♪ emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is bloomberg technology. an historic vote, a ballot cast by amazon warehouse employee in alabama deciding whether or not to unionize. we will have the latest. plus, it is the technology behind every major nfc platform, and yes 69 million dollars.

we talked to the ceo of alchemy. and from luxury houses like louis vuitton to cargo pants from car out and speakers of every kind, there's a surge in demand for streetwear. we talked to doc x, capitalizing on a new funding route, the company valued at $3.8 billion. but first, federal officials have officially started counting votes to determine whether amazon workers at a warehouse in bessemer, alabama will become the first in the united states to join a retail union. the national labor relations board is telling the balance in nearby birmingham, new media allowing to watch avia zoom. the first -- watch via zoom. the first answer was a no. redstone joins us now -- brad

stone joined as now. brad: the current count, it's about 400 no votes to about 283 yes votes for joining the union, so amazon is outpacing about 2:1. that's what we've seen all day so far. i think amazon kind of expected to win. they're confident and cocky with how they view the company. they've shown this is a larger war about amazon's power about the way it treats its workers. it's got politicians on both sides of the aisle really targeting the company. emily: and there's 3200 votes total, so a couple thousand more to count. is this a wake-up call for amazon, brad, even if they went? should they w -- they win? brad: they need to get to 600

yes votes to be certified. unlike the elections we're all familiar with, these ballots are commingled so there's not geographic diversity in the count. 2:1, amazon should be feeling good. but what do they have to learn? i think there are complaints you have heard from some of these union workers they should take into account, things about mandatory overtime, the length of breaks, the amount of time workers are spending on their feet. and look, this is a warehouse that is populated largely by members of the black community, in bessemer, alabama. and i think amazon needs to do a better job of listening to its black employees. so, we will see if they take a lesson here. emily: there was a lot of back-and-forth going into this. an official tweet from the amazon news account on -- disputing the speculation

workers have to pee in bottles on the job. then later apologized for that tweet, saying it needs to do better. what do you make of how amazon has handled this up to that point, and do you expect that kind of tone continue? should these kinds of battles continue to pop up in the u.s. and around the world? brad: it was curiously shortsighted for a company that kind of prides itself on long-term thinking, right? they said they were wrong. even if they were right, what is the point of that kind of tweet in a contentious battle? you know, for a company that goes in front of these congresspeople and senators for the foreseeable future, arguing they don't need to be broken up. and here they are antagonizing senators like elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. i don't think they have handled it adeptly. on the tweet you mentioned, that

showed, as i was saying, they haven't been listening to investors. they have drivers who cannot find bathrooms when they're out on their route. perhaps they've lost some of that closeness they use to have to their operation facilities in their headquarters. emily: bloomberg's brad stone, thank you for this analysis. i'm going to bring in our reporter who covers labor issues in depth gave us the other side of the story. so josh, it's still early, but 2:1. -- but amazon is winning right now, 2:1. have you heard anything yet from organizers so far about their reaction to what numbers are showing so far? josh: the organizers have been careful to avoid reacting to voting as it's in progress as it is the end of casting of ballots as the labor board has been going over the ballots and now

the counting has begun. but what we knew all along was that this was a fight that would go on for much longer. the results, as brad said, are not promising for the union, from the counting that's happened so far in terms of winning this vote, in terms of the ballots that were cast here. what we are likely to see is an extended legal battle that will also be a political battle about what the company did in order to prevent people from voting for the union. and more broadly, about the labor law system in the u.s. and whether these types of elections really provide a free and fair choice for workers about unionization. emily: and of course, it is still early. i just want to underscore a couple thousand ballots left to be counted. tell us more about what amazon did in the days and weeks

leading up to it that folks felt some of the organizers of this effort are speculating may have prevented people from showing up. josh: workers have described being required to attend mandatory antiunion meetings where they get barraged with predictions about the bad things that could happen if they unionize. workers have described one on one conversations with management that were used try to sway them. workers have raised the risk that amazon could leave bessemer and shut down the warehouse as something that could influence their vote. the union also obtained, through freedom of information act requests, correspondence in which postal service officials are describing how the company was advocating for them to place a mailbox on the property, something that the union argues is coercive.

and for many years, there has been disagreement among union organizers about whether it's even worth going through this election process, as it exists under u.s. law, because of the opportunities that companies have to pressure workers. and because even if the union wins the election, the law does not have to force a timeline for the company to sign a contract with them. and so a year after a vote, there could not be a contract. emily: all right, josh, i know you're going to continue to watch the results as they roll in. thank you so much for your reporting there. i want to go to market reaction about amazon and much more from our ed ludlow. ed, did we see much of a move on amazon shares? ending higher on the day, but that was before we knew which way this vote was leading. ed: brad and josh set the scene

for what this means for the union. if you are an investor, how do you play this? to stop treading water in after hours. the focus of the pandemic has been on amazon's growth, but also the conditions that its warehouse, as covered by bloomberg. look at this chart, which gives you some kind of look at the psychology that investors might have. if you look at the current share price, which is the white line, we're around $3,500 a share. the blue line is the 12-month price target for amazon, which is above $4000. in other words, that's where wall street sees the consensus at some point over the next 12 months. a lot of that narrative is around the growth of aws and cloud services. it's around the growth of investors. how much of a risk is this union vote? how much of a risk does it present to top and bottom line growth? right now, investors seem very sanguine. let's take a look at other

stories because there were market movers, netflix popping 1.4%. it has an exclusive deal with sony to take exclusive rights to properties after they've been in theaters. movies like "jumanji," "spider-man." investors really like the look of it. with uber, there was more negative news. a lot of drivers say uber's background check policy is discriminatory against certain sectors of the driver community, but investors seem pretty sanguine. and on a day when big tech was one of the big drivers, apple up by almost 2%. microsoft up by 1.3%. where was that rotation trade? where is that reopening trade? where is the reflation trade? none of us are worried about big tech right now in valuations. the market seems to like some of those mega cap stocks. emily? emily: ed ludlow, thank you so

much for that round up. coming up, jack dorsey's first tweet sold for $2.9 million even though you can still see it on twitter. another nfc art piece selling for $69 billion. just what are these assets? we talk to the cofounder and ceo of blockchain starter alchemy which powers most of these major transactions. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: riding the cryptocurrency wave, the largest crypto exchange in the united states is going public next week. the company was last valued at about $90 billion and will be

the first direct listing on the nasdaq. but work doesn't stop at crypto. coinbase is one of the backers of alchemy, a blockchain platform that powers over $25 billion in transactions of unique tokens, digital assets that have generated a market of $1 billion so far. galaxy digital's ceo is a longtime crypto supporter and has said, albeit new, nft's are here to stay. >> nft's are going to be with us for the rest of our lives, right? art on the blockchain, collectibles on the blockchain, ip on the blockchain -- it's all happening. this is fundamentally going to change how we secure intellectual property from now going forward. emily: joining us now for more, alchemy's ceo and cofounder. the company says that it has grown 54 times in size just since last august. thank you so much for joining

us. so, you're known as this one-stop shop for nft's. can you explain, in simple terms, what an nft actually is and what it's not. >> absolutely. thanks for having me on. nft's is just one of the things that alchemy covers. it's basically the idea of owning something in the digital world. in the real world, if you buy the mona lisa and have it, your friends can make a copy of it. but an art expert will come and certify that you are the owner of the original. in the digital world, if you have an image and your friend makes a copy, no one knows who has the original, but now that is possible thanks a blockchain technology. you can say i'm the original owner. and as a result, it accrues value of being the specific one. emily: so, we know jack dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million even though you can

still see that on twitter. of course, there was the crypto artwork. that said, the nft records got a little quiet over the last few weeks. what do you attribute that to, and what do you think the trajectory actually is? >> absolutely. so, one of the things to understand is nft is not just a single product or single company. nft is a whole new industry. and it has an idea of three pieces. you have this collection in which they care about scarcity and they care about showing off those things, which you can do much more readily in the digital world. so the nft is, whether it's having a lull in the next month or so is kind of inconsequential because what we'll see over the next several years, we'll have media, entertainment, athletes, musicians, games inc., and this will be a cornerstone of blockchain technology and the first consumer rise massive

option of consumer technology. emily: so, that said, there are many doubters out there. randy carver or the carver -- carver of cover financial services said you are delusional if you think these things will have long-term value. what do you say to the people who just don't get it? >> you know, honestly, that's really exciting because it means there's so much more potential. if everyone saw it, the market would be already mature. one of my favorite videos of all time is bill gates trying to explain to this reporter in 1982 why computers would be a thing and how this video technology and multimedia technology can actually provide a better learning experience than above. and i think if you look at any new industry -- blockchain, internet, computers -- you see a similar trend where there will always be people who are skeptical. but the true technologists are the ones that can see the potential applications even before anyone else does. i think we have exciting years

ahead. emily: so, what kind of nft's are going to be worth something big, and what kind of nft's are going to be worthless? >> yeah, that's a great question. i think a good analogy here is looking at beanie babies. beanie babies were definitely something very exciting in my childhood. my sister used to collect them. they're not that popular now, but the idea of collecting is something that is very prevalent, even today. when you look at any single nft, will it be popular in 10 years? it's very hard to predict, but will artists be doing things in 10 years that are valuable? 100%. so, it's very difficult to predict but a lot of exciting things in the futures. emily: now, one of your investments, coinbase, going public next week. how does that legitimize the crypto sector in your view? and what sort of has to happen in order for some of these ideas and obviously currencies to become more mainstream? >> absolutely.

so, we've been building alchemy for the last four years and a huge transformation has happened. when we started, when we hired people, they would talk to their parents or wife or whatever it is and say, "i'm going to join a blockchain company." and the response would not be super excited. when we legitimize the space, everyone's friends and family understand. it's opening up a new generation of talent exploring the new industry, and that's super exciting and will accelerate this incredibly. emily: so, what's your exit strategy? obviously, there's a lot of demand out there. wouldn't now be a good time for a hot nft company to go public? >> absolutely. so, alchemy -- backing up, we're not just nft's. think of us as amazon web services. nft's is just one exciting category.

we will go public some day. i don't know if it's going to be next week with coinbase, but some time in the near future. emily: all right, yes indeed, one of the leading blockchain performers. thank you so much. we'll be watching. coming up, clubhouse barely a year old, but it's drawn some appearances from some of the biggest names in business in hollywood, and twitter is said to be discussing buying the platform for more than $4 billion. we'll have more on that potential deal next. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> if you think about voice, it's relatively new in the area of social networking, at least in the u.s., but it is the oldest medium. we've been gathering with people and talking for as long as civilization has existed. it's something that's really

human. so, our goal is to create a new type of network that is more about those authentic human connections, and we found that voice is a really powerful medium. emily: paul davison there, cofounder of clubhouse. other over two months ago, kluth has only had 10 employees. now, we have learned it was the subject of takeover talks by twitter for $4 billion. katie ruth joins me now. barely a year old. how did these potential deal talks start happening? did clubhouse go to twitter or vice versa? katie: sure. so, we know there were conversations. we don't know who approached who or how they fell apart. but we know in recent months, there were conversations between twitter and clubhouse that were around $4 billion. and we also know that, because

it came out, some people on the side of clubhouse feel they can use that as a data point to potentially raise money around that valuation. but that round hasn't come together yet. emily: so, $4 billion -- is clubhouse really worth that much? katie: [laughter] it depends on who you ask. i have a lot of people on twitter weighing in on it. some people love it. some hate it. some people point to the fact that back in the day, snapchat turned down money allegedly from facebook. and at the time, people thought it was done. -- dumb. and then snapchat grew much bigger. or instagram sold to facebook for what a lot of people thought was way too low when you look at

it now. but at the time, people thought it was way too high. a lot of social media apps in the past have sizzled after being really high, but -- so it's hard to say which way clubhouse will go. certainly, they launched right at the start of the pandemic, and it's invite only, so they've been expanding since then. i think most of their growth has come in the last few months. but, you know, a month ago, it seemed like they're the hottest thing, and their growth has apparently slowed, at least judging by the apt charts. they haven't even launched android yet, so it's hard to say what will happen next. emily: right, android could be another big kickstarter. i spent some time on clubhouse and twitter spaces, which is a competitor to clubhouse. i guess the question remains -- does clubhouse have staying power? does it have a true differentiator?

and i wonder if in the end, twitter decided it did not or if the price wasn't right. katie: sure, so we do know twitter launched twitter spaces, which is a clubhouse competitor, pretty recently, so it looks like right now they're planning to do their own thing. facebook has also been testing out something in this realm. so, some of these tech companies may just find it's easier to try it out in house and see if they can build something. but, as we see with social media, a lot of it is network serving, and because facebook and twitter launch something, it doesn't mean it will necessarily pan out. many social media companies over the years have tried to clone various aspects of other businesses. and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. but yeah, right now, clubhouse is growing competition. emily: indeed. we will be watching what they

've built. thank you so much. coming up, some of the biggest companies in tech to keep an eye out for this upcoming earnings season, and the risks also that they face. this is bloomberg. ♪

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♪ emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. eyes are on facebook. i want to get to ed ludlow, back with the latest. ed, what's happening now? ed: a bit of breaking news, disney popping in after hours, up almost .6%. the theme parks chief at disney said they took the time that covid took them offline to make some changes around how customers will be able to order food, go on rides. he said they did some rewiring.

we were treading water but the stock popped off after trading. but as you said, one of the main focuses today, facebook. we look at some of the action. facebook was actully pretty flat. at one point, it was pushing to a fresh record but then fell away a little bit. amazon also up .6%. facebook's been really interesting. it's been an outperformer year to date. i know you have a guy standing by to talk about the stock. outpacing the nasdaq 100, but that's pretty recent. in recent weeks, we've seen it accelerate a little towards the record highs. you compare that with amazon. amazon has lagged those two major indices year to date. it's underperformed the nasdaq 100 and the myc faang plus index. come with me into my bloomberg and look at this chart.

all the narrative around the vote going on with the union and amazon. 2020 was a big year for amazon. bottom line growth was pretty incredible. you can see their quarterly net income. but it also put in focus how amazon has grown, and therefore, the working conditions at some of its warehouse and fulfillment centers. that's the question, what is mark mahaney looking at? i'm really interested to hear that. but that's really the discussion for investors. where will growth come from for amazon? aws and the cloud has been such a big story around us working and learning from home in covid. you've got the questions, emily, so why don't you ask them? emily: indeed, i will. ed ludlow, thanks so much. facebook, but when it comes to amazon, some have a strong outlook of growth on the retailer. mark mahaney has the companies -- company as one of its topics,

citing acceleration in their cloud adoption. he goes on to say the company is probably the single best internet assets. i want to bring in senior managing director mark mahaney. mark, thanks so much for joining us. we'll talk about facebook in a moment, but amazon, one of your top big tech picks. we've been talking about the union vote that's been happening the last several days. we have the first results in, but amazon leading the vote 2-1 , meaning at this point, the counts show that there is a lean towards not unionizing. do you think this is a big risk factor for amazon? mark: it probably isn't. emily, we should probably assume that there is going to be some distribution center, some fulfillment center that is going to unionize. they're probably going to have 5% of their employees one day

that are going to unionize. there is that trends the deal with. but that doesn't matter on a company of this size and scale if you have 5000 employees unionize out of an employee base of one million. if you had a dramatic unionization, but it's not so much the cost of the union jobs -- amazon's already above $15, but the question would be something that would change the efficiency of amazon fulfillment and distribution centers, and that's hard to know. unionization, i don't think it 's a sharp. at some facility, but i doubt it would be broadly across amazon. emily: ok, so let's talk about two-year other topics, one of which is facebook. we just heard ed talking about another lawsuit, online hate speech, how they failed to police it. there seems to be a huge brand reputation issue with facebook, and yet, you're right. the stock keeps going up. and do you expect it to continue to do so?

mark: yeah, i do expect it to continue to do so. amazon has traded sideways and facebook moves up because amazon was the clear covid -- i hate to say covid winner, it sounds so crass -- but they were the covid winner. the markets were curious and uncertain if they can maintain that as they go through the back half of the year. facebook first got hit as the other ad names did in the first half of the year, so you're going to be expecting facebook's growth to accelerate. and that's why the stock catches the bid earlier. we think it's an inexpensive asset versus its growth rate, and there are some things like this trend -- one of the biggest trends from last year is the rise of social commerce. social media became social commerce, which means the ad inventory on facebook becomes more valuable over time. we still think the stock goes higher from here. emily: meantime, facebook facing even more competition from tiktok. now, there's also clubhouse and

this huge discord, audio platforms, facebook trying to make their own version of that. but how much of a threat are these new upstarts? or do you see facebook as they owned instagram and whatsapp, as well as a category of its own that's untouchable? mark: probably a category of its own. it's not untouchable, but somebody needs to come out with a materially better user experience, at least to compete with core facebook. now, instagram, there is this rising competitor, which is tiktok. we've seen the rising entrance and this space that can match the popularity. it leads to this feature war, application improvement war , which is great for consumers. facebook right now is sitting in a really strong position. what you want to see as a long-term investor is, you have really high margins -- make sure you invest into new growth

areas, the development of new features whether it's facebook marketplace, instagram reels, virtual reality. and it seems they're doing the right thing there. they're investing aggressively in growth. they mistake that facebook would be making is over earning. i haven't seen them fall into that. emily: what is your take on the twitter-clubhouse deal talks? twitter looking to buy clubhouse to $4 million, the talks falling apart. we don't know why, who walked away. what is your take on that? mark: i think it would've been a smart move by twitter, and i think they're acknowledging that by building out their own clubhouse type functionality with twitter spaces. if you can't join them, you beat them. i think i twisted that, but i think that's what they're trying to do. whether that will work, i don't know. the valuation we're talking, i

don't know if that's warranted. we would have to look at the financials of clubhouse and see how well other assets have been able to monetize the user base, and that would imply a relatively large user base for clubhouse. could that happen? sure it could. twitter is improving its product development process, but it specifically needs to do it on the advertising side. that is what stopped the stock from breaking out. they have missed shipping deadlines with new products for advertisers. the users, they've gotten much better on that side. it's the product development lags on the advertiser side that bothers investors on twitter. emily: interesting. alright, and then one of your other topics is uber. obviously, we're in the midst of reopening, but we are all wondering if uber of before is going to return. there's been driver supply issues reported across the country. drivers don't want to get in the car with a stranger.

what makes you so bullish? mark: i think drivers will want to get back into a car with a stranger at some point. and, you know, we may well have to get herd immunity. when we're all commuting again, and that is probably the fourth quarter of this year, so this is going to be a delayed recovery, but it will happen. when people do and when they start to travel, uber's rideshare business will pick back up. in the meantime, it did have this big win out of the covid crisis and its food order delivery business. so that will continue to grow. what you'll see with uber over the next nine months is robust growth in the food delivery business, and a move towards profitability for the business as a whole, and those things can cause the stock to still continue to go up. it had a nice year last year, but we think still have the journey in terms of the stock going up.

emily: mark mahaney, always good to have you with us. thanks so much for stopping by. evercore head of internet research, mark mahaney. coming up, not even halfway through the year and we are seeing a boom in tech m&a. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: despite the pandemic, dealmaking still red hot. m&a is soaring in every region.e spac activity than in all of 2020, with more than 300

companies raising $99 billion. citigroup's head of m&a says i haven't seen these levels of activity for a long time and i don't see a meaningful slowdown anytime soon. stocks are highly valued. financial markets are supportive. and there's money coming in from a number of places. with us now to take a look at spac's, deutsche bank head of tech investment banking, thank you so much for joining us. so, do you think the spac is oversaturated? are we in a spac bubble of sorts? ajay: first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. the spac market has been a really revolutionary for all of capital markets. this product was the product several years ago, but deutsche bank has been in this market for

over 15 years. we have a dedicated team of professionals focusing on the spac market. and while there has been a significant amount of activity, we believe the market is here for the long term. it is actually becoming an asset class, if you will. that hedge funds, they are all investing in this market. it is really, as i said, a true asset class in itself. so, while we have seen a significant amount of activity , as you said, of over $100 billion of spac activity, spac capital being raised in q1, which if you look at the last five years. so, what we are seeing right now is clearly quality. there have been companies that have gone public through spac, and this packs have returned great, sort of, if you will, the returns for investors have been really solid last year. but because of the valuations being significantly stretched, you know, there is an increasing

amount of capital flowing into this. and much like any other market, we are seeing some normalization and valuation, normalization in multiples. there's some pullback in the spac markets. is it over inflation? for the moment, it sounds like it. but much like any other markets, we are going to see a normalization in this market, as well. and investors are certainly going to see some good returns if they continue to invest in spac. emily: but what percentage of the tech companies that are going public via spac are good deals? ajay: yeah, so i would step back and think about the sponsors of the spac. about 70% to 75% of the sponsors of the spac are really not that high quality of sponsors, which,

again, too many spac's chasing too many companies, and the bar has been going lower and lower , which has resulted in many of these spacs below $10. many of the companies that have assets in markets so far -- lumen or, draftkings, rocket labs, rover, and several others that have been working have all been -- are really good companies, but there is along with that, probably a 6-1 ratio -- a 6:1 ratio of bad companies to good. so, investors need to be careful . in fact, sponsors have to be very careful as they think about the quality of these companies. there was a time when many of these companies obviously didn't have real revenue.

they didn't have a good business plan. and there was an opportunity for the companies to really get into gross. but now they are public companies and they need to perform like public companies. they all need to sort of work into their valuation. emily: so, we heard that quote earlier from citigroup. and i'm curious what you think the market for tech m&a's and ipo's looks like for the rest of the year, and if you think the pace of the deals will keep up, and what deutsche bank's role in that is going to be. ajay: yeah, absolutely. so, the tech market has been on fire in q1. we saw $137 billion raise in both spac and non-spac ipo's. 50% of that was tech ipo's. so, tech ipo's have raised about $21 billion or so of capital, and there's a long list of really solid pipeline for tech

ipo's to go public, companies like -- obviously, we've heard of coinbase and so on and so forth. but along with that, given that we are now slowly coming out of this pandemic, there is obviously the availability of the vaccine. there's economic recovery. financing costs continue to remain low. there's about $150 billion of dried powder among the spac's. and then we continue to see on the tech side, there is a transformation and evolution of business models. you are seeing healthy activity on the m&a side, as well. we've seen massive deals happen over the last years. salesforce acquiring slack, and even cross-border deals. so, we are seeing a very, very healthy progress in the m&a market.

the multiples have kept going up. you know, the markets are obviously very supportive and conducive to continues capital growth and momentum. emily: ok. all right, information packed interview there. ajay shah, thank you for giving us your outlook on the rest of the year. ok, still ahead, what was once known as a hobby or a side hustle has turned into a $2 billion industry. the sneaker market is exploding and stockx is -- and one stock reaping the rewards. the ceo is joining us next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: kicks becoming commodities. the sneaker resale market has reached more than $2 billion in

north america. it's growing more than 10% every year. this as stock x, an exchange which started out selling high-end speakers -- sneakers expanded to luxury streetwear has rated $255 million in its latest round of funding. now valued at $3.8 billion. the start which mimics a stock market is reported to be planning to go public. ceo scott cutler joins us now with more. so scott, tell us a little bit more what stockx is in some of the other resale options that have proliferated out there. scott: our aspirations are to be a global e-commerce marketplace for consumers of current culture. and when you look at the categories, yes, we started in sneakers, but we've expanded so rapidly into other categories including apparel, electronics, collectibles. and what you're seeing is the next-generation of consumers is

looking at some of these consumer products as actual assets that are worthwhile of an investment opportunity and a consumption opportunity, and it striving rapid growth in the industry for this set of consumers. emily: now, scarcity is such an interesting part and tactic of the fashion industry that i still don't quite understand. but i'm curious how beholden you are into nike or adidas when they get to decide how many sneakers of a certain kind are putting out there, and they could also suddenly decide to make a certain product a little less scarce. scott: the objectives of any brand is to create consumer awareness and to drive brand value or heat in the category. and what you're seeing is a strategy being deployed by multiple brands across all industries, which is leveraging scarcity, collaborations to create unique product that's scarce value, but consumers are clamoring for. the consumer sees it on the feet -- foot of an athlete, worn by

an influencer, and wants access to the product, and that drives traffic to the brand. and they're going to platforms like stockx for access transparently to these products and they want authentic products, as well. what we're offering to that consumer is access to things that are being released by great brands but are typically not accessible to the same consumer. emily: so, since you're looking at the future of culture, where do you think streetwear and sneakers are going as we come out of a pandemic and some of us might want to flash our kicks a little bit more than we might have needed to last year? scott: well, leave it to this next generation to come up with unique ideas and opportunities. we always thought the idea would expand beyond the buying and consuming of products, these assets trading like commodities .

much like the oils or future markets, today, you can invest in sneakers, electronics, or apparel as an asset class. so, the idea that you could provide an index or a derivative, or a contract or nfp associated with a digital product related to a physical good is all the rage today. and it's exciting for this next generation of consumer, but it speaks to this trend of a different way of consuming, and even potentially investing for this generation. emily: scott, i interviewed you several times in your formal role at the new york stock exchange. now, there are reports of stockx considering going public. what can you tell us about your plan to go public and any plans of accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment? scott: oh man, i've gotten that question so many times. but you'll remember our conversations before, there are hundreds of companies that are preparing are going public.

so, for us, no different than them, it's the execution of our strategy, which is really expanding our platform around the world, expanding into other categories, and being able to execute and operate on that business plan that opens up opportunities for public ipo at some point. but executing on that business plan is an anti-to all of those other opportunities. so, this financing that we're announcing today is just a step in that direction. we have a great shareholder list today that includes public and private investors, some leading investors in the world. it's a part of our strategy of building a set of partners for the future. emily: 15 seconds, scott, accepting crypto, yes or no? scott: oh, absolutely. with paypal including that as a form of payment and as our consumers demand that opportunity to transact in other currencies in other platforms, we of course are looking at that

to bring it on. emily: stockx ceo scott cutler, thanks for stopping by. that does it for this "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. this is bloomberg. ♪

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