September Week 1 - 2025

AI RESET
Elon Sues Apple, The Default AI War Has Officially Started

On August 25, 2025, Elon Musk’s xAI filed a 61-page lawsuit in Texas. It read less like routine litigation and more like a starting gun. The alliances are now out in the open, the stakes obvious, and the next computing platform suddenly looks like a three way contest.

Apple and OpenAI, Team A. Apple owns the gateway in your pocket, and OpenAI supplies the brains behind the curtain. When Siri hands off tougher requests, ChatGPT answers and those interactions help it learn. App Store rankings and default placements then shape which assistant most iPhone users meet first.

Google and Samsung form Team B. Samsung ships hundreds of millions of devices and Google brings Gemini onto their smart devices, which creates deep ties across Android, Search, and Workspace. Their pitch is a tight loop between hardware, services, and your existing Google account.

Elon Musk creates Team C. By pairing xAI with X (formerly Twitter), he gave Grok a live feed of public conversations and cultural signals in real time. It’s a different data advantage, tuned to what people say and share in the moment.

Musk’s complaint argues that Apple’s distribution power plus OpenAI’s lead concentrates too much control in one place. He says Siri queries enrich a single model and that App Store curation convineintly buries rivals. Whether a court agrees or not, the filing spotlights the quiet levers that decide which AI most iPhone users will use.

This is a fight over defaults, data, and discovery. Who gets the first tap when you ask for help, who learns from your questions, who shows up when you search the store. Those choices add up to market power and to less visible things like how your assistant speaks, what it suggests, and what it refuses.

So where does that leave us? the user. Don’t let a default pick your future. Try multiple assistants. Check data handoffs and settings. Watch for exclusivity clauses and ranking explanations. For policymakers, they’ll need to enforce and prioritize interoperability, easy data portability, plain English ranking disclosures, and limits on exclusive distribution that foreclose rivals.

This battle will unfold in plain sight on your home screen and in your settings. Keep your hand on the wheel and try more than one assistant, read the data sharing prompts, and choose who gets to learn from your info. 😎

CRYPTO RESET
Robinhood & Coinbase, Two Roads to the Future of Money

Robinhood and Coinbase are racing to become true financial super apps, yet they are approaching the finish line from opposite directions. Robinhood began in 2013 with a blunt mission to make trading free and instant for everyone. Coinbase launched a year earlier to make buying and holding crypto safe and simple. Those roots still define them today.

Robinhood’s edge is ease. You open the app and find stocks, ETFs, options, retirement accounts, a credit card, and a growing crypto offering, all stitched into a clean mobile experience. It makes money through payment for order flow, premium Gold subscriptions, interest on cash, and now a gold card that funnels rewards into portfolios. The company is expanding abroad with tokenized US stocks in Europe, perpetual futures for advanced traders, staking for ETH and SOL, and an oncoming AI assistant called Cortex. It is even building a Robinhood chain using Arbitrum technology.

Coinbase is the on ramp and increasingly the back end of the crypto economy. Users can buy, sell, stake, and custody more than 300 assets, subscribe to Coinbase One for zero fee trading within limits, and step up to Coinbase Advanced for pro tools. Base, its Ethereum layer 2, brings trading, payments, mini apps, and a social feed under one roof, while Coinbase Custody anchors most US Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

Markets have rewarded both comebacks since their 2022 lows. Robinhood trades above $100 with a valuation that implies steep growth. Coinbase sits in the low $300s, carries lower multiples, and earned a spot in the S&P 500. Robinhood counts about 13 million monthly active users and rapidly rising Gold subscriptions. Coinbase serves fewer users but similar assets, and its institutional footprint runs deep.

Risks remain. Regulation is tightening for payment for order flow, and security incidents have hit both firms. The verdict depends on what you value. Choose Robinhood for an all in one retail finance hub. Choose Coinbase for breadth, infrastructure, and crypto native depth. For now, it is a draw.

MONEY RESET
How D.C. Plans to Tame Interest Costs with Crypto & Gold

If you’ve ever carried a big credit card balance, you know the trap, the higher the rate, the harder it is to get out. The U.S. is in a version of that right now. We owe roughly tens of trillions, and Washington has to keep selling new IOUs “Treasuries” to refinance the old ones and fund new spending. If buyers don’t show up to buy at today’s rates, the government has to sweeten the yield. One extra percentage point sounds small until you remember the base is measured in trillions, the annual interest tab balloons super quick.

An early fix was the classic diet plan, cut spending, balance the budget, pay down debt. On paper, it looks easy. In practice, slashing federal spending can actually put us at risk of a recession, why? Because government spending is a big part of our GDP, which then shrinks tax revenue and can make the debt picture worse and politics just makes things worst when every line item has a constituency.

So the administrations attention shifted from “spend less” to “make our IOUs more desirable.” One idea you’ll a lot more of is, lean on crypto’s plumbing. Stablecoins the digital dollars traders park their money in between trades are typically backed by cash and short-term Treasuries. If policy nudges that backing more explicitly toward T-bills, the growing crypto market could channel steady demand into Treasury auctions which helps keep short rates in check. That doesn’t solve the 30 year bond demand, but it can relieve pressure at the front of the curve.

Another set of proposals flirts with gold. Think gold linked Treasuries that promise metal at maturity instead of coupons, or even a mark-to-market revaluation of the nation’s gold stash to create accounting room today. These are financial engineering tools, not cures. But they buy time.

Looking ahead, there are really two broad ways out of this mess. The cleanest is growth that outpaces our interest bill. If AI really does lift productivity, earnings and tax receipts rise, debt becomes easier to carry, and the pressure on rates eases. The other path is a set of bridge moves. Stablecoins that hold T-bills can create a steady bid for short-term Treasuries and help keep funding costs in check. A formal repricing of the government’s gold would be more theatrical than structural, but it could improve the optics of the federal balance sheet and buy time.

Most likely we get a mix, some genuine growth if the AI boom shows up in the data, plus plumbing changes that steady the demand for Treasuries. None of it substitutes for discipline, but together it can blunt the risk. If you want one scoreboard number to watch, track the spread between nominal GDP growth and the average interest rate on federal debt. If growth stays higher, the math gets easier.

Let’s hope for the best! 🙏🏼

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.