Pepenardo’s Sleeping Knights Ride Again on Custom Magazine Covers

Drawing directly on the covers of six copies of Bitcoin Magazine’s 2036 Issue with a Sharpie, Pepenardo has turned them into original artworks. The hand-altered editions bring back familiar figures from his visual universe, including the Sleeping Knights, which were previously shown at the BMAG Museum in Nashville and at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. The masked rider of FAKEGENESIS, Dorian Nakamoto and Pepe the Frog also appear in the imagery.

On each magazine’s illustrated cover sits the artist’s signature, with a second gold-ink signature added to an interior spread reproducing his painting THE DREAMER. Every copy comes with two original one-of-one trading cards made specifically for the collaboration.

BTC Inc.’s expanding interest in art, publishing and collectibles comes through in this project, which follows Pepenardo’s MEMETIKRON exhibition at Bitcoin 2026. THE DREAMER (RED KNIGHT) and THE DREAMLESS (GREEN KNIGHT) were among the standouts of the BMAG auction held there.

Measuring 30 × 39.5 inches apiece, the two oil paintings depict reclining knights in red and green armor, with references to financial markets and historical portraiture. Both changed hands for 0.32698802 BTC — about $26,500 each — drawing 197 bids in total. Their motifs have now resurfaced in artist-made trading cards that offer alternate colorways, remixed compositions and hand-painted Creator Rare editions inspired by traditional textiles.

At a time when the trading card market is booming, Pepenardo’s practice sits between painting and handheld collectibles, a space where scarcity, provenance and variation drive value. His involvement in this market predates the Sleeping Knights by some distance.

FAKEGENESIS, his 2023 reinterpretation of Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps with a masked rider on a green horse, sold for 1.625 BTC at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami. It began life as a Fake Rares card in 2022, and the composition went on to become an early touchstone for physical Bitcoin art, evidence of growing appetite for work rooted in Bitcoin’s meme culture.

Bitcoin Magazine later printed FAKEGENESIS on its back cover, and the publication’s store offered prints. The painting’s reappearance as a hand-drawn magazine cover completes an odd trajectory: trading card, painting, printed reproduction and finally an original collectible.

Bitcoin Magazine’s own collecting story starts with the May 2012 first issue, co-founded by Mihai Alisie and Vitalik Buterin. Seven copies of that debut issue were signed by more than 20 early bitcoin figures at a London bitcoin event in September 2012. One copy earned a winning bid of 7 BTC, though the winning bidder never completed the sale or took possession of the magazine.

Later numbers of the magazine have become sought-after historical items, with graded copies and rare editions drawing collector interest. The Genesis Box followed in 2023: a limited edition of 21 collector’s sets containing the first 22 issues of the publication, each one enclosed in a protective acrylic case.

Like early exhibition catalogs, first-edition books and concert posters, Bitcoin Magazine has come to hold value beyond its original publishing function. Pepenardo’s customized covers continue that story, making the magazine itself the canvas for a one-of-one artwork.

My conversations for this story were with Pepenardo, covering his paintings, trading cards and evolving relationship with Bitcoin Magazine, and with Mark Mason, Head of Media at Bitcoin Magazine, on the publication’s historical significance and its growing collector market.

BMAG: This collaboration came together quickly after you noticed the blank space on the cover of the Bitcoin Magazine issue featuring your work. What inspired you to turn these magazines into original artworks, and how do you see them fitting alongside your paintings and trading cards?

Pepenardo: I couldn’t help but notice that welcoming blank space on the cover. It seemed like an obvious place for a drawing. Coincidentally, I came into Bitcoin through watching the energy around trading cards on Counterparty, from 2016 all the way to the present. Hal Finney foreshadowed this ethos in his famous 1993 email titled “Crypto trading cards.” Of course he was talking about digital collectibles, but the principle stays the same. Bitcoin’s history has a magnetic pull on collectibles; people want to hold on to a fragment of such an important modern history. When we look back fifty years from now, the content and the artifacts that came out of the movement will help future generations make sense of Bitcoin’s tremendous timeline.

BMAG: The two knights, THE DREAMER and THE DREAMLESS, began as oil paintings exhibited and sold at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. They have since appeared in Bitcoin Magazine and now as original trading cards with different variations. How does the meaning of these characters change as they move between painting, publication, and collectible card? What rules guide your remixed versions, and were you surprised by how quickly the cards sold out?

Pepenardo: I was shocked at how quickly they went. I have no words. But it certainly reinforces that what I’m attempting to create and build with my work has some value. Being able to use the trading cards as a way to remix the original works lets me enrich the life of each painting. The mediums are different – oil on canvas for the paintings, various print methods for the trading cards – but the tedious care that goes into executing both is the same.

BMAG: FAKEGENESIS became a defining work in your career, moving from Fake Rares into an original painting that attracted significant attention at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami. Looking back, what do you remember about that moment, and how did it change your practice and the audience for your work?

Pepenardo: FAKEGENESIS will always be the pivotal work that showed me how I should properly approach my art. I knew that even before it sold. It is a painting that embeds the tropes of Bitcoin’s ethos without being too obvious. Art within the context of Bitcoin shouldn’t have to throw a big B at you all the time; it should give you the fiery sensation of standing inside a new history being built. My hope is that it is remembered as a work that represents an entire movement – onwards and upwards.

BMAG: Bitcoin Magazine’s earliest issues have become historical artifacts in their own right, from signed copies of Issue 1 and graded editions to the Genesis Box collection. Even figures like Michael Saylor have signed covers featuring themselves for charity auctions. What gives these publications their enduring collectible value, and how do you see artist-customized covers like Pepenardo’s fitting into that history?

Mark Mason: For over a decade, Bitcoin Magazine has documented the evolution of Bitcoin, from its early technical developments to the people and culture surrounding it. We see each physical issue as a time capsule, capturing a particular moment in Bitcoin’s journey toward hyperbitcoinization.

One of the biggest factors driving their collectible value is that we never reprint past editions. Each issue has a limited print run, creating a finite supply that has made early editions, graded copies, and signed covers increasingly sought after by collectors.

Bitcoin has always existed at the intersection of technology, economics, and culture. Artist-customized covers like Pepenardo’s take that relationship a step further, transforming an already collectible publication into an original artwork. It’s an extension of what Bitcoin Magazine has become: both a record of Bitcoin’s history and an artifact of that history itself.

Once the launch landed, Pepenardo’s customized covers and trading card sets were quickly gone, and all six one-of-one editions went to collectors. There is still work to be had, including MASTER CUTS OUT THE STONE (after Hemessen), the centerpiece painting of the MEMETIKRON exhibition, which made its way from the BMAG Museum in Nashville to Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas.

Also available are FAKEGENESIS prints and the Genesis Box, the limited-edition collector’s set that preserves the publication’s first 22 issues from 2012–2014.

International exhibitions, auctions and artist collaborations that explore Bitcoin and its cultural implications are organized by the Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG). Its current offerings include Curtis William Readel’s Paper Money exhibition, alongside prints, original artworks and other collectibles.

BMAG is returning to Bitcoin Amsterdam from November 4–6, 2026, with European artists whose work examines money, power and Bitcoin.