Thursday Apr.08, 2021

💰 Coinbase drops big numbers

_The Creator Economy intensifies_
_The Creator Economy intensifies_

Hey Snackers,

Ikea is being accused of running “a system of espionage” in France. We're waiting for the next hit spy novel: The Couch That Came in From the Cold.

The S&P 500 hit a record high yesterday. Investors were happy with notes from the Fed’s last policy meeting. TLDR: the central bank is still committed to supporting the economy.

SZN

Coinbase is going public next week – and it just dropped some major numbers

Coin, based... The largest crypto exchange in America is scheduled to go public next Wednesday via direct listing (sorry, IPO). Coinbase will list its shares (directly) on the Nasdaq, becoming the first publicly-traded crypto exchange in the US. Coinbase thrived last year as investors poured into bitcoin. In 2020: it made $1.2B in revenue, and its first-ever annual profit of $322M. But it just shared some quarterly estimates that make those numbers look like BTC circa 2018:

  • $1.8B: Coinbase's estimated revenue for the first three months of 2021 — aka: more than all of 2020, and 9X more than the year-ago quarter.
  • $730M-$800M: Its estimated profit for the first quarter — aka: more than double last year's earnings.

Satoshi would be proud... whoever he/she/they are. 12 years have passed since the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the bitcoin chain — and crypto is more relevant now than ever. Coinbase expects that it has a whopping 56M verified users (6.1M of which are trading monthly).

  • ~$2T: The total value of the crypto market has already doubled since January, when it first topped $1T.
  • $223B: The estimated value of crypto assets that Coinbase has — or around 11% of the whole crypto market.

Coinbase's numbers highlight a "seasonal" effect... Coinbase's seasonal biz has nothing to do with ski lifts or white-sand beaches. A ski resort thrives in winter — Coinbase thrives on crypto buzz times. As bitcoin plunged in 2018, Coinbase lost 70% of its monthly transacting users. Before 2020, it had never seen a profit. As crypto dominated the conversation this year, Coinbase estimates it made more in three months than in all of 2020. Unprecedented crypto season = unprecedented earnings. Because of its reliance on fees from user trades, its fortunes can rise and fall with the crypto weather.

Create

The Creator Economy gets paid: Patreon, Cameo, and Substack's mega-fundraises

Influencer. Artist. Force of Nature... The Creator Economy's Insta bio (don't forget the sponsor link). Like the rest of us, celebs/influencers/creators stayed home in 2020. Concert venues, comedy clubs, and film studios were closed. To cash in on their talents, creators went full DTA — Direct-to-Audience. Now, companies that help content creators directly monetize their work are thriving. And the venture capital cash is following:

  • Patreon, the subscription site that lets you pay your favorite YouTuber, just raised $155M at a $4B valuation — up more than 3X from September 2020.
  • Cameo is the startup that lets you request personalized vids from celebs (like Kevin from The Office). It hit a $1B valuation last week after a $100M fundraise, joining Club Unicorn.
  • Substack, a platform for writers to publish paid email newsletters, is reportedly raising $65M in fresh funding at a $650M valuation.
  • Clubhouse, the audio social network that loves tech chat rooms, reportedly might raise money at a $4B valuation (4X its January value).

Shoutouts mid-live stream... Fans love feeling connected to their favorite creators, and want to support them. That's great for Creator Economy startups. Not-so-great: where fans connect doesn't matter as much. Really not-so-great: Big Tech is copying Creator Economy features.

Creator Economy startups should consider merging... because Big Tech is onto the trend. Just a few examples: Spotify, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are all working on Clubhouse rivals. Twitter acquired a Substack-like paid newsletter company — and plans to integrate it into Twitter. If Creator Economy startups merged to offer an all-inclusive platform for interacting with creators, they might stand a better chance against Big Tech. We call it... “Creators Inc.”

What else we’re Snackin’

  • Snop: Snap is reportedly planning to launch personalized in-app shopping, and bought an app called Screenshop (not screenshot).
  • Buffet: Carnival says it has seen a record level of future cruise bookings during the first quarter — but it's still not allowed to cruise.
  • Vax: The UK is limiting AstraZeneca's vaccine to people over 30, following concerns over rare blood clots.
  • Paid: Plaid, the company that (invisibly) connects your bank account to apps like Venmo, hit a $13.4B valuation after its canceled $5B Visa acquisition.
  • Taxing: Treasury Secretary Yellen says the Biden admin's proposed corporate tax increases would bring home ~$2T in overseas profits.

Thursday

Authors of this Snacks own: Bitcoin and shares of Snap

ID: 1595122

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These apps had only been available through VPNs but were popular nonetheless, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple said the Chinese government asked them to remove the apps in the iPhone maker’s second biggest market over “national security concerns.” Last week, China told its state-owned telecoms to phase out the use of US chips by 2027.

Exclusive | China Orders Apple to Remove Popular Messaging Apps

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In its third and fourth quarter earnings report, Tesla said that its current Cybertruck production capacity was greater than 125,000 a year. Musk had previously said he expected to produce 250,000 Cybertrucks a year by 2025.

Either way, that’s a lot more than the roughly 775 it’s delivered each month so far.

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Either way, that’s a lot more than the roughly 775 it’s delivered each month so far.

The recall is over an issue with the gas pedal pad that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says when pressed, “may dislodge, which may cause the pedal to become trapped in the interior trim above the pedal.” The cause of the issue: “unapproved” soap that the manufacturer used to aid in getting the pad on the pedal.

A Cybertruck customer this week posted a TikTok about a terrifying incident in which this happened and “held the accelerator down 100%” in his 6,000+ pound vehicle. Thanks to some quick thinking where he held down the brake and put it in park, he wasn’t injured.

This is the long-awaited Cybertruck’s second recall since it came out five months ago.

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Major cocoa-producing nations like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, which between them grow about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa, have seen excessive tree failure due to disease, changing weather patterns, and hot, dry conditions causing devastating droughts.

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“In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential,” its shareholders letter read. “But now we’re generating very substantial profit and free cash flow.” The company said that it will focus on revenue and operating margin as its main financial metrics, while it will look at time spent on the platform to gauge customer satisfaction.

Another way to read this? They’ve hit market saturation and just aren’t going to be growing that much anymore, and they thought they’d end on a good note. Going forward they’re focusing on how to get more money out of the customers they do have.

They’re doing so by cracking down on password sharing and charging for extra members. They’re also pushing people to ad tiers, which are more profitable than non-ad tiers.

“Scaling ads to become a more meaningful contributor to our business in ‘25 and beyond,” Netflix said.

Netflix’s ads membership grew another 65% in Q1 over the previous one, after rising 70% the quarter before, and 40% of signups in ad markets continue to be for those ad plans.