Belief churns, name tickers, a man on the market.
Speculators trace sentiment’s arc, breathless.
The swarm flickers—worship, liquidation.
Value untethers.
Not a presidency.
But price discovery.
Hold On
What a wild time to be online right now. Tiktok shut up shop, millions of zeillennial Americans out of spite, have joined a Chinese app called ‘Little Red Book’, Trumps second term begins tomorrow, and yesterday he launched a MemeCoin on the Solana blockchain.
TRUMP Coin has sort of got lost in the noise in UK media due to the Tiktok shut down. But its way way way more insane, and way more significant news. In the last 48 hours Trump’s net worth increased by FIFTY BILLION (ILLIQUID) DOLLARS. Just days before he becomes president.
Now, when I woke up this morning I had thought to write a whole big long blog post about Trump Coin. About why it’s insane, and how we’re totally off the deep end without a map now, but I sort of said the main points on Discord last night:
This is a recapitulation of the real time attention markets thesis from the ‘New Economic Entertainment‘ essay and my post the other month on changing nature of content and identity online:
But we are beginning to see a backlash, users are monetising their own attention. The rise of real time attention markets, economic entertainment, prediction markets (and the coming era of Power Fandoms) are a kind of revenge of late 90’s early 00’s Utopianism. The idea of cognitive surplus. We’re starting to see the kinds of swarm/group intelligences predicted by Shirky / Tapscott – but distorted through contemporary capitalism’s relentless logic. It took super liquid markets and meme coins for them to emerge.
The Real Time Attention Markets essay was written by RM a couple of months ago and is a vital primer to understand where things are going in the short to medium term.
Real-time attention markets are engines of condensation. They take all the complexity of markets—prediction, value, speculation—and boil it down to the simplest, rawest energy: now. Attention, compressed into seconds. Community, compressed into swarms. Control, compressed into the illusion of choice.
But is this efficiency or erosion? A refinement of human interaction, or its ultimate trivialization? These systems don’t ask such questions. They don’t need to. They exist at the intersection of impulse and engineering, where everything becomes a lever to pull.
It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it? Maybe it’s progress. Maybe it’s just momentum.
RM and I, and others have been talking about Trump Coin all day, and basically everything I was going to say in today’s post got discussed in our Telegram group chat. It’s all been neatly summarised by RM in this post: We Control $Trump Now: With great allocation comes great responsibility, or you risk pitchforks.
Their site may claim “no official ties” to politics or Trump’s personality, but in the meme world, that’s laughable. Ideology, identity, and brand are now directly linked to price. Trust is governed by market makers, speculators, and hype cycles.
RM perfectly sums up my point in the screenshot above Trump Coin, and how tying yourself to a ticker of realtime sentiment and attention being insane:
I’m fascinated by this development but question how imitators will cope. Are you ready to have your worth fluctuate with every public move? Will you betray your community for a payout or keep inflating the balloon, hoping it never pops? Are you sacrificing personal freedom to appease believers, forced to cash out incrementally without tanking your value? This is the new face of autonomy—living as a price feed. Fun Fact you might now have unrealized gains taxes on your own self-worth, so you need to sell yourself into community servitude.
The $Trump coin has thrust us into an era where political identity, personal reputation, and memecoin speculation merge in real time.
Anyways.
I don’t often make straight up predictions, but I’ve been involved with crypto for 13/14 years at this point and think I can make one now. I think things are going to get even weirder from here on. BUT the next crypto bull run which is coming super soon, when it’s over and when it crashes, is going to lead to systemic risk to the rest of the economy.
Hold on.
On The Blog:
Over the last few weeks I’ve slowly slowly been putting up blog posts for old episodes of Permanently Moved. Apart from a few exceptions here and there, I didn’t start putting the scripts online until early 2020 – just before Lockdown – this in hindsight was a bit of a mistake but we live and learn.
It’s taking quite a while, and in order to not spend too much time on it all, I’m only doing 2 a day. I’ve got as far back as 2019, and have about 40 more to go if you include almost all the episodes from 2018 I need to do. You can check out these new deep archive pages here.
Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️
Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Finishing up 2024
- Big milestone in some contract work I’ve been doing
- Decisions, Decisions
- Wrote a whole brand new talk
Terminal Access
Peter Grey from Scarlet Imprint was recently interviewed by Ranveer Allahbadi on the TRS podcast. One of the biggest English language podcasts in India.
The interview is fantastic. Can’t recommend it enough. The conversation between Ranveer and Pete is very deep, thoughtful and engaged. Totally open, transparent and engaged. If only more western podcasts were like this.
Dipping the Stacks
Early 1990s Internet Predictions Database | Imagining the Internet | Elon University
This is a searchable and browsable selection of predictive remarks made between 1990 and 1995 about the future of networked communications. The Early 1990s Predictions Database contains more than 4,200 statements made by 1,000 different voices of that time, from well-connected stakeholders to common netizens.
7 Reasons Why You’re Still Unsuccessful Online
You Spent Way Too Much Time Watching Others
How – and Why – To Read…in a World That’s Giving Up On It
“Cognitive endurance” is the ability to sustain effortful thinking over a continuous period of time. It’s a crucial skill. A new study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics points out that richer people tend to have it more than poorer people; it’s one of those self-reinforcing effects that make inequality so hard to fix.
How do we measure whether China’s economy is “ahead” of America’s?
China’s PPP GDP is only 25% larger than that of the US? Come on people… who are we kidding? Last year, China generated twice as much electricity as the US, produced 12.6 times as much steel and 22 times as much cement. China’s shipyards accounted for over 50% of the world’s output while US production was negligible. In 2023, China produced 30.2 million vehicles, almost three times more than the 10.6 million made in the US.
Roman Empire’s use of lead lowered IQ levels across Europe, study finds
Widespread use of metal caused estimated 2- to 3-point drop in IQ for nearly 180 years of Pax Romana
Reading
I finished reading Focus: The ASML Way by Marc Hijink . It’s fantastic a real page turner. I’ve made a note to update history of computing books post at some point.
I used to an Audible credit to get Zeinab Badawi’s An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence. Haven’t started it yet but very much looking forward to it.
Music
Richard Dawson – Gondola
The new Richard Dawson single is such a lovely. Dawson’s 2022 LP The Ruby Chord was a master piece. I can’t wait for the full album this is taken from to drop.
Remember Kids:
Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.
Donald Trump
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