Project Cryptograd

Premium Content on Network States, DeSci, and Crypto Markets for Paid Subscribers

Since I don’t paywall any articles, I have been thinking of how I can create value for my paying subscribers. Today I cooked something up. Many of my readers have some degree of interest or involvement in the cryptocurrency world and closely adjacent sectors such as Decentralized Science (DeSci) and Network States. These happen to be areas in which I am myself am closely involved in and like to think have some degree of insight into - at least as approximated through predictive alpha. Consequently, I am creating a separate section on this blog called Cryptograd to host exclusive premium content and analysis on cryptocurrency markets, news and upcoming events related to network states, and interesting happenings in DeSci world. Sequestering this content also allows me to post it without “contaminating” the main blog with topics that many of my more “politics”-oriented readers will not be very interested in. If that describes you, please feel free to unsubscribe from Cryptograd specifically (instructions).

Otherwise, the first sitrep in this section will be on the post-Trump inauguration outlook on the crypto markets.

💎 The Crypto Markets

Why am I perhaps worthwhile listening to crypto? For a start, I called both the bottom and top of the 2020-21 bull run (including the pico-top of GameFi), and correctly remained bearish throughout 2022. I then aggressively recommended you buy crypto from $25.5-30k as soon as the Bitcoin ETF was announced, and today BTC is above $100,000. I was verifiably early to some shitcoins that did a 100x - most notably, $SAMO (the OG Solana dog), $TIME (an OHM fork) in the last run, and Milady at $1k. I was even warning you away from FTX a few months before its ignominious collapse. Of course I had to take my share of L’s as well. I got liquidated on my trading account twice, and many shitcoins I was bullish on never took off. That’s the occupational hazard with small caps - they can sit idle the entire bull run, only to then go to zero; or they explode by 3-4 orders of magnitude, generating returns impossible to find in TradFi outside the highly gated world of VC investing.

The second objection is that crypto is a scam. You are welcome to this view, and I have in fact always acknowledged that the vast majority of assets in this space are scams - it is easier to list the exceptions, which in my view are Ethereum and Bitcoin, followed by DeFi blue chips, quality DeSci, and a few select utility coins. Obviously when buying DOGE, PEPE, or any other memecoins you should bear in mind they have zero worth beyond, well, their memetic value - whatever that is. It’s gambling on popular emotions and risk management is vital. Finally, I allow that crypto is not guaranteed to survive, and there’s a chance - if in my view a small one - that it ends up as the early 21C’s equivalent of tulips. However, I reject the idea that cryptocurrency as a concept is a scam. Credibly decentralized blockchains are by far the most rigorous framework for property rights in the digital realm. My fundamental logic is that as an ever greater share of the world’s product accrues to it - a process that will be turbocharged by AI - the value of quality crypto assets should trend inexorably upward.

I will make the case for this thesis at the technological and economic history level in future public posts, but again, I do not pretend to run a church here like Saylor or Sassal do for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and you are free to take it or leave it. I will also refrain from commenting much on things that are beyond my kern, such as NFTs (too insiderish) or traditional financial markets (no particular alpha there). I do not have a fraction of the experience and knowledge base in TradFi as I do in crypto, so anything I say there will probably be useless beyond very general considerations on politics, monetary conditions, and their expected impact on the crypto markets..

🌐 Network States & DeSci

Ever since becoming disillusioned with the scam that is “national identities” in 2022, I have become woke to libertarian ideas about free association and voluntary communities. Obviously, these are far from the world’s first attempts at “exit”. The problem is that they have had a failure rate of close to 100%, and even those very rare projects that “made it”, such as Zionism, lost their raison d’être as soon as the their decided “traditional” objectives - a Jewish State - were secured. However, I believe that cryptographic technologies have opened up organizational tools and economic capabilities - on-chain property registries, reputational systems, and treasuries - that make “network states” like these practicable and sustainable as never before. They have also come at a very propitious time. Accelerating cultural globalization, greater mobility, the expansion of remote work, and the discreditation of traditional notions about “patriotism” and “obligations” to existing nation-states have all greatly increased the viability of network states.

I have walked the walk as well as talked the talk, spending a substantive fraction of my past two years at “pop-up villages” such as the original Zuzalu in Montenegro, Vitalia in Honduras, and Zelar City in Berlin. As I discussed in a recent interview (1:00-11:10), what makes these places so enjoyable is the sense of community that a common vision produces. Metropolises are “interesting”, but induce a sense of social anomie; traditional villages might have more in the way of community spirit, but Marx was writing about the “idiocy of rural life” back in the 1840s. In contrast, within an aligned network state, you can strike up a conversation with any stranger on the street or corridor, and chances are it will develop in interesting and meaningful directions, rather than remaining confined to banalities about the weather or “did you catch the game?” The pop-up villages I mostly associate with tend to revolve around radical life extension, and bio/acc and DeSci more generally. However, this is an open frontier, and although the libertarians (TPOT, Gray Tribe, etc.) were predictably the first movers, there are plenty of other factions dipping their toes in the water. There are projects of a more conservative or identitarian focus (e.g. Freeth’m in Portugal; Orania in South Africa), while on the other side of the spectrum the artist/anarchist MOOS collective in Berlin was actively exploring the idea of DAOizing when I stayed in their coliving space. This illustrates an important truth about “network states” - they are meant to be value-agnostic. Their tools are adaptable to any sufficiently coordinated faction or movement. Instead of weaponizing the traditional state to force people of disparate ideologies - liberals, Communists, libertarians, nationalists, religious fundamentalists - who otherwise hate each other, the network states toolkit provisions them with the means to construct their own larp islands and let everyone else vote with their feet on the most functional and attractive resultant polities.

Network states (at least in my interpretation) are built on cryptographic structures, and as such I expect them to expand in power and prestige in line with the crypto market cap $TOTAL as a percentage of world wealth. The nation-state is in many ways a relict of the Agricultural Age when elites had to pin down the peasantry to the land, and has become far less viable or morally defensible in the ultra-mobile and interconnected world of the Internet Age. They survive mainly on inertia. I will further develop and explore the broader ramifications of these arguments on the main blog, but what I will say from a more practical or personal perspective is that it’s probably a good thing to be early to Ground Zero of what may come to define the next global geopolitical order, and I am perhaps not the most unqualified person to talk about it.

🔓 Unlocking Cryptograd

Consequently, Cryptograd will not just contains Crypto Sitreps about the crypto markets, but also Decentralized Sitreps about upcoming network states events, DeSci news, and other experiments at decentralizing all other aspects of society.

I will also aim to cover useful products and services that cater to this community. As of today, its natural “constituency” is younger digital nomads who are not tied down to a physical location for work or raising a family. There are obviously exceptions but it takes money and effort to make it work, and these are barriers to entry that we would wish to lower in order to accelerate normalization. Examples would include projects/companies that are developing “nomad visas”, international health insurance, “worldschooling”, and cross-border qualifications recognition.

Again, I envisage this as something that provides concrete value, so these Sitreps will almost all be for the exclusive benefit of paid subscribers.

Main blog content will remain free.

If you are only interested in my thoughts on intelligence enhancement or geopolitics or whatever, and otherwise don’t want to hear about any of this crypto claptrap, here are the instructions for Unsubscribing from specific Sections.