Elizabeth Holmes' Sentence and Musk Summons Engineers

that automates legal issues. Let's talk about, of course, where Elon Musk has been distracted, because there have been so many updates on this day alone about Twitter ed and the latest being an email apparently that he sent out to all employees just before nine am local time and urging employees and engineers there are to fly to San Francisco to be there in person for a meeting at

the social media platforms head quarters that very afternoon. Let's break the all down, brad Stone in place to say headed blue Blag's global technology coverage, Brad an extory storminary story that continues to unfold. What did you make of that email alone? I mean I would say it was surprise, Caroline, but nothing in these past few weeks have surprised me. I think the thing that jumps out is the remarkable inconsistency. I mean, wasn't it just yesterday? And again I've lost

all track of time here. Just yesterday Ellen closed down Twitter headquarters until the Monday after Thanksgiving. Um, and of course let go you know, another another round of employees via his ultimatum to workers. Now you know, it shouldn't be surprising. He seems to be operating by the seat of his pants. But closing Twitter offices and then asking employees, the remaining engineers to come helped basically save the code

base by coming into the office. Is is quite a turn about, and we're worried as uses about the stability of this platform. But it's also got the attention of regulators and amakers, first and foremost him in the US, I would actually say first and foremost in the EU. Twitter is absolutely on a collision course with European regulators. There's this thing called the Digital Services Act, which is going into effect basically at the beginning of three. The

large They've been talking about it for years. The very large tech platforms have to report their numbers and if they qualify as as being large, then they're going to basically have to you know, make some assurances around um uh, content moderation and algorithmic transparency. And this is at a point where none of those workers responsible for those areas that Twitter or left. They've all left the company. And so you hear, you know, European regulators, regulators saying that

they might make Twitter a test case. Brad, Hello, uh, you wrote a column the other day that Elon Musk is trying to pull off a sort of Steve Job sized turnaround a Twitter. Based on all the reporting that I've done, that all the pull it's as and editors that report into you have done, how's that turn around going? Thanks that. I I drew the comparison to Jobs returning to Apple in in the mid ninety nineties, and there were there are certain similarities. I mean, Jobs streamline the

company back then to to a large degree. Um you remember stories about Apple employees walking into an elevator, not being able to describe to their boss what they did, and getting fired. I think the difference is Elon has been much more destructive than Jobs was back back in the day, and Jobs was returning to a company he

knew intimately well. He was a co founder of Apple, and Elon's come into a company where he was a power user, but maybe didn't understand or doesn't understand the culture and the infrastructure and the product quite as well. So it's early. And look, I've always said Twitter is the company that can't kill itself. It's just way too addictive and effective a products. So I don't I'm not one of those who thinks Twitter is going away, but

the last three weeks he's taken it in the wrong direction. Well, I wanted to ask you about that, Caroline, and I took part in actually a couple of Twitter spaces on Friday, one that we hosted, and then I joined Cut Wagoner's Social Power Hour. And you know, if anything, you still see people on the platform. One of the issues now is that everyone has a blue tick and I look on the Bloomberg terminal. Much of the new cycle is about the content moderation and authenticity and bought user issue.

What is your read on what's going on that side of the platform. Well, it's interesting because we had this letter from Corey Booker and some other senators today urging the FTC to go kind of take a look at at Twitter. Um it's it's conduct with rolling out the Twitter Blue verified platform, which then Elan rescinded and has now talked about um suspending for a couple more weeks.

And how much just chaos that unleashed where you had impersonators of President Biden and other world leaders and companies like Hili, Lily and uh, you know, the all the instability, they're prominent figures be basically you know, spoofed on the platform. And look, I mean some of this was predictable, probably eminently so to people who have worked on Twitter a long time. But Ellen, he's gotten as far as he's gotten by not listening to people, by um going against

the grain and listening to his own intuition. And you know, for a lot of his career that's worked out quite well, and with regards to Twitter right now it hasn't. And I think there's gonna be a lot of blowback from the FDC, from the EU, from other regulators as he

tries to straighten us out. Interesting that this is such a global story, as you say, the EU regulators looking in, we understand maybe the Spanish government, the German government having respond to questions is whether they should keep their Twitter handles on the product to tool Brad what about the

global nature of the owners of this business. Now there is still some questions about Sephius, or indeed about some sort of investigation as to whether Kata Saudi Arabian money should be helping own this business right And there was I think another letter by Senator Mark Warner from Virginia.

Basically he's he's the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you know, raising concerns about those outside investors, but also the reliance of of Elon Musk's other businesses on other countries, for a, China for example, and the and the strength of Tesla in China, and it raises all sorts of concerns, you know, particularly when those countries are also um, you know, regulating Twitter when they have interest in maybe styming some

free speech on the platform. Elon has put himself in a unique and extraordinarily difficult situation I and I do expect different countries to kind of look at that and interpret it differently. Brad, what are we trying to find out next? What is the kind of big question that hangs out of Twitter outside of the regulatory side of things. I think right now, it's a it's a it's a culture issue, it's it's who's left, Who's going to rebuild this thing, who's going to keep it operating? I mean

that's really the question that everybody's asking. Well, is Twitter gonna be there when we check it in the morning, you know, that's the first question. And then I think the second as some of these big debt payments come to at the beginning of three you know what, what does what does the business look like right now? You've had so many advertisers leave the platform um Twitter blue if it if it shows results, it's not that they're not going to be immediate. So can he rebuild this

as a business again? Can he you know, turn it around and maybe start to grow it again? Those are the questions I will be looking at going in the next year. Now, we just want to pivot a little bit, with you, Brad being of course the global head of technology.

We can do this because the judge in Elizabeth Holmes trial at the moment, Judge Davila is giving a lengthy explanation ahead of sentencing, and we have had some headlines saying there's no question them as Holmes as bright says the judge, and just now saying Elizabeth's homes Judges pointing to the many misrepresentations. Everyone's waiting with bated breath as to what the length of time could be here. What's the top of mind for you? Um, well, Carol, I

mean that's a that's I guess maybe a personal question. Obviously, I'm curious what the verdict is. I would be in or sit and seeing maybe a little bit of equity um reflected in the in the decision. What I mean by that is, you know, Elizabeth Holmes was you know she she she seemed unique back when this story was

breaking a couple of years ago. And since then we've had Adam Newman that we work and now more recently Samuel Bankman freed at ft X. And the size and the scale of the fraud is almost just as draw droppering. And I know they're different situations, um uh. And and and the health of patients was at play in the

Tharnos case. But you know, Adam Adam Newman starting a new business and SPF while he may be arrested as a freeman in the Bahamas, and I guess I would I'm curious to see, you know, how the how the legal process plays out with this very prominent female founder Visa be some of these more explicit examples of male

founders and fraud. Brad, this is probably a difficult question for me to ask you, but what is the health of the founder broadly right now in Silicon Valley, in the world that we cover you've written a lot about is in Jeff Bezos is kind of taken a step back. Elizabeth Holmes is a different example of a founder that's moved on. Jack Dorsey is nowhere to be seen at Twitter, for example, And there there don't seem to be as many superstar founders right now out there in the world

that you and I operate it well. I would say the mystique of the founder is cracked for for sure, all the examples that you've cited, but it's it's I think it's so strong and it's so foundational to the Silicon Valley myth that I think we'd be making a mistake if we said that the next iconoclastic genius founder who comes along isn't you know, isn't going to have as much success with sand Hill Road and mentor Capital.

I I think that, um, you know, we have all these examples, but you play them against the examples of everything Bezos created at Amazon and Steve Jobs and and and the mystique is there might be cracked. But I don't think the founder, visionary, genie, a CEO, that that archetype is going anywhere in Silicon Valley. I think it's trunditional. Okay. Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to a hundred and thirty five months imprisonment four fraud. A hundred and thirty five

months is just over eleven years. The defense team had asked for eighteen months or at home imprisonment or you know, being confined to home instead of being imprisoned. But this, and there's the redhead crossing. The Bloomberg terminal is official. Now Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to one hundred and thirty five months for the fraud relating to Farnos, which is just little more than eleven years. Brad back to you, a little over eleven years. What sort of signal does that sound?

It sounds horrendous to me to feel that I would be incarcerated with that length of time. Yeah, no, eleven years for for now. A disgrace from a CEO with with one key and another on the way. It's it's a tragedy. Like across the board, and hopefully it does send a signal to other CEOs and other venture capitals.

But you know, Caroline, we're coming up, We're coming off this major scandal in the crypto world, and you know, the lessons are there for the investors who who who backed SPF and f t X and and they were ignored. So I'd love to say that Silicon Valley has learned its lesson, but I think the history of financial scandal in this country and in the world is that there are always new mistakes to be made. Despite the hefty sentence that's been leveled here today. All right, Bloomberg's Bradstone,

thank you. We're going to take a quick break and be right back with more details from the Elizabeth Hoimes sentencing. Coming up, will also speak with the new Grinder CEO George Harrison about everything from his first couple of months in the top role to his big ideas for the

popular dating app. This is Bloomberg. The sentencing has been read on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, of course of Sarons, being sent us to a hundred thirty five months for the fraud now, of course, equates to a little more than eleven years in prison, and we understand that then the judge won't impose a fine postpons restitution order and also is getting three years supervised release after prison. All of this with the expectation we understand that it's likely

to be appealed. But for now, Elizabeth Holmes being sentenced to an enormous more than eleven years prison for fraud, but noting that this is on the lower end of the maximum amount, and we understand Elizabeth Holmes is hugging

her parents in court after the sentence was imposed. We'll return to that in a moment, but now let's get you some more breaking news of the day, because Friday was a very big day for Grinder, the dating app specializing in LGBTQ plus communities, saw it shares absolutely surge in its trading debuted. Yeah. I've seen a few spack list things in my time at this company, Karay, this is impressive. Up more than two first day of trading after the d SPAC from Thursday's close of the pre

spack trading. Two charts that I want to look at really quickly to give some context here, first look at the d spack index on the bloombew terminal. This is a basket of twenty five companies that have gone before Grinder, and look at that two year performance. I used two year because two years ago there was euphoria around companies going public. Vice back. Look at how some of those

companies have fared since then, not so well. The second thing, the number of special purpose acquisition companies that are actually I p O in other words, the vehicles themselves that seek to go public and then merge with the company taking it public via the de SPAC process has completely drowned up. That's where are aunt? So why has Grinder different? Well, asks the man behind it ground As CEO, George Arison.

Of course, extraordinary day of celebration for you and one where we saw it the nice see the listing and of course performances and a real celebration for what has been a moment to see if for LGBTQ people as well. I'm interested in your perspective on well, now is a public company? How it makes you different from a private company? Um? Well, public companies you have to have really good controls, which

we're really excited to have. Secondly, we get to report numbers regularly and I think it'll be awesome to tell the story of how well our business is doing, but also the story of what we do for the community that we serve, because Grinder is not just a business, it's also a mission, and our employees are really tighteder that mission are used as are really tighter the mission.

And then thirdly, you know, Grinder moving forward is going to have a board of nine pybole governing the company, six of which are LGBTQ plus community members, which is completely incredible, Right, That's never happened in the history of public companies, and that just makes me so proud that that's the company that we're going to be. George, that the overwhelming number of investors voted in favor of the reverse merger, not sure how surprising that is. What is

it that you think we're so convincing? Is it actually Grinder and the opportunity for the business, the addressable market, or are you just another stack. Grinder is a really unique company because we are both growing really fast, right, thirty plus percent year over year growth, while also we are profitable and our EBADA number is extremely strong and very very positive, and we expect that to continue in

the years to come. Because our opportunity for growth is so strong ahead of us, and I think that makes us really unique. Right. You showed this back index, Well, you could put up a similar index for high growth money losing companies and they're going to be in a similar situation. Right, Those correlate. I think in general, tech world has had a lot of companies not do well because they're losing money. Grinder is very different because it's making money while growing at a really fast clip. We're

very early in our monization journey. You know. We've only started to really charge for our services in the last three or four years, and there's still a lot of monization that we can achieve by having people pay for service that they really want, right, So we're building those products for them and then they're monetizing those and that it's, as I think, in a really pole position to grow a revenue really nicely while do it in a in

a positive uneconomic way. I mean, Grands, I mean, it's a pretty amazing thing to say we have nearly two hunter million in revenue as a as a guidance point for this year, and we're doing that with two hundred people working at render, right, So that I think is a is a pretty awesome story I talk to us about. You speak very eloquently about your stakeholders in terms of people who work for you and the people that you

serve through the app. Now your shareholders. The volatility is there because in large part there's a very small float, and I'm interested as to whether you want to build that. You want to have more liquidity, want to have more shares outstanding so that we don't get these huge sudden surges in the share price. Yeah, I mean, obviously we want to have a float um that's much bigger, and we want to spend time with investors, telling them our

story and having them invest. We've done somewhere that already. We've been out there talking to large investors that invest in companies like us, and we'll continue to do that. I'm fortunate to have done this once before I've taken

another company public, so that's something I enjoyed going. We have a very strong CFO who is very good at this as well, and so we'll be out there telling our story and hopefully, you know, big inst issue investors who want to hold a stock for a long time and will come in and become our shareholders over the months to come. George, I'm really interesting about the concept of the app and how you make money in other ways.

You know, if you look, for example, a Bumble and how they moved away from just simply dating, what are the opportunities for you to branch out monetize new functionality. So obviously, the majority of what we do today is around dating and relationships. People come to Grinder to either have casual dating for long term relationships or friendships, and that we know that from all the data that we collect.

But we also know that people use Grinder in a lot of other ways and travels a very logical example, people like to take me right, I could have been Grinder traveling from San Francisco to New York, longing in talking to people about where I should stay, what I should do, what restaurants I should go to, what activities are happening. We don't monetize that at all. Now we

know people use a Grinder that way. It's like a very organic thing that happens in the app, but we don't actually monetize that that feature or that that set of features. Imagine a world where inside Grinder we there and actually give you a map of the place you're going to and say hey, here are five hotels that I users really like. Here the three restaurants that people really want to go to and that it can be monetized. So that's one of just many kind of product extensions

that we are envisioning. Now we're going to launch these three. These are all more long term because there's still so much low hanging food in our core product that we can monetize. But over the long term we see a ton of opportunity to kind of grow and really be a brand for the entire community. Right we have this brand recognition among our community members which is frankly incredible

and priceless. Well, we need to take advantage of that and really serve them in many other careers besides just the coordinating features that Grinder has to Okay, grind to see you, George Harrison, thank you. We got to run welcome backt toly Bad Technology. I'm coindline Horde in New

York along with the d Love in San Francisco. And we've got to talk about Twitter again because it's closed its officers until Monday after Elonmask gave staff an ultimatum to either commit to working long hours at high intensity or to leave. Sources say many more workers decided well to leave than he expected, potentially putting Twitter's operations at risk. A memo scene by Bloomberg also urges staff to refrain

from discussing confidential information on social media or elsewhere. Broomberg's intelligence mandate, Singh is with us following every nook and cranny of this story, Mandy, But ultimately, how worried are you about the product? How worried are you about the platform and its ability to continue being as rich as it is for people when there's no one really working there. Look, you make a great point that to keep a service like Twitter up, there is a lot that go behind

the scenes in terms of infrastructure and system software. And Twitter isn't even deployed on a public cloud that you know, Amazon or Microsoft is taking care of the infrastructure. Twitter is still a lot of the services deployed on its own private data centers. So you need those type of resources. And with this kind of leoffsman he has already you know, fired servant the staff. You don't know which are the

critical people. Maybe he has a good sense, but we don't know it yet, and he's too focused on costs. So I think a combination of you know, what he wants to do in terms of the blue checks and just get the costs under control. To me, it's just too scary right now and too risky in terms of how he's going about I love that carry the data driven Mandy saying saying Musk is too focused on costs. I love it. But Mandy, my question for you, who

or what is Twitter's competitor? Well, so that's the saving race that they have that there isn't you know, a Twitter like service out there, and Google probably wish they had something similar to Twitter or you know, even better for that matter. Some people may argue, you know, the creators may go to Instagram. It's just not saying Twitter is the service for live events. We have a World Cup coming up, and look, people still will engage with Twitter.

But the real risk here is the service may go down because we like there is no one doing the basic maintenance in terms of kicking laws and you know, the underlying infrastructure, and I just feel like in this case, there is anything that could happen. I mean, we've seen what the lack of governments can do at a company like FDx. You know, the whole thing We talked about it the whole of this week, and there is no garments, There is no one looking at compliance, and that is

the risk right now with Twitter. Of course, this is now a private company, so we don't try to stock. But there's a lot of key people who have put a lot of money to work alongside e Lomask and there's also a lot of banks holding the debt. How concerned do you think these people are right now? What

are the fundamentals even looking like in a business li this? Yes, So to what Musk has told us is Twitter was losing four millions a day, so that basically means that they're losing about you know, one point five billion in revenue. And if you think about you know, what he's trying to upset the layoffs is really make the Twitter company, you know, break even, you know, in terms of the fundamental So that should please the deadholders. But at the same time it also shows that, you know, Twitter as

a company is losing revenue. So in my mind, the fact that you know they are focusing that much on pass is a sign that they're already losing revenue. And and I wouldn't be surprised if the revenue is down almost like since must took over. Alright, bloom Bag Intelligence is Man Deep saying thank you very much for more on what's next for Twitter. Let's bring in Liz pol Form ahead of teen community Instagram and now consults with big tech companies in the creator economy, and Liz, welcome

to the show. I want to ask you a similar thing to what I ask men Deep. Where does Twitter sit within the ecosystem of social media platforms? What is it that Twitter does and who does it appeal to? Well? Um, you know, as you mentioned, I am someone who specializes in how young people and young communities use technology in the Internet, right and specifically how their behavior today influences

and shapes what technology is going to look like. So um when I hear you know, Ellen sharing his vision in pieces over the past week, and part of that is potentially paying focusing on monetization of leve all else and putting a paywall around Twitter, and that of course makes my brain go, oh, that's a kiss of deaf routines,

right um. And one of the problems I thought there not a team platform, right Like, the universal truth about social media is that adults will literally always get on the platforms that teams congregate to, and teams will rarely if ever grow into the platforms that adults are on, So like they have a team problem as it is, even if it is like incredibly culturally relevant as a platform in a way that there are no competitors, right, Like,

teams are getting information from Twitter disseminated across the platforms they do use, and maybe like ways they may not even realize. So cultural relevance, relevance really important user base in trouble. I guess you know what I've learned in recent weeks with this growth story that Musk is talking about more users coming to the platform, is the role of the content creator, right, you know, on Instagram TikTok, Caroline knows all about this. That platform is about the

people that use it. Is Twitter about the content creators? Is it about the people using the platform or is it about I mean the alternative being like more about information, dispensing information in a real time about news. So the alternative, Yeah, yeah,

I mean it is. It is and can be a content creation platform, you know on a high level when you're talking about competition, like something that I'm seeing happen that I'm honestly like kind of excited about as we see all these really big social companies that are we framed as competitors to each other, so have Twitter, Facebook, snapchats to talk um, and we're seeing like, finally, um, this system this uh sort of the melting of them, like looking at them all like they're all for everybody

doing everything all of the time, right, Not finally we're realizing and we're seeing this movement towards apsolutely the sport and things that we're realizing not every platform can be for everybody all the time, right. We're seeing these mass layoffs, all of these big bets not playing out. And I think it would be nice to see a future where, um, the platforms that survive, and it's the likely future are the ones that actually like define their audience and focus

on them really clearly. And I think Twitter has gotta lay up in that sense because it's like it's one of the platforms where it's extremely clear who uses Twitter, right, who gets valued from Twitter? And there are you know, young active we're talking about young people activists right, like there are there are very specific communities for whom that

actually make Twitter really really culture relevant. If you want if you were advising now you know musk on how to make it more for content creators, how to now lean into making really unique storytelling ways in which But I'm looking at my own Twitter feed right now and the amount of people who are giving me their Instagram links, their TikTok links because they're worried is to wear next. They're going to be and be able to have these

conversations in case the platform doesn't survive. But if it does, and if we managed to see an innovate do you want to see or turn to periscope? Do you want to see more video products? What do you want to do as someone who advises companies on attracting a team community on providing content. Yeah, I mean it's I say, like every platform the future is a multiform at right, like we they're used to. We kind of sometimes treat social media like it's you know, two thousands thirteen, where

each platform has a thing they're good at. So like Instagram's images, youtubes, video, Twitter's texts, and you know, everything you're supposed to do a separate thing on each platform. But the reality is every person is doing everything, and particularly if you're a content creator, right and you're expected to do every format and every platform, so it's, um,

that's a lot. And I do think like Twitter is behind in terms of the amount, like the types of formats you can use if you want to go on and express yourself and you're part of one of the core communities, right, like the video sucks. That's insane. Video sucks on the platform, it's crazy, but it does so being multi format and like a real way catching up to everyone in that sense and then focusing in on the actual communities that utilize their product um that are

already the foundational communities would be my suggestions. I'm just going to follow up in terms of your moderation focus as well, because of course we're hearing from Europe that they are worried about moderation in particular. They've got a different type of type of consideration there in terms of actual real rules, real policy, real fines for you if you don't live up to the content moderation that they

want to see, particularly against hate speech. But how much is that something that you have to be thinking about when you're advising these companies and how much worry and resistence is the companies at the moment aligning themselves with come with social media platforms that don't seem to care about it enough, right. I mean, I think, first of all, um Yoel Roth, who has formed Twitter's former head of safety, wrote and offbed for New York Times about content moderation

and Twitter. That's like the musty today that talks a lot about the fact that like outside forces really do in influence and in force in many ways like moderation on any platform, you know, including for example, of the app store. But yeah, different countries of different child safety laws for example. UM, So it is something you have

to keep in mind. And I when I see news like you know, the hundreds or thousands of contractors being like, oh from a big social media company, you always I will always assume it's continent of moderation because right now every company outsources that, um, And I think that you know,

these are vitally important jobs. And I can't help but wonder how much safer and cleaner for advertisers these platforms would be if they were able to keep these teams in houses they stale, right, And then also like, are you know, be able to treat tree the regional and globally, So that's like a That's something I think about a lot, and it's too bad that it's right now that these teams are treated a little bit like they're expendable. Yeah, I think a lot more to learn on the fallout.

Their former head of teen community at Instagram, Liz Pearl, thank you coming up? Can f t X investors get their money back? Will chat with the CEO of Do Not Pay who's trying to do just that? This is Bloomberg. Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neil cash Cary is slamming the concept of cryptocurrencies. He says the whole idea of cryptocurrency is quote nonsense. After the implosion of f t

X group revealed the industry shortcomings. While many officials have warned about crypto risks and the need for regulation, cash carries comment represents one of the most let's say, forceful denunciations by a FED policymaker. For more on the crypto fallout, let's bring in Do Not Pay CEO Joshua Browder. His company aims to recoup losses similar to what has now happened with FDx investors, as well as automate legal issues. Fd X is actually one of your backers, right so

let's put that out on the table. You are working though to get investors money back, Josh, this is complicated. Walk us through it. Yeah. So they invested in US about a year ago, and from a practical standpoint, it was a very small investment. But it's culturally it goes against everything we believe in, and so we're working hard to help people get money back from f t X. The most important thing to know is there's this regulation.

It's called Regulation E, and it means that if you've deposited money in f t X through a c H direct deposit, you can actually get it back if you've deposited within the last sixty days. Um, there's no discretion that the banks or anyone has. You can tell your bank I want to reverse the deposit, and then they can reverse it. And then what happens is ft X is payment processor is on the hook for refunding the money to you, and so we've been automating a lot

of these sorts of refunds. One other type of refund you can do is if you load it up your ft X balance with a credit or debit card. You can also dispute the payment under something called the fair credit building apt and it's the least we can do, given that he was actually a small investor in our company. Talk to us about that experience, Josh, about getting funding. Did anything make you think it was a miss? There were many, many things. There was a bait and switch.

I felt like um. I had a friend introducers and and they said f t X f t X Ventures would love to invest a small check in your round. And it turned out that when the documents were being circulated, they changed the name of the entity to the Lameter Research And I didn't even know what that was at the time, but I thought it was very shady that it wasn't actually f t X investing when it was presented to us that they would be the ones investing. On top of that, I told f t X, I

think crypto is a scam. Our company helps consumers fight other companies like Celsius. There's no value to crypto, and they said, no problem, we would still love to invest so against x that you told f t X that crypto is a scam, but you still took money from them for your business. Let's be clear about that. Yeah, I thought they could give us expertise on going after

other crypto exchanges. I think the last time we spoke, we were going after Celsius and they were very helpful there, and no one could have imagined that six months to a year later they would be doing all of this stuff. No one could have predicted it. And I thought ft X was one of the good ones and I was wrong.

That's absolutely extraordinary. And to that end, are you are you getting involved in any sort of class action and you looking at any form of legal action yourself or is this more a focus on how your business can help others? Right now, we're just trying to help others. There are amazing lawyers working on the consumer side with class actions. There's a firm called and and we're so on Capucci. They were big in the mad Off class class action and MF Global class action, and so we're

sending people their way. We're working in small claims court. One area that hasn't been explored enough is going after the YouTubers um There are a lot of people in the ft X orbit who are pushing consumers to sign up, saying this thing is totally safe, use my referral code. And I think regulators and courts need to look into the personal finance YouTubers who ordinary people trusted with their life savings. Josh, I want to ask you about your

users and customers. I appreciate there may be an element of confidentiality or privacy, but can you give us any sense of how much money people are trying to claim back and win back? You know, what are the losses that people in the real world have suffered on a on a ground scale. I think it's publicly reported to be over ten billion. But on our end, we've helped. We have millions being processed, being refunded through the banks. So if you've lost money in f t X, I

can't stress this enough. If you direct a positive in the last sixty days, you should phone up your bank and say, under Section E of the CFPP regulations, I want a refund and your bank can't say no um, and they don't want to tell you about this, but but you should definitely go that route if it's an

option for you. Josh, what what did you learn actually from ft X about the ability to call back money from other celsius and the like, many of which you know they themselves were acting as a white knight involved in. Was it and is it easy transparent to be able

to do such. It's really not that the system is built on so much trust that consumers and regulators could never have imagined that all the money would never be there, and so in a lot of these cases, when a company declares bankruptcy, everything gets frozen, as is the case with f t X and Celsius. But there are other things you can do, like these workarounds with reversing the funds, contacting your credit card company, taking third parties to small

claims court who aren't being properly held responsible. Hey Josh, if you raise money again from an outside investor, what lessons have you learned from your involvement with f t X. I think our name and our brand is extremely important, and we should be very careful to make sure that anyone, even if they're putting in a small check um and they have no influence, we should make sure that everything is like squeak and clean um. I thought that that

was the case with f TX. There are investors in Sequoia, all of Silicon Valley, but in reality, all of these crypto companies had shaky foundations when looking at the other backers that you have. Of course, ce Andrewson's the founders found the lux is. I mean, you've taken money from the standout Silicon Valley players and it's notable of the lessons down learned. But we really thank you for your clarity and for really being so true to yourself with us.

We appreciate it. Do not pay Ceo Josh Browder stay well. So you're coming to the World Club this November or December. You know, Cutter is a conservative country, but you want to enjoy the sun and sand. What do you wear? The answer is complicated. Country men and women mostly wear traditional dress while out and about, long white sobs for men with a court on their heads. Women wear black robes called baias with her jumps to cover their hair.

Oh and their makeup is typically flawless. But unless you wear this on a day to day basis, stick dear normal wardrobe with a few rules. In public places like malls and parks, both women and men are obliged to cover everything from their shoulders to their knees. It's particularly strict with women, but enforcements not in uniform. However, you can be and people are kicked out of public places if they don't comply. There are two main places where

this rule doesn't apply. One the Pearl, a large residential development on artificial islands that stretches out into the Persian Gulf. It's home to loss of the white collar residents from Western countries and also luxury hotels around the country. In both places you'll see mini skirts and tank tops bikinis are standard. Where at the Fool, it's clear how strictly these rules are going to be enforced when more than a million fans descend on the country before the World Cup.

But this is the way people dressing flat And we thank some own foxman for that report. And meanwhile, and Qatari officials, did you see that it is all over social media because they're set to ban the sale of

alcohol within the World Cup stadiums. It's a dramatic reversal for an earlier decision, of course, that Anheuser Busch InBev was going to be selling bud Wiser bit there rum Bug's learning that well, it's likely going to result in moving concession stands serving the booze further away from the stadiums, and those have shelled up thousands of dollars of private hospitality suite apparently they're unaffected. We understand. Look the World Cup being hold, it held in Qatar has been controversial.

I look across Instagram and look across Twitter. You've got to lean in on the positive and football or soccer wherever you are in the world, it brings the world together. Beer is a key part of football culture in Europe for example, not everywhere. But how amazing is it that the whole world is talking about football war soccer right now? So key game for you? What we obviously got the kickoff on Sunday? What does the Ecuador versus Kata? But then when when we up next bed I'm a proud Welshman,

damnline country. I cannot wait for Wales USA on Monday, and I hope honestly that Wales be England the day after Thanksgiving. I mean, there's a song. Who is it? Is it Nicki Minaj performing it the official anthem? Yeah, it's quite as I'm interested in. She's going to have to be by some luxury hotels, by something not as good as Shakira. Is not as good as Shakira is no way. Well, it's a football we hope is coming home to whomever ends up winning it. I'm pretty sure

we'll be supporting England and Wales, but support us. Next week we got Cracken's chief legal officer joining the show. This is Bloomberg.