Jackson On The Supreme Court & Space X's ISS Mission

on tech regulation. Plus we'll get the latest on how the SEC might handle Elon Musk's delay in announcing his Twitter stake and what the penalty could be. We're also at the Kennedy Space Center ahead of SpaceX, is first of its kind, all private trip to the International Space Station put together by Sam We'll talk with the startup executive's chair about how it all came together and what

it means for the future of space travel. And my exclusive conversation with the CEO of eBay, Jamie Ioni, on the future of ray commerce in a post pandemic world and how eBay It's it. Judge Kanji Brown Jackson is now the first black woman to become a US Supreme Court justice. The Senate confirmed Judge Jackson with three Republicans joining all Democrats in a bipartisan confirmation vote joining me out and discussed the significance are Jordan Reuben from Bloomberg Law.

So Jordan's just how significant is this? I do not think it can be overstated. That's exactly right. It really can't be overstated. The first black woman on the court, the first former public defender. It's truly a big day, historic day for the Court and for the country as well. What can we expect from her in terms of rulings across a rain of issues, So as with prior nominees, the name of the game has been not giving any hints about how that's going to go, and Judge Jackson

seemed to be Justice Jackson. She stayed to that script like prior nominees have as well. So that's going to be a bit of a wait and see. And another thing that's going to impact that as well, is she just going to be one justice replacing a fellow Democratic nominee on a court that's dominated by Republican appointees. So as far as the impact in terms of rulings, that's something that we're going to have to wait and see, but certainly doesn't detract from the historic nature of the

day itself. She could preside over some potentially momentous rulings on tech regulation. You've got Republicans and Democrats both pushing for better regulation of tech issues. She was asked a couple of times about this during the confirmation hearings. But do we have any indication of which way she might lean? We really don't, not just with tech, but in other areas as well. She really stuck to that script of not giving any substantive answers of how she might rule.

And so that's something that we're going to have to wait and see when a case might come up, whether it's in tech or in any other area as well. All right, well, we'll be watching over the next several decades. Bloomberg Laws, Jordan Reuben, thank you. It is now day three of Elon Musk on Twitter's board, and there are some risks with the SEC looming. Did Musk violate rules by waiting to declare the size of his Twitter steak? Bloomberg's Mark Bergan here with more on that story. Mark,

what do we know about whether Elon Musk broke any rules? Here? Well, right now we know that his disclosure period he was he was meant to disclose his share above five percent according to SEC rules, anyone several days passed that before disclosing, and course as soon as he has closed, the share price jumped up I think from about up above fifty of a believe um. And so that that he was

buying shares at that cheaper rate. And and the assumption is the market um would have if he disclosed it when when at the five percent threshold, Uh, it would have been a much higher price. As we know, Elon Musk has had a history of what I'll say generously a sort of a casual disregard for the SEC um and its rules. And so it's unclear this was intentional or accidental. Now as I understand it, being a little late with your thirteen G for a passive investor might

not necessarily stimulate the SEC to bring a case. But Elon Musk could be different. Why is that right? And then later this week, so after first coming out as a past investor, he's since refiled as an active investor and then joined joined the board, although he's promised not to to go with I'm assuming here. You know, there's some good coverage in Washington Posts about this. Certainly, Musk has a history with the SEC, and so he probably gets a lot more attention than anyone other Twitter board

number or someone else to pull this off. Matt Levine, who probably a lot of the viewers are reading, has some great series of columns this week about this, uh and how just singular Musk is too. It seems like at least flaunting the rules, mat Levine, one of our own Bloomberg Opinion columnists, What could the penalty be? Uh? I don't know at this point. I mean the SEC. I guess it's fair to say they haven't been you

could call them a little toothless thus far. Uh. And it's certainly you know, there's there are talks that um for Musk prior run ins that he would uh if not be removed from Twitter at least pull back on some of his unorthodox tweeting, and that clearly hasn't changed what comes next here. Obviously we're all wondering how Elon

Musk could potentially change Twitter. Yeah, I mean, certainly, like you know, there's some enthusiasm from from the Twitter rank and file, from from what I've talked, at least our understanding, and probably chiefly because they're their share price has gone up. Uh. You know, Ellen's in parts Silicon Valley, a pretty well respective technologist. He's very passionate about what Twitter is dipping its toes into decentralized protocols open source cryptocurrencies. As a reminder,

Twitter is chiefly an advertising business. Elon Musk famously doesn't advertise for any of his companies. Um so that you know, he's not bringing advertising expertise, although they have on that on the board right now. Uh, he's certainly bringing Uh you know, he's a prolific tweeter. He's got a huge following. Uh. Twitter has probably outside drama even before this for the size of the company, and it doesn't seem like Elon Musk is going to limit that drama going forward. Blombarks,

Mark bergain, thank you. Lots of unanswered questions coming up. An exclusive interview with eBay CEO Jamie I Known or we'll talk about trends in re commerce and how gen Z is giving the platform a second line. This is Bloomberg. Online shopping has skyrocketed amidst the pandemic, and now eBay is out with its annual re commerce report showing that gen Z is becoming a bigger driver of second hand sales. Joining us now for an exclusive interview is the CEO

of Eva, Jamie. I know, Nie Jamie. Great to have you back here on the show. So how is gen Z boosting this revolution in re commerce? Yeah, well, gen Z is really driving it. You know when you look at gen Z. Just in two thoe of gen Z has bought online and a third of gen Z started selling online last year, and re commerce really aligns with their values. If you think about you know that that demographic. You know, they really want to make sure they're finding unique,

interesting items. But importantly they really care about sustainability and how important that is. And that's why, you know, this is so important for that generation and we're really leading in to support that. Jen Z is also typically more price sensitive. How are they responding with forty inflation? Yeah, you know it's not just gen Z, it's really across the board. If we look over the last two years

of people have been selling secondhand goods. When you think about high gas prices and inflation, etcetera, he may is a great place to turn to to sell your pre loved items. You know, the average household has four thousand dollars of items that they could sell and less than of that is online. And like you said, there's amazing values in that pre loved You know, take our certified refurbage. If the gen Z needs a new laptop, they can

buy a SERTI five refurbished product. It comes with a two year warranty, thirty day hassle free returns eBay money back guarantee, and it's a like new product and importantly they're saving a product from going into the landfill. Now, you were the CEO of Walmart for many years, you were the CEO of Sam's Club dot com. The existential question for eBay seems to be just how big a

market can reselling really be? You know, it's massive. We just had our investor day and I talked about a one point for trillion dollar trend TAM total addressable market, and in fact it's actually going faster than new one season, So non new one season is going to have more

growth over the next four or five years. If you look at any category on eBay, sneakers, hand bays, collectibles, trading cards, sports equipments were only high single digit or low double digit and a trade it So there is a lot of opportunity and a huge tam for us to go after. When you last reported earnings, though, we saw eBay lose active buyers, and I know you said at the time it was because of a reduction and promotions.

What kind of marketing do you think is worth it to reverse that trend and where does that number of active buyers ultimately settle. You know, we're really leading into our enthusiast fires on the platform. This is nineteen million enthusiasts buyers who buy SEV the g m V and they're not only growing, but they're actually spending more on the platform, and they're the heart of what makes this platform really healthy. So we're really pleased they're they're going

across categories. So they may come into let's say our Parts and Accessories area, and enthusiasts will buy twelve hundred dollars in parts and Accessories, but then they'll go on and buy in other parts of the site. And that's one of the real special effects of the eBay and we're seeing that really across the board in in all of our focus categories. You're also pushing for eBay and some people may not realize this. To become more of

a destination for luxury goods. You're authenticating handbags, for example, But the perception of eBay, I think for a lot of people still might be Ebays like an online swap meet. How do you reverse that? Yeah, it's changing massively. You know. We started with authenticating sneakers over two hundred dollars and it's been an amazing experience. We've been growing double digits on the backs of triple digits. We're doing the same thing in handbags, We're doing the same thing in luxury watches.

You know, every day incredible products are sold. We just sold a Tom Brady card for two point three million dollars on the platform. We sell hundreds of thousands of dollar watches on the platform, so it's really changing. And things like are certified refurbished program. We put eBay money back guarantee in a two year warranty. It's making people really comfortable with the platform and consumers are really leading

in one. Are the bright spots in post pandemic e commerce as people return to stores and are there those uh, certain categories that you think are fading because people you know, can go back to the stores in person and and won't come back not really. You know, we think the metrics that we're seeing are not really pandemic relating. When you look at people selling secondhand goods or buying secondhand goods,

they're leading in even more. You know, when times are tough, people look for the amazing values that we have on eBay. In fact, a lot of our sellers on the platform start is what I call accidental entrepreneurs. They just needed a little bit of money, so they started selling on the platform and they turned that into a business on eBay. In some cases that's a small business where they go on to higher employees, and that's really the special part

of the eBay platform and what we're still seeing. We're seeing accidental gen Z entrepreneurs emerging on a lot of social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. How are you or can you use some of those platforms to drive gen z interest? You know, it's really interesting how much they've taken to what we're doing. Take sneakers. We had a

viral campaign go out on sneakers. We had twelve billion views of our last TikTok campaign and two million user generated videos just highlighting what's happening with the sneaker drops on eBay, the great products that we have and the amazing values, and so it's exciting to see how that community is really embracing eBay. I know there's been talk of an eBay digital wallet, but not yet about accepting crypto. Are you thinking about it? What kind of conversations are

you having about potentially accepting cryptocurrency. We are not accepting crypto right now. We just added Klarna. We also take after pace, so we now have financing and invoicing options on the platform. And when we're really excited to talk about is we just started to have a digital wallet with a cash balance. So now if you sold a couple of products on eBay, you're gonna have that cash balance sitting right there to go ahead and find your next treasure that you want to find on the platform.

So that's gonna be rolling out over the course this year, and we think we'll be really exciting as it comes to payments on the platform. Could you accept crypto someday? We're really just focused on one of the best types of payments that we need. We're continue to expand them on the platform. Uh and go from there, all right, Eba CEO, Jamie, I know one. Great to have you on the show. Thank you for stopping by. Axiom and SpaceX are on track to launch the first all private

crew to the International Space Station Friday. The four person crew scheduled to take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the morning, dot with the I S S on Saturday. SpaceX is providing the Falcon nine rocket and Dragon capsule for the crew. But it's Texas startup Axiom that has brought this all together. Their executive chair Cam Gafari and joins me. Now, Cam, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure you're very excited about the

next twenty four hours. You are saying this is the first all private mission to the I S S. But the Russians have been bringing civilians up there, uh for a pretty penny. What makes this different? Well, this is the first American U all all American, all private astronauts to the International Space Station. And you know, we're so delighted that we're able to make this happen, uh and bring this, uh, you know all together. How much interest is there for private trips and how big do you

think this market could be? Well, I think the market is actually growing quite a bit. I mean, this is the first first time that we're doing this, but we actually pretty much have sold a extreme mission and pretty much a extreme mission, and we're now trying to sell some seed on a X four mission. So, um, it's quite popular and I'm hoping that if it becomes even more popular after a X one mission is completed. And obviously the I S S schedule can be complicated, are

you planning to add many more? Yes? Um, I mean we um, you know, just just so you know, Emily um ACoM Space is a lot more than just bringing

private astronaut to the space station. We're actually building our own UH space station, AXIOM space Station, which will be launched in mid two thousand, twenty four, and it will dock with the current I S S UH and will be operating jointly with the International Space Station until I S S retires about two thousand and thirty and then we will separate from International Space Station and will be

the first commercial space space station operating in orbit. So how does this differ from the model that Ross Cosmos has been offering for so many years? Yes, So, um, Ross Cosmos used to take you know, some astronaut to space. As you indicated earlier. What we're doing is this is really the first step, the first beginning of many beginnings

that we're creating at Axiom Space. And it's really a first chapter, very historic in in in in human space exploration, really with a commercial state space taking private astronaut to International Space Station, and we will have many other missions along with this. Ross Cosmos took maybe one or two in the past to International Space Station. By the way, these are private astronauts. They're all going to be performing many experiments in space UM and we'll be conducting UM research,

educational activities, clinical research, all sorts of things. That's very different just taking a tourist to the International Space Station. So the cost for an Axiom trip to the I S S, what's the what's the cost of a seat? At this point? Were we really are not at the where you talk about the financials at this point. The Washington Post reported it was five million dollars and seed

is that ballpark? Ah? Yeah, that's about right. All right. Um, So you know, obviously the space landscape is evolving dramatically. In the War on Ukraine has changed things. How is the relationship between private companies in the US government changing as a result of not necessarily being able to use or staying away from Russian services and Russian airspace. Yeah, so that's a you know, a great question. I mean,

you know, a space station and collaborations. Actually, it's the international partners has been a great thing and it's been going on for over twenty years and it's continuing, and it's it's something that has unified, uh, you know, all the different countries together and the collaboration has been awesome and is continuing to be that way, and we expect get to continue at this point. Um. As far as the other issues that's going on, that's really between the

US government, NASA, UH and Russian agency. From our perspective, UM, you know, we're we're working with NASA very closely. We're working to SpaceX and re expecting the collaboration with Russia and Russian Space Agency to continue. All right, Well, we'll be watching the launch tomorrow. Of course. Are Ed Ludlow will be joining us from the ground of it later in the show. Act and co founder and executive chair Cam Gafarian, thank you for joining us and good luck. Well.

Tech regulation is on the minds of lawyers in Washington this week. The American Bar Association is holding its annual Antitrust meeting. Margaret Investor, Executive Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition, is one of the special guests. She spoke earlier with my colleague David Weston about what the ultimate goal of antitrust regulation is to help smaller companies grow or protect users. Well, I think as consumers we have poorly served if we have to rely on

the big companies themselves. You know, I just spoke with a smaller company the other day and they said our payment solution is so much more advanced than what we are forced to use with with one of the big companies. We want space to be able to show people what

we can do when it comes to payment solutions. I do think that innovation thrive flourish when you have an open and consistible market, and that is what we need when it comes to technology, uh, to to see it move on, not just depending on those who keep the gate all right, coming up, closing the gap in tech equity. That's what software company Carter is trying to do with the help of some celebrities. Will join us next. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology and Emily check

in San Francisco. What do Serena Williams, Carrie Washington, a Rod tan France, Ashley Graham, Steve Nash what do they all have in common? Well, they've all come together to raise awareness about the power of having equity and how it's helped them in their careers. They now teamed up with Carter, the valuation software company, to offer a free curriculum to help anyone get started. Joining me out is the CEO of Carter, Henry Ward. Henry, thank you so

much for joining us. A lot of people don't understand how equity works. They don't understand how to negotiate for equity. Why do you think it's so important that people learn exactly what this means. We think the world sort of in this era of payroll where people rent their time for money, uh, and the next era of labor compensation will be an ownership one via equity. And it's obviously started in Silicon Valley, where uh, you know, it'd be weird to work for a tchech company and not get equity.

It doesn't It's not true in other sectors or any other parts of the economy, and so A big part of what we're trying to do is educate the world about equity as a way to create wealth, uh and compensate people. It's weird that people, you know, I think in fifty years people think it's crazy that we went to work for companies and all we got was cash that we got on a payroll system and that was it. That we didn't own any of the company that we

helped build. I think Silken Valley is ahead of the world on that and and hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit. Walk us through some of the lessons that you are teaching in this curriculum. Well so, so last year, half a billion dollars of stock auction

grants weren't exercised by employees. Most if you talk to employees about why they didn't exercise their stock auction grants, almost always because they didn't know how, they didn't know if they should, they didn't know what the implications were. So a big part of equity education right now is just helping employees understand what equity is, how it invests, what it's worth, what the tax implications are, and how to think about exercising that and getting liquidity on that.

It's such an underserved community. You know, so many employees work at startups and have no idea what the equity or capital structure of the businesses. And a big part of helping them figure that out is how do we realize that half billion bucks that employees didn't get last year? How do we how do we put that back in their pockets now. One of the celebrities we've partnered with is Serena Williams, and she has said she didn't know about equity until much later in her career. She wasn't

taught this as a child. I actually had an opportunity to interview her about her new venture fund a couple of weeks ago, and she talked about lessons that she's bringing to venture from the tennis court. Take a listen. It's really about having a winning attitude and really just about understanding that you have to put a lot of time into this, you know, and you have to put a lot of effort into learning. Why do you think financial literacy isn't taught to kids at a younger age.

It's a great question, Emily. I don't know. When I was in high school, I had to take a class called medieval history, was required to graduate, but nobody taught me how to balance the checkbook. I don't know why schools don't teach financial literacy all the way from just you know, how how do I plan a budget? All the way to you know, how do I evaluate a stock auction grant for for a company that I'm going

to join? UM. I think a big part of the private sector and where we can be helpful is creating education around that and sharing it with the world. Now, Carter is an equity management platform, but you have faced your own challenges with equity issues. You were sued by a former employee over gender discrimination, and this was employee who wasn't in charge of some of your own equal pay efforts. I'm curious what you learned from that. Yeah,

it's it's a really tough one. The story around that wasn't that, you know, we may have not been fair in gender pay. The story with that we cared a lot about equality and we're hypocrites. I think it's really tough when you do these things. UM. You know, obviously we think we're not only a champion of equity, but we practice it at home. People are allowed to disagree with that, and we'll figure it out. We're a couple of years into this will probably a couple of years more.

CARDA meantime aggregates data about private companies valuations, cap tables, and in this very rapidly evolving macro environment higher inflation, we're seeing startups doing down rounds. I'm curious what data you're seeing in terms of valuations being under pressure and how that will translate into equity for employees. Yeah, it's some fascinating to watch. Obviously, there's this great price resetting

that's happening in the public markets. Uh. You know, private markets tend to tend to lack the public markets, largely because private private company CEOs don't have to enter transactions that they don't want to, and so once they see repricing happening in the private markets, they don't necessarily reprice their companies. They'll just delay a financing uh and and

wait till markets uh uh correct in their favor. I think what's happening now is we're we're seeing, still at the early in mid stages, just record numbers of deals being done, so that hasn't slowed down at all. In the late stages, we're seeing some of these deals get pushed out, but we haven't seen a repricing happening. You know, last year we did about seven billion dollars of secondary liquidity via car to x for employees. This year will

probably do tend to twelve billion. Uh. And we haven't seen repricing happening in the late stage growth market, but we have seen deals get pushed further down as CEOs are waiting to see if they can reprice their stock in a in a way that they want to interesting. All right, hen Rewards, CEO of Carter, thank you for joining us and um spreading this idea about financial literacy

when it comes to equity. It is time now for our crypto report, with robin Hood being the latest firm to support transactions on the Lightning Network, which is promised for Bitcoin believer is with higher volumes of payments, especially across borders. Are crypto contributor Stionnale Bossik here with more

see Emily. There's certainly been a lot more talk about the Lightning network here and Lightning Labs is really the biggest company that's developing software that's powering the Lightning network. And you know, let's talk about what it's used for. It's used at places like Robin Hood is facilitating the Lightning network, and lad Tene is actually a investor himself

recently in Lightening Labs, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Twitter. It's also when you look at all the payments that are happening in El Salvador, the Lightning network is a big part of what's helping make that possible. So to talk about this more is Lightning Lab CEO, who develops the software that powers the Lightening Network. She's joining us live now from Bitcoin twenty two in Miami, Elizabeth Stark, Thank you

so much for joining us. Elizabeth. You know you have this new funding round that has come from Reverend Howard valor lad ten of others. What does this actually help you do and what does this new protocol Taro actually do in terms of helping making bitcoin transfer as much easier. First of all, thanks so much for having me. Uh and greetings everyone from Miami here or the Bitcoin Tent Conference. Um So, it's been quite a week for us in

the bitcoin and lightning community. On Tuesday, well, we announced are seventy million dollar Series BE fundraise for my company, Lightning Labs. We're building infrastructure for the Lightning Network and what Lightning does is enables people to send instant, high volume transactions for low fees over Bitcoin. Lightning is a

software layer on top of Bitcoin. But we also announced in your technology we've been working on called Taro, which enables people too in the future send assets, stable coins, and really any other currency that out there, potentially using Bitcoin as a global monetary network. So we're really excited to be working with these investors to understand this long term vision and mission to bring financial access to the world. Now,

financial access? How quickly, Elizabeth, do you think that this could start to spread among other comfent countries on aside from El Salvador that are looking to adopt Bitcoin at a greater rate as a currency. Bitcoin is global, the Internet's global, and really what we're seeing is Bitcoin enables the Internet of money. Today, I can embedded photo and any application on the Internet, you know, Twitter, what's up, Email, all of those, But why can't I easily send money

or value globally natively embedded on the Internet. So the way I think about Lightning is it enables two kinds of use cases. One use cases that were previously possible and to access for those that previously didn't have it, and this is a big global issue and an international issue. We look at a country like Nigeria, seventy percent of the population is thirty or under, Well, what do they all have mobile phones? But many of those people may not have access to a bank account or something like

a visa or the traditional financial system. So the way that I think about it is, this technology will really enable people across the world to tap into the Internet money. What the Internet did for access and knowledge and information previously, because something like Wikipedia, Bitcoin and Lightning are doing for

access to money and financial services. Elizabeth. Mainstream awareness of cryptocurrency and bitcoin has shot up like a rocket over the last couple of years, but there's still such a long way to go to clarify confusion around digital assets. I'm curious what the themes are at Bitcoin Miami this year. What is everyone talking about. What are the you know, most hyped issues and the biggest problem issues? Great question, um,

I think adoption is huge right now. Right the way that I think about it, the vast majority of the users in the future will not even know that they're using to see the Bitcoin and Lightning network. They wanted to just work. They want access broadly. In the cryptocurrency space, we see a lot of technologies, but some of them are in solution in search of a solution, as opposed to think about real problems for real people. So what I'm being now is a focus on real use cases,

on real adoption, and the global element. I was just chatting with developers today from places like Nigeria, from places like uh Guatemala, So this is a global community. And this is also what I think distinguishes the Bitcoin community from some of the other UM say projects that are out there with the focus on actual adoption and real

use cases as opposed to speculation. UM shout out to my friend Lynn Alden who has written great macroeconomic research and studies Bitcoin of Lightning, and she talks about the utility to speculation ratio and a Bitcoin and Lightning are very utility oriented as opposed to merely speculation. Jack Dorsey is one of your backers. As I understand it, What is it like working with Jack? I know Twitter was

an early adopter. Jack has been incredible in terms of believing in Bitcoin, understanding its value as the Internet's native monetary network. He's tweeted about Lightning, he participated in this thing called the Lightning torch from people back in the day sent and received light transactions globally. And we're really grateful to have him on board as an investor and

as a believer. And one thing about Jack is he deeply believes in this mission and sees the potential for the Internet of money and sees the global aspect of tapping into this and really expanding access for everyone run world. Well, it's interesting because Twitter was such an early adopter of this. It really was a signal that the creator economy could

also use bitcoin in a greater way. What have you learned from the adoption of Twitter to the Lightning network and what do you expect now that Robin Hood and other big companies are also adopting it. So what we're learning is this technology is global and there are so many people around the world with untapped talent who need opportunities. And Okay, so let's say there's somebody in Argentina or

India who as a creator or a coder. Well, if you want to send smaller values tapping into the global monetary system, the fees will exceed the amount that you want to send. So what this technology does, It's so powerful is it lets you do what we call streaming SATs or stosis, the lowest de nomination of bitcoin. Let

me see this in use today with podcasts. There's some great podcasting two point applications, many thousands operating and Lightning you can pay per second, their media aspects where you can pay small values forward saying articles, their social networks, chat apps, those are all operating over the Lightning network

like Zion and Sphinx. So what we're seeing is a lot of people around the world are not able to tap in its early days, don't get me wrong, to the capacity to earn and to be compensated for their creative work as opposed to in the legacy system where the fee would actually be higher than the the amount of something. But the fees or something I want to get your opinion on here. There's a lot of mistrust of the typical financial system, the big banks, credit card

companies that is emerging over there at bitcoin. When you look at the fees that are being charged for cross border transactions, for transactions at all, do you think that the financial system as it exists now has failed US law utually? Yes? So why today do I need to send a paper check here in the U S. Why do I need to wait days for an A C H payment to go through? Over and app like Venmo

in the US, we're actually behind. We see in emerging markets they have faster systems and they can settle far faster, but when it comes to interoperability and the global element, there's still not a way that has been widely adopted by billions for people to send you know, the way they're sending data and messages on the internet today, for

them to send value and money. So I do believe you have a number of legacy players who is not necessarily in their interests to adapt and to build these new, faster, low fee technologies because they're making a lot of money off of the high fees they're charging. Now enters something like lightning. Today you can send less than one cent on lightning for a fraction of that in a fee. Right. We see people in Starbucks in El Salvador spending a couple of dollars on a coffee today and the fee

is a fraction of ascent. So the technologies were building like this new Taro protocol where you can then send assets stable coins over Lightning opens up access to people around the world. Nobles opens up to access to merchants who want to be able to receive but don't want to pay, you know, several percentage points plus a base FIA. Al right, Elizabeth starting, Elizabeth, thank you for the energy

and passion that you brought to this conversation. Co founder of Lightning Labs as well as Bloomberg's own Shaun, thank you so much. Looking forward to bigcorinizing the world with Lightning all right. Back now to SpaceX is all private mission to the I S S. The mission part of a bigger picture effort to have future private space stations in orbit for years to come. Bloomberg's ad Ludlow spoke to NASA's head of Human space Flight, Kathy Leaders, about

where the U. S. Space Agency fits in to the equation. Well, you know, part of our job, I feel like, is to figure out how to do it and then make sure that we're working with companies and other people so

that they can learn from us. And so that's really what's been going on over the last you know, two or three years, is that we've been working with these different companies, having them do our lessons learned, actually allowing them to use the contractor that we use for training and and continue to bring industry in on the lessons and the fifty sixty years of space flight that we've

had so that they can do it themselves. So you run space operations which includes humans NAS restronauts going from a TINIS National Space Station. When do you get out of this? What is the actual mission give NASA? I'm hoping it gives a whole bunch of us new rides in the future and and in twenty thirty years, guess what I'm able to do science and research and technology development on space stations that I don't have to invest in that I'm buying a ride in. You know, what

we're thinking about is our future. We're thinking about LEO economy for the you know, the next hundreds of years. And this is our first step for us too in the future, be able to buy a laboratory in the sky, time on a laboratory in the sky while we're investing in going to Mars and Either and even farther out. So it's an idea that the private sector kind of takes the cost b and of what's needed to be in lower forll BIT and you deploy resources to other

projects that's basically what you're saying. I actually feel like it's about the government had a vision when they set up NASA, and one of the parts of that vision was us to enable our commercial economy and the launch economy and the space economy. And so what we've been doing is figuring out how to do things and then when we feel like industries at an advanced enough stage to be able to do it, then we hand that piece over, allowed there to be an economic value for it,

and then move on to the next thing. This is really an important idea. When NASA was set up, NASA's had a human spaceflight Cathy leaders there. I don't want to bring in are at Ludlow now is just a few miles from the launch pad for an update on how it's all going to go down and what are we expecting from this launch tomorrow. Well, we're still expecting it's going to go ahead. For one thing. I mean,

you see it around me. It's pretty stormy here in Florida and Cape Canaveral, and there's a lot of concern that the mission will be impacted by that because it's an instantaneous launch window. That means if they have a degree of uncertainty around being able to launch at that time, they'll scrub or postpone because the trajectory of the Falcon nine booster rocket with the catch on top needs to match up in a way that it can reach the

I S S on that trajectory. So there's confidence. You know, we've spared from a lot of Nastro officials today, a lot of Axiom and SpaceX officials. That will happen, but there is a backup window on Saturday morning. Is Elan going to be there? Noe's been busy with Twitter lately, but are we expected exciting It's a it's an interesting question. He has been at crew missions before, right where SpaceX have taken NASA astronauts up to in special space station.

But he doesn't come to every flight, every human space flight. He came for inspiration for for example, and met the crew there and on their return. So I'm not quite sure if he'll be in the room, although he's got a private jet so he could go from Austin very early to Friday morning to where I am now. Well, I'm sure he'll be tweeting and we can count on that. Meantime, things on the International Space Station are ted's given the

conflict in Ukraine, how has the game changed? Yeah, And I spoke to CAFEE leaders about that as well, and she pointed out that, you know, space has always been a pretty peaceful place between the Russia and US, no matter what's going on down on Earth. The reality is that relations between the United States and Russia are not good right now, and that has impacted the space relationship.

You have the head of COSMOS, the Russian Space Agency, say just on Saturday that the economic and trade sanctions that are in place on Russia are damaging to the relationship and if they're not lifted, we could even see Russia pull out of the I S S agreement. You know, Russia and the US have been in partnership with the International Space Station since and it went into orbit in

two thousand. There are three Russian astronauts or cosmonauts on the I S S right now, and I asked NASA, well, does that mean the Axiom crew can go and say hello to them? Because for one of a better explanation, there's a sort of US European side of ISSS and a Russian side. And what I was told by CAFEE leaders is the Axiom crew could go and meet the Russian astronauts if the Russians choose to invite them, but that's at their discretion. Well, we do know now that

a seat costs about fifty five million dollars. Accident confirmed that earlier in the show. Not necessarily economical for most people. And I assume that cost will come down someday. Yeah, you know, and also remember the big cost of launches kerosene. And with everything that's happening with oil supply right now and oil products, that's a factor. SpaceX is race prices on his other products because of inflation, you know, in terms of what they charge satellite operators to go on

the transport emission. But yeah, it's a tough one to say, uh, on the economics of it. It's a similar price what act SpaceX sorry charges NASA perceive fashion nots though, so it is comparable, all right, Ed Ludlow at Cape Canaveral. Ed will be at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch over the next twenty four hours. Of course, if it happens ed, we'll be watching your coverage. Thank you. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We

will be back tomorrow. With that space X mission from the Kennedy Space Center will be space station will bring you all developments. Also, don't forget to check out our new podcast. You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Emily checking in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Day.