Mark L. Hart III is the chairman and chief investment officer of Corriente Advisors, LLC, a private investment firm in Fort Worth, Texas. He is renowned for anticipating America’s subprime mortgage crisis, Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, and China’s still-unfolding currency crisis.

Before founding Corriente in 2001, Mr. Hart was a founder, principal, and managing director of Tarpon Advisors, Inc., a Dallas-based long/short equity hedge fund. Before Tarpon, he was a managing director with Culmen Group LP, an investment firm based in Fort Worth. There, he sought acquisitions and investments in the entertainment and media industries—in addition to monitoring Seven Network’s investments in MGM Studios and Brillstein Grey Entertainment.

Prior to joining Culmen, Mr. Hart was an analyst and then an associate with Bannon & Co, Inc., an investment banking firm founded by former Goldman, Sachs & Co. bankers. At Bannon, he analyzed and structured entertainment industry acquisitions for clients such as CBS and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.

Though he has generally stayed out of the public eye, Mr. Hart has appeared in popular media outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Real Vision TV. He has also spoken at investment conferences including the Sohn Investment Conference and the Great Investors’ Best Ideas Conference.

Mr. Hart earned a B.A. in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. He currently serves on the board of directors of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the board of trustees of Trinity Valley School.

The $30 Trillion Software Market

Hart considered buying bitcoin under $1. His first purchases started at $400. “I missed the first 40,000%."

"What does a currency do? In the sixth grade you learn it’s a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account..."

"Medium of exchange is really the reason that anybody owns a currency… You don’t own it for stores of value. They deplete value."

"The way I think about it is monetary policy is generally designed to impose something of a consistent tax of holders of the currency… Most people think of the tax on currency as inflation, CPI… But, you’re also being deprived of the benefit of productivity. In theory, 2% productivity gains, then a basket of goods that cost you $100 on January 1st will cost you $98 at December 31st. You would have been at $98 had there not been monetary meddling, but because there is, it’s $102, so the tax is 4%, so you have to go out on the risk spectrum to start clawing back that 4%"

"Currencies are really just softwares. The programmers are the central banks. They are trying to address with the software the problems that currencies address: unit of account, medium of exchange, store of value. Different ones do different jobs. Dollars are the best. It costs you the least to hold it and its the most spendable and movable."

"There are 16.3 million bitcoins now. In 2040 there will be 21 million. Thats the monetary policy. It’s not going to change for bitcoin. You shouldn’t have that 4% tax. Some years there will be a huge tax. Some years there will be a massive negative tax depending on the performance of bitcoin because it’s volatile. At the end of the day, relative to any other currency, you kind of have this 4% tailwind."

"Global M1s are over 30 trillion in US dollars. Over a long period of time its pretty predictable thats going to grow at a low single digit clip forever just like it has for 100 years. One way to think about it is you have a 30 trillion software vertical growing at 3% a year. Bitcoin, which has a market cap of $40 or so billion is the next generation software that provides a vastly better solution that has currently a tenth of a percent market share. Does it go up to have any kind of market share relative to the fiat currencies of the world? Who knows… Life finds a way… I do think you have the seeds of the greatest mania humanity has ever seen."