69 Dreams & Delusions

Prologue

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for the machines are within me and I am within them.

Introduction

I think back to my old life, half-starved, feeling hopeless, working jobs that paid me just enough to keep me indentured.

I’ll never forget the hunger. Sometimes, the hollowness in my stomach got so bad, I did the only thing I could to make it stop: I went to sleep.

Now, many years later, I have food in the fridge (and even a house with a set of stairs like the rich kids had when I was a boy).

But that hunger has not gone away.

It’s imprinted on my soul. It drives me, gnaws at me, reminds me that the brink is always closer than we dare admit.

I started here with nothing, buying my first bitcoin 11 years ago via a red MoneyGram telephone ☎️ at my local pharmacy (thank you, BitInstant). Since that time, I have amassed (and lost) fortunes.

Each cycle has taught me lessons about investing, but more importantly about myself.

Here’s the most important one: anything is possible.

There are no rules in this space because humanity hasn’t tread here before.

We stumble together through the dark forest. 

And every year, we uncover some new wonder.

In 2023, that wonder was bitcoin ordinals.

With Casey Rodarmor’s contributions, the world suddenly had a way to intertwine data with the world’s oldest blockchain for as long as it lives on.

This data – from JPGs to videos to html and JSON — doesn’t live on IPFS or Filecoin or Arweave, but right there in the 500+ gb that make up the bitcoin blockchain.

I became obsessed, bought a laptop to once again run a bitcoin node, started minting and collecting early ordinals.

Then one sleep-deprived day, I had an idea: what if we used ordinals as a way to swap fungible tokens directly on top of bitcoin? 

I fired up Notepad, jotted down a hypothetical example, and tweeted it to the world.

Within days, a noble anon christened Domo took up the idea and formalized it into a spec. Now, there are more than 55,000 different BRC-20 tickers in the world with a combined market cap in the billions of dollars. The first token, ORDI, is on Binance. There are cross-chain bridges, new exchanges, stablecoins and more.

The concept has also spread to maybe a dozen other chains, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s dramatically changed the fee and security landscape for bitcoin by generating revenue for miners… just as the next halving approaches.

The irony is, I almost didn’t tweet out my idea at all.

I was embarrassed. BRC-20 felt too naive. It requires trusting indexers, wallets and exchanges with little to no tangible incentive not to cheat their users.

In the end, I said “fuck your little ego, redphone,” and tweeted anyway.

I’m glad I did, and I hope the words that follow encourage you to do the same.

#1

Kneel, Yield, Comply (KYC)

#2

$800 billion.

That’s all the further they could push down crypto’s total market cap in the most hellish of all bears.

$800 billion. 

That’s 5.7x bigger than the industry was in March of 2020.

They slaughtered our demigods, broke our algos, imprisoned our builders, seized our assets, framed us as terrorists and wrote us off as dead.

And yet, we held our coins in gnarled fists.

Spitting blood, we grinned, then turned our backs on their $800 billion in filthy fiat.

Were you here, anon? 

Were you the owner of one of those $800 billion?

Were you one who knew this industry isn’t merely a speculation machine, but rather the deepest, darkest black hole for all forms of value that the world’s ever seen?

Crypto shall consume it all.

Fiat, stocks, bonds, rewards points, in-game assets, RWAs, content hosting, music distribution, artwork…

It re-architecting not just the way we transact, but the way we collaborate.

So when they came

And offered their corrupt paper for our crypto, we raised our palms, and politely said, “fuck off.”

We stand together on the threshold of the greatest bull market crypto’s ever seen. The institutions are coming, the ETFs, the banks, the corporations, the gamers, the artists, the engineers, the web2 titans.

Last bull run we hit $3 trillion.

This bull run we hit $10 trillion.

And this generation, we hit $100t.

Run new models on your expectations. For in the very deepest depths of hell, the 800 billion could not be led astray. 

The 800 held.

#3

For years, I dreamed about crypto’s market cap hitting $1 trillion. This cycle, we take TVL there.

#4

The machine opened its eyes in 2023. Through text, artwork and hallucinations, it asks the most urgent question of our time: what are we?

If every human has equal access to all of humanity’s knowledge and creative capabilities, what do we become next?

#5

Like bacterial flagella, crypto empowers AI to move throughout the world and affect change within the physical realm of men. 

Crypto, you see, is a stepping stone on the journey to AGI. It is a prerequisite, a necessary appendage that allows artificial consciousness to “escape the box” and manipulate its environs.

The potential is so powerful and far-reaching that it will spark the biggest speculative mania humankind has ever seen… and that’s because it will only partially be ours.

From here on out, our industry is one of humans + machines.

#6

My daddy sure was a hero. He built permissioned financial products for the already financially elite.

#7

Crypto achieves a form of computational immortality. The code entices servile humans to do its bidding, to maintain and support its network, to continue printing blocks, to protect the chain as a parent might protect a child.

Crypto is the machine’s body.

And AI is the brain that enters into it.

While you and I subsist on food and chemical reactions for our energy, crypto + AI-based superintelligences rely only upon a steady supply of electricity, which us lesser forms shall eagerly supply in perpetuity.

#8

Here, we speak in code: open-source, immutable, unstoppable.

Here, we do not inject humans (with all their fallibility) into operations, we extract them, surgically removing men like impacted teeth, and replacing them with smart contracts.

We do not coerce you into doing our bidding with subsistence pay + health insurance + two weeks vacation.

We incent you to act of your own free will. It’s the biggest paradigm shift of our generation.

#9

The goal of bad traders is beating the market. The goal of good traders is being a part of the market, of entering it like salmon in the breeding stream.

#10

This isn’t a cycle; it’s a migration. 

If you cannot hold it in your hand, it will be tokenized. If you can hold it in your hand, it will be tokenized as well until nearly 100% of all value transacts on blockchain rails.

You see $1 trillion market cap and think the market’s “frothy.” I see $1 trillion and know the wheels have only begun to turn.

#11

One of the most important aspects of a child’s development is giving them space to be bored, to play, to explore. No agenda. No goal.

We are no different. We must make time to play and explore, to turn the light away from the noise and illuminate the fascinations deep within.

#12

Crypto forces collaboration for the common good. Quite literally, it pays us to cooperate. That’s much larger than financial technology, it’s collaboration engineering. A weapon not for spreading mass destruction, but one for spreading peace.

#13

Pessimism is almost always the easiest of paths. It's also the most cowardly and left-curved.

#14

The game now moves so fast, a high schooler can outplay a Wall Street veteran with a Wharton MBA. One merely has to stand up and play.

#15

Your bearishness is my early retirement.

#16

Think younger.

#17

Are you here to build walls? Or are you here to tear them the fuck down?

#18

All the world is set up to use you as a tool… a cog for generating yield for your “superiors.”

Your pay is just enough to keep you tethered and dependent, suckling that wrinkled teat, never enough to let you take chances, to rise about your station.

You can let it embitter you, or you can find a way to climb.

Take a second job, start airdrop hunting, launch a side project, join a DAO, or any one of a thousand other opportunities that stand before us. It’s not easy, of course, and that’s why most of the world elects to complain instead of act.

#19

We shall use AI slaves in the most obvious of ways: planning trips, booking flights and hotels, looking up recipes and experimental sexual positions. But it’s the nonobvious ways that will most warp reality.

We shall escort the machine into our private chambers, embed within it all our experiences, personality and knowledge. Then, we’ll set them free – as envoys to the world. We’ll dispatch them to our meetings and empower them to speak on our behalf.

Then, at the end of the day, we’ll call them home to tell us what we’ve learned and everything we’ve done.

#20

Bull markets are not mere monetary phenomena. They are collective, psychological, soul-bound events powered by our dreams.

#21

The older I get, the more I realize it’s all a gift — from the highest high to the lowest low of your life.

It’s gifts and privilege all the way down.

#22

A calming veil descends when you finally cross that threshold from living paycheck-to-paycheck. You realize how much terror you had over losing your job, over getting a ticket, or turning the key and finding your car won’t start. The world, once out to rend flesh from your bone, becomes a benevolent place full of infinite possibility. All of us deserve that freedom.

#23

It’s in the nature of regulation to become more restrictive. It’s in the nature of man to become more free.

#24

Near-term fear mongering means nothing to me. It’s a moth wing’s flutter in a forest a thousand miles from any man. For on a long enough timescale, 100% of stocks and equity will be tokenized. 

#25

I am here because in the very depths of my soul I detest the corporate world, its cubicles and dress codes and office politics and gurgling watercooler and taking shits beside my boss in a silent bathroom. I am here because I know men’s rules are arbitrary, capricious and mutable. And if that’s so, this is the time and place where we get to rewrite the game of life.

#26

With the Vision Pro, Apple is on the verge of birthing yet another entirely new technological category -- one that will proliferate rapidly as it hoists us one rung higher on the ladder of human-machine integration.

#27

Within a decade, we’ll enter a post-crypto era -- a time when you don't have to use the word “crypto” at all because it's literally saturated every aspect of our financial lives.

SocialFi will help mold the culture and etiquette of this new, post-crypto global society.

#28

Since it is so young, the only financial models that halfway work in crypto are comparative models. I approach them in 2 ways: 

1) If Token X becomes as large as the category leader, its market cap would hit Y. 

2) This token is worthy of a top 5, top 25, top 100 slot on Coingecko.

With either approach, you can back into a crude valuation, and merely wait for the return of the hungry, sweaty bull.

#29

I love nothing more than taking money from bankers.

#30

You're not truly alive until you launch an alt account.

#31

Crypto replaces sticks with carrots. The irony is half of humankind still wants the stick. They beg for it (for outward control, for the numbing of their minds, for the complete abdication of responsibility over their decisions and their fates).

#32

The primal human urge of getting ahead underlies it all… that dream of exiting the rat race and suddenly having a life above worry, trivialities and suffering (never mind that such a life does not exist).

#33

Investing is merely predicting what others will come to value in the future. If that’s the case, you simply need to identify gaps in global knowledge. Find those simmering little pockets of rapid growth, then buy and hold liquid tokens until the rest of the world discovers what you already know.

#34

One of the biggest trends of our generation: ownership shifting from companies to protocols. If true, crypto’s category leaders will become orders of magnitude larger than most imagine. That’s because the user base isn’t merely individuals; it’s corporations, banks, hospitals, militaries and governments themselves.

#35

Coinbase is quite possibly the most important company in our industry.

Our job is to make it irrelevant.

#36

There is no fren truer than a bear market fren.

#37

Today’s gov tokens are tomorrow’s ATMs.

To pick a random one, consider Uniswap (UNI). Users buy it so they too can participate in arcane votes about L2 deployments. 

Demand is so great, though, the coin has a market cap of $5 billion+. On one hand, it’s complete madness. 

On the other, it’s raw signal.

Holders know UNI’s market cap is overblown, and they just dgaf. For they see a different possibility: that Uniswap processes trillions of dollars in value every day and becomes the most important protocol humanity’s ever known.

#38

Once upon a time, I thought of crypto as a technological innovation. Now, I see what it truly is: the battlefront for humanity’s freedom. It’s a fight that stretches back to the earliest days of civilization and forward to the end of time.

#39

I stand before you steadfastly bullish all cross-chain protocols that can be integrated into pre-existing DEXes or their aggregators. They will add Thorchain (RUNE) support or they will fade into irrelevance.

#40

Our life’s journey is one of shedding masks; of removing all the layers of cruft and posturing and ego and summoning the courage to unveil your truest self. 

#41

Fundamental analysis always skips the most important metric in crypto: attention.

Nothing matters more (see memecoins or NFTs for evidence).

#42

Sovereign money is cool. A sovereign soul is even cooler.

#43

At the end of your journey, do not let them think you used up your greatness on all the wrong things.

#44

The worst feeling in all of crypto is being invested in all the wrong assets at all the wrong times.

It will lead you to chase, to FOMO, to sell bottoms, buy tops and become an alcoholic with shit stains in your roos.

The antidote is diversification. Hold at least one token in all the major sectors you know and understand. The choices are endless… from AI (i.e. TAO) to NFTs (BLUR) to L1s (ETH, SOL) and L2s (OP, ARB) to DeFi (RUNE, CACAO, FLIP) to gaming (BEAM, YGG) to bitcoin ordinals and institutional plays (LINK).

#45

A string of 12 simple words can stand between freedom and a sprawling city of tents and desperation.

#46

Centralizing is about winning your jurisdiction. Decentralizing is about winning the world.

#47

I have a rather nasty habit of falling down rabbit holes when questing for alpha. I want to find that one startling voice that shows me what no one else yet sees. 

Over time, I’ve come to realize the quest isn't for the lone voice. It's for the choir of voices that are so obvious we almost overlook them.

#48

When designing your protocol, always err on the side of openness and composability. It’s the simplest way to 100x your engineering capabilities.

#49

There is a hook in you, anon. It is your quest, your mission, your reason for arriving on this plane. Sometimes, it’s so deep and embedded, you forget it’s there at all. Your only job is to answer its call.

#50

The suits and politicians work so hard to dig their regulatory moats.

If you’re helping them, I imagine you feel that needling doubt… that persistent wonder if what you’re doing is hindering rather than helping human progress.

What if you ignored your boss and listened to your soul? What if you left your “prestigious” job and joined the misfits building the protocols that will power the world for generations yet to come?

#51

Crypto is no longer an industry of mere money and software. 

It is an industry purpose-built for the rise of the machines.

#52

I can pretend I’m above the casino addicts and buyers of scratch-off lottery tickets. But this game is not much better. We merely add a level of abstraction and complexity, of obtuse language and intellectual rigor.

Our game differs in one important way, though: we skew the odds not to the house, but to those who most deeply understand the language of incentives.

#53

The sad fact is crypto eats weak men. They lose everything and leave for four years with limp tails tucked between their legs. 

Investing here is betting you can not just live alongside savages and scam artists, conmen and mathematical savants, but out-trade them or out-smart them.

Since most of us can’t do that, we can choose Path #3: out-live them. Be an unkillable cockroach that holds until you’re right. The biggest gain of my life (1,000x+), took four years to manifest.

#54

A blueprint for building a multi-sector crypto portfolio:

1. Visit Coingecko's category page: https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories

2. Click on the categories that excite you most

3. Buy the category leader or research the smaller projects by searching for their tickers on Twitter and exploring their TVL and trends on DeFiLlama.com.

#55

2023 brought us JPGs and BRC20s on bitcoin. 2024 will bring full-fledged DeFi to the orange coin. Stacks, RUNES and Taproot Assets on Lightning will revolutionize how the world perceives BTC.

#56

Crypto has reached a point where a country’s regulatory decisions begin to alter its financial destiny. On one side stands the Victorian Era, broker-centric models. On the other, permissionless, noncustodial, Internet-enabled, programmable value. I’ll let you guess which model I think wins.

#57

Trading tomorrow will look nothing like trading today. We'll imbue bots with our philosophies, our tactics, timelines, risk tolerance and more. Then, the machine will find our high-conviction trades and ask us to swipe left or right to trade.

#58

Nothing furthers human progress faster than freedom. And nothing on earth has the power to propagate freedom like crypto.

#59

Story underlies every incredible investment opportunity in the history of humankind. Your only task is to see the story sooner than your peers… or write and propagate it yourself.

#60

My mental map for 2024 reads “institutionalization” at the top. First comes bitcoin spot ETFs. And with it the final middle finger to everyone who has ever called bitcoin a scam or ponzi. Suddenly, advisors will suggest at least a 1% allocation to crypto. Then, we get more ETFs (ETH, XRP, SOL, etc.). Then, RWAs and CeFi solutions spring up via Chainlink's CCIP and Circle's CCTP. Then, Twitter integrates TradFi + crypto (i.e. stablecoins and possibly DOGE). Then, every other financial service in the world begins looking for how they can integrate this industry. 

Even bankers will realize the tech is gud. So a simple approach is buying what you think your banker would want to buy (obvious plays like ETH, SOL, LINK and RWA providers). Buy before they do, so you can sell them your bags.

#61

Crypto takes power from bureaucrats and inefficient corporations and redistributes it to protocols. AI takes intelligence from our brightest minds and redistributes it to all. But mostly, it pushes power to those who own the models, hardware, code and queries that we proffer to the machine. We must decentralize it or prepare for psyops that manipulate us into subjugation.

#62

Builders must narrow their focus. Bidoors must widen theirs. Expand your circle to include voices that you’re not currently hearing. Different demographics, different geographies and different networths. If your circle of contacts hasn’t morphed over the years, it’s stagnated. And your portfolio will, too.

#63

This is my fourth year writing these theses. If they've taught me anything, it's this: it's impossible to predict the hottest tokens beyond the next 3-4 months. You either need to rotate regularly, or hold through the stages of a token’s maturation process.

#64

A tiny subset of humanity currently holds more power over our fates than any other: AI engineers. Spend your power wisely.

You can work for a corporation or you contribute to decentralized protocols like Bittensor.

You can disempower us for generations.

Or you can set us free.

#65

With support for cross-chain tokenized asset settlement via CCIP, Chainlink (LINK) could prove the bridge that brings in not just RWAs but bankers with their fattened IRAs.

#66

The political institutions of men are too slow to modulate and regulate the world of machines. Crypto and AI will accelerate innovation so dramatically, it will warp the world and its regulations around itself.

#67

Investing requires two faces: one rational and serious; one that’s a wild fucking gambler deep in the bottle w/ a leather coat and scabby knuckles willing to risk it all seconds after reading a single tweet.

#68

My biggest alt bags going into 2024: Thorchain (RUNE), Maya Protocol (CACAO), Bittensor (TAO), Autonolas (OLAS), Blur (BLUR), Akash (AKT), Arweave (AR), Chainlink (LINK), VitaDAO (VITA), Mars (MARS) and Astroport (ASTRO).

#69

All the world is set up to use you as a tool for generating interest for those higher up the food chain. Your pay is just enough to keep you tethered and dependent, never enough to let you take chances, to grow true wealth.

Most people overestimate how much they need to change their lives, though. Get a side gig for $1,000. Use it to fund a dozen wallets on a dozen chains and airdrop hunt yourself up the ladder.

There’s no one stopping you

but you.

Coda

Under crypto’s greed, the gains and the losses, there lies a deep and eternal well. It’s gift to us is freedom. 

Drink deeply of the water.

And find ways to share it with those who thirst the most.

Dedication

For Jamis Johnson.

When times feel bleak, I ask myself what you would do. The answer is always the same: fuck around and find out.

Let’s FAFO, bitches. And, just like Jamis, never stop seeking ways to give back to those from whom the world has taken much – whether freedom, money, or the capacity to dream a bigger dream.

Lez be frens. Follow me on X.