The Crypto Election

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Space to announce his campaign for President accomplished two things:

Let us know that Twitter Spaces can only handle 500,000 people at a time, which we guess could be important if you’re a niche internet celebrity.
Confirmed that DeSantis at least knows what crypto is.

Specifically, DeSantis said that “the current regime, clearly, has it out for Bitcoin, and if it continues for another four years, they’ll probably end up killing it”. Of course, the implication is that under Ron’s watchful eye everybody would be able to “do Bitcoin”, whatever that means.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “why is a presidential candidate talking about Bitcoin”. Well, it turns out that crypto has become kind of a…dare I say it…major issue?:

Fellow Republican hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said he knows way more about crypto than DeSantis.
RFK JR is a card-carrying crypto bro.
President Biden despises crypto.
Trump is publicly opposed to crypto, just not enough to stop selling Trump NFTs.

Combine that with the ever-present question of regulation and the non-stop attacks by Senator Warren, and it’s clear that crypto no longer exists on the margins.

The Big Picture: This election will likely determine the future of crypto in America.

🏠 TECH

It’s (Still) Self-Driving Cars SZN

Self-driving cars have been in the works for almost a decade now. Back in those sweet Summer days, it was predicted that autonomous vehicles would dominate the roads by 2021.

That obviously didn’t happen.

As we covered last year, the self-driving car industry is not doing too hot:

Uber shut down their self-driving unit in 2020.
Lyft, the predictor of the 2021 autonomous vehicle revolution, did the same the next year.
Ford and VW’s Argo AI followed suit last year.
And, despite Elon’s promises, Tesla’s can still not drive itself.

But, even with all these setbacks, the dream still isn’t dead yet. Google-backed Waymo and GM-backed Cruise are still fighting the good fight:

Waymo already offers driverless taxis in Pheonix, and they are preparing to expand to Los Angeles with the goal of 100,000 weekly trips by 2024.
Cruise does the same in San Fransisco, and they just announced plans to expand to Dallas and Houston.

However, the fight is still far from over:

Robotaxis still can’t safely go on the freeway, slowing down rides.
They also still have trouble interacting with police officers and firefighters.
Neither company is profitable yet, a slight problem considering these companies cost an ungodly amount of money.

The Bottom Line: Both companies are burning through billions of dollars. If they don’t get to profitability soon, the self-driving fighters might be out cold soon.