“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Tired old saying? Perhaps, but it seems to be guiding a lot of decisions nowadays. Individual investors and giant companies alike seek exciting new baskets to compete with previously-monolithic institutions like the stock exchange and US dollar, forcing financial services and regulators to adapt.

Meanwhile the media sphere shows the eggs increasingly centralized to a single, mouse-eared basket - but developments are not all bad, as Disney’s unprecedented might leads to surreal crossovers and technological advancement.

Smarter retirement funds are the future as Alto wraps up Series A

Broad societal shifts feel more like the start of rainfall than a concentrated stream; no one drop stands out as a turning point, but soon enough you’re undeniably wet. The latest such raindrop in the shift towards alternative assets fell this week with investment services startup Alto announcing a new $17 million round of Series A funding to open up alternative asset classes to one of America’s biggest sources of capital.

Alto, founded by investment banker Eric Satz, helps people more closely manage Individual Retirement Accounts. Various special legal provisions exist which allow these IRAs significant tax advantages, making them one of the most powerful tools for individual investors to leverage in growing their wealth.

However, each kind of IRA also comes with its own significant restrictions, making it cumbersome for even experienced investors to manage their IRAs directly. The market for IRA funds is dominated by conservative, traditional investment products. Independent statistics show as much as $33 trillion of assets held in US IRAs, but alternative assets still make up less than 5% of that total despite surging in popularity over recent years.

Alto’s IRAs allow funds to be invested through a cutting edge digital platform, making it far easier for individuals to micromanage this vital source of investing power. The company’s mission seems prescient of wider trends towards diversification and alternative assets in an age of market uncertainty.

Alto IRAs allow easy investment in private companies, fine art, and collectibles, reducing the chances of a stock market crash ruining your retirement plan. You can even set up a special IRA to invest in certain cryptocurrencies, a pioneering move which telegraphs the long-term role those decentralized markets have in global finance.

Alto and their backers join a growing choir of powerful funds and market experts who see the longer investment horizons and stabilizing role of alternative assets as vital to smart portfolio management. As the rain of change continues to fall, it’s no surprise to see the financial services industry adapt to selling umbrellas.

Disney flexes robotic might in public reveal of android actor project

Given how modern entertainment centers on the streamed, the digital, and the advance of virtual reality, theme parks and other physical attractions can often seem like outdated entertainment. But Disney and its Imagineering studio have not given up on the company’s famous parks, despite suffering lengthy closures over the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, they have been getting closer than ever to the “holy grail” of park experiences: a lifelike, full-scale robotic actor which can take on the mantle of beloved Disney characters and roam around interacting with fans. It’s an incredibly lofty goal, pushing the current boundaries of robotics technology, but the new development video released for “Project Kiwi” shows tremendous progress over the past three years.

Industry leader Boston Dynamics has made the idea of bipedal walking robots pedestrian with its various “Atlas” frames, but Disney doesn’t just need its robo-actors to walk - it needs them to walk in a recognizable, human way. So the Project Kiwi team (some of whom actually came to the project from Boston Dynamics) has developed their own independently mobile robotic skeleton from scratch. It’s an impressive sight to see the doll-sized prototype tramping around the Disney campus; but that’s only half the achievement showcased in the video.

The other, equally difficult part of this equation is dynamic human-robot interaction. In order to fill the giant foam shoes of the costumed actors who roam Disney’s parks - or perhaps portray those characters on the silver screen - a robot actor would need to be programmed with an impressive understanding of social behaviors. It would also need the kind of cutting-edge animatronics to convey facial expressions and body language that can get around the natural “uncanny valley” reaction most of us have to such human-like impersonators.

Modeled and dressed up as the treelike alien Groot, the Project Kiwi prototype seems to have made big strides in this area as well, posing with Imagineers and mirroring their eye contact and expressions. The team behind this marvel “still has a lot of work left to do”, and there is no firm timeline for its brethren appearing across Disney World. But regardless of the outcome, it’s clear Project Kiwi has already made important, Groot-sized strides in robot history.

Fast fandom

As always, there is a ton going on in the interconnected world of pop culture and fan media. Here are a few of the stories that caught our eye:

Hasbro CEO's latest baffling decree: "We're doing NFTs now!"

Toys-and-games goliath Hasbro has had to make a series of rapid pivots in the last five years, working furiously to re-establish the media franchises behind its products through online gaming and streaming shows. It’s a lot to keep up with, and CEO Brian Goldner has more than once betrayed his loose grasp of developments in Hasbro’s investor calls.

After previously referring to Dungeons & Dragons as an “esports property”, Goldner this week announced a major move into minting NFTs: “We have so many brands that really operate on multiple demographic levels; whether it’s Transformers, whether it’s Magic and the D&D brand, and brands like G.I. Joe… we are actively developing our opportunities here and we do see it as substantial.” Will Hasbro integrate blockchain technology into its trading cards and action figures, or peddle official crypto-art featuring its IP? Or will this prove to be another Goldner malapropism?

Sneakerheads set to get fractional as new platform debuts Yeezy drop

Few niches in collectibles are as hot as high-end sneakers, which have achieved mainstream prestige on the back of massive celebrity designers like Michael Jordan and Kanye West. Less than two years after holding its first event dedicated exclusively to sneakers, esteemed auction house Sotheby’s has sold a pair of Kanye’s own Grammy-worn “Yeezy 1” prototypes for a cool $1.8 million.

That’s triple the previous record for a shoe, establishing the Yeezys as a clear “holy grail” for the sneakerhead subculture. But in a telling twist, the buyer turned out to be a new fractional investment platform, Rares, which will market shares in Kanye’s old shoes as its debut offering. Whether or not that sounds like something you’ll want for your portfolio, it’s a reminder that the logic behind fractional investments can be applied to almost anything!