What I Read This Week…
President Trump and David Sacks hosted the first Crypto Summit at the White House, Figma and Discord are exploring IPOs, and Palantir has delivered its first two TITAN systems to the U.S. Army
Read our Deep Dive: The Media Landscape - Sense-Making 2.0
Caught My Eye…
Yesterday, President Trump and Bestie David Sacks hosted a Crypto Summit at the White House, further affirming his administration's support for cryptocurrencies. The President issued an executive order establishing two initiatives: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, intended to hold seized Bitcoin indefinitely without selling, and a digital asset stockpile for other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and XRP, which can be managed or sold by the Treasury. The Trump administration plans to revise and reintroduce the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), which would define whether tokens are regulated by the SEC or CFTC. Stablecoins emerged as a key topic at the summit, with the administration viewing them as a path to maintaining U.S. dollar hegemony. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated that U.S. dollar stablecoins should be fully backed by U.S. Treasuries and regularly audited, which could accelerate global adoption. President Trump concluded the summit by declaring that the U.S. will be "the Bitcoin superpower."
IPO activity may be in the process of rebounding, after a slowdown since 2021. Figma, whose planned $20 billion acquisition by Adobe was blocked by regulators in December 2023, is exploring an IPO as a market-leading design collaboration platform. Similarly, Discord's CEO Jason Citron hinted at a "liquidity event" for the messaging platform that was last valued at over $14 billion in 2021. Cryptocurrency exchanges Gemini and Kraken are also preparing to IPO, as the crypto IPO pipeline may be reopening with a more favorable regulatory climate and after the crypto market recovered from the crash in 2022. Overall, investors still remain more valuation-sensitive than in 2021, preferring companies that are profitable and on a clear path to long-term growth. Companies typically seek an IPO to access capital in public markets to further scale their businesses and create liquidity for employees and shareholders.
Palantir has delivered its first two AI-enabled TITAN systems to the U.S. Army. Last year, the company secured a $178 million contract, beating defense giant RTX Corporation. These TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node) systems are mobile ground stations that use AI to collect and process data from space sensors. Each TITAN system is composed of four vehicles: two large trucks that form the advanced version equipped to directly receive satellite data, and two smaller Joint Light Tactical Vehicles that form the basic version which accesses satellite information indirectly. These systems enable military personnel to identify targets, assess battlefield conditions, and make tactical decisions based on real-time intelligence gathered from satellites and aerial platforms. TITAN operates without requiring cloud connectivity, allowing for autonomous decision-making by processing satellite imagery and signals intelligence directly within the vehicles' onboard computing systems. The full contract includes ten TITAN systems, delivered through five separate orders. Following the initial ten deliveries, the Army will decide whether to move forward with full-rate production, with estimates suggesting potential procurement of 100 to 150 systems. Palantir collaborated with defense industry partners, including Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, and Anduril Industries to develop these systems.
Other Reading…
Powell Plays Down Growth Worries After Jobs Report Disappoints (Financial Times)
Nasdaq Joins in Race to Offer 24-Hour Equity Trading (Financial Times)
Asian Equity Markets Rally on Chinese Tech Giants’ AI News (LPL Financial)
Tech Unemployment Increases Despite Increased Hiring for AI-Related Jobs (CIO Dive)
Microsoft Urges Trump To Reverse Biden AI Chip Export Restriction (Microsoft)
Apple Delays Siri Upgrade Indefinitely as Internal Issues Escalate (Bloomberg)
Apple Reveals M3 Ultra, Taking Apple Silicon to a New Extreme (Apple)
Meta is Planning Major Investment Into Building Humanoid Robots (Forbes)
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Files to Trademark ‘Telepathy’ (WIRED)
A Digital Assets Strategy to Dominate the 21st Century Global Economy (Michael Saylor)
Disney, WBD, Apple, and Amazon Have Resumed Ads on X (Hollywood Reporter)
YouTube at 20: How the Video Colossus Launched the Creator Economy (Variety)
On X…
Couple o' Thoughts:
* Re: Securing the dollar as the reserve currency via crypto decisions. I'm unsure how that works without other countries buying into the same cryptos (notably, Bitcoin) or following the same regulations with how it operates. No authoritarian government will sign on for economic "freedom" (quotes used because of the decision to peg to the dollar), which rules out most of the BRICS nations. The EU supports crypto with some wild regulations I don't think the US would adopt. So if you can't agree on the rules and you can't use the vehicle, then how does any of this work globally? My friend Korok Ray (https://substack.com/@korok) has written great stuff on Bitcoin, but I still can't wrap my head around how you come to a global consensus in this day and age. I'd love to get a Chamanth deep dive on how this crypto-economic system works globally.
* Friedberg's optimistic take on Trump's actions was interesting. Moving the government from taxation to consumption revenue is an interesting idea; I'd love to see an analysis of that. I have thoughts on it:
* As an aside to the above, as with most things, the incentive structures between the public good and government spending are misaligned. I think there are a few things Trump and the Republicans can do that would fundamentally shift how the public participates.
1) To align incentives, we should introduce a system where the tax brackets adjust based on the amount of debt the US carries (with a cap at current levels). That would incentivize everybody to watch and vote on govt spending. If you could tell the bottom 75% of the country that their taxes would be 0 if the debt to GDP ratio were under 10%, I can only imagine the concern about how each dollar is spent. Would we say yes to as many international interventions if you were also voting to raise your tax rate from 0% to 15% or 30% to 50%? There's obviously going to be people that try to game the system by introducing more deductions/credits at different levels, but I think that comes with everything and can largely be cured with more observability that I get to soon.
2) Introduce a VAT for luxury goods of x% earmarked for paying down the debt (and moves to funding the sovereign fund if the ratio is low). Make the percentage based on some economic factor so Congress can't just raise spending proportionally. This would feel like a Bernie Sanders-type suggestion, where the rich/ultra-rich pay a consumption tax that doesn't target the bottom 50% at all (unless they're careless with their money). But it does what Warren tried to do with her silly asset-taxation idea, and it would feel like a win for a group of people desperately needing one.
3) Have DOGE create revenue public observability dashboards (similar to Ballmer's USAFacts.org) for every agency (maybe an exception for detail on military-related agencies) and work with a UX person to figure out how to display it in the 250-character world we're in now.
4) There's clearly something the political class is missing in connecting with the American populace regarding needs/concerns. Andrew Yang had an excellent idea of introducing a "happiness index" (the name sucks but the idea is good) that measured actual economic performance (https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/measuring-the-economy/). This would go a long way in making the general public feel like they are being heard.
5) Congress doesn't want this but it would be great if there were an AI tool that analyzes every bill brought forth that can show a tie in to funding mechanisms and an output to KPIs that can long term evaluate how a bill does when it is passed (so a crime bill would be detailed out with funding to DOJ and/or Corrections and KPI is felony reduction amount that is updated every few months/years. It could also include what tradeoffs had to happen, like money to this district for a new Wegmans or something to get that Congressman's vote. Maybe I'll build this open source, but if DOGE built it, it would help inform voters and thus align incentives. Reducing the public's reliance on media to inform themselves should be paramount.
**Final Note on DOGE:** - I think they would've been better off taking a chainsaw to regulations before laying off people. Getting rid of regulations and letting the private market start humming so that laid-off people can have options where to land. They might have been able to avoid a recession if that had happened. Instead, we'll see many people lose their livelihoods and have nowhere to go because the private market is shrinking, too.
* Re: AI. I don't think we're very far off from a Chrome extension named "fork" that generates a complete fork of the functionality and look of a site (or a standalone version that does the same thing). It's relatively simple in theory (I think 12 months is doable). Crawl the site for every action, note what happens as a result of the action, take note of data elements on each page, and then use AI to generate the db schema and code to execute. I think that's inevitable. However, I'm also seeing a trend with some of these AI tools (not as much Cursor/Replit but more so tools like Bolt/Loveable) where people are good at spinning up a production system quickly but the release cycles decrease significantly because the AI isn't good enough to carry it by itself from there. There are multiple reasons for this, most notably that some of these products are being spun up by people who don't know how to code, so once they hit a wall, they're stuck. Also, the code written isn't always great or the best way to code something, so taking over the coding can be a headache. So, the time to market will be low, # of people required to build the product will be low, but skill/time to scale functionality may increase.
The FCA have established the Digital Securities Sandbox with the Bank of England, allowing the first Web3 none crypto RWA’s to test the marketplace under the eyes of the regulators. We’ll be entering the Sandbox in the coming weeks, we’ll be the fourth innovation to enter, hopefully it’ll pave the way for more jurisdictions to start regulated adoption for digital assets