Scarce Trust Premium
Giordano Bruno Contestabile@giordanobc
+5.8%
since Sep 30
The idea
My belief is that AI is making content, expertise, and even identity itself abundant and easy to fake, so what becomes scarce and valuable is trust: whoever verifies it, arbitrates it, or embodies it gains pricing power. I built a broad basket across that whole stack, weighted heaviest toward identity verification, then trust arbiters, live human experiences AI can't replicate, and brands with direct customer relationships. No single name dominates, I keep a small cash reserve to add on weakness, and I'm holding this for years since it's a structural shift, not a trade.
What it owns
- As artificial intelligence makes fake identities, voices, and documents cheap to create, the companies that verify who people actually are become essential infrastructure that markets can't function without. · Okta, Inc.It proves an employee or customer is who they say they are, which matters more as AI makes synthetic identities trivial to manufacture., Clear Secure, Inc.It verifies a physical human with biometrics, the most direct answer to a world where a convincing fake identity is easy to generate., TransUnionIt sells the data that separates real people from synthetic ones, and synthetic identity fraud is the growth market expanding fastest., Equifax Inc.Its income and employment verification business is a tollbooth on proving facts about a person that artificial intelligence cannot fake., Gen Digital Inc.It sells regular people protection from identity theft and scams, problems that get worse as artificial intelligence powers more convincing fraud., VeriSign, Inc.It runs the registry behind dot-com and dot-net, the closest thing the internet has to a trust root, with pricing power protected by contract., DocuSign, Inc.It makes an agreement provably real: who signed, when, and that nothing changed after, which gets more valuable as artificial intelligence makes forged documents trivial.34%
- Ratings, scores, indexes, and payment networks are the referees that markets cannot function without, and their authority becomes more valuable as fake information multiplies. · Moody's CorporationIt sells the other half of the credit ratings duopoly, a trust stamp that debt markets require and that abundant AI analysis fails to replace., Mastercard IncorporatedIt guarantees both sides of a payment that money moves and fraud gets caught, making the trusted network more valuable as synthetic fraud increases., S&P Global Inc.It provides bond ratings, indexes, and benchmarks that markets require by law and habit, a license to be believed that artificial intelligence analysis cannot substitute for., Fair Isaac CorporationIt owns the credit score that American lending runs on, a trust standard with pricing power because everyone has agreed to believe it., RELX PLCIt sells verified legal, scientific, and risk data plus identity and fraud tools, exactly the curated truth that gets scarcer as artificial intelligence floods everything with plausible fakes.23%
- Brands that people pay directly through subscriptions or memberships keep their pricing power and customer relationships intact, while advertising and traffic-dependent businesses get diluted by AI-generated content. · The New York Times CompanyIt has millions of people paying directly for journalism they trust, a relationship that does not depend on search and advertising traffic that AI is eroding., Thomson Reuters CorporationIt sells lawyers and accountants information they can cite in court, creating a premium for sources with professional accountability as AI-generated content spreads., Costco Wholesale CorporationIt operates a membership model built on decades of not exploiting customers, with no algorithmic intermediary between the company and its members., Ferrari N.V.It sells authenticity that artificial intelligence cannot copy: a real car, a real waiting list, and a brand that gets stronger by staying scarce.18%
- Artificial intelligence can generate content on demand, but it cannot create the scarcity of being in a room with real humans, so live moments command an growing premium. · TKO Group Holdings, Inc.It owns live unscripted human competition that must be watched as it happens, and media rights deals keep repricing that scarcity upward., Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.It operates the tollbooth on the one experience artificial intelligence cannot synthesize: being in the room with real humans at a concert or live event., Liberty Media Formula OneIt operates a global live spectacle with a fixed number of races a year, scarcity by design, where attendance and media rights keep growing on demand for real human events., Madison Square Garden Sports Corp.It owns one-of-a-kind sports assets in the largest market in the country, and artificial intelligence cannot make another one.18%
- Cash7%