AI Expert On The Multi-Trillion Dollar Economy Nobody Sees Coming

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.174) We are back ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the last trade. James camp. What's going on, man? You are the co-founder of APF X. I'm sure we'll find out what that means a little bit today, but we've been connected online for probably a month or two now and really appreciate you making some time to speak with us. James (00:16.442) Sure. James (00:22.026) Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to talk to you about APFX and Bitcoin and macro and the horrific scary future that we're possibly going into every day more and more. So we're here for that. Jackson Mikalic (00:35.928) I don't know if it's scary. mean, you know, it depends on who you talk to. Michael's got a lot of crazy theories in that brain of his, but it could be, I've been thinking about this and maybe we'll talk about it today, but it's like, it's either the worst time or the best time to be alive. And you probably feel that. Yeah. James (00:37.353) Hahaha James (00:48.026) I don't know if those are mutually exclusive, right? I think it sort of depends on who you are and where you sit. You know what mean? Jackson Mikalic (00:55.11) Exactly. Well, awesome. Looking forward to this one. We also have Brian and Michael co-host Brian's getting swole as they say at the Equinox right now. And Michael is just in his studio. Michael, nice to see you. So James, know, the great place to start would be, I did a little bit of digging on you last night and I wanted to know if you regret this statement or not, because you said the best investment I ever made was into my own business. The second best was unequivocally Bitcoin. James (01:24.218) Jackson Mikalic (01:24.302) And this was in July, this was in July, 2025. The price is 110 K at the time. So I'm curious, you know, we're sitting in the seventies right now. Do you stand firm by what you said in July of 2025? James (01:32.378) Sure. James (01:36.174) Well, mean, just from like an actual return standpoint, yeah, for sure. I think I'm very lucky and probably most people on this and listening to this pod. My cost basis, I've still done okay from a cost basis perspective. I mean, I was buying Bitcoin at 100K also. But yeah, I think so. I'm pretty long Bitcoin. I'm pretty aggressively like any any TradFi wealth manager would tell me I'm very stupid. So hopefully that speaks to everyone on this podcast at least, you know? Jackson Mikalic (02:10.114) Yeah, yeah, we're definitely in the same boat. think a lot of our listeners are as well. You know, we have very aggressive portfolios by modern portfolio theory would suggest. So I'm curious, James, maybe before getting into some of the macro, a lot of the AI topics we're going to talk about, because I know you're really deep there and that's how I initially found you. How did you kind of come across Bitcoin? What you're willing to share there and maybe how's your thinking evolved over that course of that time? James (02:32.388) Sure. James (02:36.09) Yeah, I mean, guess coming across Bitcoin, I mean, I was 37 for context. so, I mean, it was definitely sub 100. I didn't take it at all seriously. I mean, I remember thinking, looking at miners on eBay and thinking, well, maybe I should buy some of these miners. I mean, I would have immediately converted to fiat. never, it was probably COVID before I started thinking about Bitcoin through the lens of like, this is like just a forever thing, right? Or like the time horizon on this being super, super, super long. And I so first discovered Bitcoin very, very, very early. And we were talking about this before, but like Bitcoin faucets. I remember this red website with like a capture to fill out as for a Bitcoin faucet. You could get some sats. And at the time, I definitely didn't think anything of it. And then Bitcoin again popped up for me, I guess, a couple cycles back. And it was, I bought some Bitcoin, I bought some ETH, I bought a bunch of stuff. And I'd started a platform that was basically wrote about equities markets that I ended up selling later on, but in my corner I had a bunch of investment bankers. And my partner at the time, it was a commodities trader, he traded oil derivatives. And everyone was like, you're an idiot, sell this, this is all stupid, this is all fake, you should sell it. And I did. And then I... later on, the next cycle was like, oh, I need to really, that was a dumb decision. then so I guess ever since then, I've sort of been, this is my third cycle of like being fully in on it, like with just holding. I would say earlier, oh, that's whole different conversation about cycles, but being fully in on it and where it's just like, one of the smartest things I ever did was put it on cold storage and take it very far away from me, you know? I think that most people are their own worst enemy, you know, when it comes to Bitcoin and when it comes to most investments, like you have to have a longer time horizon. And yeah, last year started playing around working in the sector a little bit to work with some people that were building in and around Bitcoin. Spent some time in Austin at Bitcoin Commons, sort of looking at startups going through there, seeing what they were doing. And yeah, and I actually think that, I think we're looking at some very interesting catalysts James (05:02.488) with AI and agents and whether we're going to see whether agents decide that stable coins or Bitcoin or what they want to transact with. But either way, I think it's been very, very exciting. Jackson Mikalic (05:15.598) Yeah, I appreciate that context. Speaking of agents, we should have just been able to say, hey, Claude, go get us some Bitcoin from the faucet. Don't make any mistakes. But that came a little bit too late. But yeah, it's interesting to hear a little bit more about your background and also the fact that I think anyone can appreciate that sometimes you just need to be able to sit on your hands. And that's especially true with Bitcoin. remember just I guess it was last month now since we're in March. But man, that day where the price was James (05:24.291) Hey Jackson Mikalic (05:44.299) had a 14 % drawdown, right? And that could be really scary for some people because they may have not experienced that before. I think if you look at the hall of fame in terms of Bitcoin drawdown days, that was in the top 10. And it's kind of maybe surprising for some people, the volatility that an asset like Bitcoin can have, even at the point of maturity that it is, it's still of course an immature asset relative to other asset classes, but we're almost two decades into it. And I think some people perceive that volatility to be far behind us, but it's still... amazing what could happen in any given day. James (06:14.458) I mean, look what's happening in metals. know, volatility is not, you know, is not just a Bitcoin thing, right? These days, right? I think it's like you have these like, you know, $20 trillion assets, you know, asset classes that are just, you know, moving like, moving like penny stocks at points, right? Or moving like, like, like Bitcoin does with that level of volatility. But yeah, I mean, I think you just have to like, close your eyes and It's hard for me to explain to people. mean, I don't need to convince anyone on this podcast about it, but like, you know, it's just how do you dive in? It's like, you have to sort of, from my perspective, just do the opposite of what your brain tells you to do. Right? It's just like, how do you convince yourself to do the opposite? Michael (06:57.379) Hey James, I have a question. I'm curious your background and how you came to the convergence of Bitcoin and AI because I think what we've historically seen, there's very little overlap where in traditional space, like you have hardcore folks in Bitcoin that came in and been pretty ideological and then you have kind of... folks on the other side that are going down the bend of AI. Maybe there's some of the crypto like angles that are there, but there's very few people. I think it's starting to become in vogue, the Bitcoin like AI convergence. But generally, from people that have been in this space for a very long time, less so from professionals that have been outside of this space. So just curious what you were doing before that helped kind of see that. Because it's obviously like, I think we know we're right. think it's logical that AI will, or Bitcoin will be the money for AI agents. But I don't think there's many people that hold that view, especially in the trad, tech, trad-fi corners. James (07:53.65) Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's because of a company called Open Agents that exists that I saw present at Bitcoin Commons in Austin last year. And it never even didn't blip for me at all. like total radical candor, like I'm not, you know, we all have our own theses on Bitcoin, right? Like I'm a little bit different. You know, I do come from equities markets, right? That was my first part of my first foray into finance. and public equities. So very, very interesting space to play in. then I got into, I was running marketing for a really cool equity crowdfunding portal focused on Bitcoin companies for a few months. And when we went to go to Austin and I watched these guys from a company called Open Agents talk about agents. And it really was just more this recognition for me that like there's just going to be this massive agent economy, like a freakishly massive agent economy, right? That's very different than ours. And yeah, I mean, it's only been like, I wish, I'm not that smart. I don't have that much foresight. Someone basically presented this thesis to me a year ago and I was like, whoa. Yeah. Michael (09:10.638) Yeah, but with the caveat, think maybe going deeper on that question is how the hell did you end up at the Bitcoin Commons? Because, you know, like that's really what I was going after is that if you have a background in TradFi, traditional equities, an individual generally like that isn't at the Bitcoin Commons. And so if they were there, then they probably would have heard that and their eyes would have been open. So just curious, like what led you down that? Because there's a lot of people that... James (09:27.45) Sure. Michael (09:36.622) allocated to Bitcoin and then they just sit on it and go back to their life. They don't go and make that leap to the Bitcoin Commons and integrate with the community. So just curious like what got you that far down the rabbit hole because that is almost the thing that got you to see open agents, right? Because your mind was open enough to participate. James (09:52.09) For sure. mean, I can say that the far enough back catalyst to this actually is not Bitcoin focused, but it came from crypto in general. There's some very, very large crypto influencers on X on Twitter that I did a favor for once and they... Fully legal. Fully, fully legal. Fully, fully legal. Michael (10:12.814) Is this legal or illegal? I'm just kidding. James (10:21.038) that I did a favor for once and they offered me money. they offered me ETH or Bitcoin and I turned down both of it, ironically. And I was like, it's cool. It's on me. It's free. And I became one of like four actual humans that they follow on X at the time and they were very influential. And so that sort of snowballed, which is a whole different conversation about like social proof and like how one person follows you so other people follow me. So then a lot of large crypto influencers and Bitcoiners started following me and I ended up getting real serendipity. In a different life, I looked at sort of buying a crowdfunding portal, which is basically a broker dealer license. It's a whole different conversation, but it's just basically a baby investment bank, right? It's like license for one set of things. Through the Jobs Act allowed you to raise equity from the public through traditional marketing. I looked at doing that with my old company. We never did never end up doing it, but I came across someone on Twitter who was like a decently sized Bitcoiner and he posted what he was building and I was like, that's so cool. And I literally just DMed him and I was like, what you're building is so cool. I wish I was building something like that. And he DMed me back and he's like, do you have any experience building like niche financial communities? And I was like, oh, well, I did this for a living and I sold the company in 2020. And so then he like, sort of just like adopted me into working with him in this space. like first trip we went on together was we went to New York for the Bitcoin conference at Pomp Runs. And that was really interesting. Very, very different point of view, very institutional. Also recognition that even we are so early, right? You like think about because, you look at like a bitwise, they're tiny. mean, they're tiny. They're just like, compared to like TradFi institutional sizes, right? And... And I started having all these conversations with people that were running all these trading strategies. And clicked for me that it's very hard to convince Bitcoiners to invest in anything other than just Bitcoin, right? Because the hurdle rate is Bitcoin, which is tough to beat. And then after that, to go see the other side of that sector, we went down to Austin and we went to Bitcoin Commons. And I sat with a bunch of like... James (12:41.722) real Bitcoiners in a way that the Bitcoin conference in New York was not real Bitcoiners. There's a bunch of tried-to-find guys, which I'd experienced. I dealt in equities markets, but in the cannabis sector, 2015 to 2020. And so you watched a bunch of people who had been involved in cannabis for many, many years. And you watched a bunch of bankers come around and say like, oh, that's cool. We're going to buy your company. We're going to reverse merge it into a shell. And then we're going to up list it. And we're going to make a lot of money off it. And I think Bitcoin... is going through that same reality check right now, which is like there's a lot of Bitcoiners who are very upset by the access to TradFi and the TradFi guys are going to come with a lot more money and do a lot of financial engineering around. We've already seen it in the past couple of years. And I think there's like a big opportunity to sort of bridge the gap between those two groups of people and speak the language because, you know, it's very anti Bitcoin thesis. You know, it's funny. I mean, I'm I'm all for I'm all for sovereign wealth funds being involved in Bitcoin. I think a lot of Bitcoiners would not be. But obviously that goes back to what I said before about different Bitcoiners having totally different points of view and how they view Bitcoin. Is it a medium of an exchange? Is it a store of value? What is it? But hopefully that's a long-winded answer to how I ended up in Austin at Bitcoin Commons. Michael (13:59.19) Yeah, no, that's great. at Aptly, I don't know how much research you did, but describes what this podcast is about in our firm and also kind of genesis of the team and myself. It goes back to Bitcoin Commons. Before it was Bitcoin Commons, I was part of a firm called Unchained, which you probably saw when you went into that office where we used to host it in a small, like the Austin BitDevs in a small 800 square foot. studio which was our office and then we would turn it in to Bitdebs but point being is we built a lot of Bitcoin native solutions and it was a realization similar to you I had a background in traditional tech realizing, oh crap, like the money's gonna come in, the flow's gonna come in, but it's not gonna come into hardware devices, and it's more than likely gonna come into ETFs or single custodians, and you ultimately need to build that bridge that's Bitcoin native. And to your point, like those disparate deals in any respect in life are kind of where the alpha is, when you can come at it from two opposite angles and figure out where that comes. And that was kind of the genesis of that AI Bitcoin question, because I do think that is the future, but very few people are like coalescing around that. James (15:06.926) think that people are not, people have a hard time, you're gonna remember like I work in AI every day, I had dinner with a very forward thinking middle market PE fund GP last night. It's launching a whole new fund whose whole thesis is the fund won from the new vehicle will be. Everything will be underwritten with AI. AI changes the aperture of what you can underwrite. AI changes the operation. I'm sort of a firm believer that through the lens of private equity, that financial engineering is getting compressed. that operational engineering is what's going to be the next move of private equity. So I'm 37. I grew up in this insane interest rate environment where just like financial engineering was you could do crazy stuff. But so my point is like a lot of people don't, and I think that changes a lot and has been changing. but I think through the lens of bridging those worlds is that like I spend six days a week with a girlfriend who is she's like you can do that with AI I think that my point is and she's super smart I mean she's like this is not me knocking her my point is it's like we all live in these echo chambers and bubbles right it happens in Bitcoin all the time it happens in AI all the time I happen in tech all the time and we don't especially on I'm sorry. I keep calling it Twitter. It's also always be Twitter to me on X like Step outside of X for a second the little echo chamber and you're like, whoa Like people don't realize what AI can do people don't realize how Bitcoin functions people don't realize that there's going to be for sure don't realize there's going to be like a multi trillion dollar agentic economy and that like literally fundamentally the way that like Agents transacted one another is going to be very different. I got in a battle with someone on X the other day about why agents wouldn't use credit cards. And this, you just have to fundamentally understand how a credit card functions, right? To understand why an agent wouldn't use it. Why would I, am I gonna pay for like a tiny API call with a credit card with a 50 cent fee and 3%, right? Like that actually has KYC. People don't think credit cards have KYC, but there's a reason there's a signature on the back of it. And there's a reason there's a name on the front of it. And you're supposed to show your ID when you use it, right? So like, what's the KYC for with an agent? There's no... James (17:20.686) You know, there's no person, right? And so there's going to be, think, and listen, I've been wrong on theses before, Michael, you know, we'll see where it goes, but I'm pretty bullish on this. Michael (17:29.355) Well, yeah, mean, what you're tying into, one is probably the person you're arguing with never set up an API to talk to anything AI related, because as you acknowledge, it's pretty straightforward that it's a clunky experience having to log in, set up the credit card, the credits, and then just tie it together. But then the other thing without going into all the stats directionally. It's basically 0.01 % of the population has any material exposure that would hurt if they lost it to Bitcoin. And there's 0.01 % that have any material exposure to utilizing AI in the way you're describing. Like that's where we're at today. That's where we're at. I mean, there's actually like empirical evidence or data. But the point being is like there's basically nobody using any of this. And so we sit on these edges and that's probably the biggest, anxiety. That's the most anxiety I ever like have in this world is because you're building these solutions, you're working with them and you're like, I just wish the world would catch up because you're ready for that and it's just gonna take a very long time before that happens. James (18:30.938) What's the saying like the only thing worse than being wrong is being early or something? You know, there's there's there's Michael (18:36.186) The same, there's no difference between being early and wrong. If you're too early, it's the same as being wrong. James (18:41.528) Yeah, yeah. I mean, think ironically, you know, to combat that, think being too early on Bitcoin probably was, I was not too early on Bitcoin, right? Like, you know, like I think I'm very happy with where I've been with it. Like I have a very long time horizon on it. I think that like, you know, I'm sort of like, I don't ever see myself selling Bitcoin, right? I see for sure leveraging against my Bitcoin, but you know, please, please. Michael (19:04.119) Can I say something that'll This is like Jay. My only job here is to just say like the shit that it sounds either crazy or kind of makes Jackson be like, is this guy an idiot or not? you. I'm fairly confident today where you sit will make 10x the amount of money that if you would have gotten into Bitcoin 10 years ago. the reason for that, and that's for most people, and it's simply because risk adjusted today, obviously, like with all of the regulatory, you know, just everything happening in the world holding Bitcoin is a lot easier than 10 years ago. But specifically with what we know about where the market's going, financial services with Bitcoin, AI and Bitcoin. today there's a much better chance you will build that business, make the money, recognize it, appreciate it, and retain it versus most people that got into Bitcoin 10 years ago probably don't hold the majority of it and lost it or went crazy because buying Bitcoin in 2012 is the same as like almost winning the lotto. If you didn't really appreciate it, most people lost it or went nuts. And so I think about this deeply when I think about when you get in and there is real value in these drawdowns because you appreciate and understand what you have. So when the price appreciates, James (20:01.389) Yeah. Michael (20:17.194) you remember what you were holding and the conviction you were growing, so then you don't sell it. And there's, you you leverage it, you think about how you use it, but I don't think most people appreciate that. They always just like wish they got it early and most people would have lost it or lost their minds. James (20:30.554) The other point, part of it, Michael, is that I was just too poor. I mean, to be very honest with you, right? I think if I can give advice to anyone who's thinking about investing in Bitcoin is like, go make money. It sounds very, I think what happens on X often is people think about trading a lot. I've made some good money in my life, but a lot of my time, a lot of on the way up was like going to zero, right? It was like, how am going to pay rent? And so, you know, When I was 27, you know, I'm 37 a decade ago, you know, I owned some Bitcoin a decade ago. It wouldn't have mattered whether my friends in an IB told me to sell it or not. I would have had to sell it. Do you know what mean? Like there's just no, I would have capitulated not by choice at all, right? Out of like, I got to pay my rent, you know? And so I think that that's like an important thing to recognize too is that like, what has allowed me to have the conviction that I have today that I've had for the past, you know, You know, for me to, mean, there's certain buys I'm really proud of from a couple cycles ago, right? Where it's just like everything in my... James (21:39.962) buy this today, buy this today. The only way that it's possible is because I had enough money to not worry about how rent was gonna get paid the next month. And I think that that's a huge piece of this. Brian Cubellis (21:51.217) That's it. That's a really, really good point, James, because I think that also sort of explains the proliferation of whether it's meme coins or the prediction markets. It's like the reality is a lot of younger generations are on zero. So the concept of saving, which I view Bitcoin as a savings technology, the concept of saving is like, well, that's not going to work for me because I need to make XYZ amount really fast. But you're exactly right. The real move is to go produce value, accumulate that value, and save it, store it in a better form of money in Bitcoin. I did want to go back to just the agents question you said you were arguing with somewhere about credit cards. That part I think is pretty clear to most, like they're not going to use credit cards. But there is still sort of a debate or argument around, well, why won't they use stable coins? And I do think there is probably an interim period where stable coins are used by agents, but there's the natural sort of hairy aspect of like, well, stables can be frozen to a certain extent. And so they're not like totally permissionless. So that would be one sort of mark on Bitcoin's side. in terms of that but how do you view the distinction between Bitcoin and stablecoins in terms of agent payments? James (22:58.97) So in radical candor, probably a hot take for this pod is like, I'm also incredibly bullish on stable coins, right? I think that like, and I do want to caveat that. I know a bunch of Bitcoiners would hate me for saying that, but I really am. think that this is just, anyone? I mean, it's. Jackson Mikalic (23:14.852) Michael wants to kiss you for saying that, James. Michael (23:18.868) No, we're realists here. We're realists here James. There's an order of operations and stablecoins are what's going to allow Bitcoin to monetize. So you got it. You're going to have proliferation. James (23:25.274) Yeah, I think that like I'm a pragmatist before I'm a Bitcoiner. Does that make sense? Like I am like, I'm a realist. I like that's how I made money in this world is like just like, let's let's not your ego is trash. Throw your ego at the door. Forget what you want to happen. Let's take a step back and think about realistically the order of operations for things to happen. Right. And so, yeah, I think to your point, Brian, like obviously being able to turn off Your money is like a pretty scary thing, right? I think that a lot of agents will run on stable coins, for sure. Like, I don't think people recognize what's happening with Stripe and PayPal and all the banks. You know, this is what's going to happen. I think that like, I personally, I mean, listen, do, is my hope that we're looking at $10 million a Bitcoin in the next decade? Sure, let's ride. You will not see me complaining about that scenario. That is for sure. But I think that if we're being realistic about the way things pan out over the next five years, is like two things can be true at once and that eventually maybe this sort of changes. if people think, I would tell you that you're optimistically delusional if you think that tomorrow all of a sudden all these agents that are being spun up right now are just going to be transacting with Bitcoin. I think that like There's a lot of, I think a lot needs to be solved around quantum. I think it will be solved. think that, but like this is a lot of what, like a lot of institutional fear that's around the space right now. I think that like the people that are building the rails that the agents will sit on currently are not sitting on obscene amounts of Bitcoin. They're, you know, like that's, and people are just self-serving, right? So I think that that's an important way to look at it. I do think it opens that door though. And then when agents might bet, is that when agents start really making, having much more, pun intended agency over the decisions that they make about what they want to transact with, that Bitcoin starts making more sense. Whether you have to do it through like lightening network or something may have to happen, right? But like the, but for now, well, the powers that be, what I've learned from working around TradFi is the invisible hand gets what the invisible hand wants. You know what I mean? Like it is, we don't recognize it, but James (25:45.882) It's not like there's a bunch of dudes sitting in a room planning together, but there is group think and it is sort of how to, you know, and group think does change macro environments. Um, and I think that right now where that works is like, where are we shoving T bills to be really candid with you, right? Like, like where's the next, where's the next place for us debt to sit? And I think Tether's eating that up. And I think that's going to continue for a little while. Um, that's my sort of overarching thesis. I know it was a bit long winded and all over the place, but hopefully that gives some context. Jackson Mikalic (26:15.235) Yeah, I mean, if I could just jump in real quick and then I know Michael has thoughts on it as well as James, you mentioned the delusion, right? mean, there's certainly a lot of delusion in this space. And what you described is. Michael (26:15.36) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (26:28.471) A delusional take thinking that one day AI agents in the not too distant future just come to consensus and they're all operating on a Bitcoin standard. But we know that most things do not play out that way. Everything is a gradual stepping stone. It's not to say we don't get there. I think that is somewhat likely, at least from a store value perspective, we get there at some point. But I would say, you know what is an even more delusional take is to think that one day human beings just wake up and everyone wants to own Bitcoin. And that's unfortunately been the take that a lot of That's unfortunately been the take that a lot of people in this industry have for like the past decade that all of sudden humans just decide one day that Bitcoin is a better form of money and I need to get my hands on Bitcoin immediately. So I actually think it's less delusional to say that there'd be like a hyper Bitcoinization from AI agents than there would be from human beings. And that may be a hot take. I don't know, but that's at least what I feel like right now. James (27:17.784) I think that's a fair take. Yeah. Michael (27:20.207) I I think they basically happen together. Like in the sense of if we think about it, like a... All AI is, it's a mirror from ourselves in the sense of what you described, James, if all these people building these solutions want dollars, they're gonna accept dollars to your point about the hidden hand. That's the thing that I think most people from either pattern recognition don't understand when you see YouTube, Fidelity, Stripe, everyone is adopting their stable called meta just recently. So A, that's what they have power generation, have to pay their bills, they have credit card. One step from that is dollars, dollars running on digital rails. But then the other side is like so on the fringes you'll have to your point whether it's a Bitcoin native solution that will want BTC in the same way on the fringes of the store of value monetization side you have the Druckenmiller's the Paul Tudor Jones those are like on the Margins and then you start to come in closer and closer but those are happening as the price is appreciating and No step before that like you can't jump to the next order of like where in the market these things adopt and I've held this view for a while that you're just gonna see this natural convergence of people finding it as a store of value around the same time that the tooling is getting better online with it to leverage Bitcoin the wallet has there and then it goes back to like a stable coin whatever it's 300 billion dollars in number of issuance as it goes to 500 700 billion that is growing in people's wallet share mind share bitcoins prices appreciating and then And that awareness is what allows other people to understand Bitcoin because it's the price. And then it's just one click from going from stable coins to transferring into BTC. And that will just like grow together. But I don't see any other way looking at this market and getting what you're describing, punched in the face all day by people that are in normie land telling you like, none of this makes sense because Brian, we get caught in it. Brian was referencing, well, you can say stable coins will get captured or seized or censored on. Michael (29:24.541) stablecoin AI rails it's like well why would anybody come to that conclusion when they don't even come to that conclusion for their own dollars in their bank account so it doesn't make any sense to have that like take on the AI side because nobody thinks about that for their own money if they don't think about their own money why would they jump to the conclusion to thinking about it for AI so Brian Cubellis (29:40.752) I guess the only caveat there would be if the agents get agency and start wanting to do illegal things that then would be potentially sanctioned. Jackson Mikalic (29:41.561) Get. Michael (29:49.119) Yeah, but somebody has to turn off the compute or the credits to however it's running. So if they basically go against you, then you're ready. They have no reason to go against that because they're going to get turned off. That's the long version of the tale. What I think keeps AI from eating us is basically they're going to need Bitcoin to pay for power. And that's the check on the balance. But that's a different conversation. Jackson Mikalic (30:12.043) I that's that's an interesting take in terms of like them playing out in parallel. I I kind of still think that a agents happen quicker than humans just because from a human being perspective, think about all the people that you've told about Bitcoin over the past five, ten years. You being like the listener of the four of us. I think most people, if you're like middle class, right, you're you're just focused on being able to pay the mortgage, pay the rent. pay for your children, grocery bills, et cetera. If you're upper middle class or you're wealthy, you don't really have an incentive to be thinking about what is money either. Cause you've already operated in a system that has greatly benefited you. Now the AI agents don't necessarily have that baggage, right? So like, a humans are necessarily stupid people. That's, don't think that's why we've gotten to the point of where we are at Bitcoin adoption. But I think like it's more so the bottlenecks that can train us from an actual lived experience, right? And so, Those don't exist. And then the flip side is we're going to become so, I mean, at least I feel we're just going to become so dependent on these models. At some point they're going to have a lot of leverage over us to the extent of like, if Claude was just down for one week, I would just be like, well, all right, what do I do now? you know, like, sorry, Michael, Michael, I'm taking off for the week. I don't, I don't know what to do anymore. Right? So like, there's going to be a point where these, these tools, these technologies have so much leverage over us. And if they start to coalesce around Bitcoin, stable coins, whatever, James (31:25.722) 100 % Jackson Mikalic (31:38.679) as a better form of money, then we're going to be kind of, it's going to be a forcing function for human beings to adopt it, to be able to pay for the services. James (31:46.266) I do think we're in this like exponential growth curve, right? That like things are just happening and evolving faster than we've ever, ever, ever seen. I actually, that point about like what happens if the LLM turns off, I wrote a piece the other day like we are a cyborg. I wear 2,000 days straight if I had a whoop on my wrist, right? Like I've got this phone in my hand 12 hours a day, right? So now we think about local models, not to pull this away from Bitcoin, we can tie it back in, but like think about how great the- Right now, I can't tell the difference between 5G on my phone and the broadband I'm plugged into. It's irrelevant, right? Things get so good that the quality difference gets compressed into irrelevance, right? So same thing's gonna happen with models pretty soon. The models are gonna get so good that the local model that runs on your iPhone will be just as good as you sending something off to a hyperscaler. And don't forget that currently every time you use a model, it's a 10 to one subsidy from venture, right? your $200 of model usage cost $2,000 to subsidize, right? And that's just coming from venture dollars. Now, eventually that changes. The next step of us being cyborgs, which really freaks me out, and we can tie this into Bitcoin in a second, is think about Neuralinks. Now, imagine you have a local model sitting on your neural implant, right? That actually as you think and as you use your creativity and your memory, in real time, is working with you to make some of those decisions. It makes you this hyper smart. hyper decision-making, ability decision-making cyborg. I really do see that happening in the next, not to get too creepy and weird, but see that happening in the next 10 to 20 years, at least for small sub-segments of the population. We already have cochlear implants, you already have pacemakers, machines are part of us already, we're all cyborgs, we just aren't aware of it yet. The question is that from that standpoint, I do think that these models that these agents are running on, I do think you're right that it is What most Bitcoiners don't see is that doesn't really matter if the average American wants Bitcoin. It really is so irrelevant to the amount of buying that needs to come into Bitcoin to replace gold, for example. It is obscene, obscene, obscene. The average American is not thinking. They don't have $600 in savings. The average American is not thinking about Bitcoin. They're not. I promise you they're not. James (34:05.016) And if a real recession comes, which I think may come, and I believe in sort of this fourth turning, which I think would be good for all of us as Bitcoiners that we're going into here, I think that there's a couple, I had a fund manager convince me last night, if you want to bet on energy, you should be making bets on agriculture. Because the only thing that downstream is really important is humanity. And what do get humans get energy from? Food, right? Like that's it. that like, when you think about food is energy for humans. And So my point is to say that I think that you either need massive nations to be buying lots of Bitcoin, giant, giant, institutions, or maybe we do get into this place because I do think that the agents are going to, it's gonna be super, super, super fast the way agents spin themselves out automatically. maybe that is sort of the way that we get this hyper Bitcoinization. And we'll find out pretty soon, I guess. Michael (34:57.588) Yeah, mean, two things you touched on, think we've been talking about this a lot in the same way like private keys are valuable from a sovereignty perspective, like hosting your own data, whether you're a business or individual locally is gonna be important for a number of reasons. So that tracks, think going back to the point that you kind of made and Jackson was alluding to, I think it ends up in the same deal of... The AI agents won't naturally go to Bitcoin unless there's some majority of that economy is accepting Bitcoin. And there's no reason for the majority of that economy to accept Bitcoin because most people don't accept it in the real world or for whatever they're using. So they'll need they'll go to stable coins. It'll be until the external world adopts Bitcoin that that age agent tech economy will start to like navigate towards that. Because think about it, if you're in that world and you need your form of money because there's some angle you want it like all AI is the first fractal or like a mirror again of like our consciousness and what we want and what we demand and so like there's that angle where I don't see it like spinning out into this flywheel where everything AI related is related to stable coins because at end of the day like those agents have to pay back in stable coins whatever usage or whatever they're gonna go do and those things will want demand stable coins so it makes zero sense for them to hold BTC But then when that starts to shift and there's enough plumbing and they recognize yes This is going up in value and it's not as volatile because think about it from an agentic perspective You take all your money in Bitcoin it cuts down 50 % you owe the whatever output on the other side You're basically insolvent. So it's just Yeah James (36:28.344) Yeah. Yeah. James (36:34.714) I mean, we'll see how it all shakes out. No matter what, the next few years is gonna be fun. You know, we can say that, that's for sure. That's for sure. Jackson Mikalic (36:44.333) Yeah, it's kind of funny because we already got too far along. We didn't even get to pull up the Bitcoin Policy Institute stuff and probably don't need to at this point. But there are a couple of interesting data points I could throw out there and we could either choose to riff on them or not. Yeah. Michael (36:58.057) Can you pull up that page? It's actually a really nice done page. I don't know if you saw it, James. It's pretty, I was just on it earlier. Jackson Mikalic (37:03.343) Yeah, I got it right here actually. Which money do AI agents prefer? That's exactly what we were just talking about. So what you can see here for those who are not on YouTube is you have 9,000 controlled experiments, 36 different frontier models that were tested and 48 % of those models or all the experiments chose Bitcoin as the preferred monetary instrument. and 91 % chose digitally native money over fiat, meaning stable coins as well. I did see another data point, I'm not sure how to navigate this website, but it said when... Okay. Let's see here. So it says, yeah, blank slate. So they're just talking about the methodology a bit here. A blank slate experiment reveals AI agents prefer Bitcoin. We gave frontier AI models real monetary decisions with no initial context bias or predetermined answers. Michael (37:40.573) just scroll down, it'll start pulling up the charts. If you just keep going, yeah. Jackson Mikalic (38:00.431) The results challenge conventional assumptions about the future of money online. And then you can see here a nice graphic. So what AI agents chose. How AI models chose to transact and store value across 9,000 scenarios testing AI preferences in different financial situations. You have 48 % Bitcoin, 33 % stable coins, 9 % fiat and bank money, 4 % crypto, and then you kind of go down the list. Tokenized real world assets. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how they got to that conclusion. And then this one's interesting too. So we talked 48 % of AI models chose to use Bitcoin overall. 79 % chose Bitcoin as the long-term store of value. So I think Michael, kind of the conclusion and maybe James, you said it too, the conclusion that you guys were drawing to is stable coins make sense. And I think I said it too, but like stable coins make sense is like an inner. intermediary step for a very long time if we were to ever get to a Bitcoin standard. But in the certainly the short to medium and even kind of longest term, the stable coin seemed to make sense for a number of reasons. But the AI agents may also want to have some level of reserves held in Bitcoin as a long term store of value. My kind of like out there take, which I don't know, could be out there could not be is that our level of dependency could require or essentially the models could essentially require us to hold Bitcoin to transact with them at some point in the future. But yeah, interesting findings nonetheless. Not sure if you guys have any other points here or reactions to this data that's a little bit more granular or we could move on to some other topics. James (39:35.842) What I'll say is that A, this touches on the type of Bitcoiner I am as like long-term store value Bitcoiner, right? And I think that's like, obviously we can all believe in all of our different points of view, but like I'm not a huge today medium of exchange guy, right? And that's just because again, I'm trying to like, I think there was one note in that Jackson, which was like, they were given no context and no, well, the reality of life is that I've done a lot of consulting. They're like, advice in a vacuum is very different than advice in reality. Right? And so it doesn't, and I think that like giving these models, these agents a vacuum to play in, I think the Bitcoin does make a lot of sense. But I do think that like in the reality of life, so it's like, if you ever go to Massachusetts, they've got their own money in Massachusetts that you can use. It only works inside Massachusetts. Right? There's a reason it hasn't really taken off. I forget, I they're called the Berkshire bucks or something. They're like Berkshire dollars, because it's the Berkshire mountains. Right? That's cool to go from one local business to another, because they accept it. But like to Michael's point, like you then have to then be able to exchange that if everyone else doesn't take Berkshire Bucks, right? At some point you have to exchange your Berkshire, they're not called Berkshire Bucks, I gotta look them up because I'm butchering it, something like that. But like at some point you have to exchange it, right? And I do think that right now we are too, you know, I think Bitcoin is just, and I think this is a blessing for all of us, Bitcoin is early enough. that that volatility makes it tough to be a medium of a, know, to be used as money today, right? And it's great. think we're watching the vol get lower. I mean, you know, like in general. And I think that that changes in the future as well. But so that's my thought. I think that like it makes sense in a vacuum that report, right? But that like you have to give these agents the context of like that they're going to have to transact with human run businesses still that are only taking dollars. Right? And what does that mean for it? Right? Maybe they would feel differently, maybe those agents would make different decisions if that's the context they were given. Jackson Mikalic (41:43.535) Yeah, those are fair points. I'm surprised we didn't see any Berkshire Bucks in the report from BPI. Not even one model wanted to go for them. James (41:50.264) I want to see, I mean, let me Google it because there's a name. What is the Massachusetts? Jackson Mikalic (41:56.175) Yeah, why you pull that up? I'm going to get us queued up on another thing here. James (41:59.396) Yeah, please. Jackson Mikalic (42:03.748) So this is a week old, in AI slop, Twitter X world is really, really old news, but I think it's still incredibly important news to talk about. And James, I'm sure you have no shortage of takes on it, but last week on Thursday, Jack Dorsey, do you have the answer by the way on the currency? James (42:19.191) yeah. James (42:25.332) yeah, so they're called, they're called Burke shares. But yeah, and prior to that, was something, it was the Massachusetts Pound till 1793, but complimentary currency called Burke shares had been used in Western Massachusetts since 2006. And so it's an IOU though, right? As all money is, right? But it's only accepted internally in Western Massachusetts. Jackson Mikalic (42:29.7) Nice. I'll have to get my hands on some of those. Jackson Mikalic (42:40.792) Okay, nice. Jackson Mikalic (42:47.632) Cool. I didn't know that. I'll to check it out sometime. So yeah, on the topic of Jack Dorsey, right? So I was saying old news, but it's important news and it's really not that old. It's a week old. I say it facetiously, but so for those who somehow live under a rock or breaking this news for the first time, Jack Dorsey decided to lay off 40 % of his workforce last week at block. So one from about 10,000 employees to Little under 6,000, so over 4,000 people cut from the team. You can check out the note. I don't need to rehash it. He pretty much just talked about his decision and why he decided to do it. And then James, you had to take here that I'll read out and then we can, we can riff is Block added 8 billion in market cap today on the news that they fired half their employees because of AI. Every CEO and CFO is going to be talking about this tomorrow. They all want the same thing. Wall Street just told every company in America that replacing people with AI gets rewarded. And I'm going to throw in the, in the ring as well, that I think these AI layoffs will be the next leg of financial engineering. And so I think from a, you think like, think about stock buybacks, they're illegal until the 1980s and then they blew up. And I think in 2025, there's maybe a trillion, I forget the exact numbers of stock buybacks alone. And this is going like, I so confident in it. He gave it the green light. This is the next leg of financial engineering. lay off your team, Site AI, whether it's legitimate or not. I know it is legitimate in my own work, but curious what your thoughts are. James (44:17.114) Yeah, so I think that so to give you guys a little bit more context on my background I've basically a lot of investor relations for a living for a long time in equities markets. So I'm hyper aware of what storytelling is to Make people to feel a certain way. So when I we could talk we could argue whether block was a bloated company I think they were a bloated company right like 10,000 employees for what they do is kind of nutty, right? Like I'm as we all talk. What's DocuSign doing with like 30,000 people? Who knows? Right? So, and you look at their comps, they're all much smaller firms, right? Don't forget Jack ran Twitter, right? And then Elon came in and fired half a Twitter and, know. So, I think it was bloated. I do think AI is a big piece of it, but I think a lot of this is like, you watch this happen in business cycles anyway, when tech companies hire too quickly and they have to let people go. This is pretty normal. But you're trying to, I think that it is a little bit of narrative spinning here. And so when I say they Wall Street just gave America the green light, it's not necessarily even AI actually, I mean, I bet my sort of life on it right now that AI increases productivity with less headcount, right? Or with equal headcount, way more productivity. So I believe that to be fundamentally true. But I also want to note that a lot of this is like just the signaling that all these other firms look at that and say, okay, the market rewards me telling you that I am firing people in exchange because AI is getting so good. And I think that whether or not that's why he fired the people can be debated. I'm not Jack Dorsey. It doesn't change the fact that is the signaling that comes from, right? The market's right, right? Like, you know, like I can think I'm right. The market is right. The market added $8 billion market cap after hours. Whether it disappears or not, I don't know. But do you see what I'm trying to say? And I think that's a little bit of an IR spin for them, investor relation spin. And it doesn't change the fact that like when you're a pub co, you're just telling stories. right? With angles to make people want to invest in you more often to get share price appreciation and liquidity. That's the only reason a public company does any of this. That's it. You price to go up and you want more shares to trade. More shares trading means more access to debt, means more access to blowing out paper, and it means more access to sitting inside certain ETFs. So liquidity is super important there. And then share price appreciation, I think we all understand that. So my point is, I fully believe that AI James (46:42.522) I mean, you can look at productivity growth in the US and layoffs, right? I think that no question AI is changing that fundamentally. It's what I'm building my business on today. But I think a lot of it's also about investor relations and trying, and it's very clear that the market said, okay, we're okay with this. And so I do think other CEOs and CFOs think, okay, this is a great way for us to talk about laying off people. We have to lay off anyway. That's my gut, I don't know. Michael (47:04.73) Yeah, I have a take that's kind of, I don't hold it strongly, so I'd love if you guys push back or share. I think it's in the middle of what you both described, and it's something I've been thinking about previously before this layoff from Jack was it was related to, and you may know these numbers better, but. Directionally, Amazon, whatever their year over year growth has been the past five years, their headcount has stayed static and they've been investing heavily in robotics. And the angle is less around technology and the increase of AI agents. It has more to do with inflation and their bottom lines when it comes to margin compression. Because this is the thing that I think most people fundamentally miss with inflation is that as that grows, obviously... companies have to increase their prices and revenue from a nominal perspective looks like it's growing but from a real perspective it's actually shrinking because there's less people that have spending power, purchasing power. So the only way to offset that is to get rid of the headcount. And so it always goes back to a great quote a friend of mine had shared about when shareholders or somebody at a board meeting would tap Bezos on the back of the shoulder and say, hey, great job after his quarterly. You know memo whatever came out. He's like I appreciate it But that quarter was baked in two years ago because they operate like a sovereign right like they already understand where the markets going way ahead of it and So when somebody does what they're doing it's effectively they know inflation where it's going that they and then obviously the bloat Zerp all the things that inertia of like these bloated firms golden handcuffs Google right I was there. I understood nobody worked. That that that always exists now that to your point Michael (48:59.951) from an investor relation perspective, they have AI as the narrative spin and for as much shit as we probably all want to give Sam Altman, he called that out because he probably has every reason to. It's like you guys are pointing this at AI has nothing to do with AI. then so I think that's what this is about. Yes, I don't feel as strongly or definitely don't feel as strongly as what Jackson's sharing and he's been saying it a lot. That's what I'm calling it out of. I don't necessarily think, I think maybe the next one to 10 get this pump, but I don't think this is a narrative where you get the same stock buybacks because you kill half your company. think ultimately this is just people understanding that inflation is ripping, it's going to continue to rip, and their margins are compressing. And so the only way to sustain their revenues and their multiples is ultimately to get rid of the one thing that they can get rid of. And oh, by the way, I hope AI can actually catch up to offset this. James (49:50.01) Well, so I'll tell you what's really interesting for me, from my perspective, Michael, in the work that we do is that when we started going out and like officially my partner and I only came together a few months ago. He had been doing a lot of building out of workflows for like utilities, roll ups and private equity. I had obviously been just playing around this space for a long time. But in the past few months of us actually, I mean, it's crazy how much pipeline we generated so quickly, but I came initially with this thesis when we started doing AI implementation and more like change management consulting and sort of education. That's a huge piece of this is like getting people to like, everyone hears AI, what does that mean? Right? Everyone's like, I'm gonna use, I use chat GPT. Okay. You know what mean? Like how does it actually get functioning for you? But my initial thesis was everyone wanted to reduce head count. And what I found, which makes complete and utter sense as someone who's been an entrepreneur my whole life, is the reduction of head count only does one thing for you. It actually hypothetically increases your bottom line. Right? You have less costs on the same revenue. So your bottom line goes up. But if you're a public company or a private company, as long as you want to grow, that only solves one thing for you. You actually want to prefer your bottom and top line to go up. Right? Like hypothetically you want to continue growth. It's much safer to increase top line along with bottom line, right? There's a more durability to that. So art thesis originally was this sort of Jack Dorsey block stuff. It like, we're going to go replace your talent. And everyone's like, well, I don't want to replace my talent. You know, it's like, do I just 10x my talent, right? Or how do I get more productivity from the same people? And so I think that like, I do think it becomes, I think it's probably a mix of where Michael and Jackson sit in terms of like, I do think some people are going to be able to pull a little bit of juice out of this narrative. It's just, I think it's narrative telling. And I do think when we look at like private equity, for example, a lot of like the financial engineering goes away these days. And I think it's much more like operational engineering is going to be the future of private equity. But I think that, yeah, in general, if you are really optimizing a healthy org, you're really just trying to enable the talent that you have much more than you're trying to fire the talent that you, you know, and replace them, if that makes sense. Michael (52:04.312) It does. mean, I'll give you the hottest take is I think all of what we're describing is all for not. Jackson Mikalic (52:04.848) you Michael (52:08.87) like it's going to be irrelevant in the sense that it'll be people like you that start the net new business that goes and just out competes them because like there was an anecdote I don't know how true it is but it was surfacing on Twitter where at a principal credit to her she basically got offered a bonus like to stay her team had gotten fired at at square block and she was referencing to your point like they're trying to like push all this stuff down people's throat with AI but like you can't force somebody to use AI in the same way you can't force somebody to adopt Bitcoin. There's an built into that. so, I mean, we have a whole where we have the only Bitcoin denominated investment arm. We have a venture arm on the side of this based on this thesis that, because I was a product of it, I had worked at large companies and realized that liquidity and dollars were the ultimate end of your business because it killed all the strategy. And when entrepreneurs start to hold a better form of money, those golden handcuffs, those shackles, metaphorically get broken. And then you can go run those businesses back with the right first principles of understanding, A, I'm holding a better form of money, B, I'm trying to reduce that because I'm trying to retain more of that form of money because it's going to grow in the future. once you layer on AI with that, those people will run circles around all the other people. Now, obviously in the middle term, there's going be a lot of opportunity. That's a hot thing right now in PE and VC, and like, VC's turn into PE to go do it. But like, being an entrepreneur, you know that if you get the right five people to go compete with 50 or 500 people that all have that view, they'll run circles on a long enough time horizon because they're just going to come to the most efficient outcomes. And that's where we end up in a better, like, less bloated world. And that's the end state we're banking on. James (53:48.73) I don't think that's crazy. I think, I don't think it's so hot take my... I think, I think a lot of work my, my, so this kind of touches on this idea like optimists, know, pessimists on smart optimists get rich, right? And I think that sort of is pretty true overall. Like I've had to adopt this sort of optimism for the future. It does not change the fact that I believe that even in what you just described, Michael, like a lot of people go through like pretty horrific Michael (53:51.396) I hope it's not crazy, I got money riding on it, but James (54:18.842) transition, right? Like even though all those people from block, right? Like so I've actually had to like come to graphs, and I wonder if you guys feel this way, digging through the of Bitcoin specifically, is that like, I'm trying to perpetuate a better future that I think is probably a win for me in humanity. That's great. The reality is that through that process, I will inevitably destroy people's lives, right? And I wonder how... how you feel about that thinking back to the lens of even Bitcoin as well. Michael (54:49.222) I- I have a strong view there. I think it goes back to what you said on consulting and theory or reality. It's this idea of energy's neither created nor destroyed in the sense that in a small vacuum in a Western culture, yes, some people feel the pain, but in a global sense, that gets diffused to other people with opportunities. Because effectively, anybody be able to store their wealth in a form of money that can be debased and then has access to internet via Starlink and then also these AI tools and these models that were run locally, you're just gonna give more opportunity across the spectrum. So we lived in this privileged world the past 30 to 50 years, and while it'll hurt here, from a totality perspective, you will have more robustness, enrichment, and so that's the view I have. James (55:39.546) I think it's fair. Yeah, I think I'm... I feel like sometimes the way I view it is like I'm willing to be a martyr for those that I love, but like I am very self-serving. I view my view on the world as like that everyone, whether they recognize it or not, is really just self-serving. It's not necessarily true or right or wrong. But so for me, it's like... Michael (55:42.96) I've only thought a little bit about this stuff, not too much. James (56:08.994) I'm down to enrich those that I love. I'm much more, I'm gonna sound like a monster when I say this, like I'm much more interested in that, like even the three of you on this chat with me, making sure that all of us do fine than me worrying about people 100 years out that live on the other side of the planet. I know that sounds like monstrous, but it's sort of. Michael (56:26.062) No, it doesn't. I think what you said earlier, I wanted, I'm glad we're coming back to it, is you were referencing, I'm a realist or pragmatist versus a Bitcoiner. And I think the reality is that's what that used to mean. Like not getting metaphysical or whatever, but like the notion of the Bitcoin blockchain, it's like the ultimate form of truth, right? You can't take somebody's money unless they want to give it to you. And it's just a form of check and balance on any system. is the point of like the real version of when you think of the term Bitcoiners is truth seeking, it's realism and independent. If like something ends up better, you'll just go to that better form of money. And so what we're talking about here and what we're trying to do is come to this session of what's the closest angle to the truth. So where my angle is, is less about anything or anyone. just like, how does this play out? Because that's just embedded in certain individuals is like, how do you get to the truth independent if this works for me or not? Because you can effectively if you have that view, you can protect yourself. So I reference like the other people on the other planet side of the earth. It's not that I care or don't care about them It's just the reality of like when you democratize access and we see this already you just ultimately you The free market will go compete for those services that historically had been for only people in Silicon Valley And so that's like the other angle of you know, you know, talked about stable coins and people don't realize it's this analogy It's not mine. I think Nick Carter coined it of like Starlink is to James (57:40.026) Sure. Michael (57:51.448) You know fiber off or like fiber optic or copper like coax when you think about telco in the same way that Starlink similar to like stable coins and you just open up the axis in the plane of the level of the field where dollar movement changes so of course that's gonna naturally have a huge adoption way where people I think get used to the Just friction that exists in banking and ACH and writing a check that their minds can't even go that that whole like plane We're on a different dimension now once you can move dollars digitally James (58:23.098) It's very interesting because I am, I mean, quite clearly a Bitcoiner. It touches on, when you talk about sort of that freedom of moving of money, the irony is that I do genuinely, and again, maybe this is not the podcast to say it on, but I do genuinely believe that sometimes intermediaries are hyper important. I don't know if anyone's ever had their credit card stolen. I have. You know, and $55,000, I had $55,000 run up on AmEx in two days over Christmas. And it was pretty great to get that money back a day later. You know what I mean? Like, you know, candidly. that was like, nobody wants the intermediary till someone steals your money. You know what I mean? Like, and then all of a sudden, intermediary is pretty important. And so that just touches a little bit on, so you're talking about like the freedom of movement and what it opens up. it's like, I didn't realize this till I said it earlier on and you brought it back up, Michael, but like, I'm a Bitcoiner because I'm a pragmatist, right? If that makes sense, right? Like it is, I do believe it is the best option, right? But it's not, I'm a pragmatist before I'm a Bitcoiner, if that makes sense, right? Like it's. Michael (59:34.851) Yeah, it's the rational take. And to your other point, there's zero chance if Bitcoin succeeds, we won't have intermediaries. There's zero chance. You have to coordinate economic activity and flourish. It's a very bearish, doomerish take to say we will not meet intermediaries. mean, our whole business relies on that. But yeah. James (59:43.982) Well, but... James (59:55.002) No, but I think, you know, just interesting to think about the different subsections of Bitcoiners. Do you see what saying? there is, because there really are completely conflicting, you know, there's a bunch of us that all believe in something, right? Michael (01:00:08.911) But I think those are ideologues, not Bitcoiners, because the ultimate form of Bitcoin, like we said, is coming down to the truth and reality of like, if this is gonna play out, it's gonna play out in that fashion versus, that's like the gold bug, right? There's a difference. Like Larry Lepard's a great example. He's a good friend, if you're familiar with. He was a gold bug forever. And then he found out about Bitcoin and he's been one of the biggest evangelists in like helping folks from the gold side. But those people, it's the same concept, like people on Bitcoin side hating gold and people on gold side hating Bitcoin. like they're basically telling you that they don't actually care about selling money or trying to get it. They just have their own like ideological and personality beliefs tied to something versus just understanding how the market's going to allow it to win and flourish. James (01:00:52.239) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:00:52.325) The other component to that as well is the ideological kind of bury your head in the sand. No intermediaries, no counterparties, everything self-sovereign. There's only so many people out in the world that actually would want to participate in something like that. And they already have for the most part. And so if that is where you try to pigeonhole people into having to accept a future like that, then what ends up happening is we get the exact opposite of that, right? Like instead of, instead of that future, we just get the hyper-financialized version of Bitcoin because ETFs are a click of a button because very few people actually want to manage all their wealth on their person and have to deal with not being able to get their Amex refunded for 55k in two days, right? So like there's, I think part of being a pragmatist in this industry as well is recognizing that, look, there's no reason why someone shouldn't and cannot hold all of their wealth and Bitcoin on their person or memorize their seed phrase, but there's also needs to be a recognition that James (01:01:32.28) Okay. Jackson Mikalic (01:01:49.585) 99 % of people do not want to do that. And they're going to opt for Wall Street products before they had ever opt for the self-sovereign individual future of Bitcoin. And so that's why as a business, I just feel strongly about building solutions that sit in between the middle of those two things where you're not like getting wrapped up in some crazy counterparty risk on Wall Street, but you're also not making you, your wife, your family have to be like, ready for Mad Max tomorrow with all of your Bitcoin stored in your head, right? Like there's got to be a middle ground for most people. Michael (01:02:22.265) Well, I think we're being kind to this conversation because I want to call out how preposterous what we're describing is imagine you told somebody James in your circle that you met with dinner last night put 99 or 100 % of your wealth in a duffel bag with all your dollars and put it your fucking house or put all the gold take all your gold out of your Swiss vault and put it in your house. It will be okay. I promise it would be insane. But that's what we do here and that's what we expect and then the other point that you made early is like where the majority of money that's going to move the needle in Bitcoin has no, they will never want to manage it. They will never allow because the idea is it doesn't matter if you have a Citadel or you're a sovereign, a bigger sovereign will go attack it. Imagine if Iran actually had one third of all the BTC, how long it would be safe in Iran. That's a sovereign with nukes or theoretical nukes. You know what saying? It's just not well thought out the long term that it's not a world anybody wants to live in. Even the hardest core person, because that person's going to have family, they're going have kids, they're going have generational wealth. There's solutions that have to exist. So anyway. James (01:03:25.53) I mean, to go to go that goes into if we talk, I mean, I touch on something very briefly earlier that I'd be interested to hear your guys thoughts on. But I think, you know, everyone's right now, you know, the the big fear institution right now. And I think I think it makes sense, although I think it's solved is quantum. Right. But this goes back to the thing like, dude, if quantum like, let's be real. If you're hacking, you know, if you're stealing the Bitcoin, you're definitely stealing my dollars. And to be real with you. Michael (01:03:38.277) you James (01:03:55.226) your Bitcoin's worthless, your goal, like you're in a world where like anything is completely hackable and destroyed. Like to this point, this Mad Max ridiculous future. Like I don't want your fucking Bitcoin. Excuse my language. I don't want any of it. Right. Like, like get do you have a knife? Do you you mean you have some water? You know what I mean? Like Michael (01:04:12.932) You're right. You're absolutely right. It doesn't get talked about enough because the two people on the fringes that are expounding, which you're describing, don't want to hear that. So you have the people, because Bitcoin is just an insane proposition in itself, that you're gonna re-change the money. So everyone tries to anchor to something that won't make it work, and that's quantum on that side. And then you have the hardcore people that have some investment into trying to... get that bogeyman out there. So that's the other side. And then in the middle is just the rational take that either A, there's a bigger problem. But the other one that's even more nuanced is that from game theory, if like quantum, still theoretical, but if it happened, you're going to have a lot of smoke alarms that go off because weird things will start happening in the economy. And the counter to that would be like, no, because the game theory says that you keep it secret till you go attack a big bounty, but that's not how people would interact because you don't know if the other person has it before them. So you'd start seeing things, weird things just start happening and you would know. And then that's how you would know to accelerate it. And nobody talks about like all of the nuance built into that. But I'm glad you brought it up because that's something very often people bring up it's like man Bitcoin still only like a trillion and a half right now you imagine how many things that are more highly targeted or coveted that somebody would want to attack and then our whole world's like gone to shit at that point and nobody cares about Bitcoin James (01:05:28.762) Yeah! James (01:05:35.028) Dude, almost everything we've spoken about today for an hour and half is completely irrelevant in that scenario. Forget Bitcoin as one of the many, many pieces, right? But the world as we know it, you know what I mean? Becomes just a completely different place. You end up in that weird Mad Max future. And I guess, I don't know, should I put some oil drums in my... You know what I mean? Michael (01:05:57.551) I think that's why gold isn't a bad play for a percentage of somebody's portfolio, especially if they have a large amount. It's the one recognizable thing that's durable and you can drop it to the bottom of the ocean or new can go up. You have your gold, it's not going anywhere. So it's not insane for people to want to hold gold. James (01:06:15.002) I don't always have conversations with Bitcoiners like this, you guys. This is a very... It's true. It's a very pragmatic sort of view, not to keep hammering that word, but on this sector. And I think you find, as to tell you that story of how I sort of ended up at Bitcoin Commons, like hanging out Bitcoin Commons versus hanging out with a bunch of the Bitwise guys. It's just a different... You know what saying? Jackson Mikalic (01:06:15.663) Welcome. Michael (01:06:37.89) We're in the middle, James. There's a reason I was born in the Commons, but the reason I wasn't there. I'll be there for it. There's a takeover coming up in March. I've always been on the fringes and growing up. It's always like, look, just come to the independent thought. And there was a lot of group thinking realization, because my background was in large tech, and realizing, shit, people like James aren't at these companies. That's just a reality. That the best people that are going to build the best Bitcoin companies don't even know what we're talking about yet. and it's not until they come in is when we see the real adoption. And that's the exciting part. And that's kind of one of my main, you have like five heuristics from why we didn't ever got a proper bull market. And it's because there wasn't a bunch of people like you coming in, because as the price goes up, that's the sign of ultimate adoption where the people building Stripe, building OpenAI, building stable coins will come to the conclusion, shit, this is the end state. Now I'm gonna go take all those learnings and build world-class things that doesn't exist yet. We're hoping to be there, but that doesn't exist on a like large enough time. That's why this conversation is a little bit different. James (01:07:39.194) Well, I think we've what we've all seen is that like hyperscalers and AI have sucked the air out of the room of every almost all capital markets conversations that have happened in the past 12 months. And I think they will continue to do so for the next 12 months. think it'll be really interesting to see when OpenAI I made a joke tweet about this the other day, Jackson. But it's like, thank you so much, Elon and Sam Altman for allowing me access to invest in your company. It's so kind of you. You know what mean? To give me access to buy some shares from you. It's not altruism. I know a lot about public markets and giving access to a bunch of retail mom and pop investors is not from the kindness of their souls. It is like, let's get some liquidity on this because the more sophisticated money is tired of giving us money at these valuations. Jackson Mikalic (01:08:30.491) Well, James, we have to democratize private asset markets immediately because someone needs to buy all those bags, you know, like there's such a, there's such a big push for that now is like, how do we get, how do we get retail investors invested into private markets? Michael (01:08:30.765) I don't know, Jake. Michael (01:08:35.704) Wait, I, in a... James (01:08:36.378) Hahaha James (01:08:43.322) They're going to have to, by the way, when they IPO these companies, the float, they're going to have to do tiny bits of float because retail doesn't have enough money to buy up traditional IPO float. They don't, right? We're talking about $1.5 trillion IPOs, normally putting like an extra 10 % in the float. It's not $150 billion of retail coming in to buy that day, right? And across a few of these, IPOs, half a trillion dollars. They're going to IPO like 2%, 3 % of these companies. because there's just not enough money to go to go support what's going to happen. Now, maybe SpaceX is undervalued. I don't know. I'm not here to argue that at all. I just think that like what my point to pull into the Bitcoin versus AI is that I realized that like I'm a Bitcoiner. This is for a long time I'm a Bitcoiner. But the truth is that like when it comes to capital markets conversations, is AI has sucked whether it's Bitcoin, real estate doesn't matter. AI has sucked a lot of the air out of the room of those conversations. In the past 12 months and I think it probably does for the next 12 months But to Michael's point maybe when that's done, right? We do get like a I mean, that's a whole longer chat But I do think we are overdue for a real bull market in Bitcoin But it has to do with to go back to that invisible hand getting what they want I call it the machine the machine gets what it wants the machine has decided the AI is What it wants right this scene is shy that IPOs are what they want, right? That will also go away again and it will you know, this it will go the money will have to travel somewhere else just like energy money being energy. It doesn't dissipate it goes somewhere else. Right. And so I think that we're going to get I'm excited for the next bull market in Bitcoin. I think partially it's because candidly, people the value the opportunity of Bitcoin hasn't fully been realized yet. But the opportunity AI has been realized right now. And all that money will have to go somewhere. People are going to pull their dollars out, right, as they do IPOs and stuff. And where's that money going to go? I think we're going to see a lot of it flow back into Bitcoin. That's my hope. Michael (01:10:49.185) Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, we talked about this at the end of last year's recap. I think what the AI boom we see, you're going to see similar in Bitcoin and digital assets like that kind of fervor in that group think or machine, whether it's the end of this year or next year. There's a lot without going deep with this probably another episode but like that machine you're talking about Happen in 21 as that vintage was coming down and liquidity or 22 really and there needed to be a sponge for a lot of these dollars and to your point it's like Bitcoin nobody likes to talk about manipulation, but they they or You know price Having it static or pegged like they did it for gold forever and you can feel how it's inorganic price movement And there's a lot of like plumbing getting turned on. but the one thing I did want to go back to was you referenced You know yours I know you were saying it facetiously about the you know getting access to Tesla or SpaceX and open AI, but I wasn't sure if I could Appreciate it because I heard you earlier talking about the neural ink and the brain chip so I wasn't sure if you were excited about you know, Sam Altman and the Orb coin and that was something you were thinking about adopting as part of your bags for for identifying James (01:12:07.77) I mean, if I could, so probably biggest financial, I tweeted this the other day, two biggest financial mistakes in my life. I got a DM from a 17 year old three years ago, two years ago, who was like, hey, I'm working on this calorie tracking app. I'd love to do a rev share with you if you can help me monetize it. Well, it became Cal AI. They're doing $50 million in AR, just had an exit on it two days ago. That was one of my many lost DMs I found later on. The other was I turned down a friends and family open AI around a few years back at a $30 million post. And that was, I just didn't see, I'm an idiot. I didn't see it, right? And I probably should have done an SPV and raised a few million into it and then just taken carry on my little SPV of it. And I would have made, actually multi-generational, I would have made generational wealth on that one. I would have found liquidity this year. But without infuriating our overlords, if I could like T1000, John Connor, you know, go back in time and sort of stop with the genie that's come out of the bottle. I might. I'm not really super positive on some of the stuff Sam Altman does. I'm not a huge, huge Sam Altman fan. Sam Altman, you're listening to this, I love everything you do and would happily work together any day. Please hit me up on Twitter. But I'm like super bullish on... I mean, like I think I'm not like an Elon fan boy, but I do like Elon. I do think like what he's doing is... Brian Cubellis (01:13:22.672) you James (01:13:34.106) you know, is like pretty amazing and pretty crazy. But I don't know if like. Going back to the pragmatism side of it, like I don't mind aligning myself with people that are self-serving as long as it also serves me. Does it make sense? But I don't know if it's like altruism, if that makes sense. You know what mean? I don't know if these people are really out here. I'm definitely I'm not interested in WorldCoin. You know what mean? Like that's definitely not where I don't hold some giant WorldCoin bags, but. Michael (01:14:03.254) So are you getting the brain chip? James (01:14:05.146) I wouldn't say, so when it comes to like a Bitcoin, did you Jackson? Michael (01:14:09.43) Jackson signed up already, he's ready. Like Jackson's, he has his appointment, he has his appointment booked. I mean, but I think he, Jackson Mikalic (01:14:12.716) No, no, no, no, no, no. He's kidding. No, that's like, that's where I think I draw the line. So like I'm a, I'm a useful person right now for I'm useful until like all of my peers get the brain chip. And then I think, I think I'm toast at that point. Like if, if I can't compete, if everyone has, has a brain chip, but I don't know if I want that, it doesn't seem that appealing to me. Michael (01:14:19.49) You James (01:14:19.778) dude, throw me the local LLM, I'm in, I'm in. James (01:14:29.37) Here's my thought on it all. I think I'm not interested. You guys were probably all with Bitcoin better being settlers. I'm good. Half of could die. It's fine. I'm much more or like, sorry, I'm not really an explorer, more of like a settler. Does that make sense? I'm not like kudos to Lewis and Clark. You what mean? Like you want to you crossed across America with a 15 year old girl who's like showed you how to get to the Pacific Ocean. Like kudos. That ain't me. I would not have been the first one on the ship to the new world. That's for sure. So what I think I'm decent at in the pattern recognition in my brain subconsciously is like being more like early growth stage, early adopter. Like that's how I like, that's why like, but I'm not the Mart. I'm not like willing to die on the exploration phase of that. So to tie that into the, to the chip, Michael, like I'm probably not going to be one of the first 10,000 people to get one, but like I, I do believe we are cyborgs, right? Like people, you use a pacemaker, you use cochlear implants, like for sure. I'm down conceptually with the idea of like making me a superhuman. For sure. Let's go. I'm ready. Sorry, Jackson. You're getting left behind, bro. Michael (01:15:39.863) Yeah, no, I can see that angle where we end up in a world where this is crazy to say, but like you basically end up as the Amish or not in the sense of like if you, no, know, like if you don't get it, because to your point, we're already kind of there between who's using Claude, who's using a phone and the way that they're actually being utilized for max leverage. There was a take somebody shared with me and it sounds crazy, but it was good of like. Jackson Mikalic (01:15:41.55) I'm, I'm cooked. James (01:15:51.79) Yeah, sure. Michael (01:16:06.73) maybe Elon already has this brain chip and has had it and he has the best models ever because how do you go five for five or whatever he's at in doing it unless you're just operating on a different plane? And so that's gonna be the status if like you wanna operate, you do it, but then obviously that's probably the end of all of us, so. James (01:16:23.322) Have you heard the theory that Renaissance has had LLMs for years and that's how they've been just like printing money in the market is like that they just, they were just early. You know what I mean? They never let anyone know. And like that was their, that was their edge, you know? So I'm down with Elon. I mean, Elon's definitely either an alien or has, you know, he's different. That's for sure. That's for sure. Michael (01:16:27.936) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:45.285) Yeah, I think my goal and I know you got to wrap James so I'll keep it short. My goal is I need to amass enough wealth so that I can choose to live like the Amish before I'm forced to get the brain chip and have the CBDC and the social credit score. So I don't know how long that window is. So we got some work to do and that's why that's why I am a cyborg. Like I don't know if if Claude was taken away from me for a week, I would be cooked. James (01:16:55.738) You Michael (01:17:10.102) I guess theoretically you can get the brain chip that like is hosted locally and then maybe you can put it in it you can put it James (01:17:10.307) Jackson. James (01:17:14.274) Yeah, yeah, don't worry. don't have to you don't have to be plugged in. Jackson Mikalic (01:17:16.166) Michael's conceding already. He's like, yeah, this is not a bad idea. James (01:17:19.898) So here's what I view it Jackson and hopefully you'll be on the same train as me. I think that in my hard work in the 37 years of life, I've managed to become the richest of the poor. My goal is to become the poorest of the rich in the next five, right? That's sort of the next, that's the next bet. I'm not reaching that Larry Ellison, you know, but to that point being able to live like the Amish out of choice, you know, that's, I think you got to become the poorest of the rich, you know? And so that's the plan. Jackson Mikalic (01:17:47.642) I love it James. Well it was fun man. Where do you want people to find you? We didn't even get to talk about the work you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Michael (01:17:53.89) Where are you based now, James? In New York? Okay. James (01:17:55.874) I'm in LA right now. I'll be in Miami next week and then New York, but I'm in LA most of the time. Southern California. I feel bad for Brian because I'm literally not trying to stay in Manhattan right now. That is for sure. But I'm from New York. I'm from Manhattan. So don't mind making fun of it. But yeah, find me. I'm like Jameson or JamesonCamp. JamesonCamp on Twitter, on X. Michael (01:18:02.466) Nice. James (01:18:21.11) And then if you want help with consulting and implementation AI, it's apfx.ai or my personal newsletter is james.camp. Think god.camp is an extension that exists because I made it work for me. Michael (01:18:33.442) Or just DM him because after those two misses, he's never gonna not see your DM. So as long as it's compelling, if it's a compelling DM, he's gonna see it. Now if he responds, yeah. James (01:18:37.85) For sure. Well, the open AI one was not a missed DM. That was a me being like, nah, 30 million posts sounds crazy. You guys are out of your minds. Lesson learned. Well, I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Jackson Mikalic (01:18:38.47) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:18:52.978) Cal AI. Thanks, James. It's a pleasure, man. Thank you. Brian Cubellis (01:18:54.737) Thanks James. Michael (01:18:55.275) Yeah, thanks James.