Morning Brew Daily - Montana Bans TikTok, Miami's Bitcoin Buyer's Remorse, & Uber for Teens

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Episode 62: Neal and Toby give the latest update on government news with the debt ceiling crisis and Montana's bold ban on TikTok on all devices. Then, Bitcoin 2023 is here! Except...Miami isn't all that excited about it anymore. What can happen in a year, amirite? Meanwhile, Uber reaches out to teenagers and soccer moms. Heinz makes all your sauce dreams come true with over 200 sauce combos. Maybe you can pour it over your CRISPR salad. Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Listen Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash US slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewAI. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today on the pod, Uber wants to replace soccer moms by offering rides to teens. And I want you to start thinking about your ideal condiment combination, because that will be relevant a little later. I'm always thinking about that.

Then we'll head down to Miami to check in on a much more subdued Bitcoin conference kicking off today before finishing off the show with some news about genetic. edited salad. Delicious. Neal, it's Thursday, May 18th. Let's ride. All right, I just want to offer a warning to everyone. Toby and I just drank the biggest and most potent cold brews in the history of coffee bean production. This is going to be an electric show. Well, I was going to say, I hope what you're about to hear will be coherent. I know. We'll be talking fast, giving you a lot of information. I do have, would you rather for you? Would you rather be so extremely tired that you maybe can't do anything or the other side of the spectrum where you're so hyped up on coffee that it's really uncomfortable. This is my hot take. I'm a pretty hype person always, so I'd rather

be tired because over indexing on the jitters is it's going to make me bounce up and down in my chair a little too much. Right. And you didn't have coffee at all when you were in Spain, you said? Yeah, I was coffee free. So impressive. I know. You also probably woke up at 11 a.m. Like everyone else said. We don't need to talk about that. Okay. Let's go to our first story. We're going to do a quick catch up on the debt ceiling drama. We haven't talked about it for a few days. The facts remain the same if the government doesn't raise the debt ceiling. The U.S. could default on its obligations by June 1st and yada yada yada yada, economic meltdown. The good news is negotiations seem to be progressing in the past few days between Democrats and Republicans,

which gave a boost to stocks yesterday. Both the Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy, and President Biden said they believe that a deal could be reached before the deadline. Biden declared yesterday, America will not default. So we're going to hold them to that. What are they still hashing out? Basically, Republicans want to tie a debt ceiling increase with cuts to government spending. They want more work requirements for people accessing safety programs. McCarthy said these were a red line for him in negotiations, and Biden's shown a little openness on some of those programs. And there's also $30 billion worth of unspent COVID aid that could get clawed back under a debt ceiling deal. I think it's so interesting that we're fighting over $30 billion in COVID aid when in the grand scheme of things, it's a $31 trillion debt.

So it's like peanuts on the dollar. This is a small thing. Yeah, very small. I also think it's funny that Biden is like cutting short his international trip to like get this done. First of all, it feels like a bad time to go on an international trip when you have this looming debt ceiling. This isn't just any international trip. This is G7 where all the big leaders of the major democracies meet and the. meeting in Japan in Hiroshima.

And so Biden, I think, arrived in Japan today. And so they're going to talk about, you know, big stuff, including AI. And he is cutting his trip short to come back to the U.S. Republicans are hammering him on leaving in the first place like you. But it is a big meeting that, you know, you have to show up to show your standing in the world. And it shows that because we can't get our house in order here, our leverage and our soft power on the world stage is. maybe diminished a bit because he's he's not going to Australia. He's not going to some other places. And they're like, you got, you can't, you're flying halfway across the world and you can't

make a quick pit stop here because you have a mess back home. So this whole thing is kind of embarrassing for us on the world stage. It's always, I mean, this happens fairly frequently. And the same talking points often come up. And some of the more creative workarounds for the debt ceiling have been kind of tossed out there. One of which is invoking the 14th Amendment, which is, The 14th Amendment includes, like, a lot of things. It's like a landmark like civil rights amendment, but there's also like this weird clause in about how the U.S. basically is always good for its debt. And it's kind of like unilaterally getting around the debt ceiling.

And so some people are saying, like, there was a letter from some major Democratic politicians saying, like, listen, Biden, just invoke the 14th Amendment. We don't want to be held hostage by Republicans anymore. But it would be a bad look in like kind of an unprecedented step. So that's one of them, the 14th Amendment. And then the second one is obviously minting a $31 trillion platinum coin, which is, again, one of the less serious workarounds for the debt ceiling. But again, the U.S. Treasury is technically allowed to mint a coin that has a, it is a platinum coin and it can have any value it wants. And again, that that's like a funny thing that in some circles,

people are saying, just mint the coin. But would also probably be a bad deal, a bad idea. and would have consequences that we don't really fully grasped yet. So those are the two, though, that you might see floating around the interwebs as well. Let's hope it doesn't get to that. Meanwhile, corporate America is applying pressure. Jamie Diamond, the CEO of J.P. Morgan, said that he's established a war room that is meeting weekly to figure out what would happen to the economy and his bank if the U.S. would default on its debt. And then earlier this week, more than 140 top business leaders like Goldman Sachs's CEO, David Solomon wrote a letter to the government saying that the government was already seen, or the economy was already seeing some stress from the debt ceiling dispute.

So Corp in America, they write strongly worded letters and they don't write like things. We're laughing now, but let's hope June 1st. June 1st. Mark it on the calendar. Let's get it done before then. All right. Go ahead. Let's move on to the ride sharing world where Uber has kind of been crushing it recently.

It has some product updates that I want. to explain to you all. So yesterday at its GoGet event, it rolled out a bunch of new updates that are a big deal for people with kids, both young and old. The new updates include the ability to reserve a ride with the car seat, lets teenagers 13 plus use the service unaccompanied. And this is kind of my favorite one. You can also call an Uber using just a phone number, which is funny because that's something you've been able to do with taxis and like phones are invented. But Neil, I know you have thoughts on the teenagers getting the chance to use Uber. Well, yeah. I think that's huge. First of all, Uber wasn't, you couldn't take an Uber if you were under 18. And obviously, we know that teens have worked around that and are still taking Ubers. But what we were thinking before the show, we were talking about all of the awkward high school situations that you could maybe have skirted if you could call an Uber like that, you know, that awkward first date going to the mall for a movie and your mom's driving you and just kind of like. It's actually kind of. It's actually kind of. It's kind of sad, though, because that's such a right of pass is like you and like your first.

girlfriend getting dropped off at a movie by your parents. Now it's going to be an Uber driver. So it's kind of a big deal because it's a bit of a shift in their strategy. It's only like certain Uber drivers will be approved to like carry these unaccompanied teenagers. The parent can technically contact the Uber driver at any point. So you know there's going to be some like helicopter parents who say like, why did you just take that left turn?

Like what are you doing there? My kid is in the back of your car. So you have to think parents are. both probably pumped and a little nervous. It pumped because how annoying is it to take your kids like hockey practice, especially hockey practice early. I know like ice time, you know, you can't get it. You can only get it like at 5 a.m. 5.30 a.m.

So just to call an Uber to do that or take your kid to school. There you go. So it seems like it would open up a lot of freedom opportunities. Obviously there are always kind of safety risk when you're talking about kids and Uber has, you know, installed some safety features to prevent that. My favorite of these updates, though, is this group rides thing. Did you see? I saw that.

Yeah. That is awesome because we've taken Uber as a bunch where it's like, all right, you have to drop, you know, you have to get dropped off at first Ave and I have to go to Williamsburg, but how do we work this out on the Uber app? Now you can invite people to join you on a ride and they will drop you off on the most efficient route possible and then charge each individual user the amount time that they spent in the car. That's the best part. So that is a really useful app.

Feature for, yeah, it saves like that awkward Venmo. Like, okay, so I didn't really ride the whole way, but you want to split this Uber? Yeah, that's great. And then just to zoom out real quickly, Uber is doing very, very well. Their shares are up 51% year-to-date. Their last quarter revenue was up 29% year-over-year. So this is like Uber's like to a pedal to the medal. Yeah, excuse the pun, but it's pedal to the medal right now for Uber.

Thank you. Had to get that out. All right. Let's move on. Yesterday, it's pretty crazy, Montana banned TikTok. No, not just like on government-issued devices like a bunch of other states have. It literally banned it. TikTok can't operate on devices in the state and app stores are prohibited from making it available for download on its stores. This makes Montana the first U.S. state to completely ban TikTok. So the governor, Greg Gianforte, signed the TikTok ban into law yesterday. The reason says it protects Montanin's data and personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok, as we know, has generated a lot of blowback in the U.S. because it is owned by a Chinese company, bite dance, and lawmakers are concerned that the Chinese government could use it to spy and spread propaganda to Americans. But this is not over.

The law goes into effect on New Year's Day 2024, and it will definitely face legal challenges. TikTok and free speech advocates like the ACLU have already created. criticized it saying it is unconstitutional and violates the first amendment rights of Montanans. Did I say that right? I know. You did. You did say it right. Montana Knights.

The first question that comes to mind when I heard this story is enforcement. Like, how are you truly going to enforce? They say that they're going to find, like, Google and Apple, if they have it in their app store, $10,000 a day. But, like, if it's already on your device, this reminds me of, like, Flappy Bird, weirdly. Remember when Flappy Bird was, like, this huge app? I do not. Okay.

Well, it was like this crazy. app and then the guy like removed it from the app store and like phones that still had a flappy bird pre-downloaded. We're like selling for a lot of money because like you couldn't download it anymore. So I wonder if something like that's going to happen with TikTok. And if you already have it download on your phone, like what are they going to do, delete it for you? So they won't let you do product updates. So it'll become a zombie app and become really hard.

Right. The secondary effects are kind of funny. Like will there be TikTok border towns in Idaho where everyone goes and just like takes a takes a video of themselves in Idaho right across the border. I'm also reminded of the porn hub story that did two weeks ago where porn hub was restricted in Utah. And so you saw this huge boom in like VPN usage because VPNs allow you to access the internet from a different location.

And so I think that we're about to see something like that happen. If this, I mean, all this, if it actually goes through, which there's definitely, as you said, some First Amendment. Yeah. The Wall Street Journal quoted legal experts saying that. a potential case would probably go in TikTok's favor, honestly, because this is unconstitutional, and you can't just target it, or we don't know if it's unconstitutional. It could very well be unconstitutional because it violates people's First Amendment rights, and it unfairly targets a single company.

Right. And so the governor is kind of foreseeing this legal challenge, and is saying he's also potentially going to expand it to other foreign-owned social media apps. It was a really funny quote in the Wall Street Journal where because he said like we'll probably ban we chat as well which is a Chinese messaging app used by a billion people in China but how many people are using we chat in Montana like a Chinese messaging app so but you can tell he's kind of thinking ahead and like what challenges might might face this well we'll see uh whatever happens in Montana will have much broader implications for the federal government which is also looking into potentially

TikTok ban yep um okay before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill 3-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th.

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I am, of course, talking about Bitcoin 2023, which has been held annually in Miami for the last couple of years. But while I'm sure there's going to be lots of Lambos, lots of glitz and glam, this year's conference is a whole lot more subdued than in years past. First of all, Bitcoin's down 60% from its all-time highs. The Miami Heat play in Kasia Arena instead of FTX Arena. And Miami coin, a crypto tied to this very city itself, is down over 99%. So, Neil, Miami-Myte, Miami-Hie, and their mayor, Francis Saurus, kind of hits their wagon to crypto and are feeling the pain now. How do you think the vibes are in Bitcoin 2023 right now? I mean, definitely subdued, like you said, but there are so many Bitcoin hardcore people that are probably just Bitcoin ride or die and are still living it up. So I think, you know, among the hardcore loyalists, it's still going to be a huge party. And I think all of the stragglers who were just kind of like Bitcoin curious in 2020, and last year probably won't show up.

But it was pretty stunning to see how hard Miami leaned into Bitcoin. For sure. I mean, crypto. Yeah. Like, so Francis Souris, the mayor, he actually is still taking his salary in Bitcoin. That was like a big thing that he did during the boom. But he's still getting a salary in Bitcoin. And then just like a sign of the Times, this article that came out previewing the conference,

what it did basically was put previous year's conference and compare it to this year. And like I said, like FTCS arena is no longer around. One of the biggest luxury condo complexes that used to accept payment in crypto no longer do so because FTX was used to actually support that payment system. So that's gone. And then, yeah, it's just kind of interesting to see like compare the prices to when it was and just the fervor is no longer there. Yeah. But you got an interesting DM from someone last year. So when I was down in Miami, it was actually this rate of 2020.

I tweeted out something critical about Miami and say, like, I don't know what the hype is. And I got a DM from Mayor Francis Sauer saying, like, hey, here's my personal cell number. Like, I'm so sorry. Spring break is not indicative of Miami. So I do respect the hustle of Mayor Francis Svarez. And you kind of do see it reflected in the broader economic standing of Miami. So residential real estate prices are growing at the fastest pace in the nation. it also has the lowest office vacancy rate of 16.2% in any major U.S. city.

So, like, if you remove yourself from just the crypto conversation, Miami on a whole is still doing very, very well. Yeah, a bunch of traditional finance companies like Ken Griffin's Citadel are moving down there. J.P. Morgan's opening up an office there. So I think there's, the Miami boosters are starting to realize we don't need crypto. We're doing just fine without it. Yeah, it's just becoming a broader, yeah, tech hub or traditional finance. Hub as well. So Mayor Francis

Torres, if you are listening to this, I appreciate the DM back all those years ago. All right, let's move to Neal's numbers, which we're going to try to trademark like Taco Tuesday. It's a segment where I share three interesting stats that I read from the week's news. Number

one, I'm not sure if it was possible, but there is an entertainment product that is making more money than Taylor Swift's Eritor. It's the new Zelda game. Wow. The hype legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, 10 million copies around the world for the Nintendo Switch in the three days after it was released last Friday. Nintendo doesn't break down revenue figures exactly, but considering that the game is

$70 a copy, $130 for the deluxe edition, it could bring in about $700 million, according to some estimates. That outpaces any box office debut this year and Taylor Swift's tour in terms of sales generated. It also could end up being the best-selling video game of 2023. The current pay setter is that Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy, that sold 15 million copies and generated more than a billion dollars in sales. Video games. It's actually crazy. I love seeing like what the recipe is for one of these massive blockbuster video games.

It's like the pre-established fan base that already knows the characters. It has to be released on a console that's also sold very well. Like the Nintendo Switch has sold incredibly incredibly well. So all these like ingredients combined to make just like a massive debut for Zellel. I don't, we don't play it though. You don't have a lot of video. I know, but I have heard anecdotally, like a lot of people are obviously playing it. Yeah.

Let's go to the second one. You know those modern touchscreen Coke dispensers that allow you to mix and match various sodas. So Kraft Hines is now doing that for condiments. The company is launching a remix dispenser that will spit out more than 200 sauce combinations. Here's how it works. You can choose between four different sauce bases, ketchup, ranch, 57 sauce, and barbecue. Then select enhancers like jalapino and mango and then set it in intensity level. Interesting.

Yeah. Okay. So you know those soda dispensers, like everyone would always do like, we called them like, I forget even what we called them, but you just put every single soda into one cup and drink it. Like the grand, I don't know. Yeah. Like the grand slammer. Yeah, some like horrible cocktail.

Who is going to do that with the sauce cocktail? You're going to do all 200 flavors of sauces? I would. I wonder what would dominate. Probably the spice level, right? spice, well, intensity level. I don't think there's the same a spice level. I think you should be able,

I think there should be another level and you should be able to choose the sound it makes when it comes out. Oh, God, that's horrible. Like a classic ketchup fart one, more of like a gloop, gloop. Gosh, I'm imagining that sound now. It's not good. What's your condiment of choice right now?

Like, what are you going for? Well, I'm going to give you a duo because this is a sauce combined. Yeah, yeah, a combo. It is ranch and buffalo, especially the ranch and buffalo from Chick-fil-A. That is such an undefeated combo. I love the creaminess of the ranch with the spice of buffalo. That sounds pretty good.

I have some thoughts on this, obviously. I've been good dipping back into the ketchup well. It's good. Straight ketchup, just sugar. It is so good. All right, let's move on to the third one. Hockey used to be considered a northern sport, obviously, because of ice. But the South is taking over.

The Stanley Cup semifinals begin tonight, and the four teams that made it have the lowest average latitude of any NHL Final Four ever. These teams are the Carolina Hurricanes, the Vegas Golden Knights, the Dallas Stars, and the Florida Panthers, and they have an average latitude of 32.8 degrees. It's also the first time that every team in the semifinals is located below the 40th parallel. The NHL has invested a lot in these southern teams, and it is absolutely paying off. This is why I love Neal's numbers, because what an absurd fact. No one in their right mind would ever stumble across that, so I appreciate you for bringing that to my attention. But you're from Tampa, and lightning are taking over the town feels like,

more than any other sport. Yeah, like there's the Rays, like the Tampa Bay Rays. Having an amazing season, no one goes to their games. Obviously the Bucks, now that when Brady was there, like, got a little bit more. But, like, I anecdotally, like, people love the lightning. Yeah. Because they're just so fun. Like, pardon the pun, again, but they're electric.

The games are so fun. They literally have these, whatever those, like, Tesla balls are hanging from the ceiling, and they shoot off electricity when they score. So it's very fun. I guess you don't need pond hockey. You know, have kids growing up with pond hockey or playing outside to have a big hockey culture. You just put it inside and pump it with AC. In a ring.

Spend a zillion dollars on energy. But that's Florida for you. All right. We have a really fun story to end the show today about gene editing. The big news, a new category of salad just dropped. There's this company out of North Carolina called Pearwise that has edited the genes of mustard greens in order to make them taste a little less. bitter. It uses this technology called CRISPR to go in and literally modify the genes of the lettuce. And there's already restaurants carrying this like new category of salad. And CRISPR is definitely one

those things that you've heard that like smart friend bring up where they're talking about this is the future of like civilization. So people see it as this new frontier of science when you can go in and hypothetically install any number of favorable traits into food. For instance, you can make crops that produce a larger yield, resist pests and disease, and then also potentially require less water. So this is kind of a crazy scientific advancement. Yeah. The way they're billing it as making it is making salad healthier because mustard greens kind of suck. They're like bitter and you don't.

They're peppery. Like you don't actually like, you'd rather go for iceberg lettuce or romaine, but those have very little nutrients. It's just kind of like eating water. Yeah. So maybe if you can make these more healthy things. taste a little bit better than people might go for it. What's kind of controversial, though, is that you don't actually need to label these genetically edited foods as bioengineered because the argument is that all that they're doing when

they're editing these genes is speeding up a potentially natural evolution. Technically, you could cross-breed mustard greens over generations to make them less bitter. They're just saying, we're doing the same thing just a whole lot quicker. So there's definitely going to be some debate around, is, should, this be labeled because almost 75% of people who responded to a survey wanted gene edited foods to be labeled as such. So people definitely want to know like what's going on in their food, which is understandable. This is definitely not the last time we're going to talk about CRISPR edited foods. All right. Well, we were promised designer babies and we got designer lettuce.

We'll take it. We'll take it. That is our show. You can always email us with any questions or comments at morningbrood daily at morningbrew.com. Big thanks to our entire crew who made possible. Bryce Belloff is our producer. Samantha Velas and Raymond Lou are the associate producers. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director and he is not a fan of putting teens and ubers. I can tell you that. Billy Minino is on audio, hair and makeup got banned in Montana. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Time to watch some golf. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's

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