Stoebel

@gothburz Well written and appreciate the honesty. I quickly bought art (like photos from photographers rather than avatar collections. Partly because I didn’t have the money for most NFTs and because I think the real value is proving ownership of a work. Financially my portfolio is worh 0

My net worth peaked at $1.2 million. None of it was real. I don't mean that philosophically. I mean it was located on servers that have since been turned off. I own eleven properties in the metaverse. Three in Decentraland. Four in The Sandbox. Two in Voxels. One in Otherside. And a beachfront villa in Horizon Worlds that I bought for $214,000 because Mark Zuckerberg called it "the next frontier." The frontier closed last week. It's a mobile app now. Last year I mass DM'd 340 people the phrase "you don't understand how early we are." I have since stopped doing that. Not because I was wrong. Because most of them blocked me. I got into metaverse real estate in November 2021. Everyone was buying. Someone paid $450,000 to be Snoop Dogg's neighbor. In a video game. With no legs. The avatars didn't have legs. I thought that was bullish. "The legs are coming," I told my Discord. "Legs are a roadmap item." Three hundred people reacted with rocket emojis. I called myself a "digital land baron." I put it in my Twitter bio. I put it in my LinkedIn headline. I said it on a podcast that had eleven listeners. Three of them were bots. The rest were my alts. My virtual property has more square footage than my actual apartment. My actual apartment has furniture. Location, location, location. My most valuable asset was a plot next to a virtual Gucci store. Gucci left in 2023. The store is still there. Nobody's in it. It's like a mall in Ohio but with worse graphics and no food court. I held. Diamond hands. That's what we said. "Diamond hands." It means refusing to sell while your investment loses 94% of its value. We turned financial paralysis into a personality trait. A guy in my Discord paid $2.4 million for a 618-parcel estate in Decentraland. Prime district. High foot traffic. I asked him what "foot traffic" meant when the platform had 38 daily active users. He said I didn't understand the technology. I didn't. I still bought more. We had a DAO. A decentralized autonomous organization. That means we voted on decisions. There were nine of us. Three never showed up. Two voted on everything without reading it. The other four were me and my alts. We voted to "acquire strategic parcels." The vote passed unanimously. I voted four times. My portfolio peaked at $1.2 million. I told everyone. I made a spreadsheet. I projected 40x returns by 2025. I made a pitch deck. The pitch deck had a slide that said "WE ARE BUILDING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY." The slide had a rocket emoji. That was my entire financial model. In 2023 I bought a Bored Ape for $189,000. It's worth $14,000 now. I don't talk about the Ape. I still use it as my profile picture. People ask me about it. I say "I'm long-term bullish." Long-term bullish means I can't sell it without crying in a Panera. My mom asked me what a Bored Ape was. I said "digital art on the blockchain." She asked why it cost more than her car. I said "you don't understand Web3." She said "I understand you live in a studio apartment." She's not in my Discord. Justin Bieber bought one for $1.3 million. It's worth about $90,000 now. I felt better about mine after I heard that. That's community. WAGMI. We're All Gonna Make It. We said that every day. In the group chat. While the floor dropped. While the volume dried up. While 95% of all NFT collections went to zero. We're all gonna make it. None of us made it. But we said it with conviction and a laser-eye profile picture. That counts for something. It doesn't. But we said it did. That's decentralized consensus. Meta spent $84 billion on the metaverse. I need to say that again. $84 billion. More than the GDP of Luxembourg. More than the GDP of Iceland, Luxembourg, and Malta combined. They spent it on a platform where the avatars had no legs, the graphics looked like a 2006 Wii game, and the peak user count was lower than the lunch rush at a Chipotle in Des Moines. They just pulled Horizon Worlds from VR headsets. It lives on as a mobile app. My beachfront villa is now a mobile app. Location, location, location. Zuckerberg renamed the entire company for this. Facebook became Meta. A $900 billion company changed its legal name because the CEO watched Ready Player One and said "I want that." Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021. $14 billion in 2022. $16 billion in 2023. $18 billion in 2024. $19 billion in 2025. That's not a strategy. That's a speedrun. They laid off 1,500 Reality Labs employees this year. Shut down three VR studios. Killed Supernatural. Put the entire VR social vision in a casket and said "we're pivoting to AI and wearables." The pivot took four years and $84 billion. I pivoted too. I'm an AI real estate investor now. I bought a virtual plot in an AI-generated world that doesn't exist yet. The founder said it was "the intersection of spatial computing and large language models." I don't know what that means. I gave him $40,000. He has a whitepaper. It's 47 pages. I read the title and the tokenomics section. The tokenomics section is a pie chart. I love pie charts. They make everything look like a plan. The project has a roadmap. Q1: "Build community." Q2: "Launch beta." Q3: "Scale ecosystem." Q4 is blank. Q4 is always blank. That's where the exit scam goes. My accountant asked me to value my metaverse portfolio for tax purposes. I said $1.2 million. He said "current market value." I said $6,400. He stared at me for eleven seconds. I know because I counted. He asked if I had any other investments. I showed him my NFTs. He stared for longer. I told him they were "cultural artifacts with long-term provenance." He asked if I'd considered a 401k. I told him a 401k was "legacy finance." He told me to leave his office. The metaverse is dead. I don't accept that. I am a digital land baron. I own eleven properties across four platforms. I have a beachfront villa in a mobile app, a plot next to an empty Gucci store, and a cartoon monkey that cost me more than my actual car. Location, location, location. The location is nowhere. But I'm early. I'm always early. That's the same as being wrong except you get to say it with confidence.

@matteopelleg Apple is not really known for being generous with RAM in their devices though. But I understand the point you're making and it does make sense!

I’m now convinced that the biggest winner of the AI race will be Apple. They will acquire Anthropic and put an AI model that can run on ~32GB of RAM in every device. It will be private, local, have perfect memory, access to all of your files and it will cost $0. The real moat was owning the hardware.

@_nondeju_ @Alwin_Drost Als hij geen leuke vent was, had hij vast zo zijn werk niet gedaan om eten te voorzien voor zijn dochter en wannabe schoonzoon. Die wannabe is waarschijnlijk zijn gevoel voor humor en zijn dochter en haar vriend zullen dat wel weten te appreciëren...

@Alwin_Drost Jij lijkt me geen leuke vent. Hopelijk lezen je dochter en haar vriend dit niet.

Mijn dochter en wannabee schoonzoon zijn met behulp van een mannetje of twaalf aan het verhuizen. "Pa, wil jij dan ook voor de lunch zorgen?" De lunch:

@CGarwoodPhoto @opensea Been a long time but somehow these photos popped up. Amazing work.

My first NFT collection on @opensea inspired by some recent travels. Photos were taken all over the country. opensea.io/collection/unt… #nft

@ziwenxu_ What are you actually building? How do you see it making money and how much? Genuine question btw not trying to be smart.

Mark Cuban is right: Software is dead. There are 33 million companies in the US. 99% of them have zero clue how to use AI. They don't need a "SaaS" subscription. They need a custom workforce. I’m 25. I’m building that workforce for $50/mo. - OpenClaw (Autonomous) - MiniMax M2.5 (The Brains) - M4 Mac Mini (The Engine) The next decade belongs to the architects, not the coders.

@MissJilianne @mrmamagravity Not really a strong argument, Michael. She paid $15k for a feature that was explicitly promised, not to be a long‑term beta tester. I can barely afford a $15k car, let alone a $15k add‑on, so she’s absolutely justified in calling out a promise that still hasn’t been delivered.

@mrmamagravity Yeah, it’s all my fault I let a billionaire con me. I failed.

This is the $119,000 Tesla Elon sold me with $15,000 Unsupervised Full Self-Driving four years ago. The problem is, he still hasn’t delivered the Unsupervised Full Self-Driving I paid for. There are thousands of Tesla customers just like me.

@FinanceFilosoof In mijn beperkt aantal met karakters wou ik dus een tweet maken in LinkedIn stijl.. vreselijk hoe iedereen zo ligt op te scheppen op een onnatuurlijke manier.

@FinanceFilosoof Linker In is vreselijk de posts die mensen daar maken. Ver voorbij gevlogen. Sommigen praten over resultaten… ik lever ze. #Winning #BeastMode #Unstoppable #LevelUp #SkillsForDays #WatchMeWork #NoLimits #BuiltDiffe

Groeien op Linked-In naar 20.000 volgers? Dat is makkelijk. Wie me kent weet dat ik nooit echt actief ben geweest op Linked-In en geen fan ben van het platform. Ik ben zelfstandig, ik zit nooit op de Linked-In feed en ik heb een job. Waarom zou ik daar in godsnaam actief zijn? De reden: enkel voor zaken Het is sinds juli dat ik hier actief werd nadat vrienden me op het potentieel van Linked-In wezen. En sindsdien ben ik daar ook beginnen groeien Het aantal van 4600 volgers daar is maar een fractie van mijn 18.000 volgers hier, maar op vlak van impact op mijn zakelijke leven (contacten voor mijn vastgoedprojecten en finance) heb ik er al duizenden euro's gemaakt. Om die reden vond ik het wel de moeite om kort te delen hoe je ook daar kunt groeien als je een zaak hebt. Hoe je je volgers kunt uitbreiden? 1) Zelfde als hier op X. Focus op inhoud die de problemen van je doelgroep oplost: praktische tips, checklists, mini-cases...Dat zorgt ervoor dat mensen je volgen. 2) Consistentie is key: dagelijks posten is eigenlijk een minimum. Verwaarloos kwaliteit niet, maar kwantiteit is wel degelijk belangrijk. Mensen moeten een gewoonte krijgen om jouw posts te lezen. 3) Zorg dat via je profiel in 10 seconden duidelijk is wie je bent, wie je helpt en welk resultaat je levert. Mensen beslissen in enkele seconden om op volgen te klikken of niet. Als je zelf niet je tijd steekt in je eigen profiel, waarom zouden anderen er dan tijd insteken? En vooral: Wees authentiek. Linked-In is een platform vol AI-slop en zelfverheerlijking. Focus op wie je wilt helpen en niet op jezelf en je steekt al boven 90% van de users uit. Doe dit dagelijks en je zit bij de top 1%. En groeien gaat snel. Van de 4600 volgers kwam 75% sinds ik ben begonnen met posten in juli. De groei zie je in het begin dat je begint te posten al heel snel, dan krijg je enkele korte en forse periodes van forse groei (virale posts) en dan is het gewoon volhouden. Dit zijn de 4 belangrijkste tips, maar ik kan niet alle praktische tips delen door plaatsgebrek. Als ik in 8 maanden mijn aantal connecties kan verdriedubbelen, dan kan jij dat ook. Als je vragen hebt (ook over X), mag je ze hier altijd stellen in de comments, dan deel ik met plezier mijn ervaring. Het kan maar iemand helpen die hier ooit zijn business van wil maken. En dan is reach wel belangrijk om contact te maken met je klanten. Warme groet @FinanceFilosoof

@dinosaursr1993 Zou ook gewoon redelijker zijn dat ze kijken naar de historie van chauffeurs. Als je al jaren rijdt zonder amper overtredingen dan zou een waarschuwingssysteem of een systeem waarbij het bedrag oploopt toch wat correcter voelen.

Ik hou rechts aan. Ken Leuven niet zo goed. Oei, moet de tunnel in. Rijkelijk laat schuif ik naar links (geen verkeer, niemand gehinderd) waarbij ik (wellicht) een witte lijn overschrijd. Ok, ik maakte een fout, geef me een boete. Maar 330 euro? Pisses me off, echt.

@elvermo Kom jij uit Aalst?

Honger is de beste SaaS

@Ashton_1nvests 😆

I meant $41.60 guys…

@MichaelTGlynn @ThomasSowell I get that but will numbers be as high as the numbers of cars sold? Asked AI and Got numbers 10 x as low as the number of cars. Might be wrong.

@Stoebels @ThomasSowell They will be bought by businesses to easily replace simple manual jobs. The result will be more unemployment for low wage, low skill workers.

Elon Musk: "I think it is accurate to say that if successful, Optimus will be the biggest product ever… At a million units a year, the production cost is probably on the order of $20,000, maybe $25,000."

@ZGiven71084 @ThomasSowell Got it but I'll take care of my kids. Optimus can do the jobs that actually suck.

@Stoebels @ThomasSowell Yeah but Optimus will take care of your kids so you can work 2 jobs to afford it or 3...

@Teslarati As a person who has never owned Tesla I'd say the S. That car just looks premium and it's kind of the OG model. So yeah S.

🚨 If Elon Musk called you right now and said, “I’ll keep either the Model S or Model X around, but you have to pick which one we keep building,” which one would you choose and why?

@elonmusk A lot of people (me included) can't afford a new car (not an S, 3, X, or Y). I would like one. Same goes for a robot. Def think it it's cool and I'd want one but a car feels less like a luxury than a robot. Curious whether the demand will be so high. Will be in firms probably.

The Tesla Model S and Model X are amazing vehicles. Get them while still available!

@EdKrassen TIt’s wrong to lump all Americans together. If someone like Trump were to come to power in Belgium, I wouldn’t feel represented either. I’m sure there are still many good Americans, and they remain our friends. 💕

BREAKING: America was just mocked In London today. Actor Vanessa Williams was performing the Star-Spangled Banner before the Memphis Grizzlies faced the Orlando Magic at the O2 Arena. Someone yells, "leave Greenland alone!" and the crowd breaks out and applause. Trump is making the world hate America. We are becoming a mockery.

@rami_hashimi Need is very subjective. I could use € 1000 right now to pay the bills. Or € 30.000 to buy a new family car. But my need compared to other people in this world is very relative. Some people can't afford a bed or food. Those people NEED it. I would LIKE it.

@DiamondNutsGuy Appreciated

@elonmusk Well I was following a Microsoft certification with 30 higher education students from Antwerp. 25 of them looked to have a foreign background. They were super polite and smart. Those traits are far more important than their foreign background.

Wow