Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets: Terror and Opportunity

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Cryptocurrencies soar in value, plunge, hit new highs, are written off, rebound, and hit new highs again, and the cycle repeats. We should be terrified. Over the last five years, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether have outperformed the overall market. However, can the general trend of outperformance last, or will these digital assets drop over 90% like some of its other crypto brethren? Is there a sustainable performance that creates the foundation for either a new currency or a valuable asset class? Probably not. Forces that drive these eye-watering returns seem to be the same as those that drove the social media-driven insanity behind meme stocks such as GameStop. We are seeing social media mobs controlling demand to a limited supply, creating price spikes that look attractive to any speculative investor. Unfortunately, demand can dry up quickly and the price subsequently falls through the floor. Financial markets ruthlessly sort nonsense from substance. Volatility and existential threats have been brutal and extreme for digital assets and the reckoning for crypto has been predicted for some time. However, digital assets are not on their way to history’s dustbin. Reality is more nuanced, and I try to provide a more detailed analysis since a broad brush hardly seems appropriate. The weakest and craziest portions of the crypto world have been exposed as nothing more than silliness. But some valuable components remain resilient and offer tremendous opportunity. I will explore these in detail. There is more cause for optimism than pessimism among the best and the brightest. We will explore these opportunities while harshly dismissing the hype and silliness – avoid the terror of a worthless market.

Industrial Policy – Stupidity by Another Name

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Zero-sum thinking has begun. Despite comparative advantage, mutual cooperation, and specialization proving indisputably more beneficial than any other approach to economic interaction, this ideal is under threat. Rules and norms for economic integration lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, created an order-of-magnitude increase in the average wealth of the Western population, and benefited countless hundreds of millions enabling a way of life otherwise unimaginable post-World War II. Now that system is under threat as developed countries subsidize alternative energy, attract manufacturing via expensive subsidies, and restrict the flow of goods and capital. Mutual benefit is out; national gain is now the highest priority. In other words, stupidity and zero-sum thinking have taken over. A handful of bureaucrats, regardless of how brilliant each may be, can never equal the mind of the market. Management and control usually spell disaster eventually. Managed focus on technological development for products and services the central government believes have greater substantial benefit to the overall society may not be calamitous, but the law of unintended consequences has not been repealed. It will be inefficient, substandard, and create potentially dangerous side effects. Innovation, creative freedom, and unstructured thought are essential components to the development of any technology of substance and disruptive benefit.

Uncertain Markets and Future Returns

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Volatile stock and bond markets are not going away anytime soon, and investment strategies focused on discipline, market-tested algorithms, and the patience to withstand near-term turbulence will continue to deliver better results. As US stocks have dropped about 25% and US long-term treasuries dropped nearly 30%, specific strategies that combine futures, derivatives, and other securities along with market-neutral equity trading have produced superior returns. This impressive overall performance can be expected to profit from market movements and even market shocks that, while specifically unpredictable, will be inevitable from now on. In the face of dismal predictability and lack of confidence, it is discipline, time-tested algorithms, and a multi-strategy perspective toward broad market sectors that have outperformed and will continue to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns and better overall performance.

The Ten Year Horizon: Volatile, Intense, and Mostly Harmless

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This book explores the next decade’s more frequent and intense economic, geopolitical, fiscal, and market volatility, technological innovation, disruption, and hype.

Long-term opportunity exists, and this book uses a 10-year horizon as a surrogate for a long-term perspective. Some of the world’s most important industries are being disrupted, especially finance via digital assets and Blockchain-based businesses, life sciences via gene editing, DNA sequencing, and CRISPR, and communications via advanced wireless data networks, software technologies including artificial intelligence, and new interactive platforms such as the Metaverse.

The Next Ten Years

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The onslaught of market-making bad news seems almost a daily event. A gloomy picture of slowing economic growth, elevated inflation, and confusing fiscal and monetary policy has added a lethal mixture to the market’s performance. Fiscal stimulus is sidelined, and monetary policy is constricting economic growth and entrepreneurial innovation. It makes for a gloomy outlook and an even more depressing long-term perspective. The next 10 years look more like a lost decade. High-growth company valuations have been significantly discounted, and over time as discount rates drop, their valuations are likely to increase substantially. Higher-yielding fixed income securities will be a standout performer as interest rates are reduced, the higher-yielding BDCs, REITs, leveraged loan securities, and high cash flow instruments, along with high-dividend equities, will prove extremely attractive and are currently available at bargain prices. Providers of value and users of value will be the winners for the next decade. Those generating real cash flow and disruptive innovation will define the next decade.

Predictions and Nonsense

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Predictions usually end up being nonsense. We simply draw a trajectory from what we know today. But innovation is a discontinuity. Things are unpredictable because innovation does not come from consensus thinking. It comes from small groups and individuals with a spark of entrepreneurship, intelligence, and vision.
One of the fundamental tenets of predicting technology is that most forecasters get things spectacularly wrong.

Think Differently and Better

Think Differently and Better

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The market is consensus thinking. Performing above average means being different. Simply being different doesn’t define success. Success means understanding what it takes to not only think differently but understand when consensus thinking is wrong and executing and implementing those choices effectively. Doing better (generating superior returns with less overall risk) is difficult. Understanding “what’s really going on” is not a simple formula. It requires different, deeper, and better thinking. Depart from the investment crowd, focus on the factors that are necessary and, in combination, sufficient to make a difference, sustain performance and manage risk. It’s not easy or obvious, but it is superior.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide - Nicholas Mitsakos

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Metaverse

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It has taken over 30 years for the overnight sensation of the Metaverse, but now hype, money, and large technology companies are charging in. Most obvious and conspicuous is Facebook’s maneuver to change its name to Meta Platforms and commit $10 billion. Microsoft is making a $70 billion acquisition of Activision to mostly focus on Metaverse platform development. Following on top of these two elephants is tens of billions of dollars of venture capital. The opportunity is considered comparable to the original iPhone. None of the iPhone’s component services – mobile phone, computer, camera, and operating system, were new or distinct. The iPhone revolution is the convergence into a single device (or platform) and, most importantly, the entrepreneurial spark that lit millions of application developers to create value from the iPhone platform. The Metaverse can best be thought of as the intersection of technologies and users. It combines virtual and augmented worlds, virtual assets, digital assets, and gaming into a single platform. However, there doesn’t seem to be anything too disruptive about the Metaverse or Web 3.0. It’s reasonable to be skeptical, and while there is an economic opportunity within the specific creation of Metaverse assets, the real opportunity remains with the infrastructure, intermediaries, picks, shovels, and “the arms dealers” of global digital war.

Better Investment Strategy

A Better Investment Strategy – Data, Discipline, and Rigor

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Let the data tell the story. Remove human bias. Intuitive investment ideas may seem compelling, but more often, these ideas are time-consuming, inefficient, and inferior.

Diverse thinking, innovative approaches, and a willingness to be wrong and start over typically bring superior results.

Trust the model. Data, discipline, and rigor win more often.

Sweltering, Chills, and Discontent

Sweltering, Chills, and Discontent

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While most of Europe and the United States suffer sweltering heat, darkening economic skies and bitter winter of discontent are looming. Threats to the world economy are chilling. Rising interest rates are slowing activity for discretionary spending while rising prices for nondiscretionary spending are also slowing economic activity. It would be miraculous if the compounding of both effects would not lead to a recession in both Europe and the US. China’s growth has stalled. The Ukraine conflict will resolve itself to the West’s dramatic disadvantage and the West seems to be willing to let it happen – much to each economy’s long-term disadvantage. Don’t count on anything miraculous.