Good morning. It is Monday, August 23rd, 2021.

This is Alex and of course you are listening to Equity,

the show where we unpack all the numbers

that enjoy all those headlines.

Kicking off this morning,

if you have any saved funds invested in stocks, you are probably a little bit richer today than you were at the end of last week.

Why is that? Well, stocks rose in Asia this morning. They rose in Europe and they're expected to rise in North America at the open as well. But if you're not into stocks

and you're much more into the world of cryptos we have good news for you there as

well. Bitcoin is back over the $50,000 mark this morning for example and

other major chains like Ethereum and Cardano are seeing price

increases. Solana is off 5% in the last 24 hours but mostly speaking things are up so that's

your Monday good news. You're welcome.

Now there are a couple things I want to talk about this morning including technology regulation, a huge

spack deal that involves satellites and horizontal rockets, Facebook and also a couple a regulatory changes in China and some fighting between the Indian government and its own burgeoning technology industry.

Most recently, just to pick a data point, the Chinese Communist Party took a 1% stake in the domestic entity of bite dance.

Don't forget that bite dance owns, well, it's kind of the parent company of the American company that owns Tik-Tock or whatever. You know what I'm talking about.

According to our reporting, the, quote, state-owned investor will be able to appoint a director to the three-member

board of its Chinese entity and veto certain matters related to content and future financing

over at Bight Dance.

So this 1% stake is giving the Chinese Communist Party a little bit more heft in how the company operates

that you tend to see from such a small stake. The party is also taking a stake in Wibo, notably.

Now instituting party control over major internet companies is a pretty good sign that China's

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