Kid Rock shills Worldcoin (??)

Hi,

We LARPed as VCs yesterday in Menlo Park. Thanks to the the kind folks at a16z for letting us livestream from their office.

We gabbed about Chinese peptides, privacy and the hot sauce market with guests from Poshmark, the SF Standard and more. Tap in.

Also, we had a vibey dinner for SF Tech Week on Tuesday night with friends from Base and Voices Onchain. Thanks to all who came out, my cup is full!

Warmest Regards,

The Boys

Writer: Deana

Editors: Miranda & Natasha

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Kid Rock. I’m rarely shocked by anything I see on the internet these days, but the Kid Rock “Worldcoin jump scare” video genuinely made me gasp. The video starts off normal enough, with a general rant from Kid Rock about event ticketing platforms like Live Nation and Ticketmaster pandering to bots and scalpers at the expense of fans and artists. He puts his support behind Trump and this FTC lawsuit, and then the video hard cuts to…a Worldcoin orb.

Kid Rock gets in a few talking points about “proof of humanity” and how the orb will “cut the bots out,” but it lands flat given the tone of the rest of the video, which ends with a swing at Pearl Jam (??). Of course he’s right that Ticketmaster et al. are extractive, monopolistic and awful, and that we do have the technology to solve for the ever-expanding bot issue (look at Mesh and ITM for ticketing, look at Self Protocol for private real-user verification). But imo the execution did very little to combat the ‘orb is creepy’ allegations.

In a similar vein, Cristiano Ronaldo shilled Perplexity on stage at an awards show. What’s next, Nicole Kidman plugging Zcash in her divorce papers?

Polymarket Raise. Polymarket announced a huuuuge $2B strategic investment on Tuesday from the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, which values the prediction market at a whopping $9B post-money. This makes its founder Shayne Coplan the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. He also teased a $POLY token yesterday, sending crypto twitter into a frenzy. People are sharing their old DMs with Shayne for clout and…just please don’t do that.

Quick Hits.

• The “AI is a bubble” infographic going viral.

• The payments meta: Polygon edition.

• JPMorgan’s big stupid legal bill.

Come hang with Boys Club in NYC at The Aptos Experience. I will be speaking on stage alongside Kim Milosevich, CMO at a16zcrypto.

Meet us for coffee, RSVP here.

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