Sunday Reads and Listens...AI, Starship, Protocols and The Bank of Apple

Happy Sunday

I have a few more days of cycling here in South of France before heading to Tel-Aviv.

The buzz In my world is all Apple as a bak, Gary Gensler/SEC/Crypto regulation, AI and Elon Musk (Starship had their launch and crash). Twitter Blue has also been at the top of the headlines because Elon Musk is good at staying at the top of headlines if just for kicks.

I did try Twitter Blue for a month to see if there were any benefits I would need. I did not and cancelled. Elon is handing out Twitter Blue check marks to ‘famous people’ that refuse to pay, which is the most non-free speech he has done in his continuing lie about free speech and Twitter.

As for Starship, I enjoyed this read by Lavie Ohana. Good luck to investors paying up to $140 billion for Space X when the Starship program is already a few years behind in step one.

Here is the FT on Apple as a bank. I have been saying Apple will be a bank since 2007. While I have been wrong about the timing and overall strategy, their incremental attack and nudging just means that now that the bank is here, it will just work even better. Below are my blog posts over the years as I thought through ‘Banks of Apple’…

2007 - https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/bank-applewhy-apple-buy-mastercard-visa-andor-american-express

2008 - https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/bank-appleshould-buy-bankand-starbucks

2009 - https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/bank-apple-revisted

2011 - https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/apple-bank-americai-love-market-makes-sense

2019 - https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/apple-ever-better-position

This week in AI, I liked the New Yorker piece on Duolingo founder Luis Von Ahan who says that with help of AI computers will be better teachers than humans.

As for Crypto and SEC, Fred Wilson does a great job explaining what a protocol is and why they matter. The SEC and Congress and anyone throwing shade and confusion on the subject would be best served reading it.

Last but not least, Josh Brown and Michael Batnick had a good interview of Ric Edelman talking markets, wealth management and Bitcoin.

Have a great Sunday.