Have you ever told yourself, “When I have ____, I’ll ___,” only to move that target after you get it?
This weekend, I watched I Care A Lot on Netflix and I highly recommend it. It’s an entertaining story masking a hyperbolic critique of the state of our culture and the bastardized form of capitalism in America today.
We, the viewers, find ourselves with a Sophie’s Choice: cheer for a horrible con artist who takes advantage of the elderly and destroys families, or cheer for a Russian mafia boss who deals in sex trafficking.
The con artist is a self-proclaimed “lioness” who takes advantage of our legal system by acting as a legal “guardian” to unsuspecting elderly. She manipulates all those around her in order to bleed these elders’ assets dry. She’s calculating, cold, and cares purely about the bottom line. To her, the human carnage that she leaves in her wake is just a necessary externality on the way to the top.
Her monologues serve as a commentary on the current state of affairs - kill or be killed, zero-sum, win at all costs, predator or pray - that is her view on our economic system.
She has ample opportunity to get out when the getting’s good, but she’s not only addicted to the spoils, she’s addicted to the game.
These days, I often find myself looking at markets - equities + crypto - wondering if I should be getting out while the getting’s good too. But number just keep going up.
I can’t shake the sense that we’re living through the “crack-up boom” of all US-dollar denominated assets.
A fiat currency runs on faith— faith that its stewards will fight to maintain its purchasing power. Just as faith in all US institutions has diminished of late, so has faith in US dollar hegemony.
This is taking an economic toll, but it is also taking, in my opinion, a more substantive cultural toll. When people can intuitively feel their shared base of value falling out from under them, their animal spirits grow. These animal spirits - fear of loss and greed for more - are what Keynes described as the fundamental drivers of market behavior.
The idea “I need to get mine and I need to get mine quickly” is rushing through our society. Can you feel it? It’s another mini-epidemic. Grift and greed are increasing as people fight to build their lifeboats for the coming inflationary storm.
I’m sure there are those who have researched what happens in empires during the decline of their currency (and power). For that, see Peter Turchin or Jared Diamond.
For now, I’m just reporting on what I notice - and that is the cancerous growth of the “me first” culture that we sometimes conflate with the American Dream. And in case you believe this to be an attempt at some virtue signaling from my pulpit — when I say notice, I mean that I notice these sensations growing in myself.
Throwback Episode: NFTs with 3lau
“What if media could only be accessible by a couple of people OR what if the whole world could see it, but only one person can say they own it. Just like anyone can look at a Picasso online.”
Reposting this to celebrate my friend, Justin Blau aka 3LAU, who sold another +$4M of NFTs this week. Justin has been a pioneer in the space, and if you’ve been following Look Up! you were early to the trend.
We had this conversation back in November ahead of the NFT mania sweeping the world.
What I’m Reading
Ideas
WTF is Bitclout?!, Kate Ward (Also, see my previous post on Social Money)
Alex Wolfe is Walking Everywhere
Markets
Bridgewater’s Prince Warns on Risky Assets After Bonds Decline, FT
Metaverse, NFTs, and Digital Collectibles
VC David Pakman on the Sudden Rise of Crypto Collectibles, VC Download Podcast
RAC Rebuttal to the NFT Energy Waste Argument
PAK Rebuttal to the NFT Energy Waste Argument
Crypto
Music & Crypto Use Cases, Jack Spallone
Understanding the Layer 2 Race, Kerman Kohli
Miner Extractable Value, Charlie Noyes @ Paradigm
All you need to know about Ethereum’s EIP1559, Uncommon Core
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