Extra Crunch roundup: ‘Nightmare’ security breach, Poshmark’s IPO, crypto boom, more

The rest of the world may be slowing down as we prepare for Christmas and the new year, but we are not taking our foot off the gas.

Alex Wilhelm keeps a close watch on the public markets in his column The Exchange, but this week, he branched out to look at some of the metrics underpinning soaring cryptocurrency prices and turned his gaze on StockX, the consumer reseller marketplace that just raised $275 million in a Series E that values the company at approximately $2.8 billion.

“Selling a tenth of your company for north of a quarter-billion may be somewhat common among late-stage software startups with tremendous growth,” he says, but “don’t laugh — the round actually makes pretty OK sense.”

Our staff continues to file their end-of-year stories: We ran a post this morning by Manish Singh that studies India’s massive total addressable market for retail. The nation has more than 60 million mom-and-pop neighborhood stores, and companies like Walmart and Amazon are eager to offer help with payments, logistics and inventory management — as are hundreds of native and foreign startups.

In an interview with author and MIT professor Sinan Aral, Managing Editor Danny Crichton discussed some of the debates currently swirling around the desire in some quarters to regulate social media platforms. In “The Hype Machine,” Aral explores topics like neuroscience, economics and misinformation before offering potential solutions for resolving what he calls “a full-blown social media crisis.”

The stories that follow are an overview of Extra Crunch from the last five days. Complete articles are only available to members, but you can use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one or two-year subscription. Details here.

Thank you very much for reading Extra Crunch this week; I hope you have a safe, relaxing weekend!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

Unpacking Poshmark’s IPO filing

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

How did fashion marketplace Poshmark go from posting regular losses in 2019 to generating net income in 2020?

After the company filed a public S-1 last night, Alex Wilhelm pondered the question this morning in The Exchange.

Like many e-commerce platforms, Poshmark saw a surge in activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it also slashed its marketing spend, which helped boost profits. As the cash-rich company prepares its road show, “Poshmark is valuable,” Alex concluded.

“How valuable the market will decide. But who will it enrich with its final pricing decision?”

Just how bad is that hack that hit US government agencies?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – APRIL 22, 2018: A statue of Albert Gallatin, a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, stands in front of The Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. The National Historic Landmark building is the headquarters of the United States Department of the Treasury. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

The breach of FireEye and…