Altcoins Make Move$

E-commerce giant Amazon just announced a new employee benefit: free college tuition for over 750,000 U.S. employees. 🤓 📚

It’s no secret that companies are struggling to attract minimum-wage workers atm. Amazon is the latest mega corporation to provide free college in an effort to pull more employees — the company will also pay for books at multiple universities nationwide.

Even if you work just 20 hours a week, you could be eligible for up to 50% college tuition reduction under Amazon’s plan. Clearly, $15/hr is no longer sufficient to build a workforce. Ardine Williams, Amazon’s VP of workforce development, said:

“Career progression is the new minimum wage. Most adult learners don’t have the luxury of quitting their jobs and going to school full-time.”

Chipotle, Starbucks, Walmart, and Target announced similar programs this year. Amazon intends to pay employees’ tuition upfront, with associate degrees, high-school completion programs, and English-second-language certifications also included in the plan.

To pull this off, Amazon will probably have to fork out a whopping $1.2 billion over the next 4 years. 💸 These are huge line-items, but ultimately necessary selling points for attracting new talent. Here’s the WSJ with more info.

Despite the dullness of the crypto market, some cryptocurrencies skyrocketed this week. 🚀 🚀

This week’s biggest gainer, Algorand ($ALGO.X), entered the top 20 cryptos in dramatic fashion. It has more than doubled in the last seven days, but still sits below its all-time high of $3.28.

Why is $ALGO.X surging? 💭 Recently, El Salvador permitted Bitcoin as legal tender. For better widespread crypto implementation, El Salvador partnered with leading crypto firm Koibanx to create a wallet product for its citizens. This wallet will be developed using the Algorand blockchain as a piece of core infrastructure. The news acted as a catalyst for $ALGO.X, and it soared. ✈️ ✈️

Algorand was joined by another usual suspect: Solana ($SOL.X). The crypto booked an all-time high after crossing the $210 mark this week. Solana has surged 383% over the past 30 days, according to CoinGecko. Since the start of the month, it has surpassed the market caps of $DOGE.X and $XRP.X. Today, $SOL.X is the 5th largest crypto ex-stablecoins, sitting north of a $55 billion valuation. 😍

The ongoing NFT hype on Solana has helped accelerate its price momentum. The blockchain’s big entry into the world of NFTs was boosted by the launch of the Degenerate Apes. On Monday, FTX.US’s NFT marketplace went live, enabling users to mint, buy and sell NFTs — all traded cross-chain on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. 

There are dozens of other tokens that remain unaffected by the hustle and bustle of the crypto market. For instance, Cosmos ($ATOM.X) is up by ~30%, and Harmony ($ONE.X) soared 33% in the past 24 hours. Wanna give them a try?? 🤑

The Delta variant is once again tipping the scales against airlines. 😪 Travel, which was battered during the COVID-19 pandemic, has appreciated a bounce-back with the economy’s gradual reopening. However, travel still hasn’t reached its pre-pandemic levels. 

American Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest, and United all lowered outlooks for Q3 2021 because of the ongoing virus drama. Fewer bookings, paired with cancellations on already-booked itineraries, are among the core reasons for concern.

Surprisingly, the U.S. Global Jets ETF rose 1.91% today. 🤔 The $JETS ETF tracks some of the largest airlines in America. The ETF has fallen 14.8% over the last 3 months.

To enhance its cybersecurity tools and comply with crypto regulations, Mastercard acquired CipherTrace, a blockchain analytics start-up. 🤖

The details of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed. However, the deal will help the giant payment company track over 900 cryptocurrencies, as per the release.

CipherTrace specializes in scanning blockchains for illicit transactions. Mastercard said the deal will help businesses “identify and understand their risks” and “help manage their digital asset regulatory and compliance obligations.”

Earlier this year, the payment company demonstrated interest in crypto, saying Mastercard would allow customer-to-merchant payments in cryptocurrency without settling in fiat. In July, the company referred to using the USDC stablecoin as a bridge for users paying for goods in cryptocurrency. 

This deal goes to show that payment companies are keeping an eye on the crypto security system. 👀