Author: TechBrunch

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. Get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important cryptocurrency articles delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12pm PT. Subscribe here. Hello. Welcome to the TechCrunch Crypto Newsletter. This week, Starbucks ended its Odyssey NFT program launched in 2022, Solana continues its meme coin momentum, and India faces further challenges in the cryptocurrency space due to a government crackdown. Please see below for details. this week's web3 Cryptocurrency Exchange OKX Suspends Services in India Solana Leads New Round of Meme Coin Mania How Cryptocurrency Exchange Backpack Climbed its Path to…

In its wide-ranging antitrust lawsuit against Apple and its iPhone business, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating how Apple's large financial operations, specifically its use of Apple Pay, to prohibit competition and reap huge profits in the process. They have set specific goals for what they are doing. Annual revenue is in the billions. The Department of Justice says this not only stifles competition among payment services, but also that the fees banks and others pay to use Apple Pay make it difficult for other types of services that could compete with Apple. They argue that this potentially inhibits…

Threads has officially entered the Fediverse.meta announced On Thursday, it was announced that a beta experience for sharing Threads accounts to the Fediverse is now open to users 18 and older with public profiles. This integration can only be launched in three countries, including the United States, Canada, and Japan. The company previously announced in December that it was testing the feature on networks that support Mastodon and other ActivityPub protocols. To opt in to the integration, go to your account settings and toggle fediverse sharing on. A pop-up will appear explaining what Fediverse is. The company describes Fediverse as…

A lawsuit filed Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice against Apple cites the iPhone maker's fight against Beeper, an app aimed at providing iMessage to Android users. Beeper abandoned its mission late last year when Apple blocked its app efforts. In its lawsuit, the Justice Department cited the dispute as an example of Apple controlling “the actions and innovations of third parties to protect itself from competition.” Beeper, launched by Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky, has successfully reverse-engineered the iMessage protocol and brought support for end-to-end encrypted blue bubble iMessage chats to Android users. Beeper functioned as a true…

The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF) released a statement Thursday supporting the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Apple. This group includes many major app makers, including Epic Games, Spotify, Deezer, Match Group, and Proton. “With today's announcement, the Department of Justice is committed to Apple's stranglehold on the mobile app ecosystem that stifles competition and harms American consumers and developers alike,” said CAF Executive Director Rick VanMeter. We will take a strong stance against this,” he said. “The Justice Department's complaint alleges Apple's longstanding illegal practices of abusing App Store guidelines and developer agreements to jack up prices, charge exorbitant…

Shares of social forum giant Reddit opened at $47 per share on Thursday, but quickly soared to around $55, up about 60% from its IPO price of $34 per share. It recovered to stabilize at around $50 per share. The company had indicated a target range of $31 to $34 per share for its public market debut, but ultimately settled on the higher end of that range. The highest stock price at the time of this writing was $57.80, but it is currently a few dollars below that price and down a few percentage points. With $804 million in revenue…

The Justice Department and 17 state attorneys general filed a massive lawsuit against Apple Thursday morning, accusing it of monopolistic smartphone practices. Meanwhile, Fortnite maker Epic Games has been accusing Apple's iOS App Store of antitrust violations for years, in an ongoing bitter legal battle. Although Epic is not explicitly named in the 88-page lawsuit, the game company's complaints echo a broader discussion about the App Store's anti-competitive practices. “Apple often enforces App Store rules arbitrarily,” the complaint states. “And we use App Store rules and restrictions to punish and restrict developers who use technologies that threaten to disrupt, disintermediate,…

Intuit is shutting down its budgeting app Mint this week, which is good news for rival Copilot. Founder Andres Ugarte told TechCrunch that Mint's demise marks the end of an era and proof that consumers expect more from the company's financial apps. The New York-based CEO launched a subscription-based personal finance tracker in January 2020 to provide an alternative to Mint. Copilot currently has over 100,000 subscribers, the majority of whom use the app at least once a day. Some users use the app multiple times a week, and Ugarte considers his 20% of users to be “heavy users,” who…

Microsoft's latest move to steal much of its talent from Inflection AI is making waves this week. Redmond had previously invested in the company, but is now absorbing many of its employees into a new division created for that purpose. The subtext is clear enough. Microsoft doesn't want to run into regulatory scrutiny in the form of antitrust laws. Such regulatory actions have become more common in recent years, crippling huge deals like Visa-Plaid and Adobe-Figma. Regardless of your views on deal-killers like this, it seems Microsoft has found a way around the issue here. At least so far. Elsewhere…

Build is still about a month away, but Microsoft is doing a little experiment this week in the form of an online-only event. Billed as a Windows event, the focus is predictably on AI efforts, with Copilot leading the charge. His two refreshes to the Surface series announced at the event will, as expected, put the software giant's chatbots at the forefront. The new Surface Pro 10 for Business and Surface Laptop 6 for Business both feature a dedicated Copilot key sandwiched between the Alt key and an arrow. In a post published this morning, Surface General Manager Nancy Gaskill…