Twitter's Whistle-Blower and Zoom Earnings

doesn't even know how many bots there are. US lawmakers have vowed to investigate how this plays into the forty four billion dollar lawsuit. Plus zooms transition from an essential pandemic tool to an enterprise business juggernaut, let's take longer than expected. The company reported the lowest sales gain in its history. Zoom CFO joins us this hour, and Meta learned about the FTC's lawsuit over it's within VR acquisition

via a tweet. Could this be the new norm? Under chair Lena Con Twitter's former head of security blowing the whistle. His name is Peter zach Coo, and he's filed an official complaint alleging egregious deficiencies in the way the platform handles personal data and bought accounts Twitter, refuting the claims, calling them opportunistic. How could this change Elon Musk's attempt to get out of that forty four billion dollar deal. Musks lawyers, as Katie said, have already subpeded zach COO.

There's a hearing scheduled for Wednesday here to discuss Bloomberg's Jeff Feely, who covers the courts of Delaware for us, and our own Kurt Wagner, who covers Twitter. So, Kurt, who is Peter zach co and what has he claimed? Yeah, this is someone who is incredibly well respected in the security industry. He came to Twitter in late You may remember, Emily that in the summer of that year there was

a big breach of the company. A bunch of very high profile accounts were hacked by a teenager and Jack Dorsey, then the CEO, you know, made a big plan to bring someone in with some real kind of reputation and stock in the industry. And so his you know, goes by Mudge is his nickname. And he was there until early this year two when he was actually fired or dismissed by CEO Prague Augerawal So very recently in the

building at Twitter, so he was there very recently. Twitter responding to his claims, saying, um, this is from the CEO Parague Aggerawall, I believe you obtained this memo the reviewing the claims. But what they've seen so far is a false narrative, riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuraes, inaccuracies, and presented without important context. Give us more details on what he is claiming. Yeah, I mean he's he's essentially saying that the company has not taken the appropriate steps to

protect user data. He's saying that they haven't taken appropriate steps to update you know, basic software on their data servers. Right. And the big thing, and this is the thing that you know Elon Musk is is jumping on, is that he says, well, the company doesn't actually know how many bots it has on the platform. Right. It's a little

bit more nuanced than that. We can get into that, but generally, you know, when you hear that in your Elon musk your ears perked up, because this is what you have been arguing all along, is that the company doesn't actually know how many bots it has. And here is a top senior executive who reported to the CEO, essentially reaffirming what Elon has been saying. So jeaff Musk floors have already said, we want to talk to this guy. How could this potentially change the case? What's going to

happen in this hearing? Well, first and foremost, let's let's stop for a second and say that it's way too early to know whether this guy's got the goods or not. Uh, you know, people are gonna have to dig in and see, you know, whether there's meat on the bone for these allegations. Now,

tomorrow is not about this guy. It's about allegations that the Musk people have made that the Twitter folks are hiding witnesses specific knowledge of the spam and the body accounts, and they're offering up, you know, executives and directors who don't have specific knowledge. Judge is gonna decide whether or not Twitter has to make, you know, the people with the goods available. So, Kurt, I know you've been talking to a lot of sources. There's been some reaction from

within the company. What are people saying? Yeah, I mean there's a number of current employees who can imagine aren't very thrilled right to see someone who was so recently on the staff level at the company now coming forward and making these accusations. There's been a lot of speculation as to the timing, right, I mean, we are right in the middle of this very contentious deal and suddenly this feels like a huge rapt gift for Elon Musk,

So there has been speculation there as well. But you know, ultimately this just adds even more kind of chaos and confusion to what's already been a very uncertain time at a company like this. Jeff, how often does it happen that, you know, someone comes forward claiming to have, you know, this poking gun, you know, at the perfect time in a high profile business case like this. It has happened

before in a case called Acorn per senius Um. So it's not unusual to have whistleblowers emerge when there's publicity about these big M and A fights, and it's just everything has been you know, drama central in this case, so it's not a bit surprising that we've had this development. So what are we what are you watching for what happens next? Well, again, we have this hearing tomorrow which will decide whether or not he gets more access to

the box stuff. Going forward, we're basically keeping an eye on the process of gathering ammunition. Both sides are gathering ammunition to make their case, and we're hurtling towards October seventeen, the huge, you know, Trial of the Century in Wilmington, Delaware. You are going to be very busy that day, my friend, along with our own Kurt Wagner. Thank you both giving us rather that week I should say thank you both. Obviously you'll keep us posted on the drama, all right.

Coming up, HBO gets a huge win with House of the Dragon. Just how good an omen is this for Stree Roots will discuss next. This is Bloomberg. The Game of Thrones fan club was in the house Sunday for House of the Dragon. The premier drew nine point nine million viewers on television and online, making it the best ever series debut in HBO history. It's becoming a battle of epics between HBO and Amazon, which is about debut.

It's Lord of the Rings, been off, the Rings of Power joining me now, Rich Greenfield partner, I'd light shed partner. So House with the Dragon, Rich, what did you think I mean? This is sort of this is what HBO does best. I mean, big, epic, super expensive, tens of millions of dollars in episode. But this is the bread and butter of HBO, and I think the the big question for investors is going to be how does this

evolve over the course of the next twelve months. Obviously, as you know, Emily Warner Media was acquired by Discovery. Essentially the companies came together into a merger, and at some point next summer, Discovery Plus is going to basically be you know, matched together with HBO Max, probably still called HBO Max, and we're gonna see sort of how

those two brands come together into one service. But I think when you look at something like House of of the Dragon, this is this is everything that HBO is known for over the last twenty years, you know, incredibly well produced, high end premium content. Well, we're already seeing some of those growing pains as this, uh, you know, Discovery tries to merge these two cultures. What's your expectations about how it's all going to play out. I mean, look,

you've got a company, you know. The reality is for Discovery this was a stay, right, I mean, Discovery did not have a future as a standalone company, they were going to be in deep trouble just being in the cable network world, especially in the nonfiction sort of that world was not going to look pretty over the course of the next five to ten years. And I don't think anyone really believed in the future of Discovery Plus.

And so because A. T and T needed to get out of the Warner Media business, it sort of is this, you know, you really unique opportunity for sort of a kicksay for John Malone and David Zas left to sort of wind up being in control of one of the world's largest media companies. The negative is they have a lot of debt, and so that's why you're seeing sort of a lot of cost cutting in a lot of

sort of retrenchment strategically. But I think the question is going to be this is an incredible group of assets, and how much of their focus is on building for

the future. There's no doubt in my mind that the future of television is going to be streamed, right like linear key V is dying, and so how does Warner Media, which still has a tremendous amount of cable network you know, broadcast cable network assets, how do they transform that into the future and can they do it with that much debtload. Obviously you're seeing a lot of investors who are skeptical

of their prospects so far. Does the successive House of the Dragon bode well for Amazon's Lord of the Rings project and all the money and time that they spent on it, well, I think it's it's funny that you bring up Lord of the Rings because it's actually a great example of the different strategy that you're now seeing at Warner Media or sorry, Warner Brothers Discovery, I should say,

versus the old management team. Because if you go today, Emily, if any of the viewers who are watching this turn on Amazon's you know, Prime Video, they can actually watch all of the original Lord of the Rings. Now you'd say, the original Lord of the Rings, those are Warner Brothers. Those should be on HBO Max, and they're on HBO Max.

But they're now also on Amazon's Prime Video. So you see this culture now that's really changing inside of Warner Media, where instead of making it the exclusive home of content, they're really going back to more of a licensing model where sure it's on HBO Max, but now you can also get it on Amazon Prime, whereas that never would

have happened under the prior management team. You're seeing a real focus on licensing to generate profits versus the only court of sort of north Star was streaming, meaning HBO Max. HBO Max is no longer the sole focus of Warner Brothers Discovery. They're looking to make money anyway possible, including licensing the third parties like Amazon. We're also seeing these

streamers make more moves into sports. News today that Amazon is going to show its Thursday night football and bars and restaurants as part of a it's deal with direct TV, and you know you talked about, you know, for the first time ever, they're being more viewers on streaming than on cable. Is sports really the only way to take these stream moves to the next level, to that next

generation or chapter of growth. Well, E sports is a great way to get people to come in, right If you have Champions League, which is what Paramount Plus just acquired, it's the only way you can watch Champions League as you've got to sign up for Paramount Plus. If you want to watch ww e's WrestleMania, you have to have Peacock. You know, if you you know each of these platforms is buying exclusive sports rights. Now that the negative is obviously you can't. You don't own these you don't own

the content. You have to keep fighting every three five said, whatever the year as are, you have to keep fighting for this content because you don't own it the way you own a piece of content. You know, Netflix own stranger things forever, like it's not disappearing. They don't have to go rebid for those rights in three years. So sports is a really a double edged sword. But I think what's interesting, Emily is it's the last thing that's

been holding the bundle together. Like right now, you can't name an entertainment show on traditional television that anyone cares about. The only thing that's sort of holding the sport there, the traditional multi channel video bundle together has been sports. And even now sports are finally starting to move to streaming. And I think that's why you've seen a record piece

of chord cutting seven eight percent. Now cord cutting is becoming a real problem for all of these legacy media companies because they've moved so much great content, including sports, to streaming, and the tech companies are coming in and bidding on these sports rights. You know, we think the big next thing you're gonna see in the next four weeks, we believe Apple is gonna buy Sunday Ticket, which has been on Direct TV for years. We think that moves

over to Apple. And so you're seeing real massive seismic change that is going to have big problems for anybody in the cable network business. Now. I know you're a prolific Twitter and we were speaking earlier about this whistleblower that's come forward that could potentially give Elon Musk and Edge and this battle Royale to get out of that billion dollar deal to buy Twitter. What's your take. You know, it comes down to essentially one fundamental issue is did

Twitter falsified it's public files? Because the deal that Alan Must agreed to didn't talk about bots or the percentage of bots or any of that. It basically just relied on the validity of Twitter's public filings. And if you read Twitter's public filings, it says, you know, we make a lot of assumptions in how we look at the

bot number. We think it's under five percent, but we could be wrong if Twitter knowingly knew the number was far larger than five and every one of Twitter's filings was essentially fraudulent because they were basically filing fraudulent documents with the SEC. Then Musk has a case. Now, I find it hard to believe that Jack Dorsey and Ned Siegel and sort of the entire management team at Twitter has willfully for years been filing false SEC documents. It's

obviously possible. I think it's unlikely unless those documents, Unless those filings with the SEC are knowingly false. Twitter has already said they could have bad mistakes and how they did this. It's that this is not an exact science. If that's the case, Ellen will be paying fifty right. And to be clear, we're talking about the number of bots that advertisers that that that actually see advertising that are counted at m a is not the number of

bots overall. Um, that's what they're referring to with that five percent less than five percent number. Correct. It's there are certainly good bots that are part of Twitter that

you actually would want there. But in terms of sort of the spami part that shouldn't be counted as actually um, you know, monetize able d a uses Twitter calls them m d a us is actually the term Twitter uses they have said repeatedly that the percentage of bots on a quarterly basis is sub five percent based on their analysis, but that analysis could be flawed. You would have to believe that they knowingly knew, I mean, they factually knew the number was north of five and chose to do

different disclosure in the SEC filings. That's the only way must gets out of paying right right, okay? Which Queenfield Hid Partners to have you here, Rich, Thank you for stopping by. Zoom was the pandemic's golden child, but that transition from an essential covid Ara tool to an enterprise business platform may not happen as quickly as some expected. Let's talk about all that and more. Was Zoom. CFO Kelly Steckelberg here, Kelly. Great to have you back with us.

So let's talk about the good news and the less good news. Obviously, you're you're seeing growth from enterprise customers, but you're losing consumers and small businesses. Let's start there. When, how and where do you expect that to stabilize? So great to see you, Emily, Thank you. Um. As you mentioned, we're really pleased with the performance in the enterprise, which

grew year over year. We can talk about zoom Phone and the very strong performance there, but in our online segment of the business, as you mentioned, there certainly were some headwinds, a lot of it due to strengthen the dollar, as well as impact that we're seeing from the war in Europe, but also just slower acquisition of new customers at the top of the funnel, which is having impact as people are moving around the world again and going out to happy hour with their friends rather than doing

that over zoom and slowing sales growth among corporate customers. Is that a sign of slowing corporate demand? Is that because of the macro economic issues we're seeing. So we had a very strong quarter from an enterprise perspective. Our overall bookings came in stronger than we expected and revenue at now we are starting to see our enterprise sales cycles moving towards more normalized enterprise cycles, which meant they were a little bit more back end loaded in the quarter.

That led to higher than expected deferred revenue, though just a little bit less contribution to revenue in the quarter itself. But zoom Phone was very strong performance. We crossed over that four million seat mark in August we're excited to talk about We had two record deals with seat size of greater than hundred and we're seeing strength in some of our new products, including Zoom Contact Center and Zoom

i ke for sales. Bigger picture, there's this narrative that the pendulum swinging back to the office, Apple calling workers back to the office next month. Employees are pushing back, yes, but you know this is still the policy at least as of now. I know. Zoom did its own survey on hybrid work. You found that executives still want that hybrid work environment. How are you adding all of this up and trying to figure out how this will translate

into demand. Yeah. So the great thing about Zoom technology is it enables work both at home and in the office, and they're both really important. So we see organizations recognizing that they need to maintain their Zoom licenses for their employees that are working at home, but also our technology like Zoom rooms, smart gallery workplace reservations allow them to then interact with those employees that are in the office

in a very inclusive way. And so having the right technology in your conference room is becoming more and more important every single day. We've all come used to seeing everybody's face on a square, and so technology like smart gallery enables that even if you're the one like me who I've moved out of the state of California sitting in Texas, sees everybody that's in that room and feels

really included in that conversation. And so we're excited about the prospects of hybrid work and Zoom technology is there to support it. So just about thirty seconds left, Kelly, what is the next year of gross look like to you? Where does most of that growth come from? Quickly? So, certainly it's going to come from our enterprise segment, and we are also focused on lots of new initiatives in the online segment that will drive it first to being

flat but eventually a growth driver as well. All Right, Kelly Stuckelberg's CFO of Zoom. Always good to have you here. Kelly, thank you for stopping by. Well, come back to Bloomer Technology and Emily Changese San Francisco. The FTC is breaking with tradition and it's clamped down on big tech. Meta says it learned that the Federal Trade Commission was suing the company over it's within virtual reality acquisition via a tweet. The FTC typically gives companies a chance to meet with

commissioners and argue their case before filing a lawsuit. Here to explain what happened, our very own Alex Brenka what happened indeed, Alex Yeah, Meta executives and lawyers apparently found out from this tweet that the FTC was suing them in kind of an unusual case that I'm sure we

can kind of talk about in a second. Basically, what typically happens in these situations is of the deals large enough UM, they have to file documents to the FTC, which our sources told us they did they felt hundreds of documents and data points, and then if a suit is imminent, usually there are depositions before that happens. No depositions happened in this case, UM, and the company was alerted to this via tweet. I will say the FTC

initially didn't comment on this story. They did get back to us today saying that they followed typical practice by notifying the company after the fact. That being said, our sources say this was unusual to not have any inkling UM that they would be coming for them to sue to block this virtual reality deal. What is this signal

about the FTCs approach on future cases. Yeah, it's a bit of a different approach now under m Chairperson Lena con You'll remember Cohn is a a Biden appointee M who was basically brought into the agency that is meant to enforce anti trust laws, and she's taken a pretty aggressive approach. This suit in and of itself, UM makes kind of a little used argument um called the nascent competition claim that basically means that they are suing to block this deal on the future potential of this small

and growing industry. UM. And they've alleged that Meta is a position of the of Within and its apps Supernatural can actually camp down competition because it doesn't give the tech giant the opportunity to use its resources to create more competition in this space. So a lot of unique things happening with this case, for sure, but it all alludes to this kind of more aggressive posturing up Kahn and the Democratic Commissioners on the FTC against big tech companies.

I spoke with Congressman David Ceellini yesterday and asked him about Lena Kahan and her approach and this lawsuit in particular. Some critics have said this is such a small company, wise the FTC bothering with bothering with this. Of course, Meta has said the deal would increase competition. Take a listen to what Representative Cellini had to say. I don't think we can take any representation made by Meadow or Facebook remark Zuckerberg seriously, time and time again, they've been

found to be engaging in anti competitive behaviors. M He went on to argue how much Meta and Facebook in particular are anti competitive, and how supportive he is of Lena Khan's approach. You know, of course that's just one lawmaker. But what do we know about the support that Lena Khan has in Congress to continue? You know, you'll remember the House came out with a report basically pointing out that Meta alone had acquired more than a hundred smaller

companies in the decades prior. And this within case is the only time the FTC has actually sued preemptively to stop one of those deals. For folks like Cecilina, No, they might be looking at things like the ongoing back and forth that Meta still has regarding the Instagram and what'sapp acquisitions UM. That issue is also with the FTC

from Lena cons predecessor UM. So I think that folks on who take that kind of approach that that he was talking through there, think that the FTC perhaps hasn't done enough on the anti trust side to make sure that these giant tech companies aren't basically hoovering up everyone out there to either camp down or assure that they have UM what they said in in this lawsuit is a monopoly on a potential future market. All right, Alex Brenka,

thank you for your reporting on this. Of course we'll continue to follow now, moving on to the world of cybersecurity, shares of Palo Alto Networks sword as much as twelve Tuesday after the network security company reported strong quarterly results, saying it expects sales to increase by at least in fiscal year three, but can the cybersecurity landscape? Will the cyber landscape sustained its growth? To talk about all that

and more is Palo Alto Network CEO Nikesh Arora. Nikesh, great to have you back with us as always, so look very positive eardings report to beat h good forecast. You seem to be bucking the trend because we've heard a lot of bad news from other tech company is how so, I don't know what. I don't know, Emily, maybe I don't know something. But we're seeing noise. We're not seeing a signal out there telling us that there is impending doom. Look, we see inflation, we see macroeconomic trends.

We saw a version of this two years ago with a pandemic. People thought that the floor was going to fall away from under us. All went to zero dollars. Revenues vanished for companies, and we seem to have powered through. So I don't think this one is as bad as that when it was two years ago. Do you expect a man to keep up though? Or could companies tighten their belts over the next few quarters and could not impact how much software and cybersecurity services they want to buy.

You know, it's interesting if I've been talking to investors all day and a whole bunch of market commentators about our stock and what we see in the market, and the pandemics said about a series of transformations and technology because companies saw that they were wanting in many areas they air e commerce infrastructure was not up to snuff, which they had to upgrade because they're trying to sell

everything on the web. Their customer interaction mechanisms were not in place because every customer wanted to interact with them digitally because they didn't want to touch people or see people anymore. So a lot of technology transformation projects started in the midst of the pandemic, even a whole bunch

of the cloud transformation so and hybrid works. If you add all that up, the unleashed two cities of technology transformations and couple that with the tremendous amount of cyber activity you've seen on the awareness and that so we're seeing a deal when for security, which is I think more secular and might get dented on the margin, but I think it's still one of the safest and strongest sectors to be in overall. How would you describe the

threat landscape right now? Obviously there's this ongoing war on Ukraine, but the potential, you know, huge cyber apocalypse that you know, some were warning about with that hasn't necessarily materialized. There's ongoing tension with China, of course. How do you how do you see these global factors impacting the threat? Well, like I think, if you'll step back and look at it, you know, every one of our companies has become digital.

It's uh and every time you have digitally enabled businesses to open the door for people to be able to enter from whatever they want. On top of that, we made everybody work from home. So suddenly your attack surface is what we call it, suddenly expanded. Every employee's home is a potential attack factor, everybody's laptop is every every interaction that you have with your customers digitally is a potential way if you're getting hacked. And we've seen that.

We've seen that in ransomware. We've seen that business email compromise is seventy percent of the incidents last year. We're driven from business email compromise or ransomware. Ransomware spent. You know, songs have gone to a million dollars per ran serware went every four hours. There's a ransomware leak on some website somewhere. So clearly this is not just a nation

state threat. It also is an economic opportunity for small you know, hackers or hacker groups just build consortia to start making sort of making these economic demands on a bunch of people or ransomer perspective. You're seeing the threat landscape get more sort of adverse. At the same time, in a nation, states are looking at preparedness because of the Ukraine that urgency. Am I ready to withstand an attack? We haven't seen a cybersecurity applica lips because we've actually

had real lives lost and devastation costs in Ukraine. However, do not underestimate the amount of cyber activities has gone down in terms of trying to bring the ukin in websites down in you know, white activists, right activist going after Russian sides because they don't like more Russia's doing. So you are seeing a tremendous amount of cyber activity activity we haven't seen before. There's a new whistleblower in social media and I'm just dying to get your thoughts

on this. This former employee of Twitter, former head of security. They're claiming negligent security policies, you know, egregious deficiencies and how they're handling personal data that they don't know how many pots they're even are. You know, there's been some pushback on this. You know, this sounds like something could be happening within a lot of companies. What's your take, I don't know. I don't know the particulars of the situation at Twitter. I read about it probably just as

recently as you did. I don't know what's happening there. I will say that one of the things we've been canvassing for and hoping for is more scrutiny and more

awareness at boards about the threats of cybersecurity. I think cybersecurity is the biggest business continuity to risk in the twenty one century, and I don't think boards are well prepared to understand the magnitude, understand the impact that can be had, and really to be able to assess whether their individual company is up to snuff in those capabilities. So I think it's it's in need of the hour.

I think the SEC is looking at various mechanisms to be able to create sort of regulation around how people have to disclose cyber activity and cyber readiness, just the way we do in audit committees and finance, etcetera. Well, there's also this quote number that we've been hearing over and over again, six open cyber jobs. I mean, you mentioned it's the responsibility of board, but you know it is it the government who should be stepping in here

to help fill these jobs? Is it country? I heard three and a half million, Emily, so I'm glad if it's six d it's a lot. Yes, there's a lot of jobs, and you know we're almost a full employment, so yes, we need to make sure that keep ample trained people. I think this is a double dual legs problem. This is not a singular problem of finding six in

a thousand cybersecurity enthusiasts or professionals. I think the fundamental problem is we have not applied ample automation and security, which requires a bunch of clean data, requires a bunch of integration, a brunch for platformization for cybersecurity, which is what we're trying to do in a whole bunch of others are I think the only we solved the cybersecurity problem is if he can build a eye that actually stops these attacks whilst are happening. That today's model is

not going to work. Today's model is to be something happens. We collect all the data and large data lakes, and then we have people go attack hacked them, to look at them to see what actually happened, and manually try to find the problem. I think those days are over requires a lot more automation. We think we can all the majority that's six dollars or three half billion people problem by doing that. Yeah, you also need more cybersecurity

train professions. Now, so curious for your thoughts on this last one here, you of course were Massio. She sends number two long before he launched the Vision Fund. Now we know he's lost tens of billions of dollars on some of these tech investments. What do you make of this? And what do you think the legacy of Massa and soft Bank will be in spite of this? Alright? You know Massa as a resilient individual. Um, he's been through this before. He went from boom to bust to the

last Internet Boston. He sort of reinvented himself. And the one thing I loved about him is that he has immense appetite for risk. And his appetite for risk and his ability to forget his failures is what all of Silicon Valley teaches us. So hopefully he can recover from that and go build it back himself. And I think last time he was down to a billion dollars. I think it's a lot more this time than the last time. So I have faith in his ability to rest, to

resurrect himself. But yes, I do think he got a bunch of companies at the wrong end. All Right, Nikesh, a CEO of palots On Network, is good to have you back, Nicksh, thank you for stopping by. All right, Coming up, how the crypto winter coupled with an energy crunch is impacting bitcoin mining war on that next. This is Bloomberg time now for our crypto report, and the usually volatile bitcoin has gotten stuck trading within a narrow range ahead of the fed's annual Jackson Hole meeting later

this week, covering around six hundred dollars. Mike Alfred, board member of the bitcoin minor Iris Energy, and the crypto focused investment firm Eagle Brook Advisers, talked to Kayleie Lines on the Bloomberg Crypto shirt show earlier to talk about the markets impact on bitcoin mining. It's certainly been a difficult time. And I was with a bunch of the miners in Miami about a month ago now, and you know,

the moods a little darker. Uh. The bitcoin price being under twenty thousand obviously isn't good for anyone, because profitability tends to flip negative for a lot of the large miners around those levels. Um. You know, the cost of machines has gone down though, so if you're a buyer of machines here, uh, you know, you're getting a much

better price than you were a year ago. UM. And energy prices, while they're going up, they could certainly, um you know, be held down a little bit by by macro uncertainty, at least in the US where there's sort of an oversupply of energy. So I actually believe just based on the hash ribbons, which is a metric that looks at the thirty day moving average of the global hash rate relative to the sixty day it just flipped positive again in the last week, right after being negative

since sort of at some point during July. UM. I actually think the capitulation phases over. There were miners that were literally buying bitcoin at forty thousand and then they puked that bitcoin back into the market at twenty UM. I think that speaks to, you know, the general strategy that people should have around their balance sheet here. I

think there's two strategies that sort of work well. One is just selling your bitcoin every day the way Irish Energy does, and that way you can grow just add a cash flow or like het eight, just holding the bitcoin indefinitely, but using equity and debt strategically and not taking on too much debt and then growing at a reasonable speed so that you don't get caught at the wrong part of the cycle flat footed. We think that in mid September the merge may finally happen. Ethereum will

move from proof of work to proof of steak. How does the upcoming merge affect your review on how you want to be investing in in these kinds of companies, Well, I think the bitcoin only um. You know, miners are always going to be a good bet because if you believe in a decentralized or truly decentralized monetary system, it will not function properly under a proof of steak model.

So as much as ethereum could be an interesting currency for doing n f t S or right doing de fi or whatever, um it's not going to be the same thing that bitcoin is if if it moves off a proof work and so I don't think it changes anything with the thesis, Like if if people want to speculate on n f T s right that that doesn't

bother me one bit on a free market capitalist. But if you want to own a truly hard asset with a supply cap that cannot be disrupted, that cannot be sort of taken over by any one party, you kind of need to stick with proof of work. And therefore I think bitcoin mining, at least again in North America, has a great future Mike Alfred. They're Irish Energy and Eagle Brook Advisors with Kaylee Lines. Workers are fighting executives pushing for a full and even part time return to

the office. The latest example coming from Apple. More than two hundred Apple employees have signed a position the manning the company continue it's flexible work policies instead of it's planned return to the office September five and requiring company employees to come in two to three days a week. They want hybrid schedules with direct reports rather than a corporate blanket policies. This comes at a time when the term quiet quitting is making the rounds on social media.

The idea is not that employees actually quit, but instead do the bare minimum that the job requires to maintain a healthy work life balance. Here to discuss Daniel Chake, co found and CEO of Greenhouse, which offers recruiting software as a service. So does the Apple store resonate with

you based on what you're seeing from your clients? Daniel, Yeah, you know, we've heard a lot of companies who went, you know, in the pandemic, they all went and remote and distributed, and then now when things are changing again, they want their employees back in the office because they think that being there and being able to see those

employees somehow equals culture or somehow equals proactivity. And I think what's interesting about the Apple story is what the employees are saying is we're being productive, We're giving our best, and the way we can be the most productive is

by is by working in this more flexible way. So it's it's kind of you hear it in the same sentence as this kind of quite quit in conversation, But it's actually, to me more a story of the power of employees to create value and the role of the company in either helping them do that or or trying to change how they do that well. And you'll see

whether Apple acquiesces here in any way. But you know, doesn't seem that the pendulum is swinging back to the office, and executives or those who won't work us back to the office, are having more power than they did a year ago when we were, you know, just starting to work through O Macron. We'll see. You know, Look, the pendulum has been swinging for decades in favor of employees who have more power and more control than ever before.

And so companies are finding themselves in this position of having to be people first and and and taking that on as as an opportunity and as a strategy has been very successful. Now some companies kind of or leaders wanted to be the way it was, or or someone trying to return to that think they're I think some of them are finding themselves stuck. And you know, ultimately,

value is created by talent and people. If you're, as a leader not able to put those people in the best position to create value, then you know you've got a real You've got a real problem. And so look, I think there are some companies, like you know, Apple, who have a huge investment in real estate and a big state of the art office, and they want to position that as an asset and as a strength to

those employees. And some employees want that. For some people, no doubt, getting up going to an office being with other people is really attractive and really helpful to them,

But for others it's not. And so I think what you're more seeing is, you know, multiple different kind of talent pools developing where some talent wants to work remotely, oh, their talent wants to work in the office, and companies are kind of having to choose which part of the talent pool they want to plane, but in all cases they have to choose based on what the talent wants. It's it's the people first that's driving decisions. How how

is this in acting hiring and retention? I mean, are you seeing a lot of people quit, a lot of people voting with their feet? Well, look, unemployment is still at historically you know, very low levels, and I think it's it's easier than ever to get a job, right. You know, people can just swipe left on you and swipe left on someone else and they're working in a new company. They don't have to get a new you know,

commute um. And so what we're seeing is, yeah, people are resigning, and you know, in higher numbers than they had been. But people are getting hired faster than ever. And I think we've got almost two job openings still for everyone job seeker in the market today. So it's still a talent market and companies are doing their best

just to try to keep up and compete. Let's talk about quiet quitting and this idea of just doing the bare minimum, not going to try too hard, not going to over exert myself because you know, you know what, I'm just gonna do my job. I'm just gonna do my job. Um what what impact is this having. Yeah, look, there's nothing wrong with doing your job and not you know, ruining your life in order to in order to achieve um.

But at the same time, you know, at the point where it kind of moves over into this area of sort of you know, sort of quitting or taking advantage of the system, you know, it becomes a problem. I think what this has shown is that for many companies, they don't really have a great way of measuring what

a good employee actually is. They don't actually know what output or what quality really looks like, and so they use this thing of how long are you logged into your laptop or are you sitting in your cubicle instead of knowing which my employees are actually great and what do I do to inspire discretionary effort. I think the companies who are people first focus on those questions, Um, you know, have an advantage and they don't have this problem of of employees dropping out, you know, way of

telling them all right, well, certainly lots to continue to follow. Greenhouse, co founder and CEO Channel appreciate you stop and buy and give us your take. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Coming up later this week Wednesday, do not miss my conversation with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and check out our podcast. You can find it anywhere you get your podcast studio at one point out and Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily Check in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg