Are recessions a thing of the past? Macro investor Jordi Visser explains why he believes they are and how AI and crypto are transforming the global economy. Joining Andrew Brill, Jordi explores how the digital economy, powered by crypto and AI, is creating unprecedented opportunities for growth and innovation—momentum that’s set to accelerate. He also predicts Bitcoin could soon become the world’s second-largest asset, surpassed only by gold. Discover the transformative role of AI agents, decentralized systems, and the geopolitical shifts reshaping markets. Watch now to learn how these technologies will redefine the economy—and what they mean for your financial future
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Jordi Visser 0:00
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no more recessions. That is a business cycle thing of the past. It’s for the Industrial Revolution economy, the digital economy is about productivity and efficiency, and it’s happening every single day. Bitcoin is only 2 trillion now and growing, but pretty soon, by the end of next year, I think it’ll be the second biggest asset in the world behind gold, which is close to 20 trillion.
Andrew Brill 0:27
We enter the last month of 2024 with economic indicators showing, yeah, sticky, inflation. I’m your host. Andrew brill, if you need help looking forward financially, go to wealthion.com/free for a free no obligation. Portfolio review. We’ll talk about the economy and some key factors coming up next.
Andrew Brill 0:50
I’d like to welcome Jordi Visser back to wealthion JORDY was the founder and a CIO of a hedge fund. He has over 30 years experience in the financial world, and now he’s just a person who gives great advice on crypto AI and everything conventional assets too. Jordi, welcome back to wealthion. Always a pleasure to have you.
Jordi Visser 1:12
It’s good to be here. Andrew, I’m looking forward to it. I always
Andrew Brill 1:16
like to start about asking what your view is presently on the economy as we head into the last month of 2024
Jordi Visser 1:26
on the economy itself. I don’t think there’s a lot to talk about, which is probably a little surprising compared to prior years. And what I mean by that is, it seems for the last two, three years, there’s been some kind of fear over, I guess, two things. One, where the economy would be and if we were going to head into recession or not. Number two, what that meant for the Fed, regarding both recession and then, if you go back two years inflation, so we’re entering this year where now we’ve, we’ve had steady growth, really, for for over two years, somewhere around 3% and we’re coming into this year where I think most estimates are somewhere in the two to 3% range for most people, and the Fed is going to be probably the most quiet it’s been in some time, meaning we have, You know, about a 60% chance of one more rate cut this year at the December meeting, and then going into next year. Right now, there’s about 50 basis points in for next year. So there’s really not a lot of, let’s say, fears or expectation. And I think that’s why you’ve seen sentiment go up to such high levels. So I’ll just end it with the economy. Seems like people are pretty consensus on it at this point, and positioning is is rather extreme. So I’m sure next year, it won’t take much to surprise people. I guess is the is the whale, and
Andrew Brill 2:58
it seems the economic indicators a little bit sticky, maybe slightly on the uptick. Are you expecting the Fed to still come up with that December rate cut? I guess we’re somewhere in the name of a week and a half away from that next meeting, or two weeks away from that next meeting. Are you still expecting that rate cut to come in December?
Jordi Visser 3:17
I think the payroll number this week will really be the deciding factor. But I do, I think they’ll come. You know, at this meeting, there’s a chance, and I think the probabilities are good. They haven’t really given us any indication to get it up closer to 100. So this will be the first meeting going into it, unless there’s some change after the payroll that it’s kind of going to be up in the air as to whether they they cut or not, inflation has kind of stabilized at higher levels. And I think that’s the the one fear that a lot of people have had, if you you know, in the month before the election, there was a lot of people talking about the fact that no matter who wins, we’re still going to be spending money. And inflation seems to be sticky. I’m in that camp too, where core inflation seems to be settling above 3% and I think it will stay above there, unless we start to see the stock market come down, because I think the Fed is going to is going to pause. So at this point, I would say it’s, it’s, it’s the probabilities for this month are right. And I do think next year, unless inflation starts to tick higher, and I think the only way that’s going to really happen is if energy prices bottom up and move higher. And if I was looking for one surprise, just to kind of tease people, I do think next year we will start to see at some point, energy prices start to migrate a little bit higher. So
Andrew Brill 4:44
you think that gas, I mean, gas at the pump right now is relatively low considering where it had been, you think that even, even gasoline, oil, that sort of thing, will start to tick up. I mean, the the situation around the world. Isn’t so great. So geopolitically, there could be some uptick there as well.
Jordi Visser 5:06
Yeah, there’s a couple things here, and I think this finally gets us into the election part. I think with Trump winning, people are going to have to start to reassess how countries view their own domestic politics, because I think that’s one of the features of this. So if you think about de globalization just as a theme, and I’m kind of, I’ve always been focused on de globalization. We still have that happening in many ways, but with Donald Trump taking over, I think whether you call it de globalization, it’s starting to migrate into decentralization, but also deregulation. These are a bunch of things which, for me, are going to force most economies around the world to think domestically and figure out ways to not be impacted by, say, tariffs or just the fact that the US is going to make things more uncertain. You’re not going to know what’s going to happen on a week to week, month to month basis. And China just had a PMI number, which moved higher. I’m definitely in the belief that China has already taken the reins and has put a floor into their economy for this year. And so that leads me to believe that the surprises there, particularly from a consumption basis, will be on the upside. And I think people have underestimated two things on energy. One is the whole EV car thing seems to have got people complacent that there’s nothing that can really make gas at the pump go higher. We’re down to $3.04 as of today. It’s a big fall, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s kind of surprising that inflation, on the core side, is actually stabilized up here, because goods are definitely on the lower side. And so if China’s now got their PMI seeing two back to back months on the caisson of one point or more, the US PMI numbers came out this morning, they’re up above 48 and almost all the outlooks for the regionals are suggesting more optimism, with Trump coming in from a regular regulations basis. So people are starting to get a little more optimistic there. And then I think there’s also going to be a front loading of orders on the fear of tariffs taking over, which will probably lead to a little bit more of a bounce. So I think you’re going to get some upward prices on energy in the early, you know, at least early in the year, when, when we have the when Trump takes over. But then I think the other theme, which I’m sure we’ll get into later, is I’m a big believer that the AI powered needs are going to become relevant or become really, really recognized by the world as we get to the second half of next year.
Andrew Brill 7:34
I do want to get into that. But how are we viewing the dollar right now? It seems to be very, very strong. But there’s a whole talk about the bricks and how people are going to try other countries, I should say, are going to try and move away from the dollar. Not sure that that’s possible, but they’re going to try. Yeah.
Jordi Visser 7:53
So the dollar is always, it’s always a funny one here, particularly when you’re talking to someone who spends so much time on Bitcoin, a big move in the dollar like recently gets you up, you know, eight, 9% we’ve done these pretty much over the last four years. We go up, we go down, we go up, we go down. But you’re not talking about huge moves. And so I don’t view the dollar unless it were to continue from here strengthening, and it already started to weaken. The other day, like you said, there’s a lot of news out today on Trump going against, you know, saying if, if the BRIC countries are going to try to focus on de dollarization and breaking away. I think a lot of this is just talk. The one thing I do think that Donald Trump is doing is setting up for negotiations on, you know, having a stronger hand. And I think a lot of the words are setting up for the negotiation side. So I think traders are probably getting a little bit more excited about dollar strength, which has somewhat to do with Elon Musk and Vivek and Doge. There’s a whole bunch of things going on. I think by the time we get into next year, I don’t think dollar strength is going to be a major story. And that’s only because I don’t think China, which is really important this equation, will let their currency weaken too much against the dollar. And so I think and Japan the same thing. So I think you’re just in a place where, if I had to take a trading position right now, I’d probably look be looking for dollar weakness just as a counter trend move on this going into the end of the year, and then we’ll see what happens once Trump takes over and what tariffs he puts on. But I just don’t think it’s as big a deal as people are focused on right now.
Andrew Brill 9:34
So are you in the camp of the Fed has led us to a soft landing. Now I’ll peel back the current. I’m a pilot. That’s one of my hobbies. But you know, when we come in and we don’t see the runway, we go missed and take off again. Do you think that the Fed is in danger of missing the point and having to take off and raise rates again at some point because inflation is going to be on the rise?
Jordi Visser 9:58
No, so. I am a believer that inflation is going to stay higher than where it was. I think you’re going to be settling above three. So we won’t be in the zero to two area, but we’ll be above three. But we have rates not at zero. We have rates up at 4% so I’m not one of these people that sends out an analog to the 1970s and believes that we’re going to go through another rise. And the reason is because I don’t see really any chance of a massive move higher in energy prices. I just don’t think the economy can handle it. I do think inflation will be higher for a lot of structural reasons that are there that I’m not going to go through in all detail, because I think people have probably spent too much time on this, but I do think it’s going to be on the higher side. But to your point on soft landing, let’s do it from a growth perspective. I’ve written extensively in my sub stacks, and I’ve covered this on YouTube and podcasts that I used to do regularly. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no more recessions. That is a business cycle, thing of the past. It’s for the Industrial Revolution economy, the digital economy is about productivity and efficiency, and it’s happening every single day. And it really started to accelerate after the great financial crisis, when the iPhone came into existence and smartphones basically caused a centralized world where, you know, as we all know, money is just flooded into the United States. We’re about 72% of the of the market cap of the MSCI World, led by the mega cap tech names, which all blossomed and exploded post the iPhone. But now we’re entering a different world where AI will gradually force decentralization and accelerate in the next five years, which will end up with deconcentration and eradication of the middlemen. So I just think we’re going to grow around where money supply is, and we’re not going to have the quote, unquote, fear of scarcity or running out of things because we have too much information to keep the business cycle in line. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get down to 1% growth for a couple quarters. Maybe even have a quarter of of negative growth, like we did in 2022 but then we’ll grow at three or 4% after that. So I just think it’s steady, you know, around over the course of a year, somewhere in that two to 3% range, because money supply is going to keep growing. So
Andrew Brill 12:19
let’s get into cryptocurrency, and I do read your sub stack, and I am in the age group that you you said that crypto is a speculative fantasy. You grouped AI in there a little bit too, but it seems that, and I’m curious to your take calling it crypto currency, is that what’s holding a lot of us back? I mean, we all keep a little cash in our pocket. We look at that as currency, but this is a digital world, the way you pointed out with the the iPhone, and it’s going to take just some education and getting used to it for it to become mainstream, isn’t it
Jordi Visser 13:01
for people. And I think the age that I chose in there is the defining line was 44 right? And I’m above that line. The reason I chose that line is because that’s where a bunch of all the demographics intersect. For me, you know, the percentage of people by demographic that use AI, it’s dramatically higher for people under 44 and dramatically lower for people above the age of 44 Same thing goes for crypto on an ownership basis and a use basis. But then when you go to global net worth, the people above the age of 44 own over 90% of the global wealth. So it’s a weird I mean, it’s we’re in a very, very fast changing world. So when the Bitcoin white paper came out in 2008 a month after Lehman Brothers, if you go back and spend time on on what it was, and you break it down into two components, one, just being the frustration towards governments and banks and the fairness this had been attempted many times before, many thoughts had come through. You know, some kind of financial competitive currency to represent it had been there. But I think cryptocurrency, to your point, is just a bad marketing thing for Bitcoin, and I think that’s what confuses people. I don’t view Bitcoin in any way, shape or form, as as a currency. In fact, the technology behind it for payments and transactions is is it’s not great. And so that’s why you’ve had things like Ethereum and Solana, which are much more geared towards speed, much more geared towards being able to handle the higher volumes. That’s a better technology, these these particular ones, and I think that’s why they’ve gathered steam. So I have focused on Bitcoin as the store of value bridge between the physical world A. Where we’ve all basically been until the digital economy, which really again, started accelerating in 2007 with the iPhone release. So I don’t think people have put this all together, but within a span of july of of Oh, seven is when the iPhone was released, October of 98 sorry, October of 2008 is when the Bitcoin white paper came out, and that, to me, was the white paper for explaining to people how, as technology accelerated, you were going to need the innovation of the blockchain to basically take decentralized the world and erased the middlemen, which means less government, less profits for the banks. And that’s really what it represents, and that’s what you’re seeing, and I think that’s the trend that’s happening. So I’m writing more about it because a it’s the most interesting macro story I’ve seen. I do believe in accelerating innovation, and I use AI three to five hours a day. I have more apps, and I do more things on it today than I did yesterday, and it just continues that way. And I have the luxury of being now a consultant and helping people kind of bridge their own mindset, because that’s the part that’s the hardest, Andrew is I just think people above the age of 44 it’s very hard to forget what you’ve already learned and what you went to school for. It’s very intimidating to think about learning AI and to think about investing in Bitcoin. I’m just shocked at how many people I have to explain how important it is not to invest all your money there, but at least to diversify by some amount. Yeah,
Andrew Brill 16:38
I found that interesting that you said in your article that doubting AI and crypto is a bad combination in preparation for the future. So you think that obviously AI is here to stay. I mean, you look at the Magnificent Seven that you had mentioned, and we can get into other other, not particular stocks, but how you think that’s going to evolve. But why do you think that? You know, the younger generations obviously set up pretty well because they’re into crypto. They’re accepting it. They’re accepting the AI and actually using it as you are and as I am. But you know, doubting these things will put you know, is not great for the future.
Jordi Visser 17:20
So I’ll break it down this way. And I think part of my mindset on this comes from the years that I lived in Brazil, which were 9798 and part of 99 which was an important period of my life. I was I was in my 20s there, I opened an office for Morgan Stanley there I got to witness, I mean, there’s no other way to say it, but some sort of a depression inside emerging markets during that time period. And I left Brazil just after they were forced to devalue their currency to get money from the IMF. And I think what it taught me, and I think Brazil is still going through this today, that the concentration of of the S, p5, 100 right now is a representation of the way that the economy works at this point, and it frustrates more and more people every year. And I think part of the reason that Donald Trump won this election. And if you go through, I mean, it was a fairly landslide victory, but the media and the polls that we depend on to give us some insight as to what we’re having were off significantly. And the question is, why was that? I don’t get into into guessing, but I think if you look at people across the country, the contribute the concentration of wealth is at the very high end, and it’s left people out. And I think where crypto currencies have really helped people is by giving them an alternative to a system that they just haven’t participated in the way that other people have. So the S, p5 100 has incredibly high concentration in video is bigger than the market cap of the Russell 2000 so the Russell 2000 small cap index combined, if it was added to the S, p5 100, it wouldn’t even be the biggest company. And that just shows that there really has been an eradication of businesses across the country. And I think we all see it, and so where cryptocurrency and AI have come to me, if I go back to my Brazil days, Argentina, which has been a arguably a bigger basket case than Brazil, recently, they elected a new president last year, And he’s had a huge impact on the country and their stock market is going higher, their bond risk premium is changing dramatically, and they’re able to borrow again, or they will be, and they’re able to negotiate with the IMF in a very different way. And the reason I bring that up here is Doge is. Which Trump is going on is really meant to reduce the size of the government, to get the budget back in. We just have a massive budget deficit. We have incredible debt. People have seen the numbers. They’ve seen that we now spend more on interest payments than the defense, and that historically, going back 1000s of years, is a very, very bad ratio to have meaning when it’s when your debt costs more than your funding for the for for the defense. So I think crypto currencies are basically being viewed by every day. And the paper I wrote called it kind of the Fight Club. You’re getting new people to basically leave the Fiat economy because they’re not participating in there, and they’re jumping into the crypto economy, or the digital economy. And the way that AI fits into this is AI is the most decentralizing tool yet. It allows people to scale businesses, entrepreneurs to scale businesses without humans, which means their cost goes down dramatically. It’s going to take a few years for this to go but during the next four years, with Donald Trump as president, with a pro crypto group in there, I do think there’s going to be a rise of kind of the the smaller businesses and mid cap businesses in the country. And I do think you’re going to see more m&a. I think the regulations coming down, this is all kind of a a perfect storm for bringing down the size of government, which I think most people in this country do want.
Andrew Brill 21:30
What was your aha moment with crypto? When did you decide you know what this is? This is going to be a thing.
Jordi Visser 21:38
The real aha moment, which I wrote about recently was in 2020 and so 2020 the COVID year, I had already started writing about crypto. In fact, the end of that year, I had written about some of the companies that I talked to, the CIOs at big companies, insurance companies, fortune, 500 companies, they had already started to take positions in crypto. A lot of the big pension funds, the most sophisticated ones, particularly in Canada, actually had dedicated areas to this side. So I knew the blockchain was an innovation that I believed in, but I hadn’t seen until I start seeing companies that are actually able to do things. I really didn’t care that much. But what really, I guess, took me to another level, was my at the time, 13 year old son, I went to go talk to him about what he was doing, and he said he was trading crypto, and I was interested in how he was doing this. He showed me, took me through, showed me how he was getting his information. We started talking about some of the things he was making money in. And it was like talking to one of my portfolio managers at the hedge fund. He knew everything about it. He’s 13 years old, and at some point, over a span of five months, he turned $700 into 80,000 and that, that was something where I was like, okay, he’s gonna lose that money, I’m sure. Because now I know this is a bubble, which he did. He ended up losing all of it. He’s now at about 8000 right now. He’s in college now, but he had to go through the ups and downs that came with it. But here’s, I guess, the most important point that was when I started to really listen to people like Michael Saylor, people that had a macro bent towards it, as opposed to a currency side. So I had looked at it as currency plus innovation. Now I was looking at it as innovation, plus the opposite of an economy where the government has such a huge, huge presence, where they can just print money, because this is a big thing, Andrew, for me, and I don’t think most people in in the US, except for macro people understand, but until 2008 when we had to find a way to not end up in the Great Depression, did the government realize that they could actually just print tons of money from nowhere to stop bad things from happening in the economy. And once, they did it once, and they took the balance sheet up to four or 5 trillion, then it came back down a little bit. Then we had COVID. They took it back up again, dramatically. That was the aha moment for me. Was that 2020, number one, no recession. Whatever recession happened in COVID, it was gone within a quarter. Because all you have to do is print as much money as you want. So how can we really ever have a recession? Silicon Valley Bank goes out of business. Historically, you lose a bank of that size, you have dominoes falling. So what happens? They find a way to quote, unquote, guarantee deposits and stop runs on other banks, and they let the banks put Bonds into the Fed. The Fed gives them cash, and all of a sudden we realize, wow, they created so many tools that it changed so. Is cryptocurrency, and what was the aha moment? The aha moment was, hey, we really are never gonna have recessions. They can just print their way out of anything they want, which means they’re debasing all assets. So Bitcoin has gone up faster than the Fiat assets, and that’s the most important part of the story. Is as more and more people are taking their money out of this $700 trillion asset pool, which is stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, artwork, baseball cards, whatever you want. That’s about 700 trillion globally. Bitcoins, only 2 trillion now and growing, but pretty soon, by the end of next year, I think it’ll be the second biggest asset in the world, behind gold, which is close to 20 trillion.
Andrew Brill 25:42
How do you explain the volatility and the lack of perceived value? You know, obviously there’s value Bitcoins, 9596 97,000 but there’s a perceived lack of value, and that’s why people are hesitant to accept it, I guess, is what the best word we can use, yeah,
Jordi Visser 26:08
let’s see. I remember when I took a trip to China, and on that trip, I ate scorpions, and I was forced to eat turtle at a luncheon. Now these are normal foods out there that you can buy anywhere in the United States. Not so much. You’re not going to find them in places. It’s not the same. And the reason I bring that up is no Yuval Harari and Sapiens really taught me a lesson to understand the everything is a story. So when you say value, value is something that is perceived by people. If, if something goes higher, it has value. That’s why I brought a Baseball, baseball cards. If you have the right baseball cards, they’ve gone up in value. So it’s it’s been a good store of value. If you put money into it. If you buy a Picasso, if you buy anything, it’s been proven to be good value. So value is just really representative the story behind it that other people are jumping on board with. So to measure Bitcoin for value. When people talk to me about how you you come up value, I go, Well, when the internet was growing, the number one thing we use to measure whether it was going to be successful is how many people were using it, how quick the user adoption was, what? Well, that’s what’s going on with Bitcoin. I really appreciated the 2020, 2021 2022, period. So after my son’s peak in his net worth, which happened in like February of 21 bitcoin peaked, and then it went from 70,000 ish down to 16,000 ish. That was peak to trough. That year in 22 it was down about 55% so when I get asked the question about, How do you deal with the volatility? I always say, well, let’s see. It was down 55 60% and 22 how much was Amazon down? And most people don’t know, but Amazon, which is something that has a higher market cap, it was also down 50% the NASDAQ itself was down over 40, or down about 40. So what you’re dealing with when people talk about these things is they haven’t adjusted to the story. But the problem is, if I talk to my son, he has, if I talk to people in Argentina, they have, if I talk to people in Brazil, they have. And that’s why I said at the beginning, I just happen to be in an age bracket where I’m talking mainly to people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. They haven’t embraced it, but people below that age already have. So it’s the people with the money that haven’t embraced it. But the one thing I know about all of those people, they are greedy. They go to they go to tennis clubs and golf clubs and all kinds of places. And the first thing they hear is, hey, do you own any bitcoin? They will all own Bitcoin, because that’s the way all this stuff ends up going. It always has.
Andrew Brill 29:11
So how does Jordi? How does AI fit into all this? And you wrote that AI is moving faster changing to you made the point earlier that you use it every day for several hours, and it’s changing daily. How does AI fit into all this? So
Jordi Visser 29:27
for me, the connection of AI to Bitcoin in particular has to do with the digital economy. So Bitcoin is nothing more than a digital asset. That’s it. So we’ve got the assets of the physical slash Fiat world. And when I say Fiat, that’s paper money world. So the things that most people have grown up on, like, I own the S, p5, 100. Okay, Bitcoin is a digital asset. There’s a there’s a finite amount of them, so there’s a scarcity issue. There’s no scarcity issue on App. Stock they can issue as much as you want to issue. In fact, micro strategy, which has gotten a lot of attention, people are still trying to figure out how Michael Saylor is doing. This has got to be a bubble. Everything makes no sense, and yet, he’s just selling Fiat assets to go buy digital assets. That’s basically what he’s doing. He’s issuing stock that people are buying, or convertibles that people are buying, and then he’s taking that money and he’s going and buying the physical the digital asset. And so this world is connected the digital economy and the physical economy. We’ve all seen the rise of innovation as soon as we started having an iPhone in our hand and started doing the things we went it replaced physical assets. This was our doorway into the digital world. So before the iPhone and I, it’s amazing how only after 16 years, people forget you watch TV shows from like 2000 to 2003 and they have these flip phones, and they have phones, and you’re like, okay, there were still cameras back then. If you look at how many cameras were produced globally, in 2002 there were millions of them. Now there’s none. I mean, there’s literally, if you look at a chart, it looks like zero. So the digital asset side, to me, is going to be accelerated. We’ve been moving to the digital economy since the iPhone. The iPhone started the same time as Bitcoin there. So they’re kind of brothers, if you want to use that, they came out the exact same time. We’ve watched our kids sit there and play Fortnite. We’ve watched how quickly Fortnite became something big. The digital economy is just going to continue to grow and continue to be a bigger portion of the economy, while things like Ford versus Tesla make no sense when people doubted that Tesla could have a market cap, a car company at a trillion dollars, Ford, GM, Toyota, all of them combined, don’t even get close there, and that’s been the case for a While. So AI is an accelerant on the iPhone. It’s the next phase. And so far, all we’ve done in the last two years since chatgpt is build out the infrastructure, and Nvidia has benefited. I have believed, and I’ve written about this, and I’m writing another paper this week on it is on AI agents, because I talk to people about AI agents, and they just, they don’t have an easy time with that either. To me, AI agents are the accelerant for getting into the digital economy, and that is going to accelerate the amount of money that is moving into this other economy, the digital economy, through payments. And the reason that the payments are so important, is again, I think because technology has done so well and because their market cap is so big, people actually think that most of the profits in the world are in the technology sector. Financials are still enormous. Every single person who’s watching this at some point, I’m sure, in the last 10 years, bought a house, and you just think about how many people come with their hands to take money from you, related to just buying or selling the house, the taxes from the government, the funding from the bank, the mortgage payments that go on, the insurance, all kinds of stuff that has to happen. Those dollars are part of the economy that will be replaced more and more by AI agents. The same thing will happen in the healthcare sector. Same thing will happen in call centers. All that stuff is about to accelerate now, and that’s why the next five years is about AI adoption rather than AI infrastructure.
Andrew Brill 33:34
So when we talk infrastructure, we’re talking about the chips, the cooling racks, but you’re talking more about the the software that’s going to actually let this AI work and stuff like that, right?
Jordi Visser 33:51
Exactly. This is the part, and again, in a span of just give you my brief journey. So my hedge fund closed in in May. So we’re now about six months of not going into an office every day. So the work that I do now is content, and it’s helping people and consulting people for how do they think about investing in it, for portfolio diversification? How do they make the transition, speaking in front of groups like this, but more in public to help their clients and stuff. So that’s really where my focus is going to be, and to really set up the business and go through I decided, since I didn’t have the time while I was going to a job where I found out how much time you waste going into work, the commuting time, the whole thing, and I did more of my work at home on the computer that I’m sitting here with. So I took five coding classes. I had always hired data scientists and coders to do the work for me, and I just wanted to learn the basics of coding. So I took five Python courses. These were online Coursera courses. And. Uh, I finished them within a span of about six weeks, and then I started to work on some tools where I was building my own things that I used to have data scientists do now, at the same time, I was using AI regularly, and my coding was bad. But the great thing was I would go back and forth between chat, G, P, T, to write the code, and then go back into the terminal and run my Python script and go through it, and I could do things. It was still kind of clunky, and I don’t think the coding was particularly good back in July, but what’s happened since then is it’s gotten phenomenally better. I can do things now that I never believed, and just last week, I took my website down from for my business, and I wanted to get a new one, and I was going to pay someone to do it, but instead, I started building my own. And over the past weekend, meaning Saturday, I built seven different websites in probably 35 minutes, all using cursor, which is an AI tool, which allowed me to basically prompt it what I wanted. And the only skill that I really needed was the ability of taking that script, moving it into a file, and then running it. That’s it, and that I learned pretty much on day one of my Coursera classes. So where AI is going at this point is just, it’s moving at such a fast pace that the impact it will have on businesses at the application level, it’s going so fast that we’re moving from, as Marc Benioff said this, well, it’s been mainly DIY, meaning you have to do it yourself to actually get any benefits from it. And that’s really what the co pilot assistant approach was. Well, now we’re getting into the one where next year, I fully expect that you’ll be able to verbally speak, because I’m already doing that with cursor. Verbally speak into something to say what you want, put that into a chat box, and then it will go, do it. You look at it, you come back, and you say, I would change this, this, this, this. And we’re getting so it’s going to be verbal, in my opinion, very, very soon. And once it’s verbal, you can do it, I can do it, anyone can do it. And so it becomes the application level. And I think that’ll really start to accelerate next year, probably the second half of the year is when every consumer will start to see the power of it.
Andrew Brill 37:28
Now, we’ve talked about energy earlier, and we have to power all this AI. That’s one tentacle of a place where people can look to invest. You can find a company that’s building power centers to power AI or the equipment. Where else? What other tentacles are there? We talked about software. Obviously, there’s companies out there creating the software. Is there something we’re not thinking about, Jordi, where they’re saying, okay, AI is going to affect this, and we’re going to be able to make money on this? Well,
Jordi Visser 37:59
you’re already able to make money on it. So let’s go through we talked about how Nvidia was really the big focus, and I don’t think Nvidia has gone sideways now, as I put him so I know you read my last paper. I do weekly videos right now, and the videos are meant to tell a story about both the Fiat macro world, what’s happening with stocks, what’s happening with the economy, but then gradually to bring it over. And so it starts with kind of what happened in the traditional world. It ends with what happened in Bitcoin and the adoption side. And in between is a combination of government and regulation, deregulation themes and the rise of AI agents. So if you think about it, what I’m really doing is saying, This is the old world that you’re used to. These are the things that are decentralizing in the middle. These are the trends of government, the trends of banks, the trends of AI. And then it ends over here as as the digital side. So that means the answer to your question, the AI, agents, stuff, that’s going to mean a lot more things being run by people. Because right now it’s really being run not by that many users. We’re going to have a lot more users that are using it once you have agents where you can verbally speak, like, I don’t know how often you use chat, GPT, Claude, you know, perplexity, I run out of stuff, and Claude all the time. That’s how much I’m using it. Like, it says, Okay, you can’t use this till six o’clock. Like, okay, great. And I go back over to chat, G, P, T, and I keep doing what I’m doing. Or I go to do something else but the storage side. So whether it’s Azure, at Microsoft, whether it’s Amazon, whether it’s Google, they’re all benefiting from the cloud side. That’s going to go higher from the agent use Palantir and some of these companies, like snowflake, they’re doing really well. This is, this is where you’re expanding from just having companies capex in tons of dollars, and then building. Up their chat bots, because remember, open AI is in a public company, so its valuation has gone higher, but you couldn’t make money off that, so you were kind of isolated to the mega cap names, which, again, are up 60% as an index this year. Most of them have had good years, and especially after Trump Tesla went up again. So you’re still going to be able to invest in those mega cap companies. But I think you’re going to see a lot of the software companies that were kind of shot initially as not benefiting, and some of the ones I mentioned will start to take over. So just think about it from there’s just going to be a lot more people using it this year relative to last year, and the ability of using it’s going to get easier and easier, and it does start to tax, like I said, the power side. So the data centers have been a big trend. These are not names that people, really, I think, sitting at home focus too much on, but data centers have been going up. So it hasn’t been energy companies. It’s been the data center type things, the real estate companies that are in that area, and then you’ve had these other places like Palantir and snowflake at another level, and I think you’re going to see more and more of those pop in. Salesforce.com has done really well, but you’re going to start to see other companies this year in the healthcare side and the consumer side that are going to start mentioning that they’re using AI agents, and what it’s allowing them to do is grow revenue, even if you get, like, an extra 100 basis points of revenue growth, or, let’s say, 30 basis points, if you don’t have to hire more people, or if you’re able to close call centers, you’ve just taken left your revenues the same, and you’ve taken your expenses down in compensation. And I think you’re going to see some more of that next year. It’s probably going on more than people realize. It’s not a big negative for jobs in the long run, because there’s more companies and more people being hired on the other side. But I think in the short run, it is a massive efficiency and productivity boom for many, many companies this year.
Andrew Brill 41:55
Bottom line is, the AI train is leaving the station. You better get on
Jordi Visser 42:00
it. Left in 2022 with chat GPT, and it’s starting to go a little faster. Yes, joining. Where
Andrew Brill 42:07
can we find the only I know you’re on sub stack. What’s your YouTube channel that you that I watch as well. But where can
Jordi Visser 42:14
we find you? Yeah, if and on all of these things. So I’m sub stack. My handle is at Visser labs. So just think my company is Visser labs LLC. So my last name labs, the YouTube channel is at Jordi Visser labs. My x handle is at J Visser labs. And the easiest way for people to find my content, but also reach out to me, is through LinkedIn. I do. Go through my LinkedIn messages daily. I put all of my content in there, and then on X, I try to get some stuff out on the markets, but I think most of the feedback has come back on the YouTube channel, making it easier for people to go and I appreciate this, Andrew, but I do want to make sure that people realize, you know, we talked about a lot of different things, but one of the most important things we talked about, things we talked about is the art of storytelling. You have to start to understand the story of Bitcoin. It will be important for everyone next year. In my opinion. I think it will double next year. And the reason that will drive people into it is, I think more and more people are starting I can tell you from my own incomings from friends and from people don’t know me who are like, How much money should I have in this? It is a question that everyone will be asking next year, in my opinion, just because I think it’s going to become more obvious to people as the story grows and they start hearing more people talk about it that are not zealots and they’re not sales people. There is a story here that is about diversification into the digital economy, and that’s the reason why my YouTube videos, I’m trying to get people through repetition, to see how it goes. And if anyone’s interested, one of the videos I did did, which did do, which is about 40 minutes, is specifically called the Bitcoin story. And then I did write a sub stack that got more into it that you read, which is, is it fantasy or reality? I’m going to write a longer form one too, because I think it’s a question that more and more people are asking,
Andrew Brill 44:11
oh, Jordy, I appreciate. We’re going to get all the links to your places, the x the YouTube, all that. We’ll put that up on the screen so people can find you and LinkedIn, so that they can reach out as well. I appreciate your time, and I appreciate your advice and counsel, because I think that’s knowing the story is probably a really good place to start. So I appreciate having you. I appreciate you coming on and we’ll talk again soon.
Jordi Visser 44:36
Appreciate it, Andrew, thank you.
Andrew Brill 44:38
Thanks so much for watching our discussion here on wealthion with Jordi Visser, maybe, just maybe, you have a different view of crypto and AI, but maybe not. If you would like more guidance in those areas, or looking for more help being financially resilient, please head over to wealthion.com/free for a free, no obligation, financial review. And of course, if you could like into. Subscribe to the channel. We greatly appreciate it. Don’t forget to hit the notification bell so you know when we post new videos on the channel, and please do the social media thing with us. All the links are below in the description. And if you like this content and are looking for more ways to achieve long term wealth, watch this video next. Thanks again for watching until next time, stay informed, be empowered and may your investments flourish.
