Luna

More than two decades after turning down a $120 million offer from Quaker Oats, Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, the majority owners of Clif Bar, have agreed to sell the energy bar company to snack giant Mondelez for $2.9 billion. By Jemima McEvoy T wenty-two years ago Gary Erickson and his then-business partner Lisa Thomas faced a difficult choice. Quaker Oats had proposed paying $120 million for their energy bar company, Clif Bar & Co., which was doing an impressive $40 million in annual sales after roughly doubling every year since its launch in 1992. Taking the deal meant its founders could each walk away with a pre-tax $60 million and be freed of the difficulties of building and running a business. Thomas wanted to walk away, but something told Erickson to turn the offer down. It wasn’t the right time. “I was about to become a very rich man … but instead of feeling excited, I felt nauseated,” Erickson wrote in his 2004 book, Raising the Bar: Integrity and … [Read more...] about California Couple Gets Mega Rich Off Clif Bars

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin By Christos Makridis The latest “crypto winter” following the collapse of Terra/Luna and withdrawals from other stablecoins has reignited attacks against the web3 community on the basis of insider trading and financial instability . The virtual attacks have led federal regulators, including Vice Chair Lael Brainard of the Federal Reserve, to call for the development of central bank digital currencies. But these shortcomings of crypto should be paired with the shortcoming of fiat currencies as well, recognizing that plenty of illicit laundering and insider trading takes place with the dollar too . Despite the recent attacks on crypto, the community is growing. Gary Vaynerchuk convened a diverse and energetic group of people, including celebrities like Eva Longoria and Snoop Dogg, at the inaugural VeeCon 2022, hosted in Minneapolis, Minnesota May 19- 22. Also in attendance was Congressman Tom Emmer … [Read more...] about “Let Crypto Build”, Says Congressman Tom Emmer

An electronic display board at Hana Bank in central Seoul shows the won touching 1,300 won per dollar on Thursday. [YONHAP] The won declined to a 13-year low on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman acknowledged the chance of a recession. It touched 1,302.80 won to the dollar, the lowest in 12 years and 11 months, and is down almost 18 percent from December 2020. The decline comes as stocks globally are in the midst of a rout and as cryptocurrencies melt down. Korea's Kospi is down more than 20 percent this year and the Kosdaq index 30 percent. Bitcoin has lost two-thirds of its value from the peak, and the Luna coin has lost almost 100 percent of its value. In remarks to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that recession is a possibility. The Fed raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points last week, the biggest rate increase in 28 years. It indicated another increase of 50 or 75 basis points next … [Read more...] about Won hits 1,302.8, a 13-year low, as Powell mentions recession

- A + A (June 23): Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, whose crypto ecosystem collapsed in a US$40 billion wipeout in May, told the Wall Street Journal that he lost almost all his net worth in the crash. “This doesn’t bother me,” he said in the interview with the Journal published Thursday. “I live a fairly frugal life.” Kwon told the newspaper he was probably a billionaire when the Luna token Terraform Labs backed was trading near US$100. That coin is now trading at close to zero. Investigators in South Korea and the US are now looking into the circumstances around the unraveling of TerraUSD, the stablecoin Kwon championed that crumbled from its dollar peg in May. The event wiped out the savings of thousands of investors globally and set off a wider implosion in cryptocurrencies. South Korea this week barred some current and former Terraform Labs employees from leaving the country, as prosecutors step up their investigation into TerraUSD. Prosecutors are also … [Read more...] about Terra co-founder lost nearly all his wealth in wipeout, WSJ says

Sam Bankman-Fried (Bloomberg filepix by Lam Yik) - A + A (June 23): Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto billionaire who co-founded digital-asset exchange FTX Trading Ltd, is providing credit lines to try to stem contagions for his beleaguered industry. Crypto lending platform BlockFi Inc, which had been raising funds at a reduced valuation, said on Tuesday that it secured a US$250 million revolving line of credit from FTX. Last week, crypto exchange Voyager Digital Ltd, whose shares are down 90% this year on Toronto Stock Exchange, got a US$200 million credit line — a mix of cash and USDC stablecoins — as well as a separate, 15,000-Bitcoin revolving facility from Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s trading firm. A wave of liquidation has triggered fear of contagion risks in the crypto industry, after a broad-based selloff in digital assets and the spectacular collapse of the TerraUSD and Luna tokens. Major lenders Celsius Network Ltd and Babel Finance have frozen … [Read more...] about Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried doles out credit lines to stem contagion

- A + A (June 23): Bitcoin climbed as some executives and investors expressed optimism that the selling pressure that drove the largest token to an 18-month low over the weekend is abating. The largest cryptocurrency rose as much as 4.7% to US$20,786, while Ether climbed as much as 6.4%. Bitcoin is now up 16% over the past few days, while many altcoins have seen far bigger gains. The crypto advance came even as European stocks were trading mixed. With several crypto lenders and at least one hedge fund struggling to meet their financial obligations, concerns had mounted that the wave of liquidations that sank cryptocurrencies last week would worsen. Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao on Wednesday offered a more upbeat assessment, saying the “cascades” of deleveraging are getting smaller. Crypto markets are struggling to consolidate after declining precipitously in recent months as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to fight inflation. The collapse … [Read more...] about Bitcoin advances as concerns over deleveraging ‘cascades’ ease

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In Part One of this interview , I caught up with Clif Bar cofounder Gary Erickson to learn more about the decision to step down and the seeds of the purpose-driven culture he and his wife, co-founder Kit Crawford, were able to plant at the company. Aziz: So, did that decision drive a renewed sense of energy and purpose around what you and your wife decided to do next with Clif Bar? Why did you decide to start from the inside out - by looking at the core product? Erickson: Not selling gave us the freedom to do business differently. We look to the Five Aspirations business model to guide every decision we make. Through that lens, we made the choice to take CLIF BAR organic in 2003. It was clear that transitioning to organic ingredients was right for people, farm communities and the planet even if it would hit the traditional bottom line. We were the first energy bar to make that investment, and we’ve purchased 1 … [Read more...] about The Power Of Purpose: Gary Erickson, Founder Of Clif Bar, Reflects On A Life Of Purpose (Part Two)

- A + A (June 25): Just days after saying Singapore is “brutal and unrelentingly hard” on bad behaviour in the crypto industry, Sopnendu Mohanty, the chief fintech officer of the city’s regulator, struck a cordial tone. Mohanty, in a LinkedIn post summarising his thoughts from the Point Zero Forum in Switzerland, commended the leadership of some of the biggest firms in the sector. “Leaders from the crypto/token space (Binance, Crypto.com, Ripple and others) are fully committed to building a secure and sustainable innovation solving real problems, and identifying real-economy opportunities,” said Mohanty of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). “It is heartening to see the clarity among chief executive officers (CEOs) on the need to create a responsible and compliant industry. The future is on the right path.” Mohanty’s praise comes as the digital currency market continues to spiral downwards following a broad-based sell-off in digital assets and the collapse … [Read more...] about Singapore regulator praises leaders of crypto firms like Binance

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Markets are down, but blockchain companies can still attract capital at sky-high valuations. In the latest example, Ethereum developer StarkWare has raised a $100 million Series D round at an $8 billion valuation. Led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue, the round closed last week, just six months after the company’s Series C raise, which valued StarkWare at $2 billion. Other investors include Tiger Global, Paradigm, Three Arrows Capital and Sequoia Capital. “We closed this deal in the thick of a bear market for crypto, highlighting the strength of investor confidence in StarkWare scaling,” says Uri Kolodny, StarkWare’s cofounder and CEO. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company uses zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup technology to improve Ethereum’s efficiency without sacrificing security or decentralization. It involves a computationally-intensive process, which instead of adding transactions to the blockchain one by one, bundles … [Read more...] about Ethereum Scaling Company StarkWare Quadruples Valuation To $8 Billion Amid Bear Market

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Bitcoin bank Custodia today sued the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City charging they have “unlawfully” delayed for 19 months acting on its application for a master account with the Federal Reserve. The bank, chartered in Wyoming under a crypto-friendly statute passed in 2019 allowing for “special purpose depository institutions,’’ says the master account would reduce its costs and is “vital” to its core mission of providing a bridge between digital assets and the U.S. dollar system. According to the suit, the Federal Reserve has a legal obligation to act within a year and states on its own paperwork that it ordinarily takes just five to seven days to act on a master account application. Custodia’s suit alleges the Kansas City Fed’s processing of its application was moving along until the Spring of 2021, when the main Federal Reserve got involved. The suit seeks to force the … [Read more...] about Bitcoin Bank Custodia Sues Federal Reserve, Demanding Decision On Master Account