I spent the last week back in Norway for my cousin's wedding. Some free-form thoughts on returning, and the context in which this work lives: My oldest cousin and I are only 11 months and two weeks apart. Not a full year, and this was important to me for whatever reasons a kid would have. Growing up, we lived quite literally next door to each other in the same subsidized multifamily complex. As an only child, my two cousins were the closest thing I had to brothers. When you're a kid, you assume life will continue along a certain path. You imagine you'll all grow older together. That you'll be there for the major milestones. That you'll witness the chapters as they happen. Life rarely unfolds that way. When I moved to the US, our lives began moving in different directions. Distance slowly became years. Years became decades. We stayed connected in the ways families do. Maybe a little less with the distance, and so much of life happened in between. Sitting at the wedding, I couldn't help but think about the strange duality of it all. Had I never left Norway, there's a good chance I would have been sitting at the head table giving a speech that evening. One of many if you've ever gone to a Norwegian wedding. I would have been there for all the years in between— the birthdays, the relationships, the stories, the ordinary moments that eventually become the memories we cherish most. But had I never left Norway, I wouldn't have been sitting beside my wife either. The person I spent the last eleven years building a life with. The person who traveled across the world with me to celebrate a family she had only heard stories about, and had we not met, I wouldn't be Des Lucréce. Life has a way of presenting us with impossible scenarios. Every path forward closes another behind it. My mother has a saying in Vietnamese that she repeats every chance she gets. The translation isn't perfect in English, but the idea is simple: if you gain something, you lose something. Not as a punishment. Not as a warning. Just as a reality of being alive. Life seems to balance itself over the long run. Sometimes all you can do is trust the process. We also visited my father's grave on this trip. It was only the second time I'd been there. The last visit felt recent until I started accounting for everything that had happened in between. Nearly two years had passed. In that time, I got married. I lost over sixty pounds. My career changed in ways I couldn't have predicted. Entire chapters of my life had unfolded. Standing there felt like a check-in. Not because I expected answers. But because grief has a strange relationship with time. Every visit becomes a measurement of the life that has happened since the last one. You arrive carrying new stories. New scars. New victories. New questions. The person beneath the stone remains exactly where you left them. Meanwhile, the visit with my cousins felt almost like the inverse. Every time I've seen them throughout my life, they have arrived carrying some major new chapter to share. A new relationship. A new home. A wedding. Another milestone. There is so much life still ahead of us. So many stories we haven't yet exchanged. In one place, time stands completely still. In the other, there is almost too much catching up to do. I found myself thinking about that contrast throughout the trip. How strange it is that we spend our lives moving between these two experiences. Holding on to people we can no longer speak to while simultaneously reconnecting with people whose stories are still being written. One relationship asks us to look backward. The other asks us to look forward. Maybe that's why this trip felt so reflective. It wasn't really about returning to Norway. It was about recognizing how every choice shapes a life. The roads we take. The roads we leave behind. The people we lose. The people we find. The stories we miss. The stories we still have time to share. In many ways, the themes I've been exploring through Akesha live inside this exact space. The horizon represents both promise and uncertainty. It marks the edge of what we can see, while hinting at everything we can't. Standing in Norway, surrounded by family, I found myself thinking about how much of life exists beyond that horizon. The version of myself that stayed. The version of myself that left. The father I lost. The family I found again. The years that disappeared. The years still waiting ahead. Maybe none of us ever gets to walk every path. Maybe the point isn't choosing perfectly. Maybe the point is learning to appreciate the life that unfolded from the choices we made. To trust that even the roads that separated us will eventually lead us somewhere meaningful. And to keep moving forward, even when we can't see what's waiting beyond the horizon. Thank you for reading, anon. If you'd like to acquire this work, holder raffles are live on the monster server.

The Ethereum not ETH stuff is the mental fallacy that triggered me into writing and podcasting in the first place. There is no strong Ethereum without an ETH worth trillions. Without ETH as a global store of value, Ethereum is a failed project. Full stop. ETH is economic bandwidth for DeFi. It is the only asset maximized for CROPs, fail at high value ETH, fail at CROPs, fail at Ethereum. Saying you’re bullish Ethereum not ETH is like saying you’re bullish America not the American economy. They are one and the same - economic engines. Better to admit Ethereum is a failed project than “Ethereum not ETH”. So spew that weak blockchain not crypto stuff out of your mouth, it doesn’t make sense for BTC, ZEC, ETH, or any truly crypto native project.

IYKYK

Most people quit after 3 bad months. The people we admire kept going through 3 bad years. Consistency doesn’t feel powerful when you’re in it. It feels embarrassing, repetitive, and invisible. Until one day it doesn’t.

Tomorrow. The Beyond. 🟥 .2 eth — 5/5

I just put some First-Edition Mon plushies from the reserve up for grabs for the first time since 2024! They have been available only in person at galleries/museums up to this point. (post claim) Only 500 were produced. Most are already in the care of collectors. 🧿

Even after 1255 days live, there are some interesting @PixelmixNFT outputs that come to the surface

Statement from Blackdove Regarding Foundation Foundation's infrastructure is fully operational and can be brought back online within minutes. It has always been our full intention to keep Foundation running and to invest meaningfully in its growth and marketing. Blackdove has spent tens of thousands of dollars completing the platform migration and building the infrastructure required to support Foundation at scale. We remain genuinely committed to this platform and its community. We are, and have always been, open to collaborative solutions that keep Foundation operational, including partnerships with other organizations, groups, or stakeholders who share that goal. Unfortunately, our request for a reasonable 30-day window to work through a disputed contract matter was rejected outright. That decision left us with no viable path forward at this time. Our hand was forced. We remain hopeful that a constructive resolution is still possible and that Foundation can continue to serve its users as intended. @foundation

Bitmon packs arrived today! Pulled a 1/1 too, first time ever!

Cautionary tale. A friend was just hacked. He got a new computer, downloaded a ledger wallet app, entered his keys and his bitcoin was instantly gone. Sadly it was a fake ledger app, which should not be allowed to exist in the App Store. Be careful out there.

BitMON Hong Kong public mint is now LIVE 🧿

Each one carries something. More soon.