Connect with us

‘Buy Bitcoin, plant a tree, lower your time preference’: a Sequoia story

“I’m trying to get people to plant trees," says Fangorn, a green-fingered Bitcoiner, "as an avenue for low-time preference.”
When…

Published

on

“I'm trying to get people to plant trees," says Fangorn, a green-fingered Bitcoiner, "as an avenue for low-time preference.”

When the market falls faster than a tree in the forest, the phrases “zoom out,” and “lower your time preference,” take root.

“Zoom out” refers to taking a break from the omnipresent price charts that populate news feeds and Twitter threads. Consider looking at the price of Bitcoin (BTC) over the past five years–as opposed to over the past 6,12 or 18 months.

HODLing Bitcoin has far outperformed HODLing stocks over the past five years. 

But what does “lower your time preference,”–popular parlance among Bitcoiners, actually mean? Commonly attributed to Saifedean Ammous, the polarizing author who penned The Bitcoin Standard, lowering one’s time preference translates to thinking long-term, and to valuing the future over the present.

In contrast to a fiat standard, where money loses value due to inflation; a system in which quick gains, immediate satisfaction, and instant gratification make the medicine go down, a Bitcoin standard promotes delayed gratification. The theory is that in a Bitcoin Standard, the value of money saved in Bitcoin goes up over time to be enjoyed at a later stage.

This lesson is a tough pill to swallow, (particularly during a crypto winter) but it's a vital step to understanding Bitcoin. At least, that’s what Fangorn, a passionate Bitcoiner turned tree-planter believes. A software developer and history major with a background in biology, he stumbled across Bitcoin on a Hacker News site in the summer of 2017 (when one BTC was worth around $3,000).

Something twigged during 2017 and 2018, but it took the Covid-19 market crash of 2020 for Fangorn to really “go down the rabbit hole.” He read more broadly, engaging with popular Bitcoin author Gigi’s works, who wrote 21 lessons as well as an article called Bitcoin is Time. At this point, a lightbulb went off:

“Holy shit, this [Bitcoin] is way more than just like digital gold. This is profoundly advanced engineering for civilization.”

His appetite for understanding sound money grew and hasn’t “looked back since.” He shared “the one thing to focus on is Bitcoin–the rest is a bunch of fluff.”

Sequoias are the largest trees in the world. What better way to visualize a low-time preference? Source: Twitter

An outdoorsy family man with a penchant for planting trees–he regularly gifts his father Sequoia trees for Father’s Day–Fangorn’s ideas, much like the giant trees, began to germinate. He connected the dots between a low-time preference, Sequoia trees, and the Bitcoin network:

“I can look at these trees when I’m 100 years old and think, damn it’s going to persist for another 3,000 years. And my grandkids’, grandkids’, grandkids’ will think ‘Thanks, great great grandpa for planting this tree thousands of years ago!”

Like many Bitcoiners, Fangorn has faith that the Bitcoin network will sustain civilization as sound money for years to come. Moreover, Bitcoin and Sequoias are pretty similar, they take “a lot of work, they stand the test of time, and they lift the human spirit.”

“Here’s this thing that allows us to cast our minds forward for thousands of years, plan long term, and reconnect with that core aspect of civilization, which is lowering one's time preference and planning for the future.”

Indeed, while Bitcoin is a tool famed for its “number go up” properties, it’s also a tool that allows for securing a long-term outlook.

He shares that “planting trees is a super easy, super cost effective way of explaining” what a low-time preference is. The tree is a visual representation of a low-time preference; the roots are the network. Moreover, planting trees flies in the face of the environmental FUD to which Bitcoin is often subjected.

Fangorn encourages Bitcoiners and no-coiners to plant trees to visualize a low-time preference. He shipped seeds to Andre Loja, the man behind the island of Madeira’s Bitcoin strategy; he distributed seeds at the Bitcoin Miami conference in 2022 as well as at meetups in Winsconsin where he resides.

The Sequoia seeds received by Andre Loja in Madeira. Souce: Loja

He jokes that when Hal Finney (the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction) comes round from his cryogenic freeze, “In 3,000 years, I want there to be 21 million trees that are fully grown and 30 feet in diameter–trees that were planted in the first few epochs.”

Bitcoin will enter its fourth epoch sometime in 2024 and its last epoch–when the last Bitcoin is mined–in the year 2140. By 2140, the Sequoia seeds Fangorn and other Bitcoiners plant now will still be considered young trees: they reach full maturity after 500 years.

For Fangorn, the Bitcoin mined today should still be in existence, maybe even used to pay for goods and services by his great-great-grandchildren.

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

There Goes The Fed’s Inflation Target: Goldman Sees Terminal Rate 100bps Higher At 3.5%

There Goes The Fed’s Inflation Target: Goldman Sees Terminal Rate 100bps Higher At 3.5%

Two years ago, we first said that it’s only a matter…

Published

on

There Goes The Fed's Inflation Target: Goldman Sees Terminal Rate 100bps Higher At 3.5%

Two years ago, we first said that it's only a matter of time before the Fed admits it is unable to rsolve the so-called "last mile" of inflation and that as a result, the old inflation target of 2% is no longer viable.

Then one year ago, we correctly said that while everyone was paying attention elsewhere, the inflation target had already been hiked to 2.8%... on the way to even more increases.

And while the Fed still pretends it can one day lower inflation to 2% even as it prepares to cut rates as soon as June, moments ago Goldman published a note from its economics team which had to balls to finally call a spade a spade, and concluded that - as party of the Fed's next big debate, i.e., rethinking the Neutral rate - both the neutral and terminal rate, a polite euphemism for the inflation target, are much higher than conventional wisdom believes, and that as a result Goldman is "penciling in a terminal rate of 3.25-3.5% this cycle, 100bp above the peak reached last cycle."

There is more in the full Goldman note, but below we excerpt the key fragments:

We argued last cycle that the long-run neutral rate was not as low as widely thought, perhaps closer to 3-3.5% in nominal terms than to 2-2.5%. We have also argued this cycle that the short-run neutral rate could be higher still because the fiscal deficit is much larger than usual—in fact, estimates of the elasticity of the neutral rate to the deficit suggest that the wider deficit might boost the short-term neutral rate by 1-1.5%. Fed economists have also offered another reason why the short-term neutral rate might be elevated, namely that broad financial conditions have not tightened commensurately with the rise in the funds rate, limiting transmission to the economy.

Over the coming year, Fed officials are likely to debate whether the neutral rate is still as low as they assumed last cycle and as the dot plot implies....

...Translation: raising the neutral rate estimate is also the first step to admitting that the traditional 2% inflation target is higher than previously expected. And once the Fed officially crosses that particular Rubicon, all bets are off.

... Their thinking is likely to be influenced by distant forward market rates, which have risen 1-2pp since the pre-pandemic years to about 4%; by model-based estimates of neutral, whose earlier real-time values have been revised up by roughly 0.5pp on average to about 3.5% nominal and whose latest values are little changed; and by their perception of how well the economy is performing at the current level of the funds rate.

The bank's conclusion:

We expect Fed officials to raise their estimates of neutral over time both by raising their long-run neutral rate dots somewhat and by concluding that short-run neutral is currently higher than long-run neutral. While we are fairly confident that Fed officials will not be comfortable leaving the funds rate above 5% indefinitely once inflation approaches 2% and that they will not go all the way back to 2.5% purely in the name of normalization, we are quite uncertain about where in between they will ultimately land.

Because the economy is not sensitive enough to small changes in the funds rate to make it glaringly obvious when neutral has been reached, the terminal or equilibrium rate where the FOMC decides to leave the funds rate is partly a matter of the true neutral rate and partly a matter of the perceived neutral rate. For now, we are penciling in a terminal rate of 3.25-3.5% this cycle, 100bps above the peak reached last cycle. This reflects both our view that neutral is higher than Fed officials think and our expectation that their thinking will evolve.

Not that this should come as a surprise: as a reminder, with the US now $35.5 trillion in debt and rising by $1 trillion every 100 days, we are fast approaching the Minsky Moment, which means the US has just a handful of options left: losing the reserve currency status, QEing the deficit and every new dollar in debt, or - the only viable alternative - inflating it all away. The only question we had before is when do "serious" economists make the same admission.

They now have.

And while we have discussed the staggering consequences of raising the inflation target by just 1% from 2% to 3% on everything from markets, to economic growth (instead of doubling every 35 years at 2% inflation target, prices would double every 23 years at 3%), and social cohesion, we will soon rerun the analysis again as the implications are profound. For now all you need to know is that with the US about to implicitly hit the overdrive of dollar devaluation, anything that is non-fiat will be much more preferable over fiat alternatives.

Much more in the full Goldman note available to pro subs in the usual place.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/19/2024 - 15:45

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Household Net Interest Income Falls As Rates Spike

A Bloomberg article from this morning offered an excellent array of charts detailing the shifts in interest payment flows amid rising rates. The historical…

Published

on

A Bloomberg article from this morning offered an excellent array of charts detailing the shifts in interest payment flows amid rising rates. The historical anomaly was both surprising and contradicted our priors.

10 Key Points:

  1. Historical Anomaly: This is the first time in the last fifty years that a Federal Reserve rate hike cycle has led to a significant drop in household net interest income.
  2. Interest Expense Increase: Since the Fed began raising rates in March 2022, Americans’ annual interest expenses on debts like mortgages and credit cards have surged by nearly $420 billion.
  3. Interest Income Lag: The increase in interest income during the same period was only about $280 billion, resulting in a net decline in household interest income, a departure from past trends.
  4. Consumer Debt Influence: The recent rate hikes impacted household finances more because of a higher proportion of consumer credit, which adjusts more quickly to rate changes, increasing interest costs.
  5. Banks and Savers: Banks have been slow to pass on higher interest rates to depositors, and the prolonged period of low rates before 2022 may have discouraged savers from actively seeking better returns.
  6. Shift in Wealth: There’s been a shift from interest-bearing assets to stocks, with dividends surpassing interest payments as a source of unearned income during the pandemic.
  7. Distributional Discrepancy: Higher interest rates benefit wealthier individuals who own interest-earning assets, whereas lower-income earners face the brunt of increased debt servicing costs, exacerbating economic inequality.
  8. Job Market Impact: Typically, Fed rate hikes affect households through the job market, as businesses cut costs, potentially leading to layoffs or wage suppression, though this hasn’t occurred yet in the current cycle.
  9. Economic Impact: The distribution of interest income and debt servicing means that rate increases transfer money from those more likely to spend (and thus stimulate the economy) to those less likely to increase consumption, potentially dampening economic activity.
  10. No Immediate Relief: Expectations for the Fed to reduce rates have diminished, indicating that high-interest expenses for households may persist.

Read More

Continue Reading

Uncategorized

One more airline cracks down on lounge crowding in a way you won’t like

Qantas Airways is increasing the price of accessing its network of lounges by as much as 17%.

Published

on

Over the last two years, multiple airlines have dealt with crowding in their lounges. While they are designed as a luxury experience for a small subset of travelers, high numbers of people taking a trip post-pandemic as well as the different ways they are able to gain access through status or certain credit cards made it difficult for some airlines to keep up with keeping foods stocked, common areas clean and having enough staff to serve bar drinks at the rate that customers expect them.

In the fall of 2023, Delta Air Lines  (DAL)  caught serious traveler outcry after announcing that it was cracking down on crowding by raising how much one needs to spend for lounge access and limiting the number of times one can enter those lounges.

Related: Competitors pushed Delta to backtrack on its lounge and loyalty program changes

Some airlines saw the outcry with Delta as their chance to reassure customers that they would not raise their fees while others waited for the storm to pass to quietly implement their own increases.

A photograph captures a Qantas Airways lounge in Sydney, Australia.

Shutterstock

This is how much more you'll have to pay for Qantas lounge access

Australia's flagship carrier Qantas Airways  (QUBSF)  is the latest airline to announce that it would raise the cost accessing the 24 lounges across the country as well as the 600 international lounges available at airports across the world through partner airlines.

More Travel:

Unlike other airlines which grant access primarily after reaching frequent flyer status, Qantas also sells it through a membership — starting from April 18, 2024, prices will rise from $600 Australian dollars ($392 USD)  to $699 AUD ($456 USD) for one year, $1,100 ($718 USD) to $1,299 ($848 USD) for two years and $2,000 AUD ($1,304) to lock in the rate for four years.

Those signing up for lounge access for the first time also currently pay a joining fee of $99 AUD ($65 USD) that will rise to $129 AUD ($85 USD).

The airline also allows customers to purchase their membership with Qantas Points they collect through frequent travel; the membership fees are also being raised by the equivalent amount in points in what adds up to as much as 17% — from 308,000 to 399,900 to lock in access for four years.

Airline says hikes will 'cover cost increases passed on from suppliers'

"This is the first time the Qantas Club membership fees have increased in seven years and will help cover cost increases passed on from a range of suppliers over that time," a Qantas spokesperson confirmed to Simple Flying. "This follows a reduction in the membership fees for several years during the pandemic."

The spokesperson said the gains from the increases will go both towards making up for inflation-related costs and keeping existing lounges looking modern by updating features like furniture and décor.

While the price increases also do not apply for those who earned lounge access through frequent flyer status or change what it takes to earn that status, Qantas is also introducing even steeper increases for those renewing a membership or adding additional features such as spouse and partner memberships.

In some cases, the cost of these features will nearly double from what members are paying now.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending