money games
Expanding speculation on the internet.
Money games: tools for fixing capital and the right way to understand crypto assets :
The purpose of crypto is to fix capital, creating a better capital systems that flow value to people who create this value. And not let corruption extract value from this system.
There is a lens that not many people see when thinking about tokens. The type of question everyone is asking is what they should be evaluated by: revenues/utility etc.
But my view is that money games, ie, the mechanism behind each token, is more telling than the topic behind the token.
Money games are systems that want to replace corrupt and rigged financial systems with more equitable systems. These money games serve as a coordination tool for people to unite around changing this financial system and creating an alternative system where value flows as it should ( to the people that create it ).
The way to evaluate money games is not based on revenues / DCF but based on what they are replacing, combined with parameters that are related to the mechanism of participation :
Gold was a rigged system and BTC created a mechanism pow to mine digitally. That created a better form of gold. So Btc is better evaluated in a way that uses that system. And its comp.
The finance and loan system is rigged - banks get to print and delute our money and most people don't get this loans in they Ste unfortunate. DeFi and the pool system created a P2p financial system and they should be evaluated based on that system (tvl / fees ) as well as the comp they are creating.
Art is rigged - NFTs and the mint system created a better way to trade and own art on the internet.
AI is centralized and closed -decentralized training let everyone participate and value should be measured based on the intelligence value they create.
Science funding is corrupt and rigged - desci is making efforts to replace (so far without a proper mechanism so it didnt took off yet )
Higher education is rigged - ??
recent new money games :
pokemon lootboxes - https://courtyard.io , tcgcenter.app
useful pow l1s : zkc , nock , duplex , ambient
Remember the goal: the goal is to fix capitalism and wealth distribution so it will serve most people. Like capitalism should be.
Future things to fix :
our institutions :
Gov-owned entities and offices - transparency and operations
Research and new knowledge
News
also called it flat orgs
In the last 12 years in crypto, we created many money games, building blocks we can use to replace these systems.
long.xyz ultimate goal is to create the infrastructure for the rebellious. People who want to replace the rigged system can use money games to do so. Very much like Satoshi created POW to fix gold.
The power of money games to facilitate coordination:
tl;dr : my main point in this doc is that the powerful force is not revenues, but it is a consensus around how value is created and the way the asset is evaluated. In this doc I'll talk about the evolution of money games in crypto and where we are going from here.
-Speculation & coordination is the source of all good, because it's creating coordination, and coordination is a force that people used to achieve big things. when coordination and speculation came together historically they created most of the progress - from the 2000 tech bubble, the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program. doesnt matter if the coordination is the cause of a new way to measure a financial asset ( reflexive matrics like tvl etc) or it is a top down goal like the apollo program , the result is a new era of progress .
Money games are about the way the capital asset is issued and the way we are evaluating it.
The main money game in finance (pre-crypto) - value investing theory / dcf- this was populated by Ben Graham and Warren Buffett and extended to evaluating tech companies. The idea that revenues are the sole metric we should use to evaluate any kind of endeavor.
These metric was very valuable pre-internet, became less valuable with tech cos, and with crypto protocols became even less relevant as a sole framework.
players :
professional investors - align on the “value theory” populated by Ben Graham. The best entrepreneurs are the ones who understand how to game this game and emphasize TAM and
Definition of money games: What I'm going to focus on in this doc is specifically a token-related money games & issuance mechanisms ( money games 2.0)
the core of money games are an evaluation metric ( coins are stocks revenues/utility value / memetic value etc ) as well as a comp value (ico will replace ipo , nfts will replace art ) . in the trad world, new money games created their metrics and their dreams (dotcom bubble / manhattan project / apollo program ) .
The history of money games:
Pre-Internet - value investing and rev metrics enable investors to fuel business, games like art fueled creators using the tax benefits investors get from it
Money games 1.0 - The internet created more scalable business but the metric didnt change much; people still used multiples to evaluate .
Enter Money Games 2.0 :
programmable money games - the rules are more complicated - with crypto, we came up with a different way to issue, and so came up with new analogies, like comparison to commodities, vouchers and many other things. But I'll show that these money games mainly create a new coordination around how value is created and evaluated so the analogy for what they represent is secondary .
Crypto is beyond just a better way to issue stocks; it is a focal point for people to coordinate around and achieve their goals. The primary goals of replacing an existing system.
As investors, we should have a few models of evaluation for each asset class, not only based on its content (team /industry ) but also on the type of money game.
the history of money games 2.0 :
pre 2017: proof of work
Proof of stake - Proof-of-Stake (PoS) was first conceived in 2011 and implemented in 2012 with the launch of Peercoin, which was the first cryptocurrency to utilize a PoS-like system.
2017 ICO Boom: 2017 ICOs: investors sent eth in exchange for project tokens, raising an estimated $20 billion over two years. Tech Enabler: Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard, which allowed anyone to easily create and distribute tokens on-chain.
2018 Play-to-earn breeding/battling: Breed Axies (NFTs) for battles; earn SLP/AXS tokens redeemable off-chain.
2018 - fomo 3d -A timer-based lottery Ponzi. Players buy "keys" with ETH (starting at 0.1 ETH each, increasing over time). Each purchase adds 30 seconds to a 24-hour countdown timer. When the timer hits zero, the last buyer wins ~48% of the pot; the rest is distributed as dividends to key holders (10% to Team JUST, 10% to a sequel game, etc.).
2020 DeFi Farming Season - Tech Enabler: Automated Market Makers (AMMs) (like Uniswap, launched in 2018, but gaining traction in 2020). COMP yield farming showed users they could earn tokens for using a protocol, creating the farming meta.
2021 NFT Boom: Tech Enabler: ERC-721 standard for unique digital assets + Ethereum scaling (L2s, sidechains like Polygon). Marketplaces and Platforms: The boom spurred the development of numerous NFT marketplaces and platforms, facilitating the creation, sale, and trading of NFTs.- Trading volumes reached $57.2 billion
2022- airdrops farming - Farming involved speculative interactions to qualify for unannounced ("retroactive") airdrops, often via multi-wallet strategies. However, this led to widespread Sybil attacks, where individuals created fake identities to multiply rewards
2024 Memecoin Season: Solana’s low fees + the launch of memecoins like WIF & BONK going viral. Solana recovered from 2022’s crash, Memecoins became community-driven cultural movements.
2022 tipping coins - like degen chain AND kaito - rewarding app user and becoming a proxy of that app
2025 yield sale (ao computer ) using the yield as a sale for tokens
2025 Doppler and long - modular compostable auction based liquidity bootstrapping
2025 - Twitter launch (believe )
2025 -$gor - using a memecoin launch as a fair distribution for real crypto businesses .
The future of money games 2.0 :
Crypto as a terrain for new games - using crypto primitives to create another MMO game
New Frontiers for money games 2.0 (crypto version ) :
new mechanisms
prediction markets
reward with inflation (tao )
interconnected markets - zora and virtuals
new segments -
AI training funding mechanism
RWA x gamified mechanism -
ar vr and metaverse revival
social app x crypto - Soulbound tokens proving useful (on-chain resumes, credit scores).
ways to bet on social media, games around chat gpt usage
On-Chain Social & Identity
New token standards :
ERC-6551 (Token-Bound Accounts): AI agents can own assets and interact with protocols.
Soulbound Tokens (SBTs): For reputation/trust in AI-generated content.
ERC-3643 (Permissioned Tokens): Institutional-grade AI projects needing regulatory compliance.
ERC-6551 allows NFT items to own other assets
ERC-6551 (Token-Bound Accounts): NFTs as wallets, enabling dynamic in-game assets.
ERC-721C (Creator Fees Standard): Ensures royalties in gaming NFT marketplaces. ERC-1155 (Multi-Asset Tokens): Efficient for gaming items (single contract holds multiple asset types).
Infrastructure for games is the biggest business
Within crypto -
l1s - like Solana and eth
dexs and nft markets - like pump fun
defi protocols
outside of crypto :
AI creation tool for games
Stablecoin infra for payment
So, you probably ask: what am I doing to push through this future ?
money games 2.0 grant program
Creating a monthly competition, giving away 200k$ every month to 2 game developers who build money games 2.0 or infrastructure for them.
Target cracked founders aged 18-21
Build a brand like AllianceDAO, but center it specifically on money games
Ideal candidate: already a talent curator crypto, has a lot of energy, needs to be deeply crypto native (ideally class of 2021 or prev), and down for a gig, lives in NYC, in-person organizer
Let's get crypto back to its true origin, reconnect to our rebellious nature, and not try to be someone else.
