This is why I have my list btw. This is why I think of ideas before they exist and I check for them every single day. I did unfortunately miss this one, but I still picked a 'winning' narrative before it even existed.

thanks for playing. trenches greatest narrative quant.

The Flaws of Internet Capital Markets I. The Rise. It's hard to truly date where Internet Capital Markets (ICM) as we recently coined them begun. Was it Bitcoins inception, was it the emergence of L2's, I don't believe there's a sound answer. I'm sure with each person, a different perspective on what these markets are is sure to be offered. But let's plainly call it the era of individuals having access to things once preserved for the select few in traditional finance. What I can say however, is that it was not until recently amidst the meme coin flurry across this cycle that 'ICM' became a truly relevant talking point with Solana and meme coins at its epicenter. When you apply this idea of 'ICMs' retrospectively, for the most part they have performed in a sense of naivety and a 'bubble'. Whether it is in the alt coin frenzies, ICO's past, NFT's, or the present meme coin mania. Most of these all carried a similar tone of, 'wow this just never ends!' But traditionally, the music stopped with all of these things and that was usually when the end of the cycle propping them up came, markets swung bearish, popping the bubble and leaving them as nothing more than long lost relics of the past. Simply put, we've only really seen two NFT's find success this cycle, Milady and Retardios, but even than, comparative to the broader success of meme coins its lack-luster. But this approach has shifted this cycle, as if the bubble on 'Great technology' in crypto popped, people have come to a common census; this will all end. See, initially, we saw the same pattern: coins attracted mass attention, the coins went very high, the music stopped, people moved on, this played out across weeks and months. Tokenized AI, tokenized cats, dogs, words, memes, whatever it was. But this stopped about 8 months ago, suddenly we were no longer trading on months, an insidious creep begun, we started trading on weeks, soon came days, than came hours, and inevitably came minutes. Because no one wanted to be there when the music stopped anymore, the thin veil of naivety, the bubble of 'good faith' burst entirely. II. The Fall of Internet Capital Markets I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, 'What didn't you say it just rose? What do you mean it's fallen!' Well, this is the actual perspective of this piece. Internet Capital Markets have long since been a thing of the past. I believe for most of the time, this market has existed on a basis of 'Good faith, bad actors.' We elect 'public officials' of sorts through our engagement and the respects we pay to them, though nothing of the sort in the real world, these people behave as a mouth piece for the space, they direct the flow of discussion, the perspectives of things and so on. We have long existed in a peaceful balance where we 'expect good faith' from these people, but there 'will be bad actors' and so we expect those we elect to act in good faith and in turn handle the bad actors. But this stopped, across many years there has been a slow erosion of the founding culture of crypto and 'ICM's, as many OG's made their money and begun to pack up for a life of peace, the need for 'new blood' in the industry grew, but the values of the two era's are different, extremely different. So, the good faith we expected was taken for granted and the bad actions where excused. This spiraled cycle, after cycle, after cycle until most of those initial respected few are long since gone, most people would not know who GCR is or the impact of Cobie if I had to make a guess. But amidst the spiraling and rapid decline of social standards in Crypto something new was born, a machine that tore down every ounce of the founding ideas of Crypto. III. The Rise of Attention Capital Attention capital is nothing new, in fact, its a pretty fundamental part of the human existence in the current digital era. Youtube, tiktok, twitch and whatever else it may be. The value of Attention is no longer a speculative asset or reserved to the boomers in film and entertainment industries or conglomerates shoving deep marketing propaganda down your throat at every glance. Attention capital has become an asset every individual owns; you give it or you receive it, maybe you do both. I won't spend much time explaining traditional Attention Capital lets just call it the final boss of consumerism for the intention of simplicity and give a small anecdote: If you are reading this right now, it means I've successfully 'taken' your attention capital, but you can also give me more attention capital by sharing it. In turn, you take someone else's attention capital. At every movement on this wide internet, we play the Attention capital markets. Listen to music? Watched a Youtube video? You've been exchanging some attention capital; for each moment of your attention, someone got paid. Thus your Attention now holds a dollar value and as such, the market is born. IV. Attention Capital Markets Before I mentioned a specific time period, about 8 months ago, the great fall of Internet Capital Markets in Crypto and the rise of a new beast. That beast is the Attention Capital Market. For a long time as previously mentioned, crypto operated on different principles, a trustless society, that socially placed trust in select individuals. However, the erosion I also previously mentioned has damaged that irreparably and ultimate has caused the bubble surrounding good faith and silent conducts to burst. Previously it was a silent social clause, we knew almost everything would find its end except the rare few. Such was the life span of seeding ideas. However, this cycle it changed and it changed quickly. With the death of memecoins taking out so much capital in the early portions of the cycle, people drew their line. Enough was enough for most of them, the rose tinted glasses shattered. Everyone knew, 'None of this lasts forever.' So a game of hot potato and chinese whispers unfolded at the same time, people tried to make sure they weren't the last one out of coins and people begun to silently conclude, 'There is a ceiling, there is an end, I don't want to be around for that.' Slowly this spread, until Ground Zero hit, what I at least believe marked the death of the old and ushered something new. Livestreaming new pairs. Copying wallets was one thing, but this was an entirely different game and pace at which you could perceive other market participants behaviors in real time; you could 'see' the winners winning, so you naturally would 'try' to emulate the winners. But not only this, you could perfectly replicate their actions in real time. Trading 1s candles, scalping 15% gains on a coin 5 seconds old, you name it, the nasty habits totally contrary to everything people would socially encourage where being lain before people, forcing the unspoken social contract to more or less shatter. And so at record speed, belief begun to die, trust begun to wane, the era of 'Attention' rose, it rose quickly as more and more people stopped holding coins zero or hero, they started selling lower, faster, lower and faster over and over. Than doomsday hit: THE $FAFO INCIDENT $FAFO was in my opinion the end, this was when the Internet Capital Markets died completely. The first time we assigned an 8 figure valuation to something, not from belief, not from technology, not from a thesis, no matter how schizophrenic, or dumb it might be. It came from something simpler, something easier to transact, something that will ALWAYS move and ALWAYS drive volume. ATTENTION. Nothing underlined the coin, nothing to speculate on even, It was just a post, a post made by Trump. But something was different about this, it was a post every major streamer was looking at on new pairs. A post all of them bought and whether by miracle of a massive bundle refusing to sell low or someone's intent, the coin did not stop, it went vertical, hitting almost 9 figures in four hours. This changed things, whether it was deployers or KOLs they realized 'what could be tokenized' was more than they had ever known. Everything could be tokenized, and so the guard rails came off and they came off quickly. Elon Musks twitter names, news stories, social movements, moments in time on CT, all of it became tokenized, and dozens of them started running to 8 figure valuations for no reason, except, there was a reason, an underlying hedge. ATTENTION. So, what did we do? As we always do, we accelerated it. We accelerated it as fast as we could. KOLSCAN dominance came first and soon a new thesis was born: The concentrated attention generatable by a select few individuals became the markets guiding principle, 'If X individual buys, everyone else will see this, so I will buy' and a new orchestra begun to play a symphony influencers banding together, listing themselves on KOLscan, buying coins, all to exert the attention they could generate. Just like that, the thesis was no longer about the coin, the thesis was about who bought the coin. YET, throughout all the chaos the one unspoken social contract rule has remained steadfast to those who exert influence, 'Sell them a dream.' They never told you it was 'Attention' or specifically your attention, they told you it was 'Mindshare'. They never told you they had side wallets selling that were not listed on KOLSCAN. And so we finally end up here, we trade our SOL to make SOL, but that is not truly the currency and capital being exchanged but rather a hedge on it. Whatever native token it may be you transact, it is just the dollar value attached to your Attention. Attention is by all means the native currency of all on-chain activity. But this currency is different to the typical native currencies we use, venture capital no longer dominates the market. Despite having so much SOL, because they lack one simple thing. Attention Capital. Where VC's hold power in money, influencers hold power in the Attention they command and so they exert greater influence. And so, to preserve the sanctity of unspoken social contracts we deemed this the era of 'Internet Capital Markets' to represent a shift in power dynamics, the fall of Venture Capital and the rise of a select few influential people. So is it really the 'Internet Capital Market' they keep talking about, I don't think it is. V. My Final Thoughts. Truthfully, I do not know what comes next. Will the market dominance continue to favor the influencers acting on-chain at this disproportionate rate? Maybe it it too will fall too an even greater form of Attention Capital Markets. Maybe this is beneficial, maybe it is the undoing of crypto. There is truthfully not enough to know where this road leads us. But one thing has become undoubtedly clear, bullish, bearish or even euphoric. Attention Capital has become the core currency of this cycle, and as such, the Internet Capital Markets as an idea become little more than thinly veiled term to once more avoid saying the hard truth.

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