A collection of letters encompassing simple insights and recognition of foundational shifts that any bright minds trapped within the old norms of a VC mindset can use to break free, whether they are just starting their journey or reflecting back on what they wish someone had told them in their early days.
I just watched Rounders for the first time, catching up to the insider linguistic tricks feels long overdue. Like how loan shark copycat financiers saving so much fictional wealth for the swim back are long overdue.
Gattaca, The Gambler— don’t want to give too much of a playbook— but the common thread is knowing which game you’re playing, and who you’re being played against.
Is it enough to run the table with a study heavy game, and check, check, check on inflationary ego easing in mirrors made for humble and hungry reflection? Hedge those bets against all the talk circuit anxious for clickbait peacock bros.
Vitalik, that’s a bit of an antidote to the all that false priors squawking, and another great set of threads purveyed. This week he dealt premium hands for tale tellers that know how to spot the right tells.
An away team aboard the Kobayashi Maru message reminder: It’s far more interesting to build mechanisms which generate new options with each flop, turn, river revolution––for wealth of the kind created by primary means of production in the hands of a self-sovereign networked all, not needing to be borrowed as hand me down promisaries laden with bluffed burdens. Nothing personal––yet––just don’t have time for anything less.
The great game is indeed a game, but a game whose purpose is to create the rules of the game. The only game worth playing is to change the rules of every game being played.
Daring to live the calculus of new potentialities transformed by our own coopetive artisanships into kinetic action as the pixels keep changing from moment to moment.
Bluff. Re-raise. Take credit. Tell.
“the rule is this: if you spot a tell, you don't say a fucking word”
“They're trying to goad me, trying to own me. But this isn't a gunfight. It's not about pride or ego. It's only about…”
Do you know what it’s about?
“You can't lose what you don't put in the middle. But you can't win much either.”
A mechanical grip for the mechanical turks claiming to be the invisible hands of the global financial crisis hotline system and never-ending debt note. They swear it’s not printing— distributors go brrr all on their own.
In all this bluff-tell-mechanic dealership noise, almost everyone has missed the biggest story of the last five years. The breakaway from dependence on money lending and speculative bets to self sovereign networks building wealth at its source through primary production. It’s great that a handful of VCs provided life support during that time, while most VCs take credit. But we have to ask ourselves why the industry needed life support in the first place.
How interesting is it that with Twitter, Discord, YouTube, a semi-functional understanding of web3, Clo3d, Blender, and enough storytelling practice to connect with a community of buyers, collectors, traders, creators, and other artists — you are literally more powerful now at your desktop than all the factories in Shenzhen combined.
Makes the sympathy run distant second and dry for those still chasing the old middle, when the Fed papered over your easy credit addiction with historic even easier monopoly money. Now you’re the third rate second hand lender thinking you’re a genius rocket scientist, part designer rockstar, wearing the same old outfits all over again, because the illusion of liquidity was enough to get by in precarious times riding high on the bull market risks others took for the ringarde tricks jumping for your approval. Keep chasing that high. We play the real game around here. Not the cards, not the weak hands. Or the botox induced poker faces. And, least interesting of all the mimes: what is said with insecure distraction about the game from the sidelines.
In long times and short: “A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.”
Whatever hand you are dealt, fold, call, raise, and let’s get on with the game.
Any value brought in from sales of NFTs minted through this article will be used for building out the F₃M Realm treasury, which will eventually be governed and coordinated by the DAO, furthering to decentralise the web3 fashion capital stack.