Ride-hailing giant Uber‘s stock price jumped more than 5% on Monday following its purchase of delivery service Postmates for $2.65 billion.
Uber confirmed the deal in a Monday press release after a flurry of reports over the weekend.
The acquisition comes less than a month after Uber‘s talks to buy out Postmates rival GrubHub fell through , leading the European JustEats to acquire GrubHub instead.
The company noted it intends to keep the “consumer-facing Postmates app running separately,” but it’ll be backed by a combined merchant and delivery network.
According to Uber, this should ultimately lead to more consumer exposure for restaurants — and hopefully (for Uber) it also boosts the service’s overall market share.
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Moonday Mornings: US arrests Ethereum dev for teaching North Korea about cryptocurrency
Welcome to Moonday Mornings, Hard Fork’s wrap-up of the weekend’s top cryptocurrency and blockchain headlines you shouldn’t miss.
Take a look at what happened over the past weekend.
1. Ethereum dev conspires with North Korea
US authorities have arrested developer Virgil Griffith, who has most recently been working at the Ethereum Foundation, for consulting with North Korea on how to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions .
“Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions,” assistant attorney general John Demers said in a US Department of Justice statement .
2. German banks could hold and store crypto from next year
Next year, Banks in Germany will be regulated to offer cryptocurrency products. New legislation in the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive will allow banks in the country to hold and sell cryptocurrency .
The bill was passed by the country’s federal parliament and is now expected to be given the green light by Germany’s 16 states, CoinDesk reports .
3. Israeli cryptocurrency mogul is being sued for fraud, again
Moshe Hogeg, the founder and Co-CEO of Sirin Labs, is being sued over another one of his token offerings. A new federal court lawsuit has been lodged against Hogeg and his company Stox Technologies in Seattle.
The plaintiff claims that they lost over $430,000 after investing in Stox and that their decision to do so was based on statements in the company’s whitepaper. The plaintiff is also accusing Hogeg of using investor money to buy land in Tel Aviv and one of Israel’s top soccer teams, The Block reports .
This isn’t the first time Hogeg has faced allegations of this nature.
4. Blockchain could save food industry $31B by 2024
According to figures from UK based tech industry researchers Juniper Research , blockchain-based technologies could save the global food industry more than $31 billion over the next four years .
It says that substantial savings can be realized by immutably tracking food across the supply chain to reduce food fraud. Using blockchain technologies, supply chains a re expected to streamline and be easier to regulate and make compliant, further reducing costs.
And finally…
5. IBM wants to stop package stealing drones with blockchain
Numerous commerce firms, like Amazon, are working on delivery drones, but not everyone believes the devices will be honest. Earlier this month, IBM won a patent to use blockchain to prevent delivery drones from stealing your packages .
In short, IBM thinks that it can use a sensor and a blockchain to track the journey of a drone delivered package. If the sensor detects that something isn’t quite right about the journey, it’ll alert the package’s recipient.
That’s all well and good, but what happens if a drone does fly off with your package? Logic would assume it’d be the same situation if your package didn’t arrive by any other means. A solution looking for a problem?
Well, there you have it.
Now go get on with your week. See you next time.
Winklevoss comes out of meditation to witness Bitcoin’s record high
Bitcoin broke $20,000 to set new all-time highs on Wednesday around three years after its previous price record.
Almost on cue, the rally sent major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase temporarily offline, turning profit-taking from the sudden 6% surge into a headache for traders.
Bitcoin pumps when Winklevoss meditates?
The new record highs sent Bitcoin to the top of Twitter’s trending topics as BTC fans rushed to hit publish on fire tweets they’ve been keeping for the occasion (who can blame them?).
Indeed, the last time Bitcoin was worth this much was in December 2017. But after trading as low as $3,200 a year later — more than 80% below its record highs — it’s back.
The rally comes after a flurry of interest from the coveted institutional class this year.
Jack Dorsey’s fintech Square allocated 1% of its assets ($50 million) to BTC, followed by the NASDAQ-listed MicroStrategy, which has bought over half a billion dollars worth of the cryptocurrency since August (and plans to buy even more).
Then there’s MassMutual, a relatively large mutual life insurance company. It recently announced its general fund was buying up BTC in a bid to diversify its portfolio . So too did UK asset manager Ruffer earlier today.
Not to mention, industry giant PayPal added support for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in October.
Bitcoin is now up nearly 190% in 2020, having jumped from under $7,200 to $20,633 at pixel time.
This is not investment advice. Don’t pretend it is. Always do your own research.
