Unchained - Bits + Bips: How AI and Energy Prices Will Force the Fed’s Hand

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Thank you to our sponsor, Uniswap! If trust in central banks erodes, what replaces it? This week’s Bits + Bips connects AI, energy, inflation, and Bitcoin. In this episode of Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins are joined by Daniel Ives, one of Wall Street’s most closely followed technology analysts, to break down how AI is colliding with macroeconomics. They debate whether AI will ultimately be inflationary or deflationary, why energy may become the binding constraint on technological growth, and how rising productivity could force the Federal Reserve into uncomfortable trade-offs. The conversation also covers pressure on central bank independence, the fragility of trust in fiat systems, and why Bitcoin increasingly enters the conversation when that trust erodes. Hosts: Ram Ahluwalia Austin Campbell Christopher Perkins Guests: Daniel Ives, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush Links: Bitcoin Briefly Pops to $92K on Powell DOJ News, Then Retreats Tether Freezes $182 Million in USDT on Tron Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're always kind of in a waste between inflation and GDP. These things don't exist in a vacuum. And I guess the question, if you will, that's driving a lot of that view is how big do we think the productivity gains from AI are going to be? And I think more and more investors are going to recognize that the consumer AI revolution is just starting to come. And yet probably as AI revolution has been there in VD and Microsoft, HyperSkyo's power. it's here. Consumer AI revolution now comes. And it is a tough, tough bill to pass. Genius was supposed to be easy, but we saw how difficult that was. People continually undermine a belief in the currency or a central bag. People are going to substitute to Bitcoin. Hey, everyone. Welcome to bits

of bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. I'm your host, Austin Campbell, the high scholar of zero knowledge group, here with Ram Al-aulia, maister of wealth, leader and founder of Libnah, and Chris Perkins, who I believe, Chris, I have to deprecate your old intro and you have some news for us about a spinoff, but we'll get to that in just a moment. And then finally, today we're joined by Danny Ives, the Grand Herald of Technology at Wedbush, but more importantly, currently on the run from a group of anti-AI skeptics, so coming to us from a vehicle in an undisclosed location. So we're here to discuss. the latest stories in the worlds of crypto and macro. Just remember that nothing we say here is

investment advice. Check unchangecrypto.com bits and bips for more disclosures. And first, a word from one of our sponsors who make the show possible. Are you a builder who needs to add on chain trading to your product? Bet mode activated. The scorebed app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerkers. I want need your reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any knees? Or? The score bet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today. 19 plus, Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go toconicsontera.ca.

The Uniswop Trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-and-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto. It's on-chain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity, less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. So I think we need to start today with the Federal Reserve. And the news of an ongoing spat between the Federal Reserve and the administration and the market reaction. So to lay out the facts, news broke over the weekend that there have been subpoenas to the Federal Reserve about their renovation project and potentially Chair Powell's testimony in front of of Congress about this topic. I want to be clear, President Trump himself claimed to have no knowledge of this. However, Chair Powell then came out with a video saying that this was essentially

a pretext to try to influence the Fed's monetary independence. And from there, we saw some market reactions. So stocks, honestly, either appear to have ignored this or think that eroding Fed independence would be a positive for the markets. But gold was up. Bitcoin was up and there have been a lot of discussions on Twitter about this. We've seen some of the Fed watchers and whispers speaking up some people in the administration. But before we get too granular on any of that, I wanted to just start by throwing it to the group. And I'll start, Ram, with you. What did you make of this whole thing?

What's going on? I thought it was unfortunate. It's economic populism on steroids. You take this together with, hey, let's cap credit card interest rates at 10%. And Trump is running to the left of Bernie Sanders. And he's alongside Elizabeth Warren, at least on these two issues. You throw in, hey, let's buy $200 billion of MBS, which is a Bernanke-O-Bama policy. These are ultimately inflationary policies, not in the near term, but they are inflationary.

They're inflationary for ASO prices. And they're also inflationary for commodity prices. And that's why you're seeing gold and silver and uranium and copper. go up and to the right. And it's all driven by midterms. I don't like the pressure on the Federal Reserve. It's important that the Federal Reserve remain independent. Bond investors are going to start demanding higher long-term real rates. So, you know, that's my view on the matter. Overall, you know, I wasn't happy with it. Chris, what do you think? So, you know, whether you like it or not at that level, you're political. And we know, they try to

cap it apolitical, but its politics seem to be everywhere. President Trump seems to be on offense right now, and I think Rom is exactly right. Midterms are on his mind. He's moving very quick and to try to accelerate and appeal to his populist base. This is coming on the back of Venezuela, where he really asserted himself in a material way. And yet, we should talk about inflation because right now it feels like inflation seems under control. It seems like now, if anything, perhaps Powell is going to push back on lowering rates,

even if it was like, you know, maybe I should have lowered rates or, you know, maybe the Fed should be lower rates. Maybe I don't want to do it now because it's going to look like I'm caving to the big man. So that may be working against us a little bit. At the same time, you have a couple of big things in play that may be able to keep inflation in check. You got the AI narrative, which we think. think it's going to be very disinflationary over time. We should talk about that.

Maybe, you know, Austin, you're talking about maybe some exceptions to that, but generally speaking from a macro perspective, that's our belief. I think that's the common belief, massive disinflationary force. And then you got the whole Venezuela stuff against the backdrop, right? Where, you know, to the extent we start, quote, controlling the oil in the Western hemisphere, does that keep fuel prices low? Does that help the inflation narrative, all pushing for lower rates. Look, against this backdrop, dollars weakening, Bitcoin responded favorably. The one thing that we've also noticed is that Bitcoin isn't quite digital gold yet.

It's a risk asset, and it's very, very sensitive to the behavior of the Fed. But yeah, I think there's a lot going on everywhere right now. It's hard to put it all together. Dehany, what did you make of the Fed news and the administration? I mean, look, I just think this continues to be kind of a scope opera that I think investors are almost just struggling off. Really, just given your only sort of criminal inquiry is not going to result in it. And I think that's why some market ended up up. And, you know, to some extent, I think right now investors are kind of looking past this to see, okay,

obviously you have a few interest rate sort of cuts, you know, that we're going to see. But really, who's going to be the replacement? a dove's going to come in. That's going to be bullish, I think, for stocks and it's one of these steps. So as I was looking at this, I started digging up some news and also encountered a few interesting tidbits here. One is that I believe this action has caused the odds of Powell being removed before mid-May actually to drop.

It's like 13% now. And in a similar vein, I saw that Senator Tillis said he's going to put a hold on any sort of, call it, progression of other candidates until this matter with the Federal Reserve is resolved. Chris, I think you're right as a result. This may be, while President Trump may be trying to play offense, having the counterintent effect here. And I think one of the other things that people outside the Fed maybe don't understand is how Powell is perceived within the Fed. and so how it takes sort of like a different view

of what's going on here. A good example. So a friend of mine is Bob Bench and he tells a story Bob is the guy who led Project Hamilton at the Fed about Chair Powell wanting to get up to speed

on both and commissioned an internal report which to be clear is like 50 to 75 pages dense diagrams, writing, all of that. Apparently Powell got this on a Monday,

shows up DC like to Boston Amtrak in the morning with a backpack and two binders with the whole report just fully highlighted grills people for eight hours on the thing like unprompted and then just goes home on the Amtrak safe day. Right? So you're talking about a guy who's perceived

within the Fed as a war course and somebody who was relatively unpolitical. What I worry about as a result is we've kind of been in this war shack test of a market. market where various presidents at the Fed and people on the board can kind of pull from the market what they want. Because to like the AI, I think, Chris, which you were referencing earlier, you could make an argument that there's going to be significant deflationary pressure

at parts of the economy from AI. But we're also now seeing inflationary pressure from AI. If you look at things like RAM prices, GPU prices, and the likely knock on effect, I think this just entrenched people in their views. Like JP Morgan is out now saying that they expect less rate cuts. So I'm curious if this is a little bit of an own goal as we move forward. It seems like it depends where, right? Like labor markets benefit from AI and productivity growth. You're going to see less inflation there.

But commodity prices benefit when the dollar declines. And AI can't fix that. ever since the trade wars of last year, the safety trade has been gold, not the bond, and international value stocks are earning circles around U.S. markets. I agree with Dan's point. I think ultimately it's a bullish risk assets and markets are looking past. This is, they're discounting what Trump is saying. They're saying he doesn't have the congressional authority.

Still, though, it does impact positioning on the margin. Investors are saying, I'm going to go buy emerging market stocks. I'm going to go by South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, UK, all of them are up from the U.S. markets and not buy a little. And they're also going to buy Bitcoin and gold, right? Well, China's sold me where China's by one of the first. Middle East. Well, so are Korean corporations.

They turned on buying crypto again this week, which is another bullish factor. Dan, what do you take? What's your take on Austin's belief that there's inflationary? pressures due to AI. Oh, I mean, look, if I think about it today, there's probably about five billion, give or take, just from tariffs in terms of the increase that we've seen on the build-out data centers. Look, when you do DRAM price and what we see across the board, there's that for inflationary pressures. I mean, it's a memory super cycle that's going on. We see that from SK to sand discs across the board.

Look, I think right now it comes down to like, stationary versus growth. And AI is such a big part of this economy and the capax. Buildup. Companies are basically, like, they're willing to pay a bit up because that's what they need to do in terms of, you know, in terms of the buildup that we've seen that's fourth industrial revolution.

It's an interesting point because one of the things, back to Ram's earlier comment about economic populism that the administration seems to believe here is we can run it a little bit hot on the inflation side if we run it much hotter on the growth side. And so, you know, it's something that people forget is we're always kind of in a race between inflation and GDP. These things don't exist in a vacuum. And I guess the question, if you will, that's driving a lot of that view is how big do we think

the productivity gains from AI are going to be? And in fairness to the bull case here, as we look at this, you are seeing more and more people on, call it the non-technical side of things, starting to get sort of the punchline with AI. Like, you know, to take another person from the crypto space, Mike Dutis was on Twitter today talking about, I get the coders think AI is like something of a big deal. But let me tell you it's a much bigger deal to me because I couldn't code it all before. And now I can use this thing and start making stuff for myself. And it's like the immediacy of it is something I think some people are starting to grapple with. Another good example of that. I know so.

I go ahead. I would also just add to. Look, for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. is ahead of China when it comes to the tech. You know, and that's another thing that's playing out here too. with U.S. companies from Nvidia to Microsoft to Pallentier that they're kind of dictating the ad revolution. But to Robb's point, energy is the biggest constraint in the U.S.

And price points are going up, right, in terms of just memory and just capacity. So that's probably something that, you know, those are something the biggest push and takes as you look at what's happened right now, especially in the tech world. So I actually have a question for the group. I wasn't planning on going this way, but I am going to take the detour here since Danny asked a very interesting question.

The energy bottleneck. What are we like, let's take the bullcase for AI. Let's say that we're going to build out more data centers, that we're going to solve some of the capacity bottlenecks for hardware, and that we're going to be able to drive very significant productivity growth. Wouldn't that in the current world just cause energy prices at all? a lot of place to go vertical. And if that's true, what are we going to do to build out more capacity? Like, what is the actual solution over, call it the next two years?

We're going to invade Venezuela, take 300 million gallons, about a billion of barrels of oil. And we're going to, we're going to refine it and we're going to protect it. And then we're going to, that's what we're going to do. Now, but I'll like it. I'll joking aside, I mean, maybe that's part of the thesis. But beyond that, like, you know, we do have other. like nuclear. I mean, one of the constraints, I remember after SBF blew up, right, I remember I was talking to a good friend of mine, Chris John Carlo, and he's like, oh man, I hope this is not the Three Mile Island moment for crypto. And which if you guys remember, it wasn't a nothing burger, but like nobody died, but there was an issue in Three Mile Island. It freaked everybody out. And we overregulated nuclear into non-existence, you know, for decades, right? Thank God, SBF was not the three-mile island moment for crypto.

You know, we've come back. I think we've got a really wonderful regulatory setting right now. We'll talk about that later. But I think the same set, to the same thing's happening in nuclear lands. I think we're finally getting to the point. Like, I'm an old Navy guy, right? Like we put nuclear reactors in our submarines and everyone sleeps around them. We've mastered this technology.

We're only getting better as you look at modularization. And so to me, which holds a lot of, holding us back is regulation. And like that is, that's, that's the way to solve it. I think that's how we, you know, and of course, yeah, you've got solar, the other stuff. Nuclear in my mind is the way to go. I don't know. I just want to say, you know, I want to get rumum to see what you think.

But like, to me, nuclear continues to be. That's going to be the answer. I mean, you know, not obviously nuclear fusion, infusion. I believe fusion could be significant. There's a C playing out. Right now, look at the U.S. when it comes to energy. 3% of U.S. companies have gotten down the AI path. When you get to 20%, you don't have enough energy.

Nuclear, I wouldn't call it a crisis, but to me, this is just a very, very important moment in terms of a buildout of nuclear in the U.S. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, nuclear is the only way. The issue is that the execution timeline is measured in years, and there's no near-term impact. There's no near-term impact. We don't know how to do small modular reactors.

There's still not in my backyard concerns and issues. You know, China's still way ahead on nuclear. So, I don't know, my own view is that it's the right answer, but hype is ahead of reality, and that matters. You know, what's priced in is above expectation. You know, we've seen this before, right? Biotechnology will be enriched through AI. biotechnology was also enriched when Craig Ventur

decoded the genome. We had a two-year bubble and then asked the price would nowhere for 15, 20 years, right? So, like, I'm a big believer in AI productivity. I just don't see tangible results in nuclear that drive earnings. I see prices that are high relative to expectation. Everyone's talking about it now.

I think it was a great trade a year ago, a year and a half ago. I was in that trade a year and a half ago and a year ago. I'm out of it now. I've sold my nuclear positions at this point. Yeah, well, let's go back to geopolitics, right? I was joking about Venezuela. There's something going on in Iran, too, that people, you know, for some reason, aren't talking about as much.

That's a really big deal when it comes to energy prices. If you can get that regime back into the market in a responsible way, that should also be very, very beneficial. But I think this administration is definitely focused on, we talked about it with Peter Shear last week, right? ProSec. you know, securing, like the, securing the resources

needed for the U.S. to sustain itself. And I think that's really been driving our fallen part of policy, and I think it's going to continue to do so. I would all go ahead. No, I mean, look, if you just look at a few of these charts, like Cameco, CCJ, or URA, I mean,

they're starting to look like double tops. And there's a lot of high beta and parabolic activity. Like, when I see that, I'm looking for rotations. I'm looking like, okay, everyone's the same side of the boat. What side of the boat are they not on? I think they're interesting angles. Love to get your take down on like liquid natural gas. That's near term. It's real. Good. Oh, I agree. I think you're making a great point in terms of like, see, I can almost make a

point that like energy is gupling to, when you develop one of the best AI trades this year, I think you could argue energy, which, going to include natural gas, but it's going to be a huge part of where IV is the AI this year. You know, and then there's also a basket in there with like G. Bernova and some other others, I think like venue, like iron, like that's whatever, or even though it's a crypto mining, we like that one. See, to me, the best way to think about it is more of a basket on the energy side is the best way to play it. But I think like the natural. The natural

natural gas players are going to be, they're going to be key players as this ball plays out. I think a lot of the difficulty of the energy theme is figuring out demand versus supply timelines. Right, Rahm, exactly as you were saying, like, nuclear has been so slow. I know Elon Musk is very bullish on solar in the medium to long term, but that's not immediate. China's built a lot of capacity there, but it's not a idiot. Right. Like all of this takes picks at shovels to get done. And so part of what I'm sort of looking at is we look at this and we look at the forward trajectory to bring it all the way back to the Fed is a little bit of like the, call it demand leading supply, which is going to cause a spike. And then a significant downtrend over time is people build out, people build out, people build out. We may see the same thing at RAM. We may say the same thing at other sorts of computer parts. Like all of these, if we're talking about a real. infrastructural build out will have that behavioral pattern.

Well, I just want to say that was like when I was at CES last week in Vegas, that was a big question with whether it's like, remember everything embedded AI, whether it's PCs, health, glasses, it's been a rising crisis, right? And so the reality is that

it's something where he's all playing out in real time. especially at the same time that you're trying to embed up all this technology into consumer devices then they're going to launch. How do you see that playing out

with inflation on that angle, right? You also mentioned that HBO memory is spiked. You're like 200% pricing cases and you need your memory, right, Uram, it's in every single smartphone. And now you see this AIPC cycle starting.

You're seeing Microsoft Windows 11 retire, there's a new Windows cycle coming online. So how does this play out? So is, you know, the one is like the impact of Micron, SK-Hynex, the memory manufacturers.

Then there's the supply chain behind them, like Lamb Research and K-LAC and applied materials. And then you got the PC players who and the smartphone players that use memory as an input cost. But maybe they're going to benefit from people that want AI devices.

How do you see winners and losers kind of shaken out there? Especially given that, Micron's lots to run up a bit. And yeah, go ahead. I think, Berent, I think Micron is still cheap. I mean, I'm a MIDI,

Santh and this, SKKKK-Pine, and I think it's a McMary Supercycle. We own Micron full of school. I'm with you on that, yeah, good. But I can argue the microns cheap and wants 50% upside this year.

like I I when some say oh that has a huge run I think we're actually there's four or five core suppliers and that's not going to change look I think you're going to have some absorption of costs among maybe PCD some of the smartphone players Apple's going to have to increase prices on iPhone 18

by probably buy at least $100 per phone so you're going to have to like I think like you play it up in the picks and shovels, like the memory player for the Lamb Research. And I think that it's good. The memory super cycle is going to continue to play out in 26. PCs could get squeezed on a margin for, because I think some of the biggest worry is like gross margin compression on PCs,

on smartphones players, on some that are kind of midstream from the supply chain. Look, and it's a big variable as this all plays out. I agree with that micron. But I look at names like land research. These things have never been more expensive, like 45 times earnings. Obviously, the market is saying, hey, well, look, earnings growth is going to go higher. So watch that multiple come down. I don't know.

I just can't get there personally. No, I say serious hiccups. My view is that it's 45 times, but it's probably more like the 30s relative to when numbers you're going to be. and we've never been in a memory super cycle like this that probably goes on until 2017. Danny, beyond CES, we'd love to know like any major themes that you came away with from there,

you know, that's going to impact the macro landscape or even crypto. Yeah. I thought, look, I mean, CS going for 25 years or ever, it's like, this wasn't about flying, drones and talking refrigerators. I mean, this is something where it's about physical AI

that it's really coming. When it comes to robotics, when it comes to autonomous, I thought robotics, to me, which really the most fascinating in terms of the advances we're seeing. I think spur of robotics would be a good example. Some of the human rights start from figure AI

that we've talked about. I think it's really to just crypto, though, and just my overall view is that, well, We are, we're in a fourth industrial revolution planking out. Physical AIs here. I think it's going to be bullish for blockchain, ultimately, especially as it plays out on the robotic side.

Consumer AI revolution now comes. Why do you think Apple is partnering with Google? This is going to be the start of many culprudence to the smartphone in terms of they're going to launch their true, you know, AI model now to the, you know, the 1.5 billion up the iPhones. I don't see the competition. Sorry, go ahead. How do you see this playing up between Navidia and Tesla, right?

So, Navidia is making a bid for autonomous driving vehicles, which is Tesla's home court. Navidia is obviously taking picks and shovels play. Tesla is on humanoids, but everyone sees that opportunity, too. How do you see that shakeout between these two players? Well, first, I think Tesla is playing a different game. I think 80% the autonomous market they're ultimately going to own.

Like I believe this is going to be the aerobotaxies is going to be 30 cities. I also think Trump signs the executive order probably in the next 46 weeks about autonomous going away from states to federal and that's very important from a right view to our perspective.

But look in Vita and the, they're going to be an end-to-end on some OEMs. They're obviously a partner of TESP, but you'd argue a competitor. But they'll be, there'd be a point. And I think, I think, see, I didn't,

the initial reaction to Tesla stock was down when NVIDIA, you know, when Vincent talked with everything. See, I don't, I disagree. I won Invidica involved in autonomous. Like, I won Jensen involved in it. This is not just about. So I actually talked to was actually

bullish for physical AI, bullish for autonomous, but I still believe at the end of the day, the winner, when it comes to physical AI, there's two. It's Tapsin and Vidi. Invidia's stock where it is today

is, I view it is basically like it's one of the biggest disconnects. Get investors are only valuing the data center piece

for NVIDIA. They're not valuing physical AI. They're not valuing sovereign. Oh, yeah. Which is why I think 250 or 275 is the right price. I don't think there's a bubble, but I do think Open AI is a bubble. Let me make the case. And I'll, I'll, I'll love to get your downstream kind of analysis. So Open AI is raising money at a 80 billion valuation. They've got to raise $100 billion. They want to get done this quarter. I expect they'll be successful at that. But they need to, to keep funding the machine, right? There was an interview that C of OpenAI had with Brad Gerson, Raltimiter, and he described it. They've got $1 trillion in committed obligations.

I grew up in New York committed obligations also means debt. You have an obligation to pay. And Oracle has got over $100 billion in revenue performance obligation. It means contractual commitments from Open AI. So there's this ecosystem that's built on top of Open AI. And the music keeps playing so long as open eye can raise the funds they can raise the funds then of the $100 billion seven 25 billion goes to nivita call it on average nevidia's profit margin 75% so you're now you're 50 billion dollars in that income on a trailing p.e of 45 which is two trillion dollars is hanging on this 100 billion dollar investment so look i think they get it done but beyond that there are limits right you

You get, they have to do an IPO by necessity, it seems to me. Seems like they have no choice because they've got to feed the machine. And when markets see that open ad can no longer raise financing, then I think the Semiconductor game is done. That's my view. But what's your take? Work and wrong? No, I look, I and that's like the Michael Burry. Yeah.

I mean, there's, look, see, my view is just kind of like, covering tax stocks since the late 90s. Like I've seen all types of cycles, right? Vendor 5 Manan saying back back on Bobbuburs. It's where we are today. So I just have like, I get what you're talking about and it's great argument. My view is you're building out a new economy

and you're basically in the second third inning. Open AI, Nvidia, obviously, Andy are going to include a huge part, foundationally parts of it. my view of what Open AI is doing is that look if I believe that they're going to ultimately monetize 20% of the $4.5 trillion that's spent over the next few years, they're not even believe like they're very able to pay their bills.

You know, it's like I believe like they're good for their trillion. Now, are there, is there some of that that could go by the wayside? Yes. But it goes to my view like Oracle. And I've talked about it. it's been in the table town through the last few months. And if you start talking about

CDS spreads because two dudes in their basement are trading with each other and that's where you're going on the equated. I just view it as like Oracle's one like they're gross going from 17% to 30% to 50%. Could some of that go away?

Yeah. But that's why that won't. Like you just watch Oracle's stock. I think Oracle's stock that ends the year 275. So that's one on a large cat, one that I've really liked. CoreWeev's got the Navidia put, though, right? Navidia said we will take on whatever excess capacity.

100%. CoreWeve has. And Navidia is a much better counterparty than Open AI. You don't have to bet on the thumb with that video. But you raised great point. And I think it speaks to my point. Like, they're going to have to go public by 2020. They're going to raise $100 billion.

They're probably raised another $50 to $100 billion after that. in the final round. But that the too big to fail, that's going to continue to kind of be that like, goots that's in the closet, nervousness like for the sector. But look, it's like they're going to have to prove it.

That's what, right. I mean, that solves. I think you're right. By the really love the discussion. One last point here in slash question is, you know, on Open AI,

they're charging fees to generate revenue. Google has a freemium model. They don't charge for Gmail. They don't charge for search. It's an ad-driven model. They know how pixel and digital marketing works. Meta's also entering the game with Lama, and it's a freemium model. They have existing distribution.

They don't want Open AI to have a seat at the table. How does OpenAI fund their commitments in a world where the cost of inference and the cost of services goes to zero? Sure. But seeing my view of Open AI, everything they're doing is build it. They're building on N10 and stack from chips to application to consume. So ultimately, devices. So, like, where Open AI is today, I need them as a much different company, 18 months, 24 months. Like, it's so different than, like, I'm starting off as an online bookstore. So it's like, it's great points. I just believe when you look at what the models are the book like for Open AI and the reason they're able to be able to. to raise this, you know, rapidly this will mean $100 billion at this valuation. Because investors have been looking on the other side of it. But look,

to your point, Open AI is going to have to prove it this year. Yeah, Nvidia has other sources of demand, as you pointed out, like sovereign AI. The demand for Nvidia GPUs is strong. I fully agree. Open AI is making

bets that don't have product market fit. They've got to sell me this pen story. No one wanted the pen. No one wants a pen. I just got a pair of Google pixel headphones at Best Buy. They automatically integrate with Gemini. AirPods work. Like that form factor works. They're already, they've met the market where the market has need. Anyway, I spoke my piece. I'm going to go now. Hey, I think. Chris has a question before you go to. Yeah, I just want to ask real quick about WorldCoyne.

So, you know, Sam hasn't been that, you know, obviously Sam has WorldCoyne. He has Open AI. What's your view? Obviously, you're the chairman of Orbs. Just would love to get your thoughts about the role of crypto and AI coming together in that capacity. I mean, that's why we're doing Orbs. To me, it's the intersection of AI and crypto.

I mean, that's what WorldCoyne is. There's something like with Seth, I mean, you've seen him more active with Gap and he's been with Alex, some of the, I mean, he's a huge believer in WorldCoy. But my view is like sometimes you build things and the market's not ready for it. Danny, thank you very much. I had a fully poor issue. You're joining us.

All right. So on that note, I was going to say I also want to hand the ball very briefly to Chris before we go to our next ads, which is, Chris, there was a little news at Coin Fund. lately and I know you can't talk about everything, but I wanted to give you a chance to let people know what you can say about what is going on over there and what you'll be heading up. Yeah, thank you for, it's super exciting. Yeah, my partner Seth and I announced that we're going to be spinning off. So we're going to take the liquid strategies, new entity. Couldn't be more excited.

So yeah, a lot more to come. Got some big plans. Special thanks to the coin fund guys the last four and a half years and onwards and upward. So thank you. Hey founders and developers. If you're looking to bring on-chain trading to your product, wallet, or platform, check out the new Uniswap Trading API from Uniswap Labs. It's your plug-and-play gateway to global on-chain liquidity, no deep crypto experience required, and no need to manage complex integrations or ongoing maintenance. With the Uniswap Trading API, you'll get enterprise-grade on-chain execution, combining both on-chain and off-chain sources for the most competitive prices. Simply, put, more liquidity, less complexity. And this isn't just any API. It connects directly

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through one powerful API. Visit hub.uniswop.org to learn more. All right, everybody. Welcome back. As promised, we're going to argue about more things. So we're going to start with something we've argued about before, which is the Market Structure Act. So we just got news right now that the ag markup of clarity is going to be pushed back. And the bill continues to, I'll politely say be digested by the Senate. Like, Chris, what do you make of what's going on right now? Oh, man. We talked about this, man. It is a tough, tough bill to pass. genius was supposed to be easy, but we saw how difficult that was. We've talked about this.

I think we're still banging our heads around a few things. The first one is obviously one of our favorite subjects, interest on stable coins. Or I shouldn't say interest. I should say rewards on stable coins. And this has turned into a very controversial subject. The banks are back at it. They think it's not fair. And for some reason, they are very much against it.

You know, my take on this one is that anytime there's a bill, there's a grand bargain. And, you know, I think that if I'm in the bank shoes and I was for a long time, I would say, hey, I don't like this. I don't like this. It's going to hurt my loans. I'm not going to be able to take the deposits to issue loans. And so what I would say is, you know what? If we need to, if we're not going to mess with these rewards, give me some relief somewhere else. Lower my regulatory capital because you know that there's room there.

it kind of gets you to the same place. If I'm a banker, depending on my business, I may like that a lot more. And so I think that maybe there's a deal there. But man, it's the Trump ethics things we talked about seems to be going nowhere. That seems to be a huge issue. So like that's not going anywhere. And then defy is still out there. So look, I talk to my friends who have been in DC all week.

They're like it's cooked. I talked to the people in D.C. that are trying to get it done. They're like, no, it's alive. You know, we're going to get it done. I don't know the final format of this thing if the crypto people are going to like it or not. Maybe not. I don't know. Go ahead, Rob.

Tinfoil conspiracy theory question hypothesis, okay? So you mentioned that, hey, banks want a trade, like give us some regulatory capital relief. This cap on credit card interest rates, this threat, maybe Trump is dealing the stick instead of the carrot. Trump says, look, get behind this. Get your lobby is behind this. We're going to get this done. And I'm going to walk back this 10% stuff so your stock prices recover.

I don't know. I mean, I think that that issue can be dealt with. Austin, dying to hear your take. I think we can solve that issue. I think we can kind of figure out defy. But I don't know if we can figure out this like this. maniacal focus that certain folks have on Trump and crypto and ethics needs to be addressed. And the point that I continue to make to anyone who listens with me is, yes, let's address

ethics, but let's do it for every single asset class. But to me, that's like, I talked to, you know, Democratic senators or whatever. They're like, yeah, no, no, no, we have to fix this. So do you think, Austin? Yeah. But I think there are a lot of angles to deal with the banks if you want to deal with them. One is exactly what Chris said, which is do something nice for them. The other one is do something neat, which is to say, hey, wait a minute.

If you guys are telling us that your balance sheets are in such trash shape that you can't survive if we permit competition to you, actually maybe we should start raising your red capital, right? Like there are, again, ways to push them off of that. I would ask, well, I would also say another thing I'm observing, I think retailers are waking up and noticing what's going on here and are going to pile in to refite the credit card debate writ large if backs are careful. So that one's solvable. I do think the unsolvable one is the ethics one because the problem you're going to run into there is Democrats seem unlikely to pass anything without the ethics restrictions about crypto.

And if you say to them, well, let's address everything. I think their answer is going to be yes, right? I don't think they're going to know that. And then I think it slows everything down. Yep. As you negotiate a complete epics bill. And then you end up with something that, quite frankly, the president's going to want to veto. So do you have a two-third super majority into how it's the Senate to over?

Like, it's good. If nothing else, this thing is just going to grind to a hole. Unless you carve it out, right? When we talked about modularity with Patrick Witt, the White House executive director, and we had him on. And he said, no, at this point. I do want to talk, though, and mention that there is a difference between G-sibs, globally systemic, global systemically important banks, the big guys that we all know and

the community banks. And the community banks have been getting hammered. Their numbers continue to dwindle. I'm sorry, but it's definitely not because of stable coins, because we barely have stable coins already. The reason why they're dying is because the G-sibs are killing them. And, you know, the way to solve that is to give them some regulatory relief that allows them to compete again, I think.

At least that's what, with chairman, with others. of the Treasury Besson said when he went on the all-end podcast. So I think solving the G-Sib versus community bank issue should be dealt with the way it should be dealt with, not by going after stable coins. It's really, yeah. I'm going to go one step further, going after stable coins entrenches the G-sips because like think about it from this perspective. If you are Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, City, you're providing to customers with medium to high balances, which are the valuable ones, like adequate to good customer service and one-stop banking for your checking, savings, brokerage, credit card, mortgage, all of it, right? Community banks cannot do that by definition

with their scale. Stable coins because of the interchangeability of them are a way for all of them to essentially federate against the big guys. And one of the things I was afraid about, I wrote something about this this weekend, is that the leadership of the ICBA needs to be fired immediately because they are essentially feeding all of their members to the big banks at getting them killed. And again, it has nothing to do with stablecoids currently what's happening. Because here's a great trivia question. What appears to be the number one growing bank in rural Michigan? Kiffey Morgan.

So fine. The thing that's killing you is not stablecoins. Digital bait is people who could meet the customers where they are to track the new customers, right? And that is number one, the fintech banks are just housing you. And then behind them are the G-Sibs. And then it's the community banks. And when you get to big cities, it's the G-Sips dominating because of their aggregated services.

Nowhere in here are the community banks winning. And so every year, their average customer gets one-year older. You're exactly right on the mark. I mean, the G-Sibs, the big banks and the FinTech banks have a better customer experience because of digital banking. They have a broader product offering, and that's where the future is going. And the community banks are struggling for relevance. And it's interesting because the community banks already do have more favorable regulatory treatment.

They have less capital requirements. They have exemptions under Durbin around interchange income. So there are all sorts of little arbitrage is set up in, like my alma mater, cross river, right? For example, they're all sorts of little arbitrage as these banks enjoy. And so the only answer is, well, hey, look, give them my own. more relief. You know, if you're an entrepreneur, one of the best things you can do is help these community banks maintain long-term relevance. And one of the answers to that will be through integrations with defy and through things like tokenization. It's, it, those community banks can

already avail themselves of modern digital banking technology like the Encinos of the world, the nice front ends, a nice mortgage experience. That startup ecosystem's already been built out. but what has them to build out is like liquidity and financing and risk transfer so they can compete and start to look like the service offering that a bigger bank presents. Crypto's dying. Crypto's dying for borrow lent. Like, you know, all the centralized borrow land we had last cycles wiped out because it wasn't done right. You know, Celsius, BlockFi. You know, there is an opportunity for the people who can leverage, who are smart enough to leverage technology and lean forward.

I think you're right. It's time to compete. And I think they can proliferate because the regulatory environment is going to allow it. I would also say, this is back to telling the bags, hey, be careful what you guys are lobbying for down there. Because to me, there's another obvious answer to helping the community bags out here, which is bringing back glass steggle. And if I were one of the big bags, I would want to be thick. I have heard people in the Senate discussions bring this point up because they've pointed out to the community banks, your problem is that you can't compete with these like consolidated behemoths. So like the real answer is either join them or we have to break them up.

But that's sort of the inevitable like future. And I'll tell you there are many people, right? Whether I think this is right or wrong, we think we have too many banks and we should have less. But that's a school of thought that should also be acknowledged here. But, Rob, to your point about technology, like great example of community banks holding themselves back. Apple bank here in New York. There's a branch.

I walk by it occasionally when I'm on walks around my house. If you look at their actual, like, offering, it's pretty good. It's like a checking account that pays interest. But then I go and look at their technology and it's like psychopathic. They have separate apps to manage their debit card and your bank account. Guys, what is going on here? Like, that's the stuff that needs to be here. Yeah, look, there are incredible opportunities with these community banks.

If you're folks in the right area. I like customers bank. I'm a customer of customers bank. The service sucks. The bill pay sucks. The wire experience sucks. They still haven't issued me debit cards. Been there for like a year and a half.

The support response sucks. The stock is up 70% in a year. It doesn't matter, right? If you're a bank, you get 10 turns of leverage from the Federal Reserve from the FDIC Tier 1 capital requirements and you can borrow from the Fed. You know, there are some startups like StableCore getting after this opportunity. How do we enable banks to become stable coin relevant? providing picks and shovel solutions.

And I think if you're a community bank and you can pivot, like So if I did, so if I acquired a community bank and they made it modern tech with digital marketing, and that was a driver at success. So there's still more of those opportunities out there. And you're seeing partnerships of that sort too, like your friends at Cross River, like columns, coastal community art, like you could name them all. And the thing I think will start happening is if you're a medium-de-small bank and you don't find that sort of path, you are just going to be eaten by one of the big guys, right? Like the current pathway of do nothing is rapidly running out of rope because as the boomers age and die off, if you didn't attract new customers, you're just out of customers.

If you're a community bank owner, give me a call and focus on this topic. I've thought about this one or two times. So just let me know. End up in there, very much. Final one before we bounce out of here today, guys, Venezuela and some of the actions around tether. I want to break both of these up in related fashion, call it. So as we've looked at the Maduro regime and what's gone on in Venezuela, when looking at how deeply U.S.D.T has been invented in the economy for oil exports, potentially for sanctions evasion. And by the way, depending on which end of that you're on, do we mean evading U.S. sanctions or do we mean evading U.S. sanctions or do we mean evading,

Venezuela capital controls to get your buddy away from the regime. So let us acknowledge there are two sides to that story. But the punchline is we just saw one of the larger freezes we've ever seen of stable coins. And we're seeing how much this was integrated into call it a Wadam slash Global South system. What do we think is going on here? Chris, what's your take on these unfolding events? I think it just goes to show that stable coins are the most.

significant power, the most significant instrument of national power that you could ever imagine. More powerful maybe than any weapon that you can construct. Because you have a product that's in high demand, right? Everywhere in the world, everyone wants dollars, right? And the fact that you have freeze and seize capabilities makes it very, very powerful from a position of control. Now, the power that you have is that if you don't go through proper due diligence, you're going to undermine the confidence of that currency. So as much as it's in demand right now, you can lose that demand and really undermine your currency if it's taken advantage of. And so, you know, the question is, is where do the bad guys go from here or how do people evade from here?

It's a lot harder when it's on chain, a lot harder. So it's going to be really interesting cat and mouse game going forward. One thing we didn't mention was that I'm really hopeful that market structure is going to include a whitehead hacker provision that allows private citizens with licenses to go and help recover assets. But for stable coins, you don't even need that because you just go through due process, freezes. Yeah, maybe not what Satoshi had in mind when he created Bitcoin. but it's, gosh, it is one heck of an instrument of national power. Yes, it is. A few quick thoughts.

One is this is more dollarization of emerging markets. Stable coins are advancing U.S. interests through national security and dollarized in emerging markets. That's one. Two is tether's coming into the fold, right? It used to be the perception that if you want to house assets and evade the long arm of the U.S. government, you custody and tether and not U.S.C. Well, hey, look, that's not true. And third, you know, Chris's point is right on is like there's a,

there's a big tension of around is digital assets sovereign money where you bank yourself and you have privacy and you're secured by Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure. Or is digital assets just FinTech 3.0? And this is more evidence that this is FinTech 3.0. I mean, I would say, I think these two, Chris, to your point, these two visions can live side by side with each other. It may be the case that Bitcoin is the permissionless, non-interdictable currency, that stable coins are going to be highly interdictible, and that different sets of people will use each as preferences demand, right, to bring it all the way back to where we started. If people continually undermine a belief in the currency or a central bank, people are going to substitute to Bitcoin.

So in some ways, it serves as a hedge on the worst behavior because if the U.S. is using the powers of freeze and seize capability to interdict genuine criminal actors, I think everybody looks at that goes, yeah, okay, man. But on the other hand, if they start using those to, like, steal from people who they just want to tax more or just take money because they don't like your political speech, you're going to drive people with the fair court. Yeah, it's also not dissimilar to the Fed. Have you ever been in the Fed vaults down in New York City? It's incredible if you ever get a chance, I recommend you. But, like, yeah, that's a custodian, actually. People all realize it's not our gold. It's other people's gold.

And we hold on to it because of that trust. So to the extent that we're able to retain that spirit of trust, I mean, it's a very, very good thing. I would agree with that. So on that note, we've been going for a while. We had a great conversation with Danny. And in closing notes, I will just remind everybody that nothing we said here was in Fest. advice and that we thank you for joining us for this episode of bits and bims. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding.

Until then, take care, everyone. And Chris, congratulations again. Congratulations. Thanks, sir. Thanks, guys.