Down Round

A sad mea culpa on Adam Neumann, then we talk the latest Metaverse happenings. Raph immersed himself in Decentraland, James immersed himself in Matthew Ball's new book, The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything.

They both report back.

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How did kickboxing champion, manosphere influencer and general ne'er-do-well Andrew Tate hack the algorithms to appear in everyone's feed and become the world's most Googled person? And what the heck does it mean?

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Tornado Cash is a decentralised "mixer" that allows users to obscure their crypto transactions. It's been sanctioned by the US government, who say it is used to launder money.

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Adam Neumann, the man who set $40 billion on fire during the WeWork IPO debacle, is back – and he's just been given $350 million for another crack.

Links

– Flowcarbon "Lite Paper"

- FT: WeWork’s Adam Neumann on investing, startups, surfing and Masayoshi Son

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BeReal: The hot new social media craze touts itself as the antithesis of Instagram. But one thing Instagram does is actually make money. Can BeReal reject the tried-and-true path of extracting value from its users while turning a profit? James and Raph discuss.

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Visa and Mastercard have both stopped offering their payment processing services to MindGeek, the shadowy conglomerate behind some of the internet's most visited sites – including, but not limited to, YouPorn, Pornhub, RedTube and Brazzers.

What's all this then?

Links:

MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube – Financial Times

Visa and Mastercard suspend payments for ad purchases on Pornhub and MindGeek amid controversy – CNBC

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James Hennessy and Raph Dixon on the intersection of technology, business and culture.

This week, after a quick update on the rollercoaster at Instagram since our last episode, we discuss the golden-child of the blockchain: Helium. According to crypto-utopians (including, somehow, the New York Times) Helium provides an obvious use case for crypto outside of buying drugs and evading financial regulation. Unfortunately it might not quite be living up to the hype.

Links:

Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All – The New York Times

Web3 darling Helium has bragged about Lime being a client for years. Lime says it isn't true. – Mashable

I’m Regretting Mining Helium… – VoskCoin on YouTube

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Snap and Twitter stocks plummet, Facebook is in a tizz, social media is being redefined – and it's all Apple and TikTok's fault.

Join James JR Hennessy and Raph Dixon at the intersection of business, tech and culture.

Subscribe to James' Substack here: https://www.theterminal.info/

More about The Meeting Tree here: https://themeetingtree.com

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