Hello World!

Welcome to Culture Pledge! We’re aiming to grow the arts and culture fundraising space by sharing its captivating stories and launching our own crowdfunding platform for artists.

I’m Salvatore ‘Salvo’ Delle Palme aka the editor. Since we’re brand new (founded June 2020), I thought I’d kick things off today by sharing a bit about myself, my motivations, and the story behind Culture Pledge.

For the past few years my focus has been on parenting, investing, songwriting, running, and playing a bit of poker. Despite spiritual and financial progress, I’d been searching for something bigger to focus on professionally. Then one sleepless night I had an idea that I knew I had to pursue.

Ready To Start

I’ve had enough false starts and failures to know that building from the ground up is super hard. I could just forget about “work” and go back to playing poker (something I did professionally for 9 years once). I even have this strange pressure from my family to gamble, seriously. But I’ve already walked that path. I know how disheartening it can be for anyone harbouring an ambition to contribute something more to our culture.

Also, no matter how successful you might be, poker is still a fundamentally mediocre business idea because it’s not scalable. To hit one out of the park financially, you must own a piece of something greater than yourself. Like entrepreneur Naval Ravikant said in a famous tweet storm:

“You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity – a piece of a business – to gain your financial freedom.”

I wrote something on a similar topic once too. See Why Poker is a Poor Career Choice.

That one time I played holdem on tv

Nevertheless, I still hear the chatter of the Bellagio in my head. It’s like the players are laughing at me. The game’s on and I’m not there. That always burns just a little bit.

Why Arts & Culture?

Despite being motivated to build a real business, money isn’t what drives me. (Which is good because an arts and culture blog probably isn’t the best way to make it!)

Why did I spend countless hours working on art and songs and poetry as a teenager in the 90s? I don’t love the stage and I’m not even sure I like writing. I finally understand that I was just trying to make whatever mark I could that might uplift someone someday somehow some way. Today I’m trying to reconnect with that uncorrupted energy.

I’m also pretty sure that back in the Pleistocene something was woven into our DNA that forces us to communicate feelings through art. Is that too far-fetched? In any case it’s not hard to imagine the existence of a primal human desire to create art which pre-dates and transcends concepts of material wealth.

However esoteric your art, if your message proves beneficial, you stand a chance at a modicum of influence over time immemorial. What motivation is better than that?

Lucky Chances

How much artistic talent is squandered in the corporate world? That was a theme of my two online zines, Screw The Status Quo (2009) and ZOUCH Magazine & Miscellany (2010). The second was a promising project which ultimately broke me. I may have had enough pretentiousness and zeal to make it a success but at the time my cluelessness about business was a problem.

Ironically, the push that set Culture Pledge in motion wasn’t related to my turbulent past as an editor nor my passion for art. It was being headhunted randomly by a hedge fund at the very same time that I was netting $30,000 by closing a risky oil trade. As I caught my breath I thought: why not use this cash to rekindle the dream?

Capitalism

After a few years with a focus on investing, I find the traditional investment world to be full of illusion and mimicry (and also rather dull). It’s mostly mediocre performers with meaningless credentials selling basic services under the guise of an elegant scheme.

The financial media sells us headlines and biased analysis. Most hedge funds are probably just gambling (with other people’s money). Most money managers sell something that’s nearly free already: diversified access to public markets. Abstract a layer further and you see they’re all essentially just selling the idea of those markets.

In their defence, those markets are probably the greatest engine of progress and prosperity the world has ever known. But just because the greater game of the market runs fairly smoothly doesn’t mean the players aren’t suffering from a collective delusion. Or that the traditional global financial system is somehow immunized from being massively disrupted. In fact, I think that’s what’s coming. Capitalism may be the best system ever devised but it needs an update.

What will an update look like? I don’t know. But I believe we’re at the stage now, where for civilization to truly advance, every individual on the planet must share the same freedom of opportunity. I’m rooting for a benevolent anarchy. Which to me means a system that’s both more socially conscious and more pervasively meritocratic.

I say the best system to propel a hyper-productive free-market meritocracy without conflict must be one that also continually and unambiguously raises everyone’s standard of living. A theoretical example of one small step towards a future like that would be global adoption of a cryptocurrency distributed via universal basic income (UBI).

Capitalism may be the best system ever devised but it needs an update.

Crypto Culture

The crypto space overall feels like a giant leap in the right direction. The status now is that big bets by venture capitalists and retail investors have made a large group of innovative entrepreneurs and software developers rather flush. The pace of innovation is ever-increasing as a result.

Bitcoin is crypto’s first (and arguably only) killer app. It’s like an internet version of gold coins but with its own decentralized payments network. Despite a decent first decade, Bitcoin is still 50 times smaller than gold in terms of market capitalization. It’s fair to say the jury’s still out on how big Bitcoin will be, but I’m a believer.

Regardless of the outcome for Bitcoin, a new wave of decentralized applications is currently maturing into a global socioeconomic keystone.

Rollercoaster

Following poker I spent 8 years with a focus on the crypto space. (I’m so old.) I’ve seen total market euphoria exactly twice.

The first time was in 2013 when Bitcoin’s price suddenly increased tenfold in two months. I’d just been hired at Kraken and was in the eye of the storm. The number of signups was the stuff of Silicon Valley dreams.

Late 2013

Bitcoin price spikes tenfold in two months

Then in 2014 crypto entered a long slow period. Institutional money retreated and startups folded. This is sometimes referred to as the first “crypto winter”.

Eventually, in 2017 the price of Bitcoin shot up twentyfold and crypto was propelled like a rocket into the mainstream.

Late 2017

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes

After ignoring crypto for years but for the occasional insult, the traditional financial media now couldn’t shut up about it (despite not knowing what they were talking about).

By early 2018, crypto prices were already crashing slowly and we entered a second so-called “winter”.

In the industry people use terms like “winter” because these imply a breakout is coming. It’s the same false rhetoric used to sell the traditional investment space. (Talking heads love the term “phase”, for example.) The truth is nobody knows with any certainty where prices are headed.

We do know that real solutions have been kickstarted here which are challenging weak investment practices, outmoded tech, and the cronyism and retardation of the financial regulation space. It’s kind of a big deal.

The Powers That Be

Remember that despite centralized powers perpetually trying to convince you otherwise, they do not call the shots in your life. The powers that be should simply be reacting to us in order to help us. We shouldn’t need to look to them for permission to innovate, or for handouts (which keep us subservient and weak), or news (state-sponsored media will never be impartial). And can we please stop thinking of them as our source of arts and culture. They can and will brainwash you at every turn because in their lumbering machine you’re just an integer.

Call To Arms

If my true aim is to work to increase financial and creative freedom, and I have the means to try something, then anything else is self-defeating.

Despite how it may wind them through dark places, artists choose to follow the path of their emotions. Why? Because it may be the only way to discover what it means to be human. It’s also like a troubled friend once told me some time before they committed suicide, “music gives us a reason to live”.

So many things just don’t fucking matter, but art has never been one of them. We want to make it more clear how valuable the work of independent artists truly is.

Art may be the only way to discover what it means to be human.

Thanks for taking this journey with me today.

To participate in this project, please get in touch or send in a submission.