The Generalist: “In the years since, Aave has established itself as DeFi’s leading lending project by market capitalization. Its current market cap sits above $1 billion, though it neared $8 billion in 2021. For a project that Kulechov expected to be little more than an “experiment,” such figures represent a remarkable outcome. At its most basic level, Aave is a simple product. Beneath a tangle of features and quirks, Aave offers an easy way to lend and borrow. Its service both mimics and subverts the traditional financial system. In basic terms, here is how it works. Imagine you’re lucky enough to have participated in Ethereum’s ICO and have 100 ETH at your disposal. Now, you could decide to leave these assets alone, hoping the price of ETH appreciates over time. Ideally, though, you’d earn interest on this ETH. This is where Aave comes in. Instead of having your assets sit idly, you can deposit them on Kulechov’s platform and have them earn interest. Aave generates these earnings by lending out your ETH to borrowers. This interest is issued in “aTokens” – if you deposit ETH, you will earn aETH; if you deposit DAI, you will earn aDAI.”
Donald Boudreaux: “This argument for the minimum wage amounts to an assertion that there exists an economic perpetual-motion machine. Higher wages result in workers receiving higher total pay. In turn (the argument continues), enough of this higher pay is spent by workers to buy enough of the very outputs that these workers produce that employers find it profitable to produce these extra outputs. And so – again, if this argument for the minimum wage were valid, not only would no employer have to be commanded by government to raise its workers’ wages, every employer would be incentivized to raise wages continuously, say, every month, or even every day. After all, by assumption all raises paid to workers return to each employer as demand for the profitable increase in that employer’s output…If raising workers’ wages did indeed “pay for itself” in the form of increased demand for worker output or increased worker productivity, then employers would raise wages without having to be compelled to do so.”
Akash Prakash: “When one looks at India, it is striking that it is the best-performing EM country by quite a good deal over the last 30 years. In fact, after the US, Sweden and Switzerland, it is the fourth best-performing equity market over the last 30 years (of substantial size and relevance)…Is it possible that the country itself [India] may be the next big compounder? The last 30 years certainly indicate so. One can be a contrarian and view this sustained outperformance as the reason to avoid the country and its high valuations, or one can view the persistence of returns despite a difficult backdrop as the reason to make India a structural allocation. Looking at this data, my sense is more allocators are thinking of a structural India allocation as opposed to selling down the country.”
Mises: “In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control.” [via CafeHayek]
