What we’re reading (2/12)
“Feeling The Heat From Employees, Wall Street Banks Get Closer To Adopting Bitcoin” (CNBC). “Pressure is building on Wall Street banks to accept bitcoin as a legitimate asset class — and it’s coming from within, CNBC has learned. Last month, during a town hall meeting held for thousands of JPMorgan Chase traders and sales personnel around the world, global markets head Troy Rohrbaugh acknowledged a question that is increasingly being asked by the bank’s own employees: When will they get involved in bitcoin?”
“Elon Musk’s SpaceX Now Owns About A Third Of All Active Satellites In The Sky” (CNN Business). “SpaceX created a swarm of about thousand satellites that is circulating about 340 miles overhead, and building the constellation has put SpaceX in a "deep chasm" of expenses, according to CEO Elon Musk. The constellation has also raised concerns about potential in-space collisions and the impact on astronomers' ability to study the night sky. But for some early customers of the $99-per-month Starlink service, the satellites are already improving how rural communities access the internet.”
“GameStop Mania Highlights Shift To Dark Trading” (Wall Street Journal). “A record 47.2% of U.S. equity trading volume in January was executed outside public stock exchanges, up from 39.9% a year earlier, according to data from Rosenblatt Securities, a brokerage firm. Before 2020, the percentage of what is known as dark trading had hovered just below 40% for years. Now, on some days, more than half the shares that change hands in the U.S. are traded on various off-exchange platforms.”
“Maryland Nears Country’s First Tax On Big Tech’s Ad Revenue” (New York Times). “State politicians, struggling with yawning budget gaps from the pandemic, have made no secret about their interest in getting a bigger piece of the tech industry’s riches. Now, Maryland’s lawmakers are on the verge of taking a new slice, with the nation’s first tax on the revenue from digital advertisements sold by companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.”
“America’s Cities Are In Crisis. They Should Be Allowed To Raise Debt To Save Themselves” (Time). “There will be no ‘roaring twenties’ without cities thriving, and federal aid, however imperative, won’t be enough. There is an obvious solution to this problem: unleash the ability of cities to borrow. Unlike the federal government, cities are highly constrained from borrowing by laws and state constitutions that either mandate balanced budgets or set low ceilings on the amount of debt that cities can take on.”
