Will NFTs rule the world?, NBA star invests in pickleball, flying cars, Jony Ive's new $60,000 turntable, Jack Dorsey defends Elon, and more...
Forget the NFT trading bust—Non-fungible tokens will rule our world
—NFTs as 'utility' tokens are booming. Gamers, social networks, entertainers, and top high-end brands leverage NFTs to attract, authenticate, manage, and serve next-generation customers.
Before we get more specific on how NFTs will take over the world, let’s zoom up for a moment and address the dinosaur in the room: WTF was up with that crazed NFT hysteria in late 2021? Are these NFTs for real?
The answer to the first question is illustrated above. A subset of largely Zoomers started maniacally trading NFT art and collectibles and drove insane three-month run-up prices in August of 2021, then took a dramatic swan dive four months later. The NFT craze has won the prize as the greatest collective investor blip of all time. It was clear from the beginning that the value proposition (or lack thereof) driving the 2021 NFT trading craze would never meet the fantasies of early enthusiasts. NFT trading is still with us but with a more traditional and (hopefully) rational investor-valuation sensibility.
But it’s important to understand that publicly trading NFTs only represent a small subset of the overall NFT market. Most NFTs fall under the category of ‘utilities.’ For example, gaming companies use NFTs to validate member identity, permit community privileges, and offer in-game items as collectibles. Since gaming transactions represented over half of all blockchain activity in 2022, the most popular use of NFTs today is in the gaming industry; this trend bodes well for overall NFT proliferation….
NFTs—Your new key to the hippest hotels, restaurants, and clubs
—NFTs help the fashionable hoteliers and restauranteurs attract (and track) the Gens Y & Z crowd and keep them coming back for more.
NFTs meet the booming hospitality world
The hospitality business is booming, with over $4 trillion in revenues representing 6 percent of the world's GDP. According to Crunchbase, the hospitality tech space now represents almost a $93 billion business, with 5,610 active VC-backed companies. Since 2018, the VCs have pumped nearly $7 billion into over 1,200 hospitality tech startups. Only fintech and healthcare have more startups in their sectors.
Did you know?
(Overheard on the streets of the global Silicon Valley—Got any hot tips?)
VC Whispers
Since the pandemic, pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in the country, and celebrity investors, like Stephen Colbert, are pouring millions into the sport. NBA superstar Kevin Durant and entrepreneur Rich Kleiman's investment firm Thirty-Five Ventures purchased a Pickleball expansion team,
Venture capital funding halved globally in the first six months of 2023, highlighting less demand amid sharply higher interest rates. The 48% decline to $173.9 billion and 19% drop in number of VC deals comes despite huge interest in AI startups sparked by the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
After a dramatic split with Sequoia Capital, the former Sequoia China and Sequoia India (now Peak XV) are cozying up to investors to keep the money rolling in. Sequoia China’s Neil Shen is hosting investors for a three-day meeting in Shanghai in November, and Peak is meeting U.S. investors.
AI on the March
Starting this fall, Harvard launched a coding class (CS50) taught by an AI bot. "Our hope is we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher: student ratio for every student in CS50 by providing them with software tools 24/7 to support learning at a pace style that works best.
Nadine, an AI-powered robot with human-like gestures and expressions, may tend to us when we are sick and elderly. 'Nadine has 24 hours of the day to give,' says inventor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann from the University of Geneva.
The AI for public security will grow from $9 billion in 2022 to $71 billion by 2030. Advanced algorithms, machine learning, and predictive analytics help first responders and safety officials make better decisions respond more quickly to emergencies and even prevent disasters in the first place.
Block Party
The California DMV showcased an NFT-based ownership certificate (“pink slip”). "Blockchain transforms your vehicle title into an NFT, held in a DMV digital wallet, eliminating paper title, and indisputably validating owns the asset,” says DMV chief digital officer Ajay Gupta. Saves on the back end too!
French fashion house Dior is the latest luxury brand to embrace blockchain, announcing a limited-run B33 sneaker for men with an NFT-based certificate of ownership for the available 470 pairs at $1,350.
The NY Fed and Wells Fargo, BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, and Mastercard, among others, report their successful experiment with centralized blockchain payments. “The ability to move dollars in any amount on a 24/7 basis would be a game changer for global users of the dollar," says Tony McLaughlin at Citi.
Follow the Crypto
As Bitcoin' hodling’ increases because investors remain reluctant to sell, BTC prices hit a new 2023 high this week. This accumulation is speculated to result from long-term institutions and BTC whales locking away the asset as a store of value in times of high inflation and diminishing fiat values.
Cristiano Ronaldo launches second NFT collection—The ‘Greatest Of All Time.’ The 29,000 NFT collection allows fans to ‘own’ specific goals and career-defining moments, combined with exclusive rewards and perks. His first series is the most successful athlete NFT collection of all time.
Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Citadel launched a new crypto exchange for institutional investors called EDX to trade BTC, ETH, BCH, and litecoin. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) to buy BTC and sell shares to retail investors.
Into the Metaverse
Due to design complexities, Apple has made drastic cuts to its Vision Pro headset production plans. While analysts have lauded the impressive technology behind the Vision Pro, they have warned that it will be a few years before the $3,499 augmented reality headset sees widespread adoption.
Theatres offer remote virtual reality experiences via Box Office VR to their live performances to attract new audiences. Promoters know VR is a very personal experience as opposed to theatre, which is communal, and therefore triggers deeper emotions than a stage performance.
Top 5 Games to Play in the Metaverse in 2023: Zepeto, Battle Infinity, Decentraland, Sandbox, and Axie Infinity. The potential to offer unique and personalized immersive gaming experiences has attracted the world’s top gamers to the Metaverse.
GoingGreen
After canceling the 4th of July, fireworks show due to new water quality issues in Redondo Beach, the SoCal beach town turned to an air show featuring 200 illuminated drones that were configured into a swimming dolphin, spelling “Redondo Beach,” and a map of the States and the U.S. flag.
Silicon Valley-based Alef Aeronautics received its FAA airworthiness certification so the fully electric Armada Model Zero aircraft can be road and air tested. The 2-seater car launches vertically into the air with a 110-mile flying range and 200 road miles. You can now pre-order the $300,000 aircraft.
The best electric bikes in 2023 if you are a commuter, mountain biker, delivery worker, or looking for a cargo bike for the family. Recommendations range from seniors looking to scale mountains to people living in small spaces and those on a budget.
The Incredible Shrinking Web2
What Zuck and Elon couldn’t settle in the UFC cage will be settled in the battle of the Old New Media titans (i.e., web2 dinosaurs still selling our personal data). Zuck announced a Twitter clone called Threads (yawn), a microblogging app connected to Instagram. Sorry Zuck, too boring too late.
When Elon announced limits on the number of user tweets, traffic in Jack Dorsey’s new Web3 social network Bluesky spiked. Unlike closed Web2 social networks controlled by central authorities like Twitter, Bluesky’s AT Protocol is an open-source framework for building social apps.
Poor Hollywood. Too many Streamers pursuing ‘original niche content’ resulted in shitty content. Then Netflix lost millions of subs and billions in value when we could leave the house again. Disney, NBCU, and Paramount followed with 8.3 billion in streaming losses. Then the writers’ strike hit.
What the Math Says
According to a new German “stateness” study that measures how well societies function as a whole—e.g., how quickly you get a doctor’s appointment, do children have a large selection of schools and plenty of electricity— Singapore ranks #1, the Aussies #2, U.S. #23, and China #61.
Entrepreneurial Huddle
Median pre-money Series C, D, and E valuations for U.S. startups showed signs of bouncing back for the first quarter since the VC downturn started about 18 months ago, according to new data from Carta. Late-stage startups have borne the brunt of the depression in startup valuations.
Jony Ive, the chief designer who helped Steve Jobs create our iMacs, iPhones, and iPads, introduced the $60,000 Sondek LP12-50 turntable on the 50th anniversary of Linn’s iconic Sondek LP12 turntable introduced in 1972. Gone is the 70s wood design; in are clean industrial lines, to be expected from Jony.
From the Streets of Silicon Valley
Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey defended Elon Musk amid backlash over his new limits on daily tweets to keep the servers humming. “Running Twitter is hard,” tweeted Jack. “It’s easy to critique decisions from afar…which I’m guilty of…but I know the goal is for Twitter to thrive. It will.”
San Francisco’s Fire Chief warns against ‘unleashing’ AI-operated, self-driving robotaxis in the city. “These robotaxis are not ready for prime time,” he said, citing incidents of the unmanned taxis, made by Cruise, Waymo, and Motional, obstructing fire engines and blocking roads during emergencies.
California governor and rumored presidential candidate Gavin Newsom is doubling the state police to confront the state's crime and fentanyl crises. Newsome admitted that his three restaurants, wineries, a boutique hotel, and bars in San Francisco had been robbed at least half a dozen times.
Know Thy Enemy
In a back-and-forth feud, the US is set to restrict China's cloud computing development which could also restrict Amazon and Microsoft from providing cloud computing services with advanced AI chips to Chinese customers.
A federal judge ruled the Biden administration violated the First Amendment with its “Orwellian’ efforts to censor consenting views and barred the Surgeon General, the HHS Secretary, the press secretary, and the DOJ and FBI from contacting social media firms regarding censoring.
A ‘Cyber battlefield’ map shows cyber attacks being played out live across the globe. The dashboard is updated in real-time using ThreatCloud, an AI-powered system by Israel-based Check Point. Unsettlingly, the system shows the UK was attacked 854 times per week over the last six months.
Revive Thyself! (or not)
Stress-reducing activities, such as exercise, meditation, deep breathing, and massage, activate the parasympathetic nervous system and promote the production of GABA, a neurotransmitter in the brain which helps regulates the stress response and reduce feelings of anxiety and tension.
Tom Brady plans to keep up his notoriously strict NFL diet. The 45-year-old seven-time Super Bowl winner steers clear of alcohol, sugar and caffeine, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. 'What I put in my body is very important. My body is my asset. It allows me to live the life I want to live,” says #12.
Generation Z struggles with anti-social behavior and difficulty establishing deep friendships critical to our sense of belonging, well-being, health, and happiness. The root of this issue is the COVID lockdown, which caused social networks to shrink and made it tougher to make friends say the experts.
The new study of 2.6 million Spanish adults aged 40 and under who were cancer-free in 2009 found that the longer and earlier in life a person is overweight and obese the higher risk of getting one of the 18 cancers linked to excess weight.
Flashback Interview
Bill Gates’s love affair with the ‘Interactive TV’ that never happened
—In a 1993 interview, Bill Gates could see the power of connecting consumers over a massive digital network—The problem was he was driving Microsoft down the wrong information superhighway.
Barcelona, Spain, September 10, 1993
In 1993, Bill Gates, then Chairman & CEO of Microsoft, talked exclusively with Red Herring editor-in-chief Anthony Perkins about his company's plans to be a major player in building the ‘information highway’ into everyone’s home that never happened. Foreshadowing the Internet, Bill Gates said, ‘Everybody is planning to be a big player in interactive TV! The holy grail of this revolution will be to provide consumers with two-way communications into the home through a new device we call the TV/PC.’
Current Wisdom
“The decentralized future is not just about creating new applications; it’s about rethinking how we organize society. You shouldn’t have to trust any organization in order to participate in the system.”
— Vitalik Buterin, Computer Programmer & Founder of Ethereum