Edge Newsletter #13 - Thanks for 10k! What next?

Hans Chan -

What I’m Watching

MKBHD’s video about DALL-E 2. It is a terrifyingly powerful AI system in which the user can type in a description of anything they want and it’ll generate a completely unique image (often photo realistic) based on that. Want to see an astronaut riding a horse on the moon? Or a tiger in Atlantis? It has you covered.

There’s been a lot of talk on AI. I feel we’re on the verge of AI reaching the stage where it will skyrocket in the coming years in terms of practical applications and will see it have an increasingly significant effect on our lives. Not just getting better dating matches and better cat video recommendations but right up to the level of advising government policies.

Resource of the Week

Wise (formerly TransferWise) is by far the best website I’ve used to send money internationally. They don’t charge you any money on the exchange rate and give you the market value. They’ll quote an upfront fee and you can decide. It’s vastly cheaper than high street banks.

Quote

Remember the Chinese proverb: “Tell me, I may listen. Teach me, I may remember it. Involve me, I will do it.”

Resurfaced using Readwise - Getting Past No (William Ury)

Thoughts

After 353 days on TikTok, I finally hit 10k! Thank you for all of your support, I didn’t know what to expect when I started the channel a year ago and it has been a lot of fun. While in comparison, it’s still tiny. To me, it’s very humbling that, that many people put up with me rambling about such a niche topic.

I’ve heard the sentiment that social media is the new CV. While I personally wouldn’t go that far, I think that having an online presence to showcase your work is something very powerful. Nothing else compares in terms of the reach it can provide to get to like-minded people. And as they say, your network is your net worth.

So if it’s something you’ve been thinking about, here’s another call to get started!

It doesn’t have to be TikTok, even a blog and sticking with that once a week, and letting that grow will probably surprise you after a year.

Stuff in the Pipeline

I’m going to start work on a Skillshare course on getting started on TikTok. It’ll basically be an organised series of short videos on all the aspects I’ve learned.

So things like finding your niche, basic gear, scripting, speaking on camera, attracting your audience, my perpetual content generation system etc. If you’re interested, stay tuned! All the updates will be on here and when I release it.

Property and Market Update

It’s been a busy week in the financial markets. Firstly there has been another rise to the base rate to 1.25% now. It’s introduced a lot of uncertainty to the markets, but it has been much needed. It’s well publicised that in the wake of COVID £900 billion was injected into the market via quantitative easing which was half the size of the entire UK economy.

It led to a sharp rise in asset prices across the board from property to S&P 500 to risk assets like crypto reaching new highs. Then the subsequent spiralling inflation. What we’re left with is property prices higher than ever, whilst the buying power and savings of the average person eroded by inflation, which is why recessions tend to increase the wealth gap between the top 0.1% and the rest of us.

These are the things the economy is facing:

  • Central banks trying to balance curbing sprialling inflation whilst avoiding a contraction of a fragile economy.
  • War in Ukraine threatening global food shortages and sanctions on Russia raising oil prices.
  • Squeeze on the cost of living.
  • Shortage of affordable homes and properties continuing to increase in value propped up by relaxed lending criteria and sustained demand.

These have led to a massive sell off in risk assets particularly Bitcoin and the wider crypto market. Less than 2 weeks ago I made a prediction that Bitcoin (then at around $30k) will drop below $25k by the end of the year, it seems I was far too conservative, as it’s already at the $20k mark! Most people think investors hate bad news, while this is true to some extent, what they hate more in uncertainty and that is in abundance right now. No one knows how long this conflict will last for, but from history, wars tend to last longer than what people think.

It’s not exactly a rosy picture! But to give it some balance nothing is happening right now that hasn’t happened many, many times before in history. As humans we tend to extrapolate what is happening, but in reality the future is often very different.

In my opinion, from an economical standpoint, there wasn’t anything they could’ve done radically differently considering. Taking the pain now with increasing interest rates is preferable to letting things continue to spiral with a more painful recession.

Personally I am keeping an eye on the markets as I do believe that it’s important to have a diversified portfolio to insulate yourself, and when corrections happen they tend to go overboard.

Hope this was helpful, hit reply if you like this, I read and respond to every message. Have a good week!

Hans