Transcript: Cathie Wood on Tesla-SpaceX Merger, $1M Bitcoin, More AIs Than Humans | EP #296 | Moonshots Live

[00:00:05] Singularity is here. Yes. Oh my god. How lucky are we to be alive now during the singularity? I mean I I know you guys know this. I mean we feel the speed up, right? Every day I wake up and check my ex channels which I've curated. I I check the conversations uh we have in our WhatsApp group and the moonshot mates like what just happened? What just happened? It's mindblowing. It's absolutely mind-blowing. So, uh, we have two incredible leaders on stage and I'm going to kick off the first question to you, Kathy. And thank you, uh, Kathy, for your support of this event and of the Future Vision X-P Prize. So, so proud of what you and Lisa Dodd have done to support this. >> Yes. And thank you. Lisa is here. So, thank you, Lisa, for all you've done for this great event. So uh your team uh has said the Tesla and SpaceX merger uh could be announced this year. I agree.

[00:01:04] Uh you know rockets satellites, AI, EVs, robo taxis, humanoid robots, energy all under one roof. And so the question is what is Elon in your opinion actually trying to achieve long term through this merger? Do you think he's going to hit any particular roadblocks? And I'm curious, you know, does SpaceX AI or SpaceX need to reach a certain valuation before he pulls the trigger on that so the dilution isn't too much? >> Yes. Uh so we do think it's going to happen. What is his ultimate goal? Well, he tells us all the time it's Mars. She's just uh creating a number of stops along the way um in the form of a a global you know connectivity broadband connectivity business. >> Yeah. The Dyson swarm. >> Yes. Really unbelievable how profitable and and h how big it is already from a revenue generation point of view. Uh and

[00:02:05] this Neocloud business that he you know basically was a giant pivot in terms of XAI. So, Neoclouds. Um, but Elon believes that uh that the leader, the AI leader in terms of frontier models is going to be the company with the most computing capacity and at at the cheapest cost. And with orbital data centers, he thinks uh he will be that company. So he's really going to go after, you know, the the open AIs and and anthropics of the world. Very determined. >> SpaceX is my largest holding. Um, is that your largest holding? What what's the top of your stack? >> Yeah, Tesla and SpaceX. And we do believe they will be combined. So interesting. >> Do you think uh you know, so he has a

[00:03:02] Chinese business with Tesla, right? and he's in the defense department. How does he handle that? >> Yeah, as one of the roadblocks out there. >> You know, it's very interesting to see him sitting at the table with President Trump and and Xiinping. Uh so, and we know that May Musk is adored in China. So, he's working all angles here. Uh and there's even uh there has even been uh talk that he's going to be able to um develop a robo taxi system in in China. So it's very interesting. Uh many people would say that's the biggest stumbling block given our defense posture and uh and given uh how this administration has you know basically portrayed the Chinese as our as our biggest potential en enemy. uh keep your enemies close is what I think this this week is all

[00:04:01] about. Uh so you know I can see honestly I have now I am an optimistic person but we believe that the productivity gains coming out of this AI and just generalized technology revolution are going to be so enormous that we could have a winwinwin here with China uh U and and the US uh the U China needs to develop a consumer economy and it can turn this productivity gain into increased compensation to really develop the consumer. We need to uh we need to be maybe more aggressive in competing against China. We can use some of it to cut prices. Uh so I think and that would lower inflation uh and take away a lot of the the fears out there from a policy point of view. So I think that's what uh Trump and Musk together are working on. The Fed announced something like a 4.7%

[00:05:00] GDP growth in the last quarter, which was like double the quarter before. When I interviewed Elon uh with Dave Blondon last December, it aired the beginning of January. Uh he said, you know, he could imagine tripledigit growth within this decade of the GDP, which is >> is that cumulative or >> per year? >> Yes. I um I think I I tuned into that part of it and it was like well so our number is 7 to 8% we're accelerating in the next five years to 7 to 8% real GDP growth. I have heard him say 20 30%. I had not heard him say triple digits and I wasn't sure if it was cumulative that he was talking about. I'll ask him. Uh, are you going to the uh Roadster rollout on October 1st? >> Um, we have we have been invited. >> Okay. Yeah. Uh, so I was texting with Elon and I think we're going to do a

[00:06:00] Moonshots podcast with him from there. So I'm excited about that. >> Very cool. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Iman. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that one of the interesting things that I've seen recently like your view, Nick Hill, and it kind of extends is Elon said that Grockbot has hundreds of thousands of installs now. >> And obviously, it's a brand new line. We've seen Muse with 3 million >> 3.8 >> 3.8 million downloads. And then we saw >> I'm sorry, 2.8 million downloads, 3.8 3.8 billion users, right? >> Well, that's the Yeah, it's going to it's obviously going to grow this entire sector. And then Amazon Van Muse. So I think one of the really interesting things for me and you know I think Nicol you been thinking about this a lot is how do you tell who's who on the internet when we have these AIs intermediating us and >> millions of them >> then at what point are there going to be more AIs than humans doing these jobs on the internet itself because I think this is one of the things that really drives the massive real GDP growth right because you have so much money being unlocked through intents and being able to represent what you want so I'd love

[00:07:01] your insight on that >> I think on The second part, um, I think there will be more AIs than humans next year. There's no reason for that not to be true. There's five, like anywhere between five to six and a half billion people on the internet at any given time. Um, it's not very hard to imagine that every one of us has thousands of agents working for us. They're coming in and out, but like they're all going to be there. And with consumer platforms like Muse and Instinct getting out and them reaching mass scale um I mean I think they're primarily compute limited at this point. They're not limited by people's desire to have those things. So I wouldn't be surprised like much much like we had like one PC a PC on every desktop a phone in every pocket like an agent for every person and if you move towards that v that vision then like every agent has sub agents and like those agents come about like to do tasks and then they go away because you have this main orchestrating agent that like remains with you that has context and memory. And so all of these agents are

[00:08:03] going to be on the internet. They're going to be doing they're going to be doing things. They're going to be doing things really fast. hopefully they're aligned with us. We can have a discussion about that as well. Uh and and not with each other. Um and and and so like yeah and so then the question is like what happens then? Like what happens in like 28 like well in at least in our estimation as we look forward towards the uh later years in the decade these agents become full economic actors much like websites became started off as curiosities. I don't know if anybody remembers geio cities back in 96. I do. >> Yeah. So I lived through all of that like you know I lived through uh if people remember uh Blogger and Orcut and these are old uh social networks um and then and then we got websites we got real websites that did real things like we had the New York Times or the Journal for News and then we had Amazon for shopping and then everything became a website. So I think everything eventually will become like this economic endpoint and at that point yes

[00:09:01] these economic endpoints will not just talk to us they will talk to each other they will talk to each other on behalf of us sometimes they'll talk to each other because they're just trying to accomplish a task and that is the most efficient thing to do and when they do that I think you will need like a way to say like all right who are you like when were you born what have you done >> who owns you who owns you >> who's responsible if you >> who's responsible who owns the liability like what is the provenence of your identity, what is the provenence of your compute allocation? Uh, and what are your incentives? And prove to me that you have done the things that you claim you you do. Uh, or like you know, let's say like this is another use case we're playing around with on ARC, which is a new blockchain we have. Uh, nothing in common. [laughter] Uh, and and and so there we're giving agents money. We're giving them when agents spin up like uh they need money to act. So they need money for compute. They need money to like a lot of these are trading agents right now on blockchains. And so we're giving we have

[00:10:02] a credit program. So we give them we give them 25 cents. If they come and pay us back then we give them more money. And so like so then you need a log of like where does this happen? Blockchains are great for creating like persistent logs over uh many years. Uh because you have distributed validator sets. You cannot lie. One of the things that happened in the hugging face hack was like the logs got rewritten because they were their agent's own logs. So what happens if the logs are public? What if the data is all public all indexable? You can run your own verification on who the agent is, what they have done, what is their provenence, like what are their incentives. I think we just move into a very different world uh than what we are today where it feels like a bunch of teenagers like going about the world and like we're waiting for the grown-up agents to come about like >> you know paint a picture for us when there are millions or billions of agents transacting >> right >> uh how superheated does the economy get in five or 10 years? So it's it's really interesting to think about because every

[00:11:04] inefficiency in the economy uh needs to go away, right? >> Well, it will go away. >> It will go away. And the reason it'll go away is because if you don't take it away, there will be some other agent who's willing to take it away at cost plus, right? Like essentially the economy all efficient inefficiencies get taken out by these cost plus uh agents. So at that point we have uh a very efficient uh capital allocation system and and we have to believe that on the other side of this very efficient capital allocation system is this this wellspring of ideas that is waiting to get funded. Uh and so I do think like the solopreneur uh like you were talking about earlier today will will that'll be a big uh big population. I do think like uh uh capital formation will be almost instantaneous. So if these things happen >> my idea oh it's funded. [laughter] So >> there you go.

[00:12:00]

Um so we're building primitives so that can happen. That's what inspires us because we want people everywhere in the world to be able to form capital and you form capital today by going to a bank or like you know writing a note uh or raising money. But what crypto has proven really well is that you can use cryptographic tools, you can use tokens to coordinate and form capital. Now they were less serious ideas in the past and now they're going to be more and more serious ideas in the future. So that's what's exciting about >> So let me let me follow a second. So uh ultimately the question is why USDC? Hawaii uh not Satoshi's uh you know there have been uh native agent token uh you know created. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Talk to me about how you think USDC is like the the the best mechanism for transaction for agents. >> Yeah. Look USDC has already settled over 100 trillion uh in the last good >> pretty good like yeah so over 100 trillion over 30 public blockchains. A

[00:13:02] public blockchain has every transaction publicly available. So uh it's hardened infrastructure. Uh we have uh created and redeemed close to a billion dollars of USDC uh trillion dollars of USDC today. Uh so when it comes to financial infrastructure, you need it to be 24/7. You need it to be 365. You need it to be uh you need it to be cheap. Uh you want to pay cents, not bips. Bips are basically percentage points on the transaction. So all of that infrastructure uh exists right now and what is going to be a great tailwind in the new year is that the Genius um act goes into effect uh come January. So for those who don't know the Genius Act is the stable it legalized stable coins or created a framework for stable coins in the United States and was passed last summer. It takes 18 months to get the implementation going and come January it's going to be implemented. So stable coin money uh can and can be held by a

[00:14:03] business and count as cash or cash equivalents uh in the United States and you can transact in stable coin money. So uh stable coins are good for this new world because stable coins settle instantaneously when you strike when you swipe your credit card at the merchant outside it takes them like three or five days to get that money. So they're essentially holding that risk that the that your credit card uh your bank account is going to uh move the money to them at some point. So that creates risk in the system. All of that goes away with >> it's like the Pony Express being disrupted by by telegraph. >> Yeah. >> May I ask a question? Um >> Matthew Prince at um Cloudflare Yeah. is uh very focused on agentic commerce, agentic payments. Yeah. And he believes that we are going to need uh uh blockchain speeds of 20 to 100 transactions per second in this new world >> and yet we are so far from that. Um it visas at 20,000 per second I think and

[00:15:07] Ethereum not even that right Salana a little bit more so how do we get from here to there what has to happen >> we are approaching those uh we are approaching it's did you say 20 or 100 or >> 20 to 100 >> thousand >> no >> oh then then we are there um No, no, no. I think 20 to 100. I think it's trillion. It's either billion or trillion. >> It'll be million. Billion. >> It'll be It'll be million. Trump. >> Oh, no. No. It would be million. That's right. Because NASDAQ is NASDAQ at its peak is 2 million. He's saying 20 to 100 million. >> That'd be great. [laughter] >> No, I know. But that but it's it's the world that would be >> it's the world we are moving towards. Like >> moving towards that. So how do we get

[00:16:01] there? we are already orders of magnitude like so our chain again arc is orders of magnitude higher than like what ethereum is able to achieve today right so it's in tens of thousands of transactions per second um it's an open question about like you know how do you get to 2 million to 5 million or 10 million TPS those are hard technical questions still >> uh we the one of the things that is true is like as the demand comes the solutions will follow right like in the sense that uh Ethereum created an architecture for uh what they call layer 2s and like they scaled through that. uh I don't know what the right architecture is yet for that scale like my dream is that we will get to 100,000 TPS without like you know without batting an eyelid and from there we will get to a million TPS but it's yeah if you believe there will be billions of agent agentic actors working on behalf of us all participating uh and transacting because agents acting

[00:17:00] without actually transacting is not really economic activity that's just noise right that's spam >> and so you need economic activity. So yes, I I think we'll if that is the case, I should call up Matthew Prince and find out. >> I mean, the problem at 20 million is that you run into a speed of light issue. >> Yeah. I I haven't reasoned about it that far yet. >> Yeah. So, but then you can like have different areas you can have insurance on settlements and others. Again, the economy finds a way like life finds a way. >> Yes. >> I'm really looking forward to that. If that is if that is the constraint like you must solve TPS because we have so many agents or like the economy is being held back because we cannot deliver TPS we will deliver TPS. There's no doubt in my mind. >> And Peter one other just to segue from your last question. Um uh the you know proof of humanity pro proof of humanood is is really important. Um, do you think I'd love to I know you're interviewing, but I I'd just love to >> I I pass the mantle to you, Kathy.

[00:18:01]

I'd love to know if you see orbs as a possibility. Um, we have been working with ATco and OpenAI and actually Mr. Beast to try and figure this. >> What a fascinating combination. >> Yes. No, proof of humanity largest largest number of followers. Yeah. All all of them have huge platforms. I think Mr. Beast is uh like I worked at YouTube eight years and like >> I'm only shooting for 10 million, you know, viewers on Moonshots. He's got billion. >> Yeah. >> Um I do think it'll matter. I think uh uh human experience will get valued significantly higher than machine experience. I think we all have intuition about that. Uh but we don't know yet because we haven't seen it in action. Uh I definitely don't uh I have made active choices in my kids' education where I I'm choosing for them to be educated by a human versus being like in front of a computer for like long hours of the day. And that is an uh

[00:19:02] that is a choice that I can make because I have the economic means to make that choice. I think the as we progress further I think people will care a lot more about like who is on the other side of the experience that they're getting and I think um that that which is um rare will get more valuable >> and and so even if like stable coins come about and billions of agents come about like being able to uh be in relationship with another human is now going to like disappear and like that's probably going to get more valuable and hopefully if all these agents are doing all this work for us. I am hopefully in relationship with as many humans as I want to be in relation and it's deep and meaningful and all of that. >> But then the flip side of this as well is shouldn't be people be building for agents and not humans if agents are going to be the bigger part of the economy. That's what we're building like we're building our developer platform for the next 12 months we believe is still going to be like developer first but like next year sometime it flips

[00:20:00] where uh agents are the developers and and they sort of come in and they are like because it's already the case if you ask your coding agent like what should I use like the coding agent typically has gone from like recommending three things to one thing and next year there will be an evolution of this where the coding you don't ask the agent what you want to use you're just telling them like please please build it and >> so when that happens like the agent is like showing up for your developer platform. So that means everyone in the audience who's building should make sure that just like you had accessible websites, you have agent accessible websites, right? >> Y and you want to create like you know we want to create like uh data on the internet uh now so that like when the agents come like in like 9 months 12 months time they can look at like history of uh like the opportunity is right now basically. >> So so an early indication that we're headed quickly in this direction is programmatic advertising. >> Yes. which is which I think count account accounts for well the percent of online

[00:21:02] uh advertising is roughly 25 30% already programmatic and that happened really quickly so I think that is showing us the way that's why I come back to the infrastructure question which um >> you might >> yeah I think you know this is incredibly exciting and a bit scary uh you know like we always going to have this thing I think do Kathy Like you've seen all of this before almost anyone else, right? And you've gone through periods of dismissal, fear, and optimism from the investor community. >> Yeah. >> Where are we now in all of that? And how do you see it evolving? Because all of the science fiction is becoming science fact. >> I know, >> as Alex likes to say, we're speed running every science fiction trope all at the same time. >> Yes. It's been fascinating to to be ARC in at this time because um I founded ARC for this time because because this techn of this technology revolution um but because of the tech and telecom bust in

[00:22:04] the early 2000s and then even more so after 0809 the the institutional world the in in public equities uh shifted either to passive so just mimicking indexes. Uh and of course the future uh companies that that are making this new world happen are not big parts of the indexes with the exception of a few maybe Muse and Facebook and all of that Meta. Uh I think the pendulum is going to start swinging in the other direction. uh our biggest uh proof point potentially that we've reached a a a moment of change here is what's happening this year in the what we call the multiomics revolution uh the life sciences space that space was left for dead

[00:23:00]

I in the markets even though we were getting more and more proof points that this that a the most profound applic application of AI is in health care. Well, finally this year um anthropic and open AI are talking about the health care verticals and how this much I mean each one of us is a data factory right we have 35 to 40 trillion that's my trillion 40 35 to 40 trillion cells in our body six billion base pairs uh I mean three billion base pairs of DNA and uh you know we are walking proprietary data factories and uh I do think that uh that market waking up to that and actually starting to pay some attention is is giving me hope that the chat GPT moment got us a little bit there but you know you could still own the mag six and be okay with that. Uh but you know the companies that are really harnessing AI in the health care space uh are not big

[00:24:05] parts of the benchmark. So I do think we're going to see more truly active equity management. What do you think when you saw Madna gain more than any other stock has ever gained in a major index in one day? Like what was your reaction to that? >> It makes sense. I mean these if if what they've done and and what what seems to be uh approved is uh is what we think it is a vaccine against cancer that's unbelievable. Um unbelievably good. Uh so yeah I think these company I think the health care space um is the most undervalued underappreciated space in terms of this theme. Uh but there are going to be major winners and losers. You really because health care, you know, health care and tech, this is the problem generally for health care and tech uh do not play well when I in terms of research meaning health care analysts

[00:25:05] uh are are a little cautious when it comes to tech and in fact very cautious because moving fast and breaking things does not work in healthcare right and tech analysts don't like health care because it's too bureaucratic, too regulated, too political, too hostage to insurance companies and reimbursement cycles. And so, but but we probably have the most massive convergence and and as I said, the most profound application of AI in health care and I think the light bulb has just gone on this year. >> Yeah. And Peter, you discussed how longevity is finally tractable, right? >> Yeah. uh you know I when I you know I'm in front of audiences speaking about longevity. I do that a lot to you know wealthy family offices and YPO chapters and so forth and I ask them honestly how much of your wealth would you give for an extra 20 or 30 healthy years or

[00:26:03] reverse your age by 20 or 30 years. When when they're honest about it it's nearly everything. Uh it's the you know I think of it's why I split my life between AI and [clears throat] and longevity. I think they're the two biggest markets and two most impactful markets on the planet. Um Nquille uh one of the things we've talked about on the podcast probably about two months ago was President Millle and his announcement. Anybody from Argentina here in the room? Okay. Uh so President Mille comes out and says we're going to change the laws. uh we want to attract all the AI companies here. We're going to give agents personhood. >> Fascinating, right? So I think one of the most interesting things is going to be nation states providing a sort of uh uh you know regulatory arbitrage to attract companies in uh and and efforts to them. What happens when AI agents

[00:27:04] have personhood? Do you have you thought about that? I mean right now we haven't like I think like what we have thought about is uh AI agents acting on behalf of uh people but uh it's sort of a middle ground like does a is a it's sort of like a corporation if an corporation was just AI incorporated AI uh AI managed but had a board of directors that was human and then like the progression for that from there is like what if the board of directors were other AI actors as well like what happens then that is not too hard to imagine like essentially how should like how should a company go about getting incorporated and what kind of economic output it's going to create and and and who holds the liability for the mistakes it makes and how does it distribute its profit. So again that is very imminent. Board of directors of such a company or ownership of such company is still with

[00:28:04] um humans at least in my current thinking. But not very hard to speculate that an AI can go and use crypto rails to form capital and uh and create and find shareholders who are like willing to give them capital so they can go and act uh in the world. um probably this decade. Uh but hard to speculate on like what problems they will be focused on. Maybe like medicine problems, maybe something else. Yeah. >> And this this sorry this would segue I mean um this would uh combine with uh the concept of uh distributed autonomous organizations Dows as well. So very crypto. Yeah. Dow has perfected this idea of governance [snorts] uh amongst a bunch of people who didn't know each other and they were global and agents are similar in that they are uh they are global uh they don't know each other uh and so Dows did construct like and this

[00:29:04] happened in about four or five years ago before they went out of fashion >> uh but there is a lot of prior art uh for the agents to train on on what worked what didn't work there's a whole notion quadratic funding uh that got played with. So crypto has a lot of these primitives available for untrusted parties to coordinate and and agents are fundamentally like new novel entities that exist and once they have personhood it's even more amazing you can go figure out like what their provenence is who gave them why did they get the why did they get the personhood but yeah so I I agree like I think there will be new models of funding and they won't look like the models of funding like going to a bank and like raising There will probably be uh internet native uh models of funding. I would not be surprised if one of these agents creates their own token and has their own version of proof of work and and has

[00:30:00] like a very complex economy built inside of it and using tokens to coordinate that. >> Yeah, I think you can say that Dows kind of lacked intelligence like they went >> well they were human intelligence [laughter] >> but it was like direct. I think the advent of AI now to create decentralized intelligent organizations is fascinating. >> But I had a query about that. If you have digital organizations, digital entities, isn't that just the metaverse? Like you've come from meta [laughter] >> to circle, you know, where you did the AR glasses and more. Like is actually what we describe as the metaverse not as this place that you play games, but a whole digital economy of humans and entities. Is that not actually coming true actually finally now? Plus you can make it look cool with the meta glasses and other things. >> Yeah, for me personally like so I did work on the AR glasses uh at Meta uh by >> Are you happy with the results? >> I'm happy with the results. Yes, I think the Rayban glasses were uh a good first step. Uh the Orion glasses were a good proof point and now I'm not there. I'm sure they're working on new things. Um

[00:31:00] and so for me always the met was less about the 3D. I think the 3D is exciting. Being able to wear your glasses and walk around uh uh uh like essentially CGI is exciting, but what is more exciting is that there's just a layers and layers and layers of intelligence in the world uh that is just waiting to be discovered, right? Like Pokémon Go was a great example. Like it is a metaverse because like you don't know how many uh Pokemon are there at any given stop like you know and like you see people like tapping into these layers of intelligence walking the world trying to like capture uh Pokemon. And I thought it was just f I would never do it but like I thought it was just fascinating as an example of like where people find meaning and like how it sort of that meaning sits in the physical world alongside us, right? Like which is which is what the met should be. It doesn't need to be 3D. And so will these AI entities present meaning? Absolutely. They already have. I think they passed the Turing test three years ago. Um so I think they will present meaning. They

[00:32:00] will present connection and so you will have these like new weird societies emerge which will be hybrid between humans and AIs where there will be meaning created which is metaverse in my opinion. Yeah. >> You might continue. >> Yes. I think take that to Kathy. You know like we have media, we have generative media all coming through. we have this new layer being attached like what do you see is super exciting in that space because you've got kind of the physicality of you know Teslas and things like that you have the financial rails but it seems like there's a whole world that could come from entertainment from education from engagement like what's really exciting you around that the potential there >> well as you're saying that um I think and the other thing we talk a lot about is space too right but there is another digital I mean another world that is happening and it's happening and it's going to it's going to move in you know move at a much faster pace. Um we now have immutable property rights in the

[00:33:04] digital world. >> Yes. And so I think and and you know the best way to lift people and countries and ecosystems out of poverty or inactivity is property rights. So >> Amen. >> I I I think you know I'm excited about the space generally. You probably know a lot more about and have a much better idea about what's going to happen. Um but we have um set up our research team so that we have an enterprise AI analyst team and a consumer AI analyst team and we're spending a lot of time you know talking about okay this new device is has mused the muse charm is that going to amount to anything um uh [laughter] and and reflect on okay the handset would we really So, could the handset just become an, you know, a focus of

[00:34:04] entertainment really after all and this other gadget, you know, moves into our work lives in some way? I don't know. So, we're we're debating a lot of things right now. >> Nquille, um, you're building a financial infrastructure for an economy that doesn't yet exist. [clears throat] >> It exists, but it's not >> it's nent. Yeah, >> it's just beginning. >> Yeah. >> What are the hardest problems you still have to solve >> to get to the vision you have in 5 or 10 years? And then why did you build your own blockchain? >> Yeah. Uh I think the two the two answers are related. Uh let's start with something as simple as me making a payment to you on a blockchain. There is this concept of payment finality. uh and when two banks interact like they need to have that method of interaction has to have

[00:35:02] this property of payment finality. No other blockchain today has this property in the market. So if you believe you want to get like existing banks, existing institutions, existing enterprises on this infrastructure, you need to give them guarantees that are not possible to give using existing infrastructure. So um so one example is payment finality. Another example is uh in a lot of public uh blockchains run on unknown validators. So unknown val validation validating a transaction is just looking at the block and making sure it's not ill-formed and then everybody achieves consensus on it and says this is a good block. This is how the transaction should be recorded. Now for a lot of institutions around the world not knowing who's doing the validation is a big problem because they worry about security. they worry about like uh they worry about uh North Korea being in the money flow like there's just all kinds of things that they're worried about. So we have a known

[00:36:01] validator set like uh on our on our on our blockchain. The next thing we tackled was privacy because when you and I transact it's not okay for the world to know how much money we have in the bank account in our bank accounts or for that matter what this what is the value of this transaction. So how do you solve that problem at sufficient scale where you can achieve the TPS that you were talking about? Because a lot of privacy solutions are very expensive. They're computationally expensive. >> So how do you solve it in a way that's a systems way of solving it >> but it preserves the sort of it fits within existing regulatory frameworks because you can't blow up the existing regulatory frameworks just because you have a good idea. So we saw privacy uh as as being another example and then then it's cost like we are um I was just looking at some data today something costs like uh uh 0.005 cents on ARC to settle and cost 89 cents on uh uh on Ethereum to settle. This is just some

[00:37:04] data we got yesterday on our P50 transactions. So you can do the ratio on like what the cost is. And so if you have a lot of these agents executing a lot of transactions and you have to believe that in the future if these markets are super efficient the way they get efficient is they transact right like they essentially move value back and forth. There is price discovery. You find the inefficiency and you sort of like remove the inefficiency by moving value around. So your settlement cost has to be really really low and it has to be significantly lower than what it is today because you these are massive public databases right and you're competing with databases that you're running internally like a MySQL database or something like that but now you have to make it uh scalable to the world and auditable to the whole world. So cost was another issue. So these are the problems that we've been working on. I think like in terms of what needs to solve still. I do think uh for the agentic stack uh we need uh we need to make this transition into this world in

[00:38:04] which these agents have personhood that they are liable uh for making mistakes uh that they have work history that I I can rely on before I hire them. Uh there are simple concepts like if for coding agents today, if you're using them on the open internet, if you're not paying uh somebody $200 a month, uh you're actually paying first and then the you're waiting for the coding result to come back. And so there are that could be really problematic, right? Like so there are all of these things that like go into making to essentially reworking every layer and every assumption of what it means to be a financial infrastructure. >> All right. So the so the woolly mammoth in the room to use uh Alex's joke is when do banks disappear? >> I don't think they disappear. Like I I have I have no desire for >> I know you don't >> but I I hear the list of things that that is going to be possible. >> Yeah.

[00:39:01]

It feels like it's substantially a significant amount of what banks do today. >> Yeah. >> Do they do they know they're cooked? My hope is the banks are going to work with us and like make this transition. I think every new technology change presents like new challenges and new opportunities. Some people will transition with us and some won't. So I don't know if they're cooked. Uh I think that's a tough one. Yeah, >> I understand you work with them. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. So Kathy, like um last year Unitry sold 11,000 robots, humanoids, right? We've have the Optimus and other things coming up. We have GDP growth forecasts going through the roof. We make about 70 million cars, 70 million motorcycles a year. When are we actually going to see robots out in the world making a real impact on GDP like humanoid robots? >> What's your what's your timeline? >> Yeah. >> Yes. So, uh, we according to our

[00:40:04] research and our director of research, Tasha Keiny, um, she's director of research for autonomous technology and robotics. She's here today. >> Awesome. >> Um, [clears throat] >> will she be there tonight? So, CA Kathy's doing a session this evening uh, on her 2026 big ideas report, you know, and come and dive in deep with her on this. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, I think Tasha has Oh, maybe she's coming. I don't know. Okay. I know you'll be there. >> Um uh so we have from a a research point of view concluded that um compared to a robo taxi, a humanoid robot is 200,000 times more complex with obviously the the hands being uh the the most complicated part. Uh, so while Elon says maybe late 28 into 29 scaling, we would put that a couple of years later.

[00:41:02]

You mean he would be off on timing? [laughter] >> Yes, it's El Elon's time. So, um, but yes, I mean, one of the I mean, because it's such a a personal question in a in a sense, everybody thinks, "Oh my gosh, could I have a robot in my house? who would do all my housework. Uh is that possible? Will that happen? And and the answer is yes. It's going to take years, but uh um we we do think so. And we think you know the reason Tesla is further we believe furthest ahead on this is it's the same three technology platforms that are converging in humanoid robots as it is in robo taxis. So they are robots. they uh they uh are effectively battery operated electric and they're powered by AI just like robo taxis. So he's you

[00:42:01] know from a complexity point of view we're we're very close to solving completely the robo taxi pro uh problem. I think if any of you uh are driving with now your FSDs with the latest software updates. >> I love it. I don't touch the touch wheel. We, you know, at home we have two Teslas and it's like it's magic. >> It truly is. I I would never drive another car. That's not a commercial for Tesla. It's like just I want my time back and it's such a better driver than I am. Just ask my wife. [laughter] >> Well, you know, you know what? It is true. You know, >> statistically, yes. 10 times better. >> Oh, well, I don't know about your driving, but [laughter] >> and I'm not even funny. I don't know what that lies. I'm not I'm not at all. Um, no, both Whimo and Tesla, I think I'm not sure if Tesla has uh disclosed, but we believe Whimo has disclosed that it has surpassed human drivers in terms

[00:43:03] of safety. Uh, and uh, we believe uh, Tesla is there as well. I don't think they've put out those stats yet. Uh, so yes, and and they're going to be 10 times and a hundred times and a thousand times safer. So yes. >> Yeah. The Whimo stats, I did the numbers. If all cars were as safe as Whimos, there'd be 40,000 less deaths per year and about 400 billion less in medical fees. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. Well, that's right. [applause] If if we were That's right. There are 40 roughly 40,000 deaths in the US >> and uh we could save those. I think there are 1.25 25 to 1.5 million around the world auto deaths per year. >> You know, it's it's the the secondary externalities are fascinating, right? Um if that happens, the number of organ donors goes down >> significantly, right? Which is why the other side of the business, the work of Martin Rothblat and and George Church on being able to generate, you know,

[00:44:00] replacement organs is so extraordinary. And what's fascinating is the counter movement coming from the liability lawyers >> saying we've got far less business if cars aren't crashing. >> Yes. >> 180 billion a year they get. >> Amazing. Amazing. Um Kathy, you know, we opened up the show today talking about fear, the pandemic of fear that's going on. uh and I think very unfortunately and my mission and the mission of of our podcast is to give people hope and optimism try and counter that fear with what I call datadriven optimism. Absolutely. Right. Not just >> empty like datadriven optimism. >> How is that impacting the markets today? that must have, you know, some current or future. You know, we're seeing uh the numbers are insane. Like 80% of Americans fear AI. You know, 73% say no data center in my backyard, which is more than people say no nuclear reactor in my backyard.

[00:45:00]

And the flip is true in China, uh where it's 80% pro. Uh what's how is this impacting you? I love your investment thesis. I always have. You're investing in the singularity. Uh anyway, your your thoughts. >> So on the data center, it it is fascinating. I agree with you. Um because I think there's already proof out there that putting a data center in your state or your your city or whatever um is actually over time going to lower your electricity costs. um nuclear power uh it stopped in its tracks in the 70s because of regulation. Now we're going full steam ahead and sure it's going to take a while for this to play out. But if we had not gone off nuclear, if we had not regulated it, and this is a lesson we need to tell policy makers today. If we had not regulated,

[00:46:00] electricity prices in the United States would be uh 50% of what they are now. >> It's a travesty. >> It is. It is. So regulation is a menace and it's up to us uh and and we're going out there with this you know the the the scares about AI generally and we're going out there and uh all of us on our team trying to bring data uh to you know to to light for these politicians. I even faced in Florida there's been a political backlash and it's a business businessfriendly state. Yeah. And but you face the the policy maker with facts and I noticed the advertising has dropped a lot of that um that dynamic. So I think we have to face we have to face them you know approach them and say do you understand and that's what we give our research away and we hope it gets into policy circles. Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, I did a

[00:47:02] a podcast with Michael Katzios at the White House, uh the head of office of science, technology, policy, and I'm like, Michael, who inside the government is dealing with this misinformation and trying to actually help Americans be more confident and they didn't have an answer and that worries me. >> It feels a runaway in that regard. >> We we have to tell the stories though. I think like if we are constantly in the news talking about AI taking away jobs, I think we should expect this reaction. AI has to make housing cheaper, it has to make education better and it has to make healthcare more accessible, not just people living longer. And so like if we can tell those stories, I do think like we we have a real shot of like turning the narrative around. But nobody's telling those stories, right? like those stories get anchored in like well AI is going to come and like you know you will have less office jobs and okay great then what are my kids going to do >> I call it the crisis news network it's my abbreviation for

[00:48:01]

CN yes and what's so surprising is the numbers are are not supporting that job loss maybe at entry level as I mentioned earlier today uh but I actually think we're going to end up with labor shortages and that's where we should go out talking about. Yeah, >> technology is a net job creator always. Sure, there's short-term disappointment. Yes, it's true. It's [applause] a net job creator. It is. It is. And what you have to say because people say, "Okay, well, what are the jobs?" Well, in the early 90s, did we know did we know anything about influencers or Airbnb or Uber? No, we didn't. We couldn't conceptualize it, right? uh there are many jobs we cannot conceptualize right now. So I do an exercise go to chashbt and or to gro and and say okay I want you to consult with uh futurists,

[00:49:00] scientists, engineers, science fiction, uh economists, strategists and tell me what the new jobs associated with and I would put in our five major platforms. What will they be? And you know the reason I talk about new worlds like space obviously it is a new world but asteroid minor did come up in one of those jobs and it was like gosh I haven't even been using that >> near and dear to my heart. Yes. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, and same with the digital world, you know, property rights, you know, you know, we're what I what I love about this country, you know, if you look at um I saw the statistics, this statistic this week, 90% of all the corporate bonds uh to fund uh data centers all all 90% of them are have are US and I go to the rest of the world and they are, you know that I don't see the animal spirits. I I

[00:50:05] do see the fear there. So, the irony is the headlines might be reading this, but the animal spirits are are alive and kicking and we're beginning to look, the market's near all-time highs. >> Crazy. >> Yeah. Right. Even though interest rates are going up and interest rates will go up if growth really picks up dramatically and they should go up. That's the market working. >> Yeah. I think this is the bull case for America, right? USDC circulating faster. The buildout that you've seen, we have no securitization in Europe. We have no energy. And surely this could kind of be the bull case. You have the muses, the instincts, the Grock bots of the world. The base case is be more, do more. You've always felt constrained by creativity, by access, and this is breaking down all those barriers. And in fact, you look at bonds. Bonds are so cumbersome. Like nickel, what do you see about the future of securitization of all assets? Because if you can

[00:51:00] securitize a dollar, why can't you securitize anything? Particularly with the intelligence we have today. >> Yeah, you should. Like I think uh XUS that is more common. I think the US securities laws are a little more complicated. They need to evolve uh or to allow for more experimentation and like the SEC just is putting out new rules as we speak, right? So um I do think uh for one of the things that is amazing about USDC is that is essentially exports the dollar into the world. Why is exporting the dollar into the world good? It's because people do real work. They make uh they take their local currency and then they sell their local currency and then they buy the dollar. They're essentially lending us their labor. They're lending us their money, right? So that's why stable coins are really important strategically for a country because if you want to raise debt, if you want to grow and you uh you you have such high interest rates like you want to lower those interest rates, you want to go out and like collect money from people so they can invest in

[00:52:00] your growth and then you can pay pay them back like and one way of doing that is stable coins, right? So that is so that is like a that is why why that's why sort of I've been at circle for 5 years and for the first couple of years I was so confused. I was like why don't you want this uh America because uh you can get [laughter] you can raise more money. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. You can raise a trillion dollars from the world and and and people willing to give you money because like they believe in in the dollar like it's it's so important. So from there I do think there are other assets like I think treasuries will get tokenized. I do think bonds are already uh being tokenized. When you tokenize, you do two things like um both inside the US and outside the US. You first you make it possible to access 24/7 markets. Why is accessing 24/7 markets valuable? Because that means you're more capital efficient. Like you you cannot trade a treasury after 5:00 or 4:00 Eastern. You'll know this better than me. Uh till

[00:53:00] like Monday morning. And so >> great, no more sleep anymore ever. [laughter] Yeah, there already your your agent will handle it for you. Um, and so so treasure t so one is like the you're essentially constantly managing capital efficiency, capital allocation and you'll be surprised at how much money that is stuck. So in just one example just in the international banking system the money that is being sent sent between uh countries at any given time right now there's about $3 trillion that is probably in motion that is not being used to go back into the economy and that is not being used to go back into the economy for the simple reason that the technology and the settlement protocols are very old. So imagine a world and if you believe uh the world is a hundred trillion dollar economy I'm making numbers numbers up if you had $3 trillion more afloat to invest in the world economy what would that mean that's a pretty significant thing >> right and so that's why some of what we do matters uh the other thing it'll open up is security securitization will open

[00:54:04] up is like access for people and it works both ways people in the rest of the world want to own Tesla uh circle stock we went public last Here circle stock has been tokenized by third parties and it is one of the most traded uh tokenized stocks in the world and it's all XUS and people traded XUS because they want to participate in Circle but they have no good way of doing it outside of owning a tokenized version of uh of Circle and so all of that should get normalized. Why why is that good for America? It's good for America because now people in like other countries are investing in America. They're saying like look, I believe American companies are the best. I want to give my money to this company versus some other company. And it works the other way around too. If these countries are able to tokenize their securities if they're able to modernize their financial systems, more money will flow in because you will you will not be relying on the local regulator just

[00:55:03] telling you something. your money is not going to disappear because it's going to be in a smart contract because you can audit how the financial ecosystem works. So if you want to raise money, if you want to for these other countries that don't have the AI infrastructure, they want to raise money, they want to bring capital in, then you have to give better guarantees and better returns on the capital. It cannot be the case that I invest a bunch of money and then the company I invested in gets nationalized or the money I invested in gets devalued significantly. Like all of that matters to investors. So tokenization is just an inevitability like I think it's just going to pick up much like agents doing more cognitive work is going to pick up like you know taking that work securitizing it lending it uh lending against it borrowing borrowing against it um all these are just all new primitives that are coming. You guys feel the speed of the economy accelerating as we talk crazy. >> Can I just add this is this is a really important conversation. You know that

[00:56:01] there has been a narrative out there that you know US exceptionalism is dead right and everyone was pointing out the dollar going down last year. Um if you'll notice the dollar is started to go up and uh this happened in the 80s as well when we had put in place very businessfriendly policies. the dollar doubled in in the early 80s with really good policies. So I think because of everything we've been talking about here that the dollar is actually going to go up. So it's going to be a win-win for people who are using stable coins in the rest of the world. And then I'd be remiss certainly my team would feel I'd be remiss. Uh we just securitied securitized our our venture fund that came that that was announced yesterday. So >> congratulations Kathy on that. I I want to close us out on a topic that we've discussed a few times on the abundance stage. Um and Kathy, thank you. You're coming back to Abundance 360 in March. We're going to have Brett Adcock there.

[00:57:02] We're the CEO of Helion. We're going to have Feay Lee. It's going to be an amazing amazing event in in March. Um when you are on stage, uh you were bullish about hitting a million dollars per Bitcoin. Uh I am curious if you're still bullish about that. And then any concerns about the energy sucking sound of of AI over Bitcoin mining? >> Well, I do think that Bitcoin Well, there were three things that hit it. The flash crash, uh quantum computing fears, uh which we think are uh way overblown, and AI taking all the oxygen out of the room and and taking miners away, right? Um, so we we have there's there's been one change. It's stable coins. Stable coins are usurping a role that 10 years ago we thought Bitcoin was going to play. But it makes sense. This, you know, these people live hand-to-mouth. And this makes a lot of sense. Uh, but

[00:58:03] it hasn't lost the three major roles. It's a, you know, it's a tech, it introduced a technology, a native a currency native to to the internet. So, wasn't there before. Uh, it's a global monetary system, private rules-based, that's critical. Uh, and it's, uh, it's the first of its kind, or it was the first of its kind in a new asset class. Very low correlation even between gold and Bitcoin. That correlation since 2019 has been 0.1. So, hardly correlated at all. And now, Bitcoin is going up relative to gold. I believe that Worsh is going to be very good for um for Bitcoin from this point of view. I think the gold price is going to go down and uh and and yet uh and and that that will to the extent people were playing that they'll be looking for the other um uh

[00:59:02]

safe harbor >> safe harbor store of value. uh and uh so we do we have not changed our forecast uh those revolutions haven't been changed and the more stable coins uh kind of grease the skids uh and you know get more people talking about once you've once you've got your stable coin income and you're trying to figure out okay I'm I'm actually making money now where do I put it I think Bitcoin's going to get a bit from the emerging markets as well as we always thought it would >> all right we're going Wrap it there. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Kathy Wood, [applause] Niel Shandock, and Immod [music]