Yury Serdich is a young Global entrepreneur who has discovered success in the crypto and digital art space. As a collector and curator, Yury has bought and sold his way to a diverse collection of non-fungible tokens (‘NFTs’), which include items such as DegenApeAcademy. Yury has recently made the move into creating and selling his own NFTs, with his latest offering being a collection of collectible Ton Punks – a CryptoPunk fork using TON blockchain. In this exclusive interview, Yury divulges his initial interest in the crypto space, the philosophical implications of decentralised currency, the concept behind his latest NFT collection and his goals moving forward.
Lead me through your early beginnings. How did you go from investing in crypto to curating and selling an NFT collection?
In 2013, I began with small investments in crypto. For a little insight, I was the guy selling bitcoin with an exchange rate of $8,000 thinking, at the time, what a good profit that was. I also spent around eight ethers in a browser game just for fun in 2018.
My career was propelled when I began my telegram advertisement company. Since 2021, I have been collecting NFTs, and half a year later, I launched my own collection for the first time which showed moderate success. My latest collection, Ton Punks, was launched in 2022.
What does it mean for currency to be decentralised and how is that notion desirable?
So, in reality, digital money has existed before Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the form of paypal and the E-Gold project. The main distinction between them is Bitcoin’s innovation; the system that pays off people who make it function. I mean, miners first and foremost. I like to look at bitcoin as a parasite which uses the landscape of the human organism to feed itself. The second distinction is the zero trust concept. You do not need to trust someone to use Bitcoin which is what makes it so desirable. Alternatively, in banks, you have to trust at least the brand, otherwise there is no rational reason to use this particular bank.
What kind of implications does cryptocurrency have in the political sphere?
So from a philosophical point of view, crypto is a new way of societal coordination. The question of coordination is one of the most important questions that goes through the history of humanity. Roman law is a great example of a societal coordination upgrade and we still use many of its principles today to discern our current amendments and constitutions. It can easily be stipulated that most modern law is based on Roman law. This is just one example of human coordination which has propelled the world in a new direction; however, many examples exist in history. I believe blockchain based technologies are the next big steps of a human coordination upgrade which will drastically impact the political sphere. Hopefully, it will solve a lot of humanity’s economic problems and decrease worldwide levels of violence. It’s at least worth trying.
What was the concept behind your collection?
The idea was simple: I wanted to make a “CryptoPunks” fork – the coolest and most classic collection, in my opinion. Pretty much every blockchain has their own CryptoPunks, and I decided to make it for the TON blockchain, which is young and undeveloped. That’s how the concept of “TON Punks” came to fruition.
How many pieces did you have in your collection?
We have 5149 NFTs in our collection.
What made some more valuable than others?
Each NFT has assets. We drew 150 assets; the original cryptopunk collection had only 90, for example. Then we did a random generation of collection using these assets, and that made some assets more rare than others. So NFTs that have rarer assets are naturally more scarce than NFTs that have less rare assets. That scarcity then leads to a higher demand from consumers and as we know in basic economic theory, scarcity is often synonymous with increase in value.
How much did you sell your collection for?
Around $1,5 million.
Do you plan to start a new one?
Now, I am focused on developing the already launched one. In the future, maybe I will launch a second one. I would need really strong conceptual art to do it, otherwise it won’t be that interesting for me. For now, I am advising artists and organisations to start their own NFT projects.