I love body art. At last count, I have twelve tattoos—each one marking a meaning, a memory, or a moment—some significant, others spontaneous. One of them I got in Downtown Los Angeles during a community event hosted by the NFT project Deadfellaz. Across from me, in an identical black chair, sat its founder Betty—needle buzzing as she etched the project’s iconic logo into a small patch of bare skin, the only untouched spot on an otherwise ink-covered arm.

Some people say tattoos are the stories of your heart written on your skin. For Betty, this moment marked a quiet, permanent vow to a loud, defiant belief she has poured her soul into, alongside her partner in both business and life, Psych.

While the story of Deadfellaz started a mere four years ago, Betty’s and Psych’s began decades earlier. Betty spent the first fifteen years of her life in a small village in Yorkshire, England, before moving 10,000 miles across the world to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Any move at that age, away from close-knit family and friends,  is a shock to the system. But it wasn’t long before Betty found a confidante, a creative counterpart, and her future husband at a high school party. “We’ve really grown up together,” she says, with a smile.

Raised by a thrash metal musician father and a high-achieving nurse for a mother, Betty recalls her formative years as being equally shaped by academia, adventure, and creativity. On one hand, she was deep into musical theater while trading Pokémon cards until she reached the pinnacle of owning three holographic Charizards. On the other, she was pursuing a biomedical science degree, aspiring to follow closely in her mother’s footsteps. It wasn’t until a childhood friend from England passed away from cancer that Betty paused to ask which part of herself she felt most called to.

Together, she and Psych decided that such a decision was best made through a fresh lens, and in an entirely new environment. They packed their bags and moved to Montreal, Canada, armed with little more than youth, dreams, and a high school level of French proficiency—which, as Betty soon realized, was a far cry from Quebecois once she got there. Still, it wasn’t enough to hold them back from building a life together.

Montreal became the first of many stops on Betty and Psych’s journey to cementing a professional partnership on top of their personal one. Within a few years, they not only got married, but became business partners in a full-stack creative agency, where they worked on global events as large as the Olympics. That working relationship quickly came with added responsibility, as they welcomed the first of their three children—all while continuing to bounce between Australia and whatever global destination was calling their name.

While Betty and Psych’s way of raising a family between different countries was somewhat unconventional, it worked for them—and they were happy. That is, until Betty was diagnosed with a severe form of nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis during her third pregnancy. “My condition was so bad that I had to stop working. I couldn’t even look after my other kids properly,” Betty recalls.

After finally receiving the treatment she needed and delivering safely, disaster struck again—this time in the form of Australia’s devastating 2019–2020 bushfire season, one of the most catastrophic in the country’s history. “Our whole town was on fire,” Betty tells me. “We were evacuated twice and spent many nights staying up, listening to the radio in case we had to leave quickly.” 

As if 2020 couldn’t get any worse, the global pandemic hit shortly after. Betty and Psych were raising two young children and a newborn in lockdown, while client work began to dry up. Exciting global campaigns were replaced by far less inspiring projects focused on workplace health and safety. And yet, in what felt like a year of unrelenting despair, the couple managed to find a glimmer of hope—through an old friend they had first met in Montreal.

That friend was artist Justin Maller, founder of the digital art collective Depthcore, which Psych had joined years earlier. It was through the Depthcore artist community that they were first introduced to NFTs, as several members prepared drops on the then-emerging platform Nifty Gateway. Before long, Betty and Psych were glued to Clubhouse, soaking up conversations about the burgeoning world of crypto art and digital ownership. “Seeing how people were forming communities and building in crypto was just really exciting and cool,” Betty says, “especially compared to the alternative of depressing Covid-related news.”

While Betty quickly recognized the potential blockchain technology had to build more equitable financial and creator ecosystems, it took time for her to feel completely at home. “Today—and even in my day-to-day life—I’m not known as someone who’s afraid to talk,” Betty laughs. “But back then, I just didn’t see anything in Web3 that felt like it was for me.” It wasn’t until months later, when she came across a Twitter Space hosted by artists Ed Balloon and Brittany Pierre for the queer BIPOC community, that she finally felt welcome.

As Betty continued her onchain journey, she became captivated by the way communities were forming around the rise of PFP projects. “The way people were going wild and talking about traits felt like an amalgamation of everything I’d been interested in my whole life,” Betty says. It may have been years, but her Pokémon collector’s mindset was still alive and well. And with Psych being both an incredible artist and longtime business partner, Betty spotted an immediate opportunity to bring a PFP collection of their own to life.

“We wanted to pour everything we loved into one collection, and we happen to be huge horror fans,” Betty explains, about the brand’s origins. When designing the collection’s traits, she was also deliberate about creating gender-ambiguous characters—something that was rare at the time. Most collections either pandered to a male audience or included only a handful of female traits, often reduced to heteronormative symbols like lipstick or hair bows. “I wanted anyone and everyone to feel represented in the Deadfellaz collection,” she adds.

And while the collection ended up including hundreds of traits, none is more recognizable than the Betty trait, naturally inspired by Betty herself. Not only was the PFP that Psych designed for her the very first one she ever used (prior to that, she went simply by a Lisa Simpson avatar), it has also become one of the most recreated PFPs in the crypto space. “To see so many people creating fan art and their interpretation of Betty is so humbling,” she says. “While my PFP does represent me and who I am, I’d like to think it also stands for something bigger like what it means to be fearlessly yourself.”

There was never any doubt in Betty’s mind that Deadfellaz would be met with success. “I knew what we had built was special,” she tells me. “I hadn’t seen anything like this, and I knew that if I wanted it to exist in the world, so would a lot of other people.” What Betty and Psych hadn’t counted on was those people including celebrities like actor Elijah Wood, best known for playing Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings, and NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

Over the next year, it felt like Deadfellaz could do no wrong. The brand inked a series of high-profile partnerships, from signing with talent agency UTA to teaming up with hardware wallet Ledger and global denim giant Wrangler.

But even Deadfellaz wasn’t spared when the bear market hit and NFT marketplaces began to phase out secondary royalties. “Like many other teams, we had to downsize massively,” Betty says. “It was sobering and heartbreaking to let go of people I loved, but we knew we had to take drastic measures for the company to survive in such crazy and unpredictable times.”

Those hard decisions have since proven to be the right ones. In the years that followed, Betty and Psych kept their heads down, quietly evolving Deadfellaz from a community formed around a PFP into DFZ Labs, a company with multiple verticals—including a trading card game (TCG) which is currently in early testing and now, Coldlink: a first-of-its-kind verification tool reimagining how digital assets can be accessed and used. Betty is equally excited about the potential of both.

“Gaming is literally in Psych’s DNA,” Betty explains. “He’s been designing games ever since I knew him, so to see him thrive and work to bring his ideas to life alongside a team of incredible engineers is just fantastic.” While Betty is tight-lipped over the launch details of their TCG, she could not be prouder to unveil their latest project: Coldlink, which she calls “the most exciting thing we’ve ever worked on as a team.”

Simply put, Coldlink is a universal collector. Blockchain-agnostic, Coldlink allows users to link their wallet address to just about anything—onchain or offchain—without needing smart contract approvals or risky site connections. That includes everything from social media and gaming handles to NFC chips and even concert ticket serial numbers. 

As ownership of digital assets continues to grow (think: memberships, gaming skins, digital collectibles), Coldlink opens the door to a wider range of token-gated rewards and experiences, without the need for one to connect or expose their wallet. “There are so many hurdles to real interoperability today,” Betty says. “But with Coldlink, we can tear down those walls and let people have fun—unlocking the craziest possibilities with the things they already own.”

With Psych by her side and three beautiful children, Betty already feels like she’s won the game of life. And yet, with Coldlink’s public beta now live, she’s more driven than ever to help shape the future of crypto. “I know I have the ability to create, to change, and to be part of something much bigger than myself,” she says. “And that is this industry.”

And just as her tattoos tell the story of who she is, Betty is now etching her biggest chapter into the very fabric of the Internet—leaving a mark not just on her skin, but on the entire world.

Want to read this in print? Drop me a DM on X or Farcaster for a link to download a print-friendly PDF once you've collected Betty's story onchain.

Interested in more stories like these? Digital Mavericks by Debbie Soon is an accessible guide to crypto and features inspirational stories from 13 onchain trailblazers. Grab your copy today from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.