In 2007, Shapeways operated out of a small office, relying on a handful of 3D printers.
By 2013, it had 3D printed millions of thingamajigs for customers.
By 2021, they&rsquo;d raised millions to enhance their services and expand.
This year? Shapeways has been the worst-performing micro-cap US stock.
With a return of -100%...
This indicates a complete loss of value.
THAT
Is an objectively awful microcap.
And yet, despite the risk&hellip;
Microcaps are awesome.
Why? They represent one of the biggest opportunities in the market.
<h3>The Biggest Advantage </h3>
Everyone knows microcap stocks are of the highest risk-reward strategies in the stock market.&nbsp;
That said, if you hit true, time it right, sit tight, and ride out the volatility&hellip;
Microcap stocks have the potential to deliver life-changing returns.
The BIGGEST advantage microcaps offer? Unlike large-cap stocks, which are heavily analyzed and tracked by institutional investors, many worthy microcaps operate under the radar. 
Consider these three baskets of worthy microcaps:
<ol>
<li>Good to Great Companies &ndash; These are small companies with strong fundamentals that have the potential to grow into great businesses. These are often the best way to play a trend or industry.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li> Below Cash Value &ndash; Companies that are trading below book value or cash, sometimes due to sector-specific downturns or overall negative market sentiment. (Other times it can mean something isn&rsquo;t right.)</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li> Rocketships &ndash; Companies with 30x or more potential. These are rare and typically high risk, but they can drive huge returns for a portfolio. The downside risk is often managed by ensuring the company has a core asset or legacy business that provides a floor of value.</li>
</ol>
It&rsquo;s rare to uncover an opportunity that has ALL THREE&hellip;&nbsp;
But that&rsquo;s where the big money is made.
Microcap Millionaire subscribers are the first to hear about James&rsquo; latest find - which, by the way, fits into these three baskets.

ALC-Issue-09-19-24(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

Microcaps: A Love Story

&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>.

alc-07-11-25-featured

How to Lose Everything and Keep Going

Chess saved his life&hellip; but first, it ruined it.
That&rsquo;s what Danny Rensch told me on stage at the Norway Summit last month.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3dVW1EC6zijBVuFe5WyQDE/ac6d28621b66427194bd099d16213e3a/alc-07-04-25-img-1.png" alt="Interview" width="550px" />
And I don&rsquo;t mean metaphorically. I don&rsquo;t mean &ldquo;chess saved me&rdquo; like a high school teacher saying, &ldquo;Football kept me off the streets.&rdquo;
I mean: He was literally taken from his family by a cult leader obsessed with chess.
Yeah. Let&rsquo;s rewind.
<h3>The Game That Took (and Gave) Everything</h3>
Danny was 9 years old when he first touched a chessboard. He was living in what he now openly calls a cult&mdash;a &ldquo;spiritual collective,&rdquo; as they phrased it then.
The cult leader was obsessed with chess. Not just &ldquo;I enjoy the occasional match&rdquo; obsessed. More like &ldquo;this child is my pawn in a divine game&rdquo; obsessed.
So when Danny showed talent&mdash;real talent&mdash;the kind that doesn&rsquo;t just beat other kids at school, but travels the world and wins tournaments&mdash;they moved him out.
At 12 years old, they took him from his mother and placed him in an apartment alone, so he could train full-time and travel for chess.
He didn&rsquo;t speak to his mom for ten years. She lived 500 feet away.
And the craziest part? No one stopped it. No one said, &ldquo;Hey, maybe don&rsquo;t remove a child from his family so he can become the Bobby Fischer of the Bible Belt.&rdquo;
But that&rsquo;s what happened.
He became one of the top American youth players. Traveled the world. Slept in strangers&rsquo; homes. And for a while, he bought into it. He thought he was special.
Destined. Chosen.
Which, to be fair, is the kind of thing you believe when a grown man tells you your purpose is ordained by God and your only job is to sacrifice everything for the game.
But chess wasn&rsquo;t just a game. It was his prison. And his escape route.
Because while the cult manipulated him, controlled him, used his gift, they also gave him the one thing they didn&rsquo;t expect: perspective.
&ldquo;Chess was my tormentor,&rdquo; he told me, &ldquo;but also my mentor.&rdquo;
<h3>Dark Squares, Bright Future</h3>
Eventually, his body forced him to stop. He got sick. Lost his hearing. Literally bedridden for two years. His dreams of becoming a grandmaster? Done.
But this is where the story flips.
Because sometimes when you lose the thing that defined you, you finally figure out who you really are.
While recovering, Danny discovered the internet. YouTube. Forums. He realized chess didn&rsquo;t have to be a solitary, brutal obsession. It could be something more. Something joyful.
Something&hellip; social.
And that&rsquo;s when he helped launch chess.com.
Today? 200 million users. 10 million active players a day. Global tournaments. Twitch streams. Memes. Drama. Magnus.
Chess isn&rsquo;t just a game anymore. It&rsquo;s a culture. A movement. A business.
And Danny Rensch&mdash;the boy who was taken for his talent&mdash;is now a chief architect.
<h3>What I Learned</h3>
We talked about chess. About cults. About trauma, therapy, lawsuits, scandal, and Elon Musk's brain chip. (Yes, really.) But here&rsquo;s what stayed with me:
<ol>
<li>You can build something beautiful from something broken. Pain is not destiny. It&rsquo;s just input.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>Your origin story doesn&rsquo;t get the last word. You can write your own next chapter&mdash;even if you&rsquo;ve been told otherwise.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>The same thing that crushes you can be the thing that saves you. That&rsquo;s not paradox. That&rsquo;s life.</li>
</ol>
And maybe most of all&hellip;
<ol start="4">
<li>There&rsquo;s always a best move on the board. You just can&rsquo;t always see it.</li>
&nbsp;Which means: don&rsquo;t panic. Don&rsquo;t rush. Don&rsquo;t resign too early.</ol>
Danny has a book coming out soon.
It&rsquo;s called Dark Squares. I got a preview. It&rsquo;s raw. Honest. Wounds wide open. It&rsquo;s not a chess book. It&rsquo;s a book about being human.
You should read it.
And maybe, when you&rsquo;re facing something impossible, you&rsquo;ll remember this:
No matter what happened&hellip;
You&rsquo;re still in the game.
And the next move is yours.
<a href="https://lnk.to/DRCSJAS01">Click here for the full interview</a>.

alc-07-04-25-featured

How to Survive a Cult

I&rsquo;ve interviewed a lot of smart people.
Billionaires. Bestselling authors. One guy who went from panic attacks on live TV to bestselling author on how to keep calm under pressure.
But Robert Rosenkranz? He&rsquo;s one of the most unique guests I&rsquo;ve had on my podcast. (Link below.)
Before writing The Stoic Capitalist about how he applied stoic principles over his 50-year career to navigate high-stakes decisions, build successful businesses, and stay rational under pressure&hellip;
He put 100% of his liquid net worth&mdash;all his money&mdash;on the line for one deal. A single bad week and boom, back to zero.
Except&hellip; he wasn&rsquo;t some 22-year-old crypto bro. He was 35. At the top of his game as a partner at Oppenheimer.
Why would anyone do that?
Because, he told me, he did the math. Rationally. Coldly. Stoically.
He didn't catastrophize.
He didn&rsquo;t curl up into a fetal position thinking about the Sony Walkman killing his record cover business (yes, that happened).
He zoomed out, thought clearly, made the best decision based on the info he had&hellip; and lived to fund another day.
<h3>Freedom From Outcome Addiction</h3>
Here&rsquo;s one thing that stuck with me: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t judge decisions by their outcomes&mdash;judge them by the quality of the thinking at the time.&rdquo;
BOOM.
I&rsquo;ve spent most of my life doing the opposite. I think most people have.
I would launch a business, fail, and think: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a failure.&rdquo;
But Robert? He launches a business, Sony nukes the industry, and he&rsquo;s like: &ldquo;Well, that sucked. But I made a good decision.&rdquo;
And you know what? That tiny shift in thinking&mdash;it&rsquo;s everything.
It&rsquo;s the difference between:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;I got dumped, I&rsquo;m worthless&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;I showed up with love and integrity. That&rsquo;s all I can control.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Or:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;I missed Bitcoin at $200, I&rsquo;m an idiot.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;I evaluated the risk-reward at the time. That was the best move I had.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s freedom from outcome addiction.
It&rsquo;s emotional sobriety.
It&rsquo;s stoic capitalism... with a capital gains twist.
<h3>Why Panic is Useless</h3>
Robert&rsquo;s life isn&rsquo;t just a masterclass in rationality. It&rsquo;s a masterclass in curiosity.
He read biographies not for trivia&mdash;but for blueprints. He asked: &ldquo;Is my life such that someone could write a biography of me?&rdquo;
Do you realize how insane&mdash;and beautiful&mdash;that question is?
It makes you stop doomscrolling. It makes you put down the anxiety blanket. It makes you ask:
<ul>
<li>Am I thinking clearly?</li>
<li>Am I acting intentionally?</li>
<li>Am I doing things worth remembering?</li>
</ul>
Here's what I took away from our conversation (and why I think The Stoic Capitalist is a must-read):
<ol>
<li>You can&rsquo;t think clearly if you&rsquo;re emotionally drunk. Stoicism is not about being cold. It&rsquo;s about sobriety from unuseful panic.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>Catastrophizing is an addiction. Most of us are hooked. And it&rsquo;s ruining our ability to take bold, rational risks.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>You&rsquo;re allowed to aim high. He read Carnegie. Rockefeller. He wanted to be biography-worthy. That allowed him to be bolder, take more risks, and think clearly about them.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li>Worst case thinking is useful only if it&rsquo;s realistic. Living under a bridge? Unlikely. Losing your job and starting over with your skills intact? Happens every day.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="5">
<li>Your spouse matters. When Robert risked everything, his wife cheered him on. That&rsquo;s rare. And priceless.</li>
</ol>
There&rsquo;s a lot more in my podcast. We dove deeper into his thoughts on investing through chaos and why catastrophizing is ruining your life.
<a href="https://jamesaltuchershow.com/episode/the-stoic-capitalist-how-rational-thinking-creates-success-robert-rosenkranz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here for the full episode</a>.

alc-07-03-25-featured

How I Learned Not to Panic

Picture TED and Davos crashing a chess tournament.
That&rsquo;s Norway Summit.
Also, yes&mdash;I moderated. Again.
Third time. Still not fired.
The Norway Summit brings together some of the best minds in AI, energy, and innovation while a chess tournament unfolds around it.
On the top: Magnus Carlsen deep in thought.
On the bottom: me trying to keep up with Vishy Anand, five-time world champion.&nbsp;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4nSGzIM8ppZXFrsDtANGU/4cde555feb4796b4b925e5f8ea8f2eb1/alc-06-30-25-img-1.png" alt="Norway Chess" />
At first, it sounds like a weird mash-up.
But chess is strategy. It&rsquo;s pattern recognition. It&rsquo;s knowing when to pivot&mdash;just like navigating AI, markets, and whatever chaos tomorrow brings.
I opened the event with a talk called &ldquo;Be Stupid.&rdquo; 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5SuV9yS8CzNyObb1ewFRS7/552c3520fe5f9450326eb8b1f4703e30/alc-06-30-25-img-2.png" alt="James" />
The idea? The world is moving too fast. AI, crypto, energy, robotics, finance&mdash;everything is evolving at light speed. The experts are confused. The confident are usually wrong.
And in this environment, being stupid is the hardest, and smartest, thing you can do.
But forget my talk for a second.
One of the real highlights for me? My fireside chat with Vishy Anand, who still ranks among the top players in the world&mdash;in his 50s.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2E2epHRZt8npMAgUdv9IKz/478b039109c3d9d4b70e63c3ef090930/alc-06-30-25-img-3.png" alt="James and guest" />
We talked about aging, evolving, and staying elite in a world that changes faster than ever.
And what he told me is so important I&rsquo;m sharing it here.
This wasn&rsquo;t just about chess. It was about how to stay relevant when everything around you is trying to make you obsolete.
<h3>Here&rsquo;s What I Learned:</h3>
1. Complacency Kills&mdash;Even at the Top
After winning his first world title, Vishy got worse&mdash;not because he stopped working, but because he worked on the wrong things.
&ldquo;You can still work very hard and still fall behind,&rdquo; he said. It&rsquo;s not about working hard. It&rsquo;s about working on what&rsquo;s changing.
2. Psychology and Skill Are Entangled
When he was young, he played fast because he didn&rsquo;t know what could go wrong.
That blind confidence? It&rsquo;s a superpower.
The trick, as you age, is to not let wisdom turn into hesitation.
3. The Game Changes. You Must Too.
The chess world became more nimble. Openings changed. Engines got smarter. Old tricks stopped working.
Sound familiar? This is every industry post-AI. Vishy didn&rsquo;t just complain. He updated.
&ldquo;I had to drop assumptions I didn&rsquo;t even know I had.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s how deep the reprogramming has to go.
4. Youth Isn&rsquo;t About Age. It&rsquo;s About Belief.
The younger players weren&rsquo;t necessarily better&mdash;they just weren&rsquo;t weighed down by what had already failed.
They assumed things would work. That made them try more. That made them win more.
Boom. That&rsquo;s it. Optimism as strategy.
This isn&rsquo;t just about chess.
It&rsquo;s about how to survive in any game that changes underneath you.
It doesn&rsquo;t matter if it&rsquo;s startups, investing, writing, or reinventing your career at 52.
The trick isn&rsquo;t just learning new moves&mdash;it&rsquo;s forgetting the old ones that are holding you back.
<a href="https://lnk.to/VACJAS01">Listen in here for the full fireside chat</a>. It&rsquo;s worth it for everything he shares.
Thanks, Vishy. For the wisdom. For the humility.
And thanks, Norway.

alc-06-30-25-featured

I Flew 4,000 Miles to Say “Be Stupid”

Wall Street wants you fat, slow, and late.
That&rsquo;s how they win.
The real money? It's made before you even hear &ldquo;IPO.&rdquo;
I watched it with Newsmax. One of my VC groups got in early, before it IPO&rsquo;d. Two days later? It erupted 2,000%.
And another recent example: Circle. A month or so ago, most had never even heard of it. Suddenly, everyone wanted in when it IPO&rsquo;d.
The insiders who got in pre-IPO? They were up 200% before your neighbor could ask ChatGPT &ldquo;What the hell is Circle?&rdquo;
But what I&rsquo;m seeing right now? It&rsquo;s different.
And frankly, it might be one of the most asymmetric setups I&rsquo;ve come across in my entire career.
Here&rsquo;s the deal:
<h3>Super-IPO: No Yacht Club Required</h3>
There&rsquo;s a company&mdash;one of the most fascinating tech stories I&rsquo;ve found&mdash;preparing to debut on the Nasdaq.
But you&rsquo;re not going to hear about it on the news.
Yet.
Because this opportunity doesn&rsquo;t come through traditional IPO routes. It comes through what I call the &ldquo;IPO secret backdoor.&rdquo;
And here&rsquo;s the beautiful part...
The big guys? Pension funds. University endowments. Even your mutual fund manager with his office plants and a framed degree from Wharton?
They legally can&rsquo;t buy in yet.
They&rsquo;re handcuffed. Regulated out of this phase of the game.
But you? You can be one of the first in line.
And no, you don&rsquo;t need to be a billionaire or wear a Patagonia vest or drink Soylent out of a titanium thermos.
You just need to know where to look.
But before I show you where to look, here&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m excited about this company.
<h3>Bigger Than AI, Biotech, or Energy</h3>
One reason: They&rsquo;re not just another AI, biotech, or lithium stock of the week.
It&rsquo;s something completely different.
I&rsquo;ll explain what I mean by that in the video link below.
As you&rsquo;ll see, you don&rsquo;t need to open a foreign brokerage. You don&rsquo;t need to do anything shady.
You just need to know where the backdoor is&mdash;and walk through it. Because when this stock uplists to the Nasdaq, the back door slams shut.
And by then?
The biggest gains will already be gone.
That&rsquo;s why I recorded <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2454182" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this video</a> to reveal the urgent details&hellip;
<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2454182" target="_blank" rel="noopener">And what you need to do to access the &ldquo;secret backdoor&rdquo;</a>.