 This is Nadia Tolokonnikova. She is part of a Russian punk rock collective called Pussy Riot. In 2012 she captured the world's attention for staging a protest against Vladimir Putin in Moscow's largest Orthodox church. Since then, Pussy Riot has continued using performance art to oppose political repression in Russia. People like me are labeled as extremists or terrorists. Nadia is now actively using cryptocurrency to promote her cause. The video of her music single Panic Attack sold for over half a million dollars as an NFT series in 2021. I wanted to bring a large human rights and charitable component to NFTs. In Cointelegraph's latest interview we talked to Nadia about how Pussy Riot is using NFTs as a tool for achieving social and political change. So first of all Nadia, I'm curious how did you take your first steps in crypto and in the NFT space in particular? I was always interested in that section of culture and tech because I believe that activists have to learn about what's going on with technology in order to be effective. So I have a group of friends who are particularly involved in the NFTs since well since late 2019 maybe earlier and except in hearing lots of great stuff from them. That's how I got involved. I dropped my first NFT in March 2021 and the reason why I decided to become active in this space is I wanted to bring a large human rights and charitable component to NFTs because I quickly realized that it's a space where people are open to hearing your thoughts. It's really flexible. It's a relatively new space so that's why you can actually establish residence with your own behavior. Initially I was pretty hesitant about entering the NFT space. It's a lot of activists for various reasons. My main reason was the homogeneity of the space. Due to various historical reasons, crypto is mostly owned by white men, white heterosexual men and those are not my demographics unless you need a dig. I don't really interact with them. I had a hard time actually entering the space because I was thinking how I'm going to fill within that community and then I started to connect with various groups of LGBTQ plus groups and women and crypto space. We talked about them promoting their activist issues for a while within crypto space and then realized that actually it's just like that from the surface and the statistics right now is unfortunately really daunting but we can change that. I decided that I'm going to join to make the statistics better and maybe in the future on board more women and LGBTQ plus folks into the space. What would you say is the main utility of crypto for a political activist like you? There are a lot of reasons why my activist would want to use crypto. I think first is because crypto is a great tool to transfer money without being controlled by the government if you don't want to and there is a problem with interacting with the financial system when you're living under the government. I'm from Russia and I'm fighting with my government for the last say 17 years more than half of my life and it's becoming harder and harder for us to fight with the government because they're using everything they have to oppress us including financial tools so it's not even difficult to raise money when you're critical to your government in Russia but also it's even difficult to use money that you already have in your bank account because often your bank account would be frozen because you are labeled as a terrorist or extremist by the court decision so legally technically everything is right illegal and technically according to the constitution they're protecting people from dangerous subjects as myself so people like me are labeled as extremists or terrorists so it becomes really difficult to deal with any infrastructure logistics so we need to build something on our own and definitely crypto has been a great tool to transfer money so there is that but also for raising money I mentioned it's difficult to even have money as an activist in Russia but it's even more difficult to raise money because one of the tools how our government oppresses us is frightening individuals who wanted to donate money to our cause effectively if you donate any sound that is considered as a large sound which could be even $500 to my cause you can be considered an extremist as well in my country so if you don't protect yourself if you don't encrypt this interaction then you're fucked and so we don't want we don't want our supporters to suffer that's why for a while actually so yeah you've been asking me about how we used how we used crypto before before NFTs so that's how we've been using it we for a while we have ETH and bitcoin wallets on our website so people can donate anonymously I believe that you're not you're not going to be an effective activist if you don't have global network of supporters well this is true for my movement so that's how we're all for instance day one but crypto gave us tools to actually empower ourselves and reach a much bigger amount of people than before so talking about NFTs specifically you became very much involved in the NFT space since the start of 2021 and in March you sold NFTs in order to raise money for victims of domestic violence women that were victims of domestic violence can you tell us about that initiative how did it go it was called panic attack and it consists of four four pieces in the first ever piece went for 100 ETH with Amir who bought it and then doddle price of four pieces was 178 ETH so that's how we entered the space so we raised quite a large sum for domestic domestic stulture for victims of domestic violence and we were able to transport a lot of women outside of Russia because the shelter was located in one of the southern republics of Russia I cannot name the exact one because because of security reasons because of safety reasons so I'm sure that you were raising funds for social causes even before NFTs so what is the novelty here what is the advantage the NFTs bring for this kind of fundraising purposes in social political activism NFTs are opening up us to new capital because we have large amount of supporters but most of them they don't they don't own a lot of money so crypto space is a really interesting space because not everyone but a lot of people who happen to be early adopters and crypto they care about the world they care about how the future is going to look like they don't think about what's going on how how are they going to enjoy their money today but they also think about how they're going to enjoy how future generations are going to enjoy this planet in 100 years from now so it's a really pretty incredible community with people who and the same that they they own a large amount of money because they they just bought Ethereum or Bitcoin when when it cost used to cost nothing and at the same time they care like a lot of them care about activist causes so that's that's the new development so we can say that Pussy Riot's activity is at the intersection between political activism and art and performance art so we talked about the political and the the activism side of that now let's talk about the art how are NFTs useful for your art to me as an artist it's really valuable that digital art for the first time was actually recognized as valid art and I know that there's been there's been some digital pieces exposed at museums and galleries before but generally as an artist who works only with digital assets since the very beginning of my career I never I never got they never produced any physical pieces so just had really hard time communicating to museums and galleries like where's where's my volume as an artist if I could not bring anything physical to the gallery and this NFT movement made me feel seen and happy and supported because it connected me with other other digital artists and just exposed me to this community of other people who experience the same problem and also at the same time exposed us to community of collectors who see real value in art in digital art now let's address some of the concerns around the NFT space so I'm sure that you know about all the concerns regarding the environmental problems caused by NFTs the energy consumption that is involved with the creation of NFTs so what is your take on that well there are a lot of NFTs there are ways to mint NFTs on different blockchains and you don't necessarily have to pick Ethereum you can mint on Tezos or Solana and they use proof of stake which is much more environmental environmentally friendly a concern with Ethereum is a very valid concern and that was a big it is a big question to me when I just started using Ethereum as a blockchain to mint my NFTs on what I decided is there's a question most it's it's not really fair to make artists responsible for that I think it's a question to the fossil fuel industry and it's a question to the way how we extract um extract energy as as humanity and as an activist I am committed to working on special renewable sources of energy and also besides that I know that Ethereum is going to switch to proof of stake and they have it in their roadmap now you're not using NFTs just to promote single causes you are also actively building your community within the NFT space and this community is particularly focused on LGBTQ plus people and women can you explain what is the purpose of this project problem that we're trying to solve is the problem of representation of women and LGBTQ plus people in the NFT space we believe that we're still pretty early in this space we actually have have chances to change it dramatically so our goal our goal is to change change the statistics of when it comes to NFT sales between when you compare women and men maybe you remember a month ago NFTs now posted this terrible statistics that women are women artists are accountable for only five percent of all NFT sales throughout the last year she's really sad it's combined both of women's work being cheaper and also women are not not participating equally with men in this space and the goal of Pussyverse is going to be to change that and we're going to see it looks going to be really interesting to compare the statistics in a year from now because we're super serious but making this work and there's going to be a combination of onboarding more feminine LGBTQ plus folks in the space and also at the same time working with collectors not necessarily not necessarily women and LGBTQ plus but collectors can be whoever whoever like we are going to work with male allies as well and it's going to be interesting to compare statistics obviously we're not the only player who is trying to change it but I think if we combine our efforts we really can change it and establish a new paradigm in this space because when it comes to traditional art world it's it would be pretty much impossible for just a comparatively small group of people to try to change the whole landscape but the NFT world is still so small I feel like with a good enough effort you can actually change it okay so that's very interesting can you give us more details about this DAO that you are building and how you are concretely going to achieve the goals that you mentioned it didn't announce anything yet for a reason because we want to do a lot of work behind the scenes before being on the structure of it but right now I can just state that we have intentions of creating this DAO for women and LGBTQ plus people there's going to combine already established artists in space and up-and-coming artists and basically I think the closest you can get a taste of what it's going to be with what I'm already doing if you take a look at Pussy Riot Twitter I highlight quite often new artists coming into space who I personally helped to on board tell them about MetaMask going base how you established that paying for their gas fees because as you mentioned they often can be really expensive to kick off their journey in the energy space and another part of what I'm doing is trying to find collectors for them because initially initially I was just jump-starting their journey into space and then I saw a couple of times that there is not there is no enough interest and it I think it's a combination of two factors that most of the collectors they're still men and they're really into brotherhood which is really good so another part of my job is to find empathetic collectors either men or women doesn't matter who actually can can feel that and support up-and-coming female artists so yeah that that's what I've been doing so far and we're going to continue to work on that but I want to scale it because I think this efforts that I've been doing over the last year they're nice and valid but know that one person only can change that much so I'm going to hire the whole team who are going to create educational materials for girls who want to enter the space and people who are going to be just some problem shooting if someone has any technical questions and also you know another another part of our effort is to find collectors and now another another concern regarding the NFT market specifically so a lot of people are saying that it's a big it's a bubble and that the market is overheated and that it cannot continue like that for much longer it will eventually crash so I'm not concerned that if that happens then you won't be able to use NFTs as that efficient method for for fundraising as before it's possible you know you never want to put all your eggs in the basket and you have other ways to raise money for our activism I don't think you should only hold everything just in one place but that's been said I'm positive that the value of art is not going anywhere and despite I'm focusing on working with real artists I personally love to focus on community building and on creating great art and I think in the long term these two these two are going to be long-term time investments and I never really cared that much about money I care mostly about building good community and if money are going to follow that good if they don't that's that's fine with me as well