The Future Of The Metaverse & Women In Technology

will discuss plus. Mark Zuckerberg lays out his vision for the Metaverse at south By Southwest in Austin, Texas. From Avatars and Creators to the Future of Work, will critique his take on the economies of the future. And my exclusive conversation with the and new CEO of All Rays working to raise up more women in tech, how she plans to make much needed change that has so far

seemed impossible. Mark Zuckerberg speaking at south By Southwest in Austin, Texas, laying out his vision for the metaverse and how he believes meta is building the fundamental technologies that will make

it possible. Let's dig into that conversation with Blueberks Kurt Wagner, who covers Meta for US, saying, Kurt, looking at the highlights from this interview, I know we were hoping for some hard news questions, for for some commentary on what's going on in Russia, Facebook and its properties getting shut down. That's not so much what we heard today, is it. No, it's not. Mark Zuckerberg started the conversation by acknowledging the

elephant in the room. Of course, this this war that is going on, his services kind of at the center of a lot of the information sharing that's happening there. You know, he said the things that you're supposed to say. He said, Hey, I'm thinking of the people in Ukraine that there's not much you know, that that I can

say that will do justice to what's happening there. Um. But really he didn't get into any of the specifics, and he didn't take any questions about the specifics, and I think it's just yet another sign of how much he's giving that portion of Meta's business, that portion of Meta's operations over to Nick Clegg, the head of policy there, who's been very forlorward and public about the company's stance in in Russian Ukraine over the last couple of weeks.

So this was him kind of acknowledging what he what he felt he needed to acknowledge, but then moving on to what he wants to talk about, of course, which is the metaverse, and not just the metaverse, but the economy of the metaverse. I want to take a quick

listen to a clip from that conversation earlier. And these are gonna be basically creators who are basically building all of these different experiences, and I think that's going to create this massive new economy around a lot of this that that hopefully will support many, many millions of jobs and people doing the kind of creative work that um that they want to instead of maybe the kinds of jobs that they feel they have to today. Girl, do you buy into this idea that the metaverse will create

a too truly new economy? For example, how many new jobs will this create? I couldn't tell you how many new jobs, but I do think that it's going to open up a lot of probably commerce related initiatives and opportunities that we don't think about today. You know, he talked about the idea of even dressing your avatar right and and just similar to how you have a wardrobe at home, you choose what you want to wear for work, for dinner, for play, whatever it might be. You're gonna

be presumably doing that with your avatar too. Your avatar is gonna show up in different settings, and you might want to dress or or act differently in those different places. Presumably you might actually spend money on those digital clothes right in much the same way. So that's just one example, but you could imagine that expand into a bunch of different things, you know, workouts, concerts, all the types of stuff that you spend money on today in the real world,

but doing it in a digital environment. I think that's what he envisions as this economy surrounding the metaverse. Meantime, just a couple days earlier at south By Southwest, I asked former Nintendo president Reggie fees M his thoughts on Facebook and Zuck's view of the metaverse. He is not optimistic. Take a listen to a portion of that conversation. I'm not a buyer of that idea. I don't think that their current definition is going to be successful. Why do

I say that. I say that because, first, you know and I don't know if anyone from Facebook is here, but you you have to admit that Facebook itself is not an innovative company. Not mincing words there. Facebook is not an innovative company. I'm sure that's not something Mark

Zuckerberg would want to hear. No, not at all. I mean, but it's hard to dispute in some cases because a lot of the stuff that Facebook has, dawne really well, have actually been inventions that were created by other people, right.

I mean, they acquired Instagram, they acquired WhatsApp, they acquired Oculus, and while they certainly helped build those those services into what they are today, a lot of the features that we know stories reels on Facebook, which is kind of a TikTok clone, right, Facebook has become known for a lot of things that other people came up with. Now, maybe that's the difference between inventing something and making it massively popular, which is something they're they're capable of doing, alright,

Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, thanks for breaking it down. Meantime, last week, Bloomberg News reported that by Now pay Later lender Affirm delayed a proposed asset back bond sale after a major investor in the top rated portion of that deal backed out last minute due to market volatility. I spoke about this with a firm founder and CEO, Max Levchin, but started by asking about the conflict in Ukraine, a country

he fled as a child. Take a listen. I have people there, I have cele relatives, friends, former classmates, colleagues, UM, and UH, it's horrible what's going on there. And I think the human cost that it's now crisis proportions. UM don't have to be born in Key or Ukraine to UH to understand just how awful it is, but certainly it does not does not help to UH to recognize the streets in some of the footage. I've been very focused on trying to channel all of our family charitable

contributions to refugee helping charities on the Polish border. I think that's probably the most concentrated thing one can do right now financially, to just try to upset some of the damage. Now. It's also having a macro economic cost, as we're seeing John mentioned Affirm halting this big planned bond sale or asset BacT Securities, a big investor pulling out. It seemed like this was going to go through why did that investor pull out? Um? So that's actually, you know,

probably pretty important to set the record straight. So I'll I'll start from far, but I'll cover this very carefully. So first of all, we've known each other for a long time. You know that I am an engineer and think like an engineer. So we built the entirety of a firm through this whole engineering concept of full redundancy and resiliency. So our servers have tons of redundancy. Our products have a lot of ways of a complish the

same thing. Are funding for our loans. Since we're not a bank, we have to fund loans from from the outside, has lots of lots of redundancy. We have ASIDA execurizations, which is what we're talking about here. We have warehouse lines where we basically place these loans into a warehouse arrangement that we sell our loans directly through forward flow arrangements. The deal that we were contemplating executing last Friday was

a refinancing with an existing ASTA security. One of the investors, as you correctly pointed out, felt that the market volatility overall just made them decided to pause a purchase of bonds, and the deal had a real opportunity of becoming economically less financially attractive to us than our other funding sources. So we very quickly pivoted to place the same assets

to a much better economic arrangement. And so it is correct that we decided not to do this deal, but this was entirely an economic choice in our part in favor of a firm, and part of what we said um yesterday to sort of highlight the point of this isn't just a choice we made specifically because you know that that's what I wanted to do for funding. Our profitability guide was raised specifically to make the point that even as we shift between different funding sources, we're not

going to see any deterioration of our margin. In fact, we intend to improve it and expect to improve it. Right, so will you launch that deal again? And if so when, especially in the context of the market volatility that we're talking about, UH is we're certainly always looking to both expand our funding sources. And this is not our first

deal and certainly not our last deal. And as we watched the asset eccurities market will certainly come back to it with other products I've literally spoken with handful of ADS investors last twenty four hours and asked them, so, how do you feel, you know, just trying to get the market color, and the answer has been, Oh, you guys are the quality and the market is definitely very volatile, but their flight to quality that secretes to you guys.

And so we'll absolutely launched the next deal when the time is right a firm founder and CEO Max Levchin there. You can catch the full interview at Bloomberg dot com. Coming up, the Future of Money, We're gonna hear from Mike Novograts on Bloomberg New Crypto Show to talk about the role of digital assets in the War on Ukraine and more next. Global stock markets have whipsode investors in

recent weeks with the War on Ukraine. Yet Bitcoin, usually no stranger to wild moves, has been locked in its narrowest trading range more than a year, a trend that's likely to continue, according to Mike Novograts of Galaxy Digital. He joined Bloomberg New Crypto Show Bloomber Crypto earlier with

Matt Miller and Kaylee Lines. Take a listen. Let's say the dollar might never be the same, right I mean, I think the biggest thing that's happened in the last ten years, in lots of ways, maybe longer, is when Europe the US said, hey, Russia, those reserves that you thought were yours, they're not really your reserves. So what does that mean? It means the dollar or treasuries as a risk free asset isn't so resfree. It's not resfree if you're Russian, and maybe if you're Chinese, you're like,

might not be a risk free either, uh. And so I think it's we're entering in a world uh that's unknown where people are going to struggle to figure out what is the reserve currency. The US isn't going away, right, Uh, the dollar is not going away, but it's not going to be the sole place. And so I think you're gonna see this hodgepodge of assets. Gold, certainly digital digital

assets are gonna be part of that that bucket. The whole world is not gonna flip the bitcoin overnight, but you're going to see more and more people say I want to have some of my money outside of the sovereign. How do you deal with that debate? Though, because a lot of people are talking about the problem with cryptocurrency is that you can use it to circumvent um these sanctions.

On the other hand, people in the community are saying, that's the point, right, we don't want government censorship to be able to take away our property. So let's let's talk big and small. There's zero chance the Russian government can use cryptocurrencies a circumvent right. We're regular by twenty five different agencies Galaxy and I'm sure you know f t X and Finance and the others have have just as many. And so almost all crypto moves to exchanges.

Those exchanges have k y c amail processes just like Trade five exchanges. Uh. And so plus bitcoin is a public blockchain, you know. Way back we hired Mike Morell, who had run the c I a week Galaxy at a few other companies, to do a study on bitcoin. And he did like a ten weeks exhaust exhaustive study with the security agencies, with the three letter agencies, with crypto companies, and he came up with the thesis that if you're going to design a trap to catch criminals,

it would look a lot like the bitcoin blockchain. And so it's just Elizabeth Warren is just wrong when she thinks you can use bitcoin for the Russia to say sanctions, and we're looking at it the wrong way. The Russian ruble has depreciated over nine in the last ten years, just this year, Loan, I think lie to low is

like sixty. The Turkish Layra did the same. Bitcoin is a lifeline to people in countries with really poor stewardships of their economy, and we should be thrilled that Russians can get some of their money in bitcoins so they're not completely broke holding worthless rubles. Well, that brings me to the question of what the use cases because in the context we're talking about it, it's essentially as a replacement for fiat currencies. Is that how you view what

the fit future of digital assets is? In a store of value? So gilassis is a big word, right. I think bitcoin has this really beautiful lane of being digital gold or a store of value. Everyone has a human right to have the fruits of their labor stored somewhere, and if you don't trust your your government's currency, traditionally we put it in diamonds or gold. This is the first really digital version of that, and so I think that's bitcoin's use case. Now listen, there's also a lot

of other digital assets. There's digital uh stable coins, or digital dollars or euros. There's things ethereum digital networks and f t s right, and so the the the revolution that's happening isn't just in one lane. But I think for bitcoin it really is a place you store value.

Galaxy Digital head crypto investor Mike novograts there. You can now catch our weekly Bloomberg Crypto Show every Tuesday one in Eastern Time, co hosted by my colleagues Matt Miller and Kaylee Lines, where they covered the people, transactions and technology shaping the world of DeFi welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco. Two years into this pandemic, working women and especially moms are struggling. We see women

leave the workforce at historic levels. A new global study found that last year alone, roughly of women left their jobs between just March and September alone, most because of their responsibilities to care for others. Joining me now Rashman Johnny, founder of Girls Who Code and the author of a new book Pay Up The Future of Women and Work and why It's different than you think, talk to us about where we are right now as the pandemic hopefully

winds down. What are we not seeing, what's different than we think? Well, I think we know that workplaces have never worked for women, and over the pandemic, you know, women found themselves without childcare, with managers who didn't get it, with partners who weren't doing their fair share, and now women are in crisis. Millions of women have left the workforce. Working moms say they're anxious and depressed. We can't go

back to a broken system. What can business leaders do right now to support women in moms in the workforce. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on the tech industry in particular where it's so male dominated. Yeah, well, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity. As you know, Emily, the recent jobs report that came out eleven million open jobs. CEOs are desperate, desperate for talented workers to fill those jobs.

So it's the seller's market right now. So I think women have an opportunity to ask for what they need. And what we need is affordable childcare. What we need is paid leave. What we need is employers who are going to support us on our mental health. We can ask for what we need. We don't have to go back to the old normal. There are companies like Netflex, like Microsoft, eBay with really strong family and parental leave policies. Is that enough or do we need something at a

national level? And if we need something at a national level, why has it been so hard to make that first? I don't think it's enough. Look, many tech companies are doing you know, they're making progress right there offering some of these benefits. But for example, some technology companies like Facebook offer more in helping you freeze your eggs than in childcare. And we know that the reason why women are not returning back to work is because childcare is

too expensive. Most families spend more for their mortgage, more for their childcare than they do for their mortgage. It is literally the largest expense for families paid leave. It's not good enough just to tell that you offer paid leave. Companies like Apple still don't have gender neutral paid leave policies in two thousand and twenty two. That's archaic. So you can't just offer these policies. You have to mandate that men actually take them. Tie it to performance review,

change the corporate culture. You know, Emily, we just went through We're just in the middle of women's history of and we just went through International Wednesday, Today's pay Equity Day, And in every single boardroom there's a conversation happening about how to get a mentor, how to get a sponsor, how to learn how to be an investor. The conversations that I want to be happening is how to get your partner to do more laundry, how to get the

men in this corporate culture to do more laundry. How to make sure that we audit our corporate policies so that they're not exacerbating gender inequality at home, because until we get to gender equality at home, we're never going to get to gender equality in the workplace. And quite frankly, frankly, corporate feminism has been taking us down the wrong path.

And I I realized that, you know, for the past ten years, I've been telling young women to lean in, you know, to girl boss their way to the top. That the quality was just you know, an express train to the corner office. And I found myself in the pandemic with two little kids, trying to maintain a full time job, and it nearly broke me, and I realized that having it all, it's just a euphanism for doing it all. So we had to stop trying to fix

the woman and fix the system. And that includes technology companies who often tout that their policies and and the fact that they're trying to lift women up. Well, now it's trying. It's time to get meant to do more right. Let in, let's talk about that rushima. It doesn't help that there are tech founders and investors out there like

Joe Lonsdale perpetuating stereotypes about men taking parental leave. This tweet from him just a few months ago, saying great for fathers to spend time with their kids and support moms, but any man in an important position who takes six months of leave for a newborn is a loser. In the old days, men had babies and worked harder to provide for their future. That's the correct masculine response. I mean,

there are almost no words, no words, no words. I mean almost so many female founders I know get asked, well, you're planning to have kids? You know when you have a family. Is that it's as if being a mother is a distraction to your job and it's why we have the motherhood penalty. You know, the reason why we have a pay gap is because is between mothers and fathers. The minute you become a mom, suddenly you're less committed to your job. You're unable to build the next Facebook

or the next Twitter. And so we have to root out that discrimination, which is at its core. And oftentimes in tech companies that think they're libertarian, they think they're a meritocracy. You know, they do it the worst. You know, in many ways, rooting out the motherhood penalty is just an algorithm away. Tomorrow. Every single one of the Fortune on companies could get rid of the pay gap if they wanted to. Well, appreciate you out there trying to

shatter some of these stereotypes. Rashmachal Johnny, author of the new book pay app Always great to have you here. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Tesla is raising prices on all of its electric cars after CEO Elon Musk said costs were going up. The cheapest Model three in the US is now just under forty dollars. Credit Sweet says the price hikes were between

three and five in the US and China. Coming on speaking with Joe Lubin, Consensus CEO and founder and Ethereum co founder about their massive new round of funding and the future up blockchain companies as they lean in to the metaverse. The whole year, I thought we need to be a thirty thousand fifty thousand range in Bitcoin risk to the upside, not the downside. Um, but I think you know five years out bitcoin is not at five thousand. I'm wrong. On the adoption cycle, uh right, we see

an adoption cycle that accelerates. Bitcoin grew so much faster last year Crypto grew than the Internet did its best years in the nineties. Mike Novograt's there of Galaxy Digital saying Bitcoin could hit five hundred thousand dollars within five years. I want to kick off our crypto report now with our crypto contributor Sali Bostic Shanali bold prediction there from Mr novograts bold prediction, and to get there you would have to have bitcoin rise more than twelve times Emily.

So you have to wonder what will it take to get there and what does that adoption curve look like. Bitcoin is trading below where it was this time last year. We have seen if you take a look over here at the chart, a few days of a lift here, but that still leaves you only under forty thousand perfect coins. So there's a large question about exactly that. What does that adoption curve look like? Last year there was a ton of companies, a couple of sovereigns that have started

to discuss adopting it at a greater rate. But what is twelve times the that we've seen prior? All right, Janalie stick with us. I want to bring in our next guests, Consensus CEO and founder and co founder of Ethereum, Joe Lubin, whose company just announced a new four hundred fifty million dollar round of funding, huge round. Joe, and I want to talk about how you're using this funding and also putting it to work in kind of a

different way. Explain that, Um, thanks simply. Yeah. UM, So we are taking in we we've taken in four hundred fifty million dollars in our latest rays, and we've been working on being a crypto native company. UM. We've been working on progressively decentralizing ourselves for years. We've built infrastructure in the form of a consumer wallet, in the form of a metal mask institutional wallet UM and we've built

institutional grade staking facilities and u UM. We are converting the vast bulk of the pro seats of the rays to ether um, both because we have steaking infrastructure where we can generate yield on that, but also in advance of the merge where a THEREM one and ETHERREM two um affects the transition between proof of work and proof of steak and UM, and that's going to ring in an era of what we like to call ultrasound money where the ethereum token M becomes a very important financial

instrument in the global economy. All eyes on that merge, Joe. Indeed, you surpassed thirty million monthly active users with your Etherium based crypto wallet meta mask, and I'm curious how much awareness this is driving around Web three and in what's going to take? What number is it going to take for Web three to hit mainstream UM So where we're seeing a lot of crossing of the chasm, where we're seeing cryptocurrencies defy n f t s crossing the chasm

into mainstream adoption. Very recently, we've seen another major crossing where nation states are considering this technology to be of national security importance UM and UM. Firstly, every nation state has to get savvy. They have to start experimenting with the technology and gaining expertise and really wielding the tools of the blockchain and crypto ecosystem because if they don't,

their neighbors will. And UM. Monetary systems, financial systems are being wielded as weapons on the global geopolitical stage right now and UM. This technology is going to flip everything upside down, make it more bottom up, build a new trust foundation UM. And essentially nation nation states are are jumping in already, UM and UM. So it's it's elements like that that will drive adoption. Its elements like sports leagues and many other platforms that are starting to make

use of web three. Joe to that point, you know, there's a lot of conversation over the last year on how to think about bitcoin versus ethereum and how ethereum will get greater adoption on a global scale. How do you see the conversation playing out as people make decisions on what they're going to operate on. So it coin is a very important construct. We think of it as

digitally sound money, where gold is so physically sound money. Um. Ultrasound money is this new concept UM where the ether token is burned on every transaction and a huge amount of ether um is being frozen, essentially reducing the supply on the market via staking in the protocol itself as we moved to proof of steak and staking in defy

and in decentralized organizations and so UM. I think bitcoin will have an important role going forward UM as a money, but Ether is a fuel for the entire decentralized protocol economy which is going to eat the world. And ultrasound money is a deflationary money, and so we expect a huge amount of value to move into Ether in the next few months. You mentioned D five, but I'm curious about your take on n f T s. Here, Joe, we see volumes trending downward. Do you see this space

being stagnant? And if it grows more, what would be the catalyst to help it expand once again? So our ecosystem moves in masses, surges and consolidations UM. So from tokenization to i c o S to defy one point oh two n f t s to divide two point oh two doos UM and so we're going to continue to see major new constructs emerge in our ecosystem. They tend to happen on Ethereum first UM, and each one

drives a lot of excitement. Some are rational exuberance UM and months of high intensity activity and growth of the ecosystem and increase of value UM. But then we see consolidations as things shake out, and each of these pieces become fundamentally important. They become a foundation for for the

next fundamental construct to potentially be built. UM. I don't know exactly what the next phase is, but UM all of us in the ecosystem essentially use these UH, these more relaxing periods to gird up our our teams for the next wave. Joe, a group of our former employees and shareholders are asking for an audit of a transfer of assets, including intellectual property you made from Consensus a g two Consensus Software, Inc. What's your response to this?

Quickly so, the mothership Consensus a g UM has invested in north of two D projects, has incubated many of those projects. Internally, we spun out forty or so of those projects met a mask and Infura UM and our protocols teams spun out together UM and UM so we

we've transferred intellectual property in many situations into startups. The the group in question is um seeing the value of the success that the Consensus Software Inc. Is having now and they would like to apply the current valuation to an event that was priced by our house Cooper's at third at arm's length and uh um and done in the darkest moments of COVID. And so it's uh it's

an unreasonable ask. Unreasonable ask? Got it? Joe Lubin, co founder of Ethereum, CEO of Consensus, along with our Shinali Bask, thank you for taking the time accelerating the success of women and people of color in technology. My next guest has spent her career trying to do just that, and now she has a chance to shift into high gear. At All Rays, the nonprofit with the singular goal to

diversify the tech ecosystem. Joining me now, Mandela Schumacher Hodge Dixon, the new CEO of al Rays, in an exclusive interview, Mandela, thank you so much for joining us. You were named after Nelson Mandela, So I imagine change is something that is incredibly important to you. How are you going to change something specific sically? The representation of women in technology that so far seemed impossible to change. Wow, the million dollar question. Well, thank you so much, first of all,

Emily for having me here. I am beyond honor to be in conversation with you. And just like you said, my origination is in an insto racial marriage of two civil rights attorneys who are part of grassroots movements like the apartheid movement, the anti apartheid movement, and uh, you can just imagine the conversations around the dinner table that

we had. But empathy, inclusion, diversity, justice, UM, seeing people valuing people is a core part of my d n A and I definitely will bring that to the work at all rays where we support the success like you mentioned of women and non binary leaders in tech. And I think the thing that I'm really going to add to it is my long history in community development. We support funders, founders, operators, LPs, angel investors. When you think about all the wrongs of the tech ecosystem, they are

within the all race community. We are twenty two thousand strong. And I think that going forward, if we have a more unified approach to how we are going to create seasonic change, then I think that will start having different outcomes. All Rays was founded by power women investors who come from competing firms, but all want the same thing. More women writing checks, more women getting funded. What have they told you that they want you to do differently in

this next phase of All Race. Yeah, well, there's a big focus on the founders. So the founders are the entrepreneurs and they're really the lynchpin of this entire ecosystem. And one of the stats that's I know you know very well and that you report on a lot, is this two percent number, This two percent of funding that is going to women founders, And I want to clarify for everyone that it's a little bit deeper than at It's actually seventeen percent of venture capital in went to

female founders. But if you break that down, fifteen percent of the seventeen percent went to mixed gender teams, whereas two percent went to female founded only teams. Right, So we are seeing an uptick in the capital flowing to female founders, but whether or not they have a male co founder, right, that's something to dig further deep into. But this question around why two percent? Why does it

keep staying here? I really want to ask a different question, which is who is owning this capital that is making the decision not to deploy more capital to female founders. Right, if we continue to give the same types of people the same opportunity to take a swing at bat, of course they're going to have a higher probability of hitting

a home run. Part of the issue is giving women and non binary leaders a swing at back so we can get our capital, our mentorship, all hands on tech, access to the portfolio founders, access to all that comes along with the capital to really have it be a strong arm in our business to get different outcomes and spending those numbers a slightly different way. That means more than eighty percent of venture capital is going to all

male teams. Right, you were one of the You were one of the first black women to be raising money in Silicon Valley, and I'm curious how that personal experience is going to inform the work that you do. Yeah. You know one of our board members, just Lee, who was the first female partner at Sequoia Capital. One thing that she brings up oftentimes in our conversations and even with our all race community this morning, is this notion of me being an insider but having an empathy and

a deep understanding of being an outsider. Right. Just like you mentioned, this is back in two thousand eleven, before you know, Jesse Jackson was in Silicon Valley knocking on the doors of all the tech companies demanding for them to release their diversity numbers, before this really became a mainstream topic. I was a black woman from at the time, living in Los Angeles who has a background as a teacher,

trying to break into this world. I had many things stacked against me, right, my pedigree, my identity, my lack of insider knowledge, and so I have a deep understanding of what it's like to break in as an outsider, and also what it is like to transition from a founder, a two time founder, a two time operator, an investor in LP, all of these hats I've floored in my now eleven year career out here, and so that was part of the magic of what I'm bringing to all

rays of just understanding the nuances of this ecosystem. Well, change is certainly not going to happen without a healthy dose of reality but also optimism. So I appreciate hearing a little optimism in your voice. Mandela Schumacher Hajje Dixon, the new CEO of All Rays. Thank you. We will be cheering you on. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're gonna be joined tomorrow by Aaron Levy, CEO of Box, along with Jared's Pittaro, corporate

vice president of Mike Rossoft. We'll be talking about the future of work. That's tomorrow. This is Bloomberg