LOOPERS When mind cites mind to prove mind thedosagemakesitso.substack.…

There Is No Such Thing as Market Cap in DeFi Market cap is an equity abstraction. It's explained simply as stock price x share count. While technically true, this does not communicate what that math meaningfully represents. Why does multiplying these two numbers inform anything? What market cap reveals is the total, concrete, point-in-time valuation of the business itself, expressed through a stock price. The value of a business is the sum total of all cashflows it will ever generate, discounted back to today. Projecting these profits is much closer to art than science, and why near-term prices are so volatile and capricious. It's also why long-term stock valuation tracks the company’s fundamentals. > "In the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the long term, it's a weighing machine." Eventually, every asset gets put on the scale. The reason why the market cap for stocks and their companies represents the value of the business that issues it is because the stock has enforceable claims and control over the issuing business. A stock is a grown-ass-man asset. Thus the stock represents the value of the business it exerts claim/control over. That’s why market cap is an applicable, informative concept for stocks and their issuing businesses. BUILDING FOR VOTES vs BUILDING FOR WEIGHT Optically it may look the same when a VC invests in a SaaS company Series A at $200M, and a DeFi company at $200M. It’s not even close to the same thing. The assets are completely different. The time preference is completely different. The incentives are completely different. When regular tech VCs make an investment, they are often making a 7-10 year commitment and projection of what that company's fundamentals and cashflows will be. Why are they looking out so far into the future? Because their liquidity event (IPO) is often 7-10 years away, thus they're forced to value and invest based off long-term fundamentals. The founder is as well, because the incentive are aligned so Building For Weight (fundamentals/cashflows) gets everyone the biggest reward (stock price) when they get their liquidity event. Crypto VCs do not think or invest this way at all. The combination of near-immediate liquidity and tokens that carry no legitimate claims on the issuing company creates a framework that isn't investment, but pure speculation. This critical difference manifests in every aspect of their decision making, resulting in "market cap" thinking that basically boils down to this: “can I sell this token for 50-200% more than what I paid for it within the next 6-18 months.” Crypto VCs are getting a token that has zero characteristics of a stock tying it to the fundamentals of your company. They know this. This is why they're not really investing in you: they have no mechanism to do so. When understood in grown-up terms and not crypto-kiddie situationship ones, you see it's actually impossible for them to be making a serious investment in your company. Because the token is not a serious investment. So what are they doing? They are not investing, they are trading. This is what building for “votes” means: your actions are not guided by fundamentals, but by what the other guy will be willing to pay for you a couple months down the line. This is called thinking in relative terms, not absolute terms. Trading. Traders don’t look at cashflows, gross margins, and Rule-of-40 revenue growth. Typical tech VCs really care about this, because they're actually investing. Traders look at momentum indicators, RSI, “narratives”, the musical-chairs vibescape, and other high-time-preference concepts that are totally unrelated to the long-term viability of your company. The immediate liquidity of DeFi has destroyed a critical Chesterton’s Fence of VC investment behavior. They no longer have to wait to access liquidity, so they no longer have extended time horizons, because they can simply trade out of a position when in mark-to-market green, rather than wait 7-10 years for the fundamentals-based payout. Crypto VCs do not invest in DeFi companies, they trade them. This is why DeFi does not Build For Weight. It builds for votes. This is why financial nihilism and bullshit masquerading as some pseudo-philosophical insight permeates this industry. It's the byproduct of corrupt incentives as a result of creating uninvestable company assets and passing them around in a circle, pretending they represent something real, like market cap. The entire incentive structure becomes perverse for VC and founder alike, and it manifests in myopic behaviors, creating cascading effects on builder motivations and the entire industry. We have two abstractions that *look* the same, but could not be more different: VC investment in DeFi companies and market cap. Neither apply to the current state of crypto. WHAT'S YOUR TRUE MARKET CAP? DeFi companies: This is why your “market cap” is meaningless insofar as your true company value. You did not create a $150M company because your token price x quantity happens to multiply to a number this big or because Grift Capital “invested” in you at that multiple. Your token has ZERO enforceable control/claim over your company, thus it has no equity-like value accrual, yet you use equity-like valuation abstractions? How very, very silly. This is like thinking a horse and a dog are the same animal, since they both walk on four legs. Governance tokens are nothing more than company-issued onchain "I Voted" stickers. Memecoins wearing fancy suits. A trading vehicle for people to dance around with. What’s the right market cap for a bunch of onchain “I Voted” stickers? Idk, what’s the amount of unicorns x candy canes in the world? Just make it up. That’s all we’re doing here, making shit up and pretending. It does not represent your company's cashflows, that's for sure. Your token is not an investment vehicle for your company, as it has categorically no reason to track your company’s fundamentals. It is a completely separate product, that must be managed and treated entirely distinctly. Consider... - A company does not ask "what does our stock do?" - A commodity producer does not ask "what does our oil do?" - A debt issuer does not ask "what does our bond do?" - Yet DeFi projects must ask... "what does our token do?" Right now, your token is a separate product. This means your company has two products: the platform and the token. Your token is a separate product because it demands your separate focus, time, and most importantly, resources to be poured into it to justify its existence. Your token should be a derivative of your business, not a feather floating in the wind requiring you constantly blow on it to keep it afloat. No asset with legitimate value accrual needs this. This is why the very notion of “market cap” is a wholly inapplicable concept to DeFi companies and their tokens. Another equity abstraction we’ve borrowed that’s not rooted in anything concrete. Same for token buybacks (see QT for an elaboration). CHANGE INCENTIVES, CHANGE BEHAVIOR If you don't make the most money by creating the most value, then parasites thrive. Salutary @BuildForWeight cares about DeFi. That means exalting those who Build for Weight and exposing those who don't. "Salutary" is simply a fancy word for "healthy". DeFi value creation will be ascendent when it has tokens that represent genuine investment vehicles that reward positive-sum, value-creating behaviors. Change incentives, change behaviors. There is no actual way to invest in the fundamentals of DeFi companies. Salutary is changing that. A Salutary token is a grown-ass-man token that can be owned by grown-ass-man investors. Salutary will attract exactly the right kind of support, and hate, it should. A light for the best kind of moths. You expose many sins when you tie fundamentals to the token. You also materially reward many virtues. Good. As it should be. Every asset eventually gets put on the scale, and that's when you get truly paid. Salutary is that scale. Reject financial nihilism Demonize scams Ridicule vapor Exalt value creators Be the change you want to see in the world Embrace finance natural law Change incentives = change behaviors Build for Weight

crazy how bad crypto's reputation is

Speed Running Financial History, Lessons from TradFi for DeFi: Part 6 Decentralization, Liability, Property Rights, and the Judgement of Boomie McOlds There are cypherpunk reasons why we want decentralization, and there are pragmatic ones. I believe the pragmatic ones will be what forces it. We’re not decentralizing because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary. It won’t be ideology that brings us to our decentralized destination, it will be necessity. It’s not a very romantic answer, but I think it’s the truthful one. I was hit by a hack recently. I was stolen from. I’m angry. I want to be made whole. Someone who’s had his property stolen and isn’t willing to have centralizing bodies force its return only feels this way because he didn’t lose enough. Allegiance to ideological beliefs and self-interest sits on a spectrum; some people require more distress than others for fight-or-flight to awaken. "Code is law" beliefs are something of a proxy for "I've never experienced sufficient hardship from an attack". You too have a number. At what point does someone defect from the Rules of Engagement and standard decorum, because he has too much to gain in doing so? At a certain level of pain, your best interests will supersede ideological fealty, as they should. The reason capitalism works is because we’re evolved to act in our own self-interests. There’s a difference between rational self-interest (that wants to right a wrong) and pathological self-interest (sociopathy). Rational self-interest is a healthy, darwinian characteristic. THE RECKONING OF THAT GUY See, the thing is, I can’t make someone return my funds to me. I’m not That Guy. I’m not rich enough. I’m not motivated or connected enough. But one day, the wrong guy is going to get robbed onchain, and you’ll draw the full ire of That Guy. He will not fuck around. That Guy is rich. He’s going to lose a lot of money in this robbery (call it what it is), but will still be wealthy. He’s going to be enraged, vengeful, and motivated. He’s going to do more than just demand he’s made whole, he’s going to use the legal system to impose it. Code isn’t law, men with guns is law; and he will appeal to the latter, because fuck what the code says, he wants his money back. And he’s probably going to win, and force something that everyone will absolutely hate, but ultimately is necessary. WHY DECENTRALIZE? A SECRET BONUS REASON. The path to true decentralization won’t be found in a roadmap, it’ll be found in survival. Why make something decentralized? Why are we intentionally making inefficient, slower databases? So no single entity can control them. The benefits of one person not controlling a financial ledger are worth the inefficiencies: no censorship, no gatekeeping, permanence, permissionless access, and the disintermediation of money and the state. But what if there was another critical reason that has yet to rear its ugly head: no liability. L2s AND DECENTRALIZATION Basically no L2 is decentralized. They all can rollback state, block withdrawals, or have a centralized sequencer. This is not decentralization. I’m not criticizing them for it. I understand scaling and building is a complex, difficult process that requires coordination at the onset, and decentralization is a spectrum to work towards. However, if you have all those centralized abilities, and a major act of fraud goes down on your financial ledger, and you don’t fix it…… I’m adversarially minded. I’d describe much of what I write about as adversarial philosophy. It involves candidly analyzing things, often in a discomforting way. When I see centralization and a crime someone chooses to not stop, arguably permitting, I default to how the meanest prosecutor might think...“accomplice”. BANK TRANSFERS ARE LAW: A SCENARIO Globobank was defrauded and mistakenly wired out $20M from accounts in an elaborate scam. Globobank is kinda like one big ledger in a way. Reversing this would be hairy, but Globobank can unwind the fraud and return the $20M back to the rightful owners. But chooses not to, because ideology. > Feds: “You need to either freeze these accounts or reverse this while we investigate.” > Globobank: “I’m sorry we can’t, it goes against our deeply held belief that bank transfers are law. If we undo this, then our clients will realize a lot of their Globobank assumptions are wrong, and the optics are bad. Also it’s a pain.” > Feds: “So you can undo this, but some clients would be mad and think you can’t. And it’s annoying…. so you’re refusing to rectify massive fraud because management thinks bank transfers are law?” > Globobank: “That’s right. A little rude, but correct.” > Feds: “Sounds like aiding criminal activity, let’s see what the courts say…..” THE JUDGEMENT OF BOOMIE McOLDS Now I’m going to give you an entirely plausible, unpleasant scenario for DeFi: There was a $100M hack on Optimism. They could have frozen bridges and block production and rolled it all back, but leadership chose not to. Because ideology and optics. That Guy I told you about, the rich, vindictive, angry one who lost a lot of money but is still very rich, he got hit hard. He’s going scorched earth and suing Optimism for enabling fraud and to recoup his losses. The case is going to court. The honorable Boomie McOlds is presiding. > Plaintiff: “Your honor, as we reviewed in our bank example, nowhere else would we accept willful facilitation of fraud at a financial institution. You’re just as culpable as the exploiter if you refuse to stop it…” > Defense: “Objection! Your honor, a blockchain isn’t a financial institution, it’s a **nuanced details about blocks, validators, etc. that Boomie finds irrelevant**.” “So you see, if these transactions were reversed — which my L2 client could have done — it would have been totally not cool. All our users would have been very angry because we’re supposed to be decentralized.” > Honorable Boomie McOlds: “So you could have stopped this crime, but you didn’t because you’re fake decentralized. However you're working towards real decentralized?” > Defense: “Yes, but please don’t say that outloud. Code is law.” > Honorable Boomie McOlds: “The court rules in favor of the plaintiff. You owe $100M plus damages.” THE PUSHBACK You have nuanced, technical reasons why the blockchain and financial institution parallel is amiss. You studied cryptography at MIT, maybe law at Yale, and actually this scenario overlooks a key point about possession and finality that when viewed in conjunction with the Wooden Canoe Act of 1912 blah blah blah. You’re probably right. I’m not dismissing your objections because you’re wrong. I’m dismissing them because they’re likely to be ineffective against a legal system dominated by predatory regulators and politicized prosecutors that are hired guns to protect the state, not to protect consumers. You don’t have to convince me, you have to convince the Boomie McOlds that saturate the legislature and judiciary. The state hates DeFi and is right to see it as a threat to their soft power. The state makes the law, interprets the law, and enforces the law; and it’s Boomies all the way down. To say you’re at a structural disadvantage is an understatement. Coinbase and Uniswap have the legal teams of God and did everything as by-the-book as possible, and are still getting attacked with Wells Notices. That’s because this isn’t a legal discussion, it’s a power-based one. Battles over power fundamentally don’t happen in court rooms. The court facilitates the rules imposed by the entity in power. It won’t be ideological purity that takes us to our decentralized destination, but liability-eschewing, survival-led necessity. PSEUDO-DECENTRALIZATION: THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS Currently, we have what I would describe as the worst of both worlds. We have centralized entities masquerading as global networks. Decentralization pageantry. Finality theater. This provides few decentralization benefits, and even fewer centralization ones. We have full exposure to censorship, AND get no protections against hacks! When lowlifes steal, we have to pretend like we can’t thwart it. Being able to stop this falls firmly in the censorship-benefit camp of centralization, and we're denied it. We allow billions in theft because…. eww? Pseudo-decentralization is the worst of both worlds because we’re subject to all the risks of centralization as it relates to censorship, and get none of the pros of that censorship ability. In the interim, while we’re centralized, we should reap the full benefits of it and not pretend like they're not there. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE SACRED If you’re going to be centralized, that’s fine. It’s a hard process and Rome wasn’t built in an epoch. But be transparent about what it means for risk AND protections, and don’t allow people to be wronged because it disrupts the theater. People rightfully want their property back when someone steals it. And until chains figure out ways to credibly decentralize, we should work to avoid the eventual wrath of That Guy and the legal system. Leverage the pros of our current environment to help victims. Instead we act like they’re not there, opting to protect North Koreans and criminal scum over regular users. Property-rights violators are biowaste. The DeFi zeitgeist seems to hold these people's actions as more worthy of protection than the return of rightful belongings. Don’t deprive people of their rightful property because it exposes false optics. Theft is fundamentally a property-rights violation. We all believe in property rights, right? Do you think if a burglar breaks into your home and steals he should be caught, punished, and your property returned to you? Ok and why is getting burglarized onchain different? It’s not. It’s a property-rights violation. It’s orders of magnitude more morally repugnant than stopping block creation. There is no equivalence here. We all think we should be able to self-custody our crypto because of property rights yes? Ok well just extend that belief ever-so-slightly further and understand that if this is in fact property, which it is, what that means if you’re robbed of it. Radical respect of property rights is essentially the bulwark of Western beliefs. Willfully allowing property-rights violations is a greater moral wrong than stopping the sequencer. In fact, property-rights violations may be the second-worst moral wrong that exists (second only to violent assault). If you can stop them, you should. CLOSING: DECENTRALIZE TO AVOID THIS DILEMMA If you don’t want the liability and obligation of rectifying legal and moral wrongs, the answer is very simple: credibly decentralize. Make it so you literally can’t change what happened. I encourage all chains to take this seriously. Maybe start to create a framework for freezing and rectifying obvious theft and fraud. Because That Guy exists, and when he gets hit, he’s going to go after you, and you don't want the legal system to view this the way I just laid out. Further, I personally think it’s the correct moral decision to leverage the power you have to right wrongs while you still have that power. Don’t pretend like you don’t. The best way to rid yourself of any moral or legal liability is to make it so it's not your decision to make. I prefer a decentralized world where it can’t be undone by any single entity. But I also don’t deny the world as it is now. Remove 7s: backthebunny.subs77tack.77com

Speed Running Financial History, Lessons from TradFi for DeFi: Part 6 Decentralization, Liability, Property Rights, and the Judgement of Boomie McOlds There are cypherpunk reasons why we want decentralization, and there are pragmatic ones. I believe the pragmatic ones will be what forces it. We’re not decentralizing because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary. It won’t be ideology that brings us to our decentralized destination, it will be necessity. It’s not a very romantic answer, but I think it’s the truthful one. I was hit by a hack recently. I was stolen from. I’m angry. I want to be made whole. Someone who’s had his property stolen and isn’t willing to have centralizing bodies force its return only feels this way because he didn’t lose enough. Allegiance to ideological beliefs and self-interest sits on a spectrum; some people require more distress than others for fight-or-flight to awaken. "Code is law" beliefs are something of a proxy for "I've never experienced sufficient hardship from an attack". You too have a number. At what point does someone defect from the Rules of Engagement and standard decorum, because he has too much to gain in doing so? At a certain level of pain, your best interests will supersede ideological fealty, as they should. The reason capitalism works is because we’re evolved to act in our own self-interests. There’s a difference between rational self-interest (that wants to right a wrong) and pathological self-interest (sociopathy). Rational self-interest is a healthy, darwinian characteristic. THE RECKONING OF THAT GUY See, the thing is, I can’t make someone return my funds to me. I’m not That Guy. I’m not rich enough. I’m not motivated or connected enough. But one day, the wrong guy is going to get robbed onchain, and you’ll draw the full ire of That Guy. He will not fuck around. That Guy is rich. He’s going to lose a lot of money in this robbery (call it what it is), but will still be wealthy. He’s going to be enraged, vengeful, and motivated. He’s going to do more than just demand he’s made whole, he’s going to use the legal system to impose it. Code isn’t law, men with guns is law; and he will appeal to the latter, because fuck what the code says, he wants his money back. And he’s probably going to win, and force something that everyone will absolutely hate, but ultimately is necessary. WHY DECENTRALIZE? A SECRET BONUS REASON. The path to true decentralization won’t be found in a roadmap, it’ll be found in survival. Why make something decentralized? Why are we intentionally making inefficient, slower databases? So no single entity can control them. The benefits of one person not controlling a financial ledger are worth the inefficiencies: no censorship, no gatekeeping, permanence, permissionless access, and the disintermediation of money and the state. But what if there was another critical reason that has yet to rear its ugly head: no liability. L2s AND DECENTRALIZATION Basically no L2 is decentralized. They all can rollback state, block withdrawals, or have a centralized sequencer. This is not decentralization. I’m not criticizing them for it. I understand scaling and building is a complex, difficult process that requires coordination at the onset, and decentralization is a spectrum to work towards. However, if you have all those centralized abilities, and a major act of fraud goes down on your financial ledger, and you don’t fix it…… I’m adversarially minded. I’d describe much of what I write about as adversarial philosophy. It involves candidly analyzing things, often in a discomforting way. When I see centralization and a crime someone chooses to not stop, arguably permitting, I default to how the meanest prosecutor might think...“accomplice”. BANK TRANSFERS ARE LAW: A SCENARIO Globobank was defrauded and mistakenly wired out $20M from accounts in an elaborate scam. Globobank is kinda like one big ledger in a way. Reversing this would be hairy, but Globobank can unwind the fraud and return the $20M back to the rightful owners. But chooses not to, because ideology. > Feds: “You need to either freeze these accounts or reverse this while we investigate.” > Globobank: “I’m sorry we can’t, it goes against our deeply held belief that bank transfers are law. If we undo this, then our clients will realize a lot of their Globobank assumptions are wrong, and the optics are bad. Also it’s a pain.” > Feds: “So you can undo this, but some clients would be mad and think you can’t. And it’s annoying…. so you’re refusing to rectify massive fraud because management thinks bank transfers are law?” > Globobank: “That’s right. A little rude, but correct.” > Feds: “Sounds like aiding criminal activity, let’s see what the courts say…..” THE JUDGEMENT OF BOOMIE McOLDS Now I’m going to give you an entirely plausible, unpleasant scenario for DeFi: There was a $100M hack on Optimism. They could have frozen bridges and block production and rolled it all back, but leadership chose not to. Because ideology and optics. That Guy I told you about, the rich, vindictive, angry one who lost a lot of money but is still very rich, he got hit hard. He’s going scorched earth and suing Optimism for enabling fraud and to recoup his losses. The case is going to court. The honorable Boomie McOlds is presiding. > Plaintiff: “Your honor, as we reviewed in our bank example, nowhere else would we accept willful facilitation of fraud at a financial institution. You’re just as culpable as the exploiter if you refuse to stop it…” > Defense: “Objection! Your honor, a blockchain isn’t a financial institution, it’s a **nuanced details about blocks, validators, etc. that Boomie finds irrelevant**.” “So you see, if these transactions were reversed — which my L2 client could have done — it would have been totally not cool. All our users would have been very angry because we’re supposed to be decentralized.” > Honorable Boomie McOlds: “So you could have stopped this crime, but you didn’t because you’re fake decentralized. However you're working towards real decentralized?” > Defense: “Yes, but please don’t say that outloud. Code is law.” > Honorable Boomie McOlds: “The court rules in favor of the plaintiff. You owe $100M plus damages.” THE PUSHBACK You have nuanced, technical reasons why the blockchain and financial institution parallel is amiss. You studied cryptography at MIT, maybe law at Yale, and actually this scenario overlooks a key point about possession and finality that when viewed in conjunction with the Wooden Canoe Act of 1912 blah blah blah. You’re probably right. I’m not dismissing your objections because you’re wrong. I’m dismissing them because they’re likely to be ineffective against a legal system dominated by predatory regulators and politicized prosecutors that are hired guns to protect the state, not to protect consumers. You don’t have to convince me, you have to convince the Boomie McOlds that saturate the legislature and judiciary. The state hates DeFi and is right to see it as a threat to their soft power. The state makes the law, interprets the law, and enforces the law; and it’s Boomies all the way down. To say you’re at a structural disadvantage is an understatement. Coinbase and Uniswap have the legal teams of God and did everything as by-the-book as possible, and are still getting attacked with Wells Notices. That’s because this isn’t a legal discussion, it’s a power-based one. Battles over power fundamentally don’t happen in court rooms. The court facilitates the rules imposed by the entity in power. It won’t be ideological purity that takes us to our decentralized destination, but liability-eschewing, survival-led necessity. PSEUDO-DECENTRALIZATION: THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS Currently, we have what I would describe as the worst of both worlds. We have centralized entities masquerading as global networks. Decentralization pageantry. Finality theater. This provides few decentralization benefits, and even fewer centralization ones. We have full exposure to censorship, AND get no protections against hacks! When lowlifes steal, we have to pretend like we can’t thwart it. Being able to stop this falls firmly in the censorship-benefit camp of centralization, and we're denied it. We allow billions in theft because…. eww? Pseudo-decentralization is the worst of both worlds because we’re subject to all the risks of centralization as it relates to censorship, and get none of the pros of that censorship ability. In the interim, while we’re centralized, we should reap the full benefits of it and not pretend like they're not there. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE SACRED If you’re going to be centralized, that’s fine. It’s a hard process and Rome wasn’t built in an epoch. But be transparent about what it means for risk AND protections, and don’t allow people to be wronged because it disrupts the theater. People rightfully want their property back when someone steals it. And until chains figure out ways to credibly decentralize, we should work to avoid the eventual wrath of That Guy and the legal system. Leverage the pros of our current environment to help victims. Instead we act like they’re not there, opting to protect North Koreans and criminal scum over regular users. Property-rights violators are biowaste. The DeFi zeitgeist seems to hold these people's actions as more worthy of protection than the return of rightful belongings. Don’t deprive people of their rightful property because it exposes false optics. Theft is fundamentally a property-rights violation. We all believe in property rights, right? Do you think if a burglar breaks into your home and steals he should be caught, punished, and your property returned to you? Ok and why is getting burglarized onchain different? It’s not. It’s a property-rights violation. It’s orders of magnitude more morally repugnant than stopping block creation. There is no equivalence here. We all think we should be able to self-custody our crypto because of property rights yes? Ok well just extend that belief ever-so-slightly further and understand that if this is in fact property, which it is, what that means if you’re robbed of it. Radical respect of property rights is essentially the bulwark of Western beliefs. Willfully allowing property-rights violations is a greater moral wrong than stopping the sequencer. In fact, property-rights violations may be the second-worst moral wrong that exists (second only to violent assault). If you can stop them, you should. CLOSING: DECENTRALIZE TO AVOID THIS DILEMMA If you don’t want the liability and obligation of rectifying legal and moral wrongs, the answer is very simple: credibly decentralize. Make it so you literally can’t change what happened. I encourage all chains to take this seriously. Maybe start to create a framework for freezing and rectifying obvious theft and fraud. Because That Guy exists, and when he gets hit, he’s going to go after you, and you don't want the legal system to view this the way I just laid out. Further, I personally think it’s the correct moral decision to leverage the power you have to right wrongs while you still have that power. Don’t pretend like you don’t. The best way to rid yourself of any moral or legal liability is to make it so it's not your decision to make. I prefer a decentralized world where it can’t be undone by any single entity. But I also don’t deny the world as it is now. Remove 7s: backthebunny.subs77tack.77com

it's insane to me that buy and burn has become the default for profitable crypto protocols why would a high growth startup would ever take its profits and distribute them to shareholders instead of re-investing for future growth, or at least holding it for runway

THE MILADY SOCIOPOLITICAL EVOLUTION To shock puritans: 1970-90s: devil worship, rock, tattoos 2020s: *insert wrongthink heretical belief* A counterculture is blowback. It's intentionally offensive to establishment beliefs. Find it repellent? Good, it’s meant to gatekeep you 🧵

gm. I've rewritten substantial portions of the essay Midrange Jumpers for the Middle Class. a favorite on here and 'Stackhouse I'll be doing a part 4 soon. illustrating axioms of accounting and the persistent imperative supply chains have to squeeze the middle. link in comments.

Midrange Jumpers for the Middle Class This chart made me sad. It’s the inexorable result of moneyball. When every decision is maximally maximized, when every choice is an expected-value calculation. It’s also the inevitable result of globalism. Moneyball kills your midrange jumpers, globalism kills your middle class. Both in a poetically similar way. Excessive optimization in all things eventually turns the human spirit, sports, and supply chains, gray. Unrelenting pursuit of 1% better margins or 1% greater chance of success in *insert competitive domain* is how the McKinsey consultant sees the world. It’s how the pedigree-touting economist understands every decision. These are people trained to think unnaturally, inculcated to believe what the Excel sheet spits out is absolute truth. The most noble pursuit to attain is that which maximizes the expected value. They go to schools that exalt undermining the parochial, viewing their neighbors with disregard, so long as it enhances gross margins. Because, hear me out, if it helps gross margins, it MUST be what's best for everyone. Because it makes the trinkets cheaper. Because we are trinket maximalists. Harvard Business Review is scripture. Why create your trinkets domestically when China has an underclass that exists on 1,400 calories a day and will do it for a fraction of the cost? The answer to this is obvious, if you assume people only value cheaper trinkets, hedonism, and materialism. The middle class has no desire for eudaimonism, and fulfillment from a life that imbues purpose. This must be so, because the Excel sheet doesn’t know how to calculate those other things (eudai-what? dude stop making up words and get in on this sale), and my MBA says more is more. When globocorp’s bottom line is the unwavering guiding light, when the expected value of each basketball position is the only consideration, actions eventually converge on the same expected-value-led strategies. Tedium. Mankind needs variance, otherwise he'll breaks things until the volatility and color he secretly relishes returns. If you go too long without a life of purpose, without eudaimonism, something inside you begins to chafe. Grayness seeps in. Life needs color, which is to say that which you can’t always predict. You know what maximizes predictability? Expected-value thinking. Moneyball. Globalism. You can push the grayness beachball underwater, but eventually the volatility tax will be paid. An expected-value existence is corrosive to the middle. Empirically. Demonstrably. The Excel-sheet mind cannot comprehend this, but the NBA shot chart and the factory worker can. RELIGION, PRETENDING TO BE ECONOMICS Just as the priest only knows “Christ is King”, the Trinket Maximalist only knows “open trade open borders good”. It's religious thinking, masquerading as post-hoc, economic-presenting rationale. Because you cannot possibly conceive that the highest-order value for a nation isn’t the cheapest trinkets possible. Unfathomable. When all your beliefs and motivations can be distilled down to “what gives the best margins?”, you implicitly worship the material. Because explicitly, the material is all you value when you think this way. You project this value onto others, often unwittingly, when you treat global trade as Christ 2.0. This is the religion of consumption, hedonism. No salutary purpose, eudaimonism. If it doesn’t facilitate profligate intake, I’m going to have to kindly ask that you go to college. If a couple more basis points of gross margin is the North Star, and one more point on the scoreboard is all the strategy knows, you're left with no midrange jumpers, and no middle class. Remember Rip Hamilton? Kobe? They lived in the midrange. Jordan did everything, everywhere, all at once. Now you know what you do in the modern NBA? You either get a sniper to shoot a foot behind the 3-point line, or you throw it to the post. Listen, we ran the numbers, and the Monte Carlo analysis says what it says: no more 15-footers or you’re benched. No more domestic manufacturing, or you’re out of business. Diversity? Lol yeah not that kind. Have you seen the NBA’s ratings? You get what you fucking deserve. Who cares about all the action in between the 1st quarter and the final buzzer. The sport whose very reason for existence is to entertain and excite. The event we gather in big stadiums for and have our identities tied to. Meh, you see, all that matters is just one. more. point. than the other guys. Who cares about a population’s sense of identity and esteem. A blue-collar existence of dignity and self-sufficiency. The men who derive their purpose, value, and autonomy from their ability to provide. It’s fine if we rob them of their agency, because the trinkets are that much cheaper for it. You don’t need a sense of independence, you need a smartphone that folds! A hedonistic worldview like this dominates everything else you believe. Boy you’re really laying it on thick for those flyover-state peons! All we want is just one. more. point. of gross margin bro. Chill. You clearly don’t read Harvard Business Review. > "What's the expected value of each possession? What’s the cheapest way possible to build that product?"… This kind of thinking produces grayness, and disembowels the middle. No midrange jumpers. No middle class. Blog in profile. If you read this far, you owe me a follow. I think that's fair. A related essay in QT:

Uniswap getting some other organization to buy their worthless tokens does not make the revenue-less token any less worthless LayerZero is on the right track; guiding towards $100 million of ARR in 2026, understanding that the market wants value attached to the tokens now

Goblin Town & The Effort Chad Seasons of digital commons, the paradox of platforms, & rationalist gruel Link: thedosagemakesitso.substack.…

an update on HNT buybacks: the market doesn’t seem to care about projects buying their tokens back off the market, so we are going to stop wasting our money under the current conditions Helium Mobile generated $3.4M in October alone and I’d rather we use that money to grow the business than pour it into a hole. we’re fully focused on growing @helium_mobile subscribers, the @helium network installed base, and growing carrier offload usage and will be directing all our $ in to those endeavors until morale improves data credits will continue to be burned for all carrier offload as always. thank you for your attention to this matter!

AI is not a young technology. It’s an ancient one. AI is more appropriately understood as superhistory, not superintelligence This has application beyond AI. It changed how I view myself and those around me. You are a centaur 🧵

We’re officially confirming the $BLINK launch model. $BLINK will launch using the @BuildForWeight (Salutary) Standard, supported by a Tax Decay Curve. This decision defines how governance and accountability work for BlinkBot going forward. We will publish a clear breakdown shortly covering: > What the Salutary Standard is > How the Tax Decay Curve works > Why we chose this structure Turn notifications on. Full explanation incoming.