Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedBen Thompson: belief
12 Feb 2026 Cheeky Pint Ben Thompson from Stratechery on AI ads, the end of SaaS, and the future of media
“Not just a six billion humans typing away, but agents generating stuff sort of constantly. And in that world, I think crypto as an identifier of authenticity is going to be more and more important.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Ben Thompson
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 12 Feb 2026
- Publisher
- Cheeky Pint
Transcript context
…What do you think of what's going on in crypto these days? What's crypto? No. I've always been a crypto defender. Just because digital scarcity is fundamentally interesting. It's probably even more interesting to this point in a world of infinite content, which you thought we had infinite content before, now we have infinite content on steroids. Not just a six billion humans typing away, but agents generating stuff sort of constantly. And in that world, I think crypto as an identifier of authenticity is going to be more and more important. At the end of the day, I want the original, I don't want a reproduction. And I'm optimistic about humans' ability to create value where it seemed impossible to ever exist. I'm literally a professional podcaster and content creator and get paid a lot of money to do it. Imagine explaining that to someone on the farm worried about automation. Speaking of that, you mentioned that a majority of Stratechery consumption is now in the audio form rather than the written form.…
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