During a Wall Street Journal event, Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that they are not big fans of a metaverse in its current form. Spencer called the metaverse’s current iteration a “poorly built video game” referring to the ecosystem's bad graphics and low-quality interfaces. The Microsoft gaming chief noted that the gaming world still has an advantage over the Metaverse in creating different engaging virtual worlds. At the same time, he compared most of the current metaverse projects to virtual reality room meetings and explained: “Video game creators have an amazing ability to build …

Snap Inc's CEO Evan Speigel announced in a note on Friday that the company had made the difficult decision to reduce the size of its workforce by approximately 20%. The note said that this round of layoffs comes after the company experienced slow revenue growth, a slump in stock prices, and a general lag behind its financial targets. Speigel shared: “Our forward-looking revenue visibility remains limited, and our current year-over-year QTD revenue growth of 8% is well below what we were expecting earlier this year.” Snap Inc. will now undertake the task of restructuring in an attempt to ensure the …

Bitcoin (BTC) price has been unable to close above $32,000 for the past fifteen days and is currently down 37% year-to-date. Although that might seem excessive, it does not stand out among some of the largest U.S.-listed tech companies that have also sustained notable losses recently. In this same 15-day period, Shopify Inc. (SHOP) stock dropped 76%, Snap Inc. (SNAP) crashed 73%, Netflix (NFLX) is down 70% and Cloudflare (NET) presented a negative 62% performance. Cryptocurrency investors should be less concerned about the current "bear market" considering Bitcoin's 79% annualized volatility. However, that is clearly not the case, because Bitcoin's …

Ether’s (ETH) 12-hour closing price has been respecting a tight $1,910 to $2,150 range for twelve days, but oddly enough, these 13% oscillations have been enough to liquidate an aggregate of $495 million in futures contracts since May 13, according to data from Coinglass. The worsening market conditions were also reflected in digital asset investment products. According to the latest edition of CoinShare's weekly Digital Asset Fund Flows report, crypto funds and investment products saw a $141 million outflow during the week ending on May 20. In this instance, Bitcoin (BTC) was the investors' focus after experiencing a $154 weekly …

The United States Federal Trade Commission is making the giants of social media account for their user data practices. On December 11, the FTC published orders for special reports from unnamed social media companies. The commission's stated aim for the reports is: "To compile data concerning the privacy policies, procedures, and practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Service providers, including the method and manner in which they collect, use, store, and disclose information about users and their devices." The initial orders, however, did not include the names of the companies involved. On Monday, the FTC publicized that the orders …

The venture capital firm behind Snapchat is looking at ways to increase their investments in the crypto industry, tech journal Recode reported May 17. Aaron Batalion, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed, is leading an effort to boost the firm’s investment by exploring three methods: setting up a new fund, carving out a portion of an existing fund, or launching an entirely new project, Recode reports, citing “sources”. According to Recode, Lightspeed is leaning toward carving out part of an existing fund for crypto investments rather than setting up an entirely new fund, which they had been considering over …