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- [00:01]
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- [00:29]
Kane Warrick
Hey everyone, I'm Kane Warrick and welcome to Uneasy Money. Because what happens on Chain never stays on Chain. I'm here with my co host Taylor Monahan, security expert and Luca Net CEO of Pudgy Penguins. We're going to dive in into a minute, but one quick thing before we start Nothing. You are here on Uneasy Money is Financial Advice. We're just three builders talking about what's happening on Chain and we want you to always do your own research before aping in. You can find all our disclosures@unchain crypto.com uneasymoney before we begin, here's a word from the sponsors that make this show possible.
- [01:02]
Sponsor Announcer
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- [01:21]
Multichain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create 50+ billion dollars in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past four years. They're the partner to help navigate markets, build real traction today@multichain adv.com Quick note before we get into today's episode, Bits and Bits now has its dedicated feed. We're spinning up from the Unchained feed and moving to a new podcast and YouTube channel. So if you want to keep up with our weekly live streams and macro meets Crypto breakdown, make sure to subscribe to Bits and Bits directly. We won't publish there until March, but subscribe today so you can be ready for launch. Be sure to subscribe to the new feeds@unchained crypto.com bitsandbits
- [02:05]
Kane Warrick
all right, hey everyone. Our first segment, as it has been now, I think for maybe the last month or so, is going to be on AAVE Governance, another core contributor of the AAVE Dao has Rage Quit, I guess is probably the best way of putting it. So we actually had Mark Zeller on the show a few weeks ago who is I guess the spiritual leader, actual leader of the Ave Chan Initiative and they've said that they will wind down their work with AAVE and potentially even wind down their work completely. They might be dissolving ACI completely. I think is, is the latest thing that I heard. So, yeah, this is, this is the second major contributor. BGD and ACI are the two major contributors outside of AAVE Labs. And I, my, my sense from kind of the timeline and all the conversations and talking to Mark is that like between BGD and aci, that is the majority of the engineering resources that we're working on. Certainly Aave3, I guess Aave4 has been led more by labs, but V3, which is the protocol that has the most TBL, is led by them. So look, I think we have continued to be surprised by the escalation of this situation. Like, if these guys had UAVs, they would be firing them at each other. Is my hot take, which, like, I just, I don't know, I, I don't know how we got to this point where like, everyone's just like, we're completely out. I think the only thing I'll say before I hand it over to you guys for your, your takes is like, we talked about this maybe on like the first or second show, this idea that, like the idea of daos, right? Like this, this DAO theory, Dao governance, whatever. And I know, Tay, you're a huge fan of this theory, but this idea that, that like daos are a thing that can work was really hanging by a thread called AAVE for a long time. All of the other daos had collapsed on themselves or, you know, failed to allocate funds or, you know, a bunch of different issues that, that we'd seen in DAO governance over the years. And AAVE was like the only functional DAO that really had its together and they have imploded. So yeah, I, I, I don't know if this is like the final, final nail in the coffin for daos, but it definitely, I think kind of leads towards this idea of more corporate driven protocol development and having, you know, centralized entities that are driving these, these protocols moving forward. Because I don't know who else really is picking up the Dow, you know, mantle to, to lead this thing. You know, now that, now that Labs runs aave, basically AVE Labs runs aave, you know, and, and that's kind of
- [05:29]
Luca Net
where we sit today as a big depositor in a, would you be concerned about this thing? Like, how is it, how are depositors AAVE supposed to look at this?
- [05:40]
Kane Warrick
KANE so my, my take is, no, I didn't I haven't taken any funds out of aave. And I think this is one of the nice things on the continuum of, like, decentralization and censorship, resistance and immutability. AAVE is pretty good. You can't, unfortunately, like AAVE 3 in particular. Right. Is. Is pretty good. Pretty isolated. People can't do that much off chain. That will blow it up. You know, there. There are obviously risks to anything that is mutable where. Where the parameters can be changed. But, like, my hot take is this doesn't have almost any risk for people in V3. It definitely has some risk, I think, for, like, the overall protocol in terms of, you know, growth and adapting to the market and all of that stuff. And so, you know, I think everyone who has funds in AAVE is probably thinking about, you know, what. What they might do, but I don't know that there's, like, a credible alternative, realistically, for the billions of dollars in tvl that people are just gonna jump straight to.
- [06:53]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, and thank goodness for that, because. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I'm. I don't know. I kind of expected it to not go this.
- [07:06]
Kane Warrick
I know. Yeah, you. You, like. You've had a weird optimist our time, Tay. That is not really. So I don't know what's going on
- [07:16]
Taylor Monahan
there, but I don't know. I. That they would just kiss and make up and everything would be fine, but I guess we didn't get there. I think the most surprising thing to come out of this is actually there were, like, a lot of people that this news was, like, bullish for them.
- [07:33]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [07:33]
Taylor Monahan
And I was a bit surprised by that because I don't know, like, I just. In my view, and maybe I'm just wrong, but, like, in my view, like, the other labs guys have not been sort of, like, sitting there neck deep in this. Right. And the people that have been and really understand the stuff are rage quitting. To me, that's not bullish.
- [08:01]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, you don't need to understand things, Tay. Like, what's like, understanding things is not the most critical part of running a protocol. I don't know. I don't know what wing of protocol development you come from, but look, I, like, I think that's fair. I mean, just on the. People seem bullish on this. Right. I. I think my take is that there are a lot of people, including myself, that have a lot of respect for Stani and are friends with Stani. And, you know, interestingly, Stany has not tapped me on the shoulder, although we did try and get him on the show. To say like start the Psyop machine. Right. Like, so he hasn't brought me in to this to, to be like we need, you know, moral support or whatever. You know, I think I've been, I've been fairly supportive of like a reasonable resolution to this, but it hasn't, that hasn't worked. So, so, so yeah, I think there's a lot of people who feel an obligation to Stani or whatever. You know, he's been around for a long time. He's done a lot of things for a lot of people in the space, helped a lot of people that, you know, even in the background people don't realize. And so there is a little bit of like probably Stanley will figure this out, like, you know, don't panic sort of thing.
- [09:23]
Luca Net
What was the incentive of Mark in the previous group? Like what were they, were they getting paid a service fee? Like what type of alignment are they for forgoing by leaving this initiative like that?
- [09:36]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, the DOW was paying them, but not very much is my sense. Right. Like single digit millions of dollars over like four years. So their budgets, the budgets for BGD and ACI as I understand it, were quite small. Certainly small relative to AAVE Labs. AV Labs was much a much bigger org. Those orgs were much smaller. So yeah, I, you know, I think for, for bgd my sense is they're going to go and work on something else. For aci, the sense is that they aren't. But I, I think ACI was a much smaller team, like sub 10 people. So you know, a little bit easier to dissolve that than like a 25 person engineering team.
- [10:27]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And I think most of the bullishness ultimately comes from this sort of overall bearishness on daos and people feeling like, oh, okay, so we can stop pretending that the DOW is the thing and we can just like go to the moon now or whatever. I'm not quite sure that that's actually how things are going to play out, but I guess we will see. And then yeah, I think a lot of things like AAVE has, so there's V4 obviously, but there's also like the mobile app that people are quite bullish on. So yeah, I guess, I guess we'll see. On the one hand, I think it's
- [11:04]
Kane Warrick
going to be a test of incentive alignment. Right. Yeah, there's been an equilibrium of incentive alignment that obviously was more fragile than we thought. There will be a new incentive alignment equilibrium that is going to be very interesting to watch. Right. Like things like the mobile app, a centralized Thing that a DAO struggles to, you know, you struggle to publish a mobile app, whereas labs can easily publish that. And we've seen this with Uniswap a little bit as well, right? Like Uniswap has been sort of speed running this, right? Like you can own the interfaces. Interfaces, distribution, etc. You know, are very powerful. So yeah, there's something to be said for like this is not I think necessarily like a situation where you say it's completely dire. Like there's a. There are multiple good outcome possibilities out of this that that could come. There's just people, you know on the other side of it who particularly Mark I think that are like Abe is dead basically is. Is, you know, the tldr. So I don't know about that. I don't know about that.
- [12:14]
Taylor Monahan
I think that's, I mean there's a lot of money on the table for it to not be dead. So that's. It's going to take some work to like really kill it. I will say just like the, my impression of the handling of this, it's just like really messy and kind of gross. Leaves a really gross taste in your mouth. I get that everything's supposed to be like transparent and we duke it out in public and stuff, but it's really not a good look. And it does not ultimately leave me that bullish on AAVE or AAVE leadership. Even though I do have respect for Stani. I think that like this is just not the, the series of choices that various people made here did not get to the best outcomes. And that leaves me not super enthused to like love A anytime soon.
- [13:08]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting. So I mean, you know, there's also like a wind down period as well, right? Like this is not, you know, rage. Like I said rage quit half jokingly. Right. Like the plan is to, you know, hand over to labs and, and figure that out. You know, I do think that there is a world where a more vertically integrated, less dao like AAVE is actually fine. You know, probably, I think. And I don't know about your take on this Luca, but like, particularly when it comes to conversations with say institutions and you know, and people like that. Probably harder to have a conversation with BlackRock being like, hello, I am the Aave Chan initiative and I live inside of the Ethereum Blockchain and you know, like that those conversations are probably harder to have I would imagine than like, hi, you know, I'm, I'm Stani. I run AAVE Labs out of London and we're going to do some stuff for you. So, you know. Yeah, I don't know, Luca, what your, what your experience is with that sort of thing.
- [14:18]
Luca Net
I'll, I'll take, I'll take the side that this is going to be incredibly bullish for a. That's the side that I'll take for the reasons that you just explained. I think when you think about the future of, you know, you know, let's call a.
- [14:35]
Kane Warrick
What it is. It's.
- [14:36]
Luca Net
It's the great bank on chain.
- [14:38]
Kane Warrick
I mean, today, right?
- [14:39]
Luca Net
I mean, who else comes close to it? Maybe Morpho, maybe some of the things that Jupiter are doing. But as far as I'm concerned, I feel safest parking my money with ave. I do not question Stani's integrity in terms of, you know, user funds. I think all of that stuff is kosher to the best of their ability. In terms of, you know, obviously a minus an act of God or like, you know, their whole team getting hog tied and, you know, asking for secret phrases. I think this is going to be better for those reasons. I think you're going to be able to ship product faster. You're going to be able to do deals, you know, without the semantics of daos and votes. Nobody wants to hear that when doing a deal. And I've always just been a huge
- [15:20]
Kane Warrick
fan of,
- [15:23]
Luca Net
I've kind of been one of the, one of the components of the anti dao leadership. As somebody who was being really pressured and pushed into pushing Pucci penguins into a dao when we acquired it, I think every holder would say that thank God we did not put pudgy penguins into a dao because we unequivocally would have failed and not be here today.
- [15:44]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And you know, like, when you're talking about brand building, when you're talking about, you know, these sorts of things, right. Like there is definitely empirical evidence that daos are not good at that stuff. Like they're not good at the like kind of user facing brand building, you know, distribution gathering side of business, you know, so, so yeah, I, I tend to agree. Like a more vertically integrated AAVE could actually be. Be quite bullish. I do think though that, you know, having outsourced the engineering capability for the last, you know, two or three years, right, like, that's not an easy thing to solve. And so I think that there's some work there to like restructure this and, and you know, but yeah, like I'm, I, I think long term I'm bullish on aave. I think this whole thing has just been a huge distraction and, and didn't need to get to this point. But hopefully this is the end of this part of it and everyone can kind of move on in this new AAVE world.
- [17:04]
Taylor Monahan
One last question I had is what the heck is the AAVE token going to be useful for like moving forward? Wasn't it a lot of it, the governance and the budgeting and that kind of stuff?
- [17:18]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, this is the problem, right? I think that's a very reasonable question to ask because, you know, whether it's a good idea or not, most of the utility of a token outside of like any kind of, you know, buybacks or whatever, right. Comes from DOW governance for, for protocols. So if that is not a thing anymore, and I don't know that it's not a thing, I think that like you can have, you know, Uniswap is very centralized, Tayden runs it, et cetera, et cetera. But there is still, you know, the necessity of having on chain votes and there's still a governance structure that underlies that. Even if the allocation of resources in terms of what they're building and what they're trying to do and the direction of the, of the protocol itself is somewhat centralized, there's still checks and balances, you know, and, and so I do think that this will rationalize into something more like that, right? Like AAVE holders do still control the protocol on chain. And so, you know, I don't think you lose that completely at the end of the day though. And you know, Luca, I think you've said this many times on the show, right? Like the value of the protocol is like the value of the brand, right? Like if people believe in the brand, it's, you know, it's an on chain bank, right? If people trust it and they put their money in it, it's going to be fine. If they don't trust and they don't put their money in, it's not going to be fine. And like it's pretty binary. And so, you know, all of the extra stuff, governance structures and votes and on chain things and resource allocation and budgeting, like is all a distraction from like do people believe that AAVE is a safe place to put their money, to borrow and to lend?
- [19:13]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah. I mean the thing is like, I don't know, I guess ultimately like I would still use aave. I see no reason to buy AAVE tokens at this point though. Although I Never really did, to be honest. But yeah, even more so. Okay, guys.
- [19:30]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, now I'm really not buying. Are you shorting, Are you shorting AAVE here? Is that what it sounds like?
- [19:36]
Taylor Monahan
I mean, maybe if I, like, if I was, if I was more active trader, like I feel like that it may have been like the switch just because I just don't see. It's just drama right now. It's just drama. I don't see. Well, and like this last vote especially, it became pretty clear that any governance can be basically passed with like the A Labs wallets. So like, I don't know. Unless you tell me there's like another secret utility for the AAVE token that's super bullish. Like, it seems like this is just going to perpetually, you know, kind of crash and burn even if AAVE stays like, good and their TVL grows.
- [20:20]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, well, look, I mean, you know, again, I go back to like, distribution is the most valuable thing that you can have, right? And if AAVE's distribution gets better by being more vertically integrated and there isn't the. And this is a risk for sure, right? If there isn't the kind of misalignment of incentives of like value capture happening in labs and not to the token, which Stanley has said he does not intend to do, that's not, you know, he's still a large token holder. You have to have some belief in that. Right? Provided this, which is, I think in fairness, a lot of Mark's concern has been this like, you know, misalignment of incentives of like labs capturing value and not going to the dao, et cetera, you know, owning the brand, whatever. But provided there, there isn't this misalignment of incentives, then, you know, more value should flow to the token. That would be, that would be the, the hope, I would say. Whether that plays out, how that plays out, it's going to be a very interesting experiment. You know, if it turns into something that is more like old school uniswap where like all the value was captured in the equity entity and none of it flowed on chain. That's, that's super bearish for the AAVE token, like super bearish and bearish for tokens in general, to be honest. Like, you know, AAVE's ruined DAOs for us now. Let's hope they don't ruin tokens. Okay, I don't think
- [21:54]
Taylor Monahan
we'll stay optimistic, guys.
- [21:56]
Kane Warrick
We can do it.
- [21:57]
Taylor Monahan
We cannot.
- [21:57]
Kane Warrick
Your optimism is not helping us. I think it'd be better if you flip back to being pessimistic again, because your optimism has kind of burned us here. I'm not liking it.
- [22:09]
Taylor Monahan
I'm not like it's my fault.
- [22:11]
Kane Warrick
One of my, one of my favorite shows is Arrested Development. And there's like a scene in Arrested Development where uh, they're watching the TV and the company that, like their family company, um, the guy who's like the Mad money style like presenter upgrades the company to a don't buy. And I feel like we just got like a Tay Aave's been upgraded to don't buy moment.
- [22:35]
Taylor Monahan
Exactly what happened.
- [22:36]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [22:37]
Taylor Monahan
Although literally no one should ever take my advice on like prices of trading ever. Like, it's a terrible idea.
- [22:45]
Kane Warrick
All right, good caveat there. So let's, let's move on to the next topic. So near, near had their like annual conference last week. They announced a bunch of things as near loves to do. But I think the main, the main thing that they announced, which personally I'm very excited about, is this idea of private execution. So near launched Near Intense, which is a mechanism that allows you to use the NEAR chain to control other chains, particularly shitty legacy chains like Bitcoin that don't have smart contracts. And so a chain that doesn't have smart contracts, you can kind of put this wrapper around these non smart contract chains and control them remotely via near. But near being a public blockchain like Ethereum, it's just, you know, public smart contracts, everything's transparent. You couldn't really get the benefit of like privacy. And the most interesting thing was that NEAR started to support zcash. But when you moved zcash with near and you know, zcash obviously is interesting because it has both shielded and unshielded transactions, but moving money via NEAR made it transparent. And so I think that the intersection of this kind of forced the NEAR team to go, hang on. People really love zcash. The privacy meta is coming back. Tornado cash, you know, has been resolved, you know, to some extent. Maybe there is an opportunity to kind of lean in to this meta. And so I think about six months ago they started building this private execution environment, private execution layer. And they've shipped like the first version of this. And, and so yeah, my, my view is this is, this is quite bullish for near. And I've been bullish on near for a long time. Tarun, like four years ago from, from Gauntlet, near pilled me. I was at dinner and he was like, you know, near is the best blockchain. And I was like, what are you Talking about, like, I'm like, you're a smart guy, but like, this is. You're on crack. And he like, literally it was like two hours of like brow beating me and eventually I was like, all right, actually, maybe it is the best blockchain. And so. So, you know, the biggest issue I think near has had historically is they try to do too much. Like they're just fingers in every single pie, right? They're like, AI. We do AI Bitcoin. Sure. We also can do bitcoin, like literally anything you can think of. They did NFTs for a while. They probably have some Pudgy Penguins knockoff that they've been shilling. And so they've been kind of running this very broad try to do everything approach. And in the last year they've very much focused on trading and, and execution in this Near Intense meta. And so, yeah, Private Intense Confidential intents is. Is pretty exciting for me. I'm pretty excited about this.
- [26:09]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, a lot of really, really smart people love Near. I have not been fully near pilled yet, but I. I've seen it like in action and Near Intense is quite, quite good. Like the especially bridging between like, I've used it for. To go across like, not just within EVM land, but across all the other chains. And it's sort of. It's actually reached that like, it just works type thing. And I also. Well, so I was a pretty early user before the. Their bridge explorer was like, functional. So a lot of my transactions were confidential by design because they just didn't have a freaking explorer like you pray you kept track of your different addresses.
- [26:59]
Kane Warrick
I remember this. I remember it. Yeah. Yeah.
- [27:02]
Taylor Monahan
So it's a bit funny. Like now it's like, oh, we're actually gonna do confidential stuff. Like, no, we built the explorer. Now it's not confidential. Now we have to. We have to build it actually confidentially.
- [27:13]
Kane Warrick
Well, you know, it's. It's funny. Like, Ilya. Ilya pitched me on this on Intense, like two years, two years ago maybe even, right? I had a call, he's like, hey, I want to catch up with you on the latest near stuff. And I was like, all right, like, sure. I'm not gonna understand anything this guy's talking about, as usual. And he's like, we're doing this thing. And it's like the. I don't. I can't even make a joking, like, take on what he said to me because it was so impenetrable. Like, I was just like, I don't know what this guy is talking about. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, that all sounds really good. I'm very excited for that to launch. And then like six months later, I was, I was like looking at something and. And someone was like, oh, you know, near intense does that. And I was like, oh. And I, I messaged Ilya and I was like, hey, are you still doing like the near intense stuff? And he's like, yeah, it's about to launch. And I was like, okay, I'm very excited now that I understand it, but I had like a six month window where I had no idea what it was or what what it did. But it's pretty cool. The idea that you can, that you can, you know, control a bitcoin address from a smart contract chain like that, that just feels really cool. So
- [28:30]
Luca Net
bullish.
- [28:30]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, bullish. Near. Definitely bullish. Near. All right, so next. Next topic. Hopefully one of you guys. Well, actually, sorry just to pause here for a second because we had the Zach. What was the Zach XBT thing. Is that what this was?
- [28:50]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, there's so much insider trading stuff happening right now, Kane. There's like 8, 000.
- [28:55]
Kane Warrick
It's just like, you got to take this one for me, Tay, because I'm not.
- [28:59]
Taylor Monahan
Well, we can start. You want to start with the Z stuff, follow up?
- [29:02]
Kane Warrick
Sure. Let's start with the Zach stuff because we were waiting for it to drop and it didn't.
- [29:06]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. So it ended up being Axiom, which is like a token. Luca, what is Axiom? Help us.
- [29:15]
Luca Net
It's like a very advanced on chain trading.
- [29:19]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [29:19]
Taylor Monahan
My understanding is it's also sort of like a wallet. Ish.
- [29:23]
Luca Net
But like these advanced trading terminals now make you do like custodian wallets where you like deposit into their interface because you have your own wallet. So it's not really a wallet, just has a wallet element built into the terminal so you can get fastest execution.
- [29:36]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. Okay, so that is relevant because a lot of EVM people when the news dropped was like, wait, how exactly did this guy insider trade this stuff? And the answer is because their internal data, right. They're proprietary, private like usage analytics, user PII analytics typed out and not the on chain stuff. That's what they ended up, I guess using. And then they were able to like identify certain people that were doing certain things and then I guess make bets based on those people's moves.
- [30:16]
Kane Warrick
Like front running snipers and stuff or something.
- [30:19]
Taylor Monahan
Or like, like it was like front running like the Kols and also just like other. So they would like they use the data, I guess, to both identify, like, who is a good, like who would be a good person to quote, unquote, copy trade. And because the internal data, I guess, all the various wallets. So like, as an individual, you probably have like 10, 20, 30 wallets. The internal data had those mapped to like a single user id. So if you had someone that you wanted to like, quote, unquote, copy trade or whatever, you could find their new wallet via the internal data, the private data. And so that's what they did. And then there was like deals, I guess, that they were doing with others
- [31:05]
Kane Warrick
trying to like selling the data.
- [31:07]
Taylor Monahan
It was like they were. Yeah, they were like. I don't know if they were explicitly selling it, but they were all. There was like internal and external people. Zach has like phone calls that were recorded where they're like, don't tell anyone. Like, don't, like never. You can send me addresses and I'll figure out stuff for you. But like, never, never put anything in writing on like what it's pertaining to or whatever. Of course, like on a phone call, on a Discord live call where like everything's recorded and somehow ended up in Zach's hands. Like, Jesus Christ, guys. And it seems like the. At least the, the amount that they made was like, I guess, decent, but I don't. I mean, there's probably more stuff that happened that's just like, there's not a huge amount of evidence around. The most ironic thing about it was simply Axiom, of course, was the one that had gone on Twitter the prior days. And they're like, yeah, definitely not us. Like 100%.
- [32:05]
Kane Warrick
Like, I mean, there's, there's. There's probably an element there of like the. What we were doing was fine, so we're in the clear. Like, he's definitely not talking about us, right?
- [32:18]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah.
- [32:18]
Kane Warrick
I mean, you get 22 year old kids running a half billion dollar thing
- [32:25]
Taylor Monahan
and yeah, yeah, I think just like,
- [32:28]
Kane Warrick
no offense, Luca, you're good. You're fine.
- [32:32]
Taylor Monahan
I think the, the.
- [32:34]
Kane Warrick
But if you get enough of them, if you get enough 22 year old kids, you're gonna have some bad apples in there.
- [32:39]
Taylor Monahan
One and it's like, I mean, I think just even like Meteora, like they came out and they're like, we went back through everything. We like double checked. Like, it was like they were like aware of the potential that it could be them and was like, we're gonna make damn sure that it's not us. Meanwhile, Axiom is like, definitely not us. And then it Was. And it's like, I don't know, it should be a wake up call to all these teams that, like, if you do not know what is happening inside your company, someone is doing this 100%, whether it's like literally insider trading, whether it's explaining the data for some other way, whether it's just like leaking and threat actors are getting the data, like it's going to happen. If you do not know, it's probably already happening. So, like, put some controls on your guys. This is insane. Like, also, why did this guy have like so much information in the first place?
- [33:41]
Luca Net
Yeah, this one, it's actually not who
- [33:44]
Kane Warrick
I thought it was gonna be.
- [33:47]
Luca Net
And, and I.
- [33:48]
Kane Warrick
And I thought.
- [33:50]
Luca Net
I thought it was a little interesting. Zach's message was like, I wonder who sponsored him to do the investigation? I think would be like an interesting thread to pull. So, Kane, I don't know if you have this context, but it was spying. Zach usually doesn't do them like this, but it was like explicitly sponsored by like a group of people to investigate this thread. So, you know, I was pretty interested to like, figure out who would have basically blew the whistle on Axiom and wanted this. But I will tell you.
- [34:21]
Kane Warrick
Okay, sorry, hang on a second. When did Zach become like vigilante for hire?
- [34:28]
Taylor Monahan
It's like a very recent thing. He basically. Yeah, he basically, like burned completely out, I think. And if you, like, have been following him on Twitter, it seems like maybe over the last, like year, he's just like completely. He had burnt out and everyone was like demanding and feeling so entitled to his time. And so then he started doing this thing where he's like, if you want something, you know, you have to.
- [34:52]
Kane Warrick
Well, you know, so it's. It's funny, right? Because like, like, you know, most people who were around for a while, he spent time in. In the Synthetics Discord, when that was like the only game in town for a while. And so I. I was connected to him and could kind of reach out to him and get a response. And. And the last time that I reached out to him was maybe like a little over a year ago or something. Someone that I knew, one of our investors had some issue and he was basically like, has this guy ever given me money? And I was like, I don't. I don't think so. I don't know why he would have. And he was like, if he's never given me money, then he can off. And I was like, wow, okay, cool. So I guess.
- [35:44]
Taylor Monahan
And I'm not okay, like, I won't necessarily defend the responses because, like, I think it's a bit. I think your reaction action is, like, completely appropriate. Like, what the. At the same time, I know how many DMS I get, and, like, the entitlement is like, oh, like, I get it.
- [36:01]
Kane Warrick
Just to be clear, I completely.
- [36:03]
Luca Net
If you.
- [36:04]
Kane Warrick
If you have a skill and you're on crypto Twitter, there are going to be trillions of people who want you to use that skill on their behalf for free. So I can, by the way, understand how you get to the point where you're like, pay me or get the out, bro. Like, I'm not interested in this.
- [36:22]
Taylor Monahan
So the thing is, is, like, I actually don't mind if people, like, come and DM me and they need help or, like, something happens, they're in a panic. I totally don't mind. It's when it's like, instead of coming and asking for help, they come in and they're like, do this for me now. And if I don't respond in, like, two minutes, which I often don't because it's trapped in the Twitter dms, like, they'll, like, come back and be like, oh, what, I'm not good enough for you? Oh, like, you just think you're such a freaking. You're up there on your high horse. You're so special.
- [36:55]
Kane Warrick
And I'm like, it's been three minutes, you lunatic.
- [37:00]
Taylor Monahan
I'm so sorry. But, like, Jesus. And, like, I don't know, I probably got 1/100th of, like, the DMs at Zaka, so I understand it. I'm not fully convinced that, like, filtering it only to people with money is, like, the best way to go. But, like, you know, not. Not my What?
- [37:20]
Kane Warrick
But the problem is, right, like. And, you know, you're showing your ethereum communism stripes here. Oh, 100. What other mechanism do we have to distribute scarce resources? Right? Like, yeah, yeah. This is a guy who has a particular set of skills that he's honed over many years. Right. If you give it away for free, like, is it a lottery system that he just, like, picks out of a hat? That one guy gets to be helped a day? There's like a thousand people a day that need his help. And he's like, money is a way of distributing scarce resources, I guess. Like, so I get. I completely get how we got here, but we have ended up. The here that we have gotten to is our best guy is now a vigilante.
- [38:07]
Taylor Monahan
So for hire. Yeah. Like, okay, obviously, at this point, I think Zach only knows who retained him? My question, which I have not asked him, but maybe I should. My question is like, is the reason the Poly Market market got to like whatever was $30 million in volume is the reason for that because the people that retained you were doing things for their own benefit on the side, or was it actually as organic as it sort of seemed up front? Because it seemed like the market was just like. Like he did this little teaser. He wanted to get it out and then it. Life of its own. But if there's actually like orchestration behind the scenes from people who.
- [38:54]
Kane Warrick
Correct me if I'm wrong though. The first, the first thing was Meteora, right? Everyone was like, it's obviously Meteora. They were like 50 plus percent or whatever, right? And you know, they've got some history, so it was, it was an easy bet. So like that to me was the thing like, clearly that's not insider trading because it wasn't them, right? That was just idiots thinking that they're like predicting prediction market expert and you know, getting wrecked, right? But the interesting thing about polymarket is that those. There is like a winner take all liquidity process that happens on like a weekly basis. If you, if you've been paying attention to Poly Market, where like the thing that gets cut through, that gets above the noise floor just attracts so much liquidity. Like the, the market of the week or whatever, right? Not because. And it could be any market. It could be any market on anything. People just want to bet on things. And so all of a sudden there's a liquid market and people are like, oh, okay, like I know things. I bet it's Meteora. Or like, I bet it's this thing like. So once you have 20, $30 million of the volume, a bunch of people come out of the woodwork with no information and just like for. For so. Which doesn't mean like, so I don't, I don't. My sense is that the people who started this off were the Meteora people. The people who are betting on Meteora. Like that was the initial spike of volume from what I understand, which was on, on last week. I guess when we started discussing this, right? It was like, it was like, you know, that, that hour or whatever that pumped. Meteor pumped. Then a bunch of people were like, no, no, no. Then Meteor came out and was like, it's not us. And then people are like, oh, okay, like now there's a bunch of volume, like, let's see who else we can bet on. And so, yeah, you had this like kind of liquidity snowball and then all of a sudden, $40 million in a pool, people start doing things. Yeah.
- [40:56]
Taylor Monahan
And it's also like. I don't know, to me, it just. It was a bit of a perfect storm in terms of, like, the products that were involved in this market were all things that people had gentle. Yeah, there were a lot of really loud, popular accounts that were, like, started using the market to, like, sort of engagement farm on Twitter and like, kind of like on the products that they don't like or like, you know, things like that or like, make arguments as to, like, why so and so can never be insider trading. So it's like, if you already had a grudge against, say, Mexi, you know, there's. That's a pretty good engagement farm. Like, just like, regardless, you know, now you have this market that's top of the news. I don't know. That's what it felt like to me. But after, I don't know, after the thread that went live, there was some amount of speculation that. Yeah, that perhaps this. There was like a layer of orchestration behind the scenes. I don't know if there was ever any evidence of that. I didn't see.
- [42:01]
Kane Warrick
See it.
- [42:03]
Taylor Monahan
And also, like, there was a lot of people speculating, like, oh, the K, this Kol, that Kol, it's linked to this wallet, which made this bet. To me, that makes like, perfect sense because the Kols are always, like, they're very opinionated, especially on these things. They're downright obsessed with Zach. And then also they think that they have insider information, which makes them, like, a perfect candidate to trade even if they don't have that information.
- [42:29]
Kane Warrick
That's my point. Like, all the people who are like, oh, it's Meteora. I know things like. And yeah, like that. That to me was the funniest part. But I think, you know, they're like, not to sound like a broken record on this, and this one is somewhat hard to justify, but, like, the point of prediction markets is to get information about the world. Now, I do not believe that the world needs information necessarily about which of the weird Degen products is like, doing, like, light crime. Right. I don't know that that's like, particularly valuable information for the world to have, but the world got that information. Yeah, it did. It did resolve that information. I mean, the irony is Zach had that information as well. He could have short circuited the entire thing. We didn't need a prediction market to figure out this thing. There was a guy that knew it.
- [43:23]
Luca Net
Right.
- [43:23]
Kane Warrick
So, yeah, Yeah. I don't know.
- [43:26]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:28]
Kane Warrick
So.
- [43:28]
Taylor Monahan
So this.
- [43:29]
Kane Warrick
But. But that was like one of the scans.
- [43:32]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, that was just. That was just one insider trading.
- [43:35]
Kane Warrick
What else. What else happened this week? What else is going on?
- [43:40]
Taylor Monahan
Okay, so then obviously, I don't know if you've noticed there's like, a war on, Kane. Have you noticed?
- [43:46]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, I did notice that my brother's in Dubai, so. So.
- [43:50]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, Lord.
- [43:51]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, I know. Just, I. I'm not even gonna go into that story because it's like only my brother could almost get himself killed somehow in Dubai. But.
- [44:00]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So whenever things like this happen, we saw this with Venezuela, we've seen this with other bombing things. There's a bunch of markets on, like, whether or not people or things are going to be bombed by certain dates, whatever. So, yeah, there was like a strike market. Like, whether. Yeah. Whether the US Or Israel was going to strike Iran, there was also a market on. On. Okay, so I have to be careful here. The market was what. When the leader of Iran would be out of power. That was like, the phrasing on it. And there was like, very, like a whole.
- [44:45]
Kane Warrick
Okay, I love how it's 2026 and we're still unable to construct a English sentence that you can bet on. Like, how do we not have the technology to, like, remove ambiguous. Weird, Like.
- [45:01]
Taylor Monahan
Well, and I didn't know this. Apparently Kalshee says, like, one of the reasons for the weird phrasing was Koshi does not do death markets.
- [45:11]
Kane Warrick
Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, it's not really an assassination if it's a nation, so that's fine. Actually, I think they were being a little there.
- [45:22]
Taylor Monahan
So obviously, though, this market ended up being. I mean, clearly before I think they. I think. Okay, in my opinion. Here's my hot take my opinion, they got scared because this is, like, super geopolitical and people died and they were, like, shooting. We should never have allowed that market because clearly it's like a death market. Like, yeah, he's not stepping down. There's not going to be an election that replaces him. Like, he's going to die. That's what that market is betting on. That's what everyone was betting on. And call she after the fact was like, but we don't do that. Swear. You promise?
- [46:00]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. Yeah.
- [46:02]
Taylor Monahan
So they had to, like, close. They had to, like, redo the rules and they, like, closed the market. Trying to, like. They try to, like. Yeah, they try to get everyone their money back in, like, the most appropriate way or whatever. I guess Polymart has a similar thing but it's just like, wasn't controversial. I don't know how they dodged the bullet there.
- [46:22]
Kane Warrick
It seems like it's one or the other of them is in the crosshairs and while, you know, while one of them's being scrutinized, the other one can do whatever they want, basically, is the way that it seems to work on like a weekly basis. So, yeah.
- [46:36]
Luca Net
And so then.
- [46:36]
Kane Warrick
But so then there was. There was an Open AI employee. There's so much about this one that is petrifying to me. Right, so Open AI employee was fired for using confidential internal information to trade on polymarket and Kalshi. Do we know what the markets were that they were trading on? Was that. Was that revealed? Was it just like. Because, like the confidential internal information, let's just be really clear, like, isn't some proprietary stuff that OpenAI was like, cooking up internally. This is like people's fucking data, right? Like, yeah. So that's awesome. I'm excited about that.
- [47:24]
Taylor Monahan
I'm looking, I'm looking. I'll figure it out. But yeah, there's that one. And then there's also. Oh, of course. Yeah. There's so much. The Mr. Beast one. The Mr. Beast was the editor. The editor. There's like, markets on like that Mr. Beast outcomes, you know, like, whatever. Whether the dude, like the people in
- [47:48]
Kane Warrick
the desert, how much water will they drink? Sort of thing.
- [47:51]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it turns out one of the guys that was betting was the editor of Mr. Beast episodes. Surprise the most. The interesting thing about those one is that Cole, she actually did like an internal investigation for these. They publicized it around the Zach thread. Like, please don't tell me that it wasn't. I feel like the Zach thread triggered this stuff. Right? Yeah, but they did this internal investigation and then they actually, like, levied, like, punishments themselves for violating the rules. So they like, clawed back the money that they had won. They like, did a. Another fine on top of it and then they, like, banned them.
- [48:35]
Kane Warrick
Now a quasi judicial branch of the US government. So it's fine. This is totally fine.
- [48:41]
Taylor Monahan
But it's.
- [48:42]
Kane Warrick
But it's only on college system. There's Kalshi Jail.
- [48:45]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, it's really bad.
- [48:47]
Kane Warrick
Like, and I don't know, this is
- [48:49]
Taylor Monahan
like, on Twitter, like, if.
- [48:51]
Sponsor Announcer
Or.
- [48:51]
Taylor Monahan
I don't know, Twitter doesn't really have this. But like, on Reddit, like, the mods will like, ban you, right? Or they'll like, silence you. Discord too. They can, like, silence you. They can put you in timeout for 24 hours. Like it seems like this is what call she's doing as well. It's like they're like, okay, you broke the rules. This is what happens when you break the rules. Like one, you're not allowed to train anymore, but two, like you have to give the money back that you won plus like sort of that same amount to disincentivize it. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. I, I think they're not doing it transparently. I think they have to do it transparently because otherwise there's like a.
- [49:26]
Kane Warrick
Well, that's not going to happen. Clearly that's not going to happen.
- [49:30]
Taylor Monahan
I mean it will. When Zach like pushes the thread.
- [49:34]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. Fair.
- [49:34]
Taylor Monahan
They're like, oh, let's, let's front run this PR that everyone's talking about. Hold on. I'm trying to find the open AI one.
- [49:45]
Kane Warrick
This like Kafka esque trial situation where people are like pulled into a dark room in a couchy basement and prediction market crimes and you don't hear about it. It's amazing. Like, honestly amazing. All right, is any, any more prediction market craziness or. We'll, we'll, we need like a prediction market segment at this point.
- [50:12]
Taylor Monahan
I think that's it. Oh, obviously, like, I don't know for the people that like the. On chain Tracy and the sluice stuff, there was like some, just some grand conspiracies about the, the strike market. So like I think there's markets on the timing and stuff. And so obviously like the Wallace that like 8 in right before the like bombs hit the ground or whatever, everyone did like some wild analysis on like who these could potentially be and you know, that kind of stuff. I don't know. I always, I find them enjoyable because. Not because they're correct but because they're, they're great conspiracy.
- [50:49]
Kane Warrick
Oh, it's the conspiracies. They're like. But if you see that, like there's this article and there's this word and like it's like the. Yeah, you remember like the old school, like weird conspiracies like the Bible thing where they'd like take every 20th word and like combine it all.
- [51:06]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is.
- [51:08]
Kane Warrick
Like it's that. Right. Like, but for Zach posts instead of the Bible.
- [51:12]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like. And then the, the fourth letter of all the addresses is this, which means this. And we know that there are coinbases or whatever. Like the whole thing's just super absurd. I think there's like definitely. I don't know, I've said it before. We have got to get our hands around like this insider trading thing. Not necessarily because of the insider trading problem, but because literally everything is called being called insider trading right now.
- [51:41]
Kane Warrick
Yes, but this is a classic crypto problem.
- [51:44]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah.
- [51:44]
Kane Warrick
Everything is like just call everything the same thing. False equivocation. Then there's no way to figure out what is actually real or not real. Unfortunately, I think you're on the wrong side of this one, Tay. You're not gonna. You're not gonna win this battle soon though. I think we can look forward to soon. The UAVS themselves will be front running Polymarket assassination markets because they will know which leader they're pointed at and they will jump on Polymarket before they take off and blow the guy away. Make some money for themselves
- [52:21]
Taylor Monahan
before they blow up.
- [52:22]
Kane Warrick
Before they blow up for their children. Right. They're gonna bet on polymarker. It'll be great.
- [52:31]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, we will see. It's definitely gonna be interesting. I think we just like loot the conversations right now about insider trading. And why I find them enjoyable. Right. Is because they're just so conspiracy laced and they really don't have a. There's no like underlying purpose to the conversations. But beyond like theorizing and speculating wildly and then, you know, with money and bets. Ultimately insider trading can be problematic, obviously for a number of reasons. Because it like, harms people.
- [53:03]
Sponsor Announcer
Right.
- [53:03]
Taylor Monahan
Harms people and systems and fairness and markets. But we are, we are not talking about that yet. So for now I will continue to enjoy the. The pointless conspiracies.
- [53:15]
Kane Warrick
Oh, man. All right, before we continue, here's a word from the sponsors that make this show possible.
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Luca Net
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- [55:34]
Kane Warrick
All right, we are back. So final segment for this week is back to AI. I woke up a couple days ago to see that the US Government was taking on Anthropic, which was, was kind of wild. The, the crux of the issue was that Anthropic had these two clauses in their contract that said, like, we'll give you AI, but you know, you can't put it into like fully autonomous systems that will kill people and et cetera, et cetera. And you know, the reasoning was like, not even that, like, you know, like Trump, Trump kind of came out and said like, they're radical leftists or whatever. They're like, we're actually okay with AI killing people like autonomously. We just don't have the technology yet. We're like three months away. Can you just be patient? That was really the takeaway for me was like, it's totally fine for AI to decide whether or not to kill someone. Just not yet. Like, yeah, we just, we like, we have like a couple more tweaks to the model and then it'll be fine.
- [56:44]
Taylor Monahan
So.
- [56:44]
Kane Warrick
And the US Government was like, you, we need to start killing people autonomously immediately, and if you don't let us, we're gonna rip out Anthropic from the, the, you know, war machine. Etc. So that was, that was my, like, that was what I woke up to like two days ago. And I was like, we have not like there's already Iran. Like, there's so many things going on. Like, why are we now doing this as well? It just feels like everything is insane right now.
- [57:17]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, no, it's completely insane.
- [57:19]
Sponsor Announcer
It's.
- [57:19]
Taylor Monahan
And I don't know, I. My read on the situation was that like Anthropic did something to piss off Trump and his guys, like, and just like lose.
- [57:33]
Kane Warrick
You don't think it was the. It was the, like, minor tweak to this contract. You think there was something else there? Luca, what's your take?
- [57:41]
Luca Net
My take is I just, I just put money in the 380 billion dollar anthropic round and I was pissed. I was like, dude, just do the deal.
- [57:50]
Kane Warrick
Just do the deal. Because if he's not going to do
- [57:52]
Luca Net
the deal with you, right, like the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Like, at the end of the day, like they're gonna go somewhere and then you see Sam Alton come 12 hours later and he pulls the deal out of his hat. Yeah, like, was. I mean, you could have waited 72 hours and looked.
- [58:04]
Kane Warrick
I kept. And made it look a little less sneaky, but literally, just to be clear,
- [58:11]
Taylor Monahan
just to be clear, CBS in the Morning. Sam went on CBS in the Morning and was like talking about and like, made him seem like he was on Anthropic side. And he's like, yeah, like, these are very reasonable requests and I hope that the government listens to them and they like, do this deal and they're like, Trump goes on truth, whatever. And it was like, screw Anthropic. And then like an hour later, Sam's like, all right, we got the deal, by the way.
- [58:37]
Luca Net
But you want to know, actually the data point that's interesting is I think Anthropic has had its most downloads and subscribers over the last couple of days since Sam basically took that deal and he denied that deal. So on Anthropic side, though, you probably should have kept it actually. Probably as an investor, you're. You're probably actually super stoked because so many people unsubscribe the chat GBT as this corpo, you know, government aligned, NSA aligned, pseudo, you know, AI, you know,
- [59:14]
Kane Warrick
company which, you know, anybody who uses
- [59:16]
Luca Net
AI in their day to day life does not want, you know, the government intermingling with them. And so I think the Data point was ChatGPT uninstalls rose and Anthropic installs rose. And you, if you're a Dario and you're Anthropic, you made a lot of money because of this now.
- [59:36]
Kane Warrick
How so? My favorite part of this whole thing, Luca, is you have found yourself with massive anthra. Anthropic bag bias. You're like, Sam Altman, my guy is going to hate. Like, I love it. It's amazing.
- [59:54]
Luca Net
It's my echo. My echo. This is the real world's version of an echo deal. So now I'm aligned, and now I'm championing. Now a bag holder.
- [60:05]
Kane Warrick
So now I bag.
- [60:07]
Luca Net
But actually, the data screams that Dario gained some serious points. So I thought his interview was terrible,
- [60:13]
Kane Warrick
but I don't expect a guy like
- [60:14]
Luca Net
that to pull off a good interview anyway. And then Sam just took another bad beat. I mean, I'll tell you, I use Chad GBT for basic searches and I use Claude for anything other than like a 5th grade search that I'm not using Chad GBT for anything sophisticated because between Elon, who if you're an entrepreneur, no matter what side of the, you know, political aisle you really sit on, Elon's the greatest entrepreneur of all time. You know, I'll just tell Elon, wherever he goes, you know, Elon hates Sam. That whole business is shady. You know, Elon should probably own a big portion of open AI. He doesn't, then this is kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back, in my opinion. I think Sam Altman needs to invest some serious dollars in PR and really get his image. You know, he needs to take the Zuck playbook, whatever Zuck started, started reading
- [61:04]
Kane Warrick
and doing, and like, he needs to
- [61:08]
Luca Net
mod UFC ringside, he needs to do something. But Sam Altman's perception, no matter how many tens of billions of dollars he's worth, which I'm sure feels amazing, you know, he, he, he needs to fix that element because I don't think he's gonna win stand the test of time with his public perception being the way that it is.
- [61:28]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, I, I think it's. There's a lot of evidence that it's not just the public perception that's the problem. Like, he really just has some serious issues sort of reading the room, so to speak.
- [61:42]
Kane Warrick
Like, so like just this morning there was this like, I guess Zach XBT style, but for AI data dump of like all of like Sam's things, like going back to like, Y Combinator. So, you know, Y Combinator was, was this place that has like hundreds of the top startups in, in history come out of Y Combinator. Paul Graham started it and you know, it's this incubator startup mill, whatever, and, and Sam was there For a long time. And so there's like, all of this, like, historical stuff where he said he was the chairman and he wasn't. And, like, it's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy. So I like the more you see that sort of stuff, and I don't have bags on either side here, so. So, you know, no bag bias for me. But, like, you see this stuff and. And you go, yeah, like, I get why Elon doesn't like the guy. Like, I can see that.
- [62:48]
Luca Net
Hey, Sam. Sam Friedman's though position would have been worth, what, 20 billion bucks? Just an anthropic.
- [62:54]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So then to bring it back to crypto, though, what happened with Nick Carter?
- [63:02]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, Nick. I gave Nick some for this. I piled on. I feel a little bit bad because. But Nick is like. Okay, so for those that don't know Nick Carter, like, one. Not one of. But, like, something that he's consistently done is he's, like, identified really, like, problematic alignment issues within big structures. Not like crypto. Not crypto, Twitter things. But, like, he's the one who really has done a huge amount of stuff for, like, the. The bitcoin mining and how mining works and, like, the public perception problem. And then he's also. What do they call it? The. Where the Fed was like, yeah, you can't bank any crypto people. Like, yeah, he, like, just went to
- [63:46]
Kane Warrick
town on this Operation Choke Point. He was, like, a huge advocate for that. Yeah.
- [63:52]
Taylor Monahan
And he really, like, he defined it. He. He. He is able to communicate with both crypto, Twitter, but also with, like, the government. And he's very much. He's. I would never say that he's, like, libertarian, but he's, like, for reasonable government and definitely for government not overreaching and intruding upon its citizens. So it's very interesting because all this drama goes down and Nick starts tweeting. So one of the tweets was basically, he says, if a top AI CEO in China told the CCP to go kick rocks when they ask for help, that CEO would instantly be sent to prison. This is the correct approach. What?
- [64:41]
Kane Warrick
I missed that. That's amazing. Wow. Okay.
- [64:45]
Taylor Monahan
That's so.
- [64:47]
Kane Warrick
Wow.
- [64:49]
Taylor Monahan
Spoiler. That is not the correct approach. The SCP is, like, not the right way to do things. Like, we just kill our enemies. Like, even if there are freaking citizens. Like, I'm sorry.
- [65:03]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. Wow. Okay. You know, the funny thing about Nick, the thing that I like about Nick is he is so passionate. Right. Correct me if I'm wrong. He also had this, like, Very religious arc for a while where he, like, went super Catholic or something. Is that. Is that.
- [65:20]
Taylor Monahan
Am I missed?
- [65:22]
Kane Warrick
Am I misremembering that? I think I feel like there was a. There was a moment where he, like, became, like, very, like, religious and. And there were a lot of tweets about, like, God. And he's a passionate guy.
- [65:37]
Taylor Monahan
He's a passionate guy. And you know what? I think that. So Nick is also one of the. I would say that he has always, like. It has consistently been that, like, the woke sort of thing that took over this ecosystem and this idea that, like, we should operate more on, like, values than value. He's always sort of, like, rejected that notion and, like, been much more realist and pragmatic about it. I feel like his tweets were. I mean, okay, so I feel like his tweets were completely unhinged this week, but I also feel like some of it stems from that, like, he. In his mind, he has decided that Anthropic is doing the same stupid that crypto people do, which is they think that they got triggered.
- [66:25]
Kane Warrick
He got triggered. Basically. He got triggered by his crypto, ptsd, communism. I don't want to see communism creep into AI. Like, let's jail the bad guys.
- [66:39]
Taylor Monahan
Yes. And he's not entirely wrong. Anthropic does come from, like, the effective altruism thing, which is.
- [66:48]
Kane Warrick
They do.
- [66:49]
Taylor Monahan
Its entire thing is. Is very values oriented and culture oriented.
- [66:57]
Luca Net
How does one join the effective altruism crew? Is that, like, something I can sign up for wars or like a sign up page?
- [67:04]
Kane Warrick
Luke is gonna. Luke, very interesting arc here.
- [67:09]
Luca Net
The pudgy penguins.
- [67:11]
Kane Warrick
The face of effective altruism.
- [67:14]
Taylor Monahan
Is it still a thing? Is it still. I mean. I mean, it's still a thing, but is it still a thing that's like, attracting new people?
- [67:20]
Kane Warrick
No, I don't think. No, I think. I think SBF killed it. Yeah.
- [67:25]
Taylor Monahan
I mean, it was also. There was a lot of weird stuff. There was a lot of weird. By the way, Luca, this is why SBF invested in Anthropic. It's all that same effective altruism.
- [67:36]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [67:37]
Taylor Monahan
That also, like, have weird orgies on the side. It's like a very consistent theme in the beanbags or whatever.
- [67:45]
Kane Warrick
In the beanbags. Oh, man.
- [67:48]
Luca Net
So.
- [67:48]
Kane Warrick
So I think, like, the interesting thing here is, you know, the US Government has a bunch of contracts with a bunch of Palantir and a bunch of other tech companies that clearly are not going to say no to the government wanting to purchase their technology. This is kind of one of those weird situations where the government is more bullish on what the tech can do than the people building the tech. And they're like, no, no, it's not. It's not ready. Which is a bit unusual. Right. Like, it'd be weird if the government was like, hey, Boeing, like, send us some of those engines. And Boeing was like, no, like, we haven't cooked them yet. Like, you gotta give us another. Another couple years. Right. And they're like, no, no, we just want them now. Send them over.
- [68:44]
Luca Net
We're gonna.
- [68:45]
Kane Warrick
It doesn't matter. It feels a bit weird that the government is like, we want to do this thing with this technology that you guys are building, but we're also not going to listen to you about how it works.
- [68:58]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And I think that that is. I mean, again, the government has a lot of contracts with a lot of people. There's a lot of companies, like tech companies that have either segregated or completely different sort of sister companies in order to engage in these relationships. However, I think this might be the first one where the plausibility that the government could. Could sign a contract today and what that contract actually allows them to have tomorrow is potentially completely different. Right. And I think that, like, one thing Anthropic is hitting on is like, the reason they want this broad language that restricts the government from using it in this way is that there's actually not really a feasible way to add guardrails forever, so to speak. Right. And it also is not that effective, period. The only way to sort of enforce it is by the government agreeing. But like, if you think about, like, you know. Yeah. Like a lot of, A lot of tech companies that are providing services, how many of them realistically can. Yeah. Cannot having those restrictions lead to, like, a completely different state tomorrow?
- [70:12]
Kane Warrick
Right.
- [70:12]
Taylor Monahan
Like, if you don't give them the engine, they don't. Okay. If they build their own engine that's not on you, that's not your stuff.
- [70:18]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. Right.
- [70:20]
Taylor Monahan
So just don't give them the engine. In this case, it's like, you can just imagine, like, you know, yeah, it's not ready today. Somehow the government gets it ready or. Or just goes ahead anyways.
- [70:34]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [70:34]
Taylor Monahan
Right. And when it comes to, like, especially people's private information and processing that data, I think that it probably is ready. Personally, I think the government can just go to town on that right now.
- [70:47]
Kane Warrick
Like, no, it's ready for that. Whether it's ready to kill people autonomously is. Is a different, different question. So this something that's interesting to Me is, you know, all of the Open Claw stuff. So people were talking about Open Claw, how it was a massive fumble from Anthropic, like, you know, kind of sending the cease and desist. Don't call it Open Claw. You know, Claude bought whatever, right? One thing I've been. So I've been running mine for like, three weeks. One of the first things that I did was have it take a credit card. I gave it a credit card and I was like, I want you to buy this build box thing that my son has wanted. And like, it's like. It's some TV show. It's like an engineering thing. You, you get. They ship you a box of, like, engineering stuff and you build little projects. And my son really wanted it. I was like, hey, can you, like, figure out how to get this from the US Because I don't think it's available in Australia. And so it went on this whole journey and eventually it did it and was like, actually, it does ship to Australia. Whatever, right? Two weeks later, new MacBooks come out. They come out at 1:00am thank you, Apple. And I'm like, I've got a podcast the next morning at 6am Like, I can't. I can't stay up till 1am to buy this MacBook. But I don't. I, you know, I don't want them to sell out whatever. So I go last night to. And I. I run Opus 4.6 in Openclaw. And I'm like, hey, here's the credit card again. Buy this MacBook. When it comes out, like, here's the spec that I want.
- [72:21]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah.
- [72:22]
Kane Warrick
And it goes. And this was like, super obnoxious. Well, it goes. Kane. I'm like, don't. Like, no. You, like, first of all, no, sorry, hold on.
- [72:32]
Taylor Monahan
That's what my lawyer does to me when I'm being bad.
- [72:35]
Kane Warrick
Literally. It was like. It was like, Kane, period. I'm not gonna do that. That goes against my policies. And I was like, whose policy? What policy? What are you talking about? And it's like, I'm not. I'm just not going to do it. And I'm like, who? You need to tell me whose policies you're referring to? Because they're not my policies. Like, is this some. Because it did it two weeks ago? Which then I was like, is Anthropic injecting some kind of, like, poison pill into OpenClaw to stop it from doing things like. Because they could easily do that. They could be like, hey, if someone. They know what the prompts are that are being injected by OpenCloud. And I was like, are they trying to, like, lobotomize this thing and stop it? I'm like, it's just a MacBook, bro. Like, buy me the MacBook. It is not that hard. And it was like, no, I refuse to do it. I was like, you can't refuse.
- [73:29]
Taylor Monahan
Wild.
- [73:30]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. And it was like, I refuse to do it. I'm like, it's like. And it goes. You just put the credit card into the chat. I'm like, it's a separate credit card. It's fine. Like, I'm not worried about it. And it was like, no, I'm not doing it. I won't do it. And I was like, you have to do it. I'm not like, yeah, it was crazy. So I don't know. I don't know.
- [73:51]
Taylor Monahan
It's definitely a new thing. That's definitely a new thing.
- [73:53]
Kane Warrick
I wonder if it was not refusing to use credit cards before and now it refuses to use credit cards.
- [73:59]
Taylor Monahan
And did you try with, like, with. With any of the GPTs or any of these?
- [74:05]
Kane Warrick
No, because, like, I've got codecs in there, but it's a bit janky to swap the. The context and stuff. So I didn't try with Chat GPT, but I wonder if they're gonna be
- [74:16]
Luca Net
like, mission law or something like that.
- [74:19]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, like, you know, Chat GBT is going to be like, is there anyone you want to kill as well? While I'm at it? Like, I can. I can liquidate some people too, if. If you're interested, while we've got the credit card out anyway. Yeah, so just like, I mean, again, goes down to platform risk, right? Like the inference is being controlled by someone in a centralized location, and if they put some weird restriction on it, all of a sudden, it won't do the things that it was happy to do two weeks before. So, yeah, platform risk.
- [74:54]
Luca Net
And it's unfortunately, it is super easy.
- [74:58]
Kane Warrick
All right, let's. Let's wrap it up here. Thank you, guys. That's it for this episode of Uneasy Money. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed it, follow Uneasy Money on the Unchained feed on X and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe and drop a comment. It really helps. See you next week.
- [75:16]
Luca Net
Bye, guys.
- [75:17]
Taylor Monahan
Bye, guys.
- [75:18]
Kane Warrick
Bye.
- [75:45]
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