Taleb has never revealed the details of his investment portfolio. For someone who screams "I don't care - show me the returns!" it's interesting that he cannot prove that his "black swan" strategy has ever been actionable for his own or anyone's portfolio, how to use his theories to make significant money vs. normal strategies, and any proof that his hedge fund made any money during the dot-com crash which you would figure would be the prime time to make money given his public persona.
Taleb got profiled in the New Yorker, his Black Swan book became popular, and he has rode that and Twitter ever since. I highly recommend people see him for what he is - a public figure that is a bullshitter like anyone else - at least until he shows proof that he is some sort of investor oracle. He has actively sued people who revealed how much money his prior fund lost, as those documents are floating around but he attacks anyone who publicly reveals them.
> It's interesting that he cannot prove that his "black swan" strategy has ever been actionable for his own or anyone's portfolio, how to use his theories to make significant money vs. normal strategies...
Mark Spitznagel, a cofounder of Empirica (Taleb's old fund), went on to start Universa which did pretty well with similar theories (tail-risk strategies and insurance via options against extreme market risk) in both the 2008-2009 period and last year, when they booked a huge return. So there's some evidence that the theories work to produce uncorrelated (or negatively correlated) returns that outperform the market[1].
Someone in the industry has a theory that he made his initial fortune by being unhedged during Black Monday[0] and benefiting from being on the "right" side and he's been coasting on that since then. Obviously hard/impossible to say, but he is definitely hypocritical when it comes to things like "skin in the game".
What’s the distinction, and do you have a source formalizing that?
I had always understood a ponzi as being something paid out by later investors, and where you had a plausible reason to believe in increase in value.
Here the plausible reason is “bitcoin will take over the financial system and everyone will need it” or “bitcoin will be the new store of value and everyone will want it”. In either event payout necessarily comes from later investors.
Bitcoin makes no claim of being an income-producing asset.
All non-income producing assets { gold, wine, art, baseball cards, air-jordans } are bought as a store-of-value with the hope of selling it at a higher price.
Ponzi appears to be an income-producing asset, but the income is paid out from the principal.
