CRYPTOCURRENCY

The Art of HOGE

Building a community and structure to financially liberate millions and support the next generation of artists

One of my favorite things about writing Medium articles for the HOGE community is checking my inbox [email protected].

Unlike at my day job, there are no tedious assignments waiting to greet me when I click “open”. There’s no frustration from a colleague with the way that I’ve completed a task. There are simply love letters from a group of people all over the world that enjoy my work and care what I have to say. Well, the feeling is mutual!

One such letter comes from a guy named drawnkiller, who writes

“You may have seen this being a hoge supporter. I am wanting to do a charity effort with my wife’s art. I have given away one of the NFTs out of 50. But I have 49 remaining and no bids. I offered to take any cryptocurrency that anyone is willing to give. I just wanna give to a charity and show my wife that her art can do good and support her. I don’t know if it’s a problem of everyone thinking its a waste of money to buy a NFT or if this community just is thinking I am running a scam. But I believe that we could give alot of money to charity and help hoge grow at the same time. I am giving you a reddit link. Please help me and my wife do something awesome in the name of HOGE.”

I can relate to his wife, as I also happen to be an amateur artist. Here’s a story I wrote about my high school paintings and rekindling my love for painting during the pandemic. Each of those will be an NFT once the gas costs come down.

So then, on to the point. Why do I think Hoge Finance needs to exist?

For the very same reason that the Medici bankers needed to exist.

The financial support was a necessary precondition for Michaelangelo’s David to exist.

Oh, that reminds me, someone from the meme room — do me a solid and smack this brilliant piece of art revered by millions with Hogeface, would you?

Welcome to the intersection of capitalism and postmodernism, baby!

Oh, I’m sorry… does this make you angry, to see one of European culture’s most treasured sculptures defaced with a dog face?

Well if so, then with all due respect, I think you’re looking at things the wrong way.

Let me ask you — when, exactly, was the last time that you took a moment out of your busy day to stop and admire the brilliance of the Italian master’s chiseling?

More than likely, it’s been a while.

Well, how long has it been since you’ve expressed a political view about what’s going on in the news? How long since you angrily smashed that keyboard to plant some rage in the comments section? Maybe you’re right about to do it at this very moment in my article!

But here’s the thing. Life is short.

Most of us are wasting the precious moments of our lives doing two things that are really kinda stupid if you take the time to think about it. We are working jobs we aren’t actually passionate about, and we’re expending energy needlessly on feelings of division with strangers about make-believe mythologies that don’t really serve us or make much sense. We’ve come to take everything much too seriously, and too often, it turns us against each other for no good reason.

But what does the world look like to a dog? It loves you no matter who you are, human. It doesn’t see the divisions of politics, and race, and nationality, and religion, and gender, and class. It is blind to all the fictional constructs we’ve invented, or at the very least exaggerated, to let ourselves off the hook regarding concern for the well-being of others. The dog just loves you as you are, and licks your face if you seem sad.

So that’s what HOGE means to me.

HOGE is a movement to popularize decentralized finance, which is a liberating, censorship-proof, non-discriminatory financial tool that has the ability to give millions of unbanked people around the world the ability both to borrow and lend for comparatively low fees without any middlemen. In other words, true freedom.

HOGE is also a movement to use the tools of decentralized finance to attract and reward artists, who instead of working boring jobs should be creating new and cutting edge masterpieces and being financially compensated for doing so by an ecosystem of collectors, consumers, and investors.

And HOGE uses memes to propagate awareness of itself in a way that reminds us to not take everything so seriously all the time.

If that sounds like something you might be interested in, here are some of the other things I’ve had to say about a project I’ve fallen in love with.