You can imagine I’m touchy on the subject of Sam Bankman-Fried, especially given that he and his increasingly pathetic parents have spent 2025 lobbying Donald Trump for a pardon.

So no surprise that, as the saying goes down South, I near to fell out of my chair when SBF’s verified account Tweeted “gm”, for “good morning,” on September 23. Luckily, it doesn’t appear Sam got a surprise release, or illicit access to a cell phone. A reply soon clarified that “[No, SBF is not posting himself from prison. I’m a friend posting on his behalf.]”, and the account bio now reads “SBF’s words (mostly). Shared by a friend.”

That friend should now be very cautious about, intentionally or not, committing financial crimes themselves. Their opportunity to insider-trade by using the account to manipulate markets is clearly huge: the FTT token, which once acted as an equity proxy for FTX but now has literally no utility, pumped about 30% on the surprise tweet.

And if you’re shamelessly corrupt enough to run a Twitter account for Sam Bankman-Fried, a little front-running probably doesn’t feel like a crime at all.

David Z. Morris

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Feb 9

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There are cascading deleveragings everywhere, for those with eyes to see.

So-called Digital Asset Treasury cos. (DATs) have been the flavor of the year for 2025, achieving big stupid multiples over the value of the crypto they’re holding. Their founders have floundered in efforts to explain why that makes sense. Now, the crypto market is starting to flag, and these idiots are doing stock buybacks. And other idiots have probably been conned into thinking that also makes total sense.

My advice? If you’re responsible for any aspect of this, seriously consider throwing yourself off a building in the next week or two. At least you’ll be ahead of the curve for once.

Read More at Zero In with Austin Cambpell and DZM: DATs - Treasury or Trap?

By the way: It’s probably time to move out of crypto markets. I think we’ve topped out, betwen the end of the road for DATs and Trump Hopium fading. I liquidated 75% of my crypto portfolio in early September - a choice I’m very happy with in retrospect.

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A new analysis by Deutschebank finds that capital expenditure on AI data centers is effectively keeping the U.S. out of a recession. They find, at the same time, that the revenue required to justify the expenditure will only arrive if technology spending remains on a “parabolic” growth curve - which, of course, won’t happen.

This is the ultimate danger of the con at the heart of “artificial intelligence.” Sam Altman and his ilk are pushing the canard that more compute (those huge-capex data centers) can turn probabilistic LLMs into “artificial general intelligence.” This is quite literally, in mathematical and engineering terms, an utter fantasy - but that doesn’t mean we get the resources back.

Far from improving productivity in the workplace, the use of LLMs like ChatGPT seems to be creating new inneficiencies. A new study by Stanford researchers finds that “employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers,” according to a summary of the findings. “The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work,” the team wrote. “In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver.”

So if you’re worried about the robots replacing you (and you’re not a programmer or illustrator), treat yourself to a deep, calming breath. It was always hype, and that’s becoming more and more obvious.

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Tai Lopez has always been a slack-jawed himbo grifter to the bone. But now we have official confirmation, in the form of an SEC lawsuit alleging that Lopez and his business partner, Alex Mehr, ran a $112 million Ponzi scheme while misrepresenting the returns on their acquisitions of dead brands like Radio Shack and Pier 1.

Lopez created the model for YouTube “grindset” influencers, pioneering tactics like renting cars and houses to create a deceptive image of wealth, which he then leveraged into (mostly) selling overpriced successwin “courses” about nothing.

Perhaps out of a sense of shame (yeah right), Lopez did eventually decide he should actually try his hand at running a real business. With Mehr, Lopez started acquiring “zombie” labels in 2020, broadly promising to make them profitable online retailers. In a few cases, they got more creative: Radio Shack became a cryptocurrency play, broadly in the way that dead stock tickers are currently being resurrected and taxidermied into “digital asset treasuries.”

But Lopez is of course far, far stupider than even the mercenary DAT cadres - the Radio Shack crypto play is long-vanished from the internet, and the SEC report claims Lopez and Mehr never really made any money. Instead, they pumped unaccredited retail investors for cash over Zoom calls, which whatever the shifting mores of Donald Trump’s America, is still what could be technically described as “illegal as hell.”

They also promised 25% annual returns, which could be technically described as “filtering out anyone with critical thinking skills who might have accidentally wandered into a Tai Lopez conference call.” According to the New York Post, Lopez and Mehr may have been narced out by employees at the acquired firms who didn’t want to be implicated in a crime.

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👁️ NOLLIJ: Tai Lopez Ran a $112 Million Pyramid Scheme (duh)

The stupidest people on Earth don't *always* get away with it.