I‘m stunned by this observation > Public blockchains, through making visible latent forces such as financing, unequal returns, or scarce and valuable ownership, are bringing long existing dynamics to the surface to be scrutinized. These forces are not new, they are nude. Too little has been written about this. This is Venkatesh‘s idea of blockchains mandating forgiveness not undoing from the user in yet another form. On blockchains nothing can be hidden, and so all the ugliness of the „meritocracy“ surfaces as data on the ledger. Thought you were good at making money? Well, guess again because you can also see your friend‘s account and he just made a killing on the latest memecoin. It‘s always been like that - true. But, so far, there was always more of a choice whether I buy and then show up in a Ferrari - thanks to my private bank account. Now, a lot of this information, be it directed at individuals or groups, is just there, onchain.
Having read almost all posts from Simon in this series, I feel like this one is really the best yet. It‘s crazy, but every Sunday when I read Simon‘s post I feel this unique feeling of being inspired. idk what it is that he puts in there :D Anyways, when I read it this afternoon, having to concentrate a lot, because it is packed with seemingly weeks or months of thought, there are so many great cultural observations, so much to unpack and so many interpretable metaphors! But I just went back to it and re-read it and found yet another bag of ideas!
Very interesting post; I like the idea of choosing two longer pieces and wrapping the whole issue around them. I found the observations about Hollywood particularly intriguing. I have been casually following the filmmaking industry and knew that the game was rigged, but the fact that studios don't even share viewership is crazy. Taking business ethics aside, how can you make your work better as a writer if you don't get feedback? Re: protocolization, I agree that many people might not be ready for this level of transparency. I remember when Facebook became a thing, and suddenly, people's popularity became quantified and public. So everyone could see that the most popular person in your college has 3,000 friends whereas some more shy person have 200. It was weird for quite a long time. I remember, as a 19-year-old, being so happy to get my friend requests accepted by cool people because everyone could now see that we were friends, which raised my social status. It's kind of an embarrassing thing to admit, but this is how it worked for me back then. As for blockchains, I think that this transparency is what made NFTs so hated. 2 years ago, I wrote: "I think that a significant part (5-15%) of NFT hate comes from the fact that blockchain lets us follow enormous amounts of $ involved in this space. People can't easily follow TradArt sales, Chanel bags spend, or the luxury real estate market, so it doesn't trigger them so much." (linkrel: https://x.com/MacBudkowski/status/1490441447350407171) And I think this observation also works for trading, just like you Tim pointed out. It's much different from stock portfolios where I don't even know what my friends invested in :) PS: Super happy to discover that Kiwi and the pricing algo got a shoutout from Simon!