Friday Night Links

• One day, everything in the world economy will be priced in Bitcoin. Or, one day, Bitcoin will be regarded as the biggest bubble that ever was. There are stable equilibria between these outcomes, but they are unusual and structurally exotic. There are three major ways in which Bitcoin could still fail. A: it could be actively killed by its enemies. B: it could lose its energy source. C: it could be outcompeted by another candidate monetary standard. [Curtis Yarvin]
• Meta is signing an “operating lease” with an initial term of only four years. They have the option to extend the lease every four years, but they are not obligated to. To persuade the JV to accept the short four-year leases, Meta provided a “Residual Value Guarantee” (RVG) covering the first 16 years of operations. If Meta decides to leave (by not renewing or terminating the lease) within the first 16 years, they guarantee the campus will still be worth a certain amount of money (undisclosed). This payment is “capped” i.e. there is a pre-agreed maximum limit to how much Meta would have to pay. Again, we don’t know the exact capped limit in this deal. [MBI Deep Dives]
• If you have considered an idea from a conference, you did not buy it, and then it does well, you will feel bad. I heard Bill Ackman pitch General Growth Properties at the 2009 Ira Sohn Conference, thought it was a great idea, checked the stock price and then did nothing about it. As it 10x-ed over two years, I felt sad inside, and apparently still do. This feeling is much less painful than a loss from a bad purchase, and unless you’re insane like me you might not even remember, so I’ll assign only 0.25 sad points per occurrence. If you have considered an idea, did not buy it, and it went down, you may experience a little satisfaction from your discernment. This will be a faint emotion and you’re even less likely to remember the stock than one in the “interested-not purchased-went up” basket, so I’ll only give this situation 0.05 happy points. [Harvey Sawikin]
• But there’s a catch: had we tried to do that, we may never have survived to enjoy all the ultimate gains on Lukoil and Norilsk. Between 1995-2021, the period under examination, Russian stocks experienced two major crashes (1998, 2008) and three large corrections (2000, 2011, 2014). Firebird Fund entered all of these with reasonably diversified portfolios (in 1998 and 2014, partially hedged with derivatives and cash); though we were down, the vast majority of our investors rode out the turbulence. We communicated frequently with them and what they saw was a stable management team, calmly assessing events and determined to recover the fund’s recent losses. They may have been disappointed with us but had no reason to doubt our sanity. If, on the other hand, we had entered any of these crashes or corrections with a 75% weighting to just two stocks, Lukoil and Norilsk — which likely would’ve been the case had we kept the 1995 portfolio static — we may have looked like excessive risk-takers to our limited partners. [Harvey Sawikin]
• "With the completion of the Neches River Terminal next year, we are nearing the culmination of a significant capital deployment cycle that began in 2022. These investments included large scale pipeline and marine terminal facilities as well as gateway acquisitions that put Enterprise in a position to support production growth from the Permian and Haynesville basins for years to come. With this large wellhead to water build out cycle behind us, we believe 2026 will see an inflection point in the partnership’s free cash flow. Today, in connection with this expectation, we announced a $3.0 billion increase to Enterprise’s common unit buyback program." [Enterprise Products Partners L.P.]
• Terraform's nominal design size for its kits is one megawatt. For context, one megawatt can power a few hundred homes in Europe, or about 20 to 30 large, air-conditioned homes in America. The company sells a kit that captures solar power and produces hydrocarbons, essentially creating instant oil. The goal is to have the first paying customer for these hydrocarbons, who isn't just part of a demo, as early as next year. [Casey Handmer]
• Piłsudski was aware that the Bolsheviks would not ally with an independent Poland and predicted that war with them was inevitable. He viewed their advance west as a major problem, but he also considered the Bolsheviks less dangerous for Poland than their White opponents. The "White Russians", representatives of the old Russian Empire, were willing to accept limited independence for Poland, probably within borders similar to those of the former Congress Poland. They objected to Polish control of Ukraine, which was crucial for Piłsudski's Intermarium project. This contrasted with the Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the partitions of Poland null and void. Piłsudski speculated that Poland would be better off with the Bolsheviks, alienated from the Western powers, than with a restored Russian Empire. By ignoring the strong pressures from the Entente Cordiale to join the attack on Lenin's struggling Bolshevik government, Piłsudski probably saved it in the summer and the fall of 1919. [Józef Piłsudski]
• Pick a target lifestyle number that you can comfortably live on. Call it $100-200K a year after tax all-in spend for your family. That’s housing, food, childcare, insurance, travel, everything. Then you lock that number. Tattoo it. That number is now your “max lifestyle.” You do not let it scale linearly with income. When your income jumps from $300K to $450K? You do not *deserve* to scale lifestyle 1:1. You siphon the marginal(~$80K-$90K post tax) straight into buying time and leverage: taxable brokerage, second cash-flowing asset, equity in something you own, principal paydown on a mortgage, or building/purchasing a side income stream that is not tied to a boss. Again. You use it to invest in things that earn or you control. [BowTied Bull]
• The articles published by the Annals of Eugenics (1925–1954) have been made available online as an historical archive intended for scholarly use. The work of eugenicists was often pervaded by prejudice against racial, ethnic and disabled groups. The online publication of this material for scholarly research purposes is not an endorsement of those views nor a promotion of eugenics in any way. [Wiley]