Good day valued readers,

We hope this week's carefully curated selection of news finds you well. In this edition, we cover the latest developments across investing, finance, crypto, AI, and other topics to help you stay informed.

As always, our goal is to provide you with a professional, unbiased roundup of noteworthy news to augment your understanding of what's happening in the world. We take pride in hand-selecting articles from trustworthy sources across a diverse range of industries.

Please enjoy this week's newsletter. We're grateful for the opportunity to share these insights with you and look forward to continuing to be a valuable resource.

Read time: 8 minutes

Sign Up to this newsletter.

Image of the week

Investing and Finance

This week we examine the decline of IBM's legendary business model alongside warnings of a damaging tech recession driven by sector layoffs and bankruptcies. The crashes of e-scooter firms and China's real estate bubble causing global ripples underscore these dangers. However, potential bursts accompany growth in rare earth minerals and US chip R&D, while Nvidia surges past Amazon in value. Revolut pursues travel finance as Trump profits from trade wars, China chips away at foreign reliance, and German banks brace for loans gone bad. With the terrain shifting beneath tech giants and industrial shifts underway, new opportunities and pitfalls emerge. Now let's analyze the intricacies behind these complex storylines rocking the global economy and tech sector.

1. The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’ - Read more

2. The Four Horsemen of the Tech Recession - Read more

3. E-scooter companies are going bankrupt. That should alarm you even if you hate them - Read more

4. The Coming Boom in Rare Earths - Read more

5. How Trump wins from his damaging trade wars - Read more

6. China’s property crisis is starting to ripple across the world - Read more

7. Digital banking giant Revolut is launching phone plans for travelers in the UK - Read more

8. The US Is Investing $5B in Chip R&D - Here's What You Need to Know - Read more

9. Nvidia has rocketed in value so fast it’s about to pass Amazon as the 4th-most valuable U.S. company - Read more

10. German bank braces for wave of bad loans in ‘greatest real estate crisis since the financial crisis’ - Read more

11. Bay Area tech giant Cisco to lay off thousands - Read more

12. China is quietly reducing its reliance on foreign chip technology - Read more

Crypto News

This week we examine soaring Bitcoin prices, ETF inflows, and tally over $1 trillion in market capitalization, making a case for further accumulation. However, the vanished ICOs of crypto's past underscore the sector's risks alongside volatile swings. Regardless, Bitcoin miners struggle to meet demand amidst competition from low-cost Chinese firms and Cardano's smart contract growth. Major players like BlackRock and Coinbase now collaborate on hardware wallet integration, underscoring crypto's mainstream rise. With crypto emerging from past excesses and hype cycles into an era of institutional adoption, Bitcoin appears positioned as a dominant store of value. Now let's analyze the factors driving the mounting resilience of blockchain's oldest network.

1. Bitcoin: Why now is the best time to stockpile BTC - Read more

2. What happened to crypto ICOs? - Read more

3. Ethereum's New ERC-404 Token: A Game-Changer for Digital Currencies - Read more

4. Bitcoin Represents 53% of Clients’ Portfolio Holdings in LatAm - Read more

5. Bitcoin Hovers Near One-Month High on ETF Inflows, Looming Halving - Read more

6. Ethiopia's Low-Cost Power Draws Chinese Mining Firms for Bitcoin Work - Read more

7. Cardano adds over 5,000 smart contracts so far in February - Read more

8. Bitcoin price tops $50,000 after spot ETF launches spur demand - Read more

9. Bitcoin ETFs are sucking up 10X more BTC than miners can produce - Read more

10. Ledger teams up with Coinbase for direct crypto buys via hardware wallets - Read more

11. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF passes 100K BTC under management - Read more

12. Bitcoin hits mind-blowing milestone – soars past $1 trillion market cap - Read more

Artificial Intelligence

This week we examine major AI advances and reliance at companies like Microsoft, despite growing energy and water demands. However, risks persist around unethical use and "societal misalignments," while employees secretly leverage AI, raising monitoring concerns. Major players bet heavily on AI's potential, as AMD's CEO hits $1 billion and Copilot measurement tools emerge. Yet AI's job disruption remains uneven, as chatbots like ChatGPT receive memory upgrades and businesses learn not to overthink its applications. With AI at the center of innovation but also industrialization across sectors, understanding its promise and perils remains vital. Now let's dive deeper into the breakthroughs, debates, and unknowns shaping AI's accelerating global impacts.

1. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Is Betting Everything on AI - Read more

2. 5 ChatGPT Prompts To Stop Overthinking In Your Business - Read more

3. As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires - Read more

4. The jobs AI won't take yet - Read more

5. AMD CEO Lisa Su reportedly hits $1 billion net worth on back of AI boom - Read more

6. How Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages - Read more

7. The employees secretly using AI at work - Read more

8. How the AI Revolution Will Reshape the World - Read more

9. How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab - Read more

10. Microsoft enables organizations to easily measure the impact of Microsoft Copilot - Read more

11. Memory and new controls for ChatGPT - Read more

12. "Societal misalignments" could pose AI dangers, OpenAI CEO says - Read more

Top Article Picks this week

This week we delve into perspectives on existence, societal issues, health, and technology through the lens of those nearing death, research studies, and expert analysis. Dying individuals reveal relationships and living fully matter most, while studies show Americans eat excessive protein, the wealthy utilize loopholes, and social isolation harms well-being. Experts also explore questions surrounding the nature of death itself, the meaning of adulthood today, the power of self-forgiveness, and goals and risks of AI systems like OpenAI's. Together these provide thought-provoking insights into life priorities, ethics, health, society's inequities, and our inner lives. Now let's examine these ideas more closely to reflect on what truly matters.

Today’s focus article is number 8 below. OpenAI started in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) safely. The early years were a struggle as OpenAI tried different approaches, until researcher Alec Radford pioneered large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3. OpenAI had funding issues after Musk left, so in 2019 it created a for-profit entity while still pursuing its research mission. Microsoft invested billions into OpenAI, gaining exclusive licensing rights, in exchange for providing the computing power needed.

OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, sparking an AI revolution with its conversational abilities. ChatGPT's popularity led governments and the public to grapple with AI's implications and risks. OpenAI engages with regulators but believes deploying AI iteratively is the best way to make it safe. As a mostly for-profit company now, some wonder if OpenAI has drifted from its original ideals. OpenAI says its mission remains developing AGI safely, but it has clearly changed from its early nonprofit research roots. Going forward OpenAI aims to steer AI's development responsibly, despite pressures to rapidly advance its capabilities.

1. ‘My life will be short. So on the days I can, I really live’: 30 dying people explain what really matters / 25 min - Read more

2. You’re probably eating way too much protein / 7 min - Read more

3. The Biggest Questions: What is death? / 7 min - Read more

4. Social Isolation and Loneliness / 10 min - Read more

5. How the Rich Keep Their Riches Out of Reach / 4 min - Read more

6. Americans Can’t Decide What It Means to Grow Up / 7 min - Read more

7. How to forgive yourself / 12 min - Read more

8. What OpenAI Really Wants / 43 min - Read more

9. A Few Thoughts on Spending Money / 3 min - Read more

10. How Much Vitamin D Do You Need to Stay Healthy? / 19 min - Read more

Weekly YouTube videos

Investment Bonus

🎇 Start Earning Fiverr Credits!

❄ When you join and start using it, you can earn up to $500 in Fiverr Credits!

Fiverr - Find the right freelance service, right away - Join Here!

Book of the week

In his book End Times, Peter Turchin uses cliodynamics - the interdisciplinary science of history he helped develop - to analyze the current civil strife in America. He argues that just as his models predicted in 2010, America has entered a downward spiral of social disintegration that will likely lead to a breakdown of the political order around 2020. Turchin explains this is due to an overproduction of elites caused by a wealth pump where prosperity disproportionately flows to elites, immiserating the common people and fueling mass efforts to become elite. This inevitably produces frustrated elite aspirants who harness popular resentment to rebel against the establishment. Turchin contends American society has been locked in this death spiral of elite overproduction and popular immiseration for two generations now, and without drastic action, the country is headed for violent political rupture.

Do you want to get free shares worth up to €100?

Join Trading 212 Invest with this link, and we will both get FREE shares.

Thanks for reading!

If you like what you read, forward it to your friends, so they can sign up here.