Raoul Pal's Introduction to the Exponential Age

Discussion in 'Crypto Assets' started by krugman25, Apr 30, 2021.

  1. krugman25

    krugman25 Guest

    This is a really fascinating talk from Raoul where he talks about the macro picture over the last 25+ years and where he believe it all is leading and will lead into. It's 90 minutes well spent for any investor.

     
    AbbotAle, toon, Sprout and 1 other person like this.
  2. Sprout

    Sprout

    Excellent vid. He has a gift of creating big picture contextualization.

    Thanks for sharing!
     
    gkishot, johnarb and krugman25 like this.
  3. NoahA

    NoahA

    I watched the entire video and made quite a few notes.

    The short version of my analysis is that I think he is massively missing the big picture. I can explain this with an analogy.

    Along with this massive change coming for the economy, there is a massive change in the dating and relationship space. For those familiar with the term Red Pill, they will know exactly what I'm talking about. Essentially, women today are different than those growing up just 10 or 15 years ago. Women in their 20's now act differently, think differently, have different goals and opportunities, etc. But something interesting happens though when these women enter their 30's. They learn that everything that they were taught to believe was just a fleeting moment. The superpowers they had have been ripped away by mother nature. The thousands of followers, millions of accumulated likes, all become meaningless when they enter the next phase of their life and want to find a partner and have children. The social "skills" they learned, the amount of worth they thought they had, all of this ends up having been fake and pointless when their body naturally follows their biological imperative and timeline.

    I enjoyed listening to Raul's passion, and I don't disagree with the fact that massive change is coming. But I think he is looking at all of this in a bubble. Below are just random points.

    Only once did he mention regulators, and this was only from the context of preventing money laundering. But if this system is going to change so drastically, will the authorities really allow power to escape their grasp? Will a central bank really allow their power to be taken away. He talks about a fairytale ending with no mention of how much power the wicked witch has.

    His discussion of NFTs just made me think that the value of the actual product is somehow irrelevant. Maybe I just don't get it, but would I rather have a statue or the NFT for it? It seems to me like an NFT is simply the document that says who owns it. But having the actual thing is where the joy come from, no? I found it so ironic that he talked about the NFT he had for the picture that he printed out. If the digital ownership was so wonderful, why the need for a paper version?

    He talked at length about how gaming leads to digital meetings, digital galleries, universities doing everything digitally, but don't we already have enough workers complaining about work from home? More time spent on a computer in the digital world is not what I think most people are looking to do. The whole point of WFH is so that you can do other shit while supposedly working. Its also so that you don't spend 2 hour commuting. It opens up more person time. Maybe some want to spend this playing video games, but I think more want to spend it in the real world with real people face to face.

    With everything going digital, why is depression and suicide up? Why are kids suffering so much these days? They may have hundreds of IG friends, but in the end have no one to actually hang out with. The digital world isn't mixing to well with the biological world. We as humans, given our DNA, have a need for biological interactions.

    He actually said that you can live a digital house, albeit the parents bedroom. Is the gravity of this really lost on him? Its one thing for a dumb kid to spend actual money on stupid shit in a game. But will people really build a digital house and spend money on digital furniture? No matter how much digital wood you buy, if your body is cold, no digital warmth will help. How about those digital groceries, will those fill up your tummy?

    He guesses that this might double the GDP. But if all you are doing is sitting on shitty cough and living in your digital world, you probably aren't consuming too much real stuff, and isn't this where most of the GDP comes from? The way I see it, we need to sleep for 8 hours, we work for 8 hours, a couple of hours is spent on food, etc. and so there are only so many hours left over for leisure. If people want to spend all this time online, then that's fine, but the digital world can only be a small part of our daily life.

    People still need to move their body. Will vacations be digital as well? And of course, the big one, digital sex? Most of what we see in the world today is the result of a man building something of value in order to attract a woman and get her to sleep with him. I fail to see how the digital world will replace this. Women will still want masculine men that are big and tough, no matter what stupid digital avatar you might use in your digital world. As I opened above, once a woman enters her 30's, the biological clock is ticking and the need for a baby is top priority. Her instincts kick in and I don't see how this digital world will short circuit her natural tendencies.

    I can see how the financial space has to go digital, but I just don't see how the we change up the chain of command. If BTC truly changes the landscape, we might as well also rip up the world map and country lines. Governments need money and power. If you take that away from them, you essentially dissolve what makes a country a country.

    Lastly, and this point I got from George Gammon, an economy is only as strong as the amount of goods and services it produces. When he talks about the financialization of young people, this actually takes away goods and services from being produced. If we are all just trading crypto, and coding crypto, and making NFTs, who is doing the real work? Unless we have robots that do most of the work which allow us 12 hours a day to live in your digital world, then I don't think all this stuff can happen as he describes.

    Although change is coming, his ideas are just in a vacuum without taking into account how important biology is to us humans and how things can't change without a major shift in power, and that will not happen easily. I fully expect BTC to be diminished when the FED comes out with their own currency. There will be a top and the right time to get out IMO.
     
    SteveM likes this.
  4. tsznecki

    tsznecki

    Oh look another post about what ifs from @NoahA above^.

    Ifs, maybes, question marks, hypotheticals. No actual facts just opinions.

    I notice @NoahA never replied back to me here:

    https://www.elitetrader.com/et/posts/5372370

    As expected.

    Here's a lesson from the real Red Pill you alt right Black Pilled cuck @NoahA stop being a pessimist. Nobody likes them.
     
    johnarb likes this.
  5. AbbotAle

    AbbotAle

    If you think a FedCoin is a replacement or even better than something like Bitcoin you're off your rocker.

    One is chalk the other cheese.

    A Fed coin will be just a digital dollar, but with far more control...

    Next time you see a proper Bitcoiner, one who's done the 3-6 months of hard work needed to get a handle on things, ask them if they want to swap their Bitcoin for dollars (digital or non-digital).

    They'll all say the same thing, why would I want to swap my Bitcoin for dollars when I've just swapped my dollars for Bitcoin?
     
    johnarb likes this.
  6. orbit23

    orbit23

    Bitcoin is not a good payment option and neither is Ethereum or any other crypto basically.

    The volatility ruins it for both buyers and sellers, another thing are slow confirmation times and high fees.

    Stablecoins work very well though. Busd on BSC or USDT transfer on TRC20 are both super fast and fees are very low... That is the future of payments.

    The only problem you then have is no safety for the buyer if you are not dealing with a trusted party... But that's what Visa will be there for probably.
     
  7. Please research XRP. Takes less than 4 seconds to complete multi billion dollar transactions.
    Many smaller countries are using it for their banking. It’s only a matter of time before it replaces the ancient multi-day SWIFT system for international banking transactions.
     
  8. tsznecki

    tsznecki

    I have used XRP and I like it.

    However the token itself is separate from the actual underlying messaging system. That system, which can settle in real time does not need the token. This makes me very cautious on XRP itself and why I don't have a stake going back to 2016.
     
  9. Sprout

    Sprout

    You might have to re-read the rational male again. That is not the jist of what Rollo promotes. He distinguishes hypergamy, it’s not something that has recently emerged.

    Your opinions on the metaverse have validity and I imagine it has more to do with a generational gap and whether one grew up in the Internet era or had a childhood prior to it’s exponential growth. It does have dystopian tendencies which will need addressing at some point.
     
    johnarb likes this.
  10. NoahA

    NoahA

    I never said hypergamy was new. Its just that now, its on full display, and there are no mechanisms to keep it in check. Because of female empowerment and the socialist programs, women are able to do whatever they want to do without any regard for consequences. In a way, you can almost say its similar to reckless corporations and lack of moral hazard since they know there will always be a FED bailout. Look at all the junk bonds that kept getting bought as no company is allowed to fail.

    That's the thing with hypergamy, its always going after the bigger and better deal, consequences be dammed. Its clever biological programming really, but mother nature always made sure there were roadblocks, so there was really no way to have run away hypergamy, not until today that is. But of course, the bigger and better deal is only a viable strategy for women during her best, peak years, and by the time they get around to wanting to settle down these day, their huge advantage is gone.

    So bringing this back crypto, Raul makes it sound like crypto will absolutely take over the world and everything will be better when its digital. But my feeling is that this won't be the panacea that he envisions. Its at the stage right now of the 23 year old woman who thinks life is absolutely awesome with limitless options, but when governments gets more involved, and when people realize that digital doesn't solve every issue, but in fact creates more, the value will have to be repriced.

    Do people really want to live in the matrix where their biological life means nothing as long as their digital experience is superior? I really don't think so. Our biology will always bring us towards real things, experiences and interactions. The digital world helps facilitate certain aspects of modern life, but the human experience is biological. So in my opinion, he overestimates the importance of anything digital.

    Lastly, if digital currency, and defi will be so awesome and revolutionary (which it will be), this to me means we will need less of it. The banking industry employs so many people. He even said things like bonds, etc., would disappear. So if finance is really revolutionized by this technology, there will be much less need for people working in this field, and hence it will be highly deflationary. He kept saying how it will cut out the middle man, and as true as this is, it means less jobs. Just like modern farming meant a much smaller percentage of workers were necessary to feed a country, decentralized finance will put most people in this industry out of work.

    And back to dating, most men already know that unless they are in the top 10%, they are pretty much invisible to the ladies. So finance jobs, like men in general, will prove to be mostly obsolete. :p

    So digital money is coming, defi is I'm sure going to be a thing, but be prepared to cash out when its time because the governments aren't going to allow a bunch of crypto early believers to control the space, or hand control over to a decentralized network.
     
    #10     May 1, 2021