As we just flew past our two-year mark for publishing the Cryptonite Weekly Rap this Summer, we feel nothing but a deep appreciation for our readers and anticipation for the future of the business of innovation. Since SubStack is a relatively non-Web3 platform, we can track our readers and see how many times they open and click each edition. We have avid readers in virtually every top VC fund in the world, over 80 percent of the Cryptonite 300 CEOs are on board, and something like 8 of Apple CEO Tim Cook's direct reports regularly open almost every issue. We believe part of the reason is our extra editorial effort to preserve the spirit and wisdom of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.
By chance, I saw Steve Jobs demo a simulation game called Lunar Lander on an Apple I at the iconic Kepler's bookstore in Silicon Valley (Menlo Park) when I was a kid. Who would have known then that I would grow up and successfully predict Steve's comeback in a cover interview in Red Herring (a magazine founded in 1993), precisely one year before Apple bought his company NeXT, and also be cited three times in his controversial biography by Walter Isaacson, called Steve Jobs.
The post below includes my 1996 two-part interview with Steve, the first part of which focuses on NeXT's role in the emerging Web space, driven by his passion for preventing Microsoft from dominating it. At the time, there were only 20 million people connected to the Internet 😳, 66 percent of whom were in the US. The second interview focuses on Steve’s 'side-company' Pixar, which had premiered the world's first fully computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, to much acclaim just a few months earlier and went public at a whopping $6 billion valuation. Hope you enjoy Steve’s thoughts as much as we did.
People think that my most dramatic prediction as a writer was forecasting that Internet stocks would implode in 2000 in my book The Internet Bubble (HarperCollins 1999, co-written with my bro Michael Perkins). Still, for me, it will always be The Herring 'He's Back!' cover story with Steve Jobs. Ultimately, we bounced back from the Internet stock crash, but Steve would go on to put the Internet in our pockets with the iPhone, dethrone the Mighty Bill Gates, and revitalize the stagnant PC market, which hadn't seen any real breakout innovation since Steve introduced the Mac ten years earlier.
'Microsoft is busy trying to kill Netscape [maker of the first commercial Internet browser and cofounded by VC kingpin Marc Andreessen in his early 20s]. My goal over the next few years is to stay far ahead of Microsoft until the Web is so ubiquitous that even Microsoft can't own it.'
—Steve Jobs, then CEO of NeXT, in his January 1996 RedHerring interview.
Just after Steve Jobs showed off his shiny new Macintosh OS X operating system at MacWorld 2000, Tony Perkins predicted in a Wall Street Journal editorial on March 13, 2000, that Apple would significantly catch up with PC King, Bill Gates, and Microsoft.
The WSJ sketch for the Gates vs. Jobs editorial.
On the date Tony's editorial was published, Microsoft's market cap ($362.5 billion) was 20x Apple's market cap ($18.6 billion). By May of 2010, Apple overtook Microsoft in market cap, and by Q1 2011, it surpassed Microsoft in quarterly profits and revenues for the first time in 20 years. 'I was surprised the Journal published that editorial, it was so over the top at the time,' Tony later mused.
At my second media brand, AlwaysOn, we also had some great early predictions. We gave both YouTube (2005) and Twitter (2007) the 'Company of the Year' awards before either company was even one year old. Facebook made our AlwaysOn 250top private company list (the successor list to the Red Herring 100, and precursor to the Cryptonite 300) before it celebrated its 2nd anniversary. We made those bets because we believed that 'citizen journalism' would radically diminish and eventually take down corporate media.🤷🏻♀️
YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley at the AlwaysOn Summit @ Stanford, trying to come up with the answer to the question of how his 7-month-old company was going to make money.
Shout out to Chad Hurley and his YouTube cofounders John Chen and Jawed Karim, and Twitter cofounders Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams for igniting the ‘open source media’ revolution! The corporate media puppet masters are going down one at a time, and it feels beautiful.
As you can see in the post above, out of the 1,483 unique companies that made the AlwaysOn 250 list between 2003 and 2015, 572 companies were successfully acquired, and 193 went public, representing a 52 percent exit rate at our last count. At Crytonite, our efforts to forecast disruption is more deliberate as we have started the practice of posting annual predictions. So far, we are batting way north of 800.
Most recently, our economic forecast proved markedly superior to that of the Wall Street honchos and Ivy League economists in predicting the impact of the Boogeyman's ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs announcement on April 2nd. We could see from the very beginning that Trump's 'shock and awe' tariff negotiating strategy was always to lower our tariffs, and there was very little risk that it would result in the 'trade war' all the fat cats, academic elites, and business media editors were yapping about. Why? Because the Boogeyman is negotiating from a position of strength, and as the table below illustrates, we were right on.
The tariff numbers, as of August 7th, overwhelmingly support our original forecast in early April.
All previous tariffs levied on the US have dramatically decreased, except for China and India. China remains an unknown, but we bet that we will find a more reciprocal deal with India, given the country's importance to the US as an ally and trading partner. Our negotiations with the Jewel of the East are set to resume later this month, so we are praying for success. The US has some trade issues to iron out with Canada and Mexico. Still, neither government nor the US is imposing broad-based tariffs on each other's imports due to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and that is why those countries are not listed on the table above. Trump's primary demand with Canada is that they strengthen their US border security to stem the flow of fentanyl into our country.
The only negotiation we can find that has reached anything close to a 'trade war' is with Brazil. The US-Brazil trade relationship deteriorated significantly in 2025, marked by unilateral US tariff hikes rather than active negotiations. As of August 8, 2025, there are no ongoing formal trade negotiations between the two countries.
NASDAQ has risen 21.3% since April 1, 2025—the day before President Trump's 'Liberation Day' when he announced his tariff plan.
Thankfully, the trading public quickly figured out what we knew. After suffering a market meltdown for a couple of weeks in April driven by the 'trade war' and 'hyper-inflation' hysteria pouring out of the mouths of the elites, stocks have rebounded dramatically. Trump has rebalanced most of our trade deals, and the market has responded with a 20+ percent jump to date. Only a few elites, like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, saw through the frenzy as we did.
We can't resist sharing our top 12 list of elites who forecasted the economic Apocalypse that never happened: Jamie Dimon (CEO, JPMorgan Chase), Janet Yellen (Former Treasury Secretary, Former Federal Reserve Chair), Bill Ackman (CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management), Jerome Powell (Federal Reserve Chair), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Director General, World Trade Organization), Ken Langone (CoFounder, Home Depot; Billionaire Investor), Mohamed El-Erian (Columnist, Bloomberg Opinion), Mark Zandi (Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics), Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, Columbia University Professor), Preston Caldwell (Chief U.S. Economist, Morningstar), Martin Wolf (Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times), Gregory Daco (Chief Economist, EY Parthenon), Zanny Minton Beddoes (Editor-in-Chief, The Economist), Larry Summers (Former US Treasury Secretary, Harvard University Professor). Busted 😎🤙🏼
We do want to acknowledge that whenever trade agreements are changed, there will always be people, industries, and countries negatively impacted. All government-driven agreements, including Trump's, are subject to political wheeling and dealing with powerful interest groups. So we have compassion for all those in the US and abroad affected by the political logrolling.
However, we do believe that WWII is now in the distant past, the Marshall Plan is exhausted, and we now live in a multipolar world order. The US can no longer play Sugar Daddy to foreign governments. Over the long run, uneven trade arrangements are detrimental to the self-esteem of every participating nation and, as they stood before 'Liberation Day,' were not fair to US businesses and taxpayers.
The bottom line is, contrary to the naysayers' claims, we have faith that the US is gaining significant economic momentum, driven by innovation and reduced government intervention. We stand by our forecast from the beginning of the year, which predicted 2026 would be a great year with a healthy tech IPO market, significant M&A activity, particularly in the AI space, and a booming economy. As we've discussed in previous Raps, the biggest challenge for many will be the shuffling of the labor force driven by new AI and robotics innovation.
Our editorial philosophy is to follow the math (as we have demonstrated above); we have no use for the forecasts of the self-interested money changers on Wall Street. We also ignore the Ivory Tower economists, who never step off campus and only look in the rear mirror, and show no ability to anticipate how emerging innovations such as GenAI will impact future economic growth and job creation. The people who can see the future come from the streets of the global Silicon Valley (i.e., our readers).
With the emergence of blockchain-based dApps and AI, we predict that in five years, the role of the elites, such as the top 12 that didn't get the Boogeyman's tariff game, will be radically diminished and insignificant. Economic power is shifting rapidly towards the people, and peer-to-peer, encrypted, and automated transactions will eliminate the need for government bureaucrats and most intermediaries, ultimately benefiting the whole world.
Cryptonite's development team resides in India, and our editorial and marketing teams live in Eastern Europe, Colombia, and here at home—All in their 20s. They are all looking to move up in the world by expressing their pizzazz and creativity.
Time to ask for the order
All this bragging is just a build-up to make the pitch that if you are not living in a dorm room fueled by student loans, or eating ramen every day to bootstrap your new startup, we humbly ask you to pay for your Cryptonite Weekly Rap subscription. If you have been reading The Rap for any length of time and haven't picked up one good entrepreneurial idea, spotted one new disruptive innovation trend, learned about one great new company, or chuckled once about how we give the Boogeyman, Cowardly Lion (Elon), and the other TechBros so much grief, you aren't paying close enough attention. Our work comes straight outta Silicon Valley, and we express it with charm and wit.
The Cowardly Lion. Art by Grok.
To give you the math, we have over half a million subscribers, with upwards of 40 percent open rates each week, but only 105 people who pay 😳 because we've never asked for the order. Today we are asking for order!
We have never wanted to riddle our pages with pay-walls and other tricks that block the tens of thousands of college kids and aspiring entrepreneurs from the USA, India (our second largest reader base), the EU countries (especially France and the UK), Africa, South America, and literally every country in the world from accessing our content. Keeping our content free is simply good for the whole world. Innovation-driven entrepreneurs ultimately create half the world's jobs and wealth, and we need to make sure we reach the Steves (circa 1976) and the Zucks (circa 2004), who are working out of garages and cheap working spaces, trying to make shit happen.
We recognize that most rich people get rich by being cheap, and even heavily VC-backed entrepreneurs love, love, love free stuff, so we have temporarily lowered our monthly rate to $6. Yes, $6—the price of buying one of our team members a medium cup of designer coffee. The kids powering Cryptonite deserve it. Just look at the trade chart above. That took a long time to compile, and you won't find that much data in one place pretty much anywhere in the corporate business media, mainly because it proves them wrong. We also tackle very complex issues, and share all of our AI-generated research results with links. Huff Puff 😅
New and current annual paid subscribers receive 300 Cryptonite PRO coins and a Cryptonite Original NFT badge. See below for details. Act now and get 33% off regular rates!
Plus, as you will see in the next section, we need the money to finish our next Big Thing, which is only going to accelerate your access to actionable and predictive content and take your networking power to the next level. We love what we do, and we love serving you, so let's make innovation history together by keeping the entrepreneurial lovefest alive in all corners of the planet!
Thank you very much for your attention to this request🙏!
Introducing the Cryptonite mobile web app V.05
First-generation social networks are aimless and entropic — they have devolved into chaos and have lost most of their original value. The successful networks of the future will have a collective purpose, allow members to own the content they create, and integrate cryptocurrency-based incentives that foster wealth creation. They will also offer encrypted features to optimize peer-to-peer collaboration and community action, and be bound by smart contracts that guarantee the rule of law with no central authority.
Cryptonite is proud to position our brand as the first fully Web3 social media network with a distinct purpose to power the new generation of entrepreneurs.
Steve Jobs once observed that every great entrepreneur stands on the shoulders of the giants that came before them. Cryptonite’s value comes from the industry insiders and experts who step up and teach our ambitious and entrepreneurially minded members seeking to learn. This structure gives Cryptonite a purpose — it is our raison d’être.
To achieve our noble cause, we offer our members the Cryptonite Weekly Rap e-letter (Substack-based with 520,000 members), the Cryptonite Live! YouTube channel, our annual Silicon Valley Summit in San Francisco each Fall, and the Cryptonite mobile/web app Version.05 (V.05), including the Daily Rap to be launched on October 15th. Here is a preview of what our readers will soon enjoy.
The Daily Rap—Coming to your App Store Soon!
V.05 of the Cryptonite network app will introduce The Daily Rap, where members can read up to 24 new posts a day. This version introduces the Cryptoniyte PRO coin, built on the Solana blockchain, and features your CPRO crypto wallet using the Privvy wallet back-end. It also enables you to build modern, interactive profiles and view those of other members.
V.05 will allow our members to reward each other CPROs, and rate ('Brilliant' or 'Lost the Plot') Daily Rap authors and members who comment on posts. You will also be able to mutually 'Vouch for' members, thereby validating others you connect with. If you are annoyed by a member's behavior and comments, you can 'Sack' them to avoid seeing them again. That is your job, not ours
Cryptonite Weekly Rap paid members also receive a 'Cryptonite Original' NFT badge to adorn their profiles as shown.
Cryptonite ID & profile (#deleteLinkedIn)
All registered members have a Cryptonite ID & Profile. If you click a member's Grok or Perplexity AI profile button, you will see a real-time generated Curriculum Vitae for that member. If you click the LunarCrush profile button, you will see the member's Web2 social media stats for the previous year and how they compare to other members. You will also be able to link your website, outside email, and/or the Web2 social networks you use for business (think Linktree), and create a word cloud of your top skills and innovation interests.
You will want to complete your Cryptonite ID & profile, as it's easy to share with others and post anywhere, making it the ultimate business card for the Web3 era. Members will also be able to 'Vouch for' and connect in person via QR code, similar to how you can with WhatsApp.
All registered members will receive 84 CPROs. If they add their social links, they'll receive an additional 84. Building out their word cloud will earn them another 84. The principle here is that the more you contribute to the network, the more influence you will have, and the more CPROs you will earn.
All paid subscribers receive a Cryptonite Original NFT badge to showcase on their network profile. Act now and also get 33% off the regular rates!
Buy, sell, trade, and reward expertise and influence
The purpose of the CPRO token is to align our community economically by enabling members to buy, sell, trade, and reward expertise and influence across the most financially powerful global network on the planet. V1 will include a powerful reputation and associated CPRO reward program for members who rise to Cryptonite Wizard status for their community participation and success.
'If we have learned anything in the social networking era, it is that our actions not only affect our fate, but the fate of everyone we are connected to. We are not merely insignificant little specs in a world of 7 billion people. We are all part of a network, and how we operate matters. The average person living in the developed world will get to know at least a thousand people in their lifetime. And each of those thousand people is connected to another thousand, which means we are all one person away from 1 million people and two persons away from a billion. Each of the ideas we share and actions we take are like dropping a stone in a pond, they ripple out into our network in ways we can't even comprehend.'
—Anthony Perkins, Cryptonite founder & editor
How the Cryptonite network measures its success
Cryptonite measures its success by the growth in new members finding meaningful relationships and creating game-changing outcomes (e.g., new knowledge, jobs, hires, funding, partnerships, customers, and advisors) that our members initiate and achieve under our brand. The CPRO market cap will ultimately quantify our success by putting a value on what it means to be a Cryptonite member.
The V1 EliXr community blog page for global Silicon Valley insiders and aspiring entrepreneurs to share, learn, and connect.
The Cryptonite app V1—A Reddit for adults!
The V1, due out in the second quarter of 2026, will showcase significantly more content publishing and networking member power. Most notably, our EliXr community blog page, which we humorously refer to as 'the Reddit for adults,' will complement the Daily Rap section that sets the editorial tone, and will ultimately represent well over 99 percent of the content on the app. A sophisticated reputation system will help members find and network with fellow members who matter most.
Member privacy and security is Cryptonite’s #1 job
Little did 'Satoshi' and the Ethereum founders know, but by creating a security infrastructure so digital currencies could be trusted without the need for government backing and central administration, they also provided an alternative business model to the 'customer-as-a-product' approach practiced by Web2 social networks.
People no longer want to see the online giants make billions trading their personal data like a commodity on the attention economy exchanges. Consumers are repelled by ad tracking and dopamine-driven engagement tactics. Those days will be over with the new Cryptonite app.
Notably, Cryptonite's V1 network will be distinguished as the first fully decentralized, 'trusted network' brand. Each member of V1 will be given crypto key access and control over the content, social data, and connections they create. Data security is achieved via distributed storage. This blockchain-based environment assures members that no outside party can de-platform them or seize their cryptocurrencies.
'Privacy is a human right — a civil liberty. Cryptonite will never sell its members' data out of principle, and because our social smart contracts won't allow it. With V1 of the Cryptonite app, if the FBI knocks on our door looking for a member's social graph and other data, they will leave empty-handed because we won't have access to it.'
—Anthony Perkins, founder & editor, Cryptonite
Act on our ‘pre-pre sale’ and buy CPROs at the lowest rate available!
Prior to the Cryptonite app launch in October, we are offering a private 'pre-pre sale' for $.02 per CPRO. Contact Cryptonite founder & editor, Tony Perkins, directly at tp@cryptoniteventures.com if interested, and he will send you the complete CPRO road map and tokenomics strategy. Following the launch, we will initiate our official CPRO pre-sale at $ 0.03. Subsequently, we will launch the next pre-sale at $ 0.04 after the V1 update is launched. We then plan to conduct a CPRO public offering by late Spring 2026. Again, reach Tony Perkins at tp@cryptoniteventures.com for further details.
Act now! We have a limited amount available for sale at $ 0.02!
Share this CPRO ‘pre-pre sale’ post with your associates and fellow crypto-trader buddies so they can make an early bet and win big like you!
