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This Newsletter
This newsletter will be a cumulation of things I find interesting, in the hopes that you also find them interesting. At a broad level, it will cover science, technology, sports, crypto, and much more. Once a week seems about right.
Something New
On the nature of smart contracts:
Smart contracts are self-executing contracts where the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller are directly written into lines of code. These days, and for the purpose of this post, smart contracts are simply code deployed on a blockchain.
A cool (and extremely important) future of smart contracts is that they are immutable. You can interact with the code (otherwise it would be fairly useless), but once it is on a blockchain, you cannot edit the code.
The reason for this is pretty self explanatory. Smart contracts are only useful because they allow people to bind into an (often financial) agreement without a trusted third party- the trust is instead transferred to said smart contract code. Now if this code could be edited, it could no longer be trusted as the truth, and thus people would be less inclined to pay 6 figures for a photo of a monkey.
Now, if you are a smart contract developer or fairly familiar with the Web3 space, you’re probably thinking “What about upgradable smart contracts?”. With the use of proxy contracts, one contract is the wrapper (proxy) which is directly interacted with, and a second contract contains all of the logic. The logic contract can be swapped out and upgraded, but both contracts are still immutable in the sense that their code cannot be changed. To read more about this, see here.
An Epic Thread
@ValKatayev on Jim Simmons Medallion Fund. Here are some highlights.
Since 1988, the Medallion Fund has been returning 66% per year
No, that was not a typo
During the 2008 financial crisis, the fund had a net return of 82.38%
Simmons is ex-NSA, where he worked cracking Soviet codes during the Cold War
With strict NDAs and high profile findings, the algorithm and trading methods of the Medallion Fund are still secret today!
A former CIA math genius built a quantitative trading fund that earned more than $100 BILLION for investors.
At 66% return/yr, his track record destroys that of Warren Buffet, George Soros, Carl Icahn, and every investor who ever lived.
The Smartest Billionaire in Finance:
— Val Katayev (@ValKatayev)
7:58 PM • Jan 13, 2023
A New Channel
I somehow just discovered @Ididathing on YouTube. I do my best to reserve this word, but this man is a genius. Here’s one of my favorite videos of his, though they’re all worth a watch.
TLDR: He can’t jump rope fast enough to stop the rain. But his style of storytelling and engineering recklessness is a must watch.
Science Progress
Progress in early Alzheimers detection. Early days in this research, but as Alzheimers treatments improve, having the ability to catch the progression of the disease early will be essential.
Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden discovered that Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) can be found in blood as a precursor of Alzheimers by up to 10 years
Discovery of GFAP can be found in pre-symptomatic individuals, years before beta-amyloid and tau proteins begin to cause serious neurodegenerative issues.
Though the results still need to be verified in larger cohorts, they still remain an exciting advance in Alzheimers detection.
Thats all. I hope you enjoyed this first newsletter and see you next Monday.