Only Products and Other Stuff

The crypto industry has not had a great run over the past year. Along with increasing regulatory scrutiny and skeptical investors, capital deployment has pulled back significantly from the highs of 2021, which has left many young startups struggling to raise funds. This capital crunch is affecting the Bitcoin ecosystem as well. According to Erik Svenson, co-founder and CFO of blockchain infrastructure firm, Blockstream, Bitcoin-focused companies are falling behind as fewer checks are being written. “I think investment into crypto kind of peaked early last year,” Svenson said on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast this week. “But Bitcoin itself has always been an area that has been undercapitalized.” Founded in 2014, Blockstream focuses on its own sidechain technology, dubbed Liquid Network, it has bitcoin mining operations, and provides hardware wallets for bitcoin and other assets. Notably, it doesn’t have a token of its own, unlike many other crypto companies that launched their...

Teamshares is a low-flying, Brooklyn-based startup with big ambitions to capitalize on an opportunity in plain sight: that of small businesses without a succession plan. It’s not a small market. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses represent 99.7% of U.S. employer firms and 64% of private-sector jobs. Meanwhile, just 15% or so of small business owners pass along their company to a family member, with many others simply closing up shop at some point. With an aging population in the U.S., Teamshares is betting this market will grow even bigger, which is why since 2018, it has snapped up 84 small businesses from retiring owners. These owners like its pitch. Though Teamshares says that it sometimes pays below market price for a company, it installs a new president that it trains, and grants 10% of the business’s stock to its employees. Moreover , it promises to increase those employees’ ownership to 80% within 20 years. It sounds almost valiant, like whe...

Former President Trump tweeted for the first time in more than two years on Thursday night, breaking a long silence on the platform, now known as X, that persisted into Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover. Trump’s first tweet since January 8, 2021 came after he was booked in an Atlanta jail on Thursday for 13 felony charges related to election interference in the state of Georgia. The former president, who is seeking reelection in 2024, tweeted shortly after his mugshot went public, an unusual and historic moment that continues to reverberate on social media. https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023 In the tweet, the former president directed on his more than 86 million followers on X to his WinRed fundraising page. “Today, at the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia, I was ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME,” the fundraiser reads. “… If you can, please make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Bi...

Reddit is launching the “Mod Helper Program” to reward moderators who offer helpful advice to other moderators, along with an updated moderator help center.  The announcement comes amid growing discontent among the site’s moderators , many of whom relied on third-party apps that have since been shut down because of Reddit’s API pricing . Moderators have asked Reddit to improve the official app’s moderation tools, which are lacking compared to those offered by now-defunct third-party apps. Tensions between Reddit and its moderators are still high, as the site’s admins continue to remove entire mod teams for keeping their subreddits private in protest of the API pricing, which third-party app developers criticized as exorbitant and unsustainable.  The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that awards helpful moderators with trophies and flairs. Reddit users accrue karma by receiving upvotes and awards, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moder...

Building with Lego bricks has stayed a formative and important practice for kids around the world, partly because it’s so easily enjoyed by anyone, regardless of location, language, or ability. Now the company has made its Braille Bricks, a learning toy for children with visual impairments (or who just want to learn the script) available for purchase by anyone who wants them. The set was introduced back in 2019 , but only as a kit that was distributed for free to limited recipients, like people and organizations specializing in teaching kids with vision impairments. After a couple years of feedback, Lego has decided to make the set widely available. It’s a 287-piece box of special bricks, most of which are of the standard 2×4 variety, which allows room for each letter of the 2×3-dot Braille alphabet and a visible label. This allows them to be teaching tools for sighted and vision-impaired; there’s also a reference sheet with the letters and blocks in order, and a set of starter proje...

Shein and Forever 21 have entered into a partnership that will give both brands new ways to reach customers, the retailers announced on Thursday. As part of the partnership, Shein will acquire around a third of Forever 21′s operator, Sparc Group. Sparc will also take a minority stake in Shein. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. The agreement was first reported by the by The Wall Street Journal . The partnership will allow Shein to sell Forever 21 clothing and accessories on its site. Shein says the partnership gives it the opportunity to test customer-focused experiences at Forever 21 locations across the United States, including shop-in-shops and in-store returns. With these new initiatives, the two retailers will be able to expand their reach. Although both Shein and Forever 21 are known for affordable fast-fashion, they cater to customers in different ways. For instance, while Shein sells its items online, Forever 21 is known for its physical locations. ...

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here . Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto news, memes and more. If you haven’t heard about friend.tech this week, you’re probably living under a rock. But that’s ok, we dove deep into the hype and looked at what skeptics are worried about for the new application. There was also a lot of talk around Tornado Cash as the two founders behind the crypto mixer were charged on Wednesday by U.S. federal agencies. Details on that and more below. This week in web3 Two founders behind crypto mixer Tornado Cash charged by U.S. federal courts FBI says North Korean hackers preparing to cash out after high-profile crypto hacks Friend.tech hype is skyrocketing, but will it actually reach the stars? Solana Pay integrates plug-in with Shopify for USDC payments Checkout.com cuts ties with Binance, which i...