Opinion

Crypto has long been sold as the tradition-busting future of finance, but its collapse is following a decades-old script. Take Coinbase. The crypto exchange went public at $250 a share in April 2021, when Bitcoin was worth more than $63,000, near its all-time high. Now Bitcoin is flirting with $20,000, and Coinbase is trading at less than $50 a share. ...

  With Gen Z bringing back everything from “Friends” to cassette tapes, and Will Smith the most talked-about celebrity of the year, it’s tempting to think everything ‘90s is in right now. In financial markets this week, analogies with 1998 have become ubiquitous as the yen has buckled, increasing speculation Japan will have to intervene to strengthen its currency for ...

  Russian forces have bombed grain silos and farms and plundered Ukrainian wheat, which US diplomats say Moscow is now trying to sell on. Ukraine’s Black Sea ports are blocked by mines to protect the shoreline from attack by Russia’s navy, which is also bottling up shipments. And yet, if President Vladimir Putin is to be believed, Western selfishness and ...

A bill introduced to Parliament by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss seeks to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol, revive Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangement and protect the Good Friday Agreement. On all three fronts, however, it is as likely to make things worse — all while damaging Britain’s international reputation and further straining relations with its largest trading partner. Perhaps the calculus ...

After solidifying his control of a $2 telecom carriage business, the world’s seventh-richest man is seeking his next fortune in a $1 content-streaming enterprise. Actually, the spoils from the digital rights for Indian Premier League cricket, snagged by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Viacom18 by dethroning Walt Disney & Co for the next five years, aren’t even at the $1 mark yet. ...

  News that Alphabet Inc’s Google sidelined an engineer who claimed its artificial intelligence system had become sentient after he’d had several months of conversations with it prompted plenty of skepticism from AI scientists. Many have said, via postings on Twitter, that senior software engineer Blake Lemoine projected his own humanity onto Google’s chatbot generator LaMDA. Whether they’re right, or ...

  In July 2008, with the global financial crisis trashing the world’s economy, then US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked legislators for the power to grant unlimited credit to his country’s mortgage agencies: “If you have a squirt gun in your pocket you may have to take it out; if you have a bazooka in your pocket, and people know ...

Central banks have scarcely covered themselves in glory these past few years. Most have one goal and one goal only: to keep inflation low. In most countries, they have spectacularly failed at this job. In much of the developed world, inflation has reached many multi-year highs. I can’t think of a central bank whose record has been as lamentable as ...

Tourists are coming back to Japan — but while in the past they were driving Mario Karts down the main streets of Tokyo, now they’re being asked to sit in groups distanced from locals at restaurants, and keep masks on while eating. For those eager to get back into Japan, the country’s first step towards reopening to tourists in the ...

  China suffered a rare diplomatic setback when 10 Pacific Island nations deflected its offer of a sweeping trade and security deal. However, the rebuff won’t end China’s efforts to exert influence over these tiny and far-flung countries. The US needs to respond with equal resolve — or risk losing ground in a strategically vital region. Though lightly populated, the ...