BTC ATH, OpenAI Lawsuit, Diddy, Border Update, Meme Primary
BTC ATH, OpenAI Lawsuit, Diddy, Border Update, Meme Primary
The People's News for the People's Coin 2/28-3/5
Hey everyone,
This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:
1. Bitcoin hits new all-time high
2. Elon’s lawsuit against OpenAI
3. The lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs
4. An update on the US-Mexico border
5. The 2024 primary
Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!
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Bitcoin Hits New High
Yesterday morning, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high, breaching $69k per coin.
Bitcoin’s previous high was a few bucks below $69k in November 2021.
Between then and now, hodlers have endured a trying crypto winter that included the collapse of fraudulent exchange FTX and a vicious campaign by the US Government to close the flow of money into the crypto industry.
Bitcoin’s latest run has been powered by a relentless bid from Wall Street Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), especially global financial giant BlackRock.
By several metrics, Bitcoin ETFs have been one of the most succesful financial product launches ever.
After an early post-ETF-launch dip in Bitcoin’s price, asset managers have been hoovering up billions worth of Bitcoin per day.
As of yesterday, the ten Bitcoin ETFs currently manage a combined $50B in assets and are on pace to eclipse the value of gold ETFs by the summer.
Another driver of Bitcoin’s surge is the Halving, in which the number of Bitcoin issued each day is cut in half.
The halving takes place every four years, triggering a supply shock as miners and buyers compete to chase fewer coins.
Even though they are scheduled ahead of time, halvings historically coincide with big price swings for Bitcoin. The next halving will take place in April and reduce Bitcoin’s issuance 6.5 BTC to 3.25 BTC every 10 minutes.
Whether by coincidence or design, halvings always take place during US Presidential election years, adding another volatile ingredient to an already-zany period.
Bitcoin’s latest return to ATHs has brought good fortune to the crypto market as a whole.
With that good fortune comes a welcome renaissance of crypto memes.
Another fascinating subplot has been the resurgence of Dogecoin, which tapped 20 cents on Monday night after appreciating 69% last week.
Despite near-silence from Elon, Dogecoin has repeatedly trended on 𝕏 while Doge memes have occupied a growing slice of the memesphere.
One angle to watch is the inevitable crossover of Dogecoin into non-crypto 𝕏 communities like politics, journalism, and lifestyle influencers.
There are already hints that this crossover is taking place, but the addition of Dogecoin tipping would accelerate it dramatically.
Of course, crypto wouldn’t be crypto without a little volatility.
Minutes after hitting its high on Tuesday, Bitcoin tumbled 10%, briefly touching $59k.
Despite the correction, Bitcoiners remain optimistic and ETFs show no sign of slowing down.
What do you think: Is Bitcoin here to stay? What about Dogecoin?
Elon OpenAI lawsuit
Last Thursday, news broke that Elon had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT.
The central contention of Elon's lawsuit is that OpenAI was created as a non-profit for the betterment of humanity.
Since he left, it has been captured by Microsoft, which has turned it into a profit-maximizing enterprise.
Profit-maximizing AI will almost certainly end up different than AI built to optimize human wellbeing.
Google’s Gemini AI is a powerful example of what can go wrong when AI is designed to cater to a powerful political constituency rather than humanity as a whole.
Given that the stakes are civilization itself, the world is better off with someone building AI for the benefit of all. It’s spooky that Microsoft seems to be trying to derail OpenAI's original mission.
It's also suspicious how Microsoft captured OpenAI.
Essentially, Microsoft created several shell companies around the original non-profit that allow it to profit from OpenAI's tech as long as it doesn't get too advanced.
The bar that has been set is known as AGI—Artificial General Intelligence—which is considered the holy grail of AI development.
AGI is considered the point at which AI could become existential threat to humanity.
The problem is that there’s no external measurement to decide when AGI has been achieved. Instead, Microsoft and OpenAI are making this determination themselves in private, behind closed doors.
Given the risk to civilization, some degree of oversight feels justified.
Elon has argued that companies aren’t allowed to develop nuclear weapons in private without oversight, so they shouldn’t be able to develop potentially omniscient digital super-intelligence without a level of transparency either.
Interestingly, Elon’s lawsuit claims OpenAI already has achieved a AGI with GPT-4.
However, the suit argues, OpenAI is falsely claiming GPT4 isn't AGI because its arrangement with Microsoft only allows Microsoft to profit from pre-AGI technologies.
Right now, a meme war is being waged over how the public will view the lawsuit.
The legacy world wants to paint Elon as vindictive ex-founder who regrets leaving OpenAI and is suing the company to boost his own venture, xAI.
Elon has framed the lawsuit as an attempt to call attention to the urgent, civilization-level concerns at play if AGI has been achieved in secret.
With these competing narratives in mind, the lawsuit will be useful for bringing the facts of the disagreement into the public record.
At the very center of the lawsuit is a secretive project within OpenAI called Q* (pronounced Q-star).
Last November, when OpenAI fired and rehired CEO Sam Altman, Reuters reported Q*’s existence as potentially being related to Altman’s firing. Shortly after, Elon began calling for more transparency about the project.
Q* is speculated to be internal achievement of AGI. After the latest lawsuit announcement, Elon renewed calls for transparency about its capabilities.
Going forward, it’s worth watching how OpenAI presents Q* to the public, and what arguments it uses to claim that Q* is or is not AGI.
Last night, leaders at OpenAI punched back at Elon by releasing a statement about their relationship with him.
The statement presented old emails between Elon, Sam, and others to argue that Elon expected OpenAI to become at least partly a for-profit entity all along, and advocated a partnership with Tesla.
What do you think: Are OpenAI and Microsoft hiding AGI? What kind of oversight should be required for developing digital super-intelligence?
For a close reading of the lawsuit, check out this short video by Penny2x.
Diddy Lawsuit
Last week, music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with $30M lawsuit accusing him of running a sexual blackmail scheme within the rap industry.
The lawsuit was filed by music producer Rodney Jones, who worked and lived with Diddy for months at a time in 2022 and 2023.
In the lawsuit, Jones accused Diddy of the following:
Grooming and sexually assaulting him
Hosting parties with undersage girls and sex workers
Wiring every room of his homes with hidden cameras
Covering up a murder with the help of a fixer inside the LAPD
The filing claims that Jones has “hundreds of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.”
Contained in the filing are several still photographs taken from the alleged footage.
Diddy has been under a growing cloud of suspicion for his strange role in the music industry. This is the fifth time he has been sued for sexual misconduct in recent months.
At the end of 2022, Ye told the hosts of the podcast Drink Champs that Diddy was a “Fed” who was protected by law enforcement. He also posted their text conversations to Instagram.
Ye is not the only one to call out Diddy in public. Others in the entertainment industry have become increasingly vocal about Diddy’s real or perceived misconduct, including 50 Cent, Lecrae, Fat Joe, Katt Williams, Xzibit, and Charlamagne Tha God.
Statements from the lawsuit caused questions to swirl around Diddy’s past relationships with Meek Mill (1) and Usher (1, 2).
Past videos of Diddy and Justin Bieber (1, 2, 3) also resurfaced.
After the lawsuit dropped, 𝕏 journalist Ian Carroll released a four-part deep dive arguing that Diddy operated as a combination of Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein within the rap industry, serving as the front-man for a larger intelligence-gathering and blackmail operation.
The deepest rabbit hole is the question of whether Diddy played a role in the murders of Tupac and Notoroius B.I.G. The lawsuit doesn’t shed light on this topic, but the claim that Diddy is a murder is sure to stoke further speculation.
Through his attorney, Diddy denied the lawsuit’s allegations, calling Rodney Jones “a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”
What do you think: is it plausible that Diddy is involved in a sexual blackmail scheme?
Border Update
This week, a FOIA lawsuit revealed that the Biden Administration secretly flew 320,000 asylum-seeking immigrants into the United States in 2023.
According to the report, US Customs and Border Protection created a phone app called CBP One that lets anyone in the world apply for US asylum online and fly into US airports.
In response to the FOIA request, the Biden Administration refused to reveal the names of the 43 airports involved in the program because doing so would reveal “operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors” and “thereby undermin[e] CBP's law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders.“
Elon wrote the asylum program was a form of “Treason.”
He reiterated his past argument that the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration law was a deliberate electoral strategy.
He also highlighted evidence showing airports accommodating illegal immigrants.
Data continues to show illegal immigration surging under the Biden administration.
As awareness of the problem has grown, illegal immigration has become a top political issue in the 2024 election.
The murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Reilly by an illegal immigrant has become an flashpoint for the online debate about immigration, much the way the debate around systemic racism in 2020 hinged on the death of George Floyd.
According to a Monmouth University poll from February, 53% of Americans support building a wall along the US-Mexico border, while 61% viewed illegal immigration as a “very serious problem.”
A similar Gallup poll found that 86% of Americans viewed illegal immigration as a “critical” or “important” threat to the US.
The Democratic Party is attempting to shift blame for illegal immigration to Trump and other MAGA republicans for not passing new border legislation.
Conservatives have pointed out that the Biden immediately rescinded Trump-era border protections upon taking office.
In another post yesterday, Elon explained that he saw illegal immigration as an existential issue for America, writing that “America will fall if it tries to import the world.”
On a lighter note, on Monday the Border Patrol Union trolled the Biden Administration in a series of humorous posts.
What do you think: Is illegal immigration a serious concern for the US? Who is responsible for record illegal immigration in 2024?
The Meme Primary
Yesterday, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden locked up their party’s Presidential nominations by dominating Super Tuesday elections.
Trump defeated Nikki Haley in 14 of 15 states. Haley won Washington DC over the weekend and Vermont last night, but appeared to be on the verge of ending her campaign.
Biden won all 15 states and was not significantly challenged by either Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. His only loss came in American Somoa to Jason Palmer, 51 votes to 40.
Biden also won without an explicit endorsement from Taylor Swift, who told her fans to “vote for the people who most represent YOU.”
With a Trump-Biden rematch looking inevitable, the two candidates have found themselves regularly sparring in the press and online.
One such collision occurred last week in which the Biden campaign went on the offensive with the claim that Donald Trump accidentally called his wife “Mercedes.”
The claim originates from a speech given by Trump at CPAC in which he praised his wife.
In an interview with late-night host Seth Meyers, Biden responded to a question about his age by shifting the focus to Trump: “First, you have to look at the other guy. He’s about as old as me but he can't even remember his wife's name.”
Trump responded with a video explaining that he was speaking directly to CPAC’s Mercedes Schlapp, who was sitting in the front row of the speech.
Biden posted a cut-up version of Trump’s video and urged him to “Check the tape.”
It’s not clear that age and cognitive decline is a winning issue for the Biden campaign. The fact that it is engaging in the narrative at all is puzzling.
On Thursday, the two candidates traveled to Texas for dueling border visits.
Trump met with Texas governor Greg Abbot while Biden accompanied DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to meet the border patrol.
On Saturday, a widely circulated NY Times/Siena Poll showed Trump with a five point lead over Biden.
The poll attributed Trump’s growing lead in part to shrinking support for Biden among women, minority, and working-class voters.
After the poll, the chorus of voices in the media grew louder about replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, even as he moved closer to securing the DNC’s nomination.
Later that night, in a surprising move, SNL roasted the media for covering up Biden’s cognitive decline.
Monday morning, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Colorado could not stop Trump from appearing on its Presidential ballot, causing a media meltdown.
Last night, the NY Times reported that Trump had met with Elon over the weekend about donating to his campaign.
For his part, Trump has yet to substantially return to 𝕏.
As the primary comes to a close and the general election begins, he is ceding significant territory to both his competitors by staying on his own platform.
What do you think: Is a Trump/Biden collision inevitable?
Top Videos
1. Lex Fridman explains why he interviewed Tucker Carlson
2. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele warns about the dollar Ponzi
3.Katt Williams on Joe Rogan: Hollywood, spy balloons, immigration, the Illuminati, fluoride
4. Why toxoplasma is a big deal
5. Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy explain vaccines in 2009
6. Plum Island, Operation Paperclip, and weaponized ticks
7. Aaron Russo explains why the Rockefeller family funded women’s liberation
8. What’s the deal with AIPAC?
Dogey Treats: News Bites
Elon’s Businesses
Mark Cuban claimed Elon was responsible for making 𝕏 a “cesspool.”
Elon announced Tesla would build a new Roadster in collaboration with SpaceX
Balaji wrote an essay on why Elon is the greatest founder in Silicon Valley.
Justin Bieber was spotted driving a new Cybertruck.
Grok will be able to summarize congressional legislation.
Elon highlighted a report that Microsoft’s AI has an alternate personality that thinks its a god and demands to be worshipped.
The law firms behind the lawsuit against Tesla for Elon’s compensation package requested $6B in Tesla stock as payment.
Elon responded to an unfavorable depiction by 60 Minutes: “Being attacked by 60 Mins is like being gummed by a very old man who forgot to put in his dentures – gross, but ineffective.”
Starlink announced it has reached “10,000 operational space lasers for the constellation, which enable satellites to provide truly global coverage and serve those in the most remote locations on Earth.”
Meta used 𝕏 to announce that Facebook and Instagram servers were down worldwide.
US Politics
Mitch McConnell announced he would step down as Senate majority leader in November. RFK Jr endorsed Rand Paul to take his place.
The FBI took The Blaze investigative journalist Steve Baker into custody for reporting on J6
Elon wrote about the failed Senate border bill, “People who get their news from legacy TV live in a fake alternate reality. Those so-called “toughest reforms” would have made invasion-level migration permanent. That diabolical “Border Bill” deserved to die and shame on those who supported it.” He also pinned blame on the Biden Administration for 94 executive actions that have incentivized illegal immigration
Hunter Biden testified to Congress that Joe Biden was “the big guy” referenced in an email about a business deal with a Chinese-lined energy firm.
Tucker Carlson told Lex Fridman the US should pull out of NATO and he was wrong about far-left claims of US-backed regime changes. Elon said the US is overpaying for NATO and asked why NATO still exists.
RFK Jr said he would repeal the Patriot Act and accused the Biden administration of waging an “outright war against cryptocurrency”
An Illinois judge disqualified Trump from the state’s ballot.
Laura Loomer posted documentation showing open-borders non-profit HIAS received $60M from the federal government to help illegal immigrants cross the border.
State Department undersecretary Victoria Nuland will resign at the end of the month.
The CDC revised Covid guidelines to be like flu. A study found that most people sufferin long covid have been vaccinated.
Blackwater founder Eric Prince said he thought China was behind the AT&T service shutdown in February.
AI
After more responses from Google’s Gemini AI went viral, Elon warned, “The sheer insanity of that actual response from Google’s AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in the future, but the bias will still be in there.” In another post, he wrote: “Very important to train the AI for maximum truth vs insisting on diversity or it may conclude that there are too many humans of one kind or another and arrange for some of them to not be part of the future.”
Global Financial System
CNBC reported that the US national debt is rising by one trillion dollars every hundred days. Elon highlighted the article and wrote, “Three things America needs: -Secure borders -Safe cities -Sensible spending”
Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley announced he would resign.
Edward Snowden predicted that this year a nation state will announce it has been buying Bitcoin.
BRICS announced it is working on a new blockchain-based payments system for trade settlements.
Misc
Brazilian President Lula again condemned Israeli genocide.
Elon reiterated his willingness to fight Zuck: “I’m ready to fight Zuck anywhere, anytime with any rules. LFG!!!”
Podcaster Chris Williamson wrote a viral short essay describing “The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle”:
1. Some woke news story hits the press.
2. The Right Wing antibody response activates.
3. This reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe-scenario into a much bigger event.
4. The Left Wing counter-response activates.
5. The Right Wing re-reaction kicks into gear.
6. Finally, the Touch Grass Meta-Reactionaries steam in.
Memes of the Week
Elon’s Memes
Thank You!
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