Kryptovaluuttojen volatiili päivä, ByteDance vaihtaa toimitusjohtajaa ja Pipen rahoituskierros
Kryptovaluuttojen volatiili päivä, ByteDance vaihtaa toimitusjohtajaa ja Pipen rahoituskierros
Lisäksi Ualán toimitusjohtaja Tyler Cowenin haastateltavana
Huomenta! ☕
Nyt on taas se aika vuodesta kun heräilen aikaisemmin lisääntyneen valoisuuden takia. Onneksi NBA:n pudotuspelit alkoivat, niin en ole ihan toimeton aamulla. Tämän päivän uutiskirjeestä tuli myös hieman fintech-painotteinen.
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Uutiset 🗞️
Kryptovaluutat volatiileina
Kryptovaluuttamarkkinoilla oli eilen volatiili päivä. Bloombergilta:
A 31% plunge in the morning. A 33% surge in the afternoon.
Such was the wild ride Bitcoin took investors on Wednesday, lopping off billions in value before comments from some prominent proponents helped propel it on a torrid rebound.
…
Down to within a whisker of $30,000 just after 9 a.m. in New York, the coin pared its loss to 7% and periodically topped $40,000 again in the afternoon. It resumed declines into the next session and was trading around $35,500 as of 8:57 a.m. in Hong Kong on Thursday.
Ether, the second-biggest coin, sank more than 40% Wednesday before cutting that nearly in half, and ended down 26%. It was down as much as 15% on Thursday.
Mikä tarkalleen ottaen sitten ajoi kryptojen sahausliikettä? CNBC raportoi, että kyseessä on mahdollisesti monen eri tekijän summa, joihin sisältyy mm. Elon Muskin twiittailu, Kiinan kryptovaluuttojen sääntely, Coinbasen osakkeen lasku ja se, että institutionaaliset sijoittajat olisivat siirtäneet kryptosijoituksiaan takaisin kultaan:
However, Musk announced last week that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns. He did suggest on Wednesday that Tesla is not selling its existing bitcoin holding, using emojis on Twitter to say the company has “diamond hands.”
And Coinbase, which surged above $400 shortly after its first trade on April 14, quickly gave up those gains and was down near $220 per share on Wednesday morning. Its direct listing date is also the day of bitcoin’s most-recent all-time high.
Additionally, a new report from JPMorgan said that, based on futures contracts, institutional investors appeared to be moving away from bitcoin and back to gold. Bitcoin is often touted as a potential replacement for the traditional metal as a store of value.
Myös Elon yritti rauhoitella markkinoita:
ByteDancen toimitusjohtaja vaihtuu
Sosiaalisen median yhtiö, ja TikTokin omistajan, ByteDancen toimitusjohtaja vaihtuu. Wall Street Journalilta (WSJ):
ByteDance Ltd., the owner of popular short-video app TikTok, said Thursday founder and global chief executive officer Zhang Yiming would step down from his role to focus on long-term strategy, and appointed co-founder Liang Rubo to take his place.
Mr. Zhang’s departure comes as Chinese tech companies have come under growing pressure from a regulatory crackdown on monopolistic practices, and after the Chinese short-video company was caught in the crosshairs of U.S.-China geopolitical tensions last year.
His resignation follows an internal executive shake-up in April when Shou Zi Chew, ByteDance’s chief financial officer, was named CEO of TikTok.
Kiinan hallitus on viime aikoina kohdentanut kartellien vastaisia toimia maan isoja teknologiayrityksiä kohtaan. Korkeimman profiilin uhri tässä taistelussa on ollut Alibaban toimitusjohtaja Jack Ma, jota ei näy pahemmin enää julkisuudessa.
Pipen rahoituskierros
Finanssialan kasvuyritys Pipe, kertoi uudesta rahoituskierroksestaan. Pipe sai sijoituksia uusimmalla kierroksella 250 miljoonan dollarin edestä ja on nyt kahden miljardin dollarin arvoinen. TechCrunchilta:
Miami-based Pipe confirms that it has actually raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation in a round that was “massively oversubscribed,” according to co-founder and co-CEO Harry Hurst.
“We had originally allocated $150 million for the round, but capped it at $250 million although we could have raised significantly more,” he told TechCrunch.
…
As we previously reported, Baltimore, Maryland-based Greenspring Associates led the round, which included participation from new investors Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, Fin VC, 3L and Japan’s SBI Investment. Existing backers such as Next47, Marc Benioff, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, MaC Ventures and Republic also put money in the latest financing.
The investment comes about 2 ½ months after Pipe raised $50 million in “strategic equity funding” from a slew of high-profile investors such as Siemens’ Next47 and Jim Pallotta’s Raptor Group, Shopify, Slack, HubSpot, Okta and Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya. With this latest round, Pipe has now raised about $316 million in total capital. The new funding was raised at “a significant step up in valuation” from the company’s last raise.
Pipe antaa yrityksille, joilla on “toistuvaa liikevaihtoa” (esim. ohelmistoja palveluina tarjoavat software-as-a-servce eli SaaS-yritykset), mahdollisuuden myydä tulevaa liikevaihtoaan alennettuun hintaan. Yrityksen verkkosivuilta:
Pipe transforms recurring revenue into upfront capital for growth without debt or dilution.
Pipen toimitusjohtaja, Harry Hurst, totesi Twitterissä, että yritys aloitti palvelemalla nimenomaan SaaS-yrityksiä, mutta on nyt laajentanut asiakaskuntaansa kaikkiin yrityksiin joilla on toistuvaa liikevaihtoa, esimerkiksi kiinteistöjen huoltoyhtiöt tai vakuutusyhtiöt.
Suosittelut 🕵️
Ualán toimitusjohtaja Tylerin haastateltavana
Finanssialan kasvuritys, Ualá, on yksi suurimmista Latinalaisen Amerikan kasvuyrityksistä. Yritys ns. neopankki, eli se tarjoaa mobiilisovelluksen kautta pankkipalveluita, ilman että sillä olisi fyysisiä toimistoja.
Ualan toimitusjohtaja Pierpaolo Barbieri oli Tyler Cowenin haastateltavana eilen julkaistussa Tylerin podcastin jaksossa.
Haastattelussa käytiin läpi mm. keskuspankkien digivaluuttoja:
COWEN: The onset of central bank digital currencies — how will that change the world?
BARBIERI: I think it has the potential to change the world dramatically, but it’s going to take time. The world needs a new way to send money across borders, and over the medium run, what the Chinese are trying to do with their own digital currency threatens the overall supremacy of the dollar and the ability of the United States to impose sanctions beyond its borders.
The centrality of the dollar in the international financial architecture is threatened by the fact that other countries will want to use their new digital currencies to push forward first international transfers, then bilateral trade, and finally, potentially, trade and transfers within their blocs in a way that will erode — not destroy, but erode — the supremacy of the dollar that we have seen over the last hundred years.
Keskustelussa käytiin myös läpi pohjoismaissa yleistyvää trendiä, jossa käteinen häviää maksuvälineenä:
COWEN: Where will a cashless society come first?
BARBIERI: I think in Northern Europe, and definitely China is headed that way.
COWEN: Why in those countries and not others? In the US, currency per capita is rising. That may be held abroad, but still, currency is far from disappearing.
BARBIERI: Absolutely. I think the dollar is very particular because a lot of emerging markets — people want to save in US dollars. As you mentioned earlier, I grew up in Argentina. Argentines hold an amazing amount of physical dollars because they don’t trust their banking system after the implosion of 2001. I think that it’ll remain a constitutional right to hold cash if you want. Cash is anonymous in a way that a lot of people value.
But I think that there are societies in which you basically don’t need a card. When I’m in New York — I don’t remember the last time I used cash in New York City. I think a cashless society is driven by the fact that the regulators want to see a lot of transactions, as in China. But it also could be driven by the fact that from a convenience perspective, you can create a better credit history without having to deal with the difficulties inherent in cash, which is dirty, expensive for the state, hard to manage, easy to steal, hard to save on. I think that in places like Sweden or Denmark, cash is going away very quickly.
Nopeet 🚀
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