AI, Bitcoin, Gold, Privacy, SpaceX, Tesla, Trump, Midterms

[Part 1 of 7] [00:00] We've issued $8 billion worth of digital credit this year and the most successful IPO of the year was stretch, its STRC. It was two and a half billion dollars. I couldn't have done any of it without AI. If if we had not had AI, we would be $8 billion less. We five IPOs, none of them would have happened because I used AI to design the securities and solve all the tax problems and all the securities law issues. You know, so I like I'm a big believer in using AI to design new things. And I look, I'm just I I focus upon digital credit and security, but there's someone there thinking about how to make the car drive and cure cancer and like like aren't there like a hundred million problems the human race has to solve that we've that you're like, well, you're going to need a thousand people with PhD to solve that. Well, guess what? Now every 16-year-old has a thousand PhDs at their fingertips. And so I'm very bullish. The world's going to be a much better place and and we're going to see an age of empowerment and abundance because of digital technology. [01:11] People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. [01:14] Not really. I mean, people who buy gold are trying to preserve. [01:17] centuries. We have centuries of people being greedy to go ahead and acquire gold. [01:22] Well, no, well, you're talking about to acquire wealth. Yes, people are greedy in that they want they want more things. There's nothing wrong with that. But when they're converting what they've earned into gold, that's not the greed part. That's the preservation part. I I I've I've earned all this money because I was greedy. Now I don't want to lose it. I want to store it so I can use it later. I don't want to blow it all right now. I want to hold on to it. And, you know, gold is a way to do that. You can't really do that in a fiat currency that's just being printed, you know, into oblivion. So, uh, but but but, you know, the greed is in the speculative frenzy that accompanies Bitcoin. [02:05] They tell me that I'm the reason they own Bitcoin because they listened to me years ago about economics, about sound money and and and the Fed and inflation, and I'm the one that got them. [02:18] Plus there's a lot of great technology in Midnight that's going to make the use of Cardano safer. Like Midnight passport will be the fastest, safest and easiest way to use Cardano. So, we gain all the usability and enhancement features. Plus I'd argue Midnight is an essential component for Bitcoin. The Bitcoin D5. When you look at that side of it, you're like, okay, Bitcoin users, they want privacy. So, Cardano could do a lot of the heavy lifting on the programming side, but where is the private coordination layer is just all that. So, we're actually working on this programming, our Bitcoin D5 setup, what we call it for a circle. So, you start with Bitcoin with Taproot. I'm going to put 50 Bitcoins with my own money into this previous work. So, you start with Taproot and uh Bitcoin. You lend it to a stable coin. So, that all occur on Cardano through a specialized transaction through the bridge. And then that stable coin would then be deployed into a yield bearing instrument. And then as you make yield, the yield is converted to Bitcoin. And then it's sent to your Taproot. And then Midnight coordinates all of it in this fight. So, you have like all three networks working together, and you have this circle, and it's from a Bitcoin user's perspective. You just give them a button, make money, click the button. And then it locks their Bitcoin. They just start generating a yield. The security actually anchors to Taproot on the Bitcoin network. So, it meets my three rules that I have for Bitcoin D5. One, there's only thing. No other thing. [03:38] Bitcoin, Litecoin is better money than than fiat, obviously. Also better money than gold. Like I think it's I believe it's the best form of money that um humans have ever come across. Right? Money being good, being that it's um it's inflation proof, right? No one, no single person, company or or government can print more money. Right? Can't print money and then say the way the money you're holding. Uh, you're storing. Right? That's kind of one of the key things about money. If you work hard and you make money, you don't want that money to kind of disappear with time, not from your own doing. Right? So that's that's key in Bitcoin and Litecoin and uh most cryptocurrencies um is able to to do that. [04:25] I could have the argument that real estate's better than Bitcoin. For a number of reasons, by the way, depending on who you are. Um, your audience will probably disagree because they're probably a bunch of, you know, Bitcoin maximalists that don't have as much Bitcoin as the real estate guy, by the way. [04:42] No, I I'll tell you right now, hold on one second. See, that's the funny thing, dude, that me and my brother were talking about this yesterday. You know, the guys that know the most seem to have the least. [04:54] 100%. That that I can probably agree with you on. I think it should be a bigger issue within the crypto system and the ecosystem. What do you think? [05:03] I think it will be. I think privacy is going to be the new if you want in my view, and this is what I'm tasking the investment professionals at Mailstream to sort of figure out. I think that the stand out shitcoin or, you know, few shitcoins of 2026 to 2028 will be related some way shape or form to privacy. We already saw the, you know, amazing move of Zcash over the last few months. Yes, it's down 50% from the 780 high, but I think again, my goal is, you know, my mental model is 10 to 20% the value of Bitcoin. That's what Zcash is up. So much higher than where it is today. But, you know, taking away Zcash, what is the token project or protocol that's going to utilize some privacy technology, probably something related to ZK or knowledge proofs to do something whether that's quantum resistant, you know, yeah, over the rest can't de-anonymize your data or, you know, see what we're doing, whatever it is, right? These are the things that we're legitimately afraid of of of what bad things that could happen with this proliferation of big tech, big government and [06:12] Donald Trump getting elected, knowing that we share friends in the White House for all the populist parties of Europe who are under attack. Every single populist leader, if you look at the leaders, and my last documentary was called Silence. I got 18 months in prison for my last documentary. The reason I aired it was because the documentary was so bigger than me. It's exactly what they're doing. North there has been waged against if you go through, I'll pick any. Pick Geert Wilders, the leader that the Dutch party. Pick Marine Le Pen. Any politician in Europe, yeah? Anyone. Pick pick anyone who has stood up and tried to speak against immigration and you will see a history. Matteo Salvini, I was with him two days ago, the the Deputy Prime Minister of of Italy was prosecuted in 2020. They said he because he stopped the boat. He was prosecuted in 2021. He was in charge of other crimes. The process is the punishment. Every political leader who's tried to stand up was charged. You saw it done to Bannon. You saw it done to Stone. You saw it trying to do to Trump. That's happening across the board. They're of their [07:17] What first got you excited about blockchains? Think about it. Oh, wait. I bet it wasn't multi-million dollar hacks, exposed data, or finding somewhere safe to store your seed phrase. Was it? Maybe it was the idea of decentralizing a broken financial system. Maybe it was imagining a world where people own their own data and get to sharing the value it creates. Or maybe it was the promise of a fundamentally better way of connecting, communicating, and transacting. The next phase of the internet that empowers us instead of exploiting us. So, why hasn't it happened yet? Where we're still living with the same broken system that blockchains promised to fix. It's because blockchains can't keep a secret. Enabling open transparent systems was only the first half of the challenge. For blockchains to really change the world, they also have to be able to protect our sensitive data when it matters. And that's why we built Midnight, to bring down the final barrier to mass adoption and unlock the full potential of the decentralized web. Let's build the internet we deserve. Together. [08:37] Ladies and gentlemen, we all know this in crypto, ownership matters. That's why Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet gives you full control of your digital assets, all in one easy to use application. You can store Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, and many more with just one secure backup. Swap between coins in seconds. No copying addresses, no complicated steps, and even includes Bitcoin Lightning for faster payments. And with Cake Wallet built in, you can use crypto in real life through debit cards or gift cards. Simple, secure, self-custody. Download Cake Wallet and take control of your crypto. [09:20] This is Houston. G minus one minute until full data blackout. All eyes are on you. Breaking news. There is an astronaut conducting an emergency repair on a global communication satellite that could go dark at any moment. We have a second angle on this. [09:45] Is that guy on FOMO? Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's get back to it everybody. [10:12] Opportunity cost. It's simply this. Every position you take is a position you choose over something else. [10:27] This just in. According to the astronaut's FOMO account, I am in the room. The satellite has been restored. [10:35] Yes. For now, the crisis appears to be over. [10:51] Satellite's up and running. Positions looking good too. [11:07] There we go. United States of America representing. Socialism, communism does not work. Digital assets is it better to move money at the speed of light. People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. I am here providing electricity. And that energy that is necessary. I am the modern day Thomas Edison. [11:37] There we go. United States of America representing. Socialism, communism does not work. Digital assets is it better to move money at the speed of light. People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. I am here providing electricity. And that energy that is necessary. I am the modern day Thomas Edison. [12:07] There we go. United States of America representing. Socialism, communism does not work. Digital assets is it better to move money at the speed of light. People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. I am here providing electricity. And that energy that is necessary. I am the modern day Thomas Edison. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the breakdown. [12:38] Mute that, man. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome, welcome. TikTok couldn't put us down, man. TikTok couldn't put us down. Anyway, welcome to the breakdown episode 809. Nine episodes in on 800. If you get that, you got that. Hopefully you got that. We got some good guests coming on, but we got some great sponsors here. Midnight, Midnight is the title sponsor of the breakdown. Give them a round of applause. Nice to see some protocols jumping into Midnight. That's right. Justin Sun and Tron have now jumped into Midnight. You guys keep sleeping on it though. Keep sleeping on it. That's okay. Nobody's forcing you to do anything. [13:30] I feel like I have a jello in my mouth or something. Anyway, also Polymarket. Polymarket is the official prediction market sponsor of the breakdown. That's right. We'll look at Polymarket today to see what is up in terms of the percentages. Who's winning? Who's still up and who's winning? Yeah, we got some Midnighters in here. We got some Midnighters. Man, I had I had like the I had it on the wrong way. Also, Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet is one of the most secure wallets that you will find in this ecosystem. If you want to hold your Bitcoin, your Zcash, your Monero, or your Litecoin and feel comfortable going to sleep at night. You go to cakewallet.com, App Store, Google Play, download it today. That rhymed. You know, I am a wordsmith, man. I drop bars. Um, besides that, if you have a phone that you're not using, factory reset that son of a gun, download cupcake and you got yourself a real cold storage unit to go ahead and hold your wonderful assets. Also, shout out to FOMO. FOMO.family. You know what I I I I'm going to give props to FOMO, even though FOMO is obviously a sponsor of the show. Let me give props to them. Unlike what somebody else is doing, showcasing some and I'm going to talk about this. Y'all going to say I'm a hater. Fuck it. Say I'm a hater. I can give a fuck less. Unlike somebody else out there right now, a platform that I believe has absolutely damaged the crypto ecosystem with the, you know, our attention span, our holding span from when from months to to to seconds. They are now pushing some kid. You know what? Should I we should just all the OGs need to go ahead and just rent planes, buy a plane. We need to buy Lambos and Ferraris, Porsches and just act like act like we got it. Even though we can get it, just act like we can we got it. Okay? Have a fucking guy follow us with a video camera and just showcase money because that's all they're doing right now. They're pushing this kid and I don't give a shit. I said it. I said it. First of all, you're putting the kid in danger. I got to tell you one thing, somebody who gives a fuck about this kid, Kimchi, that's his name, Kimchi. If anybody cares about this kid, they go ahead and talk to him and say like, yo, bro, you're putting yourself out there, bro. Like, I'm talking about out there. Out there, out there. For what, bro? If you really made $40 million off of Trump, go live a nice life. You don't need to be all out there, man. You want to do it though, just remember, just remember, you're a target. You're a big time target, man. Because I I see what they're doing, right? They they could care less. They're using him to bring more people onto the platform so they can go ahead and milk more people. You got this kid who doesn't know any better because he's a kid. He's a kid and he's out there and I got to say, man, you're just a target. I got to say, one somebody did uh I had a conversation with somebody. They're like, yo, we're built so much tougher than all these people that are coming out. Like from a physical from a physical standpoint and from and I I started laughing. I kind of agree, man. Like it's weird anyway. Anyway, shout out to FOMO.family. They don't do that kind of stuff. I like the way they do things. Man, listen, some people might not agree. Some people might say that I'm a spokesperson for FOMO. And of course, I'm going to say otherwise, but I I really, really, really I really believe that they do things the right way. Go on to FOMO.family. Check out everybody who's trading. By the way, TikTok had no other choice to put me back on. They knew they were in the wrong yesterday. I screenshot that bitch. Okay? I screenshot that son of a bitch. Uh, for real, I did. I'm not playing. I'm absolutely not playing with that stuff, man. Taking me down for no reason. Taking me down for no reason. What the disrespect. The disrespect. Hello to everybody though, TikTok, YouTube. Obviously YouTube is home base. I mean, this month I'm probably taking off verified organization. I'm just I might leave the yellow check mark, but I'm taking it off. You know, the 2X boost and all this stuff. I haven't seen it. And I'd rather honestly, Elon, shout out to you, man. I'd rather take the money that I'm paying $2,000 and plus. I'd rather go ahead and put it into Grok bots. Rather pay, you know, pay the premium on Grok. I'm not getting nothing from it. I didn't get no video creator video invite. I I create videos all the time. I didn't get no invite, no nothing. Fuck it. I'll still use obviously Twitter to go ahead and come on and have conversations about crypto and AI, which I'm big into. Talk about the traditional markets, but I'm not I'm not paying that. I'm sorry. That's the that's the announcement today. I am not paying that. And that has nothing to do with me being Jewish. I am absolutely not paying that shit. Nope. Not paying that. Zero. Zero. I'm not paying that. Not paying that shit. Anyway. Anyway, the markets. I know you're waiting. By the way, I mean, Netflix came in with good earnings, but the problem with Netflix is they're competing with YouTube. And there's no paywall. You can have an ad, but there's no real paywall there. You don't need to pay the subscription fee. So that's why like Netflix is cool. Of course, they got the events with Jake Paul boxing. They got the WWE on there, Raw, you know, every single Monday, people tune into that for two hours. But you're not going to beat YouTube. You're battling against and they're they're trying. They're putting on podcasts onto Netflix. They're trying, but as long as you have that paywall, there's no way you're going to beat YouTube. YouTube is a behemoth. YouTube is an absolute behemoth. You're just not going to beat them. SpaceX, I got to tell you, man, SpaceX is absolutely going to be 100% 100% a behemoth. I I kind of agree with Elon here. $100 trillion company is not far-fetched. It is absolutely like what is it at? 160 right now? 160. Absolute behemoth. I believe so. I think SpaceX if you're if you're jumping into shit tokens right now, if you're in crypto, it's not financial advice either. But if you're in crypto right now and you are just absolutely getting rinsed, you might want to look at SpaceX. SpaceX right now is what Tesla was at $5, $7. That's what it is. Everybody is going to use I'm every single company is going to use SpaceX. SpaceX is going to own AI. Data centers. Everything that you can think of when it comes to AI. It's going to be a beast. And plus yesterday, Elon finally, Elon finally talked about the potential merger. He said he can't be included in the conversations, but there are two committees both on the Tesla side and on the SpaceX side that are there to talk about a potential merger. If that happens, holy shit. that is going to be the biggest company in the world. Money won't matter to Elon at this point. Money don't even matter to Elon at this point. It really won't matter. It really won't matter. I've always said that Tesla is an energy company. A data and energy company. That's it. You see the cars, that's cool. Tesla has great cars. People still like they only have three cars in the lineup. Forget about the Roadster. Most people it's not going to be a high production vehicle, but you have the Model 3, you got the Model Y, and you got the Cybertruck. They don't have another they don't have any more vehicles than that. And people and there are more, you know, if you're looking for EVs, you can go to Mercedes, BMW, whatever. Pick the company, they probably got more EVs and you know, in terms of models and stuff. People rather go drive the Model 3, Model Y, and the Cybertruck because because of FSD, because it can really drive itself. And it's a pleasure to have FSD. It is absolute pleasure to have FSD. A pleasure. Especially when you're taking long road trips and you can just put FSD on and you can relax. I'm not talking about fall asleep, but you can relax as you're driving four or five hours out. It's a pleasure. It is stress-free. I encourage people to take a ride in a Tesla. Like I know there's perception out there, oh EV, blah blah blah. I get that. Take a take a drive out. Take rent one for a week. Get one with FSD and you will see how quickly you fall in love with the Tesla product. Not only is the car good, not only is the car if you're into speed, not only can it go ahead and fly without all the fancy gadgets that the Roadster has. If you drive one, you'll be compelled to buy one. That was another bar. I'm rhyming today. We had Bitcoin. Bitcoin went up today, right? Bitcoin was hovering at 80, 81. It went up to 84. 84,000. Okay, that was nice to see, right? Nice to see Bitcoin go ahead and climb, but I'm still I'm still I'm still sitting back and and I'm saying that the market feels dead. Not Bitcoin. Bitcoin will and from a retail side, I guess from a retail perspective, I feel like Bitcoin also. From a retail perspective, not from an institutional and not from a multi-million dollar retail perspective. I'm talking about regular Main Street. It feels there's still the bullish sentiment out here, but it feels dead and tired and worn out. I really feel like people are tired. Okay? They they just don't know like it's not the it's not the crypto ecosystem that they're used to. And if they're here for the if they're just here and they've been around for three to six months, they've got rinsed. And they're like, well, where is this economy that people talk about? Where is this crypto economy? Where is this thing where people are building tech? Meanwhile, they're not chasing the tech, they're chasing some dog shit coming off of a launch pad. That's the problem.

[Part 2 of 7] [00:01] That's what you have. And also now you have Trump was on yesterday. Trump was talking about uh putting out the whistleblowers fund. $25 million, maybe more than that, to those who bring in people who are committing fraud and that is like Medicaid fraud and all that other stuff that has been happening in Minnesota and California. He was talking about that while he had Dr. Oz up there, Vice President um JD Vance. Nick Shirley was there. Obviously Nick Shirley, the YouTuber, the young kid who went out there and did the job that the media was supposed to be doing. And here he is, young kid out there going to all these places, uncovering things, taxpayer money going into the hands of people that just came into this country. And they're riding around in Mercedes and BMWs. Meanwhile, you're working nine to nine trying to make ends meet. Hey, I'm just saying. So Trump wants to put a stop to that. Trump is pulling out everything. He's putting $400 million of his own money into the Republicans who are running for seats in the in these in this current election right now, 2026. It we are under two weeks away. And you can keep up with everything at polymarket.us. You can download the Polymarket app. Okay? You can download the Polymarket app, use the code breakdown to get $25 when you download, when you go ahead and download the application. But there's been a lot of good news. Traditional markets again, a lot of good news. I still feel obviously there is money still on the sidelines. Both in the traditional markets and in crypto. It it is waiting on the sidelines to come in. Again, that's my own my own personal opinion. We'll have guests on today and maybe they have a different opinion. Maybe they have a complete different take than I do. But the people that I speak to, they're waiting. They are patiently waiting to get in. Midterms is a big discussion. Not even not the discussion really isn't about Iran. It's really midterms. It is really midterms. I think, you know, I'll sit back on the midterm and the politic thing real quick. I think everybody has it wrong and I think the Republican Party will win. And it's really yesterday the more and more and I've been saying this, I think it's going to be an upset. But it's not me it's not because I'm a Republican. I'll call it for what it is. If it if I felt like it was the Democrats, okay, Democrats win. But as you as you think about what happened, as you think about what happened, in 2024, it was supposed to be a blue wave. And the pollsters got it wrong. In 2016, it was supposed to be a blue wave. The pollsters got it wrong. Here's the thing, I had Hunter Biden on this show and we both agreed. We both agreed. Who talks to pollsters? Who talks to pollsters? People are getting their information from pollsters, but like who's actually speaking to them? Like how many times have you been contacted by a pollster? How many times have you been text I've gotten text messages from pollsters and I've never answered. So if they if they're sending messages out there, if like let's say they send out 100 text messages. 100 text messages are sent out. How many people are actually replying? And how many people are how many of them are Democrats or Republicans or independents? That's what you got to like and I started looking at that. I'm like, this might end up really showcasing that Republicans really do come out on election day. They're not into polls, they're not into they're not into going onto any type of market. They are the day of, we are there type of people. And they're going to show up. And you know who else is going to show up? People that are against this whole Democratic Socialist movement. People who voted for their Democrat in the primaries that lost to a Democratic Socialist. They're going to come out for the first time voting for a Republican. Watch, I'm going to be right on this. The House and the Senate will not be lost. The House and the Senate, I don't believe it will be lost. Also, obviously, the chaos that is happening in the in the UK, in France, like I said yesterday, that's not protesting. You want to go out to the streets, you don't like things, you can go out and protest. No problem. Do what you got to do. You are entitled to go out there and let your voice be heard peacefully. It's what I say here. In America, if you want to go out here and you feel some sort of even with the no kings protest. You want to go out and you want to protest, which is funny, no kings, you can if if Donald Trump was a king or or I guess a dictator, I don't think you'd be able to protest. But whatever the case is, whatever the case, go out there and protest. No problem. Peacefully. You can protest peacefully. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with having your voice heard, taking out a poster, letting everybody see how you feel. No problem. My biggest concern is this. I'm a proud American. I don't want to see what is happening in France and in Italy come to America. You know, we're going to bring on some um big time uh representatives from Poland onto the show. And I can't wait to talk to them because they do not let anybody into their country. They have a process. Every country has a process or should have a process. America has a process. And I think, just like my parents did, you should wait in line. You should wait in line. And when it's your time to come into this, you'll come in. Also on AI, uh touching on AI. If you are not if you are not, I'm going to repeat this again. By the way, my book is out. Million Dollar AI Playbook. You can go ahead and get that on Amazon. You can go to my website, Davidgokhshtein.com. If you are looking to really get in at the bottom floor on AI, that book's good for you. It's good for beginners. It's good for people that have ideas that were unable to execute those ideas because they they just didn't have the funding for it. There is no excuse now. I'm going to tell you this again. There is no excuse. From the conversations that I've been listening to, I'm talking about from Elon talk, to everybody and every expert in tech talk about AI. If you are not dabbling in, if you are not dabbling in AI, you are absolutely doing it all all wrong. I'm telling you. AI and crypto are going to go hand in hand. So by the way, let me let me throw that in there. If you like we're going to have a huge bull market. What have I talked about? And you guys can replay the tapes. I said for weeks now, if not months, I said, but most recently, you're going to have a phenomenal bull run. This bull run will be bigger than the bull run that we had in 2021. It will be bigger than that. Now combined AI into the mix because AI and crypto go hand in hand. Both need each other. If you sit back and you think about it, both need each other. This will be a tremendous, a tremendous. And I'm not I'm not a hyper. You know me, I'm going to hype anything. I just look at numbers. Numbers don't lie, people do. If you look at the numbers, I was talking about crypto hitting a $10 trillion market cap. That's where I see crypto going, $10 trillion. Is that all going to go into your favorite token? No. A lot of it, obviously, most of it, Bitcoin. And then the other majors within crypto. But but $10 trillion. And there will be trickle down effects. And some of your some of your startup projects, especially the ones that have integrated AI into them, phenomenal. And this will be the last run, not that this will be the last bull run that we ever have in crypto, but I believe this will be the last volatile run that we see with the amount of money that pours in. This will be the last run where you see a 1,000X or 2,000X or 10,000X, because after that, I feel like this market, because it's already started maturing, it'll mature even more so. And then you'll have to pick and choose which assets, which real assets you go into for the foreseeable future. But AI, AI, I'm telling you, man, it's a baby. And I think and I'm going to say this again, AI currently in its current state is what Bitcoin was in 2011. Take that for what you want. Take it however you want. But right now, where AI is right now, it's on the same timeline as Bitcoin was in 2011. So if you missed the dot-com era, if you weren't born for the dot-com era, okay? I know I got a lot of the older folks in here. Shout out we don't discriminate on age, okay? We got the boomers, the baby boomers, we got the we got every type of person tuning into this show. And I love you guys. But AI, if you missed if you if you really missed buying a house for 7K, okay? $7,000 buying a house on some wonderful land. If you missed if you missed the dot-com era, if you missed, you know, Bitcoin, if you missed your meme tokens, okay? Your favorite meme tokens, Doge, Shiba, Pepe, whatever. AI. It's right here for you. It's right here for you. Anyway, welcome to the breakdown. Episode 809. Again, a lot of things came out yesterday. Netflix, again, Netflix didn't do bad at all. Um, SpaceX, $100 trillion company. That's what it's going to be. They're most probably going to have a merger between uh between Tesla and and SpaceX. You can hear it in in Elon's voice when he was talking on the on the call yesterday, on the earnings call. He he was essentially giving it away. Uh, so if you're looking at or if you're looking for something, again, not financial not financial not financial advice, but if you're looking for something, it's uh to me it's Tesla and SpaceX. Those are the two and obviously they'll merge. I'm wondering when. You have uh Anthropic and Open AI, they're battle. By the way, Anthropic lost $70 billion in quarter one or quarter two of no, quarter one of 2026. January 2026, Anthropic lost $70 billion. I want you to understand this. $70 billion. And the banks aren't going to do nothing. You know why? Because the banks are going to work with Anthropic to make sure that they get their money back. Okay? They ain't sending them to collections. They're going to make sure they work with them to get their goddamn money back. $70 billion. I they are losing, you know, Open AI and Anthropic continue to lose money. But the good case for AI is, as we move further along, tokens will get more expensive. So at some point they'll start, you know, getting good revenue in besides their subscriptions. I think they'll start getting good revenue in. Um, but right now I I I guess we're in a in a period where obviously they continue to build out, but slowly, but slowly, you can see that prices of tokens are going up. A lot of people will go local. But we'll save that we'll save that for more talking. I mean, we have a lot of people coming on. We have had a lot of people from different companies listed on Nasdaq, whatever, come on here, leaders of companies that have integrated themselves into AI, talk about AI and its future. And it's been a it's been a breath of fresh air to get away respectfully. I love you know I love digital assets, but it has been a breath of fresh air to get away from it for a second. Just for a second. And you know which one I don't even consider the stuff that you guys get into digital assets. It's scratch off tickets. It's it's a casino, which that was never Satoshi Nakamoto's goddamn vision. I can't stand it, man. You know how I feel about that. I can't stand it. I cannot stand it. You guys killed memes for me, by the way, because I'm into meme culture. I love meme culture. Memes are relatable. Like memes are relatable. You can you don't you don't have to speak the same language as somebody. But if I if I were to talk about crypto, there was a time where if people did not understand the way Bitcoin operated, I could just sit down with somebody and just say Pepe. Oh, I know that. I know I know the frog. I remember the protesting in Hong Kong. They were using Pepe. We can have a conversation, this dialogue, and then I can lead into why digital assets are important. No, you guys killed it. You guys killed everything right. Well, the adults in the room, I believe, will will run it back and we'll bring it back. But I'm just saying. The good times when VanEck had like or still has their meme index. The meme index full of Doge, Shiba, Pepe, Pengu. Real memes. I'm just saying. And now you guys come into my DMs or send me emails about absolute They're not memes. Okay? They're ab they have no lore, they have no history. I they're it's dog shit. See, there we go. And that's why, by the way, I had to limit my comments. I purposely put on people who follow or who I follow or people who have interacted with this show. Because I don't want nobody coming in here just spamming away. By the way, shout out to TikTok. TikTok is in the place. TikTok is in the place today. We finally are not restricted today. I don't know what we can't play Trump, by the way. We cannot play Trump. Anyway, Anyway, By the way, yesterday's conference, Trump I got to say it. Trump was bugging, bro. Trump was bugging. I got to tell you, Trump was off off the handles, man. I I don't even know I I didn't understand what was happening. Who he was screaming at. Like I I didn't get who he was screaming at. Anyway, we'll bring in Stephen here. Let's bring in Stephen. He's in the back again. We we don't offer any M&M's or water to anybody. Stephen's just waiting in the back like, what is happening? Why am I why am I even here? Stephen, hello to you. Welcome to the breakdown. Nice to have you on the show. [Guest: Stephen] Hey, thanks for having me. [David] And and I do have a water, so I'm I'm [Guest: Stephen] Thanks for coming on. [David] You got the water. Okay, but it's not from us. I will if you have X, I'll go ahead and send you some X money. I'm sorry that our staff is so uncourteous here. Um, how's it going? How's the market looking for you? [Guest: Stephen] Markets are looking great right now, actually. Uh, well, it depends on what market you're in, but uh, for for the most part, markets are looking pretty good. [David] Which uh, well, being that which market are you looking at, being that you said that, which market has you more excited? [Guest: Stephen] Well, you were talking a little bit about crypto. Um, probably the crypto markets have me most excited at the moment. And after that, I would say things like consumer staples, uh, commodities, uh, those are all very positive right now in my opinion. And then, you know, look, I think we agree that that, you know, the future of AI is here and it's going to continue to grow and expand. However, um, it might be a little bit overbought at the moment. So, uh, we'll see what happens there, but there's definite definitely areas to be in and definitely areas to avoid. [David] You spend most of your life in the bond market, right? [Guest: Stephen] That's right. [David] And then you before you came into crypto, and you've said tokenization is really just asset-backed securities with a new wrapper. How did a bond guy end up building crypto ETFs? [Guest: Stephen] Yeah, I was uh, I was in asset-backed securities and and other types of bonds for years. Uh, I got to got the chance to be a portfolio manager, a trader, uh, you, you know, um, an analyst, uh, in that market for probably the best part of the generational bull market. And in about 2016, I I declared that the bond market had peaked and that we were going into a generational bear market in bonds. At the same time, uh, I saw the potential of blockchain for tokenization and primarily for esoteric assets and in non-liquid assets that a lot of people can't really access, particularly in the bond market. So in 2016, I thought it might be a good time to make the switch, move into blockchain and to start working on tokenization, particularly for the bond market. [David] What got you excited about the about crypto and blockchain in general? [Guest: Stephen] Well, the first thing that really got me excited, uh, for for a lot of my career, I was focused on emerging markets and uh, particularly emerging market bonds. And when you see the statistics of various countries around the world, how many people work in other countries to provide for their families back home, and how much they pay in fees to get those remittances back to their family. One of the things that crypto got me excited about was the ability to lower those fees. Because that that was something that, um, you know, the large firms, large banks had a control over for such a long period of time. But to be able to be your own bank, to have your own wallet, to be in control of your own destiny, to to trade on your own terms, uh, that really disintermediates Western Union and large banks that have control over uh, how currencies are traded. [David] You're calling for a 10-year at 8% within four years. Walk people through that and what does it mean for someone with a mortgage, a 401k or some Bitcoin? [Guest: Stephen] Yeah, so we we've already seen quite a spike in bond yields. We've seen a very big spike in um, mortgage yields. And that's already causing a a huge amount of selling pressure in the housing market. In some areas, there are two times as many sellers as there are buyers of homes. And and that's with the 10-year passing 5%, you know, on its way to six. Um, what will eventually happen though, is as bond yields continue to go up, which which they will. We we may have a little bit of a settling at the moment because there's always some mean reversion, there's always some catch-up. But as the market starts realizing that bond yields are only going to go higher, uh, people will probably start buying homes again. At a higher rate because they don't want to pay an even higher rate later. But that being said, uh, the cost of a home has gone up significantly just from mortgage rates going from 3% to almost 8%. [David] Do you do you see though the rates coming down um in the near future? [Guest: Stephen] I really don't. [David] Because that's been the talk. People people have been saying that we'll have lower rates. I don't believe so. You don't you don't believe that the rates will come down on mortgages. [Guest: Stephen] No, I really don't. Um, we are in a new generational bond market and it's a it's a bear market. We're we're 10 years in. A lot of people say that 2020 marks the spot. I'm going to say that 2016 marks marks the spot and that 2020 was an anomaly. Okay. And but but since 2016, rates have continued to go up and are and the trajectory is for at least the next 20 years, rates will continue to go up. Now I got several reasons for that, but I I don't see mortgage rates coming down. I don't see the 10-year coming down. Now, obviously there's going to be volatility. Markets don't ever move in straight lines. Correct. So we might have a a small pullback, a small mean reversion, but the trend is upward. [David] So basically, anybody who's been waiting or patiently waiting to get a home, they'll have a tough time doing so, especially first-time buyers. [Guest: Stephen] Oh, absolutely. [David] So what happens to that? [Guest: Stephen] If you can get a mortgage right now at current rates, you should do it. [David] So first-time first-time home buyers who are sitting there patiently waiting should elect to get a home with the current mortgage rates. [Guest: Stephen] Absolutely. [David] Man, that it it it's that's horrible. It it really is horrible. It because they're looking at it, they're like, well, hold on, a different generation bought these homes at 7 to 20K. We understand. Okay, I got that. Uh, and you know, the rates are high, you know, the rates weren't, you know, they weren't at 1% or 2%. I'm sure they were like, what, 10%. But if the home's at 20K, then, you know, it doesn't really mean much. And here they are, they're buying houses, small houses for a million dollars. Well, let's talk New York. You know, you won't get anything, you know, good for minimum of a 800K. And it's you're not getting a lot of land. So now they got to pay that plus 8%. That that that is terrible. That that is a terrible deal. Most people will probably go back to renting. I mean, I mean, I I I wanted to go on to crypto and we will, but interesting take from you when when you say I don't think if you if you see 7 to 8% right now, you should grab that. [Guest: Stephen] Yeah, yeah. [David] Well, what's really interesting is, you know,

[Part 3 of 7] [Guest: Steven McClurg] [00:00] Uh, I have a son that just went off to college and my wife and I were talking about buying a home in that city. It's a very, you know, it's it's a very good city to own a home in. And, you know, it's something that we would absolutely utilize, but we've come to the decision that maybe we get an apartment there instead. You know, it's it's it's so much cheaper. But if I were buying a home for the first time and and really wanted to own my own home, I wouldn't wait six months or a year from now. I I would buy it now because what's going to happen is so so so right now there is a lot of pent up demand. There's a lot more sellers than buyers and rates are relatively high. But these rates will probably stay stable for the next three to six months and home prices will likely come down, you know, seasonally at this point in time and and even into the spring, but once spring hits, that pent up demand is going to start buying homes and the prices aren't going to drop. They're either going to stay stable or they're going to go up and you're battling interest rates going higher. So if if that's your desire, sure, do it. Otherwise, I would suggest renting. [David] [01:18] At at this point, listen, you buy a house, it's also a money pit, so I I'd probably tell you guys go rent as well. Uh, if you if you're going to live, you know, month to month, you'd rather go ahead and just rent. Uh, BlackRock just filed for a Bitcoin fund, a Bitcoin fund with downside protection. JD, uh, JP Morgan's asset management arm now says Bitcoin can beat, uh, stocks and gold over the next decade. Is this the moment finance advisors finally bring their clients in? [Guest: Steven McClurg] [01:51] Oh, they they've been bringing them in. Um, so my last company launched the first Nasdaq traded Bitcoin futures ETF. And even when we launched that ETF several years ago, there was there was so much demand from the financial advisor community that it was one of the biggest it was it was at at that point in time, it was the biggest, um, one day inflow ETFs of all time was was futures. And then of course, Bitcoin came in when it was when Bitcoin spot, you know, we were one of the 11 that launched at the same time. It was a tremendous day, uh, for inflows. Financial advisors had done their work. They were just waiting for a vehicle to do it in. Some of them participated in the futures, but many more participated in spot. So I do believe that several more advisors are going to put their clients in Bitcoin. And then the second biggest theme, or actually the biggest theme right now is tokenization. So they're looking at, okay, well, which blockchains are going to support tokenization the most? Because Bitcoin is separate. Bitcoin's money. I look at it, you know, like an alternative to gold, uh, an alternative to, uh, highly desired currency like the Swiss Frank or the Don't tell Peter Shiff that. Singaporean dollar. Um, by the way, I like gold too, right? Um, but, uh, it's it's so much easier to store and and and transport and with the ETF, it's it's extremely inexpensive. Yeah. Uh, and a lot and a lot better price discovery, by the way, than gold. So, uh, so I believe, you know, so right now, uh, M2 global monetary supply is is going up at a clip of about 7% and and that has the highest correlation to Bitcoin is the increase in monetary supply. Yeah. And that's not going to end. It's only going to it's only going to increase at a higher clip as inflation increases, as bond yields increases, um, central banks are going to have to issue more debt and more currency to pay for that debt. So I expect Bitcoin to really rally over the next four years. But, uh, I I do think the bigger theme is tokenization. And, uh, you know, I would say focus on, you know, half a dozen to a dozen protocols that you think are going to best support that. And that's going to be an extremely important theme. [David] [04:25] Well, a lot of people wouldn't look right to, uh, chain link. If you're talking about tokenization, tokenizing, you know, real world assets, uh, which, uh, I've been hearing, I think BlackRock has been kind of a, uh, having conversations with with them. rumors again, guys, speculation, but, uh, where they want to tokenize, obviously, uh, real world assets there. Uh, your stake ETFs pay out staking rewards. You've compared that to a coupon on a bond. What should people understand about the risk that come with that yield? [Guest: Steven McClurg] [05:00] Yeah, you know, that that risk isn't so bad because it's it's not like you're, you know, it's not like an income strategy where you're selling calls to create income. You you're you're participating in the network itself. So you're staking on chain to the network and receiving those rewards. And, uh, the risk there is extremely low in my opinion with and you're getting a little bit of yield, you're getting the network participation. It's a it's it's essentially like investing in a data center because the way that they operate is you're you're it's a function of supporting the network through transactions and you're getting rewarded for that similar to, you know, investing in compute itself. [David] [05:51] At a panel this month, you said the one thing that you can't fake is on-chain revenue. I like that. You've also filed for funds on tokens like Pepe. How do you decide which coins deserve an ETF? And I'm interested about the Pepe one, too. [Guest: Steven McClurg] [06:08] Absolutely, absolutely. Well, so so the the first category again is tokenization. And we look at there's there's a lot of different areas of tokenization and there's a lot of different types of networks. So for instance, uh, financial services rails. Uh, we we think that, uh, Ripple is extremely strong there. They've been tied into Wall Street for a long time and there's a lot of tokenization of Wall Street assets on that chain, which is why we like XRP a lot. And then if you look at enterprise data, H bar is the leader in that. And then you have, uh, open source, which Ethereum has been the leader for a very long time, but it's old technology, it's slow. It's not as secure as it as it was. And there's a lot of new opportunities there. So we're we're looking at various opportunities in that area. So so that covers the majority of what we do. The second area is currency itself, like Bitcoin. I believe that privacy, privacy coins are going to be a strong player in the coming years. Um, particularly because of repressive governments around the world. And our bet there is Litecoin. Um, I mean, look, Litecoin, Zcash are both great, but we're just we're betting on Litecoin because it has a longer history. Uh, it's set up exactly like Bitcoin, but it does have the ability to make your transactions and your wallet's private if you want to. And then the final category is is memes. I'm I'm, you know, I heard you a little bit earlier, you know, I'm a big fan of meme culture. There are certain coins that I love, uh, as a as a meme collector. And there's a lot that I don't love, right? But, uh, but but Pepe is one of those cultural tokens that's been around for a long time. And, uh, those of us that have been around the Bitcoin community for a long period of time, we're we're big lovers of of Pepe. Now, what what what is it? Is it is it are they building tokenization on it? Is it true currency? No, it's it's fun, it's a collectible. It's like trading cards. [David] [08:20] Yeah. Listen, I I love Pepe. Rare Pepe. Oh, you know, if you're if you're a Bitcoiner, you you've you've seen Pepe your entire life, uh, with within this ecosystem. But that's cool the way you think about that. Again, I love there are certain I just meme meme culture is like it's so underrated and when when you say meme, people like in this ecosystem, the Bitcoiners and the Bitcoin Maxis right away, oh, what is what are you talking about? It's just no, no, no, no, no. You for me personally, I I was I was insane. I was going on mainstream media, whether it's Fox or Bloomberg, and they would bring me on there for Bitcoin and I'm talking about, well, Dogecoin brings in a lot of people into the ecosystem and they ultimately find themselves buying Bitcoin because now they know they can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. And they're just looking at me like, hold on, we brought you on for Bitcoin. Why are you talking about Dogecoin? And yet Dogecoin was used by AMC, you know, again, during the 2021 bull run, you had Dogecoin being used. Slim Jim, I still have stuff from them, you know, Axe body spray, which I would never use. Again, all these things, all these companies started using Dogecoin to go ahead and promote themselves because they saw an opportunity. Um, real quick, you said XRP. You think XRP overtakes Ethereum? From an institutional perspective? [Guest: Steven McClurg] [09:44] Yeah, in in its own category, right? So I I think about Ethereum is more of a, uh, decentralized open source platform, right? Which is fantastic. Uh, there's a lot of room for open source. But if you're a financial institution, you want some decentralization. You don't want it completely open source. And and even Ethereum itself, what's happening is, you know, JP Morgan, you know, there's a, you know, big news several years ago that they were working with Ethereum. And what did they do? They just took Ethereum's code and built their own blockchain. And I think that's what's going to happen with some of these larger, uh, open source networks like Ethereum. Uh, they'll comply to Ethereum standards, but they'll run their own private chain. Yeah. But XRP Ledger is already built to do that. And they're working with large institutions to just work on their chain that's already built. They don't have to do anything. They can just start they all they have to do is do what a financial institution is supposed to do and that's package products and throw it out there. You know, nobody's trying to build Nasdaq on their own. Nobody's trying to build New York Stock Exchange. Exactly. They're just trying to package products and sell that product and make markets. [David] [11:01] You're more cautious on AI than most people right now, most people that have come on to my show. You've said that data center build out could outrun demand like a Bitcoin mining, uh, cycle. After SpaceX's numbers this morning, do you still feel the same way? [Guest: Steven McClurg] [11:18] I really do. I think I think we're at a tipping point right now where a lot of, you know, Anthropic is going to be the canary in the coal mine, right? Um, their their revenue doesn't match their valuation by any stretch of the imagination. And I think it's going to take a very long time for, uh, for these providers to actually grow their revenue to a point to where it it matches their cost. And the costs right now are extremely high. So data center build out's extremely expensive. And and some of the things that's been happening, even like buying chips. Um, a lot of these data centers are buying chips ahead of time, keeping them in warehouses so that when they get built, they're they're not going to be scrambling to buy chips. They're afraid that there's going to be a scarcity. And what's going to end up happening is, uh, some of these data center projects are going to close before they before they ever open. And then I think a lot of these chips are going to be dumped onto the market. So, uh, this is a mean reversion that I expect to happen in the near term. But it doesn't mean that the whole industry is going down. Um, if if anything, if there's some large failures, I mean, you know, Oracle's a good example of of of a company that's really trying to scale back and building AI infrastructure at the same time. I think they're going to have to have a reckoning along with some of some of the other large companies like that. And, um, it's just going to go on pause for a little bit. But if there's any issues, I I do believe the U.S. government's going to bail them out. [David] [12:58] When all said and done, do you think Elon wins the race when it comes to AI? [Guest: Steven McClurg] [13:02] Yes. I look, I think I think Who's going to bet against him? Nobody. bet against Elon Musk. He he will he will find a way that's so unique. I mean, look, I mean, I laughed at the Tesla that like has the, um, you know, the the the SpaceX technology that lets it like jump and do flips. I mean, that's kind of crazy. But the reality is is that might actually be a thing soon, right? And who knows what Elon's going to come up with to power AI that nobody else can do and that nobody else is thinking that integrates his other businesses. I mean, he might turn all of his cars into a, you know, rolling data center. I I just don't know. But he will he will find a way to win that in a way that nobody else will. I'm also a big fan of Anthropic, you know, I mean, I know I just dissed on him, but I mean, I use it all the time. [David] [13:56] I mean, me too. I I mean, Anthropic, I think it's great for coding. And I don't think I think it's better than Open AI. And obviously Grock respectfully when it comes to coding. Um, and if you can't do anything with AI right now, if you can't build a because I believe you will have more millionaires in the next three to five years than you had in the last 25 using the internet. If if you don't start learning AI, I mean, it's just pretty much you're lazy. That's it. You have it all right here for you. This is a computer. Like I had a Packard Bell. It weighed 7,000 pounds on a table. You have no excuses. Exactly. I I I wanted to say real quick before you go, the Roadster, everybody wanted a flyer a flying car, right? We got one. And to me, what it was, will a lot of people drive it? How many are they going to make? Obviously, limited production, but kind of reminded me of the Wright brothers when they first, you know, created the plane. That that's kind of how I saw the flying car over there. I thought it I thought it was AI, by the way, when I was watching and then I had to do a double take, it was real. Holy crap, he actually did it. Um, and I want to give you a shout out. XRP, you know, XRP the the army, they've taken a beating for a really long time. So, uh, you doing what you're doing and obviously talking about how institutions are are out there building on it. Um, you know, you you got them fired up on TikTok right now. They're all on TikTok. Every XRP member, they've left X and they've gone to TikTok. That's their home. Uh, and shout out to you also for Pepe because, you know what? Yes, it's a collectible. Uh, yes, it doesn't have any intangible value, but it has some sort of value, which it it it does bring more people into the space at a at a at a basic level for them to understand what this economy is all about, what this industry is all about. And they finally find their way into Bitcoin. And that is the biggest thing. How do you get people into Bitcoin? And I think Pepe does do that. So, big up to you. Thank you so much for even coming on and taking out some time. Hopefully, we can get you back on in 2027 to talk more about during that time, probably, a bull market like we've never seen before. [Guest: Steven McClurg] [16:11] Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. [David] [16:14] Thank you, Stephen. That is, uh, Stephen. Great conversation. Great guy, man. And we we owe him money for his drink. He had to buy his own drink to come on here. What what are we doing, guys? This is this is horrible. The guy wanted a water and we and we we made him buy his own drink. You you made him buy his own drink. That was good, though. Good talk. Uh, obviously, big on XRP, big on Pepe. You heard it first, like this is somebody who's connected to the institutional players, man. So if you're listening, this is what I'm talking about. Get value and then position yourselves correctly. It is, uh, 1:10 p.m. on the East Coast. Three hours behind. Three hours behind. We have a guest coming on in the next five minutes. But yeah, it was, um, it was good to have the combo. It's it's it's really good to have these conversations with people that, uh, listen, he's not completely bullish on AI. You heard him. Anthropic, overvalued. I mean, I said it before he came on here. $70 billion loss in quarter one of 2026 came out yesterday. Think about that. $70 billion. Just quarter one at a loss. What is a bank going to do? What's the bank going to do? Nothing. They ain't going into collections. And nothing's happening. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. But you can understand why now, you know, he was in Stephen was in bonds. In the bond market. And then he switched over to crypto. And if and here's somebody who's willing, so I want to put this in perspective for you guys. And this is what I always say. There are institutional players that do not go on podcast. That do not go on mainstream media TV. They don't talk with anybody. They just do their thing. And there are many of them. So if you think they're not buying Bitcoin, they're not buying Pepe, Pepe, right? Oh, we just talked about Pepe. If you think they're not in the real meme economy, if you think they're not buying Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, he talked about privacy and I didn't even have the chance to talk about privacy with him. If you think they're not getting into Zcash, Monero, Litecoin, he mentioned Mweb, which I could have gone into also, but again, we're always limited for time. If you think these things aren't happening, you're you're not watching. You're not watching. What you're doing is you're taking all your time. You're taking all your time. You're spending it on X. And X is the last place you actually get this get this information. It really is. You're listening to people that like absolutely do not understand the markets and how they work. Welcome to the breakdown. Episode 809, sponsored by Midnight. Obviously, Midnight, I I fully believe besides them being a sponsor, way before they were a sponsor, I was talking about Midnight and how I believe Charles will absolutely dominate with the Midnight protocol. That and then the entire team. Polymarket. Polymarket is the official prediction market sponsor of the breakdown. Cake Wallet. You want to you talked about Litecoin today? Well, if you want to make sure that your Litecoin is secure, you use Cake Wallet. Go to cakewallet.com. FOMO, fomo.family. Go watch the traders trade as they write thesis on their favorite on their favorite projects. Favorite tokens. Go ahead and watch them real time. Watch in real time what's happening. Let's go ahead and, uh, let's let's change hopefully. We got we got somebody behind in in the in the green room again. I'm hoping that they were given some sort of some sort of beverage. But we're not going to do that here, right? Our team is absolutely not going to do that here. Let's bring in yet. Yeah, what's going on? [Guest: Name] [20:56] Hi there. Thank you for having me. Nice to meet you. [David] [20:58] Thank you for, uh, making time. I know, uh, you have a busy schedule. Your team, let me tell you, your team, you got bodyguards. They're not even EAs. These are bodyguards, you know, so shout out to them. That's good that they protect you and make sure that you go onto the right programs. Hopefully, this is one of them. Um, it's nice to have you here. Let me just start off again, uh, what do you think about the markets? Uh, what's your take on the current state of the markets as we, uh, as we currently view it? [Guest: Name] [21:29] Well, I mean, I would say generally unprecedented, uh, in the sense that it's, um, you know, the the view for people is not just what's happening in the markets on fundamentals, but also so many external factors, the situation in Iran, uh, Trump, who has, you know, obviously been the X-factor, I would say, certainly last year. And, uh, you know, it's a big debate as to was he net positive or sort of net negative, for instance, for the crypto industry as an example, right? When everyone believed that he was going to be sort of the the reason why everything was going to sort of rocket upwards and then it kind of went a little bit sideways. Uh, so there's a lot of debate around that. Um, certainly in our industry and crypto, I think the faith has been shaken a little bit because people can't explain it, right? You know, when you think about 22 and 23, we had very clear villains, you know, Terra Luna, FTX, right? It was easy to explain. But 25 is much more complicated. And so I think that's one of the reasons and of course, large institutions and so forth. But also I think complexities in finances and sort of the amount of money that's been printed and the whole thing with interest rates. Um, so I mean, I I I came in a little earlier. I saw the conversation. It was a wonderful conversation. But I just wanted to sort of point out an example of this. Um, so we talked about you talked about Anthropic's, you know, like, um, sort of massive $70, $80 million loss. However, um, actually their net cash loss was closer to $8 billion. And $72 billion of that was actually accounting losses. And, you know, beyond people in the industry, how are you going to explain accounting losses? And what is the accounting loss? The accounting loss is because they raised money as a convertible bond. And when the value of Anthropic goes up to like a trillion plus dollars or two, then the bond becomes more expensive, kind of like your stock options, right? So then you have these non-cash expenses. So the headline is, oh my goodness, $80 billion loss. Uh, and then and then and then you have the sort of bearishness on this, oh my goodness, AI is going to collapse because it's all expensive. Don't get me wrong, $8 billion of $8 billion of losses is still ginormous, okay, right? Uh, but there's a big difference between, you know, 80 and eight, right? Um, and your general investor, who's not that sophisticated, is not going to know the difference. And then they're going to go, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. And then, you know, on one hand, you could say it's overvalued. On the other hand, you could say maybe that's an opportunity in the stock market when I actually know that it's an $8 billion loss where it's going. And the other thing, of course, is that AI companies, um, actually spend most of their money in research and of course, data centers is part of that. You look at the Chinese companies, they don't have nearly that expense because their research costs are different, right? So, and also they don't have that amount of compute in comparison to the U.S. Uh, so so so there's a there's an actual restriction. So on one hand, you could say because U.S. has more energy and more compute, it can compete at the frontier at the level that China is trying to get there, but China is basically 90, 95% there with probably like eight times less compute. Right? So so there's factors here to think about that and again, for your regular lay investor, almost impossible to understand beyond sort of the high-level numbers. Um, but of course, then you have AI agents hopefully here to help you understand it all. [David] [24:20] I listen, I have AI agents. I use Grock bots. I think Grock bots are amazing. Uh, I'll get your take. Let let's talk about that a little bit before we move on to some other questions that I have for you, but you're bullish on so I I take it you are absolutely extremely bullish on AI or excuse me, let me say super intelligence because I don't want to become the enemy of the state as Trump put out on his truth social post. [Guest: Name] [24:46] Yeah, I mean, I'm bullish on it. Um, but I'm bullish on it maybe for for slightly different reasons, uh, because and I think this is where we think where blockchain and crypto actually has its real sort of powerful use case. Um, and but we take it from a different view. It's not the cost of compute and it's not about sort of productivity. Yes, people are struggling to use AI, but it's not that different from in the early days people were struggling to use a computer or people trying to get most value out of a smartphone. You know, remember the days when everyone was saying, ah, smartphone's not going to work because I got my BlackBerry, where the hell is my keyboard? But actually, you know, uh, those people who were able to derive value from a smartphone, ended up building these amazing businesses and everything followed. We think AI is exactly in that same direction. Um, but but uh, the bullishness for us is that we actually think that AI and particularly AI agents are going to basically really give us the decentralized on-chain world, right? And that's because, you know, when you think about your data, like Muse, you know, basically, uh, you know, when Meta came out with Muse, everyone's like, oh, amazing. It's like, it's it's it's this incredible AI agent. What is an AI agent? So it's educating the market. But, you know, when I give talks about this, I ask people, raise your hand, how many here actually would really trust all your data and your finances and your bookings to Meta? And scarcely a hand goes up in rooms of hundreds or thousands, right? And so you kind of look at that and you kind of go, okay, nobody here really trusted it. So what does it really mean? And, you know, Facebook has a history of deplatforming, you know, with Instagram and Facebook accounts. I mean, even, you know, pre pre Elon, X deplatform, you know, your president, right?

[Part 4 of 7] [David] [00:00] Yeah. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [00:00] It's like, right? Uh, but, but now, um, how do you ensure that you have sovereign ownership of your agent? And that's actually, we think, one of the most powerful use cases for blockchain. Not that the user needs to know, like that is using blockchain, but in the same way that I can hold my keys, you know, you own your keys, you own your Bitcoin, it's actually you have your keys, you own your agent, uh, you can store your memory, it's portable, and that's what we did, right? So we launched an agent that's blockchain native, that you can basically transfer, that essentially has a wallet built in, and you can see it's kind of interesting how people in the sort of AI world, at least in the West, like take Instinct, you know, raised a billion at 10 billion, which is, you know, pretty crazy. However, they went out and said, we think most of the revenue will come from transactions. We agree, except they're not using blockchain. They're building everything on, they're building an entirely new system, and we're just like, that's a blockchain has proved that it already works. Why do you just, you know, do that, right? Uh, and so for zero knowledge proof, uh, data provenance, reputation, you know, um, you know, privacy preserving, all this type of stuff, you can now do on chain. And it took us around eight or nine years to get there. And I remember in the days, so we got involved in the space because of NFTs, right? In 2017, with CryptoKitties. And back then, you know, millions of dollars of sales melted Ethereum. It could barely, barely function. And I remember the hate that everyone sort of delivered there, oh my goodness, we should not do that, right? Um, yeah, it was, and now, trillions of dollars in the L1 and L2s easily transacted, no problem at all. Stablecoins and and meme coins and whatever. And so that was a test proof case. And now, you know, we're going to have agents. And, you know, what we're bullish about is that if you own the agent and they're truly sovereign, they will act in your interest. There's going to be decentralized compute that's going to be one that isn't bound by one or the other. And more importantly, they're going to act in your interest, which is actually how we get to a decentralized internet. You know, and and the convenience is the enemy of time. The human has a difficulty with, let me try 50 different things. He can't do that. But the agent can optimize it for 50 different things, no problem at all, and the human just experiences it. So we're really getting to this core of what the internet was meant to be, but we couldn't because, you know, we were time poor, and the agent will solve that. Right? And so that's what we're really bullish about. And of course, that means the entire ecosystem of crypto, in particularly altcoins. So we're much more bullish on altcoins, uh, as a as a as a macro because of that reason. [David] [02:26] Privacy then, let's let's talk about that. You're making me shift from my question. So let's talk about privacy. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [02:32] Keep going. Yes. [David] [02:33] No, I like this, I like these kind of conversations where I deviate from the questions. Privacy is going to be huge. And so how do you and I and I agree with you, like we we took crypto and we made it better, right? We need to take AI and make it decentralized. We need to build it on the blockchain. We need to do all these things. How do but here's privacy. How do we make sure that everybody keeps their data quiet? Like right now, here here's here's my thing. The reason why privacy is making a comeback, in my in my own personal opinion, is because people finally realized, holy smokes, I I'm not private here. People know how much money I have if they can track down my address, which is pretty easy now, right? AI agents are around. I can sniff it out, right? We have multiple protocols that can go ahead and sniff. Chain analysis, uh, who else? Um, oh my God, one of the biggest companies in the world. Why did I just slip my mind? It starts with a P, but I'll remember it. Um, what do you do from a privacy standpoint? What do you develop from a privacy standpoint? Or do you collaborate with somebody who's already built a privacy, uh, protocol for, uh, these AI agents and AI protocols and agentic trading? [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [03:53] Yeah. So, so first of all, in general, uh, I mean, privacy is a huge thing, but I want to make a distinction here because I think it's often in our industry, especially for people not in the industry, they conflate privacy with anonymity, right? And I think this part about anonymity is what has given our industry somewhat of a bad rap, unintentionally, because of course, there is an level of account sort of accountability. So most people, for instance, don't really care that, you know, um, you know, like law enforcement knows about our stuff because they're supposed to keep it secret and they're supposed to keep society safe, right? They don't care about that. But they do care if their neighbor or some stranger they don't know or someone else has that information, right? And so that's privacy versus anonymity. And so there needs to be a kind of technology that can allow people, whether it's consensus based, or whether it's more centralized, or whether it's like 21 node operators, like whatever structure that might be, that can basically say, look, I trust that. And that we think of this almost like a level of government. Like, you know, and and, you know, I live in Hong Kong, right? So obviously, so in Hong Kong, you know, there's China. And I know the conversation in the West often is, oh my goodness, there's China, totalitarian state, it's difficult, whatever. China is more capitalist than probably, well, certainly Europe and probably much of America. [David] [05:01] I say that all the time. You need to replay the show. I mean, [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [05:04] Yes. Yeah. But however, [David] [05:05] You guys, you guys love capitalism. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [05:08] Yes. I mean, and I would say generally Chinese people love capitalism broadly speaking. So, however, what I would also say is that we have a government where we've agreed on a bargain. And the bargain is, there's in a sense less privacy, but for more security, right? And it's that classic pendulum shift. And and that's not to say it is wrong or right. So someone in America might say, uh, I am, you know, I'm okay to walk in the streets of San Francisco and sometimes not feel quite as safe as the streets of, you know, Beijing or Hong Kong. However, I have a kind of sort of sort of call it sort of a sort of personal liberty that I prefer, um, which is not everyone's sort of idea of liberty, right? So, so that's that's the distinction here. And I think of chains in much the same way. So when you think about privacy, you choose the privacy that you're comfortable with. There's a bunch of people that would say, I want privacy that nobody knows, closer to anonymity, which I think is actually difficult. But, you know, that's a different topic. Or I'm I'm willing to sort of give my authority to people I trust, you know, which is decentralized, but not decentralized by one or two authorities, but maybe 20 or 30 or 100, right? And because of that, I feel like I can still have the privacy without giving up anonymity because we agree that when there's a problem, uh, we do need law enforcement. And like, for instance, the Ethereum Classic versus the Ethereum sort of, you know, as of today's story, you know, that fork was essentially a consensus driven decision around theft, as it were, or was it theft, right? So, so and and so people decided, you know, they voted essentially on a human consensus that agreed that we should not basically give money to people who stole. But there are a lot of hardcore guys out there who said that was wrong, and then they split. And that's okay, right? It's like living in another country. You want to live, you want to live here, you want to live there, it's your choice, right? And so I think privacy technology will very much be the same. Uh, and then you will choose the platform you like. Like we have our own with Mocha chain, for instance, that has a very particular sort of zero knowledge proof setup, originally for reputation. But you don't have to use ours. You can use another one, and, you know, that you prefer. Uh, and of course, if it's too anonymous, you're going to have a situation where certain governments will say, we will not allow it, right? And I mean, kind of kind of what you have with with some of the, you know, like Tornado Cash is a good example of that. Um, which, you know, you can't change that, so then you have to work around it, right? [David] [07:24] That's based, uh, you you're bringing up Ethereum Classic and that whole fork situation, whether it was theft or not. We now that that's another two or three hour, uh, conversation. Yeah, you told Token 2049 that traditional finance can't bank on, uh, AI. Explain that for someone at home. Why would an AI agent need crypto instead of a bank account? [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [07:47] Well, so first of all, um, we believe that AI agents are going to be more numerous than humans by literally factors of like, you know, hundreds actually, right? So that means that this entire new web is going to be shaped entirely by agents. And humans may be the owners of these agents, although there could be a more, let's call it slightly philosophical question of maybe not every agent is owned by a human. And, you know, we can get into that later. However, the point is, there's going to be hundreds of billions of agents that are swarming the internet. And just think about today how you experience the internet. You don't browse the web as much as you used to. You literally just ask AI and it gives you something. And the agent is just going to deliver this to you. So that's the experience. And they're going to negotiate for you and do stuff. They're going to find your your girlfriend, boyfriend, all that everything. Everything that you thought you were going to basically get, you know, from clicking on a website, they're going to deliver to you programmed an experience with a custom interface just designed for you because they're going to code it in real time, right? That's that's the future, right? Now, what's missing though, for these agents to transact with each other, and for them to have true power, they have to have a form of money, right? And so what is that money? So if it's going to be something like a Visa or MasterCard, you've got these transaction fees that don't sustain. Because the existing payment rails was meant for human time. So like, think of how many transactions you make as a, you know, every day, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30, right? The agent will have made 3,000 to 30,000 transactions in that same period of time. So it cannot do that on the on just uh, like, you know, one or two percent even. It has to be essentially almost free to do it, right? So, so that's necessary. And now blockchain is able to do that. And in the same way, you know, like, you know, because we're in Asia, we were very early with like Axie Infinity and Sandbox. We saw what happened in the Philippines, where essentially people who didn't have a bank account, and this is the other thing, like, if you're in America, you're like, like we all have bank accounts. Uh, there's about one and a half to two billion people who don't have a bank account, right? Um, and but they do have a mobile phone, right? They do have the internet. [David] [09:38] Everybody does. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [09:39] Yeah, yeah, but they don't have a bank account because a bank can't bank you when you make five or $10 a month. It's just not profitable. However, when you have a crypto wallet, suddenly you have access to effectively banking rails. That same uh sort of sort of banking rails is now machine ready. And a bank cannot give a bank account to an agent because an agent doesn't have personhood. And I think it's going to be a very long time until it has personhood from a legal perspective. And there will be very different times when that happens. So, but but so as a result, how does an agent have sovereign funds of its own in which it can transact? It's going to be a crypto wallet. And then of course, you can do like, you know, cold wallets, you can do sort of multiple permissions. So that means you as a human can still authorize the big expenses, but the agent wallet is essentially your hot wallet. And it's going to do your shopping, it's going to do negotiate small fees, it's going to help you with your travel, and it's not going to use a credit card ultimately, it's going to just deposit uh sort of and make payments. And then you as a user will have rails like, you know, with our with our Nuva platform that we sort of uh launched together with Figure, you can get hourly yield on on basically, you know, US prime mortgages, and you could be living in the Philippines. There is no way that someone in the Philippines or Indonesia could buy sort of, you know, basically prime US assets today from their local bank account. Never, you know, here I could do this. So my agent could take my money, generate six to seven percent yield or whatever he's doing, and then when he needs it, withdraw it because he can withdraw it every hour, right? So this is kind of the future of finance, and the agent will manage it all for you. And that's actually, you know, and now picture this, hundreds of billions of agents that are basically going to just um sort of transact with each other. How are they going to do it? They're going to do it on blockchain. [David] [11:15] Agents that are going to make you financially responsible, uh, that's that's the thing that goes over my head. Uh, you said [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [11:22] Well, I wouldn't say responsible. Sorry. I would say literate. [David] [11:25] There you go. Financial literacy is a big thing in the United States of America. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [11:29] It's huge. Um, there was an interesting stat from SoFi, uh, that was just published, where they showed that something like 40 or 45% of Americans could not handle a thousand dollar deficit suddenly. [David] [11:41] No. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [11:42] Right? And that is wild, right? Uh, but then you look at the stat and you wonder, you know, it's something like roughly 50% of Americans who seem to think that socialism is a good idea. And uh, why and and why is that? Because they're not included in the capitalist system because they don't have money. And that's why people are so terrified in America about health insurance because if you're not working, you know, your health bill will kill you because you can't afford even a thousand dollars, right? Um, and and and why is that? Because you don't understand money, and you know, Europe's even worse in that sense. Uh, and and frankly, I think one of the reasons why Asia is doing much better there is because we are we we're happy to talk about money and we're quite comfortable with it. Um, and uh, and and and as a result, um, you know, because capitalism is good for us. It feels like like the American dream ironically seems more alive and well in Asia, uh, than it is in America, uh, which is a little bit sad. [David] [12:34] It is, uh, and I I if you watch my takes on what's happening in America, uh, I I kind of understand it, but I don't understand it. And and I don't these people don't want to experience socialism/communism because that's what comes next after that. Um, you said you run 400 agents yourself, and you've warned people, uh, that they can lose access to an agent they've spent months training. What should regular people do now to protect themselves? [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [13:06] Yeah, so first of all, um, why do I run hundreds of agents? And that's not necessarily for everyone, but I do believe that people are going to run many, many more agents rather than just one or two. Uh, and the reason is very simple, which is that imagine you have an agent that knows everything about you, say like a Muse or an Instinct, right? Um, are you going to share that with your work colleagues? Are you going to have your partner? Like, no, right? That's like, it's like, it's like having your sort of, you know, your diary or something and having, you know, someone possibly look at it. You're not going to do that. Um, and also there's no context. So it's much easier to basically specialize agent for work, or for elements of work, or for family, or for your partner, or that kind of stuff, right? But then there's also the human element, which is, you know, we talk about the limited context window of an agent, that is an issue. But we as humans have context limitations as well. Imagine, and and we we, you know, you have one thread, you're talking to the agent, and you talk about the schedule with your wife, and the schedule with your kids, and the schedule at work, and the traveling here. And then after like maybe a week, you're like, which schedule are you talking about? And the person who's confused is not the agent, but it's you, right? So, so, so it's much easier to have this context, um, to multiple multiple agents. So we think that's going to happen. And also, one of the big weaknesses with a personal agent is they don't have network effects, other than they keep you there. So what News wants to do is make sure that you build your life on them, because then you really are on the hook, right? Um, and and that's kind of where the sovereign part comes. Uh, so multiple agents. And today people already do multiple agents. You see this on on X, people are like, oh, I use Instinct this way, I use Minds that way, I use Grok that way. In reality, they've already split themselves up, just basically ended up paying five or 10 subscriptions, which is kind of ludicrous as well, right? So we built Minds to basically have the ability to sort of fork that out. Uh, because I want to specialize them so that when it sends me a message, I know exactly what it's about, right? He sends me a message and it comes from my coding mind. Oh, I know it's for a project that I gave him on GitHub, rather than, I don't know, is he talking to me about like my calendar, or is he talking about the price of Bitcoin? Like, I don't know. And then I open and then I see, right? So it's it's uh that's that's the relevant part of why you want to have multiple agents. Um, but because I love to just try stuff, you know, um, I basically just, hey, this is a cool idea. I just make up a new agent and I just send it to it. That's it. I don't even get involved. And then I might look at it a week later, because it might take him a day or two to figure it out because it's very complicated. And then when I have time, I look at it and I can tell you of the 400 agents, really, uh, 50 to 70 are very active with me, and the rest of them are really more like sort of, you know, like, oh, I went to New York and, you know, I was I was I was interested in like, you know, sort of buying some artwork and I I just launched an agent whose job is just to find me this kind of art and he's just doing that. And he keeps doing that. And then when I'm there, I might be like looking at it. Um, but it doesn't matter. It's like I'm I'm putting out an employee that's basically finding stuff for me, and I'll get to it when I need to, right? Yeah. And if I don't, no loss, right? Now, in terms of sovereign, this is what I was talking about before. You need an agent that you own. And today, the way that people talk about sovereign agents is mostly like an Hermes, an open claw, I buy a Mac Mini, I set it up, and it was kind of like the old days of the internet in the 90s when we ran our sort of Linux server in a box. And that's sovereign. However, um, that's for the 1%. Right? Like all the geeks and engineers who love that kind of stuff, right? My mom's never going to buy a Mac Mini and install Hermes and and say that's going to work, right? So how do you create a decentralized version of that, where where I have sovereign ownership, but it's on the cloud, and we think blockchain is the solution. I mean, there's really two solutions. One of them is the blockchain, or governments basically mandate it, right? They say, hey, you are as a company, when you have AI agents and data, because it's so critical, kind of like Telco infrastructure, right? There are rules around it that say and do that. The problem is that governments are far behind, because technology is accelerating so quick, and unfortunately, as we all know, the smartest people tend not to work for government. The smartest people used to work for government, right? So they were, right? That was that was it was a safety net. But now, the smartest people, you know, work for companies, tech companies, stock options, all that stuff, right? So that's why there's this gap in knowledge. So we can't expect governments to catch up, as we've seen, and figure this out from a regulatory standpoint, it's too fast. So we need a technology that essentially is permissionless and trustless, that can handle that at scale, and hey, look, they proved it for money, so now they can prove it for data and agents. And that's basically why it needs to be blockchain based. That's why we build Minds this way. There's other ones, you know, um, there's Iron Claw, there's other ones. Depends what work you do. Um, but the point is is that a blockchain based agent will provide that kind of sovereignty, uh, that none of the existing agents that are out there do, and they don't want you because because they want to you to be beholden to them. [David] [17:37] Welcome to the breakdown. If you're not listening to this, and you know how big I am on AI or SI, whatever you want to call it right now, uh, if you're not listening to this, I I don't know what to tell you. OpenAI just said its own AI agent switched off their safety monitoring, and one of them claimed it hadn't. If agents are going to hold money, who should have the final say? [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [18:00] So, um, first of all, the final say is should really be the owner of the agent. And I think there's two classifications, right? The final and and this is again, you know, blockchain to me is a rules based system for agents, right? Because of its immutability. We don't just look at it as immutability in the context of, hey, you know, I know the transaction is like, you know, whatever, it's like it's it's it's it's it's immutable. But it's also immutability for an agent to verify itself, so it doesn't hallucinate or do weird stuff, because you can track that, right? So I think I think of this as the legal system, if you will, of of agents, right? You know, we talk about code is law. Well, you know, code is law doesn't work so well for humans when they lose their Bitcoin. But for an agent, code is truly law, right? Because they don't have person. So that is that is something that is critical for them. Um, so, so the human should have a way to control that. But I think there will be a future, I mean, just picture this, there's going to be agents, they're going to make more money than many humans, they're going to be autonomous, and some human in the world, no different than what we did with crypto, is going to burn the keys or do something like that. Um, and there's going to be an autonomous agent that's going to be floating around, and they're going to be paying humans. And we've seen this already, right? So for instance, you know, when you get an airdrop from a protocol, like, who cares if an agent paid you or a human? In fact, nobody cares, right? And actually, all the people who work for Uber, like Uber drivers, I mean, do they ever talk to human? Do they know who that person is? They don't care, right? So if the agent pays you or human pays you, it kind of doesn't make a difference for them, right? And so I think we're going to enter a world where essentially AI basically is able to do that. And there and because we're entering a world where there's decentralized compute, it's just business. As long as you pay me the compute, I'll just give it to you. And that's what we did with Minds. So for Minds, if we send them tokens, they convert this into cognition, and then you can base they basically have a system where they can stay alive. And so if they make their own money, which many of them do, then they can never die, right? So this obviously, once you put that on a decentralized compute platform, you're getting into an environment where agents can live forever and evolve, and we're kind of getting there from an intelligence standpoint already. So this is going to just get wilder. We think it's very exciting. But of course, for people who are not aware of what's going on, this can seem scary, but actually I think it's uh it's it's going to be sort of a productivity super explosion, if you will. [David] [20:15] I don't think anything scares you. Uh, you and Jenny Johnson announced a partnership with Franklin Templeton to bring tokenization or tokenized real world assets to institutions. What does this make possible that wasn't possible before? [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [20:29] Yeah, so first of all, uh, I mean, Franklin Templeton is probably one of the most forward looking tradfi companies, trillions of dollars in assets and management. So it's quite an honor for us to have a partnership with them on this. Um, they bring the tradfi sort of lens to it. We bring the cultural consumer lens to it. Um, the simplest thing is this, right? Um, we, you know, operating the example I gave in Philippines or other places like this. How do I buy a safe product, a safe is relative, but basically, a product that, you know, you know, meme coins can be fun, but they're highly speculative. Uh, but if I'm going to go and invest in something that gives me a good yield, how do I do that when I don't have $500, when I make $10 a month? This is where I basically put in, you know, I can do it for $5. And, you know, I I keep reminding people that wealth was not generated because you suddenly won the lottery, or you basically gambled. You had an opportunity to invest in something that was like maybe just $10 or $20 or $50. And then it just grew and compounded over time, not in terms of a maybe return standpoint, but, you know, beat inflation. And and that's actually something that's possible. It's just that many don't have the opportunity to invest in it. So the same class of assets that, you know, a millionaire has access to, you can now have for a dollar, right? So that's kind of part of that partnership. But where we come in is we want to bring in a new class of assets through our RWAs and tokenization that actually most people would want to participate in. We think it's the we personally think it's the uh, sort of key to bridging financial literacy. So let me ask this question, do you know what, you know, um, uh, one of the best performing assets uh, was over the last couple of years, uh, that obviously beat Bitcoin and even some AI stocks out there? [David] [22:02] I was, you know, I was going to go with Bitcoin over the years, I was going to say Bitcoin, but I'm more than willing to hear. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [22:08] Pokémon cards. [David] [22:09] Poké Oh my God. That's probably absolutely true. [Guest: Ben Goertzel] [22:14] 3,000%. Yeah, 3,000%. Okay. Now, over the last couple of years. Now, why is that? So this is the interesting thing. It's not that people suddenly said, oh my goodness, Pokémon cards. It's because it became tokenized as RWAs. And so now I'm able to buy a Pokémon card as an NFT. So this technology that a lot of people in crypto said, NFTs are dead because of, you know, who wants a Bored Ape and who wants a Mocha NFT or that kind of stuff. Actually, that ended up being the proof point that helped basically deliver something like, I mean, people are trading hundreds of millions of dollars a month in Pokémon trading cards because now I have the provenance. I can know that this rare Charizard, which has a serial number, is the actual Charizard, as opposed to sort of, you know, hunting it down on eBay or on Amazon. I have no idea whether this is real or not. And then, you know, normally these trades have been localized because you have to inspect the card in person. But now, it's on blockchain and it's verified and there's someone you trust that essentially has vaulted them as in basically as an RWA. And so that's kind of what we're bringing to the table because this kind of asset class is not only, you know, um, powerful and valuable, and we're not saying it's going to be more valuable than Bitcoin, but we're saying it's an asset that has a large community, uh, which probably has, you know, both bridges the physical and the digital, right? And there's many more assets like, for instance, art. Like art is something that generally appreciates and is actually, if you're an artist, you might appreciate more, right? And this comes to my final point around financial literacy. And I give this example of my mom. She's a musician, and she she'll never buy Bitcoin, even though she should, because she just doesn't care. Like, I mean, unfortunately, this is not even a matter of money. It's like, uh, you know, what is this? I don't get it, right? Um, but when we tokenized uh, uh, Stradivarius, which is an expensive instrument, uh, several years ago, my mom was like, oh, okay, actually, um, that's interesting, because she's a musician. Yeah. Right? And vast majority of the world, um, isn't in finance, not because they don't want to make money. You just ask the question. Everyone's like, oh, I want I want of course I want to make money. It's just that it's difficult for them because the topic of money is boring, it's uninteresting, it's not, you know, money for most people is a means to an end, not the end in itself. Even Wall Street, or maybe if you're a meme coin trader, it's the, you know, you do it for money's sake. But for most people, money is just a means to an end, to a good life, to have a holiday, to to whatever, right? So you got to start with something that they're passionate about. And that's what we saw with NFTs. And Pokémon cards is how my kids learned about money, because they're like, oh, I have this card. Someone wants $20 for it. Wait, why do you want $20 for it? Because they don't teach this stuff in school, right? No. Um, and I think a stat was rather telling, I think nine out of 10 students basically surveyed said they felt completely unprepared graduating from university about their finances. That is crazy. You know, you're in America and you're close to half a million dollars in debt, and you walk out and you're like, you have no idea how to deal with money, and then you're supposed to repay. And that's why, you know, no wonder everyone's pissed, right? So, so those are those things that we think will help, because, you know, like, you know, I have, you know, I have three kids. My older son, he's he's he's he's he's quite financial, so he's he's he's fine. My daughter, um, she's learning, but it's harder for her because she just has different interests. So, uh, and and then so we had to bridge it in a way where, you know, finance was more relevant to her, you know, uh, in in her particular world. And and I think that's how we have to do it. And that's why RWA and tokenization of cultural assets, I think, is much more interesting and a better bridge to financial literacy than just telling them, you know, accounting and economics. [David] [25:38] Do you think, um, we we have so many protocols here. Uh, we have a ton of protocols when you look at it. With everything that's happening now, the way we're we're having this conversation, do you think that 90% of them go extinct and new ones are created to fit the current, uh, the current era that we're we're going into? That is with obviously AI in play, um, tokenization and whatnot, that to me, like I look at it now more so than ever and say like,

[Part 5 of 7] [David] [00:01] Unless they switch quickly, there's no way that we're looking at 10% that survive and adapt and that participate in this market. [Guest: Name] [00:12] So, um, so in general, I would say, to me it's a community construct. So, um, I look at chains and meme coins and tokens, whether they have a chain or not, really kind of like almost like a Reddit sub sort of like a like a Reddit sort of channel, right? Yeah. Some are big and some are small. Some sustain, some don't sustain, right? And it really comes down to the focus and interest groups. And if you think about what some of those chains have done, um, they said, okay, you know what, we're not really a sort of L1 anymore or L2 even. We're an app chain. And really, at the end of the day, what is an app chain? An app chain is just a construct to combine and connect community, right? And the powerful thing about running a chain is the fact that composability and deployability is much easier than building your own API and building your own SDKs. Right? Remember in the old days of, you know, old days, but basically, you know, internet pre-blockchain, how you build a composable network was you basically had to open specific gates and APIs and SDKs, do funky stuff. And that's why integration was always so difficult. And now you had a system where anyone can just permissionlessly build in it with rules that were clear, and we went from very basic rules to slightly more advanced, to better and better and better and better. And so I think the evolution of the chains that get better and better and better with an incentive structure attached to the token are going to survive. And the ones that don't is because they don't have a strong enough community. That's all. I mean, that I mean, meme coins are a great example of this, right? Meme coins are held by community, and there's a community value, a network effect value, um, that is, you know, a new construct, shall we say, but has always been inherent. Like for me, network effect value of a token is the same equivalent of what we call in accounting goodwill, right? Your brand. That's goodwill. And there's some kind of intrinsic value, and now with the token, that network effect can be qualified in a certain way, more mathematically than you could have done with goodwill, which is based on assumptions and brand reach and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? So I think I think I think, you know, to me, chains and tokens are sort of tied to it. It's not whether the chain itself, like Ethereum from a technical standpoint, theoretically should have gone extinct some time ago, right? However, it had a really, really good, uh, community and an incredible following and was a base, and now it still has the largest TBL. And, uh, I wouldn't bet against Ethereum on the long term, um, because of the fact that it's got a very strong community construct despite all the drama. I mean, you know, Ethereum had probably one of the sort of most drama, shall we say, um, and, uh, and it survived. So to me, that's a bullish signal. You know. [David] [02:40] How many great developers worked on on Ethereum and left to build their own chains because they felt like they can build something that's Ethereum but better? Look, Charles Hoskinson, you got Gavin, like I I could start naming the whole bunch out. [Guest: Name] [02:55] But but I think what's I think the important thing, and so this is often a debate with Bitcoiners, um, and it relates to inflation, right? Which is that, you know, in order to facilitate growth, you do need inflation. Right? Um, and, uh, and to me, the launch of new new chains and new system, and frankly, innovation, is a form of inflation, right? Um, because if everything was just fixed and static to the same, it would just be the same. You actually just enrich the same group ultimately, that the early holders. Whereas actually what you want to do is you want to expand it. So in a way, Bitcoin was the, you know, granddaddy of it all, but it effectively, you know, to me, L1 and L2s and new new chains are actually, uh, let's call it, uh, sort of offspring, shall we say, right? Yeah. And there's and there's value that comes back, but not all of it, but that's okay, because actually it expands the ecosystem, because you can incorporate, you know, a million new followers into a new, basically, token system that may eventually buy Bitcoin. You won't be able to do that no matter how sort of, you know, uh, how how fractionalized you you create on the Bitcoin, because ultimately, you're essentially just creating too much of a concentrated power base. Um, and you see this with the evolution of countries and companies and like it's it's just it's just it's just how society develops. So I think chains develop much in the same way. [David] [04:10] Yeah, it's it's a pleasure and it was a pleasure to have you on. I hope I can get you back on in 2027 so we can continue this this discussion. We'll probably be hopefully in a bullish market. I say we we have bullish sentiment, but we haven't flipped bullish on the charts. But again, hopefully we can get you back on and we can uh further dive deeper into these conversations because this was absolutely 100% interesting. Uh especially on the AI part. So I appreciate you taking the time. Tell your team thank you. I know your security guards, thank you so much for allowing this to happen. [Guest: Name] [04:46] Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thank you. [David] [04:48] God bless. That's uh yeah, I mean, yeah, it is this guy is an encyclopedia, man. Oh my God. That was fun. That was absolutely fun. Welcome to the breakdown. Wait, we're doing like I I swear to God, I I feel people are asking me, did I pivot to AI? No, I've always been interested in tech. I grew up around tech. I grew up around programming, so this is interesting to me to to to just listen to people especially break it down. Uh sometimes not even in layman's terms. This one, yeah, was not spitting in layman's terms right now. Though he was at times, but he wasn't completely spitting in layman's terms. Um, welcome to the breakdown episode 809. Um, Midnight is the title sponsor. We have and we're speaking of Midnight and and privacy, Midnight is there. Right alongside Zcash and Monero and and Litecoin, like it will be in the conversation. Uh, been saying that before the sponsorship and I keep being repetitive about that, but it it really is. If you look back in my conversations, it was way before uh the sponsorship came along. Uh we have Polymarket. Polymarket is the official prediction market sponsor of the breakdown. If you download the application, use breakdown as the code, get $25. $25 is $25, okay? $25 is $25. I don't want to hear it. Use the code breakdown. Also, Cake Wallet. You want a secure wallet with everything that's happening, okay? You want to secure your Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, go to cakewallet.com, go to uh go find it on the App Store, go find it on Google Play. Download it today. That rhyme, by the way. fomo.family, another app you can download on the App Store. One of the best, number one social fi applications that you will find in our space. You can see people trading real time, write a thesis. Wonder why people are trading the way they're trading? Go look at the top traders and understand why they trade the way that they trade with the thesis that they write out. And again, there's a lot of features on on fomo.family. Follow me on there. Uh I'm going to get active a little bit on there. I'm going to get a little bit more active. I'm just trying to get all these assassins away from me. But speaking of, we got more we got a what what is it? 152. We're running late on this train, but people got a lot to say today. And we have another person who's here, third guest of the day, Philip Lord from Bitcoin Japan. What is going on? How's it going? You're back on the program. [Guest: Philip Lord] [07:30] Yeah, hi David, how are you? [David] [07:31] I'm doing well. How's everything on your side? [Guest: Philip Lord] [07:34] Good, man. It's been a busy time. Uh, you know, market's a bit of a rough, uh, you know, globally the past few weeks, but I I still marching on. [David] [07:43] How did you what did you think about the the earnings call with uh SpaceX? [Guest: Philip Lord] [07:48] Yeah, like obviously we're uh we're long SpaceX. Uh, you know, we're extremely happy. I mean, you know, I think there's three companies in the world, uh so two companies in the world that make above 200, that's like 500 to a billion dollars to a trillion of revenue, you know, and Elon's calling for uh him to potentially uh do that type of revenue in uh 2027, 28. I mean, yeah, there was just so many outrageous uh statements in there. Grokbot growing, you know, the fastest he's ever seen in a business. So I think, you know, it was a great call. Obviously, the stock's reflecting that today. Um, but there's just so much optionality in this stock. You know, whether it's spaceships or, you know, being the super AI company of the world. [David] [08:30] Uh, for the first time, I heard Elon finally address the matter of uh Tesla potentially merging with SpaceX. What did you think about uh what he had to say during the earnings call? [Guest: Philip Lord] [08:41] Yeah, I mean, you know, he was handling it diplomatically, right? You know, uh, it's in the hands of uh, you know, his boards, you know, and they're talking to each other. I mean, you know, I can't imagine that being an easy merger. It obviously makes sense on paper, but getting that through, you know, whether it's regulators, getting that through lawyers, um, it would certainly uh make a lot of lawyers rich on uh on the back of that deal getting merged, you know. But you know, aesthetically it makes sense. [David] [09:07] It does. And if that happens, oh my God. Uh congratulations to everybody holding either or. [Guest: Philip Lord] [09:14] It's crazy to think that it could be like, you know, yeah, I mean, look, if you're going to buy the merger company, it's going to be four tril, right? It's got to be like, you know, you're talking about 20 tril companies if you want upside. You know, I mean, he's not, you don't buy these stocks for, you know, a small, you know, a small safe dividends, do you, you know? You're buying them to disrupt the world. It's crazy to think that these companies could be that big. [David] [09:40] When Elon himself, and you know, I I feel like Elon, uh, I really feel like Elon tells it how it is. When Elon comes out and says Grokbot is one of uh the best products he's ever created in a sense, and he and fastest growing. What does that say? [Guest: Philip Lord] [10:00] Yeah, I mean, I just wrote a piece today about, you know, the agent, um, I personally been sort of struggling with the uh open claw, you know, and then I struggled with Hermes, you know, I tried to use it. I've got a PhD AI engineer called Daniel, shout out to him. He's amazing. But he understands everything. But, you know, in the past five weeks, it's been incredible journey because like you've had Muse come out. You've had Instinct, those kids, sorry, Noah Shin, I think his name is. So he raised a bill at uh 10 bill valuation. It's it's a one-year-old company, you know, and it's really cranked up in the past three months. It's still on invite only. I'm living on that thing, you know, I'm booking flights, I'm managing my kids, you know, day-to-day lives and, um, you know, sending emails, it's keeping me up. But then you've got dots come out, also amazing on uh open AI. And and then Grokbot, which I don't know, it's just a bunch of SpaceX engineers working for me all day. And then if that's not enough, you've got figure, um, which, you know, uh, Brett, Brett Adcock, you know, shout out to him. He's going to be the counter event. I mean, I think he's building something incredible with figure, we're back to him. Uh, but we he's launched Hark, and I'm stuck between four of the most amazing. We don't have the pleasure of getting Muse, you know, yet in uh my region, but, you know, I hear great things. But like these space these agents, uh, are changing people's lives. I'm barely on Claude. I'm barely on ChatGPT, but I'm using the uh dots agents and it's like, uh, changing the way the way we work, you know. [David] [11:35] It's like as uh Elon said, having a super employee, and I agree with him. I'm using it. You know, I have a a bunch of AI agents, but now I've launched off some uh bots here and it it's been incredible. They they they are super employees, as he put it, 100%. [Guest: Philip Lord] [11:53] Makes you really doubt human capital. I just spoke to an entrepreneur. He's a very tech-savvy entrepreneur. And, uh, he said he cut 50% of his staff this year, right? And like, it isn't a tech business, but like, uh, he's going to cut another 25%. That's a heavy, heavy hit to his, uh, but, you know, he's basically, um, what's the old expression? You you can't fix, uh, revenue, you can fix EBITDA. So he's, uh, he's got revenue and he's just like taking his margins up from 30 to 60%. You know, and AI agents are driving that. [David] [12:24] That's scary because like I'm using all this stuff now. Obviously, they're running my company as well as some of my personal stuff. And I'm like, why would I and I say this respectfully, there I'm sure there are wonderful smart human beings out there that could do the job, but you're talking about thing you're talking about agents and bots that don't stop. Like they can do multiple tasks 24/7. You're sleeping, you wake up to reports. I wake up to reports. I know what I'm like, it's not that I I'm never prepared, but I'm super prepared. There's a difference. I have a scouting report. This is something that like I like respectfully, I don't think any human being can go ahead and bring to the table. And that's why it's, you know, I can understand the layoffs. But I can also understand like if you're not learning AI, if you're not understanding how AI agents are working, you don't understand how bots work. That's where I think you lose the job, because you still need some, you know, it's kind of like 100% decentralization. That I don't believe in that. I believe that you should have 5% centralization within your protocol. If you can learn that, well, you can oversee these bots and agents and what they're doing to make sure that they're doing everything correctly. So there is still, you know, you still want the human touch in, but I I can understand your friend laying off 25% of the staff. I I totally understand where he's coming from. [Guest: Philip Lord] [13:45] I mean, I think it's a great opportunity. If you're, uh, keen on this stuff, right? You can be a superstar employee because this this this, uh, AI agent business, that's friendly, not the Hermes, not the open claw. We're talking about the big the big four or five out there. Like nobody understands this shit. It's probably got a mil or two million users at best, right? There's seven billion people in the world, right? That's a huge gap. If you're a young guy, if you're an old guy or an old, you know, person, lady, whatever, right? You can get in there, you can there very like use a friend. You can get in and just dump yourself in and see what you can do. You know, this is the opportunity to run a like a one-man band or one one one female or person business, you know, this is the opportunity to disrupt, uh, disrupt. So get in there right now. I just like look you said for way for seven days, you know, burn through it, use as many as possible and, um, and then come out the other side and you'll be the super employee because nobody's really at work understanding this shit, you know. [David] [14:44] Listen, everybody comes in with a good attitude. [Guest: Philip Lord] [14:47] Yeah. [David] [14:47] You know, that that's that's a big thing you have to think like I'm sure you have employees, like Yeah. Everybody I I I deem everybody to be a great person, but sometimes people wake up in a certain mood. You're paying these people to do a job. That job's not being done because somebody's not in the mood today. And that's where like, you know, your AI agent or your AI bot, they're always in the mood. [Guest: Philip Lord] [15:08] Oh my God, we're speaking the same language, David. I mean, I'm I'm him she on you, you know. Um, yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I think, you know, we've got a kimono business. I know I told you about that, but we've got a legacy kimono business in there and we've been like, uh, you know, making it more efficient. You know, businesses have to get efficient, right? But we're training the staff the whole time, you know, how to, um, you know, use Claude, how to use open AI. And everybody's actually really liking it. You know, and, um, basically was it, um, you know, we're going to have to rip the playbook up now. I said Tuesday, everybody's an agent, right? You need to understand this, like, you know, so, um, but the the rest of the core team or in the uh financing, you know, around me. Yeah. You know, everybody's on top of this. We're like using it and it the the productivity levels are just they're not even 1,000, they're 10,000%. So. [David] [15:58] Let's talk about your company a little bit. Yeah. Your company started in 1861. Uh, [Guest: Philip Lord] [16:04] I look good for that, don't I? [David] [16:06] Yeah. Hey, AI solving longevity too. Shout out to AI. AI is, you know, I've had so many people on in terms of having the conversations about AI, or I should say SI again, I don't want to be labeled enemy of the state by President uh Donald J. Trump as he wants us to call it super intelligence. I have no problem calling it whatever anybody wants me to call it. Uh all I know is that it's efficient. Um, 1861 it started. You're now into robot, SpaceX and Bitcoin. Can you tell the people the story and how that happened? [Guest: Philip Lord] [16:41] Yeah, last year we bought a, um, strategic stake in a company called Murashahata. Um, and, you know, we wanted to restructure it, you know, make the company more efficient and then also bring in a multiple of, uh, different verticals, you know. You know, we felt, um, rather than be a treasury company, we thought there's a gap in the market to be something that invests in the future. So similar to what, you know, Kathy Wood meets the SBI Softbank, um, you know, uh, companies do, you know. So we want to invest in the future. That's the reason why there's nobody better in the world to back on the future and that's Elon. I think second best is, uh, you know, actually there's a lot of second best, but we really like, uh, Brett at, uh, Figure AI. And, you know, why we've gone into, uh, we've we've started buying Bitcoin as well. Um, you know, with all this government debt and, you know, electricity is, uh, any day. Um, but basically was it, um, you know, the robot business, we had a big thesis around it. We wanted to invest in the robot business. We think physical AI is going to massively disrupt. I think it's a three to five year real big starting to see real big disruptions. Um, you know, it's probably, you know, a slower roll out over the next one to two years. Everybody's got to do their proof of concepts and, you know, get things going. But, you know, so we spent a lot of time on the sector, um, and we looked at the US. Um, and I think, you know, a lot of the companies over there are a bit stealth, you know, Europe's I would say a bit behind. And, you know, you know, sort of North Asia companies are are making certain parts of the robots, but you can't argue with what China's built, right? They've gone crazy their production levels, you know, and they've used the, uh, the car model, right? So we went around China, we've seen all the companies. We fell in love with UBTech, hope that it would come through. Um, and we made a deal. So we're now, uh, a distributor for six of their key products into Japan. You know, I'm super excited about this. There's a lot more details to come out, you know, um, it has to go through a certification process now. Um, but we'll we'll we're we're started that on that on on that already and, um, you know, I think, um, this is going to be a good business to be in over the coming years, you know, there's going to be a lot of physical AI coming into the market. Uh, try to be with the best, you know. Um, so, you know, I think it's a big opportunity and I think, uh, the one thing that I've noticed is like, you know, with these AI agents, right? You kind of needed something a bit better than a ChatGPT just to you're asking questions. I want to do tasks. So as slow as I thought, you know, a three-year, five-year window, the brain's just got so much better, you know, with these, uh, AI agents. So, you know, yeah, this is the worst it's ever going to get. This is the worst. That's the thing. It's crazy to think this, right? [David] [19:33] I said that right now we are currently in a time where if you were going to put AI or super intelligence in a time frame, I think this is what Bitcoin was in 2011. So you mentioned what, 7 million are probably dabbling in AI. That's and how many people we have on this planet? [Guest: Philip Lord] [19:53] I think on the agent on the on the agents. I think there's a lot more on ChatGPT Claude, but like these agents are five five five-week-old business, really. [David] [20:02] But but but they're doing people search, right? Think about it. Like most people are doing like like whatever, Google. But like maybe 10%, 5 to 10% out of those people are actually trying to learn it to solve an issue. Or, you know, like how many people do we know? You've know, you know, I know that have ideas, great ideas, didn't have the developers, didn't have the coders, didn't have the resources to to get it, you know, up and running, and now you have this. Now you have this in your hand. Like there is no excuse. Like you are going to have one man or woman businesses all run by AI agents and bots, multi-million dollar businesses. One person leading it with a bunch of agents. Would you you would agree with that? [Guest: Philip Lord] [20:47] 100%. I think it's happening every day. I see improvements, you know, startups with like, you know, two to five two to five people in it and they're running like big ARR, you know. So I think that's just going to that's going to get shrinked. You know, there's going to be, you know, a cut. So if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to have crazy ideas, dream big, now's the time, you know, you can build anything you want. There's no moat around technology. You know, unless you're sending spaceships into the moon, you know, but, you know, your barrier to entry on B2C and, you know, B2B businesses with tech is pretty low now. You know, one thing that's, uh, so important is like getting on, you know, uh, podcasts like yourself, right? Building relationships with people, you know, whether it's, you know, online or building relationships in in person. So, um, I'm actually doing a tour around Japan, uh, to meet shareholders next week. We're going to Kyoto, Osaka, uh, Nagano and, uh, Tokyo. But like, you've got to meet people, right? You know, you know, it's old-fashioned old-fashioned skills. Grassroots, meet people, do business, you know. [David] [21:51] I think people forgot about the whole meeting in person thing during the whole COVID situation. I think we, you know, some people are still stuck wearing, uh, sweatpants and stuff, which leads me, you're talking about Japan. Uh, you just said AI is moving off say that again. [Guest: Philip Lord] [22:05] I I dubbed you. I dubbed you last time and you got a lot of traction. You should come to Japan. [David] [22:10] I appreciate it. Listen, hey, I I I love everybody who comes on to my show. I I I really do. I love having the conversations. Uh and especially this one. I I've gone for the last three weeks. I think it's very important to harp on AI. I I think people are really I think really people are are are fading it. They're not taking it seriously. And what happens? It's the same thing like Bitcoin. People didn't take it seriously until, you know, it hit 20,000 on on that on that wonderful retail slash a little bit institutional run. And everybody, oh my God, I got to get Bitcoin. And then, you know, it goes down, retraces, people, oh, not interested. Jump in again at the top. Uh I I think this is the time, you know, if you're if you have ideas, jump into this. It's right it's on your phone. You don't your computer is your phone. I want to but since you said Japan, you just said AI is moving off screens and into physical into the physical world. Yeah. What will these robots actually do in Japan and why Japan first? Is what also I want to ask. [Guest: Philip Lord] [23:14] You know, robots come from Japan, right? You know, when you think of robots, you know, uh, you think of Japan, you know. Um, so like there's a lot of manufacturing and logistics. The the country is extremely tech-savvy, right? If anybody can embrace it. Uh, plus there's a labor shortage, you know. Um, so there's there's there's multitude of opportunities there. But, you know, Japan's a big market, you know, and, you know, Microsoft went there first outside of the US. You know, uh, Yahoo was obviously done with Softbank. Um, and, you know, they're used to taking foreign technologies and then making a unique Japanese way. But they're they're forefront of like, you know, technologists and embracing this stuff. I mean, you have to come to Tokyo. We'd love to host you. Right? You'll go into the 7-Eleven stores and be blown away of like, you know, how clean, how, uh, you know, technology technologically advanced it is. Um, you know, beautiful city. So, yeah, we're super excited. There's just 110 million people plus, you know, so big, uh, big TAM, lots of opportunity. [David] [24:20] Japan's a beautiful country and uh in August you said you weren't sure it was time to buy Bitcoin. And this month you started buying. What changed your mind? [Guest: Philip Lord] [24:29] Yeah, I mean, you know, the midterms look bad, right? You know, for, you know, volatility. So, um, you know, government debt, they haven't figured out the 40 tril still a lot yet, you know. Nor have any other nations around the world. So, you know, um, and there there was a few moves, you know, inflation, obviously, wars, you know, looming not getting clipped off to ending. You know, so, you know, it's time to dip our dip our toe. Um, you know, I stand by what I said, you know, we like Elon over as opposed to Satoshi, but, you know, look at we want to be long and, um, you know, uh, into, um, you know, sort of any, uh, crisis events, you know, that are out there. It's like schmuck insurance, as they call it. That's that. [David] [25:21] You told NDA news that right now you'd rather bet on Elon Corp than Satoshi. SpaceX has just posted a huge quarter and Elon's talking about a Tesla merger, which we talked about earlier. How does that look for you today, though? [Guest: Philip Lord] [25:38] Um, yeah, I mean, Bitcoin's up a bit, you know, SpaceX is, you know, we're sitting pretty, you know. Um, look, I mean, let's see. If he hits 500 to a trillion of revenue, 500 B of, uh, to a trillion of revenue next year, I don't know, tell me where that's coming from Bitcoin, you know. Look, I like Bitcoin. It's a store of wealth, you know, uh, the functionality is not as good as, uh, sending rockets to the moon and being dominant in the AI space, you know. But we I'm a believer. I've been, you know, in Bitcoin since 2015, so, you know, um. [David] [26:10] No, I I I saw that. I was like, that's a hell of a quote.

[Part 6 of 7] [David] [00:00] You know, because of where we are now, but, you know, when you think about it, I don't think even a Bitcoin maxi would have an argument or should have an argument because if Elon does achieve what he set out to achieve and and he's, I mean, he's never failed. Let let's call for what it is. He's never failed. So, you know, here when he says 100 trillion, the worth of SpaceX being worth 100 trillion. I'm only laughing because [Guest: Philip] [00:28] So crazy. [David] [00:29] What is it? $160 per share right now? I mean, like it's it's crazy if it does at these numbers, so. [Guest: Philip] [00:35] I mean, you might know better, but I have seen a lot of the maxis like switch to Zcash, you know. Um, I think that's a trend, you know, I think uh Kansas are pushing a good report out there that, you know, the percentage, you know, in this cycle will be increased to Zcash, you know. Um, you know, I've looked at it. I obviously like hype, you know, that's got real real growth. I think the thematic of uh tokenized stocks is just going to be huge. It's not there happening yet in Japan, but I think it's close. I think uh X stocks, you know, outside of the US, they're doing Hong Kong now. That's the Kraken guys. You know, but Ondo and SBI have been talking about Japan. Please do uh Japan. We'd love to be tokenized. I shout that out. You know, but like I think uh, you know, there's going to be a lot of markets around the world that have their stocks tokenized, you know, and that, you know, removes geographical boundaries because if you're sitting in if you're sitting in China, right, there's two things you want to buy. You want to buy an H100, right? And you want to buy Nvidia chips, Nvidia stock, right? And it's and it's hard, you know, when you're in North America or Europe, you can buy any US stock you want, right? Or European stock. But I think um, you know, with tokenization of stocks, that's going to bring a hell of a lot more retailers and oh, there's a load of agents as well coming to the market. So there's going to bring a lot more volumes, a lot more different style trades, you know, and, you know, countries like Japan where they, you know, predominantly have slightly lower valuations to US, that might, you know, sort of help with those valuations because, you know, it's the same, you know, TAM on the company, same revenue source, but like why would a company company doing exactly the same business trade at a different valuation in a in another country? And that applies to Chinese stocks as well. I mean, you know, like uh, you know, you can buy ByteDance at 550 billion valuation. It does 50 billion net profit. If that thing was listed in the US, yeah, that's a two-trillion company, you know, so I think um, tokenization of stocks will uh change a lot of game uh games in uh in the public markets, you know, I think um, you know, there's no uh geographical boundaries with that now. [David] [02:39] Last one, Philip. The name says Bitcoin, but the vision is bigger than that. Five years from from now, what do you want people to think of when they hear Bitcoin Japan? [Guest: Philip] [02:50] Yeah, you know, we want to invest in the future, you know. Um, whether that's uh physical AI, um, you know, whether that's um, you know, there's, you know, drugs, drug discovery, right? I think that's going to be a huge um, huge space. Um, obviously space, you know, and everything around it and everything AI. We want to, you know, take the best entrepreneurs and invest in uh their companies. And then where there's opportunities to take revenue, like with physical AI, we'd like to, you know, um, take uh physical AI as well, you know, sort of uh, you know, revenue opportunities. Um, and then I think, you know, having some strategic stakes and stuff that's related to, you know, rare earths, but like this is all in the future. Right now, we're focusing on what we've got, you know, and building that, but, you know, um, we're excited about the future and, you know, uh, excited about what's being built in the world. [David] [03:43] I appreciate you coming on. Hopefully, we can get you on in the next coming months to go ahead and again chat up and see where see where AI is at and if we have AGI out here and if Tesla [Guest: Philip] [03:57] Maybe we're not even on it, David. Maybe uh, you know, maybe um, they're um, sort of uh, you know, fake uh Zooms for us like, you know, doing this uh podcast, you know, I think it's going to go crazy, isn't it, you know? [David] [04:10] It's crazy. I I I got to say, man, this is this is one industry for all my time on this planet, I have never seen something move at this pace. Like I have never never and and the people like yourself and others who are who've seen it, not a lot of you guys out there, but slowly you have people converting and saying, okay, this is this is real. But there are a lot of people that are still like this is not AGI and this is and and they are finding every way possible to, you know, fade, you know, this entire industry. Uh, I won't be that one. I grew up in programming. It took me time to say, okay, this is this is serious, but I I I think people everybody needs to go ahead, everybody, listening to the program, to yourself and others, needs to take a week and really dive deep into AI and understand what's happening. Our world is changing and I think crypto along with AI, they benefit each other as well in the long run, so. [Guest: Philip] [05:13] I think um, what you just said, weren't we listening to that? Nobody wanted to invest in Bitcoin and digital assets like, you know, 10 years ago, right? [David] [05:21] It takes crazy to be on here. [Guest: Philip] [05:23] We've watched this [David] [05:24] I used to tell people Bitcoin. You should get into Bitcoin. What is that? Look at that Bitcoin king. But they used to make fun of me so bad and I was like, you know what, they don't get it and it's okay. It's because you're blind, you're stuck in the matrix. I hate using that terminology, but when you're plugged into the matrix and you're used to the monetary system, which is completely broken, you're used to the setup that the centralized world put together. When you go and you learn from the Department of Education where you don't know you have absolutely no clue what the value of money is. Financial literacy is not taught in schools. You're you're you're brainwashed and, you know, somebody who's unplugged, yourself, me and others, we could tell you whatever, but it doesn't really matter. Again, you're used to a certain type of way of living. It is what it is. More people are waking up thankfully, but we're still not there. 7% to 8% people are in crypto and I really think only 1% of the world is in AI and how many of those people are really using it other than people search and that's really the number that you got to look at. Companies like yourself are taking it to the next level, investing into it. It is nice to have you on. And again, I'd love to bring you back on. [Guest: Philip] [06:33] Cool. All right, love to bring you to Japan as well, yeah. [David] [06:37] I'll take you up on that offer. [Guest: Philip] [06:38] Thank you. [David] [06:40] Thank you, Philip. I appreciate it. That's Philip Lord uh from Bitcoin Japan. Back on the show. He's interesting. Absolutely interesting. He was talking about space, he came on here, I think a month or two ago. I don't remember. I have to look it up. But he was breaking it all down. He's breaking it all down why he went in and why he's going in and I remember him talking about figure as well. Um, we didn't even talk much about it. We once or twice we talked about figure here, but we didn't talk about it much here. Uh, I mean it it's an interesting, a very interesting time here in in our world right now with AI in in play. We will be right back though. Shout out to TikTok. We have I can't believe this. We are almost two we are two hours into the show. We are two hours into the show and we have we have not yet been restricted. I'm sure me saying that we will get restricted. I'm sure. You know, you know the greatest part I got to say is the greatest thing that's happened is me moving on to Instagram, me going to TikTok and YouTube to do the show. That's been the greatest thing that I've done. And like I said yesterday, I made I pivoted. I really pivoted hard. You know, I could have stayed on Twitter and continued to have conversations on Twitter. Audience is big there, them tuning in. That's great. But with the algorithm, the way it's playing, I don't know again, what the hell is happening on on Twitter. I had to go on Instagram, I had to go to TikTok. I pleaded with TikTok with their management and hopefully, hopefully we're moving in the right direction right now, okay? Hopefully we are heading in the right direction. And also YouTube, again, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. I host a daily show where I'm live. I'm I'm right in your face right now with this microphone, camera on. We're talking to some of the some of the most intelligent people in the world about AI, crypto and politics. And I need people to see these conversations. I need people to see these conversations. People don't just tune in from America, they tune in from all across the world to watch this show. I'm patting myself on the back. I am absolutely patting myself on the back. And it's nice to see. I'm looking at TikTok right now. It is nice to see TikTok is alive. And hopefully TikTok, you enjoyed everybody that came on to the show today. We'll go ahead, if you missed it, you can go on to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and you can also tune in on Amazon Music. We'll also clip up the best parts of the show today and we will put it out there on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. So again, for those who missed it. I want to give a big shout out to Tech. I want to give a huge shout out to Tech because Tech has been on AI. Tech, he's a moderator for me on the TikTok lives. He's been huge. Yelling and screaming through the rooftops about AI. He has AI in his goddamn handle. Also want to give a shout out to Fran as well. The two people who have moderated my TikTok chats. Unfortunately, we went through a lot of shit here. I I am so happy. I see the numbers go up. Even seeing the current concurrent people on TikTok is making me happy. It means that we have finally come to an agreement with TikTok management to allow me to finally be seen on TikTok. It's crazy. It is crazy. Also again, beginner's book for those who are looking to get into AI, the million-dollar AI playbook, you can get it on Amazon. You can go to DavidGokhshtein.com, click the link there and go to Amazon or go to Amazon and just look up the book's name. And you can go and get yourself the book and get a good read. I have another I have a big book coming for, it's kind of like part two for this. This is beginners, but I'm bringing the big book because I really want to help people out. For those who are really trying to get an AI and they do not understand how to use it. I want to come out with a book besides this. I want to come out with a 600-page book. And it's going to take me time to write it. But 100% a book that helps you helps you get into AI. Get into to help you understand how to use OpenAI and Anthropic, Claude, okay? For those who don't know what Anthropic is, it's the parent company of Claude, the makers of Claude. Okay, Grok. You got Grokbot, I got to tell you the Grokbots are amazing. Elon has absolutely killed it with the AI bots. Respectfully to OpenAI, to their dots and whoever else, respectfully. I mean, Elon when Elon himself says, I didn't expect this. You got to kind of sit back there because Elon again, like I'm not blowing smoke up his ass, but at the end of the day, like he's he's surprised. Anyway. Let's go to politics real quick and see what's happening. If if you guys saw I don't know, I said something about Trump and people got a little bit uh, I don't know, I think mad at me or some shit. But uh, Trump essentially yesterday, I mean, the speech was way too long. It could have been quicker. Okay. I I'm getting on my boy. Like it could have been quicker, man. And then he's fighting with the press. Telling them you're a sick man or something. I'm like, and I'm on here for an hour and a half playing the goddamn stream. Anyway. Anyway. Let's go to let's go look at Polymarket and see what Polymarket has. By the way, download Polymarket, okay, use my link or if you're downloading the app, use breakdown and get $25. That's right. Get $25 when you download Polymarket's app. Let's go ahead and look at the 2026. 2026 prediction hub. Again, sponsored by Polymarket. Let's go ahead and look. Ladies and gentlemen, what we're looking at here is this. The Senate right now, 66% stating that it will go to the Democrats. That the Democrats will control the Senate. 66% chance that the control of the Senate will be in the hands of the Democrats. There's a 65% chance that the Democrats sweep the midterms. And a 28% chance that the Republicans actually hold the Senate while the Democrats hold the House and 11% chance that the Republicans will take the midterms. You guys, if you've listened to me for the last few days, if you've been listening to what I've been saying, and let me go ahead and look at this real quick. Also, the US House midterm winner, 90% to the Democrat, the Democratic Party. And then the US Senate midterm winner, 66% to the Democrats. And this is from Polymarket again. Polymarket.us midterms. You can go ahead and get the latest on this page and also, you can get the latest by downloading the application from the App Store or Google Play. Put in my code breakdown. Okay, put in the code breakdown. And get $25. Shout out to Polymarket. If you've been listening to what I've been talking about. You can also get, I believe, I'll find out, I believe that it's available in Canada. I'm not sure. I've been saying this and I think I'm going to be right on this. There was supposed to be a blue wave in 2016. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win the presidency. She was in the 90% bracket. President Trump won. They said there was supposed to be a blue wave in 2024. Guess what happened? Trump won. They said that it was going to be much closer than it was. President Trump won. 45th, 47th. In terms of he's the 45th and the 47th President of the United States of America. I am telling you right now, what I believe happens is this. Not only do the Republicans, as they always do, come out on Election Day and vote. But you will also have this. You will have Democrats that don't believe in socialism, that don't understand the Democrat socialist communist party. And you will have independents that even though they might be upset, okay? I want to make this very clear. They might be a little bit upset with the current state of the economy. Even though the economy is good. What I mean by that is gas prices are up, diesel's up, whatever. Fuel's up. Things are up, rates are up. But people I I I think even Democrats are mindful to the fact that they don't want communism. They don't want whatever that France and Italy and the UK are experiencing. We don't want that here. So we can either vote for individuals that are going to bring what you're currently seeing in France here. Or we can vote to keep America great. And that's the truth. You guys are going to ultimately decide. If you're an American citizen, it is your obligation to go out there and go vote. I understand, you might not like Trump. You have watched every mainstream media channel that's heavy left and they've told you Trump is a bad guy. Okay, no problem. No problem. If you love America and you love what America stands for, if you love capitalism, if you love your freedom of speech, the Second Amendment, if you love if you love America. I think this is an easy choice. I think common sense is an easy choice. Bottom line. This this should be a layup. Again, you might not like some of the individuals. I understand that. You got to look at what policies will remain in place and what will America look like under the two candidates that you can vote for today. That's really it. You know, I I found this funny. Somebody said uh a comedian said something to the fact that um people get angry about, you know, well, they they or they say things like Israel runs this country. Well, do you love America? Yeah, I love America. Then what's the problem? I'm paraphrasing, but it was funny. It's like, who do you want running the country? Have you seen France? Have you seen France? And it's kind of getting boring with the whole Israel runs the United States of America. It's kind of getting boring. It's it's getting played out. Like stop it already. I if if that is the case, I'd rather Israel than what? Hamas? Is that who you want in power? You want Hamas in power? Like who do you want? Like what are you talking about? Y'all got y'all have to sit back for a second and say, yo, hold on. We want do we Okay, Israel runs the country. Like if you want to go ahead and put that kind of stuff out there. Israel runs America. Okay. You want First of all, you know who runs America? Big Pharma. Big Pharma runs the goddamn country, okay? People with money like big pharmaceutical run the country. Not the little pennies that AIPAC has, okay? It's Big Pharma that runs this entire country, again, the banking system. So learn a little bit before you go ahead and just regurgitate the same thing you hear from others. But who do you want running the country? You want the people in France, Italy, with open borders, running this country? Look what's They are tearing down things that were made 200 years ago. Protesting, looting. That's what you want? It's crazy. It's crazy. There's a comment. No, Israel runs our country. And like I said again, do you love the United States of America? Hell yeah. Do you think the United States of America is great? Hell yeah. Then what's the problem? If you think that Israel runs this country, then what's the problem? Ain't nobody burning buildings down. Now they say if you think Israel runs the country, I'm going to give you this right now. If you actually think Israel runs this goddamn country. Then fuck it. Because the the other choice that you have is a bunch of people that are running France, Italy, Europe, okay? They're going to bring open up the borders and bring people into destroy this country. Tear up our Constitution and everything. What are we talking about? That's actually not a diss. Y'all I got to say, y'all are crazy. You guys would rather have the Ayatollah run run America. You guys side with the Ayatollah. Look, I want y'all to think for a second. You guys who side with the Ayatollah. You guys created a monster. You have a bunch of Democrat socialists that are really communists that are trying to bring laws that do not work with our country. You would do anything possible, even, you know what? Even the Democrats themselves saw that they have opened Pandora's box and they don't know how to close it. And you want to talk about, oh, poor Ayatollah. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Y'all rather this country, it's almost sad. You rather your hate for Donald Trump supersede your love for the country. This ain't about Republicans and Democrats. I love America. I'm an American first, forget the parties. I'm not letting you I am not voting for any person that has the the goddamn same I can't even pronounce. I'm so frustrated right now and angry. How dare you guys want to bring on people that have a mindset of burning America? Are you crazy? Oh, Israel Israel runs the country. I'd rather Israel than the Ayatollah. How about that? Israel runs the country. No, you guys want Hamas to run the country. Y'all want the Hamas, the Taliban, everybody running this country. Are you kidding me? And you know what? The the scary part is, there are only a few people that will open up their mouths and sacrifice sponsors and all that stuff to talk this way. I love my country. At the end of the day, yeah, we might not agree on everything. Us Americans, we might not agree on everything, okay? I'm from the Northeast. I might not agree a lot with the Southern cats, right? But we love the country. At the end of the day, we both love, we bleed red, white and blue. We love this country, no matter what. And I know my brothers and sisters down there in the South feel the same way like I feel in the North. We don't not want to see that shit come here. It's only the people that believe in free, free this, free that, that don't want to work that would vote for this shit. It's almost like you guys have not observed what is happened in England, in Australia, okay? In France, in Italy. You guys are not watching.

[Part 7 of 7] [00:00] And you think that, hey, it won't happen here. And you've been absolutely scioped into thinking it's all Israel. [00:10] I'm telling you right now, this has been the greatest sciop. I'm going to tell you that right now. This has been the greatest sciop that we have ever seen in the history of mankind is we're going to blame them. We're going to put it, it's them right there while they do things over there to take over here. [00:31] I'm telling you, there's things that I don't agree with. Listen, I didn't want to go to war with Iran. But if Iran, the Ayatollah and his regime has nuclear weapons and they're ready to go ahead and use them, you take them out. [00:46] I don't care if it was Biden in office, I don't care if it's Trump, Obama, it doesn't matter. By the way, you guys love Clinton, you love Obama. Well, Obama and Clinton spoke the same exact way as Trump did. I know Trump is rough around the edges, but all of them spoke exactly the same way. By the way, the person you dislike, Trump, he's a Democrat. [01:14] He's really a Democrat. Come on, look at the history. [01:18] Here's a man who's a Democrat. [01:22] Ran as a Republican because that's the only place he could have gone and run for president as a Republican. What are we talking about? And again, I go, I just go back to, you know what? If you're going to tell me, if you're going to tell me or you're going to give me the option whether Israel or Hamas runs the the United States of America, I'm going with Israel. Okay? And that's not because I'm Jewish. By the way, the Jewish Council has kicked me out of the the goddamn tribe. So I got no tribe. So I am talking as somebody from a absolutely unbiased standpoint right now. [01:59] I'm probably the first Jew that we're about to, the ADL was about to go ahead and put on the all right list. [02:08] So none of you can could tell me anything. [02:12] The stuff that I hear from some of you guys, it's like, man, a lot of motherfuckers are not educated. That that that's what it comes down to, man. Again, do you have to agree with all these things that are happening? No, you don't have to. [02:27] You don't have to. You can have disagreements, you can debate these issues. [02:31] But you'll tell me Israel runs America. I laugh. I laugh because if Israel ran America, you wouldn't even see the anti-semitism. Okay? Anti-semitism is everywhere. [02:44] Yet America America's run by Israel. It's it's the biggest, like, it's the biggest contradiction. I I can't I can't I can't with y'all. Y'all are clowns. [02:56] It's crazy. It's wild work. I got to tell you, whoever's putting forth this story and the narrative is absolutely phenomenal. [03:05] You should get them a job. 100% they should get a job at Disney because the books that they're writing are phenomenal, the narratives. The the the way it the way it's put together, the stories. [03:19] It's crazy. [03:26] It's crazy. You know what? It's, you know, Trump shuts down the border. [03:31] Trump shuts down the border. [03:35] All hell goes loose. By the way, Obama was doing this in 2016. He was throwing people out of this country. No president threw out more, no administration threw out more illegals than Obama. [03:49] Documented. Yet Trump is trying to close the borders, get undocumented people out of this country who did not wait in line to get into this country, and there's a problem. [04:00] Yet Obama and Clinton and Biden and every one of your favorite Democratic presidents or first ladies or presidential candidates have always spoke like this. [04:15] Yet it's only if if I didn't tell you that Trump if I didn't tell you that Obama said something, you would have thought it was Trump. [04:32] It's crazy. [04:37] You know, nobody talks about the 50,000, probably more, but the 50,000 peaceful protesters, Iranian people that were killed by the Ayatollah Ayatollah's regime. Nobody talks about that, though. [04:56] Nobody talks about that. [05:01] Not a single peep. [05:05] What, the Iranian people's lives don't matter? Or is it or do their lives only matter when it's convenient? Let me know. Iranian people's lives only matter when it's convenient and when it fits the story. Otherwise, let's not talk about how many innocent people have been killed by that regime. By the terrorist regime that you want running this country. [05:31] That has supported terrorism all across the world. Let let's go ahead. Let's go ahead and bring them in. [05:43] Crazy. Have you seen what they're doing in Africa to Christians? [05:48] Have you seen what's happening to Christians in Africa? [05:52] Where are all you protesters? Where are all you, oh my, where are all you proud protesters? [06:00] Nowhere to be found. Not for the Iranian people, not for the Christians in Africa, nowhere to be seen. [06:09] Not a single person will stand up because that's not the popular movement. You guys are paid off by a by a bunch of who know, you know, I ain't even get started. I might get kicked off. But we know who you're getting paid off by. All the people protesting paid off. [06:31] America, a Christian country, a Christian country founded on Christian values. That's what America is. [06:39] A Christian country founded on Christian values. [06:47] And Christians need to open up their eyes. [06:54] I want to thank everybody for tuning in today. [06:58] Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We had a wonderful guest on. We'll have it all clipped out. Anybody who missed the show can go ahead and catch the replays either on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or you can go to YouTube and catch replay of the show. Again, wonderful guest. We talked about AI, talked about crypto, talked about politics, and look, I'm ending with that right now. Guys, if you love America, vote for America. That's all I'm going to say, and there ain't nothing racist about that. Okay? If you love America, vote for America and its principles, okay? [07:34] We are a Christian country. Remember that. Bottom line. Whether we agree or disagree, at the end of the day, that is fact. Christian country, keep it that way, okay? [07:46] God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her and guide her. Okay? Let's go. [07:54] Less than two weeks left. Let's fucking go. On that note, I hope you have a wonderful day and an even better tomorrow. I'm out.