MoonPay CEO and co-founder Ivan Soto-Wright speaking at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cryptocurrency start-ups have raised record funding this year.
It’s no surprise, then, that some major players in the space — from the Winklevoss twins’ virtual currency exchange Gemini to Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin’s blockchain start-up ConsenSys — announced massive new funding deals in the last week.
MoonPay, a relative newcomer, is taking the crypto mania in venture capital to new heights. The three-year-old fintech firm said Monday it has raised $555 million in its first-ever financing round. The investment, led by Tiger Global and Coatue, values the company at $3.4 billion.
Founded in 2018, Miami-based MoonPay’s software lets users buy and sell cryptocurrencies using conventional payment methods like credit cards, bank transfers or mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
It also sells its technology to other businesses including crypto website Bitcoin.com and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, a model CEO Ivan Soto-Wright calls “crypto-as-a-service.”
Soto-Wright said the firm aims to make crypto accessible to the masses in the same way that video-conferencing tools like Zoom made it easier to make calls over the internet.
“With the blockchain and cryptocurrencies, I think right now we are still in the dial-up days,” he told CNBC in an interview.
“Eventually we will get to this place where it’s frictionless to move any amount of value around anywhere in the world, and costs move as close as possible to zero.”
‘PayPal for crypto’
With prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies hitting all-time highs lately, venture capital investment in the start-ups powering the market is booming. Investors are looking for the next Coinbase after the crypto exchange giant’s blockbuster listing in April.
MoonPay’s pitch to investors is that it offers a “gateway” to digital assets. For now, that includes bitcoin, ether and other digital tokens like NFTs. But Soto-Wright’s vision is to expand the platform to include everything from digital fashion to tokenized stocks.
“People are calling us similar to PayPal, but for crypto,” he said.
The company has strong controls and checks in place to tackle money laundering, Soto-Wright said. Regulators have become increasingly wary about illicit activity in the market.
MoonPay says it has been profitable since launching its platform in 2019. The firm is on track to hit $150 million in annual revenue this year after transaction volumes skyrocketed 35-fold from 2020. Its service is now used by more than 7 million customers.
Still, the company faces stiff competition, not least from fintech pioneers like PayPal, which rolled out its own crypto features last year.
Soto-Wright said he’s not worried about the competition. He described PayPal as a “walled garden” that doesn’t give users control over their assets. “We believe the future of crypto is about customers taking possession of their private keys,” passwords that grant people access to their funds, he said.
IPO ambitions
Looking ahead, MoonPay plans to spend the money raised on new products and expansion. Soto-Wright said the firm already has ambitions to take the business public. “We have aspirations eventually to be a public company,” he said.
Cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, however, and that has impacted even the most well-known players in the space. Coinbase, for example, missed sales estimates in the third quarter after a drop in monthly users.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of nearly $69,000 earlier this month, but has since dropped about 17%. Ether, meanwhile, is down 13% from its record high.
Soto-Wright said MoonPay is prepared for a potential downturn in crypto markets, adding the firm is “agnostic” on which assets it supports.
“In the same way that telecoms got disrupted by voice over IP (internet protocol), we think, over time, financial services and all these different applications will be disrupted by the blockchain,” he said.
“There’s obviously going to be volatility as the market is trying to discover what assets, what blockchains are ultimately going to get adopted.”
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 21, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Last week on Wall Street, two forces dragged stocks lower: a set of high-stakes numbers from Nvidia and the U.S. jobs report that landed with more heat than expected. But the leaves that remained after hot tea scalded investors seemed to augur good tidings.
Even though Nvidia’s third-quarter results easily breezed past Wall Street’s estimates, they couldn’t quell worries about lofty valuations and an unsustainable bubble inflating in the artificial intelligence sector. The “Magnificent Seven” cohort — save Alphabet — had a losing week.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the pressure. September payrolls rose far more than economists expected, prompting investors to pare back their bets of a December interest rate cut. The timing didn’t help matters, as the report had been delayed and hit just as markets were already on edge.
On Friday, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said that he sees “room” for the central bank to lower interest rates, describing current policy as “modestly restrictive.” His comments caused traders to increase their bets on a December cut to around 70%, up from 44.4% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
And despite a broad sell-off in AI stocks last week, Alphabet shares bucked the trend. Investors seemed impressed by its new AI model, Gemini 3, and hopeful that its development of custom chips could rival Nvidia’s in the long run.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s ascent into the $1 trillion valuation club served as a reminder that market leadership doesn’t belong to tech alone. In a market defined by narrow concentration, any sign of broadening strength is a welcome change.
Diversification, even within AI’s sprawling ecosystem, might be exactly what this market needs now.
Qube Holdings receives takeover proposal from Macquarie. The asset management firm has put forth a non-binding proposal to acquire Qube Holdings, an Australian logistics company, at an enterprise value of 11.6 billion Australian dollars ($7.49 billion).
Bessent doesn’t see a U.S. recession in 2026. “We have set the table for a very strong, noninflationary growth economy,” the U.S. Treasury secretary said Sunday in an interview on “Meet the Press.” However, he acknowledged that some sectors have been struggling.
Singapore inflation creeps up. The country’s consumer price index for October rose 1.2% year on year, the highest since August 2024 and surpassing the 0.9% estimate in a Reuters poll of economists. Core inflation also increased a higher-than-expected 1.2%.
[PRO] Opportunities in China’s tech sector. Despite a trade truce between the U.S. and China, ongoing tensions mean both will focus on homegrown technology, analysts say. Here are the Chinese tech firms that Wall Street banks are keeping an eye on.
And finally…
A picture taken on December 8, 2014 in Abidjan shows a Chinese shoe dealer in a transaction at Adjamene’s market.
Chinese business dealings in Africa, once dominated by state-owned enterprises, are now increasingly shifting toward consumer products from the private sector.
Chinese investments in Africa’s resource-intensive sectors have declined by roughly 40% since their 2015 peak, according to Rhodium Group China Cross-Border Monitor released on Nov. 18 this year. Meanwhile, China’s exports to Africa have surged by 28% year on year over the first three quarters of 2025, the report said.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 21, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Last week on Wall Street, two forces dragged stocks lower: a set of high-stakes numbers from Nvidia and the U.S. jobs report that landed with more heat than expected. But the leaves that remained after hot tea scalded investors seemed to augur good tidings.
Even though Nvidia’s third-quarter results easily breezed past Wall Street’s estimates, they couldn’t quell worries about lofty valuations and an unsustainable bubble inflating in the artificial intelligence sector. The “Magnificent Seven” cohort — save Alphabet — had a losing week.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the pressure. September payrolls rose far more than economists expected, prompting investors to pare back their bets of a December interest rate cut. The timing didn’t help matters, as the report had been delayed and hit just as markets were already on edge.
On Friday, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said that he sees “room” for the central bank to lower interest rates, describing current policy as “modestly restrictive.” His comments caused traders to increase their bets on a December cut to around 70%, up from 44.4% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
And despite a broad sell-off in AI stocks last week, Alphabet shares bucked the trend. Investors seemed impressed by its new AI model, Gemini 3, and hopeful that its development of custom chips could rival Nvidia’s in the long run.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s ascent into the $1 trillion valuation club served as a reminder that market leadership doesn’t belong to tech alone. In a market defined by narrow concentration, any sign of broadening strength is a welcome change.
Diversification, even within AI’s sprawling ecosystem, might be exactly what this market needs now.
What you need to know today
And finally…
The Beijing music venue DDC was one of the latest to have to cancel a performance by a Japanese artist on Nov. 20, 2025, in the wake of escalating bilateral tensions.
China’s escalating dispute with Japan reinforces Beijing’s growing economic influence — and penchant for abrupt actions that can create uncertainty for businesses.
Hours before Japanese jazz quintet The Blend was due to perform in Beijing on Thursday, a plainclothesman walked into the DDC music club during a sound check. Then, “the owner of the live house came to me and said: ‘The police has told me tonight is canceled,'” said Christian Petersen-Clausen, a music agent.
— Evelyn Cheng
Correction: This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Eli Lilly.
Meta halted internal research that purportedly showed that people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to a legal filing that was released on Friday.
The social media giant was alleged to have initiated the study, dubbed Project Mercury, in late 2019 as a way to help it “explore the impact that our apps have on polarization, news consumption, well-being, and daily social interactions,” according to the legal brief, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
The filing contains newly unredacted information pertaining to Meta.
The newly released legal brief is related to high-profile multidistrict litigation from a variety of plaintiffs, such as school districts, parents and state attorneys general against social media companies like Meta, Google’s YouTube, Snap and TikTok.
The plaintiffs claim that these businesses were aware that their respective platforms caused various mental health-related harms to children and young adults, but failed to take action and instead misled educators and authorities, among several allegations.
“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement that “These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”
“YouTube is a streaming service where people come to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators, primarily on TV screens, not a social network where people go to catch up with friends,” the Google spokesperson said. “We’ve also developed dedicated tools for young people, guided by child safety experts, that give families control.”
Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2019 Meta research was based on a random sample of consumers who stopped their Facebook and Instagram usage for a month, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit alleged that Meta was disappointed that the initial tests of the study showed that people who stopped using Facebook “for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.”
Meta allegedly chose not to “sound the alarm,” but instead stopped the research, the lawsuit said.
“The company never publicly disclosed the results of its deactivation study,” according to the suit. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.”
The lawsuit cites an unnamed Meta employee who allegedly said, “If the results are bad and we don’t publish and they leak, is it going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves?”
Stone, in a series of social media posts, pushed back on the lawsuit’s implication that Meta shuttered the internal research after it allegedly showed a causal relationship between its apps and adverse mental-health effects.
Stone characterized the 2019 study as flawed and said it was the reason that the company expressed disappointment. The study, Stone said, merely found that “people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it.”
“This is a confirmation of other public research (“deactivation studies”) out there that demonstrates the same effect,” Stone said in a separate post. “It makes intuitive sense but it doesn’t show anything about the actual effect of using the platform.”
