Hey Snackers,
Mochas are mixing with the metaverse: Starbucks is adding Web3 sweeteners to its rewards program to attract more Gen Z coffee connoisseurs (collectible vanilla-frap NFT, anyone?).
Stocks barely budged yesterday, but oil continued its decline, falling below $90/barrel. Investors have eyes on todayās July jobs report, which is expected to show slower hiring.
Bye, bye, Batgirl... Warner Bros splurged $90M to produce "Batgirl," a movie based on the DC Comics character. Warner was planning to release it directly to its HBO Max streamer. Five years after the project kicked off, āBatgirlā was basically ready to go ā but the public wonāt see it.
Why not let āBatgirlā fly?ā¦ Insiders say the decision had nothing to do with the filmās quality, but was a result of shifting priorities. Remember when Warnerās then-CEO Jason Kilar decided to release all of Warnerās 2021 films on HBO Max at the same time as theaters? Thatās not happening this year. Current CEO David Zaslav seems committed to box-office hits.
The āsunk-cost fallacyā doesnāt always applyā¦ Sure, Warner threw $90M into this movie. But studios need eyes on their productions, and Warner likely thought the marketing costs for āBatgirlā werenāt worth it. Now itās cutting its losses, and not without reason: Yesterday, Warner revealed that it swung to a $3.4B loss, in its first earnings since merging with Discovery. Shares tanked 12%.
Cross-chain bridgesā¦ pave the way for highway robbery. Nomad, a crypto protocol that helps people bridge coins and tokens between different blockchains (think: moving USDC from ethereum to moonbeam), lost $190M to a freewheeling hack on Monday. After someone spotted a security vulnerability in Nomadās smart contract, potentially hundreds of people got in on the theft, striking a reputational blow to key crypto infrastructure. But the problemās bigger than just Nomad.
Crypto bridgeā¦ is falling down. Nomad is only the most recent example of cracking crypto bridges. Wormhole was hit with a $325M hack in February, $625M was boosted from Ronin in March, and $100M was lifted from Harmony in June. In other words, cross-chain bridges are increasingly taking a beating. Just this year:
Cross-chain bridges are critical for cryptoā¦ but their shaky foundations put the #FutureOfFinance at risk. Different blockchains (think: bitcoin, ethereum, solana) are kind of like walled-off crypto kingdoms, with cross-chain bridges as the toll roads letting traders move coins (and Ape NFTs) between them. No bridges = no trade, making cross-chain bridges crucial to decentralized finance (DeFi). But like on the roads of old, robbers are hiding in the digital bushes ā and they're getting bolder. Bridge security will have to get its act together if blockchain kingdoms are to potentially flourish.
Authors of this Snacks own: bitcoin, solana and ethereum and shares of Starbucks, Nikola, and Warner Bros. Discovery
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