Edition of 100 copies
3 ⅛” x 5 ¼” x ½” magic wallet closed; 6 ¼” x 5 ¼” magic wallet open
2021
This piece takes the form of a “magic wallet” which is appropriate for an edition describing the main methods of money-laundering and graft now also connected to block-chain currency. The deluxe version is wrapped in Tyvek (construction and real estate have long been involved in money-laundering) and hidden in an altered book with a niche inside. Each altered book is created from a recycled economics hardcover. This mirrors news reports of the FBI seizing altered books from crypto money-laundering thieves in New York who had used the niches in the altered books they created to store hard-drives with their blockchain information.
It is terrible for anyone to lose their savings or investments due to the volatile value of and somewhat rampant fraud attached to cryptocurrency and NFTs. But perhaps some people might reconsider getting involved in blockchain technology if the environmental impact had been mentioned more frequently in the innumerable newspaper articles about block-chain in the past four years.
Some people tout the low-carbon consumption of platform switches from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) undertaken by a few companies. So far this represents a very small part of worldwide block-chain energy consumption. Block-chain consumes more than the annual electricity use of countries like Greece and Ireland. Until there is abundant, free, non-fossil fuel electricity for the world’s needs, some people will choose to make investments in less volatile platforms, with protections like FDIC in the United States, and laws guarding against fraud in the stock market, such as wash trading, which artificially inflates value (but which is still legal in the buying and selling of NFTs).
While this work attempts to alert people to fraud, it is essentially an environmental piece. Paul Krugman of The New York Times is one of the few journalists who occasionally raises the alarm of the environmental harm of blockchain. A significant portion of the devastating pollution and impact on local populations from crypto mining is generated in places like Kazakhstan, after China outlawed blockchain. Yet even in the US some recently-shuttered or nearly-defunct highly-polluting fossil fuel plants have reopened at the behest of crypto investors in central New York and southern Montana, to cite just two examples. Currently Texas and Nevada would appear to be the most friendly to crypto mining and its correlated electrical consumption, pollution and impact on local residents.
Accordingly, the altered books of the deluxe copies of NFT have their original titles and dedications crossed out by hand, with the following dedication written in acid-free ink: To awareness of the massive environmental costs of the perpetual, permanent consumption of electricity for block-chain technology (apart from fraud)
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Laundering Instructions
To self-launder:
Obscure the source of criminal revenue (ie theft, trade in illicit goods, tax fraud, bribes or cybercrime) by using it to pay bills or rent or
Tumble illicit cash loads with legal revenue of cash intensive business, like a laundry, bar or catering company
For larger loads:
Pre-wash cycle –
Do bulk cash smuggling with money mules (use specialists to modify suitcases and facilitate travel)
Machine wash only –
Find money mule herders to solicit mules through online job ads. Mules can use their own bank accounts to forward illegal funds abroad or to opaque shell companies, or, offer their personal credentials to split loads into smaller increments and wash separately. Trust and company service providers can help set up complex laundering networks with shelf companies to layer laundered cash.
After rinsing thoroughly, deposit funds in a numbered bank account in Switzerland, or buy real estate. Loans taken out against these assets will be fresh, crispy-clean currency.
Cryptocurrency tumblers and bitcoin mixers can help you hide your identity and the source of illegal funds. Money mules can layer digital assets as well. Or, if the devastating environmental impacts deter you from utilizing block-chain currency or NFTs, you could consider phantom shipping with invoice fraud: items bought and sold only exist on paper.
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The above laundering instructions are digitally printed on a faux clothing label which appears to have been ripped out of a seam. On the back of the clothing label the title of the work is printed in acid-free green rubber stamped lettering. The title is surrounded by a series of hand-carved green rubber stamps: the symbols for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero and Solana.
Starting from the “prison bars” front cover, and opening it as a western codex book, the open wallet shows laminated foreign currency collected over the past few decades in Europe, South America, South Asia and Africa.The piece of currency is rubber stamped with the phrase “Not Funny-money Taken” with zeros in place of the letter “o” on one side, and signed and numbered by the artist on the other side. This laminated currency is held in place with an “X” with engraved and rubbed text (frottage with metal dust) stating “DIRTY MONEY” in block letters visible in raking light. The faux clothing label with the title “Laundering Instructions” is at right. When the wallet is closed again to show the back cover with silkscreen of diagonal regimental tie stripes, and reopened again as you would open a western codex bound book, this time the laundering instructions appear at left covered by an “X” and the laminated money appears at right, with “CLEAN MONEY” written with white correction-fluid in block letters on horizontal black velvet bands. And so, the cycle continues, as the wallet is opened and closed, washing the illicit gains and reputations of bad actors, scrubbing them clean in the eyes of the world until perhaps the fraud is exposed.
Silkscreen of prison bars and striped regimental tie pattern on bookcloth by Inuit in Bologna, Italy. Binding of silkscreened bookcloth and plain grey bookcloth by Legatoria dell’Unione in Bologna, Italy.
Angelonium 