Essential stories from Fast Company for the week of January 8-12

Welcome to Fast Company Digest, essential stories from tech, design, impact, and work life, narrated by Noah App. I'm Fast Company deputy editor and host of The New Way We Work podcast, Kathleen Davis. Here are this week's stories. First, with fraud, scams, meltdowns, and price crashes, it's been a rough 2 years for Bitcoin investors. But the good news, it looks like the long crypto winter has come to an end. Bitcoin is now up over 160% since the start of last year. Author Jeff Wilzer interviews experts about what lessons investors can learn from the last bear market.

Narrated by NOAH. Listen to more of the world's best journalism on the NOAH app or at newsoveraudio.com. For NOAH, this is Sam Scholl reading from Fast Company. Where on the 7th of January, 2024, Jeff Wilson writes, "What's behind Bitcoin's huge comeback?" It's been a rough 2 years for Bitcoiners. Most of the news from crypto land had the odor of fraud, scams, meltdowns, price crashes, and villains such as Sam Bankman-Fried. NFTs fizzled, the metaverse became a punchline, AI stole the spotlight. But quietly, without much hype, Bitcoin has once again emerged from the dead. "In terms of price, 2023 was an absolutely fucking remarkable year for Bitcoin," says investor Meltem Demirz, as the cryptocurrency recently topped $45,000 for the first time since April of 2022. Many see the "crypto winter" as a purge that cleansed the system. "We had all that huge selling pressure and we're done, we bottomed out," says Peter McCormick, host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, referring to the FTX-fueled negativity. "We washed all that crap away." Bitcoin is now up over 160% since the start of 2023. We're in the early stages of a bull market, says Corey Clipston, CEO of Swan, a Bitcoin media and investment company. Clipston is so confident in an emerging bull run and its influx of Bitcoin newbies that he's boosting Swan's monthly advertising budget from $30,000 to more than $1 million. He's also grown his staff from 90 people to 150. From far away, all this looks perplexing. As the price churned higher while the news seemed bearish. This left investors confused and skeptical. "It's the most hated rally," says Demirz. "Investors are tired of hearing about Bitcoin, tired of looking at Bitcoin." Because many Bitcoiners didn't expect the price to jump so soon, says Demirz, everyone hates this rally. But now Bitcoiners can point to specific catalysts for a bull run, "The ETF is coming," says Isaiah Jackson, a Bitcoin educator and author of Bitcoin and Black America, referring to the widely speculated and coveted spot ETFs from BlackRock and the other financial institutions, which they expect will make it easier for the masses to buy Bitcoin, further pushing up the price. Then there is the halving, which has an almost mystical role in the crypto space, Roughly every 4 years, the rewards earned by Bitcoin miners—as an incentive to do it—are chopped in half, which helps keep the supply of Bitcoin scarce. "We know what the market cycle does in regards to halvings," says Jason Williams, author of Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can Fuck With, referring to accompanying price pumps. These are the surface reasons, but then there is the deeper stuff. Critics of Bitcoin say that it's a Ponzi scheme, arguing that it's inherently worthless and the only reason the price goes up is that a greater fool buys it as well, but at some point the music will stop. McCormick agrees that yes, a Ponzi scheme is in the mix, but says, don't look at Bitcoin. The interest alone on the US debt is approaching $1 trillion a year, says McCormick, who argues that the government will keep printing money. —in the form of more debt—to keep the wobbly financial system from collapsing. But this only exacerbates the problem. He expects the U.S. government to keep printing money until the system breaks, and he sees Bitcoin as the ultimate hedge. This is a common Bitcoiner worldview. "The debt system is a Ponzi," says McCormick. "Holding your money in euros or dollars is a huge fucking risk." Jackson, the Bitcoin and Black America author, remains so bullish on Bitcoin in part because he's so bearish on the US dollar. "I believe we're already in a recession, they just haven't told everybody," says Jackson. While by most measures the economy looks healthy—that is, historically low unemployment—Jackson believes you can see the real impact of inflation in grocery stores and a drop in demand for entertainment. Jackson imagines that in a recession Bitcoin will reveal its true strength. —an alternate store of value that's decoupled from mainstream finance. It's also possible, of course, that in a recession people will have less money and choose not to spend it on Bitcoin. This hasn't been tested. When you believe that Bitcoin is the future, you gobble up as much as you can, and you don't really change your investment strategy when the price crashes. You just buy more at a discount. Or in crypto speak, you buy the fucking dip. McCormick keeps all his money in Bitcoin, except for a 3-month cash flow. He doesn't even see this as investing. "I don't consider myself an investor anymore," says McCormick. "If you're an investor, you're buying it as a trade. I'm just a Bitcoiner. I just believe that the best place to have any disposable money is in Bitcoin." Clipston uses dollar-cost averaging to purchase Bitcoin on a set schedule. And that schedule is daily. Every day, he makes an automated purchase regardless of the price. Which means he's been steadily accumulating Bitcoin throughout the crypto winter. Most Bitcoiners embrace some version of this strategy: buy as much as you can whenever you can. Exhibit A: Permabull Michael Saylor, who keeps "hoovering Bitcoin" and recently called the looming Bitcoin spot ETF the biggest development on Wall Street in 30 years. Still, there were some lessons learned from the last bear market. While longtime Bitcoin hodlers—for example, holders of a cryptocurrency who buy and hold regardless of price—were unscathed by the crash if they didn't sell, others bought more exotic financial instruments that tried to squeeze extra yield. Investors tried to rehypothecate Bitcoin by plunking it on exchanges and earning interest, like Celsius and Voyager. Both of these went belly up and investors lost millions. "Any time I've tried to be clever or cute, I've fucked up and done dumb things," says Demirz. She's now more wary of dodgy exchanges that promise juicy passive income from hosting your Bitcoin. And she also warns about trying to "time the market"—as in only buying at the absolute bottom. "A ton of people were sidelined in cash and thought we'd go back below $20K." says Demirz, who knows a guy who wanted to invest $20 million at that price point, but it never happened, so he missed the party. This is why Demirz now follows a strategy she calls KISS, for Keep It Stupid Simple. She parks Bitcoin in a retirement plan and doesn't sweat the short-term volatility. I sleep well at night knowing I have a level of Bitcoin exposure that works for me. As for where all this is going? "Price predictions are stupid, really dumb," says Williams, but when pressed he says that he'd be "hugely disappointed if we don't blow through 6 figures in this upcoming cycle." McCormick acknowledged the folly of price predictions but says, "I don't see it ever going sub-$20K again," and wouldn't be surprised by a $150,000 or a $500,000 Bitcoin. Clipston thinks that by the end of 2025, "I would consider anything sub-$350K reasonable." Demirz demurred from a concrete number but predicts "higher highs" and "higher lows." Then again, no one really knows where this is headed or even why the price is where it is today. All we know is the price. Demirz, a longtime and respected analyst in the space, says that yes, of course, there are "second-order narratives" like the halving and market dynamics. But at the end of the day, the biggest thing in Bitcoin is just the fucking price. It's taken me a long time to accept this because we want to believe there's more, but it's price. It's price. She expanded on this in a recent X Twitter thread. Her point is dead simple and tough to refute. When the price of Bitcoin plunged in late 2021, people stopped caring about Bitcoin. Now the price is higher and people are starting to care again. Chicken and egg? Regardless of causality, it's the price. "People have written 400-page books that are like philosophical treatises, and I'm like, 'Shut the fuck up,'" says Demirz. "This is about number go up. And when number go up, people pay attention. It's not that complicated." You were listening to Fast Company, where Jeff Wilson writes "What's Behind Bitcoin's Huge Comeback." This article was published on January 7th, 2024. And was read by Sam Scholl for NOAA. And next, some parts of the U.S.

finally saw some snow this past week thanks to a big winter storm, but it came after a record 700-day snow drought for most of the northeastern United States. Senior writer Adele Peters explains what scientists say are the long-term trends for a future of wetter and browner winters.

For NOAA, this is Adrienne Walker reading from Fast Company. On the 5th of January, 2024, Adele Peters writes, what's causing this year's snow drought? In a typical winter, Duluth, Minnesota gets 86 inches of snow. This season has been different. On Christmas Eve, when temperatures reached a balmy 48 degrees, it rained. The city had a brown Christmas, something that had happened only twice before over the past 8 decades. Over the month of December, the area got less than a quarter of its average snowfall. It's one of several parts of the country experiencing snow drought, or abnormally low amounts of snow. In New York City, it has been 691 days since Central Park saw more than an inch of snow. In Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., it's been more than 700 days. In Colorado and Utah, as of late December, snow totals were around 60 to 70% of normal. In California, the snowpack is at 25% of the normal level. Some areas, including parts of the Northeast, have snow in the forecast this weekend, and storms throughout the rest of the season could bring totals up to the average. But the long-term trend is moving toward less snow in winter as climate warms. At the University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Lab, a research field station in the Sierra Nevada mountain range where scientists study snow, lead scientist and manager of the lab, Andrew Schwartz, says, "We're somewhat slowly seeing a transition over to being a rain-dominated climate here. At this time of year, there would typically be 6 or 7 feet of snow on the ground. At the moment, there's only around 2 feet." In fall and spring, because of warmer temperatures, precipitation is more likely to be in the form of rain than snow. Snow drought is a particularly big problem in the western U.S., where snowpack in the mountains is a major source of water. Accumulated winter precipitation gets stored up there and persists until we need it, which is when things start warming up and it's time to plant farm fields, says Keith Musselman, who studies water resources at the University of Colorado Boulder. Rivers start to flow and ecosystems rely heavily on that water that's coming from the mountains. In California, the Sierra snowpack supplies nearly a third of the state's water as the snow melts in the spring and summer. If there's rain instead of snow, there's both a risk of more flooding from the rain and water shortages in the summer when the state almost never gets precipitation. Without snow on the ground, forests dry out more quickly, and there's a greater risk of fire. When a massive wildfire started in Alberta, Canada in spring 2016, one of the drivers was the fact that snow had melted early. The Midwest and East don't face the same challenges. In the East, there's not a water supply issue, says Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather. It's been extremely wet in the East here over many months. In fact, it was one of the wettest years in some parts of the East. So the impact has been a little bit different. Lack of snow impacts businesses like ski resorts and snowplow operators. Across the country, it also affects the environment. A blanket of snow helps insulate the ground, protecting plants and animals with underground burrows when temperatures drop. For farmers, snow helps protect wheat that's planted in the winter. Wildlife that have adapted to live in the snow, like the snowshoe hare, rely on snow for camouflage. Without snow to reflect sunlight, temperatures are also getting even hotter. Snow obviously hasn't disappeared completely, and when it does snow, climate change can make it more extreme since a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. Last winter, the Sierras saw historic amounts of snow. UC Berkeley's Snow Lab recorded more than 62 feet. In a phenomenon known as weather whiplash, climate change is also making dry years even drier. As the planet continues to warm, the Western U.S. could eventually hit a threshold where there's little or no snow. Depending on the literature that you're looking at, that happens anywhere from 2050 to 2100, Schwartz says. In parts of the Northeast, if high emissions continue, the number of snow-covered days in the winter could drop by around 40%. States like New Jersey and Rhode Island might have snow-free winters. In parts of the West that rely on snowmelt as a water source and don't have another option, some communities might have to relocate. To put it politely, it's just going to pose a whole lot of challenges and ones that we'd be better off not forcing ourselves into. Short says. It's one of many reasons why it's so critical to cut emissions now. You were listening to Fast Company, where Adele Peters writes, "What's Causing This Year's Snow Drought?" This article was published on January 5, 2024, and was read by Adrian Walker for NOAA.

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