Naturally, Schaefer’s “Burning Bank series” quickly endeared him to one particular community of financial pirate investors: the Bitcoin community. [...]
Schaefer recently created his first NFT series as well, he says. --source
My point is more that the crypto folks have essentially all the same shitty instincts that bank people do. Except they're in a barely regulated industry and they're fetishizing a broken technology. On the plus side, the crypto industry is also a bit lower stakes.
As for the artist, I have no clue where he is on the bamboozled<>grifting scale. It just seems he made friends with the wrong people.