Three Months In Web3: What I Learned
"There's something apocalyptic about it," someone told me this week.
We weren't talking about the war. Or the pandemic. Rather, we were sharing an incredulous chuckle at a series of announcements by Yuga Labs, the company behind NFT sensation Bored Ape Yacht Club. Over the past month, Yuga made a barrage of eyebrow-raising power moves. In a matter of weeks, they acquired CryptoPunks, launched a currency, closed a $450 million seed round and released a feature-film quality trailer for a major me
Amen
I am glad to hear your foray has ended, we need you too much here back in the real world.I also appreciate that you learned so much and shared it honestly with us too. I had never even considered the tax implications!
Thank you, if you couldn’t ‘make it’ I wouldn’t have a prayer.
Your graphics are brilliant but your writing is amazing. Thanks for sharing that journey. Please don’t quit your day job. Much gratitude sir
Open Gemini account. Stick in whatever you’re comfortable with. Collect the 8% interest while it lasts.
“While it lasts” is the key bet.
Whether 8% is enough depends on whether you think your principal will remain safe for 12.5 years (assuming you cash out your interest as soon as you get it).
I give this froth up to six years, so any “reputable” stablecoin offering interest rates lower than 17% is not worth it. Once a major stablecoin collapses, a big chunk of crypto collapses.
You stated you were “mostly correct” in your assumptions. Is there any value in any part of the crypto-verse?
Crypto and Nft stuff is the equivalent of dotcom stocks, or Ninja loan foreclosures, Enron excellence, various fashion trends in clothing or hair, cabbage patch dolls, pet rocks, beanie babies and a very long list of stupid crap that gets hyped to a point of oversaturated fat that bursts into flames, spreading like a forest fire in a wind storm, with lightening bolts and laser blasts, mixed with black smoke ruin and muddy ashes.
Yes as others have said, thank you!
Bonus rant:
Re: “It’s a hopelessly self-referential system”
That’s the master key to the kingdom right there Mr H!
I think it’s easy to travel backwards in time and climb in bed with a cute bed partner and discuss the merits of how much more savings to invest in tulip bulbs and be united in greedy dreaming, lusting with deep passion to get rich.
The alluring desire of easy money is a universally felt by everyone from pirates to priests, the sin of greed is based on inequalities, which incubate internalized dramas and narratives where people see themselves as oppressed. It’s an undefined illusion people chase, it’s the opposite of hope and more a desperation deeply rooted, as if it’s a core element of life itself.
Part of the internet age evolution we’re taking part of is the exponential explosion of misinformation and distorted reality. Instead of the early internet being a wild west, the more mature version is more like clockwork orange chaos. Web 3.0 instead of offering interesting rabbit holes, is essentially offering black holes.
The crypto universe caters to science fiction tulip mania dreams that exist in fantasy lands, where there are tales of success and pathways filled with modern day pied pipers who play an ancient tune that rings like a bell.
Disclaimer: the author has a very small position in doge coin that’s not doing very well…
Well said! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for going through the time and effort to do the research so that you could educta ethe rest of us. It is acts like that that make your newsletter worth way more than what you are charging. As a cybersecurity engineer, I would never invest a penny in crypto. That said, I do see fantastic potential in the blockchain technology for companies. Being able to have authenticated, permanent records in a database is relatively “new” and can be of great value, particularly in a court room.
I enjoyed your thoughts on web3 until your conclusion. The internet itself looked like a dead end joke in 1995. Pet stores in Duluth, and scanned magazine pages, and random fools fascinated by the novel idea of anonymity all had equal standing and importance, which is to say, zero. Your mistake here is to assume that today is the end point of web3. Today is 1995 for the internet. The only difference is that the presence of the internet itself now makes it possible for “Nigerian Princes” to successfully scam millions of people at time with garbage cartoons. So it smells more fraudulent to anyone older than 30. But the real innovation hasn’t even started.
They’re all electronic gambling tokens of one sort or other. Govern yourself accordingly …
Licensing “Break On Through” is a coup. Famously, Drummer John Densmore vetoed it being used to sell SUVs. He didn’t say he’d never allow it to be used, implying if he felt the fit was right he’d approve licensing it, and to my surprise the day has come. Here’s a little backstory:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-oct-05-et-doors5-story.html
I want to believe in blockchain technology as a way to record and transfer property rights- it could be so much more efficient than our current manual, labor-intensive process.
However, there are two problems- we need a government backed crypto (which we don’t have) and we would significantly reduce the need for many of the lawyers, title officers, brokers, etc. who are currently involved in the very inefficient process of transferring and recording property rights (which would not necessarily be great for the economy).
<3
So, we’re all friends here H and I’m curious other than BTC what tokens did you keep and why ?
I just kept a very pedestrian list: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, Polygon, Polkadot and Fantom (the Fantom is a lost cause now, but there’s no point in selling it). I have some Curve too, and some Threshold that was part of a liquidity pair. Also, Serum and Raydium (those are two Solana ecosystem tokens that I bought near the lows).