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About $90.1 million has mistakenly gone out to users of popular DeFi staking protocol Compound after an upgrade gone epically wrong. Now, the founder is making a plea — and issuing a few threats — to incentivize the voluntary return of the platform’s crypto tokens.

“If you received a large, incorrect amount of COMP from the Compound protocol error: Please return it,” Robert Leshner, founder of Compound Labs, tweeted late Thursday.

“Keep 10% as a white-hat. Otherwise, it’s being reported as income to the IRS, and most of you are doxxed,” continued the tweet.

The price of Compound’s native token, COMP, initially plunged nearly 13% in a day on news of the bug, but it’s since gained back ground.

Whether reward recipients choose to return many millions of dollars to the platform remains to be seen, though if history is any indication, it is certainly possible.

“Alchemix [another decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocol] had a similar incident a few months back where they gave out more rewards than intended,” blockchain security researcher Mudit Gupta told CNBC. “Almost everyone who got the extra rewards refunded the extra.”

What is different here is that the Alchemix exchange lost just $4.8 million.

But Gupta remains hopeful.

“This makes me optimistic that people will refund most of COMP tokens, as well, but you can never be sure,” he said.

What went wrong

DeFi protocols like Compound are designed to recreate traditional financial systems such as banks and exchanges using blockchains enriched with self-executing smart contracts.

On Wednesday, Compound rolled out what should have been a pretty standard upgrade. But soon after implementation, it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong.

“The new Comptroller contract contains a bug, causing some users to receive far too much COMP,” explained Leshner in a tweet.

“There are no admin controls or community tools to disable the COMP distribution; any changes to the protocol require a 7-day governance process to make their way into production,” he added, indicating that no fix could take effect for seven days.

Gupta, a core developer at decentralized crypto exchange SushiSwap, said in a tweet that the entire episode could be blamed on a “one-letter bug” in the code.

Compound made clear that no supplied or borrowed funds were at risk, but that did little to soften the blow.

Protocol users en masse began reporting massive windfalls. Soon after Leshner’s tweet about the bug, $29 million worth of COMP tokens were claimed in one transaction. Another claimed that they received 70 million COMP tokens into their account, or about $20.8 million at the time of their post.

The list of COMP token millionaires goes on.

For users accustomed to providing their crypto to borrowers at a set interest rate, which is typically a single-digit APY, the erroneous and sizable rewards were certainly a nice change in pace.

Leshner made clear, however, that there is a cap to the carnage. The Compound chief tweeted that the Comptroller contract address “contains a limited quantity of COMP.”

“The impact is bounded, at worst, 280,000 COMP tokens,” Leshner wrote. Gupta told CNBC that this entire pool of tokens — worth about $90.1 million, as of the time of publication — has already been handed out.

Threats lack teeth

Newly-minted COMP token millionaires now have a few options.

Bitcoin developer Ben Carman points out that it isn’t really possible for the platform to reclaim the money.

“They shouldn’t be able to recall the money without rolling back the chain,” explained Carman. “They’d have to purposefully 51% attack the chain to get rid of some blocks.”

So, it is up to a user’s discretion to decide next steps.

As a hypothetical, let’s take the account holder who was accidentally gifted $29 million in COMP tokens in error. This user could return the funds and hold onto the $2.9 million “white-hat” tip. But there is also nothing to keep them from holding their mistaken reward and risk being “doxxed.”

Doxxing someone means making public what is considered private information about an individual, which in the cryptosphere, is tantamount to committing a cardinal sin.

Doxxing their customers is about the worst thing a crypto company can do from a PR perspective,” Mati Greenspan, portfolio manager and Quantum Economics founder, told CNBC.

And it seems unlikely Leshner would pursue that route. He was quick to walk back his Thursday evening tweet, saying that, it “was a bone-headed tweet/approach.”

And then there’s the threat related to the mistaken reward being reported to the IRS.

Section 61 of the IRS code defines income very broadly. If you received a large sum from this error and decide to keep it, that would be considered income,” explained Shehan Chandrasekera, a CPA and head of tax strategy at crypto tax software company CoinTracker.io.

Users who were mistakenly awarded extra tokens could voluntarily return the funds. In that scenario, Chandrasekera says that “technically the recipient is supposed to pay income tax based on the market value of the coins at the time of receipt, but if he or she returns the funds, there’s no reason to report the income.”

But Chandrasekera also makes clear that no one has to return the funds. If their reward is reported to the IRS, they would simply be subject to income taxes on that amount.

So that $29 million COMP token winner stands to take the most home in a scenario where they just pay up to Uncle Sam, rather than pay it back to Compound.

But as Greenspan points out, how things play out with this bug is almost entirely beside the point. “The bigger issue is – can it happen again?” he said.

Compound is the world’s fifth-largest DeFi protocol with a total value locked of $9.65 billion, according to DeFi Llama, which provides ranking and metrics for DeFi protocols.

“The protocol can easily absorb a loss of $90 million and a lot of it will likely be returned, but the larger issue would be if people lose confidence in the system’s ability to function properly,” said Greenspan.

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

Pedestrians walk by an advertisement for Klarna.

Daniel Harvey Gonzalez | In Pictures via Getty Images

Klarna, a provider of buy now, pay later loans filed its IPO prospectus on Friday, and plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol KLAR.

Klarna, headquartered in Sweden, hasn’t yet disclosed the number of shares to be offered or the expected price range.

The decision to go public in the U.S. deals a significant blow to European stock exchanges, which have struggled to retain homegrown tech firms. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski had hinted for years that a U.S. listing was more likely, citing better visibility and regulatory advantages.

Klarna is continuing to rebuild after a dramatic downturn. Once a pandemic-era darling valued at $46 billion in a SoftBank-led funding round, Klarna saw its valuation slashed by 85% in 2022, plummeting to $6.7 billion in its most recent primary fundraising. However, analysts now estimate the company’s valuation in the $15 billion range, bolstered by its return to profitability in 2023.

Revenue last year increased 24% to $2.8 billion. The company’s operating loss was $121 million for the year, and adjusted operating profit was $181 million, swinging from a loss of $49 million a year earlier.

Founded in 2005, Klarna is best known for its buy now, pay later model, a service that allows consumers to split purchases into installments. The company competes with Affirm, which went public in 2021, and Afterpay, which Block acquired for $29 billion in early 2022. Klarna’s major shareholders include venture firms Sequoia Capital and Atomico, as well as SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen on Q4 results, launch of DocuSign IAM and growth outlook

Docusign rose more than 14% after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings after the bell Thursday.

“We’ve really stabilized and I think started to turn the corner on the core business,” CEO Allan Thygesen said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve become much more efficient.”

Here’s how the company performed in the fourth quarter FY2025 compared to LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings per share: 86 cents vs. 85 cents expected
  • Revenue: $776 million vs. $761 million

The earnings beat was boosted in part by the electronic signature service’s new artificial intelligence-enabled content called Docusign IAM, a platform for optimizing processes involving agreements.

“It’s tremendously valuable,” Thygesen said. “It’s opening a treasure trove of data. … We’re seeing excellent pickup.”

Looking to fiscal year 2026, Thygesen said Docusign expects IAM to account for low double digits of the total growth of the business by Q4.

Read more CNBC tech news

Thygesen said the company is also partnering with Microsoft and Google, which the company does not view as competitors because they’re “not looking to become agreement management specialists.”

Despite consumer sentiment and demand dipping across the board due to tariff uncertainty, Thygesen said the company has not seen anything yet in its transactional activity to indicate a slowdown in demand or growth.

“More and more people are going to want to sign things electronically,” Thygesen said.

The company reported subscription revenue at $757 million, marking a 9% year-over-year increase. Docusign said it expects first-quarter revenue between $745 million and $749 million and projects full-year revenue between $3.129 billion and $3.141 billion.

Docusign reported net income of $83.50 million, or 39 cents per share, compared to net income of $27.24 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago. Fourth-quarter revenue of $776 million was up 9% from the year-ago quarter.

DocuSign went public in 2018 at a $6 billion valuation. The company’s share price soared during the pandemic as demand for remote services boomed during lockdowns and social restrictions, hitting record highs in 2021 before plummeting. Thygesen, who previously worked at Google, joined the company in September 2022 after DocuSign’s massive slide.

The stock is down more than 16% year-to-date.

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Tech’s 3-week sell-off, led by Tesla, wipes out $2.7 trillion in value from megacaps

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Tech's 3-week sell-off, led by Tesla, wipes out .7 trillion in value from megacaps

Less than two months ago, the tech industry’s top leaders flocked to Washington, D.C., for the presidential inauguration, part of an effort to strike a friendly tone with President Donald Trump after a contentious first go-round in the White House.

Thus far, they’ve avoided any nasty social media posts from the president. But their treatment by investors has been anything but warm.

Over the last three weeks, since the Nasdaq touched its high for the year, the seven most valuable U.S. tech companies — often called “the Magnificent Seven” — have lost a combined $2.7 trillion in market value. The sell-off has pushed the Nasdaq to its lowest level since September.

As of Thursday, the tech-heavy index was down 4.9% for the week, heading for its worst weekly performance in six months. If it ends up down more than 5.8%, it would be the steepest weekly drop since January 2022.

Sparking the downdraft was President Trump’s promise to slap high tariffs on top trading partners, including China, Mexico and Canada, along with mass firings of government workers. The combination of a potential trade war and rising unemployment is particularly troubling news for consumer and business spending and has raised fears of a recession.

Additionally, many technology companies import key parts from abroad, and rely on trade partners for manufacturing.

This isn’t what Wall Street was expecting.

Following Trump’s election victory in November, the market jumped on prospects of diminished regulation and favorable tax policies. The Nasdaq climbed to a record close on Dec. 16, capping a more than 9% rally over about six weeks after the election.

Since then, electric car maker Tesla has lost close to half its value, despite — or perhaps because of — the central role that CEO Elon Musk is playing in the Trump administration.

The Nasdaq’s high point for the year came on Feb. 19, about a month into Trump’s second term. But it finished that week lower and has continued its precipitous decline.

Here’s how the seven megacaps have fared over that stretch:

Apple, the world’s most valuable company and the only remaining member of the $3 trillion club, has lost $529 billion in market cap since the close on Feb. 19. The iPhone maker is down 17%.

Microsoft, which was previously worth over $3 trillion, has fallen by $267 billion in the past three weeks, a drop of close to 9% for the software giant.

Nvidia, the chipmaker that’s been the biggest beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, also slid below $3 trillion over the course of losing $577 billion in value, the biggest dollar decline in the group. Like Apple, the stock is down 17% since the Nasdaq peaked.

Amazon is down by $347 billion, falling by 14%, while Alphabet is off by $275 billion after a 12% decline. Meta has shed $286 billion in market cap, a 16% drop.

Tesla has seen by far the biggest percentage decline at 33%, equaling $386 billion in value.

Goldman Sachs on Wednesday referred to the group as the “Maleficent 7.” Chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin noted that the basket now trades at its lowest valuation premium relative to the S&P 500 since 2017. Goldman cut its price target on the benchmark index to 6,200 from 6,500. The S&P 500 closed on Thursday at 5,521.52.

“We believe investors will require either a catalyst that improves the economic growth outlook or clear asymmetry to the upside before they try to ‘catch the falling knife’ and reverse the recent market momentum,” Kostin wrote.

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