Me, a week ago: Man, I’m sure sick of Twitter being about crypto and NFTs all the time. pic.twitter.com/y1vOxep3j9
— Damion Schubert, Zen Designer (@ZenOfDesign) March 1, 2022
There’s some consolation in knowing it will end hype-machines like this.
Friends With Benefits has been compared to a “decentralized Soho House” and a group chat with a bank account. Last year, investors also declared it was worth $100 million.
I flew to LA to find out what was behind the hype.
with @kevinroose:https://t.co/LyJ6RCHNcV
— Erin Woo (@erinkwoo) March 2, 2022
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.)…
cain
lol – yeah, that’s what it is all about.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
A DAO and their monies are soon parted. The classics updated for 2022
opiejeanne
Blech!
opiejeanne
The Bright Young Things, before the crash. Is this going to be the roaring 2020s?
opiejeanne
@cain:
Certain populations that should avoid adaptogen use include:
mrmoshpotato
Punch them all in the fucking dick.
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne: I hope these bitchass, shitass, trustfund, shitstains heavily invested in Russia.
Villago Delenda Est
These dudebros all need to be drafted into the Marine Corps and feel the pain inflicted by Marine DIs.
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.
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.
NotMax
Speaking of the deluge of beverages we don’t need….
bjacques
@NotMax: it’s no OK Cola.
EDIT: Er…OK Soda
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.
alurkerstempnym
@mrmoshpotato: This is the best response.
different-church-lady
Meanwhile I constantly wonder how I’m going to keep paying for the roof over my head.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Nerds!
matt
‘if you pay me, you can be my friend’
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This sounds like a dork version of Studio 54.
Ken
Because most people are unhappy and bored with their online social clubs, and just participate out of a vague sense of duty?
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.
BruceFromOhio
Ponzi meets Amway.
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.
SFAW
@Ken:
What, and leave this joint?
Bill Arnold
Sounds like a prosperity gospel.
barbequebob
@SFAW: My first computer password was Swordfish. Big fan of the Marx Brothers.
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.
Just One More Canuck
@mrmoshpotato: the simplest solutions are usuallly the best
opiejeanne
@bjacques: A fan of Evelyn Waugh.
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.
oatler
Dear Friend: This is a chain letter…
SamIAm
@opiejeanne:
From Wikipedia:
So meaningless and dangerous
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.
bruce.desertrat
“The Billionaire Boys Club 2:Crypto Boogaloo”..
Quaker in a Basement
If it “creates wealth” without creating anything else, keep a hand on your wallet.