In today’s newsletter we discuss Elon Musk is throwing a temper tantrum about not having enough stock at Tesla, cryptocurrency company Ripple is considering an IPO outside the U.S. because of the SEC’s vindictive persecution of crypto companies, Tesla vehicles hate the frigid cold like the rest of us, LeBron James signs trading card sponsorship deal with Fanatics Collectibles for $5 million dollars a year, and MrBeast finally releases one of his YouTube videos on Elon Musk’s X/Twitter platform and gets 100 million views!

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Kanye West Is Selling His Demolished Malibu House for $53 Million!

Business

Is Elon Musk making a power play for more control at Tesla?

The richest man in the world threw a temper tantrum on his X/Twitter platform the other day saying he wants to increase his ownership stake in Tesla, which will come along with more voting rights, from his current 13% stake to 25% which is almost double what he currently has.

Why is he doing this? Well, it’s Elon Musk, so who can be sure.

What we do know is what he posted on his social media platform X, which we will continue to call Twitter because it’s a better name.

“I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned. Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla.”

So there you have it, from the world’s richest man-child throwing a fit about not having enough money and power.

This all stems from Elon Musk’s desire to “grow Tesla to become a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics” according to an article on CNN, but he feels that without a compensation plan that rewards him for his genius then he’d rather take his ball and go elsewhere to develop his AI and robotics.

Ironically, Elon Musk already has another company called X.AI that literally makes Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology such as the Large Language Model (LLM) chat bot Grok that he debuted late last year. Why did he go off and make that company if he actually wanted to develop AI at Tesla?

My wild guess is he plans to grow X.AI to a certain size, develop a bunch of cutting edge software, gain market share, and then threaten to sell it to a competitor unless Tesla cuts him a big check. I mean, why get paid only once if you can rip off your own company multiple different times and ways, am I right Elon?

Once upon a time Elon Musk did own more than 20% in Tesla, but that was before he had the great idea of buying Twitter, laying off ¾’s of the company, and turning it into a cesspool of conspiracy nuts and allowing it to fill up with hate speech. Now he wants to up his ownership in Tesla for doing nothing except what is supposed to be his job as CEO. Talk about hypocrisy.

As a longtime Tesla stockholder I’ve benefited from Elon Musk’s genius, and I’m a big fan of everything Tesla does. I’m excited about how they are developing their own AI to speed up the evolution of self-driving cars by running driving simulations and analyzing the hours of real world driving that their vehicles are doing on a daily basis. I think a lot of the areas that Tesla is developing products show a lot of promise like Tesla moving into the Energy sector, solar power generation, and HVAC (which is a market I wish they’d further explore). Tesla developing their own AI to power innovation in these sectors makes a lot of sense, and I’m all for it.

Elon Musk is no stranger to large compensation packages from Tesla. He’s previously held the title for having the largest compensation package in corporate history. It’s been 6 years now since his latest compensation package that was announced in 2018 and is worth $56 billion.

For the world’s richest man who’s worth roughly $229 billion, how much is enough?

Apparently there’s no limit to how much money and power Elon Musk craves.

Elon Musk demands another huge payday from Tesla

Tech

Cold weather. No one is ever really a fan of it. Sure, some of us love snow, but not usually the bitter cold that comes along with it. And you know who else hates the cold weather? Tesla owners.

If you own a Tesla electric vehicle you’ve probably been cursing the bitter cold that has been gripping the upper Midwest and Northeast the last few weeks.

While owners of gas-powered vehicles have long known the effects cold nights can have on batteries that sometimes need a jumpstart in the mornings, it’s not that simple for Tesla owners who’ve been waking up to find their cars dead without the ability to “jump start” them.

The cold weather is socking Tesla owners with a double punch. First, it takes a lot longer to recharge when it’s cold out; sometimes taking twice as long according to some Tesla owners. Second, batteries lose their charge faster when it's cold out, so that is contributing to less range for EVs. In some cases EV owners have seen their range estimates drop by 70% in cold weather. Third, we as humans love to use heat when it’s cold out, and nothing drains an EV’s battery quicker than cranking up the HVAC and enjoying that heat that pumps out of your car’s vents.

Sure, there are some tips that Tesla and EV owners can follow to better handle the frigid temperatures we’ve been experiencing, like warming up your vehicle while it’s still charging, using the “defrost car” setting on the Tesla app before trying to open a frozen charging port door, and planning for an extended charge time when traveling.

But at the end of the day, an electric vehicle like a Tesla is still just a vehicle, and like the rest of us the cold weather will always zap our energy.

How cold temperatures are affecting Teslas, other electric vehicles

Entertainment

MrBeast and Elon Musk are having a quarrel over ad-revenue sharing on X/Twitter. If you’re a content creator you should care.

It’s no secret that Elon Musk looks up to MrBeast. He’s a wildly successful self-made content creator, turned businessman, turned social media darling that everyone loves. You can see why Elon Musk comes off as a little jealous of MrBeast, who’s real name is James Stephen Donaldson, or Jimmy Donaldson to his friends, but it’s a lot more fun to just call him MrBeast if you ask me.

And MrBeast has always been a big fan of Elon Musk’s genius and success at both Tesla and SpaceX, but it turns out not so much at X/Twitter.

Recently these two frenemies have been bickering publicly over MrBeast releasing his videos on Elon Musk’s X/Twitter. MrBeast contends that he wouldn’t make anywhere near as much releasing his videos on X/Twitter as he does launching them on YouTube.

In a post on X/Twitter MrBeast wrote a response to a user who asked him to upload his videos to the X/Twitter platform:

"My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn't fund a fraction of it. I'm down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!"

He then followed up by posting one of his recent YouTube videos called ‘$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car!!!’ and wrote:

“I’m curious how much ad revenue a video on X would make so I’m reuploading this to test it. Will share ad rev next week ❤️”

Then 4 days went by and the video surpassed 100 Million views, to which he wrote:

“100M views? Dang lol”

MrBeast might be laughing now, but I’m guessing Elon Musk is grinning like Dr. Evil sitting high up on his X/Twitter throne now.

MrBeast Shares First Video on X to Test Elon Musk's Ad-Revenue Scheme

Crypto

Is the world’s 4th largest crypto currency by market cap thinking about going public in an IPO in 2024?

Ripple is a digital payment or a remittance network created in order to establish an instant transfer of funds across the globe. The native cryptocurrency of the Ripple network is also called XRP.

According to the cryptocurrency’s description on the WorldCoinIndex website, “Ripple was co-founded in 2012 by Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen, and XRP was released that same year. Today Ripple facilitates the seamless transfer of money by connecting banks, payment providers, corporates and digital asset exchanges through the RippleNet. The Ripple XRP tokens provide banks and other financial institutions an on-demand solution to sources liquidity for instant global transfers.”

“As the Ripple network is based on blockchain technology it allows for low-cost global funds transfers just in a matter of few seconds. The Ripple’s distributed ledger XRP makes use of a consensus protocol that allows for payments and exchanges to take place in a distributed process.”

There’s been rumors, or more accurately “hope” from hodlers of XRP, which for full disclosure include me as well, that the company behind Ripple may be planning to go public someday soon.

Those hopes were put on pause recently when Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC in an interview that Ripple explored markets outside the U.S. for its initial public offering (IPO) due to the “hostile” nature of U.S. regulators.

I’m pretty sure he was talking about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, who Brad Garlinghouse called a “political liability” based on his stance of all cryptocurrencies being in his opinion securities except Bitcoin and possible Ethereum.

The fact that an incredibly successful technology company based in San Francisco, and who does millions of dollars in business around the world, would feel like the climate here in the U.S. is so hostile to cryptocurrency companies like Ripple that they would even consider going offshore to someplace like London Stock Exchange or even take their business to China and list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, is insane and shows something needs to be done about the SEC’s hostility toward cryptocurrency firms here in the U.S..

The main reason Ripple was even considering an IPO in the first place was to allow their shareholders, who have been holding Ripple stock for almost 12 years now since the company was first started, to have some liquidity and be free to sell some of their shares.

To address this Ripple recently bought back shares from its shareholders using $1 billion dollars from their reserves, according to a report by Reuters.

This buyback has bought Ripple some time, and hopefully when they are ready for an IPO the cryptocurrency regulatory environment will have improved here in the U.S. so a valuable tech company like Ripple doesn’t need to consider taking their business overseas and listing on a foreign stock exchange to get away from the SEC’s Chairman Gary Gensler vindictive pursuit of cryptocurrency companies.

Crypto firm Ripple explored IPO outside of U.S. but won't go public soon

Sports

There was a time back-in-the day when the only cards worth owning were made by Topps or Upper Deck. Times sure have changed, and LeBron James is leading the way.

For the last two decades LeBron James has had a trading card sponsorship deal with Upper Deck that saw him earning $1 million dollars a deal.

That all changed when LeBron James signed a deal with Fanatics Collectibles that will pay him a rumored $5 million dollars a year.

If you’re like me and wondering whatever happened to the trading card company Topps, it turns out Fanatics Collectibles acquired them in 2022 for $500 million dollars, so yea, I’m not going to worry about them anymore.

That was just a small part of Fanatics Collectibles’ recent success, in addition to replacing trading card company “Panini as the official trading card maker for the NBA and its players association starting in 2026.” according to an article on CNBC.

“Fanatics Collectibles has also secured long-term, exclusive rights to design, manufacture and distribute trading cards for other sports properties, including Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Football League Players Association.”

So while it’s always nice to be LeBron James, it turns out it’s REALLY good to be Fanatics Collectibles these days!

LeBron James signs trading card deal with Fanatics Collectibles, leaving Upper Deck

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris