Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 02/08 – Tesla Buys Bitcoin While Elon Sends Dogecoin To The Moon!

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

The singularity is near, cause all our meme stories are colliding. Tesla has bought a ton of Bitcoin while Elon is tweet-pumping Dogecoin. Clubhouse is blocked in China. Cold water on the Apple Car story from Hyundai itself. TikTok is skipping directly to an ecommerce buildout. And Xiaomi’s big new global flagship phone. Sponsors: Kiwico.com promocode: ride BuyRaycon.com/tech Links: Tesla buys $1.5 billion in bitcoin, plans to accept it as payment (CNBC) Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period (TechCrunch) Apple Car Talks Aren’t Happening, Say Automakers Hyundai, Kia (Bloomberg) Twitter Considers Subscription Fee for Tweetdeck, Unique Content (Bloomberg) TikTok takes on Facebook with US ecommerce push (FT) Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2020 Retrospective (Platformonomics) Xiaomi’s global Mi 11 has a Snapdragon 888 for €749 (The Verge) RideHome+ feed at: tech.supercast.tech 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 ride home for Monday, February 8th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. The singularity must be near because all of our meme stories are colliding. Tesla has bought a ton of Bitcoin while Elon is tweet pumping doge coin. Clubhouse is blocked in China. Coldwater gets

thrown on our Apple car story by Hyundai itself. TikTok is skipping directly to an e-commerce buildout and Xiaomi's new global flagship phone. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I guess in our post-game stop, Wall Street Betts world, I guess I should never be surprised to wake up to crazy news like the news that Tesla has bought one and a half billion dollars worth of Bitcoin and says it will start accepting Bitcoin as a payment for its products in the future, quoting CNBC. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it bought the Bitcoin for, quote, more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash, end quote. Tesla also said it will start accepting payments in Bitcoin in exchange for its products,

quote, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, end quote. That would make Tesla the first major automaker to accept cryptocurrency as payment. The one and a half billion dollars worth of Bitcoin will give Tesla liquidity in the cryptocurrency once it starts accepting it for payments. Tesla's move into Bitcoin represents an investment of a significant percentage of its cash in the investment. The company had more than $19 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand at the end of 2020, according to its most recent filing. But the moves also raised immediate questions around CEO Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter in recent weeks, where he has been credited for increasingly prices of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin

by posting positive messages that have encouraged more people to buy the digital currencies. Two weeks ago, the billionaire Tesla owner added the hashtag, hashtag Bitcoin to his Twitter bio, and a move that helped to briefly push up the price of the cryptocurrency by as much as 20%. Two days later, he said on the social media chat site Clubhouse, quote, I do at this point think Bitcoin is a good thing and I am a supporter of Bitcoin, end quote. Bitcoin prices search to new highs Monday, following Tesla's announcement, reaching a price of at least $44,200. Tesla shares, were up more than 2% Monday morning. Tesla warn investors of the volatility of Bitcoin's price in its SEC filing, end quote. Yeah, and about that Dogecoin stuff, in case you're not aware of Doge,

it was sort of a joke cryptocurrency, that would be one way to put it, but also, maybe it's better to think of Dogecoin as the ultimate meme currency, especially in this age of non-fungible tokens and art now and collectibles on the blockchain. So this is what I mean by nothing. surprising me anymore in the post-game stop world. Dogecoin is maybe the ultimate meme play in a way. Elon Musk is a meme engine in and of himself. So his tweets pushing Dogecoin up from half a cent at the beginning of the year to around eight cents this morning, even though Doge is sort of not an active project or even a viable one at this point. Yeah, to the moon for sure. As an aside on Dogecoin, I was involved in the filming of a cryptocurrency documentary six or seven years ago

that never got sold anywhere as far as I know, so I can't point you to any link to the video. I would if I could. Anyway, I was involved in the filming that happened here in New York City because they were covering this big crypto event in downtown Manhattan that about 200 people showed up for. It was at the height of Dogecoin mania. People brought actual Shiba Inu dogs to the event. and at the end of it, they put a Doge mask on the Bull statue that's right behind Wall Street. Anyway, this morning I reached out to some of the folks that I met back then, and some of them

never sold the Doge coin that they mined all those years ago. They held it all this time and are, you can expect, very happy right now. Although some of them also sold Doge when it was suddenly popping towards a penny about two weeks ago. It had been stuck at like a quarter of a penny for like basically forever. previous all-time high for Dogecoin was about a penny and a quarter. That was maybe three or four years ago. So I don't know, man, when you've got Elon Musk on your side to the moon for sure, I guess. And the countdown is now over, I guess, because Clubhouse is now officially blocked in China, just as everyone expected it would be, quoting TechCrunch.

Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening. as the country prepared to start the week-long lunar New Year holiday. Inside WeChat groups, Clubhouse users rush to report the situation and help each other with ways to get back onto the Red Hot Live Audio app. Audio drop-in startup Clubhouse was rapidly gaining steam in China, attracting a bevy of users early on to conversations on a wide range of topics. The app seemed likely to meet the fate of other U.S.-based apps and services, however, namely a ban, and as of Monday, that indeed was what Clubhouse

faces as confirmed by TechCrunch. Users in China can no longer access the Clubhouse app, though the app's website remains unblocked. The app is unlikely to return given how much the app's model would have to change to comply with Chinese internet regulations. As Clubhouse was not listed on the Chinese app store, it's unclear how many people from mainland China were on the platform. A room discussing the 1989 pro-democracy Tianan protest, a taboo topic in China, reached the maximum number of participants at 5,000 this afternoon prior to the ban. Another room focused on the same topic attracted over 2,000 users. Clubhouse's API has been blocked on Monday around 7 p.m. Beijing time.

Censorship Monitoring Organization greatfire.org told TechCrunch, end quote. File this one under throwing cold water on the fire that we had been watching regarding Hyundai and the Apple Car. Hyundai and its affiliate Kia now say they are not in talks with Apple to develop an autonomous vehicle, sending their shares down 8.4% and 14% respectively, quoting Bloomberg. Apple paused discussions with Hyundai and Kia weeks ago about building an electric vehicle, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg late last week. The Cupertino-California-based company has discussed similar plans with other auto manufacturers,

the people added, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. The South Korean carmakers also said in regulatory filings Monday, they were in talks with multiple companies about autonomous EVs, but that no decision has been made. Hyundai's statement is almost identical to one it issued a month ago after the company muddled its message around the highly anticipated Apple vehicle, first confirming local Korean media reports that it was in discussions with the tech behemoth, then revising its statement twice in a matter of hours. Hyundai finally said it had received requests for potential cooperation from a number of companies, end quote. So, did Apple cut off talks with Hyundai because they didn't like the leaks of the talks getting out?

Or were there no talks to begin with? And maybe we got ahead of ourselves and we should go back to being skeptical of an Apple car even happening. It's all unclear, honestly, as Shura Ovita tweeted, quote, I know this isn't Apple's MO, but what if it just, said out loud that it's working on a car and it is evaluating possible manufacturing partners. Would that be so bad, end quote? On the whole front of Twitter suddenly kicking into gear because things like Clubhouse and Substack have the potential to eat their lunch in spaces where they should probably be eating everyone else's lunch, sources are telling Bloomberg that Twitter is building subscription products to ease its dependence on advertising, including the possibility of tipping people,

for exclusive content and maybe even charging for tweet deck, which, as always with Twitter, you know, any other company would have been looking into things like diversification into subscriptions, I don't know, five years ago, quote, to explore potential options outside ad sales, a number of Twitter teams are researching subscription offerings, including one using the code name Rogue One, according to people familiar with the effort. At least one idea being considered is related to tipping or the ability for users to pay the people they follow for exclusive content, the people said, who asked not to be named because the discussions are internal. Other possible ways to generate recurring revenue include charging for the use of services

like TweetDeck or Advanced User Features like UndoSend or Profile Customization Options. Subscriptions have always offered a tantalizing alternative to advertising, but social networks have traditionally stayed free as a way to encourage user growth and engagement, which is then subsidized with paid marketing posts. Still, Twitter chief financial officer Ned Siegel said on a call with investors last year that a subscription option of some kind would offer sales durability and recurring revenue is more consistent than advertising spending. Siegel cautioned in July that Twitter was not only, quote, very, very early in exploring a subscription service,

but also planned to be picky about how it goes forward. Quote, we have a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter, he said. The San Francisco-based company may update investors on its thinking when it reports earnings on Tuesday. It has mentioned the idea of subscriptions on the past two quarterly calls, but the company has historically been slow in making product decisions, end quote. I want to point out that it was Bloomberg saying that last bit, so it's not just me that has a low opinion of Twitter's ability to iterate product. Also notice that little item about an undue-send feature. You know what feature I guarantee you people would pay for? An edit tweet feature.

Of course, we're probably never getting that one at this point. And continuing on the theme of monetizing social networks, you'd have to know this was coming, but sources are telling the financial times that TikTok has briefed advertisers on new e-commerce tools that it plans to launch later this year, including letting popular users add links and earn commissions. quote, it's old school affiliate marketing, one senior advertising executive said, adding that video makers would be able to link to any products they liked, even if they were not formally sponsored by the brand. TikTok, which is owned by China's bite dance, is also aiming to roll out the ability for brands to showcase catalogs of their products on the platform, the people said.

The app is also said to be rolling out live streamed shopping, a mobile phone version of television shopping channels where users can buy goods with a few taps after seeing them showcased by TikTok stars. This follows testing of the live shopping feature with Walmart announced late last year. Tick-Tock declined to comment, quote, It feels like TikTok is about to skip introducing a desktop experience and go straight into commerce, Jack Smith, creative technology officer at WPP's Mindshare said. Culturally, TikTok is well placed for live-streamed commerce to capture the dissolving distinction between content and commerce because it doesn't feel as polished as other platforms,

he added. The tools will bring TikTok, which has already announced a partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify, further into competition with Facebook, end quote. In the interest of keeping score on what the big tech oligarchs are up to, who's up and who's down, and the like, I like to look for these sorts of metrics. Platformonomics is out with its year. look at capital expenditure at the big tech companies. And the TLDR this year is Amazon's CapEx grew 69% year over year. Microsofts grew 14% and Google's actually declined 5% year over year, which again plays into my theory of belt tightening at Google, though again, I'll acknowledge their earnings were blowout just last week. But still, analysis like this

is a proxy way of looking at who still has the ammunition to continue to invest in expanding their various business lines, quote. The three hypercloud companies, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft collectively spent almost $97 billion on CAPEX in 2020, up 32% from 2019's $73.5 billion. Amazon and Microsoft's spending again hit new highs, bonkers new highs in Amazon's case, while Google's spending declined for the second year in a row. Amazon spent more on CAP-X than any company, not just cloud companies, in 2020. In 2020, Amazon's CAP-X was up a mere 69% to just shy of an absolutely bonkers $54 billion.

Google's spend declined 5% to $22.3 billion, and Microsoft's increased 14% to $20.6 billion. Amazon, company slogan, a penny of free cash flow is a terrible thing to waste on abstract accounting constructs like profits, is accelerating its spending and may soon achieve orbital escape velocity on the back of its CAPEX trajectory, rendering Jeff Bezos' personal space program unnecessary. It is beyond bonkers that a company that sells books, in quotes, spends more on CAPEX than any other company, and the idea that our other two software companies have a CAPEX spend in the same league or beyond the biggest automakers, energy companies, semiconductor manufacturers and telcos in the world is likewise bonkers, end quote.

Finally today, whenever I'm tempted not to cover Chinese smartphone launches, I remember that fully 37% of you listening to me right now are listening outside of the United States. So a lot of you might actually be able to buy this. Xiaomi has unveiled the global version of its Me 11 flagship smartphone, which sports a Snapdragon 888, a 6.8 inch 1440 P. OLED 120 hertz display and up to 256 gigabytes of storage, all starting at 749 euros, quoting the verge. The screen appears to be the same panel, or very similar, to what is found in the Galaxy S-21 Ultra. It's a slightly curved 6.8 inch 1440 P.Oled with a refresh rate of 120 hertz and peak brightness of 1500 nits, matching Samsung

phone spec for phone spec. I don't have the S-21 Ultra to compare side by side, but I can tell you that the M-11's screen is extremely good. The M-E-11 has a 108-mepixel primary camera backed by a 13-mixel ultra-wide and a 5-macro camera. The selfie camera is 20 megapixel and tucked inside a small hole-punch cutout at the top left of the screen. The battery is 4,600 mill-amp hours and can be charged up to 55 watts with a cable and up to 50 watts wirelessly. The Me 11 also features reverse wireless charging at up to 10 watts. It runs the MiUI 12 based on Android 11. Jaume hasn't provided a full list of regions or launch dates just yet, but says the me 111 will be priced at 749 euros or around $900 for the 8 gigabyte 128 gigabyte model, end quote.

So since as an American, I think I'm required by law to at least mention last night's big game, note that Reddit had a five-second commercial that you could only read if you got a chance to pause your TV. If you did so, you saw a faux Reddit post that said the following, quote, Wow, this actually worked. If you're reading this, it means our bets paid off. One thing we learned from our communities last week is that underdogs can accomplish just about anything when we come together around a common idea. Who knows? Maybe you'll be the reason finance textbooks have to add a chapter on tendies in the future. Powerful things happen when people

rally around something they really care about, and there's a place for that. It's called Reddit, end quote. Reddit said it spent its entire marketing budget on this ad, which is reminiscent of when companies spent their entire Series A's on Super Bowl ads back during the dot-com bubble. And also, since I believe I am contractually obligated to mention that Tom Brady is still playing and still winning Super Bowls 20 years later, this tweet from John Ehrlichman on Twitter. Some businesses that advertised during Tom Brady's first Super Bowl included AOL, Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Comp USA, Sears, Hot Jobs, Yahoo, Voice Stream Wireless, and Gateway, computers, end quote.