Inspired by my friend Julie Fredrickson, I’m going to write >500 words a day on this Substack (and probably mirror to something self-hosted), at least throughout 2023. Easy to hit word count — that’s 2 or 3 tweets — but time-boxing to reduce compulsion to edit and revise. I’ll use other forums for longer form or better edited writing.
Main things I’m excited for in 2023 (some of which I’m passively observing, some of which I’m actively participating in as an engineer, investor, or early user):
Seasteading — I bought one of the first SeaPods from Ocean Builders although I’m not rushing to take delivery yet
Truly anonymous, censorship-resistant technology — especially zk-based L2 like Aztec, and systems like Anoma (disclosure: investor) and the ideas behind dark.fi
Private market solutions to cryptocurrency and financial regulation and security — primarily through my work as CSO at Evertas, a cryptoasset insurance company as well as some non-profit and educational initiatives.
Network States and trying to build a physical community in Puerto Rico (a shooting range/training complex in the mountains, combined with ~50-100 home sites, on 1k+ acres, with resilient infrastructure — there are beach and city options, but nothing mountain-based with that level of infrastructure, and it’s a perfect environment for a training center. Act 60 tax benefits make Puerto Rico a uniquely good place for US citizens with substantial capital gains liability (rate here is 0%, and exempt from federal!), and it’s also a 4% tax rate on exported professional services (and again, exempt from federal). There’s also a great community of about 5-10k expats from tech, business, etc. here, combined with some amazing local people and expats from previous waves of immigration (a Cuban community now in their 70s to 90s did a lot of the telco and infrastructure businesses here. Plenty of logistical and infrastructure challenges living here vs. top-tier markets in the US, but it’s not that difficult to solve them.)
Continued progress with Starlink, SpaceX, and private space in general, plus advances in biotech, nuclear, and other science/engineering. I’m just watching all this from the sidelines and being impressed — Elon Musk has personally done more here than anyone since Goddard and von Braun, and I hope the Twitter takeover doesn’t make this more difficult. I’m a true believer in the “humanity must become interplanetary” idea, and I’d like to be the first person to take a domestic cat to Mars in ~20 years (once Mars has 5-10k people already living there — I don’t need to be an explorer or even pioneer, but a fast follower/early settler.)
Reshoring of industry, de-Chinaification of supply chains
Hopefully, a resolution to war in Ukraine and continued avoidance of active conflict elsewhere in the world (Taiwan, Korea, Northern Mexico being the main areas of concern for me)
Split Congress in the US hopefully slowing the pace and restricting the size of spending, at least somewhat.
Emerging platforms (Farcaster, ChitChat, etc.) to challenge the Twitter/meta/Google monopoly
Self-sovereign hardware and self-hostable services
(18 minutes, San Juan, PR.)