Bulletins

Bitcoin's price hit a new record

The cryptocurrency traded as high as $19,786.24 Monday, beating its 2017 high by about $3.

Bitcoin is up more than 169% in 2020 as a whole, and the Bitcoin Bulls see even more growth to come thanks to companies like PayPal helping bring crypto to the mainstream. All of which means the Winklevoss twins continue to be proven right, though their latest proclamation is really very bullish. "Our thesis is that Bitcoin is gold 2.0 and it will disrupt gold," Tyler Winklevoss told CNBC on Monday. "If it does that it has to have a market cap of $9 trillion. So we think bitcoin could price one day at $500,000 a bitcoin."

 David Pierce

David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's former editorial director. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.

Latest Bulletins

Now Tiger Global is slashing its tech bets, too

Tiger Global sold off its stakes in some high-flying companies as tech stocks took a tumble at the beginning of the year — particularly some that recently went public . The firm, known for taking controversially big bets on late-stage startups paired with a hands-off approach, slashed its entire stake in Bumble, Airbnb, Affirm, PayPal and DiDi this year.

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Is Elon Musk a bot?

Elon Musk is slamming the brakes on his deal to acquire Twitter due to what he considers a huge issue on the platform: the actual number of spam accounts. But what if Musk is part of the problem?

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Disney+ advertisers will have to keep it G-rated

Disney is opening up its flagship streaming service to advertising, but the company is being cautious: According to Variety, Disney+ won't allow alcohol-related or political ads to keep the service family-friendly.

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Apple is delaying its return to three days in office

Apple has once more delayed its plan to require employees to come to the office three days a week, although most workers were already required to return to the office twice a week. The company claimed that the rise in COVID-19 cases necessitated a pause in the controversial and much-protested ramp up, according to a Bloomberg report.

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The US hit a renewable energy milestone. Now comes the hard part.

Last year was a banner year for renewable power in the U.S. But there’s no time to rest on our laurels: If the country wants to meet its climate and emissions reduction goals, more solar panels and wind turbines need to be installed at an even faster pace.

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USDT investors have pulled out $7 billion in less than a week

Now, it’s tether taking a hit. The world's largest stablecoin has seen investors pull out $7 billion amid the ongoing crypto crash.

The market circulation of tether, also known as USDT, has dropped from about $83 billion on May 11 to around $76 billion on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap. The decline coincided with the crash of another major stablecoin, UST, and its sister cryptocurrency luna.

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Coinbase is slowing hiring, not tripling in size

Coinbase is reining in its hiring plans, according to a Monday blog post from president and COO Emilie Choi. Choi said she had shared the note with employees earlier, but wanted to announce the news publicly.

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Twitter wants Musk's takeover whether Musk likes it or not

Twitter asked shareholders to vote on Elon Musk's takeover of the company at a special meeting. In short, Twitter wants to move forward with the purchase whether Musk likes it or not.

The company asked shareholders in a proxy statement to vote in favor of the acquisition, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The date for the special meeting has not yet been set.

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Now a VC, Kevin Mandia thinks we don't need most security startups

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Twitter really is the public square, huh?

Twitter's prospective buyer is going about his acquisition in a rather unusual way. Elon Musk took to Twitter (naturally) on Monday to argue with CEO Parag Agrawal over the company's bot account estimates and during a conference Monday said renegotiating the deal for a lower price wasn't "out of the question." Does Musk actually want to buy this company?

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Microsoft's channel leader Rodney Clark is leaving the company

Microsoft channel chief Rodney Clark is leaving the technology giant to take a job at an outside company.

The 24-year Microsoft veteran’s departure comes just more than a year after being appointed to what he then described as a “destination role” and “dream job” at Microsoft. Last March, he replaced Gavriella Schuster, who had held the channel chief role for five years.

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Microsoft officially raises pay for some employees

Microsoft will raise employee pay through merit salary increases and larger stock grants, CEO Satya Nadella wrote in an email to employees on Monday. The decision follows similar salary bumps from other big tech companies.

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The feds finally caught someone trying to use crypto to escape sanctions

In a strongly worded ruling that suggested more than a passing familiarity with the caps-lock key, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui approved the first Justice Department criminal complaint against a U.S. citizen accused of using crypto in violation of sanctions Friday. The defendant, who remains unnamed, is accused of transferring $10 million in bitcoin to either Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Russia.

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Buffalo proves Twitch needs a racial equity audit, advocates say

Before a white supremacist killed 10 people in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo and livestreamed it on Twitch over the weekend, racial justice advocates had been calling on the company to study the rampant racism that has been so pervasive on the platform.

After Buffalo, those advocates say, Twitch is all out of reasons to refuse.

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Big Tech just took its Texas fight to SCOTUS

Tech industry groups NetChoice and CCIA have filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, asking the court to stay the Fifth Circuit's ruling this week which enabled Texas’s so-called social media “censorship” law to go into effect.

Protocol first reported Thursday that NetChoice and CCIA, the plaintiffs in the case, would file their application on Friday. The two groups had warned other advocates of their intention to file and asked for their support in the form of amicus briefs.

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California investors say Coinbase cost them 'untold millions'

On Nov. 17, the price of gyen, a crypto stablecoin, briefly spiked to $0.0234. The next day, the price fell back down to about $0.0087, approximately the worth of one Japanese yen — the fiat currency the stablecoin was supposed to be pegged to. Then, on Nov. 19, Coinbase froze trading, citing a “technical glitch.”

Some Coinbase users are still up in arms six months later, saying the marketplace misled them about the coin’s stability by listing it on the exchange. A group of California investors filed a lawsuit Thursday against Coinbase and gyen issuer GMO-Z Trust, saying they cost the plaintiffs “untold millions,” and are seeking to have it certified as a class action.

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Peloton will finally release a rowing machine

Peloton needs more people to buy its hardware and subscribe to its All-Access membership to turn its business around. Its next grand idea? Make a machine that people have been clamoring for for years.

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Robinhood's shares jumped. It can thank FTX's CEO.

Finally, Wall Street’s excited about Robinhood — thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried.

Robinhood shares rallied Friday after the FTX CEO disclosed in an SEC filing that he has acquired a 7.6% stake in the online brokerage. Robinhood’s stock was up about 20% in early trades, pushing the stock back up above $10.

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Google will use AI to make you look pretty on video

It's been a busy week of updates for workplace productivity tools: Calendly will let you screen meeting invites, Figma has dark mode, Superhuman is on Outlook now. Google also announced a slate of forthcoming Workspace updates at its I/O developer conference, some powered by AI. Many of the new features are aimed at making you look a lot less exhausted than you really are in Google Meet.

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Musk paused his Twitter takeover until he gets details on spam bots

Elon Musk paused his $44 billion Twitter takeover until he gets more information on the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform, he tweeted Friday.

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Affirm is bouncing back as its pay-later partnerships pay off

Affirm's stock took a beating this week after shares of small-business lender Upstart crashed, spooking investors generally about the fintech sector as markets dove and rising interest rates hung over the business. The "buy now, pay later" company turned things around with stronger-than-expected quarterly results. Its share price soared 33% after markets closed on Thursday to nearly $24.

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Tech groups to ask SCOTUS to toss Texas social media ruling

Tech groups fighting Texas’s social media “censorship” law may file an emergency application with the Supreme Court as early as Friday, according to two sources familiar with the case. The groups, NetChoice and CCIA, have said they plan to ask the justices to vacate the Fifth Circuit's Wednesday ruling, which lifted an injunction on the Texas law, allowing it to go into effect and prompting panic throughout the tech industry.

NetChoice and CCIA are now soliciting amicus briefs in their application to be filed by next week. NetChoice did not respond to Protocol's request for comment. CCIA wouldn't confirm its plans, but President Matt Schruers said in a statement, "We will take whatever steps are necessary to defend our constituents' First Amendment rights. These include the right not to be compelled by the government to carry dangerous content on their platforms."

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The crypto crash, explained in 1 chart

Bitcoin peaked in November above $60,000. Then came the Super Bowl ads, Crypto.com Arena and a flood of TikTok influencers promoting the latest altcoin. It wasn’t going to end well, was it?

The crypto crash has hit nearly every token and knocked even some stablecoins off their peg. But the carnage hasn’t been even. The luna token associated with the Terra blockchain lost almost all its value amid a run on its paired UST stablecoin. Bitcoin, ether and even dogecoin proved hardier than newer coins. The question now is when the market will find its bottom.

Unstablecoin: Terra halted its blockchain as UST tumbles toward $0

New activity on the Terra blockchain was halted Thursday as the luna cryptocurrency tumbled sharply and its sister stablecoin, known as UST, sank nearly to zero.

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David Marcus' Lightspark is a big bet on bitcoin

David Marcus, until recently a top-ranking Meta executive, is back with a new crypto startup that will remind many of his recent work — but has some crucial differences.

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Bulletins