It’s been a truly whirlwind six months.

I lost my mother, left the home I grew up in, saw the weird effects of COVID on society, and have gotten some recognition for writing.

For the last part, I have all of you to thank. So yeah, let’s start this off with a “Thank you. Thank you for the years of support. Years of support in the face of a ton of unnecessary hate.”

Okay, now that the mushy stuff is out of the way, let’s get down to business.

A friend posted this YouTube link of a Charlie Munger speech…

I don’t suffer from FOMO (or “Fear of missing out”) anymore, but I used to.

Let me tell you about the worst trade I ever made.

Once In A Lifetime

Familiarize yourself with the phrase “once in a lifetime” if you’re interested in finance, because you’re going to see it a lot. Every amazing trade is once in a lifetime — you’ve heard of many once in a lifetime trade’s already:

• GameStop
• Dogecoin
• early Bitcoin
• early Apple/Amazon/Google
• early Facebook

Maybe you’re seeing a running theme here?

There’s no such thing as once in a lifetime. Feel free to indulge in your regrets, think about…

There’s a helluva lot of news dropping today:

• Coinbase is going forward with its direct listing (with open price estimated to be anywhere from $300–$400)
• Gary Gensler is being confirmed to head the SEC
• and Bernie “The Ponz” Madoff died

Which is why it probably seems trivial to be discussing Tether, a stablecoin completely unrelated to any of that. But Tether is quietly manifesting its destiny and reaching what once seemed like impossible goals.

Looking at the Transparency Page — which Bennett Tomlin points out is still not correct in its numbers — shows us that Tether is quickly approaching…

UPDATE: I will be including Noah Buxton from Armanino’s statement on the matter. Here is a notice that was posted:

Though I am keen on stepping away from Medium and cryptocurrency in general for awhile, I can’t help but come back for the current scam — and yeah, I’m calling it a scam — that’s taken cryptocurrency advocates by storm: Bitclout.

The details of Bitclout have unraveled over the past week and the waters are quite muddied.

Here’s how it began:

By early March, a few well known individuals were already speaking of how Bitclout would transform the future of “productizing people.”

I’ve now spent over three years monitoring the cryptocurrency space, largely focusing on Tether and Bitfinex. This has been — as much as coiners like to pretend every nocoiner is salty and upset — a truly incredible and rewarding experience.

Some cool stuff I’ve learned about since being here:

• how corporate fraud works
• how Bitcoin and Ethereum operate
• how offshore incorporation and banking is used for obfuscation
• how to use free, publicly accessible tools to research companies, executives, and scammers
• patience

Change

I’ve previously written about how I wanted to delve into other areas of fraud outside the scope of cryptocurrency…

The past 50 years have seen an unprecedented level of stability and cooperation in the world — despite the 24 -hour news cycle suggesting otherwise. Violence is down, wars are down, the middle class (worldwide) has grown, child mortality rates are down, and literacy is up. But today we sit, like frogs in a warming pot knowing it’s too late, having a societal realization: while the West has been lulled into complacency, domestic partisanship, and repeated unwinnable wars, China has become a united juggernaut.

The Cold War Builds Overconfidence

There are, of course, a hundred different points at which one can, with hindsight, perceive the…

Hopping on this train late because there’s very little to be added to the ongoing commentary surrounding NFTs or “non-fungible tokens.” Dropping my two cents without fanfare or finger-pointing.

NFTs are, to put it as simply as possible, “art on the blockchain.” Again, trying not to muddy the waters here, basically people mint a single or limited edition amount of some digitized work-of-art (this is totally subjective) and then put it on-sale. That’s pretty much it.

There’s a lot to be said for this, from both the supporters and the skeptics, but I fall resolutely in neither camp. Why not…