Marc Andreessen on MTS. Screenshot via XSilicon Valley’s most powerful venture firm helped launch a 24/7 livestream on X Monday, joining a wave of tech money piling into the news cycle as the internet’s hottest new asset class.Why it matters: “Monitoring the situation” — the theme of Polymarket’s pop-up D.C. bar, and now the name of a new show (MTS) funded by Andreessen Horowitz — has become one of the most viral and lucrative memes in tech.The phenomenon sprouted from Elon Musk’s X, a platform now dominated by independent creators, amateur intel analysts and prediction markets that treat real-time news as a spectator sport.A permanent breaking-news cycle — President Trump’s second term, the Iran war, daily AI shocks — has made the news itself a product, something to trade, clip and monetize.Zoom in: Backed by a roster of angel investors, MTS is being pitched as Silicon Valley’s answer to cable news — a 24/7 livestream of elite X users reacting to real-time headlines, like Apple CEO Tim Cook’s surprise exit.A16z cofounder Marc Andreessen, a leading figure in MAGA’s tech alliance, framed MTS as a tool for “sense-making” in an era he calls “incredibly complex and erratic.”Skeptics were quick to mock the format as a well-funded livestream of venture partners switching tabs between X, prediction markets and Wikipedia.The big picture: Legacy media is shedding jobs, audiences and relevance. An emboldened tech ecosystem, deep-pocketed and fast-growing, is racing to replace it.Kalshi and Polymarket now command valuations in the tens of billions, fueled by bettors trading record volume on everything from the Iran war to the best new AI model.OpenAI this month reportedly paid in the low-hundreds of millions for TBPN, a buzzy livestreamed tech talk show now reporting to Sam Altman’s top political operative, Chris Lehane.The intrigue: A new Peter Thiel-backed startup called Objection.AI aims to go even further, letting users pay to challenge news stories and have them judged by a mix of human investigators and AI.