Fear and Loathing in Miami: Inside Art Basel and the Rug Radio Merger

MIAMI BEACH—Just before daybreak, I found myself sucked into a large sectional between a terrifying, bald, Persian cat and a kindly brown wiener dog, desperately trying to claw my way out of a k-hole. 

I was in Miami for Art Basel, the annual art lollapalooza that had emerged as the year’s most important gathering of the NFT/digital art world. The sprawling weekend event typically packed Magic City with a Whitman’s Sampler of high rollers, dilettantes, models, rent boys and girls, billionaires, grifters, fishheads and, of course, degenerates. And now that we were well and truly post plague, the crazy was working overtime.

Why I was in this particular apartment was a bit murkier. I appeared to be in the penthouse of a lovely couple who, at some point earlier in my tequila-soda-soaked 12-hour marathon, had invited me over. 

When I had arrived, before life got profoundly out of control, the first thing I noticed was their Christmas tree. It was nestled cozily in the corner of the penthouse, the high-vaulted ceilings making it look much smaller than it was.

It was festooned with ball gags, thongs, and stick figures contorted into various sexual positions. 

“You should give us a pair of your panties for the tree,” the woman host suggested to a woman sitting nearby.

“I’m not wearing any tonight,” she replied. 

The tree had been discussed just enough to satisfy the hosts that the effort they had put into it was worth it. Then they started passing around a glass bowl accompanied by a long copper straw. 

I was in no position to consume anything other than the contents of an IV, but a vision of my mother came to mind: “It’s rude to refuse a gift…” So I had taken a nosedive into what I later found out was ketamine. It burned like something that’s definitely not supposed to go in your nose—and that was the last thing I thought before I began melting into the couch, rapidly progressing from “I feel kinda goofy” to comatose. 

My hosts had a friend visiting. The dude was ex-military and he seemed to be the only other one completely off his rocker. He had buzzed hair and was built like his YouTube search history exclusively featured David Goggins. He kept shooting me sideways glances as if to say “I know you also no longer have control of your basic motor functions.” 

Things got weirder. I made eye contact with a bald Persian cat, which perched on the arm of the couch. It stared back, stretched creepily and slowly began to advance on me, its bare skin wrinkling and folding like a cankered, naked, old man. A brown Dachshund sat on the floor and watched, alert, like he was waiting for a murder.

I screeched in horror and began edging away on my fingertips, looking for the door, for a way out of this.

How did I find myself in this dark and vile place?

Bienvenido a Miami

A week earlier, Josh Quittner, Decrypt’s parsimonious CEO, had asked me if I wanted to go to Miami to write about a top-secret merger that was to be announced between Decrypt and the folks at Rug Radio. “We’ll cover your Uber rides but you need to pay for everything else,” he said graciously. “Do you have anywhere you can stay for free?”

I found a plane on Cheapflights that departed Vegas, where I live, at 7 a.m. I scored a window seat in the second to last row, one of those deals where you get to smell the bathroom throughout the flight. The guy who plopped down next to me was built like a linebacker and was quick to dig his elbows into my sides—claiming the arm rests, which was his right as the poor bastard in the middle seat. 

“Yo, do you mind if my girlfriend switches seats with you? She’s in the middle seat across the aisle?” he asked. Figuring it was unlikely he’d kill me due to the hour and the ban on firearms, I told him as politely as I could to fuck off. Angrily, he turned away and I felt his elbows dig further into my ribs. 

Four sleepless hours later I touched down in Miami, grabbed the most expensive Uber I could summon and headed straight to South Beach, where the NFT people had begun to gather.

I began my evening at the SLS Hotel wherein a group of Web3 companies, including World of Women and Revel.xyz, were staging an event. It was just getting dark when I arrived and the place was lit up with pink and purple neon lights lining the cabanas that circled the pool. Digital displays featuring NFTs and other digital art dotted the scene. Almost at once I ran into Dave, a VC I had met at ETH Denver. 

I like Dave. He brings the vibes. Every time someone he knew walked up he’d throw his hands in the air and exclaim excitedly, “Oh Reza! Have you met so-and-so? Let me introduce you to the man/woman who invented blah blah blah” or “Reza, do you know these guys?! They just sold 10,000 ETH worth of NFTs; they’re crushing it!” 

It’s hard not to feel important when Dave’s around, so I took him to the next party, the “Gateway Exclusive VIP Event” at the Faena Forum. Since we were exclusive VIPs, we took an Uber SUV; reggaeton tunes loudly announcing our arrival. I quickly realized that “exclusive VIP” meant “anyone who gets access to this RSVP link”—the event hadn’t even started yet and the line of hundreds of people wrapped down the block and around the corner. 

We ran into a British couple that Dave knew, staring at the line.

“Do Americans always dress like it’s Halloween?” one asked.

“No, that’s just NFT people.” 

House of Rug

The next two days were filled with NFT people, and everything colorfully blurred together like carnival spin art. That’s partly because I spent them almost exclusively at Rug Radio events, and partly because I capped off the two-day sprint with enough horse tranquilizer to put down Seabiscuit. 

RHAUS, as it was called, would have made Scarface jealous. It was a meandering Spanish Colonial-style mansion with an open courtyard in the middle and a massive, palm-dappled backyard with a swimming pool. It sat on the west side of Indian Creek and had a private dock; a bright green jetski gently bobbed as the tide came and went. The atrium was filled with screens displaying NFTs and artwork.

A Rolls Royce and a Mercedes G55 were parked outside of the entryway, and at night, a huge marquis that said RUG RADIO lit the front yard. We are so back, baby.

The majority of the party took place in the RHAUS backyard—it hosted two bars, half a basketball court, the aforementioned pool, and a huge projector screen. Techno music pulsed day and night to such an extent that, even for what was obviously a party venue, the racket so pissed off the neighbors that an enforcement cop finally came by with a $200 noise ordinance fine. 

As the first dignitary from Decrypt to arrive, I set out to make contact with the Rug Radio team, pay my respects, and perhaps touch Farokh’s hair for good luck. 

I found the charismatic Rug founder in a back room. He was chilling with Loxley Fernandes, Rug’s cool CEO; Quinn Button, PhD, its dazzling data scientist/chief operating officer, and the rest of the team, huddled around a countertop covered in wine glasses and NFT merch. They were “testing” the wine, which had been provided by a sponsor. They offered me a glass and I took a few test sips and used the only wine terms I know to describe it—so my future coworkers would understand that I’m a man of class: “I like it! It’s subtle, light-bodied.” 

They ignored me.

The RHAUS event was off to a fantastic start.  

The place was teeming with interesting people.There were lots of crypto OGs. I met the usual degens who claimed to have gotten into Bitcoin via Silk Road. Many people boasted of having made and lost millions of dollars. One guy said he got rekt when he lost all his BTC on Mt. Gox. Another lost 250 Bitcoin on an old laptop he’d lent his parents. 

I met NFT artists and gallery owners and filmmakers—lots of Rug’s creator community had turned out for the merger announcement, which was supposed to be secret. And why not? The bull was starting to snort and bellow and who were we to ignore it?

Most of the Rug regulars were anons with nicknames well-known in their community, such as G Man and Thread Guy and Simms (which maybe is a nickname and maybe not.) I wanted a nickname too but Farokh, to whom the naming duty apparently fell, had yet to baptize me. 

Caterers were walking around with trays of finger food, but my engine was running exclusively on tequila and light-bodied wine and I needed mohhhhr. I called a delivery place and ordered a few pizzas. “Compliments of Decrypt,” I lied, hoping that our accountant would reimburse me for Uber Eats as if it were Uber rides.

For a brief moment, being the man standing between event guests and warm pizza made me the most popular figure at the party. I was PizzaGuy! But soon, the pies, along with my social batteries, ran out, so I left to meet an old friend and his girlfriend downtown. And that is how, many hours later, I ended up clawing my way through the k-hole. 

On this? The day of our companies’ wedding?

Pain. Confusion. Humidity. FML. 

I awoke in a state of disarray and embarrassment. Briefly, I wondered whether my hosts had been worried that a fully grown manchild was rocking back and forth in the fetal position on their sectional, like a dying worm. Should I warn them that their cat is actually Satan?

But I had no time for such musings. 

It was noon, the big announcement about the Decrypt and Rug Radio merger was set to happen around 8 PM, and I had to sober up, fast.

I found a gym with a sauna and sweated out my poisons for 45 minutes. Soon perspiration started to form on my upper lip; it tasted distinctly chemically. Vaguely, I wondered if licking it would re-trigger the drugs and send me back to the k-hole. Sadly not. I was on the road to redemption, friends, and soon started to feel like a normal person again. 

I hitched a ride to RHAUS to meet up with the Decrypt and Rug Radio teams. 

Farokh greeted me with a big smile and open arms. After a couple days at the RHAUS, the camaraderie between us was starting to grow perhaps as a byproduct of surviving multiple days in the brutal trenches of Basel. Ilan Hazan, one of Decrypt‘s co-founders, arrived next, fresh from his home in Paris. Jetlagged, he still looked better rested than me. Three tequila sodas later, I felt life slowly creep back into my body.

The stage where the announcement would be made was a raised platform beside the pool. It reminded me of the stage at a Vegas day club. Earlier in the day, it was the setting for a series of Web3 panels from the likes of Snowfro, Gmoney, Amanda Cassatt, and a slew of other crypto OGs. 

Grandees from Rug, Decrypt, and Arbitrum sequestered in the mansion, getting ready for the reveal. The big idea: Rug and Decrypt would merge and build a next-gen media company with ad tech powered by Arbitrum. World domination would follow. The speakers agreed to KEEP IT BRIEF, and an earlier plan to make the announcement from the second floor balcony like South American dictators was scrapped for technical reasons. That was a shame. I had looked forward to seeing Quittner dressed like a general, wearing wrap-around shades and chomping a cigar.

Soon, as hundreds gathered on the lawn, it was time to make the announcement. The anticipation was palpable—or maybe I was still coming down. 

Farokh and Sir Loxley bounded onto the stage and delivered the headlines. Then Quittner came up and made some brief remarks saluting the partnership. Next, Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and the founding CEO of Consensys—an investor in Decrypt and Rug token holder—came up as a kind of surprise guest. He hailed the merger as heralding the next great phase of crypto, which was…maybe decentralized media? Or maybe it was mass adoption. Or decentralized media that would lead to mass adoption? 

Whatever, it was going to be a beautiful thing. A video pierced the darkness and it showed Rug content on Decrypt, and Decrypt content on Rug, our bright and glorious decentralized future.

When Lubin’s speech finally ended, he, Farokh, and Loxley jumped in the pool to celebrate the nuptials. Quittner, feigning a broken leg and still pissed about not getting a cigar, skimped off. The music pulse back on and the night continued. 

Only one more horrible shock would await me.

I went to the bar to grab what would be my last tequila soda of Art Basel 2023. I waited for the bartender to fix it, and fired up my flight details on my phone. I was standing behind a giant guy in a sharky gray suit. He had long braids that draped behind him, and when he turned around to wave to someone, I caught a glimpse of his face. 

It was the guy I sat next to on the flight from Vegas to Miami!

Guns are legal in Florida. Based on what I’ve read, they’re more common here than cellphones or babies. I was panicking, possibly with no good reason. I doubt he even remembered what I looked like.  But then the big guy caught my eye and I saw the recognition lights blink, and flicker on. A tense moment ensued…

He smiled. I smiled. We shook hands. We were crypto bruhs. We lived in the future, in a decentralized utopia where no one knew your real name and the tequila sodas flowed like so many airdrops. Then he looked down at my phone and saw that I was checking in for a flight. 

“Oh shit,” he said. “I’m on the same flight back.”