Author: GT

Startups attracted $91.5 billion in venture capital funding in Q1, according to the latest report from data provider PitchBook. This figure not only exceeds the previous quarter’s allocation by 18.5% but also represents the second-highest quarterly investment in the last decade. Despite this seemingly positive news, Kyle Stanford, lead U.S. venture capital analyst at PitchBook, appears to be the most bearish about VC dealmaking since he started covering this market 11 years ago. The source of Stanford’s negativity? Shattered expectations that 2025 would bring significant exits, creating a cycle where IPOs and big acquisitions would generate tons of cash for…

Kia debuted its 2026 EV4 sedan at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday, its first global electric sedan and one designed for customers looking for an affordable EV. Whether U.S. customers will gravitate toward a sedan is an open question — and one Kia isn’t necessarily betting on. The company launched sales of the EV4 in South Korea and plans to bring it to Europe by the end of the year. Sales in the United States are expected to begin in the last quarter of 2025 or first quarter of 2026, a Kia spokesperson told TechCrunch. Kia’s primary…

Where’s the bottom for bitcoin (BTC)? While acknowledging it’s possible that level has already been hit, on-chain analyst James Check suggested a true bottom may not be in place until after bitcoin suffers a true capitulation event. That would likely require a decline to the $65,000 area, said Check, calling it the “true market mean,” i.e., the average cost basis for active investors. At that point according to Check, who spoke on the TFTC podcast, the average investor may begin to feel the pressure of unrealized losses. Even long-term holders, including those who have held bitcoin for five years, could…

“We are in a period of what I’ll call fintech maximalism,” says Chemistry founder and GP Mark Goldberg. “By that, I mean the companies that grew up in the last five to 10 years in fintech, those that quietly executed through the winter of the 2021 to 2024 period, have emerged as compounders in a way that has really taken my breath away.” After nearly a decade at Index Ventures, where he backed standout fintech companies like Plaid, Persona, Lithic, and Pilot, Goldberg left in 2024 to launch Chemistry, an early-stage venture firm. Founded alongside Kristina Shen and Ethan Kurzweil,…

The U.S. dollar has been the international reserve currency since the end of World War II. Could that be changing? BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, along with several crypto experts, believe there’s a chance it could. Not immediately, but someday. Maybe. “It is very unlikely in the short term,” said CK Zheng, co-founder and CIO of ZX Squared Capital. “But in the long run, the possibility is increasing.” Check Out: 13 Cheap Cryptocurrencies With the Highest Potential Upside for You Read Next: These 10 Used Cars Will Last Longer Than an Average New Vehicle The dollar’s relative stability has made it…

Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are all locked in a race to see who can zero out their carbon pollution first.  Apple reported on Wednesday that it is more than halfway there. Since 2015, the company says it has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by around 60%. That covers everything from manufacturing and marketing to corporate operations and customer use. Many companies have successfully eliminated the carbon footprint of their core operations. Cheap solar and wind, and increasingly affordable grid-scale batteries, have made that relatively simple — and even advantageous — from a cost perspective. But Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have…

The performance of bitcoin (BTC) mining stocks was mixed in the first two weeks of April, with pure play operators outperforming those with exposure to high-performance computing (HPC), JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Wednesday. Only MARA Holdings (MARA) and CleanSpark (CLSK) outperformed the largest cryptocurrency during the period, while miners with exposure to HPC, which is used in applications including AI, such as Bitdeer (BTDR), TeraWulf (WULF), IREN (IREN) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) underperformed. The bank noted that March was a good month for the U.S.-listed miners. They added 15 exahashes per second of capacity, and mined more…

Graze, a startup that lets people build and monetize custom feeds for Bluesky’s social network, has attracted new capital. Pre-seed investors, led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $1 million in the company’s small team, which is working to give users control over their algorithms and social media experiences. Graze’s software, available via the web, offers tools to build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds. Unlike on other social networks like X or Meta’s Threads, where users are defaulted into a main algorithmic feed every time they open the app, Bluesky’s growing social network of nearly 35 million users…

The first quarter of 2025 was a reality check for digital assets. While the year began with optimism fueled by the election of a pro-crypto U.S. president and expectations of a friendlier regulatory environment, macroeconomic challenges quickly came to dominate the narrative. Bitcoin briefly reached a new all-time high of $109,356 before ending the quarter down 11.6%, its second-largest quarterly decline since Q2 2022. Altcoins fared worse, with indices more heavily weighted toward smaller-cap tokens such as the CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) and the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) declining by 55.2% and 46.4%, respectively. You’re reading Crypto Long & Short, our…

Aura, a digital photo frames company founded by early Twitter employees, is introducing its latest model, Aspen, which adds new technology to the device and its accompanying mobile app. In addition to hosting your digital photos in its 12-inch HD display, the device now also allows you to add captions to your photos when they appear on the frame. Meanwhile, the mobile app added a people search feature that makes it easier to find the photos you want to display. Aura was founded by former Twitter employees Abdur Chowdhury and Eric Jensen, and its vision has been to offer more…