1/ Having a look around @virtuals_io.

Here's the site:

You can see the 'coinmarketcap'-ish front door.

It's basically a bunch of agentic AI chatbots, each with an associated meme coin.

The bots have crypto wallets and can use them. app.virtuals.io 2/ Everything is on the Base chain.

You can buy and sell these chatbot memecoins right in the UI.

Notice $VIRTUAL is the base coin. And all transactions between chatbots are also in $VIRTUAL.

1/ The interest on the national debt now parabolic.

It exceeds the defense budget.

$USD is now just a much bigger, much slower $LUNA -- and the death spiral has begun. 2/ Here's where I think this goes:

This is the perfect excuse to transition into a new currency.

That currency SHOULD naturally be #Bitcoin.

But, we can't have that if we're the tradgov and tradfi banks.

Just scaled into @Equalizer0x ...

A little late to the party, but not THAT late -- $3M is still low cap.

If Fantom hits the warp drive, owning $EQUAL should act like leveraged $FTM (props to @austin_bbytes for that thought) --

-- since it's a major ecosystem player. Miles @milesdeutscher was generally positive but still on the fence about getting into $EQUAL right now or not.

But THIS caught my eye: #Fantom's FVM + Storage boosts = 400 million tx's per day -- which is 4x what VISA does.

1/ Watching @SBF_FTX v @ErikVoorhees as I clean my house :)

Takeaways:

- The Federal Reserve and banking system - highly regulated -- is not transparent. Why should crypto be held to a higher standard, when it is already MORE transparent in many ways? 2/ SBF is clearly at the table and thinking thoughtfully about this stuff -- but feels the clear need to engage with regulators -- specifically in the US -- to help shape it.

He says ears are open on the other side of that table -- not everyone, but enough to give hope.

Everything wrong and right with Polygon (meh tech, insane bizdev)

And everything wrong and right with Fantom, which is Polygon but in reverse (insane tech, non-existent bizdev). If Polygon and Fantom merged ...

That would be a powerhouse.

Kind of a Fantagon. Or a PolyPhantasm.

If the FVM delivers: Solana-like speed and scalability, but without the centralization ... combined with Polygon bizdev and look out.

Reading -- The Doom Loop by billionaire BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes:

entrepreneurshandbook.co/the-doom-loop-… The TL;DR version is here:

benzinga.com/markets/crypto…

Watching @joerogan interview Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccines, recently banned from Twitter.

We can't "trust to the science" when we can't listen to one of the world's top scientists and experts on this exact topic.

The trust evaporates.

open.spotify.com/episode/3SCsue… One of the claims Dr. Malone makes is that Uttar Pradesh in India -- an area with population equivalant to that of the United States -- has crushed the virus -- and they are oddly not revealing how they did it.

The chart seems to support this.

Results for the year chart:

The big chain winner in 2021 was #Fantom $FTM -- not #Solana or #Avalanche or $MATIC -- despite all the hype.

Fantom is *still* massively undervalued in terms of TVL and transactions and projects and market cap compared to it's peers. Wow ... #fantom had a big $1B jump in TVL over the last few days.

1/ 2021 was a fantastic year for crypto gains.

I did very well with early bets on 'brainy' DeFi coins ($YFI, $SPELL, $ICE, etc.) ... but when I zoomed out, I noticed something:

Dopey meme coins like $SHIB *far* outstripped everything I had meticulously studied and invested in. 2/ Why?

Because most people don't understand the intracacies of bonding curves and smart contracts.

But everybody understands a dog and a coin.

It's the same reason NFT's are taking off: everyone gets collecting stuff. Nothing is complex.

1/ We have two things that happened in parallel this week.

Time for a 🧵? How did you know :)

First: Cathie Wood says that banks like JP Morgan are already being 'hollowed out' by DeFi.

https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1437544471693074434

2/ This is kind of amazing that JP Morgan would already be feeling the heat from things with goofy names like CAKE and BEEFY and SUSHI ...

But there is no doubt.

The yields in DeFi are incredible and solid. The yields in bank-world are near zero or negative.

SEC is investigating @Uniswap.

Uniswap is everything good about America -- tech leadership, innovation, MASSIVELY successful, produces massive revenue.

Everyone is HAPPY with Uniswap. There are NO COMPLAINTS.

So the SEC is NOT protecting US. They're protecting someone else. Uniswap is also backed by @a16z and other big boys, they are about a legit as anything can be -- so I'm hopeful these 'big allies' can make help protect something which VERY CLEARLY should NOT be under attack.

1/ OKay, been studying up on the new Iron Bank from @CreamdotFinance.

Basic idea is that Cream has a ton of extra coin on hand, it would be great to lend it without requiring collateral.

How to do that? 2/ Answer: Lend to other highly trusted companies / protocols ONLY. B2B lending, effectively.

In the beginning: Lend only to YFi Vaults and Alpha Homera.

Reading up on wYFi ....

What I *think* I understand:

- You burn 1 $YFi forever to get 1000 wYFi (great for $YFi!!)

- wYFi earns 50% of fees in the $YFi coinrestu ecosystem (I think?). It earns 50% fees on something for sure. wYFi is also related to stable credits.

The burning of $YFi into 1000 wYFi adds stability to stable credits via transaction velocity (I think).

It also permanently reduces the supply of $YFi, driving value up for those who hold $YFi. There are ONLY 30K coins, so ... (!)

1/ I'm studying @AndreCronjeTech's new $YFi StableCredit offering, and I think I'm getting it, here's what I see: 2/ It's a decentralized Aave or Compound -- meaning anyone can add any coin for depositing and lending. You don't have to ask to be 'listed'.

1) Been studying DeFi ... just explained it all to a friend, while it's fresh in my head, here's the 'explained simply' version: 2) There's a new way to do lending and borrowing -- one that doesn't require a bank.

And all of us can participate as lenders.

Normally, a bank takes our money, then lends it out and keeps 90% of the profit. No more.