If you&rsquo;ve been around Bitcoin for a while, you&rsquo;ve probably heard the ocean metaphors.
Tiny holders are called shrimp. Folks with a few coins are crabs. Middle crust is fish. Upper middle crust are called sharks. And the giants holding thousands of coins are the infamous whales and humpbacks.
Shrimp (&lt;1 BTC)
Crabs (1&ndash;10 BTC)
Fish (10&ndash;100 BTC)
Sharks (100&ndash;1,000 BTC)
Whales (1,000&ndash;10,000 BTC)
Humpbacks (&gt;10,000 BTC)
Call it silly if you want&hellip;
But tracking these &ldquo;sea creatures&rdquo; tells the real story of who holds Bitcoin, how that&rsquo;s evolved, and what it means now.
Empires bend to birthrates. Bitcoin bends to who holds the most keys.
This simple metric can tell us why Bitcoin sometimes explodes upward&hellip;
Why other times it crashes overnight&hellip;
And why, right now, it&rsquo;s biased to the upside.
Let&rsquo;s dive in.
<h3>The Whale Era: 2017 and Earlier</h3>
In Bitcoin&rsquo;s early years, whales and humpbacks dominated. Most were early miners or pioneers who scooped up thousands of coins when they were cheap.
In 2016, whales controlled nearly half of all the Bitcoin in existence.
Then, when the 2017 bull run sent prices to $20,000, those whales had life-changing gains. So they sold. That massive distribution from the top-heavy elite to the broader market set the stage for the 2018 crash.
It also marked a turning point: for the first time, smaller investors began to make up a meaningful slice of Bitcoin&rsquo;s ownership.
<h3>Retail Takes Root: 2018&ndash;2020</h3>
After the 2018 bear market, you might think small holders would have given up.
They didn&rsquo;t.
Shrimps (those with less than 1 BTC) and crabs (1&ndash;10 BTC) quietly kept buying. Month after month, they added coins to their wallets. In fact, since Bitcoin&rsquo;s beginning, shrimps have only had a handful of months where their total holdings went down.
By 2020, even as whales still controlled a third of supply, the grassroots retail base was growing steadily.
That &ldquo;stacking sats&rdquo; culture&mdash;buying a little bit regularly and tucking it away&mdash;was already reshaping Bitcoin&rsquo;s ownership.
<h3>The Institutional Wave: 2020&ndash;2021</h3>
The COVID crash in March 2020 was another turning point. Big investors were spooked, but soon after, institutions started piling in.
MicroStrategy began buying tens of thousands of coins. Tesla bought 43,000 BTC. Grayscale&rsquo;s Bitcoin Trust hoovered up more than 600,000.
For the first time in years, whales as a group actually grew their holdings. But this time it wasn&rsquo;t just a handful of early adopters&mdash;it was corporate treasuries and investment products. These coins weren&rsquo;t sitting on exchanges, ready to sell. They were being locked away in long-term holdings.
Meanwhile, retail kept buying too.
Shrimps and crabs didn&rsquo;t slow down. They just kept stacking through the mania, even as Bitcoin broke all-time highs.
<h3>The Shakeout: 2022</h3>
Then came the collapse. Terra, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, FTX&mdash;a year of forced selling and bankruptcies. Whales dumped huge amounts of Bitcoin to cover losses. Exchanges bled coins as customers yanked funds off platforms.
But something remarkable happened: the little guys stepped in.
Shrimps and crabs bought more Bitcoin in late 2022 than ever before.
In a single month after the FTX collapse, shrimps added 92,000 BTC to their wallets. Crabs added 130,000.
It was the largest grassroots accumulation in Bitcoin&rsquo;s history.
<h3>The ETF Wave: 2023&ndash;2025</h3>
By 2023, the dust had settled. Exchange balances hit seven-year lows as more people self-custodied their coins.
At the same time, whispers of U.S. Bitcoin ETFs turned into real applications.
Throughout 2024, anticipation of ETF approval fueled another rally.
During this time, every cohort EXCEPT the very biggest whales were buying. 
Shrimps, crabs, fish, sharks&mdash;all net accumulators. Only the humpbacks (the mega-holders with 10,000+ BTC, mostly exchanges and custodians) were distributing.
When ETFs launched in 2025, they didn&rsquo;t concentrate coins into a few wallets. Custodians spread holdings across hundreds of addresses, often in the shark range (100&ndash;1,000 BTC). On-chain, it looked like mid-sized holders were surging. In reality, it was millions of retail investors buying ETF shares&mdash;another layer of distribution.
When Bitcoin broke $120,000, whales and humpbacks took some profits, selling into strength. But shrimps and crabs still weren&rsquo;t selling.
Retail kept absorbing supply.
<h3>Sharks: The New Kings of Bitcoin </h3>
Sharks have moved into the &ldquo;middle class majority,&rdquo; holding about 25% of the supply&mdash;more than any other cohort.
Meanwhile, whales and humpbacks make up 35%&mdash;down about 20% in less than 5 years.
Think of it like this:
<ul>
<li>In 2017, Bitcoin was a whale&rsquo;s ocean.</li>
<li>In 2020, whales had a comeback thanks to corporate treasuries.</li>
<li>In 2022, whales sold and retail soaked it up.</li>
<li>In 2024&ndash;25, the sharks have taken over.</li>
</ul>
The ocean isn&rsquo;t top-heavy anymore. It&rsquo;s filled with schools of 100&ndash;1,000 BTC holders. They are numerous, professional, and disciplined. They don&rsquo;t crash the market with single trades, but collectively they set the tone.
That shift matters.
It means Bitcoin holdings are becoming more distributed over time.
Fish already control one-fifth of Bitcoin. Combine them with sharks, and their share could climb to 60% in the next two years. A complete reversal from 2017's whale dominance.
Fish and sharks tend to favor self-custody and custodians over exchanges. We&rsquo;re already seeing it: Right now, exchange balances are already at multi-year lows.
That makes Bitcoin harder to break and tighter in supply. With fewer coins sitting on exchanges, even small waves of new demand could send prices ripping higher.
In short&hellip;
Bitcoin&rsquo;s late-2025 story is one of strength and distribution. That alone is bullish.
But wait until you see what&rsquo;s brewing with Ethereum.

ALC-Issue-09-18-25(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

A Very Bitcoin Shark Feast

For most, "settling down&rdquo; feels like the only path.
That&rsquo;s what you do: you meet someone, you lock it in, and you pray they don&rsquo;t figure out you&rsquo;re actually a lunatic.
Case Kenny&mdash;author of The Opposite of Settling&mdash;flips that idea on its head. On my podcast, he dropped the heart of his book: don&rsquo;t settle down.
Settle up.
If you&rsquo;re not familiar, Case is a writer and podcaster who built a big audience by blending relationships and personal growth.
I asked him what he meant by &ldquo;settling up&rdquo;. He gave me a few gold nuggets I won&rsquo;t forget.
I don&rsquo;t know who needs to hear my takeaways from this episode (and his book). But, if you&rsquo;re like me&hellip; you&rsquo;ll probably wish you had them tattooed on your forehead 20 years ago.
(Most people underestimate #2 and are guilty of catfishing themselves (#5).)
<h3>1. The Right Relationship Makes You More Independent</h3>
Most people assume a relationship means trading freedom for compromise&mdash;less travel, less ambition, less of themselves.
So when it&rsquo;s time to &ldquo;settle down,&rdquo; they choose a partner who boxes them in.
Case flipped the script.
He realized that the right person doesn&rsquo;t clip your wings&mdash;they hand you a bigger set. He said he actually feels more independent now that he&rsquo;s with the right person.
Takeaway: If a relationship feels like it&rsquo;s closing doors, it&rsquo;s the wrong one. The right one opens more.
<h3>2. You&rsquo;re More Likable Than You Think</h3>
Case cited research on something called the liking gap. After conversations, people underestimate how much others like them.
Translation: you walk out of a coffee date thinking, I was awkward, they probably hate me, when in reality they were impressed.
This also creates a scarcity mindset. We think, Oh no, someone finally likes me, I&rsquo;d better lock it down before they change their mind.
That&rsquo;s how people settle.
Takeaway: Trust that you&rsquo;re more likable than you think. Scarcity leads to bad decisions. Confidence leads to clarity.
<h3>3. Weird &gt; Authentic</h3>
I hate the word &ldquo;authentic.&rdquo;
Nobody knows what it means anymore. Everyone&rsquo;s performing authenticity.
Case says forget authentic. Be weird. The non-conforming traits you think are too much&mdash;the too-loud laugh, the obsession with chess, the job that makes no sense to your parents&mdash;those are the magnets.
They repel the wrong people and attract the right ones.
Takeaway: Double down on your weird. It&rsquo;s not baggage&mdash;it&rsquo;s the filter.
<h3>4. Playfulness Is the Point</h3>
Relationships aren&rsquo;t supposed to feel like business partnerships. Case says the real purpose is playfulness. Shared humor. Creating new jokes and memories together.
That one resonates most.
My happiest relationships aren&rsquo;t the most &ldquo;stable&rdquo; or &ldquo;serious.&rdquo; They&rsquo;re the most playful.
Takeaway: If you can&rsquo;t laugh together, you can&rsquo;t last together.
<h3>5. Your Brain is Catfishing You</h3>
Case also talked about the peak-end rule.
Our brains remember relationships by their highest moments and their endings. That&rsquo;s why you look back and say, &ldquo;It was all bad&rdquo; or &ldquo;It was the best I&rsquo;ll ever have.&rdquo;
Both are wrong.
The danger of the peak-end rule is that it traps you in a distorted memory loop. If you decide the whole thing was &ldquo;all bad,&rdquo; you carry bitterness into every new relationship, building walls no one can climb. If you decide it was &ldquo;the best I&rsquo;ll ever have,&rdquo; you compare everyone new to a fantasy highlight reel that no real person can match.
And just like falling for a catfish, if you buy into it, you end up chasing ghosts, clinging to nostalgia, or shutting down completely instead of seeing the present for what it is.
Takeaway: Don&rsquo;t villainize your ex or the chapter you just lived. Appreciate the good memories without letting nostalgia&mdash;or bitterness&mdash;dictate your future.
<h3>Why This Matters</h3>
I wish I had this conversation 20 years ago.
Case Kenny&rsquo;s framework isn&rsquo;t just for dating. It&rsquo;s a mindset shift: don&rsquo;t shrink yourself to fit an expectation.
Expand yourself with someone who sees you, weirdness and all.
That&rsquo;s why I think everyone should <a href="https://jamesaltuchershow.com/episode/case-kenny-stop-settling-down-and-start-settling-up">listen to this episode</a>.
Because love isn&rsquo;t about compromise&mdash;it&rsquo;s about amplification.
Stop settling down. Start settling up.

ALC-Issue-09-17-25(Featured)

Your Brain Is Catfishing You

There&rsquo;s not a single person reading this who hasn&rsquo;t done it.
You pick the right stock. You watch it double. You sell. You strut into the bar, pounding your chest&hellip;
Then you watch it go up 10x while you sip your drink in silence.
I&rsquo;ve done it. You&rsquo;ve done it. Everyone&rsquo;s done it.
And while it doesn&rsquo;t sound so bad&hellip; it&rsquo;s more insidious than it looks.&nbsp;
Because it destroys the power law of returns&mdash;the few trades that make all the difference never get to reach their full potential.
But here&rsquo;s the good news:
There&rsquo;s one guy in our Paradigm office who cracked the code. Here&rsquo;s exactly what he told me this morning.
<h3>The Antidote </h3>
Most investors dream of catching lightning in a bottle once.
Twice if they&rsquo;re lucky.
Chris Cimorelli&mdash;AKA, &ldquo;Mr. 10x&rdquo;&mdash;has done it eighteen times in the last year.
That&rsquo;s eighteen separate trades where he didn&rsquo;t just double or triple his money&hellip;
He hit 1,000% or more.
Many Altucher Confidential members are already familiar with his work. The results speak for themselves:
1,004% on Bitmine in 2 days. 1,498% on the Nasdaq ETF in 24 hours. 2,237% on Quantum Computing in 3 months. 1,415% on IWM&hellip; the list goes on.
Wall Street will tell you this isn&rsquo;t possible. But Chris has the receipts.
Earlier today, I asked him to share some of his secrets.
The starter kit:
&gt; Analyze money flow. Follow where the cash is going, not the headlines. Trillions move quietly before anyone notices.
&gt; Hunt in quiet sectors before they roar. The next big wave always comes from the places no one&rsquo;s watching&mdash;until it&rsquo;s too late.
&gt; Invest in revolutionary technology. The easiest 10x moves always come from industries that change the game&mdash;not the ones playing catch-up.
&gt; Don&rsquo;t guess. Only buy trades with mathematical certainty to hit 1,000% if the stock hits your price target.
&gt; Find your tribe. Lone wolves burn out. A good community gives you context, perspective, and sometimes the guts to hold longer.
And that last one is where things get good for Paradigm readers.
As of this week, Chris is pulling together every strategy, every secret, every back-pocket move&hellip; stuffed into a single place.
Not for the Sunday drivers. For the ones gunning it past the guardrails.
<h3>The 10x Code </h3>
Chris has turned a few thousand dollars into six-figure profits again and again. And since April? He&rsquo;s up over a million dollars in verified profits.
But if you haven&rsquo;t met Chris yet&hellip; or heard about his strategy&hellip; don&rsquo;t worry.
Paradigm just recorded a video pulling back the curtain on his background, his biggest trades, and the simple system he uses to find them.
(Including what Chris is calling &ldquo;The List&rdquo;&mdash;a list of his favorite tickers&mdash;free.)
But it&rsquo;s time-sensitive. Chris believes the next 2-3 months could compress YEARS worth of gains. And that a rare setup could begin tomorrow, September 17.
His reason might change your entire strategy for the rest of the year.
The new video breaks it all down, but you&rsquo;ll want to watch it before the window closes tomorrow.

ALC-Issue-09-16-25(Featured)

The Silent Killer of Every Portfolio

Consider Wall Street guys in the &rsquo;50s:
They sweated bourbon and cologne in (roughly) equal parts. They thought the world ended at the Hudson River.
They smoked cigars the size of baseball bats and slapped each other on the backs as they moved markets in mahogany boardrooms.
Now picture Nicolas Darvas.
A Hungarian ballroom dancer making a living under nightclub spotlights, hauling his worldly possessions from Havana cabarets to Paris theaters.
He&rsquo;s not exactly the kind of guy you&rsquo;d expect to be included in the financial history books&hellip;
And yet&mdash;he&rsquo;s there.
Why? Because Darvas turned $25,000 into $2 million in under two years. The equivalent of about $24 million today.
While Wall Street &ldquo;pros&rdquo; were overthinking everything, Darvas was quietly dancing circles around them.
This is how it happened&hellip;
Which, if you&rsquo;ve seen enough of these stories, is exactly how it always happens.
<h3>A Strange Obsession</h3>
Darvas had a weird habit.
While most in his profession either collapsed into bed or poured another drink after their shifts, Darvas grabbed the financial section of whatever local newspaper he could find.
Manila. Montreal. Marrakesh.
Didn&rsquo;t matter.
Jetlagged, still sweating in a tuxedo, he&rsquo;d pore over stock charts like they were love letters. And he started to notice something.
Stocks didn&rsquo;t just move randomly. They moved in patterns.
They&rsquo;d climb. Then they&rsquo;d stall. Then they&rsquo;d climb again. Like dancers on a stage&mdash;rise, pause, rise, pause.
Where everyone else saw chaos, Darvas saw a rhythm.
So he came up with what he called &ldquo;boxes.&rdquo;
<h3>Boxes, Boxes Everywhere</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the gist: when a stock rose to a new level and then just sat there, bouncing around in a range, he&rsquo;d draw a box around it.
If the stock broke out of the box on heavy trading volume? That was his signal.
Buy it.
And then hang on for dear life until it stalled again.
That was it.
No Wall Street models. No complicated math. No insider tips. Just a man with a pencil and a ruler.
Darvas tested his system with a few small trades. It worked. So he scaled. His account exploded.
$25,000 became $2 million in about 18 months. This was back when two million bucks meant you could buy a mansion in Manhattan and still have enough left over for a butler to press your socks.
Wall Street didn&rsquo;t know what to do with him. A ballroom dancer wasn&rsquo;t supposed to beat the best and brightest.
He had no Ivy League degree. No Wall Street internship. He barely had a mailing address&mdash;he was sending telegrams to his broker from hotel lobbies.
And yet, trade after trade, his little &ldquo;boxes&rdquo; kept working.
The press went nuts.
<h3>When an Outsider Writes the Playbook</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the thing: the market hasn&rsquo;t changed.
It still moves in patterns. Investors still panic, stall, and pile in at the wrong time. And the people who win are the ones who notice the rhythm and have the guts to dance along with it.
Darvas had his &ldquo;boxes.&rdquo;
They were his secret weapon.
Today, the modern equivalent is what some traders call the Money Zone.
And just like Darvas, there&rsquo;s one guy alive who has mastered it&mdash;not once, not twice, but eighteen times in the past year.
No Wharton degree, no hedge-fund pedigree, no Wall Street job&hellip;
Yet he&rsquo;s outperformed the pros.
Around here, we call him Mr. 10X. (You might already know him.)
And he&rsquo;s about to launch his most ambitious project yet.
On September 17, his Money Zone is set to light up three trades with the same 1,000% potential Darvas would have killed for.
If you haven&rsquo;t seen his full bull case already, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2478420">he lays it all out right here at this link</a>.

ALC-Issue-09-15-25(Featured)

The Outsider’s Guide to 10x

Last week, I sat inside Rick Harrison&rsquo;s pawn shop in Las Vegas&mdash;yes, the shop from Pawn Stars. 
This isn&rsquo;t a normal shop. It&rsquo;s a landmark. Tourists line up outside just to peek inside. The TV show has been running for over 20 seasons, almost 750 episodes.
In TV years, that&rsquo;s basically immortality.
The air was a mix of dust, money, and stories. Stories of people who walked in broke, desperate, embarrassed, or sometimes just curious.
Stories of objects that outlived their owners and ended up here, waiting to be turned into cash.
Everywhere I looked there was another absurd and beautiful one: a Civil War coin that once traveled across the Atlantic before being melted down into another country&rsquo;s money. A cowboy hat worn by a gangster who made Las Vegas what it is. Samurai swords that could&rsquo;ve killed a man 400 years ago. A rocket engine touched by Neil Armstrong.
&ldquo;Every object is a story,&rdquo; said Rick.
Some are true, some are exaggerated, some are lies that people told themselves so often they started to believe them.
And Rick? He&rsquo;s the curator, the dealer, the confessor. He knows what&rsquo;s fake, what&rsquo;s real, and what&rsquo;s just sentimental dust. Better than anyone else, at least.
In many ways, Rick&rsquo;s a curator of stories.
That&rsquo;s fascinating.
But there&rsquo;s an even bigger reason I&rsquo;m fascinated by his job.
<h3>The Best Business Model Ever </h3>
He calls pawn shops &ldquo;the oldest form of banking.&rdquo;
I didn&rsquo;t know this:
Seven million households in America don&rsquo;t have a bank account. That number shocked me. Even more shocking? About 20% of adults can&rsquo;t get one.
If you&rsquo;ve ever bounced too many checks, there&rsquo;s a secret system banks use to blacklist you. You&rsquo;re done. No account. No ATM card.
So where do you go when you need cash? A pawn shop.
Rick explains the math like it&rsquo;s the simplest thing in the world. You bring in a Rolex worth ten grand. You only need $500 for the weekend. He gives you $500.
You come back a month later, pay him $550, and you get your watch back. Ten percent interest. If you don&rsquo;t come back? He just keeps the Rolex. No collections, no lawsuits, no angry phone calls.
Done.
That&rsquo;s it. That&rsquo;s the whole model. And it&rsquo;s been running since before credit cards, before ATMs, before &ldquo;banking hours&rdquo; ruled your life.
And it&rsquo;s the best business model ever.
It&rsquo;s like banking, but without the lawyers, the regulators, and the risk. It&rsquo;s simple, ancient, cash-based, and designed to win no matter what.
It&rsquo;s actually better than banking because it thrives where banks fail. It serves people who need it most. And it turns bad luck, history, and story into good luck&mdash;over and over again.
It&rsquo;s an infinite luck machine.
<h3>How Stigma Killed the Pawners </h3>
Pawn shops used to be normal. Up until the 1950s, they were the number one form of consumer credit. Charlie Chaplin&rsquo;s breakout movie was The Pawn Broker.
Then came the stigma. The 60s and 70s painted pawn shops as dens of desperation.
Today, people still hesitate to buy a diamond ring there&mdash;even though the same &ldquo;new&rdquo; diamond at Tiffany&rsquo;s may very well have passed through Rick&rsquo;s counter in Las Vegas.
Pawn shops feed the retail jewelry industry. And the irony is: people still think they&rsquo;re &ldquo;too good&rdquo; to shop at one.
<h3>Lessons From Las Vegas </h3>
Rick loves history. You can&rsquo;t do this job without loving history. Coins, books, swords, art, watches&mdash;they all carry the DNA of a time and place.
He also loves the hustle. He doesn&rsquo;t need the money anymore. He just likes doing it.
He calls himself weird. He sleeps four hours a night. But I think he just loves being in the middle of all these stories.
The pawn shop isn&rsquo;t really about stuff.
It&rsquo;s about the thin line between value and story, money and memory, reality and illusion.
&ldquo;Every object is a story,&rdquo; Rick said.
But the real story I loved was Rick himself: a man who built a business on the things we can&rsquo;t keep, the memories we have to sell, and the history we never knew we were holding in our hands.
<a href="https://jamesaltuchershow.com/episode/rick-harrison-the-pawn-business-hidden-histories-and-the-best-model-in-banking">Click here to listen to the whole show.</a>
You won&rsquo;t regret it.

ALC-Issue-09-12-25(Featured)

How to Become a Pawn Star

People used to think &ldquo;stocks on a blockchain&rdquo; was a contradiction&hellip;
Like &ldquo;soy-based bacon.&rdquo;
(Then again, go to any &ldquo;trendy&rdquo; diner and see what&rsquo;s on the menu.)
Here&rsquo;s the thing most don&rsquo;t realize: Wall Street is a museum of paperwork glued to a website.
Move a stock from one broker to another? Might as well ship it by carrier pigeon. Settle cash? Grab a chair&mdash;you&rsquo;ll be dead before it clears. Want to trade at 10 p.m. on a Saturday? Ha. Read a book instead.
Crypto solved the cash part first (stablecoins).
Now it&rsquo;s climbing the stack: Treasuries &rarr; ETFs &rarr; equities.
Same movie, bigger budget.
But that&rsquo;s just a quick overview of what we&rsquo;ve already covered this week. As a finale for the tokenization series&hellip;
Let&rsquo;s break this down simply so there&rsquo;s no confusion.
Today, we&rsquo;ll cover the two main types of tokenization, the boring reason it&rsquo;s going to trillions, what it means for you&hellip;
And why you should pay attention now, in 2025.
<h3>What &ldquo;tokenization&rdquo; means:</h3>
When it comes to traditional finance coming onto the blockchain, there are two legit models to tokenize something.
One is the &ldquo;wrapper.&rdquo; The other is the &ldquo;native.&rdquo;
Wrapper (&ldquo;receipt&rdquo;): your token is a claim on real things (like shares) held for you. This wrapper is easy to move around and plug into apps.
We&rsquo;re already seeing blockchain versions of big, boring things&mdash;AAPL or NVDA trackers, S&amp;P-500 or sector &ldquo;ETF tokens,&rdquo; even corporate-bond and money-market/T-bill tokens that pay yield daily.
The real assets sit in a legal lockbox; your token is the claim ticket.
Here&rsquo;s one implication, which also helps explain this in a historical context:
Right now, if you live outside the U.S., buying Apple or the S&amp;P 500 isn&rsquo;t always straightforward. You need a broker with access, local rules may block you, and the paperwork and fees add up.
Tokenized wrappers collapse all of that mess into a click.
And, for the record, we&rsquo;ve already been doing this for a century with ADRs. 
In the 1920s, American Depository Receipts (ADRs) solved a problem&mdash;how do you make a foreign share tradeable in the U.S. without forcing every investor to open a Swiss, Japanese, or British brokerage account? A U.S. bank wrapped the shares and issued a receipt.
Boom&mdash;instant liquidity in dollars.
ADRs are used to this day and some of the stocks you own are probably ADRs on the backend&mdash;think Toyota (TM), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), Sony (SONY), BP (BP), or Nestl&eacute; (NSRGY).
All foreign giants, all made tradable in U.S. dollars through ADR wrappers.
Tokenized wrappers are the same playbook on better rails. A portable, on-chain &ldquo;receipt&rdquo; for AAPL or NVDA could circulate globally, 24/7, in tiny slices.
Someone in Turkey, Brazil, or Nigeria wouldn&rsquo;t need a U.S. brokerage account; they&rsquo;d just need a wallet. Compliance (like KYC at issuance, sanctions screening) still exists, but once the token is out there, it can move more freely than today&rsquo;s systems allow.
Expect &ldquo;ADR-style&rdquo; tokenized wrappers for foreign stocks and commodity products too&mdash;gold, oil, baskets of miners&mdash;issued as tokens.
Native (&ldquo;the thing is the thing&rdquo;): here, the token is the official share. Ownership is clean and direct, without a middle wrapper. Corporate actions (splits, votes, dividends) can flow straight to holders
If ADRs are coat-check tickets for foreign stocks, then native on-chain shares are like being written directly into the company&rsquo;s shareholder book.
No ticket, no middleman&mdash;you&rsquo;re on the official ledger.
An ADR lets you trade exposure to Toyota or Nestl&eacute; in the U.S., but the official shareholder list still lives overseas with a custodian.
A native tokenized share is the shareholder list. When you hold the token, you&rsquo;re the legal owner on record, with dividends, splits, and votes flowing straight to you.
So the analogy:
ADRs = tokenization 0.0.
Blockchain wrappers (equities/stablecoins) = tokenization 1.0. Native (direct registry) = tokenization 2.0.
Prediction: By 2030, direct registry tokens will likely show up where clean, official ownership matters most.
Startups and growth firms may put their cap tables directly on the blockchain. Private companies could grant employee equity&mdash;options or RSUs&mdash;as native tokens with vesting and lockups coded in.
Smaller public offerings (like Reg A+) may skip transfer agents and use blockchain as the registry.
Governments could issue municipal or agency bonds natively, with interest flowing straight to token holders. And co-ops, credit unions, or creator collectives may run member registries on chain, with governance rights tied directly to tokens.
Wrappers will dominate for scale, but direct registry will thrive in controlled settings where precision of ownership is the point.
<h3>The boring reasons this goes to trillions</h3>
It&rsquo;s not magic. It&rsquo;s migration.
The boring reason it&rsquo;ll go to trillions? Here&rsquo;s three:
<ul>
<li>What we call &ldquo;digital finance&rdquo; right now is &ldquo;digital things pointing to paper things.&rdquo; The internet isn&rsquo;t done eating everything. Finance is next. AI and crypto are just the next waves of what kicked off roughly in 1995.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In the years to come, enormous, existing asset pools (cash, Treasuries, stocks) will move to these better rails&mdash;for lower costs, faster settlement, 24/7 access, and programmability (use your assets as collateral, bundle them, rebalance them, automate them with AI).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>There will be big winners. And big losers. But the outcome will be the same. Long-distance carriers didn&rsquo;t want Skype. AOL didn&rsquo;t want the open web. But once a cheaper, faster, more open rail exists, capital and users drift toward it&mdash;sometimes slowly, then all at once.</li>
</ul>
Stablecoins proved the demand for dollar rails. Tokenized Treasuries added yield. Tokenized stocks add utility: borrow against SPY, pipe orders through AI prompts, spin up a custom &ldquo;ETF&rdquo; in minutes, and let it rebalance itself.
When you remove friction from markets that are already massive, numbers compound quietly&hellip;
Until the edge becomes the center.
<h3>What changes for you?</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the best part. IMHO&hellip;
Most people open a brokerage app and get three buttons: Buy, Sell, Margin.
That&rsquo;s it.
Feels powerful, sure. But, compared to the potential of tokenization&hellip;
It&rsquo;s the difference between renting a car with only Drive, Reverse, and Park and renting a spaceship. You&rsquo;ll look back and laugh at the old gear shifter.
Because now you&rsquo;ve got thrusters, navigation, autopilot&mdash;controls you never knew existed.
Suddenly, you don&rsquo;t just &ldquo;buy Tesla.&rdquo;
You can say: &ldquo;Build me a basket of energy stocks&hellip; make sure Tesla is in there.&rdquo;
And it happens. No forms, no middlemen, no waiting for a fund manager in Midtown to cobble together an ETF.
In short&hellip;.
Don&rsquo;t think of tokenization as some abstract blockchain thing. Think of it as moving from three buttons to an entire spaceship dashboard.
The ones who master those new controls&mdash;custom baskets, cheap leverage, round-the-clock liquidity&mdash;and you&rsquo;re no longer cargo.
You&rsquo;re the pilot.

ALC-Issue-09-11-25(Featured)

3 Boring Reasons Tokenization Goes to TRILLIONS

Six years. 
That&rsquo;s all it takes to turn the impossible into a new reality&hellip;
And skeptics into believers.
Back in 2019, Nasdaq released a short explainer video about a strange new idea called tokenization.
Johan Toll, then Nasdaq&rsquo;s Head of Digital Assets, used diamonds to explain it.
Each diamond is unique, he said. So imagine creating a digital certificate for one, logging it on a blockchain, and letting that certificate trade hands instantly.
That was &ldquo;tokenization.&rdquo;
At the time, Toll predicted tokenization would begin in simple places&mdash;insurance payouts handled automatically by smart contracts, airline miles you could swap like cash, grain shipments tracked with digital receipts, shipping documents that couldn&rsquo;t be faked.
Low-hanging fruit. Easy wins.
Capital markets, he said, due to all the regulatory friction, would take longer than everything else to play out.
But that&rsquo;s not what happened&hellip;&nbsp;
Instead of loyalty points and grain, tokenization has broken into the heart of finance: bonds, treasuries, and now stocks.
<h3>From Diamonds to Dow Jones</h3>
Just this week, Nasdaq urged the SEC to approve tokenized stocks&mdash;real shares that would live both on the exchange and on a blockchain.
If approved, it means faster settlement, global access, around-the-clock trading, and new programmable features built into the shares themselves.
This hasn&rsquo;t exactly come out of nowhere&hellip;
But it is even further confirmation of a trend we&rsquo;ve been pounding the table on for over a year now.
The biggest names on Wall Street&mdash;BlackRock, Fidelity, WisdomTree&mdash;are already building tokenization products. Stablecoins have proven the pipes work. Bonds and treasuries are moving on-chain.
The next domino is obvious: equities.
And in fact, it&rsquo;s already started.
Here&rsquo;s exactly what it looks like:
<h3>The First Stock to Walk On-Chain</h3>
Galaxy Digital, the crypto investment firm led by Mike Novogratz, just put its own shares (GLXY) on the Solana blockchain with the help of tokenization experts at Superstate.
This isn&rsquo;t a copy or a synthetic&mdash;it&rsquo;s the real stock, recognized by regulators, mirrored directly on a blockchain.
If you hold the token, you hold the share.
That means dividends can be distributed like an airdrop via stablecoins. Voting for board members could happen with a click. Settlement happens in seconds instead of two days.
And down the line, these shares could even trade on decentralized platforms alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other DeFi assets.
<h3>How to Play It</h3>
The big bet here isn&rsquo;t night-trading GLXY tokens&mdash;it&rsquo;s about the rails.
If equities, treasuries, and funds all end up living on blockchains, then the chains that host them&mdash;Solana for speed, Ethereum for security and institutional comfort&mdash;become the core settlement layers for global finance.
Stablecoins already run on these rails. Tokenized treasuries are following.
Stocks are next.
If you want exposure to this shift, watching the ecosystems around Solana and Ethereum is the most direct way to play the theme.
Much more on that to come.

ALC-Issue-09-10-25(Featured)

Nasdaq Tells SEC: “Tokenize Stocks Now!”

Before 2020, the crypto world was split into two camps.
Public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum were open to anyone&mdash;messy, unpredictable, buzzing with activity.
Private blockchains like Hyperledger and Corda were closed systems for banks&mdash;controlled, polished, supposedly safe.
The pitch was simple: &ldquo;You can have blockchain without the scary crypto stuff.&rdquo;
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<div>The slogan at institutional conferences from 2015-2018 was "Blockchain, not Bitcoin." It was the establishment&rsquo;s way of saying: we like the tech, but not the revolution.</div>
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<div role="group" data-qa="message-actions" aria-label="Message actions">It didn&rsquo;t work. Private chains fizzled. Public chains thrived. Just like the internet crushed intranets in the &rsquo;90s, the open systems won.</div>
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Fast forward to 2025. The fight is back.
Only this time it&rsquo;s not weird startups vs. banks.
It&rsquo;s currencies vs. currencies.
Today, let&rsquo;s look at how the playing field has evolved since stablecoins got the green light in the USA&hellip;
And what it means for crypto-at-large.
<h3>The Stablecoin Starter Pistol</h3>
Let&rsquo;s start with Europe.
By way of background&hellip;
Europe has spent years lost in 500-page PDFs about a &ldquo;Digital Euro&rdquo; that might, maybe, someday exist. The plan: keep it private, keep it boring, let the banks oversee it for the most part.
Then July 2025 hit. And the U.S. dropped its regulatory nuke: the GENIUS Act.
Suddenly, the European Central Bank (ECB) saw the writing on the wall:
If the US gets its way, the dollar would soon be sprinting laps on public blockchains while the euro fumbled with its orthopedic inserts.
Put differently&hellip;
If Brussels sticks to its old plan&mdash;a closed, permissioned chain run through banks&mdash;it risks falling by the wayside in the new rules of money.
Merchants, fintechs, and traders will just use dollar stablecoins. They&rsquo;re easier, faster, already plugged into global rails.
By August, the Financial Times reported the ECB is now seriously considering launching the digital euro on a public chain like Ethereum or Solana.
A major shift from its long-standing private model.
And Europe is just the beginning.
<h3>Red Yuan, Green Light</h3>
China was already years ahead at home on the digital payments front.
By 2025, hundreds of millions of ECNY wallets were live, plugged into Alipay and WeChat Pay. Every transaction programmable, monitored in real time&mdash;more &ldquo;social credit on steroids&rdquo; than digital cash.
But the yuan doesn&rsquo;t travel well. Capital controls keep it trapped, and nobody abroad wants it.
Shortly after the passage of GENIUS, Beijing floated something once unthinkable: a yuan stablecoin. Not for the mainland, but offshore, with Hong Kong as the sandbox.
The mainland stays sealed, while Hong Kong pilots a yuan stablecoin aimed at trade, cross-border settlement, and challenging the dollar abroad&hellip; and likely on a public blockchain.
But even Europe and China are just a part of this story.
Now every finance minister from Seoul to Singapore is sprinting to catch up.
<h3>The Fourth Movers Club</h3>
South Korea had stalled on CBDCs for years. But once the U.S. legalized dollar stablecoins, fintech giant Toss announced plans for a won-backed coin.
Japan finally gave in, too.
After years of punishing crypto investors, regulators approved the first yen-pegged stablecoin, JPYC, and began fixing their tax code by moving crypto out of punitive income brackets and into stock-like treatment: a flat 20% tax, plus the ability to carry losses forward.
The Middle East didn&rsquo;t hesitate. The UAE and Bahrain are rolling out dirham and dinar stablecoins under new rules.
Even Wyoming jumped in with its own Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). Every FRNT is backed by dollars in Treasuries, with the interest earmarked for the Wyoming School Foundation Program.
Circle proved the model for private firms; Wyoming made it state policy.
From Tokyo to Dubai to Casper, the choice is clear: build your own, or get swallowed by someone else&rsquo;s.
Here&rsquo;s what it means for crypto&hellip;
<h3>Bullish as Hell </h3>
When the GENIUS Act greenlit stablecoins on public blockchains, it forced Europe, China, Japan, Korea, the UAE&mdash;even Wyoming&mdash;to join the same game.
Every new state-backed or regulated stablecoin has to plug into existing crypto infrastructure: Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Layer 2s, wallets, DeFi.
More liquidity, more users, more utility&mdash;all flowing into open systems.
Stablecoins are the on-ramp for billions who don&rsquo;t care about &ldquo;crypto&rdquo; but care about payments, trade, and yield. And once they&rsquo;re on-chain, the rest of the crypto economy&mdash;DeFi, tokenized assets, NFTs, AI subnets&mdash;is one click away.
The world&rsquo;s money is being dragged, kicking and screaming, onto crypto rails.
It&rsquo;s the biggest validation the space has ever seen. And nobody (NOBODY) is ready for what comes next.

ALC-Issue-09-09-25(Featured)

Brussels to Beijing: Adapt or Be Dollarized

In Star Trek, the ship&rsquo;s computer was the real unsung hero of the show&mdash;fluent in alien tongues, plotting courses across galaxies, even patching up a warp core mid-battle.
Siri was supposed to be (kind of like) that.
When Apple launched it in 2011, the vision inside Cupertino was clear: this was step one toward the Star Trek computer in your pocket.
Jobs himself was a Trekkie, and Scott Forstall&mdash;then Apple&rsquo;s software chief&mdash;later said that&rsquo;s exactly what they were aiming for.
Alas, Siri hasn&rsquo;t quite lived up to that North Star.
It didn&rsquo;t become Starfleet&rsquo;s computer. It became Silicon Valley&rsquo;s longest-running punchline.
But maybe not for much longer&hellip;
This summer, headlines said Apple was circling Perplexity&mdash;the flashy AI search engine&mdash;at a $14 billion valuation.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4CsLL9zthz9Mj7KCsMNAGQ/ccd1c56242ca6923d647640ddff36bcb/ALC-Issue-09-08-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Then Apple reportedly ditched the idea.
Nobody knew why.
Last week, Bloomberg revealed the reason: Siri.
And it might make for the biggest comeback story since Spock came back from the dead.
<h3>Perplexed! </h3>
Bloomberg dropped the news last week&mdash;Apple is building its own AI-powered search engine called World Knowledge Answers (WKA).
Think Perplexity, but native.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/Lfisb26GeeAUGegdARY3V/25cf7104166fa1fd39b5185573909ceb/ALC-Issue-09-08-25_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
WKA will be baked into Siri. No download, no sign-up, no &ldquo;try this new app.&rdquo;
Just: you ask, your iPhone answers.
The equation is simple: Apple has 2.35 billion devices in the wild. Search is the gateway to knowledge. Whoever controls it, controls attention. And attention, at scale, is power.
But Apple didn&rsquo;t need to buy Perplexity to do that.
When Apple spends big (Beats, AuthenTec, Shazam), they buy either brand power, irreplaceable IP, or deep infrastructure.
Perplexity wouldn&rsquo;t have moved the needle for them.
Because the real story for Siri isn&rsquo;t just search engines. It&rsquo;s about a new way to interact with the internet.
<h3>The Most Beautiful Part </h3>
If Apple&rsquo;s going to mount an AI comeback, it won&rsquo;t be by copying Perplexity&rsquo;s homework.
It&rsquo;ll be by making Siri irresistible&mdash;powered by advanced voice-first tech.
&ldquo;Voice-first&rdquo; simply means technology designed to be controlled primarily through speech&mdash;where talking, not typing or tapping, is the main interface.
Just like the computer on Star Trek.
That&rsquo;s where AI is ultimately headed&hellip;
And that&rsquo;s why James believes one overlooked AI company could be Apple&rsquo;s next move&hellip;
This company&rsquo;s AI already powers hundreds of household name companies. Its platform runs across dozens of languages and billions of devices. And it doesn&rsquo;t just answer questions&mdash;it understands them.
In real time. With context.
It has patents, customers, and real revenue. Exactly the kind of asset Apple can&rsquo;t replicate overnight.
And here&rsquo;s the most beautiful part: the company is still tiny. 
Small enough that Apple could buy it with the spare change in its couch cushions. Big enough that, the moment it&rsquo;s inside Apple&rsquo;s ecosystem, Siri could go from punchline to powerhouse.
That&rsquo;s why the &ldquo;Perplexity question&rdquo; was always the wrong question.
Apple doesn&rsquo;t buy features.
They buy foundations.
And this company? It&rsquo;s the foundation for the future of how we interact with AI.
He just recorded a time-sensitive video all about this company. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2476024">Click here to watch before tomorrow, September 9. </a>&nbsp;

ALC-Issue-09-08-25(Featured)

Live Long and Ask Siri

We were told AI was coming for the white-collar jobs first.
Accountants, analysts, lawyers, coders&mdash;everyone with a desk and a keyboard.
But&hellip; that&rsquo;s not what&rsquo;s happening. Not exactly.
Sure&hellip;
Every time a company announces layoffs, they love to trot out the same excuse: &ldquo;AI.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s sexy. It&rsquo;s futuristic.
It makes them look like they&rsquo;re surfing the wave of progress.
But the truth? Most of these jobs aren&rsquo;t being replaced by algorithms&mdash;they&rsquo;re being cut because the company over-hired, missed their growth targets, or just wants to goose the stock price.
Blaming AI is narrative judo: it turns &ldquo;we screwed up&rdquo; into &ldquo;we&rsquo;re visionary.&rdquo;
The truth? AI isn&rsquo;t replacing anyone. It&rsquo;s doing something most people didn&rsquo;t expect.
And it&rsquo;s going to change blue collar work even more dramatically than it&rsquo;ll change the white collars.
<h3>AI is Making Us&hellip; Happier? </h3>
Take coders.
GitHub Copilot users finish tasks 55% faster than coders flying solo. But here&rsquo;s something surprising: 60&ndash;75% of them say they actually enjoy their jobs more now.
Lawyers? A firm using Microsoft&rsquo;s Copilot shaved thousands of hours off contract work. But it didn&rsquo;t kill their jobs.
It gave them time to focus on strategy and the more creative aspects of their jobs.
Doctors? AI scribes are giving them back 2&ndash;3 hours a day&mdash;not to binge Netflix, but to actually see patients.
That&rsquo;s not job loss&mdash;it&rsquo;s job level-up.
The net effect? 79% of HR professionals say AI hasn&rsquo;t shrunk their teams&mdash;it&rsquo;s made them more productive and grown headcount.
IBM even found job satisfaction jumped 25% when teams used an AI coach.
It turns out doing fewer boring tasks makes people&hellip; HAPPIER.
Who knew?
<h3>The Plot Twist: AI in a Hard Hat</h3>
But here&rsquo;s the part pretty much everyone&rsquo;s missing&hellip;&nbsp;
The &ldquo;copilot effect&rdquo; will leak into the jobs nobody thought AI could touch: the ones with steel-toed boots and sore backs.
Construction. Warehouses. Garages. Farms.
And instead of taking those jobs, AI will show up as a sidekick for them too.
Consider one early example of this already happening: the Exia exoskeleton created by European robotics company German Bionic.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/40Yo8ZXM234aYRspBCLicG/f14ed7756026b6789adda830afb53c0d/ALC-Issue-09-05-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This AI exoskeleton learns your body&rsquo;s movements using billions of motion data points, then gives you an extra 84 pounds of lift whenever you need it.
(Think Iron Man for drywall installers.)
And it&rsquo;s not just strength&mdash;it&rsquo;s your personal safety guy. The suit flags dangerous posture in real time.
Companies testing it saw injuries and sick leave drop dramatically.
Everybody already knows robots aren&rsquo;t stealing construction jobs anytime soon. But the more interesting trend is that they&rsquo;ll first make construction workers bionic.
And it&rsquo;s not just about strapping robots to your spine&hellip;
Warehouse workers with AI Augmented Reality (AR) glasses boosted receiving speed 15% and order picking speed 20%, shaving 16 minutes off every order.
BMW mechanics with AR glasses that beam schematics into their vision? Some car repairs are now 75% faster. Imagine fixing a BMW while a ghostly IKEA manual hovers right over the engine.
This isn&rsquo;t &ldquo;man vs. machine.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s &ldquo;man + machine = cyborg efficiency.&rdquo;
<h3>The Automation Myth Gets an Upgrade</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the counterintuitive part: replacing humans outright is harder and more expensive than just upgrading them.
Robots can analyze Excel sheets. But they CANNOT easily handle a leaky pipe in a 100-year-old house or a warehouse full of unpredictable obstacles.
AI copilots are more likely to turn plumbers, electricians, and forklift drivers into superborgians than into pink slips.
And, from what we&rsquo;re seeing so far&hellip;
When companies add AI copilots, they often create new jobs.
Amazon&rsquo;s robotics division says automation has spun off 700 new categories of work&mdash;from robot repair techs to data wranglers.
It&rsquo;s happening everywhere. An AI doesn&rsquo;t kill your job&mdash;it kills your to-do list. It allows traditionally non-creative industries to become more creative. It takes the grunt out of grunt work.
<h3>The Blue-Collar Renaissance</h3>
This might be the most unexpected outcome of all: AI could make blue-collar work cool again.
Picture a plumber bragging not about his wrench set, but about his AI app that scans pipes with a phone camera and tells him what&rsquo;s wrong.
Or a farmer showing off drones that scan crops while predictive models whisper when to water.
Sure. The pipefitter of the near future will still be a grunt&mdash;but he&rsquo;ll be a grunt cyborg with AR goggles and an AI tutor in his ear.
Meanwhile, the entry-level office gig&hellip; the one AI can replace? That&rsquo;s the one getting folded into higher layers.
Which means we may be headed for a weird inversion: blue-collar jobs become the hot and interesting jobs again.
(Who doesn&rsquo;t want to feel like Tony Stark?)
Because AI copilots make these jobs less back-breaking, more skilled, and way more fun.
<h3>Everyone&rsquo;s Got it Wrong </h3>
Everyone&rsquo;s scared of AI taking their jobs. But the reality is stranger&mdash;and I&rsquo;d say better.
AI is coming for the drudge work, not your paycheck.
White-collar workers get copilots that make them more creative, faster, and happier.
Blue-collar workers are about to get exosuits, AR glasses, and AI-powered toolkits that do the same thing.
So is it a robot apocalypse&hellip;&nbsp;
Or a productivity renaissance?
Personally&hellip; I&rsquo;m betting on the latter.

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