Goldman Sachs finds an oddity under the hood of earnings season when it comes to major technology companies.
BUSINESS
Oil prices shake off tariff worries to rise after 3 straight weekly declines
Oil futures rose Monday, finding support after three straight weekly declines that took crude to its lows of the new year.
Bond yields steady ahead of looming Powell testimony, CPI data
Bond yields held to a tight range on Monday, as investors balanced upcoming inflation data and Federal Reserve testimony with new tariffs.
Base Team Member Refutes Claims That Its Sequencer Coinbase Has Been Selling ETH
A member of layer 2 scaling solution Base has refuted rumors that its sequencer Coinbase has been selling ether (ETH).
“Coinbase has accumulated $300M+ in ETH, which is more than 2x all of Base’s ETH earnings over time,” Base member Kabir.base.eth said on X Sunday. “Base and Coinbase have and continue to hold ETH and publicly disclose our long term holdings (100K ETH+, $300M+).”
Kabir added that Base uses offchain custody for security and audit reasons (that’s why funds move to Coinbase), stressing that the Ethereum layer 2 solution earns and spends as much as possible in ETH, using it for Layer 1 costs and granting support. CoinDesk reached out Coinbase for a comment on the matter.
Kabir’s comments came after pseudonymous observer Santisa said Base has been transferring all sequencer fees to Coinbase since the debut, and the sequencer has likely sold these coins.
Coinbase is supposedly the only sequencer node on Base that sequences and finalizes transactions in a specified order and improves transaction throughput (speed). Coinbase charges a fee, collected in ETH, for this sequencer role.
Santisa’s take echoed Sonic Labs founder Andre Cronje’s concerns about the use of centralized sequencers in layer 2 solutions that lead to profit models that don’t fully align with the broader Ethereum values.
In essence, while Layer 2 scaling solutions earn a substantial revenue from transaction fees, they send a small portion of that to the Ethereum mainnet for data availability and security purposes. In other words, most fees collected in ETH is either retained or offloaded into the market, reducing the fee revenue and associated ETH burning on the mainnet. That has an adverse impact on ETH’s supply.
“L2s are why Ethereum is inflationary again. SCALE ETHEREUM. They can get the Sonic tech for free. 0 charge. Will 1000x their throughput,” Cronje said on X.
‘It is hard to watch them buy a Mercedes’: My father left his $600K estate to my stepmother. Her family put the assets in a trust. Is my inheritance lost?
“My stepmother’s family refused to follow the terms of the will, which left their joint estate to my sister and me.”
Here’s the biggest economic threat from Trump’s planned immigration crackdown, according to Goldman Sachs
Should those arrests and deportations pick up, it could have economic consequences, depending how aggressive authorities get.
What happens to the floral townhome of singer Lily Allen and ‘Stranger Things’ actor David Harbour if they split?
The couple’s extensively renovated Brooklyn townhouse includes a windowless pink primary suite that Allen called a ‘bed womb.’
Bitcoin HODLer Metaplanet Achieves $35M Unrealized Gains in 2024 Thanks to BTC Treasury
Metaplanet (3350) announced full-year 2024 financial results and is now sitting on an unrealized gain of approximately $36 million (5.46 billion yen) on a total of 1,761 BTC, acquired for $137 million.
The bitcoin investor said it increased its shareholder base by 500% to 50,000 in 2024.
Metaplanet has several ways of increasing bitcoin holdings per share. The first is debt issuance, which is achieved through secured bonds, convertible bonds, and the use of bitcoin as collateral.
The second is equity issuance through private placement, preference shares, convertible bonds and warrants on top of cash flow from business operations, according to the presentation.
The firm plans to acquire 10,000 BTC by the end of 2025 and 21,000 BTC by 2026-end. This will be achieved by issuing 21 million shares in moving strike warrants.
Metaplanet shares were up 8% on Monday and up 64% year to date.
The impressive property portfolio of the late hip-hop legend and Murder Inc. Records founder Irv Gotti
Music producer Irv Gotti died after a stroke Feb. 5. His clients included Jennifer Lopez, Ja Rule, Ashanti, DMX, and JAY Z.
BP is cheaper than its rivals. Now an activist investor has swooped in.
BP shares surged in early trade on Monday after the activist investor Elliot was reported to have taken a significant stake in the integrated oil giant.