Bitcoin Halving, S&P Swells & X Æ A-12 is Born
Happy Friday Y’all,
Let’s dive right into a few things I chewed on this week…
Elon Musketeer (aka “Marketer Musk”)
Continuing to observe the mad-man: Musk. He’s a genius marketer… flirting the fine line of crazy person. Not too dissimilar from Kanye, if you ask me.
On May the 4th (ironic), Elon Musk had a child with Grimes, giving them the name: “X Æ A-12”.
Just a few days prior, he tweeted that he would be selling almost all his physical possessions.
And yesterday, he went on Joe Rogan’s Podcast, for the second time (already has 5M+ Views in under 24 hours).
The first time he went on Joe Rogan’s Pod, he smoked weed and got in trouble from Tesla’s board members.
Among other topics, they discuss Neuralink, one of Elon’s side projects. Which is “developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers”. Neuralink overview and launch video. Full podcast here:
S&P Swells
It’s wild to continue watching the market rise, despite unemployment rising. Could it be a quick rebound before a bigger crash? Only time will tell. Here is some more interesting data…
More Layoffs :(
Sadly, many companies continue to make layoffs.
Most notable SF-based tech companies among them, in the past week:
Airbnb - 1,900 employees, 25% of their workforce
Uber - 3,700 employees, 14% of workforce
Lyft - 1,000 employees, 17% of workforce
These are not unexpected. And with VC-money fueling “hyper-growth”, it is part of the risk. But still, disheartening to watch innovation stalling.
Goes to show, we are not in control, ever. Even when we think we are.
Bitcoin Halving
“The theory of the halving and the chain reaction that it sets off works something like this:
Reward is halved → half the inflation → lower available supply → higher demand → higher price → miners incentive still remains, regardless of smaller rewards, as the value of Bitcoin is increased In the process.”
Bitcoin hit $10,000 today, presumably on the expectation of the upcoming halving.
Source: Investopedia. TLDR:
Bitcoin is halving on May 11, 2020.
A Bitcoin halving event is when the reward for mining Bitcoin transactions is cut in half.
This event also cuts in half Bitcoin's inflation rate and the rate at which new Bitcoins enter circulation.
Both previous halvings have correlated with intense boom and bust cycles that have ended with higher prices than prior to the event.
Focus > Time
Disclaimer: I am in a privileged position to have had a lot of time over the last couple months of sheltering-in-place. No kids, remote job, etc.
And still, I have wanted *more* time. But in actuality, I’m finding that I really just need more focus. The key to unlocking more time is quite simply learning to say “no” more.
Say no to conversations. Say no to those emails. Say no to those items on the “to do” list that you shouldn’t be prioritizing.
Two tweets that reiterate this thinking:
Happy Mother’s Day to all the superheroes out there. Love y’all. Thank you for everything you have done, and continue to do. You (quite literally) keep the world going. And of course, a special shout-out to my @mom, the best of them all! <3
Enjoy the weekend,
Brendan J Short