FTI Consulting News Bytes – 17th June

This week’s news

Crypto crunch for Coinbase

According to The Wall Street Journal this week, Coinbase is laying off 18% of its staff following fears of an incoming crypto winter. The move follows in the footsteps of other crypto-related businesses such as BlockFi and Crypto.com who have had to cut staff following the widely reported crypto sell-off. Bloomberg, similarly reported on the news, arguing that Coinbase have hired “aggressively” in recent years,  with its workforce ballooning by about 1,200 employees just this year. With Coinbase’s growth tied to the rapid increases in the price of digital currencies – the uncertain market is forcing the business to terminate employees. In their statement, the company said that the employee costs were too high, but would ensure that employees will receive a minimum of 3.5 months of severance and an additional two weeks for every year of employment.

The UK’s new Digital Strategy

One of the big announcements at London Tech Week was the government’s unveiling of a new Digital Strategy, aiming to bring together both existing government initiatives and some new ones, delivering on the government’s aim to make the UK “the best place in the world to start and grow a technology business.” The strategy addresses a myriad of topics including advanced computing, digital health, AI, space tech, and quantum computing. According to the Financial Times, the move is likely to be welcomed by business lobby groups, who have been calling for an overarching digital strategy from the government to boost the tech industry for some time. But, while many have hailed the new strategy as Britain’s road map to becoming a global tech powerhouse, some organisations such as techUK have cautioned the “short-termed” nature of the strategy, criticising its lack of a statement of intent about the role that digital technologies could play in “tackling the systemic problems that face the UK.”

Big Tech makes concessions on EU’s new anti-disinformation code

An updated version of the EU’s anti-disinformation code will force the world’s biggest technology companies to disclose how they are removing, blocking, or curbing harmful content in advertising and in the promotion of content on their websites – as reported by the Financial Times. Here, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and TikTok are preparing to join the bloc’s regime, where these changes will compel them to develop tools and partnerships to counter “harmful disinformation” with fact-checkers and ensure the inclusion of “indicators of trustworthiness” on independently verified information. Tech companies will also have to provide a country-by-country breakdown of their efforts rather than just providing global or European wide data as they currently do.

Retirement for Internet Explorer

Sad news this week for die-hard Internet Explorer fans as Microsoft finally retires the infamous browser after 27 years. It first debuted on Windows desktop computers in 1995, and by 2004, had cornered 95% of the market. On the topic, the BBC writes that whilst its decrease in popularity was fuelled by the launch of faster browsers such as Chrome and Firefox, the rise of smartphones arguably ran the browser into the ground with Safari and Chrome being pre-installed on Apple and Android phones. But, all is not lost for those wedded to Internet Explorer, as Microsoft Edge retains an inbuilt ‘IE’ mode for those seeking access to legacy applications. Internet Explorer, we thank you for your service.

Astronaut takes TikTok to new heights

TikTok has officially reached the Final Frontier, according to the BBC, as Italy’s first female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, has gone viral on TikTok for posting videos from the International Space Station (ISS). Cristoforetti has become a star on the social-media site, where her videos have had millions of views. Cristoforetti first travelled to space in 2014, spending 199 days on board the ISS – then the record for the longest mission in space by a woman, although that has since been broken by Peggy Whitson, in 2017, and subsequently Christina Koch, in 2019. In one particular video, made in memory of Douglas Adams, author of the seminal sci-fi series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has picked up more than 17 million views on TikTok. When she’s not lighting up the internet with her videos, Cristoforetti is working 12-hour days on maintenance and scientific research. One of her projects is to understand how ovarian cells function in a microgravity environment. And although it is at a preliminary stage, she believes the experiment could be beneficial to people on Earth.

Top Tweets of the Week

• Business Insider tweets: “Elon Musk, speaking directly to Twitter employees for first time, talks layoffs, remote work, aliens, and why sarcastic tweets should have an ‘ironic’ label.”
• CNBC tweets that: “Amazon says it will begin delivering packages by drone in California later this year.”
• The Kyiv Independent tweets: “President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared as a hologram at the Founders Forum, a gathering of tech entrepreneurs in the U.K., to call on Europe’s tech leaders to help rebuild Ukraine and to announce a “digital lend-lease.”

Number of the Week

12.4bn – The amount raised (£) in venture capital funding in the UK in the first five months of 2022, beating global superpowers like China and Germany, and second only to the United States.

What’s happening next week?

• 21 June: First satellites expected to launch from new UK spaceport this summer; World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report
• 22 June: Windrush Day
• 23-24 June: EU Summit
• 24 June: Glastonbury Festival returns after cancellations in 2020 and 2021

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