Meatball fans beware: A nationwide recall is underway for a popular brand of frozen meatballs sold at Aldi. The recall is due to the possibility that the product may contain metal fragments, which could cause serious injury if consumed. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
On Sunday, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) posted a safety alert about a Class 1 recallthe highest possible designation the agency assigns to recalled products.
A Class 1 recall means that there is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death, according to the agency.
The Class 1 recall covers a Bremer-branded ready-to-eat frozen meatball product sold at Aldi stores. The recalled meatballs were produced by Rosina Food Products, Inc., a West Seneca, N.Y., company, which initiated the recall.
Approximately 9,462 pounds of the frozen meatball product are being recalled. The issue at hand is that the recalled meatballs may contain metal fragments, which could harm individuals who consume them.
What meatball product is being recalled?
The recall covers only one meatball product sold under the Bremer brand. That product is:
32-oz. printed poly film bag packages of fully cooked frozen Bremer FAMILY SIZE ITALIAN STYLE MEATBALLS containing about 64 meatballs per package with BEST BY date of 10/30/26 with timestamps between 17:08 through 18:20 printed on the back of the label.
According to the recall notice, the recalled product has an establishment number of EST. 4286B inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were produced on July 30, 2025.
Images of the recalled products packaging can be found here.
Where were the recalled meatballs sold?
According to the FSIS notice, the recalled product was shipped to Aldi supermarket locations nationwide.
Has anyone been harmed from eating the recalled meatballs?
As of the recall notices posting date, no one is known to have been injured due to the consumption of the recalled product.
However, the issue was discovered after a consumer reported to the FSIS that they found metal fragments in the meatballs.
What should I do if I have the recalled meatballs?
Given that the recalled product has a 15-month shelf life, the FSIS is concerned that consumers may have purchased the meatballs a while ago, yet might still have them in their freezers or refrigerators.
If you think you may have purchased the recalled meatballs, you should check your freezers and refrigerators for them. If you have the recalled products, the FSIS says you should not consume them. Instead, you should throw the product away or return it to its place of purchase.
Full details about the meatball recall can be found on the FSISs website here.
Last October, 35 major donor families, calling their collaborative The Audacious Project, gathered in California and committed $1.03 billion to more than a dozen nonprofits whose proposed projects span multiple years and take on major challenges.The collaborative, housed at TED, announced the winning nonprofits Tuesday, after spending more than a year selecting the groups and helping them sharpen pitches for larger projects than philanthropic funders typically support. It’s not until the donors meet in person that they decide how much to give to each group.Jennifer Loving, the CEO of the San Jose-based nonprofit Destination: Home, said it was “shock and awe,” when they learned the donors had met their funding request to help expand homeless prevention services to multiple U.S. cities.“It’s not for the faint of heart to work on this issue in America,” Loving said, referencing the stigma around poverty. “And so you kind of brace yourself. You never know if people are going to see what you see and it was beautiful. It was really beautiful.”Connie Ballmer, cofounder of Ballmer Group along with her husband Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has been a donor since 2021, when she went with one of their sons to learn more about funding around climate change.“Nowhere that I know of can you raise a billion dollars in two days,” she said. “For an organization to raise an amount whether it’s $40, $60, $80 million, I mean, do you know how long that takes them to do that kind of fundraising?”This year, the grantees also include the Arc Institute, a relatively new research group in California, to support its development of a virtual model of a cell that it hopes will help scientists identify treatments for complex diseases like Alzheimer’s.The South Africa-based group, Tiko, also received funding to expand its services for teenage girls, including contraception, HIV treatment and responses to sexual violence. It was the third time Tiko had applied for funding from Audacious, said CEO Serah Joy Malaba, with the hope of scaling their work to reach more girls.In total, 55 major donor families have participated in at least one round of The Audacious Project’s work. The group expands by invitation and the formal criteria that donors be willing to commit at least $10 million to the funding round. Many end up donating more, in part inspired by the commitments that others make in the room.Another donor, Tegan Acton, who cofounded Wildcard Giving along with her husband, Brian Acton, a cofounder of WhatsApp, said she participates because she believes in collective action and values the focus on funding solutions developed by people close to the problems. Acton also said she’s enjoyed seeing how different donors approach their funding decisions.“Some people come and they have a binder printed and they have a thousand tabs with little notes about every project and they’ve marked up the appendices” she said, whereas others, “show up and watch the videos and see what sparks interest.”As part of the application process, finalists record something like a TED Talk that introduces themselves and their project.Loving, from Destination: Home, said the guidance from Audacious and The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm, helped sharpen their plan for scaling their approach to homelessness prevention. The initiative, Right at Home, identifies people and families most at risk of losing their housing and gives them money and support so they don’t. The approach now has won significant public funding in San Jose.“Going through this process was probably one of the most rigorous things we’ve ever done,” Loving said. “I can say with total confidence that it made us smarter.”Loving’s project is a good example of the kind of big change that The Audacious Project seeks to identify. Her group had not aspired to work nationally but identified a solution they think may help other places. Rather than opening new offices or expanding, they will partner with local groups, bring them funding and ask them to participate in research to assess the impact.For the first time this year, some organizations received a second commitment from Audacious donors, including Last Mile Health. Their initial grant in 2018 helped to train many more community health workers in multiple African countries, going from 2,000 to 23,000. This time, they received $20 million to again train more of these front line health workers but also to support an ongoing project to coordinate and mobilize more domestic funding from the countries where they work.“It’s not just a philanthropic investment and then a cliff,” said Lisha McCormick, CEO of Last Mile Health. Instead, the funds will support a reworking of how governments fund their public health systems following major cuts to U.S. foreign aid, which made up a significant portion of some countries’ health budgets.Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project, said they’d considered making second round grants for a while.“The honest question that we and our donor community had to wrestle with is, what kinds of partners are we if we walk away right when that momentum is building?” she said.
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
As President Trump has cracked down on all kinds of immigration, tech workers and students have been caught in the crosshairs. In a bid to curb use of the H-1B visaa program that allows employers to hire skilled talent from abroad and is widely used across the tech industryTrump imposed a whopping $100,000 fee on new applications last year.
The steep cost of hiring H-1B workers has already had an impact on tech companies and other employers that have come to rely on the visa, leaving many students and aspiring H-1B workers with few options to remain in the country. Some employers have been forced to reevaluate their hiring strategy and have opted to sit out the H-1B lottery this year. For small companies, the fee has made an already challenging, expensive process virtually impossible to navigate.
Amid this political climate, the immigration law firm Ellis wants to simplify work visa applications for companiesand workersthrough a tech-enabled platform that uses AI to automate parts of the process, which remains complex and largely paper-based. With a new subscription service, Ellis is now offering employers a tiered option that starts at $2,000 a month, which allows smaller startups with under 50 employees to file unlimited visa applications. That includes most of the common work visa types, from the H-1B to the J-1 student visa or TN visa for workers from Mexico and Canada.
Most immigration lawyers still bill by the hour or by case, which means companies can spend thousands of dollars per application just on legal fees. (On an individual basis, Ellis charges anywhere from $2,500 to $12,000 to prepare applications; the H-1B visa, for example, costs $3,000 in legal fees.) By bundling its services, Ellis hopes to encourage employers to sponsor more immigrant workers. If you have a fixed platform fee, like you would with Ellis, your marginal cost of sponsoring a visa actually goes down, which is an incentive we’d like to encourage, says Sampei Omichi, the founder and CEO of Ellis.
[Screenshot: Ellis]
There are other immigration law firms like Manifest Law that also have a flat fee option, which is more cost-effective for employers, as well as tech platforms like Boundless that provide on-demand legal support for visa applications. Some products are fully automating the visa application process, which means there is limited input from actual immigration attorneys. Ellis is pitching its platform as a more comprehensive solution for companiesand especially tech employersthat are looking for tech-forward legal support and the full services of an immigration law firm.
Ellis has managed to bring down the legal costs associated with visa applications in part by employing AI agents where appropriateand only with the oversight of full-time staff attorneys. By automating a lot of the rote and manual work that comes with a more operational type of law, you actually open up the attorneys to do what they do best, which is case strategy, Omichi says. Frankly, most of their job now is acting as a therapist for the folks that are going through the immigration process.
[Screenshot: Ellis]
For workers seeking visas, Ellis not only offers a smoother, more streamlined application process but also holds the promise that employers might be more inclined to sponsor their visa, even in a hostile environment for immigration. Omichi says the platform aims to provide more transparency into the process, allowing workers to keep tabs on their application through a dashboard and additional elements like shipment tracking. (Applications for the H-1B visa, for example, typically involve hundreds of pages and need to be assembled by hand and shipped out.) In advance of the H-1B lottery opening up next month, the firm also introduced an H-1B lottery odds calculator, to give applicants a sense of how likely they are to get approved for a visa based on their title and location.
Perhaps most importantly, Ellis claims to have a 99.4% approval rate on its visa applications; when a visa is denied, the applicant gets a full refund of their legal fees or can file again free of charge. Over the last year, Ellis has filed over 400 applications on behalf of employees at AI startups like Adaptive and Wordware; by the end of 2026, Omichi says the firm is aiming to help 1,000 people secure visas.
At a particularly volatile moment, Ellis also hopes to help workers wade through the morass of immigration policy, which can change on a dime under the current administration. We really try to be like an extension of their people team, Omichi says. The use of automation allows Ellis to be more responsive to its clients than other lawyers might be. In addition, the firm invests in education and resources to help both employers and workers who are scrambling to keep up with policy changes, along with giving companies a direct line to Ellis via a dedicated Slack channel.
Our job is to kind of simplify a traditionally very, very, very complex process into something a layman can understand, Omichi says. For employers, it means retaining their best talent. And for employees, it’s their livelihood. It’s often the most important thing in their life.If they don’t have stable immigration status, nothing else really matters.
In medicine, rare is often used to describe conditions that affect relatively few people. But when you work in healthcare long enoughespecially at the very beginning of lifeyou realize rare diseases are not rare at all.
As a neonatologist, I cared for newborns whose symptoms didnt follow a familiar script. An infant struggling to breathe. A baby who couldnt feed. A child whose development stalled without a clear explanation. In the NICU, there is no luxury of time. Families are desperate for answers, and clinicians are making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.
Too often, we treated what we could see while suspecting there was something deeper we could not yet name. We ordered a multitude of tests and brought in specialists to consult, but days often turned into weeks. Sometimes answers came, but often they came too late to change the course of care.
Those moments stay with you, and those are the moments that brought me here to GeneDx.
THE HIGH COST OF UNCERTAINTY
The phrase diagnostic odyssey is frequently used in healthcare, but it understates the reality for families. For patients with rare disease, the path to a diagnosis often stretches across yearsmarked by repeated hospitalizations, unnecessary procedures, and conflicting opinions. All the while, disease progresses and the emotional and financial burden on families quietly compounds.
For clinicians, that uncertainty is more than frustrating; it limits our ability to act decisively. Without a precise diagnosis, treatments are often generalized rather than targeted, care coordination remains fragmented, and families are left carrying the burden of unanswered questions. From a system perspective, the consequences are significant: longer lengths of stay, higher costs, avoidable interventions, and missed opportunities for earlier, more effective care.
What makes this particularly challenging is that, increasingly, we have the tools to do better.
Genomic medicine has transformed our ability to identify the underlying causes of diseaseespecially in pediatrics and rare conditions where traditional diagnostic approaches fall short. When used early, genomic testing can shorten the path to answers from years to weeks, days, or even hours. It can inform clinical decisions, guide care planning, and help families understand what lies ahead. Over the past couple of years, genomic technology has evolved. Costs and turnaround time have declined significantly, shifting genomics from a theoretical solution to a viable tool in everyday clinical practice.
Now, its a matter of increasing awareness and broadening access to all patients who could benefit.
OPEN TESTING ACCESS
As Rare Disease Month continues, the question is no longer whether we can diagnose rare disease more effectively, but whether we are willing to make those tools part of routine care.
In other areas of medicine, advances that improve accuracy and outcomes eventually become standard practice. Standard newborn screening, imaging technologies, and clinical protocols did not remain optional once their value was clear. They became embedded in care.
Genomics is at a similar inflection point.
The opportunity before us is not simply technologicalit is systemic. Integrating genomics earlier into care pathways requires thoughtful implementation, clinician support, payer alignment, and real-world evidence. It requires collaboration across health systems, medical societies, advocacy groups, and policymakers. And it requires a shared understanding that earlier, more precise diagnoses are not an added extrathey are foundational to good medicine.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY
Rare disease challenges healthcare to be bettermore precise, more compassionate, and more proactive. It forces us to confront the limits of traditional diagnostic models and to rethink when and how we deploy the tools now at our disposal.
For me, this work is deeply personal. It is shaped by years at the bedside, by conversations with families searching for answers, and by a belief that uncertainty should not be the default starting point of care. Over the course of my career, I have worked across nearly every layer of the healthcare systemas a practicing physician, a health system partner, and a clinical leader within payer and innovation organizations.
Im bringing that experience with me as I help usher in the future of genomic medicine at GeneDx. Here I see a rare opportunity to help move genomics from the margins of medicine to its foundation, to shorten diagnostic journeys that have gone on far too long, and to build a healthcare system that delivers clarity when it matters most.
Ending the diagnostic odyssey is not about technology alone. It is about trust. It is about giving clinicians the confidence to act and families the answers they deserve. And it is about recognizing that rare disease is not a niche problem, but something that impacts 1 in 10 Americans and thus, touches all of us.
Linda Genen, MD, MPH, is chief medical officer of GeneDx.
Youre invited to a holiday party with a dress codecocktail attire. Instead of panic-scrolling through a bunch of dresses that look great on someone else and questionable on you, you open your laptop. A runway show starts in your living room. The lighting is cinematic. The music hits. And every model walking the runway is YOU. Same body, same proportions, same posture. You toggle the scene from dramatic spotlights to natural daylight to a candlelit restaurant, watching how each dress moves and fits in real life before you pick the one that feels right.
But this isnt just a better shopping experience; it is a design process that’s likely to yield an outfit that appeals more to you. Historically, garment design has been a slow and expensive process. A designer hands a sketch off to pattern makers and sample rooms. Time goes by. One physical sample comes back. The designer evaluates it on a single body type. Often, that body type is very specific. Every iteration is costly and constrained by physics and time.
With AI, designers can sketch an idea and instantly see it rendered across fabrics, colors, environments, and a wide range of body types. They can iterate in real time, stress-test designs before cutting a single piece of fabric, and design with diversity rather than retrofitting it later. The result is faster timelines, fewer samples, and fashion built for real people, starting from the very first pixel.
HOW AI ACCELERATES DESIGN
AI also gives fashion designers more authorship. The designer doesnt have to rely solely on their intuition and experience to guess how something might work in the real world. They can simulate it with different fabrics, silhouettes, and colors, and test fit immediately. You can see how a silk bias-cut dress behaves on a tall body versus a petite one, how a structured jacket reads when someone sits, walks, or raises their arms. You can design for movement, not just a static pose.
This is a sharp break from how inclusive sizing has traditionally worked. Brands used to design for one idealized sample size and then grade up or down later. Sometimes, that starting point may be a plus-size model, but even then, only one body type is considered for the design. With AI, you can start with many bodies at once, treating variation as a first-class design constraint instead of an afterthought. The tooling compounds into revenue by expanding who the product works for.
On the consumer side, this changes the emotional relationship with clothing. Returns are one of the dirtiest secrets in e-commerce. People order three sizes, keep one, and ship the rest back. Not because theyre careless, but because the system gives them no better option. When you can see a garment on your body, in your lighting, and in your life, you dont need to guess anymore.
None of this means fashion becomes automated or soulless. If anything, the opposite happens. When designers are freed from the slow, mechanical parts of the process, they can spend more time on taste, storytelling, and craft. Beyond the runway, people will ultimately see your work on a variety of body types. Now you can apply your creativity to designing garments with this in mind. AI expands the surface area where creativity can play.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Weve seen this movie before in other creative industries. Photography went digital. Music went from studios to laptops. Film editing moved from physical reels to software timelines. Each shift caused panic, then democratization, then an explosion of new voices and formats. Fashion has lagged because its physical by default. AI is the bridge that finally connects imagination to reality without so much friction in between.
Yana Welinder is the founder of yanabanana.ai.
Throughout Kim Kardashians two-decade career in the public eye, the reality TV stars entrepreneurial endeavors have included shapewear clothing brand Skims, makeup brand KKW Beauty, cofounding a private equity firm, and a super popular mobile game.
But with her latest venture, Kardashian is stretching her mogul credentials into beverages, which has been familiar terrain for celebrities. She has become a cofounder of the energy drink company called Update. Though the startup has existed for four yearsmeaning Kardashian wasnt a day-one founderUpdates CEO and cofounder Daniel Solomons tells Fast Company that she has been a steady customer since 2023 and two years ago, began to offer feedback on the brands formula and packaging.
Update isnt disclosing if Kardashian took an equity stake in the brand as part of her appointment as a cofounder, though Solomons says that she genuinely loved how the product made her feel.
On Tuesday the upstart energy drink also announced a 4,000 store distribution deal with Walmart that begins on March 1. Before the Walmart deal, Update was primarily sold through direct-to-consumer channels, and Solomons noticed on his Shopify account that especially large orders were being placed by Kardashians team. He was able to reach out to her through mutual connections.
Daniel Solomons [Photo: Update]
That organically just turned into a situation where she was really excited to get involved, reached out, and wanted to partner up and formalize it, says Solomons. Im really bullish about the growth of the category and how we can add to that.
REBRANDING THE TECH BRO ENERGY
Solomons says Kardashian helped advise on Updates new packaging and product formulation. Solomons says the startups initial labeling was too masculine, tech bro and Update wanted to aspire to a design thats more gender neutral.
The relaunched portfolio adds new grape and pineapple flavors and Update made tweaks to the berry, peach, and mandarin flavors, a process called reformulation. It is especially common for food and beverage startups to reformulate after they debut when they are able to get in-market consumer feedback. Solomons says the changes were intended to make the beverages more true to fruit, meaning as close to the real taste profile of, say, an actual pineapple.
Update also involved Walmart, sending the retailer formula samples and packaging assets to get its feedback. Later this year, the brand expects to expand into additional major retailers and will launch more products beyond the core lineup.
Solomons says Update also brings a distinct proposition to the market by using the lab-produced paraxanthine, rather than caffeine, as the active ingredient to deliver energy. There have been few studies on paraxanthine, though early research suggests that it is relatively safe. Paraxanthine is a compound that the human body produces after consuming caffeine and Solomons claims that it has a similar bitter taste profile, but doesnt have the jittery side effects that some experience when drinking caffeine-based coffee or energy drinks.
BETTING ON A BUZZY, BOOMING CATEGORY
Update is aiming to get a firmer foothold in the fast-growing U.S. energy drinks and shots market whose sales grew by 65% to $23.9 billion during a five-year period ending in 2024, according to Mintel. The market researcher estimates sales will hit $33.4 billion by 2029.
It is a darling category right now, Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, tells Fast Company. He says energy drinks sales are far outpacing coffee and tea, two rival caffeine-focused beverage categories.
The market is dominated by three players that command 70% of sales: Monster Beverage, Red Bull, and Celsius Holdings. The larger players Monster Energy and Red Bull have lately reported double-digit sales increases, while Celsiuss revenue for the first nine months of 2025 jumped 75% from the prior year, as the core brand grew, but also due to the recent acquisitions of Rockstar Energy and Alani Nu, the later sold in colorful packaging and marketed heavily to women. Alani Nu was founded in 2018 by fitness influencer and coach Katy Hearn and sold five years later for $1.8 billion to Celsius.
Monster and Celsius are expected to release their fourth-quarter earnings this Thursday.
Energy drinks have benefited from a decades-long trend of favoring cold drinks over hot and, more recently, the skyrocketing price of coffee due to tariffs, which has led some shoppers to defect when looking for their energy fix. Celsius, in particular, has been credited with luring more female drinkers into a category that was traditionally marketed to extreme sports lovers, branding that was the core of both Red Bull and Monster.
CELEBRITIES BOOST MARKETING, BUT DONT ENSURE LONGEVITY
While Kardashians involvement will give Update a marketing jolt, especially through any support the star may offer through her Instagram and TikTok channels that have a combined 364 million followers, theres no guarantee that a celebrity-backed beverage brand will be a hit with consumers.
Look no further than sports and energy drink brand Prime Hydration, which was founded by internet personalities Logan Paul and Olajide “KSI” Olatunji. Bloomberg reported it was set to surpass $1.2 billion in annual sales by the end of 2023, a mere two years after it launched. But sales have sputtered, with the Primes energy drink volume dropping 57% for the first nine months of 2025 from the prior-year period, according to Beverage Digest.
Zoa Energy, cofounded by actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson, got a boost when it sold a majority stake to Molson Coors in 2024. But the five-year-old brand has less than 1% of the total U.S. energy drink market, which is also where Prime stands in the category.
I suspect consumers are starting to get wary of it now, says Stanford. Because every celebrity has a beverage brand now. People can only consume so many drinks.
Home Depot’s fourth-quarter performance was muted by ongoing caution from American consumers in a weak housing market, but the home improvement retailer topped Wall Street expectations.The Atlanta company earned $2.57 billion, or $2.58 per share, for the three months ended Feb. 1. Stripping out one-time charges or benefits, earnings were $2.72 per share, topping analyst projections for per-share earnings of $2.53, according to FactSet.A year earlier it earned $3 billion, or $3.02 per share.An extra week in fiscal 2024 added approximately 30 cents per share to the year-ago quarter.Home Depot’s stock rose more than 3% before the market opened on Tuesday.Revenue totaled $38.2 billion, down from $39.7 billion a year earlier. The extra week in the prior-year period added about $2.5 billion of sales.Wall Street was looking for revenue of $38.09 billion.Sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, edged up 0.4%. In the U.S., comparable store sales climbed 0.3%.Chair and CEO Ted Decker said in a statement that Home Depot’s quarterly results “were largely in-line with our expectations, reflecting the lack of storm activity in the third quarter and ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing. Adjusting for storms, underlying demand was relatively stable throughout the year.”Customer transactions dropped 1.6% in the quarter. The amount shoppers spent rose to $91.28 per average receipt from $89.11 a year earlier.Home Depot and other retailers have seen customers cut back on their spending amid concerns about inflation and economic uncertainty. A frozen housing market has added to more tepid spending, particularly for Home Depot.The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows that fueled a homebuying frenzy at the start of this decade. And consumer confidence declined sharply in January, hitting the lowest level since 2014 as Americans grow increasingly concerned about their financial prospects.Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, said there has been a shift in the behavior of homeowners because of the housing market and the economy, with more people taking on smaller projects now.“The broader truth here is that Home Depot does best for big scale improvement tasks and major DIY jobs and is a major destination for consumers undertaking such work,” Saunders wrote Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the market did not play ball over the final quarter with the number of projects undertaken down by 1.5%, mostly driven by a sharp decline in bigger ticket projects, such as full remodels.”That sent more homeowners to local hardware stores, which can easily fulfill orders for smaller projects.For fiscal 2026, Home Depot anticipates adjusted earnings to be approximately flat to up 4% from fiscal 2025’s $14.69 per share. The company foresees total sales growth of about 2.5% to 4.5% and comparable sales growth to be approximately flat to up 2%.
Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
Its another bad day for Bitcoin. Over the past 24 hours, the digital token has declined nearly 4.5%, putting it just above $63,000 and within range of its 52-week low.
But this time, Bitcoins fall seems to have nothing to do with the token itselfor the broader cryptocurrency market. Rather, its steep drop seems to be driven by three unrelated factors, to varying degrees.
Here’s what you need to know:
Bitcoin approaches 2026 and 12-month lows
Since Bitcoin hit an all-time high of just over $126,000 per coin in October, the digital token poster child has had a dramatic fall from grace.
The coins momentum, which seemed unstoppable last fall, has sharply reversed course. At its current price of around $63,192, it is now down 50% from its all-time high.
And this isnt even the worst drop that Bitcoin has suffered recently. Earlier this month, Bitcoin fell to $62,353 before rebounding.
Now, Bitcoin is again within touching distance of this Februarys low.
To be fair to Bitcoin, it isnt the only major cryptocurrency seeing steep declines over the past 24 hours. Heres how Bitcoin compares to other major coins as of the time of this writing:
Bitcoin: down 4.5%
Ethereum: down 4.7%
BNB: down 3.2%
XRP: down 4.5%
Crypto de-risking may be a driving factor
Why are all these tokens down so much over the past 24 hours?
Interestingly, the fall seems to have little to do with the cryptocurrencies themselves. Instead, today’s crypto decline seems to be spurred by de-risking activity.
De-risking is when investors take their money out of high-risk, volatile assets, by selling those assets and investing the proceeds of those sales into other assets that are considered lower risk, and thus less volatile.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are high-risk, volatile assets because their prices can swing widely over a short period of time (hello, todays drops and Bitcoins 50% fall over the last six months).
Besides cryptocurrencies, other high-risk, volatile assets can include various types of stockslike those in the tech sector.
In contrast, safe-haven, low-volatility assets include things like gold and government bonds.
High-risk, volatile assets can see their prices swing wildly in response to external factors unrelated to the assets themselves.
These swings occur because external factors can introduce significant uncertainty into markets. Uncertainty can lead to losses, so investors try to mitigate future losses by selling high-risk assets to lock in any gains or prevent further declines from affecting their portfolio.
And over the past 24 hours, there has been a hat trick of external uncertainties that is likely leading some crypto investors to derisk.
Trumps new tariffs, Iran, and AI are weighing on investors minds
Over the past 24 hours, three events have occurred that risk injecting significant uncertainty into the economy, and they are likely weighing heavily on the minds of crypto investors.
Most significantly of the three is that Trumps new tariffs are now in effect.
Last week, the president suffered a dramatic loss when the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariff policy, and thus, the majority of his Liberation Day tariffs could no longer be collected.
In response, Trump vowed to use other methods to impose tariffs on countries around the world. Those tariffs, of up to 15%, are now in effect.
However, in many cases, the new tariffs’ timeframe may be limited to just 150 days without additional approval from Congress, which the legislative body may or may not give.
All this is causing great uncertainty for businesses and governments, and ultimately risks impacting the economy and marketsagain.
Also, in the past 24 hours, America is closer than ever to invading Iran. Trump administration officials are due to meet Iranian counterparts in Geneva on Thursday, and if those talks fail, many fear that the president will make good on his threat to attack the country.
Many experts say a war with Iran could be a prolonged one, and prolonged wars have habits of negatively impacting the global economy.
Finally, yesterday, an announcement from Anthropic spooked investors in legacy SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies.
As reported by CNBC, Anthropic announced that its Claude AI could now modernize legacy COBOL systems. COBOL is a computer programming language that has been around since the 1950s and is still the backbone of most corporate systems.
After Anthoripics announcement, shares in IBM sank, as IBM generates significant revenue from maintaining these legacy COBOL systems.
Now Anthoripic says its Claude tools can quickly Identify [COBOL] risks that would take human analysts months to surface. As a result, IBM shares dropped 13%.
But Anthropics news also spooked investors with significant holdings in legacy software companies. Tech stocks can already be volatile, and more proof that AI could have a significant impact on legacy tech companies sent shivers down investors spines.
Given the triple uncertainties of tariffs, Iran, and AI, its no wonder why investors seem to be de-risking from volatile assets like Bitcoin in an attempt to protect their gains or prevent further portfolio losses.
Neuroscientists have found birding is actually a brain hack. A new study published in JNeurosci, the Journal of Neuroscience found birdwatching may actually alter the structure and function of your brainwhat is known as neuroplasticityeffectively helping to boost cognitive abilities, especially in more seasoned bird watchers.
Our brains are very malleable, lead researcher Erik Wing, a research associate at York University in Toronto, explained.
Wait, what exactly is neuroplasticity?
Neuroplasticity is basically the process or way your brain learns, creates memory, and adapts to experiences and trauma, according to Psychology Today.
Research shows that while the brain changes and develops the most in childhood, it continues to do so throughout your life.
Today, neuroscientists see the brain as a dynamic and flexible organ, one that can “reorganize connections” through “wiring” and rewiring.
How bird watching helps your brain
The new study of 58 adults compared the brains of 29 expert birders (ages 24 to 75), and 29 beginners around the same age. It found something interesting: The MRIs of the expert birders’ brains had more density when it came to areas governing perception and attention, than those of the novices.
Again, they didn’t divide the two groups based on a person’s agebut based on their birding knowledge and expertise.
Birding, which involves deep concentration and the ability to identify different birds, alters brain activity and structure in the same way becoming an expert musician or athlete does. That’s because they all require extensive brain training.
So, what did the study conclude? In short, it found the process of becoming an expert birder boosted brain cognition. And while it doesn’t stop brain aging, it does suggest that it could help minimize age-related declines in the future.
One of the many constitutional duties of the president is giving a State of the Union address to Congress. Article II, Section 3 only mandates that this act happen “from time to time,” but it has become an annual event.
Tuesday, February 24, will technically mark President Trumps first State of the Union address of his second termeven though he lectured Congress in 2025. That speech was labeled an address to a joint session of Congress, so Trump could speak on his goals for his second term.
Heres everything you need to know about tonights SOTU address.
What topics could Trump speak about?
Most pundits agree, the economy will be front and center. President Trump even teased this himself last Wednesday, February 18, at the White House. Watch the State of the Union. Were going to be talking about the economy. We inherited a mess, he stated.
This could mean he will spend some time blaming his predecessor President Joe Biden for the country’s ills.
Vice President JD Vance also confirmed that economics will take precedence. Youre going to hear a lot about the importance of bringing jobs back into our country, of reshoring manufacturing, of all these great factories that are being built, he explained in a Fox News interview.
Recent polling shows the need for Trump to tackle this important issue ahead of the midterm elections.
According to a recent Associated Press NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, only 39% of American adults approve of his economic leadership. He loses a percentage point for immigration.
Add these low numbers predate Fridays Supreme Court ruling, which declared that some of Trumps tariffs exceeded executive powers. Either way, Trump is going into the State of the Union with low poll numbers.
Are Democrats boycotting the SOTU?
The Democratic party is expected to display varying acts of dissent during Trumps State of the Union Address.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries plans to attend, but outlined his expectations for his fellow party members. Either attend with silent defiance or not attend, he instructed. He doesnt want a repeat of last years ejection of Texas Representative Al Green.
Many are taking the second option, including Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut; and representatives Greg Casar of Texas and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
These lawmakers are instead attending another event, the Peoples State of the Union, organized by MoveOn and MeidasTouch. This will take place on the National Mall.
Another counter-programming event will be held at the National Press Club: It’s is being called the State of the Swamp. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is scheduled to appear.
Additionally, Senator Patty Murray of Washington is planning on meeting with constituents instead.
Who is giving the Democratic response?
After President Trump has his say, the Democrats have their turn to speak.
This year, they have elected Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia to represent their interests. She is a vocal Trump critic and is not expected to hold back. Senator Alex Padilla of California will give the Democratic Spanish-language response.
Who is giving the Progressive response?
Democrat Representative Summer Lee of Pennsylvania will also speak. She will give the Working Families Partys response.
Since American politics is dominated by a two-party system, this progressive group allows members to be a part of another party while also closely aligning with Democrats.
How to stream the SOTU live
The State of the Union 2026 speech is scheduled to begin tonight (Tuesday, February 24) 9 p.m. ET.
Most major networks such as NBC, CBS, and ABC will cover the speech, as will major cable networks including C-SPAN.
If you have an over-the-air antenna, you can watch it for free on a broadcast network or PBS. Traditional cable subscribers are also covered.
You can also find SOTU 2026 on live-TV streaming services such as Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, and FuboTV.
Last but not least, you can easily live-stream the State of the Union speech for free on the YouTube channel of PBS News. We’ve embedded that video below.
