THE DAI ‘HISTORICAL’ SERIES

For the first in this new series, and a world first for the crypto art market, Tom Badley has released a speculative design for a 1000 DAI banknote, featuring a double portrait of Charles Dow, and Edward Jones. It continues Badley’s work in branding cryptocurrencies with the gravitas and credibility of physical money, making crypto more relatable, user-friendly, and trusted. In this respect, banknotes are successful as money – they form a powerful source of trust in a currency, as physical and aesthetically pleasing products. These aspects are, for the most part, lost in cryptocurrency, which is often faceless and hard to use.

Whilst this series is denominated in DAI, it isn’t intended to be an extension of DAI’s existing brand. It acknowledges DAI in the design’s text, and with DAI’s logo in red, but that is the extent of the DAI brand on this design. Instead, the series is 1) a design and brand challenge, to give an existing Stablecoin a new and distinct persona, and 2) an inquiry into the mythology of DAI’s 1-1 basis: the United Sates Dollar. This series will feature prominent figures from history, all of whom were integral to the Unites States Dollar’s brand – it’s logo, and psychological meaning. This is a perfect way of marrying the mostly faceless brand of stablecoin cryptocurrency, with the rich power of the world’s reserve. It is a celebration of the innovation of a stable crypto dollar, as the ultimate iteration of the the Dollar’s global function.