Hold On for Dear Life
It was October of 2021. While walking around the 1890 Bryant Street Open Studios in SF, I came across some work that immediately caught my eye. At first, I noticed the contrast of colorful painted images from nature, usually an animal, a flower, or a tree, overlaid onto textured backgrounds, mostly black, grey, and beige. It turned out that the backgrounds were mostly newspapers; stock charts and indexes to be exact. I was drawn to the two drastically opposing elements competing for your attention when looked upon closely, yet seamlessly integrated into one complete image. It was the work of Phillip Hua. The pieces really appealed to me because of my interest in finance and love for nature. It was odd to see those two intersect in such a beautiful way.
I loved how Hua had repurposed The Wall Street Journal’s stock charts for background mediums to his pieces, and immediately when seeing this it clicked that I wanted to have him do a piece for Subtle Spirits using crypto charts as the background. Now, I’m not here to proclaim the virtues of cryptocurrency because my feelings on that are irrelevant, but it is hard to deny the fact that it has made ripples into our culture, and the overlapping theme of emerging technology's impact on nature, society, and culture is very evident in Hua’s work.
When we met in October of 2021, it was just four months after Subtle Spirits released the first-ever Whiskey NFT Prodigal Son. Bitcoin and Ethereum were on a surge, besting their previous all-time highs seemingly month after month, doubling in a short 4-month time span. This was when the media was really starting to pick up on the cryptocurrency narrative, solidifying it for better or worse into the zeitgeist of America. The year when most people spent a lot of time at home, paved the way for cultural phenomenons like meme stock mania a la Gamestop and the Crypto and NFT boom. Both of which had been vehemently compared to the Dutch tulip craze.
When deciding on the main image from nature to use for the piece, I wanted to choose an animal that was rich in symbolism across cultures that related to themes of good luck and fortune. The symbol of the crab has a rich historical meaning in many cultures, among which are longevity, prosperity, good health, fortune, harmony, adaptability, and transformation. It also happens to be the symbol of my zodiac sign, Cancer. The word ‘crab’ comes from the ancient Greek word karkinos. Cancer is the only one of the twelve zodiac astrological signs that has a planetary ruler which is not a planet, instead being ruled by the moon. The other character used to signify the Cancer zodiac is the ♋ symbol, which is said to symbolize the sun and moon phases. This is also a nod to the balance of lightness and darkness, yin and yang. To depict this symbolism, the crab in the piece is surrounded by a sun and a moon.
After settling on the crab image Phillip got to work. The attention on Bitcoin had intensified as it was hammering out another all-time high of $66,000. Ethereum was on a similar trajectory continuing to best its all-time high. Because traditional print media hadn’t come around to including crypto in its stock chart and indexes, I provided Phillip screenshots of BTC and ETH financial charts for use in the piece. Rather than simply taking an image of a crab from the internet, Phillip went to a market to procure a real crab, which he photographed, printed and then painted over the image with watercolor. Next, he scanned it digitally for the final rendition of the piece.
His work is best explained by Phillip himself:
“My art weaves digital and analog processes together. I don't rely on just one process to create my work. It goes through a variety of steps and media. I digitally manipulate photos and print multiple variations of the image. I don't want it to be too mechanical so I like to reintroduce the artist's hand by painting on them and scan them back into the computer.
Then I collage different pieces of the images together and add other elements like the stock indexes and graphs. I like to use squares because they represent pixels. The dots represent the halftone printing. And with the use of photography and painting, you have all these different forms of image-making synthesized into one image. Once the final image is complete, it gets printed onto acrylic and gilded with gold metal leaf. I like to use gold metal leaf because it has the appearance of gold, but it's not. Paired with images of nature and stock indexes, it's a metaphor for the assumption of wealth and abundance with regards to nature, but it's really an illusion.”
There was a first version of this piece that contained the all-time high $66,000 price for Bitcoin, but as Phillip was nearing completion, it briefly hit a final all-time high of $69,000. I probably would have just let this slide, but the zodiac symbol for cancer is ♋, so I took that as a sign and promptly contacted Phillip asking him to make the adjustment to the final piece.
The word HODL first appeared in 2013 in a Bitcointalk forum. In that particular volatile year, BTC had surged from $130 to $950 in just eight months. In a self-proclaimed whiskey-laden post, user GameKyuubi exclaimed that the only strategy for an inept trader like himself was to just buy and hold. Except he misspelled it hodl. The theory is that you cannot lose if you do not sell and that in this zero-sum game, the majority of people should just hold. The thread went viral in the community and became a staple of meme culture. It was later elucidated into the acronym Hold On for Dear Life, describing the investing strategy one must endure in particularly volatile markets like crypto, and meme stocks.
After I took delivery of the piece, it hung on the wall of my apartment for nearly a year before I came up with the right title and usage for the bottle. During this time, the pricing of BTC and ETH crashed back down to earth, shedding nearly 75% off the highs and getting as low as $16K and $1.1K respectively. It has since recovered, albeit only about 50% of its previous gains. This is nothing new in the crypto space, as it has gone through multiple periods of boom and bust (crypto winters) since its inception. That’s when I remembered the term, HODL. The title made even more sense when I decided that it would work nicely for our oldest bourbon to date, something that we had been holding onto for a while.
Hailing from the Bay Area has always been a part of our ethos. For those who have experienced it firsthand, it is truly like living in the future. The mix of art, culture, innovation, and technology, challenges our way of doing things, even when they may be counter to the status quo. I’m really proud of this piece because it brought my love for pop culture, art, and fine spirits all into one concept. I hope you enjoy it too.
Like with all of our releases, there are HODL Collector's Edition Sets available. Each set includes two (2) waxed-dipped and signed bottles (one of each barrel #20 & #22), a signed and numbered archival print, and a corresponding numbered digital certificate of authenticity (NFT). This release is limited to just 13 editions.
Read the HODL tasting notes.