Museum of Crypto Art

M○C△ was founded in April 2020 and incorporated as Museum of Crypto Art Foundation Ltd. in March 2021.¹ It presents itself as a digital cultural institution focused on preserving and decentralising crypto art, with free public tools and community-participatory curation.¹ Founder Colborn Bell described M○C△ as a museum “in the process of unbecoming”: developing tools through which artists and collectors can curate across digital worlds rather than relying on a single centralised authority.² Its Genesis Collection applies a one-work-per-artist framework for artists who minted before December 2020.²

XCOPY’s Cracked was the subject of an essay in “From Our Collection”, the museum’s monthly series analysing pieces in its Genesis Collection; the excerpt published on 9 June 2023 described the work as “an edition of 10 minted in 2018 on the platform R.A.R.E. Art Labs” and noted that multiple XCOPY works were lost when that platform went dark.³ On 11 April 2024 M○C△ also published @CohentheWriter’s “Why are we All so Obsessed with XCOPY”, which argued that XCOPY “has been elevated to the level of patron saint” in crypto art.⁴