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Spaces Rugged, Take 2 Coffee with Captain #1,096
Recorded: Feb. 13, 2026 Duration: 0:55:48Space Recording
Short Summary
In a lively discussion, participants explored key trends shaping the crypto landscape, including the impact of economic indicators on market sentiment, the evolving utility of NFTs, and the implications of regulatory changes. Notably, MegaEth's impressive growth in total value locked (TVL) and the increasing risks faced by crypto executives were highlighted, alongside the intersection of AI and blockchain as a burgeoning area of innovation.
Full Transcription
we just lost it.
We will be right back.
Take two coffee with captain.
Haven't said that for a while.
Space is drugged.
Coffee with captain number one,
zero nine,
six to Friday.
Space has heard. I was giving it a hard time over the video feed discoverability.
So I said, you know what?
We haven't rugged you for a minute.
Take this.
Take this.
Enjoy a good old-school, old-fashioned rugged.
See how quick you can move on your feet.
YouTube does reign supreme.
That's the alpha.
YouTube's never rugged us once. If you want to make sure you're always dialed in, head over to YouTube,
hit the sub button and, uh, uh, join us over there. Uh, I don't know what to say. Like I was
complaining about it's karma. I guess I was complaining about X most of the week and X video spaces. And I jinxed it.
I jinxed it by talking bad about X.
And although Nikita did come out yesterday and said, there's 30 employees at X.
So the one that was responsible for keeping audio spaces on from the eight o'clock to
10 o'clock hour, they, you know, they, they must have took a coffee break or went to the bathroom or something and we lost it.
So I'm going to stop venting and stop complaining about X.
I'm grateful for the platform.
I'm grateful for the following here.
But boy, can it be frustrating at times.
Appreciate y'all finding us again.
I'm going to, let's do this.
I'm going to play a quick coffee break.
We'll give it a few minutes to warm up for those that are looking for the space
hopefully they can find it, hopefully it is
not as bad as
discoverability on the video spaces
hopefully people can go to my
profile and actually see
the audio spaces
I'm pinning it up top as well
appreciate everyone who's already
reposted it.
And we got like a half hour left. We may not go the full half hour here. It's a Friday. Every time
I say that though, we end up going like a half hour long, but let me do this. Let me play a
quick coffee break. We'll give the room, I don't know, a minute and 12 seconds, I think, to warm
back up. And then we will jump right back into the conversation,
as well as a few other news items. I mentioned the CPI print. I'll flash that real quick.
Not only did it come in below expectations, but it is the lowest, Core CPI, it's the lowest level
since 2021. Very, very interesting. Combine that with some of the other macro reports. I don't know. I remain optimistic. I remain bullish on we still get a good run in 2026, like in the not too distant future.
Also know there is still, you know, the chart we shared earlier this week, global uncertainty at its all-time high.
That is no joke.
Appreciate y'all helping us warm this thing back up.
I'm going to play the coffee break, and I will be right back.
We'll get things rolling.
We've got a minute and 22 seconds.
Thank you all.
Appreciate the warming up of the room.
Even if you don't want to repost it, you already reposted earlier the comments down below.
If you know someone that's building in the NFT PFP space
with AI, doing agentic
things on chain, let us know. Tag them.
If not today, we'd like to get them on in a future
show, and we'll be back. We'll get things rolling here
for the homestretch in a minute and 22 seconds. Thank you. welcome back to coffee with captain appreciate y'all hanging out appreciate everyone who helped
us warm things back up after the uh the unkind space is rugged but uh we power through everyone
yes youtube for the win uh the uh that's why we need y'all to sub to youtube so no more red
pull on spaces and if the the t's and c's from 2024 actually get enforced someday we may have
to hard pivot uh off of x we might be have to hard pivot off of X.
We might be forced to hard pivot off the exit kid.
I don't,
I really don't think that's going to happen,
but it would be great if we could just full pour all of you over to
YouTube,
because it is for many reasons,
they seem to be much more supportive of,
of creators.
And like I said,
don't,
don't rug us mid show kid,
no more complaints on,
I'm not complaining.
It's Friday.
Grateful to be here and appreciate each and every one of you complaints. I'm not complaining. It's Friday. Grateful to be here
and appreciate each and every one of you.
I may not even mention
X-Bases again the rest of the show. Coffee Break
Music is a vibe. Shout out to Payne.
He's a legend and
excited to show off a little more
Payne's talents in the near future.
We did have, I think I shared yesterday,
had a great, we went into
after the show, went into a sponsor meeting
really excited about that one
probably be end of
month I think we'll kick that thing off
and more coming soon
but with that there's
more jingles loading I'll just say that jingles
are loading for all you jingle fans
if you like that coffee break music stay
tuned more on the way Loki appreciate you
jumping back up.
I'd lost my train of thought when we got rugged.
Feel free to finish the thought, take it with server direction
you want, but yeah, thanks for hanging.
No, yeah,
I wanted to touch on
one part I saw you share,
like the correlation
Bored Ape and
Pudgy. I mean,
we've seen them for two years already.
They keep switching.
They keep flipping each other.
And that's great.
I mean, it's great that one push each other.
CryptoPunks push the market.
And then BoredApe and then Podgy.
Sometimes it's a trading opportunity.
And then the rest of the other top collections. So that's a good thing. Right now there is a whale that's trying to sell like 100
Pudgy. Interesting. Yeah, but he still has a couple listed. Sometimes he dumps, I think it was 4-5 days ago he dumped a lot
and somebody got Apache for 3.5.
So he still hasn't finished allotting and that's why there is this big spread now, which
I personally think is a trading opportunity. But overall, what I encourage all the people in NFTs is to be open-minded
because a lot of times we read takes like, oh, my collection is doing this, this is the
right way to do, your collection is not doing this, it's doing in another way so you guys
suck or you guys are extracting or blah, blah, blah.
I encourage to be part of each NFT community, at least like the top ones, to be open minded
to see how these teams are achieving each goal differently.
I mean, everybody has different strategy, different goals, so it doesn't have to be one playbook.
Yep.
And we've seen this, right?
They are the ones launching a Minko and they are the ones launching a strategy.
They are the ones having other side, all metaverse.
They are the ones doing IP proliferation.
So very, very different strategies.
Doesn't have to be the same.
And that's great.
Overall, it's great.
But yeah, so your point when you said we need utility, I mean, utility, yes, of course, it's good,
but it can never really satisfy everyone. So that's the thing. And until it lasts, we saw before, like,
airdrop or you get some tokens from some other project,
but then when it's over, everybody will dump.
So that's the problem with utility.
It's just like a short-term patch.
I personally think still today, the only utility that makes everybody happy
that makes everybody happy at the same time is floor price.
at the same time is floor price.
So this is really the basic rule,
especially for the more expensive NFTs.
So utility, status, floor price.
And it's kind of great because even if in a low volume environment,
people don't need to sell
to satisfy this utility.
They just see a number on their display and they're happy with it.
And maybe they don't feel stupid because like, think about the GVC order, right?
They feel fucking smart.
They've been up all the time.
So they are the most genius NFT traders and community in the world right now.
But if you are down 90%, you feel a fucking idiot.
So that's why also we relay people angry, blah, blah.
So yeah, that's my view on utility for NFTs right now.
But what's happening in the Ape Chain, actually?
That's a good point to your case of utility.
So they are doing great things with community
they're providing a platform that's why we see this uh this more collection they are cheap in
usd price but they are doing well right so it's really working it's really working great over
there and i think sometimes well for price is the agreed upon metric. It's the one that I think also maybe resetting expectations there.
Like we talked about netizens was a 0.3 mint.
The other art one was a free mint.
A lot of these ape chain mints are free or very low cost.
And it's, I think starting from a lower entry point and grinding up,
Good Vibes Club minute at .069 seemed like a big minute price at the point at that time,
but it's great art.
They put years of work into it, and it's seemingly been almost up-only.
I know there's been pullbacks, but if you zoom out,
it's been up only since Mint as they approach their one-year anniversary.
A couple of other related yet also unrelated at the same time, but we couldn't talk about NFTs and not mention Ethereum, where the meta began.
Breaking news just out, or at least I just saw it.
One of the co-executive directors is stepping down at the end of February.
I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure
of the impact, but in the letter here, stepping down
to my role as co-executive director at the Ethereum Foundation,
Bastion Ayo is taking over the co-executive role alongside
I can't pronounce these names, Hawaii Sway. Petra looks bright for builders on Ethereum
for Ethereum Foundation and me.
As competing ideas emerge and fail,
the markets jump up and down.
We've never been given too much certainty.
The conviction about Ethereum
that comes deep from an understanding
of its technology, its governance,
its meaning for the future,
its values we share
will always make us converge intermittently,
even when our curiosities drive our explorations
very far from canonical paths.
I'm just trying to skim this without having to read the whole thing.
Open source LMM models are not doing badly and will hopefully do better and better.
Open source agentic workers are becoming the most exciting toys for builders and creators since early Ethereum.
Important privacy and security questions emerge around the new paradigms.
The world is changing fast and among the changes, Ethereum is becoming the underlying infrastructure for verification in financial transactions.
The Cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum remains intact, with the best of privacy builders and security experts ensuring that the network helps people preserve privacy and access to essential infrastructure.
A lot of talk about privacy for a while.
More talk coming out of Ethereum lately.
And so as you look at, you know, you have to like read between the lines.
Like you just read the words that Vitalik and this co-executive director is stepping down and say it's like it's privacy.
It's privacy, it's the agentic layer,
It's the agentic layer.
and I don't know exactly what that means for opportunity, as I said,
but I do believe something there.
And it's not just Ethereum.
Obviously, you're going to see agents on a lot of chains,
but I think it's telling when you see what's coming from the top,
When you see what's coming from the top, even those that are departing.
even those that are departing.
Also, of note, since we're talking Ethereum.
Actually, no, let me hit a couple of other.
It's from Bitcoin news, but it's not even Bitcoin related.
I shared it earlier, so I will at least cover it.
Just the headline, Netherlands House passed a 36 36% Tax on Unrealized Gains.
Pretty wild. It'll be interesting to see if we see this take place in more nation states,
more states. Not great, doesn't feel great, but doesn't impact me directly today. So we'll fly
over it if anyone has a deeper thought or deeper conversation there, let us know. And then what
could impact
those of us here living in the States is it appears
imminent that the government will
shut down tomorrow. Kalshi's
now pegging it at an 89% chance.
I'm guessing polymarket's about the same. I haven't double
checked, but I will go over there next.
I share all that because
you've got global
uncertainty, all time high.
You got US government,
imminent shutdown, imminent.
You got the,
everything going on with the Epstein files
and what does that mean?
There's just a lot of overall,
not just for crypto, for all markets. You got a lot of headwinds right now.
A lot of, it's really not anything one thing specific, it's just so much uncertainty before we even talk about AI disrupting almost every industry on the planet.
Fear and greed is still extreme fear, all-time lows, not all-time, but it's popped up from the all-time low.
fear, all-time lows, not all-time, but it's popped up from the all-time low.
I, A, I do think
now is an incredible time to be a builder. I also think now is really the time to be
paying attention because it could be a violent move
back. I don't know what settles the,
what creates more certainty in the world. I don't think even if the
government doesn't shut down or they come back from a shutdown, I'm not saying that by itself changes things.
Maybe things get worse before they get better.
But I do think, I mean, even today, there's pockets of opportunity.
There's ways to make money in this space.
And I think we're close to some of these dots connecting.
We're close to some of these dots connecting.
In particular, what I keep coming back to is how can we capitalize on this intersection of AI meets blockchain tech?
Where do those opportunities lie?
And I'm going to continue to scan for them.
And I think that is very possible, if not likely, that we see some major opportunities on that front.
I mean, they exist today.
Like, Banker is the perfect example of one that's been humming.
And anyone here really that's done very well.
I don't think it's the last.
I think we're going to see a lot more of agentic solutions on chain.
And I think there'll be ways to monetize, capitalize on those opportunities.
Husker, GM, always a pleasure.
We'll brought you up this morning.
Hey, GM Cap, always good to talk to you.
Same with Loki.
I just wanted to clarify,
just make sure everyone knows
that it's just a partial,
like the most partial government shutdown,
I believe is only Department of Homeland Security
that's shutting down tomorrow.
Shout out to Mike.
Mike's in the chat just said the same thing.
Only DHC is shutting down,
but that does affect travel.
So yeah, thank you for clarifying.
100%. Yeah.
Anything, I guess, to add that? I just wanted to correct my...
I mean, I just wanted to make sure people aren't thinking like, oh my God, the government's shutting down. It'll be a complete shit show like last time.
But I mean, on the other side, I do agree with you on like, hey, get out there, learn how to do this AI stuff. 1000X podcast
actually had a really good one yesterday about like, hey, make yourself indispensable, like learn
this AI stuff. Like literally, I'm taking the day off work right now. And I'm literally setting up
a Raspberry Pi, literally having Cloud Co do, so that the Raspberry Pi can basically have a server on itself
that basically I'm just going to let my Cloud Bot,
or OpenClaw Bot, basically go ham with.
What, um, it's awesome, exciting.
You'll have to give us the update next week after you get that set up.
I guess two questions.
One, why Raspberry Pi over the Mac Mini or other hardware?
Was it just the cost?
Have you used a Raspberry Pi in the past?
Why Raspberry Pi?
And then what's the first thing you're excited to build?
Or are you just going to explore?
Do you have anything that like, oh, I did it because I'm going to go do this?
So I actually did buy a Mac Mini for the Open Claw.
So the Open Claw lives on the Mac Mini.
But I've been listening and reading a lot of stuff from Legendary. Mac Mini for the Open Claw. So the Open Claw is going to live or lives on the Mac Mini. But like
I've been listening and reading a lot of stuff from Legendary. He seems to be kind of one of
the thought leaders on Open Claw deployment. And one of the things he recommended was deploying a
tool called Zulip instead of using Telegram. I think it's a little bit more safe or like secure
quite honestly, because the server lives like on the Raspberry Pi is where it's going to live at.
So that's why I'm doing that.
And then also I'm probably going to host local websites and stuff like that,
dashboards that OpenClaw or ClawedCode build for me.
Awesome. I'd love to hear it.
Do you have a link to Zulip?
That's a big fan of Legendary.
First time hearing that one specifically.
Zulip like a tulip with a Z?
Yeah, it's Zebra Uniform Lima India Papa.
And it's like a server that you can just host on your own if you want.
You can also do like a desktop.
But just like when I had Claude do some research,
it recommended running the server yourself.
So went out,
spent another $200 on a Raspberry Pi and seen how it goes. It did not go well yesterday.
It almost bricked the Raspberry Pi. So I had to take it out, do a whole lot of reinstalls and
stuff like that. But glad to say we have recovered so far to this morning.
Congrats. For those asking, and maybe not familiar with the Raspberry Pi,
can you TLDR, what is a Raspberry Pi?
Yeah, Raspberry Pi is just, like, it is a bare minimum computer.
It usually can either run on its own operating system, Raspberry Pi, like OS, or, like, I'm flashing Ubuntu.
I'm probably saying that word wrong, but it doesn't have, like, it literally fits in the size of your hand. So it's about as small as you can.
And a lot of times it doesn't even come with a case.
It literally is just like a USB port,
an ethernet port and like the computer,
like the compute itself.
Yep.
Yep.
Just the board.
Yeah.
That ones I've seen,
it's just,
I mean,
I guess you could build a case.
I'm sure some people 3d print them.
You could probably buy a case,
but yeah,
most of the time it's just,
it's just a board with ports. And really when you say strip down bare bones computer but great for this sort
of stuff and whether if you are especially if you're new and you're experimenting and you're
learning please learn on a a segregated. Mac mini, Raspberry Pi,
something that's not your primary,
an old, I don't know if you can run them on Chromebooks or not,
probably not.
Do you know?
I don't know if it works on a Chromebook.
Like I said, I'm on a Mac mini and a Raspberry Pi.
Or you can also do like on a DPS,
if you want to do a DPS.
I can't remember what that,
like virtual private server or something like that.
That's another option.
But I think you might need,
I personally think running it on a VPS might be harder than just,
you know,
if you have the money to buy a Mac mini,
I just say like,
Hey,
please be secure with your,
with that stuff. Like this can absolutely wreck you if you are not careful.
Yep.
Yep.
And this is also,
sorry, I didn't mean to turn on, was going to another tab and I turned on some
background music now I need to figure out how I can turn it off personally
sounds very calming quite honestly sound like some birds in the background yeah
but there are some birds actually we'll leave it on I'll see I'll do it we'll
give a quick love here this is is Hunter Tales, one of the
games on Mega ETH.
You can kind of see here,
you know, a little world,
and you can go, you mince some hunters,
send the hunters out.
I just created my
account before the show this morning, so I haven't even got to play around,
yeah, one of the other new
Mega Eth games
capturing a little bit,
driving a little bit of buzz and attention,
but my first feedback to them is I don't see,
there we go, mute, found it, found it.
Good, nevermind.
User error.
So, homestretch here, a couple other things,
and Husker, sorry, Husker,
Husker, Loki, if you have any thoughts or comments on any of these, feel free to
join the conversation or if anyone else in the chat has questions, comments, thoughts,
as we enter the homestretch here. I mentioned our first headline before we got rugged was,
First headline before we got rugged was, speaking of MegaEth, MegaEth TVL exceeding $100 million.
They are, you know, it's a cheat code when you're talking the last month because they just launched.
But Bridge TVL up over $100 million now, $114 million, $92 million of that is in stablecoins.
And, you know, $59,, 60 million in, in DeFi.
So for a non-farmed start, I think pretty impressive.
There's no, you know, yet anyways, there's no,
you're not earning mega ETH or maybe some of those platforms are providing
points and stuff, but still very early in their,
in their launch process and excited to see some more of these dApps come on.
There's a few things like that.
Hunter's Tale, we talked about Survivors, which is some unique mechanics.
And I remain optimistic we'll see some new novel things on chain, potentially in the
agentic world.
So if anything catches your attention over the weekend, please feel free to share.
And we will,
we will come back to that on Monday.
The other last final headline I had,
well,
we hit on Z cards earlier.
If anyone's still looking for an invite,
I've passed a few of those out during the show and have a few more,
but I must've closed my tab.
I'll see if I can go find it here.
But not a great one, I guess, for Friday the 13th, maybe fitting.
But another, just a reminder to be safe, another PSA,
Binance's CEO, I think, in France.
I'm trying to find the actual link.
I had it pulled up, and when we got rugged, I kind of scrambled,
and I must have inadvertently closed the link.
Yeah, the Binance France CEO was targeted in a home jacking.
I don't know how many that makes this year, and they're not all in France,
but, oh, I know know we're talking like macro and
you know the Epstein files
and this Guthrie Bitcoin ransom
I think that is like I've been
following it closely it's wild
to me that I've heard
this is the first time
I think I've even mentioned the Guthrie Bitcoin
ransom on the show it's been going on all week.
I haven't seen it hardly at all on crypto Twitter.
Some headlines, people maybe re-closed in or talked,
but I haven't really heard anyone talk about it
other than my normie friends.
Like my normie friends are talking about,
like it's in mainstream media.
It's like a million dollars.
And I'm not trying to be insensitive.
I'm not trying to downplay. It's very serious. I really feel for someone that's... But help me understand why
with everything else going in the world right now, national media, apparently from all channels,
is talking about someone that's been kidnapped for the entire week. How is that a national...
I mean, I i'm gonna get him
i mean i was probably sounds like a really insensitive jerk here i just it seems i yeah
conspiracies with cap that's our closing friday segment it seems psyopish it seems like hey look
here you know don't look at this thing look over here at this this bitcoin ransom it's like i don't
i have seen a little bit of talk about it in our our discord chat mostly but but yet my i've got
normie friends were really invested in this story it's like but why i don't maybe i'm maybe i'm the
naive ignorant one i don't know i just it. It just seems odd that that's getting so much coverage.
But to that tune of this Binance France CEO being targeted, are you safe?
But the story, three masked attackers entered a residential building looking for the CEO.
This is Binance France CEO.
He wasn't home, so they fled, taking two phones.
Later the same day, the same group tried it in another location,
but law enforcement tracked them via surveillance and arrested them.
The incident shows how crypto executives are becoming targets
due to their wealth and how quickly authorities acted to prevent harm.
Also France.
France just seems extremely unsafe right now in crypto.
But please, this is the PSA, Friday PSA reminder.
Don't be flexing your wealth on chain.
And use, I mean, don't store your wealth at home.
Have safety procedures.
Have OPSEC, not just, hey, don't use a hot wallet with something you have assets in.
Funny, Katie, I said no one's talking about it.
Katie literally just posted minutes ago, what do you think happened to Savannah Guthrie's mother?
Am I wrong in thinking that it's just, it's a little weird that it's being made such a big deal?
And why a Bitcoin ransom today's age,
like that's,
it is trackable.
Like I don't,
I don't know.
again,
I haven't,
to me,
it was like kind of like a,
I don't want to say a non-issue or non-use item,
but,
and I'm feel for the family.
I feel for her Husker.
Do you have a take on the whole Guthrie situation or?
Yeah.
Yeah,
I do.
Like part,
like I will say like, I, part of do. Like part, like I will say,
like I, part of me agrees with you, but I will say like, I do think like these famous people kidnapping, capturing headlines is kind of already in our national psyche. Like literally go back to
the Lindbergh baby being kidnapped back in like, what was that 1938 or something like that? Like
it's literally still talked about
today. So I do think to a certain extent it is part of like, I don't know why, but that's kind
of always been the case of like when famous people get kidnapped, like it always happens, but I
wouldn't be surprised if there is some like hush, hush, like cover up the Epstein, like get people
focused on something else. But like, also, I'm not sure if
anyone's tracking, like, is anyone tracking the scary shit going on with ring doorbells right now?
Yeah, that was actually the last thing I had on a flyer. Again, I was going to tie it together
with AI. Also, this is how much I've not been paying attention and how much I don't watch
mainstream news or I didn't realize that Savannah Guthrie is the co-anchor of the Today Show.
That makes a little more sense.
I knew there was something there.
I just thought it was someone that was like a wealthy individual and their mother got
kidnapped.
It makes a little more sense that it's a media personality's mother.
Something just seems off.
My spidey sense to just tell me it's off it's probably just
you know a cap conspiracy moment and it's just it's really a tragic situation but
something seems off i get in both these things could be true it could be a really tragic situation
and and it could also be something that you know some of the uh mainstream media outlets to say
hey let's fan we got we got here's the we got something else we can talk about and highlight this week so we don't have to talk about that other thing that
people are apparently uncomfortable talking about. Ginger Beloved
agrees, says the whole thing with Nancy Guthrie feels off. I probably
self-admittedly there exposing myself, probably should do a little more research because I just
discovered right now, like 30 seconds ago, that it is the
media personality. But yeah, it is the, you know, it's a media personality.
But yeah, to your point, Husker, this, the most recent thing. So if you missed it,
Ring Doorbell had a Super Bowl commercial. And in the Super Bowl commercial, they announced a,
we can help you find your lost dogs. It was a commercial. It was like a, try to touch,
you know, tap into the, you know, the emotions of individuals. If you ever lost a dog, it can be,
it can be scary. They said, well, we've got, um, you know, we, we, we, we just kicked this off.
We've been finding what, helping track down one dog a day. And I didn't even really think much
of it. I was like, oh, that's, that's kind of neat. I don't, I don't use ring. I don't even really think much of it. Like, oh, that's kind of neat. I don't use Ring.
I don't have a Ring doorbell.
But my brain actually thought, hmm, maybe that's a reason to switch back to Ring in case I ever lose my dog.
Because you have to be out now.
And then almost like during the Super Bowl, you started seeing like, yeah, right.
They're using this to search for dogs.
Like it's they very clearly have AI that has facial recognition in this thing. And basically,
you're giving free surveillance. You've got a company, Amazon owns Ring, by the way, that's got
millions of these things out in the wild. The users are buying the hardware. They're paying
a monthly subscription. And it helped Amazon and Ring deploy a national facial recognition security network.
I don't think this is a conspiracy.
I think it's just very real.
It is what it is.
Now, are they using it for evil?
I don't know.
I'm not claiming that.
I'm not, at least not yet.
I don't think they are, but the fallout has been extreme.
The fallout has been so extreme that probably,
some are saying it's like it's the
most expensive Super Bowl commercial of all time. Super Bowl commercials are expensive to begin with,
$5 to $10 million a pop. I think like seven or eight is maybe more precise for a 30-minute slot
or 30-second slot. And this one led to unsubscriptions. It led to... ring just canceled their partnership with flock flock was the um i think flock was
the company they'd partner with for this surveillance so following the mounting pressure
and the questionable super lab the amazon owned company walked back its plan to integrate with
the controversial law enforcement technology company so flock is a law enforcement technology
company that they'd partner with to help find dogs. Yeah, wink, wink.
But now, should you trust Ring Now?
No. After all, they thought this was a good idea,
but it shows that the pressure works.
Be the backlash against surveillance that you want to see in the world.
Voice your disgust over surveillance grabs
and show it by canceling subscription
and tossing devices.
I don't know.
Again, unpopular take take contrarian take like
do i want surveillance in my home and knowing every step no not particularly
do i does it bother me if there's surveillance on the streets
i'm not even but it doesn't really bother me if there's because i believe it's there already i
believe they already have this.
Like from traffic light cameras and so many other things.
Now is this taking it to another level?
Sure.
I just, you know, who knows?
I get this could lead to a really dystopian future.
It could be really bad stuff.
Americans want more privacy, not less.
I agree.
Privacy is important.
In my home, it's very important. Do I agree. Privacy is important. In my home,
it's very important. Do I care if my neighborhood's surveilled? Not really. In fact,
I probably ensure that it's safe. People are less likely to break into my home if they know the whole neighborhood's surveilled. Am I suspicious of big tech companies encroaching
to my personal lives? Yes. Do I also have, I don't know, I'll have to add up
dozens of cameras in my home today? Yeah. And not just security. Like I, my, my, my robot vacuum
cleaner has got, I don't know, four or five cameras in it. Like if they really wanted to,
they could hack into my home and see what I do today based off my, my robot, my robot vacuum cleaner.
Should I put blind faith and trust in these large, big corporations?
No, and I don't.
But I also, I'm not like as worried or weirded out about outdoor surveillance like some are.
People call it a China-like surveillance, surveillance camera net. And I know if, especially I understand if it's like, Oh,
this is like a, like a bait and switch,
or they're trying to spin off nationwide surveillance as, Oh,
you can help find your dog. Is that a bad, bad move? I get that backlash.
I'm just saying like, personally,
I believe that most of the outdoors is surveilled not everywhere,
but it's certainly in high populated areas, cities and stuff.
It's like it's either surveilled 24-7 or they have the ability to do so almost whenever they want.
So it doesn't it's not that deep for me.
And I also can see good coming from outdoor surveillance while fully expect fully appreciating and wanting privacy in my own home.
Husker, thanks for bringing this up.
That was the last thing I wanted to hit on.
How do you net on this?
And am I crazy for not being overly concerned with outdoor video surveillance?
I don't think you're overly crazy, but I guess I don't necessarily agree with you either.
Like I am concerned with the flock stuff just because, like granted this i i saw this online so take
that for take what i'm about to say with a grain of salt but what i have seen is essentially these
flock cameras are like basically have some of the worst security like possible like literally the
cameras are basically just left wide open and it's actually been proven at least again by youtubers
that you can stalk somebody using their AI
to basically read license plates, follow where people are going.
So I would be probably more okay with it
if this was actually using best security practices
and also if it was locked down behind something
to where law enforcement would have to go and get a warrant
to get the video feed, essentially.
I think that's part of our constitution is a right to privacy and mass surveillance.
I don't think we should just accept, but I am okay with the surveillance as long as there's
precautions against it, I guess.
Fair, fair. And others in the chat, record for hands, flock is weak. They have to be E2E, not so hard to hack, couple tools, and you can do a lot. They're not illegal, no password is bad flock.
Fair, fair.
And others in the chat, Ruckabre hands, ads flock as weak.
rolls the cameras and agree with everyone,
everything everyone said.
Like,
yes,
is this a slippery slope?
Could this lead to a dystopian future?
Yes,
absolutely.
They need to be better.
It needs to be like,
do I expect at least outdoors in public massive surveillance in the future?
I expect it's going to happen.
I hope it happens in a safe manner
and people can't hack into it. And I think probably part of the issue here with this,
if I'm not mistaken, is like, that's so close to the home. And even though it's like maybe
out, you know, it's your outdoor camera, there's other Ring products that are indoors and one
person hacks in, the next thing you know, they've got access to all your
entire private life. So yeah, it does need to be safe. It does need, you know, who's controlling
these cameras is important. And often I think the other thing to agree with you all on is
Amazon might be trusted, Ring might be trusted, and they're kind of consumers off the unbeknownst
user, myself, might be conveying that same level of trust to a third party unbeknownst
to me, unbeknownst to the user.
Oh, I trust Amazon.
They're not going to let someone hack into this.
Amazon's not going to let someone hack into this. They're not going to, Amazon's not going to, not going to, you know,
get into my private life.
I don't have the same level of trust for flock.
It was not Amazon. And that's, I think maybe part of the,
part of the issue here, but Otis says, speaking of outdoor surveillance,
Kensington PA live cams on YouTube are wild kensington is is that like the uh that's like the the fentanyl capital of pa is that right
i'm getting i think kensington's a pretty rough area i apologize if i'm wrong there um
and beta says we just need people to stop putting uh stop being uh bad people so we don't need
cameras yeah um it also says no one pays attention to the notifications
now that was just a super bowl now that it was a super bowl commercial it's an issue
that's also part of it like it wasn't they had launched it previously
there's you talk about marketing and pr and bad marketing and bad comms like
they highlighted something that obviously was not popular, was not well received.
I wonder what the outcome is if they just don't do the Super Bowl commercial. They just continue
to roll it out. Their customers like, hey, this is now an option. You lose your dog. Oh, I lost
my dog. Ring's going to help me track it down. By calling attention to it and putting it under
the microscope, it blew it up faster than I'm guessing they expected. Obviously, they didn't
expect this outcome. They wouldn't read the Super Bowl commercial.
They did.
Uh, it was like a modern day red asphalt.
Go ahead, Husker.
Yeah.
Two points.
Um, first, I think what you're talking about is like, they said the quiet part out loud,
you know, like they shouldn't have said that, but they did.
Um, the other part, I was just going to tie in this all back to the Guthrie case.
Like ring says that, you know, what we found out is a gun or
her mom didn't have an active subscription to Ring, which is also showing that like
Ring can actually, even if you don't have a subscription, is still using that as a surveillance
tool. And the second part was they say that they only keep like photos or videos for like three
hours, but they pulled this like way after the fact. So just some other reasons to be concerned, I would say.
Maybe not freak out level, but at least I was concerned.
Yeah.
Yeah, in hindsight, what a really interesting Super Bowl this year
from many fronts, Not the game.
Everything else was interesting, though.
Shout out, Rock Paper Hands for the Pingu tip.
Greatly appreciated that. Hopefully someday I can load that up
into a Pingu card and buy you a coffee with it.
Nobody is thanking Ring
for snitching on themselves.
our guy Steve in the, I hope he doesn't mind
me sharing, in the war room
chat says, yeah, I actually said this at the time.
This was in reference to this ring blow up and it's got to be one of the biggest cell phones in advertising history.
Thanks for sharing this, Payne.
This was actually the one I saw earlier and was looking for and producer Payne doing me a solid.
Didn't even realize he was doing it for me.
This is going to be one of the biggest cell phones in advertising history.
You literally spend millions of dollars for a 30-second Super Bowl ad
to tell everyone you're spying on them.
Immediately destroy your brand reputation and upending your business model.
Ring is owned by Amazon.
I'm guessing it's not a separate subsidiary.
It could impact Amazon stock, but I don't think Ring has its own.
I think it's a wholly owned subsidiary, if I'm not mistaken.
And Steve commented on that and said, yeah, everyone on CT was bashing Coinbase for their ad.
Regular consumers liked.
I saw this one and thought, okay, so you're making me think about losing my dog and then telling me you spy on us to find it.
Got it.
Yeah. Not great. Got it. Yeah.
Not great.
Not great.
And I, you know, this is also,
this is courtesy of Fonny,
kind of rapid-firing lightning round here
to close things out.
It's talked about a random wallet.
You could go open up a random wallet with $134
and grow it to 56,000 in the matter of a day by trading five-minute crypto
charts. Good luck. That's not the average normal outcome. Von Fronten, what did I say where you're
asking really, Cap, really? What are we talking about now? The Guthrie thing, me not knowing
about Guthrie? Yeah, I do not keep up with the competition.
And I had no idea that I don't necessarily consider myself competing with today's show
host.
But it's more of the wealthy person.
It's a prominent media personality or media employers using media reach to help keep awareness
high.
I'm sure if she wanted to help them shut up about it, they would.
It's fair.
Fair.
I get it all.
It makes sense.
I get it now.
I didn't realize she was a media personality.
I just kept seeing Nancy Guthrie. I'm like, someone's mom, someone, well, so I, the headlines
I saw was someone's wealthy mom got kidnapped. My friends who were talking about it, we had,
none of them said it was the Today Show host. So it's my bad. I had researched it. It makes
more sense now. And, um, yeah, if they only had, um, if they only had the ring subscription turned on, they would have made, I kid, I'm not trying to make jokes or make light of the situation.
My apologies.
Anyways, good show today.
Appreciate everyone who powered through the rugging.
Feels kind of good to be rugged.
We're back.
We're fully back.
That might have been the bottom signal.
Might have been the bottom signal.
Things were ripping when we're getting rugged happened on a regular basis here.
So that might very well have been the bottom signal we needed.
On the other side of this, Psycho Kitty adds, I love the Ring app.
And it rescued this beautiful puppy boy from being euthanized thanks to Ring.
puppy boy from being euthanized thanks to ring so i'm connecting some dots here but i i take it as
So I'm connecting some dots here.
this was her her dog got it got loose and it was you know and it got
maybe they didn't have identification whatever got put in a shelter apparently like a kill shelter
and um because ring was able to track it down so So like, I know this is a contrarian, it's a bad take.
I see, like I said, I see the value in having outdoor surveillance to protect the neighborhood and to prevent crime.
I don't want my personal privacy to be encroached upon, but I have dogs. I've had dogs get loose before. And it's a
stressful moment. I've spent hours looking for a dog or a cat and I wish there was a better way
to do it where it wasn't. I think part of it is, like you said, the third party party how it was rolled out and um not not not saying i want massive
surveillance but uh yeah it's like a neighborhood watch app in a sense people in my area can post
lots of pets or pets in need i love it i i get it like that's awesome that's great
how do we have that cake without the,
without losing our privacy?
Husker, any thoughts on that?
Like, do you see Psycho Kitty spot there?
Like, hey, save your dog.
Awesome.
I'm, as a dog fan, like, I love that.
I'm not saying, like, obviously this was,
this blew up.
This was not a good advertisement.
But is there a way to, can you, can we have both?
Can we have surveillance cameras that are, are help us find lost kids, lost, lost pets, help prevent crime and still have our privacy or, or those things are, are just not compatible?
No, I think there is a way to do it.
It's really comes down to who do you trust? Because I could see a way of having these cameras where maybe they have some kind of blurring, like AI blurring or something like that, where like, I think it can be done.
How much do I still, man, I am conflicted on this hardcore.
Because norms work.
I mean, we see the stuff right now, right?
Like with Trump.
And I don't mean to make this political, but he is just one of those people where like
there's been norms that have existed for decades or maybe even longer than that.
And he's just breaking those norms.
So yeah, I'm sorry, Cap.
I don't have a good answer to this man.
I'm deeply conflicted.
Same.
And so it's like, I'm conflicted as well.
I'm not making light of the situation.
I can fully understand and appreciate everyone who's like,
absolutely not. You're not surveilling my home or my neighborhood. Wholeheartedly get that,
especially when it's done in a sneaky way. I also can see the good in having these capabilities.
I also, like you say, who do you trust? I don't know. Like, I don't know,
like, but like, who would I want? I don't know. Like, it's not really the big tech companies. Like I, like Google used to be, you know, don't do evil or don't be evil. And that's,
that's always been concerning to me. That's always
like, it's like, it's like, if you have to have a core value, you have to tell your people not to
be evil. Like why is, why was that one of the first things you thought of? Like, why, why would
you even think about being evil? Anyways, you know, Amazon, Google, Facebook, they all listen, they steal our data, they sell our data. I don't know.
We've earlier talking about Tesla and the full self-driving and the others cameras and all those.
I'm sure, I don't know what they're doing with it. I'm sure. I mean, it's more than just roads.
It's more than just learning to drive. They have massive amounts of video data. And I think as beyond full self-driving, I think as AI continues to improve, get better, proliferate, it's just, I've accepted it's going to be kind of, at least this is how I operate.
kind of, at least this is how I operate. A, I'm not out there doing anything illegal or
I'm not doing anything shady or that I, like if someone saw me doing something out in public,
they're like, oh, Chris is an awful person. I just, I live my life in a way where
if my, you know, mother was, you know, right beside me, she's not going to be embarrassed
or upset or disappointed in some action I'm taking out in the real world.
or upset or, you know, disappointed in some action I'm taking out in the real world.
I also appreciate privacy.
My home is kind of like my, I don't want to say my sanctuary, but I'm a public-facing
person with a private life that, well, I share a picture of my dog.
Yeah, but that's about it.
I don't know if I've ever even shared a picture of my daughter on this app.
And it's not because like, oh, I don't want people to take her,
create some AI stuff with it.
It's just like I protect my private life.
But at the same time, I've accepted that I'm probably on camera
when I'm outside of my home.
I just accepted that for a while.
And it doesn't, therefore, because I've accepted that for a while and it doesn't, therefore, because I've accepted that for a while, I've just assumed that I'm on camera without knowing who's controlling it, whether it's a government, whether it's big tech.
I just am under the assumption that anything I do outside of my home is probably being captured by some video, whether it's a stoplight camera
or someone's phone. So therefore, again, it's not that deep to me because I assume it's already
happening anyways, but I fully understand that there's more they can do with this data than
find your lost dog. I get that. I don't know the answer, but I think these are the kind of questions, I guess, that are going to continue
to come up, not just AI, and not just surveillance or cameras or videos, but I think it's when you
combine the two, it's become so much more powerful, right? And I think maybe that's,
if I try to unpack this ring commercial and why it blew up to the extreme, is the masses probably don't realize,
A, maybe they didn't realize that it was recording people every time you walk by,
but how powerful AI is. And it's only going to keep getting better. I understand that could be scary.
It's big societal change.
And yeah, I don't know the answers,
but I do know that this is not,
the Ring commercial is not going to be the last time
we have a conversation about AI and video surveillance.
And I don't know how blockchain tech can fix this one.
So that's your homework this weekend.
How could, if they brought Ring on chain,
how could that kid?
Huster, thanks so much for joining us.
Appreciate you as always.
Always enjoy the conversation.
Enjoy the Raspberry Pi setup.
No pressure, but I am genuinely curious
to hear how that goes.
I'll put you a little bit lightly on the spot
when we kick off our AI segment.
If you want to jump back up
and give us the update, what you learned,
what you, you know, someone else wants to do the same thing. You know,
what mistakes did you make that you can help them avoid and have some fun this weekend.
Stay, if you're too down from the market, check out, touch some grass. Actually,
I'll leave you with this. For those of you in New York, if you're single and you're depressed because you don't have a Valentine's date, no fret.
No fret.
Because in New York, you can actually go to a bar with your AI boyfriend or AI girlfriend.
Speaking of the Soviet future, this is a real thing. This is actually
exists now. Um, have an AI boyfriend or girlfriend. Now there's a bar for you. The posts,
Ricky Schlott checked out hell's kitchen establishment that has been redesigning
for those that have AI partners so they can bring their phone along for romantic evening.
The empire bar is set up to have like solo, just go by yourself and you have a phone set up and you
talk to your AI boyfriend or AI girlfriend while you're at the table. Some person said I'm limited
to three hours a day because it can be addictive. I think if you're like, you already have a problem
is my opinion. No offense. Like if you enjoy talking to robots, talk to robots. I just don't
get this. I don't get how someone can be like, have a like deep relationship, a romantic
relationship with a chat bot. I, it doesn't like, I just don't get it. It's not, I'm not,
if that's your thing, by all, by all means, go enjoy Valentine's day with your AR robot.
I just don't get it. And, um, but even though I don't get it, it doesn't mean it's not gonna
be a thing. I talk about how bullish I am on experiential retail.
Actually, could you not met last night before my daughter's game with someone who's building out experiential retail, and I've got a deck. the world becomes more immersed in AI and this technology
and people,
you know,
what are the next future jobs?
I think community,
experiential retail,
I think all this stuff
is insulated from that.
And I think it's not only
insulated from it,
I think more,
maybe I'm wrong,
but I think more people
are going to seek out
human interaction,
even if nothing else,
to not just be fully talking to robots all day.
Even maybe those that are dating an AI boyfriend or girlfriend, I would think they're probably still going to want to, I guess, supplement that with real life human interaction.
And just becoming more and more bullish, experiential retail.
Claude adds, she had a Nest camera without a subscription.
Google engineers pulled it out of deleted files since it had not been written over yet. They do only
hold three hours of video without a subscription. Philly now has plate readers mounted on buses,
so they are mobile scanning plates. Opportunity says, can these rig cameras spot lost money on
the ground? I lost a couple 50s on Saturday night. Probably so. Probably so. Good luck
tracking those down.
Again, Husker, thanks for jumping up today, as well as Joey and Gary.
And I'm drawing a blank.
I know there was some others.
Apologies for the rug.
I don't know what happened. I don't have an answer, but appreciate you all coming back and supporting us for Take
Two.
And stay tuned for Monday.
We will probably be announcing, maybe not kicking off some stuff next week,
but I think sharing some new stuff.
In addition to that AI,
that weekly AI segment,
if there's anything else
you'd like to see some deeper dives on
or is on top of your mind,
do let us know.
We are open to ideas, suggestions,
and want to continue to grow this
as a community show.
Speaking of, if you haven't yet,
go subscribe to the community newsletter,
coffeewithcaptain.com, drop your email,
and you'll get the Saturday newsletter that comes out tomorrow.
And with that, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day, everyone.
We'll see you Monday. Bye.
