The Acceleration Era: 2022
Elon Musk acquires Twitter for $44 billion and immediately dismantles its content moderation infrastructure, beginning the transformation of a public communications platform into a private financial and identity system. Russia is blocked from SWIFT, confirming that the payment rails are a geopolitical weapon, not neutral infrastructure. ChatGPT launches in November and reaches one million users in five days. The AI era begins not with a research paper but with a consumer product that anyone can use. The year the future arrived without an announcement.
February 26, 2022. Geopolitics. Russia Blocked from SWIFT. The United States, European Union, and United Kingdom agree to block selected Russian banks from the SWIFT global financial messaging system following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The most powerful financial weapon the West had ever deployed. Every rival nation learns exactly what American financial power looks like and begins building around it. PBS NewsHour
February 2022. China. e-CNY Used at Beijing Winter Olympics. China deploys the digital yuan at the Beijing Winter Olympics for the first time, giving international visitors access to the currency. The first international consumer exposure to a state-issued programmable digital currency at scale. Aware Trade
October 2022. China. mBridge Completes Real-Value Pilot Transactions. The mBridge project, connecting the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE, completes its first pilot involving real-value cross-border transactions. The proof of concept that a cross-border settlement system bypassing SWIFT and the dollar is technically viable. BIS
October 27, 2022. Platform. Elon Musk Acquires Twitter for $44 Billion. Musk completes the acquisition of Twitter, firing top executives, laying off half the staff, and beginning the platform’s transformation toward X, an all-encompassing app. The purchase that eventually connects a social platform to a payment layer, an AI company, and an orbital compute infrastructure. Wikipedia
November 30, 2022. AI. ChatGPT Launches. Reaches 1 Million Users in Five Days. OpenAI releases ChatGPT as a free research preview. It reaches 1 million users in five days, the fastest consumer application adoption in history at the time. Within two months, it has 100 million monthly active users. The moment AI becomes legible to the general public. History.com
2022. Surveillance. Twitter’s Security Failures. A former head of security at Twitter, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, files a whistleblower complaint with federal regulators alleging that Twitter misled regulators about its cybersecurity practices, failed to protect user data, and that foreign intelligence agents had infiltrated the company. The security infrastructure of a platform Musk is acquiring to build a payment and identity layer is documented as compromised.
2022. Law. Thiel Funds $15 Million to JD Vance’s Senate Campaign. Peter Thiel, Palantir co-founder, donates $15 million to Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC supporting JD Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign. The largest donation ever made to a single Senate candidate at the time. Vance wins. Thiel’s investment in the political career of the future Vice President of the United States. CBS News
2022. Identity. Sam Altman Achieves World ID Iris Scanning at Scale. Worldcoin’s iris-scanning Orb program reaches scale deployment, enrolling users globally in exchange for WLD token distributions. The first attempt to build a biometric proof-of-personhood system at global scale, backed by the CEO of OpenAI.