IBM plunges 25%: a drop some dressed up as a bitcoin crisis
IBM sinks 25% on the stock market after its CEO admitted he failed to adapt. The ironies of a collapse that some tried to sell as a crypto crisis.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
IBM plunges 25%: the story of a crash some tried to sell as a crypto crisis
IBM suffered a historic 25% stock market drop this Thursday, wiping out billions in market capitalization. The tech giant, once the king of mainframes, admitted it had failed to adapt to the cloud and artificial intelligence. Its CEO, Arvind Krishna, summed it up in a letter to investors: "We did not adapt or move fast enough." A self-criticism that contrasts with the usual rhetoric of Spanish companies, where any drop is dressed up as "adverse market conditions."
The contrast with the Ibex 35
While in Silicon Valley the giants succeed one another at a relentless pace —IBM falls, Yahoo disappeared, and yesterday's startups are worth a hundred billion— in Spain's Ibex 35 the same names repeat themselves decade after decade: Telefónica, Santander, Iberdrola. Innovation, in many cases, is replaced by CEO changes that have little to do with results. The criticism of the lack of movement in Spanish executive suites is nothing new: the system rewards survival over transformation.
Ironies of a foretold collapse
The curious thing about the episode is how some tried to sell the crash as a bitcoin crisis. The misleading headline "Bitcoin falls 25%" circulated to attract cryptocurrency critics, but the reality was IBM. In the end, the anti-bitcoin hysteria came to nothing: what collapsed was a dinosaur of computing that failed to reinvent itself in time. The markets, relentless, do not forgive paralysis.
IBM suffered a historic 25% stock market drop this Thursday, wiping out billions in market capitalization. The tech giant, once the king of mainframes, admitted it had failed to adapt to the cloud and artificial intelligence. Its CEO, Arvind Krishna, summed it up in a letter to investors: "We did not adapt or move fast enough." A self-criticism that contrasts with the usual rhetoric of Spanish companies, where any drop is dressed up as "adverse market conditions."
The contrast with the Ibex 35
While in Silicon Valley the giants succeed one another at a relentless pace —IBM falls, Yahoo disappeared, and yesterday's startups are worth a hundred billion— in Spain's Ibex 35 the same names repeat themselves decade after decade: Telefónica, Santander, Iberdrola. Innovation, in many cases, is replaced by CEO changes that have little to do with results. The criticism of the lack of movement in Spanish executive suites is nothing new: the system rewards survival over transformation.
Ironies of a foretold collapse
The curious thing about the episode is how some tried to sell the crash as a bitcoin crisis. The misleading headline "Bitcoin falls 25%" circulated to attract cryptocurrency critics, but the reality was IBM. In the end, the anti-bitcoin hysteria came to nothing: what collapsed was a dinosaur of computing that failed to reinvent itself in time. The markets, relentless, do not forgive paralysis.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (10 replies).
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