Financial Daily Dose 9.14.2021 | Litecoin Surges Then Plummets After Walmart-Partnership Hoax

The team behind cryptocurrency Litecoin is scrambling after an employee “retweeted what turned out to be an untrue announcement about a partnership with Walmart Inc,” a move that briefly sent Litecoin and other cryptos surging and raised the specter of a pump-and-dump scheme at play - Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch and Mashable

Purported Pinterest co-founder Christine Martinez has sued the company and two of the its acknowledged co-founders—Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra—in California state court for “breach of implied contract, idea theft, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices” for allegedly cutting her out of any compensation related to the site’s development. The lawsuit “renews questions about whether Pinterest, which caters primarily to female users, is hostile to women and minorities in its workplace” - NYTimes and Law360

Apple issued an “emergency security update” on Monday to address “a flaw that allows highly invasive spyware from Israel’s NSO Group to infect anyone’s iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac computer without so much as a click” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Marketplace and TechCrunch and Law360

Publicly, Facebook says that the same rules apply to everybody. Behind the scenes, Zuck and Co. routinely bend, break, and ignore the rules for a “secret elite” via the platform’s formerly undisclosed XCheck program - WSJ

ViacomCBS has ousted Paramount Pictures chief James Gianopulos after 4 years leading the studio in favor of Brian Robbins, “who runs Viacom’s children’s television business.” Gianopulos had helped revive a “flatlining Paramount,” but his “status as the consummate Hollywood insider” had become a liability in a streaming-obsessed industry - NYTimes

A trio of media companies associated with “exiled Chinese businessman Gui Wengui have agreed to pay $539 million to settle regulatory claims they violated investor-protection laws when they raised money from over 5,000 investors.” The payment will put an end to a year-long SEC investigation without any admissions of wrongdoing from the players - WSJ

Fox Corporation has closed its deal to buy “celebrity gossip brand TMZ from AT&T’s WarnerMedia.” Co-founder Harvey Levin will stay on at the helm of TMZ, and while terms weren’t discussed, “people with knowledge of the discussions said the deal valued TMZ under $50 million” - NYTimes

President Biden has nominated privacy expert and Georgetown Law instructor Alvaro Bedoya to fill a set on Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission, “putting another critic of the technology industry in a key position to regulate the sector” - NYTimes and Law360

The White House has also made moves at the CFTC, elevating acting chair Rostin Behnam to a permanent leadership position and nominating Christy Goldsmith Romero and Kristin Johnson to serve as commissioners – Law360 and Bloomberg

On Britain’s own pandemic-related jobs crisis, which is the reverse of what it expected: too many jobs and not enough workers - NYTimes

Your official Met Gala thread, where celebs and the fashion-forward set made it quite clear that they were only too happy to make up for a lost year of excess - NYTimes

Stay safe, and get vaxxed,

MDR