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00:00We are live from Los Angeles. I'm Caroline Hyde. I'm Romaine Bostick of course still here at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. I'm Taylor Riggs in New York. Caroline meanwhile all day today we've been here at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures talking to a wide variety of guests about well over the next 30 minutes we can dig even deeper continue this conversation perhaps talking about the future of content the future of investing here in L.A. and he's killing us with us founding managing partner Stillman. We discuss the future of Bitcoin then and it was going to be talking and FTSE the future of non-refundable tokens and how one pays for content that way with DAX CEO and founder. So we're be digging our teeth into. On a day when I really would question the business model behind filmmaking behind the future of music content. A lot of that now being built up in a world that involves crypto world and involves crypto. And I mean some say that kind of inflection point for awareness of these types of themes journalism as I would call them and even adoption. Taylor. Yeah. You talked about adoption. We'd video this week the IPO that Bitcoin Futures ETF and then today we had another one B F T I believe it was it was also another Futures Bitcoin ETF that launched as well. You just take a look at what that meant for the roller coaster ride that was bitcoin this week. Remain of course sort of on the hype the news of some of these ETF futures launches. You got a huge run up in price up to sixty seven thousand. Some of that unwinds today. We're trying to hold on to about a 60000 here as well. But a lot has been talked about. This is like crawling before you learned to walk. This sort of just sort of opened up the door to maybe what could be bigger things to come for bitcoin. Yeah. Well let's get some insight from someone who probably knows a lot more about this than we do at least Glenn. Joining us right now. She's the founding managing partner at Bitcoin Focus venture capital firm. Still Mark Lewis great to see you. Wonderful to be here. Thank you. You couldn't hear what Taylor was saying there but she was talking about near record levels for Bitcoin the launch of these ETF ETF futures ETF. And just the overall adoption that we're now starting to see of something that maybe when you started back at still Mark was kind of derided. It was you know I started in Bitcoin in 2013 and still Mark launched in 2019. But we've seen more recently though is really Bitcoin hitting an all time high in terms of the pace of adoption. So we started this year with Bitcoin at about one hundred and thirteen hundred and thirty million users conservatively. And that would look like Internet nineteen ninety seven. But we're actually on track to hit a billion users over the next four years which looks like Internet 2005. And so in fact Bitcoin is advancing in terms of adoption even quicker than the pace of the internet. Early Internet. And historically we know that Bitcoin's adoption is linked to Bitcoin's price. And so I imagine that we believe that those two things are correlated. Educate us educate our audience as to how much this is still seen as a risk asset something to speculate on or starting whether it be El Salvador or other nations and actual use case to a certain degree. What will Bitcoin end up being when we get to what the internet is now. Bitcoin is the future of finance and so we're seeing that bitcoin bitcoin adoption in the emerging market makes sense when you understand bitcoin as an infrastructure. And so Bitcoin offers a platform for people across the world to be able to store value. But the introduction of Lightning Network in its mature state which happened more recently shows Bitcoin as a payment network as well. And that allowed El Salvador to come on to this point. And so just to run through a few interesting figures here. Bitcoins through Lightning Network there's over three million Salvadorans that now use bitcoin educate. Someone wants to what lightning network means. So rightly network is bitcoins payments networks. And so what folks in El Salvador and globally use lightning network for our instant payments basically instant of nearly free global payments in El Salvador. That means going to McDonald's going to Starbucks or sending remittances. With regard to the adoption beyond El Salvador and more importantly into more developed markets obviously here in the U.S. we haven't quite seen as a payment mechanism catch on quite as fast. What sort of gets us there. What sort of nudges us into that role. Well I think this is needs based rate. So in El Salvador to go back for a moment 70 percent of the population is unbanked or underpaid. And so it makes sense that people would come online to a global financial system through Bitcoin through lightning network. And by the way 3 million people on Lightning Network means that more people are served by Lightning Network in El Salvador than the local banks. So there's more people banked by lightning than by the local banks. Now in developed markets of course there's less of an acute need for a financial rails. So what we're seeing though is people start to use it to maybe play around with but also to earn. And so we're seeing Bitcoin earning through rewards. We're seeing people opt in to be paid their salaries in Bitcoin. And this will start to further drive Bitcoin's adoption. Do you need less volatility though for that to really more people want to be paid for it from that base wage in emerging markets. I think you do. So we're seeing people adopt in emerging markets but we have to acknowledge that there's less ability to tolerate Bitcoin volatility. Just around the corner though after Taproot activates on Bitcoins core protocol in November what will be the introduction of stable channels on lightning and all that that means is that you'll be able to use lightning network as rails to trade something that is stable to your local fiat currency versus needing to trade between and accept its volatility. Let's talk about investment opportunities. Not so much from the people. Want to speculate on the price itself of bitcoin but who maybe want to make a bet on I guess the underlying technology. I know you hate that phrase but not the longevity of this. The idea that this is here to stay in some form or another whether we're going to be trading bitcoins in 50 years who knows. But a lot of people do seem to believe in the underlying technology and the overall ethos that got us to where we are today. What's the investable opportunity there. There is a few. And so with the introduction of the futures based ETF for instance people were asked again if they want exposure to Bitcoin and how. And so the ETF allows that of course you can hold Bitcoin directly or through a custodian. And there's there's a great breadth of opportunities. And so of course it's still Mark. What we're looking at is the innovation ecosystem and that's sort of exploding. It has been over the over the course of my time in the space. But over the last couple of years what we've really seen is lightning networks sort of work to catalyze entrepreneurs. Real curiosity and we're seeing just really incredibly strong teams start to build on these infrastructures. It can be quite a divisive space in a way. And whether you're a Bitcoin maximalist whether you end up thinking that the only way or whether there can be rival crypto is in some way whether you look at a theorem here in killers the salon is a sort of deemed doesn't have to be mutually exclusive or can you bet on the whole ecosystem gathering steam and somewhere what we would consider bitcoin categorically different than other crypto currencies. And so that's the case because Bitcoin's knowable in terms of its supply the rate of issuance. We know how many bitcoin exists today and we know how many bitcoin will exist in five years or in a decade. That's different from other crypto currencies and that matters. When your story. Well we also know the rate of issuance. And so for that reason I think Bitcoin alone is really a nation grade sort of money. And Bitcoin the the protocol the infrastructure where you can transact is is also a nation grade sort of financial platform and naturally different. I think we'll see that soon. I think we'll see that soon. And we're already we're already starting to in small ways people understand the friction of the modern banking system. If you send a wire you know it hurts. And and that's where lightning comes in. I mean it's really good to meet you in person. Thank you so much for making the time. Thank you for taking a head out of an awful lot of work. I've been doing this week and is killing somewhat founding managing partner Taylor. And stay with us because coming up we're gonna have more from the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. We're going to hear from the CEO of Dapper Labs. It's the company behind the likes of crypto kiddies and NBA Topshop. This is Bloomberg. Now we're almost wrapping up all week here in Los Angeles as well. I was quick I know went by in a flash. We've got to just talk to top voices. Milken. Yes. And we had a great time in Milken. I mean not only did you get a real good perspective about asset management but it was actually a lot of talk about equality and inclusion. Yeah. And also put a Long Beach one on an incredible conversation on social issues. Solved that. You're going against all the snafus. However in Venice Beach. But Academy Museum such wonderful conversation. Just have a listen to the highlights. The Fed needs to redefine what they think of as an acceptable employment level or they're going to stay to lose too OK. I would be pulling back on the taper. I would have started it already. The question is whether the economy in the West can function with the central bank being present. And I think the answer is we don't know if we had the lowest discount lowest interest rates in history which you know. If interest if something grows faster than then the discount rate then in theory it's worth infinity. So it's hard to operate in a world where things are worth infinity. We just want our clients to be exposed to the next fangs which are not going to be in the fan category but the next pigs. And Tesla. Tesla is becoming a fad. If you want to be long crypto currency probably now's not a bad time to get long. We've seen an accelerated increase month after month after month of just a surge in demand for goods driven by e-commerce. It is definitely a market in flux. And just unlike you know the recession or the bankruptcies of the soon army that have caused inventory shortages. It's just different cause it really is a supply issue. The cost has gone up 30 to 40 percent and the volume is running up probably 20 percent right now and will even be more as the year goes on or as the fourth quarter peak season hits us. I have never experienced what we're going through right now. Normally we open a restaurants we have an enormous staff actually to many people that we train. We open up. We're where we're bustling and we're very very full of staff. And we are actually struggling right now. We don't have enough staff to even open all of our venues for seven days a week. Income earners on the other hand are like well here are my expenses. This is kind of what I want to do and we'll see what happens. And so those those habits can I'm telling you it's the difference between wealth and freedom and that rat race of spending and earning money managers to truck drivers from possible companies to restaurants bars and everyone saying the same concerns supply chain issues and labor money and the labor costs. The same rings true doesn't it. Yeah I think we've got a really good sort of cross-section of our economy and really a good cross-section of where we stand in the world right now. And it's good to get out of New York skyline and some other parts of what's happening in America. Are you going back. We'll question it after a couple of days. Well we're going to have a deep dive into the future of well crypto and indeed NAFTA. Stick with us as. Remember this guy. Of course you do. Jaws the last remaining one from the original film. He is the biggest prop here at the museum. He's about 25 feet long. He's now that's five feet wide. And his nickname. Get this Bruce. Steven Spielberg called in that after his lawyer. I wonder if he likes his lawyer or not. ISE. Meanwhile I was me just taking a tour of the academy using animation pictures right here in Los Angeles and Caroline Hyde and Romaine Bostick. Now I want to be digging a little bit. Yeah. I'm a Taylor Riggs Caroline Hyde. You know you don't get to have all the fun. I know that you're out there standing next to a shark. I'm playing this video game called Crypto Kiddie. You know it. It's on the theory and block chain. People spend like a million dollars buying virtual kidneys. But the last my producer says no Taylor not just crypto kiddies. It's NBA top shop to take a look at this. This game allows users to buy basketball's greatest moments. 10 million plus market place transactions have taken place about seven hundred million dollars in total sales. NBA or crypto kitty Caroline. Maybe both. Well we're going to talk to the man behind both Mohammad Gallegos and he's with us CEO of DAPA Labs the company behind Crypto Kitty's MBA. Top shots flow anymore. And we want for a moment to take away the sensationalism around an FTSE. One minute we're all screaming about sixty nine million dollar sale. And then the next minute we're saying all right we're going to go to garbage. Talk to us about the popularity for top shops for example. Has it taken you by surprise. Well I mean I think it's still super early days. If you think about the scale of the whole NAFTA space is still a few hundred thousand people top shot at six hundred sixty thousand faith collectors. I mean collectively they have spent almost a billion dollars but it's still very early days. And you know for me the headline sales are old or great and the dollar numbers are impressive. But it's about accessibility you know for the first time. You know both collecting economies you know within Topshop and collectibles have become so much more transparent to people. And then you see artists individual creators that are connecting from anywhere in the world and creating a community that's that can be as small or as large as as it needs to be. And they're engaging with fans in an entirely new way. And we'll talk to us a little bit about the artist side of it because I've talked to some artists who've really embraced this primarily because they feel like it gives them a little bit more control over what they create and what they sell and who they sell it to. It's the first time that a digital creator has been able to make something and sell it directly to a fan. And that fan can actually take it anywhere in the world with them whether it's into a new game or sort of metaverse experience a new social network or just another marketplace to to sell to another fan. And you know for digital art the mental model is a lot like you know Patreon or some kind of supporting and you up and coming artists. And if they do well you end up getting a share in there in their success. And then with things like Topshop it becomes a new way for a sports fan to engage with their with their with the team that they're a fan of with the athlete that they're they're a fan of. And in a way that's sort of kind of like social media and that. But instead of your Instagram profile it's your block chain wallet and it's the things you choose to own. It's how you represent yourself in this new world. And in a sense it's where you choose to store your wealth whether in U.S. dollars or you know a theorem or bitcoin or top shots or float. And it's part of your online identity in a sense and for a whole new generation. Actions speak louder than words and they're blocking while it represents their actions their decisions their skin in the game. And so when I double lives you're looking at the next source of innovation the next area of creativity the next company to be partnering with brands. Where does it go. I mean we are we see ourselves as a platform company. So we have Topshop. We have in fact we have a whole dapper sports studio that is taking the Topshop platform expanding it to the NFL to La Liga and some other sports leagues. We'll be announcing soon. But we consider ourselves a platform company. And so when brands come to us we like to share the data that we're seeing. The tools that we've built sort of the open source technology flow is a decentralized block chain. DAX lives as a minor. It's less than 30 percent of the network. And other folks are folks like Google folks like Shopify folks like Genies which is a startup right here in L.A. And these folks are building new kinds of products to engage with their communities. But we have a million users that we can actually share with them and and bring new kinds of products and services to those users as well. So I think for brands it's just it's such a interesting technology because in a sense for a decade two decades on the web and social media they've been disaggregated and separated from their fans and forced to work through you know whether it's social networks or whatnot. But this lets them create an economy around really any aspect of their brand no matter how niche or how popular they can kind of they can find that micro community and then be able to engage with them through the Internet and fly as you scale out this business and try to go from what is still a relative initially in aggregate here to something that is much more broader. How do you get there. Well that's our much of the thing we go to sleep thinking about wake up thinking about is putting a block chain wallet in every pocket because we think that that's a level of empowerment that's even greater than a P.C. on every desktop P.C. on every desktop gave people the chance to sort of become their own creators. Blocking wall in every pocket gives them the ability to transact and to actually own their own identities whether they're an individual creator or has a transaction process gotten easier. I mean some of this losses denying NFC still be kind of complicated particularly for people who maybe aren't as well versed in crypto but that's why we book float. Yeah. So if you go on any other block chain it is quite complicated. But you're everyone watching this segment can go to NBA top sharks with their credit card. Nine dollars get a pack of three and FTSE. They don't have to know what crypto is. They don't have to have cryptocurrency. They don't. There is no the word NFC doesn't even show up in sort of MBA type shot sign up flow. It's only after you get it that you start learning about the technology. You kind of look into the transparency of the marketplace when you want to sell something like wait a second eBay doesn't have this. I can't look at every single trading card or work of art and see who else owns it. How many times. Treated what it was but for what it was sold for and who. Who else kind of in the world is interested in it. But all that is transparent on the block chain. That's it. That's when people started learning about oh wait that's what he is. Oh wait. That's what I'm watching is I think that's how it should be. The technology should be in the background not sort of pushed into people's faces. Interesting. We've only got a minute or so left demographics. How you seeing not expand because you hear the ultra wealthy the sort of altered art collectors are getting into it but then the younger generation educating themselves. What financial literacy around an FTSE is growing. And how old is it becoming. Well the younger generation thinks of volatility in a different way. They think of investing in a different way. I mean against GameStop and AMC as a whole whole evidence of that is about almost a social movement not just analysis of of of some spreadsheets and whatnot. And so that's the younger generation sees Topshop as a way to sort of get closer to basketball in a way they never could before. But you also see older folks that you know maybe they collected cards when they were young. Now they have kids. They can't. The lack of transparency is just too much to keep up with. And top show is much easier. You just show up for a backdrop do you. There is no fraud. There's Dubai directly from the source. You don't have to pay scalpers on stock X or anything if you don't like what you got. You can sell it instantly. And so you have kind of both sides the market. It is male dominated for sure. And you know lots of sports sort of technology is. But we're just one of our partners just launched the Dr. Seuss app into into Beta. And that's just much more families and moms playing it with their kids. That's playing with their kids daughters getting getting into it. And so it's just about different communities bring different demographics in. But because it's NFTE they're all tradeable shareable and open. Fascinating stuff. Rahim really great to see you in person for being here. Thanks for having me. Rahim Gary Gosling is of course the founder of Dapper Laughs. And that's going to wrap up our coverage here. A long week here in Los Angeles. Of course we started at MLK and we ended up at the port of Long Beach. Now here we are. Horse atop the Academy Museum of Motion Picture. It's been an extraordinary week. I really felt like we got to grips understanding a little bit more as to the nuances within the supply chain. Great to speak to some of the biggest investor minds ever at Malkin red carpet to hit them might find too high. Well yeah I was gonna bring that up. I don't want to rub it into my sunglasses for that. Maybe one thing is indoors. They might look a bit of an idiot. Well I'd look like an idiot. Everything I need now is going to join us inside. Romain get started. That's what I'm told Taylor. We miss you. I can't wait to be back.

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Bloomberg Markets: What'd You Miss? (10/22/2021)

Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick & Taylor Riggs bring the news and analysis you may have missed after the closing bell on Wall Street live from the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Today's show tackles the entertainment industry and Bitcoin Guests Today: Alyse Killeen of Stillmark, Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs (Source: Bloomberg)

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