Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 2: I'm Brian Curtis and I'm Doug Chrisner. Here are the
Speaker 2: stories we're following today.
Speaker 3: The Securities and Exchange Commission approved exchange traded funds that
Speaker 3: invest directly in bitcoin. The agency authorized eleven funds to
Speaker 3: begin trading on Thursday now. The approvals also mark a
Speaker 3: rare capitulation by the SEC following opposition that lasted for
Speaker 3: more than a decade.
Speaker 1: We've got reaction from RC CEO Kathy Wood.
Speaker 4: We think that longer term, which is our focus of course,
Speaker 4: you know, with institutions really getting the green light now
Speaker 4: with an SEC approval, we think that even going to
Speaker 4: zero point one or zero point five percent of a
Speaker 4: portfolio for institutions is going to be a price moving event.
Speaker 3: And that's CEO Kathy Wood. The decision today comes one
Speaker 3: day after a false post on the SEC's X account
Speaker 3: claimed that the agency had already approved the ETFs. The
Speaker 3: regulators subsequently said the account had been compromised, causing the
Speaker 3: price of bitcoin too fluctuate wildly, and the SEC said
Speaker 3: the FBI is investigating that breach. At the moment, bitcoin
Speaker 3: is trading up over forty seven thousand, so a three
Speaker 3: percent move here in the wake of the approval, forty
Speaker 3: seven thousand, three hundred and sixteen.
Speaker 2: Well Alaska Air Group is grounding all flights of its
Speaker 2: Boeing seven thirty seven Max nine aircraft over the next
Speaker 2: three days, and this decision means between one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten to one hundred and fifty daily flights will be canceled.
Speaker 2: You'll remember last Friday that an Alaskan air seven thirty
Speaker 2: seven Max nine lost part of its fuselage shortly after takeoff.
Speaker 2: Now that move to suspend the flights will now give
Speaker 2: USAFE to regulators time to inspect all aircraft and prepare
Speaker 2: them for a return to service once standards have been issued. Meantime,
Speaker 2: today the head of Boeing, that is CEO David Calhoun.
Speaker 2: He was on CNBC saying the company is worked looking
Speaker 2: to prevent future accidents.
Speaker 5: Now we're in a moment where we have nobody at risk,
Speaker 5: and our job is to understand literally everything that has happened,
Speaker 5: everything that surrounds that particular fuselage, plug and fix it
Speaker 5: and make sure it can never happen again.
Speaker 2: David Calhoun, the CEO of Boeing. Boeing shares finished up
Speaker 2: nearly one percent in New York Trading meantime shares in
Speaker 2: Alaska Air We're down nearly one percent today, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Doug, This story has case study all over at
Speaker 1: a place like Harvard Business School. It'll be really interesting
Speaker 1: to see how that works out. Well.
Speaker 3: Amazon is laying off hundreds of workers at its Prime
Speaker 3: Video and Studios business. Bloombergs Matt Day says he's not
Speaker 3: surprised given the state of the industry.
Speaker 6: Just a ton of pain right now in the streaming services,
Speaker 6: and folks kind of reassessing, you know, how many bodies
Speaker 6: are going to need for the demand for just the
Speaker 6: ton of streamingable content out there. Amazon's studio's boss, Mike
Speaker 6: Hopkins mentioned they like discontinue some things over the course
Speaker 6: these if they didn't specify what exactly those were, but
Speaker 6: really just the latest in what looks like cuts you know,
Speaker 6: all over the place at Amazon that they petered out.
Speaker 6: It's not, you know, tens of thousands of people the
Speaker 6: way it was a year ago, but it seems to
Speaker 6: be ongoing.
Speaker 3: That's Bloomberg's Matt Day reporting. We also reported on Tuesday
Speaker 3: that the company's Twitch live streaming service was preparing to
Speaker 3: announce cuts to about thirty five percent of its staff.
Speaker 3: That equates to about five hundred workers. Shares of Amazon
Speaker 3: closed up one point six percent.
Speaker 2: New York Fed President John Williams was saying today monetary
Speaker 2: policy is now tight enough to guide inflation back to
Speaker 2: the Fed's target, that being two percent. Even so, mister
Speaker 2: Williams suggested the Fed does need to see a little
Speaker 2: bit more in the way of evidence of cooling inflation
Speaker 2: before cutting infrast rates.
Speaker 7: I'll expect that we will need to maintain a restricted
Speaker 7: stance of policy for some time to folly achieve our goals,
Speaker 7: and it will only be appropriate to dial back the
Speaker 7: degree of policy restraint when we're confident that inflation is
Speaker 7: moving towards toward two percent on a sustained base.
Speaker 2: See is John Williams the head of the New York
Speaker 2: Fed now Tomorrow A key piece of economic news eight
Speaker 2: thirty am. Wall Street time is when we get the
Speaker 2: December reading on consumer prices. Brian Well.
Speaker 3: The Bank of Korea is likely to stand pad on
Speaker 3: interest rates today. Bloomberg's Bonnie Au has more.
Speaker 8: The BOK will probably push back against any expectations that
Speaker 8: might join the FED in signaling a pivot Governor Chiang
Speaker 8: Yong has won against prematurely relaxing the fight against inflation.
Speaker 8: All twelve economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Biok to
Speaker 8: keep its benchmark rate at three point five percent. If
Speaker 8: the Bok holds, it will mark a full year that
Speaker 8: authorities have kept the RDS steady. Economists expect only about
Speaker 8: two cuts by the end of twenty twenty four. In
Speaker 8: Hong Kong, I'm Bonnie al Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Quawai Technologies has wound down its in house lobbying operations
Speaker 2: in the US. That story from Bloomberg's Joan Wong in
Speaker 2: Hong Kong.
Speaker 9: While is last two registered lobbyists left in recent months.
Speaker 9: The lobbyist's recent departures follow an exodus of staff from
Speaker 9: Huawei's US operations that marks a quiet and to Huawei's
Speaker 9: costly decade long effort to maintain a presence in the
Speaker 9: North American market. Federal filing showed the company had spent
Speaker 9: more than thirteen million dollars lobbying in the past ten years.
Speaker 9: The firm reached its peak by supplying small mobile forms
Speaker 9: across the US even as major carriers shun did but
Speaker 9: rising tensions with Beijing. Eventually all but banded in Hong
Speaker 9: Kong joined Wang Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Meantime, China's credit market looks to be improving. We had
Speaker 3: a couple of property developers yesterday and also a large
Speaker 3: car dealer announced that they would make payments on maturing debt.
Speaker 3: One was China Wang Ka, the other one was long
Speaker 3: Fore Group, and they said that they would they would
Speaker 3: make these payments in the course of the next month
Speaker 3: or so. And also China Grand Automotive pledged to pay
Speaker 3: a dollar note that matures sometime this month. So that
Speaker 3: scene is good news and we'll offer a bit of
Speaker 3: relief to investors. Now it's time for global news. Well,
Speaker 3: another candidate buying for the Republican nomination for president has
Speaker 3: dropped out.
Speaker 1: Dan Schwarzman with that story in New York.
Speaker 10: Dan Hey, Brian As, Nikki Heley, and Rod DeSantis gets
Speaker 10: set to debate tonight in des Moines, Iowa. Former New
Speaker 10: Jersey Governor Chris Christy announces he is dropping out of
Speaker 10: the Republican presidential primary race. Christy had faced increased pressure
Speaker 10: in recent days to drop out to help boost Haley
Speaker 10: in New Hampshire, where she has focused her campaign resources.
Speaker 10: The former governor was a long shot to win, leaving
Speaker 10: the race with under four percent.
Speaker 1: Of support in the polls.
Speaker 10: Christy had at one time been a Trump ally, leading
Speaker 10: the former president's transition team, but he had fallen out
Speaker 10: with Trump. Back in twenty twenty, Christy had strong words
Speaker 10: regarding Trump.
Speaker 11: No one would tell the truth about his divisiveness. Is
Speaker 11: stoking of anger for his own benefit in putting himself
Speaker 11: before the people of this country.
Speaker 10: Christy was speaking at a town hall in New Hampshire.
Speaker 10: Donald Trump has been blocked for making a statement during
Speaker 10: closing arguments in his three hundred and seventy million dollars
Speaker 10: A civil trial judge overseeing the case, Arthur Angerin, told
Speaker 10: Trump's legal team he won't be allowed to speak, citing
Speaker 10: the former president's refusal to agree to standard court rules
Speaker 10: about what he can say. Trump is accused of inflating
Speaker 10: the value of his assets on financial documents for more
Speaker 10: than a decade in an effort to get better loan terms.
Speaker 10: Trump's lawyers and the judge have repeatedly clashed during the
Speaker 10: almost eleven week trial, as Trump's team has frequently accused
Speaker 10: the judge of bias against their clients. The USN allies
Speaker 10: weighing options to retaliate against Iranian back the m Andy
Speaker 10: based Hoothy rebels, who continue to attack commercial vessels transitting
Speaker 10: through the Red Sea. The militants launched their largest drone
Speaker 10: and missile attacks on ships earlier today, with US and
Speaker 10: British warships and planes shooting down eighteen drones in three
Speaker 10: anti ship missiles. So far, the US and its coaliship
Speaker 10: partners have failed to slow the attacks, leading to shipping
Speaker 10: companies refusing to send vessels through the area. California Governor
Speaker 10: Gavin Newsom has proposed spending cuts during the next fiscal
Speaker 10: year to tackle a thirty seven point nine billion dollar
Speaker 10: deficit due to inflation and lower tax revenue from wealthy earners.
Speaker 10: The gap is actually much smaller than was originally projected
Speaker 10: by the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, which back in
Speaker 10: December peg the deficit at around sixty eight billion. Newsom's
Speaker 10: plan to close the deficit include drawing thirteen point one
Speaker 10: billion dollars from the state's reserves, as well as cutting
Speaker 10: eight point five billion from areas such as climate change initiatives, housing,
Speaker 10: and scholarship programs while also freeze in spending across government agencies.
Speaker 10: Jaw dropping news coming out of sports album Ahead. Football
Speaker 10: coach Nick Saban will be retiring seventeen years, six national
Speaker 10: titles and after that first year, sixteen straight seasons of
Speaker 10: ten or more wins per season, Considered by many the
Speaker 10: greatest coach in the history of college football. Global news
Speaker 10: twenty four hours a day and whenever you want it
Speaker 10: with Bloomberg News.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 10: I'm Dan Schwartzman, and this is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Well, this is Bloomberg day Break.
Speaker 3: Asian Paul Allen joins us now from Sydney, and our
Speaker 3: guest is Douglas Borthwick, CEO at Blue Canary Capital, to
Speaker 3: take a closer.
Speaker 1: Look at these Bitcoin ETF approvals.
Speaker 3: So, Douglas, you've probably heard me say this, but I
Speaker 3: want to get your view on it. Do you actually
Speaker 3: see this as capitulation by the SEC or is it
Speaker 3: just the result of a lengthy regulatory process?
Speaker 12: Well, I think it's a bit of both. I mean,
Speaker 12: let's be honest, Gary Gensler had to be pulled over
Speaker 12: this finish line. And he didn't get pulled over by
Speaker 12: the market. He got pulled over, really by a lawsuit
Speaker 12: that was filed by Greyscale, but they didn't want to
Speaker 12: do it. They was very much against it, but finally
Speaker 12: capitulated today and actually voted for it along with Hester Pierce.
Speaker 12: So I think that it's something that they were kicking
Speaker 12: and screaming, but they ran out of excuses for why
Speaker 12: they couldn't do it, because the SEC's job isn't to
Speaker 12: decide what people can invest in, rather is to make
Speaker 12: sure people invest in something that they're protected, and I
Speaker 12: think that they ran out of excuses.
Speaker 13: Yeah, the SEC was pretty clear though that, you know,
Speaker 13: while it's okay with these ETFs, it doesn't endorse bitcoin.
Speaker 13: We're in a situation now, we've got an ETA of
Speaker 13: trading what is an unpredictable ethereal acid are. There's still
Speaker 13: some risks hooked up to this. Does the SEC right
Speaker 13: to be cautious?
Speaker 12: Well, there's risks associated with absolutely every security that exists.
Speaker 12: Right There's there's no company that goes out there. The
Speaker 12: SEC says there's no risk here. There's absolutely two way risk.
Speaker 12: But what this means is is that there's risk, but
Speaker 12: it's well documented in the prospectuses, so people understand what
Speaker 12: they're getting into But now this goes mainstream, and you know,
Speaker 12: you had a quote from Kathy Wood earlier. The reality
Speaker 12: is that as people start adding this as a diversification
Speaker 12: to their portfolio, and who wouldn't given you've seen the
Speaker 12: returns that have happened in bitcoin over the past what
Speaker 12: fifteen years, people are going to get involved and they're
Speaker 12: going to put you a little bit of this in
Speaker 12: their portfolio. And whether it's er point one percent, five percent,
Speaker 12: ten percent, all of this is going to start adding
Speaker 12: up considerably and banks are going to turn around and say,
Speaker 12: you know what, crypto isn't bad, Bitcoin is good because
Speaker 12: banks have now figured out how to make money on
Speaker 12: this asset with their customer base.
Speaker 3: Well, and apparently it wasn't all discounted this approval, because
Speaker 3: you have seen a bounce this morning. Now it's three
Speaker 3: and a quarter percenters so to forty seven four fifty.
Speaker 3: Do you think that this approval process, that this will
Speaker 3: serve as a major milestone for bitcoin and for other
Speaker 3: cryptos as well.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 12: It's a major milestone for bitcoin. I mean, there's a
Speaker 12: lot of crypto out there that's garbage. A theorum I
Speaker 12: think is probably going to be the next etf that
Speaker 12: we're all going to start focusing on. But for bitcoin,
Speaker 12: this is absolutely a milestone. I think it's it's I
Speaker 12: hesitate to say, but a floor in that now you've
Speaker 12: got the ability for people to be able to buy
Speaker 12: bitcoin without all of the hassle of a wallets or
Speaker 12: trying to understand what self custody is and all of
Speaker 12: these different technology terms that no one understands except for
Speaker 12: folks within the crypto industry, and so being able to
Speaker 12: just buy it simply going onto a website, being able
Speaker 12: to buy in your four oh one K in your IRA,
Speaker 12: having your financial advisor being able to allocate this to
Speaker 12: your portfolio changes the game in such a large way.
Speaker 12: And it is a limited asset. There are not that
Speaker 12: many coins left out there. The majority of people that
Speaker 12: hold bitcoin want to hold it for a very long time,
Speaker 12: and so I think that it has a great opportunity
Speaker 12: here for it to really get a lot more well,
Speaker 12: not just a verification of portfolios, but also for people
Speaker 12: to actually start thinking about bitcoin is something that they
Speaker 12: can associate themselves with.
Speaker 13: So when trading gets going, what sort of interest are
Speaker 13: you anticipating from buyers, particularly some of these retail buyers
Speaker 13: that you're talking.
Speaker 12: About, Well, I think the retail buyers, the retail folks
Speaker 12: have already been buying it themselves on a coinbase or
Speaker 12: something like that. It's the institutions that haven't been buying it.
Speaker 12: And I think it's the institutional interest that's going to
Speaker 12: be very, very interesting. And so, you know, you can
Speaker 12: get lots of you know, young guys buying two hundred
Speaker 12: dollars worth, but that doesn't really move the needle.
Speaker 1: Moves the needle is.
Speaker 12: When you buy two billion dollars worth and black Rocks
Speaker 12: been you know, there's been reports that black Rocks as
Speaker 12: are two billion dollars of interest already in their ETF.
Speaker 12: That's a tremendous amount of interest. And that's only one
Speaker 12: of the eleven ETFs that are that are out there,
Speaker 12: and this is only day one. We've got years and
Speaker 12: years of interest of buying interest coming into this.
Speaker 3: So if eleven funds approved, how do they differentiate themselves
Speaker 3: from others?
Speaker 12: Well, I think it's very hard, and I think that
Speaker 12: a lot of them right now are differentiating themselves based
Speaker 12: upon fees. Right, So one's at point four to nine,
Speaker 12: ones at point five percent. Gray scale continues spirit, you know,
Speaker 12: above one percent. I think that so feed differentiation is important,
Speaker 12: but I think a lot of folks generally will just
Speaker 12: deal with what they can deal with or what their
Speaker 12: financial advisor allocates them towards. And so while fees are important,
Speaker 12: there's still these fees are still a lot less than
Speaker 12: if they were buying bitcoin on an exchange or if
Speaker 12: they were buying bitcoin through Great Scale as it was
Speaker 12: previously when it was a trust company.
Speaker 1: So presumably this is bad for Coinbase, right.
Speaker 12: Well, you've got to wonder, you know, I think that
Speaker 12: there if Coinbase has diehard crypt bitcoin fans that want
Speaker 12: to self custody, well that's one thing. But certainly there's
Speaker 12: going to be a lot of retail that maybe wanted
Speaker 12: access to bitcoin on Coinbase and now decide, you know what,
Speaker 12: I'll just do it through an ETF. But that's also
Speaker 12: good news for Coinbase because Coinbase is involved in many
Speaker 12: of the ETFs that are right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it could be that on one side, but
Speaker 3: very good on the other side.
Speaker 1: Douglas, thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Douglas Borthwick, CEO at Luke Canary Capital. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Daybreak Asia. Your morning brief on this story is making
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Speaker 2: I'm Brian Curtis, I'm Doug Chrisner. Join us again tomorrow
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Speaker 2: right here on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia