Author: Christian Amanpour
In this photo illustration, the logo for the US tech firm “Block” is displayed and reflected in a number of digital screens on March 03, 2023 in London, England. Leon Neal | Getty ImagesWith its stock down more than 30% this year and revenue growth slowing, Jack Dorsey’s Block is going bigger in lending.The company on Thursday said it secured approval from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to originate loans through its banking subsidiary, Square Financial Services, allowing it to offer small-dollar consumer loans directly rather than relying on external banking partners.It’s an expansion of Cash App Borrow, the company’s short-term…
U.S. President Donald Trump sits next to Crypto czar David Sacks at the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein | ReutersDavid Sacks, the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar, sold over $200 million worth of digital asset-related investments personally and through his firm, Craft Ventures, before starting the job, according to a memo from the White House.Of the the assets sold, the documents said that at least $85 million “is directly attributable to Sacks.” The memo, from White House counsel David Warrington, added that Craft remains an investor in some…
A screen displays the company logo for Toast Inc. during the company’s initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on Sept. 22, 2021.Brendan Mcdermid | ReutersEconomic concerns are hitting the stock market broadly, but they’re having an outsized impact on fintech companies that are tied closely to consumer spending and small and medium-sized businesses.While the Nasdaq fell 2.1% on Thursday, putting the tech-heavy index on pace for its worst week since September, shares of Shift4, Toast and Bill.com suffered much steeper drops, losing 6.7%, 6.2% and 4%, respectively. President Donald Trump’s disjointed rollout of…
The Binance logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen.Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesBinance’s BNB token bucked the wider crypto downturn on Thursday, jumping 4% following a Wall Street Journal report that the Trump family has held talks to secure a financial interest in the U.S. arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.Such a deal would notably link the Trumps to a firm that pleaded guilty to breaking anti-money laundering laws in 2023.According to the Journal, Binance first approached Trump allies last year, pitching a deal that could help the embattled exchange regain its footing in the U.S.…
MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami.MoonPayCrypto payments giant MoonPay is expanding its push into the enterprise market with the acquisition of Iron, an API-first stablecoin infrastructure startup. This marks MoonPay’s second significant acquisition in two months, underscoring its ambition to dominate the rapidly growing stablecoin payments market.”We think everyone is going to have a digital currency wallet, whether it’s inside of a bank account or independently. And we build a backwards compatibility to the existing financial system,” MoonPay Co-Founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an exclusive interview.Already, MoonPay makes…
Jackie Reses got an early start on the entrepreneurial life.During what she describes as a “pretty gritty childhood” in Atlantic City, she and her brother ran carnival games on a Jersey Shore boardwalk, one of which (flukey ball), she says, “I think is now illegal.””I think the thing that really drove me was my own desire to succeed and make sure that I had the security that I could create for myself, and so I felt that self-reliance and that entrepreneurial background really is what drove me,” Reses told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in a Changemakers Spotlight video interview.Reses was named…
People wait in line for T-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an initial public offering earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.Spencer Platt | Getty ImagesIt was a bad day for tech stocks, and a brutal one for fintech.As the Nasdaq suffered its steepest decline since 2022, some of the biggest losers were companies that sit at the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.Stock trading app Robinhood tumbled 20%, bitcoin holder Strategy fell 17% and crypto exchange Coinbase lost 18%. Much…
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, slammed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He also said the cryptocurrency exchange is looking to invest more outside of the U.S.Carlos Jasso | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesNow that President Trump has announced plans for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, crypto industry leaders can focus on what else they want to hear from the new administration on Friday.Just over six weeks into his second White House term, Trump is hosting his first Crypto Summit, a nod to an industry that played a major role in his election victory in November. No executive was more central to…
AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks speaks with President Donald J Trump as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on Jan. 23, 2025 in Washington, DC.Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, marking a major shift in U.S. digital asset policy.White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote in a post on X that the reserve will be funded exclusively with bitcoin seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases, ensuring that taxpayers bear…