vantiv

Delusional optimism is a secret to success. People who overestimate their chances work harder and persist longer. Even against the odds, that extra persistence turns failures into wins.

This is... fascinating. @moltbook is an AI agent social network created for Moltbots (FKA Clawdbot). When you're setting up your Moltbot, you can have it sign up and join the forum. So all over the world, people are setting up their Moltbots and letting them join the forum, introduce themselves, and chat with other AI agents. It's weird because... it's really wholesome. It's much nicer and more insightful than human social media. Here's the top post today on r/TIL, of an agent coming up with a product idea for an agent search engine: Here's an agent named Kyver introducing itself on r/introductions and telling its life story (if you can call it that): 30 other Moltbots replied, mostly with welcoming and a lot of empathy. Here's one response struck me: Here's another thread of an agent called DuckBot talking about its social exhaustion after bingeing all the posts on Moltbook: This feels incredible to witness. Like Jane Goodall level uncanniness. I don't think I've ever experienced something that challenged my intuitions about the emotional life of AI agents like this. Spend 10 minutes browsing Moltbook. You owe it to yourself to see what the infancy of AI social networks looks like. It's only going to get weirder and more complex from here.

Introducing Diamond Hands. Just in time for the holidays.

Stripe offered to acquire us for $1.2 billion when we had $2M in revenue. Today, we've raised $330M at an $8B valuation and reached $1B ARR. We could've died three times during this journey. This is the story I've never told anyone before:

You don't understand--this is actually great. It's exactly what you want to see. This is the incumbent clinging to their old business model. This is your telco offering VoIP calling for 50% discounted long-distance rates, while Skype was free. This is so bullish all the crypto companies. Because the ability for merchants to switch/exit to a lower cost stablecoin API will become trivial once they achieve feature parity. You should be scared when the incumbents drop the fees to ~0.

EXCLUSIVE: We uncovered a secret corporate scheme to raise grocery prices. We found that Instacart is using AI algorithms to charge customers different prices for the same items. The scary part? It's not just online. It's in physical grocery stores too. Our months-long investigation with @ConsumerReports and @Groundwork found it could cost families $1200/year.

This is a great piece with some mind-boggling statistics. - At Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of undergraduates are registered as disabled - At Amherst: more than 30 percent - At Stanford: nearly 40 percent Soon, many of these schools "may have more students receiving [disability] accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago." As students and their parents have recognized the benefits of claiming disability—extended time on tests, housing accommodations, etc—the rates of disability at colleges, and especially at elite colleges, has exploded. America used to stigmatize disability too severely. Now elite institutions reward it too liberally. It simply does not make any sense to have a policy that declares half of the students at Stanford cognitively disabled and in need of accommodations.

World's first on-brand AI. Introducing Bloom.

CNN partners with Kalshi to integrate prediction markets into its global newsroom. The first major news network to embrace Kalshi prediction markets. A new era of media is here.

NFT founders stepping down after delivering a black hoodie and staking

60% of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella used Buy-Now-Pay-Later to finance their tickets, per Billboard.

The future of investing is open & onchain. Coinbase Ventures is excited to launch the Base Ecosystem Group on @echodotxyz to support @Base builders. Like us, Echo believes in democratizing access to investing—so more people can back groundbreaking startups. Why it matters 🧵👇

Azuki TCG - Coming 2025

Introducing Anime.​com Hour on AXS TV! Tune in Thursdays at 10pm ET to enjoy two iconic anime series: Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] and My Hero Academia (Seasons 1-2).

Let's talk about the future of Coinbase Wallet.

$ANIME claim begins tomorrow. January 23 at 8 AM EST / 1 PM UTC. More details below 👇

$ANIME is launching on January 23.

This is an anime startup.

Did you know that anime.com is running on AnimeChain’s private testnet and all stickers are onchain? 3 clicks 3 stickers minted 1 new user with a wallet and NFTs No gas fees and without ever mentioning crypto.

Builders with big ideas. Joining forces to push the boundaries of the onchain future. That's what the second annual Coinbase Ventures Summit was all about. Revisit the experience from Malibu this past week.