🤝 Instacart and Uber unite against DoorDash

Today’s market performance 🏆️ 

S&P 500: +0.51% 📈
Nasdaq: +0.45% 📈
Dow 30: +0.85% 📈
Russell 2000: +0.90% 📈

TOP STORY
🛒 Instacart and Uber unite against DoorDash

Instacart is entering the restaurant delivery game with a shocking partner: Uber.

In just a few weeks, the grocery delivery giant will be launching a new restaurant delivery feature powered by Uber's backend systems. 

• Users will be able to order through Instacart’s app or website, and Uber Eats will manage the restaurants, transactions, and deliveries.

• Uber has already confirmed there will be no price changes for customers or reductions in couriers' earnings.

Uber says it’s doing this to boost orders for its current restaurant partners, while Instacart will be able to seamlessly add many businesses to its platform.

It seems like a decent deal for both, but it’s still strange. 

• First, Uber Eats and Instacart are competitors in the grocery delivery field, even though Instacart is a much bigger fish in that pond.

• Not to mention, the deal itself seems to favor Instacart more than Uber from the outside looking in.

So why is Uber willing to team up? Well, despite being competitors, alliances are often necessary when you share a common enemy.

A.k.a. DoorDash.

DoorDash, with its 37M+ users and a whopping 67% online food delivery market share, has distanced itself galaxies away from anyone else.

With access to Instacart’s 14M users, Uber Eats can instantaneously increase its order volume and presence in the delivery market and, hopefully, chip away at DoorDash’s ginormous moat.

ENTERTAINMENT
💔 Sony and Apollo want to break up Paramount

Earlier this month, Sony and Apollo offered Paramount $26 billion for the company. The deal is still being looked over, but if it does get done, the duo has very interesting plans for the company’s future.

If all goes according to their plan, the buyers will:

• Sell CBS, Paramount's cable channels, and its streaming service, Paramount+.

• Merge Paramount Pictures with Sony's existing movie studio.

Why split? First, by splitting Paramount, Sony and Apollo can maximize the value of their various divisions—from film to television and beyond.

More bang for their buck.

Second, and this one is really dope…

Since Sony is a Japanese company, U.S. law currently prevents it from fully owning a broadcast network.

"A foreign entity can't own more than 25% of a U.S. broadcast, radio, or television license."

Breaking up the assets would allow Sony to be included in the deal because Sony would likely only take control of Paramount Pictures, which doesn't have the same rules as a broadcast network. 

The more you know.

CRYPTO
💰️ Robinhood and other platforms are making billions in the crypto market

In Q1 2024, Robinhood reported a whopping $26 billion in cryptocurrencies under its custody. 

That's a giant leap from $14B in the previous quarter, a 78% uptick as crypto continues to gain traction.

Robinhood isn’t just holding crypto for users; they’re also making bank from it.

• Revenue from cryptocurrency trading on Robinhood surged by over 230% compared to last year.

• Out of Robinhood’s $329M in transaction-based revenues, a cool $126M came directly from crypto trades.

Absolutely insane!

Ever since the Spot Bitcoin ETF was approved in January 2024, the crypto market has been enjoying a massive bull run.

In the past 6 months, Bitcoin has been up nearly 70%, Ethereum has been up 40%, and Solana has been up over 200%—yes, for real—and those are just the top dogs.

The overall market is also on an absolute tear, and Robinhood and other companies like Coinbase have been profiting from the crypto mania.

And while Robinhood is up an incredible 120% over the past 6 months, it isn’t even the biggest winner; Coinbase is.

Here’s a snapshot of Coinbase ($COIN) CRUSHING its Q1 earnings last week:

• Revenue: $1.64B (vs. $1.34B expected).

• Earnings: $4.40 per share (vs. $1.09 per share expected).

• Profit: $1.18B in the quarter (vs. -$78.9M last year).

• Transaction Revenue: $1.08B.

• Consumer Transaction Revenue: $935M in the quarter (vs. less than half that last year).

• New U.S. bitcoin ETFs, partnered with Coinbase for custody, secured over $50 billion by quarter-end.

It’s starting to feel a little like 2021 all over again; hopefully, it goes a little better this time, meaning fewer people go to jail.