Good morning,
The two big things that have happened in crypto this last week are: (1) crypto prices went up a lot very quickly and (2) the SEC released new guidance on tokens and their first no-action.
I’m not really going to comment on either in depth (well, a little bit on price but purely conceptually). My take on the prices is there are more buyers than sellers at this time and my take on the guidance is there isn’t anything particularly surprising. If you want to dig deeper, I’d read Kathrine Wu on the topic though she ends with:
The TLDR of the guidance and no-action letter is this: while the SEC (and other agencies!) are clearly being thoughtful around what sort of direction or guidance to give, there is unfortunately still a lot of nuance and questions that remain unanswered.
Don’t expect a moment of clarity.
Separately: someone suggested that I do a roundup of interesting links every week. I haven’t done that in the past because a lot of people do that. But if a lot of you would find that valuable, I’m happy to. It’s relatively low effort since I’m already reading all of it. If you’d get value from this, reply with an affirmation.
On to the post:
When Benjamin Franklin said “there are only two certainties in life - death and taxes” he was expressing epistemic humility–almost everything in life is uncertain. At the time, I suspect most people focused on the death and taxes part of the saying–they were salient issues. And they didn’t have The Black Swan, so what did they know of uncertainty.
I try my best to internalize the same epistemic humility. I don’t even think death and taxes are a certainty! But over the years, I am noticing some things that, while not certainties, seem to be true.
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