Tesla's <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-2025-q1-sales-results-worse-expected">horrendous first quarter numbers</a> have some of its backers rethinking a few things. Namely, their CEO Elon Musk, whose once immense starpower is now <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-why-mad">inverting on itself</a>.
Still haunted by last year's sales slump — the first annual drop in its history — Tesla has kicked off 2025 with a worrying omen that it may repeat the unwanted feat: a 13 percent drop in first-quarter deliveries. As the company faces widespread protests fueled by anti-Musk sentiment, the diagnosis is obvious.
"This is our first look at the impact of recent brand damage — and it appears to be the primary driver behind this quarter's delivery decline," Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote on X, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-investors-brace-another-year-sales-decline-musk-backlash-grows-2025-04-04/">as spotted by </a><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-investors-brace-another-year-sales-decline-musk-backlash-grows-2025-04-04/">Reuters</a>. "These growth rates will likely deteriorate further this quarter." Annual deliveries, Munster predicts, will slip by 9 percent.
"I estimate brand damage cost Tesla around 80k deliveries in the quarter," Munster added <a href="https://x.com/munster_gene/status/1907445132112134473">in another tweet</a>.
The problems are very much material, too. Musk made a big and brash gamble with the Cybertruck, a heterodox pickup truck with bold styling and an exorbitant price tag. And less than <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/where-did-the-one-million-people-who-wanted-a-cybertruck-go/">50,000 of them have actually shipped</a> — nowhere near the 250,000 units sold that Musk promised investors before the stainless steel trapezoids started rolling off the lot last year.
To some fans and investors, the big Cybertruck push was a slap in the face. They had long begged Musk for a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-mocks-idea-affordable-25000-tesla">small, affordable Tesla</a> that could sell in high volumes. Instead, what they got was a vehicle that weighs 7,000 pounds and costs upwards of $80,000. Even if the fabled affordable EV does come, investors don't sound confident that Tesla will nail it. Gary Black, managing partner of Tesla shareholder The Future Fund, worries that if the cheaper vehicle is simply a barebones version of an existing model, this year's deliveries and profits "will go much lower," he told Reuters.
The rest of the Tesla lineup, meanwhile, is no longer as titillating in a market full of exciting EV options.
Tesla is also getting <a href="https://futurism.com/byd-crushing-tesla">smoked by its Chinese competitor BYD</a>, which recently usurped Musk's company as the world's largest EV automaker, selling over 4 million vehicles and raking $100 billion in revenue in 2024. Tesla sold 1.79 million and took in $97.7 billion over the same period.
It's impossible to ignore what Musk has recently positioned as Tesla's next big thing: the <a href="https://futurism.com/why-tesla-cybercab-robotaxi-no-sense">robotaxi business</a>. At the unveiling event of a "<a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-event-disappointment">Cybercab</a>" prototype last year, Musk dubiously promised that pivoting into offering self-driving cabs would <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/business/tesla-robotaxi-elon-musk.html">rake in trillions of dollars</a>. But as the company struggles to refine its existing autonomous driving software options like Full Self-Driving, there's immense uncertainty over when — if ever — it can start rolling out such a vision.
All the while, the mere act of driving around in a Tesla has become stigmatized in a way that would've been unthinkable just a few years ago. Tesla cars and dealerships alike are being <a href="https://futurism.com/wave-vandalism-protest-tesla">targeted with vandalism</a>, while owners are ruthlessly mocked.
The degree of hate has surprised even Tesla skeptics. JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman, who has long been bearish on the company, <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-estimates-cut-further-unprecedented-102345155.html">said in a report Friday</a> that first quarter deliveries confirm the "unprecedented brand damage we had earlier feared." 
But "if anything," Brinkman added, "we may have underestimated the degree of consumer reaction."
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-stock-rise-white-house">Tesla Stock Is Soaring for the Funniest Possible Reason</a>

Brand Damage

Their best days may be behind them.

Tesla Investors Suddenly Terrified as They Realize Musk Has Dug Their Grave

President Donald Trump's baffling escalation of his trade war has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-tariffs-tiktok-musk-doge-immigration-live-updates-rcna199640">bodychecked international markets</a>, and is expected to leave countless industries — and consumers — with major bruises.
Americans will bear the brunt of Trump's soaring tariffs. After all, they're basically a tax on goods from other countries, additional costs that are typically passed straight down to consumers.
The electronics sector is already taking a beating, with gamers facing skyrocketing prices as supply lines fall into chaos. As <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/gaming-pcs/pc-prices-up-at-least-15-percent-trump-tariffs-may-hurt-u-s-system-integrators-most">Tom's Hardware reports</a>, boutique PC builders heavily rely on parts imported almost exclusively from Asia, which means that buying that shiny gaming PC setup of your dreams could soon become an unaffordable luxury.
"Tariffs have a direct impact on our cost structure... which we have to pass down to our customers," PC builder Maingear CEO Wallace Santos told Tom's. "Some of our suppliers are stopping their production lines to move out of China, causing scarcity, which ultimately causes FOMO, which causes even more scarcity."
Santos expects prices for Maingear PCs to rise by anywhere from 20 to 25 percent in the US in the wake of the illogical trade war.
Countries where most PC components are manufactured have been hit hard, with China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam facing steep tariff rates of anywhere from 26 (South Korea) to 54 percent (China).
"Some of our GPU suppliers had to stop their Chinese lines to move to Taiwan or Vietnam, causing additional shortages," Santos told Tom's Hardware.
Gamers — a <a href="https://time.com/7113706/trump-harris-campaign-gamer-vote/">contested electoral demographic</a> — are unsurprisingly fuming.
"Dude these tariffs are going to fuck gaming raw, I'm sorry," one user <a href="https://x.com/NightSkyKing_/status/1907548266859753736">tweeted</a>.
"If you think that retailers aren’t gonna jack up the prices of the units already in the US too, I got a bridge to sell ya," one Reddit user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/1jq9447/comment/ml5l9uf/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">seethed</a> in the PlayStation 5 subreddit.
"I'm scared of how much the PS6 will cost," another user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/1jq9447/comment/ml5cyj0/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">fretted</a>.
Other users expressed fears that the already expensive Nintendo Switch 2 console, which was announced earlier this week, could soon become <a href="https://insider-gaming.com/trumps-new-tariffs-on-exports-to-u-s-could-push-nintendo-switch-2-price-higher/">even pricier</a>. Some <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/1jq43ow/comment/ml4i415/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">argued</a> the Japanese gaming company had pushed the price up in anticipation of tariffs.
As <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/643173/trump-tariffs-steve-jackson-board-game-industry">The Verge reports</a>, even the board game industry is trembling, with Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko calling the tariffs a "seismic shift" for the industry, indicating that "prices are going up."
"This one-two punch is likely to put many of our members out of business or force them to downsize and lay off employees to survive," the Game Manufacturers Association, which represents the tabletop and card gaming industry, said in a statement <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/552558/tabletop-panic-tariffs-on-china-layoffs-bankruptcy-gama">quoted by Polygon</a>.
The gaming industry as a whole is about to face major price hikes. Aubrey Quinn, senior vice president of Entertainment Software Association, the US trade group that reps all major gaming companies, <a href="https://www.gamefile.news/p/esa-trump-tariffs">told Game File</a> that "Any one product that a consumer would buy is likely to be subject to many of the tariffs announced, all compounded on top of one another."
And the situation is bound to get even worse as China has called Trump's bluff, announcing an (<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/economy/reciprocal-tariff-math/index.html">actually</a>) <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-hits-back-trump-34-tariff-us-imports-rcna199665">reciprocal tariff of 34 percent</a> on US imports on Friday. It's yet another major escalation that could worsen trade tensions and lead to even more price hikes — to the detriment of gamers everywhere.
More on tariffs: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-tariffs-signs-ai">Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AI</a>

Luxury Gaming

"I'm scared of how much the PS6 will cost."

Gamers Panic as Tariffs Poised to Spike Prices for Gaudy RGB PC Components

SpaceX launched its Fram2 private astronaut mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Monday.
Soon after, a crew of four astronauts on board the Crew Dragon vehicle entered a <a href="https://futurism.com/spacex-first-astronauts-poles">highly unusual polar orbit</a>, giving them a unique perspective on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrQXDHYel6E">some of the most remote places on Earth</a>.
But as crypto billionaire and mission commander Chun Wang <a href="https://x.com/satofishi/status/1907286344168276215?">reported in a tweet</a>, the once-in-a-lifetime journey had a pretty rough start — highlighting a brutal adjustment period many astronauts have to endure when traveling to space.
"The first few hours in microgravity weren’t exactly comfortable," he wrote. "Space motion sickness hit all of us — we felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times."
"It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea," Wang added. "You could still read on your iPad without making it worse. But even a small sip of water could upset your stomach and trigger vomiting."
It's a particularly pertinent topic as more people — often with less training and experience — are traveling into space for prolonged periods.
The motion sickness proved severe enough that nobody on board asked to open the Dragon capsule's cupola, a large glass dome that allows passengers to gaze at the Earth below, which replaces the hatch used to dock to the International Space Station on the tourism version of the craft.
"We were all focused on managing the motion sickness" instead, Wang wrote.
The phenomenon, often referred to as "space adaptation syndrome," is a common problem for space travelers adjusting to weightlessness once in orbit. According to a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16935570/">2006 study</a>, anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of astronauts experience space motion sickness.
Researchers have found that symptoms are <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521112119.htm">usually the result of adaptation</a> to a different gravitational force — not necessarily weightlessness alone — after finding that the same symptoms appear after spending more than an hour in a centrifuge on Earth.
Scientists are still looking for an effective treatment. While drug-based interventions have been proposed to mitigate symptoms, none of them have been <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/articles/10.3389/fncir.2023.1150233/full">systematically evaluated</a>.
Other researchers are evaluating whether other interventions, like wearing a pair of VR goggles, could address the issue. In an <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/02/29/space-travel-comes-motion-sickness-these-engineers-want-help">experiment</a> last year, a team of scientists <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/02/29/space-travel-comes-motion-sickness-these-engineers-want-help">at the Un</a>i<a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/02/29/space-travel-comes-motion-sickness-these-engineers-want-help">versity of Colorado, Boulder</a> found that duplicating the motion of the spacecraft inside VR — essentially a "virtual window" to the outside — could reduce moderate symptoms of motion sickness.
Fortunately, even without extensive countermeasures, many of these symptoms can go away on their own.
After sleeping "really well," Wang recounted that he "felt completely refreshed. The trace of motion sickness is all gone."
"We had breakfast, took a few X-ray images, and opened the cupola three minutes after midnight UTC — right above the South Pole," he added.
The Fram2 crew is expected to spend up to five days in orbit, ending in a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, which is a first for a SpaceX astronaut mission, <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-launches-private-fram2-astronauts-on-historic-spaceflight-over-earths-poles">according to Space.com</a>.
More on the mission: <a href="https://futurism.com/spacex-first-astronauts-poles">SpaceX Launching First-Ever Astronauts Over Earth's Poles Tonight</a>

Floating Vomit

"We felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times."

SpaceX Tourist Says Whole Crew Got Horribly Sick When They Reached Orbit

At just 44 years old, actor and weightlifting influencer Vittorio Pirbazari has died — the second young bodybuilder to pass away suddenly in a single month.
According to <a href="https://people.com/bodybuilder-dogs-of-berlin-actor-vittorio-pirbazari-dead-44-11707644">People magazine</a>, Pirbazari's death was <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DH6YQp3o8uh/?hl=en">confirmed in an Instagram video</a> posted by his friend Said Ibraham, a German-language <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Said_offiziell">true crime YouTuber</a> with whom the bodybuilder had worked in the past.
In the video, Ibraham lamented in German the death of his "bruderherz" or "dear brother" and said, per People's translation, that he was thrown "completely off track" upon learning that Pirbazari had passed away.
Though no official cause of death has been reported, Ibraham suggested that the 44-year-old strongman had a heart attack when he was in the gym. A similar fate befell 20-year-old Jodi Vance, a weightlifting coach who died of <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/20-year-old-bodybuilder-dies">dehydration-induced cardiac arrest</a> in March after allegedly taking an unspecified supplement.
Pirbazari's untimely demise came just a few months after <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DE4eGt4twkF/?hl=en">suffering a torn chest muscle</a> that resulted in a surgical reattachment. During his recovery, the weightlifting actor was unable to exercise — and just days before his death, he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DH04lImCrmu/?hl=en">made another post</a> about his slow return to the gym.
"I'm happy to be back in the gym at all and am focusing entirely on leg training and cardio," Pirbazari wrote, per IG's auto-translation. "I'm trying intervals on the treadmill right now, but since my legs aren't 100 percent healed yet, I'm taking it slowly."
Given that he had been out of the gym for three months, it's quite possible that the German muscle man's heart was no longer able to handle his workouts — especially if he pushed himself too hard.
Do you know anything about unsafe practices in the world of bodybuilding? Send us an email at <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a>. We can keep you anonymous.
As with other young <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/fitness-influencer-death">bodybuilder deaths</a>, there's also a non-zero chance that any supplements Pirbazari was taking could have <a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/caution-bodybuilding-products-can-be-risky">contributed to his passing</a>.
One thing's for sure: there are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/bodybuilding-extreme-training/">toxic forces at work</a> in the world of bodybuilding — and unfortunately, it's claimed another life.
More on muscle: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/electrocuting-yourself-at-gym">Scientists Suggest Electrocuting Yourself at the Gym to Get Jacked</a>

Built To Kill

Why does this keep happening?

Another Young Bodybuilder Just Suddenly Died

After becoming the <a href="https://futurism.com/spacex-first-astronauts-poles">first humans to fly over the Earth's poles in space</a>, a crew of private astronauts — or space tourists, depending on your perspective — report that the world's southernmost continent is indeed a vast expanse of snow and ice.
"Hello, Antarctica," <a href="https://x.com/satofishi/status/1907345866421395867">tweeted</a> Chun Wang, the crypto entrepreneur who financed and is leading the private space mission, Fram2. "Unlike previously anticipated, from 460 km above, it is only pure white, no human activity is visible."
As seen in a video Wang uploaded, it's a breathtaking spectacle, even if a lot of it is obscured by a swirling blanket of clouds. No humans have ever been <a href="https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1906951397477929029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1906951397477929029%7Ctwgr%5Ef49aaa1a3a938a03dbd1755ee8b7095c21ba7500%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fnation%2F2025%2F04%2F02%2Fspacex-launch-views-fram2-video%2F82775125007%2F">afforded such a view</a>, in person, of the pale Antarctic landscape. Wang remarked that he's surprised that he couldn't spot any human presence on the frigid continent — which probably shouldn't be entirely surprising, since the entire enormous continent is <a href="https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/people-in-antarctica/how-many/">only home to a few thousand people</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Hello, Antarctica.
Unlike previously anticipated, from 460 km above, it is only pure white, no human activity is visible. <a href="https://t.co/i7JawFYzW2">pic.twitter.com/i7JawFYzW2</a>
&mdash; Chun (@satofishi) <a href="https://twitter.com/satofishi/status/1907345866421395867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Fram2 mission launched Monday night from Florida using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. After reaching orbit, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule nicknamed "Resilience" separated from the rocket, carrying a team of four spacefarers, including Wang, to an altitude of 285 miles. The three others are Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian polar explorer Eric Philips. Now, they're anticipated to spend up to four days in space, taking in the view and carrying out a multitude of science experiments.
Unlike other crewed missions, Fram2 struck a high orbital inclination, or angle, perpendicular to the equator, putting its path directly above the Earth's North and South poles. This has never been done by a crewed mission before, largely because traveling at an angle far from the equator requires more power, and thus more fuel — a lot more.
In our age of burgeoning space tourism, however, practical concerns like those can be ignored: Fram2 launched southward, instead of embarking on the typical easterly heading. 
Its scientific objectives sound more ostensible than actual, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/30/science/fram2-space-tourism-spacex/index.html">some critics have noted</a>. Wang, the mission commander, is not a scientist or engineer. There isn't a lot to be gained from achieving a crewed polar orbit, other than the undeniably cool novelty. Some of the experiments sound like pure PR fluff, such as one involving Oura, a <a href="https://ouraring.com/blog/oura-medical-university-of-south-carolina-partnership/">wearable health ring gadget</a>. On the other hand, it does provide an opportunity to gauge how more or less regular bodies handle space, rather than the battle-tested constitutions of bona fide government-trained astronauts.
So far, Wang and company's experience has been pretty cushy, aside from a few bumps in the road. 
"The ride to orbit was much smoother than I had anticipated," Wang <a href="https://x.com/satofishi/status/1907286344168276215">wrote in a tweet</a>. "Apart from the final minute before [second stage engine cutoff], I barely felt any G-forces — it honestly felt like just another flight."
The infamous space motion sickness, though, set in once they hit microgravity. "We felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times," Wang wrote. "It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea."
Thankfully, that quickly changed. "By the second morning, I felt completely refreshed," Wang concluded. "The trace of motion sickness is all gone."
More on spaceflight: <a href="https://futurism.com/boeing-starliner-disaster-worse-astronauts">Boeing's Starliner Disaster Was Even Worse Than We Thought, Astronaut Reveals</a>

Cold Take

Extremely breathtaking, to be clear.

Space Tourists Startled to Discover That From Space, Antarctica Looks Pretty Much Like You'd Expect

Data centers are everywhere. As the world's tech companies demand more computing power to make their software run, the facilities have popped up in every corner of the planet. They make up the backbone of global network servers, cloud computing — and of course AI.
Microsoft has been a major player in the global data center boom, but its ambitions may now be faltering, in a bellwether for the AI industry. The tech behemoth recently decided to scale back data center projects around the globe, in countries including the UK, Australia, and Indonesia. It's likewise pulled back on data center development in Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/microsoft-pulls-back-on-data-centers-from-chicago-to-jakarta?sref=YfHlo0rL">according to Bloomberg</a>.
That's on top of last week's news that Microsoft had walked away from two data center projects in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-26/microsoft-abandons-more-data-center-projects-td-cowen-says?sref=YfHlo0rL">US and Europe</a>, piling on to a February announcement that it was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-24/microsoft-cancels-leases-for-ai-data-centers-analyst-says?sref=YfHlo0rL">cancelling data center leases</a>.
Microsoft's moves are a brisk 180 from the company's early-January plans to spend <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/03/microsoft-expects-to-spend-80-billion-on-ai-data-centers-in-fy-2025.html">$80 billion</a> on AI data centers in 2025. They come as the greater US economy crumbles in reaction to Donald Trump's so-called "<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/economy/reciprocal-tariff-math/index.html">reciprocal tariffs</a>," which some analysts say are more akin to war-time <a href="https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/">economic sanctions</a>.
"These are just sanctions, imposed to intimidate countries and companies into submission like they're universities or law firms," <a href="https://x.com/ddayen/status/1907825827758354925">said David Dayen</a>, executive editor of The Prospect. "They're what a mob boss would do."
Trump's tariffs are likely to have a hugely negative impact on the US tech sector more broadly, and on data centers specifically. Once these tariffs go into place, the prospect of building <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-tariffs-could-stymie-big-162220129.html">new data centers</a> will become much more risky, as foreign-made resources skyrocket in price. Running existing facilities will likewise come at a premium, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/business/trump-renewable-energy-tariffs.html">renewable energy growth</a> slows to a crawl and <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/gasoline-heating-electricity-prices-tariffs-e52169a6">traditional energy costs</a> soar.
That's not to mention the already shaky ground of AI development. In recent months, some investors have grown wary that an <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-bubble-dot-com-era/">economic bubble</a> was forming around the AI industry — a hypothesis that Microsoft's rollback would seem to support. The shaky <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/technology/artificial-intelligence-stocks/">CoreWeave IPO</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-hype-train-profits-valuations-startups-google-openai-2024-7">nonexistent AI profits</a> don't help.
It's all piling up into a record low day for tech stocks, especially whales like Microsoft, which hit a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/MSFT">one-year low</a> as soon as the gates opened on Wall Street this morning.
In all, the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/mag-7-relinquishes-more-than-800-billion-as-tech-drives-stock-market-nosedive.html">top seven US tech stocks</a> — Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, and Amazon — are poised to shed over $800 billion in market capacity today, a huge chunk of the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/trump-s-second-term-brings-worst-stock-market-start-since-2001?sref=YfHlo0rL">$3 trillion in S&amp;P 500 value</a> erased in the 10 weeks since Trump took office.
We now sit on the precipice of a <a href="https://aldianews.com/en/politics/policy/trumps-tariffs-new-era">new economic era</a>. How this all shakes out for companies like Microsoft will probably be a tale for the history books. When it comes to tech, one thing's for sure: the AI hype train is now screaming out of the station.
More on AI investments: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-researchers-tech-industry-dead-end">Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End</a>

Bursting Bubbles

It's all going down.

Something's Gone Wrong With Microsoft's Huge AI Data Center Investments

Donald Trump's eponymous meme coin is worth less than ever in the wake of his tariffs finally being launched.
Less than 24 hours after the president announced the long-anticipated <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/04/02/trump-tariffs-april-2-liberation-day">reciprocal trade tariffs</a> on domestic imports, his <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/official-trump">$TRUMP cryptocurrency</a>'s value dropped to a meager $9 per token.
That's a new all-time low — and remember, it was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-meme-coin">only launched about 10 weeks ago</a> ahead of the real estate scion being sworn in for a second time.
Obviously, there are far bigger concerns afoot than the president's shitcoin tanking — but you have to admit that it's pretty hilarious that it's happening this way.
Still, the debacle illustrates that Trump's nonsensical trade war isn't just hurting the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/trump-says-he-s-signing-executive-order-on-reciprocal-tariffs">entire global economy</a>, which has essentially been lit on fire by the tariffs, but even his own business interests.
Ironically, the tariff announcement came just after news broke that the Trump coin would be "<a href="https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1907126051425182170">unlocking</a>" 40 million tokens, or 20 percent of its locked-down supply, later in April. It's the first time the memecoin has held such an event since its launch in January and could, theoretically, have <a href="https://beincrypto.com/learn/token-unlocks-guide/">generated the kind of buzz</a> that would drive its value up.
Instead, it made nary a blip — and after the tariff-induced price slump, it's hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to buy $TRUMP anytime soon.
Per a very unofficial poll on the <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/official-trump">crypto ticker site CoinGecko</a>, meanwhile, a whopping 77 percent of people who took a confidence survey about the official Trump coin said they felt negatively about it.
From overtaking the <a href="https://cryptopotato.com/trump-overtakes-shib-in-meme-coin-battle-btc-nears-105k-weekend-watch/">$SHIB and $PEPE memecoins</a> — yes, we're rolling our eyes too — when its value surpassed $60 per token and rising to an <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/price/official-trump">all-time high</a> of nearly $75, the Trump coin has been remarkably volatile even for its market.
Even on unelected co-president Elon Musk's X social network, news of this latest Trump slump resulted in japes and jibes.
"Donald Trump just destroyed the entire financial markets, stocks, crypto and even his shitcoin," <a href="https://x.com/Djbousquet/status/1907558168995180580">one user jeered</a>. "Everyone fucking hates him now. What a fraud."
In another post, a satirist jokingly begged the president to mention his memecoin at all.
"Pls just talk about $Trump coin," <a href="https://x.com/forexxjamess/status/1907532594133999716">the user wrote</a>. "Need money back Sir."
Those who willingly bought the president's memecoin are, clearly, in the "find out" portion of the "eff around and find out" adage amid the tariff turmoil — and unfortunately, the rest of the world is right there with them.
More on the tariffs: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-tariffs-signs-ai">Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AI</a>

Trump Slump

"Need money back Sir."

You’ll Never Guess What Happened to Trump’s Meme Coin After He Announced His Tariffs

Just before <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-tariffs-brutalize-crypto">announcing a major escalation</a> in his tariff war on Wednesday evening — followed by a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/stock-market-today-live-updates-trump-tariffs.html">major stock market wipeout</a> the following morning — president Donald Trump freed up the sale of his Truth Social shares.
As the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1b41e7c2-c835-4aa0-b874-6f8a8add107e">Financial Times reports</a>, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) revealed that it was planning to sell more than 142 million shares in a late Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Most notably, the shares listed in the document include Trump's 114-million-share stake, which is worth roughly $2.3 billion and held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr. Other insiders, including a crypto exchange-traded fund, and 106,000 shares held by US attorney Pam Bondi were also included in the latest filing.
While the filing doesn't guarantee any future sale of shares, investors weren't exactly smitten with the optics. Shares plunged eight percent in light of the news, according to the FT, and are down over 45 percent this year amid Trump's escalating trade war.
The timing of the SEC filing is certainly suspect. Trump's "liberation day" tariff announcement on Wednesday <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/wall-street-trading-desks-warn-s-p-500-selloff-will-get-worse?sref=YfHlo0rL">triggered a major selloff</a>, causing shares of multinational companies and stock futures to crater.
Trump also vowed in September that he wasn't planning to sell any of his TMTG shares, which caused their value to spike temporarily at the time.
Now that the shares are up for grabs, the president has seemingly had a change of heart — or, perhaps, is getting cold feet now that the economy is feeling the brunt of his catastrophic economic policymaking. It's also possible Trump was always planning to cash out and leave investors exposed.
Meanwhile, Trump Media released a <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-media-responds-to-inaccurate-stories-about-filing-of-form-s-3-1034543633">statement on Wednesday</a>, accusing "legacy media outlets" of "spreading a fake story suggesting that a TMTG filing today is paving the way for the Trump trust to sell its shares in TMTG." The company said this week's filing was "routine."
Experts have long pointed out that if Trump were to sell, it could lead to TMTG spiraling.
It's still unclear whether the company — which <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/14/trump-media-djt-earnings-report-2024.html">reported a staggering $400 million loss</a> in 2024, while only netting a pitiful $3.6 million revenue — will realize the mass sale of millions of shares.
But even just the suggestion appears to have spooked investors.
"In this offering it says the Trump trust could sell shares — it doesn't necessarily mean that they will," Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-media-filing-opens-door-president-sell-2b/story?id=120409342">told ABC News</a>. "It signals to the market that they could."
"This leaves it up in the air if and when a share sale will happen," he added.
In short, instead of building a viable business that generates meaningful revenue to reflect its valuation, TMTG still feels more like an enrichment scheme for Trump and his closest associates.
"Trump Media has been pretty unsuccessful at creating an operating business model, but they have been quite successful at selling their stock," University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told ABC News.
More on TMTG: <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-failing-truth-social-better-biden">Trump's Failing Truth Social Was Doing Much Better Under Biden</a>

Keeping the Door Open

Huh.

It's Interesting How Truth Social Moved to Sell Stock Right Before Trump's Tariffs Were Announced

If you follow tech stocks, there's probably one thing on your mind today: Donald Trump's tariffs.
Yesterday, Trump announced his long-teased "<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-stock-market-04-03-2025/card/math-behind-new-tariffs-points-to-trade-imbalance-as-key-issue-W4I7vbzaO5qFZS43hAjc">reciprocal tariffs</a>" on foreign imports coming into the US. Among them are a 32 percent tariff on Taiwan, 24 percent on Japan, 26 percent on India, and 34 percent on China — all major players in the global tech trade.
As a result, the magnificent seven (M7) stocks — a stock trader term for the current whales of the tech industry: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — are in a freefall today, as investors sell off their shares to brace for economic uncertainty. Among the tech industry, the stagnant AI sector is being hit particularly hard, as <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/04/03/2025/trumps-tariffs-are-a-major-setback-for-ai">energy costs</a> are anticipated to skyrocket along with the cost of important resources like steel, precious minerals, and semiconductors.
As such, the cost to build and run <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/trump_tariffs_servers/">data centers</a>, the massive facilities that make AI computing possible, is expected to spike as the supply chain adjusts to the new normal.
The vast majority of chips that power these data centers come from hard-hit countries like Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam, while the US makes just <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/dependencies-us-semiconductor-industry#:~:text=While%20the%20United%20States%20is,motivating%20efforts%20to%20reshore%20production.">11 percent of its chips</a> at home. Trump's tariffs will force countries from those companies to hike their chip prices, and US companies will no doubt hike their prices to compensate, which will ultimately run off to consumers.
That's a crushing blow for American AI companies, which were already facing the consequences of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-hype-cliff-costs">investor skepticism</a>, <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/news/moneycontrol:bcb1c485e094b:0-alphabet-shares-tank-7-on-revenue-lag-bump-up-in-ai-spending/">lagging revenue</a>, and a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/519006a9-82c6-4939-afa1-58921a399105">disappointing debut AI IPO</a> by CoreWeave.
Broader details about how these tariffs will affect the tech industry are foggy right now, as the stock market is moving at a breakneck pace, but there is one common theme: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/04/03/apple-leads-premarket-slide-in-tech-stocks-as-trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-trigger-global-selloff/">everything is down</a>. Apple, for example, is heading for its biggest <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250403150102/https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/tech-stocks-sink-after-trump-tariff-rollout-apple-leads-drop.html#">single-day plunge</a> in stock price in nearly 5 years, dropping over 8 percent in just the first few hours of trading. Other M7 stocks are likewise plummeting, with Amazon down almost 9 percent, and Nvidia down by 6.7 at the time of writing. Tesla has continued its <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-musk-trump-tariffs-deliveries-3cc5fe90">months-long cascade</a> with a 7 percent dip so far.
If you're wondering why we're doing this, you're not alone. For decades, the United States has sat atop the global economic food chain. Thanks to years of <a href="https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/us-military-strength-secures-financial-dominance">military</a> and <a href="https://crgreview.com/the-cruel-hypocrisy-of-american-imperialism/">economic</a> supremacy, the US dollar became the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/report/managing-worlds-dollar-dependency">world standard</a>, making it easy to export cheap consumer goods as high-paying American jobs became starvation industries in countries dependent on US trade.
Trump's tariffs seem to be an attempt to reverse all that — an <a href="https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/the-new-industrial-geography/">economic experiment</a> that's never really been attempted at this scale. The entire move hinges on the bet that companies will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/business/economy/trump-tariffs-us-manufacturing-economy.html">shift production</a> from places like Vietnam and Taiwan back into the US, a gamble which <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/reciprocal-tariffs-job-losses-china-stocks-ed0ddbf4">business leaders</a> say comes with high costs and even higher risks.
As Trump's tariffs aren't enshrined in law, they could be easily undone by the courts or the next presidential administration, making a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/01/liberation-day-tariffs-economy-trump-00264079">long-term investment</a> into, say, a $5 billion semiconductor plant on US soil hard to justify from a business standpoint — and at the end of the day, isn't what this is all about?
More on the AI economy: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-hype-america-financial-ruin">AI Hype Will Plunge America Into Financial Ruin, Economist Warns</a>

Bare Market

Feeling liberated?

Trump's Tariffs Are a Bruising Defeat for the AI Industry

Donald Trump's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/02/business/trump-tariffs-liberation-day">sweeping global tariffs</a> have scythed through all sectors of the economy — including crypto, a market that the sitting president was hailed as a champion of.
On Thursday, the morning after Trump signed an executive order enacting his "Liberation Day" tariffs, blockchain assets across the board slumped considerably as a mass sell-off ensued. 
Bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency, fell by 4.2 percent down to about $82,200, <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin">according to CoinDesk data</a>, liberating nearly $6,000 in value. Ether, meanwhile, tumbled by 5.6 percent to around $1,700.
The downturn reverberated through major crypto entities. Among exchanges, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us-crypto-stocks-slide-trumps-sweeping-tariffs-jolt-markets-2025-04-03/">Reuters reports</a>, Coinbase Global fell by 7.7 percent, and Strategy, a major Bitcoin holder, followed with a 5.6 percent loss. One of the world's largest crypto miners, Marathon Digital Holdings, stumbled by 8.3 percent.
According to the <a href="https://www.binance.com/en/square/fear-and-greed-index">Crypto Fear &amp; Greed Index</a>, which gauges market sentiment for Bitcoin and other major crypto, the prevailing mood is "extreme fear." Yesterday, pre-tariffs, it was "neutral."
Some crypto leaders remain bullish. "There are no tariffs on Bitcoin," wrote Michael Saylor, cofounder and chairman at Strategy and a notable Bitcoin evangelist, <a href="https://x.com/saylor/status/1907775832262652046">in a tweet</a> Thursday morning.
Crypto taking collateral damage from the tariffs is ironic, given that advocates of decentralized assets promised that it'd be above the hype- and panic-driven vicissitudes of the old-fashioned stock market — which, by the way, is also absolutely foundering in the wake of Trump's "reciprocal" action. Over $2 trillion was vaporized Thursday from the S&amp;P 500, an index that tracks five hundred of the US's largest publicly traded stocks, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/trump-tariffs-set-to-zap-nearly-2-trillion-from-us-stock-market?sref=YfHlo0rL">Bloomberg reports</a>. 
Deepening the irony, Trump was perceived as friendly to the crypto industry, even peddling his own <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-supporters-lost-money-meme-coin">dodgy meme coin</a> that <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-memecoin-lost-money">crashed and burned</a> in a way that stank of a rug pull. Crypto <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/13/bitcoin-share-price-btc#:~:text=The%20price%20of%20bitcoin%20scaled,in%20value%20since%20election%20day.">soared in the wake of his election victory</a> — as did the stock market.
The two may not be so unlike each other after all. These latest crypto declines are indicative of a growing correlation between digital assets and macroeconomic policy shifts, Marcin Kazmierczak, CEO at blockchain firm RedStone, told Reuters. "But protectionist policies that potentially weaken dollar hegemony could accelerate interest in decentralized alternatives over the medium-to-long term," he added.
Then again, there's no accounting for plain old fear. The tariffs have been looming for a while now, but their actual scale <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/investors-stunned-by-trump-tariffs-prepare-global-growth-shock-2025-04-03/">has clearly startled investors</a>, with Chinese goods <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-threatens-retaliation-trump-hits-highest-us-tariff-country-rcna199433">slammed</a> with a 54 percent import tax. Even allies like Japan have been smacked with a 24 percent hike.
"Uncertainty breeds caution in all markets, and crypto is experiencing a tension between short-term speculation, slow-moving policy shifts, and institutional pullback," Gadi Chait, investment manager at Xapo Bank, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/04/02/bitcoin-braced-for-atomic-bomb-amid-serious-trump-crypto-price-warning/">told </a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/04/02/bitcoin-braced-for-atomic-bomb-amid-serious-trump-crypto-price-warning/">Forbes</a>. "When fears of inflation driven by tariff uncertainty rise, crypto suffers in the short term. In the past few weeks, bitcoin has been trading within a wide range of $76,600 to $94,500." 
In other words, crypto has always been volatile, so a rebound is likely — but by no means guaranteed.
"If prices break decisively below $76,600, it could signal a significant shift in market sentiment," Chait said.
More on crypto: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/bitcoin-spa-mold-uti">Visitors At This Bitcoin-Heated Spa Are Complaining About Mold and UTIs</a>