☕️ JPEG drama

Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from Meta...
June 02, 2022 View Online | Sign Up | Shop

Morning Brew

Organifi

Good morning. You heard it here first—the is the emoji of the summer. It wields so much power yet remains so versatile. Consider how it enhances the following statements:

  • Need you to come in early to hop on the Roberts account
  • Bout to crush three DiGiornos
  • Hey, I think we should just be friends

Neal Freyman, Jamie Wilde, Matty Merritt

MARKETS

Nasdaq

11,994.46

S&P

4,101.23

Dow

32,813.23

10-Year

2.914%

Bitcoin

$29,664.14

Goldman Sachs

$321.85

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 8:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Without any important economic data dropping for the next few weeks, investors are driving in San Francisco-level fog. They hit the brakes yesterday, with financials doing the worst of any S&P sector.
  • Economy: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said last week that "storm clouds" were on the economic horizon. Yesterday, in remarks at a finance conference, he upgraded his forecast to a "hurricane" due to twin threats of the war in Ukraine and the Fed pulling its stimulus. Dimon said he still doesn't know if it's "a minor one or Superstorm Sandy."

CRYPTO

Insider trading comes to NFTs

Insider trading comes to NFTs

Whether it's a public company's stock or a JPEG of a distracted llama, you can't make a trade based on secret information that you know will affect a security's future price.

Nathaniel Chastain found that out yesterday. The former head of product at leading NFT marketplace OpenSea was charged with wire fraud and money laundering linked to the insider trading of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. It's the first insider trading case involving digital assets, the DOJ said.

It all started last September, when OpenSea users noticed something fishy was going on with crypto wallets belonging to Chastain. They were purchasing NFTs right before the assets were featured on the site's homepage, then selling them once their prices had gone up (typically 2x–5x the original amount, prosecutors said).

  • Turns out, Chastain allegedly chose the NFTs he had purchased to be splashed on the front page, and then cashed them in for a profit of ~$67,000, according to 8BTCNews.

Once it was alerted of these transactions, OpenSea basically admitted that insider trading was taking place, and in September asked Chastain to leave the company after an investigation. (As of March, Chastain was working on a new NFT project, Oval. His charges carry a maximum 20-year prison term).

Why it matters: OpenSea is by far the largest NFT marketplace, with 65% market share. It was last valued at $13.3 billion—more than American Airlines. Therefore, a credibility hit to OpenSea is a credibility hit to the entire NFT industry.

Not that it was overflowing with reliability before these charges, either. Crypto experts predict that more legal action is on its way given widespread complaints around scams, market manipulation, phishing, and other financial crimes in the unregulated NFT space.—NF

        

TOGETHER WITH ORGANIFI

A clean, green morning routine

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Like everyone else, Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook. After 14 years at the social media-turned-metaverse company, Zuck's No. 2 announced via Instagram and Facebook posts that she's stepping down as Meta's COO. Sandberg wrote that she'll be focusing on her philanthropic organization going forward, and that Meta's Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will fill her seat as COO when she leaves in the fall. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Sandberg "deserves the credit for so much of what Meta is today."

Another mass shooting. Four innocent people were killed when a gunman (who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound) opened fire in a medical building in Tulsa, OK, yesterday afternoon. The city's police captain called the scene "catastrophic." It follows two other recent mass shootings, one at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, and the other at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX, that have sparked greater urgency around gun control legislation.

Everyone gets a defamation. The jury in the highly publicized Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp trial found that Heard defamed Depp in her 2018 Washington Post Op-Ed, and acted with actual malice. That awarded Depp $15 million—which the judge reduced to just $10.35 million. But the jury also sided with Heard on the counterclaim that Depp defamed Heard in the aftermath of the Op-Ed, awarding her $2 million.

HEALTH

Canada takes a page from Oregon's drug policy

Shyan Willow, 27, left, and Kia Haim, 39, smoke fentanyl along East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighborhood on Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Vancouver, British Columbia Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Canada has decriminalized the possession of small amounts of opioids, methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine in the province of British Columbia. The new policy will run for three years to help determine if destigmatizing drugs results in more users seeking help.

  • FYI: The opioid epidemic is more than an American problem. British Columbia declared overdose deaths from fentanyl—a synthetic opioid that's 50x stronger than heroin—a public health emergency in 2016. In the years since, and especially since the start of the pandemic, overdose deaths have surged in the area.

Canada can glimpse its future in Oregon

In a departure from the federal government's punitive war-on-drugs policies, Oregon became the first US state to decriminalize the possession of a small amount of most drugs in 2020.

How it's going: Unclear. Drug arrests have plummeted in Oregon, with no evidence of an increase in drug-related crime, as some critics feared. However, there's also little evidence decriminalization has caused users to seek help. Less than 1% of the 16,000 people who used services offered as part of the legislation entered treatment for their drug use. But proponents of decriminalization say more time is needed for the policy to achieve its intended results.—JW

        

ENTERTAINMENT

Cher might have to officiate your Vegas elopement

Little Vegas Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada Barry Lewis/Getty Images

The group that licenses Elvis Presley merch, Authentic Brands Group (ABG), sent cease-and-desist letters last month to a number of Las Vegas chapels in an attempt to quash their Elvis-themed weddings. The trademark battle poses a threat to the small chapels' post-pandemic recovery and Vegas's $2 billion wedding industry.

The details: Nevada law says ABG can't stop Elvis impersonators from shaking their hips any more than parents in the '60s. But ABG does claim the rights to the artist's name and likeness, as well as the words "Elvis," "Elvis Presley," and "The King of Rock and Roll." So if a chapel wants to call it an "Elvis wedding," it would have to work out a licensing deal with ABG.

  • Some chapels have already taken the Spirit Halloween route and are offering an off-brand "rock and roll" ceremony.

How many people want Elvis to marry them? A lot, apparently. Melody Willis-Williams, president of Vegas Weddings and Viva Las Vegas Weddings, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that she does thousands of sequined, "Burning Love"-esque weddings every year.

Zoom out: ABG could be preparing for a resurgence of Elvis enthusiasm over the new Baz Luhrmann biopic, Elvis, which is set to release June 24.—MM

        

GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

Biggest plant in the world Royal Society

Stat: Scientists have found what's believed to be the largest single plant on Earth. An underwater meadow of seagrass off the coast of Western Australia spans 77 square miles—equivalent to 20,000 football fields or three Manhattans. And it all started from a single seed 4,500 years ago.

Quote: "Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla."

Elon Musk sent an email to Tesla employees (and another to SpaceX) declaring that remote work would generally not be tolerated there. He went on to add, "There are of course companies that don't require [working from the office], but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It's been a while."

Read: My students cheated…a lot. (Matt Crump)

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • The Education Department is wiping out $5.8 billion in student loans from borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges. It's its biggest student loan forgiveness action ever.
  • Air travel's fully back: Delta hiked its revenue forecast back to pre-pandemic levels.
  • A 25-year-old woman was killed by a buffalo in Yellowstone National Park after coming within 10 feet of the animal.
  • John Madden, who died in December, will be on the cover of Madden 2023—the first time the coach has been featured there since Madden 2000.
  • Why crypto crashed and what comes next, according to one expert.

FROM THE CREW

Have you heard about IT Brew?

IT Brew

Last month, we launched IT Brew specifically for IT professionals looking to stay in the know—and have a little fun while doing it.

From cybersecurity to big data to software development to gaming, IT Brew drops all the latest industry news, trends, and insights right into your inbox twice a week.

Click here to subscribe.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Brew Mini: "Tree parts with rings" (five letters) is your sample clue. Play today's puzzle here.

Three headlines and a lie

Quick note: Before we get into Three Headlines and a Lie, we flubbed our own Spelling Bee yesterday and wrote "supercede" as the answer when the correct spelling is actually "supersede." Still doesn't look right...

Now onto the main event. Three of these headlines are real and one of them is faker than Blue Raspberry flavoring. Can you guess the odd one out?

  1. Spain to force call centers to attend to customers within three minutes
  2. A new TikTok trend created a ginger ale shortage for multiple airlines
  3. Jill Biden says she, president settle arguments by "fexting" or "fight texting"
  4. Sonic workers flee from large snake found behind fryer

If you love Three Headlines and a Lie, play along in audio form on The Refresh from Insider, where we dive deeper into these wacky headlines.

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ANSWER

We made up the TikTok trend.

         

Written by Neal Freyman, Matty Merritt, and Jamie Wilde

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