Li’s Forecast #5

A glazed pig as the emblem of an economy

Lidewij Edelkoort

Column

October 2025

Lidewij Edelkoort

is one of the world’s most beloved and influential forecasters. Each month, she writes a column for See All This titled The Future is Handmade, where she shares her views on a handmade future and spotlights unique handmade objects. For Edelkoort, these objects are more than just beautiful — they represent a quiet form of resistance against an increasingly artificial future. Today: pigs taking over the economy.

Column

October 2025

It is well known that images of animals can move and entice people – and command their attention. That is why many companies have long had a teddy-bear mascot which, through playful clothing and a lifestyle, embodies their brand values. Soft toys remain wildly popular with an audience that longs for affection, attention and transporting stories to soften the drumbeat of bad news.

The recent success of China’s Labubu plush toys (reportedly valued at forty million) makes this relationship even clearer: a children’s plaything becomes a collectible with adult price tags – up to €9,000 for a ‘Labubu deluxe’. It seems the Japanese kawaii aesthetic is seeping ever deeper into our culture, with the cute and cuddly coming to the fore and gradually spilling into every sector. Just last week at the airport I noticed a young woman with several plush accessories, including a fluffy Nijntje (Miffy) backpack and a round Hello Kitty travel pillow. All of it, in soft off-white, was very aesthetic.

That instinct to reach people through endearing design has undoubtedly led to the project by Martha Nash, who graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2023. ‘When I warn about the risks of cryptocurrencies, there’s little to no response; but as soon as I do it with my glossy pigs and a playful explanation of an economic system built around my personal happiness, I get everyone’s attention,’ says Nash. With beautifully crafted, detailed works, persuasive arguments and humour, she makes a complex subject accessible to a wider audience.

According to Nash, people are only willing to engage with knotty topics when they are shiny and funny; that way she can also reveal the darker side of unregulated financial systems. Given the global impact of our financial system on resources, health and mental wellbeing, it is essential to understand what is really at stake – especially now that the crypto market has reached a value of more than one trillion euros.

Lidewij Edelkoort

‘It seems the Japanese kawaii aesthetic is seeping ever deeper into our culture, with the cute and cuddly coming to the fore and gradually spilling into every sector’

In MarthaMarthaMarthaCoin, Nash imagines an economy centred on a single person, using an analogue form of cryptocurrency, Pigcoins. To keep this egocentric economy stable, everyone must make the creator happy: the happier Nash is, the more valuable her coin becomes. Her market booms when she attends a Beyoncé concert, but slumps when she’s faced with a rat infestation. Like real markets, her system is sensitive and capricious: bad news quickly looks like doom, good news like triumph – both usually short-lived.

To make the abstraction of crypto tangible, Nash has shaped her ‘bitcoin’ as glossy, glazed piglets and her ‘blockchain’ as stacks of cardboard boxes with ceramic vouchers that can be traded peer-to-peer without regulated oversight. Everything looks convincing – but remains fragile and breakable.

Pigcoins – irresistible objects whose presence and character turned them into a bestseller: she has sold hundreds. That success, by the project’s own logic, keeps her happy and her economy alive. A pig, then, as the emblem of an economy grounded in aesthetic and educational value.