Weekly Roundup 08/14/26 (Anti-Datacenter sentiment, dinosaur fossil investing, SEC is DIYing Clarity)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Matt Walsh and Nic Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All of these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle Island Ventures. Guests and hosts may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast. You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
Brought down by Bad Mortgage Investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated. Federal Government Loans American International Group, AIG, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market and the Fed is asleep.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:35)
The Federal Government is stepping in to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:42)
The Bank of England has pumped $75 billion more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:47)
You print a couple trillion dollars and all of a sudden people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called the Bitcoin.

**Matt Walsh** (0:54)
Welcome to On The Brink, I'm Matt Walsh.

**Nic Carter** (0:56)
And I'm Nic Carter.

**Matt Walsh** (0:58)
Got some feedback last week that our podcast was a little bit too negative and the newsletter was a little bit too negative. But it's true, it was just one of those weeks. There was a lot of bad headlines.

**Nic Carter** (1:08)
Is that right? We were being negative?

**Matt Walsh** (1:11)
Well, I don't think we were being that negative, but I think the newsletter and some of the stories that we hit on, it's like cold card getting exploited, New York is suing Cal-She, an FBI agent stole a bunch of crypto. It was a bunch of negative stuff.

**Nic Carter** (1:25)
Well, it's only negative according to your frame of reference, right? Like if you hate Cal-She, it's positive.
So there's really no spin for the cold card thing.

**Matt Walsh** (1:36)
That was just bad.

**Nic Carter** (1:37)
Something's really bad in a relative sense.

**Matt Walsh** (1:39)
That's true. There's some more positivity this week. I think we'll have more to talk about.

**Nic Carter** (1:45)
I mean, basically nothing happened this week, so you couldn't possibly complain.

**Matt Walsh** (1:49)
I think there's some good undercurrents, though, at the SEC around giving us clarity in the absence of a bill.

**Nic Carter** (1:59)
Yeah, and I know we might sound down sometimes, but we're just here neutrally reporting the news.

**Matt Walsh** (2:07)
We really are.

**Nic Carter** (2:08)
I would say our vibe is always chipper.

**Matt Walsh** (2:11)
Yeah, I think we're always chipper.

**Nic Carter** (2:13)
Except for probably in the 2022 bear market when everything was... it felt like the world was actually ending.

**Matt Walsh** (2:20)
Like post-FTX, you mean?

**Nic Carter** (2:21)
Yeah, in the credit crunch. But you know what? Those were our highest ever ratings for the show.

**Matt Walsh** (2:27)
Yeah, because everyone was just trying to figure out what was going on. There's just where Kyle and Suzu hide. Everyone was trying to figure that out.

**Nic Carter** (2:35)
There's a lot of intrigue focused on this podcast in particular. So I mean, I think it's probably better that we're not at the center of the action.

**Matt Walsh** (2:45)
Yeah, you never want to be the main character, that's for sure. But now that I think of it, where are Kyle and Suzu?

**Nic Carter** (2:52)
That's a great question. I think Suzu still tweets. So I also on the main character front, who is the main character?

**Matt Walsh** (3:00)
It's Michael Saylor.

**Nic Carter** (3:03)
You think it's still Saylor?

**Matt Walsh** (3:05)
Oh yeah, I think he's definitely the main character. Every time that guy does anything, including tweet, he's the center of attention.

**Nic Carter** (3:12)
And you know, the main character curse never fails, although so far hasn't failed in... Well yeah, it has failed in the context of Saylor because he's still going. But with Leo Aschenbrenner, he was the main character for sure.
Yeah. And I mean, he's still in business, but he, you know, he really had his comeuppance.

**Matt Walsh** (3:32)
Who's the main character in AI land right now? What'd you say?

**Nic Carter** (3:35)
As of today, I think it's Elon, but Elon is kind of immune to the main character curse.

**Matt Walsh** (3:42)
You'd say it's Elon over Dario or Sam Altman?

**Nic Carter** (3:45)
As of right now, today, because Grok released a new model, SpaceX AI, I guess that's the name of the company now, is at a good quarter, you know. But who is the emerging main character in AI?