The AI Boom Just Broke the Global Supply Chain

The semiconductor shortage of 2021-2023 was a warm-up. What's happening now is structural. SK Hynix, the world's largest producer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the chips that make AI training possible, is completely sold out through the end of 2026. Samsung is in the same position. Every wafer, every fab slot, every advanced packaging line is spoken for. The buyers? Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and a growing list of sovereign AI programs. Nvidia can't ship enough GPUs, not because of design constraints, but because the memory and packaging capacity doesn't exist.

The downstream effects are stacking up fast. Sony has reportedly pushed the PlayStation 6 timeline to 2028 or even 2029, not for lack of engineering talent, but because they can't secure advanced node capacity at TSMC. Elon Musk is publicly mulling the construction of a dedicated semiconductor fab for xAI, which tells you everything about how desperate the supply picture has become. When a man who already runs Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink thinks he needs to vertically integrate into chip manufacturing, the market is broken.

Here's the angle nobody is covering: Bitcoin ASIC manufacturers, Bitmain, MicroBT, Canaan, all compete for the same foundry capacity at TSMC and Samsung. When hyperscalers are willing to pay any price for wafer starts, mining hardware gets pushed to the back of the queue. That means slower next-gen ASIC rollouts, higher hardware costs, and a de facto supply constraint on hashrate growth. The hashrate chart may look parabolic today, but the semiconductor bottleneck is a ceiling that's getting lower, not higher.

This is also inflation hiding in plain sight. When every piece of consumer electronics, cars, game consoles, medical devices, industrial equipment, gets more expensive because chip capacity is being absorbed by AI, that's a real cost increase that never shows up in CPI. The BLS doesn't have a line item for "your toaster now costs 30% more because Zuckerberg needed another 100,000 GPUs." But you'll feel it.

Bitcoin Is Cash, Not Just "Digital Gold"

Why it matters: Satoshi called it cash for a reason, settlement, not just store of value.

Ansel Lindner made a point worth amplifying: Bitcoin's settlement properties are what make it revolutionary, not just its scarcity. The "digital gold" narrative is useful marketing, but it undersells the protocol. Gold can't settle a $500 million transaction in ten minutes across borders with no counterparty risk. Bitcoin can. The cash properties, final settlement, permissionless transfer, programmable custody, are what central banks and institutions actually fear. Store of value is a feature. Settlement is the threat.

NUT-24: AI Agents Now Pay With Ecash

Why it matters: Bitcoin-native micropayments for the machine economy are live today.

Calle (creator of Cashu) just shipped NUT-24, a spec that lets AI agents pay for API calls using Cashu ecash over HTTP 402 responses. The flow is elegant: an agent hits an API, gets a 402 Payment Required response with a Cashu payment request, pays it with ecash tokens, and gets the data. No credit cards, no accounts, no KYC. Just sats for service. This is what the machine-to-machine economy looks like, and it runs on Bitcoin rails. The HTTP 402 status code was reserved for "future use" since 1997. It just found its purpose.

2,000 Chinese "Fishing Vessels" Practiced a Naval Blockade

Why it matters: China's maritime militia rehearsing Taiwan Strait blockade threatens the global semiconductor supply.

Per the New York Times, roughly 2,000 Chinese vessels, nominally fishing boats, functionally a maritime militia, recently conducted exercises consistent with a naval blockade of the Taiwan Strait. This isn't subtle. Taiwan produces over 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductors through TSMC. A blockade wouldn't just be a geopolitical crisis, it would be an extinction-level event for the global tech supply chain. Tie this back to the lead story: the AI boom has already exhausted spare capacity. A Taiwan disruption would make the current shortage look quaint. Every nation that hasn't started building domestic fab capacity is gambling with its economic sovereignty.

Age Verification Is About De-Anonymizing Adults

Why it matters: Identity verification at point of posting kills pseudonymous speech.

Preston Byrne flagged what should be obvious but keeps getting buried: age verification laws aren't really about protecting children. They're about building the infrastructure to tie every online account to a verified real-world identity. Once you require government ID to access a website, you've killed pseudonymous speech. Every whistleblower, dissident, and politically inconvenient poster becomes identifiable. The "think of the children" framing is the Trojan horse. The payload is a national digital identity requirement for internet access. Bitcoiners should be especially wary, the same infrastructure gets repurposed for financial surveillance overnight.

The Fed Wants Banks Back in the Mortgage Game

Why it matters: Loosening lending rules into deteriorating credit conditions echoes 2008.

Fed Vice Chair Michelle Bowman gave a speech calling for regulatory easing to bring banks back into mortgage lending. The timing is remarkable. Credit card delinquencies are rising, auto loan defaults are climbing, and commercial real estate is still in slow-motion collapse. The response? Make it easier to lend. This is the same playbook that preceded 2008, loosen standards during a credit deterioration, then act surprised when the defaults cascade. The Fed is trying to paper over a demand problem with supply-side credit expansion. If you've stacked sats, you already know how this movie ends.

CFTC Steps Up for Prediction Markets

Why it matters: Federal regulator protecting information markets from state crackdowns.

The CFTC is actively defending prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi against state-level gambling regulators trying to shut them down. This is a rare case of a federal agency doing something useful, recognizing that prediction markets are information discovery tools, not casinos. The ability to bet real money on outcomes produces better forecasts than polls, pundits, or models. State gambling commissions see a revenue and control threat. The CFTC sees a public good. For once, the feds are on the right side. Prediction markets are free speech with skin in the game.