A $16B AI hedge fund lost two-thirds of its value in ~72 hours this week and got sold overnight. That's where this week's episode starts. Six stories:

1/ Situational Awareness — @leopoldasch's AI fund — fell 67% as chip and tech equities pulled back. Facing margin calls from @GoldmanSachs, @jpmorgan, @BankofAmerica and @Citi, he moved a $16B equity book to Ken Griffin's @Citadel at a steep discount in a single 24-hour negotiation. Outbid @JaneStreet and @Millennium. The fund is still +80% YTD. It's abandoning bank leverage entirely and keeps a $5B @AnthropicAI stake. The lesson isn't "young manager blew up." It's short-duration prime broker debt.

2/ @elonmusk launched X Money on @X. 6% yield on deposits ($1k min), 3% cashback, real-time transfers, a @Visa debit card. Not a bank — it runs on @CrossRiverBank rails. Nobody has explained who funds the 6%.

3/ @Meta raised full-year capex guidance to $72B, with $17B in the quarter. Multi-gigawatt clusters. $14.3B for 49% of @scale_AI, plus @alexandr_wang and researchers poached from @OpenAI and @GoogleDeepMind at up to $200M a package. He said he wouldn't rent the data centres out. He's renting them out.

4/ @circle bought @IBM's blockchain patent portfolio — ~1,000 patents, 680+ families. Goes from near-zero to America's largest holder. IBM backs Open USD, the rival standard. It just sold its patents to USDC.

5/ Visa cut ~7% of staff — roughly 2,600 roles, mostly tech and product — citing AI. Same quarter: revenue up 14%, beating estimates. Not cost-cutting. Reallocation. @Mastercard, @PayPal and @Block all cut this year too. Real displacement, or AI-washing a post-COVID correction?

6/ An early @stripe engineer bought a bank. Darragh Buckley's @increase acquired Twin City Bank in Longview, WA — $114.6M in assets, single branch — and rebranded it Increase Bank. His infra already processes ~$500B/yr for clients including @tryramp and @GustoHQ. @Klarna applied for a charter. @Wise got rejected. Buckley just bought one instead.