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Markets and 33 Psalms with Redphone and @0xbartholomew
Recorded: Feb. 5, 2026 Duration: 1:49:06Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the evolving landscape of the market, highlighting trends in job security due to AI, the potential for Bitcoin to lead market recoveries, and the sustained hiring in the crypto sector despite economic uncertainties. The conversation also touched on the cultural shift towards valuing community and creativity over traditional work structures, signaling a transformative period for the industry.
Full Transcription
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music I'm going to go to the next video. Oh Music Music Music
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Oh I'm I I'm going to go ahead and get started. Hey, can you hear me hey what's up
doing well how are you doing doing good actually no awful these exactly dude we are in a much more painful place than we were in two weeks ago when we when
we did the first one of these yeah totally what do what's your take on it you know it's uh
i feel like it happens every couple years years. I'm always like, holy shit, did I just waste my entire life
and make this grand mistake of getting into this space?
But now there's like, I guess the difference now is like,
you saw precious metals run up, equities run up,
and I guess like BTC ran up first and then equities ran up and then precious metals ran up. And I don't know, everyone, I see like threads
around, you see threads around folks saying, Hey, is this a, is this really a store of value when like you have all this economic uncertainty paired
with global political uncertainty and btc just goes down 50 this is makes you question a little bit
but i haven't sold anything yet but that's probably on me for being a fucking idiot
what do you think?
yeah I mean I think this is
I mean I'm almost numb to it
having been in crypto so long
but I think you know five years ago
I was basically 100% in crypto
100% long.
I sold some in 21 and moved it into a brokerage account where it's managed.
So it's like, you know, stocks and stuff and fairly hedged.
If I didn't have that, I think I would be a little freaked out.
If I didn't have that, I think I would be a little freaked out.
But yeah, I think like just zooming out, I feel like a lot of this is being driven by
just the uncertainty around jobs that AI is sort of introducing into the world.
That's something I've been writing about for two years and just obsessed with this idea that,
you know, the things that
make us unique and give us market value are just eroding right before our eyes.
And I've been seeing a lot more posts lately just across all different sorts of industries
where people are seeing similar things.
So I think that's starting to enter the zeitgeist and starting to jolt stocks a little bit.
And I think crypto traders are always a little bit ahead of the broader markets.
So they probably started selling crypto sooner.
But yeah, that's kind of my conspiratorial take on what's driving over me.
Yeah, the crypto folks are so locked in that
they front run downward price action it's the opposite of what's happened historically i mean
i i do think there that's like an interesting take and a take i could believe right there's like a
culture for these folks us i guess for for being terminally online just paying attention to
everything and uh maybe having hyper reactions to jobs data macroeconomic data maybe everyone kind of
saw the chips and said holy shit it's it's time to get out. Yeah. I mean, the U.S. had today, it was the worst jobs numbers since back in 2009, right?
That's got to be pretty damning.
Amazon did, what, 16,000 layoffs last week?
So, you know, these about AI, you know, some folks, you know,
have this thesis that like AI is just the, just the like excuse for these layoffs. And,
you know, I, I disagree, but what do you think? You think, yeah, jobs numbers in the U.S., is this just the beginning of the end for the working class?
Yeah, I mean, I do think this is like our first serious tremor,
like our first moment where people are realizing,
like, shit, this isn't necessarily theoretical.
It's actually really starting to impact things.
Like I definitely don't buy the theory that it's just an excuse to lay people off.
If you're using these tools, you know, like just how powerful they are
and how they basically just eliminate the need for lots of middle management,
project management, software
development, customer service, like all of these, all of these areas are going to be
impacted.
So, yeah, I think it's, I think it's kind of the beginning.
Like I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see stocks follow.
They've just been going up so consistently for
such a long time that, you know, we've had little pullbacks, but we haven't had a serious
freak out moment outside of like precious metals. So maybe I guess you could say we have in like software stocks but um yeah it's i i feel like this is kind of a trimmer and i'm i'm probably
gonna lighten up some of my altcoin altcoin holdings on a bounce um just to yeah instead more
cash i mean it's it looks like it's starting for stocks, right? If you look at a six-month chart, this is a pretty deep,
or at least it looks relatively deep on the six-month.
But what do you think, I guess, what do you think this means for BTC and the coins?
for BTC and the coins, you think it's just gets exacerbated.
You think it just gets exacerbated?
I know there's also talk of, you know, an Ethereum staking ETF.
It feels like the cycle's over.
Well, are you a cycle believer?
Like, you think they still exist?
What are your thoughts on that?
I was pretty convinced that they were over, like the four-year cycle is over.
But markets kind of showing us that it hasn't just proven it yet.
So, yeah, I think Bitcoin will front run whatever happens.
So the sell-off, my theory is the sell-off's gonna eventually bleed
over to stocks and we'll see kind of a brutal dip. And Bitcoin will probably recover first.
And that's when if you are a stock investor, I'd definitely be buying more stocks
when you see Bitcoin finally start to recover in a serious way.
when you see Bitcoin finally start to recover in a serious way.
Oh, that's a really interesting take.
So buy equities when again, this is interesting.
Okay.
So by buying equities when Bitcoin starts running,
because you're expecting stocks to follow after after Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Under this thesis that Bitcoin traders are a leading indicator.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe that's a little arrogant take,
but I do think in general, crypto people are on the bleeding edge of things.
And yeah, like you said, terminally online.
Like everyone I know in crypto, like all my group chats,
they're all like, everyone's using Claudebot.
And like, I haven't met a soul in person.
Granted, I live kind of in a suburban area.
I haven't met anyone in person that's even heard of them.
So it is a very different crowd that's drawn to crypto, I think.
Yeah.
When you're thinking about this, like, we're already thinking about like the btc recovery
even though it's only down 50 what do you what's your take for for this year it just turns into
a spiral uh equities go down coins go down more do you think yeah i think the other thing to think about is the market structure bill.
And the U.S. was, you know, I think, actually, I'll pull up the polymarket on it right now as we're talking polymarket.
I think there were a lot of people that believed this was going to happen by the end of February.
It doesn't look like that's the case anymore.
I'm trying to find the Polymarket page on it.
Let's see.
Yeah, I saw...
I remember Coinbase.
It was supposed to be at the White House.
Wasn't that on Monday?
I did not see any follow-up on how those talks went.
But yeah, it's definitely running into a battle.
Actually, it looks
one month,
maybe I'm looking at the wrong market
here, Clarity
Act.
Right? It's Clarity Act.
Yeah, 62%.
But that one, there's only
$67,000 in volume on it.
That seems kind of low.
Yeah, that is pitiful.
I wonder how Calci's doing.
It feels like this is the wrong.
Maybe let's see clarity.
Yeah, what does Calci say?
I'm checking.
61%. Wow, they're pretty aligned. 1%. Yeah. That is insane. I guess market makers the likes I was reading today, one of the sticking points about like why it's not moving is Trump isn't willing don't want that to be possible.
And it seems like a non-starter. So it seems
like it's not moving and it seems like
it doesn't look good. I think the only saving grace would be
if the odds of this bill start skyrocketing,
maybe there's a saving grace for ETH and BTC and a turnaround.
Yeah.
Interestingly though,
like it looks like on February 5th.
So Calci,
the number I gave you was just an average.
They break it out by months as well.
And they're showing 92 92 chance of passing before
june and that number shot up in february that it looks like today's february 5th
yeah it looks like it just shot up today
uh i'm pulling it up oh my god yeah that's really interesting
holy shit it just exploded to wow no way this is all right what the hell time frame is this
breaking news breaking news on the uh twitter space great actual breaking news wow uh yeah looks like looks like a couple hours ago
it went from 37 before june to 92 percent huh yeah and this actually has three times the
call she looks like it has three times the volume that dude this is making me want
to buy i'm like this is making me want to slam some eath buys this is wow no way
yeah i mean like i was i was definitely holding out hope that this bill would be what sparks the next leg up for crypto.
Maybe it will.
Maybe this, you know, my thesis could be wrong.
I do think I tend to get too aggressive in my predictions, like in timelines.
I think corporations, I'm sure they're meeting now to discuss head AI, like how they can transform their businesses with AI and stuff.
But often there's just so many social issues that take forever to work
through and companies are slow to change.
So maybe, maybe the layoffs will, will take longer than I expect. And,
and this bill could spark a bounce and,
and maybe the economy does hum along for the rest of the year.
But, yeah, I don't know. We'll see.
I mean, one more thing on this, and we can get to the SOMs.
The interesting thing, you brought up the hiring slowdowns because of AI.
the hiring or like hiring slowdowns because of AI.
One thing I've noticed is these like financial institutions,
fintechs, tradfi adjacent businesses
are not slowing down their crypto hiring, right?
Like Visa, MasterCard,
all these random financial institutions,
no-name banks hiring crypto, stablecoin, roles.
And this, I think, is, you know, this is like, it seems a lot more so than what had happened
four years ago. It seems like teams, not just at these financial institutions, but at these large consultancies,
McKinsey, Bain, the big four, devoted to crypto. So I think there's,
it makes me wonder, I think the number of, if the coins keep going down, I think the number
of FIs that pull out is going to be a lot less than
historically because it seems like they've got full teams and are continuing to hire.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I do think like, especially for those big dogs, like
crypto development is one area where you definitely still need some expertise. I mean, AI will help you identify
common smart contract errors and potential bugs. But yeah, you really, it's not an area where you
can just build something that's meant a contract that's meant to handle billions of dollars and
just trust an AI audit. You need true expertise.
So yeah, maybe that area will have a little bit of job staying power job security.
It's just kind of funny to think of what crypto bros,
crypto devs who are also willing to go to work
for Visa or something.
It's an interesting Venn diagram of of interest there
i think a lot of crypto natives went over to tempo right stripes blockchain yeah
that's very true they've got a little bit more of like the young upstart vibe rather than the old school credit card companies but yeah yeah um
yeah i'm i'm blown away by this kalshi spike in breaking news but let's let's jump to
let's wrap up the second half of the the psalms the 33 psalms awesome let's do it yeah uh maybe a sentence or two of
like context uh before we jump to like number 17 i think we left off on number 16 last time right
yeah yeah so i've been writing these for uh just annual predictions for five or so years, maybe six years now.
And in the past, like I was mostly writing very tangible predictions,
you know, like different crypto tokens that I thought would do well
in the upcoming year.
And this time I felt like it was becoming obvious where things are going.
Like crypto is getting institutional adoption.
And it's much harder to find like individual tokens that are going to do well in that environment.
that environment. And I feel like AI and robotics are kind of the big stories now.
And I feel like AI and robotics are kind of the big stories now.
And so this year, instead of writing actual predictions, I focused more on Psalms and
like what these changes in AI and robotics and crypto and all of this frontier deep tech,
like how it's affecting who we are and how we form meaning in the world. So yeah, that was the goal with these.
Cool. Thanks for the context for some of the new folks. We're going to talk through a couple of
these, maybe all of them. I think I had something jotted down for actually number 17. So let me just scroll over to it and we can see.
Oh, yeah.
The monastery of the mind.
I think we talked a little bit about this theme last time, but you're talking about these folks that I guess the theme here is like you're not kind of overwhelmed by this deluge of everything on the internet being thrown at you all at once.
But it says here they treat focus not as a skill, but as a religion.
You want to kind of elaborate a little bit more on number 17?
Yeah, for sure.
Sure. So I can't remember if I mentioned the last time we chatted that I'd heard Eric Schmidt once say that our jobs in the future might just be figuring out what the hell is going on in the world.
Like there will be so much change, so much innovation, so much like bizarre things happening in the world that even even understanding how the world works and what's true and what's fake is going to be a full-time
job. You definitely didn't mention that last time we talked. I'd remember something that crazy. So
what does that mean? So just like on a weekly basis, the world is changing so fast. You have
people just like articulating what's happening and what does that
look like well i think uh i would have to go back and listen to the interview but i think the the
point he was making was that um there's just uh like if if things if change accelerates even faster
than it is now um you know think about about how it's going to impact your job.
Like, you're probably like my job alone over the past few years, like every single calendar year,
I look back on my job the previous year, and it's like, it's almost unrecognizable. Like,
you're forced to change so rapidly. And we seem to be moving towards this world where we won't necessarily
be working for massive corporations. We're all going to kind of be like, I think UBI will be a
thing. But I also think in general, people will just be more entrepreneurial, will get like weirder
and weirder and into these bizarre niches and build out businesses around just
things that we personally resonate with. So I imagine in the future, like we probably won't
be getting paychecks from one company, but we'll have all these income streams that are kind of
tied to like our hobbies and stuff. So yeah, in this environment, you're just going to be
inundated with stuff
and trying to figure out where to direct your attention and where to, how you can unlock
value in the world.
What you just described, paychecks coming from multiple streams, actually that already
exists right in the influencer world right you have fitness influencers just like
showing photos of themselves shredded working out eating healthy and you have you know protein bar
brands supplement brands athletic clothing wear brands paying them to post right so that this this multi this the world that world is starting to has been starting
to take fruition recently yeah definitely and i think like one one other thing i wanted to
really communicate with this is um how like like these algorithms are so powerful uh they're so effective and there's just this chance
that you kind of let your life slip through your fingers because you're you're letting the algos
like take advantage of you you're letting you're letting yourself just get distracted 14 hours a
day by stupid shit um so i think what's going to become really important in the,
in the future is,
is being able to consciously detach from it to,
to do things like read stoicism to,
to like remember to anchor yourself to like some serious values to almost to
like rediscover religion,
like whatever that looks like for you.
I think that's going to be really critical in the future.
The, I remember like, you know, sometimes I remember when I was first reading these Psalms,
like there were things I would read that would like send kind of chills through me as I was
reading it. And what you, one thing you just said right letting your life slip before you because
of these algorithm like slip through your fingers because of these algorithms is haunting uh definitely
sent some chills chills through me yeah um well I love it I think like part of um part of me writing these is often like me like talking
to myself and like recognizing that I am losing these battles and and it's almost like I wrote
this stuff to to remind myself not to let it happen like I can feel it happening to me and
I'm like there's this part of me deep inside that's like rejecting it like what are you doing
you're spending too much time online.
You're like finding things that really aren't important and elevating them in importance in your life.
And it's, yeah, it's a really hard thing to break free of.
Yeah, there's an interesting balance, right?
You know, there's, we talked a little bit about this last time, like Half the world thinks that, not half the world, but half of crypto Twitter thinks that if you're not online right now for the next three years, grinding, you are going to be part of some sort of underclass.
And the other half is like, touch grass.
Totally. The other half is like touch grass. It's a tough balance and you don't know what the right,
you don't know what the right decision is.
Yeah. I mean, for me too, like lately I've been thinking like,
like UBI feels so utterly inevitable to me that I am thinking that a lot of
these people, myself included,
do believe that you've got to make it now or like, you know, your life's going to be complete shit
and all your heirs are going to be living in hovels. I think there is a chance that we are
all the ones who are totally psyoping ourselves and that that if we would just coast along and UBI does arrive,
why did we waste years of our lives panicking and frantically accumulating assets
when on the other side of it, it doesn't really matter.
But yeah, that's such a huge gamble to take with your life to like trust governments to,
to be able to tax corporations in the future and redistribute wealth.
But I,
I don't have the courage to sort of think that that's a given, you know,
even though I, I think it'll happen,
but I think getting there is going to be very painful and very ugly.
Yeah. And what we're talking about just like goes pretty seamlessly to, I think it'll happen, but I think getting there is going to be very painful and very ugly.
Yeah.
And what we're talking about just like goes pretty seamlessly to number 18.
Second paragraph of number 18 is the new divide is not rich versus poor.
It's the driven versus the drifting, right?
The access to knowledge is equal.
Everyone has access to the same amount of knowledge, basically.
And you just have to be sit,
you have to sit there and be willing to ask questions.
Yeah.
And just even sometimes it's just like, like willing,
like consciously choosing a direction, even though you have no surety, no,, but they never take the time to explore them and position themselves to make money off of it in the future or to leverage it in some way.
Yeah.
I really think this agency is just massively important.
I think the number of times I came across a coin, probably such an early market cap.
I saw it, recognized it, but if I had taken a minute or two to do an extra,
to dive down, experiment with the protocol,
I think the dividends would have been insane in relation to the amount of research I would have had to do.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
19 kind of makes sense to jump, jump into, right? We just,
the cost of lies has fallen to zero, right?
Anyone can generate anything and make you question.
And now a lot of times when I'm scrolling through my feed,
I, you know, not just Twitter, but Instagram,
I think it's probably worse on Twitter than anywhere else,
but you see a photo or video and you ask yourself,
is this real or is this not real?
Yeah.
And, you know, you said at the last sentence for number 19
is the only truth left is the one we pay for.
And it's these prediction markets that we trust.
And, you know, it's not just crypto natives that trust these prediction markets, but everyone on the Internet now alludes to Polymarket as a sole source of truth.
What do you think?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, they're just becoming like, critically important to our lives. I mean, we, we just were looking up Calci and
Polymarket before this call, like it's, and it changed our perspective immediately on,
on like the Clarity Act. So I do think this gets to like that Eric Schmidt quote about
figuring out what's going on in the world, like we need tools to help us in this and prediction markets. I'm just it's it's like they came along like everything about technologies like this, like it arises from a need, you know, like these markets wouldn't exist if there weren't a need for them.
You know, like these markets wouldn't exist if there weren't a need for them.
Bitcoin wouldn't exist if the governments hadn't been printing money ridiculously and caused the 2008 collapse.
So, yeah, these things, first, you have a terrible problem and solutions pop up.
And, yeah, I think prediction markets are a great example of that.
Is there one you want to jump to?
I know I like hogged by running through the first.
Any of these?
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe 21.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
So 21 is called the death of IP.
And I basically have this theory that LLMs are,
you know, if you think about how they were born,
they're just basically databases
of all of humanity's knowledge
compressed into this sort of latent space
that we can then migrate through.
And I think that maps a lot to how our brains work, you know, like where all of our life experiences lead to our beliefs and
our ability to take certain actions in life.
And I think like LLMs, since they give anyone the ability to create anything, attribution and this myth of the lone creator or whatever is going to eventually become unimportant.
People aren't going to care who wrote the song.
They're going to enjoy the song.
People aren't going to need to patent some new technology because technology
is going to be abundant and cheap. And we'll move beyond this need to like hoard technology
and gatekeep it and charge people for it. And we'll instead move to this world where
technology is viewed as like this common good and we will be altruistically motivated to contribute
to it. And we'll almost become more like a kind of like a Borg-like species where we don't need
credit for things. Like we just all kind of, we're motivated by things beyond money. So that's kind
of what I felt like I was getting at with that one, but curious how you feel about IP and if that resonates at all.
I think that the institutions in place benefit so much from IP that at the end of the day, laws will need to be changed to overturn the ip regulations that are in place um i understand what you're
saying where yeah the abs like i you know one one thing you had said was people won't care like
that this great song was made by well not a specific entity like individual. And I wonder, I think there's like, the way the world is kind of
behaving, it feels like people pay very close attention to specific influencers and like what
they are doing and what they're promoting and, you know, actually being, you know, it goes back
to the word like influencers, like they have influence in what people are doing and thinking.
And it's tough for me to, one, imagine a world where money isn't the number one motivator.
And two, you're not influenced by these different individuals
that you've paid close attention to or grew up watching.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's a very, yeah,
probably the individual artists and things.
Yeah, maybe that is an area where we'll still,
we'll definitely venerate live performers and stuff but if if we are moving to kind of like a post-capitalistic society
um i think a lot of these things are are just going to going to change in very unexpected ways
so i'm super excited to see like what that like. I think capitalism has just warped our brains in the world. And that's because it is. But like it's produced the best outcomes, the best growth stories.
But you look at all these areas where it's just utterly broken in our society.
Like, you know, health care is a great example.
In the U.S., like we have amazing health care.
But like everyday people often can't even like they won't go to the emergency room or they don't get annual checkups.
It's really broken in a lot of ways.
So I'm excited to see how society changes if we do move to UBI where people aren't like struggling to just survive.
Yeah.
You brought up healthcare and this is one place, maybe I'm mistaken. aren't like struggling to just survive. Yeah.
You brought up healthcare and this is one place,
maybe I'm mistaken and under informed,
but it feels like healthcare hasn't really hit
like a hockey stick like growth because of AI.
And it feels like that has to be imminent.
What do you think about that?
Like patents, not only for like inventions and creations, but, uh, related to technology,
but patents, patents related to like medication and drugs and drug discovery.
I wonder, do you feel that way as well?
It feels like the AI boom hasn't touched this sector yet.
Yeah, I mean, I am seeing early signs of it,
like a lot on AngelList, for example,
just tons of really interesting biotech startups that
are already working with hospitals. I think a huge issue here is just obviously HIPAA and
privacy concerns and just testing things out on humans is very risky in general. So it's just got this natural friction
in it that makes those developments happen slower. But I do think like, in the medium term,
I agree with you, like, there will still be like, insane number of patents, and the medical
industry is just going to make a killing. But, you know, if you look out 40, 60 years from now,
you'll probably just, like in the movies,
enter a pod and the AI will build out, like,
bespoke cures for you, like, instantaneously.
Like, what's the need for a patent in that environment?
You know, it's producing outcomes for you
with synthetic intelligence.
I mean, the only costs there are like electricity
and whatever equipment you'd need
and like the raw material to produce a vaccine
or some genetic cure.
So yeah, that's kind of where I'm thinking
like really long-term when I say the death of IP.
Want to jump to 22.
Yeah.
Uh, this one I thought was interesting.
A minority will fuse with intelligence itself and leave the species boundary behind what what uh this is basically like describing a
you know certain humans have become like half cyborgs themselves or am i yeah yeah yeah exactly
so i think we're already seeing signs of this with Neuralink and other companies that are building out brain-computer interfaces.
So as these things become safe and all of us start getting them implanted, you'll be able to do things like just basically surfing the internet.
We'll be thinking, you'll be able to do things like just basically surfing the internet will be like thinking, you know, you'll be able to just download knowledge.
And at that point, like, are you still human?
Are you still you?
And if you, like, imagine sitting in a room with someone talking to them, like an Amish person, for instance, and like you're the cultural divide there becomes utterly massive.
And we do have that ability to interface with the club, like just by the power of thought,
you do start to you're going to have people that are absolutely opposed to that and will never do
that and won't take advantage of things like life extension technologies.
And so you'll eventually have like this huge chasm, I think, between people who technologically
augment themselves and those who don't. And I think that eventually kind of will lead to this
branch in the evolutionary tree.
Yeah, it makes me wonder, and the first thing, I don't know why it makes me go back to jobs,
but it makes me wonder like, are there going to be,
different standards for different types of employees,
like the folks that have fused with AI versus regular folks?
And I know we started talking at the start,
we kind of talked about this AGI world where we won't need jobs, but you know,
one thing I wonder about is why the hell would anyone hire someone who isn't
fused with AI, right? At that point.
Yeah, exactly.
The market forces you to do it.
Yeah.
So then it reminds me a lot of the movie.
What was the movie recently?
God, I can't remember the name, but there was a group of...
Oh, it was called The Creator.
Did you see that?
Haven't seen it, no.
Cool.
There's this group of people that reject technology and live more naturally.
But they're kind of hunted by the technological society.
Jesus.
I do think we could have like these islands of humans that just reject this stuff, like some sort of neo-amish type movement
um i mean i i'm attracted to that myself in a lot of ways um so it's inevitable so you wouldn't
you wouldn't fuse yourself with ai it feels like you you partially have a little bit, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think I would.
But there's like two parts of me.
Like half of me wants to just never look at a laptop screen again.
And the other half wants to just push it as far as I possibly can, you know.
But I think like I'm married.
I think like my wife would she would be very opposed
to this sort of thing so i don't know i might be stuck with her on this island of uh normies
who don't adopt the technology i don't know we'll see yeah
cool yeah would you do it? Brain implants?
I don't think I would.
I think I like who I am enough to not want to.
But I also think there are, I think there's a large number of folks who won't have
a choice, right? Like if you think you're going to be trapped in this permanent underclass, which
I might be, I don't know yet. We'll find out. You don't have a choice at that point, right?
If you want to compete against other humans and you have this opportunity to have a leg up, then I think a lot of folks won't
really have a choice.
So, but given a choice, I think I would prefer not to, and I'd go your wife's way.
And the way you say it earlier, throw your laptop away and never look at any of this
again.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's one thing I'm super excited about with AI. Like if we, if we get some glasses that are really, really powerful, like we're already able to speak to
text and, you know, CloudBot is allowing us to be able to just talk in a telegram chat window and get knowledge and get things done.
So I think we are just in general going to leave these devices behind.
And I can't wait for that.
Yeah.
You know, I also want like the part there's there's I know a lot of folks, a couple maybe
during the rise of the metaverse and stuff
would talk about artificial reality.
This kind of made me think of like you brought up the glasses
and I think the blend, the compromise between artificial reality
and where we live now is augmented reality, right?
Like you see what you see but
you know wearing these glasses you have things glasses or contacts things are superimposed
onto your your day-to-day life uh i don't know i just i know snapchat back in the day
was doing a lot of work in this space around like augmented reality.
Yeah, they're dying now, but we'll see.
Yeah, there's an amazing show called The Periphery, I think.
Yeah, like it's set in the future and this guy doesn't realize it it but all the people around him are fake like uh
because the world's basically population has collapsed and um the lady tells him you know
yeah we we implant those people there make it to just like settle the human nerves because you
like you become very psychologically unsound when you feel like you're alone in the world
i thought it was pretty wild that's great it's called periphery you'd said
yeah i think so the peripheral or periphery peripheral oh pretty interesting show
back to back to our breaking news from before so you know how the odds spiked to 92% a couple hours ago?
Well, they just nuked down to 28%.
Someone on Kalshi just got decimated.
Oh, that is horrible.
Yeah.
That was, geez, what happened? what happened all right well i'm glad we
didn't go and buy some eth uh i'm glad we're doing this so we didn't end up buying youth by x
yeah totally uh maybe let's talk about privacy i think privacy coins and privacy is something
you've been pretty outspoken about for quite some time.
What's your take?
Are you holding Zcash or Monero?
What's your take?
I do.
I am a big fan of Zcash.
I had some.
I sold it maybe like a week or two ago
and rotated into some alts that got utterly slaughtered.
But yeah, I like I'm planning to rotate back in.
I think I think it is like it's what attracted me to crypto in the first place.
You know, like financial privacy is I view it as a human right.
And I think a lot of people take it for granted.
Like they say,
you don't have any financial privacy anyway today.
And in that case, it's just so untrue.
You can pull out a $100 bail out of your wallet.
You can go to any store anywhere in the US
and buy something with it.
And you're not like KYC'd
by the person at the cash register. You're not like that dollar is fungible. It can be swapped
for any other dollar. It's completely private beyond the fact that you're probably on some
sort of surveillance camera. And I think that that is, if we lose that freedom um that's when authoritarianism can
really really take over because uh if you do anything that upsets the government like you
you can easily be just have all your accounts nuked and and um you're the ability to house yourself.
What was that? Sorry.
No, I said you become debanked, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And it's, yeah, I think where we're headed to, if what we were talking about earlier,
like if AI does really start to newke jobs and you start to see things
like a stronger rise in socialism, like we're seeing in New York, California, Europe,
asset seizure, but just as it's going to be on the table. So in that scenario, like you're going
to see people flee into privacy coins coins so i'm super bullish on those
long term yeah you know the other interesting thing is a lot of folks a lot of like very
crypto native folks are very passionate about privacy privacy coins the other folks you wouldn't really well that i hadn't expected at first are really into privacy
right with these these large financial institutions right you there's a lot of like
traction maybe not a lot but there's more can't more traction than i expected with canton
There's more traction than I expected with Canton, right?
Canton, the chain is like private by default.
You can issue, you can create assets, move assets along.
But unless you have viewer keys, you can't really see what's,
you can't glean too many insights off of what's happening on a network.
And this is probably something like large financial institutions have a preference
for, right? They don't want to broadcast the movement of however many millions or billions
of dollars being moved around and executing different trades. That's like a segment that
seems like... Again, Canton is not something I'm like very well educated on,
but it does seem like they are,
they're trying to, to win over a lot of the,
the TradFi world. Yeah.
Yeah. I've been really impressed by like their adoption.
There's a little like smoke and mirrors there.
It's hard to know how accurate they're,
what they say about their volumes are and things.
But I do think that it makes a lot of sense
from the point of view of corporations.
And it is like the 2018 sort of corporate blockchain thesis playing out.
Like you've got these big entities that are running nodes that are, they basically have their own private network.
And there's a lot of advantages to it.
But I think ultimately like those aren't, you know, it's kind of a stopgap. It's like the 20 year solution as, as like ultimately public blockchains, I think will embrace privacy through ZKs and like a lot of that stuff will migrate over to the public chains, especially if we start to see some more serious like acceleration in tech.
serious like acceleration in tech um you're just gonna miss the entire business models change and
like the life cycle of businesses will be much shorter um so and and much more international
so it doesn't really i don't think like some of these institutions are going to be around
in 20 years necessarily so um it is it is a nice stopgap for them though right now.
Yeah.
You know, the other thing about these like Corpo chains
like Canton is how long,
like at the end of the day,
if you have, you know, millions, billions of dollars,
hundreds of millions of dollars
being transacted on these Corpo chains
and I'll call Canton a corpo chain
even though it has like the privacy feature you know it's not as decentralized as Ethereum right
one day maybe I'm ignorant here but the the the Canton foundation the Canton can can say
all right there's now going to be a 10% fee on transaction
volume, and they're now reaping the profits. And it seems like if I was a financial institution,
I would want to play on a blockchain that has been around the longest, and I'd fear the least
having the rules changed on me.
Right. So maybe that's one, like what Stripe is doing,
create your own chain or you play on a chain that,
that, that has, that has, has shown resilience.
And yeah, absolutely.
Like I think ultimately the public chains will win, but, um but I'm also trying to stay open to this idea that maybe they are an aberration in history and like a lot of it is potentially most of them are going to go away. But I do think we'll have at least one to five
smart contract chains that kind of own
the world.
That's definitely the
future I want to see is where
they're not owned by any one
corporation.
How do you see it
breaking...
Let's say there's five handful
of chains, right? Do you see it being broken do you see it let's say there's five handful of chains right like do you
see it being broken across the universe by region of the world like what what what do you think
about when like how how this world would be structured or at least these yeah
yeah i think it would probably be i think they'll probably be chains that are sort of optimized for certain types of use cases. And yeah, some maybe for more like security like tokens.
sort of stuff like um i think we'll we'll see them like build out cultures and it's like the
city-state thing the analogy we often use in crypto um but i think it'll be much deeper than
it is today like today it's just like you wear the t-shirt and you you go to the meetups for
a certain chain that you really believe in but i think ultimately like it'll be more of a cultural like much more important to um different very specific use cases and interests yeah
yeah i don't think any polymarket user like most probably don't know it settles on polygon right
yeah absolutely and i forget that myself often.
And the folks that do know don't care, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's meaningless.
Let's jump around to another one now.
Yeah, sure.
See, I'm scrolling through.
All right. Here's number 25 25 I think is interesting. Like, so 24 I wanted to talk about too. Maybe we can jump backwards after that. But for 25 I talk about like blockchains. I call them humanity's last free port. So like free ports are these areas like usually near airports or like country borders where like no one like they're they're outside of territorial jurisdictions.
So you can do things like store items.
They are tax free and they're they're like this safe haven for assets um what what the
hell so i have to elaborate a little bit more on this what is this this is there's places in the
world that you can do yeah sorry run it back yeah yeah these are like areas they're usually like in ports, or like airports. And
it's like, it's almost like a holding tank or a holding area
where you can store valuable items and not have to pay like
customs or run them through customs. So it's like this, a
lot of people will use it as a place to store like watches or
like really
valuable pieces of art or something. Like it's almost like a,
this neutral zone in the world.
Kind of like when you're going through the airport and you go to the duty
free shop, it's like the rich person version of a duty free shop,
like a store and lock that's outside of territorial control.
So like, I think of blockchains like that a lot.
Like I think that they are this space
where you can do things that you just can't do anywhere else.
Like we've got these nodes
that are gonna run the code that you ship no matter what,
like no one can pull it down, no one can stop it.
Like you wanna deploy a app on the
app store apple can like block it uh that's just not the case in crypto and like i just feel like
we're becoming so surveilled we're becoming so boxed in and like we're so inundated from the
time we're born of this idea of like oh don't do that you could get in trouble
like you know you could go to jail for doing that or someone's gonna see you and post that
on the internet like there are all these things that like inhibit us in very silent pernicious
ways and we often don't even realize the ways that we're limiting ourselves.
And so I think like blockchains are kind of the last free place in the world for us.
Often we can deploy apps, no one can stop us.
But the corollary since I wrote this one is that I've been thinking a lot lately about AI agents and how, you know, once we're like deploying them on chain,
you know, like we're giving them the ability to do things.
And this is the environment where we can't stop them.
So once we kind of let that genie out of the bottle,
we're kind of screwed.
So in some ways, like you could argue that blockchains are going to bring about our destruction in
a way if you believe that AI is truly going to become super intelligent and blockchains
could be our most dangerous attack vector.
Yeah, the idea that AI agents would be using blockchains to transmit the money of the internet, which should be crypto, right? their own prediction markets and like building out death markets, you know, or like just paying humans to build them factories or get them supplies.
It's like, it's a very interesting, like,
like the freedom of blockchain is also what makes it so dangerous.
And I would never worried about that before the rise of AI,
but now it's something I think about a lot.
So the fear is like anyone or anything can now do anything because they have this blockchain that they can deploy contracts onto that anyone can interact with. Yeah, like the, like we don't, I don't think we fully have the ability, I mean, to, to like fully upload an intelligence onto a blockchain yet.
Like you do see these early open call agents like cloning themselves onto backup servers and stuff so that their owner doesn't shut them down.
doesn't shut them down yeah but once these things can be fully on chain and cannot be terminated
Yeah.
then they could really start start doing things that impact our the real world which is kind of
insane especially when they're embodied in robots you know it's uh yeah it's a very wild world we're
headed into yeah it you know the thing that popped into my head immediately was like,
you have agents operating on chain and collecting different cryptocurrencies. And
at a certain point, they might have enough to cause the market to behave in certain ways,
like they can even manipulate the market like we believe large actors in crypto do currently.
And it's terrifying to think about, right?
Once they're on chain, they can collaborate and yeah.
Huh.
Yeah, it's wild.
Yeah, and maybe we can jump to 24.
Late last year, I got to take this trip to san francisco san francisco and i went to this place called founders inc which was like a
it's a little accelerator um that accepts young builders from all over the world and gives them
a spot to work in and um gives them materials and grant money and basically says,
you know, you have two months, like build something fucking awesome. And these people
show up from Africa or Canada or wherever, you know, they, they move there and then they,
they get the resources they need to build something. And, and I just saw these incredible
things being built. Like one guy was, he had his own like desktop, uh, forge where he was like melting metal and he was 3d printing molds and covering them in ceramics. And then like literally building out aircraft, uh, parts like in this 10 by 10 little square all by himself.
in this 10 by 10 little square all by himself.
And I just left that place like thinking, wow,
these are like, I just saw, you know,
50 different people building 50 different crazy projects
from drones to printing metal to different robotics
and people building out, you know,
futuristic servers and stuff.
And often it was like a one solo person or like a
two or three person team and it just really made me marvel at like how how much we can do now and
i think it's kind of this taste of of the future if you if you're brave enough to sort of take a swing, we truly are unlimited right now.
So I think we all need to lean into that.
And we're truly only inhibited by our courage.
Yeah.
The one thing that stood out to me again,
I know it was like an early thing for these folks.
And you'd said like the teams were one to three people.
And one thing I think about is, you know, you have corporations,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of employees
is what we're kind of used to, right?
The high functioning ones that are very profitable,
the names that everyone,
the names that everyone's familiar with has armies.
And it makes me wonder, you know,
it feels like we're,
it feels like we're in an era where there are companies that could be
formed that have like a dozen, two dozen, I mean, Hyperliquid alone,
right?
Like there's 12 or 13 people that work there.
And because of this, because of the technology we have, we need a lot less humans to create something,
create and maintain something that has such a huge impact on the world.
has such a huge impact on the world.
And it makes me wonder,
is talent from these companies
that have like tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of employees
going to leave and just create their own thing?
And then you have these startups
that blossom into full-on corporations
that just have a handful of a dozen employees.
And like, how does that impact the world?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's again like pointing to this loss of jobs.
I feel like the other side of that
is like this sort of infinite power
that each individual has at their fingertips.
It's just like, yeah, if you can dream it, if you want it to exist,
like you can probably make it happen right now, which is insane.
Yeah. Yeah. So this tie actually ties back to AI for a second, right?
Like what we're saying is because of AI, because of the tech in front of us, any human being can go and create essentially anything.
But there's another element to add, and that's that any AI could, in theory, go and create anything.
Right.
And that's you wonder.
It just goes back to exactly what you're saying.
You're like now not just competing with humans,
you're competing with AI.
And it feels like it's going to lead to a job loss calamity.
Yeah.
Yeah, Interesting times.
Let's jump to...
I had one for...
We can jump back and forth, but I thought...
I think I had 29.
Oh, yeah.
This is the same theme.
The syntax of the guy. This is exactly kind of what we're
talking about right you don't need to know how to code you just need to know how to type and
it's just you can create anything and i think there's like a there's kind of an interesting gap
I think there's kind of an interesting gap that still exists in this.
And what I'm trying to get to is if anyone can create anything,
any agent can create anything, and that's cool,
but you still have to be able to sell it, right?
You have to be able to get users. And that isn't something that seems like
AI can do, right? Like when I think about roles that get killed by AI, the last ones I think
about are the sales roles, right? The one where you have to convince a human to buy or do something.
And it feels like humans are, what do you think?
I think it feels like I as a human would,
I'd never get on a call and be okay with getting pitched by a robot
if I'm buying a $10, $20 million piece of,
even a $50,000 piece of software, right?
What?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good point.
I do tend to think that we're not,
like, you know, you could,
we're just like probably months away from already,
like you can hop on a call with someone and it could be AI and you probably wouldn't know it.
So I don't know, like, is that true in that world?
Like these AIs can, I mean, I'm already seeing it in crypto projects.
My focus is on crypto marketing.
Like my focus is on crypto marketing.
Yeah.
And a lot of the vast majority of the content now that appears on crypto Twitter is generated by LLNs.
There's a human kind of orchestrating it.
But often they're even using the LLN to write the markdown files that sort of inform how the LLN works.
This stuff is super formulaic. And it's just getting better every day.
Like I think like a human marketer is going to be very inferior in a lot of
ways. And at some point you're going to like, we'll think, Oh, well,
face-to-face interactions will become really important.
But we've also got robots that
are going to look more and more lifelike and uh are we going to care if we're getting sold by a
robot or a human like well yeah i don't know we're just gonna go for it i i was just gonna say like
when you were saying like you can't tell if it's like humans in this in this virtual world when
you're on a google meet or something like that.
But it makes me wonder, you know,
is there going to be a shift back to doing business in person, right?
Like meeting and talking to another human
as opposed to, you know, how COVID accelerated the Zoom world
and being okay with not really meeting people. And it makes me wonder, like, is, like, the next, like, valuable skill set,
it's currently valuable, but, like, is there going to be even more value
placed upon the skill of, like, being able to, like, meet a human,
kick back, have a conversation about work, about play and be a normal human being in order to like close a deal or yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm like super excited by that.
Like I do think it's going to become massively more common and more important.
And like untethering ourselves from our screens is a big part of that.
We're just going to be able to maybe see information through glasses, or we'll just
consume it through auto-generated podcasts we tell our agent to build for us. And we're just going to have,
we're going to be able to start divorcing ourselves from,
from devices and reentering our bodies.
And I think that's one of the things I'm most excited about with AI.
Yeah.
What, what should we jump to next?
Yes. Should we do like one more each or yeah sure okay like i think the one that probably has been a big shift for me is like number 32
memento morris so when i was younger i used to really love the concept of memento mori which is
uh remember that you must die is what it translates as um and it's very common in like
stoic philosophy like even other philosophers throughout history have like kept skulls on
their desk for example to to just remind themselves that they are going to
die. And it really just puts this super powerful like perspective on everything that you're
thinking about, everything that you're doing. But it's also so like I think in my 20s, early 30s, that really propelled me to work a shitload and to try to accumulate assets so that I could give myself more freedom when I got older.
But if we're truly entering this age of abundance, if we are leaving scarcity behind, that whole aspect of our lives and our personalities is going to
evaporate. Like we're going to, there's like, you can see it when you, like when you meet someone
who's rich, for instance, like a billionaire, like not that I've met a billionaire that I know
of in person, but just the way they carry themselves, there like they're kind of above the concerns of everyday people you know like you don't you view the
world differently because you've got different leverage over the world yeah so I think like as
we move in like everyone's going to get that eventually like if we do truly enter this
age of abundance like we're we're all going to have that privilege of living like that
and in that environment like our philosophies have to change um we've said multiple times like
we think getting to that point though is going to be very rocky, very dangerous, very like potentially terrible for humanity.
I think there'll be protests, wars, you know, financial collapses, food shortages. That stuff
is all stuff that I worry about happening. And if you're locked into this mindset of,
oh, I have to make it or like I'm doomed if I don't. You can really fall into this trap of
doing things that aren't morally acceptable. You can become a dark person if you really lean too
hard into that, I've got to make it type mentality. So I love the shift away from Memento Mori over to, um, Memento Amoris,
which is remember you must love. I think that's going to be so important if, if the world does
become more difficult, like we're really going to have to lean on each other in ways that we
haven't had to in the past 30, 40 years. Um, so yeah, I really think that's important to keep in mind.
I think the part of like, what is worth, like when you're,
when you're trying to figure out as an individual,
what is worth doing forever? One,
I feel like I always see on like crypto Twitter folks that made it that are just
like complaining and so lost. And so like,
like they made their seven eight figures and
they're just like what now and they're just they seem more like a shell of a human than they were
when they were they had the goal of the seven eight nine figures uh and i even noticed this
among like you know some friends and acquaintances there are some
that like they're not billionaires or filthy rich but they've made enough to not have to work and
one or two of them are very it seems like they're kind of like aimlessly wandering the earth and
doing these like side quests that they're not like fully
passionate about, but they have the time and the freedom. So they just go and do that thing. And
I don't know if it fulfills them, but it's not a question a lot of people have to deal with right
now, right? Because everyone, a lot, most folks have to go to work, have to pay the bills.
And if you live in this post-AGI world where you don't have to work necessarily,
and I think you think this is going to happen a lot faster than I do
because it seems like you're bracing quite a bit for it.
We're just going to wake up in a year and it's gonna
be agi just we can get to that in a second but yeah i feel like there are a lot of people who
get depressed after having made it right now like i don't know what to do anymore right they were
chasing numbers on a screen they hit the number and some of them make the number higher the others are just like
fuck i don't know what to do with my life but it feels like yeah yeah that's good yeah i mean that is so that is the thing that excites me and worries me like i do think i've written a lot
in the past about the weirdening about how like cultures is just getting weirder and weirder as we become more tapped into these subcultures that the Internet allows us to connect with.
So we often have more in common with someone 2000 miles away and like treat them like we have deeper friendships with them than we do our neighbors.
Yeah.
But I think that's
gonna happen for sure like we're all just we all have infinite time and infinite capabilities to
build out things that we want um things that we're into we're just gonna end up in these
very bizarre isolated rabbit holes um but yeah i do i do think a lot of us are going to reject that and just lean into
going on walks in nature, going to the beach, playing music, doing art. Yeah. So it's, yeah,
two sides to that coin for sure. Yeah. The, you know,
one thing you had said
is you think folks
are getting weirder
and weirder.
I actually feel the opposite.
And yeah,
I don't know
if you follow
Ben Roy
on X.
Yeah,
yeah,
I do.
Yeah,
I can.
He wrote,
his profile's changed quite a bit bit but one of his like most recent uh yeah notes on internet addiction on his sub stack he also read about it but there
was like one thing that stood out so much on his notes on internet addiction.
One thing he had said was like, at the end of the day,
we are a product of the algorithms that were fed.
And one thing he had, I got to dig it up exactly,
but he had said number, oh yeah, this is so good.
Number five is, I'll just kind of read it out loud. He says,
being so online has implications for wider culture as well. People are becoming more
average over time because we're all consuming the same content curated by TikTok, YouTube,
Instagram, and X. And he calls this like, algorithmic flattening,
and we're all consuming the same inputs. And then we end up, you know, I think the idea
that we're consuming the same inputs, and we end up liking and being more similar to
everyone around us. Yeah, I see Juan dropping 100. And this is something, you know, I live in a major city in the US.
This is something I noticed, like there are so many people that seem so similar to each other.
There's this like monoculture.
He says, you know, he says we're all losing our floofy spiky uniqueness and
I can definitely resonate with that I think it's just like the most like horrifying thing to witness
right like everyone just kind of consumes the same thing and ends up becoming the same thing or like very similar to each other.
And you have like, you have like a world of souls that can kind of just get along with each other
because they're all the same. And maybe this is like, this is looking like 5, 10, 15 years down
the road. But like, if you all end up just consuming the same inputs,
some of those people are creators and those creators are influenced by those same
inputs. So the problem kind of becomes magnified, right?
The creators are fed the same input.
So now the creators are just kind of creating the same type of content.
And you have this like, I'll call it like a doom loop of everyone just consuming,
you kind of lose the individuality because right, you read a book or watch a, you read a book and you
you say, you know, it makes you feel a certain type of way and I don't, yeah, i guess i'm kind of i'm kind of like wandering off here but
i think there is something you know you think everyone's getting weirder i think i think the
opposite actually and ben kind of writes about that well i do i do resonate with that like i
think about it a lot when i heard someone talking about like years ago you could travel across the U.S., for example,
and Albuquerque would be very different from Harrisburg
or something.
Towns have really filled up with these big box stores.
They have the same restaurants.
People have the same sort of accent.
Even accents have gotten more normalized and more similar.
But like the flip side of that, I think is like, maybe it's different in a big city. I don't live
in a big city. So I'm around like different age ranges of people and like consume different
media. Like I spend most of my time on x and like um in techno circles and
when i'm talking to people where i live like they're so checked out of tech like they don't
they they absolutely hate elon they despise um they despise all the big llm companies they think
LLM companies that think AI is just like destroying the planet.
And anytime, like if I were to talk politics with them, for example,
like I can't find anyone that like shares my views anymore.
Like it's so like everyone's getting like different silos of information.
So I don't know.
There's this weird sort of it's like both things
are happening somehow.
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that perspective on it.
Yeah.
Let's see which one I'm going to jump to.
Yeah, maybe one more, and then we can see if anyone else has any comments.
I see Raf on here.
I don't know if we've ever spoken, but long-time friend on X,
so great to see you here, man.
Hey, Raf, what's up no i'm happy to honestly i we can we can just jump into whatever if anyone wants to
comment come up and say something happy to chat with them nice yeah uh yeah it looks like there's
only three people left but uh if any of you want to chat, definitely send an invite or request.
Cool, not getting anything, but yeah, what are you, yeah, any closing thoughts?
I think, you know, the thing that's, you know, I love that we met through crypto and now we're just like talking about AI.
And sometimes I hate it, but like sometimes I like it. It's where the world is going.
And, you know, you have, I think there are probably so many people if they, you know, a lot of people on their day to day-day basis don't really have the time to sit and think about, like, what the hell is AI going
to do to my life, my future, my day-to-day?
Like, what is my year going to look like?
What is my life going to look like in a year from now?
But I think it's a, I think, I think there, it's twofolded.
I think there's going to be people who,
if they were told they didn't have a job anymore
or don't need a job anymore, would be ecstatic.
They'd go surfing, start a fucking farm,
do things that like, yeah, do whatever the hell they want.
But then I also think there are folks that like,
find so much meaning in their work.
And.
It's kind of scary to think about being one of those folks, right? Your life is your work.
And if you know what I personally, I think that's it's both beautiful and sad, right?
Like if you're going to your cubicle
and opening your laptop and clicking buttons,
just, I mean, I guess that's what we do in crypto shit.
But like if that's kind of what you live for,
it's kind of a terrifying thing to think about.
People are going to have to look in the mirror
and figure out
like oh what else is out there for me and yeah just yeah I think about that all the time like
maybe I said it last time but I think of I think maybe the big psyop the big sort of
rug pull of our lives is like being told that our meaning comes from our work.
And I think if we do arrive at that place where we don't have to do it, it's almost like we're all going to climb to this higher rung on like Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
like to this place where humanity finally gets
to discover why it was really here like maybe work is the aberration like this 150 years of
having every free moment of our lives dedicated to corporations and to making other people richer
like that i think a thousand years from now,
people are going to look back on that and just be like,
I can't believe humans, you know,
spent 20 some years going to school and then like 40 to 50 years working.
And then they got to spend like five healthy years traveling the world when
they can barely walk and, um,
what was their lives? Like how, how sad and pitiful is that in a lot of ways? So, um, yeah, I think we're, uh, like in one of these,
I think I talk about us being like in a cocoon right now and not knowing
what's going to emerge on the other side. And, um, yeah,
I think that's where we're at and just can't wait to see where it leads
us yeah i think raf just requested to speak oh sweet oh i guess i can see you too oh i didn't
realize that there we go approved come on up hey raf Hey, Raf. Can you speak, Raf?
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's good.
I'm glad to be here.
I had only a red phone of your hierarchy in order could get me to voice talk.
I love it. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were going to be like a guy or a 13-year-old girl or what.
Yeah, maybe I'm a crustacean in a Mac Mini. Nobody knows. Not me either.
And thank you guys for having me up and and doing these um bart i appreciate you as
well um so i actually have a question kind of um because i i couldn't make the last one but i
um but i listened to the recording and one of the things that stuck with me
because i think a lot of people in any kind of form of finance kind of see like price discovery and being able to go risk on and express theses with capital, like, you know, are driven towards a capitalist belief.
And I'm within that. But you said something, I think it was like socialism never has worked or communism has never worked, but it doesn't account for like a totally autonomous economy that just
requires the power to run it.
And then I was also kind of thinking on sort of this,
like you have a couple, you sort of the DJ and Spartan mentality.
Like you have a few years to hyper your gamble your way out of the permanent
underclass but i
can't remember who it was but someone positive like what if there's going to be sort of this
like oligopoly like you know um 80 20 rules split you know some people have an insane ability to
leverage this technology and of course look at the out the majority of the resources but what
if the permanent underclass is kind of, you know,
lifting the rest of the world up to like a Western version of a lower middle
class? Is that like even bad? And I just thought that was,
maybe it was nowhere. I can't remember who it was,
but just kind of what were your guys' thoughts on it and riff on that?
Because I try to either run my own biases or different trade theses as like a thesis or experiment.
So like how you invalidate that.
And I just thought it was a really interesting lens of you mentioning not being able to discount things that hadn't worked in the past because of how exponential and impactful that this new technology could be.
So I'm just curious on your thoughts there.
Yeah, such a good question and like something that um i feel like uh yeah i feel like we are all like they call this moment the singularity like elon said where the singularity
started basically i think he tweeted that like a week ago or something um and the singularity like elon said where the singularity started basically i think he
tweeted that like a week ago or something um and the singularity is such a great metaphor because
it's really like a reference to black holes and how like you can't see over over the event horizon
like we're going through this moment where it just becomes impossible to predict what what is gonna
what life's gonna be like on the other side.
And it's just truly unprecedented in life.
It's like something no generation has ever experienced before.
So I think it's really dangerous to get caught up
in these sort of patterns.
Like you always hear people say, you know,
like this time is different.
Yeah, it's different and it's worse this time,
which is great.
But this time is, I mean, it is different.
There's like, and I think we all feel it.
I think culturally we can feel it
and we know that things are gonna be super different. And like, you know, what Noah said, I agree with, I think like we're going to have to
find a way, like if we don't want war ceaselessly, if we don't want protests ceaselessly, we're going
to have to like find a way to meet people's basic needs without them having to work. And the only
way that happens, I think,
is through a form of socialism,
whatever you want to call it, UBI,
like some sort of taxation on the companies
that are producing the underlying tech.
I wouldn't be surprised if the tax rate for that
goes up to 90% or something crazy.
And the owners of those corporations
and those entities are still
way better off than most people. And most of us will have like maybe a lower middle class type
existence. And if we're happy with that, which I think most people will be because
entertainment's going to be freaking mind blowing and travel will be cheap and easy through autonomous cars um they'll be happy there but for
the few who aren't happy with that they want more like they'll always be like ways to go beyond and
to be exceptional and to to accrue more value to yourself um but yeah at that point it does become
like this really philosophical question of why do you want more?
Like if you have your needs met and you know that they're met, like, can you find happiness there?
That's like the question we're all going to have to answer.
Maybe that's the point, right?
what you were saying before where yeah like the majority of meaning or status or or sort of respect
or any kind of admiration is often like you know what your work is what you do how much you make
sort of these like arbitrary delineating lines right and now whether it could be like hey maybe
because humans have been you know carving hieroglyphs into stone forever or creating moments of beauty
through art, like that can return to some sort of digital renaissance of sorts and how to kind of,
artists might, I know the initial worry is like, you know, we try to block it, right? Like we're,
when Napster came out, all the musicians wanted to stop, you know, putting anything up. And then it became, you know, too prevalent of a technology.
And then they started releasing stuff for free just to kind of get the attention more so than whatever they might get from the stream.
So I'm hopeful.
And I think it's always best to sort of lean into what humanity can take from it.
And I think we all find our own versions of that
because yeah i mean like it's hard to even though i love this space and i think it's so interesting
everything going on it's hard to be like yeah i derive meaning from like staring at green and red
charts all day and investing in vaporware and you know all some of the silly aspects of it. But then there's also,
and I was talking with Spieg here in the audience here about this.
And it's kind of like,
maybe it is that sort of dot-com era
where Google and Amazon make their way out.
And maybe it's BTC
and the smart contracts from ETH
and Link as an Oracle and
stable coin rails and everything that we operate on, kind of like what you're saying with Polymarket,
you forget it's on Polygon. That's probably the route we want to go is where it's these
critical infrastructure pieces that you don't know that you're on. Crypto rails or you're
utilizing whatever the chat box or the most advanced version of the LLM is
and it's doing the things on the back end
and you don't care about bridging
or swapping transactions or whatever.
So I do think a lot of this,
the things that we spend our time on
are going to have value
and create really interesting advances
or even just the experiment that we did that, you know,
kind of people hated on social media and on, um, you know, ad tech and all those different
things, but that was the fuel to get to this AI push.
So like, what is maybe this crypto, um, lesson in data set is the fuel for like the next
iteration of things.
So that's what I'm kind of looking for.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that completely, man. It's like,
yeah, you can get overwhelmed with all the potential negatives, but, um,
yeah, ultimately I think what you said really jumps out at me is like,
some of this stuff does sort of become infrastructure and we, we no longer even think about it. Like the word Ethereum maybe is, is like, I would say maybe 20% of most Westerners know what that is. Like, maybe it's like two percent a decade from now but it's still like
an asset with value and like is powering a lot of stuff but and even not gonna give even vitalik
full stacking like 3k eth on our heads the last couple days at least like he has like some of
like that cypherpunk like ethos still and actually cares and wants to build something lasting with this world computer
um i would take that over like you know i think it's incredible what sailor has like engineered
but like oh more debt instruments or like a tiny pittance towards quantum or whatever else or
and then go down the list of the extractors in the space. So I think like regardless of what you might think about Ethereum or Vitalik,
I think like even that ethos alone is like people that aren't here to just
extract and actually want to change things.
I think that, you know, while maybe idealistic,
it's like they're going to be the only cockroaches left.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think if Vitalik had left like years ago or something, like I'm just so
glad he's here because we do, we do need those voices and those reminders and someone pushing
for like the deeper value beneath this stuff. Yeah. So definitely an inspiration to me. I love
that guy and I'm so glad he's around a lot of
the giants that were around when i got into crypto just i don't have no idea what they're doing now
um and he could easily have just fluffed off into the sun yeah i mean you see i'd like i'm sure
hoskinson will put a picture with like a sword or like you know some like red light sauna or
whatever but um and no hate either.
Right. But, um, actually, okay. So I want to be respectful of everyone's time. I have one more
question for you. The other thing that really interested me on the last, uh, space and recording
was, um, the way you're, you and your kids interact with AI. Cause I feel like half of the
stuff I've been sort of like aware of has either been from like some of your
articles or some of your posts is like you're you're super early on you know all the stuff
that was happening on on bass with with the clankers and with goat and everything early
back on truth terminal so like you're on this sort of like bleeding edge side of it and then
it feels like you're kind of letting your children sort of find their own exploration with it, what I think is like a W father move. So I'm just curious to hear more.
Oh, thank you, man. Yeah, I go back and forth on it. Like, my wife is actually a teacher,
she teaches kindergarten. And she talks a lot about like, you know, kids getting on devices too young is like probably just having massive impacts on our society.
Like parents basically use them as like babysitters, you know, for the time a kid before they can even walk.
Kids are on these devices like 10 hours a day or something.
It's kind of ridiculous.
So yeah, I really try to minimize it when they're super young.
But then as they've gotten older, they're in grade school now.
Most parents would take their kids fishing or something
30 years ago.
Dads would take their son fishing or whatever.
My free time, I love exploring the fringes of tech, so I try to get my kids over and involved.
I try to supplant some of their fears over it because it's really weird.
My kids, every single one of them have told me like, they were worried about
AI, like taking over the world or like ruining our environment and stuff. Like, I don't know where
they're getting this information, but it is like a seriously penetrated youth in the US at least.
So yeah, I want them to be comfortable with it and i think like
as tech accelerates as it gets faster um you're you're at such a you're going to be at so much
more of an advantage if you're comfortable with it and able to change and be fluid with it um
so yeah i try to expose them to it as much as possible and try to, like, instead of taking them fishing as much or, you know, I try to bring them into my hobbies and let them then push me in new directions too.
and letting them do the pixel art and letting them develop the storyline for some game and
just watching their creativity. They use it in such weird and magical ways.
One time I saw my daughter, my oldest, she was using ChatGPT on her school computer.
And at the end of a query, ChatGPT spat out an answer and then it
said, oh crap, my cat just knocked over a bowl of milk. And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like, where did that come from? I asked my daughter and she's like, oh, I just, I had to
tweak the master prompt or whatever the settings to tell ChatGPT that she has a cat and to give me updates
on the cat and what it's doing every time and interacting with it. It's just like rare 2026
wholesome moment, bro. Yeah, but they approach this stuff like they don't have the adult sort of
like action and response sort of like we're we're very intentional we don't we're
not as playful with this stuff as they are so i learn a lot from them by seeing them interact with
this stuff as well you know i could i could use more of that man because i feel like sort of like
fomo or like falling behind where i'm like using different free models and then you know going with
claude claude code and then like now these people are, you know, everything that's happening with, you know,
the, um, open claw and clonch and all the different stuff.
And I'm like, man, I need to get these, these are rookie MToc numbers.
I need to get these token burns up.
Um, but, uh, I think that it's, there's, there's a lot of wisdom in approaching it from the
child's playful experience versus like the fear of like, I have to do this.
Yeah. Yeah. I need to remind myself of that because I'm feeling it really big with Open Claw.
I think like, but I do think the fears are kind of important to listen to as well.
to listen to as well like this is uh if what we're saying about jobs is true these this tech is kind
of existential for our careers and our our futures so yeah definitely encourage everyone to like play
around with this stuff it's like like 2021 i feel like we were all in the trenches like yield farming
and stuff and and now like everyone's in the trenches with open claw
and like that is the exact same energy you feel it in these in these group chats around open claw
and you like a lot of my crypto chats are just dead it's it's like totally changed as like
has moved there's japanese soldiers still scanning like low cap Solana coins, bro.
It's over.
Totally.
Cool.
All right, guys.
Well, definitely huge.
Thank you to everyone for listening and Bart for organizing this.
And Raf for joining and talking. So great to meet you, man.
It was awesome. Thank you guys for everything.
Yeah, for sure.
Any last thoughts, Bart?
No, none.
Raf said one thing I'll comment on.
You had said
this is new
in allusion to the idea that hey, rap was kind of saying how we'd have this
elite and this large number of middle class which we kind of do have but the problem only being
exacerbated by ai i agree with that but i do think that i do think one thing ray dalio i don't know
i think a lot of crypto people pay a little bit of attention to him, is Ray Dalio studied history for quite some time and he's really into history and he always, one thing he always says is like, this isn't new, this has happened before.
You know, you kind of Google a little bit or if you touch EPT a little bit, I was like, hey, what are like scenarios that would approach like an AI, AGI world where there's this huge disparity?
And two points they talk about are like one in the late Roman Empire, third, between the third and fifth centuries and kind of talks about how there was this like tiny
senatorial elite. And like, everyone else kind of fell, fell into like, debt bondage. Right. And
the tax burden fell entirely on this like non elite class. And there was no social mobility. And
you know, it, it, it is a little different. But I i think there's like i think it's worth like
studying history to kind of figure out oh how could this turn out how did it turn out
back in the fifth century and stuff like that so i i think it's always worth looking at history
and studying it and ray daly was a big fan of that. So yeah, that's kind of all I had to wrap with.
But I love that so many folks came
and hearing the other folks listen to our previous session
is awesome.
Yeah.
Thanks again, guys.
Really appreciate it.
And I guess I will see you in the trenches.
Farewell, everyone.
All right.
Later.
