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Formula One racing is marketed as being  all about competition, a competition that rewards instinct, speed, engineering innovation, and sheer adrenaline. Given how the crypto industry feels about fast cars and men with big personalities, it’s perhaps no surprise that crypto is emerging as one of the biggest sponsors of Formula 1. Companies ranging from FTX to Crypto.com have spent  millions of dollars on flashy deals.

Around 80% of F1 teams have at least one crypto partner. Crypto.com even has a $100 million deal with the Formula One Group itself.  But in this current market environment, how long can crypto firms keep splashing the cash? In this episode, Bloomberg senior editor Anna Irrera and Bloomberg crypto blogger Emily Nicolle discuss the future of crypto’s fast car sponsorships.

Follow us on Twitter @crypto, and subscribe to the Bloomberg Crypto Newsletter at https://bloom.bg/cryptonewsletter

This  podcast  is produced by the Bloomberg  Crypto  p odcast  team: Supervising producer: Vicki Vergolina, Senior Producer: Janet Babin, Producers: Sharon Beriro and Muhammad Farouk, Associate Producers: Mo Andam and Ty Butler. Sound Design/Engineer:  Desta Wondirad.

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(Bloomberg) — Yahoo Inc. is facing a final decision from the European Union over possible violations of the bloc’s strict data protection rules.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said on Monday that it has finalized its draft decision on Yahoo’s EU unit and sought input from privacy watchdogs in the other 26 EU nations. The watchdog opened the investigation in August 2019.

“The inquiry examined the company’s compliance with the requirements to provide transparent information to data subjects under the provisions of the” EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the authority’s deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said. Regulators have until Nov. 24 to send any “relevant and reasoned objections.”

The EU’s GDPR came into force in 2018 and gave privacy regulators across the bloc unprecedented powers to fine companies as much as 4% of annual sales for serious violations. The law also made the Irish commission the lead authority for Silicon Valley’s biggest firms, who have their EU base in the country, including Meta Platforms Inc. and Twitter Inc.

 

 

 

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(Bloomberg) — Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX experienced an increase in withdrawals after competitor Binance Holdings Ltd. announced plans to divest its entire holding of FTX’s native FTT token. 

Reserves of stablecoins on FTX dropped to $114 million on Monday from $394 million three days earlier, according to data from CryptoQuant. Hourly withdrawals of Ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, also rose sharply on the exchange, CryptoQuant data showed. 

“Based on the on-chain flows, it looks like FTX is experiencing a high volume of withdrawals,” said Hayden Hughes, chief executive of Singapore-based trading platform Alpha Impact. “So far it looks that they’ve been able to meet those.”

Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng said on Twitter on Sunday that he’d decided to sell all of the company’s FTT tokens, worth about $529 million at the time. The announcement caused FTT’s price to drop and triggered unease in wider crypto markets, with Solana, a token backed by FTX, down 7.1%. 

Read more: Binance to Sell $529 Million of Bankman-Fried’s FTT Tokens

When Binance exited an investment in FTX last year, it received $2.1 billion in Binance USD and FTT coins, the remainder of which it has decided to unload, Zhao said in his tweet, citing “recent revelations that came to light.” 

In a tweet on Monday, FTX said it was “churning through” Bitcoin withdrawal transactions, making some changes to “help speed it up.” It added that transactions involving stablecoin issuance and redemption may be slower as banks were closed over the weekend. Stablecoins are tokens whose value are pegged to a certain asset, such as the dollar.

Bankman-Fried also took to the social-media app to reassure investors.

News site CoinDesk said in a Nov. 2 story that much of the balance sheet of Alameda Research — a crypto trading house Bankman-Fried owns — is comprised of the FTT token. 

On Sunday, Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda, said “that specific balance sheet is for a subset of our corporate entities, we have >$10b of assets that aren’t reflected here.” Ellison later offered to buy all the FTT tokens from Binance at a price of $22. 

FTT was trading at $22.49 at 10 a.m. in London on Monday, according to CoinGecko, down 3% in the past 24 hours. 

–With assistance from Emily Nicolle.

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(Bloomberg) — Twitter Inc. is heading into its second full workweek under Elon Musk with half its workforce, mounting losses and a couple of unexpected reversals to its plans.

The social-media company laid off close to 3,700 people on Friday, only to reach out soon thereafter to dozens of employees who it decided were either fired in error or too essential to the changes the billionaire businessman wants to make. 

Another of Musk’s key early goals — adding verification check marks for members of its monthly subscription service — is being delayed until Wednesday to avoid potential chaos during the US midterm elections.

The whiplash events, as described by people familiar with the situation or in an internal company memo posted on Slack, follow Musk’s own acknowledgment in a tweet that the company he and well-heeled partners bought for $44 billion is losing $4 million a day.

Twitter lopped its workforce as a way to trim costs following Musk’s acquisition, which closed in late October. Many employees learned they lost their job after their access to companywide systems, like email and Slack, were suddenly suspended. The requests for employees to return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was.

A Twitter spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for comment. Twitter’s plan to hire back workers was previously reported by Platformer.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted on Friday.

Some regions were hit harder than others. The company fired more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend, severely depleting its engineering and product staff, people familiar with the matter said. The cuts left the company with about a dozen staff in the growth market, they said. 

Read More: Twitter Fires More Than 90% of India Staff, Leaving Just a Dozen

Meta Platforms Inc., which is also struggling to contain costs after investing heavily in its metaverse project, may announce significant job cuts this week, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the plans. Layoffs at the Facebook owner, which are expected to affect thousands of workers, could begin as soon as Wednesday, the newspaper reported. 

Twitter has close to 3,700 employees remaining, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk is pushing those who remain at the company to move quickly in shipping new features, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines.

Twitter has said it’s rolling out new features to its Twitter Blue subscription plan, offering a verification check mark for any user who pays the monthly fee. The company also said it will soon be launching other features, including half the ads, the ability to post longer videos and get priority ranking in replies, mentions and searches.

Twitter will issue the new blue verification check marks to users who pay $7.99 a month for the service starting on Nov. 9, according to an internal company message that was posted on Slack. The company had previously planned to roll out the subscription feature Nov. 7, the day before the election. 

The company received internal and external feedback that the verification process for its Twitter Blue program could be ripe for abuse, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified. That raised concerns that candidates and other political actors might be impersonated on the site in the days before the US election. 

Late Sunday, Musk said Twitter would ban accounts that impersonate others, after several high-profile users changed their names and pictures to match the billionaire. Any name change at all will cause a temporary loss of a verified check mark.

–With assistance from Sankalp Phartiyal.

(Updates with India, Meta layoffs from eighth paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Equities erased losses after a weak European opening, and the dollar gave up its gains, as traders took advantage of light positioning amid conflicting headlines fueling volatility.

Risk sentiment remained impaired as US corporate performance showed signs of faltering and China throttled rumors of a more lenient Covid policy. Treasury yields climbed across the curve in a bear-flattening move. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes added at least 0.2% each after dropping earlier. European stocks rose, led by travel shares. Chinese technology stocks in Hong Kong gained from progress in efforts to prevent their US delisting.

After sparking a global-market rally last week, speculation about China’s reopening received a reality check when authorities said the nation will “unswervingly” adhere to current policy. That — and muted trade data from the world’s second-biggest economy — added to worries over the world economy already under pressure from signs of slowing US corporate performance. Investors now turn their attention to US inflation figures due Thursday for their next catalyst.

 

Two-year Treasuries led a selloff in bonds as the undercurrent of global sentiment continued to be dictated by Federal Reserve policy. The two- and 30-year curve flattened by 3 basis points to 44 on Monday.

Europe’s equity benchmark, the Stoxx 600, rose for a second successive day and traded above its 100-day moving average.

Oil fell as traders fretted that China’s Zero Covid policy will delay an economic recovery and undercut demand. West Texas Intermediate futures shed almost 1%, falling toward the $91-per-barrel mark.

US data Friday — showing strong hiring and wage increases along with higher unemployment — offered a mixed picture for Fed officials debating how long to extend their campaign to curb elevated inflation.

“Over the next three to four months, dollar will continue to keep moving higher,” Mahjabeen Zaman, head of FX research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s really consistent with the recent FOMC Fed meeting we had where they said they’re going to slow the pace but push on peak rates.”

Meanwhile, investor confidence remained on the edge after Apple Inc. said it expected to produce at least three million fewer iPhone 14 handsets than originally anticipated this year, according to people familiar with its plans. Of the 430 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported quarterly earnings so far, almost a quarter have missed estimates.

 

Markets will watch the latest US inflation reading on Thursday after the core consumer price index rose more than forecast to a 40-year high in September. Even if prices begin to moderate, the CPI is far above the Fed’s comfort zone.

Key events this week:

• Fed officials Susan Collins, Loretta Mester and Tom Barkin speak at events, Monday
• Euro zone retail sales, Tuesday
• US midterm elections, Tuesday
• EIA oil inventory report, Wednesday
• China aggregate financing, PPI, CPI, money supply, new yuan loans, Wednesday
• US wholesale inventories, MBA mortgage applications, Wednesday
• Fed officials John Williams, Tom Barkin speak at events, Wednesday
• US CPI, US initial jobless claims, Thursday
• Fed officials Lorie Logan, Esther George, Loretta Mester speak at events, Thursday
• US University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.2% as of 8:43 a.m. London time
• Futures on the S&P 500 rose 0.2%
• Futures on the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.3%
• Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%
• The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.4%
• The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 1.3%

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed
• The euro rose 0.2% to $0.9978
• The Japanese yen fell 0.2% to 146.98 per dollar
• The offshore yuan fell 0.7% to 7.2338 per dollar
• The British pound rose 0.1% to $1.1395

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin fell 2.2% to $20,668.66
• Ether fell 2.4% to $1,566.09

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced two basis points to 4.18%
• Germany’s 10-year yield advanced four basis points to 2.33%
• Britain’s 10-year yield advanced five basis points to 3.58%

Commodities

• Brent crude fell 0.6% to $97.99 a barrel
• Spot gold fell 0.5% to $1,673.67 an ounce

–With assistance from Michael G. Wilson and Tassia Sipahutar.

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(Bloomberg) — UK Trade Minister Greg Hands is holding talks with Taiwanese officials to “future-proof” Britain’s economy in the coming decades, as Rishi Sunak’s administration looks to take a harder stance on China.

The in-person trip to Taipei, aimed at boosting economic ties between the countries, comes as the UK takes an increasingly protectionist approach to Chinese investment. Prime Minister Sunak has described China as the “biggest long-term threat to Britain,” and during his summer leadership race against Liz Truss said China is “attempting to bully their neighbors, including Taiwan.”

The talks will focus on industries like financial technology, renewable energy and pharmaceuticals, according to a statement Monday. The UK noted that Taiwan is a leading manufacturer of semiconductors — a key component in electric devices — and crucial because Britain is close to making a decision on a probe into a Chinese-led takeover of Newport Wafer Fab, which owns the country’s largest semiconductor plant.

China Relationship Is Casualty of Truss-Sunak Battle to Lead UK

“Boosting trade with this vital partner is part of the UK’s post-Brexit tilt towards the Indo-Pacific and closer collaboration will help us future-proof our economy in the decades to come,” Hands said in the statement. 

China rejects nations it has ties with having official interactions with Taiwan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday at a regular press briefing in Beijing. He called on the UK “to earnestly respect China’s sovereignty” and “stop sending wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces.”

On Sunday, China sent 46 warplanes and four navy vessels toward Taiwan, the Defense Ministry in Taipei said in a tweet. The number of aircraft was the biggest since Sept. 1, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.

–With assistance from Lucille Liu and Cindy Wang.

(Updates with comments from China’s Foreign Ministry.)

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(Bloomberg) — Twitter Inc. fired more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend — part of global reductions by new owner Elon Musk — severely depleting its engineering and product staff in a potential growth market.

The company employed just over 200 people in India, and the cuts left it with just about a dozen staff, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

India is a key growth engine for global internet companies such as Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which are relying on its large potential pool of new online users. Yet the companies are also facing increasingly strict content regulations aimed at reining in big tech firms in the country.

About 70% of the jobs cut in India were from the product and engineering team which worked on a global mandate, one of the people said. Positions were also slashed across functions including marketing, public policy and corporate communications, the people said. Globally, San Francisco, California-based Twitter reduced its headcount by about half or roughly 3,700 workers.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

India has one of the most febrile political conversations on Twitter, with competing parties regularly slinging allegations back and forth and accusing each other of spreading misinformation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has more than 84 million followers on the service. It’s unclear how Twitter expects to moderate that discourse with its newly reduced staff in the country, which has more than 100 languages.

Twitter’s India offices are located in New Delhi, the financial capital of Mumbai and the southern tech hub of Bengaluru.

The company has about 3,700 employees remaining globally, Bloomberg News has reported. Musk is pushing those who remain to move quickly in shipping new features, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines.

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(Bloomberg) — The dollar strengthened on its appeal as a haven while Asian stocks climbed amid split market sentiment over the prospects of China easing its Covid-Zero stance. US and European equity futures edged lower.

Shares in Hong Kong advanced, quickly reversing initial declines, as investors looked beyond risks over virus policy to pile into Chinese tech and property companies. Benchmark gauges rose across Asia, putting the MSCI Asia Pacific Index on course for a one-month highest.

It was as different picture in currency markets, where the greenback strengthened against all of its Group-of-10 counterparts. The Australian and New Zealand dollars saw the largest drops given their sensitivity to the outlook for Chinese economic growth. The offshore yuan was weaker.

Oil and gold also remained down, but above their lows for the session.

Confidence was also damped after Apple Inc. said it expected to produce at least three million fewer iPhone 14 handsets than originally anticipated this year, according to people familiar with its plans.   

Markets continue to be whiplashed as traders veer between hope of China reopening from Covid-19 and fear that harsh curbs will persist. Chinese officials on Saturday vowed to remain “unswervingly” strict in Beijing’s approach to stamping out the coronavirus. The nation’s shares had rallied aggressively on Friday on bets for an easing of virus curbs.

“Sentiment on Chinese stocks is so low that any potential catalyst would send stocks racing,” David Chao, global market strategist for Asia Pacific ex-Japan at Invesco Ltd. “Pent-up money sitting on the sidelines is chasing this rally. If you look at the stocks that have benefited, it’s the large-cap tech stocks and I’m not surprised.”

The debate over China’s outlook comes as investors contend with headwinds from Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes. US data Friday — showing strong hiring and wage increases along with higher unemployment — offered a mixed picture for Fed officials debating how long to extend their campaign to curb elevated inflation.

“Over the next three to four months, dollar will continue to keep moving higher,” Mahjabeen Zaman, head of FX research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s really consistent with the recent FOMC Fed meeting we had where they said they’re going to slow the pace but push on peak rates.”

Two-year US yields, which are more sensitive to imminent policy moves, rose slightly Monday while 10-year yields ticked lower.

Markets will watch the latest US inflation reading on Thursday after the core consumer price index rose more than forecast to a 40-year high in September. Even if prices begin to moderate, the CPI is far above the Fed’s comfort zone.

Key events this week:

• Fed officials Susan Collins, Loretta Mester and Tom Barkin speak at events, Monday
• Euro zone retail sales, Tuesday
• US midterm elections, Tuesday
• EIA oil inventory report, Wednesday
• China aggregate financing, PPI, CPI, money supply, new yuan loans, Wednesday
• US wholesale inventories, MBA mortgage applications, Wednesday
• Fed officials John Williams, Tom Barkin speak at events, Wednesday
• US CPI, US initial jobless claims, Thursday
• Fed officials Lorie Logan, Esther George, Loretta Mester speak at events, Thursday
• US University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• S&P 500 futures fell 0.1% as of 6:37 a.m. London time. The S&P 500 rise 1.4% on Friday
• Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.2%. The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.6%
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures fell less than 0.1%
• The Topix Index rose 1%
• The Kospi index rose 1%
• The Hang Seng Index rose 3.2%
• The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3%
• S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 0.6%

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%
• The euro fell 0.1% to $0.9946
• The Japanese yen fell 0.4% to 147.21 per dollar
• The offshore yuan fell 0.6% to 7.2268 per dollar
• The Australian dollar fell 0.6% to $0.6430

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin fell 1.1% to $20,902.54
• Ether fell 1.2% to $1,585.65

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined one basis point to 4.15%
• Australia’s 10-year yield advanced five basis points to 3.90%

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.2% to $91.51 a barrel
• Spot gold fell 0.6% to $1,671.33 an ounce

–With assistance from Michael G. Wilson.

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(Bloomberg) — A high-resolution satellite image taken less than 48 hours ago shows a cloud of the powerful greenhouse gas methane near a waste facility in India. The image is the second in a series of exclusive observations Bloomberg Green will publish during COP27 from emissions monitoring firm GHGSat Inc.

The detection highlights how piles of garbage — which generate the potent greenhouse gas when organic material like food scraps break down in the absence of oxygen — are triggering some of the world’s strongest and most persistent methane emissions. Landfills and wastewater are responsible for about 20% of the methane emissions generated from human activity.

The satellite image was taken at 1:28 pm Mumbai time on Nov. 5 and shows a plume of methane that GHGSat attributed to a landfill in India. The estimated emissions rate was 1,328 kilograms per hour of methane. Landfills tend to be persistent emitters, according to the Montreal-based company. 

Read more: The Trash Mountains of South Asia That Threaten the Climate

Scientists say reducing the emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, which has 84 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere, is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to cool the planet.

Failing to curb releases from the waste sector could derail global climate goals. Diverting food scraps and other organics before they enter a landfill is crucial to limiting future emissions. The impact of legacy dumps can be mitigated through aerating piles of trash and gas capture systems.

The latest imagery comes as world leaders gather in Egypt this week to discuss climate change policy, with the UN warning that global temperatures in 2022 are likely to end about 1.15C above the average in pre-industrial times, making it the fifth or sixth hottest year on record.

China

The first image in the series, published Sunday, showed six methane releases in northeast China near the Daqing oilfield, according to GHGSat. Estimated emissions rates ranged between 446 and 884 kilograms per hour and the cumulative rate was 4,477 kilograms an hour. If the releases lasted for an hour at that rate they would have the same short-term climate impact as the annual emissions from about 81 US cars.

Methane is the primary component of natural gas and responsible for about 30% of the Earth’s warming. Leaks can occur during extraction and transport of the fossil fuel, but methane is also routinely generated as a byproduct of oil and coal production and if operators don’t have infrastructure to get the gas to market they may release it into the atmosphere. The International Energy Agency has called for oil and gas operators to halt all non-emergency methane venting. 

The detections highlight the rapidly expanding ability of satellites to identify and track methane almost anywhere in the world that is driving a new era of climate transparency in which greenhouse gases will be quantified and attributed in near real-time to individual assets and companies.  

More companies and institutions are launching multi-spectral satellites that can detect methane’s unique signature. GHGSat has six satellites in orbit now dedicated to monitoring industrial methane and aims to launch another five by the end of next year. US non-profit Environmental Defense Fund plans to launch its MethaneSAT in 2023 and a consortium including Carbon Mapper, the state of California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planet Labs expects to launch two satellites next year. 

In 2021, concentrations of methane in the atmosphere had the biggest year-on-year jump since measurements began four  decades ago, according to the World Meteorological Organization. 

 

(Adds additional details)

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(Bloomberg) — After a weekend where several high-profile users changed their names and pictures to match Elon Musk’s, Twitter’s new owner says the social media platform will crack down on the practice.

“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying parody will be permanently suspended without warning,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post. 

“Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning,” he said. This will be “clearly identified” as a condition for signing up to the company’s paid subscription service Twitter Blue, Musk said. He added that any name change at all will cause temporary loss of a verified check mark. 

Several users who had impersonated Musk’s Twitter handle, including comedian Kathy Griffin and former NFL player Chris Kluwe, have since had their accounts suspended. Musk later tweeted that Griffin can have her account back for $8, which is the monthly cost of a Twitter Blue subscription.

Read more: Twitter Delays Change to Check-Mark Badges Until After Midterms

(Updates with Musk’s tweet in fourth paragraph.)

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