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Why reserve-backed stablecoins are the most popular form of this cryptocurrency

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Reserve-backed stablecoins explained

of the three main categories of stable coins. The one that is maybe the most kind of logical would be commonly called reserve backed stable coins. They have an amount in the bank that corresponds to the amount of stable coins that they've issued. So the total value of stable coins right now I believe is roughly 150 billion. And that's largely made up between us dc and tether. I think U. S. D. C. And tether make up about 75% of that number. So You know a little more than 100 million. When we created tether we did so because my partners and I were trying to trade crypto and there were always times probably at least once a week when I would get nervous about the market and I would love to go into a safe harbor that was non volatile. The only way to do that was to take the crypto. I had converted all into Bitcoin. Take the Bitcoin and transfer it to one of the few exchanges that had access to banking and then trade my Bitcoin for dollars and have those dollars wired to my bank account. And by the time that happened it took about five days and I wanted to get back in. So our thinking was what if we were in a crypto that was tokenized dollars, they can interact with crypto and you don't have to now cash out and go through all of those troubles getting that done. Now people always say tether has some controversy because of its lack of transparency around uh its holdings. I'm no longer associated with tether. I would like tether the operators of it to be more transparent to do more frequent audits. And yet people still use it. It's the most traded crypto on earth.

Jeff Harmening says General Mills had to raise prices for popular brands like Cheerios, but consumers are still buying because "food at home is a really good value".

General Mills CEOs says "consumers are feeling the pinch"

Leadership

Jeff Harmening says General Mills had to raise prices, but consumers are still buying because "food at home is a really good value".

Jeff. So good to see you again to talk about general mills and let's begin by talking about food prices, everybody is complaining about their grocery bills and the latest reports do confirm that prices are high up 13% over the past 12 months. So far, people are still buying your cheerios and Pillsbury baking goods, snacks and a lot more from General Mills. Tell us why consumers are still buying General Mills products and food products at home because they represent a great value. And even though the costs have gone up because inflation has gone up about 14 to 15% for us. Um This year consumers are shifting their habits two at home eating from away from home eating and the reason they're making that shift of food at home is that it really costs a lot less than eating out. And so when economic times get difficult as consumers are feeling the pinch right now and they really are feeling the pinch. What we saw during the great recession about a decade ago was that the same habit Of consumers shifting their spending from away from home and eating at home eating. It took place in the Great Recession as well, because food at home is a really good value, but you have raised prices right? We have increased prices because our costs have gone up by 14-15%. And so we've raised prices, we've raised prices less than our costs have gone up because we've had productivity gains and and we know that consumers are feeling pinched right now. And so the first thing we always try to do is become more efficient ourselves, but when we see record inflation, which we are right now in our cost, um the prices, the prices do go up, but it's still, even then it's still a great value for consumers to eat food at home and specifically general mills brands than it is eating out well as you're looking for value, you know, a lot of people are talking about this so called shrink inflation where the package is smaller of, let's say cheerios, but the price is the same. What do you say to that? You know, shrink inflation gets a lot of media headlines, but it's not something we spend a tremendous amount of time with for us, the you know, when people talk about string inflation at the end of the context, we're trying to trick consumers somehow and that's absolutely not the case, consumers are very smart and so when, when we want to make sure that we offer them real value. So for example, um you know when people are living paycheck to paycheck, sometimes they want a smaller box of cereal, if if they can only afford that. Other times they may have three teenagers at home, they need a big box for the price per hour. They may shop at different locations, they may shop with coupons. And so it's really incumbent upon us to add to add value in the best way we can and consumers define for themselves what makes value for their family and that's different from household to household. You recently told investors that you expect strong revenues and earnings going into 2023 and the chances are that inflation will contain to rise. So I'm guessing that you are going to continue raising crisis by, how much can you quantify? We did say that we're going to see inflation throughout this throughout our fiscal year was started in May, but we also told investors that most of the pricing that we would need to accomplish what we needed to this year was already in the marketplace or announced retailers. And so it's not necessarily true that prices will keep going up from here. It really depends on the landscape itself. But you know, as I mentioned, we've seen 14 to 15% in inflation and our prices have gone up, but even then, not as much as inflation has gone up well, you know, as you know, there are many forecasts that were either in a recession in the US or there's a risk of a recession over the next 12 months, you've been through many of the These down cycles in your, in your career. How do you see this one playing out right. I've been, I've been in the food business for more than 28 years now and you know, a couple of things I will tell you first is that whether we're in a technical recession or not. You know, consumers are feeling stretched and I think that's going to continue. One of the things I can also tell you is that no matter what one of the lessons of the last few years, if you don't know exactly what's around the corner. But for general mills we've been able to pivot quickly, whether it's a pandemic or George Floyd's murder or whether it's war in Ukraine, we've been able to pivot quickly and I'm confident as a company will continue to do that no matter what the economic cycle ahead of us, can you still grow general Mills even in a slowing economy? You know, we we can and we were we were even growing general mills before the pandemic yet. But one of the things I'm most proud of is over the last few years we've become a better company and none of it had to do with the pandemic or inflation or or covid what, what it really had to do with is we've we've made significant changes over the course of the last few years we've changed our portfolio, We've had a blue buffalo pet food. We we have divested things like you play in europe and dough in europe and hamburger helper here in the U. S. We have changed our organizational structure to become a lot more lean and we've invested in data and technology and and investments in consumer marketing, they're going to help us go forward. So we're we're highly confident that an environment, post covid post war, post recession General Mills will be a stronger company that was coming in is because we've made a lot of significant changes along the way. Well, Jeff you've come up with some very innovative and successful strategies in dealing with these things that you're talking about, soaring prices for ingredients. The scarcity of ingredients tell our view how you reformulated the recipes of one of your very popular snacks to Tina's Pizza Roll. It was a very successful change that you made. It has been successful and Latinos, Pizza Rolls, one of General Mills, $9 billion brands. And and we've kept it on store shelves because we feel like we owe that to consumers. But it hasn't been easy. In fact, there are a couple of ingredients we haven't been able to get for Latinos and as a result we reformulated pizza rolls and pizza about 25 times over the last year. Just in an effort to keep it on shelf. But also make sure we maintain the quality of those products that consumers are expecting. And I'm happy to say that even given all those changes, the business continues to grow. In fact, we're going to invest about $100 million in our manufacturing facility in Ohio to to expand the capacity of that business. But it's a great testimony to the, to the engagement and working skills people of general Mills and our consumers have benefited as a result. What are some of the lessons that you learned from that whole experience and all of the reinvention. One of the things we we've really learned is that the engagement of our employees is key because it takes a team of people coming together to make things like that happen, diversifying our supply change is becoming increasingly important and just the ability and willingness to pivot. We've been a great company for 100 and 55 years, but before the pandemic, probably no one considered us to be very fast. Now. We're both fast and I still think we're pretty good company after 100 and 55 years and we've learned the value have been able to change quickly. So what do you think has been behind the success of General Mills over all of these years? I think we've been successful because we've been willing to change, Not because we've resisted it and that's important for a company that has been around since 1866. We've changed our portfolio, added brands like blue buffalo and divested businesses like you play. We've changed our organizational structure become faster. We have invested in data and technology, but also consumer marketing to make our brands more and more relevant. And those things are important because we talked about all the changes that have happened pandemics and wars and social unrest and now, you know inflation, we've been successful through all that and we think we'll be successful after that, not because we resisted change, but on the opposite, we've actually leaned into change. And those are the kind of things that kind of spanned the arc of time and make a company successful no matter what the current situation they find themselves in.

They're a popular way to raise money on the blockchain.

What you need to know about DAOs

Finance

What you need to know about DAOs 

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The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based NFT gaming metaverse. Take a tour inside Alpha Season 2.

Here’s a look inside popular metaverse platform The Sandbox

Tech

Hello everyone. My name is Sebastian border, I'm the Ceo and co founder at the sandbox and today we're giving you this first tour of the sandbox Alphas season two, you'll get to see a little bit of all the great concerns and experiences that you can encounter uh into the open metaverse. The sandbox is a local software that just anyone can use to create experiences. And the map where you can see all those parcel of land which are like digital spaces where creators can publish the experiences that will be made available to the public. So the Avatar, it starts with a pre selection of about 40 different models and you can customize then afterwards 70. Yes, even more 70 custom models starting March 11th will also introduce the possibility to play with external avatars. The 10,000 avatar collection from Snoop Dogg, that's sold out just a couple of days ago. The first step when you start playing around the sandbox is to enter the main hub, the main hub that give you access to all the different experiences that are part of this alpha season, to just more than 35 experiences in total. The first thing that might catch your attention as you look at um is definitely the the amount of content on screen or off is uh one of the unique N. F. T. S from the world of women collection, it's been the most expensive woman and FT ever acquired, like many avatars who enter sandbox. Initially one of the first things they are going to see is really all those values and FTS being displayed from values collection which include the cool cards doodles. Um The border eight uh the mutant ape and more. Anyone who is entering the others get exposed to this culture of N. F. T. S. So any NFC, you've seen Sun Box, you can check and be driven to the marketplace. So it's a way to uh see and buy NFC in context. You can advance a little further into the land and you will find this hub that gives you access with all those portals. Two, some of the first experience from the major brands and I. P. S who have entered the sandbox here, we can see the snoop experience as well. So it will be accessible. That's one of the key uh experiences that will be available to visit into the season to smurf, Deadmau and Warner Music Group, which is one of the latest I thi I edition. The alfa is a curation of 35 experiences including uh four main I. P. Partner experiences. A couple as well of user generated content made by the community experiences and social hub. Single player and multiplayer game made by the sandbox team to you enter a portal and the portal is a direct access to an older experience. We just entered Club X. Y. Z. So Club X. Y. Z. L. Well it's supply the place for nightlife in sandbox. You get to hear new music, new artists performing each season will feature a new RT this season. We're so proud to host blondish, which is like an amazing DJ. She composed four exclusive track for sandbox that you'll get a chance to to listen for the first time in here. Um We we are really glad that it's a place where people will discover music, will get together to dance and get to even meet with the artists and her avatar here chat and interact with her. The experience we're seeing now is like, we're actually traveling full time and discovering the Hong kong peers. It's a very famous place in Hong kong city which has been reproduced here by a team on behalf of the south china Morning Post, which is like one of the largest media publication and one of the oldest, they're covering news. And this experience really put us back into traveling in time, discovering a place from the ages. Um It's been gamified as well. So, one thing that makes sandbox also difference is not just a place for passive interaction, but there's a lot of like stories, quests, dialogs, ah and games that comes up and adds more flavors, more ways to spend your time into the metaverse and somehow uh find some of your skills as you win some of those games. You can you get experience points, Those experience points that will allow you to um collect uh to increase your chance for collecting the rewards at the end of the season. It's like the whole season is actually play to earn in sandbox, you can earn and be rewarded for your time and engagement, not only by uh playing games, but also by actually being a creator by here learning progressing request and using those skills, those skills that you develop and can bring actually real words value for you. So we're going to move next to uh who stopped Alamosa. Alright, here we are. So we're actually seeing this fashion d Phil from characters in front of values and fc. Collection all of that with values, animation on the screen, something unique introduced by sandbox, we're finally in here is like house taking is going to impact your gamble. So you can also there is this community goal, like the more people stake their tokens uh toward a certain target, the more they unlock for everyone. More experience points to be distributed as well. We are back to the map you here, we can see inside this 12 by 12 uh The 35 experiences that will be part of the Alpha. Season two, it includes brands, users already content, gamemaker firmed and uh Sandbox made experience that that were part of season one, but really most of them have been already reworked, change. So it's always a new discovery whether you play season one or not, you're going to discover new content here

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