Crypto loans, Costco clones, and quitting before Monday.
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No 171 | July 4, 2025
Happy Birthday, America. 🎂💥🦅
Today’s the day we celebrate freedom by eating processed meat tubes, setting off small-scale explosives, and pretending we actually like our in-laws’ potato salad.
But while you’re busy grilling, day drinking, or avoiding political debates with Uncle Randy, we’re keeping it easy as always to stay informed on what’s been blowing up in business this week (figuratively, not just in your driveway). Let’s get into it.
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ON TAP THIS WEEK
🔥 Ditch Your Boss, Not Your Paycheck: The real guide to leaving your 9-to-5
🏡 Crypto: Now acceptable collateral for your overpriced house
🎾 Strawberries, Cream, and AI: Wimbledon’s line judges replaced
📦 Amazon’s Robot Workforce Hits a Mil…Humans Quietly Update Resumes
📱 Apple’s AI Strategy: If you can’t beat them, license them
👴 Moderna Targets Grandma’s Immune System With New Super-Flu Shot
↗️ Turn Clicks into Cash with these Tweaks
🌐 And from Around the Web: Cheap leggings, floating fettucine, and robot hat tricks.
THE CLASSROOM
Declare Independence from the 9-to-5: How to Start Your Own Business
by Luigi Rosabianca
Sick of your boss telling you to “circle back”? Wondering if your spine will permanently fuse to that cubicle chair? This guide breaks down exactly how to declare independence from your 9-to-5 without ending up broke, crying into a stale Lean Cuisine. From validating your business idea to marketing like your life depends on it (because it kinda does), it’s your permission slip to finally break up with corporate life – for good.
Oh, and if starting from scratch sounds like torture, there’s always the shortcut: buy a business that’s already making money. We wrote a book on it. Literally.
HEARD ON THE STREET
🪙 Fannie, Freddie, Cryptie
Last week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop proposals to consider cryptocurrency holdings, specifically those held on US-regulated centralized exchanges, as assets in single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. The directive does not require converting crypto to US dollars and does not include crypto held in self-custodied wallets. It also calls for risk controls, such as accounting for crypto market volatility and limiting the amount of crypto that can be counted toward reserves.
This directive introduces a novel bridge between blockchain-based capital and the $12T US mortgage market. Should the FHFA finalize this rule, setting a precedent for wider adoption across mortgages and crypto-assets, blockchain-native balance sheets could significantly impact the mortgage market by streamlining underwriting, lowering transaction costs, and enabling token-linked mortgage instruments. 21% of US adults own digital assets. Of the ~55 million individuals who own crypto assets, 6 million hold more than $100,000 on average. Given the wealth that individuals have been accumulating on-chain, the impact of crypto assets on credit markets could become meaningful.
The number of mortgage originations in the US last year was ~6 million, valued at $1.82 trillion, suggesting an average loan size of around $ 340,000. On that basis, if just 5% of mortgage borrowers included crypto-based assets in their applications, ~305,000 would qualify for a mortgage in this new framework, supporting $100 billion in originations. Each additional percentage point of adoption would increase mortgage loan volume by approximately $20 billion. Based solely on penetration rate X average ticket size, this theory assumes no leverage multipliers or velocity changes, so that the upside could be materially higher. This regulatory development leads us to believe that crypto will reshape legacy financial systems with greater transparency, automation, and interoperability. Cha ching!
🏆 Not Our Fault
It's time to honor our nation’s birthday by… watching international sports. With the NHL and NBA playoffs now wrapped up, the best sports action is taking place overseas. The poshest major tournament on the tennis calendar, Wimbledon, started this week in London.
Worth noting, this will be the first major tennis tourney without human line judges. For the first time in the tournament's storied 148-year history, the men and women stationed at the back of the courts calling ‘out’ and ‘fault’ will be missing. The Grand Slam announced in October that it would be scrapping its smartly dressed officials in favor of electronic line-calling (ELC) beginning this year, following the general trend in sports.
On the women’s side, American Coco Gauff will attempt to win a second consecutive Grand Slam following her French Open title earlier this month. In the men’s draw, elder statesman Novak Djokovic will try to muster enough stamina in his 38-year-old legs to get young phenoms Carlos Alcaraz of Spain and the Italian Jannik Sinner off his home turf.
The 112th edition of the Tour de France begins tomorrow as well. Tadej Pogačar will aim to cement his place in cycling history with a fourth Tour de France title. The 26-year-old Slovenian rider last year became the first cyclist to secure the Giro d’Italia and Tour double in the same season since the late Marco Pantani in 1998. His main rival will be Jonas Vingegaard, the Dane who has won the Tour de France and wants to challenge for the victory again after coming up short last year.
🤖 Amazon’s Automation Advances
Amazon’s robot workforce has surpassed one million and is expected to outnumber humans at its warehouses soon. Its robots have advanced from simply moving objects to sorting, packaging, and working in tandem with each other.
At Amazon’s 3-million-square-foot facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, more than six dozen robotic arms sort, stack, and consolidate millions of items. Robots help prepare customer orders and zip carts of packages to load onto trucks. One of Amazon’s newer robots, called Vulcan, has a sense of touch that enables it to pick items from numerous shelves. Amazon has taken recent steps to integrate its robots into its order-fulfillment processes, allowing the machines to work in tandem with each other and with humans. They’re part of the growing automation that has helped Amazon improve productivity. Products move 25% faster through the facility than at other sites. For some workers, it has also meant more skilled assignments managing robots, though others are being supplanted by machines.
Amazon is also rolling out artificial intelligence in its warehouses to improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and the efficiency of its robots. Amazon will also cut the size of its total workforce in the next several years.
📳 Apples and Oranges
Apple is reportedly considering using OpenAI or Anthropic to power Siri. The move would sideline Apple’s in-house models in a monumental reversal of its AI strategy. Nothing has been decided, but Apple has talked with both companies and asked them to train models that could run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for testing.
Apple is integrating ChatGPT into experiences within iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, allowing users to access ChatGPT’s capabilities—including image and document understanding—without needing to jump between tools. Siri can also leverage ChatGPT’s intelligence when it's helpful. Apple users are asked before any questions are sent to ChatGPT, along with any documents or photos, and Siri then presents the answer directly. Additionally, ChatGPT will be available in Apple’s system-wide Writing Tools to help users generate content for any topic they are writing about. Users can also utilize ChatGPT's image tools to generate images in a wide variety of styles that complement their writing. Privacy protections are built in when accessing ChatGPT within Siri and Writing Tools (OpenAI does not store requests, and users’ IP addresses are obscured). Users can also choose to connect their ChatGPT account, which means their data preferences will apply under ChatGPT’s policies. The ChatGPT integration, powered by GPT-4, will be available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS later this year. Users can access it for free without creating an account, and ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts and access paid features right from these experiences.
Tapping a competitor to power a new version of Siri would be an admission by Apple that it’s falling behind in the AI race. The company is reportedly still developing in-house models, so it may decide to continue powering Siri’s AI capabilities independently. It appears Apple is riding three bicycles at the same time so as not to risk being on the losing bicycle when crossing the finish line.
💉 An Ounce of Prevention…
…is worth a pound of cure, was once stated by Benny Franklin. Moderna’s messenger-RNA seasonal flu vaccine achieved promising results in a late-stage trial, potentially paving the way for a combination flu-and-COVID shot, according to CEO Stéphane Bancel. The news comes as vaccine policy is undergoing big shifts, and producing the first vaccine of its kind won’t be easy.
The mRNA-1010 flu candidate showed positive results compared with a licensed standard-dose seasonal flu vaccine. Its efficacy was 26.6% higher among adults aged 50 and older, and 27.4% higher among those aged 65 and older, compared with the licensed vaccine. Moderna is targeting older adults who typically have weaker immune systems, making them more susceptible to flu viruses. Subsequent analyses yielded similar results across age groups, risk factors, and previous flu shot status. The recent flu season highlights the need for more effective vaccines. President Trump called mRNA vaccines the gold standard at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the technology has become the target of increasing scrutiny during his second term, and the regulatory environment around vaccines is still taking shape.
Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly called mRNA vaccines unsafe and says they don’t work. HHS canceled a $590M contract awarded to Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine against bird flu, saying the technology ‘remains under-tested.’ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 27,000 to 130,000 flu-related deaths have occurred in the U.S. since October. Moderna says it plans to work with regulators on filing submissions for mRNA-1010. Until then, an apple a day….
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
11 Surefire Website Conversion Best Practices
with Matthew R. Meehan
Your website might look great, but if it’s not converting visitors into buyers, it’s basically a vanity project burning money. This article shares 11 CRO hacks – like clearer headlines, faster load times, and better social proof – that can actually turn clicks into cash. Even a 1% lift in conversion rates can double your leads without spending another dollar on ads.
👉 Bonus: Want more website revenue tips? Our latest episode of The Liquid Lunch Project Podcast with Sahil Patel dives into homepage fixes that boost conversions.
AROUND THE WEB
Cheap Leggings Spark Legal Stretch: Lululemon is suing Costco for selling $10 leggings and $8 sweaters that look suspiciously like their $128 versions (because apparently “namaste” doesn’t apply when your yoga pants get duped). Costco shoppers might save money, but Lululemon wants their karma (and cash) back in court.
Floatin’ Fettucinne Hits The Pool Party: If you’ve ever wanted to drift around the pool like a giant human meatball, Olive Garden’s got you covered with pasta-shaped pool noodles. Gotta say, kudos to them for thinking outside the breadbasket.
China’s Best Striker? A Circuit Board: China’s men’s soccer team can’t win a World Cup, but at least their robots can wobble around and fall over in style. The AI soccer bots played a full tournament, scored real goals, and needed stretchers when they couldn’t get up—basically, just like the men’s team but with better programming.
