geez, that thread really blew up! appreciate all the responses, feedback, and stories.

one thing that stuck out to me was how so many ordinary Amazon customers (not sellers, not tech nerds like me) now realize this is an issue from their own personal experience...

https://twitter.com/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440

a few years ago, i would try to explain this problem to friends and family.

they'd respond with glazed over faces and "amazon is fine for me, i love it."

and i'd constantly be returning or tossing stuff my wife bought for the kids 🤣

ever wonder why the cheap junk flooding Amazon has keyboard-mashing brand names like MOFFBUZW?

let's dive into an example... the 2nd organic result for "baby moccasins" has:

- 0 reviews
- no Prime offer
- 20 day shipping (lol)
- a brand name that literally looks like Dog Shit the seller behind this offer has a lifetime negative feedback rate of 20%.

small sample size, but that is MASSIVE (ours is 0%).

legit sellers are routinely suspended for a bad run of several negative feedback in a row. yet bad actors run rampant.

this was a great interview of @cmsholdings by @ericgoldenx

joincolossus.com/episodes/39020…

i loved this ep because Dan told so many stories and used specific numbers for each topic, rather than just talking about things in theory.

some interesting themes they covered... @cmsholdings @ericgoldenx 1. $USDT - Tether Truthers loves to hound on the idea that billons of USDT is printed out of thin air to pump the crypto markets.

Dan's take is actually the exact opposite (worth a listen @Jason, @coffeebreak_YT, @Bitfinexed).

here's a CRAZY story about a post on a niche internet subforum that resulted in at least one billionaire (yes with a *B*), and several deca-millionaire degenerates...

Subject: Bitcoins - digital currency
04-02-2011, 02:44 AM
"Any value to this idea or will it never work?" from 2000-2015, the Two Plus Two poker forums were the primary hangout for professional poker players. i made countless friends through 2+2.

it's hard to overstate how busy these forums were. 24/7 there was a ton of activity discussing everything from poker hands to politics.

i've heard from a lot of poker players asking for advice on moving on to start a business.

this quote always comes to mind:

"i know lots of extremely rich people. plenty of them are solo operators. plenty of them are happy people. but there is no overlap between the two groups" [badly paraphrased] from this excellent book:

amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-G…

IMO... you should avoid going it alone, and strongly consider partnering with someone.

here's the story of how i:

* bought a 6 figure domain name in 2011
* got insanely lucky to get bailed out ten years later
* cemented my number 1 rule of investing: value liquidity above all else... back in 2011, a friend-of-a-friend was trying to sell a domain name he had owned for a long time.

i can't say the actual URL, but think something like "animated.com"

i had ZERO experience buying domain names.

Very interesting episode of Uncommon Core today, with @hasufl and @zhusu discussing the future of Ethereum vs competing L1s:

anchor.fm/uncommoncore/e…

some key points and my thoughts on a few of them... 1.) Zhu: Ethereum maximalism is much more dangerous for ETH than Bitcoin maximalism is for BTC.

Couldn't agree more. Bitcoin doesn't really need to "do" anything to win as the leading store of value. If Ethereum wants to win as a tech product, maximalism is a weak approach.