Social media started out as mostly a novelty, but much of the consternation in the world today are ripples from traditional media collapsing. We are in the throes of a credibility vacuum. Everything from science to politics to interpersonal relationships is still struggling to adapt to this new paradigm. The tech industry cheered this victory of the individual, but now those same forces are coming for them. In the last few months crypto and AI have both started to show themselves as extremely...

Social media started out as mostly a novelty, but much of the consternation in the world today are ripples from traditional media collapsing. We are in the throes of a credibility vacuum. Everything from science to politics to interpersonal relationships is still struggling to adapt to this new paradigm. The tech industry cheered this victory of the individual, but now those same forces are coming for them. In the last few months crypto and AI have both started to show themselves as extremely...

Crypto The Game has been successful by even mainstream standards. It is an Emmy nominated virtual reality show where contestants spend two weeks solving puzzles, making friends, and stabbing each other in the back. In the end the winner walks away with a >$100k. Ok I lied, the game actually uses a little bit of crypto. To participate users must purchase an NFT, but after that the game is entirely played on a standard website and across various messaging apps and organization tools. The game h...

Crypto The Game has been successful by even mainstream standards. It is an Emmy nominated virtual reality show where contestants spend two weeks solving puzzles, making friends, and stabbing each other in the back. In the end the winner walks away with a >$100k. Ok I lied, the game actually uses a little bit of crypto. To participate users must purchase an NFT, but after that the game is entirely played on a standard website and across various messaging apps and organization tools. The game h...

It wasn’t long ago that “insiders” were still debating whether holding bitcoin was illegal. While there wasn't a single moment where crypto became legal, as the years went on it's legitimacy grew. The narrative is that crypto grows in 4 year spurts. While that may be reflected in the charts, the REAL battle for mindshare happens quietly in the background. In the last few months crypto has been seemingly “hugged to death” by its first taste of real mainstream acceptance. This administration ma...

It wasn’t long ago that “insiders” were still debating whether holding bitcoin was illegal. While there wasn't a single moment where crypto became legal, as the years went on it's legitimacy grew. The narrative is that crypto grows in 4 year spurts. While that may be reflected in the charts, the REAL battle for mindshare happens quietly in the background. In the last few months crypto has been seemingly “hugged to death” by its first taste of real mainstream acceptance. This administration ma...

Crypto is in the middle of a serious identity crisis. The mainstream is asking for fundamentals and many of the coins can’t seem to measure up. There is now a scramble to focus on revenue which, to justify current valuations, seems like an impossible task. The problem is that we are using tradfi’s yardstick. ETH is getting put through the ringer trying to justify its valuation, while memecoins still defy gravity. Memecoins have been the darling of this cycle, making up a majority of activity....

Crypto is in the middle of a serious identity crisis. The mainstream is asking for fundamentals and many of the coins can’t seem to measure up. There is now a scramble to focus on revenue which, to justify current valuations, seems like an impossible task. The problem is that we are using tradfi’s yardstick. ETH is getting put through the ringer trying to justify its valuation, while memecoins still defy gravity. Memecoins have been the darling of this cycle, making up a majority of activity....

I was at a lunch the other day where I was forced to defend memecoins. The person I was speaking with had worked in crypto for a while and had seen memecoins as the element that had made this industry irredeemable in their eyes. The users are never wrong My view as a product person is that whichever way people are using technology is the right way. It’s not our job to moralize the correct way to use something. The task as a technologist is to understand emergent behaviors and develop better v...

I was at a lunch the other day where I was forced to defend memecoins. The person I was speaking with had worked in crypto for a while and had seen memecoins as the element that had made this industry irredeemable in their eyes. The users are never wrong My view as a product person is that whichever way people are using technology is the right way. It’s not our job to moralize the correct way to use something. The task as a technologist is to understand emergent behaviors and develop better v...

Last week social media was taken over by a trend of Ghiblification. A flood of images passed through chatgpt’s new image model converting them to the style of Studio Ghibli, a soft friendly flavor of animation. People were quick to lambast the trend as a new era of slop, and a crime against artists. I instead viewed this as a beautiful moment of co-creation on the internet, and a great democratization of craft. What is slop? Slop is a new term to describe the ubiquity of extremely low effort ...

Last week social media was taken over by a trend of Ghiblification. A flood of images passed through chatgpt’s new image model converting them to the style of Studio Ghibli, a soft friendly flavor of animation. People were quick to lambast the trend as a new era of slop, and a crime against artists. I instead viewed this as a beautiful moment of co-creation on the internet, and a great democratization of craft. What is slop? Slop is a new term to describe the ubiquity of extremely low effort ...

Prevailing sentiment is that builders should not be trading. As a builder you should be focused on creating value for your project and not splitting your attention elsewhere. However, product building and trading are both resource management games. And in crypto they are actually two slides of the same coin. Crypto at its core is a set of capital allocation rails, if you don’t understand how the capital flows your project will have trouble capturing value. Even if you're not building in defi,...

Prevailing sentiment is that builders should not be trading. As a builder you should be focused on creating value for your project and not splitting your attention elsewhere. However, product building and trading are both resource management games. And in crypto they are actually two slides of the same coin. Crypto at its core is a set of capital allocation rails, if you don’t understand how the capital flows your project will have trouble capturing value. Even if you're not building in defi,...