Hedge Fund CIO: “This Is What A Credible Revolution Looks Like”

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

Each generation believes it can create a better world. Were it not so, we would still live in caves.

Some generations thirst for change through revolution. That probably has to do with longer-term economic and political cycles. But for whatever reason, amongst these revolutionary generations, some are more determined, effective.

The 1960s-70s youth seemed radical, but they were far from French revolutionaries. Their actions failed to spark an inferno. My wife Mara grew up in a hippy enclave during that period. Her town sought to opt out of the system by going backward, living off the land, returning to simpler times.

But history rarely turns back the clock for long. That generation never had a credible plan to replace the system with something better. Nor did it have new technology to amplify force. The establishment knew this. The youth back then presented no real threat, just the appearance of instability. Daisies and LSD.

But today’s youth have built the technologies to power revolution. Their protocols remain nascent, but if they’re allowed to flourish (or if they cannot be stopped), they will credibly replace incumbent industries that the masses have come to despise (retail banks, commercial banks, central banks, wall street, money transfer agents, credit card companies, social media companies, exchanges of every kind, censors, and the list has just started).

Someday these technologies may threaten our notion of centralized government control. In the 1960s-70s, incumbents knew the revolutionaries had no credible plan.

This time, revolutionary technologies are already being rolled out. They are more efficient, cheaper, faster. They cut out the middlemen. And empower the individual.

Today’s incumbents are threatened with extinction. In fact, if today’s business leaders were 30yrs younger, most would be racing to build their companies/wealth in this new field of blockchain.

This is what a credible revolution looks like, waged by brilliant youth, impassioned, with fantastic ideas, immense wealth, and humanity’s most powerful technologies, applied in ways that incumbents can barely understand.

And it is too early to tell exactly where this new generation will lead us, only that it is to a profoundly different future.