Today's Scoop:

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Hey friends, it's almost Friday. Did you see we got selected for the Unicorn Hunt? Unicorns are startups valued at $1B+.

Here's what you need to know today...

1. Bitcoin's making a comeback.

2. A drop in mortgage rates has spurred more home sales.

3. Layoffs are still broadly low.

S&P 500: 3,948.721Mo: -1% | 1Yr: -13% | 5Yr: +50%

The market wobbled a little higher today without any significant news.

Bitcoin's been making a comeback, up nearly 70% so far this year. All of the recent uncertainty around the traditional banking system has led some investors to store their cash in non-traditional assets.

A drop in mortgage rates has sparked more home sales. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a 2% spike in new mortgage applications last week as the average 30-year mortgage rate dropped to 6.5%. The Commerce Department said new homes sales rose for the third straight month in February.

Layoffs are still low. The Labor Department reported initial unemployment claims fell last week to 191,000, surprising investors. Despite the cost-cutting headlines from Big Tech, broad layoffs are still near pre-pandemic averages. There's still a lot of demand for workers.

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• Moderna defends 5x price hikes to Senate

• Microsoft's Bing takes a small bite out of Google

• Adobe launches ethical AI photo generation

• TotalEnergies pledges to reduce direct emissions & carbon intensity [🤓]

• Coinbase faces legal threats from SEC

(These links only work for 24 hours while the story is live)

Carbon Intensity

Many industries like energy, power, and industrials have started promising to decrease their carbon intensity. This is not a pledge to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gases their companies emit into the atmosphere, but instead the amount of emissions per unit of production.

An oil company might move to electrify its refinery, powering its operations from solar energy instead of burning fossil fuels. That would decrease the direct emissions of the oil pumping, but if it decides to pump more oil, it might still be increasing its total absolute emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year.

Critics say it's an essential first step in decarbonizing heavy industries, but it might be less progress than it sounds.

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