The Best Year For Unicorns?; The Bitcoin Scam; Funny tweet about Elizabeth Holmes; A story for dog lovers like me
1) I've said it before and I'll say it again: We are in an IPO bubble that will end badly for the naïve and gullible investors being sucked into it. But the venture capitalists, private-equity firms, bankers, and other insiders will, as always, do great. Here's a good article with data on how frothy things are getting: The Best Year For Unicorns? Excerpt:
Only 38% of IPOs have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last ten years. That's actually not so terrible, but the magnitude of relative performance clearly skews negative, as you can see in the chart below.
I think the explosive growth in private markets is a net positive, but what's not so great, at least one would think, is that of the 25 largest IPOs of 2018, 15 of them were losing money.
2) Speaking of scams that enrich insiders at the expense of average folks, Exhibit A is bitcoin.
Don't get fooled by the dead-cat bounce this year that has boosted the price to $9,138 as of this morning. Mark my words: A year from now, it will be a lot lower. This is a techno-libertarian pump-and-dump scheme that will end in ruin. To understand why, read this excellent column in the U.K.'s Tribune magazine, The Bitcoin Scam. Excerpt:
Despite the utopian claims of its proponents, Bitcoin is a right-wing nightmare which facilitates tax evasion, money laundering and environmental degradation...
The accidental (and often intentional) effect of all this earnest blockchain noise is to sustain interest and hype in the adjacent technology of cryptocurrencies. From the perspective of the grifters, charlatans, and scammers, it adds a much-needed veneer of respectability that functions to disguise more nefarious activities.
The libertarians may cry freedom and equality, but their world is the opposite. A Citigroup analysis of bitcoin from 2014 found that '47 individuals held about 30%, another 900 held a further 20%, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%.' No country on Earth has such an unequal distribution of assets and wealth.
So, when the crypto lobbyists show up in parliament with a PR budget, the Labour Party should be paying attention. What they're selling is an expression of political reaction, thoroughly intertwined with offshore tax avoidance, indelibly linked to black market activity, and implicated in environmental degradation. As for blockchain, in every proposed implementation, the merits of the technology are invariably oversold – with cheaper, more robust, database solutions readily available.
In recent decades, the Left has continuously failed to engage with questions of finance, technology, and business. Getting wise to the con-artistry and grift of the crypto movement, and countering its ideological appeal, is necessary if we are to confront the dark forces looming in our future.
3) This tweet cracked me up:
4) If you're a dog lover like me, you'll love this story, written by a father about his troubled son: Stay in the Game. Excerpt:
Max decided to stay in the game.
We later learned the reason. He'd found an eight-week old puppy roaming the streets of Santa Teresa. The dog had been abused, was eating scraps from trash heaps, and was terrified of people. But Max and the dog, which he named "Chica," connected with each other. Max and Chica became inseparable.
Max, who by then was 19 years old, started to realize he had something to offer. Chica needed help, and Max was there to provide it. Max started doing adult things, like earning and saving money so that he could take Chica to the vet for check-ups and vaccinations. And Chica started getting healthy. And Max started getting healthy. I could hear it in his voice when he would call. There was an excitement about life and the future that I hadn't heard since he was 14 years old. He was starting to get his groove back.
P.S. Here's a picture of me and my beloved Rosie, who has brought so much joy into our family over the past nine years:
Best regards,
Whitney