were reportedly repatriated between january and november. some 200-5000 were sent back in the first 11 months of 2016. the president will kick off the new year by meeting with top republicans. he will meet with senate majority leader met -- mitch mcconnell and paul ryan at camp david during the first week of january to draw up a game plan for the 2018 legislative agenda. in jerusalem, plans are underway for a new train station next to the western wall, and it could be named for president trump. israel transportation minister says the move will be a thank you to president trump for recognizing jerusalem as israel's capital. former president obama and hillary clinton remained the most admired men and women among americans. mr. obama beat out the current president 17-14%. pope francis rounds out the top three. hillary clinton is on top of the women's list for the 16th straight year, ending former dging former- e

first lady michelle obama. the current first lady, melania trump, garnered 1% of the vote. global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. ♪ cory: this is "bloomberg technology." successp, big tech, big in 2017. the headwinds in the coming year. we will discuss. among the top cryptocurrencies of the year, it is breaking out from bitcoin. the ceo, brad garlinghouse. a look back at tech leaders who helped shape 2017. satya nadella, sheryl sandberg,

and first, our lede. big-cap tech holding on historic gains thanks to record profits, a solid user base, and promising user growth. big gains for the biggest names in technology, but a big tech reckoning could come in 2018. here to wrap this up, a man who casts his own shadow, james cakmak. good to see you, as always. it's interesting. i love the way you have covered these companies. you are at a lot of these very big companies, but with a skeptical eye. some of the tough issues we have seen them show. when you look at them, who has the toughest haul in the coming year? james it's been an interesting year: because all these companies have posted tremendous financial successes and have definitely grown much bigger than i think many thought at the beginning of the year in their own right. at the same time, we saw all

this regularly scrutiny -- regulatory scrutiny across all the companies. the election didn't help with that scrutiny. as we look to 2018 i think you can handicap, it as amazon is likely in the driver's seat when it comes to favorable tailwinds, winds when it comes to regulatory environment. as you move down that list within the same group, i think google is next. they used to be the politically savviest. then you have facebook. going to get worse as we approach the midterm elections later in 2018. i think that scrutiny will only escalate from here, at least from a headline perspective. twitter, facebook, youtube, part of google -- do you think that hurts financial results? over the weekend, facebook introduced a feature that lets you find out if you have

retweeted or favorited or repo sted something from a russian fake news site. it was done very quietly over the holiday weekend. james: financially speaking, it's full steam ahead for all of these companies. amazon continuing to gain share versus traditional retail. facebook continuing to gain share versus traditional media outlets. google, the same story. twitter, they are trying to carve out a path of their own, going more niche. these companies will continue to grow. cory: so what you're saying is, a lot of headlines, who cares? it's not going to affect their financial results. james: it's not going to affect their financial results, but you do have to think about, from a stock perspective, the degree of multiple expansion. we have the earnings power, but at the same time valuations have been steadily rising for all of these companies. they are still relatively attractive for valuation relative to their growth rate.

but i do think that is something that investors will definitely need to consider. cory: so, do a separate investment results from some of those other companies -- do we separate investment results from some of those other companies? there is no company that -- they used to say when mike wallace would knock on the door, don't answer, because "60 minutes" is outside, trying to bust you for something. amazon scares every business. will regulatory concerns concern amazon, not least of which because this president does not like "the washington post," which is owned by jeff bezos? james: you have amazon moving closer to all the federal agencies with aws. you have them shopping around their second headquarters where, all these cities are clamoring for the attention to get that. cory: which means they will tick

off every singleoff every singly didn't choose. it will make political problems. james: at the same time, you have all these new fulfillment centers that will open up. amazon is safe for now, i think. but once you trigger some major headlines, such as reaching $1 trillion in value, i think that will reopen the floodgates for regulators to come in. right now i think regulators, are more focused on things that could potentially affect the election. was actually an issue, the ftc would have scrutinized the whole foods acquisition a lot more than just a one sentence response, which we think was -- cory: you are putting your faith in government regulators, really, james? james: i'm just saying that there are priorities and there are incentives. what are the regulators incentivized to do?

they are incentivized to attack the things that can affect their political prospects. cory: i will give you that. i was just giving you a hard time. james: the bigger story for 20 is all these companies have been growing in their own right, but in 2018 you will see them start to encroach onto each other's territory. the google versus amazon battle is brewing. the google versus facebook battle is brewing. those battles will continue to escalate. it will be a question of not if these companies will get bigger, but will there be a zero-sum type of aspect. i think that will be interesting. it is curious. with the duopoly in advertising between facebook and google, you echo anddevices like you see amazon getting into search in its own way. ames: you are eliminating the

incentive to search on it is cue explicitly when you can introduce a discovery mechanism on amazon. when you look at google, the product listing ads have been the bread and butter for the company in recent years. as you shift that away, and then you look at the content side of the equation, where they -- amazon is likely going to be the biggest content spender in the industry, potentially even eclipsing netflix. what are the implications there for you to? -- youtube? cory: always a pleasure, james cakmak. there is one headline for 2017 -- fake news. bloomberg's sarah frier takes a look at the hits and what social media companies are doing to curb their spread. sarah: 2017 is the year we realized how quick and easy spreading misinformation on social media is and how profitable the spread of fake news can be.

for the u.s. presidential election, fake news -- we learned it is also a tool to disrupt democracy. it reached over 150 million americans on facebook with inflammatory postings, starting conflict over issues like race and religion. this was done with 80,000 posts boosted by $100,000 in ad spending. >> these ads are just the tip of a very large iceberg. sarah: and it resulted in google, facebook, and twitter all testifying in hours of congressional hearings about russia's tactics and how they can try to stop them. but it's not limited to the u.s. the spread of fake news became a global issue in 2017. france and germany successfully fighting the scorch in their own scourge in-- the their own elections. a genocide in myanmar and an attack in the philippines on a local news organization --

just what can big tex do to rain this -- big tech do to rein this in? facebook hires thousands of people to sift through that content. critics worry about social media companies going too far with their censorship. twitter said they shut down thousands of accounts that are taking steps -- and they are taking steps to get tougher on extremists while investigating further. one thing is for sure -- fake news is going to get harder to stop. facebook often argues that it is a technology company, not a media company. well, to take on fake news in 2018, it may have to be both. cory: that was bloomberg's sarah frier. coming up, our exclusive nadella,ion with satya on the dangers of ai, the importance of windows to microsoft's future. "bloomberg technology" is live streaming on twitter. go to @technology. this is bloomberg. ♪

check this out. new york city is thinking about adding an extra fee on every single override in manhattan -- every single uber ride in manhattan. there are 68,000 cars affiliated with ridesharing services in new york city streets. cities like chicago, seattle, portland have implemented their own ridesharing fees to encourage public transportation. we bring you the highlights from the best interviews of 2017. chang sat down with

nadella. satya: to us, one of the key things, i guess -- there is some truth to it. we will always invest in hardware to create new categories. emily: would you ever make a phone again, and under what conditions? satya: at this point, what is needed is for us to not be obsessed about categories that are well served. not at least on current rules. what is considered a phone today will be a very different -- will be very different in the future. is it a mobile device? yes, it is. it is untethered. it is battery-powered. you wear it on your eyes. what is the future of those kinds of devices. to me, microsoft will always be in the end to end computer experiencing business, but our goal is to invent categories and

reinvent categories. emily: you talk about three egg strategic bets -- three big strategic bets, mixed reality, ai, and quantum computing. on the issue of ai, are you at all concerned that facebook, google, microsoft -- google, apple could outpace microsoft on ai? satya: to me, what is microsoft's approach will be all around how do we take ai. any power trick of hours. -- ours. the most important thing to us thate we democratizing so every customer of ours can build their own ai?

we better figure out a way to democratize it so that every company, whether it's a small nonprofit or a large multinational can use ai in the context of their endeavor. that's kind of what we want to do. emily: is elon musk writes to be warning about the dangers -- right to be warning about the dangers of ai, whether it be military applications or otherwise? satya: like any new technology, there are a lot of good things that come with it and we should grab hold of it, but be clear i aboutany -- be clear-eyed any unintended consequences. wherever ai runs amok or we lose control, that could be dangerous. so, i think the first response -- responsibility we have instead of thinking that's going to happen, let us enshrine a set of design principles. i think that we shouldn't abdicate our responsibility, like good user experience, there

is such a thing called good ai. i'm a firm believer that what is the need of the hour is to enshrine those principles. emily: so it could take over the world, but hopefully not? satya: it's up to us. emily: what is one technology that the competition got to first that microsoft would have wished to invent? satya: i wish we had gotten to the relational database before oracle. one of the most amazing pieces -- echnology, or before ibm i just don't worry as much about looking at the product or the technology somebody else got to it. the question is, are we able to go back to that sense of purpose that we have, what we can do with the technology, something that fits with our identity. even if somebody else gets to a quantum computer first, what are

they going to do with it versus what we are going to do with it will be very different. emily: you build several of your products for several different operating systems. what's the future importance of windows to the microsoft future in general? satya: there are one billion users of windows. it continues to be a very do,ificant part of what we but it's not the only part. i think that's the change for us. we now have a much more diverse, robust business. we have xbox in gaming, which spans both pc gaming and console gaming. we have 55 million xbox live subscribers. we have the windows business. -- we have 365 office 365. we have azure. microsoft, in that sense, is a much more diversified portfolio. linkages languages --

between them. that's how i think we are going to keep going forward. cory: that was microsoft ceo such a novella -- satya nadella. a valuation of $1.2 billion without revenue. how can that be possible? blockchain. a reminder of our interactive tv function. find tv . send the producers a message, even while the show is going on. they along with the charts we bring you on air. this is for bloomberg subscribers only. this is bloomberg. ♪

freakish surge in the last few months of the year saw a lot of companies trying to cash in on the crypto

craze. it includes a hong kong startup. stock has seen massive gains, up more than 1000% for the year. i wrote about investor interest in the company for bloomberg. talk about this story with a bloomberg news reporter, who is up on all these things. it's really interesting to me that this isn't just about speculation on currencies and stores of value. we have stocks and companies renaming themselves, announcing new business plans, like this one i wrote about, that used to be called j.a. energy, that was something like a plant-to-energy business, reverse merger, then it becomes a blockchain company. >> there is a juice maker who puts blockchain in its name, a sports bra maker --

cory: sports bras and blockchain? >> who would have thought blockchain could help the manufacturing process for sports bras. the thing is, none of them are doing anything and blockchain is just added to the name. it's like the late-19 90's and early-2000's when companies were adding dot-com to their name, not really doing anything with the internet, but their stocks would surge. it is déjà vu all over again. cory: when i was a money manager and looking for stocks i didn't believe in, i would look for things that were in line with the trend. a social media company that didn't have a social network, a wireless company that didn't have a wireless product. when i saw this, that it has both internet of things and blockchain in its description, and has zero revenue and over $1 billion in valuation, i thought this one is worth kicking around a little bit. julie: not even know revenues,

it has $15,000 of cash on hand. they are burning through $220,000 per month. it doesn't seem like a company that was one that should be soaring in valuation. i think there is a quote in your story from a professor saying the profile of the company is scary, and that basically is the summation of what this whole thing is. cory: the professor, charles lee, at stanford business school, has written very positively about chinese reverse mortgages. even then, he finds this one concerning. i looked back at the progeny, who was behind this deal. they only list we talked to executives, and three of the people at the company, one, a former director, two a former -- two former engineers -- their product was called the urine stopper. their expertise was in stopping bedwetting. julie: you manage to get

to geting -- you managed bedwetting in the headline at bloomberg. cory: it's my finest achievement. i talked to one of the lawyers for the company. if these guys have expertise in bedwetting, how can they have a company based on blockchain? hadbedwetting products radioactive protons -- nothing turned out to be true. what's the connection between bedwetting and bitcoin? well, no one has expensive bitcoin. that's the greatest thing about it. -- has experience in bitcoin. that's the greatest thing about it. julie: blockchain has been around for a while, so i might take a little bit of an argument with it at that point. if you do have experience, you would want to have that on your resume. it sounds like they weren't easy to get in contact with when you were writing this story. cory: yeah. one of the main phone number -- the main phone number listed in

the most recent filing didn't have the full phone number. the previous one was disconnected. it's an interesting company with a billion-dollar market cap. today.lit three-to-one julie, thank you very much. we appreciate your time. up next, we continue the cryptocurrency conversation. the ceo of ripple is actually using blockchain to field a banking. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your "first word news." former president obama gave his first interview since leaving the white house.

he warned about the use of social media by world leaders. president obama: all of us in leadership have to find ways in which we can re-create a common space on the internet. one of the dangers of the internet is people can have entirely different realities. they can be cocooned in the information that reinforces their current biases. >> mr. obama did not mention president trump by name. the irs says 2018 property taxes can be deductible if they are assessed and paid in 2017. residents in high tax states have been rushing to prepay next year's property taxes before new rules from president trump's tax plan overhaul kick in. at least 10 people wounded after an explosion at a supermarket in russia. an explosive device went off in a storage area of the store in st. petersburg. no one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast. in russia, plant -- president vladimir putin has submitted the

nomination papers required for him to run for reelection as an independent. he is seeking his fourth presidential term. he has a current approval rating of about 80% heading toward the march election. global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. it's just after 5:30 p.m. here in new york. it's 6:30 thursday morning in hong kong. i'm joined by bloomberg's david ingles. david: good morning. as we get underway this thursday, just a few things to notice. a lot of data coming out over the next hour. for japantput numbers and south korea. we are essentially looking at a flat to lower start. the nikkei 225 may be about 0.1% lower at the open. new zealand, uninspired at the open, flat as well.

have a look at yields. the story that we will be following is whether or not we get another leg up. at the moment, their early on, we are not seeing that across some of these bond markets that are up and running in the asia-pacific. one other thing to note, two trading days left in the asia-pacific. we are about 1/3 of 1% short of the record high. do we get there? it has not been a stellar year for equities. i'm david ingles in hong kong. more from "bloomberg technology" next. ♪ cory: welcome to "bloomberg technology." i'm cory johnson. ripple breaking out of bitcoin's shadow.

it is the leading cryptocurrency of the entire year. brad garlinghouse, ceo of ripple, joins me now from new york. always a pleasure to talk to you, and i have said that for years. i didn't have any idea ripple was going to become the kind of thing that it has become here. it's interesting to me, because you're are so focused on having a functioning business built around blockchain, which you have also -- but you also have this big, honking, valuable currency that you guys have a lot of. brad: as some of your earlier participants said, there is a lot of you, and i have said that for years. hype in this space. but there's a lot of reality. ripple has been very focused on how do we create you -- real utility and solve real problems. this is for cross-border payments, which is a multitrillion dollar problem. if we can reduce the friction they're using blockchain technologies, we create a lot of value for the whole ecosystem. cory: anyone that travels overseas and goes to the atm

machine and sees the massive moneyo access their own often for the same bank they use in their native country knows what a problem this is, let alone what a business western union and others have moving currency, but it looks like you are looking far beyond that. brad: even within the banking community, there are a few banks that sit on this -- the top of the infrastructure and all the other banks end up paying them. across the board, it's kind of amazing that we still live in to send money to london today, the fastest thing for you or i to do would be to newarko sfo or jfk or and fly the money to london. that's crazy. we live in the age of the internet, and we can't move our money in real time. the costs here can be really high. cory: it's a fascinating thing. it should be as easy as sending me mail or moving any other piece of -- sending an email or

moving any other piece of digital information. when you make the sale of this business, to whom do you make the sale? brad: we are in the business of selling technology to banks. part of it is a software sale. for customers who want to take advantage of using a digital asset for liquidity -- instead of pre-funding the trillions of dollars the banks have with other banks around the world, they pre-fund that amount that sits there. it is dormant cash sitting there. with digital assets, you can make that much more real-time to enable a payment across the border into another currency in real time. today, ripple is doing that into mexico with companies, and we see that expanding with other partners and customers over time. cory: how much money is pre-funded, and how long does it typically sit there? brad: there are $27 trillion sitting in these bank-to-bank accounts. there is a bilateral relationship tween the bank of cory and the bank of brad.

you can put as much money as you want in the bank of brad. cory: since it holidays and we have been friends -- since it is the holidays and we have been friends for a long time, you can put as much as you want in the bank of corey. brad: i appreciate that. we really can accelerate global commerce. by reducing the friction, accelerating the engine, it's good across the board. it's good for both companies in the united states, the en banc communities across -- the en banc -- on bank communities across africa -- the unbanked communities across africa. cory: the issue of the unbanked is such a fascinating issue that first world is don't think of -- first worlders don't think about much. brad: thanks want to serve customers, as long as they -- banks want to serve customers, as long as they can do it profitably. talk about a migrant workforce that is not making a lot of money. the costs of using the banking system would exceed the income

they would have. if we can reduce the friction globally and make it easier for that migrant worker to hold assets, to move those assets without costing them lots of money, they then become part of the banking -- the global financial community. we think about an internet of value. ripple's long-term vision is how do we enable an internet of value. email is an example. it's bringing those communities into the system, allowing them to participate and benefit from being a part of that financial system. cory: i could have said text messages. i want to take you into the bloomberg terminal. i sent you a screenshot earlier this week or a few weeks ago. when we created this monitor of cryptocurrencies on the bloomberg, we listed the prices. low and behold, number two right there is ripple. when i look at what that has done over the last year, holy cow. look at that gain. that's a stunning gain for

anything, particularly in the last few weeks. but that price right now of $1.23, we'll call it -- how many xrp's does ripple own right now? brad: ripple owns 61%. there's no doubt 2017 has been, amongst other things the year of crypto,. xrp has outperformed every other digital asset out there. your today, as that chart showed, we are up about -- year to date, as that chart showed, we are up about -- cory: that gives you $75 billion worth of coin right now? brad: it gives us a huge strategic asset to go invest in and accelerate the vision we see for an internet of the value that i was describing earlier -- of value that i was describing earlier. it's about the opportunity to accelerate addition we have had for some time.

there has been excitement around digital assets broadly. xrp specifically address people have realized we have real customers. we have the best-performing technology. you have actually talked about this. to complete a bitcoin transaction takes about $40 and the transaction -- cory: and it's slow. brad: and it takes several hours on average. in contrast, xrp settles in about three seconds to four seconds and costs fractions of a penny. while i think there are lots of use cases and utility you can have for bitcoin, it's not going to be a payment solution in its current form. i think it's a store of value. i'm long bitcoin. i think there is value there. but there are lots of other use cases. what's the utility? what's the problem being solved? are there real customers that can take advantage of that? cory: did you are sitting on $75 billion worth of an asset, do you envision a scenario over the next year where you will sell any of that? brad: we use some of it to

invest in the ecosystem. produceber, we publicly a quarterly market report, talking about what's going on in the xrp markets. we incentivize "market makers. -- we incentivize market makers. into the mexican peso. we want tight spreads between the mexican peso and xrp and other currencies. we work with market makers globally, with exchanges globally to make sure there is good liquidity to deliver on that. cory: brad garland house, ceo of ripple. this is a fascinating conversation -- brad garland ouse, ceobrad garlingh of ripple. this is a fascinating conversation. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily chang sat down with facebook coo sheryl sandberg and asked why there is no such thing as a free lunch. sheryl: we offer dinner, but no one is required to come for dinner, and there are people who take their dinner in a box. i think companies have an obligation to do what they can for employees, and that also means contractors. we did something two years ago which i think was pretty unprecedented. we announced we were going to make sure all of our contractors who worked at companies of a certain size get paid a minimum wage of $15 per hour in the united states and get paid leave. that's something more companies can do. i recognize the margins we have and that we are able to do more.

but i think almost all companies could stretch to do more for their employees and offer as much as they can. again, i think this is the 21st century commitment we need to people who work for us, and that includes contractors. emily: the gig economy is changing the way we work. moredrivers, all kinds of flexible work. how do we take care of those workers on a policy level? sheryl: corporates need to think about their policies not just for employees, but for contractors. let's talk about family medical leave. there's a really good bill out act., the family it's a good bill. it offers 12 weeks, covers men and women. it offers substantial wage reimbursement and replacement. and it covers all forms of leave .

that's the kind of public policy we need. there is some progress at the state level. washington state became the fifth state to offer a really good paid leave policy, but i don't think we can fully rely on companies, even though i hope companies that are watching this do as much as they can. we need strong national policy. emily: act. it's a good apple built a brandw campus with a 100,000 square-foot gym, no childcare. much was made of that in the press. tech companies have never shied away from radical solutions to problems. should companies offer things like childcare? sheryl: a lot of companies that offer it to record have long wait lists and a lot of places are not zoned for it, so you don't have the option to do on-site childcare. here is what every company should make sure, is that employees are paid enough that they can afford good childcare, whether that childcare is offered on campus, which is obviously great if you can do it, or that childcare is offered elsewhere.

employees have the flexibility that when a child is sick, they are not worried about losing their jobs. we know that people who are employees at companies like apple and facebook, those companies are more likely to be able to provide those things than other companies, and that's why we need to think about all of the workers. emily: i'm curious how the message of option b and corporate openness aligns with the message of lean in. can sharing hurt women more? sheryl: there are double standards, i'm sure. men don't really cry in the office, but if i did -- they did, i would applaud them. sons and daughters cry the same amount. as adults, women cry more than men. we socialize that. i think our culture needs to change, because we are holding both men and women back. i really believe that the best years -- leaders and managers don't shy away from emotion. they embrace it. that doesn't mean we spend all day could by jan -- day k umbayaing.

but it does mean when some one has lost a child, how are you today, i'm thinking of you, what can i do to help you -- on the way out of a meeting, are you sure you want to be here, but you know what, you made a great point. that's how you use eq combined with iq to be a great manager. i think the best managers are doing it and more can. emily: there has been the explosion of stories -- been an explosion of stories about sexual harassment in silicon valley. are you surprised by this? sheryl: i'm hugely disappointed. look, sexual harassment has been around for a long time in every industry. it's abominable that it still exists in this day and age. people know better. i think it's great when people lose their jobs when it happens, because i think that is what will get people to not do it in the future. and i think this is a leadership challenge. as a leader of a company, there needs to be no tolerance for it. full stop, no tolerance.

no one should go to work and face this. emily: part of the problem in tech is that it is still male-dominated, despite your leadership on this topic. has it been harder to change the ratio than you thought? sheryl: our numbers are still low, low for women, low for underrepresented minorities, and that's a problem. it is hurting us. diverse teams make better decisions. we are having some success on the business side of the company. our company is more than half women on the business side, and i'm proud of that. on the tech side, it remains a struggle. there are 16% of computer science graduates today that our women, compared to 35% in the 1 980's, when the field was smaller. blacks and hispanics are not represented in computer science. in order to hire computer scientists, we have to persuade more women and underrepresented minorities to going to computer science. we take that really seriously at facebook. we have a large facebook internship program. we hire people from all backgrounds. we started going earlier in the program.

we created facebook university, tried to find women and underrepresented minorities, who we thought could be great at computer science, but were just starting in the field, so we could get them earlier and invest in them and try to keep them in. we have a large computer and science -- pewter science and engineering program. -- a very large computer science and engineering program. if you go to computer science class, but you don't have enough women, you can be in a lean in circle of computer scientists, where you are seeing more women. we need to do more, because we are still not moving the numbers enough. cory: facebook's chief operating officer sheryl sandberg with emily chang. coming up, softbank's owner has a plan to invest $93 billion in a tech company. one of the most important tech investors on the planet. it hasn't always been a smooth road. we will hear from him next. this is bloomberg. ♪

cory: the u.s. library of congress announced today it will no longer at every public tweet to its archives. the project said the much larger volume of tweets now, as well as twitter's decision to double the character limit. one huge tech deal still looming. the deadline for softbank's offer is thursday. did they offer enough? it's one of the tough choices facing the founder. he joined david rubenstein to talk about a lifetime of deals that have informed sona bou -- son about his current business challenges. david: one of the investments you made is considered by many people to be the most successful investment in the history of mankind. you invested roughly $20 million in alibaba. at the time it went public, it was worth roughly $90 billion.

$20 million to $90 billion is a return of about 4500%. jack ma is a very distinguished individual, now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. what is it that made you feel this was worth putting in $20 million? >> he had no business plan. [laughter] >> and zero revenue. employees, maybe 35, 40 employees. very strong,were strong eyes, strong, shining eyes. i could tell from the way he talked, the way he looked at -- he has a charisma, he has leadership. so, his business model was wrong. the way he talks, the way he can bring young chinese people following him -- david: before yahoo! was so famous, you made an early

investment in it that was spectacularly successful. how did you hear of yahoo!? >> it was still private, 15 employees. made $100 million of our investment. at the time, we said we are -- from 15 to 35 people. we invested $100 million to own 35%. when ipo, we made a great ton. i convinced him to start a joint $1.2re, where we put million, and they put $0.8 million, $2 million of startup capital. david: let's talk about one big mistake you've made.

you are successful at almost everything you've touched. you are making a lot of internet investments, and then the market went down and the tech crashed. it is said you personallyyou art everything you've lost $70 billion of net worth, the greatest loss that any human being has ever suffered financially. so, how did you feel losing $70 billion of net worth? >> one year before that, actually, my net worth -- personal net worth was increasing $10 billion per week. [laughter] days, i became richer than bill gates. [laughter] david: did that upset him? >> no. before i told to anybody else, our stock started crashing. [laughter] >> so, in six months after that, our share price went down 99%. so, we are almost bankrupt. and somehow, i survived. that does it for this

edition of "bloomberg technology." a reminder that we are live streaming on twitter right now. 5:00 p.m.y weekdays, back east, 2:00 p.m. out west. this is bloomberg. ♪

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♪ it is 7:00 a.m. and hong kong , live from bloomberg's asia headquarters. thursday,ories this another thin day. the s&p 500 halting a two day slide, the dollar weakening against peers, and the best year for equities since 2013. investors turn to what the new year will offer. >> from bloomberg's global headquarters, it is just past 6:00 p.m. today on this wednesday. pools, a light on dark