Act I
When shit hits the fan
Why you need a store of value
i
Every fiat currency in history has died.
Not most of them. All of them. The average lifespan of a fiat currency is about 27 years. Yours feels permanent. So did every one before it — right up until the morning it wasn't.
A store of value is what you hold for the morning it isn't. One job: when everything else goes to zero, it doesn't.
“What does SoV mean to you? My interpretation is that when shit hits the fan it has > 0 value.”@toly · on X ↗
ii
It is not an investment.
It doesn't pay you. No cash flow. Cash flow would make it a business — and a business is something the State can tax, freeze, or take. Nothing to discount means it isn't a stock. It's a meme. That is the point.
It is a cost. An insurance premium. If it falls, buy more — your premium got cheaper. If it rises, good — you're over-insured. Oh-shit money, not retirement money.
“Why would anyone buy an SoV? It's an insurance cost to cya in case of local collapse.”@toly · on X ↗
iii
It is an oh shit coin.
You buy it slowly, quietly, while things are calm. A little every few months. You forget about it.
You sell it once — fast — the day shit hits the fan and you start a life somewhere else. The day of the rapid, unscheduled disassembly of the country you were born in. Two transactions. One lifetime.
“An sov is an oh shit coin. Usable == you can smuggle it out of the USSR when shit hits the fan and start a life somewhere else. It's like 2 transactions per lifetime.”@toly · on X ↗
“It's only there in case of rapid unscheduled sovereign disassembly.” @toly · on X ↗
Act II
The vault
What it is, and how it holds
iv
Its only job is to be tradeable somewhere else.
When a country dies it doesn't reach into your pocket. It cuts you off — frozen accounts, closed borders, capital controls, a currency nobody outside will take. Sovereign failures are liquidity failures.
An SoV is the door that stays open. Which is why the price is almost beside the point: as good at a hundred grand as it is at ten. All that matters is that, on the worst day of your life, someone still trades it for what you need.
“Sovereign failures are liquidity failures. What crypto gives you is permissionless access to external markets. SoV isn't an investment, it's insurance, liquidity is more important then long term value accrual.”@toly · on X ↗
v
Same myth as gold — but it travels.
Gold is a yellow rock. It's worth a fortune because for five thousand years humans agreed it is. No equation — the value is social, a belief held long enough it hardens into fact. SoV is the same myth: the oldest game there is, the bet that other people keep believing — that there's always a market, somewhere, that takes it.
But gold has a weight that fails you on the worst day. You cannot swallow a vault or memorize a brick; at the checkpoint, the guard takes the gold and laughs. SoV is that same myth without the weight — you walk across with empty hands, and nothing of yours is left behind.
“Sov is a myth. All the social layer work is non technical.”@toly · on X ↗
“[is gold an oh shit coin?] Yes, but harder to get across the USSR border.”@toly · on X ↗
vi
It is simple, because complexity is how things break.
No features. No staking games. No upgrades. The smallest attack surface there is. A vault doesn't need to be fast or smart. It needs to be impossible to open.
- 1
Priced in USDC, not SOL.
A store of value can't store its value in another thing that collapses next to you.
- 2
Every reward burns supply.
100% of creator rewards buy SOV and burn it. Forever. The founders take nothing. The supply only shrinks.
“The simplest private money with the smallest attack surface has the best shot at pmf as a sov.”@toly · on X ↗
The burn is the fund.
There's no treasury anyone can drain — because it's already spent. Every reward buys SOV and burns it. The "fund" is the supply going down, in public, forever. The numbers update on-chain.
status: live at launch · no numbers are invented — what you see is what's on-chain
Act III
Delete the State
What it’s really for
vii
It is freedom, and only lamewads hate freedom.
The State can delete your bank account with a keystroke. Freeze your money for a sentence you wrote online. Inflate your savings to zero to pay for a war you didn't vote for.
The one thing it cannot do is reach a number that lives only in your head. That isn't a feature. That's the entire reason it exists.
“Private sov is a solid meme because it expands personal freedom. Only lamewads would hate on it.”@toly · on X ↗
viii
It might be the most important thing money can be.
Strip crypto down to what actually matters to a human being and two things are left: a place to trade, and a place to keep value the State can't take. The second is the one people have needed in every century there has ever been.
“SOV/permissionless money is the most important usecase.”@toly · on X ↗
And — his words, not ours, only in a world where everyone holds their own keys:
“…a sov meme coin on some censorship resistant message bus will have far greater impact than btc or eth do today.”@toly · on X ↗
ix
How you buy and hold SOV. (not financial advice)
A little. Around one percent of what you've got — not more, not less. You buy a slice every few months, while it's boring, and you forget the password to caring about it.
You keep it for the one day you might have to grab it and run. You sell it exactly once. You pay the premium and you pray, genuinely, that you waste every cent of it.
“…don't put more than 1% of their wealth into it, and not less than 1%. It's supposed to be oh-shit money, not retirement money.”@toly · on X ↗
verifiable — every line links to the post
In Toly's words
The store-of-value thesis, from Anatoly “Toly” Yakovenko. Quotations, not screenshots — tap any to read the original.
It doesn't need cash flows because it's a cost. If it goes down in price buy more, if it goes up, great you are over insured.
It's only there in case of rapid unscheduled sovereign disassembly.
To win the Keynesian beauty contest for an “oh shit” coin you need to convince the world that there will always be a market somewhere in the world that will trade it no matter what.
It's as good at being an sov at $100k as it is at $10k all else being equal.
Because sov is an “oh shit” coin. If shit hits the fan, does the complexity created to deal with scale become brittle?
All meme, zero dev costs, perfect sov.
so here is the deal
Buy it.Forget it.Pray you die without ever using it.
That's SOV. The oh shit coin. Just roll with it, comrade.
“sov is the best meme. Just roll with it. It's ok.”@toly · on X ↗