Cameron Otsuka

GENIUS Act Deadlines, Kimi K3, and the China Competition

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

CPI cools, moving housing affordability to the center of Fed policy. Circle gets its national trust charter approved. China competition heats up with Kimi K3 and US election tampering announcements.

with Matt Dines and I

SCOTUS on the Fed, Open USD, and Brady Bonds: Precursors of Dollar Stablecoin Headlines to Come

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Precursors of future dollar stablecoin headlines have hit the tape:

SCOTUS rules on Fed independence, but Matt Dines sees breadcrumbs for the next legal fight
I outline Open USD’s challenge to issuer-led stablecoins
Mexico’s Brady Bond debt comes to roost

Circle's Float Problem

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Stablecoins are a pretty easy concept to wrap your head around: you give the stablecoin issuer a dollar, they invest that dollar into some specified mix of “safe” assets, and in return they give you a digital token. That digital token has some magical properties that I won’t get into today, but they theoretically enable use cases that you aren’t able to achieve on traditional monetary rails.

There have been many people who have noted this is kind of similar to what banks do, with one key difference: the stablecoin issuer doesn’t return that interest back to you, but instead pockets it for itself. This has led Tether, issuer of USDT, to become one of the most profitable companies per employee.

Circle follows the same pattern, issuing its USDC dollar stablecoin, managing its reserve in cash and US Treasuries, and earning profits via the yields on its reserve. Circle partnered with Coinbase as a key distribution partner, reportedly entering a revenue sharing agreement. This setup is issuer-led, making the stablecoin issuer the main profit driver, and everyone else hoping to get a small cut of whatever the issuer is willing to provide.

An obvious challenge to this model would be the creation of a consortium of partners that jointly issue a stablecoin, sharing the profits amongst themselves. Enter Open Standard:

Today we announced Open USD together with Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock, BBVA, Shopify, DoorDash, and 140+ other partners.

Much like the mobile industry needed Android, financial services needs Open USD to scale stablecoin adoption.

The stablecoin space has come a long way since we started Bridge nearly 5 years ago. Total volume is now approaching that of the ACH network and nearly every major financial institution from banks to fintechs is leaning in.

But cost and governance have limited utility and put core payments use cases out of reach. Businesses need a stablecoin that’s open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests.

We’ll be launching later this year.

Visit joinopenstandard[.]com to learn more and participate. — @zcabrams

The partner list is already enormous (140+ at launch) and took me by surprise, but the incentives make sense: the issuer-led models concentrate all of the economics with the issuer, but the distribution channels are the ones helping to grow the stablecoin’s user base. It stands to reason they may prefer a model that balances the scales more towards themselves.

It remains to be seen whether Open Standard’s governance structure will stand the test of time. With so many partners, it could implode in on itself under the weight of bureaucracy. That said, Coinbase and other distribution partners (e.g., payment processors) seem like the obvious winners on this news, as the threat of OUSD has tipped the scales at the revenue share negotiating table with stablecoin issuer incumbents.

Mine Print Hash

SpaceX’s $25B bond offering is just the latest reminder that the AI buildout is part of the dollar-credit story. Matt Dines and I walk through how and why SpaceX and FHLB borrowing are signposts for non-bank dollar liquidity. All this admist the backdrop of continuing progress on the Digital Euro, Digital Yuan, and stablecoin dollar projects.

Open Threads

Private AI usage:

The National Design Studio’s first model, Rampart, is an on-device PII-redactor. Link
Codex and Claude Desktop competitor that routes its model calls through Venice, a privacy-focused inference provider. Link
Attempting to distribute model inference compute in a sort of Folding@Home way. Link

Legislative branch pushes back on a few Executive branch moves (just a few):

Lisa Cook retains Fed Governor job, for now. Notably, the Supreme Court really is saying the Executive needs to follow the right procedures. Link
Birthright citizenship executive order is struck down. Argument over the definition of “citizen,” the 14th amendment author’s intention, and England’s version of the law from which this was borrowed, abounds. Link

SpaceX, FHLB Lending, and the Dollar Liquidity Scramble

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dollar liquidity stress is showing up far from the front page: SpaceX’s $25B debt deal, FHLB advances to insurers, private-credit PIK stress, stablecoin settlement, and Bitcoin treasury companies.

Matt Dines connects them as pieces of the same credit cycle.

American AI Suzerainty

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Anthropic export control saga was not only a preview of AI safety policy, but also a peek at what a global reordering of political economy around AI intelligence could become. Access to frontier model intelligence, and possibly Powerful AI as Dario calls it, exhibits many of the same properties that other arms-/export-controlled technologies do: a thin line separating civilian and military use. Think rockets, cryptography, or satellite imaging.

The important escalation in the Anthropic case is that export controls moved from physical components, digital artifacts, and intellectual property like Anthropic’s Mythos model weights, which represent massive levels of fixed cost. Instead, controls were placed on access to the intelligence itself because militarily, Mythos is akin to a weapons R&D lab full of scientists. The diffusion of stronger levels of intelligence is irreversible as it’s an R&D proliferation event. As The Verge put it, “Anthropic got hit by export rules nobody understands.”

One possible outcome in this future world is the gradual march towards feudal states reliant upon good standing with the US. Allying with the US would enable access to superhuman research capabilities, cybersecurity, etc., whereas falling out of the privileged zone would place foreign countries at a disadvantage.

The UK and other G7 nations were abruptly made aware of this weakness and Japan’s Digital Minister has already hinted at this, starting conversations with other countries to develop their own sovereign AI capabilities:

I hope many Japanese people understand that we need to press ahead with AI development, or we’ll end up becoming an “AI colony.” — Japan Digital Minister, Hisashi Matsumoto

Access to Powerful AI becomes a magnetizing force into the US’ orbit, then. Becoming an American citizen, or headquartering a company within the US’ sovereign borders offers outsized benefits to being anywhere else in the world¹.

This is where the Yarvinite Patchwork thesis falls apart². While Patchwork assumes citizens’ ability to exit would force governance discipline, if Powerful AI is not widely diffused, then the market for city-states consists of a duopoly with a long tail of penny stocks.

While AI export controls won’t and can’t preserve the prior global order, they increase the US’ leverage in geopolitical negotiations, intensify the demand for domestic US labor/capital, and force foreign states into a choice between sub-frontier model intelligence and deploying massive amounts of their own capital to (hopefully) build sovereign frontier AI of their own.

Mine Print Hash

The Kevin Warsh era of the Fed has begun, bringing with him a slew of institutional changes already that Matt Dines talks through. I cover the Anthropic export controls and what they could mean as countries continue their push for AI sovereignty.

Open Threads

Can smarter model routing substitute for raw model intelligence? My guess would be no, but it could marginally improve performance?

Japan’s Sakana AI claims it’s Fugu model can do this. Link
OpenRouter claims it’s Fusion tool can do this. Link

Europe trying to sort itself out.

UK chews through it’s 6th PM in 10 years as Starmer resigns. Link
Hoping to update their monetary rails to be competitive with the US. Link
Trying to get satellite launch capabilities going. Link

I don’t think is nominally any different than before, but the second derivative may have changed. ↩︎
Okay, this isn’t the only reason. ↩︎

AI Export Controls and the Warsh Era: Fed Regime Change Amidst AI Sovereignty Challenges

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Warsh’s first FOMC points to a Fed regime change beyond rates: less forward guidance, institutional reform, and credit aimed at real growth.

Matt Dines and I connect that shift to AI sovereignty: Anthropic, export controls, and access to the AI frontier.

Blocking Your AI Access — For Your Safety

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Anthropic released Fable 5, a version of Mythos with safety gates, intended to stop bad actors from using the model’s full capabilities. The full details are not public, but reporting seems to suggest that Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, contacted the US government to report Fable 5 was easily jailbroken and led to the US slapping export controls onto Fable 5 and Mythos. This is an interesting chain of events because Anthropic is both an Amazon investment and an AWS customer.

A bit of schadenfreude as Anthropic has repeatedly said Mythos is dangerous, “[t]he fallout—for economies, public safety, and national security—could be severe,” and called for a pause to AI development:

We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.

And in Dario’s own words:

Frontier AI models, like airplanes, should be required to go through technical testing and auditing, and their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety.

General opinions seem to range between the following arguments:

Dario and Anthropic are genuinely worried about the pace of AI advancement, believe institutions are moving too slowly, but intend to advance AI anyways until everyone promises they’ll stop.
The current administration has a political agenda against Anthropic and is slapping export controls on them in retaliation. This is the same line of thought from when Anthropic was designated a supply chain risk.
Dario and Anthropic (and maybe Amazon?) are putting together a marketing campaign that paints Mythos as so capable, it’s dangerous — a la Apple’s Power Mac G4 ad:

Likely some mixture of all three are at play here, but the through line across all of the messaging from Anthropic, the US government, and even opponents to AI, is safety. And safety gates, said another way, are an access-control system. Some authority decides who gains access, and to what.

I’ve previously written on political bias within models, which is a direct way to repress information. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are often used as an example that would enable easy, widespread financial repression. As AI capabilities continue to advance, gating access to certain levels of intelligence would be another way to repress.

Whether the target is social media platforms, bank accounts, intelligence, or any number of products, the regulatory question is continually formulated around the state knowing best. Whether in the form of the UK banning social media for children under the age of 16 in the name of safety¹ or ensuring AI is safe for minors, everything is a nail for the ID verification hammer.

To see if you’re allowed to read the next article, scan your ID. To keep you safe, so you don’t read something you shouldn’t have, because ultimately this is about safety from wrongthink. The fight spilling into public view is over who controls the thought.

Mine Print Hash

Tokenized assets have been a hot topic, alongside stablecoins, which plays right into the Mine Print Hash thesis. Matt Dines and I discuss how tokenized assets are competing with traditional financial rails via GENIUS Act stablecoins on last week’s podcast.

Open Threads

A little bit of everything this week:

China’s cross-border digital payments system. Link
Nvidia taps the bond market. Link
Another US-Iran deal? Link

Except for Bluesky, because apparently that’s not social media? ↩︎

Tokenized Assets: The Market Plumbing Contest

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The tokenized asset debate is a tug-of-war for control of the monetary layer beneath them.

Matt Dines argues tokenized assets are a sovereignty question: as collateral moves on-chain, nations want to control the underlying infrastructure and settlement rails that support them.

From AI Tools to AI Loops

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I wrote last week about tokenmaxxing as the awkward adoption phase of AI inside companies: first you get everyone using the tool, then you figure out whether any of that usage is actually enhancing output.

Looping is the next phase. The question is no longer, “Can an employee use AI at each step of the workflow?” The question becomes, “Can the entire workflow turn into an automated loop?”

A (naive) workflow in one of today’s software engineering companies might look something like:

client requests new feature
write specification document
implement feature in code
conduct tests and code review
make fixes
deploy feature
monitor for bugs

Software engineers are already using AI at each of these steps through a mix of autocompletions, chat interfaces, and coding agents. You may notice there are some natural places where automation already speeds this up: continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) already handles parts of the build-test-deploy process, and observability tools already notify teams of issues or roll back failed releases. But these are mostly point solutions.

What if you could create an automated loop out of the entire software engineering workflow? Boris Cherny (Anthropic) certainly thinks so, as does Peter Steinberger (OpenAI):

Here’s your monthly reminder that you shouldn’t be prompting coding agents anymore.

You should be designing loops that prompt your agents.

— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) June 7, 2026

There are already several examples and functional versions of loops that can be implemented today. Claude Code and Codex have /goal functions that continue working on a task until a final stopping condition is reached. In other words: don’t just answer one prompt; keep working until the condition is true. Andrej Karpathy’s autoresearch is the research version of the same idea: edit the code, train for five minutes, compare the result, keep or discard, repeat.

In a hypothetical near-future, the software engineering workflow may be:

client requests new feature
write specification document
hand that specification to a loop
decide whether the result should be deployed
fine-tune loop to improve its output

Loops change the dynamic away from engineers designing elegant code solutions for feature designs and towards building the instrumentation needed to define measurable stopping conditions. Or maybe, this is already old news.

Mine Print Hash

The four-week T-bill exhibited a big swing over Memorial Day, which highlighted the reason behind why the ECB is likely to hike rates at their next meeting. Matt Dines explains why this is troublesome for the EU and how the CFTC’s approval of Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual futures is a further indication of where monetary rails are heading.

Open Threads

Governments continue controlling who gets compute, who gets chips, who can work where, and which firms become part of national industrial strategy.

Bernie Sanders wants to seize the means of AI production. Link
Trump wants to invest in the means of AI production. Link
Possibly an 18-month loophole China exploited to access export controlled chips? Link
China won’t let top AI talent travel. Link
Claude Mythos - Neutered Version (aka Fable 5) limits its capabilities opaquely to the user depending on the type of question asked. Link

Building things…

China starts a prefabricated power hub for data centers. Link
Google selects Intel as a TPU manufacturer Link
SpaceX has solved the datacenters in space heat problem? Big if true. Link

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu - ★★★☆☆

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

pacing and plot was a shaky at the beginning, but it really found its footing through the back half
sigourney weaver fell flat for me, with no emotion behind her lines
grogu scenes caring for the mandalorian reminded me of the winter ellie section in the last of us
grogu and the anzellans are so cute. “big pipe, huh?”

Cameron Otsuka

GENIUS Act Deadlines, Kimi K3, and the China Competition

SCOTUS on the Fed, Open USD, and Brady Bonds: Precursors of Dollar Stablecoin Headlines to Come

Circle's Float Problem

Mine Print Hash

Open Threads

SpaceX, FHLB Lending, and the Dollar Liquidity Scramble

American AI Suzerainty

Mine Print Hash

Open Threads

Footnotes

AI Export Controls and the Warsh Era: Fed Regime Change Amidst AI Sovereignty Challenges

Blocking Your AI Access — For Your Safety

Mine Print Hash

Open Threads

Footnotes

Tokenized Assets: The Market Plumbing Contest

From AI Tools to AI Loops

Mine Print Hash

Open Threads

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu - ★★★☆☆