Ever heard of vaseline glass?
No, it&rsquo;s not something you rub on your lips.
It&rsquo;s uranium glass. The kind your great-grandmother might&rsquo;ve displayed on a shelf next to the good china. It&rsquo;s glass with actual uranium dioxide mixed in&mdash;up to 2% by weight&mdash;giving it a green-yellow glow under UV light.
People made this stuff (on purpose!) in the 1800s.
Not because they wanted to power their house with grandma&rsquo;s gravy boat. (The radiation is negligible and deemed safe.) But because it looked magical. Ethereal. Like someone bottled the northern lights.
They didn&rsquo;t fear uranium back then. They celebrated it.
Then came the 1940s.
The U.S. government needed uranium for The Bomb.
So they banned it from consumer products. Uranium glass disappeared from dinner tables and reappeared in secret bunkers and desert test sites.
But people still collect uranium glass today.
In fact, I have one sitting on my bookshelf at home.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7pQgkoOO1DtHugmhY4BpQC/f32aa349125c27468adfd06f5fbe605a/ALC-Issue-05-16-25_2_.png" alt="pub" width="300px" />
Here at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, I was introduced to a new way of &ldquo;collecting&rdquo; uranium: investing in tokenized uranium on the blockchain.
The team behind it even gave me a dollar&rsquo;s worth.
This hits on one of the most exciting trends I&rsquo;m seeing here at Consensus&mdash;and in crypto-at-large.
Here&rsquo;s why. Why now. And the bigger picture.
<h3>Return of the Glow</h3>
In the postwar world, uranium became one thing: nuclear fuel.
In 2025, it&rsquo;s having a renaissance.
<ul>
<li>Over 60 new nuclear reactors are under construction worldwide.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>China plans to build 150 by 2035.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The U.S. government is buying uranium for a $3.5 billion strategic reserve.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Spot uranium prices? Up 350% since 2017, from $20 to over $90/lb.</li>
</ul>
Yet retail investors have been completely shut out.
Until now.
<h3>Introducing: xU3O8</h3>
This is where it gets interesting&hellip;&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s now a way to own uranium&mdash;the actual stuff, not a futures contract&mdash;on the blockchain.
It&rsquo;s called xU3O8 (after uranium oxide, U₃O₈). One token equals one ounce of physical uranium, stored securely in licensed North American vaults.
Let&rsquo;s break it down.
<ul>
<li>Backed 1:1 with real uranium.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Audited and secured in facilities by companies like Cameco.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Traded via the Uranium.io platform.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Custodied through Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset custodian.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Globally accessible. No hazmat license required.</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s uranium markets for the Space Age. Digitized. On-chain.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7estwSMiObD5TKGMi5Hgzh/d2ebb9d4825e17cc3633ad82804bfb39/ALC-Issue-05-16-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Previously:
<ul>
<li>You couldn&rsquo;t trade uranium before unless you were a licensed utility.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>You couldn&rsquo;t access these markets unless you had $50M+. (Smaller players might get access via equity vehicles, but not the actual commodity.)</li>
</ul>
Now?
You can own uranium like you own Bitcoin.
Of course, you can&rsquo;t redeem the uranium unless you&rsquo;re a licensed handler. But you can trade it.
And it&rsquo;s the beginning of the emergence of something else:
<h3>Programmable Commodities</h3>
The first time you hear the phrase &ldquo;programmable commodity,&rdquo; it sounds like sci-fi.
The idea? Embed intelligence directly into traditionally static assets&mdash;enabling automatic execution, fractional ownership, self-enforcing compliance, transparent tracking, and more efficient price discovery.&nbsp;
And it's already here. Gold was the gateway. Tokens like PAXG and CACHE let you own real, redeemable ounces of London-vaulted gold&mdash;tokens that move at internet speed but are backed by the Midas metal.&nbsp;
Silver followed, with similar models.
Electricity is next. Projects like Powerledger provide a way for neighbors to sell solar power directly to each other&mdash;no utility needed. Your Tesla&rsquo;s extra charge? That can become a revenue stream with a few lines of code.
Even your data&mdash;biometrics, location, voice&mdash;can be wrapped into tokens. Ocean Protocol and Filecoin are turning raw information into a tradeable, stakeable, income-producing asset.
It&rsquo;s not a stretch to imagine getting paid every time your anonymized health data helps train a model or run a trial.
This is the quiet revolution in crypto few are really talking about&hellip; except at Consensus 2025.&nbsp;
Commodities weren&rsquo;t supposed to move like this. But once things like uranium get tokenized, the dominoes will start to fall.
We&rsquo;re not just trading atoms anymore. We&rsquo;re programming them. And the market won&rsquo;t know how to price that&mdash;until it&rsquo;s too late.

ALC-Issue-05-16-25(1)

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

I Bought Uranium at a Crypto Conference

I&rsquo;ve been to a lot of weird conferences.
One time, I went to a health summit in San Diego that turned out to be mostly about &ldquo;becoming immortal.&rdquo;
The motto: &ldquo;Live long enough to live forever.&rdquo;&nbsp;
There was a guy talking about cryogenically freezing yourself so you could one day colonize Mars.
In 2017, I went to a crypto conference at the Aspen Institute.
One guy told me Bitcoin was a gift from aliens from the future. He was barefoot the entire time. Wearing a Rolex.
At a crypto conference in Prague, I interviewed the President of the crypto-friendly Liberland&hellip; the world&rsquo;s newest self-proclaimed nation.
(It was basically the Burning Man of geopolitics.)
But Consensus 2025 in Toronto? It&rsquo;s one of the least weird conferences I&rsquo;ve been to.
There&rsquo;s no &ldquo;rah rah&rdquo; mania. No guys in banana suits screaming about NFTs. (That&rsquo;s ETHDenver.) No TikTok dancers shilling rug pulls.
Instead? Bankers. Builders. Bureaucrats. Big Tech. And&mdash;yes&mdash;even the Trumps.
But we&rsquo;ll get to that.
<h3>When the Spotlight Misses the Stage</h3>
It wasn&rsquo;t just ironic&mdash;it was blatant: this was an American crypto conference wearing a Canadian nametag.
As soon as you enter the conference, here&rsquo;s the elevators:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/73ouVRtSyJPMLYOONV72A7/856eea8ba73ad101765349cd7cbd3d45/ALC-Issue-05-15-25_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6aLggKUuGOwPDClqGg0QQv/8acd7a3bc24fbbf859c18a8f65e42284/ALC-Issue-05-15-25_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Everyone&rsquo;s excited about what&rsquo;s happening in the US.
Canada, on the other hand? It&rsquo;s still living through the regulatory chill of America&rsquo;s literal yesteryear.
Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio, said most Canadian crypto entrepreneurs have left because they couldn&rsquo;t get clear guidance.
That&rsquo;s exactly what U.S. builders said during the SEC&rsquo;s &ldquo;regulation by enforcement&rdquo; spree under Gary Gensler.
Although Ethereum was conceived here in Toronto in 2013, they moved their HQ to Zug, Switzerland. They wanted to launch in Canada, but the regulatory environment was too uncertain.
Alas, little has changed in Canada since&hellip;
While everything has changed in America.
<h3>The Shifting Landscape in America </h3>
Ari Redbord of TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company, put it like this: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re moving away from regulation by enforcement and toward targeting actual bad actors.&rdquo;
Translation: less Gensler, more common sense.
Currently, according to Ari, about 1% of crypto activity is illicit.
That&rsquo;s what TRM Labs has discovered. Not 80%. Not even 10%. Just 1%. And that 1% includes North Korea&rsquo;s entire cybercrime GDP.
Meanwhile, TRM Labs is quietly working with every U.S. federal law enforcement agency.
Instead of going after developers who write DeFi code, they&rsquo;re going after ransomware, pig-butchering scams (don&rsquo;t Google it at night), and rogue states like North Korea laundering Bitcoin.
We&rsquo;re watching something weird happen: America is suddenly the most pro-crypto country in the world.
Yes, it&rsquo;s the election. But, said one speaker, it&rsquo;s also economic survival. And it&rsquo;s also just time.
But, on the same token&hellip;
According to TRM, regulators are using blockchain analytics to police crypto better than they ever policed banks.
So there&rsquo;s also that.
<h3>Oh Right&hellip; the Trumps Showed Up</h3>
Eric Trump shared the stage with Hut 8 CEO Asher Genuis.
They launched something called &ldquo;American Bitcoin.&rdquo; (Not to be confused with American Airlines, American Gladiators, or American Idol.)
They want to mine bitcoin on U.S. soil using ultra-cheap energy.
They say they can currently mine Bitcoin for $38,000 while the rest of the world is buying at $100,000. If that&rsquo;s true, they&rsquo;re not just mining&mdash;they&rsquo;re printing.
Eric&rsquo;s takeaway? &ldquo;Real estate is hard to sell. Bitcoin isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
<h3>Crypto is Becoming an Adult </h3>
In 2017, crypto was a toddler with a sugar high.
In 2021, it was a teenager throwing a rave in your garage.
In 2025, it&rsquo;s becoming an adult. Not fully there. Still messes up. Still gets scammed sometimes.
But it shows up. Pays taxes. Talks to regulators. Builds products people actually use.
And that?
That&rsquo;s the spark that kicks off a historic wealth transfer.

ALC-Issue-05-15-25(1)

Toronto: Where America Talks Crypto

Reporting from Toronto at Consensus 2025, where there is little consensus, actually&hellip; 
When the U.S. government auctioned off 30,000 Bitcoins seized from Silk Road, Tim Draper said &ldquo;yes, please,&rdquo; bought them all, and never looked back.
Now? He&rsquo;s still buying.
Draper&rsquo;s thesis is simple. Governments inflate. Banks fail. Software doesn&rsquo;t blink.
And if you ask him how long until Bitcoin replaces the U.S. dollar? &ldquo;Ten years,&rdquo; he said in an interview with Coindesk. Maybe less.
In the same way Confederate money became worthless after the South lost the Civil War, Draper sees fiat currency losing its crown when trust in government evaporates and people start asking: &ldquo;Wait&hellip; why am I still using dollars?&rdquo;
But not everyone here in Toronto&mdash;at Consensus 2025 &mdash;buys Draper&rsquo;s 10-year timeline to dollar extinction.
Skeptics include institutional heavyweights and stablecoin advocates who see a more gradual evolution.
They argue governments will never cede monetary control, and stablecoins&mdash;particularly tokenized dollars&mdash;are the real bridge to mass adoption.
Their case? Bitcoin might be a great store of value, but it&rsquo;s too volatile, too slow, and too misunderstood to replace the dollar at scale.
And then there are those who reject Bitcoin entirely.
Leemon Baird, co-founder of blockchain Hedera, calmly torpedoed the Draper Doctrine with a different vision:
Bitcoin is inefficient, slow, and stuck in the past. The future? It's enterprise-verified and built for AI.
While Draper sees a dollarless world, Baird&rsquo;s betting a hybrid &ldquo;Internet of Value&rdquo; will rule the real-world rails.
His focus with Hedera isn&rsquo;t killing fiat. It&rsquo;s replacing the backend&mdash;tokenizing everything from dollars to diamond supply chains to AI training data.
Draper sees Bitcoin saving families from the dollar. Baird sees Hedera saving civilization from bad math, deepfakes, and coordination failures.
Similar endgames. Totally different blueprints on how we get there.
<h3>No Consensus at Consensus </h3>
Coinbase is here. BlackRock is here. Google&rsquo;s here. Even the White House is sniffing around the booths. Thousands of companies&mdash;each with their own blockchain, thesis, bag, or bill to push.
BUT
If you&rsquo;re expecting clarity, alignment, or some grand unified vision of the future&hellip;
You&rsquo;re probably going to be greatly disappointed.
There&rsquo;s no consensus at Consensus. And that&rsquo;s exactly why you should pay attention.
Bitcoin maxis are arguing with DePIN evangelists. Ethereum developers side-eye Solana stakers. Hedera talks about carbon-negative governance while a project called LayerZero pitches &ldquo;interchain everything.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, stablecoin legislation hangs in the air like a policy pi&ntilde;ata&mdash;everyone's swinging at it with a different agenda.
It&rsquo;s chaos. It&rsquo;s loud. It&rsquo;s perfect.
Because where there&rsquo;s disagreement, there&rsquo;s movement.
Where there&rsquo;s friction, there&rsquo;s fire. And where no one agrees&mdash;that&rsquo;s where the opportunity hides.
Every breakout project, every asymmetric bet, every next-gen protocol started with someone saying: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think the rest of you get it.&rdquo;
So, I&rsquo;m not here looking for consensus. I&rsquo;m looking for conviction. The teams building with urgency. The guys with crazy looks in their eyes. What&rsquo;s missing from the main stage.
That&rsquo;s where the future always starts&mdash;just outside the spotlight, surrounded by noise, ignored by consensus.
That&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;m on the hunt.

ALC-Issue-05-14-25(1)

Consensus 2025: Consensus Optional

Long drives do something to the brain.
Your hands are on the wheel, your eyes on the road&mdash;but your mind? It slips the leash.
Ideas show up uninvited. Decades-old regrets throw a party.
And somewhere between exits, clarity sneaks in.
That&rsquo;s why I don&rsquo;t fly when I can avoid it.
Flying is time travel without the soul. Driving is a choose-your-own-adventure.
No security lines, gate changes, $9 bottles of water, or random strangers sneezing directly into my soul at 35,000 feet.
When you fly, there&rsquo;s no &ldquo;Welcome to [fill in the blank]&rdquo; sign.
Just a tired customs officer and the whiplash of being teleported from a Chili&rsquo;s in Terminal C to an interrogation booth with fluorescent lighting.
No gradual buildup. No sense of arrival. Just a hard reset&mdash;your body moves faster than your mind can catch up.
Sure, the destination is the same. But how you get there? That part still matters.
<h3>The Davos of Crypto </h3>
I&rsquo;m headed to Consensus 2025. AKA, the Davos of crypto&mdash;minus the private jets (OK, maybe fewer of them) and plus a lot more
Consensus began in 2015 at a time when Bitcoin was still considered the domain of anarchists, Reddit posters, and that one guy in every friend group who wouldn&rsquo;t shut up about game theory. (Confession: I was that one guy in the friend group.)
The first event was held in NYC, drawing a modest crowd of developers, VCs, and early Ethereum enthusiasts.
It was so early Bitcoiners and Ethereum bulls still (kind of) got along.
In 2017, the bull run sent crypto to the moon. 2,000 people showed up. Bitcoin hit $20k.
In 2018, over 8,000 people packed the Hilton Midtown. Lambos were parked outside. Celebrities made an appearance. ICO bros flooded the lobby.
2019? Doldrums. The bear market set in, the regulators were circling. Consensus talks pivoted from hopium to infrastructure and real use-cases.
Now, this year&rsquo;s Consensus feels different.
Not like Miami 2021 where Bitcoin bros were throwing parties that felt more like a rap music video than a financial awakening.
Not like Austin 2022, where everyone was glancing around nervously.
And definitely not like 2023, where booths were empty, the atmosphere was apocalyptic, and the spirit of Gary Gensler haunted the venue.
No. Toronto 2025 feels&hellip; sober.
<h3>What&rsquo;s Happening Now </h3>
Let&rsquo;s start with the obvious: Eric Trump is speaking. His new mining company American Bitcoin is reportedly going public.
Then there&rsquo;s Bo Hines.
He&rsquo;s heading the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets&mdash;and he&rsquo;s laying out the White House's official strategy for crypto legislation. (Something tells me the words &ldquo;stablecoins&rdquo; and &ldquo;tokenized Treasuries&rdquo; will be uttered&hellip; a lot.)
Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), will address regulatory frameworks in America&rsquo;s strictest state.
And the wild cards, like Dave Portnoy, who will talk about&hellip;
Honestly, I have no idea.
Three things I&rsquo;ll be tracking like a hawk:
<ol>
<li>Stablecoins and Real-World Assets (RWAs) &ndash; Everyone from Larry Fink to your Uber driver is talking about tokenization.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>DePIN &ndash; Decentralized physical infrastructure is having a moment. Someone is going to figure out how to turn crypto into actual roads and wires. That&rsquo;s when the real fight begins.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>AI x Blockchain &ndash; Half the speakers will say this is the dumbest combo since orange juice and toothpaste. The other half are quietly funding it. I&rsquo;ll let you know who&rsquo;s right.</li>
</ol>
One thing I do know&hellip;
This year is different.
It&rsquo;s not just another conference. It&rsquo;s a show of hands.
Is crypto still a punchline? Or is it finally growing up?
I&rsquo;m voting on the latter&hellip;
But I&rsquo;m here to find out for sure. And which parts.
If you see me wandering around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, I&rsquo;m probably lost.
If I look confused, it&rsquo;s because I probably walked into the wrong panel and accidentally joined a multi-year staking commitment. In French.
Or maybe just trying to figure out how to get my Lightning wallet to connect to a coffee machine.
Whatever the case, say hello.

ALC-Issue-05-13-25(1)

Greetings From Toronto

Bitcoin is a bearer asset.
It&rsquo;s gold with wings.
You own it. You hold it. No one can take it from you&mdash;unless you&rsquo;re careless&hellip;
Or you lend it out to a hedge fund dressed like a bank.
And that&rsquo;s exactly what happened.
First, there was Celsius. They promised yields on your Bitcoin. Like a savings account, but better.
Mashinsky, the CEO, was parading around like a visionary. Turns out, he was gambling with your money. Celsius collapsed. Poof. Billions gone. Users locked out.
Now Mashinsky&rsquo;s in jail.
Then came BlockFi.
Same story, different suit. They looked legit. Big VC backers. Clean UI. CNBC interviews.
They even got close to a bailout from FTX, which at the time was still wearing its &ldquo;white knight&rdquo; costume.
But BlockFi had lent massive sums to Three Arrows Capital&mdash;a hedge fund so overleveraged it made Lehman Brothers look like grandma&rsquo;s bingo night.
3AC blew up. So did BlockFi.
Voyager Digital was another. They made it feel safe. Friendly. Retail-focused.
Earn yield just by parking your crypto. Meanwhile, behind the scenes? They gave over half their lending book to&mdash;you guessed it&mdash;Three Arrows Capital. When 3AC fell, Voyager followed.
Finally, there&rsquo;s Genesis. That was the big one.
Genesis was the wiring inside the walls of the crypto lending house. You didn&rsquo;t see it, but everything ran through it.
Gemini used them for its &ldquo;Earn&rdquo; program. So did institutions. Turns out Genesis had exposure to every other failure in the space&mdash;FTX, 3AC, BlockFi. And when the tide went out, they were standing there with no pants.
Each of these platforms told you the same thing: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t sell your crypto. Lend it. Let it work for you.&rdquo; 
But the truth was uglier. They didn&rsquo;t just lend it. They risked it. Multiplied it. Lost it.
Enter the new yield product&hellip; MSTY.
<h3>The Bitcoin Yield Machine</h3>
It&rsquo;s called YieldMax&rsquo;s MicroStrategy ETF. And it&rsquo;s been the talk of Crypto Twitter for a few weeks now.
For the record, it&rsquo;s nothing like Crypto Banks 1.0.
Celsius and others existed in a regulatory gray zone. For years, no regulator could agree on whose job it was to step in&hellip;
Until it was too late.
MSTY is different.
It&rsquo;s listed. It&rsquo;s structured. It&rsquo;s regulated. It files with the SEC. You can read the prospectus, track the dividends, chart the NAV.
It&rsquo;s not a black box. There&rsquo;s no rehypothecation.
So here&rsquo;s the pitch:
With MSTY, you get exposure to Bitcoin through a proxy and live off the yield. No need to sell. No need to work. Just sit back, collect the dividends, and watch it grow.
But how does it really work? And what are the risks?
<h3>The Truth About MSTY </h3>
Sure, MSTY offers "yield," but in the truest sense of the word: you&rsquo;re yielding something &mdash; namely, the upside.
Here&rsquo;s the deal:
You buy a Wall Street ETF that sells call options on MicroStrategy&mdash;the company that functions like a Bitcoin vault with a Nasdaq ticker&mdash;and then distributes that option income back to you as yield.
BUT&hellip;
You also yield potential gains to receive income.
Now, MSTY isn&rsquo;t a scam. But it&rsquo;s also not a magic money machine.
It&rsquo;s just volatility sold to the market&mdash;packaged and given to shareholders.
It&rsquo;s real, advanced, and works&hellip; for now.
The moment volatility drops on MSTR? The yield goes down the tubes with it.
If you think MSTR will be diluted by new BTC vehicles (like ETFs or tokenized funds), then MSTY isn&rsquo;t so attractive.
And right now, we&rsquo;re seeing a bunch of copycats mimicking MicroStrategy&rsquo;s playbook.
<ul>
<li>Public companies adding BTC to treasuries to attract attention (aka the &ldquo;Saylor Bump&rdquo;)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>New ETFs and tokenized treasury wrappers offering exposure to BTC + income</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Retail and institutional options desks running similar covered call strategies as MSTY&mdash;independently</li>
</ul>
In other words, MSTR&rsquo;s uniqueness could be disappearing. And without that uniqueness, its volatility premium may fade.
If that happens? Value of MSTY goes down too.
It&rsquo;s not a bond.
It&rsquo;s not a stablecoin.
It&rsquo;s a fund tied to one volatile asset that happens to be sitting on top of another volatile asset (Bitcoin).
<h3>Understand What You&rsquo;re Buying </h3>
In summary&hellip;
The bear case is dilution from copycats and cleaner access. The bull case is that no one can out-Saylor Saylor&mdash;and MSTR is still the apex meme stock for true BTC believers with a taste for volatility.
MSTY is not for most people.
BUT&hellip;
If you understand what you&rsquo;re buying (and the trade-offs), it&rsquo;s nothing like the crypto yield products of yesteryear.

ALC-issue-05-12-25(1)

MSTY: Earn Yield On Bitcoin?

&ldquo;Gold is a rock. A shiny rock. That&rsquo;s it.&rdquo;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not scarce. It&rsquo;s just heavy and useless.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t buy coffee with gold. I can&rsquo;t email gold. I can&rsquo;t even see the gold I supposedly own in ETFs.&rdquo;
These are all things I&rsquo;ve said about gold in the past. I don&rsquo;t usually get a lot of love from gold bugs.
As you probably know&hellip;
I&rsquo;ve been a long-time advocate for Bitcoin over gold, arguing that Bitcoin has:
&rarr; Greater portability
&rarr; Absolute scarcity (21 million cap)
&rarr; Built-in programmability
&rarr; No need for vaults, guards, or middlemen
BUT&hellip;
Now that someone&rsquo;s putting real, physical gold onto Bitcoin&rsquo;s blockchain&hellip; I&rsquo;m intrigued.
Why? Because it fixes gold&rsquo;s flaws by using Bitcoin&rsquo;s strengths.
You get the cultural and historical trust of gold&hellip;
With the digital, decentralized, programmable nature of Bitcoin&hellip;
And none of the 9&ndash;5 trading windows, ETF fees, or broker middlemen.
<h3>Meet the Bitcoin Matador</h3>
This is exactly what my friend, Sunny Ray, founder of Matador, is doing.
And it&rsquo;s not a gimmick.
They&rsquo;ve partnered with the Royal Canadian Mint. They&rsquo;ve already bought 64 BTC. And they want to be the MicroStrategy of Canada.
Why gold, though?
Here's a stat that blew my mind: Indian women own more gold than the U.S. government.
People around the world still love gold. That&rsquo;s not going away. It&rsquo;s a real-world cultural trend.
Matador&rsquo;s mission became obvious: digitize the oldest money in the world (gold) using the newest (Bitcoin).
Here's what they&rsquo;re doing:
<ol>
<li>They take 1kg of gold and break it into 1g pieces called &ldquo;Grammys&rdquo; (yes, like the awards).</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>They laser-etch each piece with unique serial numbers and crypto-native art by &ldquo;Doomsday,&rdquo; a legendary digital artist.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>They take that same image+serial and inscribe it onto a SAT, or the smallest unit of Bitcoin.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li>That SAT becomes a digital mirror of the physical gold.</li>
</ol>
You can buy it. Sell it. Trade it 24/7. And even redeem the gold to your house.
They call it &ldquo;printable gold art.&rdquo;
And because you&rsquo;re buying art linked to real gold, not a &ldquo;security,&rdquo; they&rsquo;ve found a clever regulatory edge.
But this isn&rsquo;t just about gold.
It&rsquo;s a sneak peek at a much bigger wave&hellip;
<h3>The $1.4 Quadrillion Opportunity</h3>
There&rsquo;s $1.4 quadrillion in financial assets in the world.
That&rsquo;s everything: stocks, bonds, real estate, debt, gold, you name it.
And almost none of it trades 24/7.
Almost none of it is divisible, global, or frictionless.
Almost all of it is locked in walled gardens&mdash;brokerages, jurisdictions, regulations, and outdated systems.
Tokenization changes that. It's the biggest use case for crypto that nobody is paying attention to yet.
And while most people still think crypto means &ldquo;dog coins&rdquo; and scams, BlackRock is already tokenizing Treasury bills, real estate, and soon... everything else.
<ul>
<li>Treasury Secretary Larry Fink called it a $10 trillion opportunity.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Kraken is rolling out stock trading.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Tether is quietly buying up billions in Treasuries.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Small-cap companies are pivoting to Solana strategies like it&rsquo;s 2021 again.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Matador is going straight for gold and silver.</li>
</ul>
Even Trump (love him or hate him) is reportedly eyeing 1 million BTC for strategic reserves.
I&rsquo;ve said it before and I&rsquo;ll say it again: crypto&rsquo;s final form isn&rsquo;t some new Ponzi. It&rsquo;s Wall Street, rebuilt.
And tokenization is the door.
<h3>So&hellip; What&rsquo;s Next?</h3>
I asked Sunny what else might be coming. What gets tokenized after gold?
His answer is what I also suspected: everything.
But Matador&rsquo;s focus right now is on precious metals&mdash;silver, copper, maybe even digitized mines.
I told Sunny he should build a platform to let anyone tokenize anything&mdash;your house, your Rolex, your baseball card collection.
His response?
&ldquo;We&rsquo;re already building it.&rdquo;

ALC-Issue-05-09-25(1)

I Was Wrong About Gold (and Bitcoin)

&nbsp;$200 trillion. That&rsquo;s the number.
Not for gold.
Not for real estate.
Not for U.S. debt (well, not yet).
That&rsquo;s the number being thrown around for Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor, Scott Bessent, Fidelity, even Congress&mdash;they&rsquo;re all saying the same thing now, just in different dialects of billionaire:
&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not in Bitcoin by 2025, you&rsquo;re going to be the person still clipping Blockbuster coupons in a Netflix world.&rdquo;
<h3>The Empire Strikes Fiat</h3>
There&rsquo;s a $2 trillion industry&mdash;crypto&mdash;that wants to become a $200 trillion global asset class. That's not just 100x. That's monetary regime change.
Of course, people have been hyping that dream for years&hellip;
So why should you care now?
Because while everyone was sleeping through another Fed meeting, the world went through the wood chipper:
<ul>
<li>China&rsquo;s cutting rates.</li>
<li>The Fed&rsquo;s boxed in.</li>
<li>Tariffs are back in vogue.</li>
<li>Sovereign debt is blowing up.</li>
</ul>
And the U.S.? It&rsquo;s at an inflection point.
Do we want to lead the digital asset revolution&hellip; or just keep pretending the Fed can innovate us into the Space Age?
<h3>You Don&rsquo;t Buy Bitcoin. It Buys You.</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the famous Saylor pitch to corporations: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re holding cash. That cash is melting. Bitcoin is antifreeze for your balance sheet.&rdquo;
Metaplanet in Japan is doing it. Strive. Gamestop. Nexon. Aker ASA. Meitu. KPMG Canada. Other companies, too. Soon, your favorite soda company might be a Bitcoin maxi and not even tell you.
Sovereign wealth has followed suit. Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia&mdash;buying through proxies.
Not public. Not loud. Strategic. Quiet accumulation behind layers of wrappers and acronyms.
The old model?
You made a Coinbase account, did the KYC dance, and prayed your seed phrase survived the laundry cycle.
The new model? You hold a retirement account. It holds Google. Google holds an ETF. The ETF holds MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy holds Bitcoin like it&rsquo;s prepping for Ragnarok.
Trump&rsquo;s Treasury is talking about a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Further legislation called Bitcoin mining a &ldquo;matter of national interest.&rdquo; Even Congress is revealing a whiff of inevitability.
This is how Bitcoin takes over. Not with a bang. With a brokerage login and a quarterly statement nobody opened.
And by the time everyone realizes it? It&rsquo;s already done.
<h3>From MicroStrategy to MacroTakeover</h3>
What was once a fringe cypherpunk experiment is now getting sliced, securitized, and sold to Wall Street in every wrapper imaginable.
Michael Saylor figured out the game: Don&rsquo;t force buyers to &ldquo;get&rdquo; Bitcoin.
Package it in whatever flavor they&rsquo;re used to&mdash;REITs, bonds, ETFs, lending products, whatever.
It&rsquo;s the McBitcoinization of finance.
And it works.
Governments are already:
* Mining at industrial scale (quietly)
* Buying through ETFs (disguised)
* Building internal custody systems (slowly)
* Asking what America&rsquo;s new Bitcoin policy is (desperately)
Look, our tune hasn&rsquo;t changed. It&rsquo;s the song that&rsquo;s different.
Bitcoin is still an asymmetric bet.
It&rsquo;s going to zero or millions.
But the upside used to be the big story.
Now? The real asymmetry is in the risk of having none.

ALC-Issue-05-08-25(1)

Dream of McBitcoinization

I remember the first time I saw the internet.
It was 1994. Or 1996. Or 1997.
I can&rsquo;t remember.&nbsp;
My dad bought a computer, plugged it in, hit a button, and it started screeching. Then he connected to something called a &ldquo;website,&rdquo; and we sat there staring at a blinking GIF of a flaming skull.
Why a flaming skull? No clue.
But that was it. No apps. No streaming. Just flaming skulls and maybe an animated &ldquo;Under Construction&rdquo; sign if you were lucky.
And yet&hellip;
That blinking skull turned into Google. Amazon. Facebook. TikTok. Billions of dollars of wealth because a few nerds saw what the rest of us didn&rsquo;t&hellip;
The internet wasn&rsquo;t a gimmick. It was a new substrate. A new terrain. And whoever organized that chaos? They won.
Now here we are again.
But this time, the substrate is space.
And this time, the blinking GIF is a blinking satellite the size of a dishwasher&hellip;
Yeah, the one your neighbor swears is a UFO.
<h3>Space is Eating Earth </h3>
Here&rsquo;s what happened while everyone was distracted by TikTok dances and teens eating drywall for clicks:
<ul>
<li>In 2011, there were 1,100 active satellites orbiting Earth.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In 2024? Over 9,000.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>By 2030, experts estimate 60,000+ will be in orbit.</li>
</ul>
And these aren&rsquo;t just glorified weather balloons.
Today&rsquo;s satellites are:
<ul>
<li>Smaller: Many are under 50 kg.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Cheaper: Launch costs fell from $85,000/kg in 2000 to ~$1,500/kg with SpaceX.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Smarter: Equipped with AI chips, real-time imaging, and inter-satellite comms.</li>
</ul>
Translation: We&rsquo;re building an internet around the Earth.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Starlink is just the opening act. Amazon&rsquo;s Project Kuiper, OneWeb, and even the Chinese military are all playing the same game: Build a digital nervous system in space.
<h3>Follow the Money</h3>
Let&rsquo;s look at where the money is going:
<ul>
<li>$272 billion: Total private investment in the space economy since 2013.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$54 billion: Deployed just in 2021.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$1 trillion: Projected total value of the space economy by 2040 (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America all agree).</li>
</ul>
This isn&rsquo;t sci-fi. This is a platform shift.
And every platform shift creates new kings.
Right now, we&rsquo;re in flaming-skull-GIF territory.
We&rsquo;ve got rockets (SpaceX), satellites (Starlink, Planet Labs, etc.), and infrastructure being built at a dizzying pace&hellip;
But very few companies are organizing the data. And order is where the value explodes.
Consider this: One imaging satellite can generate up to 100 terabytes per day of raw data. Multiply that by thousands of satellites and&hellip; you get noise. Unless you can analyze, filter, tag, and act on it in real time.
Sound familiar?
It&rsquo;s like the early days of the web. Tons of content. No search engine.
Until Google said, &ldquo;We got this.&rdquo;
<h3>The Search Engine of Space That Could</h3>
So here&rsquo;s the key&hellip;
Watch for the company that becomes the interface between space and Earth. The &ldquo;browser&rdquo; of the orbital web.
They won&rsquo;t be building rockets. They won&rsquo;t be launching satellites. They&rsquo;ll be translating space into insight. In real time. For governments, for traders, for farmers, for Wall Street.
Thing is, it already exists.
And nobody&rsquo;s talking about it.
&rarr; It already works with the U.S. military.
&rarr; It has AI systems analyzing global activity in real-time.
&rarr; It&rsquo;s quietly piggybacking off another major AI company you&rsquo;ve heard of.
&rarr; And it might be one of the most underrated stocks of the decade.
If the internet made billionaires out of browsers, this company might just do the same&hellip; from orbit.
The stock, by the way, is part of James&rsquo; &ldquo;Forever Portfolio 2.0&rdquo; -- reserved for his Beta Test group.
If you&rsquo;re not aware of this new group&hellip;
Just recently, James recommended his beta testers buy an $8 company right before Nvidia announced it was buying it out...
Resulting in a 137% peak gain. (And this position is still open.)
From now until tomorrow morning at 9:29 a.m. (ET), James is opening the doors to this beta-test group for only 250 more members.
See if it&rsquo;s right for you.
<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2438987">Click here for everything you need to know</a>.

ALC-Issue-05-07-25(1)

Don’t Look Up… Until You Read This

In 1973, the Arab oil embargo crippled America. Gas stations ran dry. Prices quadrupled. Lines wrapped around the block.
Violence broke out at pumps nationwide.
In response, the U.S. launched a series of energy independence initiatives&mdash;like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, fuel efficiency standards, and incentives for domestic drilling.
We swore we'd never let ourselves become that dependent on a foreign power again.
And yet&hellip;
Fast-forward to today&mdash;different war, same trap.
This time, it&rsquo;s not oil. It&rsquo;s rare earth metals. And ~70% of America&rsquo;s supply comes from China.
You don&rsquo;t need to know what yttrium, neodymium, or dysprosium are. You just need to know that without them, we can&rsquo;t make iPhones, EV motors, wind turbines, F-35 jets, or Tomahawk missiles.
No rare earths = no tech. No defense. No modern economy.
Last month, as you know&hellip;
China announced it will restrict exports of 7 rare earth metals critical for high-tech industries.
Right on cue, rare earth stocks tripled. Subreddits filled with rocket emojis. Retail traders discovered neodymium.
But before you mortgage the dog to go all-in on manganese futures, here&rsquo;s the truth:
<h3>Rare Earths Aren&rsquo;t Rare</h3>
Rare earths are neither rare, nor all that magical.
They&rsquo;re just dirty.
Dirty to mine, dirty to refine, and dirtier to depend on when the world's biggest supplier is your biggest rival.
And, though they&rsquo;re about as common in Earth&rsquo;s crust as copper or tin&hellip;
They're spread out, tangled up with junk, and to extract it cheaply requires filthy chemical processes.
Think: rivers of acid and fields of toxic sludge.
China didn&rsquo;t corner the rare earth market because it had the biggest stash. It won because it was willing to poison entire provinces to refine the stuff on the cheap. They chose the pollution path, not the cleaner, but far more energy-intensive one.
Enter the hypocrisy:
In our race for &ldquo;clean energy,&rdquo; we outsourced the filthy parts to China and Myanmar.
(Fun fact: Half of China&rsquo;s rare earth supply came from Myanmar&hellip; but it was messy, run by local militias and unofficial syndicates. Until, that is, Myanmar had a military coup, consolidating control, making it far less messy for Beijing. The More You Know&trade;.)
Point is, we love the shiny toys. We just don&rsquo;t want to dig for the guts.
Problem is, a single EV requires 6.6 pounds of rare earth metals. One wind turbine? Try 770 pounds. AI GPUs. Data centers. Robots. Drones. All require these rare earth metals.
We don&rsquo;t have enough.
<h3>Greenland? Ukraine? Eh&hellip; </h3>
&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s just get them from Greenland.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s true. Greenland has millions of tons of rare earth deposits. The catch? No refining capacity. Mining won&rsquo;t start until maybe next year. Probably 2026. Maybe 2030.
And Ukraine? According to the Ukrainian government, they have $12 trillion in rare earths. If true, it&rsquo;s not as meaningful as it sounds. Because they also have little grid capacity and no facilities. Oh, and Russia controls about half of the deposits now.
The U.S.? We used to mine rare earths at Mountain Pass, California. But then China undercut us on price, so we shut it down and imported everything instead.
To build a functional rare earth supply chain in the U.S., you need:
✓ Mines
✓ Refining
✓ Permits
✓ Political will
✓ Capital
Now that China&rsquo;s slamming the door, the timeline on this checklist is getting fast-tracked. Trump&rsquo;s team is already signaling deregulation.
If you're looking for a high-conviction, high-risk U.S.-based play that could 10x on rare earth nationalism, James recently uncovered the best of all worlds.
We&rsquo;ve seen a lot of rare earth companies with hype. This one has urgency, narrative, and necessity. And they&rsquo;re doing it the right way: no acid sludge necessary.
It&rsquo;s an asymmetric bet.
You risk a little for the chance to gain a lot. Like betting on oil in the 1970s&mdash;before the crisis broke out.
And, what&rsquo;s more&hellip;
It&rsquo;s only one of FIVE stocks James recommends deploying new cash into this month to his new &ldquo;Beta Test&rdquo; group.
From now until Thursday at 9:29 a.m. (ET), James is opening the doors to this beta test group for only 250 more members. 
<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2438492">Click here for the details from our Customer Service Director, John Wilkinson</a>.

ALC-Issue-05-06-25(1)

Rare Earths, Disgusting Secrets

I used to think negotiation was about being smart. Or charming. Or stubborn.
Or going full crazy.
Ask for 200% of the profits and a helicopter.
Then &ldquo;compromise&rdquo; with: &ldquo;Fine, I&rsquo;ll just take some equity.&rdquo;
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. 
Turns out, it&rsquo;s mostly about shutting up.
Chris Voss&mdash;the FBI&rsquo;s lead hostage negotiator&mdash;didn&rsquo;t build his career on yelling louder.
He built it on something he calls tactical empathy.
And I&rsquo;ve seen his methods work firsthand in my own life.
It&rsquo;s so powerful, it can get you basically everything you want. But it&rsquo;s so simple, you don&rsquo;t have to memorize any weird tricks or phrases and feel like a slimeball.
AND&hellip; it&rsquo;s universal.
It works whether you&rsquo;re defusing a terrorist in Baghdad or negotiating a raise with a manager named Craig who still uses a Blackberry. (Not knocking you, Craig. I wish I still had my Blackberry.)&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s why I had Chris on my podcast recently. (Link below.)
In the next few minutes, I&rsquo;m going to show you how Chris can help you get a raise, save your marriage, or even save a life&hellip;
And in 18 words or less.
It&rsquo;s not manipulation. It&rsquo;s the most authentic way to live. And, if you practice it, it can turn you into a superhero.
Let me explain.
<h3>Lessons From the Suicide Hotline</h3>
Chris Voss was the FBI&rsquo;s lead negotiator for 24 years. In that time, he was involved in more than 150 international hostage cases, including high-profile incidents in Iraq, Gaza, the Philippines, Colombia, and Haiti.
The first thing he told me: Tactical empathy has nothing to do with being agreeable. Nothing to do with being nice. And everything to do with basic neuroscience.
It&rsquo;s about weaponized listening.
You make the other person feel heard&mdash;deeply, viscerally heard&mdash;and their brain floods with oxytocin, serotonin, and all the trust chemicals that turn enemies into collaborators.
Chris told me about his time volunteering at a suicide hotline.
Noble, right? Helping people.
Turns out, half the callers were &ldquo;energy vampires&rdquo;&mdash;people who didn&rsquo;t want help, just attention. Others were&hellip; let&rsquo;s just say OnlyFans pioneers. (You&rsquo;ll have to listen to the episode to get the full story.)
The lesson he learned early on? You don&rsquo;t always have to respond to these people. No sermon. No rebuttal. Just remove the stimulus. You starve the behavior, not the person.
It&rsquo;s a pattern interrupt. And pattern interrupts, says Voss, are negotiation gold.
<h3>Empathy &ne; Agreement. Empathy = Intel.</h3>
Forget the candles and yoga mats. Tactical empathy is less therapy and more sonar.
You bounce statements off your counterpart and listen&mdash;really listen&mdash;to what comes back. Are they defensive? Evasive? Emotional? That tells you where the leverage is.
The goal isn&rsquo;t &ldquo;winning.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s getting information.
In one case, Voss told a Muslim witness who was skeptical of the US government: &ldquo;You feel like you&rsquo;ve never been heard. You&rsquo;re doing this because the colonial powers crushed your people, your faith, and your future.&rdquo;
Then he shut up. That pause was the power move.
The guy, previously cold, softened. And then he did what Chris wanted: He testified voluntarily in U.S. court against a known terrorist&mdash;because he felt respected by Voss.
That&rsquo;s the thing.
People don&rsquo;t want you to agree&mdash;they want you to get it.
Not manipulated. Not coerced. Just&hellip; heard. That&rsquo;s the magic. Not persuasion. Not dominance. Just accurate articulation of someone&rsquo;s pain&mdash;without adding your own opinion.
Voss breaks it down like this:
<ul>
<li>When someone feels heard &rarr; oxytocin release</li>
<li>Oxytocin &rarr; bonding</li>
<li>Bonding &rarr; honesty</li>
<li>Honesty &rarr; actual negotiation</li>
</ul>
You don&rsquo;t get that from yelling, posturing, or saying &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo; You get that by making them say, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right.&rdquo; Not &ldquo;you&rsquo;re right.&rdquo;
There&rsquo;s a difference. One is resignation. The other is resonance.
<h3>Get a Raise. Save Your Marriage. Save a Life. </h3>
One of Voss&rsquo; favorite questions is NOT &ldquo;Can I get a raise?&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s: &ldquo;How can I be involved in projects critical to the strategic future of this company?&rdquo;
Try that in your next review and watch your boss&rsquo;s brain light up like Times Square. You&rsquo;re no longer &ldquo;just another employee.&rdquo; You&rsquo;re suddenly a co-conspirator in their legacy.
You don&rsquo;t get paid more by asking for more. You get paid more by becoming more valuable. Ask better questions, earn bigger equity.
To save a marriage or a life, it&rsquo;s the same thing. Stop arguing and name the pain they haven&rsquo;t been able to say out loud.
&nbsp;Say these 18 words:
&ldquo;You feel alone. Like nothing you do is enough. Like I see your mistakes more than your effort.&rdquo;
Then shut up.
Let the silence do what your words never could: make them feel understood.
That moment of being deeply heard can be the turning point&mdash;because people don&rsquo;t change when they&rsquo;re told they&rsquo;re wrong.
People change when they no longer need to defend their pain.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr5hhgA84O4&amp;t">Listen to the whole podcast here</a>.

Altucher Confidential News Feed

Filter By Date: