People working to keep the value of the money they earned is, in fact, good.

As for paying an "unknown" person in an "unknown" country as an intermediary... isn't that how international transactions work? Do you know the people at Western Union? Do you know which country the SWIFT servers are located in? Or which routers you use to connect to a bank's website?

The fact is, workers abroad found a solution to remit their earnings back home, cheaply and effectively. That's good.

The company may have foreign owners, but the company operating in your state is still under the jurisdiction of the state regulator.

If your state is "deregulated," then the power company provides transmission, but not generation, to its customers. In that case they bill you the supply cost based on what the market is offering.

If your state is not "deregulated," then the power company is providing both transmission and generation to its customers. In that case the state regulator will define the allowed markup on the generated kilowatt hours they supply.

True for many messaging apps, but not all!

Session and SimpleX don't use phone numbers or email addresses as identifiers, which greatly limits inbound messages from unknown senders.

Echostar's market cap may only be $8B, but its enterprise value is > $30B. Market cap is just the sum total of all the shares outstanding. This is what a buyer could theoretically take over ownership of the company for. But for a heavily-indebted company like Echostar, the debt obligations are significant... $8B may buy you the company, but it also buys the obligation for all the debt.

You just said it: buying reputation. By adding cost to the system, a hurdle has been added to weed out a significant portion of bad actors, because spamming then costs money.

The reason phone scams took off in the 1990s is because the cost to make calls dropped to basically zero. And numbers are easily spoofed, so verification isn't easy.

With an identity that can't be spoofed, and takes time to become valuable, a lot of the low-end spam would disappear. Either because the spammers would need to spend years developing reputation, or because they'd need to pay for stolen identities. There would still be spam, but less of it.

Not sure why the parent is modded "Troll"; it's the most substantive comment so far.

There are good examples of organizations that provide their seal of approval as an aid to consumer purchasing: UL, IIHS, OU.

It would have been nice if the administration proposed a "spinoff" of Energy Star instead of trying to kill it, but that's not their style.

It can certainly matter. For instance:

The sales tax rate isn't the same for all purchasers. Non-profit organizations are often exempt from paying sales tax. The price on the shelf is the price they pay.

Sales tax holidays. States routinely have "sales tax holidays" wherein the sales tax is suspended for a period of time.

Sales tax is an itemizable deduction on federal income taxes. Filers utilizing that deduction need to know how much sales tax they paid throughout the year.

Store coupons almost always exclude the taxable amount ("$5 off $25, excluding taxes").

Backing by the full faith and credit of a government is not a requirement for a currency. That just happens to be how modern fiat currencies are "backed".

Yet even after Bretton Woods, central banks still hold gold. Gold is a reserve asset, but not backed by any government.

Does that happen often, where ultra-high density housing is build amongst low-density housing?

The problem is, NIMBYs block any amount of densification. Allowing duplexes or fourplexes in areas zoned for single-family would measurably increase the housing supply, without the need for skyscrapers. But NIMBYs block those as well. In my town, they even block mother-in-law suites.

"may as well invest in the USD" is not so easy in much of the world. Billions of people live under monetary oppression, forced to use the fiat (and non-convertible) currencies of their own governments. People aren't dumb -- they know when their savings is evaporating -- but actually exchanging for USD is non-trivial for many people. Some can't have bank accounts: women in some parts of the world, or displaced refugees. And those that do have such accounts face restrictions on the amount they can hold in USD, if USD deposits are permitted at all. So people turn to physical cash, which if often brought (or smuggled) into the country by family members working abroad. It's not scalable, reliable, or secure.

So tokenized USD is a solution to that problem. Access to crypto doesn't require an account: anyone with an Internet connection can get a wallet. Someone can relatively easily begin receiving remittances from family members abroad.

As for this stablecoin... well, no, I'm not seeing anything special about it.

Comparing the Bosch product spec sheets between the US and Ireland (in the EU), they both disclose this.

The US product sheet lists the number of wash options as: "3 + 2 additional in Home Connect" at the top of page 1.
The IE product sheet lists out the options only available via HomeConnect, which is better, albeit in smaller font on page 2.

Facilitating crime is only a bad thing if the crimes are bad.

Billions of people in the world live under oppressive monetary regimes, with governments forcing people to save and spend in a local currency that the government devalues overnight (Zimbabwe, Egypt, Nigeria). Transacting in USD or some other stable currency is illegal. Bitcoin allows them a way out, as it's permissionless and hard to stop. These people using Bitcoin are able to prevent their government from stealing their savings.

As for illegal drugs, consider mifepristone. This drug is unavailable to women in many places, including 52 of the 54 countries in Africa and in some parts of the US. Purchasing and selling are illegal, but the transaction can happen when facilitated by a method of payment without a gatekeeper. These women using Bitcoin are able to take back control of their bodies.

Starting three years ago, young Russian men were forced into taking up arms and shooting Ukrainians. Those that fled Russia were limited (either by law or by "enhanced pat downs") in how much money they could bring with them. Western sanctioned restricted accessing their Russian bank accounts outside of Russia. But by converting those rubles to Bitcoin, the money becomes accessible anywhere, and is unconscionable by border control. These men are using Bitcoin to avoid committing violence.

Amazon buying out iRobot would have saved the company, but the FTC and EU regulatory reviews caused the deal to be dragged out for years, until Amazon gave up and walked away. What was the point of such an extensive review of a trillion dollar company buying a $1.4B vacuum company? Year after year, iRobot was losing market share to competitors. Amazon didn't have a line of robovacs, so the deal wasn't a form of consolidation. The UK regulator approved the deal based on these findings.

Allegedly, the FTC had a fear that Amazon learning people's home floor plans would be a breach of privacy (you know, because the P in FTC stands for "privacy"). But Amazon walked away, so.... victory? As a result, iRobot will go under. People will lose their jobs. And Chinese robovac companies will be learning American's floor plans, for whatever that's worth. Much better.

Their lack of change fees is still a differentiator. And cancellation of even the low-end fares gets you a flight credit. For now.

The US government seized bitcoins from The Silk Road a long time ago. They've been sitting on them for a while. "Immediately" is long gone.