AB5D

vvd.eth

The collector who bought the canon in depth.

VincentVanDough became the most visible Art Blocks buyer of 2021 by paying record prices for Ringers and Archetype and holding them. Five years on, vvd.eth still holds 1,271 AB[500] works across 157 series, with the curated canon present in multiples.

Collector
VincentVanDough · @Vince_Van_Dough · vvd.eth
Gallery
Founder, Art of This Millennium (2022)
Holdings
1,271 AB[500] works · 157 series
abTDH
199,240,831 · · method
1,271
AB[500] works
157
Series
14
Ringers
199,240,831
abTDH

Entry into blockchain and crypto art

VVD has been in crypto since 2013, drawn first to Bitcoin trading: "The volatility was exciting to me." He was among the original CryptoPunks claimers and one of the first CryptoKitties participants.1 The pseudonym itself dates from 2021, the year it became one of the best-known names in the market.2

By September 2021 he described himself as owning more than two thousand NFTs and having spent "a little bit over $20 million" on them, while insisting on the horizon: "I'm very much a long-term collector."1

VVD across the AB[500]

Art Blocks holdings

His most expensive purchases that year were Art Blocks works: Ringers #377 for 350 ether and Archetype #213 for 320 ether.1 Both are still in vvd.eth. Artnet's NFT 30 described him as a collector who buys Art Blocks in depth,3 and the wallet bears that out: 14 Ringers, 14 Archetype, 22 Pigments, 18 Subscapes, 14 Apparitions, 12 Construction Token, 8 Genesis, 8 The Eternal Pump, 8 The Wrapture, 7 Fidenza and 7 Chromie Squiggles.

The largest positions sit elsewhere, in projects bought as sets of attention rather than single trophies: 95 sail-o-bots, 81 The Blocks of Art, 64 Kai-Gen, 45 Alien Clock and 41 AlgoRhythms. Most of what remains arrived in 2021, 1,023 works in all, beginning on 14 May 2021; 217 were minted directly. He argued that year that "it's not very far off before we start seeing works like Fidenza or Ringers in places like the MoMA," and that art's valuation "is almost just a measure of mimetic desire."1

Associated holdings

In August 2021 he was announced as the curator of Starry Night Capital, an NFT fund formed with the founders of Three Arrows Capital.4 He later set the limits of that relationship: "I bought a bunch of jpegs for them and curated the Starry Night Capital collection. That is the extent of our affiliation."2 In November 2022 he opened Art of This Millennium, a gallery for digital art, describing his own collection then as about six thousand NFTs.5 He also collects Rare Pepes. His advice to others is brief: "Collect pieces of art that resonate."2

Notes

  1. Yogita Khatri, "NFT collector Vincent Van Dough interview," The Block, 11 September 2021. theblock.co ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  2. Matt Medved, "Vincent Van Dough on Art of This Millennium and notable Pepes," nft now, 17 May 2023. nftnow.com ↩ ↩ ↩
  3. "The Artnet NFT 30, Part Two," Artnet News, 15 December 2021. news.artnet.com ↩
  4. The Block, "Vincent Van Dough launches NFT fund with Three Arrows Capital," 30 August 2021. theblock.co ↩
  5. The Block, "Vincent Van Dough launches new NFT gallery," 22 November 2022. theblock.co ↩