from officials anticipated over the next couple of days too. then sort of the larger macro uncertainties we have been tracking for so many weeks now >> yeah. something else we're tracking twitter shares. >> that's right. >> i'm sure they're going to get to that in "techcheck. so, we'll let them start right now. ♪ ♪ good monday morning. welcome to "techcheck" i'm carl quintanilla with deirdre bosa and jon fortt. today, funding secured twitter has a new largest shareholder than the head of amazon's worker union after that historic labor victory later on, we'll explain how the nasdaq whale got beached, dee. >> carl, we have to start with twitter, of course tesla's elon musk taking 9.2%

stake in the company according to a filing shares are spiking some 25% at the moment the new position comes shortly after musk criticized twitter for its free speech principles and said he was considering starting his own social media platform musk tweets of course have gotten him in trouble in the past after his now infamous funding secured tweet. musk was forced to abide by certain guardrails around his twitter use. his response back then, worth it it's worth remembering some relative size here on the day of twitter's ipo it closed near 45 dollars a share. nine years later even with today's huge pop, it is barely at $49 market cap still below $40 billion. guys, of course, a lot of questions this morning centering around what could or would elon musk do with this stake. there's not a lot he could do. there's skepticism on wall street it would be passive as it was registered gordon has ket points to the

silver-like musk connection. don't sleep on the idea that musk and silverlake might take twitter private. musk with the 9.2% silverlake is below 1% musk and silverlake were talking when he was considering bringing tesla private. i don't know what they could do but it's an idea and lots of them floating around this morning. >> yeah. well, in the spirit of elon musk, i'm going to say something controversial here and, carl, so far for me this story is in the category of interesting but not important. and that's because elon musk is a genius but all genius doesn't translate to all areas steve jobs was a genius. he was bad at social networks. mobile me, itunes ping, we have seen no indication that elon musk is good at this particular area does he really want to run twitter? does he want to be hauled in front of congress, jack dorsey and mark zuckerberg style to have to justify why it either published what it did or didn't publish what it didn't

i don't think so so, the market dynamics so far for twitter don't change in any way that i can see or appreciate here, but if, carl, elon musk articulates new grand strategy for twitter that changes the equation, then maybe it gets important. >> the question is what that's going to be, if he really is concerned, guys, about free speech, does he try to wean them off of an ad-supported model and then across the street today it's just note after note about what could the alternative be? could it be subscriptions? could it be a nonprofit? could it be some kind of vague business model based on web 3? they don't know. but certainly the voting structure, dee, and the way it's different from say meta means he could do a lot more. >> i have to ask jon, not good at twitter come on. elon musk is maybe one of the best people at twitter in the world, don't you think he has -- >> i'm not talking not good at using twitter. using twitter and running twitter and turning it into a growing profitable business two

different thing. growing profits at a significant rate, something they have not managed to do versus facebook and others but, point taken let's stay with the stock as dee mentioned earlier, up just about 26%. joining us now goldman sachs eric sheradan has a sale on the company. eric, good morning is this important yet, eric? does this change anything about elon musk's involvement, twitter's position in the ad market >> well, i don't think it changes anything with the business model today our sell rating on twitter is based on couple of things. number one, what we have seen over the years in terms of their user growth and their user dynamic. we still remain skeptical that they're going to hit their 2023 user target that they laid out at an analyst date last year and also, you know, most of digital advertising is moving down the consumer funnel, more towards direct response advertising at the bottom of the funnel twitter has struggled to capture

direct response ad budgets mostly because they don't have anywhere near the level of intent or identity and they're in the process of building their rebuilding their stock all of that still tbd for a stock that neither grows as fast as a snap nor is it as cheap as a meta or alphabet we still remain sell rated. >> twitter on yahoo trajectory from a 15 years ago. a lot of people interested in buying it and seeing the potential and might change hands a few times but not clear how it fundamentally overcomes the scale challenges that have accrued as it made bad choices how do you see it? >> i still think they need to get some of these things right if they do we will change our view as of right now, they tend to see spikes around big events a note we had last week we said at the end of march the war as well as what happened around the oscars, you could see lifts

around twitter from a user and engagement standpoint. but historically they have not translated into long duration momentum on the user and engagement side. it's a power user product for power users who love it, including folks in the media and financial services and in industry like mr. musk but at the end of the day, it does not translate into a sort of mainstream product in the same means as others do. on the direct response said, we finished our ad checks we put them out in the public domain we still have yet to see them have success with direct response advertising and you compare that to google surge trends which continue to be very good or even instagram where meta is very out of favor stock and we're really constructive there compared to the way the stock traded which you have to get some of those pieces right to create long-term business value in our view. >> eric, it's deirdre. your points are well taken, but musk often sees things that wall street does not. analysts were so wrong on tesla

for so many years. and i wonder, would you allow that there's value here that he sees that perhaps you're not understanding with your set of tools. i know you're skeptical that user growth can accelerate in the same way, but twitter has been innovating more in the last few years than it has before >> well, we'll watch for that innovation and if it comes out i could change my view i don't claim to know anything at all about the automotive sector, so i leave it to mr. musk and tesla on that front when it comes to digital advertising businesses, it tends to either be user growth, time spent, innovation around the ad side, we'll watch for that if it happens, we could get more constructive but we're not seeing signs of it just yet. >> the way you describe twitter, eric, is exactly right almost hyper nearby for people who need high frequency information. feels like a subscription model. have you done work on what that would look like? and could they make that work?

>> yeah. over time the subscription model is something that could be -- you tend to take a subscription model, though, and take mainstream off the equation. that would probably make it more of a power user product. it certainly could be something that produces higher margins than the ad business, but we don't know if they would beabl to replicate the same scale of revenue dollars. >> so eric, what's most important for twitter and its competitors right now? we have seen a lot of these stocks come down from their pandemic peaks you know, what are the signals that you're looking for whether it has to do with ad targeting or other things to determine whether the prospects are shifting >> yeah. there's a lot of interesting nuance going on in the advertising space. you've got a tail wind in a number of cyclical industries hurt by the pandemic, travel, local, media, those are all in recovery mode.

you had an enormous digitalization of the economy result of the pandemic that's creating another tail wind broadly for digital advertising. but, as you pointed out, we're still absorbing some of the privacy head winds that apple created last year. those will become easier until the back part of this year and the industry is facing what will be their toughest revenue comps in q2. and then layered in on top of all of that are investor fears about a recession, which we wrote in a note last week that we have yet to pick up signs of a recession in the broader advertising market just yet. but that doesn't mean it isn't out there and might not change in a month so, most investors i talk to are in wait and see mode on digital advertising and hopeful that the back part of the year could be more optimistic than the front part of the year we typically try to be a little contrarian and say, look, we weigh in and buy shares like meta and snap right now because we think a lot of those fears are in those stocks. >> watching twitter but eric

sheradan not buying it, literally. eric, thank you. let's stay with twitter and what elon musk might be doing here the verge editor and chief, host of decoder podcast joins us who wrote this morning, elon about to learn the content moderation at scale is a harder problem than launching rockets and landing down again that sort of says a lot. >> yeah. i mean, content moderation at scale might be the most challenge in the entire tech industry you're going to quickly discover that they're there for a reason and that having twitter be a service that you want to grow and grow revenue on requires bringing on more users and what those users want is a safe place to interact with each other, not to be overdone by spam or nazis. these are problems twitter addressed for years. if you think you can solve them by turning the dial back, you're in for a rude awakening. >> ilay, we're talking like there's fundamentals involved.

fine one calls this a ryan cohen move on steroids and he lit a fire under gamestop as elon musk lighting a fire under twitter? do the fundamentals matter could this turn into a token where it has this meme culture around it, retail investment interest that keeps at these levels and doesn't need anything else >> yeah. ryan cohen move was that he thought gamestop was a good business that they could reinvent and the memers took over and now gamestop is divorced from its fundamentals that's what i understand there i think twitter is a good business it's not undergoing massive disruption like gamestop was undergoing it's a fixture in media and politics and all these other places it just needs to find ways to make more revenue and attract more users it is by far the smallest social network by orders of magnitude in some cases. i think for -- to say they're going to meme stock it, you still got to look at what twitter is and what its business is and how it's going to grow

its user base and the solution to growing the user base is actually content moderation. it is not letting it be a free for all because that will turn more people away this is pretty well known in the content moderation industry, which i think most tech companies like to conveniently forget exists. >> so, what do you think this is then, nilay? certainly has it talking about elon musk. he's the best at getting us talking about him without having a pr department. but in a sense, the elon musks of the world are twitter's problem, right not necessarily their solution >> i don't know that twitter thinks of their most high profile users as a problem i think that is actually a source of tension within a lot of social media companies. the high profile users behave badly, get treated in special ways that other users don't get treated. people notice the hypocrisy that social media companies get in trouble. this is a well known pattern elon is just playing into that pattern with more money than anyone else so he can buy 10% of

twitter. i do think what you're going to see is elon is really committed to bitcoin he's really committed to decentralization twitter is a company under new ceo is really committed to decentralization jack dorsey is out there tweeting i am the one who led to centralization of web 2. that was a mistake i want to undo my mistake. you could see these three characters come together and actually try to build a more decentralized version of twitter that potentially and fwirt has an initiative called blue sky that would do this, potentially allows you to get your own twitter client that allows you to choose your own content moderation standards which would solve an enormous amount of problems can you get from here to there that's pretty hard but when you have a shareholder who owns 10% of the company is committed to that and ceo who is committed to a vision like that, you're on certainly better footing than saying okay this guy wants us to turn down our moderation standards. >> right yeah people already making the connection between musk and

dorsy and we'll see how simpatico they are nilay, great discussion to start the hour appreciate it. >> thanks. the head of amazon's labor union is on the other side of this break "techcheck" is just getting started.

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to unionize in a first for amazon warehouse in the u.s. the vote is a defeat for the nation's second largest private employer known for aggressively opposing unionization efforts. joining us now is man behind the movement, amazon labor union president chris smalls chris, what a journey it has been for you let's go back to when you worked at the staten island warehouse what did you see that made you and others realize that this was needed and a worthy objective? >> yeah. well, my journey started two years ago when i led a walkout over covid-19 after amazon failed to protect us we had no ppe, no facial masks, no cleaning supplies, no real guidance, no social distancing and i tried to go through the proper channels, but the company neglected to hear us out and ultimately they just wanted to stop me from organizing by quarantining just me and nobody

else so i led that walk out which terminated me two hours later. from that moment, you know, i traveled the country advocating for workers rights i didn't give up especially after jeff bezos himself signed off on a campaign calling me not smart or articulate to make me the face of the unionizing efforts. >> yeah. for our audience that may not know, you were described in a leaked memo as you mentioned as not smart or articulated you were fired from amazon you were arrested once how did that play into sort of growing momentum for the unionization driving moment. were you surprised winning this vote in alabama another warehouse last year that vote went overwhelming in amazon's favor? >> yeah. you know, for me, everybody know i always have this calm, cool, collected type of attitude so for me, i wasn't surprised because i know what we sacrificed i know we dedicated to this campaign i know what i sacrificed

personally i know the work that we put in and you know, we know our co-workers we organized our co-workers. this is the reason why we decided to have this independent-worker led union because we know the ins and outs of the company even better than the company knows their own workers. so, i just felt the whole entire time no doubt in my mind that we were going to be victorious. and we proved that on april 1st. >> chris, first of all, welcome once again this started as a highly contentious relationship between you and amazon to no small degree because people there belittled you, alienated you, thought they wocould win by makn you the face of the union push but you won this round. >> yeah. >> so my question is on your strategy from here amazon has a new ceo, right, since you started this you are now a national figure in this new labor movement.

what's your approach from here to what degree do you think you can cooperate more with amazon leadership or to what degree do you think that's wise? >> well, they don't have no choice you know, the revolution is here that's what we just witnessed on friday we're going to organize buildings all across the nation. in the last 72 hours, we've been contacted from workers all over the world. so, they want to unionize. we're going to absolutely help them and get it done here in new york first we have another election coming up in three weeks. so we're right back at the campaign, on the campaign trail. and once we're finished here in new york, we're going to spread just like the starbucks movement is spreading across the nation. >> chris, you clearly understand a big part of the amazon work force, but for those who voted against unionization, what were their reasons, do you think, and what do you have to say to change their minds >> well, you know, i don't think we have to say anything too

much they were misinformed. amazon spent millions of dollars putting them into captive audiences for the last few months every 20 minutes every single day so, imagine being put into a classroom being drilled anti-union propaganda for months of course some people are going to fall victim to that i think that's what we saw you know a lot of people just really didn't know, they were undecided. the company is telling you to vote no. this is their main source of income so of course they went with that but i think we showed them better and we talk about it, we deliver a contract, we improve the quality of life. i think they'll all come around and be on board. >> chris, as you say, this fight is far from over we're already getting a glimpse of how amazon is going to respond. they put out a statement accusing the nlrb of inappropriate and undue influence. the other side of what you are arguing. what is next your vote yes establish the union, but amazon can refuse to negotiate. it could actually take years

>> right well, you know, i can tell you now, everybody knows what type of fighter i am. i promise you, you know, we're not going to be in this fight for years. we want to make sure we deliver a contract as soon as possible and you know, the way we organize from within, the way we organized the workers the way we organized even the truck drivers, they're on board. and whatever it takes, we're going to do that to get this contract delivered in rapid time. >> right now, chris, i want to go back to my question about strategy because i think it really is an important issue for you in particular because of the level at which you have succeeded and be effective there's going to be a lot of pressure for you to speak at other places, to try to stand up unions in other places where amazon and others are concerned. but then at the same time, you're talking about delivering a contract there in staten island so to what degree are you going to personally engage with amazon

on that? and to what degree do you change into more of a diplomatic mode now as they need to talk to you? >> well, you know, that's what we have lawyers for. you know, so we're going to add more to our calvary and bring in more legal representation. and you know, i just really have to oversee it. just make sure that this is what the workers want that's my job as the interim president. whatever the workers want, we make sure we put it in writing and give it to the lawyers the lawyers deliver what we want and that's exactly how it should be the workers should be the ones making the contract. and that's what we're doing right now currently. we already dropped off two letters to the general manager letting them know our demands and letting them know how it's going to go from here on out they have to come to the table eventually if they don't, we will take further action i have no doubt in my mind that we will receive all the help and support that we need to deliver a contract now that the world is

paying attention. >> yeah. you even had the president speaking out after the vote. chris, thank you so much for being with us. we'll certainly be following your journey very closely. >> absolutely. thank you for having me. let's stay with amazon and the impact on the company's bottom line. our next guest calls amazon one of his favorite stocks in e-commerce here to discuss, scott divet scott, welcome it seems like amazon's costs probably not going down any time soon given what's happening in staten island, which is one of their larger warehouses and at least the increased possibility that the movement spreads. so what's amazon's best move here in terms of cooperating or not in this union push and what's the impact on investors? >> thanks for having me this morning. i think the -- you're seeing what amazon's best effort is with the push back that they're already doing and what happened in alabama proceeding this you know, many large companies

go through these type of challenges of walmart and history and never did end up with organized labor u.p.s. has gone in the other direction. i think it's the cost of doing business one way or the other. what's interesting is amazon today nationwide has a minimum wage that's $15. i think there was an amazon spokesperson quoted over the weekend saying that in staten island it's 17 to 23 they also have health benefits and tuition reimbursement. so, you know, where this ends and how long this takes really nobody knows i don't think it's a fore gone conclusion that may have a fully unionized labor force at amazon based on this information from last week. >> okay. so, based on is that, you're thinking that amazon doesn't have to dramatically change its approach to the labor force, it sounds like you're saying? and also, do you think that this labor movement, which is happening beyond just amazon is

going to raise the cost of its competitors as well? >> i think there may be some concessions amazon makes over time i think that relative to peers, for similar jobs, that the compensation that's offered by amazon is quite comparable so you know, the beauty of a private company and its employees is you always have the option to work elsewhere as well >> scott, some of your peers on the street taking a crack at each 1% of front line labor force that unionizes and what that would do to annual operating expense. one estimate is about 150 million in annual op-x does that make sense to you? >> it does amazon has 1.6 million employees globally roughly 110 or so fulfillment centers in the u.s so one fulfillment center not knowing the labor base in each one would be 1% or less of those

that are involved in actually shipping product for amazon which is a portion of the total labor base so that estimate, you know, ballpark seems reasonable. i think in 2021, in terms of total operating expenses to run the business, amazon was more than $400 billion. >> scott, it's deirdre broaden this out to the wider e-commerce space, where are you seeing opportunity, whether that be in shop which is still well off its highs or ebay which has been an underperformer >> so, you have a big pull forward when we were all locked in our houses for a year or so with e-commerce because there were no alternatives to shop pre-pandemic e-commerce was gaining 150 basis points by the end of 2020, that normalized to something like 350 and then there were no share gains in 2021. so when you look at it from an aggregate standpoint, it seems like you had about a year's worth of business pulled forward

and then back on to the market share gains that were being had before companies like amazon, ebay even alphabet tied to e-commerce had a similar kind of pull forward look at their p & l today from a forecasting standpoint relive to to 2019 it's about a year ahead. if you look at some of these smaller companies, some that have been decimated in this recent correction, the pull forward has been more significant. companies like carvana and etsy, shopify, they've had two to three years of boost business pulled forward now, we're giving a little of that back now is very difficult to model coming out of the pandemic, and i think there still be a squishiness in coming quart rs nonetheless, they pulled forward meaningful period of time and ultimately will march ahead at similar market share gains they had predating the pandemic once we get back to normalization. >> right and the pull forward and the valuation reset, do the two match for the most part in aggregate in your universe >> they do

there's not a commonality to the theme in the report. we do go through it one by one i would say overall that valuations are still a little bit higher than they were before the pandemic but, when you adjust for the increase in the size of the company, argue the stocks are cheaper today than they were in february, 2020 >> scott, what about the possibility that the argument i'll make that either amazon's costs go up significantly here or their velocity slows down, right? if they've got to abide by certain rules, make concessions to workers about breaks, about length of time worked, any of those things, or if the union's presence kind of slows down amazon's ability to hire and on board, are you factoring that in or is that not a concern >> amazon's is dealing with higher oil prices and covid costs related to separating people in the fulfillment center there's a ton of costs gone into

a business like amazon due to the pandemic and because of the inflation coming out this labor situation is one more i don't mean to discount it too much, but it will work itself out. if costs go up, they go up consumers will end up paying more for the higher cost of the labor force. if they don't, then they don't it's not like this is new in history. you can look at walmart. this has happened many, many times in history and companies that have won and lost i gave two examples walmart and u.p.s., stock performance has been just fine. >> all right walmart managed to avoid union efforts for a long time. scott divett, from stifel, thank you. >> thank you half past the hour stocks close to session highs here let's get a news update with morgan brennan. >> here is your news update at this hour. starbucks shares sinking more than 5%. the company says it is pausing stock buy back to invest more in employees and stores

the announcement coming as long-time former ceo howard schultz returns to lead the company on an interim basis. germany's finance minister says more bans are needed on russia no short-term alternatives and europe would inflict more damage on itself than on russia energy stocks are pulling back today even as crude oil jumps more than 3%. back above $100 a barrel exxon is among the names in the red. they could top a seven-year high and operating profits could go above $9 billion and jp morgan chase ceo jamie dimon out with annual letter to shareholders saying american consumers are generally an excellent financial shape, however, he also warns americans should be ready for the possibility of an extended war in ukraine and unforeseen consequences of that conflict. back over to you, carl >> morgan, thanks. after the break, what did

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♪ welcome back that twitter stake isn't the only elon musk-related news today. tesla delivered a record number of vehicles in q1. phil lebeau has details. phil >> jon, it was not a whole lot more than what we saw from tesla in the fourth quarter, but it was a record quarter for deliveries 310,000 vehicles, just over that the consensus was for 317, though you did see some say the consensus was 312, 313, whatever it was just shy of consensus 95% being models 3 and y as has been the case in recent quarters but china in this last quarter it did impact production elon musk tweeted about that on saturday after the numbers were released elon musk tweeting out this was an exceptionally difficult quarter due to supply chain

interruptions and china's zero covid policy outstanding work by tesla team and key suppliers saved the day. remember, they lost four days of production at the shanghai plant. by the way, they did not reach their production today what's curious is whether or not analysts now will up their year-end projections for total deliveries it currently stands at about 1.45 million vehicles easily about 50% increase compared to 936 last year. now, we won't get any guidance from tesla or will we get guidance from tesla when it results q1 results sometimes after q1 they said look this is what we're expecting for this year though i suspect they will still with what they told us in recent quarters, annual increase of 50% is what you should be expecting from us, give or take some years might be a little below 50, some a little above 50. we will get those numbers by the way on the 20th. little over two weeks from now

the big news this week will be the gig factory in texas beginning deliveries, deirdre. >> right phil, the delivery numbers remarkable when you put it beside the same numbers at other automakers how is tesla able to achieve such outperformance? >> well, look, they've got a great handle on the supply chain. and particularly when it comes to chips now, we have seen a number of automakers, look, ford just came out today. they were down, what, about 23, 24% for the quarter in terms of deliveries impacted by the chip shortage we have heard this from other automakers as well remember, one reason why tesla has been able to with stand this better than other automakers, it has been impacted but has with stood it better than other automakers is because they're writing the software to adapt to the chips that they have so, they've been able to do that much better than other automakers they are impacted but not to the same degree. >> pretty fascinating there at 11:30 now, phil, for watching

tesla for whole host of reasons. thank you, phil lebeau. still to come this morning, the nasdaq whale is beached. talking masasan's next move ayitusthe brea k. st wh

♪ want to bring you the latest on softbank. a source familiar tells me its trading unit the one behind the infamous nasdaq whale trades in 2020 is liquidating after racking up 6 to $7 billion in

losses the wind down comes as rising rates, china's regulatory crackdown, the war in ukraine hit softbank public and private holdings shares down 40% over the last 12 months we have seen green chutes in recent weeks with alibaba rebounding some of the regulatory overhang in china seeming to dissipate remember softbank's trading unit that launched back in august of 2020 took large positions in public companies. venture arm the vision fund tried to recover from missteps and losses remember wework. they shocked the mark. it was eventually dubbed the nasdaq whale because of the size of the derivative bets they help squeeze the index higher at the close of that year, it held $17 billion but one year later it collapsed to just over $1 billion it was hit not just by turbulence in u.s. tech markets. it's remaining positions include

the uk retailer thg down 85% since softbank acquired shares last may that is considered to be one of london stock markets biggest stock market fiasco. he was through the dot com boom and the vision fund eras the unicorns going in and out of that trough, jon one chapter closes for ma is a shi son. >> it's a kosh nar tale. before we talked about cathy wood as the poster child for the growth religion, carl, it was masayoshi son. this is a big down those folks religious about meme stocks or crypto or arc, right

look at masayoshi son. be careful out there. >> cathy wood herself with a series of tweets talking about the slow down, weak consumer confidence, the fed playing with fire in her words, dee although a rich valuation on arm might make up for some of that. >> masayoshi son has shown you only need one. remember the dot com bust. >> everyone else who doesn't have that money for multiple -- >> good point. >> for multiple lives in the game be careful out there. so does the a in a & d stand for acquisition? why that stock is getting a nice bump this morning. next "techcheck" will be back in a moment

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let's get a gut check on amd announcing plans for $1.9 billion acquisition of a distributed computing provider for cloud and interbase platforms. adding high performance processer stack to their portfolio. shares of both chip makers are higher today to start the day, jon. >> yeah. this makes me think of a couple of companies, one public, one private. first the public one, that is marvell plays in the data center arena. they're arguably in terms of the share of their revenue one of the biggest semiconductor

players in that space. you know, so they're in both the autonomous driving space and in data center. then renee james' ampier computing a startup that oracle has a big stake in former intel president and built this company specifically, dee, to address data center and cloud chips. the space is heating up. >> meanwhile, after the break, the founder of twitch breaks down a disrupted gaming space. microsoft and act vision big spend from netflix and of course how crypto factors into it all "techcheck" is back in two fortitude gold producing high grade low cost gold in nevada usa. a gold investment delivering monthly cash, dividends and

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big bets in the gaming space. we continue to follow the microsoft acti vision deal microsoft activision deal. joining us now, cofounder of nft gaming marketplace also cofounder of twitch, which amazon bought for a billion dollars in 2014. justin, it's great to have you with us this morning your next act is nfts and you think that introducing block chain-based assets will be an even bigger change for gaming than the streaming was, which you pioneered. tell the audience what that looks like >> thank you so we just launched frakt el, an nft marketplace.

i think block chain assets are a new business model for gaming, which will be even bigger than the free to play model so this is when games decide to put their virtual skins and items inside games on a blockchain and give true ownership to players to trade them, buy them, and sell them. >> i know that in your twitter thread explaining this, you noted that fortnight made $9 billion from selling skin. at the same time, nfts have had a rough few months activity has fallen off. there's been fraud, trade washing. there's also so many different platforms and chains you're betting on solana >> we're really focused on gaming assets. nfts are just a way to prove ownership of something in the digital world and people are using it for all sort of different things we're focused on gaming.

similar to twitch where we said gaming, streaming, is all we're doing. here, we're just focused on building a platform where people can buy and trade nfts only. >> you had a really great kind of twitter essay less than a year ago about going from huge success with twitch to failure with atrium and perhaps not considering the right things when it came to you know, the other ventures so maybe some of that is instructive when we're thinking about nfts, blockchain, the metaverse as it applies to gaming what is actually in demand here and how fast should the industry go in pursuing it based on what you've seen work and not work? >> absolutely. so you know, i've had some big wins and some really big losses. what's important when you're building a new pucroduct, it's important to make it accessible to normal people so they can understand and use your product.

i think crypto has been a very inaccessible part of the technology space for a long time and what's really important with gaming is to create that usability so normal people can understand what they're doing and buying especially with nfts so i think that's our bet is really focusing on that user experience and i think it's going to be important if we're going to expand the market of games and nfts >> peei'm curious to know, you k the point about live events and m music and tickets. the nfl is clearly interested in the space who walked in the door in ways that was impossible when it was just paper tickets. characterize the growth of that vertical versus games itself >> i think tickets is another obvious and interesting example. with tickets, there's so much data when there's a digital record of everything and you can see all the transactions and you

can trace it back to the initial sale it's like a data gold mine that event organizers are going to want to have access to then by making this a digital collectible that extends beyond the actual event, you can imagine these are things that people might value beyond like as a souvenir or it could provide access to other events or purchasing merch afterwards tickets lets you put it on a blockchain and make it an ntf. >> justin, sort of a final broad question for you of course, you sold twitch to amazon and this year, we have seen a ton of consolidation in the big players in gaming. i wonder, do you think this is a good thing for the industry, for developers, for users? especially as many in the states talk about a decentralized future >> i think you're seeing, like the maturity in the free to play business model which started off 15 years ago, now is a big,

predominant business model gaming and i think what's really interesting about blockchain is that you're seeing a new economic enjgine for a new set o games and i think it's going to encourage a new set of startups because it's risky and that will create you know, a new explosion of different type of games and startups that's the future i'm looking forward to >> certainly interesting to watch. thank you so much for joining us hope to talk to you again soon >> thank you as we go to break, we want to get a check on shares of roku higher after announcing its reached an extension with amazon still down 40% for the year. tech check iba iju a ments ckn st

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doing better than the s&p and the dow that's just about flat >> indeed, jon meantime, one more thing and then another and another you think you're busy? with elon musk buying that stake in twitter, we took a look back at a few of his recent tweets, including challenging putin to

hand to hand combat. other items, solving world hunger, putting people on mars before 2030. he still has the boring company building tunnels in vegas and he's got his company working on chip implants and brains and neuro technology and half a dozen kids. >> yes thank you, carl. that is one busy man someone i interviewed called tesla a call option on one of the greatest inventors alive that's one way to see it i mean, we just listed off all of these huge ambitions. >> yeah, but unlike a lot of us, fortunately for elon, he doesn't have to meet his deadline. the consequences of not meeting the deadline, not so huge for elon but carl, how about that justin -- i think he might have the lowest voice in gaming >> we actually had some viewers

write in and say that's what we used to call a radio voice guys, jon mentioned session highs here for stocks. could be a few more points on the s&p and you're knocking on the door of 4600, which has been a level we circulated around fomc minutes on wednesday. let's get to half and the judge. welcome. one market watcher says the end of the bear market rally is here is he right? if so, what does that mean for the great bounceback in stocks joining me for the day, bryn, liaison liz, joe we still have lot of questions in front of us, but dow's good for 40 there's the nasdaq, good for 1.5% ten-year note yield at 240 that's the call from mike who says the bear market r