Bitcoin's Fall and Bro Culture in Tech

Washington is finally taking note of sexism. That's one rampant in the tech industry where women have been long underrepresented. I'll be joined by Congressman Stephen Lynch on the heels of a hearing he chaired on quote combating tech gro culture. What he thinks Congress can do to help fix the problem. And airlines are canceling flights up and down the board

as they struggle to keep up with rising demand. We'll talk about what's ahead for the busy fourth of July travel week and the future of travel in a post pandemic world. All of that in a moment, But first I want to stick with the current market moves, market turmoil, bringing upholdings Robert kentwell to talk about the pain that most investors are feeling. The S and B suffering its cruelest first half since Richard Nixon's presidency. Ouch, that is

a dismal statistic, Robert. Look, we talked last about a month ago. Have your feelings changed given that we're continuing to see red on the screen? Well, it's gone up and down since we last spoke, but we're basically exactly where we were about a month ago. And as you mentioned, is the worst quarter for the SMP since the first quarter that we saw uh, and it's been it's been

particularly painful for investors. One of the things we were talking about before was this revaluation of tech companies and are some of these still going to be consider the tech companies Netflix or Facebook. And one of the things that we think is happening right now is really this is the end of the consumer Internet boom and meta being relegated into the value bucket is probably one of

the crowning signals of that. And there's that's perfectly fine, But then where is the growth going to come from in technology? And where we see it coming from is an enterprise cloud and the data that we're seeing today tells us that where the digital advertising industry was back in two thousand and seventeen is very similar to where the cloud enterprise software industry is today. So do you put Meta in the value bucket? Is the growth era for that company over? Well, it might actually be a

great thing for investors. Uh, if people really do value it is a value stock, because there's very few value stocks with that type of margins and growth rates going forward. So Meta is far from a from a dead you

know company as far as we're concerned. I think the inability of the business to make acquisitions over the past few years has really heard it and I think that's gonna be one of the biggest questions going forward is that the regulatory environment for Meta has quietly improved, and if that is a sign of things to come, we think that will continue to help the stock, in addition to the fact that it's just so darn cheap. Interesting. But don't you want growth to come from innovation and

not acquisition. Well, you know, you can't fight capitalism. Uh. They sure Met is going to develop plenty of products that some are gonna work, some aren't. You know, their their their marketplace business generates a little bit of money from them. Today they're finding new ways of onboarding advertisers through that and as long term investors. Yeah, of course you want the products to be built. There's just there's

too many you can. You know, we talked about, you know, Pinterest being such a such an attractive takeout Canada, the amount of time and investment that would take to recreate Twitter, to recreate Pinterest, to recreate you know what you saw, you know, with the LinkedIn acquisition of Microsoft. We think there's just too many attractive assets in the right now to justify having to build things from scratch when you can just bolt them together and make a stronger company.

So how are you parsing out the enterprise software category. It's really easy to understand what meta is, you you know, it's easy to see Instagram and What'sapp and the blue app, and you know how all of those things fit together. But when it comes to enterprise software, it's a lot more confusing. How do you distinguish between what's a good play and what's not. It is a lot more work because you don't get to just use the products yourselves. You've got to you've got to talk to the executives

and the companies that are using them. One of the biggest trends and enterprise technology has been this move from systems of record so or cole and salesforce that are basically complex databases into systems of action. And so this is the service now is of the world. This is data happens in the company, That data runs through some system and then that system tells an employee or another piece of software what to do. So these systems of action are in audibly powerful, there's a lot of lock in,

and we're still relatively early in the curve. You know, you had a great interview with Blake Lemoyne um you know, the last week, and you know, one of the things I can't help but think about, you know, is that a lot of people already work for software. Uh, you know, our software is telling us what to do. And it's been this evolution of these systems of action that are

driving it. But that's a productivity and it's an efficiency thing, and I think it's one of these things that is inevitable and it will certainly go too far, like we've seen with some of the data capture on the digital advertisers. But I still think We're relatively early in the adoption of these systems and it's been a pretty exciting place to invest, all right, Probert can't well. Upholding is always

good to have you with us. Thank you, Robert for stopping by meantime, TikTok rival Triller still going public, but on its own. The US video sharing at file paperwork for an initial public offering of its class A common stock with the SEC. This after ending it's five billion dollar murder with the video software provider see Change International. The merger termination is effective immediately with Nazdak. The NASDAK

listing expected September. We've been you know, you know, guided to believe that it could be called it nine to twelve months on that decision. It could be a little bit longer, could be a little bit shorter, but we hold strong in our common sense arguments around the E t F conversion um and have a fantastic legal bench that will be arguing this case on behalf of investors.

Grays Gale CEO Michael Shawnenstein there with Bloomberg earlier. The crypto investment firm says it has sued the SEC after the agency rejected a bid to convert its Bitcoin trust into an e t F. Our own Sali Bossik here

with more on this Shanali not necessarily unexpected, but what's next. Yeah, what's really interesting here, Emily is that this is not only a big deal for ray Scale, where there was a huge demand from clients and customers to have this trust converted into an et F, but a lot of frustration here that there bitcoin futures ets being approved when spot bitcoin ets are not being approved at large. Of course, we know there are many of them that are waiting

for approval, planning on filing again. You know, I think back to a conversation I had, for example, with Anthony Scaramucci that really had talked a lot about how an approval of an e t F like this could really start to have a huge inflow of more institutional money, for example into bitcoin. And of course, uh, this is a huge roadblock not just for the crypto community, but for gray Scale itself that now has a trust that's trading well below it's net asset value, a thirty percent

or more below it's net asset value. It had a big drop off today as well, and this will be for gray Scale along road ahead another twelve months or so to work through a loss lawsuit, according to both Bloomberg Intelligence. In the company itself, also some not good news for coin Flex. You and I interviewed the CEO Mark Lamb exclusively earlier this week about their withdrawal transaction issues, said that those would be over by today and that he was very confident that he'd be able to get

that done. Take a listen to what he had to tell us back on Monday. Yeah, I'm highly confident. We have UH. We've spoken to people NonStop on on phone calls and in person meetings UH since this issue arose, and UM, we have more than half of the UH the amount needed in soft commitments to UH to get this done. Well, Today'sonale, coin Flex came out and said they aren't going to be able to make the deadline.

What happened. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, Emily, both for coin Flex and also for an entire industry that is suffering through liquidity issues other companies as well. Remember when it comes to coin flex itself, since that interview that we did on Monday, we have Roger Vera coming out and saying that he has no debt to coin Flex and being reported as the big customer that we've been talking about that had a margin call when it

came to coin Flex. So this dispute between Roger Vera and coin Flex itself made this token offering, which was supposed to make that kind of margin call issue whole again difficult in terms of both raising money and making other customers whole and restarting withdrawals. Again, let's move over just really quickly here to talk about another company, Celsius, which also paused withdrawals about two weeks ago. How all

these companies are restructuring is fascinating. They've came out with a blog post today also saying that they're discussing both strategic transactions as well as restructuring uh their liabilities, but not a lot of detail there on what that could necessarily look like. Of course, there's a third firm. There's block Fly as well, and a lot of news around Sam Bankman Freedom f TX nearing a deal to acquire it as this industry starts to get out of the slump. Indeed,

all stories we're going to continue to follow. Bloom Visionnelly Bostick, thank you as always. All right, more now on the impact of the crypto plunge on the world of chips, and especially one chip maker in particular, that is in video. I want to bring in Bloomberg Cecilia Donastasio on this, and of course we've seen Bitcoin fall below dollars a couple of times all the last two weeks. This is not just not good for crypto investors, but also in Vidia,

which made a big bet on this technology. Tell us what's happening? Sure, So, the crypto boom generated a lot of interest in Vidia's UM game cards, which typically gamers used to play really like high resolution video games on their computers. Crypto minors, however, do create cryptocurrencies, particularly ethereum, through use of the game cards themselves, so there was a huge rush on the cards in along with the

boom and crypto UM. Unfortunately, now that crypto has crash and video itself has experienced some of that sort of UM hangover. So what's next for in video? Yeah, we'll just stage. Their strategy in video has danced back and forth between kind of UM working with crypto and sort of distancing itself from crypto. Gamers are its primary market, and the crypto industry is extremely volatile, So right now and video is kind of trying to detach themselves from

that industry and market, primarily to gamers. All right, story, We're gonna continue to follow Bloomberg Cecilia, Donastasio Cecilia as always, thanks for joining. Coming up, we're gonna take a peek at the summer season. With four of July travel about to get underway on mass Will the flight cancelation nightmares continue? We'll have that and more with Peak CEO A co founder ris Wana a Share next visits Bloomberg. Airbnb shares fell to a record low amid heavy travel disruptions in

Europe as major airports asked carriers to cut capacity. Shares closed down more than five percent after data showed US consumer spending fell in May for the first time this year. Airbnb is down more than forty so far this year, despite economies reopening and leisure travel returning around the world. Meantime,

the holiday travel nightmare is back with a vengeance. Flights across the board are being canceled from Europe to Canada to the United States due to this strain on global airlines, as airlines are having a tough time scaling back up to quickly meet booming demand post pandemic for more on this and trends to see ahead. Whereas one of us, Sheer, joins us. She's the CEO and co founder of the booking software and marketplace Peek. Was wanted great to have

you back here on the show. So what's your take on this global travel debacle and how long this goes on for? Yeah, them, Unfortunately, we've all seen it. Flights normally get canceled at a rate of about one point three pc UM right now. They've already doubled year over year since last year, and you know, very recently we've seen that go up to about five flights being canceled in the last couple of weeks. And um, you know,

and and a huge amount of delays. As you've seen there are big labor shortages going on, and about almost a quarter of flights are seeing major delays, especially in hubs like Chicago, New York, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, and so this is a serious thing. You know, We've got really fifty million Americans who are planning to do some both of July travel. People do not want to put that off despite some of the challenges in the economy, and so um, we will see record levels of people

going out and traveling again. But the disruptions are here and pretty serious and something to bear in mind if you're planning to travel right now. So what are you expecting to happen over this holiday week trends you're spotting in particular? Yeah, you know, we are definitely least seeing that that that the the amount of international travel and flight travel is much higher than it's been in the

COVID era. I would also say that, you know, local experiences are a lot and the kind of things I think that we've seen people, uh seeing as the top fourth of July, experiences have definitely been things that might be considered a little bit more special, So shark diving

in Miami, being able to go kayaking on the Chicago River. Um. There are also some really cool and interesting experiences jet skiing around the stet of Liberty, and so definitely a lot of stuff people getting outdoors on the water, making the most of the summer weather. Um. But you know, with fifty million Americans traveling, you're gonna be seen very very busy attractions and experiences as well as airports and and I think you know you're going to see it

very congested highways as well. Road trips will be up shark diving in Miami. That sounds fun. Um. Look, you just won the Entrepreneur of the Year award from e Y. Congratulations on that. Peak. Also, just um launched a partnership with jeff Jet Blue. What are your priorities for the year against the context that's the backdrop of what's happening in the macro economy. Yeah, you know, I think what we've seen, you know, for us as a business, you know,

we're basically shopify for experiences. We help people book fum things to do when we provide software the small businesses and large businesses to be able to get online. And so certainly the last couple of years, we saw that our businesses and the partners that we work with were hit pretty hard, right, and so we've had a lot of scale, nearly two billion dollars of experiences through the platform, and you definitely saw that over the last couple of

years there were winners and losers. As we come out of the COVID pandemic, we are definitely seeing that consumers want to travel and they want to do experiences. And despite some of the things that we've seen with inflation and some of the recessionary kind of dynamics that we're seeing play out. People are still wanting to do that, and so we're not seeing that go away certainly for us.

You know, a few months ago we just closed an eighty million dollar round led by west Camp and uh and Gallman Sachs Um with the former CFO Airbnb, Lawrence Toci joining our board. And so we're seeing a lot of momentum in our space, and we're seeing a lot of opportunity UM And I think as we go into this next phase um, you know, of the next year, we are definitely helping empower our operators and partners that we work with to be able to get through um.

You know what will I think be some more challenging macro economic conditions. Using interesting that Lawrence Tocy, the CFO of Airbnb, of course, former CFO joined your board. You know,

we just heard about the stack. They're being doubt how do you distinguished you know, peak and the future of the business from what we're seeing with the company like Airbnb, which you know can be some sort of a barometer for consumer sentiment, like you know, how are you as an entrepreneur um and what advice are you getting from investors about how to weather uh, you know, a potentially

significant downturn. Yeah, I think I think one of the it's very interesting about our business is that, you know, first we were profitable, and we raised this eighty million dollar round and so we're a rare kind of I think tech business that had taken unit economics and profitability very seriously, and so we're actually in a fantastic position today around being able to continue to invest in growing

our platform and helping our businesses get through this. I think also, you know, our focus has actually been on the software side, so rather like Shopify, we're working with thousands of businesses and helping them take their their you know, their business online, allowing their own website to be able to have realtim availability and online booking, and so in doing so, the average business that partners with us sees their revenues increased by about thirty percent, and they see

them saving a ton of time, hours and hours of automation that we provide. And so I think as we would go into this macro num climate, we're hearing from large businesses like museums all the way through small businesses saying we know that the bottom line really matters now, and it matters to us that we find ways to cut costs and and grow our top line in the environment where perhaps there won't be as many travelers like COVID,

but there will be a local substitution effect. We think that people still need these moments of connection and enjoy

and what people specializes in is everyday adventure. So the average experience on our platform costs about per ticket, and so this is an environment where we will see businesses needing to make this leap forward on automation and technology which helps them save costs, but will also be seeing I think consumers um not maybe being able to do as many of these big trips that you know this summer being a place where a lot of people were able to go out and do that, and moving to

local experiences within about to be able to do fun things close to home museums, ice cream sounds great to me. Rosawana, a share CEO of Pica, to have you back with us. Thank you for stopping by the real reason that diverse fintech CEOs don't get these dollars relates to the fact that women and diverse leaders control a very small person image of the three and thirty billion venture capital dollars spent just last year, Broadly speaking, eight six percent of

investment decision makers are met. Given the venture capital is very much a pattern matching business, investors often back companies and people who are most like themselves. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology and Emily Chin in San Francisco. That was just a taste of a hearing held earlier by the

House Financial Services Committee called Combating Tech bro Culture. It's something that I've been researching and reporting on for a few years, and I want to talk more about the ongoing issue with the person who led that hearing today, Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch. Representative Lynch, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so curious what led you to take on this issue. What do you think Washington can do about decades of sexism in the tech industry. Well, then,

first of all, thank you, Emily. I know you've done a lot of work in this area, and I've I've heard you on previous shows commenting on this issue. So uh, the numbers are stunning here, as as Sally cross Check in your earlier recording demonstrated the billions of dollars going out the door every year for from venture capital firms to fintech startups. I think it's less than two percent go to women, uh. One percent perhaps go to uh black uh entrepreneurs, uh you know, less than two percent

to Latin X founders. So the numbers are just stunning to see that the bulk of this money never reaches any any minority or women uh founders. So we had this problem years ago in the banking industry. They used to have redlining, and this is sort of a redlining what they're doing here. So back in the day, a lot of banks would never invest in those red lined areas,

largely there were minority areas. And so what Congress did back then was we passed the Community Reinvestment Act, and we one of the things we did was we created a score card, a report card that allowed depositors and investors to realize how that institution was doing in terms of their investment in minority areas, because that's something that socially we thought was the right thing to do. So I think what we need to do is the same thing with venture capital. I think we need to give

them a score card. I think the SEC needs to track how well. Uh. You know, inclusionary measures are adopted by these VC firms so that that that women and minority founders can participate. Interesting. Uh. Sally crow Check, longtime former banking executive founder now of a company called Elvest, also testified at the hearing today. We pulled a portion of her testimony. Take a listen to what you had

to say. The real issue is a few fin tech center on women's needs, a direct result of women entrepreneurs store defunding. As a result, your women constituents invest less of their money than men do, losing out on a storic market turns and costing them hundreds of thousands for some women millions of dollars over the course of their lives. And it's run one reason why the gender wealth gap is at thirty two cents to a white man's dollar and one penny for black women, and it's been widening.

And hearing the personal stories of some of these founders, Congressmen, what was most alarming to you about what you've heard today? Well, you know, I think that how hard they and we had several successful start up entrepreneurs that that came before the committee and hearing how hard they had to work and going to thirty thirty different interviews and and basically

begging for investment in their their products. Uh, you know, you could see how hard they had to fight to break through, and and that that not only denied them the opportunity, but they had great ideas, They had great substance to some dive ideas that that actually were a great benefit to society in general. Souh, We've got to find a way to to you know, break breakthrough or or or just make uh, these VC companies more aware

of what's out there. Oftentimes they're they're supporting, you know, hundreds of different ventures hoping that one of them might pop, might be successful. Yet in that process they're totally ignoring many of the viable substance of proposals made by women and minority founders. Silicon Valley has made some progress since Silicon Valley's own version of the me too movement now five years ago. I wrote about this in my book ro Topia, Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley.

But obviously I think most people would agree not enough progress certainly has been made. I know. Congresswoman Maxing Waters, the chair of the Financial Services Committee, made a surprise appearance today. Would you say that there is broad consensus across Congress US that more diversity in the financial technology sector is critical. I think so. You know, we had

a we had a bipartisan hearing today. I welcomed the comments of my Republican colleagues, Mr Davidson of Ohio and Mr Style from Wisconsin, both staunch Republicans, conservative, but they realized that this is good good for business by by including those ideas, and they acknowledged that the the the work of some of our minority founders who were testifying today was was very, very important to the industry at large.

And so you know that that's you know, diversity is is good for the economy as well as a social good. All right, well, it certainly interesting to hear some of the things that you're working on ways that Congress could act. Congressman Stephen Lynch, thank you so much for joining us and for taking on this issue. I want to continue the conversation now with a woman who has spoken up about gro culture in tech and venture capital, Sarah Kuntz.

She has the managing director at Cleo Capital. She's been vocal about the sexual harassment she had to face in this industry. She was a character in my book. So I appreciate you and you using your voice in that instance. It's now been about five years since you spoke up and your actions actually led to consequences for one particular individual. But how much progress do you think has actually been made in the last five years? You know, Unfortunately, I

don't think a lot of progress has been made, right. Um. I think that now when women speak up, they're believed more. I think that people know that you know, this is a problem. But you look at the actual numbers, as a congressman was saying earlier, they're really really bad for both race and gender, and they're even worse at the intersection. When you look at the number of black and Hispanic women who are vcs who get VC funding, it is almost non existent. I am almost a rounding error, right.

And then you know, you look at what's still being upheld, people like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, CEO of I can't even count how many tech companies right now trying to add Twitter to that. And he was just credibly accused of sexual harassment on the job, and the response was to fire the employees who had a problem with that, So, you know, have we really come that far? I don't think so. How much does

the thought of Elon Musk owning Twitter concern you? Honestly, I'm kind of relieved because it might actually force me to log off Twitter forever. Okay, now we heard part of Sally crow checks testimony there. You are actually an investor in el Vast and I'm sure that you're very familiar with her own experiences as a woman on Wall Street and then Silicon Valley. What are you seeing through the eyes of entrepreneurs like her in terms of the

barriers that still exist? I mean, Sally crow Check is one of the most famous women in banking, and it's still hard for her to raise and get the same valuations that a guy in a hoodie can get for a half baked idea. That's that there's something wrong with this system. And you know, there's not enough diverse investors,

aren't enough female investors. There aren't enough investors of color who can turn around and and you know, recognize, you know, greatness when they see it in their peers, and and so you know, things need to change on a lot of levels because we're just missing out on so much money. In the economy so much wealth generation because we're not funding nearly enough people who aren't white dudes. Now, a congressional memorandum actually called out three major players in investing

in technology and recent herowitz Y, Combinator, and Sequoia. What do you make of that and have they made any any strides? Certainly some of those firms have added some more women partners since me too. Yeah, you know, I think that that to some extent, they were calling them out as examples of hey, here's what exists in the ecosystem. Um. You know, I think that that there are a lot

of the legacy firms that are trying to improve. They're hiring more women, They're launching earlier stage programs where you often see more diversity, you know, come from, versus just doing later stage. But I think that the entire your industry has a long way to go. If only those three firms or underweight on diversity numbers, this wouldn't be

a problem. The reality is the entire industries behind. Okay, So what does what needs to be done to make real change and not and not maintain the status quo. I mean, there's obviously something to be said for being a bad actor in the system. There's also something to be said for just accepting the status quo. Yeah, you know, I think we've gotten some bad actors out over time over the last five years, and large part things to books like yours, But there's a lot of like call

it not so great actors that remain. And I think that the question is, how do you make it clear that you have to have a diverse investment team, if you're a limited partner, if you're a university and dominant pension, you have to deploy capital to diverse investors or funds that have diverse investors, and you have to back diverse founders. And those are the three things that just have to happen. There was a lot of concern that women would backslide.

During the pandemic, we saw women leave the workforce. Women, you know, we're often the first to leave and take care of their family these Are you concerned that that's going to happen again in this current atlways happens. It

always happens, right, We see this time and time again. Um, you know what we're going to see is that the funds that struggle to raise are going to be disproportionately you know, women and people of color lead, uh, you know that the companies that struggle to raise will be the same that you know, when those companies fail, it will be seen as sort of a moral failing rather

than market conditions. You know, Black founders had a slight uptick in funding in one following the Black Lives Matters protests, and that's gone. And you know, with markets conditions the way they are, I think it's incredibly hard to assume that it's going to be a good year to be a woman or a person of color in this industry. What are you seeing behind the scenes in the downturn?

What's happening with you know, you know, private rounds, valuations, layoffs, you know, there have been some layoffs, and I think that you know, the goal of layoffs is always you know, cut ones, cut cut deep enough that you don't have to keep doing it. And I think we'll see in coming months if that's been true for a lot of these tech companies. There's a massive amount of hiring slowdowns, and you know it's my own companies and seeing a lot of inside rounds, so they're not the slashy, headline

grabbing rounds. But you know, founders are quietly going to their existing investors, are a few new ones and saying, hey, you know, I'm gonna bring in you know, ten million more, twenty million more, you know, the kind of Series A or B level, you know, just to tide us over so that we have three years of runway instead of eighteen months, because we could be in this downturn for a long time. Our investors open to that. I think investors are doing it hand over fist um, you know.

I think it's even gonna be an interesting opportunity for some of the hedge fund crossover funds because you're now looking at companies where they're raising at you know, massive discounts to where you might have thought they would have been six months ago. And you know, if you have dry powder, which venture capital has been raising historic amounts of money over the last few years, there's a lot of dry powder, and I think people are going to deploy it to get some deals. All right, Sarah cons

to Cleo Capital managing director. It's great to have you back. Thank you, as always for your voice in this conversation. Coming up, we're gonna talk more about sexism in that different part of the tech industry. That is crypto. I'm gonna be joined by Tan Klein, a crypto investor and a founder her perspective. Next mr is Bloomberg. Time now for our crypto report. And as we've seen, Bitcoin is on track for its worst quarter in more than a decade. This as a string of high profile blow ups crushed

confidence in the sector. Plunge is the largest since the third quarter, and according to data compiled by Bloomberg, are we nearing the bottom? Let's bring in Teak Inclines read on all of this. She's the co founder of the Edge and Node, the company behind the graph protocol. Think of them as the Google of blockchains. Teagan, thank you so much for joining us. I do want to talk about your personal experience as a founder and investor in this space. But first let's get a comment on the market.

Bitcoin dipping below nineteen thousand dollars for the second time in two weeks. It's all looking a big grim. How much longer does it last? Yeah? I know, there was quite a bit of a liquidation cascade, and generally that will take six to nine months to recover. But the exciting thing that I'm seeing is that centralized finance is what broke, it's not deep by that broke or decentralized finance,

and decentralized finance actually held up very well. And so I think that there's actually a big opportunity right now to get involved in the crypto space for many of the viewers that haven't yet, especially within Bitcoin and Etherium. Because the development in Etherium has continued. We're seeing developers at the highest point we've ever seen, and there are so many brilliant minds coming back into the space as

the fundamentals are quite strong. Now, you started your career on Wall Street and left to join the crypto industry, how would you compare and contrast those two cultures? Oh? Yes, very different. I would say that my time on Wall Street, UM that it's it's very different, very different personalities, a lot of very strong personalities on Wall Street. UM, sharky behavior,

which does exist within the crypto space as well. But when it comes to the protocol layer and the builders, UM, I've actually had a lot of really great and friendly experiences in this space. UM. And when it comes to women in the crypto space, I think many are there to really lift other women up, which wasn't my direct experience and on Wall Street unfortunately, So would bro culture be a fair characterization of Wall Street and not of crypto culture. I would say in my experience yes, very

much so. Um, it does still exist within the crypto space. There are a lot of tech vcs from Silicon Valley that bring that culture in and they also invest in founders that are a little bit more bro culture. But the great thing is that in crypto you have crypto native vcs, and many of those crypto native vcs are really open to more diverse city and they have an emphasis around diversity but also a diversity of ideas and also founders. UM. So that's an exciting piece within the

webtherary and crypto space. So how do we keep the trend going then, whether it's more female executives or crypto companies getting more women investing in cryptocurrency in general, I mean, wouldn't that all help keep the crypto industry from falling into the same trap that tech has over all of these decades. Absolutely, I think that that's a really important pouring.

I think we need to we need to invest in women, and we also need to get women on the cap tables so that companies are taking female Um investors as well, that it's so often that I see cap tables that are all men, and I think when we see that, we have a responsibility to call it out, not just as women, but also as men, and men need to add women to their cap tables and other men need

to call out that kind of behavior. And then it's also important to hire strong women that support others on women uh, I think, and adding women to leadership roles within companies, And that's one thing that I've really taken seriously as a founder within the space. It's important to bring really strong bring strong women into the company and leadership roles and give women power. What are some big misconceptions about the crypto industry that we should break open

to get more women involved. Yeah, I think one big misconception is that you have to be technical, you have to be an engineer. You don't, you can. There are many different roles, and we welcome female engineers and female coders into the space, of course, but we also need um, we need marketing, we need designers, and we need people that raise capital, and so every skill set that exists in the world is also needed within the crypto space.

And there's so many different communities in the crypto space that you can belong to. Um different communities across many different asset classes in use cases. Now, we were speaking with Congressman Stephen Lynch earlier who just shaired this hearing on combating world culture in fintech. What would you like to see from Congress? What could Congress do that would

make a difference. Yeah, it's unfortunate that Congress has to step in here and that we're not self regulating and do this ourselves, because I think that we are very much capable, and it does feel like we are on a positive friend um. But I would like to see all of this kind of called out when when you see bad behaviors having women on your show, you're a great example of this, raising raising other women up. But there are some conferences where it's only male panelists or

only male speakers. So when we see that kind of being here, I think it's important to call it out. Taking Client co founder of Edge and Note Taking, thank you so much for joining than share your perspective, I'm breaking open some of those stereotypes. All right, much more ahead, stay with us. This is learn a few other stories we continue to watch. Amazon was dealta blow in federal court after allowing a female employ to move forward with

a discrimination complaint in California. This woman claims Amazon offered her husband quote substantially more in wages when applying for the same job, despite the couple's comparable qualifications and experience. She also says the company retaliated against her for filing this wage discrimination complaint, refusing to interview her for a promotion, and being denied scheduling changes. Also, a former Apple lawyer

pled guilty to insider trading between twenty sixteen. According to these charges, gene Levoff traded on confidential revenue and earnings over his decade long career at Apple. Love Off was one of the most senior executives, reporting directly to the company's general council. Apple fired leave Off in September eighteen after placing him on leave. And that doesn't for the sedition of Bloomberg Technology, do not forget to check out our podcast. You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts.

I'm Emily Changing in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg