It’s been a week, and I must say I miss Asheville. I’m back home, and I’m on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, Coinbase IPOs and wins big, a US Senator wants to stop corporate buying sprees, and a Twitch streamer does a marathon stream. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
CRYPTOCURRENCY GOES MAINSTREAM WITH COINBASE IPO
Yesterday, Coinbase when public on the NASDAQ. Coinbase started the day at a direct listing price of $250 per share and closed at $328.28 giving the company a market capitalization of $85 billion. Which many investors think is too high. Analysts say that Coinbase is one of the easiest ways regular people can invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Yesterday, BTC closed over $63 thousand dollars per coin. This means that the better investment would have been buying BitCoin directly instead of investing in Coinbase. Another tidbit, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, closed yesterday with a higher valuation than the company that’s behind the NASDAQ. How’s that??? Either way, I’m not fully sold on cryptocurrencies, even though I’m considering launching my own. 😉
US SENATOR WANTS TO BAN BIG TECH FROM BUYING LITTLE TECH
Earlier this week, US Senator Josh Hawley said he introduced a bill that would ban US companies with a market value greater than $100 billion from buying other companies. On the surface it seems like it would target the US’ largest technology companies including Apple, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and of course, Facebook. In a rare move of bipartisanship Congress is considering anti-trust bills against the major technology companies citing high concentrations and reducing competition. My feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand these companies use strong arm tactics against smaller companies, but at the same time we all aspire to be the next El Goog.
TWITCH SUBSCRIPTION RECORD BROKEN AFTER 31-DAY LONG STREAM
I feel sorry for whoever this guy lives with. Yesterday, 25 year old, Ludwig Ahgren broke Amazon’s online gaming streaming service, Twitch’s paid subscriber record. He clocked in with 282, 847 paying subscribers. He did this by providing a constant stream of his activities for 31 consecutive days. His subscribers watched him play, eat, and sleep in his red race car bed. I always wanted a race car bed when I was a kid. The previous record was held by Ninja Blevins at 269, 154 subscribers. How much Ahgren made hasn’t been made known yet, but at the end of the stretch he encouraged subscribers to join in order to donate $5 from each new subscriber joining the network. Did he take a shower?