Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend: July 31st 2026

21:09Carol Massar:I mean, it has been gradual. Is it gradual? It's not gradual, actually, if you think about, and I just want to be clear that we're not just talking about blockchain, because I don't want to be yet another person coming on thing, just, you know, espousing blockchain. I get blockchain, though, I feel like, but there's a whole lot of other stuff that's happening. General technology has reached a point where waves of technology happen. This is the next wave. Blockchain is a very important element of it. And it's most relevant to us in financial services. But it is when blockchain allows products to be structured differently than they have in the past.

21:46And that basically means, I'll make it real for us, when you think about traditional financial products, they were stuck in boxes with intermediaries. So you could only do so many things with it. If you want to roll out a new derivative contract, You had to go to a CME, right? We just had Perpetual Futures, this esoteric derivative instrument that's finally come on shore. 80 % of world crypto activity is happening in Perpetual Futures that were outlawed till about six weeks ago. So the rest of the world is not waiting for us to catch up, right? So the rest of the world is moving on. The rest of the world is using stablecoins to transfer payments.

22:23And if you look at what stablecoins has done, that's something we can all relate to. Who can argue with the fact that, you know, do you want to write a check or send money through Venmo? International cross-border transfers, three days,$50. Stablecoins, instantaneous, pennies. So then who gets disrupted in this world that you envision? Is it Western Union? Ironically, if you look at what Western Union is doing, they're rolling out their own stablecoin and they're coming out with a bank. In fact, that's the story here, Tim. Very importantly, that the first wave, two years ago I was sitting here, the discussion was about the insurgents versus the incumbents.

22:55And the incumbents have adopted the insurgent technology. Absolutely. Look at what's happening. I mean, JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, 10 years ago, says Bitcoin is a fraud, right? He's never retracted that statement. But as of last check, Connexus, which is JPMorgan's digital asset platform, is processing$2 billion in cross-border payments every day.

23:13Carol Massar:What does it mean for our everyday life? Like I always joke in, you know, when we just talk about crypto, I have yet to pay my mortgage with cryptocurrencies. I don't go buy eggs and milk with cryptocurrencies. So, but how does it impact kind of our everyday life? Carol, actually, it's not about cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency was simply the first manifestation utilization of blockchain. Yeah. It's about basically using software to intermediate between transactions. That's why I went, keep it simple. Yeah. I need to pay Tim. In the past, I would not pay you directly because there was counterparty exposure, the risk that either of us would renege on that payment.

23:48So we did that through Swift for cross-border, through ACH, Fedwire for domestic. The first wave of how that moved was we went from that to PayPal and Venmo 10, 15, 20 years ago. This is the next wave of that interaction. This, without any intermediary software intermediating between us, would mean we don't need to have even Venmo to send payments to each other. I won't get into the technical details, but it's going to be your software agent interacting with mine, and neither of us can renege on that. That means technically we don't need an intermediary.

24:20Carol Massar:But then where is the security? Like, do we just have to believe the system is secure? It's software, Carol. I mean, where is the security when you sit in a Waymo and expect a software agent to drive you, your kids? To some extent, you're expecting software is going to work. And software oftentimes is not going to work. It's not infallible, right? So we have big structural problems that need to be addressed. But what I'm saying is we're on a trajectory that I've not seen very often. and it's accelerated. And you can see that in payments, beginning to see that in securities trading with tokenization.

24:54This has got a potential to transform the way that industry is structured and who competes with whom. I want to talk about tokenization in one second, but before that, I just want to ask you across your universe of companies that you cover, who's making this transformation the best and who's making it the worst? So who's making it the best right now? I mean, I would say DTCC. I mean, who would have thought two years ago. DTCC, for a lot of viewers, they may not be familiar with DTCC, but every single U.S. equity trade goes through DTCC. 50-year-old entity, they clear and settle about$114 trillion in assets.

25:28That's more than world global GDP. DTCC is on the ball. Each time our Schwab or Fidelity account executes a trade, the clearing and settlement happens to this DTCC. DTCC has just put the entire infrastructure on a pilot project till October on chain. That means we can potentially clear and settle trades, not in one day, but instantaneously.

25:55Carol Massar:That's nuts. How come we don't talk about this company? It's the plumbing. I mean, you do, obviously. It's not exciting enough, Garel. Everybody wants to talk about the front-end consumer-facing stuff. And here's the irony. If you look at the consumer-facing stuff, why are financial institutions catching up. Because consumers have woken up and said, look, if I can send email at any point of time, right? Imagine if I said you cannot send email after 5 p.m. on a Friday because the email server is shut down. That's unacceptable to you, right? Crypto has shown us, no matter, doesn't matter what we think about crypto.

26:28The point is it's shown us that you can create an asset 24-7 instantaneously around the world. So crypto showed us that.

26:37Carol Massar:That's value. But does then crypto let's just go there do does that have you're talking about the tokens yeah does it have a future look i'm not a i'm i cover crypto market structure i'm not a crypto analyst or a crypto zealot by any means yeah um so the way i if you might you know i'll share the framework that i look at when i look at the space yeah so we've got this underlying technology blockchain and related technology the first manifestation of that was these crypto tokens that's what most of us woke up to when we thought about blockchain. Any interaction directly with the tokens is pillar one of that infrastructure, right?

27:14There's still a lot of activity there. Pillar two is nothing to do with the tokens. It's due with blockchain technology, taking traditional financial activities, payments, lending, borrowing, investing, insurance, just doing it on faster rails. That's pillar two. That's where stablecoins tokenization fits in. Pillar three is the wild west, which is what decentralized finance is about. That is only on the fringes right now. That's a utopian world. It might be realized at some point in time. I don't think regulators and the public are going to allow that. That is no intermediary, everything intermediated purely by software, science fiction stuff.

27:50Some of that is beginning to be real. There is a company called Hyperliquid that plays directly in that third realm. Today, most of the activity is in column two. I completely get it. A lot of people when they think about all this stuff say, but what about Bitcoin? And the discussion is is got way beyond that.

28:06Carol Massar:I'm not a fan. People who watch know. But I just wonder then what is his place? Or is it just useful as showing, look what we can do and think about how we can apply it elsewhere? No, like I said, I mean, who could argue in payments, right? Do you want to go through Swift and spend three days and knowing that you cannot send a transfer over the weekend and cost 50 bucks? That was Dushant Sharawat, Bloomberg Intelligence crypto and digital assets analyst. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, finally, it's time for some wine. We sit down with Claudia Chamberlain, advanced sommelier and U.S. general manager at the wine and spirits merchant Berry Brothers and Rudd on the emerging role of the luxury advisor in fine wine investment and collection.

28:46Yes, it's the weekend, says the individual who doesn't drink alcohol. It's okay. You know, people are more fun when you're around them and they're drinking.

28:56Carol Massar:It must be fun viewing. This is Bloomberg.

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30:28Carol Massar:Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

31:07Carol Massar:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how. With the Bloomberg Small Business Report, I'm John Tucker. To Fidel Castro and Cuba's communist elite, private businesses were totems of capitalist evil. Now with a country running out of food and fuel, the regime on the brink and anger spreading in the streets is those private businesses that hold the key to salvaging what's left of Cuba's economy.

31:4941-year-old Juan Carlos Blaine turned a tiny burger operation run out of his mother's refrigerator in 2012 into a thriving enterprise with four fast food shops, two mini-grocery stores, and more than 100 employees. While private enterprise remains strictly controlled, there are now more than 9 ,200 small and medium businesses in Cuba. The U.S. meantime has imposed a de facto energy blockade on Cuba. Havana has frustrated the U.S. over a lack of progress in opening its economy. And it's in this narrow stretch that small business owners now have to navigate. And that's the Bloomberg Small Business Report.

32:27This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

32:36Carol Massar:This next entity was founded in London, England. Family-run British wine and spirits merchant. So talk about having some history and being around for a long time. They have seen, to say the least, a lot of wine. A lot of beverages, probably. We're talking about Berry Brothers and Rudd. Claudia Chamberlain joins us now, advanced sommelier and U.S. general manager at Berry Brothers and Rudd. She joins us from Washington, D.C. Claudia, welcome, welcome. Before we get to the wine, give us a little history of this establishment that goes back centuries. Yes, absolutely. And thank you all so much for having me on this fine Friday afternoon.

33:13Carol Massar:So we are a heritage British fine wine and spirits merchant. As you said, we've been around since 1698, but we just opened our doors in the U.S. this past November. So we have a physical store that's at Farragut Square in Washington, D.C., and then an online service. And then we specialize in something that we call private client advisory services. Well, a couple of questions. Why the U.S.? Why now? Yeah, so I think that's a great question. The U.S. has been for the longest time one of the biggest consumers in the world. And that data just continues to point us in the direction of a lot of Americans are really interested in fine wine.

33:50Carol Massar:And so Berry Brothers, having been around since the end of the 1600s, they have quite a big database of clientele around the world. And so they've had a number of American clients for a long time. And we decided to make it a bit easier to access the services by opening up our doors in the U.S. So for people listening right now who may not consider fine wine an alternative asset class yet at this point in their financial journey, the folks who you advise when it comes to the private client service that you offer, what do you advise them on? What do you tell them about? What do you educate them on?

34:27Carol Massar:Yeah, I think, you know, it's a number of different things because it's really a one-on-one conversation around whatever it is that they're interested in. So it could be that they are new on their fine wine drinking journey. It could be that they're an established collector. So maybe they want to talk through different types of white wines that they're interested in. Maybe they have questions about different vintages, questions about how long to lay a wine down for, questions about how to serve a wine, how to pair a wine, all of those types of things. So it's really about meeting the client where they're at and giving them advice on how to drink better and also have a lot of fun while doing it.

35:04Carol Massar:So is it all about drinking better and being smart and understanding? Is it also about wine collecting? We've done so much reporting here at Bloomberg. And, you know, I'm just reading from a story that we've done over the last year. Passionate collectors buy wines they love and plan to drink, yes. But to invest, you have to select the right ones at the right price at the right time. If you have access to buy in the first place and have them maintain their value. How many people are looking to buy, put them on a shelf, in a cellar, let them sit for a while and rise in value to either drink later or to maybe even sell?

35:37Carol Massar:Yeah, I think it's, again, it's a mix. So our clientele is from all walks of life, truly. And so there are people that are looking for something that they're going to be drinking this weekend, that they're sharing with friends. And then there are people who are looking to grab a case of their daughter's birth year wines to hang on to for a while. So we see all different kinds of things. I would say that in general, the American consumer is very focused on the act of consumption and the act of how to drink something in its perfect drinking window and how to find the thing that they can open more in the immediate versus hanging on to it for a long amount of time.

36:11Carol wants to start drinking soon, but I have some more questions.

36:14Carol Massar:No, but keep going. No, but I mean, I am learning as I go and have been still. It's like, how do you figure out like when's the perfect time to drink it or what you need to do or what you should be looking for? I mean, this is what you do. Yeah, exactly. It is up to personal preference. So if you prefer something that is really vivacious and fresh and sort of bright and acidic, then you're probably going to lean more on the younger vintages of things or maybe the cooler vintages from the different growing regions around the world versus if you love something that is a little bit more broken in like fine leather, right?

36:48Carol Massar:Then maybe you're going to opt for something that's a bit more mature. So it totally depends. It also depends on what you're eating, how you're feeling, what the temperature is outside. So the type of thing is we have a range that can apply to any of those situations. And I would argue there's a case for all of those types of things. It really comes down to how you like your wine and how you want to be enjoying it in that moment. Claudia, I know there's a lot of spending power in the Washington, D.C. area, but there's also a lot of spending power in New York, L.A., San Francisco, Miami. Why Washington, D.C.

37:20is your first U.S. location?

37:23Carol Massar:That's a great question. So I think, you know, as a heritage British merchant, it made a lot of sense for us to settle down our first flagship store in the nation's capital for our first foray into the U.S. But also, you know, D.C., as you've just mentioned, there are some of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. that are right here in our backyard. It's a super transient city, so people are always coming and going. It has a very high sort of engagement wine scene. And so there's a really incredible network of fine dining and wine bars and different sommelier sort of centric groups. And so it felt like a natural place for us to springboard from.

38:01Carol Massar:There's also direct flights to most of the U.S. And with our online business and our different offerings, we do cater to clients in 46 different states as well. All right. So you were kind enough to share some wine with us so that we can kind of work our way through. Should we start with the white or the red? I think let's start with the white. Okay, so tell us what you sent to us. I'm not going to go and pronounce it because I'm always bad with this. Didn't you take French? No, you took Spanish, right? No. You took Spanish? I took muchos años de Espanol. So go ahead. Very good. Tell us about this white that you shared with us.

38:36Carol Massar:And I'm going to actually open it up and... Oh, let's hear it. Absolutely. I'm honestly so jealous. We should have had some here in the office for this too. So you were drinking the 2023 Domaine de Castillo-Pay-les-Moranges. So it is a Chardonnay coming from Burgundy. And we chose this one to show to you because it really heralds, while we specialize in the iconic wines of the world and the really well-known producers, we also prize ourselves in being able to take our customers on a journey and being able to open their eyes to the new wave of what's going to be collectible and what's really cool.

39:09Carol Massar:And so this is one of those producers that is really allocated. It's a new grower in Burgundy. They've trained under some of the very best. and the wine itself is very vibrant and I think savory in a really nice way that has to be a perfect pairing for your Friday afternoon. That's nice. I'm not a, that's actually really nice and kind of soft. I'm not a huge white wine drinker. The audience probably knows, but, but this is nice. And it's so funny. Like I do this and I'm like, why don't I drink white wine? Cause it's really, really lovely. Do more people, do you find are drinking more white wine in the summer because of the heat?

39:46Carol Massar:because I kind of drink red wine no matter what. But I'm just wondering, do you really see that uptick when it's warmer out there, especially with some of the heat waves that we've been having globally? You certainly do. I would say champagne in particular is very in vogue at the moment, just given how warm it's been in the summer in the East Coast in particular. We've seen a huge spike in champagne sales. White burgundy, which is the glass of what you're having, is absolutely incredible at this time of year. Sancerre continues to be something people really reach for as it gets warmer and also rosé.

40:18Carol Massar:So we do see an uptick in white wine sales, but I think in general, we specialize in mostly French and Italian wines. And so we still have a very healthy base of sales of red wines during this time as well. So with the red wine category, you can put some of the lighter ones. Some people will sometimes put a little bit of a chill on it. So leave it in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes before you serve it. And that's the way to sort of get the best of both worlds if you're more of a red wine drinker. Well, let's go to the red. Please. Yeah. You sent us a Chateau Langois Barton Saint-Julien. Oh, stop shouting.

40:51Carol Massar:Excellent. No, that wasn't very good. Thank you. I actually got basically was told by my French teacher to take another language. In all seriousness. All right. So let's open up. Well, you're doing great. Thank you. Yeah. It sounds like you speak wine just fine. So yes, this is the 2009, which is an exceptional vintage coming from Bordeaux. And so we chose this one to show you all because it highlights our provenance. And so when we say provenance, it means that because we are the oldest wine and spirits merchant from the UK, we have relationships that span decades. And so with those relationships, you get incredible access to the top producers of the world, to special library offerings, to large formats, to more bespoke offerings that don't necessarily reach a wider audience.

41:35Carol Massar:And so we felt that the 2009 Chateau Langoix-Barton was really exemplary for that reason. So this is a family that's been around since 1821. And so they're one of the more iconic families of Bordeaux. And they own a number of different properties. But this is their third growth in Saint-Julien. So this is going to be a red blend. All Bordeaux is a blend, typically, of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. This one comes from the left bank. So you're going to look at a base of around 50 % to 60 % Cabernet Sauvignon, depending on the vintage. And then you've got some Merlot, some Cabernet Franc, and some Petit Verdot to make up the rest of it.

42:12Carol Massar:It's easy, right? It's an easy wine. And I could see it. It's, yeah, very, very nice. I love that it's of Irish descent. I don't know that we talk about that a lot, a lot of wines with kind of an Irish heritage, right? Yeah, we really don't. And honestly, it is a unique thing of the Barton family. And we were lucky enough to have Lillian Barton visit us this past January. And no Irish accent there, but she is absolutely fabulous. So they're doing a great job in Bordeaux. We just have 30 seconds left here. We're not going to open it up because... We don't want to get hurt. We don't want to get hurt.

42:46Carol Massar:It's a champagne. It's a little warm, so we want to be careful. But tell us about what you sent here as well. Champagne has had such a big comeback over the last few years. Yep. So this is the... It's our own label. So we showed this one to you because we have a label of our own range. And so we partner with some of those producers we've had relationships with for a long time. This is a Grand Cru Champagne and it retails for$44.95, which is a really great value for a champagne, especially of Grand Cru quality. So it shows you sort of the level of tiering that we have within the range. But also, this is our number one bestseller.

43:26That was Claudia Chamberlain, Advanced Sommelier and U.S. General Manager at Berry Brothers and Rudd.

43:31Carol Massar:And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Business Week daily Monday through Friday starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV and on Sirius XM Channel 121. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available on Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV +, and more. Find our Bloomberg Businessweek podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

44:02And the latest edition of the magazine is available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

44:08Carol Massar:I'm Tim Stenebeck. And I'm Carol Masser. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone. Do stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

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