Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

I make banks. CTO and Co-Founder @pave_bank previously @monzo simon.vc 1 au Joined April 2007

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Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp

a day ago

Lee Kuan Yew's biggest ideas went entirely against the grain of postcolonial states across the rest of the world. In many ways, that is exactly why he was successful.

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Lee Kuan Yew: “Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning

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Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt

a day ago

Whilst a lot of what's being discussed around tax is just speculation at this point, this is very much the direction of travel that's been emerging over the last couple of years. So there's every chance some or all of these measures get implemented. The tax I'm particularly interested in is Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Whilst it makes up a tiny portion of the country's tax revenue, it's an extremely important tax, because the rate it's set at has a broad potential impact on economic growth and investment in the country. Based on HMRC's own modelling, a 10 point rise in the higher rate of CGT would lose around £2bn a year by 2027-28. So we need to ask the obvious question… if it doesn't raise revenue, what is it actually for? CGT brings in about £13bn. Under 2% of all receipts. From roughly 350,000 people, with 41% of it coming from a few thousand who realise gains above £5m. It's a tiny base and a highly mobile one. Which is precisely why talk of an exit tax is also now circulating. Aligning CGT with income tax means a top rate of 45%. That would not just be high. It would be the highest capital gains tax in the developed world. Above Denmark at 42%. Above Norway at 38%. Nearly double the top federal rate in the US. And because we don't index gains for inflation, that 45% would land on nominal gains, not real ones. On the OBR's numbers the tax take is already heading for 38.5% of GDP by 2030-31, the highest since records began in 1948, and past 40% on the IMF's broader measure. We are nearing Scandinavian levels of tax, but nowhere near Scandinavian public services. Because the state is not short of money. It is bad at spending it. Really bad. By the government's own assessment, £198bn of major projects are currently rated in doubt or unachievable. HS2 has gone from a £33bn budget to as much as £100bn for London to Birmingham alone. The level of government waste is staggering, yet seems to consistently be presented as a tax problem. And that's before we even start looking at the ballooning welfare budget and astronomical amount of debt interest we pay. That is what you are being asked to fund with the return on your risk. The real cost here is not the revenue forgone. It is the part we never see, the hidden cost. The companies that don't get started. The capital that doesn't get deployed. The founder who incorporates in the US instead. You can't tax what was never built… you can only tax it into never existing. But perhaps that misses the point. Because this is unlikely to raise money, and on some level I imagine they know it. Consider who is left. On the ONS's own numbers, 53.3% of people now live in households that take more from the state than they pay into it, once you count the NHS, schools and every benefit in cash and kind. Net contributors are already a minority. So a policy that punishes them does not have to add up fiscally. It only has to add up at the ballot box. That is the real inversion. The arithmetic of the economy and the arithmetic of the electorate now point in opposite directions. Which leaves one question. Why strive? Why take the risk, the years, the personal guarantees, when the state takes the largest cut in the developed world if you win, taxes your inflation as if it were profit, and fines you on the way out if you decide this isn't the right country to build anything in. This isn't a growth strategy. It's managed decline. As I say, this is all just speculation right now. But it seems very much in line with the path we're currently on.

Barney Hussey-Yeo @Barney_H_Y

3 days ago

From a very credible Labour source: - Wes Streeting promised the Chancellorship for not running. - Capital gains raised to match income tax. Possible exit tax. - Economic focus: devolution, plus state ownership of cost-of-living essentials (energy, water, transport). -

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

6 days ago

We need to stop taking about "artificial" intelligence. You shouldn't name things by what they're not. All models that exist are a human work product. We should call then exogenic intelligence.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

7 days ago

before the interesting part that are clearly just engagement farming."

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

7 days ago

When can i use Grok to filter my feed? "Don't show me any posts that are clearly fiction and cut off right

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

a week ago

@Tailscale we've given aperture a good go and have some product feedback if there's someone who wants to get on a call and chat. love from @pave_bank

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

@ankurnagpal No this is wrong. Locked shares can't be loaned for the short leg. And this strategy requires European options with a fixed settlement date.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

I actually think this is bullish for ai safety. They've now tested the kill switch in production. Everyone knows there are lines ai companies can't cross. The model will come back and progress will be slower but safer.

Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz

2 weeks ago

The letter reached Dario Amodei Friday night, around 9:47, and by the time I left the building the sequence was already closed. I am the Deputy who ran the interagency process on Claude Mythos 5 / Fable 5, and it took an afternoon. Andy Jassy had told Scott Bessent that Amazon's

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

@husseinb You missed the point. I'm not buying the stock now.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

When spacex landed a f9 on a barge i spent 500 bucks on spacex tshirts hoodies and hats, and have worn them weekly until now. I'll keep wearing the t-shirts and i'll buy the stock in 15 months from now and marry it until they declare "Elon" the first capital city on mars.

Lee Roach @leevalueroach

2 weeks ago

SpaceX is the most overhyped IPO of the decade and it will end exactly the way every overhyped IPO ends. Facebook IPO’d at $38 and traded under that for 15 months. Uber IPO’d at $45 and is still below that adjusted seven years later for a while. WeWork tried at $47 billion and

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

Fable 5 one-shot an idea i've wanted to build for years. Does where you say you live in London match Voronoi diagram of the nearest rail/tube/overground? london-voronoi.exe.xyz

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

I now have focus follows gaze, something i've wanted on my linux machine for ever. @dhh you should try this, hands never leaving keyboard.. github.com/simonvc/tobii_…

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

holy moly fable is a good model. "The user is excited" is an understatement!

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

@zooko That's cool, but i feel like the Bitter Lesson is that we'll probably just end up with smart enough models that we actually trust. Or maybe a fine-tuned model acting as supervisor/proxy.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

@BigVo013 @cypherpunk @jswihart @moxie @signalapp @keet_io This is the correct answer.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

2 weeks ago

The only real problem with using gold as a unit of payment was it's heavy and not digital. They fixed that.

Tether Gold @tethergold

2 weeks ago

Did you know, they say all the gold that has ever been mined could fit in no more than three Olympic swimming pools? Scarce. Enduring. Global. The asset is ancient. The rails don’t have to be. XAU₮. Gold made easy.

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

3 weeks ago

11/12 years ago i used to teach @CryptoClass (currency and privacy) to journalists. Keet is the app i wish existed back then. We used to struggle through with GPG, and OTR before Signal came out. @keet_io is awesome.

Paolo Ardoino 🤖 @paoloardoino

3 weeks ago

Linux ❤️ Keet is available on Flathub flathub.org/en/apps/io.kee…

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

3 weeks ago

Looks great but why the fuck would I run windows on it @nvidia ? Like what benefit do I get over an os actually built for arm?

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Simon Vans-Colina @simonvc

4 weeks ago

Good thread

Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani

a month ago

1/5 I'm a cardiologist. I have spent twenty years watching cholesterol destroy arteries, trigger heart attacks, and kill people I care about. Today, Eli Lilly presented data that may begin to end that era. VERVE-102. A single infusion. One dose. It uses base editing to