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MrBeast Acquires Step Banking App After $200M BitMine Investment

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TLDR

  • YouTuber MrBeast’s company Beast Industries purchased Step, a banking app with 7 million teen and young adult users
  • Deal follows $200 million investment from Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies in January 2025
  • Step provides FDIC-insured banking through Evolve Bank & Trust with features for credit building and money management
  • MrBeast filed trademark for “MrBeast Financial” in October 2024 mentioning cryptocurrency exchange services
  • Acquisition price not disclosed; Step previously raised $500 million from celebrity investors including Steph Curry

Jimmy Donaldson, known online as MrBeast, is expanding his business empire into financial services. His company Beast Industries completed an acquisition of Step, a mobile banking platform targeting teenagers and young adults.

Donaldson shared the news Monday on social media. He told his audience the purchase aims to give young people financial education he lacked growing up. “Nobody taught me about investing, building credit, or managing money when I was growing up,” the YouTuber explained.

Beast Industries did not reveal how much it paid for Step. The company declined to comment on financial terms of the transaction.

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Step currently serves between 6.5 and 7 million users. The app launched in 2018 to help Gen Z manage finances, build credit scores, and access banking tools.

Banking Features and FDIC Insurance

Step partners with Evolve Bank & Trust to offer Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured accounts. Users receive a Step Visa Card and can open accounts for spending, saving, and investing.

The platform charges no monthly fees. Step’s founders CJ MacDonald and Alexey Kalinichenko designed the app to improve financial literacy among younger users.

Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold said the acquisition allows the company to provide practical financial solutions. He stated financial health is fundamental to overall wellbeing.

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$200 Million Crypto Investment Preceded Deal

BitMine Immersion Technologies invested $200 million in Beast Industries during January 2025. The firm holds the largest corporate position in Ethereum cryptocurrency.

BitMine chair Tom Lee called the investment a long-term bet on the creator economy. He praised MrBeast’s reach among Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and Millennial demographics.

The investment came after Beast Industries filed a trademark application for “MrBeast Financial” in October 2024. That filing referenced cryptocurrency exchange services, payment processing, and decentralized exchanges.

Whether the trademark connects to the Step acquisition remains unknown. Beast Industries has not confirmed plans to add cryptocurrency features to Step’s platform.

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Step’s Investor Base and Growth

Step raised roughly $500 million from various investors since launching. Celebrity backers include NBA player Steph Curry, singers Justin Timberlake and Charli D’Amelio, and actor Will Smith.

Payment processor Stripe invested in Step alongside venture firms Coatue, Collaborative Fund, Crosslink Capital, and General Catalyst. The company scaled its user base to 7 million over eight years.

MrBeast runs the largest YouTube channel globally with 466 million subscribers. His channels generate about 5 billion monthly views.

Beast Industries operates multiple businesses beyond YouTube. These include Feastables snack brand, Beast Philanthropy nonprofit, and Beast Games reality show on Amazon Prime Video.

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Housenbold said Step’s technology platform and fintech team complement Beast Industries’ digital audience. The acquisition brings Step’s entire operation under the Beast Industries umbrella.

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Crypto World

Galaxy Digital’s (GLXY) testnet suffers hack but no client funds or information were compromised

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Galaxy Digital's (GLXY) testnet suffers hack but no client funds or information were compromised

Galaxy Digital (GLXY), the digital asset financial services firm founded by Mike Novogratz, said it recently contained a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to an isolated development workspace, according to a statement from a company spokesperson.

“An immaterial amount of company funds used for testing within the isolated development workspace was impacted,” the spokesperson said in emailed comments. The loss was less than $10,000, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The firm emphasized that the affected environment was used solely for research and development and was not connected to its core infrastructure, production systems, trading platforms or client accounts.

Galaxy said it detected the intrusion and moved quickly to contain it, secure the compromised workspace and implement additional precautionary measures across its on-chain infrastructure.

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“No client funds or client account information were accessed or at risk at any point based on our review to date,” Galaxy said, adding that all platforms and services remain fully operational and secure for clients.

Hacks and exploits remain a persistent risk in the crypto industry, where the combination of open-source code, large pools of onchain liquidity and uneven security practices creates an attractive target for attackers.

Billions of dollars are lost to smart contract exploits, phishing schemes and infrastructure breaches, with industry estimates often exceeding $1–2 billion annually in recent years.

Even when incidents are contained, and client assets are not impacted, breaches can erode trust, trigger heightened regulatory scrutiny and underscore the operational risks facing firms operating in largely irreversible, always-on financial systems.

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Galaxy is a diversified financial services and investment firm focused on the digital asset and blockchain sector, providing institutional clients with trading, asset management, lending, advisory and custody services.

The firm operates across several core business lines, including global markets, asset management and digital infrastructure, while also running businesses in areas like crypto mining, staking and data center operations.

Positioned as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto, Galaxy offers institutional-grade access to digital assets and related technologies, alongside investments in blockchain ventures and emerging areas such as AI-powered infrastructure.

The company said it is continuing to review the incident and will provide updates as appropriate.

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Read more: Bitcoin’s quantum threat is real, but far from an existential crisis, Galaxy says

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What Does it Mean for Bitcoin?

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What Does it Mean for Bitcoin?

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, revealed on CNBC this week that his firm purchased approximately $17 billion in US Treasury bills at the latest auction. Is a stock market crash coming and what does it mean for Bitcoin (BTC)?

Key takeaways:

  • Berkshire held $373 billion in cash or cash equivalents as of 2025’s close, more than double the levels in 2023.

  • The firm’s rising cash reserves typically precede major stock market crashes, a bad sign for Bitcoin.

Buffett still sees better value in cash than in stocks

Buffett’s message is straightforward: Berkshire does not see the recent equity pullback as a sufficiently attractive buying opportunity.

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For context, the S&P 500 has fallen about 5.75% since reaching a record high in January.

S&P 500 weekly performance chart. Source: TradingView

Buffett said stocks are not “substantially” cheaper after the decline and described the sell-off as “nothing” compared with earlier downturns in which markets fell more than 50%.

That helps explain Berkshire’s latest Treasury-bill purchase. The company ended 2025 with about $373 billion in cash and equivalents, up from a record $334.2 billion a year earlier and more than double its level at the end of 2023.

Buffett, who famously called Bitcoin “rat poison,” typically gets into cash before major stock crashes, historical data shows.

In 1998, for instance, Buffett began trimming Berkshire’s stock exposure and raising cash, pushing the company’s cash and cash-equivalents holdings to $13.1 billion, or about 23% of total assets.

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Berkshire’s cash and cash-equivalents holdings chart. Source: GuruFocus.COM

By mid-2000, that figure had climbed to nearly $15 billion, or roughly 25% of assets, before Berkshire started deploying capital into bargains as the Dot-com bubble burst.

Bitcoin’s positive correlation with stocks may hurt prices

Bitcoin has traded more like a stock than a traditional safe haven for much of the post-2020 period, often moving in the same direction as US equities, especially the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

As of Wednesday, the 20-week rolling correlation coefficient between the two markets was positive at 0.47.

Nasdaq Composite and BTC/USD’s 20-week correlation coefficient chart. Source: TradingView

If Buffett’s risk-off strategy is correct, then Bitcoin should see another crash alongside stocks. Fresh quantum-security concerns, war-driven inflation risks, and nearly 50% US recession odds are putting pressure on the BTC price.

Berkshire’s portfolio decisions have also leaned away from crypto-adjacent finance.

In the first quarter of 2025, the firm fully exited Nu Holdings, a crypto-friendly fintech company, after building its position in 2021 and 2022. It secured about $250 million in profits from these investments.

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Multiple analysts predict BTC’s price to drop to as low as $30,000 in 2026.