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Cryptocurrencies slid on Tuesday night, with bitcoin dropping back to the $60,000 level after a shaky start to what is usually one of its strongest months.

The flagship crypto was last off by nearly 4% at $60,972.62, according to Coin Metrics. Around 4:45 p.m. Eastern time, bitcoin slid to as low as $60,175. Ether last traded at $2,449.83, down more than 5%.

Stocks related to virtual currencies also tumbled in extended trading. Crypto exchange Coinbase dropped about 1% and bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy lost 2%, after closing lower by 7.4% and 3.5%, respectively.

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Crypto assets tumble to start October and the fourth quarter

Rising tensions in the Middle East dampened investors’ risk appetite as the new trading month and quarter began. On Tuesday, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel in retaliation for its recent killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and an Iranian commander in Lebanon.

“Surging unrest across the Middle East has propelled oil prices upward and reinforced the dollar’s strength, casting a shadow over bitcoin and other speculative investments,” said Chris Kline, chief operating officer and co-founder of Bitcoin IRA.

“In stark contrast to September’s stronger-than-expected performance for bitcoin, October looms as a potential rollercoaster, influenced by the delayed ripple effects of last spring’s halving event and the approach of a divisive American electoral contest,” he added. “Meanwhile, a global monetary tug-of-war is unfolding as various central banks slash interest rates and expand their money supplies.”

Additionally, investors are monitoring a strike by members of the International Longshoremen’s Association on the East and Gulf Coasts that could affect the U.S. economy depending on how long it lasts.

October and November are historically the strongest months of the year of the year for bitcoin. It has finished this month higher in all but two years since 2013, averaging a return of nearly 23%. It has become known to crypto native investors as “Uptober.”

Bitcoin has struggled to break its ceiling of $70,000, though the $55,000 threshold has provided strong support for the crypto asset. Some investors are doubtful that October will be the month it finally comes back to life, but most remain optimistic that the cryptocurrency will test new highs in the new quarter.

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Microsoft announces new HR executive, company veteran Amy Coleman

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Microsoft announces new HR executive, company veteran Amy Coleman

Microsoft’s Amy Coleman (L) and Kathleen Hogan (R).

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft said Wednesday that company veteran Amy Coleman will become its new executive vice president and chief people officer, succeeding Kathleen Hogan, who has held the position for the past decade.

Hogan will remain an executive vice president but move to a newly established Office of Strategy and Transformation, which is an expansion of the office of the CEO. She will join Microsoft’s group of top executives, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.

Coleman is stepping into a major role, given that Microsoft is among the largest employers in the U.S., with 228,000 total employees as of June 2024. She has worked at the company for more than 25 years over two stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996.

Hogan will remain on the senior leadership team.

“Amy has led HR for our corporate functions across the company for the past six years, following various HR roles partnering across engineering, sales, marketing, and business development spanning 25 years,” Nadella wrote in a memo to employees.

“In that time, she has been a trusted advisor to both Kathleen and to me as she orchestrated many cross-company workstreams as we evolved our culture, improved our employee engagement model, established our employee relations team, and drove enterprise crisis response for our people,” he wrote.

Hogan arrived at Microsoft in 2003 after being a development manager at Oracle and a partner at McKinsey. Under Hogan, some of Microsoft’s human resources practices evolved. She has emphasized the importance of employees having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, drawing on concepts from psychologist Carol Dweck.

“We came up with some big symbolic changes to show that we really were serious about driving culture change, from changing the performance-review system to changing our all-hands company meeting, to our monthly Q&A with the employees,” Hogan said in a 2019 interview with Business Insider.

Hogan pushed for managers to evaluate the inclusivity of employees and oversaw changes in the handling of internal sexual harassment cases.

Coleman had been Microsoft’s corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions for the past four years. In that role, she was responsible for 200 HR workers and led the development of Microsoft’s hybrid work approach, as well as the HR aspect of the company’s Covid response, according to her LinkedIn profile.

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Google, Apple hit with EU antitrust actions under cloud of Trump tariff threats

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Google, Apple hit with EU antitrust actions under cloud of Trump tariff threats

A man holds an Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max ahead of the launch of sales of the new iPhone 16 series smartphones in a store in Moscow, Russia September 20, 2024. 

Evgenia Novozhenina | Reuters

European Union regulators are taking steps to rein in Google and Apple on antitrust charges, even as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to hit the bloc with tariffs for alleged “overseas extortion” of America’s tech giants.

This breaking news story is being updated.

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XRP surges after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says SEC is dropping its lawsuit against the company

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XRP surges after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says SEC is dropping its lawsuit against the company

A visual representation of the digital cryptocurrency, XRP.

S3studio | Getty Images

XRP surged after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the Securities and Exchange Commission is no longer pursuing its appeal in the case against the payments company.

The price of XRP was last higher by nearly 14% at $2.57.

“It’s been almost four years and about three months since the SEC originally sued us, certainly a painful journey in lots of ways,” Garlinghouse said at the Digital Assets Summit in New York Wednesday morning. “I really deeply believed that we were going to be on the right side of the law and on the right side of history.”

“The system just feels broken. That we had to fight this fight for the industry and you had an SEC attacking the industry, particularly the Ripple case,” he continued. “There were no victims, there was no investor loss. They were just not acting in good faith.”

In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple for breaching U.S. securities laws by selling XRP without first registering it with the agency. The company scored a partial victory in 2023 when SEC. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the decision, which was hailed as a landmark win for the crypto industry. Still, while XRP at that point was not considered a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges, it was considered an unregistered security offering if sold to institutional investors.

The development comes as the SEC moves quickly to reverse much of the damage in the crypto industry left by the previous administration. Last month the agency ended its enforcement case against Coinbase; closed its investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini and Consensys with no enforcement action; scaled back its crypto enforcement unit; and clarified that meme coins are not securities.

This week, the newly formed SEC crypto task force will kick off a roundtable series focused on defining the security status of digital assets.

XRP was created by the founders of Ripple in 2012. It is the native token of the open source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business – about 95% of which takes place outside the U.S. Ripple is the largest holder of XRP coins.

The coin was the biggest beneficiary of the post-election Trump trade. It’s up more than 400% since then and up 22% this year.

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