The world's bitcoin traders are getting ready for this week's ETF decision.

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It's a tough time to be in the shopping mall business. 

Black Friday sales last year provided the latest proof of changing dynamics in the retail sector as consumers continued to move their shopping online. Online sales grew to $3.34 billion, up 22% compared to the previous year's figures, while sales at brick-and-mortar stores fell 5%.

The downturn in physical shopping has had ripple effects affecting malls. According to one analyst, more than half of America's malls will either shut down or continue to struggle in the coming years.

That is likely to have a huge impact on the investors backing loans to those shopping malls. 

Commercial mortgage-backed securities, known on Wall Street at CMBS, are securities backed by commercial mortgages on real estate like shopping malls. And when an anchor tent decides to close and leave a real estate complex, it can put the loans backing the entire mall at risk. 

For example, JCPenney recently outlined plans to close 140 stores. Morningstar Credit Ratings identified 39 locations it thought were likely to close, and found about $7.3 billion in loans securitized in CMBS could be impaired as a result. That's because mall owners often face difficulty finding retailers to take up the space vacated by an anchor tenant.

JCPenney isn't the only huge retailer closing stores, of course. Macy's and Sears are also closing stores, sometimes in the same mall.

The Hudson Valley Mall in upstate New York lost anchor tenants JCPenney and Macy's within a 12-month period, for example. That can have terrible consequences for the mall and its backers.

"The January disposition of the 765,465-square-foot mall in Kingston, New York, resulted in $9.4 million of proceeds, representing an 89.2% discount to the original appraised value and resulting in an 86.1% loss severity," Morningstar said. 

Overall, Morningstar estimates that as much as $48 billion in loans backed by mall property are at risk of default.

Some investors are looking for opportunities to profit from the mall meltdown. 

Alder Hill Management, a New York-based investment firm, is betting against a bunch of low-rated securities linked to retail real estate, according to the Wall Street Journal. And analysts at Deutsche Bank have told their clients to bent against CMBS, according to Bloomberg. 

SEE ALSO: WARREN BUFFETT: This is the best book I read last year...

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It's a tough time to be in the shopping mall business. 

Black Friday sales last year provided the latest proof of changing dynamics in the retail sector as consumers continued to move their shopping online. Online sales grew to $3.34 billion, up 22% compared to the previous year's figures, while sales at brick-and-mortar stores fell 5%.

The downturn in physical shopping has had ripple effects affecting malls. According to one analyst, more than half of America's malls will either shut down or continue to struggle in the coming years.

That is likely to have a huge impact on the investors backing loans to those shopping malls. 

Commercial mortgage-backed securities, known on Wall Street at CMBS, are securities backed by commercial mortgages on real estate like shopping malls. And when an anchor tent decides to close and leave a real estate complex, it can put the loans backing the entire mall at risk. 

For example, JCPenney recently outlined plans to close 140 stores. Morningstar Credit Ratings identified 39 locations it thought were likely to close, and found about $7.3 billion in loans securitized in CMBS could be impaired as a result. That's because mall owners often face difficulty finding retailers to take up the space vacated by an anchor tenant.

JCPenney isn't the only huge retailer closing stores, of course. Macy's and Sears are also closing stores, sometimes in the same mall.

The Hudson Valley Mall in upstate New York lost anchor tenants JCPenney and Macy's within a 12-month period, for example. That can have terrible consequences for the mall and its backers.

"The January disposition of the 765,465-square-foot mall in Kingston, New York, resulted in $9.4 million of proceeds, representing an 89.2% discount to the original appraised value and resulting in an 86.1% loss severity," Morningstar said. 

Overall, Morningstar estimates that as much as $48 billion in loans backed by mall property are at risk of default.

Some investors are looking for opportunities to profit from the mall meltdown. 

Alder Hill Management, a New York-based investment firm, is betting against a bunch of low-rated securities linked to retail real estate, according to the Wall Street Journal. And analysts at Deutsche Bank have told their clients to bent against CMBS, according to Bloomberg. 

SEE ALSO: WARREN BUFFETT: This is the best book I read last year...

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There was one glorious moment on Wednesday, when simultaneous interviews on Bloomberg TV and CNBC perfectly captured the market we're in right now. 

On CNBC, billionaire fund manager David Tepper was telling a spellbound Joe Kernen that "animal spirits" had been awoken, and that the promise of deregulation alone had the power to send the economy into bliss-mode.

"Japan's doing well, China's doing well, we're doing well," he said. Tepper, the founder of Appaloosa Management, is even long European stocks. 

"Not one more regulation is happening and ... you have tax cuts coming here," he said. "So unless there's a mess-up in the administration ... nothing's going to get in the way until inflation starts picking up."

That was one half of the picture.

On the always more sober network — Bloomberg TV — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a Wall Street billionaire in his own right, was explaining the landscape of global trade with the US by saying quite simply, "...we’re in a trade war."

"We’ve been in a trade war for decades. That’s why we have a deficit... The reality is the Mexicans know, the Canadians know, everybody knows the times are different. We are going to consume new trade relations with people. And they all know they’re going to have to make concessions," he told Bloomberg's David Westin.

Westin was simply asking if Ross was concerned about trade spats as the administration renegotiates trade deals that Trump has promised will lead to dramatic economic change. 

Quite the contrast, no?

Billionaire Tepper sees an America that will smoothly roll along into riches, and is piling into stocks as a result.

At the same time, Commerce Secretary Ross seems to be looking at an America desperately in need of shock therapy — and wants to apply a shock that could easily ripple across the world before it violently returns home to our markets.

This is exactly what has some investors unnerved right now. One view is that the promise of tax cuts and government spending and a government controlled by the Republican party (and, you could argue, Goldman Sachs) is huge for the investing class. On the other hand, that same government is promising to tear up the rule book, take a hostile stance even with friendly countries, and penalize American businesses and consumers who have adapted to a globalized world — all of which should scare the pants off investors.

Say what you want but, like, Dow 20,000.

"I don't think the market's cheap.... but you can't be short in that kind of setup. It's hard to go short when you still have the drugs being given... the punch bowl's still on the table," Tepper said.

What he means by "drugs" is that central banks around the world are still keeping rates low and money easy.

"Whether people are heroine addicts or cocaine users around the world, I don't know," he joked. Obviously, he thinks this policy should end. And to his point, The US Federal Reserve looks more and more like it will hike rates in March, a sign that policymakers see the stability Tepper sees.

And of the dramatic changes the Trump administration and House Republicans are promising in terms of leaving a border adjustment tax on imports?

Now, there's a lot of talk in economic circles about what such a policy would do. For it to go smoothly, the dollar has to rise to make up for the cost of importing goods into the country. But a lot of people, including the New York Fed, think the dollar won't rise enough, and in that case, policy will just jack up prices while making our trading partners angry, hurting exports. 

Tepper thinks that if the policy is phased in over 5 years, there might be some tiny initial shock but "competition" in the economy will take care of the rest. He thinks Ryan and friends in DC have figured that out, and that it's "not that complicated."

He is referring to the same Paul Ryan who proposed a healthcare bill with no numbers in it on Tuesday, just in case you were wondering. And yes, Tepper bought Snapchat when it IPO'd, in case you're wondering that too. The only risk he sees coming toward the world in 2017 is a potential Marine Le Pen victory in France's presidential election.

Everything else is gravy (it's not like 2016 had any curveballs or anything).

"Everyone has to be on the negative side of life," he said to CNBC hosts Melissa Lee and Becky Quick, who dug in a little on policy topics, "you're behind."

Did he just say we're at war? 

Meanwhile over on Bloomberg TV we're at war. But don't worry. 

 "No, it’s not going to be a shooting war," Ross assured Westin. "The people know you have the big bazooka, you probably don’t have to use it."

One of the central tenets of Trump trade policy is that multilateral agreements will be torn up, and instead we will renegotiate bilateral agreements with countries individually. This notion has trade experts on both sides of the aisle crying foul, not only because this is expensive and likely more time consuming than the administration thinks — Ross thinks his team can renegotiate NAFTA with Mexico in a year— it also creates a climate of intense risk.

When you tell your trading partners you're already at war, the game is zero-sum. It's not win-win anymore — and thinking in big picture win-win situations for a bunch of countries at once has been the aim of trade policy for about 70 years.

Yes, there are problems in these deals. Ross and his White House colleague National Trade Council head Peter Navarro hate that part of the US automaker's supply chain is located in Mexico thanks to NAFTA.

But the same deal also lead to American corn farmers crushing smaller Mexican corn farmers in the 1980s, which resulted in a wave of Mexican immigration to the United States.

These things are complicated, and we have an administration that has shown that it willing to use a lot of pressure, and walk right up to the line to get its way. When you walk the line, it's hard not to get tipped over. On the other side, Trump's rhetoric has only hardened and unified Mexican politicians against the US. This is not a climate of speedy negotiations.  

And it's not a time for hasty policy either. Ross isn't totally sold on the border adjustment tax that Tepper said was "not that complicated."

On Bloomberg TV, Ross made clear that the policy had trade implications beyond tax reform:

And so you have several issues. One is the question whether or not to do a border adjustable. The second is what magnitude of it is needed.

Then third are the intricate details, how does it really work. If you’re a solely domestic producer who does some exporting, that’s one set of facts. If you’re mainly an importer, a different one. If you’re both, even more complicated.

So it isn’t a very simple thing to analyze. And because it’s so important and such large numbers - as you know, they’re talking about potentially $1 trillion over a ten year period, that’s way too big a number to get wrong.

None of this is "not that complicated." In fact, it's all very risky. It's even riskier when trade negotiators go into every meeting flashing the "bazooka" (which we're assuming/hoping just means tariffs).

But then again who knows, maybe Tepper is right and everyone is creeped out for absolutely no reason at all.

SEE ALSO: There's a new 'most dangerous' man in global economics

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West Texas Intermediate crude oil trades down 4.2% at $50.95 per barrel as of 1:54 p.m. ET after the latest inventory data from the Department of Energy showed supplies rose by 8.21 million barrels to 528.4 million barrels. That's the highest since record keeping began in 1982, according to Bloomberg. Wednesday's selling has WTI on track to close at its lowest level since January 1o when it finished at $50.82 per barrel. 

WTI has had trouble breaking out above the $55 level despite reports that OPEC compliance with its agreed upon production cut is nearing 100%. Crude oil prices began rallying in mid-November on speculation OPEC would cut production at its November 30 meeting, and prices continued higher into early 2017 as both OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreed to cut production to help alleviate record oil inventories. 

But inventories have continued to swell in the US, and that has kept a lid on prices. 

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin dives after China's 3 biggest exchanges say they'll keep blocking withdrawals

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A unique proposal aimed at scaling bitcoin’s transaction capacity via sidechains has been revealed in a new white paper.

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The US Treasury market is under pressure on Wednesday after the blowout ADP private payrolls report showed the addition of 298,000 jobs in February. That was well ahead of the 187,000 print that economists were expecting and marked a big jump up from the 246,000 job gain in January.

The report caused traders to price in a rate cut with 100% certainty, according to Bloomberg's World Interest Rate Probability. 

And that's what is pushing up yields across the curve. 

Here's a look at the scoreboard as of 10:21 a.m. ET:

• 2-year +3.1 bps @ 1.358% 
• 3-year +4.3 bps @ 1.673%
• 5-year +4.3 bps @ 2.093%
• 7-year +4.7 bps @ 2.389%
• 10-year +4.4 bps @ 2.561%
• 30-year +3.4 bps @ 3.155%

Yields are higher by as much as 5 basis points with the belly of the curve seeing the biggest impact. The benchmark 10-year yield is at its highest level since in more than two months, when it topped out at 2.64% about five weeks after Trump's election victory. 

Wednesday's selling has caused bear flattening (Shorter-dated yields going up faster than longer-dated yields) along the yield curve with the 5-30-year spread pressing to 106 bps and holding near its flattest levels since September. A move below 105 bps will have the curve at its tightest level since 2007. 

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin slides after China's 3 biggest exchanges say they will keep blocking withdrawals

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Every morning in the Euclid Manor, a 6,000-square-foot single-family home on the outskirts of downtown Oakland, California, the residence's 13 inhabitants trample over one another in a race for the shower before preparing breakfast at a kitchen counter that seats three.

The tight quarters present opportunities for the residents, who include students and startup founders, to shape their bonds. It's not uncommon to find them catching up on their careers and love lives all before 7:30 a.m.

This is the reality that residents signed up for when they leased an apartment with group-living startup Open Door, which runs the Euclid Manor.

For years, the "hacker house" has offered aspiring entrepreneurs a place to rest their heads — often a bunk bed — for cheap rent. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg rented a five-bedroom house in Palo Alto, where early Facebook employees built the social network. These days, bitcoin entrepreneurs party and plot the future of money in a three-story home they share in San Francisco. There are dozens more mansions like it in the Bay Area.

The "hacker house," "commune," or whatever your preferred name for dwellings that pack in a large number of residents, is going mainstream as millennials continue to migrate to high-priced urban areas in droves. Startups have taken to rebranding the homes as "co-living" spaces.

Companies like Open Door and WeLive, a subsidiary of coworking giant WeWork, have evolved the hacker-house concept into all-inclusive experiences that comes with lots of perks. Residents, or "members," as they're often called, can join these communities and instantly tap into amenities like free internet, maid service, and new friends.

While some critics see co-living as a fringe "dorms for grown-ups" trend, the entrepreneurs behind these startups want to make co-living a major category in the real-estate market.

It may be on its way there. Common, a co-living startup, received almost 10,000 applications to fill its nine residences across three major US cities in 2016. The company is gearing up to rent hundreds more rooms this year. Open Door, founded in 2013, has established three co-living spaces in the Bay Area. The startup plans to expand from 40 bedrooms (with 140 more in the pipeline) to 1,000 rooms by the end of 2018.

In addition to bunking at Euclid Manor, where the built-in bookcases and velvety couches look torn from the pages of "Sherlock Holmes," Jay Standish cofounded the company that operates the house. As he led me on a tour around the estate, we passed a resident taking a call on the deck and a woman working on her laptop in the den. In the dining room, a banquet table stretched the length of the room. It's where residents sit for family-style dinners and meetings.

"We don't just ignore each other and go about our day when we're stressed out ... I'll actually drop in and be, like, 'What's going on in your life?'" Standish says. "It's a way to start the day that's actually honoring my humanity."

Standish, a former web designer, and his cofounder, Ben Provan, a former mechanical engineer, launched Open Door because they wanted to create spaces that brought together a wide variety of urban dwellers under one roof. In Standish's vision, the spaces wouldn't be centered on building the next Facebook but on forming authentic communities.

"That was part of why we decided to use the word 'co-living,' because it was a new thing," he says. "You could shrug off all the past assumptions about what communal living looks like."

Their first project, called the Farmhouse, opened in Berkeley in 2014. It holds 16 people, has a vegetable garden and a chicken coop, and is known for its jam sessions around the fire pit. Another project, the Canopy, sits on the edge of a gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland, and has a workshop where its 12 residents can be found building art projects for Burning Man.

There's a rich array of co-living spaces for those who can handle the lifestyle. In some cases, residents pay a premium for the privilege of having so many roommates.

WeLive, the co-living offering from coworking giant WeWork, launched locations in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, in 2016. The company's furnished, flexible apartments serve as short-term landing pads for people moving to a new city and urban dwellers looking to make friends outside the office.

In its Wall Street location, the company charges $1,900 for a Murphy bed that pulls out from the wall in a private room. Private studios start at $3,050 ($500 more than the median rent for a studio in Manhattan). The Arlington location is slightly cheaper.

According to Miguel McKelvey, chief creative officer of WeWork, co-living was "always part of the equation" for the brand. He and cofounder Adam Neumann envisioned an ecosystem of office rentals, residences, fitness centers, and even barber shops that served the concept of community living.

"It was always thought of, 'How can we support this person who wants to live more collectively, live lighter — who wants to have less stuff, who wants to pursue their passion, pursue a life of meaning, rather than looking for just material success?'" McKelvey tells Business Insider.

WeWork has the reputation and the cash to roll out more co-living spaces than its competitors. The company already has a global presence, with 90,000 WeWork members in more than 100 locations across 14 countries.

But WeLive's co-living business has rolled out more slowly than anticipated. The company reportedly told its investors in 2014 it planned to launch 14 WeLive locations by the end of last year. It currently operates two.

Real estate is a larger, more complicated investment than an office rental, McKelvey says.

"In the big picture, we see WeLive as a huge opportunity, as big as WeWork, for sure. I think we're lucky to have a good foundation in place where people trust us and are interested in the product," McKelvey says. He did not comment on how many WeLive residences may open in the future.

Common, founded in 2015, offers more diverse types of co-living.

Its residences are as varied as a 12-bedroom walk-up in San Francisco's fast-gentrifying SoMa neighborhood to a new 135-person apartment building in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill. While the company's $23 million in funding pales in comparison to WeWork's $3.6 billion, Common operates more properties and is focused on making co-living work at scale.

Common says it hasn't been able to keep up with demand for its co-living spaces and receives 300 applications for rooms in its buildings each week.

To learn the market, Common founder and CEO Brad Hargreaves visited dozens of shared housing developments, from hacker houses in the Bay Area to a desert commune in Arizona founded in the 1980s. He studied the pain points and cherry-picked the details he liked for Common's floor layout.

"A lot of what we're trying to do is rethink the layout of buildings as a whole to adapt for community and to keep the benefit of living with others," Hargreaves says. "If we take all the reasons why people don't like living with roommates and ... systematically address each of those, we come up with a much better product on the other end."

There are a few design principles core to the Common experience. No two people will ever share a bedroom. The multiple common areas are what Hargreaves calls "human-scale," or small enough to be intimate and inviting. They install private bathrooms whenever possible.

In a residence in Brooklyn, members can choose between two entrances, one that enters into the common room (where an interior staircase leads to the bedrooms) or a staircase that bypasses any roommates and accesses the bedrooms. The layout gives members the chance to be social when they're seeking community and privacy when they prefer it.

Today, a banner across the company's website reads "Home. Made." It captures the paradox of Common's desire to create a lived-in, familiar environment that is also carefully engineered.

When Micah and Dianna Baylor moved to San Francisco for a job opportunity last year, they expected to pay between 200% and 400% more on rent than what their two-bedroom back in Texas cost. They scoured the internet and wound up in 16 different Airbnb rentals before landing in Common. They're one of several couples who call the co-living space home.

They became members in September and said they intend to stay in Common as long as they live in San Francisco. Their studio space has a private bathroom and kitchenette, with storage overhead that they can access with a ladder. Dianna, a lifestyle blogger and photographer, decorates the room with eucalyptus branches that she picks up at the farmers market on Saturdays.

"My favorite thing about [Common] is it's given me the ease of having friends that aren't all work-friends," Micah, 22, says. "Back in Texas, I worked all day, I went home, I saw Dianna. I never saw anyone that wasn't talking about insurance, which you can imagine gets pretty old."

Down the street from the Baylors' residence, a nearly identical co-living space designed by Common is home to a professional chef, graduate students, and several Samsung employees.

Kevin Suh, a software engineer at an early-stage tech startup, said that when he moved into Common — his first residence in San Francisco — he expected it to be like a hacker house where people constantly discussed tech. He discovered a diverse group of professionals who were happy to relieve him from talking shop.

"Some of these people in this home are my best friends in San Francisco," Suh says.

In many ways, co-living with a house full of strangers isn't all that different from normal roommate living. Some Common members and the vast majority of Open Door dwellers share bathrooms. The noise takes some getting used, according to Suh.

At Euclid Manor, Standish tried to get his housemates to pony up $30 each for professional cleaning services each month, but some expressed concerns around the class dynamics of hiring someone to clean their house. They share the chores instead.

Standish believes millennials have a greater tolerance for the various quirks of co-living because their lives play out on social media. Each major life experience is a moment to be shared across their network anyway.

The rise of co-living does not necessarily mean the death of traditional home rental and ownership. In 2016, homeownership rates among Americans fell to its lowest level in more than five decades. Millennials in particular are putting off planting their roots. However, a 2015 Fannie Mae survey found 91% of renters ages 25 to 34 plan to buy a home someday.

The challenge for co-living companies could be converting short-term renters into long-term enthusiasts. But Matt Mazzeo, a partner at venture firm Lowercase Capital and an investor in Common, sees a cultural shift underway that sets startups like Common up for success.

"Home ownership as a life goal has dramatically shifted, and it's not limited to millennials. I think it's across society. If anything, the housing crisis sort of disavowed the fantasy that home ownership meant security," Mazzeo says. "People just care about belonging."

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Veem, formally known as Align Commerce, has raised $24m as part of its plan to simplify global fiat currency payments using the bitcoin blockchain.

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Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp and French bank Crédit Agricole have teamed up to facilitate bitcoin acceptance at investment funds.

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Bitcoin trades down 2.4% at $1198 a coin as selling takes hold for a second day. Wednesday's weakness comes after China's three largest bitcoin exchanges (OkCoin, Huobi, and BTCC) all issued statements saying they will continue to block withdrawals until granted approval to let them resume by regulators, according to Cryptocoins News. 

The cryptocurrency plunged more than $100 in a matter of minutes on Tuesday about two hours after a Bloomberg headline cited a People's Bank of China official as suggesting the recent bitcoin regulation wasn't temporary. 

The current slide follows a month-long rally that tacked on 30% and ran the price of one bitcoin as high as $1292.71 as traders speculated the SEC will approve at least one of the three proposed bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds by a March 11 deadline. Because that deadline falls on a Saturday, a decision could come on Monday, March 13. 

SEE ALSO: We bought and sold bitcoin — here's how it works

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Financial messaging giant Swift may have introduced new payments tech, but bitcoin startups still feel confident about their role in the industry.

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The month-long withdrawal ban stretches, with no timeframe for regulatory approval.

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One of China's largest bitcoin exchanges announced its intent to resume withdrawals in a statement today.

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21 Inc, one of the best funded bitcoin startups, has released an update to its bitcoin-powered email app.

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At least one major hedge fund is selling bitcoin ahead of the SEC's expected ruling on a long-proposed bitcoin ETF.

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The SEC decision on the bitcoin ETF is expected by Friday, according to a source with knowledge of the agency’s deliberations.

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