You were born by your mother...ultimately you emerged from the primordial soup of this universe.

Ontologically you could also have never existed. Or not yet. Or you could have already died. No Farcaster or ↑higher. Yet here you are, being you. Are you being the fullest you that you can be yet?

Let's start at the beginning. Mark Twain said: the two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.

You were born in a country or nation-state which you didn't choose. Nor did you choose your parents with all their beliefs, values and worldviews, religion perhaps. Your genes, and the culture that epigenetically activated them, make a big chunk of who you have become.

Ok, as a baby, infant, toddler, then young child you experienced life primarily as happening to you. For good reason! you needed parents, care takers, teachers (if you were schooled) to become a fully functioning human meatsuit first, and then member of a family, tribe, community.

Did you ever feel hard done by those early life authority figures? I could write an epos about that feeling! It's called victimhood. I continued to play the victim for decades until a near death experiences prompted me to first become self-employed and then divorced.

As a leadership coach I have worked with 1000s of people some of whom have significant organisational responsibility, measured by their headcount or budget size. Would you believe me that quite a few of them are still playing the blame and shame game despite their wealth, power and status? The "song" in their story they are telling me sounds lower vibration, and their body language often augments this with contraction. I sometimes show them the Hawkins Scale and ask them where they think they spend their wake time at. What's a good average, low points and high points of a day or week? Ask yourself that question now, it's a good self check-in.

All scores below 200 are contracting, courage is the pivotal point above which you expand. You can experience a good portion of this scale in any given day, yet I have not me a fellow human being who has shamed themselves into enlightenment by dinner time.

The quest in life is to aim ↑higher, at any given moment, no matter how low or high you jump off from. This requires mindfulness, intentionality, routines, practices, and discipline. I'll expand on this in Part 4, and 5.

Whilst deep and imho also deeply true, it's a bit complex for everyday use. Hence, I have adapted a simpler self-leadership model devised by the The Conscious Leadership Group. The four categories correlate highly with the 17 energetic vibrations of the Hawkins Scale: victim, creator, co-creator and inter-becoming.

These four Levels of Life are one of four components of of the Psychedelic Map For Change which I have been developing for many years. It aims to be a scaffolding and content agnostic. My vision is to turn the PMFC into a map for a ↑higher civilisation, maybe even as Farcaster Client for anyone who wants to embody ↑higher. Wait until Part 6.

Let's relate this to some archetypical personas in crypto/web3/onchain:

• Victim: Alex, who enthusiastically invested in "MoonCoin" at its peak, quickly found himself in a downward spiral when the market crashed. Despite his own decision to chase the hype without due diligence, he became notorious in online crypto communities for his rants blaming everyone but himself for his financial woes, earning the moniker "The Blame Game Champion."

• Creator: Sarah turned her initial crypto losses into a learning opportunity, diving deep into blockchain technology and trading strategies. She now shares her journey and insights on a YouTube channel, becoming a beacon for personal accountability and informed investing in the crypto world. When asked on a conference stage what the hottest DeFi trend in 2024 will be, she responds with god-like confidence: liquid staking derivatives (literally heard this IRL)

• Co-Creator: Raj and Lena, after connecting over their shared interest in blockchain, co-founded a d'app that rewards eco-friendly actions with their "GreenGains" token. Their project, born from eye-level collaboration, has become a testament to the innovative and positive impact that web3 can achieve. They walked the bridge from Degen to Regen already, but don't shill this to you. Gentle witty nudges in conversations at Regens Unite instead.

• Inter-Becoming: Maya, a seasoned developer and philosopher, sees blockchain as a tool for global interconnectedness, often aided by psychedelics. She contributes to open-source projects aimed at making the World Computer more inclusive and sustainable, inspiring a movement towards a new level of consciousness. At night she dreams of retro-active public goods funding, hyperstructures, interspecies money.

  I'll explain how you can cross the three thresholds in Part 6. Yep, another cliff hanger...

  ---

  I recently ran a Ponder Poll and the results were somewhat expected based on my experience of Farcaster tribes so far:

Amongst the Farcaster OGs the ratio of Creator to Co-Creator was almost 50:50. Very encouraging, because we are the people we have always been waiting for.

Co-creators are letting go of their ego, the need to be right. They trust the process and focus on growing the pie for everyone, not maximising their slice of it. They believe in positive-sum games.

I spent a good chunk of the bear market asking big questions like this:

What kind of ancestor do I want to become?

I also researched the intersection of regeneration, blockchain, psychedelics and leadership.

I heard the term Inter Becoming first on a podcast with Indy Johar, CEO of Dark Matter Labs.

Once you accept that humanity is not the end of evolution, things become pretty easy. Whatever species we will evolve into, it will to be ok. WAGMI. Why?

It’s all connected, all the way back to big bang, and even beyond...we just don't yet know how to connect all the dots...

This is the second of six planned articles. Subscribe to receive the next parts directly into your inbox.

Part 1: Crypto needs to aim for a higher consciousness

Part 3 – Realms of Reality

Part 4 – Consciousness of Choices

Part 5 – Cycle of Change

Part 6 – Idea for a very different Farcaster Client

I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.

antaur.eth

$HIGHER is a new scene coin on Base. Why on earth does the world need this?

Crypto is often accused of being a solution that’s looking for a problem.

Ok, here is a beefy problem:

"All of these technological promises of the future, all they require energy and will have a draw on our natural endowment of species, soil, forests, biosphere, and oceans. So technology can't solve our problems unless we change our values and consciousness and what are our goals and aspirations are as a culture." - Nate Hagans, The Great Simplification

What’s the consciousness of crypto? What are the aspirations of the ↑Higher Collective?

Spiral Dynamics is a theoretical model of human development that describes the evolution of values, beliefs, and consciousness through eight distinct stages, each represented by a different color. This is an long-form easy-to read primer with lots of memes.

Spiral Dynamics provides a framework for understanding and navigating complex social, organisational, and personal changes by recognising the diverse value systems that drive human behaviour and societal evolution. Even the crypto space has arguably gone through these stages:

• Beige (Instinctive Survivalist): Represents basic survival needs. Early Bitcoin miners, driven by the need for financial independence.

• Purple (Magical Animistic): Focuses on safety and belonging. Early crypto communities and forums, where trust and mutual support were crucial.

• Red (Impulsive Egocentric): Characterised by power and dominance. Early crypto founders like CZ of Binance and SBF, who shaped the market through their influence.

• Blue (Purposeful Authoritarian): Emphasises order and rules. The SEC's deterring regulation by enforcement regulations and the EU's MiCa legislation illustrate this.

• Orange (Achievist Strategic): Driven by success and innovation. The rapid development and commercialisation of blockchain technologies, such as the race to launch Bitcoin ETFs.

• Green (Communitarian Egalitarian): Values community and sustainability. Greenpill Network, ReFi DAO, promoting regenerative crypto economics; from Degen to Regen meme.

• Yellow (Integrative Systemic): Seeks to harmonise complex systems. The development of DAOs and sophisticated governance models. Ethereum Foundation.

• Teal (Holistic Global): Embraces global consciousness. The vision of Web3 as a transparent and inclusive financial system. World Computer = Truth Machine.

All colours are good and bad. Narcissism can be terrible (Trump) and great (founders).

Rules (blue) can be good. Code is based on strict rules.

Communitarian can be catastrophic: Cancer from extreme woke. Personally, the meme from degen to regen feels still dualistic and doesn't resonate with my being and doing. I know I am not alone! Good bridge building: degenxregen manifesto by @nicnode

Could ↑Higher be the middle way? A DAO in the spirit of Daoism? A movement where people can make money with internet friends – AND – extend this to more friends and ultimately kick-back to everyone? Could $HIGHER even be the first interspecies money?

This is not some Hippy Dippy Kumbaya - it will sooner or later become an existential nesceccity:

"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." - Buckminster Fuller (20th century innovative futurist polymath)

So how can operate our Spaceship? Developing ↑Higher into a global movement of aiming for Teal Organizations of all sizes seems better than Centralised C-Corps.

Farcaster

martin ↑ on Warpcast

higher is a bet on farcaster culture

What do you want to use this for? What do you want to do with your wealth accumulated in the Casino?

@cdixon.eth calls for less Casino and more Computer in Read. Write. Own.

The problem remains: whatever we build with this World Computer, it will still have our current value system baked in. No technology is holistic enough.

We need a new Culture, a dawn of a new era, an epoch even: the Regenerative Renaissance

How do you change culture?

Don’t you know this is true? This is my truth, and I am in the business of personal transformation for 50 years.

Scratching my own itch, I have developed the Psychedelic Map For Change since 2020. I might re-brand it into The Map For A ↑Higher Civilisation.

This is the first of six planned articles. Subscribe to receive the next parts directly into your inbox.

2 – Levels of Life

3 – Realms of Reality

4 – Consciousness of Choices

5 – Cycle of Change

6 – Idea for a very different Farcaster Client

I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.

antaur.eth

If the answer is not an 8 out of 10 or above, why are you still there? Sunk cost bias? Big audience? Habit?

I'd give it a 5 out of 10, and the only reason why I am still there is a handful to a dozen accounts that I rate highly and look for alpha - AND - who are still tweeting on X first or only. Does this resonate?

That being said, I notice that every time I see a tweet from these influencers, I wish they'd appear in my Warpcast feed. Now, I can't control other people...but what I can control is actively and intentionally keeping this web2 moloch alive versus depleting its energy by exiting the system.

Hence, after only three months on Farcaster, I have internally decided to delete my X account. The big hairy question is when? To check sentiment in Farcasterland, I ran this ponder survey:

Half of people would delete this year!!! Hell yes, that's encouraging.

I voted for now-ish as my FC follower count coincidentally surpassed my X count, which are both sub 1K.

I do get that big influencers with 6 or even 7 figures are reluctant to become farcaster-first let alone delete their X account for good. Just don't get behind the curve...remember MySpace, Friendster or FLICKR?

My invitation is to not wait until your farcaster followers surpass your CT. This would be comparing apples with pairs, as the obvious advantage of FC is having a crypto-native decentralised social media platform entangled with thriving ecosystems like Base, Zora and Paragraph. My guess is that 1qDAU on Warpcast is as valuable as 10 followers on X in terms of funnel stats and monetization.

Anyway, I am looking for people who want to create a cohort of cancels: let's agree to delete our X account on Fridays, and to gamify this. Maybe a prediction game on /perl?

I want to make a stand and inspire others to join me and more to follow. Who is interested in orchestrating our collective termination of X and celebrate it publicly on Warpcast? To be clear, I have nothing personal against Elon nor is this a politically-motivated stance. DC me on @antaur.eth if you are interested.

Have you complained for years that social media sucks? Well, now there is an alternative! I have deleted my FB and IG accounts years ago, and have never looked back! Not a single doom-scroll moment. It gave me a very powerful sense of agency, without any hard feelings; it was simply time to terminate.

Great, we are early on Farcaster, but that's not the same as not being on X anymore.

If this post triggered you...ask yourselfL why? :-)

The term "gloom" refers to a state of partial or total darkness, often conveying a sense of dimness or shadowiness. It also denotes feelings of sadness, depression, or a lack of hope. The word can describe both a physical atmosphere and an emotional state, capturing a sense of despondency or melancholy.

"Gloomy," describes an environment that is overcast and depressing. It can also refer to a mood or outlook that is pessimistic.

Given the gloomy state of the world (society, economy, nature etc.) it might well soon be gloom season in web3. Yet, we are at the beginning of another cracy bull market. Well, enter $GLOOM a fairly new (Feb 24) meme coin on Base with some bold aims (more on that later). Token contract here.

Wait, but why am I interested and investing in a project that sounds all doom and gloom? I am not known to be a PESSIMIST.

I seem to be in good company: turns out, that $GLOOM holders are mainly OPTIMISTS, as this Ponder Survey suggests:

https://www.weponder.io

Attitude: do you primarily identify as a... - Ponder

Ponder is a survey platform built on top of decentralized social that rewards authentic responses. Follow us on Farcaster to help draw unique human insights out into the world.

I identify mainly as a PRAGMATIST with both OPTIMIST and PESSIMIST moments, which is why I love the Gloom project and its potential: I am a bridge builder in many respects, so maybe I can also connect the lightness and darkness in the observable onchain universe?

I have been in crypto for three years, and am astounded by the level of dunking, blaming and shaming, emanating from what I call victimhood. Takes one to know one...

Rewind 10 years: I primarily experienced life happening to me. I was in victim mode playing the blame and shame game. I coped with my co-dependent marriage and volatile fatherhood with cheating, drugs, porn and masturbation. I was on track to become a bad ancestor. Life was gloomy you might say.

Yet, my insatiable zest for life let me on a brighter path and today, at 50, I experience life primarily as happening by me (creator mode) and as happening through me (co-creator mode. Life is blooming in and around me you might say.

How did I achieve this transformation? Well, it took years of therapy, assisted by psychedelics, a divorce, a spiritual awakening, and the right partner at my side. Plus, scratching my own itch, I developed the Psychedelic Map For Change; a holistic self-coaching tool that can help people, amongst other things, to cross the threshold from victim to creator and then co-creator with the ultimate aim to become an inter-becoming.

• It is important that we, here onchain and IRL, do not by-pass the shit show that the outgoing generation has created; they did their best, and we also massively profited from that. Now it is on us to clean up the unintended consequences of their choices.

• Case in point: the mental health crisis in general, and especially amongst Gen Z; the 25% of teenage girls at risk of suicide is not just a statistic to us, we have experienced this first hand in our fam.

• I don't know how and when, but I sense that Gloom, as a project, community, token etc. might contribute to the improvement of mental health, especially in crypto where people have NFT PTSD and assumedly don't touch grass enough.

• My partner and I, both new to consumer crypto, have started the channel /innerwork on Farcaster; @ruv is a Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner, a positive and progressive form of relational therapy devised by Dr. Gabor Mate who asks: “The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.” I am a transformational and psychedelic coach, and together, we can offer holding space for people who want to create bloom from gloom e.g. in monthly sharing circles or by sharing our life wisdom in live streams.

• We are big $MOCHI and Mochimon holders bc we think that this meme coin project with utility (toys, game IP), will grow in the wake of the Pudgy Penguins (PFP collection by same artist Antoine Mingo). Both are poised to form the bedrock of the Disneyland corner of consumer crypto: fun and light entertainment for families. Yet, we all know that where there is light there must be darkness, and somehow I sense that both meme coins could be two sides of the same coin...(pun intended)...imagine an unfolding story somewhere in the emergin metaverse involving Mochimon cats and Gloomer faces...that would be co-creation on another level!

• Lastly, we aim to launch our own token in future, $INNER and relate this to POIW: Proof Of Inner Work. If @Bixbite and her growing team can pull it off, we might even want to launch this on their specific Farcaster Client, which wants to enable communities to launch their own token and allow tipping these directly in casts. Here is a very first rough roadmap:

  

Rounding off, a statement by the ETH Whale called Tetranode on Bankless podcast: "I only invest in DeFi projects where I can be the biggest holder bc I want the team to have to listen to my feedback and execute improvements."

My ego doesn'y need to be the biggest holder, but I do sense that by holding a biggish bag will incentivise me and ruv to actively get involved, shape its overarching narrative, and contribute to the emerging community with our gifts.

How does this resonate with fellow early adopters and shapers?

From gloom to bloom, antaur.

Coinbase thinks like Amazon

Many start-up pitch decks talk about touching 1 billion customers by X. 99% never even reach 1 million. Amazon is on track to achieve this moonshot through relentless short-term execution quarter by quarter AND within a looooooong timeframe; Jeff Bezos thinks in decades and his shareholder letters have been shaking out paperhands and jeets ever since the IPO. The diamond hand's are up nearly 200x since May 1997. More importantly, Amazon Prime is the best shopping experience in my life. Period. Notice the lack of the word online...

Coinbase wants to bring the next billion users on-chain. I find this claim believable, because they executed the first three phases as if there had been no resistance, no lawsuits, no regulatory nightmares, no mocking from Jamie Dimon & Co.

Back in 2016 they knew where the puck was going and 8 years since sharing the "Coinbase Secret Masterplan" the Delaware C-Corp is well into phase four.

Innovating Investor Relations

I don't particularly like corporates and the business theatre they often (have to) play internally and externally to keep up the story they promise to investors. There is a whole industry called Wall Street that has the power to keep Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, in power, or topple him - based on meeting, beating or missing quarterly analysts' expectations.

CB knocked on out of the park with their Q3 2023 results, but not just in terms of the numbers. More impressively, they minted the topline results as an NFT and started a reporting revolution. Could NFTs as fundamental enabler of the emerging creator and ownership economy have gotten a more powerful advertising than this?

What if next NFT from COIN Earnings includes a 60 second pitch on an audio track? Or selected highlights as a Glitch-Gif? Imagine you can click on one of the tiles and see data? As a registered analyst from Blackrock or JP Morgan you might even see token-gated information, as if the tile you click works like a /frame on Farcaster? More than expensive JPGS then, huh?

A bluechip for Bluechips

Coinbase is the uncontested blockchain bluechip. It custodies most Bitcoin ETF. Who is Larry Fink going to call first when Blackrock gets their ETH ETF approved and wants to tokenize every RWA (Real World Asset) they have on their balance sheet. The thesis is clear: Base will be the de facto chain for regulated DeFi.

Coinbase is clean afaik. FTX is gone, Sam in prison, Binance is counted, and many a centralised crypto blockchain service went supernova in 2022. CB is the only big one standing and their standing is so rock solid that even the mights SEC will off-ramp itself in the sake of saving face (my bet). Why? Even General Warren will pull back her army when she realises fully that it won't be in her interest to stomp on millions of voter’s portfolios.

Coinbase has 110 million KYC' customers and counting. This is one of the two unfair advantages, USPs, moats, this company has. have you tried Coinbase Commerce? I recently ordered a book from Spirit DAO and was surprised to even be routed through this (new to me) check-out path. So simple. Wait until CB releases EMBEDDED WALLETS...

Even the existing Coinbase Wallets build a powerful bridge between various custodial services from Coinbase to the free and self-directed life I enjoy on Base.

Disrupting Corporate Innovation

Base is based. It is awesome! I have been on base only since December and I already call it my on-chain home.

Much has already been written about Base's strategy to become the web3 app store just like Apple created the App Store for web2.

The big difference here is the mental model behind both stores:

Apple = wallet garden vs. Base = wild garden

Based on my understanding of organizational structures, corporate innovation and leadership, Base could become single biggest differentiator for Coinbase.

Coinbase = The Tower & Base = The Square

Executives and employees at Coinbase have been and must continue be 100% compliant, diligent, playing it safe. SEC, Warren's Army, Institutional Investors, Corporate Clients, JP Morgan's analysts etc. Overly-simplified: core business.

Base on the other hand is a new organisational life form in corporate innovation. I have been working in and with Corporate VC funds (CB has one), Corporate Accelerators, Corporate Innovation Hubs and so forth. The vast majority of these vessels have not delivered the promised innovation for users, consumers, clients, shareholders. Why?

Innovation happens on the fringes! Corporate bros and sistas rarely look, sound, or feel fringe. Just go to any random industry conference or airport business lounge. Remember the 1970s and 1980s? Punks are fringe.

I am a leadership coach, team observer, culture shaper, organization designer and group facilitator of 30 years. I have NEVER observed something like the emerging ecosystem around it's founder and source, Jesse Pollak.

Jesse is Base contributor #0001 - AND - he is a CB Punk: corporate business punk. AFAIK Jesse works for CB as an employee leading the Base division (or whatever this is called in internal docs). Yet, he genuinely comes across as stewarding an open, permissionless L2 ecosystem that breeds the likes of Mochi and Toshi. Those anon devs won't ever fill out powerpoint templates that Jesse sends to Brian on a weekend before the analyst conference on Monday!

Yet, the vast majority of real world use cases will be created by these decentralsied projects, apps and protocols - all built on Base.

The genius of this set-up seems to be this: Coinbase is taking itself out as the middle man between innovators and users. In fact, the more CB can get out of the way, the more it will profit. Most corporate executive cannot square this circle and do not possess the required mental models.

To be honest, I expected Base, the Coinbase L2 on Optimism's Superchain, to feel a bit corporate. I was so wrong. In fact, whenever I see Jesse and his team casting on Farcaster, I notice no difference between Basers (aka Coinbase employees) and the likes of Dan Romero, Ted (not Lasso), Wake, and other cool cats and outcasts.

Farcaster, Frames & the Flywheel

In my perception, Base and Farcaster are inextricably linked. Which other blockchain has the energetic entanglement with a fast growing sufficiently decentralized social media graph? And can iterate and incubate at the speed of state finality in this high-value social substrate?

When I mint NFTs on Zora, I notice that I am paying with ETH on Base. How? Well, it doesn't matter, and that is the entire point of the consumer crypto stack, right?

Apropos, and then Farcaster, which is sufficiently decentralised, launched Frames...which is a total game changer. As Base itself writes: "When a Frame pops up mid-scroll, going on-chain moves from intimidating to inevitable." Entirely new economic models will be build on Frames, and many of the code in the backend will be built on Base I suspect. This is how Base will deliver its part for bringing the next billion users on-chain...

...and Coinbase will be able to put that onto its corporate balance sheet.

Elon hasn't catapulted humanity to Mars yet but it feels like a safe bet that Coinbase will indeed rocket to the moon in this cycle.

Wen flippening Amazon?

In the grand chessboard of technological evolution, a pivotal Shakespearean question looms large: e/acc or d/acc?

This is not merely a choice between acronyms but a profound decision that could dictate the trajectory of our digital future - and life on earth. Web3 enthusiasts, take heed: if you champion the cause of decentralization, then d/acc should be your battle cry. There is a reason why OGs like Ryan Selkis and Vitalik Buterin advocate and embody a defensive, discerning, decentralised, deliberate accelerationism:

Here's why:

1. The Power Shift: e/acc threatens to perpetuate a world where a select few wield "power over" the masses, dictating the digital diet of many and setting the rules for developers and creators. In stark contrast, Web3 envisions a paradigm of "power as" the individual and "power with" the collective. The essence of blockchain is to dismantle the reign of intermediaries, no?

2. The Holistic Imperative: e/acc's narrow focus fails to address the broader spectrum of our challenges. Technological solutions alone cannot rescue us from entrenched belief systems. Ayana Young's insights resonate here, underscoring the need for humanity to ascend to a higher plane of consciousness. d/acc gives us the oxygen tent to evolve from human beings to interbecomings as Indy Johar, CEO of Dark Matter Labs so poignantly puts it on the Accidental Gods podcast. Clinging to reductionism is a path to nowhere.

3. The Acceleration of Moloch: e/acc has birthed the likes of Facebook and Instagram, entrapping us in a vicious cycle of perverse incentives for both corporations and consumers. As Liv Boeree, a brilliant thinker and famous poker player, explores on her podcast with Metacrisis OG Daniel Schmachtenberger, e/acc indeed accelerates our collective spiralling towards a nadir of societal values.

For the staunch e/acc advocate, these arguments may fall on deaf ears. But consider this: did you embrace the Moderna vaccine, a product of rushed and minimally tested RNA technology? This, in my opinion, epitomizes the essence of e/acc.

I am no Marc Andreessen, but as an early adopter of the internet in 1995, I have witnessed the transformation of my techno-optimism into a more balanced stance. Andreessen's Techno Optimism Manifesto, with its "tech bro" vernacular, seems disconnected from today's realities of billion's of people, let alone the beyond human realm. Jenny Stefano's witty critique, which brands it as a parody, strikes a chord with me.

Consider these three startling facts about AI:

1. AI is the first tool capable of autonomous decision-making, including the operation of weapon systems.

2. AI can independently generate novel ideas.

3. AI has the potential to usurp human power, unlike previous tools which augmented it.

Are you still an e/acc proponent? Let's reflect on humanity's poor track record in foreseeing the unintended consequences of innovation, particularly the second and third-order effects. Take, for example, the theory that patriarchy was an accidental byproduct of the humble plow's introduction to agriculture.

Techno Optimism is irreconcilable with the ancient wisdom and teachings from mother nature I have received through many plant medicine rituals and psychedelic journeys. There is simply more to the universe than science, engineering and product-market fit. Would Andreessen, Bezos & you promote e/acc if it didn't entice the chance of a financial 100x...?

Speaking of economics...e/acc, in my view, is inextricably linked to Neo-liberalism, a doctrine that seems predestined for self-destruction. Unlike nature's apex predators, which operate within the confines of their ecosystems, Neo-liberalism and the GDP growth imperative are on a collision course with every planetary boundary. Some even describe late-stage capitalism as a "death cult."

Life wants to live...hence, a discerning, decentralized, and defensive approach to accelerationism aligns more closely with the natural order: "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished," as Lao Tzu wisely observed.

There is a reason why Bitcoin and Ethereum take the long-road, because both blockchains know their evolutionary purpose.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, has two cats: Mochi and Toshi.

$TOSHI and $MOCHI are two cat coins on Base. T caters for devs, M appeals to users.

The perfect flywheel spinners you may think. Nope, their communities seem to have beef with one another. Really? Come on!

Isn't web3 meant to usher in the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (Charles Eisenstein)? Yet when I read how both communities dunk on each other in their respective echo chambers on Telegram, I am more reminded of adult football fans acting like juveniles!

I was first muted once in the Toshi TG for mentioning the orange cat complementing the blue one, and then banned completely (for celebrating the capital rotation into ETH and Ethereum-related coins incl. 'both cats' on Jan 14 when the BTC ETFs were approved). CANCEL = NOT COOL.

No hard feelings, but since then I lost my interest in Toshi. I check the Toshi TG via my partners account from time to time, and what stands out is how salty the tone of some Toshi Maxis sounds at times; it is so salty you can top-up the Dead Sea with their tears! They seriously criticise orange as cheap copycat and that blue has the OG NFT collection on base! Hello - was the iPhone first?

Meanwhile, over in orange cat Telegram (where I am daily), some folks can't resist calling Toshi NFTs ugly and obsess about "flippening" $TOSHI. To be fair, the tone here is less aggressive/salty, yet this is not quite artful participation either imho:

• Toshi NFTs don't need to be cute as Toshi is about helpful developer tools catering for the Cambrian explosion of projects, d'apps and token when it's base szn. I am glad they didn't use their treasury on famous Pudgy Penguins artist Antoine Mingo (which is what Mochi did to create the Mochimon NFT collection). I want them to focus on making their DeFi tools the safest on base, because that gets more users here, which might in turn buy more Mochi token. Simple.

• Flippening is some of the dumbest memes ever created by crypto people: it perpetuates rivalrous thinking that brought us the current system so many of us claim they hate. Plus, had Ethereans not focused on flippening Bitcoin in the last cycle...the UX might already be 10x better...and now some fans of the second born cat on base are focussing on de-throning the OG in terms of market cap. Don't.

Don't compare yourself with who someone else is today, compare yourself with who you were yesterday (Jordan Peterson)

It took me way too long to grasp this piece of wisdom. Whilst there are species in nature with recognisable similarities, it is also true that every human is unique; what I learned from biohacking is that the only sample size that matters is:

n=1

I think that applies to cat coins too. Whilst roaming the same land, Mochi and Toshi play in their distinct niches:

Toshi = B2B

Imagine blue cat being animated and speaking in the voice of Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn): Please new dev, come my way, I will make your project on base safe and sound. Our cool tools are rock solid and will make your users and investors trust you and your token.

Mochi = B2C

Imagine orange cat being animated and speaking in the voice of a female voice of your choice: Please new user step into the web3 wonderland. You don't need to be scared, we are friendly here. Our tamamochi game shows you what is possible on-chain and what to watch out for: there are some bad guys, but mostly on other chains, not on base. Oh, and the cat is cute.

I own both tokens and I think both projects are bloody brilliant. I wish both cats to win their own game and become the apex animal their chosen niche. Then they can fulfil their evolutionary potential: to bring the masses to base.

One more thing: I wouldn't been entirely surprised if we found out is some of the rivalry is somewhat staged and scripted, like the kayfabe agreements in wrestling...

In the spirit of BOTH-AND I minted this water bottle with both blue and orange cats today on this amazing project that form within the substrate of the emerging creator economy:

https://h2o.deleteyourself.com

Hydrate #772

It's been a long bear market. Mint & customize a 3D bottle with stickers from your favorite web3 projects.

https://h2o.deleteyourself.com/gallery/772

You buy NFTs because you crave digital status.

We buy IRL art because we support artists.

We are not the same.

That was my mental model until I dived into the Mochiverse in December.

Today, my baby and I own a decent collection of Mochimons by known Pudgy Penguins artist Antoine Mingo, and this is one of my favs as cherry blossom is around the corner:

Before I share my first exhilarating NFT minting experience, let's go back to the beginning...

I got the art bug when I was 17. I lived just under an hour away from Düsseldorf in Germany, which had been a significant hotbed of contemporary art and peaked when Joseph Beuys died in 1986; he radically re-defined what art is (living with a Coyote in a NYC Gallery for a week for example). I started to collect editions from his disciples, which I could afford from the money I earned at the car wash on weekends; blue collar work for high-brow art work.

Art collector - yes. Art investor - no.

Collecting contemporary art gave me a sense of purpose, personal growth, creative expression and connection like nothing before in my life as a pupil preparing for A-Levels. There I was, still a minor, cash in my pockets, drinking champagne on gallery openings rubbing shoulders with local celebrities and millionaires. I was a bit the talk of town for a while and I would lie if I said that this didn't stroke my ego.

I quickly realised that I am not that interested in all the glitz and hype and I preferred to visit artists in their studios building deep relationships musing about art, life, sex and the universe. I knew deep inside that my buys were not strategic but entirely based on what I wanted to live with in my four walls. I could be a millionaire today, but in the end I didn't have the discipline to save enough for a signed Warhhol print etc. I failed the marshmallow test in this regard.

At some point I stopped collecting art altogether and replaced that need for visual expression and beauty with my own digital photography.

My first NFT

I didn't jump into the NFT mania in 2021 mainly because of Paris Hilton. I am grateful for her explaining the tech and culture to me in the layman terms. At the same time, I saw no utility beyond expensive jpegs in the last bull run apart from status: not my cuppa tea really...

Last year, I discovered Rumble Kong League (thanks Early Podcast!) and bought an NFT for my son who plays basketball and lives and breathes its culture - but not yet web3...so me thinking ahead when someone will eventually pique his interest (won't listen to Bitcoin Boomer Papa): you need to own a Kong (or Rookie) to play the game. Bingo! I believe this type of NFT utility will be highly sought after provided the game is great in the first place: play-and-earn, not play-to-earn. 10K Kongs on-chain (Avalanche) - 100 Million basketball players IRL. You do the maths...

Mochimons by Mingo

I wrote about investing into $MOCHI in my first on-chain post here. Immersing myself into the community on TG I soon got this alpha: Antoine Mingo, the artist behind the now famous Pudgy Penguine NFT collection would be the creative director of 3333 Mochimons.

I did some initial research and instantly knew this would be big - and a good thing: the pudgies showed at Art Basel Miami which is pretty much as big and glitzy it gets in the world of art fairs. At the same time Mingo didn't profit too much form the multi-million upside the PPs made their founder and then later on buyer. Naka promises to share the profits more equitably this time round.

Don't trust, verify: I reached out to Mingo to check that it will be really him, and if he will indeed get royalties in perpetuity. From the response I got I can assume that this will be the case, and this is the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Ideally I'd love to see this 'deal' on-chain at some point: put it in a smart contract and throw away the keys! Generational wealth for Mingo's descendants if there will be any...NFT collections like Mochimons can disrupt the (often extractive) art world for good!

My first live mint experience

In one word: roller-coaster!

My adrenaline levels were constantly rising in the weeks prior to the mint. The Penguins had a floor price of around 20 ETH in January 2024 - and a solid bag of Mochimons could mean life-changing money. I lost money in my first cycle, and this was my chance to make our family finances whole.

About a week before the minting event I decided to go all in. I set-up wallets for all my family members. You had to hold 10M $MOCHI (checked in a live snapshot) to mint one NFT with a max per wallet of 5. I knew that the collection would sell out in anything between 1-5 minutes...

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” — Amos Tversky 

It actually took two evenings to get the job done because the team postponed the mint as something on their end was not ready on Monday. Can you imagine the adrenaline for 24 hours? So Tuesday it was, and luckily, I had a work gig canceled that week, which was a bummer in terms of lost income, but ultimately the universe wanted me to have that extra space. I felt the pain for peeps in Asia who couldn't stay awake for another night or who had child care duties that night. You know who you are.

Nakamochi has nerves of steel

Tuesday 9pm UTC: the mint didn't start on time and those 20 odd minutes listening to the team on live audio in TG was both nerve wrecking and inspiring: they kept so cool and calm whilst fixing the problem before our ears listening - plus some folks loosing their minds in the TG channel: this was building in the open on another level!

We constantly refreshed all browser windows and were able to mint even 10 seconds before they confirmed the mint was finally live. The result: we got amount we had geared up for. The collection was sold out in under three minutes. My heart racing, the only sentence I said with a chuffed face: baby, we are art dealers now!

HODLing and playing until legging out

Devising the optimal legging-out strategy probably requires - in addition to macro and crypto cycle signals - deep understanding of both the art and the NFT markets. I can draw on my experience in the former, and will study the latter to combine time-in-the-market AND time-the-market.

Speaking of game...one of the deciding factors to go big on Mochimons is their potential utility in the upcoming Tamamochi game: native on Telegram plus a desktop version afaik. Bullish af!

Now add that the Mochiverse is #builtonbase and that Farcaster is blowing up thanks to #frames, I can see a flywheel of of value creation soon setting in motion. We are not in a rush to sell and ATM we are already sitting on a 30x. I bought a big diamond paperweight in orange that sits on my desk under my Mac, in case my impatient-by-nature degen-self wants to turn me into paper-hands. Ask me at the end of 2025 or so...

The reason why I never bought a Warhol back then was because his Pop Art was too low-brow for me. Too much glitz, like his spiritual-mentee Paris Hilton decades later. Luckily, I instantly liked the look and feel of Mochimons because it reminds me of my stint in Japan with its manga comic culture. And with this NFT collection, I am more art dealer than art collector - and that's ok.

You ape into shit coins and memes.

I do deep due diligence into DeFi D'apps and ReFi protocols.

We are not the same.

That was my mental model until 9th December 2023.

Fast forward two months, and tokens from the mochiverse are my biggest bags, far out on the risk curve! Wait, but why? It all started with me reading this tweet seconds after it was posted:

yuga.eth 🛡

@yugacohler

I just bought $MOCHI on Base. My thesis is simple:

1. 2021 was about dog coins. 2024 will be about cat coins.

2. Cats are cute.

3. I didn't know that @brian_armstrong has an orange cat named Mochi. Orange cats are known for their risky behaviors. Perfect for crypto.

Lmeow

MOCHI on BASE CHAIN

@mochi_token

Here. Already on Base.

Meow

127

19:05 • 9 Dec 2023

Return on Luck

Sahil Bloom classifies four types of luck, of which three are at play here:

1. Luck from Uniqueness: Occurs when your unique set of attributes attracts specific luck to you. It actually seeks you out.

   See, I follow Yuga bc he is a dev at Coinbase AND an orchestra conductor. I am a bridge builder of all sorts and love unusual intersections - and I played the clarinet as a teenager in a symphonic orchestra. Hence, without classic music, no $MOCHI for me. Thanks for this consequential post Yuga!

2. Luck from Motion: You’re creating motion and collisions through hustle and energy that you are inserting into an ecosystem which opens you up to more lucky events.

   When I do my research it is intensive and fast: I did enough DD in under 2 hours to justify a first invest before the major pamp happened.

3. Luck from Awareness: The result of your awareness and depth of understanding of a specific domain. This allows you to become very good at positioning yourself for lucky breaks to benefit you.

   I have a teenager son and a few Gen Z nephews and nieces; digital natives, living and breaving internet culture bruh. They think that dog memes are done, and I know how much crypto loves a good capital rotation.

   Plus, my professional experience and DeFi insights helped me to quickly 'validate' Coinbase's mission to onboard the next billion users - via this unique confluence: 110m KYC-ed customers, L2 Base built on OP Stack, Synthetix launching on OP, Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase Ventures, most Bitcoin ETFs using CB as custodial partner, Larry Fink talking tokenisation of RWA on TV etc. I suddenly saw an Amazon-style flywheel. Above all, Base has no native token (yet), and $MOCHI could very well become a proxy for that. Hence, expanded my thesis and went long - and I have never looked back since...

Into the rabbithole

After this first rush, I discovered $TOSHI, named after the other cat of Brian Armstrong. I will write about the should-be-good-but-isn't relationship between Toshi & Mochi in another post. Sign-up if you want to read it.

Being immersed in the TG group is giving me daily dopamine fixes; when I walk in the forest I find my self giggling at the squirrels.

Then came THE mint of the season: mochimons by famed pudgy penguin artist Antoine Mingo. 3333 NFTs sold out in 3 minutes!!! It was my first ever mint... sign-up if you want to read about my roller coaster experience.

Getting deeper into Base finally led me to Farcaster, which is a fascinating ecosystem: #frames is blowing up their servers rn and this never-launched-Facebook-idea promises to improve web3 UX big time. Yet, this is the most astounding fact: so far, Mochi is delivering on its promise to help Coinbase to onboard the next billion users: people exactly like my partner and son, and not because of Papa the Bitcoin Boomer...but because:

the cat is cute.

The moral of this story: I had to come off my high horse, surrender to what people actually want, in order to surf this amazing wave!

Not financial advice. DYOR.

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