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Speaker 1: Is the AI height brings founders and a fresh influx

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Speaker 1: of VC dollars to San Francisco. One industry has been

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Speaker 1: left ruing what might have been crypto. That's the view

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Speaker 1: of Ripple Abs co founder Chris last and I sat

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Speaker 1: down with him yesterday here in San Francisco, a city

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Speaker 1: the larson's now trying to help fixed. He outlines how

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Speaker 1: he feels the federal government and US regulators have cost

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Speaker 1: San Francisco the title as the blockchain capital of the world.

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Speaker 1: Have a listen, and you've worked with the mayor, you

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Speaker 1: have made a donation in the form of riple cryptocurrency

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Speaker 1: to SF state. Do you feel a responsibility to do

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Speaker 1: all of those things? Just explain the why first of all, Yeah, Well, you.

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Speaker 2: Know, I love the city.

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Speaker 3: I was I was born in the city, my parents

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Speaker 3: met in the city, and you know, it's the most

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Speaker 3: special place.

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Speaker 2: In the world.

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Speaker 3: You know, we have our issues, but there's this nothing

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Speaker 3: like San Francisco. You can't replicate it. So it's worth

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Speaker 3: fighting for and worth investing in.

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Speaker 1: What is a better use of time to hand over

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Speaker 1: money to initiatives that you think will work, or to

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Speaker 1: invest your own time being sort of actively participating in

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Speaker 1: the life of the city.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think if you can do both, these should

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Speaker 2: do both.

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Speaker 3: I mean, obviously people that don't have the resources to

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Speaker 3: contribute dollars for example, because you can make impact that

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Speaker 3: way for sure, But there's a lot of things you

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Speaker 3: can do just as a citizen showing up for police

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Speaker 3: commission hearings for example, that makes a difference. So I

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Speaker 3: think all of us can do things. But we're fortunate

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Speaker 3: to have resources. And you know, even though the city

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Speaker 3: has a fourteen billion dollar budget, the problem of the

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Speaker 3: cities it's all tied up and are not so private

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Speaker 3: money sometimes can rapidly make impact in things like police

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Speaker 3: recruitment or supporting small business or maybe even trying to

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Speaker 3: battle some of the nonprofits that haven't really been all

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Speaker 3: that constructive in terms of helping the city fix it.

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Speaker 1: Well, what is the knot to your mind, or the

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Speaker 1: cause of the knot that's kind of holding the sisity

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Speaker 1: back from making progress.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think we've you've got a board of supervisors

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Speaker 3: that doesn't work with the mayor. That's a huge problem,

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Speaker 3: and unfortunately that can only be addressed in the twenty

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Speaker 3: four election. And there's a lot of people focusing on that,

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Speaker 3: including you know, we're focused on that. We hope we

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Speaker 3: can change that and get a board that works with

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Speaker 3: the mayor. That's step one. But there's a bunch of

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Speaker 3: long term stuff where the charter has just, you know,

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Speaker 3: really limited the power of leaders to do. I think

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Speaker 3: the things they're so obvious that have to be done.

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Speaker 3: A lot of these problems we have, they're not hard

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Speaker 3: to figure out what we need to do. It's just

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Speaker 3: we've tied ourselves in a knot and we haven't given

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Speaker 3: ourselves the power.

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Speaker 2: It's too bureaucratic. That's going to take five or ten

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Speaker 2: years to sort of really fix some of those problems.

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Speaker 3: But thankfully there's some folks that are working on that

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Speaker 3: and that's encouraging.

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Speaker 1: There's been a focus on the part that we call

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Speaker 1: Market Street, where a number of technology companies have their headquarters.

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Speaker 1: Union Square is close by, and you have focused on

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Speaker 1: that part of town as well.

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Speaker 3: Why well, you know, Union Square is a huge draw

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Speaker 3: for the city. It brings an enormous revenue for the city.

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Speaker 3: It's kind of had been the crown jewel, but it's suffering,

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Speaker 3: suffering from all the same issues that we know about

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Speaker 3: in the city, and so we have to address that.

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Speaker 3: Downtown I think is going to get fixed and is

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Speaker 3: a process of being fixed. Prices are coming down, that's

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Speaker 3: drawing people in. We've got an AI boom going on,

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Speaker 3: so there's I'm actually not worried about that.

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Speaker 2: But then we also have to help you.

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Speaker 3: Know, the merchant districts out in the outer parts of

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Speaker 3: the city. There's thirty four merchant districts. I actually didn't

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Speaker 3: realize that until we started looking into it, and that's

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Speaker 3: a rich diversity.

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Speaker 1: Of that's something you've done in partnership with Mayor Breed

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Speaker 1: in the past.

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Speaker 3: We've done that through a nonprofit that we stood up

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Speaker 3: called Avenue green Light. So we've got about three point

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Speaker 3: seven million to make small grants to these merchant districts

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Speaker 3: and help out those small businesses that have really suffered

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Speaker 3: through the pandemic and through some of the other issues

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Speaker 3: we've had. But these are people that are committed to

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Speaker 3: the city. It's like one hundred thousand jobs that are

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Speaker 3: related to small businesses. They need our help, so we

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Speaker 3: like helping out there as well.

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Speaker 1: And your relationship with Mayor Breed, what are your current

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Speaker 1: interactions with the mayor in her office.

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Speaker 3: I think the mayor's doing a fantastic job in a

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Speaker 3: very difficult not just an environment with problems that we

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Speaker 3: have to solve, but again with not having the authority

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Speaker 3: or the power to do things that we all know

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Speaker 3: how to be done. That must be a frustrating job.

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Speaker 3: But she's committed, she's tough, she's strong, she knows what

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Speaker 3: has to happen, and look, she's looks. She's a mayor,

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Speaker 3: grew up in a housing project, single mom. She knows

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Speaker 3: what it's like to fear the police, but also knows

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Speaker 3: how important the police is to protect your community and

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Speaker 3: your family. That's a pretty unusual combination of public safety

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Speaker 3: and criminal justice knowledge and thought coming together.

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Speaker 2: Why don't we trust her to make the.

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Speaker 3: Right decisions and unleash all this bureaucracy that's held.

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Speaker 1: Here back that Your relationship to the police, as best

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Speaker 1: I can tell, is you've invested and put into place

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Speaker 1: a network of security cameras. Essentially the easiest layman's expression,

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Speaker 1: what is the thesis there? If you install your own cameras,

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Speaker 1: do you intend I suppose to hand over the data

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Speaker 1: or the increased surveillance power to the authorities, or do

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Speaker 1: you use that yourself.

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Speaker 3: Well, just to correct there, So our participation with camera networks,

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Speaker 3: we just give money to one of the eighteen community

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Speaker 3: benefit districts. They're nonprofits, community governed neighborhoods.

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Speaker 2: So think of Fishermen's.

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Speaker 3: Wharf, Castro, mid Market, Japan Town, and they handle all

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Speaker 3: the cameras, they keep the data only for thirty days,

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Speaker 3: and they work under best practices, no audio for example.

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Speaker 3: So I think extremely privacy aware, but also recognizing we

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Speaker 3: have a public safety issue in the city and cameras

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Speaker 3: are another tool. It's a force multiplier that helps out

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Speaker 3: a police department that is hugely short of manpower right now.

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Speaker 3: So we need those kinds of tools, but very importantly,

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Speaker 3: we don't control.

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Speaker 1: Themself and not up a ladder in stall.

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Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.

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Speaker 1: I've been warned not to ask you this question because

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Speaker 1: you've been you've fieled it many times before. But it's

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Speaker 1: a fair one. If you are so focused at the

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Speaker 1: board level here in San Francisco, and you work so

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Speaker 1: closely with Mayor Breed, and you believe that it's not

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Speaker 1: just money that the communt solution, why do you yourself not

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Speaker 1: run for a public office where you can have an impact.

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Speaker 3: I'm just not worried for that. You know, that's you

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Speaker 3: have to be a special kind of person to want

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Speaker 3: those jobs. And so in my view, these are jobs

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Speaker 3: I don't want, right and I don't think i'd be

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Speaker 3: that effective of it at it. What I can do, though,

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Speaker 3: is I can help with resources where they're needed, and

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Speaker 3: maybe with some ideas around some of the things that

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Speaker 3: you know, can help the city. Tools for example, the

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Speaker 3: police need. You know, there's a lot more things than

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Speaker 3: just cameras. They need drones, they need AI tools, they

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Speaker 3: need better recruitment, so we need there's a lot of

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Speaker 3: work to be done there.

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Speaker 1: Every day on Bloomberg Technology, we talk about San Francisco

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Speaker 1: in the context of being the AI city. It's having

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Speaker 1: a positive impact, but we don't talk about San Francisco

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Speaker 1: is the crypto city. Yeah, is that something you recognize?

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Speaker 3: Well, that's that's really unfortunate because I think unfortunately this

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Speaker 3: administration made a really bad.

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Speaker 2: Call at the city level or at the federal the.

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Speaker 3: Federal level, they pretty much killed San Francisco from being

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Speaker 3: what it was, the blockchain capital of the world. We

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Speaker 3: owned it and we don't anymore because the Biden administration

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Speaker 3: for whatever reason decided they want to push this industry offshore,

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Speaker 3: and so it's London, Singapore, Dubai that really are the

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Speaker 3: global capitals of blockchain. That's unfortunate. Maybe our vacancy rate

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Speaker 3: would behalf of what it is here in San Francisco

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Speaker 3: it's thirty percent. It might have been fifteen percent if

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Speaker 3: we still were the global blockchain capital the world.

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Speaker 2: So that was a missed opportunity. It's really unfortunate, hurt

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Speaker 2: the city.

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Speaker 1: The latest with Ripple Labs action at the federal level

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Speaker 1: is that you have objected to the SEC's request to

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Speaker 1: appeal the original court ruling, which was a positive for

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Speaker 1: Ripple in the sense that it found the cryptocurrency xop

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Speaker 1: was not a security when it was sold to the public.

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Speaker 1: Could you just explain what the latest is with that

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Speaker 1: legal dispute.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think the bottom line is the SEC lost

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Speaker 3: on everything that was important to them and important in

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Speaker 3: regulation of the industry. The case still continues. There's appeal

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Speaker 3: processes that everybody has the right to do. But we

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Speaker 3: think that this is really groundbreaking. This is the law

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Speaker 3: of the land, and it's actually quite good news.

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 3: For again, I think the US screwed up here on

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Speaker 3: crypto and blockchain policy. This is the beginning now through

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Speaker 3: the court's unfortunately, instead of the regulators to get that

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Speaker 3: clarity and get us back.

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Speaker 2: In the way.

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Speaker 1: There's kind of both happening in parallel. There's your situation

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Speaker 1: with the SEC. Think about the applications pending for Bitcoin

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Speaker 1: spot ETF. You know, Gary Gensler and the SEC have

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Speaker 1: both decisions to make our applications and fights that they

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Speaker 1: are are are not willing to pick. How has that

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Speaker 1: reflected on Gary Gensler to your mind as the lead

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Speaker 1: of that.

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Speaker 2: Well you bring up, yeah, you bring up a great point.

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Speaker 3: You saw in the latest challenge on the ETF the

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Speaker 3: Bitcoin ETF. Again SEC lost, But not only that, the

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Speaker 3: judge really the SEC. I really called them out in

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Speaker 3: a way that you don't really see very often. I

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Speaker 3: think it's just more proof that Gary Ginsler's decision of

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Speaker 3: sort of engaging this regulation by enforcement rather than getting

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Speaker 3: clear laws, he knows they're not clear.

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Speaker 2: He just likes that lack of clarity.

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Speaker 3: So that he can go after anybody and make up

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Speaker 3: the rules as he goes along through bullying. And that's

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Speaker 3: not the American way. This should be at Congress. We

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Speaker 3: should have clear rules from the legislatures, not through these

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Speaker 3: unelected power hungry and really misplaced decision makers that you

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Speaker 3: see in Gary Gensler.

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Speaker 1: Chris, you reflected even lamented what's happened here in San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: The cryptocurrency industry or block underlying blockchain industry is if

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Speaker 1: the US is not the place to do business, where

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Speaker 1: do you all go? Is there a better jurisdiction that

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Speaker 1: has a firmer handle on things?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: I mean, unfortunately, when people entrepreneurs ask, I say, don't

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Speaker 3: start in the US, Unfortunately you go to London, you

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Speaker 3: go to Singapore, you go to Dubai where they have

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Speaker 3: and it's not because they don't have any rules.

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Speaker 2: Quite the opposite.

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Speaker 3: They have clear rules that protect consumers and also celebrate innovation.

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Speaker 3: Why isn't America leading that call. That's what we've always

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Speaker 3: been and we got to get back to it. And

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Speaker 3: by the way, that's the engine that has made San

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Speaker 3: Francisco what it is. And they have the federal government

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Speaker 3: hamstering us just unacceptable.