Ep 19. Big sell off!

Mid April usually means one thing tax day. This year, the IRS has postponed the deadline by a month. Get on it if you are running behind! <br/><br/>This year, mid April is all about COVID vaccines. Good news is that I&#8217;ve now received my second dose of the COVID vaccine. Bad news is that I&#8217;m feeling a bit under the weather. Instead of preparing a separate issue for the &#8220;Explore&#8221; section, this week, I touch on two topics that have been on my mind. Let me know which one you think I should do a deep dive on next. As always, I welcome your feedback. Thanks y&#8217;all! <br/><br/>News <br/><br/>Coinbase goes public<br/><br/>Coinbase shares ended their first trading day priced at $328 implying a valuation of $68B. That puts them in between UBS and Goldman Sachs.&#160;<br/><br/>Unlike during an IPO, Coinbase did not issue additional shares for its direct listing. The only shares available were sold by employees and investors.&#160;<br/><br/>Notably, the CEO sold 1.5% of his shares for $290M. A few eyebrows were raised when the CFO sold all of her shares for about $100M.&#160;<br/><br/>Blackouts in China slows bitcoin mining<br/><br/>Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces of China account for more than 50% of global bitcoin mining activity&#160;<br/><br/>A series of accidents at coal-powered plants in Xinjiang led to government mandated power outages&#160;<br/><br/>These outages led to ~20% drop in bitcoin mining i.e. computing power to secure the network. This underlines the risks of concentration and need for greater distribution of bitcoin mining capacity around the world.<br/><br/>US minority speaker says bitcoin is geopolitically strategic<br/><br/>Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority speaker of the US House of Representatives, stated that bitcoin and other digital currencies are geopolitically strategic.&#160;<br/><br/>I see 2 strands to pull here: <br/><br/>a) China could drive adoption of its new digital currency by strong-arming aid-receiving countries and business partners. This could challeng