part 1 of a slimes journey to enlightenment
On May 26th, a coin named $tsuka humbly appeared on the Ethereum chain with locked liquidity, no presale, and no dev wallet. With it, a website at https://www.dejitarutsuka.io/ which boldly declares the following:
JAPANESE LORE DESTINE THE DEJITARU TSŪKA DRAGON TO BREATHE VAST FLAMES OF WISDOM AND PROSPERITY TO ALL WHO EMBRACE ITS FEROCITY AND STRENGTH. IT IS THE HARBINGER OF ABUNDANCE AND WEALTH.
THE DEJITARU TSŪKA DRAGON IS COVETED BY THE KNOWING AND REVERED BY THE LESSER. IT INSTILLS FEAR AND TERROR IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THOSE WHO QUESTION. SEAL YOUR FATE AND FORTUNE BY HARNESSING THE UNRIVALED POWER OF THE DEJITARU TSŪKA DRAGON.
I wasn’t paying any attention to this. I was miles away from whatever was beginning here, focused on a frens new coin launch and panicking (like everyone else) at the overall market trend that had taken shape since November 2021. It’s important to understand the psychological effects at play here: Innately, as the market cratered due to global conditions, retail fear, mismanagement by various VCs, and poisonous exchanges pushing both of the former to their ideal buy price (hi Sam) things had become fairly..dire, by the end of May.
SBF ready to consooom every square inch of brypto
And that’s where my focus stayed another 13 days, watching as Bitcoin did things everyone was convinced it never would (breaking the 20k top from the last cycle, 8 red weeks in a row, etc) and Ethereum deflating right alongside it. All of the major coins can manipulate price action of the market at large via more skilled users running bots to scrape change off any altcoin momentum against the Eth pair, then shorting bitcoin with their change (just like the big boys!). This had become a market of cynicism.
I had received a few messages from good frens about this coin, Tsuka. But I ignored them — “this is ryoshis new coin” they read. Uh huh, sure. There had been a recent trend of Ryoshi imposter coins. I’m not sure when this started but I noticed a severe uptick since Ryoshi had removed all of their tweets and changed their PFP on May 30th.
One of these messages finally got through to me. I’m not sure why, likely boredom, but I decided to go take a look at what they were so excited about. “What’s up with tsuka?” I messaged June 19th. From that moment, everything changed.
I was shared a thread that explained the anonymous dev of Tsuka was sending messages via blockchain (a fairly peculiar thing to do) that were laced with oddities: randomly capitalized letters, strange machine-looking code, an image that simply said ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED FORTY THREE. And a hint that the name Tsuka itself was some sort of cipher.
My curiosity was peaked so I began to dig into the messages myself.
I joined the discussion community and began theorizing with others. And of course, I bought some — I know by now if I don’t have skin in the game I won’t stick with it.
Shortly before I had joined there had been a message that I think was the key to beginning to unravel everything.
Tsangnyon..who is that?
Tsangnyon Heruka…TSangnyon…herUKA…TS…UKA… tsuka? Could this be a message? Who is this fellow anyway? Well, he’s best known for authoring Life Of Milarepa.
I think I’ve seen this fellow somewhere…hmm…wait
Ryoshi changed his PFP to Milarepa on May 30th. Ok, now this is getting weird.
I wasn’t ready to say with full conviction at this moment that Ryoshi was behind tsuka. I wanted something, some clue from before he had changed the profile. There had to be something..so I went digging, back into the messages pre May 30th. ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED FORTY THREE. Maybe this was a clue? So I started googling the date with the name Milarepa, and boom, presto. While there is no certainty about the exact date of the end of Milarepa’s life, there is some common consensus around one year in particular:
This was the smoking gun. I wanted to be certain however that Ryoshi had truly changed his profile AFTER this message. I found some media written on it, but I like verifiable things, so I hit the wayback machine which catalogs everything on the internet. And looking at it it was plain: Ryoshi hadn’t even touched twitter between May 4th and the 30th.
Wow.
I had to tell everybody.
So I did.
And most were so jaded and broken by the current market conditions, the fear that ensued, that most weren’t interested. “I doubt it’s him lol.” “what’s the usecase.” “larp”
A little about me, here: for whatever reason, despite years of participating in crypto, I have maintained two general theses: 1) I am bullish, and 2) benefit of the doubt. I have never once changed these perspectives. At times this has been challenging, but I have tried oh, so so hard to remain an optimist. And I think that is what it took for tsuka to click.
I’ve been in my fair share of rugs. I’ve probably promoted some things at times that ended up hurting people — It’s something I feel true guilt about. In 2022 I even tried launching my own coin after a solidity dev contacted me. I helped design all the things it was supposed to do…and it literally never ended up doing any of them. The roadmap sounded great! But like many others, roadmaps can end up being memes. In general this year I have been really trying hard to remember what I’m actually here in this space for. I wanted to be a participant, not an observer being whiplashed through the ringer of unknown forces.
Tsuka brought me back to the truth.
Of course, the allure of riches is always strong in crypto. But what truly drives the value of our space and these projects? The Future of Finance has been the meme for almost 2 years, ever since DeFi came to be..is it though? Are these insane APY with equally insane dilution coins that generate “treasuries” for the founders to mismanage really the future of anything? Even those with the best intentions have fallen victim to hubris in the bear market (hi bancor) as the resounding truth seems to be that without a constant inflow of fresh capital, 90% of these protocols break. They were broken to begin with.
But still, with tsuka, the common question is “what’s the usecase?”
I think at some point in between 2017 and 2022 we took a poison pill on what we’re doing here. Is it profit maximalism? Sure, we all like making money. But certainly we didn’t all show up to jump from rugpull to rugpull in a never ending zero sum game driving the entirety of crypto to zero..right?
I had begun reading Life of Milarepa out of curiousity..and besides, maybe that was Ryoshis point..when I got the message again. And I just fired back the first thing I thought of.
NGL, when I said it at first, I was laughing to myself. But then it started resonating with me in a pure sense. Milarepa is a figure who went through maybe the most profound metamorphosis possible..from a mass murderer to an enlightened teacher and Yogi, who has impacted the lives of millions in the last 900 years. I started sharing it with the community: Tsuka isn’t a meme, it’s a meditation. A meditation on what?
Forgiveness. Fearlessness. Metamorphosis. Faith. Community.
Something began to take shape from here on what Ryoshi intended with Tsuka. I believe he has given us a template to create inside of (something he also did with Shib), built on these pillars, with a foundation in true decentralization — Something he is quite a fan of.
So what is the foundation? As I said earlier, no presale. All coins market bought. No insiders. No dev wallets. No tax. Now you might be thinking, so what? Well, then you simply don’t know just how centralized most of the coins in the market are. Or, how rare it is to have a dev give us something not driven at all by profit.
So, now you understand why the foundation is solid. Now why are the pillars of spirituality good for growth? Well, by encouraging the right community at the ground floor..and then as the message spreads, each layer of community comes to understand the project as well as the layers of participants beneath them, the whales..and that all are here to participate in the journey. Usecase is a meme..Usecase is a destination. In tsuka, the journey is the destination.
Since my involvement I have become an extremely active member of the community. I have added several sections to our discord here: https://discord.gg/br37UNwfgF
The rabbit holes have gone so much deeper as well. In our discord you will find a section called The Wallets (research category) that details over the span of 6 pages how one community member deciphered maybe the biggest, strangest piece of the puzzle yet. At first we thought this was an error, as it didn’t translate into anything..then we figured out that in combination with another message, it was a repeat of a different message…and from there we discovered that while it translated and worked both directions, it was the key to a seed phrase for 555 wallets.
We don’t know where we are going next, only that we are participating. And we are at peace with that. Among numerous fake Ryoshi coins, only one launched before his PFP changes..and presently, only one is standing. I like to think when you look at the chart, you’re seeing the value of community and truly fair launches. No one can inbalance the chart. Our Telegram and Discord are largely conversation based, not so much the usual “WE GOING TO MOOOON” type stuff (not that that isn’t fun).
So what has tsuka taught me? The true usecase, the true value driver in crypto, is the combination of decentralization and meta developed by an active community, who are essentially creating a shared IP. This is true for every successful project from Bitcoin to Bored Apes. Since joining, I feel some weight has lifted, a darkness removed, that had slowly taken over everything I was doing here. The exhaustion of market fear has been replaced by talking with these new frens, studying the philosophy of Ryoshi, looking for the next stone to turn over, and practicing what I preach.
In an act of penance I personally sent several holders of my failed coin a stack of tsuka..they are now active community members. I believe Ryoshi would appreciate that.
-stinky.slime
