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

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.

aln-08-08-25-featured

$100K Lesson Learned

Let me ask you something:
When was the last time you didn&rsquo;t need to ask anyone for permission?
For a job. For a loan. To start something. To say something.
I&rsquo;ll wait.
Because from the moment we&rsquo;re born, we&rsquo;re taught to wait for someone to pick us.
The teacher to call on us. The college to accept us. The boss to hire us. The bank to trust us. The gatekeeper to open the gate.
And if we&rsquo;re lucky&mdash;if we&rsquo;re really lucky&mdash;maybe, just maybe, we&rsquo;ll get picked.
This is the lie we were sold. That freedom comes after the promotion. After the investment. After the validation.
But real freedom&mdash;the kind that makes you wake up on fire&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t come when someone gives you permission.
It comes when you stop waiting for it.
That&rsquo;s permissionlessness.
This is why I love the Internet.
The first time I wrote a blog post, I didn&rsquo;t ask if I was allowed. The first time I published a book, I didn&rsquo;t need a publisher.
The first time I made money online, I didn&rsquo;t need to wear a tie or pitch a boardroom. I just needed an idea and a way to act on it.
Permissionlessness isn&rsquo;t just a feature. It&rsquo;s oxygen.
It&rsquo;s what lets art happen. Innovation happen. Growth happen.
But here&rsquo;s the problem:
<h3>Why the World Resists It</h3>
The system is allergic to permissionlessness.
Because if people stop asking for permission, what happens to the gatekeepers?
They lose power. They lose leverage. They lose control.
This is why they invented forms. And resumes. And college degrees. And approval processes. And &ldquo;compliance.&rdquo;
None of these are bad on their own.
But when pushed too far, they create a world where genius waits in line. Where invention gets delayed. Where innovation gets diluted.
That&rsquo;s where we are.
We turned the greatest engine of creativity&mdash;human curiosity&mdash;into a DMV line.
That&rsquo;s criminal.
And we&rsquo;re at risk of doing the same thing with AI, which is worse than criminal. It&rsquo;s suicidal.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s a future that&rsquo;s dumbed down. Permissioned to death.
Right now, we&rsquo;re letting five companies&mdash;and maybe three governments&mdash;decide what it learns, what it forgets, and who gets to use it.
They own the GPUs. They own the data. They own the story.
And the rest of us? We rent access. We get the sanitized version. The safe answer. The API with the dumbed-down limits.
But one project is showing us a different way&hellip;
<h3>The Network That Reinvents Itself</h3>
I just recorded a new episode of The TAO Pod with Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital and one of the earliest, deepest thinkers in the decentralized AI space.
We went all-in on a simple but urgent idea:
Why humanity needs permissionless AI incentives&mdash;now.
We talked about Bittensor.&nbsp;
Not as a coin or a protocol, but as something bigger: A new economic system. A neural network that never stops learning. A way for anyone, anywhere, to build intelligence&mdash;without asking permission.
This episode wasn&rsquo;t just about tech. It was about what happens if we don&rsquo;t get this right.
If AI becomes just another corporate playground, we all lose.
But if we align incentives with curiosity, competition, and freedom&mdash;we win. All of us.
I&rsquo;m not saying it has to be Bittensor. But Bittensor is in the lead.
Here&rsquo;s why:
<a href="https://lnk.to/TTP0301">Click here for the full episode of the latest TAO Pod</a>.

alc-07-30-25-featured

If This AI Fails, So Does Humanity

It&rsquo;s 1991. I&rsquo;m sitting in a computer lab, staring at a blinking cursor on a black screen.
The &ldquo;Internet&rdquo; exists, technically, but there&rsquo;s no web browser.
No Google. No Facebook. No TikTok with people dancing while promoting fake finance courses.
Just a few nerds, like me, connected by TCP/IP, typing commands like telnet and ftp into the void, hoping someone else is out there.
Fast forward to now. Most of the internet is now owned by about 10 companies.
AI? Same story. You want to build something?
Simple: Spend $40 billion on GPUs, suck half the grid dry, build a brain trust of ex-Googlers, and pray Elon doesn&rsquo;t update Grok this week.
Or&hellip;
You could use Bittensor.
And this is why I just recorded my second podcast on it with Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital&mdash;the world's first VC firm dedicated to commercial open-source software and early-stage investor in AI and open-source tech.
Bittensor doesn&rsquo;t just remind me of the early internet. It is the early internet all over again. Except this time, it comes with the right incentives baked in.
Let me break it down. (Link to the full conversation below.)
<h3>A New Kind of Internet </h3>
Did you know that salt was once a luxury? Entire economies were built around it. Rice too. Japan once measured wealth in rice.
Today, AI is the new salt, the new rice&mdash;hoarded, priced, rationed by a few mega-corps.
Bittensor makes AI a commodity. And not just a commodity&mdash;an open, decentralized, ever-evolving, permissionless ocean of intelligence.
No middleman. No API key required. No begging Google for access. Just incentives.
Imagine if Google&rsquo;s search engine wasn&rsquo;t created by Larry and Sergey in a Stanford dorm room.
Imagine instead that it emerged from thousands of people around the world competing to build faster, better web crawlers&mdash;getting paid based on performance, not pedigree.
That&rsquo;s Bittensor.
But instead of spiders crawling the web, it&rsquo;s AI models crawling data, training on it, improving with every iteration, and getting rewarded in a token called $TAO.
Just like Bitcoin rewards miners for hashing, Bittensor rewards miners for intelligence.
<h3>Why This Scares Big Tech</h3>
Right now, AI is expensive because the infrastructure is centralized. If you want to build your own large language model, you have to rent GPUs from AWS or beg Nvidia for supply.
Good luck.
But Bittensor flips the script. Miners all over the world&mdash;hobbyists, data centers, maybe even that kid in India with a GTX 1080&mdash;can lend their compute to the network and get paid.
It&rsquo;s cloud computing without the cloud monopoly.
And it doesn&rsquo;t stop there. It goes beyond Big Tech monopolies.
You could even build a subnet that incentivizes certain types of energy. Want to fund a solar farm? Build a subnet.
Want to incentivize compute running on otherwise wasted energy (e.g., flare gas, hydro overflow, curtailed wind). Build a subnet.
Suddenly, parts of the energy grid become a substrate for AI.
You don&rsquo;t need to build the next Google. You just need to build the piece that the next Google uses.
Each subnet is like its own startup. But without the gatekeeping.
And you don&rsquo;t need to convince a VC. Just the network.
<h3>My Prediction? Bittensor Will Be HUGE</h3>
Bitcoin changed how we store money. But Bittensor changes how we build intelligence.
It&rsquo;s the most important platform nobody&rsquo;s heard of yet.
And when you realize that the best AI model in the world might not come from Google&rsquo;s HQ, but from a cluster of anonymous GPUs mining intelligence in exchange for $TAO&mdash;well, that&rsquo;s when the lightbulb goes off.
So here&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m doing:
<ol>
<li>I&rsquo;m learning everything I can.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>I&rsquo;m buying TAO every month like it&rsquo;s internet real estate in 1995.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>And I&rsquo;m talking to the smartest people I can find, like Joe, every week on this podcast.</li>
</ol>
Because history has a funny way of repeating itself.
And this time, we don&rsquo;t need permission.
We just need incentives.
<a href="https://lnk.to/TPEP0201">Here&rsquo;s the full conversation</a>. Worth a watch if you want to know where crypto, AI, and everything else is headed.

alc-07-22-25-featured

The Next OpenAI is Tokenized

Everyone has a podcast now. I had one before it was cool. I had one after it was no longer cool.
I&rsquo;ve talked about basically everything you can think of.
I even did one with a guy who worked for Pablo Escobar, got shot down mid-flight, and escaped prison more times than I&rsquo;ve switched careers.
That one actually did really well.
But this one? This one feels different.
I&rsquo;m starting a new podcast called The TAO Pod&mdash;and no, it&rsquo;s not about Eastern philosophy or meditation.
TAO stands for Bittensor, the decentralized AI network nobody is talking about. Yet.
The first episode just released: &ldquo;Will Bittensor Be Bigger Than Bitcoin?&rdquo; (Link below.)
Today, I&rsquo;m going to give you the gist.
<h3>Bigger Than Bitcoin? </h3>
As you know, Elon Musk is building superintelligence in a giant warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee.
He&rsquo;s using 200,000 Nvidia GPUs and billions of dollars in hardware, real estate, energy, and talent.
Meanwhile&hellip; a group of pseudonymous developers&mdash;people you&rsquo;ve never heard of, some probably wearing Crocs and eating cereal at 2am&mdash;are quietly doing the same thing.
Except they&rsquo;re doing it cheaper. Smarter. And they&rsquo;re not asking for permission.
They&rsquo;re not raising venture capital. They&rsquo;re not begging Nvidia.
They&rsquo;re doing it through something called Bittensor &mdash; and it might be the biggest thing I&rsquo;ve ever seen in crypto.
So what is Bittensor? It&rsquo;s a decentralized AI network.
Think of it like Bitcoin. Except instead of just securing transactions, Bittensor incentivizes people around the world to provide things like compute power, AI models, training data, and even agents.
BitTensor turns all the raw ingredients of AI&mdash;GPUs, data, models, training tasks&mdash;into digital commodities.
Anyone can supply them. Anyone can use them. And everyone gets rewarded based on how useful they are.
Want to build an AI chatbot? A hedge fund trading model? A healthcare assistant? A social media bot army? You don&rsquo;t need $10 million. You don&rsquo;t even need to know how to code.
You just plug into the right &ldquo;subnet&rdquo;&mdash;kind of like a decentralized startup&mdash;and the system does the heavy lifting.
It&rsquo;s Uber for AI compute. YouTube for data. AWS for open-source intelligence.
<h3>Nobody is Talking About This&hellip; Yet. </h3>
And here&rsquo;s the crazy part: one subnet, Shoots, is already serving 150 billion tokens per day.
To be clear, I&rsquo;m not talking about crypto tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
I&rsquo;m talking about language tokens &mdash; as in pieces of text.
Think of tokens as the raw material large language models (like ChatGPT or Grok) use to think, predict, and generate responses.
So when I say Shoots is serving 150 billion tokens per day, it means people and apps are sending and receiving 150 billion chunks of language through their AI interface every 24 hours.
That&rsquo;s a massive amount of activity &mdash; equivalent to running a high-traffic chatbot, search engine, or virtual assistant&hellip; at scale.
That&rsquo;s more than OpenAI was doing a few months ago. And almost no one knows it exists.
So I sat down with Joseph Jacks &mdash; one of the smartest people I&rsquo;ve ever spoken to about this &mdash; and we tried to answer a simple but mind-blowing question:
<h3>Is BitTensor the New Internet?</h3>
We also talked about:
<ul>
<li>Why Subnet 13 is quietly becoming the Reddit firehose hedge funds have always dreamed of.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Why TAO&mdash;the token that powers this whole thing&mdash; could mint more millionaires than Bitcoin ever did.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And how you could realistically launch an AI company from your kitchen table, for less than the cost of a Starbucks order.</li>
</ul>
No VC. No gatekeepers. Just code, compute, and capitalism&mdash;redesigned.
If you&rsquo;ve ever felt like you missed Bitcoin, or OpenAI, or the internet itself&hellip; this might be your second shot.
We&rsquo;re early. Think 1994 internet &mdash; back when you had to explain what &ldquo;email&rdquo; was. But this time, you don&rsquo;t have to wait for someone to build the browser.
The front door is here. You just haven&rsquo;t opened it yet.
So check out the first episode of The TAO Pod.
<a href="https://lnk.to/tpep0101">Watch &ldquo;Will BitTensor Be Bigger than Bitcoin?&rdquo;</a>

alc-07-16-25-featured

The Next Bitcoin—But for AI

We&rsquo;re obsessed with chefs right now.
The Bear. Chef&rsquo;s Table. Boiling Point. The Menu. Burnt.
Their kitchens are confessionals. The food is just a byproduct.
Even Ratatouille got it right&mdash;the art of cooking isn&rsquo;t just about food. It&rsquo;s about madness. Control. Art. Childhood trauma disguised as foam on a plate.
We love watching these tortured geniuses melt down on screen, throw pans, scream about risotto, and seek redemption through lamb jus.
But what about when the trauma is real? When the blood isn&rsquo;t stage makeup and the kitchen is more like a monastery than a war zone?
That&rsquo;s Curtis Duffy&hellip; one of the best chefs on the planet.
Curtis wrote this amazing memoir called Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef. I couldn&rsquo;t believe what I was reading&mdash;the tragedy, the resilience, the force of will.
We unpack it all on my latest podcast (link below), and what it really takes to be great at anything. Our conversation is a masterclass in pain, presence, and the quiet war for excellence.
(He also told me how to make the best BLT possible for my wife. So there&rsquo;s something in here for everyone.)
Here&rsquo;s what I learned from him:
<h4>A.] Some people are forged in hell&mdash;and build heaven.</h4>
Curtis&rsquo;s backstory is an A24 horror film. His father killed his mother and then himself. And somehow, he didn&rsquo;t become a villain. He became a monk. He took all that chaos and built a kitchen so disciplined it&rsquo;s one of the best in the world. No screaming. No panic. No cliches. Just focus. Just peace.
<h4>B.] Discipline &gt; Motivation.</h4>
Curtis doesn&rsquo;t wait to feel &ldquo;inspired.&rdquo; He shows up. Every day. Fold towels. Boil eggs. Repeat. It&rsquo;s the same reason Kobe shot free throws before school. Or why Seinfeld wrote jokes on Christmas. Discipline is boring. But it&rsquo;s the path. You want to be great? Get bored and keep going.
<h4>C.] Trauma is a knife. You either cut others or carve meaning.</h4>
&nbsp;Curtis could&rsquo;ve become just like his father. He knew it. That fear haunted him. But instead of running from it, he faced it. Every day. He turned the fear into fuel and built the opposite kind of legacy&mdash;one where young chefs are mentored, not destroyed.
<h4>D.] Obsession is the entry fee.</h4>
Curtis said: &ldquo;You have to be so obsessed with it, you&rsquo;d die for it.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s not an exaggeration. That&rsquo;s the cost of greatness. If you&rsquo;re not all-in, the kitchen&mdash;or comedy, or business, or writing&mdash;will eat you alive. Casual interest is for brunch. Not for Michelin stars.
<h4>E.] Folding towels is spiritual.</h4>
His staff folds towels for a week. Perfectly. Not because customers notice. But because they do. That&rsquo;s the secret. The invisible stuff becomes the visible stuff. That&rsquo;s how you build excellence: one towel, one breath, one moment at a time. How you do anything is how you do everything. 
<h4>F.] The best chefs are silent.</h4>
No Gordon Ramsay theatrics. No flying pans. Just presence. Just respect. Curtis runs his kitchen like a dojo. And you feel that in the food. Calm. Focused. Alive.
<h4>G.] Talent is nice. But work is everything.</h4>
Anyone can have a good palate. Few can show up at 5 a.m. to boil eggs for the 3,000th time. Talent is a spark. But work ethic is the flame that keeps burning when the power goes out.
I asked him: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the difference between two stars and three?&rdquo;
He said: Make your worst day better than everyone else&rsquo;s best.
It doesn&rsquo;t happen overnight. It takes time. Discipline. The 1% better every day mentality.
That&rsquo;s not just cooking. That&rsquo;s life. Parenting. Startups. Stand-up. Investing. Folding your own mental towels.
Greatness isn&rsquo;t loud. It doesn&rsquo;t show up in a Ferrari with gold flakes on its sushi.
It&rsquo;s quiet. Methodical. Relentless. And sometimes it smells like smoked cherry ice cream at 2 a.m.
Thank you, Curtis, for showing me what true greatness looks like.
And yes, I&rsquo;m going to make that BLT&mdash;and try not to burn the toast.
<a href="https://lnk.to/CDJAS01">Listen to our conversation here &rarr;</a>

alc-07-14-25-featured

How to Be Great (Without Screaming)

Most people think the hero&rsquo;s journey is about the moment they win. The gold medal. The IPO. The perfect checkmate. The belt.
It&rsquo;s not.
Often, the real story happens after they lose it all. After they hit rock bottom.
I experienced it firsthand and learned the power of losing everything.
And so has Miesha Tate, a former UFC bantamweight champion and pioneering mixed martial artist.
Today, her claim to fame goes beyond the octagon. She&rsquo;s now a powerful voice for resilience and reinvention&mdash;sharing her journey through depression and hitting rock bottom
We talked for over an hour on my podcast (link below). I had no idea what to expect. I know nothing about UFC.
I&rsquo;ve never been choked out. I&rsquo;ve never broken my nose in front of a roaring crowd (only in silence, metaphorically, many times).
But I know what it feels like to think, &ldquo;If I just win this next thing&hellip; then I&rsquo;ll be happy.&rdquo;
She thought winning the belt would fix her. She thought finally, finally, she&rsquo;d be enough.
It didn&rsquo;t.
<h3>&ldquo;I was the problem.&rdquo;</h3>
That&rsquo;s what she said.
Not the world. Not her opponents. Not her broken nose. Her.
The same mind that turned her into a champion&mdash;waking up early, lifting weights, watching hours of footage, getting kneed in the face until her soul left her body&mdash;was also the mind that built a home out of fear, overtraining, and denial.
And like any home built on the wrong foundation&hellip;
Eventually, it burned to the ground.
Here&rsquo;s what she said that resonated most: Every time it burns down, the bad burns with it and what&rsquo;s left is gold, the stuff that goes beyond pretending&mdash;and a real opportunity to build it back better.
I&rsquo;ve gone broke. I&rsquo;ve lost friendships. I&rsquo;ve let anxiety drive me to the edge. And each time, I thought the next project, the next relationship, the next win would fix it.
It never did.
It was me.
<h3>The Blood, the Break, and the Truth</h3>
Her first fight?
She got her nose shattered. Blood gushing. She&rsquo;s in a chokehold, leaking into a growing red puddle.
She lost that fight. Her corner threw in the towel.
And that night, a champion fighter was born.
But the belt wasn&rsquo;t the cure. She got the fame. The money. The gold. And then she realized: none of it fixed her. Her relationship was toxic. She didn&rsquo;t know who she was outside of her achievements. She couldn&rsquo;t feel anything anymore. Not even in a fight.
We all have a belt.
The fantasy that if we just:
<ul>
<li>Get the job</li>
<li>Sell the startup</li>
<li>Make a million</li>
<li>Win him or her back</li>
<li>Go viral</li>
</ul>
&hellip;then everything will click.
But if you&rsquo;re broken when you win it, the belt just reflects a broken you.
That&rsquo;s what happened to Miesha. She hit rock bottom.
<h3>How to Get Unstuck</h3>
We talked about solutions. Antidepressants came up. She&rsquo;s not a fan.
In the United States, about 1 in 6 adults (roughly 17%) have used antidepressants. Usage has risen steadily over the past two decades, especially in high-income countries.
Miesha doesn&rsquo;t like them because people don&rsquo;t need help or that they don&rsquo;t always help. But because sometimes you need the rock bottom.
You need to feel all of it. The sadness. The rage. The confusion. The grief. The doubt. Not so you get stuck there&mdash;but so you can finally move through it.
That&rsquo;s what happened to her. She kept pushing. Compartmentalizing. Smiling on camera while she died inside.
Until one day, she just got in her car with her dog and got herself out of a toxic situation.
No plan. No map. Just away.
And somewhere on that road, she found a pinhole of light.
<h3>Lessons From a Broken Nose</h3>
Here&rsquo;s what got her out of the hole:
<ol>
<li>Winning doesn&rsquo;t fix you. Only you can fix you.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>Pain is a message. Don&rsquo;t mute it. Listen.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>Action matters more than clarity. If you don&rsquo;t know what to do, move. Take one step toward the pinhole of light.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li>Let it burn. You&rsquo;ll build it back better.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="5">
<li>You can do hard things. That&rsquo;s not a motivational quote. It&rsquo;s a</li>
</ol>
Miesha ended our conversation talking about farming, raising her kids, and building a toxin-free life.
She said she&rsquo;s fighting again, but on her own terms.
Not because she needs the belt. Not because she needs to.
But because she wants to.
And that&rsquo;s when you know the home you&rsquo;ve built&mdash;the one inside your soul&mdash;is finally strong.
Thanks, Miesha.
<a href="https://lnk.to/JASMT01">Listen to the full, inspiring conversation here</a>.