Morning Brew Daily - The Mystery Behind the Creator of Bitcoin & Fast Food Blames Middle East for Poor Sales

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Episode 251: Neal and Toby discuss the court case surrounding the mystery creator behind Bitcoin. Plus, why Dartmouth is bringing back SAT scores as a requirement for applicants and why fast food companies are blaming the Middle East for poor sales. Toby shares why lip reading is so in right now and what do Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have to do with the copper mine that was found in Zambia? And finally, why Paris is voting to crack down on SUVs. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Options are not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Certain complex options strategies carry additional risk. Options can be risky and are not suitable for all investors. See the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options to learn more. For each options transaction, Public Investing shares 50% of their order flow revenue as a rebate to help reduce your trading costs. This rebate will be displayed as a negative number in the “Additional Fees” column of your Trade Confirmation Statement and will be immediately reflected in the total dollars paid or received for the transaction. Order flow rebates are only issued for options trades and not for transactions involving other assets, including equities. For more information, refer to the Fee Schedule. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. See public.com/#disclosures-main for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Hal. Today, will the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up? Then, sorry high schoolers dust off those SAT prep books because more colleges are requiring standardized test scores again. It's Tuesday, February 6th.

Let's ride. So some scientists have been watching too much spinal tap because they think hurricanes should go to category six. A new study published yesterday in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that hurricanes are getting so powerful due to climate change that the upper limit of the Safier-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Category 5, is out of date. They propose adding a Category 6 label to any tropical cyclone with sustained winds of at least 192 miles per hour, probably faster than most Ferraris lead author Michael Werner said. The scientists found that five storms would have exceeded a hypothetical Category 6, and they've all occurred since 2013.

Toby, you grew up in hurricane country. I think we need a cat six designation. I mean, Cat six definitely adds a certain weight to these storms which are just getting bigger and bigger. It's also definitely part of a push to kind of redefine how we classify extreme weather events because remember during the last summer, Europe started naming heat waves. There were two that they called Cerberus in Charon. I don't know.

Someone's got to double check my Greek there. But yeah, it's definitely as weather events become more and more extreme. you've got to find a new and redefine these classification systems. So I'm on board with Category 6. Yeah. So this is just a proposal. The officials are not necessarily going to make a CAT 6 designation. But it's just crazy to think when you think Cat 5, you're like, this is the biggest storm in the history of the planet.

So the fact that we have exceeded that in the past is a little alarming. Before we hit the news, a quick shout out to our sponsor, Vime. Toby, it's kind of a miracle that Morning Brew and Vime are working together. And why is that? Because Morning Brew was founded at the U.S. University of Michigan, while VIM was created by an Ohio State grad and his business partner. That's the Ohio State, Neil. One of those guys? Michigan won the national championship.

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College PC. One of the biggest mysteries in the business world could be solved in a UK courthouse this week. A trial kicked off yesterday that could determine the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder of Bitcoin. So back in 2008, a person or a group of people calling themselves Satoshi published a white paper that introduced Bitcoin to the world. But a few years later, they went dark. And to this day, no one knows who created the cryptocurrency. Or do we know? Amid this speculation, one guy claims he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and his assertion is at the center of this trial.

Since 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright has said he is the mythical figure behind Bitcoin, and he's launched several lawsuits against developers of Bitcoin-related projects, accusing them of violating his intellectual property rights. To put an end to Wright's litigious streak, a non-profit crypto organization backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has asked a court in London to rule once and for all that Wright is not Satoshi and that he's been making up this claim and forging documents to prove it. The stakes are extremely high because this trial will determine who or what can set the rules for the future of Bitcoin. Yeah, it's basically a lot of people are saying death for Bitcoin as we know it if Wright wins because Wright could make it illegal

for developers to use Bitcoin without his approval. If he says that this is my intellectual property, then you would have to have these, you'd have to go through Wright essentially to build on Bitcoin, and that would just essentially cause a slow death for Bitcoin because, again, you need to have a robust, like, developer community to support these cryptocurrencies. And if that goes away, then you might just see the biggest cryptocurrency in the world fade into obscurity. So it's not exaggerating to say that the very fate of Bitcoin is on the line here. And just scanning the crypto community, I would say that the vast majority of people do not

believe Wright is Satoshi. They think he's making it up. He does have a few supporters who back him up. But I would say the vast majority of the community kind of cast out on his claim. Yeah. And I think it's one, because they think his claims are bogus. But then two, if you just think about what pins the crypto community together, they don't necessarily want a leader. The absence of a leader has been an asset to Bitcoin. It's made it hardy. It's made it have to kind of adapt to stay alive through the power of network effects. And it's evolved under what people call this unspoiled system of anarchy, where it just, again, there isn't one person, one Satoshi Nakamato that controls everything. So this is like antithetical to everything Bitcoin people stand

for. So that's why you see such emotions around this trial. Just to take rights point of view, he says, look, I'm claiming I'm Satoshi. I've produced documents that prove it. And no one else has come forward. Like, if Satoshi did exist the real one and I'm not him, wouldn't they have come forward when I've been making these claims for the last eight years? Yeah, it is interesting. And one final wrinkle that I want to touch on is that recently there's this group of Bitcoin that were the first Bitcoin ever mine called the Genesis Block. And a lot of people have always pointed to the Genesis Block and said, hey, Craig, if you are Satoshi just moved a Bitcoin out of that wallet or not and just prove once and for all you are actually Satoshi.

Recently, someone just paid that wallet about a million dollars in Bitcoin saying that, and there's a lot of theories. People are saying, one, it could just be an accident or two, someone could be getting at Craig Wright and saying, hey, I owe you money. If you're really Satoshi, I'm paying your Satoshi wallet. So it's kind of like this ironic eye roll thing. So there's all these different theories and all these different layers related to this very insular Bitcoin community. But yeah, this trial is definitely one to watch going forward. It's just fascinating that we still don't know who Satoshi is. It could be you or me, Neil. You never know.

Let's move on. Your SAT and ACT scores matter again if you want to go to school in Hanover, that is. Dartmouth is the first Ivy School to reverse course on the pandemic-era decision to make standardized test scores optional for applicants. Made the decision, instead, based on new research that shows at highly selective schools, standardized test scores are actually better predictors of college performance than high school grades. Remember, the original thesis behind dropping test scores was one that it was really hard to take a test during a global pandemic, but also given the correlation between test scores and family income, dropping them might help create a more even playing field. But making the test optional often disadvantaged lower income applicants because a lot of them ended up withholding test scores that they thought were too low, that actually could have gotten them admitted to Dartmouth as a school would have considered the environmental challenges of their upbringing. Neil, the majority of four-year institutions still don't require test scores, but others like MIT, Georgetown, and now Dartmouth, are slowly reversing it.

Yeah, so thousands of colleges pulled their testing requirements during COVID, and it's been very slow to bring them back. But this new research from Dartmouth and Dartmouth's move following MIT's might kind of reverse the trend a little bit because they produce some crazy compelling evidence that show why admissions counselors, should not be, emissions officials should not be wading high school grades, you know, compared to standardized tests. They found that students with a perfect 4.0 GPA in high school, you know, not anybody we know, were just, when they went to college, their GPA would just be 0.1% higher than those with a high school GPA of 3.2. So high school grades is very little predictor of college success relative to standardized test. Yeah, I mean, it is a lot of people have heard the term grade inflation at these elite

high schools where whether teachers or students among them kind of bring up their high school grades because, again, you want those GPAs on your college application to be high and very appealing. And then also another drawback to overweighting high school resumes is the fact that these extracurriculars that end up sprucing up your resume are often the things that very very things that cost the most and that exclude lower income families from participating in stuff like after school activities, sports, like ban classes. These things cost money even more so than studying for the SAT or ACT. And so making the high school resume just the very thing,

the most insanely competitive thing, that is the only predictor of getting into schools. College admissions people realize that that's not the best system going forward. One other motivating factor for Dartmouth may be this huge jump in applications from abroad international applications at Dartmouth jumped 10% in the past year to account for about a third of the total and They need kind of this standardized way of measuring international applicants versus American applicants and grades aren't just gonna cut it anymore So that little wrinkle may also they might have been looking at their jump in international applicants and say yeah, we really need this like level playing field standardized testing to be able to weight international applicants which make up you know a third of their pool at this point to to American students.

That sound we're hearing, though, is just new high school students groaning as they have to. It's not fun. Reopen the test books, but it gets better people. When I took the SATs and finished and handed it in, I was like, I am never doing that again. That was the worst experience. Although, I want to do a SAT party where a bunch of us elderly millennials and gent's years, retake the SATs and Sierra were at.

Let's see how much we really got going on in the domes. Let's move on. McDonald's reported earnings yesterday, and it was a rare, Sales miss for the Golden Arches, global same-sour sales rose 3.4% in Q4 of 2023, which was well below the 4.7% Wall Street expected. But it had a very explicit reason for its first miss in four years. Conflict in the Middle East. McDonald's said the war has, quote, meaningfully impacted sales in overseas markets after some customers were angered by McDonald's Israel providing free meals to Israeli soldiers. This perceived pro-Israel stance of certain franchises has also hurt sales in majority Muslim countries as far as Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as countries with large Muslim populations like France as boycotts take hold.

McDonald's isn't the only one facing these headwinds either. Starbucks cut its annual sales forecast last week, saying that Israel-Hamas War will hurt its Middle East business as well. Neil, it's interesting to see these big corporations point a finger directly at this conflict for their sluggish global sales. Yeah, for McDonald's, I think it's their business model, kind of coming back to bite them. They give their local franchisees a lot of autonomy. They just basically license their brand out to these local operators, these local companies that kind of run them as independent businesses. They can make decisions on their own.

They can make statements. And so I think this very decentralized nature of McDonald's is, you know, maybe a thorn in their side at this point because McDonald's CEO says this is based on misinformation. They put out statements saying they're not. taking a stance on the war, but it is perceived based on the actions of local operators of McDonald's that they are taking a stance one way or another. So after McDonald's Israel gave, you know, gave the food out to the soldiers and citizens of the country following October 7th, the Saudi franchisee donated over $500,000 to Gaza and made a statement in support of the

Palestinians. So you see this independent network of McDonald's kind of doing their own political things that is causing HQ a lot of headaches. It kind of shows the halo effect of how you can get looped into a conflict, but the very fact that you're not taking a stance because then your franchisees end up taking a stance as well. Let's talk about Starbucks, though, because it even has a less of a direct impact on the Israel-Hamas war. This kind of sales boycott started as far back when the coffee chain sued a union for a trademark violation because Starbucks employees posted a pro-Palestinian message in the early days of the war. And then also some activists have claimed that Starbucks has supported Israel's action in Gaza,

has sent money to the country. Starbucks has kind of denied this and say, listen, we are not taking a stance as well. But it just goes to show you how these boycotts, both at home and abroad, are affecting the bottom line of these very big corporations. All right, Neil, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. A mining startup backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos has struck gold. Well, copper. California-based cobald metals said it found the largest copper deposit in Zambia in a century,

a major discovery because of how integral copper is to the green energy transition. The company said when the mine is up and running, it'll be one of the world's biggest high-grade copper mines, and it can't arrive fast enough. Copper and other metals are in soaring demand right now for their use in renewable energy and electric vehicles. According to the International Energy Administration, copper is a cornerstone of all electricity-related technologies. You simply can't decarbonize without it. There's also a geopolitical benefit. The West relies on China for a lot of these metals and being able to source

critical materials like copper without relying on your main rival has been a priority for the U.S. and its allies. So the plan now is to sink $2 billion to build this mine and open it within the 10 years. Yeah, there are a lot of subplots in this discovery. I mean, the main one being exactly what you said, that the U.S. government is embarking on what the Financial Times called a charm offensive in this infrastructure push in Africa because they're trying to combat China's control over minerals there because, again, China controls a large majority of the rare earth metals that are essential for kind of this green revolution. I also just want to talk about copper, though, because copper is the goat. It's got that high conductivity. and durability, which plays very nicely with the electrification and the renewable energy infrastructure. EVs have copper rotors, and they use copper wire to connect their engines.

Copper is also traditionally used in generators, but it's also one of the few materials that can be recycled over and over again without any loss in quality. So both recycled copper and virgin copper, as it's called, which come from the mines, can be used interchangeably in manufacturing new products. So copper is just the go. All right. If you love copper so much, what's its atomic number? Oh, gosh.

All right. Got that. It's 29. You'll never forget that. No, but it is crazy to think just how much more sort of renewable and green technologies require minerals relative to conventional energy uses that we've been using for, you know, over a century. The typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car. And an onshore wind plant requires nine times the mineral resources of a,

gas fire plant. So we're just in a new regime where minerals are essentially the new oil. I know we've heard that data is the new oil, but making sure you have mines and mineral reserves is critical if you want to decarbonize your grid. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to dive into the startup real quick. It is backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, but also it uses AI to scrape. Of course, it uses AI. But it does it in a very cool way. It scrapes historical, geological archives. So that's stuff like old PDFs or things like literal hand-painted maps to then use that to construct a map and see if some of the areas that these maps kind of have highlighted are actually rich with minerals.

So I just thought that was very cool. And another usage of AI that genuinely, as a copper fan, as a copper stand, I enjoyed reading about. Okay, let's move on. Why are celebrities at award shows covering their mouse like they're an offensive coordinator calling plays in the Super Bowl. Well, I'll tell you why in today's edition of Toby's Trends, where I, a much-do-on-line Gen Zier, educate my also very online millennial co-host,

Neil, about a recent trend I've had my eye on. So we're in the thick of award season, and while who's getting snubbed and who's winning what still captures our interests, it's the semi-private side conversations between celebs that are increasingly grabbing headlines. Enter lip readers who are having themselves a moment. cameras caught Selena Gomez chatting with Taylor Swift, mouthing words to each other conspiratorily at a recent show, but the lack of audio on these clips caused people to rush to TikTok

to see what professional lip readers on the platform picked up on. Sometimes the words they find can launch full-blown-slub, feuds regardless of how accurate the readings actually are. A world where possible quotes in exchanges between celebs are reported adds this whole new layer of juicy gossip, and these lip readers are the purveyors of such excitement. Neil, this has gotten so big and is such a thing that Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey actually held black fans to cover their mouths while talking to each other at the Grammys. They really do look like they are hiding plays out there.

As you mentioned, the sports world caught on to this many decades ago. I mean, when a pitcher and a catcher go to meet on the mound, the catcher holds up his glove over his mouth. So, you know, the opposing team can't read what they're saying. But it is kind of fascinating that this has become the talk du jour. the topic du jour of awards because there are so many cuts to the crowd and from these side angles, and people just want desperately to know what celebrities are saying. It does feel like the next evolution of celebrity culture when Harry and Megan were around the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II a couple years ago.

I know that so many body language celebrity readers were in vogue, and this seems like the next sort of dimension of that. Yeah, I think that's why it's so engrossing. there's this communicational void that leaves just enough room there for theories and half-truths to be inserted that you run with, that you spin up and you turn into something totally different. It's just the perfect medium for gossip because you don't really know what they're saying, but you know they're saying something. It can get a little destructive, though, because John Krasinski was on the red carpet with his wife,

Emily Blutt, and someone thought they saw Krasnzi told his wife, I can't wait to get a divorce, but then another lip reader said, it was, I can't wait until we're indoors. So again, it's not a perfect science, even though these lip readers are very talented. So, again, it is just the next iteration of the celebrity gossip. But it's cool that these really good lip readers are kind of gaining attraction on platforms. They have millions of followers. People really care about what they have to say.

And it is certainly a very impressive skill to be able to read lips. Finally, should you have to pay more to park your big car in a city? Paris thinks so. Over the weekend, Parisians voted to triple the parking cost for. out-of-town SUVs to tackle air pollution and carbon emissions. So starting this fall, if you want a day trip to the French capital in your Range Rover, it'll cost you nearly $20 per hour to park along the Chansalisei. Taxis and I took so much time trying to pronounce that correctly, and I did it well. Taxis and Paris residents are exempted from the rule, however. And it shouldn't come as a

surprise that Paris is the city leading the charge on implementing a parking tax on bigger vehicles. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been a trendsetter who's made it her mission to make the city safer and more pleasant for pedestrians. Last year, Paris became the first European capital to ban rental e-scooters. It's been limiting car access to certain areas of the city center, and it's built out miles or kilometers of bike infrastructure to promote cycling. Hidalgo hopes that other cities will see what Paris is doing to curb car use, especially bigger cars, and follow its lead. And we get it, Neil. You went to Paris this Christmas. I mean, the argument against SUVs is pretty compelling. I mean, they're 20% more polluting than

average cars, and then also pedestrians were twice as likely to be killed if you're by a collision with the SUV versus a standard vehicle. But I can also totally see the argument as to why this kind of tax on SUVs is overly punitive. Some advocacy groups attack the plan saying that this is a direct attack on families and penalizing big families that need these cars to kind of transport their kids around. And it's also one driver advocacy group called 40 million motorists said the French SUV is not an American Hummer. These cars aren't the giant SUVs that maybe you initially think of.

They are smaller over in Europe. Right. France is also going against the grain of consumer trends because the best selling cars in the world are SUVs. The top selling car globally was the Tesla Model Y. And it overtook the RAV-4 from Toyota, which is another compact SUV. SUVs are just like a huge, are the biggest growth trend in the market in the auto market right now. So it's just like kind of going against what consumers want.

Yeah. And European consumers actually love them too. More than half of the vehicles sold last year in Europe were SUVs as well. Wait, are we describing the RAV4 as an SUV? Does that? It's a compact SUV. That's crazy. See, that's what I mean when people, when they hear SUVs, you think American Hummer,

but it might go as small as the compact rafar. I think you are just being framed by. these massive SUVs. Like if you just saw the Ravre 4, you'd be like, yeah, that's an SUV. But let's go back to the Paris side. It's saying that there's a huge problem of auto obesity, which is what they call just the growth of cars. A Brussels-based group found that SUVs in Europe expand by one centimeter every two years. And Paris, I will say, yes, I did go to Paris. It was extremely pleasant. And you could tell very much that they had done a lot of work, restricting cars in the city center. When you cross a street, you don't have to look both ways.

Well, you do have to look both ways. But you're not dodging cars all the times. Like, there's a very noticeable lack of cars in the city center. It makes it for a much better pedestrian experience, a much safer experience. And Paris is hoping that once again, it's setting the trend on making, you know, promoting pedestrian and cycling in its city center. So we'll see if London or any other cities follows to. I don't think New York City or any, uh, any, any American cities are going to do that anytime soon. We have to wrap it up there, though. Have a wonderful Tuesday, everyone. If you have any thoughts on the podcast, please drop us a note at our email, Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer.

Raymond Liu is our associate producer. Euchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup knows who Satoshi is, but isn't telling. 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.