gm.
the musk vs altman feud just spilled into a real business decision. the new fed chair rattled bond markets. and robinhood's blockchain became one of the busiest trading venues in crypto.check out higher
3 things worth your time
1. openai just cut cursor off after musk bought it.
quick refresher: SpaceX (owned by elon musk) recently closed its $60 billion acquisition of cursor, the popular AI-first coding tool that most software developers use daily. on friday, openai (sam altman's AI company) announced it will end cursor's access to openai's AI models on november 12. openai's stated reason: it doesn't trust musk-owned entities to honor its terms of service. future openai models (like the upcoming astra) won't be available in cursor at all.
the twist: anthropic (the AI lab behind claude, and openai's biggest US competitor) immediately said it will add compute capacity to keep claude fully available in cursor. so anthropic just picked up cursor's business without having to compete for it. this is the biggest visible sign yet that the musk vs altman feud is spilling into real business decisions.
2. the new fed chair just spooked bond markets.
on friday, new fed chair kevin warsh gave his first jackson hole speech and delivered a hawkish message. hawkish in fed-speak means leaning toward higher interest rates to fight inflation, versus dovish which means leaning toward cuts. warsh said inflation is "more concerning" than the jobs market and won't come back down to target on its own. translation: the fed may need to RAISE rates at its next meeting, not cut them.
markets reacted fast. odds of a september rate hike jumped from about 35% to 57% overnight (per CME FedWatch). in other words, more traders now expect a hike than don't. bonds sold off. the surprise: this is the opposite of what wall street expected from a "trump fed." warsh, appointed by trump, isn't playing the political dovish role most investors were pricing in. and it lands 4 days after trump tried to fire fed governor lisa cook. the next FOMC meeting is september 15-16.
3. robinhood's blockchain is having a massive month.
robinhood chain (the blockchain robinhood launched july 1 that lets US traders buy tokenized versions of stocks and crypto onchain) just hit new all-time highs, with recent days topping $800 million in daily trading volume. cumulative trading volume has already topped $47 billion since the chain launched two months ago
context: putting up $47 billion in trading volume in 2 months is trajectory that most new blockchains take years to hit. tokenized stocks (AAPL, TSLA, NVDA, and more traded onchain) are a huge driver of this growth. it's the clearest signal yet that real-world assets (RWAs) are starting to move real money onchain, and that "tokenization" is going from a buzzword to a legitimate market.
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two more quick things
south korea will give free AI to every citizen.
on thursday, seoul selected 3 domestic tech consortia (SK telecom, KT, kakao) to build free, unlimited public AI services for every korean citizen (population ~52 million). the buildout is backed by 512 nvidia B200 GPUs. at least half of each service must run on domestic korean foundation models. deals sign in september, full launch by year-end. korea is the first country to treat frontier AI like a public utility, similar to K-12 education. also a hedge against dependence on US or chinese AI. expect other countries to follow.
what tokenized stocks actually are (quick explainer).
paired with story 3: tokenized stocks are the biggest driver of robinhood chain's growth. here's how they work: a licensed broker buys a real share of a stock (like tesla or nvidia), holds it in custody, then mints a token onchain for every share held. that token trades 24/7 on the blockchain (versus regular market hours for normal stocks), settles instantly, and can be used as collateral in DeFi. the tradeoff: tax treatment is still murky in some countries, and dividends don't always pass through smoothly. but the growth trajectory is real.
see you thursday.
not financial advice. aggregated community trends and commentary.