According to reports, Tencent and Bytedance, two Chinese tech giants, are planning to execute a significant number of job cuts in their metaverse divisions. Tencent recognized it is making some staff adjustments, amidst rumors of hundreds of layoffs in its extended reality division, while Bytedance is also planning to cut staff in Pico, its metaverse
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Bitcoin (BTC) starts the last week of February in a volatile mood as a crucial area of resistance fails to break. After a classic “fakeout” during low-volume weekend trading, BTC/USD is back below $25,000 with bulls still lacking momentum. The largest cryptocurrency saw what looked like the next stage of its 2023 recovery last week,
Good morning. It was a busy weekend in Munich as the world’s defence and security community digested almost a year of horrendous war in Ukraine, an increasingly tense US-China relationship and three ballistic missile tests by North Korea. What a time to be alive. Plus, Poland’s president Andrzej Duda used an interview with the FT’s
A shortage of construction workers is putting at risk the Biden administration’s ambitious plan to fuel a historic building boom in the US, according to industry executives. The construction sector could be short of as many as half a million workers this year, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry group, increasing project
A hedge fund that was one of the highest profile victims of the FTX scandal when half its assets were trapped on the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange has decided to close and return its remaining money to investors. Galois Capital, which last year had been managing around $200mn in assets and was one of the biggest
Would it be better to be a chief executive who is accountable to Steve Schwarzman instead of Nelson Peltz? Schwartzman is the founder of the private equity juggernaut Blackstone which has made its name taking companies private in leveraged buyouts. Peltz’s Trian Partners, on the other hand, is known for activist campaigns at public companies.
It is not often that a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist gives the keynote speech at a competition policy conference. But last week in Washington, I introduced PEN America president Ayad Akhtar before he gave the lunchtime address at a conference on monopoly policy sponsored by the Open Markets Institute. The pairing wasn’t as random as it
Jaime Puerta remembers the last night his life felt normal. He had dinner with his son Daniel and they joked around while flicking through old family photographs. The next morning, the former marine found Daniel unconscious on his bed with ashen skin and a blue tint on his lips. What looked like half a tablet
The Central Bank of Russia plans to launch test operations with digital ruble transactions between real customers at the beginning of April. More than a dozen banks will join the upcoming stage of the pilot project, a high-ranking representative of the bank announced to Russian media. Russia’s Monetary Authority to Trial Actual Settlements With Digital
South Korea’s “Kimchi premium” has flipped to a discount again, meaning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are now cheaper to buy on South Korean exchanges. The phenomenon is named after the Korean dish kimchi. The Kimchi premium refers to when the price of Bitcoin (BTC) trades higher on South Korean exchanges than in other markets. According
The largest bank in Southeast Asia, DBS, has revealed that bitcoin trading volume on its cryptocurrency exchange jumped 80% in 2022 while ether trading volume surged 65%. “We believe that the market has decisively shifted its focus towards trust and stability, especially in the wake of multiple scandals that have rocked the industry,” a DBS
In May 2021, a group of Chinese banks agreed to lend $300mn to investment bank China Renaissance with a condition: if Bao Fan, the company’s well-known founder, ceased to be its largest shareholder or was no longer chair of the board they could demand early repayment. Nearly two years later, lawyers may soon be poring
Crypto’s next bull run will start in Asia, according to Cameron Winklevoss, an American investor, and co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini. His comments have come amid an increase in enforcement action and looming crackdowns from United States regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “My working thesis atm is that the next bull run
A 48% Bitcoin (BTC) price surge since the start of the year has pushed BTC’s market cap past that of payment processing giant Visa once again. With the BTC price currently at $24,365, its market cap of $470.16 billion is now marginally above that of Visa, which has a market cap of $469.87 billion, according to
Binance US has refuted reports that draw parallels between it and “fraudulent exchanges that have gone bankrupt.” The U.S.-based crypto trading platform stressed that “only Binance.US employees” have access to its bank accounts, denying the allegation that global crypto exchange Binance has “secret access.” Clarifications by Binance US Binance US, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency trading platform
A palatial estate in the Caribbean was listed for a whopping $200 million Sunday evening, making it the most expensive home to ever hit the market in the region and one of the priciest homes for sale in the entire world. The Terraces, as the estate is called, spans 17 acres and nine structures. It’s
The writer is senior economist and head of Japan FX Strategy at JPMorgan It is little wonder that markets were scouring decade-old comments by Kazuo Ueda, the newly announced Bank of Japan governor. A relatively unknown academic outside of Japan who served on the central bank’s board between 1998 and 2005, Ueda’s nomination has prompted
Six days ago, a few hours before the blockchain infrastructure platform Paxos announced it would no longer mint BUSD stablecoins, $2.86 billion worth of BUSD were redeemed. Currently, Binance is the most active exchange trading BUSD tokens, and the stablecoin still commands roughly 10.7% of the crypto economy’s $67.71 billion in global trade volume over
Friday marks the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an event that shocked the world by bringing large-scale conflict to European soil. US president Joe Biden’s visit to Poland at the start of the week will serve as a show of strength to Ukrainian and Nato allies in the face of Russia’s long-expected
The network effect is a phenomenon where the value of a product or service increases as more people use it. As the user base grows, there are more opportunities for interactions, which can lead to increased benefits and positive outcomes for each user. The network effect is a powerful driver of growth and adoption for
After the disgraced co-founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), donated $5.2 million to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020 and more than $40 million to Democrats leading up to the U.S. midterm election cycle, three major Democratic organizations plan to return 2.2% of the funds, or $1 million, to the now-defunct crypto exchange. Of the total