Duncan Cock Foster

Working on something new. Prev. co-founder of @niftygateway, sold to @gemini.

Occasional investor

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

The truest form of privilege is to be born with a desire for constant change.

Most people find change uncomfortable. But in the modern world, becoming wealthy and happy depends on embracing constant change and growth.

If you naturally enjoy change, count your blessings!

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

I think the World Cup is going to be a huge success and everyone is going to have a fun time. The gloomy predictions and haters are going to be wrong

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

The past few days of NYC summer combined with Knicksmania will be talked about for generations to come

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@gcockfoster 😂

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

The last time I went to Europe, I did something similar - ate 3x as much as I normally do. I had seen many tweets like this and assumed I would love weight

I came back and discovered I had gained 15 pounds 😂

[Murray Hill Guy @MurrayHillGuy1]

My friend came back from a euro trip, did
Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome & Paris
for 2.5 weeks.

He said he ate 5x more than he does in NYC. Bread every meal. Pasta every night. Gelato daily. Drinking the whole trip… walked a lot but that’s about it.

Yet he came home 7 pounds lighter?

Makes you wonder what the hell we're putting in our food in the US?

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

A key part of J.P. Morgan's success was how rested and ready he was in crisis moments, because he took ~3-6 months off per year

Making the right decisions in those moments created an extraordinary amount of value for him, more then an extra 3 months of grind would've

[Sam Parr @thesamparr]

A lot of top bankers in 1929 made the equivalent of $100M a year working 6 hours a day.

I just read this in Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, 1929.

- One guy's routine was wake up at 6, workout, get to the office by 10, and home by 5.
- Another took the whole summer off in Europe. The boat ride was 3 weeks each way.

I’ve read about other examples of super successful people like this. Andrew Carnegie barely worked, Ted Turner (who built CNN) would disappear 3 months at a time to race sailboats professionally.

But then today we see a lot of people talking about how hard work is necessary to do great things.

They likely grinded to get there. But it's important to know what season you’re in.

Don’t compare your spring to someone else’s summer.

There are seasons to grind, and then there are seasons to rest.

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

The AI industry has gotten a little overconfident imo. They're spending their time obsessing over machine gods, mass unemployment, etc.

Meanwhile Opus 4.8 feels like a regression and Claude still can't reliably put the header on slides in the right place. So many paper cuts.

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

Bitcoin is finally an uncorrelated asset 😭

[Frank Chaparro @fintechfrank]

Bitcoin’s break from tech is getting harder to ignore.

The Nasdaq 100 just hit a fresh record high, fueled by continued AI-driven inflows, while bitcoin heads the other direction.

Over the past 12 months:
• Nasdaq 100: +41.5%
• Bitcoin: -37% and still 48% below last year’s peak

Strategy’s sale appears to have added pressure, widening the divergence between crypto and tech.

Source: Bloomberg

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

Whenever I tweet about crypto (RIP), it is so hard to get traction.

When I tweet about literally anything else (NYC takes, architecture, food), it is so much easier to get likes and retweets

Does Twitter just hate crypto?

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@JohnJBlatchford @mspringut Why?

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

The best American architectural invention is the stone skyscraper - the giant, ornately carved beautiful buildings that you see in midtown Manhattan, FiDi, Detroit, Chicago, etc.

I think we should be building way, way more of these

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@KenWattana Yup. Same exact thing happened in crypto

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@zcabrams Plus, the value of relationships is going to go up, and college is still the best way to form deep relationships

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

You can't pick the people you fall in love with, and you can't pick the business problems you fall in love with either

What you CAN do is listen closely, pay attention when you feel that spark of passion, and doggedly chase after it once you're sure its real

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Be your self, not someone you were assigned to be!

Bezos won on time horizon, not AWS or 1-Click.

If your bets have to work in 3 years, you compete with everyone. Every smart, funded team is chasing the same 3-year problems. Short horizon, crowded field.

Stretch to 7 and the field collapses. Investors want returns, employees want vesting, founders want proof. Almost nobody can sit in a bet that doesn't pay for most of a decade. The patience is the moat, and it costs you, that's why it works.

But you can't fake a 7-year horizon on a problem you don't actually care about. Pick the users and the problem Moloch assigned you, the safe ones, the fundable ones, and you'll bail the first hard year. Pick the ones that are actually yours and you'll still be there when everyone else has quit.

So the real prerequisite isn't discipline. It's knowing yourself well enough to choose a problem and a set of people you care about that you'll serve them for decades.

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@TheMindScourge Also, ticks. We should eliminate them as well

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

Jamie Dimon being upset about stablecoins and Clarity is a bit too on the nose

Crypto’s dream of a better financial system is happening slowly but surely

[Bitcoin.com News @BitcoinNews]

🏦 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns stablecoins could become a "huge problem" and says he is not happy with the Clarity Act.

🎙️ When asked about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong representing the industry, Dimon said, "He's full of sh!t."

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

100% of Americans are going own stocks in the near future - bc of Trump accounts, Michael Dell’s philanthropy, etc.

It’ll be a radically different world. Anything that makes the S&P go down will be incredibly unpopular with *everyone*. It’ll be great for capitalism

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@gcockfoster Agreed, there will always be a large market for the cutting edge

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

@oldstockbeek Excellent point!

[Duncan Cock Foster @dccockfoster]

Amazing how much of a consensus is forming around YIMBYism in the NYC area.

The New York Post, the Comptroller Mark Levine, Mamdani - almost everyone agrees. I think we might be at an inflection point

[Sar Haribhakti @sarthakgh]

No one could have predicted this

“Jersey City was one of the busiest apartment-construction markets in the entire New York metro region, adding thousands of new units as developers chased the post-pandemic demand surge. When all that inventory came online at once, landlords had to compete on price to fill the units, which pulled rents down from their 2024 peak. The building boom is why renters are getting a break now."