The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 4,524 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 112 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Olaf Carlson-Wee: Every global financial transaction will eventually occur on DeFi
“I really do view it as where every financial transaction in the world will take place.”
Drogen: Bitcoin will not become a global reserve currency or inflation hedge
“The techno libertarians who felt that this could be a new global reserve currency, that it was an inflation hedge, that you could extricate yourself from holding fiat government currency and things like that. I think a lot of people drank that Kool-Aid, and it…”
Libby: Lower-cost ETF equivalents will disrupt traditional venture capital fee structures
“I think that that's going to come to the venture world too. It's been a momentum trade. And so if you're Sequoia or Forerunner or Bessemer, you have services and tools. I think it's going to be hard to prove that you should be getting two in 20 versus an ETF e…”
Gave: As Energy Prices Rise, Europe Will Go Bust
“As the energy price goes up, Europe will go bust.
The only question is at what price?”
Sethi: Startups like Terra and FTX could reach hundreds of billions
“These companies will probably at some point, if they continue to grow at the pace they're growing, could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Papic: China has peaked as a geopolitical power for the next decade
“So I think that China has peaked as a geopolitical power for the next decade.”
Papic: China will fail to transition away from export dependence
“I'm in a camp that says they're going to fail. They're not going to be able to do it, and they're going to remain as export dependent, if not more.”
Papic: China will run a current account deficit over the next decade
“Which means that over the next decade, China will also be in a current account deficit.”
Papic: The Ukraine war will cleave the Western alliance further, not unite NATO
“There's a view out there that this will help NATO unity. And I really don't think so, Ted. I think that this will actually cleave the Western alliance further.”
Wolfe: The Sahel and Maghreb Will Become Europe's Next Afghanistan
“I believe that that will be the next Afghanistan, particularly for Europe. I think that you will have Mali pulling France in. You will have Belgium being pulled in, you will have the UK and other EU countries adjacently being pulled in, the US being pulled in,…”
Hamed predicts Instagram risks obsolescence due to poor creator monetization
“And we think Instagram is really at risk of going away because the creators on Instagram aren't making enough money to actually make good content.”
Samani: Long-term technical and social gravity trends toward one single chain
“Given both the explicit technical costs and then the softer, squishier social developer experience costs, I think gravity trends towards one chain.”
Visser: Interest rates will remain lower forever, pressuring allocators
“My belief has always been that rates would be stuck at low levels. We're still at that space, and I continue to believe that they'll be not only lower for longer, but lower forever, and that's putting more pressure than ever on allocators”
Visser: There will be no bond market in 30 years
“Well, for governments carrying the interest cost for years, I joked behind closed doors and occasionally on stage where it wasn't being videotaped that there'd be no bonds in 30 years. I still believe that.”
Sternlicht: Marriott lobbied Washington to outlaw Starwood's paired-share REIT structure
“Bill Marriott had been at this for
40 years, and I've been at it for three.
He decided that this enough is enough, and they're gonna get rid of our paired share structure.
So he went to Washington, and in the budget reconciliation bill of that year, they threw…”
Sternlicht: Amazon subsidizes $4B-$5B retail losses with AWS to destroy small retailers
“It's fundamentally destroying mom and dad retail across the country, and it's one of my pet peeves because they were allowed to sell product retail-wise for less than the cost of, they're losing four or five billion a year in retail, which they subsidize with …”
Sternlicht: Amazon Prime will hit $500 once competing retail is gone
“They charge us 75 dollars, and now I think it's a hundred. They'll go to 500 when there's nothing left but Amazon in this country.”
Elliott secured Caesars bankruptcy date agreement to trigger CDS payout
“And he had been running very tough negotiation with Apollo and struck a very, very tough deal because he knew that Apollo needed an ally really badly. And so he got all sorts of goodies, including a convertible preferred security, as well as one of these well-…”
Jensen: Very high chance humanity fails at superhuman AI development
“We only get one chance to develop an intelligence greater than us, and if you do it wrong, it's the end of things, and there's a very, very good chance we're going to do it wrong, just judging by how rarely we as a species get things right the first time.”
Ford: San Francisco lost 100,000 residents due to progressive policies
“I'll probably get in trouble for this, but San Francisco has moved so far to the progressive end. They've lost a 100,000 residents out of 900,000 people.”
Grantham: African migration to Europe will be society's primary political risk
“So I think it will be stress on those areas, and immigration, and the pressure on Europe of millions of Africans attempting to migrate will be the main political risk that we face, and a real threat to the well-being of society.”
Ariely: Token female leadership appointments make female employees feel worse
“We found that some companies, when they assign women to high positions, The women within these companies feel worse. Why? Because they take it as an indication that the company doesn't really care about them, that they're only doing things to appeal to PR, lik…”
Garcia: Bitcoin will drop to its underlying tech value without government backing
“If governments are not going to embrace it honestly, it should go down to just the technology value of it.”
Paul: 10% Chance Bitcoin Suffers Disabling Attack By 2026
“I put it at maybe 10% over the next five years that there is a successful attack on Bitcoin that effectively renders the network temporarily unusable, but unusable in a way where we don't know when the next attack will be.”
Dixon: Decentralized blockchain communities will build tomorrow's social networks
“A lot of the thesis we have with crypto blockchain is that a similar thing will happen with internet services in the same way that almost all software today is made by a group, a community of people who get together and build something. We think the same thing…”
Papic: Big Tech has likely peaked due to stroke-of-the-pen risk
“I just think that we're going to enter a period where stroke of pen risk is very high. And I don't think it's going to cause a collapse in prices, but I think this may be the apex and it's all downhill from here.”
Wittenberg: All-white firms will not survive to 2050
“Our country is going to be more than 50% diverse in 2050. Our workforce in 20 50 will be more than 50% diverse. If you're not addressing these things today, if you're just a bunch of white men, that firm ain't gonna make it to 20 50.”
Walthour: NJ claimed investing in diverse managers breached its fiduciary duty
“They originally told us, quote unquote, it was against their fiduciary responsibility to invest with women and minority-owned firms. Their website now says women and minority-owned firms, we're open for consideration.”
Bob Litterman predicts the global economy faces decades of low oil prices.
“I think we're in for, you know, decades of low oil prices.”
Siegel: Total global forest cover is actually increasing, not decreasing
“And the amount of forest in the world is going up, not down.”
25% to 30% of LBOs would go bankrupt in a normal recession
“And so much of private equity today of LBOs is single B or triple C type quality, that I would say 25 to 30% of LBOs would go bankrupt in a normal business cycle, normal recession with normal levels of delinquency.”
Private equity will likely enter an extend-and-pretend zombie state
“There's this extend and pretend zombie type behavior where the money that you put into private equity never blows up, but you never get it back, you know. And I think that's probably the most likely scenario”
CEO pedigree and elite education do not predict stock returns
“Turns out that going to business school empirically does not mean that your stock price does better. Turns out working at an investment bank or top tier consulting firm has no impact on the stock price of the company that you run. Turns out that your track rec…”
Kraus: Hedge funds generated no alpha in short positions over the last decade
“In general, across the industry, for long periods of time, last 10 years, there is no alpha in the short positions.”
McKinsey sent threatening letters to Institutional Investor and identified zero errors
“The article is called The Story McKinsey Didn't Want Written, and then we started the story by saying, during the reporting of this piece, McKinsey sent multiple threatening letters to institutional investor. We stand by this piece entirely, and they have not …”
Karp: 95% of hedge fund managers generate returns primarily from beta
“95% of managers, the bulk of their returns are some form of beta.”
U.S. Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim Was Once Google's Lobbyist
“Macon Dalrahim, for example, is the attorney general for antitrust in the US. He was Google's lobbyist for the double click acquisition.”
TransDigm Hikes Acquired Aircraft Component Prices by 500% to 700%
“A classic one that hedge funds love and that I think is horrific is Transtime. Basically, there's not competition because to get an FAA part approved takes a very long time, and so you and I can go and provide seat belts cheaper than Transtime, and anytime the…”
Novogratz: Only offshore crypto exchanges with loose KYC are making real money
“The only place people are making real money is in the retail exchanges, and most of them offshore where they're taking all kinds of regulatory. They have more regulatory Movement. You know, not as tight on the KYC stuff, and so Binance, and Bitfinex, and I mea…”
Within 30 years, bonds will not exist and everything will be free
“I say to people regularly, I don't think there'll be bonds and everything will be free in 30 years. I say it not as a fact or as a guess, but it's something I do believe is coming because of my belief in the impact that nano and three D printing and artificial…”
Friedman: Tax incentives will force all US startups into Opportunity Zones
“It's going to encourage every single business that's going to start up United States. It's going to force it for tax reasons, for economic reasons, to be in an opportunity zone.”
Friedman advises shorting Silicon Valley and selling Palo Alto real estate
“In fact, I would short Silicon Valley right now. If you have real estate in Palo Alto, you should be selling it, because if you're in Silicon Valley, you're, Except for a small place in Silicon Valley, which is an opportunity zone, those businesses are all goi…”
Russo: Alphabet CEO Larry Page no longer shows up to work
“At a time when, by the way, Larry Page no longer shows up. To work.”
Hewsenian predicted in 2018 Gavin Newsom's policies would trigger Silicon Valley exodus
“The other thing that has us very excited is that we think that Silicon Valley is only going to last for so long. If for no other reason, California is becoming very business unfriendly. If Gavin Newsom wins the gubernatorial race, And he does to California wha…”
Friedman: Active managers will profit massively when indexation hits 95%
“I'm waiting for the day when the key is to have staying power to last, is when, you know, the machines or the indexes are 95% of the market. Then you'll make money hand over”
Pfeffer predicts utility protocols will disrupt industries but tokens won't capture value.
“I think they're going to be successful. I think they're going to get a lot of users. I think they're going to be very disruptive. I think they're going to destroy, they'll create a lot of user surplus and destroy a lot of equity value. I just don't think the n…”