Morning Minute: Anthropic’s CEO Warns AGI May Be 1-2 Years Away

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

Crypto majors flat, HYPE and PUMP outperform; BTC at $88k
Anthropic CEO warns AGI is coming in 1-2 years in latest essay
Coinbase spins up advisory board to address quantum risk
BlackRock launches new iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF
Tether added significantly more gold than USDT in Q4

🧠 Anthropic’s CEO Warns AI Is Outrunning Our Ability to Control It

A sobering note from inside the AI frontier model race. And what does it mean for crypto?

📌 What Happened

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay warning that AI capabilities are advancing faster than the systems meant to control, govern, and align them.

This creates a growing risk gap as models become more autonomous and powerful.

Dario’s core thesis is about speed and compounding.

Each generation of AI models builds on the last, accelerating progress in a way that compresses timelines and reduces room for error.

Meanwhile, safety research, governance frameworks, and institutional responses move linearly, not exponentially.

He argues that society is entering a phase where capability gains are no longer matched by proportional improvements in control, especially as models begin to reason, plan, and act with less direct human oversight.

Specifically, he expects AGI to come in the next 1-2 years, and shared concerns like 50% of the entry white collar workforce no longer needed within 1-5 years.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

Dario framed the challenge starkly:

“AI progress is now moving faster than our ability to ensure that it remains aligned with human values and under meaningful human control.”

He warned that relying on informal norms or reactive fixes is unlikely to work at scale:

“We should not assume that we’ll be able to simply patch problems after deployment once systems become sufficiently autonomous.”

And he emphasized that the window for proactive action is shrinking:

“The time to build strong safety, governance, and control mechanisms is before systems become overwhelmingly powerful, not after.”

🧠 Why It Matters

Dario’s warning lands at an important moment for markets.

The AI trade is already one of the dominant macro narratives, pulling in capital, reshaping equity indices, and driving massive investment into compute, data centers, and infrastructure.

At the same time, the macro backdrop is shifting.

Rates are no longer collapsing, geopolitics are back in focus, and metals are soaring.

What about crypto? Well, not much rotation so far in 2026.

The good news is—it’s doubtful that the “AI bubble” is going to pop. If anything, the opposite.

But that comes with its own set of challenges, and a future 3-years out where half of the white-collar workforce is unemployed is both hard to imagine and hard to model out.

Stacking hard assets in preparation for that potential future is likely a good strategy.

And Bitcoin remains at the top of the shortlist for many, especially as the metals trade looks like it’s in a blow-off top.

Is the rotation coming?

We may find out very soon…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

A few headlines that stood out:

Crypto majors are red after a Sunday selloff, down 6-10% on the week; BTC -1% at $87,600; ETH -1% at $2,897, SOL -3% at $122; XRP -1% to $1.89
PUMP (+26%), HYPE (+25%) and ZEC (+8%) led top movers
The Senate Agriculture Committee delayed a vote on the crypto market structure bill due to a snowstorm, with partisan divisions still threatening momentum
Coinbase set up a new advisory board to address quantum risk, following Ethereum’s move to set up its Post Quantum team
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned AI development is accelerating faster than society’s ability to control it and AGI will arrive in 1-2 years
Clawdbot AI assistants pushed the limits of automation and safety as adoption spread quickly among developers, raising concerns of safeguards not ready for widespread AI agent usage
Tether added more Gold (XAUT) and expanded supply far faster than USDT, with gold-backed tokens growing roughly 38% quarter-over-quarter
UK crypto firms faced accelerating “debanking,” according to a lobbying group that reported billions in blocked or delayed bank transfers tied to crypto activity
Bitcoin mining stocks fell after Nvidia invested $2B in CoreWeave

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

The BTC ETFs saw $7M in net inflows on Monday, breaking a 5-day red streak; ETH ETFs saw $117M
Strategy bought $267M worth of Bitcoin last week at a $90k average
Tom Lee’s BitMine purchased $116M in Ethereum, its largest ETH buy of 2026, bringing total holdings above 4.2M ETH worth roughly $12.2B
BlackRock outlined plans for an iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF that would use options strategies to generate yield on top of Bitcoin exposure

In Memes / Onchain Movers

Meme majors were mixed and mostly flat; Doge +1%, Shiba -1%, PEPE +1%, TRUMP -1%, Bonk +1%, Pengu even, SPX +2%, WIF -1% and Fartcoin +1%
COPPERINU soared 300x to $16M in its debut
WhiteWhale (+40%), USOR (+25%) and ALONE (+20x) were other notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Polymarket had its highest volume month ever for its 4th month in a row
Zama saw $118M committed for its encrypted ICO on Ethereum
Rekt Drinks sold out its XGames collab in 60 seconds

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks -1% at 28.48 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.68 ETH, and BAYC -3% at 5.99 ETH; Hypurr +20% at 584 HYPE
Bearish (+25%) led top movers
Wolf Game announced its next chapter