I came around a post that reminded me of this very topic "WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE, YOU DON'T NEED and this very phrase was instilled long ago in me when I was still in school

https://mronline.org/2022/10/13/u-s-rejection-of-moscows-offer-for-peace-talks-is-utterly-inexcusable/
"These two points taken together lend even more credibility an argument I’ve been making from the very beginning of this war: that the U.S. does not want peace in Ukraine, but rather seeks to create a costly military quagmire for Moscow just as U.S. officials have confessed to trying to do in Afghanistan and in Syria. Which would explain why U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict."

• The Biden Labor Department released a proposal Tuesday that could make it possible for gig workers to be reclassified as employees, rather than contractors.
• The proposed rule sent stocks of gig companies like DoorDash, Lyft and Uber down.
• It comes after a court reinstated a Trump-era rule Biden’s Labor Department tried to block that would have made it easier to classify gig workers as contractors.

The Biden Labor Department released a proposal Tuesday that could pave the way for regulators and courts to reclassify gig workers as employees rather than independent contractors.

The proposed rule, if adopted, could raise costs for companies like Lyft, Uber, Instacart and DoorDash that rely on contract workers to pick up shifts on their own schedules. Shares of Lyft fell 12% on Tuesday, while Uber dropped 10.4% and DoorDash shed 6%.

The companies have argued that flexible schedules are attractive to workers, pointing to surveys showing the popularity of the model, which they say is made possible by the use of independent contractor status. Some labor experts and activists have disagreed, however, saying the companies use the contractor model to reduce their own costs while denying workers important protections such as health-care benefits, overtime pay and the ability to organize into unions.

In 2020, a California law went into effect requiring many companies to reclassify contract workers as employees, but later that year, voters approved a proposition that exempted app-based ride-hailing and delivery companies from the law.

Last year, the Biden administration rescinded a rule created under Trump’s Labor Department that would have made it easier for gig companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees. But after a legal challenge, a court reinstated the Trump-era rule.

Biden’s Labor Department said in its notice in the Federal Register that it had considered waiting longer to see how the Trump-era rule played out. But it decided to move ahead with the proposed regulation instead because it believes keeping the earlier rule in place “would have a confusing and disruptive effect on workers and businesses alike due to its departure from case law describing and applying the multifactor economic reality test as a totality-of-the-circumstances test.”

The proposed rule would allow the determination of whether to classify a worker as a contractor or employee to rely on a more holistic assessment, including whether the work is an “integral” part of the employer’s business. The goal is to protect workers from being classified improperly while providing consistency for businesses that wish to employ independent contractors, the agency wrote.

The new proposed rule will still need to make its way through the formal regulatory process, including allowing time for the public to submit comments, before it is adopted.

Uber’s head of federal affairs, CR Wooters, said in a statement that the proposed rule “takes a measured approach, essentially returning us to the Obama era, during which our industry grew exponentially. In a time of deep economic uncertainty, it’s crucial that the Biden administration continues to hear from the more than 50 million people who have found an earning opportunity with companies like ours.”

In a blog post Tuesday, Lyft wrote that there “is no immediate or direct impact on the Lyft business at this time,” noting the 45-day public comment period. It added that the rule “Does not reclassify Lyft drivers as employees,” and also doesn’t force it to change its business model. Lyft said the rule simply reverts the standard to that used under the Obama administration, which previously applied to its company “and did not result in reclassification of drivers.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/11/uber-doordash-plunge-as-labor-dept-proposes-gig-worker-change.html

A telemarketer who was fired after refusing to keep his webcam on while working had his rights breached, a Dutch court has ruled.

The employee of US-based IT company Chetu was awarded approximately 75,000 euro (£65,700) by the court.

In August, the man, in the Netherlands, was told to share his screen and leave his camera on while working.

After he declined, he was fired for "refusal to work" and "insubordination".

Chetu did not provide a statement to the court, nor did the company appear at the court hearing, the judgement says.

The court ruled on the case in September, but its findings were published this month and reported by the Netherlands Times.

The BBC has approached Florida-based Chetu, which has a branch in the Netherlands, for comment.

Increased monitoring

Earlier this year, the TUC, which represents unions in England and Wales, warned use of workplace surveillance tech - including the use of AI to monitor workers - had taken off during the pandemic and was "spiralling out of control".

Methods included monitoring emails and files, webcams on work computers, tracking when and how much a worker is typing, calls made and movements made by the worker, through use of CCTV and trackable devices.

It called for stronger regulation to protect workers.

Max Winthrop, a partner at law firm Sintons LLP, said surveillance of employees had increased massively as the necessary tech became more accessible and as employers sought to keep tabs on employees working from home.

But he said there was not a simple answer to whether any particular monitoring infringed on an employee's privacy in the UK.

"It depends. A legitimate reason to monitor, such as the prevention of theft, or physical harm to employees, is likely to be considered favourably by a court or tribunal," said Mr Winthrop, a member of the Law Society's Employment Law Committee.

"Merely imposing an intrusive monitoring regime for no good reason, especially if monitoring takes place in areas or the workspace where employees could have a reasonable expectation of privacy, is not".

'I don't feel comfortable'

The employee in the case in the Netherlands had been working for Chetu since 2019, when in August he was asked to participate in a "Corrective Action Program ("CAP") - Virtual Classroom" during which his webcam was to be kept on.

According to the court record the employee refused, saying: "I don't feel comfortable being monitored for nine hours a day by a camera. This is an invasion of my privacy and makes me feel really uncomfortable. That is the reason why my camera is not on. You can already monitor all activities on my laptop and I am sharing my screen."

In response to the employee's objections, Chetu argued that this was no different from an employee being observed in an office environment.

But the court disagreed, citing a European Court of Human Rights ruling which, it said, stated that, "video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, be it covert or not, must be considered as a considerable intrusion into the employee's private life".

The court found that the there was no sufficient justification for the monitoring by Chetu, and it had therefore violated the employee's privacy rights.



https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63203945

Grayscale Investments called the the U S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) June decision to reject its application to convert its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) “arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory" in an opening legal brief filed as part of its lawsuit against the regulator.

Grayscale filed suit against the SEC on June 29th, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the regulator’s decision, which the SEC has published earlier in the day.

Grayscale is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.

Grayscale is far from the only company whose spot bitcoin ETF application has been rejected – over the last year, the SEC has denied over a dozen similar applications from other major players in the crypto space, including WisdomTree and Ark21Shares, citing a lack of investor protections and the potential for fraud and manipulation.

WisdomTree's latest application was rejected the same day Grayscale filed its brief.

While the agency has repeatedly rejected bitcoin spot ETF applications, it has approved several bitcoin futures ETFs, making a distinction between the offerings that Grayscale’s lawyers say is “arbitrary” and “outside the Commission’s authority.”

In the brief, the attorneys argue that, because Bitcoin futures and spot Bitcoin both generate their price based on overlapping indices, the spot price of Bitcoin in both spot and futures ETFs are subject to the same risks – and therefore, approving one and denying another is unfair.

“The Administrative Procedure Act and Exchange Act require rules and regulations to be applied without favoritism for one type of product or another,” said Craig Salm, Grayscale’s Chief Legal Officer, in a press statement.

The SEC’s response is due Nov. 9.


https://www.yahoo.com/video/sec-lawsuit-grayscale-calls-spot-001120838.html

Judging by the shape of the striking elements, a Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missile fell near the Samsung office in Kyiv. Do not build a conspiracy theory where there is operator error or the poor quality of an old Soviet guided anti-aircraft missile.

The New York Times disagrees with you. They say that the Russians fired more than a hundred rockets, and killed only 19 people, which means they have poor quality rockets.

New ETF plans to provide the inverse performance of investments recommended by CNBC’s Cramer.

Tuttle Capital Management — which previously launched an exchange-traded fund betting against Cathie Wood’s stock picks — plans to debut the Inverse Cramer ETF with the ticker SJIM, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. If approved, the fund would provide investment results that are approximately the opposite of Cramer’s investment recommendations.

The host of Mad Money on CNBC is an outspoken and polarizing figure in the finance world, known for his ardent endorsements of various stocks, with mixed results. In 2021, he praised Ark Investment Management’s Wood just before her flagship fund plummeted, and he also famously tweeted to buy AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. just prior to a 30% plunge.

“Jim’s mission has always been to encourage long-term investing and a balanced portfolio that includes index funds and individual stocks,” a CNBC spokesperson wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “He regards Mad Money as his classroom and believes educating those who want to pick individual stocks through insight and experience is the best way to help them take control of their finances.”

The Inverse Cramer ETF would be actively managed, meaning financial professionals behind the scenes would monitor Cramer’s stock selections and overall market recommendations through Twitter or his television appearances, according to the filing. Fund managers would then sell those stocks short or use derivatives to produce a negative correlation to his recommendations.

If Cramer said he was negative on a stock or ETF, the fund managers would take a long position.

Tuttle’s anti-Wood ETF, known by the ticker SARK, is up almost 90% since its launch in November 2021 and has attracted more than $350 million in assets. Tuttle was acquired by AXS Investments earlier this year.

And for those who do have faith in Cramer, Tuttle is also planning a Long Cramer ETF, or LJIM, to bet on investments that Cramer endorses. The filings did not disclose the fees for the two funds, but SARK charges an expense ratio of 0.75%.

https://www.wealthmanagement.com/etfs/fund-helped-investors-bet-against-cathie-wood-taking-jim-cramer

New York CNN Business — US factories are humming, and manufacturers are scrambling to find workers as the pace of hiring hits levels not seen in decades.

Friday’s September jobs report showed US manufacturers added another 22,000 workers in September, increasing employment in the sector by nearly 500,000 over the course of the last 12 months.

The nearly 13 million workers employed in US factories make up the industry’s largest workforce since the Great Recession caused employment in the sector to plunge more than a dozen years ago. Since April, manufacturing employment has been growing at about a 4% annual rate, the fastest sustained pace of growth since 1984, when the sector had more than twice as large a share of US jobs.

And employers say they now are scrambling to fill even more jobs. The sector has had about 800,000 openings for most of the last year, despite the hiring binge, according to the Labor Department’s report.

With supply chains causing problems throughout the global economy, many US companies that depended on overseas suppliers have been shifting their focus to sources of parts and goods much closer to home.

“It was taking months for parts to not only get manufactured but come across and they decided they were willing to pay US manufacturing pricing to get that much faster,” said Hayden Jennison, production manager for Jennison Corporation, a Carnegie, Pennsylvania, company that makes everything from fire fighting equipment to construction machinery. He said there’s enough demand for his goods to staff an entire additional shift at the factory. But even though he’s paying $20 to $30 an hour he can’t find the workers he needs.

“Hiring has been a problem since 2020,” Jennison said. “Hiring experienced candidates that understand the industry, and understand what they’re doing, has been very difficult.”

Typically factory jobs and output take a hit during economic downturns, as they did during the Great Recession. But even with fears of a recession rising now, industry experts don’t expect factory jobs to default to their familiar boom-to-bust cycle this time.

“I think we’re in uncharted territory,” said Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. “For every 100 jobs openings in the sector we only have 60 people who are looking. I think it’ll take quite a while to fill that pipeline.”

Timmons said that pay in the sector is up 5% over the course of the last year, and he expects it to keep rising as manufacturers scramble for skilled labor.

Experts say one of the biggest problems manufacturers face in attracting workers is their perception of the nature of the job.

“We often take a look at the images of manufacturing and we see the sparks flying and a welding environment and perhaps it’s a little bit dingy, dark. But by and large our manufacturing jobs today are high tech,” said Eric Esoda, CEO of a not-for-profit providing consulting and training services to small- and mid-size manufacturers in Northeast Pennsylvania.

One group employers are looking to for more help: women. Manufacturing remains a male-dominated industry, with only 30% of hourly factory jobs held by women, according to NAM. But that’s up from 27% only two years ago, and the Manufacturing Institute, an education and workforce development arm of NAM, has various programs aimed at raising the share of women workers on factory floors to 35% by 2030.

Today less than 10% of private sector jobs are in manufacturing, compared to more than 40% at the end of World War II. But it is still a key sector of the economy, one that pays much better than many others. The Labor Department reports the average weekly wage for manufacturing jobs is $1,250, or $65,000 annually — 11% more than private sector jobs overall, and 81% more than retail jobs.



https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/economy/manufacturing-jobs/index.html

Mark Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford University have published a new study in the journal Energy & Environmental Science that claims 145 of the world’s nations could switch to 100% renewable energy in a few years using renewable energy technologies available today. They recommend the world make the switchover by 2035, but in no event later than 2050. Their goal is to have 80% operating on renewable energy by 2030.

The researchers looked at onshore and offshore wind energy, solar power, solar heat, geothermal electricity and heat, hydroelectricity, and small amounts of tidal and wave electricity. Batteries were the most common electricity storage solution, with the team finding that no batteries with more than four hours of storage were necessary.

“We do not need miracle technologies to solve these problems. By electrifying all energy sectors; producing electricity from clean, renewable sources; creating heat, cold, and hydrogen from such electricity; storing electricity, heat, cold and the hydrogen; expanding transmission; and shifting the time of some electricity use, we can create safe, cheap, and reliable energy everywhere,” Jacobson says. He is a staunch supporter of the Green New Deal.

The researchers say switching to renewable energy would avoid utility grid blackouts and save consumers trillions of dollars. One of the main reasons for that finding is that the combustion-based energy systems most countries rely require a lot of energy just to function. In switching to a clean, renewable energy system, Jacobson states that worldwide energy usage would go down by 56% immediately.

Renewable Energy & Efficiency

Those savings are attributable to the efficiency of clean energy over combustion systems, as well as the efficiency of electrified industry. There would no longer be a need to explore for oil, coal, and gas, drill wells or dig new mines, transport oil to refineries, build and maintain pipelines, or truck petroleum products to end users, according to My Modern Met.

Efficiency is something that people who drive electric cars should understand quite well. A gallon of gasoline has the equivalent energy of a 33.7 kWh battery. Many electric cars today have a range of 300 miles or more, which means they can travel that far on the equivalent of 3 gallons of gasoline. A first generation LEAF had a 24 kWh battery, which means it was so efficient, it could go about 80 miles on the equivalent of about .8 gallons of gasoline.

A typical internal combustion engine is 20 to 25% efficient, which means three-quarters of what you pay for is wasted as friction or heat. An electric car is 80 to 95% efficient. In a world that is rapidly overheating, how much longer can we afford to be so profligate with our energy usage? Would you pay $100 for a suit that was worth only $25? Of course not, and yet every time people fill their tanks with gasoline, they are wasting three-quarters of the energy they are paying for.

The problem is similar when we consider thermal generation of electricity. The amount of energy wasted in the process it simply staggering, and yet we continue to generate electricity that way because it is what we are used to and we can’t see another way. Jacobson and company are shining a bright light on an alternate pathway.

Non-Economic Benefits, Too

The study is mostly about economics, but there are significant and quantifiable health benefits to not filling our lungs with air that is mixed with the harmful pollutants that result from combustion. People are hyper-vigilant about what they put in the bodies today and yet they never give a thought to the crud they breathe and drink and eat that is left over after fossil fuels are burned.

The cost of making the changeover to 100% renewable energy would be a staggering $62 trillion. Wow! That is a ton of money, people. But here’s the thing. Jacobson and his team say the savings from switching the world to 100% renewable energy would be $11 trillion a year. In other words, the initial investment would be paid back in just 6 years! Many people have a hard time distinguishing between an investment and an expense. They tend to see that $62 trillion as an expense and ignore the payback.

Ford is spending $40 billion to transition to making electric cars. Volkswagen, Mercedes, GM, BMW, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota are doing the same. Does anyone think that money is just an expense or that the managers of those companies have not calculated the expected return on their investment down to the fraction of a penny? Why do we continue to view the cost of transferring to renewable energy as an expense and not an investment, one that will pay economic and non-economic benefits for generations?

Wind and sunshine are free. Once the systems to harvest energy from them are completed, the cost of fuel is zero. Yes, those resources will need to be updated, refurbished or replaced over time, just the way utility grids and thermal generating stations need to be as well. But the cost of fuel remains at zero while the price of fossil fuels gyrates radically over time.

There’s one other aspect of renewable energy that you can’t put a price on but it’s extremely valuable nonetheless — energy security. Nations that generate their own electricity don’t need to be at the mercy of lunatics and despots who can decide at any time to cut off the supply of oil, or unnatural gas, or coal. How much is that worth? It may be  hard to answer that question, but it is clearly not nothing. The people of Europe are facing a long cold winter because the supply of cheap methane from Russia has ended abruptly. How much would energy security be worth to them?

The Takeaway

In the conclusion to their study, Jacobson and his research colleagues say, “Transitioning to 100% [renewable energy] in 145 countries decreases energy requirements and annual private and social costs while creating about 28.4 million more long term, full time jobs than lost. A 100% [renewable energy] economy uses only about 0.53% of the 145 country land area, with 0.17% for footprint and 0.36% for spacing.”

People may quibble over some of the timing and access to the raw and manufactured materials needed to complete a changeover to 100% renewable energy. They may worry that there is not enough political will to make this happen. Those are valid concerns. But what the Stanford team is doing is setting a target. As Forrest Gump said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’re not likely to end up there.”

It’s easy to say the task is too hard or too expensive or pushes too far, too fast. Those might be concerns for ordinary challenges. But when the objective is preserving the Earth as a sustainable place where human beings can live, making bold plans is really the least we can do.


https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/06/switching-the-world-to-renewable-energy-will-cost-62-trillion-but-the-payback-would-take-just-6-years/

The morning did not begin with good news. Ukrainian cities were subjected to massive shelling from the enemy. We hope all our readers are staying safe. Unfortunately, there are victims and destruction. Russian terrorists attacked civilian objects. In particular, in Kyiv, a rocket damaged the building of the 101 Tower office center, which housed Samsung’s office and the company’s R&D center.

As the Director of Consumer Electronics Division at Samsung Electronics Ukraine Andrii Skira reported on his Facebook page, all company employees were outside the office. We also hope that employees of other offices managed to respond to the alarm and get to the shelter.

Any evidence that Russia is a terrorist country is no longer needed. It should not be feared, it should be defeated. Therefore, we remain calm, believe and donate to the Armed Forces, and continue to work.


https://mezha.media/en/2022/10/10/russians-hit-the-office-and-r-d-center-of-samsung-in-kyiv/

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - The global financial crisis of 2008 was supposed to have taught the world the dangers of excessive debt. But borrowing has shot up since then. The debt of governments, companies and households was 195% of global GDP in 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. By the end of 2020 it had reached 256%.

These debt mountains are harder to bear because interest rates are rising to stamp out inflation, the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have clobbered growth, and investors are more averse to risk. This will cause economic stress especially in Europe, China and the Global South, poisoning domestic politics and geopolitics.

Debt has risen for three main reasons. First, governments bailed out the financial system. Then they supported households and companies during the pandemic. Now they are cushioning the blow of eye-popping gas and electricity prices.

QE DEBT SPLURGE

Cheap money enabled these splurges. In the West, this came in the form of quantitative easing (QE), where central banks bought government bonds and other assets. While they were right to use QE to prevent an economic slump, cheap money has been a painkiller. Many governments stopped worrying about balancing their books. Companies and emerging markets also leveraged up.

If the borrowers had used the money to fund productive investment, that might not have mattered. But instead, they spent much of it on unproductive investment or consumption.

China’s excess property construction is the prime example of unproductive investment. The country’s debt as a proportion of GDP has doubled since 2007, according to the IMF. This is suffocating its economy and is one of the reasons the World Bank has just slashed its growth forecast for China this year from 5% to just 2.8%.

Meanwhile, European governments’ massive support operations during the pandemic and the energy crisis are a classic example of borrowing to fund consumption. Politicians have made little attempt to target subsidies at the most vulnerable.

The poor productivity of this borrowing can be seen in the data. In the past decade, global debt has risen by $90 trillion, whereas GDP has grown by only $20 trillion, according to Sonja Gibbs, who leads the Institute of International Finance’s (IIF) debt policy work.

Artificially cheap money has also encouraged risky behaviour. Investors have used leverage to help them chase higher returns, while funding long-term assets with short-term borrowing. The UK pension fund industry, which effectively received a bailout from the Bank of England last week, is a good example of the former. The British habit of funding house purchases with mortgages whose interest rate is floating or fixed for short periods is an example of the latter. Other problems are bound to emerge now the era of cheap money is ending.

ROADRUNNER POLITICS

It’s not just central banks that are pushing up interest rates in a belated attempt to restrain inflation. So-called “bond vigilantes” – debt investors who impose discipline on profligate borrowers – are waking up from their long slumber.

The sharp fall in British sovereign bonds last week before the BoE stepped in is the first big sign of this in rich countries. Investors lost confidence in Liz Truss, the new British prime minister, because she is borrowing to cut taxes as well as to cushion consumers from high energy prices; and because Brexit had already harmed the country’s economic prospects.

But Truss’ willingness to take the risk is evidence of a generation of politicians which has grown up thinking there are few consequences for rising debt. They are scared that voters will throw them out of office if they balance their budgets. Central banks are worried about deepening recessions and provoking financial crises if they tighten monetary policy too much. But if central banks become government stooges, investors will lash out.

It’s not just the United Kingdom which is at risk. Italy and Greece are especially vulnerable because of their high ratios of debt to GDP. If investors conclude these are unsustainable, the euro itself may suffer renewed strains.

OUR CURRENCY, YOUR PROBLEM

Compared with others, the United States has some protection from this problem. Reserves of shale gas make it a relative winner from the energy crisis. And the rising dollar will help it stop inflation faster than other countries.

But the strong greenback makes life harder for almost everybody else. It is pushing up inflation in the rest of the world and adding to the distress of those that have borrowed in dollars. It’s more than 50 years since the then-U.S. Treasury Secretary told his counterparts that the “dollar is our currency but it’s your problem”. The adage is relevant again today.

We are in the early stages of a new debt crisis in the Global South. Poor countries are especially vulnerable to high food and energy prices. Investors’ increased risk aversion is also hitting them hard. The spread on high-yield sovereign dollar debt over U.S. Treasury bonds is now more than 10 percentage points – around double what it has been for most of the last decade, according to the IIF.

Sri Lanka, Ghana, Egypt and Pakistan have already called on the IMF for help with their debts. About 60% of low-income countries are in debt distress or at risk of it, according to an IMF article. So far, this isn’t as serious as the Latin American debt disaster of the 1980s, which also infected Africa, or the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s, which dragged in Russia and Brazil. What’s more, the large western banks have less exposure to emerging markets than in the 1980s. But the flipside is that the debt is spread among many bond investors and that China is a massive lender. This fragmented creditor base makes it harder to restructure countries’ borrowings: no lender wants to take a hit unless they are confident that others will share the pain.

Poor countries could explode with anger, as they feel they are the victims of richer countries’ actions. They didn’t flood the world with cheap money, they didn’t get many vaccines to help with the pandemic, they didn’t cause the food or energy crises – and they are not to blame for the climate crisis which is hitting their countries particularly badly. Nevertheless, as in Europe and China, the problems caused by more than a decade of seemingly free money are now coming home to roost.


https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-end-of-cheap-money-reveals-global-debt-problem

Ad Age illustrates just how quickly a booming company can fall apart.

If you’ve watched a Formula 1 race this year, there’s a good chance you have — if only unconsciously — seen plenty of Crypto.com ads. Along with companies like Aramco, DHL, Emirates, and Heineken, Crypto.com has looked like it’s become one of the key players in financing the future of global open-wheel motorsport. But right now, all that money might be drying up.

A new report from Ad Age’s Asa Hiken describes a company that has marketed itself into a downward spiral. If you’ve watched any sporting events in the recent past, you’ve probably either seen a commercial or an eventside ad for Crypto.com, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Now, it looks like thousands of employees are being let go as the “crypto winter” descends.

Just after Crypto.com announced that it had hit the 50-million user mark — and just after it had served as a primary sponsor for F1's Miami Grand Prix — the crypto market crashed.

From Ad Age:


In the article, one advertising professional who worked with Crypto.com described the company as follows: “I’ve worked with many ambitious clients before, but Crypto.com is probably the most ambitious client I’ve ever worked with.” That’s because, in a span of less than a year, the brand became internationally known thanks to its intense marketing push that saw it become a massive enterprise. It worked well at getting Crypto.com’s name out.

But a downturn in crypto interest saw the platform tumble. Crypto.com has dissolved deals with Angel City F.C., Twitch Rivals, and the UEFA Champions League. It has maintained several other deals with sports teams or events but has in some cases reduced the number of hospitality packages available.

Right now, the future of Crypto.com and cryptocurrency as a whole is a little unclear. It obviously hasn’t become a universally adopted form of currency, and the initial allure seems to have faded. It could keep tumbling, or it could see a new rise in interest. Formula 1 likely won't fall apart thanks to Crypto.com — but it's yet another fascinating chapter in the sport's long history of accepting sponsorship deals that aren't quite cut out to meet their promises.



https://jalopnik.com/formula-1s-crypto-com-sponsor-is-falling-apart-1849626650

Portugal’s new digital nomad visa just made working remotely from a European beach easier

When you think "digital nomad," you might immediately think about tropical destinations.

But the trend has also been growing in Europe, and Portugal just announced a new digital nomad scheme that will open for applications this month.

The government confirmed last week that from Oct. 30, workers from any countries that aren't part of the European Union or European Economic Area can apply for the remote work and residency visa.

Proof of tax residency, employment details, such as a contract, and evidence of workers' income will be required.

Applicants will also need to be earning at least four times as much as the Portuguese national wage. That is currently 822 euros ($798), so the minimum monthly income for digital nomads would be around 3,288 euros.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/portugal-e2-80-99s-new-digital-nomad-visa-just-made-working-remotely-from-a-european-beach-easier/ar-AA12NjO9