William Mougayar mentioned Steamit as a platform that incorporates a cryptocurrency wallet in its app. That intrigued me, and so I am signing up for the service.
My hope is that Steamit will provide me one more way to shrae content that I create here and that I can access great new content as well. I will report back as I get into it.
Onward!
I got this from Fred Wilson.
Those who follow this blog know that I follow Fred’s blog very closely and I iwll keep doing so. Fred writes about his area of business – venture capital, early stage investments. He writes well, and lots of things he says have value beyond the VC business. So check him out! Or stay tuned here, as I comment a lot on what Fred is talking about.
I am re-posting a video that Fred shared here. If you have a bit of background on tokens and want to figure out where the market is headed, check out William Mougayar. Go for it!
The mind boggles. The brain explodes. We get yet one more Trump blatant lie exposed … by himself!
Trump has said many times that the Russian election tampering is a hoax pushed by Democrats to explain why Hillary lost. Notice — this is not just a denial that the Trump campaign did anything wrong. It is a denial that tampering happened.
The CIA gave (Obama) information on Russia a long time before they even — before the election,. To me — in other words, the question is, if he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it.
“Information on Russia” means information on Russian election tampering. In other words, Trump has moved from “it is all a hoax” to “there was tampering”. He is also admitting that the tampering was serious enough that Obama should have “done something about it”.
BTW, Obama did do things about it. Using hindight, they didn’t work. And they may not have worked because of Trump campaign collusion. We are still trying to figure that one out. – among other things.
We might think further about this. While Obama may be criticized for not going public with what he knew, think for a moment why he didn’t Remember? At that time, Trump was going around saying that the election was rigged for Hillary Clinton. Coming out with this type of information would have given Trump more ammo to claim he was being treated unfairly. One more thing. Trump’s most recent comment makes sense only if he did not know anything about the Russian election tampering before the electoin. If he did, one might reasonably ask why he didn’t do anything about it? And why did he call it a hoax for so long? The house of mirrors collapses unless Trump was living under a rock or in a cave.
So what is next for Tump? Perhaps a claim that Obamqa is a Russian spy? Or perhaps Obama’s father knew Lee Harvey Oswald?`Or wasn’t that Obama dancing on the rooftop as the buildings came down on 9/11?
The sky is the limit for this dude when it comes to mendacity!
I like Markelle Fultz. Not just as a player — and there is a lot to like about him as a player — but as a person. Fultz didn’t make it to the number 1 pick by just cruising on natural talent. As a sophomore in high school (i.e. just a few years ago), he was cut form the varsity basketball team. He get there with a combination of talent and hard work.
So now that he is in the NBA, the really hard work begins. And I like that Fultz is fully aware of that. His vision is to be the greatest player ever. To get there, he will be putting in a lot of hours in the gym and on the court. More important, he will be assessing everything he does in light of his vision. Is it progress? Is it enough progress?
Most of us don’t do that. Must of us cruise through situations without having or using a vision like that. But a few do. And those folks are fun to watch.
Stay tuned!
Some rather clever folks proposed a while back that the 21st century may be rather different than its predecessor. That might seem strange to us, living now in 2017. We have not seen these differences just yet. But one of these changes is apparent. That change has to do with access to capital.
There was a time when only governments could afford to make large capital investments, like wars. But the amounts needed to fund transatlantictic exploration dwarfed what governments could offer. New legal tools enabled private capital to enter the market and the world took a turn that shocked many. Still, access to capital was limited. Investing was a game for the rich and powerful. The rest of us relied on salaries to find the good life.
But in the late 20th century things started to change. In the digital world, it costs a lot less to starup a new venture that might scale. And while the risks of investing in these starups are huge, the potential gains are as well. I am reminded of the story of an early internet investor who put money into 100 firms. 99 went bust. The 100th was Google. Enough said. Welcome to the wonderful world of venture cpaital and angel investing.
It was not so obvious back in the 1990’s that this was just a starting point. Expectations that clever folks can come up with new ideas to add enormous value are rising faster than a Dubai high-rise overloaded with Pakistani construction workers. And so, folks are expanding access to capital to encourage those explorations. Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon all have established investment funds to do so.
And this is not the end point either. We are about to see yet another extension of this access to capital. E tokens make it possible for just about anyone to set up markets for new ideas You might think of each token as a tradable share in a concept.
Since the beginning of the year, 65 projects have raised $522 million in these offerings, according to Smith & Crown, a research firm focused on the new industry.
It is, as they say, a “frothy” market. That means you can easily loose your shirt by putting your money in these vehicles and many will. If this interests you, check out this podcast where William Mougayar offers his thoughts on where things are headed.
BTW, the same cautionary tales were told about web IPO’s, Kickstarter and AirBnB. There were and are scams galore in each. But they thrive despite them.
So where is this headed? My guess is that the real innovatoin here will be far better platforms where ideas are discussed and shared so that they can be turned into inventions that add value. These new platforms — that don’t yet exist — will enable high value conversations to instantly generate investment funds.
And where will that lead us? Instead of kids fighting over wheter they can get a high paying job at a bank, kids will be fighting over whether they can elbow their way into these high value added conversations.
Over time, this will reduce the risk of early stage investing. That means we will once more dramatically reduce the cost of innovation. And in turn, the 21st century will generate value added that we can only dream about now in 2017.
Hold onto your hat! Things are going to speed up!
These days, it is easy to forget that the first world war changed everything. But the simple fact is that you cannot understand the 20th century without departing from this point. The war strangled 19th century European complacency.
One of the startling effects of the war was an explosion of new forms of artistic expressionoin. According to Robert Hughes, modern art was born out of the intense anger about the war. No more so than in Weimar Germany.
The paintings of Otto Dix bring us into that frenzied era.
Yes, Liza Minelli in Cabaret was rather tame compared to the world that Dix brings us. This image speaks volumes about where this craziness comes from
August Sander’s photographs also bring us into the Weimar scene. But there is a strange detachment.
And Sander shows us people who had little to do with the sophisticates that Dix presents
Those other folks — who were the majority of Germans — would be the group that delivered Germany to the Nazis in a doomed hope of regaining the confidence of the pre-war era.
Jonathan Jones tells us more about these two artists and exhibits where you can check them out
Go for it!
This is not something I would have handered after a while back. But since then, I have noticed a steady steram of writing about the food culture in Cornwall. That food culture is developing into something very special. Why? Because Cornwall is the source of great food supplies.
Christine Muhlke writes about her excursion, with loads of tips on where to go.
Check it — with breakfast, of course! And get ready for images like this
Enjoy!
