Spot bitcoin investment funds likely to stoke miners’ massive energy use

In the past week or so, Nvidia’s stock finally encountered the law of gravity — what goes up must eventually come down, at least a little bit. And we look under the hood of artificial intelligence companies that aren’t necessarily making headlines. Plus, the Supreme Court ruled against Republican-led states that accused the federal government of coercing social media companies into suppressing content. But first, major music labels, including Universal, Sony and Warner, are suing two startups that produce AI-generated music. The labels accuse Suno and Udio of using copyrighted works scraped from the internet to train their AI models. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, for her takes on these stories in this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

It feels like eons ago, but during a town hall on violence in America in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton took to MTV to reach the nation’s youth. Clinton’s openness to MTV and what The New York Times called “other unconventional media” had helped pave his path to the White House two years earlier. Fast-forward to today, and even reluctant politicians use TikTok to reach younger voters — President Joe Biden is no exception. His first post came just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl. We invited Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, and Joshua Scacco, professor of political communication and director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at the University of South Florida, to discuss the evolution of political messaging with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali. Scacco said Clinton’s MTV moment informed how future presidents, including his successor, George W. Bush, have engaged with Americans.

This week, we’ve been taking stock of how tech has both helped and harmed Americans trying to get abortions in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the Dobbs decision, some experts warned consumers that menstrual tracking apps would provide a means of surveilling abortion seekers. There was even a social media campaign on what was then Twitter advising people to delete their period trackers. But it’s turned out that the threat to privacy isn’t limited to those apps. Other digital data can actually be more likely to reveal an illegal abortion. That’s according to Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that everyday consumer apps generate sensitive data that can be used for abortion surveillance.

After the U.S. Supreme Court took away the federal right to abortion two years ago, telehealth has helped provide ongoing access, including to people in states where abortion is now banned. That was our subject Monday. Now we are looking into apps that link patients with abortion providers. Julie F. Kay, executive director at the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that digital privacy protections are far from equal across these services.

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that abortions are not constitutionally protected in the U.S., a decision that would draw protests across the country. Since then, 14 states have outlawed abortions. Still, some people in those states have been able to cut through barriers to get abortions via telehealth, according to a recent report from the research project #WeCount. Usually, this requires a virtual visit with a telehealth care provider. The provider assesses the patient and gets their information, then can mail them mifepristone and misoprostol, which aid in ending a pregnancy. The Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone in a ruling this month, which means it can still be prescribed and mailed to patients. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the increase in telehealth abortions with Ushma Upadhyay, professor of OB-GYN and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a coauthor of the #WeCount report.

Big Tech subscription services are once again in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission, nonprofits with links to OpenAI are becoming less transparent, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is urging Congress to require warning labels on social media. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired magazine, for this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review

Picture this: The year is 2014. The song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is playing on every top 100 station, and the Ellen DeGeneres star-studded Oscars selfie has just “broken Twitter.” As all of this is happening, a bunch of content creators in certain corners of social media are about to start making a whole lot of money. Culture reporter Steffi Cao recently wrote in The Ringer that 2014 was the year that shaped the internet we know today. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to her about what happened online 10 years ago.

Shortly after the Union won the Civil War in 1865, a union major general issued an order: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” June 19, known as Juneteenth, has long been celebrated by African Americans. But in 2020, in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Juneteenth took the internet by storm. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Brandon Ogbunu, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, who wrote about that moment for WIRED back then. He revisited what was happening at that time a year before Juneteenth became a national holiday.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited the headquarters of Nautilus Biotechnology to meet with Parag Mallick, the company’s founder and chief scientist, who is also a magician and an associate professor at Stanford University. Since 2016, Mallick and his team have been building a machine that they say will revolutionize biomedicine by unlocking the secrets of the “dark proteome.”

Brazil has densely populated low-income communities living on the outskirts of many cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Ordering online shopping just isn’t an option for residents as these towns don’t have an official address, but that may be changing. The BBC’s Ben Derico reports.

Are you struggling to conquer an aspect of your health, wealth or relationship? The reason may be that you’re focusing on what you don’t have, rather than on what you DO have…

In today’s episode I take a spiritual look at money, and on some ways to change our thinking so that we may change our lives for the better.

✨ DEBRIEF | Ryan & David unpacking the episode:
https://www.bankless.com/debrief-patrick-mckenzie

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Why do banks have holidays? Should we redesign the banking system? Is there a future for crypto?

Today we’re joined by Patrick McKenzie, an advisor at Stripe who writes about the modern financial system helps us answer these exact questions.

First, we talk about the inner workings of the existing banking system. Then we get into crypto, where Patrick shares his reasons for skepticism.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro
6:35 Patrick’s Background
9:48 Banking System Evolution
20:09 Banking Holidays
26:44 Financial System Redesign 
40:12 Transactional Freedom Trade-offs
1:03:39 Crypto Slogans
1:11:36 Crypto Predictions
1:21:42 Closing Thoughts

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RESOURCES

Patrick McKenzie
https://twitter.com/patio11 

Check Out Patrick’s Blog 
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/ 

Molly White Episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Itd3g23QI 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets.

See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures  

The most valuable crypto stories for Wednesday, August 23, 2023.

"The Hash" panel covers the biggest crypto news today, including Sam Bankman-Fried's plans to argue in his defense he was acting in "good faith" and following the advice of lawyers. The FBI says North Korean hackers may attempt to cash out stolen bitcoin (BTC) worth more than $40 million. And, a closer look at the lessons learned from the Curve crisis.

See also:

Will SBF’s ‘Blame-the-Lawyers’ Strategy Work?

FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Intends to Blame Fenwick & West Lawyers in His Defense

FBI Says North Korean Hackers May Try to Sell $40M of Bitcoin

Curve Crisis Shows Pitfalls of Decentralized Risk Management

Curve Crisis Averted, NFT Loans Protocol Now Votes on Next Steps

This episode has been edited by senior producer Michele Musso and the executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Neon Beach.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.