I read the recent National Academies paper[1], and basically they say solar engineering is credible, high altitude sulfur is the only one of three ways that is known to be effective, and they want $100M over 5 yrs to study it. Basically, Luke is going to do that in 1 yr with $1M; they make a number of assumptions that I think do not help them (only considering airplane dispersal, for example). And their work on community building and further research would be helpful, but we just don't have 5 years to wait to begin to start on the problem.
Here's a specific example about the value crypto can create. 20x higher savings rate on a US dollar deposit.
My CapitalOne savings account pays 0.4%; you can open an account with ZeFi today and get 7% - 20 times more - with the same ACH in/out you're used to.[0] If you go full crypto and stay on-chain, you can find the USDC coin - a 1:1 stable coin - paying interest above 12% at many DEXes[1]. The USDC coin is like a mutual fund, it has extremely liquid high quality holdings, is audited, and is exchangeable 1:1 for actual US Dollars at any time [2].
Even better, some of these options let you keep control of your assets (non-custodial).
Because of this, it's inherently obvious to me that the US banks will be completely disrupted by crypto; in a good way for us consumers.
Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of hype and dubious projects, we're in an asset bubble with intense FOMO. I try to ignore that and think about the promise of crypto.
As compared to equities. Remember, equities took decades before the academic frameworks were established. _Gentlemen own bonds_ was the wisdom, all the Wall Street traders were the Brooklyn street kids, not he Ivy bankers. Present value sums up all future cash flows and gives it a price today - this is very misunderstood, you find reporters saying 'and they're not even making any money!' but we're valuing the total funds made in the total lifetime, discounted to today (I sometimes think if they'd called it financial relativity or finance-time it would have been cooler). I find it useful to try to think about where the comparison object was at this point in its development.
Early stage investments are not available to most. You must be an accredited investor - i.e. already have a certain amount of wealth, you must be connected - this favors certain schools or ethnographic groups. With tokens, you now have access. You can actually participate early along with everyone else. You can join the Discord, participate, and see it through all its stages. This is tremendously powerful, scary, and transformational.
Cryptocurrencies have the dollar figure, but the real value I'm seeing is in the organization and management structures. You are seeing transparency and participation that just isn't how business is usually done, or maybe ever was. If you join the KLIMA Discord, pop into their #policy channel, they are literally having open C-level board strategy discussions you can participate in.[0]
Tokens now are being used for governance and ownership. This is the DAO concept again, which functions something like stockholders getting a vote on certain things, but in crypto it is being pushed further to have 'only' that group run everything. The other strange thing is, to get these tokens, often you have to be a member or customer. There is employee ownership, and customer ownership. Which is unusual and valuable.
I'm on the pro-crypto side, but the US dollar has more than consumer confidence, it has the largest armed forces the world has ever seen. So a better comparison is something like gold, I think, that has value because we say it has value (it's shiny! and rare...)... which is fine, just different.
I'm not "anti-crypto", but reason that I won't touch it is that it's not stable. With dollars, I know that the money will have a roughly constant value across time. Cryptocurrencies do the opposite of that. By the measure of stability, gold is also preferable to crytocurrency.
If I were a speculator, that instability would be attractive. But I'm not.
The net value to society is likely negative since the impact on the target is large, and a society that allowed such things may see time horizons constrict.
You raise some good points, though. I personally am probably coming with an unspoken understanding that 'given that something fits into a legal and moral structure, and we accept a certain definition of using something by choice as value' then paying more for that thing implies more value. Facebook is probably a good example of something in the grey area, connecting people has value, but generating demand is questionable, spreading misinformation is likely a large net negative.
Monetary value reflects demand, but demand does not always reflect utility or goodness. There is a demand for atrocity.
The construction “NFTs are highly priced, thus they are desired, thus they are good” is full of holes. If I have a phobia of spiders, and a corresponding desire to eradicate them, does it follow that eradicating spiders is good? If I got my wish, I and the rest of the world would be worse off for it, but my desire exists none the less.
Seems to assume carbon emissions from electricity will stay constant, yet that is likely to fall which reduces the impact in one dimension (cost remains).[0][1]
I’m glad you went direct. As a small retail investor it allows me to have access, and buying from employees and giving them some liquidity feels good like what a market should do.
They also use restricted supply to keep the price high. Everyone’s locked up, no supply, it’s no wonder the price often jumps.
Curious what you would say about pricing startup raises? There’s a line of logic which says don’t price too high, you never want a down round and that keeps the risk low.
Yes, you've hit on the other advantages of a direct listing! Retail investors get the same treatment as big funds instead of being shut out which I love. Everyone's also allowed to sell right away which so you know you have full market information AND it's much better for the employees.
RE startup raises these are all what I call champagne problems (is it possible to win too much?). My philosophy is to aim for a little above (eg 20-30%) "market price" for what similar companies are raising at. If you go too much beyond that (eg 2-3x) then it can start to set the wrong expectations and it can get difficult to beat in the future even if you're doing well. It's not great to have misalignment with your shareholders (eg the investors who are now partial owners of your business). There is another train of thought that says to get the highest valuation you can, investors are professionals and will deal with it. So maybe I'm not bold enough. Either way, funding markets, particularly for startups now, are incredibly rich. They're probably 3x the valuation when we did venture/growth stage funding so you'll be in great shape no matter what.
