The Next Big Thing: Cryptocurrency

Updates

August 24, 2021: cryptocurrency and Visa.

August 24, 2021: Afghanistan, huge player in the cryptocurrency arena. Links to follow.

August 7, 2021: City of Williston to accept cryptocurrency; first in North Dakota; only the third such municipality in the US of A. Link here.

June 3, 2018: still bullish on cryptocurrency.

May 14, 2018: I'm a believer, and yes, it's still a cult.

Original Post

Re-posting from August 13, 2021:

Cathie Wood: I don't know if folks had a chance to read the AirMail.news story regarding Cathie Wood which I linked the other day. I can't find my post now which suggests I posted it and then took it down for some reason. Maybe it's there and I just can't find it. Whatever.

Anyway, I finally got back to the article and read it again. It's well worth the read if you've heard a bit about Cathie Wood and ARKK and don't know anything or very little about her. 

I was curious from where she came. I guess in Spanglish, I was curious de donde vino ella. LOL. [For those who do not know, Sophia and I are "learning" Spanish together using the Duolingo app and having boatloads of fun.]

An interesting story, Cathie Wood. Long story short, no glass ceiling for her:

• oldest daughter of Irish immigrants, she is now 65 years old -- younger than I but much older than I realized;
  
• grew up in Los Angeles; her coming-of-age years, the late 1970s?
  
• graduated from University of Southern California, my alma mater, with a degree in finance and economics
• mentored by Arthur Laffer, economist, trickle-down economics
• Laffer helped her get a job at Capital Group, the huge LA-based asset-management firm
• three years at Capital
• moved to NYC to join Jennison Associates, another large asset-management firm
• stayed at Jennison for eighteen years, cycling through various jobs
• 1998, about forty-two years old: co-founded the hedge fund Tupelo Capital Management
• three years later joined AllianceBernstein as chief investment officer and the manager of a $5 billion portfolio
• 2014: "the story goes" -- Alliance not all that keen on her idea for actively managed exchange-traded funds; so about fifteen years after she joined Alliance, she founded Ark Tech EFT,
  
• part of the seed money coming from Bill Hwang, the now defunct family office Archegos Capital (Archegos: another story this year)
  
• it was a chance meeting with Hwang (or was it?).
• Ark Investment Management: less than seven years after she started it, now more than $53 billion under management;
  

Street cred.

I was mesmerized when I first saw her in an interview on CNBC, or should I say when I first paid attention to her. It was as if, to plagiarize a phrase, "she emerged de novo like Minerva from the head of Zeus." 

De donde vino ella. Now I know.

Break, break.

Somewhere recently on the blog -- actually I guess that's in draft also -- recently I've become a convert to "bitcoin." I don't own bitcoin but I do know what it is and it will be a viable currency. Up until two weeks ago, I had no interest in "bitcoin," and pretty much ignored it. Now, 180° turn.

One of the better discussions during our family reunion was talking about technology. Many of my extended family members are high-functioning engineer-types who are involved in high-level technology at pretty big technology companies.

For "bitcoin" to become mainstream, I said there needs to be a tipping point. I mentioned that one of the "first" steps toward that tipping point was Square. 

The next step was that $29 billion deal with Australian Afterpay.

We have yet to see the "tipping point" itself but I know what that tipping point will be but I'm keeping it a secret. I don't want to give it away. LOL. Seriously, my skin is not thick enough to absorb the push back and laughter. But regular readers of the blog, knowing my craziness, interests, and posts, can probably guess. 

From the linked Airmail.news article:

As probably only Wood could do, she recently corralled billionaires Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, and Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of both Square and Twitter (Wood's 17th-largest holding), to join her for an hour-long virtual panel discussion to talk about Bitcoin in all its wonderfulness. 

Apparently I wasn't the only one that enjoyed it -- a "full reload, July 21, 2021" at this link.

Enough of this, time to enjoy some music. 

Oh, before I get to the music, one last story from the linked Airmail.news story that almost knocked me off my chair. 

Quick: over at the sidebar at the right, I have something called "the next big thing." Quick, for those who have been reading the blog since the beginning, what was the "first" next big thing?

The answer: Netflix. 

For me Netflix was "the next big thing" when I first mentioned it on March 21, 2013.

So, what does that have to do with Cathie Wood? From the linked Airmail.news article: Cathie Wood's meeting with Bill Hwang was apparently completely innocent, unarranged. 

On CNBC, Cathie Wood said, "On our way back from that event, we --Bill Hwang and Cathie Wood -- were exchanging stock ideas back then -- this was back in 2014 or thereabouts -- and I know he bought into one of the stocks in which we had a high degree of confidence, Netflix."

Wow, wow, wow.

Street cred.