Davos Late to the party as usual, this was the only accommodation I could find for the WEF gathering in Davos. A mere 8.6 km hike to the conference and $14,000 per night (including breakfast). Pocket change really because non-politicians (all the major CEO’s) are being charged $250,000 to attend the conference, elected representatives go

Predictions Prediction number one then. Marc Andreessen will still be boring in 2024. Here are some more: The second half of the year will be very different to the first. If you were the White House, the message to the Fed would have to be get this done quickly. We need an economy on the

Review of the year It was bad. They I was forced to consider the question this week when I was asked, “who is the eponymous, ‘they’?”. ‘They’ track your data (and then lose it). ‘They’ want to control us. ‘They’ want people to pay more tax. ‘They’ don’t want people to go on strike. To

The state of things On the bench $17k. Behind it lies the separation of money from the state. When asked, most people are quite comfortable that their elected government is in charge of the money supply. They remark, very reasonably, that “who else is going to do it……you?”. It is the right question because whilst

Contagion Next up in the FTX drama is Genesis Trading, perhaps the largest prime broker in the digital asset sector. Genesis is owned by the Digital Currency Group (DCG) who also happen to own the largest bitcoin fund in the world, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). GBTC trades now at a 43% discount to its

Things we cannot say A forbidden topic. It’s just a thought. Emerging from the wreckage of FTX to lead the industry is a Chinese-Canadian guy who bootstrapped a business into a multi-billion dollar business. For the first 12 months of his operation nobody would give him a bank account, so he had to build his

Fried Before we begin, I should make clear that ListedReserve has no exposure to FTX or the FTT token. This week’s drama being a good lesson in why segregated custodial arrangements for digital assets are vital. I suppose they will make a movie from this one day. In the battle of the crypto-billionaires this week

Risk-free These are nervous times for investors looking for shelter. Taking up the challenge is BlackRock, who when they aren’t buying all the family homes in America, also operate the iShares Treasury ETF. Their website provides helpful resources showing exactly what historic returns would be for plucky bond investors. In circumstances like these, capital preservation

Burst “Bitcoin, briefly the world’s favourite cryptocurrency, is in trouble. It plummeted from a peak of around $33 per unit in June to just $2.51.” Quite the fall it was too, 95% in four months. Still, it didn’t die, blocks kept coming, the monetary policy stayed exactly the same as it always was and always