In Still Wandering, Alex McCann declares the corporate job “a form of elaborate performance art,” arguing that modern office life has become “a hidden economy of nonsense.” Drawing on the ideas of anthropologist David Graeber, McCann suggests the pandemic exposed how little many corporate roles actually produce. Behind the polished facades of Canary Wharf and City offices, he writes, are “human middleware between systems that could probably talk directly to each other.” Yet rather than despair, McCann detects opportunity: workers are repurposing their salaried roles as “funding mechanisms for actual work,” using corporate infrastructure to incubate side projects and startups. This parallel system, he argues, signals a broader shift from faith in corporate identity toward pragmatic creativity. “The moment you stop believing in the corporate fiction,” McCann concludes, “is the moment you can start using it.”
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Lightning News expands on Steak ’n Shake’s achieved 50% reduction in processing fees after integrating Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network, a system now accessible to more than 950 million users via apps like Cash App and Coinbase. “We can skip the compliance question because we never touch customer money,” said Pierre Corbin, CEO of PayWithFlash, whose non-custodial Lightning architecture enables instant, low-cost settlement. The approach eliminates chargebacks, forex friction, and processor solvency risk, critical advantages for CFOs optimizing margins and cash flow. Non-custodial models allow enterprises to capture full transaction revenue while retaining liquidity and operational control. With real-time settlement and sub-penny fees, Lightning payments are maturing from “fringe technology” to a viable enterprise standard, positioning Bitcoin as an infrastructure layer for global retail efficiency and treasury resilience in the bitcoin backed economy.
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BlackRock has deepened its digital asset strategy by converting one of its money market funds into a reserve vehicle for stablecoin issuers under the new GENIUS Act, Decrypt’s Sander Lutz reports. The firm’s Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund will now hold only short-term U.S. Treasuries and overnight repurchase agreements to ensure compliance and liquidity. “We believe [the fund] positions BlackRock as one of the reserve asset managers of choice for the digital payments ecosystem,” said Jon Steel, head of cash management products. The move follows rising demand from stablecoin issuers seeking regulated, yield-bearing reserves. With over $1 trillion in cash management assets and dominant spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, BlackRock’s expansion marks a structural bridge between traditional finance and tokenized money. CEO Larry Fink added, “We need to be tokenizing all assets.”
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Ars Technica’s Jennifer Ouellette interviews Cory Doctorow on Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, his new book dissecting the systemic decay of online platforms. Doctorow defines “enshittification” as the process by which digital products degrade in service of advertisers and shareholders, calling it “a disease with symptoms, a mechanism, and an epidemiology.” He attributes the decline to weakened competition, deregulation, loss of interoperability, and eroded labor power—all constraints that once kept corporate excess in check. As he told Ars, “It’s not capitalism itself, but the removal of constraints that makes greed ruin our lives.” Doctorow advocates federated, protocol-based systems and stronger labor solidarity as cures, arguing that projects like Wikipedia show enshittification can be resisted. “Anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops,” he concludes—suggesting reform is inevitable, not impossible.
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