Podcast notes: Sven Henrich on Scott Melker (Wolf of All Streets)

Sven Henrich – Northman Trader, market strategist and commentator

Global economies are becoming increasingly nationalized – bond markets are no longer free market

Each boom and bust cycle is getting more volatile

Threw $12T into system – greatest (short lived) party on the planet

No consequences when Central bankers (CB) is wrong
Also created great wealth inequality

Last year Fed still buying mortgage securities – which leads to higher house prices when people are struggling to buy homes!

Some CB have already admitted that QE exacerbates asset bubbles, and they all watch stock markets closely

Great reported corporate earnings last year, but no connection to organic economy

We forget that Powell has a large equity portfolio too and he’s hurt when market drops

Goldman has 5 rate hikes priced in for this year
Initially planned to raise rates in 2023, 2024 – complete flip flop
Speeches keep setting wrong expectations

Consumer confidence = very low, technically at recessionary levels
Massive disconnect with stock markets

CB has to be super careful not to burst asset bubble that they themselves created

Fed has 12 tightening cycles since 1950s – and stocks have risen in 11 of them!

Politicians must solve inflation by summer – otherwise will lose midterm elections
Looks like a big manipulative operation

You’re joking if you think Fed will aggressively hike into an economy that is slowing in an election year

What we’re seeing right now – the markets’ correction – is healthy
When CB is in control, volatility dies – they kill price discovery – but now volatility is higher, and for traders it’s fabulous

Sven’s own wife has been a long-term bitcoin bull
Saylor helped to orange pill him recently
New young industry w/ growing pains and excessive speculation
Reminds him of 2000 tech bubble – it didn’t crash right away, wide ranges up and down for many months before finally falling apart
Need more regulatory clarity

If CB throw excess liquidity into system, everything becomes correlated

Right now everyone is still long stocks like Fab 5 (Netflix, FB) – haven’t seen protracted bear market in stocks for long time
If stocks struggle for 1-2 years, and inflation structurally higher, you gotta find an alternative
Bitcoin still correlated, but there will be a shift

“Each death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” – Stalin

If raise rates 1%, US interest payments > military budget (!)

Reason the rates cannot rise too much is because the system starts to shut down – and the ceiling drops lower and lower every time
If rates today were anywhere close to 2007 level, the entire system would collapse
Each cycle can do less and less – CB losing efficacy of their tools

ECB last rate hike was 11 years ago – haven’t been able to raise rates once
What ammunition do you have for the next crisis?

Now massive bubble + slowing growth + high inflation

Scott: If someone hands you $5M today, where do you put it?
Sven decided to start allocating into bitcoin this year – technical view – has specific allocation in mind where if goes to zero, he can survive
Bitcoin as protection + major upside play
History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes

Risks of cross leverage in system leading to liquidity crisis and blowout moves down
Bitcoin could go down to $7K
But with 10-20 year view, it’s like buying Apple in 2010 or 2001
Liked bitcoin dip to $32, 33K – wants to aggressively accumulate more
Gonna be a long-term hold
Expects his own conversion will happen to others too – thinks it’s a sizable bear market in Bitcoin, but has long term view

Two key issues for bitcoin this year
1. Regulatory guidelines – eg, Russia
2. Asset bubble in stocks

Podcast notes: Tim Urban (Wait But Why) on Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman interviews Tim Urban (writer of Wait But Why)

I wonder how small intelligent life gets – or how big

Humans operate at multiple social levels – can be independent individuals, and can be colonies / collectives

Humans are roughly in the middle of the biggest and smallest measurable things (biggest = observable universe; smallest = subatomic particles)

How many alien civilizations?
“Teeming with life”
Estimates of 27M intelligent civilizations in Milky Way alone
But we don’t observe any

Lex: Our understanding of intelligence and consciousness is very human centric – probably very limited and science is very young

No human can make a pencil by themselves

Tim: If a witch casts a spell on humanity and all material things disappears, goal is to make one working iPhone 13 and she’ll reverse the spell. How could we do it? Requires materials, factories, teams, tools

Think of how much work and infrastructure and invention required to just get food delivered to you at click of a few buttons

Elon says need 1M people on Mars to be truly multi planetary
Could be war in space for territory, tribalism (Mars v Earth)

America was first modern democracy and now there are many more – founders tried to make the ideal country

Tim: $10K bet that a human will set foot on Mars by 2030 – should be a massive global event
2030s will be new 1960s, new space decade
Greatest adventure in history – hopefully a great uniting event
SpaceX makes me proud to be a human

What makes Elon so successful?
Lots of people have his talents, but he’s sane in the way that everyone else is crazy
We’re not adapted to our modern hyper populated hyper connected world
He’s willing to question conventional wisdom, trust his reasoning
“He just does things his own way”

Hate is on the rise
Inputs are human nature (which doesn’t change much) + environment = behavior
Something in environment is changing = changing behavior
The good is getting better and the bad is getting worse
Feels like we’re headed toward an important fork between an incredible and a terrible future

“Political Disneyworld” – delusion where everything is good or evil, black or white
If you assemble highlight reel of your worst moments, you’ll seem like a terrible person
Everyone is worthy of both criticism and compassion

Our environment is bringing out really bad stuff
Rapidly changing environment = rapidly changing behavior, and wisdom is slow to catch up

Nuclear power is clearly a good option – antipathy towards it don’t seem rational or practical

Lex: lots of fear mongering going on

Tim: Balance of Higher mind + Primitive mind
When a topic riles up primitive mind, collectives become dumber than individual for self defense
Climate change has become a sacred topic – can’t handle constructive criticism
Covid / vaccines are same – sucked into a political whirlpool, into hands of primitive minds

Future has more and more complex problems, need more higher mind and less primitive mind

Opposite of echo chamber is an idea lab – need more idea labs (scientific process, new ideas, collective participation)

Stopped at 1h26m

Podcast notes: Frank Slootman (Snowflake CEO) on his book Amp It Up

Frank Slootman (FS)

Snowflake is his 3rd company to go public

What’s secret sauce / playbook? Wrote Amp It Up to address this

“Mission driven”
Strong mission posture – sense of what we’re here to do together, create something special
eg, military has precisely defined missions
Why are we here?
Don’t want mission creep, frequent changes
Filter every conversation, is it getting us closer to our mission

How do new leaders / hired leaders drive mission?
Insert yourself, connect it to big opportunities

“Align your people”
Hard to do nowadays when employees have more leverage
Direct connection to strong mission posture
Don’t pander to people
People must opt-in, signup for mission
Right people resonate with it
People wanna join a cause, not a company

“Drivers versus passengers”
Ask yourself, how important are you to the team and mission?
If you don’t know it – that’s your answer
How to recognize them? They’re wild horses, chip on shoulder, they wanna make dent in universe
Max empowerment + enablement
Influence > title + rank
Environment of hard debate and honest talk

When you hire a lot of people quickly, you risk importing culture instead of creating internally

People don’t look at your expressed values, but look at when you deviate from them – your behaviors

When you have trouble on sales side, knee jerk is getting new sales leader
A lot of these problems – esp in Silicon Valley – is product related
Easier to swap VP Sales instead of improving core product

First principles – try not to let past / what you already know to overly influence the future
esp common in VCs – too much pattern matching
“let’s try to be five year olds”
“how do you win if you do the same things as everyone else”

How to not lose focus after IPO?
Again the importance of mission posture
The only stock price that matters is the price you sell it
Short-term it’s a voting machine, long-term market gets it right

Sends Monday morning all company email – great way to have direct relationship with entire company

Quite accessible – anyone can email him, frequent direct contact with field teams and all layers of company
People don’t like an environment that’s too guarded and scripted and rehearsed

Moving to 4-day workweek?
No I’m closer to 7-day workweek – doesn’t demand from his team, but the right people will. Culture sorts like-minded

Burnout driven by lack of focus, energy, intensity
Amp up energy – that’s what people want
Faster is better – send an email and get a reply back in 2 minutes

Take every opportunity to increase energy, increase focus – every meeting, every email is a chance
Everyone – not just execs – can do this
You can either take or bring energy – be the latter

Strategy is force multiplier of execution

Most leaders will have to face company transformation
Do you recognize it in time, and can you execute on the necessary change?
All noise until you hear it more and more frequently – relies on good management team, highly intuitive elements, signal versus noise

How do you incentivize bad news?
“I can handle bad news, but what I can’t handle is no news”

Current state of American business culture
New business leaders are the same, same concerns and issues and aspirations – very inspiring
In general the founders / CEOs are younger though

Importance of social issues / ESG
Don’t like outrage culture
Examine like a business problem if you really wanna solve it
eg, more diverse candidates – examine the hiring supply chain and how to improve it

Wealth creation in SV is profound – and the wonderful distributed effects to their families, communities, etc

We’re REALLY in digital transformation now
Software instead of people
Direct to consumer
Operational disciplines become data and software driven
Importance of data science
Only limits now are budget and imagination – no longer limited by the technology

Podcast notes: The Saga of Joe Rogan on NYT podcast

Rogan grew up working class
Very good at martial arts – 19, wins national tae kwon do championship
Moves to LA to pursue standup comedy
Big break – becomes host on Fear Factor
Then becomes commentator for MMA

MMA was growing quickly, and Joe becomes public face of MMA commentary
In 2003, starts recording chats with his friends
Built-in audience: Fear Factor, UFC, comedy nerds
Audience steadily grows
In 2009, moves to Ustream platform – and renames it The Joe Rogan Experience (play on Jimi Hendrix Experience)
In 2013, he starts recording and publishing clips to YouTube
This led to massive growth

Audience is largely men – “patron saint of certain kind of American masculinity”
Like hearing smart people talk about interesting stuff

NYT podcast is highly produced, fact checking, lots of prep
JRE is polar opposite, very long (up to 4 hours), very unedited
“Medium is the message” – wysiwyg
Dabbles in wide variety of topics: fitness, fighting, health, thinkers like DeGrasse Tyson, DMT and psychedelics

His manifesto: always keep learning, keep expanding horizons

Has proclivity for conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, hearing out more radical thinkers, like UFOs, Alex Jones
He may disagree, but he will let them talk – even if they can’t get mainstream media

His biggest view – proudly anti political correctness (anti cancel culture, anti liberal pieties) – really resonates with audience
“It’s ok to be a white man who watches people beat each other in UFC”

Singular figure – pro gay marriage, pro weed, believes in climate change
Not Republican or Democratic – just Joe Rogan view of world

By 2015 – 11M per episode
Viral clips that start to influence culture
Elon Musk episode – smokes joint on air, gets really personal, becomes instant meme – causes Tesla stock to drop

May 2020 – Spotify acquires it for $100M for exclusive distribution rights
People who listen to podcasts listen to more music too
Spotify wants to build exclusive library of podcast content
Deal does well – share price rises, subscriber numbers grow
Spotify surpasses Apple to become #1 podcast platform

Then comes the covid pandemic
Invites fringe guests that counter mainstream health authorities – lockdowns, masks
Joe got covid, treated with ivermectin, skeptical about covid vaccines
Interviews Dr. Robert Malone – medical pariah, darling of Republican Right, who believes hospitals are incentivized to get more covid patients, anti-vax
Interview got huge public blowback

Musician Neil Young was very offended – tells Spotify either me or Rogan –
Joni Mitchell too

Initially Spotify says it’s neutral platform, eg, has rappers with offensive lyrics
CEO Daniel Ek says it won’t de-platform, but will add warning labels, publish moderation guidelines

Rogan releases IG video – half apologizes, acknowledges his approach may need to change
Talks about more preparation, more fact checking, more mainstream guests

Then controversy escalates
India Arie takes music off Spotify, because old clip of Rogan saying N-word

Rogan releases another video – apologizes for using the N-word
Takes down ~70 old episodes

Spotify’s own employees also confront CEO
But Spotify doesn’t back down
Promise to allocate $100M to under repped minority content

Spotify is taking their own stand, but also Rogan matters financially to them (more than he matters to a platform like YouTube)
Rogan so far is cancel proof – saying un-woke things, isn’t afraid to offend people

How can Rogan, who has more podcast listeners than NYT, not be “mainstream media”?
Massively popular, extremely wealthy, yet positions himself as outsider punching up at establishment

Represents a new emerging mainstream – popular, contrarian voices like Rogan’s

Can Spotify give platform to this new contrarian mainstream, while still adhering to old mainstream?

Podcast notes: Axie Infinity founder Jiho shares his story on Bankless podcast

Bankless Layer Zero podcast
Jiho from Axie Infinity

Grew up in NY
Gamer and collector
Dad was painter, gallery, fossil collector, and an attorney
Korean mom, tiger mom
Jiho is his Korean name

Starcraft was his first real game
Also WoW
DK Country, Zelda (played Ocarina 20+ times)
Pokemon on Gameboy – bot two Gameboys so he could trade with himself

Collectors instinct – “some things I just need”
Inherited from his father – collected 40 cases of butterflies

What’s his starter Pokemon? Charmander
likes lizards, salamanders

Trendsetter for games his school played
eg, Diablo – wanted to trade with others
Had Korean cousins who were always into the new Blizzard games

Didn’t know what he wanted to do for most of his life
Entrepreneurial pretty early – selling fossil sharks teeth at school, selling drawings and paintings to people who visited his house
People pleaser

He came from within Axie community – one of first hundreds in Discord
Fell in love with art and roadmap
Helped write whitepaper, did announcements, community building
Job is “sharing vision repeatedly”
What creates sustainable economic engine is people spending for fun + status

Some thought it was fork of CryptoKitties, and early CK players came to Axie
Problem with CK was hyper inflation of cat supply

Axie is balance of collaboration + competition
But also PvE component – Axie believers versus non-believers / critics
Beefs / enemies can be good, eg an early beef with CryptoKitties

DH: How do you prevent it becoming too grindy
Jiho: ownership helps, “things you’re grinding for”, social elements help

3rd version of battle system coming

“Is Axie fun?”
Being “rewarding” is more important – life isn’t always fun, but it should be rewarding

Metaverse = digital lives are becoming just as important, and merging with real world

A lot of initial team members are Vietnamese
Moved to Vietnam to help

In current game industry, a lot of money isn’t going to developers or players
Remove those middlemen, give to builders and players

Since AXS mooning, how has community changed?
Bear = missionaries
Bull = rest of world finds out
Cycle repeats

Classic growing pains eg,
Some schism between OGs and newcomers
Gamers in general are not very nice

Axie is example of the rise of opt-in nations
Choose who your leaders are
Decentralized contribution and building

Axie is largest Discord in world
Collab.land auto assigns role (eg, 3 Axies = can speak, 10 Axies = special channels, etc)
Moderators to guard dog and guide
Jiho is still #1 by total messages sent

Discord caps (max 800K members) may be holding back their game growth (instead of vice-versa!)
Need more innovation around social coordination tools
maybe Discord inherently unscalable

Will see a lot of consolidation in guilds, P2E games
Community + scaling + art + gameplay + economics = Each component is important, requires getting all of them right

Under appreciated reason for Axie’s success is “people love their Axies”
Bunch of his, he would never consider selling eg his first one #707
“Emotional utility” – NFTs don’t work if everyone’s doing it just for money

Mistake when shipped an update where your Axies stopped making facial expressions while battling = got feedback players missed this feature
When you don’t use your Axies for weeks, Axies should act like dogs / pets that actually miss their owners

Combo of aesthetics + utility + scarcity
Triple threat of NFTs
View at Medium.com

DS: end of day, it’s all about optimizing for love
Jiho: It’s hierarchy of needs; Ikigai

Eve founder quote – don’t chase fun, create rewarding experience

Software is creating equal access to communities, relationships, opportunities
If you’re born in bad place or environment, you’re not as limited anymore
No surprise that people in Philippines, Venezuela were early adopters
Direct access to those of different socioeconomic classes (eg, Axie players can easily connect to whales)

Future will be more free, more individual responsibility
“There will be a battle”
Felt like he was a revolutionary without a cause – but now there are many
Not going to be a peaceful era, full of schisms, but very interesting times
Web3 = generational opportunity, a cause worth fighting for

Final advice? Be willing to waste a lot of time online, wander, go down rabbit holes, absorb info