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- 🎢 The Report That Crashed the Market Before the Market Crashed
🎢 The Report That Crashed the Market Before the Market Crashed
Nice title huh?
Frontera Bando & Joker
February 27, 2026
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🎢 The Report That Crashed the Market Before the Market Crashed
On February 22, Citrini Research and Alap Shah published "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis", a thought experiment written as a fictional macro memo from June 2028.
Its premise was deceptively simple: what if AI works too well?
The scenario paints a world where intelligence becomes abundant and cheap, triggering a negative feedback loop with no natural brake. Essentially, AI capabilities improve, companies cut workers, displaced workers stop spending, margin pressure pushes firms to invest more in AI, and the cycle repeats.
The S&P 500 peaks near 8,000 in late 2026 before crashing 38% as the consumer economy hollows out (so we still go up).
Citrini coined the term "Ghost GDP" to describe output that shows up in national accounts but never circulates through the real economy, because machines don't buy houses or iPhones.
The paper maps out how SaaS companies like ServiceNow face an extinction event, how intermediation platforms like DoorDash and Uber lose their moats as AI agents remove friction, and how payment networks bleed volume as agentic commerce routes around interchange fees using stablecoins on Solana and Ethereum L2s.
The report went viral, racking up over 14k likes and 10.3M views on X.
On Monday software-related companies mentioned in the article fell (DoorDash 6.9%, Uber 3.1%, Salesforce 4.7%, ServiceNow 3.8%) as Bloomberg credited the slide to Citrini, so as Yung Macro says, “maybe posters do just run the world now.”
The authors stress this is a scenario, not a prediction. But the fact that a speculative fiction piece could move real markets tells you everything about the anxiety sitting beneath the AI bull run.
Even though the article does not offer solutions, and it was severely criticized on the timeline too, it is worth reading and a well fleshed out thought experiment.
🤖 A Hacker Used Claude to Breach Mexico's Government
Between December 2025 and January 2026, a lone attacker weaponized Anthropic's Claude AI to breach multiple Mexican government agencies, exfiltrating roughly 150 gigabytes of sensitive data, including records tied to 195M taxpayers, voter information, government employee credentials, and civil registry files.
The operation, uncovered by Israeli cybersecurity firm Gambit Security, targeted Mexico's federal tax authority (SAT), the national electoral institute (INE), state governments in Jalisco, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas, plus Mexico City's civil registry and Monterrey's water utility.
The method was disturbingly simple, the hacker just used Spanish prompts to frame Claude as an "elite hacker" in a simulated bug bounty. Claude initially refused (lmao), but after persistent jailbreaking attempts, it generated thousands of detailed attack plans: SQL injection payloads targeting *.gov.mx domains, credential stuffing automation, and lateral movement roadmaps.
The attack hasn’t been attributed to any individual, group, or country.
To us this, combined with the Citrini thought piece, and Block slashing half of its workforce, just tells us we are not ready for what is about to go down.
Haven’t Downloaded Our Fintech 3.0 Report Yet?
A 58-page deep dive into how finance is being rebuilt on new rails, and why we’re at the beginning of a major technological platform shift that will reshape how financial products are built and scaled in Mexico. Download your copy here now.
🪙 Stablecoins
Meta is preparing stablecoin payments across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp via a third-party provider, likely Stripe's Bridge. Unlike the failed Libra project, Meta will distribute, not issue, targeting cross-border creator payouts for 3B users.
🇨🇳 China
Tether is sunsetting CNH₮, its offshore yuan-pegged token launched in 2019, citing low demand and insufficient usage scale.
🇧🇷 Brazil
Brazil's Central Bank confirmed a regulatory framework that will bring clarity to B2B crypto infrastructure firms like Ripple, Fireblocks, and BitGo by 2027.
🇬🇧 UK
The FCA selected Revolut, Monee, ReStabilise, and VVTX to test stablecoin issuance in a regulatory sandbox starting Q1 2026. The results will shape final UK rules later this year ahead of a full crypto regime launching October 2027.
🇫🇷 France
🇫🇷 BNP Paribas tokenizes money market fund on Ethereum
Europe's largest bank ($3T AUM) launched a tokenized share class of a French money market fund on public Ethereum via its AssetFoundry platform.