Brian Dirking

Product marketing activist, data head, musician - left and right brained.

[Alex Mason 👁△ @AlexMasonCrypto]

Everything is playing out exactly as I said.

Bitcoin RSI just hit 70 again.

2018 → 2022 → 2026

Every time this happened, Bitcoin dumped.

The chart is warning you again.

Remember, I was the only one publicly calling the exact bottom at $16,000 three years ago and the top at $126,000 in October.

If you missed those calls, don’t worry. I’ll call the next one too.

Turn notifications on. If you’re not following yet, you’ll understand why that was a mistake later.

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

Financial Times perfectly illustrates our possible futures

[Alex Mason 👁△ @AlexMasonCrypto]

🚨 SOMETHING VERY STRANGE IS HAPPENING

The stock market keeps pushing to new all-time highs.

But nobody is paying attention to what’s actually happening.

A huge AI bubble is inflating at incredible speed and is about to pop.

This has happened before.

2000: Cisco was the king of the internet.

Routers. Switches. Infrastructure.

Everyone thought it would own the future.

Then Cisco crashed -90% and never fully recovered.

Now look at today:

Nvidia is the god of AI.

Chips. Data centers. Infrastructure.

The entire market is now tied to one company.

The Magnificent 7 control roughly 30% of the S&P 500.

If Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta don’t get real returns, they cut spending.

If they cut spending, Nvidia orders collapse.

If Nvidia collapses, the whole market follows.

It’s a bubble built around one company.

2000 was Cisco. 2026 is Nvidia.

Remember, I’ve predicted all the market tops and bottoms for the last 15 years, including the exact Bitcoin bottom at $16,000 three years ago and the top at $126,000 in October.

If you missed those calls, don’t worry. I’ll call the next one too.

Turn notifications on. If you’re not following yet, you’ll understand why that was a mistake later.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

We are excited to present The Kobeissi Letter’s 2025 performance report.

Our analysis provided a net return of +30.7% in 2025, outperforming the S&P 500's 2025 return of +16.4%.

Since 2020, our investment strategy has now returned +516.3%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500’s +111.9% return over the same period.

Our 2025 return builds on +8.1% in 2024, +15.5% in 2023, +92.8% in 2022, +35.3% in 2021, and +44.8% in 2020.

Since 2020, our analysis has delivered a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of +35.4%, outperforming the S&P 500’s +13.3% CAGR.

Read the full annual report here:

https://t.co/p5CVL5ZckU

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

OpenAI just created a $10 billion company whose ONLY job is forcing businesses to use AI.

And they're literally guaranteeing investors a 17.5% annual return to make it happen.

It's called "The Deployment Company." OpenAI finalized it yesterday with 19 investors including TPG, SoftBank, Bain Capital, Brookfield, and Advent International.

Here's the structure:

OpenAI puts in $1.5 billion. The private equity firms put in $4 billion.

In exchange, those PE firms open up their 2,000+ portfolio companies as a CAPTIVE customer base for OpenAI's products.

OpenAI then embeds teams of engineers directly inside those companies, Palantir-style, to integrate their tools into daily operations.

And here's the big red flag in all of this:

OpenAI is GUARANTEEING those PE firms a 17.5% annual return over five years.

That means even if the companies in the portfolio don't want AI, don't need AI, or get zero value from AI, OpenAI is still on the hook to pay those returns.

Think about what that means for a second.

OpenAI is so desperate for enterprise adoption that they're paying Wall Street to force their product into thousands of businesses. They've essentially turned private equity firms into a distribution cartel with a guaranteed commission.

This has NEVER been done before in enterprise software.

No software company in history has guaranteed above-market returns to financial sponsors just to get their product installed.

And it gets crazier:

Within MINUTES of OpenAI's announcement, Anthropic announced their own version.

A $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman.

Same playbook.

Two companies worth a combined $1+ TRILLION in private valuation both concluded on the same day that organic demand for their products is not growing fast enough.

If enterprises were lining up to buy AI on their own, you wouldn't need to bribe private equity firms with guaranteed returns to shove it into their portfolios. You would just sell it normally like every other software company in history.

But they can't. Because the gap between what AI companies PROMISE and what enterprises actually experience is still enormous.

OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap just moved into a new role specifically to lead this push. They've also signed "Frontier Alliances" with major consulting firms to embed AI through professional services channels. Every move they're making screams the same thing:

We have a demand problem.

And this is all happening right before OpenAI tries to IPO at $850 billion.

If they can show Wall Street that 2,000+ companies are "using OpenAI products" through this PE distribution channel, it inflates their enterprise metrics right before the roadshow.

Doesn't matter if those companies actually need it or if it creates real value. What matters is the number on the S-1.

This is the AI playbook entering its most dangerous phase.

The tech is real but the business model is being held together by financial engineering, guaranteed returns, and captive distribution deals that look more like a pharmaceutical company paying doctors to prescribe their drug than a software company earning customers on merit.

And both OpenAI and Anthropic admitted it on the same day.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

Warren Buffett just warned that the US dollar could collapse and admitted he doesn't understand most of the stock market anymore.

95 years old, sitting on $380 billion in cash, and the first time watching from the sidelines instead of actively investing.

And what he revealed at this weekend's Berkshire shareholder meeting is genuinely concerning:

On the market, Buffett didn't hold back.

He compared it to "a church with a casino attached" and said the casino has never been more packed. On one-day options: "That is not investing. It's not speculating. It's gambling. Totally."

He pointed to the Avis short squeeze THIS WEEK. A rental car company that's been around for 50 years getting meme-squeezed in 2026. The same behavior that blew up retail traders with GameStop is back, except now it's hitting boring legacy companies with zero business being volatile.

"We have lots more regulation now, but people spend their time figuring out how to get around the rules rather than follow the rules."

That one sentence explains more about the current market than every CNBC segment combined.

When asked why he's hoarding $380 billion instead of investing it, Buffett said something no one expected:

"I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I have not learned new industries for some years. I'm not going to have an edge on a whole bunch of younger people that have actually grown up with it."

Think about what he's actually saying...

This is a man who made $140 billion by understanding businesses better than anyone alive. And he's telling you the current market is so detached from reality that even HE can't make sense of what's being valued and why.

He quoted IBM's Tom Watson Sr.: "I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots."

In 60 years of managing money, he said MAYBE five were "really juicy." Five out of sixty. That means 92% of his career was spent WAITING while everyone else gambled. And he still ended up richer than all of them.

Then the conversation turned to inflation and that's where it gets really interesting:

Buffett said America is "not immune" from runaway inflation. He brought up countries that went bankrupt "six or seven times" in his lifetime.

Compared today to right before Volcker had to rescue the dollar, when Americans were borrowing at 12% to buy farmland earning 6% because they believed the dollar would disappear.

"Cash is trash" was the mentality.

Nebraska farmers collapsed
because of it. Entire communities wiped out not by a recession but by a BELIEF that the currency was dying. And Buffett sees that same energy building again.

Then someone asked the question everyone wanted answered: Do you see a crash coming?

"If you saw it coming, it wouldn't happen. The things people are talking about and thinking about? It's not going to happen. But there are things that can come out of the blue."

He compared it to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 that triggered World War I. Nobody was discussing or anticipating it. But it changed the world overnight.

"That's particularly true now because of the things that can come out of the sky."

A 95yo man who has survived every crash, every war, every crisis of the last six decades just told you the market is a casino, the dollar isn't safe, and the real collapse will be something nobody sees coming.

$380 billion in cash is his answer because he believes things are about to get much worse.

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

“I'll assist you with your poems,” Elias remarked with a grin, “I'll serve as your editor, your greatest supporter, your all.”

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

The video game level has been successfully completed.

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

Homemade apple preserves stored in glass containers

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

Looking forward to this webinar with Sigma tomorrow on @databricks SQL and using a serverless environment

[Sigma @sigmacomputing]

Ring in the New Year with data savings! 🎆🎊

Kick-off 2024 with an insightful webinar on January 10 at 10 AM PT. Discover expert tips on reducing costs for your Databricks SQL warehouse workloads and embracing a Serverless environment.
https://t.co/fK8v4xmVit

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

@databricks @alighodsi 🤣 Made my day @databricks

[Ali Ghodsi @alighodsi]

The founders of Databricks put together this strategy blog on where we think data platforms are headed in the future. We're moving Databricks quickly in this direction. This is very exciting and is the outcome of the MosaicML acquisition we did earlier this year!

https://t.co/EyO9H7I8Tc

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

Organizations struggle because data platforms do not understand the data in organizations. Generative AI addresses these challenges.

Announced today: The Databricks Intelligence Platform brings AI to your data to help you bring AI to the world.
https://t.co/CWUvhhUeDO

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

Catch @DATABRICKS expert Craig Wiley at the @pinecone and @microsoft AI Transformation Summit. Craig's session is at 2:30 Thursday July 13, and he will speak on preparing data for #LLMs and #GenerativeAI workflows @maria_pereperez

[Turbo 🐸 @asjhnwenfiwkld]

Today we launched the $TURBO #Airdrop for our community!

Check eligibility and claim #TURBO on our site:
🔗https://t.co/E70Z4AEY4c

$ETH $MONG $AIDOGE $KING $BTC $TURBO $GUAC $REKT $PEPE $SUI $RIZZ $BOB $BTC $MUSK $BOB $SHIB $WSB $WOJAK $GEKE $POOH $SNEK $PECHU $GENSLR $ZPC

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

@hulu

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

Shark attacks are an uncommon occurrence, estimated at 1 in 11.5 million, but if you're attacked by a great white shark you're most likely on California's Central Coast. Near 38%, of all great white shark attacks happen between Marin County and Big Sur.
https://t.co/Qtvh4yTPph

[Cal OES FIRIS @FIRIS]

OCFA's FIRIS Intel 12 on the Edgewood Incident, CZU. Fire is mapped at 15.3 acres at 15:59 hours.

[Victoria @Its_Roux]

#EdgewoodFire
CURRENT EVAC INFO:
https://t.co/8vrP1Cu9X8
EVAC CENTER AT:
Veterans Memorial Sr Center 1455 Madison Ave Redwood City
CURRENT FIRIS INFO: https://t.co/QBssh5lAwD
#EdgewoodIC #RedwoodCity #EmeraldHills #SanMateoCo #CAWX

[Brian Dirking @bdirking]

What is an 'organic' golf course, and why aren't there more of them? https://t.co/luBwwdrTyT