Western Civilization is doomed, unless the core weakness of suicidal empathy is recognized and actions are taken that are hard, but necessary for survival https://t.co/aIVbe1fRKS
Today on site we have over 2000 workers building the world’s most powerful computer. Thank you to the amazing, hard working men and women of Memphis for all you do! pic.twitter.com/U5707uVFW3
Anywhere, and hence remote locations. Like Midland TX where I am at. Here's what I am working on: https://t.co/clyBfdaqb7 Chatbase should co-invest. Like Yahoo in Alibaba.
With Eric Adams out of the race, Andrew Cuomo surges in poll The former governor gained 10 points since a poll last month that included the mayor, who draws a similar base of support. ........ — found the ex-governor receiving a 10-point boost even as Mamdani maintains a commanding double-digit lead in the contest to lead the nation’s largest city. ......... Mamdani, a state assemblymember, received 46 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s 33 percent. Republican Curtis Sliwa received 15 percent ......... “As the billionaires continue to throw out their last-ditched efforts to prop up Andrew Cuomo, we have genuine enthusiasm and 80,000 volunteers on our side. Last time, it wasn’t the billionaires who won that matchup.” ......... 90 percent of Mamdani voters said they were either very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting for him. ........
China is ditching the dollar, fast Officials believe that the yuan has finally come of age ......... CHINA’S LEADERS sense an epic opportunity. President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policy, gaping fiscal deficits and threats to the independence of America’s Federal Reserve risk badly hurting the dollar. It has slumped 7% on a trade-weighted basis since January, and had its worst start to a year since 1973. ............ By contrast, China’s tightly controlled currency, the yuan, has reached its highest level since Mr Trump was re-elected in November. Foreign investors are piling in. So are many governments looking for dollar alternatives. ............... China’s leaders think a globally accepted yuan can insulate their exporters from movements in the dollar’s value and blunt the threat of America’s financial sanctions. Some officials hope that foreign firms and investors will overlook the state’s rigid control and, perhaps, even come to see it as an asset. In recent years they have made surprising gains. The yuan’s share of invoices and overseas lending has grown and there has been an impressive buildout of non-dollar financial infrastructure to match. But officials seem to recognise that foreigners now need greater incentives to use the yuan and to invest in yuan assets. ............. By any measure, the yuan lacks cachet. Though China is responsible for nearly a fifth of global economic activity, its tender is used in only 4% of international payments by value (compared with 50% for the dollar). Yuan assets make up just 2% of global central-bank currency reserves (compared with 58% for dollar assets). A lot of this mismatch can be blamed on China’s controls on money flowing in and out of the country. Many economists think that internationalising the yuan is impossible while they remain in place. ........... But even after America became the world’s largest economy, it still took decades for the dollar to achieve dominance. By that timescale, China is making surprisingly rapid progress. ........... Over 30% of China’s trade in goods and services is now done in its own currency (compared with 14% in 2019). It settles more than 50% of its total cross-border receipts (including financial flows) in yuan, up from less than 1% in 2010 (see chart 1). ................... To increase circulation, officials want to encourage trade partners to accept China’s currency as payment. A major lure is offering them yuan liabilities. .......... after sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2022, Chinese banks switched nearly all of their new overseas lending out of dollars and into yuan (previously only 15% of loans were made in yuan), thereby tripling the stock of outstanding yuan debt ............ In the time since it began its internationalisation push, China has extended 4.5trn yuan ($630bn) in swap lines to 32 central banks, creating a global financial safety net that rivals the scale of the IMF’s. Only a fraction of such lines has actually been drawn on. The idea is to guarantee countries’ access to yuan in a crisis, giving them the confidence to borrow and buy in the currency. ............. While all this has been going on, China has also sorted its own financial plumbing. Now it can transact with others without touching the dollar system through a variety of means. These include the digital yuan and non-bank digital payments (such as through QR codes on apps popular in Asia). Most important is the invention of CIPS, which bears similarities to SWIFT, the West’s bank-messaging system. Since Chinese banks can and do transact outside SWIFT, the yuan’s role in international payments is probably being undercounted ..............
More than 1,700 banks have signed up to CIPS across the globe, up by a third since before the war in Ukraine. Transaction volumes rose faster than ever in 2024, up by 43% to 175trn yuan ($24trn). Clearing banks to settle yuan payments (almost all of which are operated by Chinese institutions) have been set up in 33 markets. Some joined this year, including banks in Turkey and Mauritius. China began working with the United Arab Emirates in June in order to expand the CIPS network into north Africa and the Middle East.
.............. Last year several billion dollars were said to have been transacted over a digital-currency network called mBridge, built by China with other central banks. .......... China’s next safe move is opening up its onshore capital markets to its pals. In July Hungary issued about 5bn yuan in so-called “panda bonds”, the largest single sovereign issuance to date. On September 8th the Financial Times reported that Russian energy firms had been given the go-ahead to issue yuan-denominated paper. Kenya may soon swap the dollar debts it owes to China into yuan. Meanwhile, Brazil is mulling a new issuance and Pakistani officials have been in Beijing to pitch potential creditors. ........... In a big speech in June China’s central-bank governor, Pan Gongsheng, declared that the global financial system was becoming “multipolar” and that in future the dollar would be forced to compete with other currencies, such as the yuan. Such competition, China hopes, means the country will have to do less to reduce its dollar dependence, and can resist liberalising capital flows and the exchange rate.
The yuan may yet be a global currency with Chinese characteristics.
I feel strongly that there is a need for a new Madhesi global organization.
Step 1: Invite in members globally. Fill out this form. Membership is free.
Step 2: For the US chapter, I will wait until there are over 100 members. Then an election will be organized. The election will be online and open. Then we have Officers.
Step 3: The conference call will be the primary way to hold meetings. Zero travel. A robust use of social media and online tools.
A tech startup is high risk behavior. If you had 100,000 dollars to invest, a financial advisor would tell you, put 10% of your money in the no risk zone. It might be money in a checking account, or a savings account. Put 10% of your money in high risk, high gain investments. This is money you could lose, but this is also money that could see wild growth. And then put 90% of your money somewhere in between. US Treasury bonds might give you a 5% annual return, but they are safe. Stocks might give you a 10% annual return, but they are volatile.
Investing in the first round of a successful startup could see your money grow 10,000%, but it is very hard to get in. Chances are you don’t personally know the founder of a tech startup who is just starting out. You simply don’t have that kind of social capital. And it is very hard to figure out if a tech startup is going to be successful or if it is going to go belly up.
And so I offered a hybrid situation to my high school friend Ravindra Sapkota a few months back. He is an Oxford University graduate running the top biotech company in Nepal. He raised half a million pounds out of college to launch his venture. It has had a few successful years in a row and I feel is in a prime position to raise its second round of funding.
Ravindra invested 5,000 dollars as soon as he found out I was launching a tech startup. A week later after sending the money we finally got to talking about what the idea is, what my plans were. He also later brought in one of his professors at 5,000. The professor is hoping to launch a biotech startup and is eager to raise some money for it in the New York market. I have also offered to help Ravindra raise round two money for his biotech startup in the New York market, the money capital of the world.
I made it risk free for them, as to Kundan Gurung who was one year senior to me at high school, and now lives five blocks from me in Woodside. Kundan is also in at 5,000.
The “risk free” deal I offered to them is this.
Should the venture fail, from the day of the failure, I will have 12 months to return this 5K to you, as if it were a personal loan. Should the venture succeed, I will get 5% of the growth this investment might see. So if this 5K becomes a million dollars in five years, I get 5% of that million, namely 50K, and you get the rest.
To them it feels like the worst that can happen is their 5K will not grow. That puts their money in the safe 10% no risk zone. To me it feels like I just signed up to get 50K for free. I am hugely optimistic and confident about my venture.
This instrument I invented is not to say a tech startup is risk free. It is anything but. You take multiple risks on a daily basis. You have to innovate fast. You have to move fast.
A tech startup is super risky. That is precisely why the rewards are super high. No Nepali in New York City has a net worth approaching a hundred million dollars. And you can’t dream of getting there the old economy way. A successful tech startup might be one of the few vehicles to get there.
Launching a successful tech startup also puts you in a good position to raise money for your NGO, your non profit, if you have one, it puts you in a good position to raise money for hydro projects in Nepal, should that hit your fancy.
It takes a lot to be a successful entrepreneur, especially a successful tech entrepreneur. A huge appetite for risk is key. You will almost never have 100% of the information you need. Often times you will only know half of what you need to know. And you still have to call the shots with utmost confidence. You have to have the right instincts, or you have to cultivate them.
You could fail a thousand ways. You could fail every step of the way. You could fail after two years of “success.” The market (the goddess) could kill you three years down the line in one fell swoop and with little to no warning.
I don’t see all that as a downside. That risk factor is part of the excitement. It is reward in its own right.
