Thoughts on my first trip to the National Card Show (@nsccshow) in Chicago this past weekend. What I saw at The National was insane, and incredibly fascinating. There had to be 200k people over 4-5 days. I've never seen more cash in one place in my life. Between cash and collectibles there was probably a billion dollars of value in that venue. I was blown away. It was the most fun I've had since the 2021 NFT market. Same energy and chaos, but in a physical setting! Now imagine instead of the ~10k of us who traded nonstop back then, it's 10 million people. That's the card market right now. At the high end, institutional capital is pouring in. I personally engaged with 3 different collectible funds raising capital. There was an $11m sale of a single card at the show. We will see multiple public ETFs backed by high end collectibles within 12 months. The mid tier feels overvalued right now. What I can't figure out is whether it's a bubble anywhere near popping. This market is like nothing I've seen: kids 8-16 spending tens of thousands like it's nothing, trading and flipping all day. And the parents love every second of it. Part bonding, part investing, part gambling, part addiction. The whole family is bought in, because the moms actually get a day of peace while the dads and kids run wild at the shows. That alone is priceless to most moms. I know thats how my wife feels. I bought, sold, traded and saw a ton of stuff. Here is my market assessment. I'm selling high supply and buying real scarcity. Start with the icons. Jordan and Kobe autos are fire and will continue to increase in value, but the over printed vintage inserts are overpriced. And the '86 Fleer Jordan has to come down, it's bananas right now, I saw multiple at every decent booth. It's a common card, that's the reality. Star cards are the new Jordan chase. LeBron is super in demand now. Base LeBron Topps, are completely overvalued and I wouldn't touch. But the LeBron Topps first edition is one of the most exciting plays in the market to me, I saw so few the entire show, super scarce. There is incredible demand for the other goats; Ohtani, Griffey Jr, Curry, Brady, Messi, Caitlin Clark, Gretzkey, Wemby, Mahomes...All rightfully so and will continue to appreciate in value. Modern supply has got to be an issue. Case hits like Downtowns and Kabooms feel massively inflated, driven by young kids chasing them and Whatnot liquidity where they know they can flip them all day. Parallels are a joke, 10 different borders of the same card. And modern sticker autos, too many printed year over year. The flip side is on card rookie autos, limited and you can't make more. I am buying those up in all of the players I believe in. On rookies, last year's class (Dart, Kon, Cooper, VJ types) I think come down in price the second everyone fixates on the new rookie class. Jeanty is an exception, I think he's just too good to be priced this low. The new rookie class for the NBA is going to potentially take NBA card collecting to new heights in general. You can find a stud across so many different teams, its a breakers dream. I think the Bowman 1st cards that are in high demand in MLB will also start to gain appreciation in NBA. The vintage side of NBA and MLB is where I'm buying: high grade, low supply inserts of Duncan, Garnett, Barkley, Shaq, Ewing, Nash and Nowitzki... Guys like Nolan Ryan, Jeter, Pedro, Randy Johnson, Ichiro, Bonds. Scarce and underpriced. Pokemon is overpriced and has peaked. I think it slowly comes down until they introduce parallels and sketch cards, which is inevitable given how insane the oversupply is. Every Pokemon booth is the same stuff over and over. The rest of entertainment IP is the opposite trade, little supply, still niche, and personally find it underrated and undervalued. Star Wars has a real core following that keeps growing, I love Harry Potter, and I think Garbage Pail Kids sees a real boom driven by its crossover into sports. Two more I like, both scarcity driven. Sketch cards, it's been incredible to watch a real market form and keep climbing among the collectors who actually know about them. And Project 70 and Project 2020 cards in MLB, everyone in those sets is scarce and designed by amazing artists, they outshine every other card in any display, and they're a mix of art and sports that I could see appealing to high end collectors over time. Still niche, fun to collect, I like them. They are the kind of cards I actually enjoy to PC, and if they increase in value along the way even better. WWE, the modern stuff felt flat, but WWE rookie cards are undervalued and genuinely hard to find. Some other tech thoughts.... Whatnot is raising at a $20b valuation and it might be undervalued. The overall collectible tech infrastructure is nowhere near where it's going. Enormous amount left to build. Digital collectibles had a small presence, but a presence nonetheless. Panini made the biggest splash of educating people on the digital collectible market. Topshot had a great location in the trade night room, and there were people engaing for sure, but TS needs to figure out how to build a brand, identify with the culture, and how to resonate with the trading community. The product shines, people really liked it from what I could tell. They just dont really get culture and brand. TS team would learn a ton by hanging around the WhatNot environment, thats who is nailing it right now. Whatnot breakers and streamers are more popular than athletes when it comes to the kids. The saving grace for digital collectibles will be the vaulting tech. Just from seeing how hard it was for everyone to lug around the collection, show it off properly, digital will grow, I have no doubt. The biggest bottleneck, biggest risk, and where for better or worse, the most value sits, is grading. It's the sketchiest part of the whole industry. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if one day there's a massive whistleblower moment about what goes on behind the scenes at the grading companies. PSA dropped the ball completely in regards to their offering of same day grading. The only explanation I can think of behind the incompetence of PSA is that it is manufactured challenges and intentional lack of investment in technology to maintain some level of scarcity needed to keep their business humming. I'm still working out the angles as a hobbyist, trader, investor, collector, builder and VC. But I'll tell you this: I didn't eat lunch for 2 days, did 13 hours a day on the floor, sold more than I ever have before by a longshot, and invested at the higher end which is not something I really have done much in the past as a hobbyist. Trading was a blast, I wanted to build an app to make the trading experience easier and more accessible because it was a lot of fun. Is the market is overvalued, maybe, but it also is showing zero signs of slowing down. Would love to hear others thoughts on the show, the market, what they are buying/selling and areas where investment is needed from an infra perspective.

Early warning signs are mounting that AI is already impacting the job market in NYC. New data just out show entry-level job postings in the city are way down in the careers most exposed to AI. Below chart shows change in NYC since 2022: This is coming fast and we are doing almost nothing about it.

One thing is very clear, Deshaun watson can still play QB, he’s not done yet. Very clear why he is starting.

This is as good of drama you could possibly ask for from WNBA. Caitlin down 2 pts , 2 min left elimination game, to Aja. Let’s go Caitlin! Out with the old era in with the new era.

The challenges of scarcity at scale. A tale as old as time…

Ive looked on Fubo, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Prime... WHy cant I find the Fever game anywhere. This is insanely annoying.

5 years ago, the first Knight was minted. ⚔️ A bull, a bear, a hack, and a long silence — most projects from 2021 aren't here to post this. We are. The Proods came for the fun and the Kingdom fell dark. They thought they'd won. They didn't count on the few Knights behind the walls — blades drawn, faith unbroken — who struck them down and kept building in the shadows. ⚔️ GM to every Knight who held since day one and those who have become Knights for life along the way. What we're building is for you. 🏰

$VVV hits highest single-day user signups. > 2,506 new signups (first day ever past 2.5K). > $58.6K in net new revenue from additional signups. > $5.8K in VVV burns from them. Three straight days of record numbers across new signups, new revenue, and resulting VVV token burns. Bankless's David calls VVV a superior alternative to big tech stocks or frontier lab equity. He cites Venice's reasonable market cap and direct token-demand mechanics as serving a better flywheel. H/T: @gekko_eth

WE ARE BACK 🔥

Something I been thinking about, is the transparency around collectable sales a good thing for the hobby or a bad thing for the hobby. Every where you go the purchase discussion is all about recent comps. So if you buy something on eBay, if you decide to sell it after, expect people to try and buy it at discount to your recent purchase. There used to be an art to valuing cards in some sense and that’s gone. I see a lot of positives to the transparency and the pricing data being visible as well. Curious what others think about this…

Let’s go Cam! Time to beat the Sox! LFG!!!

Big day today. I’m announcing SocialCrank, the spiritual successor to SocialRank, 12 years later. Coming for X, Instagram, TikTok and more. You can request early access here: socialcrank.ai Quick thread on what we’re building with @SocialCrankai and why I think it matters. 🧵

Wow the vault play by @coinbase is awesome.

Had to jump on the 9 games that shaped me trend. Fun to think about. I think this was mine but prob forgot a ton.

Thursday at @AskVenice: $4,625 of $VVV burned from new subs alone, an all-time high. The old mark was $4,621, set last Friday. 2,031 new signups on the day, also a record. Day total $266.6k in new-signup and credit revenue, $15,795 burned 🔥 venicestats.com/burns

SpaceXAI engineer, Nick Miller: "99% of people run one GrokBot and call it done, only 1% build teams of bots that talk to each other. i'm running a team of 20+ GrokBot agents in a loop & graph. I have a Chief of Staff bot, PM bot, QA bot and 15+ workers - that's the new stack" In a 27-minute demo, a SpaceXAI engineer explains how to build a team of GrokBot agents from scratch worth more than a $500 agentic engineering course skip Netflix today and watch this, then read how to build a fleet of GrokBot agents in the article below

I’m so happy JayZ made this documentary Jay Z in 8. This is his Last Dance. Something to leave for the next generation to understand his greatness. 1 episode in and I’m absolutely loving this.

I literally can’t think of a better pairing in film that Christopher Nolan taking on a Darth Vader trilogy. That movie would be nutssssss.

Pretty crazy stat, and looks like unless some wrestler joins at like 16-18 years old, Hitman will never be broken because these wrestlers today don’t even wrestle close to as much.

LIVE: NBA Top Shot Break with VJ Edgecombe x.lingyaoai.com/i/broadcasts/1XxygwYLb…

Cam Schlittler’s Cy Young season is complete. 33 GS 193.2 IP 1.95 ERA 239 SO 0.92 WHIP One of the greatest pitching seasons in franchise history.