Crypto, Memes, and Politics with Li Jin​

Crypto, Memes, and Politics with Li Jin​

April 11, 2024

Check the full episode on Youtube:

SUMMARY

Attention is the ultimate limitation of human value and the rise of meme coins as tokens representing the currency of the attention economy.

• 00:00 🗣️ The speaker questions the logic of adding Ukraine to NATO, discusses the ongoing war, and criticizes Trump's foreign policy and the media's coverage.

  • The speaker questions the logic of adding Ukraine to NATO and discusses the implications of invoking Article 5 in the NATO treaty.

  • The speaker discusses the ongoing war and the role of the US and NATO in providing financial and weapons support, questioning the decision not to negotiate for peace.

  • Ukraine should aim for peace rather than trying to push Russia out of its previous territorial boundaries, as it would lead to fewer casualties and a more positive outcome.

  • Trump's foreign policy is criticized as reckless, but the media's coverage is partisan and lacks intellectual honesty.

  • The discussion covers the recklessness of bashing Ukraine, the acceptance of the war in Ukraine, and the politicization of a shooting war.

• 05:08 🔑 Crypto and memes are all about attention, with the concept of attention as the ultimate limitation of human value and the rise of meme coins as tokens representing the currency of the attention economy.

  • Lee is considered an interesting voice in crypto, with a focus on the attention economy and the idea that crypto is back.

  • The speaker discusses the concept of attention as the ultimate limitation of human value and how memecoins represent the currency of the attention economy.

  • The attention economy can be analyzed as a market, with the idea of the user as the product being a key concept, and in the context of crypto, there are new attention assets in the form of tokens that users can own and benefit from.

  • The shift from analog to virtual economy was noticed by media theorists in the 70s and 80s, and meme coins are considered pseudo events not tied to an actual economy or productive asset.

  • Crypto and memes are all about attention, with the success of platforms like Ethereum and Solana being driven by developer and general attention rather than technical specs.

  • Meme coins' success is infuriating for many, as their value is not tied to any fundamental, but those who understand meme culture and internet influence can predict their success.

• 14:40 🔗 Blockchains and cryptocurrencies are like emerging religions with charismatic leaders, attention is crucial for sustainable growth, and building an authentic personal brand is key for success in business.

  • Businesses can reduce costs and improve efficiency by using Netsuite, a cloud financial system that brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.

  • Founders are turning to global talent for engineering teams, and Squad Sean's new company helps with sourcing, legal compliance, and local HR for global talent, providing premium quality at a fraction of the typical cost.

  • Blockchains and cryptocurrencies can be seen as emerging religions with charismatic leaders who are good at storytelling and promotion, and attention is upstream of value.

  • Vitalik's prolific writing and wide following in the L1 Wars shows the importance of capturing attention and building a solid user base for sustainable growth in the crypto space.

  • Building an authentic personal brand is crucial for success in business, as attention is a valuable asset and distribution is key in getting a product in front of potential users.

  • The speaker discusses the importance of having a Twitter account, rolling fund, podcast, and startup in the valley, and briefly mentions the possibility of discussing politics.

• 24:24 🔑 Crypto aims to distribute ownership broadly, attention drives value in the meme coin landscape, and there is potential correlation between social media mentions and crypto asset value, with a focus on class struggle and the tension between elite and non-elite groups.

  • The speaker discusses the importance of ownership in capitalism and how crypto is trying to distribute ownership more broadly to users.

  • Attention, not labor, drives value in the economy, and there is no efficient way to price the value of attention in the meme coin landscape.

  • The speaker discusses the potential correlation between social media mentions and sentiment with the value and movement of crypto assets, suggesting that attention will be recognized as a basis of value and mentioning the possibility of using data on token mentions to correlate with meme coin movements.

  • The focus on class struggle and the use of communism as a tool by one group of elites to take over the power structure in the United States, with the concept of the professional managerial class being a significant factor in today's power structure.

  • The tension in society is between the elite and non-elite groups, with different interests and views, and a restoration of boura capitalism may be needed to revitalize societies.

  • The speaker and others discuss their lack of focus on Europe as investors and their negative views on European countries and policies.

• 37:52 🌍 Europeans lack innovation compared to Americans, who prioritize economic progress over other societal values, leading to a decline in fertility rates and fulfillment in life.

  • Europeans have a lot of brilliant people, but they don't build brilliant things in Europe, and the discourse about Europe being better than America is just a coping mechanism for Americans.

  • Europe does not birth a lot of innovation compared to the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.

  • Europeans value different things than Americans, and while Americans are great at innovation, they are not as good at implementing and integrating new technologies into wider society.

  • The speaker discusses the dichotomy between maintaining things well and moving humanity forward within a technocapitalist society.

  • American education and cultural values prioritize economic progress, while other societies may prioritize different values, leading to a narrow focus on economic value at the expense of other important aspects of society.

  • Capitalism has led to great productivity but has also overlooked the human condition, resulting in a decline in fertility rates and a lack of fulfillment in life.

• 44:42 🔗 Crypto is a neutral technology that can promote or reduce inequality, with lower fees, extreme techno libertarianism, and a focus on community and market orientation.

  • Crypto is a neutral technology that can be used for both egalitarian and hierarchical purposes, with the potential to promote inequality or reduce it depending on how it is utilized.

  • Crypto introduces markets that reflect the high variance in human output, and while some believe markets exacerbate inequality, the permissionless nature of crypto allows for the creation of free alternatives if value extraction becomes an issue.

  • Cryptocurrency has lower fees, is influenced by extreme techno libertarianism, and has a strong focus on community and market orientation.

  • Crypto communities have a focus on social identity and a sense of belonging, but also value protocol equality and competition.

  • Crypto has contradictions in that it requires competition at the application layer, but also has a protocol that is a digital common for everyone to use and leverage.

• 49:39 🔗 Collaborative capitalism in crypto involves building on protocols to drive adoption and influence, while balancing decentralization and inequality in the market.

  • Collaborative capitalism involves building apps on a protocol to drive user adoption and influence, while also ensuring the protection and improvement of the protocol.

  • Crypto protocols require a level of faith and belief in the people building them, despite the goal of decentralization, as there are still aspects that are centralized and influenced by individuals or small groups.

  • The critique of crypto today is that there is a lot of talk of decentralization, but there are still pockets of influence and the concept of "sufficient decentralization" is a spectrum rather than a binary point.

  • Free markets lead to unequal outcomes, and the competitiveness and dynamics of the specific market determine the level of inequality.

  • In the world of crypto, the presence of network effects and low marginal cost of serving mirrors the tendencies of capitalism, leading to unequal outcomes and incentives for community ownership.

  • The speaker discusses the inevitability of blockchain and crypto in a virtualized world, the recreation of rarity in NFTs, and the amplification of success and failure in the crypto space.

• 59:56 😊 The speaker and Lee discuss meme coins and the aesthetics of their surroundings.

INSIGHTS

The Attention Economy in Crypto

• 💰 The idea that attention is the ultimate limitation of human value in a virtual, non-physical world is the basis for the economy of attention.

• 📈 In the crypto attention economy, users can own attention assets in the form of tokens and benefit from price appreciation, allowing them to become investors in ideas or memes.

• 🚀 Charismatic leadership and building an attention economy are crucial for success in the crypto space, not just technical performance.

• 📈 "Meme coin landscape boggles traditional Finance people's minds because they command a ton of attention but it's unknown how to efficiently price them."

• 💡 There may be a correlation between mentions of tokens inside Forecaster and movements in meme coin prices, potentially leading to trading opportunities.

• 🔄 With crypto, you build permissionless primitives, and something like Uniswap allows anyone to spin up a market between asset X and asset y right if Uniswap tries to do too much value extraction. Just like fundamentally the code level someone's going to Fork it and create something that that's free.

• 🌐 In the attention economy, there is a natural network effect to attention, leading to compounding returns for bigger players and a long tail of people with no views.

Sociopolitical and Philosophical Implications of Crypto

• 🌐 Emerging blockchains can be seen as quasi religious movements with charismatic leaders promoting a narrative, shaping their success.

• 📈 The idea of distributing ownership more broadly to users in crypto has spiritual parallels with Marx's analysis of ownership sitting upstream of value in capitalism.

• 🌐 The emergence of crypto in a virtualized, post-scarcity world is inevitable, recreating parameters of analog life and amplifying tendencies - "It amplifies those tendencies right in the sense that like the fraction of nft you know the the fraction of nft. Projects that are successful is probably even smaller than the fraction of substack authors who actually managed to make a living off of substack or something as a percentage."