Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Two use cases in crypto with product-market fit: speculation and stablecoins. Today, if you don't play in the speculation stack, you miss out of the $$$ spent by the relatively small population of hardcore crypto users (and occasionally a sudden surge of retail interest when there's a big meme event). This space is attractive for startups since a relatively small number of users by consumer standards can generate a lot of revenue. Stablecoins grew out of the speculation stack over the last decade, but now with the GENIUS Act, you're going to see a flood of non-crypto companies with existing distribution start to play around with crypto. This space is much harder for startups since stablecoins require massive scale to be a good business (and will become worse if interest rates fall). The challenge today is that if you're somewhere in-between speculation and stablecoins, the thing you need to make your business successful is users who spend some amount of crypto. And that market is not that big yet. So the imperative is to grow size of the market. The best way to do that is build fun and entertaining apps and experiences. This is what we're focused on with the Farcaster app and why I'm constantly telling people other stuff isn't a priority relative to user growth.
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androidsixteen
@androidsixteen.eth
Had a similar thought earlier this year, but had pegged FC as closer to the stablecoin end But it seems like since then, the focus has shifted to speculation Is this because it is easier to get to the middle after anchoring against the left side of the continuum? https://farcaster.xyz/androidsixteen.eth/0x67aae1ad
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Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
> Had a similar thought earlier this year, but had pegged FC as closer to the stablecoin end We never considered being on the stablecoin end since it's downstream of scale / distribution. > But it seems like since then, the focus has shifted to speculation The iteration on the product has been to add more crypto features, with the wallet being most important. Right now, consumer crypto use is only speculation. Today, there is minimal use of stablecoins *by consumers* in ways that make money for startups (outside of using stablecoins in the speculation stack). Stories about growing stablecoin use in developing markets != a good business for startups. Hopefully that will change (!), but you need to play the game on the field and a startup can't survive hoping something eventually happens.
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androidsixteen
@androidsixteen.eth
Makes sense -- the thinking behind anchoring FC to the stablecoin side is the variety of onchain features that leveraged USDC: - buying storage / protocol fees in USDC - purchasing warps (1:1 with dollar) -> buying channels, tipping casts, etc. - rewards - weekly tipping But I suppose these don't represent significant volume compared to speculation stack or eurodollar & business efficiency use cases of stablecoins
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