THE STORY BEHIND RUBBER DUCKZ

A small duck.
A beautiful legacy.

Before there were 2,000 digital originals, there was Alice. And one yellow rubber duck.

Alice Espinel, whose life and rubber duck collection inspired Rubber Duckz — **Alice Espinel**The heart of this story.

01 THE PERSON BEHIND IT ALL

A life spent
helping others.

The story begins with a woman whose kindness changed people’s lives. Her name was Alice.

Alice was the mother of Dani, known to the flock as MagicMan. As a founding partner and VP of Patient Services at Best Doctors in Boston, she helped connect patients with the best medical expertise available, regardless of their background or ability to pay.

Helping people was her life’s work. Along the way, she formed close relationships with the families she supported. Some of those connections would find an unexpected expression in a growing collection of rubber ducks.

02 THE FIRST LITTLE DUCK

One duck became
a family.

One day, Alice spotted a yellow rubber duck in a shop and bought it for her son. It was a simple gift, a little companion for bath time.

Soon, she decided that his duck needed some friends. A few more came home. Then a few more after that. What began as one small toy became a whole flock.

Patients noticed her affection for the ducks. They began giving her unusual ones as thank-you gifts, turning the collection into a reminder of the people she had helped. Alice had become a collector, and each new duck carried a personal connection.

Hundreds of different rubber ducks gathered around a bathtub in Alice’s original collection — The real collection that started it all.

03 KEEPING HER MEMORY ALIVE

Her kindness.
A new chapter.

Alice’s work brought joy, but also loss. She grew close to patients who did not survive their illnesses. At the same time, she was living with pulmonary fibrosis herself.

When Alice died, she left behind a family, the people whose lives she had touched, and her beloved ducks. MagicMan intended to keep the collection.

One afternoon, he and PapaDuck were talking about Alice and the life she had lived. Their conversation turned to the ducks: could they preserve the physical collection while sharing its spirit with more people?

That idea became Rubber Duckz. Blockchain and NFTs offered a way for a wider community to collect digital artworks inspired by the ducks, while carrying Alice’s story into a new setting.

The Genesis collection grew into 2,000 original Duckz. Each was drawn by hand, individually, as a one-of-one artwork. But sharing the art was only part of the idea. The founders wanted Alice’s habit of helping others to live on, too.

04 GIVING BACK

The purpose
behind the pond.

The original plan committed $50,000 from the initial mint proceeds to Boston Children’s Hospital, where Alice had helped children and their families.

It also set out support for people receiving pancreatic-cancer treatment in the Dominican Republic. That cause was personal to PapaDuck, who had lost his own mother to the disease.

Boston Children’s Hospital later thanked the Rubber Duckz community for fundraising in Alice Espinel’s memory. Its letter recognizes the support given to children, their families and the hospital’s work.

The $50,000 was the original commitment. The hospital’s letter acknowledges fundraising but does not state an amount, so it does not establish a final donation total.

Letter from Boston Children’s Hospital thanking Rubber Duckz for fundraising in memory of Alice Espinel, signed by Lynn Susman, President of the hospital’s Trust — The hospital’s original acknowledgement. Select the letter to read it at full size, here on this page.

A letter from Boston Children’s Hospital beside its Child Life Services impact report, with the recipient’s details redacted in the original photograph — Also preserved in the original archive: a hospital letter and its Child Life Services impact report.

05 A PLACE FOR THE FLOCK

More than
a collection.

The founders imagined a community that could share Alice’s values and have fun together. Raffles, games, competitions and get-togethers were part of that vision, along with merchandise people could wear as a sign of belonging.

The flock went on to meet in person, wear its Genesis merch and see Rubber Duckz in Times Square during NFT.NYC in June 2022. The collection became part of people’s lives beyond the screen.

BYORD opened another chapter: a second collection that let holders create their own Duck from illustrated traits. It gave the community a new role in the artwork, building on the participatory spirit of the flock.

At the heart of it remains the same story: a mother’s gift, a lifetime of helping people, and a group of friends who wanted that kindness to keep reaching others.