About PUNK 4762, Founder Of The PUNK Armada Ecosystem
2015 to 2019: Down The Crypto Rabbit Hole...
I’m Brian Colwell, better known in the world of Web3 as “Punk 4762.” My journey down the crypto rabbit hole started in 2015. I was a portfolio strategist for hedge funds and high-net worth individuals, specialized in commodities, and was early in identifying the market and sentiment shifts that led to a boom for Gold, Lithium, Rare Earth Metals, and other commodities essential to governments maintaining economic, defense, and political sovereignty. While researching African gold miners one fateful day in 2015, I came across the concept of a “digital gold.” Of course, we all know that digital gold was, in fact, Bitcoin.
I began to ask questions, and researched to find my own answers - “What was Bitcoin? What was blockchain? Was this Bitcoin thing a fad, and blockchain the innovation that would yield disruption? Haven’t digital currencies been tried, and failed, before? Is there an opportunity here for me to achieve goals and make far-reaching progress in my life?” There were some challenges in answering these questions, which led me to reach out to a LinkedIn connection with the words “blockchain” and “dev” in his bio. I was in luck - it turned out that this connection was one of the early developers of Ethereum. In our conversation he directed me to the Ethereum whitepaper and introduced me to “dApps.”
Now better understanding the differences between, and unique needs for, blockchain, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, I was able to formulate my investment thesis: in all Industrial Revolutions there are recurring phases and that, once we understand where are are in the cycle, we can position our portfolios and skill sets accordingly. The phases we see in every cycle of innovation and disruption are: tech innovation yields industrial disruption which leads to economic unrest and, ultimately, warfare. Here’s a recent update on the idea - What Is The Industrial Revolution (And Why Should I Care)?
2019 to 2022: Trusted Third Party...
I continued to encounter interesting people and projects building new blockchain protocols and decentralized applications. Reliable educational content was difficult to find, so I created it by interviewing project founders, blogging about what I learned, and sharing this information with the community. I grew into the role of a “trusted third party” in a trustless, blockchain environment and projects began asking me to write for them other content types, manage their social media and content marketing, and advise them on influencer marketing and go-to market strategies.
During this time I explored crypto mining, dApps, DeFi, DAOs and decentralized communities, privacy tech, staking and masternodes, and experienced the rise of the “Decentralize Everything” movement, ICOs, influencers, NFTs, and “the rug”. I was, in retrospect, blessed by the opportunity to work with projects such as Avalanche, Aragon, BEAM, Chainlink, Maker DAO, OTOY’s Render Network, Thorchain, and Zcoin (now Firo).
2022 to 2024: Punk 4762...
I expanded my Web3 network and knowledge base during the last bear market with a thorough investigation of NFT communities and projects, exploring provable digital identity as the currency of Web3 in a post-industrial, creativity-based Culture.
I selected CryptoPunks for digital identity because of the collection’s brand strength and historical importance. I chose Punk 4762 as my personal, provable digital identity because I appreciate the NFT’s aesthetics and find the combination of Punk 4762’s three traits - mohawk, shades, and cigarette - to best represent “Punk vibes”. Soon after acquiring Punk 4762, I learned of V1 Punk provenance and reconnected the Punk 4762 NFT pairs, V1 Punk 4762 and CryptoPunk 4762. I next vaulted the ENS domain 4762.eth. The trifecta had been achieved - matching Punk pairs and ENS digits. Punk 4762 was now my digital identity, but still I was not “4762.” I realized that one’s favorite traits, such as “hoody”, didn’t necessarily carry over to other collections and communities. If my digital identity was tied to a visual trait in one collection, I could potentially have no identity within another collection and community. I decided to collect only the 4762’s of other NFT collections. More than that, though, here is when I made the decision to become “4762” - not a name, not an image, not a pfp, but a number.
My investigation of NFTs finally led me to utilizing the Yuga Labs-granted and protected CryptoPunk Intellectual Property of Punk 4762 in launching the PUNK Armada NFT Collection, the Owner's Manual of which can be found here.
Today…
I'm not a pfp ... I'm 4762, and my mission is to: (1) create the digital infrastructure that enables individual sovereignty in this new era of tech innovation, industrial disruption, economic unrest, and global warfare, (2) to educate a receptive audience on ways in which we may (a) reskill ourselves to stay ahead of the robots and (b) allocate capital to take advantage of the disruptions that are coming; and (3) to prepare for a time when the promise of Web3 is fully realized, when resources of all types are bid on and transacted in across the World, in real time and in every moment, through the use solely of one’s provable digital identity.
The Perfect Provenance PUNK 4762 (V1 CryptoPunk 4762 + CryptoPunk 4762) can be evaluated here.