Speaker 1: I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg Crypto at Daily Bloomberg. I heard podcast.
Speaker 1: It's Friday July. Every day around the world, the reporters
Speaker 1: and editors who work on Crypto Bloomberg wake up often
Speaker 1: at the crack of dawn and start figuring out how
Speaker 1: we'll tackle the biggest and most important news events of
Speaker 1: the day. Crypto is a twenty four seven asset class.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop trading, and it doesn't take holidays, and
Speaker 1: as we've talked a lot about on this podcast, these
Speaker 1: markets are known for their volatility, so it's our job
Speaker 1: to assess both the big trends and the small moments,
Speaker 1: and to figure out how to translate these into stories
Speaker 1: and of course podcast episodes. Today you'll get to meet
Speaker 1: three of Bloomberg's Crypto editors, folks who are making decisions
Speaker 1: all day long about how we approached this asset class.
Speaker 1: Joining me to day Beth Williams and Dave Likka, who
Speaker 1: are both based in New York, and Philip Logger Kranso,
Speaker 1: who's normally based in Zurich but is with me in
Speaker 1: the studio in London. I know I talked to you
Speaker 1: all about every five seconds, but this is the first
Speaker 1: time you've all been on the podcast, so thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me. We have Beth and Dave in New York. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: and Phil. You're normally in like Switzerland, in a very
Speaker 1: fun office with lots of plants in the background, but
Speaker 1: today we're in the same studio in London. Because we're
Speaker 1: global like that, we are indeed to be here. What
Speaker 1: is the you'll do all day? We look at crypto
Speaker 1: um from our perspectives, We look at crypto markets, we
Speaker 1: look at crypto implotions a lot of that lately, and
Speaker 1: we look at everything from crypto mining to crypto lenders
Speaker 1: and bust and Dave. This is not your first crypto winter, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm been through the Winner of two thousand and eighteen
Speaker 1: and actually start following a little earlier when maybe there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of a winner, but I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody realized the call it that what had has
Speaker 1: been for you. The biggest difference about covering crypto now
Speaker 1: versus two thousand eighteen and earlier just the scale of it.
Speaker 1: Right now on a two thousands, seventeen and eighteen it
Speaker 1: was it was all about one coin, and that was Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and now it's just Bitcoin on steroids. And Beth, you
Speaker 1: come to crypto from a very different part of Bloomberg entirely.
Speaker 1: What has that been like? Yes, I came from the
Speaker 1: editorial opinion section of Bloomberg, where we spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time interpreting what was going on and helping readers
Speaker 1: kind of connect the dots of the events that were happening.
Speaker 1: So coming to crypto sort of cold and having to
Speaker 1: learn as I go along, but also from that perspective,
Speaker 1: always keeping in mind the bigger picture, what what does
Speaker 1: this mean? What can we tell people about the significance
Speaker 1: people who aren't, you know, trading coins every day, and
Speaker 1: just giving that sense of that wider perspective is something
Speaker 1: that I always have in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: To your point about that wider perspective, what have been
Speaker 1: for you, Beth, Like some of the pieces you've been
Speaker 1: able to edit or kind of shepherd into existence that
Speaker 1: you think have done the best job of joining up
Speaker 1: those dots for our audiences. I think in terms of
Speaker 1: those big picture pieces, we did some pieces around the time,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the Fall and and heading
Speaker 1: into year end, we were it was sort of a
Speaker 1: celebratory mode. It had been a really big year for crypto.
Speaker 1: Records were set, there was a sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of momentum going, you know, cryptos going mainstream
Speaker 1: and f teas are everywhere, you know, Matt Damon, Tom Brady, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I think we did a good job of sort
Speaker 1: of putting that in perspective, acknowledging that there was this
Speaker 1: mainstream um acceptance and that there seemed to be it
Speaker 1: seemed to be on the brink of some sort of
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe legitimacy, and maybe that that shows
Speaker 1: my own bias, but we also showed that there were
Speaker 1: many parts of crypto that are still very young, and
Speaker 1: also there's infrastructure issues. There still remains hacks, their scams.
Speaker 1: So as exciting as this industry seemed to be, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of quirks about it. Fire beware, And as
Speaker 1: we moved into two and we're seeing this decline in
Speaker 1: prices and then resulting crises, I think that reminder of
Speaker 1: you know, sort of these problem issues with with crypto
Speaker 1: that came home to roost when sort of the music stopped.
Speaker 1: The last thing I would say on that most recently
Speaker 1: in terms of sort of summing up the crises that
Speaker 1: we've seen in the and the major plunge in the
Speaker 1: market is sort of how it all comes full circle
Speaker 1: to many other crisis that we've seen in other markets,
Speaker 1: and that comes down to hubrists, complacency, and in the
Speaker 1: case of crypto, much like the financial crisis, a lot
Speaker 1: of leverage. Dave, I ask you this question because I
Speaker 1: feel like you've covered markets that have been saturated with
Speaker 1: hubrist complacency and leverage, whether in crypto or otherwise. What
Speaker 1: is it like covering our market that doesn't close. That's
Speaker 1: the big adjustment on it. So as a group, we've
Speaker 1: struggle a little bit and kind of learned a lot
Speaker 1: doing that with seven atmosphere here that this market has,
Speaker 1: I guess the biggest thing is that we always have
Speaker 1: to remind ourselves a little bit in our reporters to
Speaker 1: kind of step back, take a breath, get the big
Speaker 1: picture on it. A lot of our reporters are what
Speaker 1: you would you call some of our recent hires are
Speaker 1: crypto natives. They began their career here, so they haven't
Speaker 1: experienced those other markets. They know this stuff inside and out.
Speaker 1: But the big challenge they face in and we as
Speaker 1: editors are to kind of slow it down and explain it,
Speaker 1: to make it understandable to everybody, and it just moves
Speaker 1: so fast. We're winding our baday here and the next
Speaker 1: wave hits and we're kind of trying to get out
Speaker 1: the door and hand it off to Asia or coming
Speaker 1: in on the train in the morning, and uh, Phil
Speaker 1: is doing the tap dance in Europe until we get in.
Speaker 1: Definitely a lot of a lot of handovers and perhaps
Speaker 1: not as much sleep as any of us would necessarily
Speaker 1: like or appreciate. But Phil, you have spent a lot
Speaker 1: of your career Bloomberg and breaking news, and yet crypto
Speaker 1: seems stressful. Why is that? Well, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's basically I started in I think it was early January,
Speaker 1: and I think we've had a succession. We've had three
Speaker 1: or four different crisis of different flavors. You first have
Speaker 1: to learn what is a crypto bridge when one get
Speaker 1: hacked for about half a cool half billion dollars six
Speaker 1: six million dollars I think it was in the vaccine
Speaker 1: Infinity hack, and then once you get a grip on that, well,
Speaker 1: low and behold an algorithmic stable coin goes and explodes,
Speaker 1: and you have learned what that is. Once you master that, well,
Speaker 1: guess what, you know, it's time for the crypto landers
Speaker 1: to start blowing up in a in a kind of
Speaker 1: series of explosions. And so it's like you're always you're
Speaker 1: always catching up to what the latest sort of nice
Speaker 1: and shiny, bright thing that's going to explode. And that's
Speaker 1: been that's been something to really kind of get used to.
Speaker 1: And the scope of six months now covering crisis of
Speaker 1: different flavors every month pretty much, it's been quite quite
Speaker 1: a job getting used to, especially when so many of
Speaker 1: those just happened on like a weekend or at four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning and whatever that time zone might be.
Speaker 1: This is where Dave comes in handy, because he'll he'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this happened before, and actually just on that point on it,
Speaker 1: and and Stacy and I know Beth also covered during
Speaker 1: the credit crisis on it. To be the biggest difference
Speaker 1: is that that was almost glacial to me, and it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like slow moving. Every day you'd hear
Speaker 1: rumors about Merril lynches in trouble on it and it
Speaker 1: be take a while to play out. This is just
Speaker 1: like full set. It just happens in an instant and
Speaker 1: we go on to the next one on it. So
Speaker 1: it's it's uh. I guess the best analogy I've heard
Speaker 1: is this, this really is like the credit crisis, but
Speaker 1: minuses central banks to kind of manage the landing here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that that idea of the pace is so
Speaker 1: interesting because I remember every Friday, you know, we call
Speaker 1: it bank failure Friday, when you would get the ports
Speaker 1: of which banks have gone under um usually on the
Speaker 1: sort of the smaller, the smaller lenders, and it was
Speaker 1: like a very orderly there would be a pdf, you know,
Speaker 1: you can look at the spreadsheet um to your point.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'd hear rumors, but very few things would happen
Speaker 1: on weekends. Governments around the world be meeting super intensively.
Speaker 1: But there was almost like an understanding that this was
Speaker 1: like a nine to five crisis to an extent. Obviously
Speaker 1: that accelerated as as things got worse. But I'm truly
Speaker 1: fascinated that crypto as an asset class and therefore the
Speaker 1: crises and crypto seemed to operate at Internet speed, which
Speaker 1: is as fast as you can tweet something, that thing
Speaker 1: can come true. And I'm wondering, and this is perhaps
Speaker 1: a more existential question. Do we think the fact that
Speaker 1: so much of crypto is happening in like real time
Speaker 1: right that the lack of market closes, the lack of
Speaker 1: circuit breakers, the lack of any ability to have somebody
Speaker 1: step in and say, hang on, we need to regularize
Speaker 1: prices here? Do you think any of that is contributing
Speaker 1: to how bad things can be and have gotten. I
Speaker 1: would say absolutely yes. If you look at if you
Speaker 1: look at the traditional financial industry and any any traditional industry,
Speaker 1: they announce you have, you know, announcement windows for the
Speaker 1: companies that are listed. You know that, for instance, between
Speaker 1: six am and eight am, you might get releases and
Speaker 1: you're gonna get them over channels that are pretty easy
Speaker 1: to terrify, to verify control. Here everything happens in the phittosphere.
Speaker 1: Who have a company go and say on Twitter, by
Speaker 1: the way, hey we just went bust. And the first
Speaker 1: thing you have to do is look at is this
Speaker 1: is this a verified Twitter handle? And so it's a
Speaker 1: completely different cadence and as a completely different method for
Speaker 1: you know, making certain and at the same time, these
Speaker 1: are very very consequential announcements. I mean, these are these
Speaker 1: are companies announcing that they've hit the iceberg, and that
Speaker 1: is incredibly hard to get used to, an incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to adapt to as a news organization, I think. And
Speaker 1: similar to follow on to that point is that unfiltered
Speaker 1: nature of the way that the news is dispersed in
Speaker 1: the fact that everybody in the crypto universe is part
Speaker 1: of the news cycle and including a retail you know holder.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's on Twitter and could somewhat like in
Speaker 1: it in terms of the company sort of or the
Speaker 1: developers or whoever making these announcements on Twitter. To the
Speaker 1: the change in the news cycle when Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: elected president and you know, a lot of life became,
Speaker 1: you know, monitoring Trump's tweets, well, we do that times
Speaker 1: a thousand different crypto people. I mean, the good news
Speaker 1: is none of the crypto companies have the keys to nukes,
Speaker 1: so you know, there's like there's a degree of difference
Speaker 1: in terms of the consequential nous, but yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It is still a very different dynamic. Up next, you'll
Speaker 1: hear more from our editors Beth Williams, Dave Lica, and
Speaker 1: Philip Bloggercranza. As we talk about how we cover these
Speaker 1: crypto markets. Dave, you know, you talked about various of
Speaker 1: the reporters on the team, various of the editors on
Speaker 1: the team having come either to crypto specifically or coming
Speaker 1: at crypto from different asset classes. One of the teams
Speaker 1: that we work with most closely at Bloomberg is called
Speaker 1: Cross Assets, and they are incredible. Several of those reporters
Speaker 1: have been on the show. Folks have heard from Vildana,
Speaker 1: you know, We've had Katie Greifeld, who does a show
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg about et f s. What do you think,
Speaker 1: from your sort of vantage point of getting to work
Speaker 1: with all these different people, how do these different perspectives
Speaker 1: that we have on the team like help our coverage. Well,
Speaker 1: just by the nature of the group one and I
Speaker 1: actually came from that group, and our crypto coverage was
Speaker 1: originally part of the When it became a thing back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seventeen, we start to formalize coverage.
Speaker 1: But I think the advantage of of that was that
Speaker 1: you had people covering a lot of different markets who
Speaker 1: understood a lot of different things work, so they have
Speaker 1: been connect those dots fairly quickly understand this market and
Speaker 1: give some perspective quickly because that group just basically it's
Speaker 1: almost like a breaking news desk for markets. For me,
Speaker 1: looking at how we operate. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that's so interesting it's not even only Twitter, right
Speaker 1: that we have to be paying attention to it. Somebody
Speaker 1: might be putting out a YouTube video, or there might
Speaker 1: be a lot of conversation happening in a particular subreddit,
Speaker 1: or there's a website somewhere that is being updated with
Speaker 1: you know, bankruptcy filings, or it's just the like the
Speaker 1: distribution of information across lots of different platforms. And Phil,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something that you said
Speaker 1: about verification. You know, Beth mentioned earlier that we there's scams,
Speaker 1: there's hacks, there's frauds. There's also just market manipulation, and
Speaker 1: perhaps Dave you can also wig in. But having covered
Speaker 1: other markets, what do you think about the scale which
Speaker 1: this sometimes is happening. It's amazing really to see that
Speaker 1: just the branchness of these folks, both on the in
Speaker 1: the down aspects of it. Obviously the various platforms, Twitter, YouTube, telegram,
Speaker 1: exactly on it. So this is it's still the wild West,
Speaker 1: it really is on it. I mean, this is an
Speaker 1: unregulated market that grew as an alternative to a regulated world.
Speaker 1: On that this is the world those folks chose. I've
Speaker 1: been done this for a few years and it's one
Speaker 1: of the most fascinating aspects of covering it. On it
Speaker 1: makes it. It's just from from a news perspective, it's
Speaker 1: a great thing to cover, really, isn't. It's just a
Speaker 1: it's a dynamic story that that never stops. And Phil,
Speaker 1: I know you have a lot of conversations with different
Speaker 1: folks who are like, where do you even start? What
Speaker 1: would you tell them in terms of covering crypto. I'm
Speaker 1: still you know, that was the question I had when
Speaker 1: I started. Where where do I even start? Look, I
Speaker 1: think getting to know the big players in the industry.
Speaker 1: Who are the key players that you will be looking after,
Speaker 1: and how do you get to know these people and
Speaker 1: how do you get them to confide in you what's
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes, Because a lot of this
Speaker 1: is going to be about sort of peeling back the
Speaker 1: layers and understand what really you know beyond the Twitter
Speaker 1: wars that you know, people wage against each other. Um,
Speaker 1: just being able to understand on a fundamental level what's
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes. That's obviously a long journey,
Speaker 1: but sort of that's where I probably would start. You know,
Speaker 1: you've both raised this idea of one there being a
Speaker 1: lot going on at all times and to every player
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem sort of being almost like on equal footing.
Speaker 1: Anonymity makes journalists very uncomfortable, Um, except when we're talking
Speaker 1: about anonymous sources, which a different story. But how have
Speaker 1: you approached figuring out reliability and robustness and other capitalty
Speaker 1: traditional journalistic markers when you can't always tell who the
Speaker 1: person on the other side of an account or a
Speaker 1: wallet might be. First of all, it's you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the smell test. Does it seem re reasonable what
Speaker 1: this entity is saying? Is there any way that we
Speaker 1: can match it up against something that's already out there?
Speaker 1: The basic tools of journalism when it comes to you know,
Speaker 1: dotting the eyes and crossing the teeth just become even
Speaker 1: more crucial when Facebook stuff like this. If somebody is
Speaker 1: crypto native right there, like I only care about this market,
Speaker 1: but you could make them pay attention to any other
Speaker 1: market because it would help them understand some of the
Speaker 1: dynamics that they were seeing. What would you suggest I
Speaker 1: think the closest analogy was probably currencies on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a a derivative of that market, and
Speaker 1: the currency markets are just all about profits and loss
Speaker 1: on it, so that the it's just a trading thing,
Speaker 1: and they had a lot of issues in that market too,
Speaker 1: about similar things about manipulation, um, insider information, that type
Speaker 1: of thing. Over the years. You can look back at
Speaker 1: some of those scandals on it and it was it's
Speaker 1: currency market is just huge, so a lot of actually
Speaker 1: those traders have gravitated over when regulation really kind of
Speaker 1: clamped down on that stuff. In the currency world, I
Speaker 1: want it. I know plenty of traders who are who
Speaker 1: used to trade currencies who are now trading crypto similar
Speaker 1: kind of rush, I would imagine, and you know, sort
Speaker 1: of free for all in terms of the hours. And
Speaker 1: then Beth, given you know how much in the past
Speaker 1: as you say, and now you've done on kind of
Speaker 1: like the dot joining and helping things be interested and
Speaker 1: accessible to people. What do you think is one of
Speaker 1: the more interesting storylines that people are perhaps paying less
Speaker 1: attention to. It's a question I keep asking myself is
Speaker 1: what is the use of crypto? It may sound really basic,
Speaker 1: but I think it's it's something that when you see
Speaker 1: they have this huge rallies and huge plunges, it's a
Speaker 1: part of the market, seeing these these winters and these rallies,
Speaker 1: and how much this whole market is Bill Alton speculation.
Speaker 1: You know what I learned about it going up and
Speaker 1: going down, and all of the talk about web three
Speaker 1: and blockchain and all the ways that it can improve
Speaker 1: the world. I would like to know more about the
Speaker 1: use case. And I think people are want to know
Speaker 1: about making money. How can I trade this? The lesser
Speaker 1: known thing and something I want to know more about
Speaker 1: is what do you use crypto for? What can you
Speaker 1: use this for? Well, we will try to and I
Speaker 1: don't have an answer to that. Yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: we go to. Our reporters were like, hello, here are
Speaker 1: some story. It is since I know we all have
Speaker 1: to actually go edit some things, I think we will
Speaker 1: call that the episode. Thank you to all of you
Speaker 1: for joining me and see all when I'm back in
Speaker 1: New York. You heard from Beth Williams who's the deputy
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Crypto, and two of our senior editors, Dave
Speaker 1: Liqua and Phil Logo Cronzo. You can find all of
Speaker 1: our work on the Bloomberg terminal. We're on Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com and on Twitter. Beth is b Willie Lou. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spell that for you. That's b w I l
Speaker 1: l I l i o U. Dave is d Litqua
Speaker 1: that's d l i e d t k A. And
Speaker 1: Phil has the coolest. It's his last name. It's at Lagerkranza.
Speaker 1: That's l A g e r k r A n
Speaker 1: s e R. On the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto,
Speaker 1: you could argue that crypto is no stranger to a recession.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was the financial crisis of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, but even birth the idea of bitcoin in
Speaker 1: the first place. But this recession feels a little different.
Speaker 1: In the decade or so since that formative Bitcoin white paper,
Speaker 1: crypto has experienced spectacular growth. But now in the midst
Speaker 1: of this crypto winter, investors who entered the digital asset
Speaker 1: class during its so called bull market are reevaluating their
Speaker 1: whole relationship with digital coins. Bloomberg Reports of Claire Balantine
Speaker 1: joins me Monday for a look at how investors are
Speaker 1: feeling about this wintry mix in the market. I'm Stacy
Speaker 1: Marie Ishmael, and this is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Email your questions, comments
Speaker 1: or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: net and you'll find us on Twitter at Crypto. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producer is Mohammed Feru.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Sharon Burriro. Our associate producers Zanam Siddiki,
Speaker 1: Thie Butler and Moses and um Desta wonder At is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidrin