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Monday, April 29, 2024
On Our Final "Virtual Route 66" For April 2024: On Our World
Our team curated the following courtesy the team at CoinBase, The National and Inside clean energy on a true "Vision of the Possible" as we look forward to the continued privilege to serve:
Bitcoin
$64,319.24
+4.34%
Ethereum
$3,162.11
+5.29%
Solana
$147.995
+10.89%
XRP
$0.529
+7.02%
Dogecoin
$0.152
+3.10%
Cardano
$0.478
+6.55%
Price changes are for the past week, ending on Apr 25, 2024 at 01:41 AM UTC
The FCC voted 3-2 to restore net neutrality rules, barring internet providers from discriminating against online content by blocking, throttling, or prioritizing traffic. The Obama-era rules were passed in 2015 but repealed two years later under a Trump-appointed FCC chair.
More:
In 2021, President Biden signed an order to reinstate the rules, but FCC action was stalled by a deadlock until Democratic commissioner Anna Gomez joined in September.
Thursday's vote was split along party lines, with three Democrats in favor and two Republicans opposed.
The vote reclassifies ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, giving the FCC more regulatory authority, similar to utilities like water and power.
The rules prevent providers like Comcast and AT&T from blocking or throttling internet content and ban "fast lanes" favoring certain sites.
Zoom out:
Legal challenges are expected from the telecom industry.
Opponents argue that treating broadband providers as utilities could stifle an open internet and telecommunications industry growth.
MARKET BYTES
Bitcoin has seesawed since the halving. What’s next?
Prices fell from more than $70,000 in the days before the event to below $60,000 over the weekend as some traders seemingly took advantage of a “sell the news” strategy — much as they did after spot BTC ETFs began trading in January. At the beginning of this week, BTC briefly climbed back to $67,000, but fell near $64,000 by Wednesday morning.
Here are other headlines to know this week.
Where prices could go post-halving
In the months following each of the previous halvings, crypto markets have seen gains — although the scale of those gains moderated after the first halving.
Meanwhile, billionaire investor Mark Cuban declined to predict what impact the halving could have on prices, but suggested that the loss in revenue for miners could drive some to pivot to AI.
Generally, analysts say that the halving effect will fully emerge over the coming weeks and months.
Keep in mind… Short-term swings are expected by many crypto traders, which is why BTC HODLers take a longer view. As MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor — whose firm owns more than $14 billion in BTC — recently put it, “If you're going to invest in bitcoin, a short time horizon is four years … no one has ever lost money holding bitcoin for four years.”
Senators propose new stablecoin rules
Last week, senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), introduced a bill that would regulate firms that issue stablecoins. (Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are designed to avoid volatility by having their value pegged to a reserve asset, most commonly the U.S. dollar.)
Among other stipulations, the bill would require stablecoin issuers to maintain 1:1 reserve ratios (by essentially holding a dollar for every stablecoin issued) and would prohibit “algorithmic” stablecoins, which use smart contracts to automatically make trades designed to keep the value of the token consistent.
Reading between the lines… Per the sponsors, the bill is designed to kickstart conversations on Capitol Hill. “We're glad we went ahead and put it out just to get some good feedback,” Lummis said. “We're happy to adjust it.”
A key BTC metric approaches all-time high
One indicator that professional crypto traders use to predict how markets might behave in the future is the 200-day simple moving average (SMA), which is considered a way of gauging longer-term trends.
As of Tuesday, it was approaching $48,000 — just short of the all-time high of $49,452 set in February 2022.
Why that might be important… “Past data show the most intense phase of the bull cycle unfolds after this average surpasses its previous peak,” according to CoinDesk.
About six months after the last halving, for instance, the 200-day SMA hit a new peak above $10,300, and five or so months later BTC prices had climbed all the way to $64,000. (Always remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results.)
Millions of people are fleeing their homes each year due to climate change.
An aerial view of the Tesla Fremont Factory in California on April 24. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
One of the sideshows in a wild week for Tesla is how its market capitalization tumbled behind and then jumped back ahead of ExxonMobil.
The fact that this is even a topic of conversation is a testament to how much Tesla has fallen, with sluggish sales and a vehicle lineup that is overdue for an update in the face of now-formidable competition. Tesla’s market capitalization—the sum of the value of all of its stock—had plummeted from a high of more than $1.2 trillion on Jan. 3, 2022, to $452 billion on Monday.
Meanwhile, ExxonMobil and the oil and gas industry have been on a hot streak ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, benefiting from geopolitical instability that has boosted prices of oil and gas, an instability that has grown with the current conflict in the Middle East. ExxonMobil’s market cap has gone from less than $300 billion before the invasion to $480 billion as of Wednesday.
A lot could be said about the recent decline of Tesla and rise of ExxonMobil, but let me warn you against making grand statements about the trajectory of the energy transition.
I have some experience with this, having noted in 2020 how ExxonMobil’s value, then bottoming out during an extremely rough patch, had fallen below that of NextEra Energy, the Florida-based utility and renewable energy developer.
In the time since, ExxonMobil’s value has grown by a lot and NextEra’s is about the same after some ups and downs. It looks silly, in hindsight, to have talked about the two companies in the same breath.
At this time, two things are true: First, the energy transition has progressed a lot since 2020, and NextEra is an important company in the energy transition. Second, ExxonMobil has been a much better stock to own than NextEra in recent years, from a financial perspective.
A larger point is that it’s tricky to compare the financial performance and market value of companies in different industries, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst for the financial services company Raymond James.
“While comparing Tesla and Exxon might be a fun parlor game, let’s be clear that this is not some sort of competition over which company is ‘better,’” he said in an email. “Corporate market caps are influenced by a very wide range of variables, many of which are outside management’s control.”
He said oil prices are closely tied to geopolitical factors and have little to do with anything ExxonMobil or any other oil company has accomplished by itself.
At the same time, the EV market is facing some short-term headwinds due to factors such as high interest rates that are making it more expensive to get car loans, he said.
Tesla also has its own issues, including a volatile CEO whose online comments are alienating parts of his customer base, as the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing polling from Strategic Vision. The company’s most recent new product, the Cybertruck, has gotten rough reviews and its top-selling models, the Model Y and Model 3, have gone a long time without a major redesign. And, Tesla has gone from being one of the only makers of EVs to having lots of competition.
But Tesla’s specific problems don’t constitute a victory for the fossil fuel economy, said Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit that does research in support of the energy transition.
“The energy transition is much bigger than Tesla,” he said.
He has written extensively about how major oil companies such as ExxonMobil are not good investments because they don’t have workable plans to exist in the low-carbon world that is coming. So what does he think of the increase in market value of those companies?
“That value is really a function of the geopolitical fights that are going on, hardly something that you would consider to be a part of an investment calculus that would be stable,” he said.
The big picture comes into focus when looking at global trends in how money is being spent. EV market share continues to grow despite current challenges, with the International Energy Agency saying this week that global sales will grow to 17 million vehicles this year, an increase of about 20 percent from the prior year. EVs would be about one out of every five cars or light trucks sold.
The gap has widened by a lot since 2020, and that matters more than how investors respond to Tesla’s latest pronouncement or how much profit ExxonMobil made in the last quarter.
Other stories about the energy transition to take note of this week:
UAW Conquers Hostile Political Terrain With Win at Tennessee Volkswagen Plant: The United Auto Workers won a huge victory on Friday when thousands of workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted to join the union, despite attempts from state Republicans to discourage the effort, as Nick Niedzwiadek reports for Politico. The UAW’s campaign drew on momentum from last year’s strike at the Big Three car companies. VW Chattanooga, where workers make models including the ID.4, an all-electric crossover, is the company’s flagship in the United States.
New York Says It Is Not Moving Forward With Three Offshore Wind Farms: New York’s state government said it will not move forward with three offshore wind farms after General Electric Vernova changed its turbine design, which the state said “materially altered” plans for the three projects. The projects were to use 18-megawatt wind turbines, but then GE Vernova decided to not to make that turbine in favor of a smaller design, as Nichola Groom, Laila Kearney, Timothy Gardner and Nicole Jao report for Reuters. The change in turbines caused enough impact on the financial and operational basics that the New York State Research and Development Authority said it would not sign final contracts. The office said it intends to hold a competitive bidding process to move forward with development in the available offshore wind areas. This is the latest in a series of wind project cancellations, coming as developers face challenges from high interest rates and other changes in the market.
Chinese Export Surge Clouds U.S. Hopes of a Domestic Solar Boom: Concerns are rippling across the U.S. solar industry and within the Biden administration about whether the push to set up a domestic solar manufacturing industry can succeed against cheaper imports from China. In February, CubicPV said it was abandoning plans to build a solar component factory in the United States because of cost disadvantages with Chinese imports, a decision that underscores the industry’s worry about long-term competitive issues, as Alan Rappeport reports for the New York Times.
IRA’s Solar for All Program Will Install Nearly 1 Million Systems in U.S.: For people who have spent their careers trying to expand access to rooftop solar energy, the announcement on Monday of $7 billion worth of project support from the Biden administration is almost unfathomable in its size and scope, as I wrote for ICN. Money from the Solar for All program, which is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, will go to 60 recipients that include state and Tribal governments and nonprofit organizations. For 25 states and territories, this is the first time they’re getting low-income solar programs, as Alison Takemura reports for Canary Media. Most of the newcomers are Republican-leaning states, such as Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Western States Could Make Billions Selling Renewable Energy, But They’ll Need a Lot More Regional Transmission Lines: Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming could vastly increase their incomes from exporting renewable electricity, but only if the region can expand the network of the transmission lines that would deliver the power, as my colleague Wyatt Myskow reports for ICN. RMI, the research and advocacy group, published a report that looks at the potential for expanding clean energy development and how the states need to coordinate to be able to effectively build the power lines that are needed.
In brief | Did US President Joe Biden just sign a bill that marks the beginning of the end of TikTok? That's probably premature, but the clock, no pun intended, is ticking, at least for users in the US.
The potential TikTok ban was tucked into an overall $95 billion foreign aid package. It basically gives China-based ByteDance until 2025 to divest the company from its portfolio. Hypothetically, if that doesn't happen, the app will disappear from iPhone and Android app stores in the US amid concern about Chinese government influence and potential access to data of the app.
While testifying before the US Congress in last year, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean, denied and dismissed those concerns, but that didn't satisfy most US politicians.
Why it matters | With more than 1 billion active monthly users around the world, a move, however methodical, to ban TikTok or to force its sale, is a big deal. It's the social platform all rivals hope to be right now, at least in terms of influence.
It's worth noting that US President Joe Biden's re-election campaign is actually on TikTok, and has more than 307,000 followers on the platform. The campaign has also made clear that it has no intention of leaving the platform, despite the bill being signed into law.
It's quite the juxtaposition that proves TikTok's power. You might not like it or even want to talk about it, but it's too influential to ignore, at least for now.
Perhaps not surprisingly, TikTok's chief executive has insisted that the platform will challenge the law in court, and tried to reassure users that it doesn't plan on going anywhere.
Quoted | "While we make our case in court you'll still be able to use TikTok like you always have ... it's obviously a disappointing moment, but it does not need to be defining one"
– TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew
Future in focus
Regent is developing its passenger craft, Viceroy, which will be able to travel at speeds of up to 290kph, cutting travel times. Photo: Regent
Post, a news-centric social media platform, once had high hopes for becoming an alternative to Twitter and Facebook. Getty Images
Although news content once propelled social media engagement and generated growth for various platforms, some newcomer social platforms have not been able to find a path to success, despite ample funding and initial excitement. The latest social media site to shut down is Post, the news-centric app that billed itself as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook.
Is this the beginning of the end for aspiring social media platforms?
This is noise: It's relatively common knowledge that most new businesses fail. That trend tends to get lost in the discussion of high-flying and well-funded technology start-ups. It's easy for the ample venture capital funding and initial burst of media attention of these start-ups to cloud the prospects of these companies, but make no mistake, start-ups, regardless of funding, are still risky prospects.
One start-up's failure, however, does not make or break an entire industry. We're still going to see different companies attempting to create the next big social media app. In fact, what usually happens during the post-mortem of defunct start-ups is that the founders are able to take a closer look at what went right and wrong.
The micropayments aspect of Post worked well, so we'll almost certainly see that implemented again by someone down the line. Again, start-ups, at the end of the day, are just as risky as new businesses, even if we don't necessarily call them that.
Russia’s GPS meddling in the Baltic Sea demands NATO action, Sweden’s naval chief says Emanations from Kaliningrad are making regional shipping and air travel more dangerous.
The State of the Navy 2024 Amid program delays and budget choices, new CNO vows more learning and "more players on the field."
Drones, maps, and storm-tracking in the Pacific The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is working with partner nations in the Indo-Pacific to map the region as part of the Biden administration’s push for security.
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