Mark Rober, Bitcoin’s Rebound, & American Eagle’s Holiday 12/3/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. We're diving into crypto. Bitcoin has bounced back, but investor Anthony Scaramucci has another bet. Solana. Whichever asset is in your portfolio, the mooch is optimistic about crypto. You do have a regulatory regime under Paul Atkins and President Trump that are favoring the technology and are going to allow for this. And I think it's very transformative. At 72 million followers strong, it's scientist YouTuber Mark Rober. He's making physics and chemistry fun online, on Netflix, even on Sesame Street. You click on the video to watch Ronaldo try and score on my robot.

0:48But in the process, you know, you learn about motion capture systems and velocity and momentum. Plus, waiting on a new Fed chair, denim might save Christmas, and a closely watched special election that could signal what's to come in 2026. Everything surprises me. Nothing surprises me. Everything surprises me now. It's Wednesday, December 3rd. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Crypto prices having a big resurgence.

1:33You're talking about Bitcoin up 2%, but it's close to$93 ,000 after getting down pretty significantly. Gains across the board. Below 80? No, in the low 80s. In the 80s. 84. Or it might have, and previously, last week or whenever it was, it had been below, I think it was below 84, briefly. It's just crazy that we're saying, okay, stocks are looking a little better because Bitcoin stabilizes. Tail wagging the dog, you think? I don't know if it is anymore. It's a risk. It's a risk thing. But it definitely looked market looks a lot more orderly and a lot. The sun is shining a little more on the bulls this morning after yesterday.

2:22I don't know if we're going to mention Boeing yesterday, but that almost was the entire move in the Dow. Yeah, it was the best performer in the Dow. Up 18 points. Yeah. Now, it may have been because of the big order for Apaches, and people are saying it's being driven now by its defense business, not just commercial airliners, but I guarantee you that Airbus news did not help. It did help Boeing, and it certainly didn't help Airbus yesterday. So I don't know. It's Wednesday. Many times the beginning of the week is, I just think traders feel, ugh, feel it's Monday. Like all of us. Yeah. Like all of us.

3:03By Wednesday, it's like, you know. Getting towards the weekend. The weekend will come. I'm going to buy some stocks and some Bitcoin. On today's Squawk Planner, some quarterly results. Macy's getting set to report. This is after another great parade, I think you'd have to say. And a pretty darn good dog show. Oh, the Westminster. That wasn't. No, it's the National Dog Show with John O 'Hurley. Oh, the Westminster's in Philly? Yeah, I think this is a national dog show. Guy does a great Fred Willard impression from Best in Show. Oh, why does she grab him there? Yeah, what? Why does she grab him there?

3:45They do it doggy style. He actually... We're also going to hear... We're talking about Best in Show for anybody who hasn't seen the movie. Fred Willard, hilarious. We'll be announcing somebody probably early next year for the new chairman of the Fed. I talked to Scott about taking the job, but he doesn't want it. You got the greatest job here. Yes, sir. Right? He said, no, I want to stay chairman. I want to stay right where we are, Treasury. And I think we're doing really great, aren't we? We're doing great, sir. It's a great team to be part of. Yeah, it's amazing. And President Trump says that he will announce his pick early next year on who he wants to lead the Federal Reserve after Jay Powell.

4:31Speaking at a cabinet meeting, the president referred to the National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett, as a potential Fed choice. He also said that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doesn't want the job. Over the weekend, Trump said that he had decided on who he wants to replace Powell. The Wall Street Journal reporting that the White House canceled interviews with Fed chair finalists that were set to start today, which tells you a little bit more about what he was thinking. And in his comments yesterday, he said, oh, is he here? You know, we've got a potential Fed chair. Should we call him potential?

5:02Yeah. And Haas said I was expecting him to have like to be like, you know, like, you know, look honest. You can take me when I make a look like that. That's a good idea, director. Make the look. He's kind of. But he wasn't. Freeze frame. But he wasn't. He was like this. He was just smiling like a Cheshire cat, almost like he knew. But I guarantee you we don't know. No. Nothing's done until it's done. What we think we know, we guarantee you we don't know. Well, all we know is that we don't know. Let's talk American Eagle. Shares are soaring. The company giving bullish holiday guidance and raising its full-year forecast as it beat third-quarter estimates with a big contribution from its Aerie brand.

5:45American Eagle says it expects a fourth quarter comp sales to grow between 8 and 9 percent. And that's four times better than the 2.1 percent growth that analysts were looking for. Amazing. It says it sees full year adjusted operating income between 303 and 308 million dollars versus a prior range of 255 to 265 million dollars. The latest results are the first showing a full quarter of impact from American Eagle's splashy ad campaigns with actress Sydney Sweeney. Also tight end Travis Kelsey, which is when a retailer. I didn't realize I didn't tie to that. I thought these people, the whims of the of young people and what the stock, the shelf.

6:35That's why these specialty retailers can be really volatile. It can be really volatile because I'd have no idea what to put on the shelves. I have no taste. The tastes change quickly. You're hot and then you're not, but they have had a pretty big splash. The Sidney Sweeney thing. And then her interviews, she's very calm when they try and pin her down and stuff. But her movies now, of course, you don't know what to tie that to. One of her recent openings wasn't so great. But I think she's a pretty big star all of a sudden. Anyway, it's a big deal for American Eagle. I don't know what she commands in her next movie role.

7:13I think it'd be nice. I think we'd be happy. That's a low bar. Right. For a year, whatever it is, we'd probably be happy. All right, we're getting a clearer picture of the kickoff of the holiday shopping season. A survey from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights and Analytics shows a record 203 million U.S. consumers actually shopped during that five-day stretch from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. That beat estimates of 187 million shoppers, and it was up from last year's tally of 197. The turnout is the largest since the NRF started tracking that five-day total back in 2017.

7:50it was hard to escape it. Whether you went outside anywhere, saw ads for things, but probably just picking up your phone, probably got bombarded with ads to shop and shop now and get the deals. It was, yeah, it was hard to escape this anywhere. Even you probably got ads trying to get you to shop online. I don't see those for very long, though. I really don't. No. I don't need anything. I need to find things for other people. But you know what? They find things for themselves. pretty well, hopefully.

8:26The next congressman to the United States from Tennessee, Matt Van Epps. Hello, Tennessee. What a night. What a night. NBC News projecting that Republican Matt Van Epps has won a special election in Tennessee that drew national interest and attention even from President Trump. Van Epps will represent Tennessee's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives. Most of the expected vote counted. Van Epps led his Democratic challenger by nine points. But President Trump won Tennessee's 7th district last year by 22 points. So it's noteworthy in that it was even anywhere near that close and also noteworthy with, you know, some of the stuff that came out that this individual had said or indicated that she believed in the past, that it got anywhere close to, I think she got 45 % in Tennessee.

9:28She did. It's 54. With saying things that were just beyond the pale in terms of... I mean, does it shock you when you have the financial capital of the world being now run by a socialist? Well, that's because how many people really vote in New York City? I'd say the same in most congressional districts. Well, there's only... It's a million people out of a city. It's a million people out of a city. I don't know what it was. But a special election never draws as many voters because there's nobody else on the ballot up to get to bring them out. It's not a great sign for the GOP. It's not a good sign.

9:58But does anything surprise you these days? Yeah, everything surprises me. Nothing surprises me. Everything surprises me now. Because by the time I croak, I don't even know if I'm going to recognize this world that I'm living in. Well, that's a cheery thought on this Wednesday morning. Every person, as they get older, I think that's what happens. I wondered what, when I was young, what the people would talk about. You're like Grandpa Simpson now? Yes, yes, I am. And if I don't watch it, they're going to put me in a nursing home. You remember that line? Homer threatens him, and he says, I'm already in a nursing home.

10:30And he goes, well, we're going to put you in a nursing home that was on 60 Minutes. Oh, goodness. All of life comes back to The Simpsons eventually. Don't! In purple, yum, donuts. That's Homer, not Grandpa. Right. But everything does come back. Yes, it does. Cowabunga, dude. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, a new era for crypto. According to Anthony Scaramucci, he's betting on Solana as a long-lasting standard. AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, we had AOL Search. They got big-footed by Google. But this is mature enough now where there will be three or four players that emerge in the next five years that are going to be industry standards.

11:18We'll be right back.

11:28Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. Folks, we've just got some numbers out from Macy out with its quarterly results right now. Now, Courtney Reagan joins us on the Squawk Newsline with those numbers and some comments from the retailer's CEO. Court. Hi, good morning, Becky. Yes, stronger than expected. Third quarter for Macy's adjusted earnings coming in at nine cents. Consensus was for a loss of 14 cents. Revenues of four point seven one billion, also stronger than the estimated four point six two billion dollars. Macy's putting up the strongest total comp sales growth in 13 quarters.

12:04The comparable sales on an owned plus licensed plus market basis, that's basically all their business units, grew 3.2%. Bloomingdale's, again, the standout, comp sales up 9%. Macy's nameplate comps up 2%. Blue Mercury up 1.1%. Gross margin, 39.4%. That beat expectations but fell from a year ago, and Macy's attributes that to the tariff impact, though they do like their mitigation actions to be able to get to that point. And with one quarter left, albeit the very important holiday quarter, Macy's is raising guidance, expecting revenue now to be between$21.48 billion and$21.63 billion. That does bracket the street's estimate of$21.5 billion.

12:48Adjusted earnings now expected for the full year,$2 to$2.20. That is above consensus of$1.96. But this is the third quarter, remember, just beat by a pretty large margin. So I spoke with CEO Tony Spring, who said, look, we see a resilient consumer. Our guide is not a ceiling. It's a guardrail. The fourth quarter guidance takes into account our prudent view that we're going to see a more choiceful consumer. And let me just say by prudent, I mean sensible, well-informed and thoughtful. And then he also said regarding prices, if you looked within any given category, there is merchandise that is more expensive than it was a year ago.

13:22In some cases, there is improvement in the quality or embellishment in the fabrication. In other cases, the price has simply gone up. But obviously, consumers of Macy's seem to be handling it fairly well based on these results. But a really big month or two here left to go. Back to you guys. OK, Courtney, thank you very much. Right now, that stock is off by about two cents. Joe? Yes? It's you. Oh, for investors looking to expand beyond Bitcoin, there's a new book coming out next week, Solana Rising, investing in the fast lane of crypto, breaks down the blockchain, the major players behind it, and how it can be integrated into a crypto portfolio.

14:04And joining us now is the author, Anthony Scaramucci, Skybridge Capital founder and co-managing partner. It's good to have you on, Anthony. You read that the way my mom wrote it, Joe. Yeah, exactly. She's a wonderful lady. We're all cutting our teeth together. Maybe not you. You've got a firm grasp, enough to write a book about Solana. But let's start right at the beginning. Similar to Ethereum, it's a blockchain, and it can be the backbone of a lot of really quick transactions in DeFi. Yeah, well, a lot like the discussion that you were having earlier today with David and Bob, I mean, there's going to be layer one technology.

14:48Is that Ethereum? Not the poor people at home. Ethereum is a layer one technology. Hyperlink, Hyperliquid would be one as well. And I think all we're saying is that you'll be able to put a smart contract or a security, formerly known as a security, and tokenize it. And you'll be able to use the rail system of the blockchain. One of these. I think Solana will be one of the big winners. It's not to say that the others are not also going to win. And I believe they can cohabitate with each other. And the analogy I would use for people at home is a little bit like the cloud. When we started using cloud computing about 20 years ago, people were reluctant to use it.

15:26And then they understood there was great safety and anonymity in the storage. And then it proliferated. And you have many cloud vendors. And I think that's going to be the case in this world of tokenization. But this particular token has very unique properties. It's very cheap to use. Very cheap. It's incredibly fast. $0.50 of a cent. Yeah. $0.50 of a cent. Many more transactions per second. Many more transactions. And Anatoly. Not as many nodes, though, right? Well, it's proliferating now. I mean, again, this is sort of the same conversation that we'd be having about the Internet. And I was watching earlier, I think it was Paul was bringing it up, about how, you know, you're in the Netscape zone on your way to Google and eventually into Facebook.

16:11And I think that's where we are. We're very, very early. So just imagine four or five years from now, will there be a rail system on the blockchain where we are tokenizing things? And so I believe the answer to that is yes. Things like Avalanche, things like Solana, Hype would be one of those as well. It's cheaper than Ethereum, and it's got two types of proof. It's got proof of stake and proof of history with like a timestamp. So you don't even have to, it's much faster. I mean, much faster. It's much faster. It's milliseconds versus. Great, great finality, great certainty. And I think the big news now is you do have a regulatory regime under Paul Atkins and President Trump that are favoring the technology and are going to allow for this.

16:55And I think it's very transformative. Remember, you and I are old enough to remember T plus five, Joe. When I started in the business, you didn't settle your securities into your account for five days. It's T plus one now. you know, this could be T plus an hour or so, you know, less than that. But I think that's what they'll eventually get to. Anthony, I think crypto has certainly benefited from this administration's view and interest in crypto, all things crypto, it seems like. But today, President Trump is going to roll back, we suspect, the emission standards that were under the Obama administration and then the Biden administration placed on the auto manufacturers.

17:34Do you think that if there is a different administration down the road, it could roll back anything that's been done here? And what would that mean for the industry? Or once this is out and kind of beyond a fledgling state, is it too late to stop it? First of all, it's a great question because that's the central thesis. If you said to me right now, what would I be worried about in the future is this sort of regulatory pendulum that's going back and forth in Washington. I would really like to see this industry and other industries have Washington take a post-partisan or more transformative approach.

18:03And I will applaud David Sachs for that, because I think David, when he put out that executive order earlier in the year, he was trying to construct it in a way that would make it bipartisan, Becky. And I think that the I mean, that's the worst thing for business is to say we shouldn't have left or right regulation. We should have right or wrong regulation. and it should be transparent and safe to use and fair to the customer. And I'm hoping we can get younger Democrats to the table on that. There's a lot of, there's a partisan divide, and it's a very good point that you're bringing up. Okay, front page New York Times today.

18:36Trump's AI and cryptozar benefits himself and allies. And you are no fan of it. We've had our disagreements in the past about the president. Yeah, we have. So you're not going to be someone that I think would sugarcoat things. In anything you've seen with the president and his family and their conflicts and dealing in crypto and the businesses that they've set up, has anything really raised your eyebrow or David Sacks or anything? Has anything really raised your eyebrow in terms of impropriety? We've been at odds. Some of it is more style related. How about for this, though? But let's talk about this.

19:14So I'm friends with Eric Trump. I think you know that. He came to my conference. We all have the same birthday. We all have the same birthday. My son, my son was very involved. My son, AJ, was very involved in helping him raise money for American Bitcoin. I own American Bitcoin, so I just want to make sure that that's fully disclosed here. And so, no, I don't see that. I think that that is a partisan thing. As it relates to David Sachs, I read the article and I would just submit back to people rhetorically. You want people like David Sachs in the administration, whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican administration.

19:48And guess what? David Sachs is going to be a visionary and an entrepreneur and do a lot of business related things. And I think you don't want to overly stop those people. I don't think you just want bureaucrats, lawyers and academics in Washington because they have very little business interests outside of Washington. And so so that's me. I'm a huge fan of David Sachs. I think he's done a great job. And I think the criticisms in that article are unfair. So maybe we agree on that. Maybe we don't. But that's my approach. No, I was just asking. And I want to encourage people like David Sachs to go into government because we need those types of people in government.

20:26All right. So back to Solana. If someone, obviously, Bitcoin is$92 ,000. You can buy any amount of Bitcoin. You don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin, obviously. But if someone wants to get into crypto, you think if you're comfortable with Bitcoin, that Solana would be a good investment where it is right now? It's at about$141 ,000. Yeah, I think I think I think Solana Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche or less. So we own Ethereum, but we own less of it. But I like I like the whole area because this is taking off. You know, listen, we're old enough. Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves. We had AOL Search. OK, they got big footed by by Google.

21:07But this is mature enough now where there will be three or four players that emerge in the next five years that are going to be industry standards. I believe Solana is one of those. The other ones that I mentioned are likely one of those. But I explain in the book why the technical properties associated with Solana, I think, are quite favorable. And I'll leave you with this thought. When Anatoly created Solana, he didn't try to create new things from a computer science point of view. He used all the available tech that was out there to make it easy for developers to run programs on top of Solana.

21:42And so for me, it's one of our big names. We own a lot of it, frankly. I have a lot of it on the Skybridge balance sheet. And so I wrote a book about it because I want to also explain this stuff to our customers. And when I made the investment in Bitcoin five years ago, traditional finance people excoriated me. Some of the wire houses for you. Yeah, you were before me. But I got in there with, you know, in size as an at an institutional level. You got it in size. That's the difference. I got I got excoriated by a lot of people. Yeah, you did. Now they're coming. And I'm just saying this is five years ago.

22:14We said Bitcoin. I believe five years from now, Joe, for fortunate to be sitting at this table again, we'll be looking back on Solana and say that was a good entry point because we're using Solana. I saw a funny meme on Twitter. It had a picture of someone frustrated. And it's, you know, I've been in Ethereum at 3000 for four years or something like that. I mean, there's been it has not been like you. You have a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt in this industry. And so something like Ethereum that has really good technical properties could lag for several years. But again, let's go back early stages of tech in our lifetimes.

22:53Amazon went public in May of 1997 and had lots of hiccups, down 50 percent. You remember the March 2000 debacle? It was down 80 or 90 percent at that time. And the point is, as things are adopting and scaling, if they are good fundamentally, you should hold them, which is why we never left our Bitcoin thesis. So the speed of Solana and the it's much cheaper that that for you overcomes. It's not as distributed as Ethereum. But it's becoming more distributed. It's it's it's it's growing the scale of its distribution. So then it would have no negatives versus Ethereum. Listen, I think that people will want some customization.

23:35If you go to the big chief technology officers at the Fortune 50, they may be on Avalanche because you have these subnets on Avalanche that can allow for more customization. But I'm talking about broad scale delivery of tokenization. Somebody like a BlackRock, somebody thinking about tokenizing stocks and bonds or potentially real world assets, I think they'll use something like Solana. it's bigger it's faster and it has way more market share and it's growing faster than the others but i like them i like them what was your aura reading today we can compare to andrew no i had a andrew i had a bad sleep score this morning because i was i had to get up you were nervous about coming on here no i wasn't nervous joe but i had to get up early because i had to drive in from the outside you're anxious i knew becky would be here to protect me yeah you're anxious exactly exactly i knew becky would and andrew wouldn't be here to support he offers good defense when I need it.

24:31I know he does. Still to come on Squawk Pod, he taught millions about science through prank videos on YouTube. And now he's taking his lessons to Netflix and beyond. Creator Mark Rober. We're basically taking all the tricks I've learned on how to hide the vegetables and teach science in an engaging way. And then we're making a full science curriculum, third to eighth grade, and then we're going to make it free for all teachers forever.

25:04You're listening to Squawk Pod today with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Elmo, welcome to Crunch Labs. Up on Becky, cue. Our next guest has conquered YouTube with more than 72 million subscribers. You heard me right. I think that's up from 60 million subscribers at this time last year. It's a lot. He is now branching out into other platforms with a new show on Netflix. Joining us right now is Mark Rober. He's the founder of Crunch Labs. He's also a former NASA and Apple engineer. You've been on the program plenty of times before. We're really glad to have you back, Mark. But let's talk about this.

25:43I mean, really, when it comes to big influencers out there, you're at the top of the list of these things. You started on YouTube in 2011. That's right. And you built up a huge subscriber base by showing kids, I guess, the fun things around science. Yeah, just like how engineering can be cool. If you're an engineer, you could just will something into existence if you want it to exist. That includes things like last month, I built a goalie robot that moves it like 40 miles an hour. And then Ronaldo tried to score on it. Was he successful? No. And eventually he found one weakness the robot had, but it's impossible to score at that speed.