The work presents an effigy of the infamous pirate Blackbeard—a horned skeleton toasting the Devil while pointing a spear toward a bleeding heart, giving no quarter—layered on top of an etching of a discontinued American $100,000 bill featuring the portrait of Woodrow Wilson, a bill that was created in 1934, during the Great Depression. The ensemble brings forth a critique of the market—which, beginning in the late nineteenth century, was rooted in speculation and preyed on the hopes of the poor and the disenfranchised—in a nod to Lucy Parsons’s activism against the industrial economic system. This critique is echoed by the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, through a cryptocurrency and blockchain technology aiming at decentralizing the hegemony of the market while adding a layer of transparency. As NFT acquisitions facilitate the liquidity of cryptocurrency in its original, decentralized, and highly volatile value, one can wonder about the RICH BASTARDS and their FUTURE EXECUTIONERS.
