#69: Does crypto have any good use cases?

💎 Word gems

Does Crypto Have Any Good Use Cases? (Almanck / Nat Eliason)

I refer to Betteridge's law: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

It's important to highlight that crypto is a backend innovation, akin to the first Internet innovation, and very different from mobile, which was a user experience innovation. Just as the first web pages looked a lot like newspaper or magazine pages translated onto a computer screen, we’re still in the early skeuomorphic phase of crypto applications. The front end has not caught up to the backend.

Instagram’s Existential Bet (Divinations / Nathan Baschez)

This story feels a little out of date now, and Meta copying other products is absolutely not new. However, this analysis gets at one of my favorite topics - how decisions can fundamentally change a product.

The reason Reels/Tiktok works this way has more to do with the network structure than the content format. With these types of videos, the whole point is the “for you” page which shows you content by anyone. This is the key design decision that made people create content differently, and allowed the TikTok algorithm to be so effective: it had a lot of broadly entertaining stuff to choose from. The one big format thing that matters is the music and reusable sounds, because when you have unfamiliar people in most of the videos you see, it helps to balance that with familiar audio. This is also why memes, challenges, viral dances, and trends of all sort flourish on TikTok: they create familiarity, which it pays to piggyback off of.

Instagram’s network is structured completely differently, and the content people share on it is a function of that. Instead of seeing videos of random people, you see photos and videos of people you are already familiar with. This changes what kind of content people share and makes it far less reliant on memes, music, and trends. I think this is the thing people are bemoaning when they say they miss the old Instagram: by changing the network structure to prioritize entertaining content from randos, they make it harder for people to share the kind of content they used to, which assumed more familiarity. This content was already inherently interesting because of the social—or parasocial—relationship you had with the person posting it.

And when the Kardashians got upset about Instagram changing, this tweet gave us all a lesson in changing media:

💩 Cool shit

Recommend Me A Book - Read a random passage from a book and then reveal the author and title. Great way to find a new book to read.

The Kubrick Times - 36 futuristic New York Times headlines were written for 2001: A Space Odyssey. This site uses OpenAI to turn them into complete articles.

Found in a Library Book - A fun collection of all the random pictures, notes and more found inside returned library books.

Brickit - Take a photo of your random LEGO pieces and get instructions for new things to build. I wish I had this as a kid.

Language, Please - This is great. A free resource covering language related to social, culture, and identity-related topics.

Coastal World - Learn about banking via a browser-based game world that gives strong Animal Crossing vibes.

Sim CB - A central bank simulator. It sounds boring but trust me, managing this virtual economy to keep the right amount of money in circulation is engrossing.

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