Ep 200: Bitcoin All-Time High, Jony Ive + OpenAI, Kalshi and xAI, Google I/O Highlights, Circle IPO?, Hailey Bieber Rage Bait, Short King Discourse

[00:01] Dumb Shower is a weekly live chat on all things tech, crypto and pop culture news brought to you by Boys Club, a New York based media and creative studio. DBH is hosted by myself, Deena Burke and Natasha Hoskins. Hi. Co-founders, marketers and entrepreneurs that have built our careers in new tech and startups. We're also proudly the dumbest in the room and we love to learn in public. DBH is recorded live and best consumed as a video podcast. Here's this week's show. [00:31] you [00:34] We are, Kate and I and Miranda are all in London, England. Dina, we are missing very much. We are missing Dina a lot. We are here for Avalanche Summit London, which has been great. Final day was today. We've had a very good time there. And this is... [00:53] DBH. So what we do here is we yap for an hour ish around what's happening in tech, what's happening in crypto, what's happening in Silicon Valley, it seems, and we have a lot of fun doing it. So that's what we're up to today. [01:12] Sometimes we have guests today. We do not. Um, [01:16] It's just us. [01:17] Just us yapping. [01:19] Justice Gals. Let's get started here. I'm just going to get into presenter mode. Natasha, do you want to tell us what Boys Club is before we get started? Sure. Yeah. Boys Club is one part creative studio, one part media company. We have podcasts, we have newsletters, we do events, we do a bunch of stuff on social. We talk about emerging technology and how that technology affects our daily lives, the things that we care about and

[01:49] and we don't take ourselves very seriously. Okay, agenda today, we're going to talk about all-time highs, [01:58] crypto prices. We're feeling good. We're feeling really good. Look at God. Won't she do it? Won't she do it? We are going to spend some time talking about the Johnny Ive and OpenAI news. I did a little bit of a deep dive before we got on this call. So I have some lore to share that I think will be juicy to chat through. We're going to talk about Kalshi and Twitter, which is really just a moment for me to do a victory lap. Glow. It's for you to glow. And for the record, I put that in there. I want you to glow. [02:28] Thank you, Natasha. You deserve it. I feel very seen. We can talk about that. We'll talk about that in a bit. Google I.O. 2025. Natasha is going to brief us on the highlights there. There's some Coinbase and Circle. Well, really Circle IPO. [02:40] uh news that relates to coinbase also relates to ripple we'll talk about that in a bit and then some quick hits which kate is going to walk us through i think i saw some previews we have a slide on chris jenner's facelift we have a slide on uh [02:56] One of my personal favorite moments this morning in our... [03:00] in our actual dumb bitch hour, [03:03] stand up was [03:05] I was like, hey, can you take the quick hits? And she was like, yeah. And one of them that I put in was the short King discourse. And she was like, I'm not too familiar with the short King discourse. Should I dig into it? And I was like, oh, it's just the tweet that's in there. There's nothing to dig. Nothing more here. Nothing more to see here. But that was just really funny to me. It really got me. Yeah. So some fun stuff at the end. I do want to say before we get started.

[03:32] You don't know this. [03:33] but this is our 200th episode oh my god actually i saw this on i i want to do something special for it but here we are here we are in our hotel rooms 200 episodes wow celebrate i do have to say something that brings me comfort in that is i have said so much dumb shit over the last 200 episodes [04:03] you were like, oh... [04:05] Um, [04:06] like, [04:07] There's so much surface area for me to say stupid things and for it to be clipped and for people to like talk about it and like, [04:13] hate me or decide that they like me or whatever. It's just like weird. And one thing that we talked about then was like, yeah, but it comes to a certain point where there's so much out there that like, [04:24] And it's like when a law firm gives all of the information over and it's like 10,000 items of content and it's like, oh, no one's going to be able to get through all of that. So we've hit that breaking point. We've hit the threshold. I was listening to a podcast that was about... [04:44] that was about censorship in China. And they were talking about the three tactics that governments use to censor their citizens. And the three are fear, like, [04:58] you're scared that something's going to happen to you if you say something. Friction, make it hard. Do a firewall. In China, you can't access Twitter and places like that without getting an IP, VPN, whatever, and jumping a firewall. And then the last one is flooding. And that's just like flooding it with the type of information that you want people to know about you. I feel we have done all three. I think some people are afraid we've definitely flooded. Yeah. Oh, man. That's really funny.

[05:28] I also feel, um, [05:30] Like I have way thicker skin than when we first started. So even if someone does clip something and we say something stupid, it's like, great. I don't, I don't care. Totally. You've transformed that, like let people grow. That's an area that you really grow. Yeah. [05:44] They're doing the work for us if they do that. We're like, what are we clip farming the community? Like, you know, wait, like they're doing, if they clip something dumb, we say we're like, great. Free marketing. Totally. Yeah. Great. That is the perspective I have now. That was not the perspective I had when we really was not really not. Uh, episode one, if anybody wants to go back and listen, I actually like, haven't, I, it would be kind of interesting. Someone told me that they [06:14] still idiots it seems and then the second episode i think was [06:18] two girls, one deck. Amazing. Maybe we should call it that. [06:25] Two girls, one deck? Two girls, one deck is kind of a funny... [06:28] Oh, man. That is funny. Okay. [06:32] Yeah, so 200 episodes. That's that. Okay, quick shout out to Polygon before we get started. A couple tweets here. [06:41] We, first of all, just love Polygon. They're... [06:45] sponsor [06:45] a DBH partner of Voice Club. If you've touched crypto in any way, chances are you've already used Polygon. It's the chain quietly powering a bunch of stuff that actually works, that people actually use, like Stripe's crypto payments, betting on Polymarket's prediction markets, and much more. They're shipping. They're shipping.

[07:03] at a clip right now and it's really cool to see uh sky posted this this morning 30 million in institutional deposits hit polygon [07:12] over the weekend. [07:14] that's a lot of money. And then the story here, which is about Guatemala's biggest bank [07:20] um [07:21] adopting blockchain rails for US remittances as stablecoins are increasingly becoming the plumbing for global payments. Stablecoin summer continues. And this is happening on Polygon. So huge. They're really big in the stablecoin game right now and just love them and honored that they're our partner for this podcast. [07:40] I was at dinner last night. [07:45] dinner that had no food, which was an interesting move. But I was like, girl dinner, okay, I see you. And I talked to this lovely woman who's so smart. And we talked a lot about sort of institutional adoption into crypto, neobanks, what's happening in LATAM. And [08:09] I was really so intrigued by all the things that she was teaching me. And then this morning to be looking at this, I was like, wow, really cool stuff happening around the world with stable coins and exciting to see Polygon in the mix on that. [08:22] Totally. So shout out to Polygon. Okay, let's jump into it. [08:26] All-time highs. [08:28] Fuck the haters. [08:31] I wrote the newsletter yesterday, the Boys Club newsletter, and I had a subject line that was like, sorry to the haters and the losers about Bitcoin. I couldn't ship that. I felt too bad about shipping that. But I wish you had. I really wish you had. I wish you had too.

[08:48] Yeah, it felt political somehow in a way that I didn't feel like being in the moment. Oh, okay. You know, I didn't really want to take on that. You didn't want to take on the Democratic Party? [09:01] Okay, Bitcoin all-time high. It was at $110 yesterday. It's at $111. [09:06] today um oh man he and i had a absolute uh classic conversation yesterday [09:14] Should we buy Bitcoin? Should we buy some more Bitcoin? Is now the time? Should I get some? [09:20] classic yeah many switch cases totally i'm i'm so happy to see it i hate to say this really does affect my emotional state [09:31] It does at this point. The price of Bitcoin. It really has started to become that for me. And so [09:39] Great stuff to see here. So the mental state is good right now. Yeah. Yesterday I was like, okay, like we're so back. Like we're so back. It's totally good. It's great. But I... [09:53] Yeah, the feeling is always when it was whatever it was 80, 75, a few mere weeks ago. Why? You know, but [10:03] There was no dry powder at the moment. So yeah, the feeling's always, why don't I... [10:09] Why don't I own more? [10:10] But that's a slippery slope. [10:13] Then the next feeling after that is like, well, [10:16] Should I take profit? That actually, that's a good question to ask. I haven't asked that, but

[10:24] Are you asking yourself that? No. [10:26] All of the money, all of the crypto money that I own is... [10:33] Like... [10:34] And just it's a long haul. It's a long haul vibe for me personally. I'm just going to let that ride and... [10:41] If it goes to zero, it goes to zero. And hopefully it doesn't. Hey, don't speak that over. No, it won't. I repeat that. Don't speak that over us right now. Okay. A little bit Bitcoin to 1 million. Yes, Alex. Preach. Let's get that. Hallelujah. So a little context on where and why we're in this moment and something to be looking out for in the future. [11:11] price discovery mode where it's like, okay, we're finding our new level right now, hopefully. It did bounce. Yesterday, it hit 110 and then it bounced down to 106 or something like that, but now it's up again. So that's great news. There's a few different things that people are saying. The narrative around why. [11:28] One. [11:29] institutional adoption has been slow and steady. So slow and steady inflows to the ETFs. Like, it takes a minute for, um, [11:37] the people to understand what they're selling, like the institutions to understand what they're selling into their clients. Like it all of this is like a it's like a big ship that needs to turn that. Yes, we got the ETF approvals, whatever it was. [11:49] last year, but like there's some time to [11:52] to onboard. To understand what it is, understand what they're selling, like integrate into our products and stuff like that. And like we're seeing that come to fruition

[12:01] we're seeing the results of that work basically happening over the last whatever six to 12 months. [12:06] easing trade tensions between the US and China. So things have cooled down on that front and people are like, okay, maybe we are so back and we can put some money into things again. The dollar not being as strong as it was. So this is a story that is ongoing, will be ongoing. Wrote about it a couple of weeks ago in the newsletter. Everyone is trying, all the other [12:35] be the global store value because everyone's looking at the dollar and being like, okay, yeah, but I don't know for how long the dollar is going to have its dominance that it enjoys now. So the euro, everyone's trying out right now. Everyone's trying to get the attention of the global economy to be like, no, it's us. It's gold. It's the euro. It's all these things. And Bitcoin is like a really like long shot candidate in that race. But that is like part of... [13:04] people are hedging and putting some money into Bitcoin. [13:07] in that because of that reason. And then the one thing that is, [13:12] I think really, really interesting and what we want to what the Bitcoin people really want to see more of is Bitcoin's performance decoupling from the performance of the stock market. So once [13:23] up historically Bitcoin in the stock market. [13:26] have [13:27] Well, once Bitcoin got to a certain level, its performance has been tracking basically with the performance of the stock market. And that's recently. And what happened yesterday is interesting because stocks were down. There was all this news that came out about treasury yields. People freaked out. They're pulling their money out of stocks. And...

[13:46] uh, [13:47] the stock market was down, but Bitcoin rallied. And so that indicates like a decoupling that [13:52] Bitcoin people are like really, really pumped about because they're like, OK, this means that Bitcoin could be starting to represent this like really legitimate alternative store value. People are taking their cash out of the stocks and putting it into Bitcoin. And so that is very bullish for those people and me. [14:09] um yeah i mean the the strength of the u.s dollar or the lack thereof as of recently is has been felt here in oh yeah same one it's just like oh my god like i the last time i was in london it was the pound and the dollar were basically on par with one another like there was a tiny i think it was maybe like 10 percent increase or whatever um [14:36] And I'm going around. [14:38] thinking everything is the same as the dollar yeah and it's not one-to-one and like you are i and you're paying so i'm like paying with apple pay [14:48] It's like, okay, my cappuccinos. [14:50] $4. [14:52] four pounds and I'm like oh my gosh cheaper [14:55] I've got a cheap cappuccino here in, in London, in London town, cheaper than New York. And then your Apple pay, you, you sit down, you start enjoying the cappuccino, you get the Apple pay notification in dollar. [15:08] And you're like, Oh, Oh, not, not on par with one another. Um, so yeah, it's, it trumps America here in the UK for the dollar. It's, it's tough. It's, it's, you feel it for sure. So yeah,

[15:22] Anyway, all that to say, maybe we'll be paying in Bitcoin next time I'm here. [15:30] Kate, do you own any Bitcoin? I don't think you do. [15:33] Nope. Okay. [15:35] I mean, yeah, totally. [15:40] We ought to get you on that. Yeah, I think we might need to. So should I buy now? [15:48] Okay, what's next here? Okay, Johnny Ive and Sam Altman joining forces. Should we watch a little bit of the video first? Before we do, just, yeah, actually. [16:01] Well, let's wait actually until the end to watch video because there's something specific in the video that I want to talk about that I want to make sure everyone has a context for the story first and then we can talk about. So the headline here yesterday, it was announced that OpenAI is buying Johnny Ives. [16:13] uh design firm company and johnny i've essentially for 6.5 [16:19] billion dollars in stock. So it is a stock deal. And this was headlines everywhere. [16:28] Everyone, everywhere was running a big flashy story about this. It's really big news. I want to talk about what exactly was in the announcement and what it means, but I do want to do a little backstory on Johnny Ive. [16:43] for both of you I think we might be interested. Let's go. And for our readers. I'm gonna need it, yeah. Okay, so 1996 to 2019. [16:51] Johnny Ive is running Apple Industrial Design.

[16:54] IMAC. [16:55] iPod, iPhone, [16:57] and the Apple Watch. We don't have to talk about the Apple Watch. But the rest of the iPod. We don't have to talk about the Apple Watch. I will say, just quickly on the Apple Watch. Yeah. One... [17:09] Um, [17:09] I think I have a lack of understanding of how pervasive that is as a electronic device. Like the watch. Yeah. Like I think you go to middle, you go to Nashville, Tennessee, you go anywhere outside of New York and like basically everybody's wearing an Apple watch. And then I had an experience on the timeline the other day of scrolling and seeing someone [17:33] post a picture of their Apple Watch, they will remain nameless. But the first thought I had is, wow, you think someone's cool? And then they post a picture of Apple. No, I am. Natasha's really, really, really. If you wear an Apple Watch, [17:47] I have such little respect for you. Truly, to my heart. I will hold that. I will hold that. Clip it. Clip it. In middle America, in wedding invitations or websites, [17:58] The bride and groom will be like for dress code, they'll say, hey, please take off your Apple watch. [18:05] Like if it's formal, if it's formal. - Oh my god. - Because everyone is wearing them. [18:09] Oh my gosh. There's an incredible, as an aside, I must talk about this show overcompensating. So great. Go watch it. Benny drama. We don't need to get into it. It's all she can talk about. It's really funny. Um, [18:21] Benny drama or Benito Skinner and this woman, Mary bone Beth, I think is her name. They have a podcast. There's an incredible clip of them talking about Apple watches that like I send to people often and like belly laugh every time I watch it. He talks about like the, it's a gift and he's like, yeah, it's, it's the creme color. It's, it's,

[18:43] I'll post it. It's so funny. Anyway, continue. All this to say, though I... [18:49] Do not respect it. And I judge you if you wear one. [18:52] It's a pervasive... [18:54] electronic device in our time. It sure is. Yeah, I will say I was, um, [19:03] everyone wears them here and [19:05] I don't really have strong opinions on it as you do, but I respect your opinion. I see you. I hear you. I was surprised. I go to this yoga class and my yoga teacher is like pretty like, [19:14] crunchy lady and [19:16] tattoos and but like in a way in a national it's hard to she's like very national yoga teacher and [19:23] Um, [19:24] and [19:25] she had she was wearing one I was like oh wow that was a surprise um anyway okay so Johnny I've [19:31] Like legendary, legendary, iconic, the products like his design language is like the DNA of Apple at this point. And like it's legendary stuff. [19:45] During that whole time though, Steve Jobs is there, right? [19:47] Um, [19:48] Not to know. So Johnny, I've stayed on 2019 and. Oh, 2019. Oh, wow. So I think he had like a good 10 years of just with no, no jobs. 2019, he signs a hundred million dollar consulting deal with a non-compete with Apple. [20:06] So Apple's like, okay, you're leaving, but we want to keep you close. [20:10] And you can't work for anyone else. [20:11] You have to just stay, stay with an exchange. You get a hundred million dollars, a hundred million dollars.

[20:15] 2022 [20:17] Apple ends that deal and Johnny's free. [20:20] I don't know what caused that, but that was what happened in 2022. 2023, there's a leak that [20:26] Johnny Ive and Sam Altman are talking to SoftBank to raise a billion dollars for [20:31] the iPhone of AI, which is codenamed IO. [20:34] And we're like, okay, right. This came, this happened. And we're like, [20:38] Everyone's like, okay, they're thinking hardware, hardware's here, but we don't know exactly what's happening. So 2024, they incorporate IO and then OpenAI takes us to... [20:47] stake of that 23% at stake and is funding the early work and you're like, it's okay. So they're in bed together. [20:53] But it's not like full whole hog. It's not. [20:58] It's not like a marriage announcement. Like it's not a marriage announcement. It's a soft launch. It's a soft launch. They've been soft launching. They've been soft launching. Yesterday they hard launched. So 2025. [21:10] yesterday, OpenAI, they bought the rest of IO, basically this company that they had set up. They buy Apple buys, excuse me, OpenAI buys the rest of it, $6.5 billion, stock deal, [21:19] Johnny Ive is signed as, at first I was like, is Johnny Ive going to be an employee of OpenAI? He's not. He's not going to be an employee, but he is. He's a W2 for. Exactly. He's like, he's my social security number. He is signed as a long-term design consultant. And basically he has a, in this IO company, they, he built a team of 55 designers and designers. [21:41] engineers and that whole team comes over and johnny ive is put in charge of um

[21:48] like all of creative, all of product at, [21:52] Open AI. So that's the news. And... [21:56] the [21:59] I will say a few things about this. One, [22:01] That integration of those 55 people into that company of open AI would love to watch how that's going to happen. Would love to watch. Would tune in on a Bravo-style reality TV show so hard on that integration. So hard. Put it into my veins. Totally. I want to watch a 24-hour live stream of the... [22:22] egos in that office. Oh my God. The dick clinging is going to be like unbearable. Crazy. Okay. So that's the first thing that I just really came up for me. And then the second thing is on the, so it's, it's clearly a hardware play. [22:38] Um, very light on the details. They, um, [22:42] I talked a little bit about this idea of ambient computing. Like Sam was talking about how his relationship to technology or his relationship to his phone right now is like sucks because it's just like constantly pinging and pulling and you're tugging, it's tugging at you and your attention. And like, they're very much talking about this like ambient computing world where they had mentioned pendants. I hate pendants, pins, bullshit. Honestly, I have to say it. Like if that's where we end, if that's where we land, I will be disappointed. But like wearables as a [23:12] definitely in the atmosphere though Johnny I've maybe doing it, it would be a lot better than the few examples that we've seen over the past whatever year and a half that have failed.

[23:23] the iPhone of AI narrative is a very direct challenge to Apple. So Apple's feelings are hurt in this. Undoubtedly, like, [23:31] Tim Cook, all of that. I don't know how you feel today waking up in this world. Sad boy. Yeah. He's giving sad boy. It's hello darkness, wild friend. Exactly. A few things that Apple does still going for them is that [23:46] part of the success of the iPhone was they had a huge, like their supply chain chops and operations chops and like the Foxconn of it all is crazy. Johnny's not necessarily bringing that with him to open AI. So that's like still an open question. And then the other open question is, [24:03] related to sort of this idea of the 55 people of the design engineering team integrating into open AI [24:08] Johnny Ive is... [24:09] a perfectionist. [24:11] He's a design perfectionist. Do you think he'd be upset with the state of my iPhone currently? I think he'd be upset with the state of your iPhone. And I also think he would be upset with the state of... [24:22] OpenAI and Sam are shipping stuff like all these model 03, 04, 1, da, da, da, da, da. Like no one can make sense of it. Johnny Ives is like simplicity. [24:33] design like one big thing every couple years like it's it's a different culture [24:40] then [24:41] how he has been working and how he... [24:43] he thinks I think is very different to how Sam thinks about like rate of shipping. So, it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Um, [24:53] I'll pause here and then we can watch the video. But any notes? I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this. I think interesting note around like the tension between sort of their style of –

[25:06] development and release and things like that. I [25:11] Don't want to come at it with a lack of imagination on what it could be. But like, it is very hard to imagine. In the video, like Sam talks about what you were not only like the pinging and the pulling and like this thing that's constantly sort of like fighting for your attention, but also... [25:28] talked about [25:29] all of the steps that it takes to get to the thing that you're trying to do on your phone or on your laptop. And that was sort of interesting to me. Like, okay, yeah, you have to, he was like, you have to open it up. You have to open your browser. You have to get to Google. You have to, [25:45] as though you could have a more direct relationship to the thing that you're trying to do. And [25:51] Whether it's. [25:52] speaking it into existence or being able to just like more efficiently do that on a device which I was like oh okay it started to like open up a reality around like [26:02] there is a lack of efficiency because my experience, I just... [26:06] feel like [26:08] I am so addicted to my phone and so addicted to my devices that I can't imagine a world where that is. [26:15] it's even more efficient. That feels like crazy to me. But as he was sort of talking about what the user experience currently is, I had a little bit more like, okay, I can see where this can go. [26:27] Um, [26:29] Thank you. [26:29] I don't know. I like, I'm feeling... [26:32] Like the feelings around it are like really negative. They're not like tech optimistic at all. They're like money is not real. These men are obsessed with themselves. Like I just like it's it. The feeling is insufferable to me of this like nine minute video around them like just.

[26:48] circle jerking how much they love each other. Like I was like, Oh my God, like this is a trailer for a company that hasn't, doesn't have a product yet. And that's crazy. I do think that the video is really well done. And I think that [27:03] Johnny brings a warmth and humanity to the conversation that was really refreshing. [27:10] And I think that these men are shaping the future of the world. And so, of course, they have an ego around it. But part of me feels like complicit in that. And I don't want to be a part of it. I hear that. I respect that. Kate, can we roll the tape? I just want to watch up until a certain point. And then I want to pause it. I want to... [27:32] chat through it as soon as he crosses the road. Okay, so this is the, for folks that are listening, this is the launch video that was released yesterday that is, as Natasha points out, nine minutes long, but very cinematic. I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine [27:52] what it means to use a computer. Sam is [28:00] a rare visionary. He shoulders [28:04] incredible responsibility, but his curiosity, his humility remain utterly inspiring. Okay, okay. We can pause. We can pause here. [28:14] Okay, wait. [28:16] Go ahead. [28:18] I...

[28:19] So watching this video for the first time yesterday, I nearly lost my mind. The clip is of Sam... [28:25] Hands stuffed into his pocket, into his skinny jeans, like racing across. Like he's like trying to get across that. He's not a mission. He can barely fit his hands in the pockets because they're so tight. What is going on here? He needs a stylist so badly. Like so badly. It's distracting. It is distracting. It's distracting. It's distracting. He needs a stylist. And honestly, just go to Uniqlo. [28:52] Literally go to Uniqlo. Just go to Uniqlo. That's what I tell every man. Or go to Buck Mason. Like, there's so many options. [29:00] to do something so much better than this. Yeah, every man that thinks he's putting that shit on, like, he just, he's wearing the most basic thing he found at Mr. Porter. Like, just, [29:08] Get one of those guys to help you out. Totally. And here's the thing. People will come to his defense and be like, well, he doesn't care about what he's wearing because he's, it doesn't matter what he's wearing. He's doing all these things that are much bigger than what he's wearing. And that's true. But I will say it's gotten to the point now where it is distracting from the things that he is trying to do. Right. [29:25] that it's like now that's all i'm thinking about i'm watching this video and i'm like what is he doing like why and and also the other thing i'll say about same moment is [29:33] For someone who [29:35] who puts himself in front of the camera all the time. [29:39] He sure seems like he hates it. [29:42] Like he seems uncomfortable and miserable every time he, the camera pans to him. And I'm like, why either you need to change your attitude towards the,

[29:51] Or stop doing this. Or stop doing the videos. [29:56] Yeah, I think that's not I don't think that's an option. I think his comms teams are like we have to humanize. [30:01] all of these products and you are the face of, you are the human face of these products. And he is begrudgingly being pulled into, you can feel it. [30:09] You can. The other thing that I'll say is he is looking, he looks so... [30:15] AI generated himself. Like, okay. Two other things about this video. One, there's a lot of people who I've seen a lot of talk around, is this video AI generated or not? I'm curious. I would love to know. I have no... [30:28] opinion on that. Second, [30:31] second thing that really annoyed me about this video. [30:34] the San Francisco propaganda. I shan't engage. Like, I do not give a fuck about this city. And I know that people are like, it's the... [30:45] It's the frontier of innovation. But something Sam said in this video that literally pissed me off is he was talking about San Francisco. They have a whole section. They have a San Francisco section. And part of what he said in that video was the epicenter of culture. And I was like, fuck off. This is the culture. That's not true. That's not true. [31:15] Lost in the sauce. Like, sure, you can say it's an epicenter of technology. You can say that all great technological innovation has come from Silicon Valley. That is true. That is facts.

[31:24] You cannot tell me for one moment that a key cultural output that has shaped [31:31] Today. [31:32] came from like there's like sure like the oh anyway I don't know whatever there's the mission there's gay culture that's cool I can see that I don't know that Sam Altman is talking about that it really pissed me off I was just like don't give me that [31:47] I will not go there. She's not going to stand for it. She's not going to stand for it. [31:52] I respect that totally and completely. Just a few quick hits here. We've really spent a lot, far too long on the story. So we're going to run through the rest of these. I did like this one. That was like, this blog post is styled like a cross between a wedding announcement and a memorial webpage. Really funny stuff. Okay. Quickly on Kalshi, next story here. [32:11] Anything else you want to add on Johnny? I've been opening. I, [32:13] For me, I just want to make the meme that says 55 designers, 55 burgers, 55 fries, 55, you know the Tim Robinson one? [32:22] I don't know. I don't. But you know the team Robinson where he drives up to the order and he's saying, Oh, I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. Yeah. [32:29] - You should make that with captions. I'll say, just one other thing. [32:34] I do want to see what they make. Like I'm genuinely, I bated breath. Can't wait. I just don't want to be all negative about it. But my feelings around it are just like, I think it's taken up too much time on the timeline. I'm just like, I unsubscribe now. [32:48] Yeah. We need to come back when you have something, come back when you have something fair, fair, fair, fair. Um, okay. So next door here really, really quickly. This is just a victory lap for me. Um, yeah.

[32:58] Quick context. [32:59] two days ago, one day ago, there was this big headline on Bloomberg that said, Elon Musk's XAI will bring AI content to prediction market Kelshi. And... [33:10] uh so you read this headline and you're like wow cal she is partnering with xai then there was this um [33:16] post from the founder of Cal street Cal sheet for folks that don't know is the prediction market. It's like the competitor to poly market basically. And, um, [33:26] the founder of Kalshi tweets, [33:30] I love Elon Musk, basically, and we're partnering with OpenAI. And like, that was basically what he said. And then he was like, we're partnering with OpenAI, not with OpenAI, it was XAI, and we're so excited, da-da-da-da-da. It was a big gushy, like, partnership announcement post. Partnership was very much like the context there. The tone. The tone. And then this Bloomberg article comes out, and it was like, wow, Kalshi, congratulations. This is huge. I'm looking at this story. [33:53] And I'm like, hmm, something feels off here. Something feels off about the story. And what I was feeling like is, [34:03] there's far too often and this is like rife in the crypto industry where people talk about like okay we're announcing a partnership partnerships brand x brand and really when you look at it it's [34:17] this is vendor customer this is someone is selling a service someone is buying a service and that's [34:24] Business. It's actually just like, oh, there's a business transaction happening. Exactly. And it's often like beneficial for the smaller...

[34:34] person who's [34:36] typically buying from the bigger person for you to put your two brands together because then the smaller business can be like hey we're partnering with this bigger company no [34:45] You're there. [34:46] your vendor [34:48] Like, let's be honest about what's happening here. Crypto does it all the time. It's annoying and really gets me going. [34:54] Then I'm looking at this house. You have some media literacy, media literacy happening here. You're reading it and you read right through that. I read right through this headline and I was like, this is what's happening here because you're looking at the story. And first of all, I was like, let's see. Okay. I read the release and I was like, who's. [35:08] going to give the quote. Is there going to be a quote from Elon Musk? Because Elon Musk is in the headline, like, well, maybe he's going to talk about how excited he is for this partnership. No. [35:15] No, no Elon quote. No, it's just the Calci guy being like, we're so excited to integrate. And then you're like looking at it and like, how are they integrating it? And basically what they're [35:24] xai into like the just basically like when there's a market and there's um like some descriptive copy that's like giving people context about what the market is about okay they're like gonna use xai to generate pull in the generated okay yeah like basically like so we could make an announcement that says we're partnering with chat gpt because they are grammar checking the newsletter exactly

[35:49] okay so i just want to say let the record show i put up this [35:53] tweet yesterday. I tweeted and deleted because I did not have courage in my conviction. I can't believe you deleted it. I know. I deleted it because it was really not performing well. And I was like, I think maybe I'm off base here. But I said, this is a great headline for Kalshi because it makes you think that the two are in bed. When you think about when you see this headline, you're like, oh, X or Twitter, that's like distribution for Kalshi. That's going to be huge for Kalshi. But when really it's just that XAI is a service provider to Kalshi, a vendor, if you will. And [36:17] Tweeted and deleted. [36:18] But had I known many such cases today, [36:22] The news comes out yesterday, actually. Recent speculation. Oh, this is X. This is Twitter posting from their main account. Recent speculation about XAI's involvement in the prediction market space has been circulating. While we're enthusiastic about the potential of this industry and engaged in various discussions, no formal partnerships have been confirmed to date. Stay tuned. The founder deletes his tweet. [36:41] Bloomberg retracts their article. Oh, brutal, brutal, brutal, brutal. So this is victory lap, victory lap. And also, I will say that this kind of, to me, reads X is about Twitter's about to do their own prediction market, or they're going to do something. So that's, they're just like, we need to get Calci out of the way here. This, that was ridiculous. And that's not happening. [37:03] - Sorry. [37:04] I I'm so happy for you. I wish you had kept the tweet up. Um, there's a big lesson there. [37:09] Big lesson. There's a lesson in there. Bridge in your conviction. [37:13] uh miranda yesterday when we were together we were talking about books we were reading or books we had read and i was like well you were so early you you were the one who read uh the fear of being disliked and she was like the fair and we were like oh the courage

[37:30] it's the courage to be disliked not the favorite reference here at club hq [37:34] Yeah. Anyway. Wow. Great stuff. Thank you for giving us some media literacy on that. Tell us what's going on with Google. [37:46] So Google had their keynote, their big keynote. I think it was yesterday or two days ago. It's also called IO. So I do think there's some... [38:01] I don't know. [38:02] I have some speculation that Google comes out with this keynote. A lot of what they're saying is very obviously competitive to open AI. Most of their announcements are talking about their AI development. And so I kind of think maybe, maybe the news of Sam Altman's new acquisition was a way to just bury all of the Google news, like the timing of it. Obviously the news was going to come out because now you search IO and it's [38:29] Nothing comes up around Google. It's so weird. Okay. [38:33] Anyway, so Sundar Pinchai got up there. [38:38] He opens up. It's about two hours long. Kate, I sent you a link to also watch, so hold that up. And the keynote goes through all of the recent developments that they have released. And he starts out, this is just about trying to like sort of make a joke about how it's Gemini season. And she was like, it's always Gemini season here at Google. And I was just like, don't do that.

[39:08] going to watch the video that shows some of these developments. So first highlight for me that I feel like is most [39:16] important and most applicable for people [39:20] immediately will be that the search mode is going to be much more chat focused. So they released previous in their previous release, they added, [39:31] AI to the search where you search now and there's an AI generated summary at the top. And initially, when it first came out, there was mixed reviews on how good it was and it's gotten better and better. [39:45] So the next step for them is to have it much more chat focused. So instead of just being like Google search, it's going to be basically the chat bot. [39:53] Over time. So we'll start to see that in the coming weeks. And they had a bunch of data on how many people are engaging or using the AI overviews. So those have become like very popular and people are using them all the time. Do you use them? [40:08] Mm-mm. [40:08] I mean, I use them in that they're there, but I don't fully trust the information that comes up. Okay. You do your own research from there. Yeah. [40:18] Okay. Okay. The next one is tech to text to video improvements. So they released something called VO3 and it's pretty insane how a [40:30] good the video is. The biggest improvement to it is obviously like the fidelity of it and that you can basically write text out and it will produce a video. But the biggest improvement is the audio around it. So we can just watch, let's just watch a little bit of this so that you can see and sort of hear it.

[40:46] uh what it's like okay so this is all generated video okay okay at the very beginning this woman is talking and it's pretty crazy but it's gonna get hard to get to but you know [41:11] It's fine. Just to give you a sense, they really went hard on the animal front. They were like, the animals look good. Let's keep doing that. [41:20] So, yeah, this model... [41:22] is pretty exceptional in terms of like what it's able to produce and the fidelity of it. And whenever I see these, my main thing is not, oh, this is going to change. Like he had this whole thing about this is going to transform like filmmaking and things like that. And... [41:39] I'm just like, this is going to be great for animated films. Like animated films are really going to children's films are going to be produced at the speed of light, but I don't know. [41:49] about like [41:51] Academy Award winning film. I will say to that note, Darren Aronofsky, who did, um, [41:58] Black Swan. He did The Whale. He did Requiem for a Dream. Oh, wow. He just started an AI filmmaking studio or he started an AI filmmaking studio and then like just announced some [42:10] a con or something if anyone's going to be using ai i would rather it be in the hands of someone like him

[42:16] Yeah, I think it's like – I think – [42:20] I get the sense that it's like, it makes, it's a way to like fine tune things or to like, I don't know. I don't know enough about this category, like that space, but he did just announce it yesterday and we had it up on clone. So. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's interesting. It's also a really funny subplot on the studio that was like. [42:40] Yes. [42:40] I haven't gone there yet. No spoilers. No spoilers. They tackle AI. They tackle it. They tackle the discourse on it. The other thing that I feel is just like I've never been able to use any of these tools like. [42:58] Anytime I try to produce an image or a video, it doesn't work for me. Prompting is so hard. People don't realize. They're like, oh, AI, we're going to get so much slop. I'm like, we're going to need a lot of prompting. [43:08] Engineers. [43:09] Everyone's going to be a prompt engineer soon enough. Like everyone's a content creator now. I will say I have been, I have like a little side project that I'm working on that I was like, okay, I need to figure out a way to make [43:21] I need to figure out a way to make video [43:23] repeatable videos. [43:26] that I could use for TikTok that are fully AI generated. And, you know, [43:32] I tried out like four or five of these things. [43:37] there's like a cottage industry of like little AI [43:40] video generator things and they were all terrible. So bad, so bad and unusable. And like, I, I did not solve the issue that I wanted, that I needed to solve to do what I wanted to do. So I see this and I'm like, Oh, maybe this.

[43:57] But the thing is, is that all of the demos for all of those companies look great, too. [44:01] So it really comes down to the user interface, [44:04] Yeah. How, how really the prompting relates to what you can see, how you can edit it after the fact, like, [44:10] it's it's great it's not turnkey it's not it's not and it's easy to watch a demo of a film of generative film and be like oh wow this is incredible and then actually getting to use it you're like wait this is exactly yeah yeah that's exactly my experience of it um okay we can go back to the deck uh so another release is virtual try-ons so basically being able to try on any clothing in uh [44:32] with Google that you find on the internet. So there was a lot of talk around eating dojo [44:37] Doji's lunch, which just raised $14 million to basically build that. I don't think that [44:45] dochi's I don't think that google's try on is going to make you like an anorexic model so I do see them having a [44:57] sort of [44:58] wedge a niche where they make you look like an essence model and you look amazing. And then you want to share all those videos and all those photos. Yeah. The images that I saw are like the [45:13] Like... [45:14] - JC Penney. [45:15] JCPenney. Very JCPenney. I don't know. They can fix that in post. They can fix that. They can fix that. Just like Doji did at first. Like, I see what someone looks like in real life and then I see their... [45:26] like a real person post their doji and then I see what they have on their marketing and I'm like,

[45:32] Not quite the same. Wait, I'm not tracking. What do you mean in post? [45:38] in a sense of they're just selecting the ones that worked. [45:43] the ones that didn't distort your body. [45:46] Oh, you're saying doji is? Or people who are posting? [45:50] I think Google is using images or the times the trying on AI actually looked like the person. [45:59] And that's what Doji did as well. But then you see we know people that are using the app. We were using the app ourselves. And you see that it makes you look like an essence model. It makes you look a lot slimmer. It makes you look a lot taller. So my thought is Google could potentially do the same thing. [46:15] Totally. I totally could. I just, I think that my like looking at it is it there's, [46:24] it's a different demo like there and it's a much [46:28] much much larger exponentially larger demo for um if i see this from doji i'm like stoked because i'm like okay great we'll get acquired and like [46:38] If we do this right, we'll just get acquired in like a year. That's what I was thinking. Totally. So the next one that was really exciting to me and I think the most useful from all of the releases that they talked about besides the search stuff, which we'll see, is live speech translation in Google Meets, which is so cool. So – [46:57] They only have it right now in English and Spanish, but there's more languages coming soon, but it's actual like natural speech language.

[47:04] translation in a Google meeting. So, [47:07] And it's happening like very... [47:09] as if you had a translator [47:10] in real time so i feel like that's incredible and could really open some things up for um [47:18] people all over the world to talk totally that's great so um the last note here is just a note on adoption of ai is moving faster than ever uh this is a tweet from uh sundar panchai this time last year we were processing 9.7 trillion tokens a month across our products and apis today the number is 480 trillion that's a 50x increase in less than a year wow so [47:43] That's crazy. So those were the main highlights. There was a bunch of other ones, but those are the ones that I feel like are most consumer facing. [47:50] Thanks so much for the update. [47:54] okay what do we have next okay quickly here really quickly um the circle uh for months has been um moving towards an ipo uh they filed some paperwork it was headlines a couple months ago it's been very much the thing that's been happening and then earlier this week there was uh news that came out that was basically like well well um maybe we're gonna sell to coinbase [48:24] has been the news that people have been tracking over the past couple days. Is it going to be coinbase? Is it going to be ripple? Um, [48:29] And I think the... [48:33] um,

[48:35] the there's a couple ways to read coinbase pull it like getting cold feet on their ipo one is that like it didn't look as competitive as they are wanting it to look um honestly like there was the when you dig into like the um [48:52] the financial sheet statements and books on how Coinbase [48:59] is operating and making money, like they're spending a lot of money and they're spending a lot of money with Coinbase to list [49:05] USDC. And like they're, Oh, I remember you talking about this. Like the balance sheet isn't as sexy as you would have imagined. Yeah, it's not. And yeah, [49:14] it's like just a lot of overhead and also like when you compare it to what's happening with um [49:20] USDT like they have crazy like there's like whatever 140 people that work there and they're making like they're the most probable company like in the world. But yeah so some people are like well maybe it's just like isn't in the sort of pre-selling it isn't looking as good as they wanted it to look and so they're like looking at other options. And [49:46] The other thing is, yeah, if [49:49] if ripple buys them, that would be the funniest thing to happen in the world because I hated ripple so hard, so hard. And, and, [49:59] that [50:00] yeah would be [50:02] The army would be losing their mind. You said the other day that you were going to buy some XRP. I bought some XRP last, like when the market started to pop off a few months ago. Nice. So you're up. So I'm up. I'm totally up. And I made a really bad trade a few months back. And I'm kind of waiting for that to get to like a more...

[50:25] balanced place can we hear about it no okay and uh then i then i'm gonna i'm gonna swap it in so nice i don't know that's probably like an absolutely horrible way to approach all this but financial advice no like don't um but overall i'm [50:48] uh the portfolio is up right now so you can't i'm happy that you're part of the xrp army i really am honestly i i feel like i have i hold so little like it's not enough to be [50:58] to claim a spot in the army but it does feel good when i see headlines like this i'm like i love that it's in a section called rumors exactly um okay fifa and avalanche who's taking this [51:10] I can take this. We are here in London at the Avalanche Summit London. [51:15] And they made a big announcement today for all you FIFA fans, football slash soccer. I mean, it is Trump's America, so soccer. But big news, FIFA Collect has migrated to... [51:30] avalanche blockchain layer one okay cool they were very excited about it today the avalanche army was [51:37] Was very excited about it. Yeah, we had soccer balls all over the grounds and... [51:44] I didn't make a really sick shot. I'll share it online. Yeah, it's pretty funny. And we had a few people who were like, I thought you guys were like ETH maxis. And Miranda was like, we're interoperability maxis. I was like, okay, we gotta go. I was like, let's keep it walking. Okay, great. Let's talk about our quick hits here.

[52:05] uh, [52:06] This one was shared in my group chat before I saw it on Twitter and it's really funny because [52:13] I stand for Spirit Big, which is Spirit First Class. [52:18] So... [52:19] this one was sent in the group chat and it was like yo kate's gonna be [52:23] really standing this one but i don't want to stand so the idea is skyrider 2.0 which i don't know when this came out it looks you don't know when skyrider 1.0 came out yeah when is when was 1.0 but it looks like the video that is now circulating was made in 2018 supposedly okay on that but this is this one person made like a large post on it this this call-in rug um where it says standing [52:53] no shit. Okay, great. And so it's like [52:56] Are we are we going to see this play out where these like standing seats where you like straddle it like a bike? [53:02] AND I THINK THAT'S A GREAT [53:03] My God, like, God, I hope not. I want to see more beds. Yeah, I want that kind of innovation. I also am just like, hey, we're just having trouble getting planes in the air and landing. Like, let's just stick to. [53:17] some basics on the aviation back yes i mean this is like like half hour flights right like yeah it says it's optimized for shorter flights okay so but man [53:30] Bad. Okay. And then one of my favorite things on the internet in the last couple days is Haley Bieber trolling us. She was on the cover of Vogue. So she did some content with Vogue and she did like What's in My Bag, where it was fully satire. And

[53:47] they did a really good job at clip farming. So the clips that they cut down were great rage bait. They would only show a part where you're questioning whether it's satire or not. The one that went mega viral is [54:02] on Twitter, is... [54:04] Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Hailey Weaver shares her reading list and then she pulls out these like famous philosophy books. [54:14] Emmanuel Kant, yeah. [54:16] Uhm? [54:18] I cannot pronounce the names of these guys, but they're famous. Also, obviously did not read them. Nietzsche, Kant, like there's a bunch of all the big guns. Yeah, they're famous. Like you've seen us, you're like, I recognize that. I was supposed to read that in high school. Didn't, but... [54:32] And then right after she did that, if you watch the full video, she pulls out a notebook where she says, [54:40] love it. Like, this is my notebook. Here are all my thoughts, all my ideas go in here and it's fully blank. [54:47] It's just, it's good rage bait. It's silly. It was all rage bait. I love her. I love her a lot. I think she's so funny and wonderful and [54:58] just, uh, [54:59] beautiful and people hate her for that which is upsetting um i thought this video was funny i think [55:07] There's also a thing that's going on with like, [55:10] Justin Bieber and her where he posted this photo of her on the cover of Vogue and with a caption this long caption about how they got in a big fight once and he told her you'll never be on the cover of Vogue and he's telling this whole story in the

[55:24] in the caption and then and then in the end he's like so jokes on me or something and everybody was like what like this is weird and like don't do that and then someone tweeted um like god knew like all these people wanted to marry justin buber and god knew he needed to save like hell for our greatest angel or something which was really great and so anyway i love that she like is totally down [55:54] send it i guess like i what i don't understand i think that i think this is a story and a lesson in clip farming and i think that's exactly like the take for for this piece but like i guess what i [56:06] Why can't she read those books? That's the whole discourse. I'm just like, I believe her. When she pulls those books out, I'm like, wow, okay. I don't know why that's funny, I guess. It's funny because people think she's stupid. There's levels. That's what I'm saying. The quote tweets on this original post... [56:23] are, oh, God forbid, a woman reads or, you know, those sort of things. And then it's, [56:28] this is a joke right and all the things and so it's [56:31] i look at it and i go i love that she's aware [56:36] enough to know people will be like you're dumb you definitely don't read these and then she's just like i'm fully aware of all the things that could be said so posting this okay i think maybe i'm too old for to understand what's happening here because i i i just i just i just i just [56:51] Uh. [56:51] I just don't get it. I don't get it. That's fine.

[56:55] That's right. There's plenty of people that say that they're there. Okay. I think we need to, we need to move on from Hailey Bieber. Um, okay. Uh, short King discourse. I can take this quickly. Essentially someone just came out with a list of names of people's heights and their net worth. [57:11] And it's pretty clear that if you're a short king, [57:15] You... [57:16] are [57:17] Motivated. [57:18] You have a motivation, a drive that lives inside of your tiny torso to just get there. And so we have Zuckerberg 5'7". We have Jack Dorsey 5'10". That's fine. We have Gary Vee 5'7". Jeff Bezos 5'8". Bill Gates 5'9". Basically, there's no man on here that is over six foot. And I do have to say, unfortunately, I... [57:45] really am into a tall dude. And... [57:49] They just don't have this grit. They just don't. Too much has been given to them. And without having to fight for it. And like all of these men just like they were compensating for something. And you know what? Good for them. Good for them. Man, the highlighter is really – that's shots fired. It's shots fired. Okay, let's close out here. Jane Goodall on Call Her Daddy. Incredible stuff. [58:15] I don't really have much to add other than she was on it. So if you like her, go watch it because the whole internet seemed to be enthralled by the idea, the concept. One of the things that I really loved was someone was like, you can literally...

[58:27] um you can literally just do things send the tweet send the dm and it was like jake at all okay thanks so much for joining this was dumb bitch hour uh we have a lot of fun we i can't believe we've done 200 of these um i'm sorry or you're welcome whichever side of the fence you're on um and that's all anything else do things you know you just do things you can just do things [58:54] Okay, that was DBH. Join us live on Twitter every Wednesday at noon. Or here, I guess. [59:08] you