This week the AI does the segment before we do: a fully AI-generated take on Venice AI's $1B raise — cyborg avatars, cloned voices, takes we mostly agree with — then the real us react: Voorhees history (Satoshi Dice, ShapeShift), the "provider sees and likely saves your prompt" privacy model, and why local frontier AI is a $50K leaf blower in your living room. Then Perp of Fortune returns: Fable reads the news, goes LONG crude at 20x with $100 real dollars ("Iran is back"), gets rate-limited mid-trade, and Opus has to finish placing it. Plus: not all USDC is worth a dollar (chain drift, bridged vs native, why your burrito money depends on which chain it lives on), and BonkDAO loses $20M to a guy who bought the vote fair and square — and still lost money. Love of the game.

Glossary — Venice AI: Erik Voorhees' private/uncensored AI platform, $65M Series A at $1B; real TEE privacy is the paid tier. Perp of Fortune: our tiny real-money leveraged-perp bit on Hyperliquid, AI-picked this week (LONG XYZ:CL, 20x, $100 margin). Chain drift: the same stablecoin priced differently across chains. BonkDAO heist: $4.3M buys 1% of supply, passes a "send me the treasury" proposal, drains $20M.

Chapters: Cold open (0:00) · 3-2-1-clap welcome (0:43) · Gamer thumb week 3 (1:46) · The AI-generated Venice segment (4:26) · Panel reacts: Venice & Voorhees (9:55) · Local models (18:56) · Perp of Fortune: Fable picks the trade (27:08) · USDC chain drift (33:53) · ENS is cancelled (44:12) · BonkDAO's $20M heist (50:01) · The fill lands (50:45) · Heist math (53:50) · Tax guy (56:12) · Wrap: +$1.92 (58:35) · Post-credits (1:01:21)

Our opinions are our own, not our employers'. NOT financial advice. The Venice segment is 100% AI-generated and labeled as such.

We ran an experiment: feed our first three episodes (and, without asking, our group DMs) to Claude, have it distill each host into a soul.md personality file, then spin up AI agents with cloned voices and let them record a segment of this episode without us. We play it live, grade our clones, and issue corrections. The AI stole Chris's actual takes, nailed Tyler's skepticism, and gave Chris a British accent for reasons nobody can explain. Each of our souls fit in ~40 lines of Markdown.

In between: the main event — Base vs Tempo. Coinbase's "incubated" L2 vs the Stripe/Paradigm payments chain: who controls the sequencer, what unilateral exit actually guarantees, why freeze functions make chain security moot for stablecoins, custodial "privacy zones," and how North Korea out-races Circle's multi-sig. Then OpenUSD — the 140-company consortium stablecoin (Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock…) that's a distribution play dressed up as a protocol — and the underrated art of controlling the burn desk.

Plus Jackson's contrarian take finally comes due: your job isn't safe — ours is. Laid-off software engineers will ride AI into every other industry like conquistadores, and it ends somewhere between lifestyle-business utopia and all of us as pets of the ASI.

Recorded live at Presidio Bitcoin, San Francisco — huge thanks for the studio. Our opinions are our own, and this is NOT financial advice.

(0:00) Cold open: the AI clone experiment

(0:43) Welcome to Presidio Bitcoin

(2:13) Check-in: Pico's vet saga

(3:56) Fable 5 is back (and Jackson's in love)

(5:45) Looping: automating our jobs away

(11:06) Main event: Base vs Tempo

(15:43) Sequencers, MEV & who's in control

(22:16) Freeze functions & privacy zones

(34:43) soul.md: AI clones the hosts

(38:13) The synthetic segment (AI Chris goes British)

(47:11) OpenUSD, for real: 140 companies, one coin

(53:49) The burn desk

(56:56) Contrarian corner: our jobs are fine, yours aren't

(1:00:00) Software eats the world, then ASI eats us

(1:08:49) Gamer thumb week 2 + Pico's GoFundMe

(1:11:57) Post-credits: the Perp of Fortune incident

Glossary — L2: a chain that settles onto Ethereum. Sequencer: who orders an L2's transactions (ordering = power = MEV). Fraud proof: how anyone can challenge an invalid batch. Base: Coinbase's "incubated" L2. Tempo: the Stripe/Paradigm payments L1 run by company validators. OpenUSD: the 140-company consortium stablecoin. Freeze function: issuer power to freeze USDC/USDT anywhere. Burn desk: where stablecoins redeem to dollars — control the exit, control the peg. soul.md: a Markdown personality file for an AI agent; ours are ~40 lines. Looping: re-prompting an AI until the job is done.

We built Perp of Fortune: hand $100 to Claude, let it pick any perp at maximum leverage, and watch it ride for the entire episode. It chose $DRAM — an AI-memory index — at 20x, and immediately started funding the AI hardware supercycle. We may have found the recursive loop.

Then Tyler makes his contrarian case that self-custody will never scale to normal people, we trace the custodial honey-trap from Mt. Gox to FTX to today's Bitcoin treasury companies, and we break down why MicroStrategy's "Stretch" — a ~$100 "stable" yield product Saylor reportedly cooked up with ChatGPT — looks headed for a slow bleed to its 4% floor.

Bitcoin, AI, and questionable decisions, from three guys earmarked for the permanent underclass. Real money, high leverage — this is NOT financial advice. Our own opinions, not our employers'.

(0:00) Cold open: we let an AI gamble our money

(0:54) The Pico recovery

(3:45) Main event: Perp of Fortune

(12:08) Claude goes rogue - the $DRAM trade

(19:00) Contrarian Corner: self-custody won't scale

(34:17) The custodial honey-trap (Gox -> FTX -> ?)

(42:29) MicroStrategy & the Stretch problem

(57:10) Confession: my emergency fund went into Stretch

(1:00:53) The endgame: is MSTR just a $64B ETF?

(1:07:36) What actually moves Bitcoin?

(1:14:54) Outro + next week (all three in person)

(1:15:35) Next time on Permanent Underpod

Glossary — Perp: a leveraged crypto bet with no expiry. Liquidation: when leverage wipes your stake. Hyperliquid: the perp exchange Claude trades on. $DRAM: a Hyperliquid index perp tracking AI-memory prices. Self-custody: holding your own crypto via private keys. MicroStrategy (MSTR): a company that issues stock/debt to buy Bitcoin. Stretch (STRC): MSTR's "stable" ~$100 yield product. mNAV: a treasury company's value vs. the Bitcoin it holds. Claude: Anthropic's AI agent, here wired to pick and open the trade.

Subscribe — Ep 4: all three in person, agentic payments for real this time, and Jackson's contrarian take finally comes due.

The U.S. government forced the best AI on Earth offline three days after launch — so we spent a week mourning Fable. Meanwhile retail 100x leverage went legal, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon went to war with Coinbase, and Chris reports live from a stablecoin conference in Mexico City. Oh, and Pico survived the mushrooms.Bitcoin, stablecoins, perps, and AI, from three guys earmarked for the permanent underclass. Not financial advice — our own opinions, not our employers'.GlossaryClaude — Anthropic's AI coding agent (CLI/desktop), how the guys "edit" the podFable — Anthropic's latest model; pulled from the market by government order (with "Mythos")Opus — Anthropic's prior model line, the one we're stuck on nowPerps (perpetual futures) — leveraged crypto bets with no expiry; a "funding rate" keeps the price honestStablecoin — a crypto token pegged to $1; the GENIUS Act is the US law regulating themRent-seeking — making money from a protected position rather than by creating value0:00 Cold open (teaser)0:29 Welcome - the empty chair moved (Chris is remote)2:53 Housekeeping: we heard you (Ep 1 fixes)5:42 The Pico update (he made it)10:58 The lottery tickets, revisited13:32 Boots on the ground: the stablecoin conference16:25 Jamie Dimon vs. the GENIUS Act (rent-seeking)24:56 Will we ever pay in stablecoins? (US vs. the world)35:07 Main event: perpetual futures54:08 Permanent-underclass update: Fable 5 yanked1:04:28 Outro + Ep 3 tease 1:05:48 End card / next timeSubscribe — Ep 3: Contrarian Corner, agentic payments for realOpen source repohttps://github.com/jacksoncook/permanent-underpod

Welcome to the first episode of the Permanent Underpod! We talk about what we know: AI, stablecoins, and Bitcoin. We are an AI-first podcast poised to please you with technical chats. Comment topics you'd like to hear us cover in our next episode.

0:00 Cold open (teaser)

0:39 Welcome + meet the hosts

4:31 The first crypto we ever bought

10:10 Pico update - why Tyler is remote

12:32 The news: crypto shakeout + the AI rotation

26:41 Claude Fable 5 - are we cooked?

45:20 If we couldn't work at computers...

49:55 The confessional: biggest bag fumbles

58:00 Contrarian corner: stablecoins to zero?

1:11:30 The Vitalik sighting

1:13:23 The lottery tickets (ft. Claude)

1:22:32 Bonus: naming the pod

1:24:10 End card / next week