Burst is a media artist and musician who has been minting since 2019 and inscribing since 2023, with a primary focus on Ordinals and Bitcoin. His collection, Ordinals Yearbook No. 1, is a body of 181 single-edition artworks inscribed on Bitcoin that reflects the first 18 months of his journey with the Ordinals protocol. It captures a period full of experiments, mistakes, screenshots, laughter, text prompts, print errors, conversations, overpaints, fragments, and people. For Burst, the Yearbook functions as a time capsule of those early months, highlighting key moments in both his personal evolution and the broader movement. This includes studying the cypherpunks and the cypherpunk manifesto, researching potential Satoshi Nakamoto candidates, and diving into the earliest drafts and inscriptions from Casey and the Ordinals protocol. Through remixing, reimagining, and paying homage, Burst sought to preserve this history in one cohesive collection, honoring what he calls bitcoin, the motherchain.
Looking back at those first 18 months, Burst describes the period with excitement and the feeling of “this is revolutionary!” The experience echoed his early encounters with NFTs, marked first by disbelief, then by deep study and understanding. He immersed himself in Bitcoin’s foundations by reading the whitepaper, The Bitcoin Standard, exploring forum archives, and studying Satoshi’s emails to develop a sense of the network’s historical roots. All of this unfolded alongside his life with his wife and within his community, shaping the work he produced. This is why the collection spans five categories, from Bitcoin history and Ordinals history to reflections on his personal life as a husband, friend, and human living on what he calls the beautiful and crazy planet Earth. When creating the collection, Burst never imagined that only months later it would be exhibited in a prestigious Austrian museum. Yet that is exactly what happened, with Ordinals Yearbook No. 1 shown at Francisco Carolinum.
Many of the works in the Yearbook contain fragments of mistakes, overpaints, screenshots, and conversations. Burst says these imperfections do feel different now that they are part of a permanent, collected history on Bitcoin. All of those elements were upcycled and digested into the artworks themselves, passing through him and landing in each piece. He describes it as a metabolic process. Seeing the works collected, traded, held by passionate people, and hanging in a museum like Francisco Carolinum has shifted everything. The museum walls give them institutional weight, but the blockchain gives them something deeper: permanence that outlives any exhibition, any hard drive crash, or any fading trend.
Some pieces began in his Huanchaco studio, others as AI generations, and some as found or torn fragments. Burst recalls how everything in Huanchaco was tactile and alive in the moment, from the smell of wet acrylic and spray paint mixing with salty ocean air to the scrape of correction pen over paper and the tear of old magazines and print errors. He overpainted by hand, collaged under natural light, and sometimes even stepped on works on the studio floor to distress them further. AI generations were just raw starting points, with the real work happening through physical manipulation, sweat, accidental drips, and decisions made with fingers and tools rather than prompts. For Burst, the paradox is that the blockchain does not erase this physical history, but immortalizes it. What was once vulnerable to damage or loss is now untouchable by time, decay, or geography. Digital permanence does not negate the physical, it elevates it, turning imperfect human touches into something archival and almost mythical, like ancient cave paintings digitized and etched into the most durable medium we have.
Exhibiting at Francisco Carolinum brought the Yearbook into a tangible space and reinforced Burst’s sense that what he and others are creating is historic. He has always felt that those active since the beginning and pushing boundaries are part of something that will prevail in time and space. Receiving institutional confirmation through the exhibition proved that feeling.
The Yearbook is organized into five categories: Abstract, Bitcoin and Satoshi History, HAHA Art, Ordinals and Inscription History, and HAHA History. Burst notes that collectors so far have mostly engaged with the works as single-edition pieces that resonate personally or hold value, rather than focusing on traits across categories. There is a hierarchy in the number of artworks per category, with Abstract pieces being the smallest at 14 artworks and HAHA History the largest at 64. Ultimately, he believes collectors will decide what becomes more valuable or interesting within the whole collection. Time will tell.
HAHA sats and the HAHA framework sit at the core of Burst’s practice. For him, HAHA is the code and his tag, something he will continue no matter what. He says there is so much more to do and so little time, and he will make sure that HAHA and his art land in the history books.
Each work exists as a unique sat-level inscription, immutable and traceable, and Burst says this has reshaped his sense of authorship and legacy. Collectors who acquire these inscriptions are not just buyers but custodians in a chain of stewardship. They verify sats, maintain wallets, share context, and display works in digital frames or at events. The museum’s acquisition of two pieces OTC, the donation of 21 more by Gamma, and Burst’s donation of a HAHAcard take this further, placing the works into a public institutional collection that is cataloged, conserved, and exhibited alongside analog photography and media art histories in Linz, a UNESCO City of Media Arts. This institutional layer adds interpretation, scholarship, and visibility he could never provide alone. Legacy no longer feels like something he has to single-handedly defend or promote. Instead, it becomes a collaborative, intergenerational project, with his intent encoded on-chain, collectors’ passion keeping it circulating, and the museum ensuring long-term archival care and cultural contextualization. This relieves a quiet anxiety he did not fully realize he carried, the fear that experimental Bitcoin art might vanish like many early digital experiments before it. In a deeper sense, it aligns with the ethos explored in the Yearbook itself: Bitcoin as a motherchain for decentralized, resilient record keeping and Ordinals as a protocol that turns individual expression into communal, traceable history. Knowing others steward these pieces makes legacy feel less fragile and more alive. It is not frozen in his control but propagating through wallets, museum vitrines, archives, conversations, and trades. His role shifts from sole guardian to initial architect in an ongoing chain, which feels liberating and humbling. The works are no longer just his, they belong to the movement, to collectors who believe in it, to the institution that recognized its historical weight, and ultimately to the blockchain’s eternal ledger.
The distribution of the collection reflects this ethos as well. Some works were purchased OTC, others randomly minted, and some gifted to people who accompanied Burst’s journey. He says this mirrors the essence of what he wanted the collection to be: a deeply personal diary that simultaneously became a communal, living record of Ordinals’ early days on Bitcoin. The OTC sales, especially the two pieces acquired by Francisco Carolinum and the 21 donated plus the HAHAcard, represent intentional stewardship and institutional recognition, placing works in contexts that ensure visibility, scholarship, and long-term preservation beyond volatile markets. The random mints embody the wild, permissionless spirit of early Ordinals, where anyone could inscribe or claim a sat if they were quick or lucky enough. The gifting to friends, collaborators, early supporters, and people involved in late-night discussions about Casey’s drafts or Satoshi candidates served as homage and gratitude, acknowledging that this was not a solo endeavor. For Burst, this mixed distribution across passionate collectors, institutions, anonymous minters, and close companions feels right.
In its current state, on-chain, in private collections, and partially in a museum, the Yearbook reveals how experimental digital art no longer needs permission from gatekeepers to achieve permanence and cultural weight. It earns this through the medium itself. The collection began as raw, personal experiments, AI generations, overpaints, and fragments from Huanchaco, inscribed during the chaotic infancy of Ordinals. Blockchain gave it instant immortality and verifiability, bypassing traditional validation cycles. At the same time, blockchain as a medium forces institutions to evolve their definitions of collection and conservation. Museums historically dealt in physical objects or reproducible prints, but now they are custodians of sats. Francisco Carolinum’s actions signal a broader institutional reckoning that digital art inscribed on Bitcoin is not ephemeral or secondary, but potentially the most durable form of media art yet. By holding these works alongside analog pieces, they acknowledge that blockchain provenance offers superior traceability and resistance to loss compared to many traditional archives. This challenges old hierarchies, as the physical realm no longer holds a monopoly on durability or cultural authority. For Burst, the early Ordinals moment was not a fleeting glitch, but the beginning of something enduring, hybrid, and profoundly transformative across all these realms.
When asked what else he would like to share about the collection, Burst says they have covered a lot. There may be more to explore, from techniques to anecdotes and stories behind the artworks, but he leaves that for another time and perhaps another page where people can learn more about each piece. As he says, there is so much more to do and so little time, so let’s use it carefully and never forget to HAHA.
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