The bitcoin surge is showing no signs of slowing down. The price of the cryptocurrency rising $1,000 in less than 24 hours. Joe Lubin, Co-Founder of cryptocurrency Ethereum, joined Cheddar to discuss the future of blockchain and digital money.
Lubin says the future of fintech is blockchain. He believes the general population is pretty naive about blockchain, and notes that it takes years for these kind of technologies to ramp up their adoption curves. Despite the high learning curve, Lubin thinks people are catching on quickly.
Many people are viewing bitcoin as gold 2.0. He says functioning as a store of value shouldn't be where application of the technology ends. He says bitcoin is like a money system, whereas ethereum is a decentralized worldwide web.
Despite challenges like inflation, labor and product shortages, and the Omicron variant, holiday sales saw record levels of growth this year, according to a new report from Mastercard SpendingPulse. The group reports on national retail sales across all payment types, finding that holiday sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years this year. Mastercard senior advisor and former chariman and CEO of Saks Incorporated Steve Sadove joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Keith Fitz-Gerald, chief investment officer at Fitz-Gerald Group, spoke to Cheddar about the growing competition for Tesla's electric cars in China as tech giant Huawei enters the race. "There's a lot of legacy worry, but that does not discount the possibility that Elon might have a contender on his hands," he said about the sometimes troubled telecom company. Fitz-Gerald also gave a nod to two other local rivals, Nio and XPeng, noting the latter as having something of an edge with its CEO He Xiopeng being lauded by Chinese state media.
