Trump Brokers Gaza Peace Deal, National Guard in Chicago, OpenAI/AMD, AI Roundtripping, Gold Rally

Summary

The All-In Podcast welcomes back fifth bestie Brad Gerstner for a wide-ranging episode covering major geopolitical, political, and tech stories. The episode opens with a discussion of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal brokered by President Trump, with Sacks explaining how Trump pressured both sides into accepting the agreement, earning praise even from longtime critics. Chamath frames the peace deal in economic terms, arguing Middle Eastern nations need stability to monetize their oil reserves before alternative energy sources diminish their value. Brad highlights the “moonshot presidency” theme, noting simultaneous peace efforts across Gaza, Ukraine-Russia, and US-China relations.

The conversation shifts to a heated debate about the National Guard deployment in Chicago to protect ICE agents conducting immigration raids. Sacks defends the operation as a limited, lawful mission to enforce immigration laws against violent Antifa protesters, while Jason pushes back on the methods, arguing the violence and cruelty of ICE operations are damaging Trump’s approval ratings and derailing his popular 2.0 agenda. Chamath notes that Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s decision to send state troops to crime hotspots demonstrates this is fundamentally a bipartisan issue about public safety.

The tech portion features a deep dive into AMD’s bet-the-farm deal with OpenAI, worth potentially $60 billion over five years. Brad explains that AMD gave away 10% of the company in warrants because Nvidia has captured nearly 100% of incremental AI data center revenue since 2022 and AMD’s MI450 chip is their one shot to get back in the game. The hosts debate the AI roundtripping concern, with Chamath comparing it to well-established floor loan practices in the auto industry. The episode closes with discussions on the gold rally hitting $4,000 for the first time and Polymarket receiving a $2 billion investment from NYSE parent company ICE at a $9 billion valuation.

Highlights

”The moonshot presidency”

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“We might call Trump the moonshot presidency. If you think about everything he’s trying to accomplish, even Hillary Clinton said if he pulls off peace between Ukraine and Russia, she herself will nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. There are moonshots going on everywhere: China, AI, re-industrialization, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East.” — Brad Gerstner, 7:00

”Lisa’s bet-the-farm moment”

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“In 2022, Nvidia and AMD had basically the same revenue, $25 billion. This year, Nvidia will do 10x that at roughly $210-230 billion, and AMD will do $33 billion. Nvidia’s captured nearly 100% of the incremental AI data center revenues. Lisa gave away 10% of the company. Either the MI450 gets adopted and they get back into the game, or they’re out.” — Brad Gerstner, 46:00

”He who controls the supply chain controls the empire”

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“Sam was in Korea shaking hands with SK Hynix and Samsung. He’s buying forward capacity on HBM because now he can allocate that share. It reminded me of this Rothschild quote: ‘I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire.’” — Chamath Palihapitiya, 55:00

”There’s not a dark GPU in the world”

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“Everybody’s looking for the bubble. Everybody’s like, ‘It’s dark fiber. There’s no way you can 10x your revenues at Nvidia without it being a bubble.’ But the reality today is Nvidia trades at a lower price-to-earnings multiple than it did at $200 a share. There is not a dark GPU in the world today.” — Brad Gerstner, 1:07:00

”Everything is becoming a market”

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“Everything is becoming a market. You’ll have sports that look like markets, knowledge that becomes a market, and then equities and debt instruments that’ll be tokenized, fungible. You can just take a long or short position on almost anything.” — Chamath Palihapitiya, 1:21:20

Key Points

• Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (2:48) - Trump brokered a multi-stage peace deal including ceasefire, unrestricted aid to Gaza, release of all Israeli hostages, and withdrawal of Israeli troops; even longtime critic Aaron David Miller praised Trump’s unprecedented willingness to pressure Netanyahu
• Peace Deal Economics (5:30) - Chamath argues Middle Eastern nations need stability to monetize oil reserves before alternative energy sources like nuclear and solar diminish their value over the next 10-20 years
• Moonshot Presidency (7:00) - Brad frames Trump’s simultaneous peace efforts across Gaza, Ukraine-Russia, China, and India-Pakistan as high-risk, high-reward moonshots, with even Hillary Clinton saying she’d nominate him for Nobel Prize
• Polymarket 90% on Hostages (10:30) - Prediction market shows 90% chance all Israeli hostages will be returned by end of month
• National Guard in Chicago (13:27) - 500 National Guard troops deployed to protect ICE agents after 800 illegal aliens arrested in Operation Midway Blitz; Mayor Brandon Johnson established ice-free zones on city property
• DC Success Story (18:00) - Sacks points to dramatic crime reduction in DC after federal intervention as proof the policy works; homicides and carjackings fell, restaurants filled back up
• Wes Moore Strategy (25:00) - Maryland’s Democratic governor sent state troops to crime hotspots while maintaining anti-Trump rhetoric publicly; Chamath calls this the smart bipartisan approach
• Trump Approval at All-Time Low (30:00) - Jason presents charts showing Trump’s net approval at historic lows, with immigration approval dropping from +10% to -5% and inflation approval down 27%
• Deportation Historical Context (33:00) - Brad notes deportations averaged 200K/year under Clinton, 300K peaking at 400K under Obama, plummeted under Biden, and Trump is back at the 300-400K trend line
• AMD-OpenAI $60B Deal (44:02) - AMD gave OpenAI warrants for up to 160 million shares (10% of company) in exchange for commitment to purchase 6 gigawatts of next-gen GPUs; AMD stock up 35%
• Nvidia vs AMD Revenue Gap (46:00) - In 2022 both had ~$25B revenue; in 2025 Nvidia will do $210-230B while AMD does $33B, showing Nvidia captured virtually all incremental AI demand
• Why Gigawatts Not GPUs (50:00) - Brad explains deals now framed in gigawatts because chip generations aren’t comparable; power in, tokens out is the unifying metric
• HBM Supply Chain Power (55:00) - Chamath explains Sam Altman’s Korea trip to SK Hynix and Samsung was about securing forward HBM capacity, giving OpenAI allocation power over the critical memory supply chain
• $50B Per Gigawatt Rule (1:02:00) - Brad establishes rule of thumb: each gigawatt data center costs about $50 billion between chips, land, power, and shell
• AI TAM Estimate (1:05:00) - 500 million business users spending ~$3,000 on SaaS, plus a billion consumers; Brad estimates incremental generative AI revenue already at $100B in 2026 and growing to well over $1 trillion by 2030
• Roundtripping Not a Concern (1:06:00) - Chamath compares AI deal structures to auto industry floor loans; Brad notes Nvidia will generate $450B in cash flow 2025-2027, making their equity investments “mice nuts”
• Gold Breaks $4,000 (1:15:00) - Gold up 50% for the year, outpacing Bitcoin (+30%), NASDAQ (+19%); driven by Tether Gold stablecoin issuance, central bank rebalancing, and loss of confidence in central bank policy
• China Gold Reserves (1:18:00) - China’s central bank increased gold reserves for 11 consecutive months, adding 40,000 ounces in September alone, diversifying away from US dollar after Biden-era Swift sanctions
• Polymarket $9B Valuation (1:20:38) - NYSE parent company ICE invested $2B at $9B valuation; will distribute Polymarket to thousands of financial institutions globally; 98% chance of US launch in 2025

Mentions

Companies

• OpenAI (44:02) - Closed massive GPU deal with AMD worth potentially $60B over 5 years; also has deal with Nvidia; revenue ramping from $5B to $25B to potentially $100B
• AMD (44:02) - Gave away 10% of company to OpenAI in warrants; stock up 35%; MI450 chip is their one shot to compete with Nvidia
• Nvidia (46:00) - $4.5T largest company in world; captured nearly 100% of incremental AI data center revenue since 2022; will generate $450B cash flow 2025-2027
• Polymarket (1:20:38) - Received $2B investment from NYSE parent ICE at $9B valuation; founded 2020; valued at $350M last year
• Tether (1:16:00) - Issuing Tether Gold stablecoin that custodies physical gold; identified as major new net buyer driving gold rally
• Robinhood (0:47) - Chamath’s stock rocketed due to Trump crypto policies; combined with Uber stock price hit 250
• SK Hynix (55:00) - Controls majority of HBM memory supply chain critical for AI chips
• Samsung (55:00) - HBM supplier; OpenAI’s Sam Altman visited Korea to secure forward capacity
• XAI (1:02:00) - Elon’s AI company talking about scaling to 10 gigawatt data centers; released new video generation model
• Coreweave (1:02:00) - Standing up data centers; underwrites GPU useful life to six years
• Broadcom (1:04:00) - Provides IP for custom ASICs used by big AI companies
• Cerebras (1:04:00) - Competitor in inference chip market
• Groq (1:04:00) - Chamath’s company; competitor in inference chip space

Products & Technologies

• HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) (55:00) - Critical memory structure for AI chips; SK Hynix and Samsung control supply; AMD’s next architecture depends on it
• MI450 (48:00) - AMD’s next-gen GPU; make-or-break chip to compete with Nvidia’s Vera Rubin
• Vera Rubin / Rubin Ultra (48:00) - Nvidia’s upcoming chip architectures that AMD must compete against
• Tether Gold (XAUT) (1:16:00) - Gold-backed stablecoin driving new demand for physical gold

People

• Brad Gerstner (1:23) - Fifth bestie returns to podcast; runs Altimeter Capital; provided detailed analysis on AMD deal and AI market
• Lisa Su (46:00) - AMD CEO who made bet-the-farm decision to give 10% of company to OpenAI
• Sam Altman (55:00) - OpenAI CEO who secured HBM capacity from SK Hynix and Samsung in Korea
• Jensen Huang (48:00) - Nvidia CEO; said competitor chips priced at zero still can’t match Nvidia on performance per watt
• Jared Kushner (6:00) - Helped negotiate Middle East peace while also closing largest LBO ever in same week
• Aaron David Miller (3:30) - Longtime US Middle East peace negotiator who praised Trump’s unprecedented willingness to pressure both sides
• Wes Moore (25:00) - Maryland Democratic governor who sent state troops to crime hotspots; cited as smart bipartisan approach
• Brandon Johnson (13:27) - Chicago Mayor who established ice-free zones and filed lawsuit to stop federal ICE operations
• JB Pritzker (13:27) - Illinois Governor opposed to ICE operations in Chicago
• Shane Coplan (1:20:38) - Polymarket founder; company valued at $9B after NYSE parent ICE investment
• Jeff Sprecher (1:21:20) - ICE/NYSE CEO who invested $2B in Polymarket
• Daniel Lurie (35:00) - San Francisco mayor live-blogging arrests of 100 fugitives per night on Twitter and Instagram
• Vinny Lingham (1:15:00) - Friend of the pod who called the gold rally for the last two years

Surprising Quotes

“I paid less than a penny for my shares, but yes, it went from 13. Well, this is a typical liberal. You benefit from our policies and then you trash them.” — David Sacks to Chamath, 0:53

“We’re spending $30 billion on ICE now. We’ve tripled the budget. We’re spending $100,000 per person deported. If we simply fine that 79-year-old car wash owner $10,000 every time he hires an illegal alien, this would stop.” — Jason Calacanis, 37:00

“Price the competitor chips at zero and it’s still a more effective and economic decision to choose Nvidia.” — Brad Gerstner quoting Jensen Huang, 1:03:00

“40% of US GDP growth this year is AI. And AI companies have accounted for 80% of the gain in US stocks this year.” — David Sacks, 1:10:00

“We professionalized the wisdom of the crowds. We’ve known for 150 years that crowds are smarter than experts. In 1907, Francis Galton got 800 farmers together to guess the weight of an ox. The crowd got a lot closer than the experts.” — Brad Gerstner, 1:23:00

Transcript

0:00 All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. That’s right. It’s your favorite podcast. It’s your podcasters’s favorite podcast, the All-In podcast. We’re back, baby. Chamath Palihapitiya is here. Our chairman, our dictator. How you doing, brother? Great. Yeah. Fantastic. You know, you put the Uber stock price and the Robinhood stock price together, 150. I’m annoying. 200 I’m insufferable. And 250 we just hit. I am off the reservation officially hopping the fence. So yeah, life’s good.

0:45 All right. With us again, David Sacks, the Zar. By the way, what’s the reason why your Robinhood stock is through the roof? Because of the crypto policies of the Trump administration. Yeah, that’s fair. Fair. That’s half of it. That’s why it’s gone from like $3 to $130 billion. Two dollars. I paid less than a penny for my shares, but yes, it went from 13. Well, this is a typical liberal. You benefit from our policies and then you trash them. I’m a moderate, independent moderate.

1:12 Here we go. Now it’s starting already. It’s going to be a great week. Everybody buckle up. And he puts the namaste in your payday. Our fifth bestie is back. Brad, welcome home. It’s great to be here. I went out and got a haircut. Welcome back into the fold. Welcome back. I got a haircut on the occasion.

1:32 Jason, do you know how long it’s been since I was last on this pod? I don’t know. I’ve invited you like 12 times, but I think the emails, there’s something going on with email. I didn’t get any of my White House invitations. You didn’t get any all-in invitations. I mean, it’s been so long since I was on this pod. I went back and listened. The last show I was on, we were still talking about how great Chamath’s SPACs were before they crashed the entire market and it was already back. I mean, it was before Saxy Poo saved the entire crypto industry from prison and certain bankruptcy. And Jason, it was before you got so tilted with Democrats that you went completely off-grid, moved to Texas, and bought a bunch of guns.

2:48 We got to start off with the Israel Hamas ceasefire deal thanks to President Trump who announced it just yesterday. He announced the first phase of a multi-stage peace deal. Notably, it was on the day after the 2-year anniversary of the horrific October 7th attacks which led obviously to the invasion of Gaza. And this war has been particularly devastating for Gaza. Most of the region’s been destroyed. 2.3 million residents have been displaced. And according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed. The deal is based off of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which the White House published last week, and the Israeli government will vote on the deal today.

3:30 Sacks, tell us what went so right here in those negotiations. I mean, right now, it looks like both sides have agreed to this deal. And the first phase of the deal is for there to be a ceasefire to end active fighting. It’s going to allow unrestricted aid into Gaza. It’s going to allow the release of all remaining Israeli hostages. And Israel is going to release 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and start withdrawing Israeli troops. This appears to be a big breakthrough. I do think it is a big accomplishment by the president in terms of how this happened is because the president was willing to both cajole and coerce and use pressure with respect to both sides of the conflict.

4:30 Longtime diplomat Aaron David Miller who advised both Republican and Democrat administrations on Middle East peace negotiations for the last three decades said, “Donald Trump has demonstrated a degree of will unlike any other president, Republican or Democrat. He has pressed an Israeli prime minister in a way that none of his predecessors have ever done on an issue that prime minister considers vital to his political survival and the way he would define Israeli security requirements.” He wrote a very interesting article in 2005 called “Israel’s Lawyer” in which he was self-critical of the US’s previous efforts, saying that in the past the US saw its role as representing Israel as opposed to being an objective negotiator.

5:30 Chamath, obviously this is going to have a pretty positive impact on the region. What is it going to look like post peace? I don’t know. Nobody knows. I think most of these countries are facing a very obvious problem which is they have a resource that is becoming increasingly less valuable. That resource is oil. The practical reality is you want peace so that you can focus on the forward monetization of your reserves. The longer it sits in the ground, the less valuable it is because it doesn’t add to your balance sheet. Eventually in the 10 or 15 or 20 year time frame, you’ll have an abundance of electrons from nuclear, from gas, from solar. All of these things will ultimately diminish the net long bid to oil. If there’s stability, then the entire focus needs to be on the monetization of the oil asset.

7:00 Brad, your thoughts on the broader implications? Shout out to a friend of the pod, Jared Kushner. In one week, Jared did the largest LBO ever and then also helped negotiate Middle East peace. It’s unbelievable. We might call Trump the moonshot presidency if you think about everything he’s trying to accomplish. Even Hillary Clinton said if he pulls off peace between Ukraine and Russia, she herself will nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. There are moonshots going on everywhere: China, AI, re-industrialization, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East. These are high-risk, high-reward efforts. After the horror of the October 7th attacks, the chaos in Syria, the attacks by Yemen, the escalations fueled by Iran, he decapitated Iran. We brought Syria into the fold. We’re on the verge of expanding the Abraham Accords. If this happens, Witoff, Kushner, and the president all deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

10:30 Polymarket showing a 90% chance that all Israeli hostages will be returned by the end of the month. And then also getting aid to these poor people suffering in Gaza would also be nice to see. I’ll just say that the funny part here is watching the entire global left that’s been demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for almost two years. They’ve suddenly gone strangely silent now that President Trump has seemingly engineered that ceasefire. The Nobel committee is announcing this Friday. I do think that a record like this would absolutely win any other president the Nobel Prize. President Trump has ended seven wars in seven months before this one. Obama won just for being elected.

13:27 The National Guard has deployed troops into Chicago to protect ICE agents. Over the last month, DHS has been executing Operation Midway Blitz in the city. 800 illegal aliens have been arrested. And there was a notable raid on September 30th by Border Patrol and FBI agents in Chicago’s Southshore neighborhood where 37 illegal aliens were arrested in an apartment complex. This included flashbangs and a Blackhawk helicopter. Trump has 500 National Guard troops standing by from Illinois and Texas. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are obviously opposed to ICE actions. They filed a lawsuit to stop it. Mayor Johnson signed executive orders establishing ice-free zones across the city.

18:00 Sacks, your thoughts? I think the place starts with the Democrat attitude towards crime. You had the murder of that young Ukrainian woman, Ireina, in a subway by D. Carlos Brown. He was arrested 14 times and still left out. There was testimony of Steven Federico before a congressional subcommittee who recounted how his daughter Logan was murdered by Alexander Dicki, a man with over 25 felony arrests in San Francisco. In DC, the president had the ability to clean up the streets. Homicides and carjackings have fallen dramatically. Everyone who actually lives in DC is very happy about this situation and the restaurants are full again, people feel safe to go out.

25:00 Can I say something? You know why it’s popular and it’s working? Because of what Wes Moore did. He’s the perfect example of what a Democrat governor should be doing, which is obviously he has to blather on with his anti-Trump rhetoric, but behind the scenes he sends in state troops and makes sure there’s a surge of policing in all of these crime-ridden areas because he knows that the policy works. This is where what’s happening in Illinois is a bit of a head-scratcher because if you see how badly run and how crime-infested Chicago is, why wouldn’t JB Pritzker do what Wes Moore does?

30:00 Jason presents Trump approval rating data. His polling is at an all-time low. When you look at this chart of Donald Trump’s approval rating, you’ll see there are four dips: liberation day tariffs, the LA protests, not releasing the Epstein files in July, and now the Chicago ICE raids. If you look at his wheelhouse: immigration approval plummeted from plus 10% down to minus about 5%. The economy, he’s down 15%. Inflation, he’s down 27%. Only 17% of Americans believe Trump is making them better off. 58% don’t want the National Guard in our cities.

33:00 Brad provides historical context on deportations. Court-ordered removals and deportations averaged 200,000 per year 1997 to 2000 under Clinton. They averaged 300,000 a year, peaking at 400,000 under Obama. Deportations plummeted under Biden. Now Trump is back to the trend line of 300 to 400,000 deportations and removals. These are court-ordered removals. This has been a bipartisan consistent thing for 30 years. I think the smart Democrats are realizing this is a bipartisan issue.

37:00 Jason pushes back on the methods. We’re spending $30 billion on ICE now. We’ve tripled the budget. We’re spending $100,000 per person deported. If we simply fine that 79-year-old car wash owner $10,000 every time he hires an illegal alien, this would stop. A very simple method would be to go to where they’re being employed. You say, “I’d like to see everybody’s papers.” Whichever person doesn’t have papers, you give a $10,000 fine and come back the next day with a $20,000 fine. It would be incredibly effective without the brutality.

44:02 AMD and OpenAI just closed a massive GPU deal. Could be worth 60 billion or more over the next 5 years. AMD stock rocketed up 35% since the announcement. OpenAI committed to purchasing six gigawatts worth of AMD’s next-gen GPUs. AMD granted OpenAI warrants for up to 160 million shares or 10% of the company. Brad, break down the deal. This is a bet the farm bet by Lisa Su. She’s given away 10% of the company if the compute gets deployed. Why would she make a bet the farm bet? Remember, Nvidia just did a huge deal with OpenAI. They didn’t give away any of their company. In fact, they got the right to buy part of OpenAI.

46:00 Look at this chart. In 2022, Nvidia and AMD had basically the same revenue, $25 billion. This year, Nvidia will do 10x that at roughly $210-230 billion, and AMD will do $33 billion. Not much more than they were doing when the companies were tied. So Nvidia’s captured nearly 100% of the incremental AI data center revenues over the last 2.5 years. This is because Nvidia has this ecosystem of software, networking, extreme code design. The unit of compute is no longer the chip, it’s the entire data center. Performance per watt is everything.

50:00 Why have we switched from saying 100,000 H100s to now framing these in gigawatts? Chips change. 100,000 H100s is not apples for apples with Grace Blackwell 200s or GB300s. A unifying metric is the power that goes in. Everything starts with the power. It’s the constrained resource. It’s power in and tokens out and we can compare that over time and normalize across all these different chips. It’s not just these two companies: you got Tranium by Amazon, TPU by Google, Cerebras, Groq, etc.

55:00 Chamath connects the Rothschild quote to AI supply chains. Sam was in Korea shaking hands with SK Hynix and Samsung. My initial thought was why is OpenAI doing a deal with the memory maker? Then it occurred to me: he’s buying forward capacity on HBM because now he can allocate that share. When you look at the HBM market, it is effectively Nvidia who takes up the majority and then Google. AMD’s next architecture needs to sit on top of HBM. The companies that control energy and memory inputs will have leverage to ask for equity and upside in a way they never could before.

1:02:00 Brad on the total buildout costs. Rule of thumb: each gigawatt data center is about $50 billion of investment between the chips, the land, power, shell. OpenAI and Elon are talking about scaling to 10 gigawatt data centers. That’s a $500 billion investment per data center if it gets that big. They’re still working on the 1 gigawatt data centers but from there they’re going to go to 2 or 3 gigawatts next year and then to five over the next couple of years.

1:05:00 Sacks on the demand picture. I was struck by Brad’s chart about Nvidia’s revenue in the out years. The amount of capex going into data centers more than a few years from now is very hard to predict. On the demand side, it depends on new applications. The demand for tokens depends not just on AI chatbots but on new agents, video generation models. We are in the very early stages. It’s a little bit like the early days of the internet with the dotcom bubble where everyone thought there had been too much fiber built out, but then social networking came along, YouTube came along. All the compute will eventually get used up by new applications.

1:07:00 Brad counters the bubble narrative. Everybody’s looking for the bubble. Everybody’s like, “It’s dark fiber.” But the reality today is Nvidia trades at a lower price-to-earnings multiple than it did at $200 a share. Think about what the term dark fiber means: we were laying fiber in the ground that remained dark. We did not have the demand. There is not a dark GPU in the world today. There’s not going to be a dark GPU next year.

1:09:00 Chamath raises the ROI question. The question is what is the ROI on input and output tokens per use case? How many of those tokens are generally gross margin negative? How many are unprofitable? How many are profitable? I think that’s what people are trying to debate. We don’t totally yet know. Also, Meta published that there’s a big disconnect in failure rates of certain classes of hardware at the server rack system level, failing 9 to 20% of the time. We’re pushing the boundaries of physics at two and three nanometer scale.

1:10:00 Sacks wraps the AI discussion. 40% of US GDP growth this year is AI. AI companies have accounted for 80% of the gain in US stocks this year. I think it’s a wonderful thing that the US is on the forefront of building out this technological revolution. We just need to not screw it up with excessive regulation at the state level, excessive regulation at the federal level.

1:12:00 Brad on roundtripping and circular AI deals. Nvidia is effectively extending credit to its buyers. The question is are these companies creditworthy? Will this investment yield economically viable results? My view is there is substance to the transaction because there is downstream demand for AI applications and tokens. OpenAI’s revenue ramp rate is 5 billion to 25 billion to 100 billion. There are no dark GPUs. The tokens are being consumed. Every consumer, every enterprise, every national sovereign wants this. We should be on the lookout for sham transactions, but what’s occurring with Nvidia is not a sham.

1:15:00 Gold rally discussion. Gold just broke $4,000 for the first time ever this week. Up over 50% for the year, outpacing Bitcoin at 30% and NASDAQ at 19%. The US dollar is down 8% year to date. Chamath explains: Gold is up because there are many more net new buyers. The most important is Tether issuing Tether Gold stablecoin. Central banks are rebalancing. Macro funds have decided central banks aren’t to be trusted. It’s net new speculation, net new stablecoin related issuance, and a loss of confidence in central bank policy around the world.

1:18:00 Sacks adds the China angle. China’s central bank has been increasing its gold reserves for 11 consecutive months. They added 40,000 ounces in September alone. China’s gold reserves totaled 74 million ounces valued at $283 billion. This trend started during the Biden administration with the Ukraine war because the Biden administration used the US dollar as a geopolitical weapon, cutting off access to Swift and freezing Russian assets. The BRICS countries are looking at developing gold-backed certificates to settle international trade flows.

1:20:38 Polymarket receives $2 billion investment from NYSE owner ICE at $9 billion post-money valuation. They will distribute Polymarket to thousands of financial institutions globally. Polymarket was only founded in 2020, valued at $350 million last year before the election and $1.2 billion earlier this year. Founders Fund made a nice investment. 98% chance Polymarket goes live in the US in 2025.

1:21:20 Chamath on the future of markets. I talked to Jeff Sprecher the day he did the investment. Everything is becoming a market. You’re going to see this convergence where eventually you’ll have sports that look like markets, knowledge that becomes a market, and then equities and debt instruments that’ll be tokenized, fungible. You can just take a long or short position on almost anything. What Shane is leading the charge on is democratizing and financializing all this infrastructure to run via tokens on chains.

1:23:00 Brad on the wisdom of crowds. I love the fact we now professionalized the wisdom of the crowds. We’ve known for 150 years that crowds are smarter than experts. Francis Galton in 1907 got 800 farmers together to guess the weight of an ox. The crowd got a lot closer than the experts. When people put money on something, the crowd gets even smarter. Kudos to Shane, you’ve really taken Polymarket to a higher level.

1:25:00 Show wraps with banter. Another amazing, respectful, fascinating, insightful episode. Welcome home, fifth bestie, Brad Gerstner. Go check out his other pod, BG2. We have to get Brad and Friedberg on the same pod. What if people prefer a science corner or a market corner? Tell us in the comments. Anything’s possible on the world’s number one podcast.