Dave Birnbaum

credit @foundersfund remixed by @peteoxenham

Starting to think the future is performance-based pricing for everything.

@davidmarcus Congratulations and thank you for giving us a glimpse of the challenges you face.

After more than two decades in payments, I’d deluded myself into believing we could build a super fast, cheap, scalable money settlement network, convince the banks and wallets to connect to it, and be done (exaggerating a tad). But payments always teaches you the same lesson: the only road to success is the hard, eat-glass, walk-over-hot-coals one. The one that forces you to methodically accumulate licenses, capabilities, and partnerships, and then, like a Swiss watchmaker, fine-tune every last detail to compete in an ultra-optimized industry running on thin margins. Your tolerance for pain, setbacks, and regulatory hurdles gets tested. So does your patience. Most bail before reaching escape velocity. Our story at @Lightspark is textbook. And now, four years in, I can finally say we’ve hit the sweet spot where capabilities, licensing, and partnerships converge: - Nearly 70 countries’ payment systems integrated tightly, all realtime - Every relevant stablecoin and blockchain live - A global dollar account for banks and platforms to expand their business faster than ever - @Visa vertical stack integration for global card issuance - An at scale, hardened, hyper-competitive stablecoin and Bitcoin settlement rail (@Spark) And the best part: we’ve hit our stride. The team built the muscles to add countries and capabilities at an astounding rate, with the help of well-trained AI minions. The long road ahead will keep challenging us, but we know how to navigate it now. More importantly, we can move and store money globally for our clients better than anyone I know. And that’s starting to feel really good.

Anthropic just gave your Slack channel a permanent team member. Claude Tag is multiplayer: one Claude per channel, builds memory over time, takes initiative on its own. Your Agent Ops team just got a new job description.

Microsoft Scout just entered enterprise preview: a persistent agent running autonomously 24/7 across Teams, Outlook, and Calendar, which means your M365 admin console is now an agent management console.

Key enabling technology for long duration space flight just dropped by @Philips

Why not ask it to help build the solution that prevents this next time. Working with your agents to improve the system should take up at least 30% of the time spent with them. It’s like management overhead. You wouldn’t expect your employee to get it right all the time either. It takes mentorship.

Anyone else have a problem with Hermes where you say 1 line and then it goes working for 10 minutes tearing down your scaffolding and not keeping you in the loop? This morning I said "we have a slight issue with the email to brain flow. Some emails are getting ingested that I don't want to be ingested." Then, without responding to me, the agent went and created rules around requiring my hard consent before any automated email activity, & paused everything we built yesterday to get emails into Gbrain. This has been happening a lot lately.

@Pontifex How do you suggest we coordinate the scarce goods and services needed to meet basic human needs? Your options are price and decree.

It is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security. vatican.va/content/leo-xi…

Once a peer… like before 1900?

@TheEconomist Once a peer… like before 1900?

European football fans visiting America are discovering the mass affluence of the country’s suburbs. The wealth enticing holidaymakers troubles European elites. America, once a peer, seems to be racing ahead econ.st/4uKt4ga Illustration: Álvaro Bernis

@elonmusk @Austen When space elevator?

@Austen Unfortunately, electric rockets are impossible

Oh nooooooo what are they gonna doooooo

✴️ Combobulating…

@romanhelmetguy Then the market will reject it. Why is this even worth commentary.

Tech bros need to hear this: Nobody wants AI feature films. Imagine if Obsession was exactly the same, but all the actors were AI. It wouldn’t produce the same emotion at all. Art is human. I know we all hate Hollywood, but the solution isn’t AI. It’s funding a new Hollywood.

this dynamic is really crazy right now even things for building other things are getting wrapped with another layer trying to be the access point everyone is flailing, full of anxiety, zero restraint

Someone asked me what my long term plan is and I just said You know, I think we're going to need a breakaway space faring civilization

@RBReich Equality of outcomes …doesn’t make people happy

For those who have forgotten the past 40 years: Tax cuts for the rich ...don’t trickle down Boosting military spending ...doesn’t bring peace Slashing regulations ...doesn’t create jobs Folks, we’ve seen this all before.

If my neighbour increases the productivity of their vegetable garden and doubles their tomato crop, this does not subtract from the number of tomatoes I was able to produce in *my* vegetable garden. You are now more economically literate than all of leftist Twitter.

This is incredibly impressive from the @BTCMedusa team. The bitcoin community needs less squabbling and more building!

So excited to finally launch the product I've been working on. Here's a quick video explaining it. Finally, you can privately get heuristics on your wallet without even running your own node! Feedback welcome!

@AliceFromQueens @xwanyex Rent control caps returns, like utility regulation or drug pricing, but those are different because they come with a return floor. Hard rent control is a ceiling with no floor and rising costs underneath.

You're coming at this from the "let's find a new way to say libs suck" angle But in the financial world, not exactly a progressive hotbed, "political risk" is a standard concept in asset-investment disclosure, and corporate forward guidance. Drilling. mining, defense, & pharma companies contemplate it most actively, but real estate & construction is a big participant, too. Analysts are paid very well to put ranges in percentage form on such risks and plug them into RoI projections.

By far one of the strangest, most ridiculous arguments in favor of rent control is the position that "all businesses have risk" and therefore the enactment of rent control is just another fair risk that property owners have to face. You could pass a law that says that the city council will burn down one randomly chosen property each week and the same argument would apply. It doesn't mean anything. Most people should not be arguing about politics. All they know is that they want their rent to be lower and they will say *literally anything* toward that end.