Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?
plus: why US consumer confidence matters, World Quantum Day and more
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller ||
Hello everyone! How can it be only Tuesday…
🎥 I had a great chat yesterday with Maggie Lake on her Talking Markets show – if you missed the livestream, you can see the playback here. 🎥
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IN THIS NEWSLETTER
Term of the day: quantum computer
Hong Kong stablecoins: too conservative?
Macro: why US consumer confidence matters
Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.
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WHAT I’M WATCHING:
✨ Press Publish ✨
Come join me for a Substack Live chat next Friday, April 17th, at 11am ET when I talk to Brady Dale, who recently left a high-profile newsletter writing gig at Axios to branch out on his own – we’ll dive into why, how self-production is different, what advice he’d give anyone thinking of doing the same, where media is going, and more.
(Some of you may have gotten an invite when I scheduled the session earlier today, and I got the date wrong, sorry – still getting the hang of this – 🎥 it’s on the 17th 🎥, not the 18th.)
Term of the day: quantum computer
It turns out that today is World Quantum Day, who knew that was even a thing. It’s celebrated on April 14th because of Planck’s constant, a fundamental ratio in quantum physics which, when expressed in electron volts per second, is 4.1356677×10−15, or 4.14×10−15 should you choose to round (4/14, geddit?).
So, today’s term is “quantum computer”, tool that harnesses quantum mechanics (the behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles) to solve problems traditional computers can’t. Traditional computers use increasingly small electrical circuits and combinations of bits that are either 1 or 0; quantum computers rely on qubits, which can be 1, 0 or both, and on “entanglement” which links the state of distinct particles. This makes them not just faster for certain types of computations, but also capable of effectively evaluating several possibilities “in parallel”.
