The Pomp Letter

To investors, The Federal Reserve used low interest rates and quantitative easing to create one of the largest asset bubbles of our lifetime. They didn’t do it on purpose, but they were the leading contributor. In an effort to redeem themselves, and bring inflation under control, the US-based central bank has been on a mission of destruction for over a year now. The goal is to destroy demand from...

To investors, I have been reading one book per week this year. This past week’s book was Empire State of Mind written by Zack O’Malley Greenburg . Highly recommend reading it. If you are interested in the individual highlights that I made in the physical book, you can read those here . Hope you enjoy these notes every Monday morning. Book’s main argument: Jay-Z is one of our generation’s most nota...

To investors, I have read approximately one book per week during 2022. It started off as a personal challenge — could I stay disciplined enough to read consistently? But as with most things in life, the benefits of the personal challenge ended up being much more than I originally anticipated. The main benefit that I discovered was an inverse relationship between reading and wasting time on social...

To investors, One of the most surprising data points over the last few weeks has been bitcoin’s stability against the uncertain and chaotic macro backdrop. The asset, which is historically considered highly volatile by legacy investors, has surprised many people. I asked Will Clemente, co-founder of Reflexivity Research , to write a guest post about this lack of volatility. Below is Will’s analysi...

To investors, PayPal published a new policy towards the end of last week that was set to go into practice in November. Companies do this all the time and there is never any fanfare. But this policy update was quite different. PayPal explicitly stated that they would target anyone “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation.” How would they...

To investors, There is a famous quote from Angela Bassett that I often think of: “It's important to surround yourself with good people, interesting people, young people, young ideas. Go places, learn new stuff. Look at the world with wonder - don't be tired about it.” Interesting people. Young people. Young ideas. This simple concept is a surefire way to preserve the plasticity of your brain. As w...

To investors, Everyone is in the talent business. Whether you are an entrepreneur, investor, or an employee of a large corporation, we are all trying to find great people to work with. This activity is fairly opaque, so most people rely on their intuition. If you ask them “are you good at finding great talent?,” they will quickly say yes. But is that really true? How do you know you are good? What...

To investors, Investing is a game of demographics. You want to select markets that are ascending, not descending. Data points like population growth, percent of young people, and life expectancy are key indicators of where the world is going. Pick the right market and you can make the trend your friend. Pick the wrong market and you’ll have a strong headwind. I want to spend our time today focused...

To investors, There seems to be a lot of conversation around my Twitter profile over the last day or two. It started with this viral tweet: And there are more tweets from other individuals in the crypto community. I even got phone calls and text messages from people I have great respect for. They wanted to know if I changed my mind on bitcoin? Did I sell my bitcoin? What was going on? The truth is...

To investors, I hope each of you had a great holiday weekend. This week is going to be a little different than our normal schedule. I am in the middle of reading a fascinating book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon. Although the book is a New York Times bestseller, there are very few people I know who have read it. Gordon published the book in 2017 and it lays out a unique...

To investors, Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse dropped a must-read piece last week entitled “ War and Industrial Policy .” He starts off describing how global supply chains can only work efficiently during peacetime. Zoltan explains the three pillars of the recent low inflation world: * Cheap immigrant labor keeping nominal wage growth “stagnant” in the US * Cheap Chinese goods raising real wages am...

To investors, There has been anticipation of Wall Street institutions joining the bitcoin and crypto industry for years. Fidelity started mining bitcoin back in 2014, which was followed in 2018 with the launch of their custody and trading platform. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest became the first public fund to invest in bitcoin during the second half of 2015. Since these two pioneers entered the industr...

To investors, Today we are announcing a brand new business, Inflection Points Inc , that has been in stealth since the beginning of 2021. I co-founded the business with Colton Sakamoto and it has grown into one of the key pieces of infrastructure across the bitcoin and crypto industry. Below is more information about the business, our mission, and why we are coming out of stealth. Inflection Point...

To investors, The unemployment rate in the United States is sitting near historic lows. This is impressive, especially post-COVID chaos, because it took nearly a decade to reach the ~3.5% unemployment rate after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-2009. My concern at the moment is there is a strong probability that the unemployment rate will push higher over the coming weeks and months. The Federa...

To investors, Most people’s attention has been on the accelerating inflation and reactive monetary policy decisions in the United States. This is the problem that we can see when we go to the store and it is the problem we feel in our wallets. The problem is complex though. It can’t be attributed to any one issue, so it is important to continue to zoom out and see the entire playing field. One of...

To investors, The best companies create categories. They are able to identify new technology and apply it to solve large problems globally. These category creators are able to disrupt legacy companies, even if those legacy companies have significant scale, because the new technology allows for use cases that were previously unavailable. Take Uber as an example. The ride-sharing company was not pos...

To investors, Below is a guest post from Nik Bhatia , financial researcher and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and author of the Substack newsletter The Bitcoin Layer , providing a preview ahead of today’s Fed meeting. Enjoy! “Markets take the stairs up and the elevator down.” I’ve always loved this old trader adage because of how true it is,...

To investors, Bitcoin’s price has been falling for months and now sits under $25,000. Although these price drawdowns never get easier, they have happened numerous times over the years. It is always a good reminder to re-evaluate the bitcoin thesis and check the underlying fundamental data. First, the bitcoin thesis is simple — an open-source, decentralized, digital currency that boasts a programma...

To investors, Inflation in the United States was reported at 8.6% this morning. This is the fastest year-over-year growth in over 40 years. The most concerning part of this report is that economists and market analysts believed that inflation had peaked in March at 8.5% and was going to start trending downward in April and May. We saw 8.3% in the April report, but the May numbers surprised these “...

To investors, The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the single largest bitcoin fund in the world. With more than $19.25 billion in AUM, they hold over 640,000 bitcoin inside the fund. The fund’s AUM was over $40 billion before bitcoin’s recent 2022 price drawdown. Many people may not realize though — GBTC was a major driver in bitcoin’s increase in price from ~ $10,000 in October 2020 to $64,000 i...

If you are not a subscriber of The Pomp Letter, join 220,000 other investors who read my personal opinion on finance, technology, and bitcoin each morning. To investors, President Joe Biden is hosting Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at the White House for a meeting on inflation. Alister Bull of Bloomberg reported the gravity of the situation by writing: “President Joe Biden will hold a rare...

To investors, Asset prices have been drawing down in every market over the last few months. You can see it in stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and crypto. There have been numerous people warning business owners and founders of technology startups to prepare for a tough economic environment. This usually entails cutting costs, taking on outside investment, and focusing on profitability. The...

To investors, There was a very large crypto conference hosted by FTX and SALT in the Bahamas last week. I thought it would be interesting to have a conference attendee share their perspective from the ground — here are Sherjan Husainie ’s notes from the conference: Summary Crypto Bahamas was a high-filter and high-ROI event in the Web3 space. Given the partnership of FTX and SALT (Anthony Scaramuc...

To investors, The retirement situation in America is dismal. According to a recent Bankrate survey , more than 50% of US workers say that they are behind on their retirement savings. At least 1 in every 3 people report that they don’t even have a retirement account. To make the situation worse, 51% of Americans say that they have previously taken an early withdrawal from their retirement savings a...

If you are not a subscriber of The Pomp Letter, join 215,000 other investors who read my personal opinion on finance, technology, and bitcoin each morning. To investors, Electric vehicle company Tesla has been the source of insane controversy for years. The critics believed the company would fail and file for bankruptcy and the proponents thought that Tesla would be the most valuable company in th...