A Universal Translator, Revolutionary Baby Stroller, Transparent TV and More!

Awesome new tech from CES, plus embarrassment for SEC’s Gary Gensler

Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, January 10th. Here I am all week in Las Vegas at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. I'm here checking out all the cool new tech that's being introduced here in 2024. And I'm sharing with you the coolest finds that I'm discovering. Out of the 4,000 plus exhibitors that are here from all over the world, 150 countries represented half more than half of the Fortune 500.

And today I came upon LG. They have a massive exhibit, as you would probably expect, being one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. You know, I never heard of LG when I was a little kid, but now they're widely known all over the world 74,000 employees, 142 subsidiaries. They make everything from refrigerators and washing machines, dishwashers, cooking appliances to, of course, home entertainment gear, TVs, audios, videos, monitors, PCs.

Let me tell you what's new from LG that they've announced here at the show. They just announced something amazing. It's the world's first transparent TV. It's a 77-inch screen. It uses OLED technology. When the TV is off, the glass is transparent, like a window. You can put this TV in the middle of a room because it doesn't block the view. Or you can put it against a wall and put a painting behind it, because when the TV is off, you'll see the painting. No more huge black screen taking up massive wall space in our homes anymore. And not only that, like I said, you can put the TV in the middle of the room. It uses wireless technology. You don't have to plug it in so you really can put it in the middle of the room. The TV also lets you turn on a ticker bar that runs along the bottom of the screen. It displays news alerts, weather updates, or shows the song you're listening to while the rest of the screen is clear. They haven't announced the price yet, but I took some video of this TV in action. We got a link for you in the show notes so you can watch that video. It's really very cool.

And on the other side of the spectrum, LG just introduced a new tiny box. How tiny? Well, imagine taking two decks of cards, put them end to end. Now stack six decks, six piles high. That's about the size of this box. That box is a projector, and it projects a 4K picture onto a wall as far as ten feet away. And as you move the camera, it adjusts itself to keep the image perfect on the wall. LG is also making a briefcase. You open it up and a TV monitor pops up. Perfect for tailgating or a camping trip, or a business presentation anywhere.

I also saw what Abbott Labs is doing now when I mention a company like them, a big pharma company. You probably figure I'm going to talk to you about a new drug that they're developing. But no, Abbott is introducing a mixed reality experience. Imagine that you put on a pair of goggles. You sit back in a comfortable chair. What you see is a colorful garden with trees and plants sprouting up all around you. It's comforting and very inviting. So where do you go to get this experience? You go to donate blood? Yeah. Abbott is partnering with Blood Centers of America to solve a big problem. We are not donating enough blood. So this is the first of its kind mixed reality experience that's designed to encourage younger people to give blood to help us sustain our blood supply. You can experience this in cities all across the country. Only 3% of adults donate blood. And in the past decade, there's been a 30% decline among donors under the age of 30. The hope is that this new cool experience will encourage people to donate their blood.

All right. I'm taking too long to explain all these things to you. There are literally tens of thousands of new products here on display at CES, and I want to tell you about the coolest ones. So I'm going to give them to you in a rapid-fire sequence. Okay. If you want to learn more about any of these, we've got links for you in the show notes. And when I'm done, I'm going to tell you of the huge embarrassment that happened yesterday to the SEC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler, on the eve of the SEC's expected approval of the new bitcoin ETFs.

So first, here's the first one. How about a stroller for the baby? Well, here is the deluxe kind, Rosa. They're calling this stroller the “Future of Parenting”. Well, that's a pretty big claim. They say this is not just a stroller. It's a revolutionary AI-powered companion designed to make parenting effortless and enjoyable. Well, that's a pretty outrageous claim. Anyway, this stroller has automatic braking if it senses danger, and it gives the baby soothing white noise to protect the tiny ears from city sounds. How about solar glass? This is innovative glass. It generates electricity from sunlight. It can even harness energy from invisible light and low levels of light, like a dimly lit room or a cloudy day.

And then there's Multi-modal AI. It monitors the health status of babies and elderly people in real time. We're talking heart rate, respiration, sleep patterns, stress, and they do it through vision, AI and voice recognition technology. Yeah, the device looks at the face of the baby or the older person to detect problems.

And if you don't care about babies or grandma, well, how about your dog? Minitailz is the world's first all in one smart pet monitor. It offers advanced heart health scans, and it uses AI to detect atrial fibrillation in pets. You get real time alerts, and it tells you if your pet is strolling around or sprinting or enjoying a car ride. It's lightweight and seamlessly attaches to any collar.

And then there's a company called Ossia. They make a magnetic phone charger. It's lightweight, about the size of half a deck of cards. It's magnetic, wirelessly charges mobile phones even while you're using it. It delivers power at a distance, even through walls.

And how about a pair of headphones? These are really special headphones. You put them on, and it translates what you're hearing across 37 languages. This is like Star Trek's universal translator.

And do you snore? The Motion Pillow intelligently detects snoring and accurately measures your oxygen levels. The pillow has seven airbags that dynamically inflate and deflate to subtly adjust the position of your head and back so you're comfortable, and you also stop snoring.

And if you're not worried about your sleep, how about the sleep of your dog? Invoxia is selling a dog bed that records your dog's resting heart rate and breathing rate, and it can detect early signs of heart failure before you see any symptoms. 

And if you've got trouble walking, you'll love this brand new, real time assistive voice technology from a company called Whispp. Millions of people have difficulty speaking. This device seamlessly converts whispered and vocal cord impaired speech into a user's healthy, natural voice in real time. Terrific for people who have a stutter.

And Garmin just introduced an automated autonomous aircraft landing system. If you pilot your own plane and you suddenly can't fly, the device takes over. It immediately calculates a flight path to the most suitable airport and runway, and it avoids terrain and adverse weather. It initiates an approach and automatically lands the aircraft safely. I'm wondering why we have to wait for the pilot to be incapacitated. Why don't we just use this thing all the time?

Hey, you know, I told you in my book The Truth About Your Future way back in 2017. Gosh, that's hard to believe now. Six years ago, that 4D printing was coming. You're familiar with 3D printing. You create something on a printer in all three dimensions length, width, and height. 4d printing adds a fourth element of time. When is it going to do what you want it to do? Well, that prediction of my book from seven years ago. It's now here. A 4D food printer. Yeah, it's a personalized nutrition delivery system. The inventive technology uses software along with food, ink, pH, time, and heat to distribute nutrients into your body. Sounds pretty high tech, huh?

And Hurotics Inc. They've just launched a robot. Not just any robot. This is a robot that you wear. Yeah, a wearable robot that you can customize to fit your needs. If you have trouble walking or you need to lift heavy objects. This wearable robot can help you out.

Or maybe you just need help from a robot parking your car. So here it is the parking robot, a fully autonomous driving system. It's for operators of parking lots. It'll park everybody's car. You know, you drop it off with a valet instead of a human taking your car away. The robot does. And it recognizes obstacles, roads and license plate numbers, and it independently determines the size, weight and type of the cars that it's parking. And because there's no human involved; it can park the cars really close to each other. So it cuts the amount of space you need by 30%.

But one thing you're not going to need any help parking is the new Honda vehicle. It's called the Moto Compacto. It's an affordable, all electric personal transportation vehicle. It only goes 15 miles an hour over a 12-mile range. Frankly, it looks like you're sitting on a briefcase on wheels, but a pretty cool device. 

And then there's a company called Graphene Square. They're selling a cordless cooking device, a rechargeable device made with graphene, the world's thinnest and strongest material. It uses 30% less power and doesn't need a cord.

And there's the Gyro Glove, the world's first mechanical gyroscope medical device. There are 200 million people in the world who suffer from incurable hand tremors. Think of folks who have Parkinson's disease or other illnesses. This device instantaneously stabilizes hand tremors and restores your quality of life. I could keep going with more cool product innovations and I will all the rest of this week.

Well, all eyes in the world of crypto and investment management are focused on the SEC this week because it is today, January 10th, where the SEC is required through statutory obligation to announce its verdict on spot bitcoin ETFs. Today's the deadline for their ruling. We've been hoping the decision would come down before this, but the SEC is taking it down to the wire, so we're expecting that after the market closes today because they're not going to want to disrupt things during market trading. The SEC will issue its announcement and everybody, quite frankly, is expecting the SEC to say yes, launching these new spot bitcoin ETFs. And they should probably begin trading tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see later today if what I just said proves true, but that's what I think is going to happen anyway.

Meanwhile, while all eyes are focused on this, the SEC had a bit of a crisis yesterday with everybody paying so much attention to the SEC and what they're working on with this spot bitcoin ETF and the pending announcement. In the midst of all this yesterday, Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, issued a statement on his Twitter account, excuse me, his X account, announcing approval of spot bitcoin ETFs. And then a few minutes later, Gensler tweeted again, this time saying no such approval had been made and that the SEC's official X account had been hacked. But in those few minutes, bitcoin spiked to $48,000 and then after the correction was made, the price fell back to $45,000.

And in those few minutes, $50 billion in trades were done. That cost a lot of people a lot of money. This was downright market manipulation. Someone made a ton of money on this hack. Others lost a lot of money. And the cruel irony is that all of this is the SEC's fault. After there were false reports in the past couple of months about the SEC's actions, the SEC made an announcement saying only trust the SEC's tweets.

Well, now it looks like we can't trust them at all. The SEC admitted later yesterday that Gensler's official SEC X account did not have two-factor authentication, which is a basic way you protect all your online accounts. Some speculated that the SEC's account wasn't really hacked at all, but instead they simply had an operational mistake. Some staffer at the SEC released a tweet prematurely that was supposed to go out after the approvals were actually made, but the SEC says, no, that's not true. They say a hacker obtained unauthorized access to the account through a phone number associated with the SEC, and the SEC is asking the FBI for help in finding the hacker. This whole incident is highly embarrassing for the SEC. Just pile this on to all the other embarrassments involving Gary Gensler. I mean, after all, the SEC is the investment community's top cop, and if they can't even secure their own social media accounts, I mean, geez.

Meanwhile, the financial press remains focused intently on the new spot bitcoin ETFs that we're supposed to get today.  I spent a lot of time yesterday doing interviews for a wide variety of publications in the crypto and financial press, and there's going to be a lot more of that for me today and tomorrow and well into next week, because this is the biggest news in investment management in years, and certainly the biggest news in crypto in a decade. And what we're beginning to see are some pretty silly comments by some financial advisors.

You know, I was interviewed for an article that appeared yesterday in Investment News, where I was explaining why so many investment advisors are excited about this, why they look forward to the ability to easily, conveniently, through a very low-cost approach provide bitcoin to their clients diversified portfolios. Bitcoin is the best performing asset in history. Not to suggest that past performance guarantees future results, but we are pretty confident that bitcoin is a wonderful diversifier for portfolios because its prices don't move in sync with other asset classes. You see the movements of stocks and bonds and real estate and gold and oil. Bitcoin's prices move independently of all of that, and that is exactly why you add it to a diversified portfolio. You want investments that zig when others zag. It helps you lower the return of the overall portfolio. 

Bitcoin and other crypto clearly have tremendous applications in commerce on a global scale. Virtually every industry in the world is beginning to develop blockchain technology and deploy it in their businesses. Everybody from the Norwegian Seafood Association to Breitling watches to Parmigiano-Reggiano, the largest cheese maker in Italy, to Nike and Starbucks and Budweiser, it's really quite extensive. And yet somehow Investment News magazine was able to find a couple of financial advisors who know nothing about crypto and yet were willing to be quoted acting as though they did. One of these advisors was asked by the magazine, are you planning to recommend the new bitcoin ETFs to your clients? And this advisor said no. He said, quote, “It doesn't belong in a portfolio because it's not really an investment. It's just pure speculation.”

That's an incredibly stupid statement. You shouldn't own something in your portfolio that isn't really an investment. “Bitcoin is not an investment. It's a speculation”. Well, how do you explain gold? How do you explain artwork? How do you explain baseball cards? How do you explain rare coins and stamps or comic books? Aren't they all just speculations too? And yet, highly sophisticated investors routinely invest in these types of alternative assets. Why is bitcoin any different? Or how about this other financial advisor, who was quoted by Investment News as saying, quote, “Bitcoin really came into the general conversation because it only went up for a period of time. And then what happened? It effectively went to zero”. This financial advisor obviously not only knows nothing about crypto but hasn't even been paying attention to the price performance of bitcoin over the last 15 years. Its price didn't merely go up for a little bit. At one point, its price has been steadily rising over the past 15 years, not just with incredible increases in price, but also incredible decreases. But at no point did bitcoin's price effectively go to zero. That's a ridiculous comment that can only be made by someone who truly doesn't know what they're talking about.

And this is why, as you were trying to figure out what you ought to be doing with bitcoin, should you invest and if so, how and how much you need to make sure you know what you're talking about. You need to throw away your biases. You need to eliminate your prejudices. You need to throw away the myths and misinformation that you're misquoting others of saying. And you need to do your own research. And that is what we're trying to help you through all of the content we're creating. In anticipation of these new spot bitcoin ETFs, we're launching the new Advisor Toolkit and the new Investor Toolkit. We plan on launching them immediately right after the SEC approvals come through, which should be later this afternoon. You'll be able to get this information for free.

Make sure you get the information you need so you can properly counsel your clients. And if you are an investor, make sure you're working with a financial advisor who truly knows what they're talking about. And one of the best ways to make that identification. See if your advisor holds the CBDA professional designation Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets. The links in the show notes to show you what the CBDA designation is all about. There are courses specifically for financial advisors, for Home Office personnel, and even for investors and consumers. All the info is available to you. The links in the show notes.

We're very excited about what Gary Gensler has to say later today about the spot bitcoin ETFs. And tomorrow I'll be telling you all about it and what it means for you. I'll also be bringing you a whole lot more from the Consumer Electronics Show, the cool, nifty tech that's helping improve your life. See you tomorrow.

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