Monday morning news drop
The Crypto World Can’t Wait for ‘the Merge’ A long-awaited upgrade to Ethereum, the most popular crypto platform, may make the technology more environmentally sustainable. But it comes with risks. (New York Times)
Will This Be the First Country Bankrupted by Crypto? It’s been a year since El Salvador adopted bitcoin as currency — things are not going well (Rolling Stone)
Hope You Enjoyed the Summer Rally: The easy money has already been made (probably). (Businessweek)
Someone stole my truck. I got a crash course on the wild black market for stolen cars: Car manufacturers and individual car owners in Europe were just like those in the United States: they lacked much in the way of incentives to do something about the problem. But there was one group that did have strong incentives to fight the problem: insurance companies. (NPR)
Get Ready for the Magic Mushroom Pill: The medical benefits of psychedelic drugs have gone from Age of Aquarius punchline to solid science, but the startups racing to market might still be getting ahead of themselves. (Businessweek)
Missing parts, long waits, and a dead mouse: The perils of getting a Tesla fixed: Tesla wants to eliminate the need for service. Recode obtained customer complaints to the FTC that suggest this isn’t happening — yet. (Vox)
How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts: In the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, industrialist Barre Seid funded a new group run by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who guided Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end federal abortion rights. (Money is speech? One-person one vote?) (ProPublica)