Expanding Frontiers: An Alternative Investments & Machine Learning Podcast

This episode discusses three sources offering a comprehensive overview of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs). They explain this emerging concept where blockchain technology is used to incentivize individuals to build and operate real-world infrastructure. DePINs are transforming sectors like telecommunications (Helium), energy grids (Powerledger), and cloud computing (Render Network) by crowdsourcing resources ...

This episode discusses the research paper, "Hybrid Quantum Circuits for Interpretable Financial Sentiment.” The study applies the Quantum Distributional Compositional Circuit (QDisCoCirc) framework to perform three-class sentiment analysis on financial texts, motivated by the need for greater mechanistic interpretability than offered by traditional Large Language Models. The methodology involves segmenting sentences into short, ind...

This episode discusses the research paper, "Leveraging AI tools in finance education: exploring student perceptions, emotional reactions and educator experiences," which presents a mixed-methods study assessing the integration of Artificial Intelligence tools within finance education. Quantitative data, gathered through a Synthetic Index of Use of AI Tools (SIUAIT) and observational studies using facial expression analysis, reveal ...

This episode, the fourth of a four-part series, discusses the appendices from a book that introduces a new scientific framework called Intelligent Economics, which posits that complex, persistent systems like economies evolve to minimize their total computational cost, a principle termed the Sorter's Law. Appendix A meticulously details the formal foundations of this theory, deriving the Lagrangian—the instantaneous computational c...

The Nucleation of Symbiotic Futures

This episode, the third of a four-part series, discusses an extended excerpt (Chapters 16 through 21) from a book titled "THE LAST ECONOMY: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics" by Emad Mostaque, released on August 22, 2025. The author, who wrote the white paper for the Intelligent Internet, outlines the profound civilizational choice presented by the Intelligence Inversion, where human la...

This episode, the second of a four-part series, discusses an extended excerpt (Chapters 9 through 15) from a book titled "THE LAST ECONOMY: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics" by Emad Mostaque, released on August 22, 2025. The author, who is the founder of Stability AI, presents a unified theory of economics that reframes the field not as a clash of ideologies but as a study of three fundamental, mathematically necessary f...

This episode, the first of a four-part series, discusses an extended excerpt (Chapters 1 through 8) from a book titled "THE LAST ECONOMY: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics" by Emad Mostaque, released on August 22, 2025. The author, who is the founder of Stability AI, argues that the world is facing an "Intelligence Inversion," the final economic phase transition where Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make human economic ...

This episode discusses a comprehensive legal analysis of the proposed Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act of 2025, which aims to fundamentally reform U.S. digital asset regulation. The core of the Act is establishing a function-based regulatory framework that shifts authority from the current ad hoc system to clear statutory standards overseen jointly by the SEC and CFTC. Key features discussed include creating definitions for digital...

This episode discussed an academic essay that compares two major legislative frameworks—the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) and the U.S. Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act)—designed to regulate the growing $250 billion stablecoin market. The authors first identify four critical private law shortcomings in centralized stablecoins, exemplified by issuers Circ...

This episode reviews an extensive systematic literature review titled "A Systematic Literature Review of Asset Pricing: Insights from AI and Big Data," authored by Zynobia Barson and colleagues from the University of Tasmania. This academic work analyzes 81 papers on AI and asset pricing, 53 on big data and asset pricing, and 24 on their combined use, employing both bibliometric and thematic analyses to map the evolution of the fie...

In this episode we explore the relationship between virtual land returns in the metaverse, specifically from the Decentraland platform, and the returns of physical real estate markets, approximated by equity REIT indices. Using wavelet coherence analysis on data from 2019 to 2023, the study we discuss empirically shows that the correlation between the two asset classes is generally low, suggesting potential diversification benefits...

This episode investigates the adoption and impact of artificial intelligence (AI) within European venture capital (VC) firms, a topic previously under-researched despite AI's growing presence in finance. Based on survey data, the study we discuss reveals a significant increase in AI adoption since 2022, with screening emerging as its most common application. The research also identifies that VC firms with employees possessing stron...

This episode discusses a whitepaper that introduces the Intelligent Internet (II), a novel protocol designed to decentralize AI development and empower human agency. It proposes a "Third Path" by creating a "Bitcoin for the Intelligence Age," where Foundation Coins (FC) are minted only through Proof-of-Benefit (PoB), verifying societal good. The architecture includes three layers (Foundation, Culture, Personal) and is governed by p...

This episode explores and academic paper on the replication of hedge fund strategies using publicly available data and machine learning techniques, specifically autoencoders for dimension reduction and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for synthesizing additional data. The author aims to demonstrate that such replicated portfolios can outperform traditional hedge fund returns after accounting for fees and transaction costs, th...

This episode explores how deposit-taking institutions, exemplified by Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), are transforming into "synthetic hedge funds". It examines SVB's hybrid business model, which combined on-balance-sheet "private equity-style banking" with off-balance-sheet "hedge fund-like trading strategies". The analysis highlights how SVB's reliance on "factor-based models" and "premature hedging exits" exposed it to significant in...

In this episode, we review two academic papers investigating various aspects of hedge fund performance and investment strategies. One relatively new study primarily examines how macroeconomic factors and the inclusion of hedge fund strategies impact portfolio performance for risk-averse investors, particularly focusing on out-of-sample predictability and risk-adjusted returns. It highlights that integrating hedge funds and consider...

This episode examines different facets of the housing market and its interconnectedness with broader economic factors. It reviews three recent SSRN papers. One source explores how contractionary monetary policy can lead to higher homeowners’ insurance prices, particularly for financially constrained insurers with interest-rate-sensitive assets, subsequently impacting home prices and mortgage applications. The other source investiga...

This is the second Expanding Frontiers episode devoted to quantum computing for finance. It  explores the current (2024) state and future potential of Quantum Machine Learning (QML), specifically focusing on its applications within the financial services industry. We discuss various QML algorithms including Quantum Variational Classifiers, Quantum Kernel Estimation, and Quantum Neural Networks, and also touch upon quantum generativ...

This episode provides an overview of multimodal Financial Foundation Models (MFFMs), exploring their progress, potential applications, and associated challenges. It emphasizes the ubiquitous nature of multimodal financial data—including text, audio, images, and tabular information—in various financial applications like search, robo-advising, and trading. The paper review also addresses the development lifecycle of MFFMs, from pre-t...