Lucho Poletti is an American digital artist who makes propaganda-style Bitcoin art, reworking the visual language of banknotes and currency engravings to argue that Bitcoin is an alternative to the fiat monetary system.Working across animation, prints, and acrylic panels,,he layers densely detailed scenes that draw on Renaissance triptych paintingand wartime propaganda posters.
Poletti was born and raised in Miami, Florida, to immigrant parents who encouraged him to pursue art as a child. He earned an M.S. in Finance in 2012 and worked in business intelligence at consumer packaged goods companies from 2013 to 2017.He began creating Bitcoin art in 2017,,and in early 2018 he left corporate work, adopted the pseudonym HODL CRYPTO, and relocated to Mexico to make Bitcoin art full time.By 2020, certificates of authenticity for his prints listed Guadalajara, Mexico, as his location.
He began minting on SuperRare in September 2019 and produced 29 pieces there over the next two years, including the six-part Anonymous Leader series, built around a recurring Satoshi mask.Between 2019 and 2021 he released 27 editions on KnownOrigin, including translations of Dr. Satoshi's Orange Pill into Chinese, Italian, Polish, and Turkish.In September 2020 he released his first audiovisual collection on Nifty Gateway, pairing animation with original sound design;it sold out within seconds and earned him $20,000, and a second Nifty Gateway drop less than two months later also sold out, earning $40,000.He had the vector-art prints from these drops certified through Verisart, signing and numbering each certificate by hand before mailing it out with the print.In 2021 he released Moneta Divina on Nifty Gateway, a three-part, steampunk-styled series depicting Bitcoin as an alternative to dollar-based fiat inflation,and in 2022 he released Cypher Deos, a Bitcoin-themed triptych modeled on Hieronymus Bosch's altarpiece structure.In 2024 he released The Bitcoin Movement, a three-part animated collection combining elements from his earlier animations to trace Bitcoin's price cycles from 2017 to 2024.,In February 2025 he released Bank Runners, a collection of 1,776 individually numbered digital banknotes on Ethereum, which sold out within 24 hours of its public mint on Buildtree.io.
