Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 2: I'm Brian Curtis and I'm Doug Krisner. Here are the
Speaker 2: stories we're following today.
Speaker 1: Well, some saber rattling from China on Taiwan. We get
Speaker 1: more from Dan Schwartzman in New York.
Speaker 3: Dan Yeah Brian, China's ambassador to the US, Chifeng, says
Speaker 3: the country has no room to compromise when it comes
Speaker 3: to Taiwan's independence. She was speaking at the Carter Center
Speaker 3: in Atlanta. The ambassador's comments come as Taiwan is set
Speaker 3: to vote for president on January thirteenth. One of the candidates,
Speaker 3: Taiwan's Vice President, Lai Ching Tay, has angered Beijing by
Speaker 3: describing himself as quote pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence. A
Speaker 3: three judge appeals court panel expressed skepticism of Donald Trump's
Speaker 3: claims that he is immune from prosecution as a former
Speaker 3: president looks to avoid a criminal trial over his attempt
Speaker 3: to overturn the twenty twenty election. Trump is trying to
Speaker 3: reverse a December first ruling by US District Judge Tanya Chutkin,
Speaker 3: who rejected Trump's immunity defense, saying it seems he was
Speaker 3: seeking the power of a monarch. Bloomberg's Eric Larsen breaks
Speaker 3: down one judge's hypothetical oppose to Trump attorney John Sarr.
Speaker 4: What if a president ordered the killing of a political
Speaker 4: rival with Seal Team six, you know, does nothing happen
Speaker 4: to this president? And Trump's argument, or that he's lawyer pressed,
Speaker 4: is that if the president is impeached for that conduct,
Speaker 4: then potentially that opens up the potential for a criminal case.
Speaker 4: But if there's no impeachment, then you know, nothing happens,
Speaker 4: And the judges seemed pretty skeptical of that argument.
Speaker 3: That's Bloomberg's Eric Larson. Walter Reed Medical Center has released
Speaker 3: a statement saying that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was diagnosed
Speaker 3: with prostate cancer in early December. Austin underwent a minimally
Speaker 3: invasive surgical procedure which resulted in some complications, including nause
Speaker 3: and severe pain in his abnominal area as well as
Speaker 3: in his hip and leg, and the evaluation revealed that
Speaker 3: Austin was suffering from a urinary tract infection as well
Speaker 3: as abdominal fluids collecting, which impaired the small intestine's ability
Speaker 3: to function. The hospital those says they anticipate the Secretary
Speaker 3: will make a full recovery. National Security ca Ouncil spokesman
Speaker 3: John Kirby says even President Biden didn't know why Austin
Speaker 3: was hospitalized till earlier today.
Speaker 5: He was not informed until last Friday that Secretary of
Speaker 5: Austin was in the hospital. He was not informed until
Speaker 5: this morning.
Speaker 1: That the root cause of that hospitalization was prostate cancer.
Speaker 3: Kirby, speaking at a briefing earlier today. Storms, high winds
Speaker 3: and tornado warnings hitting parts of the South today, with
Speaker 3: roofs blown off homes and campers flipped over in Florida.
Speaker 3: In the Midwest, some cities were hit with more than
Speaker 3: a foot of snow, stranding some drivers on highways. Areas
Speaker 3: across Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota seeing
Speaker 3: snow accumulations as high as fifteen inches. More than two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand customers were without power in Alabama, Georgia and
Speaker 3: in Florida. That's according to Thepowerodage dot US website. Global
Speaker 3: News twenty four hours a day and whenever you want
Speaker 3: it with Bloomberg News.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: I'm Dan Schwartzman, and this is.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg all right, Thanks very much, Dan five and a
Speaker 1: half minutes asked the hour, This is Bloomberg Daybreak Asia.
Speaker 1: We take a look now at some of the top
Speaker 1: business stories of the hour.
Speaker 3: While the US.
Speaker 1: Securities and Exchange Commission says it has not granted approval
Speaker 1: of Spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds, that's despite a post
Speaker 1: saying it had been approved on X that appeared to
Speaker 1: be from the regulator's official account. The post included a
Speaker 1: comment purporting to be from SEC chair Gary Gensler. Gensler
Speaker 1: himself said on X that the SEC's account had been compromised.
Speaker 1: About a dozen companies have applied to list ETFs backed
Speaker 1: by bitcoin in the United States, and the SEC has
Speaker 1: until January tenth to take action on at least one
Speaker 1: of those applications. Now Bloomberg Shanali Bossack tells us what
Speaker 1: comes next for the SEC.
Speaker 4: They could always punt right. They could always push it
Speaker 4: as they have before.
Speaker 5: They could also deny application.
Speaker 4: They could ask for more information as we've seen last
Speaker 4: minute amendments to the filings just this morning.
Speaker 1: That's Shanali boss Suk. The price of bitcoin did spike, well,
Speaker 1: it did increase, let's say, and it's still a little
Speaker 1: bit higher now. Right now forty six eighty three per coin.
Speaker 2: We turn next to the latest on the Boeing seven
Speaker 2: thirty seven Max Air safety officials are probing last week's
Speaker 2: blowout of a door plug on a Max nine model,
Speaker 2: and now their attention is focused squarely on four unaccounted bolts.
Speaker 2: These bolts, you see, were meant to secure the door
Speaker 2: plug it suddenly broke loose on that Alaska Airlines flight
Speaker 2: last Friday. Inspections were subsequently ordered by the FAA, and
Speaker 2: now we learn that both Alaska Air and United Airlines
Speaker 2: have discovered more loose bolts. The National Transportation Safety Board
Speaker 2: said it would consider broadening the probe into other Max models. Now,
Speaker 2: despite the news on this crisis, it's interesting that Boeing
Speaker 2: ended all of last year twenty twenty three with its
Speaker 2: largest ever monthly sales gain for the seven thirty seven Max.
Speaker 1: Ran Well Blackrock, we'll dismiss about six hundred employees, roughly
Speaker 1: three percent of its global workforce. It comes as the
Speaker 1: company seeks to reallocate resources. We get more from Bloomberg's Charlie.
Speaker 6: Pellett, CEO Larry Fink, and President Bob Kapito said in
Speaker 6: a memo to staff quote, we see our industry changing
Speaker 6: faster than at any time since the founding of Blackrock.
Speaker 6: The executive say ETFs have become the preferred vehicle for
Speaker 6: both index and active investment strategies, that the firm is
Speaker 6: growing across the globe, including in Europe and Asia. The
Speaker 6: world's largest asset manager says it still expects to have
Speaker 6: a larger staff by the end of the year, even
Speaker 6: with the cuts, as it expands certain parts of the business.
Speaker 6: In New York, Charlie Pellett Bloomberg Radio, we.
Speaker 2: Are told Amazon's live streaming site Twitch is poised to
Speaker 2: cut thirty five percent of its staff. That would equate
Speaker 2: to around five hundred workers. These cuts could be announced,
Speaker 2: we are told as soon as Wednesday. We are hearing
Speaker 2: there are increased concern over the company's turning a profit
Speaker 2: since Twitch has increased its focus on advertising in recent years.
Speaker 1: Right well, Qualcomm says that it's pushed into automotive chips
Speaker 1: is on course to beat sales projections. A chip maker
Speaker 1: said that it will have about four billion dollars of
Speaker 1: sales from its auto unit by twenty twenty six. Qualcom's
Speaker 1: entrance into the automotive space will also decrease its reliance
Speaker 1: on mobile phone electronics, and the CEO, Cristiano Amone, told
Speaker 1: us that the car industry is going digital. So if
Speaker 1: you're going to go buy a car today, you have
Speaker 1: a fully immersive digital clck bit.
Speaker 5: You didn't have that before. That's enabled by Snapdragon. Right
Speaker 5: now you have those beautiful screens that are immersiving.
Speaker 1: They bring you a lot of information about the car,
Speaker 1: the road.
Speaker 3: On top of that, it have safety and we have
Speaker 3: a vision that assisted driving needs to be in every car.
Speaker 1: That's Qualcom CEO Cristiano Amone, speaking from the Consumer Electronics
Speaker 1: Show in Las Vegas. Qualcom is now selling more chips
Speaker 1: for handling, driving, and entertainment functions in vehicles, along with
Speaker 1: processors for personal computers and headsets. The hope is to
Speaker 1: maintain growth as the smartphone market matures.
Speaker 2: China says it has hacked into Apple's air dropped feature
Speaker 2: and as a result, message centers can be identified. We
Speaker 2: have more from Bloomberg zivon men in Hong Kong.
Speaker 7: A Beijing institute has developed a technique to crack an
Speaker 7: iPhone's encrypted device log. The log identifies numbers and emails
Speaker 7: of senders who share air drop content. The method would
Speaker 7: help authorities eradicate information China deems unhealthy. Activists around the
Speaker 7: world have employed the air drop feature to spread their
Speaker 7: messages Beijing's judicial bureaus as police have identified multiple people
Speaker 7: via the hack. Developments add uncertainty to Apple's operations in China.
Speaker 7: The company already faces severe constraints on content, including on
Speaker 7: Apple TV and books. In Hong Kong, I'm Von Mann
Speaker 7: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Daybreak Asia. I'm Brian Curtisy in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong with Paul Allen in Sydney, and our guest is
Speaker 1: Eric balchunis Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst. To take a
Speaker 1: closer look at what happened today from the SEC. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be splitting hairs with something, but we
Speaker 1: said in our lead that the SEC has not yet
Speaker 1: approved blah blah blah, And actually Gary Gensler said in
Speaker 1: his statement that the SEC has not approved. So again,
Speaker 1: that might be getting a little bit too technical there,
Speaker 1: but many people think it will happen. Was this possibly something, Eric,
Speaker 1: that was just a prepared statement that somehow made its
Speaker 1: way in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, I'm processing this all just like you, I
Speaker 5: was expecting a tweet like this to come out exactly
Speaker 5: twenty four hours from when it did. We all intel
Speaker 5: points to approval four to five pm Eastern time tomorrow,
Speaker 5: with both the nineteen befour's in the s ones getting
Speaker 5: approved and then issuers launching Thursday business day, and they'd
Speaker 5: be up in trading. So I was sort of ready
Speaker 5: they just go have dinner and have a chill night
Speaker 5: before tomorrow's madness. But the madness came early, and it
Speaker 5: sounds like it was hacked, but the timing was weird.
Speaker 5: It almost seems like a scheduled tweet that they put
Speaker 5: the wrong dat in. But let's just trust the SEC
Speaker 5: it was hacked. This isn't the first time there's been Well, you.
Speaker 1: Said compromised, right, Compromise is a little bit broader term.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Look, who knows. I mean,
Speaker 5: at some point we'll get the truth over time. You
Speaker 5: notice when people put out tweets sometimes they always say
Speaker 5: hacked and or compromised, But you know, half the time
Speaker 5: they weren't. They're just embarrassed. Who knows. All I know
Speaker 5: is that tomorrow is important because it's the deadline for
Speaker 5: the ARC filing. They have to either approve or deny,
Speaker 5: so if they do nothing, it gets approved. But all
Speaker 5: signs and all our intel points to approval. So my
Speaker 5: guess is we'll see this tweet or something come out
Speaker 5: tomorrow after they formally approve doing the more formal way
Speaker 5: on the website. But I've been covering this now. I've
Speaker 5: been in a sort of one foot in the crypto
Speaker 5: world for like six months now, and I've gotten used
Speaker 5: to these crazy happenings and shenanigans, so this is just
Speaker 5: like sort of another day in the roller coaster known
Speaker 5: as the crypto world. So I shake it off. I'm
Speaker 5: looking at tomorrow. I still think we're going to see
Speaker 5: approval and launches and we'll look back and sort of
Speaker 5: laugh at this in a couple of days.
Speaker 8: Yeah, to your point, Eric, when this happened, I overheard
Speaker 8: somebody in the office here in Sydney sort of laugh
Speaker 8: and say this is the most bitcoin thing ever. The
Speaker 8: language though, was very sec like. And as you say,
Speaker 8: this isn't the first head fake, is it. What other
Speaker 8: sort of misleading moments have we experienced?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Man, I mean the big one was coin Telegraph put
Speaker 5: out that I shares had been approved like I don't
Speaker 5: know two months ago, and the price of bitcoin went
Speaker 5: up five to ten percent instantly, and then black Rock
Speaker 5: denied it. Then somebody went into the Delaware legal site
Speaker 5: for registering names and registered eye shares XRP ETF and
Speaker 5: even put the guy's name, and it looked just like
Speaker 5: a registration like the way they registered bitcoin and ether ETFs.
Speaker 5: So people thought, oh, Black Rocks playing a file for
Speaker 5: an XRP ETF that turned out to be false. The
Speaker 5: price of XRP went up and down instantly, and so
Speaker 5: this is I know, the SEC isn't up to that
Speaker 5: kind of shenanigans. For sure. The coin Telegraph was an
Speaker 5: intern who messed up. Maybe this is that case. So
Speaker 5: there's definitely been these head fakes. And then recently there's
Speaker 5: been people over the past couple days who have gone
Speaker 5: against the grain and said, wait, you know, Gary's going
Speaker 5: to do a rug pull and deny them all, and
Speaker 5: that kind of moved the price a little on the downside.
Speaker 5: So people are able to move because everybody's skittish. This
Speaker 5: has been a ten year build up to this one moment,
Speaker 5: and everyone's just like it's like a you can pop this.
Speaker 5: It's like a feeling, the mood you can pop with
Speaker 5: of a pin, and that's sort of what this did.
Speaker 5: And it's all just sensitive and tender right now.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit earlier with what
Speaker 1: you know about X. Will they be able to find
Speaker 1: out who generated this? So that's one thing. And secondly,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems the price spike in bitcoin wasn't
Speaker 1: that much, so is this pretty much fully discount approval?
Speaker 5: Yeah, hopefully they find out. I don't know the goings
Speaker 5: on of cybersecurity, but I hope they find out. If
Speaker 5: it's them, I hope they admit it. That's will they
Speaker 5: admit it? If the call was coming from inside the house,
Speaker 5: so to speak, will they admit that? I don't know.
Speaker 5: Hopefully they do. But it is baked into a degree.
Speaker 5: There's been a huge run up in the price of
Speaker 5: bitcoin and it doesn't take a genius to realize because
Speaker 5: people are anticipating the ETFs getting approved. Because the ETFs
Speaker 5: act as bridges to a large amount of money that
Speaker 5: advisors manage thirty trillion, they love ETF so the ETF
Speaker 5: is sort of the ultimate bridge to the sort of
Speaker 5: traditional finance regular world and a big pool of capital
Speaker 5: of rich boomers and the crypto world. And so that's
Speaker 5: why the run up and prices come, and that's why
Speaker 5: it didn't move that much to the upside. We were thinking,
Speaker 5: you know, I was talking to another lawyer that if
Speaker 5: you really wanted to cause a mass chaos and compromise
Speaker 5: the SEC site, you would have said they were rejecting it.
Speaker 5: The price of bitcoin probably would have plummeted a good
Speaker 5: amount on that because the approval baked in rejection.
Speaker 1: Not so.
Speaker 5: I think that's also an interesting point on like, what
Speaker 5: was the purpose of hacking that to just do nothing?
Speaker 8: Eric, I just want to tease out a little more
Speaker 8: of this idea of a bridge. I mean, to the
Speaker 8: light person, why would you buy a bitcoin eighty if
Speaker 8: when you can just buy a bitcoin?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because if you look at coinbase, if you want
Speaker 5: to go trade bitcoin, it's pretty expensive upwards a forty
Speaker 5: basis points to two hundred and fifty basis points just
Speaker 5: for one trade. An ETF will cost one basis point
Speaker 5: to trade. That's the spread on ets, and the expense
Speaker 5: ratios are now all the way down to twenty basis
Speaker 5: points twenty to thirty. You can get already, haven't you launched?
Speaker 5: And the sea war has already gotten them down that low.
Speaker 5: So that's a pretty good deal. Plus you got this
Speaker 5: sort of regulatory stamp on it. You've got big brand
Speaker 5: names like black Rock, compatility, and it's going to track
Speaker 5: the price of bitcoin well. Other things like GBTC doesn't
Speaker 5: track well. Micro Strategy stock you could say, is a proxy,
Speaker 5: but it's not a perfect tracker of bitcoin either. And
Speaker 5: if you want to go do like your own cold
Speaker 5: storage and wallet and all that business, you have to
Speaker 5: remember twelve words for the rest of your natural life.
Speaker 5: And I know, I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 5: can't remember my Amazon passwords, so I'm not gonna go
Speaker 5: try to do that. And just like a gold investor
Speaker 5: isn't going to store gold in their house unless you're
Speaker 5: really into this, in which case do that, you know.
Speaker 5: But for most normal people who just want some exposure
Speaker 5: because they're speculating on this, and ETF is a perfect
Speaker 5: solution for them, and again gold probably the best parallel that.
Speaker 1: That's what I would say, all right, Derek, thanks very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Eric balchunis Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF analyst.
Speaker 1: It is Bloomberg gave Break Asia your morning brief on
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