The Libra hearings with @davidmarcus are streaming live right now. Face to face with the Financial Services Committee with @RepMaxineWaters
Rep Waters started off by pointing to her draft bill, the “Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act.” 🤔
This is pretty bald faced regulatory capture, isn’t it? Big tech presents problems to society, but does big finance need the protection of the government? 🔨
Rep Sherman seems to misunderstand that crypto is far more traceable than the way terrorism and drug dealing is enabled today: giant blocks of $100 bills in cash.
He also seems to misunderstand that Libra and Collibra will be different entities.
Rep Davidson points out lack of proper regulatory clarity is forcing crypto innovation overseas and that’s a lost American opportunity. 👌
Rep Gottheimer points out that Libra Association is in Switzerland because there was not regulatory clarity. He is leading the Token Taxonomy Act to keep American innovation at the forefront.
Forward thinking.
Rep Budd namechecks @coincenter which is awesome. This set of reps really get it.
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In 2019 The Richmond Democratic Club honored her with some kind of award alongside Peter Lauterborn, a manager in the SF Ethics Dept
Having friends in the Ethics dept is awfully handy if your political machine might need the dept to look the other way
This was the same event with a truly rotten cast of corrupt politicians including Allison Collins who was recalled for making instruction worse for kids, removed Algebra from middle schools and merit from Lowell (and calling Asians house n-words)
The difference between an overhyped startup failure and a valuable real business that makes it the long haul is sometimes as simple as:
Do the founders themselves believe in what they are doing to the point where they will not quit?
This is where definite optimism matters: If startup ideas were people…
an indefinite optimist looks for more optionality, searching around the room at the party for the more interesting person to talk to.
A definite optimist engages deeply and finds themselves engrossed in the person they are talking to now.
For their startup, the problem or way to solve becomes a calling. It isn’t just words to trick people into giving them capital or to come work for them.
Melgar also vocally supports our absurdly bad SF police commission (and the worst ideologues on it)
This terrible police commission is more focused on reducing enforcement on traffic stops than actually solving any real world safety problems in our city
It’s surprisingly common to spend all your time fighting the other players in your market and then realizing years later the market didn’t really exist.
The only way to avoid this is radical focus on customers, not competition.
Early on, my startup Posterous was framed to be a Tumblr competitor. We spent a lot of time fighting that battle.
That market didn’t end up being a real durable one.
We were so focused on web publishing we underinvested in mobile and the ultimate winner was Instagram.
In the moment there are enemies to the left and right of you. But the real combatant may not be obvious to either of you.
The ultimate winner knows not just what is next to them, but the contours of the battlefield and what ground has durable advantage to hold the lands.