Tag Archives: Starbucks

Cryptocurrency

Starbucks Sees the Potential of Cryptocurrency

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Watch Ben Swann Explain Cryptocurrency:

(Dash Force News) Howard Schultz, the executive chairman and former CEO of Starbucks, said that “one or a few legitimate” cryptocurrencies are coming, but does not “believe that bitcoin is going to be a currency today or in the future” and believes in the underlying blockchain technology.

Schultz clarified that he brought up the topic not because Starbucks is developing or investing in cryptocurrencies, but wanted to discuss the long-term potential of a “consumer application in which there’s trust and legitimacy” when thinking “about the future of our company and the future of consumer behavior.” He went on to mention that he could see a future where the coffee chain would be completely cashless.

The current CEO, Kevin Johnson, reiterated that the coffee giant is not investing in blockchain, but did say they are testing a cashless store in Seattle. Johnson recognized that “payment and payment platforms are continuing to evolve” and wants Starbucks to integrate new technology before competitors.

Consumer experience is a top priority

Schultz receives praise in the business community for building the modern Starbucks empire because he focused on consumer service and experience, which now qualifies him to recognize the importance of identifying consumer behavior and desires. Starbucks predicts future payment systems to evolve with how consumer desires evolve, much the same as Schultz evolved American coffee culture by recognizing, satisfying, and shaping consumer desires. Key to cryptocurrency adoption is not only to supply a great product, but also to show consumers a great experience and why to use cryptocurrency. Misunderstanding of the latter has partially led to a debate between Bitcoin, altcoins, and distributed ledger technology.

While the topic of whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies will offer the best technology is a subject of frequent debate, the business aspects to identify consumer behavior and to satisfy consumer desires can sometimes be overlooked. Naysayers doubt cryptocurrencies, but think distributed ledger technology can be integrated with current systems to better satisfy consumer desires. Cryptocurrencies have relatively high switching costs when compared to the ability of traditional payment systems to satisfy consumer desires even though the technology is inferior. Large scale adoption requires an appeal to as many consumers as possible, which requires satisfaction of consumer desires that reach beyond technology.

Dash recognizes additional elements of a strong consumer-focused currency

Cryptocurrency seeks global adoption, but many consumers are not interested in technical or economic arguments, which Dash can harness. Dash has the ability to fund omnichannel outreach to potential users not only through technical and economic avenues, but also through regular consumer avenues. Dash Force News attempts to boil down the crypto news into quick reads for busy consumers that do not want to spend time searching crypto forums. Dash sponsors sports to reach potential users that are sports fans. Dash sponsors investigative journalists to reach potential users that are news junkies. Dash partners with other businesses to bring simple and useful services to consumers right away.

Dash has the ability to reach large scale adoption with Evolution because it is an attempt to identify and solve consumer desires of simplicity. Evolution attempts to make sending and receiving Dash easy by pushing long cryptographic addresses to the backend. Evolution will also bring merchants straight to the Dash wallet eliminating the need for consumers to spend time and resources to find crypto-accepting merchants. In addition to Evolution, the DAO of Dash allows for evolving consumer needs to be continually identified and satisfied, which is key to achieve and maintain large scale adoption.

 

Written By: Justin Szilard

Featured, Opinion, Politics

LOTFI: News You May Have Missed While Media Obsessed Over Starbucks

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NOVEMBER 10, 2015– Over the past several days, the media has been obsessing over Starbucks’ decision to use plain red coffee cups with their green logo rather than their traditional holiday season coffee cups which are typically embellished with winter-type scenes.

Calling for a boycott, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump decided to get in on the Starbucks action as he threatened to cancel the company’s lease in his New York Trump Tower.

One Christian group says the move by the coffee giant is part of the “War on Christmas”. The media has been obsessing ever since.

As a former employee of Starbucks, I can tell you that the company has never recognized Christmas as anything other than a marketing opportunity. They’ve never had strong “Christ-centered” messages on their Christmas season products, so red cups are nothing new. What’s more, I can’t quite comprehend why anyone is upset over this. Would the same people force a boycott against a Jewish owned business for not celebrating Christmas? Not likely.

Last time I checked, the snowmen, reindeer and wrapped presents Starbucks featured on their cups in the past have nothing to do with Christmas. Besides, if what’s on a coffee cup makes or breaks your Christmas, you’re probably not doing it right. By the way, Starbucks still has a slew of products with the word “Christmas” written all over them.

Meanwhile, here is some actual news…

Ben Carson Isn’t A Liar

Just before the media started obsessing over the color of cup Starbucks uses, they were obsessing over ways to destroy GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson. They just couldn’t wait to get their hands on some juicy information to slam Carson into the ground as he continues his ascent to the top of the 2016 GOP field. Since they couldn’t find any such damning information, they simply made it up.

Truth In Media’s Barry Donegan wrote:

[pull_quote_center]Political journalism organization Politico has come under fire this week after it published an article that first accused Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson of lying about being verbally offered a scholarship by a West Point recruiter before it was edited to reflect the fact that Politico’s confirmation that Carson did not follow through with the admissions process at West Point does not itself constitute proof that Carson lied about anything.[/pull_quote_center]

Carson proved them wrong and demanded an apology. Politico made a slight edit to their story, but never apologized.

Of course, the damage was already done. Thousands of headlines across the country accused Carson of being a liar and fabricating his story. Media never ran thousands of headlines damning Politico for what Carson referred to as “tabloid journalism”. Instead, the they decided to focus on coffee cups.

Federal Judge Halts NSA Data Collection

On Monday, Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon issued an injunction against the National Security Agency (NSA), which temporarily put an end to the agency’s bulk metadata collection.

According to US News, Leon is the first and only district court judge to rule against the NSA program.

Feds Train Syrian Rebels With A Price Tag of $2 Million Per Rebel

Congress recently passed a bill that allocated $500 Million to train a new fighting force of more than 3,000 “pro-American” Syrian rebels.

As it turns out, only 190 rebels were trained at a cost of $2 million per rebel. After spending $384 Million of the $500 Million, the program was abandoned last month. Approximately 95 of those trained actually ended up fighting in Syria. The rest are unaccounted for.

The Pentagon has recently vowed to spend even more tax dollars by providing new weapons to Syrian rebels.

United States Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Rand Paul (Ky.) has been a vocal critic of arming the Syrian rebels.

Just recently, large swaths of these U.S. backed rebels switched their allegiance, taking with them all of the weapons and training funded by American tax-payers.

Guantanamo Bay Prison Closing?

A Republican controlled Congress recently passed a $670-billion defense bill that provides aid to Kiev and Syrian rebels. However, there’s one provision of the bill that President Obama isn’t happy with. The bill keeps GITMO open.

The White House is planning to push an Executive Order forward in order to shut down GITMO regardless of what Republicans have called for. Although the White House admits it’s not quite certain whether or not the Executive Order is even constitutional, they plan to push forward anyway.

“The focus of our efforts right now is on Congress and there are members of Congress who share this goal [closing GITMO] and who have indicated at least an openness to working with the administration to achieve this goal. That’s the focus of our efforts right now. I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the President’s executive authority to accomplish this goal, but I certainly wouldn’t take that option off the table,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday. “There are a wide range of thorny, legal questions that are raised by this ongoing effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I wouldn’t sort of speculate on those right now. These are obviously, in some cases because of the unique nature of this facility, in some cases we’re in uncharted legal waters here but, the President made clear from his first week in office that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay is a national security priority.”

Bonus

Have you heard the media reporting the fact that Bill Clinton is an honorary co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates? No? Didn’t think so…

FOLLOW MICHAEL LOTFI ON Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.

Economy, US

Honor veterans by giving them jobs

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Veteran’s Day is a national holiday for Americans of all walks of life to honor and show thanks to those men and women who served their country in some way throughout the years.  Parades are held, grills are fired up, and everybody shows some level of appreciation.  While most Americans think about a veteran’s service, not many think about a veteran’s life post-service.

For some veterans, civilian life is full of uncertainty, unemployment, and other struggles their military training never prepared them for.

While unemployment amongst all veterans has been on a steady decline over the past few years, young veterans, meaning those who served in post-9/11 engagements, are having difficulties finding work once they come home.

A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2013, found young veterans, ages 18-24, had an unemployment rate of 21.4 percent as compared to their non-veteran colleagues who had an unemployment rate of 14.3 percent.

Upon finishing their service, about 87 percent of veterans say they are confident in their abilities to find a job, according to the Washington Post.  However, according to Daily Finance, 37 percent of veterans did not know how to properly write a resume and 33 percent of veterans did not know how to show employers how their skills were applicable to the workforce.

These are not the only obstacles for veterans though who seek to join the workforce.  According to a study from the Mental Health Association of New York, returning veterans often lack experience in civilian work, they have higher disability rates, and many veterans struggle to reconnect to the civilian world, all of which makes it more difficult to hire a veteran.

To combat veteran unemployment rates, many companies have said they would hire a number of veterans over the next few years.

Starbucks is one such company, and their CEO, Howard Schultz, has vowed to hire some 10,000 veterans in the next five years, according to USA Today.  To help this process, Starbucks has even hired a recruiter who is a veteran who “understands the language,” and the anxiety veterans face in joining the workforce.

“The irony there is that there is a stigma attached to many of them about either PTS (post-traumatic stress) or brain trauma or things of that nature when in fact I can personally demonstrate through the hiring of people at Starbucks who have been veterans that they have done extraordinary things,” said Schultz.

Other employers have said they are more than pleased with the work veterans who work for their companies have put out.  These employers said all veterans bring five unique skills to their work; self-discipline, teamwork, attention to detail, respect, and leadership.

Jon Davis, a Marine who served in Iraq and who was also a former hiring manager, told the Huffington Post, hiring veterans has its advantages.  One advantage, he said, was a veteran has a “strong vein of personal integrity,” which makes them trustworthy when tasked with a job.

If you are a business owner who wants to hire a veteran, visit a website like the Veteran Recruiting Service to help out.  You can also volunteer with other other such as Welcome Back Veterans and Give an Hour to show your support for veterans n other ways.

Politics, US

You Can Now Pay For Starbucks With Food Stamps

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Starbucks

One woman pulled it off. The story is starting to make waves on the internet again.  Jackie Fowler, a Salem, Oregon food stamp recipient, went inside the luxury Starbucks franchise located inside of a Safeway grocery store with the local Fox News station filming. She purchased one tall Frappaccino and a slice of pumpkin loaf. Her total was $5.25. She slid out her Oregon Trail food stamp card, paid in part by the federal government, and handed it to the cashier who processed the transaction.

Fowler only made the purchase to assist Fox News with the investigation.

“They’re overpriced as it is,” said Fowler of the luxury brand. “That’s money that somebody could be eating with — a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk.” Fowler says the program is in need of reform due to the abuse.

It doesn’t seem like management is trying to discourage the use of food stamps inside of the Starbucks. In fact, they are advertising it, as seen in the sign.

Corporate stores do not accept food stamps. However, because the store is run by the grocery chain it is offered as a “grocery item”. Such Starbucks outlets are located inside of  airports, malls, colleges, Target, Alberstons, Fred Meyer and other chain grocery stores.