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Meat Giant JBS Eyes Deeper Pockets as It Starts New York Trading The JBS Greeley meatpacking facility in Greeley, Colorado. JBS NV shares started trading in New York, giving the world’s largest meat producer a market value of about $15 billion as it culminated a years-long effort to reach a broader pool of investors. Shares of the Brazilian company opened at $13.65 apiece on the New York Stock Exchange. On Thursday, Brazilian depository receipts of JBS NV closed at $13.70 per unit in Sao Paulo.
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Trump’s FAA Pick Vows to Hold Boeing Accountable on Quality Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) nominee for US President Donald Trump, during a confirmation hearing in Washington on June 11. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration vowed to hold Boeing Co. accountable for the quality of its jets as the US planemaker works to produce its cash cow 737 Max aircraft at higher rates. If confirmed, airline executive Bryan Bedford will be tasked with making decisions on how to proceed with Boeing, which the FAA is still closely monitoring following a midair mishap last year that exposed quality lapses at the company’s factories.
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Trump Says He ‘Would’ Arrest Newsom, Heightening Tensions By Hadriana Lowenkron and Tyler Kendall President Donald Trump suggested California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over his handling of unrest in Los Angeles, escalating his attacks on the state’s leaders. Trump on Monday was asked by a reporter about a back-and-forth between Newsom and White House border czar Tom Homan, who threatened arrest for anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement efforts, including the governor and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
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Iran Claims Access to Cache of Sensitive Israeli Nuclear Files Iran’s state television said on Saturday the country obtained a large trove of sensitive Israeli nuclear information. The Islamic Republic’s intelligence services have acquired “thousands of files related to that regime’s nuclear projects and facilities,” according to the broadcaster.
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Trump Signs Order to Boost Drone Security Before World Cup By Allyson Versprille and Hadriana Lowenkron President Donald Trump signed executive orders Friday to boost US drone capabilities, including strengthening counter-drone tools ahead of major sporting events such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics that will be hosted in the country. “Taking action on airspace security has never been timelier,” Michael Kratsios, the director of White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters Friday, citing the upcoming events that are expected to draw millions of fans to the US. “The administration is cracking down on unlawful drone use, ordering a federal task force to ensure US control over American skies and prioritizing the detection and identification of drones in real time.” The aim of the three orders, according to officials, is to boost US manufacturing and innovation while decreasing reliance on foreign adversaries, such as China, which dominates the commercial drone market. The administration is also seeking to combat malicious actors, particularly following a public outcry last year over increased drone sightings in New Jersey. The recent use of unmanned aerial weapons in Russia’s war on Ukraine, which saw Ukrainian forces launch a daring drone attack within Russia has also drawn attention to the advancements — and threats — the technology poses. One executive order to improve counter-drone capabilities calls for actions including the creation of a federal task force to review current regulatory frameworks and develop solutions to possible threats, according to a senior White House official who discussed the action on condition of anonymity before it was publicly announced. The order also directs the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide training to state and local authorities, and instructs the US Federal Aviation Administration to expedite a rule that would allow people to petition the agency to prohibit or restrict drone usage near certain facilities, including critical infrastructure, oil refineries, chemical plants and amusement parks, the official said. The proposed regulation is already being reviewed by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. “Drones are a disruptive technology,” said Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president. “They have an amazing potential for both good and ill.” A second executive order is intended to promote the US market for new technologies. It directs the FAA to speed up another rule under White House review that would allow companies to fly drones beyond a remote pilot’s direct line of sight without having to obtain individual waivers and exemptions. Companies, such as those using drones to deliver packages, have said the rules will make it easier for them to scale up their businesses and expand to more locations. Officials said the order is also meant to reduce reliance on technology from other countries. While it doesn’t ban any specific companies, such as China’s Da Jiang Innovations — the world leader in commercial drone sales — it does direct the Commerce Department to launch investigations and regulatory reviews to safeguard the US drone supply chain. That could result in a company being placed on a list that would bar new drones from being able to access US networks, one of the officials said. The National Defense Authorization Act enacted at the end of 2024 mandated reviews of both DJI and Autel Robotics, another Chinese firm, to determine if they pose a national security risk. The Trump administration has expanded restrictions on the transfer of advanced technology to China, including artificial intelligence and jet engine parts — moves that are a key point in trade discussions between the world’s two largest economies. According to the Atlantic Council, China controls 90% of the commercial drone market in the US and 80% globally. American companies have struggled to compete, which the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International has said is partially because Beijing subsidizes its domestic companies, allowing them to offer products at prices significantly lower than US counterparts. The third executive order is meant to promote supersonic technology in the US, in part by repealing certain regulations that officials cast as impeding development.
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Trump Said He Fired the National Portrait Gallery Director. She’s Still There. The museum director targeted in a social media post by President Donald Trump still holds her position, according to the Smithsonian Institution. Kriston CappsJune 6, 2025 at 3:10 AM GMT+7 Kim Sajet is still doing her job as director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, although President Donald Trump said she was fired on Friday. Photographer: Shannon Finney/Getty Images North America On Friday, President Donald Trump took to social media to fire Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, creating a firestorm of controversy at the Smithsonian Institution and beyond. Describing her as a “highly partisan person” and “strong supporter of DEI,” Trump posted on May 30 on Truth Social that he had removed Sajet from her role at the portraiture museum in downtown Washington, DC. The post indicated that her replacement would be named shortly. As of June 5, though, Sajet is still reporting to work, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian confirmed. The stakes for any decision are high: If the president succeeds in firing Sajet, Trump will have exerted control over staffing decisions for the Smithsonian, which is not part of the executive branch, potentially gaining sweeping powers over its 21 museums. Leaders at America’s cultural treasury are entrenched in a closely held debate about what to do next, as the president seeks to assume authority over the Smithsonian using both budget pressure and blunt force. Democratic lawmakers have argued that Trump did not have the authority to fire Sajet because the Smithsonian is independent from the White House. When Congress first authorized the Smithsonian in 1846, it delegated authority over the institution, which is structured as a trust instrumentality, to a board of regents. The board’s 17 members include the vice president of the US, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, members of both the House and Senate and US citizens appointed by Congress. Members of this board assembled on June 2 for an emergency meeting. The only agenda item: “confidential personnel matters.” At the same time, the White House has significant say over the federal funds on which the Smithsonian relies for much of its budget. A photo of President Donald Trump displayed in the America's Presidents exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on June 1, 2025.Photographer: Kevin Carter/Getty Images North America The White House has meanwhile drafted a laundry list of complaints about Sajet, compiling pages of quotes she’s given over the years about the ways that portraiture reflects society. Chief among the listed complaints are Sajet’s doctorate in “Liberal Studies” from Georgetown University, her political donations — she’s given $3,982.40 to various Democratic officials and liberal causes, including Joe Biden’s presidential campaign — and the caption that hangs below the portrait of Trump on view at the Portrait Gallery. “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials,” the caption reads. “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) to have won a nonconsecutive term.” The president signed an executive order in March targeting the Smithsonian for its “divisive, race-centered ideology” and pledging that Vice President JD Vance, as regent, would be responsible for changing the culture. The March 27 order mentioned two museums by name — the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture — detailing a sculpture exhibit and historic materials that the administration finds objectionable. The same day that Trump posted on Truth Social, the White House told the Smithsonian that the president’s budget request to Congress slashed the Smithsonian’s funding by $131.2 million — a 12% reduction from FY 2025 levels, according to an email from Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III to staff obtained by Bloomberg CityLab. The budget also zeroes out funding for the Anacostia Community Museum, an urban arts center located in DC’s Ward 8 neighborhood, which will be rolled up into the National Museum of African American History and Culture if the budget passes. A forthcoming National Museum of the American Latino would be eliminated entirely, as first reported by The Washington Post. Bunch’s email described the current budget as “one of the most challenging financial moments in the Institution's history.” Neither the Castle nor the Portrait Gallery has issued any formal statement about Trump’s post. The board meets for its next regularly scheduled meeting on June 9. (A spokesperson for Vance didn’t respond to questions about his attendance this week or next.) Trump’s post came as a shock to museum directors and other senior leaders, according to staffers, in part because the Portrait Gallery has so rarely been a site of controversy. One of the museum’s wings is devoted to a gallery of portraits of American presidents, including Gilbert Stuart’s 1796 “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington. The Portrait Gallery’s paintings of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama drew massive crowds in 2018 and traveled on tour to museums in seven cities. The Portrait Gallery’s programming has grown more adventurous over the years, however. In 2010, an exhibit featuring LGBTQ artworks drew the ire of conservative media, setting off a rare scandal after Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough removed a video work by artist David Wojnarowicz that included a depiction of a crucifix. Under Sajet, who joined the museum in 2013, the Portrait Gallery has mounted exhibits by Ken Gonzales-Day, Titus Kaphar and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, artists who challenge the traditional boundaries of portraiture in terms of both its form and content. Portraiture in America, Sajet said at the Atlantic Festival in 2018, “has never been only about meritocracy but also social access, racial inequality, gender difference, religious preference and political power” — comments that were recirculated by the White House this week. Trump pays close attention to his official likenesses: In March he complained that a portrait of himself hanging in the state capitol in Colorado was unflattering, prompting the legislature to remove it. And on June 2, just days after he posted the notice about Sajet, the White House unveiled a new official presidential portrait.
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Columbia Student Loans Are Threatened by Trump’s ‘Secret Weapon’ Graduates outside Low Library at Columbia University. The Trump administration escalated its fight against top American colleges by targeting Columbia University’s access to federal student loans — a new tactic in the White House’s drive to wield power over academia and key financial streams. The Education Department said Wednesday that Columbia no longer meets standards for accreditation, citing its leadership’s “deliberate indifference” to the harassment of Jewish students. It called for the school’s accreditor — which determines if institutions are eligible for federal student aid — to ensure the university’s compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
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Trump’s ‘Revenge’ Tax Could See Dollar Dive 5%, Allianz CIO Says A foreign tax provision in US President Donald Trump’s massive fiscal package could trigger a 5% plunge in the dollar and send equities reeling if it takes effect, according to Allianz SE’s chief investment officer Ludovic Subran. The item, introduced in legislation that passed the US House in May as Section 899, is “exactly what people don’t spend enough time on,” Subran said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. The provision would increase tax rates for individuals and companies from countries whose tax policies the US deems “discriminatory.”
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Circle, Backers Seek $896 Million After Boosting IPO Size Circle Internet Group Inc. and its shareholders have increased the size and price of the company’s initial public offering, suggesting strong investor demand for the stock. The company and some of its backers are now offering 32 million shares at a price range of $27 to $28 a pop, according to a filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Circle and the selling shareholders were previously offering 24 million shares at a range of $24 to $26 each. The offering had received orders for multiple times the shares available, Bloomberg News reported last week.
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Stanley Fischer, Who Spread the Macroeconomic Gospel, Dies at 81 Stanley FischerPhotographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg Stanley Fischer, a professor and practitioner of macroeconomics who helped guide central banks in two countries, Israel and the US, and mentored a younger generation of economic decision-makers, has died. He was 81. He died on Saturday, the Bank of Israel said in a statement, expressing condolences.
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SEC Dropping Enforcement Case Against Binance Crypto Exchange The US Securities and Exchange Commission moved to end its legal battle against crypto exchange Binance Holdings Ltd., the latest sign of the regulator’s dramatic shift in how it polices cryptocurrency. The regulator and the exchange’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao filed a joint motion on Thursday to stay the case in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The move follows a joint request in February to pause the lawsuit for 60 days.
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Nvidia CEO Warns That Chinese AI Rivals Have Become ‘Formidable’ Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said that Chinese AI rivals are filling the void left by the departure of US companies from that market, and their technology is becoming more powerful. “The Chinese competitors have evolved,” he said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Huawei Technologies Co., a Chinese tech company blacklisted by the US government, has become “quite formidable,” he said.
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BlackRock Is Said to Plan to Buy Shares in Circle Internet IPO BlackRock Inc. plans to acquire about 10% of the shares offered in Circle Internet Group Inc.’s initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter, as the worlds of traditional finance and cryptocurrency continue to deepen their ties. The stablecoin issuer and some of its shareholders including co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire are seeking to raise as much as $624 million in the offering, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday. Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management has indicated an interest in buying as much as $150 million of shares in the offering, the filing shows.
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Revenge Tax’: US Bill Hits Allies That Have Tax Rules Trump Doesn’t Like The office of US House Speaker Mike Johnson President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill narrowly passed the House on May 22, overcoming fierce Republican infighting. Photographer: Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg Investors in nations with tax regimes that the US deems unfair would face higher tax rates on income earned in the US if the tax bill that’s making its way to the Senate becomes law. A section of the bill, which passed the House of Representatives on May 22, takes aim at countries including Canada, the UK, France and Australia that impose “digital services taxes” on large technology companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. It also targets countries using provisions in a multicountry deal for minimum corporate taxes.
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OpenAI to Set Up Shop in South Korea to Spur Further Growth OpenAI has established a legal entity in South Korea, seeking to propel further adoption of its artificial intelligence technologies. The ChatGPT-maker plans to open an office in Seoul in coming months and is hiring staff to support partnerships with companies and policymakers, it said in a release Monday.
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Pakistan Allocates 2,000-MW Capacity to Power Bitcoin Mining Pakistan has allocated 2,000 megawatts of electricity in the first phase of a national push to support Bitcoin mining and AI data centers, as the country moves to legalize cryptocurrency and attract foreign investments. The initiative, led by the Pakistan Crypto Council, will also help monetize surplus energy and create high-tech jobs, the finance ministry said in a statement. Coal-based power projects like Sahiwal, China Hub, and Port Qasim, currently operating at 15% capacity, are among those expected to be repurposed for this effort, the ministry said.
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Crypto’s Trumpian Embrace Is Leaving Bitcoin’s Big Rival Behind Ethereum is still the second biggest cryptocurrency, with all outstanding Ether worth some $225 billion. Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg Vitalik Buterin was long viewed as the wunderkind of the cryptocurrency world. The gawky, playful founder of Ethereum — known for his rainbow-colored, animal-themed shirts — created the biggest competitor to Bitcoin and offered a techno-utopian vision that was supposed to change the financial system and our everyday digital lives.
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Saylor’s Strategy Buys More Bitcoin After Preferred Shares Sale Dave Liedtka Michael Saylor at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville. Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought $584.1 million of Bitcoin after raising more than $700 million last week through the sale of so-called perpetual strife preferred stock. The purchase, the latest in a series of almost weekly acquisitions since late October, increased the dot-com-era software maker turned leveraged Bitcoin proxy’s holding of the cryptocurrency to around $44.3 billion.
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Kraken to Acquire Futures Platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 Billion Kraken is acquiring retail futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion, allowing the crypto exchange to offer crypto futures and derivatives in the US for the first time and to expand into more traditional markets. NinjaTrader, which is majority-backed by Long Ridge Equity Partners, is registered as a Futures Commission Merchant with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Kraken said in a statement Thursday. The transaction is subject to certain purchase price adjustments.
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Crypto Exchange OKX Suspends DeFi Service That Drew EU Scrutiny Digital-asset exchange OKX has suspended a service used by hackers to launder proceeds from a $1.5 billion heist on trading platform Bybit, after drawing scrutiny from European watchdogs. “After consulting with regulators, we made the proactive decision to temporarily suspend our DEX aggregator services,” OKX said in a statement on Monday. “This move allows us to implement additional upgrades to prevent further misuse.”
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Wall Street Goes All In on Great Crypto Comeback Fueled by Trump It was only three years ago that a dispute between an infamous crypto billionaire and a titan of the financial establishment became the center of attention at an annual event known as the Davos of the derivatives market. The dust up between FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Terry Duffy, the boss of the US’s largest futures and options exchange, was emblematic of Wall Street’s skepticism then about a new generation promoting digital assets and the crypto bigwig’s plans to change the way derivatives trade.
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DOGE Cuts, Spending Freezes Starting to Ripple Through Job Market This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, economy reporter Jarrell Dillard looks at the impact that federal job cuts are having. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here. We’re still waiting to see the full impact of the DOGE-driven culling of the federal workforce. But economists are starting to revise forecasts and pencil in a big hit to the labor market in the coming months.
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Zelenskiy Signals He Would Meet With Trump If Invited Back Chian-Wei Teo Good morning. Zelenskiy is keeping the door open for dialogue with Trump. Britain and France want to create a coalition for peacekeeping forces in Ukraine. And Anora wins best picture at the Oscars. Listen to the day’s top stories. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he’s willing to meet Donald Trump again if he’s invited back to the US. He said Kyiv is ready to accept a minerals deal that was put on hold last week. French President Emmanuel Macron told Le Figaro that he and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer are working on a plan to reach a one-month truce in Ukraine.
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North Korea’s $1.5 Billion Heist Puts the Crypto World on Notice Hackers drained Ether, other tokens from “cold” crypto wallet Exchanges must step up spending on security, experts say As news started spreading about a massive hack on crypto exchange Bybit last Friday, cybersecurity researchers quickly concluded that the era of giant digital-asset heists had entered a new and potentially ruinous phase. It wasn’t just the size of the exploit, although at close to $1.5 billion, it was the biggest ever by a wide margin. Within hours, it was clear that the attack — which the Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group — was far more ambitious, and difficult to prevent, than any that preceded it.
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Bitcoin Down 25% From All-Time High as Crypto Rout Worsens Bitcoin hit high on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration The decline is part of a widespread selloff in digital assets The rout in Bitcoin worsened during Asian trading hours on Friday, sending the cryptocurrency down more than a quarter from the all-time high it set less than six weeks ago as traders dramatically reversed bets that followed the election of US President Donald Trump. The coin was down 5.5% at $79,627 at 12:05 p.m. in Singapore, after hitting its lowest level since November 10. That was part of a broad rout: Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, fell 7.3% while smaller tokens Solana and XRP were down 7.1% and 7.8%, respectively.
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PayPal Predicts Earnings Growth as Firm Streamlines Businesses Adjusted EPS seen climbing 20% over the long term, firm says CEO Chriss gives investors a first look ‘into the future’ PayPal Holdings Inc. predicted growth in earnings and transaction margins in coming years, as its new leadership continues to streamline the sprawling business. Adjusted earnings per share will increase by a percentage in the low teens by 2027 and by 20% over the longer term, PayPal forecast in an investor day presentation Tuesday. Transaction margin dollars — a key metric for the firm — are expected to climb by high-single-digit percentages over the next two years, potentially reaching 10% or more after that. The figure represents how much PayPal earns from each transaction it processes, after expenses.
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Bybit Hack, Crypto’s Biggest Ever, Spoils Coinbase’s SEC Victory Party Shares of largest US exchange plunge after Bybit is attacked ‘Careful what you wish for’ with deregulation, professor says The crypto industry started its Friday in a jubilant mood, with Coinbase Global Inc.’s announcement that US securities regulators were poised to dismiss a legal case against the nation’s largest digital-asset exchange. The happy vibe didn’t last long, however: Less than three hours later and halfway around the world, the exchange Bybit disclosed that it had been hacked in what analysts say was the biggest-ever theft in the industry with almost $1.5 billion worth of tokens looted.
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South African Firm to Amass Bitcoin Hoard in First for Continent Altvest has applied to raise $10 million for purchases Strategy pioneered by billionaire Saylor is gaining popularity Altvest Capital Ltd. said it will become the first listed company in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, emulating a strategy that propelled a more than 2,400% surge in Michael Saylor’s Strategy.com since it started buying the token. Altvest bought one Bitcoin and has applied to regulators for permission to raise about 200 million rand ($10 million) by selling shares to increase its treasury stockpile, Chief Executive Officer Warren Wheatley said in an interview. He added that no final decision has been made on raising funds. Bitcoin traded at around $97,000 on Thursday.
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Binance CEO Teng Sees ‘Fresh Reset’ for Crypto in New US Regime Says Hong Kong regulatory limits not conducive for big players “A couple” of HQ options under “careful consideration” The US under President Donald Trump has moved on from a crypto regulatory regime marked by “a bit of oppression”, according to Richard Teng, chief executive officer of Binance Holdings Ltd. Digital asset executives have loudly complained that regulators under previous President Joe Biden sought to engage in “regulation by enforcement”, their description for a spate of high-profile lawsuits against and hefty fines levied on companies including Binance, Coinbase Inc. and Ripple LLC.
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Trump’s New World Order Leaves Europe Flailing Ukrainian firefighters work at the site of a strike in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Feb. 13. Photographer: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images Welcome to Balance of Power, bringing you the latest in global politics. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. European leaders meeting in Paris today have the weight of history on their shoulders.
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Chinese Stocks Are the Biggest Winners in Trump’s Age of Uncertainty Chinese stocks have beaten every other market since Donald Trump took office last month. Photographer: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images Welcome to Hong Kong Edition. Subscribe here if you like this free newsletter. Or email us with any feedback. This week is mostly about winners. We delve into why Chinese stocks in the city are turning victorious, we talk to a running star about how to excel in a marathon, and we revisit the legacy of Hong Kong’s most famous activist investor. Finally, we review the latest outpost by the chef behind the hit Chinese restaurant Wing.
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Crypto Custody Firm BitGo Said to Weigh IPO as Soon as This Year The firm was valued at $1.75 billion in a 2023 funding round Deal in 2021 to be acquired by Novogratz’s Galaxy was scrapped BitGo Inc. is considering an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a flood of crypto companies anticipating more support for their plans from regulators. The Palo Alto, California-based company is in talks with potential advisers on a listing as soon as the second half of this year, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public.
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Stripe in Talks for Staff Share Sales at $85 Billion-Plus Value Payments platform was valued at $70 billion last year Investors would buy out existing employee shareholders Stripe Inc. is in discussions to arrange sales of stock by employees at an $85 billion valuation, people familiar with the matter said, a deal that could help the Silicon Valley payments startup regain some of the capitalization it lost during a post-Covid slump. That transaction could add $15 billion to the valuation of one of Silicon Valley’s largest private firms, which was worth $70 billion in a similar tender offer last year. It would still remain a ways off its peak value of $95 billion, when Stripe last raised money during the 2021 technology boom.
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Tether Revs Up Deal Machine After Its Embrace by ‘Establishment’ Tether invested in firm in which Lutnick, Sacks owned shares Crypto firm plans to step up dealmaking as earnings rise Paolo Ardoino, the chief executive officer of $140 billion stablecoin giant Tether Holdings Ltd., had a triumphant message for the crypto faithful gathered in San Salvador late last week. The “establishment,” according to Ardoino, had unfairly maligned Tether, which has long been the target of scrutiny among authorities over the use of its token by criminals and terrorists. But that changed when Donald Trump returned to the White House with an administration packed with crypto advocates, just days before Ardoino took the stage at Tether’s annual Plan B Forum.
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MicroStrategy’s Financial Gambit Hits a Bump With New Stock Deal Bitcoin proxy sold preferreds at big discount to pump interest 10% yield shows firm’s maneuver to open a new funding avenue MicroStrategy Inc.’s seemingly limitless moves to raise capital for its Bitcoin purchases have run into their first obstacle. The self-styled Bitcoin treasury company sold preferred stock units — rare, debt-like securities dangling an 8% coupon — last week, but it had to cater to price-sensitive buyers by pricing them at a sizable discount. The shares were sold for $80 apiece, 20% below their marketed price, effectively pushing the yield to 10% for buyers — a steep concession to finalize the deal.
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Trump Memecoin Shows Limits of Crypto’s Democratization Pitch At 9 p.m. on Jan. 17, then President-elect Donald Trump announced to his more than 8 million followers on TruthSocial that he was releasing his own crypto memecoin. The token, called Trump, featured an image of him captured shortly after a failed assassination attempt last year: In it, he’s raising his right fist and looking defiant. Trump’s message on TruthSocial, coming just days before his second inauguration, was simple: “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Within minutes, thousands of speculators began piling into the new token through a platform called Meteora. The frenzied buying drove the price to over $70, sending the market value of circulating tokens close to $15 billion. But before most investors had even started trading in earnest, 21 crypto “whales” — defined here as traders who purchased at least 500,000 tokens per associated crypto wallet in the first hour of the token’s launch — bought and sold millions of tokens as the price skyrocketed. In the first few minutes of trading, those wallets accounted for the bulk of the transactions. In addition, they generated some $214.3 million in gains during the token’s first 48 hours in existence, a Bloomberg News analysis of millions of transactions shows. And among the whales, the gains were unevenly distributed: a single cluster of related wallets generated a whopping $170 million. Memecoins are a highly speculative corner of crypto, one in which the asset offered typically doesn’t have much intrinsic value beyond whatever profits investors anticipate from flipping it. For all of crypto’s public promises to “democratize” finance, memecoins are often a losing proposition for smaller buyers, while proving wildly lucrative for their issuers as well as a few well-resourced traders. At the same time, two Trump-linked entities — CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC — own 80% of the supply, a holding that will be unlocked over three years according to the official website. That has the potential to put pressure on the memecoin’s price in the future should those entities start selling. “It’s completely abnormal to have a memecoin where 80% of supply goes to founders,” said Shuyao Kong, co-founder of blockchain project MegaETH. “In fact, memecoins take pride in fair launch, meaning no insiders were able to acquire tokens before launch.” By far the biggest winner of all – let’s call it Cluster A – showed an uncanny ability to time their trades, realizing a total profit of $170 million in the memecoin’s first two days, the Bloomberg News analysis shows. Activities performed by Cluster A tell a story of informed and well-timed transactions. First, a single wallet – Wallet A – received transfers totalling about $1.1 million in the form of the USDC stablecoin about two hours before Trump’s post announcing the token. Then, roughly ninety seconds after the post on TruthSocial, Wallet A purchased about 6 million Trump tokens at 18 cents apiece. That single purchase accounted for about 6% of the total available supply of 100 million tokens. Then, a few minutes later, Wallet A sent all of its Trump tokens to a new wallet – Wallet B. That wallet then sent tokens to several other wallets at a rate of hundreds of thousands of tokens per minute. That group of wallets made periodic sales worth millions of dollars over the next two days, including when prices peaked at $78 on Jan. 19. Later that day, as prices came off the intra-day lows to hover around $75, just off the peak, these assorted wallets that comprised Cluster A dumped about 1.7 million tokens over a three hour period. Wallet B sold a total of 650,000 Trump tokens in just three minutes. “Many of the on-chain ‘whales’ are sophisticated traders and prop funds that have automated trading set-ups that allow them to buy new token launches early if the token fits a certain criterion, often related to momentum and liquidity, and then sell when they reach a certain level of return or hit another milestone,” said Rob Hadick, general partner at crypto venture capital fund Dragonfly. By contrast, whether buyers who jumped in later won or lost money on their trades was essentially a coin toss, the analysis shows. In the first two days of trading, one Trump buyer lost as much as $5 million, according to the Bloomberg News analysis; whereas another wallet showed more than $85 million in gains. One thing both winners and losers had in common was their frequency of trading: the wallets that lost the most money and the ones that generated the highest returns all made thousands of transactions in a short amount of time. The two Trump-linked entities — CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC — have generated at least $11.5 million in fees from trading in the token as of Jan. 31, according to risk modeling firm Gauntlet. CIC Digital has previously generated millions of dollars from licensing Trump’s image on digital collectibles. Representatives for the White House and CIC Digital did not immediately return a request for comment. Interest in the Trump token has waned since that heady first weekend between the launch and the presidential inauguration: as at Jan. 31, the token had fallen more than 60% from its high. But nearly 700,000 wallets still hold the token, and it ranks among the top 40 cryptocurrencies by market value, according to data aggregator CoinGecko — beating out many coins that have been around for years. These patterns of activity and interest make the Trump token a memecoin outlier, even beyond the fact that it was launched by a two-time president who has 100 million followers on X. Edited by: stacy-marie ishmaelPhilip LagerkranserChloe WhiteakerYue Qiu Crypto With assistance from: Jeff Kao Crypto Methodology Data Bloomberg News used tools provided by blockchain infrastructure and developer platform Helius to collect a total of 5.1 million Trump token transactions on the Solana blockchain, executed between 9 p.m. on Jan. 17 and 9 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 19. Each entry contained a description of the transaction, information about the nature of the transaction (e.g. "SWAP", "TRANSFER", etc.), its unique signature, the original wallet, the receiving wallet, the fees paid, and the decentralized trading platforms where the transaction took place. Bloomberg News collected real-time Trump token price data from Chaos Labs. Data processing For each transaction marked as "SWAP" or "TRANSFER", Bloomberg inferred whether it was a "BUY", "SELL" or "TRANSFER". If the transaction was marked as a "SWAP" and the wallet swapped TRUMP for Solana (SOL) or USDC, it would be coded as a SELL. If the transaction was marked as a "SWAP" and the wallet swapped SOL or USDC for TRUMP, then it would be marked as a BUY. If the transaction was marked as a "TRANSFER" but the transferred currency matched stablecoin USDC or SOL and the receiving wallet matched one owned by a decentralized trading platform (Meteora or Jupiter), it would be marked as a SELL. Conversely, if the transaction was marked as a "TRANSFER" but the original wallet matched an exchange wallet, and the receiving wallet did not match an exchange wallet, then it would be marked as a BUY. In all other cases, transactions would keep their original code. To compute the dollar value of each transaction, Bloomberg matched the timestamp of each transaction with temporal price data, and multiplied the TRUMP amount by the TRUMP dollar value at time of transaction. Bloomberg's analysis excludes any executions on centralized exchanges such as Binance. Identifying whale wallets For the purposes of this story, Bloomberg defined a "whale" as any wallet that held at least 500,000 TRUMP tokens (0.5% of the 100M public supply) within the first hour of the launch (9 p.m. - 10:00PM Eastern time on Jan. 17). Bloomberg identified whales by filtering the data for any wallet that made a purchase of at least 500,000 TRUMP, or any wallet of which net BUYS amounted to 500,000 TRUMP at any minute interval during the first hour of launch. Calculating profits Bloomberg tallied up each whale BUY and SELL transaction in dollar value at time of purchase. Bloomberg substracted the total $USD value of BUY transactions from the total $USD value of SELL transactions to calculate raw profit. For the wallets that still held some TRUMP, Bloomberg calculated each wallet's unrealized profit using the TRUMP value at 9pm Eastern on Jan. 19 ($46.50). Bloomberg added raw profit and unrealized profit to calculate total profit. Bloomberg manually tracked each wallet that Wallet A transferred Trump token to and that did not buy any additional amount and defined them as Cluster A. Bloomberg tallied up each SELL transaction from those wallets to compute Cluster A's net profits.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Josh Younger and Lev Menand on Why Stablecoins Aren't the New Eurodollars Hello and welcome to the newsletter, a grab bag of daily content from the Odd Lots universe. Sometimes it's us, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, bringing you our thoughts on the most recent developments in markets, finance and the economy. And sometimes it's contributions from our network of expert guests and sources. Whatever it is, we promise it will always be interesting. If you like chatting with us, check out the Odd Lots Discord, where you can hang out and talk with us and with other listeners 24/7.
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Czech Finance Minister Warns Against Adding Bitcoin to Reserves Czech Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura warned against the central bank governor’s proposal to consider investing part of the country’s foreign-currency reserves in bitcoin. Stanjura said he respected the Czech National Bank’s independence and made clear that the government couldn’t interfere in the monetary authority’s decisions. Still, he expressed concern that the cryptocurrency might be unsuitable for reserve holdings because of its excessive volatility.
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Czech central bank to consider holding bitcoin as reserve asset Jan 29 (Reuters) - The Czech National Bank will consider holding billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in its reserves, Governor Ales Michl said on Wednesday, potentially the first shift into the cryptocurrency by a western central bank if it went ahead. Michl said the idea was still under analysis and no immediate decision was forthcoming. Central banks traditionally park reserves in more conservative assets and some have warned about the risks of using cryptocurrencies in public coffers. Since taking the helm of the Czech central bank in 2022, Michl has led a drive to diversify the bank's hefty reserves through the gradual gold purchases and shifting a bigger share of the portfolio into equities to create sustained profits. He plans to present the consideration of including bitcoin to the bank's seven-strong board on Thursday, he told the Financial Times in an interview published on Wednesday. If approved, the bank could eventually hold as much as 5% of its 140 billion euro ($146 billion) reserves in bitcoin, he said. In a later post on X, Michl added more analysis and discussion was still needed before any decision. "No decision is imminent," he said. "Bitcoin has significant volatility, which makes it harder to take advantage of its current low correlation with other assets. "That's why I will ask our team on Thursday to further assess Bitcoin’s potential role in our reserves. Nothing more, nothing less." Separately Michl told the FT it was "very likely" the bank would cut interest rates by 25 basis points next week, resuming an easing drive paused in December. In the FT story, former investment fund manager Michl said investment in bitcoin could prove to be worthless or it could have an "absolutely fantastic value". He said bitcoin would trend higher even without the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump since it is an alternative investment for many people. Bitcoin hit a record high earlier this month when Trump, who has pledged to be a "crypto president", was sworn in. Trump last week ordered the creation of a cryptocurrency working group to draft new regulations and explore the possibility of creating a national crypto stockpile. Bitcoin has more than doubled in value in 2024. Michl, too, highlighted wider investor interest in bitcoin since BlackRock and other firms last year launched bitcoin exchange traded funds, according to the FT. Swiss cryptocurrency advocates recently launched an initiative to make the Swiss National Bank hold bitcoin and gold in its reserves. The SNB has expressed skepticism about holding bitcoin as a reserve. European Central Bank policymakers, too, have been adamant they don't see bitcoin as a possible reserve asset and occasionally compare it to tulip bulbs during a 17th-century trading mania in the Netherlands. In an opinion piece published this month, two ECB advisers said Bitcoin was too opaque, risky and concentrated for the public coffers and that it was a "speculative bubble that will burst". South Africa’s central bank governor also criticized the idea of a bitcoin stockpile on a Davos panel last week, saying that crypto industry lobbyists should not influence which assets governments hold.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Czech Central Bank Chief Mulls Bitcoin for Reserves, FT Reports Peter Laca Czech central bank Governor Ales Michl said he would propose a plan to include bitcoin in the country’s official reserves, the Financial Times reported, the first such move among western monetary institutions that have been mostly skeptical about crypto assets. The Czech National Bank’s board is expected to discuss Michl’s proposal to buy bitcoin, which could potentially represent billions of dollars of reserve allocation, the FT cited the governor as saying in an interview published on Wednesday.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Shakeup in AI Sector Casts Cloud Over Crypto Rally Success of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek hurt the Nasdaq 100 Stock slide sapped crypto by eroding investor ardor for risk An upheaval in global markets sparked by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek triggered volatility in digital assets, raising fresh questions about the outlook for crypto following last year’s boom in prices. Bitcoin traded at $102,316 as of 1:54 p.m, Tuesday in New York, partly paring a 3% drop from in the prior session that came amid a plunge in the Nasdaq 100 Index of US tech stocks. Tokens such as Ether and Solana trimmed deeper selloffs.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Coinbase's CEO said the company needs to rethink how it lists and evaluates the slew of new tokens getting created each week. Coinbase CEO Says Surge in New Tokens Making Evaluations Harder Coinbase Global Inc.’s CEO said the company needs to rethink how it lists and evaluates the slew of new tokens getting created each week. “There are ~1m tokens a week being created now, and growing,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a post on X. “High quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible.”
Bloomberg Crypto
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Ethereum Gets a Wall Street Sales Force as Token Lags Bitcoin Ethereum is facing heat for underperforming competitors Startup hopes to become Ether’s sales team to Wall Street Ethereum used to be seen as the most likely challenger to Bitcoin’s status as the preeminent cryptocurrency, and the one best positioned to make the blockchain a more useful technology. But as Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies have been soaring in recent months — thanks to President Donald Trump’s embrace — Ethereum has struggled to keep pace, despite hosting the second most valuable digital token, Ether. While Bitcoin has gone up about 160% over the last year, Ether has only risen 40%.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Crypto Fears Ease in Asia as Officials Aim to Keep Up With Trump Malaysia and Thailand have recently signaled shifts in policy Progress in the region is incremental compared with Trump’s US Lawmakers in some of Asia’s key digital-assets markets are warming to the industry as Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda in the US ripples through the region. Officials in Thailand, Malaysia and Japan are among those to have signaled shifts in their treatment of cryptocurrencies since around the turn of the New Year. The Asia-Pacific region already boasts aspiring crypto hubs in Singapore and Hong Kong and a sleeping giant in China, where an industry ban has curbed activity since 2021.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Ether Trails Rivals as Trump’s Memecoin Debut Bolsters Solana The Ether-to-Bitcoin ratio is at its lowest level since 2021 The second-largest digital asset is falling behind rival coins Ethereum’s cryptocurrency keeps losing ground to rival tokens as it struggles to harness tailwinds created by President Donald Trump’s foray into a highly speculative corner of the digital-assets market. The Ether-to-Bitcoin price ratio — which measures the performance of the second-ranked token against that of the largest — fell to its lowest level since 2021 on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, while Bitcoin hit a record of $109,241. The native token of Solana, a blockchain that competes with Ethereum, reached fresh highs over the weekend.
Bloomberg Crypto
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A Memecoin President Is Reigniting Crypto Frenzy Memecoins by a US president-elect and first lady became a reality this weekend with all the bombastic trappings that are bound to characterize Donald Trump's next term in office. “$Trump is currently the hottest digital meme on earth,” Eric Trump wrote on X. “We are just getting started!” Even though the small print on the website states his token isn’t intended to be an “investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type,” crypto-minded Trump fans immediately started buying.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Crypto Industry Lists Regulatory Framework at the Top of Its Trump Wish List As inauguration day approaches, members of the crypto industry are eagerly anticipating a slew of digital asset friendly executive actions at the dawn of a second Trump Administration. Potentially at the top of the wish list would be an executive order prompting the regulatory agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission to collaborate on building a framework for digital asset policy. While decisions about how cryptoassets are classified will ultimately be up to Congress, an executive order could spur the agencies to produce research pushing the issue forward. The largest US firms in the sector, from Coinbase Global Inc. to Ripple Labs, have long advocated for clear regulatory guidelines just for digital assets.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Wall Street’s Complex Trading Strategies Are Off to a Great Start Say what you will about the year so far for markets, it hasn’t been boring. The S&P 500 has posted single-day moves exceeding 1% in nearly half the trading sessions since Christmas, oil briefly touched $80 and Treasuries have proved anything but risk free. The volatility may be disquieting, but it’s what Wall Street has been hoping for.
Bloomberg Crypto
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Swiss State-Owned Bank PostFinance Expands in Crypto With Ethereum Staking Swiss state-owned bank PostFinance AG expanded its digital-asset offering by introducing staking, allowing holders of the second-biggest cryptocurrency Ether to earn passive income. PostFinance will add staking for other tokens in the “near future,” according to a statement on Thursday. Staking refers to the practice of pledging cryptoassets to validate blockchain transactions and earning more tokens.
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China Weighs Sale of TikTok US to Elon Musk Good morning. Elon Musk may be about to get an even more powerful platform—TikTok. Donald Trump’s team is looking at gradual tariff hikes. And cannabis cocktails are everywhere, but are they actually legal? Listen to the day’s top stories. Elon Musk’s social media empire may be about to expand. Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok if the app is banned, people familiar said. It’s unclear whether the multibillionaire, TikTok and ByteDance have held any talks. Meanwhile, two Chinese social apps, Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, took the top two positions on Apple's iPhone download charts in the US as users seek an alternative. Could Elon Musk Buy TikTok US?
Bloomberg Crypto
