Wall Street taught me how to invest. Crypto made me question the systems we invest in. What began as an interest in a new asset class and technology became something much bigger: how money works, who gets to participate, and what we might build differently. @__comma__

We are all ordinary heroes. Heroes are all around us. Joseph Campbell (h/t @TheAnnaGat)

"If we were to drop four of the formative founding fathers into today's culture (let's say George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, and maybe let's throw John Adams in there too), what would they say we should do to improve the parts of our political, cultural, and economic systems, frankly, today that aren't working as well as they should be? A lot of people are talking about how things are broken but we're having trouble finding a solution. Assume that we read them in on all the technology and that they're up to speed in our current technological and cultural context give me a summary as well on what they would agree on. Treat them as a board and they have to come to a consensus and a combined recommendation or recommendations. What would they say?"

7/ Projects are sending real value back to tokenholders. Crypto projects with the biggest token supply overhangs (which inflate FDV relative to market cap) are the ones running the most aggressive buyback programs. E.g., @HyperliquidX routes 90%+ of fees to buybacks.

6/ Valuations are cheap, on revenue set to expand dramatically. The strongest crypto applications trade at software multiples - with dramatically higher frontier growth potential. The leaders have continued to compound through the last boom and this bust.

5/ Fundamentals have decoupled from price. Usage is at ATHs while prices are down (-50%) to (-90%) for many apps.

4/ The narrative is that crypto collapsed. The narrative is wrong. Onchain transactions went 5x from last bear market, and 3x from the 2021 peak. Stablecoins & RWAs are at ATHs. The “collapse” was really just a price cut to use the infrastructure - a positive demand tailwind.

3/ Application layer revenue is >30x last bear market. Application revenue went 30x while blockchain revenue halved. This is because blockchains did what they were always supposed to do: become abundant and nearly free. Value moved up a layer - a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

2/ Value has shifted from blockchains to the application layer. Applications went from <5% of all crypto revenue in the last bear market to 74% today, and have out-earned the blockchains every month since May 2025.

Strange price action in crypto today despite rate hike odds jumping to 80%+ Yesterday, if I had given you the exact outcome of the CPI report + rate hike odds on Polymarket, I bet you wouldn't have guessed crypto green on the day Just goes to show how complex markets are

I bet we get another Iran reversal announcement before the Fed decision, driven by the ugly charts

Two technologies. One transformation. AI makes intelligence abundant. What happens to the systems built for a world where it was scarce?

The tools change, but the creative act remains human. An essential question that we're not asking enough: What becomes possible when we embrace new technology without losing our humanity? @RickRubin at The Conversation, presented by Abridge Studios (2025).