ThankYouX opens 256-piece ‘Doom Scroll’ mint on OpenSea at $481.85

In Brief:

• ThankYouX began minting “Doom Scroll,” a set of 256 one-of-one video works, on OpenSea on Aug. 11.
• The paid allowlist and public stages both price at $481.85 on Ethereum, with the public window closing Aug. 24 at 5 p.m. UTC.
• The source material is the artist’s own social feeds, recorded live and run through data moshing until the footage came apart.

ThankYouX opened minting for “Doom Scroll” on Aug. 11, a 256-piece collection of one-of-one video works assembled from recordings of real-time scrolling.

The drop runs on Ethereum in three stages. A creator reserve allowlist opened at 3:45 p.m. UTC, free, capped at six per wallet. A paid allowlist followed at 4 p.m. UTC at $481.85, capped at four. The public stage started an hour later at the same price with a limit of eight per wallet, and it closes Aug. 24 at 5 p.m. UTC.

OpenSea posted the allowlist opening on X. “‘Doom Scroll’ by @ThankYouX is live!” the marketplace said. “256 one-of-one video artworks capturing real-time doom scrolling were fed through data moshing and feedback loops until the noise became signal. AL phase can mint now”

What’s in the files

Each of the 256 pieces is a single video. No two match in composition, motion or texture, according to the collection page.

The process was destructive by design. ThankYouX captured feed footage, then pushed it through data moshing, the deliberate corruption of compression data that makes frames bleed into one another, and layered feedback loops on top.

The statement

The collection’s text traces the work to a breaking point: the realization that “the algorithm had become a curator nobody asked for.” Feeds, it says, are stocked with material “designed to trap attention, not reward it.”

He didn’t log off. He recorded the scroll, then destroyed it and rebuilt it as art.

Early numbers

A snapshot taken during the public stage showed 43 of the 256 pieces minted across 30 wallets, with a top offer of $338.95 and roughly $16,900 in total volume. OpenSea’s drops listing put the mint price at about $480.08 in the same window, the dollar figure drifting with ETH.

Allowlist access is tied to holdings of qualifying NFTs.

Background

ThankYouX is Ryan Wilson, who came out of the Los Angeles graffiti scene. In 2009 he covered the city in Andy Warhol spray paint stencils signed “Thank You X” underneath, the “Thank You” a nod to Warhol and the X a mark of anonymity. The tag became the name.

He has shown paintings and sculpture in London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Hong Kong, and was picked by Snapchat to paint its Los Angeles offices. Paul McCartney and Zedd are among his collectors. He has worked with Snapchat, Samsung and Adidas.

His first NFT came in 2020, a collaboration with generative artist Michael Kozlowski and the With Foundation. The two returned in December 2021 with SUBTRACTION, a 512-piece generative set. STATE OF THE ART split four large-scale paintings into 400 tiles each, producing 1,600 digital works paired with physical counterparts.

Sotheby’s Los Angeles gave him a solo show, “inertia,” from Nov. 28 to Dec. 20, 2023, in Beverly Hills. The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art has also hosted his work.

After a Sotheby’s auction in London in 2022, he took part of the proceeds and bought CryptoPunk #4974.