How to limit volatility?

In web2, load balancers[1] improve worst case latency at the cost of a little guaranteed latency

In web3, collars[2] improve worst case financial expense at the cost of a little guaranteed expense

[1] cloudflare.com/learning/perfo…
[2] investopedia.com/articles/activ…
If you plot a histogram of latency before and after the introduction of a load balancer, you'll often find that average latency gets a bit worse (as you need to do two hops: load balancer and then server), but worst case latency gets way better.

Often an acceptable tradeoff.
Similarly, if you plot a histogram of expected financial profit before & after buying a collar, you'll find that the average profit gets a bit worse (due to the cost of the collar) but worst case profit gets way better.

Also often an acceptable tradeoff.
investopedia.com/articles/activ…
Bitcoin ushered in the possibility of truly free markets, fully decentralized, high risk & high reward.

Often, however, thesis and antithesis form a synthesis. The success of stablecoins show how valuable volatility reduction can be in some contexts.
stablecoinstats.com
In web2, the financial plumbing[1] that makes things possible is hidden from users. The volatility is hidden, as is the cost in privacy.

In web3, that financial plumbing is made more transparent. The volatility is visible, as is the cost in coins.
[1] adbutler.com/blog/article/w…
Think about ads: how often do you click? And how often do you actually buy? Rarely, right?

That means conversions are rare events. Rarity means high financial variance. Giant web2 companies can buffer this variance, this volatility, so it's not visible.

Oh, but it exists.
This thread prompted in part by @levie's thoughtful comments.

In short, I recognize that we do need tools to control the visible financial volatility of web3's coins.

But I want to note that this is in some ways better than the *invisible* financial volatility of web2's ads.

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More from @balajis

27 Dec
I wrote up a detailed piece on how we can combine web2 and web3 tools to automate the mess of angel investing.

The key concept is a mirrortable, which is to a cap table what a stablecoin is to a fiat currency.
balajis.com/mirrortable
The mirrortable is a non-ideological productivity improvement for angel investors. You don’t need to want to End the Fed to end the process of chasing documents across dozens of apps.

This post is the 5300 word expansion of the 280 character remark below.
Why do we want to streamline angel investing? So we can invest in more founders, in more countries. So we can decentralize the process of wealth creation, backing people in the Midwest and the Middle East.

Here's the feature set we'll want to do that.
balajis.com/mirrortable/
Read 4 tweets
23 Dec
$1000 in BTC for web2 v web3 infographic

List the top web2 public companies.

How much value was created after the IPO, thus accessible to retail?

What was investor, team, and user ownership at IPO? (The latter is usually 0 in web2).

Now do this for web3 companies & projects.
Some notes:

Define a web2 company for these purposes as an internet company that does not make significant use of a blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum in its business. Facebook, Twitter, etc are canonical.

Define a web3 company or project as one that does rely on a blockchain.
To win

We’ll award $1000 to the best infographic, and maybe some runner up prizes.

Post it as reply to the thread within 24 hours, along with raw data + sources.
Read 7 tweets
22 Dec
Why does social media make us memoryless?

One thesis is: each day we see the most important thing ever. But then yesterday’s most important thing is less important. And last week’s viral post? Already forgotten.

Perhaps we want more consistency and less novelty.
I first saw the Feiler Faster thesis in a piece by @kausmickey 20+ years ago. More recently, @Noahpinion and @micsolana have written on the phenomenon.

But I feel it’s been going on for longer than that, perhaps accelerating with media decentralization. slate.com/news-and-polit…
Read 5 tweets
18 Dec
College is a scam, you don’t need it.

- Stanford ‘00, ‘04, ‘05, ‘06
There was a time when a degree was worth it in terms of cost/benefit. That time has passed.

The in-person campus is obsolete technology in 2021. Especially at $80k/year. *Especially* without the SAT filter.

We prove it by hiring non-college grads and building true alternatives.
Good review of growing alternatives to college, several of which provide jobs and/or portfolios in addition to education.

I’ve invested my own capital into many of these, and plan to do more.
jeffburke.substack.com/p/eight-educat…
Read 5 tweets
15 Dec
Truth over popularity, always. But popularity is also nice.
Notice what else is in the top 10 list besides [excellent] web3 content from my friends @cdixon, @naval, @katie_haun, and @VitalikButerin?

It's longevity, quantified self, and self-improvement. Transhumanism is what's next.
tim.blog/2021/12/14/the…
Btw, I've thought a lot about the tradeoff between popularity & truth.

Failure mode 1: just become popular
Failure mode 2: just focus on scientific truth
Success mode: discover truths, then popularize them, ideally via a vehicle that makes them undeniable
Read 4 tweets
15 Dec
Thoughtful piece by Noah, even if I disagree with some specifics. In particular, I wouldn’t characterize currency competition as financial anarchy. Often it’s financial stability. In the past, dollarization restabilized inflationary economies. Today that may be bitcoinization.
Noah's post is worth reading in conjunction with this excellent thread by @AriDavidPaul on the possible/likely abuses of CBDCs.

I agree with many of the points here too, but there is a third angle...
There have been two theses on central bank digital currencies like the digital yuan.

1) CBDCs boost efficiency
2) CBDCs enable tyranny

Here's a third:

3) Inter-CBDC competition may increase self-sovereignty

All three can happen. Not mutually exclusive.
foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bit…
Read 4 tweets

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