Pope francis will participate in a funeral mass on thursday at st. Peters basilica for the archbishop of the boston diocese, who resigned under pressure for having failed to protect children from pedophile priests. He died tuesday. Senator al franken has given an official timeline for when he will step down. Franken plans to resign january 2. He had announced earlier this month he would step down in the wake of Sexual Harassment allegations. Global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. Im alisa parenti. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg technology is next. Emily im emily chang. This is bloomberg technology. A new number two. Coinbases Insider Trading suspicions. Investigation into a sudden spike in bitcoin cash just before it was officially introduced on one of americas most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. And one app to bind them all. Apple 2018 plans for a custom application that works effectively on the iphone, ifad, ipad, and mac. First, uber has a new number two. The worlds most valuable startup has named Bonnie Hartfords chief operating officer Bonnie Hartford its chief operating officer. She is the second highprofile hire by the over ceo. Its an interesting move, considering the other uber news out early wednesday. The European Unions top court has officially ruled that the right Healing Service should be regulated ridehailing service should be regulated as a transport company, not a tech o ne. Joining us now from london, Frederic Court and eric newcomer. Lets start there. Who is this, and why is he right for this job . He has a long history with dara cautious ascii long history with the ceo. I think thats part of it. He did a good job at orbitz, a deadly company. He was able to get a good exit, selling it to daras expedia. The experience at orbitz and expedia is super relevant to over. Its relative expertise, having a Good Relationship with the ceo. He was doing this advisor role to feel the company out. Emily he wrote a series of tweets saying over already got more uber already does more rise than the Worlds Airlines combined flies passengers and provides more Flexible Work opportunities than any other company in the world. Whats the hire of a former Airline Industry expert imply about the direction they want to take this company . I think it shows the global reach and seriousness of ubers business as an employer, for one. His tweets speak to the amount he thinks about over uber about a global employer. I think that will be a top right party for him. Top priority for him. The Airline Industry is a parallel that uber does not love. Barney made the point to me that airlines are doing much better these days. They are more profitable businesses. But certainly that expertise as a Business Model comparison, but also as a Similar Service industry is useful background to bring to uber. Emily i want to talk about this in the context of the news out of the eu that uber will be regulated as a transport company, not a tech company. This is a big blow to uber. What does this mean . Its bad for over because it means more regulation, more potential that they could have to pay their drivers more, have more regulated rules around how they pay their drivers, instead of being this digital platform that is super disconnected from the rules of local regulators. On the other hand, uber is already regulated as a Transportation Company in london and paris, two of its most profitable markets. It has already started to deal with this. Daras stance has generally been we are going to work with local regulators to allow them to regulate us as they want. Obviously, we are going to have input. This is bad in uber and uber has lobbied against it, but the company is prepared to deal with what they saw coming. Emily as a longtime investor in europe, what do make of this decision, given the challenges that uber is facing, in london specifically, where you are . Its interesting. It is confirmation that the local regulators in europe are looking at these Tech Companies and saying, we have rules and you have to operate within the context of those rules. In the shortterm, it doesnt change too much for uber, because they have to operate within those parameters, but it does cap the potential. The peertopeer service they were hoping to launch across multiple countries. There were countries they were hoping to enter just with peertopeer. That will not be possible. That restricts possibilities. Its an interesting time. As a user, the experience, the uber experience for consumers has been diluted. Drivers canceling. Its almost as if a change of guard, change of management, maybe relief of the pressure has had an impact at the level of the customer experience. I think bringing new management will tighten the grip on the business again. Its highly needed. In the shortterm, uber has got to focus on its core. Emily what signal do you think this sends from european regulators about the gate economy gig economy in general . There are talks that it could expect a company like airbnb in the future, it may be regulated more like a hotel than a home rental site as they would prefer. There is a sort of general move and realization across europe that many of the Tech Companies that are global, that have launched very Successful Services that have become dominant across europe have done that by pushing the boundaries too much. They are not paying their fair share of taxes. Its fair to expect a tightening of the grid. Also a realization by the local authorities that they do need to create a level Playing Field for the local operators as well. And force certain rules, but also fiscal discipline on top of those companies who have been able to use ireland as a place to do some invoicing. We see that changing with facebook as well. We see a wave of change. From consumers and politicians, from the local services and businesses, to say, hey, maybe we have been too open. China has been very good at closing those doors. Maybe europe needs to do that as well. Emily we know dara has been traveling a lot. How do you think this ruling will impact his strategy . I think there is a lot of europe that still needs to get figured out. With hiring barney, it is a statement, ok, internally, somebody else who is as skilled as me needs to run the internal business because there is so much to do outside. The situation in south east asia, competing there is a question whether uber will come to source of some sort of troops or truce or acquisition. All sorts of questions. I think he is very much going to be the public face, traveling around and establishing themselves better in markets, cutting deals, or making an apology as necessary. Emily interesting. Eric newcomer who covers uber for bloomberg technology. Frederic court, thank you for stopping by. On the earnings front, blackberry is raising expectations it can hit its growth target by the end of the fiscal year in march. It won new customers from government and the private sector in the third quarter. Blackberrys estimates the estimates be estimates beat estimates. Stitch fix had its biggest decline on wednesday since becoming a public company. This, after reporting its spending more money than it it is spending more money than expected to expand into new apparel categories. One of the most popular cryptocurrencies on the planet is facing its biggest controversy to date. Why coinbase is investigating possible Insider Trading on its platforms. Bloomberg technology is livestreaming on twitter. This is bloomberg. Emily it has been a wild 24 hours at coinbase. The platform is investigating allegations of Insider Trading in the hours before the Company Announced it would enable bitcoin cash. Meantime, the volatile cryptocurrency market is gaining the attention of local global institutions. Here is what the bank of england governor had to say about bitcoin earlier in london. It has increased significantly in value, but it is not connected to the core of the Financial System in general, so it is not levered. Orders of magnitude is less than the market cap. Half the market cap of apple. Its in that order of magnitude. Its more like an equity type risk that has spread fairly widely around the world. Emily to wrap up all the news in cryptocurrency, lets bring in editor atlarge cory johnson. Whats happening at coinbase . Cory this is the great fear of an unregulated market, which is that someone will take advantage of that to do something illegal or maybe not illegal, just deceptive. Its a great fear for coinbase, certainly, and a great fear for anyone involved in this trading. The regulated trading that we are used to, that has Investor Protections built into it, centuries of Investor Protection built up over time are not extant in the world of trading in these cryptocurrencies. Some could have jumped in there ahead of trade. Emily the fear is that coinbase employees are front running . Cory or someone. We know coinbase was being attacked by hackers. There were denial of service attacks across the industry. We dont know who could have gotten into their systems. We dont know how their systems work. We know they are not regulated and monitored. Anytime anyone uses the word regulation in any context, we can at least think regulations it is regulations exist as protections. Investor protections and Market Monitoring that happens across most of the trading world, certainly in the united states, doesnt happen with boy with bitcoin. Emily there has been a lot of chatter about this. A portfolio manager, also a bloomberg columnist, tweeted, my own personal view is coinbase is a zero over the next three years due to sketchy stuff that will take them down. Thats strong. Cory it is strong. This is the issue. When you make a market, a fair and orderly market, a principal, guiding rule, letting investors know they are going to get a fair and orderly market it could destroy the business of coinbase. This kind of reputational issue is extraordinarily serious. Emily interestingly, as you have more novice investors getting into this, some of the alternative coins are becoming more and more popular, the cheapest going, for example cheapest coin, for example. Cory across the board, all of these sold off. Bitcoin declined by about 2. 5 . Others were down today, 1. 5 to 2 . The total size of market capitalizations, as we heard in that soundbite, are mindboggling. Ripple well have the ceo of ripple on. Hold on to your seats. The ceo will come on next week to talk to us. The ceo of ripple controls most of the ripple currency. They decided, as they build a real business around the currency and around the blockchain technology, they will sell off those pieces of ripple in regular fashion to take that risk out of their business and let people know whats coming to the marketplace. On some level, it seems to me what ripple is saying, we dont want to be in the business of holding on to coin. We want to be in the business of actually allowing this to be used in some interesting way so business can transact on ripple networks. Emily meantime, north korea is allegedly behind a big bitcoin heist on south korea. On a south korea exchange. Tell us about that. Cory it shows us that some of the leaders in global hacking our finance focus on financial crime. As rudimentary as most of the technology, industry, Power Systems are in north korea, theyve had tremendous abilities when it comes to hacking. It was exactly this time of year three years ago when we saw the hacking of sony. We saw the release of all those inled to sony executives getting fired, all about this film with james franco that made fun of the leader of north korea, yet that seemingly ridiculous incident led to big changes in hollywood, but also showed us the power of north korean hackers in the past. Those efforts have gotten only stronger as u. S. Sanctions have gotten tougher on north korea. Emily the u. S. Has officially blamed north korea for the want to cry attack the wannacry attack. Coming up, there is a big change coming to apples mac and ios users. How it is planning a onestop shop for all of your app needs. Next. And a feature i want to bring to your attention, our interactive tv function. Find tv on the bloomberg. Watch us live. If you miss an interview, you can go back to it. Play along with the charts we show you on air. This is for bloomberg subscribers only. Emily could walmart be getting ready to ditch checkout lines and cashiers . That could be the future for the superstore, according to a report from recode. Store number eight is looking to reimagine the business. You can walk out with any item and walk out with any cash changing hands. Itll happen automatically. New additions also include a personal Shopping Service for busy nyc moms who will supposedly be able to shop via text message. A glimpse of one of the longawaited projects products, a mixed reality headset. The steam punkesque goggles come with a controller and computer pack to wear around your waist. Theyre facing increased competition from the likes of google and apple in the augmented reality realm. Bloomberg has previously reported that year with costs between 1500 and the gear would cost between 1500 and 2000. Apple will ditch having different apps for ios and macs os. One single app will work with a touchscreen or mouse and trackpad, depending on which devices being used. For more, i want to bring in who else but bloombergs mark gurman. What exactly does this mean . Mark developers will want to write more apps, make more money from apps, sell more of them. It means consumer will the Mac App Store so far has been a ghost town. This will change that. It means consumers will only have to buy one set of apps. No matter what apple device you the app will just work. Emily how will it work . Mark you will be able to download one application. It will automatically download and sink to all your devices. On an iphone, it will work with a touchscreen. On an ipad, a bigger touchscreen. The same app will be extended and work with a trackpad, keyboard, and mouse, instead of a touchscreen. Emily does it imply that mac might have a touchscreen in the future . Mark i think it does. It implies this is part of a longterm initiative to make mac more like iphone and ipad. Emily apple was not the first to do this. Mark no, they were not. Two of the other big Players Google and microsoft have sort of dipped their toes in the waters. Google with the new pixel book, you can download android apps. Its pretty integrated. Apples approach will be slightly different. It will be one type of app that expands to a different interface depending on the device you use it on. Emily im curious about your thoughts about these magically magic leap gogg les. Mark its going to be expensive, between 1500 and 2500. They are big and bulky. It seems pretty involved. Im not sure most people will want to wear that. Its a mixed reality headset, which is basically ar. It loops the real world and Virtual Worlds together. The concept of ar is enticing for a headset. You want glasses with ar, so i could walk around say hi to you and see other things. How weird would it be if i walked up with that big thing and tried to talk to you . I think we are there in terms of concept, but i think its too early. Google and apple and amazon in the future will set the stage for real ar that people will want to use. Emily this company has raised 1. 9 billion already, and they are walking into a fairly competitive market. However, there has not been a breakout success. Mark good luck to their investors is what i have to say. We will see how it plays out. They have been hyping up nothing until now. Now they are saying they are going to have a headset soon, but it is still just concept photos. It seems a little suspicious, but we will see. Emily we will wait for your review. Mark gurman, thank you. More on ubers new coo. How he could help turn the company around. And if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. This is bloomberg. Cannot live without it. So if you cant live without it. Why arent you using this guy . It makes your wifi awesomely fast. No. Still nope. Now were talking it gets you wifi here, here, and here. It even lets you take a time out. No no yes yes, indeed. Amazing speed, coverage and control. All with an xfi gateway. Find your awesome, and change the way you wifi. You are watching bloomberg. Im debra mao with your headlines. U. S. Republicans have passed their tax bill, sending the legislation to President Trump. It is the most extensive change to the nations tax code in more than three decades and hands the president his first major policy victory. The plan provides a permanent tax cut for corporations and shorterterm relief for individuals. Not a single democrat voted for the measure. Going to bring at least 4 trillion back into this country, money that was frozen overseas world, ands of the some of them dont even like us. U. K. Prime minister theresa may heads to poland in an attempt to win a brexit ally. She was forced to tell damien green to resign. An inquiry found he had made misleading statements over pornography discovered on his parliamentary computer nearly a decade ago. Cabinet the first minister to quit in months. Opec and independent Oil Producers do not intend to revisit their output agreement before june. Inventoriesnt oil wont be anywhere close to the level needed by the time opec meets then, and he is waiting until the second half of 2018 to see where the world is in terms of supply and demand. Markets checking midsession, the regional index fairly flat. Have a look at the weakness in the kospi, really dragged down by these polls on samsung. There has been a pickup in the csi 300. Australias market towards the close, looking like it is under a little bit of pressure. And of course we are keeping and i on the nikkei as well, which is slightly lower. Again still with a 113 handle. Earlier, there was no surprise from the boj, standing pat