Every essay in Issue 00
Each essay on its own page, in the same reader as the rest of the magazine.
01Money without a countryCrypto's protocols answer to no government. Its owners are another matter. The cover story follows the gap between those two facts.The cover story · geopolitics02The liquidity that isn't thereThe order book is a promise, and promises get broken exactly when you try to collect.Markets03Volatility is not riskYou can survive a wild ride and be ruined by a calm one.Ideas04The dollar ate its rivalThe technology built to route around the dollar became its cheapest delivery system.Money05The relic that refused to dieGold pays nothing, does nothing, and is being bought by the institutions whose product competes with it. That is information.Money06The half-life of an edgeEvery way of making money in markets decays. The only question worth asking is how fast.Strategy07Who checks the checkersProof of reserves, attestations, and the awkward question of who audits the auditors.Trust08The price of timeInterest is the oldest price on earth. We spent a decade pretending it could be zero, and the bill is still arriving.Macro09The index ate the marketPassive investing is the best deal ever offered to savers. Somewhere past halfway, it starts to unprice the market it rides.Markets10Marked to make-believePrivate assets fell as hard as public ones in the crash. Their prices just declined to mention it.Trust11The casino at the heart of the marketSame-day options, memecoins, prediction markets. The customers know they are gambling. The house still pretends otherwise.Culture12The sanctions laboratoryWashington has spent four decades testing what happens when you price a country out of the dollar. The findings are in, and both sides are misreading them.Geopolitics13Legal, but not at homeRussia legalized crypto for crossing the border and kept it banned in the kitchen. The strangest crypto statute on earth is also the most honest.Law