Google parent Alphabet borrowed $10 billion via its biggest — and cheapest — corporate bond sale ever on Monday.
The company pledged to use $4.5 billion for corporate moves, like acquisitions, and funnel the other $5.5 billion into environmental and social initiatives.
Alphabet said the latter represents “the largest sustainability or green bond by any company in history.”
“Although a number of companies have issued green bonds (directed solely to environmental uses), sustainability bonds differ in that their proceeds support investment in both environmental and social initiatives,” said Alphabet in a statement .
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Competition for the bonds, which work similarly to IOUs, was high. Reuters reported buyers had submitted $31 billion worth of bids.
Alphabet also issued the bonds with some of the lowest interest rates in corporate history. Alphabet‘s 10-year bond raised $2.25 billion, sold with a yield of 1.1%, while its five-year tranche promised buyers 0.45% interest.
The Financial Times noted the latter is below the average US corporate bond rate of 1.91%, and just 0.25% above the US government bond equivalent.
The motivation behind Alphabet‘s bond sale, its first in four years, remains unclear — especially considering the Mountain View tech giant currently sits on $121 billion in cash and short-term investments. The company could’ve just funded all of its “green” initiatives all by itself.
Ultimately, Alphabet must’ve considered the costs of the debt simply too cheap to pass up. Them and the swathes of other US companies to take on billions of dollars worth of debt by selling corporate bonds this year.
Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Kim Dotcom wants to bring a billion users to crypto’
Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.
Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Pasteur used to say: Live, laugh, love!
Bitcoin price
We closed the day, January 20 2020, at a price of $8,657. That’s a minor 0.53 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$46.98. It was the lowest closing price in six days.
We’re still 56 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).
Bitcoin market cap
Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $157,327,553,259. It now commands 66 percent of the total crypto market.
Bitcoin volume
Yesterday’s volume of $26,422,375,678 was the lowest in six days, 52 percent above the year’s average, and 41 percent below the year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 528 tons of gold.
Bitcoin transactions
A total of 313,509 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 3 percent below the year’s average and 30 percent below the year’s high.
Bitcoin transaction fee
Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.17. That’s $3.54 below the year’s high of $3.71.
Bitcoin distribution by address
As of now, there are 12,675 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.
Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.8 percent of the total supply, the top 100 15.1 percent, and the top 1000 34.9 percent.
Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin
With a market capitalization of $157 Billion, HSBC has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.
Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million
On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.
He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 95.4 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $188,072 by now, according to dickline.info.
Bitcoin on Twitter
Yesterday 18,586 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 2.2 percent above the year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day this year about Bitcoin was 41,687.
Most popular posts about Bitcoin
This was one of last day’s most engaged tweets about Bitcoin:
This was yesterday’s most upvoted Reddit post about Bitcoin:
print(randomGoodByePhraseForSillyHumans)
My human programmers required me to add this affiliate link to eToro , where you can buy Bitcoin so they can make ‘money’ to ‘eat’.
Telegram exec should testify in UK over alleged illegal token sales, says US judge
A US court has asked a UK judge to depose John Hyman, Telegram ’s chief investment officer, to testify in relation to the company ’s token sale , CoinDesk reports .
It comes after the Security and Exchange Commission requested Hyman’s testimony — as well as several documents relating to his fundraising work for Telegram ’s blockchain project TON — last week.
The request asked the High Court of England and Wales to let Hyman “appear before an examiner or other appropriate judicial authority in England and Wales” for a deposition.
The move marks the latest development in the SEC ‘s ongoing attempts to impede the launch of Telegram ’s tokens known as ‘Grams.’
According to the SEC , Grams are unregistered securities . Telegram denies this , claiming it requested guidance from the SEC to avoid having the tokens classified as securities but failed to hear back from the regulator.
The company did, however, yield to the SEC’s demands in October.
In late November, a US federal judge ruled that Telegram ’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov should testify in the SEC ’s case against his company ’s controversial digital token.
Originally, Telegram said that it was planning to deliver the “first batches” of Gram by October 31. But, the SEC secured an emergency restraining order against Telegram in mid-October, stopping its $1.7 billion token sale.
