Hello, and welcome to TechScape. In this week’s edition, the crypto industry’s political investments pay off in spades, the left attempts to reclaim an optimistic view of our shiny technological future, and your memories of Skype.
Why crypto is enjoying a political bonanza
The US president hosted prominent crypto leaders at the White House on Friday in what seemed like a choreographed climax to weeks of handing the industry win after win.
The day before, Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a “strategic reserve” of cryptocurrency for the US, which he called “digital Fort Knox for digital gold to be stored”. It’s just one of several recent announcements that indicated a new and friendly posture toward the industry.
Throughout last week, US oversight agencies announced they would drop investigations into major crypto companies without penalty – Coinbase, Gemini, OpenSea, Yuga Labs, Robinhood Crypto, Uniswap Labs, Consensys, Kraken – and nixed fraud charges against an entrepreneur who had bought $75m worth of Trump’s meme coin, $Trump. Two weeks ago, the new leadership of the US’s main financial regulator declared that “meme coins”, flash-in-the-pan cryptocurrencies like the one launched by Donald Trump himself, would not face strict oversight.
Trump had signaled the moves already on the campaign trail. He was the first major-party presidential candidate to accept crypto campaign contributions and promised while campaigning to make the US “the crypto capital of the world”. On Friday, he reiterated that pledge to make the country “the bitcoin superpower”.
As an industry, crypto displays a victim complex similar to that of Trump, who often speaks from the highest seat of power as if his mother were ordering him to bed without dessert. David Sacks, Trump’s appointed czar of crypto, said that the industry had been “subjected to persecution” and that “nobody understands that better than you”.
He was speaking to Trump, of course. Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, said at the White House crypto summit: “This marks another milestone to the end of the war on crypto.” Though Winklevoss’s whining may seem unearned, Joe Biden’s administration had, in fact, adopted a tough regulatory attitude towards cryptocurrency, aiming to oversee digital, decentralized finance as securities, subject to the same regulations as Wall Street’s stocks and bonds. All those investigations had to originate somewhere.
The summit was a victory for crypto and a spectacular return on its collective investment in politics. Combined, the attenders had donated $11m to Trump’s inauguration, according to the Intercept. During the 2024 campaign, crypto spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, far more than any other sector, though the industry’s main political action committee notably did not contribute to the presidential race.
Crypto is riding high, but you wouldn’t know it by the price of bitcoin, usually considered a sign of the industry’s overall health. The main character of cryptocurrency is down some 13% since the start of the year, which tracks more closely with the outlook of the overall US stock market – not good – than many crypto enthusiasts would care to countenance. Trump has said out loud that a recession might come for the US economy as he flips and flops on major tariffs, which has bewildered investors and sent US equities spiraling, particularly in recent days.
If you only click on four headlines about Elon Musk, click on these:
Can the left reclaim techno-optimism?
Do you have faith in the future?
An excitement for the polished chrome of days ahead reads as conservative in today’s political climate. Techno-optimism has become the provenance of the right. It’s a counterintuitive development: liberal politics may aim to change the present for the better, but the left, in its opposition to Silicon Valley’s billionaires, is now the party of techno-pessimism. Conservative politics, by contrast, aim to preserve and return to the past, but US Republicans and rightwingers around the world trumpet technological progress in their alliance with its funders. The rapid advancement of technology would seem to lend itself to the liberal ethos, upending ossified norms in the name of human betterment, and yet today, the dominant vision of an advanced future is one hawked by billionaires expressing adoration for unfettered capitalism.
My colleague Amana Fontanella-Khan writes in an essay introducing a new Guardian series, Breakthrough, about how the left can reclaim its lost belief in the possibility of a platinum tomorrow:
“Hope is scarce, pessimism is high and despair is pervasive. As one meme that captures the grim, morbid mood of our age reads: ‘My retirement plan is civilisational collapse.’
“On the extreme other end of public sentiment sit Silicon Valley billionaires: they are some of the most optimistic people on earth. Of course, it’s easy to be optimistic when you are sitting on enough money to sway national politics. And yet, the source of their optimism isn’t simply money. It is also a deep-seated faith in unfettered technological advances.
“But can and should the left advance its own techno-optimism? Can it put forward a vision of a brighter future that can compete with the grand visions of space exploration presented by Elon Musk? Can it make the case that science and technology ought to be harnessed to deliver breakthroughs, abundance, sustainability and flourishing of human potential? And what would a progressive, leftwing techno-optimism look like? A techno-optimism that the 99% could get on board with, especially communities of color, including Black people who have historically been excluded, and even harmed, by scientific and technological breakthroughs? These are some of the questions that this new series, Breakthrough, launched by the Guardian examines.”
Read her full essay and others in the series here
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Your memories of Skype
Last week, we asked you to email us your memories of using Skype, which will shut down in May. Hundreds of you responded, and we have compiled your reminiscences, which include not only photos and your words but also an original song based on the inimitable Skype ringtone. I can’t embed the song in this email, but you can listen to it on the article page: Skype shutdown surfaces sweet memories: ‘I proposed marriage’.
In addition to musical inspiration, you recounted to us how Skype bridged the distance to faraway loved ones, both family and soon-to-be family – two of you proposed marriage via Skype video calls. I am not often moved to tears while editing stories, but these recollections touched me.
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Here are a few excellent examples of what you told us:
I proposed to my Swedish husband over Skype using sticky notes. We got married on 5-5-15, the same day Skype will end its service. It’s very sad, I especially liked it since it was from my husband’s homeland of Sweden. Skype played a big part in our lives in keeping us connected while we were dating and it will always be in my heart.
– Holly, Iowa
In 2004, I moved across the world to attend university in the United States. Phone calls were too expensive, so I would spend hours on Skype chatting with my family and friends back home. When we went around the dinner table saying what we were grateful for my first American Thanksgiving, Skype was my answer. Homesickness was my malady, Skype was my medicine.
– Laura, Los Angeles
The person with whom I used Skype the most and used it last was my friend Harald. I live in Wisconsin and work at the university in Madison. Harald was from Germany but did a postdoctoral fellowship in Madison in the early 2000s. We became friends and, interestingly, we grew much closer after he moved back to Germany. We would get together before or after conferences and do bike trips together, and we visited each other many times over the years.
Harald’s preferred way of communicating when we were on opposite sides of the world was by Skype. He’d use it as a verb. “Let’s Skype next Tuesday,” he’d say. I would often tease him as new platforms became popular that he was wedded to this outdated mode of communication. He died about two years ago, and I miss him terribly. And any time I hear about Skype I think of him.
– Matthew, Wisconsin
For more memories of Skype, read the full story here
