Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 06/08 – Crypto’s Voldemort Goes Crypto

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

The crypto world’s greatest supervillain looks like he’s joining the crypto bandwagon. Salesforce… (Salesforce?!) has jumped on the NFT bandwagon. Could Netflix buy Roku? How many layoffs has Silicon Valley seen thusfar? And a look at Apple’s big push into the passwordless future. Sponsors: HubSpot.com AthleticGreens.com/ride Links: Citadel Securities Is Building a Crypto Trading Marketplace With Virtu Financial: Sources (CoinDesk) Salesforce takes crypto plunge with new NFT cloud (TechCrunch) US: Chinese govt hackers breached telcos to snoop on network traffic (BleepingComputer) Tech Layoffs In 2022: The U.S. Companies That Have Cut Jobs (CrunchBase News) Inside Roku, talk is heating up about an acquisition by Netflix (Insider) Apple Just Killed the Password—for Real This Time (Wired) Classified: [e-mail] 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 TechMemebrite home for Wednesday, June 8th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. The Crypto World's greatest supervillain.

Looks like he's joining the crypto bandwagon. Salesforce. Salesforce has jumped on the NFT bandwagon. Could Netflix buy Roku? How many layoffs has Silicon Valley seen thus far? And a look at Apple's big push into the passwordless future. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Sources are telling CoinDesk that Citadel Securities is,

is building a cryptocurrency trading ecosystem in partnership with Virtue, Sequoia, Paradigm, and others. Why is this notable? Well, because Citadel is owned by the guy who is the comic book-style nemesis villain of both crypto folks and meme stock folks. Quote, U.S. electronic trading giant Citadel Securities is building a cryptocurrency trading ecosystem with the help of high-frequency trading and market-making firm Virtue Financial, as well as venture capital firm's Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, according to a source familiar with the plans. Citadel Securities is the sister company to hedge fund giant Citadel. The firms in Citadel's securities initial consortium will be joined by additional wealth managers, market makers, and other industry leaders that are

expected to join the marketplace ahead of launch. The source added. This marketplace is intended to create more efficient access to deep pools of liquidity for digital assets. So a group of industry leaders are working closely together to facilitate the safe, clean, compliant, and secure trading of digital assets, the source told Coindesk. The current crypto market structure is deficient and inhibits wider adoption from a lot of investors, which is what Citadel Securities's trading consortium is addressing, the source said. It's more of a crypto trading ecosystem or marketplace than an exchange. It's going to take on the exchanges by building a better mouse trap, and quote. A second person told CoinDesk that Citadel Securities had been, quote, quietly hiring

executives to build out a crypto trading stack. A third source said that the firm is in discussions about a, quote, huge amount of systemic internalizing involving Citadel's sister companies, end quote. Citadel Securities, of course, is helmed by crypto skeptic Ken Griffin, who scuttled Constitution Dow's efforts to buy an original copy of America's founding document, though he had earlier said crypto was a jihadist call against the U.S. dollar, his firm has since announced plans to make markets for various cryptocurrencies. Virtue is known to be involved in marketmaking for crypto futures and exchange-traded funds in Canada. The firm was also said to be carrying out crypto market making on Coinbase and Gemini, the block reported. In January of this year, Sequoia and CryptoVC firm

Paradigm invested $1.15 billion in Citadel, end quote. Here's the thing, and if I'm wrong about this, smarter folks than me are welcome to correct me. I know its stock price is down a ton, but one thing that got everybody's attention when Coinbase went public was the gobs of easy money it was making at the time. Turns out, running an exchange or an exchange-like thing is a really good business. It's just that running in exchange for traditional stuff like stocks or commodities or whatever is such a regulatory heavy lift that it's a headache. Otherwise, more people would do it. but in the crypto world, voila. No regulatory overhang yet.

So, why not run a crypto exchange and make that easy money, assuming people still want to trade crypto? Makes sense to everyone from PayPal to banks to now, even Ken Griffin. Maybe a similar logic chain explains this move. Salesforce this morning announced NFT Cloud, a service for buying and selling NFTs available in a closed preview, because, you know, when I think of Salesforce, I obviously think of NFTs as a natural business overlap, right? Quoting TechCrunch. Who knows whether it's FOMO or actual customer demand for such a thing,

but Salesforce announced today that it's launching a pilot of NFT cloud, a new platform for buying and selling those crypto assets. It's a turn to the future, according to the company, one it insists comes from customer curiosity. quote, Salesforce is seeing interest from CMOs and CDOs who are asking for help entering Web3, and we are enthusiastic about bringing new innovations, products, and offerings to our customers in a way that allows them to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their customers. Adam Kaplan, SVP of emerging technology at Salesforce told TechCrunch, the company's goal with this product is to make NFT selling more accessible. Quote, NFT cloud is all about helping our customers mint, manage, and sell NFTs,

and of course it's all no code. So it's super easy on our platform, abstracting all the complicated technology in this new Web3 world, he said. He says he's seeing interests across a variety of verticals including retail, media, fashion, and consumer goods, among others. It's really about driving engagement and communities, and we're seeing super passionate communities in the NFT space, Kaplan explained, end quote. You know, Web3's biggest weapon, biggest advantage is FOMO, but also could some of this stuff, some of the moves like this, be aimed at simply keeping talent from jumping ship to Web 3 projects? From the Groundhog Day file, in a joint cybersecurity advisory, the NSA, CISA, and the FBI revealed that China-backed hackers have exploited publicly known vulnerabilities to snoop on network traffic, quoting bleeping computer. Chinese hacking groups have exploited publicly known vulnerabilities to breach anything from

unpatched small office slash home office or S-O-H-O-Routers to medium and even large enterprise networks. Once compromised, the threat actors use the devices as part of their own attack infrastructure as command and control servers and proxy systems they could use to breach more networks. Upon gaining an initial foothold into telecommunications organization or network service provider, PRC, state-sponsored cyber actors, have identified critical users. and infrastructure, including systems critical to maintaining the security of authentication, authorization, and accounting, the advisory explains. The attackers then stole credentials to

access underlying SQL databases and use SQL commands to dump user and admin credentials from critical remote authentication dial-in user service or radius servers. Armed with valid accounts and credentials from the compromised radius server and the router configurations, the cyber actors returned to the network and use their access and knowledge to successfully authenticate and execute router commands to surreptitiously route, capture, and infiltrate traffic out of the network to actor-controlled infrastructure. The federal agencies added, by exploiting these vulnerabilities, the Chinese-sponsored threat actors have established broad infrastructure networks that help them further compromise an even wider range of public

and private sector targets. The NSA, CISA, and FBI also urge U.S. and allied governments, critical infrastructure and private industry organizations to apply a list of mitigation measures that would help decrease the risk of similar attacks breaching their networks. The federal agencies advise organizations to apply security patches as soon as possible, disable unnecessary ports and protocols to shrink their attack surface, and replace end-of-life network infrastructure that no longer receives security patches, end quote. Shared Micromobility Company, Reed, Scooter Company, Bird has confirmed plans to lay off 23% of its staff

or about 138 out of 600 workers spanning across the entire. organization and regions. So more layoffs, and I thought I'd give you some hard data on the total layoffs that we've seen thus far in this tech industry downturned, since CrunchBase News is tracking this stuff, quoting them. As of the beginning of June, more than 17,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022, according to a CrunchBase News tally. We've included both startups and publicly traded companies that are based in the U.S. We've also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as Klarna, even when it's unclear how much of the U.S. workforce has been affected by layoffs.

We source the layoffs from media reports, social media posts, and layoffs. F.I, a crowdsource database of tech layoffs, end quote. Click through on the link in the show notes to see their methodology and their data. Now, if I remember my research for my book correctly, during the dot-com bubble, After it burst, 250,000 tech jobs were wiped out. But that was also because basically, 90% of tech startups also went away. If startups were to see 90% attrition these days, we'd be talking job losses well into the millions. So, you know, apples, oranges. I sort of debated whether or not to go with this one, because I'm not sure how strong the rumor smoke is here, as you'll hear when they

describe the sourcing they're using. But let's just say, I'm putting this on your radar so I can look good if it turns out to happen. And also, this sort of makes obvious sense to me. Insider is reporting that inside Roku, talk is heating up about a possible acquisition by Netflix. Quote, employees at Roku have been discussing the possibility of a Netflix acquisition in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The chatter comes as Roku's stock has dropped about 80% since late July on weaker demand for video streaming and lower set-top box sales. Roku competes with Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung in the market for streaming devices, and some of those industry titans are battling with the smaller company for lucrative video ad

dollars. The collapse in Roku's stock made it hard to compete with its larger tech rivals on pay in a tight labor market. The result has been a staggering increase in equity grants to employees leaving Roku well underwater on stock-based compensation. Roku has been seen as an acquisition target before, including last year when, according to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, considered purchasing the company. In January, the departure of a top Roku executive stoked questions about the company's future. In recent weeks, the possibility of a Netflix acquisition has become the focus of internal chatter at Roku. That's when Roku abruptly closed the trading window for all employees, prohibiting them from selling any of their vested stock at a top.

when they should normally be able to do so, according to two people familiar with the matter. There may be other reasons for such a trading halt, though. Companies typically closed trading windows for employees before releasing information that will affect their share price to avoid insider trading. Some of the people familiar with the matter, along with industry bankers and other experts, told Insider the timing would be advantageous for both parties if they were looking to strike a deal. Roku's valuation had plunged below $13 billion as of the close of trading on Tuesday, making an acquisition easier to swallow than a year ago when Comcast was reportedly eyeing a deal. Netflix is looking to introduce advertising to its service for the first time

as it faces increased competition and subscriber losses. Roku has built a robust video advertising platform that generated $647 million in first quarter revenue. That's about seven times the sales brought in by Roku's hardware business, which makes video streaming boxes and related devices. It makes sense with where Netflix wants to go. A technology investment banker says, and it makes sense in this current environment. Everyone is looking around thinking, I was worth twice as much last year, what happened, end quote.

One more thing to note, maybe it would be a fit culturally as well, because remember, Roku began life as an internal Netflix skunk works project. Finally today, one more crumb from WWDC. I wanted to dive into a bit. Wired, takes a look at Apple's plan to debut pass keys, passwordless login for apps and websites in iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura using touch ID or face ID for authentication.

Because if anyone is going to mainstream this stuff, it's going to be Apple with the huge iPhone install base. Quote, for years we've been promised a more secure password-free future, but it seems like 2022 will actually be the year that millions of people start to move away from passwords. At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference yesterday, the company announced it will launch passwordless login, cross-max iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs around September of this year. Instead of using passwords, you will be able to log in to websites and apps using pass keys with iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura. It's the first major real-world shift to password elimination. So how does it work? Pass keys replace your tired old passwords by creating new digital keys using touch ID or face ID. Apple's vice president of internet technologies Darren Adler explained at W.

WDC. When you are creating an online account with a website, you can use a pass key instead of a password. To create a pass key, just use touch ID or face ID to authenticate and you're done, Adler said. When you go to log in to that website again, pass keys allow you to prove you are who you say you are by using your biometrics rather than typing in a passphrase or having your password manager enter it for you. When signing into a website on a Mac, a prompt will appear on your iPhone or iPad to verify your identity. Apple says its pass keys will sink across all your devices using iCloud's keychain, and the pass keys are stored on your devices rather than on servers. The use of iCloud keychain should also solve the problem of losing

or breaking your linked devices. Under the hood, Apple's pass keys are based on the web authentication API, web often, and are end-to-end encrypted so nobody can read them, including Apple. The system for creating pass keys uses public-private key authentication to prove you are who you say you are. A passwordless system would be a significant step forward for most people's online security, as well as eliminating guessable passwords. Removing passwords reduces the likelihood of successful fishing attacks. And passwords can't be stolen in data breaches if they don't exist in the first place. Some apps and websites already allow people to log in using their fingerprints or using face recognition, but these usually require you to first create an account with a password.

Apple's pass keys aren't entirely new. the company first detailed them at 2021's WWDC and started testing them shortly after. And Apple isn't the only one that wants to eliminate passwords. The Fido Alliance. A tech industry group has been working on the underlying standards needed to ditch passwords for almost a decade. And Apple's pass keys are the company's implementation of these standards. When all tech companies have rolled out their version of pass keys, it should be possible for the system to work across different devices. In theory, you could use your iPhone to log into a Windows laptop or an Android tech.

tablet to log in to a website in Microsoft's Edge Browser. All of Fido specs have been developed collaboratively with inputs from hundreds of companies, says Andrew Trichiar, the executive director of the Fido Alliance. Tricar confirms that Apple is the first company to start rolling out past key-style technology and says this shows, quote, how tangible this approach will soon be for consumers worldwide, end quote. Any success for a passwordless future depends on how it works in reality, though. At the moment, there are unanswered questions about. about what happens to your pass keys if you want to ditch Apple's ecosystem for Android or another platform. Apple hasn't yet responded to our request for comment. And developers still need to

implement changes to their apps and websites to work with pass key. Plus, to gain trust in any system, people need to be educated about how it works. Any viable solution must be safer, easier, and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today. Alex Simmons, the head of Microsoft's identity management efforts said in May, In short, if cross-device systems are clunky or a pain to use, people may shun them in favor of weak but convenient passwords, end quote. So I screwed up yesterday, and I forgot to include the classified at the end of yesterday's show, assuming I remember to do it correctly today, here is the classified I meant to share with you, because it is a good job opportunity at a cool company run by your fellow listeners of the mutant podcast army.

Listen up.