World Street | Airbnb's weak forecasts, CoinDCX's investor protection fund, Fed's patience with rate cuts and more

World Street offers a sneak peek into the world of business and economy.

Airbnb issues lower-than-estimated revenue growth forecasts for the third quarter citing slow demand. CoinDCX forms Rs 50 crore crypto investor protection fund after WazirX hack. Going against popular opinion, Goldman Sachs Group's CEO David Solomon expects the Federal Reserve to steer clear of emergency measures to cut rates, as he anticipates the US economy to dodge a recession. All this and much more on the August 7 edition of World Street.

Tough times

Airbnb projected third-quarter revenue below expectations and cautioned about shorter booking windows, indicating travelers' hesitance to book early due to economic uncertainties.

Domestic travel in the US has faced challenges since the start of the year, as more Americans are becoming wary of travel expenses amidst concerns about the economy's health. The company anticipates third-quarter revenue to range between $3.67 billion and $3.73 billion, falling short of the analysts' prediction of $3.84 billion.

Additionally, Airbnb foresees a slowdown in the growth of nights booked for the third quarter and noted experiencing shorter booking lead times globally.

Safety net

Following the $230-million WazirX hack, rival crypto exchange CoinDCX has established a Rs 50-crore Crypto Investor Protection Fund (CIPF) to safeguard its customers against potential cyberattacks on its platform.

On July 18, WazirX experienced a security breach in one of its multisig wallets, resulting in the loss of about 45 percent of its crypto asset holdings. Consequently, WazirX had to temporarily halt withdrawals and trading. Multisig wallets are crypto wallets that require two or more private keys for access and transactions.

Against the consensus

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon predicted that the Federal Reserve will steer clear of emergency measures to reduce borrowing costs, as he believes the US economy will avoid a recession.

"I don't expect that you'll see anything before September," Solomon said in an interview for an upcoming episode of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations. "The economy will chug along, and we probably won't see a recession."

Investors increased their bets that policymakers would act before their scheduled September meeting following a global stock market plunge and weaker-than-expected US employment data on Friday. On Monday, derivative markets indicated a 60 percent probability that the Fed would cut rates within a week.

Tough decisions

Dell has laid off employees as part of a major restructuring of its sales division. In an internal memo titled "Global Sales Modernisation Update" sent to staff, the computer maker outlined plans to centralise its sales teams and modernise internal operations to prepare for "the world of AI."

The memo revealed that sales divisions are being consolidated and a new AI Select Sales team is being created. As part of this move, an undisclosed number of employees were let go. "We are getting leaner. We're streamlining layers of management and reprioritising where we invest," senior executives Bill Scannell and John Byrne wrote in the internal email, as reported by Business Insider.

Passing with flying colours

A version of Samsung Electronics' fifth-generation high bandwidth memory chips (HBM3E) has successfully passed Nvidia's tests for use in its artificial intelligence processors, according to a report by Reuters.

This qualification marks a significant milestone for the world's largest memory chipmaker, which has been striving to catch up with local rival SK Hynix in the race to supply advanced memory chips for generative AI tasks.

While Samsung and Nvidia have not yet signed a supply deal for the approved eight-layer HBM3E chips, they are expected to do so soon, with supplies anticipated to begin by the fourth quarter of 2024, the report said.