In Ethereum: Worth a Thousand ETH (3.5” Gold), Arlo Sinclair fuses the obsolescence of analog storage with the speculative volatility of the digital age. A gold-toned 3.5” floppy disk, painted with his characteristic hyperreal detail, bears a distressed label declaring: “A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND ETH.” The slogan, printed in bold red lettering and half-obscured by a taped-on amendment, parodies both the timeless proverb and the speculative frenzy of the NFT boom.

Sinclair’s choice of medium is central to the irony. The floppy disk—once a symbol of cutting-edge digital storage—now stands as a fossil of technological redundancy. By inscribing it with the language of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and tokenized art, Sinclair collapses past and present, questioning the permanence of digital ownership in an era when both technologies and markets are destined for obsolescence.

The weathered surface of the label, its creases and tears meticulously rendered, underscores the fragility of value systems built on hype. Ethereum, one of the leading platforms for NFTs, becomes here both a symbol of possibility and a cautionary emblem of speculative excess. The disk, unable to hold even a fraction of the data required for blockchain transactions, becomes a visual joke on the absurdities of digital scarcity and the contradictions of immaterial wealth tethered to fragile infrastructure.

As with the rest of Sinclair’s 2025 body of work, the painting straddles nostalgia and critique. Drawing on the traditions of Pop Art and post-internet aesthetics, Ethereum: Worth a Thousand ETH reframes discarded technology as both cultural fossil and satirical mirror. It asks viewers to consider what “value” means in an age where memory is unstable, markets are volatile, and images themselves are currency.