On bullshit in investing

Why does it matter? Everything is falling apart. Terra collapsed largely thanks to its token design. Projects that attracted millions or billions of dollars with the promise of absurd APYs are learning the truth of the old adage, “Easy come, easy go.” The regulators are coming. Tokens that were worth a lot of fiat a couple weeks ago are worth a lot... See more

The US kept interest rates at near zero from 2009 to 2022. This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI). This came at a time of no regulation of tech and an accepted culture in busin... See more

Is it just about the money, and does that matter? Web3 is absolutely a gold rush. People are very desperate for money (quite quickly) doing what they enjoy. Even if many entrants into crypto "do not fundamentally care about distributed trust models," an attractive alternative would be one where the user base grows to care.

The first part isn’t entirely unfair; scams and ponzi schemes are everywhere, and it seems clear that we are in the middle of an ever-inflating bubble. It’s also the case that an entire set of legitimate use cases are in reality regulatory arbitrage; crypto advocates are far too quick to ascribe all of the issues with the current monetary system to... See more

For all the talk about how crypto is changing the world, the vast majority of token-based projects are short term games that structurally devolve into glorified pyramid schemes. Inflated expectations lead to the classic boom-bust cycle where speculative intent runs ahead of reality, and eventually, it all falls down.