>> it is 1:00 p.m. narrowed on the second day of trade. twoas sort about 2000 -- dollars. --may be a criminal offense the pboc is said to be preparing a strategy to offset u.s. tax changes and the rate hike. to support.ntion that may not be needed if u.s. policies have a limited impact on chinese outflows. heading for the best two-day

gain since july. shares ended last week at their lowest level since 1999 as the company tried to sell assets and restructure. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. let's have a look at markets in the region. weakness on the nikkei. it hit a high yesterday. coming under pressure. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, the world's most popular cryptocurrency. we will break down its first day . holderl hold service bash service providers accountable? why the area -- era of smart speakers -- eavesdropping in the comfort of your own home. bitcoin's debut. the contracts thrusted the cryptocurrency into the realm of regulators, banks, and institutional investors. here to give a highlights on the day, we are joined by our reporter julie in new york to walk us through the day. reporter: we saw surges in the first few hours of trading and there are circuit breakers in

place and, if there is a surge of 10%, there is a trade pause. there were two of those circuit breakers that were triggered. thate hearing from traders it was fairly orderly. we saw a surge in volume. you can see that the action has leveled out over the course of the day. volume is on the bottom. the total volume over the course of the first 24 hours of trading ended up being around 3900 contracts. not crazy volume, in terms of compared to the underlying value of what we see on a typical day for bitcoin. the first 12 hours we saw $40 million notional trading, that is compared to the what bitcoin traded during the same time.

it is early day. tilly says he does expect things to heat up a little bit as participants watch the first few days of trading and decide whether or not they want to get in. emily: talk to us about the significance of cryptocurrency being traded on a major u.s. exchange. reporter: what it does is bitcoin-traded products into a related markets. where many traders and investors would not be allowed to invest in bitcoin, but they could have access to the futures market. we are not seeing big banks trading on their own behalf. goldman sachs says it could make markets on behalf of clients and tilly is saying we are seeing 22 participants in the market,

allowing trading either on behalf of clients or themselves. i also talked to the ceo of the brokers who is handling a big volume of the futures trading. as much as half of that trading. he has a lot of reservations about bitcoin futures and the risk that they might have. emily: are you still hearing skepticism from investors and traders? do they have to play the game? reporter: there is skepticism out there for sure. there is still a lot of discussion on whether or not it is a bubble. even if it is not a bubble, what are the risks? something to point out is that interactive brokers are among those who are allowing trading of bitcoin, but are not allowing shorting and are requiring that those put down 50% marginal or collateral to make trades.

there are still some high hurdles for investors to go over in order to invest in these bitcoin futures. that is one of the things that people are watching. the other thing is there is no a very widespread between underlying bitcoin and bitcoin futures. futures are at $18,500. that is still a pretty steep premium. perhaps,e reasons investors are allowed to buy the regulated market, but not the underlying. arbitrage seeing the bringing the gap together. julie, thank you so much. quick breaking news headline we sayingting from comcast

they are no longer reviewing 20th century fox assets. we had been reporting that they were in talks to purchase 20 century fox and we know that disney is still in talks. comcast is no longer engaged. sticking with the cryptocurrencies, i want to bring in spencer bogart. he is from a block chain investing technology company. the first fund dedicated to the bitcoin blockchain ecosystem. what do you think was the most significant thing we saw happen today. spencer: i do not know what more you could wish for. this is the beginning of the institutionalization of bitcoin. there will be a much larger trading venue for derivatives and we might do an edp in a year from now.

price goes up significantly, there are a lot of questions about where the value is actually coming from. what do you think? spencer: i like to think that this is an iceberg and people see a payments mechanism and they hear about cryptocurrency as payments. what people are ultimately buying is digital gold. people want to own some of this permission list, unfeasible and highly censored network. working below the surface, we programmableively assets. this is the most interesting thing. the concept is when we take something from the physical world and make it digital and we shed constraints and have programmable money. exchangesknow other are preparing trading bitcoin assets.

will more follow with more cryptocurrency? spencer: i think it all starts with bitcoin. see a proliferation into other assets. this is a global phenomenon. we should contrast that with the dot-com boom. very little people had access to participate in that market. it is remarkable. certainlyy can participate now. where do we draw the line between what is legit? spencer: that is fair and i think the fcc is doing a light-hand approach and that is doing a favor for the ecosystem. emily: what do you think we will see in terms of my -- regulation? seemer: overall, they

pretty keen to make sure that we do not toss the baby out with the bathwater. you want to create a safe environment but also not discourage that innovation. is becoming more mainstream. how does that change your is this? -- is this? spencer: this is a significant step. how does it change your -- we have been investing into the ecosystem and we will continue to do that. we are not holding the large assets. we are looking into new opportunities in the space and there are unanswered opportunities. emily: talk to me about those opportunities. what do you mean? spencer: we are looking at decentralized exchanges. this is some of the functions we have seen in financial markets that are happening in a parallel natively-digital ecosystem. things like paypal made it

easier to spend value in the digital world. block chain and crypto assets are new infrastructure for the digital age. emily: do you think etherium is next? spencer: that is the most likely candidate. it is number two and has the largest market capitalization after bitcoin. emily: when do we see a critical mass? are we going to see a handful of these cryptocurrencies trading? there are hundreds and hundreds of cryptocurrencies. how many of those will end up in this more legitimate market? spencer: anyone can create one of these things and put it out into the world and there are already thousands. very few will find their way to mainstream markets like we are seeing today. i would say maybe half a dozen will make it in the next two to

five years. anything after that, anybody can guess. emily: what will happen tomorrow? spencer: we will get trading on the upside. emily: all right. thank you for joining us. we will be watching the rest of the week to see how things go. continuing developments on this comcast and disney story. comcast says that they were never at an engagement level to make a definitive offer. we reported earlier that comcast is no longer engaged in the longer looking at 21st century fox. dealve reported that a could calm within days. that is coming up. we will talk more about uber. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: london's uber riders will be able to use the service through the spring, as they appealed the decision to revoke their license. the transfer will not take until april or june. for more we are joined by our reporter who covers uber. now. they have more time we were expecting some sort of appeal, but what does this mean? this gives them more time to negotiate with london. there is a direct negotiation with regulators. is very hopeful

that before this goes to court, they will come up with some negotiations with london. emily: how hopeful are you? what is the likelihood of that? eric: major cities, including london's infrastructure, i have always said it is hard to imagine london asking them to leave. it is how do they meet in the middle so that the city can get what they want? they are more willing to negotiate and try to come to a negotiated settlement in the cities. there will be a resolution and it is just a matter of finding a happy place in the middle. emily: yet they are fighting battles around the world. when they come up with these compromises, had lunch does it affect their business model? some of the steps they will have to take will involve things

where they provide a benefit for the driver or other kinds of things that i think have an impact on the way the company is valued. i think long-term, as they create these compromises, which they will have to, it will impact the long-term valuation of the company. emily: could something like that be part of the compromise? eric: in so many places, uber is an incumbent and they are meant to be a lightweight business that relies on independent contractors. anything that raises costs would hurt their business. if it blocks new entrants, that could be good for uber. emily: still no resolution on the softbank deal. the deadline is fast approaching. what is the latest on that? eric: last i heard it could be

december 28. we have this implied valuation for the secondary share and people are puzzling over whether they want to offer up their shares or miss out and hope that it forces a higher price. people are doing soul-searching about what they think the shares are worth. emily: our employees concerned? hopeful that they can sell the shares in this offering? eric: early employees see the enormous gain in value over what they got the shares for, they will probably be excited to have a moment of liquidity. emily: thank you so much. bob, you are sticking with me. president trump wants astronauts on other planets. he signed a directive to send an american astronaut back to the

moon and eventually mars. no details have been given on funding or whether nasa would rely on private industry. since retiring the space shuttle program in 2011, they have contracts with billing to send astronauts into space area coming up, we will look at possible repeal of open internet protections. here is a look at after-hours trading of comcast, disney and fox. comcast has said they are no longer reviewing 21st century fox for a possible purchase. we will continue to cover the story. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: verizon is betting on the

nfl. they will be able to stream nfl games through yahoo! or go 90 apps for free with no data charges. non-verizon subscribers will only be able to use that with a subscription fee. the contract is said to be less than $2 billion. the fcc plans to hold a vote to decide on the future of net neutrality and big names are taking sides. amazon has announced that it is opposed. one of the main complaints is, who will hold the internet providers accountable. his agency and the federal trade engine seed plan to join the police the internet. joining me to discuss this is todd shields and bob o'donnell.

so, todd, we sought new moves happening today and a statement from the commissioner about the fcc. breakdown what happened today. todd: it was an announcement between the fcc and ftc and it instantly ran into controversy. one of the leading democrats on , calledhill represented it essentially worthless. it is a way for the fcc to purportedly join hands with the trade commission and enforce the procedures to be followed, which critics say do not really hold water very well. emily: others believe they do not hold water. we spoke to tom wheeler, under whom net neutrality was passed. take a listen to what he had to say. >> in the name of consumer

protection, they say they will not protect consumers. in the name of better regulation, they say they will turn it over to the ftc, but a tweeted thatner even if they do that, they do not have any authority. they are running away from their responsibilities. emily: does the ftc have authority or not here? can we expect them to do this right? todd: yes and no. the commissioner he referred to says we cannot quite do the job. thecrats in general oppose upcoming rejection of the rules and the acting chairwoman of the federal trade commission says we can do it, but there is a catch. the federal trade commission works after the fact and they go after companies for doing things that are unfair. the federal communications

commission sets rules and says you cannot do certain things. there is a forward-looking thing to the fcc that would be absent from the ftc jurisdiction. however, proponents say that the prospect of being whacked by the ftc is enough incentive to make companies behave. emily: what does this say for big tex companies? bob: it is ironic that on the one hand you have the ftc wanted to block time warner for some of the reasons that net neutrality was designed for. on the other hand, they want to rulesd of net neutrality and this is a disconnected thing. if we are looking at how much of the traffic on the internet is video it is 75%. the impact is on video services. how do people package video services and if we can look at

comparisons with mobile internet. all of the big carrier started packaging video services at no cost to their subscribers as an incentive to get them to go to the service. i think that we will see a lot more of this and these kinds of packages. ironically, it makes the open internet into a cable television package with a limited choice of options. that is what i think is a real possibility. emily: you think that we will have different experiences? i think taxes will be built into the cost of certain services. if you go with a particular isp, you will get certain services for free, but other services will have a cost associated with them. emily: todd shields in washington, we will continue to watch your reporting. thank you. coming up, bitcoin futures. we will hear from edward tilly next.

if you like bloomberg news, you can listen on bloomberg radio. this is bloomberg. ♪

juliette: the premiums of context looking at the coin next month has narrowed on their second day of trade. in hong kong, the securities regulator says it may be a criminal offense to reroute the coin futures without a license -- the coin futures without a tcoin futures without a license. rumors that a free-trade deal is the best the u.k. can hope for.

times square bomber has told police he is a follower of the so-called islamic state. investigators say he was acting on his own. he and three other people were injured. tallest guy has opened up. more than 60 companies have now taken space on the 128 floors. billion andost $2.5 has the fastest elevator on the planet. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. let's have a look at markets in asia region. crude trucking about $67 a barrel for the first time. holding above $58 a barrel.

shanghai looking quite well as well. to the downside, we are seeing some weakness in some of the tech players that had been rallying. some weakness coming through in 1%.a's stocks, down 6/10 of you are seeing some of those apple suppliers and taiwan rally , way strongly yesterday down by 4/10 of 2%. you can really see the future of that weakness humming through. tencent and hong kong. by 1.7%. there has been buying in banks today. australia looking quite good. the big rally coming through in oil.

real estate stock also looking quite good today. a little bit of a switch out with some of the health care and utility players in the region. we are live from london at the top of the hour. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: we turn now to a developing story. disney is now the one insult pursuit of a deal with fox assets. comcast says they are no longer engaged in a review and said that we never got to the level of engagement needed to make an offer. still with us is bob o'donnell. we have been reporting these long talks with his knee that a deal could come in a matter of days. what do you read into the statement from comcast? reporter: this came out of the

blue and we were not expecting a statement at this point. we probably expected it to go down to the wire. it is fascinating the comments you read out that they made, that they never got that deep into analyzing the assets. they really just had to look at it with their responsibility to the shareholders which suggests , that they were a stalking horse for disney and not really that motivated to do that. we do not know if that is pr spin. it is an interesting development and puts focus back onto busy. we have reporting that disney could be a better candidate from a regulatory standpoint. they potentially have less contrast given some . of the decisions from the doj, might be problematic. emily: explain that a little more to me. why will disney make a more

practical suitor? reporter: it is interesting. i think even people who were closely involved might not be able to read the doj. we have had an interesting read on the at&t and time warner deal where it seems that vertical mergers are not so straightforward as you might have expected. maybe a horizontal deal with appeal like disney might be less troublesome, because clearly, with at&t and time warner, they indicate some kind of behavioral committee has happened. it is not something that they really favor anymore. with that recent read of the deal, there is a partnering with

peer likee disney, -- -- it is a it is is better sell. the other thing to think about is disney's ability to purchase the rest of the outstanding sky shares. under the u.k. rules, disney would need to change that deal. you cannot make a price any lower or anything like that and this is a difficult trial with regulators there, in terms of the amount of media assets that they own in the u.k. and it makes it difficult for them to buy sky. the decision has been delayed until january and it could still be clear, but disney does not have the same conflicts that fox does and it makes it easier for them. emily: bob, what do you make of this when comcast says that they are not that far into it?

bob: i agree. it is what is happening with at&t and time warner. on the doj perspective, you clearly god this concern that as isp's are working with companies there will be friction there. they are mostly focused on the moving tv piece, not fox news or fox sports, which remains separate. it makes logical sense. emily: we will continue to follow this and thank you for being here. bob, you are sticking with me. all right. another top story is the debut of bitcoin futures on the global markets exchange. a huge move to legitimize digital currency as the market cap tops $2 billion. we were joined earlier by a ceo

to talk about the appetite of participants so far. >> it is meeting expectations and our dedicated liquidity providers are getting comfortable with this commodity, in this case. it is business as usual from a launch perspective. we have a lot of people scaling and i expect to see a little change in those transactions over time. >> i am curious who the purchase -- participants are. i'm. to what you are hearing from larger institutions, whether they are nibbling yet, whether they are giving you indications that they might be moving into the market. had about 12 well-known participants, registered traders.

they represent many end-users, but we won't see that clarity for some time. i think you will see that build over the days to come. >> some commentators say that the price with gemini might be a problem. any plans to expand? >> not at the moment. we are pleased with the partnership with gemini and the transparency into their auction price. they know their users and the information sharing and that is important. ours is a very trader friendly contract. at the time of the settlement, it isn't different from bitcoin futures or if you are holding bitcoin. we like that construction of the contract. planned to a change offer a physically settled contract? >> it got a lot of attention.

we are pleased with the futures contract and i think you will see some buzz around the potential for securities with etm's. you will see that as the next frontier in the evolution of bitcoin in a broad base of users, but that has to get the fcc ready. >> what other contracts might come out of this? >> i think we will see the derivatives. we need to get through this settlement process with the index and i think you will see him derivatives as a result in the months ahead, and not the weeks. there is a longer process with the fcc. >> what about the mini-contract? you are talking about 16,000 or 18,000. that is a pretty big piece for

retail investors. >> it really is. 1/5 the size of our competitors contracts. there might be rooms for mini-contracts. >> i am interested in the potential for whales, the idea that somebody can figure out who is in the market and corner it. how are you staving that off? >> it is difficult to do because we are a transparent market. we are information sharing with gemini come which allows us to have transparency into the process. we have the cooperation of our -- all of our users. we know our users and we have the ability to reconstruct trades. >> wouldn't it be too late, then, with the whales? >> it would be. if you use the gemini auction,

we have colored that auction with an index. we will be looking not only as a settlement price from gemini, but it has to fit within an index of other bitcoins. emily: that was the ceo, ed tilly, there. golden globe nominations were just announced. netflix and hbo tied with the most nominations. some of the shows include "the "stranger things," and others. in the meantime, hulu got three nominations. a music identification service is acquired, shazam. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: apple has confirmed that they will acquire a music identification service that has found struggles in monetization. this is significantly less than the valuation efforts in 2016. him the valuation efforts in 2016. joining us now is our bloomberg tech editor and still with us is bob o'donnell. mark, why are they buying shazam? mark: i don't know. they have integrated with siri. it will tell you the name of a song. why do they want it?

it has a lot of good data. it gives them another foothold on the android. we will see. we also have other reports that other companies are trying to purchase shazam, but shazam is a key component. what happens if a competitor buys shazam? apple does not have the partnership anymore? maybe they will take it off the iphone or siri. they could lose the data. from a feature perspective, there is not much it can add that they already had. emily: in terms of integrating into apple music. mark: they could make a social functionality, the most tagged songs, a particular song they get so many hits, they could push it up the charts, but there are ways to integrate it, but there are not many other ways to integrate this. emily: music has become important to the apple

bottom-line. we have this chart here and you can see how apple's music revenue has climbed. bob, what do you make of the fact that apple is doing this? this is a company that was really cool a few years ago, but obviously it did not reach the potential some investors expected it to. bob: two things. they're trying to find a way to beef up whatever they can. they have the capability, but they need to make sure that they can control it. music is the top application. it is the top-request of smart speakers. number two, if we think about shazam, it was the earliest version of an ai function with pattern recognition at a pretty impressive level. the idea that they can leverage some of what they have done with the ai into visual areas is

interesting. the valuation question is, so many people have been talking about ai as if it were a product, but it is more of a feature. that is why we are seeing the pricing the way we are. emily: there are questions as to whether apple will use is exclusively or whether they will be open to other entities. mark: i could see this going both ways. apple music is built on beatz music and they have a team of android app developers. they might want to make this exclusive. i think that we will know in a few months. emily: thank you so much. bob, you are sticking with me. coming up, voice-activated speakers are expected to be a top holiday gift, but some are wary about privacy. we will dig into the technology next. on daybreak, the founders of

bitcoin exchange gemini will be on the show. you can catch that. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a german shoe manufacturer is breaking up with amazon. they say they will stop shipping products through them in europe and alleges that the company is sitting on their hands as they allow counterfeit shoes to get sold. there has been an "breakdown in trust."

saying with concerns, a speaker poses a threat to user privacy. devices like the echo and google home contain microphones that collect data and send it back to the parent company. the company is explained that it only collects the does once keywords like ok google or alexa are spoken. joining me is our guest for the hour and a writer who wrote about this. the argument you take is that concerns about user privacy might be greatly exaggerated. atd: last week there was an -- article that said do not by anyone in a go. i am and i have the echo in

every room of my house. if you look at the privacy of amazon and google, they are very explicit. it is not recording everything. there is a passive mode and a wake mode. you can go and look at what they send. that is not to say that we cannot conjure hypothetical scenarios that get us scared. emily: trust is important. we have had situations where trust has been undermined by some of these tech giants. one of these devices are hacked? what if amazon corporate says they are not listening, but somebody is? brad: they are not letting third parties loading data onto the system. it is not like the android or macos. number two, it has not happened yet.

there have been third-party researchers have demonstrated vulnerabilities, but they have always gotten and and had to take apart the device. until someone can show a remote hack, we have to suspend their disbelief. emily: should we be scared or should we trust? bob: we should be cautious, but let's not forget about the cameras. there have been many examples like this. this is not different, in that regard. the issue is because smart speakers are so popular, it is impacting a large group of people. as the technology improves, we are going to have less going up to the cloud. right now, one of the problems with the speakers is that they can only do one request. they cannot do a conversation. they would need more intelligence locally in order to have a back and forth conversation. over time, a little bit less

would go to the cloud. as the technology evolves, we will see an evolution there. emily: there are conversations that go back to headquarters. my kids are talking to alexa all day long. amazon does not want to necessarily hear all of that. should we be thinking about what we are saying to alexa? brad: if you are running an illegal business from your home or committing crimes, do not say, "alexa" and do those things. the authorities could get a wiretap to get into these devices. we have not seen that yet and we don't know about that. i would suspect they would resist that and change the nature of the device. glows when it is transmitting. emily: you wrote a book on amazon. ?ow do you think it falls

do you think it will be a completely transformational project? in this case, they want to extended to the workplace and into our cars. kindle and fire were attempts to connect that were promiscuous in their failures. here, amazon has struck old. emily: thank you. great to have you here on the show. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ high expectations. said chair janet yellen prepares for a rate increase. more than a dozen other central banks announce the last policy of the year. matt: cracking $65. brent crude hits it ties number in two and a half years as the most important bible and the world is shut down. anna: