Crypto News: How to avoid calamity

Welcome to The Readout, the new daily newsletter from Bloomberg UK.

Let's start with today's bad news. UK household incomes are on their longest downward trend since records began in 1955. Elsewhere, the UK's current-account deficit is growing, putting ever-greater strain on overseas creditors. Our macro strategist Simon White is concerned:

"Deteriorating public finances and worsening inflation threaten to prompt a mass exodus of capital from UK shores, and a concomitant collapse in sterling."

Elsewhere Barclays has followed Lloyds in giving its bank staff a raise. That counts as good news if you work at Barclays but not if you work at the Bank of England, which is urging wage restraint.

It's at this point we turn to Wimbledon to check in on Emma Radacanu and Andy Murray. Oh wait…

Andy Murray on Wednesday night. Photographer: Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images

Were you forwarded this email? You can sign up here.

The stories you need to know about this evening

Airports are asking airlines to cancel more flights.
Amazon is making a UK deal to show Champions League football.
Criminal barristers went on strike. Now they've got a 15% fee increase.

There's a new plan taking shape to avoid energy calamity this winter. The gist of it, as Rachel Morison's scoop today makes clear, is simple: "Pay not to produce."

National Grid wants to reduce energy demand in winter, so letters were sent to UK companies last week, seen by Bloomberg, asking how much they would need to be paid to reduce operations.

Leaving aside the depressing idea of handing out cash for things not to be made (which all very much fits the current mood), this idea is just the latest blackout-themed news from National Grid.

Morison — who covers energy for Bloomberg News — has a very good sense of what winter will look like. She gave me this rundown:

"First National Grid would appeal to everyone (homes, businesses etc) to conserve what they can. Then they trigger pre-agreed contracts with industry and business to limit energy usage. That's what the letters revealed today achieve.
"Then it gets a bit more serious. The network operator would need to limit supplies to gas-fired power plants and fire up the coal reserve to keep the lights on. After that they can do things like lower the voltage across the network. Cuts to household supply are the very last thing they'd do. They are trying to start up a separate scheme for households to give discounts on bills if you can cut use at peak times."

Before Parliament breaks up for summer Whitehall hopes to publish a new energy efficiency policy. Right now the most vulnerable people get government support but ministers accept there's little for low income earner-occupiers. But it's "fiendishly complicated," according to one government insider – nothing is yet signed off by ministers and any plan won't see new Treasury money.

Today I asked one energy company boss if we will see blackouts this winter, despite all of these efforts. Their answer: "I doubt it very much." The rationale was that the UK's LNG capacity is larger than those in European countries.

Rachel's report makes it clear that navigating winter will need more than a simple on-off switch. It may well be that the lights never truly go off, because of all the plans outlined above. We may avoid total blackouts, 1970s-style. Instead the economy would get used to periods of patchy supply. Greyouts, 2020s-style.

Royal outlays have risen in each of the past four years — despite the pandemic and national lockdowns — and soared 53% from 2018-2019's reported £67 million, according to the family's latest accounts, released today in London. Housekeeping and hospitality costs went up by almost half a million or 55%, the annual report shows. Travel expenses also increased by about 40% to £4.5 million as the Covid-19 pandemic loosened, including the Prince of Wales's visit to Barbados to mark the country's transition to a republic and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Caribbean tour, which cost £226,383.

Get ahead of the curve

Inside 'Londongrad'. As MPs tear into the UK over its links to Russian money, our In the City podcast looks at the world of the super-rich.

Record loss, incoming. Bitcoin is on track for its worst quarter in a decade, a time when the cryptocurrency was still in its infancy.

It's not just us. Consumer spending in the US fell in May for the first time this year, a sign of a weakening economy.

Kent v. Sussex. No, it's not a county cricket grudge match. It's the hunt for the best wine in England.

Danish mink massacre. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen "grossly misled" the public in ordering a cull of 17 million mink, a report said.

Working from Paradise. Fancy some spearfishing or snorkeling between Zooms? There's now a tropical business-leisure destination for you.

£4.5 billion

The amount saved in UK household bank accounts in the first quarter of 2022. That was down from a peak of £75,.5 billion during 2020's first Covid lockdown.

One key story, every weekday

The hackers had been inside the Bitfinex servers for weeks before attempting the heist. They'd watched users on the cryptocurrency exchange buy and sell Bitcoins. They'd studied the commands that controlled the security system. It was as if they were hiding in an air duct above a bank's vault, watching as tellers meticulously moved cash in and out, looking for vulnerabilities.

They weren't after Bitcoins, exactly. What they needed were the private keys: cryptographic passwords that would allow them to unlock the coins and move them. Once they found the keys, they struck.

Read The Big Take.

Your early warning system for the day ahead

9:30 a.m. Bank of England data on mortgage approvals, consumer credit. Plus manufacturing PMI figures from S&P Global. Mortgages and manufacturing sentiment have been trending down in recent months.

Follow all tomorrow's corporate news in The London Rush, live on Bloomberg UK from 8 a.m.

Please send thoughts, tips and feedback to readout@bloomberg.net. You can follow Allegra on Twitter. The Readout is edited by Adam Blenford.