Hey All,
Welcome to Talk Money Weekly - where I cut through the noise and curate the best money related topics from Twitter and the occasional podcast.
This week we launched Episode 5 of Season 3. "Welcome Back to My Channel."
How do you turn content into a career? In this episode, we learn how the passion economy empowers creators to become entrepreneurs. From YouTube videos, to online courses, to subscription-based journalism, we dig deep on how a year stuck at home has widened this rich, digital world. LISTEN NOW.
📈 Markets & Business
Tesla Buys $1.5B of Bitcoin
Elon Musk can move markets. Just the other day, while on the new social platform Clubhouse, Musk said that he believes in Bitcoin although he's a little late to the game. A few days later, Tesla announced that they used their balance sheet to buy $1.5B worth of Bitcoin. This is now another public company that has purchased Bitcoin. Others include Square, Paypal, and Microstrategy. This caused the price of Bitcoin to hit new all-time highs, above $49.000.
I read an interesting tweet from investment manager Karen Finerman about how Tesla may also buy gold as part of this position.Sounds like this is an inflation hedge on a weakening US$ due to all the money printing. She also pointed out that even if the price of Bitcoin goes up, Tesla cannot mark up their position, but they have to be transparent if they lose money. It's still unclear, but what we do know, is that more and more "established" entities are jumping on the Bitcoin train.
Top 10 Biggest Money Mistakes
I like lists like these because there are so many things that are out there that we believe, that actually might be complete BS. Highly recommend reading through this thread. Some highlights: small wins vs big wins, don't time the market and paying attention to other people's finances.
The "small wins vs big wins" really resonates with me. People will travel across town to save a few bucks on a purchase, but they won't spend the time preparing for salary negotiation. Saving money is great, but investing in something that can significantly increase your financial livelihood is a much better bet.
Youtube is an Absolute Beast
I'm going to spend more time curating Youtube for you all. I know I'm mostly focused on Twitter, but there's is so much great stuff on Youtube as well. In one quarter they produced $6.9B in ad revenue. Creators on Youtube can make a decent living with sponsorships, and also have the ability to build a massive audience. How crazy is it to think that there are creators on Youtube that get more views than most shows on network/cable TV!
21-year-old Youtuber Mr. Beast has 53M subscribers on his channel and averages around 35 MILLION views per video. I'm thinking of ways I can take the podcast and re-purpose it for Youtube, or taking this newsletter and making it a weekly Youtube video. Blake Robbins shares this tweet of his favorite "smart" Youtube channels. Lots of great education on the platform.
Apple Airpods Made $18B in 2020
Apple Airpods did $18B in revenue for Apple. How crazy is that? Personally, I'm on my 4th pair of AirPods, and I also upgraded to the Airpods Pro, so I account for at least (does math in head)... $500 of that. Audio is a massive industry.
For Apple, they'll only invest in a product that's going to make them BILLIONS of dollars, otherwise, it's not worth the time/risk for them. That's how big they are. What's next for Apple Airpods?
How Does Bitcoin Go Higher From Here?
The only reason. why I keep posting about Bitcoin is because I know that it's still pretty confusing. It's hard to get distracted by the "all-time high" headlines. The easiest way to understand Bitcoin is to compare it to gold. Is it better than gold? Anthony Pompliano explains his framework on why he thinks Bitcoin could hit $1,000,0000, which is about 20X from here.
If Bitcoin is the better version of gold because of portability (you can easily move it around), scarcity (there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin), divisibility (you can buy a fraction of Bitcoin), transparency (there's no middleman) and its ability to be audited (a distributed ledger cannot be forged), then it has the potential to be bigger than gold's market cap.
Don't Buy What You Don't Understand
This is the best advice you'll ever receive. Don't invest because of FOMO. Don't invest because someone is telling you're going to make a boatload of money. You must understand it, and only then will the investment make sense to you. For example, if you don't understand Bitcoin, don't buy it.
That's all the news from this past week! Let me know if you prefer receiving this newsletter on Fridays or Sundays. I've been testing different days on purpose. :)
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