“Crypto spring” has begun, claimed Bitmine chairman Thomas Lee on Monday. There is plenty of evidence that he might be right.
After a miserable start to the year, in which Bitcoin plunged in February to $63,000 (half its all-time high the year before after Donald Trump declared he would make the US the “crypto capital of the world”), it is now around $80,000. Crypto industry concerns that were holding back what was already crypto-friendly new regulation in Washington DC have been addressed. Stablecoins continue to win acceptance. BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, uses the blockchain and likens crypto now to the internet in 1996, just before it took off.
On Tuesday, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the Silicon Valley venture capital giant, announced a new crypto fund – admittedly smaller than its previous one, but at $2.2bn still huge. The firm now has nearly $10bn focused on crypto and describes the current outlook for the sector as “the most encouraging it has been in years”. This is reflected in the new fund’s strategy, focused on mainstreaming crypto. The successful founders in this phase of crypto will be “much more product focused, much more go-to market focused, and more pragmatic rather than ideological”, proclaims an a16z video promoting the new fund. One goal is for a billion people to be “daily users of blockchains through stocks, bonds, stablecoins, remittances” and the like.
This may yet turn out to be yet another incarnation of the hype cycle that has made the emergence of the crypto industry such a rollercoaster ride. But the days when crypto was the preserve of outsiders against the system are now officially over. The new message: it’s all about changing the system from within.
DeepSeek takes fund search to outside backers
DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, is reportedly about to raise its first money from outside investors at a valuation of $45bn. China’s “Big Fund” – shorthand for the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund – is expected to lead the capital round, making DeepSeek its first investment in a large language model company, a de facto national champion in the country’s intensifying battle with the United States to dominate AI.
The release of DeepSeek’s first model, R1, shocked the world in January 2025. Put together by a small team backed by Liang Wenfeng’s hedge fund, R1 had reportedly cost only $6m to train, yet its performance was almost as good as that of Open AI’s state-of-the-art ChatGPT. The combined value of AI-related shares on the Nasdaq exchange plunged by $1n, as investors jumped to the conclusion that low-cost providers like DeepSeek would drive down the price that could be charged to consumers of AI, and the billions of dollars being invested in high-price US models would never turn a profit.
There have been several twists in the narrative since then. On closer inspection, DeepSeek’s model turned out to be not quite so cheap. It had used Nvidia’s high-end chips after all. Western countries started banning DeepSeek as part of a geopolitical backlash against Chinese tech – even though DeepSeek, at that point, was not part of the mainstream Beijing AI strategy. US AI hyper-scalers did not slash their investment in AI, but doubled-down in order to stay ahead. By its own admission, DeepSeek’s latest model is still 3-6 months behind US leaders. Having long-claimed not to need outside investment, DeepSeek faces serious challenges, including a talent drain, and taking Chinese state money may be the best way for it to stay competitive.
Poll finds happiness at work leads to a balanced life
Happy at work, happier in life. So says a new Gallup analysis of 350,000 employed adults across 149 countries during 2020-25. On a scale of zero to 10, Gallup’s “life evaluation” measure showed that workers who enjoy what they do rank a full point higher than those who don’t – a bigger difference than is made by having a serious health condition (which lowers life evaluation by 0.8 of a point), but slightly less than experiencing severe social isolation (-1.4 points).
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That should probably not come as a huge surprise, given how much time people spend working. Enjoying work has a slightly higher impact on life evaluation than having an extensive choice of types of job, or feeling that the work has a good effect on others, though both of these also have a positive score, according to the research, conducted in partnership with the Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation and glasses-maker Persol. Enjoying work also increases an employee’s expectations of how good their life will be in five years’ time, their sense that life is worthwhile, and the overall positivity of their emotions on a daily basis.
Choice of jobs matters slightly more than enjoyment of work for younger people of an age where they tend to be building their career, however. Enjoyment is more important for people who are full-time self-employed than those with a full-time employer. Having purposeful work matters a lot in India, and little in Japan. A wide choice of job types scores higher on life evaluation for workers in low-income countries than those in higher-income ones (who perhaps may not appreciate how lucky they are). To maximise the wellbeing of workers, Gallup concludes, employers and policymakers should prioritise making work enjoyable as much as they do access to jobs, good working conditions and pay.
Photograph by Ian Maule / AFP via Getty Images