Hi, and welcome to today's Bay Area Times daily newsletter. Top stories today: 1) FTX finds $6B in assets, 2) Silvergate bankruptcy could be tonight, 3) Figure humanoid out of stealth, 4) Brave Search launches Summarizer AI, and 5) small retailers' revenue drop.

0. Data and calendar

1. FTX has found $6B in liquid assets, $11B in customer liabilities; Alameda liabilities are TBD

• Just looking at FTX.com, there are $2.2B in liquid assets and $11.2B in liabilities. And only $0.7B of these assets are what the FTX Debtors are calling Category A assets, meaning they have a daily volume of at least $1M a day. In a scenario where no more assets are given to FTX.com customers, the gross recovery rate could be as low as 6%. - FTX filing, Decrypt

• Adding Alameda and other subsidiaries' assets, there are $6.1B in liquid assets. Which would lead to a gross recovery rate of 54%, not including the $5B or so in illiquid assets.

• The main downside risk are the unknown Alameda liabilities, likely to be announced by March 15. According to BlockFi's bankruptcy filing, the company had a $0.8B loan outstanding with Alameda. - Decrypt

2. Silvergate Bank drops 58% on Thu as most crypto firms leave; bankruptcy could be tonight

• The bank's stock is now down 62% for the week:

• Bitstamp, Cboe Digital Markets, Circle, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Galaxy, Gemini, Paxos: all said they would suspend business with the bank, after it delayed its annual report, suggesting it might be bankrupt.

• The only big player left: Kraken, who stopped using Signature Bank for its non-corporate clients, so they probably still need Silvergate until they can find someone else. - Coindesk, Decrypt

• Bankruptcy could be announced tonight: many banks go under on a Friday night, allowing the FDIC to work on securing the customer base over the weekend.

3. Figure humanoid robot out of stealth, self-funded to $100M

• Founder Brett Adcock is self-funding $100M. Previously, he founded Archer Aviation, which did a multi-billion IPO in 2021 and is now worth $0.7B. His team of 40 also includes people from Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Apple, IHMC, Cruise, and Alphabet. - Techcrunch

• Purpose is to build general-purpose humanoid. Very similar to Elon Musk's vision for Tesla's Optimus robot. Of note, both companies say their robots rely heavily on AI.

4. Brave Search launches AI Summarizer

• Better descriptions and summarized snippets. Not that much different than Google's snippets, which also include images, videos, and highlighted single-word answers. - Brave, Techcrunch

• We don't see these improvements as a threat to Google. Competing search engines really need a 10x improvement for users to switch away from Google -- privacy and AI chat, in their current state, are not sufficient.

5. Macy's, Best Buy revenue drop

• Clearly, these smaller retailers are suffering more than their larger counterparts. For 2023, their guidance is even worse: Macy's -2% to -4%, Best Buy -3% to -6%. In contrast, Walmart, Amazon, and CVS, the top 3 retailers, all reported growing revenues in Q4. - Macy's, Best Buy, WSJ

6. Other headlines

Tech

• Apple asks ChatGPT-powered email app to set a 17-and-older age restriction.

• Microsoft's Activision deal to be approved by the EU: Reuters.

• Shef, Uber Eats for individual cooks, raises $73.5M for nationwide expansion.

• Dell's revenue down 11% to $25B in Q4, up 1% to $102B in the year.

• Ford establishes Latitude AI subsidiary for self-driving technology, rehires Argo team.

• Clubhouse sees many top hires leaving, as Twitter Spaces dominates category.

• ACLU, others oppose TikTok ban on 1st Amendment grounds.

Business

• FOMC officials suggest 50 bps hike might be necessary.

• Housing affordability index reaches 1986 low, as mortgage rate hits 6.65%.

• iPhone maker Foxconn plans $700M India plant.

• Teladoc to pay $7.8M fine to FTC for sharing patient data with Meta, Snap.

• Ericsson pleads guilty to federal bribery violations, to pay $206M penalty.

• Citigroup cutting hundreds of jobs, less than 1% of 240K workforce.

Crypto

• Senators Lummis and McHenry (Rs) continue to support crypto industry, criticize SEC.

• Senator Warren and colleagues demand to see Binance's balance sheet in letter.

• Senate bipartisan crypto bill to be revamped and released by mid-April.

• Gensler warns industry on crypto, AI, other issues.

• Ethereum staking withdrawals delayed from March to first two weeks of April.

• Ethereum to allow for private key recovery via Account Abstraction.

• Solana to focus on stability after repeated outages.

• Blur co-founder interviewed by Coindesk: unclear how 0-fee platform will make money.

Washington and more

• 28 Chinese entities targeted in latest U.S. export restrictions.

• China to release economic projections this weekend.

• European Commission President to meet Biden next week on March 10.

• Blinken spoke to Lavrov in unscheduled G-20 meeting.

• Biden releases National Cybersecurity Strategy document.

• Trump civil lawsuit over Capitol attack should proceed, Justice Department says.

• Biden campaign building advisory board of top Democrat politicians.

• AOC and George Santos being investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

• Alex Murdaugh found guilty of killing his wife and son.

• Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm not being paid for by Medicare, even with FDA approval.

7. Interesting tweets, memes, and images

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