The Next Version of Capital Markets is Coming

Tokenized Real World Assets (RWA), and a changing store of value is something I have been writing about since late 2016, and we kicked off Inveniam in January of 2017. But now, it is starting to spin up at a torrid pace. June went by in a blur. I am working more hours than I ever have in my life, I am in my 22nd year of being an entrepreneur at two firms I founded plus a half dozen+ years at other shops and I have never seen anything like this.

The convergence of AI, Blockchain, the alt markets, and payments are creating new commercial realities and new financial instruments that will transform private markets. While these pieces we have been putting together for 8 years are coming together I am constantly being introduced to new companies and new innovators who have grand plans. I look at their plans and the lack of context or depth of detail and I feel like I am on John Paul Jones ship below in the fight and the fire as he screamed, "I have not yet begun to fight." But that is me being an arrogant jerk, and it is wrong...it is my pride preventing me from learning. The resentment to the new guy is universal, in sports, in the military, in the markets...that is until they get dirty, bloody, into the fight. (Watch episode 4 of Band of Brothers)

The solution to this is humility. You can not learn with out it, and it is hard to move fast as you innovate with out it. Yet there is a time for action, and that time appears to be now. Shakespeare wrote about this in Henry V, Act iii,

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"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage:"

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If you do not gird yourself for battle and move decisively in the market, the market leaves you behind...but that is not and can not be a permanent state. We must pause, we must still ourselves and our first impulse to dismiss the new innovator, bc there are so many new sharp companies doing amazing things, we must learn from then. It is tough to cycle from battle to learning and quiet, and oh by the way, you have to go home to be a Dad or Mom, or Spouse or friend, and man does that take discipline. Take time between each role/season to pray. That said a new season is upon us...to slightly abuse the words of the Bard...

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"...teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,

Whose limbs were made in the crypto winter, show us here

The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;

For there is none of you so mean and base,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"

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The next version of capital markets is coming.