Philip Decker pfp
Philip Decker
@psd
1/5 Attention Tokens: Cultural Stores of Value in a Hyper-Distracted World At the bottom of it all, crypto is a few core things: (1) a digital store of value (btc), (2) a currency (USDT, USDC), and (3) a hyper-connected incentive mechanism. The first 2 are well on their way. I want to focus on the 3rd, mostly because I believe it has the potential to be the most impactful. Munger said it best, “show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome”. In our hyper-distracted world, the incentive is to keep doom-scrolling, keep frying our attention, keep that dopamine drip flowing. My thesis is that the stage is now set for a new crypto store-of-value to incentivize a reawakening of the human mind, freeing us from the shackles of social media. I call them “Attention Tokens”.
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Philip Decker pfp
Philip Decker
@psd
2/5 But before we get there (hint: touch grass, earn points), let's look at what makes a good store-of-value. Today, people use things like gold bars, btc, Picasso’s and NYC apartments. But historically, societies have used a wide range of items, each chosen for particular qualities like durability, scarcity, and cultural significance (each was limited by what was available to the people living at that particular time and that particular place).
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Philip Decker pfp
Philip Decker
@psd
4/5 Almost as if pre-programmed into us, every human society creates stores of value. But that idea is always limited by the physical and conceptual constraints of that place and that time. People on Yap Island didn’t want Tulips. Folks from the Netherlands didn’t want seashells. And none of them would have even been able to comprehend bitcoin. So what makes a store of value “good”? A combination of qualities really: durability, scarcity, portability, fungibility (interchangeability), and arguably, most importantly, cultural or social significance. While the form of the store of value varies greatly across time and place, its ability to be understood and relevant to a wide swath of people ultimately defines its demand and utility.
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Philip Decker pfp
Philip Decker
@psd
5/6 Today, crypto fits a lot of those buckets. It's durable, portable and fungible, and can be designed to be scarce. But does it have direct cultural or social significance? I don’t think so. At least, not in its current form. Sure, decentralization and self-sovereignty are important. But are they directly culturally relevant to everyone in our hyper-distracted world? No, not at all. In today’s world, attention is all that matters. So, let’s build a store-of-value out of it.
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Philip Decker pfp
Philip Decker
@psd
6/6 ( I totally fudged the numbering, oh well) Admittedly, that’s a strange concept. How do you build a store-of-value out of attention? Well, it would look something like this: “touch grass, earn points”. A consumer crypto app that mints “attention tokens” only when you stay off social media. Open tiktok, and the points stop. Scarce. Durable. And fungible. In our hyper-distracted and manipulated world, where everyone’s mind has been hijacked with a dizzying stream of digital slop, “attention” becomes the culturally relevant tulips, wampum and Rai stones of our time. And might just free us from our digital chains.
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