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You probably use the same password for 30 different websites. It’s time for a passkey. 

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Let’s be honest. You’ve probably used the same password for all of your online accounts and apps for years. If you’re tech-savvy, you use a password manager that generates strong and secure passwords that are saved in the cloud. 

But have you heard of or used a passkey? They essentially work the same way that most people do to unlock their phones with a numeric pin or facial recognition. And they’ve been well-established as incredibly secure and user-friendly. Tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft have all benefited from instituting passkeys and industry associations have pushed to make passkeys the standard. 

So why aren’t more people using them? 

It’s likely because many companies think of passkeys as just a security upgrade. But they’re really a crucial user experience initiative – and it’s time to treat them as such by using a combination of consumer education, phased implementation, and tech readiness assessments to make adoption smoother for users and more manageable for developers. 

Why passkey use isn’t widespread (yet)

No technology is a silver bullet in and of itself, but passkeys have proven to be a robust, easy-to–use option for authentication. But adoption isn’t ubiquitous (at least not yet) for a few key reasons:

  • Low user awareness and misconceptions. Not everyone knows what passkeys are, and those who do may have misconceptions about what’s required to use them. Some people are hesitant to use passkeys because they think they require sharing biometrics like fingerprints or facial recognition with apps. But this isn’t true since biometric data never leaves the users’ device. 
  • Prone to deepfakes. As AI-generated deepfakes become more sophisticated and easier to weaponize, users worry that the perceived security of using facial recognition tied to passkeys can be bypassed by sophisticated cybercriminals (even though the level of effort required to do so is much higher than the level of effort required to steal passwords and other phishable credentials). 
  • Lost, stolen, and new devices. Since passkeys are tied to specific devices, if those devices are lost, stolen, or need to be replaced, users must recreate their passkeys to regain access to their accounts.
  • Ecosystem lock-in. Companies like Apple and Google have tried to make the above scenario less painful by allowing users to sync passkeys across devices and back them up to their iCloud or Google accounts. However, this makes it difficult for users to switch platforms without losing or recreating all of their passkeys.
  • Implementation challenges. On the developer side, passkeys require significant engineering effort to ensure interoperability across devices and platforms. When enterprises rely on devs to build passkeys in-house, any gaps or missteps that occur during the process can surface as user friction later on. 

How companies can make passkey adoption easier

Companies need to lead users through passkey adoption versus waiting for it to happen organically. But ultimately, it should always be the user’s choice. Here’s how organizations can promote adoption and make implementation easier on devs. 

  • Guide (don’t force) adoption. Users might be prompted to set up passkeys upon making an account; if they choose not to, they can be reminded of the option again in a few weeks. Companies should also include “remind me later” or “don’t ask me again” options so users can enroll in passkeys at their own pace. 
  • Take a phased approach to implementation. Instead of going all in on passkeys right away, companies can conduct A/B tests that route a small portion of login traffic to a passkey-enabled flow and compare things like conversion and drop-off to their existing authentication flow. Taking a phased approach to passkey implementation minimizes internal resistance and ensures the technology works for users before scaling adoption.
  • Educate users on the perks. Companies should continually educate users who haven’t yet adopted passkeys on the perks of doing so. This could include sharing the results of the aforementioned A/B tests in a blog, conducting an email awareness campaign dispelling common misconceptions about passkeys, or building popups that briefly explain the benefits of passkeys at the login screen.
  • Assess developer readiness. Prior to adopting passkeys, companies must take a close look at their tech stack and their team’s expertise to determine whether they can realistically roll out and maintain passkeys in-house without stretching devs beyond their core responsibilities. Overburdening devs results in unnecessary complexity for end users, and can even hurt the company’s bottom line: As a recent study found, 37% of organizations report that dealing with customer authentication projects delayed their engineering and product roadmap.

Benefits outweigh the hurdles

It’s never been a more important time to implement passkeys.

Traditional authentication methods like passwords are failing; one report revealed that 59% percent of passwords can be breached in under an hour, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods like one-time passwords (OTPs) can easily be phished. This problem will only intensify as advances in AI make cracking passwords and creating ultra-convincing AI-generated phishing scams faster and easier.

Additionally, passkeys are a crucial differentiator for user experience. Consumers have more choice than ever when it comes to the apps they use, and a streamlined, secure login experience goes a long way in standing out in the marketplace and encouraging people to use an app.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Argentina has repaid its $20 billion credit line from Trump administration, Scott Bessent says

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January 9, 2026

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Argentina has repaid the funds it drew from a $20 billion credit line with the Trump administration, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Friday, in a crucial step for Argentine President Javier Milei to restore confidence in his chronically distressed economy.

In addition to making payments to bondholders, Milei’s radical libertarian administration had “quickly and fully repaid its limited draw,” Bessent said, without specifying the amount.

The Treasury’s latest report on the status of the credit line said that Argentina’s central bank had traded pesos for $2.5 billion through the swap as of the end of October.

The Argentine Central Bank confirmed Bessent’s announcement.

The contentious and largely unprecedented U.S. rescue provided dollar liquidity to the Trump administration’s cash-strapped ideological ally and halted a market rout in Argentina ahead of crucial midterm elections last October.

Milei’s libertarian party won a major victory in the vote, cementing support for his harsh austerity program and quelling investor concerns about the crisis-stricken country’s ability to repay debts. In another sign of the revived optimism around Milei’s reforms, his government issued a dollar bond for the first time in eight years last month, presaging a return to international bond markets.

Thanks to Argentina’s deposit, Bessent said, the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund tapped for the bailout holds no more Argentine pesos.

He praised the payment as a landmark that justified the Treasury’s bailout of Argentina, which raised doubts about the consistency of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and drew backlash in the U.S. for putting taxpayer funds at risk. Experts have also criticized the opaque and apparently unconditional nature of the loan.

“Stabilizing a strong American ally – and making tens of millions in profit for Americans – is an America First homerun deal,” Bessent wrote. “Setting the course for Latin America, a strong and stable Argentina that helps anchor a prosperous Western Hemisphere is in our clear best interest.”

Luis Caputo, Argentina’s economy minister thanked the Trump administration “for the trust in our economic policy.”

“It is an excellent reality for our country to have been able to build this geopolitical alliance and to know that we have the explicit support of the most important country in the world,” he said.

But Argentina is not out of the woods.

Its foreign exchange reserves still run perilously low. The country is set to come under further strain in the coming months from repayments on previous International Monetary Fund loans and other private debt.



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New study finds that late bloomers are more successful than child prodigies

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January 9, 2026

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You may have a leg up on the child prodigies who made you feel inadequate as a school kid.

Despite outliers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a new analysis based on 19 studies involving 34,000 high achievers across multiple disciplines — including Nobel laureates, top chess players, Olympic champions, and elite musicians — found that individuals who achieved peak performance early in life were not always the same people to reach high success in adulthood. 

“Across the highest adult performance levels, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance,” the report, which was published in the journal Science, said.

The researchers, led by Arne Güllich of RPTU Kaiserlautern-Landau in Germany, noted that prodigies often specialized in a single discipline, pigeonholing themselves in a particular field early in life. By contrast, late bloomers found success across multiple fields.

The study provides key insights into long-debated scientific inquiries into the origins of elite knowledge. While many parents may assume that helping their kids specialize early in life prepares them for successful careers, the latest research suggests otherwise. Early field-specific development can provide short-term success. However, longer-term success is more common among late bloomers.

“World top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time,” the researchers wrote, suggesting that those who bloom early in life don’t tend to reach the height of their success at the same time late bloomers hit their stride. It also means that child prodigies and late bloomers develop differently and grow up to be fundamentally different people. 

To be sure, talented children usually find success in adulthood. In fact, a 2023 study found that child prodigies tend to earn more and have more career success than the average person.

Güllich and his team also note that their study is limited by its methodology. The research analyzed data from two types of studies: prospective studies, which scrutinize high-performing children over time, and retrospective studies, which looked back at the childhood development of high-achieving adults. Researchers pointed out that it is impossible to assign children to random careers, and that further research is required to understand how early development relates to success later in life.

Still, the study’s findings challenge the emphasis on early signs of high performance that elite schools, conservatories and youth sport academies often look for when recruiting talent.

In fact, earlier research indicates that such training could be detrimental, inspiring burnout. A 2018 NIH study found that “gifted” children had poor perceptions of their physical health, and that gifted kids were more at risk of poor mental health compared to non-gifted kids.

“All the findings obtained in this study suggest that gifted children are at risk in respect of mental health,” it warned.



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Rumors are swirling about Venezuela holding $60 billion in Bitcoin—but crypto experts are skeptical

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January 9, 2026

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Following the United States’ capture of Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, a report came out claiming that Venezuela had $60 billion stored in Bitcoin—leading to speculation that the U.S. could lay claim to cryptocurrency as well as oil. Despite numerous reports of the huge Venezuelan Bitcoin stash, however, a crypto forensic firm is skeptical of the claims. 

The news of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holding began to bubble up last Saturday, the same day that Maduro was ousted. The digital publication Project Brazen reported that his regime could control $60 billion in the original cryptocurrency—but offered little in the way of proof.

“The article does not mention any addresses as a starting point, making it difficult to verify any of these speculated claims,” said Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, about Project Brazen’s report. 

Barthere is not the first person to express skepticism about the country’s purported crypto treasure trove. Mauricio di Bartolomeo, the Venezuelan co-founder of the financial services company Ledn, told Fortune on Wednesday that the level of the country’s corruption makes the figure hard to believe. He expanded his argument in an opinion piece he wrote for Coindesk. 

Estimates of Venezuela’s crypto holdings vary wildly. Bitcointreasuries.net estimates that the country has $22 million worth of Bitcoin. That figure would make Venezuela the government entity with the ninth-most money tied up in the original cryptocurrency, just behind North Korea. 

While the exact size of Venezuela’s Bitcoin wealth is unclear, the country has long been a player in crypto. Maduro introduced a token called the Petro in 2018, which was shuttered six years later. Its citizens have also turned to stablecoins as a way to fight their currency’s hyperinflation.

Trump has said that he will “run” Venezuela, and some have speculated that includes seizing the country’s Bitcoin holdings. Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, said he could not speak to the likelihood of such a seizure. He did, however, explain what gaining control of assets might look like. 

A freezing of assets could occur through centralized services, he says. These services would get a court order for an exchange or an issuer like Tether or Circle who could blacklist an address. The second method is through physical seizure. The U.S. could get control of wallets, devices, and keys through compelled cooperation. 

For now, there is unlikely to be a full and accurate account of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holdings until the political situation in the country becomes more stable.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.



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