China’s ByteDance surpasses Uber as the most valuable Tech Startup

Uber, at $72 billion, was the most valuable startup. But now a Chinese tech startup known as ByteDance has left Uber behind and is the world’s highest value tech startup. Forbes and Bloomberg recently reported that new deals and incoming investments have raised ByteDance’s value to $78 billion.

ByteDance operates a range of digital media platforms, but it is best known for Toutiao,  its AI-based news aggregator that has become one of China’s most-used apps with over 120 million users, and short video platform TikTok,  which recently gobbled up Musical.ly which ByteDance acquired via a $1 billion acquisition last year.

ByteDance aims at going global with apps like TikTok. It already has 500 million users in TikTok. It plans to step out of China with its other platforms too. In China it has already toppled down corporate giants like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Tech giants in the US have also noticed the uproar of ByteDance. Google plans on creating a Toutiao type news app for the people of China while Facebook is all set to compete with TikTok through their own app call Lasso.

This lead might be short lived because Uber is planning on going public which would take its valuation to $120 billion. If any such thing happens you know where you’ll hear the news first. That’s right, on this blog!

Facebook is all set to compete with TikTok

Tiktok as we all know is a popular lip syncing app where people can record a 15 seconds clip syncing their lips while dancing on music or simply record themselves.

Previously it was Musical.ly app which grabbed the attention of social media users but then Chinese company Bytedance acquired Musical.ly for 1Billion$.

Now Facebook has decided to launch their stand-alone app with the name Lasso where people can lip sync and record themselves same as they do on TikTok. According to TechCrunch,“Its basically TikTok/Musically. Its full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny, and focused on creation. A lot of what they are doing is just trying to be cool.”

Recently, Facebook launched their new music feature and from this feature they added music into live story stickers. Now this new app is trying to capture the TikTok user’s attention by offering more than 15 seconds duration in their videos.

New Stablecoins emerging in the Cryptocurrency market

Many stablecoins have been launched post the decline of Tether. Exchange stablecoins pegged to the dollar are relatively more popular than the others. Unlike non-exchange tied stablecoins, exchange- tied stablecoins enjoy certain benefits by being directly and immediately being put to use when launched. 

Some of the major stablecoins that have been introduced recently include:

Gemini

Crypto Exchange Gemini introduced their stablecoin Gemini Dollar and it was approved by New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) last month. Gemini, similar to Tether, claims that it will be pegged to the US Dollar. It asserts that an independent registered public accounting firm will verify the 1:1 peg on a monthly basis.

Paxos

Paxos Standard is a similar stablecoin that was issued by financial blockchain solution Paxos. It was also approved by NYDFS. Paxos was listed a couple weeks ago on top cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

TrueUSD

TrueUSD was introduced in October by one of the top three cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx.

HUSD

Huobi, a top ranked exchange by volume, launched its own stablecoin called HUSD. HBUS, the U.S. affiliate of the Singapore-based Huobi exchange, have seen both deposits and withdrawals of USDT “increased by over 10x over the last two days”.

It is to be seen which of these stablecoins go mainstream and leave the competitors behind. Success to the public will be the:

1) number of exchanges these coins get listed on,

2) the number of transactions and size of transactions committed,

3) ongoing verified amount of reserve.

Still more companies are thinking of jumping on the stablecoin bandwagon. IBM most recently announced its exploration into stablecoins through a collaboration with Stellar by building a stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain.