1/ Only ~30% of Americans trust schools, the media, or banks. Similar trends appear globally. This is a 40-year downward trend, not b/c of the Internet. We no longer trust the pillar institutions of post-WWII society and this has significant consequences: medium.com/@ElectricCapit… 
2/ We used to think of paranoia about schools, banks, or the media as fringe beliefs. But they are now the mainstream belief structure! The foundational beliefs behind Bitcoin are not new. They are resonating now because culture has shifted.
3/ Truly decentralized cryptocurrencies are terrible in most dimensions -- throughput, dispute resolution, volatility. However this is a conscious decision to prioritize other dimensions -- seizure resistance, immutability, decentralization, etc.
4/ Focusing on the inefficiencies misses the point. It would be like trying to understand YouTube as a worse form of television. Blockchains and cryptocurrencies are not a worse developer platform. They are platforms that prioritize solving trust challenges above all else.
5/ Where trading throughput off for seizure resistance makes sense is in the financial stack, starting with stores of value (and a handful of a other use cases). Most dapps fail this test. They are not fundamentally embracing the native advantages of blockchain and crypto.
6/ The best projects in BUIDL mode understand this new world is fundamentally about (lack of) trust. We are in the early days of adoption, but when innovations are adopted, they are adopted VERY quickly. And the rate of adoption is increasing with each new wave of tech
7/ As many have noted, people tend to over-estimate what can be done in two years but dramatically under-estimate what we can do in ten. But even the last year has seen a remarkable rate of progress. Play this forward ten years and the world looks very different.
8/ The best projects embrace what makes crypto-platforms unique. What can we do now that we could not previously? Not just do better, but that we simply could not do? Odds are you are not the first to think of an idea, but that's ok. Most ideas are too early, not too late.
9/ Of course, we have to be mindful of the lessons of the Internet. Disruptive innovation has secondary effects that are hard to predict, and we should do our best to plan for these risks. We should think about the consequences of our work on both individuals and societies.
10/ The collapse of trust in formerly trusted institutions is a cultural shift that cannot be understated. How exactly will we rebuild these institutions? When does it happen exactly? Which populations fully embrace the native use cases? 🤷♂️ There are many unknowns in crypto.
11/ But history has taught us: Do NOT bet against entrepreneurs, developers, and builders. Given enough time they *will* win. We went from Kitty Hawk to humans on the moon in 65 years. The iPhone is only 10 years old. WeChat is only 7 years old. A decade is an eternity in tech.
12/ Now thousands, soon millions, of developers have tools to solve trust problems & are experimenting en masse. Builders will try to reimagine every untrusted institution and all means to transmit trust. Many will fail, some may succeed. But this is just getting started. ⚡️
