Format is still hot garbage, but we are taking steps forward!
My cop out quote: “It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
^ AKA I have been lazy but at least I am not using it as an excuse to post nothing!
Articles and things I liked from this week:
"I’m hoping it will bust,” Fama said, “because if it doesn’t, you have to start all over with monetary theory.”
“If I am an oligarch and I want to hide some money, I think that bitcoins look pretty attractive to me.”
When asked about government intervention, Fama predicts that the government will be pressured to give bail outs if cryptocurrencies “blow up.” “If you’re a libertarian, though, the way I am, you say the government should never do anything,” Fama said
Pretty hilarious series of quotes that I am sure will be funny in hindsight. Especially saying that if Bitcoin does not bust then all of monetary theory is garbage. For those who have spent the time to understand what is happening, it is kind of like yeah duh.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-most-successful-people-take-a-think-day-heres-how/485746
Taking a think day is a must, much of this weekend was dedicated to slowing things down and catching up on the tasks and thoughts I have been putting off
What a garbage link eh? ^ Could have put a different link, but it is interesting to see all of the tracers.
“As intelligence gets cheaper, we will throw more brute-force intelligence at every one of the world’s key problems. In a world with massively lower costs, instead of becoming more efficient, we often throw more resources at the problem.”
Like Chamath said on All-In this past week WRT Deepseek, necessity is the mother of invention. When companies are fat and happy there is less drive to innovate. When you are resource-constrained, you find a way.
https://www.lynalden.com/january-2025-newsletter/
Lyn is the GOAT and all of her articles and podcasts are packed with signal
This is on 3 things she is “not fading”
Energy density
It’s no accident that human lifetimes and human populations both exploded in the late 1800s and early 1900s when oil discovery and usage ramped up. And it directly contributed to the rapid growth of technology, because it’s what allowed the vast majority of people to stop working in agriculture and start working in other fields that progressed our technology, medicine, industry, and so forth.
In addition, many types of heavy industry including cement, steel, glass, and chemical manufacturing require high heat in their production process. Dense sources of energy usually produce heat which can be converted to electricity or used directly, whereas solar and wind power produce electricity which then has to be converted back into heat if it’s to be used for those industries (which is a lossy process).
The second thing I will not fade is the quantity and quality of computation that will be coming, and the importance of being on the right side of that computation
Third thing was network effects - I would agree
Separate from Lyn, here were some charts I thought were interesting from Bilello:
The least affordable housing market in history has caused both demand and supply to plummet, and here’s the result: fewer US existing homes were sold in 2024 than any year since 1995.
Economists now see a 22% likelihood of a US recession occurring in the next 12 months, the lowest probability since January 2022.
Individuals own an estimated 70% of Bitcoin’s total supply…
“In response to questions, China’s central bank said that the opacity of crypto trading, its low costs and the speed of cross-border transfers presented major challenges for fighting money laundering, but that the government was expanding efforts to combat the problem.“
“China will “maintain a high-pressure stance against the use of cryptocurrencies in money laundering and for the illegal transfer of funds,” the central bank said.”
Never heard of bond vigilantes, or when I did hear it, I didn’t know what it meant.
“It was in the wake of this experience, in November 1994, that James Carville, Clinton’s legendary political advisor, ruefully remarked: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.””
“To explain the savage reaction of the markets there are two main explanations. One is that the markets took Greenspan’s decision to raise rate as a signal that the Fed had inside information about future inflation risks to which the market was not privy. If the Fed was raising rates then it was time to sell bonds. The alternative explanation is that the Fed’s intervention raised uncertainty about the future course of policy and this raised the premium that investors required to justify holding bonds of any kind.”
“Both are plausible. They are hard to distinguish from each other. Neither neatly conforms to Yardeni’s image of dauntless bond investors enforcing the financial law where government authority has collapsed.”
Book rec Maestro - The story is well told by Bob Woodward in his gushing account of Greenspan’s time at the Fed.
Deepseek FAQ
Basically the reality and predictability are less important than the perception
Problem with Distillation:
It lets competitors piggyback on the expensive investments of leading AI companies (e.g., OpenAI), undermining their competitive edge.
From a tweet thread:
I don’t think there’s anything magical here. I really think they just made 2 massive cost-cutting innovations, which let them run more experiments, which led them to reverse engineer o1 faster.
https://egodeath.capital/blog/too-big-to-fail-banks-amp-bitcoin-custody
Bitcoin so compelling and transformative—but it also places the digital asset at the risk of massive disruption when traditional financial institutions attempt to apply their usual business models of fractional reserves, under-collateralized lending, and, most concerning of all, rehypothecation.
Rehypothecation—the practice of financial institutions reusing clients’ collateral (in this case, Bitcoin) to finance their own trading and lending activities—has repeatedly proven disastrous in the crypto space
The fundamental mismatch between the irreversibility of Bitcoin’s supply cap and the “flexibility” of rehypothecation means that uncovered positions will inevitably lead to defaults.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
The second coming line:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Random Thought: “Best thing since sliced bread” A la Means siblings, Fiat Food, Ultra Processed People, RFK, MAHA, et. al. Maybe sliced bread wasn’t such a good thing.
Overheard in the lunchroom: “The David Effect” - The response to me eating healthy high-protein foods for lunch at work causes other people to be more mindful of what they are eating. Nice.
Preston Pysh presentation distilling Saylor’s MSFT pitch
Starts off with a great story about Victor hugo - ? and !
Interesting thought that Knowledge transmitted is dependent on sender and receiver, not about the numer of bits transmitted, but the context
Conditioning of the receivers past experience was vital to understand the context
He does a really great job at breaking down all of the points in Saylor’s ultra-condensced pitch to the Microsoft board at the end of last year.
Podcasts from this week:
Hey David, maybe relax on the podcasts? It comes in waves, sometimes it is audiobooks, sometimes it is podcasts, and sometimes I just chill out. (I rarely just chill out)
As in the past two weeks, I am playing around with different AI tools to try to save me some time in formatting. It is ugly and oftentimes wrong for what I am looking for, but I just think it is interesting to see what kind of outputs I can get based on my inputs.
Mt note, if any, are below the three bullet points preceded by a DH. Most of these are not polished, just little notes taken here and there where I thought there was something worth remembering. Not to say that podcasts with less DH notes have less value, there was maybe just less new information that struck me, or perhaps I was lazy when I was listening to them, who’s to say?
Bitcoin Related:
Jack Mallers: Corporate Lobbying Threatens U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Why Bitcoin is Honest Money
DH notes
Mallers is such a beast
The concept of money as stored time and energy is pretty profound
I am glad that he exists in the space and is so fired up
BTC219: The Big Print w/ Lawrence Lepard
We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network
DH notes
Lepard seems like a pretty chill guy
I am excited for his book to come out since it seems like it will be an easy orange pill for people who are several layers above the rabbit hole I have gone down over the past five years
Genuinely hopeful that things could change at some point
There is a good alternative for the first time in history which rocks
#575: The Big Print with Lawrence Lepard
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
DH notes
Another hit of Lepard as he is doing the circuit - covered the main points above and on the post from last week
SELF CUSTODY, SECURITY, & THE QUANTUM THREAT TO BITCOIN w/ Alex Leishman
What Bitcoin Did
DH notes
Leishman is a beast, full-stop
Meme coins good for establishing river credibility at the extreme
Inh protocols - worth thinking about for DH and others
001 WHAT'S BITCOIN? Part 1 with Adam Back & Peter Todd
All In Bitcoin
DH notes
Nothing too insightful here, but I have not heard Adam and Peter talk about Bitcoin much and they are true OG’s
This was a Q and A where the host would ask about a specific question and then Adam or Peter would answer in a thorough way, there was not a lot of back and forth or conversation so ended up kind of being meh relative to what I am used to
#571: We’re Gonna Buy Bitcoin And China Will Pay For It with Parker Lewis
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
DH notes
debt recap -
2007 53tn dollar denominated debt in us system pre crisis and 900bn in existence of base money
of 900 bn, only 350-400 bn was in banks, money avail to banking system
banking system leveragedabout 150 to 1, that is leverage
fed inc supply of base money by 3.6 tn, 3 series of qe to take balance sheet from 900 bn to 4.5 tn
2007 to 2019 started taking certain reserves out, somewhere between 7-800 bn, squeezed banks more because dollar for dollar out of banks and not all of those reserves are sitting in the banks
took out 33% of liquidity of banks since not all fed qe
sep of 2019 repo market crisis, int rates in overnight window went from 2-3% to 10%
pre covid, was inception of wave of money printing between 2020 and 2022
5tn created during course of covid lockdown, liquidity crisis started pre covid
4tn in reserves pre covid, to about 9tn reserves post covid
spring of 2023 wave of bank crises
svb failed first republic failed, signature, silvergate for different reasons
fed put in btfp program to lend at par even if treasuries under water
began to put money back into the system
once they quelled fear, peak of 9 trillion reserves, started taking money out again, about 2tn out 2022 to today, 7 tn
reason they have to put money in is to quell liquidity crisis which is a credit crisis where as they take dollars out there are fewer dollars relative to the same amount of debt and then everyone figures it out they start heading for the exits it's essentially re-leveraging the system
so if QE is designed to work by first quelling a liquidity crisis/credit crisis by providing more liquidity it's also designed to actually induce the expansion of credit
101.5tn based on report fed put out end of 2024
system wide federal state local corporate debt you know Financial non-financial Consumer Debt auto loans mortgages student loans credit card
so thinking about it - pre-financial crisis we started with credit problem/credit crisis too much debt not enough dollars a 52 trillion now that system is nearly doubled
101.5 trillion of debt stacked against 7 trillion actual dollars as base money
functionally what happens is the Fed goes from 9 trillion to 7 trillion the amount of debt doesn't go away
debt continuing to expand, running $2 trillion deficits, then as they take the base money out that 9 trillion going to 7
there's fewer dollars that are being competed for not just by the debt that exists but everyone in the economy
think about it simplistically of debt to Dollars it's functionally re-leveraging the system and 100 divided 9 versus 100 divided by 7 is a significant difference
so when we think about credit card delinquencies or commercial loan delinquencies or the 10y going up when they're lowering short-term rates the way that I think about it is the only thing that can influence the supply side of dollar interest rates is the supply of dollars
and the FED controls that so while they may be "reducing the short end of the curve" like the the the overnight borrowing rates they're still taking money out of the system
up until this last month reserves provided by the FED were continuing to decline that more than anything is driving interest rates higher across the board because there are fewer dollars competing for more and more debt that exists
and competition for those dollars becomes Zero Sum which influences interest rates
thinking about that relative to what Trump admin can do pales in comparison to what the fed can do
Fed maybe doesnt understand cause and effect
Looking at inflation and not focused on leverage in system
08 - werent watching mortgages, that damn broke
2019, maybe watching mortgages now, but then overnight window broke
2023, raising interest rates, this caused liquidation of assets for banks, their reserves were treasuries, banks had to sell assets to meet withdrawing deposits, had to realize massive losses that fed created by hiking int rates
Impossible to know where, maybe they have a plan for x or y or z, but there are cracks everywhere
Every dollar of credit is competing for the reserves for dollars, they remove dollars, then each individual market and market in totality have higher interest rates because overall market is competing for fewer dollars that exist that are able to lend
Which market breaks first is impossible to break because it is a function of the system
JP Morgan pulled from the repo Market went into Cash in 2019
it's Market driven, so maybe someone is supplying funding to roll over commercial loans amd they decide nope no longer doing this then that market breaks
there is an issue if nobody wants to hold long term bonds and issuance moves shorter and shorter
Expansion of public debt accounted for around 50% of the 50tn
Federal debt around 12tn in 2007
Fed debt expanding to around 36tn now
If amount of debt contracts, that money was going to someone in the economy
They are going to have to monetize the debt to control interest rates
the potential end of the fed put
btc very underowned so unlikely to be safe haven asset
2008 response relative to 2020 response was big shift, i.e. get ahead of the problem and dump liquidity
#567: You’ve Been Lied To Your Whole Life! with WAR MODE
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
DH notes
This rocked
Probably the perfect orange pill for dudes
Not sure what the female equivalent would be for an orange pill, probably something that Nat Brunell has put together on Coin Stories
Everyone knows that something is wrong, but it is complex to get at the root cause
General/News/Conspiracy/Other:
(not sure why this says 2?) E558 Katt Williams
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
DH notes
Having a plan and goals keeps you happy and makes life worth living
You have exactly the amount of time you need to do what you need. If you want to live every day like an adventure, live like you are dying
I could die tomorrow what would I need to do today - dead people ran out of time
Excellence is difficult, to be mediocre its no pressure
I dont want you to remember one joke, I want you to remember me
The jokes are secondary, we like this guy, we want to hear what this guy has to say about the topics of his choosing
Water is a sentient being - katt
Talking about living in a simulation kinda thing of comparing it to playing videogames and how those have evolved
Jesus on the mountaintop - you have nothing to offer me
#892 - Kyle Forgeard - The Rise Of NELK, Donald Trump & Global Chaos
DH notes
I have always really liked Kyle
He is clearly very intelligent and just seems to honestly represent himself a majority of the time
He is a grinder with his head on straight and is genuinely funny
It has been awesome to watch his rise as I have been a fan for over a decade
Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
DeepSeek Panic, US vs China, OpenAI $40B?, and Doge Delivers with Travis Kalanick and David Sacks
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
DH notes
Travis talking about the future of different parts of the economy was pretty insightful
Specifically in fully fleshing out trains of thought, such as x is going to happen, if we know x is going to happen, y needs to happen, for y to happen, we need to have z, but q needs to be solved before we have z so x is constrained by q
Ray Dalio | The All-In Interview
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
DH notes
It has been interesting to watch Dalio’s progression and adoption of BTC in recent weeks
He is an odd duck for sure
He has called however many of however many -n of the last recessions and seems to be a perma bear for societal collapse
Eventually, he has to die or be right so we will see which comes first
I do really appreciate how well-versed he is in historical periods to draw parallels
Chamath Palihapitiya: Zuckerberg, Rogan, Musk, and the Incoming “Golden Age” Under Trump
The Tucker Carlson Show
DH notes
Interesting to hear Chamath go on Tucker
He is an interesting cat and I think his family upbringing deeply shaped who he is today
A lot of people really dislike him because of the way that he is or in his participation in the SPAC craze
I think he tries to be very thoughtful and has made some great calls over the years
There are clear periods where he gets over his skis in other domains, but he is super bright and I liked hearing him in this context
Curt Mills: Trump Can Save America or Wage Another War, but He Can’t Do Both. Here’s Why.
The Tucker Carlson Show
DH notes
This undercurrent in American foreign policy over the past however many decades has become increasingly clear to those paying attention
I.e. it is really profitable for the US to go to war, and they will try to shape the narrative in the media in order to garner support among the american people
This was pretty egregious in the early 2000s and a collosal waste of money and human lives
I think the neo-con agenda is quite dangerous and I am glad that people are being more vocal about it in Trump 2.0
I am a moron on most geopolitical topics but I like to hear what the zeitgeist is in different spheres
Matt Taibbi: All the Top Secret Information Trump Is Releasing & What He Should Declassify Next
The Tucker Carlson Show
https://open.spotify.com/episode/751xzxtyonVO7aw7wii1EK?si=26c0ff30b39a4ca3
DH notes
I (DH) need to learn more about the church committee hearings
Biggest things Matt cares about:
Who was president - great question
Nordstream - i need to look into
Covid situation - rabbit hole
New institutions of info - potentially problematic
Collapse of trust in institutions - definitely problematic - what is the way out
For covid why was it coordinated? What was the goal? - never thought about it this way but seriously why was it?
Learning about the tactics discussed to sway public opinion and hear what concerns were - this is fascinating since the playbook is out there for people who were paying attention
Russia gate and making up fake stories to end people's careers - need to learn more about this but pretty crazy and seems like a coup to overthrow a sitting president
#458 – Marc Andreessen: Trump, Power, Tech, AI, Immigration & Future of America
Lex Fridman Podcast
DH notes
Marc is fun to listen to
He sometimes has some insensitive takes and I am not sure how much he is able to speak candidly and how much of these podcasts are genuine/what the motivation for him is
That being said, I have listened to pretty much all of his spots over the past few months
#790: Chris Sacca — How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms and Getting Into Good Trouble
The Tim Ferriss Show
DH notes
Mentors overrated, specifically look for qualities not the whole package
Establish a family creed, what does it mean to be a hoffman?
“If some fucking kid is home taking notes on this episode, I need pithier quotes” (this cracked me up)
Q1? Q2? No qfriday - great quote
Ignore typos - DH needs to revisit this list and see what these books actually are and how to spell people’s names, but a task for another day:
Chuck closterman?
Read tyler cowen noah pinion dk thompson and ziby and ethan mollack
In generations gene twangy
The coming wave sooliman
The end of the world is just the beginning peter zahan
The fourth turning van neistat?
Home grown jeffrey toobin? On time mcvey
Stolen focus
Meditation for mortals
Rejection by tony toolamootah?
Jon ronson
Robin sloan fiction
Wool series
The 5 Types of Wealth: Sahil Bloom On Why Time, Friends, Mind & Body Always Come Before Money
The Rich Roll Podcast
DH notes
Make the unconscious stories you tell yourself conscious
The Indian idea of cycles in history and a circle of destruction coming before rebirth or the idea of the Phoenix or roomie talking about the wound is the place where the light comes from or something like that thinking about how you need pain for growth and to find growth
Uncomfy to ask the questions when you are not having a dark moment
Harder to be on a good path that isnt yours than it is to be on a bad path
Bad path screams at you every day
What do I know for sure that just aint so?
Challenge your operating system
Challenging life moments and change
Chasing external markers of success so that I could wake up and say I made it
If you are successful, is this it?
When your life is out of alignment and your energy is out of alignment nothing is possible, when it is in alignment, everything suddenly falls into place like it should
Later is another word for never
Your life has seasons
Maybe when younger money is super important?
Think about what scoreboard you are using for your life
I want to wake up and be excited to live my life
having a north star - tom hanks in the window
You can do a thing and create an outcome
Mental masturbation with self help and reading, shorten the gap between information and taking action
We get a dopamine hit from information
Inspiration from information is perishable and makes you think you accomplished something
Self help books all work if you do them
Accountability is important
People you surround yourself with - you will rise to their level
When you are truly listening to someone you disappear
Level one listening is me listening where you are talking and I am thinking about myself in my own head level two is me listening where it is all about you
The way to be liked Always saying yes to everything never setting boundaries Avoiding hard conversations letting things slide versus by doing those things, the people who care about you. You’ll earn their love and respect.
There’s a difference between time and energy where if you spend a lot of time with somebody, but your energy is elsewhere. It doesn’t really count, but you have a lot of energy and a short amount of time and it would be more impactful.
The reality is, you are going to lose friends when you change the way that you’re living
You’ll do great in your life and your career if you create value for everyone you are around
The importance of trust and optimizing for being a node of trust in your life that is where there is sustained value over time that can be accrued
It matters more about the trendline when you zoom out the day-to-day fluctuations don’t matter the trendline. You’re on now if it’s the right shape, even if somebody is ahead of you and is flat, you will pass them so focus on the trendline.
Focus on the little things solving one small problem each day incremental
The Martian when Matt Damon says you solve one problem and then another problem and then the next one small problems and then eventually you get home
Josh Waitzkin: The Art of Learning & Living Life
DH notes
Great chess players look at much less but look in the most potent directions
Not looking at 50 moves
Instead of learning specific principles of chess, for example, the 64 squares, you can learn the principles with thematic interconnectedness and be able to apply lessons more universally
Preconscious and post conscious artist or competitor
Fearlessness isn’t a thing it’s how one works with fear. Fear is OK but not fear of fear
Dynamic quality a la robert persig
Priming the unconscious with the most important question before bed or moments of thought in the shower, leaning into the tension a bit of that question and then returning to normal
Recognizing that it is easy to become that most important question
Living one’s life as a work of art - focusing on quality