From Marhard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon.
Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
I'm Caroline Heyde a Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York.
And I'm Met Lolow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology and full.
Coverage ahead on the SEC's approval of bitcoinyts. What does it mean for the one point seven trillion dollar digital assets sector?
Will discuss, and Hertz makes a U turn on its ev push as the company announces it's selling twenty thousand electric vehicles after overestimating demand.
Plus the tech industry is kicking off the new year with some significant job cuts, will break it all down. Let's have a little look what's happening though in the asset of today and indeed yesterday.
We've got to look at bitcoin.
It has had a volatile trading session, actually at one point almost sing that forty nine thousand dollars handle. We're anticipating, of course, the adoption RBC saying what fifty to one hundred billion dollars of inflows for the first year due to these ets, eleven of them of course go live today.
Ed time for some team coverage.
Let's break it all down and bring in Bloomberg Shanali Bassek and Katie Greifeld and Katie, I want to start with you. I guess the question is where do we look now for reaction to news. We've shown the equity markets, Kara showed her risk asset of choice Bitcoin, but there's also some flows data that shows us the story here.
Specifically, you want to be looking at the trading volume. That's what we know right now. We'll get that flow data tomorrow theoretically, but you take a look at.
Who's winning the volume race.
So far, you have Gray Skill and you have black Rock out in front. All told, you've had thirty two million shares of GBTC tradeover for Blackrock that comes in around twenty six million shares all told. All along, eleven of these ETFs all together have traded about two point eight almost two point nine billion dollars so far, so really a lot of volume on day one for GBDC. There is some speculation that this really for a lot of investors is the first time that they have had
a chance to sell. So Bloomberg Intelligence, for example, has theorized that maybe that selling pressure for Blackrock. There's a lot of speculation out there, whether they preceded this fund, whether you're seeing that come through in the trading volumes.
I asked Ja Jacobs.
At Blackrock that but an hour and a half ago, didn't get much of an answer there, but a lot of theories as to what's actually behind this volume.
And there's the mechanics, there's the infrastructure Shanali. Then there's the ultimate view on whether this is really the turning point, whether this means mascal adoption, whether suddenly people on their iras and their pension funds start just sprinkling in a little bit of bitcoin. When we look at the price action of the og of crypto, do we think that it is well, what's.
Interesting is you did see trading volume CIVI bilions, as you were hearing Katie saying, But when you look at the price action in bitcoin itself, it reached forty nine thousand very briefly on the day, but it's back well below or fluctuating around forty six thousand. So this has not been to sell the news moment, nor has it
been the buy the news moment. Since we have seen DCTF start to take off, and even with that announcement of trading volumes being significant, you're still not seeing that movement in Bitcoin, and in fact, in some of the bitcoin related stocks, as I was saying, coin Base being down more than six percent. A big question in the
market is what this means for exchanges, let alone bitcoin itself. Now, I will point to one place you are seeing some action as ethereum, and I think the reason that's interesting is because people believe that if you see a bitcoin related spody tf then the issuers, if they are successful, will move to other products. Will they move to ethereum?
Now?
One thing that's interesting about this is the SEC's owned statement which was very clear that this was for one asset and one asset alone, Bitcoin and it was not an endorsement of the bitcoin world in itself. And so you are seeing sparks of exuberance and ethereum that you're not seeing the same way in Bitcoin at this moment. But is it founded is the question?
And also sparks of exuberance excitement when it comes to an IPO pipeline related to crypto asset circle, the stable coin issue, what do.
We learn today a long time coming as well wasn't that. You all may remember that this was a company that tried to go public via s back that was overseen by Bob Diamond's company, And since that moment, we've been waiting many, many months to see what circles ultimate exit strategy would be. Remember, they had a tough road to get here. They had money tied up in the Silicon Valley bank debacle. They were really able to pivot after that, and they have been able to hold their model into
this IPO. Now, the stable coin world is quickly changing, there's regulation around it. This is all colliding kind of at the same time here and is there a market for crypto related a stable coin related stocks. Remember it's a different flavor of crypto asset at a time when the IPO market is supposedly opening up.
Will be an interesting year, Katie.
The news of the approval, the official news broke just before I went on stage with Adena Friedman at CES and on stage I said this is the breaking news, and there was a small ripple of applause a small and I emphasized small. But after that, the conversation I had with so many people is wait, how many got approved?
Do we need eleven of these things.
No, that's the answer that I've gotten from pretty much everyone, issuers included, not specifically on the record in a lot of cases. But the thinking is that, okay, this is a very crowded field, and the question becomes, how do you differentiate yourself if everyone's going at once and we all hold the same thing. And the answer has been to cut fees and then cut fees again.
These fees are extremely low.
You have bit Wise at the bottom there charging twenty basis points. That's their eventual fee. At the top, of course, you have GPTC charging one point five percent. That's a little bit of a different story there. But when it comes to where we are a year from now, what the assets and these eleven funds actually looked like. The expectation is that this will be a winner take most
sort of environment. That you're going to have a handful of these funds holding the bulk of the assets, and it'll be interesting to see if we actually whittle down here and some of these funds eventually do shut.
Let's talk about one of those funds in a moment, not invest at Katie Greifeld, we thank you so much. We can go to one of those key issues of n spot Bitcoin ETF. Roger Basin's with us Franklin Templeton, head of Digital Assets, You of course have launched the Franklin Bitcoin ETF today. Remind us of the fees, remind us of why perhaps you think you're going to survive at least within the eleven that we have.
Well, I would just point to Bloomberg's own research.
People need to go to Bloomberg to see how the fees line up for the issuers. Do you think it's correct that you need to look at the longer term about where this goes. This has been a very dynamic issuing environment over the past several days and weeks, and we expect at the dust will settle in the period ahead. But for sure, we believe this is a page that's been turned in this chapter. Accessibility to bitcoin outside of a digital wallet, inside of some of the more crypto
native firms is what the story is here. It's no secret why we use the ticker symbol EASBC, because that's the.
Story of the day.
Roger, the accessibility part is the most interesting to me. Who is taking advantage of this product? Have you specific evidence of whether it's kind of legacy investment managers managing people's four one ks right through to the big institutionals that are active this morning.
Well, I think again, the story today and volumes that are happening today is.
Something that will change and pivot as we get.
Deeper into twenty twenty four because the idea that there is a trusted brokerage account.
I mean, we've had decades, in decades.
Of regulatory oversight on the brokerage industry and as a result of that, the broker's account has become a trusted infrastructure within the overall capital markets for clients of hold and so to bring a Bitcoin exposure, which is really a story.
About the growing and evolving network.
Economy by and large, whether it's you know, bitcoin is a single purpose network, or whether it's Ethereum and the array of other public blockchain networks that are going to be used as really utilities for this data driven economy going forward.
I think that's a thematic story that's going on.
So I think we really want to point towards the longer term thematic story. But it's a successibility that opens up not just for individual investors, but for institutions also who are looking for trusted infrastructure and trusted providers to bring these innovations alongside of their other investments.
What's interesting is, of course, in the same breath as signing off on these et the SEC chair then went on to say that investors should remain cautious about the myriad of risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto. Roger, you are someone who's been at the cutting edge of this, trying to involve and build infrastructure over at Franklin tempton deciding how to involve
digital assets more broadly with real world assets. What more is needed within the infrastructure space to make it that the SEC chair doesn't think that you should still be very cautious.
Well, I think the SEC chairman is right to talk about caution.
I mean, look, those of us who have been managing assets for our clients for dozens of years, there's volatility.
Inside of this.
You guys led with that story, with the volatility, the daily volatility that happens.
And we think that's still going to exist in this space. The question is whether you are rewarded for taking that volatility.
I think long term metrics have certainly shown so far that investors are rewarded for taking that volatility in that risk and then putting these alongside other assets for generating best outcomes going forward.
But you're correct. We have been working.
Closely with the SEC as it relates to block checking technologies and using them as infrastructure inside of already traditional assets in order to increase utility for underlying savers. And so we see the caution and we understand it, and we are alongside of that when we're counseling clients for risks in their portfolios.
In general, Roger, the harving coming up later in the year is a point of discussion in parallel with this ETF roller coaster. Have you modeled and planned for that and how will it impact the products in your business?
You know, path performance is not indicative of future results. However, if you look at previous having cycles there.
It seems to be a technical situation.
We all know that bitcoin is a constrained asset or only a certain amount of supply.
When that supply begins to be.
Diminished, especially alongside this this environment increased accessibility, it might create interesting technical dynamics flowing either way.
But I think as you're seeing the market, as you've put Arbin pointed out, is pivoting toward what are other public blockchain network infrastructure opportunities that investors may be able to tap, and so you've seen that price action diverge.
A little bit between ethereum and Bitcoin in the previous days.
Just the timely skin in the game conversation, Roger Bastin Franklin, Templeton, thank you so much. Some breaking news crossing the Bloomberg terminal in the last few moments. The FAA is formally investigating Boeing over the seven three seven Max nine incident of the weekend. The FAA said in a post on x that this incident should never have happened and it
cannot happen again. Later on, in that statement, it flags Boeing's manufacturing practices needing to comply with high safety standards that they are legally accountable to meet, and they've attached formal letter on that investigation. The shares you just saw there have been under pressure. Anyway, Reminder that what happened on that Alaska flight over the weekend is that a plug in the rear of that plane detached mid flight.
And now the FAA saying, Caroline that there is a formal investigation relating to that incident.
We stay on top of that story. We also stay on top of others that broke earlier today. Coming up the Hertz decision to reverse course on its push into electric vehicles. Details ahead on the company's decision look to offload twenty thousand electric vehicles and like a demand, we'll dig into it at the moment.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
In a major reversal after a large purchase of Tesla vehicles. In twenty twenty one, Hurts announced it is it's going to sell twenty thousand electric vehicles in return to buy gas powered cars joining us Now Bloomberg's David Welch, Detroit bureau chief, and David, this is a far cry from the plan. They were going to buy almost three hundred and fifty one hundred and fifty thousand vehicles across Tesla, GM and Pollstar.
Now they're trying to get rid of them. What is said about why?
Same thing they said in the third quarter, only more so they had depreciation on the cars, so they've got this feud of vehicles. Elon Musk cuts prices by twenty five thirty percent on most models. That means the resale value of Tesla vehicles out in the market hurts, including those that hurts itself is carrying, so they had to take a basically a charge for the disposition casts they have.
They also had higher repair costs for these vehicles. All that was hurting earnings and they set in the third quarter that they actually missed Wall Street estimates of seventy seven cents a share by seven cents because of that. So when you look at that, they had to do something. Because EV prices are still challenged, they had to actually continue to come down EV sales. New vehicle sales still growing,
but growing at a much slower pace. That has an impact on pricing and the used car market as well. All of this stuff is really related, so they had to make an adjustment. It also means down the line they're going to buy fewer vehicles from GM and from Polestar. If they do buy one hundred and seventy five thousand GM evs, it'll be over a much longer period of time than five years. That's what Stephen sure the CEO,
told me an interview this morning. So there's a lot of not good for everybody here because tests will see pricing pressure the people who own teslas right now will see every sale value go down because it oftens the market. And I think for car companies like GM, Pollstar and others who may have been hoping to use corporate fleet sales and rental sales as a way to buttress demand as consumers maybe scratch their heads about evs, that's not
going to be an easy outlet for sales either. So it's a big bump in the road for evs and there's decent ripple effect out of this.
Too, David.
The context comes as well with a story that was written up from Cox Automotive yesterday just showing that the demand for EV's isn't picking up pace. Particularly it feels as though, well just one point five percent I think growth was eked out in the final quarter of last year, and that's sequentially been going slower and slower. How much is this signaling that ultimately the user isn't ready for an EV experience when they're going via hertz.
There's a lot of that going on. Look, just to be sure here, EV sales aren't growing. If you go look year over year, the numbers are pretty big, and last year was a record year for EV sales, but the third quarter to fourth quarter number, I thought it was my story. I thought it was significant one point three percent third quarter. There are seasonal factors in there, but third quarter is usually a pretty strong quarter for auto sales because it's new model year turnover and a
lot of new vehicles come out. Consumers are excited. Fourth quarter also very strong because you have things like December to remember from Toyota and other sales that drive people the showrooms to buy cars. So those are two historically strong quarters for vehicle sales. And EB sales only grew one twenty three percent after growing six percent second quarter to third quarter and fourteen before that. So yeah, still growth in the market if you look here over a year,
but it's definitely slowing down. People are wondering where they're going to charge them when they're out and about, and there still aren't many affordable evs on the market displaced the price cuts. There's only one on the market that sells for blow forty thousand dollars, that's the Nissan Leaf, and that doesn't go very far on a charge. So there's a lot that needs to be sold to consumers to get them to continue snapping up evs and big numbers.
I said David Welch. Great to get the breakdown with you. We thank you so much on that big about face. Meanwhile, let's get you some more breaking news, this time in the banking sect. To Morgan SAMMI is going to be paying under three hundred million dollars to settle that block trade. Probusestationalie still on set with us to break it all down. So the investigation was surrounding what exactly.
The process of block trading. This is all began in the wake of the Arcagos trades. You saw Morgan Stanley end up losing some talent over this, departing with the firm over concerns about how some of these trades were handled. Now what we're seeing is they are close to an agreement.
According to sources telling our own truth arnaturagnavi' been any Morrison and Austin Weinstein that the charges could be between two hundred million and three hundred million dollars in While that may sound like a lot, it is a lot less than expected. Why this matters as well, it is one of the investigations that Morgan Stanley wanted to clear up in its succession plan as they moved the baton from James Gorman over to Ted pickover at Morgan Stanley.
Now the penalty will be divvied up between the Justice Department and the Securities of Exchange Commission, according to Bloomberg sources, and it will not include criminal charges against the bank importantly, So this would be in the coming days, according to sources, and it would turn a page for Morgan Stanley that has been an overhang in the last several months.
All right, Bloomberg Shnati bassing there with the breaking news. My goodness, has it been a sprint start to twenty twenty four. Okay, time for talking tech and first star up. An advisor to the European Union's Court of Justice says Google should not win its appeal against a two point six billion anti trust fine. EU competition regulators slapped Google with the fine in twenty seventeen for favoring its own shopping service over those of its rivals and staying with
EU regulation. Concerns over Amazon's one point four billion dollar deal to buy rumba maker i Robot are coming to light after the tech giant missed a Wednesday deadline to file remedies to anti trust enforces. The Competition Commission has set a February deadline to decide whether to approve or block the iRobot deal. Plus twenty twenty four is starting off with an uptick in tech layoffs.
In order to restructure and reduce costs.
Google is now the latest company to cut staff, laying off hundreds of workers from its hardware, engineering and digital assistant teams.
Character bit of deja vou there pay And someone that we can dive into that very story with is Brodie Ford, who perhaps has taken the temperature and mood of Silicon Valley right now, and it feels a bit dour again.
Deja vu is right.
I remember being here about a year ago we were hearing salesforce layoffs Google, Microsoft, tens of thousands of people. And this isn't quite that right. I mean, we're not talking tens of thousands here, We're talking hundreds, which is still you know, disruptive for individuals and a sign that the tech economy is not fully back to the kind of big growth days.
Right.
And so what this really is, it's a costious sign for the tech industry that right now still if you are working in a division that is not growing rapidly, you might still be on the shopping block.
And what about creative areas.
I mean, the whole generative AI boom that kind of helped be the silver lining of the cloud of job losses ends up being a bit of a cloud. If you're worrying about your job in the future, maybe Generative II is kind of going.
To take it right.
I mean, we saw Amazon Studios twitch and then Duo Lingo, which the folks that were cut were in a lot of the content creation divisions. It's hard to notice a trend here that some of these folks working on these consumer facing aspects. I mean, I've spoken of sources at Duo Lingo who are translators who said that they were kind of told like, look, hey, I can do your job right and we haven't seen that level of direct replacement.
And I think the fact that those are starting to trickle in it's not a warm sign, right mm hmm.
Yeah, it certainly isn't. And we're going to be staying on that particular story throughout thankfully through Brody Ford, we thank you so much quick check on these markets said, because we have had the macro paths outweigh some of the exuberants around the Crypto ETF. I'm looking at what's happening in NASDAC because the CPI print was all important for those that are still trying to decide where the federal reserve goes. Ultimately, there's another reading, another print ahead
or the all important March meeting for the federals. But still the fact that CPI is running slightly hot does mean that maybe Pete Bett's are being taken off the table for as soon as March rate cut. We're currently off by eight ten percent on the NASDAK. Of course, Bloomberg Donar Innex increases because of those anticipations that maybe
the cuts won't come as soon as anticipated. Bitcoin though all eyes trained on this after of course eleven ets go live today and spot bitcoin ETF trading, we're off just by three tens percent, but it has been a volatile ride, at one point at forty nine thousand. Before we get into that more broadly, look at some of the individual movers on the day and on some of the MAC market capitalizations that we're focusing in on, because
check this out. We are looking at Microsoft in the blue about it looks like to eclipse the market capitalization again of Apple in the White Apple, of course getting numerous sort of cell ratings or indeed going neutral on the stop. We've been questioning the valuations we're worrying about China, so market CAAP has taken a hit. We're about two
point eight trillion for both companies at the moment. Move on to some of the individual movers when it comes to the world of crypto though, because there has been this perhaps sell the fact kind of a move, or ultimately digest the amount that we've run up in these stocks ahead of the all important spot ETF sign off from the SEC. Riot platforms down by sixteen percent. MicroStrategy of course, big holding a bitcoin on its balance sheet of by five percent, Clean Spark it's a mining company
of by almost ten percent. So there has been a bit of weakness in today's trading in all right, let's get.
Some more reaction on every single one of those themes. Yesterday I caught up with Nasdaq CEO Adina Friedman at cs and Las Vegas just as the SEC approval of bitcoin ets was announced. Take listen to her reaction and what she has to say in particular about future regulation.
What it really tells you is that from a regulatory point of view, there's been some maturing of the bitcoin markets to the point where the SEC has now said, we approve these new vehicles that allow retail investors to access bitcoin. They don't have to actually buy underlying bitcoin, but they can have an opinion about the trends in bitcoin, and they can express themselves in a regulated market, which
of course is NASAK. So also, these instruments are highly liquid, and it makes it so that they have ready access to an investable vehicle in this space. So we're excited to be their partner.
There are some sort of cerebral, somewhat academic debates about bitcoin, in particular about whether it is a risk asset and asset class. If it is not, is it a store value? Is the NASDAC approach that this development kind of moves towards a deeper focus on crypto as an asset class.
I think I've delivet a little differently. You know, we have we have ETFs that reflect lots of different instruments and asset classes, whether it's commodities or equities, bonds, other forms of you know, OTC instruments. As long as there are liquid and they have a solid underlying price, discovering mechanism, which now the SEC is saying the bigcoin ETF, the underlying, the underlying market provides price discovery for the ETF, and they are approving the ETF. So I think that that's
an interesting signal. But I also would say that that's our job is to provide create index products. We have about five hundred billion dollars of asset center management in our own indexes, and then to be the listing exchange for those index provider products that allow investors to invest in all sorts of tradable instruments, including bitcoin.
Okay, final question on this subjects let's go back twenty four hours or most an sec X account posts. We now know that it was an unauthorized post. It was a hack. We are looking into it. But Twitter, your X formulas have explained what they believed happen, just as.
The CEO of a leading exchange.
Just explains to me what it was like for you that madness of yesterday afternoon. Given our Bloomberg audience had a very similar experience.
Well, I think the the behaviors in the markets really came from looking at anything that was related to bitcoin itself. So the underlying bitcoin markets, and then sort of any sort of public companies that had that kind of underlying
ourset class as part of their business. But I think for us, it's really a matter of making sure that we think about more generally what protections we put in place as more technologies used to drive trading, but also as more information is being used in real time to direct people investors, so we look at it more for our protection perspective. We first of all want to think about as AI comes more into the markets, how do
we regulate that appropriately? And I think both the SEC and the CFTC of expressed that there are going to be interested in that what kind of smart regulation family?
But in place.
That was Adina Friedman NASDAK chair president and CEO.
Character We've got to keep on talking crypto. The conversation continues that Jack Manners is strike CEO. Of course, digital wallet built on Bitcoin's Lightning network is an important led to offering to make basically the transactions on Bitcoin that much faster, easier, smooth. I'm interested Jack, because you have been someone who's been developing this space, thinking about crypto
and bitcoin in particular for a decade. It took a decade for us to get to this point at the spot bitcoin ETF when, of course we saw the brothers of inclebined brothers come out and want to get into this spot bitcoin ETF scenario. What does it mean to you.
Oh man, Well, first of all, Bitcoin ETF Day, Thank you guys for having me.
I think it's a huge deal.
I view bitcoin as the best expression of fiat debasement. What I mean by that is as nation states and central banks print more of their own currency and devalue it like devaluing the US dollar. I think bitcoin is the best expression of that. You can see that most in the rise of bitcoin's price, and it's because of two things. It's the scarcest asset on the planet. You can't make any more of it, and it's one of the only asset classes in the world that demands energy
to acquire it. And so those two things make it the best expression of what's increasingly the biggest problem that money managers have, which is how to take the other side of governments inevitably printing their way out.
Of all this debt.
And so the fact that Wall Street said, you know what, those hoodie coders over the last decade, Boy, they got loud mouse like that Jack guy.
But we got to get in on.
This too, because the government looks like they're going to stop QT and start QE, and we need to own an asset that protects us and I think that's bitcoin, So monumental day.
Let's go, all right, Jack, let's go, Jack. Do we need eleven different ETFs to do that?
You know who knows best ed the free market, and I think it's important that Wall Street allows for that.
So we'll see. The market will tell us. My personal opinion probably not.
That seems a bit excessive, but I'm here for it and I love it, so.
We'll see the free market. I think we'll fix a lot of this stuff.
I also am not entirely sure how Wall Street and their T plus two settlement is going to handle the apex predator that is Bitcoin. I think it'll be an interesting journey over the next twelve months to see how many of these things are left and how they're able to handle an asset that doesn't have off hours, that doesn't have supply that you can go print more of, or that you can call the CEO and tell them to calm down.
It's a new beast for Wall Street.
But they talk a big game, so hopefully they're plenty capable.
When I posted on x that you were coming on this sh show and you replied with your apex predator thesis, lots of people had some pretty cerebral questions for you, one of which is, has bitcoin kind of lost its original ethos by being accessible as an ETF The wording of one user is the original ethos of beaitcoin gone. Now the ets will start to maintain custody of bitcoin.
No, the most important principle of bitcoin is that you're not required to centralize your custody or to conform to a monetary policy that's outside of your control. Anyone can still do whatever they want with bitcoin. I've got some stored right in the other room, and there's nothing Blackrock could do about that. But if someone wanted to use bitcoin with Blackrock, go for it. That doesn't break any principle or change any type of culture set whatsoever.
Like I said, I think.
It's monumental that the world has access to a monetary supply where it cannot be inflated and that absolutely demands energy to hold it. Those two things protect you against inflation and the valuing of currency. And so if people want to get that through Blackrock, I question it. I think it's maybe a little expensive, it's not for everybody, but go for it. I don't think it's anyone's position to say, well, you can or can't do in bitcoin.
That's why it's important.
What's interesting about Strike in particular is you have Strike Private, which you help pluck private clients. Ultimately, those high networth individuals, those family offices that did want exposure to bitcoin before this suddenly incredibly easy ETF was available. Is that in any way going to implicate your business.
So we're seeing all time high numbers, even back to December. This is now a trend leading up to this event. And the way we think about ourselves is we're one of the best in the world at bitcoin is not the best, And what that means is technology licensing, global access when it comes to bitcoin, this new thing.
We're one of the best in the world at that.
And so Wall Street may take a sector of high network institutional client, so we probably never were going to serve anyway.
But it lifts all boats. It lifts all boats.
I really don't think that this is a winner take all or winner take most market. This is an entirely new monetary network and we're one of the best in the world at it. So we're stoked. We're stoked to see the attention, We're stoked to see the validity, We're stoked to see the maturity, and we're here for it. I think, you know in five to ten years, being one of the best in the world, that this thing is going to be a really, really good business.
And that's why I'm the founder and CEO of it. So we're happy.
What's interesting is, of course, in the US, bitcoin has been seen basically as well an asset to be able to bet on ultimately, whether or not it's a store of value, it's certainly been one that people have been wanting to gain exposure to, to see it as volatile, to see the games. But elsewhere in the world they do use it as a way of ultimately being able
to transact, to use it as some sort of currency. Now, when does that potentially start to seep into the US, because at the moment, we've seen the validity of it as an asset, as a store of value, but not as a currency here in the United States.
I'm not to be honest, because I'm not sure, it totally matters. So, for example, I don't own any dollars anymore.
I'm sick of them.
You know, I think the real risk is owning dollars because all they do is go down. And traditionally the game.
Was, well, shoot, what do I own?
The government's going to keep printing currency? There in so much debt. Do I try and own a house? Do I try and own an index of stocks? Do I try and find out what Jeff Bezos is up to now that he's not.
The CEO of Amazon?
And bitcoin is the most accessible, most simple, best expression of this problem that you know ed how many people in the world have to deal with fiat debasement.
Give me a number.
What do you think you answer that jack eight billion?
All of us.
Everybody is subject to a fiat currency that's devaluing, and everyone has access to this thing, and so if you want to use it for payments, if you want to store it.
So, for example, I live on credit cards, the US.
Banking system gives me a thirty day revolving door of credit where I could spend dollars without needing to own those pieces of trash, And so I just sit at bitcoin all day. I spend on credit and so to me, I don't know anyway. Does that answer your question? I think I think it doesn't totally matter.
Jack.
We have five seconds. Where does bitcoin peak in twenty twenty four?
This I think we see new highs this year, and I think this thing lands between two hundred and fifty k to a million, around the five hundred thousand dollars range at some point in twenty five. I think there's a lot of money printing that the government's going to have to do and this is the fastest course.
Jack Maler's Strike CEO, Thank you very much for your time, always colorful on this program.
Thank you.
We'll check in on the health of the industry when it comes to healthcare and Bench Capital with Dina Shakid coming up next from Lux Capital. This is Bloomberg Technology with a JP Morgan healthcare conference in full swing in SF. Let's discuss the state of the health tech space with Dina Shaker, general partner over Atlux Capital, venture firm with more than five billion dollars of assets focusing on emerging science and tech companies.
Din a Happy New Year. I was in Las Vega. Happy New Year. I was in Las Vegas.
At CS and unusually JP Morgan happening at the same time in San Francisco.
Is there one.
Single defining piece of gossip that went on in the hallways of that hotel.
More than one air, that's for sure.
I would say the mood was generally cautiously optimistic. Lots of excitement around the acronyms AIGLP one and really the intersection of bio and digital in twenty twenty four, And.
Therefore was there exuberance around writing checks to these ven diagrams that might not overlap overlap as much as might be into But I'm interested as to whether people wanted to go in and still support these companies or whether it's still a story of having to do more with less.
Well, exubritants is not quite the word I would use, but I would say there was, you know, interests and excitement. JPM is traditionally more focused on the public side of things, but of course that does have a direct impact on privates, and there is a sort of a private track at
the conference. Lots of announcements around M and A on the pharmacide, around big partnerships with AI and health systems, and so you can expect investors to continue to be excited about those particular intersections, both on the bioside as well as healthcare as they look toward early stage funding.
And what's been interesting is on the bioside there's been in a sort of spate of m and A happening to kick off the new year, but also evaluation question and going on in the public markets, at least when it comes to big tech the Magnificent seven. There must have been a lot of discussion about what the public markets means for the private markets, in particular about IPOs, about exit Stina, how you seeing that vole for twenty twenty four?
That was the question I probably got asked the most, both from companies and other investors. You know, if I could look into a crystal ball, which I cannot, what does twenty twenty four look like for IPOs? You know, I think it looks a little better than it did in twenty twenty three. I don't think it's going to be a watershed moment yet for public markets. I think we'll start to see a bit more excitement and perhaps twenty twenty five is the year where we start to
return to what we saw in previous years. But I do think there is some movement happening. The M and A is definitely paving the path, and as you heard from Adena and others on the public side, I expect there will continue to be more movement as we move toward the second half of twenty twenty four.
Dina.
When Lux raised the new fund in April one point one five billion, it was for deep tech and science focused investments. Nine months on how much of that is translated to healthcare biotech farmer, you know quite.
A bit at In fact, if you listened to some of the presentations at JPM, you would hear specifically that the interest from pharma on the M and A side is specifically around the science, not necessarily on you know, financial aspects of the company. At that stage, folks are looking to keep up with the GLP one innovation that
has been an absolute game changer in healthcare. Where is the science breakthrough and that's really where Lux has been investing for the past several decades and where we continue to invest deep tech science on the healthcare side. Certainly on AI, we're seeing a lot of intersections of the areas where we have traditionally invested. Both from presentations at JPM from our portfolio as well as others, and so that's where I think they'll continue to be a lot more.
How can you apply LMS and foundational models to actually improve healthcare outcomes? How can technology change the way healthcare is delivered to medicaid and to women's health, and how can it change the way drugs are developed on the bioside?
And it is so great to have you back on the show, Dina, thank you, Happy new year, happy new return from attorney leave. Dina Shecker, of course, general partner at Lux Capital. Victoria's Secret gets further into AI. The well known retailer plans to create more personalized and inclusive online shopping experiences for US global customers by leveraging Google Clouds generative AI technologies. Here for more on where these
relationships evolve. Carry Park, vice President of Industries at Google Cloud, along with Chris Rupp, chief customer officer at Victoria's Secret. And Chris, I start with you, because where do you want to see the impact first and foremost for Victoria's Secret.
Well, we'd love to see the impact in our customer experience. We believe there's a lot we can leverage with Google's AI platform to create better customer shopping experiences.
Carry what's so interesting is AI the hype cycle. Everyone discussing it, all businesses in their earnings reports. But yet the adoption in real world has been a bit slower than the talk. I think of the November survey for the Census Bureau saying only well just over four percent of all businesses are actually using AI to produce services to produce products. How are you seeing the adoption start to ramp.
It's ramping very quickly.
We consider twenty twenty four to be the activation year. So you're seeing live experiences with retailers today using that Vertex AI platform to bring better.
Consumer facing experiences.
So brands like Macy's are using our retail search today already, the Home Depot and Kroger are already bringing these experiences to their associates, bringing more information in training. So even though you may not think you've touched a generative experience from Google, it's coming to you fast in twenty twenty four.
How Chris does the generative experience, as Carrie says, how does that impact your employees in particular, There's been a little bit of fair about them being replaced. Does the focus on operational efficiencies anyway impact how many people you need in customer care for example.
Actually, the way we're thinking about how generative AI can help us is how it can help us on the sales floor serve customers better. So when you think about the difference between a very experienced sales associate and someone who's brand new on the sales floor, the more experienced sales associate knows much more about our products and the
services that we offer. But if we could help even the brand new associate understand the breadth of our product catalog and be able to serve customers faster and better, we would be able to convert many more of our visitors into customers. So that's what we're focused on.
Carrie.
When you are going through the relationships that you're doing, not only with Victoria's Secret Bred you've mentioned how you're working with Home Depot, Stay Lord is in there. Kroger McDonald's what is the most surprising way in which you've see in a business adopt, adapt, and leverage it.
I don't know that it's surprising. Everybody's really so with those big business.
Challenges and frictions, Just as Chris described at Victoria's Secret, closing the gap and things they've dreamt about getting closer to their customers. So es Day Laughter is an example where they want to have a deep understanding of what their customer's saying in social and in their customer service channels. And so that's an example of just unique ways to get at customer insights and interactions that the technology just didn't enable them to in past years.
Our shopping experiences are going to change inevitably. We thank you both for running us through the relationship. Kerry the vice president of Industries at Google Cloud and Chris Rupp, chief customer officer at Victoria's Secret.
Thank you both.
Meanwhile, well that does it for this edition of Blombag Technology.
Head yeah, karay, check out the podcast wherever you get your podcast.
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