Travis Uhrig was the reason Curio Cards returned to acclaim in 2021. After the project had seemingly ended and information about the vending machines was removed, the co-founder still kept the website running, eventually aiding blockchain scourers to connect the contracts to the collection four years later.

This sense of something larger, of the possibility of a project finding ground among people, is tied to Uhrig’s beginnings with and continued involvement in crypto.

Like Thomas Hunt, Uhrig was into computers at a young age. In an interview with Mad Bitcoins, he reflects on how his parents took him to the computer shop to deal with the salesman when he was a young boy, because he was the only one who understood how they worked, and what his family needed.

Uhrig’s love for technology led him to open source systems like Linux. But outside of his software development aspirations, he was also interested in volunteering and event organizing. So, he tells Jake Gallen, he would “do these Linux install fests,” where people would bring their laptops, and he’d install Linux for them and give them an introduction to it. During one particular install fest, someone mentioned the Bitcoin meetup group.

Living in San Francisco, Uhrig was already exposed to Bitcoin, at a time when it was “more of a curiosity than a global, talked about news story.” In fact, Uhrig found out about crypto in what he described was perceived as the “holy grail” for the technology: he received it as payment, he tells podcast, Show Me The Crypto. The idea of “public commons” immediately resonated with him; that “you give your time and attention to something, and that’s something you collectively own, with everybody else.” It was the idea of decentralization, and Bitcoin was “open-source money.” So, the decision to attend the meetup had already been made.

Gradually, Uhrig’s involvement grew; from stacking chairs and handing out coffee to answering questions onstage. He attended a few meetups, including “Bitcoin 101” every Saturday, and by the “third or fourth time”, he was the one “dispensing the information.” Eventually, he was asked to organize the event, and became the host of the San Francisco Bitcoin (and Ethereum) meetup groups, the oldest Bitcoin meetup at the time.

Connected to Curio Cards

It was through the Bitcoin meetup group that Uhrig met Hunt, who had also been asked to help host the events. The meeting was somewhat surreal, at first, for Uhrig. He tells Gallen: “I remember, when I met Mad Bitcoins, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ I just had a drink with the Mad Bitcoins. I had no idea he lived around here. It’s the guy from the internet. It’s the guy from the show that I watch every week.”

Yet, in the same way Hunt met people through his YouTube channel, Uhrig realized by simply taking part in “the oldest Bitcoin meetup group in SF”, he was able to reach others. “That was my platform to have an impact on the community,” he explains.

Uhrig and Hunt put together “Proof of Art”, and that too, developed out of talking to someone at a Bitcoin meetup: Cryptograffiti.

Cryptograffiti, a crypto artist originally from San Francisco, helped Uhrig see why art mattered in crypto. One of the problems why Bitcoin wasn’t “wildly popular at the time” was the “UI problem.”

The “UI problem”

Uhrig explains how, in the early days, the belief among Bitcoin proponents was that “the only reason people aren’t using it, the number one barrier to adoption, is that it’s complicated and hard. And if we made it simple and easy, everyone would use Bitcoin. We solve that, we solve everything. And that’s pretty compelling.”

Cryptograffiti was the first artist Uhrig met that made art about Bitcoin. It was art that helped others understand what Bitcoin was, how it worked, and why it was useful. Immediately, Uhrig saw the need for artists in the space.

“In my mind, Bitcoin needed artists,” he explains. “That’s how you solve the UI problem. You get any kind of creative person involved.” Uhrig saw Curio Cards as an opportunity to do just. They’d also hosted the art show the year before. The idea made sense, as a means to “get artists involved, that have never been involved in crypto before. And then, they can make art, and writings, and poems, and songs and whatever.”

That’s why Uhrig says he never created any art for Curio Cards himself, despite being interested in it, and there being no “rules” against it, because they “were just trying stuff.” For him, being in Bitcoin and part of the Curio Cards art show would’ve served no purpose. He was already “at every event, at the front, introducing the speaker and answering questions at the end.”

He adds, “There was no extra value with me entering the conversations. I was trying to create a platform to get artists that had never done anything with crypto involved, as well as artists that were popular in crypto, to kind of help anchor and attract attention.”

So, between Uhrig, Hunt and Creighton, the idea was finalized. Then, Curio Cards launched, with the website Uhrig built and continued to update. Aside from this technical involvement, the co-founder also contributed creatively to Curio Cards: according to Hunt, Uhrig came up with the projects’ name. Hunt has also stated he would’ve likely named the collectibles “Crypto Cards” or “Cyber Cards”, or something similar.

On the episode of Show Me The Crypto, Uhrig describes how the name was “not only alliterative: “curio” referred to “a curiosity” and a “rare antique object,” but also to “curated”; specifically the idea that something could be “community-curated.”

In 2017, the idea of curating art through a community and getting artists paid on-chain was new to Ethereum. But to Uhrig, Hunt, and Rhett, it just made sense.

“There is this really big problem, and we know how to fix it — why is nobody doing it?” Uhrig says, reflecting on the window of opportunity they’d identified. And that problem was,“if you’re a digital artist, there’s no way to make money on your work — not directly.”

Eventually, Curio Cards solved that problem extraordinarily, culminating in the artist's work being sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in October 2021, as well as an on-going royalty payment through an artist-controlled “multisig”, or multisignature wallet.

Although the founders of Curio Cards created something unique, meaningful, and seminal, the success caught everyone off guard. In 2021, two weeks before Curio Cards were rediscovered, Uhrig gave his two weeks’ notice at his day job.

Two weeks later, he shared the news of his departure via Twitter — an unusual move by the usually private Uhrig. Two hours later, DieAping, the first twitter user who discovered Curio Cards in 2021, shared the historic discovery with the world. Instead of buying up the cards, DieAping posted a thread explaining how they could be bought through the original contracts, using information gleaned from the Curio Cards website after entering it into the Wayback Machine.

On that life-changing day, Curio Cards took off, and Uhrig now had a community to stick around with. Although people that knew him thought he’d resigned because of the sudden NFT surge, it was just a coincidence; one of several associated with Curio Cards that have meaningfully lined up.

This article is part two in a series on the Curio Cards Founders. It was written and edited by Curio DAO contributor OC Ripley, with help from Crypto Lurker and Clio Beruete. If you enjoy our work, consider donating to Curio DAO.

And if you’d like to contribute creatively, find out how here, and visit the Curio Cards Discord to get to know the community.