Latest news with #Schwartz
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Fordefi's Next-Gen Crypto Wallet Unlocks Safe, Simple DeFi for Investors
How Fordefi's Next-Gen Crypto Wallet Unlocks Safe, Simple DeFi for Investors originally appeared on TheStreet. Tired of hearing about crypto riches but scared of losing it all to hacks or scams? Imagine a wallet that lets you dive into decentralized finance (DeFi) with the confidence of a Wall Street pro—secure, simple, and built for real-world profits. That's Fordefi, the first institutional-grade wallet designed specifically for DeFi, trusted by over 170 top-tier clients, from exchanges to asset managers. Josh Schwartz, Fordefi's CEO and co-founder, reveals how they're making crypto safe and accessible for everyone, especially high net-worth investors and family offices ready to seize the DeFi opportunity. Josh Schwartz knows finance inside and out. 'I come from a much more traditional financial background,' he shared, but the past eight years have been all about crypto, focusing on wallets and custody. Unlike traditional finance, where banks can reverse mistakes, crypto's assets are unforgiving. 'If someone compromises your private key, they can steal your funds, and the blockchain's immutability becomes your worst nightmare,' Schwartz explained. Billions have been lost to hacks and errors, making security the top priority. Fordefi takes security to the next level. 'We focus on the next generation of wallet security,' Schwartz said. Beyond just protecting private keys, Fordefi tackles the risks of DeFi, where signing the wrong smart contract can wipe out your wealth. 'People's keys are fine, but they sign the wrong transactions or have no idea what they're signing,' he noted. Fordefi's solution? A wallet purpose-built for DeFi, offering tools and guardrails to ensure safe, confident capital deployment across blockchains. For family offices and high net-worth individuals, crypto can feel like a daunting leap. Schwartz gets it—he made the same journey. 'There's an education process,' he admitted. Investors need to understand why DeFi matters: higher yields, better liquidity, or using real-world assets (RWAs) as collateral on-chain. 'Maybe I'm nervous about someone else holding my assets and want to secure them myself while getting utility,' Schwartz said. Pushback often comes from fear of losing assets or keys. Fordefi addresses this head-on. 'We talk to them about security concerns and how this asset class is different,' Schwartz explained. With 170 institutional clients, including trading firms and tokenization players, Fordefi has seen it all. The adoption curve is clear: investors start with crypto ETFs for familiarity, move to holding spot crypto, then explore staking for yield, and finally dive into DeFi. 'It's a natural evolution,' Schwartz said, and Fordefi makes each step secure and seamless. Think DeFi is too technical? Schwartz compares it to the early days of cloud computing. 'Individuals don't need to know how the cloud works—they just know their data is there,' he said. Fordefi does the same for blockchain, abstracting the tech so you can focus on profits. 'The technology is superior, and we simplify it,' Schwartz added. What sets Fordefi apart? First, its multi-chain browser extension connects to any decentralized app (dApp) across every blockchain. 'A classic problem is using one wallet for Uniswap but needing a different one for Solana's Jupiter,' Schwartz noted. 'Traditional asset managers aren't used to that.' Fordefi eliminates this hassle with universal connectivity. Second, Fordefi translates raw smart contract data into clear, human-readable formats. 'We simulate contracts so investors understand what they're signing,' Schwartz explained. No more blind transactions or costly mistakes. Finally, Fordefi tackles DeFi's growing complexity—multiple chains, tokens, and dApps—by streamlining processes like bridging and swapping. 'We abstract it and make it easy,' Schwartz said, ensuring investors can yield or trade without the headaches. For investors, Fordefi isn't just a wallet—it's a gateway to smarter wealth-building. While competitors focus on basic custody or transfers, Fordefi is built for DeFi's dynamic world. Its tools let you stake, trade, or leverage RWAs with confidence, all while saving time and avoiding errors. BlackRock's tokenized funds and stablecoin adoption show the trend is unstoppable—Fordefi puts you ahead of the curve. With a client list boasting exchanges, protocols, and foundations, Fordefi's proven track record speaks for itself. 'We're seeing massive institutional adoption,' Schwartz said, pointing to the growing trust in DeFi solutions. Whether you're dipping your toes in with ETFs or ready to build a DeFi empire, Fordefi's got your back. How Fordefi's Next-Gen Crypto Wallet Unlocks Safe, Simple DeFi for Investors first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 3, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 3, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
NBC Sports
a day ago
- Entertainment
- NBC Sports
Steve Wright, NFL lineman who modeled Man of the Year trophy, dies at 82
Steve Wright, an NFL lineman whose impressive stature was immortalized in a sculpture that became the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year trophy, has died at the age of 82. The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Wright was a giant for his day and an imposing offensive tackle at Alabama, where he won a national championship in 1961. He was drafted by both the Packers in the NFL and the Jets in the AFL in 1964. Wright chose to play in Green Bay, and he won three championships and played in Super Bowls I and II. He later bounced around the league in four different cities, playing in New York, Washington, Chicago and St. Louis before finishing his professional career in the World Football League in 1974. In an era when football players were expected to follow their coaches' orders, Wright — despite playing for the hard-nosed Bear Bryant in college and Vince Lombardi in the NFL — gained a reputation for questioning everything. At the end of his career he published a memoir, I'd Rather be Wright: Memoirs of an Itinerant Tackle, that gave fans an inside look at life in pro football from an irreverent perspective that had rarely been shared before. But Wright is best known for serving as a model for sculptor Daniel Bennett Schwartz after the NFL commissioned Schwartz to make a distinctive trophy for a new award the league wanted to bestow on a player who epitomized everything that's right about the men who play pro football, both on and off the field. Wright stood in his uniform with a giant cape-like overcoat on his shoulder pads as Schwartz went to work creating a statue he called 'The Gladiator' that the NFL adopted as its Man of the Year Trophy. In 1970, Johnny Unitas became the first player to receive that NFL Man of the Year trophy. Walter Payton got the award in 1977, and after he died in 1999 the league changed the award's name to Walter Payton Man of the Year. The self-deprecating Wright often joked about how amusing he found it that such great players and great men were presented with 'a statue of me.' Wright was the first to admit he wasn't a great NFL player, agreeing in his book with Lombardi's assessment that he had the physical talent to be a bulldozing lineman but was too nice a guy to want to run over the player across the line from him. But Wright will always have a connection to some of the NFL's all-time greats, thanks to the award that bears his likeness.
The Age
4 days ago
- Business
- The Age
How Victor took on the US president – and blew up Trump's plans to tax the world
A global business V.O.S. Selections has 19 employees and imports wines, spirits and sakes from 16 countries, including Italy, France and South Africa. Trump's tariffs would leave the company unable to plan import orders, and its relationships with wholesale customers and farmers who produce wine would suffer, Schwartz said in a declaration to the trade court. Loading Eventually, he wrote, the business could become untenable. 'We have to come up with this cash flow somehow. That's not a little bit of money – that's thousands and thousands of dollars on each container,' Schwartz said. 'It's not a small thing. It's not easy. You can't absorb it if you're a small company.' And the wine his company imports is valuable in part because of the characteristics imparted by growing certain grape varietals in specific areas. 'A popular wine like chianti cannot be replicated domestically because the raw ingredients only exist in that specific geographical location in Tuscany, Italy, and the wine can only be raised in the specific climate of that place to produce the qualities that a customer seeks when buying a bottle of said wine,' Schwartz said in his court filing. The broader wine industry has similar concerns. The National Association of Wine Retailers urged the Trump administration to reconsider the sweeping tariffs in an April statement, noting that wine importers, wine wholesalers, wine retailers and domestic wine producers would suffer 'significant revenue reductions, lay-offs, and business closings'. But in its filing to the Court of International Trade, which has exclusive jurisdictional authority over such disputes, the Trump administration called the claims of harm 'speculative', writing that they only show the 'possibility' of future economic loss. The government argued that Trump has the authority to impose broad tariffs on imported goods under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to reverse trade deficits it sees as a national emergency. They said the law's language authorising the president to 'regulate … importation' granted him full powers over tariff rates. But the trade court's three-judge panel disagreed: 'The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority,' the judges wrote in their decision on Wednesday, adding that the administration's justifications failed to meet the law's requirement that it be used to 'deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat'. Unexpected costs loom Earlier this year, Schwartz was connected to the Liberty Justice Centre, a nonpartisan group in Austin, Texas, after sharing the tariffs' impact on his business with his nephew's former law professor, Ilya Somin, who is also co-counsel on the case before the Court of International Trade. When Schwartz was asked if he wanted to become the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, he discussed the decision with his family. They convinced him he needed to take the leap. 'Everyone is very afraid of this person, so no one will step up,' Schwartz said of Trump. 'I can't complain about other people not stepping up. It was right at my plate, and I had to do it.' But the effect of Trump's tariffs extends far beyond the wine industry, including to clothing brands such as Terry Precision Cycling, a business that specialises in women's cycling attire and is a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. The Vermont-based brand imports fabrics and finished goods from several countries, including Guatemala, China and the Philippines. It paid $25,000 in unplanned tariffs in 2025 and expects to pay an additional $250,000 in tariffs by the end of the year, according to court documents. Terry Precision Cycling will face an estimated $1.2 million in tariff costs in 2026 – 'which it will not be able to pay'. That sentiment is reflected across nearly a dozen small businesses spanning the clothing, gaming and mechanical industries that filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. All but one directly import goods from abroad, and some have already paid additional tariffs under Trump's trade war policy. The companies said that 'sudden and dramatic increases in tariff amounts, together with the uncertainty of an ever-changing policy, threaten immediate and existential harm' to their continued operation. They added that tariffs made it 'all but impossible to plan', and that switching to fully domestic manufacturing would 'take many years'. The court decisions this week have provoked strong reactions from the White House. Shortly after the trade court blocked the new tariffs, Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X, 'We are living under a judicial tyranny.' Loading Trump celebrated the temporary stay delivered by the federal appeals court on Thursday (Friday AEST) in a post on Truth Social, calling the tariffs 'desperately needed', and calling the trade court 'so wrong, and so political!' The appeals court is expected to issue a ruling on whether to pause the tariffs while it hears the case some time within the next two weeks, Liberty Justice Centre senior counsel and interim director of litigation Jeffrey Schwab said.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
How Victor took on the US president – and blew up Trump's plans to tax the world
A global business V.O.S. Selections has 19 employees and imports wines, spirits and sakes from 16 countries, including Italy, France and South Africa. Trump's tariffs would leave the company unable to plan import orders, and its relationships with wholesale customers and farmers who produce wine would suffer, Schwartz said in a declaration to the trade court. Loading Eventually, he wrote, the business could become untenable. 'We have to come up with this cash flow somehow. That's not a little bit of money – that's thousands and thousands of dollars on each container,' Schwartz said. 'It's not a small thing. It's not easy. You can't absorb it if you're a small company.' And the wine his company imports is valuable in part because of the characteristics imparted by growing certain grape varietals in specific areas. 'A popular wine like chianti cannot be replicated domestically because the raw ingredients only exist in that specific geographical location in Tuscany, Italy, and the wine can only be raised in the specific climate of that place to produce the qualities that a customer seeks when buying a bottle of said wine,' Schwartz said in his court filing. The broader wine industry has similar concerns. The National Association of Wine Retailers urged the Trump administration to reconsider the sweeping tariffs in an April statement, noting that wine importers, wine wholesalers, wine retailers and domestic wine producers would suffer 'significant revenue reductions, lay-offs, and business closings'. But in its filing to the Court of International Trade, which has exclusive jurisdictional authority over such disputes, the Trump administration called the claims of harm 'speculative', writing that they only show the 'possibility' of future economic loss. The government argued that Trump has the authority to impose broad tariffs on imported goods under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to reverse trade deficits it sees as a national emergency. They said the law's language authorising the president to 'regulate … importation' granted him full powers over tariff rates. But the trade court's three-judge panel disagreed: 'The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority,' the judges wrote in their decision on Wednesday, adding that the administration's justifications failed to meet the law's requirement that it be used to 'deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat'. Unexpected costs loom Earlier this year, Schwartz was connected to the Liberty Justice Centre, a nonpartisan group in Austin, Texas, after sharing the tariffs' impact on his business with his nephew's former law professor, Ilya Somin, who is also co-counsel on the case before the Court of International Trade. When Schwartz was asked if he wanted to become the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, he discussed the decision with his family. They convinced him he needed to take the leap. 'Everyone is very afraid of this person, so no one will step up,' Schwartz said of Trump. 'I can't complain about other people not stepping up. It was right at my plate, and I had to do it.' But the effect of Trump's tariffs extends far beyond the wine industry, including to clothing brands such as Terry Precision Cycling, a business that specialises in women's cycling attire and is a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. The Vermont-based brand imports fabrics and finished goods from several countries, including Guatemala, China and the Philippines. It paid $25,000 in unplanned tariffs in 2025 and expects to pay an additional $250,000 in tariffs by the end of the year, according to court documents. Terry Precision Cycling will face an estimated $1.2 million in tariff costs in 2026 – 'which it will not be able to pay'. That sentiment is reflected across nearly a dozen small businesses spanning the clothing, gaming and mechanical industries that filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. All but one directly import goods from abroad, and some have already paid additional tariffs under Trump's trade war policy. The companies said that 'sudden and dramatic increases in tariff amounts, together with the uncertainty of an ever-changing policy, threaten immediate and existential harm' to their continued operation. They added that tariffs made it 'all but impossible to plan', and that switching to fully domestic manufacturing would 'take many years'. The court decisions this week have provoked strong reactions from the White House. Shortly after the trade court blocked the new tariffs, Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X, 'We are living under a judicial tyranny.' Loading Trump celebrated the temporary stay delivered by the federal appeals court on Thursday (Friday AEST) in a post on Truth Social, calling the tariffs 'desperately needed', and calling the trade court 'so wrong, and so political!' The appeals court is expected to issue a ruling on whether to pause the tariffs while it hears the case some time within the next two weeks, Liberty Justice Centre senior counsel and interim director of litigation Jeffrey Schwab said.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
8 Ways Smart People Save Money When Buying Gas
The average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. is $3.16 as of May 28, per AAA. Although prices may be different where you live, it never hurts to find ways to bring them down further. After all, gas can be expensive, especially if you drive a lot or have a ride with poor gas mileage. For You: Check Out: The good news is there are ways to save money when buying gas. You just need to be a little bit savvy. This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised at how many people are creatures of habit and always choose the same gas station, even if it's not the most cost-effective. You can compare local gas stations using an app like GasBuddy or Google Maps. While you're at it, use a rewards card to boost your savings — and earnings — potential. 'Find the gas station in your area that consistently has the lowest gas price, and then see if there's a credit card for type of store with gas purchase rewards,' said Kathy Gilchrist, CEO of CFOKathy. 'For example, Costco usually has low gas prices, and the Costco credit card offers 4% rewards on gas purchases. But make sure to pay the credit card off every month so that you don't have to pay interest.' 'Many credit cards offer different rates of cashback for specific categories of purchases, and gas is a common one,' added Erika Kullberg, an attorney, personal finance expert and founder of 'If you drive a lot, you can consider opening a new credit card that heavily rewards gas purchases. You can then put the cashback you earn back into your bank account or can use it to pay off your credit card.' Up Next: You might not always have to pay for gas out of pocket. 'For young adults, I'm also a fan of asking for gas gift cards for the holidays or birthdays,' said Kullberg. 'It may seem like a boring gift, but these gift cards can be really helpful when you're young and on a super tight budget.' Whether it's a gas station or a grocery store, see if they have a loyalty program that lets you save at the pump. 'For example, with Shell Fuel Rewards you normally save at least 5 cents per gallon and can sometimes save up to 20 cents per gallon,' said Adam Schwartz, CEO of CouponSurfer, Inc. 'Warehouse club like Sam's or Costco will frequently have member only discounts on gas.' The same goes for certain grocery stores. 'Many of them also offer savings on gas,' said Schwartz. 'For example, Safeway offers 20 cents off per gallon at participating gas stations.' Sometimes, the same brand will sell gas at different prices just because of location. 'Don't assume certain brands always have low prices,' said Schwartz. 'For example, there are two Shell's near me. One is $2.99, and the other one is $3.59.' 'Most cars only need regular (87 octane). Check your owner's manual. If it recommends 89 or 91 octane, you can still use 87 octane with only a slight decrease in performance,' said Schwartz. 'If your owner's manual states that 89 or 91 octane is required, then you need to use 89 or 91 octane. Using 87 in place of premium can save you as much as 80 to 90 cents per gallon. While you're at it, consider mixing gas if it makes sense. 'If your car requires 89 Octane, you can usually save money by mixing 87 Octane and 93 Octane. For example, if you are getting 15 gallons, you could get 10 gallons of 87 and then 5 gallons of 93,' said Schwartz. He gave an example to show how mixing gas could save you money. If, he said, one gas station sells 87 for $2.99, 89 for $3.59, and 93 for $3.79, it would cost $48.85 rather than $53.85. That's about $5 in savings every time you fill up a 15-gallon tank. Explore More: Credit cards might be convenient, but they can sometimes cost more than cash. 'If you pay by credit card, be sure to compare the 'credit' price,' said Schwartz. 'Some gas stations charge the same for cash or credit, while other may charge up to 10 or even 15 cents a gallon more.' The truly savvy consumer will also check their tire pressure as it can impact their gas costs. 'Low tire pressure can decrease fuel economy as much as 9%,' said Schwartz. 'Tire pressure generally decreases over time and as outdoor temperatures go down. 'See your owner's manual for the correct tire pressure. You should monitor your tire pressure at least once per month.' If you're trying to really cut costs at the pump, don't warm up your car before heading out. 'Unless it's extremely cold, most modern cars do not need to be warmed up,' said Schwartz. 'In fact your car will warm up faster with you driving it. Thirty seconds of idling uses more fuel than stopping and restarting the engine.' More From GOBankingRates Surprising Items People Are Stocking Up On Before Tariff Pains Hit: Is It Smart? 10 Genius Things Warren Buffett Says To Do With Your Money This article originally appeared on 8 Ways Smart People Save Money When Buying Gas
