Anyway, GM.

Algos treating bitcoin like SaaS. Relatively few new retail investors came in this cycle. Meanwhile, altcoins exhausted basically every possible narrative for why they should exist and are set to more persistently fade into irrelevance, with most of them not even really reaching new highs this time. Bitcoin separated from the pack for the most part, but had trouble catching a sustained bid nonetheless. -Some institutional investors are indeed spooked by the quantum risk. That had a nonzero impact, and I have really good sources on that. But if quantum was the main catalyst for the underperformance as some like to argue, then there'd most likely be a big performance gap between bitcoin (hard to upgrade) vs more centralized altcoins (easy to upgrade) that are marketing quantum resiliency roadmaps. That's not happening, though, which largely disproves that as the main culprit. -Most institutional investors I've looked into have little knowledge or even awareness of the spam issue, version wars, fork wars, etc. -Biggest factor seems to just be a combo of 1) buyer exhaustion (lack of retail, lack of sovereigns, leaving basically a corporate play this cycle) and 2) weighed down by the more permanent stagnation of altcoins (which is good in the long run but a headwind here, because there is a lot of cross-ownership between them and bitcoin).

I read the novel Blood of the Bourgeoisie by Michael Sullivan. Given all the corruption recently revealed about powerful people, it seems like a good season for it. It's a thriller about elite corruption, and features bitcoin prominently. Anyway, here's a review. The book is a concise and well-paced read, with three point-of-view characters. All three of them are quite fleshed out, especially given how trim the overall page count is. The plot is well-constructed and creative. Motivations make sense, the scale is significant, and I found myself consistently wanting to know what happens next. The audiobook version is out now, narrated by the great @walker. I started with the ebook version, but then listened to the audiobook version for the second half, so I experienced the book both in prose form and through listening, and both were quite enjoyable. I like there to be themes in novels. In other words, if the answer to why Prince Niceguy defeats Darklord Asshole in the climax is because "he's better with a sword", then that's just not that interesting to me. In addition to his training, what did Prince Niceguy learn that allowed him to defeat him? The original Star Wars trilogy handled this well: Luke loses to Vader in the middle movie and beats him in the third movie, not just because he improved with a saber between the duels but because he mastered himself and his emotions, and accepted the truth of things rather than deny them. This novel has good themes, in my view. Clashes of ideology. Tough choices. Characters who have their worldviews tested. Good, evil, and shades of gray. Can evil be purged peacefully, or does it require violence? There's a series of flashbacks in it, which is a structure that annoys a minority of readers (because it risks breaking your immersion by jumping back and forth), but I really like that structure in novels as long as it's well done. It helps flesh out a story and makes the reader wonder how the flashbacks are going to inform or intersect with the present-day plot. In this case, I thought the flashbacks were very well done and played nicely into the plot. I predicted how the flashbacks would intersect the main story, but there are other twists that surprised me a great deal. In my view that's the ideal combo, because as a reader I'm rewarded for thinking ahead, but also blindsided at times. To the extent that I have any critiques of the novel to flesh out a full review, they're pretty limited and contextual. -The bitcoin component is significant, both plot-wise and dialogue-wise. If someone doesn't like bitcoin, the plot can still work for them but it'll likely detract from their overall appreciation. On the other hand if someone is very knowledgeable on bitcoin, the "bitcoin 101" parts of it may feel skim-able. That's a tough balance for an author to navigate and I can't envision how it would be handled better. I would imagine that the sweet spot as a reader here is to be interested in bitcoin but a bit skeptical or not super knowledgeable about it. -One of the challenges an author faces (including myself) is how to make dialogue seem realistic but not too realistic. That's an unintuitive thing. If you actually transcribe most real-life conversations, they are filled with "ums" and false starts and just tons of verbal clutter which makes them super annoying to read. So an author can't actually make dialogue perfectly realistic, all the time. On the other hand, if dialogue is too polished and expositionary, it sounds artificial: "Well how do you do today, Bob? Lovely weather isn't it? Have you heard about that deceased gardener? What a shame. They found him this morning. I heard he was sleeping with the countess." Sullivan handles the dialogue well, but there were some times I would have preferred it pushed a bit closer to the realism side of the spectrum. There is not necessarily any ideal sweet spot, though. It's all trade-offs. An author has to put necessary exposition somewhere, and it can go in the narrative or in dialogue or some blend of the two, and readers have different preferences. There was one moment where characters whispered in front of another character as though they weren't heard and I was like, "guys, he's right there in earshot, looking at you..." I'd be happy to pick up other books by Sullivan in the future. In fact, he's got an earlier sci fi novel out called The Final Flaw. I haven't gotten to that one yet, but after reading this one, I'd like to give that a read as well.

Husband saw this on our yard and was like, “did someone get fucking raptured?”

"Weapons" was a movie I hadn't even heard of, but it was good. It's a 2025 horror/mystery movie with an ensemble cast, including Josh Brolin. From the same director of the 2022 horror film Barbarian, and of similar quality. The premise is that at 2:17am in this random suburban town, a couple dozen kids from the same class all disappeared. They all walked outside their front doors, ran away, and were not seen again. Except one kid in the class. As parents freak out, and the police aren't getting many leads, the story then follows multiple people to see what's going on. It's tense and dark, well-directed and and well-acted. I have rather few criticisms of the film. They made some characters a bit more unlikable/annoying than they needed to, which made it slightly hard to get attached at first, but that wasn't insurmountable. And although the story does take into account the existence of doorbell cameras and such, I felt that at today's level of surveillance, what happened is unrealistic. And the resolution felt slightly rushed. Overall, a surprisingly strong film in a genre that isn't particularly my favorite. Was entertained and tense throughout.

Trump has said that he would pick the next Fed chair tomorrow. Odds rapidly jumped for Warsh. No matter who it is, nothing stops this train.

So I watched The Rip. A Miami cop movie with Affleck and Damon. I liked the first half quite a bit. Really intense opening scene, good mystery setup, high emotional stakes, etc. Always happy to see Affleck and Damon together. The second half lost me a bit. Some aspects seemed unrealistic enough to distract me and pull me out of it. And I felt the heavy hand of the writers/director in terms of character choices not really making sense, convenient scene changes, etc. But, all together a solid cop movie. Glad I watched it. So far out of this recent run of movies, Sinners is comfortably my top choice even though I had some issues in the third act.

I see some people saying, “it’s not gold going up, it’s the dollar going down” and things like that. That’s not really the case, and there’s a simple test to see why. When a currency crashes, it loses value relative to everything. Other currencies, real estate, stocks, precious metals, etc. Prices of normal goods and services skyrocket. In this bull run, precious metals gained value vs other things. Gold vs oil. Gold vs stocks. Gold vs real estate. Silver vs oil, etc. The dollar is rangebound vs other major currencies. The supply growth of the dollar this past year was 5%. It’s gold and other precious metals that went up vs everything. Partly based on fundamentals, and now seemingly due to momentum. Now, where there is some truth to the statement: central banks in aggregate haven’t added to their holding of treasuries in ten years. The only foreign treasury purchases have been in the private sector, and at a rate lower than total US debt growth. But central banks have been buying gold. There is indeed a gradual shift toward neutral reserve assets afoot, ever since around 2009. But that a very long process. That source of demand didn’t single-handedly drive the huge boom in precious metals over this past year. This was like a volleyball held under water and let go, soaring back up.

The number of people who spent the past decade complaining about the Fed's artificially low interest rates, only to turn around and constantly complain about their slowness of cutting rates lately (as if 3.75% is super high), is comical.

The premise of the movie Bugonia is that two conspiracy theorists (led by Jesse Plemons) kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Emma Stone) because they think she's an alien. We watched it last night, and had mixed thoughts. -It was notably darker than I thought, which is neither good nor bad but in kind of a "dark comedy" genre it was lower on comedy and higher on darkness than I would've guessed. Scenes were more violent and tense than I had expected them to be. -I was entertained throughout, in the sense that I enjoyed watching it and was curious how it would end, if everyone would be alright or not, comedic or tragic ending, etc. -The acting was great all around, and particularly from Plemons. No complaints about cinematography or the score. -I felt the writing/dialogue could be a stronger. Much of it comes down to Stone's character debating with Plemon's character, the back-and-forth that they go through, and it wasn't super riveting imo. -I have another criticism but it's a spoiler to talk about it. In general, I feel that the narrative kind of "cheats" in a sense, where details and plot points don't necessarily line up as well as they could. Definitely glad I watched it. Was curious about this one.

As part of our currently nightly movie streak, we watched One Battle After Another. Dicaprio, Penn, Del Toro, etc. A (very long) dark comedy-thriller about far-left terrorists and white supremacists. Neither me nor my husband were a fan of this one at all. -Didn't like or sympathize with almost any character (other than the teenager). -But I also didn't find it that funny or interesting, and no character really captured a scene. In a movie like No Country for Old Men, I didn't particularly get emotionally attached to any character either, but they're all super interesting on-screen, especially the villain. Penn plays a villain here (Colonel Lockjaw) that is both menacing and goofy, but while the writing and acting of Hans Landa in Inglorious Bastards really nails that combo, I didn't feel that way for Lockjaw. It was more jarring. Overall acting was fine, given the quality of the actors. But no role was particularly memorable. Nothing really stood out for the cinematography or the musical score, and I didn't particularly like the writing. And several aspects seemed unrealistic in what feels like it's trying to be a fairly realistic movie. I suspect the main issue is that on one hand, they want to capture that kind of dark-funny nihilistic vibe that several Coen brothers movies have (e.g. Fargo). But they don't quite want to fully commit to that nihilism either, and instead really do want us to emotionally attach to several of the characters here, and straddling that line didn't work for me.

You know what there aren't a lot of? Horror musicals. Anyway, I watched "Sinners" last night, and enjoyed it more than I expected. My husband and I are currently in a movie-a-night mode after a long stretch of zero movies. Here's a quick review. Sinners is getting a lot of hype because it was nominated for a record-breaking16 oscars. Of course, with Hollywood quality deteriorating over time, an oscar nomination isn't really what it used to be. There's some oscar-inflation, basically. And there's often a huge disconnect between what critics and insiders like vs what the public likes, especially in this highly polarized environment. Set in1930s Mississippi, Sinners is a stylized action story about the supernatural. It's one of those elevated type of stories, where there's 1) what's happening at the surface level for entertainment, and 2) what themes those actions are meant to represent. But it didn't get as heavy-handed as I expected. Well-executed themes can deepen the entertainment, whereas heavy-handed or misaligned themes can dampen entertainment, and for me the combo was neutral-to-positive. The music and the directing/cinematography are truly incredible. Like, outlier masterpiece level, 10 out of 10. There's a huge blues component, and the visuals are just constantly surprisingly good. My biggest complaint is the action in the third act. That's the only aspect that detracted from its entertainment value for me. Physical fights and gun battles don't work with a consistent set of rules or power scaling. As a result, the fights feel very unrealistic, and the outcomes feel determined by where the plot needs things to go, rather than maintaining the illusion of cause-and-effect (e.g. it distracted me enough to pull me out of the immersion, and I felt the writer's hand strongly at play). Overall fight choreography is like a 4/10 here. Thus I consider it a flawed masterpiece. Really glad I watched it for its music and visuals and overall plot concept, but was sufficiently distracted by third act details and execution.

Big fan of the Bill of Rights. All ten of ‘em.

Canada lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs to similar levels of a few years ago (up to a limited number, and still 6% tariffs rather than zero). US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products. In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about. It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes. A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."