Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1826932477866197094 A similar error is that many people want early stage industry vibez without early stage industry risks. eg. too many defi protocols, not enough popup cities / network states / zu villages 😀
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Popup cities don’t yet have an investable thesis investors can take to their LPs. At least not one that looks any different from municipal bonds, which are a generally unattractive asset class, in the *best* case. Here’s my mapping: L1 tokens = frontier real estate with unclear political rights = telcos DeFi networks = pickaxes business ~= enterprise software VC Decentralized social = mining ~= consumer web VC Popup cities = saloons in gold rush towns ~= municipal bonds * coworking spaces I wouldn’t invest in any of it personally under “normal market” conditions regulated by existing governments None of if makes sense unless you assume some degree of state capacity failure. Maybe not apocalyptic like Bitcoin, but some failure. So all are bets that look something like a short bet on a failed state bond (like say shorting Pakistan bonds) multiplied by one of these familiar things. As purely financial bets, all look terrible. The reason to invest has to be emotional narratives. Like a space program
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
That's exactly what someone would say about bitcoin in 2009-10, which is exactly my point 🙂 (I'm not saying that if you make or join a popup city you're going to succeed financially, just that if you want early-stage industry vibes that's the kind of ground you have to tread in)
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Is anyone calling themselves “investor” looking for returns in vibes? That seems more like a scenester motivation. Buy yourself good times with marginal dollars on bets you can afford to lose.
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