This week we tried to illustrate the mix of China FUD with the Evergrande crisis, routine Chinese Bitcoin ban (#19 in history), and La Palma volcano eruption. Let's break down together how we depicted the topic.

Red did propose to make it in an Asian watercolor brush (Sumi-e) style, which is pretty tough to handle. I tried hard, fixed myself with some Procreate brushes and the result is decent but far from Sumi-e master's perfection. The Asian vibe is in though, as intended.

We have discussed the composition with Amal to be slightly different from a central perspective used on covers #47 or #30. On the left you can see the hand-drawn sketches I made during our call. The point we agreed on was to show Bitcoin (crypto in general) as proved by history to be resistant to repeating FUDs and always finding its way out.

Our tour around this dark mood piece starts with the animals. The lead character here is the Ox, representing the latest ban in the year 2021. The symbolism here is using the Chinese zodiac signs, so looking back to history, we can spot a Rat (2020), Pig (2019), and Dog (2018).

With the volcano erupting in the far background, we are referencing the latest La Palma island nature disaster events that the world is watching right now.

The real estate property crisis is shown with collapsed and burning city on the right side of the BTC undestroyable tube.

No, even the 19th attempt at killing Bitcoin hasn't succeeded. The pointless and desperate action is taken to maximum absurdity by illustrating it as sawing the tube with a blunt saw, which has no real effect. The very same destiny is waiting for the Ox as for the defeated animals before.

Ethlings Soft Rug is present as a winking and middle finger waving statue in the collapsed city. Amal picked the music track and audio sound FX to help me speed up the process, and the bass or cello tones in slow rhythm fit perfectly for the sawing animation.