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Investors in Bitcoin are waking up to another bad morning for the worlds preeminent cryptocurrency. As of the time of this writing, the price of one token is down 6.55% in the last 24 hours to just above $95,000 per coin. It’s a low that Bitcoin has not seen since May. Todays sell-off continues a monthlong trend in which Bitcoin has now lost about 20% of its value. But whats driving this most recent sell-offs? Two culprits are most likely at play. Uncertainty of Fed rate cuts Next month, the Federal Reserve is expected to announce a decision on whether it will change interest rates. The Fed has three options: increase rates, hold rates at current levels, or cut (decrease) rates. Until recently, Wall Street was pretty bullish about the likelihood that the Fed would cut rates in December. When the Fed cuts rates, it’s generally seen as beneficial because rate cuts boost liquidity in markets. Increased liquidity generally prompts investors to allocate more to risk assets. Risk assets include assets like cryptocurrencies and highly volatile stocks (such as AI-adjacent stocks lately). So a Fed rate cut in December would boost liquidity, likely driving investors toward risk assets, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which would likely rise in price. But now, as NBC News notes, in recent days, traders think there is only around a 50% chance that the Fed will cut rates in December. At the beginning of November, the majority of traders thought there was a 90% chance the Fed would do so. This uncertainty over whether the Fed will cut rates in December is likely one of the biggest factors behind Bitcoins fall today. Selloff of tech and crypto stocks Bitcoin is generally seen as a risk asset since its price is highly volatile compared to more traditionally stable assets like bonds. But Bitcoin isnt the only risk asset. Many tech stocks are seen as risk assetsparticularly ones operating in the AI spacebecause their prices can swing so widely as of late. And as of the past day, those risky tech assets have been plummeting. Yesterday alone, the prices of some major tech and AI-adjacent stocks dropped significantly due to both uncertainty about Fed rate cuts and growing fears of an AI bubble. Those drops yesterday included: Palantir Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: PLTR): down 6.53% Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC): down 5.23% Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): down 3.58% Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA): down 6.64% Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN): down 2.71% Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG): down 2.89% Meanwhile, those traditional tech stocks werent the only ones getting hit hard yesterday. As noted by CoinCentral, crypto stocks in the mining and trading space also had a pretty bad day, including: Bitfarms Ltd. (Nasdaq: BITF): down 17.98% Bitdeer Technologies Group (Nasdaq: BTDR): down 20.3% Coinbase Global, Inc. (Nasdaq: COIN): down 6.86% Gemini Space Station, Inc. (Nasdaq: GEMI): down 9.78% Bullish (NYSE: BLSH): down 9.85% When investors see risk asset stocks declining sharplyparticularly ones operating in the crypto spaceit may drive an outflow of investment in cryptocurrencies themselves as they seek safer and more stable investment assets to park their money in. Bitcoin has had a chaotic 2025 Being an investor in Bitcoin has certainly had its highs and lows this year. The token began trading just above $94,000 per coin just after the new year. It got a crypto-friendly Trump administration boost around the time of President Trumps inauguration later that month. But after trading above six figures for the first few months of the year, Bitcoin took a hit, along with most of the stock market, thanks to President Trumps Liberation Day tariffs, which injected more uncertainty into investors’ minds than they had experienced in a long time. By April, Bitcoin had fallen to just above $76,000. However, the crypto recovered nicely since then, steadily rising until it hit an all-time high of over $126,000 in October. But since then, Bitcoin has steadily declined. And after its recent fall, Bitcoin is now up only about 2.8% for the year.
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E-Commerce
Hi there, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In. Last year, I left Twitter gradually, then all at once. Throughout 2024, Elon Musks wildly irresponsible stewardship of his social networkI refuse to call it Xleft me increasingly disengaged. But the role he played in Donald Trumps reelection proved to be my breaking point. As of this week, its been a year since my last tweet. Now, I cant claim to have abandoned Twitter entirely. Im still lurking, though only sporadically. When my reporting for a story leads me thereits certainly one of the principal places people talk about AII go. Add up all my activity, and it amounts to maybe 2% of the time I once spent on the service. (Strangely enough, when I do check in, my feed is flooded with tweets from Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, whos still in federal prison but seemingly using the platform as an exercise in reputational repair.) Largely weaning myself off the social network that served as my principal online hangout for more than 15 years has been an unalloyed blessing. Before I stopped tweeting, I felt increasingly embarrassed by my participation in a club led by Musk. The 12 months since then have been his most indefensible to date, from the pointless humanitarian nightmare inflicted by DOGE cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Grok going Nazi. Being appalled from a distance has been far preferable to tweeting my way through it. The fact that Im a happy ex-Twitter addict isnt just a moral stance. For all of Musks still-unfulfilled blather about turning Twitter into an everything app, the site is shrinking. Thats true in a literal, daily-active-users sense, where its now at risk of being consistently surpassed by Metas Threads. However, Im thinking more of Twitters cultural relevance. The site that once aspired to be the pulse of the planet is clinging to the residue of what it once was. The tweets still flow, but the spark of life is gone. Thats not a universally held opinion, of course. If theres a case for staying on Twitter, its the one outlined by The Arguments Jerusalem Desmas in a piece titled, well, The case for staying on Twitter. Calling it the most influential public square we have, she maintains that departing the site for an alternative such as Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon amounts to deplatforming yourself. If Twitter were a public square, her argument might be airtight. But public squares arent private enterprises operated to serve their owners interests. Twitter is. Thats true even before you consider Musks whim-based management, which has gamed the conversation in ways that consistently make it worse. That said, I may have stayed on Twitter as long as I did in part because nothing else out there seemed any closer to being the internets one true forum. Certainly not its most populous rival, Threads: Every time Meta changes its mind about whether it wants to discourage or boost conversations about news and politics, its a reminder that the company is algorithmically shaping the discourse. One of the lessons Ive learned over the past year is that we dont need a single, defining hub of Twitter-style conversation. Why resign yourself to tolerating Musks vision for social networking when you can assemble your own? Instead of choosing between Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon, Ive been posting to all three simultaneously using Openvibe. Im also having fun with two apps that weave Bluesky and Mastodon posts together with items from RSS feeds and other sources: Flipboards Surf and Iconfactorys Tapestry. And sometimes I use two fine single-service third-party apps: Graysky for Bluesky and Icecubes for Mastodon. My new social network-of-networks is smaller than the one I once had on Twitter, where I peaked at around 95,000 followers. The quality of the conversation is excellent, though, in part because the vast majority of people whose tweets I once cared about are active on the services I use now. And Musk doesnt get to pull any of the levers, though he does pop up as a charactermost recently when Bluesky was awash in glee over Joyce Carol Oates eviscerating him on Twitter. Its to all the Twitter rivals credit that theyre partaking in the open ecosystem reflected in the various apps Im running. (Bluesky and Mastodon are all in, while Threads is still dipping its toe.) Meanwhile, Musk has doubled down on Twitters long-standing policy of preventing people from using the service in any way except via its official apps and website. The services walled-off nature is yet another reason why it feels like its fading away. I stopped tweeting because I couldnt stand having my online identity wed to Musks any longer. Now Im sorry I didnt divorce myself from his mess earlier. Well never get the lovable Twitter of yore back, but Im too busy enjoying my post-Twitter social networking life to be all that wistful. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company The secret to phone detoxingHint: You’ve got it in the bag, kiddo. Read More Creators are suffering from a mental health crisis, new study showsOne in 10 creators in North America reported having suicidal thoughts tied to their work, a rate that’s nearly double the national average. Read More If AI won’t follow the rules, should the media even try?With AI scraping content and ignoring paywalls, publishers face a brutal choice: play defense, go on offense, or get left behind. Read More Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey are getting AI voice clones with ElevenLabsCaine said in a statement that ElevenLabs is ‘using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it.’ Read More Why did SoftBank sell off its Nvidia stake?The move underscores CEO Masayoshi Son’s contrasting views of the futures of Nvidia and OpenAI. Read More Meet your new AI tutorTry new learning modes in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Read More
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E-Commerce
Is there such a thing as being too attractive? For fitness influencers, it turns out there might be. Contrary to popular belief, new research suggests that being too good-looking can actually be a disadvantage, particularly in the online fitness space. The study, coauthored by researchers at the University of Dayton and University of Oregon, found that the more attractive the influencer, the lower the engagement they received on their social media posts. The reason? It all comes down to a sense of relatability, and what researchers have termed the beauty backfire effect.” In the study, researchers showed 299 U.S. adults mock Instagram posts featuring a highly attractive female fitness influencer, a moderately attractive one, or a text-only control. The halo effect and pretty privilege are both widely studied phenomena where peoples good looks often work to their advantage. Yet the highly attractive influencer scored lowest on both relatability and engagement. Participants also reported a dip in self-esteem after viewing her post. The moderately attractive influencer, on the other hand, boosted participants confidence. It makes sense. When attempting to conjure up motivation to get off the sofa and go to the gym, scrolling through posts of rock-hard abs and fit-fluencers barely breaking a sweat can sometimes have the opposite effect. Researchers also linked this to social comparison theory. We are all guilty of comparing ourselves to others. Sometimes that comparison can be motivating, other times it can be discouraging. If a fitness influencer is too attractive, the body ideal they are selling no longer feels attainable. In a follow-up study, researchers found that highly attractive female fitness influencers faced stronger backlash than equally attractive men. This backfire effect is also most apparent in the fitness space. When the same experiment was conducted with finance influencers, appearance didnt have as much of an impact. Relatability is often an influencers most valuable currency. Social media has evolved from overly polished posts and curated feeds to a focus on authenticity. Today, people gravitate toward influencers with day jobs, tuning in to watch them go about their normal lives, rather than mega-influencers partying with celebrities or jet-setting every other week whose lives feels out of reachor out of touch. The last study backs this up. While the beauty backfire effect can undermine influencers trying to grow their followings, its not unavoidable. If those deemed highly attractive pair their posts with modest captions, talking about their struggles or insecurities, the relatability gap closes. If theyre boastful or adopt self-congratulatory language, the gap widens again. If you’re having trouble racking up the likes on social media, it could just be that you’re too good-looking.
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E-Commerce
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