Basic Attention

Proverbs 4:20 “My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.” Later today I’ll be giving a talk on crypto for YPO and one of the early questions that came in asked about why cryptocurrencies are so volatile. I still haven’t totally formulated my answer, but I feel like it has something to do with attention. Sleepy penny stocks hardly move because no one pays attention to them. Gamestop moved tremendously when Reddit drew attention to hedge funds that had shorted the stock. As we move into an information rich world, the constrained resource is not time, nor is it money. It is attention, and attention moves markets. Crypto allows early adopters to monetize their precious attention by earning tokens for engagement. If every early Facebook user earned stock in the company for each post, like and share, it would have grown even faster than it did. That is what is happening with crypto platforms today. There is even a cryptocurrency called the Basic Attention Token. You earn it by using a browser called Brave, which is 3x faster than Chrome. We all know that Chrome monetizes our attention by effectively selling our data to advertisers. Brave takes any monetization and pays you 70% of that in their token. They pay you for your attention. Genius. God calls you to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That does mean stewarding his resources well. It does mean carving out time for Him. But we’ve all experienced sitting down and going through the motions of QT without real engagement. I can spend an hour at date lunch with my wife, but if I’m on my phone the whole time it doesn’t count for a whole lot. I feel like today God is calling me to remember that loving Him, honoring Him, really prioritizing him in his proper place means paying real attention. Lord, as time goes on more and more distractions arise. Please help me get back to the basics. I give you all the glory. I give you all my praise. I give you all my attention today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

"HODL"ing the Holy Spirit

Genesis 25:34 “Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.” Yesterday my friend Brooks sent me a podcast from our friends at Faith Driven Investor. They had Jimmy Song on discussing the spiritual perspective of Bitcoin. https://www.faithdriveninvestor.org/podcast-inventory/episode-63-thank-god-for-bitcoin-with-jimmy-song I paraphrase… “Esau had what we call in bitcoin, a high time preference. He was very impatient and didn’t have much prudence. Jacob had low time preference. He was willing to wait. He was prudent. He was wise. And that’s what I wanted to point out with bitcoin. There’s an ethic of willing to wait because bitcoin is very volatile. It does churn your stomach. There’s a lot of emotional disturbance in the price going up and down that you that you kind of have to go through and a lot of people simply can’t take. So for a lot of people, they would rather live more like Esau. Who cares about my estate? That’s like 30 years from now. I’d rather have the soup now. Rather than like Jacob who says I’ll forgo the soup now but that means that I get this huge treasure later. To me that’s at the heart of what both bitcoin and Christianity are about. Our God promises us treasures in heaven doing the things that aren’t necessarily rewarded in this life. For me that’s the ultimate in low time preference behavior.” Last night we had some of the most volatile moves we’ve seen in crypto, and I’m continually amazed at the unwavering faith the community has in good times and bad. Perhaps we as believers can take a page from their playbook as we weather our own storms. Lord, I wanna HODL the Holy Spirit in my life. In the crazy ups and downs that this world throws at me, I have unwavering faith that you have a plan. You are a good God, and I can’t wait to see what you have in store. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Gojek & Tokopedia

1 Peter 5:6 “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” In 2016 I led an investment into Tokopedia and joined the company as a Board Observer. The leadup to closing was perhaps the most dramatic journey I’ve ever been through at our venture firm Amasia. I’ll save the details for another post, but suffice it to say that I hoped that we could get some credit for the tortuous path we had tread until that point. Unfortunately, because the investors who backed us on the deal wanted to keep a low profile, we never announced the round. Since then, there have been various stories that were leaked to the media about the company. Only one of them mentioned Amasia, and they spelled our name wrong! The prevalence of the leaks led to an understandable desire to limit exposure. After a couple years we added the company to our website. A couple years later I added the company on my LinkedIn profile. At each juncture I was careful to align with stakeholders. Though happy to tow the party line, part of me of course wanted to get some credit for all the hard work. I’ve had similar experiences with many other portfolio companies. It particularly irks me when other firms get more credit despite perhaps having done less. But in each of those instances, I just take it to God and He always tells me the same thing. “Humble yourself. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? It is in loving those who hate you… in doing work when you gain no credit, that I exalt you.” Then I’ll usually belt out a few worship songs and my heart will align with what my mind already knows. I serve a good God who always has the best in store. If I’m not getting credit now, I’m storing up my treasure in heaven. Well this morning I was asked to speak about the Gojek-Tokopedia merger on Channel News Asia. I used to have a weekly segment on CNA, but finally having the greenlight from stakeholders to talk about this investment in public makes this appearance somehow feel particularly special. Lord, you’re so good. Your mercy endures forever. Help me to have an eternal view today. You’re never late… you’re always on time. Thank you for loving me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.