The State of Crypto and AI…Pathetic! And A Jurassic Park Moment For Markets?

Happy Sunday…

I have been back on the bike a lot this last week. Five rides and it feels great.

My finger has also healed to the point that I played 9 holes with my son max. The finger was heavily taped, but it worked.

I have been around for a couple of bubbles and bear markets and it is starting to feel like we are on the verge of some chaos. On Friday, The $VIX spiked 30 percent and rose above 20 because the semiconductor index fell 10 percent. That puts me on $VIX watch this week and I would rather be in Italy (this photo by my friend Roy Rubin taken on Elba island)…

Twitter tweet

Onward…

Elon, The White House, the index providers, even personal Zoom pitches from Jamie Dimon are pushing $2 trillion SpaceX on the public. I mean every Space Company should have the mounting unrelated losses of Grok and Twitter tucked in neatly to dilute the actual Space part of SpaceX. How sloppy is the SpaceX IPO? One hint is Fidelity reduced minimum SpaceX investment to $2,000 from 500,000. If there ever was a moment to UNpick a stock, this might be that moment. I did that last week unpicking SpaceX and Tesla from my indexes. I can do that with Frec.com which I use for direct indexing.

Next…

I wish we still had a ‘Crypto and AI Czar’ said NOBODY!

We did have one, David Sacks who was picked by Trump in December 2024 just in time for Trump to run his Trump and Melania coin scam (both launched as he took his job and both down 99 percent). It is not just memecoin scams that David ‘czarred’ us with. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase and Microstrategy are down 30-80 percent since he accepted ‘Cazrdom’. It was good for David who got to sell all his crypto at the top. David is a man of principles…oh wait…

In January 2025, it was obvious to anyone (at least me) that it would not go well for anyone but insiders like David. I wrote this.

The crypto pumps and dumps by the family have been endless since Trump took office. David has since stepped away from his crypto czar role because you know…job well done.

As for AI, the public is about to find out what AI is worth to them as it is stuffed into their portfolio via Open AI and Anthropic. Just in time for the IPO’s, Trump on Friday would like to double down and have the government acquire stakes at the pre IPO valuations. I am sure this will go well. In the meantime, the resignations keep piling up.

On the other end of the pathetic political spectrum, Socialist Bernie Sanders thinks the public should now own 50 percent of AI companies…

For whatever reason, Dario and Sam – the CEO’s of Anthropic and Open AI have been on a year long speaking tour spreading joy about all the job losses to come. No wonder Bernie has a new bone to chew on.

Elsewhere in AI, while I am no expert in data centers or energy, my gut is that Data Centers are the new ‘fracking’. I mean Mr. Wonderful (Kevin O’Leary), the guy so wonderful he needs to wear TWO expensive watches on each wrist to tell time, wants to melt Utah. I am sure it will go well.

Before you email me calling me names for pointing out my AI worries….I am an AI optimist. I think the technology is pretty magical. But, I feel like we are at a Jurassic Park moment in AI. Crypto and markets too. When you watched Jurassic Park you knew the minute you saw the Velociraptors and T-Rex that the fences and technology would not hold.

America is pot commit to AI. Google and FaceMetaBook just announced they were borrowing money. Rates are not zero anymore fellas. While the US is pot commit to American AI, data centers in every backyard and the idea that software is dead…maybe open source and China Jurassic Parks our plans.

Next up…

My friend Jan Van Eck emailed me a post this week with a note saying ‘maybe a post degenerate economy is coming’.

The post is titled ‘The Humanist Resistance’. The author believes/hopes that AI may bring us back to our humanity.

I replied that humanity is possible for sure but being a degenerate is being human!

Going off the grid in the Italian Dolomites is definitely one way to quiet yourself from the degenerate economy, but we are now forever tethered to degeneracy thanks to predictions markets, crypto, AI and a post SEC regulated world.

Speaking of a post SEC regulated world, Trump just pardoned a Republican congressman who was convicted of insider trading.

This is on the heels of ‘celebrity analyst’ Citron Research being found guilty of scheming to manipulate stock market via media campaigns. I imagine the pardon pen will be out very soon for Citron. It won’t look good for the White House to have Citron in jail seeing all the grift going on inside the White House.

No wonder David Sacks bestie Chamath, who on his All-In podcast wanted Trump jailed for his part in January 6th riot, snuggled up to Trump. Chamath’s SPAC pump and dumps on CNBC makes Citron schemes look girl scout in nature.

It has never been a more ‘buyer beware’ world than 2026.

PS – While I am suspect of Google wanting/needing to borrow money to win AI, Ben Thompson has a great piece titled ‘The Google Capital Company’. Have a read.