Thursday August 13, 2026
Launching a Rocket is Only Part of the Challenge
Everyone obsesses over whether a company can get a rocket off the ground. Engineering a launch is a solvable problem. The space industry is full of talented engineers, many of whom cut their teeth at SpaceX and are now pushing the same technology forward elsewhere at a faster pace. But launch is only half of the story.
SpaceX just released a thirty minute clip from an internal all hands meeting. Around the four minute mark, Elon Musk walks through the early history of the company, including the fact that it took four attempts before the rocket reached orbit at all. He then plays a two minute reel of failure after failure, as the team tried to figure out how to land an orbital rocket after it was successfully launched.
It is quite easy to forget how strange that goal once sounded. Landing a rocket that just left the atmosphere and bringing it back down gently enough to fly again was not an obvious engineering path. It was a bet that took SpaceX nearly three years and a long string of expensive failures to prove out. Watching that two minute segment is a useful reminder that the companies chasing SpaceX today are not just racing against a launch cadence. They are racing against years of hard won iteration that most of the industry has not yet lived through.
Maybe that explains why every lift off and landing still gets a cheer, no matter how routine it looks from the outside.
◾ NYC Council investigating Kalshi, Polymarket, Coinbase $COIN and Gemini $GEMI over prediction market marketing aimed at youth (NYC Council)
◾ OCC approves crypto companies to operate as national banks (Crypto Briefing)
◾ Apple $APPL in talks with publishers to access news for Siri (WSJ)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ CFTC advises exchanges to tighten disclosures on prediction market incentives (CFTC)
◾ BoE shares new digital pound use cases (Bank of England)
◾ US Space Command names integrated space fires and counter-LEO-constellation capabilities top priorities for 2029-2033 (Breaking Defense)
◾ Hawaii to impose crypto ATM ban starting October 1st (Hawaii News Now)
◾ Australia warns against dealing with Yepbit Exchange (ASIC)
◾ SEC issues no-action letter allowing Franklin Templeton $BEN funds to invest in its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (SEC)
Financial Notices & Public Company Releases
◾ Financial updates:
Cisco $CSCO Q4’26: Revenue $17.3B | Op income $4.3B +38% y/y | Net income $3.9B +51% y/y | Cash $15.9B (Cisco)
BitGo $BTGO Q2’26: Revenue $4.3B +79.6% y/y | Net loss $19M | aEBITDA loss $4.2M | Cash $159.0M (BitGo)
Nebius $NBIS Q2’26: Revenue $582.3M +454% y/y | Op loss $175.9M | Net loss $190.4M | aEBITDA $236.2M | Cash $8.0B (SEC Filing)
Cerebras $CBRS Q2’26: Revenue $180.1M +74% y/y | Net loss $450.5M | aEBITDA loss $53.1M | Cash $8.6B (Cerebras)
WhiteFiber $WYFI Q2’26: Revenue $28.8M +54% y/y | Op loss $9.3M | Net loss $15.0M | aEBITDA $5.5M | Cash $60.4M (PR Newswire)
Securitize $SECZ Q2’26: Revenue $14.4M -5% y/y | Net loss $21.7M | aEBITDA loss $5.5M | Cash $33.6M (PR Newswire)
Forward Industries $FWDI Q3’26: Revenue $10.8M | Op loss $70.3M | Net loss $69.0M | Cash $11.0M (Globe Newswire)
Cypherpunk Technologies $CYPH Q2’26: Op loss $4.7M | Net income $39.4M | Cash $7.6M (PR Newswire)
DeFi Development Corp $DFDV Q2’26: SOL per share $0.066, +24% y/y (Globe Newswire)
◾ AGM Group Holdings $AGMH confirmed compliant with Nasdaq listing rules (Globe Newswire)
Restructuring, Hacks, Losses & Legal Updates
◾ President Trump sued over role in Truth Social’s paid early-access-to-posts program (The Block)
◾ Jury selection begins in $META case alleging platforms harm youth (AP News)
◾ German advocacy group files criminal complaint against $META’s AI glasses (Reuters)
◾ Supermassive Games lays off up to 75 employees (Gematsu)
Crypto Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ Goldman Sachs $GS to buy NEOS, provider of systematic options-based income ETFs (Goldman Sachs Asset Management)
◾ Wintermute plans $1B investment in HFT and AI infrastructure over next 5 years (Bloomberg)
◾ Zerohash rebuffed on US trust bank charter bid, plans to refile (CoinDesk)
◾ MEMX files to offer prediction bets on corporate earnings (Bloomberg)
◾ Dinaro achieves MiCA registration (Crypto Briefing)
◾ Fidelity to stake ether in its ether fund $FETH (SEC)
◾ Kraken Prop offers trading on the S&P 500 (Kraken)
AI Models, Applications & Developments
◾ Anthropic eyeing $2T IPO valuation (FT)
◾ WhiteFiber $WYFI and Krambu launching 100MW liquid-cooled GPU data center (PR Newswire)
◾ xAI releases Grok 4.6 (xAI)
◾ Anthropic in talks to buy optimization technology DecartAI (Reuters)
◾ Google’s $GOOGL Gemini app hits 1B users (X)
The Attention Economy, Gaming & Interactive Shifts
◾ Apple $APPL in talks with publishers to access news for Siri (WSJ)
◾ Kalshi launches real-time order book through DoubleZero (Newscord)
◾ Gamehaus $GMHS announces strategic shift toward AI-generated content (PR Newswire)
Space Systems, Satellites & Cosmic Activity
◾ Blue Origin adds second launch pad at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 36 (Blue Origin)
◾ China’s C919 passenger plane makes first international commercial flight (CNBC)
◾ Firefly Aerospace $FLY ramps up launch vehicle production (SpaceNews)