Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 4, 2022.
Mike Blake | Reuters
The CEO of blockchain startup Ripple sees the combined market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market topping $5 trillion this year.
Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC that he expects the entire value of the crypto market to double, citing macro factors including the arrival of the first U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETFs), as well as the upcoming so-called bitcoin “halving.”
“I’ve been around this industry for a long time, and I’ve seen these trends come and go,” Garlinghouse told CNBC. “I’m very optimistic. I think the macro trends, the big picture things like the ETFs, they’re driving for the first time real institutional money.”
“You’re seeing that drives demand, and at the same time demand is increasing, supply is decreasing,” Garlinghouse said. “That doesn’t take an economics major to tell you what happens when supply contracts and demand expands.”
The first U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs were approved on Jan. 10 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They trade on U.S. stock exchanges and allow institutions and retail investors to gain exposure to bitcoin without directly owning the underlying asset.
The bitcoin halving is a technical event that takes place roughly every four years in bitcoin’s history. It halves the total mining reward to bitcoin miners, which are volunteers on the bitcoin network that use high-powered computers to verify transactions and mint new tokens.
The last such event took place in 2020, and the next one is slated to happen later this month.
“The overall market cap of the crypto industry … is easily predicted to to double by the end of this year … [as it’s] impacted by all of these macro factors,” Garlinghouse said.
The total crypto market capitalization was roughly $2.6 trillion as of April 4. If the market were to double, that would imply a new total crypto market cap of $5.2 trillion.
Bitcoin has risen more than 140% in the last 12 months.
It hit a record high above $73,000 on March 13, according to CoinGecko data. It has since fallen well below the $70,000 level, however.
The world’s digital currency has been the main token driving gains for the broader market.
Bitcoin accounts for about 49% of the entire crypto market, with a market capitalization of $1.3 trillion as of April 1.
Positive signs on U.S. crypto regulation
One of the other factors that Garlinghouse sees pushing the crypto market to new highs is the possibility of positive regulatory momentum in the United States.
This year being an election year, crypto hopefuls are optimistic that the next administration will be more accommodating to the crypto industry with its policy focus.
The SEC under Chair Gary Gensler has been aggressive in its enforcement on crypto companies, including Ripple itself.
The SEC targeted Ripple with a securities lawsuit alleging it illegally sold XRP, a cryptocurrency Ripple is closely associated with, in unregistered securities deals. Ripple denies the claims and is fighting the suit.
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“One of the things actually I’ll say on the macro tailwinds for the industry: I think we will get more clarity in the United States,” Garlinghouse said.
“The U.S. is still the largest economy in the world, and it’s unfortunately been one of the more hostile crypto markets. And I think that’s going to start to change, also.”
Garlinghouse isnt the only crypto bull predicting outsized gains for the crypto market this year.
Marshall Beard, chief operating officer of U.S. crypto exchange Gemini, recently told CNBC at a crypto conference in London that he expects the bitcoin price to rise to $150,000 later this year.
“Everything went up so fast already this year, there’s just a lot of activity, a lot of adoption, new regulation, ETFs, the halving, miners needing to get out,” Beard told CNBC.
“You’re going to see violent moves up and down until that new all-time high, which I think will be $150,000,” Beard added. “It probably happens this year. I think it moves so fast … and I think that momentum, the supply shock, it moves crazy quickly.”
TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.
Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.
TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.
“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”
Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.
“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.
But there may a dark side to this growth.
As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.
“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”
Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.
“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”
Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.
While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.
Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
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Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.