The Salutary Whitepaper has been released!
Read on the website: https://t.co/IFpMLOI4UJ
Link to 'Stackhouse version of it in the comments. Pls share with a loved one :)
Build For Weight
completely deserved. magical thinking stacked on top of vapor. corrupt assets produce corrupt incentives and corrupt behaviors follow suit. rampant manipulation and fraud are the norm because that's the only way to make money when the assets are uninvestable and unaccountable.
zero enforcement of anything, the whole industry thinks everything is a math problem. it's completely unmoored from reality because it views reality as the enemy: aka atoms, aka things that don't live on blockchains (a fancy word for inefficient databases with unicorn branding).
any semblance of adult accountability to make the assets investable is greeted with more magical thinking.
Peter Pan onchain.
Build Ethereum, not a bank. Be Aztec, not arbiscrollasetimismnet. Have an unconditional exit window of some non-zero duration, preferrably infinity.
If you're a user or an app? Just stay on mainnet.
Crypto VCs will tweet "where are all the visionary founders??" then fund another sports betting interface because an identical one closed a round last month and they weren't in it. The founder is 23, went to MIT, did a year at Citadel, and Paradigm is already in.
Building in crypto in 2026, you have exactly four options:
— Build hypergambling and call it financial democracy — Rebuild TradFi with a compliance layer and a token
— Leave for AI and retroactively pretend you always cared about agents
— Build something genuinely new and get treated like a science fair project
Almost everyone picks the first three because VCs will actually fund those...
BTW, since Miladies are back in the news...
I would encourage you to read the greatest thread ever written on them, from @BackTheBunny (one of my top 5 favorite threads of all time on this site):
https://t.co/4ZRI2pchfu
our value accrual is it's not worth anything and does nothing. but sometimes we reduce the supply of nothing and make more less of it. this makes nothing more valuable, because when you make scarcer nothing, it makes nothing worth something👍
Uniswap getting some other organization to buy their worthless tokens does not make the revenue-less token any less worthless
LayerZero is on the right track; guiding towards $100 million of ARR in 2026, understanding that the market wants value attached to the tokens now
>Debate whether or not to chime in on recent CT algo drama
>@BackTheBunny already penned a poignant foundational analysis of the cultural drivers behind the debate
1. Go read his article
2. Not seeing this post until now is why I'm "pro GM suppression"
Financial Savages: A History of M&A and its Strategies
You find out how a business instrument really works, and why it’s worth something, when you learn how it’s used by the guys who have the ability to shake some trees. Does the company have to listen to you because you hold its asset? Or can they say “Meh, shoo shoo, don’t care”.
PE firms and activist investors are the unsung heroes of markets. They are the Batmans watching in the shadows who step in if a company is mismanaged or if stock price grows disconnected from business value. They don’t target someone for no reason, and almost always have a very good point to make - and they enforceably make it by holding enough of the stock.
And even when they lose… they still kinda win: some concessions or change in company behavior happens and shareholders benefit. They keep the company accountable by way of wielding an enforceable asset. You cannot ignore Carl Icahn, you cannot brush aside KKR.
Because the credible threat of M&A and board control always looms, and because those capitalist Batmans are always watching, stocks track underlying business earnings. The cash flow statement and balance sheet show up in the equity - fundamentals matter and you can invest in the company, as the stock is an investable asset.
Stocks do not have to, and often don’t, pay any dividends and you have no “right” to one unless the board says you do. The “claim on cashflows” description is an academic platitude that does not manifest in reality. But… they always effect enforceable control.
DeFi “project” tokens (a childish turn of phrase, you are a business who doesn’t act like it) are not investable assets. They are trading beans with no rights and no reason to be worth anything. They are vibe units whose reason for existence is selling them to someone else for more than you paid. Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
Crypto thinks manipulating a number and dumping on a greater fool is what investing is - demonstrating they do not comprehend what makes an asset truly worth something. So much nonsense pours out of these false pretenses.
They LARP as if the token is a stock by frivolously deploying equity concepts (e.g. market cap, buybacks, P/E ratios), when the token has zero stock characteristics!
“Did you know buybacks are tax advantaged and companies prefer them, do a buyback for your token”… thank you counsel, quick question: is the token a stock? Do you actually understand why buybacks work for equities? You cannot just vibeaciously (when one is guided only by vibes) abstract that same concept to any asset!
Why does the equity reflect the value of the issuing company, but DeFi tokens do not? It’s because the tokens lack enforceable control, binding connective tissue, over the companies that issue them.
The raw mechanics of value accrual are laid bare by examining the history, methods, and outcomes of M&A - and how stocks concretely work.
New post, see comments.
everyone slowly "discovering" what's already been discovered
sticking assets on different databases doesn't change the nature of why assets are worth anything.
stop saying "token" and say "asset". stop saying "blockchain", say "database"
it will solve a lot of magical thinking
On buybacks: I've realized you can open-source the answer, show the history, walk through the financial math... and vanishingly few will absorb it.
People need to experience lessons to comprehend them. Understanding isn’t transmitted. It’s incurred.
People don’t internalize reality until ignoring it becomes painful. You can't just hand them answers; they don't internalize them until they're made to suffer the consequences of magical thinking.
They must endure why the absence of the correct behavior is wrong. They need to feel pain first before they learn anything.
This is what healthy pain looks like. Still not enough though. More examples in comments.
We’re officially confirming the $BLINK launch model.
$BLINK will launch using the @BuildForWeight (Salutary) Standard, supported by a Tax Decay Curve.
This decision defines how governance and accountability work for BlinkBot going forward.
We will publish a clear breakdown shortly covering:
> What the Salutary Standard is
> How the Tax Decay Curve works
> Why we chose this structure
Turn notifications on. Full explanation incoming.
If you never read this thread from @BackTheBunny when it came out I highly recommend doing so...
One of the most poignant things I've ever read on this site...
Heavily influenced my view of AI, life, my INT vs WIS thoughts, and just my own experience on this earth as a human: