Everything Is Up For Grabs ...Social Leverage Saturday's

Good morning everyone.

I will get to a few Social Leverage company updates but first…what a week to start the year if you love markets, trading and investing.

This Tweet about Bitcoin really caught my attention:

Michael was telling me how he was getting mocked in the comments and I told him that it was a good signal and to be worried when everyone agreed with him. For almost two decades here on this blog I have harped on how important is it for teens to learn the language of investing. The earlier the better. The 'bug' of the act of 'trading' and investing' is the goal. There is no ‘one’ entry into the maze/game/language of investing. I don’t care if it is Vanguard, FREC, Robinhood, Bitcoin, Fartcoin, Stocktwits or Reddit that gets you exposed to the joy and pain of speculating and investing. I care that it is happening.

The melding of technology, money and now the federal government is going to ‘fcuk’ things up. I am more and more certain that almost everything is up for grabs.

What is money?

What is entertainment?

What is media?

What is a border?

What is a startup?

What is ‘luxury’?

I don’t even know what ‘shopping’ is anymore…

Of course the ‘Nifty Nine’ and let’s call them the ‘Shopping Gods’ (Walmart, Amazon and Costco) will dominate our world for the foreseeable future, but Godzilla fighting T-REX, fighting King Kong is good for the creative, the small, the flexible and the hungry.

We are all startups now. I would probably be a better parent to my kids right now if I talked to them like I talked to founders in our portfolio right now (I just might try it).

At the moment we have entered an a fresh new era of ‘Investing Fever’. What do I mean:

Unlike Covid where money was being mailed by the government to people locked at home with no place to shop or spend, this time stablecoins and airdrops are getting money to people who are making time to invest and do stupid things and learn and possibly even create new products and strategies.

You are not too late to web 3/crypto. The total market is barely $2 trillion. The trend is now a certainty. Of course how you invest and ride this trend is for you to decide.

There was a time to make fun of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Dogecoin and now Fartcoin. That time has passed.

Before Bitcoin, Stablecoins and Memecoins there was Goldman Sachs, Mary Meeker, Alan Greenspan and the ‘briefcase indicator’, The FED, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal…basically one pipe for all pump and dumps and grifts to go along with of course the few great everlasting companies.

Now everyone can be Goldman Sachs and CNBC which is not perfect, but I am confident it is better. This fever/mania has almost NOTHING to do with CNBC or Barron’s or New York Times or Wall Street Journal and before it ends maybe even Vanguard… and we should be thrilled. Even Bloomberg is behind.

Bonds are in a 5 year bear market (longest in history), Silicon Valley staged a hostile takeover of the federal government, and cable is decimated so don’t tell me you know what the future holds for money or entertainment or media or even borders.

If everything is up for grabs…what can I be relatively sure of as an investor?

For one things…all this money will have to be managed.

A second thing I am sure of is building trust will take longer as the noise in markets explodes. Also switching costs have never been lower so be careful with all your new power in the markets as both a creator and distributor and trust agent.

Third, as someone who has been lucky enough to be an investor most of their adult life, I am confident that investing will be a way of life for a much higher percentage of people in the next 20 years - which is already exploding into what I call the ‘degenerate economy’.

Fourth, this mania will be streamed, NOT Televised. If I am correct, we will be closer to an end of this current mania when Netflix launches a 10 pm eastern Squawk Box with nobody on camera over 40 years of age. I intend to be a part of this with Stocktwits and our portfolio companies.

Finally for today, get used to more speculation. While it is very easy to make fun of speculation because it is often done so poorly, actual ‘exploring’ was done poorly before technology improved and lessons from the mistakes made were learned and shared.

Onward to some portfolio companies that are in the eye of these trends…

Seeds (fund 4) is growing fast now over $750 million in Assets under management.

Frec.com (fund 4) launched an app and portfolio lines of credit . Here is a great explainer they have on ‘direct indexing’.

Big updates coming (mid February) to Stocktwits.com crypto pages and a new homepage powered by AI, our unique polls and sentiment. Also full page livestreaming of events and specific shows in January.

HelloWalla.com (fund 3 and fund 4) is growing fast helping fitness studios manage every aspect of their business. As the longevity and wellness trend explodes post COVID, they are well positioned.

Have a great rest of weekend.