The Open Money project aims to create a straightforward framework for evaluating the potential of crypto and digital asset systems.

While the project could help develop a broad-stroke investment thesis, or maybe more accurately, a distinct and informed point-of-view from which to develop an investment thesis, the goal is not to create some new financial framework. (Here's a disclaimer highlighting all the very good reasons why this is not financial advice).

Instead, Open Money is about creating a new kind of navigation system with the simple goal of helping people separate noise from signal — or junk from high-value information — as digital asset systems become more complex and ubiquitous.

Not long ago, keeping tabs on crypto and its related offshoots was as simple as paying attention to anything that sounded like "blockchain." But given the pace of the technology's development, it's not that simple anymore.

Here's an example of what I mean. The funny thing is, this thread goes on forever, which drives home the point.

Hopefully, that's where the Open Money framework comes in. It's a way to take new information from new projects and systems, compare it against a set of guidelines or benchmarks, and then decide whether to dive deeper or move on.

Crypto or digital assets, more broadly, have yet to achieve the one-click moment. Crypto is still complicated to use and discuss, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Crypto solves very thorny problems, but the language and thinking needed to understand them don't need to be complex. Or that's the idea, anyway, driving the creation of the Open Money project.

The framework so far

Last week was the first week of writing daily posts that will eventually form the structure we can use to understand Open Money.

I'm still figuring out how to operationalize this in a way that makes sense beyond writing and publishing a post daily until we get through the entire outline.

I got some really encouraging feedback and good ideas, so thank you. It always helps if you share this newsletter.

Here's what we covered last week:

Why Open Money matters: And why has new financial tech become a word salad?

Why do we need an Open Money framework: One of the hardest things about learning new systems is figuring out where to start

Open Money: a framework for everyone: The Open Money framework is designed to help make digital assets and the open internet more accessible

Why now is Open Moment's moment: The right timing is critical to the success or failure of big moments, revolutions, and societal change

The Open Money growth story: Five reasons why digital assets systems are growing so fast