Funders Phantom, Traveling Buck & Second Chances 🧳

Why are VCs willing to pay so much?

Funders have to build social relationships with founders. A founder might read a tweet from a VC and say: "Wow, he's a cool guy. I want him on my board.”

Ghostwriters write content to establish the credibility of client VCs and get the attention of young founders.

Why only Twitter?

Earlier VCs met with founders in clubs and business centres in a very Bruce Wayne-esque setting. Today, it all happens on Twitter. Twitter is Silicon Valley's most important social club, and top investors pay ghostwriters big bucks to make them look good in 280 characters.

Reasons to hire former convicts

• Finding a stable job can reduce recidivism. If people don’t find a stable job and income stream, they could be tempted to return to crime, which in the end is a burden for taxpayers. It costs billions of dollars of taxpayer money to run prisons.
• A 2021 report found that 85% of HR pros felt that employees with criminal records performed the same or better than those without.
• They also have lower turnover rates and command lower salaries, thus saving companies money.

It has been more than a year since El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender under the Bitcoin Law came. 

Here’s the one-year update on how the law fared. 

• Adoption and use of Bitcoin has remained low as the currency has lost about 60% of its value since the experiment started. 👎
• Very few businesses accept payment in cryptocurrency — and even fewer Salvadorans wish to pay in the digital token. 👎

A survey by the El Instituto de Opinion Publica found that 76 out of 100 small and medium-size enterprises in El Salvador do not accept bitcoin payments. Another survey published in March by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of El Salvador found that 86% of businesses have never made a sale in bitcoin, and only 20% of businesses take bitcoin, despite the Law’s mandate that all merchants accept the cryptocurrency. 

In Short: $60 million lost, $375 million spent, and little to show for. The Bitcoin experiment was a spectacular failure.

The last time the British pound traded at $1, we got the Plaza Accord. 

It was the early 1980s. The dollar surged by more than 50% against other major currencies. The economic backdrop was comparable to today’s—high inflation, and banks’ reluctance to hike rates. 

Solution: 

The finance ministers of Japan, France, Germany, the UK, and the US decided, at New York City’s Plaza Hotel, to take collaboratively weaken the dollar. 

The operation was such a success that two years later, the same countries had to carve out another agreement, this time to prop up the USD.

Are we heading towards a Plaza 2.0? 

Seems unlikely. 

The US has shown zero interest in such a deal. Back in 1985, US policymakers wanted to help American manufacturers boost exports. Today, that is not the concern.

There is also another strong player at the table now - China. And given US-China tensions, it’s unlikely Beijing would want to join.