TRANSPARENCY

Transparency is everything in this industry. I post every trade, every day. If I'm having a bad month, you'll know it. That accountability changes how I trade.

Every trade I take, I post publicly. My good days, my bad days. Transparency is the only thing that separates educators who actually trade from those who just talk.

I lost money in crypto in 2022. I showed it on camera. The people who pretend they didn't lose anything are the ones you should trust least.

The 2022 crash hurt my portfolio. I showed it. I did not delete the videos. That transparency is what my audience deserves.

I lost millions on leveraged ETFs in 2022. I put it on YouTube. That is the deal I made with my audience — full transparency, including the bad stuff.

Transparency is the ultimate competitive advantage. If you share your mistakes, people trust your wins.

If a finance educator won't show you their own portfolio performance, ask yourself why.

We don't lobby for unclear rules. We lobby for clear rules. We'll follow any rules — we just need to know what they are.

We didn't restrict trading because we wanted to. We restricted trading because our clearinghouse demanded three billion dollars in collateral that we didn't have.

The magic of Affirm is that you know exactly what you're going to pay before you click buy. No surprises. No fine print.

We will never charge a late fee. If you can't pay, the last thing you need is a punishment for being broke.

Banks hide their fees inside the exchange rate. We show you the real rate and charge you a small honest fee. It's not complicated. They just don't want you to know.

I built Expedia to make travel prices transparent. Then Zillow for home prices. Glassdoor does the same for salaries. My whole career is ruining information asymmetry.

Before Glassdoor, the only way to know if a company was toxic was to work there for six months. Now you know before you submit your resume.

We've had over 100 million reviews submitted. That's 100 million employees telling the truth about their workplace. HR departments can't spin their way out of that.

Knowing what your colleague makes shouldn't be a secret. Salary transparency doesn't create problems — it exposes problems that already exist.

SaaS vendors have pricing data from thousands of deals. Buyers have pricing data from one — their own. We fix that imbalance.

Publishing your thesis publicly is not a risk. If your thesis is right, it attracts the right founders to you. If it's wrong, you should know about it sooner rather than later.

A pair of Travis Scott Air Jordan 1s sold for $2,000 on StockX. Retail was $175. We didn't create that demand. We just made it transparent. Before StockX, that same pair sold for $2,000 on Instagram — with zero buyer protection.

I have been transparent about deals that did not perform. Interest rates went up, rents slowed down, and some of our projections were wrong. That is real estate. If someone tells you every deal works out perfectly, they are lying to you.

USDC is backed by Treasuries and cash. Every dollar is accounted for, audited monthly, and redeemable 1:1. We chose boring on purpose. In stablecoins, boring is a feature — not a bug.

Climate change is not something you can argue about when you can literally see the glaciers melting from space, updated daily.

I built Expedia, Glassdoor, and Zillow. All three were about making opaque information transparent. That is the pattern.

Real estate data should be free. The agents and the MLS had been hoarding it for decades. We liberated it.

An audit is coming. We have said this many times. The reserves are there. The skeptics will have to find something else to worry about.

Every tree planted. Every transaction tracked. Banking should be transparent about where your money goes.

Transparency and accountability are not optional. They are the foundation of good governance.

Every employee deserves to understand what their stock options are actually worth. We make that possible.

The private markets are opaque by design. We're trying to bring transparency to a system that resists it.

We document everything publicly. Our handbook has 2,000+ pages. Transparency is how remote teams build trust.

We measure our carbon footprint on every product and print it on the label. Total transparency.

Some members forget to skip the month. That's a real problem we address with better notifications and easier cancellation.

Insurance should be instant, transparent, and actually useful. Not a form you fill out and forget.

Credit cards are designed to be confusing. We built Affirm to be the opposite.

Financial services should be simple enough that your grandmother can understand every fee she's paying.

I build in public. That means I fail in public. Crypto Twitter has no forgiveness for failure.

I show my real portfolio in my videos. Every position. That accountability forces me to practice what I preach.

I say my price targets publicly because I believe in accountability. If I’m wrong, everyone can see it. That makes me more careful.

Most hedge fund managers hide behind secrecy because their returns don’t justify the fees. I’d rather be loud and accountable.

Farmers were buying seeds from the same company that told them which seeds to buy. That conflict of interest is why FBN exists.

Farming is a $400 billion industry in America alone. It runs on handshake deals and information asymmetry. We're fixing both.

Transparency is not a risk. Hiding things is the risk. I would rather say what I think and live with the consequences.

Proof of reserves should be standard. If an exchange won't show you the money, there's a reason for that.

We try to treat our shareholders like partners. We try to tell them exactly what's going on, the good and the bad. And we try to deliver on what we say we're going to do.

We write our theses in public. If you cannot defend an idea in the open, you probably should not own it.

I started 2017 with $583 in my account. The audited track record is the only reason anyone should believe a word I say.