Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Bitcoin rises again

A 31% plunge in the morning. A 33% surge in the afternoon. Such was the wild ride Bitcoin took investors on Wednesday, lopping off billions of dollars in value before comments from some big name-fans helped propel it skyward again. The extreme price swings, crazy even for an asset known for its intrinsic turbulence, caused outages on major crypto exchanges. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the progress of coronavirus vaccines while mapping the pandemic globally and across America. 

Here are today’s top stories  

Daily deaths from the coronavirus in India reached a record and new cases in Malaysia rose to their highest since the pandemic began. Taiwan extended a soft lockdown island-wide while Covid-19 continued to rampage through Thailand’s prisons. France loosened a months-long lockdown, allowing restaurants to serve customers on terraces while cinemas and museums also reopen. New York state, once a global epicenter of the crisis, reported its lowest infection rate since September. Here is the latest on the pandemic.

An iceberg the size of Majorca has broken off the coast of Antarctica, with measurements taken from satellites and planes confirming it’s now the world’s largest.  

It’s the latest twist in the world of blank-check mergers: A company plans to go public with a SPAC (that’s a special-purpose acquisition company for the uninitiated) and use it to buy back an affiliate that it took public. How does it plan to do that? By using another SPAC, of course.

European Union governments agreed to allow quarantine-free travel for vaccinated tourists and visitors from countries deemed safe, paving the way for the resumption of hassle-free trans-Atlantic flights. Ambassadors from the EU’s 27 member states backed a proposal to waive quarantine for those with coronavirus inoculations approved by its drug regulator. The approval could be finalized this week.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell joined other Republicans in opposing a plan for a commission to investigate the unprecedented Jan. 6 attack by Donald Trump followers on the Capitol, in which five people died and Congress was ransacked. McConnell’s move casts doubt on whether lawmakers can come to agreement on an independent probe of the deadly insurrection. Meanwhile, the former president, assailed for stoking the crowd that moved to sack the seat of U.S. democracy, faces a new criminal probe.

The U.S. will hold off on punishing the company overseeing construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, a move that’s meant to bolster ties with Berlin but left President Joe Biden open to attack for being soft on Moscow.

Dozens of consumers who were scammed by Elon Musk impersonators taking advantage of the current cryptocurrency craze are begging the Federal Trade Commission for help getting their money back.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow 

• What the biggest Bitcoin influencers are saying about its collapse.
• “Singapore variant” is actually from India, the city-state says.
• Israel rejects U.S. call that it de-escalate its Gaza bombing campaign. 
• Someone just hit the fast-forward button for U.S. consumer spending.
• The Chinese skyscraper that wobbled has prompted a U.S. warning.
• Businessweek: The U.S. dollar isn’t crashing, bears notwithstanding.
• Fighting environmental degradation, one bottle of Mezcal at a time.

Your Pile of Frequent Flyer Miles Is In Danger

If you spent the pandemic holed up at home, dreaming of the day you can jet away on vacation using all those miles you’ve banked, you may want to wake up, Bloomberg Wealth warns. That mountain of frequent flyer miles you’re sitting on may soon start shrinking.

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