Physics teacher, tech geek and jack of uncorrelated trades. Attitude is everything...find joy in the journey!
Joined February 2018
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I've been involved w/ tech since the early 90's and have framed a few tenants over the years:
1. If a new tech blows my mind, like keeps me up at night, and totally consumes me, it will eventually change the world, but...
For Bitcoin specifically, Binance hack is roughly 18k BTC whereas Mr. Gox was 850k BTC. 48x more Bitcoin stolen in Gox.
Jack Crypswell retweeted
In times like this, if you're a long term investor, you don't want to be waffling about being in or out, you want to be stacking units systematically. Don't get confused by the traders, it's a separate game.
On unit accumulation, depending on how long you've been in the game, it's helpful to think in "relative units" of the investment you did best with. I'll use $ETH because the math is easy and relates well to younger networks.
ETH has ~120M units. Let's say I once held 10 ETH.
Now I'm looking to stack $SOL, but SOL has ~636M units, or ~5.3x the # of units. Therefore, to have an equivalent position size in network terms, I'd need 53 SOL. If I want to own double the network % of SOL, that I owned of ETH, I'd need 106 SOL.
Or, perhaps I'm considering $TIA, which has ~1.16B total supply, or ~9.7x the # of units of ETH. In that case, I'd need 97 units of TIA to have a network equivalent. If I want to place a bigger network bet on TIA, because the network value is lower than when I entered ETH, then 10x the % ownership would require me to accumulate 970 TIA. 100x the % ownership = 9,700 TIA. Going for significantly more ownership, at cheap prices, if you're right, can lead to asymmetric outcomes.
$ZEC is another good example of this, since its supply mirrors $BTC's. And so it's easy to think of your "dream # of BTC," and aim to accumulate that in ZEC, if you're so inclined.
Pick your networks of choice, and do the math. I have always found thinking in unit terms keeps me grounded, optimistic, and goal oriented in dreary times. I can then dream about future upside in the thick of the bull, but the important thing is to systematically stack the units with a high conviction methodology in the bear or early-bull pullbacks.
In terms of where we are now, which is probably why most of you are still reading :) BTC has been bleeding out the long-tail while remaining resilient, with many names 20-40%+ down from the highs while BTC is down just shy of 10%. You can either say BTC has already bled the risk appetite out of the market and so most of the work is done, or you can say BTC hasn't dropped much so it'll be really terrible if it goes cliff diving. I'm sympathetic to the former view.
I read this as an early-bull opportunity rather than a warning sign that this move was a "bull trap," and so I'm inclined to be a buyer. You have to respect the possibility of lower levels, and so tranche out any dry powder that remains with % cash used corresponding to % probability those levels are the local bottom - yes, you likely end up with some excess cash if not all levels are hit, but that's okay. And don't forget, there's already opportunity in front of you.
Jack Crypswell retweeted
You guys are all worried about the wrong thing.
Everyone is afraid of cryptography being broken when the real threat is that break being made public. Those are two very different threat scenarios, and the difference is clearly underappreciated on here. Governments have routinely kept world-breaking secrets for decades:
- US and Israeli intelligence share access to a technology that lets you pull all of the data from a cell phone merely by typing in its number. It's called Pegasus, and it is still in use today.
- The NSA discovered the cryptography we are talking about and used it for a decade before the public caught on independently.
- The NSA and MI5 learned in the '50s that you could decode pretty much any data from electronics just by listening to them. They launched a research program to exploit this vulnerability and to defend against it, but didn't make any of that research public for decades. For those decades, the world was an open window to them.
Per the above, a scenario where only US labs have this knowledge is not a huge threat. The real threat is the potential game-theory scenarios between US labs and Chinese labs. To think about that, I think these are the relevant considerations:
(1) Breaking crypto would break most of the global economy, which is the government's source of income, as well as government infrastructure. It would be incredibly detrimental to government.
(2) Because of 1, labs that are de facto government-controlled will strongly prefer not to release a way to break crypto without also releasing a way to fix it.
Add these up and the real threat is not the existence of the knowledge but the game-theoretic conditions under which it's optimal for one lab to release the break before the solution. This would not happen between two US labs, which are ultimately restrained by the USG. It might happen with a Chinese lab, however, if the Chinese feel such a break would weaken them far less than their adversary: kicking themselves in the gut while kicking their opponent in the teeth.
I'm frankly not knowledgeable enough to know who gets hurt worse in that scenario, but I think people aren't taking seriously the likelihood that governments will have a gentlemen's agreement not to break the world unless some greater conflict escalates and forces them into it. It's essentially the logic of nuclear weapons. This is not a threat for the next few months, but for the next few years.
Moreover, if one party would be hurt much worse by cryptography breaking, you can expect that party to throw massive resources behind the scenes at finding a solution as quickly as possible. So with every passing month, at least one party will be getting closer to a solution that lets it defang its opponent.
The real story here is the concentration of power within governments. AI labs have more and more negotiating power with the US government. If they hold all these secrets, and have the ability to produce more, you can expect that they would not release them, but instead start to exert more and more soft power within the US government. They will accrue enormous political power and conversely the US government will gain enormous power through them.
The next chapter has nothing to do with crypto. It will be an all-out assault on open-source AI because open source is the only source of this breakthrough that would threaten existing power structures. At the end of the day, the fact that cryptocurrency shares its primitives with most of the global economy makes it a much less significant part of a much bigger power struggle.
Finding truth in tragedy and improving from it is crucial to human progress. Really enjoyed this talk about by @bgurley at the @theallinpod summit this week.
youtu.be/A4Q7zAayW20
The AI data center / Anthropic doomer irony:
Assume resistance against data centers is marginally successful in the short to medium term, but AI continues to improve and demand grows anyways. This is the most probable outcome I see presently. What then?
Anthropic compute will be constrained and what they can access will cost them more. Given their current tact, they clearly haven't achieved ASI yet. 😂
AI compute will shift the only place it can---local. Open source demand & popularity grows. Businesses and homes will inevitably stand up more compute and mini data centers in offices that truly strain the grid and cause actual price increases, in front of the meter.
As with any transformational tech, there's no stopping this train. This could be totally avoided with large scale, thoughtful permitted planning, behind the meter projects. Instead, we'll get decreased efficiency with home and small scale, unpermitted mini data centers in busineses.
The end result is worse for environment, worse for middle class blue collar workers, worse for middle America towns that could have profited, worse for national security, worse for GDP, and worse for those least able to afford higher energy prices.
This is too complicated for a mid-term political ad, but this is not hard to piece together. Come on folks. Hoping this becomes mainstream understanding after November and we get back to building the future instead of handing it to our adversaries.
The “data centers will drink all the water and eat all the power” panic is going to age as poorly as “AI is useless because it's bad at math and hallucinates too much.”
We’re sharing a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, one of the deepest problems at the frontier of mathematics.
The proof was produced by a group of agents, using an OpenAI next-generation model significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra.
The problem concerns whether the description of smooth three-dimensional fluid motion modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations can break down. It has remained unresolved for roughly 90 years.
Jack Crypswell retweeted
We are now poised to:
Formalize all known Human Mathematics.
This is the modern equivalent of the Human Genome Project. or AlphaFold more recently, whereby all data of its kind is fully classified.
With sufficient funding and compute/tokens, a coordinated effort among academia, frontier labs, philanthropic organizations, and the federal government can formalize all Human Mathematics in the next year.
Jack Crypswell retweeted
I think this means a hacker can read what I'm typing through a wall. Hit enter after an entry that includes a special character and no space? Might be a password.
Might want to stop filling out passwords on your phone.
US Bitcoin reserve is gonna actually be an AI reserve
Jack Crypswell retweeted
The ChatGPT moment for robotics is going to arrive within the next 18 - 24 months.
We are going to need a lot more chips and a lot more commodities.
2026: became clear that agents are white collar robots
2030: will be clear that humanoids are blue collar robots
Same function, a few years delayed. The masses don't love working in cubes or ditches. Will be as freeing for humanity as the industrial revolution.
In the age of AI, "be the most hyper curious person" in your work.
Bill Gurley just identified the only career advantage that AI cannot commoditize.
It isn’t talent. It isn’t your degree. It isn’t your network.
Gurley: “The thing that will differentiate you more in your career than anything else is to be the most hyper curious person that’s trying to do this thing.”
For centuries, knowledge was gatekept. Elite institutions. Expensive mentors. Geographic luck.
The information existed but access to it was the moat.
That moat is gone.
Gurley: “You have no excuse not to be the most knowledgeable person, because the information’s all out there.”
Every question you can formulate now has an answer available instantly.
Every industry. Every domain. Every skill you want to acquire.
The playing field didn’t just level. It inverted.
The people who used to win by controlling access to information now compete against anyone willing to ask better questions.
Gurley: “I can’t make you the most talented person in your company or your field.”
Talent is genetic. It’s luck. It’s the variable you cannot control.
But knowledge is a choice. And curiosity is a compounding asset.
Gurley: “If you are the most curious person that’s constantly learning in your field, you will do extremely well.”
This was always true. What changed is the multiplier.
Gurley: “That advantage is put on steroids with these AI tools.”
A relentlessly curious person with access to all human knowledge and the ability to interrogate it in real time doesn’t just outlearn their peers.
They outlearn entire institutions.
The gap between the curious and the incurious was always there.
AI just made it insurmountable.
Jack Crypswell retweeted
If you’re a $BTC, $ETH, $MSTR, $BMNR, $ASST holder you should read this.
I won’t sugarcoat it.
It really sucks to be writing a message like this again, especially after doing the same last week and the week before.
Crypto has been getting hit hard.
Again.
Markets hit new highs.
Gold rips and round-trips billions in market cap in a single day.
Equities bounce.
And crypto keeps bleeding.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are down.
Altcoins are worse.
Treasury companies are hit even harder.
To be blunt, it’s emotionally exhausting.
And that’s exactly why investing in crypto is so difficult.
Not because the thesis is complicated, but because your biggest enemy isn’t the market.
It’s you.
And how you react under stress.
Let me share how I’m thinking about this, in case it helps.
I invest actively, and a large part of my portfolio is built around the same core idea:
monetary debasement, scarce assets, and digital money.
That’s why I’m long Bitcoin.
That’s why I’m long Bitmine.
That’s why I’m long MicroStrategy and Strive.
For me, these are all expressions of the same thesis.
Just with different risk and volatility profiles.
Right now, that thesis feels unrewarded.
Since the liquidation event in October, crypto has been in what feels like a slow, grinding free fall.
Good news barely moves price.
Any bad headline pushes us lower.
We’re now close to December lows and possibly testing November levels.
That’s frustrating.
But frustration alone is not a signal.
Here are a few things I keep reminding myself of.
First: survival comes before conviction.
Crypto is already a leveraged asset.
Treasury companies are leveraged on top of that.
If you add actual leverage on top, you’re playing a game where one bad move can permanently remove you from the table.
If you use leverage at all, it needs to be sized so conservatively that you could survive moves far worse than you expect.
Not what you think is likely.
What is possible.
Second: expand your time frame.
Crypto wealth has almost never been made by perfect timing.
It’s been made by being positioned when the move finally happens.
That means your goal is not to trade every swing.
Your goal is to still be here, with capital and sanity intact, when conditions flip.
For me, I’m not judging this thesis over weeks.
I’m judging it over 12 to 24 months.
Anything inside that window is noise unless fundamentals break.
Third: position sizing matters more than ideas.
Most crypto exposures are highly correlated.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, MSTR, BMNR, ASST, miners, treasuries, they move together when stress hits.
You need to think of them as one bet, not many.
I cap single positions around 10 percent.
Total crypto exposure for me is high, but intentional.
And even then, I resist the urge to aggressively average down every dip.
Why?
Because you don’t want to run out of emotional or financial ammo before the turn.
Fourth: diversify emotionally, not just intellectually.
One thing that has helped me a lot recently is having other parts of the portfolio working.
Gold.
Copper.
Selective equities.
Rare Earth plays
Other long-term ideas.
Not because I want to “escape” crypto, but because it gives me breathing room.
It gives me cash.
And it gives me perspective.
When one part of the portfolio is hurting, another part working can be the difference between panic and patience.
That mental space is underrated.
And patience is the real edge retail investors have.
If I could give only one piece of advice, it’s this:
do not make major sell decisions in the middle of a drawdown unless they were pre-planned.
Selling while stressed, distracted, or reacting to headlines is how people miss the best days.
And missing the best days is how long-term returns get destroyed.
None of this means crypto goes straight up tomorrow.
Volatility can absolutely continue.
But if your thesis is intact, price action is information, not instruction.
I know how this feels.
That’s why I’m writing this.
We’ll be hosting an X Spaces next week with a small group of active community members to talk through all of this in real time, share outlooks, and compare approaches.
Details coming soon.
Until then, take care of yourself, zoom out, and remember:
this game rewards the patient far more often than the clever.
Let’s win together.
ALT Total Crypto Market Cap
