Crypto News: Will the Oscars join the resistance?

The Academy Awards ceremony is on Sunday night, and if you're looking for a break from political news, you might be disappointed, Businessweek's Mark Leydorf writes today. Plus: The wealthiest Americans keep spending, but at a cost; inside an MIT boot camp for entrepreneurs; and why fast expansion isn't in the WNBA's best interest. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

As a sometime critic and noted Oscar scholar (I won the Businessweek pool last year), many colleagues (well, at least one) have asked me for my predictions. Will the edgy comedy Anora win best picture, or the papal thriller Conclave? Will Timothée Chalamet beat Adrien Brody? Is this Demi Moore's year? I'd say there's only one thing we can definitely expect on Sunday night: There will be politics.

This isn't new, obviously. The Oscars have featured protest messages since the 1970s, when Jane Fonda called out the Vietnam War, and Sacheen Littlefeather, on Marlon Brando's behalf, scolded the film industry for mistreating Indigenous people. But this year something different is stirring. In the past few weeks, the #Resistance, stunned into despair by President Donald Trump's blitzkrieg of legally dubious and often vindictive executive orders, is coming back to life. Collective action is taking shape, with protesters hitting the streets nationwide and voters storming town halls to give their representatives hell for going along with Elon Musk's dodgy work at DOGE.

Illustration by Rachel Levit Ruiz

At the Academy Awards on Sunday, I predict that Hollywood will man the barricades. There are plenty of reasons progressives will want to speak up: Trump is censoring or shutting down essential government agencies. He's fracturing NATO. He daily demonizes trans folks and people of color. He didn't fix inflation on Day 1, as promised, and costs are climbing further. The markets are wobbling. On top of that, Tinseltown itself just went up in flames. The president denies the reality of climate change, which scientists say contributed to the disasters in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Nonsensically, he and his allies blamed DEI policies in the Los Angeles Fire Department for the catastrophe.

One model for Sunday's program might be Kendrick Lamar. For his Super Bowl Halftime show on Feb. 9—the most-watched ever, with almost 134 million viewers, according to the Hollywood Reporter—the rapper produced a devastating critique of the country's resurgent white supremacy without making a speech. In the most searing moment, a sea of Black dancers wearing red, white and blue hoodies formed and splintered and re-formed a huge American flag. He let the visuals (and his songs) do the talking.

Lamar performing at Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9 in New Orleans. Photographer: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

The Academy might take a page from the rapper. Word is, Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande will open the Oscars with a live number from the nominated film. If that doesn't sound terribly political, remember that the musical it's based on, written several decades before the 2024 election, tells the story of a maligned woman of color who takes on a carnival-barker-turned-dictator.

Even if the various award winners decide to spend their time thanking agents and lawyers, the political intent of their work speaks for itself. Among the front-runners for major awards are Conclave, The Substance and Emilia Pérez, which touch variously on the rights of marginalized people. The Brutalist highlights antisemitism and hostility to immigrants, while I'm Still Here tells the true story of a woman fighting against Brazil's dictatorship in the 1970s. In Anora—which I predict will win best picture, director and screenplay—a stripper stands up to a Russian oligarch.

One category to watch will be best documentary. Awards watchers say it's down to Porcelain War, which follows three Ukrainian artists who enlisted in the army after Russia's invasion, or No Other Land, which bluntly reports the house-by-house dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank. (Notably, No Other Land has yet to find distribution in the US.) The people who risked their lives reporting these stories will certainly have thoughts about the president blaming Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Vladimir Putin's aggression and openly suggesting the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Maybe that's asking too much from the Oscars. But at the last precursor event, the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Feb. 23, there was at least one speaker ready to roll up her sleeves. Accepting a lifetime achievement award, Fonda herself, now 87, let rip a passionate call to arms. "Woke just means you give a damn about other people," she said to loud applause. "Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge?" she asked. "We don't have to wonder anymore. Because we are in our documentary moment."

You've got the mic, Hollywood.

In Brief

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Wealthy Americans Are Extreme Shoppers

Over the past few years, I have fielded versions of the same question from readers again and again: Who, exactly, is buying all of this stuff?

The confusion is fair. Recent economic headlines do not add up to a coherent picture: Since 2020, Americans have spent lavishly on discretionary goods and services, even as the cost of necessities has soared. Consumer debt has ballooned right along with prices, and Americans are now defaulting on their credit cards at rates unseen since the Great Recession. Wages growth has been strong, but inflation has thwarted its ability to help most Americans get ahead. So who's booking all those first-class airline seats and tables at fancy restaurants? Why are tickets for concerts and major sporting events so expensive and also so sold out?

A recent analysis of consumer spending from Moody's Analytics, first covered in the Wall Street Journal, provides an answer: Rich people really are just firing a cash cannon into the consumer market. The wealthiest 10% of American households—those making more than $250,000 a year, roughly—are now responsible for half of all US consumer spending and at least a third of the country's gross domestic product. If you keep that in mind, a lot of strange things start to make more sense—sometimes distressingly so.

Amanda Mull writes about the risks and complications in such an uneven world: Rich People Are Firing a Cash Cannon at the US Economy—But at What Cost?

Using AI to Speed Up a Business Plan

Photo Illustration: Oscar Bolton Green; photo: Getty Images

Although he'd already started four ventures, Remington Hotchkis figured the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could teach him something new about launching a company. "I knew that they were teaching a disciplined approach to entrepreneurship, and I lack discipline in many regards," he says. But he didn't know it would give him a tool that, in just six days, could turn an idea that had come to him out of the blue into a fully fleshed-out business he hopes will help to defend Southern California against wildfires.

At a January boot camp, the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship introduced students, including Hotchkis, to software that effectively automates starting a business by using artificial intelligence to do market research and analysis. "Somebody can sit down for an afternoon and get a very thoughtful output," says Paul Cheek, the Trust Center's executive director and a senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. After six days in the center's Entrepreneurship Development program, where participants attend about eight hours of lectures each day, followed by several hours working with teammates and the JetPacks, as MIT calls the software, "people come out with a compelling business plan," Cheek says.

Robb Mandelbaum writes more about the program and its use of artificial intelligence: MIT Harnesses AI to Accelerate Startup Ambitions

A Reality Check on the WNBA's Growth Spurt

Illustration: Hunter French for Bloomberg Businessweek

Last April, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said her goal was for the league to hit 16 teams by 2028. It's close: The Golden State Valkyries, the 13th team, will begin playing when the new season starts in May. Next year the Toronto Tempo and an as-yet-unnamed team in Portland, Oregon, will push the league to 15 franchises. Where the 16th team will land is unclear; the Sports Business Journal reported it will be Cleveland, but a league spokesperson will only say the WNBA "has received formal bids from many interested ownership groups in various markets, and we are currently in the process of evaluating these proposals."

Of course, leagues think about expansion when business is growing. The W, as the Women's National Basketball Association is informally known, is no different. The league had already hit a growth spurt when rookie sensations Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese supercharged its popularity. TV viewership last season was up 155% from 2023, and attendance increased 48%. Merchandise sales online and at the flagship store in New York City rose a combined 601%. In July the WNBA agreed to an 11-year, $2.2 billion media deal—six times bigger than its previous one.

The WNBA and its partners—Amazon, ESPN and NBC—agreed to revisit the deal after the 2028 season to make sure that valuation still makes sense. Engelbert would be wise to wait until then to continue expanding, for a few reasons.

In a new Field Day column, Randall Williams lays out those reasons: The WNBA Should Be Careful About Adding Too Many Teams Too Fast

Cruel February

25%

That's how much Bitcoin has dropped since it hit an all-time high less than six weeks ago. Investors have sought safe assets amid more tariff threats, marking a dramatic reality check for one of the most popular Trump trades.

Families in Detention

"Even a short period of time in these facilities can be traumatic for children. The longer children remain in these facilities, the more the risk to their mental and physical health increases."

Neha Desai

Senior director of immigration at National Center for Youth Law

Migrant families with children are being detained at a massive California tent city for far longer than federal guidelines suggest, even as crossings remain at the lowest levels in years. Read the full story here.