Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 11/19 – ConstitutionDAO Lost The Auction For The Constitution.

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

ConstitutionDAO lost the auction for the Constitution. But it was really about the friends we made along the way, right? More Apple Car rumors. Xbox and PlayStation have harsh words for Activision Blizzard. Everyone wants in on crypto exchanges. And of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Tovala.com/ride FindYourFidelity.com Links: Crypto Investors Lose Out In $43.2 Million Sale Of Rare Copy Of U.S. Constitution (Forbes) Apple Accelerates Work on Car Project, Aiming for Fully Autonomous Vehicle (Bloomberg) Xbox Chief Says He’s Evaluating Relationship With Activision (Bloomberg) Gemini Raises $400 Million To Build A Metaverse Outside Facebook’s Walled Garden (Forbes) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: The most influential man on the internet (ReadMax) Visions of a U.S. Computer Chip Boom Have Cities Hustling (NYTimes) The Video Game History Book I Mentioned GAMECUBE AT 20: NINTENDO INSIDERS ON THE FAILED CONSOLE THAT CHANGED THE INDUSTRY (Video Games Chronicle) How Xbox outgrew the console: inside Phil Spencer’s multi-billion dollar gamble (GQ) Who Knows Anthony Bourdain? (Eater) 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 Tech meme right home for Friday, November 19th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Constitution Dow lost the auction for the Constitution, but it was really all about the friends we made along the way, right? More Apple car rumors. Xbox and PlayStation have harsh words for Activision Blizzard. Everyone wants in on crypto exchanges, and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, they didn't pull it off after all. Constitution Dow lost the Sotheby's U.S. Constitution auction last night to an undisclosed winners, $43.2 million bid after the Dow crowdfunded a total of about $40 million, quoting Forbes. Constitution Dow set a goal of $20 million, the high end of what Sotheby's had originally estimated the document could fetch.

By Tuesday, it had raised $5 million and a day later over $40 million. It's not clear how much the group eventually raised or why it wasn't able to surpass the winning bid. The Constitution's previous owner, Dorothy Goldman, plans to donate the proceeds from the sale to her foundation, which supports constitutional law study. She should be pleased. The transaction represents a 24,700 percent return on the $165,000 her husband, real estate developer S. Howard Goldman, paid for the Constitution in 1988, end quote. So my question is, was the key flaw here that they revealed or at least hinted at exactly how much money, They raised and thus had to spend. That's sort of breaking the golden rule of an auction, right? You don't want others to know what your limit is. I actually watched the whole thing live, and as soon as it hit that $40 million mark, you could see on the face of the lady on the phone that they probably weren't going to go any further. Still, you got to admit, given that all this

came together in just a week, what this community achieved was crazy impressive. A few other random thoughts about this. I didn't participate in this. I didn't put any money in myself. because of the gas fees. They would be more than I was willing to contribute. That's basically where I'm at with everything right now when it comes to this NFT stuff. I've not sold any more of my podcast NFTs because the gas fees are more than I would earn from the sale. So I'm wondering if now you've got folks who are going to have to pay gas fees just to get their unspent money back. Also, I'm pretty sure they have at least one and maybe even two or more taxable events coming their way, which, you know, awesome. Also, again, I watched the whole thing live. It was fascinating. Everyone on that sort of stage there was

drop dead gorgeous. I mean, both sexes. Everyone was beautiful. I guess fine art is just one of those industries for the beautiful people. But also, also, there were people in the audience, and yet most of the bidding came in over the phone. I'd love to learn the history of that. Surely it was controversial in, say, I don't know, 1926 when they first allowed phone bidding. Like, if you can't be here, you don't deserve to bid, that sort of thing. But I would want to do my bidding over text message or something like that if I was involved. You think that would be allowed? It's always fascinating to see how technology does or doesn't poke its way into legacy processes.

You know that when phones were first introduced to Sotheby's, people didn't trust the tech. And still, I guess, they probably wouldn't trust digital bidding. And one final thought that's kind of obvious, I guess, but I find it fascinating. If you have enough money to bid, say, $6 million on some piece of art, and then someone outbids you by $50,000 or $100,000 and you're like, no moss, like, that's fascinating to me. If you can spend $6 million, how come you're going to tap out over a measly $100,000 or something like that? I don't know. Rich people problems, right? Mark German has done it to me again.

His sources are reporting that Apple is accelerating the development of a very important. a fully autonomous electric car after hitting a car processor milestone, thus allowing them to plan on hopefully debuting the vehicle by as early as 2025, quoting German and Bloomberg. For the past several years, Apple's car team had explored two simultaneous paths, creating a model with limited self-driving capabilities focused on steering and acceleration, similar to many current cars, or a version with full self-driving ability that doesn't require human intervention. Under the efforts new leader, Apple Watch Software Executive Kevin Lynch, engineers are now concentrating on the second option.

Lynch is pushing for a car with a full self-driving system in the first version, said the people who ask not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Apple is internally targeting a launch of its self-driving car in four years, faster than the five-to-seven-year timeline that some engineers had been planning for earlier this year. But the timing is fluid, and hitting that 2025 target is dependent on the company's ability to complete the self-driving system, an ambitious task on that schedule. If Apple is unable to reach its goal, it could either delay a release or initially sell a car with lesser technology. Apple's ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals, and its interior would be designed around hands-off

driving. One option discussed inside the company features an interior similar to the one in the lifestyle vehicle from Canoe, an upstart in the EV industry. In that car, passengers sit along the sides of the vehicle and face each other like they would in a limousine. Apple has also explored designs where the car's infotainment system, likely a large iPad-like touchscreen, would be in the middle of the vehicle letting users interact with it throughout a ride. The car would also be heavily integrated with Apple's existing services and devices. Though the company is pushing to not have a standard steering wheel, Apple has discussed equipping the car with an emergency takeover mode. Recently, the company reached a key milestone in developing the car's underlying self-driving system, people familiar with the

situation said. Apple believes it has completed much of the core work on the processor it intends to eventually ship in the first generation of the car. The chip was designed by Apple's Silicon Engineering Group, which devised the processors for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, rather than within the car team itself. The work has included honing the underlying software that runs on the chip to power the self-driving capabilities, end quote. Apple Silicon might finally deliver us Apple steel, or I guess modern cars are mostly plastic these days, right? Follow up on that Activision Blizzard story. In a staff email, Phil Spencer says he's evaluating Xbox's relationship with Activision Blizzard and plans on making adjustments. Sony's PlayStation head sent a similar

note to staff recently, so pressure on Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick intensifies, quoting Bloomberg. This type of behavior has no place in our industry, Spencer wrote. He joins a swell of outcry from employees to investors and shareholders in demanding a stronger response from the U.S.'s second biggest gaming publisher. On Wednesday, Sony Group Corpse, PlayStation Chief Jim Ryan, sent a similar note to staff, writing that he and his leadership were, quote, disheartened and frankly stunned to read that Activision has not done enough to address a deep-seated culture of discrimination and harassment, end quote. But Spencer went a step further in saying he would take action. Xbox and PlayStation are among the video game industry's biggest console

manufacturers. Activision has a long history with the Xbox. The publisher's largest franchise Call of Duty became successful largely due to Microsoft's innovative online platform Xbox Live, which allows players to connect for multiplayer matches. Most of Activision's games are published on Xbox consoles. At least 500 Activision employees have signed a petition to remove Kotik, and a shareholder group has called for him to resign and for two other long-serving directors to step down by the end of the year, end quote. One more quick observation here. The Two hottest areas, in my opinion right now for VC investing are cybersecurity generally and then cryptocurrency exchanges specifically. I'm talking decentralized exchanges like FTX, but also traditional

exchanges. I guess Coinbase showed the world there's a mountain of money to be made by making a market for crypto traders. Further proof of this comes in the form of news that the Winklewos Twins' cryptocurrency exchange Gemini raised $400 million led by Morgan Creek Digital at a $7.1 billion valuation. What's interesting here, this is the first outside investment Gemini has ever taken, quoting Forbes. After seven years of funding their Gemini cryptocurrency empire out of pocket, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are in the process of signing the last documents on their first round of capital, a $400 million investment that values the New York parent company Gemini Space Station LLC at $7.1 billion. If the epic competition between the Twins and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a tortoise versus

hair scenario now is starting to look like the moment momentum might be shifting. As part of the capital raise that roughly equates to a series D, New York-based Morgan Creek contributed $75 million and general partner Sachin Jatley became the third member of Gemini's board of directors. The other board members are Tyler and Cameron. Other investors expected to participate in what would be the fourth largest capital raise in crypto history include rapper and tycoon Jay-Z's Marcy Venture partners, former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg's Wonderco, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, private equity firm 10T, family office advisory new flow partners, as well as United Town Agency, Jane Street, K5 Global, Pantara, Van Eck and BoostVC, among others.

The brothers are expected to retain 75% ownership in the company after the investment and their combined net wealth will nearly double from $6 billion in April to $10 billion today. New York-based Gemini's annual revenue has increased 600% since last year, and a company spokesperson said it is on track to be profitable by the end of this year. While they are not sharing the actual revenue numbers, they say the largest segment comes from the Gemini cryptocurrency Exchange, which charges active traders, 0.6% for transactions less than $500,000 and less for larger amounts, 0.4% on $30 billion in assets under custody, and an average of about 1% in terms of fees to borrow 40 different cryptocurrencies, among other sources. sources. Cameron says the 600-person firm with offices in London and Singapore will have 1,000 employees by next year, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. First up, Rich Lotex Kianca, the founder and longtime operator of a website and message board called Something Awful, died last week unexpectedly at the age of 45. And the Max Reed substack

makes a compelling case that Lotex set the culture for the modern internet in a meaningful way. Quote, LOTAC is sometimes well-intentioned, often deranged personal preferences, helped shape internet culture on what feels like an infrastructural level. It's not just that LOTACs made a website that directly created the starter pack of what we'd later call internet culture, but also that he set the tone for the website that would go on to set the tone for Twitter, which is where politics and the media now live. Like Robert Moses, the long-tail effects of his initiatives have largely been negative.

By driving anime fans from something awful, he in advance. Burtonly created a vacuum filled by 4chan. Banning Lollicom from ADTRW is his cross-Bronx expressway, I guess. Like Robert Moses, Lothax was famously a dick, both in harmless and in deeply harmful ways, end quote. Next, the New York Times looks at something I've been wondering about. Now that we have semiconductor capacity inside your own borders as a clear geopolitical strategic necessity, could we see high-tech manufacturing return to U.S. shores? quote, many states and cities in America are starting to see a silver lining. The possibility that efforts to sharply increase chip production in the United States will lead to a busy chip factory in their backyard,

and they are racing to get a piece of the potential boom. One of those towns is Taylor, a Texas city of about 17,000, about a 40-minute drive northeast of Austin. Leaders here are pulling out all the stops to get a $17 billion Samsung plant that the company plans to build in the United States starting early next year. The city, its school district, and the county plan to offer Samsung hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives, including tax rebates. The community also has arranged for water to be piped in from an adjacent county to be used by the plant. But Taylor is not alone. Officials in Arizona and in Genesee County in upstate New York are also trying to woo the company. So too are politicians in nearby Travis County, home to Austin, where Samsung already has a plant.

locations in all three states, quote, offered robust property tax abatement and funds to build out infrastructure for the plant. Samsung said in a filing, Congress is considering whether to offer its own subsidies to chipmakers that build in the United States, end quote. Over the last week, I've been reading a great book about modern video game history. It's called The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and the billion dollar battle to shape modern gaming. I've got a link to that book in the show notes if you want to buy it yourself. Anyway, I've read about these two things specifically over the last week. First, from GQ Magazine, an interview with Xbox's Phil Spencer, obviously mentioned in a previous segment today,

but this time discussing the history of the Xbox and the future of the device. Quote, it was to be the major first experiment for Xbox GamePass, the service that had been in concept as early as 2013. Code named Arches, GamePass started as a rental service for video games, but as Netflix and Spotify proliferated, the team settled on a subscription model. It was the answer to a shift in revenue tales in games. Something like 75% of a game's revenue used to be made in the first two months of release, explained Sarah Bond, head of gaming ecosystems.

Nowadays, it spread over two years, end quote. Spencer and his team saw an opportunity. They went out to publishers, but the idea was met with staunch resistance. They were like, no way! Game Pass is going to devalue games, Bond continues. Xbox asked instead to experiment with their own. older games where the risk was low. Engagement surpassed all estimates so a potentially even more audacious play came to life. Xbox would release one of its own exclusive first-party games onto Game Pass on the same day it hit shops. Sea of Thieves was first to leap over the barricades.

It was a big point of differentiation from Microsoft. PlayStation and Nintendo players still have to spend upwards of $50 on a new title. Here was Xbox giving you its latest most valuable product, as well as its existing back catalog all for less than $10 a month. and quote. And on the occasion of its 20th anniversary from Video Games Chronicle, a look back at Nintendo's GameCube, quote, today consumers are used to being able to purchase devices in a variety of colors, but in 2001 it was not the norm, Kaplan explained. And when Nintendo's Japan HQ pushed for Purple to be the GameCube's primary color, Nintendo of America worried about how it would be received by the Western market. We actually suggested that purple was not

the best to start with, and Japan said, no, we're going to use that. She said, said. Then we pushed for black and silver because I think in the U.S. nobody had ever really done the purple color before. It wasn't that you couldn't bring out hardware that was different. It was just a very female-looking color. It just didn't feel masculine, I think. I remember us being very nervous at E3 that we were going to get bad press purely based on the color, end quote. Beth Llewellyn, Noah's former director of corporate communications, now also a co-founder of Zebra partners agreed that the GameCue's purple design didn't help its image with core players when they inevitably compared it to PS2 and Xbox's macho black boxes. This predates Apple, she recalls.

Picking your color these days is like making a statement. But back then, all the game systems were black. Even white hadn't really been done widely. Nintendo was never a technology story, but we were always combating what our competitors at Sony and Microsoft were doing from a PR perspective, and having this purple box didn't quite help there, end quote. And finally today, as I always say, this is not tech, but another book that I plan to read in the future is the oral history biography of Anthony Bourdain. From Eater, here's a review of that book, quote, The paradox that emerges so clearly from the book is that Bordane, the most human and humane of storytellers, who taught everyone a humbler, more receptive way of being in the world, was simultaneously so tormented and so revered.

After reading Williver's 400-page plus Roshamon, one comes away without answers. But there are insights, a sense of the relentless tide of events, relationships, ideas, and sensations, a human helplessness almost, in the face of the overwhelming forces that anyone may have to endure. Family pressures, feelings of inadequacy, long years of professional and personal disappointment. The images layer up and resolve into what you might have guessed all along, just a man, vulnerable and alone, straining under the terrible, of a myth, end quote. That's all for today and for this week. Though, reminder that we're recording a Twitter space tomorrow Saturday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, so a time that maybe will give a chance for folks to participate who have never been able to do so before, for time zone reasons. And also, real quick, I have an ask for you all. This is for the Ride Home Fund. Please send me any projects or startups you all are working on if you're working on the Solana blockchain. You've been doing a great job of sending me all sorts of projects, and I've actually invested in some of them that you've sent my way. More on that soon.

But specifically, if you are or you know someone who is working on a project or startup being built on top of the Solana blockchain, please send it my way. I'm very interested in Solana projects at the moment. So if you could use some seed money for your Solana project, get in touch at Brian at Ridehomefund.com. But also remember, even if you're not the founder, yourself or working on a project at a company yourself. If you bring me a deal and make a meaningful introduction to those doing the project, I'm willing to share the carry with you. And you don't even have to be an investor in the fund to get that. So yeah, any Solana ideas. Get in touch. Brian at ridehomefund.com. Talk to you on Monday.