Dropping Nearly 20%, Bitcoin Suffers Worst Weekly Drop in a Year

“Bitcoin’s rally this year has hit a speed bump, putting it on track for the worst weekly slide in almost a year amid wider losses in risk assets,” reports Fortune: The largest cryptocurrency slumped as much as 20% this week, the most since March, and was holding at about $46,925 as of 10:22 a.m. in Hong Kong. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy…

Bitcoin Jumps To $50,000 as Record-Breaking Rally Accelerates

Bitcoin blew through another milestone, surging past $50,000 for the first time as the blistering rally in the largest cryptocurrency continues to captivate investors worldwide. From a report: The world’s largest cryptocurrency jumped as much as 4.9% to $50,548 and is now up about 70% so far this year. Bitcoin pared its gain after setting the record high. Ether, a rival…

Facebook Blames ‘Technical Issues” for Its Broken Promise to the US Congress

Facebook is blaming “technical issues” for its broken promise to the U.S. Congress to stop recommending political groups to its users, reports The Markup: Facebook made the pledge once in October, in the run-up to the presidential election, and then falsely reiterated it had taken the step after rioters overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly event partially coordinated…

They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them

In 2019 two New York Times opinion writers obtained cellphone app data “containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017.” (It’s data that they say is “supposed to be anonymous, but it isn’t. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.”) Now they’ve obtained a remarkable new trove of data, “this…

Robinhood Stops Limiting GameStop Shares

Robinhood has lifted all the buying curbs imposed at the height of the battle between amateur investors and Wall Street hedge funds. The change comes one week after the online broker limited clients to only buying a single share of GameStop and expanded its list of restricted stocks from 13 to 50. Reuters reports: The videogame retailer, the initial trigger for…

‘Meme Stock’ Rally Rescues AMC Theaters From $600 Million Debt

This week’s bizarre “meme stock” rally, which has delivered lottery-like windfalls for holders of GameStop stock, also wiped out $600 million in debt owed by the AMC theater chain. Polygon reports: That’s because, on Wednesday, a private equity firm named Silver Lake — and private equity firms are popularly considered the “bad guys” in this snobs-versus-slobs drama — elected to convert…

GameStop Jumps After Hours As Elon Musk Tweets Out Reddit Board That’s Hyping Stock

Tesla CEO Elon Musk seemed to rally behind GameStop’s epic surge on Tuesday, tweeting out a link to the Reddit board that’s largely hyped the stock. CNBC reports: Shares of GameStop, which jumped 92.7% Tuesday, were up more than 60% in after hours trading following Musk’s tweet, which linked to the “wallstreetbets” Reddit chat room that has more than 2 million…

$200 Billion Wiped Off Cryptocurrency Market In 24 Hours As Bitcoin Pulls Back

Bitcoin and other digital coins tanked on Monday, wiping some $200 billion off the cryptocurrency market. CNBC reports: The market capitalization or value of the cryptocurrency market was $880 billion at 9:20 a.m. ET, down from $1.08 trillion a day earlier, according to Coinmarketcap. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell over 12% from a day earlier to $32,576, according to Coin Metrics…

Tech CEO Apologizes After His Arrest Over Capitol Hill Protests

“Turning digital data into profit,” is the slogan of Cognesia, a data analytics company whose client list includes Visa, Rolls-Royce, and Toys ‘R’ Us. Now Variety reports:
Brad Rukstales, the chief executive of a Chicago-area company that provides data-marketing solutions, said he was arrested Wednesday after he entered the U.S. Capitol alongside a mob of pro-Trump rioters seeking to overturn the 2020…

Laptop Stolen From Pelosi’s Office During Storming of US Capitol, Says Aide

A laptop was stolen from the office of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, one of her aides said on Friday. From a report: Drew Hammill, an aide to Democrat Pelosi, said on Twitter that the laptop belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations. He declined to offer…