Chris J D'Costa

SAM BANKMAN FRIED PICKED EVERY WINNER OF THE 2020s AND HIS LAWYERS SOLD THEM ALL AT THE BOTTOM. If the FTX estate hadn't panic-sold its assets during bankruptcy, SBF would be sitting on a $114 billion empire today. Instead, he is watching the greatest trades of the decade from a prison cell. The data is almost impossible to believe: - Anthropic: $82.3 billion (165x) SBF bought an 8% stake for $500M. The estate sold it for $1.3B in 2024. Today, that stake would be worth over $80B. - SpaceX:$15 billion (75x) A massive stake liquidated early to pay creditors. - Solana: $5.1 billion (27x) SBF was an early backer at $8. The estate offloaded a massive chunk at $64. - Robinhood: $4.9 billion (8x) - Genesis Digital: $3.5 billion (3x) The Latest "Missed" Fortune: CURSOR In 2022, Alameda Research wrote a tiny $200,000 check for a 5% stake in the AI startup Cursor. In April 2023, the bankruptcy estate sold that entire stake back for exactly what they paid: $200,000. Yesterday, SpaceX announced a deal to buy Cursor for $60 billion. That "worthless" 5% stake would be worth $3 billion today. That is a 15,000x return that vanished because the lawyers wanted a quick exit. SBF was a genius at picking generational winners and a criminal at managing their money. The lawyers recovered $18 billion for users. If they had just held, they would be sitting on $114 billion and the most valuable venture portfolio in history.

One day - if websites continue to exist - each visitor will be served a website specifically designed to attract them based on how an AI has perceived it based on their site visiting history. Over time this will actually result in every website serving the exact same design as AIs converge on one absolutely irresistible (to humans) style.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Claude mobile is completely broken for me. Nothing is synchronising, Dispatch works very intermittently (mostly not at all) and the home machine is permanently on. Tried hard resets. I wonder if in trying to block OpenClaw API access, Anthropic have killed their own tool.

Researchers just proved that every single elementary function, sin, exp, log, sqrt, comes from one single binary operator. It is like finding the “God Particle" for calculus. In computer science, every complex program breaks down to a single logical operator: the NAND gate. It is the fundamental building block of all digital reality. But for continuous math, physics, engineering, machine learning, we thought we needed a massive toolbox. Addition. Subtraction. Trigonometry. Logarithms. Every scientific calculator and neural network has to juggle all of them. Until today. But this paper proved that every single mathematical function can be generated by a single, bizarre binary operator. eml(x,y) = exp(x) - ln(y). Combine that with the number 1, and you can build everything. Pi. The square root. Sine and Cosine. Arithmetic. It is all just the exact same operator, repeating over and over again in a binary tree. Nobody anticipated this existed. It was found by systematic exhaustive search. But the implications for AI are massive. Instead of an AI struggling to combine different mathematical rules to discover a new scientific law, it can just use a single, uniform architecture. One trainable circuit. One repeatable node. We thought the language of the universe was complex. It turns out, it's just one equation repeating in the dark.

Claude mobile is completely broken for me. Nothing is synchronising, Dispatch works very intermittently (mostly not at all) and the home machine is permanently on. Tried hard resets. I wonder if in trying to block OpenClaw API access, Anthropic have killed their own tool.

The shift in the crypto fundraising landscape the past 6 months has been insane. Crypto VCs used to have to constantly be networking/writing/podcasting/going on spaces/promoting your thesis/getting on 10 deal flow calls a week, to get into good deals...now it's literally enough to just have capital to write checks. Deals are being pushed rather than dug out. Inbound if people know you have money is at an all-time high. Most firms are either 1) Out of money 2) Moved to Series A and beyond or 3) Fundraising (with no success). Deals that used to close in 2-3 weeks now close in 2-3 months. Firms with questionable business models or copy pasta of the latest trend are getting zero primary or follow-on funding (Good news!). There are now realistically <20 firms writing checks in pre-seed/seed. VCs basically have the pick of any deal they want, with more time to do DD. IMHO 25/26 are going to be historic vintages for those who stick around.

Don't forget to ice your balls

This is a painting by the Spanish painter Sergi Cadenas. It ages from the angle you look at it.

🇮🇷 Iran is charging $2M per ship to cross the Strait of Hormuz and they want it in Bitcoin. 😳 At $72,000 per $BTC, each ship = 27.7 BTC. Pre-crisis, 130 ships crossed daily. • Daily: 3,611 BTC • Monthly: 108,333 BTC • Yearly: 1.3 million BTC The entire Bitcoin network only mines 450 BTC per day. Iran would accumulate 8x the monthly mining supply. Every month. A sanctioned nation building a Bitcoin treasury through a toll booth. This is the most important geopolitical Bitcoin story nobody is talking about. 🔥