millionième

Ethereum will be remembered as the MySpace of crypto.

I think Ethereum’s original sin was not considering tokenomics with every move it made from Dencun on. The ultrasound money thesis was a good one and with Dencun (or the L2 roadmap generally) they should have stopped to say that this was going to hurt the ultrasound money thesis and consider how to preserve it. Most people, like David, don’t want to believe in something that isn’t also putting up points on the scoreboard. When the main offering becomes ideology/communism and money/tokenomics/capitalism are overlooked, the peasants are going to revolt — as they’ve been doing for two years now. Look at the public reaction to Tomasz: broad praise, a sense of hope, excitement, the price pumping … only for him to be gone a year later with the new ED being someone who cannot even be found online except for a Wayback Machine url with his name that has some really questionable statements on it (and I should say the EF denied that this website, which was taken down a few weeks after he was appointed to the board, is his). They’re going to be really mad at me for even mentioning that but in the place of a void, these are the kinds of things people will glom onto. Then there was the manifesto — I mean, mandate, which they backtracked on forcing people to sign. (Btw, this is the second bit of news that seems to relate to Bastian. And now the third would be all these departures. There’s nothing else for us to point at and say about him — when I searched for his name on Google News just now only 14 links came up. He seems to be some kind of invisible hand behind the scenes.) I don’t think ideology and capitalism/tokenomics/number go up are mutually exclusive. I think you can have CROPS values and also consider how each step of the roadmap affects the tokenomics and even have teams for BD/ecosystem growth. It feels like the EF doesn’t realize the moment that crypto is in. The competition is only just starting. We are in the phase of real world adoption. The Ethereum Foundation’s CROPS principles are great ones, and they are worth fighting for. But the EF seems to want to sit back on its laurels and act above it all when all its competitors are all getting down and dirty on the field to gain market share. Maybe it is the right approach. I don’t know. I’m just saying that more competitive people won’t align with it. And so they will leave … and community members will as well. I personally don’t think it’s good for Ethereum if its most competitive people depart. Ethereum’s unwillingness to stop the brain drain will only benefit its competitors — or spawn new ones. Giving a shit about price and tokenomics and BD doesn’t hurt CROPS. It just helps ensure that these principles get spread to more people and that other chains that don’t have these principles don’t get a leg up. All the commentary may be pointless. It seems Vitalik tried what everyone wanted and it didn’t align with his vision, so he brought in a new person he felt more comfortable with. It makes me sad to see people become so disaffected with Ethereum, but maybe this is V’s Brian Armstrong/no politics at Coinbase moment where he lays down what the EF will work on and asks everyone else to leave. That was the right move for Coinbase, but I view them as fundamentally different issues. We’ll see whether Ethereum maintains its lead with a foundation that isn’t willing to fight for it.

Not interrupting your enemy is smart — but only if you actually understand what he’s doing My response to a friendly critic, posted under underneath: You’re right that Xi is currently doing plenty of damage to China — and the instinct to “not interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake” is understandable. But that view may miss the bigger picture. My piece isn’t meant to be a critique of Xi. It’s an attempt to build a more accurate model of how he thinks and acts. Far too many analysts still portray him as a master strategist — coldly calculating, long-term oriented, and ruthlessly effective. The evidence suggests the opposite: an unsophisticated leader with crude certainty, repeatedly surprised by the second- and third-order consequences of his own policies. Why does this matter? 1Accurate understanding drives better forecasting.
If Xi is who I describe — a man on a mission who cannot easily get off the tiger he’s riding — then how we interpret his future actions would be different. We would build different scenarios around Taiwan, the economy, technology decoupling, or internal instability instead of assuming omniscient grand strategy. 2China’s trajectory affects the entire world.
Even if the damage is mostly self-inflicted today, a weaker, more brittle, or more desperate China under Xi is not automatically good news. It raises risks of miscalculation (e.g., Taiwan), economic contagion, supply-chain shocks, heightened repression exporting instability, or sudden aggressive moves born from domestic weakness rather than strength. History is full of declining or internally fragile powers lashing out. 3“Paper tiger” can still be dangerous.
The current Iran situation shows plenty of rhetoric without follow-through. But a cornered or miscalculating leader with nuclear weapons, a huge military (even a hollowed one), and control over critical global supply chains isn’t harmless. Underestimating his unsophistication is as risky as overestimating his genius. In short: We should want China to fail in its more aggressive ambitions — but we also need a clear-eyed view of how and why it is failing, so the West (and the world) can prepare for the real risks, not the imagined ones. Understanding Xi accurately isn’t about sympathy for China. It’s about strategic realism.

Nic Carter = Scammer

We spoke to the Chinese Communist Party — watching the destruction of the war-making capabilities of its Islamic Republic ally — and they told us the truth.

又看到垃圾华人VC Primitive的员工在那里大谈特谈如何选项目，投资项目。 好吧，又是典型的在电梯里撒尿，以为自己靠撒尿才到楼顶。 我就直接下个结论好吧：所有华人VC的员工全部加起来，看币圈项目的水平。 都远远不及，丰密，风无向，冰娃，何币，小浣熊，小熊饼干，Sanyi我们空投圈公认的顶级选手，也不及包括我在内的一系列一流二流空投博主。 听好了，是远远不及。 这就是绝对意义上的：高手在民间。大师在流浪，小丑在庙堂。 华人VC投的那些垃圾项目，全他妈反撸的，全他妈对行业0贡献。 你真牛逼你怎么不投出一个Solana，怎么不投出一个Hyperliquid，怎么不投出一个Pump fun。 就投那些只能上币安Alpha的狗操垃圾项目，完成流动性最后一棒是吧？ 那真的你们全部下岗，撸空投的选手比你们强100倍，1000倍，10000倍。