Bitcoin

05
Mar

Coinbase

In what is one of the most anticipated public offerings of the last few years, Coinbase has filed for direct listing on the NASDAQ. Rather quietly it has become a very big company: 43 million customers worldwide $456 billion in transaction volume to date 1,200 employees (amazingly small) Interestingly, no headquarters. They all work from

26
Feb

Who would be a lender?

Square US financial services company Square reported their full year this week. Bitcoin revenue has gone from a bit of a sideshow to being the single biggest revenue item, by far. Sales grew 9x in 2020 and in their forward looking statement Square announced that in January 2021 CashApp had set a new record for monthly

19
Feb

Water

Water Taken from an address by David Foster Wallace in 2005, the idea is that the most obvious and important realities are often the hardest to see. Everyone has default settings, things they assume are just correct and they never question them. The idea is an excellent one and you can extend it to any corner

12
Feb

Worthless

Cash on Hand To great excitement this week, Tesla allocated $1.5 billion of their Corporate Treasury cash to bitcoin. The excitement did not necessarily extend everywhere though. Here is Nils Pratley, who to my surprise is the Financial Editor of the Guardian (yes, they have one). Irrespective of what you may think of Tesla or

05
Feb

Adios Davos

I went to Davos (on Zoom) A small town in Switzerland rejoices as world leaders don’t visit. Remember Davos? The big pow wow for the rich and famous in the Swiss Alps. Well you haven’t heard about it because this year it happened on Zoom. That’s right, Davos is now called Zoom. Without the private jets, the

29
Jan

Distressed assets

Distressed assets What would you say if I tried to sell you this company: The Basics Revenue: $3.3 trillion Enterprise value: $177 trillion Valuation: 53x revenue Revenue growth: negative Age: 244 years old Debt: at a 70 year high Accounting irregularities The company is very well connected and uses different accounting rules to everyone

21
Jan

Welcome to Wall Street

Grayscale This is what it hitting it out of the park looks like. Grayscale now has $22 billion under management in their cryptocurrency funds, up from $2 billion 12 months ago. Can they get to $100 billion? I think so, faster than people think too. Even more compelling is the nature of the investors. In

14
Jan

America for sale

The end of the empire Much as I don’t like to admit it, the end of the US empire was accurately called 30 years ago by Coca Cola salesman Warren Buffett. In 1990 he raised the alarm about net international investment in America turning negative, noting that America was being “sold out” to foreigners. The path to

07
Jan

A visitor from space

A visit from an alien If an alien visited plant earth and wished to make a purchase, which explanation of money and value would the alien believe? Money 1: Has a publically auditable record of every transaction ever; Has an absolutely known supply at all times in the present and future; Can only be mined by

18
Dec

The Bitcoin Pitch Deck

Bitcoin never had a pitch deck, the code was simply released into the wild and it went from there. As a parting gift for 2020, here is what one might look like.