Changing Consumer Sentiment and TikTok's Chinese Influence

win over these obstacles. Plus, the Chinese government tried to create a stealth TikTok account to promote propaganda in the US because to look at how Chinese state influence could be reaching younger generations. And the FTC is singling caution to big tech Mergers chair Lena Khan ruled her staff to sue Meta over its acquisition of a VR company, which wasn't necessarily an ex pens of deal to begin with.

We'll discuss the aggressive tone this case is setting. We'll get to all of that in about a moment, but first let's look at Amazon proving its e commerce power and card computing businesses also helping turn out revenue that even consumers the worry they're about inflation couldn't offset it gave revenue forecast for as much as growth in the current period. Really relieved investors, and we saw it in the share price reaction. Two thousand and nine best months

since two thousand and nine. Spencer Soperan covering it, particularly the consumer angle, and from the perspective, what's amazing is before the earnings, we were really worried about what Walmart was suggesting, what Best Buy was suggesting, and then roomth just Amazon shows its power and pros. Yeah, there were and relief. The word you just used earlier is exactly right. There was these kind of expectations you know, kicked in and then uh, you know, the results kind of blew

those concerns away. So investors were very relieved both Amazon can resume growth like you say up to in the in the current quarter, and also people that aren't spending. They shed about a hundred thousand workers and and started getting that spending in control, whereas previous quarter they had a lot of uh, concerns about over building and having too many people, so investors were worried how long that

was gonna last and drag on. This quarter showed they're kind of you know, starting to unwind that and starting to see see some uh some more positive signs and with a positive size. Of course, the fuecast was what relieved any more details you sat there on the cool yesterday, Annie Jasse or his team spell out how they managed

the next quarter. Yeah. One one big thing, especially on the spending, was you know, investors are always worried about how much how quickly is Amazon going to spend whatever comes in, and because of that over build on their delivery network, They're not They're gonna cool off on you know, warehouses and delivery station and those sorts of things, but they are going to spend more and it's going to be more targeted on data centers and fueling its cloud

computing business. So they really gave a signal that they're going to double down on the cloud computing and they're expecting that to remain strong even as they kind of cool off investing on the On the e commerce side and what so good or in this particular environment about Amazon visa v say the Walmarts, the best buys that have such inventory loads that they now need to basically cut the price off, is Amazon does have a very different sort of business model behind it. How has that

helped to weather. Yeah, that's a great point. And uh and something that really shown in this in this earnings report, Amazon has this marketplace model where of the products sold in the second quarter, that's the highest set number has ever been before come from these independent third party merchants. And the main thing that means is when stores like Walmart Target have this inventory risk and have to take deep discounts on products they've already purchased before they reach

tell them. Amazon doesn't have that inventory risk. If a merchant has to, you know, take the price down on something to sell it, even if that merchant takes a loss, Amazon is not exposed. Amazon still gets a permission, Amazon still gets paid to pack and deliver that product. So a lot of this, uh, this marketplace model kind of shields it from this inventory risk that some of the other retailers are basing. We really want to thank you as always for bringing us the expertise when it comes

to Amazon. Spencers Sofa thumbs up, Happy weekend. Meanwhile, let's talk about the recent changes the navigation that these companies having to do around consumer behavior, around sentiment. Because Jason Bilson needs with us principle at full run adventures, of course, a lot of your portfolio very much around the consumer. You of course in one of us a company that's all about consumer engagement and sentiment, and I'm interested, Jason.

There was a particular note coming from Wells Fargo the court Everyone's I know it caught yours too, saying basically, if we're in a recession alone, was told the consumer, do you think that the consumer is resilient in this current environment? Thanks for having me, It's a pleasure to be on the program. Absolutely, We a foreignner, you know, really believe in the resiliency of people. We hope people at the center of everything we do, and we're optimistic

about the future. We saw consumers be incredibly resalment, resilient and adaptable during the pandemic, and we believe that that will that will hold up, you know, through this economic backdrop and in the long run as we think about the next decade ahead. Why you see consumers um spend levels are high, you know, the sentiment, on the other hand, is low. They're really taking in what's happening right now,

and they're adapting and they're taking precautionary steps. So we're hearing about you know, of consumers are, excuse me, are creating a budget. Of consumers are creating a a a savings account for an emergency fund. They're beginning to make changes, certainly for lower income consumers. We saw this with Walmart coming out this week and lowering their profit target when consumers are shifting dollars from from discretionary categories like apparel

to categories that are more necessities like food. So consumers adapt. That's their resiliency, right. They may face tough times economically, personally or at a macro level, but they adapt, and that where we see the resiliency coming in just and also many of talked like there are different types of consumers out there. There are the consumers that at the moment are facing, you know, a balancing act. They cannot win. Groceries costs more, gas costs more, they are going to

have to contail their purchases. But then there's a more luxury and purchaser who is able, despite perhaps their four oh one k falling off a cliff and despite some of their stock prices having been damaged, are still willing with the pent up demand to be traveling. And therefore your portfolio company away comes into my mind's eye, all still willing to be buying an Apple iPhone or an a ring, which perhaps costs a little bit more. Are

you thinking that this consumer is bifurcated. Absolutely, I think that that's true right now. I mean, I hope we'd certainly have our eye towards opportunities that are that have the lower income consumer in mind and increasing access increasing costs for them. But I do think that we are experienced that. I mean, the reality is that this is a complex and dynamic time for consumers. As we mentioned before,

spend is remaining high, sentiment is low. You know, on the one hand, consumers want to get out there and live their lives coming out of the pandemic. They want to eat out, they want to travel. Uh. You know, on the other hand, they have inflation steering them in the face and their dollars aren't going as far as they used to. Yeah, I've heard much view that actually this summer, they'll do it. This summer that like, I am just caution to the wind. I'm getting on that flight.

It costs me a lot. But people are already buying. For example, Walmart said, look, we think that the shopping period for the September returned to school is actually be good. But my warriors, I'm the parent. I'm looking at Amazon Prime Day and buying my kids their lunch boxes because I don't want them to get more expensive. Are people buying stalking up now and then perhaps into the winter and in the fall, that's when we start to pull back.

I think that there's a possibility of that. You know, at this moment, we're seeing a shift and spend from from durable goods, uh, these one time replacement purchases that people made during the pandemic, and they're not putting dollars

towards that anymore. They're thinking about things like back to school, like travel, some of the services that they didn't get to spend on in the last couple of years, you know, with that in mind very much so though, I do believe and see that that consumers, consumers are taking precautionary steps and they will start to fall back. For the middle, middle income and upper income, we haven't seen that effect yet.

For the lower income, we have seen that, and to your point, you know, in the back half of this year, that's something that we have our eye on for sure, and we're looking at your portfolio at the moment, and chime is one that comes to mind. And course you were talking about how the consumers wanting to say you seeing a change in the way in which they're wanting to have savings for emergency rainy day funds. What about just a desire to be in the market, a retail investor,

one that wants to be seeing and building wealth. How are you thinking about that from a fintech perspective as well. There was a lot of energy around that, of course over the last couple of years. You know, I think the reality has set in. There's plenty of individuals that got burned that we're tracing, you know, chasing Uh you know what, what what I see as as a free lunch and that just isn't a free lunch, And so the realities are setting it. I'm hopeful that that consumers

will want to continue to participate as retail investors. I think that that is important increasing access to new categories of investments. This is this is critical for for broad wealth creation. You know that being said, uh, chasing the trends, people are feeling the pain of that right now, and I think that will probably color in shape how they

invest going forward. Jason, it is always fascinating to have someone who is so early in one success story like Bonomous and then gone on to bm VC and thinking about these sorts of consumer facing companies. We thank you for runadventurous principle of Jason Bolstein. There really great thoughtful answers. Now, of course, this week we have the big news of the House and the Senate have passed the Chips Act. The bill goes to President Biden's desk next to get

signed into law. Now, meanwhile, US itself as tightening restrictions on China's access to chip making gear according to two major equipment suppliers, which further under schools basically Washington's accelerating efforts to we'll win out versus Beijing's economic ambitions. Let's bring in Bloomberg's executive editor for Asia Technology, who happens to be in the US, Peter Alstrom. Thank you so

much for being with us. And we have seen already there were reports that America was leaning on European equipment makers to stop setting over to Beijing into China and now leaning on US manufacturers. Talk to us about the latest news. We know, uh, that's right, Yeah, we had two CEOs of chip equipment makers who came out this week and talked about new restrictions, tighter restrictions on their

ability to export gear into China. And this is part of, of of course, the ongoing tensions between the U S and China. The Biden administration has been following on these plans to try to restrict China's ability to get the equipment that they need to be able to make the most advanced chips. So what these two CEOs have talked about is that now they're widening the scope of that. In the past, the hurdle was sort of ten nanometers, which is really the most advanced chips, and now they're

expanding it to fourteen nimes um. And so the chip makers are now pulling back and they're disclosing to their investors that they have these tighter restrictions. And this is part of this broader clash that the U S and China are going through right now, where the US is trying to hold back China as it tries to build it's chip making expertise in particular, but more broadly the ability to build its technology sector. China's response from your perspective,

Peter Well, they've pushed back. They think that the US is unfairly trying to stop their rise in the technology area, that they want to be able to build these capabilities within the country. They're investing billions of billions of dollars into companies, into venture capital funds to be able to um invest in semiconductors in particular because that's sort of the foundation of the tech industry, but also areas like

artificial intelligence and robotics, autonomous driving, etcetera. Also, of course, the animosity, shall we call it that between China and US on the tech level is also spread into the world of social media, and time and time again we've heard, perhaps the likes of Meta say, you know, the reason we need to keep on building and scaling is because otherwise China will come in, and they mean TikTok. TikTok's already got a real foothold in the US, and then

might be reasons for concern. Can you elaborate a little bit on what might be a so called propaganda uh developments in that space. Yeah. TikTok, of course, is one of the apps that was developed by this Chinese company,

Bite Dance. They have a whole bunch of them, but TikTok is the one that's really taken off in the U S. It's very popular with teenagers in particular, and it's um first came under scrutiny under the Trump administration, which planed on banning the app for a while, and they were going to force the company Bye Dance to sell off ownership of TikTok. It's become very popular in

their concerns about national security. So the latest story that you're referring to is that we found information that the Chinese government had gone to TikTok and had tried to set up a channel where they could put on their point of view, their kind of nationalist a point of view and advocate for the Chinese point of view in the world without disclosing where it was actually coming from. TikTok in this case pushed back and said that they

would not comply with those regulations. They don't want to be viewed as a propaganda arm of the Chinese government, they saidainly don't, particularly when they do want to keep on expanding in the Western world. And to that point, Peter, there has been some interesting reporting from putting back just about their foothold in gen Z and and the way in which gen Z use TikTok. Right, well, TikTok is just exploding in popularity, and it has been for quite

a few years. What's really changing now are a couple of things. One, TikTok is beginning to cash in on that popularity. They figured out how to use advertising to be able to bring in revenues, and we've talked about how their revenues are surging. They're likely to go to about twelve billion dollars this year. As part of that, they're moving beyond their their old kind of platform. They used to be viewed as mostly entertainment. They were short

videos that people would watch. If you had to search for something, you would typically typically go to Google, of course, But now what you're seeing is that TikTok is actually being used to find things in the way that you used to look on search, especially with the younger consumers,

and getting that news as well. Executive editor for Asia Technology Peter Elstrom keeping it on linear TV for US for the time being, but meanwhile coming up shares Intel plunge today and the CEO told Bloomberg that it's stark deserves to be down. Why now mere corporal moment. Will share more in that interview. This is Bloomberg. Chip maker Intel has well slashed his sales and profit forecasts for

the rest of the year. We heard that after the bell yesterday, and of course CEO pat Girl Singer consider an Intel needs more time to make its products competitive. At the same time, while he, as should investors looked at the current quarter will be the low point. Here's some of his conversation with our colleagues and Edwards and

alex Steel. We expect two and twenty three to be challenging, and we had great winds yesterday that we announced with Amazon, you know, long term multigeneration partnership with Meta and uh you know, these are areas where we're going to go fight every customer, every socket, every workload. But we expect that two and twenty three are challenging years until we get the products that are just unquestionably the best in

the industry. Macrowhead winds are they something that you are factory into your expectations for the business, the extent to which you want to invest in the business. You know, the enterprise market continues to be strong, it's really focused the weakness and the consumer market has been where we've

seen it quite acutely in this period of time. But like semiconductors, you know, it's a cyclic industry and it always has been, and we're going to embrace this and make the company stronger, better, and you know, some austerity helps to drive my transformation agenda more rapidly into the company as well, and thus we feel like this is

the bottom. That's what we clearly communicated in the earnings call, and you know, we're off to the races to do better for ourselves and for our shareholders into the future. You guys also talked about UM, your new guidance for full year gross margins coming in around A lot of analysts were really skeptical of that number UM after the call that it's just too hopeful considering all the pricing pressures that everyone's under on chips and increase process nodes costs,

et cetera. Um, what's the probability you're gonna have to revise that lower? Well, we clearly set out a framework of our financials that we are confident in that we can meet and beat, so our confidence is high. We also had some one time things in the quarter, like inventory research that will naturally reverse. You know, some of this was the dramatic swings that we saw in the quarter. You know, we weren't able to adjust our fixed costs that quickly, so we'll have more time to do that

in the second half of the year. And with new products ramping, you know, they're very negative and as they start to ramp, you know, we get better margin structure. So overall, we're confident in the guide that we gave for the year, and we have a natural strength of shipping more products in this in the second half of the year. Normal yearly cyclicality. Intel stock is down thirty this year. It's down ten percent today. The market is just not buying what you're selling. What is everyone getting

so wrong? Then I think we deserve to be down today. And with the earnings that we report, the guidance that we gave, you know, it's a bit of a reset and uh, I think we've disappointed ourselves and our shareholders in that respect. At the same time, we've laid out a multi year path to the future and we're confident that that will be realized and we're getting more and more proof points along the way, such as our technology and process. You know that area is one that everybody

has set is most critical. And Intel seven, Intel four got very positive reviews, were ahead of schedule, and Intel three and eighteen A. And if I have leadership, process and capacity, you know Intel is going to do fine for the future. We had neither. We're getting back both of those as we go forward. So we're working on it. But clearly, this is a journey. It is a journey. What difference will the Chips Act make to your journey?

You know, the Chips Act is a seminal act for this may be the most significant industrial policy legislation that's been put in place since World War Two in the US. This is huge. Clearly, we said, you know, we are expecting and to be a beneficiary of that both in the near term right with the manufacturing offsets, and we have an aggressive capital build for that. You know, the tax benefits will be helpful, but long term, the research portions of the bill are huge for long term leadership

as well. This is good for the industry, it's good for the United States, and Intel will be a beneficiary there. And I'm proud to have played a part in getting it across the line. In tels, the pat gaussing on Blue Bay Team. Meanwhile, coming up, it is a date a judge decides when Musk Twitter trial when it's going to begin. Boy still until October. So Twitter's lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk over they canceled four billion dollar buy out of the social media platform set for a five

day trial starting October seventeenth in Delaware. Twitch As lawyers say they'll need only four days to prove Muskar is misusing questions about spam and robot accounts as an excuse to walk away from the deal. Musk's arguing Twitter's handover of the so called bots material hasn't been robust and the company's mishandling of that data provides a legitimate basis for backing out. Kurt Wagner joins us, now, too well, explain why we have to wait all the way until October.

But meanwhile we get the drip feed of news and we understand Musk has indeed filed counterclaims in the lawsuit over the buy out, but we're not gonna be able to read them. Yeah, exactly. I believe they're not public right now, so we can speculate as to what they might say. And my guess is he's gonna say, hey, listen, the thing is a real issue, and you know, see you in October. We can talk about it. But as you mentioned, you know, this trial, we knew it was

going to be in October. The two sides were kind of arguing a little bit over when it was going to be. Twitter had wanted it to actually be a week earlier than what it scheduled, which is right now for Monday, October se um. So clearly they were able to, you know, find a date that works for everybody, and I guess we'll see you there five days, four days, all of it. I mean, Delaware, a court in Delaware is known for speed, right, But is this particularly fast

or give it a context here? Yeah, it does. It feels a little fast to me. But at the same time, I mean, so much this this, you know, feels like a sort of simple case in the sense that both sides have already signed this merger agreement, right, we know, um the issues at hand, right, it's this, it's this body issue, and so um to me, it's like everything is already kind of laid out. And so as you pointed out, I think Twitter thought that they could do

this in even four days. The trial is supposed to be five, so clearly they think they can make their case quite quickly, and um, you know, we'll we'll find out, but it sounds like it's going to be that five day week, uh, and hopefully have a verdict or some kind of solution by the end of the week. October one. For lawyers, three months is pretty short for our short term media mindset. It feels like an eternity. What are

you expecting next? What do we look out for? Yeah, well, behind the scenes, we're going to see both sides, you know, doing all the things that you do for a trial. Right. They're going to be requesting documentation and providing documentation to one another. They're going to be setting up witnesses, uh,

you know, all of that stuff. I think in the meantime, there is supposed to be a vote from Twitter shareholders in September uh to kind of form formulas or formulate sorry, the deal, excuse me for create the deal and make sure everything is good to go. And um, that's going to be in September, And that's a way for them to try to show that they're moving forward with this whole thing and they're not. You know letting this get derailed. It's a Friday. I don't know what my name is anymore,

let alone how I say formalize or formulate. Ko Wagner, thank you so much of being in the studio. Appreciate it. They well. Meanwhile, Federal Trade Commissioner Chair that is, Lena Kahn is sending a pretty strong warning sign to Silicon Valley by trying to block metas pursuit of a VR fitness app. Within can't overruled, actually her staf's recommendations to allow Meta to buy the company as part of its

metaverse expansion. Now, that aggressive approach for a pretty minor deal seemingly suggest that the FTC is going to play hardball with big tech M and A, as if we hadn't guessed that already. Plombergs Max Chafkin is here to tell us first and foremost, NUNA can't overruling sort of advice by her own economists, their own lawyers within the FTC to say no, look, we're going to go ahead

and pursue this case. How big a deal is that, Well, it's a big deal in a sense that what we're finally seeing is Lena con sort of following through on something that I guess a lot of political observers have been expecting and that hadn't happened kind of in the early days of the Biden administration because you had this to too deadlock on the FTC. UH. Now we have another Democratic Commissioner, so it's three too, so all of

a sudden, cases like this can proceed. And the rationale here is basically that Facebook had already has dominance of VR, which, although it's a nascent platform, you know, is potentially an important platform, and in acquiring this smaller company, as you said, for not a huge amount of money that you know,

allows it to to extend its dominance. This is super controversial kind of in Silicon Valley because what Facebook is doing is something that not only has it been doing for basically, you know, the last decade, but the entire industry has been doing. Right. It's a totally part of the playbook that these small that these big tech giants um look to get into new platforms like VR by doing uh purchasing, and and the FTC is saying, hey, you know, wait a minute, maybe it's not going to

work anymore. I mean, according to the House, what was it metro has made a hundred or so purchases of smaller companies, and of course the FDC itself is already pursuing a monopolization case when it comes to social media. They now saying that, look, you're monopolizing the world of virtual reality. But is Meta the main company that's going to be at risk here or is this more precedent setting for an alphabet or a or an Apple. Well, I think it's certainly something that Meta in particular has

you know, employed extensively. You know, we're seeing separately. What makes this case, this lawsuits so interesting is that separately, of course, um Mark Zuckerberg is running into real problems, problems with growth, problems with you know, privacy, you know that the Apple stuff. And we're seeing you know, earnings that are disappointing. And the way that Facebook has gotten around sorry, Meta has gotten around this, you know, in

the past, is by buying companies. You know, when there was the shift to mobile um some of that innovation happened inside of inside a company, inside a company then called Facebook. But but what really propelled uh Meta Facebook two dominance was the acquisition of Instagram. Of course, that was not a huge acquisition, not that much bigger than when we're talking about here, and then the acquisition of What's App and that is, you know, given it this

huge dominance of social media. You know, if Facebook had its druthers, if Mark Zuckerberg had his brothers right now, you know, he'd probably trying to buy TikTok. Of course, that's kind of out of the question right now because you know that CC is never going to go for that. They won't even let him buy this tiny VR company. And of course, leading Colm, we knew that how writings in Academia was about Amazon and about the world of consolidation. It's sort of taking a bit of time, hasn't it

to finally get this bite rather than the bog? Yeah, And as I said, you know, we she has a very narrow window and Bloomberg has written about this over the past couple of months. But because you you had a to two deadlock, she really wasn't able to do anything. You get this new um Democratic Commissioner, and that gives her a three to edge. It allows a case like

this to proceed. But the issue is that once we hit the mid terms, uh, if Republicans take control of Congress or take control of one of the uh, you know, houses of Congress. As we expect, then you're gonna see pushback, congressional pushback, probably from Republicans, and that's gonna limit her ability to get things done. So there's this very narrow window politically, and she is of course trying to pursue it.

So so in that sense, it's not that surprising. Yeah, of course the two Republicans voting against this action on the FDC. Max, always great to have your expertise with us. Thank you for most Max Chafkin. I have a great weekend. Meanwhile, coming up, as the world slowly but surely still moves towards Web three, as we like to call it, we'll talk about the need well maybe own your own digital identity in domain names, unstoppable domains. It's just race and funding.

It's the new unicorn in the Web three space. Tune in for the interview with the CEO of the spring Back. Time now for our crypto report, and here's some optimism to wrap up the week. Bitcoin Etheria, Well, it's two largest digital tokens headed towards them best months this amid a revival of risk appetite in global markets. That's bringing our crypto contributor Shnati Bassett, who, well, we know risk

assets were well played for the month of July. Absolutely, So let's talk about what that means for bitcoin, because on a seven day basis, Caroline, you're seeing it up more than five percent. It is starting to waiver a little bit under twenty four dollars, but it does have a nice little rally. And you look at that rally right here in the middle of the week, right after

the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. That was supposed to be something that may have muted risk appetite, but it certainly did not in the case of bitcoin this week. And if you take a look at bitcoin over the full year, where does that leave us in terms of

climbing back up towards where we were before? We have a long way to go, because we were closer to sixty eight thousand when we looked at it at the high over the one year period, we're not even really where we were for the average for the full year. With the full year average was a little over forty one. So that twenty four thousand mark is exciting little jump you have here, it still is less than half of where you were almost a third of where you were

at the peak uh in the last year. Let's look in etherium as well here, because actually you had an even bigger jump this week in ethereum than you had in bitcoin. Of course, it is a smaller asset, is a smaller asset by it's a market value thirteen point five percent jump there. So there's a lot of excitement here about ethereum, about the merge that has anticipated in the coming months. So the question here is this is this a valuation play when you look at ethereum versus bitcoin?

Is that a fundamental player? People more excited about ethereum future. Let's look at a year though you do have that percent to client over the year in ethereum as well, still a long way to climb back. Context is everything, Jannali, thank you, and you're gonna be sticking with us because we're going to turn our attention to our next topic, digital identities now unstoppable domains, talking evaluations. Web three digital identity startup just become the latest crypto start up to

become a unicorn. Indeed, the crypto winter not actually affecting everyone in the same way. In place to say that Matthew Gold is with us CEO found a congratulations on the fundraise and stand being led by some key vcs in the space. Talk to us about what Unstoppable Domains is trying to do. Am I going to be buying Caroline dot high, dot ether or whatever it is in

the future and what reason when I needed? Yeah, So we're on a mission to use their own identity to all three billion Internet users on the planet, and we do that by creating n f T s and in this case, in f T domains like Caroline do n f T and we believe you're going to use that not only for retending receiving crypto payments. So if you believe in crypto, long term, everyone on the planet's going to be sending crypto to each other, So you're definitely

gonna want to domain name to make that simpler. But we also think you're gonna use that to log into all your different apps, and people are already doing that right now for Web three applications, and we think it's going to spread across to the rest of the Internet as well. The rest of the Internet. Talk to us about how Unstoppable to the Unstoppable Domains is kind of creating the next version of the Internet alongside you and

your rivals. What was the real pitch you had to investors to really buy into the future here at a time where we're facing so much pressure on the market overall. Yeah, Well, people spend or more of their time online now just staring at the screen, and less than one percent of the things that you own are likely digital assets. And we think that over the coming decades that's gonna change. So you can see a lot of value being created in crypto, trillions of dollars in value here. We think

that's only going to increase. And uh, you know, you see Mark Zuckerberg spending ten billion dollars to build the meta person br and that just says to us that there's a huge bull market in digital assets over the next decade. And we think that one of the first things you're gonna want to own online is going to be your name and your reputation. And that's really the push behind digital identity. Oh, Matthew, I'm already thinking how hard it was to get my Twitter name or my

website name or things like that. They're going to be countless. I mean, we're gonna have to have like Caroline Hyde version one to three like, what explain to me exactly how it's gonna look, how it's gonna feel the domains. Yeah, so you actually had a really good example there. How much do you think, you know, Elon musk Twitter handle is worth to him, right, and it's probably worth a

million dollars? And the thing is he doesn't own that name on Twitter, uh, and you know he could get kicked off on Twitter and then and he could lose it, right. And this is kind of a whole promise of Web three and crypto in general, is that you should be

owning these digital assets. And so instead of having like one name on Twitter and a different name on Instagram and a different one on Reddit, you could have a single name that you own and control inside your crypto wallet, and then you can use that to sign into these uh different social applications, and then you would have a consistent reputation. How expensive would it be? Like what what

if someone just went out there involved the celebrity ones up? Yeah? Yeah, So the domain names are anywhere from five dollars to thousands of dollars. It's kind of like the traditional domain name industry, with one major differences. There's no renewal fees. For n f T domains because they are blockchain assets, and through our partners, you can actually get domain names

for freeze. So a lot of wallet apps now are working with us to make sure that everyone who downloads a digital crypto wallet also gets a domain name so that they have an easy end point to deposit money into their application. So there's not gonna be a barrier to entry here if someone wants to get on. But then on the high end, we are seeing sales for these domain names in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of the poor previeu ones. How help us

understand this? One of your investors in online talking about how you're kind of what coin basis scripto you are to web three, What does that really mean and how does that kind of put you at the center of an industry in that kind of a way. Yeah, So, um, the very first simple use case is sending cryptocurrency, and if you have like twenty or thirty different cryptocurrency addresses, you're not gonna be able to remember all of them,

and they're really long computer hex decimal addresses. So that's kind of like I P addresses on the Internet in the early nineties and everyone replaced those with domain names like dot com and this is like that except for individuals. So for dot com domain names, where you have you know, maybe cifty million businesses and three million registered domains. For this, we actually think it's gonna be every single user on

the Internet. So that's three billion people, um with a with an n f T domain to make it easier for people to find information about them, verify information about them, and send them money. So if you asked me like what am I going to be using this for, um, we think it's gonna help you have portable reputation on the Internet. And so you know, we have two major problems on the Internet. One right now is that you actually can't own any thing, and then the other one

is all these problems around frauds, spam bots, etcetera. We actually just talked about with the Musk and the prior segment, and if you had portable reputation, you could actually help solve that problem. So I'll give you for instance, um my dad actually bought tickets on eBay and it happened to be from a scammer. And the thing is is that scammer can actually just go and then start selling you know, fake tickets or whatever on a different website

on Amazon Marketplace. And because there's not a consistent reputation across applications online, um, these applications can't check and see if that person is potentially uh doing fraud. But if you had a consistent reputation so that you were Caroline dot n f t on one platform, and then your Caroline dot n ft over here and your Caroline dot n ft on Twitter, and then you have a consistent reputation,

and we think that actually makes the Internet saver. Very briefly, Matthew and I understand it's a hard one to have to tackle, but you know, this is a time where valuations of crumbles. You managed to get an above a billion and a sixty five million amount, did you have to down down rade a little bit when you first started having the conversations. So we've seen cooling across the whole market, so unstop whole domains. There's no exception to that.

And we're just fortunate enough to be working with some investors who've been in space for a long time. Can terrorist or leave for this. They've been investing in crypto for tim plus years. So I would actually say that founders out there looking to raise money. Um, if you're in it for the long run, then I think you'll be fine going out and funding right now. It is

significantly harder than it was, but that's okay. I mean, if you're here to really create utility for users instead of speculation, you'll still find a business model that works and you'll still be able to figure it out. Well said, I think will thank you so much. See founder of Unstoppable Domains and Shinelli Bassett has always thank you so much. We want to take a moment to look at the

relationship between Hollywood and anti abortion states. Now. We often consider perhaps media companies, movie stars to be relatively outspoken about the overturning of ROVERSUS Wade, even some attending protests sometimes, but the Hollywood machine is sort of not taking sides. It's spending billions in film and TV production in states seeking to restrict or outlaw abortion. We want to talk about perhaps some of the tension there with Blue Begs

Media and Entertainment editor Kelly Gilbam. Of course, who is here.

He's just got over COVID, So we thank you so much for doing it with us and and Kelly and what I'm really interested in is we're not going to take sides either, because we know this as a nation divided, but talk to us about how there is a tension perhaps between employees that work at certain media companies and the decision making process that media is in terms of spending money and making movies and TV productions in states that perhaps some employees might feel don't reflect some of

the way they want their us to reflecting hard position for these big media companies to be in today, you know, Hollywood. I think people they're kind of see the business says both being part of culture and leading culture. So when there is a big social issue, UH, they feel strongly about they like to be at the forefront of that. But at the same time, UM, for each project that you see, each television show, each movie, these take years

and years of planning. They're incredibly expensive, and every single line item on the budget UM that can be removed UM is going to be good for the overall production. And sometimes the financials mean the difference between something getting made and not getting made. So states like Georgia, for example, that has UH tried to put in more restrictive abortion laws have been really good at being the cheaper option for some of these companies, So they've got to balance

getting their projects made. But at the same time, they do have a lot of employees that are pretty outspoken, and not only that, but they've got business partners like actors and directors that are outspoken to about their values. So they're trying to both run the companies and and try to keep these employees happy and not make this

a talent retention issue at the same time. Interesting the talent retention and element of it, Kelly as well, are their New states other states that are trying to woo the making of movies and TV in that place because they say, look, we're not looking to change anything up in terms of nobility to access healthcare. You know, I haven't seen. I did a lot of reporting on this, and I was a little surprised at the other states, um that are not seeking to restrict abortion rights. Uh,

they're not selling themselves quite as much. UM. I covered one talked about one interesting case and a story I wrote about a film called Eric LaRue. This is a film directed by Michael Shannon. It actually was a project that was set to start filming in Arkansas. That's a state that has some of the most severe abortion restrictions. UM, and the filmmakers actually decided to move to North Carolina,

a more free state. But the film officials that I spoke to in North Carolina weren't out there trying to say, hey, come here. They're just saying, you know, that's great. But honestly, we heard about it from you in the press. Um. You know, they're not trying to make that pitch that hard, but you know, it could be something that affects the

business long term. UM. If people are pressuring the executives of this company, if they're finding, you know, actors that are going to attract people at the box office don't want to film in those states, it could be a long term benefit for other states or other countries, Um, that both have financial incentives for filmmakers and are more free on the abortion issue. It's a fascinating read. Thank you so much for spending some time just outlining the

depth of your reporting that went into it all. Kelly Gilblum, of course she is immediate and entertainment editor here with Bloomberg, and of course that now does it from this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We have a special episode coming up Monday, I'm going to focus on antitrust legislation, scrutinary, a big tech in particular. We've just been discussing it, of course with our own Max Traffkin about the FDC, the focus on meta, so you do not want to miss that conversation.

I meanwhile, of course catch the podcast. Can find it on the terminals as online on apples, Spotify. I heart you don't want to miss that one either. Have a wonderful weekend everyone, This is Bloomberg