Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Karl Messer and
Speaker 2: Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: David Gura here with Jess Meant and filling in for
Speaker 3: Krol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg BusinessWeek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: And back in twenty twenty one, like a lot of people,
Speaker 3: Nathaniel Eliason got into crypto and amassed a small fortune
Speaker 3: doing so, but also, like a lot of people, ran
Speaker 3: into some trouble. He got hacked. He has chronicled his
Speaker 3: journey through the wild world of crypto in the book
Speaker 3: Crypto Confidential, winning and losing millions in the New Frontier
Speaker 3: of finance, and that joins us.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Now great to have you with us, and let's go
Speaker 3: back to the origin story. I'm always curious about this,
Speaker 3: especially with all investors, but especially with with crypto investors.
Speaker 3: What was it that drew you to it back then?
Speaker 3: And described the promise as you saw it then of
Speaker 3: that new frontier of finance.
Speaker 1: To lean and thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: I felt what a lot of people I think felt
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one that there was all of this
Speaker 1: money being made in this strangey, mysterious world, and I
Speaker 1: kept seeing it pop up on Twitter. I had so
Speaker 1: many friends who had gotten into that world, and I
Speaker 1: had just enough hubris to think that if there were
Speaker 1: these other people online making money doing some combination of
Speaker 1: investing and gambling, then maybe I could too. And I've
Speaker 1: been fortunate in that I'd seen crypto pop up a
Speaker 1: couple of times and twenty thirteen and twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 1: it felt like, Okay, we've seen this story happen a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and maybe it's going to happen again,
Speaker 1: and maybe I can successfully ride.
Speaker 2: At this time, you also are a new father, So
Speaker 2: how do you bridge that gap whenever it comes to
Speaker 2: the vautal world of crypto and those types of decisions,
Speaker 2: and then balancing that with your personal life.
Speaker 1: I had a few forces happening at the same time
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty one, which I think most parents
Speaker 1: can relate to. My first child was on the way,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what my financial life was going
Speaker 1: to look like once she was here. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, I had just stepped out of doing the
Speaker 1: marketing work i'd been doing before and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out a new career. So I had this strong, at
Speaker 1: least internal sense of pressure that I needed to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make more money as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't know what life was going to
Speaker 1: be like on the other side, And that, combined with
Speaker 1: how crazy so many markets were in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: and going into twenty twenty two, created this perfect storm
Speaker 1: for me to end up in some of the wild
Speaker 1: situations that led to getting to write this book.
Speaker 3: Going back to those earlier days, it did feel like
Speaker 3: and I had friends were the same boat as yours,
Speaker 3: I think, who just seemed to be making a ton
Speaker 3: of money, at least on paper, doing this, and there
Speaker 3: was this like overarching fear of fomo that I was
Speaker 3: definitely perceiving. What did you I mean? I also think
Speaker 3: that there was a moment at which there was an
Speaker 3: awareness that there were individual investors doing this buying crypto,
Speaker 3: but there was this other kind of like above that,
Speaker 3: which was a more commercial, more institutional hand if that
Speaker 3: was entering this space. Talk about when you started to
Speaker 3: recognize that that there were these other companies that you know,
Speaker 3: were wielding a lot of power in this in this world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's so true. And you see people making
Speaker 1: all of this money on Twitter, or at least you
Speaker 1: think they're making all of this money. People don't post
Speaker 1: their losses nearly as much, which was something I learned
Speaker 1: once I thought it right.
Speaker 2: They brought about their wins.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they talk about how they made
Speaker 1: a crazy return on this investment and then of course
Speaker 1: they rolled it into three more coins and lost all
Speaker 1: of it. And so you stumble on a lot more
Speaker 1: of those stories once you get in there. But the
Speaker 1: other thing I started to realize was that there were
Speaker 1: these these people, and back then it was the ftx's
Speaker 1: and the Three Arrows and companies that a number of
Speaker 1: them are gone. Now, they they had so much money
Speaker 1: to throw around that they could just completely move these
Speaker 1: smaller markets where the liquidity was a lot lower. So
Speaker 1: you might have one of these new cryptotokens that on
Speaker 1: paper is worth one hundred million dollars or even a
Speaker 1: billion dollars, but there's only five or ten million dollars
Speaker 1: of trading liquidity backing it up, and somebody like a
Speaker 1: Three Arrows can come in and just completely manipulate that
Speaker 1: market based on their insider knowledge of when news might
Speaker 1: be coming out, when you know changes might be happening,
Speaker 1: fundraisers might be happening, and it just becomes extremely hard
Speaker 1: to win as a retail investor or speculator.
Speaker 2: So walk us through some of your biggest wins versus
Speaker 2: the mistakes you also made along the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, the book started where I was
Speaker 1: trying to do what a lot of people were trying
Speaker 1: to do. In twenty twenty one. I was day trading
Speaker 1: doge coin on my phone because I saw Elon Musk
Speaker 1: talking about it on SNL, and that seemed like where
Speaker 1: everybody was making all of the money. And then I
Speaker 1: started to get into more of the group chats and
Speaker 1: started to get to know more people who were deeper
Speaker 1: in the space, and realized that there were levels and
Speaker 1: levels and levels to this game, and the deep or
Speaker 1: you got, the more adversarial it got, and the more
Speaker 1: your success relied partially on secret knowledge and then partially
Speaker 1: on your ability to actually contribute to projects and actually
Speaker 1: work on things. Something I realized pretty early on was
Speaker 1: that purely speculating was kind of a loser's game because
Speaker 1: you were always at the whims of the market and
Speaker 1: you might have these big wins that you see, but
Speaker 1: you also have these pretty devastating losses. And so I
Speaker 1: early on decided, Okay, I'm going to try to learn programming.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to work on a crypto company
Speaker 1: that's actually doing something, not just launching another meme coin,
Speaker 1: and joined up with this game and ended up getting
Speaker 1: paid in that game's token because they didn't have the
Speaker 1: actual money to pay me for the work. And then
Speaker 1: the token ended up taking off in just this incredible
Speaker 1: way where when we launched it, we thought we were
Speaker 1: going to launch it for one cent, and then we
Speaker 1: ended up having to launch it at ten cents, and
Speaker 1: then six months later it was suddenly trading at thirteen
Speaker 1: dollars and ended up creating this incredibly euphoric and stressful
Speaker 1: and terrifying just every emotion imaginable seeing my net worth
Speaker 1: on paper, you know, not necessarily accessible, go to these
Speaker 1: insane numbers and just bounce around day to day.
Speaker 3: Because of that, we had our colleague in here a
Speaker 3: few minutes ago talk we were looking at a bitcoin chart.
Speaker 3: She was saying, you can do technical analysis because there
Speaker 3: really isn't any fundamental analysis to do when it comes
Speaker 3: to it when it comes to a bitcoin and others.
Speaker 3: When was that moment for you when you know what
Speaker 3: you're describing, the kind of exuberance and effervescence, and wow,
Speaker 3: this thing created out of whole cloth is now worth
Speaker 3: x amount of dollars at least on paper. Why didn't
Speaker 3: you begin to sort of think differently about that? Was
Speaker 3: it when these companies were collapsing and you saw the
Speaker 3: industry sort of starting to reconfigure itself. Was there a
Speaker 3: moment at which you thought, this is pretty bubblicious, this
Speaker 3: is too good to be true.
Speaker 1: I unfortunately didn't start to realize how bubblicious it was
Speaker 1: until a little bit too late. The only reason that
Speaker 1: I got out the money that I did was that
Speaker 1: I just set a rule for myself that I was
Speaker 1: going to sell a small amount every day and not
Speaker 1: try to time the market, And that was kind of
Speaker 1: my saving grace through that period. Really, what I think
Speaker 1: made me feel like it was getting too hot and
Speaker 1: too crazy was I was deep in the gaming world,
Speaker 1: and I still think that there's this incredible potential for
Speaker 1: crypto and gaming to have a neat relationship in the future.
Speaker 1: People are spending billions of dollars a year on Fortnite
Speaker 1: in roadblocks, and there are already these gray markets, these
Speaker 1: gray economies that build around those games, and crypto is
Speaker 1: an interesting way to make them accessible. But you had
Speaker 1: these games that were suddenly being worth hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars more than very professional, well developed gaming studios,
Speaker 1: purely for speculative reasons, when there was not much of
Speaker 1: an actual game there that people were playing, or many
Speaker 1: people playing whatever game there was, And that's when it
Speaker 1: became pretty clear that, Okay, there is something here. There
Speaker 1: probably will be some very interesting things in crypto gaming
Speaker 1: in the future, but right now it's just crazy speculation
Speaker 1: and people are getting way ahead of themselves on it.
Speaker 2: You mentioned learning programming in a way to build your
Speaker 2: skills set beyond just trading crypto. How exactly did that
Speaker 2: help you? What methods when you're talking about programming, because
Speaker 2: I've heard this from other traders as well. Was this
Speaker 2: something you did online? Was there a particular course you
Speaker 2: did through a university.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was actually a really big challenge back then
Speaker 1: because I wasn't building trading algorithms, I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: become a quant I was trying to learn how to
Speaker 1: write code to build applications on the blockchain, so specifically
Speaker 1: building applications on ethereum, so learning how to actually launch
Speaker 1: a cryptocurrency, or how to build a very basic decentralized
Speaker 1: finance application for lending and borrowing with your assets, things
Speaker 1: like that. And the interesting thing was it was such
Speaker 1: a novel technology at the time, back in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one that there were no boot camps. There was one
Speaker 1: one not great online course that you could go through
Speaker 1: that somebody had put on you to me a couple
Speaker 1: of years earlier, but there was no chat GPT, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have that that you could ask questions too.
Speaker 1: There were very few stack overflow answers for how to
Speaker 1: do these things, and so you kind of had to
Speaker 1: hack together the education on your own. And that's partially
Speaker 1: why the first time that I built anything on ethereum,
Speaker 1: I made a mistake and somebody stole thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars from me. So a pretty painful way to learn
Speaker 1: probably ended up costing about the same as if I
Speaker 1: had gotten a little university education in it.
Speaker 2: For those sticking with us Jessman and David Gura here,
Speaker 2: of course, the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Carol and Tim
Speaker 2: are off today Bloomberg Business. We continues on radio, YouTube
Speaker 2: and originals. Of course, we're back with Nett alias in
Speaker 2: joining us on Zoom from Austin, Texas. Thanks so much
Speaker 2: for sticking with us and that we've been discussing his
Speaker 2: book Crypto Confidential, Winning and Losing Millions in the New
Speaker 2: Frontier of Finance, and of course we want to talk
Speaker 2: with you more about what the crypto looks like today,
Speaker 2: regulation hurdles, and then of course draw more from your book.
Speaker 2: So there's currently legislation in Congress that would create a
Speaker 2: regulatory framework for the crypto industry, but of course it's
Speaker 2: sorely needed, but there's a lot of issues that is
Speaker 2: holding up that type of regulation. How do you view
Speaker 2: this issue when it comes to regulation in crypto, it's.
Speaker 1: A fascinating problem because the industry clearly needs appropriate regulation.
Speaker 1: We don't want anyone to be able to do just anything. Scammers,
Speaker 1: bad actors. Everybody knows some of those stories in the space,
Speaker 1: and they also are hearing more and more of the
Speaker 1: good stories in the space, and so there do need
Speaker 1: to be proper guidelines for the industry to thrive, and
Speaker 1: it has the opportunity for America to be where it thrives,
Speaker 1: for America to be kind of the crypto center. And
Speaker 1: I'd say that in the last month or two, it's
Speaker 1: there's been a lot more optimistic, positive talk around creating
Speaker 1: that great set of guidelines for it here instead of
Speaker 1: just trying to ban everything, which had kind of been
Speaker 1: the way that we were seeing the SEC and other
Speaker 1: bodies act for the last few years, just up until
Speaker 1: this real change in the energy around crypto in the
Speaker 1: last month or two.
Speaker 3: Let me take your story as an example. You mentioned
Speaker 3: before the break you got hacked, lost about thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Was your impulse in that moment to think, who do
Speaker 3: I contact to help me out here? I'll get that
Speaker 3: money back and go to the regulators, go to law enforcement,
Speaker 3: go to government. Or were you still then of the
Speaker 3: frame of mind like this is, as Gary Gensler says
Speaker 3: so often, the wild West. This is a frontier that
Speaker 3: is not for better or worse, one where the government
Speaker 3: and regulators plays at this point in time, a very
Speaker 3: big role.
Speaker 1: I knew that what I was doing, trying to build
Speaker 1: something new on this fringe technology and give in some
Speaker 1: of the privacy and anonymous nature of crypto. There was
Speaker 1: nothing anybody could do to get that money back. It
Speaker 1: was gone, and those hackers they know how to obviouscate
Speaker 1: the funds, maybe try to withdraw them in other banks
Speaker 1: outside the US. It would not have been worth my
Speaker 1: time to to go after it, and I kind of
Speaker 1: knew I was taking that risk by building there, And
Speaker 1: hopefully when people are building in the future, they have
Speaker 1: some better safety systems in place so that they don't
Speaker 1: run the same kinds of risks that I was running
Speaker 1: back then.
Speaker 2: So after going through a situation like that, I mean,
Speaker 2: most people I would imagine be really terrified when it
Speaker 2: comes to those types of hacking or deals, why did
Speaker 2: you decide to sort of stick with crypto after that?
Speaker 1: So after it happened, I was obviously feeling pretty terrible,
Speaker 1: and one of my first instincts was to try to
Speaker 1: make sure it didn't happen to anybody else, And so
Speaker 1: I wrote a Twitter thread explaining what had happened, explaining
Speaker 1: the mistake I had made, in the hopes that somebody
Speaker 1: else would see it and maybe wouldn't make the same
Speaker 1: mistake when they were trying to learn how to do
Speaker 1: this kind of programming, and really within hours, I was
Speaker 1: getting inundated with messages from other people in crypto who
Speaker 1: were much further along in their programming journey, who were
Speaker 1: working at these huge influential companies, were really successful engineers
Speaker 1: who had made the exact same kinds of mistakes when
Speaker 1: they started. So many people had a similar story to
Speaker 1: tell that. What I ended up taking away from it
Speaker 1: was that this is kind of the gauntlet you have
Speaker 1: to go through if you want to learn how to
Speaker 1: build something in this new world as it was back then,
Speaker 1: and it was honestly kind of inspiring to see how
Speaker 1: much people rallied around somebody else making a similar mistake.
Speaker 3: We've talked about your genesis as a crypto investor in
Speaker 3: somebody playing in this space. Talk to us, if you would,
Speaker 3: about your genesis as an author. When did you decide
Speaker 3: to chronicle this in a book, your personal journey to
Speaker 3: weigh in on what's happened here in crypto and who's
Speaker 3: this book for? Who are you writing for, and what's
Speaker 3: the takeaway that you want people to have.
Speaker 1: While I was going through this whole period, I was
Speaker 1: writing articles to try to explain some of the interesting
Speaker 1: and crazy things that were happening in crypto to non
Speaker 1: crypto folks. I'm definitely not the most experienced, most expert
Speaker 1: crypto person out there, but I am quite good at
Speaker 1: explaining some of these interesting and technical topics to more
Speaker 1: of a lay audience. And as the market was quieting
Speaker 1: down and I was looking at how crypto is being
Speaker 1: talked about, it became pretty obvious that there wasn't somebody
Speaker 1: trying to explain what it was like to be living
Speaker 1: and working in that mania from the inside. There were
Speaker 1: some wonderful books and explainers from the outside from journalists,
Speaker 1: from people who were observing it, but nobody who had
Speaker 1: really lived and worked through it was sharing that story.
Speaker 1: And so I thought that this would be a really
Speaker 1: neat opportunity to capture that point in time to talk
Speaker 1: about what it was really like in the mailstream and
Speaker 1: try to sneak in some of that crypto education along
Speaker 1: the way, because I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have seen all these things happening with crypto,
Speaker 1: who know there's some good, who know there's some bad,
Speaker 1: who wants somebody to show them here's how you tell
Speaker 1: the two apart and do it in a really fun way,
Speaker 1: And that's what I tried to do with the book.
Speaker 2: What do you think is the biggest issue currently in
Speaker 2: the crypto industry that isn't getting discussed enough about? Because
Speaker 2: we talked so much about regulatory hurdle and the risk
Speaker 2: and the volatility, but other things happening underneath the surface.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest problem is that the really useful
Speaker 1: technologies that are being built are just not very sexy
Speaker 1: to talk about. Everybody wants to talk about the new
Speaker 1: coin that's going to the moon, or the new scammer
Speaker 1: who's getting caught, or the new mistake that's happened, or
Speaker 1: you know, Germany is selling billions of dollars of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: Like those stories are a lot more exciting than Hey,
Speaker 1: we designed this new way to very rapidly transfer US
Speaker 1: dollars anywhere in the world for basically no fees, and
Speaker 1: that could dramatically change international commerce and all these other things.
Speaker 1: Like those stories just aren't as exciting to people, So
Speaker 1: a lot of people miss the cool stuff that is
Speaker 1: being built, and a lot of people who are building
Speaker 1: it don't have the same crazy, bombacious personalities that get
Speaker 1: those stories out there, So you have to dig a
Speaker 1: little bit to find the cool things that are happening
Speaker 1: because they don't always make the headlines.
Speaker 3: Now we've got about a minute left. You know, I
Speaker 3: covered the Sam Bankman freed trial. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people thought that was going to be this pivotal moment.
Speaker 3: I think there were a lot of kind of naysayers
Speaker 3: who thought that this is it popular peel of this
Speaker 3: is going to vanish. Were you surprised that hasn't been
Speaker 3: the case. Of course, we've seen the ETF authorization on
Speaker 3: the heels of all of that. But what you mentioned
Speaker 3: sort of the CD scammers who are getting caught, Has
Speaker 3: that changed anything as you see it?
Speaker 1: I think the good thing about all of that is
Speaker 1: that every year crypto continues to receive investment, that people
Speaker 1: continue to work on it, people continue to get involved,
Speaker 1: The tolerance for those types of actors goes down, the
Speaker 1: skepticism towards these new profits as they often portray themselves
Speaker 1: goes up, and we develop a better collective immune system
Speaker 1: towards that behavior. So when I saw the SBF stuff
Speaker 1: blowing up, or the Three Arrow stuff before that, or
Speaker 1: Terra Luna, I didn't think that was going to be
Speaker 1: the end of crypto. I knew it was going to
Speaker 1: put a dent in things for a while. It was
Speaker 1: going to naturally increase people's skepticism. But it was also
Speaker 1: a good thing. It was like a forest fire. It
Speaker 1: was clearing out some of the bad chaffs so that
Speaker 1: we could have this much healthier ecosystem in the long run.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, sometimes some of these bad things do have
Speaker 1: to happen for the system to get stronger in the
Speaker 1: way that it really needs to to be successful. In
Speaker 1: twenty thirty, forty fifty years.
Speaker 3: Clearing out the brush, the under rush, the undergrowth. Nathaniel
Speaker 3: Iison joining us from Austin, Texas via zoom. His book
Speaker 3: is Crypto Confidential, Winning and Losing Millions in the New
Speaker 3: Frontier of Finance, a terrific and fast read, and focusing
Speaker 3: on his journey through the world of crypto, overlaid with
Speaker 3: what we've seen in its recent history. S Bloomber Business
Speaker 3: Week on Bloombergradio David Grow with Jess Manton in for
Speaker 3: Tim Stenebek and Carol Masser.
Speaker 2: We're going to have an interesting conversation coming up right
Speaker 2: now and switching gears on the importance of training workers
Speaker 2: on sustainable technology. And who better to talk to us
Speaker 2: about this than Hillary do chief Growth officer for the
Speaker 2: State of Michigan, Who's going to walk us through us
Speaker 2: joining us on zoom. Thanks so much for making time
Speaker 2: for us on this Tuesday here. Now walk us through
Speaker 2: when people are talking about training workers sustainable technology, what
Speaker 2: exactly does this all mean and what's the most important
Speaker 2: thing about this for those listening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. I'm
Speaker 4: excited to be here. And you know what we just
Speaker 4: managed to do and what we won't came here to
Speaker 4: chat with you all about today as it relates to
Speaker 4: this topic. We actually just put a national poll in
Speaker 4: the field and surveyed, you know, one thousand folks US
Speaker 4: adults across the country, and what we found was that
Speaker 4: people nationwide really overwhelmingly want to see additional investment in
Speaker 4: things like sustainable technology, clean energy, and ev infrastructure, and
Speaker 4: really importantly, alongside that investment, they really want training in
Speaker 4: order to ensure that those technologies can be developed and
Speaker 4: manufactured right here in their communities and right here in
Speaker 4: the US. And one of the most overwhelming statistics from
Speaker 4: that survey was that eighty seven percent of folks surveyed,
Speaker 4: just a huge number said that they'd be willing to
Speaker 4: pay even more for those sustainable technologies if they were
Speaker 4: indeed developed and manufactured right here in the US. So
Speaker 4: Americans are actually willing, you know, to help facilitate, you know,
Speaker 4: getting that done and getting those sustainable technologies manufactured right
Speaker 4: here in the US. And if they're able to participate
Speaker 4: in you know, that economic opportunity.
Speaker 3: Hillary, let's pick up on that if we could. So
Speaker 3: they're willing to go that route. What are their expectations
Speaker 3: for the role that the government is going to play
Speaker 3: in making this happen? I imagine there are a lot of
Speaker 3: people who might suspect these technologies are more expensive, there's
Speaker 3: going to be higher capital costs. How eager are they
Speaker 3: or willing are they to sort of shoulder the cost
Speaker 3: of that, either through taxes or just through the way
Speaker 3: that this is allocated in state budgets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, folks have identified in the survey
Speaker 4: again in really overwhelming majorities that was sort of the
Speaker 4: theme of the results here. But they do think that
Speaker 4: these are good investments. You know, seventy one percent of
Speaker 4: folks in the survey said that they believe that investments
Speaker 4: in these sustainable technologies, even really sizeable investments, will pay off.
Speaker 4: That held you know across generations, whether we're talking about
Speaker 4: Gen Z or millennials all the way to Baby boomers.
Speaker 4: So folks you know, are really supportive of investments in
Speaker 4: these sustainable technologies. And I think it's a reflection of,
Speaker 4: you know, a belief that folks realize, you know, we've
Speaker 4: got to tackle and be in the fight against the
Speaker 4: climate crisis. We've seen these extreme weather events across the US.
Speaker 4: We've seen some of the devastation just in the last
Speaker 4: week here in Houston, and you know, I think it's
Speaker 4: all just a reflection of how important it is that
Speaker 4: we have all and that means having you know, a
Speaker 4: workforce across the US that's trained and prepared to help
Speaker 4: our industries really succeed in you know, showing up and
Speaker 4: being leaders and these clean energy and sustainable technologies talk.
Speaker 2: To us about government incentives and why they are necessary
Speaker 2: for businesses to make those significant changes.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah, that was another really interesting, you know piece
Speaker 4: of feedback. And again eighty eight percent of folks in
Speaker 4: the survey, you know, said that they wanted businesses to
Speaker 4: help with training in order to be able to participate.
Speaker 4: In eighty six percent that they supported incentives in order
Speaker 4: to help businesses make the transition to clean energy adoption.
Speaker 4: And I think they're so important or that folks in
Speaker 4: the survey responded in such high numbers one because it's
Speaker 4: really critical. Are They recognized that it was critical that
Speaker 4: the US does manufacture these technologies here. You know, we
Speaker 4: saw with Chips and the IRA, these federal programs did
Speaker 4: successfully help incentivize, you know, more industry in these areas,
Speaker 4: and we want to be global leaders and be globally
Speaker 4: competitive in these industries. But I think also because of
Speaker 4: the pace at which you know, folks want us to
Speaker 4: be able to adopt these technologies and want business to
Speaker 4: be able to move in order for us to respond
Speaker 4: to the climate crisis. So, you know, I think for
Speaker 4: those reasons pace and the desire for global leadership, you know,
Speaker 4: folks are in again large majorities, really supportive of the
Speaker 4: incentives required to develop and manufacture those technologies.
Speaker 3: Here, Heil, we're talking to you from Michigan, and I'm
Speaker 3: very curious with what the landscape looks like there. So
Speaker 3: you have this comprehensive survey looking at attitudes toward this,
Speaker 3: How is that transition going in your state, and what
Speaker 3: do you see as the challenges to sort of wider
Speaker 3: adoption of this or wider growth of sustainable technologies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you know, so part of the reason that we
Speaker 4: did the survey is that Michigan has really leaned in
Speaker 4: with sharp elbows into the clean energy transition. Michigan set
Speaker 4: a really ambitious climate goal for one hundred percent renewable
Speaker 4: energy by twenty fifty as part of my Healthy Climate Plan,
Speaker 4: and you know, we really see par economic growth in
Speaker 4: our economic future as inextrictly linked to our leadership in
Speaker 4: the fight against the climate crisis. You know, Michigan is
Speaker 4: the leader, of course in future mobility, and that also
Speaker 4: means in the electric vehicle transition. We know that nearly
Speaker 4: thirty percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation,
Speaker 4: and so the electric vehicle transition is going to be
Speaker 4: critical to decarbonization. But we're also number one in clean
Speaker 4: energy investments here in Michigan, number one in clean energy
Speaker 4: backed projects, and so you know, we really leaned into
Speaker 4: making sure that we have the programs here for our
Speaker 4: businesses to be able to adapt like renewable energy credits
Speaker 4: and the workforce programs, to be able to connect even
Speaker 4: our students through programs like the Michigan or Scholar Program
Speaker 4: to fast roaring industries here in Michigan, like semiconductors and
Speaker 4: electric vehicles. So you know, we're all land in Michigan
Speaker 4: and really want to encourage other folks to join up.
Speaker 2: You talk about this twenty fifty goal, what realistically needs
Speaker 2: to be done and accomplished to actually get there between
Speaker 2: now and then, because it might seem far off, but
Speaker 2: really we're roughly, you know, about twenty five twenty six
Speaker 2: years off from that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, there's no there's no time to waste, and you know,
Speaker 4: I did think that there was. The survey was so
Speaker 4: interesting in part because again these large majorities of Americans,
Speaker 4: and when you're talking about eighty plus percent of folks,
Speaker 4: that means it cuts across political lines, it cuts across
Speaker 4: regional divisions. I think Americans wreckanize that we all have
Speaker 4: to be all in together too, and that there's no
Speaker 4: time to waste. And I think that they recognized in
Speaker 4: the survey exactly you know what we think here in Michigan.
Speaker 4: Then in order to get this done, it's going to
Speaker 4: require the government to be you know, all in, and
Speaker 4: survey respondents recognized that it's going to take you know,
Speaker 4: government incentives in order to help facilitate this transition. It's
Speaker 4: going to take business. And again, survey respondents said they expect,
Speaker 4: you know, eighty eight percent of folks expect businesses will
Speaker 4: need to provide training in order to have the workforce
Speaker 4: necessary to be able to lead in these industries. And
Speaker 4: it's going to take consumers helping us get there and
Speaker 4: supporting these industries to build a market. And again, you know,
Speaker 4: Americans in this survey said, yep, we're willing to pay
Speaker 4: more for these technologies that they're built in, manufactured, designed
Speaker 4: right here in the US. So I think it's going
Speaker 4: to take all of us, and you know, all of
Speaker 4: us in the fight.
Speaker 3: Have about a minute left, and I just want to
Speaker 3: ask you about the degree to which there's a knowledge
Speaker 3: deficit here and when we talk about sustainable technologies, do
Speaker 3: people know what we're talking about. I don't mean to
Speaker 3: talk to to anyone here, but this is new novel territory,
Speaker 3: and is there's still just a curve that industry needs
Speaker 3: to industry and state government needs to sort of mount
Speaker 3: to get more people aware of what all of this is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think there is. I think there
Speaker 4: continues to be a lot more that we all can learn,
Speaker 4: and in terms of you know, a call to action,
Speaker 4: I think even for consumers, you know, we can all
Speaker 4: do more to continue to educate ourselves on some of
Speaker 4: these fast growing technologies like Sunday conductors, for example, as
Speaker 4: we continue to try to divine and manufacture them right
Speaker 4: here in the US. And we can see that in
Speaker 4: survey results as well across generations. So for example, on
Speaker 4: electric vehicles, we can see that, you know, adoption rates
Speaker 4: and interest in electric vehicles also does seem to track
Speaker 4: you know, maybe public knowledge and education on electric vehicles.
Speaker 4: So maybe Gen Z and millennials have have more knowledge
Speaker 4: on some of these technologies relative to some of the
Speaker 4: older generations. And you know, it's not all of us
Speaker 4: to continue to educate ourselves as we lean in and
Speaker 4: do the work to help adopt these clean energy technologies.
Speaker 3: At Hillary Does, she's the chief Growth Officer at the
Speaker 3: Michigan Economic Development Corporation, talking to us about the importance
Speaker 3: of investing in and the growth of sustainable technologies. She
Speaker 3: based in Michigan, giving us a preview of a comprehensive
Speaker 3: survey on sustainable technologies that I think is coming out tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Jess, that's right, and looking at this, seventy one percent
Speaker 2: believe that sustainable tech investments are paying off, with eighty
Speaker 2: six percent urging for more business incentives.
Speaker 4: David.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek on Bloomberg Radio. David Gerrow with
Speaker 3: Jess Menton, filling in for Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek,
Speaker 3: both of whom are at the Bloomberg Koreen Festival this week.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg