1/ The minimum viable thesis (MVT) is the precursor to the minimum viable product (MVP). Understanding your customer's MVT is at the core of technology adoption.
A thread.

2/ This a concept that was first inspired by conversations with @infoarbitrage while we were going through @techstars He was the first investor that had a questionnaire to drive a rigorous thesis framework.
3/ A minimum viable product (MVP) is the smallest thing that you can ship to solve a customer problem
4/ A minimum viable thesis (MVT) is the smallest belief that you have to hold to take adopt a technology
5/ More than 100m people have adopted cryptocurrencies. What is their MVT?
6/ Mine in 2012: Technology that creates more choice and opportunities in the way people can transact will be one of the most important technologies in the 21st Century. Challenging this status quo will attract the smartest people in the world.
7/ The other people who were into cryptocurrency at that time were largely Cypherpunks. Their MVT - Technology liberates us from current institutions. Bitcoin creates a money system outside of government control increasing human freedom.
8/ Prior to 2013, governments believed that this was a flash in the pan. Their MVT to buy @chainalysis was cryptocurrencies are used to avoid traditional controls, we must have new tools. In 2021, this will change to gaining leverage and control in global financial infrastructure
9/ Entrepreneurs entering the industry often had the a classic entrepreneurial MVT. If this is one of the major secular trends in the world a rising tide lifts all boats.
10/ Banks are yet to have a coherent MVT as we have not seen many of them enter. Smaller, more nimble players have used their agility to follow the entrepreneurs into the market to be an early mover on a global macro story.
11/ However with the further adoption of cryptocurrencies. Adoption by traditional financial institutions seems inevitable. We see different MVTs playing out right now. Here are a few examples:
12/ Bitcoin as digital gold - Bitcoin is a scarce resource that has lasted long enough and created enough social proof that there is a fundamental value being placed on its scarcity, portability and censorship resistance. Every day Bitcoin survives this MVT grows stronger
13/ Everyone will have crypto in their wallet - Apps like the @cashapp have shown that younger investors are more willing to hold crypto than other assets. The entrance of @Paypal has cemented crypto as table stakes in the battle between financial institutions for wallet share
14/ Bitcoin is a macroeconomic hedge - With extremely low interest rates and no sign of a rate increase. With the potential for widespread inflation when economies open up. The unique characteristics of #Bitcoin drive uncorrelated returns over the long run.
15/ Alternative asset class - With traditional hedge funds and some corporations investing directly in Bitcoin this is an emerging asset class. Thesis driven by simple question: Will more companies have this as part of their treasuries and will more managers seek exposure?
16/ A decentralized internet requires payments - incentivizing developers and users to use new applications to replace social networks and big tech requires a new financial layer to the internet. Ethereum and competitors have proven that these decentralized apps can work.
17/ Tokenization of cash and securities leads to more efficient capital allocation - there has not ever been a global instantly settled instrument that can create synthetic versions of new assets, traditional currencies and securities.
16/ What is your minimum viable thesis? Or start with one of these and explain why you think it is true? Consider also whether your customers can get on board with your MVT.

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I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.


I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.

Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.

And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.

God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.

For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.

That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.
(1) Some haters of #Cardano are not only bag holders but also imperative developers.

If you are an imperative programmers you know that Plutus is not the most intuitive -> (https://t.co/m3fzq7rJYb)

It is, however, intuitive for people with IT financial background, e.g. banks

(2)

IELE + k framework will be a real game changer because there will be DSLs (Domain Specific Languages) in any programming language supported by K framework. The only issue is that we need to wait for all this

(3) Good news is that the moment we get IELE integrated into Cardano, we get some popular langs. To my knowledge we should get from day one: Solidity and Rust, maybe others as well?

List of langs:
https://t.co/0uj1eBfrYj, some commits from many years ago..

@rv_inc ?

#Cardano

(a) Last but not least, marketing to people with Haskell, functional programming with experience and decision makers in banks is a tricky one, how do you market but not tell them you want to replace them. In the end one strategy is to pitch new markets, e.g. developing world

(b) As banks realize what is happening they maybe more inclined to join - not because they would like to but because they will have to - in such cases some development talent maybe re-routed to Plutus / Cardano / Algorand / Tezos

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