TerraUSD offers a cautionary tale of stablecoin use

Collaterized by crypto, BitUSD is considered the first stablecoin

It was created in 2014 with the intention of making cryptocurrency less volatile. While BitUSD lost its peg to the US dollar in 2018 and never recovered, Tether was created soon after it in 2014 and has had more longevity and success.

USDC's reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank when the bank collapsed

One of the world's largest stablecoin's reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank, which famously failed in March 2023. USDC briefly lost its peg to the US dollar for a time as a result, within investors pulling out billions of dollars.

Some argue that stablecoins are unnecessary due to the ubiquity of the US dollar

Others have criticized fiat-backed stablecoins for their lack of decentralization, believing that digital currencies not controlled by central banks will become more popular in the future.

Learn how stablecoins function in just 4 minutes

This video explains the basics of stablecoins in a beginner-friendly manner. It also dives a bit deeper into the larger stablecoin landscape, detailing, for instance, the many stablecoins backed by fiat currency other than the US dollar, like the euro, the Turkish lira, and the Singapore dollar.

Crypto history's is full of bizarre stories

Digital currencies based solely on misspellings of former President Joe Biden’s name have skyrocketed, and backers of a token based on a Shiba Inu wearing a hat raised $690K to get their logo on the Las Vegas Sphere.

The stablecoin market increased tenfold from 2020 to 2025

Specifically, the stablecoin market grew from about $28B in 2020 to $282B in 2025. Some experts forecast that it could grow anywhere from 6.7x to 14.2x by 2030.

FTX, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges, collapsed in 2022

As crypto markets declined during the post-pandemic slowdown, Sam Bankman-Fried propped up the markets with billions he'd earned leading FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges. Then, in one of the most rapid financial implosions in modern history, the exchange collapsed as investors rushed to withdraw money.

The 2024 Synapse collapse took $90M of people’s life savings with it

In 2024, a banking middleman called Synapse declared bankruptcy. Unfortunately, it also locked roughly 100,000 Americans out of their own money, which prompted a class action lawsuit.

Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin was surprised by the emergence of NFTs

Scams have pervaded the NFT space and made critics question their legitimacy, but proponents believe their use cases could one day extend to real estate and credit scores.

DAI is a popular stablecoin backed by cryptocurrency rather than fiat currency

DAI is backed by collateralized debt denominated in several major cryptocurrencies, including ethereum's ether. It was created by Rune Christensen in 2017 with the goal of helping create a credit system that would allow users to take out loans collateralized by cryptocurrencies.

Elon Musk's $100M investment in SpaceX was lost to three failed rocket launches

The attempts with Falcon 1 endangered the company's future but provided valuable information from which to iterate and follow up with the successful first privately funded orbital launch in history and multiple ISS resupply missions.

A lunar probe’s crash landing may have spilled tardigrades onto the moon

In 2019, Israel’s Beresheet probe, which contained tardigrades in a cryptobiotic state, underwent a gyroscopic failure when attempting to land. If they survived the crash, the tardigrades may have spread across the lunar surface, raising ethical concerns about planetary contamination.

The overnight collapse of Ello, a beloved, decade-old social network

Ello launched in 2014 with big dreams to avoid advertising and retain a user-friendly, simple style. But in 2023, the hip social network suddenly shut down, removing nine years of posts with no warning. Artists, writers, and other creators lost nearly a decade of work with no explanation. Read the troubling story here.

When the US hits the debt ceiling, the Treasury uses emergency measures to avoid default

After the US reached its debt ceiling in January 2023, the Treasury deployed "extraordinary measures" to keep paying obligations. This article explains the steps, how they work, and why they last only for a limited time. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The rise and fall of a petrostate

Venezuela’s descent into economic and political chaos in recent years is a cautionary tale of the dangerous influence that resource wealth can have on developing countries.

Retail investors are getting burned by long/short strategies

In the US, many retail investors lack the SEC-mandated status (a high enough net worth, income, and other factors) to directly invest in hedge funds. The regulator considers hedge funds too risky for the masses. Hedge fund-like strategies have emerged as a workaround, despite potential pitfalls.

One $100 investment in the Medallion Fund skyrockets over time

The Medallion Fund, the famously secretive quant fund that invests billions of dollars for the partners and employees of a single firm with a legendary track record, has trounced the market for more than three decades. While its results are an extreme outlier, this visualization showcases the power of compound interest.

Ethereum Classic and the Ethereum hard fork

One year after its launch, Ethereum was forked into two blockchains as a workaround to return funds stolen in a major hack to users. To this day, Ethereum Classic operates separately from Ethereum, and the two blockchains have different goals. Because of this split, investors must be cautious and ensure they’re interacting with the correct blockchain. Funds can’t simply be transferred from one to the other. Learn more here.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

Red Lobster lost $11M on endless shrimp promotions—but its real estate holdings were what dragged it to bankruptcy

Golden Gate Capital, a PE firm, bought Red Lobster in 2014 for $2.1B. Golden Gate then sold Red Lobster's real estate, more than 500 storefronts, which generated $1.5B in revenue and helped finance the PE firm's acquisition of the company. Analysts say increased debt, high rent costs, and low equity put Red Lobster in an impossible position, leading to its 2024 bankruptcy filing—although the shrimp bill probably didn't help.

Space trash is making low Earth orbit increasingly dangerous for spacecraft

Millions of fragments from satellites, rockets, and other spacecraft that are no longer operational move thousands of meters per second as they circle Earth. Even a piece of debris a centimeter in size can cause mission-ending damage to space stations, telescopes, and astronauts.

Some experts equate prediction markets to the new crack cocaine of gambling addiction

An addiction psychiatrist at UCLA says betting apps are far more potent than traditional gambling, citing a 19-year-old patient who lost $180,000 and hadn't left campus in a year, cycling through sports bets, crypto, meme stocks, and prediction markets on his phone. This interview explores the extreme edge of the nascent industry.

Temu was losing an average of $30 per order as of 2024

Some business experts have made the argument that Temu is more focused on rapidly gaining market share and growing its customer base than achieving profitability.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Minor technology failures can spiral into massive internet outages

A mix of centralized cloud infrastructure and legacy protocols leaves the internet susceptible to downtime from minor cyberattacks or software bugs, infrastructure damage caused by extreme weather, and human error if a DNS service provider—the internet's phone book—or a backend system, such as Amazon Web Services, were compromised.

Today, in the US, people can face years in prison for counterfeiting money

There are both federal and state laws that punish people who use or create counterfeit money. The crime can not only trigger hefty fines, but could also lead to decades behind bars.

The worst things to buy at the dollar store, according to a financial expert

Some dollar store products can be low quality, and experts advise not purchasing them. This list includes 17 products to avoid at dollar stores, including batteries, toys, costumes, and more.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.