55 burgers, 55 fries… Booths are going the way of the McDLT as fast-food chains pour $$ into drive-thru innovation (which apparently didn’t peak with the second window). Drive-thru visitors rose 30% from 2019 to 2022, while indoor dining dropped 47% from 2019. Now chains are in a to-go space race. McDonald’s and Taco Bell have opened drive-thru-only stores. Chick-fil-A is building a drive-thru highway: a four-lane location that serves 75 cars at once. And AI chatbots have taken orders at chains like Carl’s Jr. and Wendy’s.
Mine your business… Bitcoin transaction fees are up 1,000% since August as a boom in NFT minting on the OG blockchain (aka ordinals) drives on-chain action. For publicly traded miners like Marathon Digital, Riot Platforms, and Hut 8, higher transaction fees = more $$. Hut 8’s earnings tomorrow could provide a clue whether those fees are meaningful enough to cushion the blow of next year’s bitcoin halving — when the # of BTC that miners earn for the same amount of work will be cut in (you guessed it) half.