Written by Julien Genestoux. Entrepreneur, Hacker, Investor & Advisor You should follow me on Bluesky and Farcaster
The dollar auction is a simple game that shows how perfectly rational decisions can lead to absurd outcomes. It also explains why we're seeing billions poured into AI, even when the math doesn't add up.
We are sharing why the Unlock Labs team is joining Relay, how it will help us serve builders, and what comes next for our community.
Did you know that your Uber driver has 2 jobs? One of them is to drive you to this fancy restaurant, and she's paid for it. The other, unbeknownst to her is to create "driving data" that will inevitably be fed to some kind of machine learning algorithm so that, eventually, a machine can take that job from her.
Or rather… stablecoins, not Bitcoin. I have been a long fan of Stable coins: in 2019, I pointed that they were a UX improvement over the volatile other crypto assets. Today, it looks like stable coins are taking the tech world by storm: Stripe acquired Bridge, Circle has filed for an IPO... and, both of these things from 2018 have happened, and of course, the GENIUS act is touted to bring the needed regulatory framework for these.
About 10 years ago, when Bitcoin started to emerge in the broader tech community, several folks started to think that blockchains themselves were more interesting and useful than Bitcoin. What these people missed at the time that the blockchains need a native asset to ensure their security. Blockchains like Bitcoin, but also Ethereum are secured, as much by cryptography as they are by economic incentives. A blockchain without a native asset has an "external" dependency which can be vulnerable and destabilize it.
There are many ways to think about Large Language Models, AI and conversational agents like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. I am increasingly convinced that they are in fact, a new kind of user interface, rather than a new kind of computer.
In a highly complex world, where we can only expect complexity to increase, it is dangerous to centralize decision-making, especially if these decisions are made by folks whose expertise is mostly about being elected... rather than governing.
10 days ago, it was announced that OpenAi raised $6.6 billion in funding, valuing the company at $157 billion. It is the largest venture capital round ever.
Over the weekend, France arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram. Telegram is a messaging platform, and although the reason for the arrest is not yet fully public, the charges seem to be related to the spread of illicit material on the service (terrorism, drug trafficking... etc).
The definition of Intelligence is obviously very controversial; measuring it might even be harder and prone to many awful abuses. In the last 18 months, for many, intelligence has been seen as the ability to create and "generate" text, images, and others. However, another way that I think about it is the ability to interact and transact with others and adapt to an ecosystem. It is not restricted to humans. Animals, or even plants show some level of intelligence. With that definition, artificial intelligence would qualify as something created by humans that shows some ability to interact and transact with humans.
