Thanksgiving hits different when your avatar is more valuable than your real self. In this week’s edition of Off the Record, On the Rocks, Toner & Ankarino break down the three big flippenings of the season: Sam Altman’s ambient “calm computing” moonshot, Jesse Pollock turning himself into a coin, and Elon Musk telling us that money is just a vibe (preferably traded in puka shells).

Google Gemini hijacks the narrative while Disney unzips its IP vault to let your digital twin play dress-up as Elsa. The creator economy is no longer about what you make—it’s about who you are, or who you pretend to be. Klarna mints a stablecoin, OpenSea trades creator tokens, and Polymarket becomes the unofficial Fed.

Black Friday isn’t even a day anymore—it’s a mirror, and you’re in it.

Happy holidays.

GTA VI delayed again—but this time, it’s bigger than “just polish.” Billion-dollar Saudi investments. DraftKings leaves the AGA. Roblox scans your face. Rockstar hits reset.In this episode of Off the Record On The Rocks, Toner and Ankarino go deep into the tectonic shift underway in gaming, finance, and tech. From Saudi Arabia buying up the global gaming narrative to JP Morgan suddenly embracing ETH and BTC—the fix is in, and the metaverse is real.🎮 GTA VI Delay: Why Rockstar is scrambling to keep up👑 MBS in the White House: Trillions in gaming, media, and prediction markets💰 DraftKings + Polymarket: Betting on the future is the future🕶️ Meta + UFC + Oakley: First-person sports viewing is here💳 Xbox Wallet Leaks: Microsoft’s next big play📡 Cloudflare & AWS Outages: The real war in the metaverse begins🏦 JP Morgan’s Stablecoin & Crypto Loans: The ghost of banking future is here🔥 And yes… Taylor Swift is running the NFL metaverse.Recorded: November 18, 2025 | Episode 121Subscribe for more real talk about where tech, gaming, and money collide.Not financial advice. But… the deck is stacked.#OffTheRecord #Metaverse #GTA6 #Crypto #GamingNews #SaudiInvestment #TaylorSwift #JPmorgan #DraftKings #Roblox #RockstarGames #UFC #AppleVisionPro #BlackFriday #Bitcoin #Ethereum #MBS #Podcast

World Series goes to Game 7, Dodgers win big, and Polymarket wins bigger—because the metaverse already called it. As parents tailgate on lawns during trick-or-treating and kids watch Otani on PS5, America’s pastime collides with predictive markets, AI twins, and a new economic singularity.

Meanwhile, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong trolls Wall Street in real-time, Hong Kong opens the crypto floodgates literally the morning after the election, and Animoca reverse-merges into a NASDAQ shell to become Web3’s first public sandbox. Throw in the AWS x OpenAI cloud arms deal, Tylenol stock manipulation via Truth Social, and a looming IPO from Sam Altman, and you’re not just watching the show—you are the bet.

The game now runs on tokens, energy, behavior, and time. And whether it’s GTA6 or Trump Tower Casino, your digital twin just placed a wager. On the Super Beaver Moon, the house always wins—but only if you missed the memo.

Late October, and everyone’s making moves: France aims to buy 2% of all Bitcoin, IBM launches a “digital asset haven” (because “enclave” was taken), and Nvidia wants to tokenize everything—from baseball stats to your face. The World Series runs 18 innings while Polymarket bets $197M on Jerome Powell’s next move.

Meanwhile, AI agents start replacing workflows (and maybe coworkers), Sam Altman builds a browser without Chrome, and Western Union partners with Solana to trade stablecoins across the globe. The White House gets a crypto-funded ballroom, CZ gets seized, and influencers start licensing their faces like NFTs.

It’s all one market now: sports, rates, memes, elections, even Taylor Swift scrubber icons. And with Sora minting viral videos at speed, we’re entering a new phase—where your identity is the asset, tokenized for training or traded for clout. October’s closing strong, and the bids are coming from sovereign states.

October opens with a harvest moon and a head fake: government shutdown, Swifties drop an album, Bitcoin rips to ATH, and the NYSE’s parent plunks billions into Polymarket while Texas files its own exchange—hello, Y’all Street. Meanwhile OpenAI’s Sora goes full consumer: scan your face, set who can use it, and welcome to NIL as a setting (name, image, likeness → name, image, liquidity). Influencers say “derivatize me,” Hollywood panics (hi, Tilly Norwood), and Apple quietly turns your phone into a sats rail as Meta straps a HUD on your eyeballs. Result: the creator economy smashes into Web3—your avatar is the asset, the meme is the market, and even the stock exchange is betting on truth. Buckle up; Q4’s gonna grade everything—human, AI, or somewhere deliciously in between.

Late September, and everything’s a derivative of itself. Powell blinks, Polymarket bets it first, and lawns sprout golden Trump statues holding Bitcoin (and, weirdly, Epstein). Apple drops a Bitcoin-orange iPhone with cameras that watch you watching them, Meta counters with AR glasses that literally read your eyeballs, and the line between boardroom and battlefield gets blurry fast.

Oracle re-enters the chat to “Americanize” the algorithm, DAOs spin up AI broker-bots flipping CryptoPunks for sport, and the SEC shrugs like “sure, throw it in the 401(k).” Meanwhile, Apple and Goldman quietly divorce, Tim Cook admits he stacks sats, and a Russian minister warns America not to “delete” its debt with crypto. The meme is the market, the market is the meme — and October’s shaping up like a haunted liquidity pool.

Google and Coinbase walk into a bar… and leave with a stablecoin protocol! While Powell whispers “rate cuts,” meme speed laps the Fed. Tether mints a new “U.S.” dollar, Klarna’s IPOs like it’s 2017, and Toner’s Labubu bling store proves you can spin up a full AI e-commerce stack before happy hour. Meanwhile, Gen Z just ran an election on Discord (sorry, TikTok), SOCOM launches MISO—America’s official Ministry of Memes—and Amex mints NFT passport stamps on Base. Proof of humanity meets proof of hype: propaganda, collectibles, and crypto are now the same asset class.

Patriot Day, twenty-four years later—and the timeline refreshes itself. A live-streamed political assassination in Utah, a presidential eulogy via post, and a nation doomscrolling its own democracy. Russia’s rolling tanks, Poland’s burning borders, Apple’s new watch bands, and somehow it’s all the same plotline. The markets didn’t flinch, but the mirror cracked. Putin’s finance guy accuses America of planning to “delete” $35 trillion in debt with crypto and gold; meanwhile, U.S. firms are rebranding as “treasury companies” and quietly stacking sats like it’s 1971 all over again. NASDAQ files to tokenize everything not nailed down, Doge gets an ETF, Klarna IPOs “layaway 2.0,” and Wall Street decides to cosplay as Web3 just to keep up.