Bitstamp now regrets posting Messari’s 134-page report yesterday that included coarse language and colorful descriptions of certain tokens.
SI stock has plunged over 16% from its recent all-time high.
Reps. Warren Davidson, Tom Emmer, Ted Budd and Scott Perry urged Steven Mnuchin to rethink his rumored self-hosted wallet regulations in an open letter Wednesday which warned such rules might “crush a nascent industry.”
Read more Paxos has filed to become a federally regulated bank with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, joining BitPay and Anchorage.
Read more Jose Angel Aman, charged with operating the fraudulent investment scheme, was sentenced to serve six years in federal prison and pay over $23 million in victim restitution by a federal court in Florida.
Read more Bitcoin fell below $18,000 Wednesday while DeFi closing in on $15 billion locked may have more to do with price than actual cryptocurrency parked there.
Read more Former Quontic Bank executive Patrick Sells will be responsible for developing NYDIG’s white-labeled crypto services for banks.
Read more Demand for contactless payments and e-commerce has grown in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is good news for payment service operators, but the market is very fragmented, so adding payment options is a time-consuming process for many merchants. CHAI wants to fix this with an API that enables companies to accept over 20 payment systems. The Seoul-based startup announced today it has raised a $60 million Series B.
The round was led by Hanhwa Investment & Securities, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Asia (the early-stage venture capital arm of SoftBank Group), SK Networks, Aarden Partners and other strategic partners. It brings CHAI’s total funding to $75 million, including a $15 million Series A in February.
Last month, the Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank, released a report showing that contactless payments increased 17% year-over-year since the start of COVID-19.
CHAI serves e-commerce companies with an API called I’mport, that allows them to accept payments from over 20 options, including debit and credit cards through local payment gateways, digital wallets, wire transfers, carrier billings and PayPal. It is now used by 2,200 merchants, including Nike Korea and Philip Morris Korea.
CHAI chief executive officer Daniel Shin told TechCrunch that businesses would usually have to integrate each kind of online payment type separately, so I’mport saves its clients a lot of time.
The company also offers its own digital wallet and debit card called the CHAI Card, which launched in June 2019 and now has 2.5 million users, a small number compared with South Korea’s leading digital wallets, which include Samsung Pay, Naver Pay, Kakao Pay and Toss.
“CHAI is a late comer to Korea’s digital payments market, but we saw a unique opportunity to offer value,” said Shin. The CHAI Card offers merchants a lower transaction fee than other cards and users typically check its app about 20 times to see new cashback offers and other rewards based on how often they pay with their cards or digital wallet.
“We’ve digitized the plastic card experience, and this is the first step towards creating a robust online rewards platform,” Shin added.
In press statement, Hanhwa Investment & Securities director SeungYoung Oh director said, “I’mport has reduced what once took e-commerce businesses weeks to complete into a simple copy-and-paste task, radically reducing costs. It is a first-of-its-kind business model in Korea, and I have no doubt that CHAI will continue to grow this service into an essential infrastructure of the global fintech landscape.”
LabCorp has now become the first company to receive approval to sell its COVID-19 test kit over-the-counter without a prescription, according to a statement from the company.
One of the largest diagnostics testing companies in the U.S., LabCorp could be a significant competitor to companies like EverlyWell, which received approvals for its at-home testing kits in May; MyLab Box, which announced a partnership with Walmart earlier this week to sell COVID-19 test kits with the giant retailer; or LetsGetChecked, which has its own at-home test.
LabCorp was actually the first company to receive approval from the FDA for its test kit, and now the company can sell the product through retail channels without a prescription.
“With the first over-the-counter at-home collection kit ever authorized by the FDA for COVID-19, we are empowering people to learn about their health and make confident decisions,” said Dr. Brian Caveney, chief medical officer and president of LabCorp Diagnostics, in a statement. “With this authorization, we can help more people get tested, reduce the spread of the virus and improve the health of our communities.”
It’s pretty inarguable that anything that reduces the friction consumers face in getting tested for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is a good thing. It’s also in line with a broader push to increase healthcare access for consumers in an effort to reduce costs.
When customers purchase the COVID-19 test kit, they register the kit on the company’s website and then follow the instructions given there. Tests results are delivered through a corporate portal and a healthcare provider is available to assist customers who test positive on how to proceed with a course of treatment.
The company said its kit should not be viewed as a substitute for visits to a healthcare professional and is intended for use by adults 18 or older.
It’s important to note that the LabCorp PCR test has not been cleared or approved by the FDA and is being authorized under an emergency use authorization.
The WSJ is reporting that Airbnb is expected to price its IPO at either $67 or $68 per share. The American hospitality unicorn raised its IPO price target earlier this week, from $44 to $50 to $56 to $60.
While we’re still waiting for official pricing, Airbnb is worth $41 billion at its IPO price, using the upper pricing estimate and the company’s share count of 602,448,251 from its most recent S-1/A filing. That figure rises sharply if we included more than 50 million shares that could be added to the mix upon the exercise of vested employee options. The company’s fully diluted valuation at its IPO price was calculated to be $47 billion.
Axios reports that Airbnb raised $3.5 billion at its fully diluted valuation.
Regardless of how you prefer to value the company, its worth has risen sharply from an early pandemic nadir of $18 billion. After COVID-19 ravaged the company’s business, it laid off staff and took on external capital.
Since the end of Q1 and the first months of Q2, Airbnb has recovered, allowing it to file to go public and earn its highest valuation to date.
The company’s pricing comes after both DoorDash and C3.ai each priced above their own raised ranges, and saw their shares skyrocket in the first day’s trading. Some exuberance was therefore not unexpected.
Airbnb starts trading tomorrow morning. More then.