Vanguard (again) December 2024. We are never doing it. December 2025. We are doing it. I was impressed when they held the line last December and said no. Money talks though. Clients want the asset class, advisors want the asset class and Vanguard had no choice. We have had several months of ‘nobody wants bitcoin’

UK Budget   I’ll tax them on their dog Tax them on their cat I’ll tax the man, and his wife On this and that  I’ll tax them when they fly I’ll tax them when they die  Some extra pennies, you know When their loved ones die I’ll tax them when they drive however hard they

Unhinged Cue outrage. I have mixed views on Elon, I’ve gone from not really believing in him (or Tesla) to just being wrong and him being right. Elon was accused of being “completely unhinged” after his remarks about Optimus, which included that it will ultimately be better than any human medical surgeon. He is unhinged

Still nothing Gleefully posted this week by Mr “software is eating the world” Marc Andreessen. He first wrote that line in 2011 in an article for the Wall Street Journal. It does not appear to be behind the paywall, so you can read it and weep (like I did) that you didn’t pay more attention

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