Number Go Up

The tech and AI news cycles have been relentless for good reason. Claude 3 Opus LLM came out and punched Chat GPT 4 in the nose. It’s been quite impressive, especially in math and reasoning. It can also find a “needle in a haystack.” That’s a big deal. There are very positive reviews, and we are excited to spend more time with Claude over at The Rundown. Meanwhile, Klarna took on over 700 human jobs. From their site:

• The AI assistant has had 2.3 million conversations, two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats
• It is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents
• Customers now resolve their errands in less than 2 minutes, compared to 11 minutes previously

Still, human qualities are more important than ever, argues an excellent essay co-authored by my friend and former CNN colleague, Aneesh Raman, in the NYT.

Our abilities to effectively communicate, develop empathy and think critically have allowed humans to collaborate, innovate and adapt for millenniums. Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve, yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritized in our education and training.

My attention this week has been on Bitcoin, to be honest. It’s been a roller coaster. Wild. There’s a Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index that scores market sentiment. Right now, it’s “greed.” Surprise. The forces behind it include:

• Massive ETF flows
• Wall street and (some) retail FOMO
• The Bitcoin halving event coming up in April (even more supply shock)
• The possibility of lower interest rates.

All of this has added significant liquidity to the crypto markets. The founder and CEO of Chainlink says the reason is that there are more net new buyers, driving more adoption. Those buyers are the global financial system. It’s very volatile and exciting. Number go up.

Narratives

One way to think about crypto is through narratives. That’s how I try to make it easy for myself. When I got into this space in 2021, the narrative was all about:

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
• Gaming and Metaverse
• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs). I even started a channel and made a collection called The Luka Press Club. Luka is my dog. More on this another time. OK. Well, here, I can’t help it. Decentralized storytelling was the idea. We have a white paper on this, that needs a tweak.

The Luka Press Club

In this bull cycle, the narrative revolves around:

• Artificial intelligence meets blockchain
• Meme Coins. (DOGE, SHIB, BONK, PEPE) These make no sense to me, but they have pumped over 3000% in total recently. Cute or weird images, often of dogs, that typically have no utility but generate a community and play into pop culture. I have a few in my DEGEN bag.
• RWA, Real World Assets. This is where physical objects (e.g., real estate) or financial assets that you currently hold can be tokenized and moved onto the blockchain. Traditional finance (TradFi) is moving into this space.
• Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePin). This is a method of building and maintaining infrastructure in the physical world using decentralized technologies. Its also a way of competing against huge companies with massive infrastructure. You participate in the initial building of a DePIN project, and get rewarded with crypto payments.

Here are some DePIN examples. I also wanted to highlight a few coins in the communications space that I am keeping an eye on as well as offer some context.

HELIUM. This provides wireless connectivity for IoT devices by leveraging a network of distributed hotspots owned and operated by individuals. These hotspots provide network coverage and in return, the owners earn crypto currency for their participation in the network.

THETA This is a decentralized video streaming network that improves the quality and delivery of video streams by utilizing a peer-to-peer network (I invested small bags in this one two years ago and I am running a node at home to receive some crypto rewards.) I know.

RENDER This is a decentralized network that leverages the power of GPUs across its network for rendering digital content, providing a distributed computing platform.

AI Midjourney

Tips if you’re a normie investing for the first time.

Here is what I’ve learned from losing in the last bull market (lame, I know) and from watching a bunch of YouTube channels where retail investors like me go to learn:

• Take emotions out of it.
• Do not FOMO or chase pumps
• Look past the hype. Most videos and tweets are about people pumping their bangs and schilling their coins. 95% is BS.
• Prepare for volatility and 30% pullbacks. Normal.
• DCA when coins are down.
• Focus on the new stuff, because those can really go up all of a sudden. Do not try to make too much sense of it all.
• Take profits. Never be totally out.
• Be careful. Scammers are smart. I got scammed a few times :( Make sure your coins and wallets are safe.
• Do not do stupid stuff (put everything on a meme.)
• Invest what you are willing to lose.

Please sign up for The Rundown and support our work. Paid subs would be … awesome. We need some love. Thomas and I are working hard behind the scenes. We have day jobs, so at times, those take over.

We are working on a small conference series in partnership with some cool folks too. I hope you have taken a little time to hang out with Wanja too.

Here’s $LUKA …

HODL: Hold on for dear life. Meaning, do not sell your bitcoin.