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September 16, 2020
Call it the Buffett bump? Cloud data startup Snowflake's share price massively popped at the start of trading, opening on the market at $245. The company had priced its IPO at $120 per share, raising nearly $3.4 billion for the company in what was already the year's biggest listing.
In a rare move, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had agreed to buy over $550 million in shares in the IPO and from its former CEO Bob Muglia.
Biz Carson
Biz Carson ( @bizcarson) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol, covering Silicon Valley with a focus on startups and venture capital. Previously, she reported for Forbes and was co-editor of Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. Before that, she worked for Business Insider, Gigaom, and Wired and started her career as a newspaper designer for Gannett.
Policy
Arizona bill would reform Google and Apple app stores
HB2005 would allow app developers to use third-party payment systems.
HB2005 could make it through the Arizona House of Representatives as soon as this week.
Photo: James Yarema/Unsplash
March 1, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
March 1, 2021
Arizona State Rep. Regina Cobb hadn't even formally introduced her app store legislation last month when Apple and Google started storming into the state to lobby against it.
Apple tapped its own lobbyist, Rod Diridon, to begin lobbying in Arizona. It hired Kirk Adams, the former chief of staff to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, to negotiate with Cobb on its behalf. It quickly joined the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, which began lobbying against the bill. And lawyers for both Google and Apple went straight to the Arizona House's lawyers to argue that the bill is unconstitutional.
<p> "We went through a very difficult weekend where Apple and Google hired probably almost every lobbyist in town," Cobb said.</p><p>There's a reason Apple and Google care so much: Cobb's bill would allow app developers to use third-party payment systems to circumvent the 15% to 30% cut that Apple and Google take from app sales. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In the three weeks since Cobb introduced her bill, Arizona has become an unexpected hotspot in the country's antitrust debate, with the full force of the country's progressive anti-monopoly movement lining up behind a cadre of small- to medium-sized developers against an aggressive army of Apple and Google lobbyists. HB2005 could pass the House this week and potentially even make it through the Republican-majority Arizona Senate, making Arizona the first state to push through legislation to loosen Apple and Google's grip over their app ecosystems in the country. There's similar legislation being considered in Minnesota, Georgia, Hawaii and other states, mostly being pushed by Match Group, Epic Games and the broader <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/24/coalition-for-app-fairness/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Coalition for App Fairness</a>, which only formed last year and includes Spotify, Tile and others. </p><p>Cobb said she was first approached by Ryan O'Daniel, a local lobbyist who represents Match Group and the Coalition for App Fairness, in early February with the idea that would become HB2005, an amendment that would force smartphone app stores to allow third-party payment systems. </p><p>"I felt like it was a good idea right away," Cobb told Protocol. She'd worked with O'Daniel before, and she was compelled by his argument that the legislation could create new economic opportunities in Arizona. Cobb, the chairwoman of the Arizona House Appropriations Committee, decided to put her political muscle behind it and eventually had it assigned to her committee. Over the past two weeks, she said, members of her committee have faced a barrage of lobbying efforts from free market groups, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, and of course, lobbyists retained by Apple and Google. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Apple did not immediately respond to Protocol's request for comment. Kyle Andeer, Apple's chief compliance officer, said at a hearing last week that HB2005 amounts to a "government mandate that Apple give away the App Store." </p><p>"This bill tells Apple it cannot use its own checkout lane and collect a commission in the store we built," Andeer said. The app developers supporting the bill say it would prevent Apple and Google from taking a 30% cut from sales facilitated through their app stores, a fee that they have called "highway robbery." Apple has responded that most software developers don't pay a commission and those that do often pay around 15%, claiming the main beneficiaries of the Arizona legislation would be Epic Games, Spotify and Match.com, each multibillion-dollar companies. </p><p>Google did not respond to a request for comment.</p><p>Similar legislation <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/technology/north-dakota-tech-apps.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">failed in North Dakota</a> last month. The bills are so similar that a representative for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing organization focused on shaping state legislation, forwarded a statement expressing ALEC's opposition to the North Dakota bill to Arizona lawmakers on Feb. 15, according to an email obtained by Protocol.</p><p>"The legislation introduced in North Dakota is virtually the same as what has been proposed in the strike-everything amendment to HB 2005," the ALEC lobbyist wrote. "I am comfortable sharing the North Dakota version [of the ALEC opposition statement] with you, as the sentiments are likely to be the same."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>But the North Dakota legislation was broader — it would have forced major platforms to allow alternate app stores altogether, while the Arizona legislation only bars Apple and Google from forcing their payment-processing systems onto developers.</p><p>"I think it's just an easier bill," said David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder and CTO of Basecamp, who has been an outspoken antitrust advocate ever since he got into a <a href="https://www.protocol.com/hey-email-app-store-rejection" target="_self">public fight with Apple</a> over his email service's payment system last year. He's been involved with the Coalition for App Fairness and testified in support of the Arizona legislation last week. </p><p>He said he's blown away by how quickly the Arizona legislation is moving. It was introduced on Feb. 10 and quickly voted out of committee last week. "Maybe it doesn't pass, but it would be mind-blowing if it did — it would change the entire ecosystem of Big Tech," Hansson said. "This would be the first major piece of legislation anywhere in the world that's directly addressing this monopoly power and providing the relief, not just slapping them with a fine." </p><p>Overnight, Hansson said, Arizona could become "the most attractive place in the world to start a new business that sells software through the app stores."</p><p>But the legislation is facing serious opposition from a somewhat surprising faction: Arizona Democrats. HB2005 passed the Appropriations Committee last week 7-6, mostly along partisan lines. "It is not the obligation or the responsibility of the state legislature to get involved in the midst of litigation," said Rep. Cesar Chavez, a Democrat, repeating one of the major arguments from Apple: that the concern around app store control is being litigated in California's <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-02-26-valve-ordered-to-hand-over-sales-data-for-epic-vs-apple-case" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Epic Games v. Apple</a>. Other Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee said the federal government should take action on the issue rather than the state and raised concerns about how the bill would affect the iPhone ecosystem.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>The pushback is highlighting the complicated dynamics around antitrust playing out across the country: While the most radical antitrust proposals are coming from Democrats at the national level, Republicans are often leading the charge among the states.</p><p>A coalition of progressive groups, including the anti-monopoly group American Economic Liberties Project and the Arizona Working Families Party, wrote to Arizona lawmakers last week urging them to vote in favor of the legislation. "HB2005 would prevent Big Tech from imposing terms onto developers by opening up competition in payments systems, as well as protecting smaller companies that refrain from using Big Tech's payment systems from retaliation," they wrote. "Additionally, it would incentive developers to locate to Arizona, a huge boon for companies already looking to relocate to another state." </p><p>This week, Cobb said she is planning to have a meeting with Apple executives to potentially negotiate the contours of the bill. The meeting is being organized by Adams, who did not respond to a request for comment. </p><p>"It's time to make some concessions," Cobb said. She believes that Arizona will provide an early lesson for the companies and their critics. "I'm sure other states are going to be watching from the sidelines. On both sides, I think they're going to start navigating a little bit more precisely after they've been able to gain knowledge from this experience in Arizona." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>Cobb said that aggressive strategy has only made her more determined in her support for the legislation, which is likely to go to a vote in the House this week. "I felt like, if they could do this to me, they could do this to smaller companies also," she said. </p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Sponsored Content
The future of computing at the edge: an interview with Intel’s Tom Lantzsch
An interview with Tom Lantzsch, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Group at Intel
February 28, 2021
Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
February 27, 2021
An interview with Tom Lantzsch
Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corporation
Edge computing had been on the rise in the last 18 months – and accelerated amid the need for new applications to solve challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tom Lantzsch, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corp., thinks there are more innovations to come – and wants technology leaders to think equally about data and the algorithms as critical differentiators.
In his role at Intel, Lantzsch leads the worldwide group of solutions architects across IoT market segments, including retail, banking, hospitality, education, industrial, transportation, smart cities and healthcare. And he's seen first-hand how artificial intelligence run at the edge can have a big impact on customers' success.
Protocol sat down with Lantzsch to talk about the challenges faced by companies seeking to move from the cloud to the edge; some of the surprising ways that Intel has found to help customers and the next big breakthrough in this space.
What are the biggest trends you are seeing with edge computing and IoT?
A few years ago, there was a notion that the edge was going to be a simplistic model, where we were going to have everything connected up into the cloud and all the compute was going to happen in the cloud. At Intel, we had a bit of a contrarian view. We thought much of the interesting compute was going to happen closer to where data was created. And we believed, at that time, that camera technology was going to be the driving force – that just the sheer amount of content that was created would be overwhelming to ship to the cloud – so we'd have to do compute at the edge. A few years later – that hypothesis is in action and we're seeing edge compute happen in a big way.
<p>The last 18 months have been a wild time to be in technology. We've seen edge compute come to life to help businesses adapt during the pandemic. At the same time, we are also seeing how 5G is going to drive up interest, especially from a networking perspective, rather than a use-case perspective. We also see lot of people that are focused on their data, but the <em>algorithms</em> that companies train with the data are going to be their critical assets. It doesn't matter what company or what industry; <em>this</em> will really become the differentiator for many companies.</p><p>And particularly amid the backdrop of the pandemic, we've seen how companies are using technology to either bring workers back in safely or <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-sensormatic-article.html" target="_blank">serve their customers in new ways</a>, <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/customer-spotlight/stories/brentwood-academy-customer-spotlight.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">educate children in new ways</a> -- all things that have accelerated the digital transformation that had been underway. I recently read a <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">McKinsey survey</a> that reported on the "speedup in creating digital or digitally enhanced offerings. Across regions, the results suggest a seven-year increase, on average, in the rate at which companies are developing these products and services."</p><p>And based on what we're seeing at Intel, those are lifesaving and industry saving investments happening today – completely re-designing the way that <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-mic-article.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">patients are treated</a>, and businesses operate.</p><h4>What are you particularly expecting to see this year?</h4><p>What I find most interesting is the work that combines IoT with networking capabilities – and I think this is going to be a year of expansive exploration and working with our customers to put these two things together to solve real business challenges.</p><p>When we first started the integration of networking technology and operational technology capabilities and layered that across the industry verticals, we could count the amount of interested customers and opportunities on one hand. Last year, it was five times that many and this year we see that number increasing significantly already. So, we're excited to see the industry continue to build excitement to scale those types of deployments.</p><h4>What role does AI play at the edge and in what way is Intel involved?</h4><p>An AI use case recently grabbed my attention: employees in a restaurant being screened by a device that checks temperature while the employees are washing their hands – and provides a determination on whether they'd done it adequately before they report to work. I have seen other applications using similar technology in the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/offering/a5b3b000000TiMSAA0/using-ai-to-make-construction-site-safer?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">construction industry</a>, where an AI algorithm scans to see if employees have their helmet, goggles, vest and other safety equipment on properly to determine if they are ready to work. And the best part is – that the employer can see aggregate data on these interactions to determine if more training on handwashing or helmet wearing is needed.</p><p>At Intel, in addition to providing the fundamental base technology to enable these applications, we work with a lot of third-party developers to create these applications. And we help the developers scale them across multiple industries with our salesforce. So, we may not make the scan technology that determines if you have the right gear on, but we orchestrate that coordination across our ecosystem with all of our partners to effectively put it into a <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">catalog</a> so that if customers are interested in that sort of application, we can provide them with different parties to make that happen.</p><h4>Is there a problem with fragmentation in the market and how can that be solved?</h4><p>It's very fragmented. I gave just two examples of totally different workers coming to work in different industries and I can give you five more that are different again. Although the base technology that Intel creates to enable this type of innovation is very horizontal in nature, the reality is that bringing those to life must be very "vertically-centered" and very "use-case centered" – and must take into account, geography. The two employee use cases I cited look very different if you are talking about employees in North America, India or Germany. So, all in all, this is a holistic ecosystem challenge – and an ecosystem solution.</p><p>At Intel, we're in a unique situation to orchestrate these solutions. </p><p><cite class="pull-quote">People tend to think of Intel as providing the technical footprint that enables edge computing – but we also have the developer reach – and we can use our ecosystem and scale to help our end customers get access to the best solutions.</cite></p><h4>What sort of challenges do customers face when they're attempting to adopt edge computing?</h4><p>There are two common challenges. One is the technical question of 'Who can I work with?' A customer may have a chip focus but actually, it's a more complex question than a chip. We like that complexity, because we can be an adviser to them and <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bring to the table partners</a> that they can work with to solve that complexity leveraging our technical knowledge and ecosystem network. </p><p>The second thing that companies struggle with is the challenge of how to fund getting into this space – even if the business case warrants the investment. The world has changed. Companies don't want to write a big capital check for these types of investments – they want a pay-as-you-go model, like you see with the cloud. We've been working with customers to find a way to make that happen – and I think that is going to be a bigger part of the conversation moving forward.</p><p>You can see it across almost every aspect of technology now. We rent compute more than we buy compute. Evidenced by the success of AWS, companies can rent compute from Amazon instead of building their own data center – and there are many benefits to that approach. In the old world, even for this video conference that we're having today we would have installed capital to do this. Now it's just a service. And I think that edge as a service is right around the corner.</p><h4>Do you have an example of that?</h4><p>A customer in Mexico wanted to deploy outdoor WiFi and add security features into it. So, it was an edge-based computing issue that was part connectivity. But there was actually way more to it than just installing it. We not only helped to solved the technological challenge creatively and coordinated the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ecosystem of providers</a> to solve this, but we also found a way so that the customer could get into this market with a service-based model without needing to outlay a lot of capital.</p><p>Other semiconductor companies would have a difficult time partnering on both sides of that challenge, but Intel can do it because we have the scale.</p><h4>How do businesses identify which functions they do want to perform at the edge versus in the cloud?</h4><p>It really comes down to a question of what you're trying to do and how you do it at the lowest cost, highest quality and standard in computability.</p><p>If you have an application and it can perform what you need it to do in the cloud, you'll probably run it there. The cloud is a great thing - there's infinite compute and lots of choice in a well-understood developer environment.</p><p>But there are many things you can't or shouldn't do in the cloud for certain reasons. Take the camera example from earlier. Say you have eight high-density cameras, and you want an action on them immediately. You may not be able to afford the latency that comes with going up into the cloud. Or it may be a financial challenge – that its actually more expensive to send that data to the cloud over and over again, and it makes sense to invest in compute at the edge. There are nuances in the decision-making. It really comes down to what you want the application to do, how quickly and how much it should cost.</p><h4>How does Intel help developers to learn, to build and then test their solutions at the edge?</h4><p>To enable what we know to be interesting and challenging use cases at the edge, required us to change our focus on who these developers are and what they care about. We learned that they <em>really</em> don't care about what hardware they're running on. The modern developers are fairly well extracted from the hardware – they just assume the compute is going to be available for them to do their work.</p><p>To make sure we can deliver on that, we typically target developers by specific capability. The most advanced case that we've been studying on the edge recently is focused video and specifically, video inferencing and AI inferencing. We created a tool called <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a>, which was developed in a way that developers didn't have to care about the hardware it runs on. It's a model optimization technology that enables them to easily scale out to different hardware platforms. That's proven to be an interesting value proposition to these developers.</p><p>Our goal with <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> is democratize AI activity and inference at the edge. We want to make it simple -- to put these tools in the hands of non-data scientists and make it work. As a part of that process, we're also creating an environment where they can develop anyplace, anytime, anywhere they want to be. We're so proud of our <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> community and are constantly working to grow the community and release new features and capabilities to edge developers.</p><h4>What's the possible next breakthrough that you see for Intel in edge computing and the IoT space?</h4><p>I'm looking forward to the big breakthrough when we show integrated 5G, Virtual Private Network and the edge workloads all in one unit. More to come.</p>
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Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
Power
Everything you need to know about the Coinbase direct listing
Coinbase's IPO valuation could be the largest by a U.S. tech company since Facebook went public.
Coinbase will go public on Feb. 25.
Image: Chesnot/Getty Images
February 25, 2021
Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
February 25, 2021
Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, filed its S-1 on Feb. 25 to go public via direct listing on Nasdaq. In the lead-up to the IPO, Coinbase shares traded on the Nasdaq Private Markets at $373, yielding a company valuation of over $100 billion, per Axios. If share prices remain at or above these levels, Coinbase's IPO valuation could be the largest by a U.S. tech company since Facebook went public in 2012. The company hasn't yet set a date for its trading debut.
Depending on who you ask, the Coinbase IPO could be the latest symptom of a major financial bubble or a significant milestone in the restructuring of the global financial system. Coinbase's mission is to "create an open financial system to the world." It believes the prevailing system of global finance, with the U.S. dollar serving as the global reserve currency, is outdated and inefficient. This mission pits the interests of Coinbase squarely against many of the world's most powerful nations, making regulation a grave and — if cryptos continue gaining momentum — probable risk.
What does Coinbase do?
<p>If you want to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or other crypto, you can begin the costly, labor-intensive and extremely technical process of mining. Or you can turn to a crypto exchange like Coinbase, which allows retail buyers and sellers to meet in the middle.</p><p>Coinbase also believes today's financial system relies on too many intermediaries (banks, brokers, clearinghouses, payment processors, exchanges, etc.), and that relying on this web limits access, efficiency and costs for users. The internet transformed the way we communicate and live, and Coinbase believes that the financial system has hardly been affected in the same way. By enabling anyone with an internet connection — and a bank account, with funds to invest — to easily invest in crypto assets, Coinbase aims to "democratize" access to the crypto economy. </p><p>The company isn't vastly unlike other cryptocurrency exchanges, which have come and gone since crypto trading hit the zeitgeist in 2017. General finance apps have jumped into crypto as of late, including Robinhood and Square, and crypto-specific competitors include Gemini, Kraken and Binance. Coinbase has stuck around largely because of its efficiency, but also by keeping users' personal data secure. "From the early days, we decided to focus on compliance, reaching out to regulators proactively to be an educational resource," CEO Brian Armstrong writes in the S-1. "We invested heavily in cybersecurity, built novel key storage mechanisms, and obtained a cybercrime insurance policy." </p><p>The company's exchange service is its main offering, but it also has a few other lines of business. <a href="https://commerce.coinbase.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Coinbase commerce</a> provides online retailers with software that lets them accept crypto payments (like PayPal, but for crypto). <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/card" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Coinbase Card</a> is in the early stages, giving users a physical Visa debit card and accompanying app. Coinbase even offers its own cryptocurrency, <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/usdc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">USD Coin</a>, built on Ethereum and tied to the U.S. dollar, so the price remains stable. </p><p>At the end of 2020, the company had 2.8 million monthly active users and 43 million verified users (about 6.5% of users are active, monthly). </p>Coinbase's financials
<p>Coinbase had a stellar 2020. It recorded $1.1 billion in revenue for the year, up 136% from the $483 million in revenue from 2019. This increase in revenue tracks closely with the 142% increase in trading volume between 2019 and 2020.</p><p>Coinbase derives almost all of its net revenue (96% in 2020) from transaction fees, which have been correlated with fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies. The rise in institutional trading volume has been a major source in revenue growth for Coinbase over the course of 2020. For instance, in Q1 2020, institutional trading volume rose to 6x the volume of Q1 2019. And even over the course of the year, institutional trading volume went from $18 billion in Q1 2020 to $57 billion in Q4 2020. Retail trading volume went from $12 billion to $32 billion in that same timeframe. </p><p>Bitcoin accounted for approximately 41% of trading volume on Coinbase in 2020, followed by Ethereum (15%) and other crypto assets (44%). </p><p>Coinbase posted a net income of $322 million in 2020, which is pretty incredible for a company that says it's choosing "to prioritize growth because we believe that global scale is central to achieving our mission and the potential of our business model." The biggest expenses in 2020 were "general and administrative," which represented 22% of total revenue, and "technology and development," which represented 21% of total revenue. In 2019, Coinbase reported a net loss of $31 million. </p>What could go wrong?
<p>The short answer: a lot.</p><p>Coinbase is driven by a techno-utopian/libertarian mission, and its long-term success is predicated on overhauling global power structures. This comes with a long list of risk factors, but some of the most significant include: regulation by a cohort of nations to protect the central banking system, loss of public confidence in cryptocurrencies and revenue loss that would come with greater stability in cryptocurrency prices. </p><p>"If the world ran on a common set of standards, that could not be manipulated by any company or country, the world would be a more fair and free place, and human progress would accelerate," Armstrong wrote in the S-1's introduction. </p><p>There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the bit about financial standards that "could not be manipulated by any company or country." This vision would mean the U.S. dollar loses its status as the dominant global reserve currency, <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/bretton-woods-created#:~:text=The%20Bretton%20Woods%20system%20was,gold%20at%20the%20official%20price." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a system established</a> at Bretton Woods following World War II. It would render The Federal Reserve — with its fiscal toolkit intended to provide economic stability — obsolete. With cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, there are a finite number of tokens, so quantitative easing isn't possible. </p><p>It isn't in the interest of many nations, particularly the U.S., to give up central banking control due to cryptocurrencies becoming the global reserve currency. </p><ul><li>Coinbase writes that new regulations and laws "may adversely impact the development of the crypto economy as a whole and our legal and regulatory status in particular by changing how we operate our business, how our products and services are regulated, and what products or services we and our competitors can offer, requiring changes to our compliance and risk mitigation measures, imposing new licensing requirements, or imposing a total ban on certain crypto asset transactions, as has occurred in certain jurisdictions in the past."</li><li>It also details how loss of institutional support could impact its business: "We may face difficulty establishing or maintaining banking relationships due to our banking partners' policies and some prior bank partners have terminated their relationship with Coinbase or have limited access to bank services. … In addition, financial institutions in the United States and globally may, as a result of the myriad of regulations or the risks of crypto assets generally, decide to not provide account, custody, or other financial services to us or the cryptoeconomy generally."</li></ul><p>This regulatory uncertainty hinders institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies. </p><ul><li>For instance, in January, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates <a href="https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/our-thoughts-on-bitcoin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>: "For now, though, we do not see it as a viable storehold of wealth for large institutional investors, thanks mainly to a high degree of volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and operational constraints. Rather, we see it as more like buying an option on potential 'digital gold' — it has a wide cone of outcomes, with one path leading to it becoming a true institutionally accepted alternative storehold of wealth."</li></ul><p>Now let's tackle the first part of Armstrong's statement about a world that runs "on a common set of standards." For Coinbase to succeed, it needs cryptocurrencies to remain valuable and worth transacting.</p><ul><li>"The development of new technologies for mining, such as improved application-specific integrated circuits (commonly referred to as ASICs), or changes in industry patterns, such as the consolidation of mining power in a small number of large mining farms, could reduce the security of blockchain networks, lead to increased liquid supply of crypto assets, and reduce a crypto's price and attractiveness," Coinbase writes.</li><li>Another potential risk factor comes with "security issues, bugs, and software errors" of crypto assets that "could adversely affect its price, security, liquidity, and adoption."</li></ul><p>Finally, there's a contradiction within Coinbase's current business model that bears mentioning: Coinbase derives most of its revenue from transaction fees, which are highly correlated with fluctuations in the value of cryptos. The contradiction lies in the fact that cryptocurrency price volatility is seen as one of the primary barriers in something like Bitcoin realizing its potential as an exchange currency rather than an asset class. </p><p>Coinbase believes this isn't actually an issue, since the dynamics will change over the long term. The company writes: </p><ul><li>"Over the long term, we expect further diversification of market participants, to add support for more crypto assets, and for crypto asset use cases to expand. We believe these factors will contribute to diversification in the composition of our Trading Volume and reduce the correlation to both Bitcoin price and Crypto Asset Volatility, subsequently leading to lower volatility in transaction revenues. Further, we expect that diversifying our sources of revenue towards subscription and services revenue will contribute to less fluctuation in our results from operations."</li></ul>Who gets rich?
<p>Coinbase has divided its shares into Class A and Class B, with Class B receiving 20 votes per share and Class A receiving only one. Class B shareholders are also allowed to convert their shares to Class A at any time.</p><p>This setup makes it difficult to say precisely which entities will own Coinbase when it makes its trading debut. As of Jan. 31, 2021, some of Coinbase's largest institutional shareholders included Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Union Square Ventures and Paradigm. Some of the largest individual shareholders included Frederick Ernest Ehrsam III (the co-founder of Coinbase), Armstrong and CPO Surojit Chatterjee.</p>What people are saying
<ul><li><strong>"The @coinbase<a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>Direct Listing will either confirm direct listings as a reasonable on-ramp for companies or kill it all together by making retail the true bag holders. If institutional investors use this period to manipulate the stock from a $54B valuation on Jan29 to $100B now... And then sell to retail at $100B or greater, it will be the ultimate form of stock manipulation. If the stock snaps back at a much lower valuation, each private txn preceding the DL seems manipulative. Good luck to all the players...I'm sitting out. The process stinks."</strong> —Chamath Palihapitiya <a href="https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1364960892958433285" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">on Twitter.</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1364960892958433285" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><strong>"Given the Crypto Cycle, I expect Coinbase IPO to be very successful and price to pump hard. A NYSE 'exchange' security trading >$100B should help drive up Crypto Exchange tokens. I can see a bull market narrative where something like UNISWAP is compared to Coinbase in cap."</strong> — Bob Loukas <a href="https://twitter.com/BobLoukas/status/1364974896493826054" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">on Twitter</a>.</li></ul>From Your Site Articles
- Tech companies normally rally behind social and political causes ... ›
- Coinbase confidentially files for an IPO - Protocol — The people ... ›
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Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
Transforming 2021
Blockchain, QR codes and your phone: the race to build vaccine passports
Digital verification systems could give people the freedom to work and travel. Here's how they could actually happen.
One day, you might not need to carry that physical passport around, either.
Photo: CommonPass
February 23, 2021
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
February 23, 2021
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when you'll feel comfortable getting on a plane again. You might even stop at the lounge at the airport, head to the regional office when you land and maybe even see a concert that evening. This seemingly distant reality will depend upon vaccine rollouts continuing on schedule, an open-sourced digital verification system and, amazingly, the blockchain.
Several countries around the world have begun to prepare for what comes after vaccinations. Swaths of the population will be vaccinated before others, but that hasn't stopped industries decimated by the pandemic from pioneering ways to get some people back to work and play. One of the most promising efforts is the idea of a "vaccine passport," which would allow individuals to show proof that they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 in a way that could be verified by businesses to allow them to travel, work or relax in public without a great fear of spreading the virus.
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</div></p><p>But building a system that everyone agrees with — and can access — is no small task. There are several companies working on competing projects to verify vaccinations. But beyond that, there are more than a few hurdles that could prevent vaccine passports from succeeding, from antiquated medical records systems to interoperability issues and privacy concerns. Here's how they could actually succeed. </p><h3>Competing projects, similar standards</h3><p>Pretty much since the first blockchain white paper, people have been looking for perfect examples of where a distributed, immutable ledger could be valuable. There's obviously the push to use it for currencies, and companies have tried to use it for things like tracking <a href="https://www.protocol.com/ibm-blockchain-supply-produce-coffee" target="_self">food production</a> and <a href="https://www.govtech.com/products/Blockchain-Voting-Debate-Heats-Up-After-Historic-Election.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">voting</a>, but there are few use cases that have truly taken off, at least so far. "We've been working on this since 2014; we never thought that health care would be the kind of the use case that we take this mainstream," Jamie Smith, the senior director of business development at Evernym, a company focused on using the blockchain as a basis for verifying identities, told Protocol. </p><p>Smith said Evernym had been discussing its concepts with automakers, retailers, telcos, governments, loyalty companies and banks prior to the pandemic. One of those companies was IAG, the airline group that owns British Airways, which had been interested in the idea of contactless travel based on a single identity credential that follows you from the airport check-in to your gate. With the pandemic, that morphed into thinking about ways to verify that passengers have had negative COVID tests, and eventually, that they've received a vaccine. "From our perspective, it was a really easy lift to see," Smith said. "We're doing contactless travel, and we just added verifiable credentials for test results."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>It's a similar genesis for IBM's Digital Health Pass initiative, which leader Eric Piscini said started about two years ago as a way to store people's entire health records in a safe, accessible platform. It also relies on the blockchain for its immutable record of proof, and both Evernym and IBM are part of an open-standards group called the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which aims to bring private credentialed vaccine records to business and people around the world. Companies are working on their own implementations of the standards, but Evernym's Smith said the data is meant to be portable from one passport to another. </p><p>Most of the companies working on passports say their systems are private by design, especially given that they're mainly working off the same open standards. In most cases, the health information only ever remains on a user's phone, but where it asks to verify that the user's information meets a system's standards — such as whether this person has had two COVID vaccines and should be allowed into an office — that information is recorded on a blockchain. "You can, using blockchain technologies, verify that someone has been tested recently, without having access to the underlying data," Piscini said. "I don't know any other technology where you can do that."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Similarly, the nonprofit Commons Project's CommonPass, backed by the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, started out as a project to bring an analog to Apple Health for Android. JP Pollak, a senior researcher at Cornell and founder of the Commons Project, first launched CommonHealth to bring the sort of data and insights that Apple Health offers to iPhone owners to Android users. Last summer, the group started building an app that could take health data and privately share it with others — in that case, it was to help truckers stuck at the borders in <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/digital-technology-re-opening-africa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">East African countries</a> who couldn't easily prove they'd taken COVID tests. This morphed into vaccine credentialing, with the group now working to pull together the various data streams needed to get a project like this off the ground. </p><p>"Health care institutions, EMR vendors, retail pharmacies, state vaccine registries, all issuing people a digital verifiable credential of their vaccination record that they could then use in the app of their choice, to be able to get access to various kinds of services," Pollak said. CommonPass is also working with the Mayo Clinic, as well as Epic Systems and Cerner, two of the largest EMR vendors. </p><h3>Something for everyone </h3><p>With so many competing efforts to become the world's digital vaccine passport, it might seem that the country is heading for some sort of VHS versus Betamax format war for proving everyone has had COVID vaccines. But given that so many of the efforts are using the same standards, and in many cases, looking to embed their tech in someone else's app rather than their own, the race might be less about the best tech winning, and more about various approaches working in different situations. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"The intent is not to be the only company; we don't want to be the proprietary platform that everybody has to use because they have no choice," IBM's Piscini said. "That's not who we are right now: That's the IBM from 30 years ago, not the IBM of today."</p><p>For IBM, though, the selling point is that the company already works with so many other massive companies. Why look elsewhere for a vaccine passport solution if your airline booking system is already powered by IBM? "We believe our network is going to be more valuable than any other because of our scale and our ability to integrate the platform with CRM systems, building systems or stadium systems — we can do that every day," Piscini said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTM1MjYyM30._ykxxCyx3_wDbZrYgCcmK0QT2Ue1tZFdP5pf60kOmPU/img.jpg?width=980" id="c81c9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3967636652192acfdaad341861263bc8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">IATA's digital passport app.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo: IATA</small></p><p>For other companies, it's about securing new partnerships with major players in the hopes of finding that scale. Evernym, for example, is working with International Air Transport Association, the airline industry's trade association, on an air travel-specific app called Travel Pass. IATA is working with airlines and local governments to ensure it has the latest requirements to feed the app's rules engine. "It will say, 'Hey, you're flying JFK to Heathrow, you need a PCR test 48 hours in advance before you can land,'" Evernym's Smith said. "And of course, those policy changes are changing every day." Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways are all <a href="https://simpleflying.com/qatar-iata-travel-pass-launch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a> to start trialing the app in the next few weeks.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In other instances, the technology will live inside other companies' existing apps; why make someone download yet another app and add another hurdle to compliance? Instead, the experience will be rather like adding a loyalty account or TSA PreCheck number when booking a flight. Airlines and other venues restricting access will require uploading negative test results or vaccine records using one of these services. "You're going to be using the United or the Delta app, and they'll be using our solution or somebody else's, but you will do it via their app," IATA's Travel Pass lead, Alan Murray Hayden, told Protocol.</p><p>The World Health Organization is also working on its own offering, and recently convened the <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/smart-vaccination-certificate-working-group" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Smart Vaccination Certificate Working Group</a>. It's built upon the WHO's nearly century-old notion of the "yellow card" vaccination record, which first was used to document that travelers had been inoculated against diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. Evernym Chief Trust Officer Drummond Reed is part of the working group; he said there should be more to share in the coming months. </p><h3>What could go wrong?</h3><p>It's entirely possible that as more people start to get vaccinated, vaccine passports start to become the norm. You walk to work — still masked, of course — scan a QR code reader in the lobby, and are let in. You go out for lunch, and your loyalty card app has a discount for in-store shoppers verifying they're vaccinated. Your concert ticket is also tied to health pass information that you shared earlier in the day with Ticketmaster. But there are more than a few hurdles ahead of the companies rushing to turn these concepts into realities. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>First off, there's the … reality … of the real world that any digital system has to contend with. For anyone without access to the internet, digital vaccine credentials will prove difficult to acquire, though all the companies Protocol spoke with said they would offer a paper-based QR code for people who don't have smartphones. But there's also the issue of having to corral so many different stakeholders into one system, especially when some health care providers are still reliant on antiquated database systems or <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/health-care-revolution/electronic-health-records-after-coronavirus" target="_self">even paper records</a>. "The amount of inefficiency in the system is tremendous," IBM's Piscini said. </p><p>But in the U.S. at least, all vaccinators are required to report COVID-19 vaccines to their state. Piscini said that even for people who just received a paper copy of their vaccine records, systems like IBM's can likely link up to the state's immunization registry and allow people to import records to a vaccine passport.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc4My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzg3MTM2M30.RZtqR7F_FuXK1S24V6jVaqUZ0xOSG-gCwj00xU3fxcM/img.png?width=980" id="b0bd3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="11d8002d92c0cd6ef39b12fc7b8dccf8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How CommonPass's app shows your records. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Image: CommonPass</small></p><p>And states are willing to help out, Pollak said, adding that CommonPass has started working with Hawaii to roll out its offering for would-be tourists. "We're seeing a lot of state governments stepping up and doing a really good job with this," Pollak said. "It would be surprising if there wasn't a coordinated federal effort very soon." That being said, while <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iceland-covid-passports-canada-1.5904828" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">many countries around</a> the world are committing to working on vaccine passports, getting a straight answer out of the U.S. government on what it's doing has proven difficult. The State Department, which maintains America's traditional, analogue passports, referred me to Homeland Security, which referred me to the White House. The acting director and chief of staff of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, Kei Koizumi, told Protocol that "OSTP can't discuss projects we are working on before they are publicly announced."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p>But even with systems in place at a federal level, there's still a fair amount of education that needs to happen before people will trust systems like these. "There's a substantial gap in understanding and knowledge of how these systems work, and people's views, in terms of who should get access to which data," Pollak said. </p><p>"We assume there's a Facebook Borg in the sky, monitoring every interaction," Smith said. "The emergence of verifiable credentials breaks down that mental model, where actually it becomes more like decentralized bits of paper that I can carry around, and no one's to know that I've been sharing this information."</p><p>"Our belief is that if you do the right thing, from a platform point of view, protecting your privacy, and giving you control and access to the platform to everybody who wants to use it," Piscini said. "I think those are very basic things that allow the core of the platform that we build to generate adoption by the individuals."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
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</div></p><p>Even with a system that works, there may still be holdouts to this potential new normal. "Some people are saying, 'I will never get vaccinated,'" Piscini said, "and I don't know if the airlines are going to say, 'Well, maybe you will never fly again.'"</p>
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
Protocol | Enterprise
Snowflake will help BlackRock clients make more sense of their data
The world's largest asset manager will use Snowflake's technology as the basis for a new addition to its Aladdin investment-management software.
Some of Wall Street's biggest financial services companies use BlackRock's Aladdin cloud service to manage their portfolios and analyze risk.
Image: lo lo
February 22, 2021
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET and paidContent, and served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure.
February 22, 2021
There are meme stonk traders, and then there are BlackRock customers. Those in the latter category will soon be able to use a new data management cloud service built in partnership with Snowflake, the first such collaboration deal struck by the data warehousing darling.
Some of Wall Street's biggest financial services companies use BlackRock's Aladdin cloud service to manage their portfolios and analyze risk. Modern professional investors have a voracious appetite for data that can inform their decisions, and need a sophisticated service that can quickly gather, sort and process reams of investment data, said Sudhir Nair, managing director and global head of Aladdin, BlackRock's technology arm.
<p>The partnership will allow Aladdin users to "combine the multitude of datasets that many organizations struggle to get their arms around today, and at the end of the day, just build, innovate and create analytics reporting in a way that's just much more streamlined than what they've been used to with traditional sort of data warehousing or data management capabilities," Nair said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Snowflake's technology will underpin the Aladdin Data Cloud, which will be a new option for Aladdin customers later this year and replace the current <a href="https://www.blackrock.com/aladdin/products/aladdin-data-warehouse" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aladdin Data Warehouse</a>. This will allow Aladdin users to take advantage of one of the aspects of Snowflake's technology that helped turn it into <a href="https://www.protocol.com/snowflake-ipo" target="_self">the biggest software IPO of all time</a>: It is very easy for <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/workloads/data-sharing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">two Snowflake users to share data with one another</a>, even across different companies.</p><p>Even inside sophisticated technology companies, important data tends to settle into different buckets, making it harder to mix all that data and understand the big picture. And on top of this data balkanization, every year brings a new mountain of data to add to the pile.</p><p>Financial services companies used to have distinct roles for traders, data scientists and software developers, but "the days of the separation of duties are over," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewglickman/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Matt Glickman</a>, vice president of customer and product strategy for Snowflake. That means investment professionals need to be more involved with data analysis, and making it easier for companies to share data across internal departments and with external partners becomes even more important.</p><p>BlackRock is in the process of transferring Aladdin to Microsoft's Azure cloud service, Nair said, a migration that is expected to be completed over the next 18 months. Snowflake runs on all three major U.S. clouds, and customers of one cloud service can share data with Snowflake customers using other cloud services.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>BlackRock is also the first company in a new "Powered by Snowflake" effort that the company hopes will bring new business and live up to the expectations set by its record IPO. Snowflake is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings next week.</p>
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Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET and paidContent, and served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure.
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