Investro Tea: Week #33

Two sides of pandemic

Companies Pfizer and BioNTech have officially started a formal process of approval of the booster shot of Covid-19 with FDA and showed data that proved that the third jab of vaccine increases the level of antidotes against the Beta and Delta variants. While the whole world has not yet finished the first wave of vaccination, the second wave is probably approaching as well.

WSJ also informs that the retail sales in the USA dropped by 1,1% due to the spread of new Delta variant.

Roblox, a company behind the creation of Roblox - an online platform popular amongst kids, has fallen in the share price due to the lower than expected sales for Q2. The share price of the company has fallen after hours by almost 6% as a reaction to the release of Q2 information of Roblox. If you want to know more about this company, feel free to follow this link.

The views on the pandemic are therefore twofold. On the one hand there are new vaccines getting ready for better protection of the population. On the other hand, the fears of the third wave are spreading and so is Delta variant, which causes retail sales to drop and affects even companies such as Roblox, which were during the pandemic a source of entertainment. We will definitely keep you updated on this very complex matter.

News from the crypto world

Coindesk.com shows that currently major crypto funds are experiencing an outflow of funds. Only this week this figure got as high as 22,1 million dollars. Moreover, this is a 6th week in a row where cryptocurrency fonds are experiencing outflows, which is the longest run of this type ever since January 2018 . However, the overall AUM of investment products in digital assets increased by 10 % to over 55 billion dollars. This is though mainly thanks to the increase in the prices of the cryptocurrencies.

In regards with crypto, one of the questions that we asked (and also tried to answer) is whether Twitter, one of the biggest social media networks, will allow for Bitcoin Lightning payments directly in their infrastructure. Are those only rumours or reality? You can see our take on this matter in this article.