Weekend Reading #124

This is the hundred-and-twenty-fourth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 26th June 2021.

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What we're thinking.

Another week, another bout of inflation talk... To be honest, it’s getting a bit exhausting listening to all the very strong opinions about whether inflation is high or low, or going up or peaking. That’s why we wrote last week’s blogpost. Markets have reacted very favourably to the Fed’s meeting last week, yet we are very much in unchartered waters as far as monetary and fiscal policy are concerned. This week’s announcement of a bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US will certainly get the monetary inflationistas puffing their chests once again. What’s interesting to think is if this happened a couple of months ago, the Bitcoin maximalists would also be out in full force. When the bull market stops, it seems so does the flexing!

We would not be surprised if the inflation narrative is just getting started. Rates in the emerging world have increased alarmingly quickly, particularly in Brazil (last week) and Mexico (this week). Things are not as simple as they seem.

And finally, what we have seen in the crypto markets is a fantastic reminder once again that in public markets there is a very big difference between a company (or in this case project) and its listed stock (in this case token). The crypto markets like all other public markets are governed by liquidity and an understanding of what drives liquidity in and out is of paramount importance. This substantial selloff belies much incredible innovation and fundamental progress in some areas but that doesn’t mean that prices stop going down in the short term. It’s a fantastic reminder not to get too married to your investments and a great advert for long/short investing in the world of crypto. Of course, the structural bull case is intact but as we have learned over and over again, the publicly listed price is nothing but a number.

As the inimitable @degenspartan says “it's just one big mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) innit.” DC

Harry has recently written quite a bit about the sneakers market and some really interesting tidbits have come to the fore. So much so that he decided to write a long form piece which makes for superb reading.

If you are curious as to how sneakers are taking over the world, have a read of “Sneakernomics”. HS

What we're reading.

Marc Andreessen's legendary 2011 essay, Software Is Eating The World, predicted, correctly, that “we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy." His words were extremely prescient and given his foresight it was no surprise that Andreessen went on to become one of the biggest beneficiaries (both financially and reputationally) of the last decade’s technology boom. But, as this great New Yorker article, Does Tech Need a New Narrative?, explores, toward the end of the last decade, it became unclear whether the world had been eaten by software or whether it had simply been paved over by it. Many of Silicon Valley’s most highly valued companies were platforms (Airbnb, Uber etc) that aggregated transactions and, often, this meant that they’d built private, high-margin layers atop real-world processes while externalising the risks. And these risks, especially many relating to privacy, were, largely, outsourced to the consumers of these products. The new era of technology must find and embrace a revamped image of the future, one that embraces the great responsibility that arrives with newfound great power. Otherwise, the boom of the 2010s will have been extraordinary, once in a lifetime decade. So, what do the future look like? What is being built in the Valley? EJP

Andy Weir is famous as author of sci-fi thriller, The Martian, which was made into a film starring Matt Damon. His new book, Project Hail Mary, is riveting stuff. It is the story of a man who awakens inside what seems to be a space-ship a long way from home. As planet Earth is under threat from a mysterious sun-sapping belt around Venus, Ryland Grace’s journey to find out what is going on gets really weird. Escapism at its best and fantastic fun. DC

What we're watching.

The Kominsky Method on Netflix is the sort of series you need after a long day of work. It's good fun, contains some fantastic actors (Michael Douglas as the lead), and is just whimsical and forgettable enough that it won't, like other fantastic television shows, keep you up at night thinking about how important it is that you avoid going to prison (Time), commit a financial crime (Ozark), go into politics (House of Cards), or become a police detective/psychotic murderer (True Detective). Sure, sometimes you want to be challenged and have the big questions asked of you and your existence. But a lot of the time you just want to relax. It’s why for the last few weeks, rather than engaging with anything too challenging, we’ve sat down to an episode and a half of Michael Douglas, who plays acting coach Sandy Kominsky, laugh along with his best friend as the two of them work out how to navigate the ups and downs of life. Award winning, it likely is not. But good quality entertainment it most definitely is. EJP

Netflix has, as promised, delivered the second batch of episodes of Lupin, and we have to say that it’s been extremely well-written, perhaps even more so than the first part. Viewers very quickly start wondering if some of the “misfortune” that is seen during any given episode was actually “part of the plan”, and most of the time it is. The close shaves get even closer, and in true Netflix fashion, the plot compelled us to finish all five episodes in one sitting. Resistance against the gentleman cambrioleur is, unfortunately, futile. And for those who wonder about the soundtrack, it obviously has to feature Gentleman Cambrioleur by the great Jacques Dutronc. EL

This week has been a week that has felt like it has flown by in a heartbeat and as such, I just about managed to get through a single film throughout the entire week. Although spread across several days of viewing, I watched Money Ball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. And whilst I can’t claim to know a thing about baseball, the film was a good watch and a great find on Netflix. It explores the flaws in traditional baseball team composition and how through careful economic and statistical analysis, a team with a low budget can go on to win the World Series. To my surprise, the film is based on true events and after a bit of digging, the record of 20 consecutive wins was true for the Oakland Athletics team, making them the first team to do so in over 100 years of the sport. HS

What we're listening to.

A couple of months ago we shared a link to podcast we listened to featuring Fred Ehrsam, of Paradigm in which he outlined the case for the creator economy in the context of cryptocurrencies. This latest one features Fred with Blake Robbins of Ludlow Ventures and Jesse Walden of Variant. The three talk about creators, communities and crypto once again in a follow up to a podcast they did a year ago or so. In this one they cover some of the more recent developments and discus their views on what the future may hold. From our perspective, the creator economy is one of the most natural fits for a tokenised offering and seeing how the innovation unfolds in real time is just truly fascinating. As ever, a really illuminating listen. DC

For no particular reason, I gave up caffeine this week and, as a consequence, my 'cold turkey' brain has been pounding for the majority of my waking hours. It was likely the caffeine withdrawal, it could have been a little fallout from my second AZ jab, but whatever it was, come mid-afternoon, my world-weary brain needed soothing. So, when the headache got bad and the absence of caffeine made me drowsy, I desperately turned to the Calm app to see if it could ease my troubled mind. I got the app for free as part of some AMEX promotion a long while ago but I hadn't opened it in a long while. But I was really impressed by the additional features that the app now offered. Of course, the central focus remains meditation and calm, but it also offers a really great selection of music playlists for focus and work, as well as energy and flow. It was cool to explore the app and pick out a few playlists that (placebo-ically or not) did get me back into the swing of work. Why have I given up caffeine? I'm not really sure. But I'm pleased that its absence led me to delve into the Calm app's music selection. It's a treasure trove and I can see it becoming a staple of my future afternoon work routine, replacing my mid-afternoon re-energising double-shot cappuccino. EJP

Edward PlayfairJune 28, 2021