Welcome to the first edition of The Late Night Brief. From Late Night On Base.

Every week I'll share the builders, ideas, apps, trends, and conversations shaping what's next across AI, crypto, consumer apps, and the internet.

No generic news recaps.

Just signal, observations, and the people worth paying attention to.

A special shoutout to our presenting sponsor for the month: SEND.

SEND is a peer-to-peer payments platform that allows users to move money globally with privacy-focused features built into a sleek and modern experience.

Sponsors like SEND help make Late Night on Base possible and allow us to continue highlighting the builders, founders, and projects pushing the space forward.

This week reinforced something I've believed for a long time:

The best builders don't care what the market is doing.

While timelines obsess over price action, founders continue shipping.

The amount of talent building right now is honestly incredible.

This week alone we spoke with teams focused on AI memory, compute infrastructure, prediction markets, creator economies, and entirely new approaches to capital formation.

One thing feels increasingly clear:

The next cycle won't be won by the loudest people.

It will be won by the teams quietly building while everyone else is distracted.

All of our guests had something interesting to say:

Damon (Brain)
Discussed why memory may become one of the most important components of future AI systems.

B3
Shared their evolution from gaming into AI infrastructure and compute.

Nock Chain
Focused heavily on the growing inference market and where demand is heading.

BV7X
Showcased a private beta of an AI-powered prediction market, including examples around forecasting a potential SpaceX IPO.

Connor Holliman
Opened up about life after Coinbase and the importance of building a personal brand in an era where careers are changing rapidly.

Mizzy (Pantheon)
Discussed creator coins and how projects are experimenting with treating them more like indexes than traditional meme coins.

JY (Sybil)
A great example of someone who went from researcher and community contributor to helping build the project itself.

This week's spotlight goes to the broader AI infrastructure sector.

We continue hearing the same theme from founders:

Inference.

Everywhere.

Models continue getting smarter.

But smarter models also mean greater compute demands and higher costs.

As AI adoption grows, the ability to efficiently serve those models may become one of the most important opportunities in the entire industry.

It feels like one of the strongest narratives heading into the second half of the year.

Things catching my attention right now:

• AI inference infrastructure

• Agentic systems

• AI memory layers

• Compute marketplaces

• Prediction markets

• New forms of capital formation

• Creator-owned economies

One of my favorite conversations this week was with Connor Holliman.

The discussion wasn't really about getting laid off.

It was about what comes next.

As AI continues reshaping industries, personal brands, relationships, and networks may become more valuable than ever.

Klipguy

@klipguy

Connor emphasizes the value of building your network

"One thing I realized last year with putting out content, and like building a network is that, along with the networking piece of it, I was building a brand. and when the lay off came there were opportunities that were coming

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11:57 AM • Jun 10, 2026

One thing I continue noticing:

The barrier to building keeps falling.

Tools like Claude are making it easier than ever to create products.

Which means building is no longer the bottleneck.

Distribution is.

The challenge isn't creating something.

The challenge is getting people to discover it.

That's why founders are increasingly investing in content, community, and media.

Attention is becoming one of the most valuable resources on the internet.

👀 Things Catching My Eye

One area I continue paying attention to is digital collectibles.

For years, crypto has largely focused on speculation.

But some of the biggest consumer products in the world aren’t built around speculation at all.

They’re built around collecting.

Pokemon.
Sports cards.
Funko.
Magic The Gathering.

People collect because it’s fun.

They collect because it creates identity, community, and status.

As crypto matures, I think we’ll see a shift away from purely financial products and toward digital experiences that feel more like collecting than trading.

The next breakout consumer crypto product may not look like a token.

It may look more like Pokemon.

A game.
A collectible.
A community.

Something people want to participate in because it’s enjoyable—not because they expect it to go up tomorrow.

In a market where attention is scarce, fun matters.

The biggest takeaway from this week:

Builders aren't slowing down.

If anything, they're accelerating.

While most people focus on price, the smartest founders are focused on shipping.

And eventually, the market catches up.

As always, we're live Monday–Thursday at 12 PM PST breaking down the builders, ideas, and technologies shaping what's next.

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a friend, founder, or builder who should be paying attention.

See you next week.

— Bill the Bull

Host, Late Night on Base