Rare Scrilla is a multidisciplinary artist, DJ and producer who works across pen, marker, glass, paint, AI and music.,He began creating digital art on Bitcoin's Counterparty network in 2016,and led the community effort that founded Fake Rares to continue the legacy of Rare Pepe after its Directory closed in 2018.,,
His visual work is known for bright color, a psychedelic aesthetic and a surreal cartoonish style that combines audio and visual elements. He has also produced records and created hip-hop cover art over the past two decades.,Rare Scrilla first encountered Bitcoin in 2012 through a roommate who was mining it. In 2014 he released a concept album about the Silk Road marketplace through Foundation Media, and became immersed in crypto culture the following year through cryptocurrency exchange chat rooms known as Trollboxes.When Rare Pepe cards debuted on Counterparty in 2016,he began collecting early editions and drew thirty of the cards himself, along with the logo for the Rare Pepe Wallet.His character DJPEPE, created that year, became a fixture on the Bitcoin blockchainand entered the collection of the Museum of Crypto Art.
Fake Rares extended the original 1,774-card Rare Pepe collection with new work from the community.Rare Scrilla was part of a group with Fabian Wyss and Fake Annie that told the curator Nina Roehrs everyone was invited to be a Pepe artist, prompting her to make her own piece, FAKECATTELAN, and shift from curating to making art.In 2017 he wrote an early how-to guide on creating a token on Counterparty, later cited as recommended reading on Bitcoin-based digital art.He has continued to speak about the community's history, appearing on an origins panel at a Pepe-themed event hosted by the artist Beeple in Charleston, South Carolina,and on a panel about ten years of Bitcoin memes at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas.
