The video performance Moon–Block–Chain(2023) documents Yao’s crypto-currency ini-tiation. The artist visited Hongludi Temple, a popular place of worship for wealth wishing in the mountains above Taipei, where he used a pair of moon blocks to pray for the private key to a crypto-currency wallet. This technique is described in detail in the accompanying Divina-tion Guide.
There is a connection here between religion and mathematics. By the 18th century, Leibniz had analyzed the hexagrams of the I Ching as binary numerals. Moon blocks operate like a digital logic gate, only yielding a successful an-swer if the two blocks land with opposite sides up. Both divination and cryptography rely on the universe as a source of randomness, but differ by crediting fate or physics. Praying for wealth is as familiar to temple supplicants as it is to crypto-currency speculators.

The video performance is flanked by por-traits of Twelve Disciples (2023) drawn from Yao’s extensive iconography. The artist has re-positioned the hierarchy of beings from his cosmology in a ”meta-verse” of twelve ech-elons: Aliens, Gods, Saints, Immortals, A.I., Mutants, Humans, Fairies, Demons, Ghosts, Beasts, and Legendary Creatures. These dis-ciples have assumed identities as voguish on-line avatars, mimicking popular PFP (profile-picture) projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes.

Perched at the entrance to the space is YAO COIN (2023), imitation money like the numis-matic charms found in temples, called mother coins or seed coins. This currency represents the ”tokenization” of the artist’s spiritual and monetary worth. They can be exchanged for a small donation.
ALTAR SPACE by Yao Jui-Chung co-locates trust in science, belief in markets, and faith in the divine: worshiping gods of wealth and ”moon-ing” crypto-currency, maintaining a skeptical and cynical spirit, and reincarnating high- and low-culture as crypto art.