This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg IHOD podcast, and I'm Philip Blugger Cranzler, senior editor for cryptot Bloomberg News, in for Stacy Marie Ishmael. It is Friday, February the twenty fourth. Hello, and welcome to another This Week in Crypto episode. Coin Base reported earnings again and it wasn't pretty. A big loss and training volumes missed estimates, and the prospect of more layoffs seems to remain very much alive.
In Nigeria, the Central Bank is seeking technology partners for developing its digital currency called the Nira, and Hong Kong is making strides in its effort to embrace crypto and may even have the TACIT approval of the central government in Beijing. So to help me break down the latest developments in the world of digital assets in person, I'm
joined by Bloomberg editors Best Williams and Anna Irrera. All right, we're here in the London studio for the first time, I believe all three of us, Beth and Anna, welcome gathered here in the London studio. Anna, obviously you are a resident of London and you've been here before. Beth, is your first time, isn't it? Not to London? No, but the first time in a while. I was supposed to come right before COVID and then of course that
changed everything. But most certainly first time in the London studio. In the London studio, yes, And I usually dial in from Zurich. So it's very nice to sit here with you guys, face to face and talk about all things crypto. And so let's get into it. Coin Base ported earnings fourth quarter earnings this week, and it was not very pretty, was it, Beth. Can you give us the sort of potted highlights of what they came up with? Yes? Not pretty? Is it one way to frame it? There were was
expectations that it was going to be bad. It was bad. Yeah, down in a big way. And while they beat expectations for these reduced revenue or less of a loss, their revenue was actually down some seventy five percent from a year ago, Transaction revenue tumbled, Trading volumes were down actually twenty three percent, and they've been losing coin Base is affected obviously that they're a crypto exchange, so if trading
volumes are down, they're going to be hurt. We know what happened in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty two. FTX imploded, the market went down, and then just finally on the stock. The stock fell more than eighty percent in twenty twenty two, and it's had quite a rally in coming into this year, along with the rest of the crypto market in general and other crypto stocks. Whether it has further to go is anybody's guests and analysts are a little cautious about it. Even the company itself
is cautious. The CFO on the earnings call said not to make a lot out of the January and February rebound in crypto necessarily, even though they've seen trading volume increase, and they've also said that they are going to keep headcount at least where it is, and they may even cut more jobs. So there's definitely not a sense that they're out of the out of the woods. Yet that was interesting to me that they would not basically rule
out more job cuts. I mean, you've had you saw them take out about twenty percent of the workforce earlier, and then you've had this massive or you know, fairly substantial rally across crypto, and these sort of cautious comments that they're making and would you how would you read what's your read on that coin? Miss has been through the winters before, right, they're one of the oldest sort
of og crypto exchanges. They've been at it before, so you know, you could be a little bit confident that they at least know how to shrink and expand very quickly. The difference here now is that they're public, right, they were in public before, so everybody can take a close look at their numbers and can scrutinize, and they have investors they have to respond to, and they will have
like investor relations and speak to people. So I imagine they're having to be more cautious because they can't even signal to the market that things are picking up. And you know it has picked up, but volumes are nowhere near what they were last year, and it takes several months of rally before your fees go back to what they were before. Right, And as much as they have been diversifying, I think the biggest era where exchanges make
money as trading fees. So if volumes don't pick up, they don't, so maybe they can start thinking of ways to make money on other things that are kind of like crypto winterproof. I don't know, I was thinking maybe things like analytics, like stuff that's different. I'm thinking, like, you know, traditional exchanges had to reduce their reliance on rating fees, you know, especially in equities when fees were compressed, and so we saw them buying technology companies and becoming
software providers. So I wonder if they'll start thinking of ways to do that. But obviously they have less money now, so they can't really go out and buy things. So it's just an interesting thing to see if they can sort of if they survive this winter, and then if they can future proof their exchange for another crypto winter. And I'm going to make a pretty big switch now and we're going to talk about central bank digital currencies
CBDCs in Nigeria. So Anna, you were part of this story this week about the Nira and some of the developments there. Can you talk a little bit about what's
going on? So? Yeah, So this week we reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria is looking for new partners for the Nira, which is the central bank digital currency that they launch in twenty twenty one, which made them the first African nation to launch the central bank digital currency on one of the first nations in the world, really, because a lot of central banks are talking about it, especially the big ones, but very few have launched them.
They're looking for a new partner, not to replace bit which is their current partner straight away, but what they want to do, based on what sources have told us, is that they want to take more control of the system so that they control the ledger and it's their own. So the discussions are early days, but it just shows how like things are changing and moving, and it raises many of the questions that you know, we have when we think of, you know, a digital ear or a
brick cooin, which is like when is it coming? When will I be able to pay my coffee with a digital year. I don't know if you guys think about it when you wake up, I don't put some people might right, right, but but you know, one of the things is like you're you're planning now for a token that a product will come out in like five years, and so you know, if you if you think about it, the technology you might be deciding to implement now might
be really bad in five years. And so this this shows how like complex it is, and maybe the you know, central banks that rush to put out things before maybe find themselves now in a situation like a technological situation. Then it's not ideal. And as Beth knows because she edited a really great piece earlier this year, the Innira has had really not great adoption, as have other CBDCs that are out there, because one of the big questions is, yeah, kay, you put it out, but like, does anybody want to
use it? What's the point? Isn't one of the points here that you have, As you said, Nira is very much in a developing country. Britcoin is very much in a developed country with a fairly robust fintic infrastructure already. Doesn't Nigeria have a good case here when it comes to, you know, wanting to establish a CBDC in a more sament developing environment. On the face of it, yes, I think that is one of the main pushes behind it
to get to the quote unbanked population. And they're even allowing you to be able to use the use the Nira via mobile phone. You don't even have to have a digital wallet. They're doing those kinds of technical innovations. One of the issues that's come up with. Then Ira in terms of adoption is very funny because it kind of relates to crypto. Two, as a developing nation and one with sort of a struggling economy. They've have rampant inflation,
they have a devaluing currency. The economy is not doing so well, and many Nigerians are fleeing to crypto, as in the cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and tokens like that, and not the Nira, which they see as a proxy for this currency that's devaluing. And so for them, they don't
see any protection. They don't they see better use in crypto, which actually confusingly that you know, the central bank is against that kind of crypto, the crypto that we all think about, and they're trying to promote this central bank digital currency that a lot of people don't want, though they do want crypto. And so you've got this weird
disconnect going on in Nigeria. And that's another issue on top of the technical issues that Anna mentions, which which it's true, you want to make sure that that one should get it up and running, that it's actually gonna not get hacked or or you know, break otherwise, and we'll be right back after the break with Anna Errera and Beth Williams. I do want to move further east
now and talk a little bit about Hong Kong. We've done a smattering of stories about Hong Kong and the sort of tentative embrace of crypto and Hong Kong as an outlined a plan to let retail investors trade digital tokens like bitcoin and ether. That's a major step towards the city's goal of becoming a crypto harbor in a policy shift for contrast with the crankdown we're now seeing. Beth, could you do sort of briefly tell us a little
bit about what's happening there lately. Hong Kong was a financial powerhouse for much of recent decades, and lately, with China's increasing control, seeing sort of a fleeing of of that financial power and influence. Um, Phil you yourself have moved from Hong Kong to Zurich. Sort that's when things
started going really downhill for the Hong Kong um. But starting in the fall, uh, you know, China and has been supporting and Hong Kong has been trying to reinvigorate its incentives and attractiveness to the financial community, including crypto. So they have come out with some recent proposals and regulations that are more crypto friendly. You can trade crypto futures, and they recently came out with a proposal that's going to lead toward retail investors being able to trade the
spot cryptocurrency. Yeah, they haven't completely specified, but it seems like it would definitely be those two and another large one. But the interesting aspect of the Hong Kong situation is that China, which was a huge incubator of all things crypto, crackdown on the industry basically banned it over a year ago. Now there's a sense that Hong Kong, with its ties to China, has a lot of people saying could this possibly be leading to or signaling some kind of pivot
from China. And we just recently reported Bloomberg reported that some Chinese mainland liaison officers have been asking questions and seeing how things are going in Hong Kong. So there's raising this expectation that perhaps China could change course a little. I mean, I think that's that's a big statement, and I think that would be a long way off. I mean,
they were pretty severe in the pullback that they made. Yeah, and there's another aspect here in that Singapore which sort of stole the crown early on in the race, Hong Kong was trying to buy itself out of the COVID depths, and Singapore now has kind of gotten a little bit of cold feet, you know when it comes to retail trading our crypto, and do you see that Hong Kong perceived potentially like a little bit of a gap here
to start stealing a march on. I think it's now just funny how you have the SEC, not just the SEC, but all yours authorities being so aggressive that even someone saying well, let you trade bitcoin and either seems like such a giant concession. It's I mean, it's you know, we went from trade whatever thing you can find on against crypto and find like there's no problem to now like we'll let you trade bitcoine either and everybody being excited. And I think it just shows how, you know, it's
it's interesting. Throughout crypto's history, we've had waves where the volumes were coming from Asia at the very big like not very beginning, but early rally days, a lot of the volume was on Chinese exchanges, which led people to think, you know, how do we know that it's true? And there were instances of wash trading that were like documented
by figures that are still in crypto these days. And so like we've had crackdowns, and then from crackdowns cryptos moved to another region and then it's come back, and you know, it's just a question of like moving somewhere. It's just like very shifty crypto, it moves from place to the next. But the wonder is, you know, people are very much talking about is the US dad, we see them, everybody leave? Is there no interest? But you know,
it's it's a massive domestic market. That's where the money is, That's where finances in the end. And so I wonder whether really, you know, maybe trading will move to Hong Kong for a few years and then once rules get in commonplace in the US, or people find another way to like skirt them with like some big giant narrative about some other new thing, they go back and then
they get cracked down again. But I don't I don't know if anybody will get like the crown for good, like if we measure you know, crypto hubs by the size of investments and startups and innovation. And in the end, it's really, you know, always the US. But if we measure it by trading volumes, and it's a bit different because in one case, we don't even know where the exchange is based, like Finance is the biggest change. We don't know where their headquarters is. So would you say
their volumes are you? Could you judge it by their users, like do we trust that users or where they say they are. It's just like a giant, you know, conundrum. I guess we'll have to wait a few months and see how it goes for Hong Kong in its crypto endeavors. Anna and Beth, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. This was Bloomberg editors Anna Errera and Beth Williams.
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The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Vergelina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Farouk and Sharon Barrero. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and Moses on Them. Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron. I'm Stacy, Marie Ishmael. Have a great weekend.