8 YEARS OF QUEEN 👑🎀 8 years ago today, @NICKIMINAJ released her fourth studio album, Queen. An album that arrived with enormous expectations and instantly became one of the defining rap releases of 2018. Eight years later, its impact is still undeniable. Queen debuted at No.2 on the Billboard 200 with 185,000 equivalent album units in its first week, including 78,000 pure album sales. It became Nicki’s fourth consecutive Top 2 album, extending her incredible run of chart success. 👑 The album gave us countless iconic moments — from “Chun-Li” and “Barbie Dreams” to “Ganja Burn,” “Majesty,” “Hard White,” “Good Form,” “Bed” and “Fefe.” And, of course, “Chun-Li” became one of the most recognizable tracks of the era, while its visual aesthetic, iconic looks and unforgettable hook made the song one of the defining symbols of the Queen era. 🎀 But Queen was bigger than numbers. It was another demonstration that Nicki could dominate an entire era on her own terms. The album brought together collaborations with Eminem, Ariana Grande, Lil Wayne, The Weeknd, Future, Swae Lee, Foxy Brown and more, while showcasing the versatility that made Nicki one of the most influential artists in hip-hop history. And the records didn’t stop with the album itself. Throughout the Queen era, Nicki continued achieving historic milestones, extending her record as the female rapper with the most Billboard Hot 100 entries and further cementing her historic presence on the charts. From the moment the album was announced to the iconic music videos, performances, interviews and unforgettable looks, the Queen era became a moment in pop culture that Barbz will never forget. 👑 8 years later, Queen still stands as a statement. A statement of dominance. A statement of longevity. A statement of versatility. A statement that the crown was never up for debate. Happy 8th anniversary to Queen. 👑🎀 THE CROWN IS STILL HERS. 💋

BTC is an community based energy asset that historically accelerates out of bear markets when vol has compressed and it is ignored. This is measured best in sigma moves. The pattern of the last two major shifts coming out of 2018 and 2022 (I hate to say four year cycle but yes) the pattern was seen by a large weekly sigma move where BTC crossed the 200 day moving average the week of the sigma move. So far this week is exactly the same pattern. More in this week's video.

The @EFF is abandoning X because they say views of their posts have fallen from more than 500 million in 2018 to around 10 million last year. They imply that they are being throttled by the platform. What they aren’t telling you is that their 2018 era impressions were massively boosted artificially by backend algorithmic policies that pushed their content into the feeds of millions of users who didn’t read or care about it. I looked at @EFF tweets from December of 2018 and their engagement during that period was anemic. Most of their tweets had fewer than 50 likes, and single digit numbers of replies and retweets. On average, they were getting fewer than 500 likes and retweets per day on between 1.5 and 3 million impressions. That is extremely low. This does not suggest people were actively looking for or engaging with @eff content — instead it suggests that the old algorithm was strongly amplifying content from this account — either because it was a blue-check organization with a lot of followers or because Twitter was amplifying tweets from activist organizations during that period. But the people being shown these tweets were ignoring them. I also looked at their page on Bsky, and, while their most recent posts there were slightly elevated by their post announcing that they have flounced from X, most of their posts more than a few days old get fewer 50 likes on that platform.