Yes, intentionally provocative title, but to be clear: this is not an anti-Bitcoin post. This is coming from the perspective of a longtime Bitcoin-only believer who has gone through my fair share of shitcoinery during my early, experimental years before learning to fully appreciate Bitcoin. And I'm here to say it's nice having fun playing with this tech again.

I just spent the last couple days playing around with prediction markets and perpetual futures on Metamask and Polymarket. Yes, that's right, Metamask: that buggy Chrome browser extension that I used to buy and sell my first Crypokitties with back in 2017 (full disclosure: I still have two). Not only is the Metamask mobile app a complete departure from the extension's early days, but the UX is stellar. Seamless swapping between Bitcoin and just about any other token in the world. Tight integration with Polymarket and Hyperliquid to trade prediction markets and futures. It basically feels like what Robinhood should be, untethered to tradfi and running purely on crypto rails.

Now the purists out there might immediately scoff at all this, which is fine. This is not for you. I'm not much of a gambler or speculator myself but what I've seen these past few days is an entirely new level of innovation and creativity in building the financial markets of the future. I am not talking about hard money here. I'm talking about trading financial assets, which has practical value in the world outside of just speculation. My point here isn't about buying some hot, new token or trying to convince you there's a new layer 1 that will change everything. I only want to share the idea that if you've skipped out on playing with some of the latest new toys in crypto (and let's be real here, sometimes these kinds of things are just fun to play with) you're probably missing out on some interesting experiences. Because these kinds of innovations are not happening on Bitcoin today.