OpenAI’s drug-development deal raises access questions

ETFs (1)

• FINMA approved Switzerland’s first Bitcoin ETF for retail investors and exempted it from risk-diversification rules because Bitcoin has a long trading history and high volume. FINMA still warns that Bitcoin remains highly risky, and the approval did not name the fund manager.

Regulation (1)

• Perpetuals.com, a tokenized-stock venue, and OKX notified the SEC of plans to operate tokenized securities venues. The SEC’s five-year exemption does not guarantee that applicants meet its requirements; tokenized shares could trade around the clock, while David Bennett predicted scams and a messy fight with companies opposed to the model.

Adoption (1)

• A proposed SpaceX-Tesla merger remains exploratory, but Tesla and SpaceX together hold 30,221 Bitcoin worth about $2.5 billion, with a combined cost basis near $1 billion. David Bennett said a merger could place the companies among the largest public Bitcoin holders and put their holdings under one public company’s disclosures and fair-value accounting.

BTC Markets (4)

• David Bennett argued that a combined Tesla-SpaceX company could fare better than Strategy if MSCI excludes firms with large non-yielding Bitcoin holdings from its indexes. He said index exclusion could make Strategy harder for institutions and pension funds to buy, while the merger might satisfy MSCI’s listing rules.
• The host said a one-shot sale of the seized Bitcoin could pressure the market, while returning Bitcoin directly to victims would avoid converting the entire stash to cash. He also relayed a listener’s concern that some Mt. Gox claimants might stay silent because their coins could have come from Silk Road purchases.
• JPMorgan Asset Management forecast a 10% annual compound return for Bitcoin over the next 10 to 15 years, its first Bitcoin forecast in 31 annual editions. Its report assigned Bitcoin 55% annualized volatility and excluded it from its main covariance model, citing volatile correlations; David Bennett said the firm’s forecast could be conservative.
• The host’s market roundup put Bitcoin at $81,400, the 10-year Treasury yield below 5%, and energy prices mostly higher while metals and major U.S. indexes were mixed or lower. The report also cited roughly 67,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions and a high-priority fee rate of 2 sat/vbyte.

Corruption (1)

• Chinese prosecutors are seeking 61,800 Bitcoin tied to an alleged investment fraud that raised more than 40.37 billion yuan from over 102,000 investors. A Chinese court accepted the confiscation request, and a U.K. ruling said Chinese law should govern victims’ claims; David Bennett said China’s decision to sell or retain the coins could signal its Bitcoin policy.

Protocol (1)

• The Liquid Network said it had entered the final recovery stages after an inflation bug let attackers create unauthorized LBTC and exchange it for real Bitcoin. Blockstream said most of the stolen funds were returned through a white-hat operation, but the attackers kept about 600 Bitcoin; the network was working to restore one-to-one backing and re-enable authorized peg-outs.

Mining (2)

• CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju called rising Bitcoin hash rate an indirect bullish signal because publicly traded miners have traditional-finance backing and higher hash rate strengthens network security. David Bennett noted that hash rate had returned to zettahash territory despite miners’ stated plans to shift capacity toward AI infrastructure.
• NIP Group agreed to buy another tranche of deployed Bitcoin-mining hardware, which could raise its total hash rate to nearly 14 EH/s. Its shares fell 6.8% on Wednesday and were down 86% over the year; David Bennett questioned whether miners were actually abandoning Bitcoin mining for AI infrastructure.

Biology (2)

• David Bennett argued that AI companies’ control over access to drug-discovery tools raises ethical concerns that markets alone may not resolve. He opposed relying on laws to force companies to share products, and said capitalism depends on personal morality and restraint as well as market rules.
• Anthropic pursued a similar biotech strategy, buying AI biotech startup Coefficient Bio and launching Claude for Science. Anthropic said Claude helped identify an unknown enzyme system resembling CRISPR, though some scientists called the finding overblown.

Health (1)

• David Bennett argued that the FDA’s handling of RNA vaccines failed to provide adequate testing and treated recipients as guinea pigs. He said drug approvals should normally take many years, presenting the vaccine rollout as a case where that standard was not met.

Society (1)

• David Bennett warned that the mountain road into Ouray, Colorado has exposed stretches without guardrails and can be dangerous for inattentive drivers. A listener said Ouray’s mountain setting could make it an appealing refuge, and the host recommended the scenic drive while urging caution.

Digital Sovereignty (1)

• A listener argued that people can create a personal version of Galt’s Gulch by minimizing interactions with the state. Another listener suggested Mt. Gox claimants might avoid filing claims if their Bitcoin had come from Silk Road, because Mt. Gox operated without KYC.

Agents (4)

• Nathaniel Whittemore argues that AI is shifting work beyond faster task completion: personal agents can handle routine communications, while new capabilities let people take on work outside their usual roles.
• Muse’s retention was roughly comparable to ChatGPT’s, but far above the cited iOS average; Nathaniel Whittemore cautions that agents still lack both entertainment’s pull and the reliability needed to become indispensable.
• Citrini Research pursued scorpion-toxin binders after identifying life sciences as an underfunded sector with potential AI upside. Using Claude, 300 sub-agents generated 318,000 protein candidates, narrowed them to 211, and found 17 binders for four toxins in independent testing.
• CData’s sponsored Connect AI Gateway offers a control layer between agents and business systems, with record-level access governance and usage visibility; the ad says it can improve answer accuracy while reducing token costs.

Big Tech (4)

• Meta’s Muse reached 10 million US downloads in 40 days, joining a small group of apps to grow that quickly; most were mobile games, and ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini did not match its early app growth.
• Meta devoted 39% of its October advertising spend to Muse, up from 23% in September. Sensor Tower measured 30% seven-day retention and 23% fourteen-day retention, while daily active users reached 2.5 million, up 15% week over week.
• Google expanded Gemini in Android Auto from voice controls to access across Google services, including email and Maps, enabling requests such as checking whether traffic could make a user miss a flight. Whittemore questions whether setup friction will outweigh the convenience; Tesla has also added Grok to its cars.
• Anthropic confirmed it runs a biology lab where researchers conduct physical experiments, both in its own facilities and with outside partners. Life-sciences head Eric Kodera Abrams described the approach as typical of biotech; reporting said the lab’s remit was limited.

Safety (1)

• Researchers from security firm Clarot found that Meta’s Muse conversation-sharing links were easy to enumerate, exposing sensitive business material; Meta temporarily disabled the feature and said it would improve security.

Startups (3)

• Anthropic’s leaked prospectus showed an $80 billion first-half net loss, but $72 billion came from stock-grant accounting; the reported operating loss was $8.7 billion. Jack Farley argued the accounting loss was not economically meaningful because it reflected equity-linked instruments.
• Anthropic reported $16.3 billion in first-half revenue and cited a $65 billion annualized run rate through July; it later said Q3 revenue rose $16.8 billion, or 45% quarter over quarter. Reuters reported investors preferred a $1.5 trillion valuation to the rumored $2 trillion.
• OpenAI was reportedly seeking $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation and trying to close the round within weeks, ahead of Anthropic’s IPO. Reuters said the accelerated timeline reflects competition for capital amid higher rates, volatile tech stocks, and scrutiny of AI valuations.

AI Infrastructure (1)

• Anthropic’s prospectus cited up to $750 billion in future compute spending, including about $450 billion in firm, uncancelable commitments due over seven to ten years. The Wall Street Journal reported that some commitments may be soft orders tied to future data-center construction.

Biology (2)

• The experiment produced an early binding result, not an antivenom: none of the proteins had been shown to neutralize toxins. Scorpions sting about 1.2 million people and cause roughly 3,200 deaths annually, mostly among children with limited medical access; critics noted toxin-binding proteins were already in the literature.
• Citrini’s virtual design took 64 hours, but experimental results took 39 days and a treatment could take four to seven years to reach release. Citrini concluded that DNA synthesis, protein production, toxin handling, controls, and human researchers remain physical-world bottlenecks.

Enterprise (4)

• Citrini’s experiment shows how AI can let a financial research firm test a scientific thesis directly, rather than rely only on expert interviews. Whittemore expects more firms to do this kind of cross-disciplinary work to improve their core business without becoming labs themselves.
• AI labs may eventually compete with their customers, but Whittemore argues that building a wet lab does not erase the institutions, people, and processes needed to bring discoveries into use. AI adoption across a whole industry is therefore unlikely to happen all at once.
• KPMG’s sponsored AI series promotes practical enterprise adoption, covering strategy, data readiness, governance, workforce, and value, with guests including Serojia Chatterjee of Emma and May Habib of Writer.
• Granola’s sponsored AI notepad captures meetings and turns them into structured notes with decisions and action items. Blitzy’s ad says its codebase knowledge graph supports autonomous modernization; one customer migrated a $10 million insurance monolith in 16 weeks versus a 137-week baseline.

Health (1)

• Whittemore doubts that medical breakthroughs will quickly repair public opinion of AI: routine AI-assisted discoveries may become ordinary, while a drug breakthrough would not automatically make the public trust the companies behind it. He cites Will Manidis’s comparison with public opinion of big pharma.