Jason Badeaux

The consequences of the existence of blockchains are thus that, for the first time in human history, we have a real alternative to governments and legal systems for the enforcement of promises. What are the effects this will have on the world?

I found something else surprising about previous energy transitions. Each one later enabled new modes of transport and new materials which were very hard to conceive of during its early phases. In each of the past transitions, the energy source unlocked new distribution technologies and materials that helped drive more adoption for the energy... See more

In our view, efforts like the Cybertruck aren’t really about making money; they are about getting attention and proving that Tesla is one of the world’s most innovative companies, specifically for the purpose of building Tesla’s ability to win support from stakeholders — what we call innovation capital.

Since 2017, Tesla’s capital expenditure per incremental unit of capacity has improved from ~$84,000, when the Model 3 was ramping, to ~$7,700. While these improvements indicate that Tesla could continue to increase margins, the more important takeaway is that capital no longer is a bottleneck limiting its growth. Instead, Tesla should be able to... See more

Over time, the Gigafactory will grow and hopefully fulfill Elon Musk’s dream: achieving complete vertical integration for all Tesla products.

One of the most powerful features of crypto-economic protocols is their ability to create incentive structures that allow anyone in the world to permissionlessly contribute to a set of shared objectives. These incentive structures can be finely tuned to facilitate large-scale coordination to achieve specific goals. This represents a step-function... See more

As I noted in Understanding Token Velocity, the V in the equation of exchange is a huge problem for basically all proprietary payment currencies. Proprietary payment currencies are, generally speaking, susceptible to the velocity problem, which will exert perpetual downwards price pressure.