Speaker 1: From the heart of where innovation, money and power collive
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with
Speaker 1: Emily Chang. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco and this
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up in the next hour to
Speaker 1: trading players could be looking at tie the knot. With
Speaker 1: the markets in free fall, ft X is exploring an
Speaker 1: acquisition of robin Hood. According to Bloomberg sources, robin Hood
Speaker 1: is down some seventy five since it went public last year.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you where the talk stand and we'll also
Speaker 1: bring your exclusive interview with coin Flex CEO Mark Lamb
Speaker 1: about why they froze all withdrawals and what they're doing
Speaker 1: to fix it. Plus, tech companies may be willing to
Speaker 1: cover travel fees for employees looking to get an aboord,
Speaker 1: But what about protecting your data? We'll talk to a
Speaker 1: civil rights attorney about the power tech company's have over
Speaker 1: your digital rights. In a post row era and Para
Speaker 1: Nos's Sunny Baldwani his fate in the hands of a
Speaker 1: jury at the same courthouse where his ex girlfriend, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Bones was found guilty of defrauding Investors will get the
Speaker 1: latest on where the trial stands. More on that bloomberg
Speaker 1: scoop news of f t X and Sam Bankman Freed's
Speaker 1: interest in acquiring robin Hood. We learned just last month
Speaker 1: that Bankman Freed owns a seven point six percent stake
Speaker 1: in robin Hood through another holding company. As this news
Speaker 1: was breaking, he tweeted backstopping customer assets should always be primary,
Speaker 1: everything else is secondary. For more, I'm joined by Bloombergs.
Speaker 1: Annie Massa, who covers robin Hood has been working this
Speaker 1: story for us. What's the latest, Annie? What do we know?
Speaker 1: What's the status of this? So the service is that
Speaker 1: f t X has talked internally about potentially reaching out
Speaker 1: seeing if they could buy I robin Hood, and we've
Speaker 1: seen robin Hood has been pretty distressed in the months
Speaker 1: since its I p O last year, and it's led
Speaker 1: a lot of people to wonder if robin Hood might
Speaker 1: pursue a deal. Now, they haven't advanced as far as
Speaker 1: uh as having formal M and A talks, but this
Speaker 1: is something FTX is exploring, especially after that stake that
Speaker 1: Sam Bankmn Freed took. As you mentioned, so fd X
Speaker 1: saying in a statement, we're excited about robin Hood's business
Speaker 1: prospects and potential ways we could partner with them. That
Speaker 1: being said, no active M and A conversations with robin Hood.
Speaker 1: Do we know how robin Hood and its co founders
Speaker 1: feel about this? They're the company declines to come in
Speaker 1: for our story. It's true that this is in the
Speaker 1: earlier stages right now, but and it's complicated by the
Speaker 1: fact that robin Hood's co founders lad tin Of and
Speaker 1: Beij Jubat have super majority voting uh they control over
Speaker 1: fifty percent of voting power at robin Hood, so that
Speaker 1: would complicate any deal. However, you're still in a position
Speaker 1: where there there have been a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: what robin Hood might do, whether it might come under
Speaker 1: enough pressure to look at a deal, and if FTX
Speaker 1: were to come forward with something, um they might have
Speaker 1: to take a look. Why would it feel like this
Speaker 1: makes sense? Obviously, we know robin hood stock has plummeted,
Speaker 1: They've had to do some layoffs. There are still an
Speaker 1: incredibly popular trading app. When you ask, you know, a
Speaker 1: typical retail investor, UM that said, you know that they've
Speaker 1: been working trying to push harder into the crypto market.
Speaker 1: That's f T x is bread and butter. You know,
Speaker 1: talk to us about you know, the reasoning behind a
Speaker 1: tie up other than the fact that sam Bank been
Speaker 1: freed is interested. That's right. So first year have sam
Speaker 1: Bank been freed with his stake that he already has
Speaker 1: your holding company in robin Hood. But there are other
Speaker 1: overlaps between the companies too. Robin Hood really benefited from
Speaker 1: the huge boom and retail trading that we saw during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. You can trade equities options crypto all on
Speaker 1: robin Hood and f t X is a crypto exchange,
Speaker 1: but it's also shown interest in getting into the equities
Speaker 1: world as well. So there is a fair amount of
Speaker 1: overlap between the very retail heavy world of crypto f
Speaker 1: t X really embodies and the crypto stock trading options
Speaker 1: trading for younger investors, newer investors that robin Hood represents.
Speaker 1: So you can see a tie up of the two
Speaker 1: making sense, all right, bloom Brigs. Animasa will continue to
Speaker 1: stay tuned to your reporting. Thank you. Some of the
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the world, many of them in tech,
Speaker 1: have quickly put into action plans to help employees who
Speaker 1: may need access to abortion care following the Supreme Courts
Speaker 1: ruling overturning Rowe versus Wade. Companies like Apple, Uber, Lift, Meta, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and dozens more have an ou still cover travel expenses
Speaker 1: for employees and states where the medical procedure is or
Speaker 1: will be banned for more. Now, I'm joined by Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Sarah Fryer. So Sarah explained to us what's happening in
Speaker 1: the fine print here and what these companies are saying. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of the companies are saying that they will
Speaker 1: include abortion among the health care procedures, that they will
Speaker 1: will reimburse travel for UM. So often that is, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's something that you that you need, UM,
Speaker 1: they will find a way to fly you to a
Speaker 1: state where that's possible. The problem is, UM, they're not
Speaker 1: saying anything about another big question that we have here
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg, which is not just about employees, but about
Speaker 1: their investments in these states, but about the data that
Speaker 1: they collect UM. There's a lot of concern right now
Speaker 1: that that companies will collect data just through their uses,
Speaker 1: through their searches, through their messaging, through UM, their interactions
Speaker 1: online about whether they're playing abortions, and that prosecutors in
Speaker 1: these states where abortion is illegal might try to subpoena
Speaker 1: the companies to get it. And so far, we haven't
Speaker 1: seen a lot of companies stand up and say they
Speaker 1: won't provide that data or that they'll protect user privacy.
Speaker 1: And it's a tricky situation for them because UM historically
Speaker 1: their rule has been whenever there is UM something illegal
Speaker 1: or something requested by law enforcement, they could apply UM.
Speaker 1: But in this case, where they have a subject that
Speaker 1: a lot of employees feel very passionately about, most of
Speaker 1: the us UM is on the side that, you know,
Speaker 1: people should be able to have this health care procedure.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they're going to react when when
Speaker 1: prosecutors started asking for that data, and Sarah, I know
Speaker 1: that you and your team are trying to get some
Speaker 1: answers from these companies about how they're going to handle
Speaker 1: these bigger questions. What are we hearing so far? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think that what we might see is
Speaker 1: some companies standing up and saying, no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to do that. UM this data, this user data, will
Speaker 1: fight in court over not providing it to the government
Speaker 1: and potentially endangering someone, whereas other companies will say, listen,
Speaker 1: this is the law, and we operate by the law
Speaker 1: of the land wherever we wherever we are, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: putting our product, we have to do that, and so
Speaker 1: they'll just they'll just comply, and UM it could set
Speaker 1: up a lot of problems for a lot of people
Speaker 1: who use these services. UM. It's it's very different than
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, UM pre row. Whereas now we have
Speaker 1: this entire economy around knowing exactly what people intend to
Speaker 1: do based on their online behavior. And I think that
Speaker 1: the next few years we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: of pain and question around what responsibility companies have to
Speaker 1: their users versus what responsibility ability they have to the
Speaker 1: law in the area where they operate. All right, huge
Speaker 1: big questions that have yet to be answered. Bloomberg's Sarah Fiar,
Speaker 1: editor for our Tech Team, Thank you, Sarah. Now, while
Speaker 1: tech companies might be offering their employees navigating a new
Speaker 1: important abortion landscape help, there are concerns, and Sarah said
Speaker 1: about the information these companies have on their users and
Speaker 1: how it could be used against them if they try
Speaker 1: to access an abortion. Digital rights experts warned that search trees,
Speaker 1: location data app usage could all be fair game for
Speaker 1: more on this. I'm joined by Cynthia Conti Cook. She's
Speaker 1: a civil rights attorney and currently at Tech fellow at
Speaker 1: the Ford Foundations Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice Team. So, Cynthia,
Speaker 1: we're in some very uncharted territory here. Walk us through
Speaker 1: this post row era and the heightened risk of surveillance.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yes, we are not going back in time.
Speaker 1: We are going fast forward into uncertainty. And what we
Speaker 1: have already seen happen with digital evidence used against people
Speaker 1: who were pregnant and we're charged with conduct related to
Speaker 1: the termination of their pregnancies, is that that information was
Speaker 1: text messages, it was email receipts, it was search histories
Speaker 1: and websites visited. That's the information that already has been
Speaker 1: used in cases we've already examined coming in front of
Speaker 1: courts across the country. How do you expect companies to
Speaker 1: handle this information? I mean, I wonder is there going
Speaker 1: to be some sort of shadow economy or even a
Speaker 1: shadow society created as a result. Absolutely, people will be
Speaker 1: pushed into shadow economies and pushed into places where they
Speaker 1: are experiencing a lot more vulnerability as a result of
Speaker 1: this decision. So the tech companies have here to to
Speaker 1: to do something about it, to take a stand one
Speaker 1: way or another. Tech companies could engage in a few
Speaker 1: different ways. They could, for example, collect less data in
Speaker 1: addition to I've heard a few tech companies speak to
Speaker 1: location data recently, but location data so far has not
Speaker 1: been used in criminal court against pregnant people. However, their
Speaker 1: search histories have, their website tract have. The other things
Speaker 1: that tech companies can do is become very prepared to
Speaker 1: go into court and actually pushed back against the requests
Speaker 1: that they get from law enforcement to share information about
Speaker 1: what what websites people are looking at and what information
Speaker 1: they're searching for. So you're talking about the biggest and
Speaker 1: most powerful companies in the world. So, for example, Senators
Speaker 1: Around Widen and Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to the
Speaker 1: fc FTC asking them to investigate Apple and Google's role
Speaker 1: in all of this. What responsibility do you think these
Speaker 1: companies have. The companies provide a very important service that
Speaker 1: allows people to access information about their healthcare. This is
Speaker 1: very simply a public health issue much more than it
Speaker 1: is a technology issue, and the technology companies need to
Speaker 1: understand that the information they collect and store and the
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies that they provide it to will in
Speaker 1: turn use it to criminalize the people that they are
Speaker 1: relying on to be their users and to be the
Speaker 1: people who will purchase information and of commit to their advertisers.
Speaker 1: It's part of the ecosystem. And if they are disregarding
Speaker 1: the rights and welfare of the people that they are
Speaker 1: serving through the technologies that they provide, those people are
Speaker 1: going to be less and less able to participate. Now,
Speaker 1: there are these big companies, you know, that's one thing,
Speaker 1: but there's also a host of startups offering you know,
Speaker 1: women and family health care UM and I wonder what
Speaker 1: you think the role is of those companies, less powerful,
Speaker 1: obviously less well resourced, you know, being put in a
Speaker 1: in a very difficult position where you know, in any
Speaker 1: afford to states this is all just totally fine, and
Speaker 1: in the rest of the country it's not. First, smaller startups,
Speaker 1: I would say that they first should be they should
Speaker 1: find out from the places that are already existing and
Speaker 1: have been serving the abortion access movement what the needs
Speaker 1: are for the UH questions that they're asking and for
Speaker 1: the types of services that they are considering making available. First,
Speaker 1: the people that are going to be using the service
Speaker 1: should be involved in designing it. Now, what do you
Speaker 1: think about the role of these quote unquote crisis pregnancy firms.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg has reported that these firms, which are encouraging women
Speaker 1: to not get abortion, are also scooping up data on
Speaker 1: women who are seeking abortion. Yes, that's right, they are.
Speaker 1: The crisis pregnancy centers have been very delus really not
Speaker 1: just through in person interviews collecting information about people, but
Speaker 1: simply through existing as a website collecting information about people
Speaker 1: that visit their websites in the same way. So, what's
Speaker 1: your advice to women right now about protecting their digital
Speaker 1: autonomy in this kind of messy middle where we are,
Speaker 1: where a lot of this has yet to be decided
Speaker 1: and this law was just overturned. In the same way
Speaker 1: that we should not all be individually responsible for protecting
Speaker 1: ourselves against COVID, we should all not be individually responsible
Speaker 1: for securing all of our digital devices and having all
Speaker 1: the knowledge of what types of information is collected about us.
Speaker 1: But there are a few things that people can do.
Speaker 1: Secure your devices, Do not share your devices voluntarily with
Speaker 1: police officers, social workers, anyone at a hospital. Secure your communications.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you're using encrypted communication, even very casual,
Speaker 1: and that you have all of your contacts already imported
Speaker 1: and secure your browsing, so use as your default browser
Speaker 1: the types of browsers that are not going to track
Speaker 1: you as you visit website to website. All right, Cynthia
Speaker 1: Conte Cook, fascinating new landscape to explore. Ford Foundation, fellow
Speaker 1: civil rights attorney, thank you well. A new poll suggests
Speaker 1: that a majority of Americans disapprove of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
Speaker 1: According to the CBS News survey, fifty opposed this ruling,
Speaker 1: including six of women, while seventy percent of Republicans support
Speaker 1: Supreme courts action of Democrats disapprove. Coming up with the
Speaker 1: boyfriend of Farina's founder Elizabeth Holmes, will he face the
Speaker 1: same fate? A joury is deliberating the future of Sunny
Speaker 1: Baldwani right now, We're gonna have the latest on the case. Next,
Speaker 1: this is Bloomberg. A jury is now deliberating in the
Speaker 1: trial of Sonny ball Waming, the former second in command
Speaker 1: at Sara No Nos and ex boyfriend to founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 1: While Wanni's lawyers have done their best to try to
Speaker 1: separate him from Holmes, who was found guilty of DEFRAUDI
Speaker 1: investors back in January for more on the trial. I'm
Speaker 1: joined by Bloomberg Stral Rosenblatt, who covered the Holmes trial
Speaker 1: for US. And you were in the courtroom every day
Speaker 1: for the trial of Elizabeth Holmes. You've been in there
Speaker 1: for much of the trial of Sonny Ball Wanni. Have
Speaker 1: lawyers been successful separating the two? You know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: find out. I'm not sure. It's just gonna be interesting
Speaker 1: to see what what jurors think. Uh. Elizabeth Holmes has
Speaker 1: loomed large over this trial. I was in closing arguments
Speaker 1: last week and on one day alone in in his
Speaker 1: lawyers closing arguments, she was mentioned nineties six times. So
Speaker 1: so they're they're trying what what Sonny's lawyers are trying
Speaker 1: to do. I say that he too was defrauded by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes, that that she tricked him to. That's what
Speaker 1: they're trying to pull off. Um, I think that's going
Speaker 1: to be unsuccessful. The jury was instructed to separate the two,
Speaker 1: and so you wonder if it's actually gonna work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's to me the kind of the real conundrum of
Speaker 1: this trial and confusing for jurors because they got an instruction.
Speaker 1: I sent you the instructions up. I don't enough you're
Speaker 1: able to show that, but asked yours to to not
Speaker 1: consider any fact or aspect of Elizabeth Holmes's trial. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, read very legally and very technically. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to consider the trial. That's okay, that's the instruction.
Speaker 1: But she has permeated this entire affair and the trial.
Speaker 1: And I said, she's been mentioned so many times that
Speaker 1: it's impossible for them to to to I think, separate
Speaker 1: the two of them out, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason he's in so much trouble. What is your perception
Speaker 1: after spending so much time in the courtroom, you know,
Speaker 1: is it clear that one had more of a role
Speaker 1: than another, or were they working in tandem? You know,
Speaker 1: some of these lawyers have said that he joined much later.
Speaker 1: She founded the company and he joined years later. Um,
Speaker 1: that's another way that his lawyers have tried to say
Speaker 1: this was her company and he kind of just got
Speaker 1: duped or got pulled in. But the we've seen the
Speaker 1: same texts and the same emails that were shown at
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes trial, showing how tight they were that even
Speaker 1: he was the president of the company, she was CEO.
Speaker 1: But even in that kind, in those titles, they just
Speaker 1: held a very special place at the company, special roles.
Speaker 1: They held onto information that only they could see or
Speaker 1: they decided who could see what. So they were in tandem.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's what geors are going to see,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're going to contemplate it. And does
Speaker 1: he face the same potential sentence he does. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the reasons she hasn't been sentenced yet is
Speaker 1: because the judge wants to figure out his role in
Speaker 1: relationship to hers. They look to be so closely aligned
Speaker 1: that I think they're both facing between eight and ten
Speaker 1: years of prison. Interesting now, Elizabeth Holmes, the deliberations took
Speaker 1: much longer than any of us expected. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen here? Yeah, this trial is just
Speaker 1: kind of it's just very different. It's been much quieter.
Speaker 1: So you don't have the media showing up at two
Speaker 1: am dressed like Elizabeth Holmes. You don't have that. You
Speaker 1: don't have that the the courtrooms are actually very quiet
Speaker 1: and almost empty. His family is sitting right behind him,
Speaker 1: just packed together, even though there's space in the courtroom. Um,
Speaker 1: I you know what they're seeing is it's really a
Speaker 1: very different trial. I mean there's the same facts, but
Speaker 1: there's not this kind of energy, not this kind of
Speaker 1: pressure that I know. Jurors in the Homeless trial I
Speaker 1: was speaking to them afterwards felt to to make a
Speaker 1: decision and make the right decision. I think here they
Speaker 1: could decide it kind of easier and without the pressure.
Speaker 1: So interesting, not as long I'm expecting. Well, keep following.
Speaker 1: Have you back when there is one? Thank you. This
Speaker 1: is a moment that feels that it has been twelve
Speaker 1: years in the making, and if you look at today's
Speaker 1: technology companies, the very very large majority of will survive it.
Speaker 1: The question is do they have a strategy to thrive afterwards.
Speaker 1: The best time to start a company is where do
Speaker 1: you notice such it? It's clear right now the market
Speaker 1: is going to reward real companies to build real things
Speaker 1: and make real earnings. Now we are going into a
Speaker 1: world where we're going to have to be more discerning.
Speaker 1: I think that the place of opportunity today that We're
Speaker 1: quite focused on continue to be uh is on cyber security.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, pick sectors that are essential businesses,
Speaker 1: essential markets, government perhaps draw also think the future work
Speaker 1: continues to be a place of great opportunity. A lot
Speaker 1: of companies will will be absorbed in. Other companies will
Speaker 1: just disappear um. But at the end, typically a situation
Speaker 1: like this creates a lot of new growth. So there
Speaker 1: are bright spots, but no question we're in for choppy times.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to bloom More Technology and Emily Chin in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Snapshots there of the reactions we've gotten from
Speaker 1: investors and CEOs right here on our show about their
Speaker 1: outlook on the market downturn, what the next big thing
Speaker 1: could be. This has data from CB Insights shows that
Speaker 1: private capital back startups raised far fewer rounds of funding
Speaker 1: in the last three months they did late last year
Speaker 1: early this year. I want to stick with this now
Speaker 1: and bringing Phil Haslett for more on it. He's a
Speaker 1: founder in chief strategy officeer for equities and so first
Speaker 1: of all, Phil, we hadge back on the show in March.
Speaker 1: Where do you think we are right now in the
Speaker 1: cycle of this particular downturn, Yeah, I think we've continued
Speaker 1: the trend since we last spoken March, which is that
Speaker 1: you know, private valuations tend to lag a little bit
Speaker 1: behind public ones, and we're just kind of starting to
Speaker 1: see that reality set in through Q two as observed
Speaker 1: through some of the CD Insights data. Something that we've
Speaker 1: seen on our side is that maybe if companies were
Speaker 1: trading on the equities and platform in the secondaries, that
Speaker 1: maybe discount and Q one to the most recent funding ground.
Speaker 1: We're seeing that to continue to go downwards towards maybe
Speaker 1: the forty to six percent drop, which again is kind
Speaker 1: of reflective what we're seeing in the public markets. So
Speaker 1: I think we uh may be reaching the bottom here,
Speaker 1: but we've we've certainly kind of continued the slide over
Speaker 1: the past few months. Some venture capitalists are recommending not
Speaker 1: just one to two years of runway, but three to
Speaker 1: four years of runway. I mean, can start ups really
Speaker 1: handled that when their businesses are already getting a hit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an easy thing for a bunch of venture capitalists
Speaker 1: to say. I think it's no company was really prepared
Speaker 1: to have three to four years of cash um as
Speaker 1: a startup, the same way that no company back in
Speaker 1: cobD was really prepared for an environment with zero revenue
Speaker 1: for a period of time. So I think that's a
Speaker 1: bit unrealistic. I think what you will see is kind
Speaker 1: of a definite shift in atitude and how companies are
Speaker 1: sending money. In particular, UM, one of the things they
Speaker 1: can control, has already kind of observed by UM some
Speaker 1: pretty significant headcount reductions. You know, we we've seen that that.
Speaker 1: You know, compensation really is the majority of stend for
Speaker 1: most of these technology companies, so will expect to see
Speaker 1: that continue. So let's talk to us. Uh So, talk
Speaker 1: to us about these folks who are getting laid off.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't understand that employees who work
Speaker 1: at startups. You know, half of the upside is the
Speaker 1: equity in those startups, But you have to buy that
Speaker 1: equity in order to benefit from that upside, often before
Speaker 1: you know if the startup is going to be a
Speaker 1: success or not. So when you get laid off from
Speaker 1: a company, you have a very short window oftentimes in
Speaker 1: order to buy that equity. Can you explain to us
Speaker 1: what these laid off employees are going through right now? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a tough time. You know, it
Speaker 1: starts off by getting laid off, which is obviously a
Speaker 1: big hit to someone's or financial future. UM. It's compounded
Speaker 1: by the fact that most of these employees, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: are issued you know, stock options, which basically give them
Speaker 1: the rights to purchase shares of the company they work for. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's usually a really big hook uh and and
Speaker 1: incentive for for these employees to have joined the companies. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: most of the rules around this say that you have
Speaker 1: ninety days to basically buy those shares after you've left
Speaker 1: the company or even if you're terminated. So you can
Speaker 1: kind of imagine this really unfortunate scenario where hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands of employees are getting laid off and are then
Speaker 1: given a really short window to decide if they should
Speaker 1: pay money out of pocket and incur a tax bill
Speaker 1: to own their stock or not. Right, it's it's really
Speaker 1: uncertain to know if your company is going to be
Speaker 1: successful this point, whereas maybe nine or twelve months ago
Speaker 1: it felt like a complete no brainer. UM. And so
Speaker 1: we're starting to see some more and more active conversations
Speaker 1: between companies and between secondary platforms like equities and and
Speaker 1: also between companies and their employees to see if they
Speaker 1: can kind of help UM solve this problem, which is
Speaker 1: obviously a pretty meaningful one. Then you have a company
Speaker 1: like Bolt, the high flying e commerce startup that actually
Speaker 1: gave employees an option to buy their shares early. I
Speaker 1: wonder if those employees are now in a horrible or
Speaker 1: very precarious financial situation because they took that bet and
Speaker 1: now it's not panning out at least not now, as
Speaker 1: they absolutely are. And and actually, when that proposal came
Speaker 1: out from from UH both financial whatever, it was maybe
Speaker 1: four or five months ago, a lot of the venture capitalists,
Speaker 1: particularly ones that had gone through the dot com crash
Speaker 1: in two thousand, waved as many red flags as they
Speaker 1: possibly could to say, you know, this can end very
Speaker 1: poorly when markets kind of turned on their head UM.
Speaker 1: And so while it is one idea it to kind
Speaker 1: of help employees with donating their stock, we can kind
Speaker 1: of think of many other solutions that I think are
Speaker 1: a little bit more palatable for for companies to enact
Speaker 1: for their employees. I would say kind of the two
Speaker 1: easiest ones to do UM are that, you know, companies
Speaker 1: can proactively kind of convert the equity compensation to give
Speaker 1: to employees at departure to actually extend that amount of
Speaker 1: time where they have to exercise to own their shares.
Speaker 1: That's something we saw from pinterest, and we saw from
Speaker 1: coin based many years ago, um while they were private,
Speaker 1: and I think it was very well received. And something
Speaker 1: that we work on with companies is that we can
Speaker 1: help companies elect to allow employees, you know, to sell
Speaker 1: some of their shares you know, through secondary transactions and
Speaker 1: private transactions to help you cover the cost of any
Speaker 1: exercise or any tax and uh implications as well. The
Speaker 1: last one I think that we'll see that that we
Speaker 1: talked about a bit before, was that companies can actually
Speaker 1: redo kind of their fair market valuation, which is what's
Speaker 1: used to determine tax implications and also the price of
Speaker 1: which you get your stock options. And we saw companies
Speaker 1: like instat cart do that and I expect and hope
Speaker 1: to seem any more do that as well. So what's
Speaker 1: your advice to employees right now, say they've just gotten
Speaker 1: laid off, they don't know what to do, should they
Speaker 1: buy the stock or not? How do they evaluate this decision? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tough one. Uh. My first advice would be
Speaker 1: to kind of ask the company, what, you know, what
Speaker 1: choices they do have with their equity? Is it really
Speaker 1: just ninety days? Um? The second thing I would ask
Speaker 1: is if the company is aware of investors that maybe
Speaker 1: are already on the company's cap table that are looking
Speaker 1: to grow their position that can help with liquidity. I
Speaker 1: think that's absolutely the first one. And then the last one,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a little self serving, is to kind
Speaker 1: of explore what options you have within the secondary markets
Speaker 1: to get liquidity for your shares um As you know,
Speaker 1: while the markets have taken a turn, we have seen
Speaker 1: a lot of investor interests, particularly at these lower prices
Speaker 1: for companies that they wanted to invest in for years
Speaker 1: that they finally feel like are more fairly valued. So
Speaker 1: I encourage employees to kind of start having those conversations
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. Interesting, all right, Phil has Let, founder,
Speaker 1: chief strategy officer at Equities and lots to consider. Appreciate
Speaker 1: you taking the time to walk through all that. With
Speaker 1: us coming up the crypto futures exchange that just halted
Speaker 1: all withdrawals, we'll speak to coin Flex CEO Mark Lamb
Speaker 1: exclusively about what happened and how fast they can fix it.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is Bloomberg and it's time now for
Speaker 1: our crypto report, and I want to take a look
Speaker 1: at the crypto liquidity as a wave of liquidations gives
Speaker 1: rise to even more fear. Selsie has started freezing withdrawals
Speaker 1: earlier this month, and then a vague tweet by a
Speaker 1: founder of the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which
Speaker 1: is facing its own liquidity troubles, created even more anxiety.
Speaker 1: Then came babbled finance pausing withdrawals. Now coin flix Flex,
Speaker 1: the crypto physical futures exchanges in the spotlight. Our crypto
Speaker 1: contributortionally Bossa here to give us the lay of the land, Shinali. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something interesting here, Emily is then, in addition to the
Speaker 1: situations that you had talked about, when it comes to
Speaker 1: coin flex, the counterparty was not Three Arrows Capital or
Speaker 1: another lending firm. We're going to get some more details
Speaker 1: about that in just a second. But just as equally
Speaker 1: interesting here is how the industry is being shored up
Speaker 1: in the middle of this crypto winter and liquidity crunch.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about just how that's going to
Speaker 1: happen now with Mark Lamb, the CEO of coin Flex.
Speaker 1: Coin Flex is looking to bring back their operations in
Speaker 1: more normal form of resuming with withdrawals by Thursday June.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that you said to me
Speaker 1: today that you're planning on doing that is by issuing
Speaker 1: a new token that is almost fifty million, it's forty
Speaker 1: seven million dollars worth with a twenty percent yield. That
Speaker 1: is a large return to investors who would get into
Speaker 1: this token. But Mark, tell me, what does this token
Speaker 1: actually represent? Who isn't making whole? How is it making
Speaker 1: them whole? And what happens if you can't raise that money? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sure so um at coin flex fundamentally we believe in markets,
Speaker 1: transparency and token ization. So we've done that with one
Speaker 1: of our other products, flex USD. It's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: on markets, it's it's it's funding a market, our repo market,
Speaker 1: and it's a token. And we're doing that again here
Speaker 1: with the Recovery Value us D SO r v U
Speaker 1: s D. It's a way for us to use token
Speaker 1: ization to solve this problem where we have this asset
Speaker 1: which is UM. It's an ultra highnet worth individual UM.
Speaker 1: They they owe us these funds UM. We do believe
Speaker 1: that they're going to get us these funds at some
Speaker 1: point in the future, and we wanted to make it
Speaker 1: such that the assets UM all match up and everything
Speaker 1: matches up in a way where it's a market based
Speaker 1: and we pass on this risk to investors that are
Speaker 1: understand what the risk is and and are eager for
Speaker 1: this risk, and basically UM solve the problem right now,
Speaker 1: we can't have withdrawals UM. There are lots of different
Speaker 1: ways of solving these problems in in crypto finance, and
Speaker 1: crypto generally is on the cutting edge of finance. And
Speaker 1: one of the ways that UM hasn't been as successful
Speaker 1: in the past is when companies put their head in
Speaker 1: the sand or refuse to communicate or go high behind
Speaker 1: the excuse of lawyers. UM rather than treating lawyers as
Speaker 1: as advisors and consigliarias in creating solutions that resolve the
Speaker 1: problem extremely quickly and and also in a way where
Speaker 1: more people get to participate in the solution. Mark, assuming
Speaker 1: that this does work, that you're able to raise this
Speaker 1: token and withdrawals do begin again on June, are you
Speaker 1: afraid that you will face a run on the bank
Speaker 1: in that kind of a scenario. We're not worried about
Speaker 1: that scenario because upon this fundraise being concluded, um, everyone
Speaker 1: can withdraw and and so we want everything to be
Speaker 1: always mashed at all times. And you know, in situations
Speaker 1: where that isn't, we have to intervene. We have to
Speaker 1: do these things. We are going forward, We're going to
Speaker 1: take even further steps on making every aspect of the
Speaker 1: exchange transparent, including the futures positions, the notional value not
Speaker 1: the specific coin, but the notional value of every account's
Speaker 1: positions public via an external auditing firm, and also the
Speaker 1: margin backing those positions. And we think that ultimately that's
Speaker 1: in line with our you know, our ethos from day one,
Speaker 1: we've we've wanted everything to be market based, transparent and tokenized.
Speaker 1: What's our longer term plan mark to make sure that
Speaker 1: if we experience this kind of volatility in the market again,
Speaker 1: and certainly the crypto market will experience this volatility again,
Speaker 1: it is a volatile market, that this won't happen, that
Speaker 1: it all doesn't come down to or depend on one individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So part of the issue here was and this is
Speaker 1: common practice in crypto and and really it originates from
Speaker 1: traditional finance, but we had a customer on a personal
Speaker 1: recourse based non liquidation account. UM. We will be eliminating
Speaker 1: that type of account. We will also be making these
Speaker 1: positions public and you won't just have to take our
Speaker 1: word for it. We have an auditing firm that we're
Speaker 1: going to be working with two have them published this data,
Speaker 1: and this is much needed data in futures. There isn't
Speaker 1: a single crypto futures exchange in the world, uh, including
Speaker 1: here in the US UM that that makes this data
Speaker 1: public around position sizes and the margin ratios, margin balances
Speaker 1: and collateral backing those positions. And it is one of
Speaker 1: those things where there's a balance between transparency and privacy.
Speaker 1: Right now and Defy they've set the standard in terms
Speaker 1: of transparency, and we need to do at least as
Speaker 1: good as, if not much better than Defy with respect
Speaker 1: to transparency so that depositors and users can feel comfortable trading. UM.
Speaker 1: It has a damage to privacy, but we think that
Speaker 1: traders are going to find that worthwhile for the you know,
Speaker 1: the additional comfort that they get from knowing the risk
Speaker 1: and the leverage implicit in the system. So what's your
Speaker 1: message to customers right now. What's the level of confidence,
Speaker 1: your level of confidence that in the three days between
Speaker 1: now and June you're going to make that date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm highly confident. We have we have spoken to people
Speaker 1: NonStop on on phone calls and in person meetings UH
Speaker 1: since this issue arose, and UM, we have more than
Speaker 1: half of the UH the amount needed in soft commitments
Speaker 1: to UH to get this done. And so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: highly confident that there's strong appetite from within the crypto
Speaker 1: space and also in the broader institutional space in this
Speaker 1: type of token. UM, it's not we're turning a problem
Speaker 1: into an opportunity, and we're also UM, you know, we're
Speaker 1: also turning that into an opportunity that gets resolution very
Speaker 1: very quickly. You know. This this is something where at
Speaker 1: the end of this offering, UM, you know, the problem
Speaker 1: is solved within a matter of days. This is something
Speaker 1: that's been done before in Crypto's history. UM, and and
Speaker 1: it's been extremely successful when it's been done before in crypto.
Speaker 1: What kind of treasure do you feel to reveal more
Speaker 1: details about who this investor is who couldn't meet the
Speaker 1: margin calls initially, especially when this new token is tied
Speaker 1: to their fortunes. The people who will be investing in
Speaker 1: this new token are doing it to make this other
Speaker 1: investor that they don't know. Hal, Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a great question. And look, I think the market is
Speaker 1: always going to demand more and more transparency. So we're
Speaker 1: going to be revealing as much information and as we
Speaker 1: can as we're able to reveal that information. At this point,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is what we can give,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to very very quickly, uh, be fully
Speaker 1: transparent about what happened, how we're resolving it, and our
Speaker 1: plan going forward to uh, you know, protect customers, uh
Speaker 1: and and be fully transparent to customers about all the
Speaker 1: leverage in the system and how it's collateralized. But I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I think the market will demand that information. I think
Speaker 1: the market will try to pursue that information, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the beautiful and powerful thing about markets,
Speaker 1: and that's the important thing about transparency, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think that's what's going to happen going forward. This one customer,
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you know whether he or she
Speaker 1: can pay you back? How much confidence do you have
Speaker 1: that you will get that money back? And what confidence
Speaker 1: can you have customers that you would remain solvent and
Speaker 1: be able to continue operations in normal form if they
Speaker 1: can't pay you back. Yes, So we have alternative mechanisms
Speaker 1: if if we're not able to conclude this raise, we
Speaker 1: have alternative mechanisms we're looking at and we have on
Speaker 1: the table. Um. Really the focus is on this mechanism
Speaker 1: because it actually opens up a new type of asset
Speaker 1: for customers to invest in. And UM, you know, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people very familiar with the situation.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people who you know,
Speaker 1: want access to this type of yield. So it's again,
Speaker 1: we want to turn this into an opportunity for people.
Speaker 1: We want to be totally transparent about what happened, and
Speaker 1: we also want to make it clear um going forward, Ah,
Speaker 1: every bit of data about the inner workings of our
Speaker 1: exchange is going to be public. You know. We we
Speaker 1: already um are extremely public about all the data in
Speaker 1: our exchange, but this is an area for us to
Speaker 1: go even further and even more cutting edge on the transparency.
Speaker 1: Know all right, Mark Lambs of coin Plex coin Flex,
Speaker 1: thank you Mark for coming and sharing your side. What's
Speaker 1: happening with us along with our very own shot. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Short sellers reportedly have been ramping up their bets against Tether,
Speaker 1: the world's largest stable coin, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: More traditional hedge funds have executed trades to short Tether
Speaker 1: through Genesis Global Trading, one of the largest crypto brokerage
Speaker 1: brokerages for professional investors. Some hedge funds are shorting Tether
Speaker 1: as a bet about the broader economy and Taiwan's Global
Speaker 1: Wafers plans to build a semiconductor silicon wafer plant in
Speaker 1: Texas that will be the biggest of its kind on
Speaker 1: American soil. The company says the factory will close a
Speaker 1: critical gap in the supply chain. The plant is being
Speaker 1: built in Sherman, Texas, could support as many as fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred jobs. And that doesn't for the citition of Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be back tomorrow. We've got some great guests
Speaker 1: lined up. Arms CEO Renee Has will be here along
Speaker 1: with Cloud Flares, Matthew Prince and this will be fun.
Speaker 1: American sprinter and the most decorated US track and field
Speaker 1: athlete in Olympic history, Alison Felix, she's got a tech
Speaker 1: angle for you. We'll talk to her about that tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And natally changing in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg