JUST IN: Anthropic says they’re highly profitable if you take out some of their biggest expenses.

After 5+ years, we're winding down POAP. Over the years, we: * minted millions of collectibles across hundreds of communities. * did incredible collaborations with world-class organizations - Coinbase, Amex, WMG, Bayer, and a long tail of others, including countless in crypto. * ran one of the biggest activations at Devcon, minting 8000+ collectibles over the course of a week. * built an Airport Rally to let collectors get POAPs at airports around the world. POAP meant something to a lot of people. Unfortunately, crypto's funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a sustainable company without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something. Building on a fragile and quickly evolving stack, in the middle of an incredible hype cycle, only added to the challenges. Still, there are some big lessons I am carrying from the POAP story. First: Customer communities are the most undervalued asset a company can have. If you build something with soul, people who use it and love it will take your brand everywhere. Do not underestimate the power of customer communities. Second: Connection is still the point. It's easy to lose that thread when the conversation is about the latest bubbly tech or price speculation, but the people using POAPs at events, in classrooms, at hackathons were getting something real out of it. Third: Longevity and brand equity are the only moats left. With the time to building and shipping something new collapsing quickly, and distribution becoming increasingly an engineering problem, customers increasingly want to make sure they can trust that the things they are buying will grow and evolve with the market, without changing radically. Grateful for everyone who believed in what we were building. It's too soon for me to say what's next, but for now, I'm thinking a lot about what GTM looks like in the age of AI.

Craziest thing I've seen in a while: • Someone buys $4M worth of BONK • Then posts a DAO proposal asking to transfer $20M in BONK to themselves • Waits 7 days without anyone noticing • Then votes "yes" with their own BONK holdings, and the proposal passes • $20M is transferred to them And now the Bonk team has suddenly realized they lost $20M. This wasn't even a hack. The proposal passed because no $BONK holders checked the governance forum. Insane to see the current state of DAOs.

🚨THE FBI CREATED A FAKE CRYPTOCURRENCY.. LISTED IT ON UNISWAP.. HIRED MARKET MAKERS TO PUMP IT.. THEN ARRESTED EVERYONE WHO SAID YES.. THIS IS THE CRAZIEST LAW ENFORCEMENT OPERATION IN CRYPTO HISTORY!!! The FBI built an actual ERC-20 token on Ethereum called NexFundAI.. 100 billion token supply.. A professional website.. Whitepapers promising "passive income through AI-powered investing".. It looked exactly like every other crypto project.. Because that was the point.. Undercover agents posed as the founding team.. Then reached out to professional market-making firms and said "we need you to fake our trading volume".. Every single firm said yes.. Here's what they recorded.. Gotbit.. A firm run by a 26-year-old Russian who publicly bragged in 2019 that he built a business faking trade volumes.. His team kept internal spreadsheets with columns literally labeled "fake volume" vs "market volume".. When asked how fast they could pump NexFundAI's volume to $1 million per day.. They said "6 hours.. It will cost about $200".. $200 to fake $1 million in daily trading volume.. MyTrade.. Run by a guy who called himself "the mastermind".. He explained the exact psychology of the scam on camera.. "We make the chart look like a really nice roller coaster ride.. That's where people jump in.. We have to make them lose money in order to make profit".. He said that on a recorded FBI video call.. CLS Global.. A Dubai-based firm.. Their bots generated 98% of NexFundAI's total trading volume.. When the FBI asked if they could sync fake volume spikes with fake news announcements.. They said absolutely.. ZM Quant.. Bots executing 10 to 20 trades per minute through dozens of wallets to look organic.. All of them knew it was fraud.. All of them did it anyway.. All of it was recorded.. And the clients were even worse.. Saitama.. A meme coin that hit $7.5 billion market cap.. The founders coordinated buys through private Telegram chats.. Sent "pump it" memes while manipulating the price.. Then dumped on retail investors.. $7.5 billion.. Built entirely on fake volume.. Every penny of real money came from retail investors who thought the momentum was organic.. One founder left Saitama and started Robo Inu.. Used Gotbit again.. Another launched VZZN.. Same playbook.. Lillian Finance.. Founder claimed to be a defense contractor who addressed Congress.. Marketed the token as funding children's hospitals.. Pocketed everything.. When the FBI shut it down.. They seized $25 million in one day.. 18 people indicted across the US, UK, and Portugal.. The CEO of Gotbit was arrested in Portugal and extradited.. Sentenced to 8 months plus $23 million forfeiture.. But here's the part that broke my brain.. Real people bought NexFundAI.. The FBI's fake token.. With zero utility.. Zero real developers.. Created solely to catch criminals.. Attracted real retail investors because the fake volume made the chart look bullish.. When the FBI pulled the liquidity to end the operation.. Those people lost real money.. On a government-issued token.. The FBI had to set up a restitution portal to pay them back.. And it gets worse.. Within 24 hours of the DOJ announcing the sting.. Someone cloned the FBI's exact smart contract.. Launched a copycat token.. Rode the viral momentum.. And made $127,000 in a single day.. Using the exact same manipulation tactics the FBI just arrested 18 people for.. Then in 2026.. The FBI did it again.. New token called Lexobit.. 10 more arrests.. Including operators extradited from Singapore.. IRS forensics showed that in one firm's trading.. 1,209 out of 1,221 consecutive transactions went straight back to wallets the firm controlled.. 99% circular.. The FBI proved what everyone in crypto suspected.. The volume is fake.. The charts are painted.. The momentum is manufactured.. And every time you buy a token because "the chart looks bullish".. You might be the exit liquidity.

my tank still needs a home serious responses only

crypto needs protection from extractive tokens. i may have launched multiple tokens that all went to 0, but this time is different. i recruited my current team across ALL of my previous 'experiments', so you are diversified, a team with even more experience sending tokens to 0.

I know I am really not "reading the room" right now, but if you had a token with a built in hedge that protected downside, crypto would be a lot less scary.