Axios

Nike's business is more of an oof than a swoosh at the moment.

Why it matters: Investors have been abandoning ship as Nike's strategies — both in innovation and distribution — have struggled to win budget-conscious consumers or beat back growing competition.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's anticipated complaint against Consensys, the maker of the MetaMask crypto wallet, landed with a thud this afternoon.

Why it matters: The suit labels an even wider swath of crypto tools as securities, with the SEC's latest enforcement action taking aim at services that enable folks to swap coins or stake them.

Blockchains make everything into a market, making it easy to place bets on almost anything, and last night the bets turned decisively further against President Biden.

Why it matters: When people express their opinions in these markets, they do it with money on the line, which, in theory, should give their opinions a different kind of weight.

VanEck filed the first application to launch a spot solana fund in the U.S. yesterday, right before the anticipated trading debuts of ether funds next week.

Why it matters: This would test a new regulatory boundary in the nascent crypto ETF market: whether the SEC would approve a product for a token with no regulated futures market.

Between the lines: The SEC kept bitcoin out of an ETF for several years, arguing that there wasn't a futures market of "significant size" related to the spot market — a key factor, it said, in mitigating the potential for fraud and manipulation through surveillance sharing agreements.

Coinbase linked with Stripe — what appears to be a new payments power couple in the making.

Why it matters: The U.S.'s largest crypto exchange has been on a mission to prove the value of digital assets through their utility, and linking with a payments giant can help facilitate that.

How it works: Coinbase is adding the payment processor's fiat-to-crypto on-ramp to its wallet. Stripe, meanwhile, is adding USDC on the exchange's Base network to enable crypto payouts and conversions.

The big picture: Coinbase Chief Brian Armstrong has said that his goal is to have the average transaction on Base "take less than one second and cost less than 1 cent anywhere in the world."

If meme coins could talk, they'd tell you that Doland Tremp beat Jeo Boden at the last night's first presidential debate.

• Our politics colleagues agree that President Biden's performance was a miss, "of epic proportions."

By the numbers: BODEN started sinking around the start of the debate and has fallen about 50%, trading at around 7 cents this morning.

• TREMP slid too, but declined less, about 18%.
• Betting site Polymarket shows Trump's chances of winning at 65%, and Biden at 21%.

I was at a watch party hosted by the Coinbase-started nonprofit Stand With Crypto and Web3 Familia in New York. It was a bit of a buzzkill, in that there was no mention of crypto or bitcoin.

Thursday night's debate will be remembered for President Biden's disastrous performance. But it also laid bare a key theme heading into November: a clash over how good or bad the economy that former President Trump handed off to Biden really was.

Why it matters: Memories fade, but the numbers can give a clearer view of the economic conditions that prevailed the last time Trump was president. The pandemic was a stark dividing line.

The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation showed prices in aggregate barely budged in May, while annual measures hit the lowest level in over three years, the government said on Friday.

Why it matters: Inflation was benign last month, as the Consumer Price Index report released earlier this month indicated — a turnaround from early 2024 when it looked like progress had stalled out.

The Supreme Court's end-of-term bombshell drop continued today with three business-related decisions.

Why it matters: The cases decided today are of the sort less likely to cause disruption in, say, an upcoming presidential debate. But they're important.

💊 In perhaps the day's biggest headline grabber, the court blocked a national settlement crafted in bankruptcy court that would've ended claims against disgraced opioid maker Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family, owners of the OxyContin maker.

• The 5-4 decision did not fall along any kind of discernible ideological lines. Biden-appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson joined some of the conservatives — Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — in the majority.

Walgreens said it plans to close more underperforming U.S. stores as part of a "significant multiyear" program, as the pharmacy retail giant moves through a painful turnaround strategy.

Why it matters: The company has been reeling from a string of issues including worker walkouts and debt issues, Axios' Nathan Bomey and Kelly have reported.

The core economic fact of the 2010s was that there were not enough jobs. The key to understanding the economy of the 2020s is that there aren't enough workers.

Why it matters: Labor shortages that first emerged in the pandemic aftermath are likely to stick around, a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute finds — along with the benefits it entails for workers, headaches it causes for employers, and strains on inflation and growth.

On the blockchains, a good idea is only a great idea one time.

• After that it becomes an OK idea, sometimes even a bad one.

Why it matters: Founders might be better off continuing to think about what's next to do, rather than copying existing models.

The big picture: Copying is a big thing in the crypto world, but it's seldom the case that the copycats do well. Much of the time, they waste loads of money, energy and community spirit.

The greatest example is Bitcoin. There can only ever be one Bitcoin. The engineering and the technology can be easily recreated, but Bitcoin had what might be called an immaculate conception.

Fairshake, the crypto PAC (or, really, PACs) organized by major leaders in the cryptocurrency industry, has a strong track record.

Why it matters: If the industry can show it has teeth in electoral politics, electeds might think twice before making its founders into villain-of-the-week.

By the numbers: CNBC credits Fairshake with coming out ahead in 33 of the 35 races it has entered.

• CoinDesk, meanwhile, counts 20 races in which Fairshake played a role in a win, for both Democrats and Republicans.

Yes, but: It's always hard to say exactly who influenced any given election. For example, one race Fairshake entered set a record for the most money spent in pursuit of a U.S. House seat. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is the incumbent.

Coinbase filed a pair of lawsuits Thursday seeking to compel financial regulators to hand over internal documents and communications related to past investigations and industry actions.

Why it matters: The U.S.'s largest crypto exchange is seeking information on what it suspects has been a concerted effort to kneecap the industry.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a rare series of sanctions against Boeing after the aerospace giant "blatantly" violated federal investigative regulations, the board announced Thursday.

Why it matters: The investigative agency said it was coordinating with the Department of Justice's fraud division, which is investigating whether Boeing breached its obligations under a 2021 settlement to avoid criminal charges stemming from two fatal crashes.

Uber will pay 175 people in seven U.S. and Canadian cities $1,000 to ditch their cars for a month and use alternate transportation in its "One Less Car trial."

Why it matters: Americans are grappling with high car expenses including vehicle prices, rising car insurance and surging car repair costs.