TNB Tech Minute: Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of TikTok’s Arguments
03:07 Share

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet. Resolutions.

A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging a**hole and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

Here's your TMB Tech Minute for Friday, January the 10th. I'm James Rundle for The Wall Street Journal. TikTok seemingly failed to convince the Supreme Court during oral arguments today that it should stop a federal law requiring its Chinese owner to divest it by January the 19th or face a ban in the US. TikTok argued that the law violated its First Amendment rights, but Justice Elena Kagan said that it was targeted at ByteDance, its foreign owner, which doesn't have such protections under US law.

Chief Justice John Roberts also said that the court can't ignore congressional concerns that the app, which is used by over 170 million people in the US, could be used to spread propaganda and stockpile sensitive data. Here's Roberts during the proceedings. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is in fact subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on an expedited schedule to rule before the January 19th deadline. If the law is upheld, TikTok will disappear from app stores in the US, unless ByteDance divests ownership, which it has said it cannot and will not do. A host of new Bitcoin exchange-traded funds from companies such as BlackRock and Fidelity attracted about $37 billion of total net flows in their first year of trading.

Their popularity helped fuel a rally in Bitcoin that saw it cross the $100,000 per coin price for the first time in December. The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the launch of the products, known as spot ETFs, a year ago. These allow retail investors to purchase Bitcoin in their brokerage accounts just like they buy stocks. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust became the most successful ETF launch in history based on inflows, and is now the largest Bitcoin fund in the world with $53 billion in assets.

And the electronic trading network LiquidNet has agreed to pay a $5 million fine to resolve allegations that it failed to protect confidential data and had improper controls over market access. That's according to the SEC, who said that LiquidNet, owned by London-based financial services firm TPiCap, failed to adequately limit employee access to confidential subscriber trading information.

The regulator also alleged that LiquidNet violated its rules by setting inappropriate credit limits for years. LiquidNet settled the charges without admitting or denying guilt. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Monday's Tech News Briefing podcast.