$100K Calling, Airline Woes, and Meta's AI Friend

Truly delighted to be able to write fondly about the state of the inflows to the ETF complex once again…

This Week in Crypto

Since the 18th of April, and coinciding roughly with the move off $75k, the 9 figure inflow days have been ubiquitous. What a sight!

Bitcoin looks set to retest $100,000 in the coming days, sitting at $97,500 at the time of publishing.

Just taking a look back to the start of the year (how are we already in May?), the YTD performances so far are:

MSTR +31.56%, GOLD +24.41%, BRK + 19.36% (owing to their cash position), BTC +3.31%, SPX -3.33%, AAPL -15.89%, NVDA - 17.36%

And all while the $DXY (dollar) is down around -8.89% too!

In one of the most anticipated earnings calls, perhaps ever, Strategy revealed their Q1 report.

If you’ve got a spare 15 minutes, I highly recommend a listen to Saylor explain why $MSTR trades at a multiple to their NAV (the value of the BTC they hold).

One slide that really stood out as crazy, to me at least, was the following…

MSTR have the 13th largest corporate treasury in the world. At $400,000 BTC, they’ll have the largest full stop. Saylor bought another $1.42B of BTC in the last week of April, at an average of $92,737.

In other news, the US continues to soften is approach to crypto with the Federal Reserve Board announcing the withdrawal of guidance for banks related to their crypto-asset and dollar token activities. It’s no co-incidence that Morgan Stanley announced they’re to offer crypto E-trading to their clients this week.

This Week in TradFi

A bit of a mixed bag - with both good and bad news - on the domestic front this week:

• Starting with the good: Wall Street stocks rallied yesterday, bolstered by solid tech earnings. Meta and Microsoft particularly benefited the tech-heavy Nasdaq, driving the index up 1.5%. 

  • 325 companies in the S&P 500 have reported earnings as of yesterday, and 74% have beaten analyst expectations. 

• U.S. job growth slowed marginally in April, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 177,000 jobs last month, vs. 185,000 in March. Unemployment held steady at 4.2%. 

  • For context, the U.S. economy needs to create about 100,000 jobs per month in order to keep up with growth in the working age population. 

• U.S. manufacturing contracted in April, and the Institute for Supply Management said yesterday that its manufacturing PMI dropped to a five-month low. Manufacturing currently accounts for 10.2% of the economy. 

• Business sentiment continues to darken, as companies try to forecast the impact of recent tariffs. 

  • Many airlines have pulled their 2025 financial forecasts, uncertain over how much people will spend on nonessential travel. 

  • General Motors cut its 2025 profit forecast, expecting a $4-$5B tariff hit.

  • And China ordered its airlines not to take further deliveries of Boeing planes, and Ryanair threatened to cancel orders for hundreds of Boeing planes if the tariff war led to higher prices. 

• The Fed is expected to keep rates in the 4.25%-4.5% range next week.

On the international front: 

• Japanese trading houses are promising healthy shareholder returns, as they try to keep investors happy amid tariff woes. 

  • Mitsubishi for example expects net profit for the fiscal year to drop 26%, but it still plans to increase dividends to 110 yen per share. 

• Hong Kong retail sales fell 3.5% in March YoY, marking the 13th straight month of declines. The government is hoping China’s growth and efforts to boost tourism will help bolster the retail sector. 

• India’s manufacturing sector growth accelerated in April, up to its strongest pace in 10 months. New order growth is steady, close to March’s eight-month high, and export orders grew at the second-fastest pace in more than 14 years. 

• The Bank of England is expected to lower interest rates by 25bps next week. Until now, the Bank has taken a “gradual and careful” approach, cutting rates only 3 times since August of last year, but economists are saying this needs to change if England is to deal with its downgraded growth prospects following Trump’s global tariffs.

This Week in Tech

OpenAI has rolled back its update that made ChatGPT too “sycophant-y”. 

• Over the weekend, reports about the model went viral, with users blaming the model for being too validating and agreeable. 

• On Sunday, Altman acknowledged the problem and said that OpenAI would work on fixes immediately.

• He later tweeted that the model was completely rolled back. The organization is keeping the weights on a special hard drive, so the model is not completely lost, at least. 

• It raises an interesting ethical question: obviously organizations like OpenAI have a vested interest in making the model nice enough that users want to keep talking to it. But at what point is a model too nice - at what point does it start to validate behavior it shouldn’t? And how do you draw that line? Last weekend’s 4o update, at least, was clearly over the line. But future updates may be harder to gauge. 

Meta is launching a standalone AI app, unveiled at Meta’s LlamaCon event on Tuesday.

• The app will allow users to access Meta AI in its own app, similar to the ChatGPT app. 

• The company is attempting to differentiate its AI product by using what it already knows about you - the AI app can “draw on information you’ve already chosen to share on Meta products”, such as your profile and the content you interact with.

• Similar to other AI assistants, you can also give the AI more information about you to remember for future conversations. 

• The App also includes a Discover feed, where you can share how you’re using AI with your friends. 

• Separately, Zuckerberg revealed in an interview how Meta is creating personalized AI friends to supplement your real ones. He said, “the average American has 3 friends, but has demand for 15”. Oof.

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Fivetran has acquired Census, an ETL platform that enables companies to transfer data out of databases and into operational tools, for an undisclosed amount (though Census’ last valuation was $630M in 2022!). 

• Intel’s EVP and chief commercial officer is leaving the company after 2 years in his role. 

• AI animation startup Cheehoo, founded by Hollywood execs and technologists, has raised $10M from Greycroft. 

Arch is building next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.