This week's episode of Cheddar's Crypto Craze tackles the latest news and trends in this emerging market. Cheddar's Baker Machado and Brad Smith speak with Fortune Senior Writer Jen Wieczner about the latest headlines.
Bitcoin hovering around the $10,000 mark, but it is still down 50 percent from where it was in December. Wieczner says things are still on the upswing.
This week trading cryptocurrency on Robinhood's platform became available for free, but the roll-out has been gradual. "It's only in five states right now," says Wieczner. "There's still 1.4 million on the waitlist just to trade crypto."
Telegram is raising money for what will likely be the largest initial coin offering in history. The company confirmed with the SEC it has privately raised $850 Million for the offering, and reports say Telegram is planning a second round of private financing. Full Tilt Capital's Managing Partner Anthony Pompliano explains why Telegram has been able to raise so much capital.
"This is a team that has proven themselves," says Pompliano. "I think they've got a pretty interesting plan moving forward in terms of what they want to do with their money."
Roughly $4 billion was raised by ICOs in 2017, according to EY, compared with $6.8 billion raised through traditional angel and seed financing in 2017, according to PitchBook. Regulators are now looking to crack down on this growing ICO market. "This is new we haven't seen this before so I think people are trying to figure out the best way to participate," says Pompliano.
There's a new exchange in the crypto game, and it could have the power to shake things up. Users in five states can now trade Bitcoin and Ethereum free of charge on Robinhood. Meanwhile, Coinbase overtime has been considered the go-to place to buy the top cryptocurrencies. Boost VC's Founder and Managing Director Adam Draper explains what he thinks of this emerging cryptocurrency market.
"I actually don't look at them as competitors," says Draper. "Robinhood is coming at it from an asset management side, where Coinbase is coming at it from a crypto platform side. I think the long-term impact of both of these concepts is going to be vastly different from one another."
Draper was an early investor in Coinbase, and his fund is also an investor in the company.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
