00:46.7
As for Wall Street, futures are higher as traders await more financial releases from corporate America.
00:51.9
The latest was moments ago, airline giant Boeing, which posted better than expected quarterly earnings.
00:58.7
Revenues were at 60%.
01:00.0
It was at $16.5 billion, while earnings per share stood at $1.13.
01:07.6
Here's some stocks to watch out for.
01:09.7
Monitoring shares of French luxury group Caring after it warned it expects a sharp downturn in first-half profits as a result of declining goods sales.
01:18.7
Caring shares sank 8% in midday trading.
01:21.7
Also, in focus shares of UBS, company executives told shareholders,
01:25.6
the bank has major concerns about the Swiss government's plan to hit UBS.
01:30.0
UBS is the country's largest lender with tougher capital requirements.
01:33.6
UBS's rescue of its former rival Credit Suisse in 2023 brought to $1.7 trillion its total balance sheet,
01:42.5
twice the size of Switzerland's annual economic output.
01:46.0
The chairman of UBS insists the bank is not an entity that's too big to fail.
01:51.0
UBS shares last traded in the red, down by 1%.
01:54.5
We're also keeping a close watch on shares of Tesla after it eased some worries.
01:59.6
It's about growth on a promise to roll out more affordable cars.
02:04.0
Tesla shares surged 12% on the news.
02:08.3
Meanwhile, Asian markets ended today's trade higher, also driven by tech and more corporate earnings in the region.
02:14.9
The Nikkei Index was the leader of today's rally on bets of intervention by the Bank of Japan on the weaker yen.
02:20.8
The ASX 200, meanwhile, was flat as Australia's inflation rate cooled for a fifth straight quarter.
02:29.6
Now, here at home, Philippine shares joined the regional upswing as bargain-hunting returns at the local stock market.
02:38.3
After the heavy sell-off in the previous weeks, we're bullish that the market is on its way to an upward trend,
02:47.3
especially as investors are looking to rebuild their portfolio after the index did see itself consecutively drop for like nine days.
02:59.6
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Shanghai for a three-day visit.
03:06.5
America's top diplomat will kick off his visit with a meeting with business leaders at the Chinese financial hub.
03:12.8
He heads next to Beijing for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
03:16.7
A meeting with President Xi Jinping also likely.
03:20.0
Blinken is the latest highest-level U.S. official to visit China as the two global superpowers try to iron out differences on a wide area of issues.
03:29.9
Including trade and security.
03:32.6
Blinken is expected to press China to stop its firms from resupplying Russia's defense industrial base.
03:39.3
A State Department official said Washington is prepared to take steps against Chinese firms that it believes are damaging U.S. and European security.
03:49.8
Here are some local corporate headlines.
03:52.0
Oceana Gold Philippines sets the final offer price for its initial public offering.
03:56.7
The mining firm announced that around $2.8 billion.
03:59.8
Common shares will be offered at 13 pesos and 33 centavos apiece.
04:05.4
OGPI seeks to raise over 7 billion pesos from its market debut on May 13th.
04:10.7
It will become the first IPO listing at the Philippine Stock Exchange this year.
04:16.1
And GSIS saw its bottom line grow 21% in the first quarter of the year.
04:21.6
The insurance system for state workers cites strong revenue growth as it focuses on building efficiencies in its various businesses.
04:28.8
Total assets are now at 1.7 trillion pesos.
04:32.7
The GSIS says its pension fund can now last until 2058 due to sustained investment returns.
04:41.4
The Philippines logs its highest electricity consumption rate of the year amid searing temperatures.
04:48.2
As Alvin El Chico tells us, industry experts are worried the country's power situation may still worsen.
04:56.6
After Luzon and Visayas,
04:58.8
now comes Mindanao.
05:00.6
The National Grid Corporation declared a yellow alert status for Mindanao from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Wednesday,
05:07.7
which means thinning electricity reserve.
05:10.7
Merong malaking planta na nag-out today.
05:14.0
This morning na coal, nasa 138 megawatt siya.
05:19.4
So noong April 17, may isa pang coal na 135 naman.
05:24.2
And of course, yung mga hydro natin,
05:28.8
medyo mababa talaga ang paggawa niya ng kuryente.
05:34.5
Luzon still has some hours of red alert and a longer yellow alert in the evening,
05:39.4
while the Visayas grid has a five-hour red alert during daytime and two hours of yellow alert at nighttime.
05:46.5
Since it's impossible to build power plants overnight,
05:49.6
the energy department has no choice but to resort to demand-side management,
05:53.6
which means appealing to consumers to use energy efficiently.
05:58.8
Hindi naman bawal ang mag-aircon, for example,
06:02.4
pero siguro dapat yung maayos lang ng paggamit ng ating mga appliances.
06:07.7
Halimbawa, sa aircon, sa halip na 18 degrees yung setting natin,
06:11.1
pwede naman tayo ng 25 degrees or even a little lower at 23 degrees.
06:16.8
But it appears that the appeal is not working
06:19.0
as the country posted the highest electricity consumption for 2024 last Tuesday
06:24.7
amid rising temperatures all over the country.
06:28.8
ito siguro na na ang naging dahilan kung kaya't nagkaroon tayo ng pag-nipis ng supply ng kuryente,
06:34.6
lalong-lalo na sa ating mga reserba.
06:37.3
None of the industry experts ABS-CBN talked to can categorically declare
06:41.7
that the power situation will be back to normal soon
06:44.8
considering the number of plants on shutdown.
06:47.9
According to NGCP and Meralco, it's possible that the worst is yet to come.
06:53.6
Kailangan natin ang tabayanan araw-araw kung mag-improve ba yung sitwasyon.
06:58.8
At yun na lang talaga ang magagawa natin sa ngayon.
07:02.7
Yun yung kailangan din natin pang pagpahandaan.
07:05.1
Hindi pa ito tapos.
07:06.8
Gusto ko lang sabihin sa ating mga kababayan,
07:08.8
we have not seen the highest demand yet based on the historical data that we have.
07:15.0
Based on NGCP's data,
07:17.0
there are still 20 power plants that are on unscheduled shutdown in Luzon,
07:23.4
and 9 in Mindanao,
07:24.6
which shaved a considerable amount of supply from the three electric plants.
07:28.8
We're taking a quick break.
07:36.0
Up next, PDAX founder Nigel Gaba joins us in the studio
07:39.4
to tackle the impact of Bitcoin halvings.
07:53.1
The Bitcoin network completed its fourth halving last April 20th.
07:57.1
Now while this predetermined event is,
07:58.8
expected to affect the cryptocurrency's price,
08:02.0
investors expect bigger gains in the coming months.
08:05.1
Nigel Gaba of the cryptocurrency trading platform PDAX
08:08.3
joins us tonight to dissect halving and its impact on Bitcoin
08:11.7
and other cryptocurrencies.
08:13.8
Nigel, welcome back.
08:15.6
Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
08:18.8
This, you know...
08:20.4
Why did I get that?
08:22.6
So, before we begin with the serious, hardcore questions
08:26.8
that Ron has in store for you,
08:28.8
we want to give you a challenge
08:30.0
because not a lot of people understand
08:32.0
what halving is and what happens after that.
08:36.5
Can you explain to a high school student?
08:40.4
So, that's a challenge.
08:42.7
So, a lot of people think that
08:44.2
halving, what's going to happen?
08:46.2
Will my Bitcoin drop by half?
08:49.4
That's not the case.
08:51.2
The way Bitcoin works
08:53.0
is that there is a ledger called the blockchain
08:56.9
that maintains all the transactions.
08:58.8
All the transactions in Bitcoin.
09:01.0
Now, these ledgers are maintained by what we call miners.
09:06.0
Obviously, they're using a lot of computing power
09:08.4
to maintain the network.
09:11.0
And so, in exchange for giving that computing power,
09:15.2
they get rewarded by the blockchain with more Bitcoins.
09:18.9
Right now, every 10 minutes,
09:22.3
around 6 new Bitcoins are being created.
09:25.0
But since the halving,
09:27.8
it's dropped by...
09:28.8
It's dropped down to 3.
09:34.5
So, every day, roughly about 400 Bitcoins,
09:37.9
new Bitcoins are being created.
09:39.5
Now, how might that impact the market?
09:42.9
It's obviously, when supply shrinks,
09:46.0
what tends to happen if demand is constant,
09:49.3
price would tend to go up.
09:52.6
What will happen to the miners?
09:54.5
Well, some of the miners who are not able to offer their coins,
09:58.8
quote-unquote, mining services,
10:01.0
at the current hash rate or at the current mining output,
10:06.3
they will probably stop mining.
10:08.6
And the more efficient miners will get more of the rewards.
10:11.8
Because it's not going to be worth it.
10:13.6
Very financially rewarding for them.
10:15.3
Yes, because it's not going to be worth it, right?
10:17.7
They have a lot of expenses, fewer rewards.
10:20.4
In fact, 50% lower.
10:23.7
So, some countries have cheaper electricity, for example.
10:28.8
So, you'll see miners in those countries probably tend to outperform.
10:33.0
But why is there such a system like this that happens every four years?
10:37.2
Why is there a having?
10:38.6
And why is it just Bitcoin?
10:39.8
You know, the great thing about it is the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi.
10:43.7
Who nobody knows where he is now.
10:45.7
He or she or they are, right?
10:48.6
Or whether he's a real person, maybe someone from outer space.
10:51.6
Maybe a real person, maybe a group of persons.
10:54.0
But all we know is that when he wrote or invented Bitcoin,
10:57.6
in 2008 and launched in 2009,
11:01.9
all of these rules for Bitcoin were already inscribed.
11:06.7
So, he had already foreseen that in order to preserve the scarcity value of Bitcoin,
11:13.7
it needed to have this having mechanism.
11:16.9
And the great thing about it is, well, if the output of Bitcoin,
11:21.1
you might ask, if the output of Bitcoin keeps going down by half,
11:26.8
won't there be a half?
11:27.7
Won't there be any miners left?
11:29.2
Well, the beauty of it is, as Bitcoin becomes more scarce,
11:33.2
the price of Bitcoin would also go up, right?
11:36.7
And if it goes up, miners would maybe...
11:40.0
Love supply and demand.
11:41.0
That's never been repealed.
11:44.0
Miners would probably come back in to offer mining power.
11:48.3
But why is it that no other coin has done this?
11:52.5
It's just Bitcoin, right?
11:53.9
Everybody's infinite in terms of...
11:58.4
So, the other cryptocurrencies obviously follow their own supply dynamics
12:04.4
or what you might call also consensus mechanism, right?
12:08.0
Like, it's not mining, it's not proof of work.
12:10.9
Sometimes, it's proof of stake.
12:13.3
There are other copycats to Bitcoin,
12:16.3
but probably Bitcoin enjoys the most trust and attention
12:21.8
because it's been there from the very beginning.
12:24.9
We don't know who the founder is.
12:26.8
So, I think that also helps.
12:28.4
There's that mystery, you know?
12:30.4
I'm very impressed, by the way.
12:31.4
That's a good explanation.
12:32.4
I mean, that makes sense.
12:34.4
Except, I just don't want to think about what miners actually do now.
12:37.4
That really warps my brain.
12:39.7
So, please, don't hurt my brain right now by explaining what is proof of work, what
12:43.1
are all of these equations.
12:46.1
We're gonna be...
12:47.1
So, after the halving last Saturday, Bitcoin price jumped to more than 66,000, people were
12:54.7
saying, this is very different from the other halvings.
12:56.8
This is very different from the other halving incidents because March, it already jumped
13:00.1
because of the ETF approvals.
13:02.3
And so, now, you're seeing even more jump.
13:05.1
Question is, do you expect that trend to continue after the halving incident?
13:12.6
So, obviously, you know, history doesn't always repeat itself.
13:16.8
But I think with Bitcoin, there's enough precedent to believe that as Bitcoin becomes more scarce,
13:25.1
it becomes more attractive.
13:26.8
And probably, I shouldn't understate also still the impact of the launching of the
13:33.0
A lot of people might think, well, ETFs were launched a couple of months ago and maybe
13:39.0
That's not it, right?
13:40.2
Because institutional investors don't make decisions overnight, right?
13:46.3
Sometimes it takes months for them to get board approval, investment committee approval
13:51.8
in order to even make an investment into something like Bitcoin.
13:55.6
And so, I think that the effect of the ETFs, we've not seen its full impact just yet.
14:02.5
And because it coincides with this halving event, I'm very excited to see where Bitcoin
14:09.0
prices will go by the end of the year.
14:11.0
This 2024 halving, did it have any effect on the altcoins, the other cryptocurrencies?
14:18.7
How were they affected?
14:20.9
So, what's interesting in the crypto market is Bitcoin seems to be...
14:21.8
It's not just a currency.
14:23.8
It's a cryptocurrency.
14:24.8
It's a cryptocurrency.
14:25.6
It's the first crypto asset that a person would buy, right?
14:30.1
And whenever Bitcoin goes up in price, what tends to happen is there's a lot more quote
14:36.1
unquote wealth in the crypto space, right?
14:40.0
And because people are searching for more gains, what tends to happen is some of those
14:46.7
gains move into the altcoins for more speculation.
14:52.2
So in a way, you might say that Bitcoin is the...
14:55.6
It's the tie that lifts all the crypto books.
15:01.0
Maybe more than others, like in your platform, in PDAX.
15:03.0
Except the stablecoins.
15:05.0
So in PDAX, what do you see?
15:07.0
Which coins are being affected positively by the increase in price?
15:14.1
So we're seeing very strong correlations between Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin and
15:21.8
Bitcoin and Solana, actually, it's the same thing.
15:23.0
It's the same thing.
15:24.0
It's the same thing.
15:25.6
Actually, Solana has performed much more strongly than expected.
15:30.1
Obviously, there's a lot of things going on right now in the Solana ecosystem.
15:34.9
There are these meme coins that are driving a trading frenzy.
15:40.9
Generally, most of these coins are very, very correlated.
15:45.4
And what happened to Shiba Inu?
15:50.5
After the halving, Michelle, are there any other maybe new issues?
15:55.5
Any other developments in the cryptocurrency world that you are closely watching?
16:01.0
So I think, well, Bitcoin, having had its first ETF, we probably expect that the industry
16:10.9
is not going to stop there, right?
16:13.1
I'm also looking forward to Ethereum ETFs.
16:17.0
A bunch of them are up for approval in the U.S. and in fact, a couple of weeks ago, Hong Kong approved.
16:25.4
So I think it's going to be an Ethereum ETF.
16:27.9
Locally, obviously, the regulatory environment is always very important to our industry.
16:35.6
You might say that crypto grew very big, very rapidly, and regulations are just having
16:45.0
So from a regulatory standpoint, I expect the BSP to implement more stringent controls.
16:51.6
Not because they want to do it, right?
16:52.9
But it's because they want to protect the public.
16:54.9
And we also are seeing unregulated exchanges get banned and blocked, not just in the Philippines
17:03.7
but also in India and Thailand and other countries.
17:06.6
Ms. Michelle, I think we're running out of time, but very quickly, if you can explain
17:11.2
whether at what point in the history of our markets will it become more than just an alternative
17:19.3
investment because people are still saying, okay, I don't know if I will buy Bitcoin despite
17:26.4
I don't know if I will buy it.
17:27.4
There's no dividend.
17:28.4
It doesn't do anything.
17:29.4
It just sits there.
17:30.4
And its value depends on people's moods.
17:33.5
You know, I think, I'd like to think that it happened this year.
17:39.8
When ETFs, when the ETFs were launched, it's practically a green light that institutions
17:46.5
can now hold Bitcoin.
17:50.4
It's no longer just something like, you know, NBAs.
17:54.4
You know, NBA cards or baseball cards or comic books that, you know, hobbyists trade
17:59.7
and sometimes they go up in price.
18:02.0
But it's now something that even banks, insurance companies can trade as part of their portfolio.
18:09.5
Don't forget my Optimus Prime still.
18:13.0
What Optimus Prime are you talking about?
18:17.4
Another question, if that's okay.
18:19.8
What has this done for PDAX?
18:21.4
I suppose, you know, especially the having the jump.
18:24.4
You know, we're talking about the rise in prices this year.
18:25.4
People are more excited.
18:26.4
They're FOMOing again.
18:27.4
Are you seeing more account creation?
18:28.4
How is PDAX business effect?
18:29.4
Yeah, absolutely.
18:30.4
We're seeing a lot more account creations.
18:31.4
We have, currently we have more than 2 million users.
18:32.4
Obviously, with our partnership with GCash, we're seeing a lot more user growth as well.
18:33.4
Everyone probably has GCash, so it's very easy to just pop open the app and buy BTC.
18:34.4
So we're seeing a lot of growth.
18:35.4
And I think, you know, it's not a big deal.
18:36.4
I think, you know, the market is growing.
18:37.4
I think, you know, the market is growing.
18:38.4
I think, you know, the market is growing.
18:39.4
I think, you know, the market is growing.
18:40.4
I think, you know, the market is growing.
18:41.4
So we're seeing a lot of first-time traders entering the market this year.
18:44.4
Thank you so much, Nigel.
18:45.4
Always, lock time for this interview.
18:46.4
We haven't even talked about peso-dollar, but I suppose you can please come back and
18:47.4
we'll lengthen the discussion.
18:49.4
So, for those of you who have a lot of experience with BTC, we would like to know how
18:50.4
your experience is in the market.
18:51.4
So, thank you so much, Nigel.
18:52.4
Always, lock time for this interview.
18:53.4
We haven't even talked about peso-dollar, but I suppose you can please come back and
19:09.8
we'll lengthen the discussion.
19:11.4
next time. Thank you so much. It'll be my
19:13.0
pleasure. Thanks. That's your
19:15.2
Mrs. Outlook. I'm Ron Cruz. And I'm
19:17.0
Savvy Duplito. The world tonight comes your
19:19.0
way at the top of the next hour. Keep it
