Bitcoin Hits (Another) High: Now Bigger Than Disney, Comcast, General Electric
Cryptocurrency’s latest surge pushes it past a who’s who of Fortune 500 companies
Sean Burch | November 29, 2017 @ 9:53 AM
Last Updated: November 29, 2017 @ 10:58 AM
Sorry, Pepsi. It looks like bitcoin is the taste of a new generation.
The granddaddy cryptocurrency continues to reach new all-time highs seemingly on an hourly basis, pushing past $11,000 on Wednesday morning — shortly after passing the $10,000 threshold on Tuesday.
Bitcoin’s latest blitz has sent its market cap north of $186 billion, according to Coin Market Cap — lapping the 124-year-old soda by about $20 billion. Coca-Cola isn’t safe, either, with its $10 billion advantage on bitcoin on shaky ground.
And it’s not just soda mainstays that bitcoin is blowing past. Disney — you know, home of Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear and “Star Wars” — now takes a backseat to bitcoin. Same for General Electric. And Comcast. And McDonalds.
Those companies all have many millions of customers more than bitcoin has investors right now, of course. But the cryptocurrency’s run in 2017 — and in the last month in particular — has spurred a severe case of investor “FOMO.” After starting the year around $1,000, bitcoin has shot up as both Wall Street and novice investors have taken notice of its decentralized ledger — allowing users anywhere in the world to see the latest bitcoin transactions.
Its dependence on the blockchain technology — the underlying ledger that records all transactions — rather than a centralized government, has been especially attractive to citizens in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and other countries in peril. At the same time, a planned “fork” — an offshoot in Bitcoin’s ledger that would’ve created an alternative version of the cryptocurrency — was called off earlier this month, reinforcing investor confidence.
Coupled with kids telling their parents about it over Thanksgiving, and a wave of buying from Asian markets, bitcoin has surged more than 30 percent in the last week.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.