Saturday 22nd July, 2023 - The Crypto, AI & Synthetic Biology Trinity (Issue #124)
A look at the major tech trends of the current moment, crypto, AI and synthetic biology, how they are intersecting, and an exploration of the weird and wonderful world that could be ahead of us.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
An interesting, all be it anecdotal, data point about last week’s issue was that it had 4 times the usual number of views. That’s highly unusual, it’s basically never happened. Normally speaking the numbers increase steadily, but slowly, week on week. 4x is like WTF. I had been sensing for several weeks that there might be something brewing about Synthetic Biology. Seems like that might be the case.
For reference here’s last week’s issue:
Synthetic Biology Inside (Issue #123) - The whirlwind passing through the world of social media continues, while a new very far out and quite strange paradigm of computation starts to gain some traction. https://markjgsmith.com/newsletter/2023/07/15/synthetic-biology-inside
So that’s been on my mind as I’ve been reading, listening and watching the world of tech this week. And it’s been an interesting week. The uproar in social media from the past month has sort of calmed down a bit, while there have been big moves forward in Crypto, and in AI it’s becoming clear that the large incumbents aren’t gonna sit on the sidelines this time.
That’s where this week’s title comes from. It’s partly curiosity about whether SynthBio really is blowing up, but it’s also because it occurred to me that these 3 areas of tech actually do go very well together, so let’s amalgam them into a cool sounding title and see what happens. Can you see the imagined future I’m seeing? It’s pretty cool.
Hey by the way, speaking of newsletter view numbers, if you like my ramblings and / or think the selection is interesting please consider sharing it with others. It sure would be awesome to get those viewership numbers increasing at a faster pace. Then maybe I could get some sponsors or something.
Back to the news. It feels like we’ve reached another major milestone in crypto recently. In recent weeks, US regulators have been looking likely to approve a bitcoin ETF for Blackrock, and ERP token has been officially categorised by US courts as not being a security. Both these events could significantly open things up in the crypto space.
Zooming out a little, it feels to me that we are also seeing things open up in the bigger arc of this epic. You see several months ago it felt like we were collectively figuring through some very high level macro dynamics with the current financial system. There was a period where week after week there were podcasts speaking about the fundamentals of the current system, where the flaws were becoming obvious to folks. Lock downs, banks failing left and right, bailouts, all sorts of weird things moving through the whole system. And then we started seeing the major issues with the World Bank and IMF.
Now it feels to me like we are passing through some sort of a technical progress milestone. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly. It’s like the builders have been quietly building away while all the turbulence was happening, and we are starting to see many new interesting tech product areas coalescing ontop of a very firm foundation. That’s how it feels to me. Gosh I’m saying feels a lot aren’t I. That’s happens when the fog is clearing and something interesting is coming into view. Anyhow that’s the crypto space.
In the world of AI, people are starting to notice that the dynamics in the current tech cycle are different to previous tech cycles. In previous cycles, startups could get up and running, get a leg in, by being more nimble than the big incumbents. That led to a healthy diversity. But this time, that’s not happening. It’s the big players, the Microsofts, the Googles, and the IBMs of the world that are releasing the most interesting products, backed by huge amounts of money. It’s happening at mindboggling pace. There’s no room for startups anymore. That’s worrying because it affects the whole ecosystem. That’s something we should bear in mind as we move forward.
But the future is kind of cool. With synthetic biology we’ll be able to grow physical objects instead of conventionally manufacturing them. First we’ll sequence existing things to DNA representations, then purely digital. We’ll have powerful visualisation tools, as well as tools to manipulate, compose and combine these new biological compute primitives in a purely digital world, transferred over the internet, and AIs that will help to guide the transformation back to synthetically arranged atoms and molecules, that grow into physical objects. It’s going to be complicated. Very complicated. Much like society is complicated, and the way we manage some of that complexity is with money. And that’s why the trinity of Crypto, AI & Synthetic Biology could become something interesting for humanity.
What do you think?
Lots of great podcasts this week, here are ten of the finest episodes published last week from all around the internets:
Podcasts
Fundamentals All the Way Down (JS Party Podcast) - Good wholemeal wevdev discussion about what really matters when it comes to the seemingly specialist subject of file uploads, lots of interesting details to learn in this episode. https://changelog.com/jsparty/283
Inflation cools, market rips, Ripple/MSFT best regulators, NATO summit, cocktails of youth (All-in Podcast)- Another great episode, interesting macro analysis, especially as it contrasts significantly with Jeff Snider's, some crypto talk and I also found the Ukraine war coverage great, especially the wider discussion about NATO, since I want to get a better handle on what type of things these large institutions actually do. Mindboggling that they operate in some ways like a giant SaaS platform, e.g. NATO requires military "interop" with members, also that more members means more defense contracts for US military contractors. Anyway, happy Jason is back though I thought the gang held it together pretty well last week too. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbGxpbmNoYW1hdGhqYXNvbi5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTc5MWQxMWYtNThhNC00NTc3LWI4OGUtYTc2ZWFkNjU2Yjlm?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi48f2MlaGAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQPg
Dear Redhat… (Changelog & Friends Podcast) - If you haven’t heard already there has been kind of a major incident in the open source / Linux world developing. I’ve been waiting to get a better handle in the situation before linking to anything because it seemed a bit complicated. Anyway this is the podcast episode to listen to to get caught up with that. It’s all about open source development, big corporate companies like IBM/Redhat/Oracle, developers getting paid, community based projects, all sorts of things colliding in this somewhat epic situation. Interesting because the tides and tectonic plates move slower in this area of tech but they have lasting consequences on the ecosystem. https://changelog.com/friends/7
How Ripple’s Win Reshapes Crypto with Paul Grewall & Mike Selig (Bankless Podcast) - Some regulatory clarity for the US crypto scene as the courts rule that Ripple token XRP is not a security. This episode goes into some of the finer details and what it could mean for the broader industry. http://podcast.banklesshq.com/how-ripples-win-reshapes-crypto-with-paul-grewal-mike-selig
Top 5 Bare Market Bets with Avishall Garg, and Sanjay Sha of Electric Capital(Bankless) - I found this discussion about the current bear market pretty insightful to get situated as to where we are in the current cycle. http://podcast.banklesshq.com/180-top-5-bear-market-bets-with-avichal-garg-sanjay-shah-of-electric-capital
Capital in the 21th Century with Allen Farrington (TFTC Podcast) - There’s a ton of great topics covered in this episode which broadly covers how to view capital as a tool in a modern crypto world context but with an eye in the history of the finance industry. It’s the sort of thing that could be very useful background information if you are planning on building s business or investing in markets. Quite a lot of this stuff is uncharted red territory so the other thing that’s interesting is hearing how the discussion evolves, and the new ideas and mental models the hosts play around with. It’s not a perfectly fine tuned episode but that’s part of the beauty of longform podcasting, hearing people discover the future. https://tftc.io/tftc-podcast/434
Bitcoin, Nostr & Freedom Tech with Matt Odell (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - This was a very interesting discussion both from a user freedom perspective but also from a developer perspective. The bitcoin and crypto platform is at a stage where various technologies are coming together to form a very compelling development platform, where payments rails that respect freedoms are baked in by default. Nostr is a platform and protocol that is worth staying aware of because even if the limelight is on Twitter and Threads currently, there’s a lot of very cool thing being built there. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/bitcoin-nostr-freedom-tech
Social Media in Chaos (Techdirt Podcast) - This is a roundup podcast of all the calamities in social media that have happened over the the past several weeks. Twitter, Reddit, Threads, regulation, it’s all expertly covered by industry veteran Mike Masnick. I really like Mike’s take on things, he tends to be a bit more in the big-companies-are-evil-users-rule side of things than me, but he’s spent years covering the industry in a very thorough and thoughtful way. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zb3VuZGNsb3VkLmNvbS91c2Vycy9zb3VuZGNsb3VkOnVzZXJzOjEyMjUwODA0OC9zb3VuZHMucnNz/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTU2ODQ2MjIwMA?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjgu4bzl6GAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Bitcoin Solves the Payments in AI Problem in AI with Kody Low Ep#435 (TFTC Podcast) - Interview with ex-marine Kody Low who has gotten into crypto in a big way. His knowledge is very impressive but more so is his ability to manipulate and compose the crypto components to imagine what the future of programmable money could look like. This was probably one of my favourites this week. Topics covered include the Fedimint platform, lightning as payment rails, web development and crypto payments, AI and the machine payable web, removing price volatility with synthetic dollars, using Fedimint modules to gate access to services, instant switching between layer2s, integrating LangChain agents with payments, access to ASICS and AI for all, and the builder culture in crypto. https://tftc.io/tftc-podcast/435
Varung Singh on the Evolution of Internet Protocols Ep#573 (SE Radio Podcast) - This is a somewhat change of pace to all the futuristic crypto and magic money discussions but it’s really interesting none the less because it tells the story of the evolution of some of the most fundamental protocols of the internet and World Wide Web over the past 30 years. These are the protocols that have make possible all the neat stuff that is being built in the current generation of tech. From Arpanet, through TCP, IP, UDP, HTTP, but also how modern improvements have been made using Speedy, QUIC and HTTP/3, and even protocol ossification and standards bodies, it’s all covered in this nerdy but high density episode. https://www.se-radio.net/2023/07/se-radio-573-varun-singh-on-evolution-of-internet-protocols
Links
Lots and lots of great links this week, I haven’t had time to make a selection yet, so please checkout the linkblog:
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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