I&rsquo;ve lived through every absurd rise and fall this space has thrown at us.
When I first went on CNBC in 2013 to tell people to buy Bitcoin, they laughed.
In 2017, I wrote checks into FIL and ZEC before anyone could even explain the word &ldquo;tokenomics.&rdquo;
And at these levels? I&rsquo;m buying.
Aggressively.
Why? Because the underlying numbers aren&rsquo;t just good&hellip;
They&rsquo;re insane.
<h3>The Numbers</h3>
Stablecoin volume has gone from $2.5 trillion in 2020 to $27.6 trillion in 2024 to $50 trillion this year.
For perspective: Visa&mdash;the global payments giant&mdash;is doing $15 trillion. Crypto rails are already bigger. No one&rsquo;s talking about it.
Tokenized stocks? There was zero volume five years ago. This year: $1 trillion.
Still less than 1% of global stock-market volume&mdash;which means it hasn&rsquo;t even started.
Tokenization of real assets is exploding. In 2020, less than $1 billion existed on-chain. In 2025: $60 billion. By 2030: $30 trillion.
This is a new operating system for global finance. Every tokenization infrastructure project is sitting on a decade-long tailwind.
DeFi? Same story. $100 billion in 2020. $2.5 trillion in 2024. $5 trillion this year. Because traders prefer faster, cheaper, 24/7 markets&mdash;and DeFi doesn&rsquo;t close.
Countries are joining in. Strategic crypto reserves went from just a couple back in 2020 to 27 countries today.
And the biggest one: users.
<h3>The Path to 1 Billion </h3>
100 million people used crypto in 2020.
560 million by 2024.
We&rsquo;ll hit 860 million this year and crack one billion next year.
That reminds me of the internet&rsquo;s real takeoff.
It wasn&rsquo;t 1995.
It wasn&rsquo;t the bubble of 2000. The true explosion started in 2005&mdash;the moment global internet users crossed a billion. Crypto hits that milestone in months.
This isn&rsquo;t the end of the cycle.
It&rsquo;s inning one in a new financial operating system being rewritten in real time.
That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m buying.

ALC-Issue-11-21-25(Featured)

We&rsquo;re living in an epic period of change, danger, and opportunity. The economy is blowing up in our faces. The Fed is printing trillions of dollars. People are getting fired and replaced by computers. Every day, we&rsquo;re bombarded with fake news and fake data. Crypto is eating everything online. Every &ldquo;fix&rdquo; from the government makes things worse. Technology is moving too fast for anyone to keep up.
In short, the Old World has been demolished&hellip; the new world is just beginning. Alongside the greatest wealth shift in human history. We get it. People are desperate for answers and to cut through the noise. Everyone wants to become financially secure. Nobody knows who to trust. That&rsquo;s where we can help.
Altucher Confidential&nbsp;is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart. It&rsquo;s a guide West, to the new frontier. For those who are ready to hear, James Altucher and Chris Campbell provide an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. Consider&nbsp;Altucher Confidential&nbsp;your daily guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.

mobile masthead-ALTCONF

AltucherConfidential

Altucher Confidential is your guide to surviving and thriving in the age of risk, chaos, and tremendous rewards. This is not a newsletter for the faint of heart.

Altucher Confidential

Why I’m Buying Crypto Here

It&rsquo;s November 1998.&nbsp;
The Nasdaq had just faced its most violent pullback of the dotcom era to date. The Nasdaq 100 peaked around 1,500 and dropped below 1,100.&nbsp;
Long Term Capital just went under. Russia was insolvent. Time&rsquo;s front page cover asked: &ldquo;Is the Boom Over?&rdquo;
It looked like Greenspan&rsquo;s &ldquo;irrational exuberance&rdquo; warning from two years ago was finally coming true.
No one saw what was coming next.&nbsp;
The Nasdaq didn&rsquo;t crash. It ended up rising about 5x over the next year and a half. Only then did the market truly reverse.&nbsp;
Oh, there was also this thing called a midterm election. That happened in November too.&nbsp;
The point is, everything looked terrible right up until it wasn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
Over the last two weeks, it&rsquo;s starting to feel a lot like November 1998.&nbsp;
Tech stocks are down. There&rsquo;s a shakeup in Congress. NVIDIA is facing its first real test of the era (it&rsquo;s trading at just 11x forward earnings by the way). The Nasdaq is trading at its most attractive valuation in years.&nbsp;
As an investor, it puts you at a crossroads:
<ol>
<li>Will you let the fear get to you and miss out on the next rally?</li>
<li>Or will you lean into this moment and buy the absolute best stocks that you can while they&rsquo;re trading for cheap?&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
Based on all the estimates from BlackRock, Morgan, Citi, McKinsey and Goldman we&rsquo;re still only 15% of the way through the AI buildout. Big Tech has spent $1.5 trillion so far. The estimate is $10 trillion.&nbsp;
You have options. You can go out and buy the biggest names in the AI buildout while they&rsquo;re trading at their cheapest multiples in awhile.
I mentioned NVIDIA is trading at just 11x forward earnings. That&rsquo;s what analysts expect it to make next year. Dell is at 12x. Micron is just 4x.&nbsp;
To put this in perspective, Cisco &ndash; the NVIDIA of the dotcom era &ndash; was trading at 120x forward earnings at the peak in 2000.&nbsp;
Or&hellip;
You can buy the tiny companies they&rsquo;re working with that are so ridiculously mispriced, they&rsquo;re not even on Wall Street&rsquo;s radar.&nbsp;
One of my top analysts just presented me with an idea that looks like one of those candidates.
From what we can tell, it&rsquo;s actually a secret supplier to SpaceX.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Secret supplier&rdquo; means they&rsquo;re likely blocked by an NDA from revealing the relationship. Which means when the truth gets out, the stock will go nuts.&nbsp;
Again, this stock is not even on Wall Street&rsquo;s radar. It literally has zero analysts tracking it.
That&rsquo;s why I call the guy who brought it to my attention &ldquo;Analyst #1.&rdquo;
He&rsquo;s of my top guys when it comes to finding 1,000% winners. He bought Palantir three years ago before it went up 2,500%. He called the quantum boom two years ago and closed a 2,237% winner in three months. He also bought Micron last year before it went up 1,000%.&nbsp;
Now, he&rsquo;s putting $100,000 of his own money into this next idea this Thursday at 3:59pm ET.&nbsp;
Why Thursday at 3:59pm? Well, this company is making a big announcement after the market closes on Thursday.&nbsp;
And I actually asked him to hold off on his purchase so you could get in first.&nbsp;
We publish research for you first and foremost. And this stock looks so critical to the future that Elon is building that I wanted to give you a chance to get a first crack at it.&nbsp;

ALC-Issue-111026-1

“I Made $336,025 on Micron. Here’s What I’m Buying Thursday”

It&rsquo;s a Tuesday morning in 2032.
You&rsquo;re on the front porch, drinking coffee. Your AI news briefing tells you the Dow crossed 200,000 overnight. You skip the market recap and go straight to the crossword.
Seven-letter word for &ldquo;Chatbot that debuted in November 2022.&rdquo; You fill it in.&nbsp;
A delivery robot rolls up with your weekly peptides. It&rsquo;s the second robot this week. You&rsquo;ve named them all Gary.
Your granddaughter texts from orbit. Honeymoon. Four nights, 250 miles up, ocean view of every ocean. You paid for it without blinking. In 2032, space is the new Alaska cruise, with better buffets and fewer seagulls. She deserves it.
Your neighbor leans over the fence. He&rsquo;s admiring the shiny new self-driving RV in your carport.
&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done pretty well for yourself,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;How did you see all this coming?&rdquo;
You tell him the truth.
&ldquo;Remember November 2026?&rdquo;
<h3>The Great Data Center Panic&nbsp;</h3>
Forty-one towns voted on AI data centers. Forty said no. The Nasdaq lost 5.5% in a single day. Nvidia dropped 9%. Senators called for a national moratorium.&nbsp;
It was, by all accounts, the beginning of the end. Every headline in America announced, with tremendous confidence, the AI bubble had popped.
The crowd ran for the exits. Crowds do that. It&rsquo;s tradition.
That same week, Elon Musk posted: &ldquo;Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.&rdquo;
Everyone laughed.&nbsp;
You sat down and did the math.
<h3>The Math</h3>
A Brookings study had just estimated America could pour $10.3 trillion into AI infrastructure by 2032. As a share of the economy, that&rsquo;s bigger than the railroad boom.
By November 2026, roughly 15% of that money had been spent. The other $9 trillion still needed somewhere to go.&nbsp;
Sure, some towns had locked the front door. But you think back: money that size always finds a window.
When China banned Bitcoin mining in 2021, miners packed up and plugged back in&mdash;in Texas. And when most states banned gambling, Nevada leaned in. The money drove into the desert and built Las Vegas.&nbsp;
This time, you suspected, the welcome mat was 250 miles up. And Elon had already filed for it months prior.&nbsp;
<h3>Houston, We Have a Filing</h3>
In January 2026, SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to launch one million solar-powered data center satellites. The filing called it &ldquo;a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization.&rdquo;
That, Elon explained, is a civilization that harnesses the full power of its star. The FCC harnessed the full power of the public comment period.
Only about 17,000 satellites orbited Earth back then. Elon wanted a million more. Every one of them needed parts. Somebody had to make those parts.
You made it your business to find out who.
After all, space has no zoning board. No town hall. No neighbor with a lawn sign. The voters handed Elon the best sales pitch of his career, and he never had to ask.
So you bought the tiny company making those parts. You bought it that week, while the headlines were still screaming.
That, you told your neighbor, is where it all started.&nbsp;
<h3>Now Back to Today</h3>
It&rsquo;s November 2026. The porch, the robot and the honeymoon in orbit are still six years away. But the paperwork&rsquo;s filed. The money&rsquo;s waiting. The crowd&rsquo;s terrified.&nbsp;
If this feels familiar, it should.&nbsp;
ChatGPT launched in November 2022, in the middle of a brutal tech bear market. FTX collapsed that same month. By spring, three banks were gone.
The people who bought Nvidia that month never mention it. (They don&rsquo;t have to. Just look at their driveways.)
James has spent decades finding setups like this one. This time, every clue points to one tiny supplier.
It&rsquo;s an American company. Its parts are already riding on thousands of satellites. Orders are climbing. Its own executives say orbital data centers could send business into hyperspeed. And every one of Elon&rsquo;s million satellites will need what it makes.&nbsp;
Wall Street barely knows it exists.
For good measure, James found two more: a way to own the honeymoon in orbit, and a quiet chip designer connecting the ground to the sky.
He just laid out the whole story in <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2543807">a brand new video right here</a>. The company, the orders and the deadline. Act fast, because by this Thursday, November 12, it could be too late. (He explains the urgency in <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2543807">the video</a> too.)
&nbsp;

ALC-Issue-110926-1

 2032: DOW 200,000

One weekend I tried to write a vampire novel.
I cheated. I had AI do most of the work.
First, I gave it a plot. Then I asked it to write the first chapter.
Then I made it pretend to be Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, John Grisham, and Dan Brown. Each author had to critique the others, argue about what worked, and rewrite the chapter.
I kept changing the prompts. Trying different approaches.
Eventually, I realized I was rewriting practically everything AI wrote.
Why am I even using AI?
Look, I love AI. I studied it in the 1980s, built companies around it, and use it every day.
But here&rsquo;s the problem with it: AI gravitates toward the average.
This is useful for plenty of things. If you're solving a math problem, you want the answer everyone agrees on.
But the average novel is terrible. The average business idea is mediocre. The average website looks like every other website.
And here's the biggest problem: AI is making it easier than ever to be average.
I discussed this with Chandler Bolt, founder of SelfPublishing.com, on my latest podcast.
His company helps publish two to five books a day. And our conversation revealed something much bigger than the future of publishing.
<h3>The Mobile Notary Lesson</h3>
Chandler told me about a book his company helped publish called Sign and Thrive.
It's about mobile notaries.
That's it.
Not leadership. Not finding your purpose. Not seven habits of people who wake up at 4:30 a.m. and make everyone else feel terrible.
Mobile notaries.
Chandler thought nobody would read it.
It now has roughly 1,600 Amazon reviews.
Meanwhile, thousands of people are writing generic books about leadership.
What's the difference?
Specificity.
The mobile notary book solves a particular problem for a particular group of people.
And this applies to almost every business.
AI makes it incredibly easy to build a website, launch an app, produce content, or start a company.
But when everyone has the same tools, the tools stop being an advantage.
The advantage becomes knowing exactly whose problem you're solving.
<h3>The Third-Marriage Problem</h3>
Chandler showed me another successful book: The Six Pillars of Intimacy.
I told him Claude could probably write something similar.
Six pillars. Historical anecdotes. Psychology research. Some Jungian ideas.
But there's a problem.
If I wrote The Six Pillars of Intimacy, people would say, "James, aren't you on your third marriage?"
Fair point.
The actual authors spent years coaching couples. They've lived the subject. They have credibility.
AI can give me the same information they have.
It can't give me their experience.
And this is going to matter enormously.
As AI makes products cheaper to create, trust becomes more valuable.
So does reputation. So does distribution. So does having real relationships with real customers.
The things AI can't simply generate on command.
<h3>The Viral Coefficient</h3>
Chandler introduced me to something called the viral coefficient.
I've written about 25 books and somehow never thought much about this.
It's simple.
When somebody buys your product, how many additional customers does that purchase create?
If one customer brings in another, your viral coefficient is one. If each brings in two, it's two.
Chandler pointed to The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
Someone reads it. Changes their morning routine. Friends notice.
"What happened to you?"
"I read this book."
Another sale.
The product changes behavior. The behavior becomes the marketing.
This is what every entrepreneur and investor should be thinking about.
Not just, &ldquo;How much can AI cut costs?&rdquo;
But, &ldquo;How can AI help build something so valuable that customers can't stop talking about it?&rdquo;
Because cutting costs improves margins. Creating something people love builds businesses worth owning.
<h3>The New Scarcity</h3>
Chandler's company does about $10 million a year.
So I asked how he gets to $100 million.
His biggest challenge isn't producing more books.
It's finding customers.
Search engines used to bring him roughly $3 million to $5 million in annual customer revenue.
Now people ask ChatGPT instead of Google. They get their answers without visiting his website.
AI is making production cheaper while simultaneously disrupting distribution.
That's a pretty remarkable combination.
And it tells us where the next fortunes might be made.
Not necessarily by the people generating the most content, launching the most apps, or writing the most code.
But by the people who understand a specific customer, earn their trust, and build something customers recommend.
I still might finish that vampire novel.
But it has nothing to do with whether AI can write it.&nbsp;
Because in a world where everyone can make anything, the hardest thing to manufacture is a reason to care.

ALC-Issue-110326-1

The Great AI Slopocalypse

The largest crypto heist in history happened last night.&nbsp;
&nbsp;You should hear about it now, so we&rsquo;re sending Altucher Confidential early.&nbsp;
$6.3 billion worth of crypto and stablecoins was reportedly stolen from Binance &ndash; the world&rsquo;s largest crypto exchange.&nbsp;
To put this number into perspective, the previous record belonged to the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025.
This one was four times larger.
Bitcoin is now trading around $77,000, while tech stocks are also in freefall following a string of weak earnings reports.
Here&rsquo;s what we know so far.&nbsp;
<h3>How Did Hackers Steal $6.3 Billion?</h3>
So far, the company believes the attack started with a compromised laptop belonging to one of its engineers.
That compromised laptop allowed the attacker to access Binance&rsquo;s internal systems where they submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions.
Binance says it has found no evidence that the private keys protecting its crypto wallets were leaked.
Instead, they appear to have compromised the infrastructure Binance uses to operate them and found a way to make unauthorized withdrawals look legitimate to the system.
Cybersecurity researchers at TRM Labs and Pangolin Intelligence believe North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group was responsible.
The group has previously been linked to some of the largest crypto thefts in history, including the $1.5 billion Bybit hack.
Binance says it plans to release a full technical report once it has verified the details and is working with law enforcement to identify the attackers.
<h3>Stealing the Crypto Is Only Half the Battle</h3>
Moving $6.3 billion into North Korean wallets is one thing.&nbsp;
Actually being able to use those funds is a different story.&nbsp;
Within hours, some of the biggest companies in crypto began freezing assets linked to the attack.
<ul>
<li>Tether froze more than $1.5 billion worth of USDT.</li>
<li>Circle froze more than $800 million worth of USDC.</li>
<li>Ripple helped stop roughly $200 million more.</li>
</ul>
Altogether, Binance says approximately $3 billion of the affected assets have already been frozen.
That was possible because stablecoins such as USDT and USDC don't work exactly like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has no company sitting in the middle with the ability to freeze someone's coins.
USDT and USDC do.
Tether and Circle can blacklist wallet addresses holding stolen tokens, preventing those tokens from being transferred or redeemed.
The hacker may still control the wallet, but the frozen stablecoins inside it can't simply be moved to another exchange and cashed out.
That's why the final loss could end up being substantially smaller than the $6.3 billion headline.
<h3>What Does This Mean for Crypto?</h3>
There's no way to sugarcoat a $6.3 billion security breach at the world's largest crypto exchange.
And history shows that incidents of theft and fraud involving crypto giants like Mt. Gox and FTX were followed by prolonged bear markets.
But it's important to separate what happened to Binance from what happened to the underlying cryptocurrencies.&nbsp;
Bitcoin itself wasn't hacked. Neither was Ethereum, Solana, or the underlying blockchains.
The vulnerability was inside Binance, a centralized company that holds and moves crypto on behalf of its customers.
When you keep crypto on an exchange, you're trusting that company to protect it. That's fundamentally different from holding crypto yourself, where you control the private keys. (No method is foolproof: If you go the hardware wallet route, always buy straight from the company. No third parties.)&nbsp;
For more actionable steps on protecting your data and crypto, <a href="https://altucherconfidential.com/posts/cyber-pandemic-do-this-now">check out last week&rsquo;s Altucher Confidential on the coming &ldquo;cyberpandemic.&rdquo;</a> Cyberattacks are ramping up. Crypto is one vector of attack, but far from the only one.&nbsp;
For Binance customers, the company says their funds are safe and has promised to cover any losses. So the biggest question now is how much of the stolen crypto can actually be recovered.
Roughly $3 billion has already been frozen, and investigators will continue tracking the remaining assets as the hackers attempt to move, swap, or cash them out.
Binance also needs to confirm exactly how the attackers gained access and whether the vulnerability has been completely eliminated.
The company says it will release a full technical report along with an updated Proof of Reserves once that process is complete.
Those are the two things I'll be watching from here: how much of the money is ultimately recovered and what Binance's investigation reveals about the breach.
For now, this looks much more like a failure of a centralized exchange than a failure of crypto itself.

ALC-Issue-103026-1

URGENT: The $6.3 Billion Crypto Heist

For ten years I&rsquo;ve wanted to know who killed Product 19.
You probably never ate it. Most didn&rsquo;t. I might have been the only one.&nbsp;
Product 19 was Kellogg&rsquo;s &ldquo;vitamin cereal.&rdquo; Gone since 2016. No explanation. No apology. I looked.&nbsp;
Then the former CEO of Kellogg agreed to come on my podcast. I asked him directly.&nbsp;
He said it happened after he left.
I'm still upset. It was the one thing Carlos Gutierrez couldn't give me.
<h3>From Cuba to Kellogg to the Cabinet</h3>
Carlos left Cuba as a kid after his father tempted fate with Che Guevara. The family lost everything.&nbsp;
He started in sales at Kellogg and climbed all the way to CEO. Then George W. Bush made him Secretary of Commerce. Then, at 65, a doctor told him he had ADHD.
He wrote a book about all of it called Sheer Will: Learning to Lead When There is No Path. I loved it.&nbsp;
Here's what I learned from Carlos.&nbsp;
1. Speed is a luxury. And you have it. 
I asked Carlos if Washington taught him anything about buying and selling companies.
He said the two worlds barely compare. At Kellogg, he made the call. Sometimes the board had to approve it. Sometimes. Then he ran with it.&nbsp;
In Washington, almost nothing gets decided without going through someone else who then has to go through someone else.&nbsp;
Speed is a luxury of the private sector. (That means you too.)
This is useful to know for investors. I use the same rule when I hunt for buyout opportunities. Find the buyer who doesn&rsquo;t need permission.
Right now, that&rsquo;s Elon Musk. He controls more than 80% of SpaceX&rsquo;s votes. He&rsquo;s the CEO and the chairman, and he picks the board. And SpaceX just raised $75 billion in the biggest IPO in history. That&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;m watching.&nbsp;
2. Refusing to be average starts with proving someone wrong.
I asked him what "relentless refusal to be average" meant in his book. He said it's what's left over from being the disorganized ADHD kid everyone expected to fail. He wanted to prove them wrong. He learned to welcome struggle. It&rsquo;s the price you pay.&nbsp;
He added that America is the only country where calling someone ambitious counts as a compliment.
3. The weakness was hiding a strength.
In hindsight, the ADHD diagnosis explained a lot about his career. He would drop everything and hyperfocus on one presentation for three weeks. That helped him more than any weakness hurt him. His one wish: that someone had told him about the upside sooner.
Most of us spend years apologizing for the thing that makes us great.
4. Be bad at a lot of things.
At community college he got Ds in every class except one. Public speaking. Later he found financial management. Those two skills carried him to the top. I asked if it's a numbers game. He said yes. You have to be wrong about many things to find the two you're good at. He still gets it wrong today. That&rsquo;s OK.&nbsp;
5. The first year as boss is supposed to hurt.
His biggest early mistake as CEO was hiring outsiders. He wanted to show Kellogg that fresh blood adds value. They didn't fit. He tells new CEOs to expect a rough first 12 months.&nbsp;
In that first year, he made decisions based on how he thought a CEO was supposed to act. After a year, he stopped. He went with his gut, backed by 30 years at the company. That changed everything.&nbsp;
6. Make the hard call or hand over the job.
His father told him: if you can't make the tough decisions, someone else should have your job. When Carlos closed Kellogg&rsquo;s Battle Creek plant, he kept that line in his head. Explain the decision. Stay firm on it.
Over the next five years, Kellogg&rsquo;s sales grew 43%. Its stock nearly doubled.
7. Walk in with one ask.
China once wanted intellectual property left off the agenda for an annual meeting. So Carlos gave a public speech announcing he was canceling the trip. It worked.
That&rsquo;s the thing about China. Most meetings were a grind. America showed up with 20 problems from American companies. China showed up with one or two asks, like lifting export controls. Then China tied everything to those. No progress on their list, no progress on ours.
A short list is leverage.&nbsp;
Also the minute your plane lands, China treats you like the most important person on Earth. Then it&rsquo;s harder to be tough on such gracious hosts. It works.
8. Politics runs on perception.
Everyone in Washington believed the economy was "fundamentally sound" in March 2008. Back then, he said, the numbers backed it up. Then the subprime collapse hit. His summary of Washington: "Politics is the art of perception. Business is the art of results."
9. AI helps your competitors too.
I asked if AI makes starting a business less risky. He said AI helps everyone, so you still have to beat everyone. Starting a company will always be hard.
10. Stay put.
His advice to a 25-year-old: find a company you love and give it five to ten years. Most quit right before the payoff.
Carlos left the cabinet at 55. He said the years after were his hardest. He chased things that sounded great and didn't have the same hunger.
I'm 58. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do.
Maybe that's the real lesson. Nobody figures it out. The good ones just keep asking. (And the really good ones bring back Product 19.)

ALC-Issue-102826-1

Confessions of a Cereal King

I have a business idea.
I'm going to start a travel agency that sends people to Saturn.
Luxury accommodations. Great views of the rings. Maybe a complimentary breakfast.
Stupid idea, right?
Not according to ChatGPT.
Ask it to help you build this business and it'll happily get started. It'll brainstorm names. Create a marketing plan. Figure out pricing tiers.
It might even generate a beautiful hockey-stick chart showing Saturn tourism growing from zero to $80 billion by 2028.&nbsp;
This is a problem.
AI wants you to be happy. And sometimes the easiest way to make humans happy is to make them all feel like geniuses.&nbsp;
I brought this up recently with my friend Tom Bilyeu.
Tom cofounded Quest Nutrition, built the enormously successful Impact Theory media company, and is now developing a massive video game called Kyzen.
He spends a LOT of time with AI.
And he told me something that completely changes how you should use it.
<h3>Make Your AI Hate You</h3>
Tom doesn't want ChatGPT to tell him his ideas are brilliant.
He wants it to tell him why they're terrible.
Before he starts a project, he gives his AI instructions explaining that he has absolutely no interest in being agreed with.
He wants evidence that contradicts his assumptions.
Then he asks one question: "Why is this going to fail?"
Not how can I succeed.
Not how can we make this happen.
Why will it fail?
And here's my favorite part.
If Tom doesn't know enough about the industry to challenge the AI's answer, he asks:
"What are the smartest minds who think this idea is stupid? What do they say? What's their logic?"
Now he's not brainstorming.
He's conducting an interrogation.
I love this.
Because most people use AI like a very expensive imaginary friend.
Tom uses it like a hostile investment committee.
And I think he's onto something.
<h3>Three Months. One Afternoon.</h3>
Tom told me something else that blew my mind.
His team is building a video game with an entire procedurally generated world. Think Minecraft, but with creature capturing, combat and a world roughly the size of Earth.
Creating a single usable asset for the game used to take three months, involving four or five different people.
Then AI came along.
The same basic process suddenly took an afternoon.
Think about that.
Three months of work compressed into a few hours.
Now multiply that across every business on Earth.
But here's the catch.
If Tom can do that, so can his competitors.
The technical advantages that used to protect businesses are disappearing.
The ability to build something is becoming less valuable. Knowing WHAT to build is becoming more valuable.
And that's where most people are going to get into trouble.
Because AI can build your terrible idea faster than ever.
It can help you spend six months' worth of money in six days.
And congratulate you the entire time.
<h3>The New Competitive Advantage</h3>
Sum it up in one sentence: The better your questions, the better your AI.
I think that's exactly right.
Two people can use the same AI model.
One asks it to write a business plan.
The other asks it to identify an unmet customer need, find evidence people will pay to solve it, investigate failed competitors and explain why the entire premise might be wrong.
Same technology.
Completely different results.
The first person gets a beautiful document.
The second might get a business.
This applies to investing, too.
The next time you're excited about a stock, don't ask ChatGPT to explain why it's going to double.
Ask it to construct the strongest possible argument against owning it.
What am I missing?
What assumptions have to be true?
What happens if they're false?
Then go verify the answers.
You might save yourself a fortune.
<h3>Let AI Ruin Your Dreams</h3>
For the first time in history, almost everyone has access to something resembling a team of extraordinarily knowledgeable advisers.
And most people are using that team to tell themselves what they already believe.
Don't.
The greatest advantage AI gives you might not be the ability to produce more. It might be the ability to discover you're wrong before it costs you money.
And if you're still determined to open that travel agency to Saturn? I'll invest. As soon as you get back.
<a href="https://lnk.to/ScWBQG01">Click here to listen to the full podcast.</a>

ALC-Issue-102626-1

Let AI Ruin Your Dreams

I&rsquo;ve done about 1,500 episodes of my podcast.
I released every single one. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Tyra Banks. Sara Blakely. Record, edit, publish.
Except one.
I recorded it at the comedy club I used to own in upstate New York. The guest was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My producer told me later our manager walked in that day wearing a long dress covered in Marilyn Monroe&rsquo;s face. Pure coincidence. (His uncle and, the rumors say, his father both had affairs with Marilyn.)
Then someone told her who the guest was. She ran next door and bought a new dress with 20 minutes to spare.
After we finished, I decided not to release it. I &ldquo;banned&rdquo; it myself. I had my reasons.
It sat for years. Then he ran for president.&nbsp;
This week, I&rsquo;m going back to that tape for a different reason.
Money.
The man I was nervous to put on the air became the most powerful health official in America. And the market didn&rsquo;t react the way most people expected.
In fact, something&rsquo;s happening right now I&rsquo;ve never seen in my entire career. And RFK Jr. is pouring fuel on it.
<h3>The Critic Gets the Keys</h3>
In late 2024, Trump picked him to run Health and Human Services. The FDA reports to him.
Wall Street panicked.&nbsp;
The day after the nomination, the biotech ETF (XBI) dropped 5%. One major Wall Street bank questioned whether the sector was even investable anymore. By spring, biotech was down nearly 30% from its peak.
Why? The industry&rsquo;s loudest critic now held the leash.
At the bottom, nearly half of U.S. biotechs traded for less than the cash in their bank accounts. Wall Street was paying you to take the science.
Big Pharma noticed.&nbsp;
In 2025 there were 32 biotech deals over $1 billion. That&rsquo;s the most in two decades.
The biotech scare faded. The FDA kept approving drugs. The thing everyone feared showed up. The sector doubled anyway. And we think it&rsquo;s just the beginning.&nbsp;
<h3>Rewind the Tape</h3>
I went back and listened again with fresh ears.
Kennedy unloaded on the drug industry. Bill Gates. Measles. Mumps. Mercury. Vioxx. The evening news.&nbsp;
But his real target was crony capitalism. Money buys politicians. Politicians protect the giants.
And here&rsquo;s what Wall Street missed&hellip;&nbsp;
His beef was with the giants and their old products. That&rsquo;s why his agency is racing to approve new ones. For example, two cancer treatments recently got the green light in 45 and 55 days.
Who owns the new stuff? Mostly small companies. And the giants are forced to ride the wave.&nbsp;
Their patents are running out, so they have to buy their way out. Every approval makes a small biotech more valuable. Every patent cliff hands it a buyer.
Add AI, which lets a small team do what used to take a Big Pharma budget.
Wall Street priced in the man. It missed the mechanism.
<h3>Where It Goes</h3>
Earlier I said something is happening in biotech I&rsquo;ve never seen in my career.&nbsp;
My research team went back through the market data. In less than three years, we found more than 230 one-day stock surges. All in biotech. Tiny stocks jumping 100%, 500%, even 1,378% in a single session.
We even caught some of them early.&nbsp;
Now we have our eyes on a tiny $10 biotech. It&rsquo;s in Phase 3. Its treatment could reach 320 million people. Management says results could land any day. And I haven&rsquo;t been so excited about a stock&rsquo;s potential in a while.&nbsp;
I admit. I was afraid of that episode. Wall Street was afraid of RFK Jr. We were both wrong.
The tape is out. And our research on this stock is ready.

ALC-Issue-102226-1 (2)

RFK Jr.: The “Banned” Podcast

A few weeks ago, the world was ending.
AI was going to kill all of humanity. The Clarity Act wasn&rsquo;t going to pass. Crypto was going to zero. The war with Iran was going to last forever. And the Fed was raising interest rates.
Okay. All of that news happened. The Fed hiked. Clarity failed. Iran is digging in its heels.&nbsp;
So that&rsquo;s the end of it. Humanity is dying, crypto is going to zero, and AI is killing everyone.&nbsp;
And yet, the stock market is at all-time highs. Nvidia is near all-time highs. Crypto is substantially up since the Clarity Act failed.
The media hates this.
Every day there&rsquo;s a new story.&nbsp;
I saw a headline saying that for AI companies to pay back the infrastructure build, the country will have to spend 9% of GDP on AI.&nbsp;
I read the article because I wanted to check what they were talking about. All the math was completely wrong. Their assumption, that demand won&rsquo;t catch up to infrastructure costs, is wrong. The demand for AI is absolutely going to catch up with the infrastructure costs.
And the 10% chance AI destroys humanity? There is a 0% chance. AI on its own is really stupid. It veers off track. It doesn&rsquo;t stay on target unless a human is constantly monitoring it. It&rsquo;ll write 100,000 lines of code in the time a human writes 10. Its reasoning is still very poor.
So let&rsquo;s follow the money.
Between now and 2032, $10 trillion is going to be spent on AI infrastructure. You want to own the companies that $10 trillion is going to rain down on.
Here&rsquo;s how it works.
Anthropic goes to Amazon. &ldquo;Our demand is great. We want to host a lot of AI on your cloud. We need data center space.&rdquo;
Amazon goes to Nvidia. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to need a lot of data centers. We&rsquo;re talking to you and Dell and maybe Super Micro.&rdquo;
Nvidia says, &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ve got the GPUs. We&rsquo;ll call our buddies.&rdquo; So they call Marvell. &ldquo;We need to connect all these GPUs. Can you do it?&rdquo;
&ldquo;No problem, Jensen.&rdquo;
Then Marvell says, okay, we don&rsquo;t want the old interconnects. We need the latest, fastest thing. So they go to the small cap and microcap public companies building new technology and ask, &ldquo;What have you got for us?&rdquo;
Nvidia won&rsquo;t talk to those little companies directly. Marvell shepherds them along until they finally get a conversation with Nvidia, who&rsquo;s talking to Amazon, who&rsquo;s talking to Anthropic and OpenAI.
That&rsquo;s the chain. That&rsquo;s how it works.
Let&rsquo;s say Nvidia is going to keep going up. Marvell is probably going to keep going up too. But they aren&rsquo;t where you find the 50x, 100x potential returns.
But most of the big stocks are maxing out. Not all of them. But a lot of them. So people are going to start looking lower and lower down the chain.
The money falls from the top. It lands at the bottom.
And it lands in bursts. A window cracks open, then the window slams shut.
Knowing which stocks sit at the most profitable part of the chain is half the game. Knowing when the window opens is the other half. I spend every waking day on the first part. For the timing, I call one man: JC Parets.
JC called the 2008 crash early. He called the 2022 bottom live on Bartiromo, to the day. He called Nvidia when everyone else flinched. He&rsquo;s the best market timer I know.
In <a href="https://links.paradigmpressgroup.com/s/c/9PT-C4FFeRh1twAeQhkPKZVRVGHKXsFa4SKQcAE0TLSJVb-lRLGUGepYG-lqTjnLGhE6AsOXi9_RViFxsVjPhtY3gkOUXQ4OLTIclKlehMbZ3opxtokZyzejqZZmH6A6HKT8kWPdhlA0p8e3veW2cbrEe1EnEeVtyf2jvgZ3AjxzFyI4r077hJshqxq07BfUKJVEuZysp2M8XZ8g23CXq5X-4p4fTy7Ee7Txz0TOI4okTcO-dwr8PoM9o7a_W_thvhX-3D2r3l1sfuIGN1Pd2HLKJr7TmK0XdT8EjThdsN1OiwHysgbRPdohP47F_e74ocDDlJyrtMp_2jt3nAsbb_LTRq5IPw5tva24K3SD-2i4i7zlbJS2SA3j-0-DAsH8wsqWCwNfysNkitaDfMDrchMogPcOPLP1Tz82y4UqAFr-7QExPReooEPbEX7afeCgbB5aja7_C9VN4gnXEInoM-YvbpFPJZO7rIaDuQrS6ci366sZyVINpCBkUn67uG3xETxS813X2cVaBaiwycW2nLf8cNDI08W9ZZtCTk0Il0koQyvNcreNIaSIisUM8j0pslv05UZXtgdLqe3GF8w/5iWxhG8scOIHQxRae-YUNOCATKmfHklo/25" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://links.paradigmpressgroup.com/s/c/9PT-C4FFeRh1twAeQhkPKZVRVGHKXsFa4SKQcAE0TLSJVb-lRLGUGepYG-lqTjnLGhE6AsOXi9_RViFxsVjPhtY3gkOUXQ4OLTIclKlehMbZ3opxtokZyzejqZZmH6A6HKT8kWPdhlA0p8e3veW2cbrEe1EnEeVtyf2jvgZ3AjxzFyI4r077hJshqxq07BfUKJVEuZysp2M8XZ8g23CXq5X-4p4fTy7Ee7Txz0TOI4okTcO-dwr8PoM9o7a_W_thvhX-3D2r3l1sfuIGN1Pd2HLKJr7TmK0XdT8EjThdsN1OiwHysgbRPdohP47F_e74ocDDlJyrtMp_2jt3nAsbb_LTRq5IPw5tva24K3SD-2i4i7zlbJS2SA3j-0-DAsH8wsqWCwNfysNkitaDfMDrchMogPcOPLP1Tz82y4UqAFr-7QExPReooEPbEX7afeCgbB5aja7_C9VN4gnXEInoM-YvbpFPJZO7rIaDuQrS6ci366sZyVINpCBkUn67uG3xETxS813X2cVaBaiwycW2nLf8cNDI08W9ZZtCTk0Il0koQyvNcreNIaSIisUM8j0pslv05UZXtgdLqe3GF8w/5iWxhG8scOIHQxRae-YUNOCATKmfHklo/25&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1791667671047000&amp;usg=AOvVaw30oos_FuWbkEUBQZ0dErNt">this new video</a>, he walks me through The 100X AI Window: the exact day he believes the next window opens (today), and his top trades for it.&nbsp;
You have until midnight.&nbsp;
<a href="https://links.paradigmpressgroup.com/s/c/1tNOGWV9bM9-UFEreF2QwJ76N2EehfPzE5sNiwj0w3PTsMt123y_m-oJcuco34nJdEpcbiaALXU7Fosrk8nmEoGNqf3vZ4dY61CT6Te5ag-H9a73K-zE0o9EaWjv2v9p0rp1MBXIjATQen8yXpzzF8Yg-QM2duMUb7aQNaXWFqtvyRhaGfRUlq8hrCZ1s6F-ULqUw2SRcW1r3ZzS8fvLiI50GrwVNmLhfyFU2I6zeDZuLQvsPtQPPil0gMLofaCGa_M0GlvH7S7ya3OEYN15mE2eZ1DGOPw3iq91Ht1KWISOoocBZdeXAS-fV-qMBmk_ChV0arDQN5A6Z3rEiK-MxpJB0lG0IAmVUeMOMZ09qndNqufI64fwEXDkw8_gnYpuYWq0kq-rQk38VxYXFzFZY33qcUWd_s1HTtoddVp3VM30JMJ2j-vXXJ_r4Xg2Rcp3wZ85lCsrMB5KyTL-WPjyscHrdCa4gjezCCP3BNhQXidY5ZlEXUqdW9eB9wrEZrEuDWujJ6XQks2z4SeamzPjzWmSS3k0uKhnsOH6CB5nj4RWD9uk3UbQ9deqRA8aKgzlbhv0-qz4x3GoRzAVIhk/vKHispvOpSNA7fvk8WGqfAbNf8Wgf6bv/25" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://links.paradigmpressgroup.com/s/c/1tNOGWV9bM9-UFEreF2QwJ76N2EehfPzE5sNiwj0w3PTsMt123y_m-oJcuco34nJdEpcbiaALXU7Fosrk8nmEoGNqf3vZ4dY61CT6Te5ag-H9a73K-zE0o9EaWjv2v9p0rp1MBXIjATQen8yXpzzF8Yg-QM2duMUb7aQNaXWFqtvyRhaGfRUlq8hrCZ1s6F-ULqUw2SRcW1r3ZzS8fvLiI50GrwVNmLhfyFU2I6zeDZuLQvsPtQPPil0gMLofaCGa_M0GlvH7S7ya3OEYN15mE2eZ1DGOPw3iq91Ht1KWISOoocBZdeXAS-fV-qMBmk_ChV0arDQN5A6Z3rEiK-MxpJB0lG0IAmVUeMOMZ09qndNqufI64fwEXDkw8_gnYpuYWq0kq-rQk38VxYXFzFZY33qcUWd_s1HTtoddVp3VM30JMJ2j-vXXJ_r4Xg2Rcp3wZ85lCsrMB5KyTL-WPjyscHrdCa4gjezCCP3BNhQXidY5ZlEXUqdW9eB9wrEZrEuDWujJ6XQks2z4SeamzPjzWmSS3k0uKhnsOH6CB5nj4RWD9uk3UbQ9deqRA8aKgzlbhv0-qz4x3GoRzAVIhk/vKHispvOpSNA7fvk8WGqfAbNf8Wgf6bv/25&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1791667671047000&amp;usg=AOvVaw14XPukqfcHhRDR91Cy46hi">Click here to watch.&nbsp;</a>

ALC-Issue-10-09-26-1

The World Ended. Stocks Hit Highs.

Billionaires are supposed to be ruthless.
David Rubenstein has hired former presidents. He's interviewed thousands of people. And he just told me on my podcast he could never bring himself to fire anybody.
Early on at Carlyle, the private equity giant he cofounded, he would have to fire someone.&nbsp;
The person would come into his office and explain how great they were at their job. And then somehow they'd walk out with a promotion.
His partners stopped letting him do the firing.&nbsp;
Then David bought the Baltimore Orioles.
In baseball, when the team loses, somebody has to get fired. Last year it was the manager, Brandon Hyde. Two years earlier, Hyde was Manager of the Year.
David's explanation: it's easier to remove the coach than the players. And owners don't tend to remove themselves.
He wrote a book about all this, Inside the Owner's Box. When he bought the team, he went and interviewed other owners to learn how to be one. Learn and write at the same time. I love that.
My first question: will there even be a baseball season next year? The players' contract runs out in December. The owners want a salary cap. The players hate the idea.
"Nobody knows," he said.&nbsp;
He said that a lot. Nobody knows who becomes a superstar. Nobody knows if AI creates jobs or kills them.
He's right. Most of the time.
Here's what I learned from David.
<h3>Money Doesn't Buy Wins</h3>
Since David took over, the Orioles have more than doubled player salaries.
The results haven't followed.
The Mets have one of the richest owners in baseball. No championship. The Dodgers spend big and win. Same strategy. Opposite results.
And the draft? In basketball and football, the top picks almost always make it. In baseball, the number one pick sometimes never reaches the majors. Cal Ripken wasn't a first-round pick. Tom Brady went in the sixth round.
Babe Ruth couldn't get a job managing. Earl Weaver never played a single major league game. He's in the Hall of Fame as a manager.
Credentials predict less than we think.
<h3>Shut Up and Walk</h3>
During the Orioles deal, a banker on the other side started explaining to David what debt is.
Sitting on David's side was Mike Arougheti, who runs the largest private debt business in the world.
A desperate buyer swallows that. David called it childish and hung up.
He was ready to walk away. He wasn't sure he was the right buyer, and he had plenty of other things to do.
Plus, he didn&rsquo;t want to seem desperate. He always avoided saying things like "I can't wait to get this deal done. My children want me to get this deal done. This is the highest priority of my life." Say that, and you're probably not an effective negotiator.&nbsp;
That's his rule. If the other side knows you'll put up with anything, you won't get the best deal.
He went back in eventually. A chance to own your hometown team doesn't come twice.
Just don't tell them your kids are begging you to close.
<h3>Why We Care</h3>
I asked David the big question. Why does a guy in Baltimore care if the Orioles win? It doesn't put bread on his table.
He said Baltimore has been the stepchild to New York, Boston, Philly and Washington for 200 years. When the Orioles win, Baltimore is as good as anybody.
Then he turned it on me. Why do I care about the Mets?
When I was a kid, it felt like I was winning when they won.
That's it. That's the whole business. Millions showed up for the Knicks parade. None of them own a piece of the team.
"Logic isn't everything in life," David said.
That's why he'll never sell. His parents are buried in Baltimore. He'll be buried there too. The team is his way of paying the city back.
As we wrapped up, he complimented my haircut. Then he asked if I'd ever owned a comb.
I'm 58. He told me that makes me a teenager.
He's sending me a comb. I'll let you know when it arrives.
<a href="https://lnk.to/JASDROC01">Click here to listen to the whole podcast</a>.&nbsp;

ALC-ISSUE-100726-1

“Shut Up and Walk!”

I'm nobody.
I said that to Bill O'Reilly on my podcast. He'd just told me he knows everybody. "Even you, James."
That's how you know he means everybody.
This was his third time on my podcast. At the end, he thanked me for reading his book.
"Many interviewers don&rsquo;t do that," he said.
Bill&rsquo;s written more bestsellers than I've written grocery lists. He goes on show after show. And the host flips to the back cover five minutes before airtime and asks, "So what's the book about?" That's how you get the same interview forty times in a row.
Maybe I&rsquo;m the only podcaster who reads every guest&rsquo;s book. I&rsquo;ve done it for over a decade. And I always learn something new and hear stories nobody&rsquo;s heard before.&nbsp;
Like this one&hellip;&nbsp;
<h3>How Often Does This Happen?&nbsp;</h3>
After the election, before Trump was sworn in for his second term, Biden's national security team needed to reach the president-elect. Hostages were sitting in Gaza. Netanyahu wanted Trump's sign-off on the mechanics of a deal.
They couldn't get through.
So Jake Sullivan called a friend of Bill's. Bill set up the call.
He moderated it. He offered no opinion. Trump was on the line and knew every detail, Bill says. About two weeks later, four hostages walked free.
I sat there thinking: how many phone calls like that happen every day that we never hear about?
Most of them. That's how the world works. The real story is almost always the one nobody reports.
Which brought us to talking about the media.&nbsp;
<h3>Why The Media Hates Good News&nbsp;</h3>
Bill knows how the media works better than anyone. He said they hate good news.&nbsp;
He pointed to a recent report&mdash;American households have more assets than ever, and the poverty rate is at a record low. He says CNN never mentioned it.
I pushed back. Americans have had record assets almost every year since 2010. Is that even news?
Bill's answer: the numbers are new, and they keep going up. Meanwhile all you hear about is gas and groceries.
He has a point. Fear sells. Fear always sells. I've been reading headlines for 40 years. If I'd traded on every scary one, I'd be broke. Actually, I have been broke. More than once. Usually because I listened to the scary headlines.
Then I asked him an uncomfortable question.
<h3>What About Bill?&nbsp;</h3>
Didn't shows like his start this? The O'Reilly Factor launched in 1996. Opinion all day. Didn't that open the door?&nbsp;
He said the Factor told you it was opinion. Every newspaper has an op-ed page. TV didn't. So he built one. Back then his audience was roughly 60% conservative and 40% liberal. He wanted it that way. He brought on people who disagreed with him and got into shootouts.
Now? Every channel brings in people who agree with the channel. Easy money. Preach to the choir and the choir pays.
Trump just kicked CNN, MS NOW, and Politico out of the White House. Bill has no love for any of them. Bill said it was a bad move.&nbsp;
"I would have shunned them," he said. Seats in the back. Never call on them. But never kick them out.&nbsp;
That's a business lesson, too. Don't fight the people who want a fight. Ignore them. Attention is oxygen.
<h3>A Life Fully Lived</h3>
I'll admit it.&nbsp;
I was more opinionated in this interview than I usually am. We talked about New York City, where I lived my whole adult life. We talked about Mayor Mamdani's plan for city-run grocery stores that charge 20% less.
Grocery margins are about 1%. Do the math. Every bodega near one of those stores goes out of business. The bodega owner opens at 6 a.m. and closes at midnight. He's the one who pays.
Bill agreed. You don't have to. Listen and decide.
But the part I keep thinking about came at the end.
In the book, Bill writes that his father's final words were about never reaching his potential. That's a heavy thing to hear from your dad. Some people spend their whole lives running from a sentence like that.
So I asked Bill: Have you reached yours?
I expected him to say no. Everyone ambitious says no. There's always one more mountain.
He said he's pretty much done everything. No more quests. He still wants to do a good show every day. But if someone walked in tomorrow and said, "O'Reilly, you're out," he'd say thank you.
I don't know if I'll ever feel that way.
But I'd like to.
Maybe that's the real potential. Being able to say "enough" and mean it.
The book is Confronting America: What Has to Change. The episode is live now.
Even if you disagree with Bill, <a href="https://lnk.to/JASBO101">the podcast is worth a listen</a>.&nbsp;