Global insurance company general account assets are bigger than global central bank balance sheets.

Think about that for a second. Think about how huge a pot of money that is and how significant

it is that this storied firm has decided to start allocating into Bitcoin. It may be small,

but the fact that it exists is huge.

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the

big picture power shifts remaking our world. The breakdown is sponsored by Crypto.com, Nexo.io, and

leveled, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Friday, December 11th, and today we are discussing why a famed 169-year-old insurance company just bought 100 million in Bitcoin. First up, however, let's do the

brief. First on the brief today, a vaccine has been approved, but jobless claims are way up. So

let's check in on the most important narrative trade of the year the vaccine information trade.

A key FDA advisory panel has

voted to endorse the Pfizer and Bio-Ntech COVID-19 vaccine. They say that the benefits outweigh the

risks for people 16 or older. The vote was 17 to 4, and this paves the way for the FDA to green light distribution of this vaccine.

This is likely to happen as early as today, Friday, December 11th.

President Trump, of course, in his usual style, nug them from moving too slow, calling the

FDA a big old slow turtle, but it seems like there is a vaccine on the horizon for real. This is a good thing

because we had the twin news yesterday with that of a sharp rise in U.S. jobless claims.

Initial jobless claims climbed by 137,000 claims this week to 853,000 total new claims. This is the

highest number since September and continues a trend. Claims have to be total new claims. This is the highest number since September and continues a trend.

Claims had been between 700,000 and 800,000 since mid-October before jumping last week.

Now, of course, this only makes sense as we see the return of partial lockdowns and also voluntary

reductions in business activities as COVID-19 cases swell.

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