LC

https://michael08.medium.com/why-visa-and-mastercard-will-continue-to-reign-supreme-in-an-increasingly-digital-world-5c4a9adf0a0e

I find the transactional improvement argument a more attractive investment thesis compared to the "store of value" argument. Question then is, what is the most direct investment vehicle to express that thesis? I would guess ethereum?

Or, for the visually-minded:

Thanks Cubs - appreciate the commentary.

Yes but it's a psychological thing. It "feels better" to own 3 shares @ 300/ea rather than 0.3 shares @ 3,000/ea.

Quite a sensationalized title and only if you extrapolate November 2017's monthly 25% energy growth rate over 3 years (as that part of the article mentions). The full analysis is found here: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption Which estimates that today, the bitcoin network uses about as much energy as Chile. On a per-transaction basis, each bitcoin transaction uses 741 kWH of energy as of 2020, up from 686 kWH in 2019. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/) By comparison, 741 kWH would power approximately 497,000 transactions on Visa's network. Some further figures: Bitcoin uses ~78 terawatt hours of energy as its current run-rate. JP Morgan used 2 terawatt hours of energy in 2019.

A tech question: At capacity, does incremental "mining" become more difficult? E.g. would the fee paid to the miner in your above scenario need to increase as each subsequent transaction costs slightly more resources to execute over the blockchain?

Well, who is being disingenuous now? :D The finance industry does a lot more than clear transactions. I am curious on your thoughts on whether you think eventual concentration of crypto-mining resources is a potential risk.

This is a great question and one I never thought of - and I would be curious to hear the responses. It's not just computing resources either. Electricity (and the heat it generates), not to mention the high performance processors required (already putting a strain on the GPU market) and the requirements needed to build those. Then you need space for datacenters, engineers to link and manage the operation. At some point market forces would take over and specialized groups will emerge to manage this. So now while the ledger itself may be decentralized, the group or groups with all the expertise and processing power will be centralized. This creates a new slew of problems. All this to replicate what bookies have been doing for millennia (based on an aforementioned system of trust - and enforced by some metaphorical broken knees) seems like a bit of a stretch.

More BABA - $239 They are certainly under some scrutiny. Jack Ma's pseudo fall-from-grace, the regulatory probe, Ant's shelved listing, etc. Is the thesis here a generic mean reversion? E.g. Competition is overblown, the underlying business can continue to generate meaningful profits, the regulatory/news-driven "cloud" will one day lift, etc.?

Looks OK but still not as nice as their previous offering. I migrated to Yahoo Finance for casual market information, I like that I can add select fields to the table view of a customized portfolio.

Gotta push your luck, Sanjeev! Thanks for sharing. If I really wanted to stir the pot, I'd compare Charlie and Tiger. Both can afford drivers, eh? ;D ;D

Perhaps based on his inaction 1 year ago and the general impression he left on me was that he overestimated the effect of the pandemic. Hey may have been kicking himself (gently) for missing an opportunity and/or misjudging the situation, and is therefore a bit humble on the topic? Just one of many potential explanations.

Merci

Can you recommend a good screener? Or do you just DIY it with a list of SPACs and a google sheet or some other means.

Outside of the blockchain transaction technology, how is cryptocurrency different from something like gold? Why not just remove the t+2 settlement timing and trade fractional positions in GLD futures?

I don’t agree with quite a bit of CMs beliefs, but in some senses I prefer him over WB because of his tremendous and often blunt transparency.

https://redcanary.com/blog/clipping-silver-sparrows-wings/

Do we have demographic information on this group? A theory that is worth investigating in my opinion is an aging population that was working longer into their lifetime, who "finally decided to retire" in response to an extreme stimulus (COVID).

https://paydayreport.com/amazon-offers-2000-resignation-bonuses-to-bust-union-drive/

Agreed. The founding principle of the internet (the free flow of information) is being assaulted on many fronts. Did you read the piece Liberty posted re: Apple/App Store a week or so back? It is a similar vein. Corporations are carving out chunks of the internet, building walls (and/or paying regulators to do it for them), and charging entrance/exit fees. A rhetorical question to debate internally (at the risk of over-politicizing), if the internet was not created by government and academia, would it ever have looked the way it does? If corporations "invented" the internet, would it ever have been so widely adopted, or would their tollgates have prevented adoption in the first place?

COBF/Kitten themed red headbands? Yes.

The best advice is most difficult to implement. Well said!

Preach.

Thanks for the correction - but would you say it has a huge impact? The model provided from Ferrovial assumes a ~2.75% price increase annually (in line with CPI essentially). Nothing to sneeze at, but I don't think it makes (or breaks) the investment case here. Very good point on the HOV lanes.