AI Will Drive The Biggest Boom In History | Raoul Pal

Transcript

Intro

Super intelligence has basically arrived and we're about to be replaced as the apex intelligence. People are not ready for putting AGI brains into Optimus robots or figure robots. When you put something that's physically more able, stronger, faster, better, more adaptable, and cheaper to operate than a human, and put an AGI brain in, what the [ __ ] is that? That's a new species. This is the most powerful technology we will ever invent and the last one we as humans will ever invent of any scale. And there's only two countries in the race and it's going to consume everything and everything will align around it. But this is the biggest race of all time.

>> Nothing said on for guidance is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Forward Guidance, live from the Digital Asset Summit with my friend Ralph Paul. We've done a few of these over the years,

>> but never in person. >> But never in person. We're finally here in person in one spot. We're just saying like it's pretty hard to get a Canadian in the mountains and you in Cayman in one spot, but here we are in New York. >> Exactly. And we found out we're the both the same height. >> Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of tall people in crypto. >> Yeah, there is. There is. I don't know why, but there is. >> Here we are. Yeah. Um yeah, stoked to have you this week. Uh great to record this before our panel coming up a little bit later uh with with with Brett from Coinbase as well as your your old friend Dant. >> It should be a chaotic panel as you've learned. It's gonna be Yeah. Like Yeah. We were saying, we had a we had a prep

call and it was just the most insane prep call I've ever had. It was incredible. >> Yeah. But uh yeah, I wanted to pull you aside beforehand and just chat. Yeah. Good. Hear about how you think. >> There's nothing going on. >> Yeah. Yeah. Literally nothing. Yeah. >> Um Yeah. Why don't we just start with with how you think about things? Obviously, there's your your existing macro frameworks and views, and then you get these uh these curve balls like like in an Iran war, like a oil to $100. >> Yeah. shock. How how are you thinking about that in the context of your your core macro frameworks?

Oil Shock Meets Macro

>> So, I try and avoid geopolitics at all costs. >> Yeah. >> Because it generates a lot of emotional headlines. >> You never know the truth. Everybody who says they know something knows nothing. There's very few people who actually know what's going on. >> So, you're trading headlines of which most of them aren't real. >> So, I try and avoid that. And you just have to think through, you know, what is game theory here >> and who's what is the most likely outcome? And the most likely outcome from Trump's proven thing is he ratchets up negotiations, gets harder and harder and harder and then finds a conclusion.

So my my view was that >> but if oil took another leg higher than here, we've got a problem, a real problem. And then if rates go another leg higher than here or the dollar does, then that's the end of the cycle, which would be earlier than anybody would have expected. Yeah. >> So, I kind of was, you know, biting my nails watching it, >> but assuming that it would go the right way. And if you think about the potential outcomes from this, if we get a resolution and there's a new government to deal with in Iran and they lower the sanctions and sort of start bringing Iran into the world, it lowers the oil price over time.

>> Mhm. >> And um it creates stability in the Middle East in ways we haven't had before. And it's the same kind of playbook as Venezuela. >> Because you know I've got this thesis that um called the universal code where basically the the entire purpose of the universe is conversion of energy into intelligence. >> So the energy component is what we're seeing. >> Greenland was also part of the and even the the ridiculousness over Canada was all part of the other component parts that build intelligence. M >> um and so I think what they want to do, if you listen to Scott Besson, >> it's really about we want all to flow and be as cheap as possible.

>> So then we can leverage that to create as much intelligence because this is the biggest and we'll talk about AI later, but this is the biggest >> race of all time. >> Yeah, it's a big bet. And if you listen to Secretary Bassin talks, you know, it's like there's a there's a war there's a Middle East premium in oil that's been there for for decades basically. So, it's been there apart from the price of oil. So, there's this bet that >> all right, look, we're going to we're going to take some short-term, you know, front month in the crude contracts knowing that if we get to the other side of this, like >> energy is going to be cheap. And then and you pair that with this whole play, which is that look, we have these huge innovations going on in terms of what

you talk about the univers universal code that needs to be driven by real assets is is the constraint right now. And it feels like there's this big bet that you you hear best say look short-term pain but longer term we're going to have a much more sustainable future for for energy. How do you think about just that interplay between what you say of like these these real world constraints of things like energy or or different you know precious metals etc that go into this whole buildout of that universal code with these yeah like real world constraints. >> They're all solvable but it takes time. What you've seen is people saying, "Okay, we need more power." And governments are saying, "The grids can't generate enough power." And then what we've seen, and China led the way, was a

AI Needs More Energy

massive explosion in solar. >> So, China produced more solar last year than all of the rest of the world's entire existing solar stock added together. >> And that's just going hypervertical. >> And that's telling you where this is going. It's it's going to be all forms of power. So if you use oil for the grid and shipping and that stuff, all of the data centers are going to be nuclear plus gas, you know, it's kind of everything everywhere all at once. >> Um there's no other way around it because these things are consuming so much energy >> and we've only just started. We're like four years into this.

>> Yeah. And so, you know, as we move from AGI towards ASI, you're gonna consume >> planetary style amounts of energy. Yeah, which is what Elon's doing with his Carter Chef two scale stuff, which is wild, but they're all doing it. Jensen, uh, Wang was talking about it today or yesterday. Elon's talking about it. Jeff Bezos is talking about it. So, it's serious. It's not Elon just, you know, making big headlines. >> Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the last time we talked was there's also some geopolitical things going on, but we were talking a lot about how it seems like there might be this geopolitical diving up underlying the context of there's this new arms race happening around AI around these these you know spheres of influence around the world

whether it's okay the US gets Venezuela maybe China gets Taiwan Russia gets Ukraine and we sort of have this diving up situation how how you think about that current view right now of just where we net out from this the the last few decades of globalism towards where we're going now of these more like regional spheres of influence. >> I'm not even sure how regional it is when I think about this whole equation of of AI. >> Right? This is the most powerful technology we will ever invent and the last one we as humans will ever invent of any scale. And there's only two countries in the race. Literally nobody else.

The US China Race

>> Yeah, >> sure, you know, Taiwan for some of the chips and you know, people for some of the raw materials, but really the race is two countries. It's the US and China >> and everything is being divided up according to that. And >> if you think about it, it's so important that you can't allow just one region to own this. >> So, it's a race that will never stop >> and it's going to consume everything and everything will align around it. Now, they can either do it peacefully amongst both to say, well, we're both going to have to do this >> or you can try and fight over stuff. It seems that the US and China doesn't want to fight over stuff. I think they've kind of accepted that there's two players in this race and and that

they're going to have to align. Russia's always played that kind of wild card in the middle. >> Um >> so I don't really know where that fits in, but I don't think anything gets divvied up except it looks like the US is saying we want control of our horizontal. >> You can kind of have your horizontal and the rest will figure out. Circling back to what you mentioned about the the price of oil. It does feel like Yeah. You know, around $100. Yeah. You have some inflationary headwinds, but you know, [ __ ] gets kind of real if we get to 150 bucks a barrel. >> I'm curious how that how you underwrite that that risk right now. Like, you know, it kind of feels like we're on the precipice and they're managing to hold it down, >> but if if we go up higher, what does

that look like for your business cycle thesis? So, I think we all know that once the rate of change of oil goes to 100% yearonear, >> we pretty much always had a recession. I don't think recessions are possible anymore. So, my thesis is there's no recessions, but we'd have a huge slowdown and then we've got the problem with rates going up again and they've got to refinance all these debts. It becomes really ugly. Um, which we saw back in 2022. So, I think everybody's aware of it. >> Yeah. But I think market participants are scarred by 2022 because there was nowhere to hide. Um, and so I think we're all looking at that thinking, oh my god, is this going to happen again?

Why Recessions Cannot Happen

Are we underestimating it like we did with Russia Ukraine? But Russia Ukraine was very different because it came on the back of CO and you had the reopening of factories but no supply but demand came back full. So what you had this mismatch, same after World War II, you had this huge mismatch of people coming back into the workforce and the labor force. Um, but the factories weren't able to produce anything. So, the clearing thing is higher prices. And then you add in a nice energy crisis in the middle of it and a food crisis in the middle of it. >> Um, we haven't got all of that here. So, again, I'm I'm watching it and assuming that Iran doesn't want to get to the endgame of this. The US doesn't want to.

I mean, nobody really wants to have a full-on, you know, boots on the ground grinding warfare like Russia, Ukraine. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um I I agree with this idea that we can't have another recession just because I >> mean that sounds terrible and nobody's going to believe you macro lab. >> I know like I could already see like that the quote tweets happening. Somebody's going to clip that 20 seconds and call us idiots. But like look you look at what happened on Friday like like bonds sold off like crazy. The move index went above 100. And by Friday close you're seeing headlines from the Trump administration saying we're almost wrapped up. Like is that is that what you look at is like we can't have that true recession because we just can't let the bond market fall apart like that.

>> So we can't let the collateral fall. Yeah. >> Once you understand that you understand what they discovered in 2008 is when you print money you lower the denominator and the price of collateral goes up. That's why the world recovered after 2008. And so they've learned that one trick is liquidity trumps everything. >> So the moment you start to have problems i.e. Let's say the S&P starts falling more than 25%. Well, what happens immediately? Liquidity comes back and when liquidity comes back, you lower the denominator, the asset prices go. Recessions normally happen when the collateral starts falling and everyone starts calling on it. But they don't allow that to happen. In a very indebted world, the best way is avoid the huge collapse by debasing currency 8% a year.

It's like it's a put option basically that we all pay for the system not to implode. >> I guess you know maybe the other side of the argument is that look over the past few years even in 2022 yes there's a lot of issues but there's still quite a few levers to pull like we all uncovered what was going on on the treasury market side of things. So what Yellen was doing was just like look let's let's shift all our issuance to the short end avoid issuing anything there. We had the reverse repo facility that was flush with cash. This time around I it does feel like there's less levers available. Do you agree?

>> No. So they've told you what they're going to do and Steve Mirror made it super clear. >> So they don't want to use the the the central bank balance sheet as much if they can avoid it. >> And the reason being is it's a very blunt tool because it just debases the denominator but doesn't allow for the flow of funds into the economy. And what they've said very clearly and the changes to the ESLR is all about this is you're better off to run it through the banking system and let them provide the liquidity because then it goes it via lending. If you think about the great game being played with AI, there's no way governments can do this. They can't afford it. So it has to come from leverage from the banking system. And that's what's going to happen. And if

Banks Will Provide Liquidity

you look what happened in Japan, they've made exactly the same change. they've started shifting igniting the banking system having a steeper yield curve to start allowing lending again because the Japanese banks haven't lend for 30 years but they're going to start lending again because Japan also knows that with the aging demographics and and all of the issues that are there the government can't fund what needs to happen because you know Japan is kind of the robotic side of the equation and the automation side of the equation it's going to have to be funded by the private sector so there's no way I can't just tap the Middle East for cash all the time. They don't have infinite resources either.

>> Um, you know, if you think about it, somebody like Mubard have like $300 billion. It's not that much. >> Not in the scale of what's needed here. We need trillions and trillions of dollars. So, we're going to do and again, I think it was Scott Besson who said it again. Basically, they want to rerun the late '9s, >> which is uh the Greenspan era. And what did Greenspan do? He came in basically by the mid '90s, figured out what it was, cut rates, and then did nothing. It didn't do anything, and the banking system leveled up. And so they provided the liquidity, and productivity kept inflation low.

>> So he didn't have to do anything. So I think that's Walsh's job is to not is to cut rates and then get out of the way >> and let the banks do it. So the ESLR changes allow that. So that's a start where they can take directly the Treasury can issue to the banks. And then I think they're going to try and push through the removal of the ESLR entirely, which is what they did over co and that allows the banking system to lever up. >> Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like everybody looks at, you know, we see Worsh come in and everybody freaks out because he's a hawk on on the balance sheet, but feels like a lot of people are missing the other side of the equation, which is commercial balance sheets, like commercial bank balance sheets. Um I mean you know this very

well back in 2010s like post08 none of these commercial banks wanted the loan and you know we just had to stag they weren't allowed to either puzzle 3 and all of that stopped them. >> Yeah. Um but now now they're going to unleash it and I feel like there's this this recency bias where we've forgotten what a world looks like where commercial banks actually loan. We're used to this world of just the Fed doing everything. >> Yeah, it's exactly right. But I think it's going to go back to the banks. >> Um and Japan showing the way. I always take signal from Japan. So I tried to sit down and said what did Yeah. Everyone's like Japan have lost control.

>> I'm like >> the Japanese central bank is one of the smartest in the world and they've always led central bank policy around the world. >> They're like the test case for everything. >> So I sat down like what is the signal here? Because it's not what people think it is. It's not Japan's imploding. It's like they're doing it on purpose and what are they doing? >> And it it was this whole idea >> 100%. Um, yeah, let's talk about AI then and and how you're thinking about it because I'll be honest, a couple years ago when you were coming out with the with the exponential age thesis, you know, >> yeah, I was like R's lost his mind. Um, >> but I I think I think a lot of, >> you know, people that would have doubted that idea in the last few months have

AI Adoption Is Mispriced

have started to come to some big realizations on what's going on in AI. uh whether it's what's been going on with with claude and and you know claude code openclaw all these innovations where it's like you can actually have AI do things and then you know suddenly you see the market start to realize that and you know software stocks have been selling off so there's starting to be this common realization I'm just curious how you're tracking that development of of AI >> so firstly let's go to that software stocks thing I think it's a false narrative >> and the reason being is it's exactly the same chart of Bitcoin >> so why would that be is Bitcoin going to get disrupted by AI that doesn't sound much like a narative impressive.

>> Um, so therefore when I looked at it in depth, I thought because it was a client of mine wrote to me and said, "Hey, what do you think of software stocks?" And I I was looking at the chart and I thought, "Fuck, this looks like Bitcoin." And I put it out on Twitter now. Everybody's used that chart. And I realized that it was it was liquidity that was driving that. >> So they were the most forward longest duration assets. And because US liquidity had been shrinking because of the shutdown, >> it got hit and gold kind of sucked the rest of the liquidity out of the room. So I'm like, okay, maybe it's more just a liquidity play.

>> Now in the future, is software in a different world? Yes. But it's very hard to get rid of SAS. It's it's all well and good you and I vibe coding something that doesn't really work, but we kind of make makes us feel like we we know what we're doing. >> But to do that enterprise scale, that's not happening, right? It's not happening that everyone's going to build their own accounting system. Yeah. So, I think it's a false narrative for now. >> Over time, things change. Um, but what is happening with AI is really interesting because again, we've still got these two schools of thought.

There's those of us who kind of live on X all day and are like, "Oh my god." >> And then there's your real friends outside of this world. >> They're still on the free version of chat GPT and they're just like >> at best. Yeah. >> At best. I mean, and you're like, that's one of the biggest disconnects I've ever seen. You sit down with a bunch of people in our world and everyone's like, "Why did I, holy [ __ ] this thing's alive." And you sit with your friends and they're like, "Oh, it just tells lies. I don't even bother using it." You're like, "Oh my god." >> So, I think I think there's a lot of adoption that still needs to happen.

Even though this has been the fastest adoption technology ever, >> some of it is not really true. It's like Microsoft Copilot, which is awful and nobody uses. >> Yeah. you could kind of pretend and you know to say that Gemini has all these users when they've basically forced it into the search engine. Uh so it's not as big yet but productivity is going to change forever right now. I'm not sure how productive we all are cuz I spent even more time than I've ever done. >> Make make 50 dashboards and I'm like okay wait what is this actually doing for me? Like at least I learned a lot but yeah.

>> Yeah. And most of the dashboards you know anyway like you're breaking new ground. I built myself a liquidity dashboard and blah blah blah. Exactly. >> I actually know this stuff, >> but it makes us >> I feel really good. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, >> Block Works co-founder Michael Aelito here. Quick break to talk about something we've just launched. Block Works investor relations. As the market shifts toward institutional capital, investors want more transparency, more standardization, and a higher level of professionalism. But the traditional IR model is slow, manual, and not built for how crypto works. If you're building on chain, your data is already live. Your business is already transparent. The challenge is turning that into a clear, credible story for investors. That's exactly what we're solving with Blockworks IR. It's a single platform

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that brings together real time analytics, branded investor portals, and hands-on advisory support so you can communicate what matters. If you're an onchain business looking to level up your investor strategy, check out Blockworks Investor relations at blockworks.com/investor-reations. Before you place a trade, you should know who is actually moving the market. That's where Arkham comes in. Arkham is a crypto intelligence platform and exchange that lets you see real onchain data, which wallets are buying, selling, and moving funds, and then trade directly on that information. Arkham was built to make blockchains human readable. Instead of raw transaction data, you get clear profiles, visualizers, and custom dashboards that show what's really happening beneath the surface. Tracking wallets and fund flows

is becoming just as important as technical or fundamental analysis. Onchain intelligence is also one of the best tools traders have to protect themselves against hacks, rugs, and scams. With Arkham Exchange, you can go from insight to execution in one place, the world's first exchange powered by crypto intelligence. Check out Arkham and start trading with real onchain insight at arkham.com. >> Yeah. I I want to tie that into what we're talking about in terms of this global macro arms race happening. >> And how you're thinking about whether it's zero sum or not because you know it feels intuitive to to compare it to the last big one which was say the Manhattan project and and nuclear technology back then and you know now we're in the same regime where you have different powers

Superintelligence Changes Everything

racing and throwing every single dollar that they can at this thing to to get ahead of it. Um, do you see that as zero sum or is it a a world where we just have these different spheres of of AI dominance or how do you think about that? >> I think by having at least two competitors throwing everything at it and sucking in all the world's capital even for example, what role does it play? You know, it's kind of the decelerationist. >> But what they did is they invested so much in solar, wind and all of that that they've actually been doing the energy side all along. Um so it it feels that all forces are driving this and we're drive you know super intelligence has basically arrived and we're about to

be replaced as the apex intelligence and we're going to have to live with that and people are not ready and I keep saying this and people just kind of nod people are not ready for putting AGI brains >> into Optimus robots or figure robots >> right because that cuz we think of a robot as C3PO or something funny. But when you put something that's physically more able, stronger, faster, better, more adaptable, and cheaper to operate than a human and put an AGI brain in, what the [ __ ] is that? That's a new species.

>> And it's like, you know, do we have control of the species? Do we not have control of the species? But in the end, we are getting to the world of abundance. And the bigger the race is, the faster we get there. And we're seeing it, you know, with how fast China is accelerating on robotics and trying to catch up with the US on AI. >> Um, and the US is the reverse. Is trying to catch up on robotics, but it's well ahead in AI. And then China's kind of ahead in energy because it needs to because the US has all the oil, >> right? >> You know, that whole race is the big thing. And I think it's good for humanity. I I think it's a better outcome because we have a chance of abundance because the world we all live in is a world where intelligence is the

thing that's a premium cost. Services have always been expensive and that all goes to zero the whole lot. I mean it's not very good for you and I but well I mean that's the thing and and you say this word abundance is interesting because people hear all of that and you basically have two paths now. one one is abundance and a much greater quality of life for everybody. The other is this idea of maybe if if you're more anchored to some of the short-term impacts which is none of us are going to have jobs and we're going to be in the permanent underclass as people say um and things might actually be worse for us. How do you how do you think about that that fork in the road?

>> So I think both are going to be true. >> Right. We got to go through a lot of changes of the labor force. The good thing is a lot of it's being offset by boomers retiring, >> right? People forget that. Yeah, >> you know, you've got a lot of boomers. There's 76 million of them. So that's 76 million robots we can we can have and and it will be a status quo. So people forget the aging populations are dramatic and the US is the least dramatic. you know any other country you need a lot of robots and fast to just have the status quo because you know if you think about GDP growth being population growth plus productivity growth plus debt growth population growth shrinking in every major country >> and productivity has gone down the

toilet with it so we have to solve for that first so I I don't think it's as dramatic as people think that we will have to adapt to different types of works stuff like that and I've I've believed for a long time is what is what is a human's role in all of this if we're not Apex intelligence is well we do one thing and that's be human >> we'll find value in humans right our actual our actual currency is attention >> with kind of love being at the top of the pyramid >> but attention is how we kind of organize ourselves so I think the attention economy in whatever shape or form is real and will be monetizable by us so I think that's important and then you get to the more philosophical questions is

What Is Human Value

like well do we need humans at all? >> And the answer is yes because all intelligence is built on layers of intelligence. Uh and I think you know this whole universal code idea is that the fundamental substrate of the entire universe is consciousness and not space time. And what you get from that is humans have a very specific type of compute. Everything is compute. >> Yeah. And we're this messy edge compute that does random things because we've got this thing called qualia which is this feelings part of what we do. Some animals have that but we have it in the most densest form. And so our compute is extremely valuable. So to get rid of that it's like us saying we're going to cut down all the trees.

>> The planet doesn't survive. >> And it wouldn't survive. AGI going to ASI won't survive without human intelligence. Not because we're the best intelligence, it's we're the messiest. We're the broadest kind of machine intelligence is much more linear and we're much more kind of distributed on the tails. Yeah, it it feels like the asymmetric upside like there's we could we could end up in a in a really incredible I always think about you know John Maynard Kanes in like the 1930s was saying that he thinks in 70 years we're going to be all working 15 hours a week and I think he was wrong initially of course because we all work a metric [ __ ] ton at least 40 hours a week and you know half of it is just busy work for a

lot of people. Um >> but what but what is work now right? So you and I do a lot of this. Yeah. >> It's hardly work. >> No. >> We sit down and chat to people who are interesting and have a good time. >> Right. And that if we'd have gone back and said, "Well, that's going to be work for thou hundreds of thousands if not millions of people on YouTube." >> People have said that's insane. But >> there there it is. >> Yeah. But you already have an AI version of yourself doing this. Like what does that leave for like like what is actually left there for people, you know? Like even that could be >> Well, I mean that's coming. So, I've got the that Palvatar thing, >> but I've also got on the Real Vision platform um a RA bot, which is trained

on all of my stuff, not the GMI stuff, but everything else >> and it's in my voice. >> So, you just talk to about anything. You can give it charts and ask it, hey, what do you think of this chart? It'll do technical analysis. It's wild. And soon the video version will join that and then you'll just be speaking to me in video form. But I still think humanto human interaction is a premium. like you we both sat down here and said it's so good to actually do this together. >> Because it's different. >> Um so I think there's that fidelity of of humanto human interaction is valuable. So when I think about you know where do we go? What do we do? Human experience is one of the big things.

>> So events >> Why is your event busier this year when crypto is in a bare market? >> Because people actually want to get >> Um travel and tourism. It's huge, right? every flight you're on is full and that's only going to keep going up. >> Why? Cuz it's a it's a it's a human experience because we all spend our lives on Zoom calls. >> And then it's nice to get together with people. >> So, so I think um look at sports teams just keep going like this in price outpacing the rate of debasement. Why?

Because they're human experiences. If you think about concert tours, Taylor Swift's concert tour was so big that three central banks mentioned the Taylor Swift effect. >> So there's there's signal everywhere from saying it. And the big signal I used was chess. So chess, we've not beaten a computer at chess 35 years. >> Yet the chess industry is the largest has ever been. >> Why? Because we kind of like the messiness of humans competing with humans. >> Yeah. And you know to go and watch a hockey game, an ice hockey game, >> it's nothing to do with AI >> or robots.

>> Would you watch a robot hockey game? Maybe, but really you want the the the the the actual kind of physical game. >> So I think the signal is there. Um and people can't see it because they just know the job of being an accountant or or doing their particular job, but it but it's there. >> Yeah. Something I think about a lot is whether AI will be able to create new new things in terms of ideas or brands or the idea of a sport or something like that like are the or intellectual property you know somebody like like Taylor Swift like are these going to be the things that become scarce in the future and that's our role is you know we we can input new ideas or new thoughts or new feelings into the AI but do we think that the AI will be able to

create those themselves or is that our role? I >> I'm sure it will. >> Yeah. Now, will it create the same ones as us? Probably not, because it's it's it's not human. Um, and so I think we still have value, but is AI going to design your jungle tour of Costa Rica? No. Because it's being, you know, are you going to have a robot showing you around the Costa Rican jungle? No. >> It doesn't feel good. >> Doesn't feel right. Right. Or your ski instructor. So >> there's elements that it can't do, but yes, it will have and is already having um breakthrough thoughts.

>> So, you know, we know it's going to it's going to change medicine and science in the next two or three years >> for sure. >> I mean, completely change it. And people haven't figured that out yet that they're still suspicious. And half your friends when you speak to them, it's like, "Oh, it hallucinates. I can't use it for my job. It's not good enough." I'm like, "You have no idea." >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just ask you what model you're using first. Um, okay. I want to unpack the role of crypto and digital assets in everything we've talked about because of course we are at a digital asset summit. We haven't even talked about it yet. But >> yeah, where does it sit? It seems like we're trying to I don't know if it's just trying to like force fit this narrative or whether it's really true or

not, but where does where does digital assets sit within talked about? >> I realized recently we all kind of knew the agents are going to use crypto rails, right? And we kind of left it at that. And I woke up one morning, I thought, [ __ ] the TAM of everything has gone to infinity. >> Right? We think about TAM being, okay, what's the TAM of the internet? >> maybe there's six billion people using the internet in the world today. So therefore, that's the TAM of anything and there's eight and a half billion humans. But there's going to be eight and a half billion AI agents maybe doing microtransactions. So then you think, oh, the TAM of crypto are wildly wrong.

AI Agents Need Crypto

I'm wildly wrong on this by orders of magnitude. And I realize that this is the strongest narrative we will ever have. It's more than the institutions are coming. It's the agents are coming and they're coming in gigantic size. So I think it's much bigger than we expected. And then obviously the duality of that is digital ID has to come, right? um and trust within an agentic world. So, so I think the use case for blockchain just accelerates from here. Um and so I don't think it's a force narrative whatsoever. I think it is going to be the narrative and we all underestimate it. I think I think some people view it as a as a defeat or somewhat cynical which is that oh look

the best that we could do is just become this payment rails for stable coins to transact for for AI agents. But like you're a big digital art guy. I'm I'm curious some of those ideas or like you know the web 3 stuff that Andre and Horovas has talking about for years like where does that sit? It doesn't sound like you're saying that we're we're defeated in those realms. >> No. So firstly let's go to the finance thing payments, right? Everyone stops at that and think stable coins. Well the US dollar doesn't really divide lower than 1 cent. They're going to use >> infinite number of different cryptocurrencies, tokens, whatever. So that's one thing.

Um so then agents who are doing economic activity will end up running a treasury because they'll be executing in Salana and Ethereum and SUI and whatever it is right and they'll have all this stuff and they might be using tow for compute so they're going to be running treasuries and they will be instantly using DeFi rails to manage treasuries um and figuring out what is the best asset allocation. Okay, so that's kind of interesting. The whole investment management business is going to wildly change because if you think of a business like Millennium in the hedge fund world, Millennium is a bunch of pods that used to be external hedge funds but now internal because of the economics of the industry.

>> So they coales all of these talent together and then they have this big mother ship that has to figure out compliance and investors and capital allocation and accounting and all that risk and all of that stuff. So all of those pods can be agents or individuals because you can tokenize individuals. So it kind of collapses the entire cost base of of that the asset managers and then you go to the mothership all of that can go down to an algorithm. Okay, that is really disruptive for everybody from Fidelity through to every hedge fund in the world. So that's all going to change. So how we manage money the system of that the capital raising system I always said the mean coins were instantaneous

capital formation and that's how agents or individuals >> kind of the vzero prototype of it in a way. >> Yeah. And so, okay, so we got all of that >> and then within that we're thinking, okay, Ribbit Capital wrote that that article about tokenization, really important article and Mickey Malca sent it to me beforehand and I uh wrote a big article in GMI about it uh where I said, well, if you take it to this logical conclusion that all data is going to be converted into a token and a token's not crypto token, just think of it as packets of information that are movable, transferable, So all data becomes a token. We're going to have vast token marketplaces because

the agents will need data. And as we move from AGI to ASI, you're going to need vast amounts of data. And we're only trained on the internet so far. And so that amount of data is all going to get tokenized. I am packets of information and then tradable. So that's another gigantic marketplace we don't even think about that's going to be invisible to all of us because it's going to be agents doing it >> right >> and it's going to be taking data from wherever. So I think that's all to come as well. And then if you think about the extension of that what was web 3 read write own your own data well that fits in with that marketplace stuff you know can you sell your data back to advertising people can you do that kind of stuff. So, I think that all comes as

well. And then, you know, I've always looked at what is the offset to a lot of this stuff cuz this pace of change is so fast that I got to the point where I got to the economic singularity where I'm like, I have no [ __ ] clue anymore. >> And anybody who says they do are lying, >> And I thought, okay, what has persistent value for us? >> Um, and I got to obviously human experiences, all of that stuff. I got to the two offsets to all of this were nature >> and culture. Uh and and that's why I started investing a lot in digital art because digital art to me was capturing the culture of the internet through the most monumental change humanity's ever gone through. And these are the stories

we tell ourselves much like cave paintings are or warhole is. And so I started collecting enormous amounts of digital art because you know the digital world is the new world and it will have value. Uh and nature's is the other side of it which is why you live outside Whistler and I live in the Cayman Islands. It's like you know it's a big offset. >> It's a big offset than being here in New York City where it feels more it's closer to the disruption of everything >> Yeah 100%. >> So I so I think the whole of crypto fits into this perfectly in every way shape or form. And if that I'm right that that it's units of intelligence per unit of energy then we are going to release as much information to the intelligence as

possible so it gets bigger >> and the Chinese will force it and the Americans will turn it into a capitalist methodology. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So so yeah. So marketplaces all of that but it just won't be us. It won't be market makers and you know Jane Street running it. It's just not going to work like that. it does start to feel that way. It's like, okay, this makes more sense. Um, >> all right, last topic here, and it's kind of a a weird obscure one, but I wanted to like I I know I know you'd like it. Um, but it's just around this. Okay, so we both been playing around with cloud and AI and everything. And I don't know about you, but I know you've been super into the whole like longevity health thing.

>> And I've become very enamored with this idea of like tracking various health datas and seeing what AI thinks about it and that sort of And I'm just curious like as we start to integrate as humans with AI being this compliment and these these vectors of whether it's leveraging it for longevity or or for health optimization like how do you see that affecting humanity because it's just been something I felt like out of nowhere I've just become very interested in and I know you've been on the longevity thing for a while. >> If you listen to um Ray Kerszswwell >> Mhm. I mean, this is what the single is is we actually merge with this stuff that we become one with the machines and we're already doing it. You know, everyone's got a bloody aura ring. I'm going to hated aura rings because it

AI Meets Longevity

just tells you you've had a [ __ ] night's sleep. I'm like, I know. >> I knew that. >> I knew that. Just makes you feel miserable. You get on your phone. Yeah, you slept really [ __ ] last night. Like, >> I got rid of it. But, you know, your Apple Watch will tell you all of these things. And then you know I did the whole Peter Demandis fountain life >> route which is like this longevity clinic which you know you do your annual blood testing you do every single test they put it into AI they look for you know genetic markers they look for propensity to have certain diseases they do kind of health optimization stuff um because I think Brian Johnson is right which is like our if you look at the span of longevity of humans it's been pretty consistent since the kind of agricultural

revolution as food has become more available and the medicine and stuff like that, but I think we're going to hockey stick up in terms of, you know, in 20 years time, is it normal for a human to live to 130 or 120? Yes, probably. Um, and so we're going to see that. So, >> I think not [ __ ] it up too when you're young too much, >> gives you a better chance of that. And it's not living for the sake of living longer, it's the sake of just living healthier. >> Yeah. Um, so yeah, I think it's a it's a huge deal, but nobody wants to be Brian Johnson because if we go back to the quality of human compute >> it's to live life.

>> Right. And it's it's not about to live forever. It's not about living as a machine. >> It's to have lived the most experiences you can possibly cram in to how long you're on Earth. And so I think I still think that's underestimated still >> versus the I must live forever. Therefore, I must not do any bad things. I must I must get 8 hours sleep at night perfectly. I must go to bed at 7:00 in the evening. I must never drink a drink. I must never >> It's like >> no. >> Well, that's the thing. It feels like maybe maybe right now it's just short term we're going a little too far. Like you look at young generations, they're they're not drinking as much as they've ever been. Like like nobody's really drinking. So I don't know. Do you think that's just >> I agree. Like you don't want to become

Brian Johnson where your entire life is just ultra optimizing that you forget to >> No. Well, I respect what he's doing. He's >> Yeah, he's teaching himself as an experiment. But no, but there's this whole there's a big kind of Silicon Valley bro culture about you've got to take your ice bath and you've got to do this and you've got to do that and you've got to have your 8 hours sleep and you can't ever have a drink and you can't ever do that. It's like you know, >> you know, life is about taking risk. >> Yeah. You know, it's about traveling the world, going skiing on, you know, off pie and >> almost breaking your leg or dying. That's the experience of living. The experience of living is not being alive.

>> It's what you put into. >> It's like, uh, I think both of one of our favorite quotes, buy the ticket, take the ride from Hunter Thompson. >> That's right. That's exactly it. >> Um, >> and you got to you got to end up the other side with a few cuts and bruises cuz if not, you haven't you haven't lived. We've all got friends that we've left behind who stayed in the same town we grew up in, >> go to the same pub, see the same people, have the same barbecue every Saturday. >> And their experiences are so much less. >> Um they're less curious about the world.

And if you're less curious about the world, you're creating less compute. >> You know, you're just not doing as much value. So, so I do take the longevity thing seriously. It's kind of fun as a idea. You know, you don't want to die really, >> so why why not? >> But you want to live life also. >> I want to live life also. So, you know, so I'll I'll >> I'll like do this to some of it and then embrace other parts of it. And if my aura ring tells me I had a [ __ ] like so cuz I had a few glasses of wine, I'll just ignore it. >> Yeah, I know. That was the plan. Yeah, >> that was exactly the idea. >> Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, look, so good to do this in person finally. Great to have you here at the Digital Asset

Summit. >> I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. >> Cool. Thanks, Ral. >> Take care. Yeah. Yeah.