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Galaxy Digital's CIO explains what to expect from crypto in the second half of 2023

Bitcoin touched a 13-month high on Thursday as the drumbeat for institutional bitcoin demand grew louder following comments from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

The cryptocurrency was last lower by 1% at $30,178.41, according to Coin Metrics. Early in the morning, it climbed to about $31,450, reaching its highest level since June 2022. It gave back those gains, however, after better-than-expected U.S. jobs data increased investor worries about path of interest rates.

The earlier move was in contrast to weaker stock prices and yields. Additionally, the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s June meeting, released Wednesday, showed that most officials would support more rate increases ahead. Cryptocurrency liquidity has been low for several months, continuing to exaggerate both up and down moves.

“There is still a weight on the price,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “We have often over the past few weeks seen selling resistance at around $31,000. That will eventually be broken, but meanwhile traditional markets seem to be entering a more risk-off mood – we can’t yet assume that bitcoin will just shrug that off.”

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Bitcoin (BTC) pulled back Thursday following better-than-expected U.S. jobs data.

Sentiment among traders was high though, after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink gave bitcoin perhaps its biggest ever endorsement from a major institutional player. Speaking on Fox Business News on Wednesday, Fink called bitcoin “an international asset” and said it’s “not based on any one currency so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative.”

Bitcoin has steadily climbed since June 15, when BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, first filed to launch a spot bitcoin ETF. The number of coins held by institutions through trusts, ETFs and funds has spiked since then, reaching its highest level in more than a year, according to CryptoQuant, and bitcoin open interest is back to pre-FTX levels.

“Market participants are reacting favorably to the entrance of legacy financial institutions into bitcoin — a trend that lends further validity to an asset that was once believed to be a passing fad,” said Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale, whose bitcoin trust is awaiting the green light to convert into an ETF.

“More importantly, though, recent news of new entrants into bitcoin underscores the staying power of this asset class more broadly, and many investors view this as a once in a generation investment opportunity,” Sonnenshein added.

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

Alexis Ohanian

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”

Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”

The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”

Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.

At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.

In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.

Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.

Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.

Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”

“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women's sports

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz speaks at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2019.

Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CrowdStrike shares dropped 9% after issuing weak earnings guidance as the company signaled ongoing pressure from its global IT outage that rattled businesses in July.

The cybersecurity software provider said it expects fiscal first-quarter earnings to range between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average Factset estimate of 95 cents. CrowdStrike is projecting earnings for the year to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, excluding items. That fell short $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, CrowdStrike posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share, versus net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company also reported $21 million in costs from incident-related expenses and $49.9 million of tax expenses connected to acquisitions.

The company also said it anticipates another $73 million in expenses for the first quarter resulting from its July update that spurred a global information technology outage, grounded flights and disrupted businesses. CrowdStrike projects an additional $43 million in costs due to some deal packages offered in its wake.

The outage has also weighed on free cash flow margins, which CrowdStrike said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday it expects to return to 30% or more in fiscal 2027.

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Many on Wall Street expect headwinds from the July issue to start abating in the new fiscal year, with Bernstein’s Peter Weed expecting a pick up in CrowdStrike net retention rate in the new fiscal year.

“Although FY26 guidance marked a conservative start to the year, in our view, we expect management is setting the stage for a return to a beat-and-raise cadence we saw before the outage,” wrote JPMorgan’s Brian Essex.

CrowdStrike’s disappointing guidance offset better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue and said that revenue grew 25% from a year ago.

Founder and CEO George Kurtz called the company a “comeback story” on the conference call.

“I’m extremely proud of the engagement we’ve had with customers, partners, prospects in the market navigating a year that tested CrowdStrike,” he said. “Q4 showcases the fruits of our labors, giving me strong conviction in our AI-native, single platform, excellent execution, and accelerating market opportunity.”

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Amazon’s One Medical CEO stepping down after less than two years at helm

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Amazon's One Medical CEO stepping down after less than two years at helm

A sign is posted in front of a One Medical office on July 21, 2022 in San Rafael, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

One Medical CEO Trent Green will step down from the Amazon-owned primary care provider after less than two years in the role.

Green is leaving One Medical to become CEO of National Research Corp., or NRC Health, a provider of health-care analytics and other services, the company said in a release Tuesday. He’ll start there on June 1.

Under Green, One Medical expanded into new geographic markets and opened more offices. It also integrated further into Amazon, with the company adding medical services to its Prime membership program.

Amazon confirmed Green’s departure in a statement.

“After nearly three years with Amazon One Medical, CEO Trent Green has decided to leave the company,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “We are grateful to Trent for his many contributions and wish him well on his next endeavor.”

Neil Lindsay, who leads Amazon Health Services, said in a memo to employees on Tuesday that Green is moving back to his home state of Nebraska for the new role. Green’s last day at Amazon will be April 4.

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“Trent has helped One Medical solidify its position as an incredible place for providers to deliver — and patients to turn to (and return for) — high-quality, human-centered care,” Lindsay wrote in the memo, which was obtained by CNBC.

Green was named CEO of One Medical in September 2023, succeeding Amir Dan Rubin. The change in leadership came roughly six months after Amazon completed its $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical.

The deal for One Medical is the third-largest acquisition in Amazon’s history, behind its 2017 purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion and its $8.45 billion deal for MGM Studios in 2021.

Amazon acquired One Medical as part of a deepening push into the health-care market. The company scooped up online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for about $750 million, before launching its own offering.

It’s continued to tweak its health offerings. Amazon launched, then shuttered, a telehealth service, as well as a line of health and fitness devices.

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