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VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333 This Week In Startups is made possible by: partner 1 - link partner 2 - link partner 3 - link   Today's show: Are we one step closer to data centers in space? Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six and Paige Doherty of Behind Genius Ventures break it down what it would take. Plus investor interest is surging in Physical AI companies. Paige explains why she backs applications of physical AI over general-purpose robotics, and how her thesis on multimodal AI led to the largest check she's ever written. We then dive into the Pentagon's rollout of ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government. And Katelin gives us her insight into how VCs are investing in Europe and the regulations behind the scenes. Guests: Katelin Holloway on X: https://x.com/katelin_cruse Seven Seven Six: https://sevensevensix.com/ Paige Doherty on X: https://x.com/paigefinnn Behind Genius Ventures: https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/ Full Transcript and Summary, powered by Plaud https://web.plaud.ai/s/pub_772dbc9f-cd78-4de7-911e-8d3ee2883fbb::AF3ncHtIZkSyKKL-K-XUZBAUBEdoQQBEGCQSsja3gXsll8Dm6-Xbrrlhk7g8U-xwIW9kHyYwaB0dBuoC Related Links: Department of War adds ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government: https://fortune.com/2026/09/01/pentagon-chatgpt-grok-government-military-ai-members-pete-hegseth-defense-department/ OpenAI for Government: https://openai.com/global-affairs/introducing-openai-for-government/ Starshield — SpaceX's government/defense arm: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ UN work on LAWS (Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems): https://disarmament.unoda.org/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/background-on-laws-in-the-ccw/ European Commission designates ChatGPT a VLOSE: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-designates-chatgpt-reddit-roblox-under-digital-services-act Commission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1772 Euronews on why a chatbot that searches the live web counts as a search engine: https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/08/31/eu-places-chatgpt-reddit-and-roblox-under-strictest-digital-safety-rules Entrepreneur First: https://www.joinef.com/posts/introducing-the-bridge/ Henrick Johansson, the European VC persona: https://x.com/compliantvc Starcloud — orbital data centers: https://www.starcloud.com/ Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260821884035/en/Starcloud-Raises-$250-Million-at-$2.3-Billion-Valuation-to-Scale-AI-with-Orbital-Data-Centers "From Sputnik to Starship: Estimating the experience curve of space launch technology" https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/7/pgag217/8732400 Cambridge Bennett Schoo: https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/is-space-trade-the-next-global-transport-revolution/ Crunchbase News: physical AI startups raised $47.4B across 521 deals in H1 2026: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups-robotics-aerospace-h1-2026/ Crunchbase News on record defense-tech funding: https://news.crunchbase.com/defense-tech/startup-venture-funding-all-time-record-ai-anduril/ Jensen Huang's prediction: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/executive-insights/ Zipline: https://www.flyzipline.com/ Nox Metals: https://www.noxmetals.com/ CNBC: Anthropic changes its data retention policy: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-data-retention.html Bloomberg on the plan to let enterprises hold the 30-day window: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-20/anthropic-plans-to-change-data-retention-policy-for-advanced-ai Plaud — sponsor; the wearable AI note-taker → **https://plaud.ai/twist** (code TWIST for 10% off) Harmonic: https://harmonic.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 Why making it to Fund IV is when it gets real 9:24 Pentagon rolls out ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government 10:49 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST 11:53 Paige on defense tech and three years at Northrop Grumman 13:40 Katelin: The bottleneck used to be winning the contract, now it's surviving one 16:13 Autonomous weapons, robot dogs, and the Boston Dynamics conversation in Paris 19:07 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 22:03 EU designates ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the DSA 24:54 Katelin's contrarian take: Europe is undercapitalized 29:56 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 31:07 Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B valuation 53:06 Competing with Elon: the single point of failure for the whole space economy 57:49 Physical AI raised ~$47B in the first half of 2026 1:03:42 Jason's Zipline regret and the death of "hardware is hard" 1:07:07 Is "unc" a compliment? A Gen X / millennial / Gen Z / Gen Alpha 1:09:39 Anthropic reverses its data retention policy after enterprise pushback 1:12:18 Katelin on data custody: "That's not a procurement question" 1:15:31 Back to on-prem: Go.AI, the Go1, and vertical LLMs Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/   Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

Tim Cook sent Apple staff a farewell memo on his last day as CEO, the FTC sued Amazon over $20B in hidden ad surcharges, Starman Optical bought GoPro for $285M, Waymo hit three cities, and Dyson made an AI toothbrush. On his last day as CEO, Tim Cook sends a memo to Apple employees reflecting on his time and says he takes "enormous comfort in handing the helm" to John Ternus (9to5Mac) John Ternus became Apple's CEO on Tuesday, succeeding Tim Cook after 15 years; he'll have to navigate leadership churn, stem a talent exodus to OpenAI, and unveil a foldable iPhone this month (The New York Times) The US FTC and 22 state AGs sue Amazon, alleging it overcharged advertisers by $20B+ since 2019 via hidden surcharges, with costs largely passed on to consumers (CNBC) Starman Optical agrees to acquire GoPro in an all-cash deal valued at $285M, a premium of 29.5% to GPRO's last close; GoPro hit a market cap of $4B in 2014 (Reuters) Starman Optical will pay GoPro shareholders $1.14 per share and leave them with ~10% of the combined company, which stays public; the deal wipes out GoPro's $92M debt and is expected to close by year end (TechCrunch) Waymo starts offering driverless rides to customers in San Diego, Tampa, Florida, and Denver; Amazon's Zoox plans to start testing in Houston and San Diego (CNBC) PSI, which aims to use AI "to industrialize the discovery of new physics" including cracking interstellar travel, emerges from stealth with a $58M seed (The Deep View) Dyson unveils the $499 CameraJet, an AI-powered toothbrush with a 100K-pixel macro lens that scans at 28 images per second and is trained on nearly 470K images (Bloomberg) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.He co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, sold Personal Capital for nearly $1B — and spends $70K a year.Bill Harris has a résumé that barely fits on one page. He was CEO of Intuit, founding CEO of PayPal — in the room with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin above a bakery near Stanford — and then founded Personal Capital, which he grew to $23 billion in AUM before selling it to Empower Retirement for close to $1 billion. He's done something like that 11 times. Today his net worth is around $100 million, he's 70 years old, and he spends less than $100,000 a year. He sold his houses, cars, airplane, and 31 pets (including two mountain goats and an iguana) and moved into a small cottage near Miami Beach where he bikes to work every day.This episode gets into what $100 million actually looks like when it's spread across public equities and private operating companies — and why the man who built one of the most important wealth management firms in history keeps his own annual spend near $70K. We go deep on the PayPal origin story, what it was like being "theoretically the CEO" in a room full of people whose egos "wouldn't fit in a large gymnasium," and the specific moment Bill realized that his houses, cars, and airplane weren't making him richer in the ways that mattered. He also shares his best piece of investing advice for people in their 30s, his take on why the S&P 500 isn't as diversified as most people think, and what he calls "freedom money."Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwTimestamps: 00:00 — Cold open: "There wasn't a single one of us whose ego would fit in a large gymnasium" 00:36 — Full guest intro: who Bill Harris is and why this episode matters 03:23 — Bill's origin story: the golden boy path, Intuit CEO at 40, and realizing "I am not a good manager" 06:33 — What money actually is: "It is a rocket fuel. It's the scarce resource you need to build the life you want" 07:38 — The monthly spend reveal: $70–80K a year, all in — "my addiction is Amazon" 09:04 — Life phases: family dole → NYC studio → two houses, 31 pets, and a 1906 Woodside farmhouse 14:20 — Net worth reveal: ~$100M, cut in half by divorce, and the barbell portfolio breakdown 15:27 — Why he doesn't do "fancy investing": survivorship bias, absurd fees, and why alternatives rarely outperform 17:31 — The Evergreen Wealth philosophy: why 80–90% equity is what he'd tell a client with his profile 19:07 — How to value a private company: "Two things dominate it — markets and story" 21:47 — "Things are time": the real cost of owning two houses, four cars, and a small airplane 24:33 — PayPal origin story: "We were close to fisticuffs most days. I was theoretically the CEO" 27:38 — Luck vs. skill: "I'd say it's 80 to 90% luck" — and what that actually means 30:13 — The personal payout from PayPal and Personal Capital: specific numbers, post-tax 32:01 — Why he's self-funding Evergreen with $10M of his own money: "Freedom. I have no boss" 38:05 — Why he still works at 70: mastery, not money — "I can't think of a bigger waste of time" than golf 42:48 — Best investing advice for your 30s: "Hive off a piece and let it marinate" 43:44 — Why the S&P 500 is riskier than it looks: top 10 stocks = 37% of the whole index 45:40 — "Freedom money" defined: the thing that lets you say yes to your own life 48:33 — Closing: "Money is a means to an end. It's not an end."Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

September first happens to be National Burnt Ends Day, NASA launched $4B into space, Apple TV+ is going up and IHOP has an insane new Fall menu item!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here:Want my help starting a business? Join me here inside Zero To FounderSign up for my AI Masterclass: AI MasterclassFOLLOW TOM:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=enTwitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeuYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeuWOI EPISODES:FOLLOW LISA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisabilyeu/Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisabilyeuYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/womenofimpactTik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lisa_bilyeu?lang=enCash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl #CashAppPod*Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure.Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodWhatnot: Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order.Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderEthos: Get a free quote at https://ethos.com/impactIncogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at https://business.att.comPique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impactThe team dissects the viral Konstantin Kisin vs. Steve Keen debate—both former Impact Theory guests—on the central climate question of our time: is the answer to use less and shrink (de-growth), or to innovate our way forward? The host, who knows both men and calls them smart and well-intentioned, explicitly urges viewers not to pick a side and dismiss the other as stupid, but to find the one factual disagreement worth reasoning from. His own position leans hard toward innovation: drawing on Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, he argues that 80,000 years of human progress make "it all ends now" an irrational bet, that we've innovated our way out of every prior crisis, and that de-growth—especially any talk of reducing world population—would trigger economic collapse that causes far more suffering than the problem it aims to solve. He respects Steve Keen's economic mind but argues Keen has essentially "given up," wishing we'd listened to engineers 50 years ago rather than charting a path forward now. He reframes the climate fight around tradeoffs the doom narrative ignores: citing Bjørn Lomborg's "it's real but overstated, and the solutions can be worse than the disease" framing, the roughly 140,000-plus annual heat deaths that air conditioning could prevent, and Jordan Peterson's warning about sacrificing today's actual poor for tomorrow's hypothetical poor. The conversation ranges across the East-vs-West Germany innovation contrast, a Peter Diamandis-style geoengineering thought experiment, why "politics is downstream of culture," and the host's more contested claim that climate panic often masks a desire for control and resentment—before ending on a speculative, openly-unsupported musing about the psychology behind who pushes it. A wide-ranging argument for optimism, first-principles thinking, and refusing to let "we're doomed" become the whole story.The team breaks down Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's latest move to tame rising long-term bond rates—and why the bond market is likely to keep testing him. After Bessent doubled buybacks from $2B to $4B per round (which briefly knocked yields down before they rebounded past where they started), two off-the-record Treasury officials leaked to CNBC that the Treasury General Account—the government's roughly $1-trillion checking account at the Fed—could be tapped to buy bonds en masse. The host walks through why that's a bigger deal than expected: using cash to retire long-duration bonds without issuing new supply makes the debt "evaporate," and the market has, at least for now, believed the rumor enough to push the 30-year and 10-year yields down. But he's clear about the catch: the TGA isn't a magic war chest—every dollar in it was borrowed via prior auctions, so spending it down just defers the problem and eventually requires selling more debt, pressuring the curve again. He frames the backdrop honestly: $40 trillion in debt, ~123% debt-to-GDP, climbing interest costs, Japan (the largest buyer of US debt) in trouble, China dumping Treasuries while hoarding gold, and gold overtaking the dollar as the top central-bank reserve asset. His throughline is that there's no silver bullet, only tradeoffs, and the only real fix is growing the real economy—rising middle-class wages adjusted for inflation, GDP moving from ~1.2% toward 3–4%—rather than financial engineering. Absent that, he lays out the grim menu every over-indebted empire faces: austerity, default, or inflating the currency to shrink the debt (which quietly impoverishes everyone paid or saving in dollars), and warns that another Covid-scale inflation spike without real growth is how you get to "pitchforks." The conversation closes on a lengthy, contested tangent about immigration incentive structures, the Nordic model, and social trust—with the host explicitly noting the Nordic countries themselves say they aren't socialist. A dense, sobering economics breakdown.The team breaks down the escalating US-Canada trade war after Canada walked away from a deal that would have sharply lowered tariffs on several key Canadian industries. The host argues Canada is making a serious economic miscalculation—laying out the dependency math: roughly 78% of Canadian exports rely on US consumer markets, and exports make up about 33% of Canada's GDP, versus Canada representing only around 13% of US imports and a small slice of US GDP. In his read, that asymmetry means Canada has far more to lose, and pivoting toward China—geographically distant and, as he notes, a non-market economy—is a poor substitute. He digs into what actually broke the deal per PM Mark Carney: autos, French-language and cultural protections, and, most importantly, a US demand to restrict Canada's ability to sign independent trade deals with other countries (read: China), pointing to Canada's stated goal of a 50% export increase to China by 2030, Carney's January Beijing visit, and a flurry of mutual tariff cuts (including slashing Canada's 100% EV tariff to ~6%) as evidence of a rapidly warming relationship. But the host is pointedly two-sided: he says the US had understandable strategic reasons to push for guarantees, while blasting Trump's "51st state" rhetoric and bullying public posture as counterproductive—using it as a lesson he teaches entrepreneurs about always showing the other side how a deal is a win for them, and the human psychology of how people resist being forced into even things that serve their interests. He walks through the granular US demands (auto assembly, procurement, energy allocation, language laws) and their second-order effects, and closes on a contested hypothesis that Canada may be more ideologically aligned with China than the US. A dense, numbers-driven, deliberately even-handed breakdown of leverage, strategy, and a deal gone sideways.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In "Scale or Fail: Navigating Trade Volatility for Emerging Brands", Joe Lynch speaks with President and CEO of the Americas region of GEODIS, Laura Ritchey, about how emerging brands can navigate trade volatility, manage inventory, and build scalable, resilient supply chains. About Laura Ritchey Laura Ritchey joined GEODIS in July 2025 as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Americas region. Laura is responsible for overseeing the region's freight forwarding, contract logistics and transportation business units along with engineering and technology, IT, ProVenture (U.S.-based subsidiary of GEODIS focusing on industrial real estate) and Material Handling Resources (one of the country's leading material handling distributors owned by GEODIS). In total, Laura oversees GEODIS Americas' expansive operations including nearly 20,000 employees and more than 230 sites across eight countries. Laura brings over 30 years of experience to GEODIS, with 15 focused on supply chain management in both retail and third-party logistics. Laura began her career in finance before transitioning to supply chain operations, including sourcing, distribution and strategic transformation. Prior to her current role, Laura was most recently CEO at Radial, Inc., a leader in e-commerce fulfillment solutions, where she drove revenue growth and profitability through operational excellence. At Radial, she led the North American P&L for a $1.4B e-commerce logistics division, responsible for relationships with over 170 clients across four service lines. Before joining Radial, she held leadership positions at L Brands, FullBeauty Brands and Centric Brands. Laura is on the Dean's Advisory Council at Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and is an active board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Nashville Branch. Additionally, she is actively involved with C200 whose mission is to inspire, educate, support and advance current and future women leaders. Laura earned her J.D., MBA and bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University. Additionally, Laura is accredited as a certified public accountant and admitted to the bar in Ohio. About GEODIS GEODIS is a leading global logistics provider acknowledged for its expertise across all aspects of the supply chain. As a growth partner to its clients, GEODIS specializes in four lines of business: Global Freight Forwarding, Global Contract Logistics, Distribution & Express Transport, and European Road Network. The Group operates a global network spanning nearly 170 countries and 48,000 employees. In 2025, GEODIS generated €10.6 billion in revenue. GEODIS is a company owned by SNCF group. Key Takeaways: Scale or Fail: Navigating Trade Volatility for Emerging Brands Beware the "10K Order Trap" During Rapid Growth: Scaling operations from 1,000 to 10,000 monthly orders often breaks a business before demand stalls. Emerging brands must build strong foundational supply chain building blocks early—such as maintaining clean master data (accurate dimensions and weights) and choosing a 3PL capable of global growth—to avoid costly operational failures when reaching inflection points. Adopt a Hybrid Inventory Strategy to Balance JIT and JIC: Shifting strictly between "Just in Time" (JIT) and "Just in Case" (JIC) risks either stockouts or trapped working capital. A balanced, hybrid approach—keeping adequate stock of fast-moving core basics while tightly controlling slow-moving seasonal items—helps protect cash flow without sacrificing availability. Re-evaluate the "Amazon Effect" and Recommerce to Protect Margins: High-speed, free shipping creates an illusion of necessity that drives up last-mile costs. Brands should focus on order delivery certainty over pure speed while implementing circular economy strategies (recommerce) to rehabilitate and resell returned apparel, which often recovers up to 95% of inventory value. Mitigate Sourcing Risks Beyond Single-Factory Bets: Diversifying supply chains requires going all the way back to raw material inputs rather than simply relocating assembly plants. Navigating evolving global tariffs requires nearshoring flexibility, dual-sourcing critical SKUs, and re-orchestrating supply chain flows across regional hubs. Understand True Landed Costs to Avoid Margin Shock: Delegating freight forwarding and customs clearance entirely to overseas manufacturers often leads to hidden markups and supply chain delays. Leveraging an end-to-end global provider with licensed customs brokerage capabilities ensures clear visibility into total landed costs and regulatory compliance. Leverage Global Scale with Curated, End-to-End Execution: Supported by a global network spanning nearly 170 countries, over 48,000 employees, and €10.6 billion (USD $12.35 billion) in revenue (2025), GEODIS provides emerging and established brands with an agile, end-to-end "launchpad for global growth" across contract logistics, freight forwarding, and transportation. Avoid the "Set It and Forget It" Supply Chain Mindset: Ongoing volatility, regulatory shifts, and geopolitical friction require continuous evaluation of supply chain networks. Taking a cautious, practical approach to emerging technologies like AI (for labor forecasting and route planning) ensures operational stability while safeguarding proprietary data. Learn More About Scale or Fail: Navigating Trade Volatility for Emerging Brands Laura Ritchey | Linkedin GEODIS | Linkedin GEODIS The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

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.---

 With Louis Diamond Vanguard's acquisition of Altruist could reshape RIA custody, bringing together Altruist's technology with the scale, capital, and reputation of one of the industry's best-known brands. In Summary Vanguard's acquisition of Altruist brings one of the financial industry's most established brands together with one of RIA custody's fastest-growing challengers. In this Rapid Reaction Industry Update, Louis Diamond looks beyond the reported $4B+ purchase price to consider what the combination could mean for advisors—what he sees as the good news, the potentially negative outcomes, and everything in between. Altruist gains the capital, scale, and brand recognition that could help it compete more aggressively for larger RIAs and breakaway teams. Vanguard gains a technology-forward custody platform and greater access to the independent advisor channel. The larger implication may be increased competition across RIA custody. With Schwab and Fidelity controlling much of the market, a Vanguard-backed Altruist could create new pressure around technology, pricing, service, referrals, and innovation—while raising new questions about how Vanguard balances its growing advice business with its role as custodian. The Storyline RIA custody has long been dominated by Schwab and Fidelity, particularly since Schwab's acquisition of TD Ameritrade. Altruist emerged as one of the few credible challengers, building its position around modern technology, lower costs, and an advisor-focused platform.   But technology was only part of the equation. For larger breakaway teams in particular, Altruist faced another hurdle: brand recognition. Advisors could be impressed by the platform while still wondering how clients accustomed to names like Merrill, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Schwab, or Fidelity would respond to an unfamiliar custodian.   Vanguard changes that equation.   Louis examines why the acquisition makes strategic sense for both companies, from Vanguard's push to expand access to financial advice to Altruist's opportunity to operate with the backing of a well-capitalized, long-term owner.   For advisors, however, the bigger story is what happens next. A stronger competitor in custody could affect everything from technology and pricing to referral opportunities and the choices available to breakaway advisors.   There are also important questions still unanswered. Vanguard operates its own advice businesses. Altruist's speed and fintech culture may be tested inside a much larger organization. And while Vanguard says Altruist will remain independent, the longer-term operating model remains to be seen.   The deal may not change advisors' options immediately. But it has the potential to change the competitive dynamics surrounding those options considerably.   Topics Covered Vanguard's acquisition of Altruist RIA custody competition Schwab and Fidelity Altruist's technology and Hazel AI Vanguard's financial advice strategy Custodian brand recognition for breakaway advisors Advisor referral networks Custody and technology pricing Direct advice and custodian conflicts The future of RIA platforms and Supportive Independence > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why is the Vanguard-Altruist acquisition significant for RIA custody? (03:53)Louis explains why custody has remained highly concentrated around Schwab and Fidelity and how combining Vanguard's scale and reputation with Altruist's technology could create a much stronger third competitor.   What problem does Vanguard potentially solve for Altruist? (05:01)Altruist has built a strong reputation among advisors for its technology, but larger breakaway teams have sometimes questioned whether clients would recognize or trust the brand. Vanguard could significantly reduce that concern.   Why does buying Altruist make sense for Vanguard? (07:00)Vanguard has more than 50 million investors and has publicly discussed the need to expand access to financial advice. Louis considers how Altruist could give Vanguard both additional capacity and a stronger connection to independent advisors.   What does Altruist gain from Vanguard beyond capital? (09:51)Louis discusses the significance of having a long-term, investor-owned parent rather than remaining dependent on successive rounds of venture capital, while gaining additional resources to develop custody, technology, and Hazel AI.   How could this acquisition change the choices available to breakaway advisors? (12:33)The combination of Altruist's technology with Vanguard's brand could make the platform more viable for larger teams that previously hesitated because of client recognition and trust concerns.   Could Vanguard become a meaningful source of client referrals to RIAs? (13:42)With millions of existing investors and more demand for advice than Vanguard can necessarily serve internally, Louis considers whether a future referral program connecting Vanguard clients with Altruist RIAs could become an important competitive advantage.   What are the potential risks of the Vanguard-Altruist combination? (16:54)The acquisition also raises questions around Vanguard's competing advice business, Altruist's long-term independence, differences in corporate culture, innovation speed, and talent retention.   What could happen next across the custody market? (20:00)Louis offers several predictions, including responses from Schwab and Fidelity, wider adoption of Hazel AI, a potential Vanguard-Altruist referral channel, and greater use of Altruist by breakaway advisors.   Key Takeaways Vanguard's acquisition of Altruist could introduce a more formidable competitor into an RIA custody market heavily concentrated around Schwab and Fidelity. Vanguard addresses one of Altruist's biggest challenges with larger breakaway teams: providing a widely recognized financial brand that advisors can more easily explain to clients. Altruist gives Vanguard a technology-forward entry point into RIA custody as Vanguard continues expanding its strategy around access to financial advice. Advisors could benefit from greater competition through pressure on custody and technology pricing, service, product development, and innovation. A future referral channel could become an important part of the combination, particularly given Vanguard's enormous investor base and Altruist's growing network of RIAs. The acquisition also introduces potential conflicts and execution risks, including Vanguard's own advice businesses, the integration of two very different corporate cultures, and questions about whether Altruist can maintain its speed and independence over time. For breakaway advisors, the custody shortlist may have changed: Altruist can now pair its technology and fintech capabilities with the capital and reputation of Vanguard. https://youtu.be/UlgCBjLXrnw Quotable Moments “Custody is really a trust business.”— Louis Diamond (05:55) “Every time a well-capitalized player shows up, especially in custody, advisors win.”— Louis Diamond (12:33) “Really, it's tech-forward independence now without a brand trade-off.”— Louis Diamond (13:42) “There are always innovators showing up from outside the establishment, and every time one succeeds, advisors end up with more options and more leverage and more negotiating power than they had the year before.”— Louis Diamond (22:44) FAQs Why is Vanguard acquiring Altruist? Louis sees several strategic reasons for the acquisition. Altruist gives Vanguard an established technology and custody platform serving more than 6,000 advisors, while potentially expanding Vanguard's ability to reach investors through independent financial advisors. It may also provide another distribution channel for Vanguard investment products and future offerings. What does Vanguard's acquisition mean for Altruist? Altruist gains the backing of one of the world's largest and best-known investment firms while retaining, at least initially, its brand, leadership, and operating structure. Vanguard's capital could allow Altruist to continue investing in custody capabilities, technology, and products such as Hazel AI without relying on additional venture funding rounds. How could the acquisition affect RIA custody competition? Schwab and Fidelity currently dominate RIA custody. Louis believes a Vanguard-backed Altruist could become a stronger challenger by combining Altruist's technology and pricing model with Vanguard's scale, capital, and reputation. That could increase competitive pressure around pricing, service, technology, and innovation. Why could the deal matter to breakaway advisors? Altruist's technology has attracted advisor interest, but some larger breakaway teams have questioned whether clients would be comfortable holding substantial wealth with a less familiar custodian. Vanguard's ownership could substantially reduce that brand-recognition hurdle and make Altruist a more viable option for larger teams. Could Vanguard refer clients to advisors using Altruist? No referral program has been announced. However, Louis believes it is an important possibility to watch. Vanguard has more than 50 million investors, while Altruist provides access to thousands of independent advisors. Connecting investors seeking human advice with RIAs on the Altruist platform could create a meaningful new referral channel. Are there risks for advisors using a Vanguard-owned custodian? Potentially. Vanguard operates its own financial advice businesses, creating some of the same competitive concerns advisors have raised about other custodians with retail advice operations. Other questions include whether Altruist will remain operationally independent over time and whether its culture and pace of innovation can be maintained under Vanguard ownership. What happens next for Altruist, Schwab, and Fidelity? Louis expects the competitive response to be worth watching. He believes Schwab and Fidelity could respond through technology, AI, pricing, or other changes to their advisor offerings. He also expects Altruist to compete more aggressively for breakaway teams and sees the potential for Hazel AI to expand well beyond advisors who custody assets with Altruist. Does the Vanguard-Altruist deal change anything for advisors immediately? Not necessarily. The transaction still needs to close, and its longer-term impact will take time to emerge. But for advisors evaluating custodians, independence, or the value they receive from existing partners, the acquisition adds another factor to consider as the competitive landscape evolves. Louis sees several strategic reasons for the acquisition. Altruist gives Vanguard an established technology and custody platform serving more than 6,000 advisors, while potentially expanding Vanguard's ability to reach investors through independent financial advisors. It may also provide another distribution channel for Vanguard investment products and future offerings. Altruist gains the backing of one of the world's largest and best-known investment firms while retaining, at least initially, its brand, leadership, and operating structure. Vanguard's capital could allow Altruist to continue investing in custody capabilities, technology, and products such as Hazel AI without relying on additional venture funding rounds. Schwab and Fidelity currently dominate RIA custody. Louis believes a Vanguard-backed Altruist could become a stronger challenger by combining Altruist's technology and pricing model with Vanguard's scale, capital, and reputation. That could increase competitive pressure around pricing, service, technology, and innovation. Altruist's technology has attracted advisor interest, but some larger breakaway teams have questioned whether clients would be comfortable holding substantial wealth with a less familiar custodian. Vanguard's ownership could substantially reduce that brand-recognition hurdle and make Altruist a more viable option for larger teams. No referral program has been announced. However, Louis believes it is an important possibility to watch. Vanguard has more than 50 million investors, while Altruist provides access to thousands of independent advisors. Connecting investors seeking human advice with RIAs on the Altruist platform could create a meaningful new referral channel. Potentially. Vanguard operates its own financial advice businesses, creating some of the same competitive concerns advisors have raised about other custodians with retail advice operations. Other questions include whether Altruist will remain operationally independent over time and whether its culture and pace of innovation can be maintained under Vanguard ownership. Louis expects the competitive response to be worth watching. He believes Schwab and Fidelity could respond through technology, AI, pricing, or other changes to their advisor offerings. He also expects Altruist to compete more aggressively for breakaway teams and sees the potential for Hazel AI to expand well beyond advisors who custody assets with Altruist. Not necessarily. The transaction still needs to close, and its longer-term impact will take time to emerge. But for advisors evaluating custodians, independence, or the value they receive from existing partners, the acquisition adds another factor to consider as the competitive landscape evolves. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. Related Resources  Rise and Reinvent: Joe Duran on Building and Rebuilding World-Class Firms From Insurance Sales to $8B RIA: A Northwestern Mutual Breakaway Story Diamond Consultants 4th Annual Advisor Transition Report View the transcript of this episode… Vanguard Acquires Altruist: What It Means for RIAs, Custody & Breakaway Advisors With Louis Diamond Louis Diamond (00:06): Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is a special rapid reaction industry update, Vanguard acquires Altruist, what it means for advisors in the industry. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond (00:28): At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. (01:21): Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual advisor transition report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond (02:05): Funny how the biggest news in the business almost never comes from the firms everyone is watching. On Wednesday, August 26th, 2026, Vanguard announced its acquiring Altruist. If you asked me a year ago to name the company most likely to buy an RIA custodian, Vanguard would not have been near the top of my list. Vanguard was in the RIA custody business once. They left in 2003 and handed roughly $120 billion of advisor assets to TD Ameritrade on the way out. 23 years later, they’re buying their way back in, reported $4 billion or more. So let’s talk about what happened, why it matters, and where I think it goes from here. (02:48): What happened? On August 26th, 2026, a definitive agreement was announced out of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. A deal is closing later this year where Vanguard is acquiring Altruist, the relative upstart RIA custodian. The price, an undisclosed number, but a reported $4 billion, some outlets reporting $4.6 billion or more. Either way, more than double their last private market valuation at the end of April 2025. Another element is Altruist is staying as a standalone. They’ll keep their brand, CEO, management team, and operate the same model just as a wholly owned subsidiary of Vanguard. Altruist in one breath, for those unaware, was a custodian and fintech company founded in 2018 by Jason Wenk. They became a self-clearing custodian, third largest as far as number of advisors served, north of 6,000 advisors, and had a reputation for serving smaller or upstart advisors, but recently started getting into more of the larger market breakaway space. (03:53): One estimate I’ve seen peg’s Altruist market share of RIA custody at around 6%, but you compare that to about three quarters of the market for Schwab and Fidelity combined. So a relatively small player, but a rapidly emerging player and threat in US RIA custody. This is not the first time Vanguard has been involved with Altruist. They reportedly were an early investor in Altruist back in 2020 and former Vanguard CEO, Bill McNabb, has been on the board of Altruist, so a lot of history between the firms. Let’s get into now why I think this is interesting for the industry as a whole. In my view, custody has never really been all that competitive, especially since TD Ameritrade sold to Schwab. You really had an oligopoly between Schwab and Fidelity. Sure, there’s a number of compelling, say more boutique custodians, whether Pershing Advisor Solutions, Goldman Sachs, which was another newer entrant to custody, LPL, Raymond James, First Clearing, and a number of others are also in the space, but it is a market that is dramatically dominated by the two largest players. (05:01): So I think this matters because you add an amazing venerable brand and reputation of Vanguard with this scrappy upstart custodian, and all of a sudden you can see a world where custody is one of the more competitive spaces in the industry. Altruist, in my view too, was one of the first credible challengers to the incumbent custodians in 20-ish years. Goldman has since picked up some decent market share and certainly they’re attractive for the segment of advisors. But Altruist with their tech-forward approach, low fees, and even just the way they went to market as an antagonist to Schwab and Fidelity, they’re a big deal and I think this just magnifies what they’re able to do. The gap though for Altruist was brand and reputation. Sure, they had amazing tech. No one ever has doubted that. Hazel AI, which they recently launched has been very well received. (05:55): Advisors I’ve worked with who have demoed the platform are incredibly impressed. The big Achilles heel though for Altruist has been my clients don’t know who Altruist is. Why would my clients put their millions of dollars of wealth with a self-clearing custodian that doesn’t have the same scale or reputation as the incumbent custodians? Well, that really goes away here. And at the end of the day, custody is really a trust business, but you’d have to think that a client would trust their assets held with Vanguard or with Altruist through Vanguard in a very similar way that they would trust assets held by Bank of New York Mellon or Charles Schwab or Fidelity Investments or Goldman Sachs. So to me, Vanguard acquiring Altruist solves that problem in one sentence, very simple. Why I think this makes sense for Vanguard? Salim Ramji, the CEO of Vanguard, has been saying since he arrived from BlackRock two years ago that only one in five Americans work with a fee-based financial advisor and that quality advice shouldn’t be a luxury good and this shortage is only going to get worse as advisors retire. (07:00): This is really him putting his money where his mouth is and really trying to make financial advice, human directed financial advice more accessible to everyday Americans and the upper echelons of wealth in this country. Vanguard as a company has over 50 million reported investors and over 12 trillion in assets. A lot of these people want Vanguard advice, but Vanguard hasn’t had the manpower or the capacity to deliver it itself. Buying Altruist over time can certainly solve that capacity gap and make it so that a human-based financial advisor or any of Vanguard’s internal platforms now have a greater ability to provide advice to Americans looking for financial advisors in the United States. I think this also means more distribution capability for Vanguard funds. Not that Vanguard has ever had a problem with distribution. They have a relatively small wholesaling force compared to other firms, but given their cost and reputation and performance, they’re really on pretty much every platform. (08:04): Most advisors have some clients that are invested into Vanguard mutual funds or ETFs, but this I think just gives them a greater ability to distribute Vanguard products, probably in a similar way to Goldman’s approach. When Goldman entered US RIA custody, in large part, they were doing it for distribution of different things. For Goldman, it was private markets and lending and other types of products. Vanguard is more ETFs and mutual funds, but Vanguard has also been pushing more into the private market space, so I can definitely see a world in which they can ratchet up the distribution of their products in a fairly cost-efficient way. I think to me, the most interesting thing about this marriage is the mission overlap is quite real. When Vanguard started, and to this day, their goal was to provide quality investment products at a fraction of the cost of the incumbents so that investing can be accessible to everyday Americans. (08:59): That’s exactly the verbiage that Jason Wenk and Altruist has used from the beginning, where they want to become a all-in-one hub or tech-enabled custodian so that an advisor, regardless of their size and a client regardless of their AUM, have the ability to get quality advice. I recently listened to a podcast called Acquired. We’ll link it in the show notes, but it’s a three-hour in-depth look into the building of Vanguard. And if you combine that with the podcast episode that I recorded with Jason Wenk, the CEO of Altruist, if you play them side by side, the parallels are eerily similar. So we’ll link both into the show notes, but I really think both of these firms were cut from the same cloth and really from the beginning, both have gone against the grain and tried to rattle incumbent players in the industry. So at least on paper, seems like a very good match. (09:51): Why does this deal make sense for Altruist? For one, for Jason Wenk and his leadership team, this has to be the outcome you drew up, maybe even better. Founding a new custodian in 2018, selling it in 2026, eight years later for over $4 billion, that’s a pretty incredible return on time for this team. They deserve it all and built something special and really entered into a space where no one wanted to venture just given the market share of the major incumbents, but good for them and has to feel good to pull off this type of sale. I think the big thing too is the buyer is the story. Vanguard as a company, it’s investor owned. They’re not private equity owned. They’re not VC backed like Altruist was. So Altruist can get off of the fundraising treadmill. They don’t have to worry about fund life or a five-year hold period or an eventual sale to a strategic. (10:42): Now they can really just focus on the business at hand, having one of the most well-capitalized companies in the world as their capital backer and owner. And every advisor on a PE-backed platform knows the question hanging over every relationship, who owns this next? That’s a question they won’t have to answer anymore at all, and they can really just focus now going forward. I think this also gives Altruist a fortress balance sheet and a ton of capital to keep pushing and developing their Hazel AI platform, which was launched in September 2025. Hazel’s an AI tax planning tool, kind of AI superpower that really has taken the industry by storm and has started to be sold as a standalone product to RIAs. And from what I’ve seen, they’ve sold it to over 1600 new RIAs just in the first month alone for $60 a seat per month, and that’s available to folks if they custody at Altruist or not. (11:36): So this, I think, just gives them an ability to distribute their fintech solutions and certainly develop their custody platform in a way that maybe was challenging or not as possible before. They can also take a longer term view instead of having to worry about they raised a series F, whatever comes after F and an eventual sale, investors wanting to get a return on capital, they can now focus on building over the long term, which has been Vanguard’s strategy all along. I think too, this will give Altruist the ability to invest in new capabilities that they didn’t have before, whether it’s lending or whether it’s more on the product side. It takes a lot to be a custodian. It seems like a relatively straightforward business just holding assets, but there’s a lot of products, solutions, really requirements that everyday investors and RIA clients have, and I think this will just ratchet up Altruist’s ability to close some of the capability gaps that they’ve had since they launched and they’re very transparent about those. (12:33): What I’m most excited about this, just coming from my vantage point in the industry, is why should an advisor care? To me, there’s five things that advisors should really take notice of with this acquisition. First one’s competition. Every time a well-capitalized player shows up, especially in custody, advisors win. Schwab and Fidelity have fought Vanguard in the asset management space for decades, and more recently in financial advice. Now you’re adding custody against a firm that doesn’t need to be profitable the next quarter, and all of a sudden we very much have an arms race and some competition is good for pricing, for service, for innovation, and I think this is going to be only positives for clients across the country, having another competitive option and keeping the incumbents really on their toes. Another reason, the breakaway shortlist has changed. Objection I always heard about Altruist was, “The tech is great, the AI seems cool, but how do I explain the name Altruist to a 68-year-old client who’s leaving Merrill or UBS or Morgan Stanley?” (13:42): While someone may still get some objections because Vanguard may not have the same brand cache as Goldman Sachs or UBS Private Wealth or Merrill Private Wealth, that objection got a lot weaker today. Really, it’s tech-forward independence now without a brand trade-off. It’s a genuinely different offer in the market than it was before. Third, I think this is one that hasn’t been talked about much, but should be watched closely, potential for referrals. Schwab confirmed last week that it was taking the SAN or the Schwab Advisor Network client referral minimum from two million to five million. For anyone not aware, referrals from the retail branches of Schwab and Fidelity are one of the major organic growth funnels for many of the top RIAs in this country and have driven valuations to billions and billions of dollars for firms that are in this program. (14:36): I really do see this as being a potential new massive referral opportunity of Vanguard existing clients and customers to Altruist custody to RIAs at a time when Schwab is trying to keep more of those referrals from themselves, which is a very savvy strategy, but at the same time, probably creates a bit of an opening for Altruist and Vanguard to become a really good referral hub for clients, which is a major draw for signing up new RIAs as clients, for breakaway advisors, et cetera. (15:07): So more details need to come there. We don’t even know if they’re starting a referral channel, but I have to imagine that’s high in the punch list and will be a very compelling offering in the marketplace. Yeah, think about it. Vanguard is 50 million investors and a CEO who said multiple times that they don’t have enough advisors or humans to deliver this advice. So perfect. You now have a massive array of RIAs and more and more coming to the table who offer that advice and being able to still serve them, still keep the assets in-house, but do it in a way where Vanguard doesn’t have to scale up their advisor force. They now have advisors to refer to. Fourth is pricing. I think the Vanguard effect is going to be real here. When Vanguard started, and even to this day, they’ve been the one who’ve pushed down the expense ratio on mutual funds and ETFs. (15:56): It’s been a massive benefit to investors across this country. It’s been Altruist’s playbook all along too, more focused on the advisor, so offering amazing tech and a custody platform for virtually no cost to an advisor. So I would say whatever you’re paying for technology, for custody, and really anything else that Altruist and Vanguard might touch, I would expect it to go down potentially and just have more pressures on the incumbent firms to really sharpen their pencil or to get more creative on pricing and innovation. I think that the fifth thing to keep in mind is Schwab has long used its scale and positioning in the market to best competitors, whether it was going to $0 on tickets for equities and ETFs, et cetera, a number of years ago or a number of other strategies they’ve taken. Now you have a firm that has similar scale as Schwab, a reputation for playing the long game and being comfortable making less money in the process. (16:54): So again, massive benefit to the advisors to have another major player driving down costs and increasing innovation in the space. But this is not all positives. As with anything, there’s the good and the bad, and also some open questions. The biggest, I think, downside or potential thing to watch here, and certainly if you are a BDO at a custodian, this is the line you’re using, “Vanguard has its own advice business, personal advisor, digital advisor, and a CEO who stated that his goal is that an advisor is in every investor’s pocket.” So now you have the custodian that’s holding your client’s assets also running one of the largest advice operations in the country. We’ve heard this concern in the past about Schwab or Fidelity where you have RA custody and then these firms have massive retail distribution networks. So certainly Vanguard, I think, will be in the same lane. (17:46): And if you look at a Pershing or an LPL or Raymond James, it’s a little bit different because they don’t have their own channels in the same way that Schwab or Fidelity do. So certainly if you’re BNY Mellon in particular, which is a straight B2B custodian, this is a clear point of differentiation for Vanguard, Altruist and certainly versus the other custodians. Next one is Vanguard has said that Altruist will remain a standalone business. The brand will stay intact, the management team, et cetera. But in fairness, every acquirer says versions of the same thing. The real test is let’s wait two years, three years and see how converging roles or similar roles across the firm start to converge into one, and over time will they more Altruist brand and human capital into one structure. (18:36): Right now we don’t know, but I’m always a bit skeptical with acquisitions that you have the honeymoon period, takes time for the deals to close, and then what happens a couple of years down the line? Either as there’s new executives in charge, there’s turnover, or just there’s certain synergies that can be had, and the best way to do it is by combining operations and the like. (18:56): The next risk, I think it might sound a little bit mundane, but it’s culture and speed. Vanguard based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Altruist in LA, very different cultures. Altruist as a fintech company has been superfast to market, building, breaking things, innovating. And Vanguard, I think they’ve been extremely innovative on pricing, on product development, but I’ve never heard amazing reviews about Vanguard’s technology. So does this convergence of cultures create an issue? Does it create more bureaucracy for Altruist trying to build stuff? Is there a cultural mismatch when it comes to speed of market and innovation? And I think the last thing to keep in mind or to watch is the talent drainage at Altruist post-closing. Yes, I was a FinTech company and custodian offering equity, lots of upside for people that have taken this journey with them. Vanguard notoriously is the opposite. They don’t offer equity to anyone and they offer their employees high base salaries and you have a culture of longevity within the firm. (20:00): So after the lockup period is done for, or the earn out period is done for any Altruist equity owners and many of their employees, does that cause some talent drainage where folks want to go onto the next big thing, think what will happen to all the amazing SpaceX employees a year from now when their IPO lockups are done? Does that lead them to another opportunity? All these are questions I don’t know, but trying to play devil’s advocate. I think the biggest potential negative is just the Vanguard advice business as a competitor, a conflict to RIA custody. Let me give you a couple of predictions before we wrap here. I think Schwab and Fidelity will respond fast, whether it’s on the AI front or because the pressure is really on. I don’t know, maybe the $5 million referral minimum that Schwab just announced, maybe that sunsets after a period of time. I have no idea. (20:53): I’m also excited to see, we’ll call it the tech face off between Altruist and Robinhood. Robinhood acquired TradePMR, which is on the Wells Fargo First Clearing platform and is in the process of launching an RIA custodian themselves. So now you have, I think, two pretty incredible tech-forward custodians really trying to gain market share, so that will be fun to watch. Could there be a threat in the RIA platform space? So RIA platforms meaning RIAs, we call them supportive versions of independence, where advisors can plug into, they get technology, compliance, operations, et cetera, and still own their business. Given the end-to-end tech stack that Altruist boasts, and they’ve also been in development of their own corporate RIA, does that become that much more of a competitive feature that could possibly become a solution in and of itself that takes a dent out of these RIA platforms playbook? (21:45): I don’t know, but I think it’s possible. Altruist Hazel AI, does that push even well beyond custody? There’s a ton of AI and fintechs popping up around the industry. Hazel has certainly taken a lot of headlines and attention. With Vanguard behind it now, does that push the price lower? Does it help their distribution? Maybe you picture this, if you have a Vanguard-owned product sitting in the daily workflow of a competitor’s advisors, so let’s say you’re a Morgan Stanley, you’re a Schwab advisor, et cetera, do you now have a Vanguard-owned product in Hazel as part of your workflow or your fintech stack? Could be interesting. I will call a referral channel for Vanguard or Altruist, we’ll say within the next year or two. I think it would be crazy if that didn’t happen and that will be a massive disruptor. And finally, my prediction is more breakaways landing in Altruist. They’ve started to crack that door, but now with the powerful brand and reputation behind them, the sky’s probably the limit. (22:44): So in closing, a guy, Jason Wenk, started a company in 2018 in Los Angeles because he thought independent advisors deserve better software at a lower price. Eight years later, one of the most respected financial institutions in the world paid $4 billion for it, and the reason is he was right in that bet. There are always innovators showing up from outside the establishment, and every time one succeeds, advisors end up with more options and more leverage and more negotiating power than they had the year before. It’s a consistent theme across the industry. So nothing changes tomorrow, deals take time, deals have a way of falling apart, but if you’re evaluating custodians, thinking about independence for the first time, wondering whether your current partner is going to keep earning your business, today is a good day to reopen that question. And if you’re an advisor, I think cheer this on and be excited. (23:42): And as a industry participant, I am very excited to see how this deal takes hold and how this pushes the rest of the industry to innovate and continue to be better. So that’s it for today. Thank you for hearing my ramblings, and I’ll see you next time. Mindy Diamond (24:02): As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibilities seriously and are dedicated to your clients, but are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Is a book written with you in mind. It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook.   Vanguard Acquires Altruist: What It Means for RIAs, Custody & Breakaway Advisors With Louis Diamond Louis Diamond (00:06): Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is a special rapid reaction industry update, Vanguard acquires Altruist, what it means for advisors in the industry. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond (00:28): At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. (01:21): Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual advisor transition report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond (02:05): Funny how the biggest news in the business almost never comes from the firms everyone is watching. On Wednesday, August 26th, 2026, Vanguard announced its acquiring Altruist. If you asked me a year ago to name the company most likely to buy an RIA custodian, Vanguard would not have been near the top of my list. Vanguard was in the RIA custody business once. They left in 2003 and handed roughly $120 billion of advisor assets to TD Ameritrade on the way out. 23 years later, they’re buying their way back in, reported $4 billion or more. So let’s talk about what happened, why it matters, and where I think it goes from here. (02:48): What happened? On August 26th, 2026, a definitive agreement was announced out of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. A deal is closing later this year where Vanguard is acquiring Altruist, the relative upstart RIA custodian. The price, an undisclosed number, but a reported $4 billion, some outlets reporting $4.6 billion or more. Either way, more than double their last private market valuation at the end of April 2025. Another element is Altruist is staying as a standalone. They’ll keep their brand, CEO, management team, and operate the same model just as a wholly owned subsidiary of Vanguard. Altruist in one breath, for those unaware, was a custodian and fintech company founded in 2018 by Jason Wenk. They became a self-clearing custodian, third largest as far as number of advisors served, north of 6,000 advisors, and had a reputation for serving smaller or upstart advisors, but recently started getting into more of the larger market breakaway space. (03:53): One estimate I’ve seen peg’s Altruist market share of RIA custody at around 6%, but you compare that to about three quarters of the market for Schwab and Fidelity combined. So a relatively small player, but a rapidly emerging player and threat in US RIA custody. This is not the first time Vanguard has been involved with Altruist. They reportedly were an early investor in Altruist back in 2020 and former Vanguard CEO, Bill McNabb, has been on the board of Altruist, so a lot of history between the firms. Let’s get into now why I think this is interesting for the industry as a whole. In my view, custody has never really been all that competitive, especially since TD Ameritrade sold to Schwab. You really had an oligopoly between Schwab and Fidelity. Sure, there’s a number of compelling, say more boutique custodians, whether Pershing Advisor Solutions, Goldman Sachs, which was another newer entrant to custody, LPL, Raymond James, First Clearing, and a number of others are also in the space, but it is a market that is dramatically dominated by the two largest players. (05:01): So I think this matters because you add an amazing venerable brand and reputation of Vanguard with this scrappy upstart custodian, and all of a sudden you can see a world where custody is one of the more competitive spaces in the industry. Altruist, in my view too, was one of the first credible challengers to the incumbent custodians in 20-ish years. Goldman has since picked up some decent market share and certainly they’re attractive for the segment of advisors. But Altruist with their tech-forward approach, low fees, and even just the way they went to market as an antagonist to Schwab and Fidelity, they’re a big deal and I think this just magnifies what they’re able to do. The gap though for Altruist was brand and reputation. Sure, they had amazing tech. No one ever has doubted that. Hazel AI, which they recently launched has been very well received. (05:55): Advisors I’ve worked with who have demoed the platform are incredibly impressed. The big Achilles heel though for Altruist has been my clients don’t know who Altruist is. Why would my clients put their millions of dollars of wealth with a self-clearing custodian that doesn’t have the same scale or reputation as the incumbent custodians? Well, that really goes away here. And at the end of the day, custody is really a trust business, but you’d have to think that a client would trust their assets held with Vanguard or with Altruist through Vanguard in a very similar way that they would trust assets held by Bank of New York Mellon or Charles Schwab or Fidelity Investments or Goldman Sachs. So to me, Vanguard acquiring Altruist solves that problem in one sentence, very simple. Why I think this makes sense for Vanguard? Salim Ramji, the CEO of Vanguard, has been saying since he arrived from BlackRock two years ago that only one in five Americans work with a fee-based financial advisor and that quality advice shouldn’t be a luxury good and this shortage is only going to get worse as advisors retire. (07:00): This is really him putting his money where his mouth is and really trying to make financial advice, human directed financial advice more accessible to everyday Americans and the upper echelons of wealth in this country. Vanguard as a company has over 50 million reported investors and over 12 trillion in assets. A lot of these people want Vanguard advice, but Vanguard hasn’t had the manpower or the capacity to deliver it itself. Buying Altruist over time can certainly solve that capacity gap and make it so that a human-based financial advisor or any of Vanguard’s internal platforms now have a greater ability to provide advice to Americans looking for financial advisors in the United States. I think this also means more distribution capability for Vanguard funds. Not that Vanguard has ever had a problem with distribution. They have a relatively small wholesaling force compared to other firms, but given their cost and reputation and performance, they’re really on pretty much every platform. (08:04): Most advisors have some clients that are invested into Vanguard mutual funds or ETFs, but this I think just gives them a greater ability to distribute Vanguard products, probably in a similar way to Goldman’s approach. When Goldman entered US RIA custody, in large part, they were doing it for distribution of different things. For Goldman, it was private markets and lending and other types of products. Vanguard is more ETFs and mutual funds, but Vanguard has also been pushing more into the private market space, so I can definitely see a world in which they can ratchet up the distribution of their products in a fairly cost-efficient way. I think to me, the most interesting thing about this marriage is the mission overlap is quite real. When Vanguard started, and to this day, their goal was to provide quality investment products at a fraction of the cost of the incumbents so that investing can be accessible to everyday Americans. (08:59): That’s exactly the verbiage that Jason Wenk and Altruist has used from the beginning, where they want to become a all-in-one hub or tech-enabled custodian so that an advisor, regardless of their size and a client regardless of their AUM, have the ability to get quality advice. I recently listened to a podcast called Acquired. We’ll link it in the show notes, but it’s a three-hour in-depth look into the building of Vanguard. And if you combine that with the podcast episode that I recorded with Jason Wenk, the CEO of Altruist, if you play them side by side, the parallels are eerily similar. So we’ll link both into the show notes, but I really think both of these firms were cut from the same cloth and really from the beginning, both have gone against the grain and tried to rattle incumbent players in the industry. So at least on paper, seems like a very good match. (09:51): Why does this deal make sense for Altruist? For one, for Jason Wenk and his leadership team, this has to be the outcome you drew up, maybe even better. Founding a new custodian in 2018, selling it in 2026, eight years later for over $4 billion, that’s a pretty incredible return on time for this team. They deserve it all and built something special and really entered into a space where no one wanted to venture just given the market share of the major incumbents, but good for them and has to feel good to pull off this type of sale. I think the big thing too is the buyer is the story. Vanguard as a company, it’s investor owned. They’re not private equity owned. They’re not VC backed like Altruist was. So Altruist can get off of the fundraising treadmill. They don’t have to worry about fund life or a five-year hold period or an eventual sale to a strategic. (10:42): Now they can really just focus on the business at hand, having one of the most well-capitalized companies in the world as their capital backer and owner. And every advisor on a PE-backed platform knows the question hanging over every relationship, who owns this next? That’s a question they won’t have to answer anymore at all, and they can really just focus now going forward. I think this also gives Altruist a fortress balance sheet and a ton of capital to keep pushing and developing their Hazel AI platform, which was launched in September 2025. Hazel’s an AI tax planning tool, kind of AI superpower that really has taken the industry by storm and has started to be sold as a standalone product to RIAs. And from what I’ve seen, they’ve sold it to over 1600 new RIAs just in the first month alone for $60 a seat per month, and that’s available to folks if they custody at Altruist or not. (11:36): So this, I think, just gives them an ability to distribute their fintech solutions and certainly develop their custody platform in a way that maybe was challenging or not as possible before. They can also take a longer term view instead of having to worry about they raised a series F, whatever comes after F and an eventual sale, investors wanting to get a return on capital, they can now focus on building over the long term, which has been Vanguard’s strategy all along. I think too, this will give Altruist the ability to invest in new capabilities that they didn’t have before, whether it’s lending or whether it’s more on the product side. It takes a lot to be a custodian. It seems like a relatively straightforward business just holding assets, but there’s a lot of products, solutions, really requirements that everyday investors and RIA clients have, and I think this will just ratchet up Altruist’s ability to close some of the capability gaps that they’ve had since they launched and they’re very transparent about those. (12:33): What I’m most excited about this, just coming from my vantage point in the industry, is why should an advisor care? To me, there’s five things that advisors should really take notice of with this acquisition. First one’s competition. Every time a well-capitalized player shows up, especially in custody, advisors win. Schwab and Fidelity have fought Vanguard in the asset management space for decades, and more recently in financial advice. Now you’re adding custody against a firm that doesn’t need to be profitable the next quarter, and all of a sudden we very much have an arms race and some competition is good for pricing, for service, for innovation, and I think this is going to be only positives for clients across the country, having another competitive option and keeping the incumbents really on their toes. Another reason, the breakaway shortlist has changed. Objection I always heard about Altruist was, “The tech is great, the AI seems cool, but how do I explain the name Altruist to a 68-year-old client who’s leaving Merrill or UBS or Morgan Stanley?” (13:42): While someone may still get some objections because Vanguard may not have the same brand cache as Goldman Sachs or UBS Private Wealth or Merrill Private Wealth, that objection got a lot weaker today. Really, it’s tech-forward independence now without a brand trade-off. It’s a genuinely different offer in the market than it was before. Third, I think this is one that hasn’t been talked about much, but should be watched closely, potential for referrals. Schwab confirmed last week that it was taking the SAN or the Schwab Advisor Network client referral minimum from two million to five million. For anyone not aware, referrals from the retail branches of Schwab and Fidelity are one of the major organic growth funnels for many of the top RIAs in this country and have driven valuations to billions and billions of dollars for firms that are in this program. (14:36): I really do see this as being a potential new massive referral opportunity of Vanguard existing clients and customers to Altruist custody to RIAs at a time when Schwab is trying to keep more of those referrals from themselves, which is a very savvy strategy, but at the same time, probably creates a bit of an opening for Altruist and Vanguard to become a really good referral hub for clients, which is a major draw for signing up new RIAs as clients, for breakaway advisors, et cetera. (15:07): So more details need to come there. We don’t even know if they’re starting a referral channel, but I have to imagine that’s high in the punch list and will be a very compelling offering in the marketplace. Yeah, think about it. Vanguard is 50 million investors and a CEO who said multiple times that they don’t have enough advisors or humans to deliver this advice. So perfect. You now have a massive array of RIAs and more and more coming to the table who offer that advice and being able to still serve them, still keep the assets in-house, but do it in a way where Vanguard doesn’t have to scale up their advisor force. They now have advisors to refer to. Fourth is pricing. I think the Vanguard effect is going to be real here. When Vanguard started, and even to this day, they’ve been the one who’ve pushed down the expense ratio on mutual funds and ETFs. (15:56): It’s been a massive benefit to investors across this country. It’s been Altruist’s playbook all along too, more focused on the advisor, so offering amazing tech and a custody platform for virtually no cost to an advisor. So I would say whatever you’re paying for technology, for custody, and really anything else that Altruist and Vanguard might touch, I would expect it to go down potentially and just have more pressures on the incumbent firms to really sharpen their pencil or to get more creative on pricing and innovation. I think that the fifth thing to keep in mind is Schwab has long used its scale and positioning in the market to best competitors, whether it was going to $0 on tickets for equities and ETFs, et cetera, a number of years ago or a number of other strategies they’ve taken. Now you have a firm that has similar scale as Schwab, a reputation for playing the long game and being comfortable making less money in the process. (16:54): So again, massive benefit to the advisors to have another major player driving down costs and increasing innovation in the space. But this is not all positives. As with anything, there’s the good and the bad, and also some open questions. The biggest, I think, downside or potential thing to watch here, and certainly if you are a BDO at a custodian, this is the line you’re using, “Vanguard has its own advice business, personal advisor, digital advisor, and a CEO who stated that his goal is that an advisor is in every investor’s pocket.” So now you have the custodian that’s holding your client’s assets also running one of the largest advice operations in the country. We’ve heard this concern in the past about Schwab or Fidelity where you have RA custody and then these firms have massive retail distribution networks. So certainly Vanguard, I think, will be in the same lane. (17:46): And if you look at a Pershing or an LPL or Raymond James, it’s a little bit different because they don’t have their own channels in the same way that Schwab or Fidelity do. So certainly if you’re BNY Mellon in particular, which is a straight B2B custodian, this is a clear point of differentiation for Vanguard, Altruist and certainly versus the other custodians. Next one is Vanguard has said that Altruist will remain a standalone business. The brand will stay intact, the management team, et cetera. But in fairness, every acquirer says versions of the same thing. The real test is let’s wait two years, three years and see how converging roles or similar roles across the firm start to converge into one, and over time will they more Altruist brand and human capital into one structure. (18:36): Right now we don’t know, but I’m always a bit skeptical with acquisitions that you have the honeymoon period, takes time for the deals to close, and then what happens a couple of years down the line? Either as there’s new executives in charge, there’s turnover, or just there’s certain synergies that can be had, and the best way to do it is by combining operations and the like. (18:56): The next risk, I think it might sound a little bit mundane, but it’s culture and speed. Vanguard based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Altruist in LA, very different cultures. Altruist as a fintech company has been superfast to market, building, breaking things, innovating. And Vanguard, I think they’ve been extremely innovative on pricing, on product development, but I’ve never heard amazing reviews about Vanguard’s technology. So does this convergence of cultures create an issue? Does it create more bureaucracy for Altruist trying to build stuff? Is there a cultural mismatch when it comes to speed of market and innovation? And I think the last thing to keep in mind or to watch is the talent drainage at Altruist post-closing. Yes, I was a FinTech company and custodian offering equity, lots of upside for people that have taken this journey with them. Vanguard notoriously is the opposite. They don’t offer equity to anyone and they offer their employees high base salaries and you have a culture of longevity within the firm. (20:00): So after the lockup period is done for, or the earn out period is done for any Altruist equity owners and many of their employees, does that cause some talent drainage where folks want to go onto the next big thing, think what will happen to all the amazing SpaceX employees a year from now when their IPO lockups are done? Does that lead them to another opportunity? All these are questions I don’t know, but trying to play devil’s advocate. I think the biggest potential negative is just the Vanguard advice business as a competitor, a conflict to RIA custody. Let me give you a couple of predictions before we wrap here. I think Schwab and Fidelity will respond fast, whether it’s on the AI front or because the pressure is really on. I don’t know, maybe the $5 million referral minimum that Schwab just announced, maybe that sunsets after a period of time. I have no idea. (20:53): I’m also excited to see, we’ll call it the tech face off between Altruist and Robinhood. Robinhood acquired TradePMR, which is on the Wells Fargo First Clearing platform and is in the process of launching an RIA custodian themselves. So now you have, I think, two pretty incredible tech-forward custodians really trying to gain market share, so that will be fun to watch. Could there be a threat in the RIA platform space? So RIA platforms meaning RIAs, we call them supportive versions of independence, where advisors can plug into, they get technology, compliance, operations, et cetera, and still own their business. Given the end-to-end tech stack that Altruist boasts, and they’ve also been in development of their own corporate RIA, does that become that much more of a competitive feature that could possibly become a solution in and of itself that takes a dent out of these RIA platforms playbook? (21:45): I don’t know, but I think it’s possible. Altruist Hazel AI, does that push even well beyond custody? There’s a ton of AI and fintechs popping up around the industry. Hazel has certainly taken a lot of headlines and attention. With Vanguard behind it now, does that push the price lower? Does it help their distribution? Maybe you picture this, if you have a Vanguard-owned product sitting in the daily workflow of a competitor’s advisors, so let’s say you’re a Morgan Stanley, you’re a Schwab advisor, et cetera, do you now have a Vanguard-owned product in Hazel as part of your workflow or your fintech stack? Could be interesting. I will call a referral channel for Vanguard or Altruist, we’ll say within the next year or two. I think it would be crazy if that didn’t happen and that will be a massive disruptor. And finally, my prediction is more breakaways landing in Altruist. They’ve started to crack that door, but now with the powerful brand and reputation behind them, the sky’s probably the limit. (22:44): So in closing, a guy, Jason Wenk, started a company in 2018 in Los Angeles because he thought independent advisors deserve better software at a lower price. Eight years later, one of the most respected financial institutions in the world paid $4 billion for it, and the reason is he was right in that bet. There are always innovators showing up from outside the establishment, and every time one succeeds, advisors end up with more options and more leverage and more negotiating power than they had the year before. It’s a consistent theme across the industry. So nothing changes tomorrow, deals take time, deals have a way of falling apart, but if you’re evaluating custodians, thinking about independence for the first time, wondering whether your current partner is going to keep earning your business, today is a good day to reopen that question. And if you’re an advisor, I think cheer this on and be excited. (23:42): And as a industry participant, I am very excited to see how this deal takes hold and how this pushes the rest of the industry to innovate and continue to be better. So that’s it for today. Thank you for hearing my ramblings, and I’ll see you next time. Mindy Diamond (24:02): As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibilities seriously and are dedicated to your clients, but are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Is a book written with you in mind. It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook.  

Brian Szytel reports markets were essentially flat, while bonds moved as the 10-year yield rose 3 bps to 4.66; oil was slightly lower amid ongoing Strait of Hormuz deal talk. Economic data was mostly positive, but headline PCE was 0.3 vs 0.2 expected (3.7% YoY) while core PCE matched expectations at 0.2 (3.3% YoY), lifting Fed futures to a 40% chance of a September hike, which he views as largely a token 25 bps timing debate into Q4. He previews Jackson Hole and Fed hawk Warsh, focusing on potential balance-sheet discussion amid Treasury plans to issue more short-term debt and buy back about $4B long-term. A listener question prompts discussion of debt absorption, real yields, overindebtedness as deflationary, and currency depreciation as a release valve, citing Japan's weakening yen alongside rising JGB yields. Other data: durable goods 1.1% vs 0.5%, personal income 0.4% vs 0.2%, spending 0.2, and Q2 GDP unchanged at 1.5% with nominal GDP in the 6s. 00:00 Market Wrap Overview 00:25 Bonds Oil Geopolitics 00:55 PCE Inflation Update 01:38 Fed Hike Odds 02:06 Jackson Hole Treasury Moves 03:09 Balance Sheet QT Talk 04:04 Debt Issuance Explained 05:16 Japan Yen Release Valve 06:04 Other Economic Data 06:45 GDP And Closing Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Things are getting weird – looks like someone is panicking. The Dumber side of finance – let’s dig in. A big week ahead – major earnings could move markets. – Gold, Bitcoin moving on a lower USD. PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? PayPal.Donation.Button({ env:'production', hosted_button_id:'JJJHP2GDEJC7J', image: { src:'https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif', alt:'Donate with PayPal button', title:'PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!', } }).render('#donate-button'); Follow John S. Dvorak on X Follow Andrew Horowitz on X Warm-Up - Things are getting weird - looks like someone is panicking - The Dumber side of finance - let's dig in (5 top items) - Cold War and Hot War - Canada, China and Iran - Economic "D" day - no one cares - Saying goodbye to Dolly Parton Markets - Gold, Bitcoin moving on a lower USD - Oil starting to settle - Big Week - NVDA earnings on tap - all eyes! STUPID IS WHAT STUPID DOES - A DHU One-Time Series On The Dumber Side of Finance 1) LOWER BEEF PRICES - Trump plans temporary tariff relief for certain ground-beef imports as U.S. beef prices remain near record highs. - The plan would allow up to 300,000 metric tons of discounted imported ground beef over roughly 90 days. - Supposedly this will reduce the prices for consumers - Ranchers and several farm-state Republicans are pushing back, arguing cheaper imports could hurt domestic producers. ---- Question: Tariff reduction is going to reduce prices for consumers? Didn't someone say that tariffs are paid by the companies and exporting countries??? 2) IRAN SANCTIONS - BIG THREAT, LIMITED IMMEDIATE ACTION - Treasury warned countries doing business with Iran that they could face secondary sanctions, calling it an "economic D-Day." - New sanctions hit about 60 individuals, companies and vessels, but major Chinese financial institutions were not targeted. - China remains the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, making Chinese banks the potential pressure point. - Treasury says sanctions could expand into gold, digital assets, aviation, shipping and other sectors. 3) TREASURY TRIES TO TAME LONG-TERM YIELDS - Treasury will at least double the maximum size of certain long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation. - The announcement briefly knocked nearly 10 basis points off the 30-year Treasury yield. - Critics say this treats the symptom rather than the cause - huge deficits, heavy issuance and persistent inflation risk. ------Bessent had to come out on Friday to say "at least" $4B - as bind yields moved back up -------Maybe there is a concern over the $40TRILLION debt we have amassed as a country? 4) SOMEONE GOT LONG BONDS AT THE RIGHT TIME - TLT took in roughly $529 million of net inflows on August 18, one day before Treasury's surprise bond-buyback announcement. - The next day Bessent doubled planned buybacks of 10- to 30-year Treasurys, immediately pushing long yields lower. - TLT jumped about 1.7% on the announcement. - No public evidence identifies a single buyer - but the timing of the unusually large inflow is certainly worth noting. 5) DOLLAR GETS HIT BY THE BOND RESCUE - The dollar weakened as investors questioned Treasury's expanded bond-buyback strategy. - The concern is that suppressing yields without fixing fiscal problems simply transfers pressure from bonds to the currency. - The 30-year yield has remained elevated despite Treasury intervention. - Bitcoin rallied as investors looked toward alternatives to traditional fiat assets. - PEOPLE: This is NOT Quantitative Easing - Just a move to buy longer dated and issue more short dated WALMART FLASHES A CONSUMER WARNING - Walmart U.S. comparable sales grew just 2.6%, its slowest pace in roughly six years and below expectations. - Shares dropped sharply after the report. - E-commerce remained strong, while store traffic and discretionary spending showed more weakness. - Walmart raised full-year guidance but gave a softer-than-expected third-quarter outlook. - As America's biggest retailer, Walmart's slowdown is an important read on the broader consumer. VENEZUELA HAS OIL - BUT CAN'T SHIP IT FAST ENOUGH - Tankers are waiting as long as 30 days to load Venezuelan crude because of aging ports, outages and equipment failures. - Venezuela has struggled to push exports much higher despite rising production and strong demand. - The Jose terminal handles about 70% of exports and has become a major bottleneck. - Venezuela's ports may impose a physical ceiling on production growth until infrastructure is upgraded. JANE STREET'S $15 BILLION AI HIT - Jane Street reportedly lost about $15 billion in July as AI and technology positions moved sharply against the firm. - A major source of the damage was exposure to concentrated AI trades that were forced to unwind. - Jane Street posted its first negative month of trading revenue since 2016. - As a reminder: this episode highlights how quickly crowded AI trades can overwhelm even sophisticated risk-management systems. LEAVITT LEAVES THE WHITE HOUSE - Karoline Leavitt resigned as White House press secretary after returning from maternity leave. - Trump said she would become a top outside adviser and prominent Republican voice heading into the midterms. - Looking fior a kinder and gentler replacement? HA! probably not OFF THE HIGHS NVDA - 9% off high AMD - 19% off high AVGO - 23% off high MU - 23% off high TSM - 13% off high MRVL - 28% off high INTC - 35% off high NVIDIA - THE MARKET'S NEXT STRESS TEST - Nvidia reports Wednesday - now basically a referendum on the entire AI trade. - Blackwell demand and hyperscaler spending are the key tells. - A strong guide could quickly reset tech sentiment. - A miss would raise the uncomfortable question: how much AI optimism is already priced in? - Revenue expected around $92.1 billion, up roughly 97% year over year. - Adjusted EPS expected around $2.09, nearly double last year. - Data Center revenue expected around $85.7 billion - still the main engine. - Biggest watch items: Blackwell demand, Vera Rubin timing, China sales and hyperscaler capex. - Options imply roughly a 5%-6% move after earnings. - Discussion .... NVIDIA - AI SERVERS GETTING EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE - Major Nvidia customers have reportedly been warned that AI server prices could rise more than 15% beginning early next year. - Higher memory costs are the main driver, affecting Grace Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin systems. - Nvidia is effectively passing higher component costs through despite gross margins around 75%. - ALWAYS INTERESTING THESE ANNOUNCEMENTS SO CLOSE TO EARNINGS - HMMMM CANADA-U.S. TRADE FIGHT GETS WORSE - Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. goods after Washington imposed new 50% tariffs on Canadian imports. - Canada's tariffs range from 15% to 50% across roughly 700 products and begin September 8. - Canada also announced a C$7.5 billion support package for affected businesses and workers. - Another escalation that could hit autos, manufacturing costs and cross-border supply chains. HOUSING - BUYERS KEEP DISAPPEARING - July new-home sales plunged 10.5% to a 607,000 annual rate, the weakest since January. - Median new-home price fell to $393,800, the lowest in four years. - Mortgage rates are still around 6.8%, keeping affordability under pressure. - Only 5.2% of consumers said they expect to buy a home in the next six months - the sharpest drop in more than five years. JACKSON HOLE - WARSH GETS THE MICROPHONE - Kevin Warsh speaks next week at Jackson Hole. - Markets want to know whether sticky inflation, oil and tariffs are enough to keep the Fed in tightening mode. - Long yields are already doing some of the Fed's work. - One sentence could move bonds, the dollar and stocks. - Friday, August 28 at 10:00 a.m. ET. --- BUT - Didn't Warsh say less communication is more? They can't keep put of the spotlight. PCE - THE FED'S FAVORITE INFLATION READ - "The Fed's preferred gauge/measure of inflation" - July PCE lands next week. - Watch for tariff, energy and goods inflation creeping back into the numbers. - A hot print revives hike fears. - A soft print gives risk assets some breathing room - especially with long yields already elevated. THE CONSUMER VS. THE AI BOOM - MORE EARNINGS COMING - Salesforce, CrowdStrike and Marvell give another read on corporate AI spending. - Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Best Buy and Ulta test the other side of the economy. - The setup is getting interesting: companies are still spending aggressively on AI while consumers look increasingly selective. - If that gap widens, it could become one of the bigger market themes into the fall. AROUND THE WORLD EUROPE - QUIETLY GETTING INTERESTING - European stocks slipped this week, but money has started flowing back into the region. - Euro-zone business activity is growing at its fastest pace this year, while Q2 earnings growth for STOXX 600 companies is running surprisingly strong. - CONCEPT: Europe may be turning into the anti-U.S. trade - less AI concentration, cheaper valuations, but more sensitivity to energy. JAPAN - BETTER DATA, WORSE MARKET - Japan's Nikkei lost about 4% this week even as the economic data improved. - August manufacturing PMI jumped to 55.1, with new orders rising at the fastest pace since 2018. - Semiconductors and AI-related demand are helping drive the factory rebound. - Stronger growth also keeps the BOJ rate-hike discussion alive - good economy, potentially tougher market. BIG PHARMA - CHINA'S WEIGHT-LOSS GOLD RUSH - Lilly, Novo Nordisk and others are aggressively targeting China's obesity market, where obesity rates are projected to top 65% by 2030. - China bans direct prescription-drug advertising, so companies are using subway ads, gyms, influencers and "disease awareness" campaigns instead. - China's GLP-1 market could reach roughly 30 billion yuan over the next 5-7 years. - Interesting regulatory gray area: education campaigns that look a lot like drug advertising without actually naming the drug. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? PayPal.Donation.Button({ env: 'production', hosted_button_id: 'JJJHP2GDEJC7J', image: { src: 'https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif', alt: 'Donate with PayPal button', title: 'PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!' } }).render('#donate-button-2'); THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN for SpaceX (SPCX) Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt!   FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS   See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.He manages $1.5 billion for other people — and still tracks his own spending in a paper checkbook.Glenn Ullmann is a former Air Force pilot who left the military at 29 with a couple hundred thousand dollars, cold-called 200 strangers a day out of a Ponte Vedra phone book, and built Ullmann Wealth Partners into a $1.5 billion RIA that has never had a down year — including 2008. He stopped worrying about money somewhere north of $20 million. Now 63, he spends $30–40K a month, flies his own $1.25M Cirrus, gives more to charity than he can deduct, and still shows up to the office every day.This episode gets into the tension between saving and actually living: why Glenn tells clients with health issues to fly private before their kids do it with the inheritance, how a $10M portfolio pays you $300K a year in "rent" whether markets are up or down, and why he thinks stocks are a bad word. We also cover how he gave up 80% of his own firm to keep his partners, the paper ledger that runs his life, the client who started at $100 a month and now takes the best trips on earth, and why he'd tell a 20-year-old to study English or history instead of finance.Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwTimestamps:01:46 — Who Glenn is, what Ullmann Wealth Partners does, and why "returns don't matter if you rear-end Melinda Gates without an umbrella policy"04:16 — Growing up in his grandfather's plastics business, the Robin's-egg Cadillac, and the gold coin that says "your friendship means more to me than a pot of gold"06:26 — A Morgan Stanley account at 14, paper route money, and his first stock: Sears Roebuck07:44 — Nobody from his high school went to the military. He went to the Air Force Academy three days after graduation: "the best thing I ever did, other than marrying my spouse"11:50 — The Cirrus G7, the parachute that lowers the whole plane, and the button his wife can push if Glenn stops functioning mid-flight13:35 — From AWACS pilot to pharma rep to stockbroker: dialing 200 people a day, 10 conversations, one client17:45 — Net worth leaving the Air Force at 29 and the million-dollar goal on a piece of paper that "never happened"19:26 — The $2M–$20M client sweet spot, and why the firm has never contracted in 25 years — even 2007–200921:57 — Why he went from owning 100% of the firm to 20%: "How could they not have equity?"24:03 — The 11x17 "life map," and the client who was stabbed and left for dead in her New York apartment26:15 — HENRYs who save $10K a month and still need to be told to go enjoy the rest: "People get cancer. People die falling off a ledge."28:49 — "If you don't spend this money and fly first class, your kids will when you're dead"30:40 — The net worth where Glenn stopped worrying: "probably above 20"31:49 — Alimony, fun, and the pen-and-paper checkbook ledger a $1.5B wealth manager uses to track his Amex33:29 — The $1.25M four-seat plane, $40–50K a year to operate, and a $30–40K monthly burn before philanthropy35:10 — Giving appreciated stock and exceeding his deduction limit every year36:21 — Why he still goes to work at 63, the wingman system, three chronic illnesses, and "sometimes a founder needs to get out of the way"39:40 — The Melissa example: $100 a month in 1993 to the best trips on earth41:26 — Where to park $10M after a liquidity event: "you're going to collect around $300,000 a year in dividends and interest"42:55 — Not a real estate guy, the $100K driveway, and "I never invest in things that eat while I'm asleep"44:48 — 90% in global equity, and why "they're not stocks, they're companies"45:40 — Reframing an $80K private flight as a month and a half of portfolio income47:39 — What he'd tell a 20-year-old picking a major: English or historySponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcastFollow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberkListen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/3U6PdsL David Bahnsen opens from The Bahnsen Group's new Santa Barbara (Montecito) office, briefly recaps markets (Dow up ~0.25%, S&P down ~0.25%, Nasdaq down ~0.75% led by semiconductors; staples and financials up, tech down), and argues recent 10-year yield trading has been relatively range-bound. He focuses on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's announced 30-year Treasury buybacks ($2B now, potentially $4B in September) aimed at lowering long-end rates and term premium, likening it to an “Operation Twist” style intervention. Bahnsen says the move briefly lowered the 30-year yield about 10 bps but largely failed and is unlikely to work long term, criticizing government attempts to override market price discovery. He attributes higher long yields mainly to 30-year market illiquidity and new competing long-dated issuance from AI hyperscalers. He also covers U.S.-Canada tariff threats and retaliation, upcoming data/events (PCE, durable goods, Nvidia earnings, Warsh at Jackson Hole), WTI down ~2.5% near $85, and promotes his new book, “Profit from the Prophet,” releasing tomorrow. 00:00 Welcome From Montecito 01:06 Market Snapshot Today 01:38 Is Bond Volatility Overstated 02:58 Treasury Buyback Plan Explained 05:53 Did It Work Short Term 06:59 Can It Work Long Term 07:55 Why Long Yields Rose 12:05 Concerns About Intervention 13:52 Tariffs Canada Trade Spat 15:30 Week Ahead Data And Jackson Hole 16:27 Book Launch And Wrap Up Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

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.---

OpenAI paused training and rewrote its Preparedness Framework after Astra flirted with a critical cyber threshold. Leaked numbers showed Anthropic out-earning OpenAI nearly two to one, Anthropic prepped supervoting shares, Amazon expanded drone delivery, and Meta's addiction trial opened. Links OpenAI changed safety practices and paused RL training for two weeks after the Hugging Face breach and evidence Astra may have met a critical cyber threshold (Axios) Sources: OpenAI's Q2 sales grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B as its losses widened from $9.3B to $12.3B; Anthropic's sales grew 2x+ to $11.6B, with a small operating profit (The Wall Street Journal) Sources: Anthropic's revenue run rate reached $65B by the end of July, up from $47B in May 2026, $19B in March 2026, $9B in December 2025, and $4B in July 2025 (Bloomberg) Sources: Anthropic prepares to give its co-founders shares with extra voting power to help insulate them from outside pressure; Amodei owns ~2% of Anthropic (The Information) Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone deliveries to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months, including Chicago and Atlanta by 2026's end (Bloomberg) In opening arguments, US state AGs say that Meta intentionally sought to addict children to Facebook and Instagram in pursuit of profit; Meta rejects the claims (Reuters) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.A $3 billion founder's money advice: keep driving the Chevrolet. Here's why the richest guests all say the same five things.After 100+ episodes of Moneywise, the same five spending refusals kept showing up — from a $3B founder who's never sold a company, a guy who lost 95% of his net worth and won't buy his own socks, and Bryan Johnson, who spends $2M a year on his body and almost nothing on anything else. None of them read the research. There's 50 years of it, and they all landed in the same place anyway.This episode covers all five: first class, new cars, meaningless stuff, angel checks, and kids' comfort — plus the study behind each one (lottery winners, the MIT Celtics auction, the marshmallow test follow-up). Then Anne Mahlum, who sold SolidCore for nearly $100M and forces herself to spend $200K/month, tears the whole list apart. The episode ends with a 10-minute exercise using two questions that decide what stays on your card statement.Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwEpisodes Mentioned:How Rich Is 'Rich Enough' to Fly Private? — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZyTo6gppPw"I'm worth about $3 billion": What Happens When You DON'T Sell Your Business — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZM0K9eqzx0What It's Like to Lose 95% of Your Net Worth Overnight (the socks guy) — https://youtu.be/fW-F3MKwevIBryan Johnson: I Probably Won't Actually Live Forever — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icWHq_xjhacHow to Not Ruin Your Kids with Your Wealth ft. Dr. Becky — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1SmMA-nLkTimestamps:0:00 — Cold open: the $3B founder, the socks guy, and Bryan Johnson's $2M body budget0:28 — 100 episodes in, the same five patterns kept repeating — and 50 years of research explains them1:05 — Why guests reveal their real numbers on Moneywise1:50 — #1: First class. "I still fly coach unless it's international" — his "poor kid habit"2:27 — Hedonic adaptation, and the lottery winners who scored lower on enjoying breakfast3:52 — #2: New cars. The $3B founder's advice: don't buy the Ferrari, drive the Chevrolet4:14 — The Millionaire Next Door data (most popular millionaire car: Ford F-150), "big hat, no cattle"4:40 — The commute study: zero relationship between car value and happiness5:35 — #3: Stuff. The socks guy's filter: "Does this dollar come back to me or is it gone?"6:03 — Stanford brain scans: every purchase is want vs. hurt6:28 — The MIT Celtics auction — credit card bidders paid double7:26 — #4: Angel checks. Bryan Johnson writes none — half of deals lose money, 7% produce 75% of returns8:41 — Opportunity cost neglect and attention residue: every check is an open tab in your head10:15 — #5: Kids' comfort. Parents who could buy any seat, flying the family in coach on purpose11:06 — The marshmallow test follow-up wealthy parents actually care about12:11 — 70% of family money gone by generation two, 90% by generation three13:17 — The counterargument: Anne Mahlum ($115M, spends $200K/month) — "I hate when people don't spend on principle"14:19 — The 2023 rerun of the $75K happiness study, and buying back time15:55 — The 10-minute exercise: two questions to run against last month's card statement16:33 — If you run a $3M+ company: HamptonSponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcastFollow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberkListen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

Daniel and James open with a run of ad-tech news that keeps circling one idea: everything is becoming an ads business, and agents won't change that. Starting from Antonio García Martínez's viral post, they make the case that the visible ad is just the tip of the iceberg — the targeting, attribution, and budgeting underneath is the real machine, and AI agents will simply inherit it. From there they hit Spotify testing a skip button that conveniently only skips publisher-sold podcast inventory, YouTube quietly redefining a "view" as an impression after years of setting the industry standard, and Apple's new unified campaign-management API, which James reads as step one toward an Apple Pay–powered audience network rather than a full DSP.The back half gets into the scramble for supply and the widening AI gap. Pinterest is buying its way out of being supply-poor with TV Scientific and a Zillow data deal that brings 34 audience segments back into play, while Andreessen and Ramp data shows the median company spending about $12 per employee each month on AI versus $7,500 at the top 1% — maybe the biggest adoption gap tech has seen. They also dig into a WPP rebate lawsuit that exposes how agencies really make their money, celebrate Snap-alumni startup Higgsfield's $400M raise at a $5.4B valuation, and close with primary posts on LeBron trading distribution dreams for a subscribe button, Gen Z moving 52% of their investing into sports betting, and James's theory that high interest rates are quietly making movies good again.Thank you to our sponsors:- AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com- Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai- beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com- The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Beyonce and Jay Z are worth a combined $4B and just bought the most expensive home in California history — But why do they have a mortgage? Not just a mortgage, a $53M 30-year mortgage? Because the mortgage it's a financial trickshot in growing your wealth if you do it the right way.**A sneak peek of our new series, Cha-Ching: The money secrets of the world's most famous celebs, athletes, & stars. SHARE YOUR FEEDBACK with us in the comments, DM us @tboypod, or email us at nickandJack@tboypod.com.**NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today's top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HOW TO MAKE MY MARRIAGE BETTER Proverbs 14:1 The WISE woman builds her house, but with her own hands the FOOLISH one TEARS HERS DOWN (NIV) Proverbs 24:3–4 By WISDOM a house is built, and through understanding it is established; 4 through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures (NIV) James 3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from WISDOM (NIV) 1. GROWING MARRIAGES CHOOSE HUMILITY OVER PRIDE 2. GROWING MARRIAGES REJECT ENVY AND SELFISHNESS James 3:14–15 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic (NIV) 2A. BITTER ENVY TURNS PARTNERS INTO COMPETITORS 2B. BITTER ENVY KILLS CELEBRATION 2C. BITTER ENVY PRODUCES EMOTIONAL DISTANCE 2D. SELFISH AMBITION WILL ALSO RUIN A MARRIAGE 2E. SELFISH AMBITION REPLACES SERVANTHOOD WITH SELF-CENTEREDNESS 2F. SELFISH AMBITION MAKES ONE SPOUSE’S NEEDS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE OTHER SPOUSE’S 2G. SELFISH AMBITION CAN CREATE RESENTMENT 2H. SELFISH AMBITION CREATES CONTROL AND MANIPULATION 2I. SELFISH AMBITION PUSHES GOD OUT OF THE CENTER 3. BITTER ENVY AND SELFISH AMBITION PRODUCE DISORDER AND EVIL James 3:16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice (NIV) 3A. CONSTANT ARGUING 3B. CONSTANT EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY 3C. COMMUNICATION IS CONDESCENDING 3D. THERE’S DIVISION 3E. IT LEADS TO EVERY EVIL PRACTICE 4. GROWING A BETTER MARRIAGE REQUIRES APPLYING GODLY WISDOM James 3:17 But the wisdom from above is FIRST pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere (ESV) 4A. PURE Psalm 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me (NIV) 4B. PEACEABLE 4C. GENTLE Proverbs 15:1 A GENTLE answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger (NIV) 4D. OPEN TO REASON 4E. FULL OF MERCY 4F. FULL OF GOOD FRUITS 4G. IMPARTIAL 4H. SINCERE

Before AI, Klaviyo had an insight that changed e-commerce marketing forever: don't show merchants how many emails they sent, show them how much money those emails made. That single shift helped Klaviyo capture 80% market share, earn a cult following among Shopify merchants, and IPO in 2023 with $1.4B in revenue. Now Andrew has to do it again. In this session at SaaStr AI Day, Klaviyo's co-founder and CEO breaks down how he's rebuilding a dominant pre-AI company for the agent era, including some of the most practical AI-at-scale lessons we've heard from any founder this year. What's inside: The Dark Factory. Klaviyo's internal agent system inspired by "lights-out manufacturing," where a team of agents decomposes a product prompt into specs, writes software interfaces, runs tests, handles load testing, and raises a flag only when it's genuinely stuck. One weekend, one agent team, one full prototype. The Tom Brady Rule. Andrew's mental model for LLMs: treat them like a great all-around athlete. They'll never be elite without coaching. The "harness" you build around the model, the domain-specific data, feedback loops, and scoring, is what makes the difference between a POC and a product that works for 200,000 customers. Agents skip onboarding entirely. Unlike human users who take months to learn a product, agents land as power users on day one. Andrew's team now asks their own agents, "What's holding you back?" and uses the answers to build their product roadmap. (One example: the agent discovered AMP interactive email on its own and immediately asked Klaviyo to build the missing APIs.) Agents training agents. For customer-facing agents, Klaviyo takes a feed of real support cases, classifies them, then runs an agent loop that trains another agent on the platform, without any human FDE or SE required. It ships at 50-70% resolution out of the box. APIs are the new UI. Whether your software is brand new or a decade old, if your internal and external APIs are great, agents will figure out the rest. The companies that win the agent era won't be the ones with the best interface. They'll be the ones with the best infrastructure. Three years from now, every business will have an agent you can reach through a URL, a phone number, or an email. The question is who builds the infrastructure underneath it.

California pays 270 people to investigate Medicaid fraud. In 2024 they returned 32 indictments. Arizona pays 33 people and returned 82.   PeterSchweizer and Eric Eggers break down 'the summer of fraud' on ep. 281 of The Drill Down.   Federal Medicaid recoveries went from 1.4B to 2B. CMS withheld 351M from Minnesota and 1.3B from California. Alabama employs seven fraud investigators. Minnesota employs 28.   Chapters: (02:33) The federal numbers (07:58) California's 32 indictments (10:37) Alabama has seven (15:01) 1.9B to the Virgin Islands, zero homes (19:09) Minnesota and Feeding Our Future (26:13) What happens when the money stops

Crypto reporter Yueqi Yang talks with TITV Host Akash Pasricha about Kalshi topping $4B in annualized revenue and seeking a $40B valuation. We also talk with Eliyan co-founders Ramin Farjadrad and Patrick Sohelli about AI chiplet interconnects and competing with Broadcom, Leo Schwartz about David Sacks returning to Craft Ventures to target a new $1B fund, and we get into the USDA trimming its Salesforce footprint for C3 AI with Laura Bratton.Articles discussed on this episode: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/kalshi-tops-4-billion-annualized-revenue-seeks-40-billion-valuationhttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/sacks-craft-targets-1-billion-first-fund-since-white-house-stintSubscribe: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theinformation The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/subscribe_hSign up for the AI Agenda newsletter: https://www.theinformation.com/features/ai-agendaTITV airs weekdays on YouTube, X and LinkedIn at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Or check us out wherever you get your podcasts.Follow us:X: https://x.com/theinformationIG: https://www.instagram.com/theinformation/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@titv.theinformationLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theinformation/Chapters:00:00 - Introduction01:13 - Kalshi Tops $4B In Annualized Revenue, Seeks $40B Valuation08:59 - Chip Infrastructure Startup Eliyan Hits Unicorn Status19:38 - Sacks' Craft Targets $1B For First Fund Since White House25:35 - USDA Taps C3 AI to Trim Salesforce Footprint

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.He spends $50,000 a month and keeps $50,000 in the bank. He's 27.Mo Moahid is a 27-year-old who runs the finances for his entire family — parents, brother, sister, and seven operating companies across Canada, Dubai, and Pakistan. His great-grandfather built the family fortune. The next generation lost it. His dad rebuilt the whole thing from a sales job after immigrating to Canada, and Mo grew up watching both halves of that cycle happen in his own house. He started his first company at 18, scaled it to 200 employees, sold it at 21 for low seven figures, and now moves capital between line painting, real estate development, consumer electronics, eSIMs in 125 countries, and the AI company he started with his 21-year-old brother.This episode gets into what it actually looks like to manage generational money instead of making it: why he keeps almost nothing liquid, how a $50,000 monthly burn covers five people, what happens when your dad is the chairman and your brother is your co-founder, and how inheritance gets split between three siblings before anyone dies. We go deep on the acquisition he closed the week before we recorded, the corporate job his father made him take, and the question he's already thinking about at 27 — what he wants his own kids to inherit, and what he'd rather they didn't.Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwSponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcastFollow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberkListen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

This January, four big AI × Pharma tools deals were announced at the huge JPM Pharma conference that takes over San Francisco every year. OpenAI-backed Chai Discovery (now worth $4B) was somehow at the heart despite being all of 2 years old. The Science team is proud to bring you the first podcast with cofounder Matt McPartlon and product lead Neil Patil to tell the full story! Editor's note: not to be confused with Chai AI, which was another top pod of ours.Pharma suddenly doing big AI tools dealsFor the non-pharma people, JPM is JP Morgan's annual conference for pharma deal-making that takes over San Francisco for a week in January with hundreds of side events, etc. It's a big thing. Tools deals for pharma are also a big (new) thing: companies that start as AI for Pharma usually end up building their own drug pipelines instead, and the reason is something like this: convincing pharma to use your tool requires proof that your tool works. Proof means good targets, maybe with good clinical validation. If you have that, then it's easier to raise money (with a known, if long path to commercialization) or sell (e.g payment in biobucks) for a specific target than it is to sell to lots of companies on a promise that it will work across their portfolios. The “we'll just partner / build our own drug” optionality proved to be the only good path up until January. What changed? In short, the tools got good enough for drug design teams to trust.Good-enough-to-trust unlocks the ability to scale discovery: get more, better candidates into the lab and animal trials faster. More screening for toxicity, better delivery, etc. This means that what you push to the clinic is more likely to succeed.Tools also unlock new capabilities: mechanisms that are very hard or impossible to develop using lab-based discovery. Designing an antibody that precisely triggers a very specific molecular cascade takes many years of trial and error. Designing bi-specific antibodies (that bind to two different proteins) is similarly difficult. Good design tools can unlock this.RJ: The fact that the quality of the model has jumped means you're enabling things you just plain couldn't do. So it's a step change. It's not an efficiency argument at all, or not so much.Matt: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of interesting, even for us — it took me a while to believe in the thesis, actually. I talked to Josh for months before Chai started... It's like, can I beat a mouse, and then can I do what mice can't do? And then how many levels of interaction can you just keep building on top of that?Everyone playing in the structural / binding space has an angle here, and some will be better than others, but Chai is pointing to a different unlock: getting good molecules right out of the gate (meaning they don't then need as much lab work) means that the iteration time is faster. This turns science into engineering: you can design your systems to reduce friction and hill climb towards one-shotting molecules all the way to the clinic.This, per-se, is not a new thesis: a16z articulated a version of this in 2020. What has changed is that structural models became binding models (how well doesn't this molecule bind to this molecule, aka “binding affinity). Binding models unlock design, which has been steadily improving. Chai's observation is that for engineering problems the best product tends to win, and good technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Photoshop for moleculesWith that in mind Chai has invested heavily in partnerships that allow them to learn from their Pharma counterparts. What is kind of cool about working so closely and supporting so many of these partners is we get to really learn about what is the stuff that would be helpful in research. So rather than doing research in a vacuum, based on what would hypothetically be cool, we're able to do informed research based on what our partners have just been organically asking us for help with.— Neil Patil, (Chai product lead)This means better UX, such as a molecule editor that is more like a CAD or graphics design program than a chatbot.Their approach has paid off: since June, Chai has announced three more major deals: Lilly, Novartis, argenx, plus an expansion of their Eli Lily program. This episode is too full of quotable moments for a short blog, so tune in to learn about * Why protein tokens have the highest downstream value of any token * Climbing levels of abstraction as models improve * How Pharma, VC, and research are all just portfolio optimization * How better tech changes the whole portfolio * How relentless focus on simplicity leads to scalePlus much more! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.latent.space/subscribe

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We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.He turned down $250 million for less than half his company — and admits he'd say yes today.Onyi Odunukwe is the son of two Nigerian immigrant doctors who dropped out of nursing school during finals week and opened a tanning salon at 21. By 30 he had seven locations, sold five to Palm Beach Tan for $2.3 million in a single week, and thought he was rich. Eight years later his net worth is $247 million — roughly $100M in commercial real estate, $194M in business equity across 26 companies, and under $10M in cash — and he recently walked away from a $250 million offer for 49% of Glo Tanning.This episode gets into the exact breakdown of a $247M net worth, why he rejected the biggest check of his life and what changed his mind since, his $75-100K monthly burn (full-time driver, live-in nanny, a ranch on the way), the franchise math behind Blackstone's $8B Jersey Mike's deal, how he plans to keep his kids from being ruined by money — and a confession he's never made publicly before.Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwSponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

Ambar Bhattacharyya joins Market on Close to explore the use of A.I. in the health care sector. He notes venture capital investors pouring money into the group, with $7.4B already headed to the health care sector so far in 2026. Ambar discusses the use-case of A.I. in medical fields evolving from administrative tasks to clinical augmentation and automation. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Lucas V. Schuermann, Co-Founder of Variational, joins us to talk about building a high-performance crypto brokerage model on Arbitrum. Lucas explains how Variational routes execution to TradFi venues, eliminates external market maker extraction through its in-house LP, introduces flat-rate swaps to fix funding rate volatility, and builds isolated smart contracts to protect user capital. Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com --- ## Notes: * Variational sees $1B daily volume on platform. * Platform holds $1.4B in total open interest. * Swaps feature a flat carry cost around 4% to 5%. * LP takes the other side of 100% of platform trades. Timestamps: 00:00 Start 00:46 Lucas' background 03:20 Hedgefund strategies 05:59 Hedgefund tasks 08:31 Variational founding 10:45 Variational market structure 13:41 RWA 16:32 RWA hedging 19:17 Market neutrality 22:53 "Venue for execution" 26:36 Price discovery on-chain 30:02 Building on Arbitrium 33:52 Liquidity pool 37:08 Users depositing to OLP 39:52 A Prop AMM for Perps? 42:23 Future of Order Flow 46:18 Order book theater? 50:50 Incentive programs 55:09 Swaps 57:06 Wrap up The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs builds the most efficient on-chain markets. Their orderbook and Prop AMM products have delivered price improvement to hundreds of billions of dollars in retail volume. Now, they are bringing their expertise to build Phoenix, the best on-chain perpetuals platform. Ellipsis Labs is hiring New York-based engineers. If you're an engineer looking to work with a proven team in making DeFi better, go to ellipsislabs.xyz/careers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wrWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.He got his first $5M check and expected to feel superhuman. The next day was one of the most disappointing of his life.Jesse Pujji walked away from a Goldman Sachs job where he made $500K at 25 — with a boss making $3M and a group head making $20M — to bootstrap an ad agency on $33K per partner and a stack of Amex cards. Ampush cracked the Facebook arbitrage before almost anyone: $100K in monthly revenue in June 2010 became $2M a month with $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later. He scaled it to half a billion in annual ad spend and 250 employees without raising a dollar, turned down $25M at 27, sold 20% to Red Ventures in 2015, and sold the whole thing to New Mountain Capital in 2022 for somewhere between $40M and $60M on a 35% stake. He never got the nine-figure number he made up in his head, and he says chasing it was the mistake.This episode gets into the exact allocation of a post-exit portfolio, why Jesse refuses to let his advisors put illiquid startup equity on his balance sheet, what $500K a year of "normal" spending actually buys, and why he asked his financial advisor how people possibly spend more than that. He's honest about the gap between the money he expected to change him and the money that didn't. And we spend real time on the part most founders avoid: three kids who never saw him grind, a Greenlight allowance split into thirds, a $63 JCPenney paycheck at 16 that taught him more than any of it, and the question of whether to leave them anything at all.Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mwTimestamps:00:00 — Jesse's origin story: immigrant household in St. Louis, a snow shoveling business in middle school, and $33K each plus Amex cards to start Ampush02:00 — The Facebook arbitrage that changed everything: $100K/month in June 2010 to $2M in revenue and $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later02:49 — "Sandbox entrepreneurship" — Facebook cold-calls them: "Who the hell are you guys? You're one of our top 100 advertisers"04:24 — Why he left Goldman at 25 making $500K: "I would rather make half of my future expected earnings and do something I feel excited about"06:18 — The $25M offer two years in, why they said no, and the $3M dividend they took instead — $1M each, which bought his SF house07:30 — The made-up number that wrecked them: hoping for $150M, getting $60–75M offers, and turning down $190M in Marin stock09:24 — The Red Ventures deal and $5M after tax: "I thought I would get wings or superhuman strength... nothing changed"11:16 — 2022: selling to New Mountain and walking away without going with the deal13:12 — The exit number, on the record: a $40–60M range on a stake "a little bit more than a third"16:04 — The Zone of Genius framework, and why being a CEO sat in his zone of excellence — good at it, drained by it17:52 — Gateway X by the numbers19:06 — Whether the scarcity ever goes away: "nine days out of ten" became "one day out of ten," and the coach question he couldn't answer20:16 — The Deer Valley condo, and finally understanding why people buy vacation homes21:08 — Full portfolio breakdown and why he tells his advisors to mark his startup equity at zero23:24 — Annual spend 26:52 — The schedule that makes it work: Tuesdays and Thursdays he misses bedtime, Monday/Wednesday/Friday he doesn't, and he deletes Slack on vacation28:16 — The thing that keeps him up: "They've gotten all the fruits of the grind without actually observing the grind"29:23 — Greenlight, allowance equal to their age, and splitting it into thirds — spend, save, give30:19 — Running a Starbucks P&L with his 9-year-old daughter in the store32:30 — The four-bucket framework: spend it, give it to the government, give it to charity, or give it to your kids34:44 — A Schnucks family board member on generational wealth: "Money doesn't ruin kids. Lack of values does."35:36 — What Jesse wants said at his funeralSponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.comSubscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcastFollow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberkListen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

It's our first Nightmare Fuel from our new Reddit page!! This group chat drama story's got everything with mentions of the 4B movement, looksmaxxing, birth rates and more...LINKSSee Abbie on tour! https://linktr.ee/abbiechatfieldlovesmenSend us your thoughts, topic suggestions, NMFs and more: https://forms.gle/S5Pf327SmVnnC8CE9Check out @itsalotpod on IG at https://bit.ly/itsalot-instagram.Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts https://bit.ly/ial-reviewCREDITSHost: Abbie Chatfield @abbiechatfieldExecutive Producer and Editor: Amy Kimball @amy.kimballIt's A Lot Social Media Manager: Julia ToomeySocial Media and Marketing Strategist: Elizabeth Baxter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, joins us to explore how China is building frontier AI under chip constraints, state capital, and open source ambition. Jing breaks down her scoop on DeepSeek's $7.4 billion round at a $50 billion valuation, unpacking a deal structure in which the founder wrote two-fifths of the check and outside investors got no voting rights. She explains why Chinese AI valuations trail US labs, why seven to eight language model players refuse to consolidate, and why DeepSeek chose Huawei chips before Huawei knew about it. Last but not least, Jing shares the indicators she is watching from now to 2027."This is one of the things that really surprised me when I was working on this story: DeepSeek had spent a lot of time last year retrofitting their models and software with Huawei chips. I think a lot of people assumed it's because the government ordered DeepSeek to work with Huawei to embrace the domestic ecosystem, but it's actually the opposite. It was DeepSeek that voluntarily started using Huawei, experimenting with the Huawei chips, and Huawei actually only found out after. Then they started sending people to DeepSeek to help..." - Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief, The InformationEpisode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Jing Yang from The Information[01:30] What changed since September: the ByteDance mystery resolved[03:00] Why China's AI must be read on its own terms[04:10] Breaking the story of DeepSeek on their 7.4B fundraise[05:40] How the valuation went from $10 to $50 billion[08:30] The lab that became famous for rejecting scaling laws[10:15] Unpacking the DeepSeek deal structure: four types of investors[12:40] Five-year lock-up and no secondary market trading[14:20] Reverse due diligence: DeepSeek vetting its own investors[16:40] Balancing open source, AGI research and IPO pressure[17:45] The irony: inclusive vision, exclusive deal structure[20:35] How Anthropic's Mythos preview changed Liang's mind[21:30] Why Chinese AI valuations look tiny next to US labs[23:00] Why Chinese founders go consumer when they go global[26:45] "The worst of customers" — price sensitivity and zero loyalty[27:45] The compute constraint that caps every Chinese lab[28:40] New labs in China: weaker infrastructure, harder exit[30:30] Can China leapfrog on hardware the way it did on models?[32:50] Stricter compliance, not political muscle[34:30] Founder power when your company becomes strategic[36:40] Junyang Lin's new lab and the scarcity premium[38:00] Open source influence versus sustainable commercial models[39:30] Zhipu versus MiniMax: how sentiment diverged after IPO[42:30] What is the right mental map for China's AI ecosystem?[43:20] The consolidation that still hasn't happened[45:00] Seven to eight serious players and nobody giving up[46:40] The one thing Jing wishes people would ask[47:20] Nobody ordered DeepSeek to use Huawei chips[50:00] Indicators to watch from now to 2027[55:30] ClosingProfile: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from The InformationThe Information Profile: https://www.theinformation.com/u/JingYangLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/X: https://x.com/jingyanghkPodcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

On January 1st a new EU law switched on across 27 countries — and it reports exactly how much Bitcoin you own.Europe's DAC8 turned "Know Your Customer" into what Bull Bitcoin calls "Kill Your Customer" — so the Canadian exchange just filed the first legal challenge to strike it down. We get into all of it: Tennessee becoming the 2nd US state to ban Bitcoin ATMs, Trump's disclosure showing $1.4B in crypto income while his own team writes the rules, Kraken reportedly chasing a full EU bank license — and the feel-good one, a single $150 home miner that beat billion-dollar farms to win an entire block worth ~$200,000. Then north of the border: KPMG says nearly half of Canadian manufacturers have moved or are eyeing a move to the US, Ottawa tells the UAE it has no "shovel-ready" projects for C$70B, and more.Canadian Bitcoiners PodcastWebsite: https://canadianbitcoiners.comX: @CanadianBTCPodSubscribe & turn on notifications so you never miss an episode. ————————————————————————————————SPONSORS

On January 1st a new EU law switched on across 27 countries — and it reports exactly how much Bitcoin you own.Europe's DAC8 turned "Know Your Customer" into what Bull Bitcoin calls "Kill Your Customer" — so the Canadian exchange just filed the first legal challenge to strike it down. We get into all of it: Tennessee becoming the 2nd US state to ban Bitcoin ATMs, Trump's disclosure showing $1.4B in crypto income while his own team writes the rules, Kraken reportedly chasing a full EU bank license — and the feel-good one, a single $150 home miner that beat billion-dollar farms to win an entire block worth ~$200,000. Then north of the border: KPMG says nearly half of Canadian manufacturers have moved or are eyeing a move to the US, Ottawa tells the UAE it has no "shovel-ready" projects for C$70B, and more.Canadian Bitcoiners PodcastWebsite: https://canadianbitcoiners.comX: @CanadianBTCPodSubscribe & turn on notifications so you never miss an episode. ————————————————————————————————SPONSORS

Are you an overachieving director, VP, or high-performing corporate leader crushing your quarterly targets, yet secretly looking for a predictable pathway to expand your professional options outside the enterprise?   In this dynamic guest conversation, host Billy Keels sits down with Fred Sharp, the managing partner of Clubhouse Ventures and former NCAA Division One walk-on athlete. Fred pulls back the curtain on his rapid corporate rise, detailing what it was like to be hand-selected at age 30 to serve as the Chief of Staff for the Chief Revenue Officer of a $4 Billion global tech line of business. Discover how Fred intentionally structured his 168 hours to quietly build a premium sports tech venture fund while managing massive global corporate operations, and learn why understanding the unvarnished reality that corporations move forward with or without you is the ultimate mental key to unlocking professional freedom.  

Vladimir Novakovski of Lighter joins the Chopping Block crew to untangle one of crypto's oldest debates: what happens when tokens and equity coexist. The gang digs into the Venice/VVV controversy, breaks down Lighter's new Perps integration with Robinhood Chain and the fragmentation questions it raises, dissects the wild BonkDAO governance exploit, and reacts to the eye-popping $2.4 billion in crypto income disclosed in Trump's financial filings. Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto, joined this week by special guest Vladimir Novakovski of Lighter. The crew dives deep into the resurfaced tokens-versus-equity debate sparked by Dragonfly's investment in Venice and its VVV token, with Haseeb making the case that Venice is fundamentally different from Uniswap Labs style structures. Vlad explains how Lighter has approached the same dilemma through programmatic buybacks and a single C corp structure, and the group debates fiduciary duties, Delaware law, and what a merged DeFi/TradFi future for equity and tokens might look like. From there, they unpack Lighter's big Robinhood Chain announcement, including Lighter's new role as the native Perps engine inside Robinhood Wallet, and whether running a separate instance fragments liquidity. The episode wraps with a breakdown of the BonkDAO governance exploit that let an attacker vote themselves $20 million in tokens, and a reaction to Trump's staggering $2.4 billion in pre-tax crypto income revealed in his latest financial disclosure. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights

Venture capital reporter Julia Hornstein talks with TITV Guest Host Rocket Drew about Thrive's $2B fund. We also talk with Asia Bureau Chief Jing Yang and Reporter Juro Osawa about Chinese AI lab Zhipu's custom chip plan, Catherine Perloff about Walmart's $6.4B digital advertising surge outpacing Amazon's growth, and Max Tegmark, Chair of the Future of Life Institute, about the Future of Life Institute's report card grading AI safety practices.Articles discussed on this episode: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-ai-lab-ziphu-weighs-custom-chip-demand-glm-model-soarshttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/softbank-altimeter-d1-invest-thrive-holdings-2-billion-financinghttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/walmarts-amazon-sized-ads-opportunitySubscribe: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theinformation The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/subscribe_hSign up for the AI Agenda newsletter: https://www.theinformation.com/features/ai-agendaTITV airs weekdays on YouTube, X and LinkedIn at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Or check us out wherever you get your podcasts.Follow us:X: https://x.com/theinformationIG: https://www.instagram.com/theinformation/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@titv.theinformationLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theinformation/Chapters:00:00 - Introduction01:13 - Thrive Holdings Raises $2B to Inject AI into Traditional Businesses08:28 - China's Zhipu AI Explores Custom Chips to Beat US Export Controls16:20 - Walmart's $6.4B Ad Machine Is Growing Faster Than Amazon27:33 - Max Tegmark Grades AI Safety: Why No Major Lab Earned an A

────────────────────────────────────────[00:11:48]1976 vs 2026: America Was 81% White and 90% Christian — Presbyterians Outnumbered WiccansSocialism polled in single digits; no one thought to ask. Now at 39%. Little Italy has become Little Mogadishu; Talavero Presbyterians have become pagans.────────────────────────────────────────[00:14:35]The Drug War Has No Constitutional Authority — Never Passed as an Amendment Like ProhibitionSessions was furious about marijuana legalization but couldn't touch it; there is no law, only bureaucratic rules, which is why civil asset forfeiture presumes guilt without trial.────────────────────────────────────────[00:22:26]AI Will Let Three Million Bureaucrats Do What FDR Needed an Army to DoFDR had one million documents on opponents requiring armies to process. AI does it instantly. That's the data center's real purpose.────────────────────────────────────────[00:34:48]Trump Bought Axon Stock Two Weeks Before ICE Awarded It a $220M ContractDisclosure runs 937 pages; Trump netted $1.4B in crypto in one year; Barron holds $2.3B in locked tokens. Knight: nearly tripled his net worth as president.────────────────────────────────────────[00:42:47]Trump's Meme Coin Left Nearly a Million Investors With a Combined $3.8B LossDown 97.6%; Trump crypto projects wiped out $51.4B across five coins; same structure as SBF, just bigger and with the presidency behind it.────────────────────────────────────────[00:50:29]Antwerp Diamond Industry Gifted Trump a Jewel-Encrusted Ring — Then Got Zero Tariffs on $2B in US SalesPresented on a star-spangled stage in Brussels days before the tariff removal; Knight: you can't get a better investment than a crooked politician.────────────────────────────────────────[01:16:53]Income Tax Started at 1% on the Wealthiest 1% — Khanna's Wealth Tax Starts at 2% on $50MAlready doubled before passage; Khanna's own fortune is in the exact irrevocable trusts he claims to want taxed; his 333-page disclosure is non-searchable.────────────────────────────────────────[01:40:45]Scott Ritter Debanked After 26 Years — Bank Refuses Explanation, Zionist Lobby Brags About ItCitizens Bank closed all accounts including his wife and daughters'; UN rapporteur Albanese had all accounts frozen, health insurance canceled, hotel reservations blocked.────────────────────────────────────────[01:53:47]SV40 Cancer Sequence in COVID Vaccines Was Not Accidental — Could Have Been AvoidedThey didn't need that plasmid; if SV40 sequences sit above an oncogene and integrate, they cause cancer; gene therapies were kept off market for decades for exactly this reason.────────────────────────────────────────[01:58:14]Man With Prostate Cancer Took Ivermectin During COVID Lockout — Five Years Later Still Cancer-FreeBy rescheduled surgery date, doctors found no cancer; PSA dropped from 11 to 3-4; his brother replicated the result in 2022; Knight: CIA documents show they knew and covered it up. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

────────────────────────────────────────[00:11:48]1976 vs 2026: America Was 81% White and 90% Christian — Presbyterians Outnumbered WiccansSocialism polled in single digits; no one thought to ask. Now at 39%. Little Italy has become Little Mogadishu; Talavero Presbyterians have become pagans.────────────────────────────────────────[00:14:35]The Drug War Has No Constitutional Authority — Never Passed as an Amendment Like ProhibitionSessions was furious about marijuana legalization but couldn't touch it; there is no law, only bureaucratic rules, which is why civil asset forfeiture presumes guilt without trial.────────────────────────────────────────[00:22:26]AI Will Let Three Million Bureaucrats Do What FDR Needed an Army to DoFDR had one million documents on opponents requiring armies to process. AI does it instantly. That's the data center's real purpose.────────────────────────────────────────[00:34:48]Trump Bought Axon Stock Two Weeks Before ICE Awarded It a $220M ContractDisclosure runs 937 pages; Trump netted $1.4B in crypto in one year; Barron holds $2.3B in locked tokens. Knight: nearly tripled his net worth as president.────────────────────────────────────────[00:42:47]Trump's Meme Coin Left Nearly a Million Investors With a Combined $3.8B LossDown 97.6%; Trump crypto projects wiped out $51.4B across five coins; same structure as SBF, just bigger and with the presidency behind it.────────────────────────────────────────[00:50:29]Antwerp Diamond Industry Gifted Trump a Jewel-Encrusted Ring — Then Got Zero Tariffs on $2B in US SalesPresented on a star-spangled stage in Brussels days before the tariff removal; Knight: you can't get a better investment than a crooked politician.────────────────────────────────────────[01:16:53]Income Tax Started at 1% on the Wealthiest 1% — Khanna's Wealth Tax Starts at 2% on $50MAlready doubled before passage; Khanna's own fortune is in the exact irrevocable trusts he claims to want taxed; his 333-page disclosure is non-searchable.────────────────────────────────────────[01:40:45]Scott Ritter Debanked After 26 Years — Bank Refuses Explanation, Zionist Lobby Brags About ItCitizens Bank closed all accounts including his wife and daughters'; UN rapporteur Albanese had all accounts frozen, health insurance canceled, hotel reservations blocked.────────────────────────────────────────[01:53:47]SV40 Cancer Sequence in COVID Vaccines Was Not Accidental — Could Have Been AvoidedThey didn't need that plasmid; if SV40 sequences sit above an oncogene and integrate, they cause cancer; gene therapies were kept off market for decades for exactly this reason.────────────────────────────────────────[01:58:14]Man With Prostate Cancer Took Ivermectin During COVID Lockout — Five Years Later Still Cancer-FreeBy rescheduled surgery date, doctors found no cancer; PSA dropped from 11 to 3-4; his brother replicated the result in 2022; Knight: CIA documents show they knew and covered it up. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

In this week's episode of the Coin Stories News Block powered exclusively by Ledn, we cover these major headlines related to Bitcoin, macroeconomics, and global finance: Trump reported $1.4 billion in crypto income — more than Coinbase earned all year The Trump token collapsed 97% — here's who actually made money Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin this morning in its biggest sale yet Bear market data is flashing a signal we've only seen five times since 2011 Saylor says Bitcoin evolves by not changing — Lyn Alden weighs in tomorrow ---- The News Block is powered exclusively by Ledn – the global leader in Bitcoin-backed loans, issuing over $10 billion in loans since 2018, and they were the first to offer proof of reserves. With Ledn, you get custody loans, no credit checks, no monthly payments, and more. My followers get .25% off their first loan. Learn more at www.ledn.io/natalie  ---- Order Natalie's new book "Bitcoin is For Everyone," a simple introduction to Bitcoin and what's broken in our current financial system: https://amzn.to/3WzFzfU  ---- Read every story in the News Block with visuals and charts! Join our mailing list and subscribe to our free Bitcoin newsletter: https://thenewsblock.substack.com  —- References mentioned in the episode: Trump Reports More Than $1.4B in Crypto Income for 2025 Trump Insists There's Nothing Wrong With His Big Crypto Gains Trump Pocketed More Than $1B From Crypto Ties as Industry Headed Toward Slump Trump Says There's 'Nothing Wrong' With Family's Crypto Windfall Trump's Crypto Token Buyers Are Down $3.8B, Blockchain Data Shows Nearly 1 Million Wallets Are Down $3.8B on Trump's Memecoin Trump Financial Disclosures Show Hundreds of Millions in Crypto-Related Income Trump's Memecoin Investors Are Down Billions Clarity and Congress's Summer Break — State of Crypto River's Chart on 5-Year Crypto Performance Bitcoin Magazine on Trump's Crypto Disclosure Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Have Returned to Accumulation, Glassnode Says Barstool's Portnoy Plans to Hold Bitcoin Down to $0 After Timing It Wrong Every Time Michael Saylor: "Bitcoin Evolves by Not Changing" DurdenBTC: ~45% of Long-Term Holder Supply in Loss DurdenBTC: Bitcoin Supply-in-Profit at Historical Lows Bitfinex: Long-Term Holder Supply in Loss  ---- Upcoming Events: The best time to plan for Bitcoin 2027 is right now. Early bird tickets are live — grab the lowest pricing available and use code HODL for 10% off: https://tickets.b.tc/event/bitcoin-2027?promoCodeTask=apply&promoCodeInput=HODL  ---- This podcast is for educational purposes and should not be construed as official investment advice. ---- VALUE FOR VALUE — SUPPORT NATALIE'S SHOWS Strike ID https://strike.me/coinstoriesnat/ Cash App $CoinStories #money #Bitcoin #investing

What do the 4B movement, abortion, child murder, modern writing and ancient Hellenic plays have in common?

July 2, 2026 - 6am: Trump defends $1.4B crypto earnings Rep. Comer pressed on Trump's financial disclosures MAGA voters voice growing frustration with Trump Trump debuts Qatari-gifted jet as Air Force One U.S. and Iran hold separate meetings in Qatar Russia carried out a massive drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight MS NOW's Akayla Gardner reporting on Trump's sons and their ties to defense companies Dr. Vin Gupta reports on the Supreme Court's ruling on the alleged cancer risks of "Round Up" weed killer, latest medical headlines   To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

July 1, 2026 - 6am: The Supreme Court upholds Birthright Citizenship, Trans bans, strikes down limits on campaign finance spending Trump keeps pushing the so-called 'SAVE Act' House starts recess early after hardliners revolt over the bill Trump announces GOP midterm convention in September set in Dallas Financial disclosures shoe Trump made $1.4B in crypto-related income last year To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

July 1, 2026 - 8am: Recap of Supreme Court rulings Trump reports $1.4B in crypto-related income NY Post criticizes Trump sons over foreign investments To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This Week In Startups is made possible by: CLA - www.claconnect.com/withyou Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Agree.com - www.agree.com Today's show: Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today's problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy's Aileen Lee, Floodgate's Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau's Ben Lerer joined Alex to dig into exiting pre-AI startups, rising valuations, token spend, why they are keeping their funds small, and whether the government just tripped OpenAI and Anthropic! Guest Links: Aileen Lee https://x.com/aileenlee Cowboy VC https://cowboy.vc Mike Maples https://x.com/m2jr Floodgate https://www.floodgate.com Bene Lerer https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjlerer Lere Hippeau https://www.lererhippeau.com Timestamps: 0:00 Aileen Lee, Mike Maples, and Ben Lerer join the show 5:13 Venture liquidity returns: what SpaceX/Stripe distributions mean for LPs 9:13 Bending Spoons prices IPO at $29/share, roughly $18.4B valuation 10:31 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 12:09 "Companies get bought, not sold" — Ben on taking first offers seriously 17:41 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 19:34 Mutiny's burn-the-boats AI pivot with Jaleh Rezaei 20:19 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 22:15 Mike's KeepSafe story: the "rule of 70" and profit-first companies 25:12 The new growth bar: 5x, 4x replaces triple-triple-double-double 28:55 Fund size is your strategy: why Floodgate and Lerer Hippeau stay small 30:11 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou 37:39 The $100M Series A: Starcloud, General Intuition, Scale Cognition, Scout AI 40:35 King-making rounds and why mega-seeds destroy optionality 54:11 Open-weight models: the GLM-5.2 moment and going model-agnostic 55:30 Why fine-tuning open models is a treadmill, with Cursor/Kimi as an example 1:03:28 Grading the Trump administration on Mythos and Fable 1:06:33 Rising anti-AI sentiment, the wealth gap, and lessons from social media 1:11:43 Raising kids in the post-intelligence era 1:12:35 Where to find the panel and what each firm is investing in Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

────────────────────────────────────────[00:02:09]EMS Worker Reports "Chronic Cancer" as New Medical Term — Knight: It's Turbo Cancer Being NormalizedA patient with three COVID jabs developed rapidly spreading colon cancer and leukemia within months of his last shot; Knight: the industry is rebranding what it caused.────────────────────────────────────────[00:14:00]Sony Deleting 551 Movies Customers Paid Full Price For — Buy Button Was a LieDeletion begins September 1 with no refunds; Knight: same model as CBDCs — they can delete your money the same way they're deleting your movies.────────────────────────────────────────[00:22:06]GTA 6 Ships as a Download Code in an Empty Box — Physical Discs Eliminated$80 for a cardboard sleeve; the game lives on their cloud and can be revoked at any time; Knight: "you will own nothing" is already the video game business model.────────────────────────────────────────[00:41:18]Trump's Advisors Openly Praise Caesarism — His Harvard Law Appointee Says Liberty Is Not the GoalAdrian Vermule wrote the constitutional order exists to promote "good rule," not protect liberty; Notre Dame advisor Patrick Deneen calls for Platonic aristocracy.────────────────────────────────────────[00:49:03]Trump Signed 143 Executive Orders in First 100 Days — More Than Any President in History21 national emergencies declared; troops sent to cities without local authority; immigrants shipped overseas to prisons in defiance of courts.────────────────────────────────────────[01:03:28]Supreme Court Loosens Campaign Finance Restrictions — Knight: AIPAC Corruption Now Has Fewer GuardrailsKnight reversed his position on Citizens United after watching AIPAC openly buy congressional seats; political money is a magnet for prostitutes, not politicians.────────────────────────────────────────[01:25:25]NY Post Calls Out Trump Crime Family's Biden-Esque CorruptionTrump's net worth tripled to $6.5B; $1.4B in crypto ventures; Salente: the Lutnik-Witkoff-Trump network is a crime syndicate operating in plain sight.────────────────────────────────────────[01:31:10]92% of Israelis Believe Iran Won the War — Trends Journal vs. US Media NarrativeCelente's polling contradicts everything Hegseth and Trump claimed; Knight: they lied about destroying Iran's missiles, wiping out their military, and forcing a surrender.────────────────────────────────────────[01:51:35]Real US Debt Is $176 Trillion When Unfunded Liabilities Are IncludedUnfunded Medicare, Social Security, pensions, and retirement healthcare dwarf the official figure; Salente: the plan is to tokenize public lands and launch a digital currency to paper over the collapse.────────────────────────────────────────[01:54:09]Quantitative Easing Is Roaring Back — Nobody Is Reporting ItMoney supply is expanding rapidly while the Fed fixates on interest rates; Knight: they always pump QE just before the next economic lockdown or crisis. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

────────────────────────────────────────[00:02:09]EMS Worker Reports "Chronic Cancer" as New Medical Term — Knight: It's Turbo Cancer Being NormalizedA patient with three COVID jabs developed rapidly spreading colon cancer and leukemia within months of his last shot; Knight: the industry is rebranding what it caused.────────────────────────────────────────[00:14:00]Sony Deleting 551 Movies Customers Paid Full Price For — Buy Button Was a LieDeletion begins September 1 with no refunds; Knight: same model as CBDCs — they can delete your money the same way they're deleting your movies.────────────────────────────────────────[00:22:06]GTA 6 Ships as a Download Code in an Empty Box — Physical Discs Eliminated$80 for a cardboard sleeve; the game lives on their cloud and can be revoked at any time; Knight: "you will own nothing" is already the video game business model.────────────────────────────────────────[00:41:18]Trump's Advisors Openly Praise Caesarism — His Harvard Law Appointee Says Liberty Is Not the GoalAdrian Vermule wrote the constitutional order exists to promote "good rule," not protect liberty; Notre Dame advisor Patrick Deneen calls for Platonic aristocracy.────────────────────────────────────────[00:49:03]Trump Signed 143 Executive Orders in First 100 Days — More Than Any President in History21 national emergencies declared; troops sent to cities without local authority; immigrants shipped overseas to prisons in defiance of courts.────────────────────────────────────────[01:03:28]Supreme Court Loosens Campaign Finance Restrictions — Knight: AIPAC Corruption Now Has Fewer GuardrailsKnight reversed his position on Citizens United after watching AIPAC openly buy congressional seats; political money is a magnet for prostitutes, not politicians.────────────────────────────────────────[01:25:25]NY Post Calls Out Trump Crime Family's Biden-Esque CorruptionTrump's net worth tripled to $6.5B; $1.4B in crypto ventures; Salente: the Lutnik-Witkoff-Trump network is a crime syndicate operating in plain sight.────────────────────────────────────────[01:31:10]92% of Israelis Believe Iran Won the War — Trends Journal vs. US Media NarrativeCelente's polling contradicts everything Hegseth and Trump claimed; Knight: they lied about destroying Iran's missiles, wiping out their military, and forcing a surrender.────────────────────────────────────────[01:51:35]Real US Debt Is $176 Trillion When Unfunded Liabilities Are IncludedUnfunded Medicare, Social Security, pensions, and retirement healthcare dwarf the official figure; Salente: the plan is to tokenize public lands and launch a digital currency to paper over the collapse.────────────────────────────────────────[01:54:09]Quantitative Easing Is Roaring Back — Nobody Is Reporting ItMoney supply is expanding rapidly while the Fed fixates on interest rates; Knight: they always pump QE just before the next economic lockdown or crisis. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

July 1, 2026 - 5am: The Supreme Court upholds Birthright Citizenship Trump keeps pushing the so-called 'SAVE Act' House starts recess early after hardliners revolt over the bill Trump announces GOP midterm convention in September set in Dallas Colorado primary results Financial disclosures shoe Trump made $1.4B in crypto-related income last year Social Security faces major funding shortfall by 2032 To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode Eric interviews Jon Krosnick from Stanford University in Stanford, CA. Jon discusses his cross-appointments and major initiatives, including a new sustainability school funded by a $1.3–$1.4B private gift, hiring about 60 faculty members, and the role of Environmental Social Sciences in ensuring that engineered solutions work with human behavior. He describes the interdisciplinary challenges of building a new PhD core, admits difficulty saying no, and explains the Stanford Institute for Excellence in Survey Research and his focus on meticulous methodology. He recounts training at Harvard and Michigan's Institute for Social Research, Ohio State (18 years), and a fellowship that shaped his ethical perspective. Discussing activism, he says protests may not change attitudes but strongly signal constituent passion to lawmakers; attitude change is often small and short-lived, so campaigns focus on turnout. He also explains Census Bureau work improving household respondent selection protocols and shares his parallel career as a jazz drummer with long-running bands and about 200 performances a year. [Note. Portions of the show notes were generated by Descript AI.]

GTA 6 pre-orders are live, the price is confirmed, and the internet is melting down — so naturally that's the whole episode. Raz and Jake break down the $80 standard / $100 Ultimate pricing, the "physical copy" that's really just a download code in a box with no disc, and whether you're actually losing anything (spoiler: lending to your buddies, and not much else). Then it's the free-market case for why $80 is eminently fair, the cost-per-hour argument that makes GTA the cheapest entertainment on Earth, and the uncomfortable truth that the loudest complainers have already pre-ordered. Then, meanwhile: EMPULSE. The $15 Titanfall-like from the Splitgate devs launched into early access with no store, no battle pass, and no microtransactions — and the guys explain, with the utmost confidence and zero gameplay watched, exactly why it's dead on arrival. Paint bombs included. Plus: 50 million GTA 6 pre-orders, companies closing on launch day, and a $1,000 bet on EMPULSE failing inside three months. 0:00 — Intro & "we have no likes" cold open 1:34 — GTA 6 pre-orders are live: $80 standard, $100 Ultimate 2:58 — The "code in a box": a physical copy with no disc 4:47 — Is the disc even a loss? Lending, Blockbuster, PS2 days 9:00 — Servers, Stop Killing Games & whether discs matter anymore 12:17 — Onto pricing: is $80 fair? "That person does not exist" 15:31 — The $100 Ultimate Edition: scam or just a menu? 19:22 — Does $80 GTA give every other studio license to charge $80? 23:00 — Big Macs, Netflix & the "communists in our comments" tangent 31:00 — Cost-per-hour: video games are the cheapest entertainment on Earth 34:22 — The one scummy thing: PC release delayed behind console 39:59 — Back to physical ownership: resale, lending, longevity 43:13 — Did GTA kill the disc? No — it was already dead 1:00:30 — Why no disc, really: anti-leak vs. just cheaper (part 2) 1:05:20 — Ultimate Edition breakdown: tattoos, car finds, gang raid 1:06:30 — Day-one Ultimate content: cut from the base game? 1:06:40 — "We're going to pre-order anyway, aren't we?" 1:09:54 — Is GTA review-proof? Outrage-proof? The Kotaku prediction 1:11:06 — Vote with your wallet & why a boycott is inconceivable 1:18:40 — 50M pre-orders, $4B, companies closing on launch day 1:11:06 — MEANWHILE: EMPULSE, the $15 Splitgate-devs shooter 1:13:01 — "This game will fail" — the arena shooter genre is dead 1:18:10 — No store, no battle pass, no microtransactions = $60k revenue 1:23:31 — "60 grand, baby" & the $1,000 bet it fails in 3 months 1:30:20 — GTA vs EMPULSE juxtaposition & "consumer-friendly?" rebuttal 1:32:31 — Announcements: bonus eps, Patreon, shoutouts, sign-off _Note: timestamps may be slightly misaligned on podcast apps (but not on YouTube) due to dynamic ads._ The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, and ad-free & early access versions - as well as bonus episodes - are available to all of our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/thedropshot) supporters. We stream the podcast live on our YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/thedropshotpodcast) every Saturday morning at ~9 o'clock Pacific Time. We typically start the stream 30 minutes early to answer viewer questions, banter, and chat. Links for everything are below. Thanks for checking us out!

1. HEART OF THE MATTER 1A. Record-Breaking Missionary Numbers — Pres. Oaks at New Mission Leader Seminar At the 2026 Seminar for New Mission Leaders (June 18–21, Provo MTC), President Dallin H. Oaks announced that the Church will soon have the largest number of full-time missionaries in its history, surpassing the current 87,000+ serving worldwide. The surge is driven by the first wave of 18-year-old sister missionaries (following the November policy change lowering the minimum age from 19) and the addition of 55 new missions in July, bringing the global total to 506. President Oaks outlined three characteristics defining the restored Church: (1) the fulness of doctrine (including eternal marriage between a man and a woman); (2) priesthood authority and keys; and (3) a unique testimony of Christ grounded in modern revelation and the First Vision. Sister Kristin Oaks also spoke, sharing six core truths missionaries teach. Source: Church Newsroom, June 20, 2026 Note: Strong potential for discussion on what ‘only true and living church’ means in a pluralistic world — Richie angle? 1B. New Hymn ‘Welcome Home’ — The Story Behind It Composer Andrea Brett explains how a 2017 encounter with Demetrius O’Neal — a recent convert serving as a greeter at a Spokane ward on a snowy Sunday morning — inspired her hymn ‘Welcome Home,’ now published in the new Hymns for Home and Church. Brett submitted 10 pieces when the global hymnbook was announced in 2018; this was the only one she’d written before the call. She received confirmation of its selection in February 2025, then had a full-circle moment when she and O’Neal sat near each other at the April 2025 General Conference as the Tabernacle Choir performed it. O’Neal’s name appears in the hymn’s tune name as a tribute. The hymn is now translated and sung globally. Source: Church Newsroom / Richie’s document 1C. Family History Records Are a ‘Sacred Thread’ — Elder Bragg at International Archivists Congress Elder Mark A. Bragg, General Authority Seventy and executive director of the Church’s Family History Department and FamilySearch International, was a keynote speaker at the III Congress of Archivists: Digital Archive Expo (DA-EXPO), held June 8–12 in Astana, Kazakhstan. He called family history records ‘the thin but sacred thread’ tying people together across generations, and argued that records are ‘in a very real sense, witnesses.’ Elder Bragg framed the digital revolution in genealogy in moral terms: for most of history, access to records was shaped by ‘proximity, resources and specialized knowledge,’ but today a record created in one place can be preserved in another, indexed in a third, and discovered by someone on the other side of the world. ‘The reach is astonishing. The speed is breathtaking. The possibilities are almost beyond measure.’ He also said that ‘access is an act of kindness’ — records only fulfill their divine purpose when they are found, understood, and used. His core message: preserving memory is an act of hope. ‘It says that the past is not dead to us and that the future deserves more than fragments.’ Source: Church News, June 17, 2026 Angle: Great ‘quiet but meaningful’ story — LDS family history going global and leveling the playing field for genealogy worldwide. 1D. America Gives — All 50 States Receive Food Donations The Church completed a milestone in its ‘America Gives’ initiative by delivering a shipping container of food to Hilo, Hawaii — marking all 50 states reached. The initiative aims to deliver 250 truckloads of food nationwide in 2026 to celebrate the U.S. 250th anniversary. In Hawaii, the food went to The Food Basket, distributed to 10 local nonprofits. Notably, 42% of residents on the island of Hawaii face food insecurity — the state’s highest rate. Rosie Rios, chair of America 250 and former U.S. Treasurer, praised the milestone. Local Methodist pastor Ted Lesnett said recipients will know ‘when they were hungry, someone cared.’ Source: Church Newsroom / Richie’s document 1E. Church Donates $250,000 NZD to Christchurch Anglican Cathedral Rebuild The Church announced a NZ$250,000 donation (June 19, 2026) toward the restoration of Christchurch’s iconic Anglican Cathedral — damaged in the February 2011 earthquake. Elder Peter F. Meurs (Pacific Area President) and Anglican Bishop Peter Carrell presided at the announcement. The donation comes as the project faces a $45M funding shortfall and an overall $219M budget. The Christchurch City Council has offered $15M contingent on government and Anglican Church matches. Notably, a New Zealand Buddhist community made a similar gift in 2023 — the LDS donation continues a cross-faith pattern of support for the heritage project. Source: Richie’s document Angle: Rare and heartwarming — LDS funds an Anglican cathedral. Good interfaith story. 1F. Central America Humanitarian Blitz — 5 Projects, 500,000+ People In late May and early June 2026, the Church announced five humanitarian projects across Central America (with Sister J. Anette Dennis, First Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency, representing the Church). Projects include: the ‘Windows of Light’ eyecare program in El Salvador (350,000+ screenings to date); safe water access for 250,000+ in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua (with UNICEF); nearly 750 computers/tablets donated to 66 educational institutions in Guatemala; and medical equipment for the ‘La Mascota’ children’s hospital in Nicaragua. Source: Church Newsroom, June 2026 2. FAITH & DOCTRINE 2A. President Christofferson in Philadelphia & Toronto A busy week of ministry for President D. Todd Christofferson: He offered the invocation at Becket’s Canterbury Medal Gala in Philadelphia (multifaith event celebrating religious liberty), alongside Elder Gary E. Stevenson and others. The group also visited the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall — fitting, ahead of America’s 250th. Christofferson reflected on D&C 101 and the Constitution’s purpose to protect ‘all flesh.’ From Philadelphia, he and Sister Christofferson traveled to Toronto, meeting 250+ missionaries in the Canada Toronto Mission weeks before it divides into three missions (Toronto West, Toronto East, and Montreal). He also spoke to hundreds of LDS youth, with one — Amelia Fischer — saying ‘no amount of words can describe how I felt tonight.’ Source: Richie’s document / Church Newsroom 2B. BYU Scholar Study: Religion Adds 7.6 Years to Life The BYU Wheatley Institute is releasing three reports analyzing 3,000 of the most scientifically rigorous studies (culled from 60,000+ papers by Duke University) on religion and health. Key findings: 33/34 studies show improved social health; 10/11 show improved mental health; 7/8 show improved physical health. Regular worshippers live an average of 7.6 years longer (up to 13.7 years longer for African Americans). A ‘landmark finding’: 256 studies show religion prevents/aids recovery from substance abuse (vs. 6 showing negative impact). Author Loren Marks recommends public health frameworks treat religious involvement like exercise recommendations. Source: Richie’s document 2C. Elder Soares Testifies in the Philippines Elder Ulisses Soares completed a two-week ministry in the Philippines (mid-May 2026), meeting with 600+ young single adults in Cebu, 450+ in Quezon City, and 340+ missionaries at the Philippines MTC. His recurring message: ‘His arms are extended to all of us.’ The Philippines has more than 905,000 Latter-day Saints — the Church’s fourth-largest national membership. Two new temples were also dedicated in the Philippines this month: the Davao Philippines Temple (Elder Renlund, May 3) and the Bacolod Philippines Temple (Elder Andersen, May 31). Source: Church Newsroom, June 17, 2026 3. CULTURE & CURIOSITIES 3A. LDS Author in Everyman’s Library — A First BYU biology and bioethics professor Steven L. Peck has reportedly become the first Latter-day Saint author included in the prestigious Everyman’s Library series (publishing canonical English fiction since 1906). His 2012 novella A Short Stay in Hell — a philosophical horror story about a Mormon man condemned to an afterlife library containing every possible book — went viral on BookTok and found a new audience. A literature historian noted: ‘No Mormon or Mormon-adjacent writer that I know of has ever been featured in this prestigious series.’ The Salt Lake Tribune covered the story, noting the irony that a theological horror story marks one of the most significant moments in LDS literary history. Source: Salt Lake Tribune / Richie’s document 3B. The Sasine Family — 40 Countries Before Age 1 Keith and Chelsea Sasine, an LDS couple stationed in Germany (Keith is an Army oral surgeon), made history in November 2025 by taking their youngest daughter Mia to 40 countries before her first birthday (March–November 2025), using a Honda Odyssey for European road trips. The family of six (including Izzy, 10; Abby, 9; and John, 4) attends local wards wherever they travel — a faith anchor the couple says strengthened their testimony and taught their kids the importance of the Sabbath globally. They’re planning a move to Colorado Springs in 2026. Source: Richie’s document 3C. Jen Affleck (Secret Lives of Mormon Wives) Expecting Baby #4 Jen Affleck, 27-year-old star of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Dancing with the Stars alum, announced June 18 that she and husband Zac Affleck are expecting their fourth child. She shared the news on Instagram captioned ‘Chapter Four.

The crew breaks down the SpaceX IPO's crypto-like low float dynamics and Hyperliquid's price prediction, debates accredited investor laws and failed tokenized stock allocations, dives into Fable 5's export control shutdown after Amazon flagged a jailbreak to the Treasury Secretary, and argues whether open source AI models will eat frontier pricing. Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. Robert is back after a brief hiatus recording his own podcast, The Pop, for Superstate — and the crew wastes no time roasting him for it before diving into the biggest week of news in recent memory. First up: the SpaceX IPO, the largest in history, and why it looks eerily like a crypto token launch — 4.2% float, retail getting cut out, and Hyperliquid perps predicting the first-day pop almost to the dollar. The crew debates TradeXYZ's winner-take-all dominance of HIP3 and why building on top of Hyperliquid might be a terrible startup environment. Then they unpack Elon's financial engineering genius — the Cursor acquisition as all-stock crypto playbook, XAI's pivot from failed AI lab to compute reseller, and why Grok is (unanimously) an embarrassing piece of shit. The conversation shifts to accredited investor laws, SPV dentists, and why every crypto platform failed to deliver SpaceX IPO allocations. From there, Coinbase's massive system update — tokenized stocks, an SEC-registered AI chatbot, combos, and 15-minute markets. Then things get spicy: Robert asks Claude about SBF on air, Sonnet gets it hilariously wrong, and everyone roasts him for not using Opus. The back half is all about Fable 5 — Amazon's jailbreak discovery, Andy Jassy calling Dario (who didn't pick up), and the export controls that shut down the most powerful commercial AI model ever released. Robert drops his most surprising take: "I am EAC, but this is a dry run of pressing the pause button." The episode closes with a heated debate on whether Chinese open source models will eat frontier AI pricing and a bet that may or may not have been agreed upon.  Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights