Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: If the Fire *Must* Fall…

Late Night Open Thread: If the Fire *Must* Fall…

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There’s some consolation in knowing it will end hype-machines like this.


The perfect modern FTFNYT story! Because, really, if it doesn’t involve $MONEY$, what is the point of friendship?

On a recent afternoon, nine members of the crypto social club Friends With Benefits sat in the historic Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, testing out a new beverage — a flavored, sparkling yerba maté that the group had developed with a coffee company.

As members sipped from their glasses, Joey Rubin, a leader of the group’s Los Angeles chapter, explained that the drink contained adaptogens, herbs said to increase focus and stimulate creativity.

There were some blank stares. Adapto-what-nows?

“It makes your soda $6 instead of $2,” Mr. Rubin explained…

DAOs [decentralized autonomous organizations], which have been described as “financial flash mobs” or “group chats with bank accounts,” are among the fastest-growing parts of the crypto ecosystem. There are thousands of DAOs organized around a variety of causes, from managing decentralized crypto exchanges to bidding on historic copies of the Constitution. The largest DAOs have thousands of members, and some control billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency…

The group was started in 2020 when Trevor McFedries, a digital entrepreneur, got the idea for an online club for his friends in the art and music worlds, with a private chat room that they would use special cryptocurrency tokens to unlock.

“I wanted a place for my creative peers who were so skeptical of tech and finance to have a little light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Mr. McFedries’s theory — which he tested by creating a token called $FWB and sending it to some of his Twitter followers — was that attaching cryptocurrency to an online social club would give members an incentive to make it a fun, interesting place to hang out. The more fun people were having, he thought, the more newcomers would want to join, and the more valuable their tokens would become.

With Friends With Benefits, “what you’re getting is vibes,” he said. “This token is starting to reflect some of the value of those vibes.”

The group’s rapid growth soon attracted investors, who saw Friends With Benefits less as a fully formed start-up than a crowd of crypto enthusiasts from which the next great web3 ventures might emerge. In a blog post announcing its investment, Andreessen Horowitz compared the group to the merchants of 13th-century Venice and the Homebrew Computer Club, the Silicon Valley hobbyist group where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak debuted the Apple computer in 1976…

To join, applicants are vetted by a committee of current members. If approved — only about 20 percent are — they receive certain perks based on how many of the group’s in-house $FWB token they own.

Members with at least one $FWB token (current price: about $45) can read the group’s newsletter and blog posts. Local membership, which requires holding at least five tokens, comes with limited access to the group’s chat rooms on Discord, a talking and texting app, as well as entry to offline events. Global membership costs 75 $FWB — roughly $3,400 today — and includes access to all Discord chat rooms. (Friends With Benefits lent a Times reporter five $FWB tokens in order to view the Discord chats; those tokens have been returned, and the reporter does not have a stake in the organization.)…

Reader Interactions

34Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    “It makes your soda $6 instead of $2,” Mr. Rubin explained…

    lol – yeah, that’s what it is all about.

  2. 2.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    A DAO and their monies are soon parted.  The classics updated for 2022

  4. 4.

    opiejeanne

    The Bright Young Things, before the crash. Is this going to be the roaring 2020s?

  5. 5.

    opiejeanne

    @cain:
    Certain populations that should avoid adaptogen use include:

    • Pregnant and breastfeeding women.
    • Diabetics.
    • People with high or low blood pressure.
    • People with stomach ulcers or history of them.
    • People with autoimmune disorders — especially thyroid disorders.
    • Surgery candidates.
  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    These dudebros all need to be drafted into the Marine Corps and feel the pain inflicted by Marine DIs.

  9. 9.

    opiejeanne

    @mrmoshpotato: They are clueless.

    I hope that when all the Bitcoin and clones come crashing down it doesn’t take the economy with it. I don’t think it will, I don’t think it’s entwined enough.  Yet.

  10. 10.

    bjacques

    I take back what I said last thread.

    No, I don’t, but goddamn.

    I liked Bright Young Things better when they were called Vile Bodies.

  13. 13.

    Anyway

    Bill Barr’s ugly mug is on MSNBC talking about his last days with the Mango Mussolini. Had to to turn it off. No pushback from the teevee person about his responsibilities to the public as AG.

  15. 15.

    different-church-lady

    Meanwhile I constantly wonder how I’m going to keep paying for the roof over my head.

  19. 19.

    Ken

    that attaching cryptocurrency to an online social club would give members an incentive to make it a fun, interesting place to hang out

    Because most people are unhappy and bored with their online social clubs, and just participate out of a vague sense of duty?

  20. 20.

    Ksmiami

    @opiejeanne: nah it’s still a really small part of the financial economy. I look forward to Bitcoin and crypto collapsing. It’s literally a criminal money laundering greater fool scam.

  21. 21.

    BruceFromOhio

    The more fun people were having, he thought, the more newcomers would want to join, and the more valuable their tokens would become.

    Ponzi meets Amway.

  22. 22.

    SFAW

    Did one of their “members” resemble Alfalfa Switzer? Are they going to change the name to some not-obviously-misogynistic version of “He-Man Woman Haters Club”? Will the password change from cryptocurrency to “swordfish”? [Apologies for mixing genres.]

    I really appreciate this post. Because, no matter how much my high-level brain functions deteriorate, I will never be as moronic as these assholes.

  23. 23.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    Because most people are unhappy and bored with their online social clubs, and just participate out of a vague sense of duty?

    What, and leave this joint?

  26. 26.

    Mom Says I*m Handsome

    Ugh. The future is so stupid.

    I can’t recommend highly enough this video that explains crypto and NFT’s with the proper mix of technical detail & withering social commentary. It’s the first time I’ve watched a 2+ hour YouTube of anything — absolutely captivating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

    TL;DR – Stay far, far away from all of this nonsense.

  29. 29.

    Chip Daniels

    I read somewhere a year or so ago about all the new money from Russia and China sloshing around the financial world and how it has created its own ecosystem, sort of like a vast pool of plankton that sustains an entire sea of various types of fishes, sharks and remorae.

    I think about those superyachts and multi-million dollar mansions and townhouses and how all that dirty money filters down through our society and how it warps and distorts everything.

  31. 31.

    SamIAm

    @opiejeanne:

    From Wikipedia:

    The term “adaptogenesis” was later applied in the former Soviet Union to describe remedies thought to increase the resistance of organisms to biological stress.[2] Most of the studies conducted on adaptogens were performed in the Soviet Union, Korea, and China before the 1980s, and have been dismissed for various methodological flaws and false concepts.[3] The term is currently not accepted in pharmacological, physiological, or mainstream clinical practices in the European Union

     
    So meaningless and dangerous

  32. 32.

    Cathie from Canada

    Hmmm…. 
    It SOUNDS like English.
    It LOOKS like English.
    It even READS like English. 
    But as I get further into the article, I realize I actually have NO IDEA AT ALL what these people are talking about.

  34. 34.

    Quaker in a Basement

    If it “creates wealth” without creating anything else, keep a hand on your wallet.

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