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23 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Seed and A financing: disrupted.

Now that you can raise $5M/year online, the new strategy for any founder may be to (a) set up an equity crowdfunding link, (b) get a few brand name angels, and (c) tweet it out and have them RT.

Easier for everyone. And way faster.
The concept of users/customers as investors directly overlaps with crypto as well. See this post from 2017. news.earn.com/thoughts-on-to…
Every part of the angel/VC pipeline is being disrupted by online tools.

Angellist: raise rolling fund online
Republic.co: raise equity online
Carta: put cap table online
Token sales: fund your protocol online
USDC: send wires online
Twitter: build relationship online
Add in Robinhood, the rising market, and liquidity from crypto, stimulus, IPOs.

Everyone gradually becomes an investor and a much larger share of future income is cap gains.

Yes, much is inflation-driven, but on the way to monetizing the debt they will financialize the economy.

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
25 Mar
VC funds that still can’t buy crypto in 2021 are sacrificing their returns in 2031.
I’m really surprised at how many professional tech investors *still* don’t get crypto, even as a $2T industry, even after 10 years of growth, even with BTC alone more valuable than every unicorn over the last decade combined.
It feels like a generational shift from internet to crypto, just like the desktop to internet shift happened ~20 years ago.

A fundamental backend and cultural change to how software is developed, funded, monetized, and used.

On disk, online, on-chain.
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
23 Mar
Many asking how they can bet on the Indian economy.

In theory you’d buy the rupee, just like buying BTC/ETH is going long on the cryptoeconomy.

In practice it might be more like buying an index of the top Indian tech cos and VCs.

But there’s something to the naive idea... 🧵
The progression of tech:

2000s: tech companies
2010s: cryptocurrencies
2020s: startup cities
2030s: network states

Just like you go long on companies & cryptos by buying their stock or token, so too will you be able to go long on new cities & countries by buying *their* token.
Today you go long on cities and countries by buying bonds. But those have many issues, and don’t offer venture returns.

For new startup cities and network states, you can buy the native digital asset. Since they are going from 0 to N citizens, the upside is far greater.
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
17 Mar
Video games somehow never fully broke through to the highest levels of culture, but NFTs did.
You might dispute the premise, as of course there are AAA games with serious plots and reviews. But the association with children playing and populist fun has sort of held games back.

NFT prices, by contrast, vault them into a kind of stratosphere. You can’t help but look up.
It may turn out that the presence of expensive verified NFTs is what distinguishes video games from virtual realities.
Read 6 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
16 Mar
A digital rupee will need to do everything a rupee can do. That includes foreign exchange.

Which means the digital wallet that holds digital rupees will have to facilitate trade against *other* national digital currencies.

In practice, this will likely be via crypto exchanges.
Put another way, a digital rupee won’t be closed off from the global economy.

To the contrary, it will be more freely traded for other assets, domestic *and* foreign, than the current quasi-digital rupees held on bank ledgers.

Just compare USDC to Fedwire to see the future.
Setting up a digital rupee & thinking it can be air-gapped from the cryptoeconomy is like setting up a website & thinking it will only link to itself. 🙂

A website’s value, in part, comes from its links. A currency’s value, in larger part, comes from its links to other assets.
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
12 Mar
The meme economy will become real.

- Meme creators will make NFTs
- Timestamps give proof-of-first
- Memegen partially goes on-chain
- Memetic spread is more traceable
- Memers become millionaires
- Risky art becomes uncensorable & monetizable
- Art moves outside regime control
If you’re building this, reply here and/or DM. Space is moving fast, working products preferred! Suggestions:

1) Focus solely on memes, just like Giphy focused solely on gifs.

2) Clone as much existing memegen-type UX as you need, your initial innovation may be mostly backend.
@Cryptanzee @BitcoinMemeHub @RonenV, figured you might be interested in this thread.
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
12 Mar
Glenn and @Snowden were early advocates for encryption to defend human rights against abusive corporations & states alike.

Satoshi was a pioneer in the use of encryption to stop seizures by the same corporations & states.

These are two halves of the same worldview. 🧵
They coincide exactly, because the private keys to *publish* online are the same as the private keys to *transact* online.

The same censorship-resistant blockchain design that prevents seizure of private property also prevents states & corporations from silencing your voice.
When you digitally sign and broadcast a transaction to a blockchain, it is sometimes referred to as *publishing* a transaction.

With the right design, this gives you pseudonymous, verifiable, uncensorable communication and transaction. Free speech and free markets in one stroke.
Read 4 tweets

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