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Spotify Lost $197 Million USD Over the Second Quarter of 2022
Spotify has lost almost $200 million USD over the past quarter despite continuing to grow its number of Premium users. Posting its financial results for the second quarter of the year, Spotify reported a total of 433 million users across both its free and paid accounts, making an 11 million increase over the 422 million at the end of Q1. The amount of paid users also increased by six million to now 188 million, with another four million subscribed to its ad-supported tier. Despite its growth in users, the company is still in the red, seeing a quarterly loss of $197 million USD over the last three months. The result is largely attributable to Spotify’s immense spending on marketing, which it hopes will create a surge in subscriptions over the near future to help recuperate its costs. Elsewh...
Spotify Lost $197 Million USD Over the Second Quarter of 2022
Spotify has lost almost $200 million USD over the past quarter despite continuing to grow its number of Premium users. Posting its financial results for the second quarter of the year, Spotify reported a total of 433 million users across both its free and paid accounts, making an 11 million increase over the 422 million at the end of Q1. The amount of paid users also increased by six million to now 188 million, with another four million subscribed to its ad-supported tier. Despite its growth in users, the company is still in the red, seeing a quarterly loss of $197 million USD over the last three months. The result is largely attributable to Spotify’s immense spending on marketing, which it hopes will create a surge in subscriptions over the near future to help recuperate its costs. Elsewh...
Semantics? Analysts unpack ‘technical recession’ as crypto markets recover
Data from the United States commerce department suggests America has entered a technical recession, but market analysts have highlighted key metrics that suggest investors are optimistic. The American economy shrunk for the second consecutive quarter, according to government data released on July 28, fitting the criteria for a technical recession. The Biden Administration maintains that the U.S. is not in a recession, highlighting low unemployment rates and other metrics that counter the argument. Mati Greenspan, founder & CEO of Quantum Economics, addressed the topic in his latest QE newsletter, noting a paradoxical effect between the GDP drop and a surge in stocks and other risk assets. He attributed this move to the US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates by 0.75%, whi...
What happens when 21 million Bitcoin are fully mined? Expert answers
When the last Bitcoin (BTC) is finally mined, the livelihood of miners who rely on block rewards as a source of income will be affected. Despite this, the future of mining stays promising, according to an expert in space. In a Cointelegraph interview, Mohamed El Masri, the founder of mining solutions provider PermianChain, talked about new players jumping into mining, the future of mining and what happens to mine profitability after the 21 millionth BTC is minted. El Masri highlighted that efficiency is a very important focus that new players in the space must take into consideration. Because mining profit depends on how efficient a mining operation is, the executive noted that efficiency brings down the cost of energy to a minimum. [embedded content] When asked about the future of t...
Ethereum Merge: How will the PoS transition impact the ETH ecosystem?
The Ethereum blockchain is on the verge of one of the most crucial technical updates since its inception, moving from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), also called Ethereum 2.0, or Eth2. Ethereum devs gave Sept. 19 as the perpetual date for the merger of the current PoW chain to the PoS chain. The Merge is expected to be deployed on the Goerli testnet in the second week of August. After the successful integration of the Goerli testnet, the blockchain will initiate the Bellatrix update in early August and roll out the Merge two weeks later. The discussion around the transition began with a focus on scalability, so Ethereum developers proposed a three-phase transformation process. The transition itself is nearly two years in the making, starting on December 1, 2020, with the...
New social apps want to help Bitcoiners connect in real life
Finding real love starts with Bitcoin (BTC). That’s according to the founders of Bitcoiner dating service The Orange Pill App and LoveisBitcoin. The services join a growing list of ways in which Bitcoin enthusiasts can meet, chat and now fall in love “IRL” (in real life.) But first, why do people who love Bitcoin need to connect with others who are “orange-pilled?” For George Saoulidis, cofounder of LoveisBitcoin, Bitcoiners need a dating service because money shapes our lives more than we realize: “Issues can and do arise if time preferences diverge a lot. Part of the orange-pilling process makes you see through the marketing and the propaganda to distinguish what is truly valuable: Experiences, family, friendships.” Part of the Bitcoin ethos is having a lower time preference, and not suc...
Samsung Warns of Slowing PC and Mobile Demand Despite Nearing $60 Billion USD in Q2 Revenue
Samsung has recorded yet another positive financial quarter in Q2 of 2022 but warns that demand for both PCs and mobile devices is waning. Over the quarter, the company brought in a revenue of roughly $59.4 billion USD, with operating profits rising by 12% to $10.8 billion USD. Its semiconductor division Device Solutions performed the best, achieving a historical high in quarterly revenue for the second quarter in a row, contributing $21.9 billion USD to the South Korean tech giant. Despite the stellar results, Samsung warns that demand for chips in consumer products is slowing down, with the Q2 results driven heavily by server chip demand. Both NAND and DRAM shipments were below guidance, and the company mainly attributes this to the “widening impacts of macro issues.” Making the situatio...
Solana Spaces store to bring 100K people to Solana per month — CEO Vibhu Norby
Solana Spaces CEO Vibhu Norby said the new physical Solana stores will introduce up to 100,000 people per month to the Solana ecosystem, while also signalling plans to open a virtual storefront in the near future. Utilizing a grant from the Solana Foundation, the first Solana Spaces shop opened in the swanky Hudson Yards New York shopping center on July 28. Addressing the community in a impromptu Twitter AMA on launch day, Norby explained the store is meant to teach new users about how to use Dapps, and noted that it would be introducing thousands of people into the Solana blockchain. “I don’t think people realize this but we’re going to bring 50 to 100,000 people into Solana every month through these stores — and that’s just this year.” Speaking to Cointelegraph in a phone interview...
Phishing risks escalate as Celsius confirms client emails leaked
Celsius depositors should be on the lookout for phishing scams after the company revealed some of its customer data has been leaked in a third-party data breach. On July 26, Celsius sent an email to its customers informing them that a list of their emails had been leaked by an employee of one of its business data management and messaging vendors. According to Celsius, the breach came from an engineer at the Customer.io messaging platform who leaked the data to a third-party bad actor. “We were recently informed by our vendor Customer.io that one of their employees accessed a list of Celsius client email addresses,” said Celsius in its email to customers. The data breach is part of the same incursion that leaked OpenSea customer email addresses in June. Announcement from Celsius: “We ...
Fed demands Voyager remove ‘false’ claims deposits are FDIC insured
Cypto lender Voyager Digital has been directed to remove “false and misleading” statements that its user’s deposit accounts are FDIC insured. In a joint letter written on July 28 by Seth Rosebrockfrom & Jason Gonzalez, Assistant General Counsel at the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to Voyager Digital, the authors said the representations “likely misled and were relied upon” by customers who placed funds with Voyager who now no longer have access to it. “These representations are false and misleading and, based on the information we have to date, it appears that the representations likely misled and were relied upon by customers who placed their funds with Voyager and do not have immediate access to their funds.” The Fed and FDIC allege that V...
Professional soccer club Crawley Town FC signs midfielder after NFT hodlers vote
Professional English soccer team Crawley Town F.C. have followed through on a community vote by fans and NFT holders who were recently given a voice on what type of player the team should recruit next. The vote, which took place on June 15, which was the first team decision opened up to fans, took place for verified NFTs hodlers via a temporary Discord channel. Votes were also taken from nearly 1,000 season ticket holders. Speaking with the Daily Mail on July 28, Crawley Town co-owner and former ESPN gambling analyst Preston Johnson emphasized the significance of being able to offer fans a stake in the club via NFTs: “A lot of NFT projects are just speculation with no real tangible spine, no real true story. Having a football club to root for every week? That’s a spine that peo...
‘Easter eggs’ in climate bill delight oil and gas industry
Frank Maisano, a partner at the at law firm Bracewell, said the compromise deal offers wins for both the fossil fuel and green energy industries. “There are a lot of pieces in there that are going to be valuable to different sectors,” said Maisano, whose firm works with companies in both fields. Maisano added that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who reached the deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, “has been clear on where he stands — to have some mix of benefits and not lean too heavily on renewables only. That’s what he’s gotten here.” The bill, H.R. 5376 (117th), would spend an estimated $370 billion in an attempt to slash carbon emissions across the U.S. economy by the end of the decade, by an estimated 40 percent from 2005 levels. But it includes proposals to ease federal rules ...
