I Took a Photo!

New Essay: What's Happening at Reddit? 

https://www.backoftheenvelope.xyz/p/whats-happening-at-reddit

META 5x'ed its net income over the past two years

Insanely impressive for any company, but especially one at that scale

If you believe LLMs are eating the world, the logical conclusion should be to publish more online

One of the most direct ways to ensure your voice / opinions get (at least a little) incorporated in the models

It's all training data

Three categories seem to be dominating crypto VC mindshare / dealflow right now

1. crypto x AI
2. financialized social
3. stablecoins

New piece reflecting on the state of crypto, covering H2 2024

There were three major inflection points:
1. The new administration + new Congress
2. Truth Terminal tweeting about GOAT
3. The Hyperliquid airdrop

More on why they matter here:

New piece reflecting on the state of crypto, covering H2 2024

There were three major inflection points:
1. The new administration + new Congress
2. Truth Terminal tweeting about GOAT
3. The Hyperliquid airdrop

More on why they matter here: https://www.backoftheenvelope.xyz/p/reflections-on-the-state-of-crypto-165

Farcade

gotten a lot of great feedback today. 

will have some good quality of life improvements by tomorrow for WORDS

also working on some bugs with challenges

please never hesitate to DC me with feature suggestions/complaints or bugs

One of the best things about the Farcade team is how quickly they'll iterate based on market feedback

Awesome to see

Invest in things that make the world more productive

The Harry Potter films are truly some of the best movies ever made

I’ve opened Warpcast probably >10 times per day for the past week to play in the Farcade

Vitamin String Quartet may be the best thing I discovered in 2024

Currently listening to:

Vitamin String Quartet may be the best thing I discovered in 2024

Currently listening to: https://open.spotify.com/track/5hpa5Woo3hzipxsCOrka4C?si=g5kG7vhfToaiGubEw1O48w&context=spotify%3Aplaylist%3A4r2ovJj6kXMoeonGT4oceB

My most recommended books this year:

- Breaking History (Jared Kushner)
- Who is Michael Ovitz? (Michael Ovitz)
- Electronic Exchanges: From Pits to Bits
- Winner Takes All (Christina Binkley)
- What It Takes (Steve Schwarzman)
- The PayPal Wars (Eric Jackson)
- Anna: The Biography (Amy Odell)
- Why Minsky Matters (L Randall Wray)
- The Unincorporated Man (Dani + Eytan Kollin)

🎮 Just scored 540 points on Geo Crush in the Farcade!

Can’t believe we have to wait 3 more days until the next batch of games drops

🎮 Just scored 61268 points on 2048 in the Farcade!

Investing @variant, writing at https://backoftheenvelope.substack.com/

6/ On new apps

My guesses for where we’ll see interesting new apps emerge include:

- Open social. Still relatively underexplored / underutilized relative to the rest of crypto infra. The challenge is in onboarding, but all it takes is one killer app

- Gaming. This has been a hated sector for years. The challenge has always been in building actually fun games. The right path is to lean into everything that’s new and unique to crypto. I think the @Farcade team may have cracked the code.

- The @worldcoin ecosystem. 20M users is nothing to sneeze at 

- Hooks. We know Uni v4 is coming. There will probably be apps

🎮 Just scored 72 points on Tower Blocks in the Farcade!

Alana Levin

@alanadlevin