Everyone loves cute baby animals like Pesto the penguin and Moo Deng the hippo. The zoos where they live are cashing in. Plus, we do the numbers on birthright citizenship and hear from a dogecoin millionaire who expects big windfalls once Trump returns to the White House.

Glauber Contessota first became a millionaire a little more than three years ago, after investing his life savings in dogecoin, a cryptocurrency inspired by an internet dog meme. 

As of late November, Contessoto had $2.2 million worth of doge. 

He’s planning to sell some of the incredibly volatile cryptocurrency in six to eight months, when he thinks the price will more than triple. But his aunt, Christiane Alamaraz, who lent Contessoto $1,500 for his initial investment in crypto, wants him to cash out now. 

“Dogecoin is very unstable, so how can you guarantee that in six months you will do that, you know?” Almaraz asked. 

Almaraz is a housekeeper, her husband works as an Amazon driver and they have two kids. She said after a car theft forced the family to buy a new vehicle, they’re down to about $5,000 in savings. Almaraz wants Contessoto to sell in part because she's seen how his crypto fortune has disappeared in the past.

At one point in 2021, Contessoto had about $3 million in the memecoin and had become a kind of crypto celebrity, known as the “dogecoin millionaire.” But when all the buzz for bitcoin and NFTs cooled a year later and crypto winter settled in, he became the “dogecoin former millionaire.”

“I remember very vividly, I was in the parking lot of the gym that I would go to,” says Contessoto. “And I was sitting in the car … watching the amount in my Robin Hood dump down all the way to $200,000.”

But Contessoto stuck with doge, even using money he earned from his celebrity status to buy more. Dogecoin's value started rising again this year, partly in line with then-candidate Donald Trump’s poll numbers. The former president had pledged to ease crypto regulations on the campaign trail.

After Trump won a second term, dogecoin soared. Its value has risen more than 120% since Election Day.

The president-elect announced the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an advisory group tasked with slashing the federal bureaucracy.Tesla CEO,Trump mega-donor and dogecoin fan Elon Musk is set to lead it. .

“That’s like branding that’s perfect, right?” said Contessoto. “I couldn’t have created that in a better way.”

So Trump and his DOGE have been a huge financial boon for Contessoto. But another part of Trump’s agenda could be a major problem.

“I am currently undocumented as of right now,” said Contessoto. “Yeah, I don’t have papers.”

In January, a star was hatched. 

Pesto, a king penguin of unusually large size, has waddled his way into social media feeds all over the world, forcing pygmy hippo Moo Deng to share the celebrity baby animal spotlight. In the process, Pesto has boosted the profile and revenue of the Australian aquarium where he lives.

When Pesto poked out of his shell in January, he weighed just 7 ounces, but eventually reached 53 pounds, making him the largest penguin at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. The average king penguin weighs between 21 and 40 pounds. 

Good genes and good parenting contributed to his healthy size, according to the aquarium’s website. His dad, Blake, is the aquarium’s biggest penguin, and at 22, the oldest. Raising a chick “can put considerable strain” on a penguin’s body, so Pesto was cared for by a younger doting penguin couple, Tango and Hudson.

The “global scale of his popularity” has attracted tourists from all over the world, said Claire Burrell, general manager at Sea Life Melbourne.

“Penguin chicks are pretty special. You don’t have one every day,” Burrell said. Pesto was the first king penguin to hatch at the aquarium in two years, according to the Associated Press.

Animals like Pesto and Moo Deng have not only bolstered attendance at zoos and aquariums, but they’ve inspired clothing and knick knacks that celebrate them.

The reason why so many people have gravitated toward them is simple: “They’re chubby little babies,” said Jenna Drenten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business.

Tony Wagner and Ellen Rolfes wrote and edited this newsletter. Matt Levin reported the story on dogecoin and Janet Nguyen reported the story on Pesto the penguin.