Gm. Hola! The final leg of my European trip is here with a stop in Barcelona. Park Guell, Sagrada Familia, the Gothic neighborhood, the beaches, paella…Man, what an amazing place.

— Stephen Flanders

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

🏠 CRYPTO

Coinbase v SEC Updates

It’s been a couple of months now since the SEC unleashed hell on Coinbase by suing them for:

Operating as an unregistered broker, exchange, and clearing agency.
Federal security law violations from Coinbase’s Prime, Wallet and staking products.
Providing trading for multiple illegal securities.

Naturally, Coinbase thinks the suit is ridiculous, and now we know why.

To Coinbase, it’s impossible for them to offer illegal securities trading because crypto is actually a commodity like baseball cards. Not convinced? Just look at last month’s Ripple ruling that selling XRP to unknown parties did not qualify as illegal security sales.

There really is no difference in the facts surrounding the Ripple case and this one, thus, they are asking the Court to kick the SEC to the curb.

It should be no surprise that the crypto critics are not convinced, and considering that SEC Chair Gary Gensler is the biggest crypto critic of all, it’s safe to assume the SEC won’t be either.

Expect a response from the SEC soon, and for this potentially landmark case to continue.

The Big Picture: One way or another, this case will determine whether crypto is a security or a commodity. Which means this case will determine the future of crypto in America. If it’s ruled a security and the SEC gets free rein to regulate the industry, then you crypto bros should probably hit the superconductor books.

Mobile-first apps = iPhone. AI-first apps = ??

Wispr is building the next leap in personal computing – the consumer hardware platform for AI-first applications.

They’re a rare company building in the AI space today with a hardware angle. Their belief is that while software & AI has evolved with LLMs, the input devices like keyboards have stayed the same. To redesign input interfaces, they’ve raised close to 15M from NEA and 8VC in addition to Stanford AI professors like Chris Manning & Richard Socher’s fund AIX ventures.

A big revolution is coming. And it’s going to be spearheaded by innovation throughout the stack.

Wispr was also recognized as one of the top 100 AI companies by CBInsights in their most recent report. They were placed in the “AI assistants & HMIs” category along with Anthropic, Inflection, and Adept AI.

Although Wispr is still in stealth, you can learn more about Wispr here.