business
Tether reports 17% decrease in commercial paper holdings over Q1 2022
USDT Stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) has reported it cut its reserves allocation to commercial paper investments and increased that of United States Treasury bills over the first quarter of 2022. In a Thursday blog post, Tether reported its reserves were “fully backed,” seemingly in an effort to assuage many users’ fears around USDT briefly depegging from the dollar on May 12. According to the stablecoin issuer, its commercial paper holdings over Q1 2022 decreased 17% from roughly $24 billion to $20 billion, with an additional 20% reduction to be reflected in the firm’s next quarterly report. Tether also increased investments in money market funds and U.S. Treasury bills by 13% over the same quarter, from roughly $34.5 billion to $39 billion. “Tether has maintained its stability through mu...
Saudi Arabia Is Now Nintendo’s Fifth-Largest Shareholder Following a $3 Billion USD Buy-In
Saudi Arabia has just become Nintendo‘s fifth-largest shareholder. According to Bloomberg, a filing in Japan from the video game giant revealed that the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund has purchased a 5.01% stake in the company worth $2.98 billion USD, making the $500 billion USD fund Nintendo’s fifth-largest stakeholder. The new investment comes following similar purchases throughout recent years. In 2020, the fund spent roughly the same amount to purchase smaller stakes in FIFA publisher Electronic Arts, Call of Duty and Diablo studio Activision Blizzard and Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption developer Take-Two Interactive while owning almost the entirety of Metal Slug and King of Fighters creator SNK. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia also acquired 5% stakes in both Japan’s CAPC...
Fyre Festival Founder Billy McFarland Released From Prison to Halfway House
McFarland has been released from the Milan Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan, where he was being held, according to the Bureau of Prisons website and confirmed by his attorney Jason Russo. He is now under the management of Residential Reentry Management New York — the administrative office overseeing halfway houses located in southern New York, eastern New York and New Jersey. TMZ first reported the news. McFarland’s release date from the halfway house is currently set for Aug. 30. In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to defrauding investors in the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival, which was promised to be a luxury destination music event with extravagant promotion from A-list celebrity influencers. But when ticket-holders showed up to the ...
Early polling from Terra vote indicates 91% are in favor of ‘rebirth’
Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon’s plan to create a new blockchain “without the algorithmic stablecoin” TerraUSD (UST) has the support of 85 million community votes. In a proposal opened to the Terra (LUNA) community on Wednesday, more than 91% of votes at the time of publication were in favor of “rebirthing” the Terra network — roughly 85 million out of 93 million, with up to 284 million votes yet to be cast. The proposal needs roughly 188 million votes in favor to pass before the window closes on May 25. At the time of publication, the biggest validator to come out in support of the proposal is Terra infrastructure provider Orbital Command, holding 1.39% of the voting power. Major validators with more than 2% of voting power have not yet made a decision, including cross-chain stablecoin bank O...
Meta trademark filing hints at plans for crypto payments platform
Social media giant Facebook’s parent company, Meta, may be planning to launch a payments platform with support for cryptocurrency. According to records submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, on May 13, Meta filed five applications for its namesake to be used in a platform called Meta Pay. The filings included Meta’s name for use in a “online social networking service for investors allowing financial trades and exchange of digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, digital and blockchain assets, digitized assets, digital tokens, crypto tokens and utility tokens.” Meta Platforms Inc. (i.e. Facebook) has filed 5 new trademark applications for: “META PAY” The filings indicate that @Meta plans to launch a payment platform called &#...
Crypto users react to Terraform Labs legal team purportedly leaving company
The ongoing saga with Terraform Labs, the blockchain developer behind Terra (LUNA), took a turn following a supposed change in employment status for many on the firm’s legal team. According to their LinkedIn profiles, Terraform Labs general counsel Marc Goldich, chief litigation and regulatory counsel Noah Axler and chief corporate counsel Lawrence Florio have all stopped working for the blockchain firm as of May 2022. Goldich started at Terraform Labs in August 2021 while Axler and Florio joined in January 2022. The change in employment status for three members of Terraform Labs’ legal team followed major volatility in the crypto market after the price of LUNA collapsed to $0.00 within two weeks. Stablecoins including Tether (USDT) depegged from the U.S. dollar, while the price of TerraUS...
BitMEX to diversify by offering spot crypto trading services
The Seychelles-based crypto exchange unveiled its spot trading platform today The BitMEX founding trio was recently fined $30 million for conducting business in the US illegally BitMEX exchange now allows traders to buy and sell crypto assets offered on its newly launched spot trading platform. Prior to today, the exchange did not support spot crypto trading despite being founded more than half a dozen years ago and having spread to over 100 countries. “Today, BitMEX is one step closer to providing our users with a full crypto ecosystem to buy, sell, and trade their favourite digital assets,” CEO Alexander Höpner said. “We will not rest as we aim to deliver more features, more trading pairs, and more ways for our clients to take part in the crypto revolution.” Seven crypto products tr...
Elwood Technologies bags $70M in investment from Goldman Sachs and Barclays
Elwood Technologies aims to invest in infrastructure rather as opposed to injecting funds into short-term initiatives The company’s latest funding pushed its valuation to $500 million Crypto trading software provider Elwood Technologies has secured a $70 million investment that pushed the company’s valuation to half a billion. According to a report published by Financial Times on May 15, Goldman Sachs and Barclays have teamed up to finance the crypto trading platform founded by British billionaire Alan Howard. The report detailed that venture capital firm Dawn Capital as well as the venture divisions of Germany’s Commerzbank and Galaxy Digital, also took part. The move comes as the crypto scene contends with the top 500 of leading digital assets losing over 50% in value as the crypto ...
Universal Music Partners With LimeWire 2.0 for Use of Its NFT Marketplace
LimeWire has signed a new partnership with Universal Music Group that will allow the record giant’s artists to use the NFT marketplace to sell and market music-focused NFTs, it was announced on Tuesday (May 17). This marks the first major-label partnership for the newly rebooted LimeWire, which relaunched as an NFT marketplace in March. Under the partnership, UMG will provide content licenses to LimeWire, enabling the marketplace to partner with UMG artists to sell audio recordings, audiovisual content, artwork, bonus tracks and more directly to fans. Collectibles from these artists can be purchased with a credit card, and the LimeWire platform will handle gas fees and “technical hurdles on behalf of its users,” according to a press release. Originally founded as a peer-to-peer file-sharin...
Tencent Music Revenues Fall 15%, Subscriptions Grow Amid Regulatory ‘Headwinds’
The effects of government intervention on Tencent Music Entertainment, the leading music streaming platform in China, were visible in the first quarter as the company’s revenues dropped 15.1% to RMB 6.64 billion ($1.05 billion) from the prior-year period. Shenzhen-based TME operates QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing. In a statement, executive chairman Cussion Pang attributed the decline to “headwinds in an evolving market landscape,” a reference to the difficulties created by increased Chinese regulations and increased competition from Cloud Village, the music streaming platform spun off by Netease in Dec. 2021, and Quishiu Yinyue, a new music service by Douyin, the Chinese version of short-form video platform TikTok. The quarterly report’s bright spot was music subscripti...
Mac Miller Drug Supplier Gets 17 Years in Prison for Selling Fatal Pills
A California man charged with supplying fentanyl-laced pills before Mac Miller’s fatal 2018 overdose was sentenced Monday to more than 17 years in prison. At a hearing in Los Angeles federal court, U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright sentenced Stephen Andrew Walter to 210 months in prison over his role in Miller’s death. As part of a November plea deal, Walter admitted to supplying a drug dealer with the counterfeit oxycodone pills that ultimately made their way to Miller. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Walter pleaded guilty to a single count of fentanyl distribution, which carries a mandatory 20-year sentence. But under the agreement, federal prosecutors only requested 17 years and 6 months. An attorney for Walter did not immediately r...
Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Celebrates 40th Anniversary With Double-CD Set
Prefaced by Maxwelll’s emotive cover of “The Lady in My Life” at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards last evening (May 15), Sony Music and the Estate of Michael Jackson are formally announcing the release of Thriller 40. Arriving Nov. 18 in celebration of the groundbreaking album’s 40th anniversary, the double-CD set will package the original Thriller (whose nine songs included “Lady”) along with a bonus disc of never-released tracks that Jackson had worked on for the album. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Released Nov. 30, 1982, Thriller spun off seven top 10 singles with three achieving No. 1: “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and the title track. In addition to winning eight Grammys and setting various chart records, the album has since bee...
