Google Ultra Yes. I tested it. I paid a ridiculous $204.99, for a maximum of five queries per day, just to see what this model could do. My general rule of thumb is that Open AI overstate the capability of their models (GPT5 came out a few hours ago) and Google does the opposite. To

Panic Rarely do we open with Lagarde, but she’s been forced into action by the United States Genius Act. As a quick refresher, the act will allow US banks to issue stablecoins provided they are 100% backed by US Treasuries (90 day maturity and less). It digitises the US bond market and turns it into

Bail-out “Bitcoin bails out the UK” was not a headline I expected to see quite yet. Should it go ahead, the sale is likely to go down in history alongside Gordon Brown’s memorable decision in 1999 to sell 500 tonnes of Britain’s gold for $275/oz. That gold is now worth $40 billion and Gordon sold

Vanguard Back in December 2023 we covered that Vanguard was one of the few large fund managers who had not submitted a Bitcoin ETF application. I was rather supportive of their view at the time: “Even so, Vanguard are sticking to their knitting and not pretending to know what they don’t know. In my estimation

Big Beautiful Bill Our investment thesis was and remains that governments will spend money they don’t have at an accelerating rate. Demographics, and therefore politics, point to this. The monetisation of huge state debts is really a universal basic income of sorts. We will continue to pay for everything with money we don’t have. Accordingly,

Abundance The best example of abundance I can find for you this week is this https://chat.minimax.io/, a new Chinese AI model that you haven’t heard of. Minimax is free and works slightly differently from other models, largely because US export restrictions on chips mean it has to. This one is sixteen small models behaving like

Gilded Age All eyes on Italy where inheritance flows have leapt to 20% of GDP.  Good for the beneficiaries perhaps but the overall picture is a bleak one. The population is ageing fast. More than that, it also shows a very low level of growth.  A very wealthy society would ordinarily experience large inheritance transfers

The Australian Way These stats from the UK are normally a good leading indicator. “Money numbers” from the Inland Revenue about what has been paid in payroll tax. Overall it’s a very sharp drop in employment and trending sharply down. One of the major causes has been an increase in what is known as Employers

Not friends That got ugly quickly. Elon actually believed he could cut government spending. He was given carte blanche by his former bestie to do so. He failed.  That is the thing about Elon Musk, he is actually prepared to fail. One of his rockets fell out of the sky too this week, because that

HKMA The stablecoin race gathered a little pace this week. The United States regulatory bill is making its way through the Senate but rather more interesting is the action on the other side of the world. Hong Kong actually passed stablecoin legislation, establishing a licensing regime for fiat-backed stablecoins. It wouldn’t matter so much but