Elon tells Disney's Iger to F*ck-off, Vivek wings Web3, AI is not so smart, Gen Z heirs to the Chinese empires, and more entrepreneurial mischief...
It’s time for the US to face the ‘trust’ issue
Cryptonite sits comfortably on the Pacific coast as far away from Washington DC as possible. Lawyers in leisure suits are not our gig. Part of this distance from Silicon Valley, however, means our representatives are driving our country looking in the rear-view mirror. Generally, we are cool with this because their attention usually stirs confusion, and like the rest of the country, we have trust issues with our 'leaders.'
As usual, the global Silicon Valley is working on this trust issue by building the next internet computing platform that will fulfill the original decentralized dream we had back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Where there is pain in the market, you will find entrepreneurs ready to ease it with new solutions and the VCs with plenty of risk money to back them. This transition to a trustless, permissionless society puts us back in control and—by our estimates—will create over $100 trillion in new wealth along the way.
When we are finished dusting off our pants and scrubbing our hands, government employees will have little or no access to our citizenship, tax, social security, and other personal data. Government administration and operational costs will be slashed by 80 percent, and our representatives will be expected to live and operate at home next to the people they serve. The voting system will also be secure, and if we are lucky, we will cap campaign funding laws to $100 per registered voter and wish the PACs, mega-donors, and other Fat Cats and lobbyists yielding disproportionate power a good f*cking day.
A bit of the fun part is today’s politicians really have no idea what is going to hit them, and we do look forward to the day we turn their offices in DC into a radically downsized shared co-working space and Airbnb-out the rest. In the meantime, the more we can inform and inspire our current politicians, the faster we can accelerate this transfer of power back to the people.
On that note, the entire slate of US Presidential candidates is largely clueless on how to instill the Web3 ethos of decentralization in government processes to protect US citizens’ privacy rights, balance the budget, and even bolster the US dollar.
At least one candidate for US President (we have no dawg in this race), the fancy-footed and fast-talking Vivek Ramaswamy, demonstrates, however vague, a tiny grip on the USD—BTC collision in process.
‘Bitcoin is an opt-out from the broken financial architecture created by the US Federal Reserve System—and I say this as someone who wants to fight for the US dollar to remain the reserve currency of the world. The government is threatened by Bitcoin. They fear Bitcoin will become more popular than USD and it is a threat to the incumbent status of the US Federal Reserve.’
—Vivek Ramaswamy in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
Mr. Ramaswamy went on to assure us he thinks ‘it is good to decentralize power away from the federal government’ and he is ‘by far the most Bitcoin or crypto or any other decentralized finance president we’ve ever had.’ It was a good effort, better than the rest, but his knowledge of the solutions and the magnitude of the disruption at hand remains superficial.
Our view is to offer a digital USD and return to the gold standard (even if just a sliver) to compete with the time-based created Bitcoin and put a USD in every crypto wallet on the planet before China does. There is a lot of dinero and currency value-building-power in banking the unbanked. Everyone can and will win.
Back to Black
Back on planet Earth, our trust in our Federal government and the USD is at a scary low and sinking. Our Treasury continues to print dollars at will, and our house made of Monopoly Money is teetering. We are also sitting on $33 trillion in debt, with no plan to pay down the balance. Back in September, Mr. Ramaswamy outlined a plan to reduce the federal workforce by 75 percent. Nowhere in this plan is how self-executing blockchain apps could be a HUGE part of any plans to downsize—Wall Street is doing it, Hollywood will do it or die, and it’s time for our government officials to get on it.
When Tucker Carlson asked Elon how many people he laid off at Twitter, he replied: ‘We laid off 90 percent. Turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter. If you’re not trying to run some kind of glorified activist organization, and you’re not caring that much about censorship, you can really let go of a lot of people.’ We could turn this same trick on our government. If we reform government so it is not designed to control our personal information, shake us down, and daze and confuse us at every turn, we will find we can achieve Vivek’s goal to cut 75% of our overhead and go back into the black.
AI is dumber than you think
Yann LeCun, Facebook’s top AI scientist, and a host of other AI researchers from VC-funded startups like Hugging Face and AutoGPT recently published a paper that sought to measure how the general-purpose reasoning of the GPT-4 large language model (LLL ) from OpenAI compares to average human reasoning levels. The idea was to ask the machine ‘real-world questions that require a set of fundamental abilities such as reasoning, multi-modality handling, web browsing, and generally tool-use proficiency.’
The end result was that LLLs didn’t do so well when addressing complicated real-world problem-solving scenarios, and they were outmatched by humans almost across the board.
“Even equipped with tools, GPT4 does not exceed a 30% success rate for the easiest of our tasks and 0% for the hardest. In the meantime, the average success rate for human respondents is 92%.”
—GAIA: A benchmark for General AI Assistants' paper drafted by leading global Silicon Valley AI geeks, and posted Nov 21, 2023.
Mr. LeCun noted in an X post that Auto-Regressive LLMs are ‘nowhere near reaching human-level intelligence.’ In fact, says Facebook’s top AI thinker, the current LLMs have no ‘understanding of the physical world, and their lack of planning abilities puts them way below cat-level intelligence🙀.
—Just in case you were worried about losing your job to some AI bot 🤗.
Did you know?
(Overheard on the streets of the global Silicon Valley. Got any hot insider tips? Email us editor@cryptoniteventures.com)
Billionaire Boys & Girls Club
At least 11 Chinese families — collectively worth more than $120 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—are priming their heirs—all under 40—to take over billion-dollar enterprises, from cars to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and new energy. China’s wealth boom started 50 years ago after embracing its own CCP-controlled form of free enterprise. Over that period, the founders of some of China’s biggest companies have collectively built up $1 trillion of wealth.
Despite OpenAI’s latest drama, the plan for current employees to sell $1B of their stock to an investor group led by Thrive Capital is still on track to close by the end of the year. That is a big ‘whew’ for a lot of people, as the company is valued at $86B for the sale. There were a couple of days when 95% of the employees were ready to follow Sam to Microsoft, and OpenAI’s stock value was worth the resale value of the computers in the company’s server farm. 😅
UnSocial Networking
In the unsealed Meta lawsuit by a swath of state attorneys, we learn that the company had figured out the lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen Instagram user is roughly $270, which undercuts its denials that they do not monetize young users. Meta also knew that teenage users were struggling with ‘constant negative comparisons’ on Instagram because of the types of content recommended and the fact that ‘like’ numbers were visible.
VC Whispers
Google Brain cofounder Andrew Ng is raising his second AI Fund. The inaugural $175M AI Fund was raised in 2018, and its investors included VC power funds NEA, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and SoftBank as investors. Mr. Ng was cofounder of Coursera and chief scientist at Baidu.
AI Tracker
The New Gamemaster. Google DeepMind’s AI app, built with its Student of Games (SoG) model, can beat human players in chess, Go, poker, and other games that require a variety of strategies to win. This feat has enthusiasts hailing the AI app as an act of 'superhuman performance.'
In the UK, management consultants will get the most exposure to the top 10 AI apps, from image recognition to language modeling or translation. Lawyers, accountants, and financial managers will be most transformed. Teachers also have high AI exposure. All white-collar service companies are investing in AI to boost productivity, resulting in a hiring slowdown even for software engineers.
On Hollywood
During the Hollywood strikes, projects weren’t greenlit, hits weren’t realized, new gigs weren’t booked, and paychecks weren’t cut. The hidden math is the pause gave the Studios the ability to scale back and regroup and produce an astounding $10B in free cash flow over a 12-month period.
“In a weird way, the strikes have been a mask for the deeper issues we’re struggling with—the costs of content, the quality of content, and the eradication of several revenue streams.”
—Jeremy Zimmer, CEO of United Talent Agency
New York Times Dealbook
Walt Disney’s Bob Iger is ‘definitely’ stepping down in 2026, and the ABC broadcast network is not for sale, even though he floated the idea during his titillating CNBC interview last July. ‘I did not want to get accused of being kind of an old media executive,’ which, of course, he is. At the New York Times Dealbook, Iger also said he was ‘bullish’ on the new Shanghai Disneyland and explained why he pulled ads from X.
In an ironic coincidence, Elon spoke at Dealbook a few hours after Mr. Iger and responded to the Disney ad pull. ‘What this advertising boycott is going to do is—Kill the company!” Elon shouted out as his genteel host nervously pulled on his collar. ‘And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.’
Then, seeking Mr. Iger in the audience, Elon threw down the gauntlet, ‘If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Go f*ck yourself!’ expressed the leather jacket and furry collar-attired EV company CEO. ‘Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel—don’t advertise!’
X Boss Lady Linda Yaccarino described Elon’s comments as ‘wide-ranging’ and ‘candid’ and an ‘explicit point of view about our position—as a platform that allows people to make their own decisions.’
Going Green
Solar farms in SoCal are proving millions of EV batteries could be repurposed and extend their usefulness for years as solar storage. The 20-acre, 1.5-megawatt solar farm charges nearly 600 batteries in cabinets, sending clean energy to the grid to power homes at night when energy demand rises.
Salesforce Ventures and Female Founders Fund provided Kenya-based Amini $4M in seed funding for the environmental data company that leverages AI and space technologies. Amini pulls data from satellites, research, and ground truthing to provide insights on biodiversity, soil or crop health, and track farming progress and practices like water or fertilizer use.
“We are building technology designed specifically for Africa to lead an economic transformation for our continent’s one billion people. By de-risking the ‘first mile’ of the global agricultural value chain through enhanced data transparency and access, we can kick-start positive feedback loops, provide greater economic inclusion for farmers, and transform the global farming industry.
—Kate Kallot, the founder and CEO of Amini
Tesla’s new tri-motor ‘Cyberbeast’ variant went 0-60mph in just 2.6 seconds, beating out a Porche 911 by more than a nose. It also hit the quarter-mile mark in under 11 seconds. Watch the Cyberbeast outdrag the German car in the video below..
Follow the Crypto
Coinbase’s stock (COIN) hit an 18-month high alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. The shares of the US’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange are at the highest price since before Terra crashed back in May 2022.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says there is a lesson to learn after Binance’s “CZ” Zhao resigned and pleaded guilty to willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. ‘It is the end of an era,’ he says, ‘Entrepreneurs need to comply with regulations or else develop completely permissionless protocols that can’t be regulated. And we agree.
As CZ negotiates with the Feds if he can fly home to Dubai before his sentencing, Binance is getting back into the Japanese crypto game by acquiring crypto exchange Sakura. Rumor has it CZ is likely to serve 18 months in prison as part of his deal.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC on Monday, ‘The enforcement action against Binance allows us to close that chapter of crypto’s history.’ Brian A also says he thinks ’that regulatory clarity is going to help bring in more investment, especially from institutions.’
Space Shots
‘There will be at least one, maybe two, private space stations in the next 5 to 10 years,’ says Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures. Sierra Space is partnering with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Boeing, and Redwire to launch a ‘mixed-use business park’—Orbital Reef—targetted to be open in 2027.
Researchers have found ‘the perfect solar system’ 100 light years away with six planets—all about the same size—revolving around a star. In their abstract, the researchers say the solar system was forged without the violent collisions that created our system of different-sized planets. These undisturbed conditions make it ideal for learning how these worlds formed and whether they host life.
Know Thy Enemy
Chinese national-held marijuana growing operations are scattered across small-town America from New Mexico to Maine. Some are owned by Chinese investors with commercial growing licenses; others are illegal. Oklahoma alone shut down 1,000 marijuana farms since 2020—90% of them owned by Chinese organized crime rings.
The Air Force’s super-secret B-21 Raider stealth bomber quietly made its first flight in California on Nov 10, flying from the factory to Edwards AFB at just above tree-top level. The B-21 is the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft and is capable of delivering both precision nuclear or conventional strikes anywhere in the world.
The number of US citizens who consider China the enemy has grown dramatically from 55% in 2018 to 77% today. Today, just 15% view China as an ally, way down from 38% in 2018. 51% in the US also view China as the nation’s greatest threat, up from 43% last year and 21% in 2018. Meanwhile. The number of people who see Russia as our greatest threat fell to 24% from 31% last year following its invasion of Ukraine.
What the Math Says
Heartbreakingly—due primarily to rising suicide rates among older adults during COVID-19—suicide rates in the US hit a historic high in 2022, the CDC reports. Over 49,000 people died by suicide in 2022—the highest tally recorded for the nation. The suicide rate among those younger than 25 fell. The gender gap remained with men at 23.1 deaths per 100k and women at 5.9 per 100k.
Lisa Gevelber, Google’s chief marketing officer for the Americas, reports that one of the fastest-growing job markets in the US is fighting internet crime. The FBI has seen a 300% increase in reported cyber crimes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating 600,000 unfilled US cybersecurity jobs and 3.5M worldwide.
Pura Vida (pure life)
Exercising at the same time of day can potentially shield us against bone and joint deterioration, protect against injury, and stave off age-related physical decline and conditions such as arthritis, found a study at The University of Manchester that examined internal body clocks.
After over-eating during the Holidays, make an infusion or Homemade Bitter to cleanse your body and keep your immune systems functioning well. Make an infusion with 1-3 tablespoons of herbs in boiling water for 15 minutes to one hour and then strain—check out the best herbs here for your cleanse.
