The sun is setting on a Musk Twitter (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)
Crypto nuttiness
Cryptocurrency is a revolution in monetary platforms. It’s also, still the wild west and the rare concept that will remain illusory even after you’ve decided you fully understand it (because you probably don’t).
Case in point would be the iCoin cold storage wallet. It’s a handheld device that, while looking like a small iPhone (or that Palm phone I reviewed a few years ago), is designed solely as a place to put and, I guess, carry around your crypto.
I have something similar, I guess. It’s my phone and the Coinbase app that provides a digital wallet where I track all my cryptocurrencies. iCoin adds another wrinkle, though: a printer where you can print out the key phrase you might need to access your wallet.
I know, this all sounds ridiculous. But Verizon is backing (or at least selling) it, so perhaps they understand something I don’t. Or maybe they’re just messing with us. Whatever the case, I don’t see a good reason for buying a phone-like device just to hold something that is not designed to be touched, held, or physically exchanged. Crypto lives nowhere and everywhere and is tracked on the immutable blockchain. That’s why it’s better than the money you have in your pocket. If you lose that, you’ve lost the money. Crypto is tied to you and you don’t give it up unless you pay someone with it, which is essentially transferring ownership of those tiny crypto bits.
At least that’s my current understanding.
Speaking of wacky…
Late last year, I wrote about Radio Shack, a beloved electronics retail brand that refuses to die. In December, it became a crypto platform. I know, it made no sense.
It was relatively quiet for months. them, last week, the Radio Shack Twitter account went on a tear, tweeting like a hormonal and slightly deranged teenager. It was bawdy, loud, and belligerent. Why? I think it’s doing what’s known as “sh_tposting” to drive up interest and visibility prior to launching its own coin.
I think I prefer someone charitably let the Radio Shack brand die in dignity.
What will we buy?
With the global economic downturn and disposable income in short supply, I’ve started to wonder what this year’s tech buying season, which kicks off with Back to School and accelerates through the holidays, might be like. I assume we’ll still buy but will be on the hunt for big deals. The problem with that strategy is that businesses and manufacturers are also squeezed through falling revenues and ongoing supply-chain issues.
Will they be able to offer real deals this year or drag us through more shrinkflation in which we pay the same or more for less? Could that awesome Back to School laptop feature less-than-stellar components because it’s hard to acquire the best ones? Sure? Might it be just as expensive as a more powerful system? Possibly.
This might, though, bode well for Amazon, which has now centralized all deal-based buying through its multiple Prime Day extravaganzas. But even there, I wonder if we’ll see the best deals on outdated products and technologies and not the hot new thing.
Even with deals in place, we might not be buying, at least not at the scale we have in recent years. All told, I expect a very dark and stingy tech buying season, and unless the economy manages a swift turn back to growth, not a much better 2023.
Musk out
By now you’ve heard the news, that Billionaire and brood daddy Elon Musk is trying to back out of the Twitter deal. He doesn’t want the social media platform anymore because he believes Twitter is still misrepresenting the number of bots on the platform.
A bot count matters because fewer real people consuming Twitter content would be fewer trackable eyeballs on ads and, ultimately, lower revenue opportunities. Twitter insists it’s been transparent, Musk doesn’t believe it.
Why did Musk do this (attempt to buy and then back out of the Twitter deal)? Was he messing around? Did he just want 100M followers (hopefully not all bots)?
I think Musk did it and has taken it all this far because he believes in his ability to make change, to create in the face of enormous odds, and to alter the course of entire sectors. It’s what he’s done with Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink. As I’ve said many times before, Musk has an almost unparalleled track record and what he builds is often spurred by what he sees as deficits in the current market.
His quest for Twitter began with a frustration - maybe wrongheaded - that Twitter was hampering free speech on the platform. He eventually came to believe that he could use the Musk magic to change that, remake, and revitalize the platform. However, unlike the space industry and electric vehicle technologies and market, I don’t think Musk ever took the time to truly understand the fundamentals of Twitter. I’m not talking about how it works on the surface - he clearly gets that - but the infrastructure, programming, algorithms, process, and decision making that comprise Twitter’s day-to-day business.
Maybe this decision was ultimately too emotional. Twitter was always Musk’s ID and Ego on display, which he mixed generously with real talk about tech and business (my favorite part). It just felt like the sh_tposter and not the businessperson was increasingly driving Musk’s quest to own Twitter.
And with emotion and not business sense driving this effort, it was doomed to fail. It felt as if Musk had buyer’s remorse almost from the start and has spent almost two months trying to recast or back away from the deal. Now he’s cut the cord, but instead of a clean getaway, he’s freefalling into a well of litigation and expense that will surely go into the billions.
This was an expensive gamble driven by the wrong side of Musk’s brain. I’ve often said “never bet against Musk” but in this case, he bet against himself and lost.
Stay well
See you soon