From kanfa by Mac Budkowski

When I was younger, I often found myself deeply frustrated.

I’ve been pissed off with the financial system since 2008. I was puzzled and disgusted with the greed and corporate socialism the crisis exposed. Watching Margin Call and Big Short only intensified my feelings.

When I was younger, I often found myself deeply frustrated.

I’ve been pissed off with the financial system since 2008. I was puzzled and disgusted with the greed and corporate socialism the crisis exposed. Watching Margin Call and Big Short only intensified my feelings.

A few years later, in 2013, after I started noticing how Facebook was eating away other parts of my life, I grew skeptical about Big Tech, too. This led me to start research for my Master’s thesis on how Facebook-driven overstimulation impacts people’s ability to think. 

It was a pretty contrarian view back then. Not many papers about this subject existed, with the most famous one focusing on relationships between Facebook usage and narcissism. It was two years before Tristan Harris left Google and started educating the world about the perils of ad-based business models.

Areas of Facebook research AD 2012, from this review of 412 papers.

The years have gone by, and I heard about Bitcoin and Ethereum from multiple sources but largely ignored them.

It never actually clicked until 2021. I vividly remember sitting before my old MacBook, eyes widening and heart racing, as I grasped how blockchain technology could reform both the financial sector and attention-seeking social platforms that had once fueled my frustration.

So I did what many other neophytes did before me - I wanted to show the world that crypto has actual use cases.

I set up my Substack, started writing my first post, and… realized no one's gonna care.

Tough life of a creator

I thought I was ready to write about crypto as it wasn’t my first experience with blogging. I launched my first blog in 2012 when I traveled around India. Back then, I got some initial readers—friends who wanted to follow my adventure.

But since I was in a new domain where no one knew me, I had zero initial subscribers. Even if I shared links on Twitter, my low follower count meant minimal engagement. Plus, Twitter penalized sharing links.

The challenging thing about blogging is that—contrary to Twitter or YouTube—there’s no algorithm that will resurface the best posts, so people can just serendipitously come across your stuff.

So I did what most beginning writers do - became active on Twitter. 

I started as a replyguy, sharing my thoughts with big accounts through comments. Most of my replies were ignored, but soon they started getting some attention.

After a few months, I started receiving likes and replies from people like Chris Dixon, or 3LAU and started DMing with some of them. With some of them I even met IRL.

It was empowering and convinced me that I should convert my blogposts' drafts into threads. Some of them received some attention, like the one about blockchains or the one about music NFTs

Soon, I realized the tough truth. Twitter worked, but I didn’t want to convert my blog posts to threads. I just wanted to write, not waste time on repurposing my content.

Unfortunately, the only other option I saw back then was promoting my blog post on different Discord channels, where I had to compete for attention in /self-promo channels with Cumrocket-paid pump-and-dump groups.

So I stuck to Twitter, though I didn’t like it too much. 

A hater who helped me discover Farcaster

A few months later, in July 2022, thanks to a famous crypto hater, Liron, I learned about Farcaster.

After I dunked on Liron, I saw that Dan Romero, the founder of Farcaster, started following me. So a few days later, I reached out to him to set up my account.

This seemed much better.

My posts about crypto didn’t have to compete for attention with COVID, war, and the SuperBowl. And the best part—there were no threads and link penalties. I could share my posts as they are and get a high-quality discussion in the comments. Back then, there were a few hundred active users, so every post reached most of the people on the platform.

Farcaster was also where I met Colin, whose Paragraph convinced me to move my 50 subscribers away from Substack.

Since then, I have met many friends on Farcaster. The network has grown by a lot since I joined, and the vibes have changed, but I still use it daily.

And in April 2023, I met Tim, whom I joined to work on Kiwi—crypto HackerNews. 

Kiwi as a crypto writer's Holy Grail

The idea of crypto HackerNews has been in my head for quite a long time. It felt like a perfect place for high-signal content, which would solve my initial problems as a crypto writer.

I even remember asking Jayme if they wanted to build it as part of Launchcaster a few weeks before Tim launched Kiwi’s MVP. So when I learned that Tim was working on Kiwi, I offered my help almost right away.

Why I thought it made so much sense?

The problem with social media is that they're not optimized for writers.

Your posts’ reach is impacted by your number of followers. There are some midwit takes doing rounds on Twitter because they were posted by 100k+ followers accounts, whereas interesting, nuanced takes get lost in the shadows because their author had only 100 followers.

As a writer, I also wanted to see people debating my ideas. I wanted long, thoughtful comments that would help me rethink my assumptions and explore the idea further. Twitter, with its high school vibes, dunks, and soundbite-centric culture, isn't the best place for that.

But HackerNews (and Kiwi) is different:

Working on Kiwi made sense. As of today, Kiwi has about 300+ curators and 2,000+ monthly readers, so posting there could give writer a decent stream of sophisticated readers. 

The feed is so meritocratic that I - as a Co-Founder of Kiwi - can sometimes post a link and get 0 upvotes, whereas first-time posters like Haardik can receive 15 upvotes and get featured on the main page and our newsletter. 

And the comments can sometimes be really long and nuanced.

Ironically, I am not getting too much benefit as a writer since I’m busy working on Kiwi and don’t have time to write as often as I’d like to. But it’s a great chance for others. 

There are many ways in which Kiwi tries to help writers, including letting writers get tipped. But one of the things we launched recently is Feedbot.

Feedbot

The idea of Feedbot is simple:

We run a curated list of top crypto blogs, so whenever they post, their link will automatically land on Kiwi. If the link gets enough upvotes, it will reach the main page and become seen by our users. So good crypto writers get automatic distribution on Kiwi.

As a crypto writer who has experienced some struggles, I believe it can be really helpful for both big and indie creators. So now, we are looking for more quality crypto writers whom we could include in this curated list.

If you know any writers who post good stuff and might need some help, I’d really appreciate it if you tagged them in this Twitter thread. In the thread, I explain how Feedbot works and share some guidelines that we'll follow when determining whether to add the writer to the list.

Hopefully, it'd make the next crypto writers generation's life easier.

PS: All likes and retweets are also much appreciated!