Folks, what a week. Have a ripper weekend, seeya next week - CW

The News

TrumpTok is a done deal. It’s got a few interesting owners

US President Donald Trump has signed off on a deal that will transfer TikTok’s American operations into the hands of his mates (CNBC). The sale, which apparently values TikTok US at AU$21 billion, leaves its original owner ByteDance with less than a 20% stake. The new major investors are Larry Ellison’s Oracle, A-League part owner Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX (Reuters). News Corp’s Murdochs and Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell have also purportedly bought in (CNBC)

The Sizzle: Let me pump the brakes on the most extreme doomerism about this. Yes, it’s really worrying that one of the few major tech companies that wasn’t owned by right-wing American billionaires has been handed over to… very right-wing American billionaires. The involvement of the Murdochs has particularly freaked people out.

But, the fact that the price-tag is quite low makes me suspect that this deal is going to be more limited in scope than has been suggested. And I think it’s far from certain that TikTok is turned into Fox News for Zoomers. The Murdochs don’t appear to be major owners. Even if they were, I’m not even sure that they would want to meddle too much — you only need to remember Rupert Murdoch’s ill-fated MySpace play to realise that News Corp has a pretty spotty history when it comes to social media. No matter about their political agendas, I imagine the very rich men buying TikTok also want to protect their commercial interests and not fuck with the goose that lays the golden egg.

(One thing I will add: I know no one cares about hypocrisy anymore. But it does feel pretty galling that News Corp, after spending years running campaigns about how the threat of social media, is linked to TikTok. I wonder if we’ll see their negative coverage drop off a bit…)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Crypto in Australia looks like it’s going to get some light touch regulation

Cryptocurrencies can continue to be treated like funny money under new proposed regulations which regulate exchanges and not tokens (AFR, $). At the moment, the only real regulation around cryptocurrency trading is that exchanges — the places that facilitate buying and selling — must do some basic know your customer/anti-money laundering measures. Now, Treasury has put out draft legislation that would require most exchanges to get a financial services license (Treasury). These exchanges will need to act “efficiently, honestly and fairly” … which would be a change for some in this sector!

The Sizzle: The federal government has been dragging its feet forever on crypto regulation, and has decided on some pretty industry-friendly measures. Instead of regulating cryptocurrency tokens — meaning that individual tokens would have requirements like reporting on their specifications and restrictions — this essentially lets crypto stay as the wild, wild West with shitcoins and rip-off schemes — just as long as they can convince an exchange to sell their token. This lighter regulation does seem to be the trend around the world but, man, a lot of people are going to continue to be ripped off.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

The Sizzler Say: Canva profitability, mechanical keyboard fans, and send me your birth certificates

Banger week for the Sizzler community. Actually, I’ve been informed that we’ve hit 1000 Slack members… Nice.

As always, if you wanna get involved (or even be able to read what’s on Slack) you can join the Slack server and forum via these links.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

RIP to the best name in tech

It’s the little things in life that make it worth living. Like knowing that the president of Nintendo America, who’s just announced that he’s retiring, is called Doug Bowser (Polygon).

We all love a bit of normative determinism! Thankfully, we got word that Bowser is passing the torch for best name in tech to a new contender:

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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