Am I the only person who sees cryptocurrency charts when I shut my eyes, hovering just beyond the limits of my focus like an old TV set that’s been permanently burned in by a paused video game?

Am I alone in spotting elements of token names, logos and symbols in food packaging at the supermarket?

Or are you also catching fleeting glimpses of crypto candlesticks hidden among the everyday objects before you or just beyond the edge of your vision?

These neon mirages scorched into my retina, the byproducts of squinting endlessly at jagged crypto charts during long COVID-19 lockdowns, inspired my NFT series “The Crypto Effect.”

These blockchain-inspired works of visual art are my homage to the mental health rollercoaster on which decentralized finance took many of us during the coronavirus crisis and accompanying cryptocurrency bull run.

Our inability to leave our homes this past year, as if trapped in Edward Hopper paintings, was diametrically contrasted with crypto and decentralized finance’s explosive charge into the public consciousness.

As a visual journalist, I have recently been capturing the trickle-down effects of this Herculean revolution, using a projector to superimpose what I was seeing in my head last spring onto the world around me.

This ongoing photo-projection series, which currently incorporates charts and data from around a dozen different tokens, has so far taken me across two continents. I’ve projected Polkadot candles onto 300-year-old buildings in Barcelona; I’ve cast Litecoin prices onto the torsos of blockchain enthusiasts in small New York City walk-ups; I’ve covered coworking spaces near Boston with Aave data; and I’ve even lit up a forest near Canada with Stellar Lumen charts.

And now by taking direct requests on social media, I aim to craft more images around tokens that have been stirring in the minds of others.

But creating this first iteration of the series has also been an odd, unexpected form of personal therapy, having lost a rather hefty sum earlier this year due to my own shaky inexperience. And though my funds may have tanked, my enthusiasm for the larger decentralized finance movement has not.

Having spoken to many other investors glued to their screens during the past year, I know I’m not alone in seeing these phantom charts. So, why are some of us seeing crypto in the world around us when we step away from our computers? And why are we being haunted by these faint, floating lines and numbers?

Is this addiction? Is it infatuation? Insanity?

The answers to these questions actually have more to do with that paused video game I mentioned earlier than I would have ever imagined.