Daniel McGlynn

@danielmcglynn

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I'll be the first to admit that I fell off. I'm still writing and publishing to the Open Money Project almost every day, which was/is the goal. But I've slowed way down with social sharing and talking about the project, which is also part of the goal. Anyway, still going strong. Maybe, roughly, about half-way through the outline. Today's post: https://www.danielmcglynn.com/decentralized-oracles-bridging-blockchain-and-real-world-data/

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Request for product: A wallet-connected media platform that would allow me to publish longform work, host AMAs or live-interview kinds of formats (almost like an irregular podcast), and host a community where the main focus is a curated news/info feed. The monetization happens in the form of membership. Possibly with different tiers. Does something like this exist?

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We are looking for a social media manager at Nexus. Reach out if you are interested in working on the Verifiable Internet. The role is SF-based. https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/nexus.xyz/c4536d6f-d6d2-44f4-bd3b-9ff327ad8aab

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this week's newsletter is about the missed opportunity of bitcoin reserve announcement. https://www.danielmcglynn.com/reserve-in-name-only/

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@danielmcglynn has casted for the first time in a while.

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Or, put another way, an asset that belongs to the network. The importance of this kind of network-based asset class is that it allows people to organize, create, and build economies that aren’t possible under corporate-owned or government-ruled systems. So maybe both things can be true at the same time. Memecoins are a distortion of reality that allows people to leverage satire or outsized personalities into a financially destructive force. But they might also be a path forward toward whatever comes next. In the early days, the internet was little more than poorly designed websites and bad information. And maybe that’s where we still are with crypto. Maybe someday we’ll lose part of the casino, keep some of the circus, and figure out a way for people to build and create whatever they want — even if it’s a whole bunch of celebrity-backed shitcoins.

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If that becomes the norm, then memecoins aren’t an interesting new primitive — they’re a grotesque amplification of everything that’s already wrong with the way fame and influence cloud our critical thinking skills. At scale, it means that memecoins are more damaging than the mass media models they were supposed to replace. In some ways, it’s fitting that memecoins are part of the zeitgeist that’s led us to where we are now: Nobody feels good about it, nobody knows what to do about it, but everybody still wants to see what will happen next. But then there’s this: Maybe the most interesting thing about memecoins is that they’re exactly what crypto is supposed to be in the first place — a currency native to the internet.

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Last year, I wrote about how memecoins are actually a new way to value attention on the internet. They’re a way to convert internet users and creators into owners and operators who can leverage the content and attention they create across the internet’s surfaces. Memecoins, I argued, were about deconstructing the monopolizing forces of mass media, in which corporations are high earners, and redistributing that value across the communities driving the attention. But all of that thinking feels naive now. If memecoins are about monetizing attention and building digital culture that somehow reinforces our digital identities, then what does it say about the future of digital assets when celebrities and politicians are just cranking out coins and leaving wide paths of wreckage?

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The funniest thing about these presidents and their coins is that memecoins are almost like a joke within a joke. The hard part to figure out is: Are the people launching these coins telling the joke? Are they in on the joke? Or are they the joke? It’s like a comedy show that’s turned dark — you realize you’re still laughing, but the material isn’t funny anymore. The risk here is that memecoins, like the altcoins that went bust and the shitcoins that never amounted to much, prove that this crypto movement is really just a circus and a casino designed for the amusement of people who are chronically online — but that amusement comes at the cost of everyone else. On crypto Twitter, there’s still a general vibe that crypto makes sense and is working as intended. But if you go anywhere else, it’s pretty clear that crypto, and by extension its guiding principles like decentralization or permissionless access, looks like a bunch of nonsense that only enables scams and clown-like behavior.

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Looking back, what stands out about these sideshows is that some of them actually turned out to be meaningful. Some of those sideshows moved into the main tent —and now occupy an important place in the overall crypto market cap. You can say this about early altcoins: Litecoin is a great example. And what about Dogecoin? You could even argue that Ethereum was launched as an alternative to Bitcoin, and now look at it. This holds true for the shitcoins, too. Some of them are still around. And even a few of them ended up playing a substantial role in the crypto story, at least in the way it’s been written so far. So maybe someday we’ll look back and remember these wild days of memecoins. When presidents (and it’s not just the US of A anymore — this week, the leader of Argentina got in on the action too) and other made-for-TV celebrities thought that launching tokens, cashing out, and leaving their fans holding the bag was some kind of savvy business decision.

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The thing about crypto is that, almost since its inception, it’s been defined by its sideshows. First, it was early altcoins — coins that tried to be like Bitcoin, but better. Then came the shitcoins, an industry term of art referring to assets launched with little purpose beyond pumping and dumping. These projects were more like rug pulls that everyone was in on. Today’s sideshow has got to be memecoins. We’ve covered memecoins before, mainly because they’re so interesting. They fascinate because they’re like the internet’s version of a flash mob, but defined by satire rather than spontaneous dance — like there’s some kind of big joke out there, and you can somehow make money off the punchline. In the full arc of crypto’s brief and sometimes convoluted history, these sideshows might be seen as a distraction — like they’re the thing that will never really lead to the real thing.

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Yesterday I found something buried deep in my drive. I started writing it a few years ago and it looks like I stopped at some point. It's more of a well developed outline than a first draft. It was fun to reread it after having completely forgotten about it. I actually thought it was good. Then I thought, "How did I come up with this?"

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I mean, it's Valentine's Day and I just wrote today's post about interoperability in the first principles section of Open Money...

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What comes after the casino culture?

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I'm still working on my daily posts in the hopes of building a book. The work is coming along. Some of the posts are rehashing stuff I've written previously and making it fit in the current format. Other posts are new ideas that are needed to fill out the structure. I just wrapped up section two (or maybe I should start calling these chapters), which was all about money stuff. Now we are on to section/chapter 3, which is all about some of the first principles of Open Money. Next we'll move into how Open Money works in the wild. Thank you to everyone who has checked it out. I appreciate it.

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I still think the killer app will be the ability to make a one-of-a-kind mixtape that somehow degrades over time. Communicating with mixtapes is a lost art, and quite frankly, I think could help a lot of people.

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And, just one follow-up question, how are they different from an influencer?

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It's interesting that when you are living through big historic moments you know it's a big deal, but you don't have enough context to understand how big of a deal yet.

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It's important to know who you are writing for. In the case of the Open Money project, I'm writing for my neighbor who stops me in the driveway to ask about NFTs. Or my friend who sends texts asking things like "is dogecoin real?" I've been writing about crypto for going on ten years. A lot of people around here like to say "we are so early." But so what? If all of this still doesn't make sense to people who are trying feed their families or make ends meet, then it feels like more of a game or a toy than a disruptive, society-shifting change. Anyway, I'm writing Open Money for my neighbors and my friends. But I'm sharing it with everyone in the hopes that it makes the work stronger and more useful.

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Today's post: Universal money https://www.danielmcglynn.com/universal-money/

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