Tag: Elon

Posted on

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon?

A few days ago, new Twitter owner Elon Musk said that the company will try a lot of dumb things in the coming days. And that seems to be the product strategy of the company — even if it causes utter chaos all around.

It’s a tough time for anyone keeping tabs on changes at the social network because anything can flip anytime without warning. Blinked a few times? Something has changed. Went to make coffee? A lot has changed. Went to sleep? Welcome to a new world.

Earlier this week, Twitter launched its grey-colored official checkmark for notable accounts like companies and politicians. This was meant to be a second layer of identification after Musk declared that everyone paying $8 a month will get the original blue check mark. But within hours of the launch, he “killed it.”

On the other hand, the company’s product manager Esther Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are “still going out” as a part of the new Twitter Blue product. As of this morning on Friday, The official check mark is back (kinda) — but to a limited number of accounts. There is no clarity on how this is being rolled out. Beat this plot, Christopher Nolan.

Then there is the new $8 Twitter Blue plan, which Musk thinks is the savior of Twitter (and possibly humanity). It began rolling out to iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The only feature it currently has is the blue checkmark, and yes, new users can’t sign up for it.

After this was rolled out, a bunch of accounts started to troll brands, athletes, and officials making it look like they are tweeting from official accounts. Despite several bans and blocks, many accounts are still spreading misinformation. A lot of these tweets are getting thousands of likes and retweets. Until now, we don’t know of any grave consequences but this can cause a lot of damage. Only if Twitter had strong leaders in security, legal, comms, and trust and safety teams.

Twitter has changed its policy about parody accounts saying that they should specify this in both their names and bio to avoid impersonation. Notably, the language used in these policy changes is crude and vague.

At the time of writing, Twitter seems to have turned off Twitter Blue subscriptions across the globe. As app researcher Jane Manchun Wong noted, the company is not letting users subscribe to this new plan. This could be a result of a premature rollout in countries like India, and it could also be another “killed it.” Maybe by the time you’re reading this, it might be available again who knows?

There is a lot happening on Twitter at breakneck speed. New policy pages are popping up without corresponding features being available on the app. The company is probably rolling out changes to production directly from the development environment. Timelines are breaking. There are tons of bugs on the platform. Spam has increased. Musk has called off remote work and said the company could go bankrupt. Hoards of executives have left. But everything is fine, and Twitter is the most interesting place on earth.

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon? by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon?

A few days ago, new Twitter owner Elon Musk said that the company will try a lot of dumb things in the coming days. And that seems to be the product strategy of the company — even if it causes utter chaos all around.

It’s a tough time for anyone keeping tabs on changes at the social network because anything can flip anytime without warning. Blinked a few times? Something has changed. Went to make coffee? A lot has changed. Went to sleep? Welcome to a new world.

Earlier this week, Twitter launched its grey-colored official checkmark for notable accounts like companies and politicians. This was meant to be a second layer of identification after Musk declared that everyone paying $8 a month will get the original blue check mark. But within hours of the launch, he “killed it.”

On the other hand, the company’s product manager Esther Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are “still going out” as a part of the new Twitter Blue product. As of this morning on Friday, The official check mark is back (kinda) — but to a limited number of accounts. There is no clarity on how this is being rolled out. Beat this plot, Christopher Nolan.

Then there is the new $8 Twitter Blue plan, which Musk thinks is the savior of Twitter (and possibly humanity). It began rolling out to iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The only feature it currently has is the blue checkmark, and yes, new users can’t sign up for it.

After this was rolled out, a bunch of accounts started to troll brands, athletes, and officials making it look like they are tweeting from official accounts. Despite several bans and blocks, many accounts are still spreading misinformation. A lot of these tweets are getting thousands of likes and retweets. Until now, we don’t know of any grave consequences but this can cause a lot of damage. Only if Twitter had strong leaders in security, legal, comms, and trust and safety teams.

Twitter has changed its policy about parody accounts saying that they should specify this in both their names and bio to avoid impersonation. Notably, the language used in these policy changes is crude and vague.

At the time of writing, Twitter seems to have turned off Twitter Blue subscriptions across the globe. As app researcher Jane Manchun Wong noted, the company is not letting users subscribe to this new plan. This could be a result of a premature rollout in countries like India, and it could also be another “killed it.” Maybe by the time you’re reading this, it might be available again who knows?

There is a lot happening on Twitter at breakneck speed. New policy pages are popping up without corresponding features being available on the app. The company is probably rolling out changes to production directly from the development environment. Timelines are breaking. There are tons of bugs on the platform. Spam has increased. Musk has called off remote work and said the company could go bankrupt. Hoards of executives have left. But everything is fine, and Twitter is the most interesting place on earth.

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon? by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Toyota-backed robotaxi unicorn Pony.ai sues ex-employees over trade secrets

Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement.

The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the U.S., resigned to start a competitor called Qingtian Truck.

China’s autonomous driving upstarts are under growing pressure to commercialize as they reach later stages of fundraising. They are still years away from deploying driverless robotaxis on bustling urban roads at scale, but simpler scenarios such as shuttle buses and long-haul trucks have presented them with opportunities.

In 2020, Pony established a separate trucking division, which it branded PonyTron. Earlier this year, it formed a trucking joint venture with Sinotrans, a freight forwarding company under the Chinese state-owned conglomerate China Merchants Group.

Pony filed the complaint with a court in Beijing and is seeking damages of 60 million yuan ($8.9 million) from Qingtian. The Beijing Intellectual Property Court has accepted the case, Pony told TechCrunch.

Qingtian said in a statement that it has yet to receive any allegation document and is verifying information regarding the case.

“Qingtian Truck has always adhered to the law, practiced business ethics, and insisted on independent R&D and innovation. We have not infringed upon any third-party trade secret,” the company said.

IP dispute is not uncommon in the billion-dollar autonomous driving industry that depends on technological breakthroughs. Elon Musk for a long time was at loggerheads with Xpeng, Tesla’s Chinese competitor. In 2019, Tesla filed a lawsuit against a former employee alleging that he had stolen trade secrets related to the firm’s Autopilot driver assistance feature and brought them to Xpeng. The case was dropped last year. 

Pan, former chief technology officer for Pony’s trucking business, and Sun, who previously led planning and control for the company’s trucking business in the U.S., were among the senior employees who have left Pony over the past year to set up their own shop.

Sun Haowen, former head of planning and control for Pony’s autonomous driving in China, also left to work on a new autonomous trucking venture.

TechCrunch’s sources and other media reports suggested that employees were disgruntled about Pony’s decision to merge the R&D units of its trucking and passenger car businesses, but Pony reasoned that the restructuring would lead to more efficient outcomes.

Key executives resign after Pony.ai combines trucking and passenger car R&D units

Robotaxi startup Pony.ai now valued at $8.5B

Posted on

Twitter lays off 30% of its talent acquisition team

Twitter laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team today, two months into a companywide hiring freeze. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed these layoffs but declined to share the exact number of employees affected.

The company spokesperson added that employees will receive severance packages (but declined to share specifics) and said that the remaining recruitment staff will be reprioritized due to decreased hiring. Twitter is pausing most hiring and backfills, aside from the most critical roles.

Hiring freezes aren’t out of the ordinary in the midst of massive acquisition deals, but aside from Twitter’s impending $44 billion takeover by Elon Musk, the not-particularly-profitable social platform has found itself in a precarious economic period. It’s estimated that over 30,000 tech workers have been laid off in the last two months, and social networks aren’t immune to the market downturn. Competitors like Snap and Meta have also taken precautionary measures to manage their overhead in a time of economic upheaval. Just last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that they should prepare to do more work with fewer resources.

Twitter’s executives have also witnessed some serious reshuffling since Parag Agrawal took over for Jack Dorsey as CEO. After the deal with Elon Musk was announced, Agrawal let go of consumer GM Keyvon Beykpour and revenue product lead Bruce Falck.

Agrawal has made a number of other key personnel changes since assuming his new role in December. At the time, Twitter lost its chief design officer Dantley Davis and head of engineering Michael Montano. A month later, Twitter lost two more leaders, chief information security officer, Rinki Sethi, and head of security, Peiter Zatko.

“Some have been asking why a ‘lame-duck’ CEO would make these changes if we’re getting acquired anyway,” Agrawal tweeted. “While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter.”

Agrawal himself will also likely lose his short-lived CEO role if Musk’s acquisition goes through.

In a recent all-hands call with Twitter employees, Musk said that he’s not concerned with what title he’d have at the company, but that he wants to be heavily involved in product. At that meeting, Twitter employees voiced concerns about potential layoffs in response to the macroeconomic environment.

“Right now, costs exceed revenue. That’s not a great situation,” he said regarding potential Twitter layoffs. As CEO of Tesla, Musk just laid off nearly 200 employees and shuttered the company’s San Mateo, California office amid broader job reductions. Still, it’s unclear what influence Musk would have on Twitter’s workforce if the deal even closes.

If you’re a Twitter employee or former employee with more information, please send tips to amanda@techcrunch.com, or contact via Signal, an encrypted messaging app, at 929 593 0227.

The end of a second straight month of layoffs in tech

Top Twitter execs, including heads of revenue and consumer products, are out following Musk deal

Posted on

Twitter is protecting its source code from disgruntled employees, reports say

Twitter locked down its source code to prevent unauthorized changes, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The reports say that this change was made to prevent employees from “going rogue” and sabotaging the platform after Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the company. Currently, a vice president must approve any changes.

After the company announced it would accept Musk’s offer to buy the publicly traded platform, it wasn’t immediately clear to Twitter’s 7000 employees how their day-to-day would change. Even after a company all-hands, where CEO Parag Agrawal reassured the team that no layoffs were planned “at this time,” employees were still left with questions about how they would fare in Musk’s takeover.

Twitter’s Director of Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability Rumman Chowdhury asked in a tweet, “Elon aside, can anyone explain to me how Twitter will hire/keep employees since there isn’t company stock to create competitive comp packages? A significant part of our pay is in [restricted stock units].”

For now, Musk’s takeover bid for Twitter remains subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. But if it goes through as expected, we may witness major personnel shifts, resignations and more. A similar shake-up took place when Twitter was listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time. By the time the company went public, there were already 90 startups being built by former Twitter employees.

Despite his enormous wealth, Musk doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to managing employees. Under his leadership at Tesla, the company has quashed union efforts by warehouse workers, faced racial discrimination lawsuits and dismissed employee concerns about returning to work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you’re a Twitter employee or former employee with more information, please send tips to amanda@techcrunch.com, or contact via Signal, an encrypted messaging app, at 929 593 0227.

Bring on the Twitter mafia

It’s not rocket science, why Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover could be bad for privacy

Posted on

Alright Elon, don’t fuck it up

Elon Musk’s quest to buy Twitter came to a close today with a win for the technology mogul. Regardless of what we might have thought when Twitter was busy circling its wagons with a poison-pill defense against takeover the deal is done, and, well, here we are.

After more than a decade on Twitter and several hundred thousands tweets to my name — deleted in batches of 100,000 or so, I am overdue for another purge — I have more or less grown up on Twitter, joining back in mid-2007, the same month I turned 18. That makes the posting platform much more than a public social media company to me, or a former startup that has long since transcended its corporate youth.

Twitter is my home. It’s the first thing I check in the morning, and usually the last thing I look at before falling asleep. I’ve had to banish my phone from my bedroom at times to avoid doing more Twitter. I freaking love and live it. I have made friends on Twitter, gotten jobs from endless tweeting and met all sorts of people on the service. It’s my goddamn living room.

So, Elon, don’t fuck it up.

Twitter is not perfect and never has been. I haven’t always agreed with the company’s product choices or policy decisions. But what Twitter has mostly done during its life is keep its time-series feed accessible while working to conserve as much room for speech as possible while working on the spam issue. It’s worked.

The remit ahead of Elon is to somehow carve a path forward that makes the platform even more enticing to more folks. Some of what the company’s new owner had to say in his announcement sounds fine — “[making] Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans” — but it’s not a perfect list. Authenticating all humans will cause an uproar in the crypto space, for example, where anonymity and pseudo-anonymity are considered bedrock community values. New features can be good or distracting; Fleets was bad, but Spaces are good, that sort of thing.

You can’t just throw new shit at Twitter and make it better. If you do that you will get whatever Frankenstein-style monster Facebook became and Instagram is morphing into. Twitter is good because it did one small thing very well, and generally stuck to it. More might not be better.

On the spam front, godspeed. I would love to get fewer Coinbase support spam posts whenever I mention the company during my regular usage of Twitter. But my beefs with Twitter as a user are not inexhaustible, while potential missteps feel infinite. Let’s hope that Elon has a handful of very strong ideas, and that that list is somewhat different from what he has detailed thus far. If not, he’s going to upset part of his core fanbase: Namely the Dogecoin legions who, after all this time, still believe.

It’s easy to sit here and ask very regular questions. How will Musk balance his time, for example. Who will wind up running the day-to-day operations when the takeover is completed and settled, or whether employees stay. All that matters, but with my journalist hat off and my user hat on, I simply hope that Elon doesn’t fuck up Twitter. It is my home.

Posted on

Metaverses grapple with Meta versus Apple

Hello readers, and welcome back to Week in Review!

Last week, I talked about Apple and crypto. This week, we’re talking about Apple clashing with Meta over their metaverse taxes.

After sending out hundreds of these newsletters, next week will sadly be my last time sending out Week in Review — but more excitingly it will also be my first time sending out my new crypto newsletter Chain Reaction, so if you like my ramblings, please follow me on Twitter and subscribe to Chain Reaction!!!

a game in Horizon Worlds

Image Credits: Meta

the big thing

If any of my ramblings in this newsletter have taught you one thing about the metaverse, it’s that a coherent view of it doesn’t really exist. The purest form of it is probably best seen in the undying jealousy Facebook holds for Roblox and Meta’s desire to recreate that tweenage empire and bring billions of users to it.

This week, we got a taste of how exactly Facebook hopes to monetize its looming metaverse dreams.

We learned that Meta will begin allowing goods to be sold in Horizon Worlds, its latest social VR app which it hopes to grow into a multitrillion-dollar empire. The controversial note will be that Facebook will take a 25% cut of goods sold on the platform, which doesn’t sound all that problematic until you learn those goods will also separately be taxed by a 30% cut taken from the Oculus Store. Taken together, it means that virtual goods sold on the Horizon platform in VR will come with a whopping 47.5% tax attached to them.

If you were hopeful that the virtual economy meant an escape from the bothersome features of your daily life, like taxes, you will be disappointed that Uncle Zuck will be taking a bigger cut than Uncle Sam ever did (though he’ll of course be taking his in addition).

Nevertheless, as expected, there was a fair bit of blowback on Facebook for this outsized figure, the most biting of which actually came from Apple:

“Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz stated in an email to MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.”

These are harsh — and obviously self-serving — words from Apple’s team, but there’s clearly some truth in there. Meta’s CTO responded to the quote with some fairly lukewarm commentary on how Apple makes significant margins on hardware and software while Meta subsidizes its VR hardware and thus should charge more on software. It’s not exactly a bulletproof defense, largely because Facebook tried to sell VR hardware at a higher premium, but no one wanted to buy it — so selling discounted headsets isn’t some nicety on their part, but a means of VR survival.

This all plays into a fairly consistent problem for Facebook though. Every year for the last six or seven years, it’s just always been an awful time for them to start monetizing their virtual reality play. Their audience has seemed to resist monetization shifts every step of the way, and bonafide consumer traction has been so hard to come by over the years that the goal has always defaulted to moving headsets and worrying about paying the bill later. Fast-forward a few billion dollars and the company is beginning to move more headsets by selling them at a loss, but that doesn’t mean that Horizons or VR is in any safer of a position than it was years ago.

A 47.5% cut isn’t terribly different from what content creators on Roblox are used to paying, though that money is generally being paid to account for multiple platform stakeholders rather than one company. I can’t see it being a terribly convincing recipe for bringing desperately needed creators to an emerging platform, but Meta/Facebook’s balance sheet subsidization of the metaverse will have to find revenues somewhere, especially when Meta is, after all — allegedly — a metaverse company.

other things

Here are a few stories this week I think you should take a closer look at:

Elon offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion
There’s no if, and or but about it — the biggest news of the week was that Tesla CEO and richest-man-on-the-planet Elon Musk offered $43 billion to buy social networking site Twitter this week in an unsolicited deal that had Twitter’s board scrambling and everyone in Silicon Valley chattering. It seems to be an uphill road for Musk, but knowing him, even if this bid gets scuttled, he’s probably not going to give up on shaking things up at Twitter.

Record crypto hack was perpetrated by North Korea-linked group
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the $625 million hack of crypto gaming title Axie Infinity. Well, this week things got a bit more serious when U.S. officials disclosed that they had linked the hack to North Korea state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus. The NFT game courted billions of investments, and analysts fear the nine-figure heist could go to financing some scary things like… uhh… nukes.

Disney cracks whip on fan-driven ‘Club Penguin’ copycat, leading to arrest of founders
Few sagas have betrayed the ruthlessness of The Mouse more than Disney’s undying efforts to obliterate any fan remakes of their popular children’s social network Club Penguin. This week, one of the most popular clones — Club Penguin Rewritten — was taken down in a saga that feels a bit dramatic as London police arrested three individuals connected to the project and took down the site.

Image Credits: Joshua Lott / Getty Images

added things

Some of my favorite reads from our TechCrunch+ subscription service this week:

Is Elon undervaluing Twitter?
“…What I want to know, and somewhat quickly, is whether the price being offered makes any damn sense. So let’s find out. We’ll need to know how quickly Twitter is growing, the strength of its user base expansion and how it has recently traded. We’ll also factor in Twitter’s current efforts to bolster shareholder value. Musk is offering $54.20 per share for 100% of Twitter, a deal worth $43.4 billion. Too low? Let’s find out…”

Africa tech scene shows no signs of a slow-down
“…African startups had a very solid Q1 2022 in terms of VC investment, both in dollars and in deal volume. This is news in itself, but even more so when venture funding was simultaneously declining in the U.S., Asia and Latin America….“

Is Stripe cheap at $95B?
“…With some creative math and, I hope, fair extrapolation, we can derive valuation calculations for Stripe that should help us better understand how well the payments juggernaut busy masquerading as a private company priced its last equity round…”

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Lucas Matney

Posted on

Watch Elon Musk (probably) wreak havoc at the TED2022 conference

Early this morning, Elon Musk dropped the bombshell that he offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion. Just last week, he bought 9.2% of the company for $3 billion, then declined a board seat. But Musk isn’t done causing a ruckus on the internet today — he was already slated to speak at the TED2022 conference, but the organizers at TED turned the paywalled livestream public due to interest.

Do you dare give this man any more attention? If your answer is no, I envy you.

But if you’re a hopeless gossip and/or tech nerd and want to know what the heck this dude is gonna say, tune in here.

The head of TED (lol, that rhymed) Chris Anderson says that “something amazing” is going to happen, which feels a bit more foreboding than exciting, but we’ll see how it goes.

Is Elon Musk undervaluing Twitter in his unsolicited bid?

Posted on

Will Apple build its own blockchain?

Hello readers, and welcome back!

Last week, I wrote about the issues facing Axie Infinity in the wake of a $625 million heist. This week, I’m talking about Apple and crypto.

If you like my ramblings, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to my new crypto newsletter Chain Reaction

Image Credits: Apple

the big thing

This week my colleague Sarah wrote an interesting story on an “NFT” app in the App Store that Apple seemed to suddenly ban despite the fact that it had already operated in plain sight for months. Apple had argued that the app was misleading consumers by selling “NFTs” that could not be resold and furthermore weren’t even stored on a blockchain. The app seems a little dodgy in my opinion, but that’s not particularly the fault of the app developer at hand; the app seems built to live in the gray area of Apple’s non-existent guidance for NFTs. (It’s worth noting that within an hour of our story going live, Apple had somewhat surprisingly reinstated it in the App Store.)

This whole minor saga triggers a more interesting question: What exactly are Apple’s plans for NFTs?

On one hand, I’m sure Apple would like nothing more than to explicitly ban NFTs on the App Store. Apple has argued a key area of the App Store’s utility is in protecting users from scams — something that’s a pretty difficult thing to do in today’s NFT environment. Regulating the industry inside the walled garden of its App Store sounds like a nightmare, something that would require Apple to essentially build out its own internal SEC.

But, and it’s an important but, Apple also loves money; more specifically, services revenue from the App Store.

Gaming is the most popular vertical in the App Store, which brings Apple tens of billions in revenue annually. The prospect of gaming companies embracing NFTs in a major way over the next decade seems increasingly likely, and losing out on that revenue would be destructive to Apple’s hold on in-app payments in mobile gaming.

But how does Apple reckon its IAP in-app payments system with NFTs and blockchain assets?

While individual apps might be able to justify the Apple tax on primary sales of NFTs, there’s no way that those same fees will fly for secondary peer-to-peer sales of already-owned NFTs. NFT storefronts like OpenSea and Rarible have released apps on the App Store already, but these native apps only allow users to view NFTs — not engage with their storefronts at all. Most legit NFT startups are weighing how to proceed on mobile, and Apple holding off on clear guidelines could push more developers toward investing in web-based experiences, which bypass App Store rules.

One thing that is pretty clear is that if Apple creates a specific carve-out for NFTs in its own App Store rules, it’s going to be on its own terms. They could take a number of different paths; I could see a world where Apple could only allow certain assets on certain blockchains or even build out their own blockchain. But Apple’s path toward controlling the user experience will most likely rely on Apple taking a direct hand in crafting their own smart contracts for NFTs, which developers might be forced to use in order to stay compliant with App Store rules.

This could easily be justified as an effort to ensure that consumers have a consistent experience and can trust NFT platforms on the App Store. These smart contracts could send Apple royalties automatically and lead to a new in-app payment fee pipeline, one that could even persist in transactions that took place outside of the Apple ecosystem(!). More complex functionality could be baked in as well, allowing Apple to handle workflows like reversing transactions.

Needless to say, any of these moves would be highly controversial among existing developers. Apple making any mandates on how smart contracts are written and which ones are allowed to be used would mark a major shift in the crypto world and lead to plenty of turmoil in the developer ecosystem. But I do think it’s clear that Apple is going to have a tough time ignoring this market much longer.

(Photo by JAM STA ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

other things

Here are a few stories this week I think you should take a closer look at:

Axie Infinity scores $150M in funding following $625M heist
A little follow-up to my newsletter last week… crypto game Axie Infinity, which got hacked in a major way, announced this week that they had raised $150 million from Binance, which it will be adding to its own funds to replace the money stolen last week by a hacker.

Elon promises widespread rollout of full self-driving software this year 
Tesla’s (more specifically Elon’s) promises surrounding the impending release of full self-driving software has been a constant source of controversy. Nevertheless, at the company’s Cyber Rodeo event, Musk again reiterated that the software’s full release was right around the corner.

Meta is dumping the F8 developer conference this year
Facebook’s long-standing developer conference is getting canceled this year, or “paused” in Meta’s words. The F8 developer conference was typically the premier spot for Facebook to showcase updates to the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, but following the company’s metaverse pivot, it’s likely that their flagship event will shift to being its Connect event, which takes place in the fall.

TESLA-elon musk

(Photo by BRITTA PEDERSEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

added things

Some of my favorite reads from our TechCrunch+ subscription service this week:

3 views on Elon’s Twitter investment
“…I’ve been chewing on the matter of major names taking their fans to new platforms since we saw an exodus of certain right-wing figures to alt-Twitter services in recent years. Some left voluntarily, some with a boot firm in their backside. But what they all share is the fact that their new homes have generally failed to challenge Twitter’s hegemony….”

What Fast’s demise teaches about the fragility of unicorns
“…It appears that many startups raised money last year beyond the limit of defensible pricing, leaving them in an effectively zero-margin situation. Any startup that raised at a two- or three-figure revenue multiple in 2021 now faces an environment of declining values for technology companies and high-profile investor groups retreating from deal-making. This could lead to down-rounds (or worse)…”

What Binance’s bailout of Axie means for web3
“…The hack, which took place on Axie’s Ethereum-based sidechain, Ronin, marks the largest known crypto heist to date. It was a bad look not only for Sky Mavis, but also for investors like a16z that had hyped Axie as the future of crypto. It begins to look even worse when you consider the demographics of Axie players overall — over 25% are unbanked, the company said, and many are low-income workers in developing countries who rely on Axie for a significant portion of their income….”

 

Posted on

The future of the crypto web (and this newsletter)

Hello readers, and welcome back to Week in Review!

Last week, I talked about the environmental impacts of crypto with Kimbal Musk, early Tesla investor and brother of Elon. This week, I’m talking a bit about myself, this newsletter and the future of the web.

If someone forwarded you this message, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.

the big thing

I’ve got a secret to tease that I’ve been sitting on for a few months and am thrilled to share.

Later this month, I’ll be sending out the first edition of Chain Reaction, my new TechCrunch newsletter focused on crypto, web3 and the metaverse, with all of its opportunities, hype, scams and controversy. The extra-exciting part about this weekly newsletter is that there will be a weekly podcast attached to it, co-hosted by me and my fellow TechCrunch crypto enthusiast Anita Ramaswamy. We’ll discuss the hot news, trends and crypto drama while interviewing high-profile investors, entrepreneurs and skeptics.

You can pre-subscribe to Chain Reaction on our TechCrunch newsletter page.

Now, the sad part.

A couple weeks after the newsletter launches I will be stepping aside from writing Week in Review and I’ll be handing the reins over to my more than capable colleague Greg Kumparak, who has done a killer job taking over this newsletter when I’ve been out over the years. I’ve loved sending out this newsletter every weekend; it’s always given me a chance to clear my brain, reflect on the state of the tech industry and voice my opinions on where it’s headed.

I increasingly feel like the future of the tech industry will be embracing an internet with more complex economic models attached to its platforms, ones which can do good and bad things for consumers but should ultimately open up the web and give users more agency in how big platforms operate. The future, as cleanly imagined by tech’s founders and investors, is rarely the one we find ourselves living in, but that future is also infrequently what tech’s naysayers predict.

The backlash to crypto over the past year has been interesting to witness. Viral YouTube videos and tweets paint a crushing portrait of tokens and NFTs with phrases like Ponzi schemes, money laundering, fraud and scams, and there is certainly much of that to be found. But the reality is that many consumers are simply discovering through NFTs and crypto that high finance and the concept of economic value are not the wholly rational institutions they had once imagined them to be.

The idea of spending millions of dollars to own a link to an image file in a distributed database should appear wholly non-sensical to most, but if that prospect seems reasonable to enough buyers, then its value is a product of the owners’ collective delusions — but much of the modern economy is built around these same delusions. Getting access to this uncomfortable realization is a gift in and of itself, but there are constructive and destructive places to take it.

The criticism I find more philosophically concerning is that tokens and NFTs rein in the possibilities of a boundless and unfettered web. Gamers are particularly pissed about the idea of digital scarcity and hyper-capitalism finding its way into fantasy. No one can have it all on an internet where some element of the experience is gated from users based on their economic class in the real world. It’s a conversation that’s particularly concerning as massive companies like Meta begin talking about the idea of the metaverse so earnestly.

The crypto space has a couple trillion dollars tied up in it at this point, but the remarkable thing is just how transitory it all feels. It’s part of the reason that highlighting informed criticism is so worthwhile right now, because the industry can still change.

The informed middle ground is a space where there’s not much critical discourse happening on a regular basis. Most existing newsletters or podcasts are from institutional players or retail investors with projects to shill and disclosures to ignore. Meanwhile, the bulk of tech media critiques seem to be from folks who cover several things and are frankly less incentivized to spend the time tirelessly dissecting a confusing industry.

I’ve been at TechCrunch for nearly seven years. During that time I’ve worn many hats, having been the go-to reporter for topics like gaming, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Over the past year, I’ve devoted the bulk of my time to understanding what’s going on in the crypto world. I’ve dialed up investors, chatted with founders, played around with the platforms myself and spent an awful lot of time on Twitter and Discord. What I’ve found is a multi-faceted industry with a high barrier to even understanding the basics. I want Chain Reaction to serve as a place where readers and listeners can dial in and learn alongside me as I talk with stakeholders and skeptics and try to get to the heart of where this all is headed.

All that to say, please subscribe and join me on this journey!

other things

Here are a few stories this week I think you should take a closer look at:

Russia plans to block Facebook
There’s a new kind of iron curtain going up between Russia and the West, as sanctions intensify, internet platforms grow more emboldened and the Russian government gets more defensive. After announcing last week that they would limit Facebook’s service due to the platform’s restrictions on state media, Russia has changed course and announced that they plan to outright ban the service.

How Ukraine is spending crypto donations
There’s been a lot of chatter around how crypto could help wealthy Russians evade sanctions, but Ukraine’s government is also using crypto to find aid and raise funds. My colleague Romain dove into the topic of how Ukraine was spending these funds and found a lot of unanswered questions.

An interview with Ukraine’s head of IT
TechCrunch has aimed to cover every angle of how the Ukraine invasion not only impacts the tech industry across the globe but inside Eastern Europe. This week, we caught up with Ukraine’s deputy minister for Digital Transformation, Oleksandr (Alex) Bornyakov, who discussed the country’s digital strategy moving forward.

3d illustration of white toy unicorn and financial graph

added things

Some of my favorite reads from our TechCrunch+ subscription service this week:

It’s pivot season for early-stage startups
“Late-stage tech startups are facing a changing public market environment, but their early-stage counterparts are in a different world altogether. The cohort has had access to ample capital in recent quarters, giving them a bubble of venture capital that somewhat protects them from rapid changes in the greater economy…”

Just how wrong were those SPAC projections?
“…Why are companies that went public via SPACs struggling so much? Did they catch a headwind from changing market conditions that previously helped push them forward? You bet….“

As war escalates, it’s ‘shields up’ for the cybersecurity industry
“…As a result of the heightened likelihood of cyberthreat from Russian malactor groups, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an unprecedented warning recommending that ‘all organizations — regardless of size — adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets.’…”

If you’re reading this on TechCrunch you can subscribe to Week in Review (and Chain Reaction!) in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.