Zuck's new 'creep glasses,' AI targets Robin Williams, teens love LinkedIn? Hong Kong as crypto safe harbor, AI raves in the metaverse, SF Bay pirates, and more...
The great Silicon Valley betrayal
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube betrayed the Silicon Valley spirit of freedom of expression and self-empowerment. Never before in US history have Americans been less free to see and say what they want. Facebook and Google were forced to change their name to hide their shame, and Twitter was forced to sell because they lost the trust of all but 28 percent of their members.
The inside story is Silicon Valley sees Facebook and Google as two highly unimaginative companies with one product—selling our personal data on the attention span exchange. In turn, they reward us by freely censoring and deplatforming their members whose views they don’t like and burying information so it’s impossible to find with a Google search.
The US Supreme Court announced Friday it will rule on landmark social media cases in Florida and Texas regarding Big Tech censorship. Texas’ anti-censorship law is designed to protect freedom of speech while staying consistent with the First Amendment, which still allows the removal of content that is pornographic, threatens violence, or promotes the sexual exploitation of children. In Florida, the 11th Circuit struck down a Florida law, arguing that Big Tech platforms have a First Amendment right to pick and choose views like a newspaper does.
Silicon Valley’s lore is inventing stuff that fosters individual empowerment and freedom from ‘The Man.’ From engraving a CPU on a chip to putting a computer on your desk, then in your backpack, to connecting everyone and everything over the Internet, and then putting the Internet in your pocket — Power to the people is our legacy. It is no coincidence that this self-liberating innovation was born out of the same cultural vibe that hosted the Summer of Love, ignited the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, pioneered psychedelics, and thrived on a heavy dose of blues-inspired rock ’n’ roll. So where do Zuck’s ‘creep glasses’ and Google’s Orwellian search algorithms fit into this spirit?
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will help confront the ‘We know what’s better for you than you know for yourself’ attitude as the last two of the evil triplets are still standing in Silicon Valley. Mark Twain once said, ‘All loose marbles roll West.’ If we do not return to the place where people come to be themselves and pursue their wackiest dreams, the marbles will stop rolling.
Chairman Xi’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative is plagued by loan-sharking, corruption, and scandal
CCP President Xi Jinping, considered China’s most powerful ‘leader’ since Chairman Mao Zedong, unveiled the world’s most ambitious infrastructure project 10 years ago this month to woo Asia, Africa, and the Middle East with bold promises. Unfortunately for the ‘President for life,’ his ‘Red Empire’ and ‘project of the century’ that signed up over 150 countries are collapsing under China’s stalled economy. What’s left is a wasteland of abandoned railways, half-built bridges & roads to nowhere.
The CCP’s projects, like the Standard Gauge Railway, which promised Kenya a 290-mile route connecting the coastal city of Mombasa to Nairobi, were left half-finished after China withheld funding. Seduced by glitzy sales pitches, many takers have been left unable to make loan payments when China comes knocking like a mafioso loan shark.
It was all part of President Xi’s plan for China to become the ‘most powerful global power by 2050’ by extending a friendly hand to a web of potential new allies. Some analysts suggest the plan devolved into predatory loans and debt traps to bring nations under the CCP’s sphere of influence.
'While The Belt and Road Initiative has contributed to some infrastructure advancement, it has also been a catalyst for conflicts between countries and exacerbated debt issues in some instances,” says Ashok Swain, professor of peace and security at Uppsala University. ‘One-third of projects have been plagued by furious protests, corruption scandals, labor violations, and environment problems,’ says Professor Swain.
Did you know?
(Overheard on the streets of the global Silicon Valley. Got any hot insider tips? Email us editor@cryptoniteventures.com)
The Billionaire Boys Club
Ritzy Charters has unveiled a list of the 10 most expensive yachts, with the top three worth a whopping $1.29 billion combined. Of the 10, two are owned by global Silicon Valley folks, #2 Jeff Bezos’s ‘Koru’ ($500M) and #4 multi-billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs’s Venus ($120M).
FTX debtors are making a claim for two luxury jets, a Bombardier Global 5000 and an Embraer Legacy EMB, purportedly owned by former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a filing by the DOJ. Island Air Capital, however, disputes the DOJ’s move and contends the jets totaling $28 million belong to them.
Author of best-selling books The Big Short and Flash Boy, Michael Lewis’s new book on SBF and FTX, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, dropped this week. The book has been controversial even before it hit the streets.
Take the money and run. Michael Lewis told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that FTX paid Tom Brady $55M for 20 hours of work, $35M to Steph Curry for the same, and, at his parent’s request, paid Jerry Seinfeld’s muse Larry ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ David $25M for a clever Super Bowl commercial.
Gen Y vs Gen X. While Gen Y takeover artist Zuck (FB acquired both WhatsApp and Instagram) and Gen X’s Elon Musk may fantasize about punching it out in the octagon cage Zuck built in his backyard, the real competition is who will own the digital town square. Read the stats on both wildcats and tell us who you think will win.
Social networking
Teens are flocking to LinkedIn—their new ‘happy place’ to celebrate achievement and as a sanctuary from angry rants, dark humor, thirst traps, and FOMO. LinkedIn confirmed that Gen Z is its fastest-growing demographic, and the platform has seen a 41% increase in content over the last 2 years.
Elon removed automatically generated headlines from links X members post, including news stories, to compromise their context. ‘Our algorithm tries to optimize time spent on X, so links don’t get as much attention because there is less time spent if people click away.” says the X Man.
Even before Elon’s X move, Social media traffic to top news sites had been cratering, a trend we believe will continue as trust in corporate media craters, as well. The only US institution trusted less than corporate media (9%) is Congress (7%). It’s time to fire up the podcast you’ve been dreaming about—the winds of trust are blowing your way.
X Boss Lady Linda Yaccarino told lenders the company is cash flow positive — excluding $1.5B in annual debt payments the company owes on the $13B banks Elon borrowed to close the deal. Ms. Yaccarino also said that the company was testing three paid subscription plans to diversify revenues.
VC Whispers
VC at rock bottom? As the IPO market opens a sliver, it is still too soon to tell how much exit activity to expect. In the VC deal chart below, it is clear we are coming off an exaggerated bubble; values are still in flux, but risk investors are admirably holding tough in the face of a potential recession. Reminder: Airbnb, Slack, Uber, Instagram, Microsoft, Cisco, and Block were founded during recessions.
Max Altman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s little brother, is raising a $200M fund to invest across all sectors with former Flexport exec Ben Braverman and entrepreneur Thomson Nguyen (former EIR @ Kleiner Perkins). Max Altman has been investing for years with Sam and his other brother, Jack.
Sam Altman, a former Y-Combinator boss, said he has slowed down personal investing due to his job at OpenAI but recently invested in AI payments startup Slope and Mentra, a ‘neurodiversity employment network’ and launched the OpenAI startup fund.
AI Tracker
‘The crypto bros are now the AI bros,’ says Bitpanda’s CEO Eric Demuth, who correlates each sector’s gold rush cycles. Mr. Demuth told Decrypt that there is a lot of good AI stuff in the making but predicted that just 2% of firms cashing in on AI hype will survive. Bitpand is a Cryptonite 300-nominated company.
JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon says AI will enable a 3.5-day workweek as it is ‘already doing all the equity hedging’ for his bank and otherwise ‘integral to his firm.
A new report from KPMG says 72% of CEOs consider generative AI a top investment priority and are more focused on buying new technology than upskilling their workers.
On Hollywood
Oana Ruxandra, Warner’s chief digital officer, has left the label after spearheading an aggressive push to embrace and invest in emerging blockchain, NFT, gaming, and AI technologies. While the reasons behind the departure are unclear, it is unlikely to change Warner’s Web3 strategy.
Under Ms. Ruxandra’s tenure, Warner has signed partnerships with numerous blockchain projects, including Polygon Labs, NFT marketplace OpenSea, NFT music platform LGND Music, digital fashion startup DressX, and metaverse platform The Sandbox. Warner also recently signed rapper Earl Sweatshirt to debut a long-rumored album as a collection of NFTs on the decentralized streaming platform Gala Music, where buyers collect reward points that could be exchanged for live experiences with the artist, including being featured in one of his music videos and FaceTiming with him.
Zelda Willams condemned the ‘monstrous’ AI recreation of her late father Robin Williams’s voice, which has ‘been happening for years.’ Zelda, who is in the film industry, emphasized her views amid the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, where actors and writers have been protesting the use of AI in the industry.
Hollywood must go Web3 or die. The end of the writers’ strike marks the beginning of a new era. Studios and streamers are likely to order fewer TV shows, and consolidation will follow. Cable usage dropped 12.5%, and broadcast TV slid to just one-fifth of total watch time in American homes.
The Science of Life
The dean of Stanford’s medical school thinks AI is the most significant breakthrough in medicine since antibiotics. Dr. Lloyd Minor, who has been playing around with both chatGBT and Google’s Bard, predicts AI ‘will transform the medicines you take, the care you get, and doctor training.’
Follow the Crypto
A new Hong Kong-based crypto VC fund has $100M in its pocket to fund Asian blockchain startups. The Titan Fund invests in blockchain infrastructure, gaming, NFTs, crypto exchanges, wallets, and Web3 platforms for lending and borrowing. The fund signifies the CCP’s goal of Hong Kong’ being seen as a ‘safe harbor for crypto,’ unlike its very unsafe Mainland, which has outlawed crypto.
CEO Daniel Alegre of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT creator Yuga Labs confirmed the company’s restructuring and lay-offs after rethinking its priorities and refocusing on leveraging external technical, creative, and development partners. NFTs have been selling at record lows.
Two other Cryptonite 300 nominated private crypto companies also had lay-offs. Blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis cut 15% (150 people), and crypto hard wallet company Ledger cut 12% (80) of its staff. Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthie cited ‘Macroeconomic headwinds’ as part of the challenge.
Chainanalysis’s 2023 Global Crypto Adoption Index indicates that six of the ten countries leading in grassroots crypto adoption are in Asia: India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Thailand.
The number of active crypto open source developers has nearly halved from its peak and has reached its lowest point since 2020, according to Web3 VC fund Andreessen Horowitz’s State of Crypto Index. At the peak in 2022, there were 36,500 active devs, with 19,630 active devs as of September 2023.
Into the Metaverse
AI raves in the Metaverse are the new Thing. Influential DJ Carl Cox’s virtual reality debut in the metaverse world—Sensorium Galaxy— took place in London, complete with a lava-filled stage, dancing magma avatars, and a 30-minute DJ by Cox. Not as impressive as expected, but a dope start.
Space shots
Edwin Hubble discovered cosmic expansion in the 1920s. However, we still do not know 1) What the Universe looks like, 2) How gravity works, 3) How supermassive black holes merge, 4) What happens inside a black hole, 5) What dark matter is, 6) How fast the Universe is expanding, 7) Which way up do galaxies form, 8) Where the antimatter is, and 9) How the Universe ends.
Virgin Galactic’s stock rose as it completed its Galactic 04 mission carrying private astronauts from the US, the UK, and Pakistan to space in its fifth commercial spaceflight in five months and 9th overall. Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
Back in 2012, in a conversation with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Elon admitted his reason for building rockets that could go to Mars was to preserve human consciousness in the event of a world war, asteroid strike, or civilization collapse. After his chat with Mr. Hassabis, Elon added AI to his list.
The Gen Z generation
Young people are still going to festivals and expressing free love, but they are doing it alcohol-free. One entertainment director guestimates that Gen-Z buys 25% less on booze compared to their elders. That’s a massive hit to venue revenues but results in a less raucous and safer, healthier environment.
Bad news for ‘lazy girl’ employees. Suumit Shah, the CEO of India-based Duukan, axed 90% of his staff and replaced them with AI, says, ‘copy and paste jobs are done.’ Thanks to TikTok, interest in ‘Lazy girl jobs’ has surged as Gen Zers tend to reject the hustle culture and embrace doing the bare minimum, especially on Mondays.
Straight outta Silicon Valley
Testimony in the DOJ’s anti-trust case against Google reveals that Apple considered acquiring Microsoft’s Bing to take on Google in the search space but abandoned the idea to continue its lucrative revenue-sharing agreement with the company. Google maintains a steady 90 percent search market share.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked on CBS News after the iPhone 15 launch if they were still going to pay Elon ad money in light of a select Jewish civil rights groups’ concerns about Mr. X’s ‘hateful speech.’ ‘My view is Twitter is an important property for discourse and as a town square,’ says Mr. Cook.
Bay Area residents are fending off pirates on small motorized dinghies executing smash-and-grab raids that target large vessels and houseboats. Data shows burglary on The Bay is up 18.6% compared to last year, and theft over $400 is up 10.2%.
Robots to the rescue
Robots building robots. Agility Robotics is set to open the world’s largest humanoid robot factory in Salem, Oregon, with the goal of producing more than 10,000 ‘Digit bots’ annually. Amazon invested $150M in the startup in 2022, which has raised over $180M in private funding since its start in 2015.
The number of bear attacks in Japan has been rising at an alarming rate. Originally designed to keep wild animals away from farms, authorities now use the mechanical Super Monster Wolf robot to stop bears from entering urban areas and attacking people with its eery red-eyed glare.
What the Math Says
A UK study suggests that too much time online is detrimental to well-being, especially among young people, and this trend is growing each year. The study found that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be addicted to the Internet, and this tendency decreases with age.
Chaos & Complexity
The NYPD reports that NYC non-domestic related felony physical assaults against women (2,830 victims so far this year) have surged 41% over the last four years. The attacks include random subway shoves, sucker punches, and vicious beatings.
‘It seemed like a while ago, it was old Asian people, and now it’s young women. They are not careful about who they are letting out. There’s nowhere safe for them to go, so they are on the streets, and they’re drug-addicted and desperate for a sense of control, and women are an easy target. It feels like men just hate us.’
—Anonymous woman victim in New York City
Jailed Iranian activist, Narges Mohammadi won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of Iran’s women and for promoting human rights for all. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her 5 times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.
Know Thy Enemy
Jailed Iranian activist, Narges Mohammadi won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of Iran’s women and for promoting human rights for all. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her 5 times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.
UK intelligence says Russia is trying to target civilian cargo ships carrying grain in the Black Sea by laying sea mines and planning to blame Ukraine. Ukraine is gaining momentum in the fight over the crucial sea, which is both Kyiv’s main export corridor and a launchpad for Russian attacks.
President Vladimir Putin has a vision. ‘We are tasked with building a new world order,’ where Russia confronts the West’s pursuit of a ‘global hegemony.’ He portrays Russia’s full-scale military intervention in Ukraine as part of the program because ‘the West always needs an enemy.’
Revive Thyself (or not)
Good sleepers report experiencing primarily visual sensory images as they drift to sleep – seeing people and objects and having hallucinatory-like experiences. For people with insomnia, pre-sleep thoughts tend to be more unpleasant and less random and focused on planning and problem-solving.
Fitness culture has celebrated the idea that ‘the more exercise, the better.’ But even something good can be harmful if excessive. Over-exercising (a.k.a. overtraining or exercise addiction) occurs when the intensity, frequency, and duration of activity exceed the body’s ability to recover and adapt.
Have a cup of coffee. Trigonelline (TG), a natural compound in coffee and certain vegetables, is believed to improve cognitive decline and boost memory in aging.