6 | Sunday Brunch ☕
Find Your 9th Path, the Power of Decentralized Finance, & Visualizing the Creator Economy

Happy Sunday & Happy Father's Day! Welcome back to our sixth Sunday Brunch newsletter - a concise curation of my favorite tidbits from the week.
Without further delay, grab your coffee, mimosa, water, juice, bloody mary, chocolate milk, protein shake, or whatever else the Brunchers are drinking these days and enjoy this week's issue.
Cheers Everyone.
Find Your 9th Path (Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life) - In April of 1958, Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume in response to a request for life advice. Since my introduction two years ago by my wonderful girlfriend, I've revisited Hunter's words regularly.
Let's assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let's assume that you can't see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN - and here is the essence of all I've said - you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.
Naturally, it isn't as easy as it sounds. You've lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn't any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, "I don't know where to look; I don't know what to look for."
And there's the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don't know - is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

Decentralized Finance: What it is, Why it matters - There’s been a lot of hype, buzz, skepticism, confusion, and excitement around decentralized finance aka “DeFi,” the ecosystem of blockchain-enabled products and services that replace traditional financial intermediaries with freely accessible, autonomous, and transparent software.
While it’s still early days for DeFi (just a couple years in), its associated economy is already large and consequential: Ethereum, the backend infrastructure for DeFi, settled about $1.5 trillion in transactions last quarter, or 50% of Visa’s payment volume; decentralized money markets are issuing billions of dollars worth of loans every month.

Creator Economy Snapshot - my interest in media disruption - a topic I've referenced numerous times - stems from a broader obsession with the "creator economy." CBInsights updated its market map - showcasing some of the top companies within several niches. Early-stage investors are leaning into these companies. Keep an eye out as many continue to scale in the future.

That's it for this week, everyone.
Thank you, as always, for your time. If you made it this far in the article, I appreciate you tremendously and am thrilled to have you in our community.
Feel free to share any thoughts, feedback, recommendations, or other ⤵️
Enjoy your Sunday & have a great start to the week!
See you Wednesday!
Whit Rasmussen's Newsletter
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