ENERGY

Energizer Bunny Needs Its Juice

As candidates threw haymakers in Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate, somehow a nuanced question about lithium-ion batteries flew under the radar. Moderator Jon Ralston asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren about the tradeoffs of mining and using lithium. 

In her answer, Warren acknowledged the need for specific minerals that are pivotal to renewable energy technologies. She said she’d consider exceptions to mining for them on public lands if sustainable methods of extraction are used. 

Breaking down batteries 

• Lithium-ion: A type of rechargeable battery that’s already ubiquitous in consumer electronics, such as wireless earbuds, cordless power tools, watches, smartphones, and laptops. 
• Energy density: The amount of energy a battery can hold. It’s tripled for lithium-ion batteries since 2010, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Lithium-ion has high energy density, long charge cycles, and is lightweight. 
• The downsides: Mining and refining the precious metal has ravaged nearby ecosystems and communities, as The Verge explains. And the mining of cobalt, another material needed for li-ion batteries, is linked to child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

What’s next? 

Taking more lithium from the Earth is a near certainty. It’s the power source for EVs, which are essential for decarbonizing transportation. EV penetration hinges on lithium-ion batteries becoming abundant and affordable. 

Why? Batteries make up 42% of the average EV’s total production cost. For EVs to reach price parity with gas-powered cars, battery prices must drop to $100/kWH from today’s range of $180–$200/kWH. 

Tech startups are on it

They’re trying to improve energy density and bring costs down. Yesterday, a Bill Gates-backed energy fund led a $20 million investment into Lilac Solutions, an Oakland, CA, startup working on efficient lithium extraction methods. Earlier this month, Wired profiled: 

• Sila Nanotechnologies, which pairs nanoengineered silicon particles with lithium-ion cells to turbocharge their effectiveness
• Advano, which sources its raw material from the scrap piles of electronics makers

Bottom line: As companies work to make lithium-ion more scalable and cheap, it will become a key commodity. But to truly make progress in sustainability, companies and governments need to be mindful of how they source the relevant materials upstream.

CRYPTO

Coinbase Gets Verified

Visa has handed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase the blue checkmark. On Wednesday, Coinbase said it was the “first pure-play cryptocurrency company” to become a Visa principal member. 

What does this title bequeath? Financial players authorized by Visa reportedly act as “issuing banks” that provide cards and transaction processing services. It’s good news for Coinbase Card, a Visa debit card the company launched in the U.K. last year. The card is now available in 29 European markets. 

• How the card works: Users can pay or withdraw cash (so 2008) from their Coinbase account balance at any Visa-compatible payment terminal or ATM. They choose which tokens—bitcoin, ethereum, and more—to spend, and the card converts that cryptocurrency into fiat currency accepted by the merchant. Fees apply, per usual. 

Zoom out: Coinbase has steadily expanded offerings to draw new users into the fold. The endgame for CEO Brian Armstrong? As he told Forbes, making crypto “a global, open financial system that [drives] innovation and freedom.”

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Balance Transfers 101

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So you’ve racked up some credit card debt. That’s ok. Here’s where the balance transfer comes in.

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SUPPLY CHAIN

Quantifying the COVID-19 Hit

With at least 150 million people under government travel restrictions in China, coronavirus is wreaking havoc on global tech conferences, Apple’s revenue guidance, and tech production schedules. 

On that last point: Market research firm TrendForce released its predictions for the virus’s downstream effects on the global high-tech industry...and...I wish I had a silver lining for you. 

• Smartphone production is projected to tumble by 12% in Q1 to a five-year low. 
• Smartwatches, laptops, and smart speakers will experience the biggest reduction in forecasted shipments. 
• Fiber optic cable suppliers accounting for 25% of global production are located in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak originated.  

Tech components with more automated manufacturing processes and/or operations farther from the hardest hit areas will fare comparatively better, TrendForce writes. 

• Yesterday, Huawei said coronavirus wouldn’t impact its 5G supply chain. But it is postponing its developer conference. 

Bottom line: China is the world’s manufacturer. An outbreak there is a major disruption to supply chains everywhere.

+ While we’re here: Samsung has resorted to flying phone components from China to its Vietnam factories, the FT reports.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Hackers breached an MGM Resorts cloud server and posted more than 10.6 million guests’ info online this week, ZDNet reports. The personal info of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Justin Bieber, and U.S. government officials was included in the leaked files.

Quote: “I expect that every major U.S. tech company has at least several people that have been turned by at least China, maybe Russia, probably Israel, and a couple other U.S. allies”—Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former head of security, on the First Contact podcast. 

Read: Very related…"How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter" from BuzzFeed News.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Alibaba and Ant Financial helped develop a public health tool that assigns people QR codes based on their coronavirus exposure.
• Related: Alibaba's Damo Academy says it’s created an algorithm that can ID new coronavirus cases with up to 96% accuracy. 
• Outrider, a Colorado startup automating logistics yard operations, emerged from stealth with $53 million in funding. 
• HTC announced three new Cosmos VR headsets: the $899 Elite, a lower-end Play, and the XR, which has "passthrough cameras" for AR functionality. 
• SentinelOne, a cybersecurity firm providing autonomous endpoint protection, is now a unicorn after raising a $200 million Series E.
• Layer1, a bitcoin mining startup, officially opened its West Texas facility. It’s basically a bunch of computers doing extremely difficult math equations to earn new bitcoins.

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GOING PHISHING

Give someone a phish and you feed them for a day. Give them this newsletter and they can go phishing for a lifetime. Four of the following stories are real; one is deepfaked. Can you spot the odd one out?

1. A jetpack pilot set a new altitude record in Dubai. 
2. The UN is testing drones to fight hordes of locusts sweeping across swaths of East Africa.
3. Boston Dynamics is building a robotic snake.
4. A Guardian reporter’s app-powered rental car stopped working on a California mountain when the vehicle lost cellular connection.
5. An Indian politician used deepfake technology to speak in a different dialect in an effort to win over voters.

FROM YOU

Tech stocks are riding so high it seems almost too good to be true. A prominent JPMorgan analyst has cautioned that a tech bubble is forming with inflated valuations reminiscent of the dot-com era. Do you agree?

Click to vote: Are we in a tech bubble? Yes / No 

See you Monday with the results—Ryan.

GOING PHISHING ANSWER

As far as I know, Boston Dynamics is not building a robotic snake, though other robot makers have.