1 Healthy, 2 Wealthy & 3 Wise - 10th May
Bitcoin Halving, Why BTC, Richard Feynman, Kevin Kelly, Macro Voices, LIBRA & elon Musk
Hi I am Sankalp Shangari and I intend to share my experiences in Financial Markets, Startup & VC world. More importantly, living better meaningful lives in modern day and age. One newsletter to look forward to.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
“There is no miracle people. It just happens that they got interested in this thing and they learned all this stuff.” —Richard Feynman
TWEET/ OF THE WEEK - I still can’t believe Twitter is free. Thank you Jack 👌🏼
Random Thoughts 🧠
Nothing in this post is an investment advice guys
Bitcoin Halving is upon us. Its talk of the town and trending on google searches. First of all, people new to crypto, please make note : “Crypto is very volatile, please do not bet more than you can afford to loose”. That said, its been less volatile than Oil lately. As I write this we have a seen massive bearish action in Bitcoin after an equally spectacular rise in anticipation of halving - a four yearly event where supply of BTC halves.
Paul is a well regarded name on the street. That in itself makes a very bullish case for Bitcoin but I would like to play the devils advocate here. While, Paul is getting into BTC, we never know of his positions (long or short) as he will be primarily playing on futures. Further, halving is almost beyond us now. There could be a spike again but given the macro we are living in and given the SPX highs, I personally believe there is a cap here around 10-11K. BTC should hover between 8.5K & 10.5K for sometime before making a move - depending on how COVID pans out. Long term, we are very bullish of BTC and few top crypto currencies. Few factors that make us even more bullish post halving:
Monetary inflation fears - due to unlimited printing by FED - long term bullish for Silver, Gold & BTC
New store of value in the modern digital world - Digital Gold. Why not have a secure, easily transferrable, lightweight asset in your wallet then heavy Gold with similar purposes?
Paul Tudor’s & several other institutional investments will bring other people into this who have earlier been sitting on sidelines. I always believe in following the “Smart Money”. There is so much more that we don’t know as retail investors.
Projects like Facebook’s Libra and China’s DCEP will lead to quicker adoption among masses via their wallets
Crypto infrastructure is being built at a record pace - both at individual as well as enterprise level
Bitcoins third halving leaves only about 3 million BTC left to be mined. Remember supply of BTC is fixed at 21 million. Powell or Lagarde cannot add to that but beware of greedy Wall Street bankers and their exotic derivatives
Bitcoin hash rates are going up like previous rallies and mining is also becoming more widespread outside China - Europe, North America and elsewhere. Coin Metrics unveiled a new type of hashrate index for hashrate derivatives, allowing miners to hedge one of their main sources of uncertainty.
Price wise, some personal thoughts below. Again, this is no investment advise. Closely watching the action over the last few years and how markets have behaved in the last two months, I largely believe in following price action:
A floor is there around 6.5K for BTC. Any move downward for any reason is a quick buy. BTC has been largely range bound between that floor of 6.5K and 10K
Short term we could see BTC hover around 9K post halving and try to breach those 10K levels few times. There is some short term risk as how Corona pans out but personally there should be buying opportunities below 6.5K as we have seen again and agin.
Medium term we move higher, hovering around 10K as supply tightens. The halving pump will create a new normal as there would be only 900 BTC produced everyday (from current 1800). If institutions follow Paul and follow Fidelity and follow the smart money, we should see this supply get really tight leading to higher prices
Closer towards the end of the year, BTC could make massive moves and make a new range of 15K-20K. Eventually we should see a pump and possible breach of all time highs around 20K. BTC is outperforming every market and by year end Corona should subside or have a vaccine or people just get used to the new norms, whatever they are.
Happy to speak in further details to anyone who wants to talk ab out crypto or general financial markets.
1 on Health 🏃🏻♀️🏃🏼♂️
The physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, explains the value of gardens:
"As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological states on individual and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging. In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens."
Source: “Why We Need Gardens” in Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales via James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
2 on Wealth 🥂🍻
Changing Value of Money by Ray Dalio - Printing and Devaluing Money Is the Easiest Way out of a Debt Crisis. While people tend to think that a currency is pretty much a permanent thing and believe that “cash” is the safe asset to hold, that’s not true because all currencies devalue or die and when they do cash and bonds (which are promises to receive currency) are devalued or wiped out. That is because printing a lot of currency and devaluing debt is the most expedient way of reducing or wiping out debt burdens.
Should You Pare Back Your Exposure to Stocks? There is no question that more big names will follow with dividend cuts or suspensions. In addition to hurting retirees’ sources of income in the short term, the cuts to dividends are going to deliver long-term pain to the total returns investors are expecting from the stock market. Total return represents the combination of growth in the share price combined with the reinvestment of cash dividends.
Chris is one of my favourites and sums it up perfectly, being bearish and comparing to the Great Depression. personally, I am not in that camp yet.
3 on Wisdom 🧠🗣
The Lute on fasting- Jawad Mian - “Fasting is the first principle of medicine. Fast and see the strength of the spirit reveal itself. There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. - Rumi”
Raymond Joseph Teller, one half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, on the process of mastery:
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice any Kevin Kelly - probably the highlight of my week. Simple concise advise from a widely drawn experience. Even Tim Ferris’s covered this in his 5 Bullet Friday
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
- attributed to ABRAHAM LINCOLNA Conversation with Naval Ravikant on the "Save Planet, Get Rich". The first podcast interview in a year with Naval Ravikant—entrepreneur, angel investor, philosopher and bibliophile. The modern day wisdom God.
Highlights from Naval's first podcast interview in a year! Here are the top 50 @naval quotes from this 50-minute podcast with @SamanthaRyNZ. Including: Wisdom, Long-Term Thinking, Decision Making, Self-Image, Authenticity, Work as Play, Peace, Happiness, & More (THREAD)One more podcast appearance (made an exception): Apple podcasts: https://t.co/xjMhbRF2Sh Google podcasts: https://t.co/O7vBqqBWLl Spotify: https://t.co/i4UWJltpLu Breaker: https://t.co/QJQiH3A13H Overcast: https://t.co/ycEQ8keYKxNaval @naval
1 Question to ask yourself
I’ve always been pondering since Naval put it out there.
“If you are so smart, then why are you not happy?”
1 Video I am watching - The Great Richard Feyman
1 Podcast that I enjoyed
3 Best of Bitcoin
Libra “new” edited white paper
Digital Yuan (DCEP): Alternative To The Dollar Settlement System?
Introducing Free Float Supply by Coinmetrics
3 Best Articles this week
A Complete History of Pandemics - MIT - Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil offers a sweeping look at pandemics that ravaged the world
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Startup & VC Corner
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Disclaimer: None of the content in this newsletter is meant to be financial advice. Please do your own due diligence before taking any action related to content within this article. This post is for reference only. It will not help you to “lambo” or “moon” or any other euphemism for unhinged speculation. It should help you to supplement your own analysis of the markets. Enjoy.