Ars Technica 2:00 pm on November 8, 2022
Tags: coinbase, crypto ( 62 ), digital currencies ( 29 ), Features ( 834 ), jpmorgan chase ( 6 ), PayPal ( 111 ), Policy ( 3,053 )

America’s slow-moving, confused crypto regulation is driving industry out of US

As blockchain technologies have evolved to enable ever-faster digital payments, the need for speed continues to drive both technological innovation and mainstream adoption of new digital assets. The sector is building a lot of momentum for obvious reasons—businesses have always wanted the ability to move money around faster, and individual consumers have become annoyed with waiting around for refunds. For many consumers and businesses experimenting with new digital assets, fast access to money has never felt more within reach.

This interest is not expected to cool, as younger generations become digital currency natives who only know of a world with digital wallets. But even for them, that future could remain out of reach because innovation in digital payments is slow. And that’s not because we don’t have the technology. According to many leading experts discussing fintech innovation at the Las Vegas conference Money 20/20 last month, the problem is that regulators have yet to set clear standards on what is and isn’t allowed.

In the United States, the lack of regulatory clarity threatens to slow down not just mainstream adoption of new technologies but also innovation in digital payment options, potentially cutting off consumers and businesses nationwide from sought-after conveniences, simply because regulators can’t keep up with how digital assets are being used today.

Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#coinbase, #crypto, #digital-currencies, #features, #jpmorgan-chase, #paypal, #policy

Ars Technica 10:04 pm on October 17, 2022
Tags: coinbase, Cryptocurrency ( 287 ), cryptocurrency scam ( 2 ), Policy ( 3,053 ), smart contracts

Coinbase users scammed out of $21M in crypto sue company for negligence

Last fall, scammers infiltrated social platforms like dating apps, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, attempting to convince people to download Coinbase Wallet. Once the targeted users downloaded the wallet, the scammer would then send links to fraudulent websites, prompting users to purchase a “voucher” that seemed like a safe transaction protected and facilitated by Coinbase’s trusted platform, but was “actually a malicious smart contract.” Horrified users eventually discovered the smart contract gave “the scammers complete access to the entire funds in the victim’s wallets” without requiring authorizations to withdraw funds.

Today, nearly 100 people from all over the globe are seeking to make the publicly traded Coinbase pay for allegedly doing nothing to protect users. Users alleged that Coinbase was unmoved by reports that scammers were draining accounts of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency. In total, Coinbase Wallet users that are suing collectively lost $21 million.

For months, users allegedly warned the company of this seeming security flaw. Instead of acting to protect users, though, Coinbase “took no remedial steps to fix the security flaw or even warn customers about this major problem, despite warning customers about other security risks,” according to a recently filed arbitration demand. This allegedly allowed “hundreds” of additional users to become targets of “an easily preventable” liquidity mining pool scam.

Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#coinbase, #cryptocurrency, #cryptocurrency-scam, #policy, #smart-contracts

Ars Technica 4:43 pm on June 14, 2022
Tags: Biz & IT ( 1,521 ), coinbase, Policy ( 3,053 )

Coinbase lays off 18 percent of staff as CEO says, “We grew too quickly”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong speaking at a conference and gesturing with his hand.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is laying off 18 percent of its staff, the company announced today. The layoffs will cut 1,100 workers at the largest crypto exchange in the US, leaving it with about 5,000 employees, Coinbase said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

“In the next hour every employee will receive an email from HR informing if you are affected or unaffected by this layoff,” CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a memo to staff that was posted on the company blog. Laid-off workers “will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees.”

The immediate cutoff from Coinbase systems was necessary because of “the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information,” Armstrong wrote. This was “the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business or themselves,” he wrote.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#biz-it, #coinbase, #policy

deutsche-startups.de 1:55 pm on June 13, 2022
Tags: 10x Founders ( 13 ), 468 Capital ( 62 ), Aktuell ( 3,108 ), Apex Ventures ( 13 ), berlin ( 1,028 ), boom ( 4 ), Braunschweig ( 11 ), btov Partners ( 40 ), Cara Care ( 2 ), Cherry Ventures ( 60 ), Clypp ( 2 ), coinbase, Creandum ( 26 ), Cusp Capital ( 12 ), DealMonitor ( 692 ), Dolby Family Ventures ( 2 ), Dr. Schär, DriverHero ( 4 ), E-Health ( 128 ), EXKLUSIV ( 388 ), Exporo ( 6 ), Fintech ( 707 ), Hamburg ( 1,437 ), Herius Capital, Immerok ( 6 ), infinitas capital ( 2 ), Inflection ( 3 ), Jung, Lemon One ( 2 ), München ( 569 ), Munich Re Ventures, Okapi:Orbits ( 2 ), Otterspace ( 2 ), Paua Ventures ( 10 ), Project Eaden ( 6 ), S-Fin, venture capital ( 2,288 )

#DealMonitor – #EXKLUSIV Cusp und 468 investieren in Immerok – Creandum setzt auf Project Eaden – Cherry investiert in Otterspace

Im #DealMonitor für den 13. Juni werfen wir einen Blick auf die wichtigsten, spannendsten und interessantesten Investments und Exits des Tages in der DACH-Region. Alle Deals der Vortage gibt es im großen und übersichtlichen #DealMonitor-Archiv.

INVESTMENTS

Immerok
+++ Cusp Capital und 468 Capital sowie Data Artisans-Gründer Stephan Ewen investieren nach unseren Informationen eine zweistellige Millionensumme in Immerok. Das Berliner DeepTech-Startup, das von den ehemaligen Data Artisans-Mitarbeitern Konstantin Knauf, Johannes Moser und Holger Temme gegründet wurde, kümmert sich um das Thema “Real Time Data Streaming Analytics”. Cusp Capital hält nun 15,6 % am jungen Unternehmen, 468 Capital ist mit 14,5 % an Bord. Der Cusp Capital-Vorgänger Tengelmann Ventures (TEV) war schon beim Berliner Startup Data Artisans an Bord, das 2019 für 90 Millionen Euro an Alibaba verkauft wurde. Mehr im Insider-Podcast #EXKLUSIV

Project Eaden
+++ Creandum investiert nach unseren Informationen in Project Eaden. Das Berliner Startup, das von den Upper Hand-Machern David Schmelzeisen und Jan Wilmking sowie mymuesli-Gründer Hubertus Bessau gegründet wurde, kümmert sich um “Entwicklung, Nutzung und Lizenzierung von Technologien zur Herstellung nachhaltiger Lebensmittel, insbesondere Fleischalternativen sowie deren Vertrieb, um damit einem Beitrag zur Rettung des Planeten zu leisten”. Mehr im Insider-Podcast #EXKLUSIV

Otterspace
+++ Cherry Ventures, Inflection, btov Partners, Paua Ventures und Coinbase investieren nach unseren Informationen rund 3 Millionen US-Dollar in Otterspace. Das Berliner Startup, das von Ben Dobbrick, Rahul Rumalla und Catriona Emily Furlong gegründet wurde, kümmert sich um DAOs also dezentralisierte autonome Organisation. “Our mission is to help DAOs onboard their first hundred to their next million members, by making the experience of joining and contributing to a DAO clear, straightforward, and familiar for inhabitants of Web2”, schreibt das Team. Mehr im Insider-Podcast #EXKLUSIV

DriverHero
+++ 10X Founders investiert nach unseren Informationen in DriverHero. Das Münchner Startup, das von Richard Fischer, Steven Miller, Michael König und Emanuel Wernitz gegründet wurde, möchte Fahrer:innen und Lieferunternehmen zusammenbringen. “Das erreichen wir durch unseren Marktplatz, der Jobsuchenden durch volle Transparenz und Vergleichsmöglichkeiten hilft, den idealen Job zu finden”, teilt das Unternehmen mit. Mehr im Insider-Podcast #EXKLUSIV

Exporo
+++ Das Schweizer Family Office Infinitas Capital und Altinvestoren wie HV Capital investieren eine siebenstellige Summe in Exporo – siehe FinanceFWD. “Gleicht man die mutmaßliche Höhe des Fundings mit der Entwicklung der Gesellschaftsanteile ab, dürfte die Bewertung signifikant unter den 140 Millionen Euro gelegen haben, auf die Exporo zuletzt noch taxiert worden war”, heißt es im Bericht. Die Hamburger Immobilien-Crowdfunding-Plattform, die 2014 von Simon Brunke, Björn Maronde, Julian Oertzen und Tim Bütecke gegründet wurde, sammelte erst Anfang 2021 rund 16 Millionen Euro ein. Die Fusion mit Zinsland sorgte zuletzt aber für Probleme bei Exporo. Zudem scheiterten einige der Crowdfunding-Projekte des Unternehmens. Mehr über Exporo

Cara Care
+++ Das Unternehmen Dr. Schär, das Lebensmittel und Nahrungsergänzungsmittel für die Ernährung bei Zöliakie und Stoffwechselerkrankungen produziert, investiert gemeinsam mit Altinvestoren wie JJDC und Asabys Partners investieren 7 Millionen US-Dollar in Cara Care. Das Berliner E-Health-Unternehmen, 2016 von den Medizinern André Sommer, Dankrad Feist, Orest Tarasiuk und Jesaja Brinkmann gegründet, unterstützt Menschen mit Reizdarmsyndrom, entzündlichen Darmerkrankungen oder der Refluxkrankheit dabei, ihre Gesundheit zu fördern. Insgesamt flossen nun schon 16 Millionen in das Unternehmen. Mehr über Cara Care

Okapi:Orbits
+++ Munich Re Ventures, der Investment-Ableger der Münchener Rück, Herius Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, Apex Ventures, Andreas Kupke und Christian Dahlen investieren 5,5 Millionen Euro in Okapi:Orbits. Das Startup aus Braunschweig, das 2018 von Kristina Nikolaus, Christopher Kebschull, Jonas?Radtke und Sven?Müller gegründet wurde, entwickelt eine Software, die Satelliten vor Kollisionen mit Weltraumschrott schützen soll.

Clypp
+++ Der Berliner HR-Investor allygatr investiert in Clypp. Das Startup, das von Maximilian Zeyda und Edwin Sauer gegründet wurde, setzt auf eine “schnelle und praktische Video-Dokumentation”. “Gerade in HR-Prozessen wie im Onboarding ist Clypp deshalb von großem Nutzen”, teilt der Geldgeber mit.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Lemon One
+++ Das italienische Unternehmen Boom, eine Software-as-a-Service-Lösung für die Produktion, Bearbeitung und Verwaltung von Bild- und Videomaterial, übernimmt Lemon One, eine Berliner Vermittlungsplattform für Fotograf:innen. “Gemeinsam mit dem Team von LemonOne, wird Boom so seinen wachsenden Kundenstamm betreuen und sich dank dessen Expertise auf den Ausbau seiner Technologie- und Produktsparte konzentrieren”, heißt es in der Presseaussendung. Lemon One, 2017 von Timur Kayaci, Lorenz Marquardt und Maximilian Schwahn gegründet, richtet sich anUnternehmen, die zügig Fotomaterial brauchen. Neben Acton Capital und Redalpine investierten in den vergangenen Jahren rund 5 Millionen Euro in das junge Startup. Boom sammelte in den vergangenen Jahren rund 18 Millionen US-Dollar ein. Mehr über Lemon One

S-Fin
+++ Die JDC Group-Tochter Jung, DMS & Cie. übernimmt die Mehrheit an S-Fin. Das Unternehmen aus Straubing, das 2021 von Peter Raschke gegründet wurde, kümmert sich um Immobilienfinanzierungen für Privatkunden, Unternehmen und Bauträger. “Die Expertise des S-Fin-Teams sowie die damit verbundenen, professionellen Services und organisatorischen Abläufe sollen ab dem dritten Quartal 2022 über das neue JDC Kompetenzcenter Baufinanzierung auch den JDC Vermittlern zur Verfügung gestellt werden”, teilt das Unternehmen mit.

Startup-Jobs: Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Herausforderung? In der unserer Jobbörse findet Ihr Stellenanzeigen von Startups und Unternehmen.

Foto (oben): azrael74

#10x-founders, #468-capital, #aktuell, #apex-ventures, #berlin, #boom, #braunschweig, #btov-partners, #cara-care, #cherry-ventures, #clypp, #coinbase, #creandum, #cusp-capital, #dolby-family-ventures, #dr-schar, #driverhero, #e-health, #exporo, #fintech, #hamburg, #herius-capital, #immerok, #infinitas-capital, #inflection, #jung, #lemon-one, #munchen, #munich-re-ventures, #okapiorbits, #otterspace, #paua-ventures, #project-eaden, #s-fin, #venture-capital

Ars Technica 6:25 pm on May 11, 2022
Tags: coinbase, El Salvador ( 42 ), Nayib Bukele, Policy ( 3,053 )

El Salvador buys more bitcoin after ratings agency downgrades its debt

Bitcoin’s price has plunged in recent days, briefly falling below $30,000 on Monday evening and again on Wednesday morning. Nayib Bukele, the bitcoin-boosting president of El Salvador, sees bitcoin’s low price as a buying opportunity. He announced on Monday that El Salvador had purchased another 500 bitcoin. With one bitcoin worth around $31,000, this represented a $15.5 million bet.

Bukele has made the embrace of bitcoin a signature of his presidency. Last year, El Salvador became the first nation in the world to make bitcoin legal tender alongside the US dollar. In an effort to encourage adoption of bitcoin, El Salvador launched wallet software called Chivo and offered Salvadorans $30 if they gave it a try.

Bloomberg calculates that El Salvador has accumulated a total of 2,301 bitcoins since it started buying them last September. Most were bought at prices above $45,000, so this nation of 6 million people has lost tens of millions of dollars speculating on bitcoin.

Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#coinbase, #el-salvador, #nayib-bukele, #policy

TechCrunch 7:02 am on September 16, 2021
Tags: a16z ( 35 ), Apps ( 1,721 ), Asia ( 1,250 ), coinbase, Coinswitch Kuber ( 2 ), Funding ( 1,793 ), india ( 1,102 ), Sequoia Capital India ( 43 ), TC ( 10,178 ), tiger global ( 130 )

A16z in talks to back CoinSwitch Kuber in first India investment

A16z is inching closer to making its first investment in a startup in India, the world’s second largest internet market that has produced over two dozen unicorns this year.

The Menlo Park-headquartered firm is in final stages of conversations to invest in Indian crypto trading startup CoinSwitch Kuber, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The proposed deal values the Bangalore-based firm at $1.9 billion, two sources said. Coinbase is also investing in the new round, one of the sources said.

CoinSwitch Kuber was valued at over $500 million in a round in April this year when it raised $25 million from Tiger Global. If the deal with A16z materializes, it will be CoinSwitch Kuber’s third financing round this year.

TechCrunch reported last week that CoinSwitch Kuber was in talks to raise its Series C funding at up to $2 billion valuation. The report, which didn’t identify a lead investor, noted that the Indian startup had engaged with Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase in recent weeks.

Usual caveats apply: terms of the proposed deal may change or the talks may not result in a deal. The author reported some details about the deal on Wednesday.

The startup declined to comment. Coinbase and A16z as well as existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India did not respond to requests for comment.

The investment talks come at a time when CoinSwitch Kuber has more than doubled its user base in recent months — even as local authorities push back against crypto assets. Its eponymous app had over 10 million users in India last month, up from about 4 million in April this year, the startup said in a newspaper advertisement over the weekend.

A handful of crypto startups in India have demonstrated fast-pace growth in recent years — while impressively keeping their CAC very low — as millions of millennials in the South Asian nation kickstart their investment journeys. Several funds including those with big presence in India such as Accel, Lightspeed, WEH and Kalaari recently began working on their thesis to back crypto startups, TechCrunch reported earlier.

B Capital backed CoinDCX, a rival of CoinSwitch Kuber that has amassed 3.5 million users, last month in a $90 million round that valued CoinDCX at about $1.1 billion.

Policymakers in India have been debating on the status of digital currencies in the South Asian market for several years. India’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India, has expressed concerns about private virtual currencies though it is planning to run trial programs of its first digital currency as soon as December.

About 27 Indian startups have become a unicorn this year, up from 11 last year, as several high-profile investors — and global peers of Andreessen Horowitz — such as Tiger Global and Coatue have increased the pace of their investments in the South Asian market. Apna announced earlier on Thursday that it had raised $100 million in a round led by Tiger Global at $1.1 billion valuation, becoming the youngest Indian firm to attain the unicorn status.

Groww, an investment app for millennials, is in talks to raise a new financing round that would value it at $3 billion, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. The startup has engaged with Coatue in recent days, the report said.

Andreessen Horowitz triples down on blockchain startups with massive $2.2 billion Crypto Fund III

#a16z, #apps, #asia, #coinbase, #coinswitch-kuber, #funding, #india, #sequoia-capital-india, #tc, #tiger-global

TechCrunch 5:14 pm on September 8, 2021
Tags: blockchain ( 200 ), coinbase, Cryptocurrency ( 287 ), DeFi ( 9 ), Government ( 569 ), lending pool, SEC ( 29 )

SEC wants to regulate Coinbase’s crypto yield product, Coinbase disagrees

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has reacted strongly to the company’s current relationship with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to him, the SEC is threatening to sue the cryptocurrency exchange if it launches its yield-generating product called Coinbase Lend.

With this new product, Coinbase wants to compete with popular decentralized finance (DeFi) products, such as Compound and Aave. The company wants to operate a lending pool focused on USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin that is pegged to USD.

If the company manages to launch Coinbase Lend, users will be able to contribute to the lending pool by sending crypto assets to Coinbase Lend. Eventually, the company plans to lend out those crypto assets. What Coinbase users get in exchange to contributing to the lending pool is high interests. Coinbase promises 4% APY on its preview page.

According to Brian Armstrong, the company reached out to the SEC before releasing it. “They responded by telling us this lend feature is a security,” he said on Twitter.

“They refuse to tell us why they think it’s a security, and instead subpoena a bunch of records from us (we comply), demand testimony from our employees (we comply), and then tell us they will be suing us if we proceed to launch, with zero explanation as to why,” he added.

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal also wrote about the events on the company’s blog. It appears that the company decided to move forward and pre-announce the new feature despite the SEC saying that Coinbase’s Lend program is a security.

“The SEC told us they consider Lend to involve a security, but wouldn’t say why or how they’d reached that conclusion. Rather than get discouraged, we chose to continue taking things slowly. In June, we announced our Lend program publicly and opened a waitlist but did not set a public launch date,” Paul Grewal wrote.

Here’s a pro tip for entrepreneurs reading this post. If the SEC tells you that you can’t launch something, don’t put up a waitlist with the words ‘coming soon’.

To no one’s surprise, Coinbase says that the SEC decided to open a formal investigation after that. One employee also had to spend a day with the SEC to answer questions.

“They asked for documents and written responses, and we willingly provided them. They also asked for us to provide a corporate witness to give sworn testimony about the program. As a result, one of our employees spent a full day in August providing complete and transparent testimony about Lend,” Grewal wrote.

As a result, Coinbase is now mad and has chosen to launch a PR campaign against the SEC. Brian Armstrong’s main argument is that other companies have been offering lending pools already, so there’s no reason why some companies can offer such a product and not Coinbase.

“Meanwhile, plenty of other crypto companies continue to offer a lend feature, but Coinbase is somehow not allowed to,” he tweeted.

This is a risky strategy as Coinbase could end up alienating the crypto ecosystem at large. There could be increased scrutiny on DeFi and industry-wide enforcement of stricter rules, as Sar Haribhakti pointed out.

“Ostensibly the SEC’s goal is to protect investors and create fair markets. So who are they protecting here and where is the harm? People seem pretty happy to be earning yield on these various products, across lots of other crypto companies,” Brian Armstrong said.

If you read the fine print, Coinbase doesn’t protect investors with its Lend program. Here’s what it says at the bottom of the Coinbase Lend page: “Lend is not a high-yield USD savings account, and Coinbase is not a bank. Your loaned crypto is not protected by FDIC or SIPC insurance.”

That’s not very reassuring for investors. At some point, Coinbase and the SEC will have to sit at the same table to discuss crypto lending products because a tweetstorm won’t solve the issue.

#blockchain, #coinbase, #cryptocurrency, #defi, #government, #lending-pool, #sec

Ars Technica 2:18 pm on September 8, 2021
Tags: Bitcoin ( 150 ), coinbase, Cryptocurrency ( 287 ), ecoin, Policy ( 3,053 ), SEC ( 29 )

SEC threatens to sue Coinbase over lending product

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has warned that it will sue Coinbase if it launches a new digital asset lending product, and also issued subpoenas to the cryptocurrency trading platform to provide it with more information, according to executives.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, said in a blog post that the company, which in April became the first major US cryptocurrency exchange to list publicly, had received a Wells notice from the regulator saying it would pursue legal action if Coinbase introduced a yield product called Lend.

Lend is designed to allow users to earn interest on certain digital assets on the platform.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#bitcoin, #coinbase, #cryptocurrency, #ecoin, #policy, #sec

TechCrunch 5:16 am on September 7, 2021
Tags: a16z ( 35 ), Andreessen Horowitz ( 146 ), Asia ( 1,250 ), coinbase, Coinswitch Kuber ( 2 ), Cryptocurrency ( 287 ), Funding ( 1,793 ), india ( 1,102 ), sequoia capital ( 113 ), TC ( 10,178 ), tiger global ( 130 )

Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber in talks to raise funds at unicorn valuation

Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber is in advanced stages of talks to raise a new financing round at up to $2 billion in valuation, several sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

If the talks materialize in a deal, CoinSwitch Kuber will become the second crypto startup in the world’s second largest internet market to attain the unicorn status.

The four-year-old startup, which counts Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, and Ribbit Capital among its existing investors, was valued at over $500 million valuation in its Series B financing round in April this year.

It’s unclear who is positioning to lead the round. The firm has engaged closely with Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase in recent weeks, several people aware of those discussions told TechCrunch.

A deal may finalize within this month, sources said. The size of the deal, according to one source, is over $100 million.

The startup declined to comment. Coinbase and A16z, which has yet to back any Indian startup, did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India did not respond to a request for comment last week.

The investment talks come at a time when CoinSwitch Kuber has almost doubled its userbase in recent months — even as local authorities push back against crypto assets. Its eponymous app had over 7 million monthly active users in India last month, up from about 4 million in April this year, according to mobile insight platform App Annie (data of which an industry exec shared with TechCrunch).

B Capital backed CoinSwitch Kuber’s rival CoinDCX last month in a $90 million round that valued the Indian startup at about $1.1 billion.

More than two dozen Indian startups have become a unicorn this year, up from 11 last year, as several high-profile investors, including Tiger Global, SoftBank and Falcon Edge, have increased the pace of their investments in the South Asian market. TechCrunch reported last week that Tiger Global is engaging with Apna to fund a new round that values the 21-month-old Indian firm at over $1 billion.

#a16z, #andreessen-horowitz, #asia, #coinbase, #coinswitch-kuber, #cryptocurrency, #funding, #india, #sequoia-capital, #tc, #tiger-global

TechCrunch 1:51 pm on September 3, 2021
Tags: Alexia Bonatsos ( 7 ), Andreessen Horowitz ( 146 ), app-store ( 211 ), Apps ( 1,721 ), Blake Robbins, byte ( 6 ), ceo ( 585 ), Co-founder ( 226 ), coinbase, editor-in-chief ( 3 ), Firstmark ( 4 ), Fred Ehrsam ( 2 ), Gaming ( 387 ), Instagram ( 242 ), internet culture ( 24 ), iPhone ( 415 ), Jonathon Triest ( 3 ), kyle russell, Legos, Ludlow Ventures ( 9 ), Mobile ( 758 ), Mobile Applications ( 622 ), mobile software ( 41 ), nate mitchell ( 3 ), Oculus ( 54 ), rick heitzmann ( 3 ), Roblox ( 68 ), Skydio ( 7 ), social media app ( 5 ), Software ( 643 ), Startups ( 5,133 ), tiktok ( 355 ), Twitter ( 1,288 ), web app ( 14 )

Playbyte’s new app aims to become the ‘TikTok for games’

A startup called Playbyte wants to become the TikTok for games. The company’s newly launched iOS app offers tools that allow users to make and share simple games on their phone, as well as a vertically scrollable, fullscreen feed where you can play the games created by others. Also like TikTok, the feed becomes more personalized over time to serve up more of the kinds of games you like to play.

While typically, game creation involves some aspect of coding, Playbyte’s games are created using simple building blocks, emoji and even images from your Camera Roll on your iPhone. The idea is to make building games just another form of self-expression, rather than some introductory, educational experience that’s trying to teach users the basics of coding.

At its core, Playbyte’s game creation is powered by its lightweight 2D game engine built on web frameworks, which lets users create games that can be quickly loaded and played even on slow connections and older devices. After you play a game, you can like and comment using buttons on the right-side of the screen, which also greatly resembles the TikTok look-and-feel. Over time, Playbyte’s feed shows you more of the games you enjoyed as the app leverages its understanding of in-game imagery, tags and descriptions, and other engagement analytics to serve up more games it believes you’ll find compelling.

At launch, users have already made a variety of games using Playbyte’s tools — including simulators, tower defense games, combat challenges, obbys, murder mystery games, and more.

We made an app called Playbyte that lets you make games on your phone, discover games made by other users, and challenge your friends https://t.co/FFnMbKG1ls pic.twitter.com/eqhabN3kM1

— Playbyte (@PlaybyteInc) May 25, 2021

According to Playbyte founder and CEO Kyle Russell — previously of Skydio, Andreessen Horowitz, and (disclosure!) TechCrunch — Playbyte is meant to be a social media app, not just a games app.

“We have this model in our minds for what is required to build a new social media platform,” he says.

What Twitter did for text, Instagram did for photos and TikTok did for video was to combine a constraint with a personalized feed, Russell explains. “Typically. [they started] with a focus on making these experiences really brief…So a short, constrained format and dedicated tools that set you up for success to work within that constrained format,” he adds.

Similarly, Playbyte games have their own set of limitations. In addition to their simplistic nature, the games are limited to five scenes. Thanks to this constraint, a format has emerged where people are making games that have an intro screen where you hit “play,” a story intro, a challenging gameplay section, and then a story outro.

In addition to its easy-to-use game building tools, Playbyte also allows game assets to be reused by other game creators. That means if someone who has more expertise makes a game asset using custom logic or which pieced together multiple components, the rest of the user base can benefit from that work.

“Basically, we want to make it really easy for people who aren’t as ambitious to still feel like productive, creative game makers,” says Russell. “The key to that is going to be if you have an idea — like an image of a game in your mind — you should be able to very quickly search for new assets or piece together other ones you’ve previously saved. And then just drop them in and mix-and-match — almost like Legos — and construct something that’s 90% of what you imagined, without any further configuration on your part,” he says.

In time, Playbyte plans to monetize its feed with brand advertising, perhaps by allowing creators to drop sponsored assets into their games, for instance. It also wants to establish some sort of patronage model at a later point. This could involve either subscriptions or even NFTs of the games, but this would be further down the road.

The cutest lil sprite blob I’ve ever seen #pixelart #gamedev pic.twitter.com/7uBRzs6ix0

— Playbyte (@PlaybyteInc) August 21, 2021

The startup had originally began as a web app in 2019, but at the end of last year, the team scrapped that plan and rewrote everything as a native iOS app with its own game engine. That app launched on the App Store this week, after previously maxing out TestFlight’s cap of 10,000 users.

Currently, it’s finding traction with younger teenagers who are active on TikTok and other collaborative games, like Roblox, Minecraft, or Fortnite.

“These are young people who feel inspired to build their own games but have been intimidated by the need to learn to code or use other advanced tools, or who simply don’t have a computer at home that would let them access those tools,” notes Russell.

Playbyte is backed by $4 million in pre-seed and seed funding from investors including FirstMark (Rick Heitzmann), Ludlow Ventures (Jonathon Triest and Blake Robbins), Dream Machine (former Editor-in-Chief at TechCrunch, Alexia Bonatsos), and angels such as Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase; Nate Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus; Ashita Achuthan, previously of Twitter; and others.

The app is a free download on the App Store.

#alexia-bonatsos, #andreessen-horowitz, #app-store, #apps, #blake-robbins, #byte, #ceo, #co-founder, #coinbase, #editor-in-chief, #firstmark, #fred-ehrsam, #gaming, #instagram, #internet-culture, #iphone, #jonathon-triest, #kyle-russell, #legos, #ludlow-ventures, #mobile, #mobile-applications, #mobile-software, #nate-mitchell, #oculus, #rick-heitzmann, #roblox, #skydio, #social-media-app, #software, #startups, #tiktok, #twitter, #web-app

Ars Technica 10:47 pm on August 30, 2021
Tags: 2fa ( 16 ), Bitcoin ( 150 ), Biz & IT ( 1,521 ), coinbase, crypto ( 62 ), crypto exchange ( 5 ), Cryptocurrency ( 287 )

Coinbase erroneously reported 2FA changes to 125,000 customers

On Friday afternoon, Coinbase sent email and SMS text messages to 125,000 customers, erroneously telling them that their 2FA settings had been changed.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase sent an automated message to a large number of its customers on Friday, saying “your 2-step verification settings have been changed.” Unfortunately, the message was sent in error—by Coinbase’s count, 125,000 of those messages were sent (via email and SMS text) to customers whose 2FA settings had not changed.

According to Coinbase’s own acknowledgment Saturday, its system began sending the erroneous messages at 1:45PM Pacific time on Friday, and kept sending them until the error was mitigated at 3:07PM.

In that Twitter thread, Coinbase acknowledges the mistaken 2FA messages’ potential for confusion—confusion which retiree Don Pirtle told CNBC led him to panic-sell more than $60,000 of cryptocurrency. Pirtle was holding this large wallet as an investment for his grandson, so the panicked sale may have been as much blessing as curse—he now questions whether cryptocurrency was a safe investment in the first place.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#2fa, #bitcoin, #biz-it, #coinbase, #crypto, #crypto-exchange, #cryptocurrency

TechCrunch 5:30 pm on August 21, 2021
Tags: 911 ( 9 ), AC Wellness, ad networks ( 4 ), Afghanistan ( 671 ), alibaba ( 89 ), Amazon ( 830 ), amy klobuchar ( 16 ), Android ( 405 ), app-store ( 211 ), Apple ( 1,518 ), Apple Arcade ( 17 ), Apps ( 1,721 ), arkansas ( 88 ), Audius, Bandai Namco ( 4 ), bangalore ( 7 ), chartboost, coinbase, computing ( 844 ), control center ( 5 ), Danggeun Market ( 3 ), Delivery Hero ( 37 ), Disney ( 93 ), DST Global ( 29 ), e-commerce ( 691 ), e-reader ( 7 ), e2e encryption ( 17 ), Ecliptic Capital ( 2 ), epic ( 51 ), Facebook ( 1,059 ), Faering Capital, food ( 1,015 ), Google ( 1,331 ), GPI Capital ( 2 ), Guilded ( 2 ), HBO ( 49 ), HDMI ( 13 ), healthcare ( 214 ), Instagram ( 242 ), iOS ( 329 ), ipad ( 170 ), iPhone ( 415 ), IronSource ( 4 ), iTunes ( 48 ), jason fox, john thune, kabul ( 3 ), Konami ( 8 ), Kosta Eleftheriou ( 3 ), lens studio ( 5 ), Microsoft ( 715 ), mobile app ( 57 ), Mobile Applications ( 622 ), mobile devices ( 44 ), netflix ( 288 ), nfl ( 23 ), Nintendo ( 140 ), noonlight ( 2 ), operating systems ( 262 ), Pinterest ( 72 ), play store ( 20 ), player ( 38 ), pokemon company ( 2 ), Roblox ( 68 ), Samsung ( 185 ), sensor tower ( 20 ), Silicon Valley ( 38 ), smartphones ( 342 ), Snap ( 76 ), Snapchat ( 89 ), Software ( 643 ), Sony ( 172 ), South Korea ( 372 ), Spotify ( 247 ), svp ( 12 ), Taliban ( 503 ), TC ( 10,178 ), this week in apps ( 67 ), tiktok ( 355 ), travel app, United States ( 4,489 ), wand

This Week in Apps: OnlyFans bans sexual content, SharePlay delayed, TikTok questioned over biometric data collection

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Image Credits: Apple

Apple told developers that some of the features it announced as coming in iOS 15 won’t be available at launch. This includes one of the highlights of the new OS, SharePlay, a feature that lets people share music, videos and their screen over FaceTime calls. Other features that will come in later releases include Wallet’s support for ID cards, the App Privacy report and others that have yet to make it to beta releases.
Apple walked back its controversial Safari changes with the iOS 15 beta 6 update. Apple’s original redesign had shown the address bar at the bottom of the screen, floating atop the page’s content. Now the tab bar will appear below the page’s content, offering access to its usual set of buttons as when it was at the top. Users can also turn off the bottom tab bar now and revert to the old, Single Tab option that puts the address bar back at the top as before.

Apple walks back controversial Safari changes with iOS 15 beta 6 update

In response to criticism over its new CSAM detection technology, Apple said the version of NeuralHash that was reverse-engineered by a developer, Asuhariet Ygvar, was a generic version, and not the complete version that will roll out later this year.
The Verge dug through over 800 documents from the Apple-Epic trial to find the best emails, which included dirt on a number of other companies like Netflix, Hulu, Sony, Google, Nintendo, Valve, Microsoft, Amazon and more. These offered details on things like Netflix’s secret arrangement to pay only 15% of revenue, how Microsoft also quietly offers a way for some companies to bypass its full cut, how Apple initially saw the Amazon Appstore as a threat and more.

Platforms: Google

A beta version of the Android Accessibility Suite app (12.0.0) which rolled out with the fourth Android beta release added something called “Camera Switches” to Switch Access, a toolset that lets you interact with your device without using the touchscreen. Camera Switches allows users to navigate their phone and use its features by making face gestures, like a smile, open mouth, raised eyebrows and more.
Google announced its Pixel 5a with 5G, the latest A-series Pixel phone, will arrive on August 27, offering IP67 water resistance, long-lasting Adaptive Battery, Pixel’s dual-camera system and more, for $449. The phone makes Google’s default Android experience available at a lower price point than the soon to arrive Pixel 6.
An unredacted complaint from the Apple-Epic trial revealed that Google had quietly paid developers hundreds of millions of dollars via a program known as “Project Hug,” (later “Apps and Games Velocity Program”) to keep their games on the Play Store. Epic alleges Google launched the program to keep developers from following its lead by moving their games outside the store.

Augmented Reality

Snap on Thursday announced it hired its first VP of Platform Partnerships to lead AR, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis (“KP”). The new exec will lead Snap’s efforts to onboard partners, including individual AR creators building via Lens Studio as well as large companies that incorporate Snapchat’s camera and AR technology (Camera Kit) into their apps. KP will join in September, and report to Ben Schwerin, SVP of Content and Partnerships.

Fintech

Crypto exchange Coinbase will enter the Japanese market through a new partnership with Japanese financial giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). The company said it plans to launch other localized versions of its existing global services in the future.

Social

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook launched a “test” of Facebook Reels in the U.S. on iOS and Android. The new feature brings the Reels experience to Facebook, allowing users to create and share short-form video content directly within the News Feed or within Facebook Groups. Instagram Reels creators can also now opt in to have their Reels featured on users’ News Feed. The company is heavily investing its its battle with TikTok, even pledging that some portion of its $1 billion creator fund will go toward Facebook Reels.
Twitter’s redesign of its website and app was met with a lot of backlash from users and accessibility experts alike. The company choices add more visual contrast between various elements and may have helped those with low vision. But for others, the contrast is causing strain and headaches. Experts believe accessibility isn’t a one-size fits all situation, and Twitter should have introduced tools that allowed people to adjust their settings to their own needs.

Twitter redesigns website and app with new font, less clutter and high-contrast features

Twitter also tapped crypto developer Jay Graber to head the company’s “bluesky” project, which aims to create a decentralized social media protocol on which a number of networks, including Twitter, will eventually operate. The project will operate independently from Twitter, but is funded by Twitter and run by Twitter employees. Elsewhere, Twitter rolled out a new option that would allow users to report misinformation.
Twitter added Spaces support to its API, allowing developers to build Spaces discovery tools, and later, tools for hosts.
YikYak returned, under new management. The once-popular anonymous social network relaunched on iOS this week under new anonymous ownership from people who clearly hope a do-over will lead to different results. The original version of the app shut down in 2017 after being plagued by cyberbullying.

Yik Yak returns from the dead

The pro-Trump Twitter alternative Gettr’s lack of moderation has allowed users to share child exploitation images, according to research from the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Cyber Policy Center.
Pinterest rolled out a new set of more inclusive search filters that allow people to find styles for different types of hair textures — like coily, curly, wavy, straight, as well as shaved or bald and protective styles.

Photos

Photoshop for iPad gained new image correction tools, including the Healing Brush and Magic Wand, and added support for connecting an iPad to external monitors via HDMI or USB-C. The company also launched a Photoshop Beta program on the desktop.

Messaging

WhatsApp is being adopted by the Taliban to spread its message across Afghanistan, despite being on Facebook’s list of banned organizations. The company says it’s proactively removing Taliban content — but that may be difficult to do since WhatsApp’s E2E encryption means it can’t read people’s texts. This week, Facebook shut down a Taliban helpline in Kabul, which allowed civilians to report violence and looting, but some critics said this wasn’t actually helping local Afghans, as the group was now in effect governing the region.
WhatsApp is also testing a new feature that will show a large preview when sharing links, which some suspect may launch around the time when the app adds the ability to have the same account running on multiple devices.

Streaming & Entertainment

Netflix announced it’s adding spatial audio support on iPhone and iPad on iOS 14, joining other streamers like HBO Max, Disney+ and Peacock that have already pledged to support the new technology. The feature will be available to toggle on and off in the Control Center, when it arrives.
Blockchain-powered streaming music service Audius partnered with TikTok to allow artists to upload their songs using TikTok’s new SoundKit in just one click.
YouTube’s mobile app added new functionality that allows users to browse a video’s chapters, and jump into the chapter they want directly from the search page.

YouTube upgrades search with chapter previews and better recommendations for translated videos

Spotify’s Anchor app now allows users in global markets to record “Music + Talk” podcasts, where users can combine spoken word recordings with any track from Spotify’s library of 70 million songs for a radio DJ-like experience.
Podcasters are complaining that Apple’s revamped Podcasts platform is not working well, reports The Verge. Podcasts Connect has been buggy, and sports a confusing interface that has led to serious user errors (like entire shows being archived). And listeners have complained about syncing problems and podcasts they already heard flooding their libraries.

Dating

Tinder announced a new feature that will allow users to voluntarily verify their identity on the platform, which will allow the company to cross-reference sex offender registry data. Previously, Tinder would only check this database when a user signed up for a paid subscription with a credit card.

Tinder will soon make voluntary ID Verification available globally

Gaming

Image Source: The Pokémon Company

Pokémon Unite will come to iOS and Android on September 22, The Pokémon Company announced during a livestream this week. The strategic battle game first launched on Nintendo Switch in late July.
Developer Konami announced a new game, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, which will come exclusively to Apple Arcade. The game is described as a “full-fledged side-scrolling action game,” featuring a roster of iconic characters from the classic game series. The company last year released another version of Castelvania on the App Store and Google Play.
Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle has now surpassed $3 billion in player spending since its 2015 debut, reported Sensor Tower. The game from Bandai Namco took 20 months to reach the figure after hitting the $2 billion milestone in 2019. The new landmark sees the game joining other top-grossers, including Clash Royale, Lineage M and others.
Sensor Tower’s mobile gaming advertising report revealed data on top ad networks in the mobile gaming market, and their market share. It also found puzzle games were among the top advertisers on gaming-focused networks like Chartboost, Unity, IronSource and Vungle. On less game-focused networks, mid-core games were top titles, like Call of Duty: Mobile and Top War.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Health & Fitness

Apple is reportedly scaling back HealthHabit, an internal app for Apple employees that allowed them to track fitness goals, talk to clinicians and coaches at AC Wellness (a doctors’ group Apple works with) and manage hypertension. According to Insider, 50 employees had been tasked to work on the project.
Samsung launched a new product for Galaxy smartphones in partnership with healthcare nonprofit The Commons Project, that allows U.S. users to save a verifiable copy of their vaccination card in the Samsung Pay digital wallet.

Image Credits: Samsung

Adtech

Samsung said it’s removing ads shown in its default apps, Samsung Pay, Samsung Weather and Samsung Theme, to address widespread criticism that a flagship phone’s core apps shouldn’t be ruined with ads.

Government & Policy

China cited 43 apps, including Tencent’s WeChat and an e-reader from Alibaba, for illegally transferring user data. The regulator said the apps had transferred users location data and contact list and harassed them with pop-up windows. The apps have until August 25 to make changes before being punished.

Security & Privacy

A VICE report reveals a fascinating story about a jailbreaking community member who had served as a double agent by spying for Apple’s security team. Andrey Shumeyko, whose online handles included JVHResearch and YRH04E, would advertise leaked apps, manuals and stolen devices on Twitter and Discord. He would then tell Apple things like which Apple employees were leaking confidential info, which reporters would talk to leakers, who sold stolen iPhone prototypes and more. Shumeyko decided to share his story because he felt Apple took advantage of him and didn’t compensate him for the work.

Funding and M&A

South Korea’s GS Retail Co. Ltd will buy Delivery Hero’s food delivery app Yogiyo in a deal valued at 800 billion won ($685 million USD). Yogiyo is the second-largest food delivery app in South Korea, with a 25% market share.

Gaming platform Roblox acquired a Discord rival, Guilded, which allows users to have text and voice conversations, organize communities around events and calendars and more. Deal terms were not disclosed. Guilded raised $10.2 million in venture funding. Roblox’s stock fell by 7% after the company reported earnings this week, after failing to meet Wall Street expectations.

Roblox acquires Discord competitor Guilded

Travel app Hopper raised $175 million in a Series G round of funding led by GPI Capital, valuing the business at over $3.5 billion. The company raised a similar amount just last year, but is now benefiting from renewed growth in travel following COVID-19 vaccinations and lifting restrictions.

Indian quiz app maker Zupee raised $30 million in a Series B round of funding led by Silicon Valley-based WestCap Group and Tomales Bay Capital. The round values the company at $500 million, up 5x from last year.

Danggeun Market, the publisher of South Korea’s hyperlocal community app Karrot, raised $162 million in a Series D round of funding led by DST Global. The round values the business at $2.7 billion and will be used to help the company launch its own payments platform, Karrot Pay.

Bangalore-based fintech app Smallcase raised $40 million in Series C funding round led by Faering Capital and Premji Invest, with participation from existing investors, as well as Amazon. The Robinhood-like app has over 3 million users who are transacting about $2.5 billion per year.

Social listening app Earbuds raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Ecliptic Capital. Founded by NFL star Jason Fox, the app lets anyone share their favorite playlists, livestream music like a DJ or comment on others’ music picks.

Social listening app Earbuds raises $3 million in Series A funding

U.S. neobank app One raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Progressive Investment Company (the insurance giant’s investment arm), bringing its total raise to date to $66 million. The app offers all-in-one banking services and budgeting tools aimed at middle-income households who manage their finances on a weekly basis.

Public Markets

Indian travel booking app ixigo is looking to raise Rs 1,600 crore in its initial public offering, The Economic Times reported this week.

Trading app Robinhood disappointed in its first quarterly earnings as a publicly traded company, when it posted a net loss of $502 million, or $2.16 per share, larger than Wall Street forecasts. This overshadowed its beat on revenue ($565 million versus $521.8 million expected) and its more than doubling of MAUs to 21.3 million in Q2. Also of note, the company said dogecoin made up 62% of its crypto revenue in Q2.

Downloads

Polycam (update)

Image Credits: Polycam

3D scanning software maker Polycam launched a new 3D capture tool, Photo Mode, that allows iPhone and iPad users to capture professional-quality 3D models with just an iPhone. While the app’s scanner before had required the use of the lidar sensor built into newer devices like the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro models, the new Photo Mode feature uses just an iPhone’s camera. The resulting 3D assets are ready to use in a variety of applications, including 3D art, gaming, AR/VR and e-commerce. Data export is available in over a dozen file formats, including .obj, .gtlf, .usdz and others. The app is a free download on the App Store, with in-app purchases available.

Jiobit (update)

Jiobit, the tracking dongle acquired by family safety and communication app Life360, this week partnered with emergency response service Noonlight to offer Jiobit Protect, a premium add-on that offers Jiobit users access to an SOS Mode and Alert Button that work with the Jiobit mobile app. SOS Mode can be triggered by a child’s caregiver when they detect — through notifications from the Jiobit app — that a loved one may be in danger. They can then reach Noonlight’s dispatcher who can facilitate a call to 911 and provide the exact location of the person wearing the Jiobit device, as well as share other details, like allergies or special needs, for example.

Tweets

When your app redesign goes wrong…

Image Credits: Twitter.com

Prominent App Store critic Kosta Eleftheriou shut down his FlickType iOS app this week after too many frustrations with App Review. He cited rejections that incorrectly argued that his app required more access than it did — something he had successfully appealed and overturned years ago. Attempted follow-ups with Apple were ignored, he said.

Image Credits: Twitter.com

Anyone have app ideas?

#911, #ac-wellness, #ad-networks, #afghanistan, #alibaba, #amazon, #amy-klobuchar, #android, #app-store, #apple, #apple-arcade, #apps, #arkansas, #audius, #bandai-namco, #bangalore, #chartboost, #coinbase, #computing, #control-center, #danggeun-market, #delivery-hero, #disney, #dst-global, #e-commerce, #e-reader, #e2e-encryption, #ecliptic-capital, #epic, #facebook, #faering-capital, #food, #google, #gpi-capital, #guilded, #hbo, #hdmi, #healthcare, #instagram, #ios, #ipad, #iphone, #ironsource, #itunes, #jason-fox, #john-thune, #kabul, #konami, #kosta-eleftheriou, #lens-studio, #microsoft, #mobile-app, #mobile-applications, #mobile-devices, #netflix, #nfl, #nintendo, #noonlight, #operating-systems, #pinterest, #play-store, #player, #pokemon-company, #roblox, #samsung, #sensor-tower, #silicon-valley, #smartphones, #snap, #snapchat, #software, #sony, #south-korea, #spotify, #svp, #taliban, #tc, #this-week-in-apps, #tiktok, #travel-app, #united-states, #wand

TechCrunch 2:52 pm on August 18, 2021
Tags: Bitcoin ( 150 ), Bitpanda ( 13 ), blockchain ( 200 ), Circle ( 9 ), coinbase, crypto ( 62 ), cryptocurrencies ( 108 ), EC Newsletter ( 147 ), ethereum ( 71 ), Fundings & Exits ( 2,233 ), stablecoin ( 11 ), Startups ( 5,133 ), TC ( 10,178 ), The Exchange ( 343 ), USD Coin ( 4 )

Crypto world shows signs of being rather bullish

Welcome back to The Exchange. Today we’re doing something fun with crypto.

Sure, we could write more about how insurtech valuations are under fresh pressure after Hippo’s Q2 earnings report — we spoke to the company’s president yesterday; more to come — or the latest stock market movements in China. There are big rounds worth considering as well. Roblox reported earnings this week. And Monday.com’s earnings pushed its shares sharply higher yesterday. There’s lots of interesting news to chew on.

But instead of all that, we’re digging back into crypto. Why? Because there are some rather bullish trends that indicate the world of blockchain is maturing and creating a raft of winning players

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Writing about crypto is always a little risky. Cybersecurity folks will complain that we’re abusing the phrase crypto, despite the fact that language always evolves. And Bitcoin maximalists aren’t going to find much below that underscores their core thesis that every coin not mentioned in Satoshi’s whitepaper is, in fact, a scam. Save your tweets, please.

But if you care more generally about the larger global cryptoeconomy, it’s time to imbibe some good news. Our goal is to highlight a few recent trends and then talk a little about what we might see coming from startups.

Sound good? Let’s get busy.

Encouraging news from your local distributed ledger

The Exchange finds rising NFT volumes bullish, and we have a new thesis for what the value proposition is for such digital assets. The rising tide of mega-rounds for crypto exchanges belies not only the worldwide demand for access to crypto, but also sets the stage for a global cohort of stable, well-funded and trustworthy on-ramps to the crypto world — and, of course, more exchanges imply lower fees over time.

Non-exchange crypto fees are also bullish. And then there’s a wrinkle to the stablecoin game and what sort of economics things like USDC may command in time. We have notes from an interview with Circle to help us there.

NFTs and the concept of joy

I don’t think anyone actually understands what the metaverse is. But the possibility that, in time, unique assets on particular chains — NFTs — will have a part to play in larger digital worlds seems like a reasonable conjecture. One can easily imagine life, as we all become Increasingly Online, leaning on human desires for scarcity as a method of showing status. NFTs will help meet that demand in certain digital ecosystems. Games, probably, though what we consider a game will also evolve as VR becomes more mainstream.

But that future is not here yet. So, what value are NFTs providing today that makes them potentially worthwhile? Joy.

#bitcoin, #bitpanda, #blockchain, #circle, #coinbase, #crypto, #cryptocurrencies, #ec-newsletter, #ethereum, #fundings-exits, #stablecoin, #startups, #tc, #the-exchange, #usd-coin

TechCrunch 2:00 pm on August 14, 2021
Tags: Bitcoin ( 150 ), coinbase, Cryptocurrency ( 287 ), equity ( 147 ), Equity podcast ( 154 ), Fundings & Exits ( 2,233 ), Startups ( 5,133 )

Crypto’s coming of age moment

This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We’re doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter.

As a small programming note, I forgot to tell the folks who chimed in during the chat that we were recording it, so we had to cut most the Q&A portion of the show. We got Ezra’s permission, thankfully. The mixup was a bummer as we learned a lot. In the future, we’ll not make that mistake and keep all the voices.

So, what did we talk about? The following:

The current state of crypto regulation in America, and how the government may screw everything up. In short, tech moves fast, and government moves slow. This creates friction.
Coinbase kicked the ever-loving shit out of its Q2 earnings. But as it turns out the future for trading-powered companies could include a few quarters of slower results.
And everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase. You can understand why. The company is printing cash lately, helping drive more investment into localized exchanges in different markets.

Ok, we’re back Monday with your regularly scheduled programming!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

</d

iv>

#bitcoin, #coinbase, #cryptocurrency, #equity, #equity-podcast, #fundings-exits, #startups

TechCrunch 9:40 pm on August 10, 2021
Tags: Amazon ( 830 ), Artificial Intelligence ( 1,425 ), coinbase, Crowdfunding ( 32 ), EC roundup ( 18 ), Extra Crunch Roundup ( 46 ), indiegogo ( 14 ), Influencer Marketing ( 13 ), Kickstarter ( 24 ), Startups ( 5,133 ), TC ( 10,178 ), Uber ( 357 )

Extra Crunch roundup: Influencer marketing, China’s tech clampdown, drafting growth teams

Before you hire a marketing consultant who doesn’t understand your products or commit to a CMO who has several years of experience — but none in your sector — consider influencer marketing.

If the phrase evokes images of celebrities hawking hard seltzer, think again: An influencer can be as humble as an enthusiastic Reddit user who manages your Telegram channel.

According to Uber growth marketing manager Jonathan Martinez:

“ … You don’t need to find influencers with millions of followers. Instead, lean toward microinfluencers for testing, which will bring cost efficiency and the ability to sponsor a diverse range of people.”

If your startup has a clear brand pitch, “an enticing offer” and “clear next steps,” you’re ready to reach out to influencers, he says.

In a guest post, Martinez explains how to structure offers that will maximize conversions and keep your representatives motivated to promote your products and services.

Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members.
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

Image Credits: Julian Shapiro

This morning, we published an interview with growth expert Julian Shapiro, a founder and angel investor who also advises startups on the best way to present themselves.

Marketing is data-driven, but good storytelling is an art, says Shapiro.

To connect with consumers on an emotional level, “you need a mix of goodwill, what-we-stand-for ideology, social prestige and customer delight — among other affinity-building ingredients.”

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!

Walter Thompson

Senior Editor, TechCrunch

@yourprotagonist

Early-stage brands should also unlock the power of influencers

The art of startup storytelling with Julian Shapiro

Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

“In celebration of Coinbase’s earnings report today, investors poured a mountain of cash into one of the company’s global competitors,” Alex Wilhelm writes in The Exchange.

Rolling up his sleeves, he dug into numbers from Coinbase, FalconX and FTX to give readers some perspective on the state of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase

How to hire and structure a growth team

colorful blocks with people icons over wooden table

Image Credits: tomertu (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Companies that have reached $5 million to $10 million in annual revenue are more likely to assemble growth teams; it’s a smart investment for any startup that’s achieved product-market fit.

It can also be potentially disruptive: Early marketing and product managers may feel sidelined by new cross-functional teams that suddenly take a leadership role.

In a detailed walkthrough, senior director of growth at OpenView Sam Richard explains the core players needed to build a growth team and how to integrate them into the organization smoothly, and shares some useful experiments to run.

“Don’t expect a single hire to scratch the growth itch for you,” Richard warns.

“A brilliant hire is going to come up with ideas, but will absolutely need a team to support them, turn them into experiments and then make them a reality.”

How to hire and structure a growth team

Indiegogo’s CEO on how crowdfunding navigated the pandemic

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

In an interview with Brian Heater, Indiegogo CEO Andy Yang spoke about how the pandemic has impacted the crowdfunding platform, the challenges of stepping into the role after the previous CEO departed, and how the company reached profitability.

The company wasn’t profitable when you joined?

We weren’t profitable. I joined and then we cut to profitability, or at least kind of a neutral state, and with any kind of change in leadership, some tenured folks opted out, and we basically became a new team overnight to kind of re-found the company, and we’ve been slowly adding people over the last couple years, but always with that eye on profitability and controlling our own destiny.

Indiegogo’s CEO on how crowdfunding navigated the pandemic

Kickstarter’s CEO on the future of crowdfunding

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Last week, Kickstarter announced that people have backed more than 200,000 projects with $6 billion in pledges since the company launched in 2009. Just 15 months ago, it crossed the $5 billion threshold.

Brian Heater spoke to CEO Aziz Hasan, who took over in 2019, about last year’s substantial of layoffs, the pandemic’s long-term impact on crowdfunding, and how he’s working to build a more resilient company:

I think for us some of the most important things are to really just understand how we’re operating the business, making sure that we are sufficient in the buffer that we have for the business to make sure that we’re operating in a way that we can feel confident that the team is going to have some stability, that they’re going to have this resilience.

Kickstarter’s CEO on the future of crowdfunding

Craft your pitch deck around ‘that one thing that can really hook an investor’

We frequently run articles with advice for founders who are working on pitch decks. It’s a fundamental step in every startup’s journey, and there are myriad ways to approach the task.

Michelle Davey of telehealth staffing and services company Wheel and Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners appeared on Extra Crunch Live recently to analyze Wheel’s Series A pitch.

Nof said entrepreneurs should candidly explain to potential investors what they’ll need to believe to back their startup.

” … It takes a lot of guesswork out of the equation for the investor and it reorients them to focus on the right problem set that you’re solving,” he said.

“You get this one shot to kind of influence what they think they need to believe to get an investment here … if you don’t do that … we could get pretty off base.”

Craft your pitch deck around ‘that one thing that can really hook an investor’

Online retailers: Stop trying to beat Amazon

Image of a shop owner taking a photograph of a pair of shoes before mailing to represent how small businesses can compete with Amazon.

Image Credits: TravelCouples (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Going up against global e-commerce behemoth Amazon might seem futile, but smaller players can leverage value adds that give them a leg up when it comes to ensuring a loyal customer base, says Kenny Small, vice president SAP and Enterprise at Qualitest Group.

“The reality is that Amazon’s true unique selling proposition is its distribution network,” he writes in a guest post. “Online retailers will not be able to compete on this point because Amazon’s distribution network is so fast.

“Instead, it’s important to focus on areas where they can excel — without having to become a third-party seller on Amazon’s platform.”

Online retailers: Stop trying to beat Amazon

The China tech crackdown continues

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Edtech and fintech have been in the Chinese Communist Party crosshairs in recent weeks — now, chat apps and gaming are among the targets.

Beijing filed a civil suit against Tencent over claims that its WeChat Youth Mode flouts laws protecting minors, and state media criticized the gaming industry as the digital equivalent of passing out drugs to kids, Alex Wilhelm writes in The Exchange.

He writes that the “news appears to indicate that we should expect more of the same as we’ve seen in recent months from the Chinese government: More complaints about the impact of ‘excessive’ capital in its industries, more tumbling share prices and more held IPOs.”

The China tech crackdown continues

5 ways AI can help mitigate the global shipping crisis

Image Credits: Yuichiro Chino (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

In an increasingly on-demand world, shipping delays and disruptions are a major roadblock to customer happiness.

AI can help, says Ahmer Inam, chief artificial intelligence officer at Pactera EDGE, who offers five strategies for using AI that can help startups understand supply chain disruptions and prepare for a Plan B.

“While AI won’t protect startups, manufacturers and retailers from these types of disruptions in the future, it can help them sense, anticipate, reroute and respond to them more effectively.”

5 ways AI can help mitigate the global shipping crisis

#amazon, #artificial-intelligence, #coinbase, #crowdfunding, #ec-roundup, #extra-crunch-roundup, #indiegogo, #influencer-marketing, #kickstarter, #startups, #tc, #uber

TechCrunch 9:06 pm on August 10, 2021
Tags: blockchain ( 200 ), coinbase, cryptocurrency exchange ( 4 ), Earnings ( 150 ), TC ( 10,178 )

Coinbase crushes Q2 expectations, notes Q3 trading volume is trending lower

After the bell today, Coinbase reported another period of impressive results in its second quarter earnings report.

During the quarter, Coinbase’s total revenue reached $2.23 billion, which helped the company generate net income of $1.61 billion in the three-month period. The company benefited from a one-time line item worth $737.5 million, which stemmed from what Coinbase described as a “tax benefit” from its direct listing earlier the quarter.

This puts us in the odd position of leaning more heavily on the company’s adjusted EBITDA metric, a figure that we usually discount, rather than the stricter net income result. This quarter the adjusted metric is actually a bit clearer regarding the company’s regular profitability. Coinbase posted adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion in the period.

The company easily bested expectations, with the market expecting revenues of just $1.85 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $961.5 million, per Yahoo Finance.

Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase

All that’s well and good, but the company provided a fascinating set of data for us to peruse that may help us better understand where the crypto economy stands today. Let’s get into the details.

Trading volume

There are two datasets from Coinbase’s Q2 that we need. The first deals with monthly transacting users, and overall trading volume:

Seeing Coinbase continue to add MTUs in the second quarter was impressive, as was the company’s Q2 trading volume result in light of the falling platform asset figure. Quite simply, Coinbase managed to accrete trading volume despite generally falling crypto prices over the time period in question.

Or as the company put it, “[d]espite price movements, we saw billions of dollars of net asset
inflows and new customers added throughout Q2.”

The next dataset deals with a breakdown of trading volume by source, and type:

The incremental growth in retail volume from Q1 2021 to Q2 2021 is impressive for a single quarter, frankly, but the pace at which Coinbase added institutional volume in the quarter is even stronger. It’s a huge result.

For the more crypto-focused than financials-focused out there, the second set of numbers is even more notable. Ethereum trading volume beat bitcoin trading volume, while “other” was more than twice what bitcoin itself managed.

A changing of the guard? The company listed three reasons for why this happened, the second of which is the most interesting. Per the earnings report:

[The mix shift was driven by] meaningful growth in Ethereum trading volumes, surpassing Bitcoin trading volumes on Coinbase for the first time driven by growth in the DeFi and NFT ecosystems (where Ethereum is an important underlying blockchain), and increased demand driven by our ETH2 staking product.

Basically, the neat stuff that the Ethereum blockchain enables is driving volume in its underlying coin, ether. Bitcoin may be the oldest crypto, but its crown may be starting to rust. Bitcoin remains the largest asset on Coinbase, at 47 percent, however.

Now let’s talk revenues.

Top line

While institutional trading volume was an impressive source of growth for Coinbase, the company’s revenue breakdown remained retail-heavy. Here’s the data:

The transaction revenue growth from Q1 to Q2 speaks for itself, and was a key driver of the company’s strong second-quarter aggregate results. But perhaps more notable was the huge differential in subscription and services revenue at the company, growing nearly 100 percent from $56.4 million in Q1 2021 to $102.6 million in the most recent period.

Certainly, Coinbase remains a transaction-led company, but in revenue terms, its third line-item is becoming material.

Now, the somewhat bad news.

What about Q3 2021?

Let’s start with how Coinbase describes the start to its third quarter:

In July, retail MTUs and total Trading Volume were 6.3 million and $57.0 billion, respectively, as crypto asset prices and crypto asset volatility declined significantly relative to Q2 levels. August month-to-date, retail MTUs and Trading Volume levels have slightly improved compared to July levels but remain lower than earlier in the year. As a result, we believe retail MTUs and total Trading Volume will be lower in Q3 as compared to Q2.

In contrast, Q2 MTUs were 8.8 million and total trading volume, pro-rated for each month of the quarter, came to $154 billion. Therefore, Coinbase had a far smaller July than what it managed on a monthly basis in Q2. That August is trending better than July is a small consolation, but it does appear that Coinbase will be a smaller business in Q3 than it was in Q1 or Q2.

If you were curious why Coinbase’s stock is not flying in the wake of its strong Q2 results, this is likely why. Of course, any serious investor in a crypto exchange is aware of how variable results can be in the sector. So a decrease after a few periods of strong results is not a huge lump to swallow.

Coinbase is worth $267.55 per share in after-hours trading as of the time of writing, off around three-quarters of a percent. That’s not even a haircut.

All told, Coinbase’s second quarter was excellent.

#blockchain, #coinbase, #cryptocurrency-exchange, #earnings, #tc

TechCrunch 1:44 pm on August 10, 2021
Tags: Bitcoin ( 150 ), coinbase, cryptocurrency exchange ( 4 ), EC Fintech ( 80 ), EC Newsletter ( 147 ), falconx ( 2 ), finance ( 1,065 ), FTX ( 20 ), Fundings & Exits ( 2,233 ), Startups ( 5,133 ), TC ( 10,178 ), The Exchange ( 343 )

Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase

In celebration of Coinbase’s earnings report today, investors poured a mountain of cash into one of the company’s global competitors.

I’m kidding, of course, but today really is Coinbase’s earnings day, and private investors really did just push $210 million into another exchange.

The company, FalconX, is now worth $3.75 billion. As Bloomberg notes, that’s a 5x valuation jump in less than half a year. FalconX raised a smaller $50 million round in March, notably in part from Coinbase Ventures.

The FalconX news should not surprise. Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX just raised $90 million, reaching a $1 billion valuation in the process. This past weekend, Indonesian cryptocurrency exchange Pintu raised $35 million. And earlier this year, Hong Kong-based crypto exchange FTX raised $900 million at an $18 billion valuation. There are other examples.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

It’s a lot of capital in a global race to fund the next Coinbase, I reckon.

And you can’t fault investors in their hunt. After all, Coinbase has proven to be an incredibly powerful business when crypto interest is high; trading revenues at the U.S. crypto exchange rose to $1.80 billion in the first quarter of 2021, per its most recent 10-Q filing. Coinbase managed to juice its revenue haul for $771.5 million in net income. In per-share terms, Coinbase earned $3.05 per diluted piece of equity.

It was an impressive result. Today, investors are expecting Coinbase to report $1.77 billion to $1.83 billion in revenue, depending on which analyst summary you prefer, and earnings per share of around $2.57. You can somewhat easily puzzle out what sort of net income that EPS figure represents, given the company’s Q1 results.

I’d normally argue that Coinbase’s results today would help set the tone for venture investment in the private sector and valuations for other crypto exchanges. But given the sheer amount of money that has recently flowed into a coterie of startups around the globe hoping to build the Coinbase of their market, the concept seems somewhat moot.

Instead, Coinbase’s earnings and comments about the market will simply help us understand the playground in which other crypto exchanges are currently playing, admittedly from a decidedly U.S.-centric perspective. Coinbase’s last quarter saw it generate some 81% of its revenues from its domestic market, as a data point.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s no fun to be had. We can do some math regarding trading volumes and valuations. Since we have Coinbase’s trading volume data, we can parse other exchanges for their own shared data and see which seem expensive — or cheap. So, let’s do just that. Into the numbers!

Trading volume as revenue proxy

Per its 10-Q filing concerning the quarter ended March 31, 2021, Coinbase reported that it saw trading volume of $334.74 billion, up 1,022% from its Q1 2020 number of $29.83 billion. The company also reported that its transaction — trading — revenues for the period were $1.54 billion. So, Coinbase generated around $0.0046 per dollar of traded crypto on its platform in the period.

It goes without saying, but we’re wandering into the realm of speculative math, which means that everything we’re doing today is directional rather than absolute. Our goal of seeing how other exchanges are valued based on their trading volumes will be useful, but not definitive. We’ll have to wait for more S-1s and similar filings to get to full confidence.

#bitcoin, #coinbase, #cryptocurrency-exchange, #ec-fintech, #ec-newsletter, #falconx, #finance, #ftx, #fundings-exits, #startups, #tc, #the-exchange

TechCrunch 7:30 pm on August 7, 2021
Tags: ADT, AfterPay ( 14 ), alibaba ( 89 ), Android ( 405 ), ant group ( 27 ), api ( 181 ), app maker ( 4 ), app-store ( 211 ), Apple ( 1,518 ), Apps ( 1,721 ), Australia ( 572 ), Automattic ( 17 ), Beijing ( 44 ), Biden administration ( 63 ), Canada ( 541 ), China ( 2,756 ), cloud services ( 33 ), coinbase, Coinbase Card ( 2 ), computing ( 844 ), day one ( 2 ), dragoneer investment group ( 10 ), driver ( 76 ), Dropbox ( 37 ), duolingo ( 43 ), emojipedia ( 2 ), eta ( 4 ), Facebook ( 1,059 ), fintech startup ( 20 ), food delivery ( 74 ), Game Center ( 2 ), game developer ( 2 ), general atlantic ( 26 ), General Partner ( 38 ), Georgia ( 680 ), gif ( 9 ), Google ( 1,331 ), Hyperconnect ( 5 ), Instagram ( 242 ), iOS ( 329 ), ios devices ( 8 ), ipad ( 170 ), iPhone ( 415 ), Italy ( 487 ), iTunes ( 48 ), JAM Fund ( 4 ), Justin Mateen ( 7 ), Kuaishou ( 12 ), Kuda ( 3 ), law enforcement ( 73 ), London ( 144 ), M&A ( 297 ), Maine ( 90 ), Meituan ( 12 ), Microsoft ( 715 ), middle east ( 160 ), Mobile ( 758 ), mobile app ( 57 ), Mobile Applications ( 622 ), mobile devices ( 44 ), online creators ( 7 ), OnStar ( 3 ), operating system ( 77 ), Palta, Playdemic, quora ( 9 ), Sean Rad ( 3 ), sensor tower ( 20 ), sequoia capital ( 113 ), smartphone ( 105 ), Snap ( 76 ), Snapchat ( 89 ), Social Network ( 54 ), social networking ( 27 ), Software ( 643 ), South Africa ( 220 ), South Asia ( 33 ), Spotify ( 247 ), stories ( 15 ), Target Global ( 27 ), TC ( 10,178 ), this week in apps ( 67 ), tiktok ( 355 ), twitch ( 84 ), United Kingdom ( 324 ), United States ( 4,489 ), Valar Ventures ( 18 ), viasat ( 8 ), VNV Global ( 3 ), wi-fi ( 30 ), wordpress.com ( 2 ), Zedge, Zynga ( 20 )

This Week in Apps: In-app events hit the App Store, TikTok tries Stories, Apple reveals new child safety plan

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Apple expands support for student IDs on iPhone and Apple Watch ahead of the fall semester. Tens of thousands more U.S. and Canadian colleges will now support mobile student IDs in the Apple Wallet app, including Auburn University, Northern Arizona University, University of Maine, New Mexico State University and others.

Apple was accused of promoting scam apps in the App Store’s featured section. The company’s failure to properly police its store is one thing, but to curate an editorial list that actually includes the scams is quite another. One of the games rounded up under “Slime Relaxations,” an already iffy category to say the least, was a subscription-based slime simulator that locked users into a $13 AUD per week subscription for its slime simulator. One of the apps on the curated list didn’t even function, implying that Apple’s editors hadn’t even tested the apps they recommend.

This is infuriating. How is Apple *featuring* these scams?

Let's take a look at one of these apps!

"Jelly: Slime simulator, ASMR"

1/https://t.co/lDTn8eEVfz pic.twitter.com/VyYKUSLdJE

— Simeon (@twolivesleft) August 5, 2021

Tax changes hit the App Store. Apple announced tax and price changes for apps and IAPs in South Africa, the U.K. and all territories using the Euro currency, all of which will see decreases. Increases will occur in Georgia and Tajikistan, due to new tax changes. Proceeds on the App Store in Italy will be increased to reflect a change to the Digital Services Tax effective rate.

Game Center changes, too. Apple said that on August 4, a new certificate for server-based Game Center verification will be available via the publicKeyUrl.

Fintech

Robinhood stock jumped more than 24% to $46.80 on Tuesday after initially falling 8% on its first day of trading last week, after which it had continued to trade below its opening price of $38.

Square’s Cash app nearly doubled its gross profit to $546 million in Q2, but also reported a $45 million impairment loss on its bitcoin holdings.

Coinbase’s app now lets you buy your cryptocurrency using Apple Pay. The company previously made its Coinbase Card compatible with Apple Pay in June.

Social

Sendit gains 3.5M downloads after Snapchat suspends top anonymous apps YOLO and LMK

An anonymous app called Sendit, which relies on Snap Kit to function, is climbing the charts of the U.S. App Store after Snap suspended similar apps, YOLO and LMK. Snap was sued by the parent of child who was bullied through those apps, which led to his suicide. Sendit also allows for anonymity, and reviews compare it to YOLO. But some reviews also complained about bullying. This isn’t the first time Snap has been involved in a lawsuit related to a young person’s death related to its app. The company was also sued for its irresponsible “speed filter” that critics said encouraged unsafe driving. Three young men died using the filter, which captured them doing 123 mph.

TikTok is testing Stories. As Twitter’s own Stories integrations, Fleets, shuts down, TikTok confirmed it’s testing its own Stories product. The TikTok Stories appear in a left-hand sidebar and allow users to post ephemeral images or video that disappear in 24 hours. Users can also comment on Stories, which are public to their mutual friends and the creator. Stories on TikTok may make more sense than they did on Twitter, as TikTok is already known as a creative platform and it gives the app a more familiar place to integrate its effects toolset and, eventually, advertisements.

TikTok confirms pilot test of TikTok Stories is now underway

Facebook has again re-arranged its privacy settings. The company continually moves around where its privacy features are located, ostensibly to make them easier to find. But users then have to re-learn where to go to find the tools they need, after they had finally memorized the location. This time, the settings have been grouped into six top-level categories, but “privacy” settings have been unbundled from one location to be scattered among the other categories.

A VICE report details ban-as-a-service operations that allow anyone to harass or censor online creators on Instagram. Assuming you can find it, one operation charged $60 per ban, the listing says.

TikTok merged personal accounts with creator accounts. The change means now all non-business accounts on TikTok will have access to the creator tools under Settings, including Analytics, Creator Portal, Promote and Q&A. TikTok shared the news directly with subscribers of its TikTok Creators newsletter in August, and all users will get a push notification alerting them to the change, the company told us.

Discord now lets users customize their profile on its apps. The company added new features to its iOS and Android apps that let you add a description, links and emojis and select a profile color. Paid subscribers can also choose an image or GIF as their banner.

Twitter Spaces added a co-hosting option that allows up to two co-hosts to be added to the live audio chat rooms. Now Spaces can have one main host, two co-hosts and up to 10 speakers. Co-hosts have all the moderation abilities as hosts, but can’t add or remove others as co-hosts.

making it easier to manage your Space…introducing co-hosting!

– hosts have two co-host invites they can send
– the table just got bigger: 1 host, 2 co-hosts, and 10 speakers
– co-hosts can help invite speakers, manage requests, remove participants, pin Tweets and more! pic.twitter.com/s76JFbhTL2

— Spaces (@TwitterSpaces) August 5, 2021

Messaging

Tencent reopened new user sign-ups for its WeChat messaging app, after having suspended registrations last week for unspecified “technical upgrades.” The company, like many other Chinese tech giants, had to address new regulations from Beijing impacting the tech industry. New rules address how companies handle user data collection and storage, antitrust behavior and other checks on capitalist “excess.” The gaming industry is now worried it’s next to be impacted, with regulations that would restrict gaming for minors to fight addiction.

WhatsApp is adding a new feature that will allow users to send photos and videos that disappear after a single viewing. The Snapchat-inspired feature, however, doesn’t alert you if the other person takes a screenshot — as Snap’s app does. So it may not be ideal for sharing your most sensitive content.

WhatsApp photos and videos can now disappear after a single viewing

Telegram’s update expands group video calls to support up to 1,000 viewers. It also announced video messages can be recorded in higher quality and can be expanded, regular videos can be watched at 0.5 or 2x speed, screen sharing with sound is available for all video calls, including 1-on-1 calls, and more.

Streaming & Entertainment

American Airlines added free access to TikTok aboard its Viasat-equipped aircraft. Passengers will be able to watch the app’s videos for up to 30 minutes for free and can even download the app if it’s not already installed. After the free time, they can opt to pay for Wi-Fi to keep watching. Considering how easy it is to fall into multi-hour TikTok viewing sessions without knowing it, the addition of the addictive app could make long plane rides feel shorter. Or at least less painful.

Chinese TikTok rival Kuaishou saw stocks fall by more than 15% in Hong Kong, the most since its February IPO. The company is another victim of an ongoing market selloff triggered by increasing investor uncertainty related to China’s recent crackdown on tech companies. Beijing’s campaign to rein in tech has also impacted Tencent, Alibaba, Jack Ma’s Ant Group, food delivery company Meituan and ride-hailing company Didi. Also related, Kuaishou shut down its controversial app Zynn, which had been paying users to watch its short-form videos, including those stolen from other apps.

Twitch overtook YouTube in consumer spending per user in April 2021, and now sees $6.20 per download as of June compared with YouTube’s $5.60, Sensor Tower found.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Spotify confirmed tests of a new ad-supported tier called Spotify Plus, which is only $0.99 per month and offers unlimited skips (like free users get on the desktop) and the ability to play the songs you want, instead of only being forced to use shuffle mode.

The company also noted in a forum posting that it’s no longer working on AirPlay2 support, due to “audio driver compatibility” issues.

Mark Cuban-backed audio app Fireside asked its users to invest in the company via an email sent to creators which didn’t share deal terms. The app has yet to launch.

YouTube kicks off its $100 million Shorts Fund aimed at taking on TikTok by providing creators with cash incentives for top videos. Creators will get bonuses of $100 to $10,000 based on their videos’ performance.

YouTube’s $100 million Shorts Fund to challenge TikTok goes live

Dating

Match Group announced during its Q2 earnings it plans to add to several of the company’s brands over the next 12 to 24 months audio and video chat, including group live video, and other livestreaming technologies. The developments will be powered by innovations from Hyperconnect, the social networking company that this year became Match’s biggest acquisition to date when it bought the Korean app maker for a sizable $1.73 billion. Since then, Match was spotted testing group live video on Tinder, but says that particular product is not launching in the near-term. At least two brands will see Hyperconnect-powered integrations in 2021.

Match Group to add audio and video chat, including group live video, to its dating app portfolio

Photos

The Photo & Video category on U.S. app stores saw strong growth in the first half of the year, a Sensor Tower report found. Consumer spend among the top 100 apps grew 34% YoY to $457 million in Q2 2021, with the majority of the revenue (83%) taking place on iOS.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Gaming

Epic Games revealed the host of its in-app Rift Tour event is Ariana Grande, in the event that runs August 6-8.

Pokémon GO influencers threatened to boycott the game after Niantic removed the COVID safety measures that had allowed people to more easily play while social distancing. Niantic’s move seemed ill-timed, given the Delta variant is causing a new wave of COVID cases globally.

Pokémon GO influencers threaten a boycott after Niantic removes COVID safety measures

Health & Fitness

Apple kicked out an app called Unjected from the App Store. The new social app billed itself as a community for the unvaccinated, allowing like-minded users to connect for dating and friendships. Apple said the app violated its policies for COVID-19 content.

Google Pay expanded support for vaccine cards. In Australia, Google’s payments app now allows users to add their COVID-19 digital certification to their device for easy access. The option is available through Google’s newly updated Passes API which lets government agencies distribute digital versions of vaccine cards.

COVID Tech Connect, a U.S. nonprofit initially dedicated to collecting devices like phones and tablets for COVID ICU patients, has now launched its own app. The app, TeleHome, is a device-agnostic, HIPAA-compliant way for patients to place a video call for free at a time when the Delta variant is again filling ICU wards, this time with the unvaccinated — a condition that sometimes overlaps with being low-income. Some among the working poor have been hesitant to get the shot because they can’t miss a day of work, and are worried about side effects. Which is why the Biden administration offered a tax credit to SMBs who offered paid time off to staff to get vaccinated and recover.

As the delta variant surges, a nonprofit app lets hospital patients call home for free on any device

Popular journaling app Day One, which was recently acquired by WordPress.com owner Automattic, rolled out a new “Concealed Journals” feature that lets users hide content from others’ viewing. By tapping the eye icon, the content can be easily concealed on a journal by journal basis, which can be useful for those who write to their journal in public, like coffee shops or public transportation.

Edtech

Recently IPO’d language learning app Duolingo is developing a math app for kids. The company says it’s still “very early” in the development process, but will announce more details at its annual conference, Duocon, later this month.

Educational publisher Pearson launched an app that offers U.S. students access to its 1,500 titles for a monthly subscription of $14.99. the Pearson+ mobile app (ack, another +), also offers the option of paying $9.99 per month for access to a single textbook for a minimum of four months.

News & Reading

Quora jumps into the subscription economy. Still not profitable from ads alone, Quora announced two new products that allow its expert creators to monetize their content on its service. With Quora+ ($5/mo or $50/yr), subscribers can pay for any content that a creator paywalls. Creators can choose to enable a adaptive paywall that will use an algorithm to determine when to show the paywall. Another product, Spaces, lets creators write paywalled publications on Quora, similar to Substack. But only a 5% cut goes to Quora, instead of 10% on Substack.

Utilities

Google Maps on iOS added a new live location-sharing feature for iMessage users, allowing them to more easily show your ETA with friends and even how much battery life you have left. The feature competes with iMessage’s built-in location-sharing feature, and offers location sharing of 1 hour up to 3 days. The app also gained a dark mode.

Google Maps on iOS adds live location sharing in iMessage, home screen widget, dark mode

Security & Privacy

Controversial crime app Citizen launched a $20 per month “Protect” service that includes live agent support (who can refer calls to 911 if need be). The agents can gather your precise location, alert your designated emergency contacts, help you navigate to a safe location and monitor the situation until you feel safe. The system of live agent support is similar to in-car or in-home security and safety systems, like those from ADT or OnStar, but works with users out in the real world. The controversial part, however, is the company behind the product: Citizen has been making headlines for launching private security fleets outside law enforcement, and recently offered a reward in a manhunt for an innocent person based on unsubstantiated tips.

Funding and M&A

Square announced its acquisition of the “buy now, pay later” giant AfterPay in a $29 billion deal that values the Australian firm at more than 30% higher than the stock’s last closing price of AUS$96.66. AfterPay has served over 16 million customers and nearly 100,000 merchants globally, to date, and comes at a time when the BNPL space is heating up. Apple has also gotten into the market recently with an Affirm partnership in Canada.

Why Square is shelling out $29B to snag BNPL player Afterpay

Gaming giant Zynga acquired Chinese game developer StarLark, the team behind the mobile golf game Golf Rival, from Betta Games for $525 million in both cash and stock. Golf Rival is the second-largest mobile golf game behind Playdemic’s Golf Clash, and EA is in the process of buying that studio for $1.4 billion.

U.K.-based Humanity raised an additional $2.5 million for its app that claims to help slow down aging, bringing the total raise to date to $5 million. Backers include Calm’s co-founders, MyFitness Pal’s co-founder and others in the health space. The app works by benchmarking health advice against real-world data, to help users put better health practices into action.

YELA, a Cameo-like app for the Middle East and South Asia, raised $2 million led by U.S. investors that include Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and Sean Rad, general partner of RAD Fund. The app is focusing on signing celebrities in the regions it serves, where smartphone penetration is high and over 6% of the population is under 35.

London-based health and wellness app maker Palta raised a $100 million Series B led by VNV Global. The company’s products include Flo.Health, Simple Fasting, Zing Fitness Coach and others, which reach a combined 2.4 million active, paid subscribers. The funds will be used to create more mobile subscription products.

Emoji database and Wikipedia-like site Emojipedia was acquired by Zedge, the makers of a phone personalization app offering wallpapers, ringtones and more to 35 million MAUs. Deal terms weren’t disclosed. Emojipedia says the deal provides it with more stability and the opportunity for future growth. For Zedge, the deal provides….um, a popular web resource it thinks it can better monetize, we suspect.

Mental health app Revery raised $2 million led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program for its app that combines cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia with mobile gaming concepts. The company will focus on other mental health issues in the future.

London-based Nigerian-operating fintech startup Kuda raised a $55 million Series B, valuing its mobile-first challenger bank at $500 million. The inside round was co-led by Valar Ventures and Target Global.

Vietnamese payments provider VNLife raised $250 million in a round led by U.S.-based General Atlantic and Dragoneer Investment Group. PayPal Ventures and others also participated. The round values the business at over $1 billion.

Downloads

Mastodon for iPhone

Fans of decentralized social media efforts now have a new app. The nonprofit behind the open source decentralized social network Mastodon released an official iPhone app, aimed at making the network more accessible to newcomers. The app allows you to find and follow people and topics; post text, images, GIFs, polls, and videos; and get notified of new replies and reblogs, much like Twitter.

Xingtu

@_666eveITS SO COOL FRFR do u guys want a tutorial? #fypシ #醒图 #醒图app ♬ original sound – Ian Asher

TikTok users are teaching each other how to switch over to the Chinese App Store in order to get ahold of the Xingtu app for iOS. (An Android version is also available.) The app offers advanced editing tools that let users edit their face and body, like FaceTune, apply makeup, add filters and more. While image-editing apps can be controversial for how they can impact body acceptance, Xingtu offers a variety of artistic filters which is what’s primarily driving the demand. It’s interesting to see the lengths people will go to just to get a few new filters for their photos — perhaps making a case for Instagram to finally update its Post filters instead of pretending no one cares about their static photos anymore.

Tweets

Facebook still dominating top charts, but not the No. 1 spot:

The most downloaded app worldwide for July 2021 was @tiktok_us with more than 63M installs. @Facebook, @instagram, @messenger, and @WhatsApp rounded out the top 5: https://t.co/H9RMR5Pg9P #tiktok #topapps #mobileapps #mobilegrowth pic.twitter.com/srlDI07FeD

— Sensor Tower (@SensorTower) August 5, 2021

Not cool, Apple:

Apple promoting these slime apps again.

A few of them have $10+ weekly subscriptions.

One of them doesn’t even do anything.https://t.co/d0dKLCkiVF

— Beau Nouvelle (@BeauNouvelle) August 4, 2021

This user acquisition strategy:

Great feedback, wanna use/test @FlightyApp? Looks like you fly some based on your profile, and good feedback is my lifeblood.

— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) August 4, 2021

Maybe Stories don’t work everywhere:

if you see a Fleet no you didn't https://t.co/4rKI7f45PL

— Twitter (@Twitter) August 3, 2021

#adt, #afterpay, #alibaba, #android, #ant-group, #api, #app-maker, #app-store, #apple, #apps, #australia, #automattic, #beijing, #biden-administration, #canada, #china, #cloud-services, #coinbase, #coinbase-card, #computing, #day-one, #dragoneer-investment-group, #driver, #dropbox, #duolingo, #emojipedia, #eta, #facebook, #fintech-startup, #food-delivery, #game-center, #game-developer, #general-atlantic, #general-partner, #georgia, #gif, #google, #hyperconnect, #instagram, #ios, #ios-devices, #ipad, #iphone, #italy, #itunes, #jam-fund, #justin-mateen, #kuaishou, #kuda, #law-enforcement, #london, #ma, #maine, #meituan, #microsoft, #middle-east, #mobile, #mobile-app, #mobile-applications, #mobile-devices, #online-creators, #onstar, #operating-system, #palta, #playdemic, #quora, #sean-rad, #sensor-tower, #sequoia-capital, #smartphone, #snap, #snapchat, #social-network, #social-networking, #software, #south-africa, #south-asia, #spotify, #stories, #target-global, #tc, #this-week-in-apps, #tiktok, #twitch, #united-kingdom, #united-states, #valar-ventures, #viasat, #vnv-global, #wi-fi, #wordpress-com, #zedge, #zynga

INVESTMENTS

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Foto (oben): azrael74

Top Stories

OnlyFans to ban sexually explicit content

U.S. lawmakers demand info on TikTok’s plans for biometric data collection

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Platforms: Google

Augmented Reality

Fintech

Social

Photos

Messaging

Streaming & Entertainment

Dating

Gaming

Health & Fitness

Adtech

Government & Policy

Security & Privacy

Funding and M&A

Public Markets

Downloads

Polycam (update)

Jiobit (update)

Tweets

Encouraging news from your local distributed ledger

NFTs and the concept of joy

Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase

How to hire and structure a growth team

Indiegogo’s CEO on how crowdfunding navigated the pandemic

Kickstarter’s CEO on the future of crowdfunding

Craft your pitch deck around ‘that one thing that can really hook an investor’

Online retailers: Stop trying to beat Amazon

The China tech crackdown continues

5 ways AI can help mitigate the global shipping crisis

Trading volume

Top line

What about Q3 2021?

Trading volume as revenue proxy

Top Stories

Apple to scan for CSAM imagery

In-App Events appear on the App Store

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Fintech

Social

Messaging

Streaming & Entertainment

Dating

Photos

Gaming

Health & Fitness

Edtech

News & Reading

Utilities

Security & Privacy

Funding and M&A

Downloads

Mastodon for iPhone

Tweets