Greg Guenthner:

Tesla’s Board Reportedly Sought a Successor While Musk Wheeled Around Washington

According to a new, brow-raising WSJ report, Tesla’s board quietly began searching for Elon Musk’s potential successor about a month ago, approaching executive search firms as the carmaker faced protests, plummeting sales, and shrinking profits while Musk waded into Washington to slash government spending.

Board members reportedly met with Musk to express concerns about his divided attention, telling him he needed to spend more time on Tesla and to publicly commit to doing so; per the Journal report, Musk didn’t push back and subsequently told investors he would “allocate far more time to Tesla” starting in May.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm said in a statement released overnight that it was “absolutely false” that the company approached recruitment firms. She also claimed “this was communicated to the media before the report was published.” 

Musk shared the statement and argued it was an “EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS.” The WSJ has since said Tesla never responded to the reporters’ questions.

Musk’s government work led to Tesla’s first annual sales decline in over a decade. The company's market value dropped from $1.5 trillion in December to about $900 billion currently.

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James Altucher:

Sam Altman's Eye-Scanning Orb Is Now Coming to the U.S.

Sam Altman’s iris-scanning, identify-verification technology startup says it will begin expanding to the U.S. starting May 1 and will launch a phone-like hardware device by next year. Those changes—and a promised World-branded debit card—signal the company’s ambitions to develop a “super app”—a goal shared by Elon Musk.

Altman and Alex Blania, a German physics researcher, announced at an event in San Francisco Wednesday evening that their venture-backed company, Tools for Humanity, is updating its World products to include a new, smaller, eye-scanning orb. 

The device-and-app combo scans people’s irises, creates a unique user ID, stores that information on the blockchain, and uses it as a form of identity verification. If enough people adopt the app globally, the thinking goes, it could ostensibly thwart scammers.

Altman has expressed concern about the amount of fakery that new AI tools will enable, including the generative AI tools pioneered by his other startup, OpenAI, which is valued at $300 billion. So the World app, and its hardware component, are Altman’s solution to the problem.

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Chris Campbell:

Trump’s 100-Day Crypto Bender

Trump’s first 100 days in office weren’t about building something new. They were about demolishing the last four years of regulatory hostility toward crypto, brick by brick.

On January 23, Trump signed his first major crypto order: “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.” Among other changes, it granted every American the right to mine, self-custody, and run nodes. It also banned CBDCs and barred banks from discriminating against legal crypto businesses.

But what about the next 100 days? Here's what’s coming:

• New classifications for digital assets.
• Clear rules for stablecoins and DeFi protocols.
• A national mining strategy — tying Bitcoin to energy and security.
• Pilot zones for legal DeFi innovation.
• Sovereign crypto infrastructure, with the U.S. setting the standards.

Crypto isn’t the outsider anymore. It’s not hiding in Reddit threads or Discord servers. It’s sitting at the table. Wearing a suit. Writing the rules.

And those who see what’s coming? They’re the ones who’ll reap the biggest rewards.

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