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I don’t have a single topic I want to explore in depth today, but fortunately, it was another wild week in tech so let's recap. The writing style of these digests is intentionally far less formal than my usual essays, and my sarcasm and general distaste for the "state of things" will probably shine through, so apologies in advance. Individual perspectives will determine whether you see this week as a clusterfuck or merely another step towards AGI. Here's what happened, in no particular chronological order or degree of severity.

Meta broke the internet. Meta on Thursday shipped a new product, a short-form video feed of AI slop called "Vibes." It's quite literally a feed inside of the app comprised only of AI-generated content. The dead internet theory is officially no longer a theory. Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang announced the release on X, and immediately got torched in the comments section and by news outlets alike. And rightfully so. This was probably the most unilaterally hated product release in the history of product releases. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the meeting where Zuck, Alex and the team decided to greenlight this product.

IMO, the announcement out of the Meta camp was sad. That's really the first and only word that came to mind while I read Alex's post. It's reassuring though to see the reactions in the comments section - thousands of acknowledgements that we are building in the wrong direction. That we're not using the cutting edge technologies we have at our disposal to make the world a better place, and to solve real, pertinent, human problems. Big tech companies have the firepower and reach to do so much good in this world but they will always choose shit like this. The gap between what's technologically possible and what gets prioritized reveals everything about where collective corporate values have drifted. It's up to all of us to fight against this as hard as we possibly can, change the narrative and course correct to that the world our children grow up in won't be unrecognizable.

SBF was shitposting from prison. At 7:37 PM on September 23rd, he tweeted an absolute banger. See below. At 7:38 PM on September 23rd, the crypto market sold off, maybe pricing in a redemption arc for the notorious fraudster. Despite a broad selloff across the board, and cyclical positioning suggesting a top, Tom Lee still had the cajones to sit on stage at Korea Blockchain Week and confidently reaffirm his $ETH price target of $15,000 by EOY. It's either delusion, conviction, or performance art. Maybe all three.

The White House activist hedge fund campaign gained momentum as it set its sights on a new target: Canadian-listed Lithium Americas Corp, whose shares soared 95% Wednesday after reports that the Trump administration is seeking a 10% stake in the operator of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. The proposed equity stake would be tied to renegotiations of a $2.3 billion loan the company previously received from the U.S. Department of Energy, marking the latest move by the administration to take direct ownership in critical mineral supply chains. Lithium, a vital component of EV batteries, has long been identified by the White House as a strategic priority alongside other commodities like copper and uranium. Australia and Chile lead global production but China remains the dominant player in refining, controlling 65% or more of global capacity compared to less than 3% in the U.S. The push for a stake in $LAC mirrors earlier moves involving MP Materials and Intel, underscoring the administration’s effort to boost domestic production and secure greater leverage in global supply chains. The White House definitely has a team of overworked and underpaid ex-investment banking analysts building three statement valuation models for all of these deals.

Your local SMB probably just launched a stablecoin. Companies left and right are getting in on the action by launching their own stablecoins, or building their own stablecoin-focused blockchains. Stablecoins are clearly the hottest meta in crypto right now, especially after Congress passed two pieces of favorable legislation earlier this year. The use cases are there: cross border payments and remittances, treasury management, peer-to-peer payments, and many more. Most notably this week, cybersecurity provider Cloudflare launched a USD-backed stablecoin called NET Dollar, designed to power instant and programmable payments specifically for the emerging agentic web where autonomous AI agents perform tasks and transact on behalf of users. Agents could use NET Dollar to take automated actions like booking flights, ordering groceries, or paying for services in real-time without human intervention. This move actually makes a lot of sense: Cloudflare hosts 20% of the world's online traffic, and as we enter an age where most websites are being crawled by agents, the need for instant and cheap payment rails becomes clear. This opens up a brand new revenue opportunity for Cloudflare beyond its legacy services: generating income through transaction fees, partnerships with AI labs and licensing of its stablecoin infrastructure. Separate but related, Tether, the issuer of the flagship USDT stablecoin, is reportedly seeking a new fundraising round that would value the company at $500 billion. This would make it the most valuable private company on the planet. Nuts.

Random odds and ends:

• Some legend in the Bay Area (most likely a Stanford dropout) tapped into San Francisco's parking ticket system which reveals the real-time locations of parking officers, and made a site that looks identical to Apple's Find My Friends app, except it shows where the parking cops are. I'm not usually a fan of pre-empted Series A rounds, but cut this guy a check goddamnit. Who said the Bay Area was losing the talent war?

• Over the weekend, I'll be participating in a hackathon put together by Friends With Benefits and Worldcoin. World is positioning itself as more than just another EVM-compatible L2, but rather the backbone of a new internet identity layer where proof of personhood becomes a prerequisite for participation. World's pitch is this: built-in distribution on day one (World has 36 million DAUs), proof of human (no bots allowed), and a built-in, lightweight wallet which makes transacting effortless. Participating teams are asked to build and deploy "mini apps" on top of World's built in app ecosystem in the following areas: payments, gaming, social networks, information markets, micro earning and AI agents. I'm sitting into this event virtually, mainly to observe what others are building, but will also be able to get guidance from the developer relations team on a social networking concept we're going to be developing under ninetynine labs via the World ecosystem next year. I'll break out my IDE (Cursor + Claude Code) and start to build a Vanilla Javascript compatible mini app. Proof of concept but I'm excited to share more about it in the future.

I probably missed a bunch of other relevant headlines, but these stories were the ones that provided me some degree of comic relief from the simulation we are all running around in. That said, underneath the absurdity lies something far more serious. We’re at a critical inflection point, particularly with the pace of AI innovation accelerating across every sector - from robotics to code gen to biology. Surely there are better uses cases than further corrupting social media and the internet experience more broadly. Every person in or around the tech ecosystem - investors, founders, researchers, capital allocators, hyperscalers, and YES, users of tech products - needs to pause and ask themselves a fundamental question: what future are you building? Because the reality is, what we’re creating and championing today will shape the lives of our children, and our children's children. We need to leverage technology in the right ways to push the boundaries of human capability. And whether we realize it or not, we’re all active participants in constructing that future.

That's all for today. Peace be with you!