Numlock News: July 23, 2025 • Demon Slayer, Wu-Tang Clan, YKK

Jul 23, 2025

Wu-Tang

The government has revealed how much money they got for the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a single-issue record that the music group auctioned off in 2015. It was purchased by Martin Shkreli, seized by the government after Mr. Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud in 2017 (and told to forfeit $7.4 million in assets) and then sold again in 2018 by the feds to pay off the balance. The price tag was kept secret — the current owner, PleasrDAO, bought it through an intermediary for the equivalent of $4 million in crypto — but it turns out the government sold the record for precisely $2.23 million to WTC Endeavours Limited, a Hong Kong-based company. Today, PleasrDAO allows the public to donate $1 to hear five minutes from the record, which cannot go to public consumption until 2103.

Michael Saponara, Billboard and Jason Leopold, Bloomberg

Demon Slayer

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, the most recent cinematic entry in the incredibly popular anime franchise, has smashed records in Japan, earning 1.65 billion yen (US$11.13 million) from 1,155,637 admissions on its opening day, July 18. That is the highest single-day box office gross in Japan, ever. Over the four-day weekend, the film made $49.4 million from 5,164,348 tickets sold, also a record. The film tells the story of the Demon Slayer Corps’ assault on the stronghold of Kibutsuji Muzan in their quest to end the human-demon war once and for all. Honestly, that sounds good to me; Numlock’s been on record as being against that war from the very beginning.

Naman Ramachandran, Variety

Libraries

A new report from the advocacy group EveryLibrary found that in the first six months of the year, 133 bills scored as “negative” have been brought in 33 states. These bills sought to curtail the availability of books, censor library catalogs or otherwise threaten public or school libraries. In the entirety of 2024, only 121 such bills were under consideration, indicating that the pace in 2025 has outstripped previous attempts to censor libraries. On the other hand, there are 76 bills in 32 states that are intended to protect or expand library services.

Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly

YKK

YKK is the zipper supplier for 40 percent of the global apparel industry, not to mention their work with purses, luggage and equipment. While they’re known for zippers, they’re mostly in the general fastener business — if something is open, well, by the grace of god, they want to make sure it can be closed. The corporate structure is actually pretty interesting; YKK operates as 112 separate branches in 70 countries that are all under one corporate umbrella, making $6.9 billion of revenue in the year ending March 31. Needless to say, this recent tariff kerfuffle is not their first rodeo when it comes to dealing with the vagaries of global trade.

Joshua Hunt, Bloomberg

BYD

Globally, all eyes in the EV business have been on BYD, the Chinese auto manufacturer that has scooped up 22.2 percent of the global electric vehicle market share, more than double the market share of Tesla’s 10.3 percent, the next runner-up. BYD sold 417,204 units last year, and is aiming to move 800,000 this year. That said, while many have focused on BYD, a host of other Chinese automakers have also increased their production and sales, meaning that Chinese automakers control about 70 percent of global EV production. Sure, BYD’s 22.1 percent market share is impressive, but also in the top ten are Wuling (four percent), Li Auto (three percent), Geely (2.7 percent), Aito (2.2 percent) and Aion (2.2 percent). And those add up to a pretty major chunk of the pie.

Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World

BNPL

This year, buy now, pay later transaction volumes will hit $116.67 billion, well over the $97.98 billion in BNPL spending last year and orders of magnitude higher than the $5.45 billion in BNPL spending in 2019. Banks are worried about them, and that’s one reason that FICO is adding point-of-sale loans to credit scores later this year. The BNPL industry points out that the plans are individually underwritten and have a default rate under 2 percent, but there are still signs of some stress: a quarter of BNPL users missed a payment last year, up from 15 percent in 2021.

Imani Moise, The Wall Street Journal

Head Start

A new study published in the somewhat paradoxically named journal Nature Cities analyzed 6,003 intersections in New York City and found that when pedestrians are given a seven-second head start at traffic lights — known in industry parlance as “Leading Pedestrian Intervals” — pedestrian injuries declined 33 percent. The effect was seen across all intersection types, but was particularly pronounced during daylight, when fatal crashes declined 65 percent.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

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