David Z. Morris, PhD
@davidzmorris.bsky.social
Crypto, Finance, and Fraud - davidzmorris.substack.com
"Stealing the Future: SBF and the Tech Utopians," Repeater Books
Crypto OG. X-CoinDesk, Fortune. PhD UIowa
'Hardcore' - NYMag
"Stealing the Future: SBF and the Tech Utopians," Repeater Books
Crypto OG. X-CoinDesk, Fortune. PhD UIowa
'Hardcore' - NYMag
Pinned
Dark Markets | David Z. Morris | Substack
Dark Markets is the Newsletter for Fringe Finance. David Z. Morris, PhD (CoinDesk, Fortune) is your guide to the squirming underbelly of capitalism, where markets are irrational, money is imaginary, a...
tinyurl.com
To reintroduce myself here on Bluesky: After my reporting on FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, I've been given the incredible opportunity to write a book for Repeater Books, cofounded by the legendary Mark Fisher.
Working title: "Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried and the Tech Utopians."
Working title: "Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried and the Tech Utopians."
This movie is the worst of both worlds: unearned over the top superhero mythologizing, and lazy, fumbling, intermittent action
Finally watching that new Crow movie and it's exactly as boring and awful as everyone said
January 18, 2026 at 4:27 AM
This movie is the worst of both worlds: unearned over the top superhero mythologizing, and lazy, fumbling, intermittent action
Finally watching that new Crow movie and it's exactly as boring and awful as everyone said
January 18, 2026 at 3:51 AM
Finally watching that new Crow movie and it's exactly as boring and awful as everyone said
Easily the highlight of a more generally incredible night, author Daniel Pinchbeck dropped by my talk at Codex last night.
I've been reading his work for probably 20 years. He asked me to sign a book.
The peaks just get higher.
I've been reading his work for probably 20 years. He asked me to sign a book.
The peaks just get higher.
January 16, 2026 at 4:22 PM
Easily the highlight of a more generally incredible night, author Daniel Pinchbeck dropped by my talk at Codex last night.
I've been reading his work for probably 20 years. He asked me to sign a book.
The peaks just get higher.
I've been reading his work for probably 20 years. He asked me to sign a book.
The peaks just get higher.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
“AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s homogenizing thinking.” The apt analogy is genetic inbreeding, ja? After a while, your “family tree“ doesn’t fork. Your cousin is also your sister, etc. “Sampling with replacement.“
January 14, 2026 at 5:51 PM
“AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s homogenizing thinking.” The apt analogy is genetic inbreeding, ja? After a while, your “family tree“ doesn’t fork. Your cousin is also your sister, etc. “Sampling with replacement.“
For Design Observer, I spoke to experts in visual perception and cognition, who have found compelling early evidence that AI-generated images are less effective at holding viewers' attention, largely because they are less complex.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
“Suddenly everyone’s life got a lot more similar”: AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s homogenizing thinking - DesignObserver
Research suggests generative AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s reshaping attention, identity, and how people understand their own stories.
designobserver.com
January 14, 2026 at 5:40 PM
For Design Observer, I spoke to experts in visual perception and cognition, who have found compelling early evidence that AI-generated images are less effective at holding viewers' attention, largely because they are less complex.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
As we watch a known fraudster manipulate a great power, it’s time to reckon with the true consequences of rampant financial fraud: not just isolated losses, but an entire society psychically traumatized into handing power to its worst actors.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
👁️ For Trump, Fascism is Just Another Scam
By elevating bad people and selling out consensus reality for profit, a tolerance for grifters helped lead us to this collapse.
open.substack.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:16 PM
As we watch a known fraudster manipulate a great power, it’s time to reckon with the true consequences of rampant financial fraud: not just isolated losses, but an entire society psychically traumatized into handing power to its worst actors.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
My first TikTok is going great
January 13, 2026 at 1:42 AM
My first TikTok is going great
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
"there is strong early evidence that AI images can be a turn-off for the very audiences design clients are hoping to persuade."
I was excited to dig in to research design experts are doing on GenAI imagery.
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
“Suddenly everyone’s life got a lot more similar”: AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s homogenizing thinking - DesignObserver
Research suggests generative AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s reshaping attention, identity, and how people understand their own stories.
designobserver.com
January 12, 2026 at 6:22 PM
"there is strong early evidence that AI images can be a turn-off for the very audiences design clients are hoping to persuade."
I was excited to dig in to research design experts are doing on GenAI imagery.
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
“Suddenly everyone’s life got a lot more similar”: AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s homogenizing thinking - DesignObserver
Research suggests generative AI isn’t just imitating creativity, it’s reshaping attention, identity, and how people understand their own stories.
designobserver.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:25 PM
I was excited to dig in to research design experts are doing on GenAI imagery.
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
Bottom line: GenAI is mathematically simpler than human-crafted images, and so fails to hold viewer attention.
It's likely very bad for advertising, its key commercial use case.
designobserver.com/suddenly-eve...
Join me for a rescheduled book talk about how @SBF_FTX was a precursor of the techno-utopian authoritarianism whose consequences we are living with right now.
In conversation with Adam Lowenstein of @TheProspect.
Thursday January 15, Codex Books, 1 Bleeker Street, Manhattan.
In conversation with Adam Lowenstein of @TheProspect.
Thursday January 15, Codex Books, 1 Bleeker Street, Manhattan.
January 12, 2026 at 4:53 PM
Join me for a rescheduled book talk about how @SBF_FTX was a precursor of the techno-utopian authoritarianism whose consequences we are living with right now.
In conversation with Adam Lowenstein of @TheProspect.
Thursday January 15, Codex Books, 1 Bleeker Street, Manhattan.
In conversation with Adam Lowenstein of @TheProspect.
Thursday January 15, Codex Books, 1 Bleeker Street, Manhattan.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
the DSA, the Federal Reserve, and the ladies who lunch have formed a popular front — it remains only to see if any elected Democrats will join them.
January 12, 2026 at 12:59 AM
the DSA, the Federal Reserve, and the ladies who lunch have formed a popular front — it remains only to see if any elected Democrats will join them.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
ICE killed a Black man, Keith Porter, 7 days before Renee Good, and I hadn't heard about it until today. His vigils went unnoticed. His life came and gone and America forgot to blink.
Two Americas.
Two Americas.
January 8, 2026 at 8:06 PM
ICE killed a Black man, Keith Porter, 7 days before Renee Good, and I hadn't heard about it until today. His vigils went unnoticed. His life came and gone and America forgot to blink.
Two Americas.
Two Americas.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
A Republican elected official proudly declaring he has no problem with agents of the state shooting unarmed citizens in the face if they annoy the regime.
It is impossible to make democracy work with a party that not only tolerates people like this, but elevates them to positions of influence.
It is impossible to make democracy work with a party that not only tolerates people like this, but elevates them to positions of influence.
Rep. Randy Fine: "If you impede the actions of our law enforcement as they seek to repel foreign invaders from our country, you get what's coming to you. I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved."
January 8, 2026 at 7:30 PM
A Republican elected official proudly declaring he has no problem with agents of the state shooting unarmed citizens in the face if they annoy the regime.
It is impossible to make democracy work with a party that not only tolerates people like this, but elevates them to positions of influence.
It is impossible to make democracy work with a party that not only tolerates people like this, but elevates them to positions of influence.
I appeared on New Books in Economics to talk about my book “Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia.”
“It dives into the thought processes driving not just SBF," said my host, "But a lot of other tech elites.”
megaphone.link/NBNK5466962448
“It dives into the thought processes driving not just SBF," said my host, "But a lot of other tech elites.”
megaphone.link/NBNK5466962448
David Morris, "Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia" (Watkins Media, 2025) by New Books in Economics
megaphone.link
January 7, 2026 at 7:04 PM
I appeared on New Books in Economics to talk about my book “Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia.”
“It dives into the thought processes driving not just SBF," said my host, "But a lot of other tech elites.”
megaphone.link/NBNK5466962448
“It dives into the thought processes driving not just SBF," said my host, "But a lot of other tech elites.”
megaphone.link/NBNK5466962448
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
✨ Updated preprint ✨
Iris van Rooij & Olivia Guest (2026). Combining Psychology with Artificial Intelligence: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? PsyArXiv osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/aue4m_v2 @olivia.science
Our aim is to make these ideas accessible for a.o. psych students. Hope we succeeded 🙂
Iris van Rooij & Olivia Guest (2026). Combining Psychology with Artificial Intelligence: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? PsyArXiv osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/aue4m_v2 @olivia.science
Our aim is to make these ideas accessible for a.o. psych students. Hope we succeeded 🙂
![Figure 1
Illustration of why AI systems cannot realistically scale to human cognition within the foreseeable future: (b) Human cognitive capacities (such as reasoning, communication, problem solving, learning, concept formation, planning etc.) can handle unbounded situations across many domains, ranging from simple to complex. (a) Engineers create AI systems using machine learning from human data. (d) In an attempt to approximate human cognition a lot of data is consumed. (c) Making AI systems that approximate human cognition is intractable (van Rooij, Guest, et al., 2024), i.e., the required resources (e.g. time, data) grows prohibitively fast as input domains get more complex, leading to diminishing returns. (a) Any existing AI system is
created in limited time (hours, months or years, not millennia or eons). Therefore, existing AI systems cannot realistically have the domain-general cognitive capacities that humans have. [Made with elements from freepik.com.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:24ngrqljhck7hpvbgrg7a23k/bafkreie5dbxbxpaszqwfbgne6pi7kf26im6chq45olvzxyyrg7eitq6uue@jpeg)
January 6, 2026 at 5:41 PM
✨ Updated preprint ✨
Iris van Rooij & Olivia Guest (2026). Combining Psychology with Artificial Intelligence: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? PsyArXiv osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/aue4m_v2 @olivia.science
Our aim is to make these ideas accessible for a.o. psych students. Hope we succeeded 🙂
Iris van Rooij & Olivia Guest (2026). Combining Psychology with Artificial Intelligence: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? PsyArXiv osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/aue4m_v2 @olivia.science
Our aim is to make these ideas accessible for a.o. psych students. Hope we succeeded 🙂
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
The fact that Silicon Valley is full of amateur race scientists isn’t just a coincidence: it has actively misdirected billions of dollars towards neural network/LLM based AI models that are ultimately little more than a parlour trick.
January 6, 2026 at 6:25 PM
The fact that Silicon Valley is full of amateur race scientists isn’t just a coincidence: it has actively misdirected billions of dollars towards neural network/LLM based AI models that are ultimately little more than a parlour trick.
Easily the most shocking fact from Karen Hao’s's "Empire of AI" so far is that OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever championed compute scale as a path to AGI because he thought ~"animals with larger brains are more intelligent."
This is false both on a species and individual level!
This is false both on a species and individual level!
January 6, 2026 at 6:25 PM
Easily the most shocking fact from Karen Hao’s's "Empire of AI" so far is that OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever championed compute scale as a path to AGI because he thought ~"animals with larger brains are more intelligent."
This is false both on a species and individual level!
This is false both on a species and individual level!
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
Fucking crazy parapolitics and American degeneration via crypto Mormonism. @davidzmorris.bsky.social has hooked a great story davidzmorris.substack.com/p/the-libra-...
👁️ The Libra Fraud and the "Mormon Manson": Hayden Davis, Donald Trump, and Cult Politics (Part 1)
A murderous Polygamist sect connects the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro to cryptocurrency fraud.
davidzmorris.substack.com
January 5, 2026 at 7:05 PM
Fucking crazy parapolitics and American degeneration via crypto Mormonism. @davidzmorris.bsky.social has hooked a great story davidzmorris.substack.com/p/the-libra-...
And now for the greatest challenge of my life:
Do I have the willpower to defeat semaglutides
Do I have the willpower to defeat semaglutides
January 5, 2026 at 8:40 PM
And now for the greatest challenge of my life:
Do I have the willpower to defeat semaglutides
Do I have the willpower to defeat semaglutides
Today, I wrote about one of the most bizarre connective webs in recent history:
The lineage from Evril LeBaron, the mass-murdering “Mormon Manson,” and Hayden Davis, the scammer behind $Libra, which led to impeachment for Argentinian President Javier Milei.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
The lineage from Evril LeBaron, the mass-murdering “Mormon Manson,” and Hayden Davis, the scammer behind $Libra, which led to impeachment for Argentinian President Javier Milei.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
👁️ The Libra Fraud and the "Mormon Manson": Hayden Davis, Donald Trump, and Cult Politics (Part 1)
A murderous Polygamist sect connects the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro to cryptocurrency fraud.
open.substack.com
January 5, 2026 at 6:47 PM
Today, I wrote about one of the most bizarre connective webs in recent history:
The lineage from Evril LeBaron, the mass-murdering “Mormon Manson,” and Hayden Davis, the scammer behind $Libra, which led to impeachment for Argentinian President Javier Milei.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
The lineage from Evril LeBaron, the mass-murdering “Mormon Manson,” and Hayden Davis, the scammer behind $Libra, which led to impeachment for Argentinian President Javier Milei.
open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
Comments from Maduro over the past few years I find important.
January 3, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Comments from Maduro over the past few years I find important.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
The US government is gonna do what it always does: Coup Latin America to preserve American investments. Like Prospera.
We are losing COUNTRIES to tech fascism, to the Network State, every year now.
We are losing COUNTRIES to tech fascism, to the Network State, every year now.
November 29, 2025 at 2:45 AM
The US government is gonna do what it always does: Coup Latin America to preserve American investments. Like Prospera.
We are losing COUNTRIES to tech fascism, to the Network State, every year now.
We are losing COUNTRIES to tech fascism, to the Network State, every year now.
Reposted by David Z. Morris, PhD
The most opened edition of DEPTH PERCEPTION was @markyarm.bsky.social's conversation with MSNBC’s @chrislhayes.bsky.social about his book, 'The Sirens’ Call,' which explores how tech has made so many of us lose focus.
depthperceptionbyll.substack.com/p/msnbc-chri...
depthperceptionbyll.substack.com/p/msnbc-chri...
December 31, 2025 at 6:12 PM
The most opened edition of DEPTH PERCEPTION was @markyarm.bsky.social's conversation with MSNBC’s @chrislhayes.bsky.social about his book, 'The Sirens’ Call,' which explores how tech has made so many of us lose focus.
depthperceptionbyll.substack.com/p/msnbc-chri...
depthperceptionbyll.substack.com/p/msnbc-chri...
Finally feel like an actual professional financial journalist (paying full freight for an FT subscription)
December 31, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Finally feel like an actual professional financial journalist (paying full freight for an FT subscription)