AI is quietly dissolving the walls between company functions. Sales can write product specs. Developers speak fluent “commercial-ese.” Everyone’s more empowered, more informed, more capable. So who’s actually steering the ship?

A thought piece by a product peer¹ fueled my thinking here. They describe scenarios where the decision owner is fuzzy and product debt quietly builds up, often without anyone realizing it.

Winding back a notch, my interpretation of coherence is how you get a company aligned behind a mission, with everyone pulling in the same direction.

Pre-AI, the product function was key to leading that coherence – specifically owning product-market fit and managing the interactions between the business and engineering functions. In the AI era – certainly in tech-driven companies – those functions are no longer as siloed as they used to be.

The sales function is no longer purely commercial. They’re increasingly proficient at shaping their ideas, creating business requirement documents and doing a lot of the work (at least on the face of it) that a product manager or CPO used to. I’m no longer getting one-sentence ideas and a screenshot, but thought-out requirements and case studies as a starting point.

The same is happening on the engineering side. Developers are more capable of understanding how the business operates and speaking in a way that’s coherent to the commercial side. AI is powering this mutual understanding the same way real-time translation broke down language barriers.

Probably – in both cases – new hires will be increasingly geared towards those personality types as well, accelerating the trend. So, we have less siloed functions and people much closer together in the stories they’re telling. Everyone feels more informed, better educated, and more empowered to contribute to overall strategy.

But, if everyone’s a peer, two questions emerge: Who drives the unified mission? And what does the product function do in that world?

In my current role, this broader shift met a specific moment. We had moved through earlier phases – getting the tech stack scalable, then nailing product-market fit – and were beginning to scale toward enterprise partnerships. That scaling exposed something our existing model couldn’t absorb: end-to-end accountability for the customer and partner experience was diffused across teams, and what worked at current scale would break at enterprise volumes.

A product leader has always been a bridge between functions, but in advisory or facilitating modes. What changed was the shift from coordinating decisions to owning them – from consensus to single-threaded accountability. Nearly a decade of leading product had given me context across commercial, engineering, risk and finance, so I moved to work directly with our CRO on customer experience and partnership readiness as our core operating priority.

My new mandate: optimize every decision for quality revenue and customer experience.

To accelerate that goal, I embedded myself across the full customer journey – the operational UX, the internal metrics, the competitive landscape. Not curated summaries passed up from customer-facing leads, but direct exposure to every friction and dropoff, so the trade-offs land with someone who can actually resolve them.

That’s the real shift. Those tough trade-off decisions that sat unresolved – or even unspoken – in middle management layers are now surfaced and can be acted on by someone with the cross-functional reach, time and CEO sponsorship to move quickly.

The early returns are tangible: wins in UI and GTM strategy (incorporating AI to attract attention and respond faster), plus longer-term projects to overhaul our onboarding UX and rewire how we pitch and win embedded partnerships.

So, how does this address fuzzy ownership? My hypothesis is that the CPO – and the broader product function – needs to evolve and take the lead in driving coherence.

Conversations with product peers show me we’re all feeling this pull (or push, if you’re not leaning into it). The smarter ones are concluding that the product function isn’t dead; it’s becoming the coherence function.

It’s still early days, and I’m learning as I go. But if I’m right, the best product leaders won’t be managing roadmaps – they’ll be the connective tissue holding the whole mission together. Let’s see if it holds.

^1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-product-economics-engin-erdogan-txwje

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The DAT premium party is mostly over. Since the November 2024 peak, over $60B has been wiped from DAT market caps. Nakamoto’s stock price crashed ~98%, now trading at a double digit discount below net asset value – the biggest failure to date. The market learned the hard way that holding someone else’s BTC isn’t worth a premium unless they’re doing something exceptional.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Strategy’s (MSTR) capital innovation and XXI’s ecosystem investments still justify their valuations IMO. MSTR gives retail and institutional investors an “easy” path to discover Bitcoin, offering a range of instruments including yield. XXI has a worthy mission to be a full-fledged Bitcoin ecosystem. They’re worth a dabble with speculative capital, but don’t bet they’ll outperform just hodling BTC.

Beyond DATs, there’s a deeper problem: companies have failed to demonstrate that value flows back to L1s predictably. Lightning infrastructure is winning, but does routing revenue accrue to BTC holders? DeFi protocols move billions, yet LINK – the backbone oracle – has a chart that looks terrible despite obvious utility. At ETHDenver a few years ago I heard founders openly ask “Why do I need to pay Vitalik!?” They’re capturing value at their layer, not the base.

I’ve made these mistakes myself. Chased SUI (selling my SOL stack) thinking I was early on a better L1. Rotated my ETH bag into Bored Apes thinking blue-chip NFTs were the play. Still holding both – what I thought were quick wins turned into multi-year bags. Lost not just in dollars, but in BTC terms. The opportunity cost of not just stacking kills you twice.

So here’s where I’ve landed: My core holdings stay in BTC. Accept I’ll never have enough. Try to buy the dips. We’re still early.

But I’m not sitting out entirely. My speculative capital goes to the handful of companies I believe are genuinely strengthening Bitcoin’s L1 – not just building on it, but making Bitcoin itself more valuable and inevitable.

Bitwise is building the on-ramp infrastructure. Millions of retail investors get exposure through their funds. BTC remains their biggest AUM for a reason. Long game, but essential as adoption accelerates.

Voltage is tackling Lightning GTM better than anyone. If anyone can deliver a true Bitcoin L2 that works, it’s them. The ambition is there, and getting it right means BTC becomes a more usable medium of exchange.

Fold took a beating but made smart long-term choices – strengthened their cap structure, kept shipping their credit card, has multiple irons in the fire. They’re thinking in years, not quarters, and bring daily BTC utility to the masses.

The bar is higher now. We’re still building the plane while flying it, but I’ve never been more optimistic about Bitcoin’s future. There are no guarantees, of course. But, if you’re going to invest beyond pure HODLing, back the companies that make Bitcoin better, not just their own treasuries fatter.

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This has been in my drafts for months and – somewhat depressingly – the topic is still around today. The thinking is that the economy moves in four year cycles and, perhaps more relevantly, Bitcoin price does too. We got our Q4 crash and bitcoin dipped ~50% with fear levels having been close to historic lows, and now we’re grinding or ranging depending on your viewpoint.

For four year cycle veterans this represents the “proof” that the cycle has ended and we are now in bear territory for months to come. For non four year cycle enthusiasts – aka “this time it’s different” bros – there are a dozen reasons for this blip and bitcoin is about to moon on a wave of liquidity the likes of which the developed world has never seen before.

So, who is correct, and does it really matter?

There is a real possibility both camps will be “right”. And, as the saying goes, everyone will get their bitcoin at the price they deserve.

Here’s what matters: from degen traders to Wall St, everyone’s trying to time the perfect entry. An investing framework might work for stocks or bonds, but bitcoin doesn’t care about your cycle theory. The opportunity isn’t in timing – it’s in not missing the accumulation window entirely.

The best time to buy the scarcest and hardest money ever invented was yesterday; the next best time is today. DCA if you need to smooth the entry, but don’t paper hand the opportunity to be early by waiting for a dip that may never come.

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I used to think optionality (the ability to keep as many options available as possible) was a unique strength of mine.

This made me aloof and evasive on my position on many topics. The fear of offending somebody (and burning bridges) was real, and to some extent made sense when I was the least knowledgeable person in the room.

Once I had knowledge, however, an optionality preference meant that I was never convicted in my beliefs or actions. This made it easy to change my mind, but also eroded trust with people (professionally and personally) looking for decisiveness and reassurance.

The ability to change your mind is sacrosanct. The inability to make up your mind is cancerous.

Once I recognized this pattern in myself, I started seeing it everywhere. In leaders who hedge every decision through endless internal debate. In people (myself included) who stay quiet about their personal goals for fear of commitment or judgment. Preserving optionality feels safe, but it’s a slow leak of momentum and trust.

These days, I strive to lead with conviction and have confidence in my beliefs and actions until such time as new evidence presents itself. 

This has created a snowball effect with my career, personal interests (focus on Bitcoin-led projects) and fitness goals (shredding and lifting my own body weight) where conviction builds on conviction and accelerates growth.

Being convicted also means saying no a lot of the time. A quick no – with a rational explanation – is way more effective most of the time than a long deliberation to preserve optionality.

Less time making decisions means more time working and building on what matters most.

Still a work in progress. I will change my mind a lot!

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• Bitcoin gave us a unique opportunity to think about things on a truly global, decentralized scale.
• Most humans have some form of bias based on their geography and direct use case. Americans and Europeans (on the whole) are not bothered enough about debasement and payment frictions to care about crypto.
• Bitcoin has found a more captive audience as a store of value and medium of exchange in countries with rampant inflation and capital controls. Think Venezuela, Turkey, etc. It is the ultimate form of currency that is independent of governments and institutions.
• Emerging markets set the trend and developed markets follow. This is the reverse adoption curve for almost all existing products. As someone with experience developing global products it is still counterintuitive to establish PMF in small developing markets.
• Stablecoins (I hope running on Bitcoin rails) are the first large (yet boring) use case that could be truly global in adoption. Most users care about being 24/7, fast and inexpensive more than they do about immutability, decentralization and security.
• The more developed a market the more this is true.
• Product builders need to make the case for the real benefits of blockchain technology (or not).

Personally, I care about the philosophy of Bitcoin, but there will be periods where getting a product into as many hands as possible is more important 📈

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• Current quantum tech can’t even crack factor-15 problems, let alone SHA-256. We’re talking orders of magnitude away.
• The “secret quantum computer” theory doesn’t hold up. Given the public $Bs in quantum R&D, a similar shadow program would be nearly impossible to hide.
• Here’s the kicker: Bitcoin devs aren’t quantum experts. BIPs are in progress, but nobody knows the real timeline or threat level.
• Game theory matters too: even IF quantum breaks crypto, why target Bitcoin first? There are bigger fish (banking, military, etc). You’d get one shot before defenses mobilize.

The takeaway: Quantum concerns are real but years away. Bitdevs are moving deliberately, not panicking. Most current “quantum will kill Bitcoin” takes are FUD.

Nobody knows for certain. Stay informed, not anxious.