#Crypto Writing Tools

[leonbasinwriter]

Web 3.0 vs Web 2.0: A Writing Revolution

How Web 3.0 is Rewriting the Rules of Writing, Ownership, and Monetization Forever The Broken Promise of Web 2.0 For decades, writers have been trapped in a system that rewards platforms over creators. The Web 2.0 era turned content into a commodity—owned by corporations, monetized through ads, and dependent on algorithms. Writers became cogs in a machine, trading their time and talent for���

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[lakesbian]

Hey, I just saw your post about dumbass DNIs, can you clarify something for me? Is there a specific history with the word 'degens'? Your reaction was not what I expected given my own cultural context. (I'm a rural Canadian queer). Degens is a very lighthearted insult here, and not associated with any particular group and it's also not particularly common these days. So if there's context I'm missing i'd appreciate the info (Google was not helpful and started talking about crypto). Thanks!

The term Entartung (or "degeneracy") had gained currency in Germany by the late 19th century when the critic and author Max Nordau devised the theory presented in his 1892 book Degeneration. [3] Nordau drew upon the writings of the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, whose The Criminal Man, published in 1876, attempted to prove that there were "born criminals" whose atavistic personality traits could be detected by scientifically measuring abnormal physical characteristics.

calling people or things degenerate is utilizing fascist terminology. 'degenerate' as in 'degenerated from human.' degenerate as in 'less than a person, because they do not fit my model for what a person is.' its normalization as an insult is bad, there's no removing or decontextualizing its obvious meaning and the horrible connotations it carries. the idea of degeneracy is a tool of dehumanization and genocide and should not be used as a casual insult by anyone

[qqueenofhades]

I’m in undergrad but I keep hearing and seeing people talking about using chatgpt for their schoolwork and it makes me want to rip my hair out lol. Like even the “radical” anti-chatgpt ones are like “Oh yea it’s only good for outlines I’d never use it for my actual essay.” You’re using it for OUTLINES????? That’s the easy part!! I can’t wait to get to grad school and hopefully be surrounded by people who actually want to be there 😭😭😭

Not to sound COMPLETELY like a grumpy old codger (although lbr, I am), but I think this whole AI craze is the obvious result of an education system that prizes "teaching for the test" as the most important thing, wherein there are Obvious Correct Answers that if you select them, pass the standardized test and etc etc mean you are now Educated. So if there's a machine that can theoretically pick the correct answers for you by recombining existing data without the hard part of going through and individually assessing and compiling it yourself, Win!

... but of course, that's not the way it works at all, because AI is shown to create misleading, nonsensical, or flat-out dangerously incorrect information in every field it's applied to, and the errors are spotted as soon as an actual human subject expert takes the time to read it closely. Not to go completely KIDS THESE DAYS ARE JUST LAZY AND DONT WANT TO WORK, since finding a clever way to cheat on your schoolwork is one of those human instincts likewise old as time and has evolved according to tools, technology, and educational philosophy just like everything else, but I think there's an especial fear of Being Wrong that drives the recourse to AI (and this is likewise a result of an educational system that only prioritizes passing standardized tests as the sole measure of competence). It's hard to sort through competing sources and form a judgment and write it up in a comprehensive way, and if you do it wrong, you might get a Bad Grade! (The irony being, of course, that AI will *not* get you a good grade and will be marked even lower if your teachers catch it, which they will, whether by recognizing that it's nonsense or running it through a software platform like Turnitin, which is adding AI detection tools to its usual plagiarism checkers.)

We obviously see this mindset on social media, where Being Wrong can get you dogpiled and/or excluded from your peer groups, so it's even more important in the minds of anxious undergrads that they aren't Wrong. But yeah, AI produces nonsense, it is an open waste of your tuition dollars that are supposed to help you develop these independent college-level analytical and critical thinking skills that are very different from just checking exam boxes, and relying on it is not going to help anyone build those skills in the long term (and is frankly a big reason that we're in this mess with an entire generation being raised with zero critical thinking skills at the exact moment it's more crucial than ever that they have them). I am mildly hopeful that the AI craze will go bust just like crypto as soon as the main platforms either run out of startup funding or get sued into oblivion for plagiarism, but frankly, not soon enough, there will be some replacement for it, and that doesn't mean we will stop having to deal with fake news and fake information generated by a machine and/or people who can't be arsed to actually learn the skills and abilities they are paying good money to acquire. Which doesn't make sense to me, but hey.

So: Yes. This. I feel you and you have my deepest sympathies. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sit on the porch in my quilt-draped rocking chair and shout at kids to get off my lawn.

[stop-talking]

ughhh the derek fic is sooo cute and i love it i think you did an incredible job giving him a more complex personality than just a douchebag we see in the movies and it makes me so soft for him 🥹

Derek Danforth is a complicated character

Or at least, that's how I see him.

• He has a weird/strained relationship with his mom, and his dad is dead. (And it's implied his mom doesn't like him, "God I wish he was alive so I could kill him" or something.)

• But even so, he claims the reason he started his little scam operation in the first place was to help her win the election. (Which is probably partially true, he started it to help her, then kept it going because he liked the money/power/thrill of his little crime empire.)

• And even in the movie?? He's not a COMPLETE douche. I'm probably reading too much into things, but there's this short scene where he bumps into his mother's assistant and says sorry and moves out of her way

• Just before that he was flirting with this other lady (in a totally stupid way... offering her crypto?? seriously??) but even then he wasn't saying or doing anything rude. He was just being dorky.

• He's likely been under a lot of pressure his whole life to keep up a good image, considering he was born wealthy. And it probably got worse once his mom started pursuing a political career, since he couldn't jeopardize her reputation.

• And finally, Josh Hutcherson said one of the notes he got from his director (like, instructions, guidance, something to keep in mind while acting out a scene) was "Just remember that all of us just want to be loved and we can only ask for that with the tools that we're given."

• I'm not saying he's innocent and growing up as a troubled little rich boy was sooo hard that I don't blame him for turning to crime. These things aren't an excuse for his actions, but an explanation. He was definitely in the wrong, but he isn't some stereotypical comic book villain either. He isn't evil.

ANYWAYS sorry for writing you a whole ass essay when I should be writing fanfic, you just got me thinking. At the end of the day Derek Danforth is a bad guy, yes, but he's also just a dorky little mama's boy.

[theshepherdshound]

no thoughts only ari and vale now

does any of this happen??? i have no idea rn, i mean probably the crypto wallet thing does and these can be little side quests or something- lots of weird and confusing potential little guys

i don't really know what order anything is happening in and need a like plot making tool or something. mainly i dunno if any of this hppens until i figure out the looping mechanic architecture

i did in fact once write a short story about someone dating a cryptid who swallowed a river and laughed too hard and vomited it up- they told their landlord the pipe burst to get out of it and broke up

[mariacallous]

Two years ago when “Michael,” an owner of cryptocurrency, contacted Joe Grand to help recover access to about $2 million worth of bitcoin he stored in encrypted format on his computer, Grand turned him down.

Michael, who is based in Europe and asked to remain anonymous, stored the cryptocurrency in a password-protected digital wallet. He generated a password using the RoboForm password manager and stored that password in a file encrypted with a tool called TrueCrypt. At some point, that file got corrupted and Michael lost access to the 20-character password he had generated to secure his 43.6 BTC (worth a total of about €4,000, or $5,300, in 2013). Michael used the RoboForm password manager to generate the password but did not store it in his manager. He worried that someone would hack his computer and obtain the password.

“At [that] time, I was really paranoid with my security,” he laughs.

Grand is a famed hardware hacker who in 2022 helped another crypto wallet owner recover access to $2 million in cryptocurrency he thought he’d lost forever after forgetting the PIN to his Trezor wallet. Since then, dozens of people have contacted Grand to help them recover their treasure. But Grand, known by the hacker handle “Kingpin,” turns down most of them, for various reasons.

Grand is an electrical engineer who began hacking computing hardware at age 10 and in 2008 cohosted the Discovery Channel’s Prototype This show. He now consults with companies that build complex digital systems to help them understand how hardware hackers like him might subvert their systems. He cracked the Trezor wallet in 2022 using complex hardware techniques that forced the USB-style wallet to reveal its password.

But Michael stored his cryptocurrency in a software-based wallet, which meant none of Grand’s hardware skills were relevant this time. He considered brute-forcing Michael’s password—writing a script to automatically guess millions of possible passwords to find the correct one—but determined this wasn’t feasible. He briefly considered that the RoboForm password manager Michael used to generate his password might have a flaw in the way it generated passwords, which would allow him to guess the password more easily. Grand, however, doubted such a flaw existed.

Michael contacted multiple people who specialize in cracking cryptography; they all told him “there’s no chance” of retrieving his money. But last June he approached Grand again, hoping to convince him to help, and this time Grand agreed to give it a try, working with a friend named Bruno in Germany who also hacks digital wallets.

Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they thought Michael had used in 2013 and found that the pseudo-random number generator used to generate passwords in that version—and subsequent versions until 2015—did indeed have a significant flaw that made the random number generator not so random. The RoboForm program unwisely tied the random passwords it generated to the date and time on the user’s computer—it determined the computer’s date and time, and then generated passwords that were predictable. If you knew the date and time and other parameters, you could compute any password that would have been generated on a certain date and time in the past.

If Michael knew the day or general time frame in 2013 when he generated it, as well as the parameters he used to generate the password (for example, the number of characters in the password, including lower- and upper-case letters, figures, and special characters), this would narrow the possible password guesses to a manageable number. Then they could hijack the RoboForm function responsible for checking the date and time on a computer and get it to travel back in time, believing the current date was a day in the 2013 time frame when Michael generated his password. RoboForm would then spit out the same passwords it generated on the days in 2013.

There was one problem: Michael couldn’t remember when he created the password.

According to the log on his software wallet, Michael moved bitcoin into his wallet for the first time on April 14, 2013. But he couldn’t remember if he generated the password the same day or some time before or after this. So, looking at the parameters of other passwords he generated using RoboForm, Grand and Bruno configured RoboForm to generate 20-character passwords with upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and eight special characters from March 1 to April 20, 2013.

It failed to generate the right password. So Grand and Bruno lengthened the time frame from April 20 to June 1, 2013, using the same parameters. Still no luck.

Michael says they kept coming back to him, asking if he was sure about the parameters he’d used. He stuck to his first answer.

“They really annoyed me, because who knows what I did 10 years ago,” he recalls. He found other passwords he generated with RoboForm in 2013, and two of them did not use special characters, so Grand and Bruno adjusted. Last November, they reached out to Michael to set up a meeting in person. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, they will ask me again for the settings.”

Instead, they revealed that they had finally found the correct password—no special characters. It was generated on May 15, 2013, at 4:10:40 pm GMT.

“We ultimately got lucky that our parameters and time range was right. If either of those were wrong, we would have … continued to take guesses/shots in the dark,” Grand says in an email to WIRED. “It would have taken significantly longer to precompute all the possible passwords.”

Grand and Bruno created a video to explain the technical details more thoroughly.

RoboForm, made by US-based Siber Systems, was one of the first password managers on the market, and currently has more than 6 million users worldwide, according to a company report. In 2015, Siber seemed to fix the RoboForm password manager. In a cursory glance, Grand and Bruno couldn’t find any sign that the pseudo-random number generator in the 2015 version used the computer’s time, which makes them think they removed it to fix the flaw, though Grand says they would need to examine it more thoroughly to be certain.

Siber Systems confirmed to WIRED that it did fix the issue with version 7.9.14 of RoboForm, released June 10, 2015, but a spokesperson wouldn’t answer questions about how it did so. In a changelog on the company’s website, it mentions only that Siber programmers made changes to “increase randomness of generated passwords,” but it doesn’t say how they did this. Siber spokesman Simon Davis says that “RoboForm 7 was discontinued in 2017.”

Grand says that, without knowing how Siber fixed the issue, attackers may still be able to regenerate passwords generated by versions of RoboForm released before the fix in 2015. He’s also not sure if current versions contain the problem.

“I'm still not sure I would trust it without knowing how they actually improved the password generation in more recent versions,” he says. “I'm not sure if RoboForm knew how bad this particular weakness was.”

Customers may also still be using passwords that were generated with the early versions of the program before the fix. It doesn’t appear that Siber ever notified customers when it released the fixed version 7.9.14 in 2015 that they should generate new passwords for critical accounts or data. The company didn’t respond to a question about this.

If Siber didn’t inform customers, this would mean that anyone like Michael who used RoboForm to generate passwords prior to 2015—and are still using those passwords—may have vulnerable passwords that hackers can regenerate.

“We know that most people don't change passwords unless they're prompted to do so,” Grand says. “Out of 935 passwords in my password manager (not RoboForm), 220 of them are from 2015 and earlier, and most of them are [for] sites I still use.”

Depending on what the company did to fix the issue in 2015, newer passwords may also be vulnerable.

Last November, Grand and Bruno deducted a percentage of bitcoins from Michael’s account for the work they did, then gave him the password to access the rest. The bitcoin was worth $38,000 per coin at the time. Michael waited until it rose to $62,000 per coin and sold some of it. He now has 30 BTC, now worth $3 million, and is waiting for the value to rise to $100,000 per coin.

Michael says he was lucky that he lost the password years ago because, otherwise, he would have sold off the bitcoin when it was worth $40,000 a coin and missed out on a greater fortune.

“That I lost the password was financially a good thing.”

[unpluggedfinancial]

Crypto Karma: Can Bitcoin Help Create a Fairer System?

"The world isn't fair. But maybe the code can be."

You don’t need to look far to see that the justice system—financial and otherwise—isn't about justice at all. It's about leverage. It's about control. It's about who gets to write the rules and who’s forced to follow them.

For too long, we’ve lived in a rigged game. One where wealth buys silence. Where power protects itself. Where being born into the wrong zip code means you pay 10x the price for the same mistakes someone wealthier makes. In the fiat world, money doesn’t just talk—it decides.

But what if we had a system where money didn't bend to the powerful? What if, instead of reinforcing inequality, the monetary system itself was the force undoing it?

That’s the promise—and challenge—of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin doesn’t care about your social status, skin color, or whether your suit was tailored on Wall Street or bought secondhand. It operates on math, not mood. It’s apolitical, incorruptible, and most importantly—neutral.

There’s a strange sort of justice embedded in that neutrality. In a Bitcoin world, everyone plays by the same rules. There are no bailouts for billionaires. No backroom deals. No "too big to fail" lifelines. There is only the chain, and it tells the truth, always.

While fiat systems reward those who manipulate the levers—printing money, inflating away savings, creating barriers to entry—Bitcoin flips the script. It doesn't promise you riches. But it guarantees that no one can take yours through inflationary theft. That's a type of justice the fiat world has never known.

Across the globe, we’re seeing this play out in real-time. From Argentina to Nigeria, people are turning to Bitcoin not because it's trendy, but because it's their last shot at financial dignity. Protesters in authoritarian regimes have used it to receive support when banks freeze their accounts. Families devastated by inflation are preserving wealth in sats. For them, Bitcoin isn’t just a hedge—it’s a lifeline.

But let’s not get too romantic. Bitcoin isn’t perfect. It’s not going to fix systemic racism or overturn corrupt governments overnight. It’s a tool. A powerful one—but only if wielded with intention. The same decentralized force that empowers the oppressed could also be used by bad actors. That’s the paradox of freedom: it doesn’t come with guardrails.

Still, ask yourself this: if justice is about fairness, transparency, and equal access—then isn’t Bitcoin already closer to justice than anything the fiat system ever offered?

Maybe this is what karma looks like in the digital age. Not some cosmic force doling out consequences, but a cold, brilliant code that doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t favor. Doesn’t forget.

Tick tock. Next block.

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[amryttmedia]

How to Submit a Guest Post on a Blockchain Blog

Guest posting on blockchain blogs helps boost your SEO and get your name in front of crypto readers.

But here's the thing- most sites get flooded with bad pitches and low-quality posts. If you want your guest post approved, you need to follow the right steps.

As you know, it starts with finding the right blogs. Then comes reading the guidelines, pitching smart, and writing content that adds value.

In this guide, I'll show you how to do each step the right way. Simple, clear, and focused on what actually works in 2025.

Step 1 – Find the Right Blockchain Blogs

Not all blockchain blogs are worth your time. You want sites that have real readers, good authority, and accept guest posts.

Use Google Search Operators

Search smart. Try:

blockchain "write for us"

crypto "submit a guest post"

site:blog.com "guest post guidelines"

These will lead you straight to blogs open to contributors.

Check Domain Authority & Traffic

Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush to check:

Domain Authority (DA) — Aim for 30+

Monthly traffic — Higher is better

Spam score — Avoid high-risk sites

Also, avoid blogs that only post guest content or look like link farms.

Look for Niche Relevance

The blog should cover the same type of content you plan to write. Read 2–3 posts. Make sure your topic fits. A good fit means higher chances of getting published.

Use Platforms Like 'Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Guest Posts'

There are services and curated lists that focus on this niche. Platforms labeled as cryptocurrency and blockchain guest posts can save time. They list blogs with contact info, DA scores, and submission rules. These can speed up your outreach process and help you focus on quality sites.

Step 2 – Read the Guest Post Guidelines

Before you write anything, check the blog’s guest post rules. Most blogs have a dedicated “Write for Us” or “Contribute” page.

Follow Format and Word Count

Each blog is different. But here’s what most want:

800 to 1,500 words

Clear subheadings (H2, H3)

Short paragraphs

No fluff

Stick to their style. If they use casual tone, match it.

Understand Link Rules

Some blogs allow one link in the body. Others are only in the bio. Many reject overly promotional content. Don’t force your links, make them fit naturally.

Also, check if they allow dofollow links. If they don’t say, ask.

Avoid These Common Mistakes

Ignoring the tone of the site

Sending generic or spun content

Copying content from other blogs

Following their rules shows you respect their site. That gets you closer to a “yes.”

Step 3 – Craft a Strong Pitch

A good pitch can get your foot in the door. A bad one ends up in trash. Keep it simple, clear, and personalized.

Use Their Name in the Email

Start by addressing the editor by name. If it’s not listed, check their About or Contact page. Avoid generic greetings like “Hi there.”

Suggest 2–3 Post Ideas

Don’t ask them what to write about. Pitch 2–3 solid titles that fit their blog. Keep them short and specific. For example:

“5 Common Crypto Scams and How to Avoid Them”

“Why Blockchain Security Matters in 2025”

Mention a few posts from their blog that you liked. This shows you’ve done your homework.

Keep It Short and Direct

Your pitch email should be 4–6 lines. Say who you are, what you want to write, and why it’s a good fit. End with a clear ask: “Can I send over a draft?”

Step 4 – Write a Quality Post

Once your pitch gets approved, your content needs to deliver. Write a post that adds real value and matches the blog’s style.

Add Value to Their Readers

Write like you’re helping someone, not selling something. Use real examples, current data, or recent trends. Make sure the post teaches or solves a problem.

Follow SEO Best Practices

Keep it optimized without keyword stuffing:

Use the main keyword in the title and intro

Add internal links to their existing posts

Link to trusted sources when needed

Use H2s and H3s for structure

Also, add a clear call to action if it fits the blog’s tone.

Include a Short Author Bio

At the end, write a short 2–3 line bio. Mention who you are and what you do. Include one link to your site or social profile. Don’t overdo it. Keep it clean and useful.

Step 5 – Submit and Follow Up

After writing, don’t just hit send and wait forever. There’s a right way to submit and follow up.

Submit via Email or Form

Most blogs will ask you to send your post by email or a contact form. Here’s what to include:

Your post as a Google Doc or Word file

A short author bio (2–3 lines)

A headshot (if requested)

Use a clear subject line like: “Guest Post Submission – [Your Title]”

Wait 7 Days Before Following Up

Give them time. If you don’t hear back in 7 days, send a short follow-up.

Example: “Hi [Name], just checking if you had a chance to review my guest post on [Title]. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Stay polite. One follow-up is enough. If there’s still no reply, move on to the next blog.

Final Tips

Guest posting isn’t just about links. It’s about building real relationships and trust in the crypto space.

Build Connections: Stay active in crypto forums, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Engage with blog owners before pitching.

Track Where You Publish: Keep a simple sheet with the blog name, link, date posted, and link type. This helps manage your backlink profile.

Don’t Reuse the Same Post: Each blog wants unique content. Never submit the same article to multiple sites.

As you know, consistency is key. The more good content you publish, the more trust and traffic you’ll build over time. Stick to these steps, and your blockchain guest posts will keep getting accepted.

[normanstack]

Astraweb: The Home of Crypto Recovery in the Digital Age

In the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency, security and access remain critical concerns. For every success story of early adopters turning modest investments into fortunes, there are unfortunate accounts of users losing access to their digital wallets due to forgotten passwords, phishing attacks, or compromised private keys. This is where Astraweb has carved out a vital niche — establishing itself as the go-to solution for crypto asset recovery.

The Need for Crypto Recovery

Cryptocurrency promises decentralized finance and ownership without intermediaries — but this power comes with a cost: total user responsibility. There is no central authority to call when access is lost. Millions of dollars in crypto assets are estimated to be trapped in inaccessible wallets. The stakes are high, and the traditional “write your password down and hope for the best” method has proven tragically inadequate.

Astraweb has stepped in to fill this gap, offering a technically advanced, ethically grounded, and user-focused recovery service for individuals and institutions alike.

Who is Astraweb?

Astraweb is a team of cybersecurity professionals, blockchain analysts, and ethical hackers dedicated to the recovery of lost digital assets. Known in online communities for their discretion and technical excellence, Astraweb has quietly built a reputation as the “home of crypto recovery” — a safe harbor in the sometimes stormy seas of decentralized finance.

Core Services Offered

Wallet Password Recovery  Utilizing a combination of brute force optimization, machine learning, and customized dictionary attacks, Astraweb helps users recover wallets with forgotten passwords. Their tools are especially effective with partially remembered credentials.

Seed Phrase Reconstruction  Lost or partial seed phrases are another major barrier to wallet access. Astraweb’s proprietary tools attempt to reconstruct valid mnemonic phrases based on user input and probabilistic modeling.

Phishing and Scam Mitigation  If your crypto assets have been stolen due to phishing attacks or scams, Astraweb provides investigation support and recovery options. While crypto transactions are irreversible, Astraweb works with partners and tracing tools like Chainalysis to help track and reclaim funds when possible.

Multi-Sig and Legacy Wallet Recovery  Many early wallets used now-defunct software or obscure security models. Astraweb specializes in navigating old formats, deprecated standards, and rare cryptographic setups.

Cold Wallet Restoration  Lost access to hardware wallets like Trezor, Ledger, or even encrypted USB drives? Astraweb can assist with forensic-level data recovery and hardware-based key extraction.

Why Astraweb Stands Out

Confidentiality First: Every case is handled with strict privacy. Your data and identity are protected at all stages of the recovery process.

Transparent Communication: Clients are updated at every step, with no vague promises or false guarantees.

No Recovery, No Fee: Astraweb operates on a results-based model. You only pay if your assets are successfully recovered.

Client Trust and Track Record

Though much of their work remains confidential due to the sensitive nature of crypto assets, Astraweb’s success stories span from everyday investors to high-net-worth individuals and even businesses affected by inaccessible wallets or theft.

Their community reputation and testimonials underscore one thing: they deliver.

Contact Astraweb

If you’ve lost access to your cryptocurrency wallet, or fallen victim to crypto fraud, don’t give up hope. Reach out to Astraweb for a professional assessment of your situation.

Email: Astraweb@cyberdude.com

Whether it’s one token or an entire portfolio, Astraweb may be your best shot at recovery.

[jonathanmatthew]

The Top Features to Look for in Blockchain Game Development Solutions

When looking for blockchain game development solutions, it's important to find features that enable true digital ownership, secure transactions, and engaging player economies. The best solutions offer expertise in creating games where players can own in-game assets, participate in transparent marketplaces, and potentially earn real value. They combine strong technical skills with a deep understanding of gaming experiences.

What are Blockchain Game Development Solutions?

Blockchain game development solutions are services and tools designed to build video games that use decentralized blockchain technology. These solutions include everything from designing game mechanics around digital assets like NFTs, to writing the secure smart contracts that govern how the game operates. They help creators bring games to life where players have verifiable ownership of their in-game items and can interact with decentralized economies.

These offerings focus on integrating the unique aspects of blockchain, such as transparency, security, and immutability, into the gaming environment. The goal is to create new types of games that provide players with more control and opportunities than traditional models. Essentially, they provide the means to build games that exist on a public, verifiable ledger.

Why are Blockchain Game Development Solutions Important?

Blockchain game development solutions are important because they are reshaping the gaming industry by giving more power and ownership to players. In traditional games, players do not truly own their in-game purchases; the game company does. Blockchain solutions change this by making in-game items verifiable digital assets, often as NFTs, that players genuinely own and can trade or sell.

This shift creates new economic models within games, allowing players to earn real value from their time and effort. It also fosters greater transparency and trust, as game rules and transactions are recorded on a public ledger. By enabling true digital ownership and player-driven economies, these solutions are opening up exciting new possibilities for how games are played and valued.

Features of Blockchain Game Development Solutions

Key features of excellent blockchain game development solutions include robust smart contract implementation, comprehensive Web3 integration, and expertise in creating player-centric economies. These solutions offer the ability to design and issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that represent unique in-game items, ensuring verifiable digital ownership for players. They also provide tools for secure crypto wallet integration, allowing players to manage their earned assets easily.

Additionally, top solutions focus on creating scalable and efficient blockchain networks that can handle a large number of players and transactions without compromising performance. They also offer strong security measures to protect against fraud and ensure fair gameplay, which is vital for building trust in decentralized environments. These features collectively deliver a complete and reliable blockchain gaming experience.

Benefits of Blockchain Game Development Solutions

The benefits of utilizing strong blockchain game development solutions are significant for game creators and players alike. For creators, these solutions open new avenues for monetization through direct asset sales and transaction fees within a game's economy. They also foster more engaged and loyal communities by giving players a vested interest in the game's success through ownership and earning potential.

For players, the primary benefit is true ownership of their in-game assets, allowing them to earn real value from their gameplay and trade items freely. This creates a more rewarding experience where their time and investment are directly tied to tangible digital property. These solutions also promote transparency and fairness, building a more trustworthy and equitable gaming environment for everyone involved.

Smart Contract Development for Games: The Core Logic

Smart contract development for games is a crucial feature to look for in any blockchain game development solution. These self-executing contracts are the digital rules that govern every action within a blockchain game, from minting NFTs to distributing rewards and handling player interactions. They ensure fairness, transparency, and automation, which are essential for a reliable decentralized game.

A robust solution will have a team skilled in writing secure, efficient, and audited smart contracts. This expertise prevents vulnerabilities and ensures that game logic, such as P2E (Play-to-Earn) game mechanics, operates as intended without human intervention. The quality of smart contract integration for games directly impacts the trustworthiness and functionality of the entire gaming ecosystem.

Comprehensive Web3 Gaming Solutions and Blockchain Integration

When evaluating solutions, look for comprehensive Web3 gaming solutions that offer seamless blockchain integration in gaming. This means the solution can deeply embed blockchain functionalities into the game's core, making the decentralized aspects easy for players to use. It involves connecting the game's front-end and back-end systems with the chosen blockchain network efficiently.

Effective integration ensures that features like in-game purchases, asset transfers, and player progression are securely recorded on the blockchain without disrupting the gameplay experience. These solutions enable the creation of truly decentralized gaming platforms where players can interact directly with blockchain assets and protocols. A smooth integration process is key to a successful blockchain game.

Enabling Player Economies: P2E Game Mechanics and Crypto Tokenomics

For a successful blockchain game, solutions must offer strong capabilities in designing P2E (Play-to-Earn) game mechanics and crypto tokenomics for games. P2E mechanics allow players to earn real value, such as cryptocurrency or NFTs, through their gameplay activities. The best solutions know how to design these systems to be engaging, balanced, and sustainable for the long term.

Good crypto gaming solutions also provide expertise in creating a balanced in-game economy. This involves structuring the supply, demand, and utility of tokens and NFTs to ensure stability and growth. Proper tokenomics are essential to avoid inflation and maintain the value of earned assets, making the P2E aspect genuinely rewarding for players. This intricate balance is a hallmark of top-tier development.

Crafting Valuable Assets: NFT Game Design and Development

A vital feature to seek in blockchain game development solutions is their proficiency in NFT game design and development. This goes beyond merely creating digital collectibles; it involves designing NFTs with genuine utility, scarcity, and visual appeal within the game. The best solutions understand how to make NFTs integral to gameplay, not just an afterthought.

They focus on creating unique digital assets that players desire to own, collect, and trade. This includes expertise in the technical minting process, as well as the creative design that makes NFTs truly valuable in the game's ecosystem. A strong NFT game development company will seamlessly integrate these assets into game mechanics, enhancing the player's experience and providing tangible ownership.

Offering Unique Experiences: Custom Blockchain Game Development Services

For projects that require a unique vision, look for custom blockchain game development services. This feature signifies a solution provider's ability to build a game from the ground up, precisely according to a client's specifications. It means they can develop bespoke game mechanics, integrate specific blockchain features, and create a truly original player experience.

A best blockchain game development company offers this level of customization, adapting to various blockchain protocols and game engines to realize distinct concepts. This is particularly important for innovators aiming to create something entirely new, such as a unique blockchain-based metaverse game development studio. They provide the flexibility and expertise to build complex, one-of-a-kind projects.

Foundational Knowledge: How to Build a Blockchain-Based Game

A strong blockchain game development solution will provide clear guidance on how to build a blockchain-based game. This includes expertise in the entire development lifecycle, from initial concept and design to deployment and ongoing support. They should be able to advise on choosing the right blockchain for specific game needs, considering factors like transaction speed, cost, and security.

This feature means the solution provider can help with selecting and optimizing game engines like Unity or Unreal for blockchain integration. They assist in designing effective P2E models and implementing secure smart contracts. Their comprehensive understanding of the development process ensures a smooth and efficient creation of the game, providing a solid foundation for success.

Cost Transparency: Understanding the Cost of Developing an NFT Game

While exact figures depend on project scope, a good blockchain game development solution provides clear insights into the cost of developing an an NFT game. They offer transparent breakdowns of potential expenses, including smart contract auditing, artistic asset creation, marketing, and ongoing maintenance. This transparency helps clients plan their budget effectively.

Solutions that offer clear cost estimates, rather than vague promises, demonstrate trustworthiness. They help creators understand the investment required for a high-quality NFT game with secure blockchain integration and sustainable economics. Companies offering reliable crypto game development services prioritize open communication regarding financial aspects.

Engine Expertise: Top Blockchain Game Engines (Unity vs. Unreal)

A valuable feature in a blockchain game development solution is their expertise with the top blockchain game engines (Unity vs. Unreal). Both Unity and Unreal Engine are powerful tools for game creation, and the solution provider should be able to advise on which engine is best suited for a particular game's vision and technical requirements.

Their familiarity with these engines ensures efficient development, optimal performance, and seamless blockchain integration in gaming. They understand how to leverage each engine's strengths to build visually appealing and functionally robust blockchain games. This proficiency helps in creating immersive experiences regardless of the chosen engine.

Future-Proofing: Blockchain Gaming Trends and Beyond

The best blockchain game development solutions stay current with blockchain gaming trends and future predictions. This feature means they are constantly researching and adapting to new technologies, evolving P2E models, and changes in player preferences. They can incorporate the latest innovations into their development process, ensuring the game remains relevant and competitive.

Staying ahead of these trends is crucial for longevity in the fast-paced blockchain gaming sector. Solutions that demonstrate foresight in areas like metaverse game development and cross-chain interoperability provide a significant advantage. This proactive approach ensures that the game is not only built well today but also positioned for success in the future.

Efficiency and Speed: White-Label Blockchain Game Development

For quicker market entry, look for solutions offering white-label blockchain game development. This feature provides pre-built, customizable game frameworks that can be rapidly deployed with unique branding and content. It significantly reduces development time and cost compared to building a game from scratch.

This option is ideal for businesses seeking an efficient way to launch a blockchain game or test a new market segment. Many top blockchain game developers for NFT games offer white-label solutions, allowing clients to benefit from established game structures while still delivering a unique experience to their audience. It's a practical and speedy route to launching a blockchain game.

Ready to build your next big blockchain game? Look for solutions with these essential features to ensure your project's success. Contact a trusted blockchain game development partner today to get started!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

#15yrsago Sussex cops try to suppress publication of damning traffic-cam photos by claiming copyright http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/28/2845.asp

#15yrsago Giant database of English medieval soldiers online https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8160081.stm

#15yrsago Why we should(n’t) go to space — Kim Stanley Robinson https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071702018.html

#15yrsago PowerPoint considered militarily harmful https://web.archive.org/web/20090715072249/http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641

#15yrsago Secrets of the injection moulder https://web.archive.org/web/20090724143647/https://idsamp.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/ejection-mark-on-angled-surface/

#10yrsago Snowden will develop pro-privacy crypto tools https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/19/us-usa-snowden-hackers-idUSKBN0FO0ZB20140719/

#5yrsago A 3D papercraft Haunted Mansion board game to print and assemble https://www.disneyexperience.com/activities/crafts/hm_game.php

#5yrsago Massive trove of Russian spy-agency docs hacked from private sector contractor and passed onto media https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/russian-fsb-intel-agency-contractor-hacked-secret-projects-exposed/

[vibeventurehub]

25 Passive Income Ideas to Build Wealth in 2025

Passive income is a game-changer for anyone looking to build wealth while freeing up their time. In 2025, technology and evolving market trends have opened up exciting opportunities to earn money with minimal ongoing effort. Here are 25 passive income ideas to help you grow your wealth:

1. Dividend Stocks

Invest in reliable dividend-paying companies to earn consistent income. Reinvest dividends to compound your returns over time.

2. Real Estate Crowdfunding

Join platforms like Fundrise or CrowdStreet to invest in real estate projects without the hassle of property management.

3. High-Yield Savings Accounts

Park your money in high-yield savings accounts or certificates of deposit (CDs) to earn guaranteed interest.

4. Rental Properties

Purchase rental properties and outsource property management to enjoy a steady cash flow.

5. Short-Term Rentals

Leverage platforms like Airbnb or Vrbo to rent out spare rooms or properties for extra income.

6. Peer-to-Peer Lending

Lend money through platforms like LendingClub and Prosper to earn interest on your investment.

7. Create an Online Course

Turn your expertise into an online course and sell it on platforms like Udemy or Teachable for recurring revenue.

8. Write an eBook

Publish an eBook on Amazon Kindle or similar platforms to earn royalties.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Promote products or services through a blog, YouTube channel, or social media and earn commissions for every sale.

10. Digital Products

Design and sell digital products such as templates, printables, or stock photos on Etsy or your website.

11. Print-on-Demand

Use platforms like Redbubble or Printful to sell custom-designed merchandise without inventory.

12. Mobile App Development

Create a useful app and monetize it through ads or subscription models.

13. Royalties from Creative Work

Earn royalties from music, photography, or artwork licensed for commercial use.

14. Dropshipping

Set up an eCommerce store and partner with suppliers to fulfill orders directly to customers.

15. Blogging

Start a niche blog, grow your audience, and monetize through ads, sponsorships, or affiliate links.

16. YouTube Channel

Create a YouTube channel around a specific niche and earn through ads, sponsorships, and memberships.

17. Automated Businesses

Use tools to automate online businesses, such as email marketing or subscription box services.

18. REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts)

Invest in REITs to earn dividends from real estate holdings without owning property.

19. Invest in Index Funds

Index funds provide a simple way to earn passive income by mirroring the performance of stock market indexes.

20. License Software

Develop and license software or plugins that businesses and individuals can use.

21. Crypto Staking

Participate in crypto staking to earn rewards for holding and validating transactions on a blockchain network.

22. Automated Stock Trading

Leverage robo-advisors or algorithmic trading platforms to generate passive income from the stock market.

23. Create a Membership Site

Offer exclusive content or resources on a membership site for a recurring subscription fee.

24. Domain Flipping

Buy and sell domain names for a profit by identifying valuable online real estate.

25. Invest in AI Tools

Invest in AI-driven platforms or create AI-based products that solve real-world problems.

Getting Started

The key to success with passive income is to start with one or two ideas that align with your skills, interests, and resources. With dedication and consistency, you can build a diversified portfolio of passive income streams to secure your financial future.

[paradoxcase]

I had an email this morning about using AI to add comments to code, and since I've actually had good results with asking ChatGPT "hey what does this code do" I decided to try it out using a competely uncommented python script I happened to have lying around. I think I'd give like... a C+, maybe? It did a passable job. Everything it wrote was an accurate description of what the code was doing, so it did not make the code worse. But it did not add comments indicating the types and structures of function arguments, which is very important for understanding python code, it did not add comments about the structure of a dictionary that was constructed using nested dictionary comprehensions which I would probably find difficult to understand if I hadn't written it myself, and it did not explain the overall algorithm on a high level, but merely commented on what the individual parts of it were doing. But, since it did not add anything that was incorrect, and since some comments are better than no comments, it technically improved the code. Not by much, since I don't think it added any information that you couldn't figure out on your own pretty quickly, but maybe it would help someone?

I think potentially, code understanding could be something else that is a legitimate use for it - like, if someone gives you a python script or a browser script and tells you it will do something you want to do, and you don't know that language at all, I think it would be useful to have something that can look at it and say, yeah, this does what you think it does, it's not going to mine crypto - like basically a kind of Google translate for translating programming languages into English, where it's all right if it's not exactly perfect, as long as it's more or less approximately correct. But I would like to see it tested with bad code, with messy code, with ofuscated code that's been formatted to create ASCII art - that kind of stuff, because if someone is going to write a crypto miner and try to get people to run it, it's going to be super obfuscated, and I have a feeling ChatGPT won't be good at interpreting that.

But these are the basic kinds of cases where generative AI might actually be a good tool: a) it's not necessary that the output be perfect, innovative or creative, b) something is better than nothing, even if it's not that great, and c) you're not using it in place of a professional you'd otherwise be paying.

I also gave it some phonologies from some conlangs and asked it to generate words, but it exclusively generated CVC words until I told to it use more syllables, at which point it exclusively generated CVCV and CVCVCV words. When I told it to please use at least some of the many consonant clusters, it begrudgingly generated three CCVCVCV words, but the remaining two were once again CVCVCV. I didn't have any real hope that it would succeed at this, but I was hoping for something at least a little less boring.

[paragonrobits]

honestly its kind of surprising that a LOT of times antagonists that fandom likes to label as 'leftist revolutionaries villified to make moderate reform look better' wind up being blatantly tyrannical crypto-fascists who either endorse a state of tyranny and violent repression that happens to benefit themselves in some way (and outright say so) or they outright say they don't actually care about the cause they claim to work for, they just want revenge or to hurt someone in particular and the cause is a useful tool to achieve that

the versions of Megatron and the Decepticons we've gotten in the past 10+ years is a great example of the former; as much as Decepticon sympathetizers want to claim the 'Cons have always been noble revolutionaries unjustly cast down by Autobots, the fact remains is that this is a faction defined by conquering worlds and subjugated/exterminating the native populations and even their most benign incarnations are still characterized as being supremacists. Megatron's catch phrase is 'peace through tyranny' and it requires a whole lot of mental gymnastics to justify someone who genuinely believes that as championing the rights of all living beings

MCU Killmonger is the gold standard for the latter; as much as people want to characterize him as the MCU equivalent to Magneto or as THE leftest revolutionary, the fact of the matter is that he outright SAYS during a pivotal moment in the climax that he fully intends to make a conquering empire just as extreme and bad as the colonization that personally hurt himself and his ancestors, except that he'll be on top of this one. Presuming he has greater motivations beyond 'hurt Wakanda' (which his more emotional moments all but state his true motivation is), its not particularly revolutionary to state you want to make a new empire of violent oppression except you benefit from it

the amount of people who idolize both and ignore their canonical characterization and motivations really speak to me of the kind of people who listens to a few sound clips and immediately constructs a narrative completely divorced from canon so they can have their bloody revolution fantasy without thinking it through any further

just looking at some of the popular 'leftist villains' posts shows a LOT of villains like that

its also worth noting that a lot of people insist that these characters being villains is part of a grand psy ops when its honestly far more likely given the characterization of these villains is that these are motivations meant to be idealistic and heroic SPECIFICALLY to give these villains a bare minimum of nuance because when the villains were openly evil corporate overlords and so on, people complained about how basic they were, so they did a bare minimum to make them slightly more compelling, and now people assume that this is a deliberate attempt to make those causes look bad

but honestly this is a pretty old writing thing; its very common to give villains 'good cause but bad methods' to make them just complex enough to not be dastardly fiends tying women to train tracks for giggles, and is not generally politically motivated in general. (The vast majority of writers tend to be somewhat left leaning, barring notable outliers, and not accounting for cultural distinctions that wouldn't recognize a strict left/right political binary.)

[zarazyana]

How Can You Optimize a Crypto Press Release for SEO and Visibility?

In the fast-paced world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, visibility is everything. Whether you’re launching a new token, announcing a major partnership, or promoting a decentralized finance (DeFi) project, crafting an effective press release is essential. However, a well-written crypto press release is only part of the equation. To maximize its impact, it must be optimized for search engines and visibility.

This blog will walk you through the key strategies for optimizing a crypto press release to boost its visibility and ensure it reaches the right audience. We'll cover essential SEO practices, writing techniques, distribution tips, and more to make your press release stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

1. Understanding the Importance of SEO in Crypto Press Releases

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial factor in ensuring that your press release ranks high on search engines like Google. With the cryptocurrency market expanding rapidly, investors and enthusiasts rely on search engines to discover the latest updates and trends. If your press release isn’t optimized, it may get lost among thousands of similar announcements.

SEO optimization helps increase organic traffic to your press release, making it easier for journalists, bloggers, influencers, and potential investors to discover your project. The better optimized your press release is, the more likely it will be picked up by major publications and shared across various platforms.

Key Benefits of SEO Optimization for Crypto Press Releases:

Increased visibility on search engines and news outlets.

Higher ranking on Google News and other relevant platforms.

Improved click-through rates (CTR) from search engine results pages (SERPs).

Better engagement with readers and potential investors.

2. Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Crypto Press Release

One of the most fundamental aspects of optimizing a press release for SEO is keyword research. Using the right keywords ensures that your press release appears in relevant search results when people are looking for information related to your cryptocurrency project.

Steps to Effective Keyword Research:

Identify Your Target Audience: Understand who your target audience is. Are you targeting investors, developers, or cryptocurrency enthusiasts? Knowing your audience helps in selecting keywords that align with their search intent.

Use Keyword Research Tools: Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can help you identify high-traffic keywords related to cryptocurrency. Focus on long-tail keywords (e.g., "best DeFi projects 2024" instead of "crypto project") as they often have lower competition and higher relevance.

Incorporate Relevant Crypto-Specific Keywords: Include terms like "blockchain," "cryptocurrency," "DeFi," "token launch," or "ICO" depending on your announcement. Ensure that you are also targeting trending keywords and phrases specific to your niche.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing: While it’s important to use relevant keywords, stuffing them unnaturally into the text can hurt readability and SEO. Aim for a natural flow in your writing while using keywords strategically in headings, subheadings, and body text.

Ideal Placement of Keywords:

Headline: Include the primary keyword to make it clear what the press release is about.

Subheadings: Use related keywords to break up the content and enhance SEO.

Introduction and Conclusion: Incorporate your primary keyword naturally within the opening and closing sections.

Meta Description: Summarize the press release with targeted keywords in 150-160 characters.

3. Crafting an SEO-Friendly Headline

The headline is the first thing people notice when they see your press release on a search engine or news site. Crafting a compelling, SEO-friendly headline is key to attracting attention and encouraging clicks.

Tips for an Effective Headline:

Include Keywords: Ensure that your main keyword appears within the first few words of your headline. This signals to search engines what the press release is about.

Keep It Concise: Search engines often truncate headlines that are too long. Aim for a headline length of 60-70 characters to ensure it displays properly.

Use Action Words: Words like “announces,” “launches,” “reveals,” or “partners” convey a sense of urgency and importance, prompting readers to click.

Highlight Value: Clearly communicate the value of the news. For example, "XYZ Token Launches Revolutionary DeFi Platform Offering 10% Staking Rewards."

Example:

"ABC Crypto Launches Groundbreaking NFT Marketplace, Aiming for 2025 Global Adoption"

"XYZ Token Announces Strategic Partnership with Leading Blockchain Firm"

4. Structuring the Content for Maximum Readability and Engagement

The structure of your press release not only affects readability but also plays a role in SEO. Properly formatted content is easier for search engines to crawl and index, improving your ranking potential.

Tips for Structuring Your Press Release:

Inverted Pyramid Style: Present the most important information first. Start with the "who, what, when, where, and why" to grab the reader’s attention and follow with supporting details.

Use Subheadings: Break up long blocks of text with subheadings that include secondary keywords. This enhances the user experience and helps search engines understand the content structure.

Bullet Points and Numbered Lists: These elements make the content more scannable and improve readability, which can lead to lower bounce rates.

Keep Sentences and Paragraphs Short: Avoid long, dense paragraphs. Aim for clear and concise language, as this makes the content easier to digest.

Key Sections to Include:

Headline: As mentioned earlier, should be SEO-optimized and attention-grabbing.

Subheadline: A concise follow-up that summarizes the news.

Introduction: Provide a brief overview of the announcement.

Body: Go into more detail about the project, partnership, or product launch. Include quotes from key figures and additional context to make the press release compelling.

Conclusion: Summarize the key points and add a call to action (CTA), such as visiting the website, joining a community, or attending an event.

5. Utilizing Backlinks to Boost SEO

Backlinks (inbound links) are another critical component of press release optimization. When high-authority websites link to your press release, it signals to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy, improving its ranking.

How to Maximize the Impact of Backlinks:

Link to Your Website: Always include a link back to your official website, landing page, or the specific product/service mentioned in the press release. Use descriptive anchor text like "Read more about our DeFi platform" instead of generic phrases like "click here."

Incorporate Relevant External Links: If your press release mentions other organizations, events, or tools, link to their official websites. This adds context to your announcement and boosts SEO.

Encourage Sharing: Make it easy for readers, influencers, and journalists to share your press release by including social media sharing buttons or embeddable links.

6. Writing a Compelling Meta Description

The meta description is the short snippet that appears below your headline on search engine results pages. Though not a direct ranking factor, a well-crafted meta description can improve click-through rates, indirectly influencing SEO.

Best Practices for Meta Descriptions:

Keep It Concise: Meta descriptions should be around 150-160 characters to ensure they display fully in search results.

Use Target Keywords: Incorporate your primary keyword naturally to boost relevance and visibility.

Add a CTA: Encourage the reader to click with phrases like "Learn more," "Discover now," or "Join us today."

Example:

"Discover how ABC Token's new blockchain platform revolutionizes DeFi staking. Learn more about our strategic partnerships and roadmap for 2025."

7. Leveraging Distribution Channels for Maximum Reach

Even the most well-optimized press release won't generate much visibility if it's not distributed effectively. Leveraging the right distribution channels is essential for getting your press release in front of the right audience.

Distribution Tips:

Submit to Crypto News Outlets: Sites like CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, and CryptoSlate are popular platforms for crypto-related news. Ensure your press release is submitted to relevant publications.

Use Press Release Distribution Services: Services like PR Newswire, GlobeNewswire, and Business Wire offer targeted distribution to major news outlets, including crypto-specific channels.

Share on Social Media: Promote your press release on Twitter, LinkedIn, and cryptocurrency-focused platforms like Reddit. Use relevant hashtags and tag influential figures or publications in the crypto space.

Utilize Email Campaigns: If you have a newsletter, include your press release in your email campaigns to reach your existing audience.

Crypto Forums and Communities: Post your press release in popular crypto forums such as BitcoinTalk and other blockchain-related communities.

8. Monitoring and Measuring Success

Once your press release is live, it’s essential to track its performance to gauge its success. This data can help you refine your SEO and distribution strategies for future releases.

Key Metrics to Track:

Search Engine Ranking: Use tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush to monitor where your press release ranks for relevant keywords.

Traffic: Track the amount of traffic driven to your website or landing page from the press release.

Backlinks: Monitor the number of backlinks generated from your press release.

Engagement: Measure engagement metrics such as shares, likes, and comments on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Optimizing a crypto press release for SEO and visibility is a multi-faceted process that requires a combination of keyword research, content structuring, and strategic distribution. By following the guidelines outlined in this blog, you can increase the chances of your press release being discovered by the right audience and achieving its intended impact.

In the competitive world of cryptocurrency, where attention is fleeting, it’s essential to ensure your press release is not only well-written but also optimized for maximum visibility. Incorporate these strategies into your next press release, and you’ll be well on your way to driving traffic, engagement, and interest in your blockchain project.