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Greetings! Crypto is so back, baby! Payments firm Stripe confirmed that today with its deal—reportedly $1.1 billion—to buy Bridge, a startup that helps companies make payments using stablecoin (a type of cryptocurrency backed by dollars and other traditional currencies). Given that Bridge's revenue may be around $12 million, as The Information estimated today, Stripe appears to be paying a massive price—reminiscent of crypto's halcyon pre-2022 days. But times have changed, and not just because Sam Bankman-Fried is now sharing a Brooklyn prison dorm with Diddy. Today there's a little less crazy speculative fervor around cryptocurrencies and the like (remember NFTs?) and a little more emphasis on humdrum use of the blockchain to make financial services more efficient. Stripe's own evolving strategy sums it up. Stripe had abandoned bitcoin payments in 2018, saying bitcoin was "better suited to being an asset than a means of exchange." But in April of this year, Stripe said it would once again give its customers the option to accept crypto payments—this time with stablecoin, a less volatile cryptocurrency than bitcoin. Since then Stripe has made other moves to support stablecoin payments, of which buying Bridge is the biggest. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison made clear his thinking today in a post on X: "Thanks to stablecoins, businesses around the world will benefit from significant speed, coverage and cost improvements in the coming years." Stripe's moves presumably reflect an increased level of demand from customers, which in turn suggests more businesses are incorporating crypto payments in some way. To be sure, trading is still a big part of the crypto story. The Securities and Exchange Commission has allowed exchange-traded funds to hold bitcoin directly, which has sparked a wave of bitcoin ETFs, with more crypto funds still to come. Meanwhile, blockchain proponents are still struggling to get Wall Street to incorporate the technology in some part of the trading ecosystem (my colleague Yueqi Yang wrote here about a new effort in that direction). Even so, things are looking up for crypto, particularly in the political arena. If Donald Trump wins the presidency next month, crypto will have an ally in the White House, one who is likely to drastically relax the regulatory regime that has prevailed under President Joe Biden. That would jump-start a new round of crypto investment. Nvidia is once again creeping up on Apple in stock market valuation terms. The AI chipmaker's stock rose 4% to a new record of $143.71 on Monday, giving the company a market capitalization of $3.525 trillion. That's just $70 billion below Apple's market cap of $3.595 trillion. Microsoft, which was dueling with both companies for the top spot a few months ago, is now lagging quite a bit, with a market cap of $3.1 trillion. What's the bet Nvidia claims the top spot again within the next week? - Walt Disney Co. named former Morgan Stanley CEO Jim Gorman as its new chair, effective Jan. 2, succeeding Nike chair Mark Parker. Disney also said it expected to announce a new CEO—the successor to Bob Iger— in early 2026.
- News Corp. on Monday sued artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity for allegedly "engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders," according to the lawsuit.
- Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are the bestseller in 60% of the Ray-Ban stores in Europe, EssilorLuxottica Chief Financial Officer Stefano Grassi said on Monday, a sign of how popular the devices have become.
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