China's investment holding giant Tencent is taking a 10% stake in Snap

• Edoardo Maggio
 

• 4h
• 173

Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat's parent company, Snap.Reuters

• Tencent, a giant Chinese investment holding company, is taking a 10% investment in Snap.
• The news arrived a day after Snap's third-quarter earnings release, in which the company reported numbers that missed Wall Street's expectations.

---

The Chinese investment giant Tencent has taken a 10% stake in Snap, the parent company of the popular social network Snapchat, by purchasing 145.8 million nonvoting shares over the past quarter.

The news comes as a vote of confidence in the company, which on Tuesday reported third-quarter earnings that failed to meet analysts' expectations and made the stock dive 17% in after-hours trading.

Over the past three months, Snapchat added only 4.5 million new users, a mere 3% increase over the previous quarter (the company announced plans to redesign the app with the aim of making it more accessible).

Snap also had to write off about $39 million, or £29 million, in unsold Spectacles, its camera-equipped glasses that let users take photos and videos without firing up the mobile app from a phone.

This isn't the first time the two companies have crossed roads.

Back in late 2012 and 2013, Tencent invested in Snapchat through a series of private rounds (CNBC, where we first saw the story, also reports), while an additional deal — in which CEO Evan Spiegel and cofounder Bobby Murphy had apparently asked for $40 million in secondary shares — failed to materialise in late 2013.

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

NOW WATCH: Samsung released the widest computer monitor you can buy — here's what it's like

00:00

02:32

More: Snapchat Tencent

Someone deleted some code in a popular cryptocurrency wallet — and as much as $280 million in ethereum is locked up

• Becky Peterson
 

• 16h
• 92,168

Reuters

• An estimated $280 million worth of the cryptocurrency ethereum is now locked up after a user accidentally deleted the code necessary to access the digital wallets hosted by the company Parity Technologies.
• The vulnerability impacted the "multi-sig" digital wallets launched through Parity since July 20.
• Multi-sig wallets usually contain large sums of money since they are primarily used by startups or large groups looking to prevent any one member of the group from running off with the money. 

---

An estimated $280 million worth of the cryptocurrency ethereum is currently locked up thanks to one person's mistake.

An unidentified user accidentally locked up recently-created digital wallets within Parity — a popular digital wallet provider — by deleting the code library required to use those wallets, according to a critical security alert posted to Parity Technology's blog on Tuesday. 

The freeze impacts all "multi-sig" wallets created on Parity after July 20.

Multi-sig wallets — short for multiple signature — are especially popular with cryptocurrency startups and other collective groups because they require more than one person to agree before any currency gets moved around. It's a safeguard against rogue employees who might run off with the cryptocurrencies for their own gain.

For this reason, it's also a popular way of storing cryptocurrency raised in initial coin offerings, or ICOs — a new fundraising technique used by some companies in the blockchain space, in which investors trade cryptocurrencies like ether and bitcoin for new currencies created by the company. 

Exactly how much cryptocurrency has disappeared due to the bug is unclear, but some cryptocurrency blogs have reported that Parity wallets make up 20% of the entire ethereum network. 

Researchers familiar with the space have estimated around $280 million worth of ether is now inaccessible, including $90 million of which was raised by Parity's founder Gavin Woods. Parity has not shared any official totals, though a spokeswoman from the company disputed that this number was correct.

Parity Technologies @ParityTech

Update: To the best of our knowledge the funds are frozen & can't be moved anywhere. The total ETH circulating social media is speculative.

5:18 AM - Nov 7, 2017

•  2929 Replies
 
•  110110 Retweets
 
•  112112 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>

SEE ALSO: These 5 companies are betting on Ethereum to completely reinvent the back end of the internet

NOW WATCH: This is what separates the Excel masters from the wannabes

00:00

03:12

More: Ethereum Bitcoin cryptocurrency Parity