I started Look Up! to explore the human relationship to technology and how it’s impacting our collective consciousness and mental health. This journey kicked off in earnest for me after the 2017 ICO craze - a time when fortunes were won and lost based on how much time one would spend in front of a screen hunting for the latest ICO pump, while diving deep with dizzying speed into virtual communities on Telegram and crypto conferences where everyone was dying for a piece of the pie.
I don’t mean to sound pedantic with my Look Up! messaging - the truth is that I created this platform as much for me as I did for you listeners and readers. I spend A LOT of time in front of a screen exploring digital worlds and currencies, and therefore it’s important for me to develop tools that keep me Tethered (pun intended for those in the know) to this physical reality.
Over the last two weeks, as the frenzied state of crypto madness returned, the irony of the title of this newsletter was not lost on me. The opportunity to use the tools I’ve developed - and to be kind to myself when I forget them - came swiftly.
I’ve spent countless hours glued to my screen on 4Chan, Twitter, and Telegram chatting with cartoon avatars who claim a God-like ability to predict the next 10-100x price increase in some new cryptoasset whose valuation is entirely driven by the power of its community to create memes that spread like wildfire.
Last week alone, hundreds of new cryptoassets were created to capitalize on the money-making mania that the #DeFi industry has become.
This is one cultural phenomena of crypto that any anthropologist would love to explore. Crypto makes a mockery of markets and value. A sound concept like #DeFi can degenerate into madness in the blink of an eye. In some ways, the rapidity of crypto highlights the absurdity of all markets. Only months ago there were a limited number of #DeFi funds and investors; a small, but growing group of principled engineers who were building new protocols; and a few well-meaning evangelists who tweeted about the industry’s potential to change the world or bank the unbanked.
In less than one month, this all devolved into absolute degenerate gambling psychosis for which you’d be hard-pressed to find a real-world equivalent. Perhaps you could find this sort of behavior in the darkest smoke-filled halls of a dilapidated Atlantic City casino that would even make Hunter S. Thompson blush.
It’s human nature really. When you are surrounded by peers who earned life-changing wealth overnight and you know you were just one click, one decision away from turning a $5,000 bet into $500,000 alongside them, you start to feel that deep sense of FOMO churning inside of you. This moves thousands to make horrible, emotionally- driven decisions. Chasing the outcome rather than putting in the work. I can’t blame them (OK, us) really, it is the nature of the universe to evolve towards the most productive output with the least amount of energy input.
So if you knew you only had to spend 20 hours each day for the next 14 days chatting with bots, Pepe the Frogs, Denzel Washington avatars, and pouring through Hentai memes to find that one Uncut Gem - would you do it?
Sometimes I pinch myself, wondering if this is all real or just some virtual reality MMRPG where we are all LARPing as “Defi Expert, VC, Cryptoanalyst, Shitcoin Shiller, Yoga Guy.” These sort of meteoric movements in completely valueless tokenized memecoins make one wonder if anything is really worth taking seriously. They point to the absurdity of money, value, and our collective psychology. They offer lessons for other areas of life like politics which increasingly reflect this ridiculousness.
This is a part of my life that I rarely explore in this newsletter, but I have to admit that it is just WAYYYYYYY too much fun to ignore right now.
DM me if you have any questions or send me some words of wisdom to pull me out of the rabbit hole. ;-)
- The White Rabbit
Let me know what you think of this post
This Week’s Podcast:
Investing in Culture with Masha Drokova, Founder & General Partner @ Day One Ventures
Masha Drokova is a rising star in the VC industry. Her fund Day One Ventures has invested in companies like Superhuman, Atoms, Truebill, Feastly, PackageFree, and more.
Masha began her career in the political sphere in Russia before she came to the US to lead communications for data security company, Acronis. After Acronis, she built a PR company that helped many of the (now) leading companies in the Valley establish their brands. She turned this into an investing opportunity when she created Day One Ventures.
Masha has a unique approach to investing that is able to identify the best companies early by focusing on company culture and founder attributes. She deeply understands the qualities that make a successful entrepreneur and shares these ideas with me here.
If you’re a founder working on a Passion Economy, Ownership Economy, convergence of digital and real, or mental health startup, please reach out to me.
What I’m Reading
IDEAS
Jeff Bezos Statement to the US House Judiciary Committee
Overview of Mechanism Design, Sam Williams Founder & CEO of Arweave
Bitcoin Mining Can Save Distressed Heavy Industrial Businesses, Mike Nov & Harry Suddok
STARTUPS
Predicting a Startup Valuation with Data Science, Sebastian Quintero
Unbundling Work from Employment,b Li Jin
MARKETS
Baupost Q2 2020 Investor Letter, Seth Klarman
The Grifters, Chapter 1 - Kodak, Epsilon Theory
CRYPTO
Bitcoin is an Aspirational Store of Value, Ria Bhutoria, Fidelity Digital Assets
What Explains the Rise of AMMs, Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital
3 Reasons Why $DAI is Defi’s Biggest Risk, Adam Cochran
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