stocks, but make it tokens

Hey guys,

It’s been a fun week at EthCC!

One thing I’ve learned is that people really love to drink on the beach and talk shit, myself included! Unrelated, I may start a blind item/gossip section in this newsletter. Reply to this email with tips, or hit me on signal here. FYI, this newsletter goes out to 17,000 people every week and has a phenomenal open rate. 😇

Bye!

Deana

Crypto.com generously invited me to Vegas to cover the launch of the Crypto.com Visa Signature® Credit Card and it was a blast. Learn more about the cards here.

Stock Tokens. Robinhood arguably ‘won’ EthCC with its big announcement launching tokenized stocks for EU users. Think Apple and Tesla stocks, tradable onchain via Arbitrum (someone leak the deal terms pls), with plans for its own L2. It’s a flashy move and directionally very cool, but under the hood the mechanics are très complex. The tokenized stocks are maybe not great financial products in the short term with all the SPVs, KYC, weekend price risk, etc. However, the vision is real and I think it’s fair to call it “an awkward first step” that the industry will learn a lot from. Elsewhere, Coinbase is seeking SEC approval to offer tokenized equities too, and Republic is also minting tokens for private companies like SpaceX and OpenAI. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Everything Is Token.

Urbit. There is some Urbit drama unfolding that will be extremely interesting to exactly 12 people. For those who aren’t familiar, Urbit is a long-running decentralized networking project, described by its community as “revolutionary infrastructure for user ownership and coordination.” TBH Urbit suffers from an existential messaging problem. I’ve seen it described as the following: civilization grade infrastructure, personal servers, virtual computers, an esoteric messaging platform, etc. Okayyyy, IDK! Over the past few days, things got real messy: a self-described ‘coup’ is going down, partly over the return of its deeply ~ and I mean deeply ~ controversial founder, whom I won’t link to here. Niche tea, served piping hot!

Quick Hits.

• I’m sorry but I love Snoafers, the sneaker + loafer hybrid selling out across the US. Snoafer apologists unite.

• Maybe it’s time to consider “vow of silence summer.”

• Jeff Bezos sells $737 million worth of Amazon stock, presumably to cover the wedding tab.

• These pancakes are upsetting people on the internet.

❤️ Many congratulations for Jacy for joining the Aptos team, leading their community operations.

🌙 Baby Guava drops a sweet summer playlist.

💕 Meta Betties tokenized Performance Art Collectible, minting now on Solana.