Author: maomao

#1: When an unstoppable force meets a falling knife

I recorded this with the incomparable Paul Schulte three weeks ago, right around when markets were going crazy. But I think we’re still in the same state: trepidation at what’s happening and shock at what’s being done to fix things. Paul’s one of the most experienced and erudite people I know when it comes to financial markets, […]

#0: Where we are (were) now

Welcome to the zeroth edition of The Fire Next Time Podcast/Newsletter. The world’s in a really weird place right now, and I want to talk about it with you and figure out where we’re going. This first video I want to share with you isn’t actually a podcast. It’s a presentation I gave in NYC at […]

The blockchain bargain

Here’s a model for thinking about centralized profit-seeking entities: the goal for these is often to get big enough that economies of scale kick in and your size becomes an advantage. Eventually you start to best your smaller competitors, and you start to accumulate outsize wealth, which is mostly distributed to executives, with some trickling […]

The Value of Blockchains in Financial Services

At their core, blockchains/DLT allow multiple parties to agree on a shared truth. Private consortium blockchains, especially blockchains that only have financial institutions as participants, will have a huge impact in financial services. Modern finance is highly interconnected, and trying to keep track of relationships and transactions between parties is both crucial and complicated. Even […]

The deciding factor for Universal Basic Income

I think it’s very, very difficult to figure out a sustainable system that doesn’t just end up looking like a corporation. Let’s start with solving the profitability issue. We could design a scheme where funds are distributed from the returns generated by everyone in the system, where the funds also incentivize people to generate more […]