Телеграм канал «SVIATOSLAV GUSEV»

Interesting read, check out this post, it's long but interesting. It might just let you rethink some of your values.

And make you wonder: what are you working for, living for right now? And if tomorrow turned out to be the last day of your life, would you be able to have no regrets and say with confidence that you've been doing the work of your life?

When I reread my posts from 2014–2016 on X or VK, I always remember one comment under a post with my video. I remember it like yesterday: I was recording a clip while my daughter, Veronika, was already running around the apartment. And at that moment I was talking about how Bitcoin was already worth over $1,300, and we were waiting for it to grow to ~$3,000, even though just recently we'd been buying it with you for ~$200 after a very heavy correction.

Someone left me a comment back then, something along the lines of: "Bitcoin is a scam, MMM for geeks. Soon it'll be worth $120, not 3k."

I later inserted that comment into a video. It really "hooked" me as a hater take. When Bitcoin broke $3k (at that moment I finally started buying mining equipment myself, instead of just buying more Bitcoin on the market with the proceeds from my main business).

But you know what? Bitcoin really did end up being worth 120 at one point — only it wasn't 120 dollars, but 120 thousand dollars…

It's interesting how people's lives play out over time. The man who told me what Bitcoin was, back when BTC was still ~$20 — his last name was Zgursky: he had tens of thousands of bitcoins in his hands, he pre-ordered mining equipment (ASICs) when that word didn't even exist yet, and mining on dedicated hardware was just a concept at the idea stage. Later he set up the equipment in the bathroom so the fan wouldn't bother his wife. End result: he lost absolutely everything, sank it into travel, into apartments, into women, into anything but a business that can actively run without you. And I know dozens of similar examples among my former friends, next to which the famous 10k Bitcoin pizza looks like a trivial anecdote. And it's so silly, so stupid…

At moments like these I'm reminded of a line from the film "All the Money in the World":
When I was writing the book "How to Be Rich," the publishers wanted me to change the title to "How to Get Rich." And I told them: "Getting rich is easy. Any fool can get rich." And there can be plenty of fools. But being rich — that's another matter. A man who has made his fortune is faced with one problem — it's freedom. He can afford anything his heart desires. And an abyss opens up. I've seen such abysses. I've seen it break people, marriages, but most of all, it broke their children…

Finance Ministry: The budget deficit for the first 5 months of 2026 hit 6.01 trillion rubles — compared to 3.029 trillion over the same period in 2025.

Oil and gas revenues for those 5 months dropped by 29.8%. Non-oil and gas revenues rose by 12.4%.

Have a great weekend, folks.

A regulatory vacuum is the space for installing your own principles of life and understanding of your future.

While state institutions are forming committees, strong capital is deploying working infrastructure. By the time a jurisdiction is ready to write laws, it's forced to copy them from your architecture, because shutting down your rails would halt economic turnover.

Position is built before the environment becomes transparent and expensive. Politics begins where your private code becomes a state necessity.

Persistence wins. Not talent, not capital, not connections. The stubbornness that won't let you close the tab on your own project after six months of zero growth while everyone around you laughs.

When you're selling a product, you need to inform, develop, and educate the person in that direction.

I mean, why do you need an AC at home? Just because it's hot-cold, right? But that's not an answer, that's not a cure-all, that's not the reason why someone would buy exactly your AC. Then they might as well buy any AC — actually, they could just buy the cheapest one.

And a whole series of educational questions comes up. Like, what's the difference between the cheapest AC and the most expensive one? What's the Rolls-Royce of the AC world? What happens to your health if you don't use an AC? I can throw a ton of questions like that at you.

And when you're doing infotainment in marketing, it's way harder. Not just a dumb ad message, but actual infotainment. You start drawing the customer in.

Pull the customer into that conversation, into that game, and they'll stick with you forever. Because they'll understand that you're the place where they get new knowledge about the product. And a smart customer will never walk away from a place like that.

Over-engineering a temporary solution.
Meanwhile, Russia is heading into a fuel crisis, especially in Moscow. I haven't been following Russian news for a while now, but even I'm catching echoes of how bad things are getting for Sobyanin.

😮 The US and Iran, meanwhile, seem to be closing in on a deal to de-escalate the conflict, which is great news: the fewer wars in the world, the more predictable the markets.