chris becker

The most important reason to be bullish southern Africa right now (although it's not obvious and is hard to understand), is that even the staunchest statists are realising that the state isn't going to fix this mess. Voting harder at the next election is not going to fix this. Even they are now seeing the only way forward is to build alternatives to be less dependent on the centralised state. But you don't have to be as bearish as them, because this was always the bull-case. This region will see tremendous growth once capital has been allocated into these alternatives. This will coincide with the rise of micro-states and governance structures. This is already happening, but it will expand, accelerate, and formalise. Yes, the capital reallocation may be a drag on 'growth' or other traditional economic measures. To many it will feel like unnecessary investments. But this lays the foundation for a more federal and fragmented political, institutional and economic order. These are very important investments. Make them. More than needing cash investment, they just need men to roll up their sleeves and make some time to build these things with other men. South Africa is a country in name only. Four colonies/countries and other territories were smashed together into a 'Union' by Jan Smuts to make this region easier to govern for the British Crown in 1910. The Afrikaner Nationalists quite enjoyed the power, and consolidated it. The ANC enjoyed the spoils of this large political entity. But this political system is now buckling under its own inconsistencies. This is a nation of many nations and cultures. Whether it was the ANC or the Nats in charge, this political order was always going to break and the break-up is upon us in the next few decades. The opportunities presented as we rebuild and reorganise the political and economic order in southern Africa are tremendous. And there will be world-leading institutional entrepreneurs who emerge from this. It's only a matter of time before the cultural fragmentation of the West faces the same issues, and then we will export these skills to them.

It was inevitable

Congrats to @farzamehsani and @VALRdotcom founders for whom the FNB crypto story has come full circle. Great chapter of the story, and I look forward to what’s still to come 👀 🚀

Alpha dad

Not a bad take back in 2023. Our current thesis @etherbridge: Time for ETH. etherbridge.substack.com/p/t…

And our murder rate is on par with that of the Ukraine, when including military fatalities in Ukraine's stats!

10 years ago I wrote about how robotics and AI will cause the African middle class to fall even further behind, and it’s happening

The future is coming at us fast

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain… Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed… He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter.” Isiah 53 Happy Easter. Christ is Lord.

I often think about the fact that there was no copyright when the greatest musical composers of all time composed their music in the mid 1700s (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc).

Ethereum is still the most useful multi use case distributed computing system that will provide massive value in areas that Bitcoin simply can't reach. There will be a major bullish narrative backfill for Ethereum when the price starts reacting.