Your Weekly Financial Roundup Issue No. 4

Catch the latest news on the world, tech, and the economy, including the election of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, $3.36B seized by the government in stolen Bitcoin, mass layoffs in tech, and more.

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Your Financial News Roundup

November 9, 2022


TL;DR

  1. World: This past week, former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was elected as PM again; a record $2.04B Powerball jackpot was up for grabs; and Instagram influencer, Hushpuppi, was found guilty of international money laundering.
  2. Tech: Food industry logistics firm, Orderlion, raised $4M in pre-seed; Twitter rival, Mastodon, grew to 1M+ users; and the government seized $3.36B in stolen bitcoin.
  3. Economy: The stock market bounced back in a big way in October; carbon credit markets are growing; and the tech sector saw mass layoffs for the first time in a decade.

World

🇮🇱 Netanyahu Catapults Back Into Power: Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to revive his political career and make a stunning comeback following the results from last week’s election. While the final results still need to be certified, Interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid has called Netanyahu to concede and instructed his staff to start prepping for a transition of power. The upcoming Netanyahu-led government will likely be the most right-wing administration in Israel’s history. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is still standing trial in 3 corruption cases, making his return highly controversial. (Source)

💸 Record $2.04B Powerball Jackpot Sold: Powerball fever is in the air, right in time for a very green Christmas. According to lottery officials, an estimated $2.04 billion was up for winning in the latest Powerball jackpot. This record-setting amount comes after 41 drawings since the last grand prize winner, who claimed $699.8 million in California. While the odds of winning were only 1 in 292.1 million, officials announced that a jackpot-winning Powerball ticket that matched all 6 numbers in the drawing was sold in Los Angeles County. The winner will have the option of 30 annual payouts over 29 years or a lump sum payout worth $997.6 million in cash. (Source)

🤫 Silencing Hushpuppi: Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, was sentenced to 11 years in U.S. jail for international fraud and money laundering. Hushpuppi often flaunted his wealth to his 2.8M Instagram followers as “one of the most prolific money launderers in the world,” according to the FBI’s L.A. Field Office. Abbas’s wacky crimes include tricking people to fund a children’s school in Qatar, crashing Malta’s payment systems, and funneling money to North Korea — to the tune of over $25M. Hushpuppi says he’ll repay victims with his own money, but claims he’s only made $300K. (Source)

hushpuppi

Tech

🍔 B2B Food E-Commerce Firm Raises $4M: Vienna-based food e-commerce firm, Orderlion, raised $4M to modernize outdated payment processes in the global food industry. In 2022, the industry made $8.66T in revenue, but many firms still use old-school tech (i.e. fax) to take orders. Orderlion’s product helps suppliers use mobile apps for orders, saving each supplier 95% in costs. New features can help suppliers adjust pricing for select items and increase revenue. Orderlion hopes its solution can help improve the resiliency of the global food supply chain while reducing costs during these hard times. (Source)

🐘 Twitter Rival Mastodon Reaches 1M Users: The decentralized social network, Mastodon, passed 1M monthly active users, with 500K users joining since Musk’s Twitter deal. Mastodon is seeing thousands of user signups per hour, many of whom are worried about how Musk will change Twitter. Surging user demand has pushed CEO and lone developer Eugen Rochko to work 12-14 hour days. Mastodon works like Twitter except that the app is ad-free and decentralized, hosted on servers around the world. A user joins a particular server, which chooses what content it allows and how it interacts with other servers — allowing for community moderation. (Source)

mastodon app

🛣️ The DOJ Seizes $3.36B of Crypto: On Monday, November 7, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams and IRS Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher seized a historic $3.36 billion in cryptocurrency from a Georgian man named James Zhong. According to the Department of Justice, in 2012, Zhong found a vulnerability in the legendary Dark Web market known as the Silk Road, allowing him to make rapid-fire withdrawals of Bitcoin without confirmation of the assets in his account. If convicted, Zhong faces up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud. (Source)


Economy

📈 Stock Bounce Back: Last month, the stock market rose against a bleak financial backdrop, including another Fed rate hike. Despite the gloom, the U.S. economy grew by 2.6% in Q3. Gene Goldman, investment chief at Cetera, states that stock markets may have already priced in a recession and a recovery. Other factors for the optimism could be that investors believe that the Fed will lower the pace of its rate hikes and that the market is oversold (meaning that its decline has put stocks at a bargain). With ongoing market uncertainty, investors will continue to monitor the Fed and greater economy. (Source)

🌲 Investing in Forests: Investment manager, T. Rowe Price, bought up 1.7M acres of U.S. timberland for $1.8B to prep for the growing carbon offset market. As a key climate change solution, carbon credits put a price on emissions. One credit is equal to one metric ton of carbon captured or offset elsewhere as these credits are used to offset an equal amount of carbon emissions. A firm can only emit as much greenhouse gas as it has credits for, but firms with extra credits can trade them to others that need them. While still in its early stages, the market is expected to be worth $2.4T by 2027, growing from $211B in 2019. (Source)

forests

📉 Winter Has Come for Tech Workers: After a decade-long bull run, the tech sector is now facing mass layoffs as big names like Lyft, Netflix, Twitter, Stripe, and others let go of 52K+ employees in October alone. Tech firms have been justifying their layoffs as a result of over-hiring, the need to weather an upcoming recession, and worries over inflation and rising interest rates. Much of the economic uncertainty has also affected startups, many of whom have seen their valuations fall significantly and have been advised to preserve runway and make their cash reserves last. (Source)

If you’re looking into which tech companies have done layoffs recently, check out Layoffs.fyi.


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Tip of the Day

💸 Adopting a pay-yourself-first mentality is key to creating a budget that meets your needs while enabling your lifestyle goals.


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