Ray Blanco:

China Conducts Surprise Launch of Long March 12B, Delivers Qianfan Satellites on Debut Flight

China conducted the maiden launch of its reusable Long March 12B rocket Monday, providing no advance warning and delivering operational payloads to orbit.

The first Long March 12B lifted off at 4:40 a.m. Eastern June 1 from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country’s state-owned main space contractor, announced launch success within an hour of liftoff, revealing that the debut launch had carried operational payloads, adding satellites to the Shanghai-led Qianfan (Thousand Sails) broadband megaconstellation. CASC did not immediately confirm the number of satellites carried, but if the launch followed the typical batch size of 18, it would bring the Qianfan constellation to 180 satellites now in orbit.

Though the Long March 12B is designed to be reusable, the launch did not involve a first stage recovery attempt. CASC stated that such a recovery test will be carried out at a later date.

China is aiming to greatly boost its access to space through high payload capacity, reusable launch vehicles to make its multiple megaconstellation projects viable, while also working on reusable Long March rockets dedicated to crewed spaceflight, including crewed lunar landings, and large space and lunar infrastructure projects.

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Davis Wilson:

Spot Bitcoin ETFs Record $1.42 Billion in Outflows as Investor Sentiment Turns Risk-Off

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded one of their largest weekly withdrawals on record, with investors pulling approximately $1.42 billion from the products between May 25 and May 29, according to data from SoSoValue.

The figure marks the third-largest weekly outflow since spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the United States and extends a broader trend of institutional selling that has weighed on the cryptocurrency market in recent weeks.

The outflows come amid rising Treasury yields, geopolitical uncertainty, and growing competition for investor capital from high-performing sectors such as artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks.

While Bitcoin ETFs remain one of the most successful ETF categories ever launched, the recent wave of redemptions suggests that investors are becoming increasingly cautious toward risk assets.

Despite the withdrawals, spot Bitcoin ETFs still hold a combined net asset value of $94.17 billion, while cumulative historical net inflows remain positive at $55.66 billion.

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James Altucher:

The Viral Chess Cheating Scandal with Anal Beads: Ben Mezrich Reveals the Full Story

Oh my gosh, one of my favorite guests ever on my podcast: Ben Mezrich.

Ben wrote Bringing Down the House, which became the movie 21. He wrote The Accidental Billionaires, which became The Social Network. And now his latest page-turner, Checkmate, is about one of the most explosive scandals in modern sports: the Hans Niemann chess cheating controversy that took over the world.

You remember the story. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest chess player of all time, loses to this completely arrogant, egotistical 19-year-old bad boy of chess. Then Magnus accuses him of cheating. This had basically never happened before at that level in chess.

What followed was a viral meltdown: the infamous anal beads tweet, death threats, lawsuits, chess.com, Netflix documentaries, and a chess world at war with itself.

Ben spent over a year with Hans Niemann. He got access to Magnus’s camp, chess.com, and the drama behind the chessboards. So we talk about whether Hans actually cheated that day, the insane rise of online chess during COVID, the world of prodigies, the generational clash inside elite chess, and how one suspicious game nearly destroyed a young player’s career.

So welcome to one of my favorite guests, Ben Mezrich.

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