Every story begins with a question. For the past 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to ask questions for Newsweek, Institutional Investor, The Financial Times, Barron’s, CNN, Fortune, Bloomberg, Marie Claire, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The Guardian and others.
I got my start as a student with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and won awards as a special writer, editor and foreign correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. As finance editor for Newsweek, I was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. I occasionally write columns and opinion pieces and I also write books, which you can find on this site.
Every story begins with a question. For the past 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to ask questions for Newsweek, Institutional Investor, The Financial Times, Barron’s, CNN, Fortune, Bloomberg, Marie Claire, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The Guardian and others.
I got my start as a student with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and won awards as a special writer, editor and foreign correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. As finance editor for Newsweek, I was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. I occasionally write columns and opinion pieces and I also write books, which you can find on this site.
Is Bitcoin Too Big to Fail?
Even as the cryptocurrency hits record highs, threats to its long-term success remain. (Part of the crypto column series.)
November 5, 2021
Every few months or so, when Bitcoin inevitably swoons, there’s another bumper crop of doomsday stories about whether the cryptocurrency is going straight to zero. This autumn, that question was entertained by The Economist, Bloomberg, and, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, who called it “worthless,” again.
It is unclear what is gained from the near-obsessive warnings about Bitcoin. But this has not stopped Dimon, billionaire Warren Buffett, and others of their ilk from taking swipes whenever they get in front of a microphone. After deriding the cryptocurrency last month, Dimon hastened to add, “I don’t want to be a spokesperson; I don’t care. It makes no difference to me.”
Warren Buffett May Not Be Into Crypto, but His Granddaughter Is
September 24, 2021
The first time is awkward, clunky, and discomfiting, but then you get better at it, says Nicole Buffett, the 45-year-old granddaughter of Warren Buffett.
She still remembers her trepidations when trying to create a nonfungible token, popularly known as an NFT. “I was definitely like the annoying person who doesn’t get it, asking a bunch of questions,” says the abstract painter and mixed-media artist. But she also felt like she was stepping into a fascinating new world. “It was wild, it was very exciting,” Buffett says. “I was like, ‘Oh no, I have to do all this technological stuff.’ It felt uncomfortable. It was like learning a new language.”
Regarded by much of Wall Street as a curious extravagance, NFTs are digital assets encoded in an online ledger or blockchain as part of a “minting” process, which certifies them as unique and noninterchangeable. This, as with much crypto, creates their authenticity and scarcity. For artists like Buffett, it also establishes an NFT’s provenance and chain of ownership so sales can be tracked in real time.
As a result, the assortment of items now being tokenized and tossed onto the blockchain is near-bottomless: photos, paintings, collages, musical compositions, and virtually every type of art imaginable; game, video, and audio files; celebrity tweets, texts, memes, and selfies. Charmin even began selling toilet-paper-themed NFT art this past spring, smirkingly dubbing it “NFT(P),” nonfungible toilet paper.
Is Bitcoin Too Big to Fail?
Even as the cryptocurrency hits record highs, threats to its long-term success remain. (Part of the crypto column series.)
November 5, 2021
Every few months or so, when Bitcoin inevitably swoons, there’s another bumper crop of doomsday stories about whether the cryptocurrency is going straight to zero. This autumn, that question was entertained by The Economist, Bloomberg, and, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, who called it “worthless,” again.
It is unclear what is gained from the near-obsessive warnings about Bitcoin. But this has not stopped Dimon, billionaire Warren Buffett, and others of their ilk from taking swipes whenever they get in front of a microphone. After deriding the cryptocurrency last month, Dimon hastened to add, “I don’t want to be a spokesperson; I don’t care. It makes no difference to me.”
Warren Buffett May Not Be Into Crypto, but His Granddaughter Is
With record volumes and sales exploding into the billions, NFTs are red hot — and for artists like Nicole Buffett, a pandemic-proof way to sell art.
September 24, 2021
The first time is awkward, clunky, and discomfiting, but then you get better at it, says Nicole Buffett, the 45-year-old granddaughter of Warren Buffett.
She still remembers her trepidations when trying to create a nonfungible token, popularly known as an NFT. “I was definitely like the annoying person who doesn’t get it, asking a bunch of questions,” says the abstract painter and mixed-media artist. But she also felt like she was stepping into a fascinating new world. “It was wild, it was very exciting,” Buffett says. “I was like, ‘Oh no, I have to do all this technological stuff.’ It felt uncomfortable. It was like learning a new language.”
Regarded by much of Wall Street as a curious extravagance, NFTs are digital assets encoded in an online ledger or blockchain as part of a “minting” process, which certifies them as unique and noninterchangeable. This, as with much crypto, creates their authenticity and scarcity. For artists like Buffett, it also establishes an NFT’s provenance and chain of ownership so sales can be tracked in real time.
As a result, the assortment of items now being tokenized and tossed onto the blockchain is near-bottomless: photos, paintings, collages, musical compositions, and virtually every type of art imaginable; game, video, and audio files; celebrity tweets, texts, memes, and selfies. Charmin even began selling toilet-paper-themed NFT art this past spring, smirkingly dubbing it “NFT(P),” nonfungible toilet paper.
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