💌 Letter Operators

Hey there 👋,

In this week’s newsletter, I discuss:

• Newsletter operators as a service

• Unstoppable Domains selling .sats

• PayPal launching its stablecoin, but I’m betting on Solana Pay

Cheers!

Richard Patey - @richardpatey

DIGITAL MEDIA

For an asset class that requires active management to emerge, you need to have operators.

I first helped this happen with website investing back in 2019, and I’m doing it again with newsletters:

I think I’ve tapped into something since launching Letter Operators; this screenshot is the first day of inbound interest from newsletter owners looking to outsource to an experienced operator:

Having run newsletter businesses for a few years, I have a good rolodex of operators, including those I’ve hired myself. Indeed, I’ve already matched someone who has launched a newsletter for a SaaS company.

But I’ve also been actively reaching out to every experienced operator and newsletter agency I know, including paid acquisition ones such as Grow Letter by Matt McGarry as it’s not just the content side that people need taken care of.

Talking of which, Matt has just got into a fued with Shaan Puri over statements he made on the latest My First Million Podcast. You can find the main threads in this post on X and a result of this is that people are discovering that newsletter agencies are a thing!:

And finally, I had to mention the biggest digital media news today with El Prez Dave Portnoy buying back Barstool Sports from Penn:

Adam Ryan, CEO of Workweek, the creator focussed digital media company, breaks down the details of the deal, which includes Penn getting 50% of any future liquidity event which is likely why Dave states he is never going to sell!:

DOMAINS

I previously mentioned .sats domains on Bitcoin in this issue and the potential conflict with the TLD on Handshake (HNS).

Now, Unstoppable Domains has just announced that you will be able to buy .sats domains on their website, with co-founder Brad Kam posting that they are a now a one stop shop:

As you may imagine, some people within the HNS community are not happy with this development. However as .sats/ have been selling on registrars such as Namecheap for a long time before Ordinals was a thing, Unstoppable now selling them discredits the argument for trying to trademark TLDs by being first to market, as hey.tx/ posts:

CRYPTO

PayPal has announced the launch of its own U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, PayPal USD, based on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to transfer, pay, and convert between PayPal and supported external digital wallets:

It’s backed by dollar deposits, US treasuries, and cash equivalents to maintain a stable $1 USD value. What’s cool is that you can check out with crypto and it will sell your PayPal USD to make payment.

But I’m betting on the decentralized peer-to-peer payment protocol that is Solana Pay, where you can send USD Coin (USDC) from your wallet directly to the merchant’s account.

I recently watched a super interesting video from last year’s Solana Breakpoint Conference as I’ll be attending this year’s conference in Amsterdam. It’s with Sheraz Shere, Head of Payments at Solana Labs, on stage with the Stripe crypto payments team:

And in this one minute video, Sheraz shows how an NFT can act as a loyalty token (offering discounts at stores) using the best crypto wallet in web3 Phantom, and a Solana Pay QR code:

CLASSIFIEDS

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this email is financial advice and I am not a professional investment adviser. I send weekly updates on digital asset news and what I'm doing personally - consider it informational and for entertainment purposes only.