Cipher

CFO at Ridge Capital. Bitcoin minimalist. DeFi deep value investor.

[Alvaro Cintas @dr_cintas]

What a crazy week in AI 🤯

- ElevenLabs v3
- Runner H Agent
- Leo AI gets Veo 3
- Mirage Studio AI Actors
- Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro
- HeyGen IV new AI Studio
- OpenAI Data Connectors
- Google Phone App Local AI
- Mistral Vibe Coding Assistant

Here’s EVERYTHING you need to know:

[Cipher @Cipher_Curve]

@pavelmacek Shame you couldn’t improve the longevity of your hair

[Alex Banks @thealexbanks]

We are at the iPhone moment of AI.

It will transform the future of speech, creativity & biology forever.

Here's every AI announcement from Nvidia's GTC event:

[Aadit Sheth @aaditsh]

ChatGPT prompts that make life that much easier (ranked in order):

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

Weekly Recap

1) 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia enters trade alliance with China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and four Central Asian nations to step further away from reliance on the US dollar.

2) 🇨🇳 China and France complete first LNG gas trade using Chinese Yuan, ending reliance on the US dollar for energy trades.

3) 🇨🇳 China and Brazil to settle trades in their own currencies, ditching the US dollar.

4) Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are developing a new currency, State Duma Deputy Chairman says.

5) 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia partners with China to build a Chinese oil refinery for 83.7 billion yuan ($12.2 billion).

6) 🇰🇪 Kenya signs deal with Saudi Arabia and UAE to buy oil with Kenyan shillings instead of US dollars.

7) 🇰🇪 President of Kenya tells citizens to get rid of US dollars.

8) Association of Southeast Asian Nations considers dropping the US dollar, euro, yen, and British pound for local currency financial settlements.

9) 🇸🇻 El Salvador President officially signs bill eliminating all taxes on income, property, and capital gains for technology innovations.

10) 🇺🇸 US Senator Elizabeth Warren launches "anti-crypto" re-election campaign.

11) 🇮🇳 India to settle trade in Indian rupees with certain countries instead of US dollars, Commerce Secretary says.

12) 🇨🇳 Chinese yuan surpasses the euro to become Brazil's second-largest currency in foreign reserves.

13) 🇺🇸 US government to sell 41,500 #Bitcoin  ($1.18 billion) connected to Silk Road, in four batches this year.

14) 🇭🇰 Hong Kong regulators to assist #crypto firms with banking in effort to become a digital asset hub.

15) #Binance and CEO sued by US CFTC over alleged regulatory violations

16) 🇺🇸 US Social Security funds are projected to run out by 2033, Reuters reports.

17) 🇫🇷 5 major banks raided by French authorities in €100 billion fraud investigation

18) 🇺🇸 Former President Trump says President Biden is directly responsible for the bank failures and creating an economic catastrophe that will only get worse.

19) MicroStrategy purchases an additional 6,455 #Bitcoin ($150 million).

20) 🇺🇸 President Biden says the banking crisis is "not over yet."

[Lorenzo Green 〰️ @mrgreen]

R.I.P., Siri.

Hello, ChatGPT.

Now you can replace Siri with ChatGPT.

It’s free & takes 30 seconds.

It works flawlessy.

You can see it in action here.

Setup instructions below:👇

[Nick Timiraos @NickTimiraos]

NEW:

*Signature Bank has been closed

*All depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be fully protected

*Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected

*New Fed 13(3) facility announced with $25 billion from ESF to backstop bank deposits

[laurence @functi0nZer0]

Hear me out

Silicon Valley Bank Classic

[Romano @RNR_0]

Yellen says no federal bailout for Silicon Valley Bank

[wassieloyer @wassielawyer]

Guys if we had just bailed @stablekwon out last year, all the ponzis would still be running, @SBF_FTX would be controlling both the House and Senate and we would be telling all our normie friends to “have fun staying poor” while @zhusu leads us into the promised super cycle.

[Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc @jerallaire]

Sharing an Update on USDC and Silicon Valley Bank. https://t.co/Ug3qpot8sJ

[Wealth Squad Chris @Chrissssjohnson]

When people start hitting their stride financially the first thing they usually do is upgrade their car or clothes

My advice is to start buying back your time as you make more money

Hire cleaners, hire assistants, book keepers, etc

The extra time you get will allow you to either make more money or take stress/ pressure off yourself, there’s no car, purse, shoes or jewelry that will ever compete with that

[DonAlt @DonAlt]

Banking crisises is literally what Bitcoin was made for

And yet it's down on the day

Satoshi scammed us all

[Joseph @JosephA140]

Why you should buy $0.90 for $1

A USDC 🧵

[huf.hl @hufhaus9]

so many bad takes here on CT.

- Circle foolishly put 8.25% of its USD reserves ($3.3bn/$40b) in a niche bank

- now Circle don't have access to those funds as SBV is technically "insolvent"

- i.e. SBV don't have enough cash or assets on hand to honor all requests for USD

[Michael Tan @TheManMikeTan]

Many of my startup friends see that I used to be an investment banker and have consequently asked me to explain to them what's going on with SVB as I would explain it to a 7 year old, so here goes:

[Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. @ParikPatelCFA]

Just took out 7 mortgages from Silicon Valley Bank. There is a good chance they go bankrupt and I don’t have to pay it back. Be greedy when others are fearful.

[Flood @ThinkingUSD]

Am I missing something here? Unless these guys are just total frauds a lot of the Maturities they were holding already matured? So unless they randomly decided to roll into 10yr MBS or something they should be fine. Biggest issue is people understanding they needed to gate withdrawals until SVB cash is returned.

[Zach Rynes | CLG @ChainLinkGod]

Yeah man crypto is the future, let me bring you up to speed

First, TerraUSD collapsed, a massive Ponzi scheme where investors were promised 20% APR on their USD ($20B in UST and $40B in LUNA wiped out)

This caused the largest crypto hedge fund to go insolvent due to excessive leverage, 3AC ($3B AUM wiped out)

3AC borrowed funds from all the largest crypto lenders, each of who went insolvent after bank runs inevitably occurred, causing a market wide credit crunch

Celsius ($12B AUM, $1.2B deficit), Voyager ($1.6B AUM, ~$670M default), BlockFi ($3.9B AUM, $400M revolving credit)

Voyager and BlockFi were bailed out by FTX/Alameda, but ah turns out they were complete fraud too

With $10B of customer funds siphoned from FTX to cover Alameda’s losses, a bank run took place, creating a second contagion wave, leaving Voyager/BlockFi rekt again

Genesis Lending, under the DCG conglomerate, also went bankrupt due to Alameda/FTX exposure ($3B shortfall)

Gemini was lending $900M in customer funds to Genesis, so they and their customers inevitably got wrapped in the mess too

No doubt TradFi is involved in this too, with the collapse of two banks that were key banking partners for crypto

Silvergate (FTX’s banking partner and ran an payment network for crypto exchanges) experienced a bank run and collapsed after losing $1B on bonds

While SVB (Circle’s banking partner for USDC and most tech startups) experienced a bank run and collapsed after losing $1.8B on bonds

Not looking too good for Signature Bank either, which runs the ‘other’ bank payment network for crypto exchanges

Can’t forget the SEC trying to strongarm the industry from shutting down Kraken’s staking product to calling Paxos’ stablecoins a security and shutting down BUSD, and much more

Various banking regulators also strongarming banks into refusing to onboard crypto companies as clients, forcing them overseas and to use sketchy counterparts

Anyways

Have you heard of liquid staking derivatives and re-staking? Pretty cool financial engineering right there, crypto innovation never stops 💪

[Jon Wu @jonwu_]

The 20th largest bank in the US was just closed by California state regulators.

Silicon Valley Bank was rumored to be in a sale process to protect its depositors.

Now, it's the second biggest banking failure in US history.

All because of a secular bet against rising rates: