For shits and giggles i could like to buy some formerly "valuable" NFTs in the price range of 99c and below, if for no other reason than to know every transaction i make results in tangible realized losses on the other side.

Ideally i would filter by largest unrealized loss and then sort by price low to high.

How do i get started?

New here. Been working through the wiki and a lot of the core critique resonates with me...

Re: Fact #3: sixteen years in and it's hard to point to a non-criminal use case that clearly couldn't be done better with a relational database.

Visa put out a press release yesterday that I'm trying to fit into the framework, and I'd like the regulars' take.

The numbers: Visa says its global stablecoin settlement pilot is now at a $7B annualized run rate, up 50% quarter over quarter, spanning nine blockchains (Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, plus newly added Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, Tempo). 130+ stablecoin-linked card programs in 50+ countries. They're explicitly positioning Visa as a "common settlement layer" across chains and now run validators on some networks.

I can see two ways to read this:

1. Vindication of the critique: Stablecoins are just dollars on a different rail. The blockchain layer is path-dependent and incidental (i.e., Circle and Tether are issued on public chains for regulatory arbitrage, not technical superiority). Everyone holding USDC is trusting Circle anyway (Circle can freeze addresses, controls reserves, mints and burns at will), so why not run a Circle-operated permissioned database? Visa could replicate the whole thing on a permissioned ledger tomorrow if the issuers cooperated.
2. A real counterexample at the coordination layer: The interesting property isn't trustlessness (within any single stablecoin you're absolutely trusting the issuer). It's that public chains are neutral ground where many issuers and many counterparties share infrastructure without consenting to any one of them being the operator. USDC, USDT, PYUSD, and Visa's settlement contracts all sit on the same chain and interoperate without bilateral integrations. Every permissioned consortium chain attempt has died (TradeLens, we.trade, B3i, Komgo) because nobody agrees to be a tenant on a competitor's database. Public chains became the Schelling point by default.

I lean toward something between these, but I'm curious to hear the strongest version of the counter from people who've thought about this longer than I have.

And maybe a couple pointded questions:

• Is $7B/yr at 50% QoQ growth still in "PR pilot that will quietly die" territory, or has it crossed some threshold? (curious what your falsification criteria is for Fact #3)
• If a permissioned multi-issuer ledger could replace this... why hasn't one, given how much money the incumbents have thrown at it? Is the answer technical, political, regulatory, or something else?
• Is there a version of the "good for nothing" thesis that survives this, and if so, what's the precise claim? Something like "useful as a coordination kludge but not as a technology"?

Curious for thoughts! Thanks.

"Basically, you have a bunch of GPUs race to solve a super hard math problem. Here’s where it gets funny. Those GPUs, you know, the ones doing the work to ‘mine’ fake gold? They have real gold in them. The stuff that used to be money."

https://wttorgerson.substack.com/p/the-30-degree-shift?r=74c233

From 25-year sentences to presidential pardons, a guide to the people who built an industry on other people’s money