Co-founder of @joyrideexchange @originprotocol. Don't achieve to be happy. Happily achieve.
Joined April 2007
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Matthew Liu retweeted
Public Beta now live on @base 🔥
Kelly-optimized leverage for buy-and-hold investors.
First Bitcoin, then stocks.
Matthew Liu retweeted
Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.
Cette phrase change tout.
L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?
Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.
Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.
Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.
Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.
L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.
Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.
Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.
Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.
Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.
La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.
Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.
Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.
La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.
Matthew Liu retweeted
My mentor asked me last night if I was doing okay financially given the market. We half laughed about it- about how sitting with uncertainty feels less foreign when you grew up calculating what's left and how being in crypto either conditions you for it or swallows you whole. It reminded me of my grandmother, so I wrote about it:
umikathryn.com/p/rooms-chang…
Matthew Liu retweeted
Woke up to a notification I wasn’t expecting. I made top 100 in Rising Literature on Substack. Still processing this. Thank you to everyone who’s been reading and supporting. It genuinely means everything ♡ umikathryn.com
Matthew Liu retweeted
I've followed tech for 25 years and I've never felt a larger gap between the ~1 million people using Codex/Claude and the rest of humanity.
Matthew Liu retweeted
Fundraising environments compress feedback into crude signals. Capital flows toward familiarity, not necessarily merit. When money is abundant, conviction is cheap. When it isn’t, even good ideas are asked to justify their existence in ways that have little to do with long term value.
The builders who survive downturns aren’t the loudest or the most optimistic. They’re the ones who learn to operate without constant validation. They get clearer about what actually matters.
This is the season where real companies quietly form their spine.
If you’re still here, still shipping, still thinking deeply, still caring about correctness, you’re not behind. You’re accumulating something harder to measure than capital: credibility.
<3
Matthew Liu retweeted
If @elonmusk can bring sight to the blind, it will outdo every one of his near-miraculous achievements to date.
With all of the ‘bad news’ that circulates to drive your attention, it is important to be reminded that we have so much more to be optimistic about.
Matthew Liu retweeted
For too long, San Francisco has allowed people engaged in public drug use to cycle through jail, the ER, or simply remain on the streets—without real accountability or real help.
This new RESET Center marks a fundamental change: if you do drugs on our streets, you will be arrested. And instead of sending you back out in crisis, we will give you a chance to stabilize and enter recovery.
This is about enforcing the law, getting people off the streets, and connecting them to treatment—while getting officers back on patrol and restoring safety and order for our neighborhoods.
New legislation we introduced this week will keep the RESET Center on track to open this spring.
Who would have thunk it? The solution to get affordable housing for all…is to build more housing. 🤡
How about we deregulate, issue more permits, and stop NIMBYism instead of espouse socialism and communism?
Americans need more affordable housing.
And it turns out, building more housing, does, in fact, make rents fall.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Matthew Liu retweeted
Sad to see @RoKhanna become another politician who has no economic literacy. Now hold my 🥃
Your case for a billionaire wealth tax falls apart on every key point.
You say founders like Jensen Huang would not be deterred by a 1 to 2 percent annual tax on unrealized gains because he was not thinking about taxes in 1993. That is irrelevant. No one calculates distant taxes on day one. The issue is marginal incentives: slashing the ultimate reward after decades of risk forces stock sales to pay the tax and deters the next wave of founders. Pretending this has zero behavioral effect is economic nonsense.
You brag the Bay Area has 37 times Austin’s VC and Florida “is not on the map.” That is stale data ignoring the exodus already underway. California loses high earners and companies yearly because of crushing taxes and rules. Tesla, Oracle, HPE did not relocate to Texas for the barbecue. Adding a federal wealth tax accelerates the bleed. Clusters are not immortal.
You note public funding built foundational tech: NSF, DARPA, universities. True, but irrelevant to the conclusion. Public money funds research; private risk turns it into world changing companies. Capping rewards for that private step means fewer breakthroughs get commercialized. Basic incentive economics.
You warn of revolutions from inequality, citing history. History says the opposite: Britain’s brutal industrial inequality drove the fastest living standard gains ever. Real wages soared eventually. 1848 and 1917 stemmed from tyranny and war, not rich people. America’s Gilded Age was far more unequal than today and built the 20th century prosperity engine. Punishing success slows the growth that lifts everyone.
You claim a wealth tax boosts innovation. Reality: nearly every OECD country that tried one scrapped it (France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark) because it raised peanuts, sparked capital flight, and hurt growth. The track record is a total failure.
And the mirror moment: Washington already hauls in record $5 trillion plus yearly yet runs trillion dollar deficits through waste, fraud, and bloat. Hundreds of billions vanish annually on duplication and improper payments. Before inventing new taxes on the tiny group creating real value, demand government live within its means. Jensen Huang and Elon Musk allocate capital with ruthless efficiency; government is the worst allocator on earth. Feeding its irresponsibility is not justice; it is complicity.
Wealth is not a fixed pile to slice up; it is the return on risk that grows the entire economy. Taxing it punitively does not enlarge anyone’s share; it shrinks tomorrow’s pie for all.
A billionaire tax would not save innovation or democracy. It would cripple both. Your position is not just wrong; it is upside down.
My district is $18 trillion, nearly 1/3 of US stock market in a 50 mile radius. We have 5 companies with a market cap over a trillion dollar companies. If I can stand up for a billionaire tax, this is not a hard position for 434 other members or 100 Senators.
Those saying that we wouldn't have a future NVIDIA in the Bay if this tax goes into effect are glossing over Silicon Valley history. Jensen was at LSI Logic and his co-founders at Sun. He started NVIDIA in my district because of the semiconductor talent, Stanford, innovation networks, and venture funding. We have 37 times the VC money as Austin given the innovation ecosystem & Florida isn't even on the map. Jensen wasn't thinking I won't start this company because I may have to one day pay a 1 percent tax on my billions. He built here because the talent is here.
AI was created with our tax dollars. ImageNet was created by Fei-Fei Li at Stanford using NSF money. This was a visual database. Hinton presented at an ImageNet conference his famous paper. The seminal innovation in tech is done by thousands often with public funds. NSF, DARPA, Stanford, Berkley, San Jose State, Santa Clara and the UCs are the foundation for what has made Silicon Valley a powerhouse. It's why we won 5 Nobel Prizes this year in the UC system.
Yes, we need entrepreneurs to commercialize disruptive innovation. Stanford blazed a trail in licensing technology & partnering with the private sector. The university enabled companies like Google which began as a research project called BackRub, looking at back links to rank pages. And entrepreneurs like Brin & Page reap huge rewards when they succeed. But the idea that they would not start companies to make billions, or take advantage of an innovation cluster, if there is a 1-2 percent tax on their staggering wealth defies common sense and economic theory @paulkrugman @DAcemogluMIT @baselinescene.
We cannot have a nation with extreme concentration of wealth in a few places but where 70 percent of Americans believe the American dream is dead and healthcare, childcare, housing, education is unaffordable. What will stifle American innovation, what will make us fall behind China, is if we see further political dysfunction and social unrest, if we fail to cultivate the talent in every American and in every city and town.
The industrial revolution saw soaring inequality in Britain for nearly 60 years. On the continent, it lead to revolutions in France with worker uprisings (1848) and contributed to one in Russia (1917). America's central challenge is to make sure the AI revolution works for all of us, not just tech billionaires.
So yes a billionaire tax is good for American innovation which depends on a strong and thriving American democracy.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The proposed California billionaire tax is a one-time 5% levy on net worth exceeding $1 billion for residents as of January 1, 2026 (optionally payable over 5 years with interest), not a 1% annual tax for 5 years. oag.ca.gov/system/files/i… lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis…
Well said. If the wealth tax passes, this fundamentally will alter California and go against everything our founding fathers lived and died for.
There are way better solutions for bringing about affordable, quality healthcare to people of all socioeconomic classes.
A wealth tax is a contrived way of winning votes from the lazy and shirking accountability for being a part of a broken, inefficient, and wasteful California government.
why not just raise income tax rates?
because your real intent is not to just “provide healthcare”.
you’re masking that you are proposing the creation of, for the first time in the 250 years of this American republic, an organized government seizure of private property from citizens.
you’re calling it a “wealth tax” or a “billionaires tax” or “millionaires tax” or whatever nom du jour polls well. but at the end of the day, it’s the seizure of private property from citizens by the government. citizens that earned money, paid their fair taxes on those earnings (53% if they live in California) and are now being told they need to hand over after-tax assets because the government has failed to provide promised services with the revenue it’s collected, and are now re-casting their own failure to be a socio-economic inequity that must be justly resolved... a slippery slope that has never gone anywhere good (see economic effects in USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, France and Norway wealth tax etc.)
the American founders fled tyranny in Europe and this amazing nation was populated by immigrants (myself and your parents) from around the world not just looking for a “better life” but for a place where they could have freedom from tyrannical governments that can take what they want from private citizens. a great nation borne of property rights, the rule of law, and endowed freedoms to believe, speak, or act. these principles led to the greatest run of innovations, successes, and widespread increase in prosperity, for all citizens, ever seen.
the citizens, the individuals, not the institutions, delivered this progress. those who invented, who toiled, who bled, who sacrificed, who took risk and persevered, who led, and who changed the world, are not charlatans, kleptocrats, or oligarchs. they’re what made us all better off. prosperity is a measure of america’s success, not its failure.
it is your principle that is so offensive, as evidenced by the broad disdain for your flippant flirtation with the darkest of human fantasy - socialism. you and other neo-socialists have led so many of us to reflect on America’s history and what it is becoming. that now leads so many to consider, so unnecessarily, leaving their homes for a place where everyone stands up to shout down the principle you suggest. because if your ideas are now considered moderate, it’s clear this titanic is sinking.
that a “simple tax” of taking assets that have been earned, through toil and tribulation, rightly taxed, and preserved, should now be unjustly seized, is your solution to a problem of obvious government mismanagement and outright fraud, tells us that your true motivation lies not in giving people healthcare but in cutting down success and deleting the system of prosperity and opportunity for all.
i don’t care, and neither should anyone else, what the sum total market value of a private citizens private assets might be. it is none of my business and should be none of yours. because, again, once you open that pandora’s box, we might as well study Lord of the Flies … there is literally nothing stopping 51% of citizens demanding that their government go out and seize 100% of the private property of the 49%.
want to give healthcare to people in need? do your job and fix healthcare. make it affordable. want to be lazy about it? then do your job lazily and raise income taxes.
want to take private property from private citizens who have paid their fair share of taxes and legally earned their property, then honestly declare that it is envy, not inequity, that you strive to resolve…
Matthew Liu retweeted
This idiotic attack, by an inept California politician, on a productive California resident caused him to leave. It should not be lost on anyone that this has already cost California $10’s of billions in lost taxes from Elon and the plethora of well paid employees that followed him out of the state.
That number will exceed $200B+ as SpaceX goes public and Tesla grows even more and whatever amazing new companies he starts from now…in Texas.
Said differently, had California embraced its innovators and worked with them to find ways to support them, they could count on hundreds of billions in tax revenue.
Without him, they’ve gone from surpluses to massive deficits.
The will now ask you for the money.
What happens if even more entrepreneurs leave? What jobs will be left in California? Who will pay the taxes?
I’m glad Elon left and took his tax revenue with him. It has helped expose how fiscally broken California is.
If it is not obvious to you, it should be.
Yet these politicians refuse to change. Refuse to do audits and spend less. Instead, they now target others down the list and keep asking for more. There is no amount of “more money” that will fix theft, financial profligacy and mismanagement by incompetent elected officials.
We need wholesale reforms in California before the state goes bankrupt.
We probably have until 2030 at best.
