New York State may soon have its own legislation to prevent crypto scandals on par with FTX's downfall. Attorney General Letitia James has proposed a law, the CRPTO Act (Crypto Regulation, Protection, Transparency and Oversight), that's meant to thwart cryptocurrency fraud and protect investors. Whether or not it's the "strongest and most comprehensive" set of crypto regulations that James touts, it would theoretically prevent repeats of some high-profile incidents.

The CRPTO Act would bar conflicts of interest, such as owning multiple practices or marketplaces that trade for their own accounts. Companies would have to publicly report financial statements, including risk disclosures. There would be a host of investor safeguards, such as "know-your-customer" requirements, compensation for fraud victims and a ban on stablecoins (crypto coins whose value is tied to a safe asset) that aren't pegged directly to US currency or "high-quality" liquid assets.

The bill would let the Attorney General's office shut down lawbreakers and fine $10,000 per violation for individuals, and $100,000 per violation for companies. The office would also have the power to issue subpoenas and demand damages, penalties and restitution. The Department of Financial Services, meanwhile, would be ensured authority to license various crypto service providers.

James pointed to multiple real-world examples of alleged abuse the CRPTO act would potentially stop. Terraform Labs, for instance, promised a very high 20 percent interest rate to investors in one token on its marketplace if they bought the company's other token, supposedly hiding the assets' real value. Celsius, meanwhile, bought up its own token and created an artificial appearance of demand. That left investors "caught by surprise" when Celsius declared bankruptcy, according to the Attorney General.

The federal government is already cracking down on crypto fraud. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) believe existing rules already cover numerous crypto-related activities, and in some cases have jockeyed to claim primary responsibility for regulating the technology. Politicians in the House and Senate are pushing for nationwide regulations. New York's efforts go one step further by tackling crypto-specific problems, though, and the state's role as a financial hub may effectively let it dictate policies guiding firms across the US.

Apple had its second "bad" quarter in a row. Bad, of course, is a relative term — the company's revenues declined again, but Apple is still making a positively massive amount of money. Specifically, the iPhone and Services categories, both of which have been Apple's biggest money-makers for years now, saw revenue gains year-over-year. But this wasn't enough to offset declines everywhere else: the Mac, iPad, and Wearables / Home / Accessories divisions all shrank compared to this time a year ago. As such, Apple's overall revenue dropped a modest three percent year-over-year to $94.8 billion, while net income of $24.2 billion was down less than one percentage point. Like I said, not exactly a bad quarter, but given that the company's sales and profits almost always are up, it's worth noting when they aren't.

The strong iPhone sales (up two percent to $51.3 billion) marked a record the March-ending quarter, despite the fact that the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro arrived last September. And Apple's services business, which has been growing steadily over the past five years to surpass all other products the company offers (besides the iPhone, of course) hit another record with $20.9 billion in revenue (up five percent year-over-year). 

Mac sales plummeted from $10.4 billion a year ago to only $7.2 billion this quarter past, down 31 percent overall. That's less than IDC predicted a month ago when it said Mac sales dropped by 40 percent, but the general forecast of hugely diminished interest still rings true. iPad sales weren't hit as hard but still dropped 13 percent to $6.7 billion for the quarter despite major updates to the product lineup last fall. Finally, the wearables / home category, which encompasses products like AirPods, the Apple Watch and the HomePod lineup, dipped less than one percent, so there aren't any significant red flags around that. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook is kicking off the usual call with investors at 5PM ET, and we'll update this story with anything we learn. 

EV startup Lordstown Motors is still in trouble after pausing production earlier this year. The Endurance electronic pickup truck maker said today that it expects to stop producing the vehicle “in the near future” if it can’t find a partner to keep it afloat. The warning follows a separate filing from earlier this week saying it could file for bankruptcy if its deal with Foxconn can’t be resurrected.

“Due to the production delays from early January to mid-April 2023, the failure to identify a strategic partner for the Endurance, and extremely limited ability to raise capital in the current market environment, we anticipate production of the Endurance will cease in the near future,” the company wrote in today’s filing. “To date, we have not identified a strategic partner for the Endurance.”

According to the SEC filing, Foxconn sent a letter to Lordstown on April 21st, threatening to terminate the two companies’ investment deal, which saw the Taiwanese manufacturer investing up to $170 million in the startup. (That followed a previous deal where Foxconn bought its Ohio factory.) In the letter, Foxconn told Lordstown it breached the agreement because the startup’s stock price fell below $1 per share for 30 straight trading days, leading to a NASDAQ delisting notice. Lordstown said it believes Foxconn’s claims are without merit and considers their investment agreement to remain in effect while talks continue. However, it concedes that bankruptcy is on the table if it can’t resolve the dispute “in a timely manner on terms that allow us to continue operating as planned” or find other strategic partners.

Lordstown reported a net loss of $171.1 million in the first quarter of this year, following a loss of $89.6 million in the same quarter a year ago. The EV maker had just $108.1 million in cash (and cash equivalents) on March 31st. Its stock price is currently hovering at 39 cents after peaking at $31.57 in early 2021.

It’s been a short but bumpy ride for Lordstown, which was only founded in 2018. Two years ago, its CEO resigned after an investigation revealed that executives lied about demand, the viability of Endurance’s technology and its ability to start production on schedule by September 2021. The same year, it became the subject of DOJ and SEC investigations. GM sold its stake in the company last March, although Lordstown did finally begin delivering the first trucks from its initial 500-unit order in November. However, it then froze production in February to address “performance and quality issues” and partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on a voluntary recall to remedy a connection problem that could cut off motor output while driving.

For the third time in less than a year, Unity is laying off a part of its workforce. On Tuesday, the company shared it would let go of approximately 600 employees or about eight percent of its global workforce. The company previously laid off about 225 staffers last June, and another 284 employees at the start of the year. Prior to the first round of workforce reductions, the company employed more than 8,000 staff. It now has around 7,000 employees. Unity also plans to reduce the number of offices it operates globally.

Unity declined to comment. A spokesperson instead pointed Engadget to a filing the company made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a recent interview CEO John Riccitiello did with The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all about setting ourselves up for higher growth,” he told the outlet, adding the layoffs would affect some in middle management. “It was clear we had too many layers.” Riccitiello also said Unity would move to a hybrid work model starting in June, with employees expected to work from the office at least three days a week.

The layoffs come despite Unity recently posting its best fiscal quarter and year in company history. In February, the engine maker reported a Q4 revenue of $451 million, representing a 43 percent increase from the same period in 2021. It was also Unity’s first profitable quarter as a publicly traded company. Despite that performance, investors don’t appear to be impressed with the company. Per CNBC, Unity’s stock is down 11 percent since the start of the year. The company is expected to release its Q1 earnings next week. Unity’s latest layoffs come amid broader workforce reductions across much of the tech industry. Like Unity, a handful of companies, including Meta and Amazon, have announced multiple rounds of cuts.

ARM has registered for a US stock market listing. In a press release published Saturday, the mobile chip company said it recently confidentially submitted a draft F-1 form to the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Reuters, ARM hopes to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion dollars when it holds the initial public offering later this year, though over the weekend the company said it had yet to determine the size and price range of the proposed IPO.

ARM parent company SoftBank has been eyeing a public listing ever since NVIDIA’s $40 billion bid to buy the chip maker fell through at the start of last year due to regulatory resistance from the US Federal Trade Commission and other antitrust watchdogs. In March, SoftBank said it would list ARM on the US stock market after rebuffing a push for a London listing from the United Kingdom government. ARM designs the processor components used in almost every mobile device, including models from Apple and Samsung. Its licensing model means nearly every tech company depends on ARM designs. According to a recent Financial Times report, the company recently began work on a prototype chip that is “more advanced” than any semiconductor produced in the past.

Now that it's solved its supply shortages, Sony is seeing a lot of pent-up demand for PlayStation 5 consoles. The company just announced its second consecutive blockbuster quarter, selling 6.3 million PS5s — an impressive figure in a non-holiday period — compared to 2 million last year. That brings its total for fiscal year 2022 to 19.1 million, handily beating its own forecast of 18 million. The company has now sold 38.4 million PS5s since the console was released in late 2020. 

The news wasn't quite as good on the software side. Game sales were down to 68 million from 70.5 million a year ago, and lower for the fiscal year (264.2 million compared to 303.2 million in fiscal 2021). PlayStation Network users dropped to 108 million from 112 million the quarter before, though PS Plus subs were up very slightly. 

All of that added up to a fairly large boost in revenue in the Gaming & Network Services division, up to 1.073 trillion yen ($7.9 billion) compared to 665 billion yen ($4.9 billion) the year before. Operating profit was down, though, due to a hit in foreign exchange rates. For the year, Sony hit 3.9 trillion yen in sales ($29 billion), up from 2.7 trillion yen ($19.9 billion) the year prior. 

The company is confident that trajectory will continue into next year, forecasting a 7 percent boost in revenue for fiscal 2023. It's predicting increased hardware sales, including peripherals, though it didn't say anything about results for the PlayStation VR2 to date. 

Sony's gaming segment still dominates its other divisions, though its chip/sensor and entertainment technologies (TVs, cameras, etc.) were also bright spots. Overall, Sony set a new fiscal year sales record with 11.5 trillion yen in sales ($84.8 billion) and 1.21 trillion yen ($8.9 billion) in profits. 

Sony, of course, just scored a major win over its biggest rival as well. Yesterday, the UK blocked Microsoft's merger with Activision over cloud gaming concerns, though Microsoft has vowed to contest the decision.

Samsung's earnings results for the first quarter of 2023 are in, and they're a massive departure from the same period's last year wherein it reported a steep rise in profit. The tech giant has posted a consolidated revenue of KRW 63.75 trillion (US$47.5 billion) and an operating profit of only KRW 0.64 trillion (US$477 million), mostly because its semiconductor business has (according to Reuters) reported record losses. Samsung's DS division, which operates its semiconductor and display businesses, reported a consolidated revenue of KRW 13.73 trillion (US$10.2 billion). However, it also posted KRW 4.58 trillion (US$3.4 billion) in operating losses for the first quarter.

Overall demand for memory products has been decreasing over the past months, with the division reporting only KRW 0.27 trillion (US$201 million) in operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2022. This quarter, Samsung blamed ongoing inventory adjustments, as well as the economic slowdown and the weakened customer spending that resulted from it for the decrease in overall demand. That said, the company expects demand to gradually recover in the second half of the year as customers' inventory levels get depleted.

Despite the loss in profits overall, Samsung's mobile division performed well in the first quarter. The company's MX and Networks businesses, which cover both mobile devices and telecommunication network equipment, posted KRW 31.82 trillion (US$23.7 billion) in consolidated revenue and KRW 3.94 trillion (US$2.9 billion) in operating profit. Samsung explained that while there was a low demand for smartphones overall, the market for premium devices grew year-over-year. The division's positive performance was apparently made possible by the strong sales of the Galaxy S23 series, specifically the Galaxy S23 Ultra. 

Going forward, the company's MX business will focus on supporting Galaxy S23 sales while boosting the marketing for its foldable phones to increase awareness about the devices before the next generation drops. Samsung is expected to unveil its next foldable devices in the second half of the year, possibly in August likes its previous launches. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” doesn’t seem to be affecting Facebook’s growth. Meta’s social network added 37 million users during the first quarter of the year, bringing total daily users up to 2.037 billion. Meanwhile, the number of daily users across the company’s “family of apps” rose to over 3 billion users for the first time in company history.

The company reported the growth in its first-quarter earnings report for 2023, the first since Zuckerberg announced the company was focusing on “efficiency” amid an economic downturn that has led the company to shed thousands of jobs. That shift seems to be showing some signs of success, as Meta reported $28.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 3 percent from last year and the first revenue growth in nearly a year for Meta.

Despite the boost, though, Zuckerberg confirmed that more layoffs are still scheduled to take place next month. “Even as our financial position improves, I continue to believe that slowing hiring, flattening our management structure, increasing the percent of our company that is technical and more rigorously prioritizing projects will improve the speed and quality of our work,” he said during a call with analysts.

Reality Labs also continues to take major losses, losing just under $4 billion for the quarter. That’s a bit less than the $4.3 billion the company lost last quarter, but Meta has said it expects 2023 losses for its metaverse division to top the $14.3 billion it lost last year.

During the call, Zuckerberg said the company is still prioritizing its massive investment in the metaverse, even as it increasingly turns its attention to generative AI. “A narrative has developed that we're moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision,” Zuckerberg said. “So I just want to say upfront that that's not accurate. We've been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both.” He added that the company was preparing to launch its “next-generation consumer virtual and mixed reality device” later in the year.

Meta’s CEO also talked more about his plan to create “AI agents” and other generative AI tools for the company’s apps. “I think that there's an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful. We're exploring chat experiences in WhatsApp and messenger, visual creation tools for posts on Facebook and Instagram and ads, and, over time, video and multimodal experiences as well.”

South Korean authorities announced today that they indicted the co-founder of Terraform Labs, the company that develops and manages the blockchain payment platform Terra. According toBloomberg, Daniel Shin and nine others linked to Terra now face multiple charges, including violations of capital markets law, which regulates the nation’s securities and financial markets.

The authorities indicted eight people, including Shin, for illegal trading; two others face breach of trust charges. Prosecutors say all the defendants were directly involved with Terra, having handled marketing, systems development and management. In addition, prosecutors have frozen 246.8 billion won ($184.7 million) in assets from the defendants. Korean officials said they’re working with the US on the case, although they didn’t go into specifics.

Billed as a stablecoin, TerraUSD isn’t backed by real-world assets or fiat currency. Instead, it’s supported by Luna, the native cryptocurrency of the Terra blockchain, that supposedly had a mechanism to restore its value to $1 if its value ever failed. In addition, investors saw it as an alluring money-making opportunity because of its Anchor lending program, which promised annual yields of 20 percent for coin deposits.

However, prosecutors allege the Terra blockchain was a “fabrication” from the get-go, with the entire system essentially built on a house of cards. They claim the blockchain’s algorithm that kept TerraUSD at a stable price was “impossible to get right.” Its value collapsed in May 2022, when depositors lost confidence in the platform and simultaneously tried to sell off their investments. At the time of publication, Terra has a value of less than two cents.

Before the collapse, the defendants took 463 billion won (nearly $346 million) in profit. In addition, prosecutors claim they illegally exposed clients’ payment details and embezzled funds. Authorities say those charged caused “astronomical damage” to global investors as the crash also played a role in the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the broader $2 trillion decline in the cryptocurrency market.

“Shin has nothing to do with the Terra, Luna collapse as he left the [company] two years before the fallout,” said Shin’s lawyer, Kim Ki-dong, in a statement. “He voluntarily returned to South Korea immediately after the collapse, and has been faithfully cooperating with the probe for over 10 months, hoping to contribute to fact finding.”

In September, Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for Shin’s co-founder, Do Kwon, who was also placed on an Interpol "red notice" list at South Korea’s request. He was finally arrested last month in Montenegro on capital markets law and fraud charges. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also charged Do Kwon and Terraform Labs in February.

Spotify has released its earnings report for the first quarter of 2023 and the headline figure is the number of users the company has. As of March 31st, 515 million people were using the audio streaming service. That's the first time Spotify has had more than half a billion users. Q1 was also Spotify's second-biggest quarter for user growth to date — its audience increased by five percent from the previous quarter and 22 percent year over year. The user base grew by 26 million, which is 15 million more than Spotify had expected. The company said it saw growth in both developed and developing markets, as well as almost every age group.

Most of that growth is based on folks who use the free, ad-supported version of the Spotify service. Premium subscriptions didn't keep pace with the overall growth, as they rose by two percent from the previous quarter and 15 percent year over year from 205 million to 210 million. Still, premium subscribers grew by 3 million more than Spotify had indicated in its guidance to investors.

Overall, Spotify posted a net operating loss of €156 million ($172 million) for the quarter. That's far more than the €6 million ($6.6 million) loss it saw in the first quarter of 2022, though it's an improvement over the €270 million ($297 million) Spotify lost the previous quarter.

While overall revenue was up by 14 percent year over year from €2.66 billion ($2.93 billion) to €3.04 billion ($3.34 billion), it dipped by four percent from the previous quarter. Revenue from paid subscribers didn't change significantly from Q4 2022, but it dropped by 27 percent on the ad-supported side from €449 million ($494 million) to €329 million ($362 million) — though revenue from free users rose by 17 percent year over year. The quarter-to-quarter drop is perhaps a result of advertisers tightening their belts somewhat, leading to lower ad spend.

Advertisers aren't the only businesses trying to rein in costs. Spotify, like many other major tech companies in recent months, has laid off a sizable proportion of its staff. In January, the company laid off six percent of workers, which equates to around 600 people based on the 9,800 that Spotify employed as of the end of 2022.

Additionally, Spotify seems to be placing a bigger focus on the core parts of its business. It recently announced plans to shut down both its live audio app, Spotify Live, and Heardle, the Wordle-style song-guessing game it bought last summer.