This is just end-stage capitalism, in which the richest guys are now striving for a goal more impressive than money: be the first to play God and create ASI. Fortunately we can capitalize on their unprecedented cash bonfire by buying the downstream beneficiaries.

The only thing that can save $MSTR now is if Jensen says it’s the next trillion-dollar company

Just found out today that I'm permanently banned from using Opensea. They won't reveal why, but all I can figure is that they are punishing me for having been hacked and thus being indirectly associated with rogue wallets. Nice work, @opensea and @dfinzer. I received no help from your company when I was hacked, but I do get a lifetime ban for my trouble! Thanks a bunch!

Now that we know how the X algo works, there seems to be a nice opportunity to submit abuse reports to relegate these gravedancing accounts to permanent oblivion.

$KEYCAT DAT loading

A simple guide to protect yourself from rugs in the James Wynn pattern. Set this up now and forget 🧵

B.R.E.A.M. Babyshark Rules Everything Around Me

My sleep-deprived girlfriend referred to ChatGPT as “cheepeeteepee,” and I think this simple name change could go a long way towards allaying fears of AI eradicating humanity. @sama @OpenAI

Won’t be long now until we have a $500k @cryptopunks floor.

It’s interesting that AI doomers expect the impending eradication of humanity, yet do nothing more extreme than post on X, chat on some podcasts, maybe have a Substack. Do they not really believe we’re all going to die, or is this the neutered extent of our fight to survive?

Anytime I feel as if the quality of my X feed is deteriorating, I just go on Threads for about 5 min. The average IQ over there is one standard deviation lower.

Is there a worse-designed product in the history of humanity than the automated toilet that flushes the instant you sit on it?

People continually try to derive a valuation of crypto assets based on transaction fees that do not accrue to the holders of the asset. This is like valuing a Tenderloin property based on the annual transaction volume carried out by the nice ladies on the street out front.

Heaven forbid Coinbase might list an asset that users on their chain actually want to see, as opposed to providing the standard “serious” service of providing exit liquidity to VCs by listing tokens that don’t need to exist tied to apps with no PMF

People forget that $floppa had the exact same divine provenance as $keycat — the same exact dev launched and rugged both within days of each other, and the tokens were CTO-reborn with clean, unbundled perfection. And they both have the rare asset of IP rights.

$Keycat just got massively derisked. Now we know it will have the exposure and liquidity to fly when the market improves. This announcement coming on a shitty market day is a gift for everyone who knows where this is headed.

Looking at the current market, I’m glad I was 80% in BTC *makes no trades, checks chart* Okay now I’m 98% in BTC

My name is Roman Storm, and I am one of the founders of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial privacy protocol. I am being prosecuted for writing open-source code that enables private crypto transactions in a completely non-custodial manner. This prosecution represents a terrifying criminalization of privacy. The charges against me threaten to criminalize software development itself. If successful, the implications could extend far beyond the crypto industry, impacting every software developer. I face up to 45 years in prison on charges including operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and sanctions evasion. This case has already had a chilling effect on developers working on software tools. Recently, a developer filed a lawsuit against the DOJ, seeking relief because my case has made them fearful of releasing new software. x.com/lewellenmichael/status… Additionally, there is significant confusion around the 1960 charge (operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business), as different government agencies have conflicting interpretations of the law. x.com/amandatums/status/1863… “This prosecution threatens to criminalize software development itself,” said Keri Axel of Waymaker LLP, my legal counsel. American entrepreneur and politician @VivekGRamaswamy commented, “You can’t go after the developers of code. What you actually need to do is go after individual bad actors who are breaking the laws that already exist.” x.com/benzingacrypto/status/… Multiple amicus briefs have been filed in support of my defense by the DeFi Education Fund (@fund_defi), Coin Center (@coincenter), and Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn): defieducationfund.org/_files… coincenter.org/app/uploads/2… theblockchainassociation.org… The 5th Circuit Court has already ruled that Tornado Cash sanctions were unlawful: x.com/AlexanderFisher/status… However, the DOJ has dismissed this ruling as irrelevant: storage.courtlistener.com/re… My trial is set for April 14, 2025.

A lot of good people are crashing out on and off the timeline right now, some who got rich from crypto, some who never made it after years in the industry (both versions are represented in the screenshots below). For all the ones you see on the timeline, there are even more in my private chats and DMs--some who would really surprise you in terms of their prominence in the industry and how much $ they probably have made and/or could still make in the industry, but are having an existential crisis over it because at this point they feel like they are not actually doing anything good for the world anymore. Ironically just at the point of finally being 'legalized' and going mainstream, the industry feels like it's succumbed almost completely to unsustainable zero-sum financial nihilism and bloodthirsty competition instead of taking the opportunity to build toward cypherpunk ideals or really any other ideals than Moloch/Mammon/getting rich. For myself, I've done 'okay' financially in crypto but dramatically underperformed most of the other paths that were open to me (both pre-crypto paths and more cynical paths within crypto). And this is despite not totally lacking in business or investment acumen and staying active in looking for opportunities in all dimensions--just never really managed to hit anything big. So I can relate a lot to ZachXBT and some others like him where you just really wonder why you have been doing this when it's neither the most lucrative path you could've taken nor feels like something idealistically satisfying. I was here for cypherpunk stuff and it's really weird to me to see guys like ZachXBT (even though he blocked me probably for calling him self-righteous or something) and Roman Storm get such little support from a very wealthy & degen community, as well as true cypherpunk / privacy projects mostly get ignored/maligned in the space as uninvestable while basically centralized structured finance products labeled "DeFi" as well as even dumber/more unsustainable stuff get shilled & supported nonstop. It also really sucks to see Ethereum just descend into the totally ineffectual mess that it is on the social layer today. It's the one non-Bitcoin ecosystem where a lot of the design decisions felt like they were maximizing for decentralization and censorship resistance and social revolution, but somehow the leadership refuses to fully embrace these sorts of narratives, and is even outright hostile to the more 'money' narratives and thus has ended up alienating literally everyone in crypto, both the money-degen financial nihilists and the cypherpunks, while going off on a bunch of out-of-touch 'public goods' larks that even include funding a total no-coiner and Warrenite like Angela Walch. All that being said, I just still find this stuff more intellectually interesting to work on than anything else I could be doing, and I think probably most of you should too, and should stick around. I see real (and still largely underappreciated) opportunity in lex cybernetica & in the power of this tech to catalyze radical changes within the most change-resistant industry on earth--law. I also consider Echo and Legion (I helped a lot to incubate the latter) as examples of this with real pmf already. And I see major potential in the tech itself as 'can't be evil' technology and know that the more nihilism accelerates, the closer we are to pmf for 'can't be evil tech as well, despite few really caring at the moment. So, in the immortal phrase--"I'm not fucking leaving". I am sticking this out no matter what, even as I descend into middle age without health insurance or other security net and shrinking options for alternative careers if I ever wanted to bail. But I do feel kind of tribeless within the broader crypto community. Like Eric, with ETH having become a lulcow as an asset and the most prominent Ethereum 'leaders' just seeming totally clueless on the issues, I'm no longer really ETH-aligned and felt like a semi-outsider in Ethereum even on the best of days anyway. I can see some cool stuff in Solana-land but I just really do not relate to most of their goals at all--I cannot excited about the mission of building faster rails for Wall Street running nodes in data centers and giving privileged internet lines to a specific blockchain system b/c the guy with the internet infra company also holds a lot of SOL. Or frankly jumping on the timeline every day to just see endless fairly disingenuous oppositional marketing and bragging and flexing. I can see the virtues of their tech and the talent it takes to build it, but this ethos is just not enough to motivate me. I guess MetaLeX, cybernetic law, cybernetic economy, cyber/acc (repped by @cyberfund and @Lomashuk ) are my communities now, and I'll help them on whatever chains they're on and try my best to get this recognized as one of the major tribes/cults of crypto and to build it much bigger, much faster. Many nations started with a diaspora. Probably many of you should do the same--instead of trying to be "Ethereum" or "Solana" you should focus in on what you truly care about and are uniquely positioned to make happen in the space, and join or refine that tribe or launch that tribe. Yes, that means the tribe must have its own coins for people to rally around. At this point, no "chain" will ever be big enough or coherent enough for most really meaningful missions that could change the world--you need to join a real movement that's trying to change things. Ironically this is what "believe in something" really means--not baghold some stupid memecoin because you "believe" its number will go up, but believe in a real cause and buy & hold the tokens that express & embody that cause and hope to win with all your friends and colleagues because you *deserved* it because you actually *achieved something*. Also, you all need to start listening to your 'better angels'. Have that conversation with your potential competitor, help out people who are doing good shit even if there's no angle in it for you. Stop letting lawyers and their NDAs and VCs and their fear of 'value leakage' ruin everything and block collaboration. That's up to founders and not anyone else. I've seen so much ridiculous shit on the legal side behind the scene where founders let themselves totally be run by lawyers and VCs despite talking a big cypherpunk game on socials--and you know who you are. In other words--Wake the fuck up and *really* believe in something, some mission to try to make the world really better, before it's too late, or crypto will die or turn into something even more sinister than what it was trying to replace. I'm still gonna be here trying to break through with something.