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For cryptocurrency investors, Donald Trump represents a great hope. In the libertarian paradise where tokens on blockchains pave the future of the financial system instead of banks, lenders, and brokerages, Trump could even be a prophet. Trump has cleared the way for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and coins with names youve never heard of to go to the metaphorical moon. He has promised to kneecap the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is tasked with reining in fraud on the traditional markets and was getting more comfortable with calling a spade a spade when cryptos acted like equities or trading platforms mimicked the highly regulated function of brokers. Earlier this week, Trump announced a Crypto Strategic Reserve in which the government would presumably use taxpayer money to buy and hold various cryptocurrencies. And on Friday, the White House will hold a crypto summit hosted by Trumps AI and crypto czar, the venture capitalist David Sacks. But one thing is holding him back from being a savior of decentralized finance: tariffs. (Well, really its his entire economic plan.) On Tuesday, tariffs went into effect on goods from China as well as neighbors Canada and Mexico. Not only did the traditional markets falter with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 1.3% and the S&P 500 dropping 1% as of midday, but the crypto markets took a hit too. The price of Bitcoin fell 1% and Ethereum dropped 1.2%. The Dow and Bitcoin have each erased all of their respective gains since Trump was elected in November. If youre wondering if thats a coincidence that the crypto market is moving in tandem with the stock market, its not. Cryptocurrency was long hailed as a hedge against inflation. So the theory goes: If the economy suffers, the price of goods will go up and the buying power of the U.S. dollar, the worlds reserve currency, will go down. In that scenario, itd be nice to have some alternative asset like precious metals or a digital currency that can bear the brunt ofor even thrive duringthe hard times. But Bitcoin and its peers became so popular in the mid-2010s that investors bought up a lot of it. Treasuries at companies like Microstrategy and Tesla hold billions of dollars in Bitcoin, crypto hedge funds abound, and there are even ways for retail investors to buy crypto on traditional markets such as through Bitcoin ETFs and even in their retirement plans. This intermingling often means that when traditional assets suffer, investors sell crypto and when crypto assets suffer, investors sell traditional assets. Their fates are intertwined. So, when Donald Trump announced his tariffs, both the stock market and the crypto market suffered. In other words, Trump cannot inflict pain on the stock market without sending those shockwaves through the crypto world too. Thats why his laissez-faire approach to digital assets wont workuntil he gets out of his own way, stops picking fights with neighbors and key trading partners, and does something that will actually improve the economy. Unless he does that, Kamala Harris will have been the better pick for the industry, even if she placed a cop on the beat.
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I like to say that I spend most of my life negotiatingand if you consider your own work and life, you just might feel the same. My career has been full of back-and-forth: I sat across tables negotiating agreements for Christies for over two decades as Global Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships; I stand on stages around the world as a charity auctioneer, negotiating prices up to maximize fundraising; and I founded a talent agency that requires me to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of my clients. To top it all off, Im a mom of three kids. Over the years, I have listened to many people unknowingly sink their own negotiations with a mistake as simple as using the wrong language, revealing their inexperience and lack of confidence in one sentence. Here are three phrases you should avoid if you want to come out on top in your negotiations every single time: 1. Is it okay if I ask for . . . ? One of the most important things to remember in any negotiation is to project confidence from the minute the conversation begins. I have watched innumerable people show a lack of confidence and subpar negotiating skills in the first couple of minutes of the negotiation with this phrase. If you begin a negotiation asking Is it okay if I ask for . . . ? you have made me the authority, which gives me the upper hand. As an auctioneer, I never look out into the audience and ask the bidder for the next incrementI tell them the number and then wait for them to agree. This doesnt mean you need to walk into a negotiation acting aggressive or assertive if that is not your natural demeanor. In fact, it is better if you act naturally when you walk into the room, so that the person sitting across from you feels comfortable and relaxed. Body language is a telltale sign that you are in control of the situation. If you are the type of person who likes to overexplain or ask for permission, practice the negotiation with friends and family before you walk in the room and get comfortable sitting in silence. Remember, in a negotiation, confident silence will always be your greatest asset. The person who speaks and asks too much will usually come out with less than they wanted. Negotiation is about gaining the upper hand from the minute you sit down . . . and keeping the upper hand until the DocuSign has been completed. 2. Do you think my number is too high? To set the right tone for a negotiation, it is important that you appear to be in control at all times. If you have done your prep work, you should set your LMH number in advance of the meeting. Your L is your Low (walk away) number. Your M is your medium number; you would feel comfortable accepting this offer. Lastly, your H is your high number; would be thrilled to get this in exchange for what you are providing. By thinking this through before the negotiation, you should feel confident you wont give away more than you want or accept less than you should in the heat of negotiation. Even better, this means you dont need to ask the question of the person across the table because you already know what you will accept for the service or product you provide. If they want it, fantastic! If not, you already know what it will take for you to walk away. Also note that a shrewd negotiator will go into a negotiation expecting that a higher number will be stated to start the negotiation. Good negotiators expect the person across the table to be good at negotiating until proven otherwise. If you dont feel like a confident negotiator, asking if your number is too high will only show them you dont feel confident that what you are asking for is worth the number you have put out there. Instead of asking, state your number and let them react to it before continuing the negotiation. 3. I will just wait to hear back from you about next steps. When I stand onstage at an auction watching two bidders battle it out to win the item, the minute I slam down the gavel and read out the paddle number, I recommend the winning bidders credit card number be charged as soon as possible. I learned a long time ago that buyers remorse is real, and things that are purchased in the heat of an auction battle might not be as appealing outside of a crowded room of people cheering on the bidders. I have seen the same thing happen in a negotiation. A negotiation is not done until the contract is signedso make sure to take the initiative to follow up immediately and ensure everything you discussed is ready to be finalized as soon as possible. The sooner you finalize the deal, the sooner you can get on to your next successful negotiation.
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E-Commerce
Hello! Thank you, as always, for reading Plugged In. A quick scheduling note: Starting next week, this newsletter will land in your inbox on Fridays instead of Wednesdays. See you then. Back in December, a Meta executive catalyzed a doozy of a kerfuffle by saying the company expected AI-generated profiles to exist on its platforms kind of in the same way that accounts do. Theyll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. . . . Thats where we see all of this going, VP of generative AI Connor Hayes told the Financial Times. The reaction was . . . not great (Futurisms headline: People Are Disgusted by Facebooks Plan to Deploy AI-Powered Users). Hayes specified that Meta expected this development to happen over time, and though it didnt sound the least bit appealing to me, I also thought it wasnt an immediate threat. But in recent days, a bevy of AI-generated people have overwhelmed my Facebook feed. They are, Im sure, a cruder manifestation of the idea than the AI members Hayes was talking up. But their presence has left me even warier of Meta willfully reimagining a social network around synthetic personalities. The posts in question come from a variety of AI slop Facebook pages I didnt ask to follow. The page names, such as Nature and Animals, The Newstoday, and Dogs World, have little or nothing to do with the topics of the posts. And those topics are, well, bizarre. How bizarre? Something like half the posts Ive seen involve AI-generated images of senior citizensas old as 120showing off birthday cakes theyve baked themselves. Most of the others relate to talented craftspeople who have fashioned elaborate sculptures out of materials as diverse as wood, ice, and vegetables. A smattering are then-and-now shots of happy people in photos taken decades ago and in 2025. A few show distressed wild animals getting rescued by humans. Much of the imagery is obviously synthetic; some of it is a tad more subtle. But all of it is meant to tug at the heartstrings, often in nakedly manipulative ways. A pretty high percentage of the cake bakers and craftspeople explain that their accomplishment has gone unacknowledged. Sometimes they look downright morose about the lack of love. Thats presumably meant to get Facebook members clicking, which they dosometimes to the tune of thousands of comments and tens of thousands of likes. Along with inserting these posts into the feeds of users who didnt request them (like, for instance, me), Meta tries to goose engagement via its Meta AI bot. An image of a bearded gent who carved a crib for his grandchildonly to discover that Nobody Likes It :(is accompanied by suggested questions such as Why is it unliked? and Babys reaction to crib. None of the answers the AI generates are of even the slightest value, creating a perverse feedback loop in which Meta is feeding one form of bad AI into another to generate even more slop. Which is not to say that I didnt find this material briefly transfixing when it first found its way into my feed. Craving more understanding of what was going on, I clicked on some of the posts to read the comments. An alarming percentage of them showered the purported posters with birthday wishes, compliments on their artistic creations, and general good vibes. Either the Facebook members who left the comments had been fooled orworsethey were happy to be happy about the accomplishments of AI-generated characters going through slight variations on a handful of maudlin scenarios. I did savor the delightfully cynical comments from those members who saw through the whole thing. So what? snapped one member in response to a post involving one particular cake-baking centenarian. Im 199 years old and I made my cake with peach cream and filling and I started decorating cakes when I was 6 months old. After a few days of this, I got worried that engaging with these posts at all had something to do with them being thereespecially when the onslaught not only continued, but intensified. Maybe Facebook took me as liking them (though I never, you know, clicked the Like button) rather than merely being a victim of my own morbid curiosity. So I started using the Not Interested option to tell its algorithm I didnt want to see these kinds of items. A day later, they seem to be gone, though Im not ready to declare them eradicated. At its bestas when group moderators take their jobs seriouslyFacebook is still wonderful. It might even live up to Mark Zuckerbergs platitudes about its mission being to connect the world. These AI posts have nothing to do with that. Stripped of its humanity and stuffed with generative AI, Facebook is the junkiest digital junk food imaginable. And the worst part is that the bad contaminates the good. As AI-generated fake then-and-now photo comparisons began showing up, I started skimming right past similar ones posted by people Im following. Only after slowing down and assessing them more carefully did I realize they were their real family members, not more empty calories. I felt like Id been left to moderate my own feedwhich, come to think of it, is an official Facebook policy these days. Maybe Meta will somehow institutionalize AI profiles in a way that adds value and leaves no member confused. But I cant help but wonder: Instead of welcoming AI-generated members onto its platforms, might the company be better off doing everything in its power to guarantee that the only people youll run across are, indeed, actual people? Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if youre reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. More top tech stories from Fast Company Uber will now pair Austin riders with Waymo self-driving carsAustin riders can be matched with a Waymo all-electric Jaguar I-PACE. Read More Mozillas new message: Were the only browser not backed by billionairesMozillas new CEO outlines coming browser features and her hopes for regulatory action. Read More TikToks airport theory dares you to arrive just 15 minutes before your flightA viral trend has travelers cutting it dangerously close, claiming you can breeze through security in minutes. Some make it. Others? Not so much. Read More Trumps crypto reserve is a payoff for loyalistsA crypto stockpile rewards supporters while creating volatility for the government. Read More AI Chatbots have telltale quirks. Researchers can spot them with 97% accuracyA new study shows that different LLMs have distinct writing stylesmaking AI-generated text easier to detect. Read More Elon Musks bumbling X posts are inadvertently teaching everyone how government worksThanks to replies from journalists and experts, Musks X feed has become an accidental crash course in civics and a variety of topics. Read More
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