cryptomoogle

A lot of good people are crashing out on and off the timeline right now, some who got rich from crypto, some who never made it after years in the industry (both versions are represented in the screenshots below). For all the ones you see on the timeline, there are even more in my private chats and DMs--some who would really surprise you in terms of their prominence in the industry and how much $ they probably have made and/or could still make in the industry, but are having an existential crisis over it because at this point they feel like they are not actually doing anything good for the world anymore. Ironically just at the point of finally being 'legalized' and going mainstream, the industry feels like it's succumbed almost completely to unsustainable zero-sum financial nihilism and bloodthirsty competition instead of taking the opportunity to build toward cypherpunk ideals or really any other ideals than Moloch/Mammon/getting rich. For myself, I've done 'okay' financially in crypto but dramatically underperformed most of the other paths that were open to me (both pre-crypto paths and more cynical paths within crypto). And this is despite not totally lacking in business or investment acumen and staying active in looking for opportunities in all dimensions--just never really managed to hit anything big. So I can relate a lot to ZachXBT and some others like him where you just really wonder why you have been doing this when it's neither the most lucrative path you could've taken nor feels like something idealistically satisfying. I was here for cypherpunk stuff and it's really weird to me to see guys like ZachXBT (even though he blocked me probably for calling him self-righteous or something) and Roman Storm get such little support from a very wealthy & degen community, as well as true cypherpunk / privacy projects mostly get ignored/maligned in the space as uninvestable while basically centralized structured finance products labeled "DeFi" as well as even dumber/more unsustainable stuff get shilled & supported nonstop. It also really sucks to see Ethereum just descend into the totally ineffectual mess that it is on the social layer today. It's the one non-Bitcoin ecosystem where a lot of the design decisions felt like they were maximizing for decentralization and censorship resistance and social revolution, but somehow the leadership refuses to fully embrace these sorts of narratives, and is even outright hostile to the more 'money' narratives and thus has ended up alienating literally everyone in crypto, both the money-degen financial nihilists and the cypherpunks, while going off on a bunch of out-of-touch 'public goods' larks that even include funding a total no-coiner and Warrenite like Angela Walch. All that being said, I just still find this stuff more intellectually interesting to work on than anything else I could be doing, and I think probably most of you should too, and should stick around. I see real (and still largely underappreciated) opportunity in lex cybernetica & in the power of this tech to catalyze radical changes within the most change-resistant industry on earth--law. I also consider Echo and Legion (I helped a lot to incubate the latter) as examples of this with real pmf already. And I see major potential in the tech itself as 'can't be evil' technology and know that the more nihilism accelerates, the closer we are to pmf for 'can't be evil tech as well, despite few really caring at the moment. So, in the immortal phrase--"I'm not fucking leaving". I am sticking this out no matter what, even as I descend into middle age without health insurance or other security net and shrinking options for alternative careers if I ever wanted to bail. But I do feel kind of tribeless within the broader crypto community. Like Eric, with ETH having become a lulcow as an asset and the most prominent Ethereum 'leaders' just seeming totally clueless on the issues, I'm no longer really ETH-aligned and felt like a semi-outsider in Ethereum even on the best of days anyway. I can see some cool stuff in Solana-land but I just really do not relate to most of their goals at all--I cannot excited about the mission of building faster rails for Wall Street running nodes in data centers and giving privileged internet lines to a specific blockchain system b/c the guy with the internet infra company also holds a lot of SOL. Or frankly jumping on the timeline every day to just see endless fairly disingenuous oppositional marketing and bragging and flexing. I can see the virtues of their tech and the talent it takes to build it, but this ethos is just not enough to motivate me. I guess MetaLeX, cybernetic law, cybernetic economy, cyber/acc (repped by @cyberfund and @Lomashuk ) are my communities now, and I'll help them on whatever chains they're on and try my best to get this recognized as one of the major tribes/cults of crypto and to build it much bigger, much faster. Many nations started with a diaspora. Probably many of you should do the same--instead of trying to be "Ethereum" or "Solana" you should focus in on what you truly care about and are uniquely positioned to make happen in the space, and join or refine that tribe or launch that tribe. Yes, that means the tribe must have its own coins for people to rally around. At this point, no "chain" will ever be big enough or coherent enough for most really meaningful missions that could change the world--you need to join a real movement that's trying to change things. Ironically this is what "believe in something" really means--not baghold some stupid memecoin because you "believe" its number will go up, but believe in a real cause and buy & hold the tokens that express & embody that cause and hope to win with all your friends and colleagues because you *deserved* it because you actually *achieved something*. Also, you all need to start listening to your 'better angels'. Have that conversation with your potential competitor, help out people who are doing good shit even if there's no angle in it for you. Stop letting lawyers and their NDAs and VCs and their fear of 'value leakage' ruin everything and block collaboration. That's up to founders and not anyone else. I've seen so much ridiculous shit on the legal side behind the scene where founders let themselves totally be run by lawyers and VCs despite talking a big cypherpunk game on socials--and you know who you are. In other words--Wake the fuck up and *really* believe in something, some mission to try to make the world really better, before it's too late, or crypto will die or turn into something even more sinister than what it was trying to replace. I'm still gonna be here trying to break through with something.