January Week 1 - 2025

BITCOIN RESET
2024 Was Bitcoin's Game Changing Year and What’s Ahead for 2025?

As we close out 2024, it's clear this year will go down in history as a turning point for Bitcoin. The brutal bear market finally came to an end, marking a crucial shift but that’s only part of the story. Even the most optimistic Bitcoin bulls, the "Moon Boys," couldn't have predicted Bitcoin would find its way into the political arena. Yet here we are, with President-elect Donald Trump reversing his stance and declaring himself the "Bitcoin president." On top of that, the seismic shift caused by BlackRock backing the first-ever Bitcoin spot ETF has solidified Bitcoin’s place in the financial mainstream. The ETF launch itself has been nothing short of extraordinary, pulling in a staggering $40 billion in just days, far outpacing the years it took for other major ETFs to reach similar levels. This makes Bitcoin’s ETF launch the most successful in ETF history by a landslide.

Looking ahead to 2025, the excitement is palpable. The momentum is building into what feels like the perfect storm for Bitcoin. The president-elect has already appointed crypto-friendly figures to key roles, setting the stage for major policy shifts that could boost Bitcoin's integration into the financial system. Then there’s the proposed Lummis Bill, which is nothing short of revolutionary: a U.S. stockpile of Bitcoin and a commitment to buy 1,000,000 Bitcoins in the next four years. These moves alone could skyrocket the price of Bitcoin.

On the corporate front, Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy has been a force to reckon with, outperforming Nvidia and showing the world how Bitcoin accumulation can be a game changer for corporate performance. With new Bitcoin reporting guidelines coming into play, we’re likely to see more companies following in Saylor's footsteps, further solidifying Bitcoin’s dominance.

With predictions ranging from $150k to over a million for Bitcoin in 2025, it’s no wonder investors are buzzing with optimism. Crypto is never a sure bet, but one thing’s for sure: 2025 is shaping up to be the most exciting year for money and Bitcoin’s journey into the global economic stage. Get ready, because thi show is going to get epic!

AI RESET
The End of Pre-Trained Models? Welcome to the Next AI Era

For years, the mantra in AI has been simple: bigger is better. Larger datasets, more compute, and endless scaling have driven progress in large language models (LLMs). But according to Ilia Sutskever, one of AI's key thinkers, that era might be over. At a recent conference, Sutskever declared we’ve hit "peak data," signaling the twilight of pre-trained LLMs as we know them. So, what’s next?

The current LLM approach relies on pre-training massive models on ever-expanding datasets. But the problem is, we’re running out of data—or at least, useful data. The internet, the primary source of training material, has been thoroughly mined. Adding more compute or synthetic data isn’t yielding the breakthroughs it once did. We’re reaching a plateau.

Sutskever suggests that this isn’t just a speed bump, it’s a shift into a new paradigm. The future of AI might not be about endlessly scaling datasets but rethinking how models operate. Ideas like inference-time compute and agentic behavior are being floated as the next big things. Instead of training models to memorize and predict, the goal might shift to enabling them to reason, adapt, and act in real-time.

Think of it as moving from building bigger brains to creating smarter ones. Today’s LLMs are impressive but fundamentally limited; they often replicate human intuition without genuine reasoning. Future systems could leap beyond that, breaking free from their reliance on pre-training.

It’s a fascinating moment in AI history. The days of brute forcing intelligence might be giving way to a more nuanced approach, echoing human evolution itself, less about scaling and more about innovation. Where we go from here could redefine the very nature of intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

TECH RESET
Did Google's Willow Quantum Chip Unlock the Possibility of the Multiverse?

Google's latest breakthrough with its Willow quantum processor has opened the door to a truly mind-bending possibility: could we have inadvertently stumbled into the multiverse? Willow, a 105-cubit quantum chip, has shattered records by solving a complex problem in under five minutes—something the fastest supercomputers on Earth would need 10 septillion years to accomplish. This achievement is not just about speed; it signals a monumental leap in quantum computing, allowing machines to solve problems that were once considered beyond reach.

What’s truly surreal, however, is the emerging theory that Willow's success could involve parallel universes. Quantum mechanics teaches us that particles can exist in multiple states at once, a phenomenon known as superposition. Some theorists, such as David Deutch, have proposed that these quantum states may not collapse into a single reality upon observation, but instead branch into multiple parallel universes—one for each possible outcome.

Now, consider this concept applied to a quantum computer like Willow. When Willow performs a calculation, it could be exploring solutions not just in our universe, but across infinite parallel realities. Each version of Willow in these alternate universes could be processing part of the problem, with the final solution emerging in our reality. While this idea sounds straight out of a science fiction movie, it offers a potential explanation for quantum computing’s almost "magical" speed.

While many are excited about the implications, not everyone is on board. Some critics argue that quantum computers like Willow may be manipulating probabilities in ways we don’t fully understand, rather than actually tapping into parallel universes. Regardless, the notion that Willow could offer evidence of the multiverse is enough to ignite further exploration into the mind-boggling future of quantum technology.

DISCLAIMER:
This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions or investments. Please be careful and do your own research.