now it's easier than ever to manage your account. get started at xfinity.com/myaccount emily: a revolt at reddit. almost 200,000 people calling for ellen pao's removal. we will look at what may be in store for the website. emily: i am emily chang and this is "bloomberg west." the sec reportedly investigating illegal trading. we will hear from arthur levitt.

is bitcoin the answer to greece's problems? and why some greeks are considering moving into bitcoin. and uber readies its biggest international office. all of that is ahead. but to our lead, redditors are rebelling, calling for ellen pao's resignation. a vast majority of the reddit community believes that she has overstepped boundaries and will run reddit into the ground. the petition was posted 4 weeks ago. the number of signatures skyrocketed over the weekend after pao fired talented director victoria taylor. hundreds of moderators shutdown message boards. pao went to read it and said "we screwed up." pao has been trying to cut down on harassment on the site, but redditors complain they are curtailing their freedom of speech. we have our guests here --

peter, you signed the petition. i have to start with you. why did you sign it? why was the victoria taylor so valuable to redditt? peter: as to why victoria taylor was so valuable to redditt, she was the go-between between volunteer moderators who are the lifeblood of the community -- she was in between those volunteer moderators and the administrators or the employees of reddit and she was seen as a good line of communication in a company and community that otherwise had become somewhat dysfunctional, where the people who ran the company, ellen pao did not communicate effectively with the users. it was a question of governance and communication and with her removal there was a severance of

the last possible link in the train. i signed the petition -- i am not sure if people pay attention to change.org petitions. i like to think so. for me, it was so many moderators were unhappy with the situation, with her leadership. it is unfortunate for someone like that to be the leader of an important corporation. emily: bob, you try to make some of the same changes atdigg. what do you think? bob: this is deja vu all over again. this is history repeating itself. what reddit will have to learn the power users of reddit, the moderators, have much more control over that site then, say, i do on facebook as a user or a twitter user does. emily: outside control. bob: there are lots of people

who visit reddit and get their news and there are people who run the company and then there are these power users. they are a really important stakeholder. i think what reddit is apologizing for and what they are hopefully learning, they are such an important stakeholder, you have to treat them as though they are your board of directors. you have to listen to them and create features for them. i think one of the things that happened at digg was we occasionally slipped into the mindset of the prison warden versus the inmates. you get frustrated or if they are controlling our site, we can't let them take over our site. but you've got to get out of that prison warden, they are the inmates and collaborate. emily: but people left digg and went to reddit. and ellen pao has made his apology and you look at the comments and they are some unhappy. >> she is in this defensive

position where she said, i tried to apologize to you guys before, but you down voted my apologies. even the ceo of reddit is having trouble communicating on reddit because of this community of moderators. emily: the irony here, ellen pao became famous to the world essentially, she sued her employer kleiner perkins for sexual discrimination. the jury found kleiner perkins not guilty. i recently spoke to john doerr who elaborated on their position that she was not a good investor, but maybe she could be a good ceo. take a listen. john: it's important to look at the difference between being an operator or being an investor -- i think that ellen could be a really great ceo. i hope that she is. to be a successful investing partner is a really different job. emily: is this ellen pao's

fault? is she a good ceo? bob: all i can say -- alexis has had a lot of trouble -- emily: the cofounder. bob: the cofounder of reddit. i met with him several years ago. i was interested maybe in doing it. the thing is, it is so hard to find someone who can lead that community because you have to have the hands-on approach, but a hands-off approach at the same time where you're a steward and you cannot come in and clean house and turn it into something sellable or we can sell advertisers on. you have really got to start with this partnership with the users and i think that is where she initially failed. i do not know if she can ever climb back. emily: the headlines, reddit is burning, reddit is at war with itself. is very real risk reddit could go away?

peter: that would be really difficult. people develop their habits for entertainment. i know that i am addicted to the website. i still clicking through it on my website. it's interesting people sharing interesting things. there are dark sides that i do not appreciate but that is the price we pay for free speech or open platforms. as far as whether ellen pao can drive it into the ground, i do not think so. she has an unenviable task. she has two stakeholders. users who curate and create content that people love and then she has shareholders and people she needs to return the investment. how do you make something profitable without discouraging user participation? how do you put ads up without infuriating users when they want to get to the content? emily: should reddit be a business at all? or is it just a community?

there was an idea of using the lock technology, but the site could run itself and there would not need to be management. sarah: it is kind of too late, right? they have raised money. they have shareholders to return capital to. some of the decisions they have been making such as, should i -- shutting down the abusive parts of the site have already sullied the water in terms of whether it is an open community. those people are the things that you do not appreciate about reddit even though you appreciate free speech, it's not exactly free speech -- bob: it absolutely can be a business. i think what fred wilson said was interesting. he is talking about another arch -- entrepreneur who wants to

compete with reddit. i created a platform called digg ad, and it was one of the first native ad formats to be out there before facebook and twitter. in the thing was, it was one of the most widely positively received features ever. the users understood. i think reddit users can be opened to the fact that it needs to be a business. they just need to run it and include the users as a stakeholder and bring them into the conversation. emily: which is hard to do. peter, you are going to be sticking with us after the commercial break, but we have to leave it there. bob from socialwire, sarah thanks so much. coming up, more uber drivers coming under attack. today, the company hired private security guards to handle intimidation from taxi drivers. this is the latest in a string of attacks on uber.

last week, it suspended its uber pop share ride service in paris. it has also met with bans in germany, spain, italy. despite uncertainty, uber continues to forge into new territories, and announcing that it intends to invest $50 million over the next five years in india. up next -- could bitcoin help greeks keep their money safe? that is next. ♪

emily: we turn now to greece. last night the country overwhelmingly rejected austerity measures europe once

-- wants in exchange for bailout money. now they have to come up with a plan. euro zone will hold emergency talks. under those restrictions, greeks cannot withdraw more than 60 euros at a time per day and cannot make any foreign transactions. that covers even payments like buying a song on itunes and banks are running dangerously low on funds. even though the european central bank is maintaining emergency cash support for them. one currency is gaining steam, and that is bitcoin. will it help greeks keep their money safe? how do you get ahold of it? joining me, peter is back with us from washington. we have seen the price inch backup. it is what, $250 -- $270?

that's down from a high of $1200. how much does this rise have to do with greece? guest: i think the last month it was between $220 and $250. now it has been turned to $75 at a high this morning. emily: bitcoin is pretty volatile anyway. who is to say that this is not just speculation? peter: i think it is speculation, quite honestly. speculation is a tricky thing. when you see something in the news like a sovereign debt crisis, you look at other assets to secure your money. if you're in greece, you do not have that option. i do not think we are seeing a lot of capital move into bitcoin from greece itself, but if you are from a neighboring state that has a debt problem, say portugal or ireland, you're thinking, hey, maybe i should diversify, stay away from treasuries and consider bitcoin.

but that's a speculative move. that's a thought, this is an option outside my other investment vehicle. it's not an escape. emily: most of the bitcoin exchanges are not open in greece. how can they turned their cash into bitcoin? sonny: that is the point. it's very hard. you can get to it online. the problem is, how do you get money to pay for the bitcoin actually. peter is right, a lot of the money will be neighboring countries around the world saying wow, it's interesting what is happening in greece. i should have assets in bitcoin. emily: we're seeing the eu buy a lot more bitcoin, right, peter? peter: yeah, and it is also an open question about whether it is a good store value if you say i do not want my local currency. i want bitcoin.

it is not the best store of value. we were talking earlier about how fred wilson thinks that you can build reddit on a blockchain. a technology you are getting involved in because you think it could have an upside, but it could have a very large downside because it disappears. what is good for though is a rail. can be a new payment rail for cross-border payments. you switch into bitcoin to get out of your local currency and use that as a way to access online markets another countries where you would then trade bitcoin for, say, dollars if you wanted to hold dollars or something like that. emily: this is your business. greece could adopt bitcoin. how far-fetched is that though really? sonny: i think that they should look at bitcoin as a way they can work together. i think greece adopting bitcoin

as the single currency would be hard, but i think they could definitely find a way to have it work together. emily: peter, far-fetched? peter: yeah, i think far-fetched. but that said, in argentina, we see people who do use bitcoin as a payment rail to avoid capital controls. you will see adoption. the question is usability. it has got to be accessible and accessible to the kind of people who are harmed by the kind of activities we are seeing increased, by pensioners, older folks. right now, that is not the situation on the ground, so we will have to see a big change for it to catch on. as far as adopting the national currency, and think it will be hard enough. i do not think you want to add crypto currency into the mix. emily: final thought. sonny: i agree. they still have to make more

easier and readily available to creditors and grace. if i was in europe, south america, i would have a certain amount of my asset classes in bitcoin to defend against my local currency going up and down so much. emily: we do have a team on the ground in greece. stay tuned to bloomberg television for developments there. peter, thanks so much for joining us, as well as sonny bitpay's chief officer. now to breaking news. amd shares crashing. struggling to compete with intel. we will get more on these results on thursday. now it is time for our hack of the day. sudan, russia, saudi arabia. these are a few of the countries

that may rely on the hacking team, a secretive organization known for providing surveillance and intrusion software around the world. they are reeling from a data breach that exposed their client lists. documents exposed on twitter showed that the company and has sold technology to australia turkey, and at least seven other countries. one of the cofounders tweeted, that the information posted is not true. he later shut down his twitter account. up next -- is the demand for equity in billion-dollar startups creating illegal marketplaces? before we go to break, here's a peek into the future. japan holding the world's very first robot wedding. two humanoid robots.

the bride is modeled after a japanese popstar. the ceremony included a dance number performed by fellow robots. no word on where they are having the honeymoon. ♪

emily: it is time now for the daily byte, one number that tells a whole lot. today's number is 20. that's the number of futures trading dismantled in chicago. that is right. they are going silent, closing for good as futures trading moves online. the closing pits deal with futures, contracts to buy them out of at a future date at a set price -- but not all of them are closing. and they will be sold at other exchanges like the new york

stock exchange. turning to the sec, the securities and exchange commission is investigating the illegal sale of pre-ipo shares. the regulator is looking at the sale of employee owned shares. companies like uber, pinterest and airbnb prohibit the sale of company stock, but somehow the shares are ending up on the secondary market. joining me, a bloomberg ordered -- board member and senior adviser to the carlyle group -- arthur, i will start with you. the wallstreet journal makes it sound like this investigation is quite broad. what could the consequences be? arthur: i don't know. it is ongoing.

i think they are looking at it to see added that any derivatives transactions are done on an exchange, not over-the-counter, as before dodd-frank. if you are asking me for my opinion about this, as an advisor to a number of private companies, i don't think it generally is a healthy thing to be showing unlisted securities privately in this fashion. i think in some cases, but as a general notion, i would rather see that money going to the company but rather -- rather than receiving valuations that are imprecise at best for employees to sell that stock on a second market. emily: bill, this is your business. have you been contacted by the sec? how could this affect your business? bill: we have not been contacted by the sec and our business is purely predicated on working with the company. we do not condone or broker

transactions between individuals and employees. we work with organized liquidity events where the company can determine who gets what and what price. emily: there was a big market for pre-ipo shares. after the facebook ipo, is sort of dried up. the past couple of years, the market has exploded again. what companies are we talking about here? how easy is it to get shares of uber and pinterest, despite the fact of the companies prohibit it? bill: as a result in the early days of 2010 and 2012 when facebook was trading very actively on the market companies did not want the same scenario. so, a lot of the companies we are talking about today worked

with those early companies and when they set up and found it, a lot of the companies you are mentioning, they put in place restrictions on transferring. they expressly prohibit the transfer of ownership of the underlying equity, and that includes encumbering or placing a lien on that stock. no secondary activity can take place. emily: quickly, arthur, and have -- how do you see this playing out? what penalties could we see? what sort of crackdowns could we see? arthur: i do not think it deals with penalties or a crackdown. it is more of a simple of an overheated market where people are anxious to buy the shares before they go public. i do not think that is healthy for the industry. as a shareholder, i would not want that to happen. emily: arthur, we will have to leave it there. former sec chairman arthur levitt, bill, ceo of second market.

thank you for watching. ♪

>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin with a look at american history. the events have revived president obama's momentum in this final stage of his tenure. the supreme upheld the health or -- care law and upheld same-sex marriage nationally. a tragic killing and a black church led to a movement against