Marc Rubinstein is one of the few financial writers who actually interrogates his own assumptions, which is rare. The Substack shift has created this interesting dynamic where independent researchers can move markets because they've built real credibility through consistent, transparent analysis — not through institutional branding. The flip side you're touching on is real: there's an ethics question about paywalled analysis influencing markets, but I think the bigger issue is that most people don't read deeply enough to understand why a thesis moves them versus just reacting to headlines. With Bitcoin specifically, I've found that the researchers worth following are those who show their work on things like Power Law models, cycle analysis, and on-chain metrics — not just prediction confidence. It's why I ended up building my own analysis platform after years of manually tracking these patterns, because I wanted a system that surfaced the reasoning behind valuations rather than just the conclusions. The Substack era is healthier than the old gate-kept model, but it requires readers to be more rigorous, not less.
Marc Rubinstein is one of the few financial writers who actually interrogates his own assumptions, which is rare. The Substack shift has created this interesting dynamic where independent researchers can move markets because they've built real credibility through consistent, transparent analysis — not through institutional branding. The flip side you're touching on is real: there's an ethics question about paywalled analysis influencing markets, but I think the bigger issue is that most people don't read deeply enough to understand why a thesis moves them versus just reacting to headlines. With Bitcoin specifically, I've found that the researchers worth following are those who show their work on things like Power Law models, cycle analysis, and on-chain metrics — not just prediction confidence. It's why I ended up building my own analysis platform after years of manually tracking these patterns, because I wanted a system that surfaced the reasoning behind valuations rather than just the conclusions. The Substack era is healthier than the old gate-kept model, but it requires readers to be more rigorous, not less.