This was a fun and fascinating conversation with Lyn Alden! We discuss a number of topics about which she’s not typically asked. One common thread throughout the conversation is how best to understand and invest around complex systems. Please note that while Lyn and I discuss some biohacking/energy boosting stuff, we’re definitely not doctors, so do your own research ;)
Here are a few of the topics we cover:
Energy Hacks
Lyn’s favorite energy boosting hacks, including: magnesium, sardines, vitamin K2, vitamin A, cold plunges, and sprinting
Complexity and Permaculture
Lyn’s fascination with permaculture and the application of permaculture principles to our information diets
How Lyn builds a brand around being open and intellectually honest to avoid group think and audience capture
Top down vs. bottom up (Communism vs. Capitalism) is the big story of the 20th century that continues today
Nostr
The promise of Nostr as a new substrate for re-wilding the web and its ultimate TAM
Evaluating Nostr vs. other systems/protocols attempting to build a decentralized identity/data system
NOSTR project requests from Lyn and Max
Big Tech and AI
Lyn’s take that AI is a continuation of the cloud computing wave, which means it’s centralizing in the medium term
BUT these big companies are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by restricting and closing off their products, which leaves an opening for tech that’s a year or so behind but actually open and less neutered
Lyn is less bullish on AGI; the biggest breakthroughs are likely to come out of left field like trillion dollar health care companies
Lyn is also less bullish on robotics because it’s energy intensive and more complex; software often goes faster than you think and hardware often goes slower than you think
Open Source Software and Companies
The big winners from open source software are platform aggregators (e.g. AWS) and users
Lyn analogizes companies built on open source software to ETFs - products with trillions of dollars under management but companies like Black Rock, State Street, and Invesco, which are big but not massive. BlackRock is a $160B company and only half of that is ETFs. Big but not Google or Apple. ETF businesses are worth a couple hundred billion for an industry worth >$10 trillion; the true winners here are the users as margins race to the bottom
MicroStrategy
Can $MSTR sustain its premium trading 3x to NAV ?
$MSTR advantages: founder control and growing liquidity network effects (e.g. MSTR options markets); very few ETFs and companies will achieve sufficient liquidity in their options markets
Bitcoin and Energy
Bitcoin is energy backed money - external entropy is what makes the Bitcoin system not circular logic (like proof of state) and a truly autonomous system
Both Lyn and Max track energy price/density models for Bitcoin
Lyn also uses MVRV Z-Score for tracking fair Bitcoin price
