The Crown Estate 👑
This Week in Review☕️: The Infamous Entrepreneur is back | The Queens Multibillion Dollar Fortune | Rental Housing is the next Big Bet | The dwindling Crypto market | The World is on the edge of Five
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Quick Bites:
Business📈: Calling all suckers! Adam Neumann is back- this time with a crypto angle, Bloomberg reports.
The former WeWork CEO who recently made headlines for "Flow"- his new venture-backed real estate startup, will reportedly include a digital wallet enabling the use of cryptocurrencies.
Background💡: In trying to scale quickly, WeWork's grow-at-any-cost rise to riches started to look like a Ponzi scheme in hindsight.
Adam Neumann went from millennial entrepreneur to martyr in a span of days over the pandemic.
Turns out being a spiritual Kabbalah Guru can't stop you from going down.. Wall Street doesn't care about religion, just your reserves
However, with a $350mn investment from Andreessen Horowitz last month, Neumann has once again come in the spotlight for aiming to transform the rental housing market.
Flow plans to launch a digital wallet that can store crypto- among other currencies including US dollars.
Neumann’s interest in crypto- which is demonstrated by the use of blockchain to track carbon credits by another startup he helped found, Flowcarbon- could be a good sign for the dwindling crypto industry, Bloomberg reports.
“If he can build something as big as WeWork again, I think that will be really positive for our industry if there is an element of Web3”
-Michael Anderson, Framework Ventures Co-Founder
Our Thoughts💡: Personally, we're excited to see how deep Neumann will go into crypto.
Irrespective of what the world says, if there's one thing for certain- it's that this guy doesn't lack passion or ACTION 🙌🏻
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The Monarchy 👸: Queen Elizabeth II died last week, leaving behind over $500mn in personal assets from her 70 years on the throne, Fortune reports.
Let's have a look at what happens to her fortune now.
Key Highlights, reported by Fortune:
💡Elizabeth II accumulated over $500mn in personal assets, mainly through investments, art, jewelry and real estate.
💡Her Majesty also inhertited nearly $70mn from the Queen Mother when she died in 2002, including investments in paintings, fine china, horses, stamp collection and Faberge egg collections.
King Charles III will now inherit her personal assets. Due to a unique legal clause (that aims to preserve the royal family's wealth), Charles won't pay the 40% inheritance tax.
Having said that, in reality, most of Her Majesty's inheritance actually belongs to the "Royal Firm", the $28bn empire.
Background💡: The Royal Firm is a group of senior members of the House of Windsor that the Queen was the head of. This "firm" pumps millions of pounds into the UK's economy annually via televised events and tourism.
Though the family doesn't personally profit from the business, the purpose is to boost the economy. This, in turn, can provide wealth to the Windsors through free media coverage and royal warrants, Fortune reports.
In addition, the monarchy holds around $28bn in real estate assets as of 2021:
💡The Crown Estate: $19.5bn
💡Buckingham Palace: $4.9bn
💡The Duchy of Cornwall: $1.3bn
💡The Duchy of Lancaster: $748mn
💡Kensington Palace: $630mn
Charles won't be directly inheriting these properties as these properties can never be sold.
Our Thoughts💡: Hmm.. How does a person whose dedicated themselves to public service all their life accumulate a personal fortune of half a billion?
That's the REAL question 🤔
Climate Change🌱: The Climate Crisis has driven the world to the brink of five "disastrous" tipping points, study finds.
Our thoughts on the matter👇🏻
Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change, The Guardian reports.
Planet Earth to Humans: You hear me now?! 🔊
Greenland lost a record 532 bn tonnes of ice last year. This would be enough water to raise global sea levels by 1.5mm.
What that much melted ice looks like?
Imagine six olympic-sized swimming pools made every second in 2022.
According to The Guardian, A few key dangerous tipping points are:
💡The collapse of Greenland's ice cap- which has led to a massive sea level rise
💡The collapse of an important current in the North Atlantic- disrupting rainfall upon which billions of people depend on for food
💡An abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost
“The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” researchers concluded.
“The world is heading towards 2-3C of global warming."
Culture 🧠 : Too much time off can be bad for you.
In a recent study led by the American Psychological Association, researchers found the happiest people were those who only had 2-5 hours of leisure time a day.
Personally, too much free time makes us overthink AND overeat.. aka a one-way path to a midday cookie binge 🍪 🍩🍫🍮🧁
Studies have shown that- too much downtime makes us more depressed, stressed and emotionally exhausted, CNBC reports.
Happiness levels decreased for participants who had +5 hours of free time, because "it undermines one's sense of purpose", says a social psychologist.
Our Thoughts💡: We've all been there- when we feel stress because we have too little free time.
Personally, we love the idea of having an entire day to just Netflix & Chill, but we'd personally go batshit crazy within the hour. Sometimes the idea is more fun than reality.
The truth is- there is such a thing as TOO MUCH FREE TIME!
Quicker Bites:
Carlos Alcaraz, 19, wins US Open to become youngest World no.1 in Men's Tennis history.
The UK remains in period of national mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Apple iOS 16 releases today.
New York declares state of emergency over Polio.
Russia's front line collapses and Ukraine nears a stunning victory.
US marked the 21st anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks.
Xi to meet Putin in 1st trip outside China since Covid began.