Rio Rocket is an NFT Artist, Crypto Technologist, DeFi Futurist, and creator of RARE FORMS: Elementals. He is also a multi-hyphenate film, television, and voice actor who has a recurring role on the ABC TV series FOR LIFE, has appeared on the Accenture-produced streaming series HACKERLAND, is the first and only motivational spokesperson for Lowe’s Companies, and hosts the Design Your Decade podcast.
What was your journey like to get where you are?
I took a long and ambitious journey throughout several creative industries to get where I am today. It began with my early discovery that I could draw before I could read or write. It would not be until a decade later that I would evolve into a digital artist, designer, and web developer. I entered the acting arena while looking for a higher mountain to climb and invested some of my earnings into crypto in May of 2014. By 2020 I began to notice the financial growth of my investments running parallel with my career and personal growth. Today I seek to launch two of the most ambitious projects of my life which are RARE FORMS: Elementals, motivational digital avatars, and the NOW Network, a digital ecosystem spanning across crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse. Through the same innovation, ambition, and enthusiasm that brought me success as a designer, illustrator, and actor I am leaping across the crypto chasm and crossing the digital divide into the great unknown of the future of social currency.
In a simpler phrase, what is your company exactly doing?
Rare Forms: Elementals is a personal project where I am giving NFTs a unique utility. With a tagline of Manifest More, the goal of the project is to help people tap into the power of their imagination and will to attract the things into their life that they desire. I am working diligently to make this an NFT project with real-world implications beyond the “flex” of its contemporaries. The NOW network is an ecosystem that I began building last year with a small, talented team that aims to bridge the gap between crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse. A seamless system of fair trade between digital goods and real-world products and services.
What about Metaverse are you most excited for in the future?
I am excited to bear witness to and partake in the social implications of what will be the most rapidly advancing technology in human history. We are at the precipice of a new existence. This will be the Metaverse. Through the acceleration of converging technologies we have seen more change in the past 100 years than in the previous 1000 years…and it’s not slowing down. It’s predicted that we’ll see 20,000 years of technological change in the next 100 years. If you’re in your 20’s or under…you’ll live to see things that even modern science fiction couldn’t imagine. If you even plan on sticking around for 10 -20 years or more, oh you’re in for a treat.
Why should we be paying attention to the Metaverse?
If not for sheer awe of the advancements of technology then pay attention to the Metaverse for this one reason. I believe that one day soon every real-world object, living and non-living, will have a Metaverse digital counterpart. I’ll see you on the other side!
