Eric: Send a bag of pebbles to London for 1,000 yuan

"Finally, Eric is back in Beijing." I exclaimed when I went to work in the morning. The sign was a bag of heavy goose warm stones on his desk, with the words of a clothing store in Kangding printed on the bag, and a courier invoice application form next to it. I was used to facing his empty desk, so I could sensitively infer if there was something. Eric is the chief social media officer of Good Bitcoin Company. Not long after joining, he took the initiative to go to the Kangding mine and stayed there for three months. At first, I joked with him: "I guess you will have to come back after a week. You can't stand the miner's life or the rough local food."

I never expected that he was living a very comfortable life in Kangding. Last month, our team went to Kangding together. When we saw him again, he described his daily life to us: in the morning, he would run 20 kilometers along the Dadu River under the mine and breathe the freshest Sichuan-Tibet air; after running, he would participate in the mine's task arrangement, move mining machines, check the dilapidated mining machines, etc., and take a camera to take pictures of the miners' work and life anytime and anywhere; at night, he would maintain haobtc's foreign social media accounts, and update posts on the world's most famous Bitcoin forum, sharing his daily work and life in the mine for three months. Tens of thousands of Bitcoin players from all over the world followed his posts.

"One of them is Yuri Pattison, who contacted me via email about a month ago." At ten o'clock, Eric came to work, with sparse hair combed back, unruly beard, and a lowering voice as he spoke. "I didn't care at first, but after several email exchanges, I realized his intentions."

Eric opened Google search and pointed at the pictures on the webpage and continued, "He is an avant-garde young artist in London. He is particularly interested in p2p digital currency and hopes that I can shoot a documentary about Bitcoin mines for him. Especially after I said that I didn't have an aerial camera, he immediately sent me more than 10,000 yuan worth of Bitcoin and hoped that I would buy an unmanned aerial vehicle as soon as possible to complete the documentary shooting."

Yuri Pattison

Through Google search results, I learned that Yuri Pattison is a relatively avant-garde artist in digital art in recent years. His works are bizarre. Some are human figures made up of some worn-out hard drives, and some are electronic dogs lying down to watch the latest political programs. He and his works are very famous in the London art world.

"As an avant-garde digital artist, it is not surprising that he pays attention to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is almost the most magical Internet derivative in contemporary times. The mysterious founder, grand monetary ideals, and broken reality may be the motivation for him to use Bitcoin to participate in the Libertarian Expo this time." Eric called the courier, who was carefully packing the bag of pebbles, which were also commissioned by Yuri Pattison and carefully selected by the Dadu River below the mine. The washing of the river water made each stone very round.

"3.6 kilograms, 200 US dollars." After giving the price, the courier in red looked at Eric in confusion, as if he couldn't believe that someone would send such a pile of ordinary stones across the ocean.

I probably thought of the last scene. At the Expo, after watching the half-hour documentary about the Bitcoin mine, most people still find it incredible. In that distant Eastern country, a group of miners in blue work clothes, even with bare shoulders, constantly move or repair those square mining machines, rows of blue lights, in the huge mining factory, and then the subtitles say that it is the mining process of Bitcoin, the currency of the Internet is born there, and then say that this is the future wealth carrier. This is too magical for strangers. When they were muttering in their hearts whether it was true or not, Yuri Pattison walked out of the venue to applause, carrying a bag of pebbles, and told the audience that the documentary was true, and these were the pebbles in the river next to the mine.

Magical images always have to have a realistic fulcrum.

[Attached are some of Yuri Pattison’s works]