Thursday links

Another chance for dinner with the President

Some good news on inflation: the cost of attending “the most exclusive dinner in the world” is falling fast.

In May of last year, you needed approximately $380,000 worth of the TRUMP memecoin to rank among the 220 holders who qualified for a dinner with the President. Entry to the VIP reception required roughly $5 million worth.

This was a bargain!

For comparison, a Super PAC once sold tickets to a “candlelight dinner” with the president for $1 million each. Donors were also offered a one-on-one meeting with the president for $5 million.

It’s an even bigger bargain now. Another dinner with TRUMP holders is scheduled for November and it looks dramatically easier to get an invite.

The event is a little more exclusive, with only 185 guests making the cut this time. But cheaper. Right now, the 100th registrant holds just 404 TRUMP, which is worth just $730 these days.

The 29th registrant — the last currently qualified for the VIP reception — holds 9,300 TRUMP, worth about $14,000.

In other words, the cost of attending the most exclusive dinner in the world appears to have fallen by at least 99.8% in about a year and a half.

Plus, you can sell your tokens immediately after the qualification window closes and get most of your money back!

Honestly, I might try it.

Mathpocalypse now?

Theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson captured the mixed feelings elicited by OpenAI’s release of 377 new results in mathematics yesterday. He describes it as “one of the biggest days in mathematical history” — but also a “mathpocalypse.” 

(Note: Aaronson is real. It’s the computer science he studies that’s theoretical.)

On the one hand, accelerating our understanding of math will accelerate our understanding of how the world works. One optimist thinks OpenAI’s results could lead to real-world advances like nuclear fusion, portable body scanners, and quantum sensors that could navigate the world without GPS.

On the other hand, people are increasingly worried that math is accelerating too quickly.  

The Institute for Advanced Study said, “It is now the case that AI can output mathematical arguments in situations without the human who prompted it being able to understand the arguments, verify them, or take responsibility for them.”

Another mathematician told Aaronson that seeing OpenAI’s results “felt like being teleported to the top of a mountain, surrounded by fog.” She appreciates the view, but would like to know how to get there on her own. 

In cryptography, the news has shifted the security debate from the threat posed by quantum computers to an even bigger threat posed by AI super-mathematicians.

The “Bitcoin security researcher” Justin Drake says it’s time for crypto investors to go into “bunker mode.” He recommends that all crypto assets be moved to fresh addresses that have never exposed their public keys (because AI might soon discover math that can break them).  

“Yesterday's OpenAI drop made it clear that mathematical superintelligence is upon us,” he declared. “We are about to live through weeks where centuries of mathematical progress happen.”

Cryptographer Matthew Green seems equally concerned: “I think we might lose public key cryptography,” he commented on X this morning.

If so, it won’t be just crypto assets at risk. Much of what you do on the internet — shopping, banking, logging into all kinds of accounts — is secured by public-key cryptography.

This remains speculative because none of the results published yesterday were directly related to the field of cryptography.

But Aaronson says they soon might. “My sources tell me that the AI companies have now started, gingerly and discreetly, investigating whether their latest internal models can break important cryptographic protocols and primitives.”

Yikes.

One reassuring thing is that the 377 problems that OpenAI solved were only 5% of the 8,000 problems they attempted. At school, that would earn them an F-.

Also, their solutions might not be very good. “It feels like something written by someone who’s on psychedelics,” Aaronson was told by another mathematician (his wife). “So much [is] unclear and doesn’t make sense.”

Good! If understanding is what counts, humans are still better at math than machines.

But anyone who uses either crypto or the internet should be wondering for how much longer.

Crypto security team gets positive review

The hackers who recently exploited NEAR Intents for $3.8 million in crypto included a message in a blockchain transaction that returned the funds the next day: “We were in the wrong.”

They also left some feedback on the experience that reads like a Yelp review: “Thank you to the NEAR team for being respectful, constructive, and cordial during the return process.”

That probably isn’t why they decided to return the funds. More likely it’s because the team at NEAR had figured out who they were.

Either way, the end of the hackers’ onchain apology suggests they learned a lesson: “Remember to always use bug bounties!”

The cryptoization of traditional finance

As of this month, every child in America with a Social Security number automatically has a “Trump Account” opened in their name. According to the original rules, parents and others could contribute cash to the accounts, which would then be invested in an index fund.

Now, though, Treasury rules also allow charities to donate by sending shares of individual companies to all or some of the accounts.

The donations cannot be rejected — which means that Trump Accounts are now like crypto addresses: anyone can send assets to anyone’s account, unsolicited. 

Donations can be targeted at groups of as few as 5,000 accounts.

The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip says this creates the possibility of a company sending shares to children in an area where it wants to build a data center. Or a major bank attempting to influence policy with bribes: “If every 9-year-old owned two shares of a bank, a corporate-tax increase or tightened regulation would hurt the kids.”

I’m not sure that’s much of a risk. There must be cheaper ways to lobby the government than carpet bombing children with hundreds of millions of shares.

But unsolicited donations of assets do make TradFi look a little more like crypto.

Fortunately, donations have to be approved by the Treasury, so at least kids won’t be spammed with meme stocks the way every crypto address is spammed with memecoins.

Until there’s an exchange-listed version of TRUMP, that is.

— Byron Gilliam

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