Hey Snackers,
After Netflix & Chill'd, Ben & Jerry's and Netflix are teaming up again for an aptly-timed new ice cream flavor: Chip Happens is a "cold mess of chocolate ice cream" with... wait for it ... potato chips. It has just been released in a "limited botch." Betcha can't eat just pun.
Markets were relatively still yesterday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outshone the S&P 500 and the Dow, gaining 0.78% to cap off a 6-day win streak (its longest this year).
Just got Elon'd... Tesla has officially filed a lawsuit against Alameda County, CA. The e-car hotshot says the county's order to keep Tesla's Fremont factory closed is unconstitutional, and threatened to leave California altogether:
"Frankly, this is the final straw"... In a tweet-storm, a spurned Elon said Tesla will move its operations to Texas/Nevada immediately. But a Tesla exit would be a loss for California:
Big biz has sway over local government... While local government officials might overlook Elon's child being named "X Æ A-12," they'll have a harder time ignoring the loss of an economic powerhouse. Also, other CA companies could follow Elon's lead. Tesla knows this, and Elon ordered a restart of production in defiance of the public health order on Monday. Tesla has economic incentives to ditch, but risks losing concentrated engineering talent of the Bay Area (and local love).
Amazon and AMC sittin’ in a tree... M-E-R-G-I-N-G. Just as unconfirmed as that 2nd grade rumor about Billy and Sally, but more interesting. According to British tabloid Daily Mail (which we take with large grains of salt) Amazon is considering buying AMC. This potential melange piqued our acquisition fantasy (and made AMC stock soar 30%). Here's what Amazon could get:
Amazon wants it all... This reported acquisition can also be explained by Amazon's proclivity to world domination. It dominates ecommerce, it leads in cloud computing, it took on streaming, it birthed Alexa, and it even got into the grocery game. Now it would be coming for movie theaters.
But maybe AMC isn't the best acquisition target... Amazon's other physical retail-acquisition (Whole Foods) hasn't yet achieved its "affordable for everyone" promise, and Amazon's grocery operation is still lagging behind major retailers. Also, AMC is saddled with almost $5B in debt and a loss-making biz — that would become Amazon's problem if Bezos snatched it up.
Not a horror movie title... The Halvening. Bitcoin’s long-awaited block reward halving — the 3rd ever since the cryptocurrency's creation — happened (halvened?) yesterday. The reward for verifying a block of Bitcoin transactions has been cut in half from 12.5 Bitcoins to 6.25 (at $8.7K/Bitcoin, that's a $54K reward). A little background...
Curb your crypt-thusiasm... In addition to verifying the legit-ness of transactions, mining also introduces new coins into the system (like a central bank controlling the printing of $$$, but decentralized). Enter Satoshi's halving rule...
It's all about getting "priced in"... This event has been on calendars since 2016 and Halvenings have happened before. If all investors in the market know that same information (like they did), then they probably already reacted and planned for the Halvening beforehand. That means the event was “priced in” to the current price, so in theory the Halvening shouldn't move the price much — and it didn't. The price of a Bitcoin just inched down yesterday.
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