The Daily - A Conversation With a Dogecoin Millionaire

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

This episode contains strong language.What started out as a kind of inside joke in the world of cryptocurrency has quickly become, for some, a very serious path to wealth. Today we explore the latest frenzy around a digital currency, what it tells us about the flaws in the old economy — and the risks and rewards of the new one.Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, spoke with Glauber Contessoto about his investment in Dogecoin.Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Dogecoin has experienced a scarcely believable surge in the past few weeks. And the currency’s value has been closely tied to the Twitter presence, and even the “Saturday Night Live” appearance, of Elon Musk.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. What started out as a kind of inside joke in the world of cryptocurrency has quickly become, for some, a very serious path to wealth. Today, Kevin Roos on the latest frenzy around a digital currency and what it tells us about the flaws in the old economy and the risks and rewards of the new one. It's Friday, May 14th. So, Kevin, the last time we spoke with you, you had, quite improbably, made $750,000 by selling a picture of your column in the form of a non-fungible token.

So what have you been up to since then? Well, quick update. The value of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed in the time since that episode. So the NFT that I sold is actually now worth about $1.4 million. Show off. Again, I don't get to keep it. I am a fake cryptocurrency millionaire, but there you go. So I've kind of moved on from NFTs,

but I've stayed very interested in the world of cryptocurrency. And for the last few weeks, there's been one giant story in the world of cryptocurrency. And that is the story of Dogecoin. We're gonna take Dogecoin to the moon. A positively dogged rise, it says here, in the price of Dogecoin. Dogecoin has been everywhere. Its total value stands at $86 billion, more than FedEx.

Every time I open my TikTok feed, there's like a video about Dogecoin. Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, never sell. Much rich. Buy more, buy more, buy more, buy more, it's doing well. Every time I go on Twitter, there are people talking about it. I have friends that I haven't talked to in years, like texting me about whether or not they should invest in it. Every day, the internet has a main character. And today, you know, Reddit and Twitter have decided that main character is Dogecoin.

So unlock that word and that concept for us as only you can, Dogecoin. Sure. So Dogecoin is something like Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of these other cryptocurrencies. It's a way to send and receive money on the internet. And it was created in 2013 during the first real speculative mania around Bitcoin. And it was literally meant as a joke. These two programmers created it to poke fun at how seriously all these investors and speculators were taking cryptocurrency. And basically they decided we should sort of make fun

of the people trading cryptocurrencies by making our own joke cryptocurrency. So they take this meme, this Shiba Inu dog, who was called Doge, that was sort of popular in the 2013 internet, who would like talk in like comic sans and would say things like much wow, like so scare. So they decided we're going to combine Bitcoin with Doge and make Dogecoin. Okay. And just how clear is it to everyone that this is a parody, a joke? Oh, it's completely clear to everyone because not only is the whole idea of Dogecoin just on its face absurd and ridiculous, but the technology itself, the coin itself is actually kind of broken in this

way that makes it sort of unusable as a cryptocurrency. You know, Bitcoin and all these other cryptocurrencies, they have sort of this capped supply. Like the code actually limits the number of coins that can be created. But at the beginning, Dogecoin doesn't have that sort of cap. Like there just wasn't a limit on the number of coins that could be produced. And like recently, they've gone back and fixed that. They've added a cap. But it kind of shows you like how absurd this whole project was. Okay, so given that context,

who would bother to trade this parity of a currency, Dogecoin? So for most of its life, Dogecoin is basically worthless. One Dogecoin is worth a tiny fraction of a cent. And it periodically gets popular. People talk about it for a minute. The price goes up a little bit, and then it comes back down. And it basically just fades into the background as all of these other cryptocurrencies are becoming real and legitimate

and are seeing their values go up. So this year, as Bitcoin and Ethereum and these other cryptocurrencies are having another massive run, Dogecoin made this very strange comeback. It totally exploded. And so I'm watching all this happen. I'm hanging out on the Dogecoin subreddit for work, I promise. And I kept hearing about these big time Dogecoin traders.

There was one in particular, people on the Dogecoin subreddit were calling him like the Doge father or slum Doge millionaire. Would you mind just introducing yourself and explaining a little bit about who you are? Yeah, sure. And his name is Glauber Contisoto. So I go by Jason or Pro, but my birth name is Glauber Contisoto. We get on a video call. He's a big guy, big beard. He's got like a picture of Jay-Z behind him. And I work here in LA. I work at a

music company, a hip hop music company. So Glauber is 33 years old. He was born in Brazil. He came to the US when he was six years old and his family landed in the Washington, D.C. area. We basically grew up very poor. So I remember growing up, we were in a little apartment, like basement kind of area. I shared a room with my sister until I was like 13. His mom and dad didn't even have their own room. They had like the back end of the apartment that we had to like put a divider up. So they had some privacy. Like, I remember always wondering why we were on a budget or why we were so poor. There were certain instances where I would go to my room and go through the toy box in the closet and find like old toys and stuff and pile them in my

backpack. And I'd take them to school and on the way to school on the school bus, I would sell them to kids and they'd give me their lunch money, like $2, $5 here and there. And I used to come home with like 30 bucks. And my mom was like, how the hell did you get $30? And I was like,

I was just selling some old toys I had. So he graduates from high school, goes to college, but ends up dropping out and then stays in the DC area for a while. And he meets this aspiring rapper and decides to manage him. And he really wants to work in the music industry. So I'm like, all right, what do we have to do? We need to get the hell out of here. We need to get out of Maryland. Maryland is not the place for music. So I'm like,

either I'm moving to New York or LA. I had some friends out here already. So I'm like, either I'm moving to New York or LA. I had some friends out here already. So I was like, LA it is. And like a lot of people who moved to LA hoping to have a career in the entertainment industry, Glauber has a dream. He wants to buy a house. That's what I've always wanted to do. My family has never owned a house. So I was like, I want to buy a house. And the reason for me buying a house is I wanted to get a bunch of rooms so my artists could come live with me. Like I get Lambo to come out here and live there and then work on music. Doesn't have to worry about rent, doesn't have to worry about food or anything. But when he gets to L.A., he does not have anywhere near the amount of money he's going to need to do that. So I'm sleeping on couches. I have a friend of mine in Van Nuys. I'm sleeping on his couch.

And then I sleep on a couch in West Hills. So I actually have screenshots of all the 2017 of my bank account because to motivate myself, I changed the name of my bank account to Pro is Broke as Fuck. And then I had like the little part there and it'd be like a dollar or like 50 cents or like 50 bucks or something like that in my account. It was crazy. So I didn't know you could

change the name of your bank account. Yeah, you can. It's so funny. And he starts picking up some freelance video editing gigs. He's making like a thousand dollars a month and he eventually gets this break. He gets a job at a startup in LA. They're having him do sort of entry-level video editing. They offer me 32K and I'm like blown away. I'm like $32,000 a year, that's crazy. I'm telling my friends about it. I'm like, I just got a job, $32,000 a year. My friends are like, that's not a lot.

You should ask for more. So I asked for 40K, they're like 35K. And I'm like, all right, 36K, please. And they're like, all right. So they give me 36K. First year I get 36K. And as he starts getting more experienced and taking on more responsibilities, he eventually starts making a little more money. It's $45,000. Running the entire department. I'm overseeing all these things. I'm getting the YouTube channel, so many more views and more revenue. So I go from 45K to 60K. All I do is work. So you're making a little bit more money at that point. Did you change the name of your bank account? Yes, I did. I just went back to

what it was before. So at that point, he's not sleeping on couches anymore. He's renting a place with his brother. But as he's continuing to sort of save up, he really not sleeping on couches anymore. He's renting a place with his brother. But as he's continuing to sort of save up, he really develops like tunnel vision on this goal of buying a house. I do everything in my power to do that. I'm saving every bit of money that I can. My money every month is literally going to bills. My car is a piece of shit. I'm not going out shopping. I'm not going on vacation. I'm not going out shopping. I'm not going on vacation. I'm not going to concerts.

So at the beginning of 2020, he finally has enough money saved up that he thinks he can start looking for a house. But that turns out not to be easy. I can't get a loan for the life of me. No mortgage company is loaning me because I need to put down at least 20%. He just can't get a loan for the life of me. Like no mortgage company is loaning me because I need to put down at least 20%. Like he just can't find any place that's within his budget.

So I'm like, all right, I have to make my house choices lower, right? So I'm like, I tried about two or three different houses. Nothing happened. I'm like, this is the last, this is my last shot at this, right? I'm gonna find a house that's 300,000 because I could do 20% of that.

So he starts working with a realtor and eventually... I find this house in the woods past Pasadena, like up by the mountains, and it's like $350,000. I'm like, it's a little cottage place. I'm like, that's... I mean, I could blast music and we can do a studio in there. That's fine. At least I'll have a house, right? That's all I ever wanted. So he gets really excited. He can actually afford a down payment on this place. So the realtor calls the house, calls me back the next day and says, oh, they're cash only. You got to pay for the whole thing. And so his dream is dashed again.

Right. Because he doesn't have $350,000. He just has enough for a down payment. Right. I'm like, that's it. I can't get a house. God doesn't want me to get a house. And he ultimately decides like, maybe this just isn't in the cards for me right now. Hmm. So this is a pretty depressingly familiar version of the American dream. A guy who comes from not very much, works really hard, tries to save up. Does save up. And still feels stuck. Because in a city like Los Angeles, given the economics of trying to buy a home, he is actually stuck. The system's just not working for him. Exactly. This whole classic sense of like, you work hard, you climb the ladder, you buy a house, you settle down. Like,

that version of the economy is just not really working for him. But then he figures out that he actually has another option. We'll be right back. So, 2020, the pandemic hits, go into lockdown. And over the course of that year, Glauber stops thinking about buying a house and starts just focusing on work. But then this year, 2021, GameStop happens, right? This weird thing happens with GameStop, this video game store. Right. This weird thing being a social media frenzy around GameStop that leads the stock to soar, creates enormous wealth for the people who got in early.

But more than that, it also sent a message to establishment players and finance that regular investors were now in charge. Right. I first learned about GameStop on about the Reddit's group, right? Wall Street Bets. I'm like, oh, let me go look this up. I didn't know anything about Reddit. I had heard about it, never checked it out. So basically, a bunch of people on this Reddit forum called Wall Street Bets were sort of teaming up to pump up the stock price of GameStop, basically to try to screw these hedge funds that had bet against GameStop.

Wall Street Bets, I'm all over there. And I'm like, oh, GameStop looks like a good idea. We're going to like, stick it to the man. Let's go. Like little guys versus the big guys, the big hedge funds. Let's bleed them dry. And this all went up spectacularly and then came crashing down spectacularly. And there was this whole drama with Robinhood, this smartphone app that people are using to buy and sell GameStop stock, which temporarily shuts down.

It becomes this basically this huge nationwide financial frenzy. So what do I do? I buy a bunch of GameStop when it's $300. And Glauber actually sort of participates. The very next day, Robinhood shuts it down. Like you can't buy anything and it goes down. And I'm seeing myself losing money and losing money. And proceeds to lose most of his money the next day when it crashes. But despite the fact that he lost money trading GameStop, he also saw that some people who got in and out at the right time had actually made millions of dollars trading GameStop. Right.

And that gets Glaubur thinking, if I could figure out the next GameStop before it happens, maybe that's my ticket. While I go through the Reddit, somebody posts, has Dogecoin ever gone to a dollar? And then I'm like, what the hell is Dogecoin? And that's when he hears about Dogecoin. So I start researching Dogecoin ever gone to a dollar? And then I'm like, what the hell is Dogecoin? And that's when he hears about Dogecoin. So I start researching Dogecoin. And I'm like, oh, you can buy this on Robinhood. This is cool. Like this thing that is really taking off on the internet,

that is exciting people, that's getting people interested in investing, and that the people who get in on the ground floor of this might actually be able to make some money off of it. So I'm on Robinhood and Dogecoin, I search it and I'm like, oh shit, I could just buy it here. I have an extra 40 bucks somehow in my buying power or whatever, right? So I take those 40 bucks, I put it in Dogecoin. I'm like, this is fun. Let's see what happens. Put on Dogecoin. So he starts small. And the very next

day, Dogecoin goes from a penny to eight cents. I'm staring at my phone watching it go from 40 bucks to 100 bucks to 150 to 250, 350. The price of Dogecoin goes up like 700 percent. Wow. I'm like, I don't know what the hell this is, but I'm not missing the next time this happens. I have to get in on this. No stock I've ever purchased before has ever done this. And he's realizing like, oh, this might be actually happening. I might have bet right. So that's when I'm like, what's Dogecoin? I go through the entire history. I learned everything I could possibly learn about it. I've researched it for hours on end. Like I even have screenshots of my phone and how my screen time was 20 hours a day on the phone researching this stuff. He gets very, very excited about it, starts spending a lot more time in the Dogecoin subreddit. And he becomes even more optimistic about what Dogecoin is going to do. So what's drawing him to Doge is not the intrinsic value of a Dogecoin, but the fact that

lots of other people are excited about and being drawn into Doge. Right. In a way, it's purely speculative. He's just betting that this thing that is going up will continue to go up. But he also starts sort of developing this bigger idea about Dogecoin and cryptocurrency and what kind of has value in today's economy. And why, in his mind, does Dogecoin have value in this economy? What does he tell you? his mind, does Dogecoin have value in this economy? What does he tell you? I mean, he basically sees that the world of kind of the attention economy of like memes and funny videos and, you know, shares and retweets, like it's sort of merging with the stock market. And so you have like these companies like GameStop or Tesla or something that people on the internet just decide like is a meme, like a meme stock. And so their goal is just to have fun with it, to push it as high

as they can get it, and then hopefully get out before it all comes crashing down. And he sees this cycle happening. And so he sees that if something is capturing people's attention, it's probably a good idea to invest in it early. Right. I mean, Warren Buffett would scoff at this. The fundamentals of this don't make any sense. There aren't sales, there aren't profits. But the wisdom of crowds says that this is worth more and more and more. And Glauber subscribes to that belief. Right. And I think it goes without saying, like, this is not what a typical financial advisor would recommend doing. But Glauber sort of has this new millennial Gen Z way of looking at the stock market, which is that it doesn't really matter what the underlying value of something is. It's more about attention and momentum and

figuring out where the culture is going than it is about the actual soundness of the investment. Wake up, go to sleep for a few hours, wake up, next day, bam, up at 5 cents, 6 cents, goes back down to 4. I'm like, this isn't going down to 2 ever again. This isn't going down to 1 ever again. This is going to go up. And then there's this tipping point.

And when is that? In February of this year, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, one of the richest men in the world, and kind of like self-appointed king of the meme internet, starts tweeting about Dogecoin. He calls it the people's crypto. And he says that he's actually buying Dogecoin for his son. Elon does a blast of like eight or nine or ten tweets, like back to back to back to back. And it shoots up from three cents to like four to five to six. I'm like, this is it. This is the blast off. I'm missing it right now.

And Glauber starts sort of thinking about this as the point of no return. Like Dogecoin is popular. It's getting more popular. Elon Musk is tweeting about it. This thing is going to the moon, as they say on Reddit. So now I was like, I'm going all in. Like this last thing was it for me. And so he makes up his mind and he decides to put everything he has into Dogecoin.

Can you quantify that? What do you mean? I mean, everything, like his entire life savings. How much money did you decide to invest? Total, it was $250,000 at 4.5 cents. He put in about $250,000. Wow. That's a lot of money. A lot of money. And actually... I say total because I took money out in margin. I took out about... Meaning you borrowed money to... I borrowed money from Robinhood, correct. He went into debt so that he could buy more Dogecoin. So how does this quarter million dollar bet end up playing out for Glauber?

So he goes all in in February. And for the first couple months, it doesn't really make him much money. The price of Dogecoin is just sort of flat. It's like five or six cents. And he's sort of watching it go up a little bit, down a little bit. It's not like moving much. But then April 15th rolls around. What happens then? So that day, it's a Thursday, Elon Musk, he's sort of been like tweeting about Dogecoin off and on for a long time, posts this image on Twitter. It's actually a painting of a dog barking at the moon. And he captions it, Doge barking at the moon. And people on Reddit get super excited because the moon, in Reddit speak, is what happens when something goes viral. Right on cue, the price of Dogecoin starts to skyrocket.

And what does this mean for Glauber? Man, it was the craziest day because, like I said, I knew in my heart it was going to go up. So he's just watching all this happen in real time. Like he's looking at his phone at the value of his investment when this starts climbing and I start seeing more money in my account that I'm than I've ever seen in my entire life it's just going up and up and up you know 200 300 400 500 600 700 it's like adding just hundreds of thousands of dollars in like minutes. I'm waiting for a dip at any point, a crash. I'm like, it's going to go back to 300,000 or whatever, anytime.

But it keeps going. And eventually, like the price of Dogecoin ends up going up hundreds of percentage points that day, like more than triple the value at the start of the day. Mm hmm. So I know the exact time it happened. It was April 15th at 6 p.m. I'm staring at my phone like I usually do. And I'm looking at it and it's going up, going up, going up. And the value of Glauber's Dogecoin investment. And then it crosses over the million mark.

Crosses a million dollars. a million dollars. And I'm like, it's today. Today. Now, I'm a million, right now I'm a millionaire. I'm 33 years old,

I just became a millionaire. Wow. Yeah, it's wild. I texted my mom. I was like, I was like, Mom, your son's a millionaire. She was like, you're lying. No, you're not. I sent her a screenshot. I have a screenshot of all that. I sent it to her. And I was like, I was like, your son's finally a millionaire. I was like, everything's gonna be all all right. I was like, like, you know, like you can start looking at houses. And she writes me back. She's like, all I want is you and your sister's happiness. And I'm good. That shit like.

I was crazy, man. Like, this thing changed my life. And it doesn't even stop there. 12 hours later, 6.40 a.m. the next day, it hits 1.8 million. The price of Dogecoin just keeps going up and up and up. And by the time I talked to him... I can show you guys on the screen right now, if you want to see. What is it? Can you just read that to me?

Yeah. He had turned his original investment of about $250,000 into... At this very second, it's at $2,431,000. Almost $2.5 million. Wow. Yeah. That's a big number. That's a huge number.

Oh, I just went up. That is truly astonishing. And basically, an overnight fortune. Yeah. This is awkward. I'm blushing as I'm explaining this to you, Michael. But he is very proud because to go from his initial investment to a million dollars took exactly 69 days. And 69 is the sex number.

Which he thinks is funny because 69 in Dogecoin world is a very funny number for reasons that I'm not going to explain to the listeners of this podcast. But of course, this wealth is paper wealth. He has to sell Dogecoin in order to get it. And I'm nervous just hearing you tell this story on Glauber's behalf, because I think it might be time for him to sell.

So does he sell? No. No. It didn't cross my mind. Not once to sell it. And why not? Because he sees this as a long-term investment. I guess, like, a lot of people in your situation would say, okay, I made this bet.

It paid off. Now I'm going to just take some money off the table. I'm going to make sure I have enough money to buy a house. And I'll keep some money in maybe, but I'm going to just make sure I have a little bit of security in case it does crash, in case it does turn out to be a bubble. But you didn't do that. No.

Why not? I know this is not the best example, but if you could buy into Amazon when it was $10 a share, would you have sold when it hit $20 or when it hit $200? No, you wouldn't. I think part of the reason is just he thinks it's going to keep going up. He doesn't want to miss out on the gains that he'll make if Dogecoin goes to a dollar or two dollars or five dollars. If I could go back in time and buy Bitcoin when it was at 50 bucks and sold it at $300, you know what I mean?

Like, you wouldn't do that. But he's also got this ideological motivation. I look at Dogecoin as the future. I truly believe in the cryptocurrency. I believe Dogecoin is the future of currency. Like a lot of people, he thinks that the sort of old financial system, you know, with all the banks and hedge funds and transaction fees and middlemen, that's all becoming obsolete. My generation just woke up almost. I feel like, I feel like we woke up and we're taking this shit

on our own. We realized the system is rigged. The stock market's rigged. Wall Street, they all play their game. Hedge funds play their game. If they're winning, it's all good and fine and dandy. And you can buy and sell all you want. It's a free trade. As soon as they start losing billions, they change the rules.

And the thing that's replacing it is this kind of parallel economy that's growing up around the internet, this cryptocurrency economy. Cryptocurrency is a new space. It's the future. There aren't any hedge funds trying to keep us down. There isn't any billionaires on the other side that if we win, they lose. So the same way we all pulled around GameStop, we can pull around Dogecoin and actually change the future of currency. So he's optimistic about cryptocurrency, but he's specifically optimistic about Dogecoin. It's the most friendly, the funnest, the most exciting cryptocurrency. Kids will get into it. Old people will get into it. People that don't know anything about cryptocurrency, Dogecoin is the bridge. Dogecoin loses 99% of its value tomorrow, would you have any regrets?

I'll buy the dip. You'll buy more? Yeah. You're a madman. more. Yeah. You're a madman. Kevin, when I think about the story that Cloudbor has told you, it ultimately feels like a tale of economic frustration and someone looking for a kind of shortcut to the wealth that they're not finding through traditional work. Yeah, I think in some way he represents the attitudes of this cohort of young people who are getting out into the economy, who are trying to make it the old way,

climbing the ladder, you know, one rung at a time. And they're realizing like that actually might not work anymore. And so they're looking for trampolines, basically. They're looking for big bets that they can take. Maybe it won't work, but maybe it will. And that's the kind of return that's actually going to get them the kind of stability that they've been dreaming about. Well, since you mentioned trampoline,

let's talk though about the risks involved in bouncing around on a trampoline as an economic philosophy in life. Yeah. I mean, the only time I've ever broken a bone, fun fact, is on a trampoline. So I know that trampolines are risky. They're not a safe thing to play around on. And even within the kind of speculative mania of cryptocurrency, there are people who think that Dogecoin is the least responsible thing you could invest in. That it's a joke, people are going to lose everything. Basically, even people who believe in cryptocurrency, some of them,

Everything, basically, even people who believe in cryptocurrency, some of them are saying Dogecoin is going to end up going very badly for people. But to Glauber, like that risk is not a turnoff. Scared money don't make no money. That's just the reality of it. People get scared and people want to be safe and not take any risks. In fact, that's what draws him to Dogecoin. He wants the risk. I feel like those experts on TV and like the older generation of like old money and wealth, they try to scare people into staying safe, right? And to not taking these big risks. Like,

it's almost like they want to keep everybody just in the safe zone. So nobody gets too rich. Nobody touches the 1%. You know what I mean? I feel like my generation, we're not taking that shit. Like we're learning for ourselves. I'm not going to take what an expert says on TV for their word.

He doesn't want to do it the safe way because he thinks maybe this is his trampoline. Maybe this is the risk that is going to pay off for him. So Kevin, before I let you go, I know that you spoke to Glauber about a week ago, which is an eternity in the crypto current market. So what's going on with his holdings in Dogecoin? Well, Dogecoin has had kind of a rough week. On Saturday, Elon Musk, spiritual leader of the Dogecoin movement,

hosted Saturday Night Live. There was a skit about Dogecoin. And immediately following the show, the price of Dogecoin started to plummet and lost about 30% of its value. Wow. So Glauber and everyone else who invested in Dogecoin kind of took a hit.

He's still up. He's still a millionaire on paper and on his app, but he's not quite as rich as he was a couple weeks ago. In the Dogecoin Reddit, there's a saying that the price of Dogecoin Reddit there's a saying that the price of Dogecoin never falls it only goes on sale and so

when I emailed Glauber and asked if he was having regrets about not having sold his Dogecoin when the price was higher he said nope and in fact he bought 30,000 more Dogecoin. He bought the dip, as he promised he would. As he promised he would.

Kevin, as always, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I mean, it's a rags to riches story, bro. Like, I'm trying to tell you, like, this shit changed my entire life. Maybe it's rags to riches and back to rags. You know what this is? This is the story of the underdoge.

I've always felt like the underdog my whole life. I'm serious, man.ge. I've always felt like the underdog my whole life. I'm serious, man. I've always had a chip on my shoulder. I've always been like, there's got to be more. There's got to be more to life. I've got to be able to accomplish more. There's no way it's just this.

Yeah. Well, thank you again for your time. And I'll call you back if I have other questions. But this is really, really fun. Awesome. All right. Take care. All right. Bye-bye.

fun. Awesome. All right. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Well, today is a great day for America in our long battle with coronavirus. On Thursday, federal health officials said that Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can stop wearing masks or maintaining social distance in most indoor and outdoor settings. You've earned the right to do something that Americans are known for all around the world, greeting others with a smile, with a smile. The new advice came with caveats. Even vaccinated people must wear masks and socially distance when visiting doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes,

when traveling on mass transportation, including planes, and inside transportation, when traveling on mass transportation, including planes, and inside transportation hubs, such as airports. After months of debate over whether and when to wear masks, official permission to stop using them may serve as a powerful incentive to the unvaccinated to finally get a shot. Today's episode was produced by Rochelle Banja and Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by Lisa Chow, engineered by Chris Wood, and includes original music by Natalie Burdick.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.