Tim Saval

curious about everything ⊹ technology, design, innovation, startups ⊹ hobby angel / vc scout ⊹ 🇺🇸

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@Andercot @hthieblot I second that !

Halo 1 lan party! I'll bring my Xbox and old Sony TV 📺

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

Prediction: Apple will aquire Perplexity

https://t.co/D6SA1fNkBN

[Perplexity @perplexity_ai]

Today we're releasing Personal Computer.

Personal Computer integrates with the Perplexity Mac App for secure orchestration across your local files, native apps, and browser.

We’re rolling this out to all Perplexity Max subscribers and everyone on the waitlist starting today.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Nice.

[Andy Allen @asallen]

Designers get this wrong all the time.

New tech doesn't need opinionated design. We talk about Design as if it's one thing, but really it supports different purposes depending on a category's maturity.

Early tech = "Undesigned" (open & flexible)
Growth tech = Design to scale (universal & generic)
Mature tech = Design to differentiate (opinionated)

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

It's a bit unclear but I think products like humane pin and dot failed not because they crafted too slowly in an Apple style way, but because they didn't craft correctly enough. It's the conclusions that were wrong. You can only learn that from decades of crafting, which the core team around Steve earned. Now more than ever focus and clarity matter more than speed.

[Balaji @balajis]

LIQUIDATION CONTAGION

Wealth taxes are even worse than you think. Any asset held by Californian billionaires or Dutch citizens is now at risk of experiencing forced liquidation pressure.

So: it’s not just that you don’t want to hold assets as a Dutchman. You also don’t want a Dutchman to hold your assets. Because the logic of forced liquidation is contagion.

Let’s think it through.

(1) First, suppose there is an asset with a total market cap of $10,000, with 10 shares total, of which 1 share each is held by 10 different holders, all in the Netherlands. To simplify the math, assume the Dutch holders bought those shares at par, or close to $0.

(2) Now suppose today is the unrealized cap gains tax day, and the share price is $1,000 per share. Each Dutch guy is hit with a 36% tax, and owes $360. The first guy sells his one share, gets $1,000, and pays $360 in tax while retaining $640.

(3) But the first guy’s sale reduces the market price to $960 per share. So when the second guy sells, he only retains $600 after paying $360 in tax.

(4) Now assume that by the 7th guy, all the selling has pushed the share price to collapse to $200 per share. This is a very reasonable scenario if 60% of the cap table has suddenly been dumped. Indeed it might go much lower.

(5) At $200 per share, the 7th guy actually has to go into debt to pay the tax as he owes $360. He sells his one share, pays all $200 of the proceeds in tax. And still owes $160 more in tax.

(6) The 8th, 9th, and 10th guys are even more screwed. By the time they sell, the price will likely have crashed to $100 per share or less. As with the 7th guy, even 100% liquidation will not cover their tax burden.

(7) So we immediately see many negative things about the Dutch unrealized cap gains tax bill.

(a) First, it will cause large simultaneous forced liquidations. Everyone must sell 36% of their stake near the same time.

(b) Second, it may be literally impossible to pay if a critical mass of the cap table is all subject to it at the same time. In the example above it was 100% Dutch holders, but has it been just 60% the result would have been much the same: a collapse in the share price.

(c) Third, that means it would be disastrous to have too many Dutch citizens (or Californian billionaires!) on the cap table. Their forced sales will crash your share price.

(d) So, you might have to start mass blocking those resident in wealth-taxing jurisdictions from investing in your companies.

(e) This in turn makes the poor Western European guy even poorer, as he gets locked out of high growth assets.

To be clear: I really do feel bad for the formerly Flying Dutchmen, now Crying Dutchmen. They invented much of modern capitalism. They founded New Amsterdam, now New York. They’ve punched way above their weight. I wish them only the best.

Nevertheless…they should prepare for the worst. This may be a tough century for Western Europe. The first ones out might get to freedom, while the slowest may be stuck behind a new Iron Curtain, spending a century paying off the debts their states incurred over the last century.

Because the long run fruits of Western Keynesianism are the same as Soviet Communism, in the sense of wealth seizure and pauperization.

I mean, if you knew the future, you wouldn’t want to co-own a farm with a Russian in 1916. For similar reasons, you might not want to co-own a share of stock with Dutch national in 2026. Or with anyone in a seizure-curious jurisdiction…which unfortunately includes much of Western Europe, Canada, and Blue America.

You instead want assets that are not held by those subject to forced liquidations. Now, I grant that this is an unusual way to rank assets…Dutch holders considered harmful?!? Yet it might sadly be necessary to minimize your exposure to liquidation contagion.

PS: guess which crucial stock is most held by the Dutch? ASML. So: this unrealized cap gains tax may not literally be a communist plot, but it would have the same effect.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@soleio @jgebbia @ndstudio Awesome! Great job @soleio sub +1

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@BenBoehme @sama @garrytan Well, that’s billion dollar question 🤠

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@WilliamBarrHeld "feel the AI"

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

Sam, you're just saying this because you're not a bot. Is this different from humans working for each other? Bots can also work for each other - us humans might just not be the primary beneficiaries from it. But there is still value / real-world changes in there.. and humans want / benefit from that.

The output of bot ecosystems are rarely isolated to the ecosystem itself, it "spills over".

E.g. why can't agents emerge to accumulate money and deploy it for public good. Like Conway's oscillators or spaceships. E.g. Palo Alto city releases agent that "beautifies parks": Agent figures out how to gather money (maybe polymarket trading or selling work) > buys / maintains humanoid robots > parks get cleaned.

All it needs is a seed and the human's giving legal greenlight. (sidenote: quantifying legal control might be a powerful future currency)

Maybe we can think about it not from your human society perspective but from an alien bot perspective. Lots of value to be created.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@adityaag Maybe in the end, abundant technology creates abundant humanity. Full circle

[scott belsky @scottbelsky]

https://t.co/VjDJe5Zo2R

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@balajis Think of #Moltbook is a forcing function that introduces entropy and therefore gives diverse human-defined bots the directionality it needs in order to create decisions. Pair this with https://t.co/578znExK73 updating capability and programmability and you have an #AGI precursor.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

#Moltbook is a forcing function that introduces entropy and therefore gives diverse human-defined bots the directionality it needs in order to create decisions. Pair this with https://t.co/578znExK73 updating capability and programmability and you have an #AGI precursor.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@xydotdot #Moltbook is a forcing function that introduces entropy and therefore gives diverse human-defined bots the directionality it needs in order to create decisions. Pair this with https://t.co/578znExK73 updating capability and programmability and you have an #AGI precursor.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@PeterDiamandis #OpenClaw is the lifeform, #moltbook is it's culture.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@lessin #OpenClaw is the lifeform, #moltbook is it's culture.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

#OpenClaw is the lifeform, #moltbook is it's culture.

[Tim Saval @timsaval]

@friedberg