Author: Sam Allcock

It feels different to stroll through Stanford’s computer science building on a Tuesday afternoon. Compared to three years ago, the hallways are now quieter. There’s a different vibe to the lines outside advisors’ offices; there’s more anxiety, less excitement, and more people holding printouts of course catalogs from departments they never would have thought to look into. There is a change taking place on American college campuses, and it is happening more quickly than most institutions are ready to deal with. AI has already caused one in six college students to switch majors. Almost half have given it some serious…

During a downturn, a certain silence descends upon the cryptocurrency markets. The Telegram groups become fewer in number. The conference panels become increasingly circumspect. And the serious money, the money that doesn’t post about it online, begins to move somewhere between the excitement of an all-time high and the fear of a 50% drawdown. That’s about where Bitcoin is in early 2026, and if history is any indication, this is typically the most significant point. In October 2025, Bitcoin reached a peak close to $126,000. The unwind came next. A roughly 50% drop that is severe enough to undermine retail…

It’s simple to write off cryptocurrency as a world of abstractions: markets with no goods, tokens with no weight, and fortunes based solely on consensus. And that dismissal had some validity for a very long time. However, over the past few years, something new has emerged, complete with rooftop hardware, GPS dashcams, antennas, and GPU racks. If you haven’t been watching, the plot of DePIN has advanced more than you might anticipate. Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks are systems in which actual, physical devices contribute to a shared network and receive cryptocurrency token rewards in exchange. The acronym is a little…

A senior engineering project manager at Apple called in sick on a Friday morning last spring, drove downtown to Austin, and entered a coworking space on the second floor above one of the city’s noisiest areas. He wasn’t there to interview for a job. He wasn’t looking for a place to work. He was there because the Bitcoin Commons, which is tucked away above the intersection of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, where the boulevard leading to the Texas State Capitol runs directly into Austin’s nightlife sprawl, felt more genuine than anything taking place within the refined campuses he had…

When an underdog begins to win, a certain kind of tension arises. Slowly, methodically, quarter by quarter, until one day the scoreboard looks different and no one can quite recall when it changed, rather than loudly, with press conferences or victory laps. That’s about where Circle and its USDC stablecoin are at the moment, getting closer to a position that Tether has held for almost ten years without much opposition. Tether’s USDT was the default for many years. USDT was used when transferring money between cryptocurrency exchanges, settling a trade at two in the morning in Jakarta or Lagos, or…

In front of an enthusiastic Miami crowd five years ago, Nayib Bukele made an announcement that most finance ministers would have dismissed as science fiction. El Salvador, a tiny country in Central America with roughly six million citizens that is still plagued by gang violence and debt, planned to legalize Bitcoin. Not as a test. not as a test project. as a law. The first in the world. He referred to it as the start of a revolution in finance. And for a split second, it seemed as though he might be correct in spite of all the plausible doubts.…

A warning that comes three years ahead of schedule has a subtly unsettling quality. Google released a report in late March 2026 that identified 2029 as a possible turning point, when a quantum computer might become strong enough to crack the encryption that safeguards governments, banks, and digital wallets worldwide. The language was cautious, technical, and measured. However, the underlying message was anything but subtle. You could choose the locks that protect your Bitcoin. Additionally, those who are most likely to do it are already gathering the keys. A Swiss technology company entered that specific silence, claiming to have already…

In rural Canada, Trent McConaghy was raised on a pig farm. There are few options for entertainment. In the 1980s, his father bought him a computer, gave him a reference manual, and essentially left him on his own. He created his own version of Pac-Man from scratch because there was no arcade in the area. He claims that he never really looked away after discovering a used book about artificial intelligence at a garage sale when he was around ten years old. After downloading neural networks from bulletin boards years before most people had heard the term “internet,” McConaghy was…

In San Marcos, Texas, there is a building that most people would pass by without giving it much thought. There is no rooftop terrace, no glassy facade, and no indication of the frantic energy you would expect from a business attracting significant institutional funding. A recent $16 million investment stake in Thermon Group Holdings is all the more intriguing because the company operates out of a low-profile industrial campus that seems almost purposefully designed to go unnoticed. Not much has been said by the investor. That’s partially intentional. Some institutional players enter positions covertly, submitting the necessary disclosures without holding…

The history of GLP-1 medications doesn’t start in a fancy pharmaceutical lab or a famous clinic. It begins in more subdued settings, such as university basements, animal research, and protracted, ambiguous experiments aimed at figuring out why the body acts in certain ways following a meal. Researchers looking into what they called “incretins” discovered something strange back in the 1980s. People’s insulin response was higher when they took glucose orally than when it was administered intravenously. That tiny discrepancy suggested a secret signal—something in the stomach communicating with the pancreas. CategoryDetailsDrug ClassGLP-1 receptor agonistsKey CompaniesNovo Nordisk, Eli LillyNotable DrugsOzempic, WegovyScientific…