The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 139: Why AI is Crashing Bitcoin and Stocks

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Is the AI reckoning finally upon us? What the hell caused bitcoin to drop over 50% recently? Why are some software darlings down huge? Don't worry sweetie, we'll tell you everything you need to know. Sit back and relax. The newest acid video is out now so check it out! https://youtu.be/7vkFY3f5kkw This week's bonus is a fun one. Support us and get bonus content, ad-free versions and more plus your first 7 days free at https://benandemilshow.com WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF EMIL'S NEW SHOW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHG9iIjhXvI OUR NEW CREDIT CARD SITE IS LIVE!!! Go get that AMEX personal card before it's gone! https://thecreditcardlist.com Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it! And please leave us a comment! It helps us! ***Ben's new movies and tv podcast with Dillon is OUT NOW! GO WATCH the latest episode on our TOP MOVIES OF 2025: https://youtu.be/tbC-cMqcby8?si=tO0NK0PmpN2187ir **CHECK OUT EMIL'S LIVESTREAMS HERE: https://www.youtube.com/emilderosa __ SOME OTHER VIDEOS YOU MAY ENJOY: That's Cringe of Cody Ko: https://youtu.be/dTbEk0pVh2w Our AUSTIN VIDEO: https://youtu.be/yGSs56bFzRU Our episode with Kyla Scanlon: https://youtu.be/cIHWkY35cuc Big Tech is out of ideas (ft. ED ZITRON): https://youtu.be/zBvVGHZBpMw Arguing with a millionaire (ft. Chris Camillo): https://youtu.be/1ZUWTkWV_MM We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U ***LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g ***Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa ***Trade with Ben at https://tradertreehouse.com __ CHUBBIES: Get 20% off at chubbiesshorts.com/benandemil with code BENANDEMIL! #chubbiespod SHOPIFY: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/baes with promo code: baes. __ Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crypto crashing, is it over? Is crypto over? Yeah, is it over? We've had crypto for over 10 years, 15 years almost. And they've had all this time to prove their worth. A hedge against inflation, a hedge against, you know, the dollar. Oh, the only thing it's proven to be over the, over those 15 years is a speculative asset. As we've been saying with AI, the biggest thing is all of that money that otherwise was going into all these useless crypto projects the last few years.

All of that money is now shifting to where the action is, which is in AI and robotics. And prediction markets. It's a lot more tangible. You're also taking away people's livelihoods, okay? There's only like three jobs left. It's like Uber driver, polymarket, you know, prediction market better and email job. Oh, I thought you were going to say like porn. Honestly, I mean, yeah, only fans, email job, polymarket prediction analyst.

and maybe those are the three. Wow, welcome back, everybody. Hey, right off the tippy top, I am in Mexico City. So I'm a flexing big time. Are you just in cosmopolitan Mexico City just because you're such a cool guy? I'm just such a cool guy. I just felt like absconding. But I'm in a hotel room.

Are you location maugging me right now? I'm location maugging you and spiking your cortisol levels. Shit. But I apologize. Yeah, I'm also jester maxing. But don't let your, don't let those cortisol levels get spiked. So you'll, what you'll hear because my hotel is on a main drag and this is the only place that I can be. I have no, I have no way of stopping.

You're going to hear like motorcycles and cars and stuff. So just enjoy it. It's part of the ambience. And all this, because Ben thought the Super Bowl was in Mexico City this year. Yeah. And he got scammed super hard. He apparently paid through like his, didn't you pay with Eith tip for these tickets? Yeah.

Yeah. So I got scammed. I got scammed. What we did. But so for all of our new, our new viewers and listeners, first of all, welcome. Second, this is highly abnormal. We are usually in the studio together. So bear with us.

But we've got a fantastic episode. Wait, can we tell them why you're there? Oh, yeah. I mean, I got cast in a commercial. So if you like drinking beer, you might see old Benny boy in one of your favorite commercials. Yeah, be on the lookout. Oh, damn. Dilly, dilly.

So I'll be talking about I already have an upset tummy. Oh, dude, this guy's stuff. is not built for Mexico, that's for sure. No, it really isn't. But we'll talk all about that in the bonus episode, Ben andemilshow.com. Oh, oh, ben-eamil.com. Anyway, we bought that, so that still works.

That's right. So speaking of, if you haven't seen the new acid video, go check it out, leave a comment, subscribe, and the extended version, which is like three times as long, is on Ben and Amelso.com with an alternate ending and all sorts of fun. and stuff. And in this episode, we're going to be talking all about crypto crashing. Is it over? Is crypto over?

Is it over? Chat, did AI crypto mog or did AI, help me hear, Emil, how would you phrase this? Basically, AI and prediction markets are, are betmogging crypto. They are, they're betmogging. Is that what you said? That sounds about right, actually. So they're betmogging it. And then we're also talking about two of the biggest clowns on Wall Street being down massive, massive amounts of money. And yet they're still holding strong. And then we're going to talk about how AI is also maybe finally actually having a big effect and is killing software.

So we'll be talking about that. By the way, I just walked around so long just to try to find. um, Coca-Cola Sero, which is Coca-Cola without sugar, aka Diet Coke. I have to say, what? I'm not a soda guy, but you just flashing that with the full, the full Coca-Cola logo, that's so much nicer than just like, Diet Coke. I know. And it's taste, it, it tastes, it's beautiful. I, I had, uh, I had Coca-Cola, uh, zero in the glass bottle last night as I was watching, um,

the Super Bowl. it was the best thing I've ever tasted. Best thing you've ever tasted. Yes, it was. It was phenomenal. I can't believe it. They really, I mean, Donald Trump could learn a thing or two by just drinking some diet Coke here.

Are you trying to say that America's kind of getting soda-mogged? America is definitely getting soda-mogged by Mexico's, I don't know what it is. I mean, we surely know it is in the water, because it's dog-shit water here. All right. Anyway. Also, before we get started, I know you just did it before we get started. You know what I was thinking about? Because I'm obviously, like many people, probably still neck deep in jmail.

World just going through the most insane emails. Yeah. Because we were talking a little bit about AI. You know how everyone's always like, what is your deal with AI? Like, why can't you just write your own emails? You know who actually needs the AI to write their own emails? This is what I thought about. billionaire pedophiles. I think if you can't write your own email, you're one of them. This guy

could not spell, get his point across correctly. I mean, it's all over the map. This guy needed generative AI. I think he was doing that on purpose to show that whoever he was emailing, it was just, he's not doing, he's not writing how you write emails. He wasn't doing, hello comma indent you know and there's a god damn it it's fully infected my brain he was magging yeah but to me there's a way to do that without well maybe maybe it's just i mean the guy could not spell a single word there's a way to do that with also with being able to spell he was probably cranking his hog with one hand in you know riding with the other or getting you know getting massaged was in the middle of coming.

I'm just saying, I think if you, if you're using generative A to email, you might be a billionaire pedophile. Yeah. Well, speaking of billionaire pedophiles, part of the reason why, so Bitcoin basically just dropped probably, I mean, from top to bottom,

a little over 50%, a little over half, just fuck, just cut in half. Same with Ethereum. And there's a lot of different. reasons why and it's anyone you know what no one is bringing up what the fact that in gosh when was it maybe j maybe a year ago when i was like i'm buying into bitcoin this is the only way we can actually bring this thing down yeah one year later here we are you're right nobody and now everyone's everyone's call we might have to put a we might have to put a clip in here um and i'm true to my word here

I've been buying all the way down. I bought it right at 60. I know it's back up to 70 at time of recording. But I will continue to, I'll buy all the way down to zero if that's what it takes. I'm ready. I've actually been buying a ton of this hyper liquid coin. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to shill for that. I'm not going to pump that bag.

But yeah, everybody, a lot of people were, when we were peak Epstein files coming out a couple weeks ago. Was it a week ago or two weeks ago? Week and a half ago. Nobody knows for sure. About a week and a half ago. It was like January 30th, I think. Yeah. People were losing their minds and drawing connections where there not necessarily were

connections as strong as people were alleging. And one of the big ones was Jeffrey Epstein expressed an interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole. And so that association made everybody collectively on. on finance Twitter and crypto Twitter, just have a meltdown and conclude that, oh, this entire thing has just been a pedophile scam, which is certainly, I mean, he did invest in a couple, as we talked about in last week's episode, he invested in a couple things and he was in contact with some of the first developers, but I don't think that by any means was he some kind of

grand puppet master architect of crypto as a whole. So that's one of the many reasons why it's dropped. Yeah, I think it was about something like 1,500 times that there was like, if you query Bitcoin in the files, you're going to get about like 1,500 returns. I mean, it just speaks to how, have you been seeing all of the cancer cures and all the cancer cure things going viral on Twitter the last two days? No. Oh my God. It's like so many, so many blue checks.

From the Epstein files? No, no, no. I'm speaking to how things lately are being manipulated to go viral and are extremely there have been all these. My only social media right now is J-Mail, baby. I'm digging into Sunni Previn and Jeffrey Epstein's text together. I'm looking at videos and photos. That's my Instagram now.

Just looking at Bill Clinton in a hot tub. Do you remember the Keckiest Maximus Twitter account? Wasn't it, Elon? No, but it's like associated. He called himself that, but it's a big, it's just a big Twitter account and posted, oh, as soon as the U.S. exited the WHO, now we have, and it lists like six different cures for, oh, we've got a cancer vaccine coming out of Russia. We've got a cure for pancreatic cancer, which is, you know, coming. Oh, that's the guy in Spain who needs the funding for testing on humans.

Right. But there's like six different headlines that they're touting, and everybody's quote, retweeting them and saying like, oh my God, what is going on? What is going on? And you can tell that it's just a coordinated effort to go viral and make money on Twitter. And it's exhausting because I got suckered into it for a brief moment. And then I googled each one of these. And there's nothing. Zero. There's nothing. The Spain one is real. The Spain one is real. But there's zero truth to the other ones where it's like, oh, they've cured Alzheimer's. They've cured. What does this have to do with Bitcoin? I'm just saying that it's another iteration of things spreading on Twitter that are totally so far.

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Support our show and tell them we sent you. That's Ben and Amiel A-N-D in the Miel. middle, not an ampersand, bend into meal. But anyway, back to Bitcoin. AI is, I think, taking a big chunk out of the popularity of Bitcoin and Ethereum and stuff. Because when you think about it, we've had crypto for over 10 years, 15 years, almost. And they've had all this time to prove their worth as a hedge against inflation.

a hedge against, you know, the dollar, protect, you know, a protection asset, you name it. And it has, it has gone up, but it has zero utility. Other than that. Oh, the only thing it's proven to be over the, uh, over those 15 years is a speculative asset. Yeah, and building shit that nobody needs. Like, I remember buying some fucking NFT for some stupid fuck game. You bought an NFT? Yeah.

It was like a thousand. $1,000, too. You bought a thousand dollar NFT? Mm-hmm. It's just a robot game. They advertised it so well. It was like, it's going to be a, we're going to build a whole video game. And it's going to, it's going to have a whole thing.

And if you have an NFT, you'll get to play the game. And I bought one. And immediately, as soon as they released them all, it went from being worth $1,000, at which the point that, the price that I bought it, down to like $400. the floor just fell out and I was like, okay, cool. And that's what a lot of people have been accustomed to and have been programmed to get used to these last 10 years.

It's just all of this crap that serves no purpose, has no... Oh, yeah. And the FOMO, whether it was FOMO over Bitcoin of like, dude, get in now because you're going to regret it when this thing goes to 100K. and a lot of people did regret it when it went to 100K, but then just also with all of these,

that spread into everything. I mean, you're talking about the NFTs, and then it was like, well, are you buying digital land right now? Because we've actually created online, we've created online land where we've built in scarcity. And if you're not prospecting out there, pal, you're going to get left behind.

And you're asking, what are you going to do with these NFTs? Well, you're going to hang it in the house you built on your digital land, pal. It's like, What a stupid thing. Even blockchain technology hasn't. Aside from all the speculative asset stuff, you would think that, oh, smart contracts and blockchain is going to be, is going to revolutionize things like real estate and law. It has done fuck all. I actually won't buy anything without a smart contract.

So that one's real. Yeah. No, I mean, what did you say? even when you go to Best Buy, you ask the guy in the blue shirt, like, no, is this on the blockchain? I need you guys to, like, put it on. You should be able to. It'll only take, like, 45 minutes. I'll, I'll spend three hours in a Best Buy just buying four cables because I need some guy to come out and draft me up a smart contract and minted on the blockchain. On the bleh. Yeah, these, so because of that. But it feels so silly to say, it's like, I've been saying

this for years. This is like, you know, and I get, well, here's the thing, though, where, you know, we're talking about why this specific one happened. The answer is people don't exactly know. I think people are kind of throwing out different reasons. I've, but like, I think yes, the AI in prediction markets is likely a reason why. I don't know why it would have sparked off, because this all happened within so quickly. Yeah. I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know what would have specifically triggered it that day.

I think it was the Epstein stuff kind of started. The price started weakening. The Epstein stuff came out and it was like a collective consciousness shift. A lot of a lot of long time crypto influencers who are like big trusted names have come out and basically said, fuck this, I'm out of here. This is all just a scam. I've tried, I've tried, I've tried, I've tried, it's all proven to be nothing. You've got the fact that venture capital money has completely dried up, so nobody's funding

new projects because everybody knows that it's all meaningless. Not only proving to be nothing, but also like that narrative that they've been trying to sell everyone on has basically just evaporated, right? It was supposed to be this like, we're the new frontier, we are, we're going to bank people who were locked out of the banking system. We're going to build the populist digital currency that works for us. And the best they got, when Bitcoin was doing its best,

it was being touted by this new presidential administration, being backed by the Genius Act. And at its best, it just followed the market. Whenever there was market instability, you saw people selling off Bitcoin for liquidity, and this thing that was supposed to be a hedge and escape from traditional banking systems disappeared. Where was it? Instead of a safe haven, it actually ended up proving to be more of a risk asset, which is the first to go before it usually precludes a big market drop.

But so not only everything that you just said, but then you also had a couple of long-time old wallets that have been holding Bitcoin for a decade. A few of them liquidated, which doesn't exactly bode well for instilling trust in people. And then the biggest thing, as we've been saying with AI, the biggest thing is all of that money that otherwise was going into all these useless crypto projects the last few years, all of that money is now shifting to where the action is, which is in AI and robotics. And prediction markets. In prediction markets.

So that's where the investment money is going, AI and robotics. But then the speculators, the young people in particular, are now doing Kalshi and Polly Market, in part because they don't, they now, they feel like they have more control. They feel like, okay, this is something where I can actually think about, I can use, my let me rephrase whereas with like oh I'm going to buy ass but coin I don't know

what's going to happen with ass but coin I don't know if they're going to rug me I don't know if rug pull me I don't know if the developers are going to disappear and just take millions of dollars that have been purchased here I don't know if it's still oil alert they will they will 99.9 have all ended in the same way

also another one I just want to mention I I don't know like how much credence there is to it, but another people, I mean, another one, people are speculating that had something to do with this. This was the reporting about Kevin Warsh being the next head of the Fed. Some people. Yeah, I mean, I'd be surprised if something like that could trigger something. I don't know.

Yeah, I would say, but he was more of a crypto bull than anything from what I've read. he's more like neutral to positive about it. But yeah, all these younger people are, it's a lot easier. They feel a lot more in control to speculate on things that they can actually, it's a lot more tangible where, hey, I can gamble on any outcome, any possible thing. I can use my critical thinking skills and my gut to,

potentially make money, whereas, yeah, it's just a sheer roll of the dice with crypto. Oh, dude, why hodle and see if you can hit 100,000 with Bitcoin when you can just find out tonight what color dildo is going to be thrown on the WMBA game? I forgot about that. And it's like, well, look it, it was pink, so I'm going to be able to pay my rent tonight. Yeah, but just by and large, crypto's entire use case has proved utterly meaningful. And it feels like there's been this great awakening on crypto Twitter where people are just kind of going, wow, yeah, this all feels fucking stupid. I'm pissed off.

I feel I feel lied to. You know, it's just been a place for crooks and scammers to come and steal money from people. On that note, they're pissed at Trump, too. Trump just sold $5 million worth of Bitcoin. And, you know, all of these... On that note, with the crypto-twitter stuff, I do also feel like that is... And this is not me talking about the reason it crash.

Like, I'm still a little bit confused what started all this, but I think when we're thinking about why this crypto winter is different or this downturn is different, because it is important to point out this has happened before, and people have called crypto-dead many times.

And who knows? I'm sure... I've danced on Bitcoin's grave. many times. But it does feel different. You're talking about crypto, Twitter. Even that feels different. Like, there genuinely used to be a, like, online crypto community that was strong, much to my chagrin. I found it so annoying. It was like, you know, all the gloating, all the, all the, like, tea leave reading of, all it takes is that just. That just. Charts. It's math. Right. And even maybe your algorithm is a little different than mine. I'm,

Usually when this kind of stuff happens, I'm usually flooded with that kind of stuff. I really had to seek it out and was going to the crypto subreddits and the Bitcoin subreddits to see what they were saying. And it just does not feel like there's a cohesive online crypto community like there was. And I think the whole thing ran on belief. And I think people are just starting to. And one of the worst things for any kind of market, especially a speculative asset and a risk asset like this, is uncertainty. Uncertainty begets fear and fear begets selling. And it just becomes a loop.

But yeah, like you said, it has faced death before. The Tara and Luna major, major scams. FTX, of course, NFTs, all sorts of things have coming on. and each time it felt like, oh, this is it, this is it. But money kept inevitably coming back in part because there was no alternative. But this time really does feel different to me. Yeah, that is the difference. In 2018, 2018 was another huge one where I think it lost like 80% of its value.

And everyone was like, well, that was a fun ride. Yeah. We weren't even close to the top. Hey, guys, we got to take a quick second and talk to you about Shopify. Okay, we are, we are very happy with what we've built here at Ben and Emile Show headquarters. But in the beginning, there was a lot of, let's just say there was some doubt. We didn't know exactly what we were doing. We had a lot of what-ifs.

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24-hour support. Oh, and we've taken advantage of it. All right. So it's time to turn those what-ifs in to with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Bayes. That's B-A-E-S. Go to Shopify.com slash bays. That's Shopify.com slash bays. So on to Michael Saylor, the,

what's his thing? Micro Strategy or just strategy now. he's now down $10 billion on microstratage's holdings. Volatility was a gift to the faithful. It scares away the tourist. It scares away the lazy. It scares away the people that are already conventionally rich that have all the money. If you're a 20-something or a 30-something and you're willing to do the work,

if you want to spend 100 hours or 200 hours, If you have more time than money, then the volatility of Bitcoin is a gift to you. If you have more money than time and you're arrogant and egotistical and you just pick the obvious, then if the volatility goes away, you buy Bitcoin. If people in the rest of the world knew what I know and they understood and they agreed with me, Bitcoin would go to $10 million tomorrow. And if Bitcoin went to $10 million tomorrow, I want you to think about how you would feel and how your viewers would feel

because you would lose 20 years of stacking opportunity during which you get to buy it less than $10 million. So the difference between $10 million and $100,000, that's what you give up if the volatility goes away and people start to agree. with you. Okay. Wow. I love that little camera shift in the middle of there. It adds an air of drama to it. Said the guy who's down $10 billion on Bitcoin. Dude, he looks like, if you guys knew what I knew. If you know what I know. I also think that's the, his point is perfect. It's like, yeah, if everyone believed like you did, Bitcoin probably would be super high. But your problem is everyone's lost faith in it, pal.

And the lower it goes, he's got debt covenants that he's got to pay. And he's now, he's got so many different, it's so convoluted. It's like Enron on steroids. He's got micro strategy. He's got something, it's like strategy income ETF. He's got all sorts of, I think there's like six different ones now, where he claims to be able to pay dividends, like absurd, I think like 10% dividends, which is insane. And it's all funded by borrowed money that he then uses to buy Bitcoin. And that makes the price

of Bitcoin go up, which then makes their holdings more valuable, which he can then borrow against again and just keep the flywheel going. Yeah, he's like a Ponzi scheme based on a Ponzi scheme. It's like it's going to run out at some point. Well, he assures everybody that that's not the case and that that's a loser talk. But everybody else with eyes and a brain can see that, and it is interesting because it hasn't happened yet, but the lower Bitcoin goes, the more likely it is that those debt holders will call the damn cows to come home or the chickens to roost or whatever colorful metaphor you want to. It's usually chickens coming home to roost. You usually do something until the cows come home.

Oh, right. Or your chickens come home to roost. Yeah. Well, whatever it is, it's going to... I, for a minute there, when it looked like it was just going to go straight to zero, I hate to be bleak, but I was like, Michael Saylor's going to kill himself. Is this a good... Is this a good tweet?

Me doing something until the cows come home? Yes, fuck yes. This rocks. The chickens coming home to roost. Oh, what the fuck? this sucks. I think you need to workshop that a little bit more. Sure.

Okay. Okay. Man, but he just, he looks like shit in that video. He kind of looks like if Ethan Hawk had a, had a more like fucked up nerdy brother, you know? Nathan Hawk. Yeah, Nathan Hawk. He's like Nathan Hawk, which is basically, yeah, Ethan backward kind of. not really yeah the more i'll get there yeah um well and then the other one that's two strikes we both

just uh took big swings and and got big misses so if there's one more we have to end the pod sorry yeah and the other big one is tom lee who i personally i fucking hate him now fuck that guy tom lee who always looks like shit when he's on television he always and he was basically he was basically doing his own micro strategy, but based on ETH. Yeah. And he really speed ran losing money. He's already down $8 billion. He was buying it at the top. He's been buying it still. He was predicting that Ethereum would hit $10,000 per coin by the end of January just a couple months ago when it was at $3,000. he still thinks that it's the future. I think that he's probably terrified.

I think every night when he goes to bed, his cortisol levels are getting hijacked. The crypto thing in general is just, it just like needs to be studied. The behavioral changes of people when it's, when things are good, it's like they've never experienced the downturn. I'm the smartest guy in the world.

I created this fucking company and all we do is print money because Bitcoin or Ethereum, it's never coming back down. My life's going to live forever. And then it's just like, how many times do you have to go through this? Yeah. I mean, what I was just saying about all the different forms of investment vehicles that Michael Saylor himself has made is one more. of the puzzle, which is that a big part of what made Bitcoin alluring is its limited supply.

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins that can be mined over the next 80 years. But, ironically, because of its mass adoption now, especially by Wall Street and especially by the big banks and institutions that it was created to, in response to, you know, Bitcoin's entire ethos was anti-bank, anti-institution. And now the banks and institutions have their grubby little mutts on it, or mitts on it, that 21 million supply is utterly meaningless. Because now you've got all these derivative products on top of it where, you know, whereas one Bitcoin is 100,000 and one Bitcoin can be traded, 10 different ETFs can be traded. Ten different ETFs can be traded on top of it instead of that one Bitcoin.

You can buy the, you can buy any number of Bitcoin ETFs. You can buy micro strategy. You can buy one of micro strategies offshoots. You can do any number of things except by Bitcoin itself. Rendering the argument for its scarcity totally fucking meaningless. And that also, that also plays into what I was talking about earlier about the narrative stuff where it's, it's, um, it's not a great pitch when you're like, hey, we're the new punk rock crypto project.

Please also make sure to buy our ETF at Schwab if you want to take part in all this. It's just the whole thing is falling by the wayside. The other thing too about the narrative is that this whole this whole FOMO thing has also kind of gone away where if you're someone like me and the pitch is like, hey, buy in. you're going to be sorry. Yeah. Well, sorry about what? I mean, people used to buy in at like a thousand bucks, even if 10,000 bucks, okay? It has to go to 50K for you to 5x your money.

This thing has to hit half a million bucks if I want to 5x my money. Yeah. Well, it's going to 10 million, dude. Right. And that's another issue I've always had with that. It's like, if Bitcoin were to go to 10 million per coin, or a million per coin, it doesn't make sense to me how there would be that many more multi, multi-millionaires and billionaires because of it.

Like, there's not enough room. There's not that, do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. It, like, fundamentally does not make sense. So, like, if I have, if I have one Bitcoin, I'm now, I have a million dollars, get the fuck out of here. Well, this also, you would also have to be able to exit your position for that to even be true. Exactly. There's no way all of these people are going to be able, yeah, none of this makes sense. It doesn't, well, then you venture into the, well, it's going to be our main source of

currency. And it's like, you guys have been saying that for so fucking long. You've been railing against precious metals instead, or, you know, gold is useless, silver's useless. This is, this digital gold is where it's at. And it's like, no, man, you've had it's, it's had its chance to prove itself so many times and it has failed at each point. I do want to say, I do want to say, though, the one thing that it has proven itself is that at least up until now, it always comes back. That is true. It does, I don't, and I agree with the, here's the thing. It's so hard for me to talk about this because I agree with all the people who are like this time is different, but I've also said that about basically every downturn. Same.

Like, I've been like, well, no, FTX though, this implosion, this means it's different. This is an institutional player. This guy was on stage with Bill Clinton. I'm telling you, this whole thing is done. Yeah. And sometimes, like, if you go on to a Bitcoin or crypto subreddit, it's hard to not buy into the guys who are, Because there's a lot of freakouts. There's obviously a lot of people who put too much of their money into this shit, which, like, which you shouldn't do.

I obviously have been public about the fact that I started buying a little bit of Bitcoin, but if it all goes to zero, it will be okay. It'll be annoying, but it'll be okay. Obviously, I mean, I've, what, it halfed and it's fine. So those people are freaking out, but there's obviously a ton of people who, who are doing the thing of, guys, we've been here before. It's like, you know what? It feels very similar to me with the, you know, I'm a bit of a, I don't really identify as one, but I basically do the, you know,

the Bogle heads, the investing strategy? Yeah, for Vanguard. The creator's name is Bogle. Last name is Bogle. I basically do that. Like their whole, if you don't know, Bogle is the, he was the founder of Vanguard and basically his whole ethos was that you're not going to beat the market. Like 90% of people don't beat the market. Don't be, don't pretend like you're better than that. Just buy into low cost index funds.

Exactly. And that's what I do. And every time, you know, you've seen a couple blips. Nothing like this, obviously, nothing like a, you know, 40 to 50% downturn with the market. Obviously, that would be catastrophic. But you see people who are like, oh, man, I'm so smart. I just Boglehead my way through. But every time there's a blip, there's people going like, uh, uh, and then someone steps in and is like, guys, this is exactly why you do it because you're immune to these. On a long enough timeline, you're immune. And on a long enough timeline, so far, it seems like Bitcoin comes back.

And I think that there's something to be said for when the market goes through its cycle. and it goes risk off and all the risk assets go down, obviously Bitcoin goes with it. But when inevitably the cycle returns back to risk on, and when I say risk, I'm talking about shit like the quantum stocks, where they might make money in some far off future, but for now it's just a story. That capital that's out there eventually makes its way

who knows what it'll be, who knows what the next cycle will be. Maybe it'll be robotics, maybe it'll be space solar panels. But part of that inevitably includes Bitcoin and crypto. So I do think barring some catastrophic drop in it, which causes entities like micro strategy to have to liquidate in order to pay back their creditors, I don't think that it's necessarily going to zero, but I think that it could still drop quite a bit from here. But who knows? Speaking of just all of this crap and, you know, we were talking about young people gambling on Kalshian shit.

That's what, why would people not, I mean, that's where all the energy is going. I mean, look at the, just look at Super Bowl ads. Yeah. The whole thing is just AI and, um, Polymarket. I mean, we didn't even, did, did we mention the insider trading on the Super Bowl who was just like, going like, yeah. Yeah. No, we, we haven't mentioned that, but that's, that's part of why this whole thing is just such a joke and such a scam. And I think that that's going to end up being part of its downfall, because that's ridiculous and insane that someone with insider knowledge can just openly make a thought. Forget, forget crypto. You're not going to get rich off crypto, you need to somehow, you need to start strategizing how you're going to put yourself in a position where you will have niche insider info. That's the real way to generational wealth. If you want to set your kids up, that's how you got to do it. You can also get fucked because,

like, if polymarket or Kalshi decides to get hung up on the minutia of it, for example, I think one of them was like will cardi be yeah who was it was it was cardi B it was will cardi because it was he was betting on like who would be surprised guest performers yeah um and uh i think he had cardy B and but cardy B didn't sing she was just dancing and they were like well she's actually not a performer in that case yeah it's similar to when the guy made all the money off of um calling that Venezuela would be invaded and then uh calcier polymark it was like Well, I don't know if we can actually call this an invasion. This was more of a small-scale incursion.

We would actually take kidnapping as well. Yeah. Well, you do really have to be careful what you wish for, though. I think as someone who's been calling for the end of crypto, it definitely hurts that you think the end of crypto is going to be like everyone's figured it out that this is a lot. and we're actually building a much stronger economy that's built on real, tangible things. And then it's like, no, no, no, we're just, we're just betting. Actually, the White House press secretary just made a boatload of money by ending her, by ending her conference early.

And it's like, okay, good. God, it's so fucking disgusting. And now, so the big, one of the big stories that came out in the last week was, how do you say his name, Janice Attenka-Boppo? The basketball player, Yana Santa Ticumpo. There you go. He plays for Milwaukee. And there was speculation that he was going to leave the Milwaukee Bucks.

And he leaned into it by kind of teasing that there was a big announcement that was going to come. And that caused the betting markets to go nuts. And everybody's speculating, I think $20 million worth of bets were placed. Something like that, over $20 million. And then his big reveal is that he's investing. in Kalshi. The very, the very platform that allows people to bet on every single aspect of NBA games that he plays in, that is a major conflict of interest that I'm shocked.

The NBA commissioner hasn't, what's his name? Adam Silver hasn't. You're surprised the NBA commissioner, the basically, the guy who's just let gambling completely fuck out his entire sport. True, but I mean, they used to be, they used to be so strict with things. They, I mean, I don't know. I really hope that there's enough backlash that they will, they'll force him to. But here's the problem.

What is the backlash? You're also taking away people's livelihoods. Okay. There's only like three jobs left. It's like, it's like Uber driver, polymarket, you know, prediction. market better. Yeah. And email job.

Oh, I thought you were going to say like porn. Honestly. I mean, yeah, only fans, email job, polymarket prediction analyst, and maybe those are the three. Yeah, it sucks. So I mean, are we really going to kill people's jobs? I thought we were trying to be job creators here.

Well, and if that is the case, why don't you just bet on whether or not you're going to have a job? And then you can make money when you get, get laid off by having correctly hedge. It's insurance. It's a form of insurance. That I like. Yeah. Well, so the other thing that AI is potentially killing is software. And first of all, man, you remember, so you know Figma? Did I do it? Figma nuts or something? What are you going to Figma That's what I always thought Figma was like

I didn't know Anytime someone mentioned it I'm like you mean are you doing a Ligma thing here? What are you doing? Do it. What were you going to do? Figma balls on your nuts?

Figma balls on your nuts? Figma balls on your nuts? Hey, excuse me, I fig my balls on your nuts. Me at a, me at an orgy. Excuse me, I have Figma balls on your nuts. I feel so bad for Figma insiders who have been, imagine you've worked at Figma six years, something like that.

Okay, I'm thinking about it. You've been putting all of your, you've been deciding to take stock instead of a salary increase because you're like, that payday's coming. We're a hot, hot ticket. we're going to IPO. I'm going to be, it's going to be smooth sailing for the rest of my life. It's going to be like NVIDIA.

I'm going to be like an NVIDIA shareholder. Well, Figma debuted at $84, spiked all the way up to about $142. That was in August. And now the stock is at $22 a share. And these poor insiders who could not sell had to just watch as all of their equity that they've accumulated over the years just disappear. Unbelievable. I don't, I, I'm not, I, I know I'm not like psychologically built for something like that.

I mean, you, you would be spending months being like, I'm, I'm going to be set for life. My whole life is going to be fine. And it's going to be awesome. I had people like that when I worked at BuzzFeed, who thought that, who were like, oh, man, I got stock and one of these days we're going to IPO or we're going to sell to a bigger company. And I was like, I don't know about you guys, but like the valuation, the peak was like one and a half billion dollars. And I was like, there's no way in hell. It's worth any more than this. If anything, we are extremely overvalued. And I didn't buy any of mine. And then by the time they

did IPO, it was way too late. And same thing. It just fucking tanks because nobody wants to buy that piece of shit company. Stupid, man. Oh, what a tragedy. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes stock is not the way to go. And I know people that worked there for 10 years and just accumulated and accumulated and it all was for fucking nothing. I mean, it's tough.

It's tough. It's also tough to know. I think BuzzFeed is probably a bit of an easier one. But, you know, I'm sure the good people at Figma thought they were making the smart choice there. Yeah. So what happened in the last couple weeks is basically Anthropic, which is a competitor to Open AI, their LLM is called Claude. And it has clearly taken the lead. It's like the favorite in the entire AI race, aside from like Google, which is obviously right up there with Gemini. Yeah, do you think people have turned a corner on Gemini and now it went from being a joke to now

some people's preferred, a lot of people's preferred model. Especially because it's free, which is, I mean, Google, Google can basically starve the competition by offering theirs for free, forcing the competitors to lower their prices and just eat up their cash and make their margins dog shit. But so Anthropic released this Claude co-work, which enables people to assign agents, AI agents, to do shit, to do tasks with easy natural language.

It's basically like because so many coders were using it as a little agent and now it's becoming like it's like for people with just a regular ass email jobs. They're like, hey, now you got your own little assistant. He knows all the kinds of things you want to do

and he can just go do it for you. Yeah. So they had these new plugins that were released about a week ago that can review legal contracts perform industry-specific functions. And then there was an update to its model last Thursday that enhanced capabilities for financial analysis. And so the software industry, which prior to this was untouchable. I mean, their moat was so wide. They had such fat, good margins. One point two trillion dollar industry, all of their stocks, you name it, it's down precipitously from their all-time highs, Intuit, Atlassian, Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, Cloudflare, all these things, all these companies

that you've probably never heard of. Mondays? Did Mondays survive? Monday.com did not survive. Well, it's not that they're out of business, but they're down to $77 a share from a high of like $350. Wow. Everybody's just been taken to the world. Won't someone think of Asana?

Asana has also been absolutely fucking murked. I'm sure everyone, I'm sure everyone who has. has worked at some kind of corporate job is happy to see these companies floundering. Just your middle manager being like, and did you mark it off on Asana so the team knows it's done? Hey, why don't I mark my brain out of my head with a bullet, pal? I remember having to use, I don't even remember what it was, some fucking project tracking software and I never, I never was able to use it.

It just was never that intuitive. And I just ended up fucking saying, no, I'm not going to do this. It's not. But so everybody's freaking out. Everybody's calling for the end of software because now why do you need software when you can just have a bespoke AI agent? You can drum up with a vibe code and have it do everything that that thing did for a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the price. Well, it's appealing for a good headline, and it's enough to spook the markets. But there's been a massive defense of these things.

And the biggest defender, the biggest, the highest profile defender was, of course, Jensen Wong, who's the Nvidia CEO. And yeah, last Tuesday, he was at a conference in San Francisco, and he said, it's the most illogical thing in the world, this idea that the software industry is in decline and will be replaced by AI. And he's not the only one. So there was a JP Morgan analyst who put out a note to investors saying that the expectation that every company will hereby write and maintain a bespoke product to replace every layer of mission critical enterprise software they have ever deployed is essentially assinine. Because things move slowly in the

corporate world. It takes forever for these things to, for new things to get implemented. Least of all software like this. It's not, the real effects of this will be delayed for years and years. The software, all of this stuff has proprietary shit that you can't just whip up with a couple lines of prompting with an AI. They've also got experience. They've got know-how, they've got real customer service representatives that if there's a bug or if there's a problem, you can contact them and it'll get worked out. Sure, there's like smaller, scrappier startups that can implement this stuff and save the money that they would otherwise pay to like Asana and shit.

But no large corporation is implementing anything like this. And even so to that point, funny enough, Anthropic and Open AI are themselves customers of some of these very of these software companies that we're talking about. So that just speaks to how it's totally effing. The vibe coders are checking things off on Asana and Mondays.com. Why do you keep calling it Mondays? It's Monday. Mondays.com.

Wait, but. Software stocks, though, like, what the fuck does it even do? But that's my, my question is, I agree. with your take there, but these are some pretty massive drops we're seeing. Do you think, do you think you're going to see these companies recover from this? Yes. I think so for sure. Because I think the market is now pricing in, the market is repricing all of these things. Because they're all part of this same basket of software as a service or SaaS stocks. And they all,

generally have a certain kind of multiple attributed to their earnings, however much it, you know, 20x, their earnings, 30x. And the stock should represent future cash flows. Like, I'm being very, very rudimentary here. And with these revelations in potential disruption, that means that the market has to totally reconfigure and re-rate these stocks, and it doesn't know yet. It kind of got to wait to see how everything shakes out. It could be years. It could be several quarters for them to see like, okay, is there going to be an effect in the near term? Or actually, there's a huge possibility that all these AI advances are actually going to be beneficial to these software companies. Because maybe internally, they may be able to implement AI tools that will

give them better margins, save money, shit like that. But that obviously remains to be seen. One of the big ones that I think is being overlooked is cybersecurity because with the increase in AI agents being proliferated across corporations and on the internet and stuff comes increased security issues and potential problems. And one of the cybersecurity stocks are essentially software stocks and they've suffered quite a bit. So I think that that could be interesting. I bought a few of those. Also, one of the funny things we forgot to mention about crypto was, I don't know how much this played into it, but the cybersecurity stuff regarding quantum computing and some people thinking, well, if quantum computing, if quantum computing is

just a, just a little bit away, then all my, all my Bitcoin is completely useless because they're going to be able to, I don't even know, break my encryption and steal all my, my Bitcoin. Yeah, which is so funny because like, if that would make it useless, then why hack it in the first place to take it? You know? Yeah, it's like a real, uh, or a boris. It's a snake eating its own asshole. How stupid do you have to be to be a snake eating your own tail, by the way? Well, dumbass. You don't feel it. You don't feel that, oh, this is my own fucking tail. You deserve to die if you're a moron. God, what a stupid moron snake.

Do you feel that way about dogs chasing their own tails? No, because they're not going to choke on it and keep on swallowing it until they inevitably choke. They might. I've seen some pretty stupid dogs. Yeah, I actually have two. Well, to round out the software thing, man. So just between Google, meta, Amazon. on Microsoft and Tesla, their combined spending on AI is about $600 billion for 2026,

which is way higher. So they're now spending more than they are going to be taking in collectively, which is a big deal. And one effect of that, all of that demand for AI infrastructure and build out and shit is causing memory costs to spike. Yeah. Which is then going to affect things like laptops, iPhones, all that shit, all the, all the memory that goes into there, gaming computers, gaming, um, uh, consoles. It's causing memory prices to spike, which is going to eventually affect, uh, consumer demand for those products, which could adversely, it, it's kind of a same kind of thing where this demand for AI is going to cause,

something else something else has to give, you know? AI causing memory prices to spike, well that causes demand for certain products to drop which will be bad and all these companies are going to be spending so much money

and I don't I'll tell you what, it's enough to make me glad I got in early on a nice piece of digital land where the getting's good in there, I'll tell you what. I remember people buying plots of land for like a million fucking dollars and I was pissed off.

Yeah, it's a very scary psychological thing too because I remember even deep within my core being so against all this and being like, this is fucking stupid. But even just the smallest bit,

there was the smallest bit of me that was like, am I fucking my, am I fucking my whole life up because I have no digital land? I remember seeing it. There was one called like Crypto land or something.

And I was like, why would anybody buy into this specific one? It's assuming that that's going to be the one place where everybody convenes in the metaverse. But isn't the metaverse potentially like unlimited? Can I? Why would I? It doesn't make any sense. Of course it doesn't.

It's fucking stupid. That, that, I mean, all of this, uh, forced scarcity is just like a ridiculous thing. I mean, even. Bitcoin. The whole thing is because they're like, but there's only this many. And it's like, why? And they're like, because we made it like that. Because Satoshi, God bless him. God rest his soul. It is crazy that Jeffrey Epstein was Satoshi though. God. I think the real Satoshi is long dead. Sure. Yeah. I hope not. I hope at least, I hope he at least got to live a little, live it up a little. And see his wallet be worth $100 billion? Right.

I guess he's never sold. No, not a single one that we know of. I mean, because he might have had other wallets that contained some. Or he just lost his password and, man, that would fucking steal. Wouldn't it be fun? That would be beautiful if Satoshi was just kind of roaming this world. What if Satoshi was the guy who, maybe it was like in the UK somewhere where he was basically just like going through junkyards? looking for his

hard drive. My hard drive it's in the dump, right? My hard drive's in the dump. It's got about, I don't know, something like a thousand bitcoins in it,

right? And I can't remember my password number one, but I got to find the fucking thing too. And it's probably under some shit, you know?

Fuck. I could be out there with honeys and driving a sports car, but instead I'm working for Uber because I can't find me hard drive because my mom threw it out with the,

with me old knickers. My old knickers had, had holes in them, and she thought my hard drive was also trashed. And that's why we always advocate against knicker-shaped hard drives, because you never know what's going to happen when your mom comes in.

He shouldn't hit his hard drive in his, in his underwear drawer. But one of the funniest things I think in the whole AI thing right now is that Nvidia already has backed off of they had committed. They got so funny with the language because just a few months ago, the headline was that they are going to spend $100 billion on OpenAI. They're going to invest $100 billion. And then quietly over the last couple weeks, they said, oh, no, no, no.

that was just like a verbal potential commitment. We might invest up to $100 billion. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. Why would we do that? Why would we do that? No, we didn't say that we are going to invest $100 billion. We said that we might commit up to $100 billion.

And that's making everybody kind of laughing that Sam Altman and and it's good for Anthropic because everybody liking the cloud. Everyone likes Claude. Everyone's laughing at, everyone's laughing at the anthropic commercials that are making fun of. Oh, God, dude, Sam Altman's tweet, too,

responding to the ads about the... I watched it. I thought it was funny, but I don't understand why they would do that. It's just like a guy who's... It's the like, please don't put in the newspaper that I got owned. Like, it's just like a guy like, oh, you think you've owned me.

But actually, that's not even statistically relevant. And if you, and it's like, oh, dude, we're going to pull your freaking pants down and push it down a hill or something. It's just like no one, no one cares. We, you know, you said you were on record talking about how putting ads onto the models would be like a last ditch effort. And here you are putting ads onto the models. Just take your freaking spankings, man. Yeah. I mean, when is NVIDIA?

Let's see when NVIDIA. I think they report their earnings any day now. Oh, yeah, it'll be the end of February. That'll be a big, big, big, big. That is a major market-moving event. That is, what's the word for earthquakes? In Greek? The tectonic, it's a tectonic.

potentially something. By the way, yesterday at the costume fitting for this commercial, all of a sudden everybody's phones start going off. And they all just grab their phones and they're like, okay, we got to leave. And I was like, what's going on? Oh, you had a Mexico City earthquake. Yeah. But there was no earthquake.

And I was only wearing one shoe. I've been a few times and I've felt a couple. And I remember one specifically coming home pretty dry. drunk and laying in bed and being like, whoa, I didn't. And then like hearing my friend in the other room being like, are you feeling that? And it was, it was probably the longest earthquake I'd ever felt. It just shook us for a while. Damn. Hard to go to sleep after that. Yeah. Well, folks, uh, I think we, that's a good place to wrap it up. We'll be going into the bow, boat, bo, bo, bo, bo, bonus now. My stomach it feels better, which is good. Do you think it's me? Do you think laughter's the best medicine?

I think it's Coca-Cola light. I mean, some bubbles are going to settle the stomach. Yeah. It's certainly not this shit. I hate this. Bonafont. Oh, that's the diarrhea water. That's the one they sell to tourists. When it gives you diarrhea? Are you, wait, you bought Bonifont? Yeah. You're cooked, dude. No, I've drank, I've had so much of it. It's good. that's probably why you got the Hershey Squirts, man. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, guys,

and we'll be back to our normal programming next week with us. And keep an eye up for Ben's big beer commercial. Oh, I'll let everybody know. You know I will. And I'll give more details in the bonus. Oh. Yeah. Exclusive.

Just a little bit. Bye, guys. We love you. Bye. Coming up on this week's episode of Ben and Emile Show.com. Oh my God. Look at what the camera's doing to him. I was like, I want to look good.

I want to look thin, at least in my face, you know. So I did a water fast. What is a water fast? It's where you only consume zero calories. You can only have water, coffee without any sweeteners or anything. Dude, that's not good for you. It is. It's okay to do once every once in a while.

I broke my fast. with four tacos. Wait, then what's the point of even doing this? Because it does slim you out for like, but then, yeah, I've got today off and then it meets tomorrow. But I'm also not going to get chubby in a day, although I did, yeah. But if you can get thin in a day,

if you can get thin in a day, why can you get chubby in a day? Uh, fuck you, I don't. I mean, this is just like, this is like high school girl shit.

I'm like, they make each one, seem so dire and so serious. This one says, clavicular almost caught a career-ending cortisol spike after a larp maxed Stacy tried gesturifying him on a stream by calling him a good boy

while he was mid-mog between two low-tier morphies. I don't understand. I don't understand what it means. gestures are being foids or whatever. I was like, what are these words? Yeah, I like this one. Clavicular was mid-gester-gooning when a group of foids came and spiked his cortisol levels. Is ignoring the foids while munting and magging moids more useful than SMV Chadfishing in the club?

I think that's the one that I saw the quote tweet of. I was like, wow, I did not know how deep this goes.