Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/15 – Will The SEC Allow You To Trade The (Bitcoin) Future?

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

The SEC is poised to let the first Bitcoin futures ETFs trade a soon as next week. Google finally does away with pagination on the mobile web. Why are Waymo autonomous taxis all piling up on one dead end street in San Francisco? And of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Dataiku.com Links: SEC Set to Allow Bitcoin Futures ETFs as Deadline Looms (Bloomberg) Google modernizes US mobile search results with continuous scrolling (TechCrunch) Dead-End SF Street Plagued With Confused Waymo Cars Trying To Turn Around ‘Every 5 Minutes’ (KPIX CBS) Reliable Robotics lifts $100M to take autonomous cargo planes where none have gone before (TechCrunch) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: How Axie Infinity is turning gaming on its head (Platformer) Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions? (Bloomberg Businessweek) SLACKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! (The Atlantic) Starbucks Is 50 and Emboldening Its Rivals More Than Ever (Bloomberg Opinion) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Friday, October 15th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. The SEC is poised to let the first Bitcoin futures ETFs trade as soon as next week. Google finally does away with pagination on the mobile web. Why are Waymo autonomous taxis all piling up on one

dead end street in San Francisco? And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Sources are telling Bloomberg that the SEC is poised to let the first Bitcoin futures ETFs from ProShares and Invesco trade in the U.S. as early as next week, quote, unlike Bitcoin ETF applications that the regulator has previously rejected, the proposals by ProShares and Invesco are based on futures contracts and were filed under mutual fund rules that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said provide, quote, significant investor protections, end quote. A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment, as did an official at Pro Shares. Barring a last-minute reversal, the fund launch will be the culmination of a

nearly decade-long campaign by the $6.7 trillion ETF industry. Advocates have sought approval as a confirmation of mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies since Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins best known for their part in the history of Facebook, filed the first application for a Bitcoin ETF in 2013. Approval has for years been out of the grasp of issuers who, amid myriad false signs of progress and outright rejections, have tried to get a variety of different structures cleared for trading. Over the years, there have been plans for funds that proposed to hold Bitcoin via a digital vault, or that could use leverage to juice returns. Others sought to mitigate Bitcoin's famous volatility, a key point of contention for the SEC. The SEC has in the past argued that

the crypto space is plagued with investor hazards. The SEC had expressed concern that prices could be manipulated and liquidity might be insufficient, and that Bitcoin's drastic price swings may be too much for individual investors. Bitcoin's last three full-year returns were a 74% loss, followed by gains of 95% and 305%. Additionally, the SEC has questioned whether funds would have the information necessary to adequately value cryptocurrencies or related products. There have also been questions about validating ownership of the coins held by funds and the threat from hackers, end quote. And that last bit there is what's interesting to me in a Today I Learned sort of way. I asked on Twitter why it seems like a Bitcoin ETF, not a futures ETF, a regular vanilla ETF seems like it's never

going to happen. And Blake Hagerly responded thus, quote, the ETF needs to be backed by actual assets. I don't know if you can have a legal right of ownership on a specific Bitcoin. That, if it's stolen or spent, it ceases to exist. You can have one backed by derivative. and quote. You may have already seen this, but Google has rolled out continuous scrolling for English language mobile search results in the U.S., quoting TechCrunch. The change will roll out on the mobile web and will be supported on the Google mobile app for both iOS and Android in the U.S. for most English language searches for the time being, because it's a staggered release, you may initially encounter some results which scroll and others that do not. While most people find

what they're looking for in the first few results, says Google, those who are looking for additional information tend to browse through four pages of search results. That's why the company is making the change, we're told. Now those users will be able to more seamlessly move between pages without having to click the See More button at the bottom of the page. Google notes this could be helpful in particular for searches where people are looking for a variety of ideas or inspiration on a given topic instead of just quick answers. However, there are other benefits. of this design as well, which Google did not reference. For starters, the continuous scroll doesn't force you to stop at some arbitrary point in your search, then tap a link to move forward, a holdover

from the desktop era of web search. That click-for-more type of design feels outdated in a world where in app feeds, like Facebook's news feed, for instance, present a never-ending stream of information and updates, and by continuing to scroll, Google users may end up spending more time in the app where they'll also see more ads. The continuous scroll could, also give Google more flexibility in terms of ad placement. Instead of limiting ads to the top of a results page, they could be inserted amid the search results as you move down, more like how ads on social networking feeds appear, end quote. There you go. If the scroll is infinite, then the top of the screen ads can just follow you down the scroll to infinity. See? They're still finding ways to

squeeze blood from their golden stone. And you might have heard this already, but if you haven't, allow me the privilege, there's a quiet San Francisco street, a dead-end street, where the residents are complaining that Waymo's self-driving cars are flocking to the street throughout the day seemingly confused by the dead end. Quoting KPIX San Francisco, I noticed it while I was sleeping, says Jennifer King. I awoke to a strange hum, and I thought there was a spacecraft outside my bedroom window. The visitors Jennifer King is talking about don't just come at night. They come all day right to the end of 15th Avenue, where there's nothing else to do but make some kind of multi-point turn and head out the way they came in. Not long after that car is gone,

there will be another, which will make the same turn and leave before another car shows up and does the exact same thing. And while there are some pauses, it never really stops. Quote, There are some days where it can be up to 50, King says, of the Waymo count. It's literally every five minutes, and we're all working from home, so this is what we hear, end quote. At several points this Tuesday, they showed up on top of each other. The cars packed with technology, stop in a queue, as if they are completely baffled by the dead end. While some neighbors say it is becoming a bit of a nuisance, everyone finds it a little bizarre. We have talked to the drivers who don't have much to say other than the car is programmed, and they're just doing their job, King says. In an email,

statement, a Waymo spokesperson said, quote, we continually adjust to dynamic San Francisco road rules. In this case, cars traveling north of California on 15th Avenue have to take a U-turn due to the presence of slow streets signage on Lake. So the Waymo driver was obeying the same road rules that any car is required to follow, end quote. So I guess this is actually down to poor city planning. As Jeff Nolan tweeted, though, quote, The gathering is usually a sign that something really bad is about to happen, just like in Highlander, end quote. Now, maybe you'll be skeptical of this next story after that last story about autonomous cars, but I'm still super bullish on autonomous vehicles and spaces that are less complex than, say,

the windy streets of San Francisco. Places like the open sea or the open skies. So, interesting rays for you. Reliable Robotics, which wants to retrofit commercial cargo planes with autonomous systems, has raised a $100 million Series C led by CO2 management, quoting TechCrunch. When flying cargo from one part of the world to another, you typically need a pilot for two parts, the takeoff and the landing. As so elegantly outlined in the 1980 Jim Abrams movie airplane, the rest of the time, you're pretty much on instruments. Reliable Robotics is aiming to

solve that pesky needing to have a pilot in the plane problem by instead putting the pilot on the ground when you need it and leave the plane to find its destination on its own the rest of the time. The newly raised funds will go toward scaling the team and supporting its first aircraft certification program, working toward commercial cargo operations. In the first instance, the company is working on autonomous systems for existing aircraft. They have been experimenting and developing using a Cessna 172, which started flying unmanned flights a couple of years ago. The company was founded in 2017 and was operating in stealth mode until last year. Its technology handles all phases of flight, including taxi, takeoff, landing, and parking,

while licensed pilots remotely supervise the flights from a control center. Reliable robotics suggest that the systems they've developed are able to auto land on smaller airstrips in rural or remote areas without requiring additional infrastructure or technology to be installed at the airports. The business case is simple. Pilots are the most expensive aspects of running cargo operations with similar restrictions to road-based trucking operations. The vast majority of trucking is boring and monotonous work, where the drivers are the most common source of failure. In the air, replacing the qualified pilots

with autonomous systems that can be overridden from the ground means that the cost goes down and the utilization of the aircraft skyrockets. The company's main selling point is connecting regional and municipal airports across the country. For starters, the company is focusing on increasing efficiency and decreasing the cost of hauling cargo around. Reliable robotics also hints at a future where passengers can step aboard the remotely piloted planes. The company is also evaluating emergency electric and hybrid aircraft platforms. Of course, people are a little twitchy about the safety aspects of self-driving cars, and planes add a literal additional dimension to the mix. The Federal Aviation Administration is keeping a close eye on reliable and other commercial operators

in the space, but the agency has greenlit a number of authorizations. for experimental unmanned aircraft, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. And first up, I want to turn you on to something I've been aware of for a while that I don't think we've discussed. Axi Infinity is this weird sort of Pokemon game, sort of crypto hybrid. Basically, people buy digital pets as NFTs, and the game generated $12.2 million in revenue in June.

The very next month, they generated more than $70,000. million dollars. That's some serious month-over-month growth, if I've ever heard of it. The most expensive non-fungible token sale ever recently took place on Axi Infinity. This led to a $150 million series B round recently at a $3 billion valuation led by Andresen Horowitz. Like, if you listen to the conversation Chris and I have about the Metaverse on this weekend's bonus episode, this is what we're talking about. It might already be here, at least the building blocks, quoting Platformer. In short, it's Pokemon on the blockchain. It's not available in app stores. You either download AXI onto your desktop or side load it onto your Android phone. The game offers turn-based

combat between teams of three cartoon monsters known as AXE's. Each AXE has powers originating from their type, bug, bird, plant, etc., and their various body parts. Axi is interesting because it's using cryptocurrency to stand up a new kind of video game, one in which you can earn meaningful income just by playing. The game is surrounded by a community that holds a financial stake in AXI via the game's two currencies, which they can use to influence its development. In short, it's a social network where all the participants are buying and selling goods with real money. We have a word for that, one that we would almost never apply to a web-based social network, an economy. And if AXE continues to grow at its current rate, that's poised to have some fascinating

implications. Dedicated players are now earning thousands of dollars a month playing AXI, and the platform has grown quickly to 1.8 million users logged in to the platform in August. As rest of world reported in August, this has proven particularly true in the Philippines, where 40% of today's AXI players are based. The combination of existing low wages in the country and pandemic-related lockdowns has been a boon to AXE, as players have flocked to the game in search of economic opportunity. That helps explain how AXE's total trading volume now exceeds $2.4 billion, end quote. I've also been meaning to share something about the controversial stable coin known as Tether,

and this Bloomberg piece is a good explainer for you. Exactly how Tether is backed, or if it's truly backed at all, has always been a mystery. For years, a persistent group of critics has argued that despite the company's assurances, Tether Holdings doesn't have enough assets to maintain the one-to-one exchange rate, meaning its coin is essentially a fraud. But in the crypto world, where joke coins with pictures of dogs can be worth billion of dollars and scammers periodically make fortunes with preposterous sounding schemes. Tether just seems like another curiosity. Then this year, Tether Holdings started putting out a huge amount

of digital coins. There are now 69 billion tethers in circulation. Forty-eight billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins, an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S. if it were a U.S. an unregulated offshore company, end quote. Next, the Atlantic takes a look at Slack and how it has been getting its fair share of blame lately for upending company cultures, for some of the workplace activism we've been talking about that's been bubbling up recently, quote, even if you don't use Slack or something like it, you live and work in the world Slack helped create. It's a world where openness and transparency

are prized, where work is something we are always kind of doing, where who we are, at the office and who we are outside of it are closer than ever before, where all of these dynamics mean that sometimes things go very wrong, especially for people in power, end quote. And finally, I know it's not tech, except that over the last 25 years, at least, a lot of tech work has been done there. Heck, how many tech companies were incubated or even founded there? Also from Bloomberg, a look at Starbucks as it turns 50 with a timely history of when and how it took over by creating a new sort of public space. Quote, in 1996, Starbucks abandoned the hard-edge contemporary store design inspired by

Milanese coffee bars in favor of a cozier aesthetic with more comfortable seating. Quote, while my original idea was to provide a quick stand-up, to-go service in downtown office locations, wrote CEO Howard Schultz in 1997, Starbucks's fastest growing stores today are in urban or suburban residential neighborhoods. People don't just drop. by to pick up a half pound of decaf on their way to the supermarket as we first anticipated, they come for the atmosphere and the camaraderie, end quote. Spotting a business opportunity and a social critique, Starbucks began to think of its stores as third places. The term comes from sociologist Ray Oldenberg's 1989 book, The Great Good Place,

which lamented the loss of old-fashioned main streets with their familiar gathering spots. Living in impersonal suburbs, he wrote, Americans had lost places that, quote, create an environment in which everybody knows just about everybody, end quote. The hangouts that are neither work nor home. Quote, these places serve community best to the extent that they are inclusive and local, he wrote, end quote. So as mentioned, there is a Twitter space bonus episode coming your way this weekend, discussions of what the Metaverse actually is, and also why Facebook in particular is so hot on it. But one quick mention also of the Ride Home Fund,

before we go. The Ride Home Fund cut our first two checks over the last seven days and might cut a third one soon. I can't share the identity of the startups with you yet until the rounds officially close. But I'm very excited. And I'm actually thrilled by the fact that the thesis of the fund is already panning out. I'm excited about all three companies, of course, and all three knocked on our door because they were listeners to the show. But even more exciting is this. I mentioned to Chris on the Twitter space episode. I've discovered that there's this whole ecosystem of seed stage funds and syndicates like ours all swapping deal flow in order to put rounds together. But that means that everybody sort of ends up chasing the same companies,

which is good and bad. So interestingly, two of the three companies that we've been talking to, they were opportunities that were under the radar, and we were able to get to them first. And we were able to get to them first. They only surfaced because of this podcast. That's really cool. By the way, if you haven't pulled the trigger on investing in the ride home fund, guess what? As long as you subscribe to the fund by December 1st, your money will be able to participate in these deals I'm talking about. Fundraising for the fourth quarter doesn't end until December 1st, so if you were thinking about investing in the fund, but haven't, as long as you do so by that date, you won't miss out on any deals, even the ones for the checks we just wrote. So, go to

ridehomefund.com, if interested, and click the link that says subscribe here to learn more. Talk to you on Monday.