Shapeshift's FOX Token, H.R.3289, and Of Course…The Cybertruck

11/24/2019

CZ Threatens to Sue The Block

I’m trying to decide if I will cover things like this at all going forward because it kind of detracts from what I find interesting about cryptocurrency while at the same time making the main players appear childish. Anyway, this happened and as you can see CZ is claiming it was the cause of the BTC price drop this week.

Vitalik on The Portal

Vitalik was on Eric Weinstein’s Portal podcast. If you aren’t technical and are looking for a gentle introduction to Ethereum or the current cryptocurrency zeitgeist, this episode isn’t terrible. Eric approaches the interview from the perspective of someone who knows almost nothing about the space, even though he is clearly informed.

Tesla’s Cybertruck

Everyone on the internet is roasting the design of the cybertruck. However, Tesla had zero chance of selling trucks in the existing truck market. The prototypical truck buyer is entrenched in the make of truck that they purchase. I’ve overheard conversations at Thanksgiving dinner where the buyer of one make ribs the buyer of another as if they’re discussing their favorite football teams. Not only this, but, I’d wager that the typical truck purchaser is not particularly aligned with Tesla’s brand. Tesla’s only chance to sell a truck model is to do something different from existing trucks and hope to get new truck buyers into the market.

That said, you could make an argument that Tesla shouldn’t be working on a truck at this stage of the company. But, I guess that’s why I’m not a billionaire.

Shapeshift’s FOX Token

This might be a pivot after the shift to KYC didn’t go well, or it may have been in the works since the beginning. Either way it benefits customers and is an interesting idea.

Disney+ Accounts Allegedly Sold on Dark Web

People are always flabbergasted by the compensation great developers can command. This is the sort of thing that happens when a company isn’t willing to pay top dollar for engineering talent.

Speaking of Disney+, this article about how Disney+ is not expected to effect Netflix subscriber numbers is an example of why I avoid businesses with high p/e ratios. It isn’t because the shares are necessarily over-priced, but more likely that they’re affected by the psychology of the public. This is a problem because news that may or may not actually affect the business will likely adversely affect the stock price, meaning rationality is less present in the price.

Amazon Files Lawsuit for Pentagon Contract

I covered this briefly in a newsletter a few weeks ago. It looks like Amazon is moving forward with a lawsuit.

U.S. Congress Sends Hong Kong Bill to Trump

I initially couldn’t decide if some kind of Kafkaesque masquerade was occurring, or if it genuinely takes this long to hammer out legislation when I heard the Senate news. After hearing that the bill also passed Congress shortly after, I’m more inclined to believe that it just takes this long to write legislation. I’m partly ashamed at how bureaucratic legislation writing is and partly proud that the U.S. legislators are at least doing something about Hong Kong.

This week’s newsletter not your cup of tea? Check out some of the more popular weeks below!

• GitHub Acquires Semmle, Vitalik’s Time Machine, and Condolences to the Facebook Engineer
• Get Paid Today, A $100k EOS Hack, and Tokenizing a Basketball Player
• The $1 Billion Bitcoin Whale, A $243,000 Deepfake, Pre-Mature Optimization, and The Yandhi Leak

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The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers.

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