Jensen Huang doesn&rsquo;t think AI will steal your job.
He thinks Steve&mdash;who sits next to you, types slower, and can&rsquo;t microwave popcorn without setting off the fire alarm&mdash;will steal your job&hellip; with AI.
That&rsquo;s the terrifying equalizer:
Everyone can amplify their skills, Huang says. Even if they don&rsquo;t know what an API is. (They once yelled at Siri, so close enough.)
And the thing is&hellip; this is just the beginning.
Today, AI is the worst it will ever be. And even if it stopped getting better than it is now, it would still reshape industries.
But Huang thinks we&rsquo;re only a few hundred billion dollars into a multi-trillion dollar AI buildout.
Trillions. With a T.
So, what&rsquo;s next? Let&rsquo;s dive into Huang&rsquo;s biggest predictions&hellip;
And how you can use them to stay ahead of Steve.
<h3>AI&rsquo;s Millions of Millionaires </h3>
First prediction: AI infrastructure will become as essential as physical manufacturing infrastructure.
Every company that builds a physical machine will also need to operate a second kind of factory: one that produces the AI brains for those machines.
Cars and car minds. Drones and drone minds. Lawnmowers and&mdash;God help us&mdash;lawnmower minds.
It&rsquo;s not enough to build the hardware anymore.
You&rsquo;ll also need a dedicated system to build the software intelligence that controls it&hellip;
An ongoing process of training, updating, and improving the models that govern behavior.
At least, that&rsquo;s how NVIDIA has stayed ahead.
NVIDIA&rsquo;s edge lies not just in hardware, but in its software moat&mdash;CUDA. This enables NVIDIA&rsquo;s chips to get better over time, making them more valuable long after purchase.
As a result, GPUs like Hopper (H100) retain 75&ndash;80% of their value even a year after release. (Unlike your car. Or your Peloton. Or that memecoin your cousin Todd made you buy.)
But it was Huang&rsquo;s next prediction that got the most airtime on X: &ldquo;AI will create more millionaires in 5 years than the internet did in 20.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;re used to hearing bold predictions from tech billionaires.
But this one? If he&rsquo;s right, we&rsquo;re living in the single-biggest wealth transfer in history.
Read that prediction again.
Now look around: Has anything prepared you for that kind of wealth explosion?
Probably not.
<h3>So What&rsquo;s the Play?</h3>
You don&rsquo;t need to code. You don&rsquo;t need a VC fund or a PhD in computer vision.
What you need is leverage.
Here&rsquo;s the simplified version of Jensen&rsquo;s framework&mdash;translated from silicon-speak into plain English:
<ol>
<li>Identify where AI removes friction: Wherever something is annoying, repetitive, or slow&hellip; AI is coming for it.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>Think infrastructure, not just products: Platforms, protocols, and pickaxes are where the real wealth is made.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>Bet on intelligence arbitrage: Those who move fastest to integrate AI will outcompete those still stuck in meetings.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li>Capitalize on trust: AI is powerful. But people still crave humans they can trust. Be the bridge.</li>
</ol>
This isn&rsquo;t a gold rush.
It&rsquo;s something bigger.
Gold rushes end. Infrastructure lasts generations.
You&rsquo;ll either look back at this moment and say:
&ldquo;I wish I started then&hellip;&rdquo;
Or:
&ldquo;Thank God I did.&rdquo;
<h3>Here&rsquo;s What Steve Would Do </h3>
When it comes to investing, the same rules apply: You won&rsquo;t get outtraded by AI. You&rsquo;ll get outtraded by Steves&hellip; who use AI.
So what is Steve doing? He doesn&rsquo;t code. He doesn&rsquo;t day-trade. He thinks Python is just a brand of golf polo.
But he&rsquo;s definitely looking to use AI to spot under-the-radar opportunities in the markets.
Models just like James&rsquo; DeepBlue 2.0.&nbsp;
In the past, DeepBlue 2.0 flagged:
<ul>
<li>Lockheed Martin before Russia invaded Ukraine</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Weight Watchers before Ozempic</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The 2020 crash before it hit CNBC</li>
</ul>
Right now, as you read this, the next signal&rsquo;s already loading.
James tells the story the best&hellip;

alc-07-25-25-featured

We&rsquo;re living in an epic period of change, danger, and opportunity. The economy is blowing up in our faces. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars. People are getting fired and replaced by computers. Every day, we&rsquo;re bombarded with fake news and fake data. Crypto is eating everything online. Every &ldquo;fix&rdquo; from the government makes things worse. Technology is moving too fast for anyone to keep up.
In short, the Old World has been demolished&hellip; the new world is just beginning. Alongside the greatest wealth shift in human history. We get it. People are desperate for answers and to cut through the noise. Everyone wants to become financially secure. Nobody knows who to trust. That&rsquo;s where we can help.
Altucher Confidential&nbsp;is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart. It&rsquo;s a guide West, to the new frontier. For those who are ready to hear, James Altucher and Chris Campbell provide an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. Consider&nbsp;Altucher Confidential&nbsp;your daily guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.

mobile masthead-ALTCONF

AltucherConfidential

Altucher Confidential is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart.

Altucher Confidential

AI’s Millionaire Factory

Bit Digital. 
BTC Digital. 
Bitmine Immersion Technologies. 
These guys were Bitcoin miners.
The real deal.
They had the warehouses. The rigs. The noise. The heat. The electric meter that spun like a beyblade from hell.
Then one day&mdash;I&rsquo;m guessing right after a board meeting filled with sweaty panic and Red Bull&mdash;they looked around and said, &ldquo;Wait a minute&hellip; this sucks.&rdquo;
Just one month ago, on June 25, the dominos started to fall.
All three dropped announcements that sent shockwaves through the industry: They&rsquo;d stopped mining Bitcoin and started stacking Ethereum.
Today, let&rsquo;s dive into why&hellip;
And what it means for the crypto industry-at-large.
<h3>Bitcoin&rsquo;s Red Queen Reckoning</h3>
Bitcoin mining is a brutal game of diminishing returns.
Every four years, the protocol cuts miner rewards in half&mdash;a built-in feature called the &ldquo;halving.&rdquo; That means unless the price of Bitcoin doubles to compensate, your revenue gets slashed.
Meanwhile, the cost of staying competitive keeps rising.
New mining rigs are expensive, energy-hungry, and obsolete within a few years&hellip;
Turning yesterday&rsquo;s high-tech gear into tomorrow&rsquo;s scrap metal.
To make matters worse, the competition is no longer just other private entities&mdash;it&rsquo;s nation-states.
Countries like El Salvador, Bhutan, and even Tether-backed operations in Uruguay and Paraguay are entering the mining race with cheap energy from hydro and geothermal sources.
The sovereign players aren&rsquo;t chasing profits quarter-to-quarter&mdash;they&rsquo;re playing for long-term strategic control.
So what happens if you&rsquo;re a private miner without cheap energy and a government-backed balance sheet? You&rsquo;re the Red Queen&hellip;
Running faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
(Except the treadmill&rsquo;s on fire, your shoes are melting, and your electricity bill looks like you accidentally plugged into the Large Hadron Collider.)
So these Bitcoin miners ditched the treadmill. They became pirate ships.
They went all-in on Ethereum. They stopped mining and started staking.
<h3>WTH is Staking?</h3>
Ethereum staking is like earning interest for helping run the Ethereum network.
Imagine Ethereum is a giant computer that runs without a boss. Instead of one company owning it, thousands of people around the world help keep it running.
To make sure no one cheats, the system needs people to lock up their ETH (Ethereum&rsquo;s currency) as a promise to play fair.
If they don&rsquo;t play fair and try to cheat? A portion of their Ethereum gets &ldquo;slashed&rdquo; and taken out of circulation.
If they do play fair, they get rewarded with more ETH&mdash;a thank-you for helping secure and maintain the network.
That&rsquo;s staking.
The more ETH you stake, and the longer you leave it in, the more you can earn.
So instead of burning electricity to earn new coins, these Bitcoin mining outfits pivoted.
And they don&rsquo;t just have a little bit of ETH.
BitDigital already has over 100,000 on their books&mdash;second only to Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin&rsquo;s ETH fortress, Sharplink (SBET).
<h3>Why ETH? Why Now? </h3>
Beyond brutal margins and fried ASICs&hellip; why pivot to Ethereum specifically?
Sam Tabar at Bit Digital was the first to articulate why he&rsquo;s bullish: Ethereum is no longer operating in the shadows.
With the GENIUS Act passed and the CLARITY Act gaining traction, ETH is stepping into the same regulatory daylight as Bitcoin.
BTC Digital followed, calling Ethereum the &lsquo;backbone of on-chain finance.&rsquo;
They don&rsquo;t just hold ETH&mdash;they lean into its utility. DeFi, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets&mdash;they see it not just as a bet, but as a platform with a total addressable market in the tens of trillions.
Then BitMine came in swinging with a $250 million war chest and a 9% stake from Peter Thiel&rsquo;s Founders Fund.
Their reasoning was simple: Ethereum isn&rsquo;t just a commodity&mdash;it&rsquo;s programmable collateral.
And as the regulatory perimeter expands, it&rsquo;s becoming the preferred sandbox for institutions.
<h3>How to Play it</h3>
To be clear, Bitcoin is fine.
Miners pivoting to Ethereum doesn&rsquo;t kill BTC&hellip; it just diversifies the ecosystem.
But this move does signal a major shift: Ethereum is gaining recognition as the go-to rails for tokenization.
And while we&rsquo;re bullish on ETH the asset, the biggest upside in crypto isn&rsquo;t in owning the native asset.
The real alpha is hiding in the lesser-known cryptos building the infrastructure, middleware, and tokenized rails.
That&rsquo;s where our sights are set.

alc-07-24-25-featured

Bitcoin’s Red Queen Reckoning

They call it &ldquo;Oljefondet&rdquo;...
Or the &ldquo;Oil Fund.&rdquo;
When Norway struck oil in 1990, it didn&rsquo;t splurge. It saved&mdash;channeling revenue from taxes, drilling rights, and state-owned reserves into a long-term national fund.
The goal? Turn the black gold into generational wealth.
Today, 35 years later, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is the world&rsquo;s largest sovereign wealth fund&hellip;
Worth about $1.8 trillion.
It holds stakes in over 9,000 public companies across more than 70 countries&mdash;Apple, Google, Tesla, the works.
For years, NBIM moved like a glacier&hellip;
Slow, steady, and very, very government.
But in 2020, Nicolai Tangen&mdash;a former hedge fund manager&mdash;took the helm and started flipping desks: out with the paper-pushing, in with the bleeding-edge tech.
Then, in 2023&mdash;after the fund suffered its second-largest annual loss ever in 2022&mdash;he did something that got Wall Street&rsquo;s attention: he treated AI not as a tool, but as a requirement for survival.
<h3>He Made AI Mandatory</h3>
Not as a suggestion. Not as a pilot program.
Mandatory.
As in: &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t use AI, you don&rsquo;t get promoted. You don&rsquo;t even get hired. You might get fired.&rdquo; 
Since then, NBIM has used Claude&rsquo;s Financial Analyst Solution&mdash;plugging it into tools like Snowflake, FactSet, Pitchbook, and more&mdash;to slash trading costs, spot investor bias, and streamline operations.
According to Tangen, adding AI into the workflows boosted NBIM&rsquo;s efficiency by around 20% and saved them boatloads annually.
This includes:
<ul>
<li>213,000 hours of labor annually (that&rsquo;s 100 full-time employees working 40 hours/week)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$100 million in trading fees by optimizing every trade</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>49 million transactions reviewed and improved</li>
</ul>
AI didn&rsquo;t just automate tedious work. It transformed how decisions get made.
AI says:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s what the data shows.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s what your gut might be getting wrong.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;And by the way, you&rsquo;re about to make the same mistake you made last October.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
NBIM isn&rsquo;t a startup.
They&rsquo;re not some tech bro selling yield-bearing alpacas on the blockchain. They&rsquo;re a 660-person government-backed fund with more red tape than a hostage negotiation.
If they can do this, so can anyone.
And so will everyone. 
<h3>&ldquo;Use AI or Lose Your Edge&rdquo;</h3>
NBIM didn&rsquo;t adopt AI to be trendy.
They did it because slow decision-making is now a liability&mdash;and speed, precision, and adaptability are the new alpha.
Sure, they&rsquo;re using advanced tools, but&hellip;
You don&rsquo;t need to run a $1.8 trillion fund to get started.
Similar capabilities that once required an analyst team and six-figure software are now either $20/month or even free.
For investors, the signal is loud and clear: AI is already reshaping the economic map&mdash;and not where most people are looking.
As usual, while the media&rsquo;s busy debating AI edge-cases, Paradigm&rsquo;s busy hunting for the biggest investment opportunities on the planet.
Stay tuned.

alc-07-23-25-featured

“Use AI or Get Fired!”

It&rsquo;s 1991. I&rsquo;m sitting in a computer lab, staring at a blinking cursor on a black screen.
The &ldquo;Internet&rdquo; exists, technically, but there&rsquo;s no web browser.
No Google. No Facebook. No TikTok with people dancing while promoting fake finance courses.
Just a few nerds, like me, connected by TCP/IP, typing commands like telnet and ftp into the void, hoping someone else is out there.
Fast forward to now. Most of the internet is now owned by about 10 companies.
AI? Same story. You want to build something?
Simple: Spend $40 billion on GPUs, suck half the grid dry, build a brain trust of ex-Googlers, and pray Elon doesn&rsquo;t update Grok this week.
Or&hellip;
You could use Bittensor.
And this is why I just recorded my second podcast on it with Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital&mdash;the world's first VC firm dedicated to commercial open-source software and early-stage investor in AI and open-source tech.
Bittensor doesn&rsquo;t just remind me of the early internet. It is the early internet all over again. Except this time, it comes with the right incentives baked in.
Let me break it down. (Link to the full conversation below.)
<h3>A New Kind of Internet </h3>
Did you know that salt was once a luxury? Entire economies were built around it. Rice too. Japan once measured wealth in rice.
Today, AI is the new salt, the new rice&mdash;hoarded, priced, rationed by a few mega-corps.
Bittensor makes AI a commodity. And not just a commodity&mdash;an open, decentralized, ever-evolving, permissionless ocean of intelligence.
No middleman. No API key required. No begging Google for access. Just incentives.
Imagine if Google&rsquo;s search engine wasn&rsquo;t created by Larry and Sergey in a Stanford dorm room.
Imagine instead that it emerged from thousands of people around the world competing to build faster, better web crawlers&mdash;getting paid based on performance, not pedigree.
That&rsquo;s Bittensor.
But instead of spiders crawling the web, it&rsquo;s AI models crawling data, training on it, improving with every iteration, and getting rewarded in a token called $TAO.
Just like Bitcoin rewards miners for hashing, Bittensor rewards miners for intelligence.
<h3>Why This Scares Big Tech</h3>
Right now, AI is expensive because the infrastructure is centralized. If you want to build your own large language model, you have to rent GPUs from AWS or beg Nvidia for supply.
Good luck.
But Bittensor flips the script. Miners all over the world&mdash;hobbyists, data centers, maybe even that kid in India with a GTX 1080&mdash;can lend their compute to the network and get paid.
It&rsquo;s cloud computing without the cloud monopoly.
And it doesn&rsquo;t stop there. It goes beyond Big Tech monopolies.
You could even build a subnet that incentivizes certain types of energy. Want to fund a solar farm? Build a subnet.
Want to incentivize compute running on otherwise wasted energy (e.g., flare gas, hydro overflow, curtailed wind). Build a subnet.
Suddenly, parts of the energy grid become a substrate for AI.
You don&rsquo;t need to build the next Google. You just need to build the piece that the next Google uses.
Each subnet is like its own startup. But without the gatekeeping.
And you don&rsquo;t need to convince a VC. Just the network.
<h3>My Prediction? Bittensor Will Be HUGE</h3>
Bitcoin changed how we store money. But Bittensor changes how we build intelligence.
It&rsquo;s the most important platform nobody&rsquo;s heard of yet.
And when you realize that the best AI model in the world might not come from Google&rsquo;s HQ, but from a cluster of anonymous GPUs mining intelligence in exchange for $TAO&mdash;well, that&rsquo;s when the lightbulb goes off.
So here&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m doing:
<ol>
<li>I&rsquo;m learning everything I can.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>I&rsquo;m buying TAO every month like it&rsquo;s internet real estate in 1995.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>And I&rsquo;m talking to the smartest people I can find, like Joe, every week on this podcast.</li>
</ol>
Because history has a funny way of repeating itself.
And this time, we don&rsquo;t need permission.
We just need incentives.
<a href="https://lnk.to/TPEP0201">Here&rsquo;s the full conversation</a>. Worth a watch if you want to know where crypto, AI, and everything else is headed.

alc-07-22-25-featured

The Next OpenAI is Tokenized

You brush, floss, rinse.
You buy the Waterpik and the new vibrating flosser for good measure. You chew the xylitol gum. You suck on those probiotic lozenges that taste like expired yogurt.
You even tried the &ldquo;oil pulling&rdquo; method you learned from a guy named River who lives in a van and brushes with charcoal.
And still, it happens&hellip;
Every few years, your dentist finds a &ldquo;shadow&rdquo; on the X-ray and suddenly you&rsquo;re down $900 and one molar.
Why? Because the actual problem isn&rsquo;t the plaque.
It&rsquo;s the bacteria.
Your mouth is a battlefield.
And the enemy (called S. mutans) isn&rsquo;t just surviving&mdash;it&rsquo;s thriving.
Every time you feed it sugar, it produces acid. That acid drops the pH in your mouth and melts your enamel.
That&rsquo;s how cavities happen.
You can brush all you want. But until you replace the enemy, it&rsquo;s like fighting termites with a mop.
Fortunately, new technologies are rewriting what&rsquo;s treatable and preventable&hellip;
And one treatment could be a dream come true for anyone who&rsquo;s ever had the misfortune of a root canal.
<h3>Kill Cavities Forever? </h3>
They call it BCS3-L1.
A genetically modified strain of S. mutans that&rsquo;s been reprogrammed.
It doesn&rsquo;t turn sugar into acid. It turns it into alcohol. It doesn&rsquo;t drill holes in your enamel. It just&hellip; hangs out. Peaceful. Friendly.
And&mdash;no less&mdash;it produces its own antibiotic that kicks out the rest of the bad S. mutans bugs like a billion tiny mouth bouncers.
It can&rsquo;t mutate. It can&rsquo;t share its genes. It can&rsquo;t survive outside the human mouth.
And unlike full-spectrum antibiotics, it doesn&rsquo;t kill everything in sight&mdash;it simply replaces the baddies with a better version of the same bacteria.
I learned about it in&mdash;of all places&mdash;a private clinic off the coast of Honduras. (Alas, it&rsquo;s still technically illegal in the U.S. as a therapeutic treatment.)
But this is a great example of how technology is rewriting the rules, turning yesterday&rsquo;s villains into tomorrow&rsquo;s medicine.
And if we can reprogram a microbe to stop cavities forever&hellip;
Consider what happens when we reprogram something even smaller to target the greatest scourge of them all: cancer.
<h3>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a Mass&rdquo; </h3>
You&rsquo;ve heard the stories&hellip;
The healthnut who eats clean, works out, drinks green sludge and subscribes to longevity newsletters.
And still&mdash;one day&mdash;he gets the call.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a mass.&rdquo;
While diet, genetics, and environment seem to play a role&hellip;
The real issue: The body lost its ability to identify what doesn&rsquo;t belong&mdash;and destroy it.
And modern treatment? Unfortunately, like root canals, we&rsquo;re still swinging hammers at glass.
BUT&hellip;
What if we could deploy something that doesn&rsquo;t attack the cancer directly&hellip; and instead shows your immune system exactly where it&rsquo;s hiding?
<h3>Target Acquired.</h3>
Starting tomorrow, the U.S. might begin to see it in action.
Because the FDA is about to make a decision. Not just on some experimental drug&hellip; but on a whole new category of cancer treatment.
&nbsp;No chemo. No radiation. No immune suppression.
Just one engineered payload that has the potential to find the problem and stop it in its tracks.
This isn&rsquo;t a marginal cancer drug&mdash;it&rsquo;s among the first-ever living, programmable biologics cleared for FDA review. Approval would mark a major turning point in cancer treatment.
In fact, the results are so compelling that institutional investors now own 92.53% of the company&rsquo;s shares&mdash;an almost unheard-of level of conviction in the biotech world.
(For context: a biotech company of this size typically sees 10&ndash;40% institutional ownership&mdash;maybe 60% if there&rsquo;s serious buzz.)
And if the decision goes through tomorrow morning? This may be the moment biotech history splits in two: Before and After.

alc-07-21-25-featured

Cavities, Cancer, and the Great Biotech Revolt

There&rsquo;s a scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo stares up at the Lonely Mountain&mdash;Erebor.
It's massive. Glorious. Mythic.
And inside? The greatest hoard of treasure in Middle-earth, guarded by a dragon.
Now imagine that mountain made of Ethereum.
Because that&rsquo;s where Peter Thiel just planted his flag.
Last week, we talked about the other Erebor&mdash;a new crypto bank backed by Anduril&rsquo;s Palmer Luckey and Thiel&rsquo;s Founders Fund.
Today, on the heels of crypto&rsquo;s biggest week ever&hellip;
With major crypto rules coming into effect&hellip;
We&rsquo;ll dive into Thiel&rsquo;s latest bet: Ethereum.
<h3>The Great ETH Lock-Up Begins </h3>
BitMine, if you don&rsquo;t know, is the crypto world&rsquo;s answer to MicroStrategy&mdash;but for Ethereum.
Headed by Tom Lee, they&rsquo;ve pivoted from traditional Bitcoin mining to building the largest ETH treasury on the planet. But they&rsquo;re not just buying ETH&mdash;they&rsquo;re staking it, compounding it, and treating it like a sovereign-grade asset.
For context on how quickly things are moving along&hellip;
On July 14, Bitmine first disclosed its holdings of 163,000 ETH (worth about $500 million).
Then, on July 16, it came to light that Thiel's Founders Fund quietly scooped up 9.1% of BitMine.&nbsp;
By July 17, Bitmine had nearly doubled its ETH position to 300,000 ETH&hellip; over $1 billion.
Bitmine&rsquo;s ultimate goal? Control 5% of all ETH&mdash;over 6 million coins. If that happens, BitMine becomes more than a treasury. It becomes Ethereum&rsquo;s BlackRock.
BitMine&rsquo;s not alone. Legacy BTC miners like BitDigital and BTC Digital are also embracing Ethereum and ETH staking.
And not to mention Sharplink Gaming (SBET), another Ethereum treasury company led by ConsenSys co-founder and Ethereum architect Joseph Lubin, aiming to buy $5 billion in Ethereum.
If all that&rsquo;s not enough&hellip;
July 16th also marked the ETH ETF&rsquo;s most explosive days.
That&rsquo;s when $726.7 million surged into ETH ETFs.
BlackRock alone vacuumed up half a billion. Fidelity threw in over $100 million for good measure. Just like that, 4% of all ETH supply got tucked into institutional vaults.
It wasn&rsquo;t just the biggest week for Ethereum&mdash;it was a flare in the sky.
Wall Street has arrived.
And the shelves are getting bare.
<h3>No ETH for You, Sir</h3>
Wintermute is one of the most successful companies in the bitcoin and crypto industry.
It&rsquo;s a major crypto trading firm that helps big players&mdash;like hedge funds and ETFs&mdash;buy and sell large amounts of cryptocurrency without crashing the market.
Think of them as the behind-the-scenes dealer that keeps the pipes flowing smoothly when someone wants to buy millions in ETH without making headlines.
Right now, its founder, Evgeny Gaevoy, is signaling that the company is completely out of Ethereum.
The demand is there, but the supply is bare.
Exchange balances are scraping multi-year lows. Meanwhile, 30% of all ETH is staked, effectively gone from circulation.
The result? Ethereum now faces a potential 10&times; demand shock&mdash;the current amount of people trying to buy Ethereum is about ten times more than the amount of new Ethereum (18,000 per day) created.
<h3>Smaug-Sized Gains</h3>
Peter Thiel just made his move.
You know&mdash;the guy who co-founded PayPal, backed Facebook before it was Facebook, bet on Palantir, and called Bitcoin before anyone on Wall Street could spell &ldquo;blockchain&rdquo;...
Yeah, that guy.
He not only just backed a crypto bank focused on stablecoins&hellip;
He&rsquo;s also buying deep into the crypto that quietly powers most of the world&rsquo;s stablecoin activity: Ethereum.
Thiel isn&rsquo;t the type to chase hype. He&rsquo;s the type who builds the railroads before anyone realizes there&rsquo;s gold in the hills.
You're not late.
You&rsquo;re right on time.
And the biggest gains are yet to come&mdash;especially for specific, under-the-radar tokens.
More on that next week.

alc-07-18-25-featured

Erebor Rises: Peter Thiel’s Massive Crypto Bet

Nine hours. Closed doors. One last-minute call from Trump.
And suddenly, Congress&mdash;yes, the same one that can&rsquo;t agree on the definition of milk&mdash;just greenlit three bills that rewire the rules of money.
No meme coin left behind. No stablecoin unscathed. And possibly, no turning back.
These three bills&mdash;aimed at stabilizing stablecoins, disarming the SEC, and killing the Fed&rsquo;s CBDC before it&rsquo;s born&mdash;are now closer than ever to reality.
The Genius Act.
The CLARITY Act.
And the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act.
Individually, they&rsquo;re powerful. Together, they&rsquo;re writing the new rules of money.&nbsp;
Here&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s happening&mdash;and what comes next.
<h3>1. The GENIUS Act: Stablecoins Grow Up</h3>
Stablecoins have been the crypto world&rsquo;s sketchy cousin for a while. Nobody really knew what was backing them&mdash;T-bills, rocks, words of encouragement?
The FTX, Terra, and Silicon Valley Bank collapses exposed the cracks.
Billions evaporated, and the regulators looked like substitute teachers trying to grade a particle physics test.
Enter: the GENIUS Act.
What it does:
<ul>
<li>Requires full reserve backing for all stablecoins. No more &ldquo;trust us, bro&rdquo; economics.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Mandates audits. Real ones. Regular ones.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Hands power to both federal and state watchdogs.</li>
</ul>
This isn&rsquo;t just about Circle or Tether. The GENIUS Act creates two classes of stablecoin issuers:
&rarr; Federally insured depository institutions (banks).
&rarr; Nonbanks, who must still meet capital, liquidity, and risk management standards.
Why does this matter? It paves the way for FinTechs, crypto firms, and even retail giants (think Walmart or PayPal) to issue stablecoins without needing a banking charter.
And here&rsquo;s the geopolitical angle&hellip;
This gives U.S. tech companies, banks, and crypto firms the green light to export dollar-based payment rails worldwide&hellip;
Especially into emerging markets where China is pushing its own digital infrastructure (like the Digital Yuan, UnionPay, and Belt &amp; Road finance apps).
It&rsquo;s not just about domestic finance. It&rsquo;s soft power.
<h3>2. The Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act</h3>
This one&rsquo;s straightforward&hellip;
The bill bans the Fed from ever launching a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
No Orwellcoin. No programmable expiration. No Fed-issued money you can only spend on soy burgers.
If you&rsquo;re wondering why this even needed to be codified&mdash;a U.S. CBDC was already being tested. Quietly. The Digital Dollar Project. MIT. Pilot programs. The whole thing.
But this bill kills it.
On the other hand, looking into the future&hellip;
It doesn't guarantee stablecoins won't ever resemble CBDCs.
The GENIUS Act adds some guardrails, like smart contract transparency. But the real test is the Tornado Cash trial&mdash;which could set a chilling precedent for open-source privacy.
(I dive deep into this in my upcoming book, Tether: The Rogue Token and the New Rules of Money.)
On another note, the bill also enshrines your right to self-custody. The government can&rsquo;t force intermediaries or impose wallet bans. This sets precedent for crypto-as-property, not just speculation.
<h3>3. The CLARITY Act</h3>
This is the bill (certain) crypto people have been begging for.
It draws a line in the sand between what the SEC gets to regulate&hellip; and what it doesn&rsquo;t.
The big twist?
The CLARITY Act allows tokens that were once regulated as securities to trade freely&mdash;peer to peer&mdash;after their initial sale.
Imagine you buy a tokenized share in a real estate project. Initially, it&rsquo;s regulated like a stock. But once you own it, you&rsquo;re free to trade it like a Pok&eacute;mon card&mdash;without every trade being SEC-handcuffed.
It&rsquo;s like saying: &ldquo;Sure, we&rsquo;ll regulate the initial coin offering (ICO)... but once it&rsquo;s out there, let people do what they want.&rdquo;
This unlocks a tidal wave of possibilities for secondary markets, tokenized assets, and decentralized platforms&mdash;all while keeping fraud in check.
In short, the CLARITY Act draws a sharp regulatory boundary:
<ul>
<li>All Bitcoin, Ethereum, and mature decentralized tokens &rarr; CFTC supervision</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Fundraising rounds and security-like tokens &rarr; under SEC jurisdiction</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>But after issuance? Free trading allowed like a baseball card swap</li>
</ul>
You know who loves this? Investors. Ethereum pumped. Bitcoin flexed. And the altcoin world started to dream again.
<h3>Why Now? And Why So Fast?</h3>
Follow the money.
These bills didn&rsquo;t pass on goodwill. They passed because the crypto lobby finally showed up with sharper suits and sharper knives.
And Trump? He sees the opportunity. This is how he takes on the Fed, pulls a fast one on China, and taps into the next generation of finance.
These aren&rsquo;t just crypto bills. They&rsquo;re a framework for the new rules of money.
<ul>
<li>GENIUS Act makes stablecoins legitimate.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>CLARITY Act tells you what&rsquo;s a commodity, what&rsquo;s a security, and when you can trade.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Anti-CBDC Act shuts the door on the Fed.</li>
</ul>
And&mdash;for now&mdash;America just handed the keys to entrepreneurs.
This is just the beginning.

alc-07-17-25-featured

GENIUS, CLARITY, and WalmartCoin

Everyone has a podcast now. I had one before it was cool. I had one after it was no longer cool.
I&rsquo;ve talked about basically everything you can think of.
I even did one with a guy who worked for Pablo Escobar, got shot down mid-flight, and escaped prison more times than I&rsquo;ve switched careers.
That one actually did really well.
But this one? This one feels different.
I&rsquo;m starting a new podcast called The TAO Pod&mdash;and no, it&rsquo;s not about Eastern philosophy or meditation.
TAO stands for Bittensor, the decentralized AI network nobody is talking about. Yet.
The first episode just released: &ldquo;Will Bittensor Be Bigger Than Bitcoin?&rdquo; (Link below.)
Today, I&rsquo;m going to give you the gist.
<h3>Bigger Than Bitcoin? </h3>
As you know, Elon Musk is building superintelligence in a giant warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee.
He&rsquo;s using 200,000 Nvidia GPUs and billions of dollars in hardware, real estate, energy, and talent.
Meanwhile&hellip; a group of pseudonymous developers&mdash;people you&rsquo;ve never heard of, some probably wearing Crocs and eating cereal at 2am&mdash;are quietly doing the same thing.
Except they&rsquo;re doing it cheaper. Smarter. And they&rsquo;re not asking for permission.
They&rsquo;re not raising venture capital. They&rsquo;re not begging Nvidia.
They&rsquo;re doing it through something called Bittensor &mdash; and it might be the biggest thing I&rsquo;ve ever seen in crypto.
So what is Bittensor? It&rsquo;s a decentralized AI network.
Think of it like Bitcoin. Except instead of just securing transactions, Bittensor incentivizes people around the world to provide things like compute power, AI models, training data, and even agents.
BitTensor turns all the raw ingredients of AI&mdash;GPUs, data, models, training tasks&mdash;into digital commodities.
Anyone can supply them. Anyone can use them. And everyone gets rewarded based on how useful they are.
Want to build an AI chatbot? A hedge fund trading model? A healthcare assistant? A social media bot army? You don&rsquo;t need $10 million. You don&rsquo;t even need to know how to code.
You just plug into the right &ldquo;subnet&rdquo;&mdash;kind of like a decentralized startup&mdash;and the system does the heavy lifting.
It&rsquo;s Uber for AI compute. YouTube for data. AWS for open-source intelligence.
<h3>Nobody is Talking About This&hellip; Yet. </h3>
And here&rsquo;s the crazy part: one subnet, Shoots, is already serving 150 billion tokens per day.
To be clear, I&rsquo;m not talking about crypto tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
I&rsquo;m talking about language tokens &mdash; as in pieces of text.
Think of tokens as the raw material large language models (like ChatGPT or Grok) use to think, predict, and generate responses.
So when I say Shoots is serving 150 billion tokens per day, it means people and apps are sending and receiving 150 billion chunks of language through their AI interface every 24 hours.
That&rsquo;s a massive amount of activity &mdash; equivalent to running a high-traffic chatbot, search engine, or virtual assistant&hellip; at scale.
That&rsquo;s more than OpenAI was doing a few months ago. And almost no one knows it exists.
So I sat down with Joseph Jacks &mdash; one of the smartest people I&rsquo;ve ever spoken to about this &mdash; and we tried to answer a simple but mind-blowing question:
<h3>Is BitTensor the New Internet?</h3>
We also talked about:
<ul>
<li>Why Subnet 13 is quietly becoming the Reddit firehose hedge funds have always dreamed of.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Why TAO&mdash;the token that powers this whole thing&mdash; could mint more millionaires than Bitcoin ever did.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And how you could realistically launch an AI company from your kitchen table, for less than the cost of a Starbucks order.</li>
</ul>
No VC. No gatekeepers. Just code, compute, and capitalism&mdash;redesigned.
If you&rsquo;ve ever felt like you missed Bitcoin, or OpenAI, or the internet itself&hellip; this might be your second shot.
We&rsquo;re early. Think 1994 internet &mdash; back when you had to explain what &ldquo;email&rdquo; was. But this time, you don&rsquo;t have to wait for someone to build the browser.
The front door is here. You just haven&rsquo;t opened it yet.
So check out the first episode of The TAO Pod.
<a href="https://lnk.to/tpep0101">Watch &ldquo;Will BitTensor Be Bigger than Bitcoin?&rdquo;</a>

alc-07-16-25-featured

The Next Bitcoin—But for AI

On July 4th, while politicians celebrated freedom by inventing new ways to limit it...
Something ancient lurched deep in the Bitcoin blockchain.
80,000 Bitcoin vanished from eight wallets that hadn&rsquo;t as much as twitched in 14 years.
No warning. No trumpet sounds. Just an $8.6 billion silent exit. The crypto world freaked out.
Many asked: Is Satoshi back?
Before we get into what this means for Bitcoin&hellip; let&rsquo;s rewind a bit.
<h3>Satoshi Returns? </h3>
Quick recap if you&rsquo;re new here: Nobody knows who created Bitcoin.
He called himself Satoshi Nakamoto. Could be one person. Could be a team. Could be an AI from the future running on a ThinkPad in a cave in Iceland.
Whoever it was mined over a million BTC in the early days&mdash;then disappeared.
No interviews. No selfies. No TED Talk.
Gone. 
Those coins? Never moved. Ever. They&rsquo;ve just sat there like a loaded gun on the coffee table of the internet.
BUT&hellip;
<h3>Important Myth-Busting Interlude</h3>
Contrary to popular thought, Satoshi&rsquo;s coins aren&rsquo;t in one giant wallet.
They&rsquo;re scattered&mdash;thousands of addresses, 50 BTC each. (Because that&rsquo;s how mining worked during Bitcoin&rsquo;s early days.)
Satoshi mined ~22,000 blocks for 50 BTC. Never reused addresses. Never spent a single coin. Satoshi&rsquo;s famous stash is a digital graveyard of untouched treasure.
Though old, those eight Independence Day wallets weren&rsquo;t from that pile.
So why did people think it was Satoshi? Because these were Satoshi-era coins&mdash;untouched since he vanished from the forums.
The kind of coins that aren&rsquo;t supposed to move unless something big is happening.
<h3>The Weirdest Part?</h3>
Before the 80,000 coins moved, something bizarre happened: the wallets received a message.
Most people don&rsquo;t know this, but&hellip;
Bitcoin has a feature called OP_RETURN. It lets you write a short note directly onto the blockchain&mdash;like graffiti in a ledger.
Someone used this to send tiny &ldquo;dust&rdquo; transactions to these old wallets, leaving messages.
Messages like:
&ldquo;LEGAL NOTICE: We have taken possession of this wallet.&rdquo; And, &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s not abandoned, prove it with a signed transaction by Sept 30.&rdquo;
The message linked to a site, Salomonbros.com, claiming &ldquo;constructive possession.&rdquo;
Basically: Prove it&rsquo;s yours or lose it, nerd. 
Whoever held the keys apparently got the messages and moved the coins. All 80,000 BTC.
But it wasn&rsquo;t a hack. It was a bluff. A psychological jab.
So why do it?
<h4>Theory 1: Phishing for Whales</h4>
It&rsquo;s the same tactic as those weird scam texts: &ldquo;Hey Ruth, still thinking about our deal?&rdquo;
They know your name probably isn&rsquo;t Ruth. They just want to know if the number is active (step one). They want to know if you&rsquo;re naive enough to react (step two).
And if you&rsquo;re prone to panic, they want to know if they can exploit it now or down the road (step three).
Same deal here.
<h4>Theory 2: Government Probe</h4>
But maybe it wasn&rsquo;t scammers at all. Maybe it&rsquo;s a quiet government operation&mdash;poke the chain, watch what moves.
And something did.
<h4>Theory 3: I&rsquo;m Wrong. Salomon Bros Are For Real</h4>
I&rsquo;m not wrong. Saloman Bros is a scam.
<h3>Follow the Coins</h3>
Blockchain analysts traced the BTC.
Not to shady mixers that hide your actions. Not to some sketchy decentralized exchange in the crypto jungle.
But to Galaxy Digital&mdash;an institutional-grade OTC desk.
The kind of place billionaires go when they want to unload billions without tanking the price.
As of now:
<ul>
<li>Galaxy took 40,000 BTC, maybe already sold</li>
<li>Binance and Bybit hold 6,000 BTC</li>
<li>The rest is sitting still</li>
</ul>
That&rsquo;s not a panic sale. That&rsquo;s a professional unwind.
<h3>What If It Was Satoshi?</h3>
It wasn&rsquo;t Satoshi who moved the coins, but&hellip;
Let&rsquo;s play it out.
If even one coin from Satoshi&rsquo;s known stash moved, it would likely trigger a panic.
It&rsquo;d be a full-blown headline meltdown. You will never see more exclamation points in your entire life.
&nbsp;&ldquo;Satoshi Sells!!! Confidence in Bitcoin Shattered!!!&rdquo;
&nbsp;&ldquo;Bitcoin's God Just Spoke!!! Traders Are Freaking Out!!!&rdquo;
&ldquo;Satoshi Just Broke the Internet!!! (And the Market)!!!&rdquo;
&nbsp;&ldquo;EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT BITCOIN IS A LIE!!!&rdquo;
Panic. Selling. Retweets.
But eventually? Recovery.
<h3>Why It Would Make Bitcoin Stronger</h3>
Ironically, Bitcoin&rsquo;s greatest test isn&rsquo;t regulation or a market crash. It&rsquo;s not even quantum computing.
Bitcoin&rsquo;s real final boss is its first believer.
The whole narrative of Bitcoin&mdash;the thing that gives it cultural gravity&mdash;is that it was created&hellip; and then abandoned.
Satoshi&rsquo;s absence gave Bitcoin something no altcoin, no central bank, no Silicon Valley startup could ever replicate:
Purity. Immaculate conception.
But that purity comes at a price. It&rsquo;s also a sword of Damocles hanging over every die-hard Bitcoiner&rsquo;s head.
What if he returns?
If Bitcoin can survive Satoshi selling&mdash;even just one little Bitcoin&mdash;it proves the system works even when the mythology breaks.
So no, this probably wasn&rsquo;t him.
But if it ever is? I hope he cashes out.
Because the only thing stronger than a legend? The thing that outlives it.
And I, for one, will buy the dip.

alc-07-15-25-featured

The End of Bitcoin As We Know It (Again!!!)

We&rsquo;re obsessed with chefs right now.
The Bear. Chef&rsquo;s Table. Boiling Point. The Menu. Burnt.
Their kitchens are confessionals. The food is just a byproduct.
Even Ratatouille got it right&mdash;the art of cooking isn&rsquo;t just about food. It&rsquo;s about madness. Control. Art. Childhood trauma disguised as foam on a plate.
We love watching these tortured geniuses melt down on screen, throw pans, scream about risotto, and seek redemption through lamb jus.
But what about when the trauma is real? When the blood isn&rsquo;t stage makeup and the kitchen is more like a monastery than a war zone?
That&rsquo;s Curtis Duffy&hellip; one of the best chefs on the planet.
Curtis wrote this amazing memoir called Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef. I couldn&rsquo;t believe what I was reading&mdash;the tragedy, the resilience, the force of will.
We unpack it all on my latest podcast (link below), and what it really takes to be great at anything. Our conversation is a masterclass in pain, presence, and the quiet war for excellence.
(He also told me how to make the best BLT possible for my wife. So there&rsquo;s something in here for everyone.)
Here&rsquo;s what I learned from him:
<h4>A.] Some people are forged in hell&mdash;and build heaven.</h4>
Curtis&rsquo;s backstory is an A24 horror film. His father killed his mother and then himself. And somehow, he didn&rsquo;t become a villain. He became a monk. He took all that chaos and built a kitchen so disciplined it&rsquo;s one of the best in the world. No screaming. No panic. No cliches. Just focus. Just peace.
<h4>B.] Discipline &gt; Motivation.</h4>
Curtis doesn&rsquo;t wait to feel &ldquo;inspired.&rdquo; He shows up. Every day. Fold towels. Boil eggs. Repeat. It&rsquo;s the same reason Kobe shot free throws before school. Or why Seinfeld wrote jokes on Christmas. Discipline is boring. But it&rsquo;s the path. You want to be great? Get bored and keep going.
<h4>C.] Trauma is a knife. You either cut others or carve meaning.</h4>
&nbsp;Curtis could&rsquo;ve become just like his father. He knew it. That fear haunted him. But instead of running from it, he faced it. Every day. He turned the fear into fuel and built the opposite kind of legacy&mdash;one where young chefs are mentored, not destroyed.
<h4>D.] Obsession is the entry fee.</h4>
Curtis said: &ldquo;You have to be so obsessed with it, you&rsquo;d die for it.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s not an exaggeration. That&rsquo;s the cost of greatness. If you&rsquo;re not all-in, the kitchen&mdash;or comedy, or business, or writing&mdash;will eat you alive. Casual interest is for brunch. Not for Michelin stars.
<h4>E.] Folding towels is spiritual.</h4>
His staff folds towels for a week. Perfectly. Not because customers notice. But because they do. That&rsquo;s the secret. The invisible stuff becomes the visible stuff. That&rsquo;s how you build excellence: one towel, one breath, one moment at a time. How you do anything is how you do everything. 
<h4>F.] The best chefs are silent.</h4>
No Gordon Ramsay theatrics. No flying pans. Just presence. Just respect. Curtis runs his kitchen like a dojo. And you feel that in the food. Calm. Focused. Alive.
<h4>G.] Talent is nice. But work is everything.</h4>
Anyone can have a good palate. Few can show up at 5 a.m. to boil eggs for the 3,000th time. Talent is a spark. But work ethic is the flame that keeps burning when the power goes out.
I asked him: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the difference between two stars and three?&rdquo;
He said: Make your worst day better than everyone else&rsquo;s best.
It doesn&rsquo;t happen overnight. It takes time. Discipline. The 1% better every day mentality.
That&rsquo;s not just cooking. That&rsquo;s life. Parenting. Startups. Stand-up. Investing. Folding your own mental towels.
Greatness isn&rsquo;t loud. It doesn&rsquo;t show up in a Ferrari with gold flakes on its sushi.
It&rsquo;s quiet. Methodical. Relentless. And sometimes it smells like smoked cherry ice cream at 2 a.m.
Thank you, Curtis, for showing me what true greatness looks like.
And yes, I&rsquo;m going to make that BLT&mdash;and try not to burn the toast.
<a href="https://lnk.to/CDJAS01">Listen to our conversation here &rarr;</a>

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