In November 2021, the management of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles announced the venue’s renaming as Crypto.com Arena, for at least the next 20 years. The move caps an agreement between AEG Worldwide, owner of the center, and the fast-growing cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com.

Crypto.com reportedly paid $700 million for the privilege of seeing its name in lights at the center. Experts say this is likely the most expensive naming rights deal in sports history. 

Three decades of sports and entertainment 

For more than 30 years, the Staples Center has served as a premier destination for hundreds of high-profile events, including NBA All-Star Games, Disney on Ice events, the World Figure Skating Championships, and numerous Grammy Award productions. Musical acts that have performed at the center over the decades include U2, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift, and many other top names. 

But the Staples Center is perhaps even better known as the permanent home of four of the country’s most popular professional sports franchises: the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers teams, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.

The official renaming event and revelation of the center’s new logo was set to take place on Christmas Day at a match-up between the Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. The fanfare is all in keeping with Los Angeles’ position in the entertainment and sports industries as well as the Staples Center’s role within such a company town. 

That was fast

For being at the center of such a big deal in 2021, Crypto.com emerged from humble beginnings. In 2017 the URL referred solely to a personal blog, the project of a professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. The then-obscure company that took over the professor’s blog transformed the web address into a buy-sell-trade extravaganza for the emergent crypto community. It now offers debit cards backed by cryptocurrency, digital wallets, and other financial products. 

Crypto.com was originally established in 2016 under the name Monaco and is still privately held, having yet solicited zero dollars in institutional funding. It maintains a head office in Singapore with branches in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Malta. 

In the year leading up to its acquisition of naming rights at the Staples Center, Crypto.com concluded a string of other high-profile sports sponsorships, including partnering with the Montreal Canadiens and purchasing naming rights to the Philadelphia 76ers’ uniform patches. 

Since vaccinations against COVID-19 became available at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, governments around the world have taken more or less proactive steps to ensure vaccination protection for their citizens. The resulting success rates are correspondingly uneven in terms of driving down rates of infection, serious illness, and death. 

The Challenge of Getting the World Vaccinated

As of late October 2021, experts estimated that only about 3 billion—out of a total of 7.9 billion—of the world’s people are fully vaccinated. (About 3.85 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.) Getting the pandemic under control will require immunizing a larger percentage of the world’s population in order to reach the required critical mass. 

The major challenges remain: “vaccine hesitancy,” the logistics of production and distribution, and the fact that wealthier nations still hold the edge in a world of limited vaccine supplies. 

Overall, experts note that relative national wealth, a strong public health infrastructure, and a population well-educated on the benefits of vaccines are leading factors predicting success. For many African nations, vaccine rates remain in the single digits, for example, and India has achieved only about a 22 percent full vaccination rate. 

Most Vaccinated Nations Tend to Be Smaller, Compact

According to an October 6, 2021 article in U.S. News & World Report, the governments that have achieved the highest percentages of vaccinated people aren’t necessarily the most wealthy, although they do tend on the whole to be more compact geographically. Gibraltar topped the list, with more than 97 percent of its residents fully vaccinated. The countries with above-80-percent full vaccination rates also include Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, the Cayman Islands, and Iceland. Those coming in above 70 percent include Singapore, Spain, Chile, Cambodia, Qatar, and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a figure of only 57.4 percent of United States residents fully vaccinated as of October 25, making the country an outlier among wealthier Western nations. 

Success Even in the Face of Delta

Looking at individual national success stories, Chile stands out. Public health authorities note the country’s history of pro-vaccine policies, carefully strategized vaccine rollout campaigns, and an easy and accessible system for obtaining vaccination. Similar factors are in play in nations like Israel and Iceland. 

Driven by the more contagious delta variant, COVID infections in even these well-vaccinated countries have seen upticks over the summer and fall of 2021. Even so, as data emerged, it clearly showed significant reductions in cases of severe illness and death among people fully immunized with one of the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna). 

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislative package making its way—in fits and starts—through Congress over the summer and fall of 2021 was written to include funding for numerous improvements of national importance. These include repairs and upgrades to roads, highways, and bridges; expansion of the electrical grid; and the reach of broadband Internet into underserved communities. But the bill also has a provision that encompasses tighter regulation of cryptocurrency markets, drawing attention from the fintech sphere. 

Regulating crypto brokers

Through a provision of the bill designated “Information Reporting for Brokers and Digital Assets,” regulators hope to enhance the ability to enforce tax laws on the cryptocurrency industry while generating additional income to support spending plans for the rest of the bill. 

Experts noted that on passage of the bill, the United States Department of the Treasury would gain the ability to impose new requirements for tax reporting on crypto transactions. What regulators like Securities and Exchange Commission head Gary Gensler are ultimately going for is a more systematized way of identifying and rooting out fraud and money laundering in the historically under-regulated industry. 

Specifically, the bill would require brokers in crypto to report any type of transfers of digital asset classes to accounts where users’ names and addresses are unknown. This provision, which would take effect in 2023, would place significant burdens on brokers already subject to the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirement. To keep its volume of required reporting low, a crypto brokerage would need to operate within a well-honed system for identifying client accounts that receive transfers. 

Broad regulatory reach

For a large portion of the crypto trading community, one part of that original provision cut particularly deep. It defined a “digital-asset broker”—in what some saw as overly broad terms—as “any person” who, in exchange for “consideration,” regularly supplies “any service” that facilitates the transfer of “digital assets on behalf of another person.”

The central concern here was that miners, or even software developers, could be ensnared in the reporting requirement. In this view, imposing these stringent requirements on such frontline actors—many of whom are freelancers—would impede future innovation and potentially drive many people working in this sector to relocate outside the US.

A responsive fix

The crypto industry protested, and Congress inserted an amendment that seems to have addressed these concerns. The language of the amendment states that the tax-reporting requirements as applied to brokers specifically exclude miners, developers, node operators, and other like categories of workers. 

As of mid-October, the bill’s passage in any form still hung in the balance as Congress and the White House continued negotiations. 

There’s plenty of debate about the simple issue of whether wearing face masks helps prevent the spread of COVID-19. As research continues to confirm, the answer is simple: they do.

A simple practice delivers big results

A large-scale Stanford University School of Medicine/Yale University study, conducted through a rigorous randomized trial and published on September 1, 2021, showed that people in community settings who wore surgical face masks that properly covered both mouth and nose and who were exposed to targeted information about COVID and masking succeeded in significantly lowering their risk of contracting and spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This research further bolsters the hundreds of previous laboratory and observational studies that produced similar results. 

Notably, the study found that cloth masks were measurably less effective than surgical masks, an outcome the researchers chiefly attributed to the latter’s higher filtration capabilities. 

How it worked

The study was the largest of its kind to date. The researchers examined outcomes in 600 Bangladeshi villages after they enrolled about 350,000 adults into two groups. One group was given a range of promotional communications on the importance of masking, and a control group was not targeted to receive this information. The researchers followed up by, among other things, testing participants who showed COVID symptoms.

Community outreach boosts masking

In addition to its findings on mask efficacy, the study demonstrated that specific public health strategies were able to boost the practice of masking by people living in these lower-income rural communities—all at a relatively low cost.

The goal of the study was to normalize mask-wearing within communities. Its strategies included door-to-door mask distribution, printed messages available in public locations, text messages, monetary rewards, community role models encouraging mask-wearing, and direct one-on-one approaches offering mask guidance if someone was either not wearing one or wearing it incorrectly. 

This approach resulted in a tripling of mask-wearing in the targeted communities. 

As one of the Stanford scientists on the research team told media upon publication of the study, evidence this strong represents “the gold standard” of research into public health outreach measures on preventing the spread of COVID. 

Taking the long view

Based on those findings, officials are looking to use the same plan to promote masking among millions of people in the developing world who may not have access to a vaccine against COVID-19. This makes the research study extremely valuable, as the pandemic continues to run unabated in many of the world’s most resource-poor and vulnerable regions. 

The researchers also point out that although large cities are very different from rural Bangladesh, this study is just as relevant to keeping all people safe and healthy. People living in urbanized areas in the developed world tend to work in closed-in office buildings rather than outdoors. They also tend to physically cluster more than would be natural for people in the Bangladesh countryside. Given these lifestyle issues, residents of San Francisco, New York, and comparable areas should feel even more confident that wearing a mask is the most responsible choice they can make.

The end of August 2021 brought the news of increased regulatory oversight trained on the $2 trillion market in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 

There’s a new sheriff in town

These stronger regulations come after a recent explosion of interest in crypto investments, particularly among younger and first-time investors. This level of enthusiasm was what helped propel the value of bitcoin to rise by 300 percent over the preceding year. Some experts, like U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler, are calling the atmosphere surrounding crypto investments today the “Wild West.” 

Gensler expressed his plans to rein in crypto in a public address and interviews with media outlets that included the Financial Times, saying the industry needs regulation in order to help it survive and thrive over the long term. 

Gensler’s previous experience includes his work as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and as a professor who taught graduate courses on cryptocurrency and blockchain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He views consumer protection as the heart of his push for greater regulation, an opportunity to provide the transparency and information that investors until now have lacked.

The positives and negatives of an unregulated market

Until this change in attitude from the SEC, regulators in the U.S. had taken a laissez-faire approach to protecting investors from the volatility of crypto markets. In 2019, the SEC publicly stated that it did not even view bitcoin as a security. In the United Kingdom, regulators likewise have kept their hands off of cryptocurrency assets, even though they regulate many of the derivatives based on them. 

In the words of the ancient Romans, the traditional attitude toward crypto has been “caveat emptor” (“Buyer beware”).  

This state of anarchy, in the eyes of some experts, has largely been beneficial, in that it has allowed for free-ranging innovation and exponential growth in the industry. 

Driving out the bad actors

But Gensler, who has requested an expansion of his agency’s regulatory scope from the U.S. Congress, has seen recent news stories that provide strong justification for his claims.

In one of the best-known of these, the decentralized finance (“DeFi”) platform Poly Network suffered a hack in which the attacker stole—then bizarrely returned—tokens with a total value of $600 million. While Poly Network eventually made a deal with the hacker, whom it called “Mr. White Hat,” and even offered him a job as a security advisor, the incident highlights the degree to which such a volatile state of affairs can wipe out immense amounts of investors’ assets. 

Hackers now often extort ransom payments in bitcoin from their targets. They are drawn to crypto’s easy transferability and almost non-existent official trail. As cryptocurrencies continue to gain popularity with even casual investors, experts predict that the situation will only worsen without intervention, as more hackers and other unscrupulous people see the expanding opportunities in a regulation-free zone.

In what looked like a whiplash-quick reversal to a lot of laypeople, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late August 2021 recommended booster shots of the approved vaccines against COVID-19. The move came amid growing evidence of waning immunity about eight months after a completed vaccination regimen, particularly among very elderly or immunocompromised people.

The U.S. Commits to Boosters

The goal was to maximize protection for everyone, particularly health care workers and the most vulnerable, the populations vaccinated first in the initial rollout. Leading health experts stated that it had become “very clear” that even healthy, fully vaccinated people would likely lose their immunity over time. 

The CDC announced September 20 as the date when vaccines would be available to all who were eligible, beginning eight months after a person’s second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines. The organization noted, again based on emerging research, that it would likely soon recommend an eight-month booster for those who received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine as well. Because the J&J vaccine rollout came more than two months after that of the mRNA vaccines, its final research results remained pending at the time of the mRNA booster recommendation.

Even given this recommendation, the universal consensus remains that the existing vaccines are extraordinarily effective in preventing serious illness and death. This has held true even with the dominance of the new and more contagious delta variant.

Most People in the World Still Need a First Dose

The decision on boosters provoked concerns on the part of many epidemiologists, who noted the continued proliferation of severe COVID-19 infections, largely driven by the delta variant, in the developing world. At the same time American health leaders were recommending booster shots for their own population, only about 1.3 percent of people in lower-income nations had received even an initial vaccine dose.

Scientists were already aware that lower vaccination rates in developing regions was a major factor driving the development of dangerous COVID variants such as delta (first documented in India in October 2020) and lambda (first detected in Peru in August 2020). Delta has shown itself to be about 1,000 times as transmissible as the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, although almost all fully vaccinated people have been able to weather the small number of breakthrough infections well. Some researchers believe the lambda variant could be resistant to existing vaccines. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) took a vigorous contrary stance to that of the U.S. WHO officials argued that residents of richer countries are receiving “extra life jackets” when those in developing nations have not even received their first. A top WHO researcher said that evidence remained equivocal about the value of third-shot boosters for everyone, adding that allowing billions of people to go unvaccinated could end up creating even more dangerous new variants.

Staying Ahead of the Virus

Meanwhile, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told media outlets that the Biden White House had given the go-ahead for booster recommendations based on a sharp general increase in American hospitalizations and deaths. President Biden stated that his administration had become convinced that boosters were the best way to protect the country against the proliferation of even more variants.

Dr. Murthy further noted that, in the cases of vaccines against hepatitis B and other infectious diseases, a three-shot schedule has been in place for many years. In the case of hepatitis vaccines, that third booster typically confers longer-lasting protection, making it reasonable to predict that the COVID-19 boosters might produce a similar effect, although more research would be needed to confirm the length of that new immunity.

In the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading COVID-19 authority, it will be far better to “stay ahead” of the virus than to be stuck “chasing after it.”

Cryptocurrency has developed a market valued between $1 and $2 trillion, but “crypto” doesn’t only mean Bitcoin and Dogecoin. There is a constantly proliferating number of crypto types and brands: at least 10,000 as of the spring of 2021. Some get the nod from experts as being particularly good investments, while others seem—at least for now—to be relegated to the fringes of the financial world. 

Novice investors, as well as those with more experience, might want to take a look at a run-down of the most prominent crypto types. Each is designed to answer different needs and specifications, and each offers its own profile in terms of ease of use, degree of user adoption, special characteristics, and investment potential. 

Remember that most cryptocurrencies can be categorized as either coins or tokens, and these terms can be fluid, depending on whom you ask. The term “altcoin” typically refers to non-Bitcoin, alternative crypto coins that are quite literally alternatives to Bitcoin, although they tend to be structured along the same general kind of open-source framework. 

Altcoins

The best-known altcoins out there include Namecoin, the first known iteration of this type. Namecoin originated in 2011, about three years after the introduction of the concept of Bitcoin. Other altcoin types include the “green crypto” Peercoin; Auroracoin, developed in Iceland; and, of course, the still-popular Dogecoin. 

Unlike the types listed above, some coins don’t use the Bitcoin model of open-source protocol. These function instead within their own systems, using their own protocols.

Ethereum and its relatives

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain platform with its own branded cryptocurrency, which is known as “Ether” or “Ethereum.” Ethereum garnered headlines after it caused a market swell in the first week of August. That’s when it dropped its “London” upgrade, boosting not only its own price, but that of the entire cryptocurrency market. 

Other big news for Ethereum: its developers are planning to switch from a proof-of-work consensus algorithm (the energy-intense type used by Bitcoin) to one based on proof-of-stake. The change will permit Ethereum’s network to operate on vastly less energy, while upgrading the speed of its transactions. The change is expected by 2022 but could be released at the end of the year.

Tokens

While the term “cryptocurrency” typically refers to the native digital asset associated with a particular blockchain protocol, “crypto tokens” are digital products constructed by platforms on top of existing blockchains. 

Tokens can possess value and serve as mediums of exchange, similar to how cryptocurrency coins are used. But tokens more typically represent some designated physical or digital asset (such as real property or a piece of artwork), or even a utility function or a service. 

The various types of crypto tokens include “value” (or “payment”) tokens, the utility tokens created to help access blockchain-related functions, non-fungible tokens, and security tokens, which are designed to help protect a user’s account. Bitcoin and Litecoin can be considered types of value tokens. 

In India in October 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic took a tragic new twist with the emergence of the B.1.617.2 variant (the so-called delta variant) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease. Since then, this particular variant has shown itself about 225 percent more transmissible than previous iterations of the virus.

According to scientists at the World Health Organization, delta is set to become the dominant form of the virus in short order. Whether the delta variant is more deadly is still a matter for researchers to verify, but its ease of contagion is a matter for serious concern. 

The tragedy of India

As India’s second wave of COVID-19 infections peaked in May 2021, doctors were identifying more than 400,000 new cases daily. By late July, that figure was down to about 40,000 new cases per day. 

COVID-19 has left a devastated population in its wake: While official Indian government figures put the death toll from the disease at about 414,000 in late July, some researchers believe that figure undercounts a vast swath of deaths. There could be as many as 3 to 4 million people total in India who have died of COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. Indirect casualties include deaths like those of people who died because they could not access medical care, due to hospitals being overwhelmed by COVID-19.

A worldwide problem

Now, the rest of the world has been introduced to this troubling variant. By late July, the delta variant accounted for more than 80 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the United States, a 50 percent increase over the beginning of the month. By mid-July, confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were up almost 70 percent over the previous week, and hospitalizations had increased by almost 36 percent. Almost all of the hospitalizations were among the unvaccinated.

Delta is similarly gaining ground in other countries, with the United Kingdom especially hard-hit. 

Vaccines are still the answer

Studies show that the currently approved COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.—those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson—still deliver robust protection against the delta variant once a person is fully vaccinated. 

And that’s the key: The effectiveness of these vaccines against the delta variant is lower when a person has only received the first dose of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. After two doses, an individual is considered almost as protected, or equally as well protected, against the delta variant as against the original alpha variant for which the vaccines were designed.

Another point to remember, with delta spreading so rapidly, is that breakthrough infections will occur in some vaccinated people. This is statistically expected, since no vaccine can achieve 100 percent efficacy. Even so, these breakthrough infections are typically mild or asymptomatic. Only a few have produced serious illness.

Protecting communities

Given that the delta variant is exponentially more contagious—and possibly more virulent—than the original COVID-19, a number of healthcare professionals began in July to recommend a return to universal indoor masking and social distancing, even among the fully vaccinated. This not only protects vaccinated adults and teens out of an abundance of caution; it also puts another layer of protection between the virus and unvaccinated children and vulnerable adults.

In June 2021, the world got some more good news about the fight against COVID-19. A vaccine developed by Novavax, Inc., showed in phase 3 clinical trials that it offers a greater than 90 percent efficacy at preventing symptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Officially called NVX-CoV2373, this vaccine also offers 100 percent protection from moderate and severe COVID infections, which typically require medical treatment and hospitalization. 

For individuals in high-risk categories—those aged 65 or older, and younger people with serious underlying health conditions—the protein-based Novavax vaccine demonstrated 91 percent efficacy in keeping them from developing symptoms of COVID-19. 

These results are approximately equal to those obtained with the currently authorized Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

The phase 3 research showed that the Novavax vaccine is safe and, overall, well-tolerated by recipients. Similar to the transitory side effects experienced by many people who have received the other COVID vaccines, the Novavax trial participants reported a day or two of headaches, muscle aches, and fatigue. And like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the Novavax product requires a regimen of two shots in order to achieve proper effectiveness. 

Novavax, Inc., is a smaller pharmaceutical manufacturer based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The company’s vaccine development was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a research department of the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

Help beyond borders

Experts note that the Novavax product may be more useful beyond the U.S., since the country’s vaccine supply is currently saturated with the previously approved brands. Novavax’s leadership has stated that they are considering waiting for emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration until the fall of 2021. Meanwhile, looking toward a likely role in stemming COVID-19 in the rest of the world, Novavax has applied for official licensing in India, South Korea, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. 

The company plans to manufacture approximately 100 million doses monthly by the close of the third quarter of 2021, followed by about 150 million per month by the end of the year. 

Novavax’s results highlight the question of vaccine access for less-resourced countries like India and other nations still in the thick of battle against COVID-19. The fact that the new vaccine can be stored at room temperature enhances its suitability for the developing world. 

A global perspective on public health

As time progresses, the U.S.’s supply of authorized vaccines—the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna and the one-shot, adenovirus-based Johnson & Johnson—is growing. The U.S. simply may not need to provide additional emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for new vaccines, since it already has a steady supply of safe and reliable options.  

Through the international vaccine-sharing program Gavi, Novavax has already committed to distributing more than 1 billion doses in countries where the need remains great. 

The question of booster shots for immunity does carve out another potential role for Novavax in the U.S., however: the new vaccine’s protein-based structure likely gives it the potential to be effective at amplifying the protection of different vaccines administered previously.

Bitcoin experienced notable price fluctuations over the span of only a few months in the first half of 2021, even considering that volatility is built into its design as a nascent asset class.  

Although bitcoin reached an all-time high in April of $64,829.14, by June 8 it had dropped by almost half. Looking at bitcoin’s value over the entire preceding 12 months, however, its price still remained up by more than 230 percent. The continued interest is driven largely by growing confidence on the part of big corporations such as Elon Musk’s Tesla, and by institutional investors generally.

El Salvador makes it official

One country had enough confidence in the world’s best-known cryptocurrency to officially make it legal for use in all transactions. On June 9, media reported that El Salvador became the first nation to pass legislation declaring bitcoin to be legal tender within its borders. The so-called Bitcoin Law cleared the small Central American nation’s congress with a strong majority, with 62 of 84 legislators voting in favor.

The new law allows citizens of El Salvador to pay their taxes in bitcoin, and merchants can display prices in bitcoin. Additionally, bitcoin will not be subject to taxes on capital gains. Within days of the passage of the law, even small neighborhood stores in the economically distressed country were posting signs saying they accepted payment in bitcoin.

Shortly after El Salvador’s vote, the price of Bitcoin rose to $34,239.17, an increase of 5 percent. 

But is it viable?

Critics noted that it remains undetermined exactly how El Salvador’s government will be able to roll out use of bitcoin in the real world. Based on bitcoin’s history of mercurial price fluctuations, there are still plenty of experts who doubt its stability as any type of approved national currency over the long term.

 Before the new law, the only current official currency of El Salvador was the United States dollar. The country’s Bitcoin Law provides that the exchange rate between the cryptocurrency and the dollar will be “freely established by the market.”

A geothermal edge

Furthermore, El Salvador plans to mine bitcoin using geothermal energy from volcanoes. Only hours after the Bitcoin Law was passed, President Nayib Bukele ordered the state-owned geothermal energy company to come up with a plan for using geothermal energy to facilitate bitcoin mining. El Salvador and its neighbors have recently focused heavily on developing their geothermal power, given the region’s hundreds of volcanoes.