The euphoric sentiment on Twitter suggests that another crypto bull market is upon us. Congrats, anon—you made it. But wait, consider: are we really at the start of the next supercycle, or is it simply that the equities market needed somewhere to accommodate the overflow liquidity? Perhaps narratives—stories we tell ourselves and each other about AI, Storage, Gamefi, Blackrock and Citadel, etc.—are all second-order effects of price (or, at least, they are intertwined reflexively). Stepping back, I believe little has changed since FTX blew up last November, at least from the tech and innovation side. Thus, now seems like a good time to reflect on what crypto means for me, someone who has been in the space full-time since early 2020, and why I’m bullish on crypto for the wrong reasons.

In his Letter on Humanism, Heidegger asks: “Should we still keep the name “humanism” for a “humanism” that contradicts all previous humanism” (263)? This question is characteristic of Heidegger’s understanding of humanism by virtue of its radical departure from all pre-existing definitions of humanism—including Sartre’s. For Heidegger, traditional humanism is an attempt to liberate humans to allow them to become the best possible version of the beings they are. From Ancient Rome to Modern France, the basic tenet of humanism has remained the same. Specifically, every interpretation of humanism thus far has been metaphysical in the sense that it builds off an entity-oriented understanding of being and treats all beings, including human beings, as having some defining attribute or essence. Consequently, its philosophizing is confined by the realm of metaphysics. Heidegger rejects that humanism as he conceives it should be metaphysical at all: his project is humanistic only insofar as it still reserves a special place for human beings. In his view, humanism should reject all previous presuppositions and ask, instead, what it means to be.

Yes, I’m a leg man. I confess.

This piece is part two of Eulogy for my Non-Fungible tokens:

Ah, the good old staircase wit.

Things fell apart on my 21st birthday. Now I am become man, destroyer of pie. And, as is the case with young men of vanity of person and of situation, I find adulthood to be very much in bad taste. My whole life I have struggled with mediocrity with varying degrees of success. I have no doubt become a finely-packaged bachelor if one were not to look too closely at the label. I had earned an agreeable following through my work, sweated away fifty pounds, conquered a voguish depression, and made and lost great fortunes worthy of gilded age gossip. Yet now, on this 17th of June, the eve of my birthday, I lie awake, suffering from some quarter-life crisis that refuses to be washed away by youthful exuberance before the coming of midnight.

Despite its sirenic wiles, Romanticism remains the most poisonous antidote to man’s search for ontological meaning in an absurd world (to Camus’ dismay, anyone has yet to die for it). Our rebellious fathers, themselves the great sons of the enlightenment, brushed off the creed of rationality and truth to instead worship the sentiments of the individual. Slowly, art became the performative enterprise through which voyeurs announced themselves to the world in hopes of vindication from the goliaths on Olympus. Objective works of beauty and the sublime were discarded in favor of acts of desecration. The treacherous romantics have stolen fire from Prometheus: we have slain the steward of our higher aspirations.

In the struggle between individualism and collectivism regarding the mode of production, collectivism has the last laugh. Pushing past the economics of Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian, and Harold Demsetz, American philosopher Elizabeth Anderson reveals a striking American contradiction: that modern workplaces are “private governments,” or, more specifically, communist dictatorships that can order you around and sanction you for non-compliance. Rule-making is not up for deliberation. Whereas enlightenment philosophers since Locke have rejected kingship and absolute monarchies, no one has yet questioned the sector wielded by CEOs over low-ranking employees.

Yesterday was the worst day of my life. I lost four ultra-rare NFTs in a blip. All of a sudden, my heart and brain felt like they didn't belong to the same person. My hands were shaking. I cried and dried my eyes only to wet them again. On the plane home, the nice Jetblue lady asked me if I was okay and gave me a cup of water. I didn't know what or how to respond. I don't even remember her name. All I remember was replaying the scenario over and over again in my head, fantasizing about rewinding time, if only for 9 seconds. Eventually, I realized that stands aren't real and settled for the next best thing: sublimating all of my destructive emotions into an essay as they flashed through me. I hope the sharp blade of my pen and the red ink on my paper will serve as a gaping reminder of the perils of greed and allow me to heal and become a better person.