Layered Money Update: The Token Layer
Revelations about the AI revolution's impact on bitcoin and the global economy continue.
Article brought to you by:
Dear Readers,
This will be an honest letter. It comes from a place of uncertainty for what the future holds, conviction in my own research and original thesis, and a desire to stay current.
As a professional in the investment industry, I have seen a pair of seismic shifts.
The first one was in 2016, when I felt the final trigger to dive into bitcoin. There was part of me in a panic once I understood it, a panic that was sourced from being late.
It turns out I was late relative to others already there, but early enough to capitalize.
Get 30% off your first year.
The second seismic shift was ChatGPT. I was not an early adopter, and I certainly missed the Nvidia trade, the only trade that has outworked bitcoin over several time horizons. In hindsight, capturing Nvidia’s 600% return, trailing three years, was a slam dunk, seeing the success of ChatGPT. Regret isn’t my style, so instead I am trying to learn from my mistake of, as a global macro analyst, not identifying such a powerful global trend sooner; one that not only took Nvidia to heights but has altered how global business works.
A third seismic event has occurred recently, and it’s affecting my entire global macro framework and investment thesis. Today’s letter ventures into uncharted territory.
My research objective is to discover global trends as they develop. Layered Money was one way to describe what was happening with the emergence of bitcoin, but I recently realized that the framework applies to AI in an unexpected way. Layered Money readers, let’s get a little cosmic.
TL;DR Summary
A seismic shift is underway. I missed Nvidia. I will not miss the Claude Opus 4.5 moment. Anthropic’s revenue trajectory confirms that something profound is happening under the hood of the global economy.
Tokens are becoming the new ‘oil.’ They are the gatekeepers to how work gets done. The price of anything digital (your kid’s tuition, your tax filing, your research access) may soon anchor to the cost of AI compute the way a steak reflects the price of energy.
Bitcoin’s role is strengthened by this shift. Credit will expand to build the token economy. That money needs somewhere to go on the savings side. Bitcoin remains the only scarce digital commodity with a measurable supply, and that matters in a productive world of tokens.