Key Takeaways
- Cognition's annualized revenue run rate reportedly crossed $1 billion, drawing a terse reaction from Elad Gil.
- Raoul Pal argues blockchain is an underpriced coordination layer and that agents will force tokenization of stocks, bonds, real estate, and contracts.
- Meb Faber repeats five persistent investor mistakes and shares Roger Ibbotson's age-based allocation view.
- Ben Carlson highlights the difficulty of stock picking and active management in a market where most stocks lag.
- Charlie Bilello shares a viral quip tying a 2020 home purchase to $9 trillion in Fed money printing.
- Jason proposes a seven-year minimum wage increase and questions a Supreme Court voter-list ruling.
1. AI Agents and Tokenization
- Elad Gil responded only with "Wot" to news that Cognition's annualized revenue run rate surpassed $1 billion, offering no further commentary. 1
- Raoul Pal laid out his "Exponential Age" and "Everything Code" thesis: blockchain is the foundational coordination layer for all digital economic activity and is severely undervalued; agents will buy, sell, negotiate, and settle faster than expected, and because machines cannot hold stock certificates or read mortgage deeds, stocks, bonds, real estate, currencies, contracts, data, and energy will all be tokenized and priced on-chain, with value ultimately settling on L1. He distinguishes the L1 infrastructure layer, the application layer above it, and Bitcoin as a store of value, arguing that at scale L1 will run the entire global economy. 1
- Pal also argued that Sui's strong performance stems from its beta—low free float, 70% locked in staking, and an earlier stage—so capital flows cause larger swings; he said its network density (TVL per active user) has stayed stable in both up and down markets, signaling network consistency and exceeding most peers, and that Sui's native team is building rails for finance and the agent economy. 1
- Ben Carlson said that simply picking individual stocks and holding them long term has long been a low-probability path to success, and shared the view that most stocks are losers and that this may be the hardest environment ever for active managers, with a few stocks performing extremely well while most do not. 1 2
2. Investing Frameworks and Market Commentary
- Meb Faber said that four years on, he still sees investors making the same five mistakes: ignoring fees and taxes, over-concentrating in the domestic market (e.g., the US), not allocating to real assets, not allocating to trend strategies, and not allocating to value (instead going fully market-cap weighted). 1
- Faber shared Roger Ibbotson's view that young people should have a 100% stock portfolio, but should become more risk-averse with age because remaining recovery time shrinks and human capital declines. 1
- Charlie Bilello shared a viral quip in which someone said they bought a house in 2020, the Fed then printed $9 trillion, and joked "I'm a real estate genius"—a self-deprecating take that the gain may have come from monetary easing rather than personal skill. 1
3. Policy and Platform Notes
- Jason proposed a minimum wage plan of raising it by $1 per year for seven consecutive years, calling it largely symbolic since only 10–15 million people currently earn under $15 an hour; he argued it would make lower-income workers feel the wealthy are willing to help, and that companies owned by supporters would benefit as the incremental income gets spent, adding that people earning under $30 an hour basically do not save. 1 2
- Jason questioned the Supreme Court ruling that allows the Trump administration to use a government database containing Social Security information to help states identify non-citizens on voter rolls, asked via @grok whether the Social Security database covers all US citizens, and advocated for voter ID in the 15 states that have not yet implemented it to end ballot disputes. 1
- Lyn Alden criticized the so-called "laptop" project, saying it should never have existed from the start—not a tactical misstep but a foreseeable strategic error with no reason to exist apart from fraud. 1
