The SEC’s Kik Crypto Case Shows Just How Far Crypto Has To Go—Data Sheet
Zuck’s bucks. The troubles of some cryptocurrencies, as Adam just discussed, isn’t deterring others from launching. Facebook plans to offer its own digital payments vehicle later this month. The Facebook virtual coinage will be available in the company’s apps and at ATM-like machines. Employees working on the project will even be able to take their salaries in the new digital moolah. A digital experiment at JPMorgan Chase, however, is ending. The bank will kill Finn, its online and mobile banking service aimed at younger customers, a year after launching it nationally.
Gee whiz, that Mr. Lincoln, there he is. Forget car rides and rented scooters, how about flying across the city in a helicopter? That’s the plan Uber is testing in New York City. Flights from a downtown Manhattan heliport to JFK Airport will cost about $ 200, Uber says. Speaking of the friendly skies, Amazon is moving forward with drone delivery tests using a newly-designed craft that combines features of a helicopter and a plane. “The tech industry is abuzz about drones, but not all drones are created equal,” Jeff Wilke, head of Amazon’s consumer business, said as the drone was unveiled at the company’s re:MARS conference on Wednesday.
Speeding up. Now that you’re all excited about flying around with your packages, don’t be sleeping on scooters. Scooter service Bird is buying smaller rival Scoot, as the field continues to consolidate. Last year, Lyft bought Motivate and Uber bought JUMP. No purchase price info on Scoot yet, though the startup was valued at over $ 70 million in its last round of venture capital. As far as bikes that don’t actually go anywhere, exercise service Peloton says it has filed confidentially to go public. The company, last valued privately at $ 4 billion, won’t be disclosing financial details until later down the line.
Mystery box. Elsewhere on Wall Street, online clothing retailer Stitch Fix reported revenue jumped 29% to $ 409 million and earnings per share of 7 cents slipped 22%. Both were better than expected and Stitch Fix shares, already up 38% this year, jumped another 33% in premarket trading on Thursday.
New Jack City. The metro government of Baltimore offered an update on Wednesday as it continues to recover from the ransomeware attack that corrupted its computer networks last month. While facing costs of $ 10 million and another $ 8 million in lost revenue collections, less than one-third of city workers can log back on to their computers. The situation is “not ideal, but manageable,” says finance director Henry Raymond.
New day dawning. A couple of longtime tech rivals shook hands and struck a deal: companies using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform will now be able to connect it to their Oracle cloud applications. “Our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything,” Oracle EVP Don Johnson said.
