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The stock market doesn't seem to think China will ever take Taiwan.
By many measures, the stock market is valued more richly than at any time in history except 1999 and 1929. Yet a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would cripple the world economy and send stocks plummeting.
There is an argument to be made that any war with China would lead to massive money printing and so, in dollar-denominated terms, stocks could thrive.
But this doesn't explain the stock markets blasé attitude. In the event of a Taiwanese invasion, some companies would be affected more than others. Apple would be crippled by the loss of its supply chain. But oil and steel companies would presumably profit greatly. This is of course not reflected in the stock prices. Apple is worth $3 trillion while U.S. Steel trades at a paltry $8 billion.
Stock markets don't know all that much, that's why volatility exists. There was about a monthlong period where the Chinese locked down 100 million people over a virus and the market was barely affected. It doesn't take a genius to perceive that COVID was a big deal in early 2020, before the March panic.
Nor did it take a genius to perceive that the new AI techniques were a big deal back in 2020 or 2021. The GPT-3 paper was out then, people like Gwern were showing the vast possibilities. And nobody really noticed until ChatGPT several years later when it became blindingly obvious what was going on.
I'm determined not to miss the next big obvious thing.
I almost bought Novo Nordisk in 2022, saw that it was already overvalued and that they would have plenty of competition before they could make mega-profits. So I didn't buy. It's up more than 100% since then. I still think my thesis is correct, but the market cares about hype not profits.
I was a user of GPT-3, saw it's potential, but figured I was already late to the game. Two years later, the market bids up anything with AI attached to it.
The one success I had was buying airline puts in February 2020. I did get a 50x return on those, but the position size was small.
Of course, it's easier to see these things in hindsight. I have no idea what the next big thing will be. The rationalist community was very early on semaglutide, GPTs, and Covid. But there doesn't seem to be anything comparable today.
And for the record, I don't think China will invade Taiwan, but we are all a little too comfortable with the fact that everything is made in China. At some point this is going to cause major disruptions.
It's maddening how taking a pure 'value driven' approach to buying stocks does in fact lead you to ignore hype cycles and their somewhat predictable impact on particular stocks or classes of stocks, such that you feel like you genuinely left wads of cash lying on the pavement because you didn't believe your eyes when you saw them.
ON THE OTHER HAND, the markets also briefly went crazy for NFTs, and "The Metaverse" (actually amazed how little came of that), and of course you could have bought into Gamestop during that crazy era, and ended up with almost nothing to show for it. It was as obvious to me that NFTs were going to eventually implode as it was to me that NVIDIA would take off. Hence why I avoided NFTs and bought NVIDIA and told friends to buy NVIDIA, but didn't go in nearly as aggressively as I could have. Because I severely underestimated the effect of the crowd of people who'd rush in about three steps behind me.
Having operated in the cryptospace through the first decade of its existence (2017 was a CRAZY time) I've learned that its almost always the stuff you DON'T see that will get you. Maybe you make a fortune on altcoins but... your holdings were in FTX (or one of the other failed/fraudulent/hacked exchanges), or you fell for a phishing scam. So I learned that A) trying to time market swings is a fools errand, and B) focusing too much on making good trades and NOT thinking about and protecting against ways you can lose your bags due to factors beyond your control has a small but real chance of wiping you out without warning.
I will never, at this stage in my life, feel regret about not yoloing into Bitcoin in 2013. I bought modest amounts back then (and have the Blockchain transactions to prove it) and sold almost all of them over the years, particularly in order to put a down payment on a house. The stress reduction alone was worth the price. I'd have had to bought a ton of them and held through insane market swings to get truly life-changing wealth out of it.
Hmm. The longevity/anti-aging space is making some rumblings. There's a possibility AI will fuel rapid advancement there, and with the boomers retiring there's obvious demand. No obvious plays that I can see, though.
"Legitimate" and regulated prediction markets are VERY early on the scene but seem to be gaining traction. In a sense they're just another form of gambling, but if they gain real attention they could explode overnight. They could disrupt the insurance industry in a good way
And the one that I think COULD turn into something huge are industries enabled by Starship. Yes, many people (I won't say MOST!) are aware that SpaceX is testing a FUCKHUGE rocket. I doubt any are thinking one or two steps ahead as to what having cheap and plentiful launch capacity will mean. Spot any players that might be onto the killer use for copious amounts of low-earth-orbit capacity.
See, I bet you beat the market too. Not lambo-land but you're better off than index funds.
Yeah NFTs were a bit of a dud. I think the idea was good (I never wanted any and didn't buy any) but everyone hates them for some reason. Aren't they strictly better forms of digital cosmetic items? Why are CS:GO knives worth more than jpegs on the internet? Wouldn't it be good for artists if they got some set% of the resale value of their art? I don't think I've ever been more isolated and alone in defending NFTs though, pedophilia seems more popular.
No, I don't think it would be good to create a new class of rentseeking. I consider this question as part of the background to led to copyright extensions of lifetime of the author + 70 years, total travesty of the system that should never have been considered.
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Because NFT space was filled with lies, fraud, scams etc.
I hate digital cosmetics items
How NFT would even help here or enforce it?
Because it's a programmable contract. You can set it to do whatever automatically.
I don't even know how you can have NFT fraud. It's not like you're being sold a promise of future dev work, only for the devs to disappear. What you buy is what you get. Some people spent about $180 on gas for an NFT which just said how much gas they paid (which is pretty funny tbh). I have screenshots from the discord of this guy offering a bounty for the location of the devs: 'what will happen to them is none of your concern'. It's their own fault for buying stuff they don't need. If you do some basic checks it's very unlikely you'll be scammed.
And "if they got some set% of the resale value of their art?" is impossible as NFT cannot control what happens outside its blockchain
For example, people promising that NFT can enforce revenue share for artist. Like you just did.
People were selling NFT with promises of riskfree earnings. And other typical get-rich-quick scams. Googling NFT fraud will give you parade of examples.
That's not how it works. They stay on Eth or Sol or whatever chain they're on, that's the whole point. You can only deal with them through the chain they're on.
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That was not the reason. NFT hatred was a thing on day 1 of NFTs reaching public consciousness, before there was time for any scams to even theoretically be exposed.
Because scams happened before NFTs reaching public consciousness.
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NFT hatred was a thing on day 1 because people accurately predicted that the NFT space would become full of lies, fraud, scams etc.
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I 'beat the market' but I didn't leverage up or otherwise really demonstrate the courage of my convictions. So my returns were modest in the grand scheme. I was a HODLer more than anything. I was overly sensitive to getting wiped out. That said, I've seen so many people get wiped out I suspect I would have come out behind had I been willing to take bigger risks in crypto.
That is, if you're the type of person who will leverage their bets and accept more extreme risk/reward ratios, you're probably not the type to have sensible exit strategies. Or, you're the type to abandon those sensible exit strategies when you smell more profits, until you eventually overextend.
So I'd guess I'm just not 'built for' that type of behavior, although I think I'm better for it.
Because they're attached to a popular game, and the items can be used to show off status in the popular game. Not vice-versa, where people think that the item itself, rather than the social status, is the point. NFTs never quite got popular enough to confer actual social status outside the NFT sphere, and trying to export status from the NFT world to the real world works about as well as trying to export status from, say, an MMORPG to the real world.
It really came down to the attempt to shove NFT items in many, many places where they didn't really add much, and to 'force' people to get familiar with blockchain tech, which already had a shoddy reputation elsewhere.
I think the one cool use case for NFTs might have been to allow you, the player, to carry NFT cosmetics between games, which is to say you could have a unique outfit, or item, or vehicle, or whatever, and it is tied to your identity in an 'immutable' way, so you can import it to a new game and immediately have access to it, which is to say, add some 'permanence' to your digital property.
For example, I play racing games of various types, and I have a couple cars that I favor and I have some livery designs that I like to recreate in each new game. If I could get an NFT for the cars and liveries that allow me to import those cars from Forza Horizon to Need for Speed to Gran Turismo, and be assured that I would immediately have access to them in future games, I would be enticed to do so.
That would have required significant coordination between different game devs, which seems improbable.
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We were hanging out in the same places back then and I feel the same. The best cast scenario where I had followed through and found a way to get my money into Mt. Gox when they changed their rules as I was waiting for my money to clear Dwolla and ended up with 30 coins for $150. There's no world where I hold them and sell for $2 million. I was going to pay off my house no matter what. My regret is I planned to drop some money every month after I sold but was lazy... that was dumb.
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