Posted on 1/1/2018, 12:09 pm, by Colin Charles, under
General.
I was flying and managed to catch Tulip Fever. Interesting show, considering I have had many conversations recently where people had no idea what the Tulip Mania was all about. It’s a good “plane movie”, and maybe gives you some insight into what occurred then, but it didn’t open to great reviews (e.g. NYT). It has two themes – love, and of course the tulip mania. I choose to focus on the tulip aspect of things, considering I’m in tech, and the crypto space is often referred to as one. Naturally this is spoiler filled.
Some gems:
- Q: Are they a good investment? A: Well the market’s going up, you won’t go wrong
- Man has 18 Florens in total, and he spends it all in one go – “an excellent investment”
- “Took his own life over a Tulip bulb”
- Man: I paid 18 Florens for these bulbs, I’m told if they continue to rise, they will double. Nun in convent: A month ago, you could have had them for 10.
- “Cut the flower and sell the bulb, you have a rare one”
Shortly thereafter the man gives up being a fishmonger to become a trader! (A bit like crypto today when Uber drivers talk about investment advice).
More quotes of choice:
- “of course, free money”
- Nun: “the more they weigh the more they’re worth” – best bulb, sold for 920 Gilders, but we sold it for 18.
- “I would like to get a foot into the tulip business. Will you help me?”
- If the market keeps going up why isn’t anybody selling? Because it can go up three times in a month.
- “All we have to do is put all our eggs in one basket. A single bulb. The rarer the better.”
Eventually at auction, Admiral Maria – a 2,000 Floren tulip bulb, which goes for 1,500. He asks for 1,200 then they agree on 1,400. He is leveraging everything even though he doesn’t actually have the Admiral Maria. Due to his friend’s drunkenness, the bulb goes missing (eaten?), and the fishmonger sadly has been thrown into the sea
Eventually, 8000 Gilders and 2 houses is what the new owner sold the Admiral Maria for.
Then the Government stepped in to ban the Tulip trade. Prices crashed.
All this points to irrational exuberance and the theory of the greater fool.
This is not a movie I’d watch paying full attention to. You could get away with occasional reading on your Kindle/iPad. But it might get more people to remember a bit about the history of the tulip mania. After all, as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Posted on 27/12/2017, 9:37 pm, by Colin Charles, under
Tech.
Cryptocurrencies? Blockchains? I’m sure you’ve heard of them before by now, unless you’re living under a rock. I’m an open source & database guy, so for me, I look at all this with a fine toothed comb. Probably doesn’t help that I enjoy reading the FT on a daily basis. Anyway, a selection of links… You may not be able to read all the links (subscriber only), but maybe I’ll think about something new come 2018.
- Markets signal diminishing faith in US government – “Big things happen if someone invents the right story and promulgates it.” – Robert Shiller, author Irrational Exuberance. He called the dotcom and US housing bubbles bursting before it happened; he now calls Bitcoin a bubble
- Bitcoin swings from bull to bear and back in a day – when Bitcoin hit an all-time high of a little over USD$11,000! “It is a classic bubble, and bubbles go up a lot. It is a mania and the best thing about it is you can’t value it, like trading technology stocks in the ’90s.” – Rich Ross, head of technical analysis, Evercore. “Every three weeks it goes up, people take profits and then it goes down but money is still coming in so it will keep going up,” said David Drake, managing a family office investing in Bitcoin
- There are many reasons to be cautious about bitcoin – Jean Tirole on the ICO craze
- FT Lex: Bitcoin: a poxy currency – learned a new word today, poxy. Thinking in terms of hyper-deflation makes the mania easier to treat.
- FT Alphaville: Bitcoin’s fractioning problem
- Listen: Should investors buy Bitcoin? – FT Money presenter Claer Barrett and guests discuss whether or not Bitcoin deserves a place in your investment portfolio. Good podcast.
- Busting the myth that bitcoin is actually an efficient payment mechanism – yes, it is expensive to use. Not the standard take on “energy use” either. FT Alphaville only requires registration for free reading BTW
- Bitcoin and cash cast a shadow over banks
- CryptoKitties – digital pets, Ethereum’s first real use case?
- Hacker News: Is Bitcoin surge driven by paid-publicity (similar to US election story)?
- Sixty free lectures from Princeton on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Avg length ~15 mins. Links in post.
- A beginner’s guide to getting started in the cryptocurrency world
- Why a Bitcoin Fork Is Not a ‘Stock Split’
- How To Sell Bitcoins in Canada
- Don’t fall for the hype – Why Bitcoin’s $10,000 Price Doesn’t Reflect Its True Value.
- Initial coin offerings: investing’s wild frontier
- Is Proof of Stake really the solution?
- The Token Handbook – its basically a book, lots to read here
