Imagine someone in the middle of a forest with nothing but shelter and a modest Internet connection. This hermit is well read, knowledgeable, and highly critical. She's the kind that always picks up on crowd sentiment way before it builds into a frenzy. Meet Yolanda. The world's biggest information addict. Intellectual curiosity led her to Satoshi's whitepaper and 72 units of Bitcoin back in 2009. Naturally, she rolled her cryptos.. flipping them like you would a vegan meat patty, moving into high potential coins before the massive pumps.
She has been one hell of a player in the game. A cognitive elite that wouldn't have been able to go big without dealing with meatspace problems in the past. Started with nothing but a laptop, her net worth is now $1.55 billion dollars. All diversified into 99 different cryptocurrencies. Her only problem was - "what's this all about?"
Is there ever any consensus over what the future of humanity should be like? Yolanda took months attempting to figure it out. No answers. It would be foolish to assume there's one single consensus. The next best thing is to look at capital formation and technology. They have always been leading the charge. So with the thousands of cryptocurrencies flying about in electric air, Yolanda assumed the following:-
- Social structures are being decentralized.
- There will be many different kinds of societies trying out different things.
- The returns of state enforcement will be severely reduced.
- Nation-states will downsize and fragment over time from the lack of control.
- Large-scaled wars, especially over physical resources will be a thing of the past.
- Local cartels could grow in power from the lack of central authority.
- Smaller jurisdictions will emerge, popping up like wild mushrooms.
- In the future, choosing jurisdictions will be like shopping for jeans.
After mulling over a cup of Darjeeling, Yolanda charted her next gameplan on recycled paper, sent in by one of those Amazon drones. She knew that markets are largely emotional, thanks to the ebb and flow of social media. Which assets aren't media influenced anyway? Talk about intrinsic value.
Yolanda also understood that she's only one person. She cannot do everything herself, despite having dreams of a better society that she could one day be part of. In her opinion, capital should be focused on the sharing economy and a zero-marginal cost society. Or else, what's the point of money, if not to create an abundance?So with $1.55 billion in hand, she thought - "Should I create, or curate the future?". She chose the latter, fully knowing there must be people that are smarter and more resourceful out there.
Laying out the gameplan, Yolanda recognises that she has been curating cryptocurrencies all along but had never considered content curation.. the soul of cryptocurrency curation. She had only been a voracious content consumer, curating for herself. Looking deeper into the matter, it turns out that content curation is not as simple as it seems:-
There's a case of curating for immediate or latent potential. Curating seemingly inconsequential content produced by someone relatively unknown could even have great effects at a later point in time.
What she considers great content might not even resonate with anyone else.
Long or short form content? Details and poetry are persuasive, but readers might do better consuming simple content.
But the economics of traditional social media doesn't seem to work out. It might still work now, but maybe more people will start tuning into a place where attention is treated as a scarce resource. Payout over number of likes. Something like Steem, perhaps? She could also exert more influence that way by having more stake in the system instead of having to compete against a system in which likes that are given out freely without consequence. Does it even matter?
Why not curate the curators instead? The only way to speak into everyone's minds is not to have one specific information curated, but many to speak into the minds of the masses. Not everybody speaks the same language anyway, and not everybody thinks the same at all, even when faced with the same content.
It was a tiresome process trying to figure out the probabilities, and she began feeling like it's just too much trying to have absolute control. It's an illusion. Sure, she enters and exits her coins like a boss, but it was the work of entire markets that actually made her one of the most successful cryptopunks in town. No one's truly independent after all. So she decided to maintain with her portfolio of 99, and as for Steem.. she has decided to take her time accumulating a huge amount while mentally curating the curators. Surely, that's the best thing to do? Maybe some day she'll know what to do with her bag of coins.
Next stop: $1 trillion dollars in magic internet money.
I know this is sucky fiction lol.