1/ Thread: Limits to the asymmetric payoff for Bitcoin
Most of my friends who bought btc tell me the asymmetry embedded in the payoff for buying bitcoin.
Just buy 1% of your portfolio; you really don’t need to understand anything.
2/ If btc reaches a million, you are set for life. If it’s zero, you won’t lose much sleep.
It makes perfect sense and for a long time, I agreed with them. The math is undeniable.
3/ Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the real concern is not that whether btc reaches zero or a million when you have 1% exposure.
The real concern is what happens AFTER it reaches a million.
Here’s I think what will happen.
4/ After some moments of euphoria, I will lament the fact that I only had 1% exposure.
What was I thinking? Why didn’t I put 10%? At least 5%?
God, I was so stupid! Wasn’t it SO obvious?
Trust me, it will seem VERY obvious to everyone regardless of whether it's 0 or million
5/ Then I would probably meet some “dumb” guy who didn’t buy btc and I would come to my senses.
"Well, at least I have a million dollar."
Now what do I do with this million dollar?
6/ With this newly minted cash, I would probably have to come back to the boring world of public markets.
What is the expected return in public markets in general? 7-8%.
7/ After making gazillion times money in btc, do you think I would put up with those saggy returns?
Absolutely NOT. I am much smarter than that.
with my big brain, I will chase the next "btc". This time, I won’t make the same mistake. I would keep 10% of portfolio on this "btc"
8/ Let’s say this next “btc” will work as well. What’s next?
Whatever it is, I’ll put 50% in it.
At some point, I will run out of my luck, and the music will stop.
9/ So much of investing is behavioral that if I were given the option to choose either top 1 percentile intelligence and 50 percentile temperament vs top 1 percentile temperament and 50 percentile intelligence, I would choose the latter every single day.
10/ Losing your discipline for every FOMO out there is not a strategy that’s going to be successful.
End/ I would be indifferent whether btc goes to zero/million/billion.
Intellectually, I am far more interested in understanding real businesses than figuring out the big macro topic of the day.
I will leave it for the smarter people out there.
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Survivorship bias is real, but it is always humbling to look back and see how different revolutionary tech was perceived when they first came to the scene.
Let's look at telephones, cars, and social media.
2/ When Edison was working on the idea of telephone, he was trying to work out a way so that telegraph operators could talk to each other.
As telegraph operators were scattered all over the world, a telephone would be a great help for operators to coordinate with each other.
3/ What about ordinary people talking to each other?
"What are you smoking, Monsieur? Why would people from faraway places talk to each other? And do you know what it would cost you?"