Vincent Maher

CEO at Broadbrand | Executive at Digital Solutions Group

[Vincent Maher @vincent_maher]

This week’s playlist is out: Beat and Order 002 - Raw / Deep / Hypnotic Techno https://t.co/HZ0jzuEwy1

[Vincent Maher @vincent_maher]

Beat and Order returns on Spotify🚀 Weekly drops of deep, dark techno and minimal. Beat and Order 001 features new releases from Maksim Dark, Chris Liebing, Deepak Sharma and more. Fresh tracks, hypnotic basslines, and refined energy every week.

https://t.co/RJQDUwzmBq

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Wow

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

Can confirm this is true. It was one of the most unethical and un-American things that happened in the Biden administration, and my guess is we'll find Elizabeth Warren's fingerprints all over it (Biden himself was probably unaware).

We're still collecting documents via FOIA requests, so hopefully the full story emerges of who was involved and whether they broke any laws.

Warren and Gensler tried to unlawfully kill our entire industry, and it was a major factor in the Dems losing the election. The Democratic party should realize Warren is a liability and further distance themselves if they want to have any hope of rebuilding.

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

Seems like the Banana Zone wasn't such a stupid idea..plenty more to come, over time (with plenty of sharp corrections too along the way).

Strap in. 🍌🍌🍌

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

How Libra Was Killed.

I never shared this publicly before, but since @pmarca opened the floodgates on @joerogan’s pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this.

As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a stablecoin that we built with my team at @Meta. It would’ve solved global payments at scale. Prior to announcing the project, we spent months briefing key regulators in DC and abroad. We then announced the project in June 2019 alongside 28 companies. Two weeks later, I was called to testify in front of both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, which was the starting point of two years of nonstop work and changes to appease lawmakers and regulators.

By spring of 2021 (yes they slow played us at every step), we had addressed every last possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and so much more, and we were ready to launch.

We had worked on a slow rollout of a limited pilot that some members of the Fed’s Board of Governors were supportive of. At last, Chair Jay Powell was ready to let us move forward in a limited way. The story, as I heard it, is that Jay Powell was told by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at one of their biweekly meetings that allowing this project to move forward was “political suicide,” and she would not have his back if he let it happen. I wasn’t in the room when this conversation happened, so take these words with a grain of salt, but effectively this was the moment Libra was killed.

Shortly thereafter, the Fed organized calls with all the participating banks, and the Fed’s general counsel read a prepared statement to each of them, saying: “We can’t stop you from moving forward and launching, but we are not comfortable with you doing so.” And just like that, it was over.

One essential point is worth making here. There was no legal or regulatory angle left for the government or regulators to kill the project. It was 100% a political kill—one that was executed through intimidation of captive banking institutions. That was the hardest part of this story for me personally. Not that we had failed, but that America, this country I immigrated to and became a proud citizen of because of its rule of law and value system, behaved in such a way for political reasons. It was a very tough pill to swallow.

The bright side of the story, though, was the many learnings from this wild ride. By the end of the project, we had made so many concessions to get a thumbs-up that the whole design of the network became a Frankenstein of our initial ambitions.

We also learned the biggest lesson of all, which is that if you’re trying to build an open money grid for the world—eventually moving trillions of dollars a day, designed to be here 100 years from now—you have to build it on the most neutral, decentralized, unassailable network and asset, which, hands down, is Bitcoin.

And now this is what many of us who went through this scarring journey are building together at @Lightspark. And this time, we won’t stop until we get it done!

[Jeremy Kuo @jeremykuoo]

Back in the 1950s, Marlboro went from a failing company to the world's #1 cigarette brand in four years.

They created a muscular and rough cowboy who answered to no one - the ultimate symbol of masculinity.

Here's how Marlboro manipulated an entire country.

[Brendan McCord 🏛️ x 🤖 @Brendan_McCord]

45 hours vs. 45 seconds.

That's the gap between how long our essay contest runner-up spent crafting his submission and how long an AI would take to imitate it.

But in that 3,600x difference lies a fascinating question about the future of human thought.

[Satoshigallery @satoshigallery]

Grateful for the opportunity to make a statue of Satoshi Nakamoto for the city of Lugano 🇨🇭displayed in Parco Ciani.

The statue disappears in front of the audience and what’s left of Satoshi in visible “between the lines” (of the code) for all the #bitcoin users.

#bitcoinart

[chris ₿ 🇨🇭 @chrisb_btc]

I really like the newly unveiled statue of Satoshi Nakamoto in #Lugano. Especially the way it honors privacy. Depending on the perspective, it disappears. #PlanBForum #privacy 🇨🇭

[Vincent Maher @vincent_maher]

This is such a massive scientific and engineering achievement

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: SpaceX booster rocket successfully returns to the same tower it launched from.

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

Google needs more of teams like the NotebookLM team.

1. Build products with users, not for users
2. Don't build AI for the sake of AI
3. Spend meetings building, not talking about building

I genuinely believe the best products are built by small, empowered teams (even in big tech).

[Vincent Maher @vincent_maher]

@zfellows This is some good insight

[Kpaxs @Kpaxs]

Probably the best thing that was ever written on management.

[Vincent Maher @vincent_maher]

AI Chatbots Have Begun to Create Their Own Culture, Researchers Say
https://t.co/NhEfgmvn7s

[Robert Yang @GuangyuRobert]

Introducing Project Sid: the first simulations of 1000+ truly autonomous agents collaborating in a virtual world, w/ emergent economy, culture, religion, and government

Humans are the only species to land the moon, because we can cooperate at a vast scale

Can AI do the same?

[Coach Plotkin @CoachPlotkin]

This is so good by @JamesClear

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

AI is bringing back creatures of the deep, and they're kind of sick

(from u/edwardtracy)

[Ben Lang @benln]

The condensed @pmarca guide to career planning: