As artificial intelligence becomes the dominant interface for work, creativity, and competition, some people are adapting to it far faster than others.

In this episode of Endgame, Amanda Cassatt sits down with Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi to explore a generational shift in technological advantage: the biggest winners of every major tech transition are not the most experienced, but the most “pluripotent.”

Younger people, who haven’t yet locked themselves into fixed professional identities, are better positioned to experiment and use new tools as leverage.Haseeb explains how AI intensifies this dynamic.

The key emerging skill is no longer traditional engineering or management, but the ability to talk to models. Younger builders are becoming fluent in prompting, cross-agent workflows, and systems where AI agents write, review, and coordinate each other, patterns discovered by people actively building, not by institutions.

This reframes what talent and leadership mean. The edge now belongs to those who remain cognitively flexible and let technology reshape how they think and work. In an AI-native world, the most effective founders aren’t the best coders or managers, but the ones who can reason about complex systems and continuously adapt alongside fast-moving tools.

Ultimately, AI becomes a generational filter. Those who grow up fluent in these systems will treat them as a natural extension of thought, while older cohorts experience them as something they must translate through. As with every technological shift, the people who adopt the medium as native are the ones who end up defining the future.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

01:23 The Intersection of AI and Crypto

06:13 The Role of AI Agents in Software Development

09:00 Shifting Profiles of Founders in Tech

11:55 The Future of Knowledge Work and AI

14:57 Decentralized AI and Security Concerns

17:57 The Future of AI and Crypto Integration

20:51 The Role of Stablecoins in the Crypto Ecosystem

24:01 The Evolution of Legal Systems in Tech

26:46 The Future of Labor and Capital in AI

30:01 Global Perspectives on AI and Crypto

32:54 The Future of Venture Capital in Tech

35:59 The Intergenerational Wealth Transfer of Crypto

39:01 The Future of AI and Crypto Regulation

42:04 The Role of Innovation in Crypto

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Technology is the most powerful force in history, and whether it liberates or consumes us depends entirely on how aligned it is with human agency.

For Amanda Cassatt, this belief underpins her techno-optimism: the conviction that progress must be actively built, not passively awaited. In this solo episode, she explains how she sees technology as upstream of culture, economics, and politics, and views optimism as a necessary stance for shaping systems that improve the future rather than accepting stagnation.

In her view, one of AI’s most powerful use cases will be hyper-addictive entertainment and persuasion, with millions of intelligent agents optimized to capture attention, shape behavior, and extract value.

But Cassatt argues that AI also holds the potential to act as a personal ally: an intelligent layer that enforces individual priorities, shields users from exploitative systems, and restores agency in an increasingly manipulative digital environment.As technology progresses, so will the need for “envelope technologies” and personal AI systems that protect users, preserve agency, and give people real control over the tools that mediate their lives.

For Cassatt, the future of technology hinges on alignment and ownership, determining whether we build systems that mine human attention or systems that empower humans to shape their own trajectories.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

01:31 Telling the Story of New Technology

05:13 Innovation or Financial Nihilism?

09:12 Birth of Two Markets

15:38 Key to Successful Startups

18:14 The Role of Brands

27:06 Stories to Understand the World

29:01 The AI Conundrum

39:02 Is AI the Tool or Are We?

44:11 The Case for Techno Optimism

Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast Edge City on X: https://x.com/JoinEdgeCityTimour Kosters on X: https://x.com/timourxyzAmanda on X: https://x.com/amandacassatt Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iSvbKOJWoEPiAoGmiulkd Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440 Substack: https://substack.com/@UCInZsV3L1nDGoFjxoNUnPQQ

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As nation-states double down on borders, nationalism, and readiness for war, some people are choosing not to wait around to see how that ends.

Amanda Cassatt sits down with Timour Kosters, who worked alongside Vitalik Buterin on Zuzalu, and co-founder of Edge City, a borderless pop-up society where highly driven builders, thinkers, and creators experiment with life beyond the nation-state. Emerging directly from the Zuzalu experiment in Montenegro, Edge City functions as a live prototype for post-national belonging, a place where identity, culture, and collaboration are designed deliberately rather than inherited by accident.

Timour explains how Zuzalu shaped Edge City’s core philosophy: opting out of national identity, rejecting reflexive patriotism, and building high-trust communities that can survive disagreement without collapsing into tribalism. Edge City offers sovereignty within, giving people a way to escape inherited identities, nationalistic pressures, and the growing assumption that global conflict is inevitable.

Heterogeneity and multidisciplinarity are intentional. Edge City incubates startups, launches new fields of inquiry, and partners with emerging cities and jurisdictions, turning the community itself into a platform for coordination and long-term impact. The result is a network that produces ideas, companies, and alliances that would be difficult or impossible to form inside traditional state structures.

Edge City even tracks an unusual metric of success: children, and conceptions. Including families is not sentimental, it is strategic. It binds people to the community, creates continuity across generations, and embeds the next cohort inside a society actively experimenting with alternatives to nation-states. In a world increasingly organized around borders and conflict, Edge City is betting that opting out early is the real advantage.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

01:05 Vitalik’s goal: a minimum viable “crazy thing” that’s long enough to become real life

03:00 What Zuzalu was really for (and Timour’s role running the AI track)

08:10 Edge City’s design goal: heterogeneity and multidisciplinarity (and the fault lines)

10:40 AI safety vs accelerationism, crypto skeptics, political diversity—and why debate is hard

16:50 Where Edge City fits in a world of geopolitical blocs

19:40 Timour’s personal relationship to Russia and why he’s not a nationalist

22:10 Can network societies become bridging nodes across spheres of influence?

24:10 Historical parallel: the “International” before WWI—and what’s different now

26:10 Fear as a political tool—and why hope is “really punk”

32:00 The missing step in the Network State: kinship before land

36:10 Startup example: Constellation and the compressed loop from idea → data → investors

41:20 Working with towns and jurisdictions: Esmeralda, Bhutan, and “drop-shipping” talent

47:10 Why kids are a North Star metric—and how families change the entire vibe

49:30 “Conceptions” as an internal joke metric—and what it signals about community health

51:00 Closing: building futures that feel livable, not hollow

Subscribe to Endgame: https://www.youtube.com/@endgamepodcast

Edge City on X: https://x.com/JoinEdgeCity

Timour on X: https://x.com/timourxyz

Amanda on X: https://x.com/amandacassatt

Serotonin on X: https://x.com/serotonin

Endgame on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iSvbKOJWoEPiAoGmiulkd

Endgame on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endgame-with-amanda-cassatt/id1801809440

Substack: https://substack.com/@UCInZsV3L1nDGoFjxoNUnPQQ