"The Coinbase IPO is potentially a watershed event for the crypto-industry and will be something the Street will be laser-focused on to gauge investor appetite," said Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives. He was speaking ahead of what looks set to be one of the biggest flotations in New York this year, by one of the world's best known cryptocurrency exchanges.

Other fund managers, however, are holding onto their dollars, warning that crypto is still a sector to be avoided, pointing to ongoing price volatility and unstable consumer demand. 

Whichever side you take, the market in virtual currencies only looks set to get bigger and more boisterous in the months ahead.

The once-mighty Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has been thrown into turmoil, with the offer of a private equity buyout to save it from further ruin. In a deal that is almost certain to draw rigorous scrutiny from the Japanese government and regulators, Luxembourg's CVC Capital Partners is offering $20 billion for the multinational giant. 

Toshiba, which began in the 19th century building Japan's telegraph system, has been selling off parts of its empire piecemeal in recent years after being brought close to ruin by an accounting scandal in 2015. 

With signs that other private equity groups may make a bid, see our graph for the latest on what's happening in the PE sector. 

Handbags and sunglasses may seem unlikely purchases for lockdown life, but consumers in the U.S. and China have certainly been splashing out, with sales booming at Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH and at other top fashion labels. 

We have a short film about rare earth minerals. What are they, and why are they so contentious?  

And actress Jessica Alba has proved there is life beyond Hollywood. She is poised to join the billionaire set, with the planned flotation of her eco-friendly baby products empire "Honest".

Read on for all the day's business news in full.

Louise Greenwood,

Digital correspondent

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Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, has launched on the Nasdaq, sparking demand across the sector. The world's second biggest cryptocurrency Ether climbed to a record high, while Bitcoin Cash jumped more than 10 percent in early trading. If Coinbase reaches its estimated value of $100 billion it will be worth more than the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market combined.

The Nasdaq on Tuesday set a reference price of $250 a share for Coinbase's direct listing, with a private stock trade in early March suggesting a slightly more modest valuation of $90 billion for the exchange, which would make it the biggest company to go to market via a direct listing.

Last month, the San Francisco-based company said private market transactions valued it at around $68 billion in 2021, versus $5.8 billion in September. The listing, the biggest yet of a cryptocurrency company, has been hailed as a major breakthrough for the asset, which until recent times had been shunned by most mainstream investors. 

Bitcoin has hit another record high of more than $64,000, more than doubling in value this year as banks from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley and electric car giant Tesla say they will accept the virtual coin as a legitimate payment.

Toshiba's CEO has resigned after a boardroom coup at the Japanese multinational, which has been fighting to block a private equity takeover. Shares in the tech conglomerate and chip maker surged 6 percent in early Asian trading on rumors that other bidders may join CVC Capital Partners, which has put forward a $20 billion buyout offer for the group. Nobuaki Kurumatani had faced criticism from activist shareholders over his handling of the bid which the board of Toshiba has described as "unsolicited and lacking in substance". If the deal is approved it will be the biggest leveraged buyout in Japanese corporate history.     

CVC has told Toshiba that it plans to form a consortium to mount the bid. Analysts warn the Luxembourg-based fund may be obliged to work with investment funds backed by the Japanese government to receive regulatory clearance. 

Singapore-based Grab Holdings has confirmed it will go public on the U.S. markets. The tie-up with Altimeter Growth Corporation, which values Grab at around $40 billion, is expected to be the largest-ever U.S. equity offering by a company in South East Asia. Amid strong investor interest, CEO and co-founder Anthony Tan says he hopes the Grab flotation will "open up access for everyone to benefit from the digital economy." 

Grab is the market leader for online food delivery, ride-hailing, and digital wallet payments in South East Asia.

The UK's biggest retailer has announced a rise in sales but a sharp fall in full-year profits. Supermarket giant Tesco has reported "exceptionally strong" revenue growth, up 7 percent to $73.6 billion. But pre-tax profits fell by a fifth as the group, which is Britain's largest private-sector employer, spent $1.2 billion to cover staff illness and shielding requirements. 

Tesco's full-year pre-tax profit fell from $1.3 billion to $1.1 billion. Supermarkets have been deemed essential retailers and allowed to stay open during the UK's three national lockdowns. Tesco added that it will repay in full the business rates relief it has received from the government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

EasyJet says it expects to have made pre-tax losses of between $951 million to $1 billion in the six months to the end of March. But the low-cost airline adds it is ready to "ramp up" flights ahead of the summer holiday season, with a reduced fleet of planes, as vaccine roll-outs continue in its biggest markets.

Meanwhile, rival Ryanair has had another setback in its fight to stop state aid for airlines, after Europe's second-highest court again backed support deals granted to SAS and Finnair. Europe's biggest low-cost airline by passenger numbers has filed 16 lawsuits against the European Commission chiefs for allowing $3.6 trillion in state aid to be paid to mainly flag-carrier airlines including Lufthansa, KLM, Austrian Airlines, and TAP. However, the Luxembourg-based General Court again ruled on Wednesday that aid granted to SAS and Finnair did not flout the bloc's rules.

Norwegian Air says it hopes to raise $711 million in fresh capital ahead of emerging from bankruptcy protection next month. Courts in Oslo and Dublin have recently given their approval for the troubled carrier, which has struggled in the COVID-19 pandemic, to cut its debt through a stock conversion. 

 

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Shares in French luxury goods giant LVMH have risen to record highs, after the group reported sales of $16.6 billion in the first quarter, up 30 percent on the same period a year ago. The figures, which strip out the effect of currency changes and LVMH's acquisition of U.S. jeweler Tiffany,  were ahead of analysts' expectations.  Shares in LVMH, owner of more than 70 brands ranging from Moet & Chandon champagne to Guerlain cosmetics, rose 2.7 percent in early European trading. 

Rivals Kering and Hermes also recorded a bump in their share price and market watchers say the luxury goods sector has had a better-than-expected lockdown with strong demand in the U.S and China.

Douyin, a version of TikTok in China, banned more than 200,000 accounts and removed more than 2 million illegal videos last year, according to new figures. The app, with 600 million daily active users, says it is acting to prevent exploitation of minors and has added a "youth mode" control, that limits screen time to no more than 40 minutes and blocks overnight viewing.

China's top internet firms must stop abusing their market dominance and cease all illegal activities within one month, or face "severe punishment," the government has warned. At a meeting on Tuesday, the country's market regulator and its cyberspace and tax agencies warned more heavy penalties, such as the record $2.8 billion fine just handed to Alibaba Group for antitrust violations, could be on the way if further abuses were detected. 

UK competition watchdogs have provisionally cleared Virgin Media's $42 billion tie-up with mobile operator O2, concluding it was unlikely to lead to higher prices in the wholesale mobile market. Respective owners Liberty Global and Spanish group Telefónica struck a deal to combine their UK operations in May 2020 to unite the country's second-largest broadband network with its largest mobile operator. 

Shares in Credit Suisse have fallen further after the lender was forced into an assets sell-off to limit the damage from its exposure to the collapsed U.S. hedge fund Archegos Capital Management. Shares have fallen more than 2 percent to a four-month low after it reduced its holdings in media companies Discovery, and the Chinese online video platform iQIYI earlier this week. 

"Honest" the eco-friendly baby products company founded by Hollywood film star Jessica Alba is to go public in a deal that could be priced at $3 billion. The Los Angeles-based firm has filed for an IPO of $100 million worth of shares with the regulators. Honest, which was founded in 2011 specializing in non-toxic baby products, has recently branched out into cosmetics and household cleaning goods, which have boomed in lockdown. It plans a Nasdaq listing after its revenue jumped 28 percent to $300 million in the year to the end of December.

 

WATCH: You may not have heard of them, but the device you are using to read this is probably made up of them! So what exactly are rare earth metals?

 

Japan is facing international criticism over its plans to release more than a million tons of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. CGTN Europe spoke to M. V. Ramana, a nuclear expert from Canada's University of British Columbia, and asked him about the risks involved.

The water that is being discharged contains many radioactive materials, in particular tritium ... a radioactive variant of hydrogen which bonds in the form of water, you can get radioactive treated water, which can enter the body very easily. Likewise, it can also bond to organic molecules that can go inside the body very easily. And therefore, there's definitely reason for concern about this. 

 

Japanese officials say that the radiation doses from the released water will be very low. 

From all we know, there's no threshold below which radiation is safe or exposure to radiation increases, to some extent the health effects on your body, including cancer and a variety of other problems. The simple reason why they chose to dump it in the ocean is that it is the cheapest way to deal with this. Other options are more expensive. And that's not something that TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and the Japanese government seem to want to undertake. 

 

And finally... several private equity groups are considering making an offer for Japan's Toshiba. Most of the global attention has been focused on special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) in recent months. But market watchers say, behind the scenes, PE groups have been busy raising cash and are poised for a post-pandemic comeback.