📺 100M YouTube #MemeFi subscribers 💌 via AI (news + meme + learn) videos 🌊
Why do exchanges list a memecoin? Because of its 100M YouTube subscribers, daily videos, and token campaigns. Watching news for your mind 🧠 on dopamine, spreading memes for your heart ❤️ on oxytocin, or learning coins for your soul 😇 on serotonin – with AI visual effects and synthetic audio.
Distribution is king – for and with crypto. Onboarding via a Telegram web app, YouTube public channel, social referral battles, onchain airdrop points, … to reach the ONE goal! Better yet, the allure of (impossible) quests: verifying Binance usernames for know-your-customer (KYC), connecting emails to YouTube viewing stats, and depositing tokens for leveraged rewards.
The difference between a Ponzi scheme and a real economy? Sufficient value creation not extration, utility addition not speculation, and entertainment explosion not addiction – to sustain the growth of a community. Are these vanity metrics and regrettable user minutes? Yet, post digital intelligence, humans find meanings among “Hot or Not” to swipe right, Farmville to tend vegetables, or Polymarket to bet fantasy politics.
https://t.me/durov/307 (2024-07-04)
🐹 Hamster Kombat has become the latest Internet phenomenon everyone's talking about. 239 million people have signed up for this Telegram mini app in just 3 months 🔥
📈 It took Hamster only 73 days to reach 100 million monthly users. Each day, 4-5 million new users join Hamster Kombat, making it the fastest-growing digital service in the world 🔝
It's among his most popular tracks, a 2020 banger entitled "Coffin," which has amassed more than 150 million streams on Spotify since its release on Oct. 23, 2020. The track is teeming with replay value, fueled by a thumping 808s-driven instrumental and Yachty's slurred delivery. Although the Georgian has developed a reputation as a more melodic presence in the music industry in the years since its release, it's little surprise why the masses who filled into the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash ground back in 2021 felt so compelled to let loose amid Yachty's croons.
https://a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps-3/ (by SeaArt: Yoga Flow In Mini-Dress)
Video saw three new entrants (Luma, Viggle, and Vidnoz) and music saw one (Udio) — both modalities have seen massive leaps forward in output quality over the past year. This included four of the top five first-time listmakers by rank: Luma (#14), Viggle (#21), SeaArt (#29), and Udio (#33).
What about on mobile? Content editing for image and video is the most common use. At 22% of the listmakers, it’s the second largest product category of the mobile ranks — users are eager to edit the content on their phones. Alongside Doubao, the photo and video editor Hypic (#19) and assistant Cici (#34) are also Bytedance products, totaling six spots across both lists.
https://press.airstreet.com/p/your-guide-to-ai-august-2024
7 years ago, Synthesia had early confidence that we were moving into a video-first world, based on changing consumer habits and the boom in video content on social media, but there was little reason to believe AI-generated video would be easy.
Jonathan walked through how Synthesia broke the problem down into manageable chunks to create value in the interim. Initially, they focused on using GANs to develop deep fake technology for lip-syncing so customers could dub a video into any language convincingly. It took another 2-3 years to get to text-to-video with avatars and then achieving product-market fit.
https://a16z.com/the-next-generation-pixar/
Abel Art estimated the cost of a 1 minute video from Luma at $125, equivalent to renting a cinema lens for one day. With thousands of bite-sized mini series such as “Forbidden Desires: Alpha’s Love,” ReelShort has driven over 30M downloads and $10M+ / monthly revenue.
Fable Studio is building Showrunner, an AI streaming service that enables fans to remix their own versions of popular shows. Fable’s proof of concept South Park AI debuted to 8M views last summer.
https://phrack.org/issues/71/17.html#article (Calling All Hackers: How Money Works - Equities)
VC's want founders to be cult leaders. Have you ever heard this line? "We invest in great storytellers." Like what we saw with stocks and tokens, much of the easily-unlockable potential upside in assets is speculative. In essence, value can be created through narrative. Narrative *IS* value.
The market maker provides liquidity so the market looks really healthy and well-traded so it is easy to buy the token. In good deals, they are paid in in-the-money call options on the tokens, so they are incentivized to help the token trade well. Their superpower is having a lot of liquidity to deploy, and people on PagerDuty.
https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/following-up-on-telegram-bots-cryptos-new-cash-cows (2024-08-20)
The once-saturated Telegram bot market has largely consolidated into five majors players: Banana Gun, BullX, Trojan, Maestro, and Bonkbot. BullX and Trojan dominate Solana volume at the moment, making significant gains at the expense of Bonkbot. Solana remains the premier venue for memecoin trading.
Banana Gun will need to carve out market share on Solana, or rely on alternative tailwinds such as its upcoming web app. A memecoin attention rotation back to Ethereum ecosystem could also spark a rally for BANANA, as it enjoys such a large moat in the EVM. [@hamster_kombat_bot @tapswap_bot @catizenbot]
https://www.wired.com/story/telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-arrest/
“No one in Telegram was prepared for such a scenario,” says Anton Rozenberg, who worked with Durov from the early days of VK in 2007, before working for Telegram from 2016 to 2017. Rozenberg foresaw Durov acquiring the best legal defense money could buy.
“But without him, the messenger may have huge problems with management, all crucial decisions, and even payments,” he added, given Durov’s personal involvement in running the company. Rozenberg saw no obvious replacement for Durov, who makes key decisions on nearly all matters at Telegram—financing, development strategies, product design, monetization, and content moderation policy.
https://members.delphidigital.io/reports/a-ton-of-gaming-hype#hamster-kombat-2db5 (2024-06-25)
This simple loop has attracted over 200M registered users to date. The prospect of potential returns paired with minimal effort requirements on the user side has led to exponential growth. The team didn’t focus solely on Telegram and Twitter but has put significant efforts into gamifying their YouTube channel. The team releases two 2-minute videos a day—one covering daily crypto news while the other is usually an educational video—and hides clues within the videos to incentivize users to stay continuously engaged.
Their account has grown to 28M+ subscribers, making it one of the fastest-growing YouTube channels ever. Their 137 videos have generated 461M+ views. To put this into perspective from a Web3 gaming standpoint, this comes down to about 100x more than the Illuvium YouTube channel.
Telegram bots offer two key benefits to users: mobile experience and UX improvement. The mobile experience element is the more fragile component of Telegram bots’ value proposition long term. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) + Account Abstraction: Friend Tech… but clamping down on PWAs. Uniswap app – Uniswap has initiated a 0.15% front end fee and has been pushing its Uniswap Wallet app.
https://hamsterkombatgame.io/docs/hk_wp_rev.0.2_july_30__2024.pdf
Breaking the world’s record on YouTube – the fastest YT channel to get 10 million subscribers – it took us 6 days! YouTube: over 34 million subscribers on the main channel, and millions more on our 17 regional YT channels. Thousands of videos about our features, in-game cards, Daily Combos, and ciphers are launched by bloggers on YouTube daily.
https://x.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1827642283560144916
Because it feels like an ouroboros: the value of crypto tokens is that you can use them to earn yield which is paid for by... people trading crypto tokens.
Even if the answer is something clear like eg. people getting 8% APR on USD are paid by people paying 8% APR to leverage ETH at 2x, it still means that the ongoing existence of the defi market is downstream of the existence of the ETH market, which means that while defi may be great it's fundamentally capped and can't be _the_ thing that brings crypto to another 10-100x adoption burst.
The series can cost between $20 and $40 to finish, though it’s possible to avoid paying by watching ads to earn free coins; users also have the option to purchase a one-time subscription. Verticals will be a billion-dollar industry.
Why the algorithmically generated titles — Married for Green Card, Stayed for Love, Snatched a Billionaire To Be My Husband — are so straightforward and specific. Lead actors earn between $300 to $500 a day for five to seven days of work. Onunion projects significantly lower than the day rates for SAG-AFTRA features, which are $1,158 per day for performers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/technology/pavel-durov-telegram-detained-france.html
Tucker Carlson, the far-right talk show host who interviewed Mr. Durov this year, said the arrest was a “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies.”
Telegram makes money through in-app purchases, advertising, subscriptions and other promotions. In March, Mr. Durov told The Financial Times that Telegram was nearing profitability and considering an initial public offering.
Riding the meme coin wave - Heavy coverage of meme coins aligns with target demographic interests. The project appears to be growing extremely rapidly by positioning itself at the intersection of crypto enthusiasm, meme culture, and mobile gaming. The YouTube channel serves as both a marketing tool and onboarding funnel for the game itself.
Meme Integration: The channel heavily incorporates crypto memes and internet culture, making the content more relatable and shareable for younger audiences. Engagement Tactics: The channel uses various engagement techniques like posing questions to viewers, encouraging comments, and teasing future content to boost interaction.
https://www.wsj.com/world/who-is-pavel-durov-telegram-founder-9b43eb5a?st=c98miqkxbe8ixw2
Telegram said this week that it is still below the threshold of 45 million active monthly users in the bloc to be considered very large. That law is mirrored by the EU’s Digital Services Act, which subjects “very large” online platforms to enhanced monitoring and enforcement.
In addition to France and the U.A.E., Durov has citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean island nation that offers it to those who can pay. He eventually based Telegram in the U.A.E.
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/eduard-gurinovich-how-the-blockchain-helps-to-monetize-the-time/83045826#5 (2017-11-30)
Hamster Kombat’s internal conflicts centers around disagreements between the project’s creator, Eduard Gurinovich, and a key investor, AD.RU, which claims that it had significant contributions to the game's development, including an initial investment of $600,000 and a key role in securing additional investment. Nikita Anufriev, former marketing director of Hamster Kombat, claims that he was promised 25% of the company's revenue or shares, but the promise was never kept.
https://javelinvp.medium.com/founder-feature-david-rogier-ceo-of-masterclass-6501f54530c3
He is genuinely passionate about education and life long learning. He wants everyone on the planet to have access to the best sources of knowledge, not just a privileged few. He also is incredibly determined, thoughtful, and has a force of personality that gives him the ability to make real human connections and inspire people to believe in his vision wherever he goes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/arts/sarah-mccreanor-smac-hydraulic-girl.html
As a dancer and a comedian, Sarah McCreanor, known as Smac, likes to up the ante. Why mimic a dance or a person when you can turn yourself into an emoji? A head-bobbing chicken? An object being crushed by a hydraulic press?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/style/harris-trump-political-memes.html
The video, called “Let’s Get Ready to Bumble,” is a slick mash-up of President Biden’s verbal slip-ups and his stumbles set to a thumping 1990s dance track.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/20/23801716/reddits-r-place-protest-art
But the 2023 version of r/Place — which arrives on the heels of things like massive protests about the company’s API changes that priced out many third-party apps, its recent contentious relationship with mods, its decision to remove all chat history before this year with little warning, and its announcement that Reddit Gold as it’s currently known will be going away — has become a massive billboard for users to air their grievances.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/154qutf/rplace_is_back_again/
Last year, 10.4 million of you created this masterpiece over the course of four days, placing 160 million total pixels. At its height, we saw you all place 5.9 million pixels per hour. From Rembrandt replicas and BTS creations to iconic French monuments and streamer wars, r/place’s reemergence had many awesome moments where you all gathered together to create, cooperate, alter, and meme the world’s largest collaborative digital canvas.
https://www.kucoin.com/news/articles/tapswap-daily-video-codes-august-21-2024
Activate Daily Boosters: Use boosters like "Tapping Guru" and "Full Tank" to increase points per tap, maximizing your earnings.
Invest in Upgrades: Purchase upgrades such as "Multitap" for more coins per tap, "Energy Limit" for more taps, and "Recharging Speed" for faster energy recovery.
https://www.binance.com/en-IN/square/post/9152265234497
https://press.airstreet.com/p/the-state-of-chinese-ai
Models produced by Chinese labs have scored particularly well on math and coding. DeepSeek-Prover outperformed GPT-4 on math problems. They generated large-scale synthetic theorem-proof data by translating informal math problems from the internet into formal statements and using an iteratively improved language model to generate proofs. This synthetic data is then used to fine-tune the model, creating a recursive self-improvement cycle. While it only proved 5 out of 148 problems on their International Mathematical Olympiad benchmark of choice, GPT-4 proved 0.
The H100 is vastly superior on some metrics - for example if you measure by FP16 Tensor Core Flops, it has a 6.68x performance advantage. But, despite its lower overall computing power, the H20 architecture has been optimized for LLM workloads in a way that is fully sanctions compliant and it’s reported to be 20% faster than the H100 in LLM reasoning tasks.
https://press.airstreet.com/p/your-guide-to-ai-july-2024
Runway released one of the most impressive accessible (OpenAI’s Sora remains heavily gated) text-to-video models yet. Trained jointly on videos and images, Gen-3 Alpha will underpin Runway's Text to Video, Image to Video and Text to Image tools. The company is keen to stress the controllability the user has over the output (a common criticism of text-to-video), along with the steps forward in fidelity and consistency.
Generations remain confined to 10 seconds, but this may be addressed in larger models in the Gen-3 family that will be released further down the line. It is worth noting that these performance gains aren’t cheap - text to video is a resource intensive business and each 10-second clip will cost between $1 and $2.40. No wonder you can’t use it without paying.
Noah Smith has documented how Huawei’s A100 copycat appears to have failed, with 80% of those produced so far malfunctioning. A full 80% of the Ascend 910B chips designed for AI training are defective and SMIC is struggling to manufacture more than small batches. Huawei executives have all but admitted defeat.
https://messari.io/report/memecoins-audience-telegram (2020-01-07)
https://github.com/w3laba/Clicker-Tap-Mini-App
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/macron-fires-back-at-critics-of-telegram-ceo-detention-1011fcd7
In an interview this year with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Durov said that during his latest trip to the U.S., officials approached an engineer traveling with Durov and tried to pay the engineer to insert code into the Telegram platform; Durov said that code would allow spy agencies to snoop on users’ communications. The investigation is examining 12 potential criminal violations, including complicity in the spread of child pornography, refusal to cooperate with authorities and complicity in fraud.
https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/superstate-fund-rundown
USDC/USDT is intertwined within every network with deep liquidity. This is arguably more important than the native yield and is also why we have seen other attempts at treasury-yield-generating tokens fail. Native yield is not the most important aspect of a stablecoin.
In late July 2024, Superstate released its second fund: the Crypto Carry Fund (USCC). This is effectively a tokenized fund designed to provide exposure to the “cash-and-carry” trade. The strategy currently operates on Bitcoin and Ethereum, where it longs spot and shorts futures. The fund is optimized for yield: the spot ETH positions are automatically staked to enhance returns.
🐛 One day, a butterfly was trying to get out of its cocoon. Somebody saw it struggling so they cut the cocoon to help it escape. While the butterfly was free, it lost the ability to fly because it didn’t complete its metamorphosis. In life, there will be struggles; there will be pain. Just know that when you’re going through it, you’re building the strength to fly. 🦋 Change is INVINCIBLE.
Hyperscale MMO like Edge of Chaos, Project Awakening, or Stars Reach. Maybe it will be social gaming hubs, guild halls, or entirely virtual esports arenas that bring together thousands in a persistent virtual experience. Massive Interactive Live Events (MILEs) like Twitch Plays Pokemon, Reddit’s r/Place, GTA: San Andreas Run, and Neflix’s Squid Game.
Star Atlas, another blockchain game similar to Star Citizen and Starfield, has been in development since 2020 but recently partnered with MetaGravity to help with scale. In July 2023, a successful 10k CCU test was completed, and by November of that same year, the team was able to scale to 30k CCU (network bots + 200 live players). Wilder World, a blockchain gaming company building a GTA-like open-world sim, partnered with MetaGravity.
https://www.youtube.com/@HamsterKombat_Official/videos
https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/cryptos-killer-use-case
Prominent publishers include the likes of Instagram, X, Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, etc. All of whom ruthlessly compete to drive “unregretted user minutes.” YouTube Shopping: In a deal between YouTube and Shopify, companies can sell products on YouTube through live streaming, videos, or via a digital storefront
https://members.delphidigital.io/reports/ugc-gaming-web3
UGC [User Generated Content] offers brands a seamless environment in which to build experiences on the platform. A study from March 2024 conducted by Roblox and Latitude concluded that 75% of users were likelier to notice brands advertised on Roblox vs. elsewhere. After viewing video ads on Roblox, users were 10% more likely to visit the advertisers’ experience and 5% more likely to post about advertised brands. In addition, users were 4% more likely to follow the brand on social media and 3% more likely to look for further information.
Thirty-eight states have since legalized sports betting, and the trend is likely to continue. Companies like DraftKings and FanDuel have aggressively started sponsoring sports broadcasts or sports-themed YouTube shows. At the same time, DraftKings was able to sign big names like LeBron James or Kevin Hart as ambassadors.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidias-gpus-have-a-weakness-video-generation
“Training data [for video generation models] can scale into petabytes pretty easily, as opposed to a few hundred terabytes for language-only models,” said Amit Jain, a cofounder at video generation startup Luma AI. To give you a sense of the magnitude of that—a petabyte is equivalent to a whopping 1,000 terabytes, or around 500,000 hours of video. Luma team to add thousands of GPUs in days from its three to four different providers.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is amassing a considerable number of GPUs, including the coveted Nvidia H100s, with a goal to accumulate over 20,000 GPUs. This initiative, known as ‘Oxygen’. Luma AI, a video generation platform, has been one of the early beneficiaries of this program, citing access to GPUs as a key reason for choosing a16z as their lead investor.
https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/tons-of-distribution (2024-06-06)
Another $TON project flying mostly under the radar from North American CT. @hamster_kombat: 4.8M followers, 78M Total players, 31M DAU, 24M in the TG channel, 13.5M Youtube subs.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/best-thc-drinks
Thanks to science: Drinkable cannabis is made possible by nano-emulsification, a fairly new technology that breaks down compounds like THC and CBD into particles that become surrounded by water-soluble molecules. Nanoemulsified extracts have changed the game when it comes to flavor, delivering consistent doses without the grassy, bong-water-like aftertaste found in early attempts to make weed drinkable. These tiny water-loving cannabis particles are also more easily absorbed by our body’s soft tissues, allowing the effects of infused beverages to kick in as soon as 10 minutes after drinking, rather than the hour or two waiting period of traditional edibles. Infused beverages hit differently than smoking a joint or nibbling a pot brownie.
Cannabis-infused beverages with hemp-derived THC products fully legal in all 50 states thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill. Suddenly I could partake in my favorite plant in a more discreet (and fragrance-free) format without having to step outside the party. I could also enjoy all the sensory pleasures of cocktails—rich floral aromas, juicy citrus flavors—and wake up the next morning sans hangover. The sugar-free sweet life: Wynk. While some cannabis drinks on the market tend to rely on fussy flavors or loads of added sugar, this sugar-free seltzer was first introduced in Massachusetts in 2021 and has exploded in popularity nationwide thanks to its refreshing taste and relaxing, euphoric high.
https://stratechery.com/2024/integration-and-android/
Pixel-exclusive-assistant was “Pixie” (in Google’s True Moonshot): the maximal application of AI to Google’s business prospects — when it comes to the org chart, the Pixel has been elevated above Android.
Google Pixel is up to around 5% marketshare in the U.S., but only 1% worldwide. Phones are to become your wallet, become your keys, run advanced AI workloads, do stuff in the background for you.
https://www.owlposting.com/p/some-questions-and-answers-i-had
Age1 is a VC that focuses purely on longevity startups. Impetus Grants give equity-free money to scientists who are doing longevity projects. Altos Labs, Retro Bio, and NewLimit are all billionaire-backed, for-profit, longevity startups. Mitochondrial morphology is improved. Epigenetic noise is stripped away. Telomeres are lengthened – cellular reprogramming leads to age reversal.
A primer on the current state of longevity research: easy-to-measure biomarkers on the table; grip strength, graying hair, and wrinkled skin all show strong correlation with age, even within mice and primates! A video a bit back about their work on cellular reprogramming reports a 25% bump in total lifespan alongside some qualitative health-span improvements using a therapeutic based on Yamanaka factors across 1000 mice.
Gill was holding 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 Jun 21 $20 call options. It also showed he was holding more than $29.2 million in cash. Together, that represents a position worth $386.35 million. Including Gill's $29,276,400.56 in cash, his net worth can be approximated to be at least $400 million.
Short-video platform Douyin, owned by ByteDance, has used a price-comparison tool to stimulate merchants to lower prices. “Consumers are increasingly choosing experience-based consumption over material purchases,” said Chen Lei, PDD chairman and co-chief executive officer, though he also cited a growing emphasis on bargains, or “rational consumption.”