Transcript
0:00 Hello Altaba Studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. >> I'm John Furrier on the CUBE Studio with Gabe Altaba, my co-host. >> [music] >> Welcome back to the CUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. I'm Gemma Allen. This is NYSE Wired's Crypto Trailblazers. And joining me now is a man who is a self-professed mad scientist of crypto. Welcome Jordi Visser, founder of Visser Labs.
0:31 >> It's good to be here, Gemma. >> Thanks, Jordi. Okay, so you are sitting at a very interesting intersection point of AI meets crypto meets the macro world of tech and finance. Break it down for me. Who are you? What do you do? >> I'm someone who has spent their entire career um following macroeconomics, um managing money, managing businesses, and watching them grow. Uh And 2 years ago, I just made the decision that the pace of change that was happening uh due to AI uh would change the macro world and leave it in a position where people were going to have to adapt. We're seeing that now.
1:16 Uh and eventually as the global industrial system was being rebuilt for intelligence, we would eventually get to the point that the global financial system would have to be rebuilt uh to handle effectively uh billions of digital employees coming into the world who are consuming tokens every day. We're all learning about that through what the stocks are doing. So, I found this more interesting than staying in the old traditional world which was moving slow, uh and I jumped right into uh the river that's flowing in the direction I want to be involved in.
1:48 >> And you are fundamentally a researcher, correct? You >> Um I would say I'm an AI power user who writes about his experiences. I've always done content. Rather than say research, I provide content to people to help them learn. So, I would say I'm more of an educator than a researcher. >> I like it. I like the the rewrite. I think we're all kind of heading that direction, right? In this modern time we're in. So, talk me through some of your big key sentiments and findings at this moment. I mean, so much is happening in those spaces so quickly.
2:24 What is your big thesis right now? >> Well, let's start with with artificial intelligence. I would say in late October of last year into the end of November, a transition happened that was more important than ChatGPT and it's launch basically in November of '22. And that was the beginning of the agentic world. And I don't think most people um and even the most sophisticated people on Wall Street, uh number one, fully embraced that view. I would say for every person I meet who's been in the business a long time that uh is following AI, I would say one out of every three believes this is a bubble.
3:10 Uh and that is the most interesting part to me is why people that have been so successful can't see what's happening where the agentic world started with Opus 4.5. Opus 4.5 led to all of these changes including Open Claw and then Opus 4.6 and 4.7, then GPT 5.5, now Opus 4.8. The ability to do things verbally and turn them into actual software, the ability to use these to have no employees. I have a business. It's growing rapidly.
3:41 And I really don't have anyone working for my company other than myself, and I'm building everything, and I've always had data scientists. I always had people building for me. So, I don't think people fully grasp how quickly things are changing and this is the beginning of a journey. This is the very first inning of the rise of the agentic world. >> Okay, so let's get into that for a second. How many Mach moneys do you have?
4:02 >> Uh two. >> Okay. So, agentic agentic meets finance, okay? Open claw. A lot of it is not necessarily I believe a skepticism that the of the possibility of the technical capability, it's skepticism of the ability of any large institution like this to actually allow an open claw even in a more guarded fashion with, you know, specific governance rails truly be autonomous in these environments, right? Those are kind of two separate things. I think the technology folks know that's getting there.
4:35 >> Mhm. >> Whether or not though it's going to be let in and let loose is another question. What do you think? Like do you think that it's, you know, a a conversation that will happen sooner than people believe or what do you think is going to be needed to allow an agentic unleash on Wall Street? >> Yeah. So, there's two things that are forcing this and the reason I'm at the New York Stock Exchange today is to talk about tokenization.
5:01 Um the NYSE has more impact in this world than they recognize. So, when you say open claw will be accepted, will be used for all of the reasons that are legitimately correct. Open claw's been around for basically four months for the most part. >> A version of I should say. We have Nemo claw, we have all sorts of claws emerging, right? >> Everything emerging. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Let's just say autonomous agents and let's go through this. Um over time they will get better.
5:35 They will get easier to use. People will start to realize just like they did with autopilot on a plane flying way above ground that humans aren't flying it most of the time. They'll get used to the fact that this will happen. Uh and it'll happen faster than it has in the past because of the competition that is happening. AI is a unique technical let's say um impact. It is both disruptive as we saw in the early part of the year for many, many companies. And it's also, if you don't adapt to it, you're probably going to be disrupted. So, it's forcing people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do, including spends spending lots of money.
6:13 And this is not just at the company level. The fear of obsolescence is as strong as FOMO. Countries are doing this. So, the China and the US are in a race as well. I think people underestimate that this is a unique force where if you don't do it, you fall behind very, very quickly because that's what the whole point of exponential innovation is. And so, your second part of accelerating this into crypto, there's a demographic element of all of this, which is younger people embrace AI easier because they don't have this problem of technology. And I think you're going to see the same thing that organizations that are new is the reason why I chose not to work for anyone again. It is very difficult for organizations to enable at any level people to actually use the technology to its fullest.
6:58 >> So, let's get into the crypto space for a second because in some respects it's almost like a perfect storm of chaos, right? Crypto arrived, suddenly it was like extremely validated and legitimized by some of the changes of the last two two years or so. A lot of excitement and enthusiasm in the space. And then we've seen AI rise along with that, right? So, there's a lot of macro trends, macro skepticism having I guess what you could call pretty significant micro impacts, right?
7:25 Crypto was originally meant to be the democratization of finance, right? That was the original thesis. You talk about that generational divide. Those enthusiasts, okay? We have a lot of them on this show. They're interesting folks. They're eclectic, they're bohemian, you know, they they're not your typical tech bro or girl, right? But these worlds are colliding along so fast as these freshers are also colliding. So, what is actually happening? How is AI fundamentally shifting the crypto thesis of 2 years ago? And how is that then, I guess, bringing risks and additional skepticism into the space when we have conversations, you know, with tradfi folks like the folks that sit behind us here?
8:07 >> So, I I will tell you this. Over the course of the last 2 years, um I've seen a dramatic shift in the way the tradfi views the crypto space. Part of that is the ETF. Part of that was the Circle IPO. Part of that is doing the work, which is what's being done right now, definitely by hedge fund people because they're reaching out more and more about the reality of how do I make money on more transactions happening through the agentic world. And this is the thing. When you see parabolic charts of uh ARR for Anthropic, >> Mhm.
8:40 >> Micron, Dell recently, and you go through what these are. Well, this is the agentic world. None of these charts were parabolic without the agentic world. The agentic world is accelerating adoption, but it will also accelerate the payment rails that are necessary. You're going to see more volume. You're going to see a change in GDP. You're going to unleash 2/3 of global assets through tokenization. All of these things are coming, and I think the reason the tradfi world is now starting to pay attention. As someone who has done presentations for the endowment foundation community, the public pension plans, and family offices all over the course of the first 5 months of this year, they're more receptive than they were 2 years ago. So, even though the price doesn't show it in terms of what's happening in the ecosystem where crypto is doing so poorly, I think your point at the beginning or the way you started this is correct.
9:28 Just like when small caps are underperforming large caps and this trend can last for a year, the energy and the allocation of dollars is being sucked into AI right now. At some point, we will build in enough of future returns in AI and the physical side, and this is where I'll kind of end this part that you can double-click on whatever part you want. AI right now is a physical trade. It is not a software trade. It's about infrastructure.
9:51 Eventually, software will become a big part of this again, and the software is the financial guardrails. This is where crypto fits in, and when you're trying to make money as a hedge fund on how do I invest in the software part of the agentic world? That's where the financial side the crypto side will be again uh the dominant force in the in the years to come. >> So, if we look at those examples you gave, let's just take Anthropic and let's start with Dell, right? In terms of their market cap and what they've you know they have phenomenal earnings last week. Things are on the up up for Dell.
10:20 That is a clear evolution of a thesis, right? They're they're a hardware company originally. They obviously have a services business, won a big contract last week, but fundamentally, their entire play is AI factories, right? It is about ensuring that companies of tomorrow have the metal and the the stack to deliver on an AI factory thesis. Institutions can understand that, right? Because it's a narrative that we all grew up with in some respects. It's an evolution of a tech landscape.
10:50 >> Mhm. >> For crypto, because it's so new still in some respects, and the actual evolution of this into something that's also extremely new seems like somewhat of a clash, perhaps, or like I said, an opportunity. I feel like the you know, how AI is truly or agentic, you know, platforms. I mean, if we think about quantum encryption, for example, right? Like 5 years from now, the opportunities are insane, right? But how that narrative is being told, it's confusing.
11:21 Like it's not really as clear as to what does this opportunity look like for the crypto industry specifically? How will AI fundamentally make this more opportunistic or better for investors. >> So, uh I let me spend time on the first thing you said because Jensen Huang goes around the world and he starts very early in this year at CES and he talks about Vera Rubin and he talks about the needs of inference and the ability of shifting everything towards handling AI agents.
11:56 He talks about Open Claw. Last night he talked about Marvell out in Asia. Um people have to understand that we're in the very first inning of building what you said, which are token factories. Now, what are token factories making? They're making effectively food for digital employees, for agents. So, I use this analogy all the time. Um if if today we announced that there would be 7 billion people included in the global population this year, what would happen to everything physical in the world that we needed? We wouldn't have enough housing, we wouldn't have enough food, we wouldn't have enough cars, traffic would go through the roof.
12:33 That's a doubling of physical people. Well, we're talking about billions of digital employees entering the world and they're not consumers yet. All they are are consumers of tokens. But eventually, as they become part of the economics of of the world that we're in, as the digital guardrails go up, the entire landscape of what we do will change. Everything will change. GDP has seen a decline in the velocity of money over the course last 50 years because people have been getting older. We're bringing in young people back into this through digital employees. By unleashing 2/3 of the assets of the world, which are illiquid and dormant, they just sit there. They'll be fractionally traded.
13:12 You'll have more velocity and GDP is about not just the money supply, it's about the velocity of money. So, economics will change, everything will change and eventually, when the infrastructure has been built in at least for the next years and the bottlenecks and the shortages, which are inevitable that we're seeing in memory start to disrupt the ability of these companies to make earnings at the pace that they are not surprised anymore. You'll start to get the dream of software. And the dream of software is about growth. It's about oh, nothing's going to stop this because it's a linear growth and it's parabolic. I think the crypto community should just be patient.
13:46 I think they should watch what's going on and hope that AI keeps growing at the pace it is cuz that means the infrastructure is growing at the pace necessary to get those seven and a half billion digital employees what they need which is food right now, tokens. >> And of the teams emerging in the AI space like quantum, you know, which is again verse always told 3 years away, right? You know, like encryption, all of these new innovations that are going to come about because of AI, which do you feel will have the most immediate transferable opportunity for the crypto trajectory?
14:20 >> I I do think this year tokenization is a real event to bring uh excitement into the space. I think people have to be patient with the reality. It's one of the reasons why I'm here. I don't think enough people have spent the time on what what tokenization's impact is. So, that's one thing. I think again, um when earnings are this good and they're surprising by this much, it's really hard to not pay attention to stocks. This has been an epic historical earnings period. Um one we've never seen before when you normalize it to historically when we've seen these kinds of earnings growth of 20 plus percent, it's been coming out of a recession.
14:58 This was after a period of double-digit earnings or at least close to double-digit earnings last year. So, crypto should be playing kind of the uh the red-headed step sister in the background. It shouldn't be the place where people are focused on, but there's a lot of catalysts coming up. But part of the catalyst needs to be that people are less focused on the AI infrastructure trade. One of the most important I would say positive things that have occurred in the last 2 weeks.
15:24 I've started to see a momentum shift in the factors of the equity market. Software names are doing extremely well. We've seen major rallies in Palantir, major rallies in Oracle, major rallies in Cadence Design Systems. Many, many software names have started to go up. That was a negative fact for crypto in the early part of the year. It's not rallying with it now, but I think that's because people are still finding charts that look the way Bitcoin used to look, which is parabolic. And I'll just add one more thing. Again, as an optimistic side for the crypto community, one of the biggest negatives from the traditional finance world of investors who control the world's money is Bitcoin is too volatile. I can't invest in it. I wrote a paper this year called Your Capex is my opportunity.
16:04 This was a direct reference to the Jeff Bezos line of your margin is my opportunity, which really dominated the companies that won in the prior 15 years. Your Capex is my opportunity is what people should be investing in for the AI factories that you mentioned are going to be built. It's $90 trillion according to Jensen Huang. If he's off by 10 trillion, that's a lot of money that's going to go in. But I do think as you think about that Capex side and you think about it, the crypto side will have a phrase somewhat similar, which is going to be about the financial guardrails are necessary. And I do think as the year goes on this year, you'll start to see a change in the sentiment and then we get into next year, the Bitcoin volatility won't be a bad thing anymore cuz it actually has less of a volatility than almost all of the AI infrastructure trades do now. So.
16:46 >> And you did the monster trade for sure. Okay, so last question. We had an interesting event here at the NYSE last night. We talked with a company that a Neocloud for AMD and a few others, TensorWave. And we talked about this idea that's emerging around token access, right? And almost like a people do business with friends approach. You know, and there's been a lot of backscratching has happened, counter backscratching in the tech industry for a long time. And token access and getting access to GPUs is a challenge for startups, right? Which creates a tiered approach for innovation.
17:22 >> What are your thoughts on that? How do you think that is potentially a risk to an industry like crypto where there has certainly been somewhat of an outlier, you know, narrative to this point? >> So, I I I'm going to take this the direction that is very different than maybe what you're expecting to hear. I've worked in the financial world. I was a managing director at Morgan Stanley. I ran a hedge fund. I've left that world for a reason. And part of it was when you start managing hundreds of people in your 20s and you realize how slow companies are to adapt to things. If you believe the pace of change is exponential, you want to go set up your own business. You asked me how many Mac minis. Okay, I have Open Claw running on two separate machines.
18:09 One's Chinese open source. The other one is GPT-5. 5.5. Here Here's the the the end result for everyone. If you work at a company and that company is slow to adopt to AI and you're really powerful as a user, then you'll go start your own business. My business is growing rapidly. Um I'm using content to get my message and educate around the world. I think education right now is a great place for the VC world to focus on. Educating through AI, educating and preparing people for what's happening in AI. Most of my subscribers are following my thematic portfolio, which is based on the infrastructure trade and based on your CAPEX is my opportunity. So, I just found it easier to build my business, grow my business, and I pay $12,000 a year for my tokens.
18:56 That is a lot cheaper than what healthcare used to cost for some of my employees and was certainly less dealing with them at the end of the year in terms of bonuses. So, I think people have to realize that if you work at a big organization, the organization may not get the the usage, but if you go and start your own business, you'll have plenty of tokens and what you need. And if you want, then you can go use open source and you can reduce your cost by 80 90%. So, I just think that I think people are missing the point that this is a phenomenal time for startup businesses to grow rapidly. And the numbers you see with Anthropic, trust me, my own personal experience, I have the same type of parabolic move.
19:32 The numbers are much smaller, but they're growing parabolically. >> Okay, last last last question. Which is performing better, the Chinese open source or chat GPT 5? >> Chat GPT 5.5 um is my So, I use all Well, I use all four major LLMs, but then I also use Perplexity. And these are every day. Uh GPT 5.5 replaced Opus 4.7 for me. >> Yeah. >> Mainly because I found it to be more intelligent and slower. I use the Chinese open source models for a lot of my stuff for reduced cost and for the more complex things.
20:06 The models keep getting better. The only issue that runs in is as the models keep getting better, I need more hardware and the hardware is in shortage right now. So, my problem is not the Chinese models. It's that once I get to Kemi Kemi K 2.6 or Qwen, the higher models, I need more So, hopefully whether it's um the new uh Nvidia Dell machine or Apple starts coming out with their products, I'll be able to get more Mac minis than then I can run all of this on my own.
20:34 So. >> Well, Sordi, please come back and keep us updated. Thanks so much for joining us on the Cube. >> Glad to be here. >> I'm Gemma Allen coming to you from the Cube studio at the NYSE. This is Crypto Trailblazers, one of our programs with NYSE Wired. Thanks for watching.