A children's book explanation of what's happening:

1. If you are "smart money" you are allowed to take your $1 and leverage it up to $15+

2. You can now buy $15 of stock AND if you promise to short companies, you can short $15 of stock as well

3. In finance language, this means that you are $30 "gross" ($15 of longs + $15 of shorts) but $0 net (+$15 of longs -$15 of shorts). This makes everyone feel good because it feels like you are taking zero risk...but in reality, your $1 is exposed to $30 of risk.

4. Now you go around and tell your friends about both your longs and your shorts and when you do it at a restaurant vs on Reddit, its called an "ideas dinner".

5. You also publish your longs on a quarterly lag via an SEC rule. You don't have to tell anyone about your shorts.

6. Now the less cool people who weren't invited to the ideas dinners, start copying your longs based on your report.

7. You realize that publicizing your shorts is also a good idea so instead of only selling stocks, you also BUY options (puts) which has to be reported.

8. Now everyone can see both your longs and your shorts and if you have a hot hand, you can likely predict that the cool people from the dinner as well as the less cool people monitoring your filings will copy you.

9. But then an outsider notices that the math is way off!

My Chads, institutions and retail are entering the DeFi space at unprecedented volume. One of the key primitives in DeFi will be the securitization and tranching of DeFi and is still massively undervalued. Enter https://t.co/Gx4H3hIzNg ( $SFI ).

Don't worry, let me ELI5.

1/ Alright so securitization and tranching, that's a mouthful. 👅💦

Let's take a step back. If you look at any financial activity within DeFi, whether it is yield farming, lending or liquidity providing, there are risks involved.

2/ As an honest farmer / liquidity provider, the rewards are yield, and the risk is losing your funds due to e.g. smart contract risk and (potentially) IL.

As an honest lender, the rewards are interest, and risk is default of the borrower.

3/ 99% of the current retail participants don't use portfolio risk management in their DeFi activities. We farm a bit, IL a bit, loan and borrow a bit and hope we make gains at the end of the day. For institutions, portfolio management is much different.

4/ The problem for institutions to enter such DeFi activities as yield farming, liquidity providing and lending/borrowing, is that it's inherently risky and not quantifiable with variable rewards. We early adopters don't mind this risk, but this prevents adoption by institutions.

You have heard a lot about how anon accounts are being doxxed by Sarah Mojarad. I learned yesterday that I am unfortunately one of those accounts.
SARAH MOJARAD DOXXED ME.
And she could dox you, too.
1/

This year I started writing daily on Twitter about finance and investing and gained more than 500 followers in 2 weeks

Here are the main things I learned on Twitter growth

1. Brand
2. Content
3. Engagement
4. Networking
5. Tools

/THREAD/

1. Brand
You need to find a niche you are interested in and focus on it
E.g. finance, fashion, travel, etc.

Adjust your profile by adding a profile picture and banner that will show someone what your profile is about and why they should follow you.

Add a linktree that will have all the links for your blog, website, newsletter, etc.

2. Content
Don't wait to gain followers before posting. Nobody will follow you if they see an empty feed.

Start posting daily focusing more on single tweets or threads that provide insights on a topic people in your niche might be interested in.

At first, it will feel like talking to a mirror.

Have a pinned tweet, which will be your best one that will catch the attention of someone visiting your profile.

1/ Brief history & Roadmap of @CreamdotFinance

One of the fastest shipping teams in DeFi

The last few days have been buzzing in the financial market.

Gamestop. AMC. Short squeeze.

Those words have trended on social media in the last few days. Here’s what's been going down.

THREAD

Gamestock, a video retailer, has had its share price go sky high in the last few days.

Why is this so?

There has been a tug of war between two parties.

Large companies known as hedge funds versus retail investors led by wallstreetbets, a group on Reddit.

The hedge funds and a few other players in the market had shorted the stock.

Shorting, in essence, is a bet that the price of a stock will dip.

So, you borrow the stock, sell it, buy it back at a lower price and then return it to the lender.

The hedge funds decided to short the stock because it has poor fundamentals.

It struggled for a while.

So you would expect the price to dip, right?

A small band of investors on Reddit wallstreetbet, however, were furious by this.

So, they decided to buy up the stock, which pushed the price high.

[QUICK THREAD: PERSPECTIVE]
1/11
Make no mistake, I abhor that prancing peacock, I really do. Just not for your reasons. His financial corruption doesn't bother me. His Islamophobia does, but only so much. His lies, again, only to an extent.

2/11
Financial corruption is as old as politics itself. Lying isn't a Modi-exclusive feature, it practically underscores Indian politics. And islamophobia? Ask yourself, is he the inventor of Islamophobia, or the product?

No, what bothers me is his mainstreaming of trash.

3/11
Men can set you on fire and livestream your death under far-from-tacit political patronage. That's what I hate Modi for.

It's a mundane reality that you'll receive threats of rape and death for merely pointing out his flaws. That's what I hate Modi for.

4/11
Academic institutions get addressed by conmen like Jaggi and Ramdev. That's what I hate Modi for.

Congregations of scientists talk about Vedic airplanes and radioactive dung with a straight face and it's elitist to call them out for it. That's what I hate Modi for.

5/11
A panwala in Bombay not only has a strong opinion on what's best for Kashmiris but also wants every one of them gunned down to uphold that opinion, even though nobody in his entire family tree has even a hint of stake in the state in question. That's what I hate Modi for.

1/ This is a memo outlining 11 ways to hide your money offshore.

It was not supposed to “fall into the wrong hands.”

Well, it did. https://t.co/N6RUDqHVfR

2/ The “11 ways” memo is part of a huge trove of documents—350,000 to be exact—leaked from inside a trust company called La Hougue, based on an island off the coast of France.

Amid the data, this memo stood out for its candor.

3/ After one tax expert reviewed it, he told @SamEifling and @CalynShaw, “I have to say I’m not sure what else I can add other than ‘WTF’? (you can quote me on that). How stupid (or confident nothing will ever happen to you) do you have to be to put this in writing?”

4/ Mother Jones and @GlobalRepCentre are surfacing this particular memo simply because it’s the sort of thing you never see: a customer-facing document obtained in a big offshore data leak, quoting dollar amounts that few people ever hold in their hands at one time.

5/ Each of the 11 options listed in the memo offers some sort of contrived business deal by which you move money into an anonymous offshore account. And—here’s where the genius lies—they design those deals to give you some sort of tax break. The methods are, at best, legal-ish.

#AXXAers a short(ie #shortsqeeze hopefully) #update on one of $AXXA’s #VC companies:
1/

$AXXA Great #zoom call over the weekend w/our #French #VentureCapital Office. We received confirmation of a #USD $250,000 #INVESTMENT into one of our early-stage startups from a reputable international #VC funder.
(let's focusing on #VC before we move to other divisions)
2/

$AXXA Our #French #VC Group will be increasing its stake in this #startup. For confidentiality reasons, we will not disclose the name of the #funder until the second #stage #Funding round is complete.
3/

A little about #axxaVC: $AXXA #VC company invests in a range of technologies including #Robotics, Hardware, IT, #Health & #Biotech, and #VR and #AI technologies. These are areas where the direct application of technology makes a real, measurable difference in people's lives.
4/

$AXXA The #VC subsidiary company that just received its Second Round funding develops #Virtual #Reality (#VR), #Augmented #Reality (AR), and #Mixed #Reality (#MR) technologies. Their #technologies are cost-effective motion trackers for multiplayer full immersion #VR zones.
5/

Sweden's elderly in 2020 recorded one of the lowest mortality rates in history.

Overall mortality rates in Sweden by age were excellent in 2020 and better than the 2015-2018 average mortality rates for nearly all age groups.

A deep dive into why 👇👇👇

Overall death numbers are meaningless without stratifying by age. Below, we have mortality rates from 2015-2020 by age groups 0-64, 65-79, 80-89, and 90+. The 65-79 group fared worst with ~3% inc. over 2015-18 average.

Amazingly, the 90+ group had lower mortality in 2020.

All age groups can be plotted on the same graph, but must be standardized since the range of values is so large (1 for 0-64 vs 200 for 90+)

Here, mortality rates are shown relative to 2018.

The most interesting observation (imo) is the significant drop in mortality rate in 2019 in all age groups.

Around 60% of all deaths in Sweden come from the 80+ age group. When mortality rates dropped 5% in 2019, this left a much larger than normal 80+ pop alive in 2020.

This lead to a swelling of the 80+ population in 2020 by 6.6%. This was by far the biggest percentage increase in one age group over the 5 year period of data

Pop. Deaths
2018 - 522k 54k
2019 - 536k 52k
2020 - 572k 59k

1/14 Now that everyone and their mother is talking about $LUNA & $MIR my message is

We don't need the money

This is why

👇

2/14 Vast majority of crypto assets have insignificant or no adoption at all. The few with the highest adoption are at best very good speculation bets.

3/14 #Ethereum is the King of platforms and today there is no competition even close the liquidity and usage. All this activity is not reflected in $ETH itself and that is why EIP 1559, a proposal to change the economic model is a constant debate.

4/14 Looking at the $ETH example at this point we can conclude the ideal asset needs two important factors

1. Adoption
2. Good value capture

High adoption without a good value capture is not ideal and vice versa

5/14 @terra_money is one of the world's most highly adopted chains with millions of dollars in "real world transactions".

What does this mean and how is this aligned with $LUNA token holders?

How @OthersideAI founders @mattshumer_ @MilesFeldstein and @JasonKuperberg amassed a 13k waitlist and $2.6m funding after building a demo in 2 hours.

Their product will change how we communicate. 👇🧵

2. OthersideAI was launched in the latter half of 2020 by three college-aged founders—Matt Shumer, Miles Feldstein, and Jason Kuperberg.

The company’s origin story is incredible. 🔥

3. The three founders met at @LaunchPadSYR (the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars at Syracuse University). 🎓

The idea for OthersideAI came from an experience CEO Matt Shumer had at his previous startup, Visos.

4. Without a network to tap into, Matt Shumer had to cold email practically anyone he wanted to connect with or pitch. 📧

“I eventually came to the conclusion that I spend too much time writing emails and I tried to figure out a way to use [GPT-2] to cut that time down” -MS

5. WTF is GPT-2? 🤔

Open-source artificial intelligence by OpenAI.

Developers wield the AI to perform certain specific tasks.

In this case, composing emails.

1/ Yesterday I pushed out a report covering the various angles of growth observed across the NFT ecosystem.

2020 was a monumental year for NFTs, and the stage is well and truly set for another record-setting year in

2/ For those of you new to the topic, take a moment to familiarize with what non-fungible tokens are as well as how they might become a core driver of the evolution of online content.

Don't be afraid to let the imagination wander!

3/ Whilst data remains relatively fragmented, the numbers of active marketplace users is clearly growing with almost $90M in sales.

💰Largely driven by 4 major categories:

- Crypto Art (>$20M)
- Crypto Sandboxes/Virtual Worlds (>$16M)
- Video Games (>$15M)
- Collectibles ($16M)

4/ The dip in marketplace activity due to high gas fees during the "DeFi Summer" is notable: as activity and sales declined.

Interestingly, we see that throughout the year the amount of NFTs sold per month declined whilst average sale price went up.

5/ This is likely indicative of gas fees forcing users to focus on buying quality over quantity, whilst smaller transactions on mainnet were prohibitively expensive forcing them to shift to layer 2s such as Matic, or not take place at all.

Did you know that you can send a follow-up email sequence from @gumroad?

It's called a workflow, and here's how to use it to make $$$...

1) Set up a free product (pay what you want, $0+)
Keep it high value and very short.
A single page summary or plan of some sort is good.

Tell them in the product that they'll get more by email.

2) Set up your workflow under Customers => Workflows.

Here's what to send...

#1 Sent Immediately:
Remind them of what they'll be able to do if they ACT on the freebie
Tell them they'll get more useful stuff over the next few days
tell them how to recognise your emails

#2 Optional same day
Keep this super light and breezy, like an email to your friends

If you have a higher level service, ask if they're interested

Ask what they're working on, people love talking about this

#3 The paradigm shift

Tell them there's a reason why what they're doing isn't working
Hint at a missing piece, a conspiracy against them (Big Pharma), or just dumb advice accepted as common wisdom

This is the setup for your product which solves the problem

For years, more and more services that should be statutory and government funded have had to be replaced with charities and donations because the govt stops funding them. To the point where we are literally donating now to schools, NHS, foodbanks & shelter.

Govt isn’t even providing basic human rights at this point, and we are all expected to be so happy when someone walks up a mountain or releases a song to donate to a service that we literally pay taxes for already.

No one should be having to raise money for stat services.

But it’s framed as positive isn’t it? An elderly man raises millions for the NHS and he’s a bloody hero. He is. Of course. But why on earth did he even need to do that? The NHS isn’t a charity. It’s supposed to be funded correctly to function.

People create choirs and release songs to raise millions for veterans who are left to die and suffer after service - and it’s all supposed to be a lovely gesture but the real crime is that the govt exploited these humans and then left them with absolutely nothing

People go out of their way to create shelters and accommodation charities and that’s brilliant - we are reliant on humans like this.

But why? Why should we be?

Aren’t humans entitled to safe accommodation and shelter? Why isn’t the govt held accountable for refusing to provide?