Good morning. I am off to ride Palomar mountain after I post this.
I have a busy three weeks of training to get ready for my September on the road.
As always, each Sunday I share some reads and listens.
First up is Netflix and the advertising business. I think Netflix will thrive with ads and new formats of content, but as we have seen through Netflix’s history, it will be bumpy. Long-term it has been smart to invest with Reed Hastings.
Next up…Is it time to get greedy in energy? I have not touched energy stocks, but I worry this pullback in oil prices and the stocks is just a pause that refreshes them. I would love to be wrong.
My biggest complaint about crypto is that I don’t trust or enjoy the web 2 messaging platforms used to discuss and engage with it. Tom explains why ‘Messaging is the Web 3 Bottleneck‘. The gist:
Every new software era has its messaging protocol. IRC in the 1980s. Instant messenger in the 1990s. SMS in the 2000s. WhatsApp, Telegram in the 2010s. There will be a new messaging protocol native to the web3 era.
When web3 messaging arrives, consumers will send billions of private messages to each other. Users inviting others will welcome the next hundred million users to web3. Applications won’t trail far behind sending product, marketing, & support messages.
Messaging protocols are oxygen for startups & consumers alike. It’s time web3 had its own.
Every week Tadas curates a podcast list for your weekend pleasure. Here is this weeks list.
Finally – expect to hear more about ‘chips’ for decades to come because it is ‘political’ and getting more political. I did not know that $AMD passed $INTC in market cap. Ben Thompson has a good essay on the subjects titled ‘Political Chips‘.
Ben Hunt had this to say about chips and politics and Taiwan:
Why is Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan? Why did Congress, which can’t even agree on supporting US veterans for their service injuries, agree to provide US semiconductor companies with hundreds of billions of dollars in support?
Because of this, something I wrote two years ago:
It is an existential risk to the US to have the world’s principal supplier of semiconductors under the direct political control of China. It is an existential risk to China not to have this control.
Taiwan is now Arrakis. It’s now the most important country on earth. And we WILL fight over it.
Have a great Sunday.
