>> from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg technology. coming up in the next hour, antitrust reforms introduced by a group of house lawmakers includes going after big tech megamergers. we will hear from victoria spartz of indiana.

plus, both sides of the crypto coin, the future of regulation with hector pierce and on the investment side, we have michael of the crypto asset firm grayscale. disney moves a documentary about the beatles from theaters to its streaming service. a sign hollywood is still unsure whether moviegoers will return to theaters. all of the stories in a moment but first, a check of the markets including the tech heavy nasdaq. kriti gupta is here with that. kriti: a risk off day in the stock market. that was good in tech. the nasdaq outperformed. you can see that massive surge higher before we went into that fed meeting yesterday that rock ed the markets. this is not just today's story. you are seeing this on a weekly basis. tech is performing. crucial to say after the underperformers for the first

five months of the year. june really let it hit its stride. you are seeing the first two weeks of june doing well for the tech sectors. it accelerated. with that defensive bid, you're seeing treasuries higher as well. that correlation between stocks and bonds in positive territory. interesting to see that as we start to see the defensive bid, bonds back in focus and tech is really taking their cue from that. now trading in tandem rather than opposite directions. ed: right now i am watching meme stocks. amc entertainment, another another volatile day, up 10%. another reddit favorite, gamestop a little more muted. up .3%. blackberry, i remember when i arrived blackberry being an old-fashioned tech company. who knows? we know this is retail traders driving this narrative. a lot of it to do with meme

stocks. one theory put forward by a guest on bloomberg television is you're still seeing the rise of the retail trader and perhaps they are here to stay. let's change the boards to big tech. megacap big stocks, there is no reason or rhyme, no news flow but we have seen rotations out. this reflation trade falling away. names like amazon and apple making significant gains. apple up 1.3%. astonishingly, apple is in negative territory year to date. nvidia giving us news, up $854. they like what they heard. they have raised their price target on that stock. also, peloton higher. mark zuckerberg zuckerberg, the facebook ceo, saying that they have a big future, they named check peloton. the final thing i want to bring you, the sec issued statements after the market closed, saying

it will be closed for juneteenth on friday and the federal reserve board in washington has followed suit in the last few minutes. breaking news, day two will be close to serve the juneteenth holiday. emily: ed ludlow, kriti gupta, thank you so much for the roundup. moving on to big tech antitrust. it has been top of mind in washington this week between various hearings and a new package is being pushed by representative david cicilline. joining me to discuss one of those bills is republican victoria spartz of indiana. she is sponsoring the modernization act which updates filing fees for mergers for the first time in two decades to ensure that the department of justice and ftc officials have what they need to enforce antitrust laws, or so they say. thank you so much for joining us. what do you hope this bill will accomplish? >> i would like to stipulate, i

would really appreciate that we don't have one, and this -- just one omnibus bill with a lot of information and you can't tell whether it is good or bad. we can have six separate bills and six separate issues to debate. i personally will stay open-minded, but i don't like a lot of provisions in other bills. the bill i am working on was passed by the senate and was unanimously passed in the senate judiciary. i decided to be the lead sponsor on that bill because i believe the bill needs some work and we can provide more sources to the ftc to do a better job dealing with bad apples and having more user fees. we have to require more transparency and accountability

from the ftc. they have been under different administrations. they have to be accountable to congress. i am planning to make some amendments on tuesday -- wednesday. emily: how might the facebook instagram or facebook whatsapp acquisitions have been different? rep. spartz: ftc, there is a function to review the merger. if you look at my bill, it does not just deal with big tech or particularly target any companies. it can be hospital monopolies, we have plenty of monopoly problems out there, but they have to start looking. the concentration of market that are allowed to ask monopoly powers. how we can have more effective tools at the ftc to deal with that. it's when they start using

monopoly power to suppress consumer or there is no protection of people's privacy protection. they have these crazy terms of service no one knows what data they collect about you. we have to have discussion and debate. ftc can be useful or not. emily: the person appointed to the ftc has been a vocal critic of big tech. what is your take on kahn's appointment? rep. spartz: there are a lot of concerns on the republican side about how she would aggressively enforce it. i don't think the ftc should be aggressive, ftc should do its job not to pick losers and winners, but see when aggressive monopoly powers have to be checked against the little guy and consumer. i think that is why it is important.

actually help more transparency, accountability to congress. we need to have this discussion. my republican colleagues have legitimate concerns. they feel she will be very aggressive and unfair. if we don't get involved, she will do it anyway. i feel if we get engaged and have the debate, we can make better legislation. emily: republicans and democrats both seem to want action on big tech, but for different issues -- for different reasons. democrats want more moderation and republicans are worried about infringement on free speech. where do you think you can find common ground? will you find common ground in order for there to be some movement? rep. spartz: we have to, because if we don't find common ground, nothing will happen. we have some problems. if we have a technology company be able to silence the president of the united states, it is a big problem. if we have hospital monopolies

dictating the prices in the country, it is a huge problem. a lot of them are created by our government creating barriers of entry. we need to have a discussion and a functional ftc to have the mechanism, may be for different reasons. we need to find some common ground to move forward. if we don't deliberate, we will have the status quo and nothing is going to change. it is hurting the consumer and the free enterprise and the markets. monopoly powers are not good. especially if they abuse free enterprise, it hurts small business. i used to work with fortune 500 america. i understand the importance to have a healthy market and healthy m&a transaction. a lot of them are getting less and less healthy. the ftc is not doing their job. emily: looking at big tech, i would love to hear some specifics. if you think about companies as big as google, amazon, facebook,

microsoft, which companies and where do you see the best case for a possible breakup? or is that not what you're looking for? rep. spartz: some of my colleagues and i are looking at breaking up but i think bottom up approach is better than top -down. that should be the last resort. there are a lot of things in the bottom up approach where you can have data protection. the large players are playing by fair rules. a lot of them suppress the market competition and the little guy. that will naturally allow more competition and a more competitive market. that is my personal perspective. that is why i want to make sure that the ftc is accountable and explaining to us what they are doing. there are some other bills that believe in that approach. i would like to hear the debate. i am not sold on that.

i think bottom up approaches work better than top-down. emily: can you give us any more indication of the bills you are looking to introduce next week over ftc regulation? rep. spartz: there are six bills, they do them in different ways. some of them deal with opportunity, some look on the burden of proof related to mergers and acquisitions. i don't want to get into details, they will all be debated. they are legitimate concerns. i have strong concerns with the rest of the bill, including the bill that i am introducing. it will be passed like it is because it is best in the senate. there are good parts. there are other parts of the bill that i don't particularly like. i don't like that it just applies to few companies, it should apply to everyone.

it should apply to big companies and apply to everyone. emily: republican representative victoria spartz. thanks so much for joining us to share your point of view. we will be watching for those bills next week. coming up, the ftc has delayed a ruling on bitcoin etf's. but when it comes down to it, what will it be and could other countries adopt crypto like el salvador? we have a guest weigh inon that -- in on that next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: bitcoin has had a wild few months since reaching its

high back in april but the coin has gotten a boost in recent days. just over 3% on the back of elon musk tweeting that tesla could resume accepting bitcoin as long as miners resume transactions -- miners do so sustainably. they have been pointing to a small village in el salvador where they have been doing it for years. earlier, bloomberg spoke with the ceo of this crypto lending firm. >> el salvador is a small country and it has some troubles here and there. this is a great pr move. 20% of their economy comes through remittances. for them, it makes sense. i see some of the latin countries following up. sooner or later, is the u.s. going to follow suit? i doubt that. emily: i want to bring in the ceo of the crypto investment firm grayscale investments.

do you doubt the u.s. will make a similar move? michael: what we really see now is quite a few projects underway both in the u.s. and abroad where central banks are beginning to explore the development of their own digital currencies. we have seen that in places like china, the development of the digital dollar project beginning to get some traction in the u.s. ultimately, this is not necessarily something that should be understood to be a competitor with decentralized protocols like bitcoin. rather, i do see in the future that we will see sovereign currencies, fiat currencies make the move on to a blockchain based system. emily: how is this uncertainty impacting where you are placing your bets? do you have any plans to pitch a tent on bitcoin beach in el salvador anytime soon? michael: this has been an interesting time in the market,

seeing moves like what we are seeing in el salvador, seeing an environment where we have some of the world's most followed and famous investors publicly coming out in support of bitcoin, major corporations beginning to add bitcoin to their balance sheet. this is an environment unlike we have ever seen before around this asset class. i think the last 18 plus months, people in the investment community have solidified the staying power digital currencies now have and investors are waking up to the potential they can provide to their portfolios. emily: i just spoke with the coinbase co-founder who is legitimately concerned that china will surpass the u.s. in crypto and especially when it comes to regulation. what do you think? michael: what we are seeing in the u.s. is a regulatory regime that has been very in tune with cryptocurrency.

firms like grayscale is an example of firms working in the asset class but also the existing regulatory framework. what you are seeing is guidance that has given investors the confidence they need to approach and be involved in the asset class. whether it is irs, treasury, you name it. what we have seen in other parts of the world china is a stance that i think is a bit more prohibitive at times around decentralized currencies like bitcoin. to fred's point, i do sometimes agree with that stance that there is a little bit of an arms race around it as to which countries and regulatory regimes will be most accommodative to assess and ensuring that the companies and people using them

are going to get that advantage. there is some element of time being of the essence around those initiatives. emily: speaking of that, we are expecting a decision on bitcoin etf's. where do you expect that decision to land? michael: we have been engaged with the ftc on bitcoin etf's dating back to 2016. we are 100% committed to converting our flagship fund into an etf when the regulatory environment is ready to make those approvals. from our engagement with regulators and within the financial services and crypto communities, we are really encouraged by a lot of the progress. i think the sec has been very clear that there are certain aspects of the crypto ecosystem that they are looking to achieve a certain level of maturation. they are trying to ensure that these markets, before they

improve -- they approve products around them, are free of manipulation and ultimately may have some of the same types of investor protections in place that they may have around equities and even other asset classes they also oversee. while we are certainly making progress, i think we are not quite there just yet. emily: there has been a ton of volatility. are we back on the upswing? will we see some more lows before we get back to the high up cycle? michael: based on investor demand, we have seen this time and again. we have seen leverage coming out of the ecosystem that has caused a correction in the price of bitcoin. typically, the investor behavior has been one of using these pullbacks in price opportunistically to add to the position. if they fundamentally still believe in the investment pieces

but that investment is now available to them at 10% or 15% cheaper than a month or two ago, then investors often use these kinds of periods of time to add to their positions and build up a diversified portfolio when you see those pullbacks. emily: what do you think of elon musk's latest comments? does the whiplash bother you? saying one thing and then saying another? michael: you are talking to someone who has been run crypto for about 8 years now, so i have seen those movements in the crypto price. i think some of the commentary elon musk has made has been focused on esg and some of the carbon footprint and energy consumption concerns around bitcoin mining and when it comes to that, i think it is important that we stick to the facts. i think the latest statistic is 75% of the miners are using renewable energy as part of

their energy net. that could be hydro, it could be wind, it could be solar. we are only 10 or 12 years into the lifecycle of crypto assets. it stands to reason that this is an opportunity for this industry to innovate advised to -- innovate and reduce its carbon footprint and ultimately rise to the challenge that is being presented to it. emily: i am sure over all these years, you developed the iron stomach to weather these ups and downs. thank you so much, michael, for taking the time to join us. coming up, facebook launches new tools to help businesses reach more customers. but is the social network muscling in on amazon's e-commerce turf? we will find out. and adobe out with second-quarter earnings after the bell. the company giving a profit forecast for the current four cutter. -- the current quarter.

this is bloomberg. ♪

>> i don't think we are making a dent in amazon yet. we partner with a lot more of the ecosystem so we have a close partnership with shopify, which also builds great tools to support businesses to shop on the internet. we partnered with a lot of companies like that. our approach has been to be pretty open and partnership oriented. we are not going to build all the tools that businesses need to grow and sell online, but we have built some really good ones where a lot of businesses can drive sales through our ad products. if we can extend that by enabling purchases by browsing directly, that would be great, but we will do that in partnership with a lot of our companies.

emily: mark zuckerberg speaking at a tech conference about the social network's e-commerce plans. his comments came as the company introduced ads to its instagram reels products to help businesses reach wid audienceser -- wider audiences. in other news, the company behind tiktok announced a $2.1 billion dollar operating loss last year. that compares to a operating profit of $684 million in 2019. this swing coming after the company issuing more shares to employees ahead of a widely anticipated ipo. it also boosted spending to acquire users and support content creators. a number of websites operated by financial institutions, governments and airlines went down briefly in the second thursday global internet outage in as many weeks. among those affected, hong kong exchanges and clearing, a number of australian banks command southwest airlines. some of the outages were linked to a failure at akamai

technologies. the issue caused a one hour long outage. it was restricted by a software failure. coming up, 23 and me debuts through a merger sponsored by richard branson. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. let's get back to financial markets, where ed ludlow is keeping an eye on the spac market. they slowed a bit, but they are still coming. what are you seeing? ed: still coming. looking at the companies who went public with a spac. 23andme, surging 21% on its debut as a public company. of course as you said, went public via reverse merger with a richard branson spac. if you follow the space, there are some big moves.

the hydrogen semi-maker up almost 8%. a fintech company up 4%. i like to look at the bigger picture. come with me and look at this chart. let's focus on the white line down the bottom. that's an index of companies that went public through a reverse merger with a spac. they now trade as themselves. that white line is underperforming the blue line. that blue line is a gauge of all the spac's yet to acquire a company. there is a lesson here. it does not guarantee performance taking this route to go public through a reverse merger with spac. if you come back to me in the studio, some year-to-date performance is worth noting. draftkings, marginal gains. what do all three of these companies have in common? they were subject to a short seller attack. as a short seller, they profit if the stocks drop. what is interesting is as a spac, you can market future

financial projections. it is very different to listing through the traditional ipo route. but it means that sometimes people come digging. look at those spac's year-to-date. it is a really choppy road. i will keep an eye on 23andme. emily: choppy, indeed. bloomberg's ed ludlow. as ed mentioned, the genetic testing and personalized medicine company 23andme began trading on the nasdaq. it went public through a merger with the richard branson spac. shares up over 21% from the opening price. earlier i caught up with anne wojcicki, 23andme founder, who once told me she never wanted to be a public company. i asked why now. anne: i am a firm believer companies should not go public until the time is right and they are mature enough to handle it. it is a lot of pressure, as you know. you are on tv every day and people are watching your ticker and your price. you want to be public when you

are mature enough of a company to manage that. 23andme is absolutely at that stage. we are also at a point where there is just an incredible opportunity on the consumer side of the business and the therapeutic side of the business and we absolutely want to build to scale. -- to be able to scale. emily: now, i know part of the mission here is to raise cash to double down on the therapeutic side of the business. you recently licensed your first drug developed in-house to another company. how many more drugs could we see, and when? anne: we have a large collaboration with gsk, focusing on, really looking at all the genetic information and genetic insights, and can we turn those insights into therapeutics. we have over 40 programs underway with them. our first one is in human clinical trials. we are excited to have hopefully another one in humans soon. emily: i want to talk about the dna testing part of the company which is how 23andme was born.

you did have some layoffs through the pandemic. i know the business has slowed. ancestry for example, has taken their testing kits off the market. there have been privacy concerns as well. will those continue to be a challenge, and how does dna testing fit into the future vision for the business? anne: all great questions. i think what is really clear is people understand the idea of dna, and a personalized experience happening in your health care. but we do not yet have that experience. i think people are largely frustrated the health care, how it is. i think there is an opportunity for us to be better in the whole world of personalized prevention as well as more personalized treatment. that's really a lot of where we are focused now. what has been interesting in the market as you alluded to with the ups and downs is that people

do not know yet exactly what do you do. how is health care and genetics integrated? that is something 23andme is really pioneering and trying to explain more to our customers, what actually should they do with genetic information and how do they integrate that into their life and into their care. last, with respect to privacy and everything going on, 23andme has always said that there is a huge opportunity to actually engage individuals more with their health and in research if you treat them more like a partner and not like a human subject. that means if you actually provide them choice and transparency. what 23andme does, we do not ever opt our customers into anything. it's we give them a choice -- we give them a choice to opt in. we are very transparent about the research we are doing. we gave people the opportunity to opt out even when we have done large partnerships, and we always found when people have this opportunity to have a choice, they want to participate. emily: as we have been talking and i have been watching the stock price, it was 19% above

list, now it is about 17% above list. we have been talking about a spac bubble, and if that will -- that bubble has burst. curious why you thought a spac was the right call versus a traditional ipo, when you are more likely perhaps to get that typical tech ipo pop? anne: i was really happy with the opportunity to work with richard branson and his team. frankly, we looked at the ipo process and the spac process, and the opportunity to work with them and engage with investors more was just an opportunity we wanted to pursue. i am really thrilled. richard branson is one of the few successful entrepreneurs who understands health care, the consumer side, why it is so hard, and he will be a great partner for us going forward. emily: paint a five-year picture. we have about one minute left. what does the company look like? will there be new products? will there be new features?

what looks different one year, five years from now? anne: there are two things we are focused on. one is truly helping our 11 million-plus customers, and growing, helping them have a personalized health care experience based on their genetics. very few physicians are trained on how to integrate genetic information into care, and that is specifically an opportunity for 23andme to help all of our customers integrate genetic medicine into their primary care experience. second, we're absolutely going to run fast and furious with all the opportunities we see on the therapeutic side, and we are going to help our customers benefit by really being able to give them a genetically-derived treatment that came from the 23andme community. emily: you have done some really interesting covid research linking genetics to blood types, to the loss of taste and smell. are we going to see more discoveries, more that you unearth on covid in particular?

anne: we are talking about more research on long covid. that is a perfect example where 23andme, because we have this ongoing engagement platform, we can engage our customers by putting out a survey to them, and filling out more information and being able to do the analysis on that. emily: anne wojcicki there, ceo and founder of 23andme. coming up, my conversation with sec commissioner hester pierce about the future of regulation for crypto. she is generally known as someone who has been more favorable to crypto policy. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> it is really hard to price things in dollars. we just do not know where the dollar is going to go. i am super bullish on bitcoin. i think $200,000 a coin by the end of the year is still within reach. it may be a lambo with fewer options or a smaller engine. i think we are still looking at very lofty price targets here. i think we will see a new all-time high before the end of the year. emily: kraken ceo jesse powell on his price target for bitcoin. he also responded to a question about elon musk's concerns about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency. jesse: bitcoin is a lot greener than people give it credit for. it is a way to capture a lot of discarded and lost energy. it is a way to bootstrap renewables.

i think it is doing a lot for the renewable energy sector. i do not know how long elon has been studying this, but i think he has some more studying to do on this topic. emily: after that interview aired earlier, elon musk responded on twitter, saying based on what data? meantime, everybody is waiting for the sec to make a move on cryptocurrency, and how the chair will lead that effort remains a big question. i spoke with hester peirce, known for her more favorable position on crypto. take a listen. hester: it is a little too early for me to tell you what to expect in terms of what our new chairman is planning to do on crypto. he has been outspoken already about wanting to have some oversight of the stock markets. whether that is the sec or another federal regulatory agency. but with respect to with what we

are going to do at the sec, i hope we can provide clarity in a few different areas. one would be, i have put out a token safe harbor to give some clarity around token distribution events. i think we need to approve an exchange traded product based on bitcoin. we have new applications based on ethe as well. we need to provide clarity around custody for regulated entities for broker-dealers. those are some of the areas i would like us to take action in. emily: the sec filed a lawsuit in december against ripple labs, creator of the xrp token. the claim is xrp is an unregistered security. why did this happen now? hester: i cannot speak to any litigation that is ongoing. but i can say we have been

bringing enforcement actions now in this space since 2017. i anticipate as long as there is activity in this space, they will be enforcement in this space. that said, i have been very clear about the fact we need to provide regulatory clarity before we spend too much more time on enforcement where there is not fraud involved. emily: that leaves the question, xrp has been on the market for eight years. when does a digital asset become a security, or maybe something else? and how does the sec determine that? hester: well, i think that is a difficult question. it is something again, i have tried to get us to be a little more precise. when we think about a crypto asset, a digital asset as being a security, what we are doing is we are saying it is being sold as part of an investment

contract, which means there are promises being made around the sale of that asset. it does not mean the asset itself necessarily has to be a security. it means it was being sold as a security. then the question becomes, at what point can someone sell that asset not as a security? and that is a very difficult line. emily: when it comes to elon musk in particular though, you -- do you find it at all problematic that one person, whose company owns a lot of cryptocurrency, in this case bitcoin, can have such tremendous power over the market? is there a problem with that? hester: again, my focus as a securities regulator is to try to regulate the securities markets in a way that protects investors and the integrity of that marketplace. i always encourage people to make their own decisions, regardless of what anyone, whether it is a celebrity or

their brother or mother tells them about a security or an asset of any kind. make your own decision, do your own analysis. if you are not able to do that, then go to a financial professional or another professional. go and get the help you need to make the decision and to do so wisely. emily: what do you think the odds are for a central bank digital currency? hester: well, certainly there will be a cbdc, whether or not from the u.s., i am not the one to answer that question. the fed has said that they are thinking about it. so i expect we will see the fruits of that thought as they try to engage with the public on it. other central banks are coming up with cbdc's. i think it's a natural progression of money that will

see people moving into cbdc's. there are a lot of questions around them, around privacy, around whether people will feel comfortable using a cbdc or prefer to use private stable coins. those are coins in the united states we have to wrestle with because we care about financial privacy. emily: what about what is happening in other countries? when you look at china, does china have too much influence on the cryptocurrency market? hester: i think one of the benefits of crypto is that allows people all over the world to participate. crypto markets are very diverse. and so the level of participation by different people and different countries varies a lot across different crypto assets. so you kind of need to think about it in that way. but another piece of this i would bear in mind is crypto activity can move very easily.

it is much harder for any particular country or group of people in any particular country to retain control over any particular decentralized system, as long as it really is decentralized. emily: does it mean that crypto could be a real systemic risk to the traditional financial world? hester: the traditional financial world has obviously brought society really important benefits. and i think as we see crypto mature, it is going to open more doors to more people to participate with the financial system. and that is a good thing. that is something that we should encourage, right? so, do we have to watch out for risks? that is what regulators do all the time. we are going to be watching for risks no matter whether they come from the traditional financial system, from a decentralized financial system, or some combination of the two. but i think these concerns that

there is something inherent about crypto that should have us scared from a systemic perspective are overblown. emily: sec commissioner hester peirce there on cryptocurrency. of course we will be looking at how the sec weighs in on crypto in coming weeks. coming up, disney is taking a u-turn with its highly anticipated beatles documentary. why the company is holding off on theaters and taking it straight to streaming. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> 2, 1, 0. ignition. and lift off. go falcon. emily: another successful launch and landing for a spacex falcon

nine rocket. on board, a new gps navigation satellite for the u.s. military. this is the first time spacex has launched a national security mission with a reused rocket. meantime, hollywood is not quite sure movie theaters want to get back to that in-theater experience. so much so that disney is moving its highly anticipated documentary about the beatles from theaters to its streaming service. chris palmeri has all the details. this is a big one. why do you think they did this? chris: there's a couple things going on. one is it is pretty clear we have a lot of stories about movie theaters coming back. if it is a movie like godzilla, a quiet place, a horror movie, it attracts that kind of core moviegoing audience, 18 to 30-year-olds who maybe are trying to get out of the house. feel like they are invulnerable. they are going out to see movies in theaters.

the older folks like me, you know, are still very skittish, even if you are vaccinated, to get in a room with a bunch of strangers. i think that is probably part of the calculus here. the beatles movie -- to convince a guy like peter jackson, the lord of the rings director, to take this movie out of theaters, that took a lot of work. but they are figuring beatles fans will feel more comfortable. the other interesting thing is they put it on disney plus, not hulu, no extra charge. you know how much disney plus is important to this company. to put it on thanksgiving weekend, they are really trying to make a statement and have everybody talking about it. emily: that is what i was going to ask, because it was supposed to come out and theaters in august. why not put it out on streaming in august? chris: it was originally supposed to come out last year. it just has to do with competition and schedules.

thanksgiving is actually kind of a time when disney releases some of their bigger movies. frozen came out then. but given the lag they have had with not being able to produce any movies the last year, they have a problem with content, so they have to fill these windows. whether it's in theaters or on tv or on streaming, with these big events, things that get people talking. emily: so, what are the other big pictures that disney has coming up for the rest of the year? because if you look at what is happening in theaters right now, it's certainly interesting. and it does certainly seem that only a certain kind of audience is going back. chris: right. it's not a traditional year. the box office is still down 50%, even from last year's numbers, and last year obviously took a big hit. so we're going to see big movies.

f9, the fast and furious sequel is coming out. that is a universal picture, but that will be out later this month. that will do very well, i'm sure. disney has black widow coming out in theaters, that is going to do very well. again, it is that core audience of younger people who are feeling a lot more comfortable going out and spending time with their friends, and are looking for events like that. and these more adult-oriented films are probably going to keep getting pushed out. emily: meantime, looking at the bigger disney empire, are we seeing a rebound at the parks? back to summer, if you will? masks off, states reopening, california reopening is a big deal for disney. chris: oh yeah. they just opened this avengers campus at california adventure. as we wrote about, they did it without the usual huge big

publicity push like they did for cars land or star wars land. it still had lines, even with the virtual queue system they started. people trying to get there early to get a reservation. the park itself, you need a reservation to get into. it's sold out on a lot of days. and things are busy in florida as well. so it's not quite the good old days, but certainly people are looking to get out and get those experiences. emily: all right. bloomberg's chris palmeri. we will keep watching how this evolves. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." tune in tomorrow, where we are going to be joined by hadiyah mujhid, the founder and ceo of hbcuvc. this is a group that directs capital to black and latinx innovators. a really fascinating approach to a difficult problem.

you don't want to miss that. i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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