1/ a short summary of a recent talk on silicon, satoshis, and superpowers
power in our world is changing. a decade ago, oil and gas companies and banks ruled markets. now it's tech companies and financialization runs rampant (>100x P/E ratios etc)
2/ as our lives become increasingly digitized, value creation is happening on a new frontier, and a handful of industries and companies are well positioned to capitalize on this shift
3/ this is also impacting the geopolitical landscape. we live in a multipolar world, and power has historically been dependent on the ability of a nation to secure access to natural resources, namely oil
4/ but there's a new power structure emerging.
numerous corporations book annual revenues > than the GDP of G20 economies. people are spending insane amounts of time and energy in virtual worlds. and public blockchain protocols are growing in power and influence.
5/ so as an investor, i ask myself - how should i position my portfolio?
energy, compute, and digital currency will make this digital, multi-polar future possible
6/ one idea i keep coming back to is this - producing and processing bits and bytes (in the digital world) still requires atoms (in the physical world)
we don't often talk about these in the same context, but both matter
7/ let's start with energy
more technology means generating and consuming more energy. our culture loves vilifying energy consumption, but it is an inescapable reality of human progress.
while renewables generation is growing, fossil fuels still dominate our energy mix
8/ but there are new models for energy generation and management, below are some that i'm excited about
- new energy sources are needed - i am a big proponent of nuclear, esp SMRs (small modular reactors) from co's like @oklo and @NuScale_Power
- the growth of peer to peer… https://t.co/ynLvIur4gDtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@oklo @NuScale_Power 9/ next, compute and connectivity
access to on-demand high performance compute and connectivity is constrained by (a) supply - there simply isn't enough of it, and (b) physics - data isn’t massless (crazy innit) and doesn’t travel in a straight line
@oklo @NuScale_Power 10/ but there are exciting new models that could help ease some of these practical constraints
- new types of semiconductors are leveraging innovations in materials science, like graphene, to ease supply chain and production bottlenecks to lower costs and innovating in chip… https://t.co/Yx5HX53z7Otwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@oklo @NuScale_Power 11/ and so we come to my favorite topic, cryptocurrency. bitcoin is money backed by energy and compute.
an increasingly digital world will require a native currency for transacting between not only billions of humans but the trillions of AI agents and connected devices
@oklo @NuScale_Power 12/ aside from fueling the digital economy, there's a much larger opportunity at stake for cryptocurrencies and public blockchain networking to provide the substrate for the trillions of dollars of infrastructure investment needed to usher in the future
@oklo @NuScale_Power 13/ we are still in the early days of exploring how crypto primitives can change the unit economics of infrastructure investing
many of the early experiments have not succeeded when it comes to adoption and scale, but have demonstrated the potential of shifting from a corporate… https://t.co/nd8WEj2boEtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@oklo @NuScale_Power 14/ Bitcoin (and PoW Ethereum) have catalyzed billions of dollars of investment in physical infrastructure in the form of ASICs co-located with renewable generational assets (and GPUs) and now support trillions of dollars in annual economic activity with this physical… https://t.co/YUO9aS3pGCtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@oklo @NuScale_Power 15/ i'm excited to continue exploring this intersection, and looking forward to working with companies and projects in the crypto ecosystem to bend the arc of reality in our digital and physical world alike
it's time to build... power plants and data centers!
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1/ thanks to @farokh and the @RugRadio community for having me on the show today! i enjoyed discussing NFT market structure and why i don't care for utility or roadmaps with my JPEGs 🙅♀️
2/ blog post on NFT market microstructure and how it may evolve over time - don't worry, u will be able to explain market microstructure if u just skim it lightly
bonus: you can collect the post as an NFT if you are so inclined, thanks to @viamirror
bitcoin, ethereum, and fully collateralized, dollar asset backed stablecoins (effectively the on-chain banking sector) make up the majority of the market today
2/ more interesting in looking at velocity, or trading volumes as a % of market cap, to understand where the turnover is in current markets
stablecoins have by far the highest velocity (we'll break this down further), followed by Tron (why?), Solana, and Ethereum
3/ stablecoins data is also fascinating
despite calls for its demise from both industry insiders and outsiders, tether is the backbone of crypto markets
despite commanding less than half the stablecoin market cap, the USDT trade pair comprises over 80% of daily trading volume
1/ an explainer on asset liability mismatch and why crypto firms are especially susceptible to this phenomenon due to issues around duration matching and risk management
tl;dr the finänce explanation for celsius, 3AC, and many others struggling
this is a balance sheet ⚖️
2/ unlike tradfi, in crypto, most debt doesn't have a fixed term and requires over-collateralization (you have to post more collateral than the value of your borrowing)
in the last month, a lot of long term debt suddenly became short term debt or even worse, got called
3/ so all of a sudden, millions or in some cases, billions of dollars of long term debt suddenly became short term debt
this changes the *duration* of your liabilities dramatically
let's look at the structure of the assets side of the balance sheet