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Closing out this week’s Green Deals, we have a notable changeup in Lectric’s ongoing Presidents’ Day sale, with the XP 3.0 Long-Range e-bikes getting a price cut to a new $1,139 low along with the $563 in free gear too. We also have secured our readers an early-bird pre-sale offer on Anker’s new 58L SOLIX EverFrost 2 Electric Cooler with free gear at $809. Next, we spotted GE’s Smart Indoor Smoker dropping to a new $499 low while Jackery’s Explorer 2000 v2 Portable Power Station is keeping to its $999 rate despite its recent Tax Season sale ending. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals are in the links at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s new low price on Tenways’ 8-speed CGO600 Pro e-bike, the 4-day EcoFlow flash sale, and more.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

Lectric cuts prices on XP 3.0 long-range e-bikes to new $1,139 low along with $563 in free gear

As its Presidents’ Day sale continues through March 1, Lectric has made a slight change to things by cutting the price on its XP 3.0 Long-Range e-bikes to $1,139 shipped along with the $563 in free bundled gear. All-in-all, this package would normally cost you $1,762, with this being up towards the higher end of bundle sizes we’ve seen. The additional $60 being cut off the bike’s price is also a nice surprise, dropping things to a new all-time low price. Along with your e-bike, you’ll be getting a wider saddle, a suspension seat post, steel-encased front and rear baskets, an Elite headlight, an accordion-style bike lock, a 40L storage bag, and a cargo net.

The top-selling e-bike in America, Lectric’s XP 3.0 Long-Range e-bikes, can be seen all over the place here in NYC, which makes sense given its affordable capabilities. The 500W motor (1,000W peak) comes paired with a 48V battery and is supported by both PAS and the brand’s PWR Programming, providing up to 65 miles of travel on one charge at top speeds of 20 to 28 MPH, depending on local laws. Of course, there is a throttle here if you want to go all-electric, just keep in mind that the travel range will get cut down around 30 miles.

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Alongside all the listed free gear you’ll be getting, there’s a bunch of solid stock features too, like the integrated rear cargo rack (which the basket connects to), puncture-resistant tires, 180mm hydraulic disc brakes, a foldable body, an LCD display, and more. You’ll have three color options that tie in with the frame designs: the black step-over model, a black step-thru model, and a white step-thru model.

Be sure to check out the full lineup of Lectric’s Presidents’ Day sale here while the $654 savings are lasting, including the largest package we see accompany the new XPeak 2.0 Off-Road e-bikes. There’s also an ongoing clearance sale on the predecessor XPeak 1.0 Off-Road e-bike that comes with $727 in free gear (including an extra battery).

Anker EverFrost 2 Electric Cooler

Save $350 before anyone else on Anker’s new 58L SOLIX EverFrost 2 Cooler at $809 (Reg. $1,099) + FREE gear

We have secured 9to5 readers an early savings pre-sale offer at Wellbots on the new 58L Anker SOLIX EverFrost 2 Electric Cooler for $809 shipped. This all-new model is hitting the market today carrying a $1,099 price tag, with shipping not slated to begin until next month. This deal ensures you’ll be getting the latest piece of portable smart coolers while putting $290 back in your pocket. What’s more, you’ll also be getting free Road Trip accessories along with the cooler, including a cup holder, a knife holder, and a fishing rod holder that seems to attach to the body of the device ($60 value).

This new SOLIX EverFrost 2 cooler from Anker is the largest among the three (with the others being 23L and 40L models) and the only one to sport two independent compartments – one for refrigeration, the other for freezing, with everything monitored and controlled through the companion app. Whereas the first generation coolers used direct cooling systems, this model has been upgraded to utilize air-cooled refrigeration, improving temperature uniformity with no more need for manual defrosting while also making the speed by which it cools all the faster – 18 minutes in its eco/smart mode and 15 minutes in max mode.

Another standout feature about this model’s design is that it is the only one with the capability to hold and run off two 288Wh batteries at once, providing up to a 39-hour continuous runtime for the single-battery configuration in eco mode and up to a 78-hour runtime for dual batteries. And don’t think these battery’s usage is limited to the cooler, as they can be disconnected and repurposed as power banks, each delivering a 60W USB-C and a 12W USB-A ports to top off your devices and personal gadgets.

To recharge the batteries, you’ll have four options to choose from: connect its 100W maximum solar input to harness the sun’s rays, or plug it into either a standard wall outlet, USB-C connection, or a 12V car port. All the models in this series carry an IPX3 water-resistance rating, cause let’s face it, these will likely be great companions to the beach, lake, or other swimming hole come summertime. Following in the footsteps – or should I say tracks – of its predecessors, it also sports a body with wheels, albeit larger 6-inch ones that better roll over semi-rough terrain, as well as a fold-down tray that doubles as a handle to pull it along wherever you end up.

GE Smart Indoor Smoker

GE’s smart indoor smoker lets you enjoy BBQ without setting off alarms at new $499 low

Amazon is currently cutting the price in half on the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker that is now down at $499 shipped. This model released at the top of last year carrying a $999 price tag, with most of the discounts we’ve seen in the time since keeping things above $700, though we did see it drop as low as $599 during Black Friday and Christmas sales and one single period of it down at $550 in July. You can upgrade your kitchen today with a larger-than-ever 50% markdown, which saves you $500 at a new all-time low price.

This smart countertop alternative has been a popular option among my friends – especially once the Texan-born member of our circle grabbed one for his Coney Island apartment, making up for the fact that he had no outdoor space for a traditional smoker. You don’t have to worry about setting off smoke alarms here thanks to the Active Smoke Filtration system that converts wood smoke into warm air, channeling it through the main chamber and into your favorite foods. There are two heat sources – one for burning wood pellets, the other for actual cooking – as well as six preset options for brisket, pork ribs, pork butt, chicken wings, chicken breast, and salmon, so don’t worry about having professional pit master skills.

Speaking just on its smoking capabilities, it has five adjustable controls ranging from infusing mild hints of flavor all the way to full-on rich and robust smoky satisfaction that can be tasted through your sense of smell alone. With the SmartHQ app, you’ll have total remote smart controls so you can manage longer-timed cooking periods, even when you’re away from home, with it even allowing for hands-free voice controls via Alexa or Google Assistant.

Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 portable power station

You can still grab Jackery’s Explorer 2000 v2 LiFePO4 power station for your backup needs at $999

Jackery’s official Amazon storefront is offering its Explorer 2000 v2 Portable Power Station for $999 shipped. Normally costing you $1,499 at full price, if you missed out on the brand’s recent Tax Season sale, this is your chance to score it at the same rate we saw there. It’s only fallen lower during Black Friday and Cyber Monday when things hit $899, though we haven’t seen those same rates reappear since. Today’s deal gives you the second-lowest price we have tracked, giving you one of the brand’s latest releases while saving $500 in the process. You can even find it matching in price direct from Jackery’s website right now too.

Whether you’re planning to use it for outdoor work, DIY jobs, covering camping sites, or just want a reliable means to keep essentials running during emergencies and blackouts, Jackery’s Explorer 2000 v2 tackles it all with a 2,042Wh LiFePO4 battery and a 2,200W output through its seven ports (peaking to 4,400W). Thanks to Jackery’s honeycomb design paired alongside exclusive CBT tech, it comes in a much smaller and lighter form factor than you may expect, complete with 62 different forms of charging protections and a silent mode for when you plug it in while you sleep.

You’ll be able to get it back to an 80% battery capacity in around 66+ minutes when plugging it into a wall outlet, though if you’re rushing to meet last-minute plans, the supercharge feature gives you a full battery in 102+ minutes. You can even plug it into your car’s auxiliary port for a 24-hour charge, or invest in solar panels to utilize the sun’s rays to refill the battery. On that note, there’s the option to grab the power station with two 200W solar panels for $1,599, down from $2,499.

If you want a similarly updated new model but want it in a smaller package, the brand’s Explorer 1000 v2 Portable Power Station is down at $495.38 shipped right now too, after clipping the on-page 38% off coupon. It comes with the same array of protections, a 1,070Wh LiFePO4 capacity, and a 1,500W output (peaking to 3,000W). Like the above model, there are seven ports to utilize, plus a similar emergency charging feature that gets it to full via a wall outlet in just one hour.

Best New Year EV deals!

Best new Green Deals landing this week

The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.

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Fintechs like Block and PayPal are battling like never before to be your all-in-one online bank

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February 22, 2025

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Fintechs like Block and PayPal are battling like never before to be your all-in-one online bank

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter Inc., speaks during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Friday, June 4, 2021.

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Jack Dorsey’s Block got started as Square, offering small businesses a simple way to accept payments via smartphone. Affirm began as an online lender, giving consumers more affordable credit options for retail purchases. PayPal upended finance more than 25 years ago by letting businesses accept online payments.

The three fintechs, which were each launched by tech luminaries in different eras of Silicon Valley history, are increasingly converging as they seek to become virtual all-in-one banks. In their latest earnings reports this month, their lofty ambitions became more clear than ever.

Block was the last of the three to report, and the high-level numbers were troubling. Earnings and revenue missed estimates, sending the stock down 18%, its steepest drop in five years. But to hear Dorsey discuss the results, Block is successfully implementing a strategy of offering consumers the ability to pay businesses by smartphone, send money to friends through Cash App, and access credit and debit services while also getting more ways to invest in bitcoin.

“In 2024, we expanded Square from a payments tool into a full commerce platform, enhanced Cash App’s financial services offerings, and restructured our organization,” Dorsey said on Block’s earnings call on Thursday after the bell.

Block and an expanding roster of fintech rivals have all come to see that their moats aren’t strong enough in their core markets to keep the competition away, and that the path to growth is through a diverse set of financial services traditionally offered by banks. They’re playing to an audience of digital-first consumers who either didn’t grow up using a brick-and-mortar bank or realized at an early age that they had no need to ever set foot in a physical branch, or to meet with a loan officer or customer service rep.

“Longer term, we see a significant opportunity to grow actives, particularly among that digital-native audience like Millennial and Gen Z,” Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said on the earnings call.

Block shares drop after reporting earnings and revenue miss

As part of its expansion, Block has encroached on Affirm’s turf, with an increasing focus on buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings that it picked up in its $29 billion purchase of Afterpay, which closed in early 2022. Block’s market share in BNPL increased by one point to 19%, while Affirm held its position at 17%, according to a recent report from Mizuho. Both companies are outperforming Klarna in BNPL, the report said.

Block’s BNPL play is now tied into Cash App, with an integration activated this week that gives users another way to make purchases through a single app. With Cash App monthly active users stagnating at 57 million for the last few quarters, the company is focused on engagement rather than rapid user acquisition.

“We think that there is significant opportunity for growth longer term, but there are some deliberate decisions we’ve made as part of our banker-based strategy in the near term” that have kept user numbers from increasing, Ahuja said. “This is a part of our continuous enhancements to drive healthy customer engagement as we bank our base.”

Compared to Block, Wall Street had a very different reaction to Affirm’s earnings earlier this month, pushing the stock up 22% after the company’s results sailed past estimates.

Affirm founder and CEO Max Levchin, who was previously a co-founder of PayPal, built his company with the promise of giving consumers lower-cost and easy-to-tap intstallment loans for purchases like electronics, jewelry and travel.

The BNPL battlefront

In its latest earnings report, Affirm posted a 35% increase in gross merchandise volume to $10.1 billion. Revenue surged 47% to $770 million, while its active consumer base grew 23% to 21 million.

Beyond BNPL, Levchin has pushed Affirm into debit with the Affirm Card, which now has 1.7 million active users, up 136% year-over-year.

“Anything we can do to personalize the experience, to give people a chance to feel like this is the best alternative they have to their debit or their credit card is what we’re busy with,” Levchin said on the earnings call. He said the goal is to get the card to 20 million users, spending on average $7,500 per year.

Affirm is also partnering with FIS to bring its debit card functionality to traditional banks.

Levchin left PayPal in 2002, after the company was acquired by eBay. It was a decade before he’d start working to help popularize the modern day BNPL market.

Now his former employer, which spun back out from eBay in 2015, is in on the BNPL game.

Watch CNBC's full interview with PayPal CEO Alex Chriss

Under the leadership of CEO Alex Chriss, who took over the company in September 2023, PayPal is in the midst of a turnaround that involves working to better monetize products like Braintree and Venmo and joining the world of physical commerce with a debit card inside its mobile app.

Investors responded positively in 2024, pushing the stock up almost 40% after a brutal few years. But the stock dropped 13% after its earnings report, even as profit and revenue were better than expected. PayPal’s total payment volume for the quarter hit $437.8 billion, slightly below projections, while transaction margins rose to 47% from 45.8% — a sign of improving profitability.

One of Chriss’ big pushes is to get more out of Venmo, which has long been a popular way for friends to pay each other but hasn’t been a big hit with businesses. Venmo’s total payment volume in the quarter rose 10% year-over-year, with increased adoption at DoorDash, Starbucks, and Ticketmaster.

PayPal is also promoting Venmo’s debit card and “Pay With Venmo,” which saw 30% and 20% monthly active growth in 2024, respectively. The company is introducing new services to improve merchant retention, including its Fastlane one-click checkout feature, designed to compete with Apple Pay and Shopify’s Shop Pay.

Last year, the company launched PayPal Everywhere, a cashback-driven initiative designed to boost engagement within its mobile app. Chriss said on the earnings call that it’s “driving significant increases in debit card adoption and opening new categories of spend.”

As with virtually all financial services products, the new offerings from Block, Affirm and PayPal are designed to produce growth but not at the expense of profit. Banks operate at low margins, in large part because there’s so much competition for lower-priced loans and better cash-back options. There’s also all the costs associated with underwriting and compliance.

That’s the environment in which fintechs have to operate, though without the costs of running a network of physical branches.

Levchin talks about helping customers spend less, not more. And Block acknowledges the need for hefty investments to reach the company’s desired outcome.

“This is a part of our continuous enhancements to drive healthy customer engagement as we bank our base,” Ahuja said. “We’ve made investments in critical areas like compliance, support and risk. And as we’ve done that, we’ve progressed more of our actives through our identity verification process, which in turn, unlocks greater access to those actives to our full suite of financial tools.”

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with PayPal CEO Alex Chriss

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Trump to shut down all 8,000 EV charging ports at federal govt buildings

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20 hours ago

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February 21, 2025

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Trump to shut down all 8,000 EV charging ports at federal govt buildings

Trump EV charging federal buildings
Photo: Blink Charging

The Trump administration is shutting down EV chargers at all federal government buildings and is also expected to sell off the General Services Administration‘s (GSA) newly bought EVs.

GSA, which manages all federal government-owned buildings, also operates the federal buildings’ EV chargers. Federally owned EVs and federal employee-owned personal EVs are charged on those 8,000 charging ports.

The Verge reports it’s been told by a source that plans will be officially announced internally next week, and it’s seen an email that GSA has already sent to regional offices about the plans:

“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA-owned charging stations are not mission-critical.”

The GSA is working on the timing of canceling current network contracts that keep the EV chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, the stations will be taken out of service and “turned off at the breaker,” the email reads. Other chargers will be turned off starting next week.

“Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service.” 

Colorado Public Radio first reported yesterday that it had seen the email that was sent to the Denver Federal Center, which has 22 EV charging stations at 11 locations.

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The Trump/Elon Musk administration has taken the GSA’s fleet electrification webpage offline entirely. (An archived version is available here.)

The Verge‘s source also said that the GSA will offload the EVs it bought during the Biden administration, although it’s unknown whether they’ll be sold or stored.

Read more: Trump just canceled the federal NEVI EV charger program

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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*

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Hackers steal $1.5 billion from exchange Bybit in biggest-ever crypto heist

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21 hours ago

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February 21, 2025

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Hackers steal .5 billion from exchange Bybit in biggest-ever crypto heist

Ben Zhou, chief executive officer of ByBit, during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023. 

Joseph Nair | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, has been hacked to the tune of $1.5 billion in digital assets, in what’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.

The attack compromised Bybit’s cold wallet, an offline storage system designed for security. The stolen funds, primarily in ether, were quickly transferred across multiple wallets and liquidated through various platforms.

“Please rest assured that all other cold wallets are secure,” Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, posted on X. “All withdrawals are NORMAL.”

Blockchain analysis firms, including Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence, traced the stolen crypto as it was moved to various accounts and swiftly offloaded. The hack far surpasses previous thefts in the sector, according to Elliptic. That includes the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021 and the $570 million drained from Binance in 2022.

Analysts at Elliptic later linked the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking collective notorious for siphoning billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency industry. The group is known for exploiting security vulnerabilities to finance North Korea’s regime, often using sophisticated laundering methods to obscure the flow of funds.

“We’ve labelled the thief’s addresses in our software, to help to prevent these funds from being cashed-out through any other exchanges,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist at Elliptic, in an email.

The breach immediately triggered a rush of withdrawals from Bybit as users feared potential insolvency. Zhou said outflows had stabilized. To reassure customers, he announced that Bybit had secured a bridge loan from undisclosed partners to cover any unrecoverable losses and maintain operations.

The Lazarus Group’s history of targeting crypto platforms dates back to 2017, when the group infiltrated four South Korean exchanges and stole $200 million worth of bitcoin. As law enforcement agencies and crypto tracking firms work to trace the stolen assets, industry experts warn that large-scale thefts remain a fundamental risk.

“The more difficult we make it to benefit from crimes such as this, the less frequently they will take place,” Elliptic’s Robinson wrote in a post.

WATCH: Crypto stocks plunge

Crypto stocks plunge despite SEC dropping suit against Coinbase

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