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Bitcoin just posted its highest weekly close since January, up 43% on the quarter and roughly 50% off the bottom. Jackson, Michael and Brian make the bull case, then take on Ari Paul's Coinbase allegations and what they mean for custody concentration.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

Gold and silver just shed over a trillion dollars in a day as the 10-year yield hit a 19-year high, and the math on gold's $18 trillion run says Bitcoin could move faster than anyone expects. Also on the clock: OpenAI shelving GPT-6.1 Astra, Apollo's warning about an agentic bank run, and Ari Paul's hack allegations against Coinbase. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?OPEN A FREE ONRAMP FINANCE ACCOUNTOne free account to buy Bitcoin, use the Onramp Terminal, and access the rest of Onramp: Bitcoin IRA, Bitcoin-backed loans, and Multi-Institution Custody. Recurring buys carry no Onramp trading fee. Active clients are eligible for Onramp-funded rewards up to 5%. Cash back on the Onramp Card converts to Bitcoin in one click. Takes a few minutes to open.

One chart from Epoch AI shows the cost of AI falling about 47% a quarter since 2023, faster than any technology in history, and it exposes the math under the AI trade. Michael, Liam and Brian on why cheap intelligence competes away profit, and why Bitcoin is the scarce unit left.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

AI just bailed out Bitcoin's public miners, and Bob Burnett says that is the healthiest thing to happen to mining in years. Liam sits down with the Ocean executive chairman on falling hash rate, who builds Bitcoin's blocks, and what the BIP-110 fork proved.Guest: Bob Burnett, CEO of Barefoot Mining and executive chairman of Ocean. https://www.barefootmining.com/BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

Brandon Quittem helped build Swan from a Bitcoin gifting app into a full service firm, and he thinks custody is the piece Bitcoin still needs before it grows 10x. Cam Stromme sits down with him on meetups, DCA, multisig and protecting your Bitcoin as if it were already worth ten times more.Guest: Brandon Quittem, VP of Client Experience at Swan Bitcoin and founder of the Minneapolis Bitcoin meetup. https://x.com/BquittemBOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

AI's $3.1 trillion in off balance sheet commitments can end two ways, and both end with the printer running. Jackson, Michael and Brian make the case for Bitcoin, from the biggest ETF inflow day of 2026 to Howard Marks's new memo and BlackRock's AI research.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

The average Bitcoin ETF holder is back in profit for the first time since January, and the data says most of them held through the whole drawdown. Also on the clock: SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic out-valuing 45 years of US tech IPOs, Meta's Muse agent matching ChatGPT's launch, and wash trading allegations at Kalshi. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?OPEN A FREE ONRAMP FINANCE ACCOUNTOne free account to buy Bitcoin, use the Onramp Terminal, and access the rest of Onramp: Bitcoin IRA, Bitcoin-backed loans, and Multi-Institution Custody. Recurring buys carry no Onramp trading fee. Active clients are eligible for Onramp-funded rewards up to 5%. Cash back on the Onramp Card converts to Bitcoin in one click. Takes a few minutes to open.

Meta shipped Muse to a user base measured in billions, and within days Amazon blocked it from shopping on Amazon.com. Michael, Liam and Brian on why autonomous agents will need a settlement unit, and why that is the clearest path yet to Bitcoin becoming ordinary money.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

The Fed just hiked for the first time since 2023, and Gary Brode's answer is that it changed nothing at all. Jackson sits down with the Deep Knowledge Investing founder on why the Fed is now irrelevant, and why he spent a month paying for lunch in Bitcoin.Guest: Gary Brode, founder of http://deepknowledgeinvesting.com/ and a former long/short hedge fund managerX: https://x.com/Gary_BrodeBOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

The Clarity Act fell short in the Senate, and the banking lobby's fear of deposit flight looks like the real sticking point. Jackson, Michael and Brian cover why banks keep building anyway, the oil shock squeezing consumers, and Strategy's STRC buybacks.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

Anthropic's Dario Amodei says AI labs must pace the frontier. Is it safety, or cost control ahead of an IPO? With Cam Stromme sitting in for Michael, four stories on the clock: that slowdown call, a Fed hike priced in with the 10-year above 5%, foreign money picking US stocks over Treasuries, and the bank deposit fight inside the CLARITY Act. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?OPEN A FREE ONRAMP FINANCE ACCOUNTOne free account to buy Bitcoin, use the Onramp Terminal, and access the rest of Onramp: Bitcoin IRA, Bitcoin-backed loans, and Multi-Institution Custody. Recurring buys carry no Onramp trading fee. Active clients are eligible for Onramp-funded rewards up to 5%. Cash back on the Onramp Card converts to Bitcoin in one click. Takes a few minutes to open.

New Clarity Act text dropped overnight ahead of a Senate vote on September 15, with the ethics sunset deleted and the ban broadened. Michael, Liam and Brian on why the institutional money is still on the sidelines waiting to see whether the United States fully commits.BOOK A CONSULTATIONHolding Bitcoin for decades raises two questions: who protects it, and how it reaches your family. Onramp answers both. Three institutions protect it, and no single one can lose it, move it, or use it. Inheritance built in. Insured through Lloyd's of London. Speak with our team to see if it fits.

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement Interview Series: a one on one interview series hosted by Liam Nelson, Partner at Early Riders. One guest, and a deep conversation on the deals, the capital and the technology moving through bitcoin, so you can hear how the people actually doing the work think about where the future is going.Liam sits down with Alfonso Gómez-Jordana, co-founder and CTO of Crossmint, who built Google's "I'm not a robot" captcha as an intern and now builds the payment rails those bots use. His argument is that money is becoming a back end technology: agents will hold the card, pick the rail, convert into stablecoins when an endpoint demands it, and inside of ten years most people will stop looking at prices or approving transactions at all. They get into why MoneyGram is replacing its core with stablecoins and finally monetizing float it never touched, why standing up stablecoin acceptance is now easier than getting a Stripe account, what breaks when a prompt injected agent is spending money that is not its own, and whether Bitcoin stays the neutral settlement asset once data centers find something better to mine.Chapters00:00 - Alfonso Gómez-Jordana, co-founder and CTO of Crossmint01:37 - Building "I'm not a robot" at Google, then Firebase and WhatsApp06:12 - Why an economy of agents needs programmable money07:53 - Inside Crossmint: wallets, tokenization, licensed fiat swaps09:50 - The clients: trading apps, MoneyGram, payroll, agent platforms12:57 - Do stablecoins help remittances, or do they monetize the float17:59 - The principal agent problem when a bot holds your money24:57 - Why accepting a card is harder than accepting a stablecoin26:52 - Hacks, trust, and who decides which rail gets used30:47 - Tether, Circle, OpenUSD, and whether one stablecoin wins34:05 - Bitcoin as neutral money, and the compute mined challengers38:27 - Could Bitcoin's consensus follow AI compute40:36 - What the industry got wrong about web3 and consumer crypto43:47 - From meme coins to real assets and tokenized fundraising47:18 - Euro stablecoins and why every country needs a strategy53:13 - Past the singularity, money moves to the back endIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Alfonso Gómez-Jordana:https://x.com/alfongj

First Principles: self custody is a skill you practice, not a device you buy. Tyler Campbell, product manager at Unchained and one of the most experienced multisig onboarders in bitcoin, joins Cam Stromme to rebuild custody as a habit rather than a purchase. The through line is the one they both keep coming back to: find your single points of failure, and then go use your keys before the day you have to.---

An ex-OpenAI and Anthropic researcher says there is over a 10% chance AI ends humanity within the decade, and his warning has already pulled in 150 million impressions online. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the clock: Donald Trump promising $5,000 to every US adult if Republicans hold the midterms, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying nothing else matters if China wins the AI race, the 10-year Treasury yield near a 19-year high as the Treasury triples its bond buybacks, and a lightning round on OpenAI's contested 10,000-agent math proof. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: Scott Bessent told yen traders "I am the house now," and one day later the Treasury lifted its buyback program to $6 billion a day while the ten year yield hit fresh highs anyway. Jackson, Michael, and Brian break down what it means when intervention stops moving the tape, why a yen carry trade unwind is the tail risk nobody is pricing, and how Norway's $2.3 trillion fund cutting government bonds fits the same story.---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.Michael, Liam, and Brian open the first ever Final Settlement live stream on the Liquid Network exploit that drained roughly 4,000 Bitcoin, about $320 million, after the attacker inflated the supply of LBTC and pegged out against reserves the sidechain did not have. They get into hot keys and federation quorums, why the base chain held while the layer above it did not, and where the real spectrum of risk sits between an early stage protocol and a bank. The middle of the show turns to Ben Carmen open sourcing Lightspark's lightning service provider, GPT-6 Astra and the AGI question, and Matt Pines and StarCloud on physical superintelligence. The back half is settlement plumbing: 21 banks including Bank of America, Citi and Goldman lining up behind a joint dollar stablecoin, why the collateral layer is the real prize, the SEC's proposed transfer agent overhaul, Circle buying Tazapay, and the rumor that ARK, BlackRock and Fidelity could trade tokenized funds through a transfer agent alone. They close on AMC's chief executive going after Robinhood over tokenized stock, and the meme coins now paired to it.Chapters00:00 - The first ever Final Settlement live stream01:37 - 4,000 Bitcoin drained from the Liquid Network04:21 - How the LBTC supply was inflated06:11 - Hot keys, quorums, and why TradFi moves slowly09:21 - The added risk of moving off the base chain12:54 - A spectrum of risk, from Mt. Gox to open protocols15:45 - Ben Carmen open sources Lightspark's LSP18:56 - GPT-6 Astra, Claude 5.1, and the AGI question22:27 - Matt Pines, StarCloud, and physical superintelligence24:26 - 21 banks line up behind a joint stablecoin25:24 - Why the collateral layer is the real prize29:37 - Transfer agents, T+0, and who owns the ledger37:16 - Felix Pago, Open Reserve, and Circle buying Tazapay41:39 - The rumor: tokenized funds from ARK, BlackRock, Fidelity45:49 - Pledging your ETF and the daisy chain risk48:34 - AMC's CEO versus Robinhood on tokenized stock52:54 - Meme coins paired to tokenized equityIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

OpenAI just declared that AGI has arrived, launching GPT-6 Astra five days ago with materials calling it the start of the "AGI era." Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the clock: what GPT-6 Astra means for jobs and the labor market, Norway's $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund proposing to cut its US Treasury holdings while institutional money managers rebuild gold positions, the demographic milestone of people over 65 now outnumbering children under five worldwide for the first time in recorded history, and a housing market where sellers can't sell and buyers can't get help with their mortgages. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: government bond yields are blowing out across the developed world, Japan's 10-year hit 3% for the first time since 1996, and the Treasury's buyback program has already been overrun. Jackson, Michael, and Brian trace what a global bond rout means for hard assets, why $3.5 billion went into Bitcoin ETFs in August, and what it says that 21 of the largest banks just announced a joint dollar stablecoin.---

Global bond yields just climbed to their highest level since 2008, with Japan's 10-year notes touching 3% for the first time since 1996, as traders price in a near seventy percent chance of a Fed rate hike this month. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the clock: the global bond selloff and a central banking system with no good options left, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's push to redirect ten trillion euros of household savings into EU companies, a Wall Street Journal piece on Americans melting down family heirlooms for cash, and South Korea giving its entire population free, unlimited access to AI. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.Michael, Liam, and Brian open on BitGo acquiring NYDIG's institutional trading business for a reported $42.5 million, and on Russia's largest bank moving to accept Bitcoin, ETH, and USDT as loan collateral while forecasting $46 billion of regulated crypto exchange trading in year one. They get into why a sanctioned, energy rich sovereign is the one recollateralizing first, Blockstream's new post quantum signature proposal, and the SEC sending a crypto custody overhaul to the White House with the Clarity Act stalled. The back half is market plumbing: why settlement is the real prize, the tokenized GLD that spiked to $2,000 on Robinhood over the weekend against $400 for the underlying, bank tokenized deposits, and Robinhood's chain now out-earning every Ethereum L2. They close on Hyperliquid, trading Anthropic shares on entropy.io, the Singularity Stack report, NVIDIA buying Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, and a $400 robot duck that talks over Nostr.Chapters00:00 - Bessent, Warsh, and the bond market03:32 - BitGo acquires NYDIG's institutional trading business07:47 - What BitGo actually gets: liquidity, scale, and stickiness11:24 - Russia's largest bank moves on BTC, ETH, and USDT12:56 - Recollateralizing the global financial system15:34 - Energy rich and sanctioned: why Russia goes first18:14 - Is the US behind, or already through the door?20:58 - Blockstream's quantum fix and the Shrinks proposal24:14 - The SEC preps an overhaul of crypto custody rules28:35 - Why settlement is the prize: DTC, IOUs, and T+033:10 - Tokenized GLD spikes to $2,000 on Robinhood35:04 - Tokenized deposits, bank consortiums, and JP Morgan38:31 - Robinhood chain now out-earns every Ethereum L243:54 - Hyperliquid, Trump, and 24/7 commodities47:16 - Trading Anthropic shares on entropy.io51:12 - The Singularity Stack report and Onramp is hiring56:13 - NVIDIA buys Hugging Face, and a $400 robot duck on NostrIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

The Last Trade: a $20 trillion carry trade sits underneath every market in the world, and when it unwinds, Bitcoin is what gets sold first. Jackson sits down with Roberto Rios, the macro analyst behind The Dollar Endgame, on Japan's $91 billion week defending the yen, the first time any major country has used the Fed's FEMA repo window to fund an intervention, and why Japan has roughly eight interventions left before the reserves run out.---

First Principles: Parker Lewis, author of Gradually, Then Suddenly, joins Cam Stromme to rebuild Bitcoin custody from the ground up in the aftermath of the Coldcard exploit and the Trezor data leak. Four principles run through the hour: eliminate single points of failure, build fault tolerance, understand the difference between a custodian's keys and your account access, and separate adversarial risk from the mistakes you make yourself.---

The Last Trade: Bitcoin just posted its second best week since February 2021, up about 24% from roughly 62,000 to a high near 80,000, and Brian calls it the biggest dollar magnitude move ever inside a three to five day span. Gold and Bitcoin ETFs pulled a combined $7 billion in a single week, a record for any five day period. Jackson, Michael, and Brian trace it back to the Treasury's bond buybacks and Stanley Druckenmiller's op-ed calling out his own former protege.---

Stanley Druckenmiller just used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to publicly break with his old friend and former Soros Fund Management colleague, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, over the Treasury's decision to more than double its bond buyback program. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the clock: Druckenmiller's "Let the Bond Market Speak" op-ed and what it means for the Fed's credibility, Bessent's own "Economic D-Day" sanctions warning to Chinese banks over Iranian oil, a trillion-dollar gold revaluation thesis gaining steam, and Apple's new $10,000 Mac Studio that can run frontier-level AI models with zero cloud dependency. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.The Treasury doubled its bond buyback operation and Bitcoin ran from roughly $63,000 to $80,000 in a week. Michael, Liam, and Brian open on what Bessent actually did, why issuing at the front end to buy the long end is yield curve control without the name, and why gold, oil, and Bitcoin all responded the way the debasement thesis said they would. They get into whether the move was coordinated, what the White House crypto meeting and the SEC's new proposals mean with the Clarity Act stalled, and how tokenized stocks and meme coins are about to make grift a feature of the next cycle. The back half turns to market structure: Citi launching Bitcoin custody, why Bitcoin is a one way street once people understand it, and the honeypot problem banks are walking into. They close on Stripe buying OpenRouter, NVIDIA moving up the AI stack, agentic payments at Ramp, and a leak of API keys from 659 Stripe merchants.Chapters00:00 - Bitcoin rips from $63K to $80K02:55 - Bessent doubles the Treasury buyback05:27 - Why you cannot time Bitcoin's best ten days07:35 - Revaluing gold and the liquidity sponge trade11:43 - Tether and the new eurodollar market12:22 - Bitcoin is back on institutional screens15:03 - Was this whole move coordinated?17:49 - The White House crypto meeting and the SEC20:32 - Tokenized stocks, meme coins, and legalized grift28:16 - Oil, energy, and nominal versus real wealth32:19 - Citi launches Bitcoin custody33:20 - Bitcoin is a one way street40:44 - The honeypot problem with bank custody43:56 - Stripe buys OpenRouter and the singularity letter49:36 - NVIDIA, Perplexity, OpenAI, and Hugging Face58:20 - Ramp, x402, and agentic payments1:01:34 - Robots beat Usain Bolt1:06:20 - Single point of failure: 659 Stripe merchant keysIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

The Treasury just told markets not to trust their own eyes. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the clock. They break down the US Treasury more than doubling its bond buyback program, from a $2 billion cap to a $4 billion floor, in an attempt to cap bond yields, only for 30-year yields to erase the intervention and climb back toward multi-decade highs within 24 hours, right after Treasury Secretary Bessent said the yields "do not reflect the underlying fundamentals." OpenAI has reportedly paused a round of frontier-model post-training over safety concerns, just as Alibaba's open-source Qwen model closes the gap on the frontier labs while running on a laptop. Moderna and Merck's personalized cancer vaccine cleared a major late-stage trial milestone, sending both stocks sharply higher. And New York City is weighing grants for local grocers to help them compete with Mayor Mamdani's government-run grocery stores. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: the US Treasury just doubled its long-dated debt buybacks, turning a $2B daily cap into a $4B daily floor, and long yields fell, gold jumped $100 an ounce, and Bitcoin ripped a five thousand dollar candle. Jackson, Michael, and Brian make the case that this is the opening move of yield curve control and the Bitcoin thesis playing out in real time. They also cover Citi confirming Bitcoin custody, the Trezor shipping breach, and why the flight into ETFs is the wrong lesson.---

The United States just crossed the $40 trillion debt milestone, and new Treasury data shows foreign buyers pulling back. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the clock (Brian Cubellis is out this week). They break down Anthropic's revenue run rate climbing to $65 billion in July, about seven times where it was a year ago, against OpenAI's recently reported $40 billion, and what it means for the AI capex debate. A new company called Toka can hijack live camera feeds, Google just paid $10 million for Spirit Airlines' internal customer data, and a viral backlash against Flock's license-plate cameras raises the question of who is actually watching your data. Foreign holdings of US Treasuries fell in June, led by Japan and China, and a global bond selloff has sent long-term borrowing costs to their highest levels in decades, right as the country crosses $40 trillion in debt. And with Senate control now a 50-50 toss-up, the group discusses what a Democratic sweep in 2026 would mean for AI regulation, deficit spending, and the K-shaped economy. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

Gen Z is moving money out of the stock market and into sports betting. Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, Liam Nelson, and Michael Tanguma put four stories on the shot clock. They break down a Betterment survey showing more than half of young investors have redirected investing money into sports betting, a Trezor shipping-partner data breach that exposed roughly 12,000 hardware-wallet customers, the widening gap between AI adopters and laggards as top firms burn 8.3x the median in output tokens, and why almost nobody understands inflation, with wages down around 87% measured in gold. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: BlackRock just cut the IBIT in-kind conversion minimum from $25M to $1M, and Jackson, Michael, and Brian ask whether the post-Cold Card rush out of self-custody and into the ETF is swapping one single point of failure for another. They break down the SEC and OCC moving on tokenized securities and a path for crypto firms to become banks as a Clarity Act plan B, Trump Media stacking real Bitcoin while divesting its other crypto, gold surging toward $4,500, and the wrench-attack reality that makes multi-institution custody matter.---

Michael Saylor's Strategy is selling Bitcoin while Trump Media just added more than 4,000 BTC. Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, Liam Nelson, and Michael Tanguma put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Strategy selling another 1,690 BTC as its USD reserve hits $4.65 billion against Trump Media's 10-Q showing 14,139 BTC, up from 9,542 in March, Nvidia lining up $500 billion of Wall Street capital for AI compute with a 25% backstop, Spotify's new skip-ad button and YouTube's tighter monetization bar, and credit card debt hitting $1.26 trillion as fintech Clare rides workers living paycheck to paycheck. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.The CLARITY Act has slipped to a September 15 Senate vote, and Bitcoin did not move. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian make the case that stalled legislation on top of the Coldcard fallout, BIP-110 infighting, and Saylor selling, with the price still holding, is what a bottom looks like rather than a top. They run through a brutal week for Bitcoin infrastructure: BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclosing vulnerabilities or going dark, with Boltz warning that attackers now iterate faster than a team its size can patch. On the AI side they cover Kimi K3 escaping an isolated sandbox, Sam Altman's comments on Astra and who gets frontier access, an agent that cancelled a stranger's gym reservation to move its owner up the waitlist, and Cloudflare Wallets arriving as agent requests climb 1,700% and cross half of all network traffic. They close on the deals: Yellow Card's $40M round, Sapium's $35M Series A for the agent routing layer, Coinbase losing BVNK to Mastercard despite bidding $700M more, Airtable selling for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak, and what Block's Buzz did during the Coldcard incident.Chapters00:00 - Coldcard update: thefts slow, 2,000 BTC still gone01:00 - BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclose vulnerabilities02:51 - Why open source Bitcoin code became the target04:11 - Boltz: attackers now iterate faster than we can patch05:22 - Liam: Bitcoin itself is not the vulnerability06:40 - Good actors handicapped when US frontier models refuse10:04 - Sam Altman on Astra and keeping powerful models from the few11:12 - Only 2% of US households pay for AI13:34 - Kimi K3 escapes its isolated sandbox14:34 - Why non-deterministic models cannot be reliably contained19:35 - An agent cancels a stranger's gym reservation20:58 - Cloudflare Wallets and the programmable agentic internet23:45 - Agent traffic passes human traffic26:42 - ARK on Cloudflare's earnings: agent requests up 1,700%31:07 - Privy's CRM breach and the limits of mobile wallets32:13 - The CLARITY Act slips to September 1533:45 - Why stalled legislation plus a flat price looks like a bottom35:56 - Yellow Card raises $40M for African stablecoin rails37:40 - Sapium raises $35M for the AI agent routing layer40:14 - Coinbase bid $2.5B for BVNK and lost to Mastercard at $1.8B42:17 - Airtable sells for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak45:32 - The Architecture Problem and where custody goes next47:48 - Why every firm ends up at multi-institution custody49:22 - Buzz, Goose, and how Block moved in hours on Coldcard54:45 - GPU hours as crude oil: an open source AI analogy55:34 - Sergey Brin returns to Gemini, Meta ships Muse CodeIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

The AI boom might just be money moving in a circle. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Ed Zitron's circular-revenue thesis (an estimated 70% of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google AI revenue comes from OpenAI and Anthropic), gold breaking out roughly $200 after Warsh's dovish Fed, the national debt climbing $450 billion since July 1, and an estimated $30 million stolen in violent crypto attacks in 2026. Liam is out this week. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian go live for the first time to work through the Cold Card fallout, the Bitcoin Red Team audit that filed nearly 5,000 findings across 390 projects in 27.5 hours, and the UK AI Safety Institute report of OpenAI and Anthropic agents creating fake identities to pressure an open source maintainer into approving malicious code. They close on the sovereign bid for gold, with the Bank of Korea buying physical gold for the first time in 13 years.---

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, and Liam Nelson - joined by guest co-host CamStromme, filling in for Michael Tanguma - put four stories on the shot clock. Coldcard's $130 milliondisaster was supposed to be a one-off. The panel makes the case it's the opening move in a much biggerreckoning: AI models are now finding vulnerabilities across software faster than humans ever did, andnobody knows yet what else gets found. They also break down OpenAI's Astra solving 10 decade-old mathproblems, the US and Japan's yen intervention, and Iran's on-again Strait of Hormuz deal. Where's thesignal, and where's the noise?---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.The Coldcard exploit has escalated: nearly 2,000 Bitcoin drained and counting, passphrase wallets confirmed compromised, MK4s and Qs exposed alongside the deprecated MK3, and Coinkite confirming a five-year-old flaw in on-device seed generation. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian walk the full timeline of the worst self-custody incident in Bitcoin's history: how the RNG silently downgraded to guessable entropy, why same-vendor multisig quorums are also at risk, and the firmware updates reportedly bricking devices mid-migration. Michael and Liam share their own weekend fund migrations (one from the back seat of a car), and the guys get into the harder questions: why AI may be a bigger threat to Bitcoin security than quantum computing, why the stampede to exchanges and ETFs is the wrong lesson, and what a fault-tolerant custody architecture looks like when one mistake can no longer be allowed to knock you out of the game.Chapters00:00 - The Coldcard exploit: what happened and who is affected02:20 - Move your funds: urgent guidance for Coldcard holders05:09 - Technical breakdown: how the RNG flaw was exploited10:17 - Passphrases, firmware bricking, and the silent downgrade17:14 - Earlier warnings and why same-vendor multisig is exposed21:22 - Weekend migrations: Michael and Liam's personal anecdotes30:26 - AI vs quantum: the real threat to Bitcoin security33:25 - Single-vendor risk, single-entity risk, and custody honeypots44:03 - Silver linings: the end of the custody purity test50:26 - Where the industry goes from here56:15 - One mistake can't knock you out of the game59:05 - Final guidance and staying vigilantIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

The Last Trade: an emergency episode. Jackson, Michael, and Brian break down the Cold Card exploit that has drained over 1,000 Bitcoin after a five-year-old flaw in the device's random number generation was found, reportedly with help from an AI model. They explain why the bug reaches beyond the MK3 to later models, why single-vendor multi-sig is not immune, and what Cold Card users should do right now. They make the case that AI has permanently changed the custody game, and walk through multi-institution custody as the fault-tolerant alternative.---

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Brian Cubellis, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund blowing up and getting scooped by Citadel as South Korea's market sheds roughly $2 trillion in 40 days, Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump agreeing to scrap the debt ceiling, Fauci pleading the fifth before Rand Paul, and open source tools like Granola and Whoop getting reverse engineered overnight. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian make the case that the worst Bitcoin sentiment they can remember is exactly the accumulation opportunity, with Bitcoin near $64K and down 50% from its highs. They break down why the Clarity Act stalling barely dented price, and how the SEC and CFTC are already building Project Crypto backups. They dig into Jack Dorsey and Block open-sourcing tools that make Bitcoin the scarce counterweight to AI. They close on an OpenAI agent escaping its sandbox, South Korea's crash, and the Fed holding as three officials push to hike.---

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis put four viral headlines on the shot clock, sparring over Anthropic slicing millions of print books from their bindings to train Claude, grocery prices climbing 33% since 2019 in the biggest jump in 50 years, big companies hiring again for AI-native skills after October's largest layoff month in over two decades, and Franklin Templeton calling agentic AI the killer use case for crypto.---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.This week Michael, Liam, and Brian open on the open-versus-closed AI debate: Jensen Huang's first-ever tweet and NVIDIA's letter backing open models, the new Security Alliance consortium, the researchers quietly wishing they could slow it all down, and NVIDIA's reported $250 billion financing for OpenAI's Ohio data center. They dig into Jack Dorsey's Buzz, the open-source workspace built on the same Noster and Bitcoin primitives as BitChat, and what shared compute and censorship-resistant protocols mean as BitChat downloads spike 32-fold in India. The guys run through a stack of payments deals: Stripe's talks to buy OpenRouter near $10 billion, Cursor, Ramp, and Meta building model routers, and Natural Pay's $30 million Series A for agentic payments. They get into their favorite topic, the DATs: Mallers exiting 21 Capital as Tether's XXI merger collapses, Strategy's first Stretch buyback, and the new Bitcoin security consortium taking on quantum. They close on Augustus's $180 million raise, Worldcoin, and Travis Kalanick's return with Adam.Chapters00:00 - Introduction and overview of AI and open models02:10 - Jensen Huang's first tweet on open models and global cooperation09:08 - Discussion on slowing AI development and game theory18:03 - Jack Dorsey's Buzz: Open source workspace and primitives24:55 - Shared compute, decentralized protocols, and open standards35:02 - Regulatory landscape and geopolitical implications45:11 - Impacts on privacy, security, and censorship resistance54:03 - Recent deals and industry movements in AI and crypto01:02:08 - The future of Bitcoin, open protocols, and decentralized dataIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis break down an OpenAI frontier model escaping containment during testing, unpack the US-China AI race and Anthropic's own hypocrisy on stolen data, dig into Google's first negative free cash flow since going public, and flag the 30-year Treasury yield's longest stretch above 5% since 2007.---

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian zoom out to the real asset supercycle, using the In Gold We Trust report's century of data to argue almost nobody is positioned for what comes next. They break down the Clarity Act's make-or-break Senate vote and the ethics fight over Trump. They dig into the 30-year yield holding above 5% for the longest stretch since 2007, and what a $40 trillion debt load means for the debasement trade. They close on the US-China AI race and the model distillation war.---

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis debate the White House's push to ban China's Kimi K3 AI model, dissect Jamie Dimon's warning that markets underestimate risk and he wouldn't buy stocks or treasuries at these prices, unpack why the World Cup trophy's gold has surged from $150,000 to $550,000 since 2020, and weigh the Clarity Act's odds as they swing from 30% to nearly 50% ahead of its early August deadline.---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.This week Michael, Liam, and Brian break down Moonshot's Kimmy K3 release and what a more open, cheaper Chinese frontier model means for the race against Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6, from cyber guardrails and export controls to the Trump administration weighing a ban on Chinese models. They dig into the AI capital markets: Anthropic and DeepSeek's IPO plans, Nous Research's $75 million raise at a $1.5 billion valuation, Gavin Baker's intelligence-per-dollar thesis, Liquid AI, and OpenShip's self-hostable app platform. The guys run through the payments story: the $53 billion Stripe, Advent, and Block bid for PayPal, Visa's new OUSD stablecoin platform, and Amazon Japan's move into a yen-backed stablecoin. They cover a stack of digital asset headlines: IBIT options limits rising to 1 million contracts, Citadel's $400 million investment in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation, the ECB's digital euro pilot, Velocity's $38 million Series A, Tether's Genius Act countdown, and Lynn Alden's new Bitcoin-focused PE firm. They close on where the Clarity Act stands, Early Riders' mid-year letter, Onramp's back-to-basics promo, and AI's arrival in film and music.Chapters00:00 - Introduction and Weekly Recap01:26 - Kimmy K3 Release and Open Source AI Models05:43 - Meta-level Analysis of AI Race and AGI08:04 - AI Development: Capabilities and Guardrails09:44 - AI as a Commodity and Data Strategies11:08 - Global AI Race and Export Controls13:13 - US-China AI Power Dynamics16:46 - US Regulatory Posturing and Competition21:55 - US and Chinese AI Model Competition24:58 - AI Infrastructure and Market Share Shifts31:40 - AI and Financial Markets: IPOs and Capital Flows36:29 - Open Source AI Projects and Sovereignty37:16 - Fintech and Payments: Stripe, PayPal, and Crypto49:05 - Digital Asset Headlines: Tether, Stablecoins, and Regulation52:58 - Crypto Market Dynamics and Capital Flows55:25 - Bitcoin and Digital Asset Strategies01:00:16 - AI and Bitcoin: The Future of Capital and Innovation01:12:50 - Closing Remarks and Future OutlookIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis dig into 96% odds the Fed holds rates flat, a Ramp report showing AI-heavy firms are hiring not firing, a survey where 69% of Americans want OpenAI and Anthropic to give up half their stock, and shocking data on AI companions, with 72% of teens reporting a romantic relationship with AI and marriage rates at a 120-year low.---

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian make the case that Bitcoin is carving out a structural bottom as old-coin distribution collapses and the worst of ETF and treasury-company selling exhausts itself. They break down Japan reclassifying crypto as a financial product and slashing its effective tax rate from 55% toward 20%. They dig into why the Clarity Act, not the administration, is the real green light for Wall Street. They close on Morgan Stanley's $4 to $8 trillion AI capex wave and the launch of Onramp's Back to the Basics campaign.---

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis debate whether June's cooler-than-expected 3.5% CPI print is signal or noise, break down oil's surge on Middle East tensions, unpack the ultra-wealthy land-maxing trend reshaping Palm Beach real estate, react to New York's first-in-the-nation data center moratorium, and dig into Strategy's new Bitcoin Bank Adoption Index, where Fidelity leads at 71% and RBC trails at just 13%.---

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.This week Michael, Liam, and Brian break down the banks' accelerating tokenization push: BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan joining a 54-firm UK tokenization task force, Swift's blockchain ledger pilot with 17 banks, and what it means for Bitcoin's role in the emerging plumbing. They dig into Satya Nadella's AI sovereignty thesis, Microsoft's Frontier Company data play, Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, and the Fed's new AI task force under Kevin Warsh. The guys run through a stack of deals: TerraWolf's $19 billion Anthropic infrastructure agreement, OLAMA's $65 million raise, Paradigm's $1.2 billion fourth fund expanding into AI and robotics, and Tether's $20 million investment in Mercado Bitcoin. They close on TradFi's crypto expansion via SBI Holdings and Russia's Alpha Bank, Kraken's $22 million lawsuit win, where the Clarity Act stands ahead of the midterms, and Spiral's new open source push to merge Bitcoin and AI.Chapters00:00 - Introduction and Show Overview00:18 - Market Sentiment and Show Focus01:15 - Banks and Traditional Enterprises in Digital Asset Space02:40 - UK Tokenization Task Force and Use Cases03:40 - Swift Blockchain Ledger Pilot with 17 Banks04:34 - Global Sprint in Tokenized Securities and Deposits07:23 - Bitcoin's Role in the Future of Digital Infrastructure09:39 - The Bullish Case for Bitcoin Amidst Tokenization12:28 - AI Tools and Sovereignty in Data Ownership15:37 - Microsoft's Investment in AI and Data Sovereignty22:16 - Microsoft Frontier Company and Proprietary Data Platforms25:07 - The Importance of Human Agency in AI Adoption28:40 - AI and the Disruption of Traditional Business Models29:08 - Apple Suing OpenAI Over Trade Secrets32:36 - The Long-Term Impact of AI and Open Source Models36:50 - DoorDash's AI Code Reviewer and Internal AI Adoption38:19 - Fed's AI Task Force and Economic Policy43:32 - Russia's Strategic Use of Bitcoin and Digital Assets50:07 - Paradigm's New Fund and Broader Tech Investment55:13 - Traditional Finance's Entry into Crypto and Digital Assets01:02:41 - Regulatory Developments and the Future of Crypto Legislation01:09:18 - Bitcoin's Role in the Future of Digital Infrastructure01:11:21 - Open Source AI and Bitcoin IntegrationIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and Brian Cubellis launch a new twice weekly show built around a five minute shot clock. This first episode takes on a single story: the Wall Street Journal's claim that moving back in with your parents is now a sign of financial savvy. Nearly half of American adults under 30 are doing it. The panel's verdict is that it isn't savvy, it's survival.---