This news is for anyone who has long assumed the little “Crypto” icon at the bottom of their Venmo screen was just there to be ignored. Yesterday, PayPal debuted its stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), the first issued by a global financial platform.

So…what is a stablecoin? It’s a cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset, in this case, the US dollar, which is meant to make it less volatile and safer than other digital tokens. Stablecoins have been around for decades but haven’t taken off in the consumer payment space—mainly because regulators aren’t sold on that stability promise.

PayPal asserts that PYUSD will “reduce friction for in-experience payments in virtual environments” and allow faster and cheaper transfers between countries.

• PYUSD works for peer-to-peer payments, both for checking out online and transferring value among digital wallets.
• The currency is redeemable for dollars and is convertible to or from other digital currencies that PayPal supports.
• And soon, you’ll be able to send your tokens between PayPal and Venmo, making it even more convenient to send Karl $50 for dinner and drinks.

The future of digital payments

Regulatory smackdowns have cast a shadow over crypto, stabelcoins included, for the last year. PYUSD is issued on PayPal’s behalf by Paxos Trust Co., which previously issued the Binance stablecoin, BUSD, until that one was shut down by regulators earlier this year for…being involved with Binance.

But with PayPal—a mainstream fintech company—entering the scene, Paxos sees a “watershed moment” in stablecoin regulation coming. Congress is also currently sitting on two bills (one about the broader crypto industry and one specific to stablecoins) that could have a huge impact on what happens next in the space.

What’s in it for PayPal? Besides keeping it at the cutting edge of payment tech, there’s a profit potential. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, could be on track to bring in $6 billion in revenue this year.—CC

One of fast food’s greatest innovations is here. We’re not talking about the dollar menu, either.

It’s Miso Robotics’ AI-powered restaurant robotics. And you can join them as a shareholder for a limited time.

Miso Robotics’ tech can fill the 3.7m fast-food jobs projected to go unfilled over the coming decade. That’s why their flagship robot, Flippy, is already automating frying stations for the biggest brands in fast food, including White Castle, Chipotle, Jack in the Box, and more.

An opportunity to invest in the company automating the $675b fast-food industry? That hits the spot.

Miso’s current investment round is open to all Morning Brew readers. Less than 50% of available shares are left. Secure yours by investing today.

Tesla’s CFO stepped down. Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn unexpectedly resigned after working with Elon Musk at the electric vehicle maker for 13 years, which one asset manager told Bloomberg “is like working 50 years for anyone else.” Kirkhorn, who plans to stay at the company until the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition, has been replaced by Tesla’s chief accounting officer. Still, the unexpected departure spooked investors, raising concerns about volatility in the company’s executive ranks and the succession plan for one day replacing Musk at the top.

Paramount found a new buyer for Simon & Schuster. Private equity firm KKR has agreed to buy the publisher for $1.62 billion. The deal comes less than a year after a federal judge kiboshed a plan to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for ~$2.2 billion on antitrust grounds, ruling that deal would financially harm authors after a trial in which Stephen King testified against it. Rather than appeal, Paramount decided to search for a new buyer and received a $200 million fee from Random House since the deal failed to go through.

Yellow’s bankruptcy might cost taxpayers. The 99-year-old trucking company made it official on Sunday, filing for bankruptcy and ending the employment of its 30,000 workers following years of financial struggle and a labor battle with the Teamsters. But for most outside the trucking industry, the big question looming now is whether the company’s plan to sell off its assets will enable it to pay back the controversial $700 million pandemic-era loan it got from the government or whether other creditors like Apollo Global Management will get whatever is left from the freight company.

Freeway traffic won’t be the only thing grinding to a halt in Los Angeles today. More than 11,000 city workers plan to walk off the job this morning for 24 hours.

Sanitation and airport workers fed up with a lack of resources and unfilled vacancies will be among those participating, according to the SEIU Local 721, which represents many city workers.

Hot Strike Summer has already been extra scorching in LA. The city workers will be joining:

• 170,000 Hollywood actors and 12,500 screenwriters picketing there and in NYC.
• Thousands of local hotel workers staging rolling strikes (who even tried to get Taylor Swift to postpone her LA tour dates).

Nationwide, strikes have spiked this summer, putting July among the busiest months for labor action in decades, according to the Washington Post.

But…unless UPS’s 350,000 workers reject the contract their union secured for them, this year is not on track to have more strikers than 2018 or 2019—which in turn had fewer strikers than many years in the 1950s through 1970s, per Bloomberg columnist Justin Fox. There’s another big strike looming, though: With the auto workers union demanding a 40% raise for 150,000 hourly workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, Detroit may soon look like LA with less green juice.—AR

Turns out classics majors and petroleum-engineering students have more in common than we thought: Both their programs are shrinking. College students aren’t interested in entering the oil and gas industry like they used to be, no matter how much money they could make when they graduate, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The number of undergrads studying petroleum engineering—once a practical, popular major that would make Boomer parents proud—has seen a 75% decline since 2014, Texas Tech professor Lloyd Heinze told the WSJ.

In the past, enrollment in oil- and gas-related majors followed the market, but despite oil prices popping off between 2016 and 2021, the number grads entering the field still fell, according to the US Dept. of Education. It probably didn’t help that the pandemic highlighted how volatile the oil and gas industry could be as companies laid off over 100,000 employees between March and August 2020.

It’s not just about business. Petroleum engineers can earn 40% more post-graduation than computer science grads, but Gen Zers are opting for more environmentally conscious companies and positions. Current students are nervous about the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate change and question whether these high-paying jobs will even exist in the future as the country moves toward clean energy.—MM

Stat: Few things scare billionaires—they’re constantly vying to send themselves to space or even fight each other in a cage—but one thing that probably does strike fear into a titan of industry’s heart is learning that Nate Anderson’s firm, Hindenburg Research, is writing about their companies. According to Bloomberg, the prominent short-seller shaved $99 billion from the combined wealth of Gautam Adani, Jack Dorsey, and Carl Icahn this year and caused the value of public companies they own to plunge by $173 billion, despite all the companies denying his claims against them.

Quote: “This case is about a social media celebrity who believes his fame means that his word does not matter, that the facts do not matter, and that he can renege and breach his contractual obligations without consequence.”

The company behind those MrBeast Burgers that the YouTube star deemed “inedible” and sued over has now fired back with…its own $100 million lawsuit. This is one potential money giveaway MrBeast definitely doesn’t want to be a part of. The ghost kitchen company’s suit claims MrBeast flaked on his publicity obligations and that he damaged its reputation and relationships with suppliers and vendors by griping about the burgers and his deal with the company to his millions of followers.

Read: You’re probably drinking enough water. (The Atlantic)

Catch a shooting star: It’s time to take in a meteor shower.

Don’t blame your tools: Even a toy fishing rod can catch fish (YouTube).

Godzilla vs. Kong, etc.: Here’s a ranking of movie monsters to argue with your friends over.

Can you name a lot of cities? Then you’ll like this game.

Loyalty is everything: Julie Bornstein turned that motto into millions with Sephora’s Beauty Insider program. Here’s how she did it.

Brew Mini: For the competitive crossworders reading this, see if you can beat Neal’s time of 43 seconds on today’s Mini…then feel free to chirp him on Twitter (or whatever it’s called now).

Lottery logic

Today’s trivia question will require you to use logic to get somewhere in the ballpark of the right answer. It’s more about the journey than the destination.

Okay, here we go: Tonight’s Mega Millions jackpot is $1.55 billion. If you took $1.55 billion worth of dollar bills and stacked them on top of each other, how high would the money tower be?

105.2 miles (in space)

A dollar bill is .0043 inches thick, and you would have 1.55 billion of them. The money tower would be 6,665,000 inches tall, equivalent to 105.2 miles.