this week does elon musk's behavior change how people think about behavior? the ceo of christmas mac hardman on this year's supply of christmas trees. that's this week on "press here." ♪ ♪ good morning, everyone. even people that know nothing about crypto currency now it's run into some trouble. they heard people like me say on television the price of bitcoin is down something like 7 0% from

the all-time high and there is a young man out there named sam bankman freed and ftx and if they're not sure what that is about, they know there is billions of dollars gone. there is a daily show about bitcoin on youtube, nico, i'd love to chat and debate with you about bitcoin. let's start with qualifications. why do people listen to you when it comes to crypto? >> we've been doing a daily show for two years. we're one of the most popular bitcoin youtube daily shows on youtube and twitter. i've been in the industry for six years now and i work for a bitcoin company called swan bitcoin and yeah, we've been pushing this message for a long time but i am -- i get a little worried when people say what qualifications do you have? you know, i really -- i'm a big believer on what value i bring to the table rather than credentials. >> fair enough. now, when we talk about bitcoin,

know that i have been kind of a crypto currency in general skeptic for quite sometime but then again, i've been wrong about all kinds of things over my many years of trying to figure out the world. but, lately the evidence seems to be on my side. you have ftx a firm called blockfi out of money and sequoa is out of money and made a mistake. the evidence of skepticism is on my side. are you seeing positive things the way i'm seeing negative things? >> yeah, so, you know, unfortunately history is repeating itself. the reality is there is bitcoin and crypto, right? and you should be skeptical of crypto, right? crypto is a continuation of the legacy system, right? unfortunately -- >> just for the viewer that

doesn't understand, crypto currency is an over arching term. bitcoin is a crypto currency but not all crypto currency is bitcoin. >> correct, yes. you have to define what the difference is between the two, right? you know, because i could say anything i want but what is really the fundamental difference? crypto currencies are inherently centralized and controlled by a group of individuals. bitcoin is not controlled by anybody. there is a set of rules, protocol is what it is. the issue rate is what it is and it cannot be changed, right? because it's like that, it protects the individual user of bitcoin and if you compare that with whether it's crypto or whether how our current financial system works today, there is a bureaucratic elite, there is an elite group of people that get to change the rules to benefit themselves, you know? so that's what bitcoin is about. now, to go back to your original question, right, if you look at the ftx blowup, if you look at

the celsius blowup, if you look at all the exchange blowups, if you've been chasing yields and sending bitcoin to get a 6% yield, right and in the process of doing that, you're giving up custody of your bitcoin, of course, it's going to affect you. if you've been listening to the true bitcoiners, the only thing we advocate for is to earn bitcoin, mine bitcoin, buy bitcoin and take that bitcoin into self-custody. if you take that bitcoin into self-custody, none of these blowups would have affected you. >> right. i wondered about this. you read about these exchanges and these -- i mean, they functionally are like banks where you park bitcoin. bitcoin to those who are not aware is not a coin, it's just a set of numbers. it a very long string of numbers. i could put them on a usb drive

and put them in my safe, my literal steel safe in my house and write them down in a notebook if i had the patience. i don't have to store bitcoin on these places that seem to explode and disappear overnight. >> absolutely. that's what makes it so radically different. we've always had to outsource this storage of our wealth to a third party and what makes bitcoin so unique and so different is you hit the nail on the head, scott, right? you can write down a 12-word phrase and in those 12 words, theoretically you can still millions, billions and trillions of dollars by writing it down and that fundamentally changes everything and it also empowers individuals, right? the likes of which i've never seen before. if i live in a total country or a country with high inflation, for the first time i could choose to opt out of the financial system entirely and now, for the first time, i get

to choose -- i get to keep all my work, right? it not being stolen from me either via inflation or its government. right? that's what makes this so unique and that in itself, the ability for a human being to store their wealth by either memorizing the 12 word c phrase or writing it down will change the world completely. >> the time i have, i appreciate. hear more from nico at bitcoin he's the host there on youtube and also the thanks f for beingng withh us h this mororning, nicoco. we'll l be right b back.

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♪ ♪ welcome back to "press here." before the break i was talking to a sort of bitcoin evangelist. i'm not convinced and likely will never be no matter what tries to convince me. the block chain has potential. crypto currency, i'll pass. turns out a lot of americans agree with me on that point in a paper titled what consumers think about the future of bitcoin, the decision the intelligence company morning consult predicts fewer bitcoin crippling the possibility that crypto will go main stream in the near term. jordan is an analyst. i suspect ftx has a lot to do

with this. people see other people putting money in what they see is a bank of some sort but now a defunct bank and think that's not for me. >> ftx had a significant impact in the crypto market and bitcoin specifically. since the revelations came out that there was the management at ftx and bitcoin is down 20% but thisis only one thing in a string of happenings with crypto and bitcoin. at the peak according to our data, if you consider bitcoin a brand, favorability peaked around december 2021 last year and since then, it been on the decline. we see favorability, these types of metrics mirror what is happening in the market. bitcoin goes down and people

have a less positive impression and don't want to buy into it as much and the collapse of ftx is not helping in any way. >> your study asks people how much they thought bitcoin might be worth six months from now. i think surprisingly people who owned bitcoin expected it to go up or said they expected it to go up and those who don't own bitcoin didn't think it was going to go up. >> yeah, you know, there is definitely a certain element where if you're bought into something and want to be more confident about it obviously but among people that tend to be more engaged with crypto currency, i'm thinking of younger consumers, gezz adults, we're hitting levels we haven't seen in a couple years now. those peaks were december of last year and now we're seeing purchase favorability towards bitcoin among genz adults and millennials hit july 2020 levels in a way we're seeing the erasing of years of work that built up bitcoin as a brand and

confidence in crypto currency and bitcoin specifically erode right now and the future of crypto currency is looking a little bit shaky from that standpoint and we can also think about the regulatory environment that might be facing us, too. >> it seems like everybody that you surveyed agrees on regulation. >> yes. in large part, most people agree that crypto currency needs to be regulated more. and it's something that we've heard from janet yellen for example saying there is enough regulation in the crypto kerr -- currency market and saying bitcoin is on its way to being relevant. thinking how the midterms turned out, there is a strong possibility that regulation is -- could happen in near term. people are talking about it for the technology industry more broadly and i wouldn't be surprised if we're going to see more regulatory events, action

happen in the next year or two when it comes to crypto currency. >> it's interesting to think of bitcoin as a brand. it's a new way for me to think. you track brands very carefully, sticking to the brand news, also very much in the news is elon musk and your firm found that his behavior over at twitter has some correlation with what people think of teslas. >> yes. so elon musk has certainly been in the news dominated tech news at least if not for a few years, definitely recently in the past couple months and it's been fascinating to look at through the lens of reputation because we've been tracking even elon musk brand for a couple years now and far from being, you know, obscure about three quarters of americans who knew elon musk was 18 months ago and now he's become a household name. 94% of americans according to the most recent survey recognize

who elon musk is and comes with a degree of notoriety in a sense. he's not for everyone. he's a controversial figure that speaks his mind and the problem with that is the polarization of the brands he's associated with. we're seeing it with twitter. twitter is always a political brand to a certain degree and right now, his takeover to formalize on october 27th is the most significant brand event for twitter among democrats and not in a good way. basically, flipped republican have a more positive impression of twitter than democrats that we haven't seen yet. >> and that's flowing over to tesla, as well. >> it flowing over to other brands like tesla. tesla is on its way to becoming a partisan brand. republican haves a much more favorable impression of tesla now than they did in the past. it used to be a relatively non-partisan, democrats, republicans, similar impressions towards the brand and now impressions towards tesla plummeted among democrats and what is interesting is to the

public company. it doesn't have everything to do with markets. we haven't seen this impact other auto brands for example. ist elon musk and his brand's story. >> lastly, talk to me about methodology. you survey people, what, every day? >> every single day. we're tracking several thousand brands. every brand gets hundreds of interviews every day and that's how we're able to cut it if you consider yourself democrat, republican, genz. >> fascinating. i appreciate you sharing data and trends. jordrdan is ant analyst f for g consult.t. thanks f for being w with us. (vo) it's a a fact! twowo out of the amamericans whwho qualifyy for memedicare do o not receivel ththe benefitsts they deseserve.

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♪ ♪ finally this morning, it's become a bit of a december tradition for me to check in with mack hardman at the san francisco bay area manufacturer of artificial christmas trees, sort of the lexus of artificial christmas trees. i know it's your busiest time of the year, mack. appreciate you making time for us. we talked over the years about supply chain. let's do it again. is the supply chain back to normal after all of that? >> always great to see you, scott. we're much closer to normal than we've been since covid came out so what is happening for all the

products shipping around on the ocean, that is pretty much back to normal. there is still issues with a potential strike here on the west coast so that hasn't happened and that's not likely to happen, however, a lot of shippers said we don't want to take the risk so sent more things to the east coast that backed the east coast up, however, that's mostly cleared up. we're down to the rail strike which has been in the news this week which the president is working hard to avert but pretty much things are back to normal and prices have also come back to normal so i think that's part of why we're seeing inflation easing up and maybe the fed backing off a bit is because the ocean freight crisis has come way down, almost, you know, by tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. >> now, is there one particular thing that you still have trouble getting, one particular piece or generally speaking you're not quite there yet? >> right now on the holiday decor side everything is in good

shape. all the decorations for christmas, christmas trees, everything is in good shape. what is interesting is we missed the height of inflation. as an industry, we ordered things right now for next christmas so literally after this, i'm going to be finalizing the 2023 order for christmas trees believe it or not and so when we order christmas trees for last year, the prices had not gone up and spiked as much and then the shipping prices also came down and so as an industry, we haven't experienced as much inflation as some other industries have because our lead times are so long and we kind of missed that peak. so we're getting everything in. we had products doing really well this year because we couldn't get them last year and they have finally come in. a shell that comes from the philippines, we make beautiful kind of tree toppers and other products with this kind of shell. we didn't have that last year and now we do because it's

coming back in stock. >> because what you ordered last year is selling this year and ordered when prices are lower and selling when prices are higher, there would be an enormous temptation to bring your prices up to competitive levels, right? maybe you have. i mean, i don't expect the ceo to say yeah, we're trying to soak the consumer this year but you have a real opportunity to make a lot of money by just raising prices. >> well, prices are up a little bit but i probably miscommunicated in that costs are still up. they're just not up as much as they could have been if we were a retailer that ordered things six months ago. so if you're buying something in the store that the retailer ordered six months ago. those prices up more. we paid more for shipping than we did historically but it's a little better than the shipping prices were last year. right now if we place an order today and ship it today, it would be a lower price and we'd be able to lower the prices but

the goods came in at higher praises than we purchased them and higher ocean freight cost as well, so we're not there yet and i can say unfortunately for us as a business, we're makingless money per item sold today than we would have in the past. and we hope in the future that recovers but we can't past it along to the consumer because the prices go too high. >> when we talked during the pandemic, there was a shortage of everything including artificial christmas trees. have you been able to match the consumer demand properly? there are some big box retailers like target that said oops, we have too much stuff now. >> yeah, you know what is really interesting in the artificial christmas tree industry specifically is with the exception of balsam hill, every other seller sells a lot of other things. so if you think of lowes and home depot and target and walmart, they sell so many other products. they said making independent good decisions, they said let's

order fewer trees this year, they came in late and had to mark them down in january. so let's order 10, 15% fewer christmas trees. this means this year everybody ended up ordering fewer and there is not as many in the market. at the same time because prices are higher, demand is a little softer. so i think there is enough of it. it's looking right now like there is enough availability for the rest of the season. i don't know what will be left for clearance. it is really fascinating how these different factors are at play and we'll, you know, there's great availability this year versus any time in the last several years. so it's really returned i'd say more to normal. the other thing, scott, we're seeing is consumers are not purchasing as early this year. it really spiked over the last bit and that's kind of the pattern that we would see in 2017, 2018, 2019 in the covid

years people bought earlier. i think originally in covid because people were at home getting ready for christmas sooner and last year because of the shortage, everybody is like my gosh we better buy it before we can't. this year it's not an issue. we're seeing much later demand this year than we have in the last several seasons. >> i know one year you were in a major department store. is that partnership continuing and what has that turned out? foot traffic in stores, i would imagine, is trending down if you look over the broad number of years. >> so we have a partnership with nordstrom and so in several nordstroms until the bay area and walnut creek store, we have a balsam hill display that is there and we're seeing that do really, really well this year. we launched the partnership in 2020 and nobody went to the stores in 2020. in fact, we could see in the daily sales when different states enacted lockdowns, you could see the sales drop in the regions and then last year, we did something different with

them. this year, we have a smaller footprint. they have 100 stores. we're in 20 or 30 of them. but the stores that we're in are actually doing really well and we had a phenomenal weekend with nordstrom this past weekend with foot traffic and in terms of our sales through the channel so i think consumers are feeling more comfortable in the holidays now go going back out in stores. that's what i'm hearing from other companies i keep in touch with, consumers were disappointed with the black friday deals they found in person but foot traffic was actually up over the last several years and, you know, a huge weekend, black friday sales, cyber monday sales, certainly the biggest weekend of the year for us as a christmas decor retailer but in talking with other friends around different e commerce companies, it was a big weekend and successful. earlier november, not so much. black friday and hopefully that continues the next few weeks, adding consumer confidence growing with the news from the

fed interest rates may slow down or increase a little bit. we'll see how it shakes out over the next two or three weeks. >> finally, mack, christmas is a very traditional time so i don't know there are fads or fashions in christmas but have you seen any changes or anything that's in that was out before? are blinking color lights in this year? what's the situation in the fashion of christmas. >> in the light side people continue to want to have fun with their lights and i think that's something that kind of started with covid. more people are putting up holiday lights. they're putting them up earlier and taking them later. we have an app called twinkle and they do amazing displays and i can map them so i can run a barbershop pole and we have them on our balsam trees as well. people want to do something more fun. maybe a little more towards the multi colored lights than the past few years.

on the christmas tree side, this one behind me a frosted tree has been going on for a few years and continues to be strong and we're seeing the return to tradition as people get back together in parts of the country that they didn't last year, we're seeing more of that sort of classic silver and gold, red and green, color palates are in and seen an interest in nature. we had super cute felt animal ornaments and those blew out. they sold out. we've seen a lot of interest in squirrels and mushrooms and things to do with nature. i don't know what is driving that but we're happy to provide it to the consumer and as long as it brings joy and everyone has a wonderful happy holiday season and boy, do we need peace on earth this year? that's what we're all about and we're glad to see people out there enjoying it and celebrating christmas. >> no doubt. so glad i asked that question. mac, appreciate your time. get back to work supplying people with christmas. mac hardman is ceo of balsam hill and country.

♪♪ ♪ that't's our s show for thi weekek. reminderer, we havee a sister podcasast called "s"sand h hil ababout ventuture capitalal and peopople that m make it possibl. ii hopee you'lll givive it a tr. yoyou can finind it a anywhere find y your popodcast. mymy t thanks to m my guests a k you for m making us p part of y sundayay morning..

damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle," i'm damian trujillo, and today, one of the greatest community service organizations in the entire country, sacred heart, the executive director is here on your "comunidad del valle." ♪♪♪ cc by aberdeen captioning www.aberdeen.io 1-800-688-6621 damian: and we begin today with the monthly visit by the consulate of mexico right here in san jose. with me is ambassador alejandra bologna on "comunidad del valle." ambassador, welcome back to the show. ambassador alejandra bologna: thank you so much for having me. damian: yeah, thank you for being here. well, you know, it's that time of year when some families are packing up, pulling their kids out of school for a week or so and heading off to mexico. what should we know about that trip that families make annually