near used to be an L1 when they started off. they're now an onchain exchange... everything you can do on coinbase/binance, you can do on near dot com. they just route to the best venue/product incredible product execution.

To all developers building stocks on @solana, the @Backpack Securities mint + redeem is open access. Transform a bona fide security entitlement to and from a token with a single API call. Docs here

The 1970s belonged to commodities and were miserable for stocks in real terms. The 1980s and 1990s belonged to financial assets. The 2000s belonged to commodities again — the last supercycle. The 2010s, overwhelmingly, to the asset-light growth machine. Every switch felt permanent while you were inside it. Every one ended, and the baton passed.

There's an underrated reason why more people are gambling than building. meme stocks/coins, options YOLOs, sports betting all at ATH -- speculation dominates because individuals can’t trust prices. Everyone is lying to you modern society wrecks price discovery through multiple layers of distortion: - central banks: QE, zero/negative rates, and currency pegs suppress true cost of capital and risk, making everything look cheaper than it really is. - governments: subsidies, corporate bailouts, capital controls, tax loopholes, and misreported inflation shield industries and consumers from reality, pushing misallocation of resources. - public markets: passive ETF flows inflate valuations regardless of fundamentals. illiquid private markets, “mark to model” valuations, zombie companies (debt > revenue), adjusted earnings, and shadow banking leverage hide leverage and true profitability, making prices look healthier than they are. - education: student loans and government funding inflate tuition far beyond actual delivery costs. housing: zoning laws, rent controls, and government guarantees distort supply/demand signals - energy: subsidies, carbon credits, and strategic reserves mask true production and consumption costs. - labour: minimum wages, licensing requirements, and immigration restrictions prevent wages from clearing naturally. - food: corn, soy, wheat, and sugar are heavily subsidized, making processed foods artificially cheap while healthier options look “expensive.” these dilute the signal prices are supposed to send. Price is a compass price discovery is a compass. it tells you whether your savings will grow safely in bonds, whether housing is affordable, whether a stock or startup is worth betting your career on. without it, you can’t plan retirement, assess risk, or build long-term wealth. you’re left guessing -- or gambling. Solana Forces Price Discovery when internet capital markets win, it will strip away many of these distortions by making every trade transparent, instant, and global. Every truth can be accessed via some price chart -- prediction markets, tokenized stock of every company, synthetic commodities etc. -- and traded 24/7 without gatekeepers. As more assets move on-chain, the fog of off-chain price obfuscation clears. Price is truth.

There is an insane loophole that makes Nu Global possible Nu Global is not a bank. Not deposit-insured Swiss law says: if a bank guarantees repayment + interest, the money is not a “deposit.” So a non-bank Swiss company can hold it The catch: they can only market in Switzerland. You “came to them.” Reverse solicitation One Swiss book. 35 countries. No local license. You don’t even own the coins. You own a claim on Nu Global AG That’s how you custody globally without opening a bank everywhere Genius. Might become the new standard for stablecoin neobanking

Commodities relative to 30 year Treasury bonds are making their highest high since 2008. That is one hell of a message. The market is increasingly rewarding ownership of real assets over long duration promises to receive dollars decades into the future.

korea may be the leading indicator for where politics is going. the current president literally campaigned on “kospi 5,000.” he pushed governance reform, tax incentives and policies that drove household capital into domestic equities. the kospi hit 5,000 eventually. stock market performance is becoming a political deliverable. many countries may choose to deliver UBI through the stock market

Implication of this headline for investors, in plain speak: Inflation is going WAY higher over time if this continues; sell LT bonds on all days ending in "-y". Via @riteshmjn

Active managers are making more revenue after converting their MF to an ETFs despite charging lower fees. How's that possible? Bc the inflows are that good over here. The funds that were converted went from outflows of $4/year to inflows of $16b = ETF IT AND THEY WILL COME. via @DavidCohne

on the tokenization supercycle imagine discovering youtube in 2010 and thinking: great, american tv shows can now be distributed globally. you’d be right. but you’d miss the point. the real 1000x was that youtube created an entirely new class of global-native content that traditional tv could never compete with (ie., medium is the message) tokenization will do the same to capital markets it won’t just make american equities easier to buy. it will take high-quality, under-distributed companies around the world and violently reprice them. the subtler point is: distribution is valuation. distribution was always one of the great moats of US capital markets. and that monopoly has now met its final boss: internet-scale distribution of any stock in the world to anyone with a smartphone. imagine every public company on earth were listed on the NYSE, and every person on earth had robinhood installed do you think today’s relative valuations would survive? that is the multi-trillion dollar question

in the next few years, individual investors will outperform Wall St. the best individual investors have the same conviction as active managers -- and none of the shackles. with streaming and social clout, it compounds: the best pickers can now attract flows directly. there's a paper that proves the mechanism [1] these guys took every US active fund, 1983–2018...and they asked: forget the whole portfolio, how do managers' highest-conviction picks actually perform? their findings summarised by claude: 1. managers' best ideas beat the market by 2.8–4.5% a year. and it's permanent — no reversal even a decade later. these stocks were genuinely underpriced. 2. everything else in the portfolio adds nothing. the average fund holds ~160 stocks. the "all holdings" portfolio earns 6bps of alpha. statistically zero. 3. alpha declines monotonically from idea #1# to #10#. only the top ~5 matter. the other 155 positions are filler. --- OK, so stock-picking skill is still a thing. so why do funds still lose to the index? because the wrapper forces managers to bury their 5 good ideas under 155 mediocre ones: - fees are on AUM. diversify to scale, capture your own alpha as fees. manager wins, client pays alpha fees for closet beta. - career risk. one concentrated bad year gets you fired. nobody gets fired for humping the index. - morningstar and sharpe ratios punish concentration. flows chase stars (for boomers), stars require blandness (until ansem, threadguy etc take over). - lawyers. "prudent man" rules treat conviction as a liability. - the kicker: SIZE KILLS ALPHA. best ideas of small hedge funds beat those of 10B+ giants by ~15% a year. the individual investor has the smallest AUM of all. here's how to win based on this paper: 1. concentrate. your top 5 ideas, sized like you mean it. 8 stocks capture 80% of all diversification benefit anyway. 2. buy cheap beta for the rest. diversification costs nothing thanks to vanguard. alpha costs everything. never pay active fees for filler. 3. go where the funds can't: illiquid, small or weird. that's where best ideas outperform most. 4. do the work. the catch is that conviction without research is just gambling -- these managers earned their alpha, they just weren't allowed to act on it. you have to be both the analyst and the allocator. 5. build distribution. the fund's moat was never stock-picking, it was gathering assets. streaming and social flip that: audience is the new AUM. tools to responsibly monetise that will emerge. wall st. can't hold its own best ideas -- but you can -- and that's the edge. [1] "Best Ideas" -- Antón, Cohen & Polk: