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» Sara Yasin’s new digital magazine, The Key, will center Palestine.

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:23:45 +0000

The Key launched with an essay by the new magazine’s editor in chief Sara Yasin called “It’s Not Complicated.” The essay is part reflection, part media criticism, part thesis statement for the publication, and Yasin’s opening line rolls all of these themes into one, crisp sentence:

“When you are in Palestine, you see things exactly as they are.”

The Key takes this simple observation as both assumption and challenge: Palestine is worth covering unapologetically, according to their mission statement, “as the core issue at the heart of the modern world.”

The magazine debuted with some wonderful writing. In addition to Yasin’s essay, The Key published two poems by poet and journalist Tamara Nassar and a beautiful essay on the contrapuntal and living between two world’s by poet and translator Alaa Alqaisi.

I had a long talk with Yasin to talk about her vision for the magazine, and how it was inspired by her experiences as a journalist and editor at BuzzFeed News and the Los Angeles Times, as a Muslim and Palestinian American in a post-9/11 America, and as a writer with values. (Our longer conversation will be on the next episode of the Lit Hub Podcast)

The Key is publishing in partnership with the Palestine Festival of Literature, a literary organization that Yasin has worked with since 2013, after meeting the novelist and PalFest co-founder Ahdaf Soueif and getting the opportunity to travel and write in Palestine. The Festival also put Yasin in touch with a community of other publications, writers, and editors who have been similarly clear eyed on Palestine.

“I was very shaped by PalFest’s approach,” she said, which aims to offer a fuller picture to readers. “The fact that they didn’t start from, ‘Let’s break all of your myths’ is really immersing the writers in not just understanding what’s happening, but in really connecting with people,” Yasin said.

This community of like-minded folks has been foundational for The Key‘s team, and Yasin was careful to stress that the publication isn’t claiming to be the only voice responding to legacy media’s failures in covering Palestine.

“There were just so many publications and places and people who have had the kind of bravery that teed it up for something like The Key,” Yasin said, “I don’t think anything like The Key would exist without people pushing the door open.”

In organizing events for PalFest after leaving the LA Times, Yasin encountered an audience with a clear desire for “literary focused spaces to explore these ideas.” Plus, she saw more honest and uncompromising work in literary spaces, as opposed to journalists who were in large part still frustratingly calcified. The idea of pushing for change in static news organizations from within seem fruitless. Even starting conversations sometimes felt onerous for Yasin.

“Untangling that did not seem to be an interesting problem to solve,” she said, “You’re sitting there going, ‘Well I’m just negotiating finer points, and actually this thing is much bigger.’”

And despite accusations to the contrary, this wasn’t Yasin trying to be an activist. She simply wanted to do her job correctly, and wanted others to do the same.

“I want to be a journalist because I want to tell the truth, report things as they are, and do things to a high standard,” she said, “And if I’m not able to do that, then I’m complicit in the things that we’re covering incorrectly.”

Ultimately, the work she wanted to do needed to happen “outside of a mainstream newsroom,” she continued. “And so for me, PalFest felt like the right place to do that because it’s anchored in the same values that I share… doing high quality, very accessible work, but that has very clear and uncompromising values.”

But the values can quickly become secondary if there’s nowhere to publish, and Palestine remains a topic met with reluctance and outright hostility from many large news and media outlets. A lot of writers who might otherwise find a home in mainstream publications instead “find themselves blackballed or they want to boycott these places,” Yasin told me.

“On a very practical level,” she said, “we need to have more places for these people to publish their work that actually pays them.”

“I got sick of saying, ‘Why hasn’t anyone published this?’”

Yasin envisions The Key as a vibrant space for those writers doing work that deserves a prominent platform, and though it’s still early days, she has lots of exciting stuff planned. Her team is gathering writing from political prisoners, media criticism from inside mainstream newsrooms, stories of Hollywood censorship, profiles of the former head of Addameer and of a Palestinian rapper, poetry, and lots more. And the site looks great too, thanks to designer David Pearson.

Yasin is hoping to keep subscriptions low—it’s $2 a month right now—which keeps the writing accessible and, as Yasin put it, “creates a little more of a connection.”

The Key will keep a focus on Palestine, which has emerged as a central issue in so many conversations since October 7th and the genocide began. For Yasin and the whole team, this goes beyond a question of journalistic priorities and values—though Palestine is undoubtedly a vital story, as Israel’s brutality is ongoing and the Western world’s inability to stand up to genocide and war has created permission for further escalations. (As of this writing, Israel and the United States are bombing most of the Gulf, settler expansion in the West Bank is escalating, and Israel has forced at least 700,000 people from southern Lebanon at gunpoint, and on, and on.)

Palestine is central, a galvanizing idea that inspires, echos, and reveals. When we look at Palestine, we look at the world.

“What are the things you cover if the baseline is someone thinks that not only is a genocide happening, but that genocide is wrong?” Yasin said, “What does it mean to tell stories if the goal isn’t, ‘You have to humanize Palestinians?’”

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Toy industry pressures make digital the star

admin — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 06:46:18 +0000

The gap is widening between rival toy makers Hasbro and Mattel — thanks in part to a 30-year-old trading card game.

The toy giants have flip-flopped dominance in the space for decades, jockeying for the most coveted master licenses to put new fan favorites — Disney princesses and “Star Wars” characters among them — on store shelves. But as the industry recovers from a period of declining sales, Hasbro is the one winning over Wall Street.

For the fiscal year 2025, Hasbro reported revenue gains of 14%, reaching $4.7 billion, while Mattel saw its net sales drop 1% to $5.3 billion.

Though Mattel’s revenue is larger than Hasbro’s, its growth has been stagnating, according to Eric Handler, managing director and senior research analyst at Roth Capital Partners.

“[Mattel’s] revenue has been in a very tight range for five years now, and 2026, on an organic basis, is the same,” he told CNBC.

Mattel shares are down more than 20% in the last 12 months, trading at around $17. Meanwhile, Hasbro’s stock is up roughly 46% over the same period, with shares trading at around $100.

Of course, Hasbro’s journey post-pandemic has not been without its own headwinds. The company’s revenue took a hit when it divested its film and TV business, eOne. Also, its entertainment segment, which includes film and TV licenses, was deeply impacted by Hollywood’s dual labor strikes in 2023.

“Despite market volatility and a shifting consumer environment, we returned this company to growth in a meaningful way,” Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks told investors during an earnings call earlier this month.

Throughout these changes, one key piece of Hasbro’s business has been steadily growing — Wizards of the Coast.

A dash of Magic

The Hasbro division includes Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering and the company’s portfolio of digital and video games.

In 2025, Wizards’ revenue grew 45% to $2.1 billion, fueled by sales of sets tied to Magic’s Universe Beyond and smaller, limited-edition Secret Lair packs — some that sell for close to $200.

While the segment accounts for less than half of the company’s revenue, it represents 88% of its adjusted profits.

Magic: The Gathering playing cards form a light fixture at the Wizards of the Coast headquarters in Renton, Washington, Sept. 11, 2025. With traditional toy and game sales lagging, Hasbro has found a growth engine in role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and a growing portfolio of digital and video games.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The strategic trading card game Magic, which was created in 1993, typically features two players going head-to-head using custom decks of collectible cards to cast spells, unleash creatures or use artifacts to defeat their opponent.

In the last five years, Hasbro has expanded beyond the lore of the initial game to launch card sets based on intellectual property from third parties, including “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” Marvel’s “Spider-Man” and “Lord of the Rings.”

These sets are not only popular with long-standing Magic fans, but act as a gateway for consumers from other fanbases into the world of Magic. In mid-2025, Hasbro released a “Final Fantasy” set that became the fastest-selling expansion pack in Magic: The Gathering history, generating $200 million in sales in a single day.

“They have done a fantastic job of widening the funnel in the last couple years, and it’s become a multigenerational type of product,” Handler said. “The player base is growing. It’s a sticky player base that is showing eagerness with new products and new ways to play.”

Through the end of 2025, more than 1 million unique players participated in organized play — meaning sanctioned tournaments — according to Cocks. That’s a 22% year-over-year increase, he said.

Additionally, the number of game stores that host events, called the Wizards Play Network, has grown to more than 10,000, a 20% increase from 2024.

“Taken together, this reinforces our confidence in Magic’s long-term growth,” Cocks said on the company’s earnings call. “We are building a system of play with multiple entry points, product types, and engagement paths, and that system is positioned to continue driving growth into 2026 and beyond.”

In 2026, Hasbro plans to launch new Magic sets based on “The Hobbit,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Star Trek.”

The company has forecast mid-single-digit growth for its Wizards business in 2026, but Keegan Cox, associate vice president and research analyst at D.A. Davidson, in a research note published shortly after the company’s earnings, called that estimate “conservative.”

The digital frontier

Hasbro’s Wizards unit also includes the digital and licensed gaming space, which saw revenues jump 6% in 2025, fueled by the success of “Monopoly Go!”

Cocks has previously noted that modern consumers and modern play is increasingly moving into online forums, and the company has launched new games and an in-person video game studio in Montreal to boost play.

While Hasbro’s digital gaming division is growing, Mattel is just getting its own digital unit off the ground.

Earlier this month, Mattel announced it would buy out partner NetEase from its 50% stake in their Mattel163 joint venture, taking full ownership of the business. Mattel163 develops digital games based on the toy company’s brands and since 2018 has launched four digital games: Uno, Uno Wonder, Phase 10 and Skip-Bo.

“In our view, [Mattel] is in the early stages of an investment similar to Hasbro’s investment in gaming over 7 years ago,” D.A. Davidson’s Cox wrote. “While we do not think [Mattel] will be chasing to compete with Hasbro … we do believe [Mattel] can make successful mobile games tied to their IP and should add to profit margins over time.”

An industry in flux

Mattel’s push into digital comes as two of its flagship brands struggle to make sales.

“Barbie’s been on a meaningful decline, as has Fisher-Price,” Handler noted. “That’s sort of been negating a lot of the good news that’s been happening with Hot Wheels.”

The vehicles division saw gross billings jump 11% in 2025, while the dolls segment fell 7% and the infant, toddler and preschool space slipped 17%.

That segment for the youngest consumers has been in decline for over a decade, the result of shrinking population growth and the fact that children are being introduced to electronics earlier in their development. Shifting play habits have meant toy makers have to adapt, and fast.

But there’s hope for Mattel and the toy industry as a whole. In 2025, total annual dollar sales were up 6% in the U.S., according to data from Circana. And, perhaps more importantly, the number of units sold increased 3%, quelling fears that price-conscious consumers are pulling back on toy purchases.

“Unit sales being up, I think, is the most important metric we can look at,” said James Zahn, senior editor of The Toy Insider and The Toy Book. “If unit sales were down, that’s when you know people are really buying less, and that didn’t happen.”

Mattel and Hasbro, alongside other toy companies, are also expected to get a boost from a robust theatrical calendar this year.

Mattel has two of its own brands being represented at the box office with “Masters of the Universe” coming in June and “Matchbox” arriving in October. While Mattel won’t see a major bump from ticket sales, its toy sales could get a boost. After all, the 2023 release of “Barbie” helped fuel a 16% increase in gross billings of the doll in the quarter after it hit cinemas.

Mattel also holds the master toy licenses for “Toy Story” and Disney princesses, meaning it’ll handle the bulk of the product for “Toy Story 5” and the live-action “Moana.”

Hasbro will have toy lines for “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “Avengers: Doomsday.”

Together, Mattel and Hasbro have also collaborated on the much anticipated product line for Netflix’s hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters,” promising dolls, foam roleplay items, games and plush items.

“‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is gonna do big business for both Hasbro and Mattel,” Zahn said.

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Bitcoin nears record high in latest sign it may be turning into ‘digital gold’

admin — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 18:56:34 +0000

Bitcoin rallied about 1.6% Friday, coming close to setting a new record despite widespread economic uncertainty.

The cryptocurrency traded at over $122,000 – just below the all-time high of about $124,000 that it notched in August.

The rally is a signal that investors may be viewing Bitcoin as another safe-haven asset, like gold, as the US government shutdown continues.

The cryptocurrency traded at over $122,000 on Friday. REUTERS

Spot gold jumped 0.5% early Friday to $3,876.55 per ounce. Prices have gained more than 2% this week – and gold futures have soared over 46% so far this year.

“That correlation with gold has picked up. Bitcoin is often thought of as digital gold because of its limited supply,” Alex Saunders, Citi’s head of quant macro research, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” on Thursday.

Meanwhile, experts and pols are lamenting the adverse effects of the shutdown, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warning Thursday of potential harm to economic growth.

“The shutdown matters this time around,” Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick wrote in a note Friday.

Meanwhile, funding impasses in Washington, DC, prompted the first government shutdown since 2018. Xinhua/Shutterstock

“During the previous Trump shutdown… Bitcoin was in a different place than now, so it did little,” he added. “However, this year bitcoin has traded with ‘US government risks’ as best shown by its relationship to US Treasury term premium.”

Standard Chartered expects Bitcoin to hit a new high soon, ultimately reaching $135,000.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 310 points, or 0.7%, while the S&P 500 ticked up 0.1% on Friday.

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Google willing to share digital ad data with publishers to address monopoly, executive testifies

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 06:44:12 +0000

Google is willing to cough up more advertising data to publishers to address concerns about its illegal monopoly over digital advertising technology, a top executive at the search giant said Tuesday.

Glenn Berntson, an engineering director for Google Ad Manager, acknowledged the potential remedy during the second week of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Virginia federal court. He was called as a witness by Google’s defense lawyers.

Providing “publishers with these detailed insights, I think, is a good idea,” Berntson said during cross-examination by the Justice Department’s attorneys, according to Bloomberg. “The specifics is something we’d have to explore.”

Google is willing to share more advertising data to publishers to address concerns about its illegal monopoly over digital advertising technology. AFP via Getty Images

Google is trying to wriggle out of a more damaging forced breakup of its digital advertising empire. The DOJ has argued that Google should be required to sell its key ad exchange, AdX, to restore fair competition and protect news publishers and advertisers that rely on the system.

Any remedy short of divestiture should be a “hard pass,” according to Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade group that represents online publishers.

“What publishers need isn’t another last-minute desperate gesture from Google as they try to avoid absolutely necessary structural remedies,” said Kint. “The Department of Justice has put on a brilliant case presenting remedies that will actually stop Google’s illegal conduct harming publishers, deny Google the fruits of it, restore competition and to avoid re-monopolization going forward.”

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who has final say over which remedies to implement, ruled in April that Google had violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online publisher ad server market, as well as the ad-exchange market that connects ad buyers to sellers.

The shared data could include details on how Google’s ad server determines which display ads to show – boosting transparency about the inner workings the auction system that the company uses to buy and sell ad space in real time, according to Berntston.

The DOJ has also proposed that Google make the auction process more transparent by sharing data, but Berntson testified on the stand that simply releasing source code about the auction process wouldn’t necessarily help publishers understand it.

Instead, Berntson said Google could release a breakdown explaining its digital auction process. At the same time, he admitted that larger publishers with more resources would likely want to see the source code itself.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that Google had violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online publisher ad server market, as well as the ad-exchange market that connects ad buyers to sellers. REUTERS

On the stand, Berntson was “incredibly non-committal and fairly vaguely acknowledged that transparency is good,” according to Arielle Garcia, the COO of Check My Ads, a digital ad industry watchdog.

“Technical documentation isn’t a substitute for allowing publishers to independently audit the data about their own campaigns or to see the underlying logic, so this is yet another surface-level commitment that doesn’t do much,” Garcia said.

News publishers and other Google critics have long complained that the auction process for ad sales is too opaque and leaves businesses at a loss to explain how ads are selected.

The trial’s remedy phase is expected to conclude as soon as this week. Google has vowed to appeal Brinkema’s original finding that it has a monopoly in digital advertising.

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Attorneys for Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, said the DOJ’s proposal for forced divestiture could break the technology, causing disruption for the businesses that rely on the system to do business.

Rather than a breakup, Google has floated making the tools easier to use and more compatible with third-party tools.

However, in a key moment last week, Google advertising executive Tim Craycroft admitted under the DOJ’s questioning that the company held internal discussions about the feasibility of selling part of its ad business as recently as last year, The Information reported.

The outcome of the case represents a potential existential threat for Google, which dodged the worst-case scenario in a separate antitrust case targeting its online search business earlier this month.

In that case, US District Judge Amit Mehta shot down the DOJ’s request for a forced selloff of Google’s Chrome web browser. Instead, he required Google to share more search data with rivals.

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Goldman Sachs, BNY introduce money market fund digital tokens

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:44:58 +0000

A screen displays the the company logo for Goldman Sachs on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., May 7, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York Mellon are set to announce that they’ve created the ability for institutional investors to purchase tokenized money market funds, CNBC has learned.

Clients of BNY, the world’s largest custody bank, will be able to invest in money market funds whose ownership will be recorded on Goldman’s blockchain platform, according to executives of the two firms.

The project has already signed up fund titans including BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and Federated Hermes, as well as the asset management arms of Goldman and BNY.

The Wall Street giants believe that tokenizing the $7.1 trillion money market industry is the next leap forward for digital assets after President Donald Trump last week signed a law marking the arrival of U.S.-regulated stablecoins. The GENIUS Act is expected to boost the popularity and use of stablecoins, which are typically pegged to the U.S. dollar, and JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America have said they are exploring their use in payments.

But unlike stablecoins, tokenized money market funds pay owners a yield, making it an attractive place for hedge funds, pensions and corporations to park their cash.

“We have created the ability for our clients to invest in tokenized money market share classes across a number of fund companies,” said Laide Majiyagbe, BNY’s global head of liquidity, financing and collateral. “The step of tokenizing is important, because today that will enable seamless and efficient transactions, without the frictions that happen in traditional markets.”

Money market funds are mutual funds that are typically invested in safer, short term securities including Treasuries, repo agreements or commercial paper. They are generally considered the most cash-like of investments that still offer a yield. Traditional money market funds can be liquidated within a day or two, though redeeming shares only happens during market hours.

Institutional and retail investors have rushed into the asset class in recent years, pouring roughly $2.5 trillion into them since the Federal Reserve began a rate-hiking cycle in 2022.

A better future?

By creating digital certificates of ownership for money market funds that reside on a blockchain, Goldman and BNY’s move should allow for faster settlement, round-the-clock trading and automation. To ease the transition, BNY will also keep traditional money market records on top of tokens of the same assets.

The banks view the tokenized funds as setting the foundation for a future in which the assets are traded in a more efficient, always-on digital ecosystem. Investors and corporations could lean on stablecoins for global payments and tokenized money market funds for cash management.

But tokenizing the asset class gives the funds new capabilities beyond speed and ease of use; the digitized funds could eventually be transferable between financial intermediaries without having to first liquidate funds into cash, according to BNY and Goldman.

That could bolster its use by the world’s largest financial players as collateral for a multitude of trades and margin requirements, said Mathew McDermott, Goldman’s global head of digital assets.

Doing so would free up time and capital that is today consumed by traditional transactions, he said. Instead of investors and corporations selling money market funds to deliver cash collateral for a trade, they could just exchange the token, for instance.

“The sheer scale of this market just offers a huge opportunity to create a lot more efficiency across the whole financial plumbing,” McDermott said. “That is what’s really powerful, because you’re creating utility in an instrument where it doesn’t exist today.”

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Goldman Sachs and Citadel invest in crypto firm Digital Asset

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 13:00:50 +0000

Crypto company Digital Asset said Tuesday that it’s netted $135 million in funding from a raft of major names in banking and finance.

The firm, which touts itself as a regulated crypto player, said it raised the fresh cash in a funding round co-led by DRW and Tradeweb, with Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities also investing.

The investment highlights how large financial institutions are embedding themselves in the once murky world of crypto.

Previously associated with fraud, money laundering and other illicit activities, digital assets have become a more mainstream asset class over the years as big names like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley warmed to the space.

Just last week, JPMorgan launched its own version of a stablecoin, a deposit token called “JPMD.”

“With growing participation from global financial institutions and market participants, we expect this funding round to help us solidify our role as the backbone of digital finance,” Yuval Rooz, Digital Asset’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC.

Digital Asset sells a number of digital asset services to its clients, which include major Wall Street players like Goldman Sachs, Citadel and Virtu. Co-founded in 2014 by Rooz, a trader turned entrepreneur, the firm competes with the likes of Ripple, R3 and Consensys.

The firm will use the new funding to advance adoption of the Canton Network. Initially developed by Digital Asset but now open-source, Canton is a public blockchain designed for financial institutions to move assets and data around while meeting regulatory and privacy requirements.

Banks and trading firms are using Canton to tokenize real-world assets such as bonds, commodities and money market funds.

“This raise will allow us to build upon the continuing momentum around the Canton Network and accelerate the onboarding of more high-quality assets, finally making blockchain’s transformative promise an institutional-scale reality,” Rooz told CNBC.

The network now supports trillions of dollars in tokenized assets, according to Digital Asset’s CEO.

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Applied Digital shares rip 40% higher on CoreWeave AI lease agreement

admin — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 17:32:29 +0000

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

Shares of Applied Digital rose more than 40% after the company said it signed two long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave for artificial intelligence data centers.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave climbed more than 7% following the announcement.

Financial terms of the two agreements were not provided, but Applied Digital said it expects $7 billion in total revenue during the approximately 15-year period.

“Through these newly signed long-term leases with CoreWeave, we are taking a step forward in our strategic expansion into advanced compute infrastructure,” said Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins in a release announcing the news.

CoreWeave will provide AI and high-performance computing infrastructure for the Applied Digital data center campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, according to the release.

Applied Digital will provide 250 megawatts of critical IT load for CoreWeave. The campus is designed to host 400 MW of load.

CoreWeave shares have been on a tear over the past couple of weeks, setting a record high of $130.76 on May 29. The company, which rents AI servers powered by Nvidia chips, started trading at $39 on March 28.

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Digital Estate Planning: How to Prepare Your Social Media Accounts

admin — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 19:40:36 +0000

How do you want your social media pages, smartphone photos and computer files handled after you die? While property and money distribution are usually at the top of the estate-planning list, don’t forget to leave instructions regarding your digital accounts and assets — so your survivors are left with more than just random bits and pixels from your online presence.

Here’s a short guide to getting your digital material in order, as well as advice for dealing with the accounts of those who departed without leaving directions.

Create a Digital Directive

A law known as the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, enacted by most states, gives a chosen representative (like your estate’s executor) the authority to manage your electronic affairs. For specific instructions, create a document stipulating how you want your online accounts and all digital content handled when you die or become incapacitated, and keep it with your other estate papers.

Giving access to your account user names and passwords will greatly help your representative, but proceed carefully. You will need a safe place to list the credentials for all your financial institutions, as well as for any e-commerce stores, insurance policies, online storage, email, social media platforms, cable and wireless carriers, medical apps, and media subscriptions.

The 1Password app can hold all kinds of confidential information.Credit…1Password

One way to encrypt and store this sensitive information is to enter it all into a password-manager app. Wirecutter, the product review site owned by The New York Times, recommends 1Password ($3 a month for an individual plan, $5 a month for the shared family plan) or Bitwarden (free, with in-app upgrades). Apple and Google have their own free apps, which save and store passwords on devices running their software.

If you want an analog option, print out the list or write everything down in a notebook. Keep it updated, but make sure the list is locked in a home safe or another secured location, as it would be a gold mine for identity thieves.

Don’t forget to note the passwords and passcodes needed to get into your password manager app, phone, computer or tablet; most manufacturers can’t bypass a PIN code without erasing the device. Your survivors may need your contact list to tell people you’ve passed, and they may need to keep your phone accessible for any necessary two-factor authentication codes.

Designate a Legacy Contact

Along with compiling your digital directive and passwords, you should consider adding someone you trust as a “legacy contact” for your Apple, Google, Facebook and other accounts. A legacy contact is the person you choose to directly handle that account after you’re gone.

Apple added a legacy contact feature to its software in 2021 and lets you select a manager for your Apple account used with iPhones, iPads and Macs. To set it up, go into your system settings on the device or Mac, select your name and then Sign In & Security, and choose Legacy Contact.

Google has an Inactive Account Manager tool for dealing with your Google Account if you are not able to use it. To set it up, visit the Data & Privacy settings of your Google Account.

Facebook has a legacy contact setting for designating someone to manage your profile page, as well as a setting to delete your account when the company is notified of your death. For sites that don’t let you designate a person — and that you haven’t left instructions about — your executor typically must contact the company and request that the account be deleted or memorialized (converted to a static page).

Apple, Google and Microsoft are among those with account-deletion steps on their sites. Facebook, as well as other social sites, has a tool to download the photos and other content from an account before you delete it, as does Google with its Google Takeout feature.

Managing Without Instructions

On the other side of process, if you’re the person handling an estate for someone who didn’t plan for their digital legacy, your administration experience may take more time. But even if you did not receive instructions, you should try to shutter social-media profiles and other accounts to avoid misuse on the internet.

Just as you would inform financial and insurance firms of the person’s death, you should notify the social media and other companies and request that they close the deceased’s accounts. This typically requires providing a death certificate, an obituary, letters testamentary (court-issued documents given to an estate’s executor), your personal identification and other files. Digitized copies are often accepted.

The help sections of Instagram, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PayPal, X, Yahoo and other sites have instructions for account access and closures, as do those of Apple and Google. In many cases, you can request the account’s content like photos and posts, although this may require submitting even more legal documentation to the company.

Managing the digital assets of a deceased person without instructions can make a difficult time even harder — which is all the more reason to leave your loved ones everything they need.

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Tesla reports $600 million profit boon from digital assets rule change

admin — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 04:58:33 +0000

Musk had previously said in June he was leaning towards supporting DeSantis for president in 2024.

Joe Skipper | Reuters

Tesla‘s bitcoin holdings led to a big pop in reported net income for the fourth quarter because of a new rule change in how companies account for digital assets.

After showing a carrying value of $184 million in digital assets for the prior four quarters, the number suddenly jumped to $1.08 billion in the December period, Tesla reported in its earnings release on Wednesday.

The increase followed a recent policy change from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which mandates that corporate digital asset holdings be marked to market each quarter starting at the beginning of 2025. Before the FASB rule change, companies owning bitcoin had to report their holdings at the lowest value recorded during their ownership, regardless of any subsequent price gain.

Tesla said in its earnings deck that the change resulted in an earnings per share boost of 68 cents in the quarter, and CFO Vaibhav Taneja noted on the earnings call that the net income increase was $600 million.

“It’s important to point out that the net income in Q4 was impacted by a $600 million mark-to-market benefit from bitcoin due to the adoption of a new accounting standard for digital assets,” Taneja said.

At the end of the third quarter, Tesla’s bitcoin holdings were recorded at a carrying value of $184 million, though their fair market value was significantly higher at $729 million. That means the actual increase in the value of its holdings in the period was about $347 million, reflecting bitcoin’s fourth-quarter rally.

Much of the recent gain in bitcoin is tied to optimism surrounding the second Trump administration, which was heavily backed by the crypto industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was Trump’s biggest financial supporter and is now a top adviser in the White House. Longtime Musk ally David Sacks was tapped by Trump to the be the White House AI and crypto czar.

Bitcoin tracking website Bitcoin Treasuries ranks Tesla as the sixth-biggest holder of bitcoin among public companies.

Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings and revenue fell short of analysts’ expectations on Wednesday as auto revenue dropped 8% from a year earlier, yet the stock climbed in after-hours trading.

— CNBC’S Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Digital health stocks pummeled by Wall Street in 2024, but Hims surges

admin — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:41:46 +0000

Doximity at the New York Stock Exchange for their IPO, June 24, 2021.

Source: NYSE

If the Covid era marked a boom time for digital health companies, 2024 was the reckoning.

In a year that saw the Nasdaq jump 32%, surpassing 20,000 for the first time this month, health tech providers largely suffered. Of 39 public digital health companies analyzed by CNBC, roughly two-thirds are down for the year. Others are now out of business.

There were some breakout stars, like Hims & Hers Health, which was buoyed by the success of its popular new weight loss offering and its position in the GLP-1 craze. But that was an exception.

While there were some company-specific challenges in the industry, overall it was a “year of inflection,” according to Scott Schoenhaus, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets covering health-care IT companies. Business models that appeared poised to break out during the pandemic haven’t all worked as planned, and companies have had to refocus on profitability and a more muted growth environment.

“The pandemic was a huge pull forward in demand, and we’re facing those tough, challenging comps,” Schoenhaus told CNBC in an interview. “Growth clearly slowed for most of my names, and I think employers, payers, providers and even pharma are more selective and more discerning on digital health companies that they partnered with.”

In 2021, digital health startups raised $29.1 billion, blowing past all previous funding records, according to a report from Rock Health. Almost two dozen digital health companies went public through an initial public offering or special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that year, up from the previous record of eight in 2020. Money was pouring into themes that played into remote work and remote health as investors looked for growth with interest rates stuck near zero.

But as the worst waves of the pandemic subsided, so did the insatiable demand for new digital health tools. It’s been a rude awakening for the sector.

“What we’re still going through is an understanding of the best ways to address digital health needs and capabilities, and the push and pull of the current business models and how successful they may be,” Michael Cherny, an analyst at Leerink Partners, told CNBC. “We’re in a settling out period post Covid.”

GoodRx signage on the outside of the Nasdaq on the day of its IPO, September 23, 2020.

Source: GoodRx

Progyny, which offers benefits solutions for fertility and family planning, is down more than 60% year to date. Teladoc Health, which once dominated the virtual-care space, has dropped 58% and is 96% off its 2021 high.

When Teladoc acquired Livongo in 2020, the companies had a combined enterprise value of $37 billion. Teladoc’s market cap now sits at under $1.6 billion.

GoodRx, which offers price transparency tools for medications, is down 33% year to date.

Schoenhaus says many companies’ estimates were too high this year.

Progyny cut its full-year revenue guidance in every earnings report in 2024. In February, Progyny was predicting $1.29 billion to $1.32 billion in annual revenue. By November, the range was down to $1.14 billion to $1.15 billion.

GoodRx also repeatedly slashed its full-year guidance for 2024. What was $800 million to $810 million in May shrank to $794 million by the November.

In Teladoc’s first-quarter report, the company said it expected full-year revenue of $2.64 billion to $2.74 billion. The company withdrew its outlook in its second quarter, and reported consecutive year-over year declines.

“This has been a year of coming to terms with the growth outlook for many of my companies, and so I think we can finally look at 2025 as maybe a better year in terms of the setups,” Schoenhaus said.

While overzealous forecasting tells part of the digital health story this year, there were some notable stumbles at particular companies.

Dexcom, which makes devices for diabetes and glucose management, is down more than 35% year to date. The stock tumbled more than 40% in July – its steepest decline ever – after the company reported disappointing second-quarter results and issued weak full-year guidance.

CEO Kevin Sayer attributed the challenges to a restructuring of the sales team, fewer new customers than expected and lower revenue per user. Following the report, JPMorgan Chase analysts marveled at “the magnitude of the downside” and the fact that it “appears to mostly be self-inflicted.”

Genetic testing company 23andMe had a particularly rough year. The company went public via a SPAC in 2021, valuing the business at $3.5 billion, after its at-home DNA testing kits skyrocketed in popularity. The company is now worth less than $100 million and CEO Anne Wojcicki is trying to keep it afloat.

In September, all seven independent directors resigned from 23andMe’s board, citing disagreements with Wojcicki about the “strategic direction for the company.” Two months later, 23andMe said it planned to cut 40% of its workforce and shutter its therapeutics business as part of a restructuring plan.

Wojcicki has repeatedly said she intends to take 23andMe private. The stock is down more than 80% year to date.

Digital health’s bright spots

Products of Hims & Hers displayed.

Hims & Hers

Investors in Hims & Hers had a much better year.

Shares of the direct-to-consumer marketplace are up more than 200% year to date, pushing the company’s market cap to $6 billion, thanks to soaring demand for GLP-1s.

Hims & Hers began prescribing compounded semaglutide through its platform in May after launching a new weight loss program late last year. Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster medications Ozempic and Wegovy, which can cost around $1,000 a month without insurance. Compounded semaglutide is a cheaper, custom-made alternative to the brand drugs and can be produced when the brand-name treatments are in shortage.

Hims & Hers will likely have to contend with dynamic supply and regulatory environments next year, but even before adding compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its February earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.

Doximity, a digital platform for medical professionals, also had a strong 2024, with its stock price more than doubling. The company’s platform, which for years has been likened to a LinkedIn for doctors, allows clinicians to stay current on medical news, manage paperwork, find referrals and carry out telehealth appointments with patients.

Doximity primarily generates revenue through its hiring solutions, telehealth tools and marketing offerings for clients like pharmaceutical companies.

Leerink’s Cherny said Doximity’s success can be attributed to its lean operating model, as well as the “differentiated mousetrap” it’s created because of its reach into the physician network.

“DOCS is a rare company in healthcare IT as it is already profitable, generates strong incremental margins, and is a steady grower,” Leerink analysts, including Cherny, wrote in a November note. The firm raised its price target on the stock to $60 from $35.

Another standout this year was Oscar Health, the tech-enabled insurance company co-founded by Thrive Capital Management’s Joshua Kushner. Its shares are up nearly 50% year to date. The company supports roughly 1.65 million members and plans to expand to around 4 million by 2027.

Oscar showed strong revenue growth in its third-quarter report in November. Sales climbed 68% from a year earlier to $2.4 billion.

Additionally, two digital health companies, Waystar and Tempus AI, took the leap and went public in 2024.

The IPO market has been largely dormant since late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risk. Few technology companies have gone public since then, and no digital health companies held IPOs in 2023, according to a report from Rock Health.

Waystar, a health-care payment software vendor, has seen its stock jump to $36.93 from its IPO price of $21.50 in June. Tempus, a precision medicine company, hasn’t fared as well. It’s stock has slipped to $34.91 from its IPO price of $37, also in June.

“Hopefully, the valuations are more supportive of opportunities for other companies that have been lingering in the background as private companies for the last several years.” Schoenhaus said.

Out with the old

The Nasdaq MarketSite is seen on December 12, 2024 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Several digital health companies exited the public markets entirely this year.

Cue Health, which made Covid tests and counted Google as an early customer, and Better Therapeutics, which used digital therapeutics to treat cardiometabolic conditions, both shuttered operations and delisted from the Nasdaq.

Revenue cycle management company R1 RCM was acquired by TowerBrook Capital Partners and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in an $8.9 billion deal. Similarly, Altaris bought Sharecare, which runs a virtual health platform, for roughly $540 million.

Commure, a private company that offers tools for simplifying clinicians’ workflows, acquired medical AI scribing company Augmedix for about $139 million.

“There was a lot of competition that entered the marketplace during the pandemic years, and we’ve seen some of that being flushed out of the markets, which is a good thing,” Schoenhaus said.

Cherny said the sector is adjusting to a post-pandemic period, and digital health companies are figuring out their role.

“We’re still cycling through what could be almost termed digital health 1.1 business models,” he said. “It’s great to say we do things digitally, but it only matters if it has some approach toward impacting the ‘triple aim’ of health care: better care, more convenient, lower cost.”

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