  We prove a new convergence result for the slice spectral sequence, following
work by Levine and Voevodsky. This verifies a derived variant of Voevodsky's
conjecture on convergence of the slice spectral sequence. This is, in turn, a
necessary ingredient for our main theorem: a Thomason-style \'etale descent
result for the Bott-inverted motivic sphere spectrum, which generalizes and
extends previous \'etale descent results for special examples of motivic
cohomology theories. Combined with first author's \'etale rigidity results, we
obtain a complete structural description of the \'etale motivic stable
category.
