Category Archives: Business

Who Won the $731 Million Powerball?

Someone in Maryland is suddenly $731 million richer.

A jackpot-winning Powerball ticket was sold at a convenience store in Lonaconing, Md., a down-on-its-luck former mining town in the virus-battered northwestern corner of the state. The ticket matched all six numbers during Wednesday evening’s Powerball drawing.

The $731.1 million jackpot is the fourth largest in Powerball’s 28-year history and the sixth largest lottery jackpot ever in the United States, Powerball announced on Thursday. The drawing was the highest the Powerball jackpot has been since March 2019, when it rose to $768 million.

Powerball did not immediately name the winner. Lottery winners in Maryland can choose to remain anonymous, and they have at least 182 days to claim the prize.

The winning ticket was sold at Coney Market, a convenience store that sells subs and pizza in Lonaconing, a small town — population 1,200 — in Allegany County, which has the most Covid-19 cases per capita in the state. About a quarter of the population of Lonaconing lives below the poverty line, according to census data.

“We were surprised and very happy,” Richard Ravenscroft, the store’s owner, said in an interview on Thursday. “We don’t know for who, but we are happy for somebody.”

The store will receive a $100,000 bonus from the Maryland Lottery for selling the winning ticket. The winning numbers in Wednesday’s drawing were 40, 53, 60, 68, 69 and a Powerball of 22.

According to Powerball, the winner can choose to have an estimated pretax annuity of $731.1 million paid in 30 payments over 29 years, or a lump sum of $546.8 million, also before taxes. The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are one in 292.2 million.

Another national lottery closed in on a record jackpot this week: Before its drawing on Friday, Mega Millions estimates that its jackpot will reach $970 million, which would be the second-largest prize in the game’s history.

A lingering mythology holds that the winners of big jackpots become cursed after their strokes of good fortune.

One influential study in 1978 found that lottery winners were not any happier than their neighbors or more optimistic about the future. Other studies have countered the notion of the so-called lottery curse, suggesting that the winners’ general psychological well-being bounces back over time after cashing in the prize.

Mr. Ravenscroft, who has owned Coney Market for six years, said he wished the winner luck. “I really think that they have quite an opportunity, and I hope they use good judgment,” he said.

The Powerball jackpot was last hit in New York in the Sept. 16 drawing. Since then, there had been 35 games in a row without a jackpot winner until Wednesday.

The next drawing will be on Saturday, when the Powerball jackpot resets to $20 million.

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Bitcoin falls 11% after report suggests a critical flaw in the cryptocurrency called ‘double spend’ may have occurred | Currency News | Financial and Business News

  • Bitcoin fell as much as 11% on Thursday after a report from BitMEX Research suggested that a critical flaw called “double spend” had occurred in the Bitcoin blockchain.
  • Double spend is a highly feared scenario where a user is able to spend their bitcoins more than once.
  • A double-spend event has not been confirmed, and BitMEX has given mixed messages.
  • Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.

Bitcoin fell as much as 11% on Thursday, hitting its lowest level in nearly three weeks, as the popular cryptocurrency was hit with a double whammy that jolted faith in its user base.

First, Janet Yellen, President Joe Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, suggested during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday that lawmakers “curtail” the use of Bitcoin because of its use in illicit activities.

And second, an unconfirmed report from BitMEX Research on Wednesday suggested that a critical flaw called “double spend” had occurred in the Bitcoin blockchain.

Double spend is when someone is able to spend the same bitcoin twice. It is a feared and dire scenario for the digital asset, and the blockchain was thought to have solved the issue when Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper in 2009.

Early attempts to launch a digital cash system were ultimately halted by vulnerabilities that could have enabled double spending and undermined faith in the system.

BitMEX Research tweeted that “it appears as if a small double spend of around 0.00062063 BTC ($21) was detected.”

Read more: GOLDMAN SACHS: These 22 stocks still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels – and are set to explode amid higher earnings in 2021 as the economy recovers

BitMEX later said it appeared that the double spend was actually an RBF transaction, which is when an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction is replaced with a new transfer paying a higher fee. But BitMEX’s Fork Monitor said that “no (RBF) fee bumps have been detected.”

BitMEX said in another tweet: “A transaction in the losing chain sent 0.00062063 BTC to the address 1D6aebVY5DbS1v7rNTnX2xeYcfWM3os1va, and a transaction in the winning chain which spent the same inputs only sent 0.00014499 BTC to this address.”

If the double spend did in fact occur, it could be a fatal blow to the popular cryptocurrency, indicating that the flaw Nakamoto set out to solve remains a vulnerability that could crush confidence in the asset.

Meanwhile, institutional investors continue to gain exposure to bitcoin. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday said BlackRock had enabled two of its mutual funds to invest in the cryptocurrency.

Read more: We spoke to the Winklevoss-backed crypto platform Gemini about Bitcoin, how to use stable coins, and why regulation won’t kill the boom in digital currencies



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Instacart is firing every employee who voted to unionize

Instacart is laying off every employee who voted to unionize, Motherboard reports. The news comes as the company shuts down in-store operations at some grocery stores amid the coronavirus pandemic and doubles down on curbside pickups.

The layoffs impact 10 unionized workers at a grocery store called Mariano’s, in addition to other Instacart employees. The group in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, voted to unionize last year with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546 (UFCW). It was a landmark victory for gig workers and represented “the first time employees of tech companies that rely predominantly on contract labor have formed a union to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions,” according to my colleague Nick Statt.

Employees were in the process of negotiating their first contract when news of the layoffs hit. “These layoffs are totally discouraging for any gig workers who are trying to do something to make these jobs better,” one unionized worker told Motherboard. They said they were fighting for health insurance and vacation time in their initial contract.

UFCW told Motherboard the layoffs will impact nearly 2,000 of the company’s 10,000 grocery store workers.

The news could have a chilling effect on other organizing efforts by Instacart employees across the country. The company’s leadership has already shown its hostility toward organizers, running a union-busting campaign that included bringing in managers to the grocery store in Skokie to convince workers to vote against the union.

Although the pandemic has changed the company’s in-store shopping model, it’s also brought a significant increase in demand for grocery delivery. This year, Instacart plans to go public, an event that could value the company at roughly $30 billion.

The company announced the layoffs in a blog post about new grocery pickup models. Instacart said it would transfer some of the impacted shoppers to other grocery stores and provide “transition assistance” to people looking for work. “We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we move through the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re doing everything we can to support in-store shoppers through this transition,” the blog post says.

According to Motherboard, workers could get as little as $250 in severance.

Instacart would not tell The Verge whether the union employees would be among those getting transferred. The layoffs are scheduled to happen between March and June, according to Motherboard.

In a statement emailed to The Verge, an Instacart spokesperson wrote:

As a result of some grocers transitioning to a Partner Pick model, we’ll be winding down our in-store operations at select retailer locations over the coming months. We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we move through the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re doing everything we can to support in-store shoppers through this transition. This includes transferring impacted shoppers to other retailer locations where we have Instacart in-store shopper roles open, working closely with our retail partners to hire impacted shoppers for roles they’re looking to fill, and providing shoppers with transition assistance as they explore new work opportunities. We’re also providing all impacted shoppers with separation packages based on their tenure with Instacart.

The statement was pulled directly from the company’s public blog post.

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Bitcoin White Paper Now Hosted by Everyone From Square to Facebook. Here’s Why

Some of the Bitcoin community’s most prominent voices (and also Facebook subsidiary Novi) are now hosting the Bitcoin white paper.

The move follows legal threats from nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright levied against the nonprofit that has long hosted crypto’s foundational document.

“Yesterday both Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright infringement of the Bitcoin whitepaper by lawyers representing Craig Steven Wright,” the nonprofit wrote Thursday morning.

(Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, who has yet to be conclusively identified; Wright has repeatedly made claims that he is Satoshi.)

Seemingly in response to the takedown notice, a wave of crypto firms have published the white paper on their websites. As of press time they include:

Others are likely to join in.

The document has been uploaded to Arweave, a distributed platform for “permanent” file storage. It is also being stored on the “uncensorable web” via the InterPlanetary File System (IFPS) and the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

Bitcoincore.org appears to have taken down its copy of the Bitcoin white paper. The PDF is still live, however, on Bitcoin.org.

This is a developing story and will be updated.



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Hard-luck Maryland town gets a $731.1 million Powerball win

LONACONING, Md. (AP) — The latest jackpot-winning Powerball ticket, worth $731.1 million, was sold in a struggling coal mining town whose biggest previous claim to fame was being the hometown of baseball Hall of Famer Lefty Grove.

Someone bought it at Coney Market, a convenience store in the Allegany County town of Lonaconing, the Maryland Lottery announced on Thursday. The store will get a $100,000 bonus for selling the ticket to the fifth-largest lottery prize in U.S. history.

It had been more than four months since anyone won the Powerball, allowing the game’s jackpot to grow so large. An even larger Mega Millions jackpot will be up for grabs Friday night.

Just who will collect the Powerball prize may never be known: Maryland is one of the states that allows winners to remain anonymous.

But keeping quiet about such a huge windfall could prove difficult if the ticket was bought by a local. Lonaconing (pronounced LOH-nah-koh-ning) is a town of about 300 families that’s well off the beaten track, with a poverty rate of more than 22 percent, well above the national average.

“We’re really happy for somebody,” Richard Ravenscroft, the store’s owner, told The Associated Press by phone. “I can’t wait to congratulate the person. I just hope whoever has won it uses it wisely and that other people benefit from it.”

The lottery ticket is a big win for a town that has a long history of losses, from the iron furnace that closed in 1855 to the glassworks that were shuttered in the early 1900s, to the coal-mining jobs that virtually disappeared after World War II. Periodic floods along Georges Creek have been devastating, and local streams carry acid from abandoned mines.

Ravenscroft said there is still some strip mining in the area, although that’s winding down because of environmental concerns, and the remaining factory, a pulp and paper company, shut down recently after going through a series of buyouts. Another company is coming in that plans to hire about 200 people to make something out of wood chips, he said.

Another positive headline came in 2001, when the town finally got a library after a local fundraising drive.

Coney Market, named for what locals call their town, is in a century-old building along Maryland’s Route 36, which was designated a Coal Heritage Route in an attempt to attract tourists. It draws its share of regulars, who can eat hamburgers and submarine sandwiches in a small seating area.

Ravenscroft wants to expand the store’s kitchen and serve real meals, like mashed potatoes and gravy. Perhaps the bonus can help with that.

Lonaconing’s previous biggest winner was Robert Moses Grove, known as Lefty Grove, who pitched 17 seasons in the big leagues, nine with the Philadelphia Athletics and eight with the Red Sox. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947, and died in 1975.

The Powerball jackpot came only a day after nobody won the $970 million Mega Millions prize, the third-largest prize in U.S. history.

Winning numbers for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing were: 40-53-60-68-69 and a Powerball of 22.

It was the first time both lottery jackpots topped $700 million. The biggest prize was a $1.58 billion Powerball jackpot won by three people in 2016.

No one had won either of the jackpots since mid-September, allowing the prizes to grow steadily for months. Such a long stretch without a winner is rare but also reflects the incredibly small odds of winning — 1 in 292.2 million for Powerball and 1 in 302.5 million for Mega Millions.

Maryland lottery director Gordon Medenica told the AP he’s not surprised when people overcome the odds and hit a giant jackpot, because thousands of people win smaller prizes after every drawing. The chances of winning something are about one in 25.

“The fact is, people win all the time. Clearly the focus is on the big jackpot and that’s what motivates people to play the game, but they come back and keep playing because there are so many other ways to win,” Medenica said.

The prizes listed are for winners who choose an annuity option, paid over 30 years. Most winners opt for cash prizes, which for Mega Millions would be $716.3 million and $546.8 million for Wednesday’s Powerball. After the Powerball win, the new jackpot has a $15 million cash value.

Prizes are subject to federal taxes, and most states take a cut as well.

Mega Millions and Powerball are played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Powerball also is offered in Puerto Rico.

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