The Win and Help Win Philosophy

And a Big Thank You!

This past weekend I had lunch with an old friend who had reached out to me because she had been reading this newsletter and wanted to learn more about investing. I was honored that she trusted what I had to say about investing so much so that she wanted to meet up to learn more. It truly meant a lot to me, as there are days where I wonder if I’ve just become a crypto evangelizing snake oil salesman. Her brother also joined us, and he said that he had found the newsletter to be “enlightening”. Now, her brother happened to have been friends with one of my favorite writers of all time, so to hear that he felt that the newsletter was anything less than a flaming heap of garbage was perhaps one of the most validating experiences of my entire life.

In light of this, I want to start this edition of the newsletter off with a big “thank you” to my old friend, and to her brother, someone I am happy to call a new friend. And I also wanted to send a big “thank you” out to everyone else who has reached out to say that they have found this newsletter to be helpful or insightful. And while I am at it, I would like to thank everyone who has been critical of what I’ve had to say. Your voice is just as important as the voices offering praise.

This newsletter has not only given me the chance to reconnect with family and friends from around the world, but it has motivated me to remain consistent with my writing practice. Markets are evolving so quickly right now that, to really do this newsletter justice and to provide you with timely, relevant information, I have had to publish frequently. In doing so, in maintaining some consistency in this writing practice, I feel like I have learned to synthesize ideas more fluidly, and I’ve learned to trust myself more and overthink less. Most importantly, not only have I tapped back into my voice as a writer, but I have remembered what it feels like to feel vulnerable in creating something again. This last part has felt particularly important, as I am a writing teacher, and I constantly ask my students to experience a similar vulnerability as they subject their words to my critique (and sometimes the critique of a broader audience). It only feels right that I remain in touch with what that feels like.

So, even if this newsletter hasn’t prompted you to invest - which isn’t necessarily the purpose of it, especially since I am not a financial advisor - I hope it has opened your mind to the ways in which the world is changing, and I hope that it has at least made you chuckle a bit in the process. Feeling accountable to you as an audience is a large part of what has kept me consistent in this practice, so thank you for reading and responding.

With all of the above said, I wanted to share a thought from Balaji Srinivasan, a profoundly intelligent human being, as I felt it so perfectly articulated the vibe in the cryptocurrency investing world right now. He shared the following in a recent interview with Tim Ferriss:

I think it is fair to say that the best tech folks and the best crypto folks are win and help win...Win and help win is neither progressive, nor conservative, nor libertarian, and let me explain why. Okay, so first, conservative, your typical conservative, and maybe it’s a caricature, maybe some of your listeners won’t like this or that, but they just kind of want to stay at home, they want to do their nine to five. They’re not as ambitious, they don’t want to leave the small town. They don’t want to go bright lights, big city...Your progressive often has a very zero-sum mentality. They may be ambitious, but they often believe at a very fundamental level that the rich are rich because the poor are poor, that one person’s gain is another person’s loss necessarily and they feel it’s a zero-sum conflict and the state, it’s there as a weapon, and so on. And the libertarian will say live and let live, which is a vision of Little House on the Prairie, all being by themselves, et cetera. And win and help win is none of those three; it’s ambitious in a way that the small “c” conservative is not, it is positive sum in a way that a progressive is not, and it is collective in a way that libertarianism is not. And I think that’s actually the most powerful kind of philosophy…

Visualize Value @visualizevalue

"Win and help win." — @balajis

(In that same interview, Srinivasan said that if he were given $100,000,000.00 today to invest, the most obvious to do with that money would be to put half into Bitcoin and half into Ethereum. He also recently started a new project in which he pays you in crypto to learn certain skills. Not a bad deal.)

This quote resonated so deeply with me because it reminded me that “winning” doesn’t really feel that good if you aren’t helping other people to do it, as well. Yes, “winning” here has to do with making money, and I still get those veritable pangs of Irish Catholic guilt that remind me that I am likely going to hell because now I am someone who invests and writes about money instead of a sad-song playing broke-ass martyr who extols the tenets of democratic socialism (though, I will probably get back to playing those sad songs eventually. Speaking of sad songs. Mmmm.). The struggle is real, as is the imposter syndrome. But I am working through all of it, and I have fully realized that while this newsletter is about money, it isn’t about greed. It’s about having some sense of financial freedom, a feeling of breathing room. I lived paycheck to paycheck for years, and it was overwhelming. I no longer live like that, and it is liberating. And oddly enough, while I now have relatively more means, I actually have less possessions than I have ever had in my adult life, as well as less of a desire for possessions. What I have acquired as a result of having a bit more money in the bank and a bit less debt on the balance sheet is more time to do the things that bring me joy, and more of an ability to help those who are in vulnerable financial situations. This is true freedom, true “winning”, to me.

So, thanks to how Srinivasan articulated the concept of helping others “win”, I feel more of a sense of purpose than ever in keeping this newsletter going. With that said, please keep in mind I don’t know that my perspective is “right”, which is why I try to not be prescriptive. However, I can say with confidence that my takes are relatively well-informed, and that I strongly believe we are watching one of the largest wealth transfers in human history play out before our very eyes. And if anything I have written has helped you to be see a bit ahead of the curve and to capitalize as a result, then I couldn’t be happier. All that I ask is that if and as you get yourself free of debt and other financial burdens, pay it forward. Help others to help themselves, as well. As I write this, I am reminded of a good friend of mine that used to mail me books on finance after he was done reading them because he knew I was interested - and also kind of broke. This newsletter is my version of such a gesture. I know that you might not grasp all of the financial jargon or terminology right now, just as I didn’t when I first encountered so much of it, but keep digging deeper if this interests you. Click on some of the links to articles and videos that I share, and dive down some rabbit holes. Watch some YouTube videos on the train ride to work, or listen to a podcast as you drive to work (I will provide some recommendations for some notable financial YouTube channels and podcasts in the next edition of the newsletter.) Never in the history of the world have we had such access to such brilliant minds and never has access to financial markets been so democratized. Spend a little more time listening to what these minds have to say, and a little less time aimlessly scrolling through social media, and your perspective will start to shift.

Thank you again to everyone - from New York to California and from Japan to Argentina - who has been reading. And thank you again to my two friends with whom I had lunch this past weekend. I hope our conversation helps you both rack up a few “wins” in the personal finance column.

Best,

Frank

Twitter: @frankcorva