Chayan Asli

I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financing crashes for the indefinite future. The genius plan to get the Gulf states caught in the crossfire has incinerated much of the funding for LPs, for datacenters, and for IPOs. Anyone in tech who supported this war may soon learn the meaning of "force majeure" as funding gets yanked. (4) Many capital allocators will instead be allocating much further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs, towards useful basic things like food and energy. (5) It's fortunate that all those progressives yelled about the "climate crisis." Yes, their reasoning about timelines was wrong, and much of the money was wasted in graft, but the result was right: we all need energy independence from the Middle East, pronto. It's also fortunate that Elon and China autistically took climate seriously. Now they're going to need to ship a billion solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, nuclear power plants, and the like to get everyone off oil, immediately. (6) It's not just an oil and gas problem, of course. It's also a fertilizer problem, and a chemical precursor problem. Maybe some new sources will come online at the new prices, but it takes time to dial stuff up, particularly at this scale, so shortages are almost a certainty. That said, China has actually scaled up coal-to-chemicals[a,c] (C2C), and there's also something more sci-fi called Power-to-X[b] which turns arbitrary power + water + air into hydrocarbons. But all of that will need to get accelerated. I have a background in chemical engineering so may start funding things in this area. (7) Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people. [a]: reuters.com/business/energ… [b]: alfalaval.com/industries/ene… [c]: reuters.com/sustainability…

Our venture partner @ajp_digital has been testing Rei Core extensively, and we're excited to share our thesis publicly on $REI. We continue to closely follow and support their growth. The breakthrough isn’t bigger models - it’s smarter cognitive architectures like @rei_labs that turn probabilistic outputs into purposeful intelligence. LLM weights capture patterns, but not understanding - true intelligence requires structured reasoning beyond model parameters.

the act of creation is the only thing that justifies existence

$IREN today reported its Q1 FY26 results. Key highlights: - Targeting $3.4bn in AI Cloud ARR by end of 2026 (expansion to 140k GPUs) - Secured $9.7bn contract with Microsoft: 5-years, 20% prepayment, $1.9bn ARR contribution - New multi-year contracts supporting growth to target AI Cloud ARR of >$500m by end of Q1 2026, including with Together AI, Fluidstack and Fireworks AI @danroberts0101 Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IREN, commented “IREN continues to execute with discipline, delivering record results this quarter and meaningful progress in our AI Cloud expansion. We secured several new multi-year contracts, including a landmark partnership with Microsoft, which solidifies IREN’s position as a leading AI Cloud Service Provider and expands our reach into new hyperscale customer segments. Looking ahead, our announced expansion to 140k GPUs represents only 16% of our 3GW grid-connected power portfolio, providing ample capacity to continue scaling IREN’s AI Cloud platform and drive long-term value creation.” Press release: irisenergy.gcs-web.com/static-files/9… $IREN management will host a webcast to discuss these results at 5:00pm ET today, which can be accessed here: edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/xqn5ku83/

Great energy in Seoul last week - glad we could play a part

We were honored to host our sponsors, speakers, and esteemed guests at the VIP Dinner of EastPoint:Seoul 2025, held at the historic Jungdong 1928 Art Center. Special thanks to National Assembly Members Min Byungdug (@anyangmin), Ahn Do Geol, Kim Jaesub, Lee Junseok, and Caroline Pham (CFTC) (@CarolineDPham) for joining us. An evening of dialogue, new connections, and Korean classical performance.

We’re co-hosting Asia’s first Bittensor event at Korea Blockchain Week 🇰🇷 Together with the Bittensor community and ecosystem leaders, we’ll dive into: • Real use cases shaping decentralized intelligence • How decentralized AI (dAI) could evolve compared to centralized incumbents • Insights from the founder of Bittensor @const_reborn and leading ecosystem projects Our founder @chayanasli will join the panel to share our perspective on dAI, and where the next wave of adoption may come from. 📍 Event link & registration: luma.com/pzyvu52c?tk=Tz…

As part of our expansion to Korea, we’ll be supporting Korea Blockchain Week - and opening our new office to host brainstorming sessions with projects and teams who want to connect with the local ecosystem. Our local team has been around the space for years and is deeply connected with the community and stakeholders here. If you’re building something meaningful and want to share ideas with the Korean community (or just need a space), reach out - we’d love to host you.

안녕하세요 🇰🇷 - Looking forward to contributing locally and connecting with incredible people here.

Pick decentralized AI freedom over crony capitalistic ring kissing. Be your own boss, live in cyberspace, stack real money and make AI truly free and non totalitarian. Build tech that doesn’t need to kiss a ring, and never could anyways.

🔥 From Retail Trades to Institutional Plays: Join our live Space as top liquid crypto fund analysts break down what’s driving today’s market—current trends, treasury moves, global insights, and what’s next for funds! 🗓️ Date & time: Wednesday, Aug 13 | 21:00 (UTC+8) 🎙️ Guests: @FrancisCrypto from @FlowTraders, @ChungTheOga from @ark_stream, @10kCapital from @ApolloCryptoFM and @0x_Lyvia from @Cryptocom_Cap 👇 Set a reminder & bring your questions!

life is 10x better when you're obsessed w/ building something

@Galois_Capital Dm - we’re interested @Vestunltd

Virtually free money for whoever wants them. DM to connect.

As I am heading into retirement/sabbatical in April, my current trading team is disbanding. So far I have two guys up for grabs. Both are money makers.

Obvious positioning after turning the money printer on last year. Momentum atm remains with China

Introducing Cygnus - a modular real yield layer and the first Web3 Instagram App Layer - onboarding the next billion users. Cygnus is thrilled to announce the successful completion of a $20 million pre-seed funding round, backed by industry pioneers such as @ManifoldTrading, @OKX_Ventures, @mirana, @Optimism Retro Funding, @CL207 and more. This funding positions Cygnus for accelerated growth as it expands its product offerings and strengthens its presence in key markets, onboarding the next billion users into blockchain and driving the crypto industry into the era of super apps.

We're excited to announce a $31 million strategic raise led by @FactionVC to fuel the rise of SocialFi.

AI Agents have already started to use crypto rails to make transactions simply by interacting with you. The security, infrastructure layer and composability with other applications is only going to accelerate in the future. The Coinbase team through their Layer 2 Base, is promoting this use case and is openly calling for more development in this space on Base.
 It is likely as the AI Agent mania continues to develop, there will be many potential great AI Agent products and simultaneously tokens that could become the focus of a sector driven rally. The main blockchains that are building AI Agents are Solana, Base and Ethereum. We are actively watching this space for developments, and believe there will be multiple winners here.