announcer: from the heart of where innovation, power and money collide in silicon valley and beyond, this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg technology. coming up, the plot thickens. twitter adds elon musk to its board just a day after musk disclosed he is now twitter's largest shareholder. turns out former ceo jack dorsey

and the new ceo are in on it. what does it mean for twitter, free speech and the world's most public town square? we will uncover the story from all angles to the hour. plus what is it like to work on the board with elon musk? we will be joined by steve wesley who will share the good, the bad, and the unexpected with comes with having one of the world's most controversial innovators in the room. and he has fashioned himself as a free speech defender but will musk be good or bad for free speech? could it open the door for former president trump to be an banned from the platform? there is shares up another 2% after a 27 percent spike monday. ed ludlow is here to break it down. we can debate the long-term impact but no question it has been good for investors in the last 48 hours. ed: especially considering that

stocks were lower and a lot of hawkish comments from the fed weigh down shares. it has had its biggest two-day gain, above 30%. here's the reality of the situation. there's a staggering volume of twitter shares that exchanged hands over the last two days. that chart says it all. look at the right hand side of the screen. that's after more than 250 million shares changed hands on monday. investors on the retail side, look at trading platforms like fidelity. a lot of demand for twitter shares as investors trying to work out is this a good thing? direction on the stock suggest so. there's a little irony in all of this. before the big surgery got on monday, around 28%, another 2%

on tuesday, twitter was down. it is now very firmly in positive territory and you can see we are outperforming tesla on a year-to-date basis, which is higher. and it is interesting, the elon musk effect you have with the stocks and how he uses twitter as a mechanism to communicate with investors. i'm sure we will be paying closer attention to him now. emily: yet another plot twist -- the twitter ceo announcing elon musk has joined twitter's board and jack dorsey is set to leave the board in may and says he's happy about it. twitter will cap his stock ownership. he is at 9.2% which will give him plenty of influence. that's discuss it with david kirkpatrick and max chafkin. elon musk has talked about his

tesla master plan. let's his master plan for twitter and how does it fit into twitter's master plan? max: elon musk likes twitter. he's an enthusiastic user and you can see why twitter would want him on the board. for musk, the master plan is about tesla. let happening here, i'm sure elon has big ideas for twitter around free speech but the game behind this is protecting tesla's most important marketing channel. ed mentioned it is elon musk's way of communicating with investors and raising an enormous, almost unlimited capital for tesla. it's also a great way he has been able to market himself in the cars. having a seat on twitter's board is going to help him in the long-term. yesterday, twitter's value went up bunch. tesla went up a lot less as a

percentage but musk made a lot more money on tesla. his money is still in tesla and we should be thinking about it in those terms. emily: looking at these tweets today, i'm excited to share we are appointing elon to our board. it became clear to us in conversations in recent weeks that he would bring great value to our board. jack dorsey re-tweeting this and what you can imagine is a coordinated effort, saying i'm really happy elon is joining the board. they both lead with their hearts and will be an incredible team. what do you make of their wholehearted embrace of this? vid: we know jack dorsey and elon musk are good friends. they sort of think alike in a lot of ways, though certainly elon musk is a much more impetuous person then jack dorsey. but having the richest man in the world, one whose every move

is attended to with such incredible attention has got to be good for any company, certainly it has been good for tesla and if he really cares about twitter, which he must, this is something we are just learning, that he cares about it organizationally as opposed to just being one of its greatest power users, he is going to certainly bring tremendous value to the deliberations about strategy, product design, etc. emily: what kind of freedom do you feel elon musk is lacking on twitter? he seems to have grown there quite freely. max: there's some risk to his twitter presence. he someone continually pushing the boundaries and twitter has been aggressive -- not aggressive but has made some moves in terms of trying to rein in what it terms misinformation, hate speech and that sort of thing. he's also in the middle of this messy fight with the sec over

tweets he sent years ago. tesla has this twitter sitter and right around the same time he was acquiring these twitter stakes, there is a filing where musk is complaining about his being muzzled, as he sought, by the sec. this is a way for him to ensure that he stays put. emily: it will be interesting how this impacts the rest of the social media landscape. there was quite a moment, elon musk in response to that question got a lot of feedback, including from andrew dodd worth -- andrew bosworth, who is the cto of facebook, saying they solve the question ofditing on facebo that you just leave a lo what do you think having elon and twitter's quarter or at least on the board means for facebook? david: i would reiterate having

him in your corner is bad for your rivals. many of us find things that have happened on facebook give us the willies in recent years, so i can understand why he would say that. twitter come on balance, has been a more responsible platform than facebook. but the confusing thing is his repeated statements, several times saying he wants free speech to be more allowed on twitter then he thinks it's may be too restrictive. it doesn't really make sense since he's never been restricted by twitter. in fact, he's been restricted by the sec and i think he's had second thoughts about some of his own tweets, but it's bad for facebook. i think may be an edit function is a good idea for twitter. i personally have trouble using twitter. i just find it awkward and offputting in many ways. i'm an outlier in the tech

journalism community in that way. but twitter needs product improvement. even jack dorsey says that all the time and doesn't make any bones about it. emily: and yet a long time former twitter veteran says this is an expensive way to add an edit button if that's what you want. as you point out, elon musk likes making jokes but he's rarely doing it just to joke. his stake is now worth $4 billion. there has to be more than an edit button desire. max: david's point not withstanding, twitter is playing with fire. elon musk is really good at attracting attention to there's a large community of investors who will buy anything tells them to and that is really good. but if twitter has about a quarter or loses 20% or 25% of its market value, that's disastrous for the management

team and that's just a blip on elon musk's radar. it doesn't affect his long-term vision. the fear, i think is this is someone who has in the past have had trouble raining himself in and is very impetuous and twitter, a relatively small company is attached to the elon musk train. it's going to ride that train for better and probably worse. emily: here's an open question. what does it mean for former president trump who has been banned from twitter. i've asked twitter executives many times if there's a path for him to come back and he has had no. could this open a door? david: it's a very legitimate question given the point musk has made about free speech because the first thing you think of, if twitter were more lacks in enforcing it speech rules committee number one application would be trump might be allowed back on. i don't think of musk as a

particular defender of trump. i think he's a libertarian by inclination, though he has a very complex mix of use. i would say if anything, it's positive for the ex-president but we can't know. there are so many things about this we can't know, the speed with which it all happened is dizzying and i've been thinking what a weird thing -- the richest man in the world is so incredibly impetuous, you never know what he is going to do next. all these implications are only going to be found out over time. emily: the plot has thickened indeed. thank you both. coming up, we will hear from a republican representative, darrell issa. his thoughts on what musk means by free speech and what is it like working on a board with elon musk? we will ask a former tesla board member. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: lawmakers on both sides fail have plenty to say about twitter's handling of free speech on its platform. here's republican representative darrell issa of california earlier my colleague, david westin. >> i've known elon musk for a long time and i watched him break the glass ceiling that kept him from competing in rockets and missiles and he did so over a long time with his dedication.

he believes in that free enterprise system, so i think he's going to be a positive for a twitter that has been erring on the side of less free speech. you might room member taking down things as misinformation that later proved to be true. i think he's looking at it as we are going to be for free speech and a bigger way and i think that is positive for twitter and positive for all of us who would like to see social media be less about censoring and more about simply being a conduit for people's ideas whether we disagree with them or not. >> i've been listening to congress over the last couple of years and one is though what -- one concern you've identified is twitter saying who can talk and who can't talk. i understand you are make -- saying elon musk will make it freer, but also in terms of concentration -- there's a lot of concerned as you have an antitrust responsibly. are you concerned about the

wealthiest man in the world having significant influence over twitter? >> 10% doesn't run a company and there are two extreme anti-oil people on exxon's board. if the power of his argument is going to be more powerful than his vote because he's going to be outnumbered essentially nine to one. but there's something else at work and that is twitter has a monopoly on one section. facebook has a monopoly on another section. these giants we are concerned about. but if they operate like your public utility, charging everyone the same amount to buy electricity and not shutting anyone off as long as the bill is paid, the monopoly is pretty benign and that's one of the concerns we have in congress is not whether an entity has monopolistic power but how they use that power. whether they abuse it or simply

have the luxury of being the dominant force. that has been true in tech for a long time. i remember when microsoft basically owned your ability to get on the internet. that's not true today, but it did take looking at it and making sure they were an honest rocher some years ago. emily: republican darrell issa of california, who himself has worked in tech and business. how will having elon musk in the boardroom influenced twitter's handling of free speech, misinformation and so much more? it's get to that with someone who worked on a board with elon musk for many years. the founder of the wesley group and was in early investor in tesla and a former tesla board member. great to have you back. what is it like serving on a board with elon musk? >> it's never boring. i think this is a big win for twitter. he's brilliant, he sees the future, he is a driver. for sure he is temperamental and

irascible, but he pushes people to be their best. he's also twitter's greatest power user. he loves pushing boundaries and my advice to twitter executives is put on your track shoes now because elon is going to push you to pick up the pace. all in all, i think that's a good thing for twitter users and twitter investors. emily: elon is a big marketer. how can network to twitter's advantage? steve: i think the case can be made that elon is reinventing to any for sentry marketing. look what he did at tesla. he had a marketing budget close to zero. he took every penny he could and invested it in innovation to make greater progress. in contrast, gm, ford, spent billions. they could have spent it in r&d, but they spent it in tired super

bowl ads and so on. you have to wonder how much further ahead with a major auto companies be if they had done what elon did at tesla? in a lot of ways, he's the perfect poster boy for what some might call 20th century marketing, forming that relationship with your customer and he's doing it all on twitter. what's a better advertisement for twitter than that? emily: he's going to have a very relaxed relationship with twitters leaders and board members. what do you imagine his relationship with the new ceo will be? steve: it is not going to be quiet. i think he's going to push all of them. we are day one into this and he saying it's may be time to get that edit function in there. i think is going to shake things up. in the old days, weeks to say if they broke, don't fix it. the new mantra is from steve jobs -- if you aren't busy updating your own project,

someone else is. i think he's going to make a statement that you need to form a direct relationship with your customers. twitter is probably the most cost-effective way to do it. elon, for a charismatic guy, he slightly awkward. i think a lot of other ceos ought to be taking note. emily: elon musk has used twitter to replace his own marketing apartment. i wonder how an investor fits into the portfolio? how does it relate to tesla, spacex, the boring company and hyperloop, for example? steve: elon is a big picture guy and i think what he saying is i'm an innovator. i've transformed the american auto industry and transformed space. this has to go. ceos of the future need a direct

relationship where they can tell the truth in real time and not wait six months. i think that is a step forward and i think he's going to become a role model for not just ceos but politicians. having that direct relationship with the customer and voter and sit of the canned adds so many of us are used to is a bit caustic. you will have to manage it well and we will see how they do. emily: where do you think elon musk falls on twitter's banning of president trump? steve: only elon knows that. a lot of people will say he's a free marketeer and will let trump back on. i don't think that's the case. he has high standards and hold people to a high standard and the reality is -- i say this for all of tech. tech, overall needs to hold a higher standard with people telling the truth. they need to remove people telling flat out lies.

they need to remove people inciting violence. i hope you will set a higher standard with terms like this to follow. emily: some would argue elon musk has peddled his own version of the truth, for example, the funding secured tweet when funding was not secured. steve: elon is always pushing the boundaries. he will be one of nine board members. on the whole, i think he's going to push them to innovate. in terms of setting government policy and with the standards are, i don't know if he's going to be taking the lead on that. but we will see. one thing i can promise you is that it will be boring. emily: it won't be boring indeed. steve wesley, former tesla board number, good to have you back with us. so much more coming up. you don't want to miss it. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a few other stories we continue to watch -- amazon buying dozens of rocket launchers for its high-speed internet service. they will buy as many as 83 launches. amazon's license with the fcc requires them to launch at least half of its 3200 satellites by july 25. the kinsey scott has transformed american philanthropy by giving away $12.4 billion too often overlooked causes and is stepping up donations outside the united states.

the serving causes across five continents from micronesia to brazil. ibm banking on the lingering relevance of mainframe computers at a time when many businesses are moving to the cloud. the company hasn't bailed a new model designed for corporate data centers. they've been marketing themselves as a key center for data in person and in the cloud. coming up, more on what elon musk's plans could mean for twitter and free speech. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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emily: welcome back to bloomberg technology. you've heard it from investors to analysts and from ceos and former ceos -- there are a lot of opinions about what elon musk means for two or. ed ludlow has been looking at the markets and so far, so good. any indication this could be bad for investors? ed: only a 2% gain on tuesday but over the two days, the biggest today jump in twitter history as a public company.

what's more, a broad range of analyst notes came out in reaction to the news that elon musk first taking a stake and then appointed board member or largely positive. they range from the opinion that he will help twitter by association. he has star power but he has good ideas, a track record of innovation which could help, but there is a gap between what people see is him doing for the platform and what they see him doing for stocks. there's been a big pop in the stock. you see that on the right-hand side. the blue line is the average analyst price target for twitter which is around $44 a share when we are currently trading at $51 a share. analysts cut their price targets because they don't think there's that much upside to run. there's a gap where people think elon musk could take twitter and

where they see the stock going and there's a further breakdown which is the influence of retail investors. i told you earlier about 460 million shares of changed hands over the last two days, but there's real insatiable retailer investor appetite. this is fidelity's trade session -- twitter number one, 10,000 by orders and around 8600 for tesla. the third company is a bio company and pharmaceuticals. but clearly, it's not just wall street looking at this going what is elon musk going to do? retail investors, just as they have done with the tesla story has hung on elon musk's every word and have bought in the last sessions as well. emily: i want to bring in tim o'brien come a columnist for bloomberg opinion and associate professor for comedic asian at

syracuse university. not only has twitter added elon musk to the board but the ceo says they have been talking to him for weeks. why is that significant? >> it is significant because elon musk took a stake in the company under the guise of being a passive investor, which meant if you are following the classic definition, he would -- was merely stopping by and parking his money and was going to watch from the sideline and not seek great changes at the company or seek a board seat, for example. all of which was up in the air yesterday when this investment was disclosed. lo and behold, we find today that he has a board seat and the twitter ceo has said they have been talking together for weeks, which does not bear any hallmarks of a passive investor. i don't think anyone thought he would be a passive investor stop i think he is an activist by

nature, but i also think it represents a little bit of a tiny chapter in elon musk's blabbing -- thumbing his nose at convention and sec guidelines as he sees fit. he's had a long run in about tweeting inside information or misleading information and i suspect this will be more fodder for the sec to chew on. emily: musk has been positioning self as a free-speech defender. what does that mean for president in particular? will musk -- where will musk fall on this? >> this isn't really about free speech. if anything, twitter has become more about elon's speech. if anything, he has figured out this is a powerful platform.

maybe he took some notes from mark zuckerberg that he needs to have some influence over a platform. i think if anything, the future for former president trump is tbd but i have never seen it as a band. it's a ban for as long as those who control the company wanted to be and we just need to be real about that. you referred to elon as a world-class troll. that is -- tim: that is how he uses twitter. he is -- has routinely over the years tried to shut down his critics, silence them. he has used twitter to savage them, to make fun of them, he has used twitter as a troll to go after people. he has used twitter to talk of his own investments and things like cryptocurrency.

so this whole time in recent weeks where he has said twitter is throwing blockades in the way of free speech and maybe he needs to launch a new platform, and enticing thing he put out there prior to this investment being disclosed runs counter to his entire personal experience on twitter. he has been unfettered on twitter. but elon musk is a libertarian and as a posture that is part of the far right zeitgeist right now, that the social media platforms have turned against conservatives, when in fact, the social media platforms have finally woken up to some of the virtues of policing propaganda, which is a different thing than free-speech in certain cases. emily: we actually have some breaking news -- twitter has announced via a tweet from its commute occasions account that the company is working on an edit button internally. this is a feature they have been testing and working on since

last year. your reaction? tim: elon musk tweeted last night after his investment was disclosed that he would like to see an edit button, so i think this is twitter making a big, bold public statement in response to what elon musk wants to see. but of course they have been working on this for a long time. if they step up their pace on better user experiences, better experiences on twitter because elon musk is there, it's good for investors and good for users. that is a part from what he might do to either curtail or pervert actual free speech on the platform itself stop -- platform itself. emily: how do you think an edit button would change the nature of twitter? this is something some users have been asking for for a long time but twitter has always resisted, i believe in the name of maintaining and protecting

the authenticity of the platform. jennifer: i don't think this is about typos. i think he is trying to use this as a way to look like he is appealing to the public that he some kind of rebel leader. elon musk is, the only thing i'm sure of is he is really good at accumulating wealth and with that comes power. there has been some conversation about how facebook let's you edit and facebook and twitter are not the same thing. last time i checked, journalists around the world have not been putting facebook posts in news stories stop this would fundamentally change what the platform is. maybe that's what elon wants to do. i don't know why he's taking a stake in this other than he has figured out this is somehow going to serve his agenda. we will have to wait and see but

i don't think it will culturally change -- maybe he wants to burn us out? it's just a bunch of ceos, politicians and state actors. maybe it's not that great anymore. emily: to that point, and your article just this week where you suggest elon musk could be bad for free-speech, the venture capitalist mark entries in reposted and did not seem to agree with your premise. elon musk then commented saying such an article is always good for a laugh. he confused the article that it was actually republished in the washington post. but what do you make of a defender of free speech criticizing your free-speech? tim: they are entitled to do that because i believe in free speech. that's ok. marc andreessen and elon musk are cut from the same cloth.

they are silicon valley titans who have a view of the world that i think is pretty mechanistic and individualistic. there can be virtues to that but when you're talking in the context of why they have an interest about the kinds of speech that appears on twitter, it has nothing actually to do with free-speech and has everything to do with their own biases being put to the test by the things that appear on twitter. emily: tim o'brien and professor from syracuse university -- so much to continue to debate. thank you both. coming up, twitter and crypto -- how elon musk joining twitter's board could influence crypto aspirations. we will talk about that with someone from the blockchain association, next. ♪

emily: let's get to our crypto report and our main story -- elon musk joining twitter's board. will it bring the element of blockchain networks into twitter? let's talk about all of this and more with kristin smith, executive director of the blockchain association. it's no secret twitter has been bulking out some of its crypto features. they have the blue sky project they have been exploring, but what do you make of elon musk's influence on the crypto community and how that could

influence twitter? tim: -- kristen: these are all great questions. i think one of the reasons is he really truly understand the value of cryptocurrency, whether it be bitcoin or does coin, he knows the value of open source networks and knows the value we have many multiple minds thinking and building on how to create a better network. that's very different than a centralized company like twitter. what's going to be interesting is is he going to bring these elements of the crypto world, these anti-censorship elements and allow for a way for new people to come in and maybe import their own algorithm that could potentially go through and sort the news in a way they want to be seen, not in the way twitter is dictating it be seen.

i think there's a potential for innovation here, given we represent the crypto industry at the blockchain organization, we are hopeful by bringing in this kind of mindset that there will be new ways to get this platform to a place that serves more of its users because it is an incredibly powerful platform and i would argue probably the most powerful platform for sharing and receiving information. emily: just how important is twitter to the crypto community? there's a strong and passionate community of cryptocurrency supporters on twitter. we call it crypto twitter. crypto topics are trending on crypto twitter because of the volume of users there. kristen: crypto twitter is a real thing. twitter enables developers all across the globe to debate whether or not they should make

technological changes to open source networks. it's a forum for this kind of debate. it's a public commons for exchanging ideas and a way for people that have targeted and narrow interests to find one another and build a community. the crypto community uses twitter perhaps more so than any other community or ecosystem out there. it's an incredibly powerful tool for the crypto community. if you look back to last summer in august, we had over 40,000 phone calls generated to the u.s. senate over the course of five days because they shared a link on twitter and it went viral, and you had crypto twitter influencers, members of the house and senate tweeting these links and celebrity influencers and business leaders, this is a tool for political activism and a tool for sharing and debating ideas.

it's an incredibly important platform and i thing it's one where content we find every day in the crypto world will only improve the way the platform can work. so i'm excited to be part of it. emily: the sec has obviously been paying attention to elon musk and you have had run-ins with them before. how do you imagine the sec is watching his influence on twitter in particular? kristen: i think the sec pays a very close attention to what he does and they pay very close attention to the crypto community. definitely a lot of allies going on out there. as long as he is transparent with what is going on and brings more transparency, i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing for him to be a part of it. i don't think it should pose any problems for the sec at this -- for the sec at this time. i think they will keep a close

eye on him just like they do with many other people in the crypto space. emily: they are most deftly watching. kristin smith, thank you for joining us. coming up, the elon impact on twitter shares. will the social platform continue to rally? we will talk about that next. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> i think he really believes he can do something good for society with this platform. >> he is certainly making a statement, and it is a statement that -- statement about censorship. he doesn't agree with censorship for a smooth functioning democracy. >> i interpreted as a sign of how influential elon musk is. there's nothing changed in the front middle outlook for twitter. >> i think this starts what was

going to be a broader strategic initiative for elon at twitter. >> i think it's a very expensive way to get yourself an edit button. i to gets a very interesting move. he's a power user and knows the product well. >> it will either be agar walled changing the policy of the company to an open source, being censorship or call people out on censorship or it will be a management change. i don't know what's going to happen. emily: twitter shares have skyrocketed since the news of elon stake in the company. but how long can the rally last? my guest currently has a hold on the company. are you sticking with that? >> clearly a positive move for the company, not taking away

anything on that side but we have a 30 plus percent move with a lot of the fun a mental improvement, which we have not seen yet. i think many of us have said ask the advertisers if anything has changed in the answer is no. clearly, this is about a future foundation. i have called this a foundation of a great car -- the whole user interface in terms of what he has done in the auto world, i think he can bring a lot to this world and he's going to have no doubt a positive impact. investors right now are betting not in -- betting a year out that it's going to have an improvement which is great for long-term shareholders, short-term, i think there's going to be a lot of volatility

in the stock. emily: will this really change the game for twitter's business? there was an argument earlier that twitter could spend less on marketing because elon musk will do that for them via twitter. but when you look at the balance sheet, how will this change? brent: i don't know if it's a game changer. the board is stacked. brent taylor is a product guy and he knows how to speculate. they are surrounded by a lot of people. right now twitter doesn't have an awareness issue, they have a usability issue and that's what many of the advertisers and end-users are looking for better solutions for that. one advertiser last week said it perfectly -- they had 10 improvements -- twitter hasn't had that many improvements in a

decade and that's the opportunity and why he is betting a huge amount well -- 1% of his wealth, he put a big dollar amount in because he sees the future and three or five years that if they can make these changes and make it more usable and get -- there's over 2 billion -- it's a tiny amount compared to other platforms. emily: what is the risk of bringing elon musk into the room? brent: big ideas can go haywire. some of these ideas -- he seems to make big bets and any time you make a big bet, it can flareup. but we know, we think he's going to have a positive impact. i think one person's view and opinion on this as a board member, there is going to be a

lot of other voices and it is going to be run very well over time. i think the risk is if fundamentals don't turn in the next quarter or two, investors will have to be put on hold in the short-term. i don't think there's a lot of downside given that he is in. you have a nice floor put in in the short-term given his arrival but the risk is -- this is going to take several quarters. it's not going to be an overnight experiment that turns out a perfect solution. emily: it is certainly going to be an entertaining one. and we are long for that right. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. tune in tomorrow. we will continue our coverage of elon musk's big stake in

twitter. we will have a slew of special guests. i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

haidi: a very good morning. welcome to daybreak australia. we are counting down to asia's major market open. shery: good evening from new york. the top stories this hour, u.s. stocks and bonds fall as the fed says the central bank may shrink the balance sheet as soon as next month. haidi: the u.s., eu, and g7 countries coordinate a fresh round of sentience on russia as outrage