Things I’m Reading
Some cool stuff this week
First up, this is probably one of my favourite tweet threads in a while. Basically Sean knocks some common sense into the average investor and clearly articulates the bull case for DeFi. While reading through the thread I couldn’t help but think to myself that the current setup reminds me of ETH back in 2018/2019. When you have something that you know creates genuine value, earns cash flows and has a huge developer ecosystem built on top, it’s hard to ignore the indisputable facts. If you’re looking for where the next huge asymmetric upside comes from, this thread is your best bet imo.
The world has been a bit of a crazy state for the past few weeks, this thread helps summarise it all, putting the effects into context about why we should care and how it impacts us all. Increasingly the founding principles of crypto are being put to the test and we’re seeing a large portion of the world wake up to why decentralisation, security and censorship resistance actually matters since the powers above can come swooping down on you quicker than you realise.
JPEG’d, a project that allows you to collateralise NFTs at a 300% ratio with instant liquidity, launched their initial fundraiser. The end result? A $70m raise. Pretty good on paper but when you dig deeper into the unlock schedules and think about how much buying power is really left in the market you start to question who is really going to buy your bags? Setups like this typically encourage player vs player games in crypto where your profit is someone else’s loss.
Another solid thread by Jason Choi, this time about the metaverse and breaking down the “metaverse” stack per-se. A lot of the mental models for fat protocols, thin applications and traditional value capture are ported into the metaverse space. The underlying theme I got from reading through was that making plays means you’d have to be very patient given the current state of the technology. I’ve been trying some of the metaverse apps and games and have been thoroughly disappointed with how hard they are to use and laggy (despite having a spec’d out laptop). Always worth staying educated to be proven wrong though!
A ton of stuff came out from ETHDenver around identity and reputation which was really neat to see. This thread compiles a bunch of the top themes with links to the videos and presentations. Plenty of ideas to branch off and explore there. If you have some time, take a bit to go through these tweets to better understand the next frontier of crypto that unlocks a whole new class of applications.
I’m not super big into the NFT space but I found this tweet from DCInvestor quite thought-provoking around how floor NFTs versus the rarer ones have a certain pricing/market dynamic to them. While the total financial $ value of NFTs is pretty small, I see a world where in about 3-5 years from now they