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Howdy, y'all. Charlie here. Watch our new documentary, The Bitcoin Professor, featuring StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben Sasson, as he and I hit the road to meet with real Bitcoiners in the American heartland.

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We visit a Bitcoin mine, a Bitcoin cattle ranch, and a local Bitcoin meetup. Discover how Eli and StarkWare are building tools to supercharge the Bitcoin economy. Watch the full documentary today on our YouTube channel.

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Link's down below in the show notes.

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You know, there's been this huge spending boom in twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-five for AI data centers, but frankly, supply chains haven't been able to keep up with this, and I would not be surprised to see them break in twenty twenty-six.

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So much so that you see multiple delays from multiple different providers for these data centers.

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To me, it almost seems like if you're looking for a spark that could light the fuse for a recession, it would be these deals being delayed and certain companies either defaulting on the debt that they have for these things, or just creating a kind of cascading event as confidence breaks down in this trade.

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'Cause we've already started to see that with Blue Owl, Oracle's chief financing partner.

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They declined financing one of Oracle's new data center builds, basically saying that the ROI just didn't make sense for them, they, they don't wanna take the risk.

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If you just look at everything that's going on, the macro market and, and the kind of accordion effect for supply chains that we're really still feeling since COVID, and all of the mixed pricing signals, it seems kinda obvious to me.

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Bitcoin mining expert says that Bitcoin's hash rate growth will stall or even pull back in twenty twenty-six. Yes, this is the twenty twenty-six predictions episode from us at Blockspace Media.

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Colin and I have six predictions on Polymarket, AI one-shotting all the boomers, Bitcoin lending, and yep, we are still gold bugs. This is the Blockspace Podcast, brought to you by CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner.

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Let's kick it off. [upbeat music] We're back. It's the beginning of January, so everybody's dropping their predictions. We're gonna drop our predictions. This is Blockspace Media, the writers' room.

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We're the screenwriters of this season of Bitcoin, and we're calling our shots. We're telling you the major plot beats of this year.

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Colin and I put together our six predictions in our newsletter, which you should go check out, newsletter at newsletter.blockspacemedia.com. And we're gonna get into them.

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Obviously, disclaimer, this is not trading advice. In fact, we don't actually make any price calls, so thank God. In fact, we conspicuously have not told you the price of Bitcoin in twenty twenty-six.

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I'll throw it to you, Colin. That was partially to save our own asses- Yeah... but also 'cause the Lord only knows what's gonna happen with Bitcoin this year. It's been lagging the indices towards the end of the year.

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People were screaming that it's gonna catch up maybe, and I think that if it does rally from here, that will tell you where we're at in the cycle, 'cause Bitcoin's often a leading indicator for liquidity issues within the broader market, right?

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Bitcoin trades twenty-four seven, super easy to liquidate. Funds and individuals will sell it when they need to meet other obligations because it is so quick in-- compared to other assets.

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So, I mean, we're up today, but we're not gonna talk about Bitcoin.

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We're going to first go to, much to Bitcoiners' chagrin, we're gonna cover precious metals, because it turns out your boomer father knows a thing or two every now and then.

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And this, this is the silver chart for people who have been under a rock or not online over the last, you know, month or so, which good for you. But silver w- is up a hundred and forty percent over the past year.

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Gold is up roughly sixty-five percent, I believe, sixty-two point five percent over the year.

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Now, what we're basically getting here, and I'm gonna throw in a few data points, but the TLDR from, you know, the macro analyst world for why this is happening,

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central banks have been hoovering up gold over the last year.

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This comes amid waning confidence in US Treasuries that, depending on where you look, might start from when we sanctioned, I say we, the US government sanctioned

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Russian accounts at the outbreak of the Ukraine war that included US Treasuries. Suddenly, the risk-free rate ain't so risk-free anymore if your entire, uh, position can be frozen by the largest superpower in the world.

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So, that kinda sets the backdrop. Gold ripped last year.

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Silver was kind of just moseying along up until the last few months of the year when it started soaring, hit a crazy new all-time high after all-time high throughout Q4, ended up topping out at about eighty bucks an ounce, and actually on the spot market in Shanghai, it got up to as much as eighty-five dollars an ounce, and then in Dubai, it got up to ninety-one dollars an ounce.

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So if you're wondering why this is happening and why I'm saying I think that metals will outperform the rest of the market next, or this year as it did last year, it has to do with the central banks stacking gold, which is

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seeming like an incipient monetary reset in the sense that now banks are starting to move towards a neutral settlement asset that de-risks their exposure to US Treasuries. This is gonna play out over many years.

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You know, I would not expect the culmination of this to happen in twenty twenty-six, but it, it really looks like we're starting to enter a capital rotation event into commodities, into things that will prove out for industrial use, and gold is a part of this narrative in terms of its monetary value as a neutral form of currency settlement.

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Now, where does silver fit in? A- as Charlie joked the other week, you know, the Litecoin to gold's Bitcoin in an inversion of the old saying, right?Silver obviously has a monetary use case.

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Silver bugs are sometimes laughed at, but if you look at times when, when which precious metals are ripping, silver has a higher beta to gold when, when it moves.

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But silver is also a critical industrial metal for EVs, electric vehicles... Or sorry, electric vehicles, solar cells, and also for data centers.

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So a few just quick stats, uh, be- before I sh- I throw in a few more data points. Anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 metric tons of silver are needed for an AI data center, just an absolutely massive number.

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And another really important news item here is that China has just instituted export controls for silver. China dominates anywhere from 60 to 70% of silver refining, the global capacity for silver refining.

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So that's going to only contribute to a supply shock that has been going on for some time.

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I have this report right here from the Silver Institute, and, and they show that the silver market has been in a supply deficit over the last five years.

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In, in fact, they estimate that this, uh, that this deficit has accumulated to a 580 million ounce drawdown between 2010 and 2015.

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So over the last 15 years, according to this research report from the Silver Institute, there's been a 580 million ounce deficit for silver over the last, uh, over the last 15 years.

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And this is not something that will necessarily be solved anytime soon.

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A metal-focused research group estimates that the deficit will shrink in 2026, as it did in 2025, but they think-- they, they estimate there will still be a deficit in 2026 of about 30.5 million ounces of silver.

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So when you add all of that up,

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I, I think that you can make a very clear case for the fact that silver and other industrial metals that are crucial for the electrical transition and also for data centers will continue to do well.

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Uh, you know, and if we get a recession, they could very well outperform, you know, the stock market and other instruments. They'll sell off in a recession, no doubt. I'm not claiming they won't.

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But even if we don't get that, I expect that they'll have another banner year, because if you just- if you run the numbers, there's not enough supply out there for the current capacity that is needed for a lot of these build-outs.

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And with China restricting or controlling exports now, now only the largest producers with a license can export, and only if the CCP says they can, you, you get a picture for a, a pretty good year for precious metals more than likely.

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One last note, if you're curious about more about this, I'll link this in the show notes. Go check out research by Austin Campbell. Um, his research firm, Rose, called this back in October 2024.

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They called the run-up that we saw in 2025, and he has some really good analysis looking at kind of sensitivities for silver price and supply.

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And he makes the point that I think it's roughly between $120 and $130 an ounce of silver.

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If it reaches that point, that's when producers for industrial goods start really feeling pressure in terms of their ability to break even on what they're producing. So...

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And he also has a lot of really good, uh, analysis in there for substitutes like copper.

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The too, too long, didn't read is most of these manufacturing hubs and factories don't actually have the infrastructure in place to, to, uh, use copper as a substitute.

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That transition will take a few years still, and no doubt it's being looked at right now. But until there's further price pressure, he doesn't think that we will move towards that more aggressively.

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So Colin's first prediction is that gold and silver will-- are-- have already had their moment, and they will continue to have their moment in the remain-- in the, in the year of 2026. That's his first prediction.

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I will have a very meta prediction on predictions, which is my prediction is that prediction markets will have a banner year. You might say, kind of like the gold-silver thesis. Wasn't this-- Wasn't that this past year?

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Wasn't that, like-- Wasn't this past year the big one f- for Polymarket? And, uh, I would say it absolutely was, uh, for all of us who are online.

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We all saw it, and we're all watching, you know, the, the big boys start to acquire or get into the prediction market game because it's got huge Polymarket fit.

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This is, uh, prediction markets have long been theorized by, uh, often, like the, the cypherpunks and the online people of the world.

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But my point is, is that, uh, and I'm, I'm coining this term, they'll have a 538 moment. If you remember, Colin, do you remember when, like, I think it was the Oba- Was it Obama's election or was it Trump's election?

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Anyway, it was like maybe 2008, 2012, the presidential election. Nate Silver's website, 538, took like a, a very statistics, data-driven p- statistics, uh, forward approach to predicting, um, a lot of these elections.

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And it became like you had everybody, like, do their polls, like the CBS poll and the NBC poll and, and, uh, and these other, you know... And the, the Nielsen's whatever.

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But like 538 was this third party which w- started to be included kind of all at the same time because, like, everyone was referencing the, this data that Nate Silver and the team were putting out.

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And it kind of revolutionized how the average person thinks about population studies and predicting outcomes, especially as it comes to elections.

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I think prediction markets will have that moment this year, especially in the midterms, because they've been huge this time.

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They've had sustained use that is only growing, and it's outside of-- we broke outside the four-year election cycle where Polymarket was only relevant during the political elections.

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And we're headed into an off-election year, and there's a lot of things going on.

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So instead of there si- being-- seeing one single market everyone's paying attention to-Polymarket and Kalshi and others are going to have insight to tons of these.

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And now that we know, the rumors are the quants have gotten a hold of a lot of this information. But this is still the Wild West of, um, like, of, uh, like markets and market-making and trading.

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But I think that the normies who re- like, they, Polymarket is still kind of this, like, niche thing that they're- they've got name recognition.

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They can tell you what it is now, but I don't think the average normie, like, hears something and then goes and checks the Polymarket to see if it's true or not.

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That, I think, is the moment, 'cause that's what happened with FiveThirtyEight. People would hear this, like, "Oh, wait."

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The, and then they'd, like, hear this, like, they'd, like, wonder, "What's the election in my own state?" And they'd go to FiveThirtyEight instead of CBS.

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I think that's gonna happen with Polymarket, um, and Kalshi, and maybe, maybe other prediction markets. My other thing is there's absolutely gonna be a major controversy or two.

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There have been already, but there's gonna be some exploits.

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There's gonna be some, like, big, there's gonna be some big thing, probably, um, a, a m- market manipulation or an Oracle problem or perhaps a Zelenskyy suit market debate, if you remember that, where did Zelenskyy actually wear a suit or not?

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It's kind of a hard to, to, uh, you know, land on yes or no. So let's add something like that. So that's my, uh, prediction. I, uh, think that this is, this is one of my favorite predictions that we have actually.

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Maybe that's just because I'm biased towards prediction markets. I think they're incredible, and if you were paying attention to them for the 2024 election and,

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uh, you know, partially for 2020, you wouldn't have been surprised at the outcome. And going back to your point about how normies use it, if that's even a useful term anymore, sorry if that offends anyone.

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No, it's like your dad or your- Yeah... a person on the street. No, I know. I'm just- The person in the coffee shop, and, like, you're having a conversation. It's, like, a stranger on the street.

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They'll be like, "You know, I was checking the Polymarket for that," and that's- Yeah... gonna be a thing. Yeah, yeah. I, I was being tongue in cheek. Yeah. But if y- I would, I, this is a gut feel.

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I would imagine that most people who are not super plugged into this stuff, like the normal, average Joe, they're probably using it more for sports betting than they are for geopolitical financial stuff, right?

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But man, put your- Geopolitical financial stuff... I mean, can you imagine putting all the sports bettors right next to all of the, like, midterm election [laughs] bets?

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Like, that is going to throw some crazy things into the mix. It's gonna throw some curve balls b- [laughs] because- [laughs]...

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you know, there are no doubt some sophisticated sports bettors who are looking at stats and running the numbers, right?

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But there are also a lot of jabronis who have no business doing this, and they're gonna probably add noise to the signal.

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That being said, though, I think this is really prescient, and I will say, looking at a write-up from Forbes that analyzes a research report from Keyrock and Dune,

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they estimate that Polymarket had $21.5 billion in trading volume last year, and Kalshi, the former o- formerly the only US-regulated one, now Polymarket is approved, which is another catalyst for this, Kalshi had 17.1 billion.

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Now, if we back that up to 2024, Polymarket's animate, or estimated volume for 2024 was about 9 billion. [smacks lips] Uh, this is- That was for your presidential election year, too, so.

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Yes, and, and funny that you should say that. Th- th- that is from, uh, this research outfit called Sacra, Sacra perhaps. I'm sorry for mispronouncing it if, if, if that's the wrong way.

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But, uh, Kalshi was a, was mid bi- digit billions. Polymarket was 9 billion, and the majority, almost the m- uh, almost half of that volume came in November. So for, for Polymarket, it was 3.7 billion.

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For Kalshi in November, it was 5.8 billion.

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So ultimately, when you look at that, like, the mo- uh, the, uh, the election was clearly a takeoff moment for these markets, and I think they really validated what a lot of people were originally poo-pooing about them because they were more accurate than the polls, except for maybe Atlas Intel and maybe Rasmussen.

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But they completely blew all the other mainstream polls out of the water. And so I think we could have a similar inflection point to your prediction, Charlie.

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In the midterms this year, if they prove to be more accurate, that could be the real inflection point where the majority of people, at least the smart money in the normie circle, starts moving here because it's just a much better way to divine or project what's gonna happen in the future.

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So I think it's a good- People are gonna like it because it...

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And the thing is people are gonna like it because it's gonna be the most reliable, and it's gonna be the one that people perceive as most neutral because it's the most correct, because people have all-time low trust in legacy media.

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We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner, a publicly traded company with the largest operating hashrate, powered entirely by self-operated infrastructure across four states.

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This is our proof of work, and we are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and Bitcoin at cleanspark.com. Okay.

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Third prediction, toss it to you because this is the one I teased at the top, which is hashrate expert, Bitcoin expert. So you're a Bitcoin expert now, Colin. Act like it.

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I get called a Bitcoin expert all the time by people- Yeah... in my, you know, day-to-day life, and I'm like, "No." [laughs] "I'm just an expert to you." [laughs] You, you know what I mean?

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But that being said, I, I do think this is a good call, and it's that Bitcoin's hashrate will end the year with one of its worst performances in recent memory.

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I think it's even ma- could, could potentially be lower than 2021, which was the China mining banThat is a little bit contingent on if Bitcoin's price really just absolutely capitulates this year.

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If that happens, it's almost a guarantee in my mind. But I wanna get up the hash rate index, hash rate chart really quickly just to kinda show people where we're at.

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So this is the one-year chart for Bitcoin's hash rate, and last year was probably slower growth than we would've seen, and this is obvious, so apologize, I apologize for saying something kind of rudimentary.

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If Bitcoin had ripped even higher, we would've seen this definitely grow a little more.

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Also, if all of these Bitcoin miners weren't pivoting towards AI, we also would've seen more growth, because the majority of the growth for Bitcoin's hash rate since the China mining ban has come from the US, it's mostly come from public companies.

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They're no longer buying ASICs, so much so that we're hearing rumors that Bitmain might not even be producing air-cooled S23s. That's not been confirmed yet. I, I've asked around and no one's heard of that.

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But if that's true, it kind of is a huge sign of the times showing you where, where we're at right now. But last year in 2025, Bitcoin's hash rate increased by 32%.

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Pretty good, not nearly as good as 2024, which was, it was up 52%. 2023, it absolutely exploded to a hun- a h- up 102%.

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2022, a bear market year, it was up 41%, more than this year or more than 2025, ostensibly a bull market, although we know Bitcoin underperformed at the year's close.

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And in 2021, Bitcoin's hash rate, uh, the year of the China mining ban, only grew 18%. In 2020, it was 44%.

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So let's back up to 2021 really quickly, because that, I think, is going to be potentially the, uh, most, the most useful year to model this.

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Uh, China banned Bitcoin mining in the summer of 2021 with these kind of rolling provincial bans starting in Ju- in May and, and finishing in June. That hash rate got reshuffled.

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Some of it went to Kazakhstan, some of them went to Russia, some of it went to other, you know, central Asian countries.

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Uh, they ended up getting kicked out because some of these miners weren't necessarily playing by the rules. You know, in places like Kazakhstan, they raised tariffs, it got reshuffled more.

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A lot of that came to the US, and over, because of that, you had dampened hash rate growth in the year.

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It, it would've been conceivably much more than that considering that was a bull market year without the China mining ban.

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But all that being said, considering we have so many Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI in the US, and that market in the public markets at least for hash rate demand has dried up, it's hard for me to see where this hash rate's gonna go.

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One of the more promising jurisdictions recently, Ethiopia, is raising electricity rates because so many miners came there that they, that's actually stressing their grid.

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Latin America is somewhat a place, is somewhat perspective for growth, but its growth's been slow in places like Paraguay. There is a lot of, how should we say, red tape and maybe

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legal maneuvering that you have to do with the local governments down there. Brazil hasn't really been favorable towards it, even though they have a lot of energy assets. Uh, let's look at Russia.

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Russia actually has seasonal bans for Bitcoin mining now for the same reason, that it was stressing their grid.

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Residents were actually firing up ASICs because they have subsidized energy, and the, uh, you know, the officials there said, "You can't do that because you're taking otherwise cheap energy and then driving up costs for us to produce it."

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So that's gone. Uh, some of the industrial y- uh, mining sites in regions like Irkutsk in Siberia have seasonal bans, so that's gonna be a dampening effect, and some regions have all-out bans entirely.

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Uh, China is also cracking down on Bitcoin mining in Xinjiang, which is where the bulk of the industry still operates and kind of underneath the table or in the shadows.

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It, it's TBD, we reported on this earlier, how sticky that ban will be, but that could be a potentially another deflationary factor for Bitcoin's hash rate.

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A- and then, like, if you just look at Bitcoin's price, if let's just assume that we chop between 80 and 100K for the entire year, that really doesn't give miners much room.

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Margins are super compressed, and if any hash rate does continue to come online when Bitcoin continues to just chop, miners are gonna capitulate as hash price drops and difficulty goes up. So I see a lot of headwinds.

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I'm not really seeing many tailwinds. It would not shock me to see Bitcoin post its worst or worse than, its worst growth since 2021 or worse than 2021. There you have it, hash rate bear.

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That's not a controversial thing to say that it's slowing down, but I like that you're leaning into it, slowest pace in years, purgatory, possibly low. Predictions are only fun if you make them bold. I agree with that.

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So we're gonna double tap on this. Not only that, but AI data center stalling. We love talking about it. Yeah. And we're- Let's, uh, what's this one for you?

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So this one's also pretty- This is your, this is an important prediction...

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I think this is a pretty safe call, and I, I put this in here just 'cause I haven't seen too many people on our side of the aisle talking about it, uh, our side of the aisle being Bitcoin- You've been one of the few, I think, who's been, like, on the record, uh, talking head who's like, "This is gonna be an issue when the, when the bills come due."

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Yeah, and I started really thinking about this and looking into it after there were delays at Core Scientific's Denton site that they're building for CoreWeave as part of their contract to host CoreWeave's GPUs.

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There were a number of delays.

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There were construction delays in the summer because of, uh, inclement weather, and then there was an alleged transformer fire according to a lawsuit, and, uh, I say alleged because that has not been confirmed by CoreWeave or Core Scientific.

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But if that's true, caused another delay. Those were two

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events, one weather, in which you can't really control, and the other aFire, uh, for a transformer if it happened, which is also somewhat out of your control, though we don't know the specifics.

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So they might have wired it wrong, who knows? But I, I started thinking about co- you know, this is happening to Core Scientific. They're one of the early movers.

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This won't be the last time we see this, and I'm not just talking about Bitcoin miners expanding into AI, I'm also talking about Neoclouds and traditional tech companies.

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And the Core Scientific delays were material or, or, or were caused by, you know, like I said, weather and maybe hiccups on site. But the real thing in 2026 that I think is going to,

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uh, prohibit some of these from coming to market quicker is just supply chain hiccups. This is-- There's this great Sequoia article, if y'all want more context on this,

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about the fact that, you know, there's been this huge CapEx boom and this huge spending boom in 2024 and 2025 for AI data centers, but frankly, supply chains haven't been able to keep up with this.

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And I would not be surprised, as Sequoia says here, to see them break in 2026, so much so that you see multiple delays from multiple different providers for these data centers.

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And I, I'll leave this to a macro analyst to break down, but to me it almost seems like if you're looking for a spark that could light the fuse for a recession, it would be these deals being delayed and certain companies either defaulting on the debt that they have for these things, or just creating a kind of cascading event as confidence breaks down in this trade.

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'Cause we've already started to see that with Blue Owl, Oracle's chief financing partner, they, they declined financing one of Oracle's new data center builds, basically saying that the ROI just didn't make sense for them.

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They, they don't wanna take the risk. They think that they have put enough money down, and they wanna see where this whole trade goes. So lot of stuff wrapped up in that. I think this one's a pretty safe bet, honestly.

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It-- I don't know how many... You know, I'm not gonna put a number down if like 10 of these big- Yeah... what gigawatt data centers are gonna be delayed.

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But if you just look at everything that's going on in the macro market and in the kind of accordion effect for supply chains that we're really still feeling since COVID, and all of the mixed pricing signals, it seems kinda obvious to me, so.

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Yeah, I like that prediction. That's like right in our m- our specialty and niche, and, uh, we've been covering this a lot on the mining podcast we do here on the Blockspace Podcast. So those are two of your predictions.

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That's all three of yours. Now I get a couple ones. This is the fifth prediction out of the six. Um, this is that, um, I predict that Goldman, JP Morgan, and other of these big banks launch Bitcoin lending.

153
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That's not really that big of a prediction. They've called this. My prediction, though, is that it will be wildly successful.

154
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So, um, there's kind of been a little bit of a joke in crypto, which is like there's not much product market fit. There's like stablecoins, there's Bitcoin as money, um, and then NFTs do have like a product market fit.

155
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You could argue prediction markets have a product market fit, but, uh, it's-- I don't know, they're kinda like stablecoins. Like, do you need a blockchain for that?

156
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But anyway, um, so, uh, one of the things, because Bitcoin is being embraced by institutions as pristine collateral, I think that is such a great term, 'cause it really is like the best collateral.

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It, it, uh, it, it's going to be very, very good for lending. Now, I don't know how, like, all of the nuts and bolts work, but I could very clearly see a trend, which is there is $2 trillion of Bitcoin.

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A lot of people who've had a lot of Bitcoin and they don't wanna sell it, but they want to

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start using it, and it's crazy that this asset has not had-- It's gotten this big without, like, robust, massive banks, like the Goldman and JP Morgan, setting up lending.

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And this lending can be against your IBIT shares. It can be against your ETFs, against your actual real, not paper Bitcoin. It could be against maybe some kind of Bitcoin synthetic product.

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Anyway, uh, I predict that that's going to be huge, and the thing is, is like I, I use this comparison. When BlackRock launched their ETF, when the ETFs launched in what, like, what was it, 2023? Or was it '24? I forget.

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Anyway, when the ETFs finally launched- Beginning of 2024. Beginning of 2024.

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They were the biggest success right out the gate, and they, they've continued to be the biggest and most successful products in the history of a lot of these, uh, providers who have-- who are in the business of, like, doing ETFs.

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Larry Fink lauds their ETF perf- their Bitcoin ETF performance. It's, it's very-- It's Bitcoin-pilled, uh, Larry Fink a lot. So I think we'll see a similar thing with Bitcoin lending. It just seems so obvious to me.

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It-- There's-- It's just a strong product market fit, and it's probably something that your mom and dad or that your Boomer parents are once again probably gonna, uh, do as they, as, uh, those of them, uh, uh, have, uh, put, have got Bitcoin in their, uh, retirement accounts, they can finally lend against that.

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Maybe I'm missing some regulatory hurdles, but someone'll figure it out. They'll-- What I'm saying, it's gonna be a big deal. I'm a fan of the on-chain stuff. I'm a fan of the DLCs, discrete log contracts.

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Company Ligos, they're sponsors from other, of our other stuff. But, like, I just-- This is such a clear trend to me. I'm just calling it that 2026 is gonna be the start of it.

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If the price of Bitcoin goes up, then it really, uh, hammers that home, so. I, I think this is generally a good one. Maybe, like, prediction markets, you might be a little too early- Yeah...

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just depending on how people block this. I'm al- always too early on stuff. My biggest thing is I'm directionally right, timing is wrong.

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For some of those Boomers holding Bitcoin ETF or even Bitcoin outright, they could be qualified investors and might be eligible for some of these institutional lending products, you know, if they have a net worth over a million dollars, excluding their real estate or their primary residence, or a, uh, a salary of $200,000 individually, $300,000 jointly.

171
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They might have access to these things. I think you're right to point out DLCs.

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ThoseProducts will be, you know, obviously more open to individual Bitcoiners, retail investors who don't have access to these things, and they'll use it, a lot of enthusiasts, even with the higher interest rate, uh, for maybe the novelty or also just for the liquidity.

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But I have a list here of big banks in the US with Bitcoin lending plans or with, you know, uh, current offerings. JPMorgan Chase exploring loans backed by Bitcoin and other crypto for institutional clients.

174
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Uh, Bank of America offers Bitcoin-collateralized credit lines and loans to clients. Wells Fargo is reportedly looking at, is reportedly offering Bitcoin-backed credit.

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BNY Mellon, uh, is also looking, uh, or is involved in digital asset services and custody that support credit and loan products.

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Citibank is preparing a crypto lending desk, and Charles Schwab apparently is looking at it as well.

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And this gets really interesting when you, when you tie in Bitcoin treasury companies to this, because we've already seen Bitcoin treasury companies take on loans against their Bitcoin to satisfy near-term obligations from, uh, brokers like AntAlpha,

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2Prime, et cetera. The-- And once this becomes open to them, if it's not already, they're gonna default to these o- or they're going to be biased towards these options.

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The interest rate will probably be lower, and it'll just look better, honestly, to their investors.

180
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Uh, I think that that could be one of the areas that really kick-starts the growth, especially as Bitcoin treasury companies who might be suffering are trying to kick the can down the road, or kick the insolvency can down the road, I should say.

181
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So overall, good take. I don't know how much they'll take off, but they will definitely be in use this year in ways that we haven't seen before. So I like this one. I haven't seen- Yep... anyone really talk about this.

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Yeah, I'm kind of interested, 'cause I, I, as I put all these predictions together, I was like, "These are, these are kinda obvious to me." But, um, I, you know, as always, it's, it's like humor.

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The most important part is? I don't know. The punchline? Timing. [both laugh] Okay. Okay, well, last, last one. [laughs] That's really hard to do with a bit of a, a chat delay.

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[laughs] Okay. Um, okay, the last prediction, 90% of users on the internet cannot discern AI-generated content from human content by the end of the year. I put myself in this bucket.

185
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I think I've been very good at telling what's real and what's not. But even I... Heck, this could be 98, 99% of people.

186
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Basically everyone is just, uh, everyone's gonna feel like a boomer on Facebook, uh, a year from now.

187
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Um, boomers today, blissfully unaware that raccoons do not currently hop like al- you know, like, uh, kangaroos, and d- they don't lay eggs. Like, for some reason, they don't understand these things. That's real.

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They, you know, in their heads, these are real things that have been caught on video that cannot be faked. Well, that, dear listener, will also happen to you by the end of this year.

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And I'm not talking just videos or pictures. I'm talking y- about you are thinking that you are interacting with real people.

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It could be so far as to be friends and family, even loved ones who you believe you are interacting with, and you will not be able to tell short of hopping on a video call with them, and then that even too might be wrong.

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So I think the, it, one of the funny things that's, um, I like to say it's a, an analogy I'll make is, um, to like, like how do you know that you have been fooled unless someone tells you?

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Kind of like you're driving through a small town, you ask for directions, and the guy says, "Oh yeah, just make a left at the last stoplight."

193
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Well, how do you know which one's the last stoplight if you've never been there before?

194
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So similar to, like, not realizing that everything that you're interacting with is computer and AI-generated, uh, I think most people, uh, just have the luxury of being angry or disappointed in themselves that, "Oh, that's AI.

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It should be AI. That's bad," and I, uh, and, uh, or, uh, "That's really dumb. You shouldn't try to fool people."

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I think that's just gonna go away or at least that, th- that type of reaction's gonna be less meaningful because people will not realize that what they are looking at or reading or listening to is fake, because that is how good it is, it, it will be.

197
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It will, the internet will, uh, be populated by what they seem to be, what seem to be humans, but are not. And, um,

198
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so I think this is bullish on in-person interactions, but bearish on collective sanity and collective shared perception of reality.

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I think a lot of people do not appreciate this, and we are not, absolutely not prepared for it.

200
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Um, you know, if I could, uh, if I could buy stock in just the idea of, like, YubiKeys and physical signing devices, I probably would. I haven't figured out exactly, um, what the best way to do that is.

201
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Um, so that's my prediction. Um, uh, but, you know, the funny thing's like I already think it is kind of this way. Like, I, there are people who I would describe as, like, internet native that I talk to

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who, um, are already, uh, have sent me completely fake AI articles, and I thought that these things were very easy to, to tell. But, um, they're not.

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I think we have already passed the, uh, we've already crossed the chasm, and, um, it's, uh, and we're just, uh, we just haven't quite realized yet. Yeah, this one's, this is a huge black pill.

204
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[laughs] Yeah, it's a black pill, man. You know, I, I, I might, I'm gonna take the under on 90% just to throw a white pill in there.

205
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But I will say the boomers will absolutely continue to be one-shotted by AI.We were sitting around the living room or maybe the kitchen over Christmas, and my uncle-in-law came over with a video from Instagram, and it was just so obviously AI to me.

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They were like, "Is that real?" It was a chicken walking into a living room and popping a balloon, and all the dogs start freaking out. And- It was like a Sora video or something? Yeah. Yeah.

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And I was like, "I don't know, guys. Have you ever seen a chicken balance a balloon on its head and then throw it up and pop it?" And I tried to show them some of the hallmarks of why it was fake.

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Like, one of the dogs runs into a table, and it just flips in such a way that's clearly, like, not... You know, it just... It wouldn't do that way in real life. Like, physics doesn't work like that.

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But the Boomer AI slop thing is real. My dad sends me AI slop videos all the time. Love him, God bless him, but, uh, there's s- some of them are really bad, and he thinks they're really funny, and I don't.

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You know what I mean? So some of it won't even just be that they can't even recognize it. Like, I think there's this... The, the slopification will continue. So- Yeah... I think- I mean, imagine.

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What are we on, Sora 2, Sora f- I forget. Whatever.

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Like, currently, the Sora videos, um, they, uh, uh, regular, if you watch enough and you, and you catch them out of context, um, even to the trained eye, there will be a moment at the very start where you...

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where it does not appear to be fake. You have to watch it for a few seconds. Now, imagine what a single iteration in that will be, and as people get better at running these things- Yeah, no...

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and prompting and everything like that. I, I agree with that. Sora is, I think, probably the most impressive AI tool to come out just for the fact that it... the videos simulate everything so perfectly. It's insane.

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Yeah. You could... Yeah. I c- I uploaded my avatar to Sora, so you can make all your terrible videos about me and how bad this podcast is or how good it is. That's going to be a real...

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That's gonna be difficult when people- Yeah... podcasters start doing fake podcasts with their AI selves. Like, I saw- Oh, we're, we're absolutely gonna do one of those on this podcast sometime.

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I don't- And we will tell you what- I think you should steer away from it. That's... Unless it's, like, a social experiment. It's... Oh, yeah. We're, we're gonna experiment live with our listeners.

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Um, I, I like to say it's like that meme of the guys riding on the train or the bus, and they're looking out each window, the dark and the light, and, um, it is, uh, the sad doomer says, "Everything you read is fake."

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And to me, I look at this as the bright future where everything you read is fake.

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Finally, we can end this po-mo- post-modernist hellscape of not being able to actual, like, discern objectivity and wading through the morass of these limp-wristed, uh, French philosophers

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wreaking havoc on Western rationality, and we can finally return to, uh, a world where, like, everything's fake. So just, uh, uh, have to realign ourselves. Um, this is gonna be a...

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become a culture and philosophy podcast eventually. We're... Charlie and I are pushing it hard for that- Yeah... to go that way.

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And I do think the silver lining here is there's gonna be a lot of fake stuff, but if you find trusted creators who are creating real stuff, that should be even more valuable and be, and be magnified and amplified in a different way, so.

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Please clip this and tell us a year from now what our predictions are wrong and why we're dumb, um, or tell us how much you love us and, uh, give us credit when we're right.

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Otherwise, make sure to, make sure to like, subscribe, leave a review, and we'll see you all next week. [upbeat music]