In this week’s episode, we walk through ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2025 Research, highlighting the key disruptive innovation technologies that are set to transform the global landscape
🤖 The AI Paradigm Shift – from neural networks to large language models, how will AI reshape industries, and the companies poised to win
🌌 Space Innovation & Satellite Connectivity – including two companies that are leading the future of satellite communications
🔋 Energy Storage Revolution – a surprising company’s market share in global energy storage plus exciting developments in nuclear power and renewables. How will these trends shape energy markets?
🚗 Will autonomous vehicles eliminate car ownership? How soon will we see robotaxis become mainstream, and what companies are set to lead the transportation revolution?
🤖 How humanoid robots will transform small businesses and everyday life. Are robots about to become a common household feature?
💡 Agentic AI & The Future of Commerce – why buying experiences will move from “one-click checkout” to “one-query purchasing” reshaping commerce and advertising forever. Will these two ad-tech giants escape unscathed?
Plus:
⚠ Political Crypto Chaos – analyzing the controversies and market manipulations surrounding political endorsements of crypto. How should investors protect themselves from political pump-and-dump schemes?
Segments:
00:00 Cold Open
04:15 Monetising Gemini in Fantasy Football
08:20 AST Space Mobile – what did Krzysztof do?
10:46 ARK Invest Big Ideas 2025 Overview
20:32 Space Industry and Small Launch Providers
32:19 Energy Storage and Tesla’s Role
37:29 Autonomous Vehicles: The Future of Transportation
45:26 Humanoid Robots and Their Impact on Small Businesses
52:15 AI Agents and the Future of E-commerce
01:06:31 Crypto Corruption and Political Influence
01:13:30 Closing Thoughts
E70: ARK BIG IDEAS
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Luke: Hello and welcome to the latest wall street wildlife with Christophe and Luke. We are going deep on arc invests, big ideas, 2025 deck this week. We’ve got some hot takes on a number of quite interesting slides in their predictions about the world for the year ahead.
[00:00:23] Krzysztof: How you doing, Badger? You still, uh, you still avoiding avalanches?
[00:00:29] Luke: I’m good, like it’s, it’s a super sunny spring conditions in Chamonix now, uh, I’m more than halfway through my ski season. Today was day 48 on the mountain and I’ve been shooting some like fun videos, uh, for friends and for the podcast. So you might see those on my Twitter.
[00:00:45] Krzysztof: 48 consecutive days?
[00:00:47] Luke: Hmm, had a few days off, uh, but yeah, 48 days since early January. So it’s pretty good going. Like I haven’t missed too many.
[00:00:55] Krzysztof: Awesome.
[00:00:57] Luke: should I tell you about, how Gemini [00:01:00] is paying for itself? I think I’m a monetized Gemini.
[00:01:05] Krzysztof: tell, tell us about, right, it seems like you never pay for anything. You’re always taking other people’s poker money. always taking my money. Uh, you’ve, you’ve figured things out pretty, pretty well.
[00:01:18] Luke: Well, let’s see.
[00:01:19] Krzysztof: what’s the latest badger, badger scam?
[00:01:22] Luke: yeah, my buddies think it is a badger scam. I’m now Mr. AI. every year I’ve got a bunch of my poker friends and they have a bunch of different fantasy football bets. And so they were doing the FA cup fantasy football. And I literally know zilch about football. I have no interest, no idea what’s going on.
Couldn’t tell you who’s playing, couldn’t tell you who the favorites are. And normally their fantasy football stuff is really complicated. And every week you have to like do managers and teams and I ain’t got time for that stuff, but they did like a special one off. Uh, and then you just had to pick teams basically from like a bucket of teams.
[00:02:00] So I got Gemini to do with Gemini 1. 5 with deep research. I got that to pick my teams and, uh, we had some successes over the weekend. I had no idea what was even going on and I, everyone has thrown in the towel and it looks like I’ve now got it locked up for like a. 800 pounds win. Awesome. Thanks to Preston United and I don’t know, like Everton or someone or Brighton.
Brighton. Brighton apparently won 2 0 yesterday, apparently. And so this is it. I’m like, I’ve got it. Almost got a lock. So yeah. Thank you, Gemini.
[00:02:34] Krzysztof: Right, that, that’s nuts. I don’t know if that says a lot about you, a lot about AI, or a little about your friends, your, your poker buddies. Yeah,
[00:02:44] Luke: All of the above. Absolutely all of the above.
They’re, uh, they’re mocking me AI. And now. Mr. AI is going to take home the glory and the money.
[00:02:55] Krzysztof: I don’t even know, I don’t even know what’s [00:03:00] going on anymore. I’m buried underneath massive amounts of work in academia, but, you know, AI is infiltrating that and I’m talking about it every day to my students and it’s Wild, for example, assigning essays or the idea of writing an essay, well, now it’s like, it’s, it’s not, it’s, it’s just so far from something you could just do is assign an essay and show me your thinking on paper.
Like what does that even mean anymore? So anyway, it’s a wild world,
[00:03:31] Luke: big brain guys, you’ll figure it out.
[00:03:32] Krzysztof: right? Okay.
[00:03:34] Luke: Focus on the end goal that we talked about the other week, like educating students and making them ready for the world.
[00:03:39] Krzysztof: Yeah, that’s what I, blab on about all the time. It’s just now the methods of how you do that is, is more complicated. For one, I’ll, I will tell you that, as I’m taking it. Did I tell you I’m taking Italian, uh, at the university? After I finish teaching, I go to Italian class, but it’s wild. Now, you know, I get exercises or, or [00:04:00] things to, complete, but I’m using AI. Integrally, you know, I’ll take a snapshot of say the workbook uploaded to AI. And then the amount of explanations and examples I get is just. Absolutely fascinating. I remember part of your, your thesis against Duolingo. I’m not sure how that’s working out, but it was like that AI will be, will become a better foreign language tutor.
And that’s what it feels like. I have my own little Italian speaking. Boss, you know right over my right shoulder. So
[00:04:33] Luke: Yeah, that’s great. But you’re actually using it to converse, like speak to chat GPT or Gemini in Italian.
[00:04:39] Krzysztof: no, i’m not speaking to it And that’s mostly because my wife speaks italian. So I kind of have a live in Speaker, but I have not gotten to that level right now. I’m learning grammar stuff. So, you know, it’s correcting
[00:04:54] Luke: Awesome. Good stuff. Don’t get disintermediated. You educator, you got much to add to the [00:05:00] world. Shall we talk briefly? I want to, before we get into the big topic today, let’s reflect on a conversation we had two weeks ago. Cause I did a poll with our Patreons, episode 68, and if I got this right, you shared your portfolio, which was like massively EOS, 43 percent EOS at the time, 16 percent ASTS SpaceMobile, a bunch of other stocks and some really small stuff.
And your question to me was, I want to have more ASTS. Should I, like, how should I get there? And I think we kind of arrived at three options. One was to like trim EOS, cause you don’t want to have 43 percent in one position. One was like your preference, which I think was to sell a bunch of the small stuff, and then I think you kind of reluctantly, I don’t know if you accepted my advice, you’ll tell us in a second, but my advice was like 16 percent ASTS is plenty.
Be happy with that. So we asked our Patreons and as you can see, it looks like [00:06:00] more than half our Patreons agreed with me. 16 percent is a fine position. So what did you do?
[00:06:05] Krzysztof: Can you believe that I did nothing?
[00:06:10] Luke: Perfect. Very good.
[00:06:12] Krzysztof: I did do nothing, but it is the first of the month or rather the first of the month just triggered. So we have 200 monkey has 200 fresh bananas sitting right there. But curiously this week EOS and ASTS report earnings, in the front half of the week. So the, that’s important for my companies.
Precisely because we’re essentially pre revenue right at the beginning of that hockey curve. So delays or unexpected positive amounts announcements could have major impact on the share price. So it’s a very, very volatile and I wouldn’t say precarious time, , but much can change very quickly. And so I decided to [00:07:00] basically wait until processing the earnings report and then.
Either be happy with my already large positions or if the stocks drop with nothing, thesis breaking, which I can’t foresee that being the case, then adding even cheap, more cheaply. So
[00:07:16] Luke: Awesome. That’s great.
[00:07:17] Krzysztof: the wisdom of the crowds won one out this time.
[00:07:21] Luke: Yeah. Good man. Good man. And I wonder if that actually takes us into our. Headline topic for today, which is going to consume most of our episode conversation because we are digging into the ARK invest big ideas, 2025. Deck, they publish it every year. Because we were just chatting about your ASTS position, and I think maybe an interesting place to start in that ArcDeck is to, talk about some of their thinking around space and launch providers and SpaceX in particular. But before we do, do you want to give us a bit of an overview of like what this thing is and like their five big categories?
[00:07:58] Krzysztof: Yeah, sure. [00:08:00] So as I was reading this deck right up front, they have, a title called five innovation platforms that are catalyzing accelerated growth. So that’s the, I think it’s important to just slow down with just that. They’re talking about platforms, all these things, this won’t be a surprise to anyone to hear that AI, is a thing.
I mean, at this point, it’s silly to even talk about, but I think it’s the catalyzation of accelerated growth that’s . All these fields, these five fields, are obviously growing quickly, but the idea is that they will grow even more quickly, and how is the main takeaway. The five are public blockchains, AI, multiomics, which I’ll define in a bit, energy storage, and robotics.
And what was cool for me, looking at those five categories, Is that they actually map out [00:09:00] really nicely to all my top positions in the king of the jungle portfolio. I think I have a representative, obvious representative in each spread across each of these five categories, which is I think what you want as an investor.
investing in future growth, right? You want to have a little piece of the pie, in the major categories that are set to accelerate in their growth. So does it make sense to sort of talk about each of these a little briefly and give, give an example? Or define them a little bit better.
[00:09:33] Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. I’m not invested in all of these categories. And I actually, I steer away from a couple of them, but, if you’ve got something everywhere, then yeah, let’s do that.
[00:09:43] Krzysztof: Yeah, sure. So public blockchains, I think that’s pretty obvious. but the thesis for me is that the, entire, foundation of the global financial system will move onto these blockchains, which will be a massive. [00:10:00] paradigm shift. And I will stand to benefit from this if in fact it happens and Chainlink is the protocol that basically underpins most of it.
So that’s one, one aspect of it. AI I think is almost, I don’t know, let’s not spend too much time on it. It’s pretty obvious, right? Neural networks and learning language models are basically making things possible now that were never possible. These computational systems, they’re calling them.
We have in my portfolio. I have access to Nebbius, which is the company. NBIS, that is building data centers and helping companies get their AI game up. Multiamics is the fancy word for all the bio slash biotech. innovations that are moving beyond merely reading genes. So now you have [00:11:00] things like, the actual DNA code, but then you’re also looking at the proteins and you’re looking at the epigenes and you’re looking at transcription stuff.
And there’s all these factors that are data dependent that work together. to accelerate the radar, which we’re going to start carrying stuff. So my representative there quite obviously is Relay Therapeutics, which I’m naming is one of the most undervalued companies in the whole space right now. Then we get to robotics.
Arc says this is catalyzed by artificial intelligence. Humanoid robots are obviously something that Tesla is working on. They mentioned 3d printing. And they’re also talking about reusable rockets. So, I’m thinking, yeah, like, the way actual, like, futuristic robots will one day be in your kitchen. And my obvious example for, from the portfolio is Tesla. [00:12:00] Yours is rocket lab. And then the 5th category they talk about is energy storage that the prices of energy are going down. And they also mentioned a category called distributed energy generation. And this is the fact that up to now, you know, you have big gigantic call it utility plants, but now we are, on the way to building smaller, more local sources of energy.
that basically take the pressure off from these gigantic monoliths. You tie them together with the renewables. And then to my thesis, you then find a way to store all that energy locally, and you have basically a bunch of micro grids that are much more resilient. And that is obviously why EOS is my biggest position because they stand to benefit from the energy storage side.
It’s pretty exciting, you know, for us, because what we’re, we’re optimists and we’re future, you know, we like investing in future [00:13:00] innovations and those five big categories. Really align well with I think what we spend a lot of our time talking about and investing in
[00:13:08] Luke: Yeah, absolutely. And. In previous podcasts, you might have heard me cast aspersions at Arc, but one thing I do like about Arc is they do good research. They got smart folk who are plugged into the industry. They do this kind of really good horizon scanning, what’s important, and they try and draw interesting conclusions about like technologies, but also like the convergence of technologies and how things stack together.
To like change the world in quite interesting ways. And so I, do highly recommend reading this deck in full, at least just skimming it, page turning. It’s like 150 slides. I’m sure ARC have got their own podcasts, like go check those out. I draw the line at ARC’s actual stock recommendations, cause I’m very skeptical about.
Their valuation models, , and their track record, frankly. But their research is solid. And so I, I look at this every year for the last [00:14:00] couple of years. And if you go back a year, I think we dived into the big ideas, 2020 FORDEC.
[00:14:05] Krzysztof: yeah I’m glad you mentioned that badger. It’s kind of astounding to me Extent to which they have made such poor investing decisions t doc For example is something that comes to mind I think it used to be one of their top positions at one point, but that’s the thing with futuristic ideas Like it sounds great on paper And we thought telehealth would be the next big thing because this one company had to leave.
But then all of a sudden, you know, the future is different than we think. And TDoc is one of the worst investments of the last few years. Just a massive loss of capital. So be careful, right? Our listeners, it’s like, I’ve fallen into this trap many times. The story sounds really good and exciting. You have an arc presenting it with shiny, all kinds of shininess, but you really can’t know for sure until you’ve done a lot [00:15:00] more work, I think.
On your own, and even then, you know, be careful,
[00:15:04] Luke: Yeah. Do your own research and like, be skeptical about everything you read, like try and find multiple sources and, try and find your own clarity of thought around whether the thing, like the idea you’re investing in. is something, well, my framework is something the world needs more of. Might need more of in the future or not, you know, you might have your own framework, but don’t just read and then slavishly copy what any other investor or research organization puts out.
[00:15:32] Krzysztof: right? No matter how shiny and how well funded there is one slide early on. I also like to draw our attention to badger. I’m sorry. This wasn’t in our episode prep, but I looked at it and it’s an obvious point. There’s this I think on slide. 10, they have this image, uh, entitled called convergence is accelerating the technology revolution.
So they’re sort of a map how [00:16:00] those five categories we just mentioned, they’re not isolated. They’re all actually sort of playing with one another. And the obvious example for me that I’m paying attention to is. The AI category basically is to me, it’s sort of the linchpin of all this requires a bunch of new data centers and requires a bunch more energy to work.
That is directly connected, therefore, to the distributed energy generation field that is needed. a different way of saying that is because AI is accelerating, I’m going to benefit as an investor from that. But I’m also going to benefit from EOS because EOS is making that possible and they’re sort of, together.
And in this case, actually, from my own portfolio, Iris Energy, they’re much more direct play on the whole building up warehouse stuff, but they’re interconnected.
[00:16:58] Luke: Yeah, absolutely. [00:17:00] Why don’t we take a couple of these slides and drill in a little bit deeper? cause I think we both had thoughts on some of Arc’s ideas and I guess like I intro this segment saying, Hey, ASTS and SpaceX. Why don’t we start with, uh, the rockets category. Because I saw an interesting slide about the proliferation of small launch providers.
So this is quite an interesting observation by arc, I think, and essentially they’re saying like industries tend to consolidate particularly where like they’re young new industries. And we see this all the time with, for example, cybersecurity, like tons of consolidation there around the leaders over the last few years.
Either some companies fail and fall by the wayside or they get acquired because they’ve got like good IP or customer. Engagement, you know, whatever in certain geographies, and ARC have observed how this is happening in the space industry and, , to quote from their slide today, only 17 of the [00:18:00] 194 small launch providers created since 1996 are operational.
This is quite an interesting place to start, I think, because. like clearly SpaceX is way past like the curve they’re now, well, they are almost the entire industry. They’re massive. And I’d make a good argument that Rocket Lab similarly are, um, over the hump, the transitioning into their neutron program.
, and there’s going to be some challenges there, but they’re well capitalized. They’ve got their space system segment, they’re generating. Like operational income. So almost kind of self sufficient and the transition to neutron, like medium lift could be bumpy, it could be painful, but I’m relatively confident they’re going to get there at some point, maybe not 2025, but at some point, but then you and I talk about a whole bunch of other space companies and I know ASTS aren’t a launch provider per se, maybe the same argument might apply to [00:19:00] them.
Like companies in this young nascent industry, like the majority are probably going to fail, not succeed. What do you make of that?
[00:19:08] Krzysztof: I don’t know. And maybe that’s a good thing, because it feels like the obvious point you’re making is that, what, the big guys, the well capitalized, or the ones who’ve already passed an existential crisis will only grow larger, as is the way of capitalism. Makes it more likely that the little guys won’t win just because that’s what happens everywhere.
But aside from that, making more, for me to make a comment about an industry that one, I’m not an expert in, you know, like in an engineering sense, but also because it’s so brand new and I don’t know what I don’t even know. I would assume on that first point, you’re right. And on the second point, who the hell knows?
[00:19:51] Luke: this is not like an indictment on ASTS because they’re not a launch provider. There are a bunch of other, like if I think about all the other space companies I [00:20:00] know. The only one probably has a guaranteed chance of success in my mind is probably like Blue Origin only because they’ve got like the backing of Jeff Bezos and his like, bottomless billions of dollars that he can just keep pumping in to make them successful.
And hey, I saw in the news, Bezos is about to like launch katy Perry, past Bezos’s other half, are apparently going to go off on a Blue Origin flight.
So that guy’s got to get it right. Right.
[00:20:27] Krzysztof: right. Yeah. Failure here would be bad. The only thing I could comment on with any sense, even modicum of intelligence is that I do see rocket launches as becoming come up commoditized and maybe, sooner than later, And that’s why I don’t worry about that aspect of it for A. S. T. S. as with most things, the more launches, the more I mean, we’ve passed the we’ve like you said, we’ve passed the sort of critical.
[00:21:00] Moment where what SpaceX was down to its last launch will face bankruptcy, right? Had we not cleared that hurdle, it would be a whole different story. We could have cleared it. The engineers obviously now know it’s now seems like more about refinement and speed. Like you said, the big guys are well capitalized.
I don’t see how it just gets cheaper and cheaper, more reliable going reusable stuff.
[00:21:27] Luke: Yep. Yep. Actually, that’s a great segue as well to another slide in the ARC deck, because they talk about exactly that, which is the ever decreasing, almost exponentially decreasing cost in the SpaceX in launching reusable rockets, and also like the time tween the reuse of a rocket, which is like coming down and down and down.
So, yeah, according to ARC. Like a one Falcon nine now costs less than a million dollars to refurbish. That’s essentially their launch cost, right? Refurbish the thing, [00:22:00] refuel it, and then that’s it like shoot it off again. And then you’ve put like the next payload in orbit. Those costs are dramatically lower than they used to be.
And the turnaround time is dramatically lower. Like when SpaceX started, it was like 356 days, evidently, turnaround. Time like relaunching a booster and now they’ve got that down to 14 days. So that’s pretty wild.
[00:22:25] Krzysztof: Listening to all this does make me feel it’s hard not to feel bullish when you hear stuff like this, that the, both the rate of, enhanced. Technologies is accelerating and that’s enabling the dropping of costs. So when we’re still in this kind of stagflation ish macro period, that’s how I’m experiencing it anyway, right?
Where costs are going up, but the money’s still being pumped in and inflation, all that stuff, it does seem like this is our way out, right? To innovate our way out of this mess. And the numbers, according to this sort of [00:23:00] optimistic future, the optimistic futurists are making it seem like, yeah, all kinds of things are about to be unlocked for cheaper.
And that’s increased GDP growth, which could take care of the potential looming recession,
[00:23:16] Luke: Yeah. Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:18] Krzysztof: was the only other time we’ve been on this kind of cusp as investors, but we didn’t exactly know it was what, 26 years ago at the advent of the internet. Right, where you could feel sort of like, oh, things are really going to get different, become different, but even those impacts.
from the internet took, well, I don’t even know how to think about this. Like it took before the world changed, like fundamentally, I don’t know, was it a decade, but even then it was like, the rate wasn’t anywhere as quick as it is now.
[00:23:51] Luke: it’s an interesting analogy, isn’t it? Because if you were like an early adopter of that kind of stuff and you’re using like pets. com and all these other. Like [00:24:00] really early e commercey type capabilities, the world got super excited, but then we had like the. com bubble essentially, because I guess big businesses plowed a ton of money into this new.
Like frontier for commerce, like things had to evolve and mature and society had to get used to that. And now it’s generated incredible societal value, the internet, but, in a very different way, perhaps too, was first envisaged and I wonder. Like maybe space will be somewhat similar because it’s a good analogy.
We’re driving down the cost of launch. We’re starting to put like communication, satellites and monitoring of weather tracking and all sorts of other stuff, but kind of who knows how we really kind of monetize space and explore, sort of use the capabilities that we’re creating with these launch providers like super low cost, super high frequency, probably stuff that we can’t quite imagine [00:25:00] today.
Thanks
[00:25:00] Krzysztof: well, with an obvious, counter to that being ASTS and I am prepping a long, deep dive and, and, you know, that’s going to happen, but. There are some things that are, to me, already obvious and already kind of in hand in the sense that it’s just a matter of execution. They can’t launch the, whatever, all the numbers of their satellites that they need, but that’s going to happen over the next, whatever, 12 months, it’s a kind of a waiting game, which then once those are up.
We know the way your phone basically changes overnight. You now have access all the time from anywhere. So the planet changes overnight, literally. That’s kind of the bull case for the company. It’s a flip of the switch and the technology already works. So that’s already proven, right? I guess the analogy from the internet days would be what?
Like Google search worked. We knew it worked. It was just going to [00:26:00] be a matter of time before it kind of got bigger and bigger. We just couldn’t foresee that it would become a verb, right? Just integrate into people’s lives so primordially that there’s no, alternative. So I think there are places as investors, we, can look that are pretty obvious and you have to always do your research, I think in separating the.
What pie in the sky kind of like complete like yeah, this is gonna be the best thing ever But also from the shorts or from the bears that try to you know, spread fear uncertainty and doubt For their own usually for their own market positioning purposes. So there’s no shortcut, right? There’s no shortcut when you’re trying to predict the future, but there are what, as we say in poker, there are, there is the thing thinking bets and you know, when you’re holding good heart cards and [00:27:00] when the probabilities are in your favor.
[00:27:01] Luke: Yeah, like maybe there’s, like, this is an appropriate point for that Donald Rumsfeld quote, right? Like your known knowns, your known unknowns, and your unknown unknowns, because There’s a whole bunch of known unknowns to do with space, but there’s probably like another whole category of stuff that we just have yet to realize is going to be a problem either in like an engineering challenge or a commercialization challenge,
[00:27:27] Krzysztof: Okay, so let me riff a little bit more on this. Cause you’re, you’re, you’ve talked about this industry way more than me, but I think so, for example. With ASTS, there’s the obvious, there’s the known known that your phones are going to be much better, right? Okay, sure. But what we’re not really, I guess most investors probably are not thinking in the way all of the world’s defensive infrastructure changes when all of a sudden every last, I guess [00:28:00] military operation has unlimited access to signals, right?
To the whole internet of things. is empowered in a way that it has never been empowered before. And that’s why, for example, what’s it called the, the CEO of your company and rule Palmer lucky why he’s an ASTS investor because he understands the, what’s it called the defensive contract side of things, but We don’t know how that’s gonna actually play out, right?
Like, we know the frontier. I don’t know, anyway, maybe the experts do. That’s a whole nother dimension of this stuff that’s so wild and kind of beyond imagining that it’s hard to predict, quantify in many ways.
[00:28:47] Luke: but hard to argue at the start of this. like next, not the final frontier like Star Trek, but like this next frontier. Very exciting place to be investing right now. should we come [00:29:00] back down to earth and talk about energy for a bit
[00:29:03] Krzysztof: yes. Tell us, tell us what we need to know from Arc about energy.
[00:29:07] Luke: I’m not a big, energy guy, but I thought I’d throw this slide in because like you are an energy guy, right? You like that stuff. But I did roast this guy, uh, in 2026 about Oklo.
So I’m probably going to have egg on my face because I basically like Oklo as a safari stock back when it was like a 2 company. And now it’s like a 20 something dollar company. Okay. Whatever. but think I’m plugged into this space. Like I did recommend. New scale power. And so the whole, for me, like my investing thesis around this stuff was the need or the benefit that safe nuclear power, modern nuclear power could bring to like the overall energy equation.
And it seems like, arc. Agree as well, because they’re flagging, I’ll quote from the slide, solar, wind, and stationary energy storage are just getting started. One solution will not meet all demands. [00:30:00] And they’re talking about nuclear as being part of that energy equation, but clearly like solar and wind and batteries, like big static batteries, a bit like the ones that EOS makes, but a bunch of other folk make as well are a key.
Factor in addressing our ever increasing energy demands. And the main reason I threw this slide in was Tesla, because this really surprised me. I had no idea. Tesla accounts for 19 percent of global energy storage today. That’s a pretty phenomenal number.
[00:30:32] Krzysztof: I’m holding back on because I feel like an EOS rant coming on. And I’m trying to spare you from that. So you’re saying it’s phenomenal, because I’m in shock. Like we obviously, we know about Tesla energy as being one of their segments. And when you think about Tesla, like it is an energy company, as well as being like an AI company and a car’s company and everything else. But I had no idea they had, I’ve read the stories about what that big [00:31:00] static battery they put in Australia years ago.
[00:31:02] Luke: And I’m sure they’ve done like a ton more of things like that. I had no idea they’re like nearly 20 percent of all the static batteries we have in the world. Is Tesla. That’s a lot. And
[00:31:13] Krzysztof: That is not news to me because that’s precisely what I’ve been looking at, with as much excitement on their earnings calls as their car stuff because, of EOS. So when I see they’re growing that segment over in triple digits. I think it was 114 percent just off the top of my head last quarter, and their solution is in many ways, not always, because that’s unfair, but in many ways inferior to what Eos is making, and Eos is the sort of like pure play on the same sort of idea, it just doesn’t catch fire as one of the main components, and it’s longer lasting, blah, blah, blah, then I get extremely excited about this exact segment.
cool. Yeah, [00:32:00] it’s a massive opportunity for both Tesla and for all the other companies that can figure it out and do something a little bit better or different, not even better, different will suffice.
[00:32:12] Luke: you’re the energy guy, but I guess a bit like, like all those other exponential graphs we were just looking at, like the cost of energy storage is coming down and down, I assume. And this is probably why presumably Trump is so keen to get his hands on, uh, Ukraine’s like rare earth metals, because you know, there’s, we, we need some of that stuff to build some of the infrastructure, build the semiconductors, build the batteries.
[00:32:38] Krzysztof: I mean, this fits in right, the knot, that Gordian knot in the middle, that AI is just I don’t know, the way, I think of it, Badger, is like, every so often the world changes so radically, it’s, it’s mind blowing, but all of these changes run on electrons. I mean, right. Everything, the [00:33:00] digitization of everything.
So those electrons, we just need massive amounts more of them, but then once you gobble them up, you know, like with the sun and night, the whole thing, the fact that the earth spins around and there’s nighttime and you can’t generate it with solar, right? You got to hold them somewhere. So all these things really work together.
You can’t have your AI without having your batteries. Or you can’t run these massive, whatever, inference language models without the electrons. or, last point, this is another thing worth considering, all the electric vehicles that are coming, right? They run on what? Batteries. What do batteries require?
Electrons. Where are these electrons gonna come from? And, how are they gonna recharge? Again, batteries. So for anyone listening to this, I think you gotta almost, like, reset your mind to update it, or maybe perform a new software [00:34:00] install to, from what you used to think batteries were, or how important they were, to a whole new level of importance and integration.
[00:34:09] Luke: Good segue again, because that actually nicely brings us on to another arc slide, about autonomous vehicles, because as these things roll out and we get more and more of them in different formats and shapes, like trucks and little, buggies that drive around the pavement, , that’s really going to change society.
And Arc has some thoughts on that as well as different. So like, well, here’s their autonomous vehicle slide on screen. So you’ve got like big transportation by road, like big trucks. You then got like smaller, like vehicle size, car sized. Uh, logistics again, autonomous.
And then like we’ve seen, I haven’t seen one live, but maybe in university campuses, in some places in the States, you see that it’s all like buggies, like one foot [00:35:00] high, like scooting around and delivering pizza and delivering like textbooks and whatever it is that, um, the students want, like this stuff’s making its way slowly into the real world.
And that’s really going to change the way we. operate as consumers because suddenly, the cost of things like Amazon prime, we’ve been, we had a great conversation with Matt Cochran in last week’s episode, Matt, like super friend of the show, very smart guy. And he has some great anecdotes about, logistics and Amazon’s dominance.
We talked about. Like the magnificent seven, like go check out last week’s episode. If you want to hear that in full, last week we talked about same day delivery becoming almost ubiquitous. Well, as these like drone deliveries and little buggy deliveries really start to take off here, certainly in urban areas.
Like most stuff you’ll be able to get within an hour, maybe even sooner. Right. Because you’ve got this cunning Amazon intelligence, which probably knows what you’re going to order before you [00:36:00] even order it. Like, you know, you hit the buy button and the things like, Oh, it’s at your door, by the way, because we knew you were going to order that thing.
[00:36:07] Krzysztof: So two, two questions for you.
are you talking about the kind of world where after a day of skiing, you know, you’re cold, you come in from the mountain, you get back to your chalet, and before you even sit down, there’s a little thing whirring, bringing you your Rum infused Negroni, like just places it, pops it in your hand just by you, just by knowing your patterns from the day before.
[00:36:39] Luke: I got that already. My, my buddy Jonas makes a mean Negroni. So yeah, l l
[00:36:44] Krzysztof: wild to think about. Two, what year do you think legitimately will be the sort of threshold year where people genuinely think to themselves it’s no longer worth [00:37:00] owning a car? Now owning a car is, call it, I don’t know if I would say stupid, but the way people stopped owning horses and buggies at some point it was just like outmoded.
It’s 2025 now. When does that happen?
[00:37:18] Luke: longer I think than, than the technology. Like, so I think it’s a generational thing. So I don’t like, like most teenagers or is it Gen Z? I don’t know, like 20 year olds, whatever that generation is. Like most of them haven’t, I gather, or at least like a significant number have not bothered like passing their driving test because they can rely on.
Uber and Lyft and other companies like that, and their equivalents in other, you know, remoter parts of the world. And so I think when as that generation and like people younger than that become, as they kind of grow up mature, right. They, [00:38:00] a majority of them probably would never have owned a car and would just never think about owning a car.
Whereas, when I was 17, thousands of years ago, like the very first thing I wanted to do as soon as I passed my 17th birthday was go. Get my first driving lesson and like try and fast track my way to being a vehicle owner. It took me like three goes to pass my test ’cause I was a . But, um, uh, but like I was delighted.
Like as soon as I passed my test I was like to my dad like, help me figure out how to buy a car. And I, you know, I had my first car as soon as I could. ’cause that was such an important part of. My life and how I want to navigate the world, but that stuff’s just irrelevant to kids these days and young adults, right?
There’s certainly gonna be demand for vehicles, but, there’ll be autonomous, not human driven, but I think like it’s the old guys. We have to kind of age out of vehicle ownership because I’m always going to own a vehicle, a car or a motorbike or something. And if I get rid of the current car, I’m gonna replace it with something fancier, maybe.
I’m probably never not going to own a vehicle just because that’s kind of my mindset.
[00:38:59] Krzysztof: Yeah, it’s [00:39:00] just wild to think about man. I liked your example of right, right of passage, phasing out, but as you were talking, it just clicked to me, like, that if I’m a teenager now, it’s just wild to think that I don’t need to rely on my parents to pick me up, to get me. I mean, Musk, we know, is predicting This, uh, paradigm shift probably sooner than reality, will let him, but then again, I’m in the epicenter of all this in Austin, if all the regulatory stuff goes, falls, On, uh, call it Tesla’s side or Musk’s side, I could kind of foresee by 2030, if Austin has a bunch of the robo taxi things just whizzing around, and then my registration comes up and my, you know, car insurance comes up, all these payments come up.
I’m like, why pay all that money? Or actually, here’s the little middle step [00:40:00] between that. Right now, both my wife and I have a car, so we have two cars. I could easily see one of them going away because, you know, that double, you know, so, okay, so we both need it. So one of us will take the robo taxi and the other, right?
So even by that logic, you reduce the cars on the road by what, 25%?
[00:40:23] Luke: Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Like there probably won’t be like a hard transition. We’re just going to slowly drift into like vastly reduced private vehicle ownership where all vehicles on the road are just owned by corporations and then you, you know, you lease them for an hour a day, whatever you need for your particular journey or particular thing you’re trying to make happen.
[00:40:46] Krzysztof: Yeah, totally.
[00:40:49] Luke: And there is another slide in the ARK Invest deck that brings a bit of that journey to life. ARK was sharing in one of their slides, the reduction in Tesla’s cost per [00:41:00] mile and how competitive it is versus Waymo. You know, you and I have chatted about.
Alphabet’s Waymo, I’ve made the argument, I think the strong argument that actually they’re probably ahead of Tesla in terms of actual FSD because they are actually doing it, albeit in geo, geofence locations. Once Tesla kind of catch up in terms of their capability, which might well be Austin first, the fact that Tesla are putting vehicles with this capability on the road at such a lower cost base, because they don’t have Like LIDAR, they have massive efficiencies for their vertical integration of their manufacturing, capacity, and, they are going to succeed.
They’re going to outcompete Waymo at some point. , and they’ve just got the data advantage as well, right? Because they’ve got what hundreds of millions of cars collecting. Billions of miles every day, pretty much right now, which is going into their big AI model to help it learn how to drive
yes. I don’t know if I [00:42:00] have much more to comment on that. It’s pretty obvious.
so that we’re talking about autonomous vehicles just there. And I suppose robots, I’m going to pick that slide out of the ARK invest deck as well, like robots are kind of like autonomous vehicles in your home.
[00:42:15] Luke: And again, I think ARK is showing some quite interesting statistics around how robots, well in the home, but actually what ARK are talking about here, and I Like the commercial space and they’ve made the observation, which hadn’t occurred to me, but I think is very true. That small businesses, little companies are going to benefit disproportionately from humanoid robots.
Let me sort of run the logic by you and see if this, gels with you as well, because if you’re like a massive organization, like I say, Amazon, right. And they’ve got Kiva, whoever it is, they got, they got their, you know, millions of robots, whatever they’ve got now whizzing around their warehouses, moving things [00:43:00] around, like they have these highly specialized robots.
To do like high frequency, you know, high capacity to do one job really well. And so that’s the kind of model that works when you’re like a giant, like an Amazon, but if you’re like some little company, you’ve probably actually got, let’s say you’re like, you know, 10 to a hundred staff members, human staff members, and if you’re like a blue collar type, where if you have a white collar kind of company, you’re probably replacing those people with software like LLMs and different stuff.
And if it’s a blue collar kind of job. Maybe like a small construction company or you’re manufacturing like small volume manufacturing or I know haircuts and manicures or whatever, like the hell it is, right? Making cakes. If we have humanoid robots, which are then like the world has been designed for humans with like two hands and two eyes.
Well, to, those small companies are going to get a significant benefit because they can like directly replace. Some of the more boring, [00:44:00] repetitive jobs that they humans do with one or two robots, which might cost them like $20,000 or $30,000 and they have to charge them up every night. but then, you know, if you can, if a one robot last you like five years, well, you didn’t have to keep playing that human salary.
You got like. You know, many years worth of stuff and the robots can be working like 24 seven through the night. So, you know, you can see the, impact on like margins for smaller companies and how robots are really going to change that thing, which is going to help more consumers because it’s going to make like goods and services cheaper, perhaps better quality, perhaps more reliable, repeatable, which I think,
[00:44:39] Krzysztof: man. This is mind blowing to me. Just thinking about this stuff. Honestly, you know, we pooh poohed the Tesla robo taxi presentation. Now that was what, six months ago. one of the things we saw where the human robots dancing around and serving drinks, right? As you were talking, there’s [00:45:00] obviously the way corporations that could afford these things right up front will benefit. But then immediately I thought of having my own little robot house cleaner, and obviously as an early adopter. You would be paying up out the nose for the privilege. Let’s say five years, five years after the first one debuts. Think about what a massive industry the home cleaning industry is. Right, but then think about how quickly LLMs learn, how quickly, like the Roomba version, the sort of, you know, the Roomba goes around, learns the map of your house, how exciting that was, now you no longer need to sweep your floors or whatever.
But imagine having an actual thingamajig that learns How to clean every surface and you know, whatever you leave the house for four hours You turn it on and you come back and you have a sparkling house. Like that’s like Legitimately to me doable right for at this [00:46:00] point.
[00:46:00] Luke: yeah, there are obviously still major engineering, like barriers to cross. Like, we’re certainly on the path to that.
[00:46:08] Krzysztof: Yeah, I’m saying it’s no longer like sci fi, you know Like or you know in the Rocky movies There’s the I don’t know right? There’s big One of the characters get it gets a little robot thing for his birthday. I can’t remember right but At that point, what was that? That was just a box that like had lights and rolled around. Uh, it’s weird to say, yeah, the future is now, but then I was thinking, right. I mean, this gets us to that universal basic income conversation pretty darn fast, I think, you know, you start taking away all these jobs. I mean, how many. Industries depend on these kinds of menial tasks is staggering and that many of them can be replaced might be replaced It’s just like wild to think about.
[00:46:51] Luke: I’m an optimist. And so I think there are solutions that aren’t just about UBI, universal basic income, but like, we’ll always think of [00:47:00] other things for humans to do. We’re just more like this stuff is magnifying our impact and our ability and it’s getting rid of like the really boring stuff that frankly no one wants to do.
but yeah, like I’m no argument, it’s going to be a vastly different world. And as a, as someone who certainly plans to buy one of these things. As soon as it’s available as well, like I’m super looking forward to that.
[00:47:21] Krzysztof: Yeah, I mean there is a slide on this deck titled jobs are bundles of tasks and it’s the cost of dish washing You know, which includes wash dishes, glassware, please clean dishes, store them, remove trash, all these things that are not that complicated, once, put it this way, if Tesla can literally solve driving, right, in complex situations, Then surely the put away a few dishes and mop the floor is just not even close in terms of level of difficulty [00:48:00] and The time spent right billion in billions is staggering.
[00:48:05] Luke: I’d argue that they are the same problem. Like you’re trying to understand the world and achieve some kind of outcome. And if you happen to be like a robot, a car shaped robot, you’re understanding like the traffic and the pedestrians, and you’re trying to get from where you are to some other location.
And if you’re like a humanoid shaped robot in a house, then, you know, yeah, you’re trying to turn like dirty dishes into clean dishes and get them back in the cupboard. The same kind of thing, like see, understand, and then take action. You know, there is an arc slide, which is much closer to what, what’s happening right now.
because like with humanoid robots, we’re talking about like physical AI in the real world doing stuff. And that might be a little, you’re right. It’s not science fiction that’s coming, but it’s still like coming soon. But stuff that’s here now are essentially like software, [00:49:00] robots, agents, agentic AI.
And there’s a couple of, there’s like operator from open AI. I’ve not used it. I’m looking forward to using it. There’s a bunch of tools from Gemini Jarvis, I think is like one of the code names. And, there’s one from perplexity, I think. And essentially like it’s early days right now, the way some of these agents are working, I don’t know if you’ve looked at some videos.
It’s like. The robot, the AI takes control of your laptop, maybe takes control of your browser and it literally like pushes the mouse around and clicks buttons and it tries to achieve some kind of outcome for you, like booking a vacation or researching like the next fancy vacuum cleaner and then buying it, we’re starting to use this stuff now and I think this is going to be incredibly powerful.
And I’m going to concede something to you on in before we wrap up this conversation because I think you’re right about one of my portfolio holdings. And now I’m thinking a bit harder about it. Anyway, before I [00:50:00] before I
[00:50:01] Krzysztof: hmm. Are you gonna say are you gonna? Oh
[00:50:04] Luke: um, well, it’s alphabet alphabet is the one I’m conceding perhaps concerned about now. I think you’re right. Because. Well, let’s just take, let’s take the big picture of you, right? So like today, if I want to buy, I know a new pair of headphones or something, right? I might go and look at a few different websites and do my research and then I’ll do a bit of price Comparison and see where I can get it the cheapest and I’ll look at you know How quickly can I get it and do they have like a decent guarantee and all that sort of stuff?
And then I’ll buy the thing and it’ll get shipped to me and great. I’ve got my headphones. So there’s like a bunch of work I did there. And in the process of me doing that work, like different websites are pushing a whole bunch of advertising to me and I’m kind of seeing it and maybe, you know, like maybe Sony managed to sell me their headphones cause they know I’m researching headphones rather than, whichever other manufacturer I might have been intending to buy. so like in the future with like these, [00:51:00] once I start using these AI agents, like my e commerce journey might be me literally saying to like Gemini, buy me the best reviewed headphones for under a hundred bucks. And then like the agent is going to do all that research and read the comparison websites and price check.
And it’s just going to come back to me and say, like, I recommend this particular brand, like model of headphones. You can buy the cheapest here. Like here it is, like essentially it’s going to give me the page, which says like, click here to confirm the purchase. And so I didn’t see with my human eyes, any of that advertising.
So that’s all lost. Um, and that is, I will concede a major concern for a company like Google, which is leading, like they’re building their own AI agents, but they got a really fundamentally. re engineer their revenue model, essentially, because, um, like SEO and advertising and all that stuff is going to become kind of irrelevant in the future.
[00:51:59] Krzysztof: [00:52:00] Yeah. It’s hard to think that a pillar of the world’s like mag seven, market, like Google could lose its fundamental source of income. that’s pretty wild.
[00:52:12] Luke: Yeah, certainly when it comes to buying, I do like this ARK quote, one click checkout should give way to one query purchasing. I think that’s quite a smart way of thinking about at least that particular use case, which is like, I have an intent and I want to buy a thing. If I want to research something though, and I suppose it’s the same thing, like I’m using agents today to, or different, more sophisticated research models to go and do the research and distill them back into something for me.
[00:52:41] Krzysztof: You know, this, reminds me that one of the companies that I think. We’ve studied quite a bit over the many years is TTD, Trade Desk. I wonder if this is even more in the crosshairs , than Google might be, or as much. I don’t know. But [00:53:00] exactly one of those companies that I’m thinking of, forgive me for saying this, like, even something like CrowdStrike, where that moat that was once impenetrable, I don’t know what the AI is going to be able to do and whether it’s sophisticated enough to really completely make an entire industry sort of just other, and thereby, unless the fundamental company also adapts and adjusts.
fast enough that they just don’t, you know, they just go away. I don’t know.
[00:53:33] Luke: You’re right. And I’ll agree with you because Arca pointing out how like that point you were just making, like companies like the trade desk and Pubmatic and all these guys that are there essentially to put like the right advert in front of your eyeballs to sell you something with that, you know, amazing like auction that takes place in real time, like a lot of that’s just going to, you won’t need that stuff.
And so I think arcs data, if we believe it is telling us that. [00:54:00] Something like 6 percent of page views are now coming from AI looking at the web, like crawling and figuring stuff out as opposed to humans, and that’s only going to go up. And so that’s massively going to reduce the value. Of like these companies because they’re all about sticking adverts in front of human eyes.
[00:54:24] Krzysztof: And I keep coming back to the same point badger. So I’ll speak in my head. So I’ll say it out loud. We started the show by talking about acceleration, right? That’s I think want emphasize to our investors. The internet took like whatever, 25 years to sort of evolve, I think was a normal evolutionary pace.
Maybe it was fast, but maybe it was a fast evolutionary pace, but it would not surprise me in a similar way, like when Kodak lost most of its purpose for existing when digital [00:55:00] photos came online and went from film to digital and that company goes extinct, the rate at which some of these now seemingly strong companies might go extinct.
Because the rate at which the stuff will only increase as the AI agents get faster and better, it might really be a matter of, I don’t know, months? At some point, like months, years, I don’t know, like I would, I think as an investor right now, I would really encourage everyone to look at your portfolio and at least do the mental framework of is your company, are the companies you’re positioned in behind the bulldozer in front of it, you know, or alongside the bulldozer or in front of it.
Maybe that’s the better spatial metaphor. And if you have doubts, just, put some asterisks next to that and, you know, do the work and blah, blah, blah, but do not take anything for granted at this point,
[00:55:57] Luke: Yep. Entirely agree. I’ve been asking myself that question about [00:56:00] my portfolio and having read the arc deck, I’m probably going to go back and look at my portfolio again. and ask myself more probing questions about some of my holdings.
[00:56:08] Krzysztof: right? Cause, uh, to be not cynical, but as much money as can be made during this shift. Can also be lost if if you’re not taking this stuff seriously enough, I suppose.
[00:56:21] Luke: Yeah, totally. Like if you’re again, it points out why the majority of investors should just buy the index, right? Because by definition, like you own in proportion to its size, every company. In the index, say the S and P, the NASDAQ, whatever your index you chose to buy. And you don’t have to ask these questions and rebalance like it all happens for you.
But if you’re going to be a growth investor, which is like a subset of the different kinds of investor you could be, if you’re going to own some of these smaller companies that are ripe for. Being disruptors, but also being disrupted. You got to keep your eye on that prize and watch and like, things are happening so [00:57:00] much faster today than they ever were.
And like tomorrow there’ll be happening even faster still. So yeah, like things can happen on a dime and you might find like. Chegg, you know, the homework company, but I think, have they now gone into receivership? Oh, no, no, they were, that’s right. They announced a few weeks ago. if you remember them, they were a company that were like helping kids with their homework and do like research.
Well, like LLMs smashed them because now suddenly kids are just asking like chat GPT for the answer and to help them understand the topic. I think Chegg are now trying to sell their assets and they were like a multi hundred. Million dollar company. Like they’ve been valued at less than like 10 million.
I think if I’ve got those numbers, right, like they’re worth nothing.
[00:57:43] Krzysztof: Wild. Yeah,
[00:57:44] Luke: Hey, Oh, well, that was good. That was a deep dive into the Ark invest deck. If you’re listening to this and you found it interesting, like go read the whole deck, 148 pages, skim it, pick out the stuff that interests you. And maybe there’s like a slide we didn’t touch on where you’ve got your own. Thoughts and [00:58:00] questions, like do drop them into the comments on the YouTubes and on the, podcasts and catch us on X, tell us all about what you think.
[00:58:06] Krzysztof: right on. There’s so much more to talk about so maybe we’ll revisit it in future episodes. Especially, right, if there’s a particular segment that you call to our attention. I want to to so to change topics a little bit. To some extent, this is, uh, a fun, uh, fun little story. I came across some time ago I think was the coach or the head manager of, uh, a professional football team hired professional pickpocketers. a team dinner. So you know, all the athletes were sitting around having a good time and by the night’s end, you know, they didn’t have their wallets and you know, what’s the moral of the story? I suppose It’s something like, always be paying attention. [00:59:00] I want to tie that in with another observation I made this weekend.
Explicitly to myself. It’s boggling my mind to the extent of which the price of shares, or the volatility that you see, like pre earnings, post earnings, you know, the algo driven stuff. It is now like the rate at which like a company releases earnings. Then you see the stock price plummet like 18%, but then by days end, it’s up 6%.
And then, that kind of like, what’s it called? Harmonica not harmonica accordion going back and forth, is faster than ever. And to me, it’s palpable. And I think I’m putting these ideas together to say, more than ever, it seems like you have to be more vigilant. than ever because the forces acting on your investments is, is quicker than ever, but also to your point that if you remain an [01:00:00] investor with call it a three to five year outlook, you can’t go much beyond that because things are changing too fast in the other direction, in the longterm direction, then you could sort of, not isolate yourself from these wild rapid changing changings, but you won’t be so affected by them. Because whether a share price goes down overnight, 18 percent and up 6 percent the next day, giving you whiplash, you just won’t really care that much, but to the pickpocketers point, I don’t know, maybe this seems too cliche to say, but like always be paying attention, but paying attention to what?
Paying attention to, the bigger picture of your investments thesis. I don’t know if that’s useful badger.
[01:00:44] Luke: yeah, it’s good. Good reminder. And I could, I said a metaphor, right? Like the future, if you don’t keep an eye on it, might like pickpocket your returns because like the world went in a direction you didn’t expect. And it went so quickly, like you didn’t have a chance to react. So suddenly, [01:01:00] like you’re with the herd selling.
Like after the horse has already bolted out of the gate. This is
what we try. right. I mean, I guess to work the metaphor a little bit, how do pickpocketers work by misdirection to a large extent, right? They want your attention over here. They bump your shoulder. That’s what you feel. Meanwhile, their hand is in your other pocket because you can’t feel it because you’re over here, right?
[01:01:24] Krzysztof: I don’t know. I thought it was a cool. I like that the manager did this because they’re professionals, right? And even professionals can continue to get better and they lose sight of some things. So. I think for investors, it’s a good, it’s a good, thing to consider. Are you paying attention in the right way to the right things?
[01:01:43] Luke: I wonder if that is a somewhat of a segue you doing well with these segues today, by the way, I wonder if that is a bit of a segue to the Donald Trump quote that you wanted to talk about, or is this sequence of truth, social posts? Cause is there [01:02:00] some misdirection going on here?
[01:02:01] Krzysztof: Yeah. So I’m going to speak about this because some of our patreons over at patreon. com slash wall street wildlife. We love you guys. they asked for my comment on this. And first of all, that this is that yesterday Trump announced that there’s going to be some sort of national level crypto reserve thing made, right?
Okay, fine. We know he’s a pro crypto president, right? So that’s not news. But then he listed the coins that would, you know, he listed examples of the coins that would be in this thing. he listed Solana, XRP, and ADA, right? Well, and then he, he retweeted and saying, oh, and also Bitcoin and Ethereum, I love those too.
Man, this is, you know what this is? Uh, given my take on XRP specifically, I see XRP as an actual, like, failed project. Compared to chain link. [01:03:00] So because of my understanding of the space, I’m seeing the president basically promoting one of these mean coin shit coins that just still has value simply because people say it does right. Turns out that David Sacks, you know, one of the former all in guys, uh, is now the A. R. A. I. Z. R. helping to implement all these things. Surprise, he is an investor in the company whose top five holdings are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and ADA. In other words, when I read the tea leaves, this is almost like literal, blatant corruption, but in the crypto space, it’s legal because there are no, they’re not quite securities or whatever the regulations are.
So it’s sort of like. The problem with lawmakers. [01:04:00] Investing in securities and companies while they make the laws so they know which stocks are going to benefit from the laws that they’re, elected to implement why the whole Nancy Pelosi tracker, right? Is such a thing to pay attention to as a citizen, right?
Is it fair that she? Has made so much money as a congressperson and congress obviously is this is the whole thing like how corrupt is the system? in this crypto space, it’s even more mind blowing because it’s front and center. It’s not even illegal It’s just in your face and here’s monkeys point Here’s the moral of the story. You would think, as a normal citizen, that what the president promotes is somehow good for the country or good for everyone. no, This is almost like, again, like a kind of grifting slash [01:05:00] corruption made public, made seductive, made legal, or not illegal, whichever way you want to look at it.
And unless you’ve done your work and know that things like XRP is closer, way closer to a gamble and a degenerate thing than it is call it good crypto, the way I think of it, then you’re going to be completely fleeced, like 100 percent by the president himself. And in this case, forgive my politics, I do not trust that guy because I think of him as a serial liar. please be careful, all of you who are following my lead and investing in crypto. And just, dammit, be sure that you’re not taking these kind of front and center promotional announcements, blindly just because it’s the president that’s making them. [01:06:00] It’s like corruption made public is my takeaway.
[01:06:03] Luke: Yeah. I guess we’ve
[01:06:04] Krzysztof: Maybe legal made legal.
[01:06:05] Luke: yeah, we’ve seen multiple examples of this and not just from. Like the leader of the U. S. We’ve seen it from the leader of Argentina, right? He was caught up in some scandal where either knowingly or unknowingly he endorsed Libra, like another cryptocurrency and said, Oh, this is like the future of money for Argentina.
And then there was like a rug pull and a bunch of, I guess, citizens have lost like a ton of cash in that. Trump blatantly did it with Trump coin and millennia coin. And then, yeah, you know, allegedly, He and his cryptos are maybe have some interests, allegedly have some interests in some of these cryptos.
Like, just do your own
[01:06:44] Krzysztof: Oh, not even right. Not even allegedly. I mean people uncovered that right before this announcement, there was this massive bet. Using 50 X leverage on the three coins mentioned by [01:07:00] Trump’s announcement.
[01:07:02] Luke: And I’m,
I’m trying to, I’m protecting us from like David Sachs lawyers. Right. Even though we’re like, nobody’s. So I, I don’t know. And I know, ’cause I only, ’cause I saw like an hour before we recorded, like he’s all over Twitter denying, like how he’s managed his own crypto holdings. So I got no idea. And you know, whatever we read, don’t believe anything you read.
Right. I think
[01:07:22] Krzysztof: sure.
[01:07:22] Luke: there’s some kind of investigation going on and something will come out officially at some point. But the main point here is, people with influence or insider information, that’s like totally illegal in the regular securities world. But if you’re a member of Congress, well, this stuff happens and, uh, at the moment, and certainly this administration doesn’t look like it’s going to be the administration that’s going to kind of close down those levels of access and force anyone with that kind of information to either.
like have their portfolio managed blind or just not be allowed to manage to own stocks.
[01:07:57] Krzysztof: Right. Which one, one last point [01:08:00] occurs to me in the chain link community. There were, there was a lot of grumbling that they didn’t mention chain link, in the list. And now thinking this through, I’m like, thank God they didn’t, because I want them to keep very clear the sort of like. the real stuff from all the grifting stuff.
And so I like this idea of sort of the real project What’s it called? They’re going to prove their worth without any of these, these public campaigns. And then, the value, then the fundamentals will rise to the top. So it’s sort of a counterintuitive take, people who are doing their work and their research and understanding what’s.
The on the on the ground fundamentals will benefit because those will will win out and you don’t need the pump pump and dumps
[01:08:49] Luke: Great stuff.
[01:08:49] Krzysztof: This has been a Banger has been has this been a banger? Maybe our YouTube commentators can let us know In the [01:09:00] comments, all our fancy wild animals over on Patreon, bless your hearts, thanks for supporting our work, you know who you are, we’re enjoying every second of it.
[01:09:09] Luke: yeah, good stuff. patreon. com slash wall street wildlife. We have now actually got merch. We’ve had our designers been helping us like, In the last 24 hours, I now have some like fancy images. And as soon as we hang up this recording session, I’m trying to try and figure out with Christophe, how we put the merch on the platform and how we make this work in like a way that’s nice for all Patreons.
But there’s a bunch of other Patreon benefits, like not the least of which is. If you’re at our Capybara tier and above, you don’t have to listen to our stinking adverts. Like you get ad free experience. Yeah, check it out if you enjoy the show and, uh, go give us a thumbs up over there, but otherwise you can find us at X.
I do more of my tweeting as at seven Luke Hallard.
[01:09:54] Krzysztof: 7 Flying Platypus,
[01:09:57] Luke: Very good. Are you ready to become a beast of an [01:10:00] investor?
[01:10:00] Krzysztof: your journey starts here, animals.
