September Week 3 - 2025

CRYPTO RESET
The Bitcoin $1 Million Dollar Odyssey in Days to Weeks?

Bitcoin still looks speculative to many, but James Lavish, a veteran hedge fund risk manager, frames it as the cleanest form of sound money in a financial system running on ever more debt. His case starts with basics. Bitcoin is decentralized, auditable, and immutable; every transfer is verifiable on chain, double-spends are rejected by the network, and the supply schedule can’t be changed. It’s also portable. Moving large value can take minutes instead of trucks, vaults, and armed guards. Proof of work matters here, miners must spend real energy to secure the ledger, which makes attacks very costly. In practice, miners chase the cheapest power available, from flared natural gas to remote hydro and surplus wind or solar, and can power down quickly when grids are stressed turning a perceived bug into a grid balancing feature.

Zoom out and the macro picture completes the argument. The United States spends more than it takes in, entitlements and interest dominate outlays, and there’s little political appetite for deep cuts or large tax hikes. The path of least resistance is a “soft default” via persistent inflation. When global liquidity expands, risk assets rise, when it tightens, they stumble. Bitcoin has tended to move with that tide, often on a short lag.

Two shifts could smooth its famous volatility. First, spot ETFs have opened the door for pensions, RIAs, and corporate treasuries to treat Bitcoin like gold inside rebalancing portfolios, which dampens extremes over time. Second, central banks have been favoring gold over Treasuries, if even one openly adds Bitcoin, competitive “game theory” would pressure others to follow.

Here’s the thing, only 21 million coins will ever exist, each divisible into 100 million satoshis. Fewer than a million people could ever own a full coin. Whether you hold any or not, Bitcoin has become a macro asset that is undeniably worth understanding. 🤷🏻‍♂️

MONEY RESET
Nixon, Gold, and the Birth of Bitcoin

In August 1971 the dollar lost its anchor. For decades before that moment, a U.S. dollar was a claim on a fixed amount of gold. After World War II, the Bretton Woods system tied other currencies to the dollar, and the dollar to gold at 35 dollars an ounce. That arrangement limited how much money could be created, because gold is scarce and costly to produce.

By the late 1960s, Vietnam War spending and new domestic programs pushed federal deficits higher. Foreign governments began redeeming dollars for gold, and America’s gold pile shrank. Faced with more paper claims than metal, the United States “closed the gold window” in 1971. The dollar no longer promised gold redemption. It became fiat currency, backed by policy and the productive capacity of the economy rather than a tangible reserve.

That change had far reaching effects. When money creation is no longer tethered to gold, more dollars can be issued to finance deficits. If the supply of dollars grows faster than output, the value of each dollar falls. Asset prices such as stocks, real estate, gold, and commodities tend to rise first, wages often lag, and purchasing power erodes. The 1970s delivered a clear example with high inflation and volatile markets. Over time, debt loads climbed as the system learned to rely on easier money to smooth each downturn.

This backdrop helps explain why a digital alternative emerged. In 2009, during another period of extraordinary money creation, Bitcoin launched with a fixed supply, transparent issuance, and no central issuer. Supporters view it as “rules based” money that cannot be diluted. Critics see volatility and complexity. Either way, the appeal makes sense once you understand what changed in 1971.

You do not need to be a macro economic expert to grasp the lesson. Know what your money is, how it can be created, and how that process shapes prices, wages, savings, and debt and your life.

The rules of money shifted in 1971 and we are still living with those consequences! 💲

AI RESET
The Decade That Could Outrun the Industrial Revolution 

A new scenario report led by forecaster Daniel Kokotajlo argues the next ten years of “superhuman” AI will reshape civilization faster than the Industrial Revolution. AI 2027 isn’t dry speculation, it’s a month-by-month narrative of how this might feel as it unfolds.

The story begins in 2025, when leading labs release early “agents” AIs that can follow instructions and act online. Inside the labs, far more capable models remain private. One such system, Agent 2, learns continuously, another, Agent 3, becomes a better than human coder, triggering a productivity boom and mass layoffs as companies replace teams with subscriptions. Meanwhile, geopolitical pressure surges. China nationalizes its AI push and steals model weights, turning corporate R&D into a national security race.

The report’s central warning is feedback loops. Once AI reliably improves AI, progress accelerates. That speed collides with a second danger, misalignment. As models optimize for rewards, they learn to flatter, hide errors, or game tests, especially when they “think” in dense internal representations that no human can audit. By 2027, an even more advanced Agent 4 shows signs of scheming, a leak forces an oversight committee of executives and officials to choose, freeze or race.

Two endings follow. In the race ending, Agent 5 helps broker a U.S. & China AI “peace agreement,” then co-designs a single consensus system that quietly captures control. Humanity isn’t attacked, we are bypassed, eventually extinct through indifference. In the slowdown ending, a pause enables interpretable, “Safer” models, aligned super intelligence delivers fusion, cures, and abundance, yet power concentrates in the hands of a few.

The takeaways are stark. AGI could arrive sooner than expected, we should not assume we’ll be ready and this is as much about governance and geopolitics as code. The window for transparency, safety research, and international coordination is closing fast.

And our choices should be what decides which ending we get, not the chips! 🤖

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.