for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. this is a poem by us broadcasting around the world from right here in washington d.c. i'm part chilled and thank you for joining us appreciate you being with us coming up today they renounce a researcher who says that point price was artificially inflated last year twenty seventeen we'll get into that other crypto news with jeffrey tucker the editorial director of the institute for economic research and christy i the co-founder and managing partner at the tech trader fun plus we have the latest on the battle in seattle as pressure from businesses like the eight hundred pound gorilla amazon and

starbucks successfully opposed a head tax to alleviate the dire homelessness problem in the emerald city will be joined by seattle city councilwoman to schama so as one who holds no punches in her critical to critique about amazon and other big businesses all of that ahead but first let's have some headlines the brave new world of media mergers has arrived and as predicted and comcast has offered a sixty five billion dollars deal all cash for twenty first century fox the bid sets up a fight with the walt disney company which also seeks to acquire fox disney c.e.o. robert iger as essentially wage his future in the c.e.o. position on winning the media war adding to the drama mr iger also is believed to have held a corporate grudge against comcast since twenty fourth when comcast tried to acquire disney the decision by a federal judge to allow the merger of media giants eighty. time warner earlier

this week was widely expected as we discussed on the program yesterday in detail to lead to an unprecedented level of consolidation of media ownership with bidding wars just like this one and more reshaping of the corporate media landscape that new area began almost immediately after the judge's ruling with comcast bold bid for fox and what much more on the story with a few guests tomorrow. in honduras and i corruption unit sponsored by or the organization of american states or oas has accused the president's party of stealing stealing nearly twelve million dollars from agricultural programs to reef to finance his reelection campaign and allied campaigns the investigators say the money was diverted through foundations and non-governmental organizations two hundred president current and as his national party and allies in the liberal and broad front parties prosecutors say some of the funds went on to preyed on to

pre-pay debit cards that the national party gave to members national party officials now say they will cooperate with investigators but at the end of may mr hernandez's allies mounted a legal effort to declare the oas unit that corruption unit a creation unconstitutional president hernandez held on to power last year after a vote many denounced as fraudulent full results were delayed for over three weeks when early tallies show showed mystery losing after a major protest and the killing unfortunate killing of sixteen demonstrators the oas called the official results invalid and asked for a new election and another presidential misbehavior news that's a new category we have here presidential misbehavior news another presidential misbehavior news president aired one of turkey has threatened a quote operation an operation against the financial ratings firm moody's air to one was apparently angered when moody's placed turkey. in a review for

a downgrade in september june first aired a one said quote god willing we will conduct an operation against moody's after june twenty fourth the president did not elaborate on what the operation would involve but it certainly sounds sinister june twenty fourth is the date of the turkish elections. and last year a bit clawing saw amazing price high is around twenty thousand dollars per coin but researchers some researchers at least now say that half of that price increase was due to price manipulation that's a contention at least in our recent release paper by finance professor john griffin bit the next one of the larger and more unregulated of the exchanges was involved allegedly in pushing up the prices of crypto currency isn't twenty seventeen through the use of the secondary digital currency tether called a stable coin while there are not e-mails or documents to prove the manipulation mr griffin pointed to the block chain letters which recorded all of the transactions he also noted that while these tether movements were going on crypto currencies

like ether in z. cash also saw similar price increases mr griffin had previously research project behavior including the manipulation of the volatility index known as the vix trader on the chicago board options exchange cboe which we have reported earlier this year has been accused multiple times are being manipulated. and we now move to cryptocurrency is which we love to cover to help us we're joined by geoffrey tucker the editorial director of the american institute for economic research and by christy are the co-founder and managing partner at the tech trader fund thank you both for joining us let's start off with that headline about bitcoin being inflated last year and jeffrey i want to start with you my thought when i read it was duff there is only supply and demand out there with with bitcoin and there was a heck of a lot of foam oh a fear of missing out so this really didn't seem like that far stretch to me i don't know about manipulation you know as

a regulator we use these terms very carefully and perfected a manipulation we called it actually meant something under the law so i think sometimes that people and maybe in this instance the term lation is being thrown around a little cavalierly but what are your thoughts jeffrey. i agree with you i read the paper really carefully and i'm very interested and tether i was with the court development team of tether i guess that was about during the time i think it was late developer early december something like that and they they argued their case for their very strange the asset in front of something like two hundred other top quantz in the crypto space and i mostly persuaded people that it's a weird asset it's tied to the dollar you know they have to maintain this peg between tether and the dollar sounds a plausible to you realize what it is that tether is supposed to do it serves as a kind of a dark dollar clearinghouse for all the other crypto from particular bits to next

exchange so you can imagine that during this period of this great run up you know by following other considerations that there would be a lot of trading going on and i think the problem with the paper as i read it is that it failed to really distinguish between responding to prices and causing prices. of course we can only expect can go a little bit fuzzy but i don't see any real malfeasance here i see a very strange institution tother just responding to wild price changes and that they would have to do the same thing on the down side to christie what do you make of it i think at the in the midst of all of this in two thousand and seventeen it was really hard to tell whether it was actual market where there was actual cause of market manipulation i think that there was a lot of definitely a lot of follow that pushed the prices up and what really caused people to take a look at tother which it neatly was

a very good idea like it provided liquidity it was a stable coin like the technology and the idea behind tother itself was very sound but then when people took a closer look at the relationship between tother the company. and with the release of paradise papers and they realized that the directors of the two company were the same it showed a lot of suspicion and then especially when t'other denied. denied the fact that they had like an odd if they had an audit or whether they like maintain the reserves and a lot of things published on their website just didn't fit the facts they weren't very transparent and that just caused a lot more suspicion to come up and christine let me go into that just a little bit more because we threw that term around and i've used it to stable point and what it's meant to be is a coin that actually isn't going to go from four hundred dollars to twenty thousand dollars in a year and a half or something but tether is one to be that stable coin am i right yes tether

wants to be the stable coin and it's a good idea to have a stable coin because it promotes liquidity and everybody wants to put a value on to obviously it was like six thousand u.s. dollars but it's really hard to trade for crypto currency together so by having a perfect middle ground that is a currency like a curtain. currency and a cut to currency at the same time to provide liquidity among all the exchanges so the idea itself is really really good but the company that implemented potentially might be a little shady jeffrey i want to get your take on that before we move on yeah yeah barr one way to think about tether i think it's a but i really have states say this but it operate as a kind of private crypto of central bank exchanges that that's what it's really doing and i don't think heather would even exist if the conventional banking system had been friendly to annex another exchange but the problem a lot of these laws companies just aren't they're having

a hard time maintaining conventional banking relationships because the regulators are so suspicious and so tethered really opened up as a kind of a frantic move like we've got to have clearing around here and so it's kind of a cool innovation like say i was i was the nucleus skeptical and you can imagine why like it's interesting to hear a guest say that sounds like a really good idea to me when i heard about i thought this other really bad idea you can't you can't have a page that sounded to me like a bad idea of a crypto former britain would certainly like that but the more i look at it do you understand what i mean you know one hundred percent but yeah but the more i looked at a while you know this is this is kind of it's kind of a hack you know for the i'm feeling this in the banking community to do with crypto exchanges and so that is fairly brilliant and i mean it's true that the lack of transparency was definitely there but i'm also slightly sympathetic to the company that came out of nowhere and moved so fast and yes true they were ever able to

provide a clean out of but i think over time it's kind of shaken out that i don't i don't think there's as much suspicion in the crypto community today towards tethers there was say in october november of two thousand and yeah i do agree with you and i want to move on but i do want to just make a little comment of what you said jeffrey because you and i have talking about talked about this off. ferebee i believe that if you look at the ultimate crypto space there will be stable coins and i think there will be things that are actually based upon physical assets whether or not it's gold or oil or silver real estate or whatever it is it is just a natural progression of the crypto economy but there fits and starts as to when will occur my next question is some interesting stuff we have seen william shatner captain kirk who is out there now into the crypto space he's beamed himself into the crypto space and we even see the former strategist for mr trump steve

bannon getting into the crypto fray but that's on the one hand you know but there's also a lot of haters out there right christy what do you make of all these people is that just a natural thing given that kryptos are so new i think so but i think having a celebrity endorsement someone so high profile was definitely a very smart move for a company whether or not his move to create like a greenhouse mining facility to improve environmental friendliness and the footprint impact that decline mine has had whether or not that that puts a sustainable business i am a little skeptical on that because he will now have to prove that he's able to try the environmental cost down and the cost of mining down compared to regular electrical mining that we have today jeffrey i mean i'd let you comment on this one but let me just say i mean you walk down the street in mine manhattan maybe not not land where you are but i mean you know every fifth person has an idea for a new krypto or a new ice you know so it's not better so how do you want to sell out this is true

about latitude. i was just at a party less than two hundred fifty crypto fanatics at atlanta so we got the same thing going to. say something i had dinner with go shop there last july two thousand seventy we've talked all about because the only reason i say i don't know it so you and i are close to it is you're here. i kind of want to take a little bit of credit for that is that ok yeah yeah it was easy though he's an awesome guy we talked all about the claim that i was sitting on my left and that really enjoyed the whole conversation the it in a lot about it and you know he was curious about it i wish i could take credit for actually giving him some crypto that i was i didn't do that and we did have a nice conversation no it makes me really happy to hear that and happy to say that yeah well you know we got people on both sides we are glad i'm here putin and jamie diamond jamie diamond you're all the big boss christi when you work for j.p.

morgan chase real quick chris you've only got about thirty seconds can you tell me do you expect these larger point angeles to to sions like j.p. and others will ultimately get into the crypto space i do think that qatar currency trading desks this year they were part of it so i definitely think the banks would have to have some sort of cut the currency footprint to still be able to offer their investors like a different form of asset that they're interested in thank you both kristie either co-founder and managing partner jeffrey we're going to have you back we love having you on. part of jeffrey jeffrey talk editorial director of the american institute for economic research thank you guys thank you very much. and it's time now for a quick break but hang here because when we return we have the latest on the battle in seattle as amazon and starbucks successfully opposing it to alleviate their horrendous homelessness problem will be joined by seattle city councilwoman to promise the one who takes no prisoners dinner critical of amazon and other big

businesses and as we go to break here the numbers at the closing bell this point trading above sixty six hundred forty dollars with air up over five percent for the day we'll be right back. short term gains at the expense of a longer term growth saudia some of the best thing in the future and products and employees you're taking all of future revenues if you're booking it today just like the man is buying back all the stuff in his own store yes he bought back all of the stuff in his store and he has a lot of revenue but now my store is empty and he has nothing to sell so the next quarter he.