Microsoft Rises after 2Q Beat, the DOJ Sues Google

revenues they've beat estimates. Plus the Justice Department in eight states are suing to break up Google's a business, and senators blast ticket masters CEO over soaring ticket prices and a terrible customer experience. Let's flip it on the Microsoft, because this is the key name. The first megacat to report profit was the focus strong fiscal second quarter at EPs at two dollars thirty two cents to share above

and list expectations. The other way of looking at it is that actually EPs did not drop as much from the same period a year ago as the street had been looking for the broadest story. If you look into my Bloomberg terminal. When we talk about that bottom line was the performance in strength in as your cloud. How often has that unit, Carol been in the headlines of late And that's what we'll go straight to first with Jeffreys analyst Brent Hill, who has a by rating on Microsoft.

Welcome to the show. Brent. Simple question to start with this is once again as you're saving the day, isn't it? Yes? As here's one component. Office was also very good. I think the balance of growth and profitability is keeping Microsoft alive. Remember, going into the print, everyone was super fearful that Nidela had shared, you know, a textra up for two years. The US was going to get worse. So they certainly brought expectations down in front of the print, but delivered

what was in okay quarter. No one was going to do backfloods over these numbers. There's no question technology spence slowing in the get worse in the back. After the year, they have another quarter of to tough comps, so you know, let's let's let's not not break up the champagne glasses at this point. But it relative to the fear way better than expected. Yeah. I think that's an interesting point.

I think when we look at asual the business a hundred basis points better than than guided, then you kind of think about this idea that I think EPs drop six and a half percent. The street was looking for a seven point five pc drop year on year. When we look forward to the rest of the year, what is this story for Microsoft with this broader economy. Is it going to have to rely on its cloud business? Yeah, I mean it's all about the cloud. I mean, there's

no other story here. Uh, it is the cloud. Um. I think as we go deeper into the year, I think this concept of I T budgets are shrinking? Can Microsoft do more with less? And what we're hearing in a lot of the interviews is ce I O s are continuing to consolidate their spend onto Microsoft. Microsoft has been vicious about contract renewals. They don't budge when when ce IO is trying to renew. So relative to a overall tech environment that is slowing into can Microsoft is

going to do relatively better in that environment? And and it's about consolidation in taking spend from other vendors. So I think other vendors are in a way worse position. The portfolio, the durability of the revenue. The quality of this management team should be able to cut through this. But I think really investors are trying to ask, you know, what do I pay for the stock that's got ten dollars of earning power trains out of mid twenty multiple.

So it's not exactly cheap, it's not expensive, it's just kind of right in the middle. So I think that's a concern. Okay, so your price target, of course, Brend, is to eighty. What takes us that? And what do you want to hear on the coolt I think we continue on to hear about they haven't guided in this release, so we need to hear guidance. Uh and and that are things you know. Nidella said this that things may get worse inside the US, what's happening in the US

market and the rest of the world. Ultimately, can they commit to double digit growth? They've talked about a framework of having double digit growth with margin improvement. Can they hold that? And so I think overall everyone is really just all eyes on what's going to actually happen with

with overall growth for the rest of the year. Brent, You'll be sticking with us, Brent, Phille just hold on one moment, because we've got another key technology news of the day, we've got to digest Justice Department eight States as well also in Google over the search giants ad dominance. Blomberg's Emily bern Broum is with us in d C. Having the details for US, Emily taken away. What overall is the argument coming from the United States against Google? Right?

So today the Justice Department in eight US States announced their long awaited case against Google. UM. They're alleging that Google has abused its dominance in online marketing. UM that for every one dollar that advertisers spend on its litany of online advertising tools, UM, Google takes thirty cents, So essentially that they have UM, they've harmed competition online, They've made life harder and were expensive for advertisers. UM. And this is the second case that the Justice farm it

has brought against Google. UM and some experts say this is UM potentially a more winning case. UM. And I know everyone in the tech industry is watching really closely. They certainly including Google, which has itself responded E many member, we thank you for that. And NETS get the take of Jeffreysans Brentville, who has a by rating on the Google parent alphabet and regulatory headwins. We know they're abound

for many a tech name. But from your perspective, the fact that Google is saying there isn't sort of legal founding for this, do you agree. Look every legal case it's calmed, they thown away around it, and so it hasn't slowed them down yet. I don't think this is gonna low down. It's hard to handicap the case, to be honest, um, but we've been living with regulatory headwinds and the Internet for so long. Um, it's really hard to handicap. I don't believe this is going to have

any impact. Ultimately, at the end of the day, Google's providing service that's helping us as consumers get places, find items. I do not right now have any belief that this will have any material impact in the business. Um. There's been tons of legal scare tactics. UM, So right now it's really hard to handicap. And I think this is why Google's training at such a low multiple, as everyone's

concerned at some point could something happen. We we there's been no precedents that it has any had any issue on side the core business that has slowed them down still far, I mean, Brent Google said in a blog post that the lawsuit quote attempts to pick winners and

losers in a highly competitive advertising technology sector. They say logic duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General, much of which was recently dismissed by federal art is this though, Brent, Even if they managed to win, it's a cost headache, but it's also perhaps costing them in terms of innovation. Is it just a distraction? What do you worry about the opportunity cost hit? Yeah, it's a distraction. They're they're focused on innovation. Their innovation has not dropped.

I mean, it's like every other turn we hear some legal case. And again this has been across Internet, across a lot of tech names. It has not cost them any innovation yet and ultimately they broke up pieces of the business to be a concern, but so far we just haven't seen it. So really, in our opinion, not much to say at this point other than it's a distraction and their job and they have done this very well is kept their eyes on the road and kept focused.

I'm looking at the share reaction during Tuesday's session with down one point seven all told, once the market had closed. This is a department the DJ that looked at this under the Trump administration, it continues to look at it under the Biden administration. When you're an analyst covering this stock, how much is the risk of serious action with serious results modeled into your price target. It's modeled in because you have a multiple that now is training at a

very big discount. So I don't think anyone that's investing the Internet names is investing right now with all the understanding that this is an issue. This is an issue for Amazon, it's an issue for Microsoft, It's an issue for Facebook and Meta UH, it goes across the board. So I don't really see an issue that is going to create at this point a big concern. And again, you've seen Google stock or the last decade, UH continue to power higher. So we'll keep an eye on it.

We're certainly cognizant of it, but but so far, I don't think there's enough for us to really hang or hat on anything at this point. And the other story dominating the headlines is layoffs. You know, we cannot get away from alphabet and Google being another company that is that is pulling back what surprise Caroline and I with some of the specific airs, even off ficial intelligence where

competition with Microsoft is heating up again. What do you think that means for Alphabet's business, the action it's taken on headcount reduction. They needed it. They hired, you know, in the mid twenty growth rate. So we think this is pretty common, Microsoft, Amazon, everyone is taking action the

environment sloin for tech. They all have to slow their head count and they all have to effectively go through and really re examine who they've hired and not everyone's gonna work in any business, right, So at least five percent of this is just removing hires that don't work. The other five percent plus is trimming. We're not discounting there's going to be potentially more changes to headcount. I think that that is a still open and I think

we we expect more cuts to happen across tech. So I think this is the first wave, but I think this is very common, and to be honest, I think Google should have acted faster than one of the last ones to jump in the cost cut pool. Salesforce. You go through the list, everyone's really dying they have indeed, and we'll still see if Morris to come. Brent, so great to have you across these two key stories. Brent Hill, he's Jeffrey's analyst. Meanwhile, let's get to another key story.

Rupert Murdock is scrapping plans for a proposed merger between Fox and News Corp. Murdock had, of course sent plans to put back together a media empire, then he split back in but he indicated that he and his son Lachlin have determined that a combination is not optimal for the shareholders of Fox and News Corp. At this time. The Murdock family, remember, has about thirteen nine voting stake in both News Corps and approximately of Fox Bank of America.

Some stock compensation being announced and for those who are earning up to half a million, so five hundred thousand dollars, they are now eligible to receive once again a pool

of restrict restricted stock. This is rewarding basically a majority of the entire EMP employee base, which was to about who are earning five or below, so still sticking to that reward compensation to try and keep their talent, even though they saw some downdraft on their revenues of let's shift gears, and let's talk about staff and relationships with

with executives elsewhere. Alphabet apparently is illegally using return to office policies as a tool to try to derail YouTube contract workers from organizing in Texas, As, all according to a complaint filed by the Alphabet Workers Union on Tuesday. Bloom Mark Bergen joins us Now for more on this, and Mark fascinating that we're seeing this move. Who of YouTube are trying to organize? What parts of the business? What kind of contract us. Yeah, these are contract workers

for YouTube Music, which is their Spotify competitor. They're based in Texas and they're alleging here of this complaint to the Natural Labor Board that as soon as they started ramping up their unionization effort, they got calls to come back to the office and if they didn't come back that they might find themselves determinated as Googles, we remember as one of those companies that has this three day a week policy, um that they're sort of enforcing. It's

unclear house strictly they're enforcing it. In this case, it seems to be pretty strict. Here in the Bay area. Lots of Alphabet employees, lots of Google employees, lots of them are contractors. That's what's been surprising, especially in the recent headlines around layoffs, that's become a flashpoint for the company.

Why why is this an issue? It's something that's come up in from a lot of their full time employees that have complained here that they have this this two tier system where their contract workers they don't have the same benefits, they don't have the same equity as a

regular sort of Google engineer might have. You know, this is sort of like you were just talking about regulation with the big tech companies sort of baked into like you, We're seeing this at Apple right with their retail employees, were seeing this an Amazon, their warehouse workers, Microsoft their video game employees, and then various parts of the Alphabet Google empire um have been raising this issue around contract workers.

In this complaint, they explicitly said, no, Alphabet, you are the joint employer as an addition to Cognizant, which is the actual employer. That's something that that Google Alphabet has actually pushed back on in court filings and said no, no, we're not the employer here. This is the contractor to the employer. Dig into that a little bit more because representatives of both Alphabet and Cognizant didn't immediately re sponsor

request or comment. But ultimately this is about the contractors being employed through Cognizant and Alphabet trying to say that we were sort of a step removed here. Yeah, this is something I mean, it's not just the tech industry, but they've adapted this practice reason in the decades. You know'll be interesting to see with the layoffs you're just talking about. Uh, it's more like you know, Google YouTube, they still want to grow YouTube music, still wants to

compete with Spotify. They still want hundreds and thousands of employees out there that do with these workers in Texas to which is actually come through the library to make sure, Like that's what I was going to ask you. I mean, is there a specific job function that their argument allows them to leverage this rule in the return to office argument?

And what is it that they're doing. Yeah, my understanding of these workers, they're not like the content moderators that YouTube that will screen for violent footage or child pornography. They're actually like looking at, oh this video is the music video? This one's not this Mudia music video comes up from this label. Right, These are all these kind of behind the scenes ghosts in the machine laborers that

the YouTube relies on. You. My guess is they might actually have to rely on these people more now that they just cut twelve thousand full time employees. All right, Bloomberg's Mark Berg, and thank you very much as you want to stick with Alphabet and its research lab deep mind, it's taking a hit outside of the U S. The AI unit will close it's Edmonton, Alberta outpost and lay off some operational staff in the UK as part of the tech giants recent effort to cost costs that we've

just been talking about. Impacted engineers and researchers will be offered the option to relocate to other offices for those and other roles unfortunate carry will be laid off. Meanwhile, coming up, let's flick gears and look at innovation coming from Amazon. It's a five dollar a month subscription for generic drugs. Latest venture coming from that in commerce giants, Bloomberg.

So you pay a hundred and thirty nine dollars a year for Amazon Prime in the US, would you pay another five dollars a month for a drug subscription service from Amazon. The e commerce giant has started r x Pass. You have to be a Prime member and you can order from a menu of fifty three generic medications, which

Amazon says can treat more than eighty health conditions. R x Pass is available in most US states, but if you're in California, Pennsylvania, in Texas, you're going to have to wait the pitch low priced simple medications on a monthly basis, but you can't use government insurance. And it's

not clear what's new in Amazon subscription offering. The tech giants already offered Amazon Pharmacy since where Prime users can already pay for subscriptions using their insurance, or you can get discounts on medicine if you want to pay cash. So this is a Bloomberg story that caughter I on Tuesday morning, mostly because I thought i'd heard it before.

Amazon announced back in Amazon Pharmacy, where you can use insurance and if you choose not to pay a bit of cash, but you get a big discount on on drugs. So this is very similar, but it seems to be that subscription part of it, and there was some reaction out there today to this news. There was particularly from competitors stocks which fell unsurprisingly. Good our X has been a company that time and time again, when we've questioned the CEO, he said, look, Amazon is not our threat.

We can be innovative. But now a lot of analysts are out there and saying, well, innovate because if you think about what Amazon is offering five dollars and months, it's not going to compete versus Good or X if you're ordering just one drug, but if you if you're ordering one to three, five dollars a month is really cheap versus what they're going to be. As we said in the piece, you can't use government insurance. There was

another part of that which was interesting. Not available in California or Texas, in other ways, the country's most popular states. And Amazon actually did not give us an explanation as to why, which I thought was interesting. Kind of got check it and think there must be to do with regulation or signing off, crossing the t s, donning the eyes.

But overall, this is a company that has time and time again focusing on how we can become more addicted to prime well seemingly by offering some healthcare that's the way to do it. Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct just severely weakened, if not destroy competition in the air deck industry. As detailed in our complaint. We alleged that was an a competitive CONDAC extends to three significant elements of the digital ad buying process. US Attorney General Merrit Garland.

They're speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, so let's get right back to that key story of the day, the US lawsuit to break up Google's ad unit. Let's bring in an expert in the space. David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, provides legal support for the online advertising industry. Both about seven hundred members in fact, including Google, but

also Netflix, Twitter, Metas, Spotify, many many more. Just off the back of your annual leadership meeting, David, and I know you can't speak as if your Google, but tell us everyone must have been discussing this from your perspective. How does the advertising tech world currently function? Is it a competitive space? Well, it's great to be here and

thank you for the question. We just hosted about twelve hundred folks in Marco Island across the digital ecosystem, and we had two and a half days of conversation around privacy, public policy, address ability, the future of streaming. UM A healthy and open and supported ecosystem, I will tell you from where we sit UM, and we we kind of go out to our membership every year with a a survey.

There is widespread belief that there is healthy competition. We have a very very long tale in the Internet aid ecosystem. We have millions of small businesses that rely upon advertising, and yes we do have some larger players. But this news which actually just wrote today, I certainly did see it. UM. We have not dived into it, dove into it in any way, just finished our conference about two hours ago,

but obviously we'll be closely watching. What was interesting is that many have used the anecdote that this is like City Bank or Goldman owning the New York Stock Exchange.

How is it different? Can you get us under the skin of how the infrastructure that Alphabet owns and operates It's different from say a bank owning the Nicely there are there are lots of companies that own multiple parts of the tech ecosystem, of the supply chain in the digital ecosystem and the and the end beneficiary is consumers. Consumers like convenience, they're like lower price, they like its supported, they like free internet, they like free information, entertainment, communications.

There are there are lots of examples of this beyond just Google. Um, so I'm not sure why it's It's not just a Google situation. Folks do play on both sides of the equation, and the end recipient of that is a consumer winning. Hey, David, Let's let me come at it this way. The d J states alleges that Alphabet or Google in particular, dominates the market for search, but also dominates the market for advertising technology. You lead

an industry association for advertising. Does Google dominate the market for advertising technology? There was a report that recently came out I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal about a month ago that reported that between Google and Meta, they represent less than fifty of the ad supported ecosystem in the US. That is a change, that is a decrease over time. Are there players that have significant influence

and significant share? Yes, in lots of cases in the industry, whether you talk about detergent chocolate, autos, there are lots of examples of leading players that have significant market share. I do not think the AD supported ecosystem is any different than other categories. Of course, David, you're the Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO, and I know one thing top of

your mind right now is streaming. It was interesting this weekend gone actually Lucas Shaw how In l a our correspondent covering that industry, interviewed the new CEOs of Netflix, and I'm paraphrasing, but they basically said they got to an ad supported tier and they got to add tizing when they realized they better get moving because of the competitive landscape. Where do we stand with the streamers, those newer players and those longer legacy players, and how they

are contributing to that marketplace. It represented a lot of our conversation over the past two and f days. In fact, we had Jeremy Gorman from Netflix as a speaker on the stage. She talked about their UH. They're getting into the AD supported streaming space. It's still early days. They have a minimum viable product and they're very excited about

growing that, driving innovation and UH and scale. There is absolutely no doubt that we are seeing a very very quick shift from linear television to the streaming space, and supported streaming is clearly where the action is at, and

there's obviously lots of competition in that area. We host something every year what's called the New Fronts, which is basically a celebration of what is the opportunity in the streaming space, which is coming up in May for the general upfront season when advertisers go to the market and buy for the upcoming year, and we'll just the environment. Seemed like, David, everyone's been worrying. The earnings are about to be upon us, and we're waiting to hear how

these companies have navigated a slowing advertising environment. Is that what people are worrying and seeing in that business? But I think that's exactly the right word, is slowing what we have seen, and we actually do research on this topic. We go out to the market, we interview buyers, and we believe that this year will be a growth year for the digital environment, but it will be a far

slower growth here than it has been historically. Overall, we see that the advertising space will grow about six percent in te and there are areas that will decline linear television as an example, and there are areas that will grow significantly. CTV we have growing four year on year, and once again that is coming off of a year of explosive growth in two So a year of growth, but a year of slowing growth. A year of growth but a year of slowing growth. I think that something

we've heard time and time again from this industry. Caroline David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, thanks for joining us hot on the tails of your annual meeting. Now onto Elon Musk. Who else? He told a jury he was confident he could have pulled off his proposal four and a half years ago to take tests the private, saying he's never had any trouble raising money for his companies.

I want to get straight to my colleague over at that San Francisco court room, Bloomberg's Malati Nayak, who has been covering Musk testimony for the last three days. This all about, of course, those tweets in to take test the private, Malachi, what was the takeaway from day three? So looking at deep Sea, indeed two it was almost like a day of two Musks. Yesterday we saw Musk whose mumbling looking forwards a judy. We had a very confident muskod the stand. You know, he was making very

good I gonta with the jury. And yesterday he had admitted that he didn't get enough sleep, but don uh this you know, he probably slept last night it and and was back in court today in full form um. Some of the takeaways today were Must basically touted to the jury his record when it came to UM investing raising funds when it comes to investors, and he said that he, uh, every financing rep around that he has ever had, you know, under his watch, has been oversubscribed.

He talked about how he had the best record in the world perhaps of raising money when it came to investors, and he also said that he was always truthful to investors and that's why investors would just give him the money. Um. And we also had a lot of questioning from his own attorney, Alex Biro, so I think he was a

lot more comfortable. And then we had the attorney from the claensive side who tried to sort of land some of these gotcha moments, but they didn't quite happen, although he did get musked too, uh to say that you know, uh, he hadn't previously talked about the space x um you know shares, which he said yesterday he would adapting to the finance the deal, ultimately taking a step back. Malati, Is he doing enough of what's required of him to

fight off the allegations of the shareholders? Um? I think, you know, he came with these good catch phrases talking about how he really cares about investors and wanted to do right by investors. Uh. He repeated, how you know, um, there was an equivocal support from Saudi Arabia and when he said finding secured, he actually, you know, believed that Saudi Arabia was committed to this deal. UM. So I

think that you know, he definitely brought his a game today. Um, and he definitely sort of you know um um ensured that there weren't any punches that landed from the plaintiff's attorney except for a few here in there. Malatti, this is probably the three days of this trial that everyone

was most excited about and most tuned into. But we have a little way to go, don't we what's left in this process, So we have a few more witness is lined up and this is a two week trial, so things are fluent and in fact that the judge was concerned they were running behind schedules. So I'm guessing the trial could end around the first week of February, and then we'll have to see how long the jury takes to uh come out with a verdict on on where there must you know, what is thinking was behind

these tweets? Mala Niack, We thank you so much taking time out at that very courtroom to come and speak with us. Thank you. Meanwhile, coming up, we've got to get into the world of crypto. For example, Celsius might create a token of its own to get itself out of bankruptcy. What else is happening in the crypto space at the moment. We're going to talk about it all with Blockchains Associations that Kristen Smith, this is broom back.

There were clearly interpart transactions and loans that we're not well understood by the various stakeholders. Uh, and we'll see what the courts have to say about that. So there's multiple entities that will likely file suit. The Binklbas brothers have said there there's this pending fir Tree has one. So we'll see if the court forces disclosure of all

this and what that means for illegal ramifications. That was Vanek, head of diusital Assets, talking about the commingling of crypto funds within firms like fd X. Today Tuesday, Bloomberg learned Celsius is considering a new token to repay creditors and exit bankruptcy. And other headline that's caught my eye on the Bloomberg in the last twenty four hours. Binns conceding it mistakenly placed user funds with its own reserves. A lot to pass over. Let's bring in Kristin Smith, executive

director the Blockchain Association. I guess it's a group you serve as a liaison between policymakers, industry participants. Negative headline binance considers well, concedes sorry, using funds mistakenly stalled with its reserves, issuing a token to make up to creditors. I mean, it's impossible question. What is your reaction to

all of that continuous negative headlines? I said, yeah, no, listen, it's obviously been a challenging year for the crypto industry, and we're continuing to see a lot of interesting headlines. I think if there's any silver lining to all of this, this has been a real educational opportunity, particularly for policymakers as they're trying to get up to speed on a very complex industry. UM. I do think, you know, when we see headlines around finance, I think there's probably deeper

details um in the backstory. I mean, I you know, binance dot com is not a US operated company, but it does pose these questions how do users who are giving their assets to of a third party know that they're actually there? And I think some of the US companies have some really innovative proof of reserve systems in order to do that. But all of this really gets back to a conversation about how do you hold digital assets? Hey,

how cool you can hold digital assets yourself. You don't have to rely on a third party, or if you are relying on a third party, how do you know

they're reliable? And so yeah, we're all thinking of this as one big, giant, ongoing teachable moment, and the block Tin association teachable moment that continues to kind of confound in a maze in some ways of the resolute optimism within a space where many here of perhaps the new CEO of f t X going through a bankruptcy proceeding is then talking about how they could perhaps resuscitate the ft X product here in the US, and therefore the

token link to that. Jumping ahead a few steps, well, did you see the reaction rise in ft T tokens because of that uplift? Does that signal you know, seeds of chain. I'm I'm very skeptical of these tokens that are tied to a specific exchange or platform. I think real crypto assets operate decentralized crypto networks and they aren't tied to the success of any single entity or firm. So I think the activity that was happening around the f t T token was pure speculation. That's not a

token that's widely traded in the United States. UM, I don't think that that is is necessarily the right answer. I think that you know, investors, as they're looking to invest in crypto assets really need to do their own research and understand what is the underlying network, because the crypto industry isn't here to build crypto tokens where the

price moves up at down centralizednization. The buzzworld because it is well, it's it's it's incredibly important, and I think there are really strong use cases around it, and and and not as strong use cases around it. What we're trying to do with crypto networks is find an incentive for different parties that don't have any connection to come together and operate the infrastructure of a network. And and that is something that in order to have that economic incentive,

you have to have a token. Um, if you're going around and tokenizing something related to a specific company, that looks a lot more like like a security and and sort of misses the point as to why we are here building building out crypto networks. All regulators missing the point or having to focus more on things they worry that are looking like securities. Um, yeah, no, listen, I

think it depends on the regulator. Um. There, Hester Percy yesterday or a couple of days ago, gave a phenomenal speech when she truly she's a commissioner at the SEC. She absolutely understands the power of decentralization and the need to find an appropriate way for this technology to be built out. If you look get other parts of government though, um, you know, maybe not not so much. I guess that's

good job security for me. The Blockchain Association, because we have never ending education to do of our of our nation's policy makers. But um, you know, listen, it's a complicated space. There's a lot that's happening really fast. I do this all day long, and I can barely keep up with all of the developments. So it's hard to

judge policymakers. But I do think you know, what we saw last time we were talking about f t X, what that has done has really brought the crypto industry to the top of the fold um on every major news outlet. And I think that policymakers that before had dismissed this as something they didn't need to pay attention

to do are taking a really hard look. And I think we're going to see a lot of discussion and debate in the next congress um and through this last half of the vidynamics where we have the House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion. You can forgive me for looking down at my screen for that one. My My question is actually opposite. When does the industry kind of look at itself and say,

when do we get better at self policing? Yeah, I think that's an excellent question, And these are conversations that are happening within the crypto industry right now. I mean, there is so much transparency as to what's going on in the crypto industry because most of this information is on the blockchain, and so when you're dealing with these

decentralized parties, there's a ton of information there. The challenges you need to be able to translate that into something that's useful, and there are companies out there that help do that translation. Um, but what we need to do is figure out there are a lot of good practices out there that different companies are doing. We need to make sure that we're picking the best ones and communicating

those and sharing those best practices across the industry. So I do think we can do a better job, but self policing and that is absolutely a focus of the industry right now. I'm going to hold onto that world useful because when you go to a policy maker and say this is the most use case I'm seeing at the moment, what is it? What what's actually decentralizing assets in a useful amount of right now? Yeah, No, I

mean I think that's a very good question. I Mean, one of my favorite projects, I said on the board of their foundation as the file Coin Foundation, and I think you know, file coin is trying to do a decentralized version of Amazon Web Services so that you know, you can hook up servers to the network, you can you know, provide that service. If you have storage, you could store it in a way that's cheaper and decentralized.

And so you know that's maybe um not as sexy as some of the you know, n f T s or things that are out there today, but it's an example of one that I think it's very cool and we'll build a new infrastructure for the Internet going forward. Book Chain Associations executive director Kristen Swith, who are the two of us and several sois creates all the conversations we've had. Is taken a while. Thank you. Ever thought that Tims with lyrics will be quoted by a politicianal

Capitol Hill? Well Tuesday they were is it hearing to try and get to groups? Actually happened? When at all you weren't able to get it to get for Wasn't that too much demand in front of the system. Was it the box was sucking on all the tickets? Or is it that there's too much control? I one key companies Live Nation. It controls a whole host of live venues across the United States, but it also owns ticket Master, which is then the only way to get the ticket

when you're at that particular venue. People say that there's not enough competition, seeing CEO out there, seeing the only way to drive competition is to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster that came together in this argument keeps coming back time and time again. Paul jam made this argument

back in the nineties. It's been to be visited on Capitol Hill, and now the third straight time, they're going to digest whether they're really competition would help you get your hands and the tickets that you want, heard of thought politicians quoting swiftly, not just you. But ultimately this is kind of fascinating, isn't it that once again people just arguing there is too much consolidation in the space. Interesting On a day we were just sort of discussing

the d o J looking at Google. Everyone's still looking at ticket Master. I can find in you. I bought some tickets recently. When you start the year, people say what I want to go to this year? They're often expensive and you look at how you buy them. Well, actually it's true. The Bloomberg reporting shows ticket Master is often the only option right other than in the secondaries market. But it's what people have been talking about on Instagram, Twitter and take you to TikTok as well as a

kind of event about their experiences. But it reminds you why do we have oversight, Why do we have this discussion on marketplace competition, and why do you have those select committees bringing up CEO of Satgeek for example, to say the only answer is to split them up. The competition is thin. There's a secondary market StubHub. But isn't it interesting? On our own Twitter poll, we went to

you the audience and asked what you thought. Most people said, where else am I going to be getting these tickets? When it's self Live Nation has more than a hundred of these really great places to go and watch music, right, And that's the the answer. Where else would I go? And it goes back to my point. You start your ego, which gig do I want to go to? Which show have I dreamed of? You only have one option? Yeah,

at the moment, where else do I go? As the winner on that particular poll, but just it seems to be a day here in San Francisco. Or we've talked so much about earnings, I've also talked so much about regulation, about oversight. It's a real story of Washington meets Silicon Valley. Then it never ever goes away. It doesn't and that does it for this additional Bloomberg technology. But we never go away because Wednesday we have Arkes Pascucchini on the chef.

Don't forget check out our podcast. I heart Spotify, Apple, wherever you get it. This is Bloomberg