Before I get share the latest Late Checkout Substack post, I wanted to let you know that Crypto College Cohort #2 is minting now!

If you’re interested in elevating your skills in NFTs, DAOs and social tokens, this is the course for you. I’ll share my tips and tricks for creating exceptional web3 projects.

Mint an NFT membership card for access and learn more here

Now back to regular scheduled programming… a fun post about where the future of crypto world could take us.

Hundreds of people were gathered at Lake View Cemetery on February 9th, 2032 in Seattle.

I was there with my partner and our children and I’m not ashamed to say I shed tears. 

I never met @punk2998 IRL, but he was one of my closest friends. 

@punk2998 and I probably spent thousands of hours talking on the phone and working on projects for NeuraDAO, a DAO that was established by @boredelonmusk in 2027 focused on providing access to Neuralink’s new brain-machine interface that allows paralyzed people to use the computer.

@punk2998 and I worked together mainly on the DAO’s media team: me as a writer and @punk2998 as a jack-of-all-trades. Since he had a huge online presence, he helped get me in the door to interview famous scientists and founders in the neuro-tech space.

The new world we live in is strange. When my mom was growing up, she had a pen pal in France.  Now, we’re becoming best friends with strangers on the internet without ever knowing their names or faces.

But, what is in a name? And what is in a face?  

I talked to @punk2998 for hours on the phone and I could tell you without a doubt, he was one of the smartest, kindest, and most generous people I’d ever met.  He was the glue to our DAO; he lifted us up, provided input on every group call, and always delivered above and beyond.

Full disclosure: when I try to explain my friendship with @punk2998 to my partner, she thinks I’ve lost my mind.

She’s a data scientist and although she did most of her school online, she knew everyone’s names and faces. Typical. She can’t seem to wrap her head around the idea of being friends with a pseudonymous person. 

Me: “Babe, don't you get how respected @punk2998 is? He could fill a Twitter Space with a moment's notice. His threads get 10,000 retweets.”

Her: “He got lucky and bought a few JPEGs before it was cool.” 

Me: *gasp*

Her: “You don’t even know his name!  You can’t be friends with a social media account!”

Me: “He’s a real person - with feelings and values!  Disney tried to turn him into a superhero; he refused.  Meta tried to hire him as COO; he refused!  He’s a hero.”

All our conversations go like that. I keep trying to explain that @punk2998 was respected around the globe.  If you weren’t following him back in 2024, I guess it’s hard to understand.

As NFTs grew like wildfire during the bull market of 2025, @punk2998 gained a huge following for his NFT collection, well-crafted tweets and articles breaking down the industry.

Like any good crypto-native, @punk2998 had his hands in countless different projects as an investor and writer. Some people speculated that maybe he had a background in investment banking or hedge funds, but @punk2998 told me he never wore a suit in his life.

I couldn’t tell you where @punk2998 went to college, whether he was married, or what part of the world he lived in.  It didn’t matter.

He was like Batman: more than a person. He was his ideas and work.

During the Great Doxxing of 2028, 1,097 cryptopunks were doxxed; their anonymity was shattered, yet @punk2998 remained anonymous. After that, he became even more of a legend.

Over the last 3 years, he was teaching a cohort-based-course on pseudonymity, anonymity, and privacy that has had over 10,000 students.

With friends all over the world, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Seattle funeral wasn’t the only one going on. There were dozens of simultaneous @punk2998 funerals.

Each funeral had its own flavor. In NYC, his team posted his tweets on flashing billboards. In Barcelona, they had a plane write out “@punk2998 lives” in the sky. 

When punk2998’s heart stopped beating last Friday, his Apple Watch started an automated process that sent a tweet out declaring his death as well as $200,000 worth of ETH distributed across 20 wallets across the globe. After 5 minutes of research on OpenSea, I found that all the wallets were owned by fellow punk-holders.

After that, the $300M in his wallet lay dormant for 45 hours until the wallet made a tiny transaction. The wallet sent $15,000 to an unknown wallet this morning. Then, @punk2998 tweeted, “still here.” 

I tried messaging him, but the inbox is closed.

There’s been a lot of speculation going down. Who owns the Twitter account and wallet now?

Most likely, the account and wallet were passed down to a friend or family member, but maybe there was a bug in the Apple watch and this whole thing was a mistake.  

Maybe he purposely caused the glitch and was at the funeral in Seattle laughing about it all.  That’d be such a @punk2998 thing to do.

There’s no way to know, but I promise you my life was better because of him.

Post by Greg Isenberg, Jason Levin and help from Vyara, Kevin, Dany and more

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