• Howie Town
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  • Small Miracles From The Ceasefire...Tik Tok Gaslighting...$TRUMP and The Uncharted Degenerate Economy AND The Next Bubble That Is People As Brands ...A Sunday Rant.

Small Miracles From The Ceasefire...Tik Tok Gaslighting...$TRUMP and The Uncharted Degenerate Economy AND The Next Bubble That Is People As Brands ...A Sunday Rant.

Good afternoon…

I am on a flight back to Phoenix from New York.

I have this long post about degeneracy, crypto, Tik Tok, greed and grift to follow but it is silly compared to the news that three female Israeli hostages - Doron, Emily and Romi - are returning home after 471 days of captivity. This is a small miracle amidst the horror.

Here is Emily with her mom.

It is probably a mistake to post a picture of a smiling Emily because the media and the sick trolls of social media will use this to say she was treated well by Hamas.

The truth is she was taken and held hostage by the monsters Hamas and the majority of Gaza citizens that still side with Hamas. These people can’t wait to break the current ceasefire. I see a mob of monsters who are NOT starving, are well armed, who have obviously been hiding in tunnels while innocents die and have not experienced anything resembling a genocide:

and…

There are thousands of horrific stories to go around about the hostages but one you won’t hear much about is Hillel’s brother who was murdered by a child terrorist being released now in exchange for these hostages:

Pace yourself for the sick drama that will continue to unfold as this ‘ceasefire’ begins. Trump is quickly in on the attention and drama floating the idea of moving two million Palestinians from Gaza to Indonesia.

Ok onward…to my blessed and easier life.

I spent the last four days working in New York.

Yesterday, my daughter Rachel and I had a great day eating (bagel, pizza, falafel, dumplings and soup) and walking the city. Before me met up I had one of those ‘only in New York’ mornings. I was having an early breakfast at The Crosby Hotel waiting for my friend Rob Petrozzo in the empty restaurant and my friend Rami, a portfolio CEO, walked in with his wife - they had just landed from Tel Aviv. I made them sit next to me to catch up.

Ten minutes later Quincy Smith walked in with his wife. Quincy was the CEO of CBS Interactive back when he/they bought my company Wallstrip back in 2007. I have not seen Quincy in at least 10 years and I of course made them sit down on the other side of us. Quincy and his partner Mike Marquez, who was the head of acquisitions for CBS at the time really, set my life off in a new direction by acquiring Wallstrip. It was fun sharing some stories with Quincy from behind the scenes (which he was hearing for the first time). I mean it’s too late to undo the deal….

Quincy and Howie at The Crosby

On the way out of the hotel a little later with Rachel, we almost ran over Adam Sandler walking into the hotel. I am mad that I did not chase him into the elevator for a selfie.

I have lived in Phoenix mostly for the last 40 years but only in New York can I get 30-40 friends together (as I did for the comedy relief night) with just a couple days notice and it seems like in New York I run into more friends on the streets that I know than I ever do in Phoenix.

Next up

The insanity that is America and Trump and what people care about right now…Tik Tok and memecoins.

TikTok is back working today after being gone for 13 hours because Trump and I imagine his boss Elon want to tell kids they saved it. Let the gaslighting continue!

Trump found time this weekend between golf, solving the Middle East crisis and saving TikTok from the Supreme court he inserted, to launch a memecoin. It’s many things, but mostly gross and negligent.

His son Eric calls it $TRUMP on Twitter.

Talk about mixed feelings.

For one thing, Stocktwits created the ‘cashtag’ which is being used to promote this coin/con. For another, I (and our emerging manager fund and LP’s) are long Solana which has benefitted (so far). Through these same funds we are investors in Spot.dog, Pump.fun and Squads all growing fast from this memecoin boom. I imagine there are twenty other ways I might be benefitting from this new $60 plus billion $TRUMP memecoin, but as my friend Yoni at Etoro says to me in this thread…’there is no putting the ‘money and value that can be printed, created and distributed by people with this technology’, back in the box:

This tidal wave of this ‘degenerate economy’ should not be a surprise. I explained what I saw coming right here this last year and just two months ago it became more obvious and I wrote this piece:

What I did not predict in November was the acceleration, pace and speed of this boom. Years of gains have been compressed into the last two months. Short term from here I expect some chaotic volatility.

As for the long term…when Yoni says above that this technology is not going back in the box…Solana is now a $125 billion blockchain and survived a 90 percent drawdown and The FTX fraud…

The $TRUMP coin is trading at a $70 billion and was launched without a bank or brokers and is trading at a market capitalization bigger than all but TWO of the Russell 3,000 companies (Dexcom - a diabetes company founded in 1999 with $4 billion in sales, and Palo Alto Networks)…

Tyler Denk, the founder and CEO of the awesome startup Beehiiv.com (we are investors) nailed a tangential problem that I have talked about when I complain about the venture capital industry misallocating capital during Web 2.0 and ZIRP that continues today in AI and crypto….

A new form of ‘performance anxiety’ is surfacing as the ‘degenerate economy spreads. I fully understand why LP’s, especially less institutional ones are growing weary of venture investing. The ‘liquid’ crypto asset class is proliferating.

I suspect non serious founders without ‘business first plans’ will start to shudder or be forced to shudder their companies at an accelerating rate.

I have/had this simple financial idea in my head (I still do) that memes and memecoins are this fresh way to measure and monetize ‘goodwill’ - especially for smaller, profitable businesses that had passionate and loyal customers.

Unfortunately for this thesis, Trump has rushed to print money and value using this technology to capitalize on his ‘goodwill’ in his usual greedy and sloppy way. He and his close circle of swindlers could care less about what mess they leave behind.

I expect Elon and a slew of influencers will rush to copy Trump and monetize their ‘goodwill’ in the coming weeks and months. We shall learn that ‘people’ are as greedy as ‘corporations’ and will see that ‘The Person as Brand’ (a must read) can implode even quicker than a Corporation as Brand when you tie money, liquidity, value and markets to your personal brand.

I bought this piece of art a few months back that captures how I feel about much of the ‘degenerate economy’ and ‘attention economy’ as it accelerates

I hope the technology survives the behavior by the bad actors/people.

As of this weekend memes moved beyond the speculation, silliness and fun of $Dogecoin, $Fartcoin and $Butthole and have been fully financialized and weaponized.

Buyer AND seller beware!

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