Author: Sam Allcock
There’s an important fact that gets lost in all the talk about Conor McGregor these days. He was recently found guilty of sexual assault by a jury in Dublin and told to pay about €248,000 in damages. After that, the whiskey company he started fired him. Partnerships in video games ended. It was quietly taken out of advertising materials in a number of markets that used his name. But from a money point of view, none of it made a difference because McGregor had already cashed out years before. That’s the part you should learn. Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey…
Around 2016, there was a time when some people in the tech world really thought they had solved one of the oldest problems in human history: how to run a business without dishonest leaders, over-sized boardrooms, or executives who only care about themselves. They said the answer was easy: write down the rules, let the people vote, and let democracy work its magic. A Decentralized Autonomous Organization is what they called it. After only a few months, it had lost about $60 million to hackers, and the dream was already falling apart. It wasn’t just a technical glitch that caused…
Singapore and Hong Kong were like two students sitting next to each other in the same class for years: they came from similar backgrounds and had similar raw skills. Both countries had British laws as a foundation, kept their governments small, and relied on trade and finance to make their futures possible. The smart money in 1990 would have been on Hong Kong if you had to bet on which one would win by a large margin. China was on its side. What could Singapore possibly have to offer that would be better? It turned out to be quite a…
Investors keep using a line that Jay-Z said years ago in places where rappers don’t usually get used. “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” At first glance, it sounds like puffery. If you look into it more, it sounds like the thesis statement for one of the most organized ways for celebrities to manage their money today. Shawn Carter went from living in Marcy Houses in Brooklyn to having a net worth of $2.5 billion. His story is not about music royalties or arenas that are packed to the brim. To own something and know when to let…
One thing that makes you respect someone more and more over time is seeing them refuse to be defined by one thing. As a single player, Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam titles and made the tennis world look almost unfair for 20 years. When most people retired, they thought it would mean endorsement deals, charity events, and maybe even a clothing line. Something completely different and much more interesting actually did happen. When Serena started Serena Ventures in 2014, it looked like a lot of other celebrities’ side projects: quiet, ambitious, and easy to not give much credit to.…
A certain kind of realization comes on slowly at first and then all at once. For many economists and labor researchers, that moment came around 2023, when the rise in freelance work after the pandemic stopped looking like a one-time event and began to look like a permanent change. The most recent data release from the Workforce Information Council not only backs up that suspicion, it makes it stronger in ways that are hard to ignore. The number in the headline is pretty clear: between 72.9 and 76.4 million Americans now do some kind of freelance, independent, or gig-based work.…
In the middle of a Federal Reserve press conference, Jerome Powell’s careful language starts to sound like he is trying to slow down on purpose. When asked about the idea of a digital dollar, he doesn’t say yes or no. He talks about taking care of people. He talks about being honest. Congress is what he talks about. After that, he moves on. That’s not just sitting on the fence; that’s a policy position, even if it doesn’t sound like one. For several years, the Federal Reserve has been quietly working on a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. They…
This story can also be told with Peter Jackson as a movie director who just got lucky. He wrote three books that people really liked, won some awards, and then he moved on. But that version doesn’t show that he spent decades making tools that no one else had. These tools were so advanced and important to how movies look today that an American tech company paid $1.6 billion to own them. That’s the story that should be told. When Unity Technologies said it would buy Weta Digital’s technology division for US$1.625 billion, many people who aren’t in the film…
A certain moment is what most young traders remember. The first time, after a trade, confetti fell all over their screen. The shades. What an animation. The short-lived rush of dopamine that made me feel like I had won something. It wasn’t a mistake. Someone planned that moment very well. Broking apps have quietly changed over the last five years into something that looks less like a financial tool and more like a real-life mobile game. The one-tap execution, the loud push notifications about price changes, and the leaderboards all make it feel like you’re losing time when you stop…
When a bank releases its annual report, there is something quietly open that can be seen. The language is always careful, calm, and almost comforting. There are, however, numbers in the middle that tend to make people stop and read again. These numbers are between performance metrics and shareholder notes. This year, that number at Lloyds Banking Group is £17.7 million. That’s how much Charlie Nunn could earn in 2026 if everything goes as planned and shareholders agree with what the bank wants to do. Twenty-four years ago, Nunn made £6.2 million a year. In 2025, he made £7.4 million.…