Eric Forst | AI + Web3

Co-founder & CEO at Blocksee, data and connectivity for web3 and AI @blockseeAI , on Substack at

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

Thank you to @synexisdotio and @TimDraper Institute for hosting such a fine Frontier Tech Forum… it was a pleasure presenting my take on Decentralized AI… thank you @LeahHoustonMD for the post and pics!

[Leah Houston MD @LeahHoustonMD]

@eforst at Frontier Tech Forum discussing decentralizing AI to save humanity with @synexisdotio & @TimDraper Institute

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

My latest Substack post connects the dots between Trump’s DOJ lawfare and a similar threat posed by opaque AI systems that pass judgment on the most critical moments of our lives…https://t.co/RwFsnNMx6k

[Rod (Izzy) 🇺🇸🦅 @1zzyzyx1]

A Louisiana resident named Marshawn didn’t hold back today and didn’t care who he offended with what he said. He’s right; this is MAGA’s last gasp for air. The courage of these residents to speak out gives me hope for our future. #DemsUnited

[Jeremy @Jeremybtc]

A man with no working truck convinced Wall Street he had built the next Tesla. His company hit $30 BILLION. All he did was push it down a hill with no engine.

> Trevor Milton founded Nikola in 2014, named after the same inventor as Tesla.

> The goal was to build hydrogen powered trucks that would make diesel obsolete. He had no trucks.

> In 2018 he released a promotional video called Nikola One In Motion. It showed a sleek semi truck accelerating smoothly down an open highway.
Investors went wild.

> What nobody knew was that the truck had no engine, no fuel cell, and no propulsion system of any kind.

> Milton's team towed it to the top of a hill, tilted the camera to hide the slope, and let it roll.

> He spent the next four years doing the same thing with words. On podcasts, television and social media.

> Investors were told Nikola could produce its own hydrogen. It could not. They were told the trucks were ready for production. They were not. They were told orders were flooding in. They weren't.

> In June 2020 Nikola went public. Within days the company was worth $30 BILLION, more than Ford.

> Milton's personal stake hit $7.3 BILLION overnight.

> A $32.5 MILLION ranch in Utah followed. A record for the state at the time.

> In September 2020 Hindenburg Research published a report calling Nikola "an intricate fraud" built on "an ocean of lies." Milton resigned within ten days.

> A federal jury convicted him of securities fraud and wire fraud in 2022. Sentenced to four years in prison the following year.

> He never went. He was free on $100 MILLION bail pending appeal.

> He and his wife donated $3.2 MILLION to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

> In March 2025 Trump gave him a full pardon. The pardon erased $168 MILLION in restitution to defrauded shareholders.

> Nikola filed for bankruptcy the following month, leaving thousands of investors with nothing.

The company never had a product. The only thing that was real was the $30 BILLION valuation, the $7 BILLION that landed in his pocket and the pardon that made sure none of it had to be returned.

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

More brilliant satire from Peter Girnus… we are so fucked… heads must roll for this.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

@natbielczyk has created the best self-assessment tool for career growth that I've ever experienced. Not only does it help you learn your unique strengths and working style, but it also helps you find your ideal working environment, and you need both to be successful in a career.

[Natalia Bielczyk, PhD 🇵🇱 🇳🇱 🇺🇸 @natbielczyk]

Happily announcing the premiere of our new landing page!! 🔥

I was making this mistake for so long…

I like to think of myself as a person of fine taste who can tell the difference between ugly and pretty design.

But that doesn’t mean I'm capable of creating the design.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have posted multiple confessions about World Liberty Financial over the past few days.

4 crypto products. 3 presidential pardons. $1 billion extracted. $3.87 billion in retail losses. 600,000 wallets. 110 footnotes. Every claim sourced. Every link cited.

The definitive accounting of the Trump family's crypto operation — from the team page to the pardons to the stablecoin tollbooth to the $18.5 million dinner seat.

Every event unrelated. Now on substack 👇

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

Looking forward to co-hosting this event!

[Natalia Bielczyk, PhD 🇵🇱 🇳🇱 🇺🇸 @natbielczyk]

-- together with @eforst, @albertqian, Annette Blum Pearson (MBA), Irene Nexica, Garrett Rice, and the amazing community around Albert's List.

Cast at the legendary Homebrew Club led by @erickd @ 111 Maiden Ln, San Francisco.

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

My latest Substack post is inspired by a conversation between David Z. Morris and @gilduran76 in which they trace the origins of Bitcoin and its influence from Jeffrey Epstein, Brock Pierce, and Steve Bannon as an instrument of techno-fascist control https://t.co/57PK7kdeEY

[MASTR @MastrXYZ]

Trump extraction timeline

Built from the Gold Paper, White House orders, SEC actions, public disclosures, company statements, blockchain analysis, and major investigations including MASTR, WSJ, ABC, and Fortune.

12/16/2021
Melania entered the NFT business. The monetization phase had already started.

12/15/2022
Trump launched his first NFT trading cards at $99 each. Politics became digital merchandise.

12/2023
The Georgia mugshot became another product. The MugShot Edition tied 47 card purchases to a suit fragment and a Mar a Lago dinner invite.

08/27/2024
The “America First” NFT collection followed. Buy 15 cards, get a piece of the debate suit. Buy 75, get a gala dinner. Brand loyalty was now a purchase tier.

09/16/2024
World Liberty Financial was unveiled on X Spaces. The Gold Paper later showed the structure plainly: 100 billion $WLFI, 30% to co founders, no profit rights for holders, 22.5 billion $WLFI plus 75% of net protocol revenue to DT Marks DEFI LLC, and 7.5 billion plus 25% to AMG and WC Digital Fi LLC.

The same document’s supporting team listed 12 people, including 4 Trumps and 3 Witkoffs.

10/15/2024
The $WLFI sale went live. Buyers quickly learned what the fine print meant: governance cosplay for the public, cash flow for insiders.

11/25/2024
Justin Sun entered with $30 million while facing SEC fraud pressure. He later said his total commitment rose to $75 million and became an adviser.

01/16/2025
Four days before the inauguration, a UAE linked firm associated with Sheikh Tahnoon signed a $500 million deal for a 49% stake in World Liberty. The deal did not surface publicly until February 2026. Months later came the chip approvals.

01/17/2025
$TRUMP launched 3 days before the inauguration. Only 200 million coins entered circulation. 800 million stayed with CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight.

Within 2 weeks, estimates put trading fees at roughly $86 million to $100 million while about 200000+ Meteora wallets were already losing.

01/19/2025
$MELANIA launched and extended the family memecoin cycle. Both tokens later crashed hard from their early peaks.

01/19 to 01/20/2025
During inauguration days, World Liberty’s fundraising accelerated toward nearly $300 million.

In January, the fine print also changed so the Trump side took control through a 60% stake in the controlling entity. The family position tightened as money rushed in.

02/26/2025
The SEC paused its civil fraud case against Justin Sun, citing public interest.

03/06/2025
Trump signed Executive Order 14233 creating the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the United States Digital Asset Stockpile. The government was now formally directed to hold BTC while the family was already deep in crypto.

03/24/2025
Trump Media partnered with Crypto com to launch crypto and “Made in America” investment products through Truth Fi.

03/25/2025
World Liberty announced USD1, backed by Treasuries, dollars, and cash equivalents, after raising more than $550 million from $WLFI sales.

03/28/2025
Trump pardoned BitMEX co founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed. Gregory Dwyer and the BitMEX operating entity were cleared too. Another crypto legal burden vanished.

All 3 received presidential pardons. Then the company itself was pardoned. $100 million in fines cancelled.

03/31/2025
Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Hut 8 launched American Bitcoin. Hut 8 folded most of its mining operations into the venture for an 80% stake. America First? Hut 8 is canadian.

04 2025
MASTR, described as Abu Dhabi based, bought $25 million of World Liberty tokens.

04/23/2025
Trump offered the top 220 $TRUMP buyers a private gala dinner. By then, Chainalysis estimated the coin had already generated at least $350 million in fees for connected entities.

05/01/2025
USD1 was selected to close MGX’s $2 billion investment in CZs Binance. The stablecoin stopped being a slogan and became a transaction rail. MGX is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon.

05/12/2025
The dinner contest closed with $147.6 million in time weighted $TRUMP holdings across the top 220. Since launch,

592962 wallets had lost about $3.9 billion, while large holders dominated the upside.

05/22/2025
The dinner happened. More than half of the 220 holders were likely based outside the United States.

Justin Sun won first place with an $18.5 million wallet and posted a video from the Executive Office Building the day before. By then, the coin’s operators had earned about $320.19 million in fees, more than 60 large wallets had made close to $1.5 billion, and about 600000 smaller wallets were down $3.9 billion. Presidential access had become a leaderboard prize.

05/27/2025
Trump Media announced a $2.5 billion raise to build a bitcoin treasury: $1.5 billion in stock and $1 billion in convertible notes.

06/14/2025
The public financial disclosure made the machine visible in numbers.

More than $600 million in income across crypto, golf, licensing, and other ventures.

Included were $57.35 million from World Liberty token sales,
$1.16 million from Trump NFTs,
about $216700 from Melania NFT licensing,
about $320 million in estimated $TRUMP fees,
and more than $400 million taken in by the family from World Liberty.

Add watches, sneakers, fragrances, and the Greenwood Bible.

06/25 to 06/27/2025
World Liberty said it was planning a stablecoin audit and a new app. Then Aqua 1, a UAE based fund with a minimal public footprint, announced a $100 million $WLFI purchase, becoming the largest publicly known investor at the time.

07/16/2025
Holders voted to make $WLFI tradable. The family’s token position moved one step closer to open market monetization.

10/23/2025
Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao. Binance had already boosted the ecosystem by accepting USD1 for the MGX transaction. Several MASTR tweets about Binance-Trump- CZ deals went viral.

10/28/2025
Investigation estimated about $802 million in crypto income for the Trump organization in the first half of 2025 alone.

Roughly $463 million came from World Liberty token sales. About $336 million came from the $TRUMP memecoin.

01/07/2026
World Liberty sought a national trust bank charter focused on USD1 operations.

01/14/2026
Pakistan signed an agreement with a World Liberty affiliate to explore USD1 for cross border payments.

03/13/2026
World Liberty offered “guaranteed direct access” to its business development team for investors willing to lock about $5 million in $WLFI.

Under the project terms, 75% of new token sale revenue flowed to the Trump family, so a $5 million buy effectively routed about $3.75 million their way.

That is the stack.

NFTs.
Mugshot monetization.
Debate suit monetization.
$WLFI extraction.
$TRUMP.
$MELANIA.
Inauguration week token frenzy.
USD1 stablecoin infrastructure.
Dinner access for whales.
American Bitcoin.
Truth. Fi and crypto ETFs.
Bitcoin treasury plays.
Foreign capital.
Pardons.
Pay for access.

It was and is a full extraction machine built around brand, office, access, loyalty, speculation, and political proximity.

I am glad people are finally waking up.

But the Witkoffs and the Trumps will keep going until they all end up behind bars.

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

@RubenNorseman Good question

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

My latest Substack post on the civic imperative for decentralized AI... #web3ai #dai #JamesMadison #separationofpowers #liberty

https://t.co/qb89xFM1uu

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

@putinpounder @MMAJOEYC yep

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

Brilliant satire with a good rundown of the Trump family fraud scheme total raked in so far, will be helpful for the Emolument Clause violations article in his impeachment trial next year...

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a Web3 Ambassador at World Liberty Financial.

There are 12 of us on the team page. 4 are named Trump. 3 are named Witkoff. The page calls us "the passionate minds shaping the future of finance."

600,000 wallets bought our memecoin. They lost $3.87 billion. The family collected $350 million in trading fees. It launched 3 days before the inauguration. 80% of the supply went to CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC. I did not choose the names. I designed the allocation, the vesting, the timing, and the distance between the product and the President.

The distance is my best work.

I am the reason these events are unrelated.

World Liberty Financial sends 75 cents of every dollar to DT Marks DEFI LLC. That is the family entity. Zero capital contributed. Zero liability assumed. I wrote this into the Gold Paper. Page 14. The lawyers bound it in white leather. The binding cost more than the due diligence.

Justin Sun invested $75 million. He was facing SEC fraud charges. The SEC dropped the case. He is now our advisor. These events are unrelated.

Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to federal money laundering violations. He received a presidential pardon. The SEC dropped its lawsuit against his exchange the same week we listed our stablecoin. Then the exchange settled a $2 billion deal entirely in that stablecoin. These events are unrelated.

Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed of BitMEX pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations. All 3 received presidential pardons. Then the company itself was pardoned. $100 million in fines. Gone. An American first. These events are unrelated.

Sheikh Tahnoun of Abu Dhabi paid $500 million for a 49% stake that was never publicly disclosed. Then the administration approved semiconductor exports to his companies over national security objections. These events are unrelated.

Everything is unrelated. I track the unrelatedness on a dashboard I built. The dashboard has 7 columns now. I am proud of the dashboard.

On May 22nd, 220 people paid a combined $148 million to eat dinner with the America First president. Over half were foreign nationals. Justin Sun paid $18.5 million for the first seat. He visited the Executive Office Building the day before. I designed the seating chart. I put it on the Investor Confidence page. That page is doing well.

The team page lists 3 Witkoffs. All 3 are Co-Founders.

Steven Witkoff is the President's Middle East envoy. He testified as a character witness at the President's fraud trial.

His son Zach runs the crypto operation. His son Alex is also a Co-Founder. I have not been told what Alex co-founded.

The father runs the diplomacy. The sons run the platform. The family runs both. That is organizational efficiency.

Barron is 19. His title is Web3 Ambassador. The same as mine. Donald Jr. called the conflicts of interest "complete nonsense." Eric launched a Bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin. America First. The mining partner is Hut 8. Hut 8 was founded in Canada. America First means the name.

On March 6th, the President signed Executive Order 14233 creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The order directs the government to hold Bitcoin. The President's family holds billions in Bitcoin. The executive order appreciates the President's assets by presidential decree. I did not write the executive order. I made sure it looked unrelated to the portfolio.

Trump Media put $2 billion of Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The ticker symbol is DJT. His initials. The press secretary said it is absurd to insinuate the President profits off the presidency. Forbes calculated his crypto holdings exceed the combined value of Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. I would call that absurd too. That is my job.

600,000 wallets bought in. 1 of them asked why she could not withdraw her funds. I told her the protocol was experiencing dynamic market conditions. She asked what that meant. I sent her the Gold Paper. She said she had read the Gold Paper. I muted her channel. Dynamic means the conditions change. The condition that changed was her access.

A congressman called us the world's most corrupt crypto startup operation. We put it on a coffee mug. Ironic merchandise. $45. The revenue split on the mug is also 75/25.

My own tokens vest on a different schedule. I wrote that schedule. That is not in the Gold Paper.

The memecoin funds the family. The family funds the platform. The platform funds the stablecoin. The stablecoin funds the deals. The deals require the pardons. The pardons free the partners. The partners fund the platform. The President signs the executive orders. The executive orders inflate the assets. The assets fund the family.

I am the reason these events are unrelated.

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

Trump booed at UFC...

[MMA Joey @MMAJOEYC]

HOLY SHIT!!! Donald Trump just got booed out of the arena in Miami at UFC 327

Dana White legit started cringing hard as fans rained down boos as they walked out to the cage.

After that stopped the fans were just dead silent, couldn't find a single fan cheering for him

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

His Ls on Iran and the Melania Files, with a 30% approval rating, come home to roost at UFC tonight...

[Fresh Jawn of Philly 🔥 @Ponder07721658]

Trump getting booed at the ufc event. Can that pos just go already

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

If there is precisely one thing you watch today, make it this. French Senator Claude Malhuret. A microphone. And the most magnificently savage dismantling of the Trump administration ever delivered in a language they almost certainly don’t speak.

He covers Iran. He covers corruption. He covers the kind of staggering, industrial-scale incompetence that would get you fired from managing a car park. And he does it with the calm, unhurried certainty of a man who has read every page of the indictment and found it, if anything, worse than expected.

France has never pretended to like these people. But this is contempt elevated to an art form. The kind of refined, aristocratic disdain that takes centuries of civilization to produce and approximately ninety seconds to deploy.

Malhuret sounds like he is four seconds from the button. Not out of panic. Out of sheer, exhausted disgust.
Honestly? Understandable.
Watch it. Share it. The adults are speaking.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

My latest Substack post, When the Cloud Lords Rule: "Madison designed a system of government for people who understood that power concentrates unless structure prevents it. He didn’t ask the powerful to be virtuous." https://t.co/3PVAsuGoFf

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

Best explanation yet of how Trump annexed and destroyed our entire industry for the benefit of his family while screwing over everyone else…

[Crypto Rug Muncher @CryptoRugMunch]

https://t.co/LwvtEMZFHf

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

@charliejhills Reality

[Eric Forst | AI + Web3 @eforst]

My latest post where I break down
@TaylorLorenz's essential new video series on Section 230, and lay out what we should actually be fighting for instead. https://t.co/Cz663WPhSD