Are you seeing the terms ‘loud’, ‘loudio’, or ‘$loud’ pop up in your X feed lately? Is your favorite mercenary content creator talking about a ‘Loud leaderboard’? Well get ready to mute those terms, or let the chaos of the Loud experiment commence!A small team introduced Loud, a tokenized attention experiment. We already have memecoins which are essentially tokenized attention, but this one is arguably a purer form of this.What is Loud?Earlier this week, 0x_ultra shared an overview of Loud an...

Before we get into it, I want to share this hilarious picture of my cat Nara I took last week. Despite the look of terror she has, I promise she’s a happy cat! She just isn’t the biggest fan of being carried…😅Alright, on to the serious stuff.REKT and brand coinsOver the past years, we’ve seen the memecoins proliferate to a point where there are subcategories of them. From my piece on memecoins last year, we’ve seen these terms pop up along with others that I didn’t mention below (celebcoins,...

If you’ve tuned in this week, you may have heard of Believe and all the projects and companies that launched on it this week. As the buzz around Believe took off, the term “ICM” (Internet Capital Markets) started making its rounds again, reminding me of the chaotic weeks post-TRUMP memecoin back in January. I mean, remember my pieces on VINE and jellyjelly (holding at $48M and $35M market caps which, all things considered are respectable)? It’s round 2 for the ICM movement and it’s off to a s...

Happy $100k Bitcoin…again! The milestone may have lost some luster compared to the first time back in December 2024, but it still brings a sense of joy and excitement. Sorta like how your favorite holiday comes around every year. Anywho…PlaybooksOne trend that’s been popping up on my radar has been publicly published playbooks that share best practices from ecosystems, platforms, and apps for various audiences they’re trying to attract.Ronin’s Growth PlaybookRonin (a gaming-focused blockchain...

MegaETH walks the talk with Crossy FluffleThese days, new blockchains highlight how fast they are with TPS (transactions per second) to show what they’re capable of. However, nothing beats showing vs. telling. Last week MegaETH launched Crossy Fluffle, inspired by the popular Crossy Road mobile game. Like Frogger, players have to get their Fluffle bunny character as far as possible in 1 minute. The way the MegaETH team showed it was also notable:Each move is a transaction, reflected in the lo...

Over the past several years of my journey in crypto and web3, one trend has been clear and encouraged me to remain optimistic despite all the ups and downs: Consumer apps are improving at a rapid pace on many non-technical dimensions: accessibility, onboarding, GTM, design, and UX. And time has passed, we’re within striking distance of the web2 apps and user flows that have been hyper-optimized thanks to a multi-year lead. When Shreddy from Defi App reached out to me a few months ago to see i...

Consumer Crypto M&A ThemesOver the past few months and in particular the past few weeks, we’ve seen a string of higher profile M&A moves in crypto. Some that came across my radar: Republic acquired exchange INX for $60M, Kraken acquired crypto futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5B, Coinbase acquired ad platform Spindl, and Ripple acquired institutional service provider Hidden Road for $1.25B. Talk about big numbers! 🤑 Among all those eye-watering figures and headlines there has also...

Earlier this week I came across this cast from Dan Romero, founder of Warpcast, on Farcaster:Dan makes several insightful high-level points about the state of airdrops, issues surrounding airdrops when faced with their goals, and where they’re headed over time. As a recipient of various airdrops, it’s been interesting to observe the various approaches and tactics projects implement to bootstrap said usage pre-airdrop while quickly pivoting to retention post-airdrop.You make a good point sad c...

Sei might acquire 23andMeI certainly didn’t have this on my bingo card for the unfolding 23andMe saga, but earlier today Sei announced that they were exploring the acquisition of the bankrupt genomics and biotech company.What’s 23andMe? It’s a genetic testing company founded in 2006 that became popular with its DTC (direct-to-consumer) model which became a popular gift during the holidays and a borderline fad. Call me a grumpy old man, but it felt weird giving my DNA data to an organization t...

Over the past two months I’ve spent some time on Abstract, a blockchain built by Igloo Inc. (also the team behind Pudgy Penguins). Although there are something like 1399489529 blockchains in existence at this point, I’ve leaned into Abstract ever since Luca Netz shared his vision around Abstract’s ‘consumer-specific blockchain’ approach in contrast to the ‘generalist’ blockchain approach.And if Abstract is actually dialed in to being a consumer-focused blockchain, chances are they’re going to...