The finance content no one else will publish
I’m a sitting CFO writing anonymously about
– grey-zone strategy
– capital structure games
– building real wealth behind the curtain
🎯 https://t.co/nvz20A6w14
Bubble fears sparked a wave of “the bubble popped” takes. What’s actually appears to be popping is hedge fund leverage. AI keeps advancing at a pace that makes the future genuinely uncertain.
@elonmusk has long said abundance is coming. That abundance hurts the terminal value of nearly every company by collapsing scarcity and pricing power. Markets are finally starting to adjust to that. Pomp and I talk about it all this week as well as BTC continuing to disconnect from tech.
Volatility on misunderstood newsflow seems endemic to AI:
Deepseek.
Liberation Day.
Kimi.
SALP.
Gross to net confusion for Anthropic.
OpenAI taking share from Anthropic.
Gross to net confusion for OpenAI.
A mistranslation of Hock Tan’s comments yesterday.
Two years ago, I launched my YouTube channel to help people navigate the coming disruption from the convergence of AI and crypto into the world we knew.
The mission was simple:
Signal — separate facts from noise with data
Alpha — focus on agentic compute and crypto
Agency — help people use AI tools to grow with exponential reality
Over those two years, one form of noise has been constant:
“AI is a bubble.”
This week was no exception.
This week’s video is about climbing the AI Wall of Worry and why the ride is just be starting.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and joined the growing community on this journey of personal growth and empowerment.
Please forward this to anyone trying to learn, adapt, and prepare for what is coming next. Thins are accelerating and not being ready is not an option if you want to thrive in the new world. Climb now!
Watch: https://t.co/rBJS4PiCTM
My good friend is publishing his book today. The introduction begins with a line: “A single idea can change your life.”
In a world where people spend too much time judging others, arguing about what is wrong, and reacting to the noise around them, I love the philosophical simplicity of that thought.
Progress starts with an idea, not certainty, not consensus, and rarely approval from everyone else.
The best books don't just give you answers. They give you an idea you carry with you long after you finish reading.
Congratulations, my friend. I hope this book puts a few of those ideas into the world.
For those watching crypto today and wondering what is happening and why, Here are the daily and MTD percent numbers of the top 10 performers of my Crypto Ecosystem Equal Weight Index. None of these are BTC, ETH or SOL. This is the ecosystem responding to the connection to AI. Think when the app store was launched. I begin the weekly crypto videos and research to go through why AI is now boring and why crypto is where AI is moving as agents take over to use the infrastructure built for them instead of humans. Start learning today.
Our USELESS position has ballooned to nearly 10% of the portfolio over the last few days (up 313%, unrealized).
Our memecoin sleeve of the portfolio is now 14.4% (up from 5% at the lows)
I often get a lot of pushback on why we hold memes. "How the hell are you going to pick the right one?"
I have trouble explaining it, honestly. We track holder cohort data on the memes we view as "blue chip." But a lot of it is just crypto-native instinct.
It just sort of seems obvious to me that USELESS could get huge. At a $40-$70m market cap (where we bought), I like the risk/reward.
Just can't ignore that.
Of course, I may not pick the right ones. That's why we only allocate 5% of the portfolio to them (and buy when they are deeply oversold).
So, I can live with it if I'm wrong. And I only need one high-flyer to make it all work.
That's why we allocate to memes. If it wasn't good for the portfolio, we wouldn't hold them.
---
If you'd like to see what else is in the portfolio + receive alerts when we make changes, you can sign up for TDR Pro below and get one month free 👇
Pump Fun is an online casino/social experience in which the "dealers" (the creators) drive revenue and earn more than the casino itself.
Creators are now earning over $1.5m/day on Pump Fun (more than the protocol). In total, creators have earned over $450m over the last year.
If you squint a little, you can see shades of "early YouTube" in PUMP.
Powerful business model that feels like it's ready to hit escape velocity.
“The tape does not concern itself with the why and wherefore.” Jesse Livermore
That is the point of this week’s video.
In 2014, Marc Andreessen wrote *Why Bitcoin Matters* and said Bitcoin offers “a sweeping vista of opportunity to reimagine how the financial system can and should work in the Internet era.”
That era is here now.
AI compresses time.
The old system starts to break.
Terminal value for fiat assets get harder to trust.
The fiat system keeps borrowing against the future.
Stripe prepares for AI agents.
The Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary accept Crypto as the new financial rail.
This is the AI-Crypto-Macro Nexus — the point where all three collide.
Now Bitcoin is back above the 200-day on a seven sigma pattern seen two times in the last decade.
Ethereum is also above the 200-day.
The tape is confirming the story.
If you still don’t know why Bitcoin matters, the tape is speaking now.
https://t.co/1yJuxlPDz7
My dad and friends dads worked in a factory and then later in a different role but still working class, and people don’t appreciate how TIRED all the dads were at end or the day. Especially over 40. Corporate jobs are stupid but a much easier ride. Not even close.
Why does it feel like everyone is getting poorer?
Because if you judge cost of living by tangible items like ground beef, inflation is about 20% higher than what we're told
Which would mean real post tax family incomes have only gone up 10% in 55 years
Except the average family now has 1.8 working people compared to 1.2 in 1970. So a lot of the time wives used to spend prepping meals has been replaced by restaurants & Door Dash
And the pensions that were paid to workers which averaged 40% of their salaries upon retirement have been replaced by 401K matches that average 5% of salaries
Factoring everything in, the average American worker is probably making about 35% less than their grandfather was 55 years ago
And the only way out is to start your own company and invest profits into other profitable companies. Almost everyone who could possibly help you is complicit in making the trend worse.
Utah and Idaho teenagers desperate to work at ski resorts, but a J-1 visa allows private equity owned lodges to import foreigner workers and not have to make social security payroll tax payments. Pure profit into their pockets.
Important announcement: I am upping my offer, $10 million dollars for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boy's high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.
Stocks are significantly outperforming housing over the US over the long run:
Since 1975, the S&P 500 has delivered an average annual total return of +12.2%.
This is more than double the +5.1% annual gain in US home prices over the same period.
Even without reinvesting dividends, the S&P 500 has still returned an average of +9.3% per year, outperforming house price appreciation.
After adjusting for inflation, the gap is even wider, with the S&P 500's real total return at +8.3% over the last 50 years, nearly 6 times the +1.4% real annual return of US home prices.
At the same time, the S&P 500 excluding dividends and adjusted for inflation has returned +5.4% per year, on average.
Stocks have been a far more powerful driver of wealth creation than housing.
For the real estate folks who understand this: Cost Segregations that were PUSHED on many newbies entering the real estate market (mainly Airbnb) in 2021-2023 are now becoming the biggest nightmare for those buyers as they try to exit their non performing properties. That massive depreciation they took against their income back in 2021 now needing to be paid back in the form of depreciation recapture.
I know some folks who paid $1.5 million for an Airbnb that did $200K in rental income in 2022. DSCR loan at 7%. 20% down. Borrowed $1.2 million. Did 100% Bonus depreciation with cost seg in year 1. Now rental is doing $100,000/yr. Losing money each and every month now after paying mortgage, electric, gas, internet, etc. Need to sell, house is worth $1.2
million (maybe) now.
They are faced with not only a large loss for the sale but also the depreciation recapture when it sells. You would be SHOCKED at how many people bought Airbnbs not only for “income” reasons but also because they were told by realtors that they could offset their W2 income by a massive amount in the year they made the purchase.
Chickens are coming home to roost.
Someone sent me this data on NYC housing.
Anyone with half a brain realizes Mamdani's rent freeze is going to make rent prices skyrocket over the next 3 years.