I have this general approach to technology that when you're not sure, you should just try it. Most errors on the technology side, most people that start missing changes in technology, is because they try and read about it and figure out by reading about it if it makes sense.

Internet culture is culture. Everyone is online and spending most of their lives there. You can even argue the metaverse has been here, not just with obvious examples, like World of Warcraft and Fortnight, but even Instagram. There are people already buying assets, they're buying the Louis Vuitton purse, to take a photo of to impress a bunch of digital people with their digital asset, which just happens to be a photo of them wearing the purse, that 99.999% of people will never actually see them with. So, the metaverse is here; it's just not evenly distributed.

I think everyone or a material number of people are going to participate in a DAO over the next 5 years. They won't know it; they don't need to know what it's called. Remember, the average person doesn't know what a hypertext transfer protocol is. They don't need to ... We should be thinking about NFTs the same way; we should be thinking about DAOs the same way ... The average person only cares about user experience.

Ethereum is proof-of-stake, and Bitcoin is proof-of-work. Solana does more transactions per second, but it's more centralized. You know who cares about this? Nobody. This is literally like saying... 'Look at this amazing application; it's called Instagram. Did you know that they're using python on the backend?' Literally not a single person has adopted Instagram because it uses python.

The first year of people discovering [NFTs], their scamiest friend made $83,000 selling a penguin with a penis in its eye. Think about that. Of course normal people don't get it. They're right. It's the same reason people didn't get the Internet in '99.

If you have Google alerts on for NFTs right now and you read what's happening day to day, you would be bullish. You're not bullish because you bought an NFT for $8,000 that's now trading at $600, and you're mad.

These things have been primarily built and deployed and communicated by men, and they're not made by women, and that's why it's so urgent that you join Boys Club, that you get on board into what's happening, that you get into web3—because your input is so vital to what's being built right now. Your creativity and design and thoughtfulness and interests are required for this space to be interesting to more people.

Social media as we know it... is probably going to look like a weird transition. I think, in the grand scheme of the Internet, it's actually going to look like a blip, because it becomes an intelligence test once you provide ownership as to why you would ever want to participate in a scheme where you don't actually own the things that you produce.

Every day, the last 20 years, it's going in one direction only. And what happens at the end, the end state of this, is you will have X firms... and Y government services... and all of those very large databases will intermediate everything. And once that choke point exists, once that honeypot exists, there is a danger; it will be exploited.

I believe, wholeheartedly, the online identity, the digital identity, which will more often than not be pseudonymous, is going to be more valuable to more people than their government name.

The thing that I find funnier is a lot of people who believed in Bitcoin couldn't get there to believe in Ethereum, and a lot of people who believe in Ethereum can't get there to believe in NFTs ... What cracks me up is that people who use Ethereum, or maybe DeFi, and don't use NFTs sometimes try to convince me that NFTs are a scam. I'm like, have you looked yourself in the mirror?

Brother, I'm not going to stop until it's good. Like, I don't understand how anybody doesn't understand that. I'd rather fucking die than let cynics be able to write the history of VeeFriends not being a good project. I can do this forever. I'm going to do this forever.

What I'm really proud of... is if I go to—I'm clicking right now on the PROOF Collective on OpenSea— we have 933 unique holders out of 1,000. That's a 93.3% unique holder rate of our PROOF Collective token. That is awesome.

What is happening is a progressive erosion of freedom that is happening very quietly, very much in the background ... It's the technological equivalent of the medium is the message. And the medium, in this case, is large-scale big data companies that have network effects. And then, secondarily in some countries, governments.

We have gone from a point where cash was viewed neutrally to cash is now viewed with suspicion. There is no chance cash could have gotten launched today if it didn't already exist.

I think NFTs are our best shot—or if not our best shot, an equally good shot as everything else combined—at achieving this decentralization.

Do you know how many times I've been told crypto is a scam? Do you know how many times I've been told crypto is all wash training, its money laundering, it's a pump and dump, Ethereum is a scam.... I mean, my view of my average friends' capability to think sensibly about Ethereum is zero.

My north star here... still always comes back to user experience. What ends up winning 1,000 out of 1,000 is along those lines of a user experience and making something people want. That is the motto of Y Combinator for a reason.

All of these things could have been protocols, should have been protocols. Twitter came the closest ... The whole idea that who is allowed to use the dominant short-form text messaging protocol in the West should be determined by who the CEO of Twitter is from time to time is ridiculous.

The metaverse in a decade is going to be your all-encompassing ambient digital environment. You'll be primarily in augmented reality; your field of vision will be infused with data, images, conference calls, whatever. You're going to have AI assisting you in there. It's going to be great.