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Fridaaaaaay. It was a short week, but it still dragged on a little.

We’ve got some exciting Twitter Live action coming up on September 13, so mark your calendars! At 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT we are talking with Andrew Chan about why Gen Z VCs are trash, and at 12:00 p.m. PDT / 3:00 p.m. EDT, we’re talking with M13 partner Anna Barber about what today’s founders can learn from the dot-com bubble bursting.

Enjoy your weekend!  — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• More layoffs: Patreon, a company that enables content creators to offer monthly payment subscriptions to customers, confirmed that it let go of five people from its security team. Zack reports there are not a lot of details about the layoffs, but did have some information about how Patreon will manage its security going forward.

• Thank you, Mr. Roboto: Amazon announced it is acquiring Cloostermans, a mechatronics company based in Belgium. The e-commerce giant’s focus on robotics has Ingrid writing that Amazon “is taking an interesting turn in that strategy as it expands its industrial warehouse capabilities.”

• We like a startup with a fun name: Cryptocurrency is a hot market in Africa, and Tage writes about one blockchain payments startup, called Bitmama, that raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to show what it can do in new markets.

Startups and VC

For our episode of Chain Reaction this week, our trusty crypto desk discussed the latest drama surrounding crypto mega-exchange Binance, which is shaking up the stablecoin ecosystem as it looks to muscle its way to supremacy. It’s a fantastic episode and well worth a listen.

Over the past decade, startups migrated north from Silicon Valley to make San Francisco the country’s hottest tech hub. The streets of the city were bustling with throngs of workers, writes Mary Ann. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and things slid to a halt. Now, more than two years and several vaccines later, San Francisco’s office scene has still not rebounded and the city’s streets remain eerily quiet.