Whoa! It’s been a week. I made it back home alive after Mark’s visit to DC. It’s another Thursday, and I’m back in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: US takes BitCoin mining lead after Chinese ban, William Shatner blasts off and boldly goes where others have gone before, and Twitter embeds ads in tweet replies. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
US TAKES LEAD AS CHINA BANS ALL BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS
China might be besting us in AI and chip development right now, but the US has taken the lead in BitCoin mining. In June, the Chinese government instructed banks to no longer process BitCoin transactions. Chinese mining fell from 3/4 of the world mining compute to effectively zero now that the ban has taken effect. This has led to Chinese BitCoin miners moving to Texas. The Chinese ban has caused a ripple effect. BTC is now trading below $30,000 per coin way down from its last year high of $65k. The new leaders in mining are the US, Kazakstan, and Russia. I’m not sure that’s the company we want to keep, but the Chinese rejection of BTC reflects attitudes of many non-speculators around the world. The Chinese declaring all BitCoin transactions illegal is probably a precursor to their promotion of the e-Yuan as a new digital currency. The ban has also encouraged some outrageous behavior, the CEO of Chinese mining company Poolin hopped on a flight to Texas and exclaimed, “we decided to move out once and for all. We’ll never come back again.”
SCRUFFY NERF HERDER OLDEST MAN IN SPACE
Yesterday, William Shatner, the man better known as James Tiberius Kirk, became the oldest person to travel in space. He blasted off in a Blue Origin craft for an 11-minute trip with four other passengers. Kirk’s capsule traveled passed the Karman Line the internationally recognized boundary for crossing into space. Richard Branson’s space plane, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s Inspiration4 missions are ushering in the beginnings of commercial space travel and I’m here for it. Congratulations, Scruffy Nerfherder!
TWITTER IS EMBEDDING ADS IN TWEET REPLIES
In a new money grab for eyeballs, Twitter is experimenting with a new way to position advertising. Twitter will be embedding ads in tweet responses after the 2nd, 3rd, or 8th responses. I know y’all know how I feel about these free services. I’m already annoyed by them, but hey, what are you going to do. Twitter is already an agitating application, what’s to stop them now. The new ad placement will be featured to a test community on iOS and Android users.
Starting today, we’re trying something different and testing a new ad format in Tweet conversations. If you’re a part of this test (which is global; on iOS & Android only), you’ll see ads after the first, third or eighth reply under a Tweet. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/kvIGeYt2vp
— bruce.falck() 🦗 (@boo) October 13, 2021
