David Chau

Presenter | Journalist | Business reporter @ABCNews. All views here are my own. News tips: [email protected]

[David Chau @ChauDave]

What the #Doge?!! Someone just sent me this slightly weird "coin art". But I also found it very amusing! 😅

Happy Friday!!!

#TGIF #Crypto #cryptocurrency #weekend

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

Trump was just given a blanket pardon from the IRS for any past, present, or future tax crimes.

[Hugh Riminton @hughriminton]

IDF admits it “photoshopped” a picture of a Lebanese journalist they killed in an air strike at the weekend to present him as wearing a Hezbollah uniform.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

A blog post just wiped $30 billion off IBM in a single afternoon.

Not a product launch. Not an earnings miss. Not a competitor undercutting on price.

A five-minute blog post explaining that Claude can read COBOL.

IBM dropped 13%. Worst single-day loss since October 2000. Twenty-five years of stock resilience ended by one AI company publishing a capability update.

Here’s what happened:

95% of ATM transactions in America run on COBOL. Hundreds of billions of lines power banking, airlines, and government systems. The developers who built them retired decades ago. The knowledge left with them. Finding engineers who can even read COBOL gets harder every quarter.

IBM’s moat was never the technology. It was the fact that nobody else could understand it. Entire consulting empires existed because the code was too old, too tangled, and too critical to touch. Companies paid IBM billions because the alternative was catastrophic system failure.

Then Anthropic published a blog post saying Claude Code can map dependencies across thousands of lines of COBOL, document workflows, identify migration risks, and translate legacy logic into modern languages. Modernization in quarters instead of years.

The market heard: the priesthood just lost its monopoly on the sacred language.

And this isn’t the first time. Last week Anthropic announced Claude Code Security for vulnerability scanning. CrowdStrike dropped. Okta dropped. Cloudflare dropped. One company is serially destroying legacy moats with blog posts.

Now here’s where it gets surreal.

This same company, on the same day, also published evidence that three Chinese AI labs ran 24,000 fake accounts and 16 million exchanges to steal Claude’s capabilities. DeepSeek used it to build censorship tools. MiniMax pivoted within 24 hours when a new model dropped, redirecting half its traffic to steal the latest version.

And yesterday, the Pentagon summoned this same company’s CEO for what officials called a “sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot meeting,” threatening to blacklist them like Huawei for refusing to let the military use Claude without safety restrictions.

Three stories. One company. Twenty-four hours.

The company destroying legacy moats faster than the market can reprice them is simultaneously being threatened by its own government and looted by foreign competitors.

Anthropic is valued at $380 billion. Its CEO says a 12-month delay in AI would make him bankrupt. The Pentagon wants to designate it a supply chain risk. Chinese labs are running industrial espionage against it. And it just proved it can vaporize $30 billion in market cap with a Monday morning blog post.

Whatever you think about AI disruption, IBM’s stock just settled the argument.

Full institutional analysis on my Substack.

https://t.co/AEv8EMPdsZ

[David Chau @ChauDave]

Link to ABC live blog: https://t.co/jxSSGi0lP6

[David Chau @ChauDave]

The Federal Court has handed down its decision in the Antoinette Lattouf v ABC unlawful termination case. ABC has been ordered to pay Lattouf compensation of $70,000. Full text of judgment here: https://t.co/qWO0WJQO4u

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📣 CALL-OUT: Are you currently paying off a home loan, and happy to chat with me on TV? 📉 I'm doing a story for ABC News about next week's RBA decision (which is likely to be an interest rate CUT).🥳So if you're not camera-shy, please send me a DM! #economy #mortgage😀

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📣 CALL-OUT: Are you paying off a mortgage, and praying interest rates will fall? 📉 There's a chance the #RBA may cut rates at its Feb meeting, and I'm doing a TV story about it for ABC!🏚️ If you're not camera-shy, and would like to chat about it with me, please send me a DM!!🙂

[David Chau @ChauDave]

The #RBA has left interest rates on hold for more than a year (at 4.35%), and hasn't completely ruled out a rate cut in Feb 2025. Economists are betting on multiple cuts next year (something mortgage-stressed borrowers are praying for). My latest story 👇🏼
https://t.co/bz7iPIlPVJ

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈 ASIC chair Joe Longo says the surge in #Bitcoin's value is a case of the "bigger fool theory" - based on speculation that someone else will pay more than you did. The price of the OG #crypto has surged ~26,000% in ten years! My latest report 👇🏼 #btc100k https://t.co/vdlyFTFddX

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📢 CALL-OUT: Are you currently paying off a #mortgage - and praying
the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates as soon as humanly possible? 📈 If you're not camera-shy (and happy to chat with a friendly ABC reporter), please send me a DM! 📺I'd love to hear from you.🙂

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈 ANZ is the latest major bank to revise its prediction on when the #RBA will start cutting rates (from Feb to May 2025). It's partly because #inflation is still too high, and Australia's #jobs market is surprisingly strong. My latest report on YouTube 👇🏼 https://t.co/HbvFYO0FNG

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈Australia's #inflation figures are a mixed bag:

- It slowed to 2.1% in the year to October due to energy subsidies (good!)

- But on another measure ('trimmed mean' inflation), it rose 3.5% (not good!)

Confused? I don't blame you. I break it down here: https://t.co/exiULLS7LS

[David Chau @ChauDave]

#Trump's tariff announcements have rattled #markets — the #AUD (seven-month low), Canadian dollar (four-year low), Mexican peso (two-year low). I spoke with Credit Union SA's Susan Stone about how the Australian #economy will be affected by a trade war:👇 https://t.co/7yhUG21rlz

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈 Donald #Trump says the US will impose 10% tariffs on goods from #China, and 25% tariffs on all products from Mexico and Canada. 💰 This led to the #AUD tumbling as low as 64.35 US cents (its weakest in seven months). Here's what it all means👇
https://t.co/vEP5z7ByG8

[David Chau @ChauDave]

@DarrenMcErlain Thanks Darren. You've made my day! 🙂

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈 I had the honour of guest-hosting The Business. Lots of good stuff tonight - from disgraced #MinRes founder Chris Ellison's apology to shareholders, #Nvidia's massive AI profit, #Westpac delaying its rate cut prediction to May 2025. 🤯 Check it out! 👇🏼
https://t.co/xVKPXwPY85

[David Chau @ChauDave]

Remember when people argued a mining tax was an unacceptable 'sovereign risk'? It's quite tame compared to having your CEO locked up in a foreign country, ruled by a military govt who's after a big 'pay day' (as #gold miner Resolute Mining can attest) 👇🏼https://t.co/DpmnVCjnFK

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📢 CALL-OUT: #Inflation has been falling for a while. now. But are you *actually* seeing that in your shopping, energy bills and day-to-day life? 💰 If you're not camera-shy (and happy to chat with a friendly ABC reporter), please send me a DM! 📺I'd love to hear from you.🙂

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈 The #jobs market is still strong. #Unemployment was steady at 4.1%. 16,000 workers started new jobs in Oct (bit lower than expected). 📺 EY chief economist Cherelle Murphy expects the #RBA to cut rates in 2025 (first or second quarter). Listen here:👇 https://t.co/80qtB2vEjK

[David Chau @ChauDave]

📈The price of #dogecoin has DOUBLED since #Trump won the US election last week — and ahead of his decision to appoint Elon Musk as co-head of the newly-created 'Department of Government Efficiency'. Here's my latest finance report 👇 https://t.co/2mqgdyZ33x