tv Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg February 18, 2022 5:00pm-6:00pm EST
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agreed with secretary of state blinken and the foreign minister, lavrov, should meet on february 24 in europe. if russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy. they will have chosen a war and will pay a steep price, not only from the sanctions we and our allies will -- the rest of the world will visit upon them. there are many issues that divide our nation and our world, but standing up to american aggression is not one of them. the american people are united. europe is united. the transatlantic community is united. the free world is united. russia has a choice between war and all the suffering it will bring, or diplomacy that will
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make a future safer for everyone. i'm happy to take a few questions. nancy from bloomberg. nancy: do you think the pivot is wise, for the presidential envoy to leave ukraine if a net invasion is imminent? pres. biden: that is his determination to make. i have spoken with zelensky a dozen times, maybe more, i don't know. it is -- and in the pursuit of a diplomatic solution, it may not be the wise choice. but it is his decision. nancy: do you have any indication about whether president putin has made a decision whether to invade? do you feel confident he has not made that decision already? pres. biden: as of this moment, i am convinced he has made a decision. we have reason to believe that. >> there seems to be unanimity between the united states and
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europe to do comprehensive sanctions. is everyone on board with the exact same sanctions you want to do? pres. biden: yes. there will be some slight differences, but there will be more add-ons than subtractions. >> principally putin is going to oversee nuclear drills this weekend. what is your reaction to that, sir? thank you. pres. biden: well, i don't think he is remotely contemplating nuclear -- using nuclear weapons. but i do think it's a -- i think he is focused on trying to convince the world that he has the ability to change the dynamics in europe in a way that he cannot. i don't -- how much of it is a
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cover for just saying we are just doing exercises? and it is more than that? it is hard to read his mind. >> mr. president, to be clear -- [crosstalk] to be clear, you are convinced that president putin is going to invade ukraine? is that what you just said a few moments ago? pres. biden: i did, yes. >> is diplomacy off the table? press biden -- pres. biden: diplomacy is always a possibility. >> why do you think he is considering that option at all? pres. biden: we have significant intelligence capabilities. thank you. >> president biden at the white house, saying he is convinced that russia will attack ukraine in coming weeks, and he said in coming days. he believes putin has already made his decision, but if it happens, russia will pay a steep
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price. i want to get to anne-marie at the white house. -- annmarie at the white house. annmarie: that was a question from nancy cook asking if vladimir putin made a decision to invade, and you heard from the president of the united states, saying we have reason to believe he has made that decision. when a reporter followed up on that question, he responded with the intelligence as a reason why we are able to bring ourselves to that point. this raises the question, if the united states does believe that president putin has this plan and has already in his mind made up this decision to further invade ukraine, it raises a big question on what paths are left on the diplomatic front. emily: exactly. he said this would be a catastrophic war of choice, but that the door is still open for diplomacy, but reiterated that u.s. troops are not going in. though does russia pay a steep
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price if that does not happen? annmarie: it's going to come down to hardship, economic sanctions, and being cut off from the global international community. the president reaffirmed after his phone call with transatlantic leaders including canada, united kingdom, italy, the european union, about coalescing around a hard sanctions package. and we heard from the deputy national security adviser talking about how harsh these would be. they would go even deeper into the russian economy in terms of cutting them off from global systems than we saw prior with the annexation of crimea in 2014. we should note there are still questions to be answered about what in fact are going to be the sanctions, in terms of how much pain they will inflict on russia. we even heard today from mario draghi, the leader of italy, talking about the fact that potentially we want to avoid the energy sector, even how reliant europe is on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, coming from russia.
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he said potentially we would have to look at what those penalties would mean, depending on the severity of the attack. a lot of questions remain, but coming out of this news conference, the president taking a few moments of questions, it is clear the united states things that president putin has made up his mind. i can't tell you how significant that is. they have yet to want to say that. they continuously have said they were not sure if president putin had made up his mind, but he is certainly preparing for a potential invasion giving the amount -- given the amount of troops, 190,000, when you include troops and national guard from russia. emily: what do we know about the state of diplomatic channels? over the last few hours, have any conversations been happening? annmarie: if you have happened. i think one important one was today from defense minister lloyd austin to his russian counterpart, sir geisha goo -- sergei shoygu.
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immediately after, defense secretary lloyd austin put on twitter that he asked for this drawback of russian troops. we have next week a meeting between antony blinken and his russian counterpart, sergey lavrov. that will be toward the end of next week. there was a caveat we heard from the state department that the meeting would only come as long as russia did not further invade ukraine. given the president's remarks today, you can see the intelligence the u.s. believes was building that there might be an imminent threat to ukraine, and that there will also be a number of other diplomatic meetings happening. olaf scholz says he is having the g7 meet next thursday, so there has been a flurry of diplomacy. the united states has been clear this is something they do not want. when you ask why are you sharing intelligence in almost an aggressive manner, this is something they did not do in
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2014, prior to the annexation of crimea. they say they are trying to avert a war. and this is potentially something they look back on in 2014 that potentially they could have done to change the calculus in the kremlin, and they are wanting to make sure the world knows this is the intelligence they have if vladimir putin was to invade, or potentially having a false flag invasion to strike a little bit of a wider crisis. romaine: -- emily: a huge development at the white house. president biden saying he is convinced that russian president prudent is made a decision to invade ukraine in coming days, and if he does so, this will slam the door on any diplomatic solutions here. something we will continue to follow closely. stocks falling today amid these ukraine-russia tensions ratcheting. we have seen it over the course of the last week, investors getting very jittery. ed ludlow, are we seeing any
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reaction to the president's remarks? ed: the invesco etf that tracks the nasdaq did not move that much during the course of those remarks. a russia u.s.-listed etf's down a little more, 0.3 percent. there was a small move lower during the remarks. this is friday before a long holiday weekend. maybe we would expect to see more of a reaction tuesday. let's see what happens over the weekend. i brought up invesco qqq on powershares because of friday. a volatile session where we swung between gains and losses, but ultimately the s&p 500 down by 0.7%. technology was a real underperformer, particularly mega caps. you see that reflected in the index. some individual movers were interesting. we will get to it in just a
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second. this is the second weekly decline in a row for the nasdaq 100. that is the white line. the blue line is the thing plus --fang plus index. texture started to underperform the s&p 500 today. that is the first back weekly loss since early december. two stocks i'm looking at quickly -- ford. ford's ceo considering a split up of the combustion engine business and ev business for a series of mechanisms available, a spinoff or restructuring. that stock rising about 4%, closing up about 3%. roku, a big drop after missing estimates for the first -- for the fourth quarter and giving a weak outlook for the coming quarter. this is the latest example of a pandemic favorite falling by the wayside. emily: we are hitting the anniversary, the one-year anniversary of pat taking over
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as ceo. his strategy, the frustration with some of the bears out there -- listen to what he had to say. pat: we still have analysts out here. some of them piss me off. i called him my bears and my permabears. great strategy, but i'm not sure if i need to invest for a year or two yet. when is it going to start materializing in the marketplace? so good progress. it is a good year behind us, and people are really getting excited about the new old intel. emily: and yet intel shares falling even further despite hearing him lay out that strategy. ed: down 5%, biggest drop in three weeks, the stock trading at its lowest level since november 2020. what wall street is saying is the opposite of what pat gelsinger just said on tv. they had an investor day recently, intel. this is bernstein's take.
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the comments on intel's plan were almost absurdly bullish, and i think the street is thinking this is going to take a lot longer and is going to cost a lot more money than perhaps intel stated today. emily: ed ludlow, thank you. coming up, we continue the conversation on russian aggression toward ukraine and how it is using cyberattacks to paralyze ukraine's government. that is still to come. ♪
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over the last week, cyberattack launched earlier this week paralyzed multiple ukrainian government websites and banking systems. officials in kyiv called this attack the worst of its kind in ukrainian history, and shooting to mass confusion and destabilization. officials deemed the size and resources involved in this attack suggest a country was behind it. joining us now for more on the global threat landscape is andrea joyce, head of name and intelligence. in this particular -- nambient intelligence. was russia behind it? >> it looks like it was a russian military organization called the gru. this is very significant because the gru is the same organization that tried to disrupt the olympic games opening ceremony in our last olympic games, and also was responsible for the attack that disrupted shipping
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lines, vaccine production. we are looking at a group that is very, very significant and very dangerous. emily: how is the cyber threat landscape changing is the tempers rise? what are the dangers? sandra: the dangers are many, are really multifold. for example, what we are seeing from the russian cyber capability right now in ukraine is that they are doing a lot of information operations, meaning it is not just deed dos-- ddos attacks on banks, but sms scams. people are getting texts saying the bank website is down, which causes people to have more fear, more uncertainty. that is part of the game as well, making sure they can get into the head of their targets. a lot of the talk, what president biden just talked about with putting up fake news
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about genocide or other fabrications -- the point behind them is to justify, put out a false justification of war, but also to see doubt and fear into their target, the ukrainian people, who want to still have confidence that their government can protect them. emily: so what is your reaction to what president biden just said, that he believes president putin has decided he's going to invade ukraine physically? what does that mean for the digital frontlines? sandra: cyber defenders around the world are paying attention now. and if anything good has come from the many years of russian cyber aggression, it's that we know a lot about their threat actors. we know a lot about their tactics, techniques, procedures. we need to use them now to make sure we are prepared. what that means for businesses is that this is a time to make sure they have all their hardening procedures done, that they are not low hanging fruit for a possible russian action. emily: what possible attacks are
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using directed against the united states? what sectors are you most concerned about is to mark -- concerned about? sandra: right now, we have not seen direct action against u.s. targets. there is the usual activity we have been seeing way before this incident, which is russian threat act there's who are -- threat actors who are continuing to conduct espionage, or through supply chains, poking around and doing the work they do, putting more in place in the event they want to take action. that is something we need to be paying attention to. emily: if russia invades ukraine and then the u.s. retaliates, how might that impact russian attacks on the united states by both state-sponsored hackers and criminal ones? sandra: we can anticipate higher risk of cyber actions against the united states if we were to
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deploy sanctions as a retaliatory measure. but really what we need to do is prepare at this point, and not panic. this is not a panic moment. it is a mission moment. cyber defenders know what to do and need to start doing that. what we are really concerned about is russian aggressors using the software supply chain to make scaled attacks across something like what we saw, those cyber actions we can mitigate. we can detect them and that is what cyber defenders need to be doing right now. emily: bloomberg has reported in other news that microsoft is considering acquiring mandiant. microsoft has been vulnerable to several attacks over the last year. why might a deal like this makes sense, given the clearly rapidly-evolving threat landscape? sandra: as a matter of policy, we don't address any rumors about mergers or acquisitions. but what i can say about the entire cybersecurity industry is
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that it is united right now, looking at the russian threat. everybody is on alert. this is probably one of many miscalculations by the russian president, that there was going to be a lot of disparate infighting. that is certainly not the case, not with the western allies, and not with the cybersecurity industry. we are united on this as well. emily: sandra joyce, head of mandiant intelligence. thank you for your perspective on this. coming up, forward looking at ways to separate its ev operations from its legacy business, according to a bloomberg scoop, in the hope of getting the kind of investor respect enjoyed by tesla. >> i really admire frankly the difficulties they had and the way they manage to those difficulties into the success they had. they are now making more than
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emily: ford ceo jim farley wants to wall off ev from its conventional business. they want the same investor love of tesla and other pure play ev makers. they could have a new edge in an electric age. ed ludlow broke the story. what is farley trying to accomplish here? ed: sources tell us there are a lot of options on the table. the end goal is to have the ev business stand on its own two feet. sources say the spinoff or ipo of the ev unit is an option. the spinoff or ipo of the legacy
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gas business is an option. or restructuring internally, where they act as two different companies independently -- horses told us that at the end of last year ford spoke to financial advisors about how it could raise money privately just for the ev business. nothing is finalized. none of this is happening. but that is what sources tell us. emily: i interviewed farley a couple of weeks ago here in sonoma. they were making a product announcement. he used an analogy about how different producing a traditional gas powered car is from manufacturing an electric car. take a listen to what he had to say. >> it is like snowboarding or skiing. we share the lift, but as soon as you get off the lift, the intuitions are wrong between both businesses. have to relearn how to get down the slope. emily: i wonder if there was a clue in there about what he is trying to do now. ed: shortly after that
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interview, which was fantastic, on the earnings call, he said he would not comment on media speculation on the idea of a spinoff, but he said they are looking to run the ev business in a different way to how they run the legacy gas business. this is part of the story we reported. sources telling us what the options are. the sticking point is the ford family. the ford family has three board seats. they get a lot of their income from dividend payments. part of the frustration or complication is convincing them. ultimately, this is about a future where ford makes electric cars. they have to balance that with its profit coming from gas guzzlers, the f-150. how do you separate the businesses? how do they work in isolation? how do you take the profit from one and give it to the other? it is something wall street has asked for for some time. this idea is not new. clearly, farley is thinking about his options. emily: how soon could this happen? ed: it is really hard to say.
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to be really clear, ford issued a statement saying they have no current plans for a spinoff of either. sources tell us this has been worked on every day by people internally. management are talking about it. they have already spoken to advisors. that's what i am told. emily: ed ludlow, our big bloomberg scoop. moments ago, president biden said he believes that russian president vladimir putin has decided to attack ukraine, and that invasions including a strike on give could come -- on cap -- a strike on kyiv could come in days. russia says -- we will have more on this developing story next. ♪
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pres. biden: russian troops currently have ukraine surrounded from belarus along the russian border and with ukraine to the black sea to the south, and all of its border. you know, look, we have reason to believe the russian forces are planning and intend to attack ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days. emily: in the coming days. that is president biden speaking minutes ago at the white house about rising tension between russia and ukraine. russia told the u.s. this week it has no plans to attack, and
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officials have repeatedly dismissed u.s. warnings about a possible invasion as propaganda. let's go to annmarie hordern in washington. those remarks about 30 minutes ago. what is your take? where are we? annmarie: incredible he significant development when it comes to the united states's thinking about what vladimir putin's thinking is. actually get this correct. the president was asked, do you think president putin has yet to make a decision on whether to invade? he said, "as of this moment, i am convinced he has made the decision. we have reason to believe that." this is significant. the past few weeks, the u.s. was very transparent and almost aggressively so with the intelligence, saying they wanted to deter a russian invasion or further russian invasion of ukraine. they would always maintain that we do not know yet whether vladimir putin has made up his mind. and it sounds like this evening the president, the intelligence the president is seeing, does
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give him reason to think president vladimir putin has made up his mind. another significant development -- the united states thinks it is 169,000 to 190,000 russian personnel, encroaching on ukraine from belarus all the way to the black sea. emily: curious about the timeline. he said in coming weeks and in coming days, and used the date february 24. if it happens before that date, russia will have slammed the door on diplomacy. what is the significance of that? how soon could this happen? sandra: i believe that is the date sergey lavrov, the foreign minister of russia, is sitting down with secretary of state antony blinken. last night, when the state department said the russians have gotten back to them and agreed for another meeting late next week, say said the -- they said the precondition is we will not meet with russia if they further invade ukraine, because that means they never viewed diplomacy as a real path
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forward. the president did not say that the diplomacy is completely out the door. he said if vladimir putin decides to take that route, the united states is ready and willing to have those discussions. we have seen a flurry of diplomacy between u.s. defense minister lloyd austin with his russian counterpart today. we are going to have the lavrov -blinken meeting next week. we had a g7 meeting with otto schulz next thursday. one other important moment we should note -- the president was asked about president zelensky of ukraine. should he or should he not leave the country this weekend? he is going to that security council, which is huge for the united states, including the vice president. intentionally, the timing of this could be fraught for ukraine. if the president of the united states thinks vladimir putin intends to invade. emily: the president saying it may not be wise for zelensky to
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leave ukraine at this moment. annmarie hordern for us at the white house. thank you for your reporting on this. the white house has a tense role . i'm joined by the former u.s. under secretary of state, and former chair and ceo of doc you sign. -what- oo o -- and ceo of docusign. >> putin is not one of the leaders that bluffs, so this is a serious situation. the other concern is prudent in the ukraine, where does that stop? you have the ramifications for china and taiwan. when i was under secretary of state -- undersecretary of state, i was the highest level state department official to go there in years. we have to protect these linchpins of democracy. emily: how would you compare
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president putin to president she -- xi, and why is that comparison significant? keith: they are both totalitarian. they both use this technological authoritarianism. i think xi is more dangerous in the long run. he has more resources. and clearly, what i experienced when i started building the clean network alliance of democracy with 60 countries -- he also has no regard for human rights. emily: what is your experience with what is happening behind closed doors, happening in those diplomatic channels? however small they are, the president said he believes putin has made a decision to invade. the plumas he is still on the table. keith: i can tell you
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particularly with my experience with china, they have a different honor system. and i've never seen china keep one agreement that does not suit their purposes. if you don't believe me, as the people of hong kong. there is probably a lot of things going on. i think we have already experienced that. it all goes down to one word, and that is trust. you cannot trust prudent. you cannot trust xi. emily: you are one of the rear officials who worked under president trump who is continuing to work with the biden administration. what progress have you made? i know you are focused on the chip and supply chain crisis. what progress are you seeing on that front? keith: my big responsibility was to operationalize the global economic security strategy to combat economic aggression and
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maximize national security. i give credit to the biden administration. they have picked up on all those in terms of the clean network alliance and build a model using those democratic values, including respect for rule of law, respect for property. respect for the environment. they have been using that against us. and we used it against them to create this new model. and in regards to the semiconductor supply chain, we did the on shoring, the largest onshore in history at the time, $12 billion. that has resulted in about $300 billion of investment in the u.s.. the other big one is the usmca
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act, the competes act. that was two bills we helped design for research funding and on shoring. the biden administration, a big supporter of it. they deserve credit. they are picking up on all those initiatives. emily: the former u.s. undersecretary of state. thank you for bringing your perspective on all these latest developments. appreciated. coming up, how gamefi is paving the way for the future of gaming. we speak with the ceo of pocket of quarters. they are announcing a universal videogame currency. what does it mean? ♪
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emily: bitcoin went on another wild ride this week, coming back down to $40,000 by today. sonali basak is here to discuss it in this crypto report. why the up and down? sonali: if you tried bitcoin, you know it's going to be a wild ride. this week, not only as hit -- has it dropped below 40,000 -- that is lower than it was two weeks ago. we had swings as high up as 4% and a slow down and 7% if you look here. if you look at ethereum, it was an even more drastic swing. bitcoin is a bigger currency by value. on some levels, it is harder to move up and down. the volumes are much higher. here is a theory and for you.
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you can see they are tracking the same trajectory. emily: stay with us. i want to take a turn and talk about another story, gamefi, where you get crypto tokens as a gamer for mining resources. one of the best known -- there are hundreds. one prospect is coming out to announce a universal videogame currency. it is the first token to be s.e.c. compliant. they mean to make it easy for players to take their coins between virtual worlds. the founder and ceo joins us now. why do we need a universal gaming currency? what makes you think this will take off? mike: the biggest problem that players today are facing is the fragmentation of virtual currencies. there are literally millions of different currencies. what happens -- really, the
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inspiration for the company came from my son when he was 12 years old. he said i'm leaving madden and i want to play fortnite. why do i have to lose all my time, effort, and coins when switching games? he came up with this idea of one interoperable coin that could be used across all games. now you see with the rise of the metaverse that his original single player problem is really a group problem. he and his friends want to run around and play multiple games. it is difficult to get you and your friends to go from one game to the next if every single game has a different virtual currency. emily: it is such a sweet idea funding this company with the help of your 12-year-old son. take us into the future, the metaverse that mark zuckerberg is describing. how would quarters or might quarters be used there? mike: we are at a really
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interesting moment in history, right? i saw a recent study that people spend four and a half hours a day on their phone. in our lifetime, it's going to flip. we are going to spend more time in virtual worlds, screens, so on and so forth, then we do in the real world. you have on the one hand, here is mark zuckerberg. he has taken the word metaverse, which was from a dystopian future of one person controlling everything we live in in the future. what we think is the players, the people, we should decide what the virtual world can look like, especially because there is no constraint in terms of what kind of world we could create and what kind of experiences we should have. i really think that this is a call to arms for everybody to get involved. emily: i'm kind of curious. there is a lot of digital currencies out there that would not have any type of stamp of approval from the s.e.c. i'm wondering what s.e.c.-compliant really means, and what that does in terms of
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helping legitimize this project. mike: you opened the segment with comments on gamefi. the killer app you are watching today has been speculation. you were talking about the gyrations of the bitcoin price. but really, a virtual currency, a game token, is prepaid entertainment. whether it is chuck e. cheese tokens or robuckx, this is what is fun and safe for players to use. the innovation here is taking that age-old business model for video games and putting it on the blockchain and making it interoperable. emily: i'm curious about how what you are doing can be translated for other purposes here. as far as the metaverse goes, it is clear to see how gaming -- as far as cryptocurrencies go, how gaming can be a really interesting application.
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you think it can be adapted otherwise? mike: we get asks that question a lot and i think there are a lot of projects that could use our model for a prepaid token that is legal and compliant with controls built into the blockchain, and having a two token model so that you can get speculators and investors involved and get that magic for catalyzing marketplaces. for us, we think that the meat of the new future -- the other day, matt wallace was talking about trillions of dollars coming here. the need is going to be entertainment. that is really the main focus that we have. emily: there is still a lot of fragmentation in the cryptocurrency market and the gaming market. what is the incentive for gamers to get on board, and what are the challenges you see in getting them to buy-in? mike: it is a multisided
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marketplace which means you have to catalyze thing -- catalyze things. game companies are happy having fragmentation as part of their business model. it is very anti-player to have breakage as your business model. the offer to gamers is very compelling. they all know and want something like this. the trick because it is a marketplace is -- the thing gamers care most about is within two seconds they can play something and have fun. there is some unexpected developments i think in the blockchain space that really helped us on that front. sonali: i would love for you to comment more largely on gamefi and some of the issues rolling around out there. especially for such young people that are transacting in this space, what is your biggest concern? mike: i think that gamefi, the
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speculation from cryptocurrencies and ico's, we are about removing all the limitations that are preventing the industry from getting a larger hold on videogames and blockchain. we live in a world where it is all gray tech. some of these things are going to clearly be blocked tech, and they are going to go away or be pushed into a corner, and the few projects that are white tech are following the rules -- that is going to expand the market for everybody, when you see these clear applications, and bring this to a variety of industries -- in our case, videogames. emily: we will be watching to see if quarters takes off. thank you for joining us, as well as our own sonali basak. coming up, apple store employees are quietly working to unionize. two locations already being supported by major national
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emily: google and meta are facing a possible data doomsday in the european union. the watchdog could make a decision that would paralyze transatlantic data flows and risk billions in revenue for the two companies. this has to do with contract terms used by meta, google, and others to legally transfer user data back to the u.s. both companies have said this is necessary to the business and are pushing back. meantime, apple store employees at some of the locations across the u.s. are working to unionize. i want to bring in mark. how far have they gotten?
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looks like we are having some trouble getting mark there. on this push for apple employees to unionize, my understanding is that having gone that -- it has not gone far but discussions are in progress, not unlike what we have seen at amazon, where employees are also trying to unionize. certainly, this would be a big development for apple if this happened. a huge chunk of apple employees are apple store employees. they are a critical part of the company, and obviously retail sale is a huge driver of sales. mark berman back with us now. park, we could not hear you earlier. what can you tell us? how likely are apple employees to unionize? mark: i don't think it is very likely. this has been tried in the past, particularly in the san francisco area and northern california about a decade ago. there is a group of a few stores
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on the east coast, but particularly in ohio, talking about this. i'm not sure this is going anywhere. my hope is that some solution is reached to be closer to corporate benefits. we reported a few times that benefits have improved. there are vacation times for part-time employees, fixed days, child and elder care, and raises between 2% and 12% across the retail army. and the annual increase they get around october/november at the conclusion of apple's fiscal year -- this was an additional increase based on inflation, based on covid-19. other complaints we have seen in the past year or so. apple is trying. i'm not sure a union is the solution, but we will see what ends up happening, given there have been other companies that
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tried to squash unions. we will see what apple does in this case. emily: can you compare apple to what we have seen with amazon, workers also trying to unionize? mark: the crux of the issue is that apple retail employees believe they are underpaid and they are using the example of tim cook paying his $100 million pay package for being ceo for a decade. it's been in the news recently. apple is a $3 trillion company in terms of market cap. apple retail employees are paid a bit above minimum wage, usually between $20 and $30 per hour for most of the mid range roles at retail stores around the u.s. they believe they should be paid more, given the large sums corporate employees are being paid. they are all part of the same company. that is the big difference is that apple employees are already paid more than typical in the retail sector, and apple likes to point to retail employees. they get a few thousand dollars
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worth of our su shares annually. they are getting some benefits. and they are working in a totally different environment than maybe amazon workers and factory workers. since they are working in actual retail stores, which are pretty nice, with all do respect -- but obviously there has been a lot of turmoil in retail stores recently. there have been a lot of employees complaining about covid-19 conditions, employees unhappy with their management. obviously, apple has tens of thousands of retail employees, so that is expected to happen. i do think there is a lot more work for apple to do. emily: employee agitation certainly not unique to apple, but it would be fascinating if the retail store employees make more progress there. mark berman covers apple for us. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. wall street week coming up next with david westin. he will be joined by catherine keating of bny mellon wealth management, and joanne feeney of
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david: geopolitics to the forefront even as the economy stays hot. this is bloomberg wall street week. i'm david westin. this week, larry summers on the post gas tax holiday. >> i think we are plumbing the depths of new bad ideas. david: and nikki drexler on the state of the retail industry and where it is headed. >> it is price lingo in there. david: it
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