The Citadel (v. Nardo): From Meme To Monument

My latest painting, The Citadel (v. Nardo), did not begin simply on canvas. It began as a whisper – an image passed digitally between anonymous hands, reposted, remixed, archived, and mythologized across the internet. Like many of my works, this piece builds from historical fragments and symbols, grounded in the belief that memes are not fleeting – they are foundational. They don’t just reflect culture, rather, they write it.

Last year in 2024, I presented a solo show in Abu Dhabi centered around the fact that Subway – the sandwich chain – was one of the first fast food restaurants to accept Bitcoin. That small historical detail became the seed of a larger conceptual inquiry: what does it mean to “consume” in an age of hyper-speed information? The works explored the overlap between fast food, memes, and digital attention. The exhibition was tight, precise, and deeply memetic in its structure.

The Citadel came from a similar place.

In 2013, a now-legendary Reddit post titled “I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing” appeared online. The author – claiming to be from 2025 – warned of a future shaped by Bitcoin, but not in the way many had hoped. It wasn’t a utopia. It was a stratified society where those who adopted early became untouchably rich, and everyone else was left behind. Whether satire, fiction, or genuine warning, the post struck a nerve. It spread quickly. It became part of the cultural and memetic architecture of Bitcoin.

Years later, another anonymous user gave that warning a visual form. The Citadel v.1, likely created on 4chan, featured a massive tower cobbled together from borrowed imagery – most notably a background ripped from Alexander Mikhalchyk’s oil painting Tower of Babel. Red – overlaid with iconic internet figures like Pepe, Wojak, and the Bogdanoff twins. It was chaotic, funny, ominous. And it caught fire. Versions spread across forums. Variants emerged for Monero, Ethereum, and other Bitcoin-based class hierarchies. A whole mythology took shape around it.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that image. The symbolism. The verticality. The warning. It wasn’t just a meme – it was a map. A visual schema of power and belief, told in the language of the internet. And yet, it had never been physically painted. Never given the weight or permanence it deserved. That’s when I decided to create what I believe is the first fully hand-painted oil version of the Bitcoin Citadel meme.

The Citadel (v. Nardo) is 7 feet wide, 5 feet tall, and entirely rendered in oil by hand over six months. The tower in my painting is original – constructed from references to Bruegel’s depictions of Babel. The superimposed depictions of Pepe, the monk, the nobleman, even Jesus, are deliberate nods to the v.1 version, reimagined and integrated with painterly care. Nothing here is copy-pasted. Every inch is built to feel mythic, monumental, and true to the weight of the meme itself.

Like all my work, it’s meant to evoke grandeur, drama, and symbolic density. It’s meant to feel like a relic from a future past – something dug up from the ruins of digital civilization. My late professor once told me that the best art is both folkloric and provocative. That line never left me.

And that’s essentially what internet memes are. They are modern folklore. They encode belief, identity, warning, and aspiration in compressed symbols. They may start as jokes – but jokes have always been a delivery system for deeper truth. Memes don’t just survive online; they shape what we expect from reality.

The Citadel (v. Nardo) will be sold at auction via Scarce.City and debut at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas – the largest gathering of Bitcoiners in the world. It’s not just a painting. It’s a response. A reckoning. A reminder.Because in the end, as I always say: you become what you meme.

This is a guest post by X-Nardo Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.