♪ emily: i am emily chang, and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you our top interviews from the week in tech. president trump withdraws from the paris climate accord, while leaders from tim cook to elon musk speak out. uber fires the star engineer at the center of its driverless car program. why is was time for anthony levandowski to go. and there is a new phone on the block. we will hear from the coo of essential and ask how their device stacks up against apple in samsung.

first, to our lead, president trump has announced the united states will withdraw from the paris climate pact, and that he will seek to renegotiate the international agreement in a way that treats american workers better. pres. trump: i will immediately work with democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into paris under the terms that are fair to the united states and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers. emily: the tech industry already responded to trump's announcement. elon musk announcing his departure from the president's council with a tweet saying, "departing the presidential council. climate change is real. leaving paris is not good for america or the world." we spoke to a member of the bloomberg energy finance team about the impact of this decision. >> the gap between president

trump and silicon valley is a grand canyon at this point, but i think what is more interesting to me is the question of how committed business has become, not just silicon valley, but most big businesses in the united states towards climate change remediation. the issue of whether climate change is happening or not is not really controversial among most business leaders. it is accepted as much of your reporting has already suggested. clearly, a lot of progress is possible even without the u.s. in the paris agreement, despite the fact that everyone agrees it is a stupid, stupid thing to pull us out. emily: let's talk about this, colleen. how are tech companies and broader u.s. businesses actually going to respond, in action rather than words? colleen: great question, emily. we have already seen action out of silicon valley from these tech companies. if you look at the tech amiche, amazon, google, microsoft got

together in defense of the clean power plan, and we have seen them repeat that climate change is one of the most significant issues facing our generation globally, and they are actually putting action behind these words. they have said -- all four of these companies which represent two and a half trillion dollars of market cap have all set 100% renewable energy goals. they want to source all electricity from renewable energy globally. google came out on record saying they will hit that target in 2017. we saw amazon be the number one procurer of clean energy in 2016 in the united states, and apple is signing deals for wind farms in china for clean energy for their suppliers. they are very much behind this. emily: china has reiterated their support for the paris agreement. i wanted to take a look at the bloomberg. we have a map of the solar plants across the country.

the green shows plants already in operation. the yellow shows plants that are planned. how does this map change in five years as a result of this, or does it? colleen: that's a great question. in some ways, i think you would expect to see that green appears even more heavily in those states in which solar is already very concentrated. it is important to talk about what is going on on a federal level, but equally important in the u.s. to be thinking about what is happening on the state level, to. just yesterday, the californian senate passed a bill to get 100% renewable energy by 2045. that still needs to make its way through the assembly, but there is absolutely activity on a state level that will continue to drive wind and solar build. at the same time, we have seen cost fall dramatically, which means it is becoming more economic to install solar in more areas of the country. just from 2008 to 2016, we saw

the cost of tv modules, only part of the panel, but the cost of tv modules fall by 90%. this is helping more states to actually invest in solar as well. emily: david, president trump is saying he's trying to protect american jobs. on the other hand, there are concerns about jobs in clean tech and new energy. are we ceding this potential big market opportunity to other countries like china? david: absolutely. i think it is widely believed particularly among people who have a sort of future centric view, which you would hope most business people, but there is a massive long-term business opportunity in remediating climate change. it is almost like what i was thinking before. if you think about what world war ii or what wars due to motivate a country to really gather all its energy together and make rapid progress or look at what the depression did to create the wpa and all the

infrastructure we created. facing a crisis can be one of the most motivating things in the economy, and it is happening in china right now. they look at it that way, and they are really aggressively moving forward on remediation technologies across the board, with solar being a leading example. i want to quickly point to another thing that is really relevant to the connection between tech and industry and this decision. in most states where they operate, tech companies are the number one power consumers , because cloud centers are such a gigantic consumer of power. there was an article not long ago -- even in west virginia the coal state, the utility there is now shutting down coal plants and putting in more renewables, partly because microsoft and other companies are their biggest customers, and they are saying, we want renewable power. emily: that was colleen regan and david kirkpatrick. coming up, another wild week for uber.

the startup fired the star engineer at the center of its bitter dispute with waymo. the electric car market has been growing in fits and starts for years. but could the chevy volt be the tipping point for the industry? we will hear from one analyst who literally ripped up the car to find out. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: amazon crossed a major

milestone this week. the stock traded above $1000 a share briefly for the first time ever and has hovered just below that price. the company has been wooing investors with dominance in online commerce and cloud computing. the stock is up almost 40% from a year ago. meantime, frazzled parents might get cash back from amazon. the tech giant will refund customers whose children made unauthorized mobile app purchases between 2011 and 2016. the federal trade commission ruled that amazon made it too easy for children to make

purchases on mobile games. the decision ends a three-year legal battle. the refund amount could top $70 million. it was another eventful week for uber. their revenue increased $3.4 billion in the first quarter, despite thousands of people deleting the app from their phones. they also said that head of finance will leave to take a position at another startup. but the most explosive development the week was the sacking of anthony levandowski, the former head of the self driving car efforts. he is also the man at the center of the battle between uber and alphabets's driverless car unit, waymo. he was recruited by uber after a long stint at google. waymo sued uber earlier this year, saying he stole patents for the development of self driving technology, then used them at uber. he invoked his fifth amendment

right not to testify, which made it more difficult for uber to defend itself. we spoke about this with mark bergen and our senior executive editor brad stone. >> this is really about 14,000 files. files that were allegedly and surreptitiously downloaded by anthony levandowski from waymo. a judge said levandowski had to turn over those files. uber told him he had to turn over the files and he declined to comply, perhaps because something about them was incriminating. it is interesting, it turns what has really been a two-party case into almost a three-party case. we now have waymo versus uber and anthony levandowski off on his own. emily: how does this impact the case? does this hurt uber's case or help waymo's case? >> it's hard to say. they are waiting for whether or not this will set the criteria the judges set up for the injunction. the judge could say, uber, you fired levandowski, and he said

previously that waymo's case was strong, but he said there was no "smoking gun." it seems like uber's lawyers know what they are doing. this might be good for them, but right now it is really unclear. emily: is there any chance levandowski could be personally prosecuted here? >> i do think there is a criminal case. he also has a prior case waymo filed against him prior to the february lawsuit against uber. he hired his own lawyers after that lawsuit, criminal defense lawyers, so that is a likelihood as well. emily: levandowski argues he has been forced to choose between his job and his constitutional rights. does he have an argument there? >> i am not a legal expert, but perhaps. emily: uber's driverless car future, what does this mean? they have already taken him off

as head of the unit. do they need him? >> there is a deep bench of talent. eric replaced him as the head of the driverless car condition -- division. he came from carnegie mellon. they hired other folks. one from the university of toronto started the ai lab in toronto for uber. the risk is the optics of this look so bad that it is going to be increasingly difficult for uber to hire folks, and talent is the name of the game right now. emily: there is a public trial on track for october. what is next here? mark: to brad's point, self driving cars are not on the road tomorrow. experts say they are years, if not decades, away. there is a chance that uber might turn more into a partnership model. they might try to reach out to more carmakers, something that lyft has done, and lyft is also in talks with waymo on a partnership. we will see a lot of movement.

uber also has the massive investigation into their harassment issues. maybe this is a way to put this on the back burner and deal with a lot of other cultural issues facing the company. brad: there is always the possibility these companies settle. google is an investor in uber. there are reasons for them to work together. it appears from a distance that this case has been about the founders of alphabet, larry page and sergey brin, with a personal vendetta against one of their former employees, anthony levandowski. now that he has separation from uber, perhaps it is the beginning of uber and google coming back to being allies versus adversaries. emily: interesting. the uber ceo got some sad news of the weekend. his mother, bonnie, was killed in a horrific boating accident and his father is in serious condition. our hearts go out to travis at this time. i want to ask, brad, uber have a lot of challenges on its plate.

the sexual harassment investigation, the results are coming this week or next week. are we expecting any delays? brad: as far as i know, no. eric holder was due to deliver his report to the board of directors. it was not expected that the report would become public until next week. i don't know how much it will slow down the investigation. emily: do we know anything about which way the investigation is leaning? brad: we know very little, other than he talked to many many hundreds of employees, he delayed the report at one point asking for more time because of the response he had gotten. i expect it will be tough for uber. emily: how have all of these issues piling up impacted the uber brand? brad: in the tech community and the investment community here in san francisco, very much so, you step outside the bubble and go to another city, another country

and uber is an increasing part in people's lives. it is this weird paradox where the brand has been hurt, hiring has probably gotten more challenging. inside uber is probably a very difficult time, but this is a service and a company people love. emily: that was bloomberg technology's brad stone and mark bergen. the story we are watching, it has been revealed two former theranos directors did not follow up on allegations surrounding the validity of the technology used at the start up. gary russhead and george schultz said they did not think to question elizabeth holmes about the matter. remember that both men left the board in 2014 after a wall street journal investigation highlighted employee's concerns about the company operations. coming up, we will dive into what has become essentially the

state of the union for the tech industry. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: nest labs has finally

ended an 11-month product drought. the latest product is a security camera called the nest cam iq. it is the first redesigned camera since the required -- it acquired startup dropped the camera in 2014. it shoots higher resolution video that allows users to more deeply zoom into footage without losing as much clarity as the current version. the lens will automatically pan to follow a person in the view as they walk around the room. mary meeker unveiled her widely followed internet trends report for 2016. it covers everything from the cloud and internet advertising to wearables and music subscription services. a major takeaway from the report, the rise of online ads. with global internet advertising

expected to pass tv in six months, and google and facebook reaping the benefits with their combined share of online ads amounting to a whopping 85% and rising. we dug into the findings with bloomberg intelligence u.s. director of research paul sweeney. paul: we are seeing the trajectory over the last 10 or 12 years where we have tv ad spending growing about 4% to 5% a year, and digital ads ending -- spending growing 15% to 20% a year. the lines are just about to cross this year, and if you look at the forecast over the next several years from various forecasters, continued upward trend in internet ad spending, double-digit growth versus television in the low single digits. emily: what does it mean for everyone else if facebook and google are getting the lion's share of the pie? paul: if i am an advertiser, i am worried, because i have a

market where there really is a duopoly between facebook and google. i only have two platforms to allocate my ad dollars. that is not a good market structure, market dynamic. what we are seeing is of the incremental ad dollars going to the digital marketplace, google and facebook are taking just about everything. it is really a challenge for some of the smaller platforms, think twitter, snapchat, 400 million users on your platform these days is not enough. when you take a look at google and facebook, each of facebook's platforms is at or above one billion users, when you think about facebook and instagram and message. it is just a tremendous reach vehicle, and what we are seeing is these big platforms like google and facebook are really starting to target television advertisers, because that is where the money is. emily: something else that meeker called out is the measurement of the impact of online ads is very much lacking.

also, the placement of ads is sometimes rather suspect, perhaps they might pop up next to offensive content. what you make of these potential headwinds? paul: these are significant risks, and they are highlighted by not only advertisers, but the ad agencies that represent them. measurement and context and placement are really the two big issues that these internet companies really have to figure out. that being said, the dollars are still going to digital. what is interesting, we are going to have a big data point coming out of the television industry over the next couple of weeks, when they sell about 75% to 80% of their inventory of what is called the upfront market, and $18 billion or $20 billion will be allocated to television. the expectation is tv ad spending in the upfront will be flat or down. facebook and google are seeing their top line advertising revenue grow 20% plus. you just have to compare the two markets, and you can see where advertisers are going despite some concerns.

emily: on a slightly different topic, she also called out amazon and talked about how it is changing the face of retail, which we know, but mary meeker specifically pointed to amazon baby wipes, amazon batteries, these are products that amazon is branding itself and selling to consumers. what impact is that having on the retail landscape? paul: it is having a big impact. when you get to private branded products, it shows the strength of amazon in the retail marketplace. not only have they disrupted the entire brick-and-mortar retail, but now they are really starting to think about how they position themselves within the retail market in certain verticals. when you think about amazon, jeff bezos has shown that he will make any investment that he thinks will grow his business long-term because he believes, obviously, that retail sales going to online will grow from today's average of about 7% or 8% to well over 10%, and he needs to be a part of that and be a leading player.

we have seen this company make tremendous investments across businesses because they believe in the long-term story. emily: that was bloomberg intelligence's u.s. director of research, paul sweeney. waze has been expanding across california. alphabet has been testing a service here in san francisco and in israel, and plans to launch in brazil. its ridesharing platform operates more like a traditional carpool where the driver and passengers have similar origins and destinations. unlike uber and lyft, where drivers pickup and drop-off riders wherever it is expected. we spoke with the head of carpooling at waze. >> hello. what a nice ride. >> thank you. >> happy carpooling. how many people are using this already? >> tens of thousands of people have registered.

millions of people have already downloaded waze, and all they need to do is opt into carpool. on the riders' side, tens of thousands of people have downloaded that app. we have thousands of carpools every week in the bay area. >> why are people using waze already in terms of carpooling? is it work, is it play? >> we are trying to connect commuters who either don't have a lot of options or are tired of driving, or have limited parking at their workplace. we are connecting commuters who are going in the same direction and who have similar origins, similar destinations, they are neighbors, they are friends, they are colleagues, and simply taking cars off the road. >> what about the money exchanging hands? how much are you getting reimbursed for taking me? how much am i paying you? >> it is a not-for-profit share the expense carpool. these are not actually for profit drives like ridesharing.

as a driver, you get up to $.54 a mile, which is the federal limit on gas and expenses for driving, and the rider will pay no more than that as well. a 10-mile ride will probably be about a five dollar exchange rider and driver, and waze is facilitating that. we do the transaction behind the scenes. >> why else is waze doing this? is it not making them money, or is it? >> obviously there is a financial component. today we are not taking any commission on matches, but at some point when we retire -- reach higher density and our quality of service is where we want it to be, we can take a small commission. >> and the data you are getting out of it, where is that of interest? >> definitely data is important to waze. the more people that are using waze, the better it gets for everyone. something like carpool where we can tell where your home and

where your work is and your sort of commute patterns, that helps us with routing for everyone. that helps us tell cities we work with, here are your origin places of density, your destination places of density. we work with 250 different cities around the world to help them solve their traffic problems. >> how does it play into the greater scheme of alphabet as well? >> at this point, we are not working within any other entities. it is very much a waze product. it is something we hope is important for the future of waze. >> how is the competitive landscape? >> at this point, it is early days. lyft and uber have experimented with carpooling models. emily: coming up, the man who was the mastermind behind android has unveiled his latest creation. we will find out why essential believes there is room in the market for yet another smartphone.

and a reminder that all episodes of bloomberg tech are live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays at 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. ♪ emily: welcome back.

i'm emily chang. andy rubin is back in betting big on a big new smartphone. he unveiled a new product from his new company, calling it the essential phone. it has some serious competition in the smartphone market, but rubin believes his company and product will have the it factor to appeal to the masses. we found out from the president and coo of essentials. >> premium materials, craftsmanship, and passion, are what we are bringing back. >> do you think apple has that? >> i think there has been a little bit of a board room factor setting in.

we've got a very distinctive device, obviously. it's got the first ceramic titanium enclosure. we've got the biggest screen and smallest formfactor. and we've got an excess report in the back with the world's smallest 360 camera that can snap straight on the back. i think what is going to happen with our devices, it is going to evolve with you, allow you to make your phone more meaningful and powerful overtime. we will focus on significant innovation at all times, and only significant accessories. this device we are selling for $49.99. it will not only democratize 360 video access, but it is something that's affordable that you bring with you, you can capture any important moments, whether it's a sporting event or

your kids first steps. emily: this is your first hardware company. what are some custom components? >> its enclosure, materials. we're the only premium product using premium materials. we are not marking up our building materials by a factor of three. we need to be a proconsumer brand that uses our materials on our phones, and we need to have a great value proposition. our full display is the first rounded screen. we have our camera notched through the middle of it. ultimately, you can think about what we're doing in the long term of this device by looking at the back. we are using a fingerprint sensor on the back. we have an internal camera with a black and white fusion color system. the next device will actually swallow the edges up. we are almost bevel-less at the moment. we have thinner edges on the device than anybody else. and frankly, it's distinctive.

we are bringing back the cool factor. emily: what sort of software customizations are there on top of the android base? >> we are going for purest, cleanest, simplest android. android's 85% of the market, and we think we know how to take advantage of it better than any other firm in the market. we trying to, frankly, unleash the full power of the pure android operating system. emily: will third-party accessories be available for the connector on the back? >> they will. we are big on open ecosystems. there will be a developer network around that. our android ecosystem, play, will have no preloaded apps, minimal preloads, because people want choice. i think you are right. we are going to be able to turn the back into a real standard in the long-term, a hardware developer network. emily: the home operating system, ambient os, the idea is to be a connected operating system for the home.

the connected home has yet to take off. when will it? what do we need to get there? >> that is a good question. andy and i believe that the home is at the same stage of development as the phone was in 2004 when we started android. we are intent on building out that horizontal plate. i think in developed nations, it will take us the better part of a decade for us to go from single -- really just digital appliances is what we have in the home. we are trying to build a device to help you choreograph your home, and we are doing that without being another walled garden. emily: you think android is just fine. will you ever build your own phone os? >> never say never, but we think there is a lot we can do to add premium hardware to a great operating system, and we feel no one has done full justice to the android operating system with the hardware. we are a hardware business when it comes to the phone and the 360 camera.

we are a software hardware full stack on the home. emily: apple is launching a home speaker to take on amazon echo and apple home. what does amazon bring to the market, or is it too late? >> we are where the phone market was in 2004 and 2005, just scratching the surface of capabilities. there will be a lot of change. one of the things we are passionate on is believing in the long run that consumers want stuff to work and they want to be able to buy whatever point solutions they want. we don't think the winning model is, you have to use all my stuff. we want to provide that horizontal layer that allows you to pick out whatever you want for your stereo system, your front door, your baby monitor. think about the long tail in the home. it is much longer than the mobile device market was. there's a lot of sentimental value still to come. emily: that was essentials president and coo.

ahead of the release of the tesla three, the auto team at ubs got a hold of their biggest competitor, the chevy volt. they took it apart to give a comprehensive breakdown of the features. they discuss what they found under the hood. >> we partnered with a team that we call the evidence lab, a bunch of data scientists, and we talked about how the chevy volt -- bolt will be the first mass-market ev with over-200 mile range. it will be an interesting test in the u.s. and globally. since it is such an important vehicle, we decided to partner with the company who is an expert in automotive teardowns and provided us a very detailed cost analysis of the entire ev powertrain, which i think gives us a unique edge in understanding this important phenomenon in the industry. emily: give us the highlights on how the bolt compares to the tesla model three. >> we will get full details of

the model three, that they are a similar price point. the base tesla model 3 will be $35,000. the bolt with base will be more like $30,000. similar price points. the range will be very similar, both will be over 200 miles. obviously, tesla is more upscale when we compare the two. we put more cost in the powertrain. they will have a nicer interior. given the price point, it is probably going to be more like $42,000, $43,000 with all the options, closer to a bmw three-series. emily: you estimate gm is losing $7400 on every car. there are estimates that tesla will be losing $2800 on every model three. how do they close that gap? >> the big driver is going to be battery cost.

that is assuming gm is only going to sell around 30,000 bolts a year. a very low number. the r&d costs are really spread off of a lot of units. the big driver going forward is going to be that battery costs are going from over $200 per total kilowatt hour today, we estimate it will be around $130 per kilowatt hour. there are massive declines in battery costs that are a key driver. we also assume certain components that have a good step function coming down on the ev powertrain that will help in above-average cost decline on the ev powertrain as well. that narrows the gap from a $9,000 cost premium today to just a $3000 or $4000 cost premium by 2025. when you contribute that to the total cost of ownership, lower fuel, lower maintenance, the economics, especially in europe when gas prices are higher makes a lot of sense. emily: what is your projection for the growth in the ev market in general as a result of the bolt?

>> we raised our global forecast, because we found costs are lower than we expected, and we expect battery costs to accelerate. a lot of experts we talked to around the battery. we are expecting by 2025 about 14% of vehicles globally will be ev's, a very high number compared to other estimates. a lot of that will be driven by europe with about 30% penetration in europe, and in the u.s. we are a bit more conservative, expecting only 5% ev penetration. we look at it with much lower gas prices, it's going to be more of a luxury vehicle. one of the reasons we are cautious on tesla is we know all the german luxury guys will be coming with their own ev's, mercedes, audi, porsche. the competition is intensifying on luxury side. emily: as more companies produce electric vehicles, what does that mean for the auto industry at large? >> it's an important

transformation. when you think of automakers, the whole engine is going to be overhauled here. that is going to be a difficult and challenging transformation. at the end the day, we do think the return on investment capital for automakers will be very consistent with what we have today, and i think there's a very important role for the traditional automakers in the future. the supply base, we highlight some names that should benefit from this. we highlighted in our report, delphi has really good content, lear has good content on ev. more content than we have on an internal combustion engine. it could be a positive if you are a well-positioned supplier. emily: any idea when chevy will be making the car more widely available with less focus on california specifically? >> i don't have any official news. i assume it will be ramping production throughout the rest of the year. it only launched in the fall. emily: that was colin langan.

coming up, bitcoin has been on a tear, surging more than 100% in the last two months. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: intel has escalated the

battle against rival amd in the market for high-end computer processors. the company unveiled a new, more powerful chip. intel will begin selling chips under a new core i-9 brand aimed at gamers. the only competition in pc processors, amd, says its latest product has outperformed intel chips. bitcoin has risen more than 100% in the last two months. critics say the digital currency is showing signs of a bubble. in the last week, bitcoin hit an all time high, only to slump

back down. it is this kind of volatility that gets bears worried. not to mention questions about safety, fraud, and competition from other digital currency. we spoke with poly chain capital founder and ceo. poly chain is a hedge fund that -- backed by union square ventures, as well as our bloomberg editor at large, cory johnson. >> we have seen really fast growth in bitcoin recently. i think this is an uptick coming from an industry that hasn't been moving as aggressively in the public radar. now that growth in the price is more closely tracking to fundamentals, i think we are seeing a big uptick for that reason. emily: investors told that bitcoin is like gold, a finite resource, and therefore not as interesting. what is your take? cory: i think gold is fascinating personally, but it's true that the way bitcoin is constructed is meant to be

finite and harder and harder to mint as there are more and more out there. the scarcity value is an important part of the bitcoin plan, and has been from the very beginning. but i think for people in the bitcoin community, they see all this investment, they see all this excitement, they know all these deals, and they can't believe their parents don't understand what they are doing. they see the price served as a validation of what they have all been working on. there's an element of gold like fervent belief and rabid speculation going on here. you can see that in the reaction of price. and when you showed the five-day charge, when you saw that really dramatic one hour settle off in bitcoin, you can really see it is so speculative, this current wild ride that bitcoin is on. while the long-term value of bitcoin may be in the eyes of the holder, the volatility is really in the eye of the speculator. emily: i have been talking to investors who said bitcoin is old news.

the new hot cryptocurrency is something called -- i asked for craig wilson's prediction for the year, and he had this to say about cryptocurrency in general. take a listen. >> i think that etherium will bypass -- the market cap of the theory him -- etherium will bypass the market cap of bitcoin by the end of the year. emily: of all the predictions he could have made, about anything, that is what he chose. explain how they are different. >> bitcoin has programming language that you can use to interact with the protocol as a developer. it is very limited programming language. in etheriem, it is much more expressive. what we have seen in etheriem is a much richer organic developer system developed very quickly. emily: would you agree with what fred had to say?

you think the market cap is going to replace -- >> i don't know if i would agree with as aggressive a timeline as fred, but in the long-term, absolutely. emily: how long? >> i would extend that out one year, made by the end of 2018. emily: interesting. cory, what are your thoughts? i think ethereum is interesting. it's more like a pc ip than the client server model. i think it is fascinating from that regard and could have interesting use cases, still using the general concept of block chain. but it is harder and harder to use bitcoin, and one of the issues being talked about in the bitcoin world is how hard it is to close a transaction. the speed to close a transaction in bitcoin is getting exponentially worse.

it's been happening coinciding with the big rise in the price. it's hard to do a deal in bitcoin right now. we have a chart that shows how long it takes to get confirmation on the bitcoin network of a bitcoin transaction, and it is getting slower and slower. that may be a problem embedded into the actual coin itself, so the bitcoin can't get out of its own way with this problem. there's been a lot of discussion of this problem for well over a year in the bitcoin community, but the fixes haven't worked and the proposed fixes are challenging the very nature of bitcoin, so unless a solution is found, there is going to be a real problem in the face of bitcoin's ascendancy, because the transactions can't get done. emily: what about the safety issues? we just covered this big ransomware attack, and the attackers were asking for ransom paid in bitcoin because of the anonymity. will that change?

olaf: i think these technologies offer a whole new suite of use cases that were not possible before. that includes good actors and bad. just like the internet enabled both good and bad people. emily: are there any other crypto currency we should be watching? >> many others. would you like to know what they are? emily: yes, i would! >> i very much like ethereum tokens, and some of the more novel types of signatures. emily: when do you think these are going to go mainstream? when will the average novice consumer be paying for things in bitcoin or ethereum? >> we are still in the infrastructure building phase before we are ready for user-facing applications. but i do think within one to two years, we will start to see the first viral applications that are user facing.

emily: coming up, box is standing out in the credit allowed space and generating cash in its coffers. we will hear from ceo aaron levie about the company's latest earning results in the goals ahead. check us out on the radio. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: to keep up with

competitors, microsoft is giving skype a makeover. the new app has all the features users know, while adding third-party services, simpler photo sharing, and a revamped interface for group chat. skype has taken a backseat to the convenience of snapchat and apple's imessage. the new skype will be released gradually, starting out with android devices, then on the iphone in about a month. it was a banner quarter for

cloud content management company box. positive earnings pushed them to a 52-week high. investors were particularly pleased box maintained its goal of being cash flow positive, a big challenge for a tech firm looking to grow. we talked with box ceo aaron levie about the results and what's next for the company. >> made sure we are plugged into different applications our customers are using. if you are using facebook for the enterprise, their new workplace product, we want to make sure content can be served up securely within that environment. if you are using ibm's workflow technology, we want to make sure we can plug into that seamlessly. if you are using slack, we want to make sure box can be the backend system for that content. we want to make sure we have deep integration and underlying data management within that app. partnering is fundamental to our

strategy, and we are very excited that in the past year we have some expansive partnerships with companies like microsoft, google, ibm and others. these are very core to our strategy. emily: how does being free cash flow-positive impact the business? >> this is obviously one of the biggest questions that wall street had when we were first going public. we were growing very quickly and burning a lot of cash. the big question was what was this business going to look at at scale and what was going to be the convergence point? we told the market that q4 of fy 17, in january that we just came through, we said we would be cash flow positive in that quarter, and we did achieve that. that was what we have guided wall street to. for the full year for fiscal 2018, the year we are in right now, we also guided that we will be cash flow positive full-year basis. obviously, we don't have to raise outside capital anymore because we are now generating cash.

we have over $200 million in the bank. i think more importantly, it shows that as we are growing pretty rapidly with 30% growth on the top line, we are generating a very healthy core business model and we have very strong and healthy economics at the foundation of the business, which obviously is incredibly important to just running our company, but also equally important to wall street's understanding of what we're building. emily: you have been critical of president trump. when he was a candidate last summer, you signed a letter along with 100 other tech leaders saying he would be a disaster for innovation. box shares are up 30%. has trump been the disaster for innovation that you expected him to be? >> i would separate our business performance from some of the policies that have been enacted. as it relates to a innovation and the innovation economy, we really haven't gotten much of a clear message from this new administration about what they

believe are going to be the defining factors over the next decade and coming decades to really truly driving a high innovation economy. that would range from things like high skilled immigration, stem education, digital policy issues like encryption reform, patent reform -- a lot of issues where they are still -- it is still really unknown what the administration's viewpoint is on these major issues that are going to be not just fundamental to the tech sector in silicon valley, but really the broader economy as more and more of our economy moves into the digital age. i think it is still very early, and unfortunately we haven't seen some of the policies we would like to see that would drive innovation forward in a much longer term picture as opposed to just the past 140 days or so. emily: what about climate change? what are the biggest threats to the tech industry with regard to the trump stance on the paris

accord? >> i think we have a real risk in things like climate change, immigration reform, and the travel ban. when you look at things like internet policy, we have historically been a leader around the world in setting the tone and sending a message to the rest of the world about really what we are going to stand for and what our philosophies are going to be as a country. emily: that was aaron levie, ceo of box. that does it for this edition of the "best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you the latest in tech throughout the week. this wednesday, we sit down with meg whitman, hewlett-packard enterprise ceo in an exclusive interview. tune in for that conversation at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. all episodes are now live streaming on twitter. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

stephen: welcome to zhengzhou, capital of hunan province, which is home of four of the great ancient capitals, and this year's host of the china green companies summit. china's economic growth has been nothing short of remarkable, but how it can sustain that growth may be the big story yet of modern china. ♪ stephen: china's march to becoming the world's second-biggest economy is at a crossroads, with a growth rate of 6.5%, the lowest in 25 years. beijing needs globalization, but the geopolitical map is changing, led by the protectionist policies of donald trump. >> you can't call for open competition, and deshe