Player Piano I have not been helped in this analysis by reading Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 book, Player Piano. It imagines a future dominated by machines. Paul Krugman, referring to the book, argued earlier this year that new technology shifts jobs rather than destroys them. I’m not so sure. Thinking machines are not the same as

Haircut I had not fully appreciated the impact of synthetic diamonds on the wholesale diamond price. My barber, an expert on many topics, told me about it. Down almost 50% from their covid peak and falling all the time. I did a bit of digging and found this McKinsey Report on the state of the

Collateral This evening, when you return home, someone is in your house. We will call her Jane. Jane claims it is her house and has always been her house and decides not to let you in. You call the police, who arrive and check their records (which are limited regarding ownership). There is something that

Still important This was rather unhelpful on a Saturday morning. It precipitated one of the biggest liquidation cascades seen across this sector. The numbers are variously exotic but it is certain that billions of dollars of leveraged positions were wiped out. For scale, it was 10x the size of the FTX wipe-out. Shortly thereafter, prices

Both ways You cannot have it both ways. We talk all the time about the collapsing value of fiat currencies, so bitcoin touching an ‘all time high’ in the week is a purely nominal measure. We know this because in Turkey and Venezuela it has all time highs frequently week because those currencies are in

Yotta It was July 2021. Moneybits covered the decline in the bitcoin mining hash rate that resulted from the Chinese mining ban. The hash rate dropped towards 100m TH/s. Today, just over four years later, that enormous number is 10x as large. We had this to say at the time: That is exactly what did

Stocks I am suspicious of the public markets. They have become a soup kitchen for retail clients to eat once the main meal is over. Perhaps the best example on a foodie theme is Beyond Meat. They raised their first private round in 2011. A few years prior to listing, they raised more money to

The Holistic View A $71 billion corporate treasury puts Michael Saylor at number five overall. Given the scheduled CAPEX of the three above him he might go past them before too long. The open question really is whether Bitcoin counts as a corporate treasury asset? The current answer seems to be no. Late last week

The Turing Test Turing called it the Imitation Game. He argued that asking “can machines think?” was “too meaningless to deserve discussion.” Instead, he devised something definitive. The Players: (A) A man. (B) A woman. (C) An interrogator (of either sex). The Setting: The interrogator is in a separate room from the man and the

Jackson Hole Not exactly convenient, Jackson Hole. I’ve often wondered why the Federal Reserve decamps to the middle of Wyoming every year when their head office is on the other side of the country. It turns out that in the early 80s, the hosts of the conference wanted to attract then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.