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Robinhood logo displayed on a phone screen and representation of cryptocurrencies are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on January 29, 2023. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Online brokerage giant Robinhood on Thursday said it’s launching a cryptocurrency trading feature in the European Union, pushing further outside the United States as the company looks to unlock growth from international markets.

Robinhood said its new crypto product would allow customers to buy, sell, and hold from a range of more than 25 tokens, including bitcoin, ether, ripple, cardano, solana, and polkadot. The company hopes to offer more tokens, as well as the ability to transfer and “stake,” or earn rewards from, crypto in 2024.

The move marks Robinhood’s second major expansion outside of the U.S., after it announced late last month that it plans to launch stock trades for U.K. customers by early 2024. The company opened a waitlist in the U.K. last week for the service, which will offer yields of up to 5% on customer deposits.

Robinhood is looking to tempt EU users into using its service with the ability to earn free bitcoin for users who trade lots and refer the app to their friends. The company will offer users up to one bitcoin, based on a a percentage of their monthly trading volume and the number of users they refer when they sign up.

It comes as several major U.S. crypto firms are turning to the European Union for growth after facing a tough time from regulators stateside. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has targeted several crypto firms, including Coinbase and Binance, with lawsuits alleging they violated securities laws.

The EU, meanwhile, has proposed a comprehensive set of regulation, called the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, that would bring in stricter rules for crypto trading platforms and issuers of so-called stablecoins — tokens pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar or euro.

Watch CNBC's full interview with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev

Johann Kerbrat, general manager for Robinhood Crypto, said the firm chose the EU as the first international target market for its crypto product due to the region’s development of the world’s first comprehensive set of laws specifically tailored for the crypto industry.

“The EU has developed one of the world’s most comprehensive policies for crypto asset regulation, which is why we chose the region to anchor Robinhood Crypto’s international expansion plans,” Kerbrat said in a statement Thursday.

Robinhood also touted transparency and security features in its European crypto offering to convince users to trade with its service. The company said it would transparently display spreads on trades, including the rebate the firm receives from sell and trade orders.

Robinhood said it never commingles customer coins with business funds other than for operating purposes, such as payment of blockchain network fees, and stores all its customers’ coins in cold wallets disconnected from the internet.

Robinhood said it also has a crime insurance policy in place to ensure a portion of assets held across its storage systems are protected against losses from theft, including cybersecurity breaches. The policy is underwritten by underwriters at Lloyd’s, the insurance marketplace.

Theft of crypto has been a big problem for the industry over the past couple of years, with major hacks of blockchain networks resulting in millions’ worth of digital coins being drained from users’ wallets. Just last month, the HTX exchange and Heco bridge, two platforms linked to high-profile entrepreneur Justin Sun were hacked for an estimated $115 million.

The blurring of lines between trading venues and custodians became a big problem last year when FTX, the disgraced former $32 billion crypto exchange, collapsed after revelations that its sister market-making firm Alameda Research used customer funds to make risky bets on certain tokens.

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Meta could take a $7 billion hit this year because of Trump’s tough China tariffs

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Meta could take a  billion hit this year because of Trump's tough China tariffs

This photo illustration created on Jan. 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C., shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.

Drew Angerer | AFP | Getty Images


Meta’s core online advertising business could take a $7 billion hit this year due to President Donald Trump’s tough China tariffs impacting retailers in the country.

That’s according to a MoffettNathanson research note published Tuesday that analyzes the potential impact of China-linked retailers like Temu and Shien slashing their Facebook and Instagram advertising budgets amid the U.S. and China trade dispute.

The MoffettNathanson analysts pointed to Meta’s latest annual report in which the company revealed that its China revenue was $18.35 billion in 2024, equating to a little over 11% of total its total sales. Like other analysts, MoffettNathanson believe Temu and Shien comprise the bulk of Meta’s China business, and if those online retailers cut back on their ad campaigns this year, the social networking giant’s 2025 ad sales could be impacted by $7 billion.

Meta did not immediately respond for a request for comment.

There are already signs of a pullback, the analysts wrote, citing a CNBC report about Temu reducing its U.S. advertising spending and seeing a big drop in its Apple App Store rankings following Trump’s China tariffs.

“China’s importance to Meta’s business cannot be overstated,” the analysts wrote in the note. “While Meta does not provide a country-level breakdown of revenue within Europe, we logically can presume that China is Meta’s second-largest revenue source after the United States — a remarkable position for a country where Meta has no users or active platforms.”

Meta could be in even more trouble if the broader markets heads into a recession this year, as some analysts and corporate financial chiefs have predicted. A “truly prolonged economic downturn” combined with the U.S. and China trade dispute “could wipe $23 billion in 2025 advertising revenues off Meta’s books and crush our 2025 earnings by -25%,” the analysts said.

“As noted earlier, we believe Meta is particularly exposed to a pullback in ad spend from Chinese advertisers,” the analysts said. “In a scenario where a recession is triggered or exacerbated by escalating trade tensions, Meta would face a dual headwind: cyclical advertising weakness and a targeted decline in Chinese ad spend.”

The MoffettNathanson analysts still maintain a Buy rating on Meta, said they have but decreased their target price by $185 to $525.

Meta shares have dropped about 19% to $499.36 since Trump was officially sworn in as U.S. president for the second time.

The company reports its first-quarter earnings next Wednesday.

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Tesla short sellers have made $11.5 billion from this year’s selloff

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Tesla short sellers have made .5 billion from this year's selloff

It’s been a brutal year for Tesla shareholders so far, and a hugely profitable one for short sellers, who bet on a decline in the company’s stock price.

Tesla shorts have generated $11.5 billion in mark-to-market profits in 2025, according to data from S3 Partners. The data reflected Monday’s closing price of $227.50, at which point Tesla shares were down 44% for the year.

The stock rallied about 4% on Tuesday, along with gains in the broader market, heading into Tesla’s first-quarter earnings report after the close of trading. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The electric vehicle maker is expected to report a slight decline in year-over-year revenue weeks after announcing a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries for the quarter. With CEO Elon Musk playing a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, responsible for dramatically cutting the size and capacity of the federal government, Tesla has faced widespread protests in the U.S. and Europe, where Musk has actively supported Germany’s far-right AfD party.

Tesla shares plummeted 36% in the first quarter, their worst performance for any period since 2022, and have continued to drop in April, largely on concerns that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on top trade partners will increase the cost of parts and materials crucial for EV production, including manufacturing equipment, automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells.

The company is also struggling to keep pace with lower-cost competitors in China, and is a laggard in the robotaxi market, which is currently dominated in the U.S. by Alphabet’s Waymo. Tesla has promised to launch its first driverless ride-hailing offering in Austin, Texas, in June.

Tesla has been the biggest stock decliner among tech megacaps this year, followed by Nvidia, which was down about 28% as of Monday’s close. The chipmaker has been the second-best profit generator for short sellers, generating returns of $9.4 billion, according to S3.

Nvidia is currently the most-shorted stock in terms of value, with $24.6 billion worth sold short, S3 said. Apple is second at $22.2 billion, and Tesla is third at $17.6 billion.

Musk has a long and antagonistic history with short sellers, who have made plenty of money at times during Tesla’s 15 years on the stock market, but have also been burned badly for extended stretches.

In 2020, Tesla publicly mocked short sellers, promoting red satin shorts for sale.

“Limited edition shorts now available at Tesla.com/shortshorts” Musk wrote in a social media post in July of that year, as the stock was in the midst of a steep rally.

Two years earlier, hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital posted a tweet that he received the pairs of short shorts that Musk had promised him.

“I want to thank @elonmusk for the shorts. He is a man of his word!” Einhorn wrote. Einhorn had previously disclosed that his firm’s bet against Tesla “was our second biggest loser” in the most recent quarter.

In February 2022, after reports surfaced that the Department of Justice was investigating two investors who had shorted Tesla’s stock, Musk told CNBC that he was “greatly encouraged” by the action and said “hedge funds have used short selling and complex derivatives to take advantage of small investors.”

PlainSite founder Aaron Greenspan, a former Tesla short seller and outspoken critic of Musk, sued the Tesla CEO alleging he engaged in stock price manipulation for years through a variety of schemes.

The case was removed to federal court last year. In 2023, Musk’s social network X banned Greenspan and PlainSite, which publishes legal and other public and company records, from the platform.

— CNBC’s Tom Rotunno contributed to this report.

WATCH: Here’s what to watch for in Tesla’s earnings report

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Instagram launches Edits app for video, rivaling TikTok

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Instagram launches Edits app for video, rivaling TikTok

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

Instagram on Tuesday launched its standalone Edits video creation app that offers features similar to those already available from TikTok parent Bytedance.

The new app allows creators to organize project ideas, shoot and edit video, and access insights about content. Edits includes background replacement, automatic captioning and artificial intelligence tools that can turn images into video.

“There’s a lot going on in the world right now and no matter what happens, we think it’s our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a Reel posted in January announcing the app.

Edits appears to be Meta‘s answer to CapCut, TikTok’s sister app that is also owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, which allows users to create and edit video on their phone or computer.

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

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With TikTok’s future uncertain, Instagram’s move to launch Edits could be seen as a step to gain ground in the next era of short video creation in the creator economy.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump for a second time extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban. The deadline is now mid-June.

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

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