A Big Year For Bitcoin, Vice Awards, And The Top Money And Lifestyle Trends For 2021

Plus: The Year’s Best Portraits

Good morning.

In the year’s last edition of the Daily Dozen, let’s review these top tips on making money and living large in 2021.

Regular programming will resume on January 4. I wish you all the best possible start to 2021.

Bank of America analysts shared 11 stock picks they say will shine in 2021, with the reopening play, growth trends in 5G, and acceleration in ESG investing all playing a role in their selection criteria.

It may not have made the above BfoA selection, but one company worth watching is Etsy, the ecommerce firm focused on vintage and handmade goods, on track to best all but one other stock in the S&P 500.

2020 was a big year for bitcoin, bigger still than the highs of 2017, after finding support from Wall Street and some of the world's biggest investors. The digital asset space is poised to grab more headlines next year due to much-anticipated developments such as industry-defining regulations and Facebook launching its own cryptocurrency.

One of the most surprising entries in the digital asset space is perhaps that of a 168-year-old company specialized in printing banknotes, which led a $17 million Series A into Metaco, a Swiss startup providing custody services for bitcoin and stablecoins.

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matters movement at a time when the health and economic effects of Covid-19 were hitting Black and Brown Americans the hardest, reignited the discussion on the country’s structural racial inequities. As the U.S. looks to take meaningful strides to close the racial wealth gap, here are five big ideas to consider.

Some of the conversations revolved around the contributions by Black and Brown artists, and how they’re valued. Few know more about this than Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, who amassed one of the largest private collections of Black paintings, letters, books and other artifacts, spurred by their desire to teach their son about Black history. 

If anyone thought that the pandemic would have affected the appeal of luxury brands, they were wrong. Luxury e-tailer Moda Operandi’s report into how its customers’ habits changed in the first four weeks of the pandemic compared to the four prior highlighted trends that reaffirmed the strengths of luxury brands even in times of crisis.

Hardly anyone would describe Crocs as a luxury brand, but this didn’t stop some of the shoes’ limited edition items—such as those in the KFC x Crocs collection—from reselling for as much as $250 online, a sign of the enduring fascination with fashion’s most dressed down footwear.

Now that you know what’s cool to wear, how do you pair that with food and drinks? Alcoholic beverages are getting more colorful, more personalized, and will more often be enjoyed in cans.

As traveling abroad is likely to remain challenging at least throughout the first half of 2021, those looking for an adventure can find it in their kitchen—challenging themselves with a cooking kit, or discovering Korean flavors.