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AI Podcasts

March 28, 2025

Hash Rate - Ep 103: 'It's AI' $TAO Subnet 32

Hash Rate pod - Bitcoin, AI, DePIN, DeFi

AI

Key Takeaways:


1. Niche Focus Wins: Its AI demonstrates the power of specializing in one thing (AI text detection) within the BitTensor ecosystem, achieving leading accuracy and carving out a clear market position.


2. Ecosystem Arbitrage: There's a significant valuation gap between BitTensor AI projects (like Its AI or ReadyAI) and comparable VC-funded companies (GPTZero, Scale AI), suggesting potential upside once accessibility improves.


3. The Bridge is Coming: Easier access via wrapped tokens or user-friendly platforms bridging BitTensor to chains like Solana/Ethereum is the critical next step for unlocking subnet value and attracting mainstream capital.

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March 28, 2025

Subnet 3 Templar –World’s First Distributed, Permissionless, Incentivized Open Source AI Training

Opentensor Foundation

AI

Key Takeaways:


1.  Permissionless Works: Templar validates that truly open, decentralized AI training with economic incentives is not just theory—it's running, learning, and stabilizing *now*.
2.  Incentives Align: Token ownership fundamentally shifts dynamics, turning potential adversaries into collaborative builders invested in the network's success.
3.  The Future is Co-Owned: Templar paves the way for globally co-owned, state-of-the-art AI models, potentially outcompeting even the most well-funded centralized labs and offering a more equitable model for AI development.

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March 28, 2025

Novelty Search March 27, 2025

taostats

AI

Key Takeaways:


1.  Incentivized Decentralized Training Works: Templar demonstrates that coordinating anonymous miners globally via crypto-economic incentives to train a single AI model is feasible, moving beyond permissioned compute pools.
2.  Production is the Only True Test: Real-world deployment with adversarial miners is non-negotiable for building robust decentralized systems, revealing exploits impossible to find otherwise. Templar's rapid iteration (>200 runs) provides a significant edge.
3.  Community & Ownership are Superpowers: Openly sharing struggles and leveraging tokenomics to give miners ownership transformed Templar's development, aligning incentives and fostering collective problem-solving far exceeding a centralized team's capacity.

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March 24, 2025

Steffen Cruz and Will Squires: Macrocosmos, AI, APEX, Data, Bittensor Subnets 1 9 13 25 37 | Ep. 32

Ventura Labs

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. The open-source AI landscape has rapidly evolved, with models like Deepseek and R1 significantly impacting the decentralized AI space.
  2. Macrocosmos focuses on building high-quality, feature-rich products that leverage the power of Bittensor's network and incentivize miner innovation.
  3. Long-term vision, community engagement, and sustainable monetization strategies are critical for success in the maturing Bittensor ecosystem.
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March 24, 2025

ARC Prize Version 2 Launch Video!

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. ARC V2 represents a significant advancement in benchmarking AI reasoning capabilities, moving beyond the limitations of pre-trained language models.
  2. Efficiency, not just capability, is a critical aspect of intelligence, and ARC V2 effectively measures this efficiency gap between AI and humans.
  3. While O3 demonstrates early signs of fluid intelligence, it is not yet human-level and further breakthroughs are needed to achieve true AGI.
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March 24, 2025

Steffen Cruz and Will Squires: Macrocosmos, AI, APEX, Data, Bittensor Subnets 1 9 13 25 37 | Ep. 32

Ventura Labs

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Macrocosmos is building an interconnected suite of products (Constellation) that leverage different Bittensor subnets, aiming for a synergistic approach to decentralized AI.
  2. The focus on building high-quality, feature-rich products over simply competing on price highlights a maturing mindset within the Bittensor ecosystem.
  3. The emphasis on long-term vision, community engagement, and sustainable monetization strategies is crucial for navigating the rapidly evolving decentralized AI landscape.
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March 23, 2025

The Magic of LLM Distillation — Rishi Agarwal, Google DeepMind

Latent Space

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Distillation is more than just model compression; it's a powerful technique for improving LLM performance and enabling practical deployment.
  2. On-policy distillation offers significant advantages over traditional methods, especially for complex, long-horizon tasks.
  3. Choose the right distillation strategy based on the specific needs of your application, balancing complexity, cost, and desired performance.
  4. Explore on-policy distillation if your model tackles complex or lengthy generation tasks.
  5. Prioritize simple distillation methods initially, and escalate to more complex techniques only when necessary.
  6. Don't underestimate the value of distillation; a small improvement during training can yield massive benefits during deployment.
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March 23, 2025

Exploring Program Synthesis: Francois Chollet, Kevin Ellis, Zenna Tavares

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Deep learning alone is insufficient for program synthesis; symbolic approaches and hybrid models are crucial for tackling discrete, algorithmic tasks.
  2. Developing dedicated infrastructure for program synthesis is premature; further research is needed to identify effective, scalable techniques.
  3. Benchmarks like Arc are essential for driving progress in program synthesis, providing focused environments to study generalization and adaptation.
  4. Deep learning's strength lies in pattern recognition, not program generation.  Symbolic methods or hybrid models are key to unlocking the true potential of program synthesis.
  5. A "Keras for Program Synthesis" is coming, but not yet.  More foundational research is needed before building specialized frameworks.
  6. Arc, particularly Arc 2,  is a crucial testing ground for stronger generalization in AI, pushing beyond mere interpolation towards true compositional understanding.
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March 22, 2025

Test-Time Adaptation: the key to reasoning with DL

Machine Learning Street Talk

AI

Key Takeaways:

  1. Test-time adaptation is a powerful technique for tackling abstract reasoning tasks like ARC, enabling neural networks to adapt to novel perceptual challenges and achieve state-of-the-art performance.
  2. Prioritizing raw representations and flexible contextualization over specialized encodings or program synthesis can be crucial for handling ARC’s adversarial and abstract nature.
  3. The future of reasoning with deep learning lies in exploring creative test-time compute strategies, including more nuanced pre-training and diverse benchmarking, to further unlock the potential of neural networks for complex reasoning.
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Crypto Podcasts

October 31, 2025

Crypto Finally Goes Mainstream | Roundup

Bell Curve

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Banks Can't Ignore the Genie: Jamie Dimon's reversal and JPMorgan's new crypto services signal that institutional resistance is crumbling. The catalyst is the disruptive threat of stablecoins to core banking models.
  2. Consolidation is the Game: Mature sectors like exchanges and L1s are consolidating. The strategic play is to identify the dominant platforms (e.g., ETH, Solana, major exchanges) poised to compound value as moats widen.
  3. Regulation is the Kingmaker: Political moves, such as Trump pardoning CZ, are reshaping the competitive map. Access to the U.S. market will be a critical battleground, making regulatory strategy more important than ever.
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October 31, 2025

Crypto’s in a 20-Year Secular Bull Market | Weekly Roundup

Empire

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. **The "Bloomberg for Crypto" is the Endgame.** The most valuable companies will provide institutional-grade data and software. Blockworks' pivot is a bet on this future, moving from a crowded news business to a high-growth data platform with clear product-market fit.
  2. **Tokenization is Now a Publicly Traded Thesis.** With Securitize’s IPO, investors can make a direct, public-market bet on the tokenization of real-world assets. It will likely be valued as a high-growth proxy for the entire sector.
  3. **Adoption is Bought, Not Begged.** Layer 1s are aggressively paying for partnerships with brands like Western Union. For investors, the question is whether these deals create a sustainable flywheel or just a temporary boost.
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October 30, 2025

Why I’m Short $1M of ETH.

Taiki Maeda

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. The Q4 Pump is a Trap. The widespread belief in a year-end alt season has become a crowded exit strategy. When everyone plans to sell into the same pump, there’s no one left to buy.
  2. ETH's Fundamentals are Hollow. Ethereum's valuation is propped up by narratives, not reality. Weak on-chain activity and a value-accrual model that benefits apps over the base layer make its current price unsustainable.
  3. The Sellers Are Here. From VCs with token unlocks to treasury companies turning into paper hands, identifiable sellers now outweigh the speculative buyers, signaling the cycle has turned.
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October 30, 2025

Hivemind: Crypto's Leverage Hangover, Hyperliquid's Resurgance & What's Next for Markets?

Empire

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Survive, Then Thrive. After massive liquidations, the strongest assets and narratives (e.g., privacy plays like Zcash) recover first. Focus capital on names showing relative strength post-wipeout, as they are the first to capture returning liquidity.
  2. Revenue is the New Narrative. The game has changed. The market now demands clear revenue streams and legal structures that align token holders with protocol success. Valueless governance tokens are out; tokens tied to real business operations are in.
  3. On-Chain TradFi is Here. Platforms like Hyperliquid are successfully bringing assets like the NASDAQ on-chain, proving crypto-native demand for traditional markets. This represents a major new frontier for DeFi protocols looking to capture volume.
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October 29, 2025

Deficits Are Forcing the Fed Back Into Expansion | Lyn Alden

Forward Guidance

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. **Fiscal is the new Fed.** Government spending, not central bank policy, is the dominant force in the economy. Stop looking for a traditional recession; the deficit is the stimulus that won’t quit.
  2. **The Fed is re-opening the liquidity spigot.** The era of Quantitative Tightening is over. A gradual but persistent expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is coming, which will provide a tailwind for assets.
  3. **Own scarce assets.** The long-term debasement of fiat currency is the default path. Alden remains constructive on Bitcoin, viewing its current phase as a prelude to a significant move higher in the coming years.
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October 28, 2025

Hash Rate - Ep 140 - The New Crucible Bittensor Wallet

Hash Rate pod - Bittensor $TAO & Subnets

Crypto
Key Takeaways:
  1. Security Is No Longer an Afterthought: The Crucible Wallet’s native Ledger integration provides the first hardware-secured, consumer-friendly way to manage TAO and subnet tokens, addressing a major security gap in the ecosystem.
  2. Automated Strategy Beats Day Trading: The "Staking to Core Alpha" feature offers a powerful tool that automatically reinvests yield into a customizable portfolio of subnets, saving users from the overwhelming task of constantly researching and reallocating assets.
  3. Capital Flow is King: The wallet's primary mission is to redirect staked TAO from the root network into deserving subnets, providing them with the capital needed to grow and achieve commercial success, which in turn strengthens the entire Bittensor network.
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