On Wednesday, the market capitalization of bitcoin exceeded Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company. According to CompaniesMarketCap, a popular leaderboard that excludes many private assets, bitcoin ‘flippened’ the company for a few hours during Wall Street’s lunchtime. 

That achievement came mere minutes after bitcoin surpassed a popular albeit imprecise measure of the world’s mined silver: 1,751,000 metric tonnes.

Although bitcoin’s retracement to a $1.7 billion market cap on Thursday reinstated the $1.8 trillion Saudi Aramco to its higher rung, bitcoin is still higher than silver and very close to re-flippening Saudi Aramco.

In any case, Bitcoiners are already looking past the oil giant and precious metal. Scanning toward the top of the list, they are seeking their next target to flippen.

Above Saudi Aramco on the leaderboard sit Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, and gold. Which of these will bitcoin flippen next?

The next assets for Bitcoin to flippen

Because assets on CompaniesMarketCap are marked-to-market on a daily basis with changing prices, their rank fluctuates periodically. Nevertheless, as of publication time, the easiest asset to surpass on that list is Alphabet (Google) with its $2.1 trillion market cap.

Bitcoin would need to rally 23% from its current value to surpass that company and rank sixth on the leaderboard.

Close to that number is Amazon, just $0.1 trillion higher than Google as of publication time. A 29% rally for bitcoin from today’s $87,600 price would outrank Amazon.

Above that number is rarified air. At the exosphere of public companies is NVIDIA at $3.6 trillion — more than double the size of bitcoin.

Atop the leaderboard is gold, the world’s most valuable precious metal by total mined supply. Although many gold bugs dispute the amount of gold secretly amassed over millennia in India, China, Russia, and other countries, a popular estimate of its above-ground supply is 208,874 metric tonnes.

Read more: Bitcoin breaks $93,000 amid rumors that Saudi, UAE, or Qatar is buying

What bitcoin needs to flippen gold

If that tonnage is accurate — as with silver, mined supply is a big assumption — then gold has a market cap of $17.2 trillion today.

In percentage terms, gold is at least 900% higher than bitcoin’s market cap. If Asian countries have secret stores of gold, that percentage would increase.

Of course, CompaniesMarketCap does not list many other assets that bitcoin could flippen. There are parks, militaries, real estate, and countries. Residential real estate in Australia alone exceeds $10 billion, for example.

Whether bitcoin will flippen Google, NVIDIA, gold, or any meaningful percentage of global real estate remains to be seen. Certainly, bitcoin does not fit neatly into any prediction model. It has the ability to become one of the world’s biggest assets if its bullish trend continues.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Bitcoin flippened silver and Saudi Aramco — are Google and Amazon next? appeared first on Protos.

Blockchain brands are flexing finances to lure top execs from tech giants like Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon to build the crypto-centric internet ecosystem known as “web3,” reports CNBC.

Ambitious tech folk are hoovering up massive salaries and mouth-watering share packages offered by crypto companies like Polygon, Circle, and Coinbase.

Coinbase, the top US crypto exchange, has offered software engineering roles that earn up to $900,000 per year, according to social network Blind.

“As more crypto and web3 companies emerge, we expect the market for tech talent across all levels to become even more competitive,” said James Hallahan, director of UK and Ireland for Hays’ tech division (via CNBC).

The outlet noted that blockchain startups raised more than $25 billion in venture capital in 2021, giving them plenty of cash to attract top talent.

Talent follows (web3) innovation

Checkbooks aside, crypto companies are relying on targets being unable to resist web3’s allure.

The term is mostly amorphous, but it generally relates to the budding blockchain-powered tech stack envisioned to one day democratize our internet experience away from legacy tech corporations.

“Naturally, people will want to work on what they view as the most exciting and innovative developments in the technology space, and currently, that is crypto and web3,” said payroll software firm Deel’s chief Alex Bouaziz.

“Many are seeing it as the future of the tech industry, in the same way that Facebook and Amazon were attractive in the past.”

Certainly, this looks to be the case. Established tech giants are indeed haemorrhaging top talent to their blockchain rivals.

Last month, Novi’s chief marketing officer (Facebook’s crypto and payments unit) Sherice Torres was poached by payments portal Circle. A move likely in part inspired by Diem’s untimely demise.

Circle is currently looking to public via a SPAC deal that will see it reportedly valued at $9 billion.

Also in January, Amazon’s general manager of edge services, Pravjit Tiwana, joined Winklevoss-backed crypto exchange Gemini as its new chief technology officer.

Read more: [Cancel culture or DAOism? Web3 hits fever pitch over religious tweets]

Not to mention Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s senior managing director and global head of gaming who left to head up a new studio at Ethereum scaling solution Polygon.

Speaking about the new web3 opportunity, Wyatt told CNBC:

“When I started at YouTube Gaming almost eight years ago, I was the first person there. We didn’t have a team. People were really starting to show interest in gaming video.”

“I look at this opportunity very much the same way.”

Looking for bite-sized news? We’re on Twitter.

The post Web3 crypto startups poach top execs from Facebook, YouTube, Amazon appeared first on Protos.

US authorities have charged an Australian entrepreneur over an alleged crypto scam that saw nearly $6 million of investors’ money plowed into South African gold mining companies without telling them.

As reported by Australian Financial Review (AFR), California-based Craig Sproule pitched Crowd Machine as a blockchain-based alternative to Amazon Web Services.

Sproule claimed he raised $41 million in early 2018 through an initial coin offering for his company’s crypto, Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCT).

He also dubbed himself “the man behind the Machine” and promised to use the funds to build a decentralized cloud network.

However, the SEC alleges Sproule instead siphoned $5.8 million to gold mining companies in South Africa.

Sproule told investors that CMCT’s price could eventually reach $600. The token never traded higher than $0.085, according to CoinGecko.

The team blamed CMCT’s poor returns on a hack in September 2018 that supposedly saw more than 1 billion tokens stolen. CMCT’s price collapsed 90% shortly after.

But this was just one lie Sproule allegedly told unwitting investors.

Documents lodged by the SEC claim Sproule targeted his marks through social media. He apparently told Crowd Machine had a “live commercial product,” “battle-tested” by Fortune 500 firms.

But the SEC disagreed, saying that none of Crowd Machine’s tech was functional. Indeed, the only thing tested was software used by another Sproule company, Metavine.

Crowd Machine scam still trades on one crypto exchange

The SEC has charged Sproule, Crowd Machine, and Metavine with “making materially false and misleading statements when selling digital asset securities.”

Regulators say Crowd Machine didn’t register its token sale with the Commission. It also “knowingly sold CMCTs to ICO pools without determining whether the underlying investors were accredited.”

As a result, Sproule must cough up $200,000 and can no longer serve as a company director. Crowd Machine’s token will also be pulled from crypto exchanges (at press time, HitBTC is the only platform that still trades CMCT).

Read more: [Indicted Republicans and a dead Belarusian — what happened to Organic Fresh Coin?]

According to an SEC statement, none of the South African gold mines that Sproule invested in have returned any revenue. Not only that, all of the $5.8 million is still missing.

“Sproule and Crowd Machine misled investors about how they were using ICO proceeds, spending funds on an entirely unrelated scheme,” said SEC chief cyber unit enforcer Kristina Littman (via AFR, our emphasis).

“We will continue to hold accountable issuers of digital asset securities who fail to provide fulsome and truthful disclosure to the public.”

Looking for bite-sized news? We’re on Twitter.

The post Blockchain ‘alternative’ to Amazon Web Services just another crypto scam appeared first on Protos.