The White House is once again pushing the nation's largest railroads to provide paid sick leave to their more than 100,000 workers.
The big picture: The administration faced criticism last year after President Biden signed legislation to avert a nationwide rail strike, forcing a labor contract that didn't include the benefit.
The business model of streaming media has chopped off the long tail of content monetization.
Why it matters: The future of media and entertainment is tied, inextricably, to streaming — posing existential questions to creators and tightening the bind of costs to artistic decisions.
Crypto exchange Kraken on Thursday agreed to shutter its staking services for U.S. customers, and pay $30 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a settlement.
Why it matters: The top U.S. financial regulator has now spoken on staking, a process that compensates retail crypto investors for holding certain digital coins. The service offered on other major crypto exchanges like Coinbase.
What they're saying: "As part of the settlement, Kraken has neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations," a Kraken spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Axios.
"Starting today, with the exception of staked ether (ETH), assets enrolled in the on-chain staking program by U.S. clients will automatically be un-staked and will no longer earn staking rewards," the statement added.
The big picture: Ethereum staking validates transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. To do this, a user would lock up their tokens, or "stake" the native coin, in this case ether. They earn rewards in that token, in return for helping secure the network.
You can do this for any proof-of-stake protocols.
Kraken is among the top staking service providers, representing 7.6% of all staked ether, behind Lido's 29% and Coinbase's 13%. Though, Kraken can't unstake ether right now, because no one can.
Between the lines: The SEC's complaint specifically takes issue with pooled staking, rather than staking at large.
Zoom in: In order to offer staking services, an exchange like Kraken would pool customer assets transferred by them and stake them on their behalf, the SEC's complaint reads.
In doing so, there would be a contract between Kraken and their customers, that both transfers the customer's asset, and a promise on return.
“Whether it’s through staking-as-a-service, lending, or other means, crypto intermediaries, when offering investment contracts in exchange for investors’ tokens, need to provide the proper disclosures and safeguards required by our securities laws,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in the statement.
Bottom line: It would appear the SEC appears intent on proving it can keep the troubled crypto industry in line, by whatever means necessary.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman will step down from his role at the end of the year and remain on its board of directors, the company said on Thursday, as part of its quarterly earnings announcement.
Why it matters: Activist investor Elliott Management began building up a stake in the Silicon Valley payments company last summer.
PayPal was once viewed as one of the pandemic's biggest winners, but its stock has since plummeted as business has slowed, along with other formerly high-flying tech giants.
Yahoo plans to lay off more than 20% of its total workforce as part of a major restructuring of its ad tech unit, executives told Axios. The cuts will impact more than 50% of Yahoo's ad tech employees — more than 1,600 people.
Why it matters: The changes will end Yahoo’s years-long effort to compete directly with Google and Meta for digital advertising dominance.
In a notable wrinkle, it will also tweak how it weights different goods and services, based on Americans' recent buying patterns.
State of play: Previously, the agency has updated those weights every other year, adjusting price swings in anything from bananas to used cars, and how those ought to affect the overall inflation index.
For example, gasoline had a 3.431% weight in 2017-2018, which fell to 2.977% in 2019 and 2020.
Now, the BLS is shifting to re-weighting CPI every year.
The re-weighting shouldn't radically shift the inflation numbers, but it could make analysts' forecasts a little less accurate, given uncertainty about how the numbers will look.
The new weights "introduce additional uncertainty to our forecasts," said BofA economists in a note this morning.
"While we do not expect the new weights to change the outcome materially, it could add or subtract" a few basis points from their forecast.
Go deeper: BLS explained the process in a blog post here.
Engineering talent has flooded the market due to big tech layoffs, and startup founders plan to snatch it up.
Why it matters: These new companies will need smart communicators to help them build their brand, explain their purpose, recruit top talent and bring in business.
Redwood Materials has received a $2 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan to begin domestic production of critical battery components for electric vehicles (EVs).
Why it matters: The loan is another lever, in addition to lucrative tax credits for battery manufacturers, that the Biden administration is pulling to jump-start a U.S. supply chain for EVs.
Shannon Braytonhas introduced the world to such iconic tech brands as Yahoo, eBay, Open Table and LinkedIn.
Why it matters: Now she's building, promoting and protecting brands at scale as chief marketing officer of Bessemer Venture Partners, a venture capital firm supporting tech, enterprise, consumer and health care startups.
The U.S. unemployment rate is the lowest it's been in half a century, but there's still an undercurrent of unease among communications and marketing professionals.
By the numbers: According to Indeed data shared with Axios, job postings for marketing and communication roles are down 31% since last year.
The ATM is among the more ubiquitous gateways to crypto, found at truck stops and bars around the world, but that status hasn't saved them from the broader system's maladies, Crystal writes.
Driving the news: Top-5 bitcoin ATM operator Coin Cloud filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Nevada on Tuesday, just steps behind its lender, Genesis Global.
Nextracker, a Fremont, Calif.-based developer of solar tracker systems, raised $638 million in its IPO.
Why it matters: This is the largest U.S. IPO since Mobileye went public last October, and the largest solar energy IPO in more than two years. It also comes on the same week that three other companies are planning to raise at least $150 million in IPOs of their own, suggesting something of a market thaw.
In a new survey, 50% of Americans told Gallup they're financially worse off now than last year. That's the highest percentage since the Great Recession.
Why it matters: We're not in a recession, but people have the financial blues for a bunch of reasons. And, though the president touted his economic record this week in the State of the Union, it's a tough sell — especially across the aisle.
A top Southwest Airlines executive, appearing at a Senate hearing on Thursday, plans to deliver another apology for the company's disastrous holiday meltdown.
Driving the news: "Let me be clear: we messed up," Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson will tell the Commerce Committee before being grilled. "In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resilience."
Podcasting has emerged out of years of rapid growth and a pandemic boom to face an identity crisis as its ecosystem contracts, advertisement slows and the medium eases into maturity.
Why it matters:Podcasts changed the listening habits of millions of people over the last decade, but the once-groundbreaking format has settled into a more precarious middle age.
The cost of many Super Bowl party staples has been steadily rising over the last few years, per the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data.
Why it matters: As Americans gear up for Sunday's matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, their bank accounts are about to get sacked.
Walt Disney Company announced Wednesday on a call with investors that it expects to cut 7,000 jobs this year — or about 3.6% of its global workforce — as part of a broader restructuring plan and a bigger effort to save $5.5 billion in costs.
The big picture: In light of financial pressure from Wall Street, CEO Bob Iger reiterated his plan to make Disney more efficient while also bolstering the company's streaming business.
