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tv   Tech Check  CNBC  April 14, 2021 11:00am-12:00pm EDT

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other major averages are in the green. that is going to do it for "squawk on the street. "techcheck" is going to begin right now ♪ good wednesday morning and welcome to "techcheck. our new show about tech here at cnbc i'm deirdre bosa with carl quintanilla and jon fortt as always a huge show today. history for crypto as coinbase goes public, we are awaiting the first trade and a monster valuation that is only getting bigger plus, slack ceo stewart butterfield will join us on how we work and communicate and some new numbers from tiktok reveal just what is underneath the hood at this company.
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>> let's take a quick check on the market as we wait for coinbase to open nasdaq, about a percentage point away from a record high. s&p is already there moderna is higher. travel plays, trip and booking holdings higher. facebook off by 1% intel having a tough week down for the third straight day down 6% since monday, carl. >> jon, today's most important tech story is coinbase going public in a direct listing, potentially value the company at $65 billion or more. as it becomes the first major crypto business to go public in the united states, investors are hailing it as a bit of a watershed moment, encouraging institutions to play in the crypto space and some recent private trades have valued the company at almost $100 billion of course only this morning on "squawk box," co-founder and ceo brian armstrong talked about the company's connection to crypto and here's what he said.
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>> we're also kind of what you might call an indexed bet or levered bet on the crypto space more broadly we're kind of selling picks and shovels and helping people access and use the new technology, so i think we're going to grow along with the crypto space but if we keep growing share, then we'll sort of be an addition of that on top of just the price of crypto hopefully. >> so many topics to delve into. the way in which central banks are viewing the space right now, certainly institutions, half of their business profitability and how they're going to manage, jon, what we at least historically have expected in crypto and wild price swings of the currency itself. >> yeah. carl, i'm just reminded that it was 5.5 years ago i met brian armstrong for coffee in san francisco. one of the things that struck me then about him was his level of conviction he told me he was taking his
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full salary in bitcoin at the time and not converting it to cash i thought wow, that's somebody who is putting his money where his mouth is turned out to be a pretty smart be he also gave me a dollar's worth of bitcoin in a coinbase account to show me how coinbase worked you know, every once in a while i take a look at that. it's worth $221.30 this morning. that's where we will -- yeah, deirdre. >> there's got to be a way to nft that, one coin brian armstrong gave you years ago i love what was said on "squawk box" this morning, this listing today, of course, we're going to get caught up in the price and technicals, but it's more than coinbase and bitcoin, really the net scape moment for crypto. i got a lot of backlash saying it's not a flattering comparison look what happened to net scape. the point being this is really a moment, the beginning, like netscape was the beginning of the internet perhaps what we're seeing is the
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beginning of crypto in the mainstream as carl alluded to, decentralized finance, central bank digital currencies and blockchain and nfts we have covered over the last few weeks. we look the at the indication, which by the way is $350 a share, 40% premium to the reference price puts the valuation above $90 billion. we are looking towards a monster debut here but we should keep that in mind. this is about more than where coinbase is trading today. >> well, yeah. let's start with that. joining us now, silicon valley super angel ron conway, early investor in coinbase and stripe, and google, airbnb -- doordash, square, pinterest, just to name a few. good morning we can talk about coinbase and brian armstrong and the whole company, what it represents for crypto right now, but let's start from the investor
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perspective,s the public market investor perspective, what do you have to believe about coinbase to buy it for what looks like it's going to be 350 a share here does it have to do for transactions on the internet what google did for information? >> yes, i absolutely believe that coinbase is the google for the crypto economy and opens this huge opportunity to consumers. if you start at the very top of the funnel, look at the market size for the crypto economy. last year, it was 778 billion, headed to over a trillion, and the crypto economy is in its infancy. so the crypto economy is the next multitrillion dollar opportunity in innovation.
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and if people look at the size of the opportunity, then the market caps of these companies looks a little more reasonable >> ron, what kd r what all companies are worth a pretty high price today but when you look at the size of the market of crypto, i think they're analogous. >> what convinces you that coinbase is the google of crypto and not the yahoo! it is early. yahoo! did well for a while. there was lots of competition and better ideas we have square and robinhood, a lot of companies, established finance companies piling into the crypto area, what sets coinbase apart >> well, what really sets coinbase apart is it is a crypto
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only company it's very focused on providing crypto consumer products worldwide. all these other companies, crypto is an add-on. so coinbase is what we call a crypto first company and that focus is what is making them a market leader. the brand that they have built, you know, the power of brand, you can never put a price tag on and coinbase already has a great reputation and a great brand with consumers it focuses on delivering a user-friendly product that makes it easy for consumers to get into this exciting new market. they are the user friendly door to crypto.
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>> ron, more broadly, mike novagratz was on this morning and he said at 2 trillion, crypto makes up about half a percent of global wealth and his argument if you don't think that's going to at least 2 or 3% in the next two to three years, you're not paying attention. is that a legitimate way to look at it? >> yes, yes. that's a very legitimate and smart way of explaining to people the size of this opportunity, that at 2 trillion we've only concurred a few percentage of the market space it's a huge, huge opportunity. >> ron, good morning it's deirdre you call coinbase the google for the crypto economy, but we know that google does much more than search there's a digital advertising business, they're going into many others.
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few people think that coinbase can maintain these sort of exorbitant fees and margins that it is seeing now, so where does it need to diversify to maintain that status, to really become, you know, the platform for crypto >> well, coinbase is constantly adding new crypto services and new coins available to its service. so it is expanding its product line, you know, very rapidly they're absolutely the leader in the space. >> leader in the space, particularly when it comes to, you know, the crypto currencies that we're most familiar with, but how does coinbase play into central bank digital currencies? we're talking about china creating its own digital yuan, but creating its own digital
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wallet, how does coinbase get involved with the central bank currencies >> i think that's one of the opportunities for brian armstrong and coinbase, now that they have built this amazing brand, and after the ipo today, to be in an evangelist for this industry since coinbase is the market leader and talking to other countries and opening lines of communication in educating them on the opportunity and how the technology industry and the policymakers can work together to make this a great opportunity for america, you know, for america first, and we should be watching what china is doing because we want to be the technology leader in the crypto economy. there's going to be millions of
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jobs created from this new trillion dollar industry, and we want those jobs to be in the united states and coinbase is poised to lead that charge with all the other companies in this ecosystem. >> armstrong, ron, this morning, on our air, talked about the way in which central bankers are viewing crypto in general and did sound a bit like he was frustrated that in his view, they are too focused on e potential for elite or illicit use of crypto as a main function of the tool. i wonder if you think that's been overplayed and if central bankers need to consider some of the other elements of it >> yes for sure, the central bankers and the crypto industry should be communicating with each other a lot more closely, and, you know, with every new technology
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boom, there's the good and there's the bad. some people are focusing too much on the bad of crypto. it's interesting, mike murle, a former head of the cia, just released a study that he conducted that the post tulation that crypto is being used for widespread back actors, just isn't true you know, every transaction on the blockchain is recorded, and law enforcement, that's a good thing for law enforcement. >> right. >> everything can be tracked this study from mike morale, very interesting today. >> that is interesting back to the investor perspective, i see this curious trend in crypto where people who got rich off of bitcoin and
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ethereum are buying nft-backed digital art, i suspect they're buying into this offering. is there the chance there's kind of an internal crypto systemic risk here where if one crypto type asset founders in some way, there are going to be people who have other assets and investments affected, is that something we should think about as we see companies like coinbase go public >> what we need to think about is that the crypto economy today in its infancy is probably a couple thousand companies in the crypto economy some of those companies are going to do really well, like standard technology, internet companies today, some of those companies will do really well and some of those companies will flounder, so it's like the rest of industry, really no better and no worse
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>> all right got to pick the right ones you picked this one at the right time for sure, no matter what the price action is today. >> yeah. you know, sv angel, our fund, sv angel, we invested in coinbase when brian was just starting the company and went to visit y combinator, the world's famous accelerator founded by paul graham and jessica livingston and that y combinator has birthed so many iconic companies in the technology industry brian started there and sv angel, we invested in all the follow-on rounds and coinbase has educated us and this entire industry about the benefits of the crypto economy coinbase is the pioneer and netscape was referred to earlier and sv angel got its start by
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saying we only invest in internet startups. well until netscape came along and opened the user interface to the internet, there wasn't a way for consumers to interact. >> yep. >> with -- with the internet. >> and notably mark andresen is all over coinbase as well. it all goes full circle. ron conway, thank you. >> thank you. >> the reason we call him the god father of silicon valley today's crowd source, our segment is a good one where we ask you to participate in the show, so send us your best coinbase memes, videos, reddit posts, commentary, send us what you got it, tweet at cnbc tech check and we will show you some of the best answers later in the show jack dorsey responding to an article titled "coinbase's $100 billion ipo provides an alternative investment to bitcoin with the comment" "why
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do we even need an alternative?" later this hour, katie hawn will join us and after the break do not miss slack ceo stewart butterfield. we are just getting started on "techcheck."
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♪ get a gut check on shares of discovery, told you before the top of the hour, credit suisse unloading another $2 billion worth of stock linked to its archegos exposure that includes a big position in disco. that stock down. >> coinbase going public via direct listing this morning indicating it could open at $351 a share, well above the $250 reference price. our next guest company was one of the first major players in tech to forgo the traditional ipo route when it debuteded on the nyse in 2019 through a direct listing, stewart butterfield, co-founder and advisory of slack and joins us now.
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good morning thanks for being with us >> thanks for having me and congrats on the new show >> thank you now, let's start with direct listings they put more power into the hands of retail investors, take out the intermediaries in a bigger way than traditional ipos it's not a coincidence that coinbase is going public in this manner, in the spirit of crypto, and decentralized finance. was any of that running through your head when you decided -- only the second company to do so -- pursue a direct listing? >> you know, i think the single biggest factor is whether you need to raise capital or not and if you don't, then a traditional public offering doesn't work so well i think there can be a host of other reasons and i don't want to do any arm chair psychoanalysis but you're right in this case there's an element of democratization to it. >> disruption, decentralization, that has happened in the workplace over the last year everyone seems to agree that future is some kind of hybrid
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model, but some big companies, notably google, are looking at i suppose you call it less remote work in the future do you think that's a mistake? what will lk the new norm? >> i think there's two fundamental truths people seem to be missing, and the first one is the first executive who we hired who didn't live in san francisco where our headquarters is, she asked, what's different, from now or from february 2020 and you can't unscramble an egg so we need to talk about the differences from today today, we're working the way we're working and for most organizations and most workers it is working. what we can look forward to, i think is some relief, some ameal rags of the global pandemic, things like people can go visit their grandparents and they can have kids in school and they can have nice dinners in crowded restaurants and go on vacations and that stuff, we have what we're doing today, but life is
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better and then on top of that we have the offices as an additional tool to help align people, to collaborate, to become more productive, and the second truth is, the number of days that people spend in the office i think is the wrong axis to look at it. if you say people are going to come to the office one or two days a week, you're presupposing people live within one or two miles of the office. we need to think digital first, investing time and energy, as they do to office leases and build outs and conference rooms and all that the ratio is one to ten, i think we need to make it ten to one. >> stu, that seems complicated for some companies i mean you've had in a way a distributed workforce from the beginning, kind of canada, san francisco, right, but there are a lot of companies in silicon valley based on this idea of keeping people on-site and interacting with each other as much as possible you're in the process, you know,
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regulatory blessings with standing of combing with salesforce that's made a big location bet on san francisco. so how do you expect to navigate that over the coming months, you know, that blending of cultures with a distributed and to some degree at least physically disconnected reality >> it's a great question and i think that while we didn't have that many remote workers before february 2020, to be clear i would put myself in the camp of people who back then thought what we were doing today is impossible and sometimes when you need to do something that's impossible, or you thought was impossible, it turns out to be possible, there's opportunities to reimagine i think that humans are pretty -- old habits die hard, right. we get stuck in grooves, we stick with the defaults. a lot of management techniques and processes around collaboration that we use up to february 2020 are kind of legacies of the birth of the
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modern corporations going back to the 19th century. even on campus, i mean due have to be in the same room, same floor, same building, in the same campus, same city we've proven we can do it so what can we retain from this world when we get the additional flexibility and kind of power of having offices if you ask a lot of people, spending less time commuting sounds good, more time with family sounds good, more flexibility in how people arrange their lives sounds good and given that that's possible, how do we want to do it? i will say, there's going to be a range of opinions. this is a market decision ultimately a, we want to hire from anywhere in the world giant pool of talent that today is inaccessible to us because unless someone lives within commuting distances of our offices we didn't hire them. second thing is, employers will want or come to expect the flexibility as a basic benefit in the same way compensation is market driven, work-from-home policies distributed work
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policies or that digital approach is going to be an expectation that employees demand >> stewart, that's interesting goldman is a good example of what you're talking about. they had blowout results, they're trading capital markets business was to the moon and yet on the call, they continue to talk about how -- how much better they would have operated had they been together in the office i guess i wonder, what is it, do you think, that is keeping some of these work cultures so insistent that you got to come back and i wonder if you've noticed some opinions, google is a good example, where they've basically set a line and say you may not have to come in every day but you need to be within driving distance from the office >> yeah. i think that's going to be a disadvantage there's companies like google that have enormous hubs. we just hired an incredible director of product management and that person came to slack partly because they lived in seattle and they knew at their
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current employer they were only going to be able to work on projects based in seattle and this is a global organization, has offices all over the world, all kinds of exciting things to work on, but they're limited that's bad from two perspectives one from the employee's perspective, they took our recruiter's call, but bad for the employer, right. the idea that this is an important initiative, we're going to bet the company on this thing, we're going to hope this produces good results but only willing to hire people from the mall metro region today with the knowledge that is a limitation that's something we inherited in a default that is difficult to change >> right at the same time, google is opening up offices in other places in america, so if you look at that, maybe they have the footprint to do so stewart, way tonight ask you, it's been an experiment for you as well to figure out what tools, work in this next era in a hybrid workplace you introduced a public messaging platform and quickly
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walked it back on concerns that messages of abuse could be sent with relative ease did that scale back or slow down slack's ambitions to move beyond internal messaging are you ready to become sort of a social work platform with all of the moderation considerations that go along with that? >> yeah. i think there's some real confusion there and entirely our responsibility the messaging retreating people was not something we walked back it's grown quickly, the number of organizations, 74,000 paid customers has grown in the last year but the number of connected end points, the density of the network has grown faster, almost 250% what we changed was a little bit of the process of sending an invitation to someone to connect. it's double opt in both sides, there's all kinds of security controls, and it's absolutely not intended to be a social network. it's not letting you talk to anyone it's letting you talk to the people you work with closely who happen to be employed by someone
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else a marketing director that might be a creative agency, an accountant, your auditors. there's a range of relationships that are really important to the internal workings of an organization but that work with customers or partners or vendors. >> right well stewart, thank you so much for being with us today. stewart butterfield, co-founder and ceo of slack. >> thank you >> later this hour we've got a reality check on tiktok, plus julia boorstin is with us next julia, it's a big day for disruption. >> indeed, jon we've been watching coinbase as a cnbc disrupter since 2014. i'll break down how much that company has grown and why more disrupter 50 ipos are coming that's up after the break.
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fortt and deirdre bosa julia boorstin joins us as well. record highs on the dow and nasdaq peloton, zoom, some of those work-from-home names get a breather after yesterday's enthusiasm tesla and facebook down 2% coinbase remains the big story of the morning now indicated $355 and that does imply a valuation north of $90 billion. >> we'll keep our eye on that. time for a cnbc news update. rahel soloman has that >> earnings season is off to a fast start with big beats from three banks, goldman sachs, wells fargo and jpmorgan chase topping earnings estimates by 50% or more. moderna laying out plans to fight covid-19 and possible future variants. the company's ceo wants to make sure there are vaccine booster shots available this fall. hundreds of companies and top executives signed a letter opposing legislation that makes it harder for eligible voters to cast ballots, apple, ford and
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bank of america, the group took out two-page ads in "the new york times" and "washington post." sdwloo bernie madoff, the man who pleaded guilty to running the largest ponzi scheme has died in prison only about $13 billion has been recovered. bernie madoff dead at 82 you're up to date. jon, back to you. >> thank you. in today's debut coinbase could be worth around $100 billion. seven years ago, it made its debut on our cnbc disruptor 50 list julia boorstin started that list and has more on the company's path to a listing for us today julia? >> well, jon, coinbase has been on the disruptor 50 list three times in the list's eight years and grown from 1.3 million consumer wallets that it had when it debuted in 2014 to now
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56 million verified use percent. coinbase will be the 62nd disruptor 50 company to go public originally priced at $65.3 billion. that would have made it the second largest disruptor 50 exit behind uber, but the direct listing as you mentioned is indicated to open around $350 which would mean a valuation of more than $92 billion. that would be the largest valuation of any of the disruptors public offerings. we are expecting more disruptor ipos and direct listings pitch book reporting today that overall vc investment spiked 93% in the first quarter with three quarters of those investment dollars going into late-stage deals. what that points to is more exit activity coming. we have already seen a record number of public offerings this year, 50 public offerings, ipos, in the first quarter that's more than double the range of 9 to 21 first quarter
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public listings we've seen over the past five years. now there are some other disruptors that are in the pipeline ui path is set to start trading on the nyse next week, robinhood filed for an ipo on the nasdaq and both 23 and me and wework are going to go public via spacs. back over to you, carl >> all right julia, don't go too far away cnbc.com with a scoop that you might have noticed gop donors and leaders discussing plans to take on big tech during a retreat at president trump's mar-a-lago resort the reporter behind that story brian schwartz joins us this morning. great to have you. the phrase taking on corporate america and big tech is sort of loaded how much of this really involves investing in a social platform that would cater to conservatives? >> thanks for having me. i would say that, you know, this is really starting to boil up at this point, these conversations, amongst republican business leaders and donors, about investing into such a company.
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there's a lot of talk in conservative circles about, you know, conservatives feeling they've been censored on twitter and facebook at mar-a-lago between business leaders there was a discussion about investing into a new media platform, a social media platform, that could be a counter to that. you know, i know we've seen similar things with this with parlor but the talk is growing and in the early stages but that's where we are at this point regarding this potential new platform that may come out soon >> brian, i'm so curious about this because, of course, there wasn't only parlor but gab known for being a home to more conservative viewpoints. isn't part of the problem you need a lot of people on these platforms and a platform like facebook just has pretty much everybody on it. are they talking about really founding one themselves or finding a small platform and investing in it? it seems like this is going to be a tough challenge for them to
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actually get something meaningfully off the ground. >> yeah. i think you're right you mentioned a few examples that are right on the money for what we're talking about here. i mean the bottom line is this, i mean they see that there's -- i think a market here for this kind of so-called cancel culture stuff that they are talking about and you know they see these platforms, new platforms they want to invest into social media based as a play where conservatives could voice their opinions where they think they can't do that on facebook and twitter. that's where they're coming from from the business perspective. going forward for them there's going to be hurdles to move ahead with this. i think they realize that. these businesses executives we mentioned a few of them in the story on cnbc.com, that's why this is such in the early stages at this point and trying to figure out what the next best move is. like you said is it going to be a brand new company or something smaller, something a smaller type social media company they invest into going forward that's
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still up for debate at this point. >> brian, we say conservatives, reminded of that line from "the princess bride" that word, it does not mean what you think it means. what we're hearing out of josh hawley, companies with a market cap of more than $100 million wouldn't be able to do m&a at all because they're woke i mean coinbase is about to bump up against that perhaps on its first day and there are companies like amd, snap, already, they wouldn't be able to grow by m&a, it seems like it could potentially outside of free market capitalism, crush some innovation in this country if you put that kind of shackle on companies i wonder, what economically is happening in the gop right now >> you know, wyou're 100% right on that. i don't think i thought i was going to say something where republicans are starting to push back on big business i never thought we would be talking about things like this
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look back into 2017, 2016, where donald trump and republicans worked, you know, hand in hand with many big businesses and ceos to push this tax cut that we're now debating right now with joe biden's infrastructure plan they worked well together for years and they were allies really, what seems to have pushed this over the edge on the republican side particularly the republican business side, is what's been happening in georgia and other states we have to keep that in mind, this conversation, where, you know, look, there's been different voting laws passed, corporations and executives have come out and pushed back on that, and i think republicans are kind of responding in kind as we can see right now. >> okay. brian schwartz, thank you. coinbase board member and partner katie haun joins
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"techcheck" after this break download, subscribe and enjoy the "techcheck" podcast wherever you get your podcasts. we're back in two. i really hope that this vaccine can get me one step closer to him. to a huge wedding. to give high fives to our patients. to hug my students. with every vaccine, cvs is working to bring you one step closer to a better tomorrow. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy, even a term policy, for an immediate cash payment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized that we needed a way to supplement our income. our friends sold their policy to help pay for their medical bills
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♪ i know i can ♪ >> as we wait for coinbase to go public in the direct listing take a look at the investors that may be getting ready to cash in among the names rapper nas whose investment could net him $100 million, kevin durant, nba star investing at a $1.6 million valuation, the company worth 65 x alexis ohanian betting on the success and speaking of early investors, ahead of the first trade cate rooney has a guest. hey, kate. >> hey, karl we're joined by katie haun who leads the firm's crypto funds and a coinbase board member. welcome, thank you so much for being here it's a big day for crypto. >> good morning, kate. thanks so much for having me.
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>> of course this is fascinating you were a doj prosecutor and were asked to essentially investigate and shut down bitcoin how did you go from that to sitting on the board of the largest u.s. bitcoin exchange? >> you know, i think he that's a real testament, kate, to this company and its commitment to responsible innovation and i think that's been one of the k keys to coinbase's success brian and fred, the co-founders, always took compliance, security and regulations very seriously, even from day one. it's proof even in silicon valley, i think it pays to think long term. those guys certainly were from the beginning not always to move fast and break things, especially when dealing with customer funds, and so, you know, not many founders in silicon valley would have invited a former federal prosecutor, who they didn't even know, to join their board of directors.
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but i think that's really a testament to the company that they would invite in people from the government there's an interesting story that is that when fred and brian first started the company, they had lawyers who were telling them they didn't need to get licenses in the jurisdictions where they did business and, you know, they got rid of that firm very quickly, so they've always taken regulation seriously since the very days that coinbase began. >> katie, good morning, it's deirdre. that's a fascinating story that you told, and interesting to look at it in the context of other sort of companies coming up, newcomers and their relationship with regulators i have a media question for you. i couldn't help but note that brian armstrong and yourself, and andresen partner are on cnbc today amid discussions of legacy media disruption and your own firm's push to driving their own media strategy
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i wonder, can our audience see these interviews as evidence of the value of mainstream media, real traditional interviews and questions? >> well, i think, look, today, deirdre it's a historic moment for coinbase and not just for coinbase, but for the entire crypto ecosystem you mentioned andreesen horowitz and one of the things we look for in finding teams are teams that are visionary and also that can execute. that's what you have in coinbase you have an absolute case study in entrepreneurship. it's one case study that i know i'll teach at the stanford business school, i teach a class on crypto and i will teach this case study some day because you had in brian armstrong and his founding team a vision and they stuck to that vision for nine years through ups and downs and various price cycles, some came and went, others pivoted, this team has been there from day one and they stayed the course i think that's why you see coinbase being where it is
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today. >> and katie, speaking of today and the direct listing, there are plenty of skeptics on the price tag in particular, two big things i've been hearing about this week, transaction fees and the revenue concentration. how should investors think about the risk that others could come in, compete with coinbase and use lower fees or essentially offer free trading >> yeah. look, i think it's just a positive reflection of how big the space is becoming and you are seeing crypto really mainstream at this point with all of the institutions and customers coming in. you know, one of the things i've seen about coinbase that's been true during the four years that i've been on the board is this is a team who can manage revenues and who can manage, you know, expenses and continue to grow through a variety of price cycles brian armstrong is very focused on the long-term vision of the company. coinbase added 20 in the last
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year and they are diversifying away from just transaction fee revenue. one of the exciting things i see at andreessen horowitz happening in the cryptos space, there are new industries that are being built, whether talking about dentralized finance or de be fi as we call it in crypto or the nft space, which has got an lot of coverage lately and we can speak about, coinbase is a portal to this entirely new crypto economy and i think we are still very much on the ground floor i think coinbase is very focused on the long-term vision of that crypto economy >> and that is why it's central to our coverage today. katie, we thank you. kate rooney, thanks to you as well hope you come back early and often. more great interviews coming today to help you understand the story behind coinbase and crypto catch the co-founder fred ehrsam on "closing bell" at 3:00 eastern time. >> as we head to break, checking in on shares of sap, raising
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projections for the year after first quarter earnings showed strong progress in cloud sales up about a percent a reality check on tiktok, new data on how many teens are users, might surprise you. "techcheck" is back in two some say this is my greatest challenge ever. but i've seen centuries of this. with a companion that powers a digital world, traded with a touch. the gold standard, so to speak ;)
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everyone wakes up every morning to a world that must keep turning. the world can't stop, so neither can we. because the things we make, help make the world go round. they make it cleaner, healthier, and more connected. it's what we build that keeps things moving forward. so with every turn, we'll keep building a world that works.
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time for a reality check an internal tiktok presentation has reportedly leaked online and it is full of information. the company presents to potential advertisers. the company says 47% of current users have bought something they have seen on the platform. that is out of a user base of more than 100 million in the u.s. and 730 million worldwide now, the u.s. ad business, up more than 500% this year, and how about this nearly 60% of tiktok's users are under the age of 24 with 17% between the ages of 13 and 17, giving the platform a significant base to build upon as it continues to scale, carl >> yeah. some viewers yesterday said maybe the most undercovered tech stories is the evolution of tiktok guys, keep your eyes on google today. webb bush adds it to the best ideas list with an upgrade for snap and downgrade for facebook. back in a moment
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so you're a small business, or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. coming up on "techcheck", a makeover at the top, along with crowd source as the internet cobars its two cents on inse right after this break
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tike for a time for a "techcheck" segment called persona. stitch fitch has announced a shift. founder and ceo katrina lake is handing over the reins as chief executive of the styling company she founded a decade ago when stitch fix hit the public marks in 2017, she was the youngest woman to take a company public stitch fix stock has performed well over the past 3 1/2 years, up more than 200%. it has been a volatile journey with large sell-offs following earnings and stock down 20% this year elizabeth spalding is taking the ceo title, by the way. that official transition going into effect on august 1st. >> yeah, spalding a long-time bayne executive. meantime, we asked, you delivered a few of our coinbase memes and commentary we pulled off the web. this one from dr. momo using the infamous performance at the super bowl coinbase. it is the most utilized platform for crypto purchases no doubt in my mind this thing sticks around for years to come and performs as one of the leaders in the fintech space
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according to his tweet, carl >> guys, we continue to watch indications on coinbase. we will be watching that closely. by the way, this great week on "techcheck", the inaugural week rolls on friday it is brian chesky of airbnb let's get to "the half." carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner front and center, the moment of truth for the banks, crypto and your money as earnings seasons gets under way and coinbase goes public our investment committee joining me, jenny harrington at gillman hill asset manager michael farr is here, president of farr, miller and washington jon thatnajarian and joe terrana the russell is having a really strong day, yields on the ten-year sitting at 163. jenny, so i got more new highs but

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