Jason Badeaux

Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

We refer to this thesis as “proof of physical work.” Protocols that fit this thesis incentivize people to do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure. Relative to traditional forms of capital formation for building physical infrastructure, these permissionless and credibly-neutral protocols:1. Can build infrastructure faster—in many... See more

Each energy transition has enabled massive improvements to existing materials (wrought iron and later steel made using coal), created entirely new materials (polymers from oil-refined petrochemicals) and/or made low-cost manufacturing viable at scale (aluminum using electricity).

An example of Tesla’s manufacturing innovation is its use of giant mechanical presses that can save substantial manufacturing time by forging single car bodies and individual car panels alongside its near-fully automated production with little human handling from beginning to end. Tesla’s different approach to auto manufacturing starts with single... See more

It's unfair to judge Ethereum (which launched 7 years ago) or Solana (which launched 2 years ago), both of which do claim to enable "use cases", by Bitcoin's 13-year history. Smart contract platforms are a different technology than blockchains, even if they are colloquially used interchangeably. Many major projects on Ethereum, have only a few... See more

A system is self-sustaining if it would continue to function normally in the indefinite absence of its creators.

He also uses what we call “impression amplifiers” to get stakeholders on board. For example, when Musk stands on stage and reveals the Cybertruck, he doesn’t just talk about the new idea, he materializes it, putting it into physical form to convince skeptics (he also did this when he parked a Space X rocket in front of the National Air and Space... See more

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