I've been thinking a lot about what is actually happening in these markets since getting to NY.
Some new things have clicked and become really undeniable with being here, it has just been fas...
How do you spot a fake in culture, in tech, and in markets of all kinds?
A great place to start is corporate simpdom and the symptoms of central control.
Before the hea...
Tech Bros suck.
There is just no other way around it. Sorry to be so blunt.
But seriously, it seems that for the past 10-20 years, give or take, complaining about ...
From scavengers to prospectors, is web2 rehab possible?
TLDR; probably not. You can go home now.
But, for those still here, let’s see what the prospects are.
From seed, to crop, to harvest, to market, to plate.
High yield arbitrage is so much cooler and tastier than just swapping seeds for other seeds forever.
If you think seed 2 s...
Exit strategy.
Who benefits most from timing the right moment, right from the start, to race for the exits?
The hint is in the title of this Letters to a Young VC series. Of course, i...
I just watched Rounders for the first time, catching up to the insider linguistic tricks feels long overdue. Like how loan shark copycat financiers saving so much fictional wealth for the s...
…You seem to have confused the value of liquidity in an artificially scarce market with the work founders, creators, engineers and others who take on the majority of the risk do to actua...
What happens to VC when founders and projects have alternative sources of capital that out-scale traditional debt & equity agreements?
With real web3 in full effect, founders no longer ...
Why do VCs do VC?
Get bags, have fun, be savvy.
So, why does being a gardener of CC0 ecosystems give VCs a better path out of VC?
Better bags, mo...
From Vc to Ac.
Amplifying the delta between load and effort for more savvy cash.
At some point on every journey towards the hope of more savvy bags, one has to put aside the theatrics...
The insecurity inherent in the way that we think about securities.
What are we talking about when we talk about security?
A family of four walks alone along what they are told is ...
Is a cow a security because it makes milk which can then be used to make derivative goods like cheese, yoghurt, and butter?
Is pizza a security because it is made from multiple component p...
Money is a self perpetuating social convention.
It's no more than a token that we trust will hold value in future exchanges. If buyers and sellers, ports and authorities accept textil...
This letter zeroes in on cryptography and economics.
It all began as a dream.
In the late 80s to early 90s a group of hacktivists, hobbyists, mathematicians, computer scientists and m...
For 3000 years, up until the 1970s, cryptography had been based on symmetric keys, meaning the same keys were used to both encrypt and decrypt messages.
In order to communicate securely the...
As any good money making adventurer setting off to discover new bags knows, risk is everything.
From how much appetite you have for uncovering unique opportunities that others don’t d...
Imagine an alternative to the data surveillance economy.
It’s actually quite hard to do, given our experiences over the past two decades, where we’ve become conditioned to assum...
We’re now on letter nineteen, and it’s about time that we talked about what actually differentiates assets built for and in web3.
The thing is, we have to be honest with ourse...
Wow. Twenty letters in the bag.
Fresh off all the drama and clearly intentionally engineered gas wastage of the behemoth Otherside drop, continued inflation anxiety, Fed basis point jum...
A different medium for this message. Go to chromadin.xyz....
Dear YC Founders,
This letter is a special edition, just for you.
You may not all be VCs yet, but you are certainly in training— conditioned to look for the exits at all times...
Imagine an alternative to the data surveillance economy.
It’s actually quite hard to do, given our experiences over the past two decades, where we’ve become conditioned to assuming a trade off between abstract information we don’t have the slightest clue of how to make use of, in exchange for seemingly free access to tools we can’t imagine living without, has become the norm.
It hasn’t always been quite as bad as this, in the early days the internet wasn’t nearly as controlled and centralised as it is now.
But while true, that fact doesn’t mean much in a practical sense. In those early days there were also very very few people online. As the vast majority of humanity has become hyper connected, there is a stronger truth to the belief that we simply need persistent access to the potent tools which we’ve come to depend on. And, if we can “pay” for that access with something we know instinctively has value but is too complex and far away from us to truly understand, then so be it.
But we also know in a creeping and creepy sense deep down that we’re being lied to, not so much intentionally maybe, but by countless numbers of ordinary people going about their work clocking in at big tech companies lying to themselves about this model being the only way to generate economic value and profit wildly.
There is no disagreement here about part of that.
Profit is good for the advancement of tech and humanity. As long as that profit is real.
The problem is, in our data surveillance economy, the vast majority of the externalities and costs associated with them are hidden.
This does untold amounts of damage.
Thankfully, there really is an alternative. And, as web3 proves, it is already here today.
So, what does a realistic start to a breakaway from abusive data manipulating systems and towards software oriented business models rooted in personal property, privacy, and self sovereignty look like?
- Users are able to decide on a case by case basis whether and how much to make their personal activity data available for a range between open and token governed access.
- This means software of all kinds becomes organised around social media identity and connectivity platforms (it doesn’t look all that different from today’s tech on the surface).
- These are built on decentralised networks incentivised by dynamic NFTs generated on the fly by user activity or minted and curated intentionally by users (this part is radically different because of who gets to decide what happens to our data, how, and when).
- Dynamic NFTs act as keys for aggregate voluntary user data packages that are themselves dynamically updated and secured behind ZK seals.
- Interested 3rd party data prospectors can only gain access, or stay up to date, with collections of NFT keys with consumable features.
- Web2 social media and big tech companies fade into obscurity as their business model collapses with no ability to transform themselves without taking years fighting against their legacy interests from within.
- Web3 protocols as truly decentralised networks that enhance the self sovereign power of creators and users of all kinds replace the old decrepit data thievery addicted dinosaurs nearly overnight.
Interesting to note and ponder about what impact transforming the business model away from subservient ad targeting towards dynamic personal data sovereignty has on VC, as it too transitions away from an ad model addiction.
There’s three days left until the end of the year, 30 blocks left in this walk, and I’m still getting these damn messages.
![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publica...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #2</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">January 6th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>Galleries, galleries and more galleries… but so much empty space?</h3><p>When did one of the most scarce things ever in this global capital become so abundant?</p><p>All of you have to do i...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #3</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">January 12th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>There isn)
I moved around a lot, I’m used to rame...
Pressure.
Pushing down on me. Pressing down on me.
Prospecting drilling between the liquidity and lack of substance for some life giving thing— liquid gold, fresh water, magic...
And I can’t tell you what I’ll write. They’re words without the paper.
There’s no kind of right way to do what I do. Feeling out of place, like a live in outer ...
He comes to town every Tuesday. Are you free Tuesday?
Intellectual curiosity for this midtown magic.
The liminal watercolor of magic that happens between those two. They are showing t...
How's this for an intro? Have you done this before?
I can’t be sure.
Sitting down, sitting up.
![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/tv1YkxPx...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #8</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">February 18th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h2>Standing by the phone.</h2><p>Picking through these illusions and sets to my soggy shoes, if all ends up I’m moving through.</p><p>Sunday to sunday, to the morning light. Wear long sleeves, ...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #9</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">February 27th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>Red and black they glow. Under attack.</h3><p>One way through the flames. Burning cities. Napalm clouds. Hate it when they play both sides.</p><p>Tearing into pieces.</p><h2>It’s Our Right t...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #10</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">March 6th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h2>Walk with me across the bridge.</h2><div><p>Their movements almost completely mechanical. Repetitive and precise. The factory stretches on for miles. 100 ft industrial ceilings with horizontal joi...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #11</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">May 22nd, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>The emergence of this self sovereign individual.</h3><p><em>I no longer have brain damage.</em></p><p>So she said.</p><p>Escape the shackles and transform the character of the governments, civilis...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #12</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">March 20th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h2>Dezinformatsiya Et Cetera.</h2><p>Through a door and into a dim corridor, these digital machines are the only check between you and the trigger buried in the syncopated rhythm.</p><p>Slide the key...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #13</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">March 26th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>A key cypher pair for practical fashion revolutionaries.</h3><p>Can you help me discover what this means?</p><p>Fasten your seatbelts.</p><p>He committed his first crime shortly after 3:00 in the ...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #14</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">April 4th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>How can you reach escape velocity?</h3><div><p>To overcome the horseless carriage problem is one thing. But, to be durable, portable and visible enough as to carve out space and time is another.</...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #15</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">April 10th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h2>The desire to know and embrace everything around you. Can you forbid a man from that?</h2><p>A worldly otherness. A belief in elsewheres. Scattered uncertainties falling away. A lost sailor handed...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #16</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">April 17th, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h2>It’s all about as tedious as supernatural forces can be.</h2><p><em>Experts predict that in the next 10 to 100 years scientists will succeed in creating human-level Artificial General Intell...</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #17</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">May 22nd, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>A few more AI renditions to go, and many more after that.</h3><p>It’s not as hard as it might look- if you just figure it out to your own satisfaction.</p><p>A fully realised main character....</p></div><div class="hover:underline cursor-pointer"><div class="text-md text-red-400 font-bold">Sub-Thread Weekly: #18</div><div class="text-xs font-bold text-[#400000]">May 3rd, 2022</div><p class="text-white"><h3>An early attraction to the edge.</h3><p>Wordly pursuits and precision engineering.</p><h2>Some kind of love letter to the golden era of web3.</h2><div><h2>Where)
AI generated text is supercharging fake news. Yet, this was my results. A pretty decent text generator in some contexts, in others, a whole bunch of hogwash.
Thank you?
Input: Goin...
Mastering the discipline to the point where it literally flows through you.
Freestyle is an art form. Beyond coming prepared and spitting pre-written verses.
No ...
A written appropriation of videos, visual insights and anchors for how to make it in web3, not lose your shoes, your shirt, your soul.
How to survive an IRL dungeon crawler game.
...
- DIGITALAX: Emancipatory Lifestyle Tech.
- F3Manifesto: Transcendent nostalgia. Machine & human made. In with gen. AI, web3 fashion & cc0 before it was cool.
- Highlaŋu: The Highland-Yolŋu alliance. Maximum resistance experience. Maximum knowledge preservation. Wearing and building erasure-resistant transmission systems.
- Coin Op: We know it's a lot to keep up with. How can you know if this is the blend of instant convenience and purchasing power you've been waiting for?
- Chromadin: There are whispers of new apps that can't be taken away from you. Stirrings of resistance decentralized in code. Where users own the network, direct messages are reliably private, and the channels we see the world through can be counted on to stay fully independent. Engagement and influence flow back to you. Like it was always meant to be.
- Kinora: On-Chain Video Social Quests.
- MONA: ERC20 protocol token. Unclaimed Value in Agency.
Synthetic Futures
Time to help others with the outbreak. Not out of danger yet.
Emancipa
And there’s no point raising problems with people who don't learn how to understand them, in a system that wasn’t built for you, and still isn’t..
Dhäwu
A fragment of languages that shouldn’t have survived— but did.
Cuntism
Strayan Social Disease: Whinging, Advanced Wankerism, Cuntishness and some good old Terminal Tall Poppy.
- Triple A: Everyone wins in this agent-to-earn story.
- NPC Studio: Equip your AI workforce. Train for less idle time. Try to survive in style.
- Lucidity: Agentic ComfyStream Search.
