OpenClaw Takeover & the Agentic AI Revolution

This kind of sets up what I've always thought like everyone always talks about million dollars Bitcoin or multiple millions of dollars Bitcoin and that the world would look very crazy there and they think like whether it was hyperinflation or whatever and I I don't necessarily think it looks like that. I think it looks like what is probably described here and what we see around uh aentic AI and just like the deep uh deep fakes and craziness we see on uh not knowing what's real or not like the just aperture and for what can exist and how fast things are moving that speed will be like a backdrop to a Bitcoin world where the price is a million dollars because if you think about it in a world that is very straightforward it's very hard to wrap your head around a digital bare asset holding millions of dollars of real world value. But in the world that he's describing here, along with everything we talked on this pod, it would make complete sense that you'd also have an asset worth a million dollars um sitting there. >> It [music] all comes down to computers communicating. >> The information superighway [music] can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. [music] >> Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is [music] it still rat poison? >> Probably rat poison squared. >> We need to get into the world of okay, this is actually foundational technology. >> What the internet [music] of money does is it creates a single network which can do [music] a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The internet is [music] going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a [music] reliable ecash. All righty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, February 16th, 10:32 a.m. Happy President's Day to those who celebrate. We've got a big show, boys. A lot is uh a lot's happened over the past seven days since we since we last recorded. This is our first real ninja launch. We usually riff and uh for a sec and get a little prepped. I'm so jacked. This is truly like the best time to be alive. Uh hands down. World's chaotic, but it hit me right before recording like this is like Bitcoin AI. And it's funny they're going to, you know, converge, but it's like Bitcoin back when it's the the only other feeling I've ever gotten where it's like the more you lean into it, the more you can not only control your destiny, but really be a leader in the world. When I looked back at Bitcoin in 17, I was like, "Holy shit." Like, if I actually, you know, embrace this and go deep. Uh, it's going to compound ahead of everyone else. And it's just the same time right now. It's It's crazy stuff. Yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic because I do think, you know, the three of us and people in our circles very much are tuned into a lot of this stuff and like I would say the vast majority of like humans, normie people are completely missing a lot of this and so you simultaneously feel like you're always behind if you're like tracking this stuff. But the reality is if is if you have any sort of inclination towards using these tools, learning about them, you are miles ahead of the average person who's not this isn't even on their radar. Um, so lots to get into. I think the natural place to start uh is the quasi acquisition I guess of uh OpenClaw by Open AAI. And this is interesting for a number of reasons. Um but up on the screen is uh Sam Alman's tweet about it. Um so Peter Steinberger who built uh OpenClaw originally Claudebot and then you know Anthropic and Claude kind of came after him to because Claudebot was a little too close to uh to Claude. It was using Claude on the back end primarily. Um but because of that he changed the name of it uh and now OpenAI sort of aqua hired him um and is claiming to remain uh keep openclaw open source. Um but there's a few different ways to look at this because on one hand you could look at this as a massive win for open source. Uh this guy built this thing out in the open uh fully open source. It has gotten incredible traction in terms of people using it, developers building on it. But then then at the other hand uh you have OpenAI hire him uh put OpenClaw in a foundation claiming it'll still be open source but as we know OpenAI has a um sort of a nefarious history of of claiming things are going to remain open and then they're not. Um few different direction we could take this but uh curious initial thoughts on this. Well, so I think taking a step back, I think um a lot of people probably there's interesting overlap with AI and what's happening. Then you take it at the bleeding edges of this open claw and agentic payment and AI that overlap with crypto and Bitcoin Twitter. So there's naturally I think uh you know interesters some individuals have probably most listeners have heard of something about open call but I think most folks to your point that don't follow any of this have no idea. But then even the majority of people hear about it but they have no idea like what is it? And so I'll just give a quick recap. I think the the main premise to understand is that uh you effectively have this like arbitrary agnostic source which is open claw open source that you're giving root access to whatever uh platform or device that you're uh installing it. And this is why you should never really install it on anything with sensitive material or on your main you know daily drivers. So that's where you see the the buzz around Mac minis because of the uh Mac's in a really interesting spot too with a unified platform with RAM and memory which is what gives it just a lot easier to out of the box have running. Um but long story short, you have this open source platform that can now start and uh effectively integrate and integrate with pooling um via APIs, whatever foundation models, frontier models you're using, but then ultimately take that and go spin up whatever you effectively need, whether it's emails, whether it's integrations across other APIs, but there's a notion of you have this platform, but you als also have um the thing that most people don't call out is uh memory that is stored based on your conversations and its learnings because these are two big pieces. I will say that if you're on the bleeding edges of using open cloud, you've still found some value or can do something productive. What I'm starting to learn is for most individuals it's even way too much that to start now if you're even interested in any of this is really just downloading uh Claude and Claude co-work because um it's my understanding from an enterprise perspective they've been very deliberate and intentional with security and how they access anything on your desktop. Now you're still trusting a third party but it's a little bit more closed end in what it can do. um but also gives you about as amount enough of functionality in your daily life and how it's has enough memory to store what you're trying to work on and make you insanely productive. It can get you to 80 to 90% of the way there without freaking yourself out uh and having to go download all these tutorials and mess something up because you have to really set your permissions right. Um more on that, but I think just from a productive perspective, if you want to play with this stuff, you can get 80% of the way there with, you know, Claude and then if you really want to move the needle. Now, um, to Brian's point, super fascinating situation that played out for a number of reasons. One is this could we don't know the the acquisition price would be the first, you know, uh, billion dollar, you know, company that was built something itself. Also, um it's it's a little it's a little concerning, you know, when I think about Open AI and all the different things that have happened with um Sam Alman and you know, you can go back to the Must stuff and Sam Alman all the way to just, you know, people being suicided uh and where he's played into that or not and that firm. What's concerning is OpenAI, they made this acquisition. They're more than likely going to build it into the platform in some way, whether it's via downloadable application or a plugin. And it also came out over the weekend that Kimmy uh 2.0, which is the open source solution coming out of China, also put uh their version of, you know, agentic capabilities into the browser. And obviously, I would or I would encourage to do your research. Don't do that. But where it's concerning is because if open AI is effectively going to be the default as Brian was saying, I think most people that even hear about AI are going back to uh it's like the AOL of AI is going to be like open AI. It's a different call out, but it's the realization that if you haven't used this stuff in a while, I was playing around with some uh onrem uh open source models and because they can run via the RAM and it's crazy what like the old stuff could do versus claude. Like it's just night in day on the level of context. So point being is anybody there just I would encourage you to go check out the latest frontier models. But independent of that, most people are going to go to OpenAI. they're gonna download this thing and uh open g have rude access to basically everything that you have on your computer. Uh I was pinging a good friend the other day expla and telling us he's like well this is kind of what Microsoft already does um via you know uh Microsoft and and their um operating system. So anyway, I'll pause there because that was just like initial thoughts. There's obviously a lot of other implications and where this goes with Agentic, but I do think it's a it's a fascinating dynamic and I and I question um was this always baked into what was going to happen because it's also happened insanely fast and uh it would make sense to me because OpenAI has this play and they're effectively going to have everyone's data because most people are not going to go on the latest models. They're not going to go and buy specialized hardware. They're going to go plug in Google O to OpenAI and just give access to everything. I think uh all that is very well said and I think that what they're actually going for too is the data is being is changed from not just your and I's data but also the agents data too and so they're I'm sure that they're going to incorporate this somehow but ultimately um they really want to in my opinion be on the bleeding edges of how are the agents that act autonomously going out and interacting with different interfaces because taking a step back as these models get better and better in all of these open source tools. There will inevitably be not just essentially B2B and B TOC type uh businesses anymore, but there are increasingly going to be agent to agent and business to agent um which I think are probably going to be some of the largest industries in the world and in largest companies within a few years. I think that what the play really is is trying to build on and and understand how to optimize the usage of agents to go out and autonomously complete tasks on behalf of whatever employees, business people or or uh just ending consumers on the other side. Um and ultimately it's it's interesting to see that all of the work or not all of the workflows but a lot of them are going to need to be optimized not just for human interactions in in businesses but I do think that that's what a lot of the uh benefits of openclaw has been is just the ability to iterate extremely quickly on uh the open source tools. Um, and ultimately as the agents continue to go out and do commerce and and work on behalf of people, I do think that um, while you and and I and all these people who haven't necessarily use these tools yet, they need like a perfect interface for people who are a little less technical, um, these agents will be able to just understand natively how to interact with um, these tools in the best ways of possible in a technical manner. And so thus um essentially they're going to be able to iterate on these open source models and uh understand the data a little bit better on that fund. Um it's just a fascinating time. >> Yeah. One thing I would really encourage anybody listening is to go and and play with this stuff. Um it really truly I was just thinking about it. It reminds me of early Bitcoin when you know we used to call it um I don't even remember. It's funny because we're all nerds like you know didn't have families and you were maybe married or engaged and so you could get a Saturday morning and and I forgot what it was called but like you know where you just play around with hardware devices and you're wiping stuff you're check you're check you're checking new um hardware devices you're checking new uh open source tools you're messing around with lightning and point being is a lot of that serves as a foundation to Liam's point like a lot of people may never care about this but if you remotely care about your data, your future technical life, sovereignty. It's not to say you have to go build uh a lot of this stuff, but it influenced a lot of people's first principles understanding of like risk and security because when you understand severing the keys and when you think about how most people don't have large percentages of their wealth in Bitcoin, it feels risky. But when you start to like play with this, download seed phrases, wipe them, back them up, understand multi-IG, understand config files, it embeds a level of confidence from an allocation perspective or like what you're going to do with your career, how you think about finance in the same way that when you play with these tools, it's super clunky and you have to just generally be curious because I remember like you're setting up multisig for the first time. It's annoying. You have all these different things that aren't working. It's the same thing here and I get annoyed because I'm like, man, am I really being productive? but it serves as this like base layer for a conversation or context into what's coming, how to think about it, how to manage your data that I don't think most people are going to have and then it just compounds. Um, so that's just something to call out as far as just utilization and where this all goes. >> Yeah, very good point. just there is there's some interesting parallels uh between you know basically Bitcoin and and all this AI stuff in terms of uh DIY side of things uh fully open source that kind of thing and then reliant on various dependencies to help you uh with those things. So, I think we're seeing um very similar dynamics uh in this world. But I want to go back to something you said just around the speed of uh all of this stuff that's happening like it was, you know, just back in January that sort of uh Claude and Anthropic was just all over your timeline like just completely swamping your timeline. Everyone's excited about it. Um, and this this tweet I have up here is like telling the story of of basically anthropic fumbling the bag on uh Claudebot in a sense where uh back in January again all the hype was around uh Claude Code. Um and then uh Anthropics legal team sends a cease and desist over Claudebot sounding too familiar to Claude. uh Steinberg Berger who's the founder of it um basically uh changes the name uh and then in February he you know we have this announcement that he's joining open AAI and um they've sort of aquaired uh the tech to some extent although again claiming it'll remain open source um but this is just fascinating in my mind because again if you're in if you're following this stuff like it is whipsawing back and forth so quickly in terms of everyone was excited about cla code now Everyone's saying codec might be better than cloud code and it's just going back and forth and it really is this war of like not only uh the tech but also the talent, right? Like this is a this is an acquisition of talent to to some extent. Um go ahead Mike. No, no. I was just going to say um yeah, I mean I think like take this with a grain of salt because it's the same thing with when people look at Apple and Apple looks like they're playing like 4D chess when it when you look at how they think about building um hardware and where this is all going because to Brian's point like here you're reading this and the way I read it the the way I think about it is like this isn't even true. Um Claude has a like upper level um already enough like uh iterations on cloud co-work cla code anything on the desktop and they're just taking a more deliberate approach to anything Aentic related specifically from enterprises versus this other route and it it's a it's not exactly apples apples but it's the notion that Apple wasn't playing a uh playing a game here they were playing for what Brian's alluding to is these frontier models as they go further out their data size like from a pure normie perspective uh like us we will never be able to run a frontier model most even businesses won't because when you think about the amount of rack space and power and compute needed but what's happening is that as those frontier models get better the legacy call it 12 to 24 months lagging um you're able to basically um I forget the term but you can like start to compartmentalize where I never forget that word right the first time where you uh can find the data and run the models. And so ultimately what it means is you can run these models on smaller amounts of RAM versus what it historically took 12 or 24 months prior. So while you have the models getting faster and better on the frontier side, the older models are getting more um effectively like distilled so you can run on consumerbased hardware and that's where you see Mac Studios coming and Mac Studios are starting to increase the amount of chips and then the the RAM the the VRAM is the main thing. So like um this new I was doing research I was thinking about what to buy and it's coming out this year. There's I believe M5 maxes on the studios, but then also on the computers where you're going to get anywhere between uh what historically be like 8 to 16 gigs on a MacBook are going to be like now 64 to 128 to like you know even above and then on the studios you're going to get all the way up to almost a terabyte and that's how you right now I think it'll be like 528 max but where you'll start to be able to run a lot of this. Why I'm bringing this up is because when you start thinking about modes and data where I think we all agree a lot of this uh proprietary and alpha is going to exist is based on the prompts and then really the knowledge within an organization and as people start realizing that because you're effectively taking those prompts you're taking that data and you're using it to train these models and so it's going to make more and more sense to start hosting these things on prem because we went away from this notion of on-rem where you have AWS and mic Microsoft Azure and Google and as the market starts to recognize this and it's going to be really like chaotic because you have these legacy firms that all they know is outsourcing their uh server rack space but now if you want to have a mode if you don't want to be training somebody else's data with your proprietary information it starts to pull away and even from an individual perspective as you start to think about how do you manage your life how do you manage uh because there's things around the terms of service of these I believe um a like you're giving all to train, but also you're you're liable for anything in a court of law that you're putting into these uh models. And so it's just a fascinating time to start thinking about what you're going to be doing with your data, how you're going to protect yourself in a digital world. And then also from a sovereignty perspective, when I think about food, you know, firearms, BTC, like the notion of hardware, you're going to want to run this stuff because you can see a bifurcation. like we truly are going to see this bifurcation between um being able to manage your data, being able to uh run these models, being able to do things that you want in a propri in a uh proprietary private way, but then also the the thing is >> check out earlyers.com for all the latest in Bitcoin investment research. Now, back to the show. >> More mature than ever. It's like this stuff doesn't make somebody that was average, a little bit above average. Uh what it really does is take like the top performers and makes them 10x better it because you can feel the feedback loops as you're prompting them and you're working through how the outcome should be and you're seeing you're like merging you're kind of like working backwards and forwards and then you start to uh because like claude as an example all their code is being built by cloud code but then the other example is everyone internally is using like three to seven cloud instances because you're just running things in parallel because while you're doing one thing you're knocking something else out, whether it's the report or design. Uh, so it's just it's just insanely fascinating and it's going to happen even faster than I think we all expect because whatever is out is only what they're giving us to be out. It's not what actually is already being used internally. >> Yeah. I I want to uh maybe pull on the thread that you were describing in terms of onrem versus trusting cloud dependencies just using sort of like a more enterprise focused version of these tools. uh maybe talk a little bit more about like the trade-offs because you sort of alluded to it. It's like you want to be able to own your data. You want to be able to run this stuff yourself, but then this is where the parallels to like Bitcoin custody come in where it's like well then you are the dependency, right? Like if you're not outsourcing the dependencies, you become the dependency and you have to be very careful about the permissions you set, the access you give these things. Um and then also the cost of like running it locally as well. So maybe like do you have any more color on like how you how you're viewing those different trade-offs because I think you're right for like the average norm person they're going to go the route of just you know using the open AI uh sort of like white labelled version of openclaw but for a lot of uh organizations or just more technical people they're going to opt to build this stuff on premises because they want to own the data they don't want to have those dependencies but again there's there's trade-offs associated with that right >> yeah I haven't thought too deeply but I think it mirrors a lot of um what we do at on-ramp in in the blending like there's a barbell right and there's there's a hardcore barbell of somebody has their own multi-IG or self-custody setup and that's for very few people and I think there will be very few people you know and relative to the vast majority of people holding Bitcoin vast majority of people using AI that will house everything right from um I think it'll grow over time because of the amount of comp that can be run on a on a consumer-based device and then you have the other side that outsources it and you effectively are giving up all autonomy, right? Because they can not only give you your Bitcoin the next day, but you also are at the behest of like what the data is feeding you, the joke I like to play. And it sounds so crazy now, but we have to remember back in co like Google will tell you a woman a man could have a baby, right? And so it's like the models will and and I'm I'm a product of this like I have a horrible sense of direction. I think at least half of it is because I've just always grown up with Google maps. So you just kind of brain is like doesn't really frame that. And so then I think they'll end up with this middle ground and the middle ground will be built on trust in brands and you'll start to recognize people doing it certain way and you'll have hardcore people that are early adopters that um effectively put their stamp of approval and there's audited code and you're either not um taking that data or you're able to like right now what is a general standard my understanding is if you have proprietary data you can host uh these local models that are a lot easier to put on consumerbased hardware devices and And what you do is extrapolate that um and then use some of the frontier models for other things and so you can get like the best of both worlds and you have to be able to know you know what your device is doing but you're switching and oscillating between that and so I think that'll be somewhat play out but I think that middle ground around where we think of multi-institution and commercialization um and like we see this with MacBooks kind of right because MacBooks and iOS devices yes like they probably work for the government but at the end of the day there's a reason why they're very secure. There's a reason where they've taken stances on um the level of privacy that you get in certain respects. I think like everyone's familiar with you can like spin up emails really quickly on there for to protect your privacy and from security. So, I think it starts to blend there, but it's too hard to tell right now on like what does it look like in a future state. The last thing I'll say, I know we're going to like part of this segment will be the agentic stuff uh about payments because I just I started thinking more about it and um I think that'll probably play a part in it as well when it comes to uh how you how you're able to pay for the tokens and the usage with this. Yeah, just to that point too, Brian, uh if you could click on the second link out there, um just because all of this, at least right now, is completely open source. There are so many iterations and um on what the actual models look like today. So, for example, Open Claw, it takes about over a gigabyte of um RAM and takes about 500 uh seconds to start off. You need to have like a Mac Mini or something similar to that. And if you click on the picture on the right, um there are other more lightweight models that are um don't have quite as much functionality, but uh take less than a second to run, take about or 100x cheaper in terms of RAM, and can be run on like any $10 Linux board. And so um that's just to say that um similar to running open source models that will be a little bit slower and and there's a really interesting company out there called open router that just optimizes for whichever type of task and uh if you should be using the most expensive frontier models out there in terms of APIs that uh are for heavier lift tasks that are um you know actually very significantly t um like sophisticated versus just you uh finding some news on Google um and using the free open source models and optimizing for cost in that front. In that way, I think that there will be many different offerings for different um models and and usage of these tools and there will be um easy switching costs as as long as these things stay open and just optimizing of uh the speed and direction of how and where you use for different tasks out there. >> Yeah. And Mike, you mentioned this like the sort of a parallel narrative that's been, you know, uh really accelerating over the past few weeks is the payment side of all of this. So like agents uh using crypto rails effectively to pay each other, pay humans, etc. Um and so there was a few headlines that we wanted to to bring up here. One was Coinbase rolling out an AI tool to give any agent a wallet. Um and then there was another announcement from Stripe uh something similarly uh using base which is Coinbase's um sort of Ethereum L2 um for AI agent payment protocols as well. Um thoughts on thoughts on any of this because I think the what what sts out to me is like you know you have a lot of Bitcoiners just assuming that oh the the agents are are going to use Bitcoin because they're going to recognize it's it's the best money. uh why would they use uh digital dollars when in reality like I think there's going to be at least an interim period here where they're also going to use stable coins. Um and particularly because you know entities like Coinbase and Stripe are building uh the paths for them to use these stable coins and so um people need to build similar tools on the Bitcoin side to allow these things to happen. Uh Cali had a good tweet uh the other day. Um you know, USDC on base seems to be far more common for 402 payments than Bitcoin. Recently, even Stripe joined the bandwagon. That's a centralized stable coin on a permission chain. Agents are starting to use fiat. It's a huge loss and in a race many aren't even aware that it exists. Um so this is all to say like you know we have to build in parallel with these other uh firms that are you know more on the stablecoin side. Uh it's not just going to automatically happen that all the bots and agents are going to use Bitcoin. So, this is uh this is going to be crazy because I was thinking more about um everyone kind of knows like Bitcoin like let's just go to Bitcoin and it's the it's the easy thing to say. It's like Bitcoin is going to power AI and um AI agents and you know it makes sense borderless no KYC blah blah blah. It sounds it sounds good and makes sense but again we talk about this a lot. The bookends are the easy part where you make money is is in the middle. And so when you start to play around with these tools, you start to realize um because one of the benefits just to call out is like you effectively can produce anything technical now because you can give the feedback. So all this stuff requires a lot of technical uh efforts but if you're playing around with whatever different uh not universes but like your constructs. So whether you're using codecs or claude code or you're messing around with claude uh in prompts, you can be coding something while running the prompts in a different browser to uh check on any of the uh outputs that they want you to run in the terminal. So you're effectively getting this nice recursive feedback loop which is is helping you understand how to prompt or how to run in terminal. But um where you start to really get the visibility is like API rails because a lot of platforms have API tokens and you have to go set up set them up. So that's really where like still Clawbot kind of fails because you can go get Clawbot running. Um but then there's a bunch of different ways to stop it whether it's capture which is coming about where you can have humans like solve the capture in real time. Um but then you have to go get the API tokens, you have to feed it. And so when you start to do this you can squint again. and it talks about getting the um getting the uh your hands dirty. You can start to squint and see how uh it's really clunky and it's really cumbersome and it's going to start to make more and more sense uh via what you were sharing with there's two different things happening in real time. There's uh Coinbase setting up the wallets and the infrastructure for different web pages to interact with this and then there's uh what Stripe's doing and uh some of the payment mechanisms for us. So now you can start to see how streaming payments and things moving over the web will start to unlock these things for your uh Aentic um AI, you know, whatever you're using to be able to spin this up relatively faster versus being clunky and having to go username and then um but with that I will say like full stop like it's all going to be on stable coins. Like anybody saying it's not going to be on stable coins, I think it's crazy. I'd make any bet for to start. And the reason why is multiple. one is everyone understands the US dollar. Uh everyone understands um like the US dollar basically because after that if you go and look at the heavy push on stable coins, not everyone understands stable coins, but it's not hard to understand how it'd be ubiquitous um that you can move dollars faster and then you're going to be able to move them online. You're probably going to have wallets in your Chrome browser. You're probably going to have your local bank offering it. Point being is you can start to do micro payments with dollars. Um you can start to move them and then that's what all of these platforms use. They don't know or understand dollars. They don't understand Bitcoin. They're paying for their power and they're doing everything with dollars. And the other thing on top of that is they're probably going to start to embed some kind of like KYC on those stable coins so you can effectively know who these people are because it's a crazy world and it will happen but like where you have all this anonymous stuff just happening and that's where like AI will come I'm sorry PTC will come in lightning will come in and I'm not saying everything will be done this way to start but you will see the vast proportion of these platforms integrate utilize and everyone will understand stable coins and how do you need to get access to them. So you could power anything related to uh Aenta Commerce and AIS. Um and then naturally though as you go further out into the future you can see how AI uh BTC will just will layer into that because of its programmability because of um the need for you know the censorship resistant all the other different angles that will come that you'll be able to just spin up what you need via passing Satoshi's through. But I see this very similar to um it's just like kind of bit Bitcoin when somebody buys it. Most people don't go and park all their money in 12 words or anything that doesn't look like black rock. They generally don't park all their money in anything really to start. They just like, you know, leg in with a small percentage. So, I was just thinking more about that and I think it's going to be fascinating um to see it play out because I think the web inherently gets better and GDP grows on the web by just effectively being able to put dollars through different applications and letting things happen in the background for you versus uh like right now as an example if you want to run like if so let's say you go download openclaw you download openclaw you have to point it at a model uh tip of advice don't point it at cloud and opus uh 4.6 because it's the most expensive. So, uh I did that. You run out of credits really quickly. But let's just say you do that or you do to the sonnet or whatever is before. You still have to go into Claude's dev u website. You have to park whatever amount of dollars as credits to there and then you're basically getting the utilization and then you have to set it up on parameters. If you reduce the credits, then refill and all that. Like all of that requires efforts versus you being able to just streamline and have a wallet that's always like tied uh and then do it on a usage basis that's like in pennies of a dollar online versus having to set those credits up and maybe never use them, but you have to load it on a website. >> Yeah. All great points. I I did want to pull up a couple other things related to this >> actually. >> Go ahead, Liam. Yeah, >> I was just I don't know exactly how this is going to work in a a longer time frame, but just because it's so tip of the spear, you know, none of these agents can hold money in cold storage. So, they're going to have to use hot wallets and there will be a ton of um this is like kind of hackers wet dream just because they're going to be able to figure out how to manipulate a lot of these tools that people give um you know bad prompts to and just to like send them them actual money. It seems like on the edge cases there are some instances already of this happening and uh people are generally using small amounts of funds. But as more and more assets go into this economy, I do think that um the amount of security is going to need to have um to accelerate really significantly because there are going to be a lot of bad prompts out there and um you know just the ability to not hold hot or cold storage as agents or um you know give some amount of credits at some period of time. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out and I think that there will be a lot of hacks out there and um could likely be a negative uh aspect of uh just more stringent regulations for the digital asset industry as a whole too is if there continue to be like instances of additional fraud and hacks online. >> Yeah, that that's one interesting path. The other thing that comes to mind that Michael sort of alluded to is like there is elements um for these agents that would make Bitcoin a preferable payment rail just in the sense of it's censorship resistant. So ultimately these stable coins can be frozen, right? Like they are not uh totally decentralized and permissionless. So, like I I still think this I agree that this is still a farther way out, but like I think there will be a point where these agents are trying to do things that may not be uh totally lawful and they're just operating and doing these things and so then they will prefer a money that is harder to seize or freeze. Um, so that that's one path, but I I would agree that like there's going to be an initial period where yeah, uh, particularly because the Coinbases and Stripes of the world are building these things with stables in mind, like you know, they're they're going to use them. Yeah. And one just one thing to call out like um I think this is a big fundamental reason where independent of the forecaster and craziness on crypto and VC and companies Dan Romero joining Tempo and Stripe has to be a big play like um you know I was on a podcast last week with Robin Ser and they asked uh I don't even remember what it came up but it was ultimately like if you weren't focused on Bitcoin like I don't think anybody else here would not focus on anything other than AI and um similarly if it wasn't focused on Bitcoin and like let's just say it was gold, you know, tokenizing gold and stable coins because it's really just the surface area for what was previously not possible has been removed and from AI and how you can do and build things, but then ultimately you have to connect all that plumbing and then how it's being done online. And so I just think that uh that's also a really big um just unlocking you know you always say like look where the talent is going and that's a big way when you see and then that doesn't even account for crossborder and all the real world applications with money movement. This is just talking about um and again we're not we didn't talk about a commerce and everything that'll be related to how does it just search for you and understand your preferences and your sizes like you know you think about the clunkiness there with your card and the chargebacks and so there's a lot um there's a lot of incredible stuff happening. >> Yeah. Um before [clears throat] we move past uh AI stuff, I did want to pull up a couple other links that we had on the list. Um just to sort of contextualize the speed at which this stuff is happening and sort of like the rate of adoption. So this was um Spotify reported that its best developers haven't written a line of code since December. Um so you know they're basically revealing that um they are using Claude to write a ton of their code. And so um you know things like enabling real-time bug bug fixes and and feature deployments um straight from phones like you know whether it's WhatsApp or Telegram being able to just do this stuff uh super efficiently. Um and so even the best engineers are are sort of actually writing less and less code. The other one uh which I found super interesting was uh this chart which shows developers are building for open claw faster than any other OS in history. Um, and so maybe you wouldn't initially sort of look at OpenClaw as a as an OS, but I mean it fundamentally is and people are building on it at a much faster clip than sort of any other OS in history. So I thought this was this was particularly fascinating. Um, any other thoughts on AI guys before we go to um some some other links we had some announcements from uh sort of Trafi World? >> The only thing to call out um there's really two concepts. One is highly encourage people to play with this stuff for the very sake of so you don't lose your job because you get really hard to get axked if you're utilizing these tools and you become the PE person people go to. It's going to still be super clunky at an organization to start to embed these things. on the other side of it. If you're building in this area, we'd love to speak with you because this really is the underpinning of everything that early writers was meant to be the early adopters utilizing these tools. We'll be able with uh $100,000 make very large companies. And where you would need that $100,000 in this world is literally around tokens and maybe some hardware. uh whether it's on your computer being able to run this stuff or if you wanted to host it from a proprietary perspective that there's not a lot of capital needed. Um the understanding is there's a lot of like $10 million uh AR companies out there where people don't talk about them because there's not really defensible modes. Uh so they're just making a bunch of money. And um I would just highly encourage if you're building on any of this stuff and also if you want to work with us because as we think about hiring from an operator perspective like there's no shortage of people that want to work in Bitcoin. We get no shortage of uh interest on early writers and on rampant. The best thing to do is show us what you're working on here because that speaks like 100x uh on how you're thinking about the world because even about on our team, you know, I went full like 48 hours this past weekend working on it and it's like I had to do it because I'm just naturally curious, but also if you don't know as a leader the capabilities of this stuff, how can you expect your team to start utilizing it? And so it's the other side. if I'm utilizing all this and I'm as busy as I am and nobody else is, well then we have a problem uh on the organizational side and we'll figure that out. But so I just think that there's never been a better time if you're going to be curious and play with this stuff and it really is asymmetric because to the upside you can benefit but then to the downside if somebody has to pick on a chopping block if your organization has to get rid of headcount well why would they get rid of the person that's producing at 10 to 100x what everyone else is doing? >> Yeah. Just from the early riders perspective, we're really starting to see the do more with less thesis accelerate. Open claw built in 82 days before selling to OpenAI. Likely people are speculating for at least $und00 million. And it's also just the ability to work at lightning speeds, too. Um, you know, building that in such a short period of time and having it catch on to the amount that it did is really just fascinating to see. And um you know we're we're going to see everything really start to accelerate significantly faster than it has in the past too. Um, so just really fascinating time to be alive and and use those tools too as as a builder operator and then be able to benefit from it from investing in early stage companies that are going to be able to move in a lot quicker and less bureaucratic ways than these large organizations that are going to come with top- down approaches to AI rather than bottoms up from uh people who are actually using the tools. >> When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, peace of mind starts with architecture. On-ramp's multi-institution custody distributes control across three independent regulated keyholders in a two of three quorum. No single point of failure, no pulled or omnibus exposure, segregated client titled vaults. You retain full legal ownership while on-ramp coordinates security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes. It strength of many delivered through the simplicity of one. Multi-institution custody is the foundation for everything we build. sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls. And now on-ramp is piloting flat, predictable pricing, making best-in-class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever. On-ramp strength and many simplicity in one to learn more, check out onrampbitcoin.com. >> 100% totally agree. Switching gears here a little bit. Uh, a recurring theme on the show for the past several months to over a year has been Tradents putting their chips on the table, getting getting things situated to uh work in the digital asset space, launching stable coins. A couple weeks ago, we had Fidelity launch their stable coin, Fid. And then we have this uh news from over the weekend that Charles Schwab is staffing up to build its own stable coin as well. So, uh, CEO already confirmed on the summer call that Sha Schwab will be, uh, launching a stable coin alongside trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Um, and so this is just, uh, sort of another incumbent that is getting their arms around this stuff and realizing that, uh, not only do they have to participate in the sense of allowing their underlying underlying clients to, you know, have access or exposure to these things, but they actually need to build it themselves to some extent. uh whether that's a stablecoin or custody rails. Um so I thought this was relevant. And then the other one um similarly we had uh Wells Fargo posting a head of digital assets uh role 4 days ago. Um the mandate as described in the role is to build a 3 to 5year strategy across tokenized deposits onchain collateral intraday liquidity 24/7 programmable payments fully integrated with wires a fed now swift. Um, and this, as it notes here, comes right after Morgan Stanley did something very similar and JP Morgan made um, these crypto leadership hires. Um, the third one, um, that I had on the list was, um, Black Rockck doing something as well. I think Michael, you shared that one. Any thoughts on either of those two while I pull up, uh, the Black Rockck link? No, I I just think uh it's it's similar as AI. Like I think we talked about at the end of last year, one of the predictions is digital assets will take the same wave as AI did last year in the sense of everyone needs a strategy. And um that's crazy, but it it just makes sense. as well as Fargo who's historically been, you know, insanely kind of against this asset and just legacy. Uh we talk about it a lot when you look at your legacy banking rails and just the user experience and clunkiness. Um so I think those are huge. And then I tap this mainly because um I think we're just going to naturally see more of this convergence. There's a lot here. The one that I joke is like they it's just for Brian is that they did this uh DeFi offering uh for Black Rockcks um it's a fund they offer some kind of interest but it was like they built it for trading on unis swap and they bought the unis swap token and I just thought that was funny because it's kind of what we've been talking about it's like these things don't have value they're not needed but like these people don't know um we just saw you know Harvard who we think knows things bought Ethereum I'm like, this stuff's just going to propagate um for a while because people just don't really understand, you know, that one thing could just service everything. And honestly, it kind of can't right now because the people that understand like unis swap and how to do that stuff, they don't understand how to do this on on BTC. Like there's just this interesting angle where people that come from uh I remember being at the time like the Colombia of the world they like got this shiny object of crypto and they built all these primitives around DeFi that will probably live in Bitcoin but they went to like crypto and these other things versus building on the cell and foundation and so uh I think we'll just see more of this but the the net is positive whether it's digital assets crypto or stable coins and AI or just crossborder all of these things are bullish for Bitcoin because it opens up the aperture for people to realize that digital assets are here to stay and then people will see the ruggings whether it's via inflation of the supply inflation of the monetary uh you know nominal value so your your real returns are holding your purchasing power of holding stable coins is going down as compared to Bitcoin and then it's just one quicker step to go from that into BTC >> 100% I I think there's um I've certainly come around to the notion that, you know, the the sort of crypto journey uh is no different for an institution or a trap firm than it is for any individual over the past 10 years in the sense that um you're going to try out these other things. You're going to think they have value. Uh you're perhaps even going to build on them, but uh there is that learning curve of recognizing uh what is the solid foundation to build around. And so this is obviously still very early stages as as a lot of these firms get involved with this stuff. um they're going to have similar learnings and whether that takes months or years um not exactly sure but uh there's going to be that similar curve >> and and I think it could be a feature not a bug when you think about it because if you if you think about like you do need you do want a better internet you want a like whatever more open internet more GDP flowing through it and so while Bitcoin's better than stable coins the reality is most people are going to build on stable coins via these primitives and so we all benefit from that in the Same way that if somebody wants tokenized securities or they want security access whether it's private or publiclix and they want to be able to leverage them or do other things like these primitives that they're building on are going to do it. They're just not decentralized. But I think that's a feature for them. It's not a bug. Meaning like the same way Tempo is creating this solution because if somebody uh hacks your stable coin wallet built into it, they can just burn those stable coins like an FDIC and just revert it back. most people want that in the same way that if something nefarious happens on unis swap like there's just an admin key and so I think like once you realize that you're like oh well this is how it was always intended it was just the crypto like kind of you know the the ethers or whatever didn't really understand that they thought they're building uh decentralized infrastructure they're not they're just building the the other the same thing but like with different goals or different whatever it is in sight um and so I think like it's just playing out the way it was and and crypto was like a test net for Tradfy and what they're going to be able to do here and take over. >> Agreed. And that a lot of that is still a test net for what's going to happen on Bitcoin and and those products and applications as well. And the other thing just to mention too is while there are a lot of folks in the Bitcoin space who have uh at least started out with some thesis around altcoins or stable coins too, they've uh been a consensus of one. And so they've been able to easily dismiss that when it didn't necessarily go as planned. But when you have a large organization with a bunch of different committees and uh etc. It's going to be more difficult to give that up even when you see it not necessarily working out and playing as a thesis intended. Um there will definitely be some net benefits, but there are also going to be a lot of um just R&D that's you know wasted on things that don't necessarily come to fruition as well. Yep. All right. Maybe uh before we wrap, I did want to just briefly touch on something that went super viral over the past few days uh which was a Ray Dallio X article. It seems like, you know, X is having uh a good amount of success pushing the articles because every every week it seems there's something that goes mega viral where there's, you know, your timeline is flooded with people quote tweeting the article. This was one of those uh where you know he's really just talking about his thesis that he's had for the past call it 10 to 15 years around the shifting uh sort of world order u monetary monetary system sort of long-term debt cycles. Um I think I guess the new thing that he's saying here is this was always a uh sixstage uh cycle as he described it and he's saying basically we're we're now in stage six. Uh so for the past few years he was saying we were in stage five. Now he's saying we're in stage six six. Um and I mean the takeaway for me like if you look through the comments or a lot of the the quote tweets on this from sort of Bitcoin Twitter spa space is like you know he gets it he gets what's happening here but he doesn't see Bitcoin as a solution which I think has been the the case for a while. It's not that he doesn't understand Bitcoin at all. He's had some exposure over the past several years but um you know not nearly as big as his gold position. Um, and so I think there's still a lack of understanding there in terms of Bitcoin being the the solution or at least an alternative um, in this shifting monetary order, the shifting world order. Uh, curious if you guys had any thoughts on this, if you even read it or if you if you just think it's uh, it's noise at this point. He's uh, old man yelling at cloud about something that he has been yelling at for 10 years. >> I mean, it's similar to what he's written in the past. So, um, I don't think that the thesis is any different. I think uh like the CBO recently put out new estimates on where they expect the debt and deficit to go in the um longer term as well and it's just more of the same. I mean the thesis is uh what people have been saying for the past 10 plus years. Um it is definitely accelerating but it's accelerating as like a a very slowmoving train. Um and you know people at least right now in the government side of things and um a lot more of the optimists are at least seeing AI as a potential way to um get out of this problem just due to the productivity increases. But the thesis is still exactly the same. I don't necessarily think that anything is is new from this one too. It's just him reiterating it in a more cohesive manner too. Yeah, I think um I'm glad you recaped that, Brian, because uh I kept seeing it and I was hoping I didn't have to read it. Um we had, you know, we Nick said he he uh listens to the pod, so hopefully he hears this. He had shared this article over the weekend in our Slack and uh and all I got was like the link and it says it's official. The world order has broken from Ray and I my my comment was laugh aloud. Thanks for the heads up, Ray. Um because like to the point that we talked about it's like what kind of anybody paying attention understands that there's just natural friction happening. Um, I think maybe to tie this all to the beginning of the pod is that um, this kind of sets up what I've always thought like everyone always talks about million dollar Bitcoin or multiple millions of dollars Bitcoin and that the world would look very crazy there and they think like whether it was hyperinflation or whatever and I I don't necessarily think it looks like that. I think it looks like what is probably described here and what we see around uh agentic AI and just like the the deep uh deep fakes and craziness we see on uh not knowing what's real or not like the just aperture and for what can exist and what uh how fast things are moving that speed will be like a backdrop to a Bitcoin world where the price is a million dollars because if you think about it in a world that is very straightforward it's very hard to wrap your head around a digital bare asset holding millions of dollars of real world value. But in the world that he's describing here along with everything we talked on this pod, it would make complete sense that you'd also have an asset worth a million dollars um sitting there. And the the last thing I'll say is when we think about because he probably didn't because a lot of this stuff is for his investors. you probably didn't outline the social strife we see in different uh sovereigns when it comes to uh privacy autonomy and all the different things that we're seeing across like Netherlands and you know um the realized income and what's happening in Iran across across the world and that this is the value in borderless censor censorship resistant money is that people that are hosting models uh that are deemed to be uh you know a threat or risk to the local sovereignty can do that and accept money that can't be censored or seized because you can imagine how stable coins and other things will naturally seize or they'll get the addresses. They'll have IP blockers. They'll have all these things that won't let those payments go through. But that form of money will naturally end up in in that way and it'll make a more robust and uh freedom oriented technology kind of like area of the market that most people will realize and eventually it's just like I just use that because it's a better tool and you'll have swapping between stable coins and dollars. They'll look like stable coins but or stable coins of Bitcoin. It'll it'll move again. I don't know what it'll look like but you can start to understand well if this is all true then you can't just recreate the existing stack which is what's happening now. you'll start to have an asset appreciate, but then it'll also start to be more ubiquitous across all things. Um, and so, you know, it's always fun to throw out the million dollars, but like I really think that's how you end up seeing the fast approaches to the crazy numbers that you see in Bitcoin is once this gets realized. Uh, in the same way that hardware, I think when what we talked about, we're probably still three to six months behind, you're going to start to see a lot of hardware fly off shelves, especially with uh uh there was a really good article around um uh the RAM. I forget who was the manufacturer, but it's ultimately like all the stuff that goes into iPhones and computers from a u memory perspective is super like short uh in the supply chain. And I think you're going to start to see that start to break and that's when people are going to start hoarding a lot of this stuff. Um and when you see that happen, you're just going to have like different spikes and different things and obviously like production will grow with that and then they'll start to manufacture. But I think you're just going to start to see a lot of weird stuff play out um across all sectors. >> Yeah. Just scrolling back up here to to this section here, I think speaks to sort of what you were describing where like you know he's he's outlining very clearly here why you need neutral permissionless assets in this in this world where um it's sort of uh multipolar delization. No one trusts each other. you're not going to use US treasuries as a reserve. You can't at this point. Um and so that's why I I think, you know, he's sort of explaining why gold's gone on its run over the past year. Uh because there is an increased need for neutral reserve assets that can't be frozen or are harder to seize or freeze um than let's say US treasuries. But he's describing why a lot of the reason why uh Bitcoin exists in this world and has a massive value prop in this world. And so while he doesn't mention it here, a lot of people read this as sort of the writing on the wall for uh as you mentioned the value prop for a a massive repricing of Bitcoin as we sort of hurdle into this new world. >> Yeah, maybe I'll pull up one thing because this kind of um I didn't expect to, but this this we this came out last week. Um, but also it kind of ties into this new world we're building for and going into. Um, so we had Nick Dlozzer who's our COO and CCO at on-ramp on last trade and and he put out a great piece uh highlighting a lot of the technical operational legal work um related to building multi-institution and how somebody can onboard in minutes. Um, but one of the other things that was released here was that um you can actually download a wallet configuration file. So if you're familiar with like uh third party like collaborative custody providers or the nunchucks the you effectively need that wallet configuration file from a collaborative custody provider because that ultimately is the map to how do you reconstruct the wallet. So, you know, by leveraging somebody else's stack, it's helpful because you get the platform, the wallet coordination to make it easy, but god forbid if anybody ever went away, you need to be able to reconstruct that because just having your hardware devices isn't enough to back into how do you build the wallet and then spend the BTC. And so, uh, long story short, there's open source tools like Sparrow, Caravan, there's others where you can upload that, but we actually just shipped where now you can take out the wallet configuration file from your multi-institution uh, wallet and then go and verify that those are all segregated on chain. You can even go, you know, legally to the other institutions if we weren't around to be able to move the assets. And I think this kind of ties into a lot of what we're talking about because this is kind of like the end state. As you start to think about a world where you're rebuilding trust and systems, you're going to naturally have people you trust because they can aggregate and create better experiences, but they're also kind of similar to what we talked about with Claude and uh Claude Code and co-work on your on your um desktop, how they kind of shield off and make sure you uh um approve permissions before they access things. In the same way here, you'll start to coales and brands will start to be created where they're building things. They're creating delightful consumer experiences, but at the end of the day, they have like really robust backgrounds and security that you ultimately don't have to be relying on them that has never existed before. And so, uh anyway, I just think we're going to see more of this. will continue to build this stuff for people that are going to be holding large amounts of money uh in BTC, but naturally know as the world gets more chaotic, they may not want 100% of it on their person or on a third party custodian, which I think we're all pretty bullish on. As Bitcoin appreciates, more and more people will come to this realization. Uh and so that really underpins everything we build and then also the things we invest in. >> All right, gents. Good rent. Good tight rip. >> Good stuff, guys. >> See you guys next week, guys. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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