that have crossed the chasm in terms strong organic developer ecosystem
Source: I spent probably 4 hours day in day out in the last 2-3 years talking to builders in the various ecosystems. At this point even without any hard data I have a pretty good internal “neural network” of where the strongest organic developer activity happens
Mar 22, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It’s far easier to be Warren Buffet than Stan Druckenmiller.
Last couple of years, a whole generation of retail investors and entrepreneurs have been conditioned to obsess over macro. The reality is >99% don’t have any edge whatsoever in this game. And as a result it’s counterintuitive to let macro be a factor in their decision making.
Dec 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/ In my new article with @MohamedFFouda, we dive into proof of physical work (PoPW) networks.
We discuss the necessary characteristics of a good PoPW network, the current landscape, and a few startup ideas for aspiring founders.
medium.com/alliancedao/ho…2/ We start by stating that the long-term goal for any PoPW network should be to become decentralized exchanges connecting service providers and service buyers.
Nov 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
When the FTX News came out, it was 1) the SINGLE biggest collapse in history of crypto and 2) it caught EVERYONE off-guard. Yet the market was down only 20%.
That tells you about the market positioning, ie, market was already largely deleveraged and derisked.
In order for another event to cause the market to go down another 20%, that event needs to be 1) meaningfully bigger than FTX and 2) completely unexpected.
Virtually nothing satisfies these 2 conditions. Including Genesis.
Nov 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Meta thoughts on the whole FTX drama:
- The crisis that FTX is going through is not one of insolvency, but one of potentially unrecoverable reputational damage.
- It's never a bad idea to diversify your funds across custodians.
Aug 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Every time the government attacks us we realize that our system is only as decentralized its most centralized layers, so we need to decentralized the ENTIRE stack.
Today we learned that the stack includes 1) version control and 2) stablecoins.
Jun 23, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I've seen hundreds of DAO pitches and less than 1% of them are able to articulate why they should go DAO as opposed to a traditional legal structure.
After 10 minutes of discussion from first principles with me the answer is almost always they can achieve what they want to achieve with traditional legal, and without the legal risks associated with DAOs.
Jun 17, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Sentiment is horrible but I still can’t think of a good reason to be bearish crypto 3+ years out.
Idiosyncratically even my worst case scenario for the contagion is not as bad as Gox in 2014 or the DAO hack in 2016.
Jun 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Any suggestions for a podcast name?
Idea: intellectually honest, truth-seeking conversations with the smartest people in crypto + occasional banter
There will be a small thank you gift if I pick your suggestion.
Anyone who has ever pitched me knows I have zero patience for abstract hand-wavy BS and ask very hard questions, because that's the only way to deeply understand a topic. So it'll be a bit like that.
Jun 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
There's an important nuance between Terra, Celsius, and 3AC.
People sounded the alarm on Terra long time before its collapse. But almost everyone was surprised by 3AC. And Celsius, somewhere in the middle.
Why?
Decentralization, and therefore auditability.
I'm not implying Terra was fully decentralized. But relative to the other two, it was more decentralized. As such, it provided more transparency and information for the public to determine its level of systemic risk.
Jun 10, 2022 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
One of the most common questions I get from founders is "should I go to this conference?"
My thoughts below:
Conferences are NOT an efficient way to build brand.
Consider far more scalable strategies like content marketing.
May 23, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It's abundantly clear from the Miladys drama that NFTs will financialize not just culture but also politics. Dystopian, but inevitable.
Imagine you hold certain political views and all of a sudden you hold a bag of assets the value of which depends on the collective strength of your political faction.
There’s certain professions where individual career risk is high but reward is also exceptional if among the top 0.1%.
Visual artists, story writers, musicians, chefs, hackers, scientists, etc.
These are groups of people for whom forming a DAO could make a ton of sense.
These DAOs would serve 3 main functions:
- curation: find the (future) best in their respective profession
- risk sharing: maintain EV while reducing individual risk
- support: build tools and services such as marketing
Apr 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Earlier today I told an aspiring crypto founder:
Crypto is NOT the most important problem for humanity to solve at this moment. But these crypto games we are playing will help us bootstrap foundational technologies that we can use in 10 years to solve truly important problems...
... like space, climate, life science, and other stuff that really move the needle for humanity.
Mar 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm increasingly excited about the very idea of "decentralizing the entire stack".
- Physical layer
- DNS
- Compute
- Storage
- Data query
- Node infra
- Oracles
Currently we have proofs of concept for each layer. But it'll take years for POCs to become production-ready.
It's during crises that we realize the importance of decentralization. And the whole system is only as decentralized as its most centralized layer. And therefore it's only as anti-fragile as its most fragile layer.
Last week I keynoted ALL7 Demo Day where 20+ exceptional founders presented to 200+ investors.
Among them: 14 second time founders, 11 with successful exits, 2 with multiple exits, 4 YC alums, 9 alums of top startup schools like Stanford/MIT.
Here's the full list:
deBridge: Cross-chain interoperability protocol
deBridge is a cross-chain interoperability and liquidity transfer protocol that enables decentralized transfers of data and assets between various blockchains.
1a. Crypto is struggling with mainstream adoption because there are entrenched competitors in payment. — @decentralion
Jun 17, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
0/ Three *possible* reasons why securities tokenization, if successful, may be as socially impactful as bitcoin.
1) Fractional ownership 2) Price discovery 3) Increased moneyness for tokenized assets
1/ With fractional ownership the average investor will have access to more assets. This means they can better plan for the future by creating a portfolio with a superior risk/reward profile.
Have you looked at how correlated stocks and bonds have been in the last decade?
Jun 14, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
0/ Just because tokenization has a ton of benefits doesn't mean stakeholders' incentives are aligned.
That is, if it benefits the token issuer while creating 0 value for token buyers or vice versa, it's unlikely to work.
Thus it's important to understand who benefit from what.
1/ The most mentioned benefit of tokenization is liquidity. IMO it's misleading and it really boils down to two things: liquidity premium and price discovery.
Let's look at liquidity premium first.
May 22, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
What's wrong with all the quantitative valuation models we see today in cryptoland?
Humble advice from someone who got destroyed again and again by the market in his 8 years of quantitative trading career:
1a. Do not base investment decisions on models that lack any rigorous statistical evidence, no matter how intuitive these models are.
Charts that show that a model has successfully predicted past 3 bubbles are *not* rigorous statistical evidence.
May 20, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A critical look at popular crypto indices.
First, why are indices important?
1. Passive funds track indices to provide investors broad exposure to a market. 2. Active fund managers benchmark their performance against indices (and by extension passive funds).
1) Bloomberg-Galaxy Index: Individual weights are capped at 30% and rebalanced monthly. The issue here is passive funds could incur considerable rebalancing cost. Imagine BTC quickly regaining >50% dominance within a month, the fund would have to sell a ton of BTC at month end.
