Bitcoin Hits $80k for First Time Ever & Barnes & Noble is So Back

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0:29Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, after crypto's big win at the elections, is Bitcoin going to the moon? Then, Barnes & Noble has surprisingly turned around its business in a story that is sure to be a page-turner. It's Monday, November 11th. Let's ride.

0:50Good morning. Today is Veterans Day 1111, when America honors the people who have served the United States in the armed forces. we're sending our gratitude to all veterans and their families and i'm particularly thinking about my two late grandfathers who served in the army during world war ii one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was going to belgium with my mom's dad and our entire family to see where he fought in the battle of the bulge i think he was just 18 at the time which is just crazy to think about they were also both big eagles fans so i know they're smiling down today after that thumping over Dallas.

1:25Go birds. They would have loved to see Saquon in action. Just some logistics too. Many of you listening might be off today and so are most banks, the U.S. Post Office, public schools and libraries. They are closed. But the stock market, most retail stores and national parks are open. National parks are also free today too. So if you don't have anything to do, maybe head to your nearest one and try walking around while listening to this episode of Morning Brew Daily. But first, a word from our new sponsor, Sage. Sage is back. Not the herb, but the best accounting, payroll, and HR software in the game.

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3:20During the campaign, Trump fashioned himself as the pro-Bitcoin candidate and has pledged to introduce policies that make the United States the crypto capital of the world. But it's not just Trump that's causing all of these Bitcoin fireworks. The GOP, considered the party more friendly to crypto, appears to be closing in on gaining control of the House as well as the Senate. So the people in charge of writing and passing laws in this country are going to craft regulations that are more friendly to crypto than the existing legislature. Toby, the crypto industry is doing a victory lap over these election results.

3:51It shelled out$135 million on races up and down the ballot this election, and that totally paid off. 54 of the 58 candidates supported by crypto super PACs won their races and three are too close to call. It is crazy to just think back even to the middle of 2022. Bitcoin hitting 80 ,000 was just as far away from the industry's minds as you could possibly imagine. That was right after the market meltdown, right around the collapse of FTX as well. It was also right around that time where the crypto industry started taking Washington more seriously. Brian Armstrong, who is the CEO of Coinbase said, we have to be realists.

4:28Money moves the needle. And what he did was set up this pack that said, we want to start pouring in money towards Washington, much in the same way that these other industry groups like oil and gas do. They wanted to be a factor in these Senate races and in the presidential race. And you're right. They have poured a ton of money in since crypto accounts for more than 15 % of all known corporate spending since 2010. It already has$78 million lined up for next year's or in two years midterm election. So they truly did just embrace Washington and embrace spending in order to advance their agenda. Yeah, the amount of money that the crypto industry poured in after that call to arms by Brian Armstrong is truly astonishing since 2010, which is when that Supreme Court decision came down, which allowed corporations to spend freely on elections.

5:19They're just the second industry behind oil and gas in terms of spending. And then the name you need to know is Fairshake. That is the top crypto super PAC that has been donated to by folks like Coinbase, Ripple Labs, Andreessen Horwitz, who has spent a ton of money. They're the VC firm that has invested a lot in crypto. They're the biggest single issue super PAC in history. And you're right, they already raised nearly$80 million to spend on 2026. So crypto is not going anytime soon. I think one race that people should know about that sort of shows the crypto industry flexing is the Senate race in Ohio.

5:54Sherrod Brown, the Democrat there, had been very skeptical of crypto and wanted to bring hearings about how crypto is used in terrorism and other scam, scammy ways that Bitcoin or Bitcoin and the crypto industry has been leveraged. Well, Fairshake spent$40 million on an opponent, Bernie Moreno, and Bernie Moreno beat Sherrod Brown in that race, in a tight race. So that is just one race where you can see the crypto industry really flexing. And they didn't talk about crypto at all in their ads on this. They just talked about various other issues. But the whole point was just to get Sherrod Brown out.

6:32Right. And then also, now that more crypto-friendly people are filtering into Washington, there also looks like some anti-crypto people are filtering out. One of the biggest opponents, the nemesis of the industry has been SEC chair Gary Gensler. He's been arguing that crypto firms need to be under his agency's purview. They need to have more protections that treat them more like stock exchanges. He was probably going to be gone from Washington soon under this new Trump presidency. So everything is coming up for the crypto industry. You can see it, too. It's not just Bitcoin that is rising. Ethereum is ripping.

7:05Ripple, who you mentioned, is ripping. Even the meme coins like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin are up 17, 31 percent. Coinbase, too. We mentioned Brian Armstrong absolutely crushing it now up 50, nearly 50 percent in the last week. So it is a rising tide floats all boats situation. But the question is, will the crypto industry become the Wild West that led to some of the most epic collapses and frauds that America has ever seen? Remember, Sam Bakeman Freed is in jail right now for running the biggest corporate fraud in American history. stealing$9 billion through his crypto exchange, FTX. So that was what the current administration was trying to crack down on.

7:45Now that there might be more unfettered crypto enthusiasm, we'll see whether the crypto industry reverts back to some of those bad actors that had plagued the system for the past few years. As Trump gears up for a second term in office, another question that is top of mind is if the sports world, from the NCAA to FIFA and beyond, is ready for another Trump presidency. Two of the biggest sporting events in the world will happen under Trump's second term in the 2026 World Cup, which the U.S. is co-hosting alongside Mexico and Canada, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Plus, the NCAA has major business implications on the line as it has been trying to get Congress to pass a law that would prevent athletes from being classified as employees, something a Republican Congress has been more amenable to.

8:32Even the world of golf is holding its breath as the new administration could help broker a deal between the PGA and Live Tours. So Neil, lots of implications for the sports world under a second term for the most sports-focused president in modern U.S. history. He really is. He loves sports. He loves surrounding himself with sports people. So there is going to be a lot of attention on the sports world during a second Trump administration. But let's zoom out to the college sports world, which doesn't have anything to do with Trump. It has to do with a Republican legislature, which does appear to be on track to happening.

9:05It was a bad day, election day, if you were a college athlete. It was a great day if you were a college president or conference commissioner. For five years now, the NCAA has poured billions of dollars into a lobbying campaign to get Congress to pass a bill to finally write a rules of the road for this huge question that is looming, which is what should we classify college athletes as? And they, the NCAA, conference commissioners, they want an anti-employment provision. They do not think that college athletes should be considered employees. And so it looks like now that, you know, after the results of the election, Congress could finally take this up, this issue that's been weighing down the NCAA for so long and has caused all sorts of Wild West regulations like NIL to finally take this up and put some rules on the road that would be more amenable to the people in charge and not the college athletes themselves who have sort of disrupted the status quo as we've seen in recent years.

10:04Dartmouth men's basketball players unionized. There was also a case involving USC football and basketball players. This is in front of the National Labor Review Board. That could get a change up as well with the changing administration. So it looks like maybe one way or another, we will have some sort of resolution in the question of NCAA amateurism. And then let's talk about these global mega events too. The World Cup and the Olympics are both coming to the United States, putting it on a world stage. Could be a little bit awkward, though, because the World Cup, I mentioned, we are co-hosting alongside Canada and Mexico.

10:38There has been a lot of talk about Trump applying tariffs to Mexico, so that could strain diplomatic and business ties between these two co-hosting countries. So that's one thing to look out for. The president of FIFA, on the other hand, who runs the World Cup, is very close with Trump, Infantino has posted Instagram stories congratulating him in the past. So it does look like at the very top levels, Trump and Infantino will be able to smooth things over. But you do have to think about just kind of the awkward diplomacy that is at hand, even though that we're talking about a sporting event, soccer event, there are other geopolitical and business tensions underneath the surface.

11:14Yeah, I mean, I totally forgot we're hosting the World Cup in 2026. That is on the 250th birthday of the United States. So I can't just imagine the attention, the billions of people watching. It's also in the new expanded format, right? 32 teams, which is going to draw even more eyeballs, draw even more sponsorship dollars. So this is going to be just a mega event that is happening in maybe a year and a half. And then coming after what we saw at the Paris Olympics, which took over the world, it's going to be perhaps even bigger in LA in 2028. So got me a little excited, but yes, you're just thinking about what's going to happen in the next four years.

11:51There's just a lot going on. Sorry, I was just daydreaming there about Christian Plucic holding the World Cup trophy at the end of the World Cup on America's 250th birthday. I don't think it's going to be this time around. Guess who's back? Back again. Barnes & Noble is back. You can tell a friend. The bookseller, who was on the verge of bankruptcy just six years ago, has found its groove and is on track to hit its goal of opening 60 new locations this year. After getting its lunch eaten by the rise of Amazon and sinking a billion dollars into developing an unpopular Kindle competitor, a hedge fund buyout in 2019 kicked off a surprise turnaround.

12:28Instead of stripping the bookmaker for parts, they handed control over to a British bookstore revitalization specialist named James Daunt, and he saved the big chain by going little. He decentralized a lot of the store's operations and empowered local store owners to curate selections based on local preferences instead. So with a little bit more indie flair, suddenly a chain that didn't seem like it would survive in this era has picked up where it last dog-eared a page. Last year, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores than it had in the 10-year period from 2009 to 2019. So maybe the same way that Brian Nickel is the fast, casual whisperer, James Daunt is to bookstores.

13:12And what he's been doing would make a brand strategist absolutely wince because there's very little uniformity in how they're renovating or decorating stores. I mean, there's nine locations of Barnes & Noble in New York City. Four of them have different logos. And then there's this one location in Florida where the local management there said, we don't really want to be named Barnes & Noble. We want to be called B. Dalton Bookseller after a chain that Barnes & Noble acquired back in 1987 and liquidated. And they were like, yeah, we want to be called, be Dalton bookseller instead of Barnes & Noble.

13:46And James Donn is like, sure, go ahead. So there's a certain lack of uniformity, a really intense focus on local booksellers. But that's what James Donn thinks works in the bookselling world. He doesn't think that chains and uniformity work. It's that local quirks and allowing and empowering the local leadership teams to put their own indie bookstore flair on it is one of the reasons for the turnaround. It really has been quite the story arc for Barnes & Noble. First, it was the big box villain kind of ravaging these local indie bookstores, but then it itself got ravaged by the even bigger behemoth, which was Amazon.

14:20So now it's returned to kind of this indie bookstore arc. One thing that they have started to do is they've changed their relationship with publishers. It used to be that publishers could pay you to set up a display in the front of a Barnes & Noble. And yes, that brought in revenue, but it also risked putting a lot of real estate towards maybe an unpopular book. So what they've been doing instead is just not even really looking at data, just kind of talking to their communities and listening around, maybe scrolling TikTok, seeing what BookTok is talking about to curate selections that people actually want to read.

14:50And you're right, it doesn't necessarily make sense, but indie bookstores have never really made sense. It's always been about the feel and the vibe and the flair to it. I have seen some pushbacks, though, because they're trying to remake a lot of these stores, you know, make them look more like indie bookstores with a new layout, less alphabetical, sorting more, just get lost in like a corner like that. But some people walk in and say, like, you guys are trying to copy an indie bookstore, but you are not. So they see through it a little bit. But sales have risen 4 % in the last year. There are opening new stores, so clearly it is resonating with some people.

15:22And honestly, the more bookstores, the better. That's what I like to say. Up next, it's our winners of the weekend.

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16:14And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

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17:20The controversial plan, which would have put a$15 toll on vehicles driving into the heart of Manhattan, the first of its kind in the United States, is being revived by New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Last week, according to Politico, she asked the U.S. Department of Transportation whether a version of congestion pricing with lower tolls would trigger a long environmental review. So seems like she's gaming out a potential timeline. And if she reintroduces congestion pricing, it'd represent a dramatic U-turn by Hochul, who squashed the plan in June just weeks before it was supposed to go into effect.

17:53That move drew outrage from transit advocates who argue congestion pricing can reduce traffic and improve air quality while raising funds for the subway and buses, but Hochul withdrew congestion pricing after fierce opposition from people in the outer boroughs and the suburbs who called the$15 toll a shadow tax on commuters. So Toby, what might be changing her mind? Well, I don't know if you've heard recently, Neil, but there has been an election in the last few weeks. Trump could try and block the plan at a federal level, threaten to withhold federal funding. He would not actually have unilateral power to stop the program, but his administration could take it to federal court.

18:31Generally speaking, though, he has been pretty vocally against the plan. Trump Tower is in the congestion zone. So right under, I think it's at 59 in the congestion zone, 60. Go figure that he doesn't like congestion pricing. But yeah, the general consensus is if that Hochul doesn't get this through before January, before inauguration day, it is unlikely that this plan will start. Yeah, it is. It is crazy to see that Hochul just first did this whole 180 cancel the plan, but now it's kind of soft launching the fact that it might go through again. They've reduced the tax maybe from$15 to$9, so they've softened it a little bit.

19:04In general, this is a pretty unpopular program with a lot of people, a lot of New Yorkers. Siena College did a survey back in April, and two-thirds of New Yorkers said they opposed it, but there are a lot of people on the side, transit authorities being one of them. Yeah, because now they have a$15 billion budget hole that needs to be recouped. Meanwhile, all the infrastructure has been placed because she canceled it January 5th. It was supposed to go into effect January 20th. So they had$500 million worth of cameras that would have placed this toll all around New York City that are now, I assume, just sitting there.

19:40So basically, Hoco is like, what's the timeline here? Because the question is, if she can get it started in the next few months before, I guess, weeks, months before Trump gets gets inaugurated, then it would be hard to stop. So there does seem to be momentum building back, maybe in a little bit of a watered down version, $9 instead of$15, more exceptions. It seems like she was just waiting until after the election to kickstart this plan. But I know, you know, we'll see. It'll be another big fight. My winner of the weekend is the State of Pop Music because the Grammy nominations came out just before the weekend.

20:13And boy, are we in a good place. You have the juggernauts represented in Taylor Swift and Beyonce, but also a gaggle of newer stars ascending to challenge their throne. Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roan, Charli XCX, and Shibuzi all snagged nominations showing how deep the competition is this year. Some nuggets to look out for come 2025. Beyonce has passed her husband Jay-Z to claim sole possession of the most nominated artist in Grammy history, breaking a tie at 88 apiece to surge ahead to 99 after her Cowboy Carter album got lots of love. But some fresher names to the Grammy scenes could steal the show this year.

20:51Both Sabrina Carpenter and Chaperone are up for the big four awards of Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. If either sweeps, they'll become only the third artist ever to do so. You know, lots more interesting sublots to unpack, too, in what was a great year for music. It really was. I mean, in those big four, only 13 artists ever have even been nominated in all of those categories. So they're already making history, Sabrina Carpenter and Chapel Roan. We're also getting a big heavyweight fight for album of the year between Cowboy Carter from Beyonce and Taylor Swift, the tortured poet's department.

21:29That's only the second time they're going they're going head to head in album of the year. Swift won the first round. But it is interesting to see what happened in pop music this year. You had just like the legacy powerhouses of Taylor Swift and Beyonce. And maybe you could even put Billie Eilish in there against a new crop of newcomers that have just taken over the airwaves, have led in sales and streams, Chaperone and Sabrina Carpenter. So they've been doing they've really just disrupted the pop music industry this year with with their songs. And I know you can't stop singing. I know one one song I do want to call out, too, is a very old song.

22:04Remember, Now and Then was this recorded demo that John Lennon wrote for the Beatles back in 1977, but it was never finished. But then it was finished using the kind of technology powered by AI and released in late 2023. So that is actually up for song of the year. And it is one of the first time a Beatles song is, if it wins, it would be one of the first time a Beatles won a Grammy since February of 2024, for when their remastered reissue of I'm Only Sleeping One Best music video. So it is interesting to see that somehow the Beatles keep popping up in Grammy history, in modern Grammy history.

22:40All right, and we have to finally quickly touch on some snubs. I want to get your take on whether this was a correct snub. Hozier's Too Sweet got snubbed. I mean, that was all over TikTok, so I don't know how that, well, maybe I'm just too much in a TikTok bubble. So I think that is, I think you can deem that a snub. It is a good song. Dua Lipa's Radical Optimism album. It is just wild how deep pop music is this year that Dua Lipa was regulated to the sidelines. And I think that one was valid because it's just math. There's only so many people getting nominated. I don't think Dua Lipa deserved it.

23:09And then Zach Bryan, the country star, got also shut out. But he was huge. He's selling out. Barclays Center here, he's selling out everywhere. But he didn't put up his music for Grammy nominations. Also, we are team not Zach Bryan at Morning Brew Daily. All right. It is Monday. So here's your preview of the big events going down this week. The question on investors' minds, how high can stocks go? Wall Street is coming off its best week all year following that post-election boost. But it faces a few tests this week. There are earnings reports highlighted by Home Depot, Disney, Shopify, and Spotify.