"Cycular" Financing w/ GamersNexus

Ed Zitron (0:01)

Causome Media Hello and welcome to Better Offline, I'm your host Ed Zitron. What's up, folks? We are back at it. Subscribe to the newsletter, download the premium, download this episode, download all the episodes. I need those downloads or else buy some merchandise if you must. But today, we are joined by the mighty Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk to us about something called Cicular Finance, Cicular?

Steve Burke (0:39)

It's not a circle. It's a cycle. They said that.

Ed Zitron (0:43)

This is the virtuous cycle, is it, that Jensen Huang has been talking about? Why don't you tell me? It came up in your video, but I want to hear your eloquent way of putting it.

Steve Burke (0:53)

They said that they know that, quote, some will refer to this as circular financing, end quote. But if you read some of their posts, they talk about how it's a virtuous, as you said, cycle.

And as we know, cycles are not circles.

Ed Zitron (1:13)

Yeah, they're cycles. They just go in a shape that might be circular, but it's not the same thing as a circle.

Steve Burke (1:21)

Right. It's really best you don't think too much about cycle and bicycle, and everything on a bicycle is moving in a circular motion. But it's a specifically different thing. You made that very clear.

Ed Zitron (1:35)

Yeah, and so this is Nvidia in their last earnings trying to justify what is obviously blatantly circular financing, where they invest in someone or they provide residual guarantees. Now, I just want to also add that they're saying they'll provide residual guarantees with data centers, but not saying what that actually means. There's lots of articles that are saying, oh, it could be this and that. Nvidia is not actually saying anything about these. They've said in one post, it'd be up to 25%, but not what that would actually result in.

Steve Burke (2:05)

I've noticed this with a lot of it. I mean, like the super intelligence accord.

Ed Zitron (2:10)

Oh, Christ.

What is this thing? I didn't want to jump the gun. I'm sorry. No, please, just let's get to it.

Steve Burke (2:18)

So yeah, I mean, as you know, the Trump administration gathered some of the AI executives, SI, sorry, I fucked that up already. SI. They've issued an executive order to rename artificial intelligence to super intelligence for purposes of government documents, and it was just to get ahead of it is not binding and does not do anything. And I did notice that the company is on there. It's like Anthropic. Elon Musk was on there representing, I guess, Elon Musk and whatever he does now.

Jensen signature on there for Nvidia.

AMD was absent, but AMD did follow up and say that they were happy to support and participate.

It just seemed to, it felt the same as a group project when the one kid in the group who did actually nothing, hands in the paper and says, we worked very hard on this. AMD is jumping in there to say, we're happy to be a part of this too, even though we weren't really fully included.

Ed Zitron (3:26)

Yeah, it's such a bizarre thing because they also signed this self-regulatory thing as well where they've agreed to do absolutely nothing legally binding in any way, shape or form.

Steve Burke (3:36)

Well, they did say that they would police themselves.

Ed Zitron (3:38)

Oh, good. And as we've seen, look at how well regulated the tech industry is as a direct result of their regulation of themselves.

Steve Burke (3:46)

Do you know the Elmo meme where the background is on fire and he's waiting? Yes, that's kind of what I'm picturing right now.

Ed Zitron (3:52)

What I liked about it as well is just how all of these guys who genuinely, I'm saying this without any irony or anything, genuinely these companies have more power than the United States government.

They actually do if they wielded it, but all of them, the second, the absolute second Trump is like, I'm going to die in the document, all of you must kiss the ring. They fall over themselves to do so. I mean, did you see the video of Mark Zuckerberg and him talking?

Steve Burke (4:22)

Which one?

Ed Zitron (4:24)

Outside of the White House, they were talking and him and Zuckerberg were yucking it up, and people were like, oh, Zuckerberg can barely hold his laughter in. When actually what happened was the moment Trump turned away, Zuckerberg looked like he had diarrhea.

He looked like he'd seen the face of God, but the best part was in the background of Trump warbling on about some shit that barely made sense. Dario Amadei looked like he was being stabbed in the leg by a little man. He was like actively grimacing.