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Ripple’s bosses, Brad Garlinghouse and Monica Long, have been globetrotting like it’s their job (oh wait, it is). In just five days, they hit Dublin, London, Singapore, and Sydney-because why stay in one time zone when you can confuse your body clock for world domination? According to XFinanceBull (yes, that’s a real name), this isn’t just a holiday; it’s a strategic blitz to make XRP the Beyoncé of global payments. And yes, they’re throwing AI into the mix because, well, 2023.

In a move that’s either genius or the financial equivalent of putting pineapple on pizza, Steak ‘n Shake has expanded its “burger-to- Bitcoin” strategy. On March 16, the Biglari Holdings-owned chain took to social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter, because why not add more confusion to the world?) to share its crypto love story. The company claims Bitcoin payments are faster and cheaper than traditional methods, allowing them to reinvest savings into better food quality. Because, you know, nothing says “premium burger” like a side of blockchain.

This week, the well-known billionaire investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, bestowed upon us a thought exercise that merits the utmost attention. His argument is one that seeks to unsettle the foundations of our current financial projections. According to him, AI’s swift and ever-advancing disruption will make it impossible for any company to reasonably predict its future cash flows beyond a mere five years. This, he claims, will result in a collapse of the terminal value that currently underpins the vast majority of equity valuations, accounting for a staggering 60 to 80 percent of them.

Imagine, if you will, a vast landscape of idle hardware, lying dormant like a slumbering giant, while the masses cry out for its strength. Independent operators, in their isolation, allow their GPUs to gather dust, unaware of the desperate pleas of developers seeking to harness their power for inference, embeddings, or the noble art of model fine-tuning. It is a comedy of errors, a farce played out on the grand stage of technological progress.

Last week, institutional investors decided to toss a staggering $1.06 billion into the crypto cauldron, extending a three-week bonanza of inflows, as reported by our good friends at CoinShares. This steady stream of cash suggests that big-money players are not entirely convinced we’re all doomed, despite the rising ruckus across the pond.

Alike, the altcoin cohort, those wanderers of lesser esteem, found their own mobility. Ethereum waddled back into the $2,200 corridor, and Cardano, a bit dazed, jumped ten paces above it; such small victualls are rarely worth a broader moral commentary, but they tickle the communal nervous system.

If Bitcoin can summon the courage to breach $74,000 with conviction (and by “conviction,” I mean “volume”), it’ll likely sashay back to $80,000, a level it once called home before its January meltdown. But should it stumble-oh, the humanity!-it’ll retreat to its comfort zone between $62,000 and $72,000, where it’s been sulking for over a month.

Against this backdrop, retail demand for oil exposure is surging. Trailing one-month retail purchases in pure-play oil ETFs hit a record $211 million on Thursday.

In its wake, $113 million in short positions were unceremoniously liquidated within the hour-a financial guillotine, if you will. The broader crypto bazaar, ever the opportunist, has plumped by over $320 billion since the conflict’s début in late February. Such is the theater of war and wealth.

Though the price action dances like a drunkard at a masquerade, behold! New catalysts emerge-like mushrooms after rain-to fuel the optimism of those who dare to dream of profit.