The Block

Earlier this week, someone claiming to be @fintechfrank from The Block reached out to me on discord to write about my "project". I was skeptical since I have multiple projects and the message was poorly worded. But I decided to give Frank the benefit of the doubt.

I tried to answer his questions as efficiently as possible. We decided to schedule a call, but not before I joined their discord to create an 'author request ticket'. But I was excited for my article in The Block, so I wanted to talk ASAP.

With the call postponed, I decided to join their discord. Its verification bot directed me to the very trustworthy looking url of botmee6.re, which had a pretty standard verification step of dragging a button into my bookmark bar.

The URL for this link attempted to run some JavaScript. This was too complicated for me, so I got frustrated and didn't do it.

A couple days later, daleybish reached out to me about my article! I was really excited since the Editor and Chief of Staff of such an important publication were reaching out. I tried to answer her question in as much depth as possible but she insisted I make a ticket in discord.

We tried troubleshooting. She hopped on a call with me to help, but her mic wasn't working. Eventually I got frustrated and decided to follow up with Frank to see if he wanted to just have the call anyhow.

Thankfully Frank's mic worked! We hopped on a call, and I asked him a few questions about himself. He got disconnected, but ultimately told me he lived in Miami and studied Art History before he became a journalist.

He offered to help me troubleshoot the discord verification, but I wanted to get down to business and talk about my big article in The Block! He eventually agreed, and I asked him what he thought about my work. He had some trouble answering and said he wasn't good with words...

This was a little strange coming from a journalist, but I let it slide! I asked him some more pointed questions, and he got a little defensive. He said that ultimately art is a very subjective experience, so it's difficult to fully capture what he feels in words.

We talked a bit more about the subjectivity of art, and he offered again to help me troubleshoot discord if I just screenshared. But I was having some trouble with my Chrome screensharing permissions and wanted to keep the conversation going while we were on a roll.

I asked what his favorite piece of art was, and he said the Mona Lisa (because of the technique and the composition). I could tell he was an art major! He also said his favorite crypto art was CryptoDickButts because they were so unique.

At this point Frank seemed sort of resigned for some reason, and asked me to describe my art. I told him about how I draw a lot of inspiration from scams -- particularly in how they construct false realities that mirror the false realities that we encounter in our everyday life.

He asked it scams could be art since they're unethical, to which I replied yes. He disagreed, but said there are a lot of scams in crypto. I asked him if he knew of any good ones, and he described one he heard of where a fake discord verification hijacks your account.

I asked why someone would want to hijack my account, and he suspected maybe it was to peak it my messages or something. Sounds mostly harmless to me. It seems like this is the attack that he was describing.

Then he suggested that maybe we collaborate on a project. Maybe since I like scams and money so much, that we could try to sell fake money... to which I responded that that sounds like a great idea! That's right up my alley and can be a new and exciting direction for my art.

Long story short, he's coming up to Brooklyn for a business meeting, but wants me to pay for his plane ticket since he's short on cash. I told him that he should buy some FastCash if he wants to make some cash fast.

After our call it seems like he ran into a bit of trouble. He pinged me, but stopped responding to my attempts to help him troubleshoot.

It was great talking to you fintechfrank! I'm looking forward to seeing my big article in The Block!