Author: GT

A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order shutting the de minimis trade loophole, effective May 2.Trump in February abruptly ended the de minimis trade exemption, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. The order overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees and caused the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily halt packages from China and Hong Kong. Within days of its announcement, Trump reversed course and delayed…

Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years — growth that has extended the lithium-ion battery recycling and materials startup’s footprint well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters as it locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe. And yet, Redwood Materials CTO Colin Campbell saw a gap in the company’s 1,100-person workforce. San Francisco was the answer, Campbell told TechCrunch, a longtime Tesla veteran who took the top tech spot in August 2023. The company, which was founded by former Tesla CTO JB…

Bitcoin hit a record high of $109,000 earlier this year, but the level of sales remains far below the peaks seen in previous cycles, according to research by on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. The study, released on April 1, highlights a trend of investors who purchased Bitcoin between 2020 and 2022 holding onto their assets, even amid significant price volatility. The data shows that buyers from this period, whose cost basis ranges from the 2020 low of $3,600 to the 2021 high of $69,000, have not been motivated to sell, even as the cryptocurrency’s price continues to fluctuate. While the share…

Epic Games announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Loci, an AI platform for automated tagging 3D assets. The deal will help creators with the labor-intensive process of tagging as well as to help detect potential intellectual property (IP) violations. Loci, which uses computer vision models to understand 3D content, automatically tags 3D assets, making content easier to search, share, and discover. Due to the large number of assets that creators often need to manage, the new integration is likely to be very helpful, as the process can be very time-consuming.  Not only will Loci’s technology address the challenges associated with…

The cryptocurrency market could hit its lowest point within the next two months, with a 70% chance of this happening before June, according to Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen. The timing depends heavily on the outcome of ongoing global tariff negotiations, particularly the reciprocal import tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. These tariffs, intended to reduce the country’s trade deficit and boost manufacturing, are creating uncertainty across financial markets. Trump unveiled these measures on April 2, aiming to address a $1.2 trillion trade gap. The global markets have already shown volatility in response to previous tariff announcements,…

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored. TikTok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February.  Nonetheless, TikTok’s future remains uncertain, and a potential second ban on April 5 is looming. A number of investors are competing for the opportunity to purchase the app, and if…

Six years ago, while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition, Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world: Women in her native Colombia and the rest of South America are dying at higher rates due to late detection.  Today, Agudelo is the co-founder and CEO of Salva Health, and recently took home the top prize at TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield. On the latest episode of Equity, she joins Rebecca Bellan to discuss how her company is using its Julieta screening device to revolutionize early breast cancer detection. But before we dive…

By Lawrence Delevingne, Michelle Conlin, Tom Wilson and Tom Bergin WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A pair of top Democratic lawmakers asked the U.S. securities regulator on Wednesday to preserve records related to President Donald Trump’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial and posed questions about potential conflicts of interest. In a letter sent to acting Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mark Uyeda, seen by Reuters, lawmakers requested information to “help us better understand the extent to which the Trump family’s financial interest in World Liberty Financial may be influencing your and the Commission’s activities.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the U.S.…

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals. Ahead of the layoffs, Automattic’s website listed 1,744 employees, which means north of 270 people may have lost their jobs. (Automattic declined to confirm this number but we’re hearing the exact number was 281.) The post, which was also shared with company employees via Slack earlier on Wednesday, explains that this “restructuring” was necessary due to the competitive nature of the market and the speed with…

Digital assets have grown into a multi-trillion-dollar market, yet they remain largely disconnected from traditional finance. Institutional investors increasingly want to own and monetize digital assets, but most banks, broker-dealers and asset managers operate on infrastructure designed for stocks and bonds — not blockchain-based assets. While spot crypto ETFs are an important step toward integration, they only enable passive exposure to the asset class. For digital assets to fully mature, they need a mechanism that bridges them with the entirety of the existing capital markets infrastructure in a familiar, regulated way. You’re reading Crypto Long & Short, our weekly newsletter…