Crypto Week Kicks Off in Congress, Will Tesla Invest in xAI? & Google’s $2.4B Windsurf Deal

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2:29Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is July 15th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices all rose as Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 100 % on Russia unless it agrees to halt hostilities in Ukraine within 50 days. The Nasdaq reached a record high. Bitcoin also hit a new all-time high above$123 ,000. We'll talk more about that in a second. And the yield on 30-year treasuries hit its highest level in more than a month, as investors awaited June's inflation report due this morning. Okay, what else is happening? Bitcoin hit a record high yesterday of$123 ,000.

3:11It's up 28 % year-to-date and 100 % in the past year. This rally is coming as three pieces of pro-crypto legislation make their way through the House, emphasizing the Trump administration's pro-crypto agenda. The House Committee on Financial Services even officially decreed that this week is Crypto Week in a statement that outlines their, quote, efforts to make America the crypto capital of the world. So a great week for Bitcoin and the crypto community is understandably very excited right now. Big rally happening in Bitcoin. Now, why is this happening right now? Well, one piece of it that we should recognize is the dollar.

3:53As we know, the dollar has fallen 10 % so far this year. It's the worst start of the year since 1973 for the dollar. So since we are looking at the dollar price of Bitcoin, when the dollar falls in value, that means that there are now more dollars for every Bitcoin. So that is partly why we're seeing this rise in the value of Bitcoin. If we were to look at the price of Bitcoin in, say, euros, for example, then you will find that actually this rally is a lot less historic. If we were to look at the price in Russian rubles, which is the best performing currency of the year so far, then actually Bitcoin has not hit a record high this year.

4:30It's actually down since the beginning of the year. So just the first point, a lot of this has to do with our perspective. From an American perspective, Bitcoin is looking really strong, but you also have to realize that that is also because the US dollar is really weak right now. Now, does that mean that the declining dollar is the only thing that is driving this Bitcoin rally? No. There are other forces at play here that are adding to this demand for Bitcoin. And one of the biggest forces is this new crypto regulation that we're seeing from Congress. So what is that regulation? Well, Well, there are three main bills.

5:07We have the Genius Act, we have the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, and we have the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. Now, what do those three apps actually do? Well, here is Hilary Allen. She is a law professor at American University. She's going to break it down for us. So what these do in many ways is take apart regulatory regimes that have been in place for a long time to protect consumers, investors, things like that. So, for example, there's been banking regulation for a long time that says that only banks can accept deposits. But the Genius Act says that you don't have to be a bank to issue a stablecoin, which is the functional equivalent of a deposit.

5:51The Genius Act also takes apart the separation between what we had banking and commerce. So it used to be that Walmart could not open a bank, but Walmart will be allowed to issue a stablecoin. And more to the point, so will Meta, so will X. So we're taking apart protections that I think have stood us in good stead for a long time. Similarly, the Clarity Act, the goal here is to basically make a big hole in the securities laws so that the crypto industry doesn't have to comply with the securities laws. But the problem with that is not only is it problematic for the crypto industry to enshrine the fact that they can issue things to investors without registering with the SEC, without having to disclose financials, without having the panoply of investor protections that the SEC provides.

6:45It creates this loophole basically on the basis of whether you use a blockchain or not. So there's an opportunity there for vast swathes of the financial system, the traditional financial system, to migrate into this new regime by using a blockchain. And that is going to be highly problematic for investors, even if they aren't investing in crypto. The Anti-CBDC Act is something that I think has gotten a lot less attention. It basically sort of wants to rule out the possibility of the Federal Reserve introducing its own central bank digital currency on some kind of blockchain. frankly the thing to be really careful about with this legislation is depending on its final form it could actually hobble the federal reserve in other ways if it restricts them from engaging in technological improvements and things like that how much of a leg up do these regulations actually offer the crypto industry so it's a good question so bitcoin is in many respects a ponzi like asset It has nothing behind it.

7:53Its value only comes from being able to attract more investment. And the name of the game lately has been trying to encourage institutional investment to get sort of the biggest investors to play in this space. But part of the appeal has been that these assets are not regulated and others are. So the underlying blockchain technology itself is pretty clunky, doesn't scale well. If that was your only advantage, you wouldn't be doing well as a business if the blockchain technology was your only competitive edge. But what has happened is by using this blockchain, a lot of people have gotten away with not complying with the rules that everybody else has to comply with.

8:37And that is creating a competitive edge. So one of the things I've been wondering about is with these loopholes that these pieces of legislation are opening up that aren't just for the crypto industry but will attract people from other parts of finance as well, will that actually be counterproductive for crypto? In other words, if you can get any stock without having to comply with the securities laws, does Bitcoin retain its appeal? And so I wonder if this might end up in the long run being counterproductive for the crypto industry. Well, Hillary makes an important point here, and I'm glad she brought it up.

9:18And that is that the crypto industry seems to be a little bit too excited by a piece of legislation that could actually come back to bite them. And I would add something on top of that. And that is that while, yes, this regulation recognizes digital assets as an asset class, yes, it's supposed to be pro-crypto. But it also brings in several laws that the crypto industry was originally designed to not comply with. For example, one of the most important themes in crypto is the abolition of this thing called KYC, or know your customer. And this is basically a law in banking that says that you have to know the identification of the customers of your bank.

9:59Crypto was supposed to get rid of that. That was one of the original theses of crypto. But the Genius Act says that actually, if you want to issue a stablecoin, you have to comply with KYC. Put another way, this is basically just regular banking all over again. At the same time, crypto was also supposed to get rid of the dollar, or at least untether from the dollar. Well, the Genius Act says that actually all stablecoins have to be backed one-to-one with US dollars or with US treasuries. Again, there goes the original thesis of crypto. In fact, a lot of this new regulation is just reiterating things that we already know.

10:38The Clarity Act, for example, clarifies that Bitcoin isn't a security, and therefore, it should not be regulated by the SEC. That's the big change in that regulation. But it's funny, the SEC already clarified that. In fact, that's exactly what Gary Gensler said when he was head of the agency. So what does this even change for Bitcoin? Claire spoke with Corey Freya, a former advisor to Gary Gensler, who offered a perfect anecdote that really captures the futility of all of this regulation. There's a great quote from Bradley Garlinghouse. He's the CEO of Ripple. And in 2017, before he entered into litigation with the SEC, he said on a number of interviews, podcasts, public appearances, something to the effect of regulatory clarity is just a euphemism for we want to ignore SEC regulations.

11:36So look, we're not just going to ignore it. The Bitcoin rally is legit, no question about it. But the forces that are driving that rally are, in our view, less legit. You've got, on the one hand, a dollar that is declining and increasing that price of Bitcoin, and at the same time, regulation that is barely regulating. So yes, today, one Bitcoin is now worth more than 120 ,000 US dollars. But besides that number, we don't see anything new here.

12:12Tesla will be holding a shareholder vote on whether or not the company should invest in XAI. This comes just after Musk's decision to have SpaceX invest$2 billion in his AI startup, which was also merged with X at the beginning of this year. This vote may prove difficult, as shareholders have already expressed concern regarding Musk's activities outside of Tesla. Tesla stock closed up just over 1 % yesterday on news of the vote. Okay, so Elon wants Tesla to invest in XAI. How much does he want to invest? We don't know the exact number yet, but we do know the valuation that XAI is currently seeking, and that is$200 billion, which would make XAI more valuable than Blackstone, more valuable than Uber, more valuable than AT &T.

12:59Put another way, this isn't just like a little angel investment into a small little AI startup. This is a very significant investment. This would be a very significant decision by the shareholders of Tesla, who are already, by the way, in kind of a precarious position. And the stock is down nearly 20 % year to date. Sales are in major decline. Profitability is shrinking. So to invest in this new AI company while you're strapped for cash seems to be a slightly strange decision. Why would you do that right now? Well, of course, the one detail that I have left out that might explain all of this is that XAI isn't just any AI company.

13:41XAI is Elon Musk's AI company. He created it. He owns it. And as the owner of that company, he has every incentive to sell shares in XAI for as much money as possible. So what do we have? We have the CEO of a public company asking his shareholders to buy shares in his other company, which seems to us to be a conflict of interest. But is it? We spoke with Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware to find out. Full disclosure, yes, Charles is my uncle. We've had him on the podcast before. We are related, but don't let that color your opinion of him.

14:23He is a leading expert in the field of corporate governance, and we are very happy to have him. People originally invested in Tesla, so it's said, because of the AI potential of Tesla. It wasn't just a car company. It was a lot more. And about a year or so ago, as I recall, Mr. Musk said, well, I will develop AI for this company, but you're going to have to give me a huge chunk of the company Tesla for me to do this. Well, that raises conflict of interest issues because he said, if you don't, I will set up my own AI company. And that is what is known as the corporate – violating something we call the corporate opportunity doctrine or possibly, which says that if you're an officer or director of a company and an opportunity, business opportunity comes to your company, you have to allow your company to have it first before you look at it.

15:19But here he's saying, well, I will take it on my own unless you give me a bigger chunk of the company that I've already invested in. You invested in two, Tesla. And the idea is that you can't – an officer or director has a duty of loyalty to their own company, and you can't take an opportunity of the company for yourself and not allow the other shareholders to share it. it. Now, the resolution of this typically is the shareholder would bring a suit and said, look, this is a corporate opportunity. You can't take it on your own. It has to be shared by all of us. That was why we invested in this company.

15:56But in this case, he moved the company to Texas. Texas now says for you to bring a suit like that, a derivative suit, you have to have at least 3 % of the stock of the company itself. Well, a company's biggest Tesla, I doubt if anyone, other than Mr. Musk, and maybe one or two others, a few others, have that kind of position. So the opportunity to bring a suit in Texas is basically almost impossible on this. So what do you do next? Well, he comes back and says, okay, I'll give you a chance to invest in my new company. All right, that makes some sense if you think about it. But for him to have the capital to invest in that company, as he did with X, he'd have to probably sell some Tesla stock, which he doesn't want to do.

16:42So instead, he asked Tesla to fund his new company, which obviously he's going to control. And ultimately, I would expect that the shareholders would take less of the gains and certainly have no control than if the Tesla company itself had made the initial investment. It's called having your cake and eating it too. Is there any precedent for this? Have you seen anything like this before? This is one for the books. Has it ever existed like this? I don't know, perhaps somewhere, but I've never heard of it. And it's extraordinary. It's very clever. But the question is, ultimately, in our system, if you take the public's money, your responsibilities change.

17:27If you owned 100 % of Tesla, as you would have other companies he has, you do what you wish. But this is different. It's a public company, and you have taken other people's money. And that's where your responsibilities change. And that's why we have such tight guardrails around this sort of thing, a la corporate opportunity, because if you didn't, people wouldn't invest. Or certainly they wouldn't invest in equities. They would simply use debt, which is not a great way to start a new business. And that's the problem. This has implications not just for Tesla, but you think about it, the entire system that we have for investing.

18:05And if this goes as I guess he wishes it will go, it has profound implications for other businesses. That was Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, or as he is known to me, Uncle Charles. Well, if there's anyone out there that still believes that this is a good fiduciary decision, that he is just doing this for the good of Tesla shareholders, I'm not sure how you could believe that after what Charles just told us. But I would also just encourage you to simply examine the company that they're buying. And that is an unbelievably expensive company with a very underwhelming business.

18:48I mean, this is the company whose chatbot just turned into Hitler last week. This is a company that is burning through a billion dollars per month. This is a company that is competing with Gemini and OpenAI and all of these other extremely strong AI companies. They've got 11 times fewer users than Gemini, and they've got 17 times fewer users than OpenAI. And yet they are seeking a valuation of$200 billion, which means they're going to be trading at 400 times forward sales. and you compare that to OpenAI, which trades at 24 times forward sales. So this company is just way over value. And then you realize the only reason it's priced that high is because the primary investor has been Elon Musk.

19:31I mean, as we covered a few months ago, Elon has been investing his own money into his own companies at ridiculously high valuations, basically in order to make the price look normal. He did it with X at$45 billion, and he's doing it again with XAI. And now he wants Tesla shareholders to just join him along for the ride. So if Charles's comments didn't confirm it for you, I would hope that just looking at the business itself might confirm it. This is a total and utter conflict of interest. So unless the Tesla shareholders get some gigantic discount here, unless they get those XAI shares for literal cents on the dollar, then there's just no question.

20:14This investment makes no sense. After the break, another chapter in the AI acquihiring story. Stay with us.

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22:13We'll be right back. All that time once spent on folding and sorting, watching and waiting, to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like birdhouse building you. Yeah, the birds are going to love this. Or dollhouse building you. Yeah, the kids are going to love this. Or maybe house DJ track building to the bass drop you. Oh yeah, the kids are gonna love this.

22:50Do you love it? Oh, that's a good you.

23:00It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

23:10We're back with ProfG Markets. Google is set to pay$2.4 billion to licensed technology from Windsurf, an AI coding assistant platform, as well as hire multiple top researchers, including Windsurf's CEO. This comes just months after it was reported that OpenAI was acquiring Windsurf for roughly$3 billion. That deal fell through, though, due to conflicts with Microsoft. That's a whole other story, but then Google swooped in and bought the technology and the CEO. Then, yesterday, the saga continued when it was announced that Cognition, another AI coding startup, would be acquiring what's left of Winsurf.

23:49The exact terms of that deal are unclear, but a statement from a co-founder of Cognition confirms that all Winsurf IP, its branding, its product, its customers, and all remaining employees will become a part of Cognition. Additionally, all Windsurf employees will, quote, participate financially in this deal. But like I said, the deals are uncertain. I did exchange some DMs with the new CEO of Windsurf, Jeff Wang, who I've had on the podcast and who I think is fantastic. I asked him for an update and he said, quote, it's been a day. So we don't know that much right now, but we do know that Google paid$2.5 billion for this licensing deal.

24:27And this brings us to a theme that we have discussed before, and that is the takeover of AI by bid tech. This strategy where instead of buying up competition and triggering antitrust enforcement, you just invest in these AI companies and then attach all of these crazy strings that result in something very similar to just owning the company. We've seen it with Microsoft and OpenAI. We've seen it with Microsoft and Inflection, Meta and Scale AI, Amazon and Adept AI, Amazon and Covariant, Google and Character AI. The list goes on. In each case, big tech invests in the company and then they essentially take control of that company.

25:08And so now we're seeing a new twist in the story, but ultimately the same story. Google is paying$2.5 billion to quote, license the technology from Winsurf and take along with it, the founder and CEO. If that sounds like an acquisition to you, channeling my inner Scott Galloway here, trust your instincts. This is an acquisition dressed up not as an investment, but now as a licensing deal. But it's the same story. And it's becoming almost comical how frequently this is happening in AI. There is not one reputable AI startup in the world right now that is not in some way dependent or controlled by big tech.

25:49Big tech has compromised the entire industry. And we're now devolving into an ecosystem where competition just doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, you could be a great AI company. You could be building models even better than Gemini, better than Llama, better than Chachi BT. But the reality is that sooner or later, you're gonna get a knock on the door and one of Mark Zuckerberg or Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai is gonna show up with terms of your surrender and also the biggest bag of money you've ever seen in your life. And they're going to say, take the money, join us. And you're not going to say no, because these companies, they've just gotten so rich and so powerful that they can pay you anything to turn you to the dark side.

26:32And to the dark side, you will turn. We've seen it over and over again during the biggest technological revolution in the past 20 years at least. And all of the value is being accrued to a handful of multi-trillion dollar companies. In this case, Google takes the technology of Winsurf. They also take a bunch of the researchers and the CEO. And we'll see what happens with this wrinkle in the story where Cognition comes and buys what's left. But the solution here is simple. The FTC and the DOJ need to start doing their job. I mean, the point of these agencies isn't just to review acquisitions. It's to prevent monopolization.