Every Sunday night for the past nine years, I’ve sat down at my desk and stared at a blank lesson plan template. Five days, five classes, five periods. Standards to cover, vocabulary to review, materials to prep, activities to sequence, and somewhere in there I have to make sure a room full of teenagers actually cares about what’s happening on Tuesday. It’s the part of teaching that nobody talks about, the part that eats your weekends, and the part that honestly matters the most because a bad plan means a bad week for everyone.

A few months ago, I built something with Claude Code that changed the whole thing. I’m not exaggerating when I say it fundamentally shifted how I think about planning, and I want to walk you through it because I think there’s something in here for anyone who does work that involves repeating complex processes over and over.

Here’s what I built. It’s a system that takes a single JSON config file (basically a structured list of what I want to happen each day of the week) and turns it into a formatted lesson plan document, a set of color-coded Canvas pages for my students to see online, and then delivers everything to the right folder on my Drive. One command. The whole thing takes about three seconds to run.

But the document generation is honestly the least interesting part. The part that changed my life is the archive.

I have over five years of lesson plans sitting on my Drive. 263 lessons, hundreds of resources, worksheets, presentations, all of it. Before this system, that archive was basically a graveyard. I knew the stuff was in there somewhere, but finding last year’s vocabulary quiz for a specific unit or figuring out what I taught during week 6 of Q3 two years ago was a nightmare. I’d dig through folders, open files one at a time, and give up after twenty minutes.

So I built a search engine for it. Every lesson plan I’ve ever written is now indexed in a database with full-text search. I can type in “counterargument” and get back every lesson from every year where I taught counterarguments, which standards I hit, what materials I used, how I sequenced the activities. It’s like having a photographic memory of my entire teaching career.

And that’s where the comparing comes in. When I’m planning a new week, I can pull up last year’s version of that same week and see what worked. Did I spend too many days on that novel? Did I miss a standard that I should have covered earlier? Where did I put the vocabulary review?

The standards tracking is probably my favorite feature, and it’s the one that honestly makes me feel like a better teacher. There are 69 ELA standards I’m supposed to cover in a year. The system tracks which ones I’ve hit and which ones I haven’t. Right now I’m at 52 out of 69, which is 75%, and I can see exactly which standards are still open and which units will close the gaps. Before this, standards tracking was a spreadsheet I updated inconsistently and felt guilty about not maintaining. Now it’s just data that updates automatically every time I generate a plan.

Claude helps with all of it. Not just the coding (although it wrote pretty much every script in the project), but the actual planning. When I’m building a new week, I’ll describe what I want to accomplish and Claude will cross-reference my curriculum data, check what vocabulary is scheduled for that week, look at the school calendar for shortened days or assemblies, and draft the config file. Then I review it, make adjustments, and run the generator. The whole process that used to eat three to four hours of my Sunday takes maybe forty-five minutes now, and the quality is better because I’m spending my time making decisions instead of formatting cells.

I also built custom tools for generating presentations, worksheets, and handouts. Every PowerPoint gets a unique visual design (dark themes, varied layouts, color-coded content) because I got tired of every classroom presentation looking like it came from the same template in 2009. The worksheets auto-format to fit on one page with the right margins and font sizes, which sounds trivial but if you’ve ever spent twenty minutes trying to get an assignment sheet to not spill onto a second page, you know it matters.

The thing I’m most proud of isn’t any individual feature though. It’s the fact that I have more energy for the parts of teaching that actually matter. I’m not staying up until midnight on Sunday fighting with formatting. I’m not losing track of standards. I’m not reinventing the wheel every year because I can search my entire history in seconds. The planning is better, which means the teaching is better, and honestly that’s pretty much the whole point.

If you’re a teacher (or anyone who does repetitive knowledge work), I genuinely think this kind of system is worth exploring. You don’t need to be a programmer. You just need to be clear about what your process is, what data you’re working with, and what the output should look like. Claude handles the rest.

BFG

When I was growing up outside Philly, snow days had a whole ritual to them. You’d wake up at five in the morning (the only time in your entire childhood you’d voluntarily set an alarm that early), sneak downstairs in the dark, and flip on the local news. The school closings scrolled across the bottom of the screen in alphabetical order, white text on a blue bar, and your entire emotional state depended on where your district fell in the alphabet.

Mine started with a U. Which meant I had to sit through every single district from A through T before I’d know if my day was about to change. The anticipation was genuinely unbearable, and I say that as someone who now teaches for a living and has sat on the other side of that equation (honestly, the teacher side is pretty great too). That moment when your school finally appeared on the screen was one of the purest feelings I’ve ever experienced, and I am not exaggerating even a little bit.

I bring this up because I realized recently that the snow day feeling never actually went away. It just found new places to live.

If you’ve been in crypto for any amount of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The 3 AM price checks. The wallet refreshes. The Discord notification sounds you’ve Pavlov’d yourself into responding to instantly. It’s the same emotional architecture as watching that scrolling bar, and honestly I think the reason so many of us got hooked on this space in the first place is because it gave us a feeling we hadn’t felt since we were nine years old in our pajamas on a Tuesday morning.

The thing about snow days that nobody really talks about is that the actual day was usually nothing special. You’d go outside for an hour, throw some snowballs, get cold, come inside and watch TV until someone told you to do something productive. The day itself was fine. But the finding out part, that split second of discovery, was transcendent. That’s where all the magic lived.

Crypto works the exact same way. I watched Bitcoin cross $100,000 for the first time in December 2024 and I promise you the feeling was indistinguishable from seeing my school’s name on that blue bar.

Seven years of watching and waiting and the payoff is this brief, perfect moment of confirmation. That’s the snow day. And then (just like when you were a kid) the day goes on and you find something else to worry about pretty quickly.

Of course, the flip side is also true. Sometimes you’d sit through the entire alphabet, A through Z, and your school just wasn’t there. That was devastating in a way that’s honestly hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. You did everything right, you woke up early, you checked the weather, you looked outside at what was clearly enough snow to cancel school, and it just didn’t happen

.

Bitcoin hit its all time high near $126,000 back in October. It’s sitting around $68,000 right now. If you’ve been here long enough, you know the feeling. The storm came, the snow piled up, and somebody somewhere decided we’re going to school anyway. Pretty brutal tbh.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: even after the worst non-snow-day of your childhood, even after the most devastating morning of watching that blue bar scroll past your district without stopping, you still woke up the next time it snowed and checked again. You never stopped believing that the next storm might be the one.

I’ve been in this space since 2013. I bought my first Bitcoin with a money order I walked into a bank to fill out (honestly that still sounds made up when I say it out loud). Since then I’ve watched this whole world grow into something I never could have predicted, from DeFi summer to NFTs to AI agents transacting on the blockchain autonomously. The snow days come and go, and to be honest I’ve probably had more non-snow-days than snow days at this point, in both the literal and crypto sense of the word.

At the end of the day, the snow day feeling isn’t really about the snow. It’s about believing that today might be different from every other day. That some external force might interrupt the routine and hand you something you weren’t expecting. And if you’re paying attention (and honestly, if you’re still reading this newsletter, you pretty clearly are) those moments show up way more often than you’d think.

You just have to be willing to wake up early and check the screen.

That’s it for today - I hope you have a great day!

BFG

I remember sitting at my kitchen table in the summer of 2016, watching sixty million dollars drain out of a smart contract in real time, and thinking that honestly this whole thing might just be over.

The DAO was supposed to be the future of everything. The first decentralized autonomous organization, a community-run investment fund built entirely on Ethereum, the kind of project that made you feel like you were part of something genuinely new (and I don’t use that word lightly). People had been giddy about it for months, myself included. And then a bug in the code let someone siphon off a third of the funds while the rest of us just sat there refreshing Etherscan and hoping the next block would somehow fix it.

It didn’t. But here’s the thing nobody talks about enough: almost everyone I know who stuck around after that summer went on to do something pretty incredible.

I should back up. My first Bitcoin purchase was in 2013 for about ninety bucks. It required a trip to Bank of America for a money order that I then mailed off to an exchange called Bitfloor (the kind of thing that sounds like a fever dream now but felt perfectly reasonable at the time). Something about it just clicked, and from that point forward I was all in. When Ethereum showed up a couple years later I got in, and that’s what pulled me straight into The DAO, because when you’re watching an entirely new financial system get assembled in real time you don’t exactly sit on the sidelines.

Nearly ten years later, that story still isn’t over.

The unclaimed ETH from The DAO hack is now being used to create a massive security fund for Ethereum. The wreckage became infrastructure. I think about that a lot, honestly, because it mirrors something I’ve watched play out in this space over and over again: nothing is wasted if you’re paying attention.

After The DAO I kept showing up. I watched DeFi summer happen from the sidelines, then jumped in headfirst. I bought a Moonbird around 16 ETH. And somewhere in there I started writing about all of it. What began as daily updates for the PROOF community turned into one of those things I couldn’t put down, and before I knew it I was publishing every single day for over five months straight, covering everything from ecosystem recaps to on-chain analysis to whatever random thought crossed my mind about nesting mechanics or the future of digital ownership.

The pretty wild thing about writing that much is you stop documenting the space and start documenting yourself. Bear markets made me terse and careful. Bull runs made me sentimental and grateful (as you can probably tell). And every single time the markets dipped, the same pattern played out in the broader community.

Every cycle, people panic. Every cycle, someone declares it dead. And every cycle, the people who were here before just keep building. To be honest, that pattern is pretty much the entire thesis of my thirteen years doing this.

I burned out eventually (honestly I’m surprised it took as long as it did), stepped away for a stretch, and when I came back the whole world had shifted underneath me. AI wasn’t a buzzword anymore, it was a tool I was using every day to build apps with my son and plan lessons for my students and, yeah, keep writing. Crypto and AI stopped being separate conversations entirely.

AI agents with their own crypto wallets, transacting autonomously on the blockchain. This is pretty much the kind of thing The DAO was reaching for back in 2016, except now it actually works (or at least it’s a whole lot closer to working).

So now I write a newsletter called Ghost Notes, and I write about pretty much everything. Crypto, AI, being a dad, gaming, whatever feels honest that week. If you had told me back when I was mailing off that money order that all of this would eventually lead to a newsletter where I’m writing about Coinbase AI wallets and my son’s basketball games in the same breath, I would not have believed you. But at the end of the day, I think that’s kind of the whole point. You don’t get to skip the chapters. Every bear market you survive, every project that blows up in your face, every stretch where you write until you can’t anymore, it all adds up to something you never could have planned. I’m pretty grateful I stuck around long enough to figure that out.

That’s it for today - I hope you have a great day!

BFG

Meph Runs & Bull Runs

I was sitting on my couch last Tuesday night, pretty exhausted from a long day of work, when I saw a notification pop up on my phone that made me feel like I was 12 years old again. Blizzard had just surprise-dropped a brand new class for Diablo 2. Not Diablo 4 (though the Warlock is coming there too). Diablo 2. The game I played on a beige CRT monitor in my parents’ house in the late 90s, the game that taught me what “just one more run” really meant, the game that honestly shaped a pretty significant part of my personality. And here it was, getting a brand new class in 2026. I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded something so fast in my life.

I tweeted about it pretty much immediately because I couldn’t contain myself.

The Warlock is the first new class added to Diablo 2 in over 25 years, and it’s part of an expansion called Reign of the Warlock that Blizzard just dropped. The class has three skill trees (demonic binding, eldritch weapons, and arts of chaos) and the whole vibe is summoning and consuming demons for power. They also added loot filters, better stash tabs, and this pretty incredible Chronicle system that tracks every unique item you’ve ever found across all your characters. If you told 12 year old me that Diablo 2 would still be getting love in 2026 I would have laughed at you, and then I would have gone back to doing Mephisto runs in my pajamas at 5 AM.

The best part, honestly? I’ve been playing hardcore mode again with the same buddy I used to play with when I was 12. That’s about 26 years of friendship, and we’re right back to clearing Nightmare difficulty together like nothing ever changed. We’ve been having an absolute blast. And my son, for the first time, has been genuinely interested in watching me play a game that came out over two decades before he was born. There’s something pretty special about that.

But the Warlock announcement got me thinking about something bigger than just a video game.

We are living in the age of the remix. And I mean that in the most sincere, non-dismissive way possible. Everywhere I look, the things that matter most to people right now are the things that take something old and make it feel new again. Not by replacing the original, but by building on top of it in ways that would have felt impossible even a few years ago.

Think about it. Diablo 2 is a 25 year old game running on an engine that predates the iPod, and Blizzard just gave it a brand new class with modern quality of life features while keeping everything that made it special in the first place. The skeleton is the same. The magic find grind is the same. The feeling of finding a Shako on a random Hell Mephisto run is the same. They just gave us new tools to experience it.

Now think about crypto for a second (I know, I know, but stay with me here). Bitcoin is 17 years old. Ethereum is 11. We’ve been through how many cycles at this point, and every single time, the people who stick around end up building something better on top of the same foundation. The blockchain itself doesn’t change. The consensus mechanisms are pretty much the same at their core. But every cycle, someone figures out a new way to use the infrastructure that already exists, and suddenly you’ve got DeFi, or NFTs, or Farcaster, or whatever the next thing is. The remix. The old bones with new muscle.

And then there’s AI (and honestly this is the part where all three threads come together for me). I’ve been using Claude pretty heavily for the past few months, and the thing that strikes me about it is that it’s not replacing the skills I spent years developing. It’s remixing them. I still need to know what good writing sounds like. I still need to have opinions and instincts and taste. Claude just lets me take those things and do more with them, faster, in ways I couldn’t have imagined even two years ago. The foundation is still mine. The remix is the collaboration.

Here’s the thing about hardcore mode that I think applies to pretty much everything. In hardcore, you get one life. One death and your character is gone forever, along with every piece of gear you spent weeks farming for. It teaches you something you can only learn by doing (honestly, no amount of reading prepares you for that first hardcore death). You learn to never overextend. You learn that survival matters more than speed. You learn to always keep a town portal ready, because the moment you get comfortable is usually the moment everything falls apart.

That’s crypto. That’s AI. That’s life, honestly. The people who survive multiple market cycles aren’t the ones who ape the hardest into every new token. They’re the ones who know when to portal out. And the people who are going to get the most out of tools like Claude aren’t the ones who hand over the keys entirely and stop thinking. They’re the ones who stay engaged, who keep their hand on the scroll, who never stop paying attention to what’s actually happening on screen. The tool is only as good as the person using it, and the person is only as good as the thousands of hours they put in before the tool existed.

When I was a kid playing Diablo 2, I had to memorize which monsters dropped which items, which runewords required which runes in which order, which builds were viable for Hell difficulty. All of that knowledge took hundreds of hours to accumulate. And you know what? That knowledge still matters. The Warlock doesn’t erase any of it. Claude doesn’t erase any of it. A new market cycle doesn’t erase any of it. The foundation compounds. The new layer just gives you more to work with.

At the end of the day, I think the people who are most excited about the future right now are the ones who understand this instinctively. The Diablo 2 players who are firing up Reign of the Warlock aren’t doing it because they forgot about the Sorceress or the Hammerdin. They’re doing it because they know the game so well that a new class feels like coming home and finding a new room in your house. The crypto builders who keep showing up after every crash aren’t delusional. They just know the foundation is solid and the next remix is going to be pretty wild. And the people using AI tools to amplify their existing skills aren’t being lazy. They’re doing what every generation does with new technology (they’re standing on the shoulders of everything that came before and reaching a little higher).

I’ve been in crypto since 2012. I’ve been playing Blizzard games since the mid 90s. I’ve been writing online for years. And I am honestly more excited about all three of those things right now than I have been in a very long time, because for the first time it feels like they’re all doing the same thing at once. Taking the bones of something proven and beloved, and building something new on top of it without losing what made the original special.

That’s all for today - I hope you have a great rest of your week!

BFG

A little while back my son told me he wanted to make a video game. He’s 10. He wanted something his friends could play on their browsers at school a la coolmath. So we sat down, I opened up Claude, he described what he wanted, and about an hour later there was a working game on the internet with a URL he could share with his buddies. He didn’t write a single line of code.

He immediately started asking about more levels and a leaderboard. He did not once stop to appreciate how insane that was.

I did though. Because when I was his age, I spent an entire summer trying to build a Geocities page.

Barriers Have a Short Memory

Here’s the pattern I keep coming back to. Every few years, the barrier to entry for something important drops so dramatically that the next generation barely notices it was ever there. The people who grew up climbing the wall have already internalized the struggle, but the kids just walk right through.

I think about this with crypto constantly. When I first bought Bitcoin in 2012, I walked into a Bank of America, filled out a money order, mailed it to an exchange I’d never heard of, and prayed it would show up (I was probably a little crazy, tbh). Now you can buy it from your couch while watching Netflix. That barrier evaporated so completely that most people don’t even know it existed.

And now it’s happening with building software. Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” about a year ago, the idea that you can describe what you want to an AI and just let it build, without ever looking at the code.

Collins Dictionary named it the Word of the Year for 2025. MIT Technology Review named generative coding one of its 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026. And Karpathy himself already moved past the term, he’s calling it “agentic engineering” now, because the AI agents are doing pretty much all of the actual writing.

That wall I spent an entire summer trying to climb in the 90s? My 10-year-old walked right through it in an hour. Pretty wild when you think about it.

What My Kid Actually Taught Me

The thing that struck me wasn’t the technology, it was my son’s complete lack of awe about it. He didn’t marvel at the fact that he described a game and it materialized out of thin air. He just immediately started thinking about what to add next. More levels. Better graphics. A scoring system. His brain went straight to the creative part because the technical part was invisible to him.

I spent my childhood learning how to use the tools. My son is spending his childhood learning what to build with them. At the end of the day, I think that’s the most important shift happening right now. The question stopped being “can you figure out the tools?” and started being “what do you actually want to create?”

And to be honest, that’s a way better question for a 10-year-old to be answering.

The Feeling Hasn’t Changed

The first time my son saw his game running on a live URL, something he could actually send to his friends, he turned to me with this look. Not disbelief exactly, more like “wait, that’s actually mine?” I think about that a lot. Because I had that exact same feeling the first time my janky Geocities page loaded in a browser 25 years ago. The feeling of “I made this and it exists in the world now.”

The tools changed. The speed changed. The barriers changed. But a kid making something and being proud of it, that hasn’t changed one bit.

That’s all for today - I hope you have a great week!

BFG

i built a self-learning memory system for claude code. here’s how to set it up in 2 minutes.


claude code has no memory between sessions. none. every time you start a conversation it wakes up with no idea what you worked on yesterday, what mistakes it made, or where you left off.

i’ve been running claude code as my daily driver for months now. not for fun. it’s how i actually get work done. and the no memory thing was destroying my productivity. every session started with me re-explaining context like a broken record.

so i built a system where claude writes down everything it does, learns from every correction, and picks up exactly where it left off next time. after a few weeks the difference is real. not because the model got smarter. because the instructions got better.


the problem

claude code reads a file called CLAUDE dot md when it starts up. most people throw some project instructions in there and move on. but that file doesn’t learn. it doesn’t update itself. it doesn’t remember what happened last session.

you can tell claude “remember this for next time” and it’ll say “got it” and then completely forget because the session ended.


the fix. 3 layers of memory.

1. activity logs. a timestamped journal of everything claude does during a session. what got built, what decisions were made, what broke. one file per day so you can always look back.

2. notes files. permanent knowledge organized by topic. environment quirks, coding standards, workflow rules, patterns it learned. these get loaded every single session through a hook.

3. last session file. exactly where we left off. what’s done, what’s next, what’s blocking. claude reads this on startup and picks up the thread.

every learning goes to exactly one place. project stuff stays in the project. global patterns go to global notes. one-time observations sit in the activity log until they show up enough times to earn a spot in permanent notes.


self-pruning

this is what keeps it from becoming a mess. without pruning your notes files grow forever and eat your context window.

on session start claude checks file sizes and flags anything that needs cleaning up. activity logs older than 14 days get compressed into monthly summaries. duplicates get merged. entries that ended up in the wrong file get moved.

one rule. pruning only makes things denser. it never deletes anything. it compresses, moves, or promotes.


the loop

every time you correct claude it writes that pattern down immediately. not at the end of the session. right then. next session it loads that note and doesn’t make the same mistake.

after a few weeks claude stops asking questions it already asked. it remembers how you like things done. it knows your codebase. you’re training a system that writes its own training data.


how to set it up

open claude code and paste this. it builds the whole thing in about 60 seconds.


the prompt:

build me a self-learning memory system with these exact specifications. create all the directories, hook scripts, settings dot json entries, and CLAUDE dot md instructions. don’t ask me questions. just build it.

architecture. 3 layers:

1. activity logs at ~/.claude/logs/YYYY-MM-DD dot md. timestamped journal of everything done during sessions. format each entry as “## HH:MM - [project] description” followed by bullet points of what happened. write to this continuously throughout the session.

2. notes files at ~/.claude/notes/ as markdown files. permanent knowledge loaded every session. start with session-lessons dot md for reusable patterns and last-session dot md for session continuity. i’ll add topic files like environment dot md or coding-standards dot md later as needed.

3. last-session dot md at ~/.claude/notes/last-session dot md. where we left off, what’s done, what’s next. update this at the end of every session and before context compaction.

hooks. 2 scripts registered in settings dot json:

1. SessionStart hook called load-notes. loads all markdown files from ~/.claude/notes/, all project-level notes from the current project’s notes/ directory, and today’s plus yesterday’s activity logs from ~/.claude/logs/. also checks if any notes file exceeds 50 lines and warns to merge and redistribute. checks if any activity logs are older than 14 days and warns to archive into a monthly summary.

2. PreCompact hook called pre-compact-lessons. reminds me to write any unrecorded learnings to the correct notes file, update the activity log with current state, and update last-session with status and next steps before context gets compacted.

routing. add this to CLAUDE dot md so you always know where to write things:

when you learn something, route it to exactly one place. is it project-specific? write it to that project’s notes directory. does it fit a topic file like environment or coding-standards? write it there. is it a global pattern you’ve seen two or more times? write it to the global session-lessons file. is it a one-time thing? activity log only. if you’re not sure, keep it at the project level.

self-pruning. add this to CLAUDE dot md:

on session start, if session-lessons is over 50 lines, merge duplicates and move misplaced entries to the correct file. if any activity logs are older than 14 days, archive them to a monthly summary and delete the daily files. always read last-session to pick up where we left off. during the session route every learning immediately, log everything with timestamps, and on any correction write to the correct file right away. at end of session review the activity log and promote repeated observations to permanent notes then update last-session. one rule. pruning only makes things denser. never delete knowledge. compress it, move it, or promote it.

immediate commits. add this to CLAUDE dot md:

write learnings the moment you have them. don’t wait until end of session. every insight is one crash or timeout away from being lost.

make the hook scripts executable. register them in settings dot json under the hooks key. test both hooks after building and show me the output.


that’s the whole thing. paste it. let claude cook. start a new session and the system is running.

the more you use it the better it gets. every correction becomes a permanent rule. every session builds on the last one. you stop repeating yourself and start compounding what you know.

gm gm everyone, and happy summer!

Our latest episode of Odds and Ends is out, and you can check it out by clicking on the image above, or this link here.

Thanks for listening!

BFG

gm everyone, and I hope you are having an excellent weekend so far!

Don’t forget that today is the Season 2 $degen drop!

I wanted to write a quick piece on some things I've seen and experienced in my short time (only around 2 months ish) on Farcaster so far. I get a lot of messages asking me for the best way to increase $degen allowances, to get followers (hate that term), to engage with people, etc.

So here's what I have to say about that.

It’s a Different Beast

The first thing you have to understand is that Farcaster is NOT X. Many things that fly on X or CT are kind of looked down upon on Farcaster - I’ve found things like sarcasm, ripping people, “engagement farming,” etc, don’t get nearly the reception that people expect coming over for the first time. This post from Tervo in his newsletter is a great example of why that is.

Simply put, Farcaster really did start out (and largely still is) as a place for serious builders/creatives. And if you’ve been around crypto any length of time, you know there is occasionally some in-fighting between the “traders and builders,” so to speak. Recently, this has been changing, as people more on the left side of the curve (like myself) make the switch to Farcaster. However, like Tervo mentioned, there is a specific etiquette here on Farcaster, and that’s something we should respect.

Just like when you travel to a different country you should be respecting their norms and trying to speak in their language as a sign of respect, so should you respect the norms that have been on Farcaster far before our arrival.

As I mentioned above, these are things like:

• Being kind to people by default

• Being genuine and engaging

• Not posting low-effort posts/replies

• Avoiding engagement farming

Being Genuine

Speaking of being genuine, I’ve been in crypto for 12 years, and I can tell you unequivocally that many of the people on Farcaster (especially the bigger accounts) are very smart and can smell the BS from a mile away. If you come here with the wrong intentions (how do I make money by farming $degen???), you will be sussed out and ejected from the social hierarchy. I’ve seen many big follower CT accounts try to make the switch over to Farcaster and fizzle out very quickly - if you’re not willing to put the time in to build up your reputation organically, then why should anyone else waste time interacting with you?

The best way to build up a following, I have found, is to be as genuine as possible and interact (reply) with people as much as you can. Pick a few channels that you want to focus on (that match your interests) and reply, reply, reply. Work your way towards being a recognizable name and even top caster status - but do keep in mind, this is not necessarily how you increase your $degen allowance per se, and therein lies the rub.

It’s a Fine Line

With the incentive that $degen provides for people to come over to Farcaster, it’s a fine line between doing things “the right way” and doing them “the wrong way.” Read this post I made the other day on the $degen ecosystem for a little more information on that if you’re not already aware.

In terms of the $degen/farcaster ecosystem and how they work together, there’s a few issues at play here:

• The way to increase your $degen allowance “is determined by several factors, with a primary focus on recent reactions to your original casts.” You can find the exact formula here.

• Because you receive more $degen allowance by reactions to original casts, it incentivizes people to post things that get a lot of engagement - let’s take a giveaway for example.

• However, most people view giveaways as spammy and generally scroll past them (myself included) - unless they are of somewhat significant monetary value, a physical item that people want, or a trade for goods/services (custom PFPs by a legit artist, for example)

You have this very fine line where the types of things that get the most engagement are also viewed as engagement bait, automatically turning people off on your account/posts, especially in a place like Farcaster. At the same time, unless you are a builder/creator (of which we now know many people incoming are not), you are somewhat hamstrung when it comes to increasing your allowance, leaving these methods as the “easiest” and most accessible way to increase your allowance. So what are you to do as the average joe?

As I said above - it’s a fine line. There really isn’t anything wrong inherently with a giveaway, for example, but it’s important that you aren’t doing anything low effort or giving away something that nobody wants. If you make an NFT of some low effort AI art you made, you have 100 followers, and you expect people to tip you $degen and interact with your post, you’re probably not going to find much luck. On the other hand, that means you are probably somewhat forced to give away something of legitimate value, which not everyone has the ability to do.

How Do I Strike the Balance?

So, ultimately then, how do you balance being genuine and engaging, allowing you to build a good reputation for yourself, when there are incentives to also post what traditionally would be known as engagement bait (which would probably detract from your reputation)?

Well, I certainly am no expert, but here’s how I kind of view it, and here is my recommendation to most newcomers.

• The first and most important thing you should be doing is replying to people and genuinely engaging them. This doesn’t mean low effort “gm” only, but literally responding to their posts, asking questions, finding out about them, asking about their art, their hobbies - whatever they are posting about.

• As you engage with people and they realize you are genuine and here for the right reasons, they will naturally be attracted to you (who doesn’t like good vibes), and probably end up following you, liking your posts, supporting you, etc.

• You turn around and do that exact same thing - continue to reply, support those who support you, etc.

• The more you reply, the more followers you get, the more engagement you get on your original casts.

• The more engagement you get on your original casts, the more your $degen allocation goes up.

Notice, however, that there is no shortcut here. To tie it all back together, if you’re not willing to put the time to get to know people and support them, then why should anyone else waste time supporting you?

It ultimately all comes back to one thing:

Reply.

BFG

gm everyone, and thanks for taking the time to check out this newsletter - if you missed my primer on Farcaster from the past week, check it out below:

Today, though, I want to dive a little bit more into $degen and why it’s been so instrumental in the success of Farcaster to date. As always, this is from the viewpoint of someone who joined just a bit over a month ago, so take what I say with a grain of salt, and always DYOR (that’s the teacher in me - always use multiple sources). It’s also worth mentioning that I have a bag, both from people kind enough to tip and also from buying on secondary.

What is $Degen, and Why Is It All Over My Feed?

As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, $degen is what seems to fuel (compliment, really) social interactions in the Farcaster space.

Degen is basically the currency of Farcaster that makes the world go round - people are constantly tipping it to each other - “lmao good post, 3000 $degen.” The cool thing is that you not only can receive tips from people, but you also get a use it or lose it allowance every day (if you qualify, which you can by reading the FAQ here) to give away. You don’t get to keep any leftovers (and it also doesn’t come from your own received tips), so it really incentivizes people to out, talk to others, and spread the love.

Low effort posts usually don’t get much $degen, so once again, if you’re just farming and people spot you, you’re gonna get rekt.

From one of the team members themselves:

If you use Reddit, you’re probably familiar with their karma system. This time around, imagine that the karma has a USD value, and it recently just broached .02 US.

Truthfully, I’m not generally a fan of “points systems,” as really it usually just means that we are the ones getting farmed for our liquidity instead of the other way around. The $degen team, however, has flipped that entirely on it’s head. These points have a value assigned already, along with a release schedule.

Not only that, but the main way that $degen is distributed is via tips from other users. There are LP contributors, of course, but even those rewards are getting reduced.

The beauty of this design is that instead of most of the token going to farmers and people with huge pockets like normal who can afford to dump ridiculous sums into LP positions, tokens are instead distributed by the community, for the community. The only way you are going to get $degen tips on Farcaster is if the people like your content, creations, or whatever it is you have to say. The result is two fold:

1. The distribution goes to people who are actively contributing to the ecosystem instead of detracting from it (deserving)

2. Most people who receive these tips are community members already who believe not only in the $degen ecosystem, but Farcaster/Base itself - instead of people farming and dumping, most people I know who receive tips hold and accumulate because they believe in the mission

How Do I Get a Tipping Allowance?

If you’re at this point, you probably are wondering how you get to participate in the fun. Getting $degen is one thing, but giving $degen is even better. Importantly, you need to meet this most basic criteria to start:

You can also check out this Dune link for the actual formula to increasing your tip allowance.

Every day, you get an allotment of $degen (once you’re eligible) that’s use it or lose it. It doesn’t come from your own received tips - it resets every 24 hours. Really, you should make your personal mission to zero out your allowance every day - otherwise, you’re burning free money that could go to someone deserving.

For more detailed information, however, I highly recommend checking out Wake’s Tipping Guide below. This is basically the holy grail of $degen tipping information.

Overall, $degen is an extremely unique coin that many are treating as a proxy bet on the entire Base/Farcaster ecosystem - and you can probably see why. The recent price action supports this as well. Distributed in possibly the most fair and mission-aligned method you could think of, I’m extremely bullish on the future of $degen, and try to add whenever I can (and sometimes it costs me, please don’t let me trade anymore).

I hope this newsletter helped you understand the $degen ecosystem a little bit better - but you can always feel free to reach out with any questions!

BFG

I've been using Metamask since literally the day it came out but recently have been running into more and more issues or concerns (I probably use 'concern' too loosely). On one hand, wallets are super sticky - in a place rife with scams, it's hard to trust a new service with your money. On the other, however, it's important to stay up to date as new tech comes out - and at the end of the day, I want to protect myself as much as possible.

Ultimately, this led me to move to a new wallet - Rabby - which was a very uncomfortable thing to do for me initially when you are talking about a space that takes advantage of people every day. For the first few days, every time I would check my balance I'd hold my breath and hope everything was there - this isn't anything against Rabby, either, but if you've been around long enough, you know how it is. However, after using it for around a week, I'm happy that I made the switch, and I would encourage anyone else still using Metamask to consider doing so as well. I don't have any relationship with Rabby, by the way, I just like to talk about things I use and/or enjoy, as you all know. Of course, if you use Coinbase wallet or something, you may already have your wallet of choice. I personally haven't used it much, so I cant speak to it with confidence.

So why am I glad I made the switch? A few reasons. Feel free to visit their X page here, by the way - and as always, double and triple check that even I linked the correct link. You should always verify things yourself.

Multi-Chain

Rabby supports a lot of different chains, and it gives you a super easy overview of everything you own on any given wallet - regardless of which chain it's on. This is my garbage hot-wallet by the way, so don't look here for alpha (many tokens in here were airdropped to me as scams), but you can see how cool and easy it is.

My favorite part, though, is that it automatically switches network for you as needed. You don't need to mess with swapping RPCs or manually inputting them anymore.

Security

The real reason I am enjoying Rabby, however, is the much improved security experience. First, before you even go to sign any transaction, it will show you common flags (you've never sent to this wallet before, for example). It won't even let you go through with the transaction unless you acknowledge these security concerns first.

Second, it will simulate the transaction for you and show you EXACTLY what you will be sending and receiving. Instead of just blind-signing something, now you get to see the exact assets that will be moving. So if you go to "claim" something, and you suddenly see the transaction simulation show you that all of your NFTs are going to leave your wallet, you can stop that before it happens.

MEV Protection

If you're new, you may not know exactly what this is. But sometimes when you send a transaction with a certain amount of slippage set, for example, bots can frontrun your transaction, buy a token cheaper, then sell it to you at the higher end of your slippage. Technically, you agreed to this, but bots and people take advantage. MEV protection prevents this from happening, and you can turn it on when you go to send a transaction.

Not all wallets are made equal, and I'm sure different use cases call for different things - for example, I still use Phantom for Solana. But overall, I'm glad I took the plunge to try out Rabby and hopefully end up protecting myself from being taken advantage of. If you have been debating making the swap, I would encourage you to check it out. As always, make sure you confirm the links and extensions you are downloading come from the official source.

Bitfloorsghost

It’s time that you get on Farcaster/Warpcast.

Now, before we start, keep in mind that you may see me, or other people, use Farcaster/Warpcast interchangeably. Think of Farcaster as the rails behind the scenes of your e-mail services, and Warpcast as gmail. Most of us use the Warpcast app to participate on Farcaster. So, when you sign up using the link above, you’re signing up for your Warpcast account. It costs 5 dollars or so which some people seem to balk at, but if you are so ingrained in the crypto community that you are reading this letter, that’s probably (hopefully) not you.

With that being said, let’s get into it.

What is Farcaster?

As always, I’d like to direct you to the source first - feel free to do your own reading here and that way you don’t fall subject to my own biases.

Overall, however, think of Farcaster as a decentralized “public social network similar to Twitter and Reddit. Users can create profiles, post "casts" and follow others. They own their accounts and relationships with other users and are free to move between different apps.”

For those of you who have used Reddit before, it’ll have a familiar feel. Instead of just “tweeting” out to the general masses, on Farcaster, there are channels - which you can think of as subreddits. You pick the channel you want to send the message in and go from there. You can subscribe to as many of you like ofc - some of my favorites are /replyguys, /wearesoearly, /itookaphoto, etc.

Why use Warpcast over X?

This is probably the #1 question people have - and in a space where we have all been burnt so many times on “the next social media app” (think Threads), why should you make the jump when all these other ones haven’t worked out?

First, I’d like to state that I joined Farcaster only a little over a month ago, so I certainly am not some expert, and I definitely don’t portend to speak for the community or anything like that. However, I think you’ll find that the fact that I only joined such a short time ago and am enjoying it so much only adds to the credibility of my claim that you should be on Warpcaster over X right now if you’re in the crypto space.

The Friends

One of the biggest things that stands out when it comes to people migrating from X or other social media over to Farcaster is how common it is to hear people talk about the amazing friends and connections they are making - especially just starting out as a smaller account. I’ve been on X for about 4-5 years now, and in that time have amassed a not-too-shabby 11,000 or so “followers” (I hate that term tbh). It’s been a lot of grinding, a lot of getting ignored, and even now it’s hard to get heard on a site that doesn’t always prioritize the best contributors on the platform (not that that’s me).

In the 1 month + I’ve been on Farcaster, I’ve already reached about 7,000 followers (once again, hate that term - I prefer friends), and it’s been a result of doing absolutely nothing different than I already did on X.

Now you might be saying, well of course you can get a lot of followers - you have plenty on X, they just migrate over. Well, that’s where you’re wrong, kiddo. I’d venture that a vast majority of my followers on Farcaster didn’t even know of me before I made the swap - so different is the community. But instead, the reason I feel like I’ve made a lot of connections here is due to one of the best draws of Farcaster overall - the community is much more intimate, insular, and genuine.

Similarly, people who are coming from X with lots of followers - if they aren’t in the trenches replying to people and being genuine, they usually fizzle out pretty quickly. The Farcaster crowd is just different. If you’re just there to extract value, farm followers, etc., you probably won’t qualify for a Power Badge and your posts will probably not get much attention.

Being straight up, 100% honest with you guys - I’ve had more fun in the past month I’ve been on Farcaster than the past 12 years in crypto, and it has nothing to do with money (although that is fun, too). I’ve made more connections and what truthfully feels like more lifelong friends by being a replyguy here than all the years I’ve been on X. I think if you ask around you’ll find I am not in the minority on that.

The Building

There is so much happening on Farcaster at all times - the signal to noise ratio is way better. One of the coolest things taking place on Farcaster are “frames.”

What’s a frame? Let’s just consult the official documents themselves:

A Frame lets you turn any cast into an interactive app.

It’s a standard for creating interactive and authenticated experiences on Farcaster. Create polls, live feeds or interactive galleries inside Warpcast or any other FC client.

Frames extend the OpenGraph standard and turn static embeds into interactive experiences. The diagram below shows the difference between a standard OG and a Frame OG inside Warpcast.

For example - in this frame, I can check my $degen balance by simply clicking a button in my feed:

Or, perhaps you want to mint an NFT directly to your wallet without exposing any information or signing anything at all:

Frames are one of the first things that really drew me into Farcaster and showed me that this wasn’t just your normal “new crypto social media app” flavor of the week.

Frames are a game changer.

The Projects

If you’ve been hanging around even CT for the past few weeks/months, you’ve probably heard about $degen tipping and Onchain Gaias. If you were on Farcaster/Warpcast, though, you probably have already gotten a fat $degen airdrop, and you also probably minted Onchain Gaias for free (floor currently .88 eth).

Did I mention my airdrop from season 2 is worth 23,000 US dollars now?

Did I also mention that small accounts like me and Tervo on Farcaster outearned what some huge accounts (like our friend Ansem) earned on X in a few months when they have 35x the followers? Or that Threadguy outearned himself even?

New social media apps do need incentives to pull users, and I’ll wait while you think of a better one than something like that.

Degen

Degen is basically the currency of Farcaster that makes the world go round - people are constantly tipping it to each other - “lmao good post, 3000 $degen.” The cool thing is that you not only can receive tips from people, but you also get a use it or lose it allowance every day (if you qualify, which you can by reading the FAQ here) to give away. You don’t get to keep any leftovers (and it also doesn’t come from your own received tips), so it really incentivizes people to out, talk to others, and spread the love.

Low effort posts usually don’t get much $degen, so once again, if you’re just farming and people spot you, you’re gonna get rekt.

For more information, check out the official site:

Onchain Gaias

Last but not least, Onchain Gaias - the brainchild of Ciniz and Anton Marrast - was born on Farcaster/Base. In fact, you couldn’t even mint one unless you did it through a frame by having a Warpcast/Farcaster account.

As one of the earlier (or at least, more vocal) supporters of this project, I have an endless amount of things to talk about in regards to it - enough that it should get its own newsletter to explain it all, to be honest. That will be coming out shortly.

In the meantime, what you should know is that it was a free mint available to people on Farcaster who collected Ciniz/Anton’s NFTs that you could mint through a Frame (again, for free). The floor has now risen to .88 as of this writing as people are desperately seeking a native Farcaster PFP - and it’s going to be much more than that.

Check out this great quick explainer to get a basic idea of what is going on:

As I mentioned above, I’ll be putting out some more content soon with more specific information on some of these Farcaster projects - Degen, Onchain Gaias, etc. In the meantime, I can’t recommend enough that you sign up and start making some friends. Hopefully I’ll see you over there.

BFG

That paid off huge for those of us here at RELaiTED, and what better way to get back into things than with the start of a new year, and fittingly, with a prediction thread.

2024 Predictions

The Bitcoin ETF will be approved

This seems almost a formality at this point, but that recent intern newsletter release shows you that reactions will be harsh across the market if the ETF is denied. Really, it’s just the main narrative driving everything right now. It also spawned some takes from people who think it will be denied. It won’t.

An ETH ETF will launch as well

Once the BTC ETF is approved, the flood gates are going to open as regulators signal they are open to crypto like they haven’t been previously. We are going to get an ETH ETF this year as well, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a SOL/other alts ETF follow soon enough.

Solana will outperform Ethereum by almost all meaningful metrics in 2024

These types of tweets have become commonplace over the past few months, and I expect that to continue. Particularly as more and more people come into (and return to) the crypto space, the ability to participate on Solana simply can’t be replicated by Ethereum. As more users enter the crypto space Solana first, or as they switch from other chains, Solana is going to continue to outperform Ethereum in most meaningful metrics, and it will become retail’s chain of choice.

NFTs won’t be as big as they were last cycle

I’m not saying that they won’t have huge rallies and that new NFTs won’t hit aths - just that most older NFTs will never hit ath again, and it’ll be harder to find newer NFTs that really outperform the gains you can get on tokens, etc., at equal risk levels. Even though we are going to have a lot of new market entrants coming in this cycle (as always), I feel like the wool was generally pulled back from our eyes in regards to NFTs and the value they do (and don’t) offer people. Art and PFP NFTs certainly fall into different categories, but personally, I’d rather have a portfolio of tokens than NFTs for this cycle.

Kanpai Pandas and Pudgy Penguins will be the exception

Two projects from “last cycle” that will continue to do well this cycle will be Kanpai Pandas and Pudgy Penguins, largely because they are much more than just PFP projects. Both of these companies are venturing into the real world to find sources of revenue and to become much more than just a cute PFP. Not many people in this space I’d bet on more than Bagz either, tbh.

2024 will be the year of the airdrop

It’s not the first time airdrops became a popular meta, and it hopefully won’t be the last, but I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of what is going to take place this year in regards to airdrops. Just off the top of my head, on Solana alone upcoming we have Jupiter, Dymension, Marginfi, and Tensor, not to mention all the drops coming to Saga holders, different chains, etc. I imagine the airdrops we see this year may shame some of the ones in the past - it’s a great time to be messing around on different blockchains.

We are at the start of the biggest bull we’ve seen yet

I’ve been around the crypto space since 2012 and have been through my fair share of bull markets. Each cycle, people talk about how the next one is ‘the biggest, and the last,’ and so far, only half of that has been true. I’m betting that continues - this won’t be the last cycle, but this one will be the biggest one we’ve seen yet.

RELaiTED will put out more newsletters

I’d love to keep this one going, but I want to get it out before any ETF news decides to get dropped. I hope you all have been having a great Christmas break, and blessings upon your bags!

Bitfloorsghost

It’s been a while since our last update, but what better way to dive back into things than providing you with the tools to take advantage of what many of us believe will be a booming upcoming Solana DeFi bull market! If you’re looking for a chance to qualify for airdrops and farm tokens - this is the document for you.

If you’ve messed around with DeFi on Ethereum before, it’s pretty much the same - except different apps and this time around, no 30 dollar transaction fees to stake and unstake your tokens.

Let’s get into how you can take advantage of this awesome opportunity - or be taken advantage of, hard to say.

Wallets

The first thing you’ll need is a wallet - if you’re familiar with how MetaMask works on Ethereum, it’s the same idea. My recommendation would be to use Phantom, which you can check out here.

Install this bad boy on your browser, create an account, and we are off to the races.

Bridging

Alright, so you have a wallet, but how do we get some SOL on there? You can do it simply by buying SOL on a CEX like Coinbase and sending it to your address, but I’d recommend bridging using a protocol like Mayan Finance - there’s always the chance that you qualify for a future airdrop. Remember, the name of the game is to use as many protocols as you can.

Using Mayan Finance, you’ll simply connect your Metamask Wallet, input how much Eth you want to swap to SOL, select SOL on the Solana Chain, connect your Phantom wallet, and get your swaps in.

Liquid Staking

Now, you can simply stake your SOL on Coinbase for ~4 APY, and your money is going to be safe. Or, you can take the red pill, and dive down into the DeFi rabbit hole to put your money to work for you. This is inherently riskier, but with great risk can come great rewards. The best way to do this is via a liquid staking protocol like Jito or SolBlaze.

Both offer similar APY at ~7.2%APY, but not only are you getting that APY, you are also going to qualify for any future airdrops or boosts that they provide for using their protocols.

For example:

When you stake with Jito or SolBlaze, you’ll get their token in return that represents your staked SOL - either JitoSOL or bSOL, respectively. This is where the fun begins - because now you’re not only gaining the APY, you’re not only qualifying for any future airdrops, but you still have a token you can put to work for you.

Lending

With your newly minted JitoSOL or bSOL, you can now look to put those coins to work themselves to “double dip” on your rewards.

One of the most popular ways to do this is via the lending protocol, Marginfi.

When you head to the Marginfi app, you’ll see a variety of global lending pools - including JitoSOL and bSOL.

You’ll notice it has both bSOL and JitoSOL, but both have hit their cap of deposits and therefore don’t have any more room to accept further bSOL/JitoSOL. The goal here is to wait until Marginfi announces the expansion of deposits, and be one of the first in line to slam your coins into the lending protocol.

Now you’ll probably think to yourself - .06% APY? Why bother?

Remember - the goal here isn’t necessarily the APY, but instead that you will begin accruing Marginfi points - which will enable you once again to qualify for future airdrops or any other unique ways that they want to utilize the points in their ecosystem.

At this point, instead of simply getting ~4% APY on Coinbase, you have:

• Exposure to Mayan Finance and any potential drops they do

• ~7% APY for staking on Jito/Blaze

• Exposure to Jito/Blaze ecosystems for any potential drops they do

• ~.05% APY for staking on Marginfi

• Points on Marginfi that can qualify you for future drops/benefits

Conclusion

And that about wraps it up! While there are a lot of different protocols you can use in the Solana ecosystem, these are the ones I have my eye on in particular. Happy Farming!

On February 9th, a new twitter account named “PROOFEXPOSED” started following a lot of people in the PROOF ecosystem and leaving comments under posts, etc.

The main message of the poster seemed to be that PROOF of Conference was at risk of being canceled, even though everyone was still currently of the belief that things were running smoothly. While I’m sure the documents exist out there still, they weren’t too juicy - they just showed that Proof of Conference was likely going to cost PROOF a substantial amount of money out of pocket that they simply don’t have to spare. I did catch this, though - the order stood out to me a bit tbqh.

Although these posts spread like wildfire in a lot of the PROOF OG refugee side-chats that have popped up over time, they were quickly deleted from the account itself with a new message posting on the Twitter account’s bio - but not before putting the idea in everyone’s head that PROOF was facing more troubles than we already could see from the outside looking in.

Officially Canceled

After a couple short weeks of speculation, the PROOF team came out and announced what at one point was almost unthinkable - Proof of Conference was being canceled due to lack of interest, confirming the “leak” as valid.

While certainly an absolute nightmare from a public relations and optics perspective, as long as anyone’s flights and travel are refunded by PROOF (definitely am interested to hear if this applies to you), it was probably the right move considering the dearth of tickets that were sold and the lack of interest. With price points way too high for their own community members and a struggling project trying to keep afloat in the space overall, there simply wasn’t enough demand.

The community was understandably upset, as Proof of Conference has been heralded for a year now as one of the most important things being executed on by the team.

The disappointment seemed to catch the eye of Kevin Rose, who started to try to get into it with community members by posting and deleting responses to tweets.

Between the cancelation of the conference and a CEO going off on community members, people hit the markets and have been flooring Moonbirds and passes ever since.

Summing It Up

While the Proof of Conference cancelation was massive egg on the face for PROOF, it ultimately seems to be yet another example of the team putting themselves in impossible to win situations. Many of you know me as one of the biggest early supporters of PROOF out there, but over the months I’ve also started to distance myself as I no longer believe in the team’s ability to execute on what they promised. In web3, community is really the only thing that matters, and at this point I don’t know if PROOF will ever regain the community’s trust.

That’s it for today - I hope you have a great week!

bitfloorsghost

As everyone is by now aware, FTX, Alameda, etc., all went under this past week. It all started with a Coindesk article that started drawing a little closer scrutiny to Alameda Research’s balance sheet. Why did that matter?

A few days later, CZ posted this tweet signaling Binance’s intent to sell their FTT position.

At this point, the CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline, tweeted this out, which of course in the world of crypto painted a huge target on their back. It reminds me of the time someone had a huge on-chain short on YFI and all of Crypto Twitter banded together to blow them out.

BTW, this tweet from Caroline was paying homage to a once famous, now infamous tweet from SBF where he and Coinmamba got into it over the value of SOL a couple years ago. Coinmamba was the butt of jokes for a while as SOL ran from 2 dollars to over 200 after that tweet.

Coinmamba ultimately got his revenge in the end, however - sometimes patience is a virtue.

Shortly thereafter, the price of FTT fell below 22, and the whole ponzi began to unravel. But why did that number even matter to begin with?

Withdrawals started to slow and pause on FTX.

Panic and rumors began to spread. Sam tried again to stop the fear.

From here, Sam put out a since-deleted tweet:

"A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors," Bankman-Fried tweeted. "FTX is fine. Assets are fine. FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don't invest client assets (even in treasuries). We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be."

But it couldn’t stop the damage already being done as people flooded towards the exit, eventually resulting in all withdrawals being paused.

Eventually, everyone was aware of what was going on, and it was apparent that FTX/Alameda were going under. Sam came out and said that they had come to an agreement to be acquired by Binance, and by this point everyone was aware things were pretty dire, but there was a sliver of hope. CZ’s tweet, however, mentioned that the deal was contingent upon the whole thing passing due diligence - and the markets reflected all of these sentiments by first rallying and then dropping again significantly.

One day later, the deal was announced as off, and by that point, everything had imploded on SBF’s end.

A day after that, and once one of crypto’s most shining stars and companies were snuffed out as SBF declared bankruptcy.

Everyone thought that was pretty much that - the damage was done, there would be contagion and other companies shuttering, but FTX and Alameda were gone, and eventually this stuff would work its way through the legal system. Friday night PST, however, things started to heat up again.

There was even an update pushed out to the FTX app that appeared malicious that happened at the same time.

I obviously don’t know what is going to happen from this point, and it will be quite a while before the ripple effect from these events fully dissipate. What I do know, however, is that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened before in our ecosystem, and it won’t be the last. Obviously the magnitude of what FTX/Alameda has done is enormous, but it comes at a time when crypto is much more mature than it was when, say, Mt. Gox got robbed of 850,000 bitcoins and people thought crypto might be dead forever. We’re far beyond that point now, which is why I don’t remain too concerned about where we go from here price wise in the short term as there is no doubt in my mind that Ethereum and crypto are here to stay.

In fact, I’ve turned up my own personal DCA and feel pretty bullish of late on crypto as a whole, even though that may sound ridiculous - and maybe it is. But I invest with a long-term time horizon, and the bottom line is that the best trades I’ve ever made in crypto are contrarian ones, so I guess I don’t have a choice.

The FTX situation is going to continue to evolve, so I’ll see you next week with another update! That’s it for today - have a great week!

bitfloorsghost

I’d like to start off today’s newsletter by thanking everyone who reached out to me yesterday, either in Discord, via Twitter, e-mail, DM, or other methods. I really appreciate all the kind words, and it makes me feel like I am doing my job as a simple newsletter writer in terms of having a good idea of what the community is feeling at times. I appreciate all of you very much, and I hope to continue representing you well.

I’ll be honest - I knew yesterday’s newsletter would probably drum up some conversation, but even I was kind of blown away by the (generally) positive reception to it. It led to one of the best conversations that we have seen in the lounge to date, as it was obvious that the topics mentioned were on people’s minds - they were just looking for a chance to feel comfortable broaching the subject. And yesterday’s edition of Proof of Update certainly provided that, as shortly after it went out the lounge became more active than I’ve ever seen it outside of the CC0 fud debacle.

The entire morning yesterday in PROOF’s Moonbird’s lounge was poppin’ as people voiced their opinions, specifically around the idea of equity in PROOF Holdings, Inc., and how many long-term community members who held since mint (whether it was the PROOF pass, Moonbirds, or Oddities) had hoped to have a shot at obtaining a “piece of the pie” instead of it being handed over to traditional VCs in the web2 mold in another situation of the rich get richer.

At first, there was some pushback on the idea that we as community members even had the risk-tolerance for such an investment.

However, I think most of us would agree that this sentiment is misplaced - I’d argue that most NFT investors have far higher risk-tolerance than a fund receiving equity in a company, and that the latter is far less risky than buying a jpeg. Similarly, we are always told that this is a long-term game even as NFT holders, so the time-horizons for people buying NFTs “long term” and those who would seek an investment in PROOF Holdings, Inc., itself would generally align.

Some members of the community agreed, and while that is not in any way a reliable poll, I can unequivocally state that somewhere in the realm of 99% of PROOF NFT holders would trade their NFT in for real equity in the company were they offered the opportunity. The question then became, would we ever have that opportunity?

Part of the ethos of web3 is community ownership - no longer being a “product” of some megacorporation that sells your community to investors, but rather being able to own that corporation and value yourself. This quickly became the topic of conversation - as after all, there had to be some reason that a16z wanted equity and didn’t instead sweep the Collective/Moonbird/Oddities floor. And I think the answer is simple there - they know the value is in the company itself.

So it’s only logical that a company extolling the virtues of web3 would be offering that equity to community members over traditional funds - otherwise, what is the difference between these companies and every company in the past like Facebook? While there had been some hand-wringing and beating around the bush, my good pal Bobby got straight to the point asking for clarity on whether the team sees holders as investors or not, which Stevey responded to below:

While we did receive the answer that we are not viewed as investors as simple NFT holders, this doesn’t mean that the community never could be investors, as many in the NFT space are accredited investors to begin with. After all, Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) exist for exactly this reason - to allow a bunch of accredited investors to combine funds and invest directly in a company itself. Check this out for more information on SPVs. So that begged the question - is this something PROOF had interest in?

While it appears they aren’t taking any more investments right now, that doesn’t mean they won’t in the future - and perhaps this whole conversation got the ball rolling in at least letting the team know about how much people want this opportunity. In a similar vein, I’m sure any community members offered the opportunity to invest in PROOF Holdings, Inc., would also be happy to not ask for any board seats - a sentiment echoed in the lounge. Truthfully, it’ll be very interesting to find out exactly what A16Z did get, as I’m sure the details will leak out eventually.

In the end, we had a lot of great conversation, and we had some great responses from the team overall that show the door has been opened to this conversation going forward.

Finally, while a lot of great talks took place yesterday, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every NFT company should offer equity to their community members even if that would be the web3 way - as no two projects are the same, either in scope or in terms of how far along they are in their own timeline - a fact I even addressed in the lounge.

It just seems to me and a large part of the community that this type of model would fit very well with the mission that PROOF espouses, even if it wouldn’t necessarily make sense everywhere else. Going forward, I hope that we can continue to have these types of conversations and always work to ensure that the community is the first priority when it comes to value-return in everything that a team does. With that said, I will leave you with a great write-up from Mattness of Poorbirds.

That’s it for today - I hope you have a great Wednesday!

bitfloorsghost

Before we kick off what indubitably will be quite a spicy edition of Proof of Update, I wanted to mention another spicy item of news - yesterday we released the Odds and Ends episode featuring the crew from @hotwings_xyz, @kevinthomaschen and @jhzorro! Check it out below as we dive into movies, their work with Hot Wings Collective live events, and just the future of blockchain technology overall on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify, respectively.

Yesterday, a good friend and EightBit community member @whel8033 wrote a great article regarding what NFTs are as an investment, and it really serves as a great launch point for today’s newsletter. Oddly enough, I had this newsletter ready to fire off for a few days, so it was just perfect timing tbh. I really suggest you check this out below before continuing:

Similarly, a while back I wrote a newsletter regarding some things that I thought the PROOF team could improve going forward, aptly titled Constructive Criticism. If you missed it, you can check it out here:

PROOF of Update

Constructive Criticism

Read more

4 years ago · 10 likes · Bitfloorsghost

I wasn’t sure how it was going to be received as everyone knows I’m a huge PROOF fanboy, and I certainly didn’t want to give the impression that I “lost the faith” so to speak. And as we all know, sometimes in the NFT world things can get a bit tribal with people feeling personally offended whenever someone criticizes “their bags.” Regardless, I felt there were some areas to improve, so I put it out anyway. Interestingly enough, it became (and still is) my most popular newsletter edition to date.

At that point, I realized that just simply being honest about things was the way to go, particularly with a community that is as mature as the PROOF community - I’ve often heard our community referred to as “the grown-ups in the NFT space,” which is quite a fitting title. From that point forward, I promised myself I would be honest about my take on things, bullish or otherwise. So today’s newsletter is going to be exactly that - my honest opinion on an issue I keep seeing people mention regarding the value accrual to our PROOF NFTs, specifically the idea of…

Value Accrual by Association

In my piece titled “Constructive Criticism,” I laid out three major concerns I had regarding the PROOF team and its vision for where the project was heading: namely communication, focus, and the DAO. While it seems some strides have been made in the area of communication, there have also been some steps taken backwards as the weekly parliament that we have all come to love is no longer a promised thing. Understandably, weekly parliaments were never the intention from the team - they just kind of happened and started to become an expectation. But I’d obviously be remiss to say that communication has improved if one of our favorite aspects of the team hit the chopping block on the priority list for them.

We also haven’t really received much more information on the DAO - something that I thought was important to launch more quickly than not (and yes, I know rushing things is never a great idea) as everything in this space is a competition for attention, including community creators. However, the real focus I want to discuss today was item #2: focus. Here is a little snippet of what I wrote regarding that in my previous piece:

I get the impression sometimes that a lot of the talk about value accrual for the community (and their NFTs) is some secondary, tangential benefit by being part of the PROOF ecosystem, and as long as PROOF grows as a brand, then people will want to buy the NFTs we have. I’m pretty comfortable in speaking for a decent amount of the community here (and you let me know if I’m wrong) in saying that that is definitely not what people are expecting in terms of returns of value. That would just be an expected bonus on top of what the real expectations are - that the team keeps the existing community in mind, and keeps them central to everything they do. Now I’m not saying that all of these expectations are fair or right, but they are the expectations out there, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

As you can see, my concern here is that the team’s main plan for value accrual for our NFTs is the idea of “Value Accrual by Association” - the idea that if PROOF becomes a major company, people will naturally want to join our community and buy our NFTs. While I have had people reach out to me voicing this concern plenty of times, I always kind of pushed back thinking that it was too antithetical to web3 of a direction to take for it to be the case for a company that extols the merits of web3 and community. But the longer time goes on, and the more I hear from the team regarding it, I get more concerned that it’s a major part of the plan for returning value back to us, the holders. For example, with the launch of PROOF’s new website yesterday, this tagline sits front and center:

Perhaps I am reading into it too much, but it seems that there has been this notable pivot from the team working to create value for the PROOF NFT holders, to the idea that they will provide the tools and resources for community members to do it themselves by building a media company of sorts.

Take the clip from BloombergTV with Kevin Rose the other day for example where he discusses PROOF as a media company, which I link below to the relevant part regarding utility of our NFTs:

Basically, Kevin said the following (emphasis mine):

“I think this is a very new idea and concept for people to wrap their head around. For the very first time, you actually have and collect something that is a core piece of ownership of a project. Oftentimes as these projects become more and more popular, value accrues back to these NFTs as collectable pieces of art.”

I certainly don’t speak for everyone, but as I mentioned above in the newsletter that I put out over a month ago, unfortunately, I don’t believe that most of the community is on board with this being the main value proposition for our Moonbirds, Oddities, and Collective Passes - specifically since Moonbirds for example was touted as a utility-heavy NFT, not just a collectible. To be honest, the idea that a large portion of the value we can expect coming back to us is simply because we hold a piece of artwork from some future media corporation is somewhat the antithesis of Web3 where the whole idea is community ownership. It very much reminds me of when Coinbase hit the scene many years ago - we all knew it would be huge, and so we wanted to invest in the company itself. But instead, they went with private fund raises, and as usual, once they IPO’d all of the early investors who were let in privately got to dump their bags on us - a web2 tale as old as time.

While I am not sure what the future will bring for all of us in the PROOF community and our NFTs, I’m still a huge fan of the project and the team. However, I do think there are still some very valid questions and concerns regarding how value will return to us as community members considering that a large portion of the PROOF team’s treasury came from the Moonbirds mint and PROOF the company largely continues to be built off of the funding that we provided.

While they have also accepted more funding from various other entities, this doesn’t necessarily translate to value for us, the holders, and in fact brings up even more questions in regards to whether or not they now need to consider driving value back to their shareholders (a dirty word in web3) before the community. Hopefully, going forward, we can get some more clarity regarding these extremely important issues. If not, there may be more bumpy roads ahead.

Extras

Pretty wild move by MagicEden. The royalty wars continue.

PROOF doubles down on the idea of “community empowerment” with their latest website redesign.

That’s all for today - I hope you have a great Tuesday!

bitfloorsghost