Weekend Reading #130

This is the hundred-and-thirtieth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 7th August 2021.

To receive a copy each week directly into your inbox, sign up here.

*****

What we're doing.

It's great to be back together again in our new offices and the speed of idea iteration is already quicker. The commute as ever is a grind but there is lots to read, listen to and watch so we are taking advantage of this opportunity!

In a way, having the day broken up by a commute to and from the office also helps to re-establish boundaries for when the working day starts and ends. Of course, this being our own business, there aren’t any rules that say no work before or after a certain time, but being able to draw some sort of line is always healthy.

What we're thinking.

This week was all about Ethereum as the London hard fork happened on Thursday. We are not sure yet whether the rally in price we saw is speculation into the event (like many highly anticipated events in markets) or the beginning of a new bull market, but as ever we are paying close attention. Our long-term thesis on Ether still stands and we are excited about what is to come. But as we know well, nothing in markets (and in life) ever happens in a straight line.

The Chinese “clampdown” on its tech and internet names took a small breather this week but one particular announcement captured our attention. The headlines around Evergrande, the heavily indebted and largest real estate developer in China have been all over the news in recent weeks as their bonds traded at eye-wateringly low levels as a possible sign of stress. This week in an announcement made with little fanfare, Tencent appeared along with one other unidentified buyer as the purchaser of a stake in Evergrande’s subsidiary, HengTen Networks Group Ltd. This may not seem like a big amount of money, and it isn't for them, but it is something we have seen before when the big internet companies were “asked” to invest in China Unicom a couple of years ago. We would expect to see more of this type of activity should the need arise as companies with strong balance sheets are used to help those not so fortunate to be in such a position. We have seen it in China already but it's an old playbook for dominant governments from Poland to Russia etc.

What we're eating.

Having moved into our new office just last week, we have had all sorts of different world cuisines on our doorstep. As such everyday has been a new opportunity to try somewhere new and so far, there haven't been any disappointments. On the menu for Friday was Japanese at Eat Tokyo where Ed and I took on the challenge of their humungous double chicken katsu curry and rice. HS

I also tried a fantastic Italian restaurant on Baker Street this week serving up authentic Napoli pizza: L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele. With the rest of the surrounding clientele being native Italians, my expectations were certainly high, and it was great. All of the pizzas are cooked fresh in the huge clay ovens at the front of the restaurant and whilst the menu options are broad, you certainly can’t go wrong with their classic Margherita. HS

What we're reading.

Sam Bankman Fried has become the breakout personality in the world of Crypto. At 28 years old he is a multi-billionaire and founder of FTX, the leading crypto derivatives exchange. He shot to mainstream fame as one of the biggest funders of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and FTX recently concluded a few massive sponsorship deals in both Major League Baseball and in Esports. This piece from Mario Gabriele, part one of a three-part series, is called “The Prince of Risk” and is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand where the world may be heading and what drives one of the key protagonists in getting us there. DC

This was a cool Forbes profile of Michael Dell, a tech titan who is often be overlooked when compared to more esteemed, limelight-seeking peers. Despite being less headline-grabbing, in many ways, his success story is more fascinating as he built his hardware business whilst battling sceptics in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street to amass a $50 billion fortune. Like Gates or Jobs, Dell’s influence is everywhere, likely on the desk right in front of you. Dell is the world’s biggest in data storage, servers and “hyperconverged” infrastructure and it’s the top seller of desktop computers and monitors in North America. When you think about how little you know of Dell himself, this is surprising to hear. His future is also interesting. As the profile sets out, Dell says that his biggest ambitions lie ahead – and it’s kind of cool to know that they have nothing to do with space travel or Mars colonisation! EJP

I came across this spectacular piece about time crystals. Up until this week I had never even heard of time crystals, but this article does a good job of explaining them. This week Google announced that its quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer.

“A time crystal is a new phase of matter that, simplified, would be like having a snowflake that constantly cycled back and forth between two different configurations. It’s a seven-pointed lattice one moment and a ten-pointed lattice the next, or whatever.” In other words, it is a perpetual motion machine, something that physics under Newtonian laws considered impossible.

“What’s amazing about time crystals is that when they cycle back and forth between two different configurations, they don’t lose or use any energy.”

One potential application of time crystals would be to power quantum computers. But that is a LONG way off. This is only the beginning. I guess reading too much science fiction makes you get a little excited at this kind of stuff. If that’s the case, I’m guilty. DC

What we're watching.
Hands up who’s in need of a holiday but can’t have one due to either forces beyond your control or the thought of a 6-hour airport queue is far too intimidating to handle. Well, if you can’t make it to the sun, let the sun come to you with a fantastic new BBC travel series, Write Around The World, in which Richard E Grant travels to a selection of beautiful European travel destinations that have inspired some of the world’s finest writers. Grant heads to Positano to look at the view from a hotel bed that led Angela Highsmith to invent the murderous Tom Ripley. He visits the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in search of F Scott Fitzgerald’s inspiration for Dick Diver and the post WWI setting for Tender is the Night. He spends time in Naples, experiencing the neighbourhood that Eleanor Ferrante brought to life in My Brilliant Friend. The idea for this series – combining literature with travel – is a brilliant one and so obvious that you wonder why it hasn’t been done for television previously. The landscapes that set the scene for great works of literature are, often, wonderful places to visit, so the marriage between travel and books is a great for a television travel show as the on-camera scenery is stunning. The star of the show, however, is Grant, whose child-like enthusiasm for everything from pizza to Pompeii, olive oil to swimming in the sea, brings the show to life. His wide-eyed excitability at the places he explores beams into your living room and makes you want to be on holiday (as soon as the airport queues become a little more manageable). For now, seeing Europe through Grant’s eyes will have to do, but we hope for not much longer. EJP

The battle between DC and Marvel is one that has raged for years, and after a whole host of fantastic movies from Marvel recently, it seems that they have been the clear winner. However, I recently started watching the 2014 series, Gotham, a Batman spinoff focussing in on detective Jim Gordon, and so far, it has been thrilling. Instead of focussing on the life of Bruce Wayne as an adult superhero, it explores the troubles of Gotham through the eyes of the detective, meanwhile young Bruce is merely a side character. With episodes of around 40 mins each and packed with a good amount of action and suspense, it makes for perfect watching on my commute. I’ve so far gotten through much of the first season, but it seems there are a further four more seasons to keep me entertained over the coming weeks. HS

Olympics dominates the Kemp household daily and it was exhilarating as ever. Watching a thirteen-year-old Sky Brown take Bronze in skateboarding was fantastic. Watching a new 100m and 200m champion was eventful... slight bit of nostalgia not seeing the main man “Usain Bolt” on the track...

Last week, I mentioned the British and Irish Lions tour... well, we got what we wanted. 1-1 in the series with the decider being TODAY. Can't wait! I still see the Springboks victorious. DK

What we're listening to.

This fascinating podcast, Two Smiley Faces, from the BBC World Service looks at the history and meaning of emojis. If you’re like me, you use these little yellow hieroglyphics every single day (if not, every single hour) and they’ve fast become an integral part of the way that we all communicate, in both our personal and professional lives. It almost feels as if their prevalence seeped into our everyday lives – one minute they didn’t exist and now, suddenly, as if from nowhere, they’re everywhere and it’s hard to imagine a typed conversation without them. But where did they come from? This short show digs into some of the stories behind those tiny pictures on our screens, and it covers a breadth of sources. From the early days of reggae in Jamaica to San Francisco’s Chinatown, we’re introduced to some of the people responsible for the emojis that we all use today. EJP

I’ve been quite curious for a while about why there is such a buzz around investing in space. It sounds quite far-fetched when you first think about it as intuitively space-related industries and the cashflows from them are so far into the future. Is space just another fantastic narrative to sell to naïve investors? The Virgin Galactic stock hasn’t fared too well after an initial eruption of excitement and even though SpaceX shares are hot in terms of demand (we hosted and placed some a year or two back on our private deals platform, 3BC) it is still very much unclear when the profits will arrive if at all. So, when I saw on Colossus, that there was a space-themed business breakdown called Space: The Final Frontier, I took a listen. The episode features Tren Griffin of Microsoft and covers satellites and all sorts of other bits about what the future holds. It's no secret that from a military perspective the race for space is very much on but this chat really framed things for me really well. Griffin is very animated on this topic, and it was really interesting to listen to. DC

Edward PlayfairAugust 9, 2021