1/ a quick thread on NFTs and why JPEGs are worth spending some time and energy understanding
are NFTs a bubble?
no.
wealth is a bubble. 1% of the global adult population are now millionaires.
2/ the global market for luxury goods i.e. conspicuous spending is absolutely massive
NFTs are digital flex / status symbol for a new class of consumers, but unlike the traditional markets of wealth and status, they are open to anyone, anywhere with verifiable scarcity
3/ for those who says spending millions on JPEGs is dumb and we should be solving world hunger, please give the folks on the trad art collector list a call first
people are spending $200M on blobs of paint. how is spending $2M on blobs of pixels any less noble?
4/ as noted by @Rewkang, look at the relative market caps of these companies
the addressable market for artificially scarce status symbols is in the trillions
the addressable market for verifiably scarce digital status symbols is likely just as big, if not bigger
5/ and unlike bags, watches, and shoes, digital status symbols can be fractionalized, enjoy shared ownership, and used as collateral in on-chain financial markets
@MessariCrypto highlighted the massive financialization opportunities for NFTs
6/ so there are three options
1: do nothing 🙃
2: embrace NFTs, dive in, and attempt to learn and understand; and
3: mock NFTs as a bubble and nothing more than elaborate money laundering, just as you mocked bitcoin 5 years ago
i choose 2
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1/ just wrapped my quarterly report for @CrucibleVC
our playbook is simple
as a GP, every quarter i quantify and qualify our ability to run this playbook. we double down on what works, experiment / re-visit with what isn't working.
let's dig into the data and tools👇
2/ we use @attio to manage our pipeline
step one is analyzing the funnel - both raw #s and relative %s
with a small team, quality > quantity. low conversion % signals top of funnel is too broad. high conversion may signal you're not seeing enough deal flow.
@attio 3/ "customer experience" in the context of venture is largely based on responsiveness, so tracking time spent processing deal flow is an important metric
i'm pretty happy with our pacing. good to spend more time in later stages ensuring everything is ticked and tied.
1/ gave a talk last week on "energy, compute, crypto" - the three pillars of the modern economy and the converge of three trillion dollar investment themes
sharing the slides and full deck - let's rip 👇
2/ compute rules capital markets
Nvidia was the big story in 2024, but Broadcom cracked the top 10 too and TSMC cemented its place alongside the rest of the Mag 7
expect 2025 to continue this trend as energy and compute carry capital markets
3/ while everyone was loading up on semiconductor names, energy had its own quiet rally
Vistra, an independent power producer, outperformed Nvidia and Bitcoin
this year, we'll see more focus on the US grid which is by far the greater bottleneck than GPUs
1/ ok i think i have finally sort of gotten to the root of my issue with DePIN as a category
data gathering / observability is step one but it is in and of itself not a valuable exercise. generating tons of new data doesn't unlock billions of $ from buyers for this data.
2/ the bottleneck isn't data but rather actionable insight
the real value in data is *understanding whats going on* and then *doing something* with all of that data that generates economic value, either through unlocking revenue (top line) or lowering cost (bottom line)
3/ DePIN feels like people strapping sensors to things and then trying to sell data (of questionable value) and then saying later there's something else that they can do through that aggregation
some projects enabling optimization w data w various degrees of automation
1/ quick rip on why @Polymarket matters and why the future of information is markets
markets are efficient at pricing information. if you have information or insight that others don't, there's a huge opportunity to generate alpha. alpha generation requires information edge.
2/ the last few months show distrust of main stream media (MSM) and formal, credentialed sources of information is at an all time high.
so where is information coming from?
- citizen reporters on X
- indie media / podcasts
and markets will price the signals generated
3/ not all markets are equal - liquidity is key. more liquid equals more better.
see the divergence in odds btw Polymarket and Kalshi. Polymarket had 10x the liquidity -> higher signal.
market microstructure also drives differences but the effect is more subtle imho
1/ melts and kaledora, sitting in a tree
talking about commodities
thanks to @EV3Research @MoneroMahesh @DAnconia_Crypto for hosting me and @kaledora @OstiumLabs for bringing the rizz
slides and commentary 👇 below the jump
2/ history of oil and what it can teach us about DePIN
standard oil - rockefeller started by horizontally integrating and rolling up refineries, and then realized operating leverage would come from controlling the upstream inputs and the downstream transport and retailing
3/ we are starting to see DePIN ecosystems repeating this playbook. @helium has gone from deWi to building generalized DePIN infrastructure. @hotspotty started with deWi optimization software and is now building a broader DePIN aggregation platform.
1/ quick notes and data points from the discussion @kellyjgreer and i had at @PubKey_NYC last night
'tis the season of the most hated rally - bitcoin is ripping and macro folks are not happy about it
jamie dimon and elizabeth warren seem especially mad 😠 max cope incoming
2/ bitcoin pricing is driven by FLOWS
it's tempting to get lost in piles of analysis but as we'll discuss later on, the key to understanding is looking at open positions, trade volume, inflows and outflows
sentiment doesn't matter until it's expressed as a trade
3/ bitcoin is highly reflexive
i had a moment of enlightenment a few years back. i used to believe narrative -> sentiment -> flows -> price but it's really much simpler
price drives action
this is what @saylor $MSTR has perfected. buy, price goes up, follow with narrative