chengdu lore drop: East Lake park.
no flex, no crowd, just water sfx + low-budget birds + your brain finally buffering in peace.
touch some reality, then you can go back to pretending online again. #chengdu#Chengdunomad
I recently visited my sister who lives in Chicago
She moved there for a "big opportunity" three years ago
She took me to her office, presumably to show off
I noticed employees eating lunch at their desks
"Why is nobody taking a proper break? Is there no worker canteen?" I asked her
She laughed and said "we just order DoorDash, we have unlimited budget"
I did not know what "DoorDash" was but it sounded like another scammy American startup
Later she showed me her "401k" balance with almost $300,000 saved
She said it's her "retirement" to which I burst out laughing
"Real pension is managed by the state, this is gambling by Wall Street"
I flew back to Germany the next day
On the flight home I sat next to a banker from Frankfurt
We shared a cappuccino together and I told him what a failure my sister is
He shook his head and said "Americans are not well"
He is right, my sister calls herself successful, while she doesn't even have a government pension
This is exactly why Americans lose at everything
No government protection, no guarantees, no rights
Friends, Christmas has become the most sophisticated sales funnel on earth. It’s no longer about God, it’s about your credit card. The sugar, the booze, the junk, the avalanche of gifts no one needs and everyone throws away is for them not you.
They sell you “memories” wrapped in debt, clutter, and zero cash flow. None of it makes you freer, richer, or actually happier a month from now.
Make Christmas contrarian again, be the weirdo who leaves the season with more money, more health, and more self-respect than you started with.
Spot on.
In China, since we lack the religious tradition, Christmas was imported purely as a commercial event from day one. For young people, it’s essentially just another Valentine's Day for dining, dating, drinking and booking hotels.
It’s even more extreme on our e-commerce platforms: they invent over 300 festivals a year—Goddess Day, Foodie Day, "Love Yourself" Day—solely to move product.
We need to define our own holidays, not let algorithms and consumerism dictate when we celebrate.
@CrashiusClay69 someone say house is not asset, someone say house better than any asset.
Actually house is not asset, Stock is not asset, life is your only asset
Younger brother came into town for the holidays, we were talking about crypto yesterday.
Trying to figure out why it's been so weak, even with strong equity markets. He threw me a curveball.
"Crypto isn't that cool anymore."
Blew my mind. The kid is 22.
"Prediction markets are better, and stocks too because they don't get rugged 24/7".
I looked much deeper last night...and what I'm observing under the surface is not technical or fundamental.
It's cultural. A social shift. Attention has relocated.
Starts on youtube. Views are down across anything related to crypto.
A crypto youtuber with 139K subscribers said that his viewership had dropped more in the last 2 weeks than anything he's seen in 5 years.
Second point. Attention is shifting from the top. The biggest crypto influencers are publicly "losing interest" in crypto, and switching to stocks (sources attached).
Third point. Crypto has long been a free-spirited, lawless, young man's game.
But with legacy brokerages like Schwab/JPMorgan getting involved + gov't interest, is crypto losing the demographic that made it popular in the first place?
Potentially...as the perception's changed.
Fourth point. Optionality. Every vehicle is becoming more accessible. From $COIN adding stock trading, to $HOOD adding 0DTE options, to prediction markets as a whole...
Everything's right there...without the perceived risk of a rug-pull via the “lawless” crypto landscape that defined crypto’s appeal in the first place.
Question is...does real-world crypto utility generate enough demand to offset a sustained decline in retail participation?
All I'm saying is the divergence of the once highly correlated $BTC - $QQQ pair is highly suspect. And it's only getting wider.
Yes, you can argue some of these things happen in every crypto bear market, but there's new variables & moving parts now (optionality + legacy brokerages participation + gov't interest) that change the game.
Crypto seems to be in a transition phase...from a momentum asset to an infrastructure asset.
Fundamental transitions like this are usually not kind to price in the medium term.
Long term, I'm bullish on the crypto's utility and think it will be everywhere, but the real world utility/adoption (and subsequent growing pains...) is something I'm watching in 2026.