The Secret Muslim Banker

Managing a $100m investment fund. Breaking down macroeconomics with Islamic finance. Sharing my journey and insights on creating a riba-free economy.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

It's been a while but here's a new article on sukuks.

I learned a lot thanks to @SafdarAlam 's book and I wanted to share it with you all.

The sukuk market, predicted to grow to more than $1trn this year, isn't so different from conventional bonds.

https://t.co/OtJtpNmbzN

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@ericwallerstein A lot of people miss the picture when looking at only US dollar reserves (ie treasuries held) by central banks. The biggest sovereign wealth funds keep adding dollar expo be it by stocks, private investments etc

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

"The related party transactions within the Muskonomy are something to behold. Our favorite part discloses that SpaceX bought $690 million worth of cyber trucks from Tesla and about $700m worth of battery packs. Trucks were at full retail price. So we spend between companies and get a multiple on our own spending? Does Tesla buy services from SpaceX too?"

[BlindSquirrelMacro @SquirrelMacro]

https://t.co/vA12zVeDUQ

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@SafdarAlam Articles on X seem to do well but I understand. Looking forward to reading them.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@SafdarAlam Interesting. What do you mean keeps discipline? And why do you think X and LinkedIn aren’t appropriate platforms for these papers?

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@EvanWritesOnX DDR5 is not relevant, that’s standard RAM for PCs/laptops. HBM is what matters for AI chips.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@SafdarAlam It baffles me…

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@SafdarAlam Thanks for this!

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@SafdarAlam Where can you find the list of the scholars? Or the fatwa?

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

I didn’t believe this at first.

But looked into and it’s true. They’ve created a “shariah-compliant” way to bet on sport events.

In an event contract (think Kalshi or Polymarket) you a pay a fraction of $1, equal to the market probability, and depending on the outcome of the event you’ll earn $1 or 0.

These guys have made this event contract “shariah compliant” by creating tokens that are tied to an index which is the event contract itself.

This is the epitome of halal in form, not substance. And I’m being extremely generous here.

How can a token tied to a sports index be called asset-backed. How is the sport index an asset?

An analogy would be creating a shariah-compliant token that is tied to an options contract. Doesn’t make sense.

[Muslim Bitcoiner BIP-110⚡ @MBitcoiner]

Halal sports betting is already here

[Jeffrey Currie 🆔++ @CommodMkt]

Welcome to the most asymmetric trade in modern financial history.

The thread below lays out why. The opportunity exists because capital has chased the AI trade while ignoring the physical assets AI requires to run — assets that have quietly become the best-performing asset class of the decade. Since October 2020 when we first called for the commodity super cycle: QCI Total Return +217%, GSCI Total Return +205%, Gold +140%. NASDAQ trails at +130%. S&P 500 at +85%. The top three are all commodities. Yet oil cannot get out of its own way while copper and the broader atom complex prints fresh highs . That is the dislocation. That is the trade.

Get long. Buckle in. Hang on for the ride.

Forgive the longer posts in this thread — attempting to mimic my old 10-bullet commodity takes. On to it.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

What's the best alternative to Vercel?

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@trader1sz Wrote many articles on my blog explaining the concepts on riba if anyone wants to take a look. Riba doesn’t get enough of the blame for our our economic and societal woes.

[Data Driven Stocks @stockdatamarket]

I’ll add my two cents to @kakashiii111:

I regularly use hundreds — sometimes thousands — of $NVDA GPUs.

A year ago, renting even a small cluster was nearly impossible because everyone was scrambling to train LLMs.

Now, a lot of those datacenters are sitting half-empty or fully empty. I can make a phone call and get 1000 GPUs the next day.

Most LLM projects are effectively dead. The ones still standing are rapidly specializing, building custom hardware, or vertically integrating. Claude and OpenAI are moving beyond traditional GPU dependence, while Google has been ahead of the curve with TPUs for years.

The era of “just train a massive foundation model and win” is ending a lot faster than people expected.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@Fink_Money And the way they are investing across the board is unparalleled. They are pioneers on recreating the networks on how the GPUs communicate with each other.

They also own the highest share of sea cables. My favourite horse out of the hyperscalers if I had to choose.

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

“Before 2012, the 4 hyperscalers (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta) collectively accounted for less than 10% of total subsea cable usage.

Google’s first investment came in 2008, when it joined a 6-member consortium to build Unity, a transpacific cable connecting Los Angeles and Chikura, Japan. The cable came online in 2010.

As of 2024, the four together had stakes in 59 cable systems. Google leads with 33 cables (17 fully owned, 16 part-owned), Meta has 16, Microsoft 6, and Amazon 4.

They now control roughly 71% of global subsea fibre capacity, around 80% of trans-Pacific bandwidth, and approximately 90% of transatlantic capacity.

In 2012, traditional telecom carriers controlled roughly 80% of subsea capacity.”

[Hiten Shah @hnshah]

If you care about AI, you need to read this Om Malik piece.

It’s the first writeup I’ve seen that explains the physical reality behind the AI boom.

We keep arguing about models, agents, and apps, like the whole story is software.

@om shows the story underneath the story. AI is forcing a new internet into existence. Private, machine-native, optimized for GPUs talking to GPUs and clusters talking to clusters.

That framing instantly makes a bunch of “why is this happening?” questions click.

Why hyperscalers are spending like it’s a land grab.

Why fiber is suddenly strategic.

Why the hottest battleground is inside data centers and between them.

The best part is he doesn’t hand-wave. He gives you a map. He walks from east-west traffic inside AI data centers (the inversion most people miss), up through the metro and long-haul buildout, to what he calls an “Internet of AI.”

When you finish it, you’ll start seeing that AI is rebuilding the internet.

Read it. https://t.co/50cLmgg9bn

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

@MBitcoiner Nice share. Need to check this out

[The Secret Muslim Banker @SecMuslimBanker]

Great storytelling.

So many parallels to today where our attention is hijacked by futile distractions.

These ancient men lost sight of their purpose, distracted by a board game. The worrying parallel to today, is the lack of awareness of mindless games we are playing.

"the servant believes he is worshipping when he is only counting"

[Will Manidis @WillManidis]

https://t.co/pB2s2Y0YJA

[Handre @Handre]

The Bank of Japan owns 7% of the entire Japanese stock market. The Swiss National Bank holds $200 billion in US equities - Apple, Microsoft, Amazon. Central banks buying stocks directly destroys price discovery.

When you purchase Toyota shares, you compete against a institution that creates yen from nothing. The SNB prints francs to buy dollars to buy Facebook stock (they're literally a hedge fund with a printing press). Stock prices no longer reflect company fundamentals or investor sentiment - they reflect central bank balance sheet expansion.

This is wealth redistribution to asset holders. Currency debasement funds it. Every Swiss franc created to buy Nvidia stock dilutes the purchasing power of workers holding cash savings.