📝 Web3 Field Notes #23 – 99% is Noise

Web3's ultimate creator playbook. Binance enters ordinals. Bitcoin's new token standard. Jane Street exits crypto. AI is getting regulated. IBM enters enterprise AI. New start-ups, charts & more.

Marc Baumann

May 12, 2023

Hey, it’s Marc. I write about Bitcoin, Web3, and technology. ✌️

Welcome to another issue of my obsessively curated field notes to help you filter out 99% of the noise.

⏱️ Reading time: 4 min

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

– Thomas Sowell

📚 Key Reads

The Web3 creator playbook. The most in-depth, on-point, step-by-step explanation of the “web3 creator” process I’ve come across. By Rafa Fernandez. Link
Revenue in this economy? Ways for native Web3 communities to generate revenue. By Seedclub. Link
Crypto-native NFT IP: a new era for consumer brands. By Mikey 0x. Link
Open vs. owned metaverse experiences. By Jean-Francois Thery. Link
A Starbucks Odyssey: Why NFT customer loyalty programs might actually work. By Alex Stein. Link
Is the federal government trying to kill off crypto? One of the most complete and impartial accounts of what’s happening on the regulatory side in the US. By Jen Wieczner, NY Mag. Link
Blockbrain crypto & stocks report, April 2023. Link

🚨 What caught my eyes

✨ Web3 + NFTs

Binance announces support for Bitcoin NFTs, aka ordinals. This is a major milestone for ordinal adoption, which has come a long way in the last few weeks, generating millions of inscriptions and billions in volume. New to ordinals? Read my primer here. Link

🌎 Crypto & Macro

A new token standard for Bitcoin, called BRC-20, is spiking fees to 2021 highs. BRC-20 allows users to inscribe token data to individual sats (the smallest unit of a bitcoin). The emergence of BRC-20s is a notable development for Bitcoin as this is the first-time users can easily create fungible tokens on Bitcoin’s native chain via the ordinals protocol. BRC-20s are also gaining massive support from Bitcoin’s mining community. Miners are generating substantial amounts of new revenue from increased transaction fees. Link
32% of family offices invest in digital assets according to Goldman Sachs. Trends? Yes. Compared to 2021, a greater proportion of family
offices are now invested in cryptocurrencies — 26% versus 16%
in 2021. However, 62% are not invested and not interested in
investing in the future, compared with 39% in 2021, and just 12%
indicated potential future interest, down from 45% in 2021.1 Link
Jane Street Group and Jump Crypto – two of the world’s top market-making firms – are pulling back from trading digital assets. Link
PayPal disclosed nearly $1 billion in cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet in a 10-Q filing with the SEC. From the end of last year, the company reported an increase of $339 million in customer crypto assets. Link
A suite of legacy finance and tech firms, including Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft, have committed to join a new blockchain system, the Canton Network. We saw such attempts already back in 2016 without producing notable results.

🧠 AI

Leading AI pioneer Dr. Hinton expresses concern about his own invention. Link
The White House announced plans to address AI's risks. Link
The UK competition watchdog is launching a review of the AI market, including the models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT. Link
IBM launches an AI platform for enterprises, called Watsonx. Link
A leaked internal Google doc on AI. Quite interesting. Link

If you’re new here, we welcome you to join 3’953 bright + avid readers by subscribing here:

🚀 Hot Web3 start-ups:

Console: Where web3 communities chat.
Solaire: Helping brands to simplifying the Web3 onramp for retailers & consumers with phygitals.
Wovn: Driving engagement, sales, and commerce for creators and businesses in Web3.

99% of the things that bombard us every day are noise. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, remember this red thread:

We’ll spend more time in (semi-)virtual environments.
While doing that, we’ll create, earn, and hold ever more virtual assets.
Like the physical goods we own, we will also own virtual assets, reflecting our virtual existence.
Ownership is possible thanks to blockchains and wallets. Central platforms won't be substitutes for that.

That’s Web3's vision. It’s pretty simple.

That’s all for now, folks.
Back to building! 🚀

– Marc

⚡️ Partnership Opportunity

I’m looking for suitable partners willing to put their brand in front of thousands Web3 opinion leaders, brand builders and innovators and to support my work. Limited spots available. You can email me at hello@dematerialzd.xyz or reply to this email. I have a sponsorship deck I can send you. Talk soon!