Who is the Man Who Just Paid a Record Breaking $4.6 Million to Eat Lunch With Warren Buffett

Bidding for the 20th annual charity auction for a "Power Lunch with Warren Buffett," has ended, with an anonymous winner taking the prize with a final bid of $4,567,888.

The lunch is presented by eBay and the Glide Foundation and will be held at the famed steakhouse Smith & Wollensky in New York City.





The auction was hosted exclusively on eBay, with final bids due Friday, May 31, at 7:30 p.m. PT. Past winners include David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital and Ted Weschler, now part of Buffett's investment team.

As in previous years, 100 percent of the proceeds donated to the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco-based charity which provides local services to the homeless. The foundation is associated with the Memorial United Methodist Church and was founded over fifty years ago by Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani.

The annual lunch, which started in 2000, has raised over $30 million for the non-profit. Buffett's late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett,was a well-known resident and philanthropist in San Francisco.

Per the bidding website, GLIDE is described as "a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization.

"Glide's mission is to break the cycles of multi-generational dependency, poverty, and low self-worth by providing a spiritual home of unconditional love. Glide strives to create a healthy community by offering effective services that foster holistic healing in an environment of cultural integrity and diversity."

Similar to Berkshire Hathaway's stock price, the cost of a winning bid has risen substantially over the years. In 2000, the winning bid was $25,000 while the 2019's winning bid of $4.6 million, an increase of 187 times. In the same time period, Berkshire Hathaway's stock price has risen a mere 5.5 times.

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

I made my first million at 13. Here's my No. 1 rule for investing

Becoming a millionaire by 30 is a rare enough achievement, but Michael Cammarata did it when he was in his early teens.


The cofounder and CEO of Schmidt’s Naturals, which makes natural deodorant and other household products, brought in over a million dollars when he was 13 by running a web hosting company. Cammarata, now 32, was an avid player of the video game "StarCraft," around the turn of the millennium.

“I got into computers. I was dyslexic and was struggling through school when I was around 11,” Cammarata says. But he discovered an inviting new world in the internet. He learned how to build websites and program software through fellow "StarCraft" gamers.

Soon he borrowed $2,000 from his college-age brother to get a dedicated server, which allowed him to start a hosting business. When his dad found out about the purchase, he gave Cammarata several months to start making money from the venture. “I got tens of thousands of people to sign up when I was around 13. I got into a very large amount of money,” Cammarata says.

He expanded by launching his own online advertising network next. “I transitioned into that at around 15 years old. I didn’t have anyone to sell my inventory, so I asked my father if he could help me, and he introduced me to a sales group. My dad was really crucial. He got them to sell my ad inventory,” he says.

Cammarata has since used his fortune to invest in a wide array of companies from tech to naturals. Schmidt’s has become one of the biggest players in its field, recently adding toothpaste and soap to its products. Unilever acquired Schmidt’s at the end of 2017, and Cammarata is working to make his brand even more mainstream.

We talked to Cammarata about his unusual career background, the hard lessons of becoming rich early, and his business mantra.

Cammarata’s first millionaire snafu
Cammarata scored over a million nearly overnight with the web hosting company he operated on his server. After figuring out how to automate the process, as he had no employees or budget, money from customers started piling up.

“A little lesson I learned is that I signed up with a credit card processing company [to handle transactions]. I went from zero money to millions of dollars in revenue,” he says. But he had one big problem: the processing firm held the cash, which he needed immediately. “The bandwidth bill was in the millions of dollars. So I was able to very early on, with the help of my dad, structure my cash flow because I wasn’t really thinking like that being 13.”

Cammarata’s father came from a corporate background, having worked at McCann Erickson. “He brought me back to the numbers,” Cammarata says. And his dad’s help connecting him to a sales team allowed him to push his ad network reaching 150 million people a month to clients, which became a lucrative business of its own.

His biggest mistake, and how he learned to trust his ‘vision’
As Cammarata’s businesses grew, “attorneys and advisers magically appeared,” he says. “I had to learn how to deal with all these opinions. I wasn’t used to it back then and gave them more weight than I should’ve.”

One poor judgment call in particular sticks out. “I wanted to take a big stake in Blizzard [the company behind "Starcraft" and "Warcraft"], put two million in it. People said, ‘You’re crazy.’ They made my favorite game. I thought it was cool,” he says.

Though he was willing to lose it all, friends and advisers talked him out of it over many sessions. He lost out in the end. “Oh my God,” he says of what could’ve been. “Blizzard merged with Activision shortly after. I still do have stock in Activision Blizzard, but the amount of stake in the company I would’ve had… It would’ve been cute. It could probably have pushed me into the billions faster and could’ve changed the direction of my life.”

But that non-move gave him a bit of wisdom that has proved invaluable since. “If I could go back, I would definitely take even more risks and trust my gut even more. Hesitating or not trusting your instinct is probably the downfall of most people. I had such a clear vision and still have a clear vision, but you can’t let the noise come in,” Cammarata says. “I was dyslexic, I could barely read and write, and I tried to be normal and fit in. It didn’t work, and I learned it’s okay to be different. Dyslexia is an advantage because I see things differently than most people.”

Doing things the hard way
Cammarata graduated high school early and never went to college. In his late teens, he was busy trying to build his mini-empire.

“I was learning by trial and error, and there are definitely moments where you learn more about people and their capacities,” he says. “On the investment side, probably the hardest is doing due diligence on companies.”

One headache resulted from hiring an outside firm to look into a company he was investing in that sold consumer electronics. “I assumed they did it correctly. They didn’t cross-check licenses for all products,” he says. “The company started losing money because they didn’t have the right licenses.”

He suddenly had to come up with a plan to restructure the company and make it a profitable investment. “When you have advisers, you can’t accept their word as gold even if you hire the biggest firm,” he says. “I had to be active and hands-on in my investment portfolio, really do the work myself, and not rely on other people to do work for me. When you have money, it doesn’t change that you have to act like you don’t. If you just rely on experts, you’re going to fail and have a rude awakening.”

Listening to the customer
“I always wanted to manage a rock band,” Cammarata says. He got his wish, and another unlikely professional detour, when he started managing the boy band Big Time Rush, formed in 2009. The band launched its own show on Nickelodeon, which became one of the highest-rated live-action programs for the network.

“It taught me two things: how to really scale a promo, utilize different PR firms’ specialties, and time it with content and a social-media strategy. It’s really complicated,” he says. “I learned how to launch a product.”

And in doing so, Cammarata developed another idea. “I interacted with the fans in real time on certain platforms,” he says of working on the band. “By being on the ground listening to those consumers, those females,” he discovered their passion for natural products, in particular deodorant. “I knew they were going to be the next generation of household purchasers.”

He eventually bought Schmidt’s, at the time a tiny company in Portland, Oregon, which sold its deodorants in jar form. He had to learn how to get its powdered product into a stick and in doing so, was able to scale Schmidt’s into a market leader. It’s gone from four employees in an office attached to a pet store to over 150 employees.

His No. 1 rule for investing
One thing has remained consistent in Cammarata’s ventures since he launched his web hosting phenomenon at 13: He spends money only on what he believes in. That remains true across his work as an investor.

“My philosophy from when I was a kid was I always wanted to have a positive impact on the world and push humanity forward,” Cammarata says. “When I started to invest, I looked for companies with purpose.” He would get to know companies for two to three years before jumping into business with them.

He’d advise that other aspiring entrepreneurs do the same.

“Deploying money into things that don’t give you personal purpose doesn’t work,” he says.

Deutsche Bank MISTAKENLY SEND Away $35 Billion

A routine payment went awry at Deutsche Bank AG last month when Germany’s biggest lender inadvertently sent 28 billion euros ($35 billion) to an exchange as part of its daily dealings in derivatives, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The errant transfer occurred about a week before Easter as Deutsche Bank was conducting a daily collateral adjustment, the person said. The sum, which far exceeded the amount it was due to post, landed in an account at Deutsche Boerse AG’s Eurex clearinghouse.

The error, which took place in the final weeks of former Chief Executive Officer John Cryan’s tenure, was quickly spotted and no financial harm suffered. But the episode raises fresh questions about the bank’s risk and control processes, which Cryan had boasted of improving before his ouster.

“This was an operational error in the movement of collateral between Deutsche Bank’s principal accounts and Deutsche Bank’s Eurex account,” Charlie Olivier, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, wrote in an emailed statement. “The error was identified within a matter of minutes, and then rectified. We have rigorously reviewed the reasons why this error occurred and taken steps to prevent its recurrence.”

It’s another misstep for Deutsche Bank at a time when it is undergoing a change of leadership in the wake of its third straight annual loss, and, like other lenders, faces increased scrutiny from regulators. Cryan, who was CEO for three years, said in a speech earlier this year that the bank was approaching the end of “phase 1” of his restructuring, which bolstered internal controls and shrunk the number of operating systems at the bank to 32 from 45.

“A bank mistakenly making such a large transfer shows its controls aren’t working adequately, and it’s embarrassing,” said Dieter Hein, an analyst at Fairesearch who has the equivalent of a sell recommendation on the bank’s stock. “This kind of incident shows that the bank’s problems are so big that you can’t fix them immediately. Cryan failed.”

Hein also said chief operating officer, Kim Hammonds, who herself is being ousted, bears some of the blame given her involvement in Cryan’s information-technology revamp. Hammonds reportedly called Deutsche Bank “the most dysfunctional company” she’d ever worked for, and hasn’t denied making the remarks.

Bear Trap

The error should have been caught by an internal fail-safe system known as a "bear-trap," the person said. The mechanism was set up after an internal audit at the bank triggered by an earlier collateral payments error, in March 2014, the person said.

While such errors do occur, the amount involved -- more than the bank’s market capitalization of around 24 billion euros -- is highly unusual, according to the person.

Eurex held back 4 billion euros of Deutsche Bank’s funds over the weekend of March 23, the person said. A spokesman for Deutsche Boerse said the company doesn’t comment on single transactions or client relationships.

Deutsche Bank’s new CEO, Christian Sewing, is seeking to turn around the worst-performing member of the Stoxx 600 banks index this year, with the company’s shares having fallen 26 percent to date. Analysts have said Sewing’s appointment raises questions about the lender’s future direction, especially the under-performing investment bank business.

In a separate development, Germany’s biggest bank has been asked by the European Central Bank to simulate an orderly wind-down of its trading book, Chief Financial Officer James von Moltke told Bloomberg Monday. Deutsche Bank is the first to receive such a request from the ECB, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said the ECB is using Europe’s largest investment bank as a "guinea pig" before it sends similar requests to other banks.

How Tesla's Elon Musk Will Get To Become the World's Richest Man Even When He is Not Getting Paid By Tesla

Elon Musk is already known for his ambitious bets, but the Tesla CEO is now gambling with his own net worth: Tesla announced Tuesday that it would pay Musk nothing for the next 10 years—no salary, bonus, or stock—unless the electric car company nearly doubles in value.

Before lauding Musk for his apparent selflessness, though, it’s worth noting that the billionaire, who has served as Tesla’s chairman since 2004 and as its CEO since 2008, has been getting along just fine despite never receiving a salary as long as he has been with the company. Indeed Musk, worth an estimated $21.5 billion, will once again refuse his annual paycheck of $56,000—California minimum wage—in 2018 and the decade thereafter.

Under the new payment plan, however, Musk could actually become much, much richer—and so could Tesla stockholders.

To earn any compensation going forward, Musk must grow Tesla, whose current market capitalization is about $59 billion, to $100 billion in market cap, and also increase its revenues or adjusted earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a.k.a. EBITDA) by at least 70%. That would satisfy the first milestone of the 12-level compensation ladder, allowing Musk to collect stock options worth an additional $1 billion.

But Musk also has the opportunity to collect a significantly bigger windfall. If Tesla’s market value reaches $650 billion (an 11-fold increase) by 2028—and if the other financial measures multiply between 15 and 21 times—Musk can keep all dozen tranches of stock options, netting him an additional $55.8 billion, according to the company.

Musk’s real reward would be even greater. After all, the CEO is also Tesla’s largest shareholder, and if he hits all 12 performance milestones, the company calculates Musk would own as much as 28.3% of Tesla. With that large a stake of a $650 billion company, Musk’s net worth would surge to $184 billion in Tesla stock alone—potentially making him the richest person in the world. (Although Musk’s stake is unlikely to end up that large due to dilutive events, such as stock issuance to employees, the size of his current Tesla holdings would be enough to make him the richest person alive today.)

The world’s wealthiest person is currently Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose $108 billion worth of Amazon stock makes up the lion’s share of his net worth. Musk’s maximum stock option award would boost his net worth—even before factoring in his ownership in his other company SpaceX—above that of Bezos. (Of course, if Amazon stock rises at least 71% in the meantime, Bezos, who also foregoes a traditional salary, would likely maintain his title atop the world’s rich list.)

While money is a powerful incentive, it’s not clear how much the incremental awards have driven Musk’s performance at Tesla. Besides forfeiting a salary, Musk also has yet to exercise any of the stock options he has collected as part of his previous compensation agreement from 2012, despite having achieved nine out of 10 milestones required to to receive the maximum amount. Of the Tesla stock he currently owns (some 33.6 million shares), Musk acquired the vast majority of it before Tesla even went public in 2010.

The new compensation scheme also incentivizes Musk to hit different types of targets than he has in the past, which critics worry will come at the expense of other achievements. Since 2012, Musk’s stock awards have depended not only upon Tesla reaching certain market valuation thresholds (all of which it has fulfilled), but upon accomplishing 10 operational goals, including rolling out its first Model X and Model 3 cars, and also producing its 300,000th vehicle.

By contrast, the new pay plan encourages Musk to focus on increasing sales, profits and the Tesla stock price without holding him accountable to meeting production quotas. It also untethers him from certain milestones that have remained stubbornly elusive—for example, the only outstanding hurdle from the 2012 agreement which Musk has failed to meet: The requirement that Tesla maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four consecutive quarters. The last time Tesla’s gross margin was that high was the first quarter of 2012.

Of course, Musk has proven skeptics wrong multiple times before—defying bearish investors and short-sellers to achieve a more than 1,030% in Tesla stock over the past five years, and going so far as to sleep at the factory to keep production on track. If Musk can rise to this latest challenge at Tesla, he’ll also earn his place among Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and the other wealthiest billionaires on the planet.

Warren Buffett Swears He will Never Invest in Bitcoin and Here is why he said so

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway  widely venerated for his investing acumen, said Wednesday he is bearish on cryptocurrencies, and swore he would never buy Bitcoin.

“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” Buffett said on CNBC, noting that he didn’t understand Bitcoin and other blockchain-based digital assets. “Now, when it happens or how, or anything else, I don’t know.”

The investor, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha for his market prescience, didn’t think he’d ever warm up to cryptocurrencies.

“We don’t own any, we’re not short any, we’ll never have a position in them,” Buffett added Wednesday. “I get into enough trouble with the things I think I know something about. Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know about?”

Still, while Buffett’s words often make waves in the stock market, cryptocurrency prices remained relatively stable following his comments. The Bitcoin price sank only slightly to about $14,400, while the price of Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency, rose to more than $1,300. Ripple, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, continued its multi-day slide, falling to less than $2 apiece amid concerns unrelated to Buffett’s comments.

It’s not the first time Buffett has dismissed cryptocurrencies. In 2014, the octogenarian investor dubbed Bitcoin a “mirage,” warning investors to “stay away from it.”

That sentiment echoes recent comments by other influential Wall Street figures including J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who in September called Bitcoin a “fraud.”

But while Buffett said he wouldn’t go so far as shorting Bitcoin, he suggested he might find other ways to bet against it. The stock-picker told CNBC he’d “be glad” to buy five-year put options on “every one of the cryptocurrencies.” Put options can be a way for investors to bet against an asset, as they become more valuable as the underlying asset’s price falls.

Such put contracts give buyers the option to sell an asset at a certain price at a future date—which can result in a windfall if the price of the asset declines below the previously agreed-upon price. Put options, however, come with more limited risks than simply shorting an asset, which can result in infinite losses if the asset’s price rises instead of falling as expected.

Though Buffett was speaking hypothetically and said he has not gone so far as to actually invest in any Bitcoin puts, there are now avenues for investors to pursue a similar bearish strategy. Derivatives exchange LedgerX, for one, offers both short- and long-term Bitcoin put options. But trading volumes have been relatively thin on the platform (just $1 million during its first week operating in October), making it less attractive for larger investors to get in the game.

On the other hand, there’s some reason investors might not want to take Buffett’s advice on Bitcoin. While the Oracle’s overall investing track record is unparalleled, Buffett has been notoriously reluctant to invest in new technology—a weakness that has cost him even better returns over time. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting last May, for example, Buffett expressed regret for not investing in Google (now known as Alphabet)  and Amazon stock years ago, having failed to appreciate the tech companies’ great potential.

8 Daily Habits That Dramatically Improve Your Prospects of Becoming Rich

Obtaining wealth and success is a journey. We can look at those who have made it and tell ourselves that they were born special or have been incredibly lucky. Those both may play some role in their success, but using someone else's success as a reason for our lack of achievement is just an excuse.

Almost all successful and wealthy people started out where we did. What differentiates us and them is not genetic disposition or being born into a rich family. Rather it is the way that they live their lives each day. It is the habits that they have created for themselves and the way they have learned to become better -- and it is the daily grind of working consistently towards understanding the world.

This journey starts with our daily habits. Over time, when continuing these habits and frameworks of thinking, we will move closer towards success and wealth.

Here are eight daily rituals that you can begin today that will drastically improve your chances of wealth and success:

1. Exercise.

Exercising has many positive effects. First, it will keep you healthy. This helps you look good and feel good about yourself. It is also a great time to decompress. We are busy during the day, and, when we work out, we are able to leave everything else aside.

Not to mention that exercising releases endorphins which, by definition, make us feel better. Some people say that you have to work out in the morning or in the evening. Instead, just find the time that exercising is best for you.

For some, working out in the morning is a great way to kick off the day. Others would rather use the morning to work and enjoy winding down with a workout in the evening.

2. Self-reflect.

We have many experiences each day. We could extract how each of these moments makes us feel and impacts on our life. Reflecting the outcome of our experiences helps align us moving forward to do more of what we love and learn from our mistakes and successes.

Successful people take the time each day to reflect. This could come in a variety of forms, depending on what works for you. Some people like to journal. Others like to go for walks. Other people like to meditate. Regardless of what you choose, finding some way to self-reflect will put your future decisions more in line with who you are at heart.

3. Build your network.

Being self employed is hard. Imagine if you sent one cold email each day and one message to someone that you know giving them an article they would be interested in.

Over the course of the year, you will have reached out to 365 people and added significant value to the lives of those that you already know. Successful people have powerful networks and are able to leverage them to find new opportunities, learn, and be challenged.

Sending two emails sounds quite easy and it is. Yet, close to nobody does it each day. Taking the five or 10 minutes each day to create stronger connections with others will drastically improve your success.

4. Work on a skill or habit.

Spending 10 to 30 minutes daily on a skill or habit will pay drastic dividends over time. Over the course of a few years, you could become one of the best at one particular thing with this daily commitment.

Or, you could work on different skills/habits over time. Doing so, even with just a small amount of your day, will allow you to develop new skills or habits that you can apply throughout your life. Plus, doing so will make you happier by feeling more productive and a greater sense of personal growth.

5. Get enough sleep.

This point is a bit controversial. Some people would argue to sleep less and do more. If you are someone who can operate at maximum output with less sleep, then all the power to you. But don't kid yourself, most people, though, less sleep means sacrificing in productivity or output, even if you are drinking coffee.

Sleeping enough also gives our brain the necessary time to recharge and process the information that we received throughout the day. It can be difficult to make the conscious effort to get enough sleep when you are busy, but doing so will allow you to tackle life with everything that you have each day.

6. Take time to be grateful.

The most successful people take the time each day to be grateful for what they have. This gratitude promotes overall happiness. In turn, this allows us to tackle life with more energy and rigor.

Given that we are as lucky as we are, and have the opportunities that we do, we need to capitalize on them. Being grateful reminds us of that and can help us both take advantage of opportunities as well as persevere in difficult times.

7. Do something that makes you uncomfortable.

The most successful people take risks and challenge themselves. Making an effort each day to do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone will have endless benefits. It will make you more comfortable with risk. Being able to take chances is often the only way to yield large rewards.

This will also help you when you are in the face of adversity. Staying composed when times are tough will pay off in critical situations in your life. Being accustomed to risk also prevents complacency. It will give you a tendency to try new things which will leave you better off and make life more meaningful. Right now I'm trying to learn to become a better programmer as well as starting an Amazon store to make some extra cash. Just because I'm not good at it doesn't mean I shouldn't try. Start today, even if it's only five minutes.

8. Read.

Beyond working on new skills or habits, the most successful people are always learning. They make a daily commitment to reading. This does not have to come in the form of books. Some people listen to podcasts and others enjoy shorter articles. Regardless, though, consuming content and learning each day will widen your perspective and allow you to find more of what you are passionate about.

Deciding what to read can be difficult, but do not use that as an excuse. Don't overwhelm yourself with the likes of a book a week -- start with a page a day if you have traditionally not been a reader.

3 Things Entrepreneurs Need to Understand About Blockchain Technology

The rapid evolution of the internet has reinvented what it means to be a business owner. In the same way that the digital economy has empowered tens of thousands of hopeful entrepreneurs over the last decade, blockchain technology promises to ignite a new generation of innovators.

Though much of the fintech coverage is focused on the ephemeral benefits of cryptocurrency exchanges and returns, there is far more opportunity, especially for engineers, designers, and makers generally, when we think about the long lasting impact that blockchains can have on how we organize and store systems within our society.

As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to navigate this space and separate the signal from the noise when it comes to determining the key information to understand. There are many self-proclaimed experts who simply want to steal your attention and sell you a product. The best entrepreneurs are able to separate these distractions from what is truly important and find ways to use the best of this technology to make a difference.

Here are three essential implications of the technology, relevant to entrepreneurs, that will help to define the fundamental tenets of how starting a business will be different in a blockchain economy.

1. A new fundraising mechanism.
Access to capital is one of the biggest points of friction for founders. This obstacle becomes twice as hard when you are living outside of an economic hub, as there are fewer investors willing to take a chance on you. From a global market's perspective, this is largely inefficient and a waste of potential, given that there is a surplus of talent needing capital to help kickstart their ideas into action.

In a blockchain economy, initial coin offerings will become the standard vehicles for startup (and large enterprise) fundraising. An ICO, as they are shorthanded, is effectively the modern day IPO, a tool to "crowdfund" capital to companies in an extremely secure and efficient manner.

Companies like ConnectJob, an on-demand economy built on top of a blockchain, are already beginning to announce their token issuing, achieving rapid global growth via the crowd. Unlike the traditional markets, these coin offerings are accessible to anyone interested, regardless of geography, so there can be a much larger base of potential investors. This opens up an entire new economy of innovation, powered by ICOs, that can scale quickly and escape the sluggish and elitist venture capital community.

At the same time, it is really important to be cautious whenever investing in a coin offering, as there are many scammers and hackers who are out to take your money. Given the lack of regulations, as it is still very much so a developing space, you should proceed with extreme caution, for when a deal seems too good to be true, it generally is. In sum, you should really only invest in deals you have thoroughly researched and have conviction about.

2. Seamless systems.
Many of today's most dynamic and massive industries are built on top of intermediary parties. The government. Healthcare. Freight. Education. Voting. The list goes on and on. In each of these industries, middlemen, operating as brokerage services, dictate the ebb and flow of the sector. But, at the same time, ask anyone ingrained in some of these friction-ful industries and they will tell you, these intermediary services can drive prices up and slow down progress velocity. Working internationally, brokers can be a nightmare to deal with and charge exorbitant prices for seemingly menial work.

Luckily, we can supplant the need for conventional intermediary parties by using Ethereum smart contracts to automatically verify and validate issues of trust and verification. At a high level, smart contracts operate independent of any one individual and are essentially an algorithm that authenticates information. With smart contracts implemented across a wide variety of industries, we can stop relying on humans to handle our most important data.

Entrepreneurs can abstract this technological breakthrough and apply it to a number of pressing problems -- many of which stem from the foundational issue of human error. For instance, TraDove has applied the power of the blockchain to unlock corporate demand for a token-based business-to-business (B2B) marketing, sales, and trade platform. This is the first of many implementations that are likely to reach a wide scale.

3. A community-driven priority.
In a distributed ecosystem, built with blockchains, the power lies with the people. In other words, there cannot be one singular entity with controlling powers over the rest of the network. This, among other things, protects against top-down corruption and manipulation. It also restores power to the community as a whole.

ODEM, an on-demand education marketplace, has been able to leverage existing relationships to cultivate an active and inspired audience around their upcoming token offering. Started by the founders of Excelorators, an education company with a network over 200 professors, ODEM's community attracts educators, students, and investors. All three share a common goal of eliminating intermediaries and costs involved in traditional education.

As a result, building a strong and active user base that is passionate about your mission and project will become essentially important for the next wave of companies and entrepreneurs. Whether you are planning an ICO or working to develop your product roadmap, it will be critical, perhaps now more than ever before, to future plan with your community in mind. Entrepreneurs will need to become master communicators who can persuade their vision to the masses, such that they achieve buy-in and are able to work quickly and effectively.

This Couple Quit Their Jobs to Eat Around the World and Now Make Six Figures

Greg Remmey hovers over a platter of pizza, angling his cracked iPhone to capture the green pickled chilis and curled pepperoni slices. His wife and business partner, Rebecca Leigh West, shines a flashlight from her phone on the production, turning a small table at the New York City pizza joint Speedy Romeo into a makeshift photoshoot. Greg snaps the pic, which later will be uploaded to their joint Instagram account, Devour Power, where more than 450,000 followers can see it.

At first glance, Remmey, 28, and West, 31, may look like your average food-obsessed couple, but Devour Power is actually their full-time job: They oversee not only the Instagram account but also Devour Media, a content-creation studio that runs social-media accounts and produces original content for more than 25 restaurants across the U.S. It started in 2012 as Meals and Reels, a blog and Instagram handle where the couple, who were modeling at the time, shared short movie reviews on the Web site and drool-worthy food photos on Instagram. 

They quickly realized the Instagram account was growing faster than the site, due to their ultra close-up shots of tacos, burgers, and cheesy delights, and by 2015 they’d amassed 75,000 followers and changed their name to Devour Power. The following year, Remmey and West began charging brands for content, realized they could turn their foodie hobby into a business, and quit their day jobs to plot the groundwork for Devour Media. Here, the couple explains how they leveraged their hobby into a successful business.

Your Instagram account started as a hobby, but you must have been dining out all the time. How did you afford it?

West: When we started Meals and Reels, we were probably going out to eat for lunch and dinner every day. It’s still the same now. Even if you just get tacos for a few dollars, it all adds up.

Remmey: But we saw it as an investment. We could tell there was some form of benefit to it and maybe you could build a business off posting pictures of food.

How much money did you spend on food in the first year of Meals and Reels?

Remmey: Around $30,000.

West: A lot of the meals started to get comped by restaurants, too, once we reached about 15,000 followers. That was within the first year.

How would people know who you were when you came in?

West: We’re pretty adamant about not walking into a place and being like, “Oh, this is who we are” with that attitude. You see that nowadays a lot of times [with] Instagram influencers. If you can’t afford it yourself, don’t be there. But chefs and managers began to know who we were from social media, from going to events. Our faces are on Instagram and Snapchat every day. And in the early days we carried business cards everywhere and just left them in checks we’d paid for. Or we’d grab cards from the restaurants’ managers or chefs and e-mail them links to Instagrams we posted after eating there just to say, “Hey! We exist!”

And now, you sometimes travel for free, too.

West: The first big trip we got offered was to go to Hilton Head.

Remmey: That happened when we had 300,000 followers, well after we became Devour Power.

West: A resort or hotel will reach out and offer to pay for your airfare, your hotel, and pay you for posts. But we tag all those photos as #ad.

GETTY | ABBY SILVERMAN

Same deal with a restaurant, too, right?

Rebecca: Yes. We’d rather be safe than sorry.

How did you decide to launch your business, Devour Media?

Remmey: We both wanted to do food Instagram full-time. We wanted to quit our day jobs.

West: And work together.

Remmey: [But] we needed to still make that consistent money that was coming in from our paychecks, and we couldn’t just rely on one-off partnerships with a random hotel here and there. With Devour Media, we partner with brands and restaurants to create content for them.

What does that mean?

Remmey: We go in and take pictures and make videos for them. We either give them the content to use on their own social accounts or, for an extra charge, we run their entire social media. One of the [other] things we offer is posts on our Insta accounts — @DevourPower, @Devour_theworld, @Devour_cheese, or @Devour_tacos, etc.

What are you offering restaurants that they can’t do themselves?

West: We take the same kind of close-up, food porn photos featured on our account. Lots of natural lighting. But they’d rather work with us than a traditional PR or marketing firm, because we can offer what they can’t — a post on our account, which can reach more than a million people if it’s cross-posted on our other sister accounts. Our accounts make 10 million impressions a week.

What are you raking in now?

Remmey: When we first started monetizing Devour Power in 2015, and it wasn’t full-time, we were making about $40,000 together.

West: Devour Media is on track to make more than a quarter of a million by the end of this year. Not bad for the first year being full-time! And now we’re growing rapidly. We have clients all over the world and we recently got our own digital series on the Food Network called Much Rush.

A lot of people would argue that there’s no way they could get into this business — who has all that money to spend on food?

West: I grew up as the only child to a single father who passed away two years ago. We were lower-middle class. You know what it takes to stay in New York City? Hustle. We work 24/7 and never say no to clients.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Shot on location at Cheese Grille in New York City.

Real life Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort slams Bitcoin as a ‘huge, gigantic scam’ and warns wannabe investors not to waste their money

THE real-life Wolf of Wall Street has slammed Bitcoin as a "huge, gigantic scam" and has warned would-be investers not to waste their cash.

Jordan Belfort believes the controversial cryptocurrency is a bubble and could be set to plummet in value soon.

The former stockbroker, whose market manipulation and fraud crimes in the 1990s were subject of the 2013 film starring Leonardo di Caprio, said:“Promoters are perpetuating a massive scam of the highest order on everyone.

“Probably 85 per cent of people out there don’t have bad intentions but the problem is, if five or ten per cent are trying to scam you.”

Belfort said he expected the price of Bitcoin to rise further in the short term before an eventual collapse in the market.

He likened it to Holland’s “tulip mania”, where the value of tulip bulbs grew exponentially in the 17th Century before a rapid fall in prices.

In an interview with CNN he said: “I think it’s a huge danger right now that people are looking at this as the next great thing, it’s a bubble for sure.

“The next stage, you will see it really skyrocket, there will be a short squeeze, it will go even higher and then eventually it will come caving in, it’s almost a guarantee."

“If you were the most disciplined person and get in and get out there is probably a short window to make some money.

“But that’s not human nature, people will get in and make some money and they want to make more.
“In the tulip bubble the beginning of the end was when they started trading futures on tulips, that was another move up and then all of a sudden it collapses and it’s over.”

His comments come after a businessman who made millions from Bitcoin also warned potential buyers not to waste their money.

Minted Grant Sabatier, 32, said throwing savings at the controversial cyber cash is a "terrible idea".
Sabatier, who reached his goal of making $1million by age 30, first invested $5,000 (£3,739) in Bitcoin in 2013 at $72 (£53.85) per coin.

And although his investment is now worth a staggering $1,148,720 (£859,081), he says people should think twice before following suit - because the Bitcoin is "impossible to value".

Writing for CNBC, he said Bitcoin is "short-term gambling, not investing".

Sabatier, who lives with his wife in Chicago, wrote: "I first invested $5,000 in bitcoin back in 2013 at $72 per coin and now own approximately 69.2 Bitcoins.
"I decided to buy as a long-term experiment and used less than one per cent of my net worth at the time to buy into Bitcoin. Sure, I wanted to make money on it, but if I lost everything, it wasn't going to change the course of my life.

"Bitcoin is trading at $16,600 (£12,414.48), which makes my Bitcoins now worth $1,148,720 (£859,081). It took me five years working 80-hour weeks to make over $1million (£747,860) saving and investing in the stock market.

It's by far, without a doubt, the easiest money I have ever made. But I don't recommend you invest in Bitcoin today."

Describing Bitcoin as a "global craze" that "even my barber who has no idea what a blockchain is buying", Sabatier added: "It's (Bitcoin) impossible to accurately value. When the price of anything fluctuates 20-30 per cent in one day, it's obviously unstable, so you could lose all of your money very quickly.  

"If you need your money in the next year, don't buy bitcoin. With the insane short-term fluctuations, Bitcoin is short-term gambling, not investing."
Sabatier, who is the founder of Millennial Money, where he writes about personal finance, also warned that cyber wallets could get hacked regularly.
He further said that, because there is no central governing body to guarantee Bitcoin, it can be disfficult to get back if lost. 

He said: "You might think that digital wallets are secure, but cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets continue to get hacked regularly. More than $70 million (£52, 502,000) in Bitcoin was hacked from NiceHash, a Bitcoin mining marketplace, last week.
"Just because exchanges like Coinbase have $200million (£149,572,000) in venture funding and a nice shiny marketplace doesn't mean that they can't get hacked either. 

"Because there is no central governing body guaranteeing your bitcoin, if you lose it, it can be difficult to get back. If it gets stolen, then you are out of luck. Hacks will continue to happen."

Police seek homeless man who accidentaly stumbled upon cash and took off with $354,000 from Paris airport

French police say a homeless man found a huge amount of cash last week at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport and was able to leave the complex with 300,000 euros ($354,000).

Two police officers, who are not allowed to speak publicly on the case, said Thursday that video surveillance showed the man looking in the trash and leaning against a nearby door.

Airport police union official Jean-Yann William Airport told France Info television that "to his surprise, the door is opening, he's entering and finds out there's huge amount of money" in the room of cash transport company Loomis.

Video then shows the man leaving the airport with two big bags.

Police recognized him as a homeless man living in the airport area. He is being actively sought.

Couple That Invested in Bitcoin at $800. Now It's $17,000 and They're Donating Everything to a Cancer Hospital

Tech investors Halle Tecco and Jeff Hammerbacher invested in Bitcoin back in 2013 when it was selling for around $800. Now that the cryptocurrency has surged more than 2000%, they’re donating the entire portfolio to a South Carolina cancer hospital.

The couple did not say how much the investment is worth, but considering Bitcoin’s price has gone up to $17,000, the donation is estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars, CNBC reported. Tecco and Hammerbacher’s donation will fund cancer research at Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, S.C. The hospital will now have to decide whether to convert the Bitcoin donation into dollars.

“We pretty much forgot about it for a few years (the Bitcoin investment) and then this year, it got interesting,” Tecco told CNBC.

Photo by Steve Jennings—Getty Images for TechCrunch)

 

Steve Jennings 2013 Getty Images

Tacco is the co-founder of digital health investment firm Rock Health, and Hammerbacher was a Facebook data scientist and is now an assistant professor at the medical school. The husband and wife duo co-run an angel fund called Techammer. They told CNBC that they wanted to publicize their donation in the hope that it would inspire others to follow suit.

“The investor community that as benefited from the Bitcoin craze should use this foresight (and luck!) to help others. We hope we are just the first,” Tecco told CNBC via text.