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 855 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 9 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
Chhatwal: The 50 tourism destinations announced by the Finance Minister remain unidentified
“We had this announcement by the Honorable Finance Minister on 50 new destinations. To be developed on a mission mode. But we still haven't identified which are those 50.”
Kamath: China's government has failed to break even on high-speed rail
“But those are not profitable ventures. Like even the Chinese government till date has not been able to break even on that. It requires a lot of capex.”
Chhatwal: Tourism Generates 3.25x Gross Economic Value Multiplier
“The, all the studies show that for every one rupee spent in this sector, the gross economic value that gets added is 3.25.”
Damani: Onboarding a villa costs 8-12 lakhs and is recovered in 4-5 months
“All of that accumulated will be an expense of anything between eight to 12 lakhs. That amount is recovered within four to five months by the homeowner.”
Magow: IRCTC commands 80 percent of Indian online rail bookings
“And if you break that into then IRCTC versus all the other OTAs, including Make My Trip Go, Ibibo, Redbus, others, Zig Ziggo, and the others, all of us put together will be 15, 20%. 80% is IRCTC.”
Chhatwal: 88% of IHCL revenues come from asset-heavy properties
“88% of the revenues come from the asset heavy because you need a lot of management contracts or a lot of royalty fees or a lot of income in form of other forms of branding fees to come to the level of one owned asset, let's say in Mumbai.”
Magow: 50% of Ayodhya visitors also visited Varanasi on the same trip
“Actually, 50% of that population went to Varanasi also. In the, on the same trip.”
Chhatwal: Every hospitality job creates 8 to 10 indirect jobs
“Every job created in this sector creates eight to 10 jobs indirectly.”
Tang: CATL sells at a 10% premium due to superior safety
“Tier two Chinese companies, the ratio of their safety issues always much higher than top, like BYD, like CTL.
So that's why CTL always sell about the 10% expensive than
The tier two.”
Tang: Sodium raw materials cost one-tenth of lithium equivalents
“So the price of cobalt sodium Combinates, it's one-tenth of the lithium components.”
Tang: Sodium-ion batteries utilize the same manufacturing facilities as lithium
“We are the same level with lithium. So we use actually the similar facility with lithium. So we just change the material. So so that's why most of the lithium battery company, they claim they have sodium product.”
Klein: China's annual trade surplus surged to $1.1 trillion post-COVID
“If we look at China's external balance with the rest of the world in the years immediately leading up to the pandemic, the trade surplus, depending on how you measure it, was around, you know, 100 to two hundred billion dollars a year, which is, you know, In o…”
Ning Zhu: RMB's Share of Global Settlements Has Barely Grown in a Decade
“I think in terms of the total settlement for the whole world, R&B has not gone up a lot in the past decade or so.”
Armstrong: AML enforcement seizes only about 1% of illicit global finance
“There's some estimates that only I think about one percent of all illicit activity is frozen or seized as a result of AML activities globally.”
Armstrong: Coinbase integrating stablecoins with 5 of top 20 world banks
“We were doing stablecoin integrations with five of the 20 largest banks in the world.”
Armstrong: Coinbase stores more crypto than any other company
“We're the company in the world that stores more crypto than anybody else.”
Armstrong: Coinbase gained US regulatory approval for crypto perps and options
“So we actually just today got approval for crypto perps and options tradable by U S people. I think we're the first regulated exchange in the U S to do that.”
Christodoulides: India Does Not Engage in Unilateral Actions
“We don't see unilateral actions from India.”
Kamath: The most successful historical city-states were never highly democratic
“When I read history, like say we had city-states before we had nation-states, they were never, never very democratic in nature, the ones that thrived.”
Christodoulides: European nations are increasingly questioning their transatlantic relationship with America
“And we see today the Europeans, because of tariffs, because of Greenland, because you name it, questioning the transatlantic relations.”
Christodoulides: Turkey occupies 37% of Cyprus's territory
“The fact that Turkey still occupies 37% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus.”
Prasad: Innovator drug production costs represent only 3% of the price
“See, the cost of production is not material during the patent time. Right. So they don't. Three percent, four percent.”
Prasad: Global drug impurity limits are identical, but enforcement varies drastically
“The standards are the same everywhere. How their enforced are different. I think the standard of Indian regulators limits on impurities, impurities are perfectly fine.”
Prasad: China now produces 29% of all new cancer drugs globally
“29% of all new drugs are now, I think, in cancer are coming from China.”
Prasad: China originates 70% of novel antibody-drug conjugate biologics globally
“70% of the biologics, which are novel biologics ADCs are coming from there.”
Prasad: China saw approximately $50 billion in pharmaceutical deal making last year
“Fifty billion or so last year's deal making in from China. And all the global trials are coming from China now.”
Prasad: Indian API manufacturers primarily compete against each other, not China
“India is a big exporter of APIs. In fact, the competition is severe among Indian companies. It's not the Chinese which are competing with us.”
Prasad: Novel biologics require lower capital intensity to develop than small molecules
“You can also generate novel biologics at a relatively lower intensity of cost than small molecules. It's easier to develop.”
Prasad: US entrepreneur sold $1B in compounded GLP-1 drugs at 90% margins
“I know a guy who was sold more than a billion dollars worth of product at 80, 90% gross margin.”
Marks: Annual S&P 500 returns are almost never between 8% and 12%
“The return on the S&P, which averages 10, is almost never between eight and 12.”
Marks: 99% of Oaktree's high-yield bonds paid full principal and interest
“I've been in high yield bonds for 48 years. And in our experience, 99% of the bonds have paid interest in principle as promised.”
Marks: Oaktree's 40-Year Default Rate Is Roughly One-Third Market Average
“Over the last 40 years, on average, something like 3.6 or 3.7% of all high yield bonds have gone into default every year. And our default rate has been Roughly a third.”
Banga: Mastercard hit $360B market cap while Citi was under $100B
“And then from there, I had a chance to be one of the candidates to be the next CEO of Citi, which was 250,000 people. And I quit and became the CEO of Mastercard with 4000 people. But when I left, Mastercard's market cap was three hundred sixty billion, and ci…”
Banga: Over half of Mastercard's code was machine-written when he left
“Even when I was at MasterCard, by the time I left, you know, more than half our code was being written through machines.”
Kamath: Nothing's revenue grew from $500M to about $900M
“The sales look great. I think they went from 500 mil last year to about 900 mil this year.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs does not depend on OpenAI for voice models
“Where we today, of course, don't depend on open AI for voice and we can stay ahead and build models that are both great in English, great internationally, great across India languages, great across European languages.”
Kamath: Super apps have never worked in India or outside China
“Super apps have never worked in India. A lot of people have tried it actually outside of China. They've not worked anywhere, right?”
Amodei: Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust appoints majority of board
“We have an unusual governance structure, something called the long-term benefit
Trust.
you know, it's a body that, that kind of ultimately appoints, you know, the majority of the board members for Anthropic and is, you know, made up of financially disinterest…”
Amodei: Anthropic advocated for AI regulation while competitors and government opposed it
“We've said that there should be regulation of AI when all the other companies and the administration have said there shouldn't be regulation of AI.”
Amodei: California AI bill advocated by Anthropic exempts sub-$500M revenue companies
“The regulation we've advocated for example, SB in California exempted everyone who makes under five hundred million dollars a year in, in in, in, in revenue, right? SB, SB was a transparency law, which you know basically requires companies to you know, to show…”
Amodei: Anthropic studies prove AI usage can de-skill human coders
“You know, we did some studies around code and showed that, you know, depending on how you use the model, you know, we can see, De-skilling in terms of writing code, right? There are different ways to use the model, and some of them don't cause de-skilling, and…”
Harari: Taiwan built social algorithms that reward cross-group consensus over outrage
“Like you had these models from Taiwan, that they actually built it and it worked well, that you can take the same basic premises of social media and reverse them. You can have the algorithm rewarding content, like the algorithm, first of all, in this Taiwan sy…”
Harari: Putin and Xi were caught on a hot mic discussing immortality
“A couple of months ago, they caught Putin and Xi in Beijing talking privately when they thought that nobody was listening and the microphones were on. And this was amazing, because what were Putin and Xi talking about in private? They didn't talk about Ukraine…”
Harari: 21st century governments spent more on healthcare than military
“For the first time in history, the average health care budget was around 10%. First time in history, on average, all over the world, governments spent more on healthcare than on the military.”
Dr. Jayanthi: Visual naked-eye screening for oral cancer is only 60% accurate
“The detection of oral cancer currently is just visual screen, naked eyes. There's no tool, there's no devices, you are just supposed to look with naked eyes and detect microscopic changes. That is, that's why the accuracy rate is almost as good as a flip of a …”
Al Olama: UAE government ministers are among the highest paid globally
“So, I think the UAE government, in terms of ministerial positions, is amongst the highest in terms of monthly pay in the world. So I think Singapore is higher, a few other countries are maybe higher, but we get paid quite well”
Al Olama: Sheikh Mohammed uses secret shoppers to detect government inefficiency
“Sheikh Mohammed has what he called secret choppers. So these are people that go across town. They look like me. They might look like you, who raise reports to him, who tell him, for example, that they've witnessed corruption here or inefficiency there, or they…”
Dalio: US stock wealth-to-money ratio matches 1929 and 2000 bubble peaks
“What's the money ratio right now in the United States is about eight and a half to one, and so on, and when you look at it and then also then there's what it's in. The stock market is, is right now about three to one, and that's very high. If you were to go ba…”