| Georgia votes, OPEC+ in disagreement, and more virus lockdowns. VotingPresident Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden held campaign events in Georgia yesterday ahead of today's runoff election in the state that will decide which party has the majority in the U.S. Senate. There are signs that investors are preparing for a Democratic sweep of the two seats on offer, with stocks that would benefit from that party's polices outperforming yesterday while market-derived inflation expectations climbed to the highest since 2018. It is likely to take a few days before the results of the vote are known, with counts likely to face legal challenges which could further delay confirmation of the winners. Trying again Yesterday's meeting of OPEC and its allies to agree on production levels for February ended with nothing more than a commitment to meet again today. The big two of the alliance -- Saudi Arabia and Russia -- disagree on whether to go ahead with the planned production increase next month that was agreed in December. The Saudis argue that new coronavirus lockdowns mean demand will be lower than expected, while Russia's oil minister wants to stick to the original plan. There are also difficulties caused by some members already pumping more crude than their quota. A barrel of West Texas Intermediate for February delivery was at $48 ahead of the resumption of talks. Lockdowns The post-holiday rush of tightening restrictions is in full swing in Europe, with the U.K. going into a lockdown, while Italy and Germany look at lengthening curbs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned health officials to stick to its guidelines on administering vaccines after one officer suggested cutting the dosage levels of Moderna Inc.'s shot as a way to immunize more people. The current trajectory of cases in the U.S. could break records again soon as the number of infections rises. Markets mixed Yesterday's volatile start to the year for stocks seems unlikely to be repeated today as global gauges are having a fairly quiet session. Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.6% while Japan's Topix index closed 0.2% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index had slipped 0.1% by 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time. S&P 500 futures pointed to the potential for the index to recoup some of Monday's losses and the 10-year Treasury yield was at 0.933%. Gold was higher and Bitcoin held over $31,000. Coming up...December ISM Manufacturing is at 10:00 a.m. Total vehicle sales for December are published today. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and New York Fed President John Williams speak later. Voting in the Georgia election runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. OPEC+ talks are scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. What we've been readingThis is what's caught our eye over the last 24 hours. And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morningYesterday I argued that Bitcoin is the first major religion of the 21st century, as it shares many characteristics with more established faiths. The argument isn't meant to be just clever or interesting. It's a big deal and key to understanding how Bitcoin works. Anyway, I'll get back to that in a second.
To back up though, remember a few years ago people tried to sound clever by saying things like: "Bitcoin may be a bubble, but the underlying blockchain technology is very profound." That view has largely been discredited, but there is a little truth in it. In the past, sharing things or giving something to someone on the internet has typically followed two patterns. I can share a photo with my colleague Sid, and when I do that I'm giving him a digital copy of it. We both then have identical photos. Or I can pay him money using an app like Venmo or PayPal, but then we have to use a third-party intermediary to conduct the transaction. The breakthrough of Bitcoin is that I can give Sid some coins and I don't have them anymore and I didn't need to use a trusted third party to intermediate the transaction. It's pretty cool technology.
Great, so you can pass it around, and only one person at a time can hold it, and there's no centralized third party that can decline the transaction or kick you off the network or anything like that. But that still doesn't answer why a Bitcoin is worth something and not nothing. After all it doesn't have any industrial or ornamental use. In his famous book Money and the Early Greek Mind, the scholar Richard Seaford wrote that a key reason that gold and silver were deemed to have value (and eventually became money) was that, like deities, gold and silver are immortal. "Gold is especially associated with the gods, who may themselves be called golden and possess a large range of golden things that in the human world are not made of gold... The associations of gold and silver derive not only from their lustre but from not suffering corrosion: unlike other metals, they may seem immortal."
In other words, gold and silver eventually became money because of this perceived mystical link that made it distinct from other worldly commodities. This helps explain the mystery of Bitcoin now, because it also has the mystical spark that alchemizes what is essentially a cell on a big spreadsheet (the Bitcoin blockchain) into something perceived to have monetary value. Whether it's worth over $30,000 for one 21 millionth of the network is a totally separate question. But the Satoshi creation story, like gold, explains why it's worth something and not nothing. Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg. Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. | 
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