How to Deal with Failure

Happy Thursday everyone! ‘No’ is one of the most powerful words in the English language, and I think it’s one we don’t spend nearly enough time using. In an increasingly digital world, a lot of asks are made of us. Our phones send us notifications every 5 seconds. People try to convince you to buy their useless cryptocurrency or NFT. You’re asked to take calls or attend events you know will only serve the person asking, not you. FOMO, a plague that now impacts anyone who regularly uses the internet, has turned people into ‘yes’ machines. Impulsive dopamine addicts that don’t want to potentially lose out on opportunities to advance. I’m here to tell you you need to start using no. No to the thousands of notifications you get a day pulling you in different directions. No to the self serving people that DM you asking for your time or money. No to events you know for a fact will be a waste of your time. If you lose 100 dollars you can earn it back. If you lose 1 day it’s gone forever. Anyway, onto the alpha:

Contents:

1️⃣ Latest Twitter Thread

2️⃣ Sponsored: Franken DAO

3️⃣ 1% Better Every Day

4️⃣ Stories of the Week

5️⃣ Favorite Replies

Latest Twitter Thread:

SPONSORED: Franken DAO

How would you spend $1.3 million dollars?

Welcome to Punksville - a fictional universe run by the malevolent Dr. ETHvil. We are 3D FrankenPunks and this is NOT an ad for a new mint, we just passed our one-year anniversary last week.

We actually want you to spend our treasury! Over the last year, the FrankenPunk community treasury has grown to over $1.3 million (including 4 CryptoPunks).

Later this month, we will be launching our “Franken DAO”. The Franken DAO has complete control over the FrankenPunk community treasury and run by our holders.

We want your involvement! The DAO is here to ensure that the direction of the project is dictated by its holders - you.

Come join: https://discord.com/invite/8D9WD3d34y

1% Better Every Day: Failure

This week’s ‘1% Better Every Day’ is about failure. In an age where depression and anxiety are at all time highs, it’s easy to get swept up in the emotion of a failure. It’s easy to look at mistakes you’ve made in the past and let them dominate your psyche. Handling failure the wrong way will almost 100% of the time lead to more failure. It will become a self fulfilling prophecy where your mindset figures out news ways to fail. It becomes your identity. The way you handle failure will be the sole determining factor of how successful you become. Let me give you an example:

In 2017 after years of feeling like I had no purpose I started a side hustle. I built out a sports blog with a few friends of mine. I built the website and started a Twitter for it. For over a year I wrote daily blogs and tweeted multiple times from the account. For hours and hours of my time I was rewarded with under 100 followers and about 10 daily active readers (probably just my friends and family).

In 2019 I started a traditional finance blog and Twitter account. After getting into stock investing I felt so inspired that I wanted to write about my journey. Again, another year of blogging and tweeting was rewarded with next to nothing.

These kind of failures could be crippling. Hundreds of hours gone with nothing to show for it. When the pandemic hit in 2020 I was stuck in my New York City apartment alone. I reflected on those failures. On those hours lost and money wasted. Then I discovered NFTs and got that spark of inspiration again. I took all my learnings from my last 2 projects and registered the @NFT_GOD Twitter handle. I bought yet another domain from Go Daddy, and built out this newsletter. I came into this project prepared. I knew what kind of tweets didn’t work. I knew what kind of writing people didn’t want to read. The lessons I learned from those years of experimentation and failure led to this account. The audience and platform I’ve built here has been life changing.

Failure can easily tear one down. Ego hates failure. Ego wants you to never think about your failures. Ego keeps you up at night focusing on the pain of those failures. The key to success is murdering that ego. It’s silencing that voice. It’s muting all of those negative emotions. The key to success is reflecting on those failures with a clear mind and understanding where you went wrong and what you can do better next time. If you’re able to learn from every single failure with 0 emotion or ego, it’ll be impossible for you to lose.

This Week's News:

🔥 Elon Takes Over Twitter

🔥 Art Gobblers has Massive Controversy

🔥 Bored Apes Hits New Low

ELON TAKES OVER TWITTER

The most entertaining outcome is often the most likely. When it comes to Twitter, we certainly got the most entertaining outcome. Elon Musk officially took over Twitter Friday, completing his 44 billion dollar takeover of the popular social media platform. This signals what will without a doubt be a massive shift for the platform.

From a technology perspective, I’m incredibly excited about the future of the platform. Elon has long been a proponent of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In fact, CZ from Binance contributed over half a billion dollars to the acquisition. This is a massive signal that crypto and NFTs will play some role in the future of Twitter. On top of that, Elon announced a creator’s program would be coming to the platform, similar to the ones Youtube and TikTok have. What this means is there will be new ways creators on the platform will be able to monetize their content. It’s obvious to me this will all be tied together. Crypto and NFTs are the future of reward programs. Reddit has already started implementing this. The more well received content you create on Reddit, the better the chance you receive a rare NFT in the form of an avatar. Creators will be rewarded directly for the performance of their content.

The future of social media is transforming right before our eyes. If you aren’t building your own platform and creating content, it would be foolish not to get started.

ART GOBBLERS HAS MASSIVE CONTROVERSY

By far the most talked about launch this week was Art Gobblers from Justin Roiland and Paradigm. The project launched to absolutely insane volume, close to 10,000 ETH on Opensea alone in under a week. Shortly after launch the project was met with a wave of controversy. First, observant blockchain sleuths realized many major names and influencers in the space got free allowlists for the project. This was amplified even further by the 15 ETH floor the project launched with. If that wasn’t enough, animated shorts from Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland resurfaced with very questionable children focused content.

There’s a lot to unpack in this story. I think much of the controversy is simply a result of a bored community looking for targets to take their anger out on. Influencer marketing has been around for decades in almost every industry. When celebrities go to the Academy Awards they get a gift bag filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of free jewelry. Nobody gets angry at Leonardo Dicaprio for being a Cartier shill. Companies need to market their product. They go to people with a platform and give them their product for free. It’s some of the most powerful marketing there is. It’s been around forever and will continue long after we’re gone. I do believe there are lines though. If an influencer receives the product for free, pumps it to their audience in order to drive up the price, then dumps I believe that is unethical. Also, if they enter into an advertising agreement then don’t disclose it to their audience, that is also unethical (and illegal). I just believe we are in the middle of a bear market and a lot of people are looking to be triggered by something.

BORED APES HITS NEW LOW

The bear market is tougher on some projects than others, and that’s certainly the case with the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, as all of the Yuga NFTs continue to find new market lows. At the time of writing Bored Ape Yacht Club is sitting at a 68 ETH floor. While a large part of this dip is certainly due to the bear market conditions, you can’t help but also pin some blame on recent Yuga events. APE coin staking has been delayed multiple times with less than believable excuses including team members falling ill right before major Twitter Spaces. On top of that, we’ve heard very little about Otherside in several months.

I’ve been preaching this for a while, but NFT projects that are dependent on constant releases and information will struggle to succeed. NFT communities are fickle and impatient. This is the biggest reason I have switched my investment strategy to primarily art. Art projects don’t need roadmaps. They don’t need staking or tokens. They don’t need constant updates. Cryptopunks never need to release new functionality. Fidenzas don’t need to reveal a new roadmap. They’ll hold value because they are important. That’s all. Remember this next time you buy into a cartoon zoo animal PFP.

Replies of the Week

Thank you so much to everyone who’s replied to my tweets or emailed me this week! Look forward to hearing from more of you soon! Take care and have an excellent weekend!