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Whooo-weee interesting times for crypto land as Bitcoin crashes below $17,000 for the first time in a while. Wild, as the cryptocurrency traded at $65,000 or so a year ago. That’s a drop of 74%. What kind of winter is this – are we seeing a crypto cold wave or crypto permafrost? Reply to an immutable blockchain transaction, please.
If you’re excited to understand the crypto world, we’ll have an event in Miami in a few weeks – details and tickets here! — Christine and hi.
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- More social media struggles: Although the subject was a downer, Paul wrote a great story about Meta’s confirmed layoffs of 11,000 employees, explaining what happened, why and what it means in the larger context of Meta’s future. More in Big Tech below.
- It was good while it lasted: For a few hours this morning, we TechCrunchers were thrilled to see our precious Twitter handle get the “Official Twitter Badge”, but like Amanda writes, what Twitter gives, Twitter quickly takes away.
- this is what For real happened: It was Elon Musk, in the boardroom, with the badge code. As we just mentioned, Musk killed the ghost all over Twitter today, rolling out gray ticks for high-profile accounts and then removing them. Kylea has more.
Startups and VC
Edge computing cloud and global data network Macrometa has raised $38 million led by Akamai Technologies as the two announce a new partnership and product integrations, Catherine reports. Funding also included participation from Shasta Ventures and Sixty Degree Capital. Akamai Technologies CTO Andy Champagne will join Macrometa’s board.
Startups may be in financing in the middle of winter, but the sunbeam shining on some VCs speaks of a different trend, reports Ingrid. EQT Ventures, the venture fund arm of Swedish investment giant EQT that bets early on startups, mainly in Europe, has closed its latest fund and filled its coffers with €1 billion (and €1.1 billion in total pledges).
Like our headline stories, but more summarized:
Three tips for managing a remote technical team
Image Credits: Inok (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Remote working isn’t for every business, and it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. When Greg Soho and his co-founder decided to build a distributed engineering team for their startup, countless questions ran through their minds: will the team be productive? How will decisions be made? How do they keep the culture alive? Today, the startup manages an outside team of about a dozen engineers, and they’ve learned a lot along the way.
On ukbusinessupdates.com+, he shares some of the tips and advice the company has learned – most of the advice is best applicable to early stage startups.
Three more from the TC+ team:
ukbusinessupdates.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams stay ahead of the curve. You can register here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
Following today’s Meta announcement regarding the layoff of 11,000 employees, Ingrid delved deep into the company’s 8-K and emerged with a new catch, including the predictable — that cutting hiring costs and capex investment will help bottom line in 2023.
In the meantime, Frederick writes about IBM’s Osprey quantum processor, which isn’t exactly the 4,000 qubits the company aims to achieve by 2025, but 433 qubits is a good start.
And we have five more for you:
- More layoffs: You didn’t think you’d get off that easy, did you? Ron reports that Salesforce has laid off hundreds of employees, while Aria reports that Astra is laying off 16% of its workforce, after it nearly tripled in the past year.
- Brrr, it’s cold in here – there must be some crypto in the atmosphere: It’s like Anita had some sixth sense or something. Earlier today, she wrote that the proposed Binance and FTX M&A deal seemed unlikely to close. Look, just before this went out, Binance decided to walk away from the deal, Jacquelyn reports.
- Collaboration Station: Ready to Freeform? Not sure yet if it will become a verb, but Apple hopes its collaborative whiteboard is something that sticks, Ivan reports.
- Sensors and software and EV, oh my!: Volvo unveiled its first all-electric SUV today, and we’re drooling. Jaclyn has more.
- We suspect he didn’t win the Powerball: Elon Musk sold more of his Tesla shares, Rebecca writes. The 19.5 million shares were worth nearly $4 billion. Wonder what he’s using the money for…
