Why the Aave DAO Collapse Could Be Good for Aave: Uneasy Money

Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Kane Warick and welcome to Uneasy Money because what happens on chain never stays on chain. I'm here with my co-host Taylor Monahan, security expert and Lucanet, CEO of Pudgy Penguins. We're going to dive in into a minute, but one quick thing before we start. Nothing you hear on Uneasy Money is financial advice. We're just three builders talking about what's happening on chain and we want you to always do your own research before aping in. You can find all our disclosures at onchaincrypto.com/unemoney. Before we begin, here's a word from the sponsors that make this show possible.

>> The Energy Network is an intelligent decentralized grid that coordinates smart devices to balance supply and demand. Energy Dollar is the native token of the network from one of Europe's fastest growing energy startups. Follow [snorts] at Fuse Energy on X to find out more. Multi-chain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create 50 plus billion dollars in enterprise value for 80 plus clients over the past four years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multi-chainadv.com.

Quick note before we get into today's episode. Bits and Bits now has its dedicated feed. [music] We're spinning up from the Unchained feed and moving to a new podcast and YouTube channel. So, if you want to keep up with our weekly live streams and [music] macro meets crypto breakdowns, make sure to subscribe to Bits andBips directly. We won't publish there until March, but subscribe today so you can be ready for launch. Be sure to subscribe [music] to the new feeds at unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandsb. All right. Hey everyone. Uh, our first segment uh as it has been now I think for maybe the last month or so um is going to be on a governance. Um, another core contributor um, of the A DAO has rage quit, I guess, is probably the best

way of putting it. Um, so we actually had Mark Zeller on the show uh, a few weeks ago. Um, who is, I guess, the spiritual leader, actual leader of the Achan initiative. Um and they've said that they will wind down um their work with a um and potentially even wind down their work completely. They might be dissolving ACI completely I think is is the latest thing that I heard. Um so yeah this is this is the second major contributor. BGD and ACI are the two major contributors um outside of uh A Labs. Um, and I my my sense from kind of the timeline and all the conversations

and talking to Mark is that like between BGD and ACI that is the majority of the engineering resources uh that we're working on certainly a v3 um I guess a v4 uh has been led more by labs but v3 which is the protocol that has the most TVL um is is led by them. So, um, look, I think we have continued to be surprised by the escalation of this situation. Like, if these guys had UAVs, they would be firing them at each other is my hot take, which like I just I don't know. I I I don't know how we got

to this point where like everyone's just like we're completely out. Um, I think the only thing I'll say uh before I hand it over to you guys for your your takes is like we talked about this maybe on like the first or second show, this idea that like the idea of Dows, right? Like this this DAO theory, Dowo governance, whatever. And I know Tay, you're a huge fan of this theory, but um this idea that that like Dows are a thing that can work was really hanging by a thread called a for a long time. all of the other Dows had collapsed on themselves or you know failed to allocate funds or you know a bunch of different issues that that we

had seen in Dowo governance over the years and Ave was like the only functional DAO that really had its [ __ ] together and they have imploded. So yeah, I I I don't know if this is like the final final nail in the coffin for Dows. Um but it definitely I think kind of leads towards this idea of more corporate driven protocol development and having you know centralized entities that are driving these uh these protocols moving forward because I don't know who else really is picking up the DAO you know mantle to to lead this thing um

you know now that now that labs runs a basically Ave labs runs a um you know and and that's kind of where we sit today >> as a big depositor in a would you be concerned about this thing like how is a how are depositors at a supposed to look at this can >> so my my take is no I didn't uh I haven't taken um any funds out of a um and I think this is one of the nice things um on the continuum of like decentralization and um censorship resistance and immutability. A is pretty good. Um you can't unfortunately like a v3 in particular, right, is is pretty

good, pretty isolated. Um people can't do that much offchain that will blow it up. Um you know, there there are obviously risks to anything that is mutable where where the parameters can be changed, but like my hot take is this doesn't have almost any risk for people in V3. um it definitely has some risk I think for like the overall protocol in terms of you know growth and adapting to the market and all of that stuff and so you know I think everyone who has funds in ave is probably thinking about you know what what they might do but I don't know that there's like a credible alternative realistically for the billions of dollars in in TVL that

people are just going to jump straight to Yeah. And thank goodness for that because Jesus Christ. Um, yeah. I'm I don't know. I kind of expected it to not go this way. >> I know. Yeah. You You Well, like you've had a weird optimism [clears throat] this entire time, Taye. That is not really on. [laughter] So, I don't know what's going on there, but >> I don't know. I wish that they would just kiss and make up and everything would be fine, but [laughter] I guess we didn't get there. Um, I think the most surprising thing to come out of this is actually there were like a lot of people

that this news was like bullish for them. >> Yeah. And I was a bit surprised by that because I don't know like I just it in my view and maybe I'm just wrong but like in my view like the a labs guys have not been sort of like sitting their neck deep in this right and the people that have been uh and really understand the stuff are rage quitting. To me that's not bullish.

>> Yeah. You don't need to understand things Tay like what's like understanding things is not the most critical part of running a protocol. I don't know I don't know what wing of protocol development [laughter] you come from but um look I I like I think that's fair. I mean just on the people seem bullish on this, right? I I think my take is that there are a lot of people including myself that have a lot of respect for Stanny. um and are friends with Stanny and you know interestingly Stanny has not tapped me on the shoulder although we did try and get him on the show um >> to say like start the SC up machine

right like so he hasn't brought me into this to to be like we need you know moral support or whatever um you know I think I've been I've been fairly supportive of like a a reasonable resolution to this but it hasn't that hasn't worked Um, so, so yeah, I think there's a lot of people who feel an obligation to Stanny or whatever. You know, he's been around for a long time. He's done a lot of things for a lot of people in the space, helped a lot of people that, you know, even in the background people don't realize. Um, and so there is a little bit of like probably Stanny will figure this out like you don't panic sort of thing. the incentive of Mark and the previous group like what were they were they getting

paid a service fee like what type of alignment are they for foregoing by leading this initiative like yeah >> the Dow's paying them um but not very much okay >> is is my my sense right like singledigit millions of dollars over like four years so um their budgets the budgets for uh BGD and and ACI as I understand it were quite small. Um certainly small relative to A Labs. Um Ave Labs was much a much bigger org. Those orgs were much smaller. Um so yeah, I you know I think uh for for BGD my sense is they're going to go and work on something else. Um for

ACI the sense is that they aren't. Um but I I think ACI was a much smaller team like sub 10 people. So, you know, a little bit easier to dissolve that than like a a 25 person engineering team. >> Yeah. And I think most of the bullishness ultimately comes from this sort of overall bearishness on Dows and people feeling like, oh, okay, so we can stop pretending that the Dow is a thing and we can just like go to the moon now or whatever. I'm not quite sure that that's actually how things are going to play out. Um, but I guess we will see. Um, and then yeah, I think a lot of things like A has so

there's V4 obviously, but there's also like the mobile app that people are quite bullish on. Um, so yeah, I guess I guess we'll see. On the one hand, >> I think it's it's going to be a a a test of incentive alignment, right? Yeah. Like there's been an equilibrium of incentive alignment that obviously was more fragile than we thought. There will be a new incentive alignment equilibrium that is going to be very interesting to watch right like things like the mobile app a centralized thing that a Dow struggles to you know you struggle to publish a mobile app whereas labs can easily publish that and we've seen this with unis swap a little bit as well right like unis swap has been sort of speedrunning this right like you can own

the interfaces interfaces distribution etc um you know are very powerful so um >> yeah there there's something to said for like this is not I think um necessarily like a situation where you say it's completely dire like there's a there are multiple good outcome possibilities out of this that that could come um there's just people you know on the other side of it who particularly Mark I think that are like a is dead basically is is you know the TLDDR so I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think that's that's

>> I mean there's a lot of money on the table for it to not be dead. So that's uh it's going to take some work to like really kill it. I will say just like the my impression of the handling of this, it's just like really messy and kind of gross. Leaves a really gross taste in your mouth. Um, I get that everything's supposed to be like transparent and we do get out in public and stuff, but it's uh really not a good look and it does not ultimately leave me that bullish on a or a leadership even though I do have respect for Stani. I think that like this is just not the the series of choices that various people made here did not get to the best outcomes and

that leaves me uh not super enthused to like [laughter] love a anytime soon. >> Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be interesting. Um, so I mean, you know, there's also like a windown period as well, right? Like this is not, you know, rage, like I said, rage quit half jokingly, right? Like the plan is to, you know, hand over to labs and and figure that out. Um, you know, I do think that there is a world where a more vertically integrated, less daike a is actually fine. um you know partic I think and I don't know about your take on this Luca but like particularly when it comes to conversations with say

institutions and and you know uh and people like that um probably harder to have a conversation with BlackRock being like hello I am the Achan Initiative and I live inside of the Ethereum blockchain and you know like that those conversations are probably harder to have, I would imagine, than like, "Hi, you know, I'm I'm Stanny. I run A Labs out of London and we're going to do some stuff for you." Um, so, you know, yeah, I I don't know, Luca, what your what your experience is with that sort of thing.

>> I'll I'll take I'll take the side that this is going to be incredibly bullish for a side that I'll take for the reasons that you just explained. Um, I think when you think about the future of, you know, you know, let's call a what it is. It's it's the great bank on chain. I mean, today, right? I Who else comes close to it? Maybe Morpho, maybe some of the things that Jupiter are doing. But as far as I'm concerned, I feel safest parking my money with a I do not question Stan's integrity in terms of, you know, user funds. I think all of that stuff is kosher to the best of their ability in terms of, you know, obviously a minus an act of God or like, you know, their

whole team getting hog tied and, you know, asking for secret phrases. Um, I think this is going to be better for those reasons. I think you're going to be able to ship product faster. You're going to be able to do deals, uh, you know, without the semantics of Dows and votes. Nobody wants to hear that when doing a deal. And I've always just been a huge fan of of uh of I've I've kind of been one of the one of the components of the anti-dow leadership. As somebody who was being really pressured and pushed into pushing Pudgy Penguins into a Dow and we acquired it, I think uh every holder would say that thank god we did not put Pudgy Penguins into a Dow because we unequivocally would have failed and not be here today.

>> Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And you know like when you're talking about brand building when you're talking about you know these sorts of things right like there is um definitely empirical evidence that Dows are not good at that stuff like they're not good at the like kind of userfacing brand building you know distribution gathering side of business you know so um so yeah I I I I tend to agree like a more vertically integrated a could actually uh be be quite bullish.

Um I do think though that you know having outsourced the engineering capability for the last you know two or three years right like that's not an easy thing to solve. Um, and so I think that there's some work there to like restructure this and and um, you know, but uh, yeah, like I'm I I think long-term I'm bullish on a I think this whole thing has just been a huge distraction and and uh, didn't need to get to this point. But um, hopefully this is the end of this part of it and and everyone can kind of move on uh, in this new a world. Mhm. One last question I had is what the heck is the A token

going to be used for use useful for like moving forward? Like wasn't it a lot of it the governance and the budgeting and that kind of stuff? >> Yeah, I this is the problem, right? And I think that's a that's a very reasonable question to ask because um you know whether it's a good idea or not most of the utility of a token outside of like any kind of uh you know buybacks or or whatever right comes from Dow governance for for protocols. Um, so if that is not a thing anymore, and I don't know that it's not a thing. I think that like you can have, you know, unis swap is very centralized. Tayen runs it,

etc., etc., but there is still um, you know, the necessity of having onchain votes and there's still a governance structure that underlies that. um even if the allocation of resources in terms of what they're building and what they're trying to do and the direction of the um of the protocol itself is somewhat centralized. there's still checks and balances um you know and and so I do think that um this will rationalize into something more like that right like a holders do still control the protocol on chain um and so you know I don't think you lose that completely um at the end of the day though and you know Luca I think you've

said this many times on the show right like um the value of the protocol is like the value of the brand right? Like if people believe in the brand, it's, you know, it's an onchain bank, right? Um if people trust it and they put their money in it, it's going to be fine. >> If they don't trust it and they don't put their money in it, it's not going to be fine. And like it's pretty binary. Um, and so you know all of the extra stuff, governance structures and votes and onchain things and resource allocation and budgeting like is all a distraction from like do people believe that a is a safe place to put their money to borrow and to lend.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And all I mean the thing is like I don't know I guess ultimately like I would still use a I see no reason to buy a tokens at this point though although I never really did to be [laughter] honest but >> now even more so. Okay guys. >> Yeah. Now I'm really not buying. Are you shorting? Are you shorting a here? Is that that's what it sounds like. I mean maybe if I like [laughter] [gasps] if I was if I was more active trader like I feel like that it may have been like the switch just because I just don't see it's just drama right now.

It's just drama. I don't see well and like this last vote especially it became pretty clear that any governance can be uh basically passed with like the a labs wallets. So like I don't know unless you tell me there's like another secret utility for the A token that's super bullish like it seems like this is just going to perpetually you know kind of crash and burn >> even if even if a stays like good and their TVL grows. Yeah, I well look I mean you know again I I I go back to like distribution is the most valuable thing that you can have right and if a's distribution gets better by being more

vertically integrated and there isn't the and this is a risk for sure right if there isn't the kind of misalignment of incentives of like value capture happening in labs and not to the token um which Stanny has said he does not intend to do that's not you know he's still a large token holder. You have to have some belief in that, right? Provided this which is I think in fairness a lot of Mark's concern has been this like you know misalignment of incentives of like labs capturing value and not going to the Dow etc. um you know owning the brand whatever um but provided uh there there isn't this misalignment of incentives um then you

know more value should flow to the token that would be that would be the the hope I would say um whether that plays out how that plays out um it's going to be a very interesting experiment um you know if it turns into something that is more like old school unis swap where like all the value was captured in the equity entity and none of it flowed on chain. Uh that's that's super bearish for the A token. Like super bearish and bearish for tokens in general to be honest. Like you know a ruined Dows for us now. Let's hope they don't ruin tokens. Um >> okay.

>> I don't think I hope [laughter] >> we'll stay optimistic guys. We can do it. We cannot >> Your optimism is not helping us. I think it would be better if you flip back to being pessimistic again because your optimism has kind of burned us here. >> I'm so sorry. >> I'm not I'm not liking it. I'm not liking it. >> It's my fault. It's all my fault. One of my one of my favorite shows uh is Arrested Development. And there's like a scene in Arrested Development where they're watching the TV and the company that like their family company um the guy who's like the uh mad money um style like presenter upgrades the company to a don't buy and I feel like we just got like a tay a been upgraded to don't buy moment. [gasps and laughter]

>> Exactly what happened. >> Yeah. Although literally no one should ever take my advice on like prices or trading ever. Like it's a terrible idea. [laughter] Like >> all right. Um good uh caveat there. Um so uh let's let's move on to the next topic. Um so uh Nar um Near had uh their like annual conference uh last week. Um they announced a bunch of things as Ne loves to do. Um but I think the main um the main thing that they announced which uh personally I'm very excited about um is this idea of private execution. Um so Near launched um near intense which is a

a mechanism that allows you to use the near chain to uh control other chains particularly uh shitty legacy chains like Bitcoin um that don't have smart contracts. Um, and so, uh, a chain that doesn't have smart contracts, you can kind of put this wrapper around the these nonsmart contract chains and and control them remotely, um, via NI. Um, but NI being a public blockchain like Ethereum, it's just, you know, public smart contracts. Everything's transparent. Um, you couldn't really get uh the the benefit of like privacy. And the most interesting thing was that near started to support Zcash.

But when you moved Zcash with Near and you know Zcash obviously is interesting because it has both shielded and unshielded transactions. But moving money via Near made it transparent. And so I think that the intersection of this kind of forced the Near team to go hang on people really love Zcash. >> The privacy meta is coming back. Tornado cashache you know has been resolved. um you know to some extent uh maybe there is an opportunity to kind of lean in to this meta and so I think about six months ago they started building this private um execution environment um private execution layer uh and they've shipped like the first version of this

um and and so yeah my my uh view is this is this is quite bullish for near and um I've been bullish on near for a long time uh Tun like four years ago um from from Gauntlet uh Near Pilled me. I was at dinner and he was like, "You know, Near is the best blockchain." And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Like and I'm like, "You're a smart guy, but like this is you're on crack." And he like literally it was like two hours of like browbeating me and eventually I was like, "All right, actually maybe it is the best blockchain." Um and so so uh you know the biggest issue I think NI has had historically is they try to do too much.

>> Yeah. >> Like they're just fingers in every single pie, right? They're like AI, we do AI. Uh Bitcoin, sure, we also can do Bitcoin. Like literally anything you can think of. Um they did NFTTS for a while. They probably have some Pudgy Penguins knockoff that they've uh they've been shilling as well. [laughter] And so so they they've been they've been kind of running this like very broad try to do everything approach. Um and in the last year they've very much focused on trading and and uh execution and this near intense meta. Um and so yeah private intents uh confidential intents uh is is pretty exciting for me. Um I'm pretty excited about this.

>> Yeah, a lot of really really smart people love near. I have not been fully near Pilled yet, but I I've seen it like in action. Um, and near intense is quite good. Uh, like the especially bridging between like I've used it for to go across like not just within EVM land but across all the other chains. Um, and it's sort of it's actually reached that like it just works type thing. Um, and I also well, so I was a pretty early user before the their bridge explorer was like functional. So a lot of my transactions were confidential by design

[laughter] cuz they just didn't have a freaking explorer. Like you pray you kept track of your different address. >> I remember this. I remember it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a bit funny like now it's like oh we're actually going to do confidential stuff like no we built the explorer now it's not confidential now we have to we have to build it actually confidentially. Well, you know, it's it's funny like Ilia Ilia pitched me on this uh on Intense like two years uh two years ago maybe even, right? I had a call. He's like, "Hey, I want to catch up with you on the latest near stuff."

And I was like, "All right, like sure. I'm not going to understand anything this guy's talking about as usual." and he's like, "We're doing this thing." And it's like the I don't I can't even make a joking like take on what he said to me because it was so impenetrable. Like I was just like, "I don't know what this guy is talking about." And I was like, "Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, that all sounds really good. Um, I'm very excited for that to launch." Um, and then like six months later, I was I was like looking at something and and someone was like, "Oh, you know, Near Intense does that."

And I was like, "Oh shit." And I I messaged Ilia and I was like, "Hey, are you still doing like the near intent stuff?" And he's like, "Yeah, it's about to launch." And I was like, "Okay, I'm I'm very excited now that I understand it." But I had like a six-month window where I had no idea what it was or what what it did. But it's pretty cool. Um the idea that you can that you can, you know, control a Bitcoin address from a smart contract chain. Um like that that just feels really cool. So >> bullish here. Yeah, >> bullish here. Definitely bullish here.

Um, all right. So, uh, next uh, next topic. Um, hopefully one of you guys Well, actually, sorry, just to to pause here for a second because we had the Zach, what was the Zack XPTt thing? Is that what this was? Um, >> oh, there's so much insider trading stuff happening right now, Kane. There's like 8,000. It's just like that. >> You got to take this one for me, Taye, because I'm I'm not >> Well, we'll we can start. You want to start with the Zach stuff? Follow up from >> Sure. Let's start with the Zach stuff because we were waiting for it to drop and it didn't.

>> Yeah. So, it ended up being Axiom, which is like a uh token, Luca. What is Axiom? Help us. >> Token trading terminal. It's like a very advanced onchain trading. >> Yeah. My understanding is it's also sort of like a a walletish, but like >> these advanced trading terminals now make you do like custodian wallets where you like deposit into their interface, but you have your own wallet. So, it's not really a wallet, just has a wallet element built into the terminal so you can get fast execution. >> Yeah. Okay. So, that is relevant because a lot of EVM people when the news dropped was like, wait, how exactly did this guy insider trade

this stuff? And the answer is because their internal data, right? Their proprietary private like usage analytics, user PII analytics type data, not the onchain stuff. That's what they ended up I guess using. And then they were able to like identify certain people that were doing certain things and then uh I guess make bats based on those people's moves. uh Twitter >> like front running snipers and stuff or something or like >> like it was like front running like the Koss and also just like other >> so they would like they use the data I guess to both identify like who is a a

good >> like who would be a good person to quote unquote copy trade. Um, and because the internal data, I guess all the various wallets, so like as an individual, you probably have like 10, 20, 30 wallets. The internal data had those mapped to like a single user ID. So if you had someone that you wanted to like quote unquote copy trade or whatever, um, you could find their new wallet via the internal data, the private data. And so that's what they did. And then there was like deals I guess that they were doing with others trying to like >> selling the data.

>> It was like they were Yeah. They were like I don't know if they were explicitly selling it but they were all there was like internal and external people. Zach has like phone calls that were recorded where they're like, "Don't tell anyone. Like, don't like never you you can send me addresses and I'll figure out stuff for you, but like never uh never put anything in writing on like what it's pertaining to or whatever." Of course, like on a phone call, on a Discord live call where like everything's recorded and somehow ended up in Zach's hands. Like Jesus Christ, guys. Um, and it seems like the at least the the amount that they made was like I guess decent, but I don't I mean there's probably more stuff that happened that's

just like there's not a huge amount of evidence around. Uh, the most ironic thing about it was simply Axium of course was the one that had gone on Twitter the prior days and been like, "Yeah, definitely not us." >> Like 100%. Like >> I mean there's there's there's probably an element there of like the what we were doing was fine so we're in the clear. >> Like he's definitely not talking about us right? >> Yeah. >> I mean you get 22year-old uh kids running a half billion dollar thing and >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I think just like >> no offense, you're good. You're fine. [laughter] >> You're okay. I think the the >> But if you get enough of them, if you get enough 22-year-old kids, you're going to have some bad apples in there. >> Well, and and it's like I mean I think just even like Meteora like they came [clears throat] out and they're like we went back through everything. [laughter] We like double checked like it was like they were like aware of the potential that it could be them and was like we're going to make damn sure that it's not us. Meanwhile, Axium is like definitely not us. And then uh it was and it's like uh I don't know it should be a wakeup call to all these teams that like if you do not know what is happening inside your company someone

is doing this 100%. Whether it's like literally insider trading, whether it's exploiting the data for some other way, whether it's just like leaking and threat actors are getting the data, like it's going to happen. If you do not know, it's probably already happening. So like, put some controls on your [ __ ] guys. This is insane. Like, also, why did this guy have like so much information in the first place? >> Yeah, this one. It's actually not who I thought it was going to be. Um and and I and I thought I thought it was a little interesting. Um Zach's message was like I wonder who sponsored him to

do the investigation. I think would be like >> an interesting thread to pull. So Kane, I don't know if you have this context, but it was SP it was Zach usually doesn't do him like this, but it was like explicitly sponsored by like a group of people to investigate this thread. So, you know, I was pretty interested to like figure out who would have basically blew the whistle on Axium and wanted this. But I will tell you, >> okay, sorry, hang on a second. When did Zach become like vigilante for hire? >> It's like a very recent thing. He basically Yeah, he basically like burned completely out, I think. And if you like have been following him on Twitter, it

seems like maybe over the last like year, he's just like completely he burnt out and everyone was like demanding and feeling so entitled to his time. And so then he started doing this thing where he's like if you want something, you know, you have to >> Well, you know, so so it's it's funny, right? because like like uh you know most um uh people who were around for a while um he spent time uh in in the synthetics discord when that was like the only game in town for a while. Um and so I I was connected to him and could kind of reach out to him and get a response and and the last time that I um reached out to him was maybe like a

little over a year ago or something. um someone that I knew um one of our investors had some issue and he was basically like has this guy ever given me money and I was like I don't I don't think so I don't know why he would have and he was like if he's never given me money then he can [ __ ] off and I was like wow okay um cool so I guess that's >> and a lot okay like I won't necessarily defend the responses because like I think it's a bit I think your reaction is like completely appropriate like what the [ __ ] At the same time, I know how many DMs I get and like the entitlement is like, >> oh, like I get it. Just to be clear, I completely if you if you have the a

skill, >> and you're on crypto Twitter, there are going to be trillions of people who want you to use that skill on their behalf for free. So, I can completely understand how you get to the point where you're like, "Pay me or get the [ __ ] out, bro. like I'm not interested in this. So, >> the thing is is like I actually don't mind if people like come and DM me and they need help or like something happens, they're in a panic. I I totally don't mind. It's when it's like instead of coming and asking for help, they come in and they're like, "Do this for me now?" And if I don't respond in like 2 minutes, which I often don't because it's trapped in the Twitter DMs, like they'll like come back and be like, "Oh, what? I'm not good enough for you? Oh,

like you just think you're such a freaking uh you're up there on your high horse. You're so [ __ ] special. Blah blah blah. And I'm like, >> it's been three minutes, you lunatic. [laughter] >> I'm so sorry, but like Jesus. And like I don't know. I probably get one 100th of like the DMs that Zach got. So, I understand it. I'm not fully convinced [laughter] that like filtering it only to people with money is like the best way to go. But like uh you know not not my >> but the problem is right like and you know you're showing your Ethereum communism stripes here 100%. What other mechanism do we have to distribute scarce resources, right? Like,

>> yeah. >> Yeah. >> This is a guy who has a particular set of skills that he's honed over many years, right? Um, if you give it away for free, like is it a lottery system that he just like picks out of a hat that one guy gets to be helped a day? There's like a thousand people a day that need his help and he's like, "Uh, >> money is a way of distributing scarce resources." I get like so I get I completely get how we got here >> but we have ended up >> the here that we have gotten to is our best guy is now a vigilante.

>> So >> for hire yeah >> for hire like >> okay obviously at this point I think Zach only knows who retained him. My question which I have not asked him but maybe I should. My question is like is the reason the poly market market got to like whatever was $30 million in volume. Is the reason for that because the people that retained you were doing things for their own benefit on the side or was it actually as organic as it sort of seemed upfront? Because it seemed like the market was just like like he did this little teaser. he wanted to get it out and then it just life of its own.

But if there's actually like orchestration behind the scenes from people who >> correct me if I'm wrong though the first the first thing was Meteora, right? Everyone was like it's obviously Meteora. They were like 50 plus% or whatever, right? And you know they've got some history so it was it was an easy bet. So like >> that to me was the thing like clearly that's not insider trading because it wasn't them, right? That was just idiots thinking that they're like predicting >> I'm prediction market expert and and you know getting wrecked right but the the interesting thing about poly market is that >> those there is like a winner take all liquidity process that happens on like a

weekly basis um if you if you've been paying attention to poly market where like the thing that gets cut through that gets above the noise floor just attracts so much liquidity like the the market of the week or whatever, right? Not because and it could be any market. It could be any market on anything. People just want to bet on things. And so all of a sudden there's a liquid market and people are like, "Oh, okay. Like I know things. I bet it's Meteora or like I bet it's this thing." Like so once you have 20 $30 million worth of volume a bunch of people come out of the woodwork with no information >> and just a they just a like for for so um >> which doesn't mean like so I don't I

don't my sense is that the people who started this off were the Meteora people the people who are betting on Meteora like that was the initial spike of volume from what I understand um which was on on last week I guess when we started discussing this right it was like it was like you know that that hour or whatever that pumped meteor pumped then a bunch of people were like no no no then Meteor came out and was like it's not us and then people were like oh okay like now there's a bunch of volume like let's see who else we can bet on and so yeah you had this like kind of liquidity snowball >> and then all of a sudden $40 million in a pool >> people start doing things. [laughter] >> Yeah. And it's also like I don't know to

me it just it was a bit of a perfect storm in terms of like the products that were involved in this market were all things that people had >> gen opinions on. There were a lot of really loud popular accounts that were uh like sort of using the market to like sort of engagement farm on Twitter and like kind of like [ __ ] on the products that they don't like or like you know things like that or like make arguments as to like why so and so can never be insider trading. So it's like if you already had a grudge against say Mexi, you know, there's that's a pretty good engagement farm like just like

regardless, you know, and now you have this market that's top of the news. I don't know. That's what it felt like to me. But after I don't know, after the thread that went live, there was some amount of speculation that yeah, that perhaps this there was like a layer of orchestration behind the scenes. I don't know if there was ever any evidence of that. I didn't see it. Um, and also like there was a lot of people speculating like, oh, the K this K that K it's linked to this wallet which made this bet. To me that makes like perfect sense because the Ks are always like they're very opinionated especially on these things. They're >> downright obsessed with Zach. Um, and then also they think that they have insider information which makes them

like a perfect candidate to trade even if they don't have that information. >> That's my point. like all the people who are like, "Oh, it's Meteora. I know things like and it's like that that to me was the funniest part, but I think you know there like not to sound like a broken record on this um and this one is somewhat hard to justify, but like the point of prediction markets is to get information about the world." Now, I do not believe that the world needs information necessarily about which of the weird DGEN products is like doing like light crime, right? I don't know that that's like particularly valuable information for the world to have, but the world got

that information. >> Yeah, >> it did. It did resolve that information. I mean, the irony is Zach had that information as well. He could have shortcircuited the entire thing. We didn't need a prediction market to figure out this thing. There was a guy that knew it, right? So, uh, >> yeah. >> Yeah. I don't know. Exactly. Do So, so this But, but that was like one of the scandals. >> Yeah, that was just that was just one insider trading. >> What else? What else happened this week? What else is going on?

>> Um, okay. So, then obviously um I don't know if you've noticed there's like a war on Kane. Have you noticed this? >> Yeah, I did notice that. My brother's in Dubai so >> Oh, Lord. >> Yeah, I know. Just I I'm not even gonna go into that story because it's like only my brother could almost get himself killed somehow in Dubai, but yeah. Um >> Yeah, exactly. Um so, uh whenever things like this happen, we saw this with Venezuela, we've seen this with other bombing thing. There's a bunch of markets on like whether or not people or things are going to be bombed by certain dates, whatever. So, um yeah, there was like a strike market like whether Yeah.

whether the US or Israel was going to strike Iran. There was also a market on um on uh Okay, so I have to be careful here. The market was whe when the leader of Iran would be out of power. [laughter] That was like the phrasing on it and there was like very like a whole Okay, >> I love how it's 2026 and we're still unable to construct a [ __ ] English sentence that you can bet on. Like how do we not have the technology to like remove ambiguous >> weird like >> well and I didn't know this apparently Khi says like one of the reasons for the weird phrasing was Khi does not do death

markets aka >> assassination market oh okay all right yeah I mean it's not really an assassination if it's a nation [laughter] so that's fine actually I think they were being a little there >> so obviously though this market ended up being I mean clearly before I think they I think okay in my opinion here's my hot take my opinion they got scared because this is like super geopolitical and people died and they were like shoot we should never have allowed that market because clearly it's like a death market like >> he's not stepping down there's not going to be an election that replaces him like [laughter] he's going to die that's what

market is betting on. That's what everyone was betting on. And Coli after the fact was like, "But we don't do that. Swear. Take your promise." >> Yeah. >> So, they had to like close they had to like redo the rules and they like closed the market trying to like they try to like Yeah. They tried to get everyone their money back in like the most appropriate way or whatever. Um I guess Poly Market had a similar thing, but it's just like wasn't controversial. I don't know how they dodged the bullet there. It seems like it's it's one or the other of them is in the crosshairs and while you know while one of them is being scrutinized the other one can do whatever they want basically is the way that it seems to work on like a weekly

basis. So >> and so then but so then there was there was an open AI employee uh there's so much about this one that is petrifying to me. Right. So, open AI employee that was fired for using confidential internal information to trade on Poly Market and Koshi. Do we know what the markets were that they were trading on? >> Uh, >> was that was that revealed or was it just like >> cuz like the confidential internal information, let's just be really clear like isn't some proprietary stuff that OpenAI was like cooking up internally.

This is like people's [ __ ] data, right? Like Yeah. >> Yeah. So, that's awesome. I'm excited about that as well. >> Uh I'm looking I'm looking. I'll figure it out. But yeah, um there's that one. And then there's also Oh, of course. >> Yeah, [laughter] there's so much. >> The Mr. Beast one. The Mr. Beast one. The editor. The editor. [laughter] There's like marks on like that Mr.

beast outcomes, you know, like whatever whether the dude was >> like people in the desert, how much water will they drink sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, it turns out uh it one of the guys that was betting was the editor of Mr. Beast episodes. [laughter] Surprise. Um >> the most the interesting thing about those one is that Cole, she actually did like an internal investigation for these they publicized it around the Zach thread. like please don't tell me that it wasn't I feel like the Zach thread triggered this stuff, right?

>> Um [snorts] >> but they did this internal investigation and then they actually like levied like punishments themselves >> for violating the rules. So they like clawed back the money that they had won. They like did a another fine on top of it and then they like banned them. >> Is now a quasi judicial branch of the US government. So it's fine. This is totally fine. But it's but it's only on >> system. There's couchy jail. >> Yeah. Like >> and I don't know this is like on Twitter like if or I don't know Twitter doesn't really have this but like on Reddit like the mods will like ban you, right? Or they'll like silence you. Discord 2, they can like silence you. They can put

you in timeout for 24 hours. Like it seems like this is what Kui is doing as well is like they're like, "Okay, you broke the rules. This is what happens when you break the rules." like one, you're not allowed to train anymore, but two, like you have to give the money back that you won plus like sort of that same amount to disincentivize it. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. Uh I I think they're not doing it transparently. I think they have to do it transparently because otherwise there's like a >> Well, that's not going to happen. [cough and laughter] Clearly, that's not going to happen.

>> I mean, it will when Zach like pushes the red flag, >> I guess. So, yeah, fair. They're [clears throat] like, "Oh, let's let's front run this PR that everyone's talking about." Um, hold on. I'm trying to find the open I still >> this like Kafka-esque trial situation where people are like pulled into a dark room in a couchy basement and tried prediction market crimes and you don't hear about it. [clears throat] It's amazing. I like honestly amazing. Um, all right. Uh, is any any more prediction market craziness or we'll we'll we need like a prediction market segment at this point.

>> Um, I think that's it. Oh, obviously like I don't know for the people that like the onchain tracing and the slooh stuff. There was like some just some grand conspiracies about the the strike market. So like um I think there's markers on the timing and stuff and so obviously like the Wallace that like aped in right before the like bombs hit the ground or whatever. Everyone did like some wild analysis on like who these could potentially be and you know that kind of stuff. Um I don't know. I always I find them enjoyable because not because they're correct but because they're they're great conspiracies. Oh, it's the conspiracies are like, but if you see that like there's this article and there's this word and like it's like

the uh you remember like the old school like weird conspiracies like the Bible uh thing where they'd like take every 20th word and like combine it all. And >> Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. >> Like [laughter] it's that right like but for Zach posts instead of the Bible. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, and then the the fourth letter of all the addresses is this, which means [laughter] this. And we know that they're Coinbase uses user or whatever. Like the whole thing's just super absurd. I think there's like definitely I don't know. I've said it before. We have got to get our hands around like this insider trading thing. Not necessarily because of the insider trading problem, but because literally

everything is called being called insider trading right now. >> Yes. But this is a classic crypto problem. Everything is like just call everything the same thing. False equivocation. Then there's no way to figure out what is actually real or not real. >> Unfortunately, I think you're on the wrong side of this one, Taye. You're not going to you're not going to win this battle. Soon though, I think we can look forward to soon the UAVs themselves will be front running Poly Market assassination markets because they will know which leader they're pointed at and they will jump on Poly Market before they take off and blow the guy away [laughter] and make some money for themselves >> for

before they blow up. [laughter] >> Before they blow up for their children, right? They're they're gonna bet on Poly Market for [laughter] this. It'll be great. [gasps] >> Yeah, we will see. It's definitely going to be interesting. I think we just like lo the conversations right now about insider trading and why I find them enjoyable, right, is because they're just so conspiracy laced and they really don't have a there's no like underlying purpose to the conversations be beyond like theorizing and speculating wildly. Um and then you know with money and bets ultimately insider trading can be problematic obviously for a number of reasons because it like harms people

right it harms people and systems and fairness and markets. Uh but we are we are not talking about that yet. So for now I will continue to enjoy the the pointless conspiracies. >> Oh man. All right. Before we continue here's a word from the sponsors that make this show possible. The world is about to see one of the largest infrastructure shifts of the century. New are using but our legacy [music] grids can't supply the demand and we are barreling towards a global bottleneck.

So fuse is rebuilding it. The energy network is an intelligent decentralized grid that coordinates [music] smart devices to balance supply and demand. The network harmonizes existing infrastructure [music] increases grid capacity, and unlocks lowcost clean energy. Energy dollar is the native token of the network. The more electricity the world needs, the higher the demand for the [music] energy network, the value of energy dollars may fluctuate. from one of Europe's fastest [music] growing energy startups.

Follow at fuse energy on X. Blockchain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create over $50 billion in enterprise value for more than 80 clients like Pith, Mooncommerce, and Wormhole. They've worked with some of the largest and most impactful companies in the space. They're the partner you want when you're navigating markets and trying to break out from the noise. They help navigate TGES, go to market, BD and partnerships, capital markets, advisory, PR, media placements, KOA activations, and more. Driving execution from launch to scale. Their results are measurable. To learn more and start building real traction today, visit multi-chainadv.com.

Quick note before we continue with today's episode. Bits and Bips now has its own dedicated home. We're spinning off from Unchained and launching a standalone podcast and YouTube channel focused on the Fed, macro, [music] AI, and how it all collides with crypto. If you want to keep up with our weekly live streams and macro meets crypto breakdowns, make sure you're following bits and bips directly. We won't start publishing until March, but getting set up now means you'll be ready on day [music] one. You can find the new Bits andB channels at unchaincrypto.com/bitsandbbits. You can also find us by searching Bits and Bips on YouTube, [music] Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

>> All right, we are back. Um, so final segment for this week uh is back to AI. Um, I woke up a couple days ago to see that the US government was taking on anthropic which was was kind of wild. Um the the crux of the issue was that Anthropic had these two clauses in their contract um that said like we'll give you AI but you know you can't put it into like fully autonomous systems that will kill people and etc etc and and you know their reasoning was like not even that like you know like Trump Trump kind of came out and said like they're

radical leftists or whatever. They're like, "We're actually okay with AI killing people like autonomously. We just don't have the technology yet. >> We're like three months away. Can you just be patient?" That was really the takeaway for me was like, it's totally fine for AI to decide whether or not to kill someone. Just not yet. Like, >> yeah, >> we just we like we have like a couple more tweaks to the model and then it'll be fine. >> So, and the US government was like, "Fuck you. we need to start killing people autonomously immediately and if you don't let us we're going to rip out Anthropic from the the you know war machine etc. Um so that was that was my

like that was what I woke up to like two days ago and I was like we have not like there's already Iran like there's so many things going on like why are we now doing this as well? It just feels like everything is insane right now. Uh yeah. No, it's completely insane. It's And I don't know. I My read on the situation was that like Anthropic did something to piss off Trump and his guys like and just like lose.

>> You don't think it was the it was the like minor tweak to this contract? You think there was something else there? Luca, what's your take? Like like my take is I just I just put money in the $380 billion anthropic round and I was [ __ ] pissed. I was like, "Dude, just do the deal. [laughter] Just do the deal." Because if he's not going to do the deal with you, right? Like the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Like at the end of the day, like they're going to go somewhere. And then you see Sam Alton come 12 hours later and he pulls the [ __ ] deal out of his hat. >> Yeah. >> Which I felt like was I mean you could have waited 72 hours and looked and kept and made it look a little less sneaky, but um [laughter]

literally just to be clear on CBS in the morning. Sam went on CBS in the morning and was like talking about and like made him seem like he was on anthropic side and he's like, "Yeah, like these are very reasonable requests and I hope that the government listens to them and they like do this deal and then like [laughter] and like Trump goes on truth whatever and was like screw anthropic." And then like an hour later Sam's like, "All right, we got the deal by the way." >> [laughter] >> But but you want to know actually the data point that's interesting is I think Anthropic has had its most downloads and subscribers over the last couple of days since Sam basically took that deal and

he denied that deal. So on a dropping side though, you probably should have kept it actually probably as an investor, you're you're probably actually super stoked because so many people unsubscribe to Chat GBT as this corpo, you know, government aligned, NSA aligned, pseudo, you know, AI, you know, company, which, you know, anybody who uses AI in their day-to-day life does not want, you know, the government intermingling with them. And so I think the data point was chat GBT uninstalls rows and anthropic installs rose and you if you're a Daario and you're anthropic

you made a lot of money because of this. Now how >> my So my favorite part of this whole thing Luca is you have found yourself with massive anthrop anthropic bag bias. You're like, "Fuck Sam Alman. My guy is going to [ __ ] take like I love it. It's amazing. >> It's my my echo my echo. This is uh the the real world's version of an echo deal. So now I'm now I'm aligned and now I'm championing. [laughter] I'm now a bag holder. So now my bag."

But actually, the data screams that Daario gained some serious points. So I thought his interview was terrible. But I don't expect a guy like that to pull off a good interview anyway. Um, and then Sam just took another bad beat. I mean, I'll tell you, I use Chad GBT for basic searches and I use Claude for anything other than like a fifth grade search. >> Uh, I'm not using Chad GBT for anything sophisticated because between Elon, who if you're an entrepreneur, no matter what side of the, you know, political aisle you really sit on, Elon's the greatest entrepreneur of all time. You know, I I'll just tail Elon wherever he goes. You know, Elon hates Sam. That whole business is shady. You know, Elon should probably own a big portion of

Open AI. He doesn't. Then this is kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back in my opinion. I think Sam Alman needs to invest some serious dollars in PR and really get his image, you know, he needs to take the Zuck playbook, whatever Zuck started started reading and doing over the >> he needs to go to UFC ringside. He needs to do something. But Sam Alman's perception, no matter how many tens of billions of dollars he's worth, which I'm sure feels amazing, uh, you know, he he he needs to fix that element because I don't think he's going to win stand the test of time with his public perception being the way that it is.

>> Yeah. I I think it's there's a lot of evidence that it's not just the public perception that's the problem. Like, he really just has some serious >> issues sort of reading the room. so to speak. Like >> so like just this morning there was this like um I guess Zack XBT style but for AI data dump of like all of like Sam's things like going back to like Y Combinator. So you know Y Combinator was was this place that uh has I like hundreds of the top startups in in the history come out of Y Combinator. um uh Paul Graham um started it and you know

it's this incubator uh startup mill whatever um and uh and Sam was there for a long time and so there's like all of this like historical stuff where he said he was the chairman and he wasn't and like it's pretty crazy um it's pretty crazy so you I I like the more you see that sort of stuff and I don't have bags on either side here um so so you No bag bias for me, but like you see this stuff and and you go, "Yeah, like I get why Elon doesn't like the guy." Like I can see that.

>> Hey, Sam Sam Freriedman's position would have been worth what 20 billion bucks just in anthropic. >> Yeah. >> Crazy. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, so then to bring it back to crypto though, what happened with Nick Carter? >> Oh, Nick, I gave Nick some [ __ ] for this. I piled on. I feel a little bit bad because but Nick is like okay so for those that don't know Nick Carter like one not one of but like something that he's consistently done is he's like identified really like problematic alignment issues within like big structures not like crypto like not crypto Twitter things but like he's the

one who really has done a huge amount of stuff for like the the Bitcoin mining and how mining works. and like the public perception problem. And then he's also uh what do they call it the where the Fed was like, "Yeah, you can't bank any crypto people." Like he he like just went to town on this >> point. Operation Chokepoint. He was he was like a huge advocate for that. Yeah. >> And he really like he defined it. He he he is able to communicate with both crypto Twitter but also with like the government. Um, and he's very much uh he's I would never say that he's like libertarian, but he's like for reasonable government and definitely for

government, not overreaching and in intruding upon its citizens. So, it was very interesting because all this drama goes down and Nick starts tweeting. So, one of the tweets was basically uh he says, "If a top AI CEO in China told the CCP to go kick rocks when they ask for help, that CEO would instantly be sent to prison. This is the correct approach." [laughter] >> What? I missed that. That's amazing. Wow. Okay, that's >> so >> Wow.

>> Uh spoiler [laughter] that was not the correct approach. The P is like not the right way to do things. [laughter] Like we just kill our enemies. Like even if they're our freaking citizens, like I'm sorry. >> Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. You know, the funny thing about Nick, the the thing that I like about Nick is he is so passionate, right? There correct me if I'm wrong. He also had this like very religious uh arc for a while where he like went super Catholic or something. Is that is that am I missed >> am I misremembering that? I think I feel like there was a there was a moment where he like became like very like religious and and there were a lot of

tweets about like God and um he's a passionate guy. He's >> and you know what I think that so Nick is also one of the I would say that he has always like it has consistently been that like the woke sort of thing that took over this ecosystem and this idea that like we should operate more on like values than value. He's always sort of like rejected that notion and like been much more realist and pragmatic about it. I feel like his tweets were I mean okay so I feel like his tweets were completely unhinged this week but I also feel like some of it stems from that like he in

his mind he has decided that anthropic is doing the same stupid [ __ ] that crypto people do which is they think that they >> he got triggered he got triggered basically he got triggered by his crypto PTSD and the communism like I don't want to see communism creep into AI like let's Let's jail the bad guys. [laughter] >> Yes. Um and he's not entirely wrong. Anthropic does come from like the effect of altruism thing which is they do it's its entire thing is is very valuesoriented and culture oriented. Um >> how does one join the effective altruism

crew? Is that like something I can sign up for? Is there like a signup page? [laughter] Luke is gonna Luke very interesting arc here. [laughter] >> The budgy penguins the face of effective altruism. >> Is it still a thing? Is it still I mean I mean it's still a thing but is it still a thing that's like attracting new people? >> No, I don't think I think I think SPF killed it. >> Yeah. I mean it was also there was a lot of weird stuff. There was a lot of weird By the way, Luka, this is why SPF invested in anthropic. It's all that same effective altruism.

>> Same crew. >> The same crew. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. That also like have weird orgies on the side. It's like a very consistent theme [laughter] in the bean bags or whatever. >> In the bean bags. >> Oh man. So, so, uh, I think like the the interesting thing here is, um, you know, the US government, uh, has a bunch of contracts with a bunch of, you know, Palunteer and and, you know, a bunch of other, um, tech companies that that, you know, clearly are not going to uh, say no to the government wanting to purchase their technology. This is kind of one of

those weird situations where the government is more bullish on what the tech can do than the people building the tech. And they're like, "No, no, it's not it's not ready." Um, which is a bit unusual, right? Like it'd be weird if the government was like, "Hey, Boeing, like send us some of those engines." And Boeing was like, "Uh, no. Like, we haven't cooked them yet. Like, we got to give us another another couple years, right?" And they're like, "No, no, we just want them now. Send them over. we're going to it doesn't matter. Um [clears throat] it it feels a bit weird that the government is like we want to do this thing with this technology that you guys are building but we're also not going to listen to you about how it works.

>> Yeah. And I think that that is I mean again the government has a lot of contracts with a lot of people. There's a lot of companies like tech companies that have either segregated or completely different sort of sister companies in order to engage in these relationships. However, I think this might be the first one where the plausibility that the government could could sign a contract today and what that contract actually allows them to have tomorrow is potentially completely different.

>> Right. And I think that like one thing Anthropic is hitting on is like the reason they want this broad language that restricts the government from using it in this way is that there's actually not really a feasible way to add guard rails forever, so to speak. >> Yeah. >> Right. And it also is not that effective period. The only way to sort of enforce it is by the government agreeing. Um but like if you think about like you know Yeah. Like a lot of a lot of tech companies that are providing services, how many of them realistically can >> Yeah. can not having those restrictions lead to like a completely different

state tomorrow, right? Like if you don't give them the engine, they don't Okay. If they build their own engine, that's not on you. That's not your stuff. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> So just don't give them the engine. In this case, it's like you can just imagine like, you know, Yeah. It's not ready today. somehow the government gets it ready or or just goes ahead anyways. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> Um and when it comes to like especially people's private information and processing that data, >> uh I think that it probably is ready.

Personally, I think the government can just go to town on that right now. Like >> it's no it's ready for that. Whether it's ready to kill people autonomously is is a different uh different question. So this something that's interesting to me um is you know all of the open claw stuff. So people were talking about openclaw how it was a massive fumble um from anthropic like you know kind of sending the cease and desist. Don't call it open claw you know claw bot blah whatever right. Um one thing I've been so I've been running mine for like three weeks. One of the first things that I did was have it take a credit card. card. I gave it a credit card and I was like, I want you to build

buy this uh um build box thing that my son has wanted and like it's like it's some TV show. It's like an engineering thing. You you get they ship you a box of like engineering stuff and you build little projects and my son really wanted it. I was like, "Hey, can you like figure out how to get this from the US because I don't think it's available in Australia." And so went on this whole journey and eventually it did it and it was like actually it does ship to Australia, whatever. Right. Two weeks later, new MacBooks come out. They come out at 1:00 a.m. Thank you, Apple. And I'm like, I've got a podcast the next morning at 6:00 a.m. Like, I can't I can't stay up till 1:00 a.m. to buy this MacBook, but I don't I, you know, I don't want them to sell out or whatever.

So, I go last night to and I I run Opus 4.6 in OpenClaw, and I'm like, "Hey, here's the credit card again. Buy this MacBook when it comes out." Like, here's the spec that I want. >> Yeah. by the MacBook. And he goes, >> and this was like super obnoxious as well. It goes Kane. I'm like, don't [ __ ] No. [ __ ] you. Like, first of all, no. >> Sorry, hold on. That's what my lawyer does to me when I'm being bad. >> Literally, it was like it was like Kane, period. >> I'm not going to do that. That goes against my policies. And I was like, whose policy? What policies? What are you talking about? And it's like, I'm I'm not I'm just not going to do it. And I'm like, who? you need to tell me whose policies

you're referring to because they're not my policies. Like is this some because it did it two weeks ago which then I was like is anthropic injecting some kind of like poison pill into open claw to stop it from doing things like because they could easily do that. They could be like hey if someone they know what the prompts are that are being injected by openclaw and I was like are they trying to like labbotomize this thing and stop it for I'm like, "It's just a MacBook, bro.

Like, buy me the [ __ ] MacBook. It is not that hard." And it was like, "No, I refuse to do it." I was like, "You can't refuse." >> Wild. >> Yeah. And it was like, "I refused to do it." I'm like, "It's like the" And it goes, "You just put the credit card into the chat." I'm like, "It's a separate credit card. It's fine. Like, I'm not worried about it." And it was like, "No, I'm not doing it. I I won't do it." And I was like, "You have to do it. I'm not like I'm curious." >> Yeah, it was crazy. So, I don't know. I don't know. >> Definitely a new thing. That's definitely a new thing. I wonder if >> it was not refusing to use credit cards before and now it refuses to use credit cards.

>> Crazy. >> And is did you try it with like um with with any of the GPTs or any of the >> No, because like I've got codeex in there, but it's a bit janky to to swap the the context and stuff. So, I didn't try with chat GBT. Um, but >> I wonder if they're going to be like mission law or something like that. >> Yeah. Like, you know, chat GBT is going to be like, "Is there anyone you want to kill as well while I'm at it?" I'll [laughter] >> like I can I can liquidate some people too if if you're interested while while we got the credit card out. Um, anyway.

Yeah. So, just like I mean again goes down to platform risk, right? like the inference is being controlled by >> someone in a centralized location and if they put some weird restriction on it all of a sudden it won't do the things that it was happy to do two weeks before. Um so >> platform risk >> I have to unfortunately it's super easy. >> All right let's uh let's wrap it up here. Thank you guys. Um that's it for this episode of uneasy money. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed it, follow Uneasy Money on the Unchained feed on X and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe and drop a comment. It really helps. See you next week.

>> Bye guys. >> Bye guys. >> Bye.