Cre8or • \krē-ˈā-tər \ • noun
A person or thing that brings (something) new into existence. 👋 Welcome to the 845 Cre8ors who are reading this newsletter.

🧠 This weeks big idea is…

Web3 is a feeling, and Cre8ors is Punk Rock!

This weeks op-ed is written by Cre8ors founding member Chringo.

⏱️Time to read: 6 minutes

I appreciate this is a pretty abstract sentence to start with but let me explain…

We’ve all ended up here, in the wonderful open world of web3, from all places and for all kinds of reasons. A few weeks back, Cre8ors held a special space dedicated to the stories of its community. I came away feeling totally inspired and grateful to have stumbled into such a genuine group of people with such diverse and interesting journeys.

This made me reflect on my own journey and how I got here – something I’d never really done before – and this is where I landed…

For anyone that doesn’t know me, I’m Chringo. I’m a designer by day and a musician for the rest!

My real name is Christian… A friend who loved the Beatles and I were playing some music years ago, (I am a drummer) and he called me Ringo (who was the drummer for the Beatles). Christian and Ringo came together and thus, Chringo was born… Nearly a decade later it made the perfect pseudonymous Twitter handle… but there we go, I just ruined that… I’m Doxxed!

It was 1998 and I was 9 or 10 when a childhood friend put on a new CD that he had been given. I may not have realized it at the time but I can wholeheartedly credit this album with changing my life. It was an album called Americana by a band called the Offspring. I had just discovered skateboarding, and now throw into the mix my first punk rock experience and I was in!

That was basically me, skateboarding and music. right through to becoming an ‘adult’.

To be honest, not much has changed at 34, but at about 14, I admitted to myself I wasn’t very good at skateboarding, got really into playing the drums and joined my first band.

I had learned that with enough willpower and a ‘can do’ attitude, you could make music you loved with your friends, play it to other people and have the best time doing it, then travel to another place and do it again. I knew people were doing this and I was pretty set on making that my reality too!

I hopped from band to band throughout school and college with some amazing people who are now lifelong friends, getting better at what we did and trying to make the next big leap. Then in 2008 I somehow ended up at university, (it seemed like a logical next step) studying music tech, (which seemed like a legit way to make a career in music) but I quickly realized, I had no interest in it! I was, however, pretty good at playing the drums so I dropped out, spent my recently acquired student loan on better equipment, joined another band and went right back to it!

This time it felt really good. We got a manager, a small record deal, put out an album and did a bunch of touring, all of which I can honestly say — like the Offspring album 10 years before — changed my life, and helped me realize how important it was to me to push on with the things you love. All the work (and it was hard!) didn’t matter because it was all a part of the journey.

After 3 years, we parted ways as a band and I was getting along comfortably in the full-time job I had picked up to get some stability in my life, which was good! But one day it dawned on me that although the people around me were good and I had a steady bank balance — in the plus for once — I got precisely zero satisfaction from the job. And that wasn’t good enough. Especially if I was supposed to keep it up for the rest of my working life.

New York was a place that I had always wanted to visit and I’d finally managed to save up some money so I decided to go. Solo. There was so much cultural history there from The Beastie Boys to The Ramones, CBGBs and Studio 54. I just wanted to experience the place.

At the airport waiting to catch the plane, I was looking through magazines and came across one called Huck. A skater called Ed Templeton was on the cover so I picked it up and later, on the plane I started to read. After about 20 minutes, I found that as much as I loved what I was reading, the actual magazine and how it looked had almost as much, if not more of my attention. The layouts, the typography, and the photography. They all captured this feeling of innovation and counterculture… and made me feel something!

Long story short — I realized that this was graphic design and I was really into it! And, there was a roadmap, a way I could actually do it. It meant putting in some hours to educate myself, pulling together a portfolio, lots of late nights and some help from friends but I got back into university. I was 26 and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made!

Since then, I’ve graduated, moved to London, worked as a designer for 5 years, continued playing music, put out two more records, toured in Europe for the first time, and got engaged…

But Anyway… There’s a point to all this.

It’s that feeling that keeps me excited and inspired. A passion for creating something new. A need to make things better, and to make new things possible. That same feeling I had way back at 9 years old discovering punk rock and skateboarding, or at 26 making life-changing decisions, and most recently at 32, discovering web3.

I think that’s why Cre8ors resonated so strongly with me. It’s a collective energy to create something exciting, as a community! If web3 is a feeling, then Cre8ors is punk rock! Or whatever it is that gets YOU inspired…

Chringo

🗞 In The News

Eurozone officially enters recession

SEC Charges Coinbase for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange, Broker,and Clearing Agency

US court summons Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao

Binance Lawyers Say SEC Chair Gensler Applied for Advisor Role

The Full List of Cryptos Named Securities in SEC Lawsuits Against Binance and Coinbase

Apple unveils Vision Pro AR/VR headset, priced at $3,499

Binance US suspends USD deposits following SEC lawsuit

📌 Major milestones

The Cre8ors Odyssey campaign has ended.

If you you are reading this, it means you were early this time 🧬

👟 Next-steps

The opportunities to earn free relics will be way less from now on.

However, you can still make it in.

In Cre8ors we believe in building a community of good people.

If you think you deserve to be part of our collective, join the discord and let us know why.

We might have to gift for you.

https://discord.gg/cre8orsnft

🗣 Shoutouts

@ReduxWynnsa with the amazing shoutout! We are out here! LFG!

@Tbone_Mendes Bringing more people together with their fire photoshop skills 🔥

Welcome @mxoxnxk! The Cre8ors is happy to have you on board!

@uFControl has been BUILDING with us! Hard work does pay off 💪

@Fera_Animalia being bullish on our website and we are so stoked to have you!

Until next time,

the Cre8ors