Crypto Retreats From Record Territory as Traders Take Profits
Bitcoin fell as much as 2.2% to about $115,000 while Ether, the second-largest token, at one point shed more than 4% to dip below $4,300 on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The combined value of all cryptocurrencies sank to $3.9 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
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New York Post
14 minutes ago
- New York Post
Microsoft workers rename HQ ‘Martyred Palestinian Children's Plaza' during anti-Israel protest
Dozens of anti-Israel Microsoft employees, many wearing face masks and keffiyes, swarmed the company's headquarters in Washington state to protest the Big Tech giant's ties to Israel's military. The protesters set up tents in a 'liberated zone' on the Redmond campus, renaming it the 'Martyred Palestinian Children's Plaza' — and toted signs that urged co-workers to 'Join the worker intifada: no labor for genocide.' Other placards said 'stop starving Gaza.' A group calling itself 'No Azure For Apartheid' organized Tuesday's sit-in after The Guardian reported that an Israeli military intelligence agency was using Microsoft's Azure software to amass recordings of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 4 Microsoft said the workers were asked to leave and did so. Bloomberg via Getty Images 'Once again, the enablers of genocide and apartheid choose to criminalize those that oppose the bombing of Palestinians, rather than the war criminals ethnically cleansing and starving our people in Palestine,' the group — an offshoot of No Tech For Apartheid — wrote on X. The group also published a lengthy manifesto calling for a 'worker intifada' and stating that 'it would not be cogs in the Israeli genocidal machine.' 'The group was asked to leave, and they left,' a Microsoft spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday. About 50 current and former Microsoft workers took part in the sit-in, company officials said. Microsoft had said it was not aware 'of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft's services' and would conduct a formal review of the allegations. 4 The workers were protesting Microsoft's work with the Israeli military. Bloomberg via Getty Images The protest was the latest sign of ongoing unrest at Microsoft over its contracts with Israel. 4 Microsoft employees called for a 'worker intifada.' Bloomberg via Getty Images In May, the company reportedly began barring employees from using certain words in company emails, including 'Palestine,' 'Gaza' and 'genocide.' It also fired a software engineer who interrupted a speech by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to protest the help given to the Israel's military. 4 A group called 'No Azure For Apartheid' led the protest. Elsewhere, Google fired more than two dozen employees last year for disruptive anti-Israel protests at its offices. As The Post exclusively reported, Big Tech employees were among the biggest individual donors to New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani's campaign. the Demcratic socialist has faced heat during the campaign cycle over his refusal to back away from the phrase 'globalize the intifada.'
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Crypto startup Legion raises $5 million to bring back ICOs—without the scams
The ICO, or initial coin offering, era was notorious. A decade ago, crypto founders raised millions and even billions from small-time traders by selling cryptocurrencies tied to new projects. Many raises, like the one for Ethereum in 2014, were in good faith. Others were outright scams. Regulators cracked down on the practice, and ICOs soon became another chapter in crypto history. Now, the practice appears to be making a comeback, and the crypto startup Legion hopes to create the go-to platform where companies can—responsibly—sell tokens to small-time traders, say cofounders Fabrizio Giabardo and Matt O'Connor. 'Just think IPO-type rigor, IPO-type access, mixing in with, again, crypto rails,' Giabardo told Fortune. On Wednesday, the pair announced that Legion had raised $5 million in a seed round led by VanEck and Brevan Howard Digital. The crypto exchange Kraken as well as the venture arms of the crypto exchanges Coinbase and also participated in the raise, among other investors. Giabardo and O'Connor declined to disclose their startup's valuation. The round was for equity and token warrants, or promised allocations of a yet-to-be-launched cryptocurrency, they said. ICO boomerang Legion's capital injection comes as ICOs are back in vogue in crypto. In June, the stablecoin project Plasma raised $500 million in five minutes through a public token sale. In July, a memecoin factory that's become one of the most profitable projects in crypto, raised $600 million in 12 minutes. And Cobie, a pseudonymous crypto influencer and investor, has launched his own ICO platform called Sonar. The return of the ICO follows a regulatory thaw in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump's administration has signaled a friendlier approach to crypto than that of former President Joe Biden. Crypto companies, who once were fleeing the U.S. amid a flurry of lawsuits from the Securities and Exchange Commission, are now returning. And some feel more emboldened to try out ICOs as a means to raise funds. But Giabardo and O'Connor believe their platform will help prevent the outright scams that were common a decade ago—when founders would raise millions off the back of a jargon-filled white paper and then disappear in so-called 'rug pulls.' Both founders are crypto veterans. Giabardo, who had stints as a geologist and then consultant, started exploring crypto in 2020 and eventually began working with the crypto analytics platform Delphi Digital. O'Connor comes from traditional finance, where he worked at the asset manager Bridgewater Associates before he found his way to working on Stacks in 2022, a blockchain built on top of Bitcoin. The two eventually crossed paths and decided to work together to bring back ICOs. Their platform is built to comply with recently released regulatory framework in the European Union for early token launches, they said. The statutes require projects to release a 'white paper' that requires issuers to detail, for example, risks involved with the offering and update their white papers anytime there are material changes to the projects. The two cofounders have also met with the SEC to discuss what disclosures the agency should require for public sales, said O'Connor. 'Give people honest, truthful, succinct disclosures that they can fully understand, do some kind of checking that validates that, yes, they do truly understand these things,' he added. 'And then, it's up to them to take the risks realistically.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Strike CEO's New Venture Takes Aim at Bitcoin's Biggest Corporate Holders With Revolutionary 'Bitcoin Per Share' Strategy
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Jack Mallers' Twenty One Capital plans to dethrone MicroStrategy and Marathon with $5 billion Bitcoin treasury—but the real innovation might be how they measure success Jack Mallers, the Bitcoin maximalist behind Strike—a digital payments app that uses the Lightning Network to enable instant, low-cost Bitcoin and dollar transactions—and the driving force that helped El Salvador adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, is making his boldest move yet. His new venture, Twenty One Capital, has accumulated over 43,500 Bitcoin worth more than $5 billion and is positioning itself to become the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder—surpassing current leaders MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) and MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA). Don't Miss: The same firms that backed Uber, Venmo and eBay are investing in this pre-IPO company disrupting a $1.8T market — — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different strategies. But what sets Twenty One apart isn't just the size of its Bitcoin war chest. In a recent Bloomberg Television interview, Mallers revealed a fundamentally different approach to measuring corporate performance that could reshape how Bitcoin-native companies think about shareholder value. The 'Bitcoin Per Share' Revolution While traditional companies obsess over earnings per share, Twenty One has introduced what Mallers calls 'Bitcoin per share' as their primary performance metric. The reasoning is both simple and profound: measuring success in dollars is meaningless when fiat currencies are constantly debased. 'Everything goes up in dollar terms,' Mallers told Bloomberg. 'The objective is for shareholders to get wealthier in Bitcoin terms by growing the Bitcoin per share.' This isn't just accounting innovation—it's a philosophical shift that treats Bitcoin as the ultimate unit of account. Twenty One expects to complete its public listing in the third quarter following Securities and Exchange Commission review, with over $5 billion in Bitcoin at launch, giving investors direct exposure to this new performance framework. Trending: If there was a new fund backed by Jeff Bezos offering a ? The Scarcity Advantage Mallers' confidence in Bitcoin's trajectory stems from what he calls 'definitive scarcity.' Unlike traditional commodities where increased demand can stimulate additional supply, Bitcoin's fixed 21 million coin limit means new buyers must compete for existing holdings. 'If you want more bitcoin, you don't go to the bitcoin factory. You have to go up in price,' Mallers told Bloomberg, predicting Bitcoin could reach $150,000 as institutional and sovereign buyers compete for limited supply. This supply constraint is already creating upward pressure. MicroStrategy holds the largest corporate Bitcoin treasury, while MARA ranks second with over 46,000 BTC. Twenty One's goal to surpass both reflects Mallers' belief that corporate adoption is still in its infancy. Beyond Treasury: The Dual Strategy Twenty One isn't just another Bitcoin treasury play. With backing from heavyweights including Tether and SoftBank on its board, the company plans to build Bitcoin products, technology, and tools—essentially competing with both treasury companies like MicroStrategy and product-focused firms like Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN). 'Why not both?' appears to be Mallers' philosophy. His track record supports this ambition: Strike, his previous company, became a major Bitcoin financial services platform, and his involvement with El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption demonstrated his ability to execute complex, high-stakes 'Maxi' Advantage Perhaps most telling is Twenty One's unwavering focus on Bitcoin exclusively. Mallers embraces the 'Bitcoin maximalist' label, viewing other cryptocurrencies as inferior alternatives to what he calls 'pristine money.' His rationale centers on Bitcoin's role as a store of value in a world where traditional assets are constantly diluted. 'I've created value and I want to keep it,' he summarizes as Bitcoin's core use case. 'Bitcoin allows you to abstract your effort, time, and energy, and take it with you tomorrow,' he told Bloomberg. This single-asset focus contrasts sharply with diversified crypto strategies, but it also provides clarity of purpose that resonates with institutional investors seeking pure-play Bitcoin exposure. Market Implications Twenty One's approach could accelerate corporate Bitcoin adoption by providing a clearer framework for measuring success. With an unrealized gain of over $1.3 billion already accumulated, the company serves as a real-time case study in Bitcoin treasury management. For investors, Twenty One represents a new category: Bitcoin-native companies that measure success in Bitcoin terms rather than fiat. This could appeal to those who believe traditional accounting methods undervalue Bitcoin-holding companies. The broader market implications are significant. As more companies adopt Bitcoin treasuries and measure performance in Bitcoin per share, it could create additional demand pressure on Bitcoin's fixed supply—potentially validating Mallers' bullish price predictions. Twenty One's public debut will test whether investors are ready for this new paradigm. If successful, it could mark the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we measure corporate value in an increasingly Bitcoin-denominated world. Read Next: 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. Image: Shutterstock This article Strike CEO's New Venture Takes Aim at Bitcoin's Biggest Corporate Holders With Revolutionary 'Bitcoin Per Share' Strategy originally appeared on Sign in to access your portfolio
