3 charts for you today:
Bitcoin's big day
This week El Salvador became the first country to officially make Bitcoin legal tender, adding it to the US dollar — the currency El Salvador has predominantly used since adopting it in 2001.
El Salvador's economy is one of the most reliant in the world on remittances (assets or money sent home by migrant workers) — which account for about one-quarter of GDP according to data from the World Bank. El Salvador's president is hoping that Bitcoin makes it easier (and cheaper) for migrant Salvadorans to send money back to El Salvador, while reducing the country's dependence on the US dollar, and helping to reach the ~70% of Salvadorans that don't have a bank account.
Of course, just making something legal doesn't mean it will become widely adopted — and two obvious barriers spring to mind. The first is a hard technological barrier; a majority of the El Salvador population doesn't have access to the internet. The second will be convincing the significant portion of the population that are skeptical about Bitcoin and its future, some of whom turned out to protest the new law this week.
You get $30, and you get $30...
To encourage adoption of the cryptocurrency, El Salvador is giving people $30 worth of Bitcoin if they download a digital wallet called "Chivo" (which is reportedly local slang for "cool" in El Salvador).In true Bitcoin fashion, the cryptocurrency marked El Salvador's big day by falling more than 10% in value, reinforcing its tendency to be highly volatile.
TikTok users are now spending more time watching content than YouTube users are, according to a new report from App Annie. According to the data the average American (Android) user is watching almost 25 hours a month on TikTok, more than the ~23 hours a month the average YouTube user squeezes in. In the UK TikTok is even further ahead, with the average TikToker spending 26 hours a month on the app, ahead of a 16 hour average for YouTube users.
Quick dopamine hit, plz
Those comparisons are more interesting when you consider that most TikTok videos are somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds (although the maximum is up to 3 minutes). That suggests that the typical TikTok user is quite happy to sit and watch somewhere around 200 different 15 second videos every single day, compared to say a handful of YouTube videos that might run 10+ minutes. How far can the "short-form" format be pushed?
Okay we had another chart lined up, but this headline just grabbed our attention at the last minute.
Data from CB Insights reveals that there are now more than 800 "unicorns" (private startup companies worth more than $1bn) around the world.
Those unicorn companies, which include Stripe, SpaceX, Bytedance (TikTok owner), Epic Games (Fortnite creators), Reddit, Revolut, Discord... and 800 other super promising companies are worth a total of $2.6 trillion at their latest valuations. Remarkably, that is pretty much exactly what the world's most valuable company, Apple, is currently worth (give or take a few billion).
Unicorns aren't so rare
Startups with three commas in their valuation got their name because unicorns were meant to be rare. That is clearly no longer the case — which means we probably need a new name to describe highly valued startups. Suggestions welcome!
PS: Thanks to Anand and his team at CB Insights for the data, the full list of all 800+ unicorns is here if you're interested.
1) Almost 60% of all college students in the United States are now female — the highest proportion in history.
2) The Feds are reportedly looking into why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken, and whether franchisees are allowed to try and repair the machines themselves. Currently about 12% of McDonald's ice cream machines are broken in the US, according to data from mcbroken.com.
3) President Biden's average approval rating has taken a sharp dive, presumably over the handling of Afghanistan, according to the latest aggregated polling data from fivethirtyeight.
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5) Ford has just hired the most senior person who was working on the secretive Apple car, Doug Field. Having previously been Tesla's chief vehicle engineer the hire is a massive coup for Ford, which is aiming for 40% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2030.
6) New research has found that those with narcissistic personality traits tend to rise to the position of CEO 29% faster than those with similar skills, but fewer narcissistic traits.
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