Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | December 30, 2021

Bitcoin’s performance in 2021 and outlook for 2022

As 2021 is coming to a close it is clear that the Bitcoin market has not fulfilled the promises that the onchain data seemed to indicate. To say it in a different way, I was way too optimistic in my predictions of where Bitcoin would end this year. Even just 2 months ago I thought Bitcoin would hit at least $100K by the end of 2021, but that didn’t happen. When I don’t get my predictions right it’s important to look what assumptions were wrong and how they could impact the future, and that’s what I am doing in this post.

In case you are not into Bitcoin on a daily basis, Bitcoin still did quite well in 2021. It went up from around $28000 in late December 2020 to about $48,000 right now, so an increase of about 70%. Not bad compared to most other asset classes, but it’s lower than average for Bitcoin. During the year Bitcoin has been quite volatile, hitting $64,000 before going down to $29,000 before climbing up to $69,000 in October. But the volatility has actually been less than in other Bitcoin cycles.

So what happened and why did Bitcoin not follow its price trajectory from 2013 and 2017? I think I (and many Bitcoin analysts with me) underestimated how quickly Bitcoin matured over the past year. What I mean with that, is that the price is not only determined by mining supply and spot buying & selling like it was during the past 2 halving cycles.

A large part of the market now consists of institutional investors that mainly take derivative positions through futures and options. This means that each time the price overshoots (like when it hit $64K in April and $69K in November) they start shorting it, leading to long squeezes of other investors, which in turns leads to a Bitcoin price crash. The result of that is that you don’t see a real mania phase anymore, because the price starts to go down before FOMO (fear of missing out) sets in among retail investors. So without institutional shorting I believe we might have been over $100K now or potentially even a lot higher.

Are institutions bad for the Bitcoin price? No, they may actually be a good thing because the other side of the equation is that they will also prevent Bitcoin from going down 80-90% like it did in the past after a blow off top. We will still see Bitcoin going down 50% in the future, but if it goes down much more than that institutions will step in to take long derivative positions. So I expect that shocks to the Bitcoin price will be a lot less going forward. The long term Bitcoin price will not change, just the way we will get there. Bitcoin will be less volatile, which may actually lead to even faster adoption.

It does mean that some of the short-term models that are purely based on onchain data may have to be revised. For example, Plan B’s floor model that had predicted prices of at least $100K in Q4 this year completely missed its mark. I believe that is because you don’t see derivate positions onchain, so you miss out on a large part of the action. You are literally comparing apples from 2017 to oranges from 2021. I don’t know how his model works, so this is of course speculation, but I do think focusing purely on onchain data might not be sufficient anymore. This will only get worse in the future, especially if more people flock into the US Bitcoin ETFs that only use futures. You simply don’t see those flows onchain, but they still drive the market.

There are a number of other reasons why Bitcoin did not hit $100K yet. However, they seem less important to me and only have a short-term impact. Among them the fact that Chinese exchanges like Huobi informed their users that they can’t sell their Bitcoin anymore after Dec. 31, leading to many people selling their coins and depressing the price. Year-end balancing for institutions also plays a role, as does tax loss harvesting for investors that bought BTC at higher prices during the year. Although they all have an impact before the end of the year they should also lead to increasing prices in early 2022.

Of course there are other things driving the price as well. One of them is that the Bitcoin mining market changed completely since the 2016 halving. When we started Hut 8 Mining in 2017 and took it public in early 2018, we were the first publicly traded Bitcoin mining company. We decided to HODL our Bitcoin instead of selling them and to simply raise money from capital markets to cover our expenses. Since then many other companies copied that strategy and because of that a large part of the mined Bitcoin do not hit the market anymore. This has big implications for the impact of the Bitcoin halving and on models that are based on this. Although the halving will still have some impact, it is significantly less than it would have been without the publicly listed Bitcoin miners.

The same is true for companies like MicroStrategy that keep on buying new Bitcoin and hold them on their balance sheets. It seems pretty straightforward to me that this could lead to even higher prices from PlanB’s S2F model. There are simply less coins hitting the market, so the resulting price should be higher. Because his model is currently at the lower end of its price band it means other things are keeping the price down for now.

All in all I continue to be very bullish for Bitcoin. Fundamentally nothing has changed, the market structure is simply different from before. Unfortunately it makes onchain analysis less important, but it is still very valuable to understand what type of investor is buying and who is selling. I believe Bitcoin will keep on breaking new records in 2022, but likely with less volatility than in previous cycles. When we will hit $250K or $500K I don’t know. It might be faster because more coins are taken off the market. Or it may take longer because we see less FOMO because institutions prevent 10X returns within a year. However, if you have a long term horizon it should not really make much of a difference, so just keep on HODLing.

Disclaimer: As always, this is my own opinion and not meant as investment advice!

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | October 10, 2021

How to make money in the current market

It looks like the world is heading into a period of high inflation, mainly because Central Banks keep on printing huge amounts of money. Although I see deflation as well, especially in high tech products, the inflationary effect caused by quantitive easing will likely be much larger than the deflation caused by innovation and more efficient production (Wright’s Law). Money simply has to go somewhere and right now most of it seems to be ending up in the stock market and in real estate. I have thought about these effects a lot and my investment strategy for the next couple of years is based on this. This post describes my thinking process and in which categories and companies I would invest if I would have cash laying around. Crypto is of course a large part of it, but there are several other asset classes and categories that will completely outperform the market.

Crypto
To start, I believe crypto is changing the world and will eventually replace the current financial system. This is partially because crypto is superior to traditional finance (cheaper, faster and less centralized), but also because Central Banks are not doing their job and inflating their currencies away. Most people still don’t understand crypto and don’t see what progress has been made over the years. However, I think that every serious investor should spend time to learn at least the basics of decentralized financial systems. Just dismissing it without doing your homework is intellectually lazy and will cost you a lot of money. Crypto is the best hedge against Central Bank spending and inflation over the long run.

Within crypto I think Bitcoin has the best risk/return ratio, it will most likely go up another 20-50 times over the next couple of years and the downside risk is very limited. Yes, BTC is volatile and has seen huge drawdowns, but every single time it comes back stronger and makes new all time highs. See it as a long term investment and don’t sell if there is a sell off. If you don’t know how to invest in Bitcoin itself there are now many proxies, such as Bitcoin ETNs or ETFs (Canada has several ETFs, the US will likely get one soon), companies that hold large amounts of BTC on their balance sheet (MicroStrategy) or Bitcoin miners like Hut 8.

DeFi and other tokens
Although I am a Bitcoin maximalist, I do recognize that altcoins have a place in the ecosystem as well. DeFi (decentralized finance) and NFTs will eventually take over the traditional financial system and most of it is built on other blockchains. Having some exposure there makes sense in my opinion. The easiest way for traditional investors is through investments in listed companies like Galaxy Digital, tokens.com (staking tokens) or decentralized finance platform Wonderfi. They all have research teams that invest in the best teams and tokens, so if you don’t have the time for a deep dive these are good alternatives.

Minimum return should be 15%
Outside crypto I would stay away from traditional manufacturing or from old business models. Even though many of these companies grow around 10% per year, that’s actually not enough to beat asset inflation. The way to look at this is to compare the growth to the increase in the money supply, which has been about 15% per year over the last couple of years for the USD and most other fiat currencies. In other words, if a company grows less than 15% per year it’s just the Central Bank that’s keeping it alive. Anybody who makes less than 15% per year is losing money, but for some reason many investors are still happy with 10% returns per year.

Network effects
We are living in an exponential age, an age where a few companies will do extremely well (they will grow exponentially) but where most companies will end up as zombie companies. These businesses will survive but barely. Most of the surplus will end up with a few companies and if you want to do well you have to be an investor in them. What I look for when I try to find these companies are network effects: the more people use them the more valuable these companies become. That’s why for example Facebook, Google, Apple,Tesla and Amazon are outperforming most other companies. Even if we would get a stock market crash (unlikely in my opinion unless Central Banks will stop printing money) these companies will keep on doing well (they will go down a bit but will recover quickly).

There are a number of ETFs that are active in this space if you want to outsource the selection of the right companies to professionals. Personally I am a huge fan of Cathie Woods’ ARK ETFs. She understands network effects and the effect of communities and is using that herself. ARK announces every single trade they do and Cathie does regular podcasts in which she talks about her investment thesis and her vision for the future.

MRNA
New technologies that can change the world are also always on my radar. When COVID started it became quickly clear to me that MRNA vaccines could be a game changer, not just for the pandemic but for many other diseases as well. One company that has done extremely well is Moderna, now well-known because of the COVID vaccine. Because of this they now have a huge war chest, meaning they will likely be on the forefront of future vaccines for for example cancer or HIV. This is an example of a company that has the potential to outperform almost any other stock in the middle to long term.

Metaverse
The Metaverse is another ‘technology’ that is not yet on the radar of most traditional investors. A metaverse is basically a virtual world in which you can live your life, one where you can work, play and communicate with others. A world where you can show off your wealth through for example NFTs or where you can simply hang out with friends. There are a number of metaverses out there already and my expectation is that they will all be interoperable, meaning that you can easily go from one metaverse to the other. It’s still very early days but a few early winners seem to be emerging already, such as Decentraland, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space. If you look at the ones that come from the pure-gameplay side there are among others Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft. Some of these are listed companies, others offer tokens or you can invest in virtual real estate in these metaverses and potentially make a killing. High risk but also a potentially very high return. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are also becoming active in this space, so they are good proxies if you want some exposure here. And of course the chip makers that generate these worlds on normal screens, in virtual reality or augmented reality.

AI
As I have argued before, artificial intelligence wil eventually lead to most people losing their jobs. That could be a good thing if they still can get paid (e.g. through a universal basic income) and if they can do something more meaningful with their lives. I am not optimistic though, the transformation to a low employment economy will be painful, especially for the older generations that have never learned to make their own money. However, for companies that use AI to replace human beings the advantages are huge: for a one time investment they will never have to pay wages anymore. This may sound harsh, but now that many people don’t want to work in restaurants or retail shops anymore (the signs for new staff are in shop fronts all over the world), employers can either opt to increase wages to attract people (leading to more inflation) or if possible look for AI solutions. Restaurants will be the first to implement robot waiters or chefs, and people will accept it knowing that otherwise the restaurant wouldn’t be able to find staff. But once they are replaced these jobs will never come back. The same for truck drivers, there is a huge shortage of them in the UK and in the EU that leads to all kinds of supply chain issues. We are pretty close to self-driving trucks and the supply chain problems will push governments to allow them. These jobs will be gone forever.

Now the question is who will make money off of these robots. Most likely initially the retailers and restaurants, but I would not be surprised if robot makers will eventually start leasing them out. This means less investments for small companies and long term cash flow streams for the companies creating the AI and robots. These cash flows could be huge, they could be close to all the wages of the people that are being replaced – not just in the sectors that I just mentioned, but in almost any sector. The companies that will capture this surplus will be among the most powerful in the world. I think chip makers will be among the ones that will benefit most from this, but Tesla seems to also understand where the world is going and will try to capture a large share of it. Next to that I think Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon will be big players in this field. They may seems overvalued based on classic financial metrics, but these metrics are based on a linearly growing world, not an exponential one in which the top 5% will get the vast majority of all future profits.

Climate change
Another big opportunity for investors will be climate change. I have been worried about it for a long time because governments weren’t doing enough, but after COVID I realized that governments are pretty much clueless (or at the very least incompetent) about how to solve a big crisis. That means climate change will lead to huge disasters, but that will also lead to solutions created by entrepreneurs. COVID taught me that we won’t come together as humanity to solve climate change, we will fight among ourselves and many people will not believe that climate change is real, not even when their house is under water or on fire. We will not reduce our CO2 output, at least not sufficient to solve the problems we are facing.

That leaves carbon capture and sequestration combined with the emergence of new clean energy sources, and that’s where the biggest opportunities will be over the next decade. There is huge innovation and investments in renewables going on. But that won’t be enough, we need bigger sources of energy. I believe nuclear will solve this eventually, maybe through smaller and safer nuclear fission reactors, but more likely through a breakthrough in nuclear fusion. I think nuclear fusion, which generates no radiation and basically uses water as a the main ingredient for unlimited energy, is very close to becoming a reality. Of course I know all the stories about this being the case for 30 years already and that it’s always another decade off, but I think the investments that are needed to get there will become a reality because of climate change. Investments in renewable energy, but especially in nuclear fusion will have an incredible pay off for investors.

At the same time I believe carbon credits or carbon removals might be a solution to steer the world into a carbon-free future. I won’t go into the technical details here, but in short companies that reduce carbon emissions or remove carbons from the air will get paid for this with credits. This means that you can pay people not to cut down forests for example, but it also will make projects feasible that are currently not profitable. Companies like Carbon Engineering will depend on these credits and more investments will flow into the space because of these credits. At the same time most companies will have to get to net zero emissions in their operations, but in reality most can never do that. That means they will have to buy these credits or removal rights in order to keep operating or to keep their shareholders happy. I think investing in these credits could lead to returns similar to those of Bitcoin. There is a risk that governments will step in to keep prices artificially low at first, but eventually the climate change pressure will be too high and the market will take over. Over the past 12 months EU carbon credits have gone from about EUR 22 to over EUR 60 and even though ‘experts’ don’t see them going up much more (just like they said with Bitcoin at $100 in 2013), it think this is still very cheap. It’s simply supply and demand (just like with BTC) and with demand going sky high in this decade while supply is lagging behind, prices will have to go up much further. I think an investment in carbon credits or in carbon removals has the potential to outperform almost any other investment.

Conclusion
Investors will need to make at least 15% per year to offset the inflation effects of quantitative easing. I think the sectors, companies and investment instruments that I outlined in this post will likely lead to much higher returns than just 15% per year. I personally believe now might be the best time ever to create wealth for many investors, if you are willing to take risks you should be able to make much higher returns in several of the sectors.

Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion and no investment advice. I do have positions in many of these sectors or am looking at deploying capital in them. Do your own research and never put more money in than you are willing to lose.

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | September 29, 2021

Travel in times of COVID

After not traveling much for the past year or so (my last trip was a 6-week trip to China, exactly a year ago with 2 weeks quarantine in China and 2 weeks upon my return to Canada) I decided to do some serious ‘revenge travel’. We spent most of the summer in Canada on boats and at my summer home, and started traveling internationally again about 6 weeks ago. Since then we have been to the Bahamas, New York City (twice), The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Monaco. It was an interesting experience because every single country has different regulations and sometimes it’s not clear when you arrive what these regulations are.

In Europe most countries don’t require COVID tests anymore, and if they do we decided to skip those countries (sorry Italy!). But in North America you need them each time you travel. Canada requires PCR tests every time you return, which is a bit of a hassle. The US and the Bahamas are fine with antigen tests, which only take a few minutes and are not as uncomfortable as the PCR tests. The good thing is that you can get these tests anywhere in N America: in New York City you can even get them for free in mobile vans that are parked on the main streets in Manhattan, and in the Bahamas they can come to your home or hotel to do the COVID test for you. Face masks are required everywhere (even outside) in the Bahamas and Monaco, but most other countries are more relaxed and only require them indoors. In The Netherlands you can now even go indoors without masks, it’s the only country where I have seen this so far (Canada had this over the summer, but they changed back to indoor masks after the delta variant hit).

In the Bahamas we stayed at our own place instead of a resort, but in order to enter hotels, resorts or restaurants you had to provide your COVID test results. What we didn’t realize until after a few days, is that there was a 10 pm curfew in effect. We had not seen it announced anywhere, not even at the airport, and resorts seem to have been exempted from it, because we spent several nights at restaurants at the Atlantis until after 10 pm. However, when we went to a local beach side restaurant around 8 pm they told us they were closed already because of the 10 pm curfew. We literally had no idea, but we suddenly understood why Michi had been stopped by police after 10 pm one night after visiting a friend in a nearby resort. The police just asked where she was going and when they realized she was not a local they let her go, without even telling here about the curfew.

We also made a road trip through Europe, which was very enjoyable. Because of COVID it wasn’t very busy on the roads and we never had to book hotels in advance, so we could just decide to take a hotel without planning ahead. Hotels were quite affordable as well, at least cheaper than before, simply because they are competing for less travellers. Restaurant reservations were not needed, except for some of the top restaurants in Monaco during the yacht show, which means you can decide last minute what, where and when you want to eat.

Quarantine is not required anymore as long as you are fully vaccinated. You do need to show your vaccination proof in every European country we visited if you want to have dinner or even just a coffee in a bar or restaurant (just like in Canada, the US and the Bahamas). Europe has its own QR code system that is incompatible with the Canadian vaccine passport, but we never had any issues with our vaccine cards. The countries that have had the system for a couple of weeks already seem to have fully integrated it into their way of life, nobody complains about it and even at McDonalds people simply scan their code before entering. However in Holland where the QR code system was only introduced a few days ago a vocal minority is still strongly against it and some restaurants are even threatened with closure because the owners don’t want to scan QR codes.

Personally I don’t think governments should force people to take vaccines if they do not want to take them (I am pro-vaccine, but think it’s an overreach of government power). I wish everyone would take the vaccine, but if they don’t I am against forcing them and it simply means they will get COVID within the next year anyway. After seeing how well the system works all over the world I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to fight against it, it’s simply not a hill that’s worth to die on. There are much worse things going on in society that people seem to take for granted. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories about governments using vaccine passports to get more power, in my opinion governments are just incompetent. I have seen it with Ivermectin, about which I wrote on this blog back in January this year. I thought governments would be able to understand how well it works (the data is there for all to see), but they are simply too busy and seem to follow the mainstream media. And indeed since then the media turned it into a ‘animal deworming medicine’, instead of an almost-free pharmaceutical that has been used by billions of people with hardly any side effects since the 1970s. Again, not a hill to die on, and I have had my own supply for months already.

Anyway, I don’t really want to turn this blog post into a discussion about vaccines or medicine, but just want to point out that things are similar all over the Europe and N America. Of course most of Asia, Australia and NZ are still very different (let alone Africa and S America), but they will get there as well. I am glad I can travel again, intercontinental planes between Europa and N America are full and most good restaurants seem to have survived. It will take another year before things are fully back to normal, but at least with some small inconveniences we can pretend that COVID is over. If you want to enjoy travel without too many other tourists around now is the time to go.

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | March 21, 2021

My favorite podcasts

In the summer of 2004 podcasting was invented and I was lucky to witness it first hand as a subscriber to Adam Curry’s blog (Adam invented podcasting with Dave Winer). I still remember downloading iPodder, which was the first app to automatically download new podcasts episodes from my laptop to my iPad. Podcasting actually led to the start of Tudou.com (and even Twitter!) and in 2014 I wrote a blog post about it: https://www.marc.cn/2014/08/10-years-of-podcasting-adam-curry-and-the-beginning-of-tudou-and-twitter.html. Interesting is that in the last paragraph of that post I wrote that podcasting never really became mainstream. Well guess what, it finally became mainstream about 15 years after it was invented. Almost everyone I know now listens to podcasts regularly and the best way to keep up with most subjects is to listen to podcasts.

There is so much good content out there that it’s impossible to listen to all podcasts that I want to listen to. I now probably listen at least 1-2 hours per day to podcasts every single day. I do that while running, while walking, while skiing, while driving, or simply when I am doing the dishes or when I am cooking. Every single moment where I don’t have to think about something I put on a podcast. I normally listen at 1.5-1.75 times the normal speed, but depending on the topic and the podcast I also listen to some at twice the normal speed. But despite that I still miss a lot of great content. I have not figured out how to solve that yet. I actually considered hiring someone to listen to podcasts for me and make summaries with time stamps. Maybe it might even be a business idea to do this for the top 100 blogs and sell subscriptions?

I have a list of favorite podcasts that I try to listen to each time they are published and several that I only listen to when I think the content is interesting. Below is the list of the main podcasts that I try to listen to every week:

What Bitcoin Did

Peter McCormack’s podcast in which he interviews experts in the Bitcoin field (note: only Bitcoin, no altcoins or non-Bitcoin projects). If you want to really understand Bitcoin and want to keep up with the latest news in the space this is one of the very best podcasts out there. I listen to almost every episode.

We Study Billionaires

Originally I ignored it because of the cheesy title, but once I checked out a few episodes I was hooked. This podcast is more about investing in general, but I tend to only listen to their crypto-related episodes. There are some real gems in this feed. I now probably listen to about half the episodes.

The Tim Ferriss show

One of the first podcasts that I listened to religiously. However because there is so much good other content now I started listening to it more selectively. I now maybe catch only about 1 out of every 4 episodes and often stop listening after 15 minutes if the interview is not what I had expected. That being said, I learned a ton from Tim over the years. Without him I would have not gotten into psychedelics (his podcasts changed my mind on it and because of that I started reading Michael Pollan’s book). The same for intermittent fasting and many health related topics.

The Peter Attia Drive

I first learned about Peter Attia through the Time Ferriss show, and if I remember it correctly Peter actually started podcasting because of Tim. I actually pay $15 per month to listen to Peter’s podcast, it’s an ultra-deep dive into maximizing health, longevity, fasting etc. Fascinating topics that I would normally not learn a lot about. Peter is a great interviewer. I listen to about half the episodes, but if I would have more time I would listen to all of them. Some are hard to understand at first but by doing a bit of research on the side you can gain incredible insights into health and healthcare.

a16z Podcast

This is the podcast of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and it has the occasional brilliant podcast, but most I now tend to skip. They now also start posting some Clubhouse recordings (despite the fact that Clubhouse does not allow recording their sessions, but I guess if you are the biggest investor you have special privileges). Check out their feed, there are probably a few older episodes that might interest you.

Exponential View with Azeem Azhar

Azeem has an excellent weekly (paid) newsletter that I subscribe to and I also listen to his podcasts regularly. Not all of the subjects interest me, but I always check them when a new one comes out. Wide ranging topics from AI to longevity, and from COVID to deep dives on some of the leading companies in the world.

The Pomp Podcast

Anthony Pompliano built a huge audience over the past couple of years and he is not only a good sales man, but also a decent interviewer. I don’t listen to most of his podcasts, but 2-3 times a month he has an interesting guest or topic and then I put it on my playlist. Topics are very wide ranging, so not just about crypto and decentralization.

The “What is Money” Show

This one should get a special mention, because it is an incredible 9-episode interview with Michael Saylor. This is a must-listen-to series if you really want to understand Bitcoin and why it will completely change the world. Michael is the CEO of Microstrategy and he went through the Bitcoin rabbit hole last year and his company is now one of the largest BTC holders in the world (close to 100,000 Bitcoin, so about $6 billion at current prices). He uses history to weave an incredible story about money, economics and Bitcoin. It’s quite a journey, but it’s well worth listening to (total time investment about 12 hours).

Others
I used to listen to Joe Rogan as well regularly, but since he moved to Spotify last November I have no heard any of his podcasts anymore. It’s a pity he sold out (I understand it of course), but I don’t like switching to a different podcast player so I likely won’t hear his podcasts anymore.

I do listen to some YouTube videocasts as well, I actually started to pay for YouTube Premium specifically for that (no ads and you can keep listening even if you close the screen). And I listen to (or watch) RealVision videos regularly. RealVision is a paid subscription, but their crypto videos are free to watch.

Next to that I listen to a number of sailing podcasts (The Quarterdeck, On The Wind Sailing, Out The Gate Sailing), but more during the summer than during winter. To keep up with what’s happening in psychedelics I listen to Psychedelics Today. And of course there are a number of Dutch podcasts that I listen to, mostly about Bitcoin (Cryptocast, Satoshi Radio, De Bitcoin Show and Hup Bitcoin).

Podcasts have changed my life, if you don’t listen to them yet you should give it a try. There is so much good content out there, you can also just listen to the news or find some drama series to follow. There are many good ‘best of’ podcasts articles out there. Check out this one from Esquire for example, or this one from Forbes. If you have suggestion for podcasts that I should not miss, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

Enjoy the show(s)!

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | January 20, 2021

Ivermectin, the bridge to the COVID-19 vaccine?

It’s great that COVID vaccinations started last month in many countries, but in most developed countries the general population will only get the vaccine by Q3 or Q4 this year. In developing countries that may be in 2022 at the earliest. At the same time the virus is mutating and getting more contagious, leading governments to continue lockdowns or even tightening them. As many of you know I am a huge proponent of doing a full lockdown for a couple of weeks followed by ubiquitous testing, so that the economy can open again completely (like in China), but most Western countries don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around this simple solution

So I started actively looking for other ways to open up the economy faster. I asked myself the question whether there are any drugs out there that can sharply reduce infection rates or that can sharply reduce symptoms or mortality. It turns out that there is a cheap, widely available drug out there without many side effects that can not only reduce getting infected by up to 90%, but that also can make symptoms much less severe if you get it, and it can reduce mortality for ICU patients by up to 50%. Its name is Ivermectin and in my opinion it is a literally a miracle drug. But governments, the WHO and the NIH are actively ignoring the results of clinical trials or just simply dismissing them.

To be honest, when I first heard about Ivermectin I was highly skeptical, just like I was with hydroxychloroquine drugs and some other therapies that were pushed early on in the epidemic. Ivermectin seemed to be highly politicized, so my assumption was that this was a typical Trump drug: something some Republicans could earn a lot of money from if they promoted it, but a drug that in reality would not work. So I dismissed it after a Senate hearing about it in December during which all Democrats walked out, and in hindsight that was a mistake.

The medical doctor that did the Senate hearing is a lung specialist and ICU doctor, Dr. Pierre Kory. Over the past days I started reading all materials that Dr. Pierre Kory has published on Ivermectin and I changed my mind 100%. My conclusion: this drug can help people to return to a normal life while waiting for the vaccine. By just taking one small dose every 2 weeks economies can open up and people can stop worrying too much about COVID-19.

Ivermectin has been around for over 40 years and is mainly used as an anti-parasitic drug. The drug has been safely used by 3.7 billion (!) people worldwide, and the discovery of the drug was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2015. It’s on the WHO list of essential medicines. So this is not a new drug or a drug that has not been tested. Side effects are limited, although there are always some, and the drug is cheap. Despite all this the NIH gave a very negative advice about using the drug in August last year, although after reviewing many more clinical trials they finally changed to a more neutral position just last week.

There have been 27 controlled clinical trials for the usage of Ivermectin to prevent or to treat COVID so far, with a total of over 6500 patients. These trials overwhelmingly show that Ivermectin simply works, but the WHO and NIH keep on trying to find reasons why these results are not good enough. Their arguments are among others that the majority of studies are observational, uncontrolled trials. This is simply false, because all the observational trials actually have control groups. They also state that the majority of studies have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. This is not only false (half of the studies have been published in peer reviewed journals) but also irrelevant because every other drug used for COVID-19 was adopted from pre-print data (for example Remdesivir, corticosteroid, or monoclonal antibodies). Finally they state that the majority of the trials were not randomized controlled trials. This again is incorrect, because 15 of the 24 controlled trials were actually randomized.

The FLCCC Alliance is the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, an organization of physicians trying to prevent of find treatments for the virus, and Dr. Pierry Kory is the president of the FLCCC. For some reason the FLCCC Alliance has been blocked in attempts to disseminate scientific information about Ivermectin on Facebook and other social media with the FLCCC’s pages repeatedly being shut down. Furthermore, after a FLCCC press conference in Houston, no major U.S. media outlets reported the FLCCC’s pleas for help from the federal government to act in order to bring this pandemic to an end. Nor did any representative from the CDC, the NIH or the World Health organization contact them. To make matters worse, Dr. Kory lost his job at the University of Wisconsin because of speaking out about his fight to find alternative solutions to the COVID crisis, and in December he lost his new job at Aurora Health after he testified before the US Senate.

What is happening here? I don’t know, but I can speculate. Maybe because of the failures with the other therapeutics the WHO and NIH have become more cautious. That’s the most likely scenario for me. However, if you are in the middle of a pandemic that is destroying economies all over the world, you have the duty to look for alternative solutions. They are simply not doing it. Maybe Big Pharma plays a role here as well? Maybe if the medecine was expensive and patented they would more readily agree to use it? Or maybe it is a typical US political partisan thing where Democrats actively boycot anything the Republicans say? I really don’t know, but I feel I need to spread the word about this because I am now convinced it can literally save people and can open up economies again.

Let me give some anecdotal evidence to show what happens when Ivermectin is distributed among the general population of a city or country. I know of course that anecdotal evidence is not scientific, but it gives you an idea of how well Ivermectin works against COVID. In Brazil some cities started distributing Ivermectin to the population in July. A month later the case count was down by 50-80% in these cities, while in similar cities nearby without the distribution program COVID cases were down by just 20-40%. Something even more impressive happened in the state of Alto Parana in Paraguay, where the governor and his brother both got COVID and quickly recovered after they were given Ivermectin. They were so impressed that they started to give everyone in the state Ivermectin. The result? Six weeks later there was no COVID case in the hospitals anymore and the governor claimed it eradicated COVID completely in the state, while in the rest of the country the numbers remained high. There are several more examples of this from among others Mexico and Bangladesh, and all these studies show that with Ivermectin you can reduce or beat COVID, at least until everybody has access to the vaccine.

If you have an hour to spare, this interview with Dr. Kory is very insightful and gives a lot more details than just this post. The presentation is meant for physicians but it’s not too hard to understand. Start at about 11:00 to see Dr. Kory’s whole presentation.

I want to spread the word about this and wake up governments and decision makers. If you know anybody in your state, province or country who has any decision making power for COVID drugs please share this post with them. Show them my background, I have a reputation to lose so I have done tons of research before even considering to write this post. I believe we need to create awareness about this miracle drug and start distributing it as soon as possible, it can literally make the difference between life and death for many people and it can help to open up economies.

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | December 29, 2020

Bitcoin: The Herd is here!

For at least 3 years I have been talking about the fact that the herd is coming. What I meant with that, is that I have been observing for years that institutional investors were getting ready to get into Bitcoin and that the cryptocurrency would shoot through the roof once they would enter the market. And this year it finally happened! The herd is here, the professional investors are now entering the market and the price has started to climb up fast.

In early February this year I wrote a blog post when Bitcoin broke through $10,000 and why I thought that this could be the beginning of a new bull market. I touched upon COVID-19 in this post as well (long before most people paid any attention to the virus), but I did not realize that COVID would slow down the bull market by about 6 months.

Right after global lockdowns started in March Bitcoin actually crashed hard (together with the stock market), but it also recovered quickly. By early October the real new bull run really started and since then the Bitcoin price went up almost 3 times. I think this is the beginning of an epic bull run that could lead to Bitcoin prices that hardly anybody can imagine right now. If you are not in Bitcoin yet because you thought it was too risky, now may be a good time to get in (not investment advice though!). In my opinion Bitcoin is de-risked with professional investors buying up all the newly mined coins and Bitcoin at $28,000 might be a safer investment long term than Bitcoin at $6000 at the beginning of the year.

What changed? I believe the most important factor is that some well known investors paved the way for others to invest and make it less risky to do so. At the beginning of the year investing in Bitcoin may have cost a professional investor his or her job, right now not investing in Bitcoin may get you fired. It’s a completely different investment environment. Over the past couple of weeks there was another announcement of a new large fund investing in Bitcoin almost every day.

It all started in the spring of this year with Paul Tudor Jones announcing that he put a small percentage of his net worth into Bitcoin. That opened people’s eyes, because PTD is highly regarded. Not long after that Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor announced that his firm had invested $450 million of its reserve assets into Bitcoin. This was huge news, MicroStrategy was the first publicly listed company that did this and the public markets liked it: its stock price almost tripled in 4 months time after the announcement. Not only that, MicroStrategy doubled its reserves during that time because the Bitcoin price doubled. They basically made in 6 months what the company would have normally made in 10 years. Michael Saylor became a hero in the Bitcoin world and started doing almost daily podcasts and video interviews, in which he convinced a lof others that having Bitcoin as a reserve asset is less risky than keeping it in dollars.

Then in October all of a sudden the announcements started. Just a few examples of financial news headlines since then:
– Billionaire Hedge Fund Investor Druckenmiller Says He Owns Bitcoin
– JP Morgan saying that investors are selling gold for BTC
– PayPal Enables Users to Buy, Hold and Sell Cryptocurrency
– Citibank Analyst Says Bitcoin Could Pass $300K by December 2021
– BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer Says Bitcoin Could Replace Gold
– Guggenheim Fund Reserves Right to Put Up to 10% in Bitcoin Trust
– MassMutual announces a $100 Million Purchase
– Ruffer investing $740M in BTC – and selling Gold for that
– Jim Cramer buying BTC and talking about it on TV
– Fidelity CEO saying that there is a pipeline of institutional investors looking to get into Bitcoin custody
An avalanche of positive news for Bitcoin is coming from some of the top financial institutions in the world. I personally think the MassMutual purchase of $100 million of Bitcoin may turn out to be the most important one. Not because of the amount, that is actually quite modest, but because this is the first life insurance company getting into this new asset class. They would have to get SEC approval for this, which is quite an effort in itself, and now others will follow. Moreover, once you invest $100 million and that investment is going up 50% in 3 weeks you will likely start to invest more.

The herd is here and these investors won’t go away anymore. Right now Bitcoin is at about $530 billion in market cap, it just flipped Visa and is now the same size as Berkshire Hathaway. It still about 20 times smaller than Gold, but I believe that within 5 years (=after the next Bitcoin halving) Bitcoin might flip Gold as well. The higher Bitcoin goes, the more institutions will invest. Look at BlackRock for example, their Chief Investment Officer publicly said that Bitcoin could replace Gold, but the firm does not buy Bitcoin yet for its funds. Why? Simply because Bitcoin is still too small for them. But not long anymore!

I am happy that my predictions are coming true. I spent years studying Bitcoin on a daily basis and saw the writing on the wall for years, but it was hard to predict exactly when it would happen. In 2017 I predicted that Bitcoin would hit $150,000 in 2021 and I still stand by that prediction. It could be a few months later of course, but it could also happen by next summer already. It all depends on the speed at which new investors enter the market. The nice thing about having the Bitcoin blockchain is that you can calculate how long it might take to get to this price (because all transactions are visible on the blockchain).

At this moment the market cap of BTC goes up by about $3.50 for every $1 that is invested in the market (and this ratio is going up). At a $150K Bitcoin price the market cap would be around $2.2 trillion, so assuming that the ratio remains stable we would need about $500 billion in new money inflows. Last week about $10 billion of new money was invested into Bitcoin, so you can do the math: even at this speed we’ll hit $150,000 at the latest by December 2021. If the speed increases we could be above $200,000 by this time next year. Not many liquid assets will give you a 6-8X return in 12 months.

And after that? Looking at what is happening in the markets now I am extremely bullish and think we’ll likely see $400-500,000 prices when more institutional investors come in, simply because there is so much demand and very limited supply. In case Central Banks would put part of their reserves into Bitcoin we will even get much higher prices (in the millions of dollar per coin), but for now that is not happening yet. I am glad that after the 2017 retail rally this new bull market is led by institutions. They won’t panic sell like retail investors did in 2017-18, so likely the dips will be smaller as well. Don’t get me wrong, we will still see a lot of volatility with the price going down 20-30% every now and then. But likely not the 50%+ drawdowns like we saw in the last bear market, where BTC was actually down more than 80% at one point. The sky is the limit right now!

Disclaimer: As always, do not take this as investment advice and never put more in than you are willing to lose. Do your own research!

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | December 14, 2020

Psychedelics stocks are outperforming Bitcoin!

It may seem like just another clickbait headline, but it’s actually true: over the past couple of weeks Bitcoin has done extremely well, but publicly listed shares in psychedelics companies are doing even better. I am not really surprised, because that expectation is the exact reason that earlier this year we started a psychedelics venture fund, Synaptic Ventures. I wrote a post in July about this, with my expectations for the sector and with a description of the companies we planned to invest in. You can find the post here: https://www.marc.cn/2020/07/psychedelics-the-next-big-thing.html

Just now I sent out an email to our limited partners (=the investors in the fund) with an update on our investments and our returns. Because it gives a good overview of what is happening in the sector I decided to share it here as well (slightly redacted). As you can see over the past 8 months we made an average 120% return on our investments that are publicly listed. I don’t see this ending any time soon and we have some interesting new investments in the pipeline. It’s great to be part of this sector, to help advise some of the leading companies in the space and of course to also make nice returns for our investors.

—

Dear Synaptic Ventures investors,

I would like to give you an update on the investments we did with Synaptic Ventures this year and the performance of our portfolio companies. It’s been quite a year for psychedelics and the financial markets: the first psychedelics company only went public in March this year and since then many have followed. We looked at many different companies this year and only invested in the ones that we feel have the best long term potential. Our thesis is that we only want to invest in high quality companies, not in potential pump and dumps.

Since we started investing in June this year we have made a number of investments:

– Entheon Biomedical

Entheon Biomedical is a biotech company focussed on the development of psychedelic medicines for addiction disorders. The Company’s research and development pipeline revolves around DMT. The company went public in November 2020. We bought the shares at $0.40, the current share price is $1.03 (+157%)

– Sansero Life Sciences

Sansero Life Sciences is a Canadian-based bioscience company developing novel medications based on psilocybin.

The company merged with Cannaglobal and Rise this summer, and is now called Cannaglobal Wellness. The valuation of Sansero in the merger was double the valuation from when we invested, so on paper we made a 100% profit.

– Cannaglobal Canada

We invested in Cannaglobal Canada right before their merger with Sansero. They are now called Cannaglobal Wellness. They are a global psychedelics leader focused on psilocybin and other natural compounds to promote emotional, mental, and physical wellness. The company is still private.

– Field Trip

is a mental wellness company that focuses on psychedelics and psychedelic-enhanced psychotherapy.

The company listed in October 2020. We bought our shares at $2.00 and sold them at $2.64 shortly after the listing (+32%)

– Eleusis

Eleusis is one of the early movers in the psychedelic medicine space (the company started in 2013 already), they are looking at using psychedelics for both anti-inflammatory and mental health applications. The company is still private.

– Cybin

Cybin’s aim is to become the first life sciences company to bring a psilocybin drug to market targeting Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). They raised a $45 million round in October 2020 (a record for a Canadian psychedelics company) and listed a month later. We invested at a $0.75 share price, the current price is $2.25 (+200%).

– Psybio Therapeutics

Our latest investment is Psybio Therapeutics, we completed this investment earlier this month. PsyBio Therapeutics is developing biosynthetic psychoactive compounds which offer a new paradigm of treatment to reverse the course of mental health issues.

As always, if you have any questions or remarks feel free to get in touch any time. Easiest is to email me or to add me on WhatsApp or WeChat.

Happy holidays!

Marc

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | November 5, 2020

China: Life After COVID Is Back To Normal

A few months ago I was lucky to get a visa to China so I could visit the country during the middle of the global pandemic. After 2 weeks in quarantine in Xiamen in late September and a total of 5 COVID tests I was finally allowed to fly to Beijing. When I landed there I had literally arrived in a different world, a world without COVID.

Of course I knew that there is no COVID in China anymore, but seeing it for yourself is different. Everything is open again, even bars and clubs. Social distancing is a thing of the past, but when I arrived in Beijing most people still wore face masks, even outside. When I visited Xiamen again last week a lot less people wore them, but maybe that was also because of the much higher temperatures there. Everybody needs to have a health app installed on their phones, without it you can’t enter many public places (the app proves you have no COVID or have not been in contact with COVID-positive people) and you can’t fly without a green QR code on your app (not even if you just want to leave China).

Beijing in mid-October, everyone still wears face masks outside

Life is back to normal in China. Interesting is that people work from their offices again: The work-from-home phase did not last here, maybe because people only worked from home for a few weeks instead of a few months. I wonder if that will also happen in the Western world or if people will keep working remotely. Everything is open and there are hardly any restrictions left, although you still need to wear face masks in among others taxis and in school.

What dit China do to get here? It’s actually quite simple, they had a complete lockdown of the whole country for a couple of weeks, and for some hotspots like Wuhan for a few months. After that they opened up again, but they did that with ubiquitous testing and obligatory face masks everywhere. Each time a new outbreak occurred they would lock (part of) a city down and test everybody. In that way China got the virus completely under control.

It may be hard to believe if you live in Europe or the US, but it is really not that hard to do. The partial lockdown in many other countries is simply not enough. It turns out that it is much better to have a shorter but very strict lockdown than to have a much longer partial lockdown that just tries to ‘flatten the curve’. I think Europe and the US are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to remain open for business. The long term effect in the Western world will simply be much worse than the short term effect in China.

I am actually flabbergasted that the Western economies don’t see this and don’t copy the China playbook. I have argued for a short but full lockdown on Twitter since March, but most people did not take it serious. Of course it’s not the full story, China also had face masks from day one, while many other countries still don’t seem to ‘believe’ in them (although that finally started to change after the summer). The science is clear, but politicians are clearly no scientists.

And of course you need testing capacity, something that seems impossible to scale up in many Western countries. The virus started in January and soon after that it became clear to me that this could be a global danger. As I noted on Twitter, face masks were sold out in Vancouver on January 25 already, simply because most Chinese in Vancouver also saw the risk and started buying them. But governments took a full 6-7 weeks before they started to take it more serious. They lost so much precious time, instead of getting face masks ready and prepare test facilities they downplayed the risk. It was hard to believe for me, but I realized (once again…) that you should never rely on politicians for information but do your own research. If they had invested in testing equipment instead of telling the population that it was not a big danger, they could have avoided almost all of the current problems.

Not many face masks anymore in Xiamen in early November

So what now? I believe the only way for Western countries to get out of this social and economic disaster is by doing a complete lockdown for at least 3-4 weeks, followed by testing for everyone. If you are negative you can go back to your old life. If you test positive you have to stay in quarantine for another 3 weeks when you will get tested again. Once you have had COVID you will get new tests every month to make sure the virus did not come back. Each time there is a new outbreak you will have to quarantine cities or parts of cities and test everybody.

And of course there will be quarantines and COVID test for any travelers from countries that don’t follow these rules. It is really not that hard, and if countries would follow these guidelines COVID will be gone by Christmas in the Western world as well. Will it happen? I am afraid not, politics are too polarized, so countries will likely go deeper into a death spiral until an effective and globally available vaccine will be available. That will be at least 6-9 months from now (there will be vaccines much earlier than this, but there won’t be enough supply and setting up a distribution system will be another hurdle), and by then it will be too late for both many businesses and many people.

It was great to spend some time in China during this pandemic and I wish I would have been able to stay longer. I am now back in Canada and I’m doing a 2-week quarantine at home. Of course that doesn’t really make sense coming from a COVID-free country, but I knew that in advance so I just play along. To me it’s another example of governments having no clue what they are doing. Anyway, I make the best of it and being at home certainly beats a hotel quarantine like in China!

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | October 9, 2020

Quarantine in China

I am sitting behind my laptop in a hotel room in Xiamen (southern China) looking out over a construction site and the suburbs of this city of almost 4 million people. The room is not bad, but I have been locked up in here for the past 2 weeks, so I am starting to look forward to leaving it. I am not allowed to even open my door and walk into the corridor, and I have not seen any other people except twice a day doctors in full hazmat personal protection equipment. It is a bit surreal but it’s my own decision to be here and I don’t regret it.

China is one of the very few countries in the world that have COVID-19 completely under control. There have been no new domestic cases since mid-August, the only cases are from people traveling to China. China has achieved that with very strict lock downs early on in the pandemic, followed by quick and widely available testing combined with contact tracing for every person who was infected. That is great when you live here, but the downside is that if you travel to China you have to undergo extensive quarantine measures just to enter the country.

I was aware of that when I decided to travel here, but until I experienced it myself I did not realize how strict the rules were. You first need to apply for a visa to China. Chinese passport holders can travel without restrictions, but anybody else needs to get a newly issued visa. Even my current Chinese residence permit was not valid to travel anymore. Then you need to book a flight, which is not easy because instead of many flights per day there are now only a few flights per week between Vancouver and China. My final destination was Beijing, but I had to fly to a different city for my quarantine and I managed to get a flight to Xiamen. Prices are still very high (around $8000 for a one way business class flight), but they have come down a lot already since this summer.

Before boarding a plane to China you have to show a negative COVID test issued within 72 hours of flying. Because Canada can’t handle the number of COVID tests it actually took me 3 days to get the results and I almost missed my flight because of that.

Vancouver airport

Before even going to the airport I had to download 2 apps on my phone, both mini-programs inside WeChat. One for customs and one that would be used as my electronic medical records for all my COVID and antibody tests in Xiamen. Not sure how people do that who can’t read any Chinese, even I had trouble figuring it out and filling out all the forms inside the apps.

Arriving at the airport I had to fill out a paper form about my health in Chinese (no English version was available), show my test results and then my temperature was taken before checking in. It was all pretty efficient and within 10 minutes I was at security already, where another temperature check was performed. The airport was virtually deserted, on the screens I saw that there were only 3 international flights in the next 12 hours.

I decided to have a drink in the lounge, but it turned out that they did not serve alcohol because of COVID (not sure what the reasoning behind that was actually). So I just had a bottle of water and left the lounge to take a one hour walk through the terminal before boarding. I thought boarding might be a hassle but because of the apps it was pretty efficient as well. On board I took my seat and hoped to get a drink before departure, but it turned out that there would be no food and beverage service on the almost 13-hour flight. Even in business class the only thing we got was a plastic bag with 2 pieces of bread, some cookies, an apple and 2 bottles of water!

The flight

I put on my N95 mask before entering the airport and on the plane everybody had to wear masks as well. Most people had N95 masks as well and many were wearing plastic face covers and gloves as well. I felt pretty safe on the plane, simply because everybody had been tested in the days before the flight. When I boarded the plane in Vancouver I realized it was probably one of the safest places in Canada, the chance of catching it on the plane would be virtually zero. Looking around I also realized that I was probably the only non-ethnic Chinese on the plane, even though the plane was completely full. I guess that explained the Chinese-only forms.

The flight attendants were extremely well protected and there were even special regulations for going to the toilet. A flight attendant would open the door for you and you would have to wear plastic gloves inside the bathroom. After leaving the bathroom you had to throw the plastic gloves away and clean your hands and arms with alcoholic wipes that the flight attendant would give to you. No touching of anything with your hands was allowed.

Arrival in Xiamen

I was tired and slept about 7 hours (with my face mask on) during the flight. We landed around 5 AM in Xiamen and then the long arrival procedures started. I was prepared for that and knew it could take hours to just get off the airport, but it went quicker than I thought. After the quarantine police came in and checked everybody’s temperature I could leave the plane after about 45 minutes (luckily I was in the front of the plane) and we were taken in buses to the quarantine arrivals hall. There we had to show a form that we had to fill out on the plane (again only in Chinese) and QR codes generated by the apps. My temperature was taken again and then it was time for 2 different COVID tests: one with a long needle that seems to go from your nose into your brain (in reality it goes from your nose into your throat I read later, but it did not feel like that) and another one where they take a sample from inside your throat. Both were not fun, especially not after a long flight, but you have no choice of course.

Immigration took a bit longer, simply because the border agents did not speak a word of English and did not seem to understand any of my Chinese (that happens more often, the assumption seems to be that I must be speaking English them so they don’t even try to understand what I am saying). Complicating matters even further was that they did not seem to understand why I came to China. In that kind of situation being patient and smiling a lot always helps and indeed after about 5 minutes they stamped my passport and let me through. We were now about 2 hours after landing.

I picked up my suitcase, which was a challenge because I had broken my hand 8 days earlier (I had a nasty fall on the Grouse Grind), so my arm is in a cast and the rest of my body was still very bruised. Luckily there were porters who helped me and I even managed to send my suitcase directly to my hotel. Of course at that point I did not know which hotel I would be sent to, because there was another step in the process: the distribution center.

The hotel

Each time 15 people were through the testing and immigration process they were put on a bus and driven to a conference center where authorities would decide which hotel you would have to stay in for your quarantine. That took another hour and then I was finally taken by another bus to my destination. The hotel looked decent, but it was not as nice as the Xiamen hotel where Grace and the kids had quarantined 2 months ago. The quarantine hotels are not open to the public and security is pretty tight. Everybody in the hotel was wearing full PPE, so you could only see their eyes behind a plastic screen.

Upon check in I managed to upgrade to a suite, which was a huge relief for me. I got some Chinese forms, paid the room with WeChat pay and then went up to my room in the elevator. I walked through the corridor, took a final picture (the tables are for food that you order, the chairs are for your COVID and antibody tests) and then entered my room. The room looked pretty good, but after the door closed behind me it suddenly hit me that I would be locked up in here for 14 days. I did not know how to feel about that, but I was happy that the long journey was over and that everything had gone well.

The first thing I did was to order some room service. The (Chinese) food came after about an hour and was not bad, so that was a good start. After a shower my suitcase arrived and I decided to measure a walking route in my hotel room. Because the suite had 2 doors I could walk a 25-step circle in the room, which was better than I had expected. Over the past 14 days I averaged about 20,000 steps per day and my record was over 30,000 steps (25 km) in my hotel room. It was the only way to stay in shape and I enjoyed it. I walked the circle 1000s of times and can now do it while reading a book without hitting anything.

As usual, I was very well prepared for the stay. I had downloaded tons of movies, documentaries and TV shows on my iPad. I had many audio books and podcasts on my phone, and my Kindle had many books that I wanted to read. I had planned to use the quarantine efficiently and looking back that was the right decision. Believe it or not, but I have not been bored once during this quarantine.

I made a schedule that I adhered to pretty strictly: I decided to get up between 3-4 AM every morning so I would be awake during the afternoon hours in Vancouver, meaning that I could do calls and Zoom meetings with North America. After 10 AM I normally would spend at least 2 hours doing university lectures, I finished one 34 lecture course about Chinese history and an 8 lecture course about composer Franz Liszt in the past 2 weeks. During that time I would normally get my first temperature check of the day as well. After lunch (served between 11:30-1 PM) I would take a nap, study Chinese for an hour and then I would read a book or listen to podcasts while walking around my room.

I ordered a lot of good wines and it was very tempting to start drinking at lunch already, but after one day I decided not to open a bottle before at least 5 PM. After another temperature check and an early dinner I normally spent the evening listening to podcasts and audiobooks and I watched an occasional movie. I was normally in bed between 8-9 PM, so I would get enough sleep.

Today is my last day and looking back I have to say that I enjoyed the quarantine. I got so much work done and I finally managed to read books and do courses that had been on my to do list for years. It’s nice that you don’t have to go grocery shopping or have to cook, it saves you so much time. I think I might actually miss the quarantine. However, I can also understand that it is depressing for many people. Not being able to leave is psychologically not always easy, especially when it’s nice weather outside and you see many people walking around. Having a strict schedule really helped me and I would probably do the same again if I need to travel to China another time before the rest of the world gets the pandemic under control.

I very much look forward to going outside for the first time in 2 weeks in a couple of hours. I can’t wait to feel the sun and the wind again. And I can’t wait to see other people, especially my kids who I have not seen for almost 2.5 months. I did 5 COVID tests and 2 antibody tests over the past 2 weeks and the QR code on the app on my phone reflects that, so I will be able to go to bars and restaurants again.

The 2 weeks of quarantine was worth the wait for me and I really look forward to being in a COVID-free world for a while as a reward, a world that has gone back to normal while the rest of the world still does not seem to understand how to stop the virus. To me it is clear that China is doing this right: it may seem draconian to lock people up in hotel rooms, to do constant COVID tests and to have contact tracing apps on your phone, but it works!

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Marc van der Chijs'

Uncategorized