Feb 1, 2021: Thoughts on Clubhouse

For those of you who have Clubhouse FOMO, I’m here to put your hearts at ease this morning. I spent a chunk of time on the app this weekend after ignoring it since last summer, and I learned a few things.

First, while I’m glad I have access to Clubhouse, I probably won’t be using it that much as a passive listener just yet. It’s a big time suck, so unless you are a creator, you aren’t missing out. Much like early twitter, early blogging, early YouTube, etc. there are a lot of rooms where people are saying words without actually saying anything useful. It’s great for hangouts, but it's talk radio vs. high-signal, thoughtfully moderated podcasts. That’s novel! But not great for high-density learning.

Second, that current gap means that there’s a ton of room for structured, interactive discussion to evolve within Clubhouse, and I’m sure as more creators spend time iterating, we’ll hear better content. The platform itself is worth the hype in terms of ease of use and audience discovery (not to mention the novel focus on voice). I'll spend more time hosting discussions there in the weeks ahead, but would prefer to rule with an iron first as a moderator, and always set a schedule, topic, and time limit. (Scarcity is value.)

Third, Clubhouse is a *great* substitute for the conference cocktail conversations we’ve all been jonesing for. There are people within crypto that I really like seeing in person, but we’re not friends per se. I haven’t spoken with them outside of DMs in a year. I’m sure neither party would call for an impromptu chat. But the organic feel of “running into a person” on Clubhouse gave me the same vibe as running into a friend at a conference. There’s something big there, particularly if it ultimately becomes easier to float between rooms of 5-10 person chats vs. 100-200 person chats...like you would at an actual conference.

I’m curious what others have thought so far as well. What would you like to see out of a good crypto Clubhouse community?

(Also, here’s a good post on the future of social audio.)

• INTEL: Loom, Nexus, Alpha, Cardano, PERP, Polkadot, UMA, Filecoin, Nervos (+20 updates)
• Musk says bitcoin is a good thing in Clubhouse chat (Decrypt)
• Ripple files a meh response to the SEC’s complaint (The Block)
• BlockFi is the latest to register a bitcoin trust (CoinDesk)
• Binance had $500 billion in January trading volume (The Block)
• Uniswap had $30 billion in January trading volume (The Block)
• Kraken is running a Chainlink node and sharing its data (CoinDesk)
• The store of value generation is kicking your ass (Mark Cuban)
• Visa may add cryptos to its payment network (CoinDesk)
• Daily Shade: This guy cracks me up. New favorite follow.