What is Crypto Really All About?

• To the outsider, crypto enthusiasts largely look like a bunch of libertarian leaning, wanna be economists who appear to have a major axe to grind with the financial system as we’ve known it for the past 80 years or so.  While there is some truth to this broad brush approach at generalizing a very large ...more

Why aren't all economists rich?

• Why aren't all economists rich? Some are. Economics is the most common degree amongst the world's top 100 billionaires. Some famous economists such as David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes were very wealthy indeed. However, for the most part, economists will give you a list of excuses why understanding economics won't make you rich. They are ...more

The shortages were unevitable

• What did you think would happen? 1: Lockdowns and unemployment subsidies constrain production 2: Print trillions of dollars and throw it out of helicopters 3: Consumers start spending stimulus money 4: Manufacturing shifts to the production of consumption goods 5: Producers bid up prices of production goods and labor 6: Price increases, shortages, and unfilled jobs everywhere. It has nothing to do ...more

• McAllen, Texas is consistently the fattest city in America, and they are not happy about it. They can’t figure out why, as they have plenty of parks and organize 5K runs nearly every weekend. What they don’t realize is that for non-athletes, exercise has very little to do with bodyweight.The obesity epidemic is caused almost entirely ...more

5 strategies I used to reach financial independence

• My portfolio growth rate over the last 6 years has averaged 130% of my salary. In other words, my portfolio increased by 100% of my salary plus 30%. My actual saving rate was between 60 and 70%. More importantly, over this period my portfolio* grew from about 4x my burn rate to 22x my burn rate. ...more

Restore deleted rides from your Wahoo bike computer

• How to restore accidentally deleted rides from your Wahoo Bolt/Roam/etc bike computer: Get the Android SDK platform Connect your Element Bolt, Roam, etc via USBIn a command line window, run ./adb devices. This is just to check that adb can see your Wahoo device.Run ./adb pull /data/media/0/exports ~/Desktop/wahoo_exports with the last part being the folder ...more

Adding complexity to a system does not make it more valuable

• Every month, my company spends about $50K on software development. We've been doing this for 10 years. We think that we're building something valuable well into the future.Yet if the company went bankrupt, our work will instantly become worthless. Our business system serves our unique needs and would be useless in any other context. Likewise, ...more

Pick Your Horse: Gift or Trojan

• You are undoubtedly familiar with the idea of a “Trojan Horse,” an idiom derived from the Trojan War of Homer's Iliad.  A large, hollow, wooden horse is left behind by the Greeks after their supposed failure to take the city of Troy.  The Trojans take the horse back inside their city’s walls, and that night, ...more

Three problems with the science of The Tomorrow War

• Here are three problems I have with the science of The Tomorrow War: 1: On the proper use of time travel Time travel requires the creation of a closed timelike curve (CTC): a closed loop in which spacetime returns to the starting point. Let's assume that a CTC is possible (an open question in physics), and it ...more

Correction vs Crash

• Even casual crypto observers are aware of the dramatic downward price action across the crypto space over the past few weeks.  This price action has market participants weighing in with opinions regarding where the crypto market stands:  on the cusp of a short consolidation and follow-on breakout, or has the next cyclical crypto winter made ...more

Top ten ways you can appear rich even when you’re poor

• 1: Be fit and slim: there is a strong negative correlation between wealth and obesity. Why? Contrary to popular belief, the rich are not slimmer because a healthy diet is more expensive or they can afford personal trainers. They are slimmer because they invest more thought into what they eat. This is because the wealthy have a ...more

How Many Horses are in the Crypto Asset Race?

• While Bitcoin is undoubtedly the most recognized crypto currency in the world, there are literally thousands of other cryptos in existence.  While we tend to call everything in the crypto space “cryptocurrencies”, this is misleading because the only thing these digital assets have in common is that they have issued tokens that power their own ...more

Bitcoin has already advanced global privacy and financial autonomy

• If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, what legacy would they leave behind? I can think of three main impacts: First, Bitcoin raised awareness of the flaws in fiat money, the superiority of sound money, and the potential of people to trade with each other without third-party intermediaries. Second, Bitcoin has provided a life raft to ...more

Bitcoin has already advanced global privacy and financial autonomy

• If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, what legacy would they leave behind? I can think of three main impacts: First, Bitcoin raised awareness of the flaws in fiat money, the superiority of sound money, and the potential of people to trade with each other without third-party intermediaries. Second, Bitcoin has provided a life raft to ...more

Vellum's new Whitepaper: "Bitcoin's Rise and the Coming Crypto Economy"

• Bitcoin can seem like the merger of the Wild West and the Jetsons.  If you aren't already an expert, keeping away might seem safer.  Fortunately, Vellum Capital prepared a whitepaper that makes sense of the cryptocurrency space without being technical or sensational. Get the complete whitepaper: "Speculation Becomes Consensus Bitcoins Rise And The Coming Crypto ...more

Will Bitcoin go over $20K to reach a new ATH?

• Will Bitcoin go over $20,000 and reach all-time new highs by December 2020? Here's a quick guide for investors to know what's happening now: The first question: does Bitcoin over 19,000USD represent a new thesis or outlook for the market? No. As for nearly all digital assets, Bitcoin's value is established from a 'stack' of value ...more

Will Bitcoin ever go to Zero?

• In November of 2020, we posted an article that looked at whether Bitcoin was poised to push past the $20,000 barrier.  Entitled, “Will Bitcoin Go Over $20K to Reach a New ATH,” that article is worth exploring again several months later as we look to gain some perspective on where things now stand not just ...more

Why GameStop is not the new Bitcoin

• When Robinhood disabled customers from buying GameStop, some people in the WallStreetBets subreddit suggested a need for a "decentralized brokerage." Others said that "GameStop is the new Bitcoin." Yet others decided to target the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which spiked over 500% before it failed to process transactions due to overload. The premise behind these ideas is hilariously ...more

Six things COVID-19 has taught us about Bitcoin

• This week the United States economy reported an additional 4+ million people filing for unemployment. The cost of COVID19 lockdowns and their destabilizing effect in business is an economic wave unlike anything in our lifetimes. This extraordinary investment environment has also provided tremendous qualitative indication and information about the market’s current assessment of Bitcoin and ...more

Don't dismiss Bitcoin just because of its wild price swings

• There are valid reasons to criticize Bitcoin, but price volatility is not one of them.  Why does the price of Bitcoin change so much from day to day? The answer is simple: the value of Bitcoin derives almost entirely from speculation on future adoption of Bitcoin rather than practical use. Bitcoin speculators are betting on the likelihood that ...more