I sat down with Meyer "Micky" Malka, Ribbit Capital founder, investor, and entrepreneur at heart. We discussed the Foundation arriving in Palo Alto, backed by a $25M grant and a mission to unlock digital art's potential.

Micky wants you to know something:

@nodefnd is yours.

“Better money makes your life better.”

The qualitative mantra is at the heart of Micky Malka’s journey through financial services, cryptocurrency and fintech.

He believes the same is true for art.

“The beauty about saying better art makes your life better is that it can always be better. No matter what you see, it never ends. It’s part of this infinite mindset where you shouldn’t stick to one way of looking at the world. It should always be evolving.”

Ribbit Capital’s New York City office is full of art.

We are seated in a conference room featuring artworks by Erick Calderon aka “Snowfro” and Julio Le Parc. The selections flow together and speak volumes. They connect generations. They connect mediums.

The origin of Micky’s love for art is found in Venezuela. He reflects on walking through a Carlos Cruz-Diez airport installation as early as 5 years old: “It made me feel like I was in space”.

He met his wife Becky in Venezuela. They grew up together with a shared philosophy: “If artists inspire us, we will live in a better place because they can always lead you to a language where you can see the future.”

An art collection began when Venezuelan painter César Rengifo inspired them to collect a 1970 artwork entitled ‘Los trompos.’ It has traveled with them since.

Many airports and artworks later, a worldview formed.

There is only one Mona Lisa, and yet according to Micky there are 100 to 300 artworks that people talk about in different parts of the world. Regional Mona Lisas.

This planted the seed of his digital art awakening.

"It took me a while to see that the amazing technology of blockchain allows one person to own [an artwork] but the rest of the world to see it at the same time."

For someone whose concept of better money was always that "a person in Venezuela or Pakistan should be able to invest the same way as somebody in Wall Street",

Why should art be any different?

Micky believes that art has a universal language.

Digital art shares it.

CryptoPunks?

Chromie Squiggles?

“It was just a language. It was just a group of people identifying with something that had nothing to do with politics, it had nothing to do with religion, and it had nothing to do with where you lived. It had something to do with what these colors or that message or that face make you feel.”

As Micky and Becky began to collect digital art, they saw a disconnect.

"Some art is meant to live on your iPhone. A lot of it is not."

They saw dynamism, motion, and scalability in digital art. Who was working on showcasing it?

Galleries felt sterile. Institutions felt stagnant.

Micky imagined walking with his kids in Manhattan: "They'll see these big, marvelous columns and buildings, and they'll ask me, 'What are they?' I would tell them 'These used to be bank branches.' They had to showcase that they were big and they were solid, but you don't need a bank branch anymore. I feel museums are going through that same moment in time."

He and his wife decided to do something about it.

"We looked at each other and said... 'How do we help these artists tell their stories?'"

They decided to create digital art's "last mile", changing how humans experience it, how it makes them feel, and ultimately, what they share with their children.

NODE begins "like any great story of a museum or art has always started. Good people committing to show the way it should be done."

In this case, commitment means putting a $25M grant behind a non-profit foundation. The best funded digital art centric institution in the world is a strong start.

They interviewed almost 20 artists and posed a question: "If you could exhibit your art, what would it look like?" A mental framework solidified.

NODE has three focal points:

Micky tells me that "any startup that tries more than one [thing] is suicidal."

Node is trying three things.

Micky's eyes glimmer. He laughs. "Yes."

“Everything you do in life, it’s all about the people that surround you” says Micky.

They saw a host of amazing people across digital art.

Consistent with the beginning of any industry, they saw short-term goals, results and outcomes. They saw the right intentions, without a platform to actualize them.

They saw Phil Mohun, "who exhibited art in 10 cities around the world [with Bright Moments], who tried every single potential screen interface you could, who interacted with over 100 artists, trying to figure out their different needs."

Phil and his team became the next foundational piece to NODE, working together to draw knowledge from that experience, but "do it completely different".

Micky speaks about seeing the world through the eyes of others.

“Love for the storytelling” is what he sees through Phil’s eyes, “the energy and desire to really allow people to get inspired.”

NODE was intentional in selecting a first physical home in Palo Alto.

Stanford campus is less than a mile away. Meta, Google, and Apple campuses are all local. San Francisco is 20 miles away.

"It's in the center of Silicon Valley. If we can make it work there, we can make it work anywhere."

They value the digital orientation of Palo Alto. They also value an opportunity to redefine it.

"They speak the language, but they have lost the creativity of understanding outside of an algorithm. Everybody has become too number-centric, too left brain. There's not enough right brain DNA. It should come back."

NODE is one block away from the original Apple store.

There, the intention of Steve Jobs was "people should experience computers not as computers, but as devices that make your life better." They allowed people to play. They iterated.

"For a long time, that was the first store until they got it right, and then they exploded worldwide."

NODE's first mysterious words on March 27, 2025 - its version of "Hello World" - were "Network ready."

Micky believes in DNA.

"I always tell founders that the biggest moment of a company is the DNA that it starts with. It's the roots. It's when the chromosomes combine and you create something. It will always be part of the living organism that you built."

NODE is not trying to conquer the world.

Their intent is in the name.

"One node of a network... We are trying to start a network."

Micky believes in controlling inputs, not outputs, but I challenge him anyway.

What is an ideal outcome in 2035?

"Maybe there are 10 NODEs all over the world that are doing this. Maybe there is just one NODE that happened to teach all these institutions how this should be done, and they all convert themselves into this model... We will be open to both."

What are the inputs to get there?

"I don't expect this to be perfect. I expect that we will make mistakes, but we will make it once, never twice. Expect us to double down on the space and double down on making a home for the artist. Expect us to do. We will talk with actions, not with words."

I ask Micky if he sees himself in NODE.

He turns serious, adamantly replying "No".

Individual focus is failure. "It is much bigger. It is much better."

NODE is not I win, you lose. It is we win.

NODE is the tens of thousand of people who sign the mantra.

NODE is the artists and visitors who leave imprints.

NODE is how they speak about it when they leave.

NODE is yours.

Because it takes a network to make art work.

This is a 24 Hours of Art Exclusive, written by founder Roger Dickerman (RD). 24 Hours exists to share the art, market and stories of the digital art revolution. It recently announced a 2025 partnership with @SuperRare to deliver the definitive Digital Art Annual Report.

RD's Special Thanks To:

Micky Malka and @philmohun - for their trust.

@justinwetch - for audio processing and media.

You - for reading through the last line.