Trading Pub – 23 May 24 (Special Guest: Mark Yusko)

00:00: Introduction of guest speaker Mark Yusko.
01:15: Mark provides a short introduction about himself, his background growing up during the rise of technology, and his career path leading him to blockchain investments.
06:30: Mark discusses his approach to investing in innovation before others understand it and investing in infrastructure during technology waves.
07:36: How blockchain could be a new operating system starting a new 14 year technology cycle.
12:05: How he was initially skeptical of Bitcoin but looked into it further due to a friend’s conviction in it.
16:27: How he now focuses on blockchain venture capital investing through his firm Morgan Creek Digital.
17:46: Why he does not consider AI to be a new operating system and views it as a tool.
18:21: Chatbots like GPT-4 are performing plagiarism by searching existing information rather than demonstrating true intelligence.
20:49: How an LLM works by predicting the next word based on a prompt vs how the human brain makes connections between information.
22:06: Hinton’s approach was brute force, not elegant like neural systems.
22:17: There is a debate around what true intelligence is and how the brain actually functions.
24:46: How AI and Bitcoin unlock the asset of human creativity by reducing time spent on tasks.
25:23: AI will give people more time for creative pursuits.
28:49: The evolution of empires based on inability to control debt and how this leads to currency failures.
38:29: How central banks control the price of gold through spoofing markets.
40:07: Church had monopoly on power centuries ago due to illiteracy, they told people what to think and do.
41:11: Internet disrupted centralised media control by ABC, NBC, CBS by making information bidirectional and ubiquitous on platforms like Twitter.
42:09: Blockchain and Bitcoin make value exchange like sending money peer-to-peer without intermediaries like banks for the first time.
47:03: Difference between decentralised crypto and centralised currencies controlled by governments.
48:13: Aging population and lower productivity will mean lower GDP growth requiring more tax/debt which leads to money printing and crypto gains.
53:24: Liquidity drives markets, and printing is the only way out for indebted governments, making scarce assets like Bitcoin more valuable.
55:07: Halving ensures fixed supply and is a built-in price support mechanism as miners need higher prices to compensate for reduced block rewards.
01:00:10: Past Bitcoin prices and how high prices could go based on supply.
01:01:46: ETFs allow ‘boomer wrapper’ for holding Bitcoin in brokerage accounts with someone else managing keys.
01:05:05: Supply shock and demand shock from ETF approval have contributed to price increases.
01:13:21: Scientific vs. philosophical questions to get scientific vs. other types of answers from AI.
01:33:12: UK government preparedness campaign and pondering on preparedness for potential long term internet/power outage from cyber event.
01:36:40: Current market cycle will have a fake peak similar to 2021 before continuing upward trend.
01:40:02: Prolonged cyber outage could cut off internet access but not affect underlying cryptocurrency networks.
01:42:11: Cashing out crypto profits to have funds available in the real world in case of infrastructure issues.
01:45:11: Major calamities often coincide with wars that big players can blame market falls on.
01:46:32: Billionaires moving to cash, and Bill Gates recently liquidating stock, indicating they foresee issues and are positioning a year in advance.
01:47:59: Plans to start phasing out crypto holdings from summer 2023 onwards depending on price targets being met.
01:56:36: Crypto markets are waking up and individual coins will start performing strongly as big players move.