Yesterday I attended The Vintage annual meeting. Vintage is a $1.5 billion Israeli fund of funds that invests in global technology venture funds.

I promised not to share charts, but it is no secret that the lack of IPO’s and the slowdown in mergers and acquisitions (as share prices have boomed), has created a glut in the private markets.

Making matters potentially worse, hundreds of new fangled blockchain and ‘crypto’ companies are going public through ICO’s that are off the ‘institutional’ grid.

I did take a 20 minute break to enjoy the magnificent view from the deck of the Hilton Tel Aviv…

Later in the day I was back with my group getting fintech pitches at The Tel Aviv stock exchange.

On the walk back to my hotel at the end of the day I chatted with Jeremy Gardener, who works at Blockchain Capital and is by far the youngest person on our trip. He is just 25 years old and has seen way more of the world than me.

Here is a recent profile of Jeremy.

I was asking Jeremy questions about Bitcoin, the Blockchain and the Blockchain he helped found called Augur (Auger.net). Augur is a really cool decentralized blockchain idea and token. I really hope it works when it finally launches. It would change financial markets in many ways. Basically, the product has to work perfectly when launched because of the decentralized nature of the code.

I speculated a little after chatting with him and bought a little (on the Bittrex exchange) and will follow along on Stocktwits (ticker symbol $REP.X).

Checking in on the stock market today, the biggest news to me was the massive breakout in Cisco. The old tech bellwether hit 10 year highs today.

This $450 million sale of a Leonardo Da Vinci painting was not something to sneeze at.

I mentioned ‘The Ogre’ in my title. I leave you Jeff Sessions, the US Attorney General, who gets taken apart for his lies in a spectacular way. Jeff is a motivator for the millennials like Jeremy decentralizing the world.