Quarter-Life Capital

E3
Speaker 1
[00.00.00]
Hey everyone, welcome to the episode three of the Quarter Life Capital. I'm here with Matt and Soham, as usual, our co-hosts. Um, so there has been some exciting news and development. So I think, Matt, you just went to a Bitcoin conference in Washington DC. Tell us how that went.
Speaker 2
[00.00.17]
Yeah, it was it was great. It was called OP next. And it was basically talking about what is the future of Bitcoin. Right. So what are the changes that are upcoming to Bitcoin and what are they going to be and how are
Speaker 1
[00.00.27]
they going to improve Bitcoin for
Speaker 3
[00.00.28]
the better. And maybe what are what are some of the concerns that people have with those upcoming changes. And um, and what things would it enable if we if we did implement those things? Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about the organizer, which is MicroStrategy, a new strategy
Speaker 1
[00.00.44]
very recently. Right, for our listeners who don't know, like what strategy in general. Yeah. MicroStrategy is a company that made the decision to add Bitcoin to their, uh, to their books. So as a company to actually buy Bitcoin and they issue debt in order to achieve that. So as we know you know,
Speaker 2
[00.01.01]
MSR is, you know, quite correlated now with the actual price of Bitcoin. And they have managed to accumulate quite a bit of
Speaker 3
[00.01.08]
coin, you know, 500,000 600,000 Bitcoin. Now their association with the event itself, um, there was there was only one representative from strategy B, uh, that was actually there. So they weren't too involved. But I think their main point was just to create a venue for, you know, bitcoiners to come and discuss, you know, the,
Speaker 2
[00.01.27]
you know, the latest changes to Bitcoin.
Speaker 1
[00.01.29]
Okay. Um, and tell us more about what are the latest changes of bitcoin. Uh, because, you know, as most people probably don't know, I'm assuming Bitcoin actually goes through some iterative changes. Every few years or every few months on our listeners what that really is. Well, you're
Speaker 2
[00.01.43]
basically asking about Bitcoin governance, which of which there is not an official official process. And the reason for that is because with Bitcoin, right, it's supposed to be decentralized, right? It's supposed to be a network that, you know, can't be easily changed because you don't want the money to be easily changed. Um, but that being said, there has been changes, you know, recently the most recent change was 2021, where they made a couple updates to Bitcoin with like new transaction types that people could use, um, and
Speaker 1
[00.02.11]
added a new cryptographic scheme.
Speaker 2
[00.02.13]
That was something that a lot of cryptographers and a lot of developers wanted for a long time. But the most recent change that people are excited about, um, is called covenants. It's basically a way to be able to restrict the way that you spend your bitcoin. So Bitcoin right now imagine that you have a castle and it's heavily guarded. And you know, it's very difficult to actually go into the castle and steal the gold. But imagine if you if you are able to do that and you are able to go and steal that gold, that there's a high speed train inside of there that allows you to take the gold immediately. That's basically Bitcoin, right? You can guard your private keys as well as you want, but if someone does manage to get your private keys, they can immediately steal all the money. So how can we add restrictions on that Bitcoin. So we would, you know, be able to set it up in a manner where, hey, maybe I have a hot wallet and a cold wallet. So instead of someone just being able to come in and steal all of the funds, instead it's set up so that, you know, maybe you can only steal, you know, 5% of the funds to the hot wallet, you know, in the next 30 days, and then it takes longer to do the
Speaker 1
[00.03.16]
rest. Okay, that's really interesting. And tell us more about how our decisions are made, um, in the Bitcoin community because as you said, I'm assuming like most Bitcoin protocols, essentially there's not really a way to vote. Or is there a way?
Speaker 3
[00.03.31]
Well, they have a concept called signaling. But it's really interesting because first of all, everyone talks about the concept of consensus, right? Like everyone coming to consensus on a particular change. But that's actually impossible because not every single person is going to agree on a particular set of changes. And we saw that actually way back in 2017. Um, we had the Blocksize wars, where basically the Bitcoin community actually split into two, where you had Bitcoin and you had Bitcoin cash, and they were basically arguing with each other on how it should be done. And so there's no real perfect way to do this. But the basic idea is that you should have broad consensus on a particular change, you know. No,
Speaker 1
[00.04.07]
no, like large group of people should be opposed to a particular change. But even when everyone agrees on what the change should actually be, then they disagree on how it actually should be activated. And so then then everyone has to come to consensus on how it actually should be activated. And there's a couple different ways to do it. Sometimes they do it with signaling where they have minor signal, you know, hey, I'm good with this coming in. Or they have a certain number of nodes. You know, in Bitcoin a lot of people run their own node, so they'll signal to the world, hey, I support this change and I'm going to upgrade my
Speaker 2
[00.04.40]
software and go and run that
Speaker 1
[00.04.41]
I see okay. It's very interesting. And I just wanted to dive back to the last episode where we were talking about David Sax making a comment about Bitcoin might lose his status very soon. We talk about how ridiculous that comment was, right? So for our listeners, were probably mostly mostly in their 20s. I want to go to Matt first about why you're so firm into believing Bitcoin will always be number one when we have Solana, when we have, you know, other coins are just taking place and potentially selling the thunder from the second or third spot. There might be an argument of okay, why isn't it coming for Bitcoin. So I'll go to Matt first and then so I'm next. Well
Speaker 2
[00.05.20]
I think Bitcoin is really you know. It was the only cryptocurrency in the very beginning that was created where, you know, when it was originally created, the intention of everyone joining and and wanting to use it. The intention was not to have a get rich quick scheme. You know, back in the day Bitcoin was worth nothing. Right. So Hal Finney you know the early you know Bitcoin developers that you know were interested in it. They weren't there to make a huge return. They were just like oh this is a really interesting idea of money. It's worth nothing today. It might be worth something in the future. But we want to, you know, help develop it in order to create something of it. It was the computer scientist, the cryptographers, the the cryptopunks that were, like really excited about it or, sorry, the cypherpunks that were really excited about not the cryptopunks. Um, that's an NFT thing that doesn't line up. So they were really excited about the idea of it. Whereas later cryptocurrencies, it was a situation where, you know, everybody already knew that you could get rich quick. And so they knew that creating that cryptocurrency. And the other thing is Bitcoin has 15 years of proving itself in the market. And it doesn't have one owner, right. Satoshi can't come in and make a decision that's going to completely ruin the coin. It's very difficult to do governance, which I think is a feature in some aspects.
Speaker 1
[00.06.39]
Okay. And so I want to talk more about the recent years. We've seen more. When was when when did the bitcoin become an ETF in the US.
Speaker 2
[00.06.48]
Um it was last year. Um, and I believe it was either in January or February and it was a Blackrock ETF. Um, Canada actually had it first way back in 2021, but most people didn't know about it. Okay,
Speaker 1
[00.06.58]
okay. So I think the US ETF really picked up a lot of steam and a lot of adoption for the Bitcoin price. And I feel like more people are finding an easier way to transact in Bitcoin. So, um, I know you have a lot of experience in capital markets. Um, so what do you think of those two correlating together. Our stock market movements, are they moving Bitcoin more and more with those tariffs for example.
Speaker 3
[00.07.20]
No I completely agree with you. I think the idea of like the ETF being introduced was one of the biggest catalysts for Bitcoin. Um, overall, it's I think it's one of the best vehicles for anyone that's like a long term investor. The S&P 500 when that started becoming an ETF, when Bogle first created the ETF for that, that's when it started taking off gold. When it was put inside the ETF, that's when it started taking off. And ETF just allows for every person including me, you and everyone else to just be able to buy something with ease. I think with Bitcoin, one of the big speculations for why people didn't buy it was it was complicated, and it was this idea of like the ID is like, if you don't copy and paste this exact wallet address correctly, you'll lose it forever. Right. So those kind of difficulties become hard versus something in like the traditional finance space where you've already been used to it. You buy stocks on a daily basis, you know, sometimes doing research, sometimes with doing research. But, you know, meme stocks, everything exists. And so I think the ETF became the perfect way for people to actually start coming into the thing. Added liquidity for Bitcoin to another layer. And. And the other part is the conversion. I think right now Blackrock is trying to make it so you can convert like your I bet, into actual bitcoin, which is something that like gold has been able to do. And I think that right there will be the next propellant.
Speaker 1
[00.08.35]
Okay. Talk more about that. So they just announced they will
Speaker 3
[00.08.38]
allow people to convert. So this was a couple of months ago. But they filed regulations to be able to like do on spot conversion from like your shares into actual bitcoin for whatever you monitor you own your own X amount of bitcoin right. And so that one conversion right there will help a lot of people. If you ever want to actually exit the traditional finance space, you'll be able to do it with ease. If you want to enter back into that space to, it becomes easier for you to have it through something like an ETF where your entire portfolio is being tracked anyways and everything like that. You can see it cleanly in whatever UI, whatever, like brokerage account you use. It makes it easier for a lot of people that are a bit more skeptical. I mean, it's a brand new asset, right? Change will like, terrify anybody. So I think like easing it into an ETF makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.
Speaker 1
[00.09.23]
Right. And I think Matt like, there might be a flip side to this. On one side, I think ETF does make it a lot easier for anyone to buy. But then I think there's maybe two sides of this. The first is the sovereign side, which is if you're buying a lot of ETFs. Um, but governments potentially could seize it at some point. Right. Even most people I think, will see or think of this as like, oh, it's never going to happen. Well, obviously there's a chance that government will come and seize your Bitcoin ETFs because those are just ETFs. Those are not actually bitcoins. You're not actually buying bitcoins. And the second thing I saw was that ETFs were only trading from 930 to 4. Right. They're not trading 24 hours. So I just want to as a bitcoin what do you think of those ETFs. I mean I think it's a great way to get people in. But what I hope is that people go and you know then upgrade their their setup later. Right. So if you've gone and you've bought the ETF Bitcoin that you're later going to go and actually buy real Bitcoin. And the reason I think that's really important is you know we can look at a nice chart. Um actually James O'Byrne from the OPP next conference actually had a chat with this, which basically showed, you know, legal ownership of gold all the way up until 1932. It was yes, you could have legal ownership of gold. And then right in 1933, it goes to no, because the, you know, Executive Order 6102 comes in, the government
Speaker 3
[00.10.40]
confiscates the gold. So if you're keeping your bitcoin as ETF, Bitcoin or you're keeping it on an exchange, then you've done half the work for them. Because now in order for them to confiscate your bitcoin, they don't need to go knock on your door. They go knock on Coinbase's door or other custodians door. And this isn't an impossible thing. This is less than 100 years ago that this occurred. So it's a non-zero chance. So yeah, start with the ETF. But at some point you should be withdrawing that Bitcoin, you know, to self-custody and start with a mobile wallet on your phone with a seed phrase. And then you can upgrade later to, you know have a hardware wallet. Right.
Speaker 1
[00.11.15]
Okay. Yeah I think we will talk about that more in detail. So I
Speaker 3
[00.11.18]
will just say one thing. Just two years ago during Covid with the Freedom Convoy and kind of we have seen governments even. Recently confiscate people's fire and I think attacks as well. They can introduce a new set of taxes if you want to sell your Bitcoin ETFs, right? Which case? I just read this news last night. Um, there's a proposed Republican tax change that's basically that's like a tariff countermeasures into different countries because the world invests in US equities and ETFs. So they're proposing a 15% tax when foreign investors sell their capital gains. Essentially it's similar to when you're buying when you're buying dividends, when you're when you're a foreigner and you're buying a dividend stock and you're getting the dividends I think the US has a 15% tax already. So but capital gains are not taxed. So this
Speaker 1
[00.12.04]
is potentially a way to do that right. Matt what do you
Speaker 2
[00.12.07]
think. I mean that's insane right. So Bitcoin is a global asset right. Anyone can buy it. Anyone can own it anywhere. You can take it anywhere in the world. You can send it anywhere in ten minutes. Meanwhile, you know these stocks. It's just insane. You know, as a Canadian, me going and buying Tesla stock or Netflix or whatever. And suddenly my capital gains is 5,050%. And then I've got to deal with Canadian capital gains on top of that. I mean, it's just getting insane. So if you want exposure to an asset that is, you know, outside the realm of whatever was occurring in one particular country, right? You don't want to be exposed to, you know, what's going on with tariffs or whatever. And I think Bitcoin is the perfect asset long term for you to be buying essentially.
Speaker 1
[00.12.45]
Right. And do you think what do you what do you think about other assets potentially let's say for some investors in their 20s who let's say have $1,000 every month to invest. What would you recommend them to invest
Speaker 3
[00.12.58]
in? Uh, I would also recommend bitcoin to a certain extent, I think. I think there's an asymmetric risk that it makes a lot more sense to own some than not to own some at just like the core of it. Um, outside of that, if you want true diversification, I also do like the idea of gold. I think right now USA has become very nationalistic about like protecting everything from inside the borders. So it becomes hard as an investor from outside of USA to want to go into us. They're starting to trade like, you know, much more of, like an emerging market country that are becoming much more risky. So I wouldn't recommend the S&P 500 as much as maybe one of those like full vto, like the full World Index ETF. Something along those lines if you want just pure on equity exposure as well.
Speaker 2
[00.13.44]
Okay. I was laughing the other day like looking at the S&P 500. It's like oh it fell fell 5.5%. And it was like Bitcoin fell. Oh I know Bitcoin went up you know. So so basically we had a the day where the volatility of the S&P 500
Speaker 3
[00.13.59]
was higher than Bitcoin. And
Speaker 2
[00.14.00]
everyone's saying oh I don't want to buy bitcoin because it's too volatile. Yeah.
Speaker 3
[00.14.03]
I think one thing you should add is one thing people don't really acknowledge about Bitcoin. It's this idea that you're able to like invest in an asset and completely eliminate counterparty risk to zero. The idea is that if you're buying Bitcoin, you don't have to worry about what anyone else on the planet does. Like what Matt was saying before about this idea of consensus. Even with the block size wars, the income. Did end up winning, right? Like, it's not like new members were able to win with all these other assets you're going to be buying. There's a lot of control on the inside that you don't really see too much about. So I would recommend just like looking into it a little bit more as
Speaker 1
[00.14.36]
well. Okay, Matt, I do I do want to talk about something that when young people first get into Bitcoin, we talked we just talked about how they can start with ETFs and then get an actual blockchain setup. So I actually had a personal experience of setting that up a few months ago obviously. Um, and I think for me, the um, the surprise was that when you place an order, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't delivered immediately. Right? There was like a transaction fee. So you have to wait for the blocks to form. Um, so I do want to ask, like, for people, for people who are not that technical, it might be a lot of things for them to learn all at once. Right. So I know you also talk about like there has to be a better, easier way for people to own their own bitcoins. Um, so for those people, let's say in their 20s and 30s, like, what would you tell them to consider? Or is there anything you want to tell the Bitcoin community to reconsider making it
Speaker 2
[00.15.25]
easier? Well, I think it's both actually. So it's like, okay, for if you're a young person, you might graduate from the ETF and then maybe you start moving that over to a nice, you know, a nice exchange. And then you might move that over to okay, well I'm going to move that over to a mobile wallet where I have my seed phrase on there. And that's kind of an easy transition. And I'm going to back that up. I think there's a, there's a, there's a, you know, a progression that you can do as a new Bitcoin or to kind of start increasing your self sovereignty. And I wouldn't say move all your coins right away. Right. Like if you have a certain amount of Bitcoin ETF, you know, maybe move 5% of it and then double check your setup. And then once you have that then you can go and add more. But I agree with you that the process like it's it's scary to go and set up your own self-custody today. You have to be worried about the fact that if you lose that, you know those 12 words, that seed phrase which represent your private key, that all of your Bitcoin is gone if someone steals it, or if you just completely lose it, then. Then it's gone forever. You've made a donation to the rest of Bitcoiners because no one can access it. Um, so the improvements, I think, were actually very relevant to the conference I was just at, which was, okay, well, we need some improvements to Bitcoin called covenants that are going to allow for restrictions to be put on how Bitcoin is spent, because I think it becomes a lot easier for people to get into Bitcoin if they know, even if someone steals my or gets my private key or my seed phrase, they can't go and steal all of it. You know, it takes 30 days to get, you know, 95% of the funds out. I can have a cold wallet and I can have a hot wallet, and I can sleep at night knowing that. So I think that's really what's coming. And I hope it's coming soon, because we've been waiting a long time for these improvements to
Speaker 1
[00.17.06]
come. Okay, okay. And so before we get out of this topic, I just mentioned a little bit more about the asset classes that we mentioned. Yeah. So for a while, at least for our parents, stocks and bonds are two key pieces of asset classes. So I know we're talking more about like as younger. We're experiencing a very different world and that's very different from our past. So. So would you right now say that S&P is not a good vehicle because our parents might say, oh, it's been going for 7% every year. How would you respond to that. Yeah, that's a good question. Um, and yeah, I think in like the capital markets, you have both equity and debt instead of equity. The most common like, uh, thing used was the S&P 500. But the problem is it's become so frequently used, it became a store of value to a certain extent. And now people said, like, whatever you put in, like whatever extra savings you have just kept going into the S&P 500. So at that point, it became algorithmic. It wasn't actually based on fundamentals, valuations. A lot of that stuff started like deviating away to a certain extent. Um, I think the phrase is zombified money. It's this idea of like, oh, whatever this money is, is constantly flowing through. They'll just keep the same flow. And so the idea is what you're actually investing in itself is more just like the rate that everyone is kind of putting the same money in. And so you're just investing in what other people are also going to put their capital into, and you're getting a capital pool that's just increasing. The idea is, though, that that isn't exactly investing in the most, like, finite way. Um, if you want just like what you're trying to do is you're trying to invest in the idea that of time, whatever energy it took for you to create a dollar
Speaker 3
[00.18.43]
today, you want that same amount of like value ten, 20, 50 years down the line. And so the idea is like with something like Bitcoin, what comes in is that energy kind of gets stored here. You know what the denominator will be for the rest of your life right. And so that's where I think like it starts becoming useful that you're not really viewing Bitcoin as like an investment or as like can ask maybe even just as a monetary policy or whatever extra amount that I have. I know this amount will be stored safely as x percent of 21 million and it becomes becomes easy to sleep. And I think when you know everything about what your investment actually
Speaker 1
[00.19.20]
is.
Speaker 3
[00.19.22]
Yeah I was just going to say
Speaker 2
[00.19.23]
Bitcoin. I think you said it perfectly. Like Bitcoin is
Speaker 1
[00.19.26]
an abstraction on energy
Speaker 3
[00.19.27]
basically, right? And you and any advanced civilization, you would think that their money would be based on energy, right? In the long term. Right. That's what Bitcoin is. Even Henry Ford said that like, oh, uh, the best type of money would be a money that is based on energy. And then now we have Bitcoin 100 years later.
Speaker 1
[00.19.44]
Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay. Well, okay. We'll move to the next topic. I prepare for this episode, and I think a lot of listeners are actually asking like, oh man. And so I'm like, What is George like, what is your eye setup on a day to day basis? Because I think all three of us work with our electronics, computers quite a lot, our phones quite a lot, because we are like more like a white collar office worker, perhaps. Um, so we'll start with some share a little bit more about, like how you use AI in your daily life, in your work, etc.. Sure. Like
Speaker 3
[00.20.14]
I think the number one thing I use in more than anything else is just this idea of brainstorming, the idea of just having someone that you can talk to. They take great meeting minutes for you, whatever you're saying. But then they also then like interact with you, they do research for you. It becomes really easy. I like going on walks and a lot. So I'll put my AirPods and I'll just go on a walk and I'll just I'll talk through like, oh, what is this? Like, what's a mug, for example? And you can start digging really deep into a topic
Speaker 1
[00.20.39]
you basically are using. Yeah, I
Speaker 3
[00.20.41]
use chat the most because I think the voice of chat is very like eloquent and like I've actually just gotten used to it a lot. I tried using Grog's voice that was kind of pitchy. I didn't like it too much. Right. Um, and then the other way I also use like, um, I, I tried using cursor windsurf and the Firebase studio, like, as, like the IDs to code. I can't do it. Well, okay. Um, so I think that's like a little bit harder for somebody coming from an outside background. But one other thing I think is so useful from like AI is this idea of like context. Like I can give it a screenshot of something and it kind of explains to me, oh, what's going on in this diagram, what's going on there? So sometimes those like really elaborate graphs that have no proper, um, legendary. Then along those lines I'm able to use AI to be able to see, well, what's this actually trying to say? And dissect good analysis from
Speaker 1
[00.21.28]
that? Okay. Um, yeah. I'll talk a little bit more about my setup, which is I find myself being a more frequent AI user in recent months. I feel like I just like I came to be using it so much every day. It's really hard to imagine living without it. At least for me personally. Right? And I started using ChatGPT two years ago and and then and then now my setup is ChatGPT for a little bit for work. And, um, and how I do is basically setting up projects. Um, so we have these ChatGPT projects. So every project I have, it will be a project on ChatGPT. And then I'll upload the files, I'll upload like some relevant details. And I really I really appreciate that they're burning money on this project so that there's not actually any limit. Right. As a plus user, which I'm paying I think 20 bucks a month us. I think that's how much I pay. I can essentially talk to it endlessly, right? Um, for whatever I need. And then remember the context. So, for example, I was reading this book. I was talking to telling you guys about about, like, the sovereign individual. And there was this one chat. I think it has maybe like 200 or 500 conversations like back and forth, and I can still add conversations on it. And I know that it has like a good enough context that can actually add things to it that fits exactly like talking to different people. So that's amazing for me. I think for cloud, I use cloud. I even though like a bit less recently, but I think Claude is really great for writing, at least for me, and also obviously for coding, but I use cursor for that. So for Claude, I use it for primary conversations. I have a quick question about workhorse. I ask Claude because it's a little bit more conversational. Um, jam. And I use a little bit more on deep research side. So we have this Gemini 2.5 deep research, which I really enjoy using. And as I said in the last episode, it comes with my work subscription with Google Workplace. So those are my setup. Now let's go set up. Yeah, that's really cool. Well, George, on my end I've got obviously using cursor quite a bit. So cursor is great for me because, um, you know, you can obviously put it into agent mode or ask mode and you can also provide a lot of context. So I've been doing some like kind of hacky things to get it to have more context about my project, for example. I'll run like the tree command, which basically like outputs all of the files that are in, you know, my project. And then that provides that as context. The cursor and the cursor also indexes all the files in my coding project as well. So then I'm able to ask it like, oh, this issue is happening with this, or this issue is happening with that, and it can actually go with the agent and just write it all out. Um, now, sometimes it makes a lot of mistakes. Like it's really, really great at doing like UI components, but it depends on what type of like front end it's creating. Um, but connecting to that to a back end, it always, almost always messes up. And so you've really got to, you know, know which things it can be useful for. The other thing I've been experimenting with too is taking my basically my entire code base. And there's websites now like, um, when instead of putting github.com, you could put you it hub like, and then it will basically output a diagrams that you can go and import the cursor. That will then give it a better sense of how your project is structured. And then there's another one to where it will basically output all of your code that is very easily imported into, like the code of your entire repository, and you can import that directly into cursive. So that has been incredibly helpful. But experimenting with like windsurf versus versus cursor cursor is like I think faster. Um, and then windsurf
Speaker 2
[00.24.54]
is like slightly more accurate. So, you know, you can kind of switch between them for that, right? Um, yeah. So, so many more things I want to experiment with. Do. We're just getting started.
Speaker 1
[00.25.04]
Yeah. I feel like we definitely use different types of
Speaker 2
[00.25.06]
cursor, which is very different from the cursor, obviously. Um, so for our readers who might want to try our cursor, because I know the adoption rate is still low compared to general population, um, share a little bit more about like, okay, what are the one on one of cursor? How do you use it? Most straightforward way. The most
Speaker 1
[00.25.22]
straightforward way. I mean, I think, uh, you know, just download it and open it up in your code base, and then you either put it in agent mode or ask mode, right? So if you trust it to write code. Okay. By the way, if, if you are a like, vibe coder and you know nothing about coding, like be careful about putting it in agent mode and learn how to do like how to use git, you know, which is like versioning. Learn how to do versioning on your code, because there was this guy who was like posting on Reddit, like, oh, I lost a, uh, for, uh, four months of work, uh, putting it in agent mode. And I'm like, dude, yeah, you need to be like, you know, saving,
Speaker 2
[00.25.57]
saving your files and creating versioning of your files before
Speaker 1
[00.26.00]
doing that. Yeah. I feel like you could use agent mode just as, like a fun thing of like, okay, I'm seeing things happening from my eyes. Um, I would say yes. Learn git. And or if you don't know how to use git, maybe tell cursor agent to use git for you. Perhaps that's a good way to save your progress. Um, and also, yeah, versioning is actually quite important because there are often sometimes where. I use cursor and it will mess up the whole entire project. And I'm not coding. By the way, I was just coding and then I have to switch the branch. I'll delete the former branch. I would start that entirely different branch and start coding it from there. Right. So and also my advice would be to use really use a language that is really common that I agents can actually understand quite well. I'm not sure about what language they are. Screws up quite a lot. But yeah, like for example, I think it's like quite good at Python, quite good at JavaScript. But then for example, like if you try to get it to create a front end that like does anything related to the trading charts or something, it will totally mess up. So you have to be very careful on what thing you're doing and then like go. It's pretty good with rust, it's terrible with C plus. Plus it's okay with. Right. So it's like you really got to like you know know
Speaker 2
[00.27.10]
which language to use. And it's going to be appropriate for you when you're
Speaker 1
[00.27.14]
when you're five code. That's interesting. Yeah. And I just want to talk a little bit more about like when we were in college, the computer science courses were teaching us about C plus plus a racket. So it was more about the science. Maybe it's not less about like applications, right? So so like what would you say for people who had like computer science degree or has something to do with computer science and they're out and they're out of the workplace and they're finding very hard to find a job.
Speaker 3
[00.27.41]
I think it's a good question. And I think the idea of like being classically trained in computer science is still important. I don't think it just goes away. But I do think the idea is you should be able to also just learn English to a like a strong level and communication. I think the joke back in the day was I guess CS majors aren't like the best with girls or anything or communicating, you know, things along those lines. At the end of the day, like what we are progressing towards is a natural language programming model, right? So you still do need to be able to be able to talk and explain your entire like, thought. But I think a lot of people in Waterloo, in CSE, they could do it extremely well, but they can't really explain what they're doing. They just know how to do it. I think that bridge right there needs to be created for all the next generation of coders and everything along those
Speaker 1
[00.28.29]
lines. Okay, Matt, do you think the future of software engineering is shifting more towards people who can do the best of both worlds, or like the best of computer
Speaker 3
[00.28.37]
science, but also the best of like,
Speaker 1
[00.28.38]
business and applications and explaining? Well,
Speaker 2
[00.28.40]
I do think that there's going to be more and more solopreneurs. There's this like really nice chart showing, like the number of solopreneurs like without funding has like dramatically increased in the last little while. And so I think that becomes more important. And there's like right now we have we have a situation where jobs haven't caught up, right where we've had a situation where AI has, you know, automated a certain number of jobs and then companies aren't hiring or are firing people because I can do a better job. But the new companies that are going to replace that haven't been created yet. Um, and so I think those things are going to need to catch up. And, you know, then we'll reach equilibrium. But I think the other thing, too, is like even as a coder, um, you know, if you just think you can come in and you can code it together, you probably can for a very simple. UI or MVP, but like if you're actually building a real application, it's going to completely mess you up and you're going to need to know like how it works. So what I would say is use AI in order to ask the questions. They're going to allow you to learn techniques faster than you were able to in the past. In the past, when you were learning, you had to go through documentation for 30 minutes to understand how a basic API worked. Now you've got that at the, you know, at your fingertips. So take advantage of that to learn like way faster than you could
Speaker 1
[00.29.51]
before. So that's a really good point. And I think um, recently there's also this leak on Reddit regarding Shopify. I'm not sure if you guys have heard of it, but the Shopify CEO essentially sent an email to everyone at Shopify and saying that every manager who's thinking about hiring a new person needs to prove in writing why this job wouldn't be able to be done with AI. And it was like, and I when I first, when I first saw, I was like, oh, wow, he's really putting like, what you're not supposed to say out loud, right? And and I think this is really important. Like there's a huge implication for this for people who are already in the workforce and people who are just entering the workforce. Um, so yeah, like I guess, what do you think about this? Like, does it mean just like, less job openings for young people in general? And what are you supposed to do? Well,
Speaker 2
[00.30.34]
first of all, as a previous intern at Shopify, uh, let's go Toby. You know, I think that's I think that's actually awesome for them to be doing. Uh, because I think I think it's like it's like you need to stay ahead of the times, right? And so, you know, if you're joining Shopify, then the expectation is that you're going to have a certain proficiency in AI, and you're going to know how to leverage that as well as possible. You're going to be a fantastic developer, but you're also going to know how to leverage AI to make you faster. Because really what it is, is it's being able to work with a junior dev, uh, that might have some challenges here or there, but if that can speed you up and what you're building and you can be A2X developer because of that, then you're just going to be, you know, that much faster at outputting code or outputting that much more efficiently, or knowing what, you know, what they're I think really looking to do is to figure out, well, how can we bring people into our organization that also know you know I very well. We've already got engineers that understand the code base extremely well. Well, who are the engineers that we can bring in to speed up processes? For example, you know, if new code changes are being made. You know, how can we get AI to review that? That speeds up the process of merging that code into the code base. Um, so I think that's really smart to be honest.
Speaker 1
[00.31.43]
Okay. So, um,
Speaker 3
[00.31.44]
yeah, um, I would probably take the exact same stance. I think the idea is that overall AI is going to become very powerful. I think for whatever job descriptions we have today, it becomes hard to justify hiring somebody versus just using AI, because I think the job descriptions are simpler. But I think what does need to change is this idea that in the next like five ish years, the idea is those job descriptions are not going to stay the same, you know, like in the same way what used to be taxi drivers and like the way you'd get a taxi is by like becoming a driver, sorry, is you'd buy the medallion, right? And that used to be over $100,000, right? What ends up happening is Uber came in, Lyft came. And these. These were disruptive to the industry. But then people got like good living still. Like now becoming an Uber driver, now becoming a Lyft driver. Those. And then outside because of. Uber Lyft. What happened is like DoorDash Uber eats those industries were also able to be created right. And this is something that's happened just in our own lifetime. The idea is that just because AI is going to come in and replace what's existing, that input doesn't mean that the output will stay the same. The output will still. I think what everyone's been told was like, it's going to be growing exponentially. I think jobs will be like not only like more jobs will be added, but much more creative and interesting jobs. Like for example, me, like I work, a lot of my job becomes like administrative tasks about like billing, invoicing and stuff like that. It'd be nice if, like, I could actually do, like a hard part of my job. Like, you know, like the actual stuff that we get paid for. I think that is where we're going to be evolving.
Speaker 1
[00.33.15]
Yeah, I was I was thinking I was I was just looking back. I was like, I wish I was, I was in college because it would be much easier for my life We're learning, like, you know, and also studying at the same time. But also on the other side. Okay, maybe I'll rely on it so much. But I want you to learn
Speaker 3
[00.33.35]
it. No, George, I think you would have been. You would have been building your company and then have to do all your
Speaker 1
[00.33.39]
schoolwork, you know. Over the Shopify. I do agree that the best thing for him to do. I'm just I guess I can learn on the set of this because if, um, if everyone kind of does this right. It just means that the available jobs are going to be less and less. And here in Toronto, I think the unemployment rate is 9%, which which might not even have to do with that. But I'm, I'm seeing like it's probably the employment trend is going to tilt up for younger people especially um, aside from like immigration and stuff. So I would just I'm more concerned about government overreach in the near future because of this high unemployment. Um, so that they might be introducing more taxes, and it's eventually will be bad for everybody right now.
Speaker 2
[00.34.27]
Well, I think it's the short term, right? In the short term you have. It goes out of equilibrium because AI is able to replace these things and people. Then people catch up though, because now now you have young people that are like, hey, well, instead of me just learning coding, I'm going to learn coding. Plus like how to leverage AI the best. And then, you know, the junior people that are able to leverage AI the best. Like that's that's what they will bring into the organization, right? You've got all these senior people that know how to do the job effectively, but they don't know how to use AI. You've got the young people that are going to be learning how to use AI effectively, and they're going to be bringing that into the organization. So if you're, you know, if you're trying to get into the industry like, like pitch, pitch to companies, how can they use AI to speed up their processes? And you will get a job. Absolutely. So, um, I think it's just a it's the same thing that happened with the Industrial revolution, right? You had, um, these processes that came into place that replaced so many jobs. We used to have 98% of the population that was farmers, and now it's like 2%, right? What happened there? You know, if everyone was thinking. I'm going to be a farmer. Well, you know, 98% of people would be unemployed, and that's obviously not the case. So
Speaker 3
[00.35.29]
yeah, I agree completely. I think the idea is that again, because of AI now, what would take days or weeks now take hours or a day, right. Like and so there is just going to be a disruption there. And then on this idea of like government outreach, I mean that's always going to be a risk. And almost anything that's disruptive. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1
[00.35.48]
that's true. But um, no, I was going to say was but I think at the end of the day, what's going to happen is like when that was going on, the solopreneurs that are coming up, they're going to need to hire people to. It's not like they're going to on a single handedly grow the entire company, you know, like at that point you also get lonely. Like it's not just like just a company, right? It's for everything. Like all these things will grow and as society will grow into it, every time there's been a new industrial revolution, even with like Excel, people thought that, oh, like, everything is over. It never becomes over. I still hate, except,
Speaker 2
[00.36.19]
well, I feel like humans are good at creating work for themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1
[00.36.22]
yeah. That's true, that's true. I do actually want to share something relevant on this topic. Like, I wanted to hire somebody for graphic design for social media, and then this new image generator came out. No, I was like, dead serious. I was like, okay, we're having this person, we're putting this, we're putting this request on LinkedIn or whatever on Glassdoor, and then this hits. And now I'm like, okay, I guess I don't really need to, you know, like on the one hand, oh shit, it's such a good thing for small businesses, right? But also, on the other hand, just concerned about like, okay, the disruptions of all that. So that's why I was saying a little bit concerned about that, because I think of myself many years ago as a junior developer. Um, it would probably be a lot harder for that same Jorge to find a junior developer job in Toronto.
Speaker 2
[00.37.10]
Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I think for well, it's so interesting for like the image generation side because like now like a person who is not an artist can like generate logos. Like by the way guys, court of Life capital is AI generated. it, but, uh, you know. So we didn't need a graphic designer, right? We went to GPT, and we generated it. We described what we wanted now, but I think there is still like, a case for, you know, AI doesn't always generate it perfectly. There's always, like, something that's like, slightly off or like, you know, it generates it from scratch. And so there's, there's still like a missing piece there that like people can fill in. But now also I think for graphic designers they can be way more efficient. Right. Instead of them having, you know, ten clients, they can have 100 clients. Um, is it great to be a graphic designer now, nowadays, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit more tough. Um, but maybe people value, you know, art that's made from scratch more now. Um, or maybe they just need to switch jobs. I don't know, it's
Speaker 3
[00.38.02]
a hard one. What do you think? So, um. And I kind of disagree to a certain extent. I think, um, back in the 1800s or 1400s, what used to happen was these artists would go around to like specific scenic areas, and they would paint the mountain range, they would paint specific, um, ranges, and then they would come back home and sell that. What then happened was like photography got invented, right? That was a. A new class of art. For example, the idea is at the end of the day, with this eye. You are still the person at the helm. You're still a creative control. What's going to happen now is you still have to be one that says, oh, make this into like Studio Gilbey. Like design, for example. That's a simple one. But now with ChatGPT is like new, uh, I guess tool. What you can also do is you can select specific parts of the picture, say or replace this with X, replace this with Y. It's just the idea is you just have to upskill yourself. Now, I don't think the idea is that artists are missing at the end of the day, like you still are the one that's creating it. It's just you have an artist in the background that can actually execute on your behalf, but it's your vision, right?
Speaker 2
[00.39.03]
It's basically like creativity is enabled, right? Like the creative um is enabled more and more. And those that have a vision for what they want to create are able to create it on a better scale as more and more things are built that allows you to create those things faster and faster. And we all become gods eventually,
Speaker 1
[00.39.20]
right? Yeah, I agree, I think thinking about emails, like how many emails do you get? It's kind of written and I do it as well. Like sometimes I write emails, I'm just like, oh, I really want to rewrite it. But now I care more about the short emails, the one two sentences emails. I just read it. I'm like, great, I got it. I'd have to spend a minute reading this email. Isn't that amazing? And I kind of value more about emails that are actually written by humans. So maybe that's like a start of things like ours. I'm personally, I don't know, I'm personally like appreciating more about like TV shows and other movies more than I was before, because now anybody can generate it. But it pushes me towards thinking, oh, okay, now I prefer like I prefer shows that are carefully scripted, but actually has like the ups and downs that should keep me motivated to watch. You know, I don't know. I don't know if you feel that. Well,
Speaker 2
[00.40.10]
George, I wonder like the the emails that you get that are short, that are written by a human, how do you
Speaker 1
[00.40.16]
know they're written by a human? Um, well, the first character is always lowercase. I guess that's always a good way to tell. And there's grammar mistakes. And there are three dots.
Speaker 2
[00.40.28]
I feel like I feel like that's the thing.
Speaker 1
[00.40.31]
Like people will write
Speaker 2
[00.40.32]
and they'll be like, uncapitalized. And then like, there'll be slight grammar mistakes. And it's like, now that's real, you know, like you have to do it incorrectly to be
Speaker 1
[00.40.39]
considered. Yeah. Understand that I think so. So yeah. Like what do you prefer, do you prefer more about like the realistic stuff, that human creative stuff
Speaker 3
[00.40.48]
or. Honestly, I think it's a good point. I've never even thought about the idea of like, I think one thing I did here is that, uh, I uses dashes a lot. Um, which is very annoying because I use dashes ever since I was
Speaker 1
[00.41.01]
a kid, I use dashes. Yeah,
Speaker 3
[00.41.03]
but I don't think I noticed it, like, um, I do use it for myself in terms of writing emails. Um, but I also do write, like, very short emails. I just say, oh, make this into one sentence. Um, so I think, like the bigger picture is I think I just won't be able to tell. And I don't think I care enough to be able to tell if I'm being more honest. Yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 1
[00.41.23]
That's true. And I have to say, like when I go to Claud and I tell Claud, right as George
Speaker 3
[00.41.29]
actually knows, which is
Speaker 1
[00.41.31]
just the craziest thing, because I was like, how do you know, George? Is because, like, I don't have that many followers and I will write actually similar to my tongue. And I swear to God it's not using like, my existing chat data. It's definitely scraping. Perhaps Twitter and other stuff. That's crazy. To get that information, you should try writing like sophomore math. No,
Speaker 2
[00.41.51]
I've done it a lot, but I've done a similar thing, and my friend actually generated an image of me like basically without taking a picture of me. So he was just like, oh, Matt from Atomic Finance. And then you had to do it a couple more times, like, oh, can you like, look online for like pictures of him? And then he was like, oh dude, give me studio style. And it did it. And I was like, whoa,
Speaker 3
[00.42.10]
like, that's crazy. You literally
Speaker 2
[00.42.12]
didn't even need to provide them before you generated it.
Speaker 1
[00.42.15]
That's insane. That's crazy. Yeah. So I guess we're reaching the last segment of the show, and I want to try something different this time. I want to try us, like each giving our best takeaways of the past
Speaker 3
[00.42.26]
week or the past couple of weeks, wherever. And given the advice to people who are listeners who are listening. So I think my takeaway was that from the tariffs and from the, you know, ups and downs of like 10%. It's like a meme coin. I think it solidifies the point that if you're investing in something, then you should be in it for a long haul. If you're pulling something out because you're losing money. You see you see what happened last week was basically like people made their money back, right? I mean, largely not all of it, but largely they've been on the back. So I think if you really want to stay in for a long run, whether it's for Bitcoin, whether for treasuries or treasuries are safe, whether for stocks or bonds, I think you need to be patient and for the long run at whatever you. Yeah, I think for
Speaker 2
[00.43.10]
me, like just coming back from the conference, I think the future of Bitcoin is bright. I think we're going to get new upgrades of Bitcoin that are going to help with people being able to self-custody and store Bitcoin themselves, and I'm
Speaker 1
[00.43.22]
excited to see it happen. Yeah. So I'm
Speaker 3
[00.43.24]
speaking of I'm I'm also excited I think this is gonna be the first quarter where we get to see like Bitcoin mark to market on people's balance sheets for earnings. So that's going to be exciting. Um, but I guess my bigger point is cash is king. Like I think we've realized in the past couple of weeks, like Warren Buffett now has over $300 billion saved up in cash they can use to buy stuff right now on a discount. So I think, you know, like people always say, oh, hold on to some cash along with some petty cash. I think it's starting to, like, make sense?
Speaker 1
[00.43.52]
Yeah. We're entering very like lots of sort of fluid period of investing as well, which is really cool. So yeah. Thank you everyone for for, you know, joining the show. Thank you for our listeners who have listened in. And as our listeners know, we are thinking of creating a community of like capital, like minded 20 and 30 year old or maybe other age groups, whether it's lower or higher doesn't matter. Joining us. So we have some, you know, potentially like developments that we're going to announce probably in the coming weeks about how
Speaker 3
[00.44.22]
to join our community. Completely free. We're still working it out, but we would love to be more connected with our audiences. So if there's any advice that you'd like to give us, any topics that you want, me so have Matt talk about, tweet us, tweet to us on Twitter. I think that actually means more to me that than anything else is to get a feedback from a listener that's saying, oh, I really like this segment. I really like this segment or this segment. I will add some more clarifications, which we've got over the past week, which really amazes us. So if you know how to reach us, check the description of the podcast to reach all three of us and your advice will shape the future of this community. So thank you guys so much and talk soon. Okay.