Devin Baker

The Fat Protocol Thesis is being eroded in real time. Not by a faster L1, but by a growing recognition that value capture lives where demand is native and immediate, not abstract and structural.

A story he often tells is about when all the early e-commerce VCs (it was a small group back then) got together for coffee in the early 2000s. They debated: how big is the market for e-commerce going to be?

Is it going to be mostly electronics (maybe only techies will use PCs)? Could it ever work for women (perhaps they’re too tactile)? What about... See more

The US is likely heading toward:

• Lower rates (circa 3%) despite near-term inflation


• More liquidity injections (US$1.5 trillion in 2026)


• Continued unconventional policy tools (Treasury QE, stable coin-driven demand)

Investment Implications

• Risk-On: favor Bitcoin, equities, and growth assets


• Watch for Fed rate cuts and monitor US Treasury bill

... See more

Bitcoin is the clearest example – BTC holders are willing to accept inflation as a pure expense with no expectation of future income rights. You could also easily imagine Bitcoin having a 1% inflation tail programmed from the start, and perhaps BTC holders would happily hold it. That would happen because BTC holders derive sufficient utility from... See more

To thrive in a hyper-financialized world, investors must rethink their approach, moving beyond risk-on/risk-off mentalities toward a portfolio that embraces both compliance with the status quo and resistance against systemic fragility.

We’ve talked about crypto very little thus far. Blackbird’s membership cards are NFTs, its loyalty token is $FLY, and network participants can earn ownership in the network with $F2, but we’ve focused on what those different products do for restaurants and their customers, not on the nitty gritty of the tokens themselves.

That is a great thing.

Blac... See more

The primary development of STPv2 is Tiers, which can be understood as the ability for creators to provide different offerings at different price-points.

For example, a subscriber to the $5 tier might only get access to Bob’s newsletter, while a subscriber at the $10 tier gets access to Bob’s newsletter and his private group chat. Creators can... See more

There’s one big difference here, though. While Ben sold Eater and Resy to centralized companies, that’s not an option for Blackbird. Instead, ownership of the network of restaurants will primarily go to the restaurants themselves as the company progressively decentralizes. “Overall, the restaurant industry should own roughly half of the network,”... See more

The output matters, but the intention, the struggle, the care is what makes it count — what gives it weight.