Raphael Stevens

Billionaire bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz said Wednesday that the cryptocurrency industry remains in its early days, as he predicted the wealth it generates will continue to proliferate in the years ahead.”Right now, total crypto wealth is roughly $2 trillion, so that’s one half of 1% of all wealth,” Novogratz said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “If you don’t think in the next two to three years that can be 2% to 3%, you’re not paying attention to the trends.”Global wealth is estimated at around $400 trillion, according to a Credit Suisse report from October.The entire market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is a little over $2 trillion as of Wednesday, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap.com. Bitcoin — which was trading above $63,000 per coin Wednesday — is responsible for more than half of crypto’s market value. Bitcoin has been on a tear since the fall, having been priced below $11,000 as recently as October.”The amount of growth that we’re going to see in our space is staggering. We’re just getting started,” said Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused financial services company. Galaxy recently filed for a bitcoin ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Novogratz entered the crypto world after stops at well-known, traditional Wall Street firms — he’s a former Goldman Sachs macro trader and fund manager at Fortress Investment Group.The rise of digital assets also has been kind to investors who got their start outside of mainstream finance, according to Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer at CoinShares and longtime crypto believer.”Here’s what’s great about it for me: Bitcoin has created a lot of wealth for people who weren’t part of the traditional financial system, weren’t money managers,” she said in an interview Tuesday on “Squawk Box.”Novogratz’s comments Wednesday came ahead of the blockbuster market debut of Coinbase, which is the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. Bitcoin set a new record high of almost $65,000 earlier in the day. Ether, the world’s second-largest crypto currency by market value, also was rallying.Novogratz said he wasn’t too concerned with how shares of Coinbase traded during its Nasdaq debut. The stock opened at $381 a share, well ahead of the reference price of $250.”Let’s not miss the big picture: This is like the Netscape moment for the cryptocurrency economy. Remember, Netscape in 1995 — four years before we had this crazy frenzy — basically signaled the beginning of the internet age,” Novogratz said.”This is a really important day for the whole crypto world. This is saying, this is an asset class and it’s an asset class that’s here to stay,” he added. “And so, listen, it’s somewhat irrelevant where Coinbase trades today.” More

Vials labelled “COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccine” and syringe are seen in front of displayed Johnson & Johnson logo in this illustration taken, February 9, 2021.Dado Ruvic | Reuters[The meeting is slated to start at 1:30 p.m. ET. You can watch it by clicking here.]A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel is holding an emergency meeting Wednesday to debate how Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine should be used after six women developed a rare blood clotting disorder that left one dead.The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will review data on the women, ages 18 to 48, who developed a rare blood-clotting disorder known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST, according to a draft of the agenda. The women developed the condition within about two weeks of receiving the shot, U.S. health officials told reporters on Tuesday.The meeting is scheduled to run from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. ET.On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration asked states to temporarily halt using J&J’s vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” following the reports of blood clots. Shortly after the FDA issued the warning, more than a dozen states, as well as some pharmacies, took steps to halt inoculations with J&J’s vaccine, some replacing scheduled appointments with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the recommended pause on the use of the vaccine will give U.S. health regulators the time they need to thoroughly investigate the cases. Fauci said officials at the FDA and the CDC want to see if there are “any clues” and “find some common denominators among the women who were involved” that could be enabling the blood clotting disorder.”We are totally aware that this is a rare event. We want to get this worked out as quickly as we possibly can and that’s why you see the word ‘pause,’ in other words, you want to hold off for a bit,” Fauci said. “We want to leave that up to the FDA and the CDC to investigate this carefully. I don’t think it was pulling the trigger too quickly.”Out of the roughly 120 million people in the U.S. who have received at least one vaccine dose, roughly 6.9 million have received J&J’s vaccine, Fauci said, noting that there haven’t been any “red flag signals” from the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines that rely on mRNA technology in their shots. Out of the 6.9 million people who got the J&J jab, six developed blood clots, he said.J&J said in a statement that “no clear causal relationship” has been identified between the blood clots and the vaccine, adding it is working closely with regulators to assess the data. The company also said it would “proactively delay the rollout” of its vaccine in Europe and pause vaccinations in its clinical trials as health regulators review the cases.Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said Tuesday that officials learned the blood clotting generally occurs about a week after vaccination, but not more than three weeks after, with a median time frame of nine days.”We know that for these vaccines, that for the first several days after vaccination, there are flu-like symptoms that can include headache,” he said, adding that those are likely common side effects. “If someone presented to an emergency room with very severe headache or blood clots,” doctors should ask whether they recently got a vaccine before putting together a plan of care. If the patient also has low platelets, doctors should consider that it may be related to the vaccine, he said.Marks told reporters that researchers haven’t yet found a specific cause for the blood clotting in J&J vaccine recipients, but they believed it was similar to other adeno viral vector vaccines. “That is an immune response that occurs very, very rarely after some people receive the vaccine and that immune response leads to activation of the platelets and the extremely rare blood clots,” he said. More

A New Shepard rocket launches on a test flight.Blue OriginJeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin launched and landed the fifteenth test flight of its New Shepard rocket booster and capsule on Wednesday.The mission did not have passengers on board, although the capsule on top of the rocket is designed to carry as many as six people for future flights. Known as NS-15, the mission launched from Blue Origin’s private facility in West Texas and marks a “verification step” for the rocket and capsule before flying people, the company said.New Shepard is designed to carrying people on a ride past the edge of space, with the capsules on previous test flights reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet (or more than 100 kilometers). The capsule spends as much as 10 minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth, with massive windows to give passengers a view.The mission on Wednesday reached 348,753 feet altitude, Blue Origin said – or about 106 kilometers, above the internationally recognized boundary of space.NS-15 is expected to represent the second of two “stable configuration” test flights, CNBC reported in January, after the NS-14 mission featured the debut of a new rocket booster and upgraded capsule. While Blue Origin has only said that the first crewed flights will be “soon,” sources told CNBC in January that the company’s leadership hopes to launch its first crew on the NS-16 mission.The company confirmed CNBC’s reporting that NS-15 would feature a test of loading and unloading the crew. Blue Origin called this an “astronaut operational exercise,” a key step in preparing for launching passengers.”The primary operations will entail Blue Origin personnel standing in as astronauts entering into the capsule prior to launch. These astronauts will climb the launch tower, get into their seats, buckle their harnesses, and conduct a communications check from their seat with CAPCOM, the Capsule Communicator. The tower operations team will prepare the capsule cabin for launch and then briefly close the capsule hatch. The astronauts will then exit the capsule prior to launch,” the company said in a blog post.Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos opens the capsule of the new Shepard Rocket after a launch.Blue OriginAfter the capsule lands, Blue Origin said its personnel will re-enter the capsule to rehearse opening the hatch and exiting the spacecraft. More

RN Courtney Senechal unpacks a special refrigerated box of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines as she prepared to ready more supply for use at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center (EBNHC) in Boston, Massachusetts on December 24, 2020.Joseph Prezioso | AFP | Getty ImagesThe Biden administration is working to accelerate doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines after U.S. health officials advised states to hold off on using Johnson & Johnson’s shot while regulators investigate a rare blood-clotting issue, a top U.S. official said Wednesday.Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid-19 coordinator, said the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended pause on J&J’s vaccine would not have a “significant impact” on the administration’s vaccination program. On Tuesday, the FDA asked states to temporarily halt using J&J’s vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” after six women developed a rare, but serious, blood-clotting disorder that left one dead and another in critical condition.Some medical experts and former health officials worried halting the use of the single-shot vaccine would disrupt the nation’s massive vaccine campaign.Zients said the J&J vaccine makes up only 5% of the recorded shots in arms in the U.S. to date. Still, the U.S. government is “doing everything we can to accelerate the delivery” of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as officials work to end the pandemic, he told reporters during a White House press briefing Wednesday.The administration currently has deals with Pfizer and Moderna for 600 million doses combined, enough to inoculate 300 million Americans, since those two vaccines require two shots given three to four weeks apart.Zients’ comments come a day after Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that his company has ramped up production of its two-shot vaccine and will be able to deliver 10% more doses to the U.S. by the end of May than it had previously agreed to produce — up to 220 million from 200 million.The ramped-up production is important, as some states, such as New York, said they will use Pfizer’s vaccine in place of the J&J shot for appointments that had already been scheduled.Zients also said Moderna has indicated it is on track to meet its commitment for 300 million doses.– CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report. More

In this articleDPZMCDDINYUMDaniel Halpern is looking to hire 800 workers, and it hasn’t been easy.Halpern is CEO of Jackmont Hospitality, an Atlanta-based foodservice company that franchises about 45 restaurants including TGI Fridays across the country.Diners are returning. But Halpern hopes that in the weeks to come his locations will be properly staffed to ensure that the patrons he’s been waiting for will have the experience they’ve come to expect.At the moment, Jackmont employs around 1,200 workers. Before the pandemic hit, its workforce was 2,700, more than double that.”For those of us in the service industry, staffing is paramount to having success. When we get out of the crisis, we want to be able to open and offer our guests a quality experience,” Halpern said. “We are constantly trying to staff — it is the number one issue on our calls with our general managers.”Two people have a drink outside Baja Sharkeez in Huntington Beach, CA on Tuesday, April 6, 2021.Paul Bersebach | MediaNews Group | Orange County Register via Getty ImagesAverage wages at his restaurants are around $13 an hour, before tips. He also offers benefits, but says he’s looking to incentivize servers by paying them daily tips on cards and discussing additional perks like sign-on bonuses.Additional stimulus via both direct payments to individuals and enhanced unemployment benefits is a potential double-edged sword for restaurants. Consumers have more cash on hand and are returning to dine out. But some operators like Halpern feel it’s incentivizing workers to stay home. Beyond that, major retailers like Amazon have hired hundreds of thousands of workers over the course of the pandemic, likely impacting the service sector’s labor pool.Tropical Smoothie Cafe is seeing the labor crunch play out at its nearly 1,000 company-owned and franchised locations, which typically employ 16- to 22-year-olds. CEO Charles Watson said hiring is the company’s biggest headwind right now.”There is a dearth of labor in the restaurant business and in the service business like we have never seen. … There is simply no labor in many to most of the markets that we have cafes in — simply put, people would rather stay home and get paid than go to work,” he said. “That’s creating big problems for us in terms of our most important thing, which is customer service.”A Now Hiring sign is posted in front of a Taco Bell restaurant on February 05, 2021 in Novato, California.Justin Sullivan | Getty ImagesIn March, nonfarm payrolls increased by 916,000 for the month while the unemployment rate fell to 6% —this marked the highest total job increases since August 2020, a sign the economy is bouncing back.The National Federation of Independent Business said the challenge of trying to find qualified employees is weighing on small business owners. While sentiment overall increased in March, 51% of owners reported few or no “qualified” applicants. What’s more, 42% of all owners reported job openings they couldn’t fill — a record high reading and 20 points above the group’s historical average over the last 48 years of 22%.”Main Street is doing better as state and local restrictions are eased, but finding qualified labor is a critical issue for small businesses nationwide,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a statement. “Small business owners are competing with the pandemic and increased unemployment benefits that are keeping some workers out of the labor force. However, owners remain determined to hire workers and grow their business.”Domino’s CEO Ritch Allison also acknowledged labor market tightness on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” Monday. The company has hired tens of thousands of workers, including delivery drivers, over the course of the pandemic.”It’s a very competitive market. So we look at ourselves as competing for customers and also competing for drivers, for team members — we’ve got to be great at both,” he said.Large restaurant companies have announced hiring events recently for tens of thousands of positions. Through Thursday, McDonald’s will be hosting an event to fill 25,000 roles in the state of Texas alone, Reuters reported. The fast food giant hired 260,000 last year when restaurants reopened for diners.IHOP, owned by parent company Dine Brands, said it would hire 10,000 employees to fill positions for part and full-time workers at 1,600 locations in the U.S.And Yum Brands’ Taco Bell is renewing its hiring parties across the country on April 21, at nearly 2,000 locations. The company is looking to hire 5,000 workers, converting parking lots and patios into job fairs to keep applicants safe in the ongoing pandemic.”It’s no secret that the labor market is tight, which is why we are thrilled to host our fourth round of Hiring Parties in partnership with our franchisees,” said Kelly McCulloch, Taco Bell’s chief people officer, in a statement. More

In this articleBBBYBed Bath & Beyond CEO Mark TrittonSource: Bed Bath & BeyondBed Bath & Beyond has a story to tell.Unfortunately, though, for some analysts and investors, the retailer is only in the first or second inning of a massive turnaround. Here, patience is going to be key.Chief Executive Mark Tritton took over the embattled home-goods business, leaving his post as chief merchant officer at Target, in November 2019.He swiftly cleaned house, bringing in a new suite of executives to sit alongside him. He announced a sweeping store-closure road map to rid the business of unprofitable shops and to allow it to invest more in digital. He also led a number of divestitures, including Christmas Tree Shops and Cost Plus World Market, to whittle the business down to core banners. Much of this work, notably, took plan during the span of a global pandemic.After Bed Bath & Beyond released its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings results Wednesday, shares tumbled more than 11%.While it swung to a profit, net sales were down double digits year over year. That was in large part due to ongoing store closures and divestitures that the company has made in the past 12 months.Comparable sales were up 4% overall. Within its namesake Bed Bath & Beyond banner, comparable sales climbed 6%. Digital sales, in total, were up 86%. “What we’re seeing coming through is new confidence from customers as vaccines start to take off,” Tritton told CNBC’s Courtney Reagan on Wednesday. “It’s still early, there’s a lot of ambiguity out there … but we’re seeing a return to stores and a rebalancing of that digital and physical space.”One of the biggest criticisms Bed Bath & Beyond has faced in past years is over its sloppy stores that almost resemble warehouses: Complaints include outdated fixtures and merchandise piled so high that shops feel cramped and unorganized.Tritton is clearly trying to fix that. Bed Bath & Beyond is in the process of remodeling 130 to 150 stores this fiscal year, including 26 during the first quarter. It just completed its first batch in the Houston market in February.The company said it will spend about $250 million over the next three years to remodel roughly 450 Bed Bath & Beyond shops in total. That involves decluttering aisles, adding fresh signage and installing more modern light fixtures.”It’s early days,” Tritton told CNBC about the remodeling. “Normally we have a period of adjustment as we go through every remodel. … It’s about a 12-week process.”Meantime, Bed Bath & Beyond must also prove that its gains can last beyond the Covid pandemic. It has now booked three consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth. But when customers aren’t stocking up on hand sanitizers, cleaning supplies and bread makers, what will they be buying?Bed Bath & Beyond wants to be known as a destination for all-things home.Earlier this week, it debuted its “Home, Happier” campaign, which includes a 30-second national TV ad and social media spots that feature different families enjoying their homes.As part of the launch, store employees are also going to be outfitted with new uniforms, name tags and face masks, the company said.In coming years, Bed Bath & Beyond will strengthen its lineup of private labels across different categories of home goods. It’s planning to launch at least eight brands this year.Last month, it debuted Nestwell, which sells soft bedding and bath items like towels. Haven, a spa-inspired bath brand, will launch next week. Next month, it will debut Simply Essentials, a brand that the company says will be known for its “great value.””By introducing brands that can only be found at Bed Bath & Beyond, we create a unique reason for customers to shop with us,” Chief Merchandising Officer Joseph Hartsig said during a conference call with analysts.As a bonus, these efforts should also also help boost Bed Bath & Beyond’s profitability. The retailer has said it expects its private-label sales will grow to represent 30% of its business within three years, up from about 10% from today.”These are huge investments,” said Jessica Ramirez, a retail research analyst for Jane Hali & Associates. “But, so far, we’ve only seen that one label come from [Tritton].”Investors might have expected to see more signs of progress in Wednesday’s report, Ramirez said, but they’re going to have to wait a bit longer to see how the remodeling, the new brands and Tritton’s other initiatives pay off.Tritton also has a plan for those iconic Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. While not getting rid of them entirely, the company has been scaling back the number of coupons it sends online and to customers’ homes. It’s also trying to cater them more specifically to things people might be looking for, based on the customer data it has on hand.Bed Bath & Beyond shares are up about 34% year to date, giving the company a market cap of $3.4 billion.—CNBC’s Katie Tsai contributed to this reporting. More

In this articleCAKEAmericans love The Cheesecake Factory. The restaurant known for its massive 21-page menu and dozens of dessert options is ranked as one of the top casual dining restaurants in the U.S. by trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News.The company reported positive same-store sales growth in 21 of the 24 quarters before Covid-19 hit in March 2020. But the eatery popular with everyone from NBA stars to cheesecake aficionados has fallen on hard times as the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the restaurant industry.In February, Cheesecake Factory announced fourth-quarter sales of $554 million, a 20% drop from a year earlier. Same-stores sales fell 19.5% during the same period.So after more than 40 years in business will Cheesecake Factory be able to regain its momentum and will the chain’s takeout and delivery service be enough to offset the decline of the dine-in restaurant experience? Watch the above video to find out more.Watch more:Why GNC filed for bankruptcy protection despite vitamin sales boomWhy rural hospitals are going bankrupt More

File labelled “Sputnik V coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine”, March 24, 2021.Dado Ruvic | ReutersIndia has granted emergency use authorization for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, shortly after overtaking Brazil to become the world’s second-most affected country by the coronavirus.The move, announced Tuesday by the Drug Controller General of India, makes India the 60th and most populous country to adopt the shot. Sputnik V is now approved for use across a total population of 3 billion people, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. “Approval of the vaccine is a major milestone as Russia and India have been developing an extensive cooperation on clinical trials of Sputnik V in India and its local production,” RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said in a statement. The deal includes partnerships between RDIF and some of India’s pharmaceutical companies to produce “over 850 million doses” of Sputnik V in India annually, meaning enough of the two-shot vaccine for 425 million people, Dmitriev said. India on Tuesday reported more than 161,736 new Covid cases — the eighth straight day that more than 100,000 infections were registered. The country of 1.3 billion has now had more than 13.87 million total confirmed cases and over 172,000 deaths. Sputnik V joins two other vaccines to become the third authorized for use in India. At less than $10 a shot, the relatively low-cost vaccine touted by Russia’s leadership has rapidly gained approval in developing countries as many regions experience second and third waves of the virus. Among the countries that have approved it for use are Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Hungary, the UAE, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq,  Myanmar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of the Congo, Vietnam and the Philippines. Russia’s health authorities declared its efficacy rate at 91.6%. People wait to board passenger buses during rush hour at a bus terminal amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Mumbai, India, April 5, 2021.Niharika Kulkarni | ReutersThe shot, developed by the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, has been criticized by many in the Western scientific community for what they saw as rushed development and a lack of transparency. A month before the launch of Sputnik’s efficacy trial last September, Russian authorities made the highly controversial move of approving the vaccination for people outside of a clinical trial, which the Gamaleya Center said was used for health workers and high-risk groups.  But the highly-reputed medical journal The Lancet in February reported the Russian jab’s high efficacy rate in late stage clinical trials, writing that Sputnik V’s “vaccine efficacy, based on the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases from 21 days after the first dose of vaccine, is reported as 91.6%, and the suggested lessening of disease severity after one dose is particularly encouraging for current dose-sparing strategies.” On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that he had received his second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. He has declined to say which one it was. More