12 miles per gallon

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Something different

A short break last week in which I came across this podcast which is both interesting and long. The whole premise is around the idea that school is a nonsense waste of time (90% of it). It necessarily caters to the lowest common denominator because it has no other choice. 

I must say there were elements of this that I would not personally tolerate (the food bit and the screen time). It is compelling though because the participants are sufficiently economically capable that they could pretty much make any scenario happen. Naval for instance has some interesting things to say about children and learning. Specifically his own kids, so it isn't just some random no cost riff.  For those who follow him he is a thoughtful guy and has been very successful, so I put a certain amount of weight on his considerations. Not least, he was a very early bitcoiner. 

I return frequently to the comment of Hal Varian (Google Economist) who famously said that: “if you want to know what you will be doing in 10 years then look at what rich people are doing now”.

It is 11 years since his tweet, small countries are now indeed buying bitcoin. I also strongly suspect that a lot of children will not be going to school in 10 years either. 

I hate to say this because it's upsetting to a lot of extremely devoted people who are both diligent and kind, but the reality is school is a concentration camp for the mind. The whole concept, if one steps back, is just complete nonsense and so much of what is ‘taught’ is nonsense too. 

How then will children learn? Here is just one example from the open source DeepSeek R1 model which came out this week. With a simple prompt, the AI coded a full visual display of exactly how Pythagoras works. In itself impressive, but of course you can then spend all day asking unlimited questions at your own speed until you do understand it. The image below is a shot of a fully rendered video the AI produced explaining what is going on.  

That is not as impressive as this though, which I won’t reproduce here just follow the link. The AI correctly rendered Quantum Electrodynamics (a PhD level concept I do not claim to understand). 

The machine that does all this is free. Completely free. Accordingly, I remain of the view that the early movers will once again be correct here and education as we know it has ended. However, so embedded is the concept it might take 30 years because the government will not want to let go. After all, people might actually look up for themselves “what money is”. 

The proof of that embedding is that next week my children are going back to ………… school. 

TRUMP - COIN

What of Trump-Coin then?

The whole thing just emphasises the type of President Trump will be. For a long time we have made clear that from the sector's perspective he was the better choice. However, this particular manoeuvre seems to solely enrich him (he and his family own 80% of it). Rather like, I will do things that are good for you as long as they are even better for me. I don’t actually have a problem with that as long as I am not forced to participate. 

It also emphatically proves something else. There is bitcoin, which has a fundamental link to physical reality through its mining process, and then there is everything else. Trump Coin and Melania Coin, however fun they may be, would not pass any of the tests required to get in our Managed Fund. They will also not pass the test of time either. A pure grift. 

The movements of the assets are trackable of course and to the extent that the Trumps monetised any of this, they did so by selling TRUMP and buying bitcoin. Clearly, they too understand where long term value lies. 

We have to take the bad with the good though. This was unmistakably bad.  

Davos 2025

Davos is back! Headlining this year was the unelected leader of the European Union, Ursula Von Der Layen. She is seen in the photo arriving in an Audi A8 6.3 litre 585 HP 12-cylinder gas-guzzling beast. It’s a beautiful car and a testament to the magnificent German heavy industry that will shortly no longer exist. The vehicle does 12 miles per gallon. 

Ursula was quick to point out that European and Global citizens should aim to quickly decarbonize their lives in the way she has. She urged “nature based solutions”. 

Unabashedly, she explained that the Paris Climate Accords remain “the best solution to the world’s problems”. I suspect that might be correct, except that China is not a signatory, India is not a signatory and now the United States has also withdrawn from the agreement. Those three countries make up over 50% of global carbon emissions. You might expect some acknowledgement that the last man standing in the agreement is going to be the biggest loser, so maybe we should rethink? No such thing happened though and she doubled down on Europe’s commitment to achieve very little at absolutely enormous cost. 

It’s not that Paris is necessarily bad, or wrong, it’s simply that the agreement only ever worked if there was global consensus. Without it the whole thing falls apart, which it has. 

Elsewhere on the Davos stage was Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, representing Syria for the first time at Davos. A friendly chap, Mr al-Shibani was a member of (US & UK designated) terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate. He had a cosy chat with mass murderer, Tony Blair. Mr Blair was able to share how he killed 100,000 innocent Iraqis a few years back, and the boys went on to discuss solar panels.   

Outside in the cold, a lonely figure was handing out leaflets to Swiss attendees regarding the referendum on adopting a bitcoin reserve in Switzerland. They have 18 months to get 100,000 signatures.  

For nerds

Time for some bitcoin technical. There is a view that not much changes or moves forward on bitcoin. I (predictably) disagree with that. The base layer of the protocol does not change much, that is true, but new products are built on bitcoin all the time. 

One good example is something called Chaumian E-cash. This concept was designed by David Chaum in 1982, in the late 80’s he had signed deals with Microsoft, JP Morgan and others to launch e-cash at scale but it never actually happened. Chaum’s website provides a nice timeline of events. 

One of the reasons it didn’t happen is that there was no distribution layer for Chaum’s idea. He needed to use the banking network and that’s where everything fell over.

Now there is a globally distributed monetary layer anyone can use. If you are interested check out cashu.space. It enables you to issue your own private money, or rewards points or anything you want and its base layer is bitcoin. Transactions are instant and free. It really is very, very good.

This podcast goes into some detail about how to use it and why it might be important. I would summarise the situation as Chaumian E-cash is likely to be to bitcoin what CBDCs are to fiat. The race is on. 

Euro-Trash

The Euro continues its journey to parity with the dollar. European leaders, rather than reflecting on the massive outperformance by the US, have doubled down. More regulation is needed they say, more control over social media is needed because people are being misled. In Europe, misinformation is everywhere. Frankly of course it needs to be because if they woke up and realised what was happening there would be a few Euro-leaders out of a job. 

They just will not give it up. I find it absolutely astonishing that they persist with this dogma when their mandate (which comes from the European Parliament) is solely about inflation. If they were to take an honest position on this they would be advocating for the cheapest energy source they can find irrespective of its environmental impact - which is solely a matter for elected representatives and not central banks.

It’s not like they don’t know all of this either. It is laid out in some detail in the minutes of the ECB November meeting. An extract of which I provide below. 

Semantics matter too. “Market perceptions of diverging growth trajectories”! Germany’s economy has gone backwards two years in a row. It is hardly a perception. If US equities have performed well because of the sectors expected to benefit from Trump, why was the same not true in Europe? The answer is they have no tech industry because they do nothing but attack big tech. Everyone who is any good at it just gets up and leaves. 

This bit is even better. The ECB projects that the updated EU Emissions Trading System (known as ETS2) will itself cause inflation to rise by 0.2% directly. This directly contradicts their continually insane remarks that windmills make inflation go down. 

It is worth reading about ETS2. It begins in 2027 and will apply to building and transport industries. Requiring emissions caps on cement, roads, vehicles etc. The whole thing will make heavy industry in Europe (which is broadly what they are good at) non-viable. China, India and now the USA have no such restrictions. Yet somehow Europe expects to grow and be prosperous?

An entire continent, that once dominated the world, is committing economic suicide before our eyes. Nobody cares, not even the Europeans. 

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