Techmeme
January 19, 2023, 8:00 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
CoinDesk retains investment bankers at Lazard to help the outlet explore options including a partial or full sale after “numerous” indications of interest  —  Company has ‘received numerous inbound indications of interest,’ CEO Kevin Worth says  —  CoinDesk Inc. …
The Block:
Sources: Genesis creditors are negotiating a bankruptcy plan with the firm and weighing a one to two-year forbearance period in exchange for cash and DCG equity  —  - Genesis creditors are negotiating the terms of a possible Chapter 11 filing, according to sources close to the matter.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on an iPad-based smart display, with smart home controls, video, and FaceTime, and a new Apple TV with a faster processor for H1 2024  —  Apple Inc. is working on a slate of devices aimed at challenging Amazon.com Inc. and Google in the smart-home market …
Addy Bink / The Hill:
Amazon plans to close AmazonSmile, launched in 2013 to let customers donate 0.5% of eligible items' purchase prices to a charity, on February 20, 2023  —  Amazon will be closing its charity program, AmazonSmile, in the coming weeks in order to “focus its philanthropic giving to programs with greater impact.”
Financial Times:
Sources: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund sold most of its crypto portfolio by the end of March 2022, before the crypto market crash, generating ~$1.8B in returns  —  Billionaire was early mainstream investor in the digital currency but VC fund no longer has significant exposure
Reuters:
The US Treasury's FinCEN unit labels crypto exchange Bitzlato as a “money laundering concern” related to Russian illicit finance; French police seize Bitzlato  —  The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network on Wednesday said it has identified virtual …
James Eyers / Australian Financial Review:
National Australia Bank creates the AUDN stablecoin, the second major Australian bank after ANZ's A$DC, letting customers settle transactions on the blockchain  —  National Australia Bank has become the second of the major banks to create a stablecoin, called the AUDN, to allow its business customers …
New York Times:
Crypto investors say Sam Bankman-Fried frequently promoted and manipulated “Samcoins”, including Solana, Serum, FTT, and Maps, to benefit FTX and Alameda  —  Sam Bankman-Fried found ways to control the prices of digital coins to benefit his companies, FTX and Alameda, according to cryptocurrency investors.
Alexandra Wexler / Wall Street Journal:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Mailchimp says a hacker accessed data on 133 accounts via a staff social engineering attack, first detected on January 11, its second breach in six months  —  Email marketing and newsletter giant Mailchimp says it was hacked and that dozens of customers' data was exposed.
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
Analysis: Series B valuations fell 50% from a $250M median in Q1 2022 to a $125M median in Q4 2022; Q4 2022's VC activity by volume resembled that of Q2 2020  —  Series B valuations were cut in half from the first quarter of 2022 to the last  —  Early-stage startups finally got the message …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Wikimedia launches an updated Wikipedia design, including improved search and accessibility, a refreshed table of contents, and easier language switching  —  Wikipedia, one of the world's top 10 most visited websites, and a resource used by billions every month, is getting its first makeover on the desktop in over a decade.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Twitter launches Blue on Android for $11 per month, the same as iOS and $3 more than the web, after launching an annual subscription  —  A day after launching an annual Twitter Blue subscription, the social media company made the paid plan available for purchase for Android users today.
Digiday:
Similarweb: Twitter referral traffic to 12 major news outlets fell 12% on average from November 2022 to December 2022; only traffic to NY Post and Fox News grew  —  Under the leadership of Elon Musk, Twitter's role as a traffic referral source to publishers' sites is largely declining.
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Andrew Bosworth talks about Meta's decision to discontinue Portal and how the company nearly made a deal to license Portal's tech and platform to Amazon in 2020  —  Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth told BuzzFeed News how a deal to keep the Portal software going almost happened.
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Apple enables a temperature and humidity sensor in the HomePod mini and second-generation HomePod, helping users create automations to execute household tasks  —  The reintroduced HomePod offers a temperature and humidity sensor, but Apple is also enabling the feature on the existing HomePod mini.
Jon Porter / The Verge:

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Jennifer Gollan / ProPublica:

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Jon Porter / The Verge: