gm. gm. Regardless of if we are “falling back”  or “springing forward,” it seems like daylight savings was designed for one purpose only: to make everyone more tired. 

But do you know the real reason why daylight savings was invented? Scroll down to today’s trivia to find out. 

VALUATIONS

China is the canary in the startup market coal mine

Earlier this week, the region of Shenzhen, often called the Chinese Silicon Valley, instituted a lockdown due to a sudden rise in Covid cases. That’s bad news: Apple, Samsung, and various other chip manufacturers all have critical suppliers located in the region who have had to shut down production.

The fall out

Supply chain angst is being manifested in the public markets. The Hong Kong Hang Seng Index fell more than 5.7% yesterday, reaching a new 52-week low. No bueno.  

Paul Weedman, the head of manufacturing consultancy Victure Industrial in Shenzhen, put the lockdown in perspective when talking to Reuters. 

• “Imagine you have a factory of 100 people and all of a sudden you can’t do anything — you can’t fulfill your existing orders, you can’t accept new orders,” Weedman said. “The impact is not two or three weeks, but three to six months."

What about the private markets?

Obviously short-term market conditions like a lockdown don’t affect trailing private-market valuations, but we can take a peek back at Q4 2021 for some insight into how startup valuations are trending in China. 

Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch dug through Pitchbook data to find that VC investments are notably slowing down in the region, as you can see from the chart above. 

The takeaway? We’re seeing a material drop both in the number of investments and the dollar dollar amount being invested. Lockdown induced selloffs aren’t affecting this data, but it could be a sign that there are more tough times ahead for China’s private markets.  

Zoom out: Many in the industry have been keeping a close eye on if/when private valuations will scale back in reaction to the massive rout public tech companies have experienced over the past few months. If China is any indication, a slowdown is indeed coming. 

ROUND UP

Lotta crypto news to recap

A virtual treasure hunt that puts Ready Player One to shame has reached its conclusion. On Monday, Twitter user Andrew Badr posted a thread narrating how he and two friends solved a puzzle set up by Larva Labs nearly a year ago. After discovering a hidden sequence in a NFT released by Larva Labs that referenced "PIG NUMBERS," Badr and his team began investigating. They eventually discovered that lining up all the Meebits pigs wearing jerseys gave the treasure hunters an Ethereum key linked to a wallet that contained .025 ETH and a Meebit. We can already hear Nic Cage calling his agent.

A $22 million bet on the price of LUNA is currently going down on Twitter. Anon crypto investor Sensei Algod put out a challenge late Sunday offering an open $1 million bet that the price of LUNA would be lower 1 year from now. Do Kwan, the founder of LUNA, accepted and the duo wired the money to an escrow account managed by UpOnly’s Cobie. Then, another anon account offered the same bet to Kwon, just 10x bigger, which Kwon accepted. Now there is $22 million sitting in Cobie’s public escrow wallet and the community will no doubt have its eyes on the price of LUNA for the next 12 months. The magic number is $88. Gl to all. 

Ethereum took another step towards the merge. With the Kiln testnet now live and running on a proof-of-stake chain, Ethereum is closer than ever to ditching proof-of-work—a move that will slash the chain’s energy costs. With billions of dollars already riding on Ethereum’s PoS chain, Kiln’s successful transition to a PoS Beacon Chain lets investors breathe a sigh of relief.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Companies from McDonald's to Microsoft have ceased operations in Russia in reaction to the war against Ukraine. But, developers are also putting their foot down. A whopping 6,982 mobile apps have been pulled from the Russian app store since the start of the invasion, a huge increase over normal. A similar elevated rate of removal has also been seen in Belarus. 

Startup: Staffing shortages have impacted every industry, but restaurants have been hit especially hard. Bear Robotic isn’t the only company attempting to use robots to help alleviate staffing issues, but it has separated itself the pack in recent years. Read more about it here.  

Rabbit hole: Did you know that oxidation is what makes tea black? Neither did we. (Sophie’s Cup of Tea)

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Apple added 123 new emoji to iPhones in an iOS update.

• Astra successfully completed a launch yesterday, just a month after its last failed attempt. 

• Intel confirmed that it will spend $19 billion on a new semiconductor plant in Germany.

• The Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time permanent, advancing the bill to the House of Representatives.

• MetaMask’s parent company ConsenSys raised its Series D at $7 billion valuation

TRIVIA

Why was daylight saving time originally adopted in the United States?

A. To give farmers more daylight hours to work their fields

B. To prevent workers from commuting in the dark during the winter

C. To save energy during World War I

D. To reduce crime by limiting the time people spend out after dark

SOMEBODY BUILD THIS

TIDBITS

🧠 Startup ideas that sound great, but actually suck. 

🥷 Why are movies so dark now? 

🎣 The city of Fresno lost $400k in a phishing scam in 2020…but never told anyone.

TRIVIA ANSWER

C. The US first adopted daylight savings in 1918 to preserve coal supplies and conserve energy during World War I, but the change was scrapped a year later. 

In 1966, the Uniform Time Act brought daylight saving time back for the whole country after some states, cities, and towns created clock chaos by adopting it individually.