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- [00:04]
A
Welcome back. Signal versus Noise, gentlemen. What's going on? Michael, Brian, Liam, how are you doing?
- [00:11]
B
What's up, fellas? We're live.
- [00:13]
C
We're back.
- [00:14]
B
New week, new topics.
- [00:18]
D
I don't know if the world got crazier after we launched the show or it's always been crazy. But now we have stuff to talk wide arrangements. Yeah, it was hard about, but hard
- [00:26]
B
to narrow the list. There was some, some debate on what should be on the list.
- [00:30]
C
The final settlement list keeps on getting longer too. We're gonna have to do even more of these podcasts.
- [00:36]
A
I mean, the amount of news that Michael has, just insane. The guy's operating at a different level in terms of just all these inputs. Michael might have to start another show. He might have to do a separate live stream, a solo stream every week.
- [00:48]
B
Texas has live show. The people on it, people are asking for it.
- [00:53]
A
The people don't have enough content yet. All right, so just for those who are new, right, we try to, we try to stream at 12:30 Eastern. We're about five minutes late today, but 12:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays released after the fact, Wednesdays and Friday mornings. Today we're going to be covering four core topics. We're gonna constrain ourselves to covering these topics in six minutes. We're all going to give our thoughts, signal or noise on each one of these topics and then we're going to leave a few minutes at the end to just flag to you something that we found interesting. We're going to call it the Lightning round for now. Probably we'll have a different name next week. Stay tuned. But we'll be discussing something that caught our attention. Quick, a quick share. Just for other information that we don't necessarily have the time to cover on today's show. So without further ado, the first topic for today's episode would be the recent developments in the world of AI. Have you ever heard of artificial intelligence? Talking about today, the latest between the US and China, the Trump administration. This headline here, I'll read it out. The Trump administration reportedly reviving push to ban Chinese AI models following the Kimi K3 launch, citing cybersecurity concerns. Gentlemen, I would love for one of you to start just because I know you've already had some thoughts on previous shows and there's even been some new developments just in the past 24 hours. So maybe Michael, if you want to tee it off here, give us your thoughts on just overarching and then dig into signal versus noise. Like where what should we actually be paying attention to as it relates to this latest development.
- [02:26]
D
Yeah. So I think I'm going to go at an angle to that's more concise which is around the signal here is around like sovereignty and recognition that we don't live in a free market. There's a lot more happening that we'll, we'll cover all that. Brian and Liam kind of shared the, the, the overarching like what's happening from a market perspective. I think the net net for months it's been hinted at that we're or it hasn't even been hinted. It's been shown from the was it intel that the U.S. government took a stake in and and then there's obviously the conversation that's been going around with the government taking stakes in these frontier AI companies labs that we're going to a. You can call it nationalistic, socialistic, communist, whatever you want to call it. We are. We've not been in a free market for a long time and the reality is the best technology and the best money is going to increasingly be harder for individuals to get their hands on Find or at least find the signal on why they want it and what their. What barriers are being put between them and the things that they need to thrive in a digital world. That the notion of these platforms specifically Kimi, the other Chinese model manufacturers that are producing superior intelligence at a fraction of the cost of the frontier labs in the US and the idea that the US government wants to either ban via national security issues whatever you want to call it while other large corporations like Microsoft is referencing is reported that they're going to start to leverage it for some of its Office suite should give everyone pause of like what's happening here and what is a slippery slope we're going down and how do I protect myself from it? Because there's a number of like second third order things we can pontificate and we will talk about and theorize why they're happening. At the end of the day this is coming and you want to be prepared for that. You want to really do your research and understand how to protect yourself.
- [04:28]
B
Yeah, maybe I'll jump in. I mean there's a lot here as we referenced I think when what was announced yesterday around Microsoft leveraging Kimi for copilot basically because it's cheaper for them to do I think was a strong signal that basically the market forces are going to dictate how this ends up playing out. If companies, if individuals get more value from a Chinese based open source model are going to try to use it, it's very difficult to proverbially ban these things because they are more open. You can fork them yourself and use them. And then, you know, yesterday there was this headline that we're looking at here around like, well, is the US going to ban these models? Besant today walked it back a little bit. He said, you know, we're pro open source, but we are going to look into basically IP theft. So the insinuation there is that if Kimi or Deepseek is basically taking the US Frontier models, distilling them and then basically, you know, putting them out in the open for cheaper, then maybe the US government has a problem there. And so I think, you know, we referenced this before we hit record, but this is a fluid situation. Even the government doesn't really know what they're doing. Everyone's kind of flying by the seat of their pants. It's massive signal in the sense that, you know, this is the one topic I think we all agreed we needed to talk about because it, it is the biggest story in sort of technology markets, as we've discussed sort of equity markets, where they are today. They're completely driven by, well, are these US Frontier labs going to be successful into the future? Is all of the capex, all the debt that they're accruing, are they going to achieve some ROI in the future that makes all of that worth it if they're getting undercut by these open source models out of China? Like that is a potential problem for that story and that narrative, for equity markets, for tax receipts, all the things that are downstream of this, this bubble, effectively, whether you think it's a real bubble or not, whether you think it's sustainable or not, this is a super important story. And so I would say this is massive signal. Not that I have like, you know, a crystal ball into how it's going to play out, but it's something that you need to be paying attention to for sure.
- [06:50]
D
Yeah.
- [06:51]
A
I mean, I would just go real quick here because, Brian, I think you distilled the most signal so far on the last like minute or so of what you just described. Right. Because ultimately the analogy that I would make here is that you have these companies that have insane valuations. You point to the incentives or it's like, okay, well these companies, there's a lot riding on these companies being successful entering public markets next year. And then for competitive businesses to come out of China and be able to produce a similar product or perhaps in some cases an even better product at a fraction of the cost is going to put a lot of pressure on these valuations and there's so much just beyond the valuations of these companies. But the whole idea behind the productivity, productivity boom and this growth miracle that so many think is going to come from AI, I think it's really, you know, there's going to be a ton of pressure to compete here and it's ultimately going to, I think, you know, one of the interesting analogies here is from a SaaS perspective almost what you're describing with China doing with their AI models is what people are doing now with 5 coding. Right? And so this is just the nature of where technology is going. It's getting so much cheaper to produce things at the margin and I, I think it's just something worth paying attention to because ultimately we're, we're operating at a global scale here. And I agree with you, whoever is most competitive in the price is going to win over the longer term.
- [08:08]
C
Completely agreed. I think just looking at this headline citing cyber security concerns about AI for Kimmy is mostly noise offering the ability to download the weights and have more eyes on the actual project will allow for more security, bugs to be found, etc. And so allowing for open models to proliferate should be a net good thing. There is, you know, signal that IP theft, especially if you are a US consumer or business, that if you're, you probably shouldn't be using the API, especially with sensitive information be sending the to data centers overseas and that other company or other countries can use it to train their future models as well as you know, potentially do whatever they want with your data. And then the last aspect is it too that you know, there, there's been a lot of screeching that OpenAI anthropic et cetera won't be able to train their new models off if there are other dumping of free or very low cost tokens from China. I just don't necessarily think that's true. That's essentially saying that nobody's going to do research and write books if libraries make books free for people to use. I think that there's going to be high leverage ability for people to train models and this will ultimately net benefit the consumer in the productivity miracle that the US needs to happen.
- [09:35]
D
Well that's the, the, the bigger angle that's like somewhat above our pay grade but just throwing it out there is the acknowledgment of larger models need that capex spend. And to justify the capex spend there's the angle that Brian was referencing of the Capital markets, the amount of debt, equity value. These companies are going to ipo. You don't want to burst that bubble. Part of because of the economy and the justification around it. But then also, I mean, think about just since 21, how much liquidity has been soaked up from venture and private equity into this sector of the market. But then the other idea to Liam's point was their angle is you need to continue to lead at the frontier. It goes back into like the GPUs and what the US has versus China and why they have been leading at the frontier side because they still are making a mistake about it. But if they want to continue, they need this kind of like monopoly here in the west to justify the amount of users, the revenue growth so they can sustain continuing on that CapEx spend to effectively go towards like this notion of ASI. That's hypothetical, but that's what I've been able to gain my bearings on. There's a race globally for asi and this hinders that if they can't justify the ability to continue to spend to get there. Now, the Chinese angle, there's a few I don't necessarily know. I think like they're. So this was something that came up recently about how most people don't even know how China operates. Like people that are very close and that is super in the 2026 world where things are out in the open. We still don't understand their strategy of what's happening here. But I do think that's a component, whether it's true or not, that they can't actually lead at the very edges of the frontier when it comes to the size and number of parameters because they won't be able to justify the amount of spend required. Now is that true or not? I do think it happens to be true based on everything I've seen that there's a heavy amount of not only energy, but data centers when it comes into this. So that's a component that like falls into all of it.
- [11:42]
A
How do we do on time?
- [11:44]
B
We went over, but I think that's, that's valid. This is a big topic with a lot of angles.
- [11:49]
A
Agree.
- [11:49]
D
Producer Nick fell asleep. I was waiting for the buzzer.
- [11:52]
B
Oh, it buzzed. It buzzed when Liam was talking.
- [11:54]
C
Yeah, I got buzzed on.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah. All right, let's move on to the next topic then. So we got something in the markets here. Jamie Dimon says markets underestimate risks and he wouldn't buy stocks or Treasuries at current prices. That's a little bit of A conundrum. Brian, this was a, this is a piece of news that caught your attention. Before you give your take on signal versus noise, could you tee us up here just in terms of what this piece is distilling on Diamond's latest thoughts on the market?
- [12:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess there's not like a ton of preamble here outside of, I guess Jamie Dimon was being interviewed and he said, I do think risks are probably bigger than other people think, pointing to wars in Ukraine and the Middle east, tensions in the US Between US and China, and rising military spending in a time of mounting government tests. I mean, my take is like, this is definitely noise in the sense that you shouldn't care what Jamie Dimon thinks about markets. He's not saying anything novel here. He's saying things that are pretty down the fairway if you're being honest about where markets are today. Equities are near all time highs. U.S. treasuries and fixed income in general has been negative real yielding for about a decade. So this isn't like some, you know, massive piece of signal that he's, he's giving the market like he doesn't want to buy anything. The question is like, well then what do you do with your capital if you are not in Treasuries or stocks? He doesn't really give that answer. That's the other reason this is noise. He's saying, well, don't buy this stuff, but I'm not going to tell you what to buy. So all in all, I think this is massive noise. Don't listen to Jamie Dimon in general. He's also not really giving you a solution or really saying how it's going to play out. He's just saying what I think. If you're being honest, everyone kind of knows about where we are in the market today.
- [13:43]
D
Yeah, I'll take the other side. I think this is massive signal mainly because he's saying the quiet part out loud. We occupy this corner of the Internet that talks about debasement and why there's a real cost benefit analysis that people don't do when it comes to equities or bonds as it relates to the downside of what could happen if you wake up tomorrow and nobody in the market says that. Now, Brian hit a key point like what's his angle? Because he operates the largest bank or the large bank in the United States and where is he coming? He recently was on another podcast. There's another angle he's at play here. He's just not saying it But I do think it's important because most people aren't out there talking about the multiple that stocks are trading at Treasuries, the conflict, the real debasement. So I thought it was interesting that somebody as prominent as Jamie Dimon is coming out saying this where most prominent leaders would not explain bonds and stocks are not a good store of value.
- [14:38]
C
Yeah, I agree. I think there's a lot of signal here. He probably knows more about what's going on in Ukraine, the Middle East. Thanks. And we do, too. So if he's saying necessarily that at these prices it probably doesn't make sense to get involved, I'd take him at his word. Definitely agreed that there is a solution that he's incentivized not to say whether it's gold or Bitcoin, just because they can't make quite as much money on that compared to, you know, stocks and bonds. But I do think just in a world where debasement is so prevalent, the fundamentals are completely dislocated with pretty much all valuations across financial assets.
- [15:18]
A
Yeah, I would go signal here as well, just because of the fact that this is a conclusion that I think most market participants will have to reach sooner than later. And when that happens, I don't really know what will happen. But this does remind me of the conversation I mentioned from last week where we have people that operate in capital markets. They operate within Wall street and these largest banks, and they think the same exact thing. People literally do not know what to do with their savings anymore, which is such a problem because you should be able to earn a living and then be able to save without having to participate in markets like this if you don't want to. But things are so structurally broken. And we obviously think that Bitcoin can play a role as a solution, an individualized solution for people to be able to protect their purchasing power over the long term. But I think this is signal to the extent of, like, usually people of this stature are not going to say this if they do. Michael, to your point, there's some incentive that we're not read in on yet. Perhaps it'll become obvious at a later date, but this is just something that more people are going to have to wrap their heads around. Like where, you know, in this day and age, how do you actually preserve your capital? Are you going to continue to buy things that just net you worse purchasing power over time, I. E. Us Treasuries? Are you going to put all of your faith in multiples that don't make sense? Fundamentals that don't make sense in the equity markets either. Some people may take the side of, well, stocks will go up because of the incentives, and I largely agree with that over the long term. But there's another camp as well that people just will funnel their savings into the stock market just because they perceive, well, if the stock market collapses or there's a major failure in markets in the US Then, like, you know, I might as well go down with the ship, for lack of a better word here. So I'm not entirely sure what the real tell or the read is behind the scenes, but, man, I mean, I think a lot of people are going to come to this conclusion over the next five years or so.
- [17:07]
D
I know it's wishful thinking, but it'd be nice in 6, 12, 18 months, we find out that JP Morgan ends up being one of the biggest shills for gold and Bitcoin and trying to get ahead of it, I think.
- [17:19]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would put my faith in that, but I could imagine a world where, Michael, I know you're paying quite a bit of attention to Clarity Act. And if that were to pass, and then there were some other catalysts behind the scenes, and then you have companies like this that were positioned, kind of already had seated the narratives about, okay, well, there's a lot of risk in these markets, and now we have a new market that you can participate in that could make sense. But I'm not quite sure that that's playing out just yet.
- [17:44]
B
All right, so I'm on. I'm on the island. As this is noise. I'm among a bunch of Jamie Dimon stands. That's okay. I mean, the only thing I would point out is like, you know, he's not calling out debasement specifically. I think, you know, he's talking about deficit, fiscal spending, but he's really talking about, like, wars. And, you know, markets underestimate risk. It's like, well, markets always underestimate risks. Like that is what financial markets, when you're thinking about equities, like, there's some amount of risk you're taking because there's always underlying risks. So I guess my point was like, this isn't. This isn't some, like, massively novel take because we've been at, you know, the war in Ukraine's been going on for a long time. There's been tensions in the Middle East. The deficit's always been a problem. He didn't say this a year ago. He didn't say it Two years ago. And if he had said it then, like stocks went up since then. So I don't think there's actually a ton, a ton of noise or a ton of signal on what he's saying here.
- [18:39]
D
Well, it's clear you don't find. You find it noisy. You make that. Yeah, I mean we, we got a transition. But he said at current prices. He's still referencing like the prices. And I don't think anybody would disagree. Over a long time horizon or even months, stocks will go up. It's just. Do they go up in real versus nominal returns? And it feels like that was embedded into this independent of geopolitical. He's calling all that fiscal risk as well, which to your point, having gone away, I think it's just what we're saying signals the fact that somebody of this stature is saying it out loud.
- [19:13]
B
Fair bunch of diamond stands.
- [19:16]
A
Satoshi. Is that what he said before? Satoshi is going to pop up?
- [19:19]
C
Yeah.
- [19:22]
A
All right, so here's the next topic. We have the World cup gambling and inflation. So I'm going to read this viral tweet here from Michael Tanguma. 2020 was the event horizon for hyperinflation. The money crossed a line and has not come back. The same trophy which he's referencing, the World cup trophy. 3. 300.75 kilograms of gold for 50 years. It held nearly $150,000 for a decade. And since 2020 has gone vertical to about a half a million dollars. 550 0. This is actually a great chart. I had not seen this one yet before Michael. So give us, give us your take. First of all, did you watch the World cup at all? And then second of all, what's your take on just the topic of the World Cup? And if you want to tie in inflation and gambling, please probably get a lot of stuff for this.
- [20:08]
D
But I saw somebody post yesterday like my, my goal this year was to watch somebody posted, you know, no World cup footage or video. And my gold next World cup is watch negative World cup footage. So I'm in that camp. I didn't see clip. I actually watched a couple minutes of the US Deal and I was wondering what I was doing. So this was from our friends at Blockworks. There was a few good charts just
- [20:30]
C
to call out outside of the one
- [20:31]
D
that's on the screen. They were showing the FIFA World cup prize pool from 1982 was close to like, I don't know, $10 million. And this year it was up near a billion. I think it was like 800 million on the chart. And then the other one was the average English football player was £24,000 in 1985 and right now it's a three point million pounds in 2025 or 2026.
- [20:58]
B
And then obviously this is the gold.
- [21:01]
D
I just think that this ties into really what's happening from a global perspective. Inflation. And then there's the other side of it which was a crazy amount of volume and impressions across the trading apps, whether it's the prediction markets or just traditional betting applications here. And you saw that there was a huge decline post World Cup. I know Brian and Liam tracked us closer so they'll share some of the specific stats if they have them. But I think the main point is the dollar's fundamentally cooked and the market's waking up to them. And when you look at a chart like that and it's really that post 2020 that there were, I don't think there was ever any coming back. And most of the market's not necessarily pricing that. And then what are all the downstream effects whether it's the amount of gold in the World cup trophy all the way to, you know, salaries or just what does that behavior incentivize when it comes to gambling?
- [21:56]
A
Yeah, I mean I can go ahead and jump in. So Michael, like you, I did not watch much of the World cup at all. I did catch 20 minutes on Sunday but that's about as long as I could hold my attention for, for the finals match. And I did notice the rampant amount of, of cow ads actually so much to the extent. I was at my in law's house and we were watching together for a little bit and my mother in law was like kalshee, what is that? And then I proceeded in that 20 minutes or so. I was watching the commercial came up and it was of course Kalshee and it was like all over the place. And so I think there were millions and millions of people that were just introduced to prediction markets for the first time. And you know, what better way to take your hard earned money and not be able to buy into stocks or bonds at extreme valuations, not understand Bitcoin. You might well just put it into Kalshi and you should start gambling. And so it's interesting just to see the insane amount of growth in this industry just relative to a few years ago. And then I totally agree with you this, you know, maybe it's a little bit noble that FIFA still has the same amount of gold in the trophy for, for all these years. And maybe, maybe that's a testament to, you know, they're doing, you know, they have some amount of integrity in that sense. But it is crazy to look at this chart over the past 100 years and see the trophy has not changed at all, but the units of which it's measure have just pretty much gone printed into oblivion. It's essentially monopoly money. So, yeah, I mean, kind of a sad state of affairs between those two things that really feel for people who haven't really found a way to or solution to kind of circumvent all of the societal collapse in the monetary collapse and haven't found Bitcoin or another viable solution that works for them just yet.
- [23:39]
B
Yeah, knowing FIFA, we should probably check to see if that's real gold in the current trophy because FIFA notoriously, historically one of the most corrupt organizations in all sports in all of the world, really. I did watch some World Cup. All it really did was remind me that soccer is probably my least favorite sport. Too much flopping, not enough scoring, terrible. Some really terrible refereeing. And yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you guys said in terms of this being signal. It's a signal to me of just financial nihilism at scale. When the money's broken, people can't save and they are increasingly pushed via insane amount of advertisements towards Kalshi, prediction markets, draftkings, all forms of gambling. And you know, the prediction market stuff is really, you know, nefarious in terms of it being positioned as not something other than gambling. It has this other component to it where someone doesn't feel like, you know, they're necessarily gaming gambling because if it's, you know, on an election or something outside of sports, it's like, well, you know, I'm, I'm a smart guy. I have information. Maybe I'm going to, you know, place some money on this outcome. So it's kind of this facade to hide the fact that it's gambling, but it's really the same thing. And it's unfortunate because, you know, if you look at any of the data around losses on these platforms, like it's staggering. Like a very, very small percentage of people win or are profitable via prediction markets and especially sports gambling. So it's signal, but it's a sad state of affairs.
- [25:31]
C
Yeah, the real chart of this gold in the World cup trophy and how much it's been devalued over the past 100 years is a real signal. CPI will make up whatever metrics it wants to say about how much price has gone up over the past 100 years or so. But it's obviously wrong. When you look at images of just what food used to cost or anything, even from shows or movies from a relatively recent amount of time, the numbers just don't add up to what they actually come across on the screen. And so this is a lot of signal that this is actually what the real world looks like. And yeah, I agree that FIFA is kind of one of the noisiest things. Just go outside and do things yourself rather than watch other people do them.
- [26:18]
A
Yes. On that topic, Liam, just real quick. I'm amazed about, like, the general population's interest in, like, what celebrities are doing what at, like, these types of sporting events. It's like, oh, who is that? Like, I'm just thinking to myself, like, how would you ever give a. Like, who's at the sporting event? But yeah, let's. Let's carry on. We get the last topic to round it out here.
- [26:39]
B
So.
- [26:40]
A
White House reportedly backs Trump ethics language as Clarity act push enters the final stretch. Is it actually the final stretch? That's what I want to know. Are we going to see the Clarity act passed? That's what the people want to know. And that's the information that Michael has. Michael, what's the read? Is the signal or noise?
- [27:00]
D
I think this is signal. I think that this has gained a lot of mainstream attention across all financial platforms. They're talking about it. This ties in. I mean, Bessant was talking about it last week. I forget who else was tweeting. I think this sent last night. And then who's our buddy? Not Bo that took Bojangles spot.
- [27:24]
A
Yeah.
- [27:24]
D
Patrick Witt. I think he's part of an area of the. He participates. It's something equivalent to the National Guard. I'll get butchered for this. But point being is that he was called on for whatever residency he had and he was able to defer it to help get this across the finish line. I think that for the past couple weeks, we've been talking about whether it's global adoption of these assets and then specifically around the policy. Japan was the most recent that you've already started to see the signal that this would get passed. I think the price is somewhat reflecting that. And so I've continued to believe that this will be done specifically because of what we talk about with the debt and the need and proliferation of stable coins to soak that up. And so I think this gets done. The core idea, or the latest, was that the ethics provision, Trump had agreed on it. It went back to the Senate. I don't think it's out yet. But in the coming like day or two, they're going to release what that language looks like and then it just effectively needs to be voted on before I believe the first week of August. So I think the, the prediction markets have it at like still like 40% but I do think that we would expect it to continue to trend up.
- [28:39]
A
It just jumps at 80% I think today.
- [28:41]
D
No way.
- [28:42]
A
I thought I saw something to that.
- [28:44]
B
I don't like 50, but it was down at like 30.
- [28:48]
D
Yeah.
- [28:48]
B
Now it's in the 40s.
- [28:50]
A
Maybe it wasn't for the final, it could have been not for the final passage. It could have just been some intermediate.
- [28:55]
D
So it's up to, it's up to 43%. I mean I think that the net of it to round it out is I think this is super important because it's one of the those inverse buy the rumors sell the news in that nobody was expecting it. It's kind of fallen dormant in the mainstream narrative. And we've understood like again, when you go back to Schwab, Vanguard hiring a digital asset expert, different firms across the board integrating digital financial services that if this passes I hopeful wishful thinking, but I also expected I would put betting that we're going to have a pretty exciting end of the year, specifically fall of 2026, because in the same way we didn't get a traditional bull market in bitcoin, we didn't have a traditional bear market in what has historically been a 70, 80% drawdown. And so if that's the case, I think we take back up again.
- [29:50]
C
Yeah, I'll, I'll go next. I do think that this is noise just because Trump is involved and he is probably one of the noisiest people in terms of his ethics and how both Republicans and Democrats react to anything ethics related as the meme coins and World Liberty Phi etc has been a big contentious point. And there are a lot of Democrats that really don't like to see everything that Trump's doing with his ethics. And so I do think that the real signal in here though is that pretty much both outside of this ethics language, like both Republicans and Democrats want to get something done and think it's within the U.S. national priorities and, and it's a strategic point. And so I think between now and what is it, the first week of August, we're going to see more noise back and forth. But the general friend is that they want to get something done. It looks more like 50 now, even after it was just like a third yesterday so it's going to be noise until the next, for the next two or three weeks. But signal is that the powers that be want this.
- [30:59]
B
Yeah, I think that's a good point, Liam, that there is clearly at this stage bipartisan support for the actual sort of meat and intent of the bill itself. There was, you know, previously, maybe six months ago, dispute around some of the yield dynamics that's been sorted out. And then sort of the last barrier, it seems, was this ethics stuff, which, like, it's. The interesting aspect of it to me is like, you know, Trump already did all of the scams, so it's like, why wouldn't he agree to some sort of ethics provision or language? Because unless there's like clawbacks to being like, hey, we're going to take that billion that you made from your meme coin, like, you know what, what's the, what's the downside in, you know, agreeing to something that, like, you can't do that stuff into the future. So I, at this point, I would be surprised if it doesn't get passed because it does. Like one day you were like, this
- [31:57]
D
ain't, this isn't happening.
- [31:59]
B
Well, I mean, Besant just said, I guess an hour or two ago, it's at the one yard line. So here's the. I'm going with Scotty.
- [32:07]
D
Here's a cynical take. This was always going to pass. It was always baked in and the grift was always going to happen. We didn't have it, but it was on the top list. So we can cover it here because I know the guys are interested. It was the truth social stuff in the API. I'm shocked it wasn't part of it. And everyone's talking about, no, not part of the list, but part of the conversation has nothing, has nothing to do with the API. It has to do with the air cover for grift.
- [32:35]
B
Meaning like normalizing insider trading.
- [32:37]
D
Well, no, no, no, not even. Maybe, not even necessarily that. Maybe that, but more of the angle of like, whatever million dollar checks are handed for the API is how you justify taking that, which goes to another level of like, how is it part of this bill that there's an ethics provision, but then in other parts of the market, he's allowed to operate true social and then his tweets are tied to capital, you know, so then if you go full circle, then you're like, well, this was always just like theater versus actually signal. But anyway, that, that's the angle when I first saw the truth social stuff, after seeing all of the World Liberty was less around. Oh, my God. They're doing this because nobody's on Truth Social. Like, it's not like this platform that has a bunch of users, mostly bots. I think they have data on that.
- [33:19]
A
It's more.
- [33:19]
D
You just justify the ability to charge people tens of millions of dollars to access this, and then that's how you line your coffers as a politician.
- [33:26]
C
Yeah. Crypto is down. Too bad. Trump's like, they're too poor now. He's moved on to other scams with richer people now.
- [33:32]
D
Yeah, the equity markets are nice and frothy.
- [33:34]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [33:38]
A
I don't have much to add here. I'm going to say it doesn't get done, though, mostly just out of not wanting to be disappointed. I've just been so disappointed the past two years.
- [33:46]
D
Well, it's bullish for Jackson because he's working to escape the permanent underclass. And I think if we get this clarity act, I do feel pretty strongly we're going to have a pretty exciting 24 months in this industry before they pop at all. And if that happens, everyone that's holding Bitcoin or interested in this space is going to have a nice next one to two years.
- [34:08]
A
All right, so how do we do this lightning round? This is something that, Michael, you came up with. Originally, the show was five topics, five minutes each. But we're adapting, as you can tell, and so I want to get people involved, provide feedback, let us know what's working, what doesn't. What are you interested? What are you not interested in? The idea for the lightning round to round out the show today is each one of us can just share something that caught our attention and just riff on it real quick. And if anyone has a reaction, feel free to add it. But, Michael, am I accurately describing the purpose of the lightning round?
- [34:42]
D
Yeah, I think the core idea is it's a noisy world. There's so much content out there, and so we're all, you know, diving into an insane amount of research, podcasts, etc. And so if we highlight something that we're paying attention to across, you know, the Internet, the interweb, you might find it valuable. The one that I had most recently was the podcast the Diary of a CEO. There was the open AI whistleblower. His name's Daniel. I won't pronounce the last name. Daniel. Coco, whatever. But he really outlines. I think the most interesting signal you can find in AI is find the people that were at the labs before across the board. If you're investing or Joining a company, you should look at those individuals because a lot of those individuals have been at the inside of what's happening. That happens across sectors. It doesn't matter if it's digital assets, you know, traditional tech that once you're an employee you can see where the angles are, you can see where opportunities are. This guy was on the other side which had took the black pill on what they're racing for and just breaks it down. So I think that would be highly interesting for individuals that want to get outside of the traditional noise of mainstream and east versus west and actually what is at stake and what are they gaming for?
- [35:55]
B
Nice.
- [35:56]
C
I'll go next. I would recommend a substack called Crossing the River. Michael, you spoke about it earlier how many people don't actually understand what's going on in China and how people operate. The whole concept behind the newsletter that I found through Bill Gurley promoting it was it's all about entrepreneurism, entrepreneurship in China and the best founders venture capital landscape and what people are building over there. There's a very fascinating article about what the state of venture capital is in China and how Everybody left after 2022 just because of, you know, uncertain political landscape and how the government has come in and now funds 55% or more of all venture capital in China and how they have these top down mandates of AI and robotics. So I thought the whole thing was pretty interesting. You could go through them pretty quickly and I honestly wasn't super familiar with the topic and so would recommend people to check it out.
- [36:57]
B
Alrighty, I'm going to go and a couple of things here. I mean the main plug is for a follow on Twitter ormuzletter. And the spirit of what I'm going to say here is there was a story that I wanted to put on the list that nobody else thought should make the list and that is that the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. And so a few data points here. The number of ships crossing the strait is back to levels consistent with the pre mou. So the memorandum of understanding from a few weeks ago passage sort of spiked back up a little bit. We're now back down to basically no ships passing through the strait and then oil. So crude oil inventories are at the lowest in 45 years. And the higher level of what I want to say here is like, you know, we talk a lot about AI, we talk about the Clarity act, we talk about digital asset infrastructure. I think there's an argument to be had that there's a lot of distractions in the world going on right now. And at the end of the day, like we are at war and the horror movies is closed and you know, the world is constrained for energy and oil at a time when, you know, as we talked about with all the AI CapEx infrastructure, like we need more energy than we already have and we're being constrained by these activities and attention. And then if, you know, just an hour or so ago that handle that I mentioned to our Mooseletter tweeted out breaking at least eight oil tankers have aborted transit through the Bab El Mandeb Strait. So this is a separate strait following. Following the Houthi naval blockade against Saudi Arabia. So this is.
- [38:38]
D
Did you just create a topic? Did you just create a topic or were you just going to tell. This is. No, no, look, hold on real quick.
- [38:45]
B
Let's pay attention to it. It's all distraction. Like this is actually what matters for markets.
- [38:49]
D
It's why I think we should talk about.
- [38:51]
B
These are going up.
- [38:52]
D
I think we should talk about it on. On last trade because there's a whole other slew of like Chinese have like cut half of their production. Nobody knows where it went. And then on the other side of this they're going to open up a bunch of oil trade that wasn't on market.
- [39:05]
A
So.
- [39:06]
D
So it kind of like doesn't say that oil is like this is a good topic. We should chat about it on the last trade.
- [39:11]
B
But what was the plug at Hormuz letter?
- [39:13]
A
Good at Horus letter.
- [39:15]
D
That's all we were looking for. Thanks, Brian.
- [39:16]
B
Handle to follow
- [39:19]
A
Brian. Maybe you need a talking head show with, you know, Michael, you go head to head.
- [39:24]
D
Brian. Brian. No, it's, it's. I do think the geopolitics stuff, the. Probably the main reason it didn't make it this week is it could be every week because it feels like every week there's something shifting. But I do think I tried to
- [39:34]
B
get it on the list last week too. And you guys submit.
- [39:36]
D
Oh no.
- [39:37]
A
It sounds like Hormu's letter is just trying to create news to stay relevant. No one even cares about the Hormuz anymore.
- [39:42]
B
It's closed. Jackson, close.
- [39:45]
A
All right, all right. Jackson, did you.
- [39:47]
D
You got anything?
- [39:48]
A
Just real quick, there was an article that went pretty viral. Might have been last week, might have been this week called Young Adults are Poor Despite Every Metric which suggests otherwise by Johan.
- [40:01]
B
What? What metric suggests otherwise?
- [40:03]
D
It's just.
- [40:04]
A
No, no, I just want to. I think the.
- [40:06]
D
I love the bias that gets like we're all naturally interested in our things. And so Jackson is like either real
- [40:11]
B
estate or I'm poor.
- [40:12]
D
And it just continues to be the.
- [40:15]
A
I think, I think what. Obviously it struck a nerve. What's most interesting about it was just the idea of social capital. And so a lot of things that are expensive today are because the social fabric has just really gone down the. For lack of a better word, over the past couple generations. So like typically you'd have neighbors that would look after children, look after the community. Used to have public schools that were largely reliable. You would have like people speaking English. You'd have teachers that were competent. A lot of this stuff that we kind of took for granted. And so now not only are, you know, a number of things that we understand are expensive, but also a lot of things that used to be just part of what you would get as being a citizen in this country. You now have to kind of opt into other systems that cost additional capital as well. And so I think it's worth checking out. It's different ideas. It's not all just about, oh, poor me, I can't afford a house. But yeah, this is interesting one.
- [41:09]
D
Check out the article. And I think that both those topics are perfect for Last Trade. We're finding our nice efficiency Rolodex where we go into this cite the article.
- [41:17]
B
Signal is signal.
- [41:19]
D
We, we. We should talk about both these on Last Trade. But we do have work to do
- [41:22]
C
and we have a call.
- [41:23]
A
Really bad work. All right, all right, so we'll. We'll end the show here. Please like and subscribe to the feed. And also thank you for those who actually got on Ramp Media. Over a hundred five star reviews on Spotify. Well, they're not all five stars. 100 reviews on Spotify. Thank you for reviewing the show. I appreciate it.
- [41:45]
D
Yeah, little business on here. We should. If you guys are game after this, we should send this to the Onramp Media channel and. And highlight. You can find. Follow it the other podcast feed so we can boost some of it. This was a good rip. It was nice back and forth.
- [42:01]
A
All right, gentlemen.
- [42:03]
C
Thanks, guys.
- [42:04]
B
Later.