I get the impression that I have a rather keen sense of macro trend spotting. There's more than a handful of predictions I got right many years ahead of time.

Or they could be confirmation biases on my end. As a counter balance, these are some items I got wrong. It starts with one where I had the least strong opinion on and ends with one where I was almost certain about.

NEO blockchain

This is the only crypto prediction here. NEO was gangbuster during 2017, I thought that would give them enough firepower to build something of note, given the unique Chinese root it has.

The lack of decentralization didn't bother me (still doesn't) but against other layer-1 chain NEO doesn't have much to show for it today. I say this while still having capital locked in this ecosystem.

TikTok

I thought TikTok would've been a passing fad but it went way beyond that and became a new force to reckon with.

Platforms like this came and went in the past. I underestimated the potential of the format of short videos (as I did with tweets). My wrong guess wasn't so much that TikTok wouldn't fly but the medium as a whole would not.

Livestreaming

Similar to short videos above, I underestimated people's willingness to pay money to cam girls and TV-salesmen.

I turned a blind eye to an entire segment of cultural evolution that it took billions of revenue for me to believe it exist.

I was not bearish on livestreaming as a technology. My blindspot seems to be cultural, where my mind shuts off from crowd manias that I don't find appealing.

Malaysia's MSC

While it's not technically dead, it's a zombie project. Which is a fate worse than death.

In the late 90's, I genuinely thought it was going to be successful. But I was a kid, I didn't have much basis for predicting its success other than hopium.

The lesson thought is simple: government-driven projects are doomed to fail.

Self driving cars

Ten years ago I predicted self driving cars are going to roll into production into five years. Now I don't see it happening in another ten years.

The bottleneck is definitely not technology, it's legislation. I knew that even then, but I was completely naive to think that it's a solvable problem.

The only government with balls of steel to deploy self driving cars at the risk of human life is the Chinese Communist Party. It's only a question of which province is willing to take the first step.