Author: Sam Allcock

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…

A brand-new structure with virtually no signage rises at the edge of a dusty industrial park in northern Virginia. There were only long, rectangular walls and the steady hum of cooling systems—no windows or logos. It looks like a warehouse from the outside. Inside, it resembles an engine room for the contemporary economy. With chips supplied in part by Nvidia, rows of servers stretch across the floor, blinking in unison. Liquid cooling systems and carefully designed airflow control the extreme heat. Power lines run low and thick outside the building, supplying electricity at a scale that seems almost overwhelming. CategoryDetailsSectorAI…

The doors of a low, windowless building in Silicon Valley don’t open on their own. Access badges are examined twice. The air inside is kept abnormally cool to control heat, and rows of machines hum at a constant pitch. Engineers move silently between terminals, looking at dashboards that monitor something hard to see—models that are constantly learning, evolving, and getting better. Some of the most potent artificial intelligence systems are being developed here. And more and more, very little is said about it. CategoryDetailsIndustryArtificial Intelligence ResearchKey PlayersOpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta PlatformsEmerging LabsSecret Labs Inc, DeepSeekCore FocusLarge language models, multimodal…

A cookbook with the word “keto” prominently printed on its cover and a half-used jar of coconut oil remain next to the stove in a light-filled suburban Chicago kitchen. It may have been the focal point of everyday meals a few years ago, with plates full of bacon and eggs and coffee mixed with butter. It now appears a little out of place, like a holdover from a quiet era. There was a time when the Ketogenic Diet seemed almost inevitable. The grocery aisles changed. “Keto-friendly” labels were added by restaurants. Social media was full of dramatic weight loss tales,…