Author: Cassius Taylor

States within states: why large companies need cryptocurrencies

Analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that the cryptocurrency market is already catching up with the traditional financial market in terms of volume and amounts to $1.87 trillion. Apple, Amazon, and Walmart have announced the search for specialists in cryptocurrencies and digital money. Where will the company’s interest in crypto assets lead?

Who goes to the crypt?

On August 15, the largest retailer in the United States, Walmart, posted a vacancy on its LinkedIn profile about finding a leader in digital and cryptocurrency products. Based on the job description, this person should develop a “digital currency strategy and a product roadmap.” The specialist should also be responsible for partnerships related to cryptocurrency. The announcement does not specify which products the future Walmart employee will launch.

This vacancy was published a few weeks after Amazon, one of the world’s most prominent players in the e-commerce market, announced the search for a leading specialist in digital currency and blockchain products. According to the job description, it should be an employee who will develop a digital currency and blockchain strategy for Amazon and a product roadmap. One of the necessary skills of a candidate, which Amazon indicated, is “the ability to succeed in an uncertain and constantly changing environment.” According to a London newspaper City A.M. source, Amazon’s plans are broader than just accepting cryptocurrency for payment: in 2022, the online retailer will create its token.

At the end of 2021, Amazon will start accepting bitcoin as payment — it will be the first of about eight cryptocurrencies that Amazon will work with, the interlocutor of City A.M. noted. According to him, the company will later start working with cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Cardano, and Bitcoin Cash. At the same time, Amazon denied these rumors and reported that the speculations that arose around the company’s specific plans for cryptocurrencies do not correspond to reality.

The British bank Lloyds Banking Group also published a vacancy in the search for a senior manager for digital currencies and innovations in mid-August. The announcement says the company is looking for an expert in cryptocurrencies and blockchain who will work on new projects for the bank.

Even earlier — at the end of June — Apple posted a similar vacancy. Among the essential requirements for the position of manager for the development of “alternative payments,” the corporation indicated five years of experience working with digital wallets, players in the “buy now, pay later” segment (Buy now, pay later, BNPL), fast payment services, cryptocurrencies, etc.

Some large companies already accept cryptocurrency as payment for goods and services. Starbucks and a large chain of Home Depot construction stores accept cryptocurrency through third-party applications that convert digital money into dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported. Payment in bitcoins was also accepted by Tesla. Still, the company’s head, Elon Musk, soon suspended the experiment because cryptocurrency mining is too harmful to the environment. At the end of July, Musk said that the company would most likely start accepting bitcoins again after conducting a comprehensive check of the amount of renewable energy used to extract the currency.

Why is this necessary

Today, the cryptocurrency market is already catching up with the traditional financial market in terms of volume, Goldman Sachs (GS) analysts write in a report dated August 11 (Forbes has it). According to CoinMarketCap.com, there are about 6,000 cryptocurrencies on the market, with a total market capitalization of $1.87 trillion. For comparison, the total market value of bonds covered by the Bloomberg-Barclays US Corporate High Yield Index is $1.67 trillion, while the market capitalization of the S&P 500 is approximately $39 trillion, according to GS.

Analysts write that cryptocurrencies are a highly competitive market compared to other asset classes. The most popular digital currency is bitcoin-it accounts for 46% of the entire cryptocurrency market, and another 20% is occupied by the second most popular, Ethereum. The shares of the two largest companies (Apple and Microsoft) in the S&P 500 account for about 12% of the market capitalization. According to GS, the shares of the largest 84 companies account for 66% of the total market capitalization.

Facebook was a pioneer in the cryptocurrency market among large companies. Still, it tried to launch a digital currency at the wrong time. In 2019, it was crushed by the state regulator, which is afraid of losing its control, according to Alexander Brazhnikov, executive director of the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain (RAKIB). However, the pandemic has changed the situation; he continues: online solutions are becoming more popular, and now it is difficult to resist such initiatives, says Brazhnikov. According to him, the world is moving towards the fact that cross—border companies can get away from the dependence on states and their currencies-the dollar, euro, and ruble.

“Why should Amazon receive payment in different currencies, if the company can make its own tokens, for example, Amazon Coin and receive payment in them?”, the expert argues.

Amazon can teach people to buy in their currency if it encourages customers with discounts when using tokens and then begins to cooperate with other companies, predicts Brazhnikov. Such a development strategy will lead to the fact that shortly companies will not depend on any state, Central Bank, or regulator but will sell and form prices for goods and services themselves, the expert is sure.

Now retailers, as a rule, accrue points to customers for purchases on their sites, and creating their cryptocurrency will help them replace these points, says Rustam Botashev, portfolio manager of the Hash CIB investment company. Companies may want to sell some tokenized goods in the form of an NFT (non-fungible token, non-interchangeable token) or launch a marketplace, Botashev suggests. Experiments with cryptocurrencies are a win-win situation for large companies, which either will not affect their development in any way or will only affect them positively, he is sure.

Pharmaceutical companies today

The COVID-19 pandemic has given a strong impetus to the development of many pharmaceutical companies. Consider who has succeeded in their development more than others and which companies should be adopted.

Anti-covid cocktail drives record revenue for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is an American biotechnology company founded in 1988. The most commercially successful product of the company is the anti-covid “cocktail” of REGEN-COV antibodies, which US ex-President Donald Trump used to treat the coronavirus.

As a representative of Regeneron said earlier, the US government has already purchased up to 1.5 million doses of the drug, and it is provided free of charge to patients. In the first half of 2021, Regeneron sold REGEN-COV doses totaling $ 2.85 billion (37.2% of total revenue) without a full-fledged regulatory license. REGN shares have gained 69.27% ​​since December 31, 2019, while the S&P 500 is up 36.2%, and the industry average S&P 500 Healthcare is up 32.05%.

The stock is recommended to buy with a target price of $ 755.02, which implies a 15% upside potential.

Axsome Therapeutics shares jump 19%

Axsome Therapeutics, a biotech company that develops new treatments for central nervous system diseases, jumped 19.06% in a New York premarket.

The company said on Monday that it had received a response from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that a new application for a depressive disorder drug (AXS-05) would not be completed by the target date of August 22, 2021.

However, the FDA did not request additional information from Axsome; the application is ongoing.

Shares closed 8.29% higher on Friday.

Trillium Shares soar 190% after news of merger with Pfizer

Trillium and Pfizer announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which Pfizer will acquire Trillium, which develops innovative cancer treatments. Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will acquire all outstanding Trillium shares not yet owned by Pfizer for $ 2.26 billion, or $ 18.50 per share.

This represents a 118% premium to Trillium’s 60-day weighted average share price.

Trillium possesses the only known targeting molecule, SIRPα – CD47, with clinically significant responses to monotherapy and a solid basis for combination therapy, supported by preclinical data with diverse therapeutic agents. With Pfizer’s global reach and capabilities, programs will move faster to patients.

The Growing Student: Sex, Drugs and … Health?

With a busy schedule of partying, experimenting, disobeying their parents, further experimenting, and (of course) receiving a 4.0-grade average, a student tends to forget perhaps the most important aspect of living—health.

Taking into consideration the rising numbers of smoking, pregnancy, drug use, alcohol consumption, malnutrition, and obesity among young adults, it seems appropriate now more than ever for a student to receive proper, quality health insurance. This demographic tends to live invincibly. Many believe themselves to be indestructible, as though nothing dangerous can happen to them, even while staring danger in the face. This vicarious attitude may add an intended flavor to their lives, but it’s almost as if an overdose could lead to poison.

Debauchery in Numbers

So they wear the shortest skirts, drive the fastest cars, and eat the greasiest pizzas. What are the numbers saying about teens and young adults?

  • SMOKING: A third of all smokers began smoking at age 14. Almost ninety percent of all smokers began smoking at age 21.
  • PREGNANCY: In the United States, one in ten babies is born from a teen mother. Three-quarters of a million teens between 15 and 19 become pregnant each year.
  • DRUGS: On an average day, 586,000 adolescents used marijuana, about 49,000 adolescents used inhalants, 27,000 used hallucinogens (e.g., Ecstasy and other club drugs), 13,000 used cocaine, and 3,800 used heroin.
  • ALCOHOL: Among persons aged 18- to 22-years-old, 18 percent of full-time undergraduates were heavy drinkers compared with 12 percent of those who were not full-time undergraduates.
  • MALNUTRITION: About one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death. Four percent of college-aged women have bulimia. One percent of female adolescents have anorexia. Researchers at Harvard University Medical School have new data that suggests that up to 25 percent of adults with eating disorders are male.
  • OBESITY: About 31 percent of American teenage girls and 28 percent of boys are somewhat overweight. An additional 15 percent of American teen girls and nearly 14 percent of teen boys are obese.

In the United States, approximately three-fourths of all deaths among persons aged 10-24 years result from only four causes: motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide. There are several options of low-cost student health insurance available, and it is much better to be safe than to be sorry.

Investigate Before Investing Into Any Cash Gifting Program

In this fast-paced world that we live in today, you can never really tell what or how things will turn out for you. Oftentimes, numerous unexpected events happen. Furthermore, when such unfortunate events occur, numerous individuals find themselves in a dire predicament because they don’t have any fallback plans.

To counter this, some people have looked into the online money-making programs. Online money making programs are very powerful means to make money because you get to leverage the ability of the internet. Due to that, you are able to reach thousands or even millions of individuals effortlessly. A proven online money-making venture that a lot of people turn to either for full-time work or for part-time work is called as cash gifting. Cash gifting is a very simple money-making venture that when executed by the rules and correctly, can reap amazing rewards and benefits.

Numerous people continuously ask, what’s cash gifting and how does it work? In essence, cash gifting is simply receiving and giving gifts that are in the form of cash. Certainly, though, there is a lot more to it than its simple definition. The business of cash gifting is an undertaking that involves a lot of intricate components. Giving and receiving money is one of them, but it definitely is not entirely dependent on such little effort. Some other components that play an important role in the business of cash gifting are marketing and advertising, lead generation, and organizational tactics.

On top of that, because cash gifting is primarily based on leadership and teamwork, it will be more advantageous if you can practice these traits. Cash gifting programs are usually in the nature of membership programs. When people join, they’re entitled to give cash gifts to other members while they get to receive cash as well. The growth of an individual’s earnings will rely on the people he or she will recruit to the membership.

It’s very important to do your due diligence prior to going into any form of investment. The business of cash gifting is just as prone as any other business venture and should thus be explored with caution. Most of the time, because people think that it is an effortless way to make money, they try to deceive the newcomers by promising them amazing rewards and benefits. It is a good idea to search for a lot of cash gifting programs and see them firsthand before making decisions. This is a good way to get to know more about the business while protecting yourself from being a victim of a cash gifting scam.