Numlock News: March 11, 2026 • V-Bucks, Black Market, Van Allen Probe A
By Walt Hickey
V-Bucks
One of the most important currencies in the world just had a sharp deflationary spike that threatens to upend one of the most crucial economies on the planet. I refer, of course, to V-bucks, the in-game currency of Fortnite. Currently, players can get 1,000 V-Bucks for $8.99, but soon that’ll get them only 800 V-Bucks. This change may send ripples through the Fortnite Debt Market, which I assume must exist at this point. Not to mention the impact it will have on forex desks the world over, who must figure out the ramifications for liquidity (which I presume will have ripples throughout the Hearthsteel, Simoleons, Mario coin and ISK markets).
Settled
The Department of Justice abruptly cut a deal with Live Nation, agreeing to drop the antitrust suit against the titan of the live event industry and owner of Ticketmaster, leaving the state attorneys general to carry the case forward themselves. In exchange, Live Nation-Ticketmaster — which still controls 70 percent of the primary ticketing market in the United States — will pay $280 million in restitution. Given that the penalty is equivalent to about four days’ worth of corporate revenue and the deal was cut on Monday, Live Nation will be past all this unpleasantness sometime tomorrow night.
Credit Ratings
The three most-complained about entities to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, the three agencies that maintain credit ratings on Americans. Those credit reports can contain any number of errors, and those errors can stymie people attempting to access a loan or a mortgage. There isn’t a ton of incentive for the agencies to fix that problem, beyond the oversight of the CFPB. However, that agency has been gutted. Since January 2025, there have been 2.7 million credit reporting complaints submitted to CFPB that have gone without relief. The consumer disputes career isn’t exactly profitable, so a skeleton crew at the credit reporting agencies is tasked with handling it. TransUnion had just 171 workers responding to consumer disputes covering 38 million line items as of 2021.
Long Distance
A new study analyzing data from 81 research papers found a compelling large-scale pattern seen in the evolutionary drivers of 103 mammal species that make long-distance sounds to be heard by other members of their species. For marine animals, size is the biggest influence on the sound; big guys make loud noises. Blue whales, at 150 tons, sing songs that can travel 1,600 kilometers with the right submarine acoustic conditions, while otters weighing 28 kilograms are lucky to have their calls reach one kilometer. Of terrestrial mammals, the leading factor was the size of the species’ home range, that is to say, their overall domain. The type of habitat, the intention of the call and whether the mammal was a social or a solitary creature were also factors. Interestingly, given known trends of whales getting smaller thanks to evolutionary pressures from whaling and environmental changes, it stands to reason that the maximum distance of their songs has been declining in step.
Black Markets
A new study found the extent to which the legalization of recreational cannabis has taken a large bite out of the illegal marijuana market for marijuana. The study, which looked at 286,844 cannabis seizures across 686 state-year observations, found that when a state adopts recreational cannabis laws, it experienced, on average, a 45 percent relative reduction in average cannabis seizure counts compared to states that only had medical marijuana. This makes sense, as you’d have to be really devoted to a supplier to not simply switch to the non-criminal seller. However, I imagine there are devotees; after all, even though Roosevelt knocked down Prohibition in ’33, my local speakeasy still buys its bathtub gin from my local rum-runner “Scoots” McGinn, our local bootlegger who’s got the finest giggle water and coffin varnish this side of The Line, none of that rotgut, even if the revenuers pinch a load here to wet their beaks. I refer, of course, to the 2010 vintage Four Loko.
O’Hare
The Federal Aviation Administration is considering the flight cap at Chicago O’Hare International Airport this summer. O’Hare was the busiest U.S. airport in 2025 by takeoffs and landings, and the FAA is attempting to cut flights because planned increases from both United and American — which each have a hub there — seem poised to overload the airport. Both companies have planned an expansion, with United looking to operate 780 flights per day out of O’Hare (up 34 percent year over year) and American looking at 525 daily flights on peak days, up from 480 last year. The most recent cap floated to carriers, 2,500 flights per day, is significantly lower than the 2,800 cap previously floated. I tremble, though, at the possibility of what would happen if the vaunted Star Alliance and their archrival Oneworld were to find themselves united with a common enemy; could any foe resist them?
Miranda Davis and Allyson Versprille, Bloomberg
Van Allen
Van Allen Probe A was launched in 2012 as one part of a satellite duo designed to study the radiation belts of Earth. It was launched in an elliptical orbit, with a low altitude of a few hundred miles and an apogee of 20,000 miles. The mission ended in 2019 when the satellites ran out of fuel, and NASA engineers expected that they would reenter the atmosphere in 2034. However, higher-than-anticipated solar activity has evidently caused the atmosphere to swell in a manner that increased drag, which means that Van Allen Probe B is expected to crash to Earth sometime in 2030. Its partner, the 600-kilogram Van Allen Probe A, will hit the Earth’s surface sometime between Monday and later today. It may have already happened. With a 1-in-4,200 chance of harm coming to anyone during its return to Earth, this actually exceeds the government standard threshold of a 1-in-10,000 chance that an uncontrolled reentry causes a casualty.
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CFPB did a bunch of things that would never pass legislative muster…..which is why the authors set up the strangest funding method possible so nobody in Congress would be blamed when it did something untoward.
To avoid further lawsuits, its funding was just removed in the last Treasury appropriations.
And the sleight-of-hand just goes away….