Elon Musk's Stake in Twitter and Okta's Breach

all angles Claus. We will hear directly from Octa CEO Todd McKinnon in his first interview since that massive third party breach by the hacker group lacks lapses was disclosed. What really happened and how are they addressing customer concerns. We will have all the details in an exclusive interview. And coming out of crypto's breakout year of one, what trends should we watch for now that greater adoption is underway,

from inflation to regulation. We'll speak with the top exact from the crypto platform, Gemini about their latest global report. All of that in a moment, But first to the biggest story of the day, and that is Elon Musk and Twitter. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO disclosing in a filing that he now owns a nine point two percent stake in Twitter, worth somewhere around three point seven billion dollars now, making him the company's largest shareholder. The big

question how will he use this new power. Let's bring in Bloomberg's at Ludlow and the big question that is just how active is elon muskt going to be? Now it's the three point seven billion dollar question, isn't it? The devil's in the detail because the filing type he use, you're only eligible to do so if you have no intention of changing or trying to control the operations of the issuing company. In other words, you're a passive investor in investor and not an activist investor in any event.

Look at the board gain on Twitter, the best and performing stock in the SMP five hundred on a day where we saw very muted moves across financial markets, various asset classes not moving strongly in either direction. But that gain in Twitter having a real effect on other social media stocks really pushing then has that one hundred to show some outperformance When it comes to techno, the technology set of broadly coming me to my boombo terminal, and

let's just put some size and scope on this. This is the biggest jump in Twitter stock since November two thousand thirteen, in other words, the biggest jump Twitter's experienced since listing day. And then I know that you were there right in two thousand thirteen. You witnessed that I p O the massive surge in Twitter shares, and as you look at that chart in your screen, we haven't had many days like that for Twitter since over the

last decade. This is a stock that was under performing year today that it's now in positive territory year to date. But you know, things have kind of lost momentum right since any thirteen, it has. Indeed, I was on there on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when Twitter went public. Thank you, Ed. I want to stick with Twitter now as I had set a social platform

gaining the most since trading debut. In joining us to discuss Katie Stanton, founder and general partner of Moxie Ventures and an early Twitter employee, as well as Bloomberg so our Fire, who covers the company for us, Sarah, I'll start with you the big question, why did Ellen buy this steak? Well, I think that that he has hinted a bit at why in the past few days among his his beefs with Twitters that he thinks that they

aren't doing well on free speech. Well, you know new celon Twitter does not have a free speech commitment commitment under the First Amendment. They're just a private company. But um, I do think that with this influence, with this power, even if it's a passive steake, he can exert some, um some behind the scenes influence over Twitter. Um. Now, we don't know exactly what he's going to do, but

it might have something to do with their constant moderation efforts. Katie, you worked at Twitter for almost six years until and you tweeted today. Maybe pick a nine percent of one of the top US greenhouse gas emitters like Chevron or Xon and accelerate their paths to clean energy. What is your initial reaction to ellen buying mistake. Yeah, well, I think it's a very expensive way to get yourself an edit button. Um. I think it's a very interesting move. Um.

Elan is obviously a power user. He knows a product well, he knows that Twitter is the place for the world's conversation. But for Twitter, I think It's really tricky in two ways. First, as Sarah mentions, it's it's really difficult. Elon has been very vocal about making Twitter an unfettered free speech platform, and this is part of the founding ethos of Twitter, but it's not an absolute and it's really hard on social media and we've seen the consequences of what happens

when there's no accountability for when disinformation spread. It's so it's complicated. And second, I think it's tricky because it comes it becomes another distraction for the Twitter team. But I have full confidence in the Twitter team because they're used to all kinds of distractions. It's basically what we would have called them Monday. So on that note, Twitter shares have languished for years despite all of this activity.

You know, President Trump on the platform, so many ups and downs when you look at just what happens on Twitter on a daily basis, you know, what do you make of the strategy that the current Twitter chief team is taking Without Jack Dorsey, they're under new leadership of Parague Aggrawall Ned Seagal, the CFO. I'm a big fan. I think Jack has hired extremely well. I have worked side by side with Vite the chief legal officer, with Kevon big Poor, the chief product officer. They're excellent. They're

excellent what they do, They're thoughtful, they're ethical. I didn't work as closely with Parogue, but I know he's very well respected by the team. He's well prepared, He's been at Twitter for a long time. He's technical, he has at the engineering team. So I'm very bullish and I'm very confident that the Twitter team will continue to evolve and protect the platform, Sarah. Elon Musk, the way that he disclosed this indicates that he's not intending to be

very active or join the board. I mean, maybe he just wants an expensive edit button, as Katie is alluding to. But how active do we expect him to be? Knowing that Elon Musk doesn't just sit back and let things happen, well, and I think the most interesting thing will be any criticism he makes of Twitter. Now, anything he says on Twitter about the company might move the stocks, So we could be in for a few very volatile months ahead. But there's also the question of whether Twitter will feel

that they can moderate Elon Musk. Now if should he violate the rules, would they take down their biggest shareholder. That's a question I have. We're so witing to hear if if the company and Elon Musk have talked at all about this. I think that that it's worth keeping in mind the with Twitter, what Katie just said, this is a company that has been through a lot of drama.

The reason that parrogacy eo right now is because Jack Dorsey was was looking into a succession plan under the activist activity by Elliott Management just in the last year or so. And this is a company without a founder, voting control. So it's unlike Facebook, unlike Google, unlike Amazon, unlike Snap, this is a company that is very vulnerable to takeovers, to m and a speculation, and to activist investors,

to all of that. Um So, I think that that Elon Musk, whatever whatever he plans to do or even hints that he might do, we know how much people follow what he says on Twitter. Now it could actually move Twitter stock every time. Katie, what is your take on his you know, potential opinion that maybe a new platform is needed. You know, you're a venture capitalist. Now you're placing on you know, what could be or what

you believe will be the next big thing. Do you think there's room or opportunity for a new social platform. I don't really think that the world needs another centralized social media platform. Um. I think we have more urgent needs if it's climate change, if it's health innovations and

healthcare and economic mobility. But they do think that there's a lot of room for improvement to make sure that the platforms that we connect on are healthier, that they're safer, and that we're doing a better job of reducing a lot of the toxicity and the heat that tends to spread uncontrolled on a lot of these platforms. Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk Sarah have had some interaction on Twitter.

When Ellen posted that question about whether the Twitter algorithm should be open source, Jack responded saying the choice of which algorithm to use or not should be open to everyone. Um. And then a few years ago he actually said directly that he likes how Elon Muski uses Twitter, that he's focused on solving existential problems, sharing is thinking openly. I respect that a lot, all the ups and downs that come with it. And yet we haven't heard from Jack

yet today. Sarah, what do you make of that? I mean, I think It's it's almost like did Elon go out of his way to defend his his friend who is no longer CEO of Twitter. I mean, it seems like they have a bit of a friendly relationship, but it's unclear now what happens. It's also there are a lot of of um liability issues now. If if there's some some public discussion about what might happen next, it could move,

like I said, move the stock change things. And so I think everyone's just trying to be very careful about what they're going to say, if anything, about what happens next. And I'm I'm really waiting to hear what what Jack wants to do. He has talked about decentralization of social media. The other day he actually tweeted that he regretted what he built. He regretted being a part of of contributing

to this very centralized viral media ecosystem. So so I think that there's some soul searching that Jack Dorsey has done in in maybe lawn Musk has been a part of that, or at least listening as as he tweets about it. Katie, what do you make of that? I mean, what do you think Jack is thinking Now, I have no idea. Yeah, I have no idea what he's thinking.

I'm a big Jack fan. Um, I'm sure he's very thoughtful um and thinking through what the future hold and what this new development may or may not how it impacts the product and the team. But UM, I have no idea what Jack is thinking. Well, we all want to know. Uh. Katie Stanton, founder and general partner of Moxi Ventures and an early Twitter employee, thank you. Along

with Bloomberg's Sarafier. Coming up the Octa third party breach, we will be joined by Actice, the EO and co founder Tod McKinnon in an exclusive interview, his first since the breach was disclosed. Just what happened and what have they learned? That is next? This is Bloomberg Octa in focus after a security breach at one of its third parties.

The breach happened in January, but Octa didn't disclose it until about two months later, and after the hacker group LAPS has claimed responsibility for the attack and posted screenshots of alleged customer accounts on Telegram. Octa and it's CEO Tom McKinnon say he's since spoken to hundreds of customers about what happened, and joins us now here in an exclusive interview, his first since disclosing the breach. Thank you so much for joining us and for being here in person.

Thanks for having so Look. I know you've been investigating the incident, You've been talking to a lot of customers. What can you tell us right now about what exactly happened and how much damage was done? So to put it in context, as you know, ACTA is the trusted identity provider for over fifteen thousand companies, so big, small governments, private companies, and so anytime something like this happens, it's

a big deal. And we'll talk about details and what happened, but I want to be really clear that we're responsible so third parties this and third party that it's our responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen. And the big takeaway there are many takeaways from us, but the big takeaway is, as we've done before, we're gonna learn from our mistakes and we're gonna be transparent about what we're doing differently in a concrete way, how we're going to

prevent this from ever happening again. So, how did it happen. So what happened was, as you mentioned, there's this third party call center and they do inside this call center, there's about forty people that are support agents that work on behalf of Octa to provide low level support to our customers and correct. Yeah, and the hackers broke into this site. So they use some vulnerabilities and actually the

competitor software to break into the site. And when they were in the site, they were able to take screenshots of what the support agents were doing on their computers and that's what they posted on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. So how many customers were actually compromised? You said, initially as many as three. Yeah, And this is really important because through this whole process, we're trying to be as transparent and as conservative and our impact analysis as possible.

So what we did is we said we looked at every possible customer that had any kind of support interaction over the five days in question, and that is the list of potentially impacted customers. Now, everyone is very concerned about this, and as they should be. Oct as critical infrastructure for fifteen companies, so they everyone assumed the worst and we did as well. But the actual technical impact two companies in terms of what they need to do is near zero. Is near zero, but it's it's it's

incumbent upon us. What do you mean by that technical impact? The actually what they need to do as a response to this, what disclosures they need to make, so actually they need to change. It's actually near zero three hundred sixty six companies. How many actually were compromised, you know, yet potentially impacted? Three six? So we're drawing that line

very conservatively. But because of the nature of how our system worked and our product, the Octave security technology worked well in this case, and the way our processes really limit what a support agent can actually do on these systems, the impact is near zero. So how many of those three D sixty six customers do you believe we're impacted? It's it's not exactly clear because the hacker was essentially looking over the support agent shoulders and looking at what

was happening. So what we've done is we want to work with our customers to have a detailed analysis of what actually happened. So we've shared with all of these three D sixty six companies detailed click by click support logs so we can work in conjunction with them to truly verify that the impact was zero. This investigation is open and it won't be closed until we get every customer or to agree with our assessment. You faced a barrage of criticism, including from your own customers, about the

timeline with with this was disclosed. Why did you wait almost two months to share this with the public, and only after screenshots were shared by presumably last Yeah, I've talked to hundreds of customers and this comes up over and over and it's unacceptable and we're accountable for it. The facts that when I tell people the facts, they

started to get a better understanding the facts. While we knew something happened in this time period in January, what we actually knew was that an account takeover attempt actually failed and we detected it and there was no It wasn't clear the impact. We didn't know the extent of the forensics report. It certainly didn't contain screenshots. So, for all intents and purposes, the first time we knew about this, the severity of it, and the and what the hackers

actually got was on March when they publicly the information. Now, your initial statement also stated that OCTA itself was not breached, and this was in the middle of a lot of conflicting and confusing information, not just for your customers, but for the cyber community, for journalists like myself. How do you regain the trust of the enterprise community after this? And for customers prospective customers, we're saying why should we

use OPTA? Well, I think it's very important. We are we are a trusted brand, and that trust has been damaged, and we do take accountability for all the mistakes we've made, and we have made mistakes, and one of them, as you mentioned, is the communication was not as clear as it should have been. So we're trying to communicate more openly, more transparently, more consistently, and more more and ultimately more clearly.

And I think when customers and conversations like this understand the facts, how they unfolded and what we knew when, and more importantly, as we share how we're going to do better in the future to make sure this doesn't happen again, To make sure customer support environments aren't put in an insecure place, to make sure that the communication is more timely, to make sure that the communication is clear and there's no question about what was breached and

wasn't breached. That's what we're committed doing better next next time. What's your sense of how the business will be impacted by this? Have you lost customers as a result of this? Well, it's it's very early, so our focus has been on

talking to customers and talking to prospects. And when I have those conversations and people on the management team have those conversations, what's very clear is a lot of these same same questions come up, which is why I'm so grateful for you allow me to talk about this today. But when we address these concerns and we talked most importantly about how mistakes were made, we're taking responsibility and how we have concrete plans to to remediate this and

make sure it doesn't happen again. They're in a much better place at the end of the conversation than when they started the conversation. Now, Bloomberg has reported that the alleged mastermind of this group is a sixteen year old who lives with his mom in England. What do you make of the fact that a teenager may have pulled

this off. It's it's interesting, but ultimately, Emily it doesn't matter, because we have to protect customers against everyone, teenagers and adults and nation states and people that have various different motives, and it's incumbent upon us to make sure this never happens again. And that's including learning from all the mistakes made and more importantly, collaborating with the broader cyber community

to share open and transparent information about what happens. One of the biggest weaknesses in cyber response is people are afraid to share what happened. If you look time after time again, even this subcontractor to Octa, they were hesitant to share what they knew. Why because they're afraid of litigation, they're afraid of being suited, and they're afraid of reputational damage.

If you look this, this hinders our response as a community over and over again, and we have to get better at that, and we're trying to lead the way. We're trying to be a leader, be open and transparent. And if you look back at the facts we've disclosed, they're they're all consistent. We haven't had to change anything, and so we're proud of this front footedness and this

transparency despite the mistakes we've made. Are you worried about or are you facing any or bracing for potential regulatory scrutiny as a result of what happened, or be the timeline with which you disclosed it. Well, I'm very confident with the facts and how we've behaved in light of those facts. But I think your question is should there be more regulation to to somehow try to get this

log jam broken of people disclosing things. So, I know the SEC is working on things, the federal government is working on things, and we would welcome that because we think the best thing to happen is to be there more openness and more transparency in these kind of matters. Have you been talking to law enforcement about the incident itself?

Authorities in the UK? This is so, this is an ongoing investigation and we have been working with law enforcement, and I think they're doing a good job in this case. So what will you be doing differently going forward? Well, like I said, there's many learnings, and we're committed to not only taking those learnings, doing a deep analysis, and proactively putting things in place to make sure that these

problems never happen again. We're going to publish this report to our customers and they can collaborate and and have input into this retrospective. So the first thing is just to make sure that no customer support information is ever placed in an insecure environment. Now, ironically, here the problem with this site is while they used Octa to log into these support systems, didn't use Octa to protect their

own front door as a company. And it was a competitor product, and the competitor product was at fault for this, for this breach. And we're going to make sure that these companies that are third parties to us use Octa among many other things, to ensure that their technical controls are up to the snuff that we would we should require. So this is side tell do you no longer work with sidetel? We no longer work and what's the product

that they were using? That's them. Look, the Biden administration has warned of a heighten threat of cyber attacks in the midst of what's going on between Russia and Ukraine. It's my understanding this didn't have anything to do with that, not our understanding it or not yet. But how would you describe the environment in cyberspace right now? Is their chaos? It is there a greater risk of any kind of cyber attack happening given the activity a couple of couple

of things. First of all, all of our information shows that this was not or indicates that this was not related. But like I said, we're very diligent and we're checking every possible scenario, and we're is focused on protecting all of these kind of kinds of things, remember happening. But everyone knows that the power of technology is so great and with that power comes risk, So everyone has a general heightened awareness and a heightened investment to stop these

kinds of things from happening. In addition to that, this what's happening geopolitically has everyone on edge, which explains partially why people were so concerned and there's so much stress and strife. What ultimately has turned out to be something that's very very minor technical technical impact. Optics CEO and co founder Tomikin, thanks for joining us, Thanks for explaining

what happened. We appreciate it. Thank you all Right. Coming up, Apple employees are pushing back on returning to the office after two years at home. More on what some are calling the iPhone makers inflexible work policies. Next, this is Bloomberg a few other stories. We continue to watch. Workers at Apple are pushing back on returning to the office after two years working from home. The company's relatively inflexible remote work policies, some employees say, are inspiring them to

look elsewhere. Workers are required to be back in the office at least once a week by April eleven, twice a week by the end of the month, and on Monday's, Tuesdays and Thursdays by May. Plus. A Hong Kong based digital media and e commerce company back by celebrity investors listing on NASDAC via s back it is called Height East investors including Tom Brady and tennis champion Naomi Osaka. We'll be back with more of Bloomberg Technology and Elon

Musk's big steak in Twitter after the break. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily changing San Francisco. Let's get back to our story of the day. A surge in Twitter shares after Elon must disclosed a two steak and boost in some of its social media rivals as well. Are at Ludlow back with the movers, not

just Twitter. How yeah, it was interesting you did see the likes of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, of course, snack Google which zones or alphabet the parent company of Google, and also YouTube Mate gains kind of caught up in this optimism and interest during the market's day Monday in social media stocks. But you know that surge in Twitter raises the question is this a positive movie on must taking a nine point two steak in Twitter? What will

happen next? Will he affect change? Were a little earlier we heard from Kaffee Would, of course, the CEO and CEO of arc whose flagship innovation ETF actually shed Twitter shares earlier this year. This is what she had to say. I will say this could be setting up for another leadership change at Twitter. You never know. Then, I'm not jumping to this conclusion automatically. I'm saying it's one of

many possibilities. It'll either be argal changing the policy of the company to you know, really open source the the censorship or or call people out on censorship, or it will be a management change. I don't know what's going to happen. So Cathee would say she's not sure what's going to happen, but this could be a shot across the bow for the Twitter CEO paragag Roy. Of course it could be a warning from Elon Musk. What was interesting.

She also kind of talked a bit about the landscape for social media stocks, which of course have not been great to see if you come into my bloombow terminal. Just a quick point though, that that jump in Twitter shares that we saw during Monday session actually took Twitter pretty positive, firmly into positive territory where you have the likes of Facebook down more than thirty percent year today and Snap still down more than ten percent year today.

So there hasn't been much love for social media stocks. Does this put more attention on the space them, well, have to see, that's mention. Indeed we will see. Thank you well. Friday mark the first time ever that the software company Palentteer entered space. During SpaceX's Falcon nine launched last week, Pvalentteer's Edge AI enabled satellite was deployed, a milestone that could significantly speed up the delivery of data

sent back to Earth. Joining me now, CEO of Palentteer, A Sham sank Our Sham, great to have you back with us. So what exactly is this satellite? Doing right now. Well, thank you for having me back, Emily. So you know, we are so excited to have our edge AI technology in the satellite bus of a satell Logic New SAT satellite. And what this allows us to do is quickly moved AI models right next to the satellites camera itself. So you think about the pictures were taking videos that you

can get from space. These are massive files and it takes so long to bring that data down to Earth and it really introduces tremendous latency in terms of how long it takes you to leverage insights that happening in the real world given that downlink delay. By moving the AI inferencing to space, you can do that in seconds and you can get the information down to Earth in less than a minute. And that is a fundamental game changer.

So can you serve some examples of what will improve because you have this capability when we move so commercial space has exploded over the last decade. Now we are drowning in collection. But if you think about it from say, for example, a military commander's perspective, they're not interested in saying, when can I get the next picture over this region, perhaps a region in the Ukraine or Russia. You're they want to know how many tanks are there, how many

transport elector erector launchers are there. They have a mission questions and how often can I revisit that? I need that information every hour And with this capability you can now reduce all of the latency that provide real time insights, that provide real deterrence as we've seen in the conflict in Ukraine, and real insight into what's happening in the world now. The war on Ukraine has sparked backlash against Russia's continued dominance in space, and you've got a lot

of companies looking for partners as a result. Has Palace here seen any new business because of that. We have really mobilized our entire company against the invasion Ukraine and the consequences of that. I think in many ways we believe this situation was foreseeable, and you know, at the time of our listening, we talked quite publicly about how we would not work with the Russian government and actually

with Russian companies given the overall context there. But now our software is being used to power refugee operations from Romania, Poland, Lithuania across all of Europe. I've talked before about how supply chain is really a software problem, and our software here is helping, just like we do with the World

Food Program. It's helping match all of the goods that are coming in, the beds that are available, everything that's coming from the hands of the donors to the hands of the refugees and those who need it, and doing that as efficiently and effectively as possible given the incredible scale millions and millions of refugees that need help in this moment. Similarly, we are helping commercial companies with their supply chains. There are a lot of automotive parts that

are made in Ukraine. We've helped BMW ensure the continuity of their Munich facilities and production plans by being it dynamically changing their production plans to respond to the changing supply chain shocks that are occurring. And of course, most obviously, we have been deeply involved in helping with the military response, not just in the US but across European nations who are on a fundamentally different footing from a defense and

security posture since the invasion. How are you helping them? We're helping them gain insight into what's happening on the ground. A lot of that is coming from space, A lot of that is coming from reports that are happening through different fused information sources. There's a lot that's happening on social media right now that kids you fundamental insight and and helping drive coordination around the logistics. Uh and a lot of that plays into refugee operations. How many folks

are we expecting? How do we plan for the capacity of the folks that we need to to provide housing, board betting for there are in enormous number of orphans. I'm sad to say that that we're helping provide a housing and shelter for essay come across the border. Now. You have talked about supply chain trends in the past food shortages, and I'm curious, given your unique view and all of the data that Palentteer has, you know, how is the supply chain crisis at this moment? Is it easy?

And especially when it comes to food, which in so many parts of the world we're short on. Yeah, I wish I could say it was easy. I think it's actually getting worse right now when I look at what's happening with inflation. We had inflationary pressure from COVID, we had inflationary pressure from from Ukraine. But now it's it's kind of it's you know, we have inflationary pressure as

it relates to energy, as it relates to food. And what we're seeing is that companies that have a granular transaction level enterprise profitability data asset are the ones that are going to thrive here. They have a better ability to do revenue management, They have a better ability to find substitutes in their supply chain and be more competitive and offer the lowest price that their customers going forward.

And those that don't are really struggling to understand what this means not only for their own profitability, but how they should be reacting and pricing the market. So I think I think the greater challenges lie ahead of us here for the commercial world. What do you think is gonna happen with the markets? So, I mean Palenteer shares, you know, along with the rest of bid tech, have taken a nose dive since the first part of the year.

Though Palenter actually since the war started actually trending upwards. We had a very strong revenue growth with twenty percent adjustice free cash flow and this environment, investors were very excited to see that combination of strong revenue growth and profitability in cash on the cash generation basis. UH the U S Commercial business doubled for the second year in

a row. The Government Business Group sent you over year, so I think, you know, we came out of our Q two three earnings call really thinking, well, we're so excited about the business. It's clear from the feedback that investors are mixed. They don't quite see every think we're seeing.

We went into the to the end of year call, the Q four call really breaking a lot of detailed co words out, which allowed investors to see what we were seeing in the business and why we were so excited about the performance of the key growth areas, US commercial, government business, and I think the market's reacting to that. Shum Sankar, CEO of Palatier. Always good to have you on the show, Sean, thank you. Coming up, it was

crypto's breakout year. We're gonna talk with Gemini CEOO no Approlment about their new report on global crypto trends and what's to come in This is Brumberg time for our

Crypto Report. Now with crypto markets looking like they are rallying and with Bitcoin not the lead here, so Lana and Tera are among the biggest gainers in the crypto universe in the last week, a sign of a broadening rally in digital tokens, while Bitcoin over the same period remains a little changed and still trading within a tight range. I want to talk about all this and much more with Noah Perlman, chief operating officer of the crypto platform Gemini. Noah,

great to have you with us. What's your take on what's happening in crypto markets at the moment given all of the buzz and activity we've seen around crypto specific to the war on Ukraine. UM, Emily great to be back on the show and thanks so much for having me on to discuss Gemini's Global report and all things crypto. UM, you're right, there has been so much buzz about crypto over the past year, and we were really excited to dig into the actual data to uncover trends and adoption,

barriers to entry and general attitude stards crypto. And our survey, which did looked at respondents across twenty countries, we found four four key findings. So first increased adoption globally. One really was a breakout year. We saw crypto ownership nearly double in several key geographies, including the US. That means basically about half of the people bought their first crypto

in UM. Second, and interestingly, we saw that in addition to increased ownership, it was a real broadening of the base of crypto investors, with more women and more diverse investors coming into the space. UM. Third, we saw that respondents were really tuned to inflation and the responses demonstrated that inflation is a significant driver of demand in the space. UH. And finally, finally, consumers worldwide, they continue to seek out

more education and regulatory clarity concerning digital assets. We're looking at India, Hong Kong, Brazil looks like they had some big uptick. Where are you seeing the most adoption right now, Well, we're seeing the most interest in uh developing countries where UH there is historic currency instability UH and so where

we see that. Our theory is that look where your where your currency is stable, UH, crypto maybe a nice to have helps diversify your portfolio, But where we see currencies that have been devalued against the dollar, we've found that people are five times more likely to buy crypto, and there the theory is that crypto there is not a nice to have, but it need to have. Bitcoin has been trading between thirty four and forty four THOU dollars for most of two fairly narrow arranged. Do you

think that's going to change? I talked to my traders about that. We do think that we're poised for continued to continued growth UH and price increase UH this year, and a number of things are driving it, certainly UH inflation, which you know, we've seen that worldwide where there is inflation,

it's a driver of demand. And obviously we've got inflationary pressures here in the US UM and also the war in Ukraine has demonstrated UH some interest in UH ensuring that countries are taking a look at their currencies and making sure that they aren't as dependent on world events. And we've seen crypto as a mechanism of easing friction for cross border payments UH. And so we'll see if that increases UH price movement here. UH. What headwinds are

you bracing for? Is it regulation? Regulation continues, Regulation and education continue to be the head winds. So despite the fact that we've the crypto markets continue to have m a tremendous info of investments and we saw look we saw more than ten and a half billion in investment in the space in the fourth quarter of one alone. We still have regulatory uncertainty uh and a lack of clarity. UH. And look, this is not just in the US, it's worldwide.

We have the sense that government's regulators know that they've got to do something. Often they don't know what to do, so they'll make statements that aren't always helpful to industry. You'll see things like a plan for a plan, or we're going to study it. And as you know, what the markets want is certainty, tell us what they are.

We are more than happy to work with our regulators and we do UM and so we can get some clarity and can move forward, no problem in CEO of GEM and I Noah, good to have you back, exactly all right. Coming up more on Elam Musk's big Twitter sake. What does he plan to do with it? That is next. This is bloomerk. Let's get back to the story of the shares of Twitter soaring after Elon must announced he's taken a nine point two percent steak in the company,

the largest of any investor. Natasha Lamb of Varginia Capital joins us now to discuss Natasha as an activist investor yourself, what do you make of this? Um? Well, I mean, it's it's hard to say. I think that I believe that Elon musk critique is that social media companies need to be better managed. H That's something we've been saying for years. They need better governance. But it's so interesting because I don't see Elon Musk as you know, a

golden child of good governance. Um. Even if you just look at Tesla, where he inhabited the role of CEO and chairman originally, you know that was bad governance on O one. Tesla's struggled with allegations of racial discrimination. They could certainly look to improve the diversity of their board. UM. And in fact, Musk has gotten trouble, gotten in trouble on Twitter before with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC for saying that funding was secured to take Tesla

public when it wasn't. Um. Was that free speech or was that a regulatory violation? But as part of the sec settlement. He actually had to step down his chair of Tesla's board. Again, we don't think he should have been in both roles anyway. Um. And you know we've seen the same with Mark Zuckerberg, who you know, I guess now another social media mogul struggled to learn that lesson. Um, that unchecked power. You know, that unchecked power has been

detrimental to Facebook or Meta. Um. I think that Musk has the ego in the capital. And I say this, you know, in the best way possible he's got that. You go in the capitol to launch a new social media company to try to reform Twitter. Um, but I don't think he has the X or tease uh in terms of how to actually make that happen. Interesting, Well, you brought up the funding secured tweet which sent shares of Tesla up. You know, he can tweet about dose or bitcoin and then sell a bunch of it tomorrow.

He could turn around and just sell this Twitter stake and he would have made a lot of money in a single day. Is there something wrong with that? Um? Yeah, because that sounds like manipulation, um, not free speech. Uh. And I guess the question, the big question Mark is what are Must's intentions for Twitter? Um? You know, based on his tweet, it appears that Must beef with Twitter's

free speech. But what is really needed is upholding free speech while dealing with the rampant manipulation of social media platforms. And it's not just saying, you know, I like the stock where I don't are making jokes and um, you know, playing games like that. It's the misinformation, the disinformation, the likes of which we've seen from Russia, voter suppression, it's racism, sexism,

abuse along those lines. Violence. Um, you know, think about the mass killings in El Paso, christ Church, New Zealand, not to mention the insurrection on our capital. Um. And all of those issues need to be dealt with in a mosaic. Um. So I think, you know, I think Musk might be might be simplifying things in a way. Um that that just isn't possible. Now, are gin a capital? Still has a small steak in Twitter as I understand it,

but smaller than it once was. Why is that? I mean, take a look at the stock right, So I wonder if couldy Lon Musk being good for Twitter shareholders? He you know one thing about you know, Elon Musk is he's a brilliant engineer and he's assistants thinker UM, but I don't think he's a human or civil rights expert, which is really what's needed. So if you look at Silicon Valley, they continue to fall over their shoelaces figuring

out how to deal with all of the issues. I just mentioned this huge mosaic UM, but I don't see anything in Musk's background that make him the man for the job UM. I would like, however, to see Must support stronger governance at Twitter as now an outside shareholder, and that could be in the form of board members that do have human and civil rights expertise to address

free speech. So, you know, we've stepped back our positions in Twitter because of you know, all of the issues it's had, UM, but you know, we do still own some Twitter and we actually have a proposal going to a vote on May asking Twitter to add UM board members with human and civil rights expertise. That gets exactly to muscus point. Interesting free speech, that's what you know, that's what it's about. So maybe the best outcome is that Must can throw his weight behind that proposal and

support some effort to improve Twitter's board. Now, of course, Jack Dorsey left fairly abruptly last year, left s CEO, left the board, but it is still a fairly large shareholder, has two point three percent Stave. We haven't heard from Jack. You know, what was your experience in dealing with him as an activist investor? And what do you imagine he's thinking. I think, you know, I think it's a tough job, right, um, And it was tough for Jack Dorsey, who was also

splitting his time. I think he was a well intentioned individual that tried to do the right things at Twitter. Um, and you know, and took some steps to do that. And you know, of course, because it's such a huge mosaic, you're going to get criticism from both sides. Um. I think it was the right choice for him to step down and you know, have the new CEO have this full time job. But there's still work to be done to make you know, to to transform the town square

if that's what this is. Um. You know, a lot of people spend a lot of time on Twitter, but it's a small, um chunk of the population, and the manipulation that's happening over these platforms is really unfortunate. Um, so you know, we'll see what happens. But there there's there's room for improvement and and maybe must can be part of that. Indeed, all right, Natasha lam a lot of open questions. Thank you so much for weighing in and trying to answer some of those. Natosha Lamb of

Argina Capital, thank you as always. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We are back here tomorrow. We're gonna be joined by Christian Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, and we'll also have an exclusive conversation with Johnny Price of we Funder. Don't forget to tell back out our new podcast as well. Find it anywhere you get your podcasts. For the daily Bloomberg Tech news round up, I'm Emily Check in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg