October Week 1 -2025

BITCOIN RESET
Every Argument Against Bitcoin Destroyed

Adam Livingston, better known online as the “Bitcoin Wizard”, has heard every anti-Bitcoin talking point imaginable and in his viral 2025 monologue “Every Argument Against Bitcoin Destroyed,” he goes point by point, roasting critics while slipping in sharp lessons about money, energy, and trust.

Livingston opens with a jab at the financial establishment: people call Bitcoin a scam while trusting a banking system that, in his words, “pays less than a North Korean lemonade stand” and is “run by clowns with Ivy-League MBAs.”

He starts with the classic claim that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. The dollar, he argues, isn’t backed by anything tangible either. Bitcoin’s worth comes from math, energy, and fixed scarcity: only 21 million coins will ever exist.

On energy, Livingston flips the script: mining isn’t wasteful, he says, it converts otherwise stranded energy into incorruptible digital capital. “Money should cost something to create—otherwise it turns into Monopoly money,” he quips, contrasting Bitcoin’s physics-based security with fluorescent-lit bank branches and wire transfers that halt on holidays.

Price volatility is another frequent critique. Livingston argues that the swings are simply the sound of a young asset finding its market price. “Volatility is the sound of something being born,” he says, likening the dollar’s “stability” to a sedated coma patient quietly eroded by inflation.

He’s equally blunt on the crime narrative. Cash, not Bitcoin, remains the favorite tool of criminals, and less than half a percent of Bitcoin transactions are illicit. As for governments banning it, Livingston notes that “you can outlaw math, but you can’t erase it,” predicting that countries that try will merely drive talent and capital elsewhere.

On the Ponzi accusation, he points out that a true Ponzi needs a central schemer—Bitcoin has none. The real Ponzi, he suggests, lies in fractional-reserve banking and unfunded pensions.

Livingston’s punch-line is that Bitcoin is open-source, borderless, and censorship-resistant—“the exit door from the biggest con ever sold.” Equal parts comedy roast and monetary manifesto, his talk reframes familiar fears—energy use, volatility, regulation—into features of a system built to outlast politics, promising no bailouts, no central controllers, just code and consensus.

AI RESET
The AI Layoff Story Is Only Half the Truth

Across the tech world, headlines keep blaming AI for mass layoffs, but the data suggests a more complicated picture. Workers tell stories that feel painfully familiar: months of fruitless job hunts, savings drained to zero, and fresh pink slips landing just weeks into new roles.

Companies like Salesforce, Meta, Google, and Amazon claim their shifts to “AI first” strategies make thousands of workers redundant. But visa and tax records tell another story. In 2025 alone, Salesforce received 1,137 new H-1B visas, almost the same number of U.S. jobs it recently cut, while Amazon was approved for more than 10,000 H-1B positions, including over 2,300 developers for AWS. If AI were replacing engineers wholesale, why the surge in imported human talent?

Critics argue that corporations are using AI as PR cover, while offshoring or insourcing labor to cut costs. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21 percent, but profits made by foreign subsidiaries are taxed at just 10.5 percent, incentivizing companies to shift operations abroad. The strategy squeezes both American workers, who lose jobs, and visa workers, who can be underpaid and overworked because their legal status is tied to their employer.

Meanwhile, executives often profit from the headline of “AI layoffs” itself. Stock prices tend to jump after job cut announcements, boosting compensation packages linked to share performance.

AI is replacing some roles, especially language heavy jobs like customer service, content moderation, and basic copywriting, but it isn’t the sole driver of tech’s upheaval. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found 911,000 fewer jobs than expected after recent revisions, and unemployment among computer engineering grads tripled from 2.3 percent to 7.5 percent in a year.

The truth: AI is part of the disruption, but cost cutting and labor arbitrage are just as responsible, a story rarely told in the layoff headlines.

TECH RESET
Digital IDs, A Safety Net or Digital Surveillance

Around the globe, governments and tech giants are accelerating plans for unified digital ID systems a single credential that could determine where you work, what you buy, even how you interact online. Proponents such as Bill Gates frame these programs as tools for financial inclusion, while Oracle’s Larry Ellison touts them as the backbone for modern AI-driven governance.

A recent speech in the UK hinted at just how far things could go: a mandatory digital ID to work by the end of the current parliament. Advocates promise convenience—no more juggling log-ins and tighter security. But critics warn that once implemented, such IDs become “always-on” surveillance keys, centralizing everything from health records to spending habits on a single government-accessible platform.

Skeptics like Neil Oliver call it a “digital prison,” arguing that convenience is the bait, while mass data-sharing is the switch. The fear is a future of “zero-trust” society, where citizens are treated as guilty until they constantly prove their identity to shop online, log in to email, or access financial services. Combined with AI-powered analytics and satellite surveillance, opponents warn it could amount to “turn-key totalitarianism.”

For developing nations, the pitch shifts from convenience to “financial inclusion,” pointing to India’s Aadhaar and payment-rails projects as models. Yet critics argue that much of what’s promised low-cost digital payments and global access already exists in open-source, permissionless tools like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin advocates such as Jack Dorsey contend that decentralized protocols protect speech and privacy precisely because they’re not owned or altered by governments or corporations. In their view, math beats AI: cryptographic networks like Bitcoin offer borderless access and can’t be silently switched off.

The debate over digital ID boils down to trust: centralized efficiency versus individual sovereignty. As digital credentials advance, citizens face a defining question do we trade privacy for convenience, or build on open systems that keep control in our own hands?

DISCLAIMER:
This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions or investments. Please be careful and do your own research.