Business

Just a few months after he said it would start.

Getting paid by Twitter requires three things: You have to pay Twitter for Twitter Blue, the advertiser has to pay Twitter to show the ad, and the person viewing the ad also has to pay for Twitter Blue.

How much can you make? Musk and his new CEO Linda Yaccarino didn’t say. Anyway, here’s a look at the Twitter competitor that’s coming soon from Instagram.

That was said by our EIC Nilay Patel on an episode of the podcast Decoder last year about decentralized autonomous organizations.

Now, a lawsuit won by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against something called Ooki DAO establishes that these crypto-era decentralized finance (DeFi) orgs can be held liable for breaking the law.

CFTC Division of Enforcement Director Ian McGinley:

The founders created the Ooki DAO with an evasive purpose, and with the explicit goal of operating an illegal trading platform without legal accountability.

This decision should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who believes they can circumvent the law by adopting a DAO structure, intending to insulate themselves from law enforcement and ultimately putting the public at risk.

Did you know: Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are surfing and painting still lifes? Also, apparently Davies is thinking about AI. If you are curious about what Davies and Zhu are up to now, the answer is: having a nice time.

If you are more interested in the details of the Three Arrows Capital business and bankruptcy, you might check out a YouTuber instead: Hugh Hendry, whose interviews of Davies get into the guts of the firm.

Cisco’s adding generative AI tools to help identify key points in the meeting, as well as automatically produce notes and action items. It’s similar to Microsoft’s Teams recap features powered by GPT, Zoom’s IQ, and Google’s summary feature for Meet.

Previously: “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.” - Sam Bankman-Fried. “All funds are safe.” - Alex Mashinsky, Stay SAFU out there!

The Bloomberg columnist, beloved by Verge staffers, has filed a banger, folks. He begins with a little victory lap and gets funnier from there:

“A decent rule of thumb,” I wrote in March, “is that all cryptocurrency exchanges are doing crimes, and if you’re lucky your exchange is doing only process crimes.”

While many are champing at the bit to see Apple’s new AR headset, some investors are more interested in potential AI announcements at WWDC, according to a tweet today from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

As Kuo explains it, the headset “may not be a substantial revenue and profit contributor for suppliers in the next two years compared to AI.”

And joining her is NBCUniversal executive vice president Joe Benarroch (via Wall Street Journal). From the Journal:

“Tomorrow, I start a different professional adventure at Twitter, taking on a role focusing on business operations,” Benarroch wrote in the memo. He noted that he has worked with Yaccarino to champion and grow the company’s business priorities and help build partnerships, among other things. “I am looking forward to bringing my experience to Twitter, and to working with the entire team to build Twitter 2.0 together.” 

Yaccarino’s hiring has helped rid the company of its “high risk” label, and bringing in NBCUniversal’s top ad sales person is another attempt to connect with advertisers.

The Verge’s Alex Heath has confirmed both will start tomorrow.

Selig made Apollo, one of the most popular third-party Reddit clients. He and Snazzy Labs owner Quinn Nelson dive into why Reddit’s abrupt shift to an API access pricing structure may give apps like his an untenable future, saying it could cost him $20 million per year.

It’s a good interview that covers alternative monetization schemes and draws comparisons to API policy changes for both Twitter and Imgur.

The Wall Street Journal reports on some customers who experienced delays stretching weeks as they attempted to transfer money from the Goldman Sachs savings account attached to their Apple Card, in amounts from $1,700 to as much as $100,000. (I guess they were really enticed by that 4.15 percent APY.)

After contacting Apple, Goldman Sachs VP Nick Carcaterra responded with the same statement given to the WSJ:

The customer response to the new Savings account for Apple Card users has been excellent and beyond our expectations.

While the vast majority of customers see no delays in transferring their funds, in a limited number of cases, a user may experience a delayed transfer due to processes in place designed to help protect their accounts.

While we would not comment on specific customer interactions, we take our obligation to protect our customers deposits very seriously and work to create a balance between a seamless customer experience and that protection.

There’s a bunch of examples here but frankly, the nut of the piece is pretty far down:

Bankers have a fiduciary duty not to trade on unreliable information. That’s an issue as use of AI expands.

If you can’t explain where your information came from, is it reliable? Oh well, the hedge funds are at it, too.

“Isn’t this sort of exciting?” writes Matt Levine. “The widespread use of relatively early-stage AI will introduce new ways of making mistakes into finance.”

“One appeal of generative A.I. is that it offers something for every would-be entrepreneur.” Yes, it is nice to see the hype machine in full effect, isn’t it? Here’s a sentence we should revisit in a year: “And unlike crypto, especially now, A.I. is a more credible field to be in for mainstream techies.” Anyway, every single one of these children would have gone to work on Wall Street before the year of our lord 2008.

Not the first time Fidelity marked down its investment and I suspect it won’t be the last:

Fidelity first reduced the value of its Twitter stake in November, to 44% of the purchase price. That was followed by further markdowns in December and February. 

Now the volume for its crypto on-ramp business has fallen by about 70 percent, its chief operating officer has left, and the chief technology officer left, too. The bagholders include Tiger Global Management and Coatue. Unclear what this all means for the celebs who bought in because of the NFT concierge service!

Right, okay, the guys who were insider trading at Coinbase are settling SEC charges that “they engaged in insider trading through a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding at least nine crypto asset securities” — wait, hang on. Securities?

Ahead of those announcements, which usually resulted in an increase in the assets’ prices, Nikhil Wahi and Ramani allegedly purchased at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of which were securities, and then typically sold them shortly after the announcements for a profit.

Huh, this feels like a teaser for something!

Fun inside baseball tip: Pay attention when a company hires Charles Harder and has him speaking on the record. Anyway, Gemini!

The SEC is suing Gemini as regulators crack down on the industry. The exchange’s market share has shrunk versus rivals even as crypto prices have rebounded. A banking partner wants to break up. And now this month, a crucial due date on a loan — that, if repaid by its bankrupt lending partner’s parent company, could help hundreds of thousands of Gemini customers recoup some of the $900 million worth of crypto deposits trapped in its defunct Earn product — has come and gone as negotiations on a resolution drag on.

Elizabeth Holmes will begin serving her 11-year federal prison sentence for defrauding investors in her blood testing company. She is still appealing her conviction.

John Carreyrou, whose Wall Street Journal article seemed to initiate her undoing, tweeted the video of her walking in with the caption “Bad Blood, the final final chapter.”

After seven months of reporting and production, we’re excited to finally publish our documentary, Lisa’s Final Act: how Apple invented its future by burying its past. It’s the story of how Apple tried multiple times to kill the Lisa, the big sister of the Macintosh and a pioneering flop of a computer.

Come for the strange tale of politics and ego, stay for the clandestine burial in a Utah landfill. Enjoy!

The Washington Post reports regulators have hit Elon Musk’s Boring Company with multiple complaints over careless, unpermitted work in Bastrop County, Texas.

Elon’s “Snailbrook” plans to build a private community around his SpaceX and Boring Company facilities — as well as local unease about the effects of Elon’s “move fast” ethos on the countryside — have been reported by The Wall Street Journal and the San Antonio Express-News.

From the Post:

Amy Weir, a local property owner, said Musk’s companies have “no doubt done amazing things,” but that there was no need for them to “reinvent wastewater treatment” when the city was ready to handle the job. The penalties for violating the permit were far too low, she added. “The owner of these companies spent $44 billion on Twitter, and it had no impact on his ability to continue to build these businesses,” she said.

A little over a month after Starship obliterated its launchpad and went kablooey before it reached stage separation, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that it will be ready again in about two months, pending launchpad upgrades and rocket testing.

Yesterday, SpaceX released a dramatic video recapping the first flight, if you want to watch it with synth-heavy piano music behind it.

Are you a good board member who’s really focused on what’s best for any individual company, though? Anyway here’s Reid Hoffman, who’s driving the AI hype:

Few are as intertwined in so many facets of the fast-moving industry as Mr. Hoffman. The 55-year-old sits on the boards of 11 tech companies including Microsoft, which has gone all in on A.I., and eight nonprofits. His venture capital firm, Greylock Partners, has backed at least 37 A.I. companies. He was among the first investors in OpenAI, the most prominent A.I. start-up, and recently left its board. He also helped found Inflection AI, an A.I. chatbot start-up that has raised at least $225 million.

Hoffman has his own AI company now. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Kudos to The Block for spotting this hilarious thing on the website of Paradigm, a venture firm:

A line that said “we believe crypto will define the next few decades” was removed from the home page, which now makes no mention of web3 or blockchains.

Apparently the change occurred on May 3.

Even though YouTube snatched up the rights to the NFL’s popular (and expensive) package of out-of-market games, for commercial customers, it’s being sold through a different company, EverPass Media.

EverPass, in turn, is licensing the package to DirecTV, so your local sports bar, hotel, or other business that shows League Pass has a way to keep subscribing. Interestingly, CNBC’s Alex Sherman notes that, unlike the old days, this deal isn’t exclusive, so locations that don’t have DirecTV could get access too, if other services cut a deal with EverPass.