What is Valuable? 🪃

Short, practical drops on culture and technology. 🚀

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To the community 🙏

Good morning! ☀️

Last week I mentioned that I was only now getting to Ernest Cline's epic Ready Player One. In the book, a famous game designer created the OASIS: A virtual world where you can, in essence, be anyone you want to be.

The year is 2044 and the analog world ('IRL') has fallen off. Energy crises, social unrest and urban ghettos. Most spend their time (sometimes all of their time) in the OASIS, only coming out to eat and rest. The metaverse > the universe.

It's a dystopian hell-scape that I hope never comes to fruition. But a truly great work of fiction plants the seed of possibility. I finished last night. I could barely put it down. It somehow felt completely possible. I left the book hopeful, but with the faint awareness of a pit in my stomach. Ready Player One now sits in a special shelf of my Goodreads account, reserved only for those books that change you somehow.

Whatever way you slice it, this really is gaming's moment.

Let's get into it. 🚀

Tweet of the Day (TOD)! 🐦

Late Checkout isn't the first to point out the mass-onboarding happening right now in gaming. At it's core, it's a very natural way to learn the power of digital value. Internet native currency, digital land and territory, non-fungible identity and other wild and wonderful tech we're now encountering in the mainstream is very natural to long-time gamers.

The Metaverse ☕️

We're creating virtual worlds. What their use case is, may be, and could be are very different things. It begs the question, what is valuable? 

By definition the answer changes over time. To my niece, Roblox is valuable. (In an unexpectedly fascinating turn, some parents are even using Roblox to teach their children budgeting). Her relationships, her in-app purchases, what she is able to build, and her success in the game mean something to her.

To hundreds of thousands of people in South-East Asia, Axie Infinity is a way to earn digital value and convert it into value in the real world. The amount of people who make a full-time living playing play-to-earn (P2E) games would blow your socks off.

For every 65 year-old who grew up with metal coins and paper cash, how money can, not only be numbers on a screen, but can be alternate forms of software (like BTC and ETH) boggles the mind. But to the millions of Millennials (and younger) who came of age using money as the exchange of numbers on a screen, it's perfectly reasonable.

Of course we would have internet native money. In hindsight, it's obvious in the same way that having internet native information is obvious. We can exchange information in real-time, across networks, anywhere on earth. Why wouldn't we eventually be able to do the same thing with value. Jack Mallers and Strike, for example, have made streaming value possible anywhere on earth, immediately, for free using the bitcoin network. It's remarkable stuff.

What's the point? 📲

It's helpful, in this moment of evolution to have reverse-mentors. Sure, look to our elders for wisdom on how to find a life worth living long-term, but to understand change, or value, look to the young ones. If you're paying attention, you'll see that what is valuable has changed. 

Start building. 🙏 🚀

Gratitude 🙏

I feel lucky to have you on the other end of this newsletter. If you haven't yet, join the community, and a bring a friend! Have a great week.👇

See you on the path. 

- MG