![[Column] Michiel Frackers: Ayatollah at the controls crypto market plummets](Article Images/Key Persons/Michiel_Frackers_Marketing_Report.jpg)
Welcome to the fiftieth edition of this newsletter, in which I fully remember the Koot en Bie classic 'but enough about myself, what do you think of my hair ?' extensively wanted to look back, navel-gaze and look ahead. Then an ayatollah pressed a few buttons, meaning that even the announcement of my new podcast has to give way to the consequences of world news. Because if there's one thing I excel in, it's modesty.
Originally, I wanted to focus this fiftieth edition mainly on the definitive breakthrough of crypto, which is slightly ironic because after the Iranian attack on Israel, Bitcoin and Ethereum in particular experienced the biggest decline in a year.
Iron Dome saves the markets
In the above price graph of the last five days, the decline in the cryptos is particularly noticeable, because the Microsoft share and the S&P 500, which I have included for comparison, have been stagnant since Friday. There is a good chance that when Wall Street opens tomorrow, the market will have gotten over the initial shock and the stock markets will fall less than the crypto market this weekend. Also because Israel's Iron Dome is holding up well, as Wired explains .
If Iran's leaders wanted to hit the detested West harder, they should have attacked on a day when Wall Street was open. Now Bitcoin and Ethereum in particular are being hit, with all the altcoins in their wake .
For those who want to follow the crypto market at a glance, the top 100 biggest risers and fallers are always useful. A distinction can be made between the 'hit list' within the top 100 largest cryptos measured by market value; or for the real daredevils the overview of all coins . It is not unusual to see, like today, an increase of 32951 percent (this is not a typo) like Polis or a decrease of 98 percent like NTD is experiencing.
However, those kinds of coins have nothing to do with investing or innovation, so don't expect any attention for the latest meme coins or other nonsense here. These are the crypto variants of roulette or slot machines, only with even worse odds. Blockchain technology offers special possibilities, especially when combined with a decentralized structure such as Bitcoin, but unfortunately these aspects usually remain underexposed due to all the nonsense in crypto.
New: Crypto Spotlight 9
Original idea: a podcast
There are apparently between three and five million podcasts in the world , so it's high time to add one to the list. No fear of rehashing my ramblings in audio form: I don't do this alone. I will be creating the podcast together with a successful entrepreneur who has more than made his mark in online media and e-commerce.
The nice thing is that he started his startup while he was still a student, but after selling his company he decided to first work at a scale-up (that's what only Dutch people call larger startups) and later in the corporate world to broaden his experience. . This unique combination offers a special perspective on the technology of today and tomorrow.
My co-host is also an expert on cryptocurrencies and the author of a leading work on the subject. His expertise enables him to make analyzes and predictions, which we will hold him to.
We want to make an attempt every week to analyze the tech news and look a little further than the issues of the day. Don't expect any thoughts on the number of megapixels on the new iPhone or the clock speed of an Nvidia GPU. What we want to discuss is: how will Microsoft and Google respond if Amazon makes its AWS even more attractive to AI startups? And what does that mean for you if you work at a startup, or at a large corporate, that sees all this technology coming your way?
Be warned
The fact that we produce a newsletter and a podcast about technology and innovation already shows that we have the pretension to be able to say something meaningful about it. But it's more fun to make that pretension measurable.
That is why we will each create an investment portfolio, which will consist of a mix of tech shares and crypto coins. (Although one of us would be cowardly, or wise, to include an index fund as well.) In any case, we'll be keeping score every week.
We're going to try to become smarter together. We would love to receive suggestions, comments and questions from readers and listeners to respond to. But what we are certainly not going to do is give tips or advice. Remember this motto: 'read the newsletter and listen to the podcast, but never listen to us.'
The markets' rapid response to developments in the Middle East this weekend underlines that we also need to offer some kind of alert function. Consider a message if one of us adjusts his investment portfolio because he expects a price change of more than ten percent. But again; that is not investment advice.
Do you have any tips, advice or warnings? I would like to hear from you by email or in a response on LinkedIn, where this newsletter appears in English .
Special links
Some notable things from last week:
AI researcher Dr. Andrew Ng will join Amazon's Supervisory Board, replacing ex-MTV CEO Judy McGrath. It underlines that the AI war has become primarily a battle for top talent, after Microsoft recently brought in former Google DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman. This makes Google the loser of the week, because it is striking that both ex-Googlers are now at AI competitors Amazon and Microsoft.
In addition, it shows that Amazon places little value on someone with a media and marketing resume like McGrath, preferring instead to bring in top technical talent. The nerds are winning the war against the hip media people.
Ng was previously co-founder of the Google Brain project and chief engineer at Chinese internet giant Baidu. His newsletter The Batch is highly recommended and his presentations at TED and Stanford are also fascinating for anyone interested in the possible influence of AI on society.
Ng has the gift of explaining complex topics such as AI in a clear and even catchy way. At his presentation in Singapore last year, I took photos of almost every slide, no matter how ugly they were and in way too small a font, because Ng knows how to visualize a lot of information in a clear way.
'For $699 and $24 a month, this portable computer promises to free you from your smartphone. There's just one problem: it just doesn't work.'
The Verge wrote a heartfelt, yet scathing review of the AI pin I wrote about in November :
'THE ENTIRE PRESENTATION VIDEO IS INTERESTING TO WATCH, BUT PERHAPS NOT FOR THE REASONS THE FOUNDERS HOPE. FIRST OF ALL, I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WOULD BUY A $699 DEVICE THAT CAN DO LITTLE MORE THAN A SMARTPHONE, WHICH EVERYONE CARRIES WITH THEM ALL THE TIME AND ISN'T GOING TO REPLACE WITH AN AI PIN. TO LIVESTREAM THEN, FROM YOUR CHEST? THAT'S ESPECIALLY FUN FOR SELF-KICKING MOUNTAIN BIKERS AND HAMAS MEMBERS.'
And now it turns out that thing doesn't even work, for a seven hundred dollar plus monthly subscription. I still don't believe in smart glasses, like Meta's. I already have glasses and would prefer to get rid of them! I'd rather make my watch smarter, as a possible replacement for the smartphone.
Ken Kantzer is CTO of startup Truss and shared interesting experiences from working with ChatGPT at scale. One conclusion stood out, when testing all kinds of prompts: "Well, it's crazy that the quality and generalization of GPT can improve if you're vaguer." Vague is good in AI.
“PEOPLE ARE ALL MEANT TO GET ALONG. ONLINE TEXT-ONLY MEDIA HAS GIVEN US THE DELUSION THAT PEOPLE CAN'T GET ALONG, BUT ACTUALLY EVERYONE DOES GET ALONG.”
Said Naval Ravikant, Founder Of Angellist, Who Started Airchat With Tinder's Brian Norgard.
I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I would like to hear reactions from people who are already using Airchat. I'm not a fan of the name, but anything better than Air X or X Air.
In 1991, as a student during my internship, I wanted to start a sports weekly called Sportweek. Only one publisher was moderately interested: Maarten van den Biggelaar, previously founder of the Dansen bij Jansen discotheque and the business magazine Quote. After months of visiting media planners and advertising agencies, it was clear: there was zero interest.
Disillusioned, I left for an exchange to San Francisco, where I came into contact with the internet for the first time. Forget Philips, IBM, TNO: back in the Netherlands, Van den Biggelaar was the only one who saw that the Internet would become a mass medium and he became our first investor in Planet Internet.
High-speed trains are an excellent alternative to short air journeys; faster, cheaper and more sustainable. I wouldn't bet against him and I think Van den Biggelaar is on the right track with this train plan – sorry, I couldn't resist. Oh, and Sportweek, which a number of journalists started a few years later, apparently without first asking the advertising world if they were interested. It quickly became defunct.
Within two days, this video has been viewed almost five million times: comedian Conan O'Brien was a guest in the popular YouTube series Hot Ones, in which host Sean Evans and a guest eat chicken wings with increasingly hot sauce.
The trick lies in the combination of Evans' astonishingly good preparation, with the complete dismay of his guests who find it difficult to maintain their PR talk under the attacks of sweat and pain. It's kind of a mirrored version of waterboarding.
That is, until O'Brien was a guest on Friday and even decided to drink from the hottest sauce bottles. When asked about his familiarity with spicy food, O'Brien replied:
“I GREW UP IN AN IRISH CATHOLIC FAMILY IN BOSTON. I NEVER SAW HERBS UNTIL I WAS ABOUT 52 YEARS OLD.”
Conan O’Brien
These are the nineteen best episodes of Hot Ones : featuring Shaquille O'Neal, Margot Robbie, Gordon Ramsay and Billie Eilish.
Finally
Music festival Coachella streams live from many stages from the Californian desert. Today is the last day with Doja Cat, among others .
