"This market sucks"

I suspect many younger investors are struggling a bit with their tech and growth heavy portfolios. How fast things can change over the course of a year.

One web3 project I’m involved with has a #stocks channel in their Discord. One member of the project proclaimed “this market sucks” in the channel this morning.

Of course, the reality is that this market does not suck right now. The DJIA just hit a record high today. The S&P 500 hit a record high just the other day. On the flip side, the Nasdaq was down 1.33% due to a continuing pullback of tech stocks.

My entire retirement account is in various index funds so I haven’t been in a complete downfall. With that said, my liquid portfolio is very much tech and growth stock heavy and it’s been a rough couple of months. My portfolio sucks right now and it may suck for awhile longer, but I’m not that worried about it.

Truth is, portfolios tend to suck from time to time. Stocks go up, down and sideways often. So yes, my portfolio is sucking right now and it will suck again in the future. In between those periods of sucking are hopefully going to be great periods of growth where I’ll be ecstatic that I didn’t panic sell everything.

The emotional side to investing is tough. Hold on, it’ll suck a lot less in the near future, I promise.

Closing out 2021 and goals for 2022

I’ve been publishing personal goals every new year since 2020. It’s been a fun experiment. I believe that forcing myself to write goals down publicly helps keep me accountable.

Before we get to 2022, I want to review my 2021 goals and judge myself based on them. I put together 4 personal goals for myself in 2021 and it was a mixed bag.

  1. Find work life balance - Half the year was a bit of a struggle for me. I burnt out hard in the summer, but started to find work/life balance towards the end of the year. I give myself a C for figuring it out eventually.

  2. Drink less - Another mixed bag. Post-vaccination world was a lot of fun. The summer was a bit of a blur as I was constantly traveling for work and social events that involved a lot of drinking. I slowed things down in the fall and winter months though which I was proud of myself for. Still, I have work to do here and give myself another C.

  3. Learn Mandarin - complete fail as I never started and instead switched to Spanish Duolingo due to my upcoming month in Mexico. I never got fluent. This was a bit of a stretch goal but I did start learning a new language in 2021 so I give myself a F+.

  4. Practice gratitude - this was probably my biggest win of the year. Coming out of the pandemic post-vaccination was a great way to practice gratitude. There were a lot of things we took for granted and 2021 was a great way to take a step back and realize how lucky I am. Solid B.

For 2022, I’m going to give myself 3 achievable personal goals that I wanted to work on this year. They’re different but they have a common theme on helping me become a better person.

  1. Drink less. Back in my goal list for 2022 is to drink less. I’m getting older and my body isn’t reacting well to alcohol anymore. I have more responsibilities as time goes on and sleep is much more valuable nowadays. Drinking less and saying no more often to social events is the healthier choice that will help me become more productive and focused.

  2. Read a book a month. I have realized that I have become more and more addicted to my phone as time goes on which means less reading. Discord, Slack, Twitter, etc. have all become a distraction and often do not lead to productive gains. I love reading so consciously putting my phone away and taking time to read before bed or over the weekend should be an achievable goal.

  3. Maximize my time. I am continually taking more responsibilities both in work and personal life. This is going going to continue to increase as I get older. I realize that I need to focus much more on maximizing my time spent during activities. When I’m working on something, I want to be 100% focused. If I’m socializing, I want to be 100% present. If I am relaxing, I want to be 100% there. I have been bouncing around too often and distractions have gotten the best of me recently. I won’t be perfect, but this is a big goal I want to focus on in 2022.

Here’s to my 2022 goal recap being much better than my 2021 recap.

Recharged for 2022

It’s been a great holiday break. We had an amazing December to close out the year at Secfi. I’m so proud and impressed by the team. The past few weeks have proven just how much we can accomplish when the entire team is on the same page.

I’ve taken the past week to recharge and it’s been amazing. I caught up with friends, got up to the mountains and played some golf. Best of all, I slept a lot and got caught up on rest.

I wanted to do a bit of reading today and write about some of my 2022 goals, but I thought it would be best to take it easy and maximize my time off. I’m back at it tomorrow and I’ll look to catch up this week.

I’m looking forward to writing about my 2022 goals and predictions this week.

LinksDAO

It’s been a great few days of doing… well nothing. The last week has largely consisted of me sleeping in, watching TV, reading a bit and relaxing. I was supposed to head up to Lake Tahoe yesterday, but the snow made the roads unmanageable so we decided to wait back. It’s been a blessing as I’ve gotten the chance to catch up on a few things while resetting. I’m going to try to head up tomorrow and get some time on the slopes.

One project in web3 that I came across today was LinksDAO. It immediately caught my eye as this is the intersection of my two current biggest hobbies, golf and web3. I joined the Discord and plan to buy in when the public sale opens on January 1st. I unfortunately missed the pre-sale.

The project is relatively early, but the main mission is to acquire a golf course which has been semi-jokingly one of my dreams ever since I fell in love with golf almost 2 years ago. I’m not sure if the DAO will succeed and odds are probably against it to be honest.

With that said, the community has been fantastic so far. I’ve enjoyed interacting with others and talking golf. There’s some really cool ideas brewing in the Discord server and I want to be part of the future.

If everything goes well, maybe I’ll be part owner of a new type of country club. If everything goes to shit, then I’ll hopefully make some new friends and get some great rounds of golf out of it. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Powering down

For me, the holidays are a great time to sit down and reset. I got to hang out quite a bit with my sisters and other family for the first time together in over 2 years. While this may seem like a standard occurrence every holiday season, I’ve realized that I’ve gotten to the age where we may be spending the holidays together less often.

I’ve had a lot of urges over the last few days to power on the computer and grind out some work. I’ve had to consciously stop myself and tell myself to not do any work. Bad habits that need to be curbed.

I’ll do some clean-up work for year end in the morning tomorrow and then look to head to Lake Tahoe on Tuesday for the week. I do have one goal for this week and that’s to get caught up on some great web3 readings and articles. I’ve got a big pile up of things to catch up on and I look forward to digging in even deeper.

Besides some light reading, my main goal for the next week is to power down, rest and charge for the new year. It’s been a long year and we all deserve it.

Reevaluate and rebalance

Most investment funds will be a big rebalancing of their portfolios quarterly and a larger one towards the end of the year. I always encourage my friends and clients to do the same. There’s a reason why those who invest for a living rebalance their portfolios on a regular basis, but yet most retail investors do not.

I do a modified approach which I call reevaluate and rebalance. Every quarter, I review where my portfolio sits at the current moment. I create a breakdown of my money and break this all down into different asset classes between private companies, public equities, crypto, and others.

I first measure performance and reevaluate my strategies. It’s important to note that this does NOT mean changing strategies every quarter or every year. It’s largely a check-in to ensure that things are on the right track and I’m sticking to my guns. I will occasionally make tweaks here or there to ensure that things are on the right track. Rarely, I will completely switch out of a strategy as I realize that I’m in the wrong place.

Secondly comes the rebalancing. With appreciation, portfolios become unbalanced at times with more weight going into one asset class. For example, if you’ve held crypto for a couple years, you’re likely going to have an outsized crypto position relative to when you first invested in crypto. I am always looking for outsized positions to determine whether or not I should reallocate some of that asset class into other areas.

Diversification is good. As much as I’d like crypto to continue to go up and power great gains, I also need to ensure that I am not in financial ruin if there is a crypto winter.

I’ll be doing my revaluating and rebalancing in the next couple of days and I’d encourage all to do the same.

The rise of retail investors

I read a fascinating stat the other day either on a newsletter or in a deck. I of course forgot to write down the source and I can’t remember exactly where I found it.

The data point was that retail investing more than doubled from 11% of total trades to over 23% in the span of a year. I thought that was fascinating. Almost a quarter of all trades done are now done by retail investors.

When I was just starting to learn how to invest just a few years ago, I was told that retail investors do not move the market. Institutional investors did the bulk of buying and selling. Retail investors were just in for the ride.

Well, as we head into 2022, we now know that power of retail investors. We have seen meme stocks go crazy with AMC and Gamestop earlier this year. Professional investors who invest other peoples’ money can no longer ignore the possibility that a group of retail investors on Reddit can band together and move the market.

If 2021 is a snapshot in the future of investing, 2022 is going to be exceptionally interesting. With crypto, gone are the accredited investor regulations (for now at least). Web3 is at it’s infant stages and I expect 2022 to be the year that web3 officially arrives for the mainstream.

Tax tech

In a somewhat under the radar acquisition, Square bought Credit Karma’s tax filing business last year. The acquisition seems to have been completed and Cash App had a great press release where they are now offering free tax filings to all users.

For the consumer, I think this is huge news as tax filing software can often cost hundreds of dollars. I’ve never used Credit Karma’s product but I heard that it’s pretty good overall.

Given my background in tax, I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I haven’t looked into building a better and easier tax product. It’s a good question.

There’s undoubtedly demand in this space. No one likes doing their taxes and if tech can make tax filings easier then people will buy the product. Given that, the market is somewhat limited. I read somewhere that the market for tax filing is a $11b business which seems about right. It’s growing, just not at an exponential speed as it’s tied to Americans growing up to become paying tax payers.

Possibly the biggest issue with create a tech forward solution here is that you are bound to the Federal, State and Local government’s tech. There’s 1 Federal government, 50 states, and many more locales for you to deal with to complete all your tax filings. I can tell you right now that the IRS still requires you to fax stuff over to them and there’s also some tax forms that you MUST paper file. Multiple this by the 50 states and local governments and you got a gigantic mess on your hands.

On top of all this, tax is insanely complicated. It is very much a garbage in, garbage out situation. Taxpayers are required to collect documents and enter it into their tax software. Most do not know where to get these forms and these forms can often come in paper, electronic or never show up at all. It’s an absolute mess.

This creates a perfect storm where taxes become a very manual process. There’s limited ability to automate tax filings. Consumers can either use a software to file themselves or hire someone to do it for them. If you have a somewhat complicated tax return, it becomes very difficult to file yourself unless you understand what you are doing. This results in these individuals paying firms to do the filings for them.

Most people I speak to are looking for something in between. They want a tech solution but someone to review and verify what they do. Unfortunately, everything I’ve seen in this space ends up becoming much more of a manual solution. The tech ends up being the front end only and there’s little to no automation possible.

I do wish to see someone prove me wrong here, but there needs to be a lot of changes within the IRS, state and local governments from a tech perspective before something can be done here. Given that this is the government, I’m not expecting that to happen soon.

The web3 true degens

I’ve been writing a lot about web3 and pretty much all my posts have largely been positive. It’s probably fair to turn the tide a bit and look at some of the negative things I’m seeing right now.

I’m not talking about the clunky interface and tech as well - that stuff is come along as web3 develops and grows. I’m going to focus on the bad behaviors that crypto and NFTs that I’m seeing quite a bit on Twitter and my Discord servers.

There’s a running “joke” in web3 where people self-deprecate and call themselves degen, short for degenerate. This term is used in the same light as a degenerate gambler, but in the web3 world, focused more on the crypto and NFT space. We make light of the word and I go as far to call myself a degen.

The market has been trending down the last few days. We are now seeing the crypto market largely follow the equity market. Along with the downfall, I’ve seen the true degens emerge from darkness and it isn’t pretty.

Most shocking to me is just how rampant leverage is used to buy crypto. One individual mentioned that he’s lost everything he had twice already over the last year and he’s just starting to build everything back up. Yet, he’s sitting here in a $1k+ floor NFT project.

I don’t love this aspect of web3. The insane gains have created a lot of scammers, rug pulls and pump and dumps. On a less nefarious side, it has created a lot of gamblers, “ true degens” if you will.

I’m all for a good bet every now and then. Gambling can be fun if it’s done responsibility. Ordinary individuals levering up 10x to buy a shitcoin or ape into a NFT project is not just gambling, it’s stupid.

As web3 evolves, I’m hoping we’ll start to see much less speculation and more focus on great projects.

Culture at work

I saw this video last night and thought it was a fantastic display of culture at work.

I believe that there’s a lot to learn from sports in the world of business and vice versa of course. Some may see a student athlete picking up a trash can that’s been knocked over, but I see a leader standing up during a time of adversity and leading by example.

Your culture as a team or company shows up during times of adversity. Following a tough loss, this student athlete made a statement that this is inexcusable and he was going to fix it. That’s culture at work. It’s no surprise that Houston has been a fantastic team over the last few years and has made runs at a national championship.

There are of course examples like this that happen in the workplace on a day to day basis that does not come close to receiving the same fanfare. These little things all matter in the grand scheme of setting your company’s culture.

We’ve seen simple things in the office. Cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or conference room. Picking up the trash you knocked over. Putting things away where they belong.

Now that we’ve gone remote, there are still many ways that highlight a working company culture. Adhering to best practices with files and tools so your teammates know where to find things. Taking notes for those that couldn’t make the meeting. Sticking to your company’s communication protocols.

Of course, every company culture is going to be different. Some companies prioritize things that others won’t and that’s okay. You know you see a good working culture when something is important to the company and people are assuming that is the standard without giving it much thought.

My 3 year plan?

I minted my first two NFTs yesterday and officially joined the Illuminati project. I will say that it’s a completely new experience joining at the beginning of the project versus hopping in later on down the road. It’s much easier to embed yourself in the project and relate to others in the group. Also, you start to realize that no one really actually knows what’s going on and you’re just one of them as well.

On another note, it’s officially time for performance reviews. This year has been a bit easier as I’ve handed my team off to my replacement while I move onto the next project at Secfi. It’s been a nice relief to go from thinking about a bunch of my staff to thinking about myself for a bit.

For the first time in 3 years, I really started to sit down a bit and figure out what my next 3-5 years may look like. I know that I’m enjoying my time at Secfi and don’t have plans to leave, but I haven’t really given my career progression much thought. It’s not to say that I haven’t thought about my career or care about it, but rather that I’ve just been heads down looking to build Secfi and progression has come naturally versus setting a target in 3-5 years.

I thought it was a good exercise for me this past week to start thinking about what I wanted and the steps I needed to get there. I spent the week thinking about this in depth and at the end of it, I ultimately came to the conclusion that I truly don’t know what I want yet.

I felt that setting an arbitrary target like “be CEO or COO” was a silly target as titles just don’t mean that much to me.

I also felt that things are changing so rapidly in the world of fintech, startups and investing in general and I am interested in a whole slew of different things right now.

I also thought that my priorities and life will likely be a whole lot different in 3 years as Sophia and I look to start a family.

So ultimately this came down to the fact that I am interested in a whole bunch of things in the future and my career can go in so many different directions that creating a 3-5 year plan just isn’t the right way to go about it. In other words, things are fluid and I’m fully embracing it.

I know that I am working on some amazing things at Secfi for the next 6-12 months and I want to continue to work on it. I know I’m happy but have a lot of things to work on personally to grow. And I know the future can be really good to me when it comes to my career, but I just need to live in the present for right now and embrace the fluidity of things.

NFT World

I’ve spent the last two hours researching different NFT projects. The projects happening right now are absolutely fascinating and I’ll admit that it’s been hard to hold myself back from buying a whole bunch of NFTs.

I’m hoping to participate in my first minting tonight with the Illuminati NFT project. Fingers crossed that I’ll be able to snag a couple. I told Sophia that I was planning on spending 0.5 ETH (~$2,000) on these two NFTs and she almost flipped out. She joked that this better be a good investment and we better get rich off of it.

The reality is that most of these NFT projects will likely fail in the long run. Buying a NFT with hopes that it’ll 10x is the wrong reason to do so.

I view these projects as a way to get involved in the web3 community first and foremost. I am admittedly playing with house money on gains from my ETH and I am more than willing to pay to play with that cash.

Beyond the learning, the ability to be part of a great project and community is worth the price of entrance to me. I have met some amazing people on the internet and I hope to continue to meet great people as part of these web3 communities.

Of course, the possibility for gains on your NFTs is something that is undoubtedly on most people’s minds. I view that as an added bonus to everything that comes along with it.

Fingers cross that I get to mint my first NFT today.

Team get togethers and corrections

I’ve written a lot about our team get-togethers and how much of a difference that makes in team morale. We had an amazing week together as a U.S. team. Lots of great meetings and brainstorming to set the foundation to close out the year strong and spring us into 2022. The grand finale was our Christmas party on Thursday. We started out with drinks at the office and went out to a fantastic dinner at Corks. I can’t wait until we have the entire team from Europe and the U.S. together again.

On another note, growth stocks particularly in tech have had a rough few weeks and year overall. My tech heavy portfolio has taken a large hit. $DOCU has taken a 40%+ tumble after earnings. $PTON is down 66% over the last 3 months. Many tech IPOs in 2021 have taken a large drop.

The pullback might be a sign that fundamentals may actually matter after all. It sure didn’t seem like that in late 2021 where it seemed like every tech stock was headed for the moon.

I’ve had to reevaluate my portfolio quite over the last few weeks, but changes will be largely minor. My long-term outlook on these companies are still largely intact. I buy stocks that I want to hold onto for 10 years and despite these painful drops, I need to stick to my guns here.

Time will tell the winners and losers in my portfolio, but corrections should not force any rash decisions.

Put your head down and get shit done

There’s a ton happening right now at Secfi. For starters, we’ve got the whole US team in San Francisco for meetings and our holiday party tomorrow. It’s a fun and festive atmosphere. Given that, the work doesn’t stop.

We need a few good weeks ahead of us to close out the year strong and on top of that, we’ve got some really exciting initiatives that are in the works as I write this. There’s no time to rest and I’ve come to realize today that this won’t be an easy 3 weeks.

Startups are a grind and everyone knows it. There’s times when you just need to put your head down and get shit done. The next few weeks are one of those times. There may need to be some sacrifices made given the holidays, but the grind will be worth it as we accomplish our goals heading into 2022. I’m pumped to close out the year strong.

Playing with fire

I was responding to a Twitter thread in which a former CFO mentioned that he was burned by his company’s stock despite being a promising startup coming out of Y-Combinator. He had used a non-recourse loan to exercise his stock options through an existing investor on his company’s cap table.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out and the loan ended up being underwater. Not only did he not make a penny off his stock options, but he was also stuck with a tax bill on the forgiveness of debt from his loan.

It was an unfortunate situation that happens more than we’d like to admit. Most companies actually fail despite what this market is portraying.

I had a few takeaways from reading this thread.

First, don’t risk what you can’t lose. Avoid financial ruin at all costs. The positive note for this individual was that at least the loan was non-recourse meaning that he didn’t come out of his savings to pay for the stock. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen individuals do some insanely risky loans and plays in order to exercise their stock options. Some take a second mortgage on their home. Some get as much recourse debt as possible.

This is playing with fire. Things may work out and you’ll forget this advice. On the flip side, this could result in you losing your home and potentially financial ruin. None of the upside is worth that downside. If you’re taking recourse loans or using your savings, make sure to not bite off more than you can handle.

Second, structure absolutely matters. Not all financing is made the same. If this individual had worked with a provider that structured the contract in a much more favorable way, he may not have a tax bill at all. In all likelihood, his taxable gain would’ve been washed out by his losses on his stock. He’d still be at a net 0 position, but that’s better than losing money on the stock.

I know I am biased here as I work for Secfi, but everyone needs to understand what they’re getting into and the potential downsides.

Freedom

I woke up this morning in Estonia and I’m now back at my desk in San Francisco at 4pm PST. I’m tired but in a manageable way. I was lucky to sleep about 4 hours on the flight and woke up at 8am PST. I tried to get work done on the plane but the wifi wasn’t being compliant so here I am back at the office. World travel is pretty amazing isn’t it?

Speaking of world travel, I had a great tour of the KGB museum which is in the Viru Hotel in Tallinn yesterday on my bonus day. Our tour guide was someone who grew up and lived through the occupation by the Soviet Union. She had some amazing stories to tell. The Viru Hotel was built by the Soviets as a way to attract western tourist and money. As you can imagine, the entire hotel was bugged by the KGB which was a surprise to no one.

Everyone was effectively monitored coming in and out of the hotel. Staff and guests were always being tracked. Non-compliance to their archaic rules could mean heavy jail time. The tour was a small glimpse into life during the Soviet occupation. It was well… brutal.

Our guide told many stories of what life was like. She and her parents would collect colored plastic bags as something for a special occasion. Apparently, black plastic bags were commonplace, but colored ones only came from western countries so the locals would save those for special days.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing I heard was that bananas were banned as they had come from western countries and the Soviets were trying to limit as much western influence as possible. Yes, bananas.

This was all just about 35 years ago. I’m glad I had the extra day to check out the museum as it made me realize just how precious freedom can be. Let’s not take it for granted.

Making the best of everything

I was all ready to head back to SF today after being gone 3 weeks. Got to the airport and the lady told me I needed a negative COVID test to fly despite being vaccinated. I argued with her that the website(s) that I looked at said you didn’t need a test until starting tomorrow, but in the end I was apparently wrong. The CDC website was misleading in that it failed to mention that the change going into effect tomorrow was reducing the testing window from 3 to 1 days rather than actually implementing a testing rule.

I tried to rebook to another flight later today, but the next flight back to SF was tomorrow morning. As most can imagine, I was freakin’ pissed. I was going to have to spend another day in Estonia. I had been sleeping 4 hours a night over the last week and I was already exhausted and wanted to be home. Woe is I.

I took 10 minutes to digest everything and start planning how I was going to “survive” another day when it all came and hit me at once. I get to spend another day in Tallinn, Estonia. I had just tweeted that it was one of the coolest towns I’ve been to and now I upset that I was forced to spend another day here. Man, I felt like an idiot.

Perhaps I was just a bit cranky and it took me awhile to realize that my vacation just got extended unintentionally. I quickly got some new life. Booked a COVID test back in town. Booked a nice hotel with a spa. Booked the KGB museum tour that I didn’t get to yesterday. I now have another full day of exploring Tallinn.

Yes, I’m still tired. Yes, the work is still there. But I can sleep and work any day… but traveling Tallinn is something that can’t happen all the time.

It was a good life lesson in positive thinking for me. I’m glad I was able to catch myself and turn my mindset around. Not everything will go according to plan and I need to make of everything in life no matter how frustrating or whose fault it is.

Monday will be a busy day and I’ll be recovering in sleep all week, but for now, let’s have a freakin’ great day.

Slush 2021

I spent Wednesday and Thursday at Slush 2021 which is Europe’s premier startup and VC event. I had a good time and learned a lot. Despite the gap closing, there is definitely a wide difference between the US and European markets and that was something I was paying close attention to.

The biggest difference I saw was that everything was largely VC driven and Europe seems to be much more VC friendly. In the current US market, VCs seem to almost be the ones doing the pitching trying to get allocations in hot startups. It has become undoubtedly a founder friendly market. In Europe, I still saw that VCs control most of the power still. I spoke to a few European VCs that said 2x liquidation preferences are still somewhat common. Founders are actively seeking out VCs, not the other way around. It’ll be interesting to see if this turns around at all in the future.

One other big difference in the markets is equity compensation just isn’t a big deal in Europe. Unlike in the US where companies are minting thousands of millionaires at every exit, Europe is still far behind in equity. Klarna celebrated making 75 employees millionaires at a $40b+ market cap. That number in the US is often in the thousands.

Most people we spoke to just aren’t that interested in their equity. They have some stock but none of them are overly excited about it even for those at unicorns. I believe that a lot of this is cultural and pay related. Europeans do not get paid as much as in the US, and that means much lower equity. In addition, owning a piece of a company is not something that is commonplace in Europe. I spoke to a CFO of a Series A startup and they had just started thinking about giving employees equity. A company without an equity plan would be at a serious disadvantage here in the US.

Lastly, it was hard not to notice how much smaller the European market is compared to the US. Compared to Money2020 which was solely a fintech conference, Slush 2021 which was for all European startups was much smaller. Yes, COVID has something to do with that, but I think that’s just the reality. The startup and VC market is just much smaller overall across the EU than it is in the US. Finland is rightfully proud of their 4-5 unicorns that have made it over the years. Today, there’s nearly a unicorn a day being minted in the US.

None of this is a knock on the EU startup scene as it’s still growing widely. There’s some amazing founders, operators and investors in Europe and it was good to see the thriving market. While they may be a bit behind the US in a few areas, I expect Europe to quickly start closing that gap over the next few years. It’ll be fun to watch and I look forward to comparing notes from Slush 2021 to Slush 2022.

Estonia

I’ve had a heck of a week. On Tuesday, I flew to Helsinki to attend Slush 2021 on Wednesday and Thursday. It was a pretty good conference that was geared towards European startups and VCs. I’ll probably write a lot more about it tomorrow when I’ve got a bit more brain capacity.

For now, I’m absolutely beat and going to keep this short. The jet lag and conference events caught up to me quickly. I slept quite a bit on my 2 hour ferry ride over to Tallinn and then again when I got back to my hotel.

Tallinn is a very cool city minus the freezing cold temperatures in the winter. It’s an old medieval town with lots of modern buildings surrounding it. I had a blast walking around today and I plan on doing a walking tour later today.

In terms of Estonia as a country, I have heard that it’s a big tech hub with lots of young engineers. The country has prioritized technology and the country is growing rapidly because of that. Someone even told me that the fastest internet in the world is in Estonia.

I’m excited to go out tonight and meet some of the locals and see what the country is all about.

#KGMI

Hello jet lag, my old friend. I ended up sleeping soundly from 9:30 until 12:30 last night. Then maybe snuck in a couple one hour naps throughout the rest of the morning. I’ve been in better shape, but I’ve been in worse also. I’ll need to stay positive and grind through 5 hours before my flight.

I bought into my first NFT community on Saturday. I do a bit of NBA Top Shot collecting and I had been looking to buy a few NFTs over the last couple of months. Part of this was fueled by speculation and another part was just genuine interest in web3.

Luckily, I was able to stay disciplined and didn’t chase for the speculative nature of NFTs. I know a lot of folk have made a lot of money on NFTs, but I believe the crazy appreciation days are largely over. I personally am much more interested in the general applicability and community building that comes from NFTs.

I have been lurking on a few Discord channels over the last few months and unfortunately I just couldn’t relate to many. There were too many topics I was uninterested in and I didn’t feel like I wanted to join any of them except for the fact that I could potentially make money off these NFTs. I felt those were the wrong reasons to join.

Enter Knights of Degen. The community built for sports and entertainment fans with an emphasis on betting, hence the degenerate gambler reference. This was more my speed. After spending a shit ton of money on gas fees, I finally found a knight I wanted and bought it for 0.2 ETH.

I’m still learning a lot and getting ingrained into the Discord. I’ve been having fun so far and will look to get more involved. I do encourage as many people to explore communities. It’s clear that NFTs will be a large part of web3 and I’m stoked to be participating at the next frontier of the internet. #KGMI