Units of Measurement at International Airports

“Can I pay in pounds?”

“I’m sorry?”

Mind you, this is in the Miami International Airport (MIA) in Miami, Florida.

“I’m just wondering if I can pay in pounds because I have some mass that I can give away,” I say to the hard-working clerk at a Pizza Hut as I point to my freshly raised and flexed bicep.

“That’s a good one,” a man ahead of me says.

I get some chuckles all around.

I tell the man ahead of me that it came to me in real time.

He happens to live in London, where my flight is headed but is on his way to Los Angeles.

He also happens to work in the Web 3.0 space.

I tell him I’m heading to a conference in Europe that’s led by a layer one blockchain protocol.

He’s impressed and we go on to have a genuine conversation about common myopia and the religious attitude of many that invest their time and/or money into the Web 3.0 world.

We follow each other on social media.

His Twitter profile is verified.

He tells me about the venture he is working on and how he’s closing up a $5M seed round.

I’m addition to his comprehensive interests in blockchain, the art world and his easy going personality, this is quite impressive.

These days, I hear a lot of skepticism around blockchain technology and the developing market, (I wonder why) so his success led me to feel the need to do some research.

According to a report written by Messari, $30.3B was raised by crypto projects and startups in H1 of 2022 alone.

This number surpasses all of the fundraising done in the previous year.

Meanwhile, the total market capitalization of crypto was down just about 50% in that same time frame year over year.

Even in a definitive bear market, investors are pouring money into Web 3.0 infrastructure at an unprecedented rate.

Is this a sign of myopia that this traveler and I discussed? Or could it be a leading indicator of higher valuations in the coming years?

Time will tell.

Regardless, I’ve met yet another zealot.

After running into countless irritated travelers with heightened levels of stress, and happy families on their way to a dream of a vacation, I would say a sense of humor weighs more in an international airport.

Happy Monday! — The Goofy Zealot