tv Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg January 20, 2022 5:00pm-6:00pm EST
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in the u.s. where are you, what kind of money are you looking to have it deploy? putting in about 6 -- >> we have put in $6 million so far. >> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide in silicon valley and beyond, this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and sign up slow down, netflix missing on subscribers. we break down the numbers. plus, pressing pause.
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pella tom halting production of a signature bike ironically just after they added a pause but to the bike utterly. -- button to the bike literally. senate lawmakers advance what could be their biggest chance to rein in big tech. some are still raising red flags. looking at the future of the u.s. big tech crackdown. the market saw a big change in direction late in the day. what happened? >> day by day, blow-by-blow, minute by minute. we go from a 1% gain on the nasdaq 100, heavy tech index to a 1% decline. 10% drop from a high to a trough.
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the whole market turned a corner late on thursday afternoon. n.y.c. bank plus index. they had been up so much earlier in the session and declined 3/10 of a percent. chip stocks had a really rough start with a bad streak. lower than october. the longest losing streak in a month and investors really changing sentiment. ironically, quick tone late to the party, finally got the memo. bitcoin dropping late thursday. falling away late, what happened? take a look at what happened with this, falling as much as 41%, the biggest drop since november. halting production on the big-ticket items.
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moving the entire market as we entered the earnings season. commentary and troubles are pandemic related. it expects to add 2.5 million subscribers in the first quarter. do you watch bridgerton? emily: absolutely. ad: so you are a fan. they say the reason they downgraded their outlook, a big drop, the street is looking for 6.5 and the second season is coming late in the order, march. i'm not the problem, i'm already a netflix subscriber, right? emily chang doesn't know what it is and we have to get her up to speed. that's the macro.
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emily: shares falling short in the second quarter. could the streaming giant be entering a second phase of slower growth? investor reaction here to these numbers. what is your reaction? >> netflix used to be a utility. it's now a commodity. in many instances it was the only option, netflix. they have increased competition not only from the disney's and the amazons and others, but the real growth over the last year in streaming, in europe, has been free ad supported streaming solutions. that is i think the most fickle thing about the netflix situation right now. emily: let's talk about their ability to stay ahead.
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they have obviously had big hits like squid games. given that they have had more competition in streaming, what are the chances that they could continue to stay ahead? andre: slim for a few reasons. they have outspent everybody in terms of content production but they are now competing with people like disney, who have 100 years to do other things with their content. more importantly, netflix only has one real touch point with the consumer. 3, 4, 5 years ago, they had all this insight into what was popular. licensing content better than others. now i would argue that netflix has a significant data disadvantage against amazon, apple, google, the disney of the
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world, understanding e-commerce. i think it will be difficult for netflix, which is really more of a content distribution company to compete. emily: meantime, hbo max has been one of the top downloaded apps and i didn't realize this, sex and the city reboot is the main driver of that despite the publicity. along with euphoria. do you think that original programming on hbo has a leg up because it is hbo? andre: i would have been more likely to say that when they had more mega titles. they obviously have good content and do well. hbo max and others had that release window in theaters as well as on streaming.
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i don't think that the challenge is going to come from one competitor. the netflix concern is specifically that disney is going to have better content. that's highly possible but i think it's a share of onslaught. having so many options, if you took it outside streaming, with increased competition in many respects, it can have cheaper prices and offer goods and services for free it will be challenging for your business. emily: meantime, netflix getting into gaming. a huge driver of future growth. is netflix really prepared to compete there? andre: no, i was one of the first people for years ago who
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said netflix really needs to get into gaming. it was definitely the right move to do so. the concern is how slowly it's been moving with them being behind. pretty much everything they have been successful at they have had first mover advantage. international distribution. the original is specifically for streaming. you cannot be years behind microsoft and sony and invest less than they are investing in think just because you have a large subscriber base that you will be able to catch up. emily: we will keep watching these headlines coming in. andre, always good to have your perspective in. retail investors now have the ability to what business leaders asked questions directly thank you robinhood. coming up next.
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emily: with the earnings season underway, robinhood announced that starting today retail investors will get a chance to ask company leaders questions. users can now ask questions through the robinhood app and if they are uploaded the questions will get asked on earnings calls . robinhood says it is a chance for investors, big or small, to
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feel a sense of ownership. for more i'm joined by the robinhood chief product officer. thank you for joining us. how much demand you think there will be? >> thank you for having me. it's clear when you think about access to investing, one of the big gaps that we see is a you don't have access to the companies you are in. this launch, what we are doing, being able to connect, talking to ceos, following up and engaging. engaging elon musk at our own management team. but we think it does is give a channel for retail investors to express their ideas to ask questions. if you think about it, that happens with institutional shareholders with an opportunity for participation and long-term ownership for all investors.
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emily: companies that use this technology range from robinhood to tesla. what has been the reaction from c those like elon musk? >> it's been fascinating. on the one hand this is a great opportunity for their voices to be heard and the reaction has been equally positive because they find that retail investors are asking russian and if you think about it these are not just symbols. myself included, these are brands that they believe in. companies that they are passionate about. things they care about like between energy, etc.. the things they ask are a lot and express a strong desire for the company to do well emily: they are giving users the tools on the investments to make.
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how do you make those and make sure that you are making the right? >> robinhood is all about expanding access to investing. we started out by doing that with fractional ownership. talking more about customer service through crypto, this recommendation is another step. it's designed for full-time investors in education to make a starting choice. the minimum is $20. the way that we can do that is basically analyze the customer. we matched it to the diversified portfolios that we saw again. making sure that people can get started in investing. one thing i want to say is that
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this is a product that we are seeing as disproportionately useful and engaging for customers who don't have a specific stock in mind. they are all told to start investing and they don't know where to get started. this is meant to aid the process. emily: robinhood has been accused of game a firing investing, glorifying gambling in investing. do you think you could be moving into dangerous territory? >> i think there is a vast chasm between game of fixation and what we do, accessible design. what do i mean by that? when we say accessible design, running into the maze. it's the primary computing device for many people.
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saying like hey if the wealthy do it, it's investing and if you start to get a line of sight into your financial future, it's gambling. it has to be intuitive, that's accessible design. we are keen on making sure that the information is in context. we have been working on these life-sized explainers. to be able to explain in context of the issue, the market cap, the crypto coin, etc.. we want to do more of them. emily: crypto wallet just came out in beta. what activity are you seeing given that we seem to be in the middle of a crypto winter? >> very timely, we just announced the beta program is live. there are close to 2 million
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people on the waitlist as we systematically approach this and develop it in public, as i call it, working with customers in the second thing is we are doing it in a way that is intuitive and safety first, making sure that we have all heard stories of folks who have lost their coins and really want to make sure that security and safety is in place. crypto, i think again, is about accessing investing with a whole new set of customers and people coming on board and getting started in investing with crypto. we want to make sure that we do it safely. emily: talking about what really matters, are you going to list shiba inu or not? >> i was certain you were going
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to ask. [laughter] really appreciate the community, love seeing the energy around robinhood. we don't take that for granted. at the same time, i cannot talk about token listings. the thing i will assure folks is that, again, we are systematically putting things in place to be able to enable great crypto products as we are the best and most inexpensive way that you can get into this new and emerging economy. crypto wallet, you just heard me talk about it. you will see it continue to play in the space but we won't be playing crypto bingo. emily: we are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the so-called retail revolt. i'm curious how you reflect on
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that one year later as you try to make sure that robinhood never finds himself in a place like that again. >> one thing specific to robinhood, of course, it made us stronger. we had that major crypto platform. it just made the company a lot more robust. the broader point that i see is that the retail energy, there is a lot of appetite and energy for investors to add their voices and in terms of channeling that and connecting retail investors directly to the companies that they invest in, it starts at the beginning of retail investor information on a whole different level, right? it's no longer restricted to wall street.
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it's about the main street. emily: absolutely. looking forward to seeing how many investors use the new feature. thanks for telling us all about it. jennifer, thank you for stopping by. coming up, peloton plummets. a report that like production is on pause and shares have gone downhill. details, next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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what is your reaction to this? >> thanks for having me. just the levels that we have, we have been on the sidelines since it was initiated in april. our first reaction is that there are a lot of things going on with peloton. but he things we want to focus on, they are facing the opposite of what they faced during covid. what they had done during the demand in covid, they struggled to keep up. now it's the opposite, they built a vast capacity and inventory and are seeing diminishing demand. the economy, reopening with people going back to the gym and there is a lot of competitive pressure and their products are not necessarily the most price friendly. they face a ton of competition.
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in an environment where markets are reopening, the costs structure is really high and they are still generating losses and the competitive pressures are high, they may raise pressures as they start charging $250 by the end of this month. that does raise prices further for consumers. i think this is a perfect storm for pellet on. emily: what do you think the demand trajectory is going to be coming out of a pandemic. a big spike through the pandemic , but going forward a lot of the people that were going to buy a bike maybe already bought a bike. >> exactly. there are two sides of this. if you speak to an investor or anyone who is really bullish, the idea is that the market is
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very large and there should be more demand that they should be benefiting from on an ongoing basis. the fundamental question for peloton is how big is the market and how big is the competitive mode? we think that the competitive advantage is diminishing because if you actually look at nordictrack munches, they are competitively priced, the warranty is just as good or even better. the dimensions are the same. basically the same product with a better value. the question is going to be not only is it important for penetration, but also dynamics. how many households are really going to buy a connected device that is affordable. we think that the market is
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>> i'm very concerned about the bill they are considering. it's not the usual type of legislation that we consider where the rules are laid out and everyone is expected to comply. instead, it is specifically designed to target a small number of specific companies most of which are headquartered in my home state of california. emily: welcome back to bloomberg technology.
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that was senator dianne feinstein commenting on antitrust bill that could rein in big tech. despite that it made it out of committee, plenty of democrats oppose the bill as it stands. saying that it could hurt consumers and they are also concerned about -- security. for more, i am joined by our tech editor and the founder and ceo of the chamber proctors -- progress. this would prevent providers from preference and products. talk to us about how significant this bill could be. >> frankly, these are some of the most -- potential changes
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that congress has debated ever. they are aimed at prohibiting big five companies from preference in their own products. that would mean that amazon couldn't feature amazon basics brand products. it couldn't highlight amazon today shipping. an iphone couldn't come preloaded with imessage. a google phone could not come preloaded with google maps. you think about a car that comes with when should wipers or radio, under this radio, you would be forced all of those amenities separately. it's not the pricing that some companies would benefit from that had of mandate, but some consumers would see a negative. emily: even though a number of senators oppose the bill, they still pushed it out of
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committee. >> i have remaining concerns about the private and -- privacy and security. and also about services that are widely popular with consumers and my constituents. i'm going to support this in market here today in this committee, but i expect the sponsors will continue to address these open questions that i and the others have expressed about the bill. emily: what do you make of that? there is clearly bipartisan support for big tech, raining it in in some way. will there be agreement on how to do that? >> there is a long distance from getting out of committee where we have gotten so far to seeing this put into something more substantial and make its way through the senate. there is five-part port. there is debate -- there is bipartisan support. do see people who are advocating
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on behalf of the tech companies trying to send the message this will hurt consumers. it's hard to see exactly where the consumer gets hurt when if you are one of the advocates of this legislation, the argument is that you are given more choice. you are undermining subtle ways in which google for example puts forth its products or gives them more prominence or the way that amazon might subtly or overtly encourage the businesses on its marketplace from having to use its products. there is a question about the extent to which amazon uses the data it collects on businesses. it knows what sells, it knows what flies off the virtual shelf. it hard for amazon to make an
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argument that it doesn't use that information to its advantage. google is very much in the driver seat when it comes to how the page is laid out and what you see and ditto for apple when these apps come preloaded, they get preference. they show up and they are right there for you. the intent behind this is to level the playing field a little bit more parted if you are a lawmaker, knocking big tech gives you political points and that's crucial for some in an election year. emily: as someone who worked at alphabet for many years, you said earlier you think consumers are going to be hurt by this. on the other hand, it seems obvious that of course google provinces its own products and isn't that a conflict of interest? >> what you sought the hearing today was a good debate over what's at stake.
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there are two competing visions. you saw senator klobuchar voice a concern that big tech has clouded out services like spotify. then you had people like senator feinstein and senator padilla who had an interesting moment where he said consumers like that they can do to amazon or google, search for a local restaurant or product and in a few cliques they are there. i think you saw opposing viewpoints going at it in a substantive way. sponsors are clearly trying to help some companies. frankly that's why you see republicans and democrats divided on this topic. emily: how much more debate do you expect to see and what is
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the likelihood of this bill getting past from the vantage point in washington? >> it's an uphill battle because senators are split. yes it has bipartisan support and it was approved by a majority of committee members. use of both democrats and republicans voicing significant concerns. there is a custom of senatorial deference. you saw some democrats saying i'm going to vote for this, but it needs work. that's a similar posture to a lot of house democrats to their version of the bill. even senator grassley had a moment where he said this isn't ready to attract the necessary 60 votes that would need to pass the senate floor. leaders of the senate and house tend to not bring bills to the floor unless it has support from the majority party. user from the democrat side that even among democratic senators, there are mixed views. emily: what are you going to be
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watching for as this moves forward? >> you saw debate over amendments. we talked about the national dimension and whether this advantages u.s. players. the lawmakers are not going to let something pass that they see as giving an advantage to the big chinese players. you're going to see discussion of amendments that will also target tencent etc. i think the international dimension will come to play. the small businesses need to get their message across. google and apple and the large companies have platforms and they are able to get their views out there and they are able to show this is the way things are. you like it because this is the way things are. the small businesses need to get their message across which is there is a choice and are you being given a choice as a consumer about the search engine, the products, the apps you download? can these big platforms be doing a better job of giving you that
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choice and making that clear? these dutch -- that's what these companies need to do a better job of communicating. >> thank you. the federal reserve took a key step today toward the possible issuance of a u.s. digital currency. it is a move the central bank says could dramatically alter the central banking system. it took feedback on a coin. coming up, cleaning up cryptocurrency. that was the subject of a subcommittee hearing earlier today on blockchain which some members called concerning. we will have more on that next. this is bloomberg. >> we need to be thinking about
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emily: city mayor just confirmed his first paycheck will be converted to bitcoin and ethereum making good on his campaign promise. coinbase will be handling the conversion. speaking of crypto, much as been said about the carbon footprint of crypto mining which was the topic of a house subcommittee meeting.
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let's dive into this with the executive director director of the blockchain association. what are your takeaways from the hearing today? the concern is that crypto uses a lot of energy. >> the big takeaway i had is that this was a constructive and balanced conversation. we have seen the energy issue come up in other hearings. a year ago, notably on the senate side in the senate banking committee, elizabeth moran expressed deep concerns -- elizabeth warren expressed deep concerns. they want to be thoughtful in their approach to the space. there is understanding and a realization that bitcoin and other crypto networks are something that is here to stay and this is something they need to be thoughtful about. i thought there were good questions, this is a committee that unlike the senate committees, they are new to understanding this, but they
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understood the nuances between proof of work and proof of stake. hopefully that lays the groundwork for more education as we get into 2022. >> there was definitely more friendly banter than we heard in prior hearings. your from this ceo -- let's hear from this ceo. >> you are appropriately exploring the narrative that the demands of crypto currency will destabilize the grid and i am here to tell you that the narrative is wrong. crypto computing can be a catalyst for clean energy development which will reduce pollution and create local jobs. >> do you agree with that? >> john is absolute right. if you look today with renewable energy, you often lose so much of that. if you pair bitcoin mining with
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the deployment of renewables, a can make something that was unprofitable now profitable because you pair it with bitcoin mining. the coin mining can be turned off and on easily so you can manage the amount of electricity going on in the grid. we think bitcoin is a positive development for renewable energy. we also heard debate today about some of the other blockchain consensus mechanisms that use less energy. what we didn't get into but i would like to see more discussion of going forward is you can do -- credits very easily on the blockchain. i think we have a good story to tell as an industry and a community around the space. this was a good first step toward getting that messaging before congress. emily: i want you to listen to a quick exchange between a representative from florida and the ceo of bit fury speaking of the developing relationship
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between the crypto community and washington. >> on the efficiency note, we are seeing much more interest in producing ultralow voltage chips. what are you seeing? >> the energy improvement from 2013 to 2022 is 6100%. the pioneering of those kinds of quantum order of magnitude efficiency gains are shared among all of computing. in the same way the space program created benefits for other things in the world, bitcoin has created innovations for other parts of the world. >> we are on the demand sign -- demand side. emily: would you say you are seeing an improvement between the crypto community and washington or more understanding and what does that mean regulation? >> it is gotten a lot better and
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there are a lot of reasons for that. there is a very active community on twitter. we saw this for the first time in august when the senate was moving and infrastructure bill through. crypto twitter activated. they got in touch with their congressmen and senators and they let their voices be heard for twitter. this is been a powerful tool. we are also seeing a lot of new candidates come into the space that have crypto policy as part of their platform. they are diversifying and their messages is pro quik-trip -- pro crypto. they may inadvertently have a primary challenge from someone who is pro crypto or being attacked on twitter by crypto people. they want to be seen as leaders and going back to the previous segment, we have issues with big tech.
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the answer is big tech is to support crypto networks because that will drive innovation, it will open up these platforms, open up competition, give users power over their data. that is starting to sink in and we have really turned a corner. there still a lot of education, a lot of policies that need to be cleaned up. the pieces are coming together and i am optimistic that we are on a path to getting better policy for these crypto ecosystems. >> thank you for weighing in. coming up, is this mercedes-benz move to autonomous driving? this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: mercedes-benz announced it was going to use lidar technology from luminar. we spoke about whether the european market is ahead when it comes to autonomous driving. >> there's no question that the europeans have been ahead of the game. they started earlier and they have made a lot of technology. there's a lot of opportunity for the americans to catch up, but they will have to take action and to it quickly if they want to catch up to mercedes and volvo and other automakers in europe.
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>> i wonder where the ketchup potential is. it would be great if my car can drive me to work, but it feels like buses, mass transit, huge trucks that are transporting goods, that's where we need lidar. >> absolutely. from a commercial trucking perspective, we see that is a huge opportunity. we are also working with a large producer of commercial trucks, daimler. it is separately run than mercedes. it is absolutely important. of course, the volume of consumer vehicles is a multiple of what you would have even on trucks. the significance of something like this is very high when it comes to being able to put it on vehicles and see the intent of
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what we're doing for this collaboration. >> elon musk and tesla believe anna camera-based technology approach -- believe in camera-based technology when it comes to autonomous driving. others say you need many approaches. why is elon musk wrong? >> it's a question of what you want to do. you can build a great assistive driving system with cameras. you have companies that have been doing it for the better part of a decade. tesla has built an independent system similar to that. if you want to be able to reach higher levels of autonomy while at the same time improving the basic safety capabilities of the vehicle which by the way, even with existing camera radar, the
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substantial majority of new vehicles including some form of assistive driving feature, they still get in accidents all the time. it doesn't stop you from running into the thing right in front of you. when you have this kind of technology -- emily: that was the ceo of luminar technologies. i want to move on and talk about another wert -- venture of elon musk, brain implants. they have a long-standing goal to implant chips inhuman brains and it's getting closer. talk to us about the big picture and how close they are to human trials. >> the big picture goal is to help alleviate neurological disorders like stroke and
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paralysis. elon musk's team at neural link believes they can do that by implanting chips into human brains. that sounds crazy, but there are a couple hundred thousand people around who already have chips for various conditions in their brains. mostly things like parkinson's disease or epilepsy. this would be taking these chips to a new area where they would solve these neurological disorders. >> what do we know about this clinical director position? >> the chief thing this person will have to do is interact with fda has to sign off on any clinical trials. the way they describe the job makes it clear that they are in the early stages. maybe if everything goes well by the end of the year at best. emily: i wonder how close we are. thank you. that does it for this edition of
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