Digital Ruble Launches, Bitcoin Rally, and AI’s Hiring Freeze

This week in focus for “Deconstruction” are the digital ruble, Bitcoin surpassing $81,000, Nvidia’s acquisition of Hugging Face, the mysterious decryption of a 370-year-old cryptogram, and a future where AI doesn’t fire people but simply stops hiring them.

Digital Ruble Launch

Starting September 1, the Bank of Russia launched the digital ruble. Any citizen can open an account on the central bank’s platform via a banking app, with a monthly top-up limit of 300,000 rubles. Transfers and payments are currently free.

In Moscow, the founding congress of the AOCV—an association aiming for SRO status for crypto exchanges—took place. To operate legally, an exchange now needs 15 million rubles in capital, a central bank registry, and SRO membership.

Bitcoin’s August Surge and the Rektember Ghost

In August, Bitcoin gained about 25%, recovering from $64,000 to $82,000, with inflows into crypto funds exceeding $2.9 billion for the week. Major holders increased their positions by 60,000 BTC, and the correlation with gold reached a six-year high.

However, September (Rektember) is approaching—historically the worst month for Bitcoin with an average return of -3%, and resistance in the $83,000–86,000 range remains a significant hurdle. Analysts are looking for a daily close above $83,000 to confirm a bullish reversal.

Why is Nvidia Buying Hugging Face for $12.93 Billion?

Nvidia has officially confirmed the acquisition of Hugging Face for $12.93 billion—tripling the platform’s valuation in just three years, despite annual revenue of around $150 million.

The company is paying 86 times annual revenue not for financial metrics, but for control over the main gateway to the open AI models ecosystem. The key question is whether Nvidia will maintain the platform’s neutrality, which has historically supported competitors as well.

Fable 5.1 and the Decryption of a 370-Year-Old Cipher

Anthropic released Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1—the former became 25–45% cheaper due to reduced caching costs, and the Enterprise Frontier Safeguards system for client cloud data storage is announced for fall.

Fable 5.1 shone in benchmarks: it identified the cause of a Millennium failure that engineers couldn’t fix for five years and created a Venus map with 25% higher accuracy. But the main story is the decryption of a 1653 cryptogram, allegedly cracked by AI in 44 minutes. The problem: independent experts found ten discrepancies, and academic confirmation is still pending.

AI-Centaur in Reverse: Who Pays for Restructuring, and Who Just Closes the Door?

Zuckerberg promises personal superintelligence for everyone, Gates admits there’s no plan for entering the new era, and Doctorow flips the centaur metaphor: now the algorithm makes decisions, and humans work at machine pace as verifiers.

Consultant Nikhil Suresh hasn’t found a single working AI project in corporations over a year and a half—but projects aren’t shut down because promoting AI is career-advantageous, while opposing it is risky. The main fact: employment of young specialists in AI-vulnerable professions has dropped by 19%—there are no mass layoffs, just no new hires.

This is a shortened version of the podcast. Watch the full episode: