Equity

Equity Monday: Cryptos fall, the deplatforming rush, and fitness tech stays hot

Episode Summary

Episode Notes

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here —and don't forget to check out the extra episode we dropped on Saturday, as there was just too much to talk about last week.

So, what's on the docket for today? A great host of things:

Trump was broadly deplatformed, which is controversial not only amongst his political allies and acolytes, but also amongst those worried that fringe-yet-not-wrong views could suffer in the future.
Parler, a Twitter clone that tried to claim the mantle of free speech -- despite having posting rules -- was cut off by major tech companies over its inability to censor calls for violence. It had recently hit #1 in the App Store.
Bitcoin and other cryptos are in correction, as the stock market preps to give back some recent gains. All this while the electric car market keeps getting hotter and hotter as Chinese tech companies link up with auto makers to get their own vehicles into the market.
On the funding round front, Ajaib Group raised $25 million as the low-cost trading boom grows around the world. And, Keep, a Chinese fitness app, raised a megaround.

Closing, I am befuddled by how dissonant the global economy feels, with seemingly two different eras going on at once. It's not clear if I have finally become the softy I have always threatened to become, or merely that the inequality of outcomes in the 2020-2021 economy are merely as heartbreaking as I imagine them to be.