Harold Eytan, Particle’s CEO is an operator who launched and until recently led Operations at Numan, the UK’s largest digital men’s health platform treating over 600k patients. Previous to Numan, Harold started his career at Rocket Internet, where he took numerous ventures from idea to launch in their signature 90 days.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from originally and when did art first enter your life?
I was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland before moving to London to complete my studies. London has remained my base ever since. My background has always been as an operator. I’ve always enjoyed and sought being involved in businesses from their inception. My time at Rocket Internet is what taught me about the importance of execution, and I’ve brought that to all projects I’ve been involved in since – getting projects from idea to launch in 90 days.
Art more generally has always been a part of my life. My family has collected for decades, my father Meno Eytan is an artist and my sister Charlotte works in the artworld. They educated me in the world of fine art and have watered the seed that got me to start collecting myself, and cultivate a deeper interest in this fascinating world.
How would you explain NFT’s to someone first entering the market?
Technically speaking, NFTs or non-fungible-tokens are unique digital tokens that serve as proof of ownership of an asset. This can be a work of digital art, but can be extended to almost anything. Since NFTs live on the blockchain, they are documented on a public ledger acting as a digital record or trail of all transactions this asset would have gone through. In a nutshell, for you to prove that you own the t-shirt you are wearing, you need to produce the receipt you received when you paid for it. With NFTs that is all automatically registered. The provenance trail for all these assets are.
What is Particle? Who is part of the team?
Particle leverages the blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to radically change the way people own, collect, experience, and ultimately enjoy art. Our goal is to acquire some of the world’s most important fine art masterpieces, and put them in the hands of the Particle community.
The founding team is comprised of Loic Gouzer, former chairman of Christies Post-War and Contemporary Art, Philip Eytan, serial entrepreneur and chairman and co-founder of Voyager Digital, Shingo Lavine and Adam Lavine, crypto experts and founders of Ethos.io, and Oscar Salazar founding CTO of Uber.
Making ownership available digitally through NFTs is something new to many. Can you explain how you came up with this idea?
The very nature of NFTs lends itself quite perfectly to the notion of digitally documenting ownership of physical assets. Loic Gouzer, one of Particle’s founders had always wanted to bring fine art ownership to a wider community and recognized that through this technology that may be possible. Loic called his childhood friend Philip to explore its feasibility and by getting Adam, Shingo, and Oscar on board, they felt confident that as a founding team they could bring this vision to reality.
Where do you see Particle 5 years from now? What is your goal?
In 5 years, we’d like Particle to have one of the world’s greatest fine art collections – one that is owned by the Particle community, and can be enjoyed by others. The collection will be toured by the Particle Foundation internationally for all to enjoy, and Particle NFT owners will have various other benefits attached to their ownership of the collection –from a voice in the decision making of the Particle Foundation, to access to the world’s best museums.
First Fridays: Miami Art Week Edition 2021 presented by Particle. Photo: Chris Carter.