It’s all eyes on the Fed as the next Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting fast approaches…
We’re a little less than two weeks out from the meeting and from hearing Chair Jerome Powell’s decision on whether to keep up this stubborn streak of sustaining high interest rates… or if we’ll finally see a rate cut – the first since December last year.
We won’t know for certain until then. We do still have key inflation data readings to be released before the meeting on September 16–17 – the August Producer Price Index (PPI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) reports – which may influence Powell’s decision.
But with yet another exceptionally weak jobs report signaling a struggling labor market – and consistent pressure from the White House to cut rates – the futures markets are pricing in about a 90% likelihood of a Fed Funds rate cut this month.
The odds are good. The expectation is that this meeting will see the first of several cuts made to lower interest rates.
And while those expectations have certainly had the markets moving, the Fed’s interest rate decision isn’t the only factor affecting the markets this month… and into the end of 2025.
Our colleague, Larry Benedict, has been watching for another key Wall Street event on the horizon. Set to strike the same week that the Fed makes its interest rate decision, it has the potential to create massive swings… which, as a trader with decades of experience profiting in choppy markets, is very much Larry’s bread and butter.
He’s been using this phenomenon to bank outsized profits for decades… and he believes all the buzz surrounding this month’s Fed decision could very likely ramp up the market activity even more than usual.
Larry’s hosting a special broadcast next Wednesday, September 10, at 8 p.m. ET, to help people get ready to trade ahead of the Fed meeting and Wall Street’s big week.
If you want to join him to get the details, you can sign up here with one click.
Now, on to this week’s AMA…
Hello Jeff,
As always, a big thank you to you and your staff for a fantastic job. I’m so impressed you can keep up such a workload with the challenges you are facing. Hope you get well soon.
I ran across several articles claiming mercury could be used as a fuel for nuclear fusion and create gold as an end product. It sounds like an alchemist’s dream.
They do use the Tokomak reactor you have written about several times. But is this even believable? Not just the creation of gold, but also using mercury as a source. If handled safely, I suppose it can’t be more dangerous than radioactive materials.
Thanks again.
– Russ F.
Hi Russ,
What a fun question, and I’m impressed that you picked up on this development. Marathon Fusion is a very small, early-stage private company, and it just published its research about a month ago.
I was actually waiting until their paper was peer reviewed before deciding to write about it, but you beat me to it. So let’s jump into this very interesting idea.
So first of all, the short answer is no, mercury cannot be used as a fuel for a nuclear fusion reactor. Marathon Fusion has conceptualized using a tokamak reactor, as you mentioned, which would use a deuterium-tritium fuel for the fusion reaction.
That’s all very normal, but where it gets interesting is in how Marathon proposes using mercury. Shown below is a geometric cross-section of a tokamak fusion reactor. The donut-shaped core (shown in blue) is where the fusion plasma is contained.
Cross-section of tokamak reactor | Source: Marathon Fusion
The yellow in both pictures represents a first breeding blanket. Usually, the breeding blankets are made of lithium. The blankets capture the high-energy neutrons and breed tritium, which is needed for new tritium fuel production.
But by putting a mercury breeding blanket before the Lithium blanket, Marathon can theoretically produce gold. The neutrons trigger a reaction with the 198mercury, which produces 197mercury plus two neutrons. Then, the 197mercury decays into 197gold in about six days. There are a few caveats, though…
This kind of transmutation should work. However, in order to make it possible, we’d need a nuclear fusion reactor using deuterium-tritium as fuel.
It is important to note that Marathon Fusion has only raised about $5 million to date. They simply don’t have the capital to do much at all. But perhaps that’s the point of this research… to get investors excited and raise capital.
It’s an interesting technological idea because it adds an additional economic incentive to the operations of nuclear fusion as an energy source. Marathon estimates that five thousand kilograms of gold could be produced a year per gigawatt of electricity produced.
And to use Marathon’s own words, “[this] marks the beginning of a new Golden Age.” A golden pun.
Hello Jeff,
You may not remember it, but I wrote to you back in 2021 about pursuing a career in technology as an economics major. A lot has happened since then (including me living in Japan for a year and a half 😉), and I’ve decided I’d like to pursue a career in the burgeoning field of blockchain technology.
Right now, I’m taking a class on cryptocurrencies at my university, and I’m also going to join the cryptocurrency club as an officer this year. One of the major goals of the club is to help students find jobs within the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.
The only problem right now is that it’s really hard! The job market is weak (especially for students), and it’s hard to find connections at blockchain companies. Companies like Ripple have a whole section for interns that is completely empty.
What I’m wondering is what do you think is the best thing we can do right now to help us get involved in the blockchain space? Most of us are business students who are passionate about this space and have a little experience investing and trading, but we’re just not sure how else to move forward.
Any advice is appreciated.
– Brigham M.
Hello Brigham,
Yes, I do remember. That’s fantastic that you took the opportunity to live in Japan. I’m assuming that you really enjoyed it and had a great time. It is such a fantastic country.
One of the best things that anyone can do is to go live and work outside of their home country for a few years in a culture that is dramatically different than their own. It’s a real eye-opener, and if you make an earnest attempt to learn and understand with an open mind, it becomes a phenomenal growth experience.
I know that you’ve been reading my work, so I know that you know the last few years have been horrible for the blockchain/crypto industry due to the policies of the Biden Administration.
Had the people who were in control remained in control, the industry would have all but collapsed in the U.S. Naturally, the environment for jobs and employment during those years was not good.
So your timing is actually great. Right out of the gates this year, after the Trump administration took control, executive orders were issued with clear support for the industry.
And as we know, the GENIUS Act has already been signed into law regarding stablecoin regulations. And there is already a draft of the CLARITY Act – the legislation that is designed to provide a regulatory framework for market structure for the blockchain industry and all digital assets.
Once the CLARITY Act is signed into law, the floodgates will open for the industry.
With a clear regulatory framework, the blockchain industry will have the ability to invest and build the next generation of internet and financial technology. There will be opportunities everywhere.
Now, as for your specific question about how to find work in the blockchain industry coming out of school…
While there are some similarities in finding a job without any relevant experience, there are some dynamics that are unique to the blockchain industry.
The whole industry got its start as a grassroots effort to build something completely different than what existed before.
It wasn’t built by large corporations with research and development efforts. It was built by technologists and computer scientists who believed in self-sovereignty, a healthy distrust of governments, and the desire to build decentralized networks that didn’t rely on untrustworthy middlemen extracting their pound of flesh on each and every transaction.
Because of that, the industry operates largely on an open-source ethos. It is very community-based, where members of any given blockchain project are collaborating and contributing ideas and software code openly to advance projects without any formal kind of operating structure or even employment contracts.
One of the big decisions that you and your friends will have to spend a lot of time deciding on is which route you would like to take as a business/economics major.
For a student with a computer science background, a more technical path would be an obvious choice. But for business/economics majors, there are other options that might be of interest:
And it’s this last category that is very native to the blockchain industry. Projects and jobs are typically from the ground up. It is quite normal for a blockchain project or company to reach out to members of their community who are visible, engaged, and making contributions to their project to join their team.
Often, there is no formal job posting. It doesn’t matter so much where we went to school. It’s about showing passion, commitment, contribution, and specific areas of strong interest that attract companies to individual contributors.
To that end, one piece of advice I can give is to try and figure out:
Coming out of school, I know that might be a daunting task to have answers to the above two. But I strongly recommend picking an answer to those two so that you can focus your efforts on bringing yourself up to speed to become well-versed in those areas.
Ben Lilly, my senior crypto analyst, and I discussed and agreed that ideally, once you have those two answers and increase your knowledge base on the projects that intersect your interests, it is important to get involved with those communities.
Set up an X account, use a simple and descriptive sentence in your bio that encapsulates your interest, follow those people and projects that you are interested in, and when you have something interesting to contribute, do it – engage.
Also, join the project-specific forum boards, whether they are on Telegram or Discord or Slack, etc. Engage when you have something to contribute.
If the community needs some work done, offer to help. And if you have the knowledge and motivation, you can write longer-form essays that you can post on X or even on a blog on Substack.
What I described is the way it really gets done, and through those connections that you build, work opportunities will develop.
With that said, there are more traditional job-seeking approaches, but those are typically limited to more “corporate” blockchain companies.
For example, Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and Circle are three examples of more corporate blockchain companies that have either gone the IPO route (Coinbase/Circle) or are planning to do so (Ripple/Polymarket). This is where you’ll be more likely to find formal job boards and an application process.
I understand that some may not have the financial resources or support to work and contribute without a salary for six months or a year. In that case, if unable to find employment directly in a blockchain project, I’d recommend trying to find an entry-level job in a sector directly related to your Web3 area of interest.
For example, if you’re interested I derivatives, find an entry-level job at a bank or a hedge fund and learn the ropes in derivatives in traditional finance, and then study crypto derivatives in your spare time.
In time, you’ll develop some expertise that is directly translatable to the blockchain industry in a specific application of blockchain technology.
I am invested in Starfighters Space, which is currently a private company.
They will be a direct competitor to SpaceX for low-orbit satellite delivery. They are nearing the end of their Reg A offering, with 98.2% of their $35 million completed. Although it is still open for investment right now.
Are you aware of this company? I have not heard you mention it or write about it. I was surprised, since it is a SpaceX direct competitor. I would be interested in your thoughts about this company.
– Paul K.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for writing in. Yes, it’s been some time since I’ve written about Starfighters Space, though it did come up in an AMA in the past… nearly a year ago, in fact.
For the benefit of those who don’t know it, Starfighters Space is a private company that, in the past, has been known for its pilot training programs and civilian flights on its F-104 fighter jets.
It has undergone something of a rebrand and is attempting to shift its focus to the aerospace industry, using its aircraft to launch payloads into space instead.
When I last dug into Starfighters Space, it was trying to raise capital via Reg A+ crowdfunding regulations. The circumstances surrounding the company at the time gave me pause…
[There] are no notable institutional investors who are active in the aerospace industry backing this company.
The company had zero revenues from operations in both 2022 and 2023 and only small amounts of revenue in those years from training and test flights. This is a company with more than $11.5 million in liabilities that will suffer dilution due to a number of issued warrants and convertible debt that have been issued.
It’s raising at a $65 million valuation, which, from my perspective, is way too high, and with a number of related party transactions that give me concern.
Readers wrote in with questions about Starfighters’ potential cost advantages of being able to launch satellites into orbit more cheaply than SpaceX could… as well as questions regarding other pilots who have expressed concerns that payload sizes would be insupportable with Starfighters’ jets.
Concerns that I felt were valid…
[The] question was whether or not this company could mount a competitive offering to SpaceX because it claims that it will be able to launch satellites more cheaply than SpaceX.
First off, let’s consider the basics. An F-104 is a fighter jet that can carry a rocket within which there is a payload (i.e., the satellite). This means F-104s are only capable of carrying very small satellites – small enough to fit inside the cone of the rocket carried under the belly of the F-104.
The payload is only about 100 kilograms (kg). That’s it.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 stands 70 meters tall (229.6 feet) with a payload of 22,800 kilograms to low Earth orbit (LEO). These two companies aren’t even operating in the same space.
But what’s far more concerning is that Starfighters Space uses incorrect data in its offering.
Source: Starfighters Space
Note what it claims to be the Falcon 9 cost/kg to low Earth orbit – $16,093 (there was even a typo of the cents symbol).
The actual cost to LEO per kg is as low as $1,520, and typically well below $5,000/kg. Note Starfighters’ “initial” costs of $22,000 dropping at “scale” to $15,000. SpaceX is already as low as $1,520/kg, and once the SpaceX Starship is operational, those costs will drop to around $100/kg.
Even when I look at the RocketLab data, the above image claims RocketLab’s Electron is capable of 150 kg to LEO, but the actual number is 300 kg to LEO.
These numbers appear to have been chosen to make Starfighters look more competitive than it actually might be. This is false information, which paints an incorrect picture of the investment opportunity. This kind of nonsense makes me upset, as investors are being misled.
Bolded for emphasis, but I don’t entirely trust the information Starfighters Space has been dispersing. I have some concerns about how it portrays its data as well as its ability to follow through on its claims.
I took a brief look at the latest offering materials, and there are still a lot of red flags. The company is touting multi-billion IPO’s like Uber, DoorDash, Lyft as a way to suggest the potential of their IPO, which in their words:
After this round, we believe we will be sufficiently capitalized to consider pursuing a direct listing (or traditional IPO).
I find this to be a ridiculous statement, as the company is loaded with liabilities, related party transactions, and doesn’t have the capital to support being a public company.
And if it isn’t clear already, if it did try to go public, it would be a tiny microcap, which I would expect to trade well below a $30 million valuation.
If you would like additional information, I wrote about this offering in The Bleeding Edge – Reason to be Optimistic About Nuclear Energy.
So, to sum it up, Starfighters Space is not a direct competitor to SpaceX in any way, and there are many things in their filings that are of concern to me.
I hope that perspective helps.
Sincerely,
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
