bret

building and investing and philosophizing | Crypto Payments

[Mesh | We Are Hiring! @meshpay]

Crypto deposits for @useworldapp, now powered by Mesh

Our integration with @tfh_technology lets ~18M verified humans across 160 countries fund their wallets directly from hundreds of supported platforms.

Read the full announcement → https://t.co/UVBM1zg5UA

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

https://t.co/vLmiBKTtX3

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

Humans will soon replace AI.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

Good take

My guess is
- demand for intelligence is near infinite
- but 80% of workloads will be running on 99% cheaper models within 12-18 months
- 20% of workloads will still run on latest gen models where IQ maxing is important (scientific breakthroughs, higher level ochestrator agents?)
- rough analogy might be what % of macbooks or gaming PCs sold have the maxed out specs for CPU/GPU, prices are falling much faster than Moore's law here though
- this leads me to think the limiting factor will be energy and compute, not better models

At Coinbase we're working hard on routing prompts to cheaper models where appropriate, and in some cases have been able to keep costs roughly flat, while token usage continues to grow exponentially.

[Jen Zhu @jenzhuscott]

Massive output uptick due to agentic AI. Complete flat adoption.

[Omar @TheOneandOmsy]

Rundown on where Visa is seeing pmf w/ stablecoins from their CEO, Ryan McInerney:
> 1) Consumer payments -> Visa card issued on top of stablecoin balances. Growing "very, very quickly" and up to ~160 stablecoin-card programs globally (i.e. Whop, Etherfi, Plasma, Redot, $WU soon etc)
> 2) Stablecoin settlement -> "Historically we settle in fiat. We do it Monday through Friday, and we do it once a day. But now we're using stablecoins to offer settlement 7 days a week, multiple times a day across border around the world". Up to single-digit billions (last # I saw $V release was ~$5 billion in Jan '26) and growing "very, very fast"

[DEGEN NEWS @DegenerateNews]

NEW: $HYPE DAT @HypeStrat UNREALIZED P&L SURPASSES $1 BILLION - HIGHEST AMONG ALL DIGITAL ASSET TREASURY COMPANIES

@BitMNR, THE BIGGEST $ETH DAT, LEADS ALL DATS IN UNREALIZED P&L LOSSES - OVER $8 BILLION

SOURCE: https://t.co/NsLhIcoZFa

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

We are now in a weird era where a guy gets publicly shamed for running his sprinklers on a Tuesday, while a data center the size of a Costco quietly drains a reservoir so AI can generate a picture of your cat as a medieval knight. And the data center gets a tax incentive for it.

[doomer @uncledoomer]

if the biggest companies in the world can release genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment, how can we possibly trust that the explosion in new tickborne illnesses is naturally occurring and not some dark extra governmental fifth gen warfare project

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

I want everyone to stop and ask what interest Google has in releasing mosquitoes. They’re a tech company. Not an environmental group. Not a non-profit. Not a government. A tech company. Just like Bill Gates, I don’t want them anywhere near our wildlife or nature. CC: @LeeMZeldin

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

Meta Instagram Reels is currently doing $50B of run rate revenue

Just Reels alone makes more revenue than Netflix, Nike, Coca Cola, Visa, Spotify, Uber and Airbnb

Let that sink in

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Apollo’s Chief Economist: Zero Evidence of AI-Related Job Losses

[Stand With Crypto🛡️ @standwithcrypto]

Sorry Jamie, but the people have spoken. They want Clarity, and they Stand with Crypto 🛡️

[bret @bb_ouroboros]

Jamie will be anti-stablecoin right up until JPM decides it can win at stablecoins.

[Bitcoin.com News @BitcoinNews]

🏦 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns stablecoins could become a "huge problem" and says he is not happy with the Clarity Act.

🎙️ When asked about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong representing the industry, Dimon said, "He's full of sh!t."

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

This survey suggests over 80% of companies have seen no productivity gains from AI so far, despite billions in spending.

Among 6,000 executives, 1/3 of leaders said they use AI, but only for 90 minutes a week.

This is even though most respondents believe AI will increase productivity by 1.4%, cut staff by 0.7%, and boost output by 0.8% in the next 3 years.

Of the executives, a third said they use AI at work, but only around 1.5 hours per week on average. Meanwhile, 25% of those surveyed have not used AI yet.

---

nber .org/papers/w34836

[bret @bb_ouroboros]

💯…The promise of AI was to eliminate busywork.

Instead we're using AI to mass produce busywork, then using more AI to consume it.

We're approaching a world where the output of AI is primarily for other AIs, with humans trapped in the loop pretending it's productivity.

[David Wells @DavidWells]

The AI ponzi scheme goes like this:

Everyone is generating all these long ass docs and then passing them off for others to read

Then the person receiving is like, wtf this is way too long, and hands that into an AI to read and summarize

Then they are generating a long ass response back

and this cycle goes like that forever. and we call this work now 😅

The token lords watch this from their towers nodding and grinning.

[David Wells @DavidWells]

The AI ponzi scheme goes like this:

Everyone is generating all these long ass docs and then passing them off for others to read

Then the person receiving is like, wtf this is way too long, and hands that into an AI to read and summarize

Then they are generating a long ass response back

and this cycle goes like that forever. and we call this work now 😅

The token lords watch this from their towers nodding and grinning.

[Crypto Rover @cryptorover]

🚨 THE AI BUBBLE IS STARTING TO CRACK.

In the last 30 days:

– Microsoft cut Claude Code licenses
– Uber blew through its AI budget in 4 months
– Uber's COO questioned AI spending
– Fortune 20 companies started slashing token usage
– One firm burned $500M on Claude in a month
– H200 rental prices collapsed from $7/hr to $4/hr

The people actually paying the AI bills are pulling back.

Wall Street is still pricing perfection.

[Mindset for Money @Mindset4Money_X]

Bro humans were down 3-0 and we just won game 7 this week 😭😭