Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 02/14 – The Big Game Is Big For Crypto

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Monday, February 14th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Turns out Super Bowl ads really do move the needle. Another day, another crypto bug. This one could have let you create unlimited ether from thin air. See what I did there. Could we see a digital euro by the end of next year? A couple of super interesting raises and the curious case of the missing Nvidia graphics card. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, the cards got shuffled and we ended up getting dealt a bunch of crypto stories today. So, buckle in. Do you ever wonder if ads in the Super Bowl actually work? You might have noticed there were a ton of crypto ads last night during the big game, and, well, it seems they were effective.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Coinbase, FTX, E. Toro, and other apps are surging in popularity this morning. Coinbase, for example, rose from 186th to second in the U.S. App Store after its QR code ad, quoting the block. FTX owned Blockfolio and E Toro, the investment app, also shot up the rankings after running ads during the big game. Coinbase's minute-long ad featured a QR code bouncing across the screen and invited viewers to participate in a large giveaway, with over $100 million and incentives for the crypto community expected this year. Coinbase's website briefly experienced issues soon after the ad aired. FtX's ad featured comedian Larry David. The two-minute video shows David rejecting some of history's greatest inventions from the wheel to a fork to a toilet. He is ultimately introduced to the FTX app and says, I don't think so, and I'm never wrong about this stuff, end quote. So if Coinbase's website was even

Starting point is 00:02:15 briefly down after the QR code ad, I guess it was effective. I didn't see the ad, or at least that one, I saw the Larry David one, but it was just the code bouncing around the screen for 30 seconds, at least that's what I've been told, and it cost them $14 million for that. day, another this, but remember, it's not just stories of hacks, it's also stories of simple bugs, because crypto is code, remember? Ethereum Level 2 scaling project optimism had to fix a bug that left it open to unlimited ETH token creations in its accounts. That's right, I've heard of printing money, but quoting Coin Telegraph, the bug, which could have enabled hackers to create as much ether in an optimism account balance as they wished, was first discovered by White Hat

Starting point is 00:03:10 Hacker and iOS jailbreak software SIDIA developer Jay Freeman. In a deep dive blog post, Freeman explained that the bug, quote, would allow an attacker to replicate money on any chain using their OVM 2.0 fork of Go-Etherium, end quote. For his efforts, Freeman was awarded one of the largest bug bount to date, netting him a total reward amount of $2 million and $42. according to the optimism team, quote, the bug made it possible to create ETH on optimism by repeatedly triggering the self-destruct op code on a contract that held an ETH balance, end quote. In a blog post, the optimism team noted that its chain history showed that the bug had not been exploited

Starting point is 00:03:51 except for an accidental activation by a staffer at Ethereum Data startup Ether scan, but, quote, no usable excess was generated, end quote. A fix for the issue was tested and deployed to Optimism's Covan and Mainnet, networks, including all infrastructure providers within hours of confirmation, the team said, thanking Infura, QuickNode, and Alchemy for their fast response times. Optimism is a layer two scaling solution for the Ethereum network employing optimistic roll-ups that aggregate transactions outside of the Ethereum blockchain. This provides the benefits of reducing slippage, decreasing transaction costs, and vastly

Starting point is 00:04:26 improving transaction speeds. However, as this bug has made clear, while Layer 2 protocols offer improvements in efficiency, security during ongoing development remains a common point of concern. While this bounty is one of the largest to have been paid out so far, Maker Dow has just announced that it will be offering a maximum bounty of $10 million to anyone who can point out critical security threats in its smart contracts. This is the largest series of bug bounties to ever have been hosted on bug bounty platform immunify, end quote. In the UK, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Tax Authority has seized three NFTs in a 1.4 million-pound fraud case involving 250 alleged fake companies,

Starting point is 00:05:15 the first UK law enforcement agency to ever seize an NFT. Also perhaps the first seizure of NFTs by law enforcement anywhere? Quoting from the BBC. HMRC said the suspects in its fraud case were alleged to have used sophisticated methods to try to hide their identities, including false and stolen identities, false addresses, prepaid unregistered mobile phones, virtual private networks, false invoices, and pretending to engage in legitimate business activities. Nick Sharp, deputy director of economic crime, said the first seizure of an NFT, quote, serves as a warning to anyone who thinks they can use crypto assets to hide money from HMRC. We constantly adapt to new technology to ensure we keep pace with how criminals and evaders

Starting point is 00:05:58 look to conceal their assets, end quote. HMRC said it had secured a court order to detainly seize crypto assets worth about 5,000 pounds, and three digital artwork NFTs, which have not been valued, while its investigation continues, end quote. And the European Commission says it is planning to propose a bill for a digital euro in early 2023. The ECB expects to start working on a prototype of this digital euro by the end of that year, quoting Politico. The bill will serve as the legal foundation for the European Central Bank's ongoing technical work on the virtual version of a Euro banknote or coin. Central banks across the world are developing virtual money to ensure they're not undermined by the growing popularity of

Starting point is 00:06:49 cryptocurrencies, which has inspired big tech to eye ways to enter the payments market. One of the biggest jolts was when Facebook owned by Meta announced a few years ago that it would launch a virtual currency with 25 other companies. Although political and regulatory pushback on both sides of the Atlantic killed that project, that broader push has spooked policymakers into action. If we don't satisfy this demand, then others will do it. ECB executive board member Fabio Panetta told MEPs in mid-November. As co-legislators, you will play a key role in any changes to the EU legislative framework that may be necessary to introduce a digital euro, end quote. The ECB is currently carrying out in-house experiments with the digital euro and expects to

Starting point is 00:07:29 start working on a prototype at the end of 2023. Eurozone governors will then decide whether minting a digital euro is worth the trouble. If they do, the virtual currency could be ready by 2025 at the earliest. That time frame works fine for the EU's legislative process. The bill will have to go through negotiations within EU capitals and parliament before it can become law. A public consultation is set to emerge from the EU's executive arm next month. The consultation won't replicate the ECB's call for comment from 2020, which found payment privacy was the top concern among respondents. The Commission's questionnaire will instead focus on how the digital euro could be used, such as handling everyday payments. EU finance chief Mariet McGuinness announced the Commission's legislative plans

Starting point is 00:08:13 Wednesday morning at a fintech conference by a four consulting soon after Politico had confirmed the news. Our goal is to table legislation in early 2023, the Irish woman said. A targeted legislative consultation is coming in the coming weeks, end quote. An impact assessment will follow to gauge what safeguards are needed to prevent the initiative from destabilizing the financial system. Germany and France last year urged the ECB to speed up the process amid fears that the Eurozone could get left behind. The People's Bank of China began its journey toward a digital yuan in 2014. India's finance ministry, meanwhile, has pledged to have a virtual version of the rupee later this year, end quote. Interesting raise that I wanted to share because robotics is having a

Starting point is 00:09:01 moment, at least when it comes to VC interest. is not as hot as all things Web 3, of course, but among non-Web3 stuff, it's right up there in terms of the number of raises that have been reported recently and even the number of pitches that I'm even seeing. I missed out on this one, sadly, but New York City-based Viam Robotics, which is still in stealth mode, has raised a $30 million Series A led by Tiger Global with participation from Union Square Ventures and Battery Ventures for its standardized building blocks approach to robotics. What's that? quoting the robot report. The company is still in stealth mode, although it has already hired more than 36 employees, according to its LinkedIn profile. Here's what we do know about the company.

Starting point is 00:09:46 It was founded in 2020 by MongoDB co-founder and longtime CTO Elliot Horowitz. The company is based in New York City. Viam is a hardware and language agnostic platform that allows developers to create, configure, and control any robot from anywhere. The company is building a novel robotics platform that relies on standardized building blocks rather than custom code to create, configure, and control robots intuitively and quickly. They expect to develop a robotic solution that works across industries to solve complicated automation problems with software. Since our seed round, we've brought on extraordinary talent, built, tested, and launched our platform and engaged with external parties energized by the prospect of building robots easily and intuitively, said Horowitz.

Starting point is 00:10:27 Albert Wenger, partner Union Square Ventures commented, quote, holds a profound promise to make our lives better. Viam will make it dramatically easier to bring new and more powerful robots to market. This is a massive opportunity and I'm thrilled to be working with Elliot again, end quote. You won't find much information yet on the Viam website other than job opportunities. They are actively hiring robotics and software engineers. One of the best places to follow the company is on their Instagram feed, and quote. Also interesting, Indian ad tech company in Moby's Glance, a lock screen content app has raised $200 million from Geo Platforms. A source says at a $1.7 to $1.8 billion post-money valuation.

Starting point is 00:11:16 I thought this was interesting because today I learned there are lock screen content apps that are doing big business. Google has also had a previous investment in Glance, quoting TechCrunch. Geo Platforms is investing $200 million in Glance, which serves media content, news, and casual games on Android handsets lock screen. The two said Monday, the latest in a series of bets from Mukesh Ambani's Empire. As it looks to expand, it's offering to over 420 million telecom subscribers it reaches in the South Asian market. Founded in 2019, Glant's ships pre-installed on several popular smartphone models and has a mass presence on 400 million users, it says. A sizable portion of the user base disables Glance within the first week of them buying the

Starting point is 00:11:59 smartphones, and in many cases, retail store owners remove Glantz themselves, according to a senior Glantz executive with direct knowledge of the matter. Glantz maintains tie-ups with nearly every top Android smartphone vendor in Asia, including Zhaomi and Samsung, the two largest smartphone vendors in India. The firm will bring its technology to the GeoFone Next handsets. As part of the deal, the two firms said, geo and Google collaborated to build the GeoFone Next, which runs a heavily optimized Android operating system and sells for about $87.

Starting point is 00:12:29 Glance will deploy the fresh capital to expand in several key international markets outside of Asia, Geo said. Some of these markets include the USA, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. It also plans to broaden its catalog of live content and commerce ecosystem, both of which it wishes to bring to users' lock screen, the firm said. Mr. Mukeshambani has been a source of immense inspiration for me since my early days, and it is an honor to have Geo becoming a strategic partner in our journey, said Navine Tawari, founder and chief executive of InMobi Group, in a statement, end quote. Finally today, remember when Samsung said it was going to announce a chip and then it ghosted on that announcement. The chip was

Starting point is 00:13:13 later unveiled without much explanation for the delay. This is not that exactly, but Nvidia's RTX 3090TI is still missing, and the company refuses to say what's going on, quoting the verge. InVIDIA announced its RTX 3090 TI with faster memory and better performance at the Consumer Electronics show in early January. After originally promising more information by the end of January, InVIDIA has since remained silent about pricing or a release date for the RTX 3090TI, possibly T-Ti. Now the company is refusing to say what's going on. We don't currently have more information to share on the RTX 3090 TI, but we will be in touch when we do. NVIDIA spokesperson Jen Anderson recently told The Verge.

Starting point is 00:13:58 Just days after NVIDIA's original announcement of the RTX 3090 TI, Tweektown and video cards reported that NVIDIA had halted the production of the flagship GBRG. The company had reportedly been planning to release the RTX 3090 TI on January 27th, but BIOS and hardware issues have apparently led to delays. January passed without any further details from Nvidia, leading to many wondering if the company had forgotten to launch its new flagship GPU. It's not clear when we'll hear more beyond some basic specs. Nvidia previously revealed that the card looks almost identical to the RTX 3090, but will include 24 gigabytes of GDR680. running at 21GBPS. That's the same amount of V-RAM as the RTX 3090, but with a nearly 7.7% faster memory clock. The RTX 30-30TI will also include 40 taraflops of GPU performance around 11% faster than

Starting point is 00:14:52 the RTX 3090. It looks like we'll have to wait a little longer to see exactly how well this card performs against the RTX 3090 and AMD's Radion RX 6900 XT. We still don't have a price for the RTX 3090, but it's likely to debut close to $2,000, considering the RTX 3090 retailed at $1,499, end quote. I will admit that last night's game was the first full NFL game I've watched probably since the kids were born, so maybe this is an obvious thing that everybody knows but me, but are the announcers on NFL games not supposed to talk about the officiating, or were they holding off because it was the Super Bowl?

Starting point is 00:15:43 because who was it, Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels, I think. There was that obvious face mask that wasn't called, and then a series of bizarre calls towards the end of the game, and each time something funny like that would happen, they would just sort of be like, gee whiz, and then just move on without really talking about it. Believe me, if that was a Premier League game and there was an obvious handball or studs-in tackle that wasn't called,

Starting point is 00:16:07 and it led to a goal, the commentators on the game in soccer would never stop talking about it. So was there a good reason they were holding off last night, or was it a cowardly reason? Anyway, sorry, Bengals fans. Maybe seems like a team that could be strong for the next few years, though. So get them next time. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 02/14 – The Big Game Is Big For Crypto

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