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22
May

What will it take to make you believe?

A matter of interest A reminder on the US legislative process (or for me, newly installed knowledge). A Sponsor comes up with an idea for a bill. Must be a sitting Senator or Representative. A Committee reviews the bill. They hold hearings and expert advice and then vote if it can proceed to a full

15
May

What you need… is more of us

54-45 Nine votes is the smallest margin yet by which a new Federal Reserve Chair has been approved. Kevin Warsh it is. They don’t normally bother counting, it goes through on a ‘voice vote’ because normally there is consensus. Firstly, Jerome Powell. I liked him more in term two. He did actively stand up to

08
May

Jean-Claude

Remember when 1998 was not the same. The Bank of England had just been given independence in 1997, Tony Blair had just won his first landslide election and the first five years of “New Labour”, as they called themselves, were quite sensible. The Bank had one opportunity to demonstrate their credentials regarding inflation and they

01
May

A warm bed in Grimsby

5.5 First we got GPT 5.5, which has spent the last week proposing all manner of solutions to the Erdős Problems. Terence Tao described one of the solutions as a “meaningful contribution”. He is a notably hard marker when it comes to AI and mathematics, so his comment distills to very high praise indeed. Then

24
Apr

Many worlds

The Quantum Edition This week’s edition is dedicated to the question of quantum computing. If you are here for Euro-Trash, it’s back next week. Many Worlds beyond Copenhagen People throw “quantum computing” around quite casually as though it is just another kind of computer chip. I was promised by an investment banker in 2017 that

17
Apr

When only one thing works

Check for yourself One of the benefits of travel is seeing with your own eyes. Travel to China, and it’s obvious their payments and transport systems are about 10 years ahead of our own. Not that we would read about that locally. China is bad, you see. Travel to Britain, and it’s obvious (at least

27
Mar

A rude guest

4Chan We have talked a bit about the fines levied on American companies by the European Union. Last year, it was their single largest revenue source. How long will America tolerate this? I think we found out this week from a different source. The UK censorship bureau “Ofcom” decided to fine website 4Chan (an anonymous,

20
Mar

Since 1184

Bitcoin A whole week of positive ETF inflows last week. The S&P 500 fell 2.2%, and gold dropped 3% and bitcoin gained over 10% as the crypto market added over US$200B. Why? As with all markets, we don’t really know. But the following ideas are true and may well be contributing. Wars are expensive. Generationally

13
Mar

Making Tax Miserable

Making Tax Miserable To great fanfare the UK Government is about to embark on its ‘Making Tax Digital’ program. The idea is to modernise tax collection and reporting by mandating that taxpayers keep digital records and submit returns on specifically approved software. Large companies already do so but MTD makes this mandatory for every landlord,

06
Mar

London

ETF Flows  A little heartbeat on the ETF flows here from Coinglass. Suffice to say until this week, recent outflows have been negative, but not overwhelming so. The net decline in ETF bitcoin holdings is tiny overall from its peak and does little to explain the price movement. The main factor is older holders selling.