♪ ritika: --romaine: from bloomberg world headquarters in new york, i'm romaine bostick. caroline will be back, but she's missing her favorite topic, bitcoin. australia rolled out the coin is legal tender here. a little bit of a rocky start. a lot of public skepticism here about using this. of course, a lot of bulls out

there who say they prefer to use u.s. dollars. the big concern about how you get people to adopt. is it transactional, is it an asset class? who knows? let's talk more about this and get some reaction. >> el salvador, let's face it, it is on its back. it's got real problems. it is a bankrupt country. i don't think it is going to spread to other countries. >> it is a little bit surprising that the administration has pushed bitcoin as a medium exchange so firmly when at the sovereign level it seems like the most obvious thing to do would to adopt it in their foreign exchange reserves.

>> whenever you are doing a new technology rollout, i guess the real question is, back in six weeks or 12 weeks and let's talk about how it is working. doing things to scale is not easy. taylor: your guess has been covering el salvador's -- our guest has been covering el salvador's adoption of bitcoin. joe it is interesting if you think about it coin versus a lot of the other cryptocurrencies. they are focused on technological roadmaps, software and banking. bitcoin is very much a bitcoin will take over all money philosophy. something like a nationstate

saying bitcoin is now legal tender is pretty remarkable. thinking about buying the dip today, that is part of their vision. it is about the inevitable bitcoin conquering the world. taylor coiled -- taylor: the bitcoin conquering the world, please explain why bitcoin is the preeminent. joe: all of the other existing cryptocurrencies typically have some sort of leader or ceo. bitcoin of course does not. it is highly rigid. the software is very difficult to change. it is the idea that it is the closest thing the digital world has to something. and unable to be changed. romaine: let's get some insight from someone on the ground.

michael, i am curious about public reception in el salvador about this effort. >> there is some confusion on the ground about the rollout. we have seen polls in weeks leading up to today's rollout that between 60% and salvadoreans prefer to use the u.s. dollar, which is el salvador's official currency, to bitcoin. there are polls that show most would like to see this bitcoin law repealed. several companies said they would accept it. we saw reports of people paying successfully done bitcoin and some of these larger chains, but there are protests on the ground. there are some people on the ground that have requested that if you repeal, and there is some confusion going forward.

taylor: it was suggested that it be used as a store of value rather than a currency because of the fluctuations. what is the feeling on the ground given the volatility, at least today? michael: sure, that is a risk, and i think it contributes to some of the fear on the ground among the people in el salvador. what happens if it loses 10% overnight? there were a couple of weeks from april to may where it lost 50% of its value. it is a big risk, something the imf and world bank have highlighted. using el salvador as a conversation. is it something that has come up and it does concern people on the ground. romaine: what is the next step here? there are some who say more

governments will adopt, but this is not really about government adoption. joe: i think adoption is still going to be more on the grassroots, even among people in el salvador. what i expect is that still it will be due people around the world what to see and adopt. romaine: we should point out, el salvador is a small economy. it is ranked 110th or something. taylor: there are big companies adopting bitcoin like donald's, allowing you to pay in bitcoin. what is the risk here that smaller companies, small businesses, entrepreneurs really get shut out of the economy if they try to convert at a faster rate? >> that is part of the risk and i think that is part of the concern, that some of these

smaller mom-and-pop stores in el salvador and family-owned businesses don't have the technology for financial education to use it, so there is a fear they may be sort of shut out of this economy if they are not able to adopt it. there has been a pilot program for this. there is a small beach town in el salvador where they did rollout it coin several years ago, and it is mostly small businesses. it is a pretty tiny beach town. it has worked fairly successfully there on a small scale. obviously, it has not been scaled up to a national level, so there are questions about how it will work, but there are concerns about some of these businesses not being technologically able to handle it. taylor: thank you, as always. always grateful for your expertise in crypto. stay with us because we have more crypto ahead. we are going to be discussing

wall street's overlap with fintech. we will be doing that the founder and ceo of gauntlet. i hear sonali basak has key questions she would like to ask. this is bloomberg. ♪

romaine: welcome back. we want to go down to queens, new york city, where president biden is surveying some of the damage from hurricane ida. president biden: let me begin by saying i wish every american could walk down this alley with me, to see and talk to the

people who have been devastated -- just talk to them. none of them were shouting or complaining. every one of them were thanking me as if it were something special -- i mean it sincerely -- that i was here. and hope that we would be able to do something. this is america where i'm standing right now. these are the people, if it's scranton or claymont or anywhere around the world -- the country, who built this country. it is about time we step up. they are always the first ones that are hurt and the last ones that are helped, but that's not going to happen this time. the group i have standing with me, led by chuck schumer and your congresswoman -- is this your district?

oh, it is grace's. i want to thank her personally for her gumption, the way she squawked and hollered and fought so hard all the people in this alley. i really mean it. thank you, thank you, thank you. but that goes for everybody here. i want to thank the governor and leader schumer and kristin -- or should i say senator gillibrand, and congresspeople maloney and meeks and mayor de blasio for being here. it's not -- how can i say this? sometimes some very bad things happen that have a tendency to bring out the best in the people and the country, and i think

what people are seeing across this country, from the wildfires in california and the far west which i'm heading to in a couple of days all the way to down in louisiana in the gulf where i was a couple days ago, to new jersey and pennsylvania, people are beginning to realize this is much, much bigger than anyone was willing to believe, and a whole segment of our population denying this thing called climate change. >> right. >> right. >> right. president biden but i really mean it, out of something bad, something good will come of it. it is not just people trying to get by working their boats off

-- working their butts off. it is people on the high shore finding that the buildings are beginning to tilt. hundred-story buildings. this goes so far beyond what anyone has been willing to speak to up to now. we just finished surveying some of the damage, and earlier today, we were in new jersey, which also got badly hit. walking these neighborhoods, meeting with families and first responders, seeing how folks are doing after this destruction and pain and another devastating storm is an eye-opener. the people that stand on the other defenses that don't live there who are talking about interfering with free enterprise

by doing something about climate change -- they don't live there. they don't understand. last week right here in so many other communities, these waves crashed through her, testing the aging infrastructure. more lives were taken here than down in louisiana. let me say that again. they had over 20 inches of rain. they had 178 mile an hour wind gusts, and more lives were taken here than down in louisiana. you all saw the harrowing images of stories -- you all saw the harrowing images and stories of families trapped in basements. my message to everyone grappling with this devastation is -- we are here. we are not going home until the

work is done. we are not leaving. we are going to continue to shout as long as it takes to get real progress here. romaine: we are listening to president joe biden, he is actually in new york, talking about hurricane ida which made landfall down in louisiana on august 29. the remnants of that moved north and devastated parts of new jersey and new york. if you want to hear his full remarks, you can go live on the bloomberg terminal. we want to get back to our regular program. sonali has been talking about fintech and crypto. sonali: really, this is about payments, and every bank and every big payments company is speaking at the same thing, as are many tech giants. the founder and ceo joins us.

before -- the founder and ceo of dauntless -- the founder and ceo of gauntlet joins us now. do you think there is a bigger opportunity in finance outside of traditional finance? quick take, for sure. i think a lot of the reasons i moved over were -- >> hey, for sure. i think a lot of the reasons i moved over were people told me what algorithm creating looked like in the 1990's and early 2000's. another thing that is interesting is it is sort of a blend of tech type of tools and skills with training expertise and finer -- finance expertise. in a lot of ways, it has a lot more new opportunities but also has means to be accepted

broadly. romaine: there are a lot of opportunities for investors, but with regard to the public, i'm curious as to which you think the structure -- there has been a lot of talk about el salvador, but there is another use case that goes beyond just basic hand-to-hand transactions. >> for sure. i think the biggest improvement in the crypto ecosystem in the last few years has just been the adoption of stable coins. stable coins are dollar-like assets that are pegged by an arbitrage mechanism or by deposits at a bank, and stable coins are the next generation of venmo and square and sort of square cash. right now when you want to make a payment -- say you have $20 in

venmo, and you want to spend it at robinhood to maybe buy some shares, you have to go through your bank, so you transfer from venmo back to your bank. there's no boundaries, so your dollar can be spent anywhere. instead of having a venmo dollar and robinhood dollar be different, you could actually transfer one to the other and basically be much more efficient with capital. on top of that, there are services that you can sort of use that are the automated for borrowing and lending and for trading, and these services, unlike their fintech counterparts, are much more autonomous. they are very hard -- very hard for people to take down, and they have been battle tested. sonali: where do you think the

traditional wall street has and perhaps has not been willing to work in this space? >> yeah, for sure. i think one of the things that happens in every cycle is there's some subset of people from traditional finance who move over, and i think what we saw from 2017 was it was much more of quonset moving over where previous cycles had your more technical and quantitative people moving over. i think what has happened over time, people have started to actually realize a lot of the promises that have been made over the last 10 years that have just taken a long time. i think one of the things that a lot of people on wall street don't realize is a lot of the stuff can continue to be used at

this scale and more. i think that aspect of removing investment bank jobs might be scary to some. at least i view it as directly competitive in a lot of ways. romaine: which we had more time. founder and ceo of gauntlet. we are jumping to another big player in this space, a rival to the theory of -- a rival to ethereum. joining us now, solano labs ceo. that's talk about why suddenly people have woken up to this. we have seen various tokens, various platforms have their moment in the sun. sometimes for fundamental reasons, sometimes for nebulous

reasons. i'm curious what you see driving activity of late. >> honestly, we have seen so many developers join the system and build up applications, so that is really what is driving it. the cycle is different because there's actual products and user experience is so much better. taylor: there has been such a big run-up in solana's price. are you worried that the price itself is in a bubble? >> crypto is always a very volatile, very fast-moving space . we don't really focus on the price. the important piece we care about is how many developers are getting into the ecosystem, how fast they are building products,

how fast companies are being formed and getting funding and seeing that progress i think is really what is driving everything right now. taylor: we were talking about el salvador today. they were saying a lot of interesting commentary on bitcoin versus the blockchain and stored value versus the real use case. what do you see as a real use case for some of this underlying blockchain technology? >> these are true peer-to-peer systems. this is why finance is such an important use case. this is the software that is able to connect people, so it is pretty remarkable to see it taking off right now.

that is the main use case, and it is quite different from a currency or store of value. you can think of it as removing risk by replacing all the work we do with humans with paperwork, with software. romaine: talk to me about the transaction costs. it seems to me with other platforms, the transaction costs seem high or not is transparent. the whole universe we talk about today is so much bigger than what it was even two or three years ago. >> this is designed to reduce transaction costs. the bed with of the network goes up and the capacity goes down. we joke we have to use a scientific calculator to

determine the cost per transaction. taylor: what proof do you have that you are building something better for developers, better for consumers than your peers? >> the proof is already in the pudding, so to speak. we are seeing teams raise capital and form companies. it is already happening. the difference now is that these developers don't have to worry about scale. they can really focus on their products and getting users. romaine: this is basically the evolution we are talking about right? >> yes. romaine: thank you for joining us, the ceo of solana labs. we talked about these alternative coins and the evolution in the space of

fintech and how it all at some point melts together here. you cover the big banks. are they at all concerned about this? sonali: they absolutely are. a lot of investors are comparing bitcoin to netscape. is it the version that will be the preeminent at the end of the day, or is it ethereum or solana? taylor: the good news is i have technology music in my ear because "technology" is coming up next. this conversation will continue on b-tech. romaine: we put together i think a really good show despite some disruptions from the president, but i'm sure we will be back talking about crypto. we even heard from joe weisenthal today, which is always a good sign. taylor: always a special treat.

and sonali, thanks for joining us. "bloomberg technology" is up next, including music. romaine: have a great evening, everyone. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is "bloomberg technology" with emily chang.