09/25/2020: Weekly Newsletter

Money

• GoodRX IPO'ed this week (CNBC)

• Palantir direct listing estimated to be valued at ~$22Bn (WSJ)

• Plaid looking at DeFi (CoinDesk)

• OCC issued guidance for stablecoins: "national banks and federal savings associations can hold reserve funds for stablecoin issuers". Even more interesting, the article states that "the dollar-backed stablecoin market nearly quadrupled in size over the past year – from around $5 billion in September 2019 to around $19 billion currently", which definitely shows some impressive growth (CoinDesk)

• Bank of Canada research shows ~5% of Canadians own crypto and those with low financial literacy were 2x likely to own crypto as those with high financial literacy (I'd be curious to understand what the definition of what low vs high 'financial literacy' is and how that is measured...) (The Block Crypto)

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Tech

• Commercializing quantum computing and VC investment (The Economist)

• Amazon announces a flying camera drone (Wired)

• Underwater data centers (The Economist)

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Culture

• A'ja Wilson, featured in a FiveThirtyEight profile, is a powerhouse WNBA star who talks about how she was benched in college (FiveThirtyEight)

• Ruth Bader Ginsberg's expansive legacy (The Atlantic)

• If you're interested in how QAnon started, this fascinating interview with documentarian David Farrier discusses why conspiracy theories start and how they spread (Armchair Expert)