emily: i am emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." we are watching two big events. one, that deep-freeze that continues in texas, causing crippling power problem for millions across the state. plus, prepared testimony ahead of thursday's gamestop hearing. just what will the robinhood ceo tell lawmakers. and a legitimizing crypto. mastercard announced it will start facilitating

cryptocurrency transactions this year. we are going to speak to ceo michael miebach in a wide-ranging conversation. and shopify beat the e-commerce giant exceeding -- we are going to check in with the shopify president. the texas energy crisis continues. ed ludlow has the picture from san francisco. ed: s&p 500 is basically flat. what is interesting is eight out of the 11 industry groups ended in positive territory in the green. it was really technology stocks that pulled the rest of the index down. you can see that in -- the basket of mega cap tech

stocks down by 1.48%. here is my statistic of the day, statistic of the week. it was the first decline in 11 days. that was his longest streak of wins since the index was foundedin 2014. investors taking a pause on big tech after what was an incredible earnings season where we saw stocks have outsized earnings growth relative to the rest of the market. you can see the philadelphia semi conductor index also lower might 1.9%. the other side of the coin is the texas energy crisis. you can see one of the big outperformers on the s&p 500 were energy stocks rising as we saw oil in new york, wti and natural gas make significant gains. the idea of course that while all of these oil producers and natural gas suppliers are unable to operate, that removed supply from the market while there is incredible demand because of low

temperatures. that is boosting the stocks of those producers. the other direct effects of the texas -- has been semi conductors. because we have seen a number of big names in austin, texas in particular -- they have idled two plants in austin. that has had permutations throughout the semi conductor industry. nvidia, the biggest points decliner on wednesday. investors taking a lot into account. we also have economic data that shows strength in the u.s. consumer but also rising prices. that is giving concerns around inflation. we also see treasury yields higher. in an environment where we see yields higher, that often weighs

on big tech and that was certainly the story wednesday. emily: thank you so much for that round up. the outages caused by icy weather impacting millions of people across texas and the central united states. getting worse with some blackouts expected to continue through at least thursday. texas rate operator cut power to 2.8 million homes just hours after restoring service to 700,000 households. analysts say the crisis underscores the u.s. electric system's need for additional power lines across the country and large-scale storage systems that potentially could get a'rhetorical boost to president bidens plans for an historic investment in our country's electric grid. joining us to discuss is nicholas steckler. what is your assessment of what is still going wrong here? nicholas: let's start with an update. things are very dire in texas

right now and they are still in the thick of it. this will go down as one of the biggest power shortfalls in history in the u.s. power sector. what the real primary cause is of all this, the grid operator in texas, every quarter and every year they are trying to figure out what demand will be on each season. typically texas is a summer-peaking system. in winter is usually pretty relaxed. texas got hit with summer-level demand in the middle of winter and blindsided all the power capacity that really should have been ready. what happened is they under forecast demand by 25%. that is how we got here. there's a lot of news about different outages as well of different types of power and generation capacity. that comes second. the first issue is there was not enough guidance to direct power to be available because of the under forecast. when we look at what capacity was available there were outages

across all generation technologies. we saw coal, nuclear, natural gas and wind all have big issues with the freezing and cold weather turning these plants off-line. that is how we ended up in a situation where 40% of texas is off-line and millions are without power. emily: now, the state has just banned natural gas companies from taking fuel out of the state. i want to talk about restoration. one of my friends in texas said their power had just come back on but i know some folks have had power restored and then it has gone out again. what is the timeline for getting power back to everyone? nicholas: they are right in the middle of it. it is going to be cold for the

rest of this week. one of the biggest issues we identified is natural gas powered power plants cannot get the gas they need. there have been other issues with icing as well. as things warm up hopefully by friday, plants can get back online faster. at the earliest we get most of the generation capacity back online in a couple days at the earliest. then customers need to be reconnected en masse. and that does not happen all at once. this kind of shortfall, it will take days to bring neighborhoods back online, all the cities that have been shut down. we look back at 2011 to compare to their last blackout, which was much smaller, much, much smaller. if we transfer it to today to try and figure out how long it would take to get everyone online, in the most optimistic scenario it would take much more than a day if they had to go at the rate they reconnected people last time. to put that altogether, in the most optimistic scenario, maybe by the weekend there could be full connectivity and supply, but it really does not look like that. our natural gas team looking at the pipeline networks and the freezing problems there, which

is the number one issue, that will put us well into the next week before everyone has power. emily: wow. that is a long time to go without power and potentially even water. some folks have not had water for more than 24 hours. what does this mean for the power mix, given biden's plan and given the tug-of-war that continues to happen between supporters of renewable energy and those who say it is the intermittent problems with renewable energy that created this problem? nicholas: we can think about the short-term and the long-term and i think the biden plan is more of a long-term thing. in terms of federal response in the short-term, we can definitely see incentives hardening. resiliency of the power network will be a big priority, but in texas, it will be about what the short-term response will be. we can see oil be dispatched to

glass plants that can burn it. we might see investments in gas plants to get them to burn oil on-site to prevent this type of thing from happening again in the future. we can see weatherization of all the power plants to do with the cold. there are technologies proven in colder climates texas never thought they would need. and of course grid operators will have to expect to have more capacity online in the winter. to come back to your question about the biden clean energy agenda, if we look at 2035, getting to that goal they set of 100% clean energy, it will be about natural gas. in this situation, what these lack show is a hit on natural gas which is traditionally a reliable perception of being the backup fuel. gas being the largest and most fit generation source in this situation is may be going to open up opportunities for new technologies, possibly small nuclear, hydrogen, solar, which has already seen a lot of acceleration since the california summer blackouts last year. i think it is a good opportunity for new technology to get a win over natural gas.

emily: ok. appreciate the round up. thank you so much for that update. coming up, we are looking ahead to the house gamestop earrings -- hearings happening thursday. is more financial regulation ahead? that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ (announcer) do you want to reduce stress? shed pounds? do you want to flatten your stomach? do all that and more in just 10 minutes a day with aerotrainer, the total body fitness solution that uses its revolutionary ergonomic design to help you to maintain comfortable, correct form. that means better results in less time. you can do an uncomfortable, old-fashioned crunch or an aerotrainer super crunch.

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emily: all eyes in the trading world will turn to washington thursday at the gamestop house hearing. testimony includes that of ceo of robinhood, and the ceo citadel. at the core of the conversation,

the practice of payment -- it is a practice that has come under scrutiny in the wake of the gamestop frenzy in the boom in daytrading. here is sonali basak on why transactions between retail brokerages and large high-frequency trading firms have raised eyebrows in the financial world. ♪ sonali: day traders are piling into the stock market and major wall street firms are paying lots of money to handle their trade. it has outraged some who feel the relationship to wall street is a bit too close. it is called payment for order flow. and it a key pillar of trading.

a brokerage like e*trade or robinhood will direct orders to a market maker like citadel securities. in return, those market makers will pay the brokerage a small fee. those firms are making money on spreads for stocks and options and the sec has traditionally accepted them as a way to transfer some of the market making profits to the brokerages. it helps the market maker in return amass greater volumes of trade. ultimately, bringing them more money. they add up. they reached about $3 billion across the industry in 2020. the schwab organization, robinhood, and e*trade brought in the most fees, with schwab and td taking in 1.4 alien dollars. citadel securities, which handles more than 1/5 of u.s. equity volumes, has paid more than $1 billion for order flows last year. some of these market makers are high-frequency traders who handle orders in fractions of a second. their involvement theoretically benefits customers. bloomberg intelligence analysts calculate it save the retail

traders 3.7 billion last year. yet the practice has drawn a lot of criticism. senator elizabeth warren says there are troubling concerns about robinhood's relationship to wall street, and has called for a clearer accounting of the relationship between counterparties. still, payments per order flow has made it much easier to provide services to new day traders, and expand access to stock markets. it may be here to stay, but it is likely to stay under scrutiny. emily: bloomberg's sonali basak with more on the upcoming hearing i am joined by duke law professor gina-gail fletcher. thank you so much for joining us. do you see a problem with payment for order flow? gina-gail: yes. payment per order flow i think is a troubling aspect of the market that has definitely allowed platforms like robinhood

and e*trade to gloat -- grow significant a by attracting retail investors with this promise that there is no cost to their trade. however as we always say, there is no such thing as a free lunch. so this is being paid for in some way by the retail traders, these day traders. they are paying for these transactions in some way, and there is some question as to whether or not they are fully aware of the extent to which they are bearing the cost for this supposedly free service. and that is what payment for order flow -- emily: i believe robinhood would say we disclose this to our customers, we disclosed this many time during the process. is that not enough? gina-gail: there is some disclosure going on for sure. this is something that the sec is requiring of these brokerages

to do. they have to disclose their arrangement for this payment for order flow. but to some extent this is not enough because a lot of investors i believe do not truly understand the costs they are bearing because robinhood is able to aggregate this. they can aggregate their disclosures without really disclosing to a retail investor what they lost by having their overflow -- order flow routed to someone who pays a cut to robinhood and the cost or the price the retail investor is able to execute their transaction may not be the best price that is truly available within the market. so i don't think this technicality of it all is at the forefront of retail investor's minds, not withstanding the disclosures robinhood might be making. emily: we did just get the prepared remarks of the ceo of robinhood, who will be testifying tomorrow. he said, i want to be clear at the outset, any allegation that robinhood acted to help hedge or

other special interests to the detriment of our customers is absolute false and market distorting rhetoric. our customers are our top priority. from what you have seen, do you believe that there is anything wrong with robinhood's model? anything that regulators could fairly challenge? gina-gail: so, i think that with robinhood's model, there are some things that might raise some concerns. one of the things is that robinhood, by default, they place traders into margin accounts, allowing certain retail investors to trade with borrowed money, to trade on leverage, which magnifies potential wins, but also magnifies potential losses. so there needs to be a deep

consideration of whether or not we want every day traders to be defaulted into these types of margin accounts on which they are able to trade on leverage, especially to the extent that anecdotally we have heard that traders are able to do. and so while robinhood might tout itself -- robinhood and others might tout themselves as bringing this supposedly it is a of the market, we have to think about whether or not their hidden cost to retail dissipation any market, that the retail investors might not be aware of. and that comes again from the payment for order policy we talked about earlier, but it comes to access to fairly complex financial instruments that are now available at the tip of a finger of certain retail investors who may not understand the complexities of the product or the true price or

valuation of these products. emily: i also want to talk to you about the potential burden on the individual retail investors who got involved here, and the folks who were rallying the troops. roaring kitty, who has a very popular youtube channel, where he talks in great detail about what he saw as the financial performance and financial future of gamestop, has been sued on behalf of one of the individuals who lost money. do you see any culpability there? is he really liable for something? gina-gail: you know, given what i know so far about this situation, it would be hard for me to see that he is liable. there are a few points here. again, if there are other facts that come out later to change the situation, then i would have to revise what i have to say. but based on what i know so far, he put out his opinion about

what was going on, what he thought was a feature of gamestop, and what he thought was the future of the company as a value. and without having materially false information, making misstatements of facts, in some way, this does not rise to the level of the type of fraud we are normally going after. if he was doing potentially a pump and dump scheme, to manipulate the price of the stock support. now, there is a requirement that he disclose any interest he might have any company if he is being paid for touting the stock, and it does not seem as if this is what is going on here. so, simply suing him because he simply put out his opinion and you decided to follow it may not actually be a solid basis for liability. and so, i am not sure that there is anything there other than probably sour grapes. emily: so, look then, as you look across the very many competing issues and parties here, do you see anyone who

bears blame, or liability for the problems that ensued, and do you think that there are actually new regulations as a result of this investigation? gina-gail: i think this investigation, like many investigations going into potentially artificial or inflation prices, is going to be a long one for the sec. they are going to have to be going through thousands if not millions of trades in order to nail down what went on, by whom, who bought what, who sold what, and what was going on there, what their interests were. when it comes to blame, this is a really tricky question. because from a morality standpoint, we want to be able to blame someone for what happened. but it depends on what we are trying to ascribe blame for. we could say we could blame the short-sellers who created the position, but others may think we should blame the sec for even allowing this level of

shortselling to be possible and legal in the first place. or we could say we can blame the traders who created the potential for a short squeeze. the blame scenario here, i am not sure it will get us very far, because what happened in the markets is that there was a sort of irrational exuberance was going along with some kind of a social movement that caused gamestop stock to rise to an artificial level. to me, what really is concerning is that the sec did not intervene in some way earlier to kind of either stop trading on these stocks earlier, thereby leaving it up to robinhood and other brokerages to make that decision piecemeal, and that there wasn't some kind of odor

arching -- overarching vision that was released by the sec. emily: well, it's certainly going to be a fascinating day. we are going to be tuned in. gina-gail fletcher from duke university, thank you so much for sharing your analysis will thus. coming up, youtube being the latest platform to try and take on tiktok. we will have all the details, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ when you switch to xfinity mobile, you're choosing to get connected to the most reliable network nationwide, now with 5g included. discover how to save up to $300 a year with shared data starting at $15 a month, or get the lowest price for one line of unlimited. come into your local xfinity store to make the most of your mobile experience. you can shop the latest phones, bring your own device, or trade in for extra savings. stop in or book an appointment to shop safely with peace of mind at your local xfinity store.

emily: some other tech stories we are following, youtube is taking on tiktok by introducing a short form video feature called shorts. to the united states in march. shorts will let users create and upload 15 second video, which is the length of an average video on tiktok. youtube has been testing the feature in india since september. the dogecoin market has a leader of the pack. one person got 28% of all the cryptocurrency in circulation, about $2.1 billion. dogecoin was created in 2013 as a satirical homage to bitcoin.

coming up, speaking to michael miebach. talking crypto and much, much more. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. mastercard is launching the first card that will support the world's first central-bank digital currency, after announcing it will start facilitating crypto transactions later this year, hoping to send bitcoin to new highs. mastercard also throwing its weight behind new efforts to support black-owned businesses hit hard by the pandemic. to cover all this i'm joined by mastercard ceo michael miebach. thank you so much for joining us. i'm anxious to get your thoughts on cryptocurrency, but first i want to start with the big picture, because you have such a

unique view into the health of consumers and spending trends. what trends are you seeing in consumer spending and what does that tell you about what is to come later this year, as we come into a new normal? michael: hey, emily. good to talk to you. that is a fantastic question and one that we are being asked all the time. you can appreciate going through 12 months of covid.

there's government, businesses, bankers. everybody really wants to understand how the pandemic has hit the economy, how it has hit their business, what it means for consumer expectations and so forth. so it's a question we have invested a lot in. we have also us of data, as you can appreciate. i would describe our business as a bit of a seismograph as to what is going on around the world. and what i am seeing in terms of the trend is you look pre-pandemic, we are all engaged in e-commerce. none of that was new. but what we see during the pandemic is really a seismic shift in terms of consumer behaviors. because you had to shop online. so the rise of e-commerce has dramatically accelerated. i think years of change has been compressed into the last 12 months. that is the first thing to say. but you asked the question, what of that will translate into muscle memory? what of that will stay? what makes a trend? so in order to get underneath that, trying to augment our data pieces is what consumers are thinking as a look ahead. and what we have heard is two thirds of people asked in 14

markets around the world, is i want to do more digital banking, i want to do more online payments, because i learned to like it. now i use less cash. so that is the fundamental trend that is at work here. and then the question is will that stick? what will happen? is there a reversion to previous behaviors? here, i am convinced that once vaccines are rolled out, once travel restrictions are taken back, people want to get out. they will want to make up lost time. they will want to travel and see friends and family. you want to go back to the sports event. the super bowl probably triggered exactly that desire. in a way, we look at the future as those good experiences that people learned about because they had to in terms of easy online check out will stay.

but reverting back to eating at local restaurants, supporting your local shop, taking a trip, that will come back. i believe there is significant pent-up demand. whatever it is. emily: how important is the return of travel to mastercard's growth? michael: travel is a very important aspect of a business. we enable travel domestically and internationally. when you currently look at the online spend, a significant portion of that is people booking trips on booking platforms come etc., but there is physical travel as well. it is a significant driver of our revenue. it matters. we gained a leading position when it comes to travel. everybody know we are going to continue to bet on the return of travel. not only because it matters but because it matters to people. emily: i have to ask you about the crypto news and i have to start with the sand dollar, rolling out prepaid cards which

could be loaded with the world's first central-bank digital currency, the sand dollar, the bahamas. you will be the only card that supports this. how much volume are you expecting here, or is this more of an experiment? michael: so, the bahamian government and the central bank, they launched the central bank digital currency last year. it launched in october. what is happening now is this is one of the first central-bank digital currencies and we are basically providing an ability for a person, a business, anybody in the bahamas who owns digital currency to transfer it into the real bikini and dollar, -- the real bahamian dollar. that is nothing different than from various other such card programs we have where other cryptocurrencies can be transferred into whatever you want to buy with that. it is not an experiment.

it is real. what is really the distinction is this is the first central-bank digital currency that we will be transporting into currency versus all the programs we currently have our private sector-issued cryptocurrencies. emily: so what other central banks are you talking to? michael: there is a whole range around the world we are engaging with. there was a group of central banks recently putting out a paper on how central-bank digital currencies should work. two tier concept of making sure there is a lender of last resort coming into the fold to make sure you can effectively distribute this currency. so the leading seven central banks around the world put together in partnership with our

input, rather, a statement on how that should be constructed. at a given point in time we have 10, 15 programs in different countries around the world supporting the implementation of such central-bank digital currencies, including providing a test facility. we launched a sandbox where governments can come in and invite banks to test how this will actually work. because in the end to bring a utility to a consumer, you have to see what does the last mile do. how can i spend in a shop? and it was a big announcement that we made in our earnings call three weeks ago, where we said ok, we will enable those central-bank currencies in our neighborhood. emily: now, you have also said he will start the record some cryptocurrencies for use in payments later this year. which cryptocurrencies are we

talking about, and are we talking about bitcoin? michael: yes. emily, that's an important question. central-bank digital currencies, the nature of that is essentially stable coins backed by the country. there's private sector cones as well backed by generally private deposits. that is a type of cryptocurrency that we believe will bring utility from a payment perspective. we've not made any decisions yet which of those will be. but that category, private-sector-issued stable coins, is one -- we put out principles to the side which ones we will support and which ones not. the first principle has to be regulatory compliance. there's a principal on consumer protections, like data privacy, for example. you want to make sure what comes along with a crypto payment is data you understand want to pass along. and finally there's an aspect of stability, and stability is guaranteed in the end through a concept of a stable coin because it is backed by an asset.

here is where you come to known asset-backed cryptocurrency, like bitcoin and a range of others. right now, fluctuation on prices make them not usable from a payment perspective. so here, there's a problem. imagine you buy a pizza, and it costs 10 units of a free-floating cryptocurrency, and the price within minutes fluctuates significantly up or down. your pizza could have been worth $40 or $5. from a payment perspective, that's a problem. but we're not an investment company, we are payment company, guaranteeing a payment from a buyer to a supplier. so, that's the issue of what we're doing there.

we're coming right back to the sand dollar. bitcoin asset holders can say you transfer and in exchange at one of our partner programs, you can expand through our network. emily: i just want to take a little bit there on bitcoin, because obviously your news about being more accepting of cryptocurrencies sometimes later this year helps to send bitcoin, the price of bitcoin up. we just spoke with a well-known economist who said it is pure speculative, self-fulfilling bubble. it doesn't have any income. what is your reaction to that, given what you just had to say about stability? michael: emily, my view is i look at this question through the lens of a payment technology company. as i just played out, it really does not bring much utility from a payment perspective because of the fluctuations. from an investment and asset perspective, we're not an asset manager. that has people taking risk and

they take a look at any other asset class, and that is something we do not take much of a view on. i think if people have invested and they want to transfer that into a network to buy something, that we enable that, because in the end, we enable choice in payments. it can be real-time payments, it can be crypto, it can be anything for that matter. so that is our approach to this. emily: now, i want to talk a little bit about some of your other priorities, because financial inclusion is one of them. you have got a new partnership with jennifer hudson, you have also got a new initiative to support black-owned businesses and other small businesses. and i am curious what trends you are seeing there among black-owned businesses over the last year. did they struggle more than other small businesses? michael: emily, it's a fantastic question. you are putting a finger right

on the problem. and i think what we have seen as we have seen a dual crisis. there's the public health crisis, but there is also a crisis of exclusion of hitting minorities a lot harder than other parts of the population, and that played out in many markets around the world. so we clearly can say that small businesses are hit harder than larger businesses, no surprise. and then you look at minority-owned small businesses, you see that even more pronounced. black-owned businesses in the united states have been struggling significantly. it now has to be everybody's interest to see they can get back going. and here, in terms of the equal opportunity that needs to be created to ensure access to capital, to ensure you can get your business online, if you didn't have an online presence before, all of that is what we are trying to enable. we put a commitment out there of $500 million altogether to support the black american community. a good chunk of that will go to

small businesses. our partnership with jennifer hudson should help to really draw attention to the topic, draw in partners, because we can't do this ourselves. we have a lot of partnerships and we want more partnerships to come on board. so it's a very important topic here in the u.s., but it is one around the world. in terms of support, generally speaking, emerging markets are the backbone of the economy. we put out a quarter billion dollars out there to help small businesses go online and survive in this new digital economy, and thrive. emily: all right. well, fascinating to hear you on such a wide range of topics. michael miebach, ceo of mastercard. obviously the company has evolved into much more than a credit card company. coming up, shopify's fourth quarter sales soaring past estimates, but they expect to see slowing growth.

we are going to break it down with the president of shopify, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: after a meteoric rise in 2020 that made it canada's most valuable company, shopify has a lot to live up to. revenue in the fourth quarter was $978 million, beating forecast propelled by a boom in online shopping. but the company is anticipating a slower pace of growth due to a resurgence of brick-and-mortar stores, as more vaccines roll out. shares declined after earnings. joining us not to discuss, harley finkelstein. talk to us about what you see in the second half of the year as we move into a new normal. we just heard the ceo of mastercard talk about what is happening with small businesses. to be fair, they benefit on either end, whether you are buying online or in person. harley: i think there is a lot to be optimistic even in the second half of 2021. last time i was on your show i mentioned it feels like the real tail world that would have existed in 2030 was pulled back to 2020.

so we have seen this massive catalyst to acceleration of digitalization in retail. but you heard this in our earnings this morning, but we are writing the future of commerce. entrepreneurs are the heroes of the shopify story. you talked about we are the independent brands, and the rebels are winning and consumers have been voting with their wallets to buy from independent brands wherever possible. in 2020, 47 million consumers purchased from a shopify merchant, up 52% from 2019. and that helped expand shopify to be the second largest e-commerce retailer in the u.s.

shopify is now 9% of all u.s. e-commerce. if you think about it, shopify is a proxy for independent retail for direct to consumer retail. we only succeed when our merchants do. we now have more than 1.7 million merchants on shopify. people from first-time entrepreneurs making their first sale every 28 seconds, to the likes of hallmark and peer arena -- and revenue nearly doubled year-over-year to $978 million. gmv was above $40 billion, up 99%. there's a lot to be optimistic about. and we think the future will look a lot more like independent brands than department stores that existed in the past. emily: so, it's interesting, you announced last week that shop pay will be off shopify for the first time, powering transactions on facebook and instagram. how much growth are you seeing there? harley: we announced that last

week, our accelerated check out. it not only helps merchants get more sales, buyers can revert better and faster. now we think providing it to the instagram and facebook platforms means our merchants cannot only accept new customers on those platforms, and anywhere were customers are, but can now transact in a more efficient way. but what you are seeing is shopify is becoming far more than an e-commerce provider. we are making it as easy as possible, where the cost of failure is as low as possible, so more people can participate in entrepreneurship. but we think the future is wherever consumers are, so that is what we are trying to build. seeing shop pay move into facebook and instagram is a great way to demonstrate where the future of retail is happening. emily: quickly on the subject of participation, elon musk recently tweeted about shopify, saying it was great, spacex uses

it. that sent the stock up. it reminds me of this gamestop hearing which we are going into, where you are seeing the shift of power from institutions to individual investors. i am wondering as the president of a public company, what your view on this is. harley: i think more people per dissipating in the equity markets anticipating in buying companies they think are valuable is a wonderful thing. but in terms of how we run our business, we are not monitoring stock-price day-to-day. we are trying to get to a point where we completely democratize entrepreneurship. so we use 100 year perspective. we want to build a 100 year company. we are about 15 years into our journey right now. in a long run we are happy where shopify is, but on the topic of more participation in the equity market, we think that is also democratizing. so i think if you do it prudently and carefully, buyer beware, there's a way for this to be a positive story long-term.

emily: ok. harley finkelstein, president of shopify, thank you so much for stopping by. coming up, expectations have been skyhigh for apple on suggestions of a new iphone super cycle, but much more to look forward to in 2021. a sneak peek at our power up series, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

mark: i'm mark gurman. on this week's episode of power up, i will be taking a look at what to expect from apple this year and in the years to come. if you are an apple user, there is a lot to look forward to in 2021. first, let's talk about the ipad. the company is planning to announce the new ipad pro the coming months and it will look similar to current models but as a new mini led screen to the larger version.

that will make the tablet ever so slightly thicker, but the improvements will mean a brighter screen and far better contrast ratios. you can also expect a new processor that is on par with the m1 chip, 5g, and better cameras. you can also look forward to a thinner entry-level ipad later in 2021. onto the mac. the company is planning major new versions of the macbook pro, macbook air, imac, and mac pro, all with in-house chip. you can expect them to launch around the middle of the year. we will have minor design changes, but also remove the controversial touch of our, -- touch bar. bring back the magnetic charger, and to the joy of youtubers and photographers, mark the return of the st card slot. -- sd card slot. the macbook air will be going much thinner. that laptop will also bring back the max 8 charger. the imacs will see their first full redesign in nearly a decade towards the end of the year, getting a design similar to the

$5000 pro display xdr. there is also a new mac pro in the works, leveraging apple's more power efficient chips. you can also expect an updated intel mac pro for users who need true intel compatibility. of course ever wants to know about the new iphones. expect the lineup in the fall that will look similar to the iphone 12, but the possibility of an -- one should expect new apple watches to launch around that time, too. further in the pipeline, likely in 2022, is vr and ar headsets that is pricey and will focus on gaming and communications. much further out will be a pair of ar glasses that can overlay information like text, maps, n -- maps and notifications to the wearer's field of view. and apple has a team working on car interiors, exteriors, batteries, and other

technologies. but don't expect a tesla rival for at least another five years. i am mark gurman. this is power up. emily: bloomberg's mark gurman reporting there. a reminder, we will be covering special coverage of the gamestop hearing tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. eastern time. included on the witness list, the robinhood ceo, the citadel ceo, and the reddit ceo. we are just getting in steve's testimony. quote, we have since analyzed the activity in wall street bets to determine whether bots, foreign agents, or other that actors played a significant role. they have not. in every metric we checked the activity was well within parameters and moderation tools were working as expected. he goes on to call wallstreetbets a real community. again, our coverage begins at noon eastern time. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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