1 Is payment the breakthrough point for crypto applications?
This has been a hot topic that I've seen on Twitter in the past few days, with several well-known figures in the industry joining the discussion.
They basically all believe that payment is an extremely important breakthrough point for crypto applications going forward.
I have always been skeptical about payment applications based on crypto assets (especially stablecoins).
It's not that I think the application is bad, but I believe it will face huge obstacles in the promotion process, especially from the regulatory side in various countries.
In the past few days, there has been news about the stablecoin ecosystem: USDT was required to be delisted by a European regulatory agency, citing a lack of transparency in regulation.
In contrast, the more strictly regulated USDC faces much less regulatory resistance.
But once an asset is subject to overly strict regulation, I feel it will be greatly limited in its development. This is not in line with the rules of technological development.
The rules of technological development must first break through in the direction of least resistance. Crypto applications still have many areas waiting to be broken through, and many areas face far less resistance than payment applications. So at least for now, I don't think payment will be a very promising breakthrough direction.
Moreover, for human society, we already have fiat-based online payment networks. If stablecoins are subject to the same strict regulation as our electronic payments, I really don't see why we still need a strictly regulated stablecoin payment?
Or, for ordinary users, how much difference can there be between a blockchain-based payment application and an internet-based electronic payment?
The above was my previous view, and now my view has changed slightly: if this kind of payment application is not for serving humans, but for serving AI, the scenario may be different.
AI may not need stablecoins pegged to human society's fiat currencies, they can create their own set of assets that they like, which may be meaningless to humans and may not even attract the attention of regulators, but are of great significance to them.
In that context, crypto-asset-based payment applications may have a very different prospect.
2 Buffett's investment in Sinopec is completely politically motivated, and the UN compradors have ruined the country.
Regarding the reasons behind Buffett's investment in Sinopec, Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders have asked this question more than once at the shareholders' meeting.
One shareholder's question was particularly typical, and his question (in essence) was:
He simply couldn't believe that Buffett, without ever contacting Sinopec's top management or having any special information about Sinopec, could have thought of buying Sinopec's stock?
The old gentleman's oral response to this question was essentially as follows:
He did not know anyone at Sinopec, nor did he have any special information. He just looked at Sinopec's financial data and roughly estimated that the company's scale and output would be similar to Western oil giants like ExxonMobil. But Sinopec's market value at the time was only about half, or even a third, of its Western counterparts.
In this case, even considering the risks in the financial data and other worrying sensitive risks, he still felt that Sinopec's stock price was undervalued. Therefore, he went ahead and bought Sinopec's stock.
Later, when Sinopec's price had risen to about 60-70% of its intrinsic value, the old gentleman completely liquidated his position. The reason was also very simple, in the old gentleman's own words (in essence):
In a country where the rules can be changed at will, he found it very difficult to control the subsequent risks of this company. So even if Sinopec still had room for further appreciation, he didn't want to stay in the battle.
The subsequent developments indeed turned out as the old gentleman had predicted: even after he sold, Sinopec continued to rise for a while before starting to decline.
