Bitcoin’s Next BIG Move Could Be Decided In The Next 48 Hours | Jordi Visser & Jim Bianco

Higher rates are not expected to halt the AI infrastructure buildout because Anthropic and OpenAI reportedly have very high margins, but Anthropic is trailing OpenAI in compute and may need IPO capital to fund the gap. OpenAI systems were described as using 100,000 GPUs, with its next model expected to use 400,000.

The speakers argue that pausing AI development would not stop the infrastructure race because China is unlikely to slow down, favoring private-sector involvement in AI safety instead. At the same time, Anthropic’s potential IPO could require greater disclosure of risks, including potentially enormous product liability from AI-enabled attacks on critical infrastructure.

One speaker expects AI to disrupt every business over the next five years by changing growth rates and making some software companies difficult to value beyond a three-year horizon. That risk is concentrated in the market: 41 AI-related S&P 500 stocks represent about 48% of the index’s market capitalization, leaving the other 459 stocks capable of moving in the opposite direction.

The diesel market is being squeezed by reduced refining aimed at producing more gasoline, Russia’s lost refining capacity, and halted exports, pushing Europe toward U.S. supplies and higher prices. The speakers argue that rate hikes cannot quickly resolve an oil-driven supply shock because higher energy costs restrain spending while higher borrowing costs increase federal interest expense and the deficit.

Prediction markets were assigning an 80% to 90% probability to a Federal Reserve rate hike, and the speakers said probabilities at those levels have historically tended to precede a hike. One speaker argues that a 6% nominal-growth economy warrants rates near 6%, beginning with at least a 5% handle, while the 10-year yield’s rise from 3.60% to roughly 4.98% during Fed easing illustrates the market’s independent pressure on long-term borrowing costs.