Bitcoin crashes 50%, Citrini AI doom essay, Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raises $1B

This weekend was the pod’s Season 4 launch party. To celebrate you can give them 5 stars and increase the chance Maya agrees to a Season 5. 

This week the pod starts with with Bitcoin, which is down about 50% from its peak (~120K to ~65K). They walk through why this crash doesn’t have just one culprit. Trump’s tariff uncertainty, Iranian geopolitical tension, and Bitcoin in key ETFs all contributed. On Feb 5, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) sold a lot of Bitcoin, seemingly because it had to rebalance alongside a broader US software/tech selloff, which tied Bitcoin even more directly to tech stocks. They also talk about how Bitcoin is failing the “digital gold” test right now (gold is up while BTC is down), even if it’s working as a decentralized currency, it’s not working as a store of value.

Next they unpack the viral “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” essay by Citrini, which imagines a bearish AI scenario: white-collar automation triggers layoffs, SaaS gets copied and commoditized, and consumer spending weakens because workers don’t have money to spend post layoffs. The pod has hot takes on where Citrini’s assumptions are underbaked.

They close with World Labs, a startup that just raised $1B to build “world models” for spatial intelligence aka AI that actually understands 3D environments. Co-founder Fei-Fei Li is considered the God Mother of AI, since she was one of the first to advocate for data as a way to improve ML models instead of algorithmic improvement. Early use cases include robotics training and game development. Tune in to hear if World Labs would “Get the Check”.

00:00 Season 4 launch party recap

03:54 Why Bitcoin crashes by almost 50%

14:57 Citrini essay hot takes

23:31 The permanent underclass

35:47 Godmother of AI Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raises $1B