Semui.eth

Learning about the Network.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Thread of threads for @unicmetaverse META-511 ✍️, led by @punk6529 and @giaglis.

This course was filled with learnings about trends in NFTs, the Metaverse, and how we really need to be thoughtful about our increasingly digital future.

378 tweets in total. Hope it is useful. 🙏

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

I can afford ETH again

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Interesting comparison to the early days of the web.

What is to AI, which the search engine was to the browser?

https://t.co/zX9AbaPpPG

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

@reylarsdam still here 🫡 👋

[blocknoob 🦇🔊⌐🆇-🆇 @blocknoob_]

Worried about the country doxx

Join us at https://t.co/ToOlkLOmPP

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Ethereum

It’ just an immutable, public ledger of account that verifiably captures transactions between accounts in the network.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Worth reading, and reading again.

The value of a network increases with more participants.

Participation increases when folks sense something meaningful is being built.

And decentralization is strengthened by each additional participant.

[6529 @punk6529]

1/ On Losing Faith

Is it over?
Was it all a fever dream?
Have we run out of steam?
Is it time to pivot to AI for real this time?

2/ Everything is dead?

BTC: DAT premiums down, nobody cares
ETH: Stablecoin
Alts: Crushed
NFTs: Right click saved
Meme coins: As expected tbh
Zcash: Pumping! which ofc means "cycle is over"

3/ This is the worst cryptotwitter timeline I have ever seen relative to the environment.

Nobody is attacking us, USA is being reasonable and rational, no CEX has run away with our money, and yet, dead, dead, dead.

No narrative, no spark, nothing.

4/ Why?

I read the timeline and it tells me:

a/"nobody owns BTC" (odd, I mean someone has to own BTC, there is a ton of BTC)

and

b/ "the gamblers have liquidated themselves (again)" - true, but it was always like this

5/ This TL feels different. This does not feel like
"fuck I got liquidated", it feels like malaise, tiredness.

Like boredom, to be honest.

I know you think it is the price action but the price action is obviously downstream from psychology.

6/ I have a different view of what is going on.

I think almost everyone forgot what matters, chased after things that did not matter and, we are in the process of discovering they don't matter.

7/ What matters? Only decentralization, only permissionlessness. Nothing else matters at all.

Everything else about crypto is WORSE than a centralized database and always will be because that is how computers work.

8/ In my view, basically everyone "major" except vitalik has strayed from the light on this.

Let's start with Team BTC which USED to be very interested in how to build a network that become nation-state resistant.

This was the BTC of Antonopoulos, of Lopp

9/ We are 5 years into the BTC of Saylor and that BTC is 100% about driving price action.

It is about driving flows to BTC, about getting fully integrated with the USA financial system.

10/ It sounds nice, it sounds better than the system beating us with a big stick, but the net effect is that more and more BTC ends up in Coinbase Custody in New York State

Nothing wrong with that, but none of that BTC is nation-state resistant.

It is 100% non-resistant to the US government specifically.

11/ The problem with this is that with permissionlessness off the table, the only thing left to drive purchases of BTC is FOMO.

"there are only 21M, they are going to run out, you need to buy some before others do and it goes exponential"

12/ I mean, maybe that is true.

I am not making price predictions, I still own BTC and always will I think.

But it is cringe, and it is wrong.

13/ You can think about this by taking it to the extreme case and trying to understand which of the two scenarios adds value to the world.

14/

Scenario A: Blackrock owns all 21M BTC, everyone on planet earth owns shares in the Blackrock ETF and Brian Armstrong is in charge of making sure we don't lose Our Precious

Scenario B: Everyone on earth has their own BTC wallet and BTC is distributed in several billion places around the world and it is literally impossible for any government to stop BTC

15/ In Scenario A, BTC is a complete and utter failure. It is just a pet rock. Yes it is "rare" but it is also "100% seize-able by the USA government"

At which point, it might as well be an IOU from the USA government that it pinky-swears is rare

16/ "but it is not like this because other nation-states are accumulating and game theory blah blah blah"

No my brothers and sisters.

The exact scenario where your BTC get seized is a) centralized and b) hyperbitcoinization

Maybe the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is happening and it is your ETF and $STRATEGY (TM) capital stack all along (thank you for your contribution to our national security)

17/ To be clear, nobody is seizing your BTC (let alone your ETH) now because it is not important enough yet.

But, if it was, I dunno, I would not trust those centralized vehicles.

CEO, Board, shareholders, SEC, US government, state government, custody firm, their regulators all have an angle of attack on a DAT.

18/ If USA seizes BTC, other countries won't save you:

EU: "Thank god our dreams have come true, we can ban it also"

UAE: "grumble grumble, but fine we will go along"

China: "ban. unban. ban. unban. anyway so long as currency is not free-floating, BTC won't be free here"

Russia: "someone falls out of a window"

19/ Of course, BTC in ETFs is by no means the worst of it. The "crypto's main use is a casino" crowd is the worst.

This is not a zero-sum game, it is a negative sum game because it is rigged.

20/ "what about the JPGs huh?" -> I still love them.

The best ones are the best tokens in the world by far, rare, suffused with meaning, with no external dependencies and great to hold on-chain.

And beyond the art JPGs, I think that NFTs can do many more things, but this is on me to "show, not tell"

21/ I want to circle back to BTC because it is the easiest to reason about.

When people explained to me time and time again that it was a ponzi, I had a simple explanation of why it is not.

21/ BTC lets you do some things better than the existing system. "be sovereign over your money" or "send money to anyone on the planet within minutes" or "maintain an insurance policy against the existing financial system"

22/ I could not tell you how much value this had, but I knew it was not zero.

In fact, the value went up the more people used it, the bigger the network was, the more people you could transact with, the more resilient it was to government censorship.

These are the economics of a network system, not of a ponzi.

23/ If you take this away, if you stop building a network but instead just, at the extreme, just sell everyone shares of the ETF, well there is no network, there is no incremental network value being generated by the next buyer.

24/ In this model, BTC becomes more ponzi-like.

If a new participant does not make the network stronger by joining, they are not adding value, therefore there is a fixed pie and it is just value transfer to an existing holder.

25/ Again, take it to the extreme other direction -> assume we managed to move the whole economy to decentralized rails.

I think that world would be better, it would make better decisions, it would take advantage of the wisdom of crowds, there would be more transparency, less rent-seeking and the aggregate value of the world goes up because it is more productive.

Some % of the improved value of the world will get captured by the early participants to the network (which is normal and fair) but some % will be captured by everyone (as a late participant or consumer).

26/ But if we don't make the world better, if the world is exactly what it is, but also we play with a pet rock, this will not happen and, well, eventually playing with pet rocks gets very boring

27/ So what to do?

The same things you always should do:

a/ push yourself, and by extension, the world an inch, a foot, a mile down the pathway of decentralization.

many ways to do this, it is a journey, start today.

b/ remember, you, yes, you in the mirror have no business trading perps or day-trading stupid coins.

you are bad at it and your future self will be mad at your current self.

28/ If you must do it, carve out a budget and test how great you are across the cycle with your budget (1%, 5%, 10%, 20% of your portfolio, not all of it)

I am of course a dinosaur, but my total portfolio % of "putting money into stupid coins I have been FOMOed into it" is less than 1%. It has gone about as well as you might expect.

29/ Other than that, own some BTC, some ETH, some NFTs (good ones, that you like) in a self-custodial wallet, a small number of your favorite alts if you must.

And keep your job. Earn money, don't try to be a pro crypto trader, this is an imaginary job that only cobie and like 5 other people are qualified for.

I have always worked, every single day of my adult life. You should too.

30/ Crypto is a bad way to get rich quick, but a decent way to get rich slowly. In any case, you should have some stake in the decentralized world, in the digital world.

31/ I think in the end, "it" will be OK but "it" it not everything, it is not most things. As it always was, most coins will go to zero, most NFTs will go to zero. These are the rules of the game.

32/ Most of you are young. You have time, you have time into the ASI world, you have the greatest gift and wealth of all. You will be ok.

33/ Don't mope. It does not help anything. If you are bummed out, sad about your outcomes, there is only one sure thing that helps.

Get back to working.

34/ Even if you are young, life is short, your life is the important thing, money is just a game, just a tool, just an information system.

Don't anchor to your wealth, don't anchor to your ATH, it is not real, my ATH wealth has gone down 90% multiple times. Note it and just keep going.

If you are healthy, in a decent country, in a half-decent economic situation, you are better off than almost anyone who has ever lived

35/ If you have an opinion (even a dumb one) about Monad or Grifters, you are in the 0.001% most forward thinking people in the world.

Did you make a "mistake"?

Who cares, everyone makes mistakes - keep going, keep trying, keep making mistakes, eventually you will find your way, you will get a win.

This is how it goes.

36/ use a hardware wallet and even better a SAFE

37/ and to close again with the most important thing. decentralization is the only thing that matters.

if you go in that direction, if we go in that direction, in the end, it will be ok.

i have no doubt about this, i have never had any doubts about this, it matters so much more than you think it does.

/the end

[DappRadar @DappRadar]

After seven years, it's time to say goodbye.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

@DappRadar Very sorry to hear this. Thank you for all that you have done for the space.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

This was unimaginable just a few years ago

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Taiwan's Central Bank To Explore Bitcoin Reserves, Pilot BTC Holdings https://t.co/h4NSNEudCd

[RΞY @reylarsdam]

Any day creating art is a good one 👊🔥

[⛓ @chainszy]

the best art this space has produced came from people who had no idea if anyone would buy it. they just made it because they had to. because the vision wouldn't leave them alone. because creating was the only way to process what they were feeling. that's the energy that builds culture. not calculated plays for engagement. not trend chasing. not trying to figure out what the market wants. just pure expression. pure vision. and somehow that's the thing that resonates most. because humans can tell the difference between art made to sell and art made because it had to exist. one feels empty even when it's technically impressive. the other feels alive even when it's rough around the edges. collect the thing that's alive. everything else is just decoration

[Documenting Saylor @saylordocs]

“If I put $100 in Bitcoin in 2010 I’d have $2.8B now.”

No.

If you bought $100 of Bitcoin in 2010 and watched it go to:

$1k → $100k → $1.7M

and did nothing

Then watched $1.7M go to $170k

and still did nothing

Then watched $170k go to $110M

and still did nothing

Then watched $110M wither to $18M

and still did nothing

Then watched $18M surge to $390M

and still did nothing

Then watched $390M deteriorate to $85M

Then watched $85M climb to $1.6B

and still did nothing

Then watched $1.6B shrink to $390M
and still did nothing

Then watched $390M surge to $2.8B

and then for some reason finally decided to do something…

Then yes, $100 in 2010 would be worth $2.8B today.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

The storage issue remains an existential threat to NFTs.

What’s the point of provenance if it points to an empty box in 10 years?

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Going down the ipfs rabbit hole and counting how many nodes are publicly pining certain NFTs.

So far I see as few as 2.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

@mintface @0xCuttlefish Oof, that’s painful.. need to check it out

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Are there any major NFT collections that are actual broken links now?

Seen screenshots, but I’ve never actually seen it in the wild yet.

Is it because most platforms have cached images?

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

@mintface That’s a very nice one indeed.

I’m partial to the pilots 🧑‍✈️

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

Purely subjective, but I haven’t seen one “bargain” for a 2021 pfp in months.

The kind where the aesthetics stand out and make you want to hang it on a wall.

This makes me think the buyers and sellers with certain tastes are already done.

To everyone their own, though.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

I like to browse NFT collections on days like these 📉

[DGMD.6529 @DGMD22]

Kinda funny to see a sudden wave of OG Bitcoiners (who likely sold the majority of their stack last 12 months) pivot and start shilling ZCash as a 'Better Bitcoin'.

Privacy is an important niche here, but there are many holes here that people are turning a blind eye to. First of all, ZCash is pretty OG itself but that still doesn't mean it has a moat around privacy, not anywhere the same that Bitcoin does around being an irreplicable store of value. There will be many forms of privacy coins as the meta continues to slow burn, and many of those will diffuse mind share and capital.

Additionally, privacy is great but if you are gonna hold ZCash, you better have conviction to hold through multiple -90% dips. Regulatory bodies are NOT going to be accepting of it the same way they have now become to bitcoin. That's not to say governments are right, privacy can be a right in itself, but they will fight it hard... and that will be reflected in multiple brutal shakeouts.

At the end of the day, Bitcoin as a SoV and as a currency that is actually being accepted globally at all levels is still likely to accrue the most massive value over time. There are still the ongoing concerns over Quantum, etc. but I have the same view as Saylor on this - as concerns arise, as do anti-Quantum solutions - Banks, finance, governments are at way higher risk to be hacked and chaos ensue than Bitcoin at this point.

[Semui.eth @iamSemui]

I like to browse NFT collections on days like these 📉