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From financial analyst to crypto artist and worldbuilder, Josie Bellini has helped shape the NFT space from its earliest days. In this episode, she shares how her background in finance and deep dive into the crypto world led her to create iconic projects such as CyberBrokers, one of the first fully on-chain avatar collections. Josie talks about the importance of digital permanence, building immersive lore with her community, and why ownership, accessibility, and collaboration are redefining how we experience art in the Web3 era.
Before CyberBrokers, Josie Bellini had already built one career in finance and another in coding. The move into crypto art in 2017 wasn't a pivot - it was a discovery. She found the tools she'd been looking for to do the thing she actually cared about: build worlds that belong entirely to the people who inhabit them.
Josie Bellini is an artist and entrepreneur who began creating crypto art in 2017 after discovering Bitcoin through Chicago meetups and subsequently leaving finance for a coding bootcamp at Northwestern. CyberBrokers - her 10,001-character collection, fully on-chain as vector art - cost approximately 100 ETH to upload to the blockchain and represents one of the most technically ambitious fully on-chain projects in the NFT space. She named all 10,001 characters herself and wrote 26 chapters of story for the universe. Her follow-up project, Drifters, features fully 3D interoperable avatars and collaborations with artists including Brian Brinkman, Coldy, Osanachi, XCOPY, and Banana Ken.
"Fully on-chain" is not just a technical specification - it's a philosophical commitment. When all the data that defines a work exists permanently on the blockchain rather than on a server that can go offline, the work becomes genuinely permanent in a way that most digital art isn't. Josie Bellini built CyberBrokers that way because she believes the community that forms around a collection deserves work that can't be taken away. This conversation explores what that conviction produces: the cost of the commitment, the storytelling that gives it meaning, and what on-chain storytelling actually looks like when it's done at the scale of 26 chapters and 10,001 named characters.
Fully on-chain as ethical commitment
Storing vector art entirely on-chain costs approximately 100 ETH in upload fees. Bellini made that choice because she thinks communities deserve permanence - not because it was efficient. That ethical orientation shapes everything about CyberBrokers.
Naming 10,001 characters
The decision to name every character in the collection herself is a statement about what stories and worlds require: specificity, care, authorial intention. It also creates a relationship between collector and collection that mass-generated projects can't replicate.
Drifters and interoperability
The shift to 3D interoperable avatars in Drifters reflects Bellini's ongoing commitment to giving collectors utility that extends beyond static display - characters that can travel across different virtual environments and carry their identity with them.
Kindness as professional principle
Bellini's advice - to show kindness to everyone, genuinely, without hierarchy - comes from experience in a space that can become status-obsessed and transactional. Her practice models a different set of values.
"It's so important to just show kindness to everyone and be genuine. Don't think you're above anyone just because of whatever reason."
CyberBrokers and Drifters are case studies in what fully on-chain commitment produces - technically, aesthetically, and communally. If you're thinking about what makes digital art truly permanent, Josie Bellini's choices give you concrete answers. And her approach to storytelling raises the bar for what a collection can be.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
