Rakdos Augermage

Crypto | Magic the Gathering Premodern Golden Era

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

@ohyishi would love to try out onekey!

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

If you're going to survive in crypto, you have to accept what it actually is.

You're going to get 35% pullbacks. You'll get 50% drawdowns.

None of it matters if you understand what you own.

The core of what you hold should be a small handful of networks with real, provable long-term value and genuine adoption. Get that right, and the drawdowns stop being terrifying. They become the point.

Because this is a long game. I think these networks become the pension for an entire generation. You don't trade your way there. You build a thesis, you accumulate, you keep something back for the big sell-offs, and you let time and adoption do the work.

The volatility is the price of admission. The people who make it are the ones who stop flinching at it.

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

Look what I dug up. November 2013. As far as I know the first proper macro write up of Bitcoin anyone had done, telling my GMI subscribers to buy it at $200.

Everyone thought I'd lost it. A $200 internet coin, taken seriously in a macro letter. Wasn't mad though... just early.

Thirteen years later and I'm still here, deeper in it than ever. What started as one early call has become the centre of how I think about the entire future.

Crypto isn't a side bet anymore. It's one of the only things that outruns the debasement of your savings, and the smart contract networks are becoming the rails the whole exponential economy runs on.

Here's the bit most people still haven't understood... Bitcoin and the smart contract networks aren't the same bet. They're not even the same kind of thing. One is where you store your wealth. The other is what the entire economy gets rebuilt on top of.

That's what I've written up this week. The whole picture, thirteen years on.

[The Futurizts @TheFuturizts]

Tax reliefs you shouldn't miss out:

1. Vaccines: RM1,000

2. Dental checkup / treatment: RM1,000

3. Medical checkup / mental health: RM1,000

4. Any books (physical or electronic), laptop, phone, tablet, internet bill: RM2,500

5. Sports equipment, rental fees, gym membership: RM1,000

6. EPF voluntary contribution: RM3,000

7. PRS: RM3,000

8. Medical insurance: RM4,000

9. EV Charger + Home CCTV + Food composting machine: RM2,500

10. Entrance fees to zoos, museums, theme parks: RM1,000

View the full list here: https://t.co/iE8XuTFK0T

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

@Rednatic2 go to sleep bro

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

Sometimes the worst thing in your life turns out to be a blessing instead.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In 2002, Brad Pitt walked off a Darren Aronofsky film called The Fountain, seven weeks before cameras rolled. Warner Bros had already sunk $18 million. Around 400 crew members in Australia lost their jobs overnight, and the finished sets were auctioned off.

Pitt still owed Warner Bros a movie. That debt became Troy.

So the role he spent years regretting began as a legal settlement. He trained six months for a character he accepted to avoid an exit fee, then tore his Achilles tendon playing Achilles.

Then the story flips. Aronofsky rebuilt The Fountain at half the budget with Hugh Jackman. The passion project Pitt abandoned over creative differences grossed $16 million. The contractual punishment he hated grossed $497 million.

And Troy was the first film ever produced by Plan B, the company Pitt had founded months earlier. Plan B went on to win Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight.

The movie he calls a mistake built the company behind his greatest wins.

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

@Rednatic2 I once did 270km ;)

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

Pretty much sums it up!
In hindsight:
- honesty is the best policy. If they were upfront and honest about there’s this wonderful place in Malaysia and here’s how we bring value etc, it changes the whole narrative. They did none of that and now pushing all the blame on Msia.

[LifeHaxks @clumzytraveller]

Forest city , cheap and cheerful.

Yet branded as a tech enclave in/near “Singapore”. There were IG stories going far back in 2025 claiming that the founder bought an island close to “Singapore” …

But now we know all they do is just rent a few towers, got it probably , for dirt cheap and subletting it out to “startup founders” at many times over.

Too bad that Singapore which most prob his first choice for NS , HDB will never allow this .. and condos are just too expensive for them to make an extra buck.

Best way , market forest city as an island close to Singapore without calling it Malaysia and when all fails .. threaten to pull the “multi million” dollar investments out .. and gaslight malaysia as a pea brain , third world country that’s not welcoming investors ..

Splash some religious extreme agenda into the heap to trigger the west and voila .. kebaboom..

Shit goes viral really fast !!!!

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

Love Balaji, but imo wrong approach and very threatening tone and stance against the country. Malaysians will not take the msg well.

[Balaji @balajis]

Should the global tech community continue investing in Malaysia?

Given recent events, I raise this question respectfully for the consideration of Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (@anwaribrahim), for the people of Malaysia, and for our friends in the Malaysian tech community. The answer will be of interest to anyone in global tech that’s considering building, investing, or expanding in Malaysia, including executives at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, founders of tech unicorns like Coinbase and Solana, and investors at the world’s largest venture capital funds like a16z and Polychain.

As context, I am the former CTO of Coinbase and former General Partner at a16z. In October 2024, I opened a startup society called Network School in Malaysia, because I felt I’d been invited in by the government’s pro-tech policies.

Specifically, the KL20 initiative set out Malaysia’s ambition of becoming a top 20 global tech hub. Their MDEC digital nomad visas and MM2H investor visas were created to facilitate an influx of global talent and capital. And the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone was announced to facilitate the flow of capital and talent between Malaysia and Singapore, where I live. When taken in combination with Malaysia’s datacenter buildout and its policy of welcoming visa-free visits for 98% of the world, it seemed like Malaysia might be a great place to build a global tech hub that was simultaneously inexpensive and easy to visit (especially for non-Westerners).

And that’s what we did, by creating Network School. It’s an international tech community with its first node in Forest City, Malaysia. We picked Forest City because it had millions of square feet of empty space, because it was one hour from Singapore’s capital markets, and because it was within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Then, within 18 months, without a single penny of government money, we built Network School into a global attraction that brought thousands of engineers, investors, and builders from 70+ countries to learn technology, burn calories, earn online, and have fun, integrating with the local Malaysian economy along the way.

Indeed, in terms of quantifiable contribution to the Malaysian economy, we’ve already invested 100M+ MYR in our campus to make it startup-friendly. For perspective, that’s about 4% of the budget of Johor, the Malaysian state where Forest City is located. We employ dozens of Malaysians directly and indirectly at every level from executive to staff. We’ve backed Malaysian tech startups like Collektr, hosted events for local teams like Superteam Malaysia, and are major customers of many local businesses like barbers, laundromats, and restaurants. We’ve also revitalized the multibillion-dollar Forest City project, causing millions of MYR in real estate appreciation. And, as the video below describes, we were on the cusp of a 500M+ MYR expansion to grow our community, as well as a global merit scholarship with my friend Amjad Masad of Replit.

However, that emerging multi-billion dollar success story — which should rightfully have been hailed as a huge victory for the pro-tech policies of the Malaysian government — is at risk of being derailed by a fake story spread by an anonymous account named MP4P.

In short: on the day before the July 11 Johor elections, MP4P posted an Instagram post falsely accusing Network School of harboring illegal aliens. The sensational accusations caused a tizzy in Malaysia, until Malaysian authorities came to our campus on July 14 to investigate. (I should note that the officers were very polite and professional.) After checking hundreds of physical passports from 40 countries, including dual passport holders, the authorities confirmed to the press on July 15 that all travel documents were in order. During the process, we cooperated fully; in the thread below you can see a photo of the men, women, and children of Network School smiling and holding up their passports in the bright daylight. Our faces are shown and our names are known; we have nothing to hide.

With that said, the process is the punishment. What MP4P did is very similar to the American crime of “swatting”, because MP4P created a hoax report of a serious threat, thereby forcing the Malaysian police to take time away from protecting the Malaysian people towards investigating a nonexistent issue. Moreover, this anonymous MP4P account has also called for Malaysia to boycott Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…a move that would cost ordinary Malaysians thousands of jobs…even while MP4P’s own Instagram collaborators promote their Apple and Google apps! I mean, we aren’t talking about a credible accuser, but just someone screaming inconsistently at the top of their lungs on social media for traffic, an all-too-common phenomenon these days.

Anyway, at this point, all further investment we were planning to make in Malaysia is on hold until we get sufficient assurance that such issues won’t recur. So are the investment plans of many of our friends, including the execs and investors at global tech firms that we brought to Forest City. Because to put it very plainly: we have invested 100M+ MYR in Malaysia, while creating jobs for dozens of Malaysians, and our faces and names are known. Our Malaysian executives and employees deserve the benefit of the doubt over anonymous internet trolls.

There are two paths forward. In the first case, if Malaysia still wants continued global tech investment, if it wants to be a top 20 tech hub, if it wants us to revitalize Forest City, then we request an audience with the Prime Minister’s office to discuss the terms of a memorandum of understanding between Network School and the Malaysian government, similar to the document recently signed between the Solana Foundation and the Kazakhstan government.

Specifics can of course be discussed, but we would publicly commit to abiding by all Malaysian laws (we already do) and respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty (never in question). In return, they’d get to know our friendly community, and realize that we actually chose Malaysia because we thought it was a great place to build a tech hub where engineers from the global South, investors from the West, and builders from Malaysia itself could meet new people, build cool things, and perhaps create millions of dollars in economic growth in the fullness of time.

That vision of peace and trade, internationalism and entrepreneurialism, is still on the table. We aren’t asking for any money — just a meeting, to help restore confidence in Malaysia as an investable jurisdiction. Alternatively, if you don’t want our investment, or those of our colleagues at billion dollar funds and trillion dollar companies, we will of course respect your wishes, and reallocate our capital to other countries instead.

Either way, we will remain friends and abide by your decision. Please let us know.

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

https://t.co/kHRR5f2ZG6

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

When Raoul speaks, i listen carefully.

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

This is the most important chart in all of macro and most people still don't get it.

Labor force participation rate vs government debt as a % of GDP, inverted. They move in perfect lockstep.

Government debt has been accumulated to offset the declining working-age population, and from 2008 onwards, that debt has been mostly just servicing old debts while interest payments keep compounding.

Demographics are destiny and ours are already written. The workers for the next decade have already been born. Or rather, they haven't been.

Which means the borrowing and the debasement aren't going to ease. They're going to accelerate.

[st1ne @SolSt1ne]

Seth Klarman, founder of Baupost Group, built it from $27 million into $22 billion - and his secret weapon is doing nothing for years at a time

his book "Margin of Safety" is out of print and sells used for over $1,000

he almost never talks in public

he just did - in one of the rarest interviews of his career

75-min on how the Oracle of Boston actually thinks about risk

bookmark & watch today

[Tushar Jain @tushar_jain]

1/ Multicoin published a full analysis & valuation of Hyperliquid (HYPE).

HYPE is now one of the largest positions in our liquid hedge fund. We've been accumulating aggressively since February.

Here's why we believe HYPE will be one of the best performers over the next cycle:

[The Biohacking Immortal @1Immortals1]

red light therapy sounds like complete pseudoscience until you actually read the 5,000+ peer reviewed studies on photobiomodulation. then it sounds like cheating

the mechanism is simple. red and near-infrared light (630-850nm) penetrates your skin and is absorbed by cytochrome c oxidase in your mitochondria. this directly increases ATP production in every cell the light touches. more energy per cell. that's it. that's the whole mechanism

- accelerates wound healing and tissue repair. used in burn units and post-surgical recovery
- reduces joint pain and inflammation. multiple studies on arthritis and tendinopathy
- increases testosterone when applied to the testes. yes really. a study showed 120% increase in T levels with testicular light exposure
- improves skin collagen density and reduces wrinkles. dermatologists use it but charge $300 per session
- enhances muscle recovery and reduces delayed onset soreness
- improves thyroid function in hashimoto's patients enough to reduce medication dosage in clinical trials

you don't need a $1,200 panel. a $60 red light bulb from amazon with the right wavelength (660nm red + 850nm near infrared) works on the same physics

use it 10-15 minutes on target area from about 6-12 inches away. morning is ideal. don't wear eye protection unless pointed at face. consistency matters more than session length

the fitness influencers made this look like a gimmick by posing shirtless in front of $3,000 panels. the actual research is decades old, military funded, and more robust than most pharmaceuticals on the market

[Goku @ProjectGokuu]

Andrew Huberman says most men over 40 should probably be taking Cialis every single day.

The vasodilation from it that helps with erections is the same mechanism that:

- Lowers blood pressure
- Protects the brain
- Prevents strokes

Stanford's head of male sexual health, Dr. Mike Eisenberg, recommends 2.5 to 5 milligrams of tadalafil daily for most men over 40.

— Andrew Huberman on TBPN (@tbpn)

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

@karsten_frank I was there to witness it! Great memories man!

[Pavel Paramonov @paramonoww]

https://t.co/kWW0wLFvbP

[Rakdos Augermage @RakdosAugermage]

@BaldKnower whatever u sent him is whatever he owed you, unless u both completely agreed that u WILL BE paid in dollars regardless of Sol price.