This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how Bitcoin and Gold are surging against the dollar, following the Treasury’s interventions in the bond market and our national debt surpassing $40 trillion. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank goodness!)

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.02% )   $DJI ( ▼ 0.21% )   $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$META ( ▲ 1.07% )   $SNAP ( ▼ 8.45% )   $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.43% )   $RVMD ( ▲ 1.92% )   $OURAZZX ( ▲ 0.11% )   $PYPL ( ▼ 0.74% )  

Meta Pays Billions To Settle Addiction Claims

Meta $META ( ▲ 1.07% ) has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion to settle claims that it designed its platforms to addict children. Ironically the company’s stock rose considerably on the news, at one point adding around $54 billion, or close to 5%, to the company’s value, so it’s almost like capitalism rewarded the bad behavior:

Stick that on your Instagram story, baby!

Meta is graciously agreeing to silence notifications at night, limit usage between midnight and 6 a.m., and interrupt the endless scroll. 

Colorado's Attorney General, Phil Weiser, said that “the focus of this case was to protect our kids: stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school.…” Meanwhile, Meta’s Chief Legal Officer, C.J. (what, from The West Wing? —Ed.) Mahoney, tried to spin this multi-billion-dollar retreat as a collaborative choice, claiming Meta simply wants to ensure “teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms.” 

I mean, sure. Remove harmful features only after you’re sued for roughly $200 billion. That’s how I define “collaboration,” personally.

Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom told the New York Times, “Meta wouldn’t settle unless it sees the writing on the wall and feels really exposed.” 

Ya think?

Under the agreement, Meta will initially pay $12 billion, but it is trying to drag TikTok, Snap $SNAP ( ▼ 8.45% ) , and YouTube $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.43% ) into the settlement to avoid being singled out. As Mahoney implored, “This framework will only work if all our peers join us.” 

Misery loves company….

While D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb hailed this as a “monumental public health victory,” the cynical truth remains. Meta finally realized, as Duke Law professor Stuart Benjamin noted, that “the cost of maintaining infinite scroll, auto play, filters, etc., is just too big a risk for the company.” 

Back in my youth, teenagers just smoked cigarettes. The good old days….

Quote of the Day

New Approval for "Life-Altering" Cancer Drug

Pancreatic cancer is one of the really nasty ones, killing about 50,000 Americans every year. But finally, some good news: The FDA has finally approved a drug to tackle the mutation that drives pancreatic cancer. Revolution Medicines’ $RVMD ( ▲ 1.92% ) new treatment, Rasonque, has achieved the seemingly impossible by using "molecular glues" to bind to a notoriously slippery, flat protein, the biological equivalent of superglue. Wall Street is salivating, forecasting over $20 billion in annual sales and the firm’s stock has risen from $36 to $215 over the past year as a result.

When clinical trial results were presented last spring, revealing that subjects lived over 13 more months, nearly double the survival rate of chemotherapy alone, the drug received a "nearly minute-long standing ovation" from researchers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Oncologist Carla Kurkjian hailed the drug as “life-altering,” noting it allows doctors “to have a different conversation than we’ve had for so long.” Of course, that new conversation will have to address the body-wide rashes and gastrointestinal issues caused by side effects of the drug. But still. Death is an unpleasant side-effect of pancreatic cancer. So, I’d settle, I think, for the blotches. Patient Jay Williams noted, “What it does is buy you time, and that’s one thing you don’t always have with pancreatic cancer.” 

RevMed Chief Executive Mark Goldsmith is in a hurry: “This is a monumental opportunity for patients and their families, and we need to do everything we can to clear the decks and make that happen as quickly as possible,” he said.

Oura: The Smart Ring Eyeing a $16 Billion IPO

Oura $OURAZZX ( ▲ 0.11% ) , the smart ring maker, is reportedly planning a U.S. IPO that values the company at north of $16 billion. That is a stunning jump from the $10.9 billion valuation Oura was assigned last September.

Once a niche gadget beloved primarily by biohacking CEOs and my weird mate Ken, Oura has successfully rebranded itself as a mainstream sleep-and-recovery brand. Financial growth has been spectacular, soaring from $500 million in revenue in 2024 to an expected $2 billion in 2026. Who knew charging people hundreds of dollars to tell them they are tired could be such a goldmine?

But it isn’t all peaceful slumber in Oura-land. A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco has rudely awakened the company, accusing it of misleading consumers about its sleep-tracking precision. According to the filing, Oura is accused of claiming “To measure a heartbeat or a temperature, but the exact stage of sleep the wearer is in, which in reality requires electrodes in the scalp and sensors on the eyes, as only a hospital or other clinical setting can do.”

Naturally, Oura’s PR machine has, er…awoken. A spokesperson pushed back, claiming, “While Oura Ring is not a medical device or a substitute for a clinical sleep study, Oura’s sleep staging has been validated and compared favorably in multiple studies against polysomnography, the gold standard.” The company insisted that “Multiple third-party, independent studies support our claims of accuracy.”

Personally, I’d pay well for a ring that insists I slept well and “don’t even look tired” despite all evidence to the contrary, just to cheer myself up. But I prefer to wear my Whoop wrist band, which only has a $10 billion valuation after its series G financing. Let’s hope they catch up with Oura, soon. Because I feel like a bit of a loser, now, honestly.