He called Bitcoin a scam at $60…

📊  Today’s Big Picture

I keep a running tally of how many stories deserve the top slot each day. The usual answer is one. Today produced four.

Before lunch: three major retailers reported, and July housing starts fell 12.4%, the frozen-housing thesis in one number.

By afternoon: Brent oil crossed $91 after President Trump said there are no talks with Iran.

And at 2 p.m., the Fed published the minutes from its July meeting, the document I taught you to decode yesterday.

Here’s my plan for that last one. I’m reading all of it tonight, and tomorrow’s issue is the full breakdown: what the hawks said, who had company, and what still matters for September 15-16.

Now, for today. We have a new featured contributor who needs no introduction at all: James Altucher.

And interestingly enough, he’s here to share what he calls “the worst call” he ever made. 

I’ve read a lot of guest essays in this job. Very few open with the writer admitting he missed a 1,000x. He’s spotted the mistake he made, and has a new prediction to share.

James Altucher, right below. The day’s three stories and your checklist update follow him.

Featured Contributor

Today, a special guest: James Altucher, the hedge fund manager turned bestselling author of Choose Yourself, who has built and sold companies, hosted one of the most popular business podcasts in the world, and made, by his own admission, one legendary mistake.

‍What he did next with that mistake is the reason he’s here.

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‍The Worst Call I Ever Made

In 2013, I was doing weekly Q&As on Twitter. Someone asked me about Bitcoin.

It was trading at $60.

I said: “bitcoin is a fad, or a scam, or a ponzi scheme, or worse.”

Then my friend Naval Ravikant flew to New York, stood at a whiteboard for an entire day, and showed me why I was wrong.

By the end I realized Bitcoin might be the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in finance, and I’d been in finance since 1999.

Three months after calling it a scam, I released my book Choose Yourself on a Bitcoin-only store I built myself.

I sold about 60 copies for a tenth of a Bitcoin each. Six dollars at the time. That tenth of a Bitcoin is worth more than $6,000 today.

So, in a way, I sold 60 copies for $6,000 each.

I got reminded of all this last week in Paris.

I was at the Proof of Talk conference when an interviewer named Anna Tutova asked the one question I never escape:

“Didn’t you call Bitcoin a scam?”

Here’s the lesson I learned back then:

When something sounds insane, that’s exactly when you should sit down with the smartest person you know and let them draw on a whiteboard.

In fact, that’s exactly why I went to Paris in the first place.

I wanted to talk to some of the smartest people in the world about the most insane idea in AI.

Why I’m All-In on Decentralized AI

Here’s what else I told Anna in Paris: centralized wins the sprint. Decentralized wins the war.

Anthropic just raised $65 billion. OpenAI will chase even more.

But what happens when the models keep getting bigger? You can’t raise a trillion dollars. At some point the math breaks.

Decentralized networks don’t have that problem. People all over the world contribute. The network compounds while the centralized players hit walls.

This is how the internet evolved.

Thirty years ago everyone ran Windows or Mac. Meanwhile, thousands of strangers were building Linux. Today Linux sits at the core of nearly everything. The decentralized operating system won.

Same with news. CBS, CNN, Fox: centralized, run by a few people telling you what matters. Then the internet turned everyone into a news source.

AI is next. And the leader in decentralized AI, by far, is Bittensor (TAO).

TAO trades around $190. I said on camera: $3,000 by year-end. Long term, $50,000 to $100,000.

A handful of its more than 100 subnets are already the best in the world at what they do, and the only way to invest in subnets is through TAO.

And Then I Made Everyone Mad

The interviewer asked about quantum computing cracking crypto.

Here was my answer: quantum computing is science fiction.

It doesn’t exist in any way that solves a real-world problem. I went to graduate school for computers. I work with quantum companies. Google solved a complicated math problem. Good for them.

That’s a demo, and a demo won’t hack Bitcoin.

Maybe in a hundred years. Maybe I’m the guy calling Bitcoin a scam at $60 again.

But I doubt it. Because this time I’ve already been to the whiteboard.

I’ve made three famous calls now: the one I got wrong, the one I’m all in on, and the one nobody wants to hear.

Clip this email and grade me in a year.

That was James Altucher.

The $1 Trillion Gold Shock Rickards Says Is Coming Sept. 30

Gold ran to record after record this year and still sits near the highs. Jim Rickards, who many call America’s #1 gold expert, says the bigger move is still in front of us.

He points to September 30, 2026 as the date a major shock hits the gold market, tied to what he describes as a Trump-administration gold initiative he believes could unlock up to $1 trillion in gold over the coming year.

He’s just released one of his favorite gold plays, a single ticker, 100% free.

See Rickards’ free gold play here →

Paradigm Press is a paid partner of Future Finance. The forecasts and claims above are James Rickards’ and Paradigm’s, not Future Finance research or advice. As always, do your own diligence.

🔍  Signal vs. Noise

Three Headlines, Three Realities

Now, about that very loud news day.

1. The first headline is that this week’s retail earnings settle the consumer debate.

• What reality says: the registers and the construction sites are telling two different stories.

The registers look fine. Home Depot beat yesterday and rose about 1%. Lowe’s earned $4.40 a share this morning, a touch better than last year, on comparable sales that grew 0.2%. Barely positive, but positive.

Now the construction sites. July housing starts fell 12.4% in a month, to the weakest pace in over a year. Single-family starts dropped almost 10%.

Both fit one picture: nobody’s moving, so everyone’s patching. Small projects, maintained homes, frozen ground underneath.

My read: the consumer is doing what consumers always do late in a squeeze, spending on the leaky faucet and deferring the new kitchen.

Target and TJX reported this morning too; their numbers join tomorrow’s full scorecard, next to the one that outranks them all: Walmart, tomorrow morning.

2. The second headline is that the oil scare already peaked.

• What reality says: Brent just crossed $90, and I’d circled that number for you.

Monday I gave you three boxes to watch this week. Box three was Brent against $90. It broke today, above $91, after the President said there are no talks with Iran and, in the same breath, told Americans to accept higher gas prices.

The supporting numbers are stark. Tanker transits through Hormuz last weekend: five on Saturday, zero on Sunday. The prior weekend: 31.

Why this matters more than most headlines: today’s oil is September’s inflation data, and September’s inflation data lands five days before the Fed decides.

The three Fed officials who voted for a hike in July did it because of energy. Oil above $90 is their argument, refreshed daily.

3. The third headline is that today’s Fed minutes settled September.

• What reality says: a document that old doesn’t settle anything, and that’s tomorrow’s story.

The minutes landed at 2 p.m. Remember their defining feature: the meeting they describe ended before the negative jobs number, the cool inflation prints, and the retail pullback. Four soft reports, all invisible to the people in that room.

Going in, markets priced roughly a 32% chance of a September hike. The 2-year Treasury, the yield most sensitive to Fed expectations, sat near its lowest since June.

Whatever the document says, the reading rules from yesterday apply: participants over members, count the counting words, and weigh every hawkish line against the month that followed it.

I’m doing that work tonight, line by line. Tomorrow you get the decoded version, and the honest answer to the question I set up yesterday: did the three dissenters have company?

The Next Big Winner Won’t Be in the Minutes.

Fed documents, retail earnings, oil headlines: this week is a firehose of public information, priced within minutes of release.

Gems Uncovered hunts where prices haven’t caught up: weekly research on early-stage assets and native market opportunities, delivered with the thesis, the evidence, and the risks in plain English.

Today’s guest argued the next revolution is decentralized. Finding its winners early is research work. That’s ours.

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💭  What To Watch For

• Open tomorrow’s Future Finance first. The minutes, decoded line by line: who wanted a hike, how many had company, and what survives the four soft reports. This is the issue I’ve been building toward all week.
• Listen to Walmart (NYSE: WMT) before tomorrow’s open. Box one of Monday’s checklist, the second-half outlook from America’s largest register, gets its answer.
• Watch the CFTC’s digital-asset meeting tomorrow at 1 p.m., regulators moving on crypto without waiting for the Senate’s September 15 vote.
• Track SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) through this week’s unlock window, roughly 319 million insider shares becoming sellable against a stock that’s been climbing into it.

💭  Today’s Final Thought

A status report on Monday’s checklist, since the week is answering it fast.

Box three, Brent against $90: answered, the wrong way. Every day above that line feeds September’s inflation report.

Box two, the Fed itching or patient: the document is on my desk tonight. Graded tomorrow.

Box one, the consumer: half answered by Home Depot and Lowe’s, spending steady, ambition frozen. Walmart completes it in the morning.

Two of three boxes land within 24 hours, which makes tomorrow’s issue the most important one this week.

Tonight, a man who was wrong about Bitcoin at $60 asked you to grade him in a year. Fair request. Same rules apply to me. My calls from Monday are above, graded in public, and tomorrow’s issue faces the same test.

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- Rami Al-Sabeq

Editor in Chief | Future Finance

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Disclaimer: This content is not financial advice, it is for informational purposes only. All investments involve inherent risk. Any financial decisions you make are solely your responsibility.