The Degenerate Economy Will Be Tokenized…Don't Underestimate The Other Guys Greed!
Good morning…
I hate not being consistent with the newsletter the last few months, but I also hate phoning it In.
I am in deep work mode and have had little time to organize my thoughts for the daily newsletter.
On Coronado, deep work mode is much easier for me because of the creature comforts of the island. Ellen and I walk the beach almost daily. Just a three minute walk from our house is a small gym where we meet a trainer three times a week. We have a five minute walk to Von’s for groceries which makes my diet way more healthy. We also have a great media room at home for us to unwind each evening and I live in it most nights by 7 pm.
Yesterday, I took a few hours off to ride with a few buddies from up in north San Diego. We met in Del Mar and rode up past Encinitas and stopped in at The Taco Stand in Encinitas where my partner Matt lives so that he could join. California coast life is not horrible.
Onward…
This has been a ‘bananas’ year if you are into the markets. It feels like a decade has been pcaked into six months.
I say that as a price follower, not a news follower and so I feel for the news and opinion junkies. My only prediction for the second half of the year is that the tsunami of news and opinion will increase. As I like to say ‘there is no such thing as information overload, only filter failure’. If you use price as your filter as I do, you have saved and will continue to save yourself much aggravation.
Of all the news and opinion that was bad in the first half of 2025, I would say Tucker Carlson and the World War 3 ghouls got it the most wrong. Sadly this audience grows.
How wrong was this ‘doom’ crowd as of the close today?
$BTC all-time high…
$NVDA all-time high…
$QQQ all time high…
— Stocktwits (@Stocktwits)
8:37 PM • Jul 9, 2025
Oh.. and solar is outperforming all other energy including oil which was supposed to go to $150 once World War 3 broke out last month…
I say this not to jinx my biggest worry going forward after the ‘12 day war’ is an increase in terrorism.
No matter…as a market participant I continue to believe there has never been a better time to be a follower of ‘price’ action. The closest thing we have to news/opinion in 2025 is price. Unless you are on the inside (sadly ‘the inside’ is a growing dark force), you are doomed as a trader/investor if you can’t build a system that helps you follow price with a strict risk management system and discipline.
The least big surprise to me in the first half was the insane level of grift and insider trading. It is a spirt crusher to see it happen in such plain sight. We are getting closer to the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ moment of corruption and grift and insider trading. The other side of this corruption will be painful for too many.
Almost every US market sector is in a positive trend right now except housing, but let’s be honest, our King will outlast Powell and he will huff and puff until he gets what he wants…lower rates.
I imagine ‘dream homes’ will be a top search on Zillow soon.
What should you be worried about?
As I wrote a few weeks ago, supply is coming, but to me it seems like we could surprise a lot of the ‘gloom and doomers’ before supply swamps demand.
This moment reminds me of one of my favorite movies and scenes of all time in Scarface…with Frank leaning into Tony with …’don’t underestimate the other guys greed’:
And finally,
You know what’s better than a ‘degenerate economy’?
A tokenized degenerate economy!
Earlier, I referenced the supply that is coming that will eventually swamp the demand. The supply this time will not need the ‘green toner’ for the money printer like all the previous booms and bubbles.
The supply will be digital and ‘tokenized’.
Robinhood’s founder Vlad is on a podcast tour talking about their plans to ‘tokenize’ financial assets. The ‘Odd Lot’s podcast was a good one to help you hear the pitch and vision.
Matt Levine has his usual, fresh, smart, funny and cynical take on this fresh push from Robinhood.
The market could care less what the smartypants of the world think about all this right now…here is what the world thinks of Robinhood $HOOD ( ▲ 2.53% ) (the Coinbase chart looks the same)…
I am completely with Matt Levine on this one thing which caught most people underinvested in this trend six months ago (before this epic explosion higher)…
But I personally would not have predicted this future. Instead of regulators imposing disclosure and trading rules to make crypto more like the stock market, the financial industry seems to be finding a way to get rid of disclosure and trading rules in the stock market, to make the stock market more like crypto.
Enjoy it all while it lasts…
DiscIosure: I am long the ‘tokenized economy’ through investments I have made and or still hold including Robinhood, Stocktwits, Alpaca, Etoro and many crypto funds.
