TikTok thinks tariffs are about $5 t-shirts, Xboxes, and luxury yoga pants.
Obviously, they&rsquo;re wrong.
But how wrong are they?
Yesterday, I called up a founder in Hong Kong who builds 3D spatial software for robots.
Think 3D GPS for C-3PO.
What he told me:
Everyone thinks the tariffs are about jobs. Or trade. Or consumer goods.
They&rsquo;re not.
They&rsquo;re about robots. Chinese robots.
The real fear in Washington isn&rsquo;t inflation. It&rsquo;s not jobs going overseas. It&rsquo;s not trade deficits.
It&rsquo;s total irrelevance.
Here&rsquo;s something to think about.
<h3>Jensen Huang Already Warned Us</h3>
At CES this year, NVIDIA&rsquo;s Jensen Huang said the quiet part out loud:
&ldquo;The next frontier of AI is physical AI.&rdquo;
Translation: AI is dumb without robots.
If you&rsquo;re not building embodied AI&mdash;machines that move, act, build, touch&mdash;you&rsquo;re playing with toys. And China isn&rsquo;t just ahead.
They&rsquo;re racing solo:
<ul>
<li>The world's biggest AI company before OpenAI was SenseTime&mdash;a Hong Kong firm focused on computer vision.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>DJI, also Hong Kong-based, owns 90% of the consumer drone market. 75% of the commercial one.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In 2015, China&rsquo;s industrial robot count matched the U.S. By 2023, every other robot sold was sold to China.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Today, half of the world&rsquo;s robots live on Chinese soil.</li>
</ul>
And the harshest truth? Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are the least important component of where AI meets robotics.
Figure AI, one of the most important robotics companies in the US, recently terminated their partnership with OpenAI.
Why? LLMs, they said, are the least important part of their stack. In fact, it was holding them back.
What&rsquo;s more important? Flexible manufacturing.
Consider:
The founder I spoke to said he once needed a very specific camera module for a robotics project. Couldn&rsquo;t find a single Western vendor with the specs.
He went to Shenzhen: &ldquo;They built it in under two weeks and shipped it to me for less than $1,000.&rdquo;
100% impossible in America.
<h3>The West Forgot How to Build</h3>
A European company called Northvolt&mdash;founded by a former Tesla exec&mdash;raised $16 billion to make batteries from raw materials.
They couldn&rsquo;t do it. Not even one.
Why? Because they had to import the cathode materials&hellip; from China.
One Chinese company controls more than half of the global battery market.
China controls 75% of rare earth materials&mdash;the guts of every chip, drone, and robot.
Meanwhile, America has no manufacturing left.
We outsourced it and now we&rsquo;re stuck with an economy that&rsquo;s great at monetizing memes but can&rsquo;t make a cathode.
<h3>The U.S. Is Waking Up</h3>
The analogy that keeps coming up:
In the 1930s, the U.S. was where China is now&mdash;an emerging industrial powerhouse. Western Europe was the over-leveraged consumer.
We all know how that ended.
China doesn&rsquo;t just want to make your toaster.
They want to build the toasters, the factories that make the toasters, the robots that run the factories, and the AI that manages the robots.
That&rsquo;s the real blueprint behind &ldquo;Made in China 2025&rdquo;&mdash;a plan to dominate every high-tech frontier that matters: chips, drones, EVs, and yes&hellip; robots.
And what&rsquo;s America&rsquo;s response?
Tariffs.
Not as a tax. As a tourniquet.
The U.S. isn&rsquo;t just slapping duties on cheap junk&mdash;it&rsquo;s aiming straight at the lifeblood of China&rsquo;s rise: the industries that power their future dominance.
That, says my founder friend, is what the tariffs are about.
Not jobs. Not T-shirts. But the machines that build the machines for the next industrial revolution.
Because if we lose that race, it won&rsquo;t matter how good our LLMs are.
We&rsquo;ll be brilliant minds without bodies.
And China will own the physical world.

ALC-Issue-05-01-25(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

The Real Target of Tariffs: Chinese Robots

If I told you in 2017 Trump would come back in 2025&hellip;
...hoard Bitcoin in a &ldquo;digital Fort Knox&rdquo;&hellip;
...replace Gary Gensler with a crypto bull&hellip;
...and airdrop a meme coin to top supporters&hellip;
You&rsquo;d think I was high on mushrooms.
But here we are.
100 days into his second term, we&rsquo;ve seen:
<ul>
<li>The U.S. government is now the world&rsquo;s largest sovereign holder of Bitcoin, with no intentions of selling.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The SEC is playing nice.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Banks are allowed to touch crypto again.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And yes&mdash;there&rsquo;s now a guy in the White House with the title &ldquo;Crypto Czar.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Let&rsquo;s rewind to the beginning to see how it started, where we&rsquo;re at now, and where this is all going.
<h3>The Wrecking Ball</h3>
On January 23, Trump signed his first major crypto order:
&nbsp;&ldquo;Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.&rdquo;
It wasn&rsquo;t subtle.
The EO declared:
<ul>
<li>Every American has the right to mine, self-custody, and run nodes.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Agencies must support the use of public blockchains</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Banks can no longer discriminate against legal crypto businesses.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>CBDCs? Banned. Outright. Zero discussion. He called them &ldquo;surveillance coins.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
In short, Trump&rsquo;s EO nuked everything the Biden administration had built:
Biden&rsquo;s 2022 Executive Order? Gone.
The Treasury&rsquo;s crypto &ldquo;risk&rdquo; framework? Burned.
The IRS &ldquo;broker rule&rdquo; for DeFi (that would&rsquo;ve treated DeFi like traditional banks)? Overturned by Congress. Signed by Trump in April.
The OCC, FDIC, and Fed also killed every single anti-crypto banking memo from 2023.
Meaning? Banks no longer need permission to handle crypto. Not for custody. Not for stablecoins. Not for anything.
<h3>Meanwhile in Beijing&hellip;</h3>
This wasn&rsquo;t just deregulation.
Perhaps it was also a geopolitical chess move.
While China pushes its BSN Spartan Network &mdash; a neutered, tokenless, state-controlled clone of Ethereum &mdash; Trump planted the opposite flag.
If you haven&rsquo;t heard of BSN&hellip;
Think Huawei for 5G &mdash; but blockchain. BSN is what China is attempting to export through Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Like 5G, China wants to set the international standards for this emerging technology.
And, as it happens, permissionless public blockchains are the one thing China can&rsquo;t &ldquo;copy, paste, control&rdquo;.
<h3>Meet the New Cabinet</h3>
Finally, let&rsquo;s look at the people Trump surrounded himself with:
<ul>
<li>Hester Peirce: Leading the &ldquo;Crypto 2.0&rdquo; Task Force. Advocating token safe harbors and ETF expansion.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Paul Atkins: Acting SEC Chair. Ending the war on DeFi.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Caroline Pham: Acting CFTC Chair. Pushing for spot crypto regulation and legal DeFi pilot programs.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Rodney Hood: Acting Comptroller. Reinstated the 2020 crypto bank guidance.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary. Wants to weaponize stablecoins to preserve dollar dominance.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>D. Vance: VP. Talking Bitcoin in backrooms with senators.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Judge Judy Shelton: Studying how crypto impacts geopolitical power.</li>
</ul>
In short, Trump&rsquo;s first 100 days in office weren&rsquo;t about building something new&hellip;
They were about demolishing the last four years of regulatory hostility toward crypto, brick by brick.
What about the next 100 days?
<h3>The Next 100 Days</h3>
They&rsquo;re focused on the future.
What&rsquo;s coming:
<ul>
<li>New classifications for digital assets.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Clear rules for stablecoins and DeFi protocols.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A national mining strategy &mdash; tying Bitcoin to energy and security.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Pilot zones for legal DeFi innovation.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Sovereign crypto infrastructure, with the U.S. setting the standards.</li>
</ul>
Crypto isn&rsquo;t the outsider anymore.
It&rsquo;s not hiding in Reddit threads or Discord servers.
It&rsquo;s sitting at the table. Wearing a suit. Writing the rules.
And those who see what&rsquo;s coming? They&rsquo;re the ones who&rsquo;ll reap the biggest rewards.

ALC-Issue-04-30-25(1)

Trump’s 100-Day Crypto Bender

Everyone you grew up admiring&mdash;the authors, the speakers, the celebrities, the viral sensations&mdash;are either broke, divorced, in therapy, or quietly Googling &ldquo;how to declare bankruptcy without anyone finding out.&rdquo;
They checked all the boxes. The degrees. The experience. The speaking gigs. The bestsellers.
They were qualified.
Guess what? Didn&rsquo;t save them.
Last week at the Full Stack business conference, Peter Saddington put me on the spot: &ldquo;How do you succeed when you&rsquo;re not qualified?&rdquo;
Maybe that&rsquo;s the wrong question.
Because the most successful people? Weren&rsquo;t qualified at all. They were just too stubborn, too weird, or too unemployable to quit.
<ul>
<li>Steve Jobs dropped out of college after six months.</li>
<li>Richard Branson never finished high school.</li>
<li>James Dyson failed 5,126 times before inventing his vacuum. No engineering degree.</li>
<li>Quentin Tarantino worked in a video rental store. Never went to film school.</li>
<li>Walt Disney was told he &ldquo;lacked imagination&rdquo; and got fired from a newspaper.</li>
</ul>
Every time I was too naive to know it was supposed to be impossible, I pulled it off.
The moment I started listening to the experts &mdash; believing I needed permission, credentials, qualifications &mdash; it actually became impossible.
Here&rsquo;s what I told Peter&mdash;with the biggest secret (the one that changed my life) at the end.
<h3>Secret #1: Being Unqualified Is a Superpower</h3>
When you have zero qualifications, you&rsquo;ve got nothing to protect&mdash;no title to cling to, no reputation to uphold.
You get to ask dumb questions, try crazy things, break rules, reinvent the rules, and then eat lunch alone because everyone thinks you&rsquo;re weird.
That&rsquo;s the edge.
The people who &ldquo;know better&rdquo; are often trapped by their expertise. You? You&rsquo;re free. You&rsquo;re dangerous. And you&rsquo;re going to surprise everyone&mdash;including yourself.
Example: I started a web company in my 20s with no clue how business worked. No business plan. No suits. Just pure, dumb enthusiasm. Somehow, we landed HBO as a client and eventually sold the thing. Why? Because I didn&rsquo;t know I couldn&rsquo;t.
<h3>Secret #2: Rational Optimism Beats Everything</h3>
Not delusional optimism. Not &ldquo;The Secret&rdquo; vision-boarding-manifest-a-Lambo. Rational optimism.
I was broke, depressed, and living in Airbnbs I couldn&rsquo;t afford. But I&rsquo;d ask myself: What tiny action can I take today that makes tomorrow slightly less awful? That&rsquo;s rational optimism. You anchor your hope in reality. Then you do something about it.
Every success in my life started with one optimistic thought&mdash;and then one uncomfortable action.
<h3>Secret #3: Exercise Your Idea Muscle</h3>
Feeling unqualified often means feeling idea-less. Solution? I write down 10 ideas a day. Every day. Even when I don&rsquo;t want to. Especially then.
Most of the ideas are garbage. Doesn&rsquo;t matter. The process works. You get more creative. You build confidence.
One of those dumb little lists turned into a company I sold for $10 million. Another turned into a book that sold 100,000 copies. Most? Trash. But trash is compost. And compost grows things.
<h3>Secret #4: Choose Yourself</h3>
Stop waiting for someone to pick you. The college, the boss, the publisher, the investor. Forget them. They don&rsquo;t know what they&rsquo;re doing either.
Start a blog. Launch the podcast. Write the book. Sell the thing. The tools are free. The gatekeepers are gone. The only permission slip you need is the one you write yourself.
<h3>Secret #5: Make Yourself Useful</h3>
Hate networking? Me too. So don&rsquo;t &ldquo;network.&rdquo; Be useful. Send someone 10 ideas for their business. Introduce two cool people. Post something helpful online. Show your work, don&rsquo;t just talk about it.
When you&rsquo;re useful, people remember. And when people remember, doors open.
<h3>Qualifications Are a Lie</h3>
Everyone&rsquo;s winging it. Everyone&rsquo;s scared they&rsquo;re about to be found out. So here&rsquo;s the truth: You&rsquo;re already qualified.
Because you&rsquo;re willing to try.
That&rsquo;s rare.
So raise your hand. Start the thing. Say yes, even when your brain screams &ldquo;Who do you think you are?&rdquo;
You&rsquo;re someone who&rsquo;s doing it anyway.
And that&rsquo;s exactly how people succeed.
<a href="https://lnk.to/HTSZQ01">Listen to the full podcast here</a>.

ALC-Issue-04-29-25(1)

Why Success Gurus Die in Debt

When FTX blew up in 2022, most politicians and bureaucrats had two reactions:
<ol>
<li>Pretend they never heard of crypto.</li>
<li>Blame "lack of regulation.&rdquo;</li>
</ol>
Paul Atkins? He had a different take.
FTX, he said, didn't collapse because of "too little regulation." It collapsed because the U.S. made it impossible to build good crypto companies here. So the bad ones set up shop overseas.
Direct quote: "The collapse of FTX was this international debacle that happened because, I think, the U.S. didn&rsquo;t make our rules accommodating to this new technology."
Now, Atkins is heading up the SEC.
Quick flashback: Atkins was an SEC Commissioner in the early 2000s, back when people still thought "Sarbanes-Oxley" was a type of medieval torture device.
Even back then, Atkins wasn't the "regulate-everything-that-moves" type. He was the guy saying, "Maybe not everything needs a thousand pages of rules?"
Fast-forward again to the 2017 crypto boom.
While others were busy calling Bitcoin "rat poison," Atkins was helping launch something called the Token Alliance &mdash; an industry group trying to write clear guidelines for crypto.
Atkins co-chaired the Alliance and pushed the idea that not every token is a security, and not every crypto entrepreneur is a wannabe Bernie Madoff.
He said, and I quote: "The Token Alliance will serve a much-needed role in helping the industry establish for itself appropriate guidance for this new and exciting asset class."
Translation: "Let's not regulate this into oblivion."
<h3>Crypto&rsquo;s Rocky Balboa Moment</h3>
Sure, NFTs and most memecoins are toast.
CryptoPunks might survive.
Bored Apes probably won&rsquo;t.
Tulip #71 is definitely dead.
But underneath the ashes of the last bubble, something real is stirring:
<ul>
<li>Real-world assets being tokenized.</li>
<li>DeFi evolving into actual financial infrastructure.</li>
<li>Bitcoin being treated not like magic internet money &mdash; but like digital property.</li>
</ul>
The same way the Dutch saw an explosion of financial innovation after the tulip crash&hellip;
Crypto is rebuilding after four years of onslaught&mdash;stronger, smarter, leaner.
And this time, it's happening with Washington&rsquo;s blessing, not in spite of it.
Three reasons to be bullish:
<ol>
<li> Big Money is Quietly Moving in: They won't shout it from CNBC headlines, but asset managers and hedge funds are stacking up crypto while retail investors panic. Ask yourself why.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li> Regulation Is (Finally) Happening: A few years ago, crypto enthusiasts feared regulation. Now, they're begging for it. Why? Because regulation means clarity.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li> Crypto Is Eating Finance: Banks are expensive. Western Union is slow. Stock exchanges are closed on weekends. Crypto tackles all this. And it&rsquo;s happening now, right under our noses.</li>
</ol>
If you're reading this and thinking, "Bull market confirmed&rdquo;... 
Maybe. Maybe not. Yet.
This isn&rsquo;t a magic switch.
It&rsquo;s the start of something &mdash; but like anything real, it&rsquo;ll take time to unfold.
(That said&hellip; the smartest players are already positioning themselves.)
Of course, regulatory clarity will create winners and losers.
That&rsquo;s how it always happens.
But after studying the ones actually building, here&rsquo;s what we see:
This isn&rsquo;t a graveyard.
It&rsquo;s a construction site.
It&rsquo;s Rocky at the end of the 12th round.
Bruised. Bleeding. But smiling.
The next markets are beginning to bloom &mdash; quietly, stubbornly, piece by piece.

Crypto’s Rocky Balboa Moment

Circle, the US stablecoin giant of USDC fame, wants to IPO.
Again.
You might recall&hellip;
Back in 2021, Circle tried to go public through a shortcut called a SPAC merger &mdash; basically, merging with a blank-check company to hit the stock market faster.
It didn&rsquo;t work.
The deal collapsed.
Mostly because the SEC dragged its feet and the crypto market turned into a dumpster fire&hellip; aka, FTX.
Now they&rsquo;re filing for an IPO the old-fashioned way: underwriting banks, SEC reviews, ticker symbol ("CRCL"), the whole Wall Street show.
Some say it&rsquo;s brilliant. Some say it&rsquo;s suicidal.
Both might be right.
Here&rsquo;s the real story nobody&rsquo;s telling you:
<h3>Howard Stern&rsquo;s HR Department </h3>
Remember when crypto was the outlaw frontier? Decentralized. Permissionless. Middle fingers in every direction?
Now we&rsquo;re dressing up stablecoins for Wall Street&hellip; like Howard Stern starting an HR department.
But Circle&rsquo;s move is bigger than it looks.
If they pull this off, it cracks the gates wide open.
Stablecoins stop being &ldquo;that weird thing on exchanges&rdquo; and start being seen as infrastructure &mdash; a new plumbing system for global money.
If successful, Circle would be the first pure play stablecoins company on the public markets. It would give investors a direct way to bet on the idea that stablecoins are the future of money.
BUT&hellip;
<h3>Smells Like Desperation</h3>
There&rsquo;s a reason Circle is racing to IPO.
Right now, Circle is still raking in big revenue from high interest rates on USDC reserves &mdash; but rates are expected to fall soon, crushing their profits.
Here&rsquo;s why investors are skeptical:
&rarr; A 1% drop in rates could slash Circle's income by $441 million. Lower rates = much lower profits.
&rarr; Over HALF of Circle&rsquo;s revenue comes from high distribution deals (e.g., $900M to Coinbase, big incentives to Binance) just to keep USDC dominant on exchanges.
&rarr; Circle spends heavily ($250M+ per year on compensation, $140M+ on admin) mainly to handle global regulatory compliance.
&rarr; Circle trades at 32x 2024 earnings &mdash; expensive for a company facing shrinking margins, falling rates&hellip;
And another huge headwind:
<h3>The Sandbox is About to Get Crowded</h3>
Right now, Circle operates in a regulatory gray zone that&rsquo;s about to be wiped clean.
Once real regulatory clarity hits&mdash;and it is coming FAST&mdash;every bank you&rsquo;ve ever heard of (and some you haven&rsquo;t) will pile into the game.
JPMorgan. Bank of America. BlackRock.
Why?
Because the stablecoin business is basically a license to print money:
<ul>
<li>Take deposits.</li>
<li>Park them in 4&ndash;5% Treasuries.</li>
<li>Pay customers 0%.</li>
<li>Keep the spread.</li>
<li>Sleep like a baby.</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s the ultimate business model.
Better than insurance. Better than banking.
Until, of course, someone else shows up offering customers 1% yield. Then 2%.Then 3.9% while they keep the skim.
And just like that, Circle&rsquo;s moat? Gone.
<h3>Circle&rsquo;s Real Risk</h3>
People buying Circle stock are betting on two things:
<ol>
<li>That Circle&rsquo;s regulatory head start will be worth something.</li>
<li>That its network effect (USDC dominance on exchanges, partnerships like Coinbase) will protect it when the floodgates open.</li>
</ol>
Problem is&hellip;
Regulatory "first movers" often get steamrolled once rules are clear. The hard work gets done. And the giants come in, step over the rubble, and build empires.
Still, it&rsquo;s a big moment for crypto.
You can already see the outlines:
<ul>
<li>Yield-bearing stablecoins.</li>
<li>Tokenized bonds.</li>
<li>Seamless staking through your bank app.</li>
<li>Crypto embedded directly into your financial life.</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s no longer some far-off dream. The transition has started.
If you&rsquo;re bullish on crypto&rsquo;s future, Circle&rsquo;s IPO isn&rsquo;t something to blindly chase.
It&rsquo;s a flare fired into the sky.
Regulation is coming. Liquidity is coming.
The absorption is happening.
Long crypto? Long Bitcoin? Yes. Long Circle? Much tougher call.
But ignore this moment completely? Only if your retirement plan involves time travel.

ALC-Issue-04-25-25(1)

Circle's IPO — Should You Buy? 

Most never see a prison cell.
But most live in one anyway. Trapped by identity, fear, resentment, addiction to validation.
In 2009, Damon West stepped into a real Texas prison&mdash;steel bars, concrete walls&mdash;and a reputation: the Al Capone of Dallas.
They gave him 65 years. &ldquo;Six dimes and a nickel&rdquo; in prison slang.
BUT
While most of us rot away in comfort, Damon got free in hell. And in 2015, they let him out.
I had him on my podcast to talk about it&mdash;and about his new book, Six Dimes and a Nickel.
I expected a prison story. What I got was a blueprint for rebuilding a life from below zero.
Let&rsquo;s rewind.
<h3>Bad Mailman</h3>
Damon was a college quarterback from Port Arthur, Texas. He had the golden ticket: talent, charisma, a full ride to a Division I school.
But when a shoulder injury ended his career, he spiraled&mdash;fast. Then meth showed up, seductive and clingy.
Burglary was how he kept her happy.
He dressed up like a mailman to case luxury condos and used spy tools like peephole reversers.
&ldquo;When I broke into people&rsquo;s homes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t just steal their property. I stole their sense of security. I can&rsquo;t give it back to them. I can&rsquo;t change it.&rdquo;
One of his victims was a woman whose fianc&eacute; had died in Iraq. Damon stole the engagement ring&mdash;without realizing what it was.
Years later, she emailed him. Four words: &ldquo;Damon, I forgive you.&rdquo; That email changed his life.
But Damon&rsquo;s pivot didn&rsquo;t come from forgiveness. It came from a word he told the parole board when they asked what kind of man he wanted to become:
Useful.
He didn&rsquo;t say rich. Or innocent. Or even free.
Useful.
Inside prison, he taught inmates how to read. Picked up trash when no one else would. And started spreading four words they&rsquo;d never heard: &ldquo;I believe in you.&rdquo; 
Those four words became a movement. A book. And, thanks to one old inmate, a metaphor that took on a life of its own:
<h3>Be a Coffee Bean </h3>
Prison&mdash;like life&mdash;is a pot of boiling water.
You can let it make you soft like a carrot. Hard like an egg. Or&mdash;you can transform it, like a coffee bean changes the water itself.
That became Damon&rsquo;s mantra.
He fought&mdash;literally fought&mdash;to live it. When you walk into a maximum-security Texas prison refusing to join a gang, you're marked.
Damon took beating after beating. He lost most of those fights. But he kept showing up. Kept trying to be a coffee bean. And everyone&mdash;outside and in&mdash;eventually respected him for it.
But here&rsquo;s what hit me the hardest: Damon told me, &ldquo;The hardest prison to do time in, James, is the prison in your mind. I meet more people out here in the free world who are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison.&rdquo; 
Most people never see a prison yard.
But they serve time anyway&mdash;in jobs they hate, lives they fake, fears they feed. Confined in roles they didn&rsquo;t choose and lives they&rsquo;re too scared to leave.
Damon got out. And now he&rsquo;s showing others how to do it.
And yeah&mdash;I needed to hear it. Maybe you do too.
Listen to his story on my latest podcast.
It&rsquo;s worth it.
It just might set you free.
<a href="https://lnk.to/DWHWSZQ01">Click here to listen</a>.

ALC-Issue-04-24-25

How to Escape Prison

The NYSE is one giant garage sale with 8,000 things to dig through.
Most are dusty old lamps.
But this one? A framed Picasso buried in the $5 bin.
It&rsquo;s quietly positioned at the crossroads of three megatrends&mdash;and no one&rsquo;s talking about it (yet).
That&rsquo;s why I put $50,000 of my own money into it.
Look, I&rsquo;ve played every role in the game&mdash;founder, investor, loser, winner. I&rsquo;ve bet it all. Lost it all. Walked away. Came back.
Lived on couches. Stayed in penthouses. (Somehow) kept my hair.&nbsp;
I also called some of the biggest stock moves of the last 20 years.
But this?
This might be the most exciting setup I&rsquo;ve seen since I published The Forever Portfolio in 2008.
Back then, the world was ending. The Dow had collapsed. Bear Stearns and Lehman were gone. People were shouting &ldquo;sell everything!&rdquo;
I laid out a blueprint for finding the next generation of multibagger stocks. A handful of those picks went up more than 10,000%.
Today? A similar setup has already happened.
The market is a mess. Inflation, interest rates, tariffs, tension, drama&hellip;
It&rsquo;s the perfect storm.
And that&rsquo;s when you strike.
<h3>So What&rsquo;s the Opportunity? </h3>
Let&rsquo;s just say this:
<ul>
<li>It&rsquo;s small (under $500 million).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>It mines Bitcoin (and holds thousands of them).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>It recently launched a new division focused on renting out its AI infrastructure to help companies build their own ChatGPT-style LLMs.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>It doubled its revenue because of that.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Its balance sheet? Stronger than most Fortune 500s.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And its stock? Dirt cheap.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Smart money (BlackRock, Citadel, Millennium Management) is loading up.</li>
</ul>
In short, this company sits at the exact intersection of AI, crypto, and hypergrowth stocks&mdash; my three favorite megatrends for the next 5 years.
I call this the &ldquo;trifecta trade.&rdquo;
And tomorrow, Thursday April 24 at 11AM ET, I&rsquo;m giving it away. For free.
I&rsquo;m calling the event 2025&rsquo;s Ultimate Money Move.
If you tune in, you&rsquo;ll get:
A.] The name and ticker of the stock I put $50,000 of my own money into
B.] &nbsp;My full thesis on why I believe this could be a 10-bagger
C.] The opportunity to access my Forever Portfolio 2.0 &mdash; a handpicked collection of 10 elite microcaps I believe could rise 1,000% over the next 1&ndash;2 years.
And a lot more.
See you tomorrow.

ALC-Issue-04-23.25

The $50,000 Bet I Just Made

In 2008, I begged my publishers not to publish my book.
It was called The Forever Portfolio.

<div class="image-table" style="float: right; padding-left: 20px;"><img src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5lXgt6jB3OMNNyFakH1apA/7e469261b5f5677104a447f979039b9c/Forever-Portfolio.png" alt="" width="250" align="center" /></div>

The idea was simple: find the unstoppable trends and quietly buy the companies riding those waves. Not to get rich overnight. Not to beat hedge funds.
Just to never worry again.
It was optimistic and people hated me for it. No one wants to be optimistic during a full-blown meltdown.
I knew this and begged my publisher to wait to publish it. They didn&rsquo;t listen. I sold like 40 copies that year.
But now, in 2025, those 40 people who bought the book are probably pretty glad they did.
The book named 11 stocks I predicted would become the market&rsquo;s next leaders.
Google... Meta... Starbucks... Costco&hellip; and more.
The stocks in The Forever Portfolio have since seen peak gains as high as 2,314%... 3,767%... even 14,961%.
Life-changing returns. And it was all thanks to the unique position we were in in 2008.
Here&rsquo;s what else I predicted back then.
Chapter 2: &ldquo;Computer viruses will live forever.&rdquo; In 2008, bots were this weird underground threat. Today? Malware is AI-generated, decentralized, and sold as a service. Your phone is already infected. An estimated 50% of the internet is bots. BOTS!
Chapter 3: &ldquo;Inoculate your portfolio against a global pandemic.&rdquo; Yeah. That happened. Twelve years later. The world shut down, the markets cracked, and suddenly people were Googling &ldquo;how to buy Moderna stock&rdquo; from their basement office-slash-toilet.
Chapter 4: &ldquo;Diamonds, chocolate, and Botox will always sell.&rdquo; I mean, look around. We&rsquo;re on Ozempic and flexing at Barry&rsquo;s Bootcamp while impulse-buying $18 chocolate bars made with &ldquo;ancestral cacao.&rdquo; Luxury didn&rsquo;t die&mdash;it got direct-to-consumer and charged you for shipping.
Chapter 6: &ldquo;Tattoo removal will become a billion-dollar industry.&rdquo; It has. Because regret is a feature, not a bug. Also, sleeves don&rsquo;t pair well with child custody hearings.
Chapter 9: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no known cure.&rdquo; For Alzheimer&rsquo;s. For obesity. For digital addiction. I wasn&rsquo;t trying to scare anyone. I was just trying to say: the world doesn&rsquo;t usually fix things&mdash;it manages them. Investing in the management and the potential for a cure is where the asymmetrical bets are.
I could keep going.
I wrote about the long-term health effects of urbanization and the economics of crime. I even wrote an entire chapter about death.
You want a forever portfolio? You better own a company that sells caskets. I mentioned one stock, Service Corporation International (SCI), by name.
$10,000 in SCI in 2008 would be worth $219,718. If you reinvested the dividends? ~$275,000.
Either way, you would&rsquo;ve clobbered the S&amp;P 500.
But here&rsquo;s the thing I didn&rsquo;t get right.
<h2 class="subhead">Forever Portfolio 2.0</h2>
Back then, I wanted to build a portfolio that let you sleep at night. Now I want to build a portfolio that lets you wake up excited.
So I&rsquo;m doing a full update. Not a sequel. Not a new book. (Yet.)
Just a living, breathing, real-world look at what the next 15 years will actually demand&mdash;from your money, your time, and your sanity.
The trends are still there&mdash;stronger than ever. Aging. Autonomy. Digital identity. Fear. Safety. Faith. The same forces that shaped the last 20 years will shape the next 50.
But I want to show you where those trends are going.
Not as a guru. As a guy who once (or twice) lost everything and spent six months Googling, &ldquo;Can stress actually kill me?&rdquo; (It can.)
The first Forever Portfolio was a survival plan. This one is a permission slip.
To live better. Invest simpler. And finally stop checking your phone during weddings.
While things haven&rsquo;t gotten nearly as bad as they were 17 years ago&hellip;
Thanks to the recent market volatility, we&rsquo;re sitting on a rare second chance to make the same kind of gains.

alc-hero-img-04-22-25

You’ll Never Work Again If This Works (Again)

You walk in. They close the door. There&rsquo;s that weird &ldquo;we-hope-you&rsquo;re-doing-well&rdquo; smile.
Uh-oh.
You're about to get fired.
They start talking. You&rsquo;re not even listening. You&rsquo;re just thinking about how fast you can clear your browser history before IT locks you out.
I&rsquo;ve been fired from just about every job I&rsquo;ve ever had.
&rarr; HBO fired me after I sold them a show.
&rarr; The hedge fund I co-founded kicked me out.
&rarr; I even got booted from a company after I sold it for millions.
And you know what I learned? Firing someone isn&rsquo;t always about incompetence.
Sometimes it&rsquo;s about control.
And that&rsquo;s exactly what we&rsquo;re watching play out&mdash;right now&mdash;with Trump and Jerome Powell.
Trump just threatened to &ldquo;terminate&rdquo; Powell.
CNBC says &ldquo;he can&rsquo;t do that.&rdquo;
Fox says &ldquo;he absolutely should.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, everyone&rsquo;s missing what&rsquo;s really happening in the markets. Spoiler: the biggest setup for stocks in decades. 
Maybe ever.
And, yes, it has everything to do with what Trump&rsquo;s doing right now.
But not just any stocks. Many stocks&mdash;some of which you might already own&mdash;are going to get left behind.
That part is crucial.
So let me show you why I&rsquo;m ghosting everything on my calendar this week. (And setting up a livestream on Thursday to talk all about it.)
First, the question everyone&rsquo;s asking&hellip;
<h3>Can Trump Really Fire Powell?</h3>
Trump sees Powell as an obstacle.
But can he really fire him?
Legally? Not easily.
The Fed Chair serves a four-year term, and you need &ldquo;cause&rdquo; to remove him. And nobody knows what &ldquo;cause&rdquo; actually means.
Does it mean corruption? Or just bad decisions?
If Powell hikes rates into a recession, does that count?
Nobody knows. It&rsquo;s never been tested. No President has ever tried it. Not Nixon. Not LBJ. Not even Reagan.
Trump might be the first.
But even if he doesn&rsquo;t go nuclear, he still has options.
Option one: Wait until Powell&rsquo;s term ends in 2026 and appoint a replacement who&rsquo;s ready to do everything Powell won&rsquo;t.
But Trump&rsquo;s not a patient man.
Option two: He could nominate a &ldquo;shadow chair&rdquo; now. Someone the markets know will be Powell&rsquo;s successor. Someone who goes on TV and signals what Trump wants him to. Someone who says, &ldquo;When I take over, we&rsquo;re doing this.&rdquo;
Wall Street listens to signals. That&rsquo;s how the Fed works now. It&rsquo;s all about expectations.
That&rsquo;s how you move the game without touching the board.
Option three: This one&rsquo;s spicy&hellip; and a lot more speculative.
There&rsquo;s a Supreme Court case on the docket this year (Trump v. Wilcox)&mdash;one that could redefine presidential control over independent agencies.
If the court rules in Trump&rsquo;s favor, it could change everything. No more &ldquo;for cause&rdquo; clause. No more guardrails.
It would mean Trump could legally fire Powell&hellip; with the stroke of a pen.
That&rsquo;s not just a shift in monetary policy. That&rsquo;s a new era.
For the record, I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;ll happen.
Because&hellip;
<h3>Here&rsquo;s What Everyone&rsquo;s Missing </h3>
Trump doesn&rsquo;t need to fire Powell at all.
Because the pressure alone is already having an effect.
Behind the scenes, markets are twitching. And capital is starting to move. My team and I are watching it in real-time.
Here&rsquo;s the thing&hellip;
The smart money isn&rsquo;t moving out of fear.
But out of anticipation.
And they&rsquo;re shifting into the parts of the market that have been ignored.
Meaning? Right now is the BEST time to pay attention.

ALC-Issue-04-21-25(1)

Everyone’s Wrong About Trump and the Fed

This is bigger than the internet. Bigger than mobile. Bigger than social media.
While everyone was distracted by stock market fluctuations and political theater&hellip;&nbsp;
Most people have NO IDEA what just happened last week with ChatGPT.
Their new memory feature allows ChatGPT to remember EVERYTHING about you across all your conversations.
Think about that for a minute...
While most tech companies have been collecting mere breadcrumbs about you - your likes, your clicks, your browsing history - OpenAI is now collecting the most valuable dataset in human history: your complete psychological profile.
This is Zuckerberg x 5,000.
The more you use ChatGPT, the more it understands you, becoming a supercharged reflection of yourself that improves at an exponential rate.&nbsp;
Are you a regular ChatGPT user?
Consider whether it&rsquo;s time to turn off the &ldquo;you can train on my information&rdquo; feature. To prevent your data from being used for training while still using the memory feature:
<ol>
<li> Disable Model Training:&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>Navigate to Settings &gt; Data Controls.</li>
<li>Toggle off "Improve the model for everyone".</li>
</ul>
<ol start="2">
<li> Manage Memory Settings:</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>Go to Settings &gt; Personalization &gt; Memory.</li>
<li>Here, you can:</li>
<ul>
<li>Turn off memory entirely.</li>
<li>Delete specific memories.</li>
<li>Use Temporary Chat for sessions that won't be saved or used for training.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
Now the investment implications&hellip;
<h3>Why This is Bigger Than You Think</h3>
Consider this: the relationship between humans and ChatGPT is evolving beyond a mere tool.&nbsp;
People are now treating these AI assistants as friends, confidants, and even romantic partners.
I'm not making this up - there are already documented cases of people ending real human relationships to pursue &ldquo;connections&rdquo; with their AI companions.
A viral Instagram meme shows a person going through life with a glowing, featureless humanoid figure - representing ChatGPT - as their companion.
The post has over 1.1 million likes and comments like "Bro ChatGPT is like my best friend. Ain't even ashamed to say it" with 25,000 likes.
But here's where things get really interesting for investors and entrepreneurs...
<h3>Three Things to Watch</h3>
For starters, hardware is the next big thing for the big players.
The iPhone form factor is dead.
It hasn't meaningfully changed in nearly a decade. The next evolution in hardware will be designed specifically to interface with these AI companions.
OpenAI is already working on hardware with Johnny Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and iPod. But you can&rsquo;t ignore Elon Musk&rsquo;s edge here.&nbsp;
So what does all of this mean for you?
<ol>
<li>The companies that control the personal AI relationships will be worth trillions. OpenAI and Elon Musk will have the coziest moats.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>We're witnessing the birth of a new internet - one built on agents that can communicate with each other across platforms. Google's new agent-to-agent protocol allows AI agents to work together without sharing internal memories or tools.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>The hardware companies that create the perfect interface for these AI companions will dominate the next decade of technology.</li>
</ol>
And almost nobody is talking about what this means.
My prediction? Within five years, most people will have a personal AI that knows them better than anyone else. And they will interact with it in ways that seem foreign today.
(And, yes, it will almost certainly have dystopian elements.)
In the meantime, the biggest gains won&rsquo;t come from household names. And, right now, James is seeing a prime opportunity to invest in the most under-the-radar plays in AI&hellip;
For dirt cheap.
More on that next week.

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