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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
You’ll never believe what this email thread...
Among a number of claims on U.K. adtech lobby group MOW’s website is the canonical biggie that “Advertising funds the open web.” This coalition of “marketers,” whose members are not being made public despite its sweeping claims to love web openness — lest, MOW says, Google rain down punishment upon its ranks of “top companies from across the globe” — recently complained to the U.K.’s competition regulator about the tech giant’s plan to end support for tracking cookies. If...

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Bitcoin advocates revolt against the Trump administration’s...
Leigh Cuen Contributor Bitcoin fans across the country are rallying against a common enemy, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, one of President Donald Trump’s closest associates, has been working overtime since Thanksgiving to push several crypto regulations through before the Biden administration takes over on January 20, 2021. FinCEN statements list the usual reasons for financial regulations, an effort to curtail terror financing, sanctions evasion and black market activity related to drugs...

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Tencent investment stays on game in 2020
It’s no secret that Tencent, the Chinese tech giant behind WeChat and a handful of blockbuster video games, is an aggressive investor. Even during 2020 when the pandemic slowed down economic activity in many parts of the world, Tencent was charging ahead with its investment ambitions. During the year, the company participated in more than 170 funding rounds that amounted to a total of 249.5 million yuan ($38 million), according to the Chinese startup database ITJuzi. That made 2020...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook bans Trump for two...
Online platforms take action against President Trump, Lenovo tries out a swiveling screen and Roblox raises $250 million. This is your Daily Crunch for January 7, 2021. The big story: Facebook bans Trump for two weeks After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol yesterday, a number of online platforms moved to suspend accounts connected to the outgoing president. For example, Twitter locked Trump’s account for 12 hours after he posted several (subsequently deleted) tweets repeating his unsubstantiated claims...

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Lisbon’s startup scene rises as Portugal gears...
Almost four years ago I wrote a long deep dive into Lisbon’s tech scene. So it’s great to check back in with both Lisbon and Portugal for a slightly briefer update on where it’s at. As well-outlined by Stephan Morais, founder and managing general partner at Indico Capital Partners, Portugal has a very high quality of engineering talent at a competitive cost; an extremely high level of English language proficiency (compared to Spain, France, Italy); and a preference for...

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Mambu raises $135M at a $2B+ valuation...
Challenger banks, incumbent banks, and all of the many businesses that are making inroads into any kind of banking service all have something in common: when it comes to launching a new product like a credit line or a deposit or current account, these days many of them are opting not to build from the ground up, but are instead using third-party technology to power these services. Today, one of the big players in providing that tech is announcing...

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Affirm targets up to $38 per share...
Today Affirm, a fintech startup that offers payment options to e-commerce customers, released a new S-1/A filing. The new document follows a late-December filing of a similar nature, though that update focused on changing the language of Affirm’s reported results, tweaking its language to remove some adjusted metrics and hewing closer to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. The company’s more recent filing details what could be its first IPO price interval, indicating that Affirm may price its shares...

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Jack Ma’s absence from public eye sparks...
The world’s attention is on Jack Ma’s whereabouts after reports noted the billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group had been absent from public view since late October. On October 24, Ma delivered fiery remarks against China’s financial system to an audience of high-rank officials. Days later the Chinese authorities abruptly halted Ant’s initial public offering, an act believed to be linked to Ma’s controversial speech. The Chinese government subsequently told the fintech behemoth, which had thrived in a...

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The cauldrons of gold theory of media...
Another week, another email newsletter. This time, the story is Punchbowl, a politics-centric newsletter founded by a crop of recent Politico alums including Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan. Ben Smith has the story, as does Maxwell Tani at the Daily Beast with some more juicy details. Why do we need another newsletter analyzing Beltway politics in a world of Politico Playbook, Axios, The Daily 202 and a hundred others? In fact, why do we need the voluminous...

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One Way Ventures, a firm focused on...
One Way Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs immigrant founders, has closed its second fund at $57.5 million. The close comes three years after One Way announced its debut fund, a $28 million investment vehicle. The new fund will allow One Way to grow their check size from $500,000 to $1 million, giving them the ability to lead institutional seed rounds at a faster clip, says founding partner Semyon Dukach. The bigger fund is par for the course...

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Venmo adds a check cashing feature, waives...
Venmo this morning announced it will begin to offer a new check cashing service, “Cash a Check,” in the Venmo mobile app. The feature, which is being rolled out to select users starting today, can be used to cash printed, payroll and U.S. government checks, including the new stimulus checks, the company says. Though typically there will be fees associated with the Cash a Check feature, Venmo says these are being waived on stimulus funds for a limited time....

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India’s CRED raises $81 million, buys back...
Bangalore-based CRED is kickstarting the new year on a high note. The two-year-old startup, led by high-profile entrepreneur Kunal Shah, said on Monday it has raised $81 million in a new financing round and bought shares worth $1.2 million (about 90 million Indian rupees) from employees. The Series C financing round, as first reported by TechCrunch in late November, was led by DST Global. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst also participated in the...

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Extra Crunch’s top 10 stories of 2020
I edited hundreds of stories in 2020, so choosing my favorites would be an exercise in futility. Instead, I’ve tried to gather a sample of Extra Crunch stories that taught me something new. (Which means this top 10 list betrays my ignorance, a humbling admission for a know-it-all like myself.) While narrowing down the field of candidates, I realized that we’re covering each of the topics on this list in greater depth next year. We already have stories in...

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Activist hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb takes...
Third Point, the activist hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb, is busy in the waning days of 2020. It’s had great returns despite huge turbulence early in the pandemic — Reuters says that it is up 12.3% for the year as of earlier this month — and the firm clearly sees more and more potential for growth in the tech sector. First, we learned via Asa Fitch at the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the hedge fund sent a...

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Understanding Europe’s big push to rewrite the...
European Union lawmakers have set out the biggest update of digital regulations for around two decades — likening it to the introduction of traffic lights to highways to bring order to the chaos wrought by increased mobility. Just switch cars for packets of data. The proposals for a Digital Services Act (DSA) to standardize safety rules for online business, and a Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will put limits on tech giants aimed at boosting competition in the digital markets...

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