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...
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 ourselves, most assets that claim to be in web3 are just regular old flatland assets with some minimal crypto payment integration. Not quite the right click save as JPEG accusation, exactly, but really, too damn close for comfort.
What makes an asset meaningfully web3 is actually quite simple.
It’s all about the dimensions.
And we don’t mean how many pixels up and across it happens to be. To truly understand an asset you have to look at where it lives, how it behaves and what it does.
Who really cares about some static slice that never really changes or changes anything for you, that lets gamblers posing as financiers make bets on what some greater fool will think that it will be worth some day?
No.
The magical power and near mythical source of delta, of change, in any asset is in how it moves through mediums of many dynamic dimensions.
It is precisely the ability of an asset to perform as a key that differentiates it from a speculation or an investment. A key to what, you ask?
Well, remember, assets like money are representations with some variance of complexity, from the super simple to the myriad layered, of value.
Just like the role energy, of the touch the 3rd rail and you’ll almost certainly be burnt to a crisp flowing through you kind, not the new age crystal vibes kind, plays in physics as the literal currency moving mechanisms of all kinds in this great and wondrous multiverse, the proper value of assets is measured by how they make others move.
An asset with true web3 dimensional utility has some dynamic nature that with real functional utility crosses between and beyond a variety of mediums, settings and coordinate contexts, like for example the keys that we mentioned. Think now of NFTs of many varieties with some kind of content on display, used specifically to open up or to lock and unlock a treasure chest you find out in a real world dungeon crawl or VIP access to a secret apparel drop.
The exact same keys can also serve as your status badge allowing for like and game to recognise game and like.
NFTs as high functionality utility keys give the bearer access to a token governed coordination crew of fellow keyholders. These dimensional assets can also take the shape of what might in staler generations be thought of as vandalism in the form of sticker swapping, wheatpasting and street art.
Same content, jump to a new dimension and here you find yourself in a 3D immersive RPG. Maybe wearing a virtual reality HMD, preferably made with open source hardware, but unfortunately more likely made by that least metaversal tycoon wannabe, Zuck, or maybe, in a super cool one of a kind because it’s always changing immersive projection IRL NFT experience.
And for the relentlessly archaic VC model minded amongst us, the imposter thinking here that you might be prone to is to leap headlong into the addiction with looking at every kind of asset as an opportunity for speculative gambling style investment.
Do as you like, but there is no jurisdictional summoning circle for the SEC to salivate over here.
These are uncommon experiences and journeys made possible by entirely composable machine parts used to produce everyday commonplace commerce.
We’ll forgive you this time though for getting a similar thrill of excitement from the prospect of being able to portal jump across dimensions into a much improved reality over the flatland we’ve all become far too used to.
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.
