new Luca Netz dropped 🐧
last week, the owner of Pudgy Penguins wrote a Substack titled “The Future of Culture is Tokenized”. in it, he uses terms like ‘veblen goods’ and ‘-EV’ to let everyone know that yes…he did indeed take an economics class in college.
and also yes…he successfully runs of one of the most expensive NFT projects in the space.
in the post, Luca is advocating for more “culture is on-chain”. Luca uses that phrase twice; I talk around it a few times in my book, The NFT Survival Guide too (more shamelessly plugging in a bit).
“culture on-chain” is exactly what it sounds like…framing NFTs and memecoins more as movements, and less as technology. it doesn’t really mean anything.
but what Luca subtly is getting at here is that the ultimate goal of memecoins and NFT projects is to take the culture of the Web3 (created by others) and viciously monetize it (to pad the pockets of those who know how tech and business works).
it’s what Luca’s Pudgy Penguins have gotten really good at doing.
think of Bad Luck Brian and the stock image of the guy looking back at the other girl. the number of times their likeness has been used far outweighs what they’ve been paid, I’m sure.
no, it’s not that we WANT culture on-chain.
it's that we realized a few years ago that these dumb memecoins and JPGs on the Internet were means of making money from simply being in-the-know about Internet culture.
the future Luca strives for is one where the purveyors of Internet culture are paid handsomely for that knowledge.
me? I fall into the camp of those who participate in the culture, but don’t know a lick about tech or business.
for that reason, I’ve fell victim to many NFT projects, unfortunately.
I’ve been apart of communities where I felt as though I was somehow a stakeholder. because I owned a few of their NFTs, and I could in theory make a profit from them down the road…so I shilled.
admit it. we’ve all been in it for the “flip” every now and again. we all starting drinking the Kool Aid at one point or another. I bet you’ve truly started believing that NFTs could change not only to your personal finances, but also the global economy.
that’s because it’s happened before.
on the backs of a culture their community created, Yuga Labs became a billion-dollar company. their holders didn’t though. now we feel that more ever.
the founding members of Yuga and their now-ousted CEO are the only ones who really saw that life-changing money. the rest either gambled and won (yay) or gambled and lost (oops).
I don’t think it’s sensationalist to think that NFTs and memecoins are actually the future. we’ve seen firsthand how a group of degens on the Internet can radically change the financial system (see Wall Street Bets) and the people involved in those communities.
it’s just that "culture on-chain" gives hope to millions of us gamblers that we can collectively make things better for ourselves by connecting with a global network of degens.
when in actuality, it’s probably only a select few and the project owners who see the +EV (did I use that right?)
Pudgy Penguins have become inevitable. whatever opinion you hold of them, there is no denying their status in the NFT space right now. they are printing money and headlines.
they’ve always been controversial. I’m beginning to think they always will be. I, for one, cannot buy into them…as much as I try.
but reading what Luca says about the future of culture makes me think he’ll one day be a very rich man. even more so than he is now, I’m sure.
on the flipside though, I can’t say the same for his Pudgy Penguins holders.
see you next week.