Monthly Archives: August 2018

Son auditoire devrait être ravi. En déplacement ce mardi en Virginie occidentale - le deuxième Etat qui produit le plus de charbon aux Etats-Unis - Donald Trump doit annoncer qu'il revient sur le Clean Power Plan de 2015 . Ce plan, adopté par l'administration Obama, visait à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans l'énergie de 32 % en 2030, par rapport à leur niveau de 2005, et à favoriser la production d'énergies plus propres, comme le gaz, l'éolien ou le solaire.

Venezuela moved to shore up its crumbling economy on Monday, devaluing its currency and preparing to raise the minimum wage by more than 3,000% in what the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, declared a visionary bid to tame rampant hyperinflation.More than 500,000 Venezuelans have fled overseas this year amid chronic shortages of food and medicine, soaring crime and warnings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that inflation could hit 1m% this year.But on Friday Maduro unveiled a dramatic raft of measures designed to end a depression he blames on an “economic war” being waged by imperialist foes of the Bolivarian revolution he inherited after Hugo Chávez’s 2013 death.

It may well be the realisation by politicians and banking chieftains that, looking into the future, it is becoming apparent that a traditional bank may no longer necessarily be needed to carry out many of the tasks some of the private banks and wealth managers have been performing.This description is perhaps simplifying things a little, but at its core, "Swiss Banking" is about wealth preservation. As such, one of the major appeals has always been the safekeeping of clients' assets and ideally avoiding too much transparency and public limelight. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies enable these custody solutions.The large banks may not yet be openly embracing the space, but it is noteworthy that SIX, the Swiss main stock market, announced plans to establish a market for cryptocurrencies, particularly for all the tokens that are considered as securities—SIX is majority owned by the country’s banks.Switzerland's international worldview, its highly educated workforce, and a long heritage in (private) banking and wealth management appear to have created a unique space in which these combined factors form an environment from which a thriving crypto ecosystem is beginning to emerge.Add to this, a government and regulatory framework that is attracting talent and capital, and you may come to the same conclusion as Ueli Maurer, the Swiss Federal Councillor, who at this year's G20 finance ministers' meeting underlined the country's position and ambition on cryptocurrencies, saying that digital assets offer "a great potential for financial services." 

One-hour curbside pickup is the latest Amazon benefit granted to Whole Foods Market shoppers using the Prime Now app. With a minimum order of $35, you'll get the convenience of parking in a designated spot while someone brings your groceries to your car. If you want your goods in 30 minutes, that will set you back $4.99. The service will begin at Whole Foods locations in Sacramento, Calif., and Virginia Beach, Va., but will be rolled out to more cities by the end of the year. The new service is yet another move by Amazon to set itself apart from Walmart, its closest US competitor, as well as grocery conglomerate Kroger. Getting items to shoppers quickly and more conveniently (not to mention cost-effectively) is where the retail battle is being fought. Same-day delivery has seen rapid uptake, according to Dropoff, up from 17% of US internet users in 2017 to 31% this year. Groceries are the most-wanted same-day product category (64%) and the top category delivered same-day (19%).

So far, the restructuring looks like a win financially. The stock price is up more than 85 percent and the Google side of the business has gone gangbusters, with quarterly revenues surging by more than $13 billion since the second quarter of 2015 under its new CEO, Sundar Pichai, while Page stays out of the public eye as the CEO of the larger Alphabet holding company.What’s less clear looking back, however, is whether the new model has increased Other Bets innovation or slowed it down. Since the Alphabet announcement, the company has introduced a handful of new subsidiaries, sucked one back into Google, and even spun off several projects into independent companies outside of Alphabet.On this anniversary, here’s a look at some of the challenges and benefits of Alphabet’s soup:To spin off or stay put?Today, Alphabet has a grand total of 13 Other Bets. In its latest earnings, the company revealed that they posted $145 million in revenue, up 49 percent year over year, but still only a teeny tiny percentage of Alphabet’s overall Q2 revenue of $32.66 billion. Because the company shifted its smart home unit Nest back into Google, segment revenues were actually down 12.5 percent since the first time the company broke out Other Bets quarterly earnings in 2016. Operating losses have fluctuated too, hitting $732 million in Q2, a 15.6 percent increase year over year, but a decrease since the segment lost $802 million in Q1 2016.

“We’re partnering with Google Cloud to provide developers with a full stack solution so they can unleash the potential for web-paced innovation in blockchain. This will reduce the technical barriers to DLT application development by delivering our advanced distributed ledger platform and modelling language to Google Cloud.”Digital Asset will both provide these tools and the necessary support to blockchain app builders entering the Cloud. However, the partnership doesn’t stop there; Google Cloud will become part of Digital Asset’s developer program private beta, and Google Cloud developers will have full access to DAML, Digital Asset’s Modeling Language software development kit. Via Google Cloud, Digital Asset will be in a position to further grow DAML, in the process providing developers with a complete package of everything they’ll need to create blockchain-based apps.This week, in an interview with CoinDesk, Blythe Masters said:“Having spent three and a half years in the design-and-build phase, this is the ‘open up and educate’ phase and [the time to] build a community of channel partners and developers,”“The application of this technology is by no means limited to the world’s biggest market infrastructures. It goes well throughout financial services, well beyond capital markets and beyond financial services into all the other industries that have a vested interest in improving the efficiency of their workflow orchestration.”

3% off with FaceCoinFacebook could build a cryptocurrency wallet with its own token that people could use to pay for things with partnered businesses or that they discover through Facebook ads. Because blockchain can make transactions free or very cheap, Facebook and its partners could sidestep the typical credit card processing fees. That would potentially allow Facebook to offer users  “3% off purchases made with FaceCoin” or a similar promotion. Discounts like this could draw users into Facebook’s cryptocurrency feature. It’s well-positioned to run such a scheme thanks to its extensive connections with more than six million advertisers and 65 million businesses that have Facebook Pages. The social network could eat the costs of running the program, passing the transaction fee savings on to the users, while touting partnerships with Facebook Crypto as ways to boost sales for businesses. That could in turn get clients to spend more money on Facebook ads, as the discounts would enhance conversion rates and drive sales.One thing we know for sure is that Facebook won’t be building on the Stellar protocol. Facebook debunked a Business Insider report saying it was, telling TechCrunch it was not in talks with Stellar or planning to build on it.P2P and micropaymentsFacebook already lets you send friends money through Messenger for free, but only with a connected debit card or PayPal account. Facebook could offer cryptocurrency-based payments between friends to let a wider range of users settle debts for shared dinners or taxis through Messenger. Users might fund their Facebook Crypto wallet once with a payment, possibly with a one-time transaction fee, and then they could send and receive the tokens for free from then on. Blockchain becoming the backbone of peer-to-peer payments could further increase engagement with Messenger for its 1.3 billion users.

The news that Starbucks was among the companies working with Intercontinental Exchange on creating a platform called Bakkt that will allow consumers to "buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network" was widely interpreted as a sign that the coffee giant was set to accept cryptocurrency payments. Not exactly. The idea, according to Starbucks, isn't to take Bitcoin as currency for pumpkin spice lattes but rather to enable the exchange of Bitcoin for US dollars to spend at Starbucks. Even so, is the fact that a major US company is getting involved with cryptocurrency a signal that this niche payment method is mainstreaming, or is it simply a customer-centric retailer offering more options?Most internet users worldwide are aware of cryptocurrency, but fewer than half own it. When polled in February by SharesPost, 71% of cryptocurrency owners planned to buy more this year, and 21% of non-owners planned to start. But a more recent US-focused survey by Wells Fargo showed far lower levels of adoption and interest, perhaps due to the plunge Bitcoin experienced this year. In May 2018, 72% of US investors (adults who have invested $10,000 or more) had no interest in ever buying Bitcoin. Just over one-quarter were interested, though. Higher levels of men (30%) and consumers under age 50 (41%) were interested but holding off on buying Bitcoin.Starbucks might be the highest profile company getting involved with cryptocurrency, but it's not alone. Overstock.com became the first major retailer to accept Bitcoin in 2014. According to The New York Times, the online retailer generates roughly 0.2% of its revenues from cryptocurrency.

Il y a dix ans, les distributeurs généralistes ou alimentaires avaient encore le temps de se réinventer. Réallouer des surfaces, bannir les silos, travailler la donnée, se centrer réellement sur le client. Mais pour la plupart d’entre eux, il est désormais trop tard. Car autant le mouvement d’un e-commerçant vers la distribution physique a de bonnes chances de fonctionner, autant l’inverse est beaucoup plus difficile, pour les raisons que nous venons de voir. Voyez les échecs successifs de Wal-Mart, premier distributeur mondial, dans ses tentatives de devenir un acteur omnicanal. Les e-commerçants, notamment Amazon, vont continuer d’acquérir des réseaux physiques, d’autant plus aisément que ces derniers sont mal en point. L’acquisition par Amazon de Macy’s et de Carrefour ne diluerait ses actionnaires que de 8 %. Que peuvent alors devenir les acteurs de la distribution, si ce n’est être rachetés par des e-commerçants? Il leur faut réduire drastiquement et rapidement leurs surfaces, se focaliser sur quelques marchés géographiques et/ou sectoriels, où ils pourraient encore faire valoir quelques avantages concurrentiels, du moins pour quelque temps. Pourtant, certains comme Sephora, Best Buy ou Home Depot ont su aller de l’avant et s’ériger en exemples. Ils ont allié des investissements techno- logiques astucieux avec une mise en avant du capital humain, toujours centrés client. Mais la distribution ne souffre pas que de la trans- formation digitale, elle souffre aussi, d’une façon encore plus profonde, de la paupérisation de la classe moyenne dans l’ensemble des pays développés. Or, c’est sur cette classe moyenne qu’elle s’est construite. La distribution physique se trouve ainsi victime d’un effet de ciseau, qu’elle n’a pas su -ni voulu- voir : la paupérisation de son socle historique de clientèle couplée avec la transformation des modes d’achat liée au digital. Elle est passée outre le conseil de Gérard Mulliez, le fondateur d’Auchan : « une bonne approche du client ne se conçoit pas sans une bonne approche de la société de consommation ».