The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved spot bitcoin ETFs yesterday for the first time. The 11 exchange-traded funds will let old-school investors and bitcoin enthusiasts alike access the world’s biggest cryptocurrency without having to keep a long password for a crypto wallet. The move makes it even easier for your mom to become a crypto bro.

Now that it’s real, what does it mean? Spot bitcoin ETFs will make investing in crypto more accessible by providing investors with exposure to bitcoin without them having to buy it themselves.

This also integrates bitcoin into the traditional financial system. Big players like Fidelity, Ark Investments, and BlackRock were among the first applicants approved by the SEC. Bitcoin is essentially putting on a tie and agreeing to go work at its dad’s insurance firm for the summer until the whole “buying a hamburger with crypto” thing takes off.

• The ETFs will let investors buy and sell groups of assets that reflect bitcoin’s price movements without having to actually trade crypto. There are similar ETFs for other commodities like energy or agriculture.
• Spot bitcoin ETFs are different from bitcoin futures ETFs, which were already cool and legit in the SEC’s eyes.

Why now?

The long-awaited win for the beleaguered crypto industry came after a false start on Tuesday, when someone hacked the agency’s X account that…didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled…and spuriously said the ETFs had been approved.

Crypto investors have been asking for spot bitcoin ETFs since roughly 2013, but the SEC has historically grimaced at the idea of inviting such a volatile asset into the financial system, concerned that a bitcoin ETF could be easily manipulated.

But Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which already helps investors buy bitcoin, tried to create an ETF for years and eventually took the SEC to court to force the agency’s hand in approving the fund. In August, a judge ruled in favor of Grayscale. This prompted it and a number of big-name investment firms to rush to file with the SEC to create spot bitcoin ETFs, and the agency was up against a deadline to decide.

It will be a quick turnaround…trading could begin as early as today. Financial firms have already started competing to have the ETF with the lowest fee.—MM

Masterworks just wrapped up another banner year, selling over $21.9m of paintings in 2023 and delivering the proceeds to investors. Talk about a Happy New Year…

So what did investors do with their cash? Charter a yacht in Ibiza? Finally close on that Alpaca farm? Maybe save a little? Nah.

Either way, Masterworks wants to do the same thing for you. This award-winning platform is unlocking an asset class that was once only available to billionaires.

To kick off the new year, Masterworks is inviting Morning Brew readers to open a free, no-obligation account today. Isn’t it time you check them out?

Amazon cuts streaming jobs. The e-commerce giant has spent billions building its content and streaming service, but now it wants to rein in costs. So, it’s laying off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and MGM Studios units, the latter of which it acquired for $6.5 billion in 2022. It’s also cutting 500 staffers from its livestreaming platform Twitch. These job cuts come after Amazon terminated ~27,000 employees across the company in late 2022 and early 2023 to bring costs down. But it’s not the only company that wants to spend less on streaming: Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. are all looking to shave expenses, while Netflix hasn’t raised its content budget in two years, per Bloomberg.

Trump can’t make his own closing argument. One person who won’t be speaking during closing arguments today in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Donald Trump is the former president himself. Trump had hoped to take the unusual step of speaking up, but Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the trial, said yesterday that Trump had not agreed to the “reasonable, lawful limits” he imposed—which included keeping any remarks “relevant.” Trump’s lawyers will, of course, still try to counter the AG’s demand for a $370 million fine and a ban on Trump doing business in the state.

Israel to face South Africa’s genocide allegations at UN court. Beginning today, the International Court of Justice will hold preliminary hearings on South Africa’s claims that Israel has committed genocide in its war against Hamas, which, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, has left more than 23,000 Palestinians dead. Israel has denounced the case as “absurd blood libel,” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it “meritless.” South Africa is seeking an emergency order for Israel to halt its military operations while the case, which will likely take years, is heard—but it’s unclear whether such an order could be enforced. An international law expert told the Associated Press that South Africa’s claims will have to clear a high bar; the court, which only considers disputes between nations, has never found a country responsible for genocide.

As the artificial intelligence race takes off faster than Tyreek Hill on the snap, OpenAI is working to cement itself as a top-tier AI tool with a new kind of app store.

Yesterday, it launched the GPT store, a platform where paying users of ChatGPT can share their own custom bots, known as GPTs, or download others’ for free. The store was initially set to launch in November but was delayed amid the Sam Altman–OpenAI board drama.

Three million custom chatbots are already available, according to OpenAI, including one from AllTrails that recommends hikes and a bot that creates SEO-optimized blog posts. The store categorizes GPTs by function (writing, productivity, etc.), and the company plans to feature a leaderboard for the top-performing ones eventually.

No coding necessary: OpenAI launched GPT Builder in November to make it easy—even for those without programming experience—to create a tailored GPT model. Now, builders (OpenAI-speak for developers) can share their creations in the store.

What else is still up in the air? How builders will get paid. OpenAI said it will announce a payment model sometime in Q1 that will be based on user engagement, but has given no specifics.—CC

If tap water had a head of marketing, they would be whipping their shirt around in the air right now: A study published this week found that the typical plastic bottle of water contains up to 100 times as many plastic fragments as scientists previously thought.

The new research is the first to scour water bottles for “nanoplastics,” which are even more minuscule than microplastics and may account for the vast majority of plastic contamination. That’s especially concerning because nanoplastics are small enough to enter the bloodstream, breach cell walls, and pass into a fetus.

Here’s what researchers at Columbia University and Rutgers University found after testing bottled water from three popular (unnamed) American brands:

• One-liter bottles of water contain anywhere from 110,000 to 370,000 plastic particles—90% of them are nanoplastics.
• Much of that plastic comes from the bottles themselves, but particles are also present at every stage of water production, the researchers wrote.

We’re eating plastic, too. Consumer Reports recently found a “widespread” presence of plastic in foods, with plastic showing up in 84 of the 85 foods it tested, including in many popular items found at grocery stores.

What now? There’s still no concrete data on how plastic affects our bodies, but if you’re worried, you can 1) swap plastic for glass when possible 2) drink tap water, which has fewer microplastics and 3) avoid microwaving plasticware.

Stat: How much would you need to get paid to stop having nightmares if you were on the plane that sprung a hole midflight? Alaska Airlines thinks $1,500. That’s what the airline offered passengers who were on Flight 1282, which had to make an emergency landing after the door plug on the Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off, “to assist with any inconveniences,” according to the Washington Post. The airline also provided an apology and a full refund, as well as mental health resources from Empathia. While some passengers may later decide to sue to try to get more cash from either the airline or Boeing, at least they don’t have to buy new iPhones.

Quote: “I do feel deeply sorry for these people, I really do.”

Stephen Harrison is an English actor living in Thailand, and he probably didn’t expect his best-known role to blow up the way it did. He recently told the Guardian that although he portrayed the (apparently nonexistent) CEO of Hyperverse, Steven Reece Lewis, he didn’t know the crypto company would falsely describe him as having highfalutin credentials and use that to allegedly scam investors. Harrison says he feels sorry for the people duped in the alleged scam, that he had “not pocketed” any of the $1.3 billion that Chainalysis estimates Hyperverse made in 2022 alone before it fell apart, and hopes the victims find “some justice.”

Read: The real effects of the possibly fake shoplifting scare. (Vox)

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