Max Bronstein

The belief that crypto cycles are a thing of the past is just this cycle’s manifestation of “this time is different”

it's clear at this point that there are 3 classes of crypto i) commercial crypto ii) casino crypto iii) cypherpunk crypto commercial crypto is RWAs, stablecoins, institutions things that use crypto for its function in increasing the efficiency of finance faster payments, faster settlement, better composability, and a universal API for money this is mostly a positive development, but it does necessarily ignore most of the core ideals of why crypto was started there are a lot of relatively invisible chokepoints of control here that most people have not woken up to i.e., that 95% of stablecoins can be frozen or single sequencer censorship casino crypto is mostly things that are borderline regulatory arbitrage and are heavily premised on speculation too wild for institutions, but still not necessarily native to crypto ideals most of the aim here seems to be making money I don't have anything against this as I believe people should do whatever they do without harming others, but it's not something I'm personally interested in the final, least prevalent and almost extinct class of crypto is the cypherpunk class this is ironic as the cypherpunk class is responsible for starting the entire industry as well as underlying its most important set of functionality satoshi was a cypherpunk cypherpunks use cryptography and code to build systems of freedom freedom from state overreach, freedom of speech, and the right to transact this group gets confused for what is actually criminal behaviour like breaking the law or buying janky ass drugs on the darknet which does nothing but cheapen the ideals of liberty for some false virtual mental dopamine hit of being an edgelord cypherpunks are libertarians and believe in free markets and understand that autonomous systems that can't be messed with are the only way to achieve this the commercial and casino classes of crypto have had all the recent spotlight but crypto without the cypherpunks is not crypto I believe most of this has been a messaging, education, and storytelling problem we are going to fix this and we are going to make crypto cypherpunk again you are already seeing the ideals live within systems like zcash, but soon it will enflame everywhere cypher/acc

The belief that crypto cycles are a thing of the past is just this cycle’s manifestation of “this time is different”

Increasingly convinced last Friday's massacre broke crypto for a while - hard to quickly develop a sustained bid, after such a meltdown. This cycle has been disappointing for most, which can paralyze action as people hope for bluer skies, or former ATHs. It's easy to get caught up in chart minutiae, but when looking at $BTC and $ETH in linear monthly (see below), it reveals *we're still in the elevated range* (although showing cracks), if you're thinking of taking profits. $MSTR is slipping, gold is sending a warning, as are credit markets, and stocks will be the last to get the message. We can always get another weak bounce, but I've taken action accordingly (remember, it's never all or nothing when raising cash). I want to see how $BTC responds to $100K, but will likely get interested in the market again when I see $BTC $75K or lower. This bull was different, and the next bear will be different too.

Most 2021/22 crypto VCs showing DPI did it by buying BTC/ETH/SOL near the lows, not via successful ventures or liquid venture investing LPs are in two minds - they made good money, but not in the way they signed up to pay 2/20 for. The skill being rewarded is timing trades - not sourcing elite founders and helping them build enduring companies

so we (thinking zoomers) have material edge both in deliberating the new paradigm and in capitalizing on its downstream ripple effects

Satanic to Sublime: aligning human potential through open-ownership protocols. Join me to pitch Blackrock on free AI, permissionless systems and incentivized model training at the Louvre, Paris. June 10th