Everyone I know is nervous.
They just want to get it over with.
But don&rsquo;t just tune out now&mdash;this is the moment to stay sharp. Right now is the best time to pay attention.
I've been studying crypto since Bitcoin was $114. I worked on Wall Street for decades. I&rsquo;ve been studying politics for a LOT longer than that.
I've seen innovations, trends, and fads come and go. I've spotted unicorns, predicted bubbles, and watched fortunes made and lost.
(Sometimes my own.)
But what's happening right now makes those early days look like a warmup.
These three things - politics, crypto, and Wall Street - are creating an investment opportunity unlike anything we&rsquo;ve seen before.
It&rsquo;s simple:
Wall Street isn't just dipping its toes in crypto anymore - they're diving in headfirst. BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citibank: they're all rushing into a very specific corner of the crypto market.
In fact, the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink - the guy who once called Bitcoin a tool for criminals - now says this trend will create "the next generation for markets."
Without going too deep into the weeds&hellip;
Wall Street wants to put literally everything onto the blockchain - stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, Treasury bills, you name it.&nbsp;
We're talking about potentially $100 trillion worth of assets.
But here's what nobody's talking about:
Tomorrow's election could act as a massive accelerant for crypto.

ALC-Issue-11-05-24(1)

We&rsquo;re living in an epic period of change, danger, and opportunity. The economy is blowing up in our faces. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars. People are getting fired and replaced by computers. Every day, we&rsquo;re bombarded with fake news and fake data. Crypto is eating everything online. Every &ldquo;fix&rdquo; from the government makes things worse. Technology is moving too fast for anyone to keep up.
In short, the Old World has been demolished&hellip; the new world is just beginning. Alongside the greatest wealth shift in human history. We get it. People are desperate for answers and to cut through the noise. Everyone wants to become financially secure. Nobody knows who to trust. That&rsquo;s where we can help.
Altucher Confidential&nbsp;is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart. It&rsquo;s a guide West, to the new frontier. For those who are ready to hear, James Altucher and Chris Campbell provide an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. Consider&nbsp;Altucher Confidential&nbsp;your daily guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.

mobile masthead-ALTCONF

AltucherConfidential

Altucher Confidential is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart.

Altucher Confidential

Election Eve: The $100T Bet

Morgan Housel&rsquo;s confession should be studied in every high school in the world.
He said that when he was young, he wanted a Ferrari, a mansion, a Rolex&mdash;because, as he said, &ldquo;I had nothing else to offer.&rdquo;
I felt that one in my chest.
Because it&rsquo;s true for a lot of us. It was true for me.
When you don&rsquo;t yet know how to create, love, or make something meaningful, you try to buy proof that you matter.
I told him my version of that story: the years I made money, lost it, made it again, lost it again&mdash;each time convinced that this number, this deal, this investment would give me peace.
Instead, every up and down just made me more neurotic.
At one point, I told my psychiatrist, &ldquo;You can help me by writing me a check for a million dollars.&rdquo;
He said, &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t help you.&rdquo;
I hated him for it.
And of course, he was right.
<h3>Purchasing Independence </h3>
When I invited Morgan on my podcast, I knew I wasn&rsquo;t going to get the usual &ldquo;save more, compound interest, latte math&rdquo; routine.
His new book The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life reads less like a finance manual and more like a paradigm shift for anyone who&rsquo;s ever mistaken money for meaning.
And, as I expected, he said something that genuinely rewired my brain: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t view it as saving money. I view it as purchasing independence.&rdquo;
When you put away $100, you&rsquo;re not deferring joy. You&rsquo;re buying the right to choose. You&rsquo;re buying the ability to say no tomorrow. You&rsquo;re buying your way out of desperation.
And it&rsquo;s not about the marshmallow test, either.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t view it as delayed gratification,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I view it as pleasure right now.&rdquo;
Because independence feels good immediately. It&rsquo;s not a monk-like waiting game for retirement. It&rsquo;s instant Nirvana.
BUT... once you become independent, the traps become more complex.
<h3>The Downgrade Problem</h3>
Morgan told me about Harvey Firestone&mdash;the tire guy&mdash;who said every rich man he knew built a mansion, and every one of them ended up hating it.
They longed for the small cottage they started in. But they couldn&rsquo;t go back.
&ldquo;There is no going back except as a broken man,&rdquo; Firestone said.
Most people can only move in one direction&mdash;bigger, flashier, more complicated. And once you inflate your life, you can&rsquo;t deflate it without feeling like you&rsquo;ve failed.
But, on the flipside, Morgan revealed the secret benefit of wealth:&ldquo;Wealthy people aren&rsquo;t necessarily happier. They just have fewer bad days.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the best definition of wealth I&rsquo;ve ever heard.
Not yachts, not mansions, not net worth&mdash;just fewer bad days.
Maybe it&rsquo;s even the best system for creating lasting wealth. Just aim to have a better day than yesterday every single day.
1% better every day.
<h3>The Ferrari Fallacy </h3>
We also talked about envy. How people spend money to signal things they think others will admire&mdash;but those &ldquo;others&rdquo; are barely paying attention.
That gets back to the Ferrari fallacy.
&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not even thinking about you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re thinking about themselves.&rdquo;
Nobody cares that you have a Ferrari. They care that they don&rsquo;t have one. They don&rsquo;t admire you; they admire a projection of what they think they&rsquo;d be if they had what you have.
While you&rsquo;re busy trying to impress them, they&rsquo;re not thinking about you at all. They&rsquo;re stuck in their own mirror maze&mdash;just like you.
Every dollar you spend is a vote for either independence or insecurity. Most are just buying shinier cages.
Speaking of, we talked about identity&mdash;another cage.
There&rsquo;s a trap when you start saying &ldquo;I am a saver&rdquo; or &ldquo;I am an investor.&rdquo;
Once you attach I am to anything, you&rsquo;ve joined a tribe. And tribes make you stupid.
Financial advisors see it all the time: people who&rsquo;ve saved their whole lives but can&rsquo;t bring themselves to spend it in retirement. Because their identity is saving.
They&rsquo;d rather die rich than live free.
That one scared me a little. Because I could see that future version of myself&mdash;hoarding independence until it becomes another prison.
<h3>The Real Compounding</h3>
I asked him what the goal is, then&mdash;if not happiness.
He said: &ldquo;Happiness lasts five minutes. Contentment lasts a lifetime.&rdquo;
So maybe that&rsquo;s it. Save for independence, not indulgence. Buy fewer bad days.
Aim for contentment. And measure wealth not by how much you can show off&mdash;but by how quietly you can live on your own terms.
At the end, Morgan said something that stuck with me more than anything.&nbsp;
He and his wife moved houses recently, and he missed the one where his kids took their first steps.
&ldquo;When we moved, I slammed the door on compounded memories,&rdquo; he said.
Of course, those memories don&rsquo;t go away. That&rsquo;s one of the cool things about getting older. You have more compounded memories.
You can time travel in your head. You have all of this perspective, context, and you&rsquo;re more solid. It&rsquo;s easier to have fewer bad days.
(That&rsquo;s why mathematicians peak at 25 and historians peak at 69.)
We always talk about compounding money. But compounding memories&mdash;that&rsquo;s the real interest. That&rsquo;s the real wealth no market can crash.
So instead of getting a new Ferrari&hellip;
<a href="https://lnk.to/JASMH01">Listen to the full conversation here. It&rsquo;s free. You won&rsquo;t regret it.</a>

alc-10-17-25-featured

The Ferrari Fallacy

The Louvre!
The place where the Mona Lisa hangs out. The museum that holds more cultural turning points than any other building in history.
I&rsquo;m in a brand-new documentary called The Art of Disruption: Bittensor and the New Intelligence Economy.
It was filmed while I was in Paris at the Proof of Talk conference&mdash;held at the Louvre&mdash;and was released just this week.
I&rsquo;ll break down why I&rsquo;m so bullish on Bittensor. And why you should check it out.
<h3>From Internet &rarr; Bitcoin &rarr; Bittensor</h3>
Every once in a while, a &ldquo;virgin landscape&rdquo; opens up.
In the &rsquo;80s, it was coding. Anyone who mastered it could become a billionaire.
In the &rsquo;90s, it was the internet. Then the smartphone app boom.
Then crypto. Ethereum.
Now? It&rsquo;s decentralized AI.
That&rsquo;s what Bittensor is. A global marketplace where intelligence itself becomes a commodity.
Think of it this way:
<ul>
<li>Bitcoin turned electricity into money.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Ethereum turned contracts into code.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Bittensor turns intelligence into a marketplace you can actually build businesses on.</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s not hype. It&rsquo;s not theory. I&rsquo;ve seen it firsthand. I talked to a lot of people in the documentary.
It was one of the turning points where I became so bullish on TAO.
<h2>Why the Documentary Matters</h2>
In the film, you&rsquo;ll hear from Jacob Steeves (the founder), PhDs, GPU architects, hedge fund managers, open-source venture capitalists, and subnet builders doing things like drug discovery, 3D design, and large-scale compute.
Some of them compared TAO to &ldquo;digital commodities.&rdquo; Others said it&rsquo;s &ldquo;digital capitalism.&rdquo; One called it &ldquo;as big as the internet.&rdquo;
Me? I predicted this: &ldquo;The first one-person billion-dollar business will be built inside the TAO ecosystem.&rdquo;
And I believe that.
Why? Because the infrastructure is already here.
Bittensor gives you access to tens of thousands of GPUs &mdash; more than what OpenAI used to create ChatGPT. Only instead of raising $100 billion in Silicon Valley, you can spin up a subnet, incentivize miners, and build an AI startup for relative pennies.
That arbitrage is insane. And it won&rsquo;t last forever.
<h2>Obsession = Success</h2>
Here&rsquo;s what else I noticed in Paris: the community is obsessed.
And obsession is the one common ingredient in every massive success story I&rsquo;ve ever seen.
Bitcoiners were obsessed. Internet pioneers were obsessed. App store kids were obsessed.
Now? The Bittensor community is obsessed.
Not with price charts (okay, maybe a little), but with building.
New billion-dollar subnet ideas are popping up every week. Some are already competing with centralized incumbents and winning. Others are experimenting with things nobody&rsquo;s ever tried.
It&rsquo;s the kind of messy, experimental, chaotic energy that actually changes the world.
<h2>The Louvre Was the Perfect Backdrop</h2>
The Louvre has always been about capturing civilization&rsquo;s turning points in art.
The Renaissance. The Enlightenment. Revolutions and upheavals.
This time, the &ldquo;art&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t on the walls. It&rsquo;s in the code. It&rsquo;s in the incentives. It&rsquo;s in the people building crazy, ambitious things on Bittensor subnets.
That&rsquo;s why it was the perfect place for this documentary.
And why &mdash; if you&rsquo;re reading this &mdash; it might be the perfect time to dive deeper.
Look, I&rsquo;m not saying everyone should buy TAO. What I am saying is: pay attention. Virgin landscapes don&rsquo;t open up often. When they do, they don&rsquo;t stay &ldquo;virgin&rdquo; for long.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDNBQ52M8k">Here&rsquo;s the full documentary</a>.

ALC-Issue-09-26-25(Featured)

Bonjour, Bittensor!

Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s death was a shock.
Not just because of the violence itself. Or the endless looping of his death on social media.
But because of what came after&mdash;millions of people watching, arguing, and spiraling into their corners.
The entire event became less about a man and more about the way we talk&mdash;or fail to talk&mdash;to one another.
So I wanted to have a conversation about how we can talk to each other now, in this bizarre, divided, dopamine-addicted, chaos-entrepreneur culture we live in.
That&rsquo;s why I asked Charles Duhigg back on the podcast.
You might know him from The Power of Habit. His new book is Super Communicators. It&rsquo;s about how to have better conversations in a world that&rsquo;s tearing itself apart through bad ones.
If there&rsquo;s one skill that can make or break everything, it&rsquo;s this.
<h3>The Hardwired Superpower</h3>
Communication isn&rsquo;t about transmitting information.
That&rsquo;s the byproduct.
The real evolutionary function of communication is connection.
When we feel heard, our brain releases oxytocin (the bonding hormone), which reduces stress and increases trust.
Homo sapiens thrive because we figured out how to feel kinship with each other, even in disagreement.
Our biggest failures come when we lose that sense of connection.
I watched some of his debates.
That&rsquo;s the thing Kirk did well&mdash;even when you despised him, he&rsquo;d mirror you, loop back your words, keep the temperature low enough that at the end of the night, most (though obviously not all) would walk away thinking, &ldquo;At least he heard me.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s what Charles calls &ldquo;super communication.&rdquo;
The brain uses mirror neurons to reflect emotions back at each other. When you repeat or paraphrase what someone says (&ldquo;looping&rdquo;), their brain perceives it as deep listening.
They immediately trust you more.
<h3>Three Conversations at Once</h3>
Charles broke one of the biggest problems with how we communicate.
Neuroscience says there are three types of conversations:
<ul>
<li>Emotional</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Practical</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Social</li>
</ul>
Here&rsquo;s the problem:
When you&rsquo;re in different conversations at the same time, you can&rsquo;t hear one another.
When one person is having an emotional conversation and the other is stuck in a practical frame, their brains literally light up in different networks.
An example:
A star employee is upset because they feel unappreciated (emotional/limbic brain).
The manager responds with a spreadsheet of productivity metrics (practical/prefrontal cortex).
Coworkers start gossiping, speculating, or joking about &ldquo;office drama&rdquo; (social/orbitofrontal cortex).
The employee quits.
If our frames aren&rsquo;t aligned, people literally can&rsquo;t process each other&rsquo;s words as intended.
It&rsquo;s probably the #1 thing that ruins relationships: we think we&rsquo;re having the same conversation, but we&rsquo;re not.
<h3>When You&rsquo;re Furious, Get Curious</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the trick Charles gave me (and now I&rsquo;m giving to you):
When you feel furious&hellip; get curious.
Anger narrows your focus (amygdala hijack). Curiosity broadens it, activating the dopamine reward system&mdash;making people more receptive.
Ask a deep question.
Not the lazy &ldquo;what hospital do you work at?&rdquo; kind of question. The &ldquo;why did you go to med school in the first place?&rdquo; kind.
Ask someone on the opposite side of an issue: Why is this important to you?
And then shut up. Listen so hard you can repeat back what they said, maybe better than they said it.
Suddenly, the cliches fall away.
Nobody says &ldquo;guns don&rsquo;t kill people&rdquo; when you ask them how their dad taught them to hunt. Nobody says &ldquo;ban all guns&rdquo; when they tell you about their kid hiding under a desk during a shooting.
The brain encodes disagreement as a threat. The same circuits as physical pain light up. But if someone feels understood first, those circuits quiet down.
That&rsquo;s where connection lives.
<h3>The Real Challenge</h3>
Charles left me with homework, and I&rsquo;m passing it on:
This week, find someone you disagree with. Ask them why that belief matters to them. Don&rsquo;t argue. Just listen.
It&rsquo;s hard.
It&rsquo;s going to feel like holding back a sneeze. But if you can do it, you&rsquo;ll feel something most of us haven&rsquo;t felt in a while&mdash;human connection from across the aisle.
The superpower isn&rsquo;t victory&mdash;it&rsquo;s repair. The fabric&rsquo;s fraying, and what we need are people mending threads, not yanking them loose.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_XY07g2e0">Click here to listen to the whole conversation</a>.

ALC-Issue-09-24-25(Featured)

Debate Is Dead. What’s Next?

In 1998, the &ldquo;smartest guys in the room&rdquo; blew themselves up.
Long-Term Capital Management&mdash;run by Nobel Prize winners&mdash;was leveraged to the gills.
Russia defaulted, the trades collapsed, and Wall Street braced for Armageddon.
Panic everywhere.
Phones ringing off the hook. Headlines screaming &ldquo;Systemic Collapse.&rdquo;
But here&rsquo;s what you didn&rsquo;t see on CNBC: while everyone was unloading positions at any price, a few players were stepping in to buy. They didn&rsquo;t know exactly how it would end&mdash;only that fear had forced prices far below reality.
And when the Fed cut rates and the panic flipped, those positions exploded higher.
Although it gives people PTSD when I bring it up&hellip;
The same thing happened in 2009.
Banks looked finished. Citi at a buck. Bank of America at three. Every headline said &ldquo;nationalization.&rdquo; But people like David Tepper started buying anyway. (He later said it felt like he was bidding alone in an empty room.)
Then the government backstopped the banks. Prices went vertical. His fund made billions.
Here&rsquo;s the pattern: it&rsquo;s not the bailout that made the trade. It was the panic. The bailout was just the spark that flipped the trade. Big money is ALWAYS made by standing ready while everyone else is puking shares.
I&rsquo;ve got a friend who&rsquo;s been exploiting these setups for decades. He can spot them better than anyone.
He doesn&rsquo;t bother predicting what the Fed or regulators will do. He studies where fear (or greed, or panic, or stupidity) has created formations that are stretched to breaking. When that happens, the reversals are almost always violent.
I like to think of these moves as supernovas&mdash;the kind of trades that start as quiet accumulations and end as brutal explosions.
Although these supernovas erupt during major crises, you&rsquo;ll find smaller ones every week in individual stocks. Why? Because human behavior doesn&rsquo;t change. Mispositioning is everywhere.
Fear drives as many trades as greed&mdash;and that&rsquo;s what fuels the setups.
BUT the setup that has me excited right now is different.
Why? Because it&rsquo;s in a sector primed for an infestation of supernovas.
<h3>Why AI&hellip; Why Now? </h3>
Again, these moves are rare. But when they happen&hellip;
They don&rsquo;t crawl higher. They detonate. The bigger the base, the higher in space.
And right now, the conditions for detonation are here again.
Which brings us back to AI. Six months ago, everyone wanted to own it. Today, many names are treated like landmines.
That&rsquo;s the fuel.
Because underneath that fear, a HUGE setup is coiling in one stock in particular.
It&rsquo;s not about the Fed, or GDP, or some grand narrative. It&rsquo;s about where the crowd is leaning too far and where the market flips. And right now, the crowd is leaning the wrong way in AI.
All it takes is a tiny spark. One piece of good news. One unexpected breakthrough. One earnings beat. One shift in the narrative. One viral tweet.
Prices rip.
It&rsquo;s the same pattern we&rsquo;ve seen again and again.
Fear creates the setup. Positioning coils the spring. And the explosion&mdash;when it comes&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t give you time to tiptoe back in.
That&rsquo;s why one of the smartest guys I know is zeroed in on AI right now. Because when this one blows, it won&rsquo;t be a grind. It&rsquo;ll be a supernova.
And it's all set to begin TOMORROW, September 24.
Doug and I just sat down with him to break this down. He laid out how the setup works, why it&rsquo;s happening in AI today, and&mdash;at the end&mdash;he gave away one of his supernova trades for free.
<a href="https://pro.trendlabs.com/m/2480847">Click here to watch the full interview</a>.

ALC-Issue-09-23-25(Featured)

Feel the Fear, Profit Anyway

Let me tell you a story about bubble wrap.
Back when I was running a hedge fund, I put this story into my 2004 book Trade Like a Hedge Fund.
It taught me a lesson I never forgot.
It was so powerful, one of my partners even threatened to burn all of the copies if I published the book.
No&hellip; it&rsquo;s not about the plastic you squeeze &ldquo;pop-pop&rdquo; when you&rsquo;re bored.
It&rsquo;s about the company called Sealed Air&mdash;the makers of bubble wrap&mdash;and how it almost went bankrupt overnight.
At least, that&rsquo;s what everyone thought in 2002.
<h3>How panic makes the pros rich&hellip; </h3>
In 2002, the stock looked great at $39. Solid company, good cash flows.
Then something terrible happened: a report tied them to asbestos liabilities from a company they had acquired.
Suddenly, it looked like Sealed Air was on the hook for billions.
Two days later, the stock was at $13.
That&rsquo;s not a typo. $39 to $13 in 48 hours.
Every analyst, every trader, every newspaper headline screamed &ldquo;Bankruptcy!&rdquo;
But it was all phony.
It was just panic, fear, and lawyers making billable hours.
A few days later, the courts agreed. The liability wasn&rsquo;t Sealed Air&rsquo;s problem.
The stock went supernova.
It didn&rsquo;t just shoot back to its original price of $39. It shot way higher, above $50.
Back then, the lesson was seared into me: people panic first, think later. And if you can keep your cool while everyone else is screaming &ldquo;fire,&rdquo; you can make a lot of money.
<h3>Here&rsquo;s the part I&rsquo;ve never talked about&hellip;</h3>
As I said, when I told my partners I was writing this book, one swore he&rsquo;d buy every copy and burn them.
Why? Because on Wall Street, the first rule is: never share your edge. And we had a lot of edges.
I published it anyway.
BUT&hellip;
Of all the stories I included, few noticed the deeper strategy in the bubble wrap story.
And I didn&rsquo;t talk about it much afterward because&mdash;honestly&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t simple.
The setups aren&rsquo;t easy to spot. You need patience, discipline, and guts.
But, if you get them right, they can make you richer than any strategy in that book. 
And hedge funds use it to make BILLIONS.
So I let this strategy sit for twenty years.
But now something&rsquo;s happening I can&rsquo;t ignore.
<h3>AI is Going Supernova </h3>
Here&rsquo;s what I learned&mdash;and shared back in 2004: exploitable edges don&rsquo;t come from fancy and complex models.
They come from human nature. Fear creates forced sellers. Greed pushes them into bad bets.
And when the setup flips, it&rsquo;s violent.
That&rsquo;s what creates supernova moves in stocks.
That&rsquo;s what happened with bubble wrap in 2002.
And it&rsquo;s also happening in AI in 2025.
Investors panic at every headline&mdash;&ldquo;overvalued,&rdquo; &ldquo;bubble,&rdquo; &ldquo;regulators cracking down,&rdquo; &ldquo;profits years away.&rdquo;
And yet&hellip;
Hedge funds are making a killing on the other side of it.
One trader I&rsquo;ve known a long time is making these same setups pay off again and again. He&rsquo;s not just one of the best I know&mdash;he&rsquo;s one of the best in America. 
And right now, he&rsquo;s zeroed in on AI.
I&rsquo;m excited about what he&rsquo;s doing, so I wanted to share it with you.
Doug and I just interviewed him to talk ALL about how it works. (Watch <a href="https://new.trendlabs.com/m2/10451">until</a> <a href="https://new.trendlabs.com/m2/10451">the end</a> for a FREE supernova recommendation.) <a href="https://new.trendlabs.com/m2/10451">Click here for the full interview with me and Doug</a>.

ALC-Issue-09-22-25(Featured)

James Altucher’s Book of Dangerous Ideas

For most, "settling down&rdquo; feels like the only path.
That&rsquo;s what you do: you meet someone, you lock it in, and you pray they don&rsquo;t figure out you&rsquo;re actually a lunatic.
Case Kenny&mdash;author of The Opposite of Settling&mdash;flips that idea on its head. On my podcast, he dropped the heart of his book: don&rsquo;t settle down.
Settle up.
If you&rsquo;re not familiar, Case is a writer and podcaster who built a big audience by blending relationships and personal growth.
I asked him what he meant by &ldquo;settling up&rdquo;. He gave me a few gold nuggets I won&rsquo;t forget.
I don&rsquo;t know who needs to hear my takeaways from this episode (and his book). But, if you&rsquo;re like me&hellip; you&rsquo;ll probably wish you had them tattooed on your forehead 20 years ago.
(Most people underestimate #2 and are guilty of catfishing themselves (#5).)
<h3>1. The Right Relationship Makes You More Independent</h3>
Most people assume a relationship means trading freedom for compromise&mdash;less travel, less ambition, less of themselves.
So when it&rsquo;s time to &ldquo;settle down,&rdquo; they choose a partner who boxes them in.
Case flipped the script.
He realized that the right person doesn&rsquo;t clip your wings&mdash;they hand you a bigger set. He said he actually feels more independent now that he&rsquo;s with the right person.
Takeaway: If a relationship feels like it&rsquo;s closing doors, it&rsquo;s the wrong one. The right one opens more.
<h3>2. You&rsquo;re More Likable Than You Think</h3>
Case cited research on something called the liking gap. After conversations, people underestimate how much others like them.
Translation: you walk out of a coffee date thinking, I was awkward, they probably hate me, when in reality they were impressed.
This also creates a scarcity mindset. We think, Oh no, someone finally likes me, I&rsquo;d better lock it down before they change their mind.
That&rsquo;s how people settle.
Takeaway: Trust that you&rsquo;re more likable than you think. Scarcity leads to bad decisions. Confidence leads to clarity.
<h3>3. Weird &gt; Authentic</h3>
I hate the word &ldquo;authentic.&rdquo;
Nobody knows what it means anymore. Everyone&rsquo;s performing authenticity.
Case says forget authentic. Be weird. The non-conforming traits you think are too much&mdash;the too-loud laugh, the obsession with chess, the job that makes no sense to your parents&mdash;those are the magnets.
They repel the wrong people and attract the right ones.
Takeaway: Double down on your weird. It&rsquo;s not baggage&mdash;it&rsquo;s the filter.
<h3>4. Playfulness Is the Point</h3>
Relationships aren&rsquo;t supposed to feel like business partnerships. Case says the real purpose is playfulness. Shared humor. Creating new jokes and memories together.
That one resonates most.
My happiest relationships aren&rsquo;t the most &ldquo;stable&rdquo; or &ldquo;serious.&rdquo; They&rsquo;re the most playful.
Takeaway: If you can&rsquo;t laugh together, you can&rsquo;t last together.
<h3>5. Your Brain is Catfishing You</h3>
Case also talked about the peak-end rule.
Our brains remember relationships by their highest moments and their endings. That&rsquo;s why you look back and say, &ldquo;It was all bad&rdquo; or &ldquo;It was the best I&rsquo;ll ever have.&rdquo;
Both are wrong.
The danger of the peak-end rule is that it traps you in a distorted memory loop. If you decide the whole thing was &ldquo;all bad,&rdquo; you carry bitterness into every new relationship, building walls no one can climb. If you decide it was &ldquo;the best I&rsquo;ll ever have,&rdquo; you compare everyone new to a fantasy highlight reel that no real person can match.
And just like falling for a catfish, if you buy into it, you end up chasing ghosts, clinging to nostalgia, or shutting down completely instead of seeing the present for what it is.
Takeaway: Don&rsquo;t villainize your ex or the chapter you just lived. Appreciate the good memories without letting nostalgia&mdash;or bitterness&mdash;dictate your future.
<h3>Why This Matters</h3>
I wish I had this conversation 20 years ago.
Case Kenny&rsquo;s framework isn&rsquo;t just for dating. It&rsquo;s a mindset shift: don&rsquo;t shrink yourself to fit an expectation.
Expand yourself with someone who sees you, weirdness and all.
That&rsquo;s why I think everyone should <a href="https://jamesaltuchershow.com/episode/case-kenny-stop-settling-down-and-start-settling-up">listen to this episode</a>.
Because love isn&rsquo;t about compromise&mdash;it&rsquo;s about amplification.
Stop settling down. Start settling up.

ALC-Issue-09-17-25(Featured)

Your Brain Is Catfishing You

Last week, I sat inside Rick Harrison&rsquo;s pawn shop in Las Vegas&mdash;yes, the shop from Pawn Stars. 
This isn&rsquo;t a normal shop. It&rsquo;s a landmark. Tourists line up outside just to peek inside. The TV show has been running for over 20 seasons, almost 750 episodes.
In TV years, that&rsquo;s basically immortality.
The air was a mix of dust, money, and stories. Stories of people who walked in broke, desperate, embarrassed, or sometimes just curious.
Stories of objects that outlived their owners and ended up here, waiting to be turned into cash.
Everywhere I looked there was another absurd and beautiful one: a Civil War coin that once traveled across the Atlantic before being melted down into another country&rsquo;s money. A cowboy hat worn by a gangster who made Las Vegas what it is. Samurai swords that could&rsquo;ve killed a man 400 years ago. A rocket engine touched by Neil Armstrong.
&ldquo;Every object is a story,&rdquo; said Rick.
Some are true, some are exaggerated, some are lies that people told themselves so often they started to believe them.
And Rick? He&rsquo;s the curator, the dealer, the confessor. He knows what&rsquo;s fake, what&rsquo;s real, and what&rsquo;s just sentimental dust. Better than anyone else, at least.
In many ways, Rick&rsquo;s a curator of stories.
That&rsquo;s fascinating.
But there&rsquo;s an even bigger reason I&rsquo;m fascinated by his job.
<h3>The Best Business Model Ever </h3>
He calls pawn shops &ldquo;the oldest form of banking.&rdquo;
I didn&rsquo;t know this:
Seven million households in America don&rsquo;t have a bank account. That number shocked me. Even more shocking? About 20% of adults can&rsquo;t get one.
If you&rsquo;ve ever bounced too many checks, there&rsquo;s a secret system banks use to blacklist you. You&rsquo;re done. No account. No ATM card.
So where do you go when you need cash? A pawn shop.
Rick explains the math like it&rsquo;s the simplest thing in the world. You bring in a Rolex worth ten grand. You only need $500 for the weekend. He gives you $500.
You come back a month later, pay him $550, and you get your watch back. Ten percent interest. If you don&rsquo;t come back? He just keeps the Rolex. No collections, no lawsuits, no angry phone calls.
Done.
That&rsquo;s it. That&rsquo;s the whole model. And it&rsquo;s been running since before credit cards, before ATMs, before &ldquo;banking hours&rdquo; ruled your life.
And it&rsquo;s the best business model ever.
It&rsquo;s like banking, but without the lawyers, the regulators, and the risk. It&rsquo;s simple, ancient, cash-based, and designed to win no matter what.
It&rsquo;s actually better than banking because it thrives where banks fail. It serves people who need it most. And it turns bad luck, history, and story into good luck&mdash;over and over again.
It&rsquo;s an infinite luck machine.
<h3>How Stigma Killed the Pawners </h3>
Pawn shops used to be normal. Up until the 1950s, they were the number one form of consumer credit. Charlie Chaplin&rsquo;s breakout movie was The Pawn Broker.
Then came the stigma. The 60s and 70s painted pawn shops as dens of desperation.
Today, people still hesitate to buy a diamond ring there&mdash;even though the same &ldquo;new&rdquo; diamond at Tiffany&rsquo;s may very well have passed through Rick&rsquo;s counter in Las Vegas.
Pawn shops feed the retail jewelry industry. And the irony is: people still think they&rsquo;re &ldquo;too good&rdquo; to shop at one.
<h3>Lessons From Las Vegas </h3>
Rick loves history. You can&rsquo;t do this job without loving history. Coins, books, swords, art, watches&mdash;they all carry the DNA of a time and place.
He also loves the hustle. He doesn&rsquo;t need the money anymore. He just likes doing it.
He calls himself weird. He sleeps four hours a night. But I think he just loves being in the middle of all these stories.
The pawn shop isn&rsquo;t really about stuff.
It&rsquo;s about the thin line between value and story, money and memory, reality and illusion.
&ldquo;Every object is a story,&rdquo; Rick said.
But the real story I loved was Rick himself: a man who built a business on the things we can&rsquo;t keep, the memories we have to sell, and the history we never knew we were holding in our hands.
<a href="https://jamesaltuchershow.com/episode/rick-harrison-the-pawn-business-hidden-histories-and-the-best-model-in-banking">Click here to listen to the whole show.</a>
You won&rsquo;t regret it.

ALC-Issue-09-12-25(Featured)

How to Become a Pawn Star

Are podcasts the new books? Or are they the new cigarettes?
I just went on Ryan Holiday&rsquo;s podcast. And we spent a lot of time on that question.
Ryan and I are both podcasters.
So it&rsquo;s a little like two bartenders debating whether alcohol is medicine or poison&mdash;while we&rsquo;re pouring each other another drink.
But it&rsquo;s an important question because podcasts have become the soundtrack of our commutes, our workouts, even our insomnia.
Here&rsquo;s what happened&hellip;
And why this is probably one of the most important conversations of our time.
<h3>Why Everyone Knows Everything</h3>
We talked about writing, noise vs. silence, algorithms, and why everyone now feels like they have to have an opinion on everything.
These are hard habits to break.
Because the truth is, most of the time I have no idea what&rsquo;s happening in Ukraine, the Fed, or TikTok&rsquo;s algorithm. And yet I&rsquo;m supposed to have a &ldquo;take.&rdquo;
Silence is violence, they say. But isn&rsquo;t noise violence too?
That&rsquo;s the trap: podcasts give you this illusion of depth when, most of the time, there&rsquo;s nothing there. It&rsquo;s just noise filling silence.
When silence is probably the antidote.&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s an inherent danger to the medium itself.
When you&rsquo;re stuck in traffic or grinding on a treadmill, you&rsquo;re not fact-checking&mdash;you&rsquo;re marinating, which is why nonsense can sound profound in audio when it would collapse in print.
But the problem isn&rsquo;t podcasts. The problem is us.
Our dopamine systems are being hijacked. If the clip has a red-faced thumbnail and the word &ldquo;DESTROYS&rdquo; in all caps, we&rsquo;re there.
And meanwhile, books&mdash;the slow-brew wisdom machines&mdash;sit neglected. Books take years. Podcasts take two hours and a Starbucks.
<h3>Podcasts Are Cigarettes? </h3>
Podcasts can be thoughtful, connective, even life-changing&mdash;like books. But they can also be addictive, shallow, and manipulative&mdash;like cigarettes.
The tension isn&rsquo;t resolvable. It&rsquo;s the price of the medium.
So are podcasts destroying our brains? Maybe.
But they&rsquo;re also giving us stories, connections, reminders that we&rsquo;re not alone in being confused, old, tired, creative, or just trying not to make &ldquo;old man moves&rdquo; at the chessboard of life.
And sometimes, they remind me why I started writing in the first place: not to be a slave to the listener, or to the algorithm, but to be free.
Anyway, if you want to hear me wrestle with all this (and also my one weird Bono story), the full conversation is here:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFNaJkThbTw&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">Are Podcasts Destroying Our Brains? | James Altucher and Ryan Holiday</a>

ALC-Issue-09-01-25(Featured)

Podcasts Are the New Cigarettes

College is the most expensive bad decision most people make: debt, wasted years, and a false sense of &ldquo;preparation&rdquo; for a world that doesn&rsquo;t exist anymore.
The first time I said this&mdash;in 2007&mdash;I got a death threat.
Now? It barely raises an eyebrow.
For years, the problem was obvious. The alternative wasn&rsquo;t.
Now we have one.
It&rsquo;s called The Preparation. 
Not theory. A test case. A book my friend Matt Smith wrote with Doug Casey.
Matt&rsquo;s son, Maxim, didn&rsquo;t sit in classrooms. He lived through cycles: EMT work, wildfire fighting, building houses, ranching, starting businesses, traveling with purpose.
I just had an hour long conversation with Matt on my podcast about the book. If you have kids&mdash;or know anyone with them&mdash;it&rsquo;s mandatory listening (and reading).
This conversation hit home for me.
Because I&rsquo;ve been shouting about the same thing&mdash;first into the wind&mdash;for almost 20 years.
<h3>Death Threats &nbsp;</h3>
In 2007, I wrote in the Financial Times that college was a waste of time. Nobody said this then. It was heresy.
I got hate mail.
People said, &lsquo;Well you went to college so now you are trying to keep others beneath you&rsquo;&hellip;
One person threatened to kill me&mdash;turned out he was a senior at Brown University.
But I looked at the math: $200,000 sunk for a degree, years lost, and for what? A shot at a job you weren&rsquo;t even prepared for.
In 2010, I doubled down.
I wrote &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Send Your Kids to College&rdquo; in Huffington Post. I went on Yahoo&rsquo;s Tech Ticker and said it straight: college is a scam.
Tuition was rising 10x faster than inflation. Kids were drowning in debt. I told parents: take that $200,000, put it in bonds or let your kid start a business.
They&rsquo;ll learn more failing at a startup than partying four years away.
People started asking me, &ldquo;OK James, if not college, then what?&rdquo;
So I wrote 8 Alternatives to College. 
Travel. Start a business. Create art. Write a book. Learn how to make people laugh. Join a charity. Master a game or sport. Learn by doing. 
That grew into a 2012 book, 40 Alternatives to College. 
My anti-college book made it to #1 of all college books on Amazon.
Cracks were forming.
<h3>I Failed. But She Dropped Out. </h3>
In 2017, I offered my daughter a deal: I&rsquo;ll give you the money I would&rsquo;ve spent on your tuition.
She said no.
I drove her to campus, dropped her off, and wrote an essay called I Failed to Prevent My Kid from Going to College. 
Two years later, the college came after her for $16.92 for a microwave she never broke.
They threatened her with legal action.
She dropped out. Got a job in her passion. Found an internship. Paid her own rent.
She was thriving. I wrote College Is Going Down the Drain and said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a proud father.&rdquo;
And I was.
<h3>Then COVID Hit</h3>
In late July 2020, I wrote a viral post: &ldquo;COLLEGE IS DEAD FOREVER. HERE&rsquo;S WHY: &hellip;&rdquo;
I argued the pandemic had accelerated the demise of the traditional college model.
That&rsquo;s why I like Matt Smith&rsquo;s The Preparation.
It&rsquo;s not me ranting on a blog or crunching math in an op-ed.
It&rsquo;s a working prototype. A young man skipping the $250,000 mistake and gaining actual skills, resilience, and purpose instead.
I loved this conversation.
And if you&rsquo;ve ever wondered if there&rsquo;s an alternative to the debt trap&mdash;this is it.
<a href="https://lnk.to/MSRCJAS01">Click here to listen to the full episode</a>.

ALC-Issue-08-26-25(Featured)

Why I Said College Was a Scam (and Still Do)

&ldquo;TV Producer Teams Up With Satanists to Take Down Con Artist.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s not clickbait&mdash;that actually happened.
My latest podcast guest, Jonathan Walton, was scammed out of $100,000 by a master con artist.
From that experience, he launched the Queen of the Con podcast, built a blog, and started helping other victims investigate and bring scammers to justice.
Years later, the con artist who scammed him resurfaced.
She was leading a bogus satanic church and fleecing its members.
He tracked her down, gave her location to Northern Ireland police, and ultimately helped put her back behind bars.
I just spent over an hour talking to Jonathan about how not to get scammed.
And now I&rsquo;m side-eyeing everyone I meet.
In a world full of scams, here&rsquo;s what you need to know to protect yourself.
<h3>Your New Best Friend</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the thing: master con artists don&rsquo;t try to hack your bank account.
They hack your empathy.
Jonathan learned this the expensive way&mdash;$100,000 expensive&mdash;helping an &ldquo;Irish heiress&rdquo; get her &ldquo;inheritance.&rdquo;
Sounds stupid, but from the outside, every long con sounds stupid:&nbsp;
&ldquo;How could anyone fall for that?&rdquo;
I could. You could. Anyone could.
Because when you&rsquo;re in it, you&rsquo;re living inside a carefully crafted relationship that feels organic&hellip; and even serendipitous and magical.
Like the universe is finally giving you a break.
Professional con artists operate in plain sight.
They&rsquo;re your &ldquo;new best friend,&rdquo; your &ldquo;helpful neighbor,&rdquo; your &ldquo;I-just-happen-to-know-a-guy&rdquo; social connector.
They embed themselves in your life for months or years before the ask.
<h3>The Greatest Hits of Red Flags</h3>
Jonathan&rsquo;s book, Anatomy of a Con Artist, breaks it down into 14 red flags.
My favorites:
<ol>
<li>Too Kind, Too Quick &ndash; If someone&rsquo;s acting like your maid of honor before you&rsquo;ve finished your appetizer, be suspicious.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>The TMI Trap &ndash; They &ldquo;confide&rdquo; deep, dark secrets (fake) so you&rsquo;ll reciprocate with your real ones. Now they own you.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>Beak-Wetting &ndash; They borrow a small amount, pay it back fast, then&hellip; boom, the floodgates open.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li>Stories From Far-Away Places &ndash; Harder to verify, easier to believe.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="5">
<li>Drama Is the Default &ndash; If every week is a crisis, you&rsquo;re not a friend&mdash;you&rsquo;re an ATM with emotional support.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Why You Won&rsquo;t Report Them</h3>
Here&rsquo;s the genius of the trap: once they have your secrets, you&rsquo;re afraid to go to the police because you don&rsquo;t want your stuff in a court transcript.
That&rsquo;s how they move through entire social circles without anyone comparing notes.
Jonathan says that&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s the most under-reported crime in the world.
And it&rsquo;s why he now hunts cons for fun (some people golf).
He&rsquo;s seen the same patterns in every scam&mdash;from Bernie Madoff to NFL quarterback Eric Kramer&rsquo;s secret-marriage nightmare.
The scripts don&rsquo;t change; the costumes do.
How to Not Get Played
<ul>
<li>Notice if three or more red flags stack up.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>If their origin story changes depending on who&rsquo;s listening, run.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>If they try to isolate you from someone, immediately connect with that person. Compare notes.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And, yes, sometimes the right move is just Googling them, running a background check, or even noting their license plate.</li>
</ul>
Talking to him, I realized the most dangerous scams aren&rsquo;t about greed. They&rsquo;re about care.
It&rsquo;s when your heart gets in front of your brain that you&rsquo;re toast. And that&rsquo;s why the best defense isn&rsquo;t paranoia&mdash;it&rsquo;s pattern recognition.
The scams will keep happening.
If you want the full playbook, <a href="https://lnk.to/JWJAS01">listen to the latest podcast</a>. And do it before you meet your new &ldquo;helpful&rdquo; neighbor.