Weekly edition · 2026-W43
Markets, AI and crypto: the week of Oct 19–25, 2026
Voices lean risk-on, driven by AI demand, with crypto more mixed and valuation and macro caveats.
Most voices see AI demand outrunning supply: Andy Jassy on a16z said Amazon's AI capacity is sold out for 2026 and largely for 2027, and Nikesh Arora on All-In said compute demand exceeds world supply.[1][2] Jordi Visser argued the AI cycle is not a bubble and that hedge-fund deleveraging is largely finished, leaving him constructive on risk assets absent a recession.[3] Raoul Pal described a risk-on expansion with a possible CapEx-driven supercycle, but flagged a strong dollar, tightening financial conditions and an overbought Nasdaq as warning signs.[4] On crypto, Raoul Pal called the current phase a hiatus in a longer bull market, and a16z's Chris Dixon said stablecoins are the natural payment layer for an agent economy.[5][6] On All-In, Chamath flagged that spending is concentrated, saying 1% of companies account for 90% of AI spending, and Arora said the US will need a fiscal reset.[2]
Where they disagree
Crypto is the sharpest split: Jordi Visser rejected the idea that Bitcoin goes to zero, while Chamath on Peter Diamandis's show said Bitcoin could eventually be hacked and fall to zero.[3][7]
Sources (7)
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- All-In Podcast: AI Cyber Panic, Ken Griffin’s Bubble Warning, The Fall of France? (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- Jordi Visser: AI Bubble Burst? Bitcoin to Zero? Hedge Funds Wrecked? Sounds Like a Bottom is Near (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: My Entire Macro Framework, Explained (Oct 22, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: Four Frameworks, One Code (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund Now | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon (Oct 22, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304 (Oct 21, 2026) · watch
Markets
Of the 5 voices with a recent view, 3 bullish, 2 neutral.
Voices lean risk-on, backing AI-driven growth while flagging volatility, stretched positioning and fiscal strain.
Jordi Visser argued the hedge-fund-driven selloff is largely spent, that corporate profits are up 20%, and that he sees no profit-based recession signal, while expecting continued volatility.[1] Raoul Pal described a risk-on expansion with technology in a bull market and the recent drop as a mid-cycle correction, though he called the Nasdaq overbought and said it is not yet the time to add.[2] Raoul Pal also said asset prices grow with debasement at roughly 8% a year, and that only Bitcoin and the big Nasdaq/S&P tech names have consistently cleared that hurdle.[3] Peter Diamandis's panel was optimistic on AI investment and infrastructure, though Chamath said he is less invested than at any point in 15 years and prefers cash-flow businesses and power assets.[4][5] On All-In, Nikesh Arora said the US economy is entirely levered to the AI trade, while also saying the US will need a fiscal reset.[6]
Where they disagree
a16z's Alex Rampell argued supply aggregators like Amazon lose value as agents automate human attention, while Andy Jassy, on another a16z episode, saw strong secular growth for AWS and Amazon despite near-term free cash flow headwinds.[7][8]
Sources (8)
- Jordi Visser: AI Bubble Burst? Bitcoin to Zero? Hedge Funds Wrecked? Sounds Like a Bottom is Near (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: My Entire Macro Framework, Explained (Oct 22, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: Four Frameworks, One Code (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold | EP #305 (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304 (Oct 21, 2026) · watch
- All-In Podcast: AI Cyber Panic, Ken Griffin’s Bubble Warning, The Fall of France? (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI (Oct 19, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
Each voice this week
| Voice | Stance | Their view | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jordi Visser | Bullish high conviction · months | He thinks the hedge-fund-driven selloff is largely spent and remains constructive on risk assets absent a recession, while expecting continued volatility and sharp corrections. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| Peter Diamandis | Bullish high conviction · years | The panel is bullish on power and AI infrastructure as long-term scarce assets, but Chamath is cautious about broad equity exposure and prefers cash flow while market outcomes remain uncertain. | Oct 23, 2026 |
| Raoul Pal | Bullish medium conviction · years | Debasement keeps pushing asset prices up at roughly 8% a year or more, and only tech and crypto beat it, though he flags no imminent break and a debt roll that depends on liquidity. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| All-In Podcast | Neutral high conviction · months | The panel sees AI-related spending as a powerful economic driver but warns that concentrated, possibly circular startup demand and mounting fiscal stress create meaningful risks. | Oct 23, 2026 |
| a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) | Neutral medium conviction · years | Jassy sees strong secular growth for AWS and Amazon's businesses, while acknowledging near-term free cash flow headwinds from heavy capex. | Oct 23, 2026 |
AI
Of the 5 voices with a recent view, 5 bullish.
Voices see AI demand outrunning compute supply and expect the build-out to keep expanding.
Jordi Visser argued the current AI cycle is not a bubble, citing real demand and SpaceX's compute demand substantially exceeding its supply.[1] On a16z, Andy Jassy said Amazon's AI capacity is sold out for 2026 and largely for 2027, and that even $220B of capex leaves demand unmet.[2] Raoul Pal described a super cycle of compute, energy and credit build-out into 2030, expecting pauses and scares but no regime-defining break.[3] On Peter Diamandis's show, Chamath said AGI has been achieved in labs and predicted a massive compute shortage over the next three or four years.[4] Several shows flagged friction: Jassy said inference cost is still an order of magnitude too high, and a16z's Jean Denis said AI is not diffusing because the product experience is a text box.[2][5]
Where they disagree
On All-In, Chamath estimated that 1% of companies account for 90% of AI spending, much of it from unprofitable VC-backed firms, while Raoul Pal's framework sees the build-out running into 2030 with no regime-defining break.[6][3]
Sources (6)
- Jordi Visser: AI Bubble Burst? Bitcoin to Zero? Hedge Funds Wrecked? Sounds Like a Bottom is Near (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: Four Frameworks, One Code (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304 (Oct 21, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI (Oct 19, 2026) · watch
- All-In Podcast: AI Cyber Panic, Ken Griffin’s Bubble Warning, The Fall of France? (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
Each voice this week
| Voice | Stance | Their view | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) | Very bullish high conviction · years | Demand for AI compute far exceeds supply, enterprise adoption is still early, and the buildout is a sound use of capital even at larger scale. | Oct 23, 2026 |
| Jordi Visser | Very bullish high conviction · years | He views AI adoption and investment as a durable, demand-led expansion rather than a bubble, with significant upside across computing and healthcare. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| Peter Diamandis | Very bullish high conviction · years | The panel expects AI capability and adoption to keep expanding across enterprise work, software security, and biology, provided agent autonomy is matched by effective governance and safeguards. | Oct 23, 2026 |
| Raoul Pal | Very bullish high conviction · years | AI is driving a super cycle of compute, energy and credit build-out into 2030 and an economic singularity around 2030, with the eight-signal 'coal mine' warning gauge reading in the eighties and none tripped. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| All-In Podcast | Very bullish high conviction · years | AI adoption will expand across enterprises, with open-weight and specialized models handling much routine work and frontier models serving high-value tasks. | Oct 23, 2026 |
Crypto
Of the 4 voices with a recent view, 3 bullish, 1 bearish.
Most tracked voices lean bullish on crypto, though a bearish minority questions Bitcoin's security and productivity.
Jordi Visser was strongly bullish, arguing tokenization is advancing and that quantum computing cannot currently break Bitcoin, which he said could adopt quantum-resistant cryptography.[1] Raoul Pal described the current weakness as a hiatus in a longer bull market, saying layer ones will become the operating system of the machine economy.[2] In another episode, Pal said global liquidity implies Bitcoin's secular trend should be higher, though he noted community attention is low and Sui is drawing more interest.[3] a16z's Chris Dixon argued agents will become the most numerous internet participants and that stablecoins are their natural payment method.[4] Peter Diamandis said Bitcoin would perform exceptionally well, while guest Alex called Bitcoin and most crypto-branded activity unproductive.[5]
Where they disagree
Jordi Visser dismissed the idea that quantum computing could send Bitcoin to zero, while on Peter Diamandis's show Chamath Palihapitiya said AI-enabled attacks could eventually hack Bitcoin and drive it to zero.[1][6]
Sources (6)
- Jordi Visser: AI Bubble Burst? Bitcoin to Zero? Hedge Funds Wrecked? Sounds Like a Bottom is Near (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: Four Frameworks, One Code (Oct 25, 2026) · watch
- Raoul Pal: Raoul Pal: My Entire Macro Framework, Explained (Oct 22, 2026) · watch
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz): The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund Now | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon (Oct 22, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold | EP #305 (Oct 23, 2026) · watch
- Peter Diamandis: Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304 (Oct 21, 2026) · watch
Each voice this week
| Voice | Stance | Their view | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jordi Visser | Very bullish high conviction · years | He is strongly bullish on crypto infrastructure, Bitcoin, and tokenization, arguing that AI agents and cybersecurity concerns will increase their relevance. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) | Bullish medium conviction · years | Crypto has worked in areas like stablecoins and tokenization and is merging into mainstream fintech; stablecoins are the natural payment layer for an agent economy. | Oct 22, 2026 |
| Raoul Pal | Bullish medium conviction · years | Crypto is in a mid-cycle bear market that he calls a hiatus in a longer bull market, and layer ones are the operating system of the machine economy. | Oct 25, 2026 |
| Peter Diamandis | Bearish high conviction · years | Views were divided: Peter was bullish on Bitcoin, while Alex judged Bitcoin and much crypto to be unproductive uses of scarce capital. | Oct 23, 2026 |
Calls made this week
- He predicts Micron could reach 1500 by the end of February, while cautioning that semiconductor corrections can occur even amid strong longer-term gains.
“Micron could be at 1500”
- He predicts that AI-driven cyberattacks will become a major market story over the next three years and could push banks toward blockchain-based systems.
“this story here becomes the most important story over the next three years”
- He says Bitcoin would outperform U.S. stocks, gold, and real estate over the next decade, citing a forecast he attributes to JPMorgan.
“JP Morgan just said they think Bitcoin will be the best asset over the next decade.”
- He expects Bitcoin-related ETF share creation to rise significantly if Bitcoin moves back above $100,000.
“Once we get back above this level here, which in Bitcoin terms is basically going to be $100,000”
- The compute cycle build-out into 2030 should have pauses, rotations and scares but no regime-defining break in the underlying engine.
- Realized 5-year productivity growth will break above 2% for the first time since the early 2000s as the last domino falls, since intelligence leads capex by about 6 months and capex leads productivity by 4-5 years.
“CAPEX leads productivity by 4 to 5 years.”
- The economic singularity, where economic models stop working, arrives around 2030, which he has narrowed from 2030-2032.
“I think 2030 is now spot-on.”
- If AI and robots accelerate GDP growth from around 2030, debt to GDP will fall mechanically, but not until productivity picks up over the next five years or so.
- Nikesh Arora says AI-enabled vulnerability discovery will happen more often than once every ten days.
“these things going to happen much faster than every 10 days.”
- Nikesh Arora says increasingly capable models will keep finding new ways into company infrastructure, making cybersecurity an ongoing cat-and-mouse contest.
“you're going to be playing this cat and mouse game”
- Elon Musk said SpaceX might have more than 20 gigawatts of superintelligence compute online next year, while describing that outcome as a non-zero possibility.
“there's a non-zero possibility”
- Elon Musk said SpaceX expected to bring an additional 10 gigawatts of compute online in 2027.
“bring an incremental 10 gawatt of compute online in 2027”
- Peter said SpaceX’s Starlink bandwidth could increase one hundredfold within three years.
“within 3 years to increase a 100fold on bandwidth”
- Alex predicted that other entrepreneurs would copy the model of formally separate companies operating as an integrated business ecosystem, unless regulators or courts stop it.
“I expect so many other entrepreneurs to copy his example.”
- Peter said Starlink could take over the mobile-coverage business by offering connectivity everywhere.
- Alex argued that AI will expose vulnerabilities in legacy software and that much of it could be rewritten securely within roughly 18 months.
“everything afterwards will be rewritten from scratch, secure by design”
- Supply constraints in memory and other components will persist for several years, not end in 2027.
“I think we'll see them in different components for several years.”
- Within five to seven years, most enterprise applications will use inference pervasively.
“quite a few, if not most, of the enterprise applications that we use and that exist today are going to be using inference”
- Companies will have fewer humans doing the work done today, with smaller teams.
“we're going to have fewer humans doing the work that they're doing today”
- Companies will have to rewrite almost all their code to be agentically capable.
“I predict that companies will have to rewrite um almost all of their code to be agentically capable”
- Startup formation will skyrocket because AI makes it easier than ever for individuals to start their own businesses.
“I think startup formation is going to skyrocket from here.”
- The supercharged young person using AI will achieve amazing things within the next decade.
“the supermpowered 24y old with AI is going to just achieve like amazing things in in the next decade”
- Agents will become the most numerous participants on the internet, and stablecoins are the natural way for them to pay each other.
“the most numerous participants on the internet will be agents and not people”
- AI is breaking the internet's covenant between distribution and content, hurting attention-economy businesses in the near term and driving a reconfiguration of the internet over a decade.
- AI will be the dominant narrative of the next 20-30 years.
“the AI stuff we're talking about now is going to be the dominant narrative of the next 20, 30 years”
- A practical quantum computer could break today's cryptography around 2030, so organizations should begin adopting post-quantum protections now.
“well, it will break today's cryptography.”
- Someone will claim progress in quantum error correction by the next year, with one or two parties showing progress by 2027.
“I'll predict you'll see somebody make claims by next year.”
- Most enterprise token usage could shift to open-weight models because they can be far cheaper, keep proprietary information under company control, and reduce dependence on external providers.
“75% to 90%, but that's the range I would put”
- The speaker expects that 30 states could potentially ban data centers, but not all 50.
“Is it possible 30 will ban? Yes.”
- Countries that prioritize capital investment and accept job displacement are likely to fare better in the AI transition than those that try to preserve every existing job.
- AI is likely to cause major SaaS disruption over the next few years because companies can recreate software products for an AI-first world.
“there's going to be huge disruption in the SaaS space over the next few years.”
- AI is likely to replace many software capabilities and drive consolidation from hundreds or thousands of vendors toward a handful of major platforms, although highly reliable systems will be harder to replace.
“could I replace 490 of them with minor AI capabilities and do I need to go back and leverage five to 10 main platforms?”
- Chamath predicts a massive compute shortage over the next three or four years because of power, construction, supply-chain, and labor constraints.
“we are probably going to see a massive, massive, massive compute shortage in the next 3 or 4 years.”
- Chamath says the United States could remain short by 1.4 terawatt-hours of electricity by 2050 even if planned projects are built on schedule.
“by 2050, we're still 1.4 terawatt hours short”
- Chamath says Bitcoin could eventually be hacked and fall to zero.
“eventually it gets hacked and then it goes to zero.”
- The cost of a given level of health intelligence will plummet, leading to commoditisation of health intelligence.
“the cost for that level of intelligence also dramatically reduces like it has been”
- Healthcare spend will see overall compression in coming years, driven by administrative and back-office workflow automation, though it has not happened yet.
“we are really optimistic about kind of an overall compression of spend over the over the coming years”
- Clinicians and patients will increasingly feel safer with AI in the care journey, though this is not fully the case yet.
“both parties might actually feel safer with AI in their care journey”
- The biggest health impact in 5 to 10 years will come from new treatments via AI-guided target generation and trial prioritisation.
- Robotics in care is not expected to matter in the next few years.
“My expectation is that it's not like a next few years kind of thing.”
- The AI market for helping businesses do more is bigger than coding and will move the needle at large AI labs within about 12 months.
“in the current environment, it's not going to move the needle at those companies, but I think in 12 months it will”
- The forward-deployed-engineer approach used by labs will get worse as models improve, while automation-based custom software scales better.
“as the models get better, the FDE approach actually gets much worse”
- The future involves far less human in the loop, with economic benefits to companies outstripping the risks.
“I think the future looks like a lot less human in the loop than we see today”
- Amazon will lose to agents and its best countermove is to build its own personal agent rather than block others.
“Amazon might lose a huge chunk of their advertising business trying to fight the future”
- Most people will take 6 to 18 months to experience the magic of personal AI assistants, as with the iPhone.
“it will probably take 6, 12, 18 months for most people to experience this magic even in their personal life”
In their words
“the deleveraging is either done or in the seventh or eighth inning”
“interest payments lead liquidity by about 3 years”
“1% of companies represent 90% of AI spending”
“Bitcoin is going to do unbelievably well uh in the future.”
“even spending $220 billion of capex this year, we're leaving a meaningful amount of demand on the table”
“this is not a bubble”
“Only two things have outrun the printer with any consistency, technology and crypto.”
“it has to diffuse out of the startup ecosystem”
Episodes in this edition
- AI Bubble Burst? Bitcoin to Zero? Hedge Funds Wrecked? Sounds Like a Bottom is Near
- Raoul Pal: Four Frameworks, One Code
- AI Cyber Panic, Ken Griffin’s Bubble Warning, The Fall of France?
- SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold | EP #305
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout
- The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund Now | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon
- Raoul Pal: My Entire Macro Framework, Explained
- Arvind Krishna & Nikesh Arora: Quantum Threat, Open vs Frontier AI, AI Cyber Warfare & SaaS Collapse
- Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304
- OpenAI’s Head of Health AI on Whether You Should Trust ChatGPT
- Dylan Field: Is AI Replacing Designers?, Design is the New Code & Democratizing Creativity
- Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI
Read on Risk summarises what other people said in public videos and podcasts. Summaries are generated by AI and checked by code against the transcript, but can still be wrong; follow the source links before relying on anything. This is not investment advice and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell. Disclaimer ·How this works