Weekend Reading #145
This is the hundred-and-forty-fifth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 20th November 2021.
To receive a copy each week directly into your inbox, sign up here.
*****
In case you missed it, this week saw an extraordinary effort from the crypto community to purchase a copy of the US constitution that went on auction with Sotheby’s in New York. Named ConstitutionDAO, denizens of the decentralised web pooled together north of US$40m of bid for the copy in auction. Unfortunately, they were bested by an anonymous phone bidder, who eventually won the bid at US$43.2m.
That said, the fact that a disparate collection of individuals could come together and pool capital to make a purchase of an iconic item at an equally iconic auction house tells volumes about the coordinating abilities of the decentralised web. We’ve always looked at crypto’s biggest edge as being a coordination instrument, synchronising incentives and aligning them in previously impossible ways, and this is just the latest example. Their failure to win the bid is secondary, the fact that so many individuals chipped in to form a $40m pool is in itself a fact for the record books. The pool is being returned to the investors, but the comments shared by the team demonstrate the extent of the engagement garnered by the project.
Just as the internet could distribute – as the e-commerce platforms have shown – and assimilate vast populations that were previously inaccessible into a platform’s addressable market, so too the internet can gather capital from that same breadth of individuals. “Aggregation” implies a centralisation function, so perhaps the right term should be “reverse distribution”.
As ConstitutionDAO (and many other DAOs) is starting to demonstrate, coordination isn’t exclusively the domain of centralised institutions providing the service in exchange for a fee. Trustlessness is becoming the new name of the game.
The metaverse bubbling up got into full swing this week too with stocks and crypto projects with anything to do with the theme rocketing. This week’s newsletter seeks to unpack this as best we can.
Meanwhile, the inflows are coming:
What we're reading.
This week I finished James Dyson’s autobiography, Invention: A Life. It is fantastic, inspiring, and a must-read for anyone who is looking to invent, create or make anything. Despite Dyson’s infamy as an engineer, this isn’t a book purely about engineering or design. It is more about the challenges that creating original works brings, and how to overcome them. Famously, Dyson made 5,127 prototypes of the cyclonic vacuum cleaner that would transform the way houses are cleaned around the world, and so a lot of this book is focused on the importance of persistence, which is a lesson that it’s nice to be persistently reminded of. But it also teaches a tonne of other findings, such as design, creativity, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship and contains so many wonderful lessons for entrepreneurs. Of course, the proof of the success of Dyson’s methods is in the fact that his company is now one of Britain’s most well-known and profitable, making Dyson himself one of the country’s greatest entrepreneurs and wealthiest men. Hence, there is always some value in reading a book like this and trying to glean, at least, a couple of decent learnings from one of the world’s finest as who knows where it might lead us and our own everyday business dealings. EJP
This week Rolling Stone Magazine featured a big article on the popular NFT avatar project Bored Ape Yacht Club. It comes at a time when celebrities and the like are onboarding themselves in the club through ape purchases. There is a plethora of NFT projects out there but some rise above the rest. What seems to be emerging is that BAYC has the makings of a global iconic or even luxury brand. When viewed in this context, the floor price of around 50 ETH (200,000 USD) doesn’t seems so steep. The founders of the project have built more than just some cool jpegs. They have created a community and also continuously dropped more stuff to each ape holder giving something of a yield for holders! With over $100m on their “balance sheet” the future is bright. I for one can't wait to see what they come up with next. DC
What we're watching.
There’s science fiction and then there’s science reality, and when reality starts to look like something that belongs in science fiction, that’s when one starts to get goosebumps. That was exactly the feeling elicited by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at Nvidia’s tech conference. It’s around 90 minutes long, and usually we’d be the first to flick the playback speed to 2x, but this is an exception. Even a partial understanding of the technical jargon leaves one with the realisation that many tenets of science fiction: accelerated computing, AI, quantum modelling etc have now come to life in Nvidia’s hands. This culminates in very practical outcomes: self-driving cars, software modelling of natural phenomenon, scientific experiments cutting experiment time and cost down by orders of magnitude, AI-driven data security, and even what Nvidia calls the “omniverse”. Yes, it’s bigger than the metaverse. The approach of optimising computing all the way from the fundamental processor hardware sitting on the chip to the compilers and code libraries that run on top of that processing power has turned Nvidia into much more than a “chip company” – as Huang himself pointed out. Nvidia’s goal is to put the tooling down and enable developers to build exponentially better software on top of it, regardless of the end application. It’s well worth the time to watch, and certainly feels like the real-life version of a tour of Tony Stark’s workshop. EL
Last week I recommended one of my favourite films of all time, The Talented Mr Ripley. Following up on that recommendation, I sat down with my wife this week to educate her on what is another of cinema’s greatest, as we watched Gattaca, a sci-fi classic from 1997 starring Jude Law and Ethan Hawke. Set in the not-too-distant future, the film presents a biopunk vision of a future society that is driven by eugenics with children conceived through genetic selection to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. Considering how far scientific development has come in the 25 years since this film’s release, and with the debate about eugenics raging more fervently than ever, this is a timely film to watch today as it provides a cultural marker about the rights and wrongs of genetic engineering. Aside from the scientific and moral debates, it’s also a great, great film, expertly acted, with a beautiful soundtrack. If Michael Nyman’s, The Departure, doesn’t bring you at least close to tears in the film’s finale, I’m going to have to assume that you were genetically engineered prior to your birth to not feel emotion! EJP
Last Sunday night, the family sat down to enjoy the latest blockbuster from Netflix with “Red Notice”. This movie seized the biggest Netflix opening weekend ever tag line... Some of my favourite actors star in this one which portrays an FBI profiler pursuing the worlds most wanted art thief. They become reluctant partners in crime trying to catch an elusive crook who’s always one step ahead...
In addition, I also indulged in the 3rd edition of “YOU” series. It's not everyone's cup of tea and dives head first into what one would do for love. A charming yet awkward crush becomes something even more sinister when the writer becomes the manager's obsession. Using social media and the internet, he uses every tool at his disposal to become close to her, even going so far as to remove any obstacle -including people - that stands in his way of getting to her. This obsession grows fast, and victims accumulate... DK
What we're listening to.
As we head into year end, the work front has not eased up and I find myself walking down memory lane. Nothing better than having some of my favourite tunes from my youth in the background while a get my head down. With classic rock bands like Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers added to my playlist, I find myself effortlessly conquering the workload... DK
I’m a subscriber to Bill Bishop’s Sinocism newsletter which keeps me up to speed on all things China. As someone who 3 years later is still coming to terms with my Mandarin Studies its quite cool to have something in my inbox which shares quite a bit of actual original language text alongside some superb analysis. Recently Bill began to offer a podcast on top of the written offering and the first three episodes are all well worth a listen. The podcast is free and the first three include a series of esteemed guests covering pretty much everything you need to know at present. DC
The BBC World Service occasionally throws up absolute gems. I often have it on in the background whilst cooking or shaving or whatnot, but sometimes when listening I have to sit down and actually focus on what the radio lottery has offered up. This week, we landed on a great episode of Outlook, a documentary podcast series that tells extraordinary first-person stories from around the world. The subject of this episode was told by a close family friend of mine, Ed Jackson. In 2017, Ed was a professional rugby player, he had just signed another two-year professional contract, and he and his girlfriend Lois had got engaged and were planning their wedding in Italy. All of that changed in a split second when Ed dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool. He hit his head with such force that he dislocated and fractured two vertebrae at the base of his neck. Paralysed from the neck down, he was told he would never walk again, but Ed quickly searched for and found the positives in his situation. Now, four years on, he considers himself "lucky", which is a remarkable attitude. It's an attitude that taught him to walk again and has taken him higher than you could ever imagine - in 2019 he reached the 6,476-metre summit of Mera Peak in the Himalayas, he's reinvented himself as a media personality and rugby commentator and has setup a charity called Millimetres 2 Mountains and published a book, Lucky, which is well worth a read. This is a great listen that charts Ed's story and how he had the guts and the balls to overcome the adversity that life threw at him. Inspirational, he is. Inspired, you will be. EJP