Author: Fortune Magazine
Xbox parent Microsoft announced plans to acquire video game developer Activision Blizzard for a staggering $68.7 billion, bringing some of the gaming world’s biggest titles—Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, Diablo—under its umbrella. The deal marks Microsoft’s biggest purchase in company history, dwarfing its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. With the acquisition, Microsoft could take Activision Blizzard’s extensive game library and put it on the fast-growing Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscription services—as well as any future virtual reality and metaverse platforms. Microsoft’s two game pass offerings, which cost $10 to $15 monthly, already boast about 25 million subscribers combined, Microsoft officials said Tuesday when announcing the…
Crypto.com, the five-year-old cryptocurrency exchange which boasts Hollywood superstar Matt Damon as the face of the company (and as an investor), has allegedly been hacked. On Monday morning, Crypto.com announced via Twitter: “We have a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts.” In response, the company paused withdrawals, to ensure the safety of user funds and launched an investigation, it said. Crypto.com said at the time that “all funds are safe.” On Tuesday morning, the company tweeted that it had restored all withdrawal services,” stating again that no customer funds were lost. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek tweeted via his personal…
Times have rarely been tougher for Bollywood, India’s Hindi language film industry. Revenue from theaters plunged by 80% to $378 million in 2020, according to consultancy EY. Theaters started reopening in October after an eight-month shutdown last year, but now some are closing again owing to Omicron. Amid the disruption, though, the industry that saw annual revenue of $2 billion prior to the pandemic has found a sliver of hope in one of the world’s hottest trends: non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Since November, industry players have raised around $4 million by selling NFTs, digital assets that provide an immutable digital signature to real world objects like…
Last year, China’s government banned cryptocurrency trading and mining in one of the world’s most intense crackdowns. But China’s government is pursuing other uses of blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—as long as the technology stays under its control. This month, the Blockchain Services Network, a Chinese state-backed blockchain company, plans to roll out infrastructure that would allow individuals and businesses in China to make, sell, and buy NFTs. He Yifan, chief executive of Red Date Technology, a company that provides technical support to BSN, announced the news to the South China Morning Post and explained that NFTs “have no legal issues in…
Alex Song has invested in a lot of esoteric financial products over the years. Mortgage-backed securities. Litigation financing. Whatever it might be, the former private credit and financial technology investor, who previously worked at Sculptor Capital Management, Bain Capital, and Morgan Stanley, likely has some experience or interest in it. So, it was only fitting that Song would take a slightly untraditional approach to managing a corporate treasury where securities like government bonds and investment-grade corporate debt have historically been finance executives’ preferred investments. On Thursday, Ramp—the corporate card start-up where Song is now head of finance and capital markets— announced that it…
If you can’t beat them, copy them. At least, that partly explains why central banks in nine countries have introduced their own digital currencies. Typically, cryptocurrencies are pitched as decentralized alternatives to paper money. This is increasingly a problem for central banks, which could lose control over monetary supply if cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and stablecoins—a type of token that maintain a steadier value—become the norm. So some central banks have decided to create crypto competitors that they control. The value of this central bank-controlled digital currency, or CBDC, mirrors the price of its physical equivalent. For example, Nigeria’s e-Naira is worth…
Just six days in, the new year is already proving to be a chaotic one for cryptocurrencies, financial markets, and Web 3.0. Venture capitalists are still squaring off with Block’s Jack Dorsey about the Internet’s future. Non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea has raised an additional $300 million that values the company at $13.3 billion—a little more than Robinhood’s market capitalization on Thursday. And crypto and meme stocks alike are in freefall, thanks largely to evolving monetary policy and expected interest rate hikes that are making investors rethink owning risky assets. To kick The Ledger’s year off, though, we’re going to talk about the past: RadioShack. Why? Because the 100-year-old electronics retailer—whose…
Bitcoin’s getting a drubbing this week as the Federal Reserve readies a removal of stimulus, but bulls are feeling as emboldened as ever. The largest cryptocurrency by market value has shed about $80 billion since the start of the year amid a slump that’s brought it to its lowest levels since its early-December flash-crash. But out have come predictions it can still reach the vaunted $100,000 level at some point this year. It would have to more than double from current levels around $42,900 to arrive at that milestone. Analysts say it’s not that it can’t—it’s posted plenty of triple-digit annual returns over the…
The metaverse refers to different platforms on the internet that are creating an interactive world, complete with virtual entertainment and businesses. As of Wednesday, the cheapest price for a parcel of digital land in the Sandbox platform was 3.7 Ether, the equivalent of $14,099, and on Decentraland it was 3.46 Ether, the equivalent of $13,211, according to Meta Metric Solutions, a company that tracks digital real estate prices. A 1×1 parcel of land, the smallest size available, is equivalent to what the user’s avatar would experience as 96-by-96 “meters” in the Sandbox, and 16-by-16 “meters” in Decentraland. It wasn’t always…
The curtain just lifted on one of the many mysteries surrounding Bitcoin: How much is being produced using super-dirty coal in Kazakhstan. We knew that the Eurasian nation was a major destination for miners, and that the refugees recently expelled from China were flocking there. Still, it was difficult to establish how much of all the world’s coins Kazakhstan was minting. Clouding the picture was the government’s recent moves to severely restrict the mining boom that was plaguing its cities via rolling blackouts. On January 5, the world got at least a rough answer. Violent protests erupted over the soaring cost…