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Associated Press
a day ago
- Business
- Associated Press
'Please be careful.' There are risks and rewards as crypto heavyweights push tokenization
As cryptocurrencies become more intertwined with the traditional financial system, industry heavyweights are racing for a long-sought goal of turning real-world assets into digital tokens. 'Tokenization is going to open the door to a massive trading revolution,' said Vlad Tenev, the CEO of the trading platform Robinhood at a recent James Bond-themed tokenization launch event in the south of France. Advocates say tokenization is the next leap forward in crypto and can help break down walls that have advantaged the wealthy and make trading cheaper, more transparent and more accessible for everyday investors. But critics say tokenization threatens to undermine a century's worth of securities law and investor protections that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world. And Robinhood's push into tokenizing shares of private companies quickly faced pushback from one of the world's most popular startups. What is tokenization? The basic idea behind tokenization: Use blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrencies to create digital tokens as stand-ins for things like bonds, real estate or even fractional ownership of a piece of art and that can be traded like crypto by virtually anyone, anywhere at any time. The massive growth of stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency typically bought and sold for $1, has helped fuel the appetite to tokenize other financial assets, crypto venture capitalist Katie Haun said on a recent podcast. She said tokenization will upend investing in ways similar to how streamers radically changed how people watch television. 'You used to have to sit there on a Thursday night and watch Seinfeld,' Haun said. 'You tune in at a specific time, you don't get to choose your program, you couldn't be watching a program like Squid Games from Korea. Netflix was market-expanding. In the same way, I think the tokenization of real-world assets will be market expanding.' Growing momentum Robinhood began offering tokenized stock trading of major U.S. public companies for its European customers earlier this month and gave away tokens to some customers meant to represent shares in OpenAI and SpaceX, two highly valued private companies. Several other firms are diving in. Crypto exchange Kraken also allows customers outside the U.S. to trade tokenized stocks while Coinbase has petitioned regulators to open the market to its U.S. customers. Wall Street giants BlackRock and Franklin Templeton currently offer tokenized money market funds. McKinsey projects that tokenized assets could reach $2 trillion by 2030. Crypto's golden age The push for tokenization comes at a heady time in crypto, an industry that's seen enormous growth from the creation and early development of bitcoin more than 15 years ago by libertarian-leaning computer enthusiasts to a growing acceptance in mainstream finance. The world's most popular cryptocurrency is now regularly setting all-time highs — more than $123,000 on Monday — while other forms of crypto like stablecoins are exploding in use and the Trump administration has pledged to usher in what's been called the 'golden age' for digital assets. Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University, said the biggest winners in the push for tokenization could be a small handful of exchanges like Robinhood that see their trading volumes and influence spike. 'Which is kind of ironic given the origins of crypto, which was to bypass intermediaries,' Reiners said. Trump bump Interest in tokenization has also gotten a boost thanks to the election of President Donald Trump, who has made enacting more crypto-friendly regulations a top priority of his administration and signed a new law regulating stablecoins on Friday. 'Tokenization is an innovation and we at the SEC should be focused on how do we advance innovation at the marketplace,' said Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins. Is it legal? Securities law can be complex and even defining what is a security can be a hotly debated question, particularly in crypto. The crypto exchange Binance pulled back offerings of tokenized securities in 2021 after German regulators raised questions about potential violations of that country's securities law. Under Trump, the SEC has taken a much less expansive view than the previous administration and dropped or paused litigation against crypto companies that the agency had previously accused of violating securities law. Hilary Allen, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, said crypto companies have been emboldened by Trump's victory to be more aggressive in pushing what they can offer. 'The most pressing risk is (tokenization) being used as a regulatory arbitrage play as a way of getting around the rules,' she said. However, the SEC has struck a cautionary tone when it comes to tokens. Shortly after Robinhood's announcement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been an outspoken crypto supporter, issued a statement saying companies issuing tokenized stock should consider 'their disclosure obligations' under federal law. 'As powerful as blockchain technology is, it does not have magical abilities to transform the nature of the underlying asset,' Peirce said. All eyes on private companies One of the most closely watched areas of tokenization involves private companies, which aren't subject to strict financial reporting requirements like publicly traded ones. Many hot startups are not going public as often as they used to and instead are increasingly relying on wealthy and institutional investors to raise large sums of money and stay private. That's unfair to the little guy, say advocates of tokenization. 'These are massive wealth generators for a very small group of rich, well-connected insiders who get access to these deals early,' said Robinhood executive Johann Kerbrat. 'Crypto has the power to solve this inequality.' 'Please be careful' But Robinhood's giveaway of tokens meant to represent an investment in OpenAI immediately drew pushback from the company itself, which said it was not involved in Robinhood's plan and did not endorse it. 'Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer,' OpenAI said on social media. 'Please be careful.' Public companies have strict public reporting requirements about their financial health that private companies don't have to produce. Such reporting requirements have helped protect investors and give a legitimacy to the U.S. financial system, said Allen, who said the push for tokenized sales of shares in private companies is 'eerily familiar' to how things played out before the creation of the SEC nearly a century ago. 'Where we're headed is where we were in the 1920s,' she said. 'Door-to-door salesmen offering stocks and bonds, half of it had nothing behind it, people losing their life savings betting on stuff they didn't understand.'
Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Times
First McDonald's took French cities — now it's the new village café
Home to barely 3,000 people, the village of Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès in the south of France has a fine 17th-century church and narrow picturesque streets lined with stone buildings. Since this spring, it can also boast its own branch of McDonald's. In the country that invented haute cuisine, it is part of a drive by the American fast-food giant, which already has 1,560 French branches, to expand beyond its traditional sites in cities and out-of-town commercial centres. Fifty new outlets are due to open this year and, for the first time, many are expected to be in small rural communities. 'McDonald's has become a bit like the village café,' says Jérôme Fourquet, director of the opinion and business strategy department of Ifop, a leading French pollster. For the leaders of such communities, the chain's arrival means much needed jobs. In Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, it has become the biggest employer. 'They plan to hire 40 people,' Jean-François Durand-Coutelle, the mayor, told local media several months before the opening. 'As per my request, local people will be given priority, especially the young and those trying to supplement their pensions.' For many in the restaurant business, however, McDonald's foray into la France profonde is yet another blow to the country's proud culinary tradition. 'We are losing our soul. The local authorities should stop this,' fumed Alain Fontaine, president of the French Association of Master Restaurateurs. 'Tourists will arrive in a 13th or 14th-century village, see the renovated fountain and church and magnificent walls, and then right in the middle of the square there will be a McDonald's — the same McDonald's they can find in Coventry, Northampton, New York or Milan. What's that all about?' • Foodie breaks in France French eating habits have changed dramatically since the first 'McDo', as it is known by fans and foes, opened in the Paris suburb of Créteil in 1972 — two years before the chain established a bridgehead on the other side of the Channel in Woolwich. It has long since been joined by other well-known fast food brands such as KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut. These days there are also countless other burger, chicken and kebab joints, as well as several chains selling 'French tacos', filled flour tortilla wraps that have little in common with their Mexican namesake. The French still spend more time at the table than anyone else in the world — 133 minutes per day, compared with 79 in Britain and just 62 in America — but they are more likely to be eating a cheeseburger and fries than a plate of magret de canard or beef bourguignon. For the first time in 2023, sales of fast food overtook that of traditional restaurant fare and now account for 55 per cent of the restaurant market. The young are its keenest consumers: 67 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds say they eat fast food at least two or three times a month, according to a study on French eating habits published last month by the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, a think tank. Of dishes served in restaurants, 70 per cent contain chips. Alain Fontaine, 67, who also heads the Association of Bistros and Cafés, has witnessed the transformation of the French culinary landscape during his five decades in the restaurant business. His career actually began in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, to which he decamped as a football-obsessed 20-year-old who dreamt of playing for Brian Clough's wildly successful Nottingham Forest. Despite a few trials, he never made it into the team and found himself working at the Novotel. Haute cuisine it was not. 'This was the beginning of the era of the microwave,' he recalled. 'And the Irish chef spent most of the day in the bar.' For the past 23 years, Fontaine has run Le Mesturet (established 1883), near l'Opéra in Paris, which serves classics such as frogs' legs, foie gras de canard mi-cuit and blanquette de veau, all prepared and cooked on the premises. In the meantime, the surrounding streets have filled with Japanese restaurants: there are 765 of them across Paris, putting them in second place among foreign cuisines behind Italian restaurants, of which there are 1,876. The nearby Golf-Drouot, a celebrated venue where Johnny Hallyday and fellow legends of French music played in the 1960s and 1970s, is now a Five Guys. The latest challenge faced by French restaurateurs, Fontaine argues, is the growth of mid-market restaurant chains or groups that have long been common in Britain but have hitherto been a rarity in France. They are often founded not by restaurateurs but by entrepreneurs or financial groups, whose deep pockets mean they can afford the best sites and, thanks to their size, can drive down the price of the food they buy. 'We independent restaurants are in the same situation as grocers were 40 years ago when they were first faced with the supermarkets,' he said. 'Now we are the ones are going to disappear.' But Eloi Spinnler, 30, a prominent chef with 280,000 Instagram followers, wonders what the fuss is about. 'There have always been chains in France,' he said, citing old family favourites such as Léon de Bruxelles, Courtepaille and Buffalo Grill. 'The only thing that has changed is the new chains that have done well want people to eat well,' he added. 'Working well on social media is also very important.' Both aims apply to his own group, Bonaloi, which is due to open Envie, its third restaurant in Paris, in September. Back in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, the community seems delighted with their new McDonald's. Among the handful eating there on Friday was Noemi Diaz, who had driven for a few minutes from nearby Moussac for a late lunch with her husband and three-year-old son, who had disappeared to the restaurant's play area. 'The prices are good and my son loves the games,' she said. Despite Fontaine's concerns, the outlet lies not in the village's picturesque heart, but instead next to a petrol station in a commercial centre on its outskirts. This is deliberate, according to Yannick Augrandenis, a company spokesman: customers expect copious parking, while proximity to the road network means they can attract diners from the surrounding area. In the past, McDonald's was targeted by those opposed to globalisation — most notably by José Bové, a sheep farmer who became known around the world after he and a group of friends attacked one of its branches in Millau, 75 miles to the west, in 1999 in protest at a 100 per cent tariff slapped by America on roquefort cheese and other European products in a trade war. Although American tariffs are back on the table again, thanks to President Trump, the French see McDonald's differently these days, not least because three quarters of the food that goes into the two million meals its branches serve each day is sourced within the country. 'In nine out of ten cases we open new restaurants, we are welcomed,' Augrandenis said. 'In some cases it is even local landowners or local authorities who approach us.' Even if there is sometimes hostility, it quickly blows over. Any hostility that there might have been from Laurent Galonier, who runs Le Rendez Vous, a bar restaurant in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, is long gone. 'It has had no impact whatsoever on my business,' he said, as a group of regulars sipped pastis at the bar. 'It's also a positive thing,' he said. 'I used to have to drive to the McDonald's in Nîmes and by the time I got it home it was all cold. Now it only takes me a few minutes.'
Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Times
First they took French cities — now McDonald's is the new village café
Home to barely 3,000 people, the village of Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès in the south of France has a fine 17th-century church and narrow picturesque streets lined with stone buildings. Since this spring, it can also boast its own branch of McDonald's. In the country that invented haute cuisine, it is part of a drive by the American fast-food giant, which already has 1,560 French branches, to expand beyond its traditional sites in cities and out-of-town commercial centres. Fifty new outlets are due to open this year and, for the first time, many are expected to be in small rural communities. 'McDonald's has become a bit like the village café,' says Jérôme Fourquet, director of the opinion and business strategy department of Ifop, a leading French pollster.
Times
09-07-2025
- General
- Times
Marseille fires hit hillside immortalised in cubist masterpiece
T he harbour of L'Estaque in the north of Marseille was immortalised more than a century ago in art. When Georges Braque, inspired by Paul Cézanne, painted houses on this hillside from multiple angles at once, sitting uneasily on the canvas, he effectively invented the cubist landscape. Now, the view they enjoyed has been dramatically altered by a fire that ripped down the hills towards Marseille, blackening dozens of houses and injuring about 100 people. Firefighters halted the blaze at the last moment, and there was only a single road separating the fires from mass residential areas. To many in the south of France, where millions live perched between arid hillsides and the Mediterranean sea, this was a warning.
