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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;16;03 - 00;00;31;24
Aaron
It looks like IPO season starting, guys. You ready to buckle up? Is that going to be the top or is that just going to be, you know, another chapter in the evolving development of AI and the new American economy?
00;00;31;27 - 00;00;52;08
Derek
Man, I definitely go back and forth on this maybe to kind of see it up. I mean, there's just a massive, massive wealth creation event set to happen over the next three months. We've got three of the biggest IPOs ever of all time. All between 1 to $2 trillion in value, most likely. Kind of all launching sequentially, one right after the other.
00;00;52;09 - 00;01;17;05
Derek
I think space is the closest. It's imminent. I think maybe a couple of weeks away. OpenAI's not too far after that, and I think all indications are point anthropic being just right after that. Yeah. I mean, like we're we're talking about like a non-trivial portion of, of like wealth and, and you know, largely these, these people are bullish on the trade and want to find maybe new productive homes to place that wealth.
00;01;17;05 - 00;01;46;07
Derek
And so you could kind of expect that after these lockups start to end, that starts to recirculate back into the market and lower and mid-cap projects and maybe an adjacent technologies that are promising, but not quite at the forefront of AI right now. You could also make an argument that, you know, like the fact that we have these three projects that have created this much value and only now can retail get exposure to it is like a systemic problem that needs fixing.
00;01;46;08 - 00;02;06;25
Derek
Like, this is not the point of capital markets to abuse it, to basically treat the late stage private markets kind of like your piggy bank. And then when retail finally has access to these hot fliers, it's like they're paying. They're buying them at like valuations we've never even seen before. And so yeah, and ultimately like they're the least sophisticated.
00;02;06;26 - 00;02;29;22
Derek
They're the ones that are difficult have difficulty underwriting you know revenues and EBITDA and trajectories and earnings and I fear are the ones that end up getting dumped on. And it's typically what coincides with, you know, that lack of education and the demand to get exposure to things that whatever space AI just like is a very clean narrative, right.
00;02;29;22 - 00;02;51;25
Derek
Or like, you know, the fact that OpenAI's got 25 billion run rate anthropic set, like 60 billion. It's like these are numbers that are just like ridiculous at this point. And so I just think we we might find ourselves, I could argue, both sides. We find ourselves in a situation where, like retail gets dumped on here and a massive amounts of wealth gets created and taken out of these markets and put into defensive positions as things sell off.
00;02;51;25 - 00;03;02;25
Derek
I could also make the argument that people are long this productive trade here, and I wanna find new homes for it. But yeah, it's I'm watching closely and and following along like everyone else.
00;03;02;28 - 00;03;39;18
Chris
I'm also of mixed minds here and I'm very curious to see how this plays out. One thing I definitely have like an eye towards is crypto often runs things earlier than everyone else, and this certainly has a lot of crypto esque characteristics in terms of it coming to market, the size of it, the the insider participation. And so, you know, like it wouldn't shock me, you know, if come the third one of these, they start to fall.
00;03;39;24 - 00;04;07;07
Chris
You know, that you get diminishing day one runoffs that let's say space goes bananas. Right. Which seems very reasonable just given a it's going to be the first one of the bunch, be it's a broader set of exposures and then you know, see the cult of Elon. Right. And then if OpenAI goes second, well, you know, OpenAI isn't the most beloved of companies.
00;04;07;10 - 00;04;28;21
Chris
I certainly think if anthropic went second, you know, there'd be a little more, I don't know, enthusiasm for it, especially just considering, like, how the two are performing this year. One is a little cleaner. And so, you know, come the third go around like if it's diminishing returns and then, you know, macro is certainly not doing great. Right.
00;04;28;22 - 00;04;39;04
Chris
Like, you know, you can only operate within your own bubble for so long. And so yeah, I'm with you, Derek. I think this is going to be worth paying attention to.
00;04;39;05 - 00;05;00;09
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with you, Derek, on this should happen sooner. I think that that's like the big sin from the.com crash that, you know, we push these things later in later stage. People don't feel like they're part of the journey. They feel like maybe they're the, you know, the the last leg of the journey and they may not be getting a good deal.
00;05;00;09 - 00;05;21;03
Aaron
And I do think that that, you know, in certain ways contributes to some of the like, anti tech pieces. You know, for me it's just all about, you know, token consumption and whether or not that continues and I just I really don't see like a, I don't see like an abatement anytime soon. It feels like it's just going to continue to go up and up and up.
00;05;21;05 - 00;05;39;20
Aaron
You know, even if you're like bearish on the fact that AI may not transform the workplace, like who's probably going to be the bigger biggest consumer of inference and tokens in a year or two, it's going to be robotics or some sort of embodied AI. So I just don't see how this ramps down, at least at this point.
00;05;39;21 - 00;06;11;17
Aaron
It doesn't mean that, like individual projects may not run into some issues. Like, you know, I happen to just be playing around with cursors composer 2.5 and I know, of course you may feel differently, but like for lots of things it's pretty good. As good as like GPT 5.5 or opus 4.7 and it's 20 times less expensive. So I do I do worry more about like whether or not any profitability that some of these, these companies have been able to start whittling out.
00;06;11;17 - 00;06;16;23
Aaron
And I think anthropic has whether or not that's like sustainable. But that's kind of a different story.
00;06;16;25 - 00;06;46;22
Pri
The one question I have is where is this liquidity? I mean, I know you guys probably kicked off with this, but where's all this liquidity coming from? I was like thinking about that last night. And I'm like, is a crypto market going to just dump? I mean, there's not that much liquidity in the crypto market, but is it will it actually dump and other stocks like traditional tech stocks just like completely dumped in order to support these like 5 or 6 companies that are going public, like there's only so much retail capital slash even private endowments, family office.
00;06;46;23 - 00;06;51;11
Pri
It's like there's only so much capital in the world. Like they're talking about trillions of dollars. Market cap.
00;06;51;12 - 00;07;08;26
Derek
Yeah. I think these are a great questions. I will say the AI trade being as relentless as it has been, I think I talked about when I was at New York, has been kind of like one of the 5 or 6 factors that have made me, you know, short to medium term, bearish on crypto risk and risk assets in our space.
00;07;08;26 - 00;07;29;26
Derek
There's just not the same narrative flow right now for crypto as the data center. Build out the productive revenue that's being generated by anthropic and OpenAI, the tail of bottlenecks that are required to support that revenue growth over the next 5 or 6 years. I mean, anthropic just like bowed to the King and signed this data center deal with Elon's colossus.
00;07;29;29 - 00;08;03;07
Derek
I think clauses and costs can't remember, but it's $1 billion a month basically until 2029. It's like the numbers that are required to flow. And, you know, within these data center builds, there's all sorts of labor and products and stuff required to actually make those builds happen. There's, you know, co-located data center GPUs and CPUs and memory and networking and water costs and heat and and then so now people are speculating on, on these bottleneck trades as being kind of like face smelters over the next ten, 20 years.
00;08;03;07 - 00;08;24;22
Derek
And so, yeah, I guess taking a step back pretty like I tend my general thought is like, as long as this trade persists, it's like very difficult to say, like, you should be bidding eath here or you should be buying bitcoin as a store value. It's like these things are for sure like, you know, 0 to 1 innovations, but like they're not the shiny object right now in the room.
00;08;24;22 - 00;08;45;29
Derek
They've been around for 10 to 15 years. People are, you know, maybe a little bit more skeptical on the types of applications and products you can build around this stuff. They're going to take their money, they're going to put it back in their wallet, and they're going to go to where the other casino is bright and shiny. And and that's been a large part of like, why crypto has been a laggard and why I think it probably continues through at least the next quarter or two.
00;08;46;00 - 00;09;09;13
Derek
I think in general, the question you're asking is the right one, which is like at some point the marginal bidder, you really need to kind of laser in on that person. And when you've got three public companies with lockups that are falling and, you know, trillions of dollars of market cap, that's not just been, you know, put into into the public market, and retail is bidding these things, you know, risk capital everywhere else just like dries up.
00;09;09;13 - 00;09;25;14
Derek
And I think the flow dynamics and who's buying and selling becomes like critical to watch during those these events because like it can even if you do believe that the trade is durable, it doesn't mean that things can't be mispriced, which we've seen kind of mark tops in the past.
00;09;25;17 - 00;09;44;06
Aaron
I don't know if this is a trade though, Derek. Right. Like it really is just like a shift. Like if you're allocated right now as a hedge fund into let's say like Salesforce or DocuSign or something like that. Like why like why are you going to continue to maintain those positions? I just feel like that whole category of software.
00;09;44;07 - 00;10;10;22
Aaron
If you want exposure between the 3 or 4, and I'm sure there's going to be more even after that, like, why would you just not adjust your capital to that? I feel like in my in my mind, if whatever capitals remaining in crypto, it really is, I'd imagine like pretty focused on the on chain economy. And or maybe it has like an international dimension where it could be difficult for that capital to actually acquire some of the shares here.
00;10;10;22 - 00;10;24;17
Aaron
So I don't know. I'm sure there's going to be some overlap related to it, but it feels like it feels like it should be a little bit segmented, I would think. Or what do you guys think about that? Because I do think that's a good part of your question there.
00;10;24;19 - 00;10;51;14
Chris
Well, for one, I actually think this is a great time for if to be caught in the doldrums. And what I mean by that is eath is in this transition period, right? It's being taken over by institutional. We're seeing a lot of early participants, you know, exit the space we are seeing. We don't really know what we're seeing out of the F, but we're seeing a wave of mass departures.
00;10;51;14 - 00;11;16;24
Chris
And at the end of the day, right. Like Eve has to grow up. It has to cross the chasm and become a useful working asset. And so to do that in the shadow of an AI explosion, whether he succeeds or not, like I actually think having that shadow and having attention elsewhere is probably for the best, because then he lives or dies on its own merits.
00;11;16;26 - 00;11;41;08
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, it already has that utility, right? It just like kind of cleaning up the house and and doubling down on where the demand is. Right. That's one way to think about it. And realigning people towards at least what it's going to look like in the next, like the next couple of quarters, at least. I think to me, I've been increasingly thinking that crypto and maybe just like finance period is just going to benefit.
00;11;41;09 - 00;12;01;26
Aaron
Not right now, but like in the long run, because I just feel like the software modes are just getting thinner and thinner and thinner and like crypto is natively networked. I think network effects still hold. I still kind of go back to this thought, like, I don't think anybody, anybody thinks that let's say Bitcoin or ETH or some of these other things will be disrupted by AI.
00;12;01;27 - 00;12;18;15
Aaron
I think they view it as like a catalyst for that. And I think it kind of extends to a lot of, you know, financial products and services to in the sense that, like, their core business is not going to get disrupted, like the business of, I guess, you know, generating a profit or a return and really like all this stuff.
00;12;18;16 - 00;12;26;26
Aaron
And crypto in particular would just catch a bit kind of after that. I don't know. I just keep on thinking about that over and over and over again. Like.
00;12;26;28 - 00;12;44;14
Chris
Yeah, I mean, water is wet, money is ever green and money is constantly in pursuit of itself. And so money is not going to be disrupted by all this. It's just waiting for like a new set of flows to emerge for it to do its thing.
00;12;44;17 - 00;13;16;26
Aaron
Yeah. And like and then crypto is going to be one of those flows. There's just I don't see how that's not going to be the case. Even if I look at like finance stocks, if I look at a business like circle, like circle is going to be even less impacted by AI than, let's say, like a traditional bank or, you know, some of the publicly traded like private equity vehicles because their business is not going to really change like it is what it is, because it kind of got generated in the past couple of years versus like these more established businesses that have to adjust what they're doing, not just because of crypto, but also
00;13;16;27 - 00;13;46;08
Aaron
because of this, like AI tsunami that's coming for them in different ways. So I don't know, like I really think that like, crypto is going to come out of like looking really good, like after this kind of wave of first wave of exuberance comes out around like some of these AI stocks. And I do think it may happen like once people realize like, oh, shoot, like anthropic can't charge 20 times the price of an open like effectively like an open source model in order to complete the task.
00;13;46;13 - 00;13;59;25
Aaron
Like they're charging $11 per task versus like $0.50 for composer two. And it doesn't feel radically different. Like that's a huge like profit and and revenue compression that's like looming on the horizon.
00;13;59;28 - 00;14;19;26
Derek
Yeah, I think I agree with that. But wouldn't that run. So I think there's a couple of risks like this. I think open source AI, local AI run huge risks to the business model of anthropic and OpenAI, where you're routing intelligence and tokens through their API and paying for it on demand. And their ability to extract it on premium from their pre-training is predicated on there not being alternatives.
00;14;19;26 - 00;14;46;07
Derek
Well, there's alternatives now, like to your point, there's like local AI, there's really strong open source AI that's only a couple of months behind. Deep seat came out today and was like, yeah, we're going to raise $10 billion and we aren't planning on monetizing our pre-training. We're going to keep open sourcing them like, that's a big deal. I think to me, when I see that, when I see these, like, competitive threats looming in the background around the unit economics of how these things are valued and retail not really being aware of these things and being kind of the last in line.
00;14;46;09 - 00;15;04;04
Derek
My first thought isn't like, okay, this is a fairly priced business. Retail is getting in on the ground floor. They can sit on this thing for a while. My thought is, wow, retail has no idea what they're walking into. Their stepping into a moving train. They don't really understand the competitive dynamics of how feisty this is going to be over the next year.
00;15;04;04 - 00;15;13;13
Derek
And they're buying this thing a 2 trillion bucks and that's like, that's the stuff you you kind of start to see when dislocations are forming, if you know what I mean.
00;15;13;15 - 00;15;43;26
Chris
At the end of the day, this is an office space problem. And what I mean by that is, you know, the office space here are data centers. And so margin compression will certainly happen. And I think that's where an anthropic is most exposed by, you know, open source or more efficient models. And that's what you're talking about at the end of the day, the ability of these models to make that impact really is going to come down to like, where can you run these from?
00;15;43;26 - 00;16;04;26
Chris
And so, you know, like we can have all all the best open source models in the world. They still need to get sit in data centers. And so that's like just another bit of calculus in this equation is, you know, will the cost of running your compute rise even as like your unique mix on tokens falls?
00;16;04;26 - 00;16;37;01
Derek
I think that's the idea that these models need to sit in data centers as they're being served, as inference is being served, is also an assumption in a competitive threat that I'm not quite sure is true. And that's something that like sounds really radical today. But these I mean, like the the ability to do distillation to like keep the integrity of these models and have smaller and smaller models that are running locally or can be stitched together with compute, heterogeneous compute that lives in a, you know, a small workspace or on your desk.
00;16;37;01 - 00;17;01;13
Derek
If you put your MacBook and your gaming GPU together, or you're buying that inference from somebody who has done that on the other side of the world, like there are these models that I think are cropping up that converge very nicely with this idea of high performance, smaller models running locally and that kind of sit outside the walled gardens of data centers that I think is a threat that I don't know if many people are right now.
00;17;01;13 - 00;17;19;14
Derek
No, I think the counter to that threat is like, this is why OpenAI and anthropic in another of these companies are getting so bullish on like the hardware or like the embodied hardware layer, like you may have seen this, but like more and more, Sam's talking about like this phone that he's trying to build and like he's trying to pull the timelines even closer into 2027.
00;17;19;14 - 00;17;38;14
Derek
The reason is because my gut says they recognize defending their pretrained is going to become harder and harder and harder with stuff like deep seek and open source and local, and they need to figure out a way to take those pre-trained and start selling things that are a little bit more defensible in market, rather than just like gating via an API.
00;17;38;17 - 00;18;01;09
Derek
And so I think we're going to start to see this more and more like these very clever, you know, in throwback and OpenAI. So starting to buy wet labs and like do clinical trials and research and like productize through hard science. Like there are these business models that I think are going to get layered on top that these guys are all trying to race to recognizing the competitive threats to their their cash cow right now.
00;18;01;12 - 00;18;27;14
Chris
Sure. So two things here. One, I think the local stuff is fine when you're talking about like, you know, the open claw type of communities. You're talking about me coding in my basement, right? When at last. Ian realizes it can run Kimmy for to do its entire stack that still needs to go into data center, and that's going to be the far higher, you know, consumption user there.
00;18;27;14 - 00;18;48;01
Chris
And so it still kind of goes back to the data center bottlenecks. But that second point you're making. Yeah, I do think that is really salient. And that's what happens to everyone who runs, you know, a utility slash commodity business. You know, do car manufacturers make more money on cars or do they make more money on auto financing?
00;18;48;02 - 00;18;57;27
Chris
Right. Like being a value added resellers where your margins are and therefore of course, like, yeah, an open AI has to start working their way up that tree.
00;18;57;28 - 00;19;25;16
Aaron
Well, I think it's also the sophomore piece. Right. Like that's why they're moving to services. Maybe they're going to move to, I guess take on the pharmaceutical industry yet. We'll say hearing OpenAI plus Anthropic plus wet lab together really does bring back some like horrific memories of of Covid for me. And the only thing I heard Sam talk about this week is how we overdosed on GLP ones and like lost all feeling.
00;19;25;16 - 00;19;28;09
Aaron
So I don't know where his head is right now.
00;19;28;11 - 00;19;34;05
Pri
That was actually a very funny clip. But no, it's it's it's a good point. Chris and Derek.
00;19;34;09 - 00;19;53;26
Derek
Yeah, it's I mean, all this stuff is so fascinating right now. It's hard to kind of keep your head on straight with all the with all the things happening around this. It's, I think, crypto or not crypto. Chris said this earlier, maybe about ten minutes ago. How like crypto kind of front runs a lot of these teams. And I think his point was around like, you know, the liquidity washing that can take place.
00;19;53;27 - 00;20;12;29
Derek
I mean, good examples like Lava Labs launching me bits marks the top around NFTs or like the other deed, you know, raising. I can't even remember how much like $200 million, like an hour took a lot of liquidity out. It's like those same dynamics can happen with much bigger assets. It with when the whole world is participating in those in that market structure.
00;20;13;00 - 00;20;30;20
Derek
There's another takeaway to which is just like crypto is also front run from a fact that this is a space where you've had to build with basically no moats. Like every piece of code that you put on a blockchain can be used or forked by your competitors, right? It's like the hardest space to build. Durable value has been crypto.
00;20;30;20 - 00;21;10;02
Derek
And hilariously, it's like both the the blessing and the curse of this technology is that everything is open and permissionless, but it's also been very hard for people to kind of like, capture riparian rights on whatever the thing that they've built is and why we've seen so much churn from this space. It's like cutthroat out here. I think those same dynamics exist around AI, and I think the world and how it prices and markets around us that doesn't, hasn't quite figured that out yet at how, yeah, how how competitive it's going to be when data and intelligence and these models basically can be distilled or, you know, just pulled together and reinforcement learned.
00;21;10;02 - 00;21;30;14
Derek
And it's just like digital stuff just wants to break free. And people are going to find ways to break it free. That's just like, if I can count on anything, it's like the human engineering and ingenuity and creativity to do that. You know, it's kind of fun to kind of like apply the lessons that we've been trained to learn in crypto and over the last ten years to these markets, because I think they're going to play an increasingly relevant role.
00;21;30;16 - 00;21;52;06
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, another way to think about it, right, is like everybody's pricing these companies and as software companies instead of, you know, electrical utilities, which is kind of what they are. And I have reservations at deep SQL produce anything useful. I haven't felt a desire to use that model. And, I don't know, nine months if not a year.
00;21;52;07 - 00;22;11;06
Aaron
So I do think I don't even know if it's going to be open source, Derek. That does it or, you know, just easier to train more specialized models coming out of vertical AI plays, right? They just undercut premiums that can be charged. But like ultimately I think this is what you're kind of pointing towards, Chris. Like, they're just electrical companies.
00;22;11;12 - 00;22;30;10
Aaron
They're utilities all the way down. You know, maybe they can stretch up and try to like add General Electric on top of that and start making and, you know, leveraging the electricity that they're creating, the intelligent electricity that they're creating. But who knows if they can do that? I'm a little skeptical, to be honest with that piece.
00;22;30;16 - 00;22;58;25
Chris
Yeah. It's interesting Derek, you bring up the whole, you know, copycat stuff and not being able to hide what you're doing because this is something I'm actually been thinking about this week, because what I'm doing in my own project is at the moment, I'm building out like a, an entire messaging protocol because I need to be able to do more complex work in interactions with outside parties, right?
00;22;58;26 - 00;23;21;02
Chris
Like if someone wants to work in my system, they need to be able to have a conversation. They need to be able to scope a job. They need to be able to agree to what that unit of work is. And in order to do all of that right, I basically need to build out like a communications protocol, a language per se, so that people know how to talk to my system.
00;23;21;02 - 00;23;51;15
Chris
And one thing I realized was, as I was doing this, I'm essentially like opening, you know, like visibility into a huge range of complex tasking within my harness. But it's also necessary, right? Like if you want these things to be able to take full advantage of what they're doing, you actually have to be able to expose more and more and more to the point where, like reverse engineering, what exactly is going on under the hood isn't all that hard.
00;23;51;15 - 00;24;17;07
Chris
And so, like, I don't think this is a unique problem to me either. Like if you want people to be able to use a multimodal model coming to market, like you're going to have to really open up the tool calling the classification, like you're going to have to open up this entire surface, that once you see that surface, you know, for a practitioner, it becomes very, very easy to understand what's happening under the hood.
00;24;17;07 - 00;24;21;26
Chris
And it's not magic. It's literally like a giant switchboard.
00;24;21;28 - 00;24;40;02
Pri
I guess that begs the question, like, what would you on? Like the switchboard or like the piping cost versus like the services? Because I think it is a good question. Like, how are these companies supposed to go? Like at a certain point, like you have the piping, you have AGI, like the growth is going to be on services, I guess.
00;24;40;02 - 00;25;11;07
Pri
But like and kind of Aaron seemed a little bit skeptical of that. But I don't know, maybe I'm skeptical too. I don't really know where I'm going with my my point, but I guess I'm trying to go back to the fact that, like, what would you actually value the piping at as opposed to the services? Like, I'm wondering what your average retail customer even just like what these early investors in series H are expecting these companies to do, just like be the piping, like like, you know, the con editor, is it going to be just building on top?
00;25;11;07 - 00;25;22;05
Pri
And of course, we've seen them move into other verticals like law and accounting and whatever. But yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that fully. It's just it's just more thinking, like where the value comes from, I guess there.
00;25;22;12 - 00;25;47;02
Chris
This is not a unique problem, right? Like every business is priced on a multiple of what it makes. I mean, that's the standard model. Yeah. And you know, it's it's not wild to think that look in an AI workflow engine that just produces work and that work is constantly under threat, that we're constantly needs to evolve. It constantly needs to be finding new work to do.
00;25;47;03 - 00;25;59;00
Chris
I mean, you know, it's not wild to say, well, you know what the multiple on that is eight, right? It's not 40, it's not a hundred. It's not a magic number. It's the same multiple. It's a slightly better multiple than a car wash.
00;25;59;01 - 00;26;17;05
Pri
But I don't think people are like valuing things on multiple, especially when it comes to technology. It's like it's ability to like infiltrate. It's network effects. It's it's reliance. I mean, every, every even if their multiples aren't high, the reliance across all the industries like that has to be factored into the price to.
00;26;17;07 - 00;26;48;16
Chris
So yes, it does, but you can't have it both ways. You can't say AI is going to accelerate everything, and we're going to have a huge sloshes of innovation at which everything like fast forwards at this exponential rate. And oh, we should give this some just some sort of magical value based on like black box whatever. Right? Like at a certain point in time, if you actually want the promise of this thing, then it ceases to be magic.
00;26;48;16 - 00;27;12;04
Chris
It's just the most powerful commodity ever created, but everyone has access to it and therefore like it prices based on its ability to perform things. Now, if one of those performance things happen to be it can capture that asteroid or, you know, $18 quadrillion, well, you know what? That's deserving of a multiple, you know, if it just does what everyone else is doing with it.
00;27;12;05 - 00;27;14;14
Chris
Well, then that multiple is like teeny tiny.
00;27;14;16 - 00;27;28;13
Pri
Fair enough. On the on the data center piece that you guys are talking about before, though, as a bottleneck, I feel like, you know, people largely agree with that. But like, do we think, how are you guys feeling about the orbital data center conversation? That's like everywhere.
00;27;28;19 - 00;27;52;26
Aaron
Yeah, I think I mean, that's what makes space a little bit different. But you know, just the spread just to put a like I guess a book end on on what we were just describing like software, internet software has like about a 40 forward price turning right now, like trailing 50, you know, and for software system and application it's like forward 30 trailing 57.
00;27;52;28 - 00;28;08;13
Aaron
You know utility has like a 17 times PD. So it's just a huge spread. And then I so that's the big question like how is the market going to price it. Or are they going to price this like software or are they going to price it. What they probably should be pricing it at, which is more like a utility.
00;28;08;13 - 00;28;30;06
Aaron
And I do think like every all these models are flying high because people are happy to pay top dollar for the token. There was a nice podcast, which I think you recommended pre with the CFO from anthropic, and he was framing this as there's like a lot of returns that come to having the best model. I think that's kind of true because there was no other game in town.
00;28;30;13 - 00;29;00;09
Aaron
But if you know whether it's like lightweight, proprietary models like composer 2.5 or open source models, they come in and they're they're not able to to generate the same multiples for profit margin on each one of those tokens. It's going to be a big deal, right? So if anthropic can only charge $7 instead of or five $5.50 instead of $11 for each task completed, they need to double their customers in order to maintain that same profitability.
00;29;00;10 - 00;29;22;05
Aaron
Like, that's a big task, right? And yes, the stuff hasn't been completely diffused into the economy. But like, I think that's a different task than what they're kind of facing right now with these like high watering revenue numbers. I think space is different because there there were Chris is going right, like they're increasingly looking like an AI version of AWS or Google Cloud.
00;29;22;07 - 00;29;50;03
Aaron
Right. They're selling compute. They have a lot of hardware components related to it. From data. Yeah, they're kind of like the most diversified out of the three that are coming out. Yeah. Between like Starlink, between like Tesla, between like optimists coming out, between like just selling, you know, selling compute. I think anthropic is agreeing to pay something like I forgot the number was like billions per quarter through 2029 to space.
00;29;50;09 - 00;30;04;17
Aaron
So I think space space is revenue has like a much, much higher opportunity to, you know, to continue to ramp even if there's price pressure on tokens, which I think is going to be a big story probably next year. Right.
00;30;04;19 - 00;30;28;01
Chris
Let's kick the tires at a paradox for a minute. Can I be both deflationary and carry a huge premium on itself, or does AI eventually have to compress and reflect itself as a commodity? And for how long can AI carry a premium? If AI is truly impactful, then it is deflationary.
00;30;28;02 - 00;30;30;23
Aaron
It's Furlong's paradox. Is that what I'm hearing? Chris?
00;30;30;23 - 00;30;33;11
Chris
I'm just asking questions, man.
00;30;33;13 - 00;30;36;15
Aaron
I think we coined something here. You should publish something on that.
00;30;36;16 - 00;30;41;19
Chris
I'll. I'll fire up the m dash right after this call.
00;30;41;21 - 00;30;51;16
Derek
Like, can AI lower the price for everyone and everything while the bottlenecks still are monopolies and like, earn monopoly like returns? Is that the question you're asking?
00;30;51;17 - 00;30;55;22
Chris
Yeah, that's the question. How long can it pull that trick off? I mean, ten years maybe.
00;30;55;25 - 00;31;16;14
Aaron
Yeah, I think there's definitely a period. Right. I think it's because they just but the challenge then is going to be can they expand at a rate that is faster than the price drop. Right. And like is this notion of like like a premium return to like having one of like a handful of the top models going to continue?
00;31;16;15 - 00;31;36;00
Aaron
I don't know, I just think a lot of we're seeing like, like the clues from this in software. And here's just what I know from using it. Right. Like there's very little model of allegiance, right? I feel myself getting more cost conscious about model use. So I doubt that I'm like alone there and I'm not seeing as much differentiation.
00;31;36;00 - 00;31;55;27
Aaron
And each like, you know, marginal improvement there. It's great. Like it's awesome that 4.7 was better than 4.6, right? But you can still like drive most things on a day to day by not using their top model. And I just think that that's going to happen everywhere. So I don't know if that thesis, which is what they're bringing to the market, is going to hold up.
00;31;55;27 - 00;32;15;13
Aaron
And I'm skeptical that the wonderful people that work at anthropic or OpenAI are going to be able to run a wet lab, like, I think it's more likely that they would do that. Not great. And I'm a little skeptical that they'll even be able to deliver consulting services. I think they must have felt that, or else they would have they would have entered into those partnerships if they felt like they could do it alone.
00;32;15;13 - 00;32;18;23
Aaron
So, I don't know. I just have a lot of questions around that.
00;32;18;25 - 00;32;46;17
Derek
Yeah. I think I mean, my view is like it's all execution, right? Like, I think how long, how long can they listen? Do I think this technology is not the area? Like, of course, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's not seeing the impact of those effects happen on some, some timeline. The second part of your question is interesting, which is like, for how long can the power law winners and the bottlenecks be priced at a premium to generate, kind of like monopoly like returns?
00;32;46;18 - 00;33;13;29
Derek
I the only thing that keeps coming up from my head is just like, it's it's one of the reasons why I used to use the analogy with like startups. Like the one thing you have with startups is speed. It's like when you're a big ship and you've got all the employees that are focused on one specific direction and they're all, you know, heave hoeing, and they've built this giant motor and engine and there's, you know, they've they've got the cost structure and everything supports the way that they're generating revenue.
00;33;13;29 - 00;33;28;02
Derek
It's really hard to start turning that ship around and doing something different. And startups are able to kind of see, like what's not working and working and be able to like quickly say like, nope, they're in the wrong direction. We're going to build this thing and point it towards that island over there and go, go in that direction.
00;33;28;02 - 00;33;53;13
Derek
And they can usually do that faster. It's like the innovators alignment faster than like the incumbent is allowed to kind of turn the ship around. I think with, with the I guess maybe the analogy isn't like totally clean, but the way I keep thinking about is like the way our society has been built is like there's a lot of tech that they're it's going to be really sticky trying to unwind things, to be kind of like built from first principles as a result of this technology.
00;33;53;13 - 00;34;22;18
Derek
It's like, you know, in a perfect world, like you'd want a fresh canvas, you'd want to say, okay, we've got this insane ability to generate intelligence at the drop of a pin. It can, you know, it's smarter than every human alive combined. And we can have that type of intelligence in, you know, nanoseconds. And with that technology, it's like you probably want to design new political systems, new economies, new tax regimes, new, you know, social contracts.
00;34;22;18 - 00;34;43;21
Derek
And like, we're just not going to do that. It's just too heavy of a ship like America is too big of a ship. The world is too big of a ship. Interstate and cross-border, you know, trade is too big of a ship. And so, like, maybe the answer to your question, Chris, is like, how long can the existing system kind of be pillaged upon by this apex predator?
00;34;43;21 - 00;34;54;22
Derek
Maybe it's ten years, maybe it's 20 years, maybe it's 50 years. I think it might take a little bit longer than people think. Just because it's a there's, there's there's going to be a lot of kind of mucking to unwind there.
00;34;54;29 - 00;35;01;15
Chris
Wow. So you're going so far as to say, like AI will ultimately be the downfall of neoliberalism?
00;35;01;15 - 00;35;04;15
Derek
I'm not I'm not saying anything. I'm all I'm saying.
00;35;04;15 - 00;35;06;23
Aaron
Is, how'd you get there, Chris? How'd you get there?
00;35;07;00 - 00;35;10;24
Chris
Because he's saying, like, AI could carry this over to the whole system falls.
00;35;10;25 - 00;35;28;27
Derek
I haven't, I'm actually saying something. I think I'm saying slightly different, which is like it has the potential to do that. And from first principles, probably, if we could, if we could have a clean slate, we probably wouldn't want to pull forward all of this tech that. But I think I'm saying something opposite, which is I think it's going to take some time for like for us to unwind this stuff.
00;35;28;27 - 00;35;49;23
Derek
And I think in that period of time, while that's happening ten, 20, 30 years, these things like these, these massive businesses can get built like these huge engines that kind of like pillage and pirate on the social contract and free labor or free markets. And you know how commerce works. And, and I think that's maybe the threat I'm flagging.
00;35;50;00 - 00;36;07;13
Aaron
Yeah. Cleaning up tech decks, going to at least take a couple of years. Like it doesn't matter what it is. And then you're going to have to adjust your models related to it. I feel like there's just compression everywhere though, Chris. Like, even if you look at crypto like you're seeing institutions come in and like Coinbase, margins are going to get compressed there too.
00;36;07;14 - 00;36;17;10
Aaron
It just feels like almost the meta theme is what you're saying, Derek, which is just everything's getting more and more competitive, right? Like, every business is now like a pizza shop in New York.
00;36;17;13 - 00;36;20;15
Derek
Yeah. Yes. I think that's a good analogy.
00;36;20;18 - 00;36;25;17
Chris
But that's not new. I mean, I'm sure there was once like really high margins and making televisions.
00;36;25;19 - 00;36;42;04
Aaron
Yeah, yeah. But look, look at what happened. Right. It went like a lot of that work went overseas. Right. Like it was no longer RCA capturing that premium. Right. It was, you know, some no name company, at least American consumer that was beginning to take more and more of that market share.
00;36;42;07 - 00;36;47;09
Chris
Except in this case, everything is going to go to space where there's no taxes in space law.
00;36;47;11 - 00;36;49;14
Aaron
Yeah, yeah.
00;36;49;16 - 00;36;54;21
Derek
Conditions. I mean, that's why the I think you're flying out. You want to get out there?
00;36;54;23 - 00;37;01;15
Aaron
Yeah. Your neoliberals will be right out there in space, Chris. Like maintaining their position. So. Or your neo neocons.
00;37;01;18 - 00;37;06;18
Chris
I don't know how is the EU going to claim jurisdiction over privacy in space?
00;37;06;20 - 00;37;09;25
Aaron
Why are you assuming that there's going to be an EU?
00;37;09;27 - 00;37;19;13
Chris
Because I think we're going to get into performing work in space to avoid jurisdictions and taxation prior to the death of the EU.
00;37;19;14 - 00;37;30;18
Derek
I think that's I think that's definitely going to happen. Chris. Like, I think this is like the final frontier of regulatory arbitrage. Just get your shit off of planet Earth into space where you can kind of start writing your own rules.
00;37;30;19 - 00;37;37;15
Pri
It won't America start writing rules like they're already setting up space and like on moon. Yeah.
00;37;37;18 - 00;37;54;20
Derek
I think the tricky part is like, we have a suite. The way we've built our system, a rule on planet Earth is like it's by defending borders and like it's, you know, geographic control. And when you're talking about space, like, are we are we really going to start sending armies to defend our little plot of land on the moon?
00;37;54;20 - 00;37;59;12
Derek
Are we really going to start? Start like charting out.
00;37;59;15 - 00;38;02;27
Derek
Jurisdictions around like thin air?
00;38;02;29 - 00;38;08;26
Aaron
We we set up a Space Force, and the US is constantly hoping to expand its jurisdictional reach.
00;38;08;27 - 00;38;20;02
Derek
I think Chris's point is, is a good one, which is just like, this is where you're going. This is where things are the least settled, and this is where you want to go to, like get outside of the constraints of how the world works.
00;38;20;09 - 00;38;46;25
Chris
Yes. Because look, the US of course, will want to take what it can lay claim over the US. The way it does this right is and give me the better word, but it just looks for footprints and it says, okay, maybe you're based in Singapore, but you're in US East one. Maybe you're claiming you know that you have a corporation, but your bank is in New York, right?
00;38;46;26 - 00;39;15;26
Chris
Like that's how the US does this. And so if you're Elon and you're putting both your energy like you're putting your energy production, your compute and your intelligence were all sitting up in space, you're effectively running your own closed loop. And so what I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of footholds you can find because, you know, these are all like Delaware, Texas corporations at the same time.
00;39;15;27 - 00;39;40;18
Chris
Like there's a ton you can do. And Apple did this with Ireland, right? Like there's a ton you can do such that when the US does come for a pound of flesh, it's not coming out of space exit pocket. It's coming out of like the downstream consumer who's getting that shit beamed down to them. It's like the avoidance of the taxation, not necessarily a taxation itself.
00;39;40;21 - 00;39;42;18
Pri
So the network state is in space.
00;39;42;19 - 00;39;43;20
Aaron
Yeah. It's always been.
00;39;43;22 - 00;39;46;08
Chris
The networks space free.
00;39;46;11 - 00;39;48;14
Aaron
It doesn't exist.
00;39;48;17 - 00;40;09;26
Aaron
Yeah, I do think I do think some of these jurisdictional questions are going to become more and more manifest. Right. We're seeing like Eric Schmidt getting booed at the illustrious University of Arizona Wildcats, which I thought was interesting because they probably all using it like on a day to day basis to get through and get their diplomas from the regions of the University of Arizona.
00;40;10;03 - 00;40;11;29
Derek
There's there's no question.
00;40;12;04 - 00;40;38;13
Aaron
Yeah. Right. So it's just like the cognitive dissonance there is kind of wild, you know, we see as as been tracking and others like just the slightly manufactured to fully manufactured pushback on the data centers. Right. So I don't know, I feel like there is going to be demand to kind of get out of Dodge, whether that's to like a network state or to outer space or where the, you know, the remnants, the remnants of the European Union.
00;40;38;19 - 00;40;47;11
Chris
The demand is to get above the NPC sock puppet caste system and to be the one directing other people's speech.
00;40;47;14 - 00;40;58;06
Aaron
It's been the game since the dawn of time. Chris. Right. Whether whether that whether that was a religious institution, you know, if you were the elite class, it's always been the same game.
00;40;58;07 - 00;41;26;09
Chris
It seems to be recurring theme on the pod today. Everything old is new again, this I think I think the the difference now is apparently everything is more pronounced now that it's networked. You know, like I do feel like the last like this month, if this month is brought anything to the table, it's the glaring realization about how much opinion and speech is generated downstream of paid intent.
00;41;26;09 - 00;41;52;03
Chris
And we can see this all over the place from, you know, a pro-Israel lobby spending more on any congressional race ever in Kentucky and getting an incumbent unseated in Massie. We can see it in media with, like all the music journalists being like, oh my God, geese pays for this. And Justin Bieber's Coachella set was really astroturf, you know, in terms of demand.
00;41;52;03 - 00;42;16;20
Chris
And then we can see it in like these sort of prestige positions, you know, in which. Oh, you're doing anti data center research and you got a grant for that. And so you're doing this timeline. Did you know seemingly good policy making that you know is a very prestigious sort of role. But who's paying for it. Or we can see it on in technology with a 16 Z.
00;42;16;23 - 00;42;36;04
Chris
You know, in their new media efforts and bringing everyone to like some swanky bougie ass ranch in Carmel, you know, so that they can get indoctrinated and turn around and hop in their slacks and wait for, you know, some partners say all of you need to hit retweet and say, this is the greatest thing on earth, right? Like or just like the sheer amount of bots everywhere, right?
00;42;36;05 - 00;42;50;01
Chris
Like, all speech is paid speech nowadays. And how pervasive it is, is really starting to become like very brazen and naked and just a huge bummer, honestly. Like, it just makes you want to, like, sit around and talk to me all day.
00;42;50;07 - 00;42;54;09
Aaron
The dead internet. We're in the this is the the late cycle.
00;42;54;09 - 00;43;00;18
Chris
The dead everything like a sovereign opinion might be the most valuable thing these days is because it's rare.
00;43;00;22 - 00;43;01;12
Aaron
It's fair.
00;43;01;16 - 00;43;23;15
Chris
I mean, it's gotten so silly that like, Twitter is now like as it relates to New York City playing this giant, like, open source, like Larry David. David, this Larry David like version of like, what people can do in New York City, you know, like, I don't think we're that far off from like me asking pre what New Yorkers are allowed to listen to LCD Soundsystem.
00;43;23;16 - 00;43;27;28
Chris
Like the discourse has gotten like so frivolous around this stuff it's insane.
00;43;27;29 - 00;43;36;27
Aaron
Why do you think that's the case, Chris? That Larry David ification of New York City, you know, going on like why do you think that's happening? Yeah.
00;43;36;28 - 00;44;06;01
Chris
I well, I think New York, you know, in San Francisco, this s tier like aspirational city thing is certainly having, having an impact in which like these two locales are now operating like, you know, by their own rules or they're playing their own like baroque late games and they're very different games, right? Where like, New York is, is gotten into like, very much this sort of like, right based precedent.
00;44;06;03 - 00;44;30;27
Chris
What action is allowed to you based on who you are, where you live. How long you've been in the city. And, you know, it's like this weird version of like social status signaling or class signaling, but it's also just very gossipy and dumb and fun, right? Like, you know, it's almost like maybe to some degree, it's. Oh, I clearly, I know, no longer have a voice in politics.
00;44;30;27 - 00;44;47;01
Chris
And so therefore, why should I even bother talking about it? Because whoever is writing the biggest check is winning this race, you know? So let me just, you know, be like, who has the right to steal? Who has the right to sit on a stoop in Bed-Stuy, who has the right to go to this place? Who has the right to live here?
00;44;47;03 - 00;44;51;19
Chris
Right. Like it's I don't know if it's it's maybe a redirection of energy.
00;44;51;22 - 00;44;54;04
Pri
It's like the anticipation of reality.
00;44;54;08 - 00;45;21;07
Aaron
I actually think it's the processing of the puritanical strand that we've been living through. Right. Like that strand still exists. It's just it's kind of like a Covid virus. Like each time it permeates, it gets weaker and weaker. And so maybe that's what we're seeing, Chris. Something like that. I mean, we definitely went through like a, like a little mini puritanical echo from 2010 to 2020, whatever, you know?
00;45;21;08 - 00;45;26;14
Aaron
So maybe it's that because it's kind of like, oh, I should be able to tell you what to do.
00;45;26;17 - 00;45;44;09
Chris
Sure. Like, yeah, I think there maybe are some strains of that. But there's also like this fetishization of New York City itself. Like you would never have these conversations about, I don't know, Saint Louis. Like, what gives New York this special status in which, like, you know, we can literally be like.
00;45;44;10 - 00;45;46;09
Pri
We know why.
00;45;46;11 - 00;45;47;16
Chris
You say it free.
00;45;47;22 - 00;45;49;11
Pri
It's the best in the world.
00;45;49;18 - 00;45;51;24
Chris
It's the best city in the world.
00;45;51;25 - 00;45;55;13
Aaron
And that looks like the best basketball team in the in the nation.
00;45;55;13 - 00;46;10;02
Chris
So God, you guys are getting yourself so set up for a disappointment and you got to take the ride. Like, look I would love for the Knicks to win just for the sake of the city. Like the city would be so happy for this. But like, that's not really the Knicks role in life.
00;46;10;03 - 00;46;17;17
Aaron
Oh definitely it is. New York's got to get its swagger back. It just went through this this period and is coming out the other side.
00;46;17;18 - 00;46;36;24
Chris
Well one thing New York can rest assured. Shock of shocks MSG will not have to move for the new Penn Station so James Dolan can continue. Like running mass surveillance on government land and banning whatever lawyers firm like if you're a lawyer for a firm he doesn't like, he can ban you from the garden.
00;46;37;01 - 00;46;43;02
Aaron
You also because it's the greatest arena on the planet, Chris, is that is that why it's awesome? Doesn't need to move?
00;46;43;03 - 00;46;45;17
Chris
Yeah. I mean, is it.
00;46;45;19 - 00;46;46;09
Aaron
It's definitely.
00;46;46;09 - 00;47;07;27
Chris
Not right. Like in terms of events, it's hosted its placement like center in the city of those things. That's where like MSG can lay that claim. It can't like lay the claim for MSG itself. Yeah it's true. And she's perfectly nice, right? Like, it's not like you're walking into a second rate arena. There it it's.
00;47;08;00 - 00;47;33;28
Aaron
They renovated. It looks good I think going back to your point before, to me, I feel like we're in a also like a transition period. It feels like a little 1970s in New York to me. And I think it's like refining its footing. And I think it's like a, like intellectual and cultural core is just whatever that was in the previous 15 plus years, like the public has consumed it, rejected it, done whatever it's wanted with it.
00;47;33;28 - 00;47;39;18
Aaron
So I think we're like in a period of exploration there again and again what comes out the.
00;47;39;18 - 00;47;39;29
Aaron
Other side.
00;47;39;29 - 00;47;53;07
Pri
Are you like culture, art, advertising, brand fashion, really New York's I mean, obviously New York is financed and all of those things as well. But like when it comes to global cultural footprint, like.
00;47;53;11 - 00;47;55;08
Aaron
Are you about to say taste.
00;47;55;09 - 00;48;18;01
Pri
And I mean taste, I actually wasn't about to say taste, but that's kind of what I'm actually getting at is like, as we realize that that is more valuable, relationships are more valuable, like a concentrated city that also values culture, cultural institutions, brand, you know, taste esthetic like I do think that that I mean, that's where Europe actually.
00;48;18;01 - 00;48;41;00
Pri
I'm like, you guys might oddly win AI because you actually do have taste. And that might be like the only thing left. We just like leapfrog all the all the labor there. And they just kind of are left with the, the leisure, which they're very, very good at. But anyways, I don't mean to, to digress, but like I think that's potentially why there's like a light obsession with New York.
00;48;41;00 - 00;49;01;29
Pri
Also, I think it's just like relationships, like people come here from all over the world and country to to meet other people who are highly motivated. It's I mean, it's always been the case for the orc, but in the age of AI and cognitive labor, being taken by machines like that only becomes more important. And like SF is even trying to emulate that.
00;49;01;29 - 00;49;20;02
Pri
And I've seen like LA also start these little like parties and like you feel like the people in SF, a lot of what I see, like they're trying to bring like culture and vibe and like the Beat Generation vibe back into SF. It's a little cringe coming from the tech community, but they're at least trying to because I think people are realizing that's important.
00;49;20;02 - 00;49;23;09
Pri
Whereas like New York authentically has that.
00;49;23;10 - 00;49;45;16
Chris
No, but New York's not authentic and New York's on the verge of cringe. I just like navel gazing. That's that's the problem. That's actually what I, I, I couldn't care less if people want to like, you know, pick these tiny little issues and, and like generate a whole storm over like etiquette or, you know, interpretations of like privilege and this and that.
00;49;45;17 - 00;50;10;18
Chris
Right. But when that all aggregates up and it's viewed in mass like it's cringe is fuck and like you're a New Yorker, well, no you're not. And you probably are a transplant. But, you know, if you're a New Yorker, you're just like, cut the shit and live in your city, act like you've been here. And that, to me is part of the problem is like, there's, you know, we ruin everything.
00;50;10;18 - 00;50;32;00
Chris
And I don't know quite where I'm going with this, but I actually want to jump back over to, like, what Aaron was talking about or, you know, and you were talking about like, sure, New York's a leader in fashion advertising. It's a cultural capital. At the same time, no one is making a good living doing these things, right.
00;50;32;01 - 00;51;00;20
Chris
Like, you know, we're in the mad men of this world, like, who's in the advertising business, you know, that is going to do great other than, like a very small concentration of people. And so that tension exists as well, where, sure, all these things you can point to, New York as a leader is still a leader in it at the same time is that creating healthy citizens who are participating in those economies?
00;51;00;20 - 00;51;19;21
Aaron
I think the navel gazing that was part of that process. Chris. Right. Like, and if I hear you, you want us to be like a little bit more nonchalant about it and just keep keep like the centered cool that I think does like Fire New York, but I think it's got to find its like new angle and it just testing it in market, or at least some people are.
00;51;19;23 - 00;51;29;13
Pri
The angle is going to be making AI true for the rest of the country probably. I don't think SF has what it takes to create brand and around AI.
00;51;29;13 - 00;51;37;11
Aaron
I mean, that's obvious. Literally, they're they're booing people. It's like a step away from having tomatoes phone at you.
00;51;37;11 - 00;51;46;03
Chris
I believe NYU was booing someone for AI as well. This is not a unique problem. We're not we're not better than anyone else around us.
00;51;46;03 - 00;52;03;06
Pri
No, no, but it's not about like NYU. It's because I think it's like AI sentiment, like people haven't. People associate AI with Sam Altman and San Francisco and like, frankly, the new oligarchs and like, I wouldn't I mean, it's there's a good blog post, I think talking about like a couple weeks ago in this pod, but it's like this.
00;52;03;07 - 00;52;22;08
Pri
AI populism, the backlash is like less maybe about the technology and more about this new class of oligarchs that have emerged and they're like, you know, maybe, you know, standing with Trump or whatever, and they have tons of money and they're making tons of money, and they're only to come into more money. And I think that actually is like, I don't think people actually hate the tech.
00;52;22;09 - 00;52;37;23
Pri
I just think they hate the people representing the tech. And so if New York has some hand in adding more gloss to the technology to disassociating itself with the oligarchs, I think that would probably benefit the technology.
00;52;38;00 - 00;52;39;18
Chris
Oh, I don't know, because.
00;52;39;19 - 00;52;41;00
Pri
I don't know. It's a thought.
00;52;41;01 - 00;52;56;21
Chris
I'm the NYU eficacia of New York is the same thing. It's just has a bigger footprint. It's less concentrated. It's the same sort of cringe. Is a West Village cool? Is a East Village cool?
00;52;56;22 - 00;52;58;16
Pri
You still are still kind of cool.
00;52;58;19 - 00;53;04;01
Chris
I mean, let's just say like, both of them are just NYU spreading its arms out and watering it down.
00;53;04;02 - 00;53;04;17
Pri
Yeah.
00;53;04;18 - 00;53;23;02
Aaron
I do wonder if it's almost like their their approach gets surfaced and then rejected, which I feel like is also kind of happening. Like it's like these these movements need to get like processed through a larger organ system, like society. And I do think that we're seeing ways of that kind of happen. And you kind of.
00;53;23;02 - 00;53;27;25
Pri
See what kind of like a symbolic representation of the NYU of New York City.
00;53;27;26 - 00;53;28;28
Aaron
Yeah, yeah.
00;53;29;01 - 00;53;44;07
Pri
Like if that gets rejected, I guess maybe that would be a sign. Because if you look at like a lot of the voters, they were like East Village, like Greenwich Village, like NYU kids, basically, and like Bushwick kids and Ridgewood kids. But like, I wonder if that is kind of like a symbol of that of what Chris is talking about.
00;53;44;07 - 00;53;47;28
Pri
And like, what you're saying is like whether or not that works his way as part of the process.
00;53;47;28 - 00;54;04;07
Aaron
I think that is working its way through the system. And then once it does and it's ultimately rejected, just like anything else, then, you know, it's on to the next thing. So, I don't know. I think it's all like a process, like maybe it's a taste making process. This is kind of how it works. You throw stuff out.
00;54;04;09 - 00;54;11;26
Aaron
Maybe it's a little cringe. Chris I think that's fair, but if it is cringe like it ultimately does get rejected. I think at least in New York.
00;54;11;29 - 00;54;22;08
Chris
I'm just going to keep throwing counters out here. What if mom Danny actually pulls a married coach and he changes his position in time and his speed runs it?
00;54;22;09 - 00;54;46;13
Aaron
Oh, he's definitely going to. That guy is slippery than a snake. So like, I, I'm confident that that will and the priority is happening. But I think that's part of it too right. The fact that he needs to adjust to kind of stay in the meta or to kind of maintain support, I think it's kind of telling to and I think on the flip side, we're seeing the same thing kind of happen in LA, right?
00;54;46;15 - 00;55;08;28
Aaron
Like where you're getting like almost like a more pragmatic approach to different things like starting to emerge. So I don't know, times are changing, guys. I think I think what we're edging towards is just like another vibe shift. I think that we've we've kind of had one that went into another or like kind of a transitory state, and then we're going to get something new on the other end of it.
00;55;08;28 - 00;55;21;06
Pri
I agree. I wonder how long that takes, though. Like I think it's going to take a couple more years. But yeah, I definitely I mean, I've been feeling that like I feel like if you zoom out and look at the lens of like, we're in a transitory state and like the other side is probably like five years away.
00;55;21;06 - 00;55;25;14
Pri
It's just like much easier to cope with, like the chaos of society right now.
00;55;25;15 - 00;55;37;10
Aaron
Or what? Like the last five ship people were saying it was like a six months to a year before the previous election. Maybe the same thing happens and we're just nine months to a year away from that.
00;55;37;15 - 00;55;42;21
Chris
What is that going to do to Cobble and Gavin Newsom? If the vibe shift happens in the middle of their campaigns.
00;55;42;22 - 00;55;47;16
Aaron
They'll get shifted off the stage, as probably should have happened a couple of years ago anyway.
00;55;47;18 - 00;55;51;12
Chris
Yeah, that that just means like some lunatic on the right is going to win.
00;55;51;13 - 00;55;52;16
Pri
That's true.
00;55;52;18 - 00;55;53;25
Chris
Because they don't vibe.
00;55;53;28 - 00;55;58;11
Pri
Unless the lift the left is able to get someone good.
00;55;58;12 - 00;56;07;23
Chris
They're not like the fucking DNC just released its postmortem on why they lost the election and they didn't mention Gaza once. They're not going to vibe shift. They're going to go down.
00;56;07;25 - 00;56;13;04
Pri
Yeah, I actually didn't I'm going to check that out. I'm curious what they think the reason they lost is.
00;56;13;06 - 00;56;21;04
Chris
Not the reason they lost. I'll tell you that much. It's because they're the unit party and they refuse to acknowledge it. And everyone sees that they're a giant Kong.
00;56;21;06 - 00;56;34;03
Pri
Yeah, that's like a Daniel about this. Or he's like, he's like. The issue is also looking a Democrat, like, not necessarily a progressive, but being a Democrat right now is like so patently uncool is like, they just need they need to fix like the image.
00;56;34;05 - 00;56;45;15
Chris
I mean, I don't know, like, how do you fix the image of, hey, we're just going to say, we're going to say we care, and then we're going to kick you in the ass every chance we get. Like, that's not an image problem.
00;56;45;16 - 00;56;45;21
Pri
Yeah.
00;56;45;21 - 00;56;47;29
Chris
That's true. That's what you want to do. Problem.
00;56;48;01 - 00;56;49;14
Pri
Policy problem.
00;56;49;15 - 00;57;09;07
Aaron
Yeah, I think it's I'm hoping you just see kind of like where I think Americans like to be, which is really a shift towards more in the center. But maybe there's a couple more throws back and forth before we kind of get there. But weirdly, I feel like that's the or that's where I feel like the endpoint is.
00;57;09;08 - 00;57;12;26
Aaron
And weirdly, I feel like we're we're kind of meandering our way towards that.
00;57;12;27 - 00;57;26;21
Chris
I would love the vibe. Shift was politics goes from an 11 to a four and people stop. Like, I would much prefer everyone spend all their time arguing over who can listen to LCD Soundsystem in New York City.
00;57;26;21 - 00;57;45;14
Aaron
But maybe, I mean, maybe that's the positive thing about what you're seeing, Chris, because a lot of the people that probably were or engaging in that discourse were probably, you know, screaming at the top of the lungs about, you know, what you should be permitted to do politically or like in a in your home or in a workspace.
00;57;45;15 - 00;57;59;17
Aaron
Right? So they're just kind of shifting their those like base desires to something else. And maybe that's more productive because nobody needs to listen to them if they're going to, you know, regulate who should go to a chicken shop of some sort.
00;57;59;20 - 00;58;04;29
Chris
What sort of regulations and would you draft around chicken shop admissions?
00;58;05;01 - 00;58;19;28
Aaron
I mean, it's also weird because I don't understand why New York there's like this new talking about fetishes. It's like, why do people want to wait online for like, yogurt or some other dumb thing? I feel like the the number of lines has just like, explodes.
00;58;20;01 - 00;58;30;02
Pri
And so I was walking around Soho and like the number of lines was just like staggering. I do I think it's social media though. I mean, it's entirely social media driven.
00;58;30;02 - 00;58;31;15
Chris
But that but that's existed.
00;58;31;15 - 00;58;49;12
Aaron
For a number of years. It's something else is going on in those like queuing up. It's like a like a performative consumer of some sort. Like, I'm so willing to wait online for like, the very best. I mean, all that stuff could have happened a half a decade to a decade ago, like everybody did.
00;58;49;13 - 00;58;57;28
Chris
I mean, we had cronut, you know, we've had lines like, I mean, the Apple for the iPhone four had a huge line. Yeah. But like.
00;58;58;05 - 00;58;58;22
Chris
Those were like.
00;58;58;23 - 00;59;07;01
Aaron
Isolated events. Now it's just like it's here's some mediocre frozen yogurt and you got, like a line around the corner.
00;59;07;04 - 00;59;15;23
Chris
Even my neighborhood has something with a line on it, and my neighborhood should. So it's clearly gone a little too far.
00;59;15;29 - 00;59;17;03
Chris
Just a.
00;59;17;06 - 00;59;22;01
Aaron
Artificial scarcity manifesting in in IRL spaces.
00;59;22;02 - 00;59;24;01
Pri
NFTs all the way down, I guess.
00;59;24;08 - 00;59;32;15
Chris
Maybe counterfactuals. It's cheaper if you're waiting 45 minutes in line to spend ten bucks on coffee, maybe you're actually saving money.
00;59;32;17 - 00;59;35;03
Aaron
That's a good point. It's kind of like an event, right?
00;59;35;05 - 00;59;37;01
Chris
It didn't experience.
00;59;37;04 - 00;59;40;01
Aaron
That's the evolution of the experience economy. Yeah, I could see that.
00;59;40;03 - 01;00;03;09
Pri
Make friends with people on line. I actually was pretty infuriated. I was in Soane and like I usually just like, okay, people in lines are like, you guys are losers. Like, it's fine. But the one line that really infuriated me was like, blank street coffee. There was like 40 people in line for Blank Street. I'm like, this whole coffee shop is intended to be like well priced, mediocre coffee.
01;00;03;09 - 01;00;17;17
Pri
And you guys and like, you can get coffee on every block in Soho. Like, what do you guys doing? This is not a good coffee place. Like, it's also everywhere. And it's also not that great. Like it was very odd. I was like, I've never seen a line that annoyed me so much.
01;00;17;24 - 01;00;26;11
Chris
Well, there was a whole lot of discourse around around this as well. I mean, who has the right to open a mediocre coffee shop and then have a huge line outside of it?
01;00;26;12 - 01;00;29;20
Pri
And I said I should write a think piece on this. I actually probably could.
01;00;29;22 - 01;00;31;05
Chris
Oh, Lordy.
01;00;31;07 - 01;00;35;14
Pri
Should we should we wrap up the pod on that note on lines?
01;00;35;19 - 01;00;49;08
Chris
I mean, it's better than like, you know, getting into the weeds of if you're excited about how unique and how much stuff is in a bodega, you're a noob. Yeah. Why don't we stop before we get down to that bottom of the barrel?
01;00;49;11 - 01;01;09;18
Pri
Yeah, no one needs to to hear NYC bashing. Welcome to Net Society today. It's me, Chris, Aaron and Derek talking all things crypto culture, tech, AI and more. Just a quick reminder these thoughts and opinions are our own and not of our employer. And none of this is financial advice.