2021 Week 22 Readings

China Tech, Ethereum, Semi-conductors and Car manufacturing

Big Tech in China:

China tech policy: Shenzhen’s new data law another signal of intent to rein in Big Tech | South China Morning Post (scmp.com) meant that China tech in Shenzhen can forget about owning their customers data. The law will get tougher and that will also mean that the bigger tech will get more entrenched in the older segment of the digital economy? For startups, they will just have to play a different game. The whole startup ecosystem in China may just open up for more innovation.

The tech spin-outs - Chinese Characteristics (substack.com) came up with a good hypothesis on why the Chinese big tech is doing tons of IPOs. My simplified thoughts is that they just want to cash out, the articles provide another angle to that IPO equation.

Ethereum:

While Bitcoin is generally seen as digital gold, Ethereum is only as good as its processing capability. A good reason on why Ethereum may lose its lead as a platform is when a better blockchain appears. Maybe Ethereum may not be losing its lead if we dwell a bit deeper but things are still uncertain at this early stage of the game.

An Incomplete Guide to Rollups (vitalik.ca) helps us understand the permanence of Ethereum as a platform and why Ethereum may just continue to dominate. If developers are able to develop new protocols to transact faster on a different layer, then there is really no need for additional crypto other than bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Limits to Blockchain Scalability (vitalik.ca) as a follow up on why blockchain has certain scalability issue and why it is crucial for regular users to have a culture where running nodes is a common activity. The main bottleneck in Ethereum is storage size, and statelessness and state expiry can fix this and possibly why Ethereum will continue to be the preferred blockchain.

Semi-Conductor:

The Good And Bad Of Auto IC Updates (semiengineering.com) help understand the increasing complexity of car manufacturing and why it is going to be a big tailwind for the semi-conductor and the automated testing equipment space.

Hope this is helpful on what we had been reading and thinking

-Weighted