Chris Campbell:

Senate Votes To Kill Moratorium on AI State Regulation

The proposed 10-year moratorium on state regulation of AI is dead, by overwhelming consensus from the Senate.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Senate voted 99-1 to remove controversial language from Republicans' budget legislation, referred to as the "Big Beautiful Bill." The proposed legislation was increasingly defanged as Congress tried to come up with a compromise to protect states' legislative independence. But ultimately, the Senate voted to remove the moratorium altogether.

The 10-year ban of states' legislation of AI was contentious from the start. Big Tech companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon reportedly actively lobbied for passing the bill, saying patchwork state AI regulation would inhibit the U.S.' competitive edge against threats like China.

Those opposed to the bill, including civil advocacy groups, AI safety researchers, and state attorneys general said it would be an unprecedented concession of power to Big Tech and would strip states of its ability to protect people from AI harms.

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James Altucher:

Wall Street Strategist Tom Lee Is Aiming To Create the MicroStrategy of Ethereum

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is joining a little known bitcoin miner aiming to become the biggest publicly traded holder of ether.

Lee, a high-profile market strategist known for his prescient bitcoin price forecasts and stock predictions, has been appointed chairman of the board of directors of BitMine Immersion Technologies, effective Monday.

The company also announced a $250 million private placement to implement a buying strategy around ether, which it aims to make its primary treasury reserve asset while continuing with its core bitcoin mining business.

Lee’s appointment comes amid a groundswell of interest around stablecoins following the successful IPO of stablecoin issuer Circle at the beginning of the month and positive momentum pushing potential stablecoin legislation through Congress.

“The financial services industry and crypto are converging and it really started with stablecoins, which is the ChatGPT of crypto because it’s viral adoption by consumers, business banks and now even Visa,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday.

“Underneath the stablecoin industry is Ethereum – that is really the backbone and architecture of stablecoins so it’s important to create a project that accumulates Ethereum to essentially protect and have some influence on the network," he added.

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Ari Goldschmidt:

GOP Wants EV Tax Credit Gone; It Would Be a Disaster for Tesla

The Republican Party's opposition to tax credits for electric vehicles has stepped up a notch. As its members in the U.S. Senate add their input to the budget bill that came from their colleagues in the House of Representatives, among the changes they want to see is a faster eradication of the IRS clean vehicle tax credit.

The tax credit provides up to $7,500 off the price of an EV as long as certain conditions are met, and the language from the House would have given it until the end of the year. Now, it might be gone by the end of September.

The looming passage of the bill appears to have reopened the rift between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Republican Party, which the billionaire funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the last election.

After a brief war of words earlier this month that was quickly smoothed over when Musk apologized to President Trump, it seems there's the potential for strife again.

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