I met Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology, Sam bankman Fried speaks, but questions remain. We discussed the mystery that still surrounds the missing billions at spfs, bankrupt crypto exchange f t X. Then we're turning into a buy now, pay later economy, especially this holiday season as shoppers try to stretch their dollar. Klaners CEO on its fight to reach profitability and how regulation could impact the buy now, pay later industry. And Musk takes a break from Twitter to talk well brain surgery. The world's richest person says Neuralink could start human implants within six months and makes big promises for the tech, including cures for paralysis and blindness. Welcome, fus, let's gonna check on those markets here. It's been Katie Rfield high. Katie High ed Well, it was a pretty muted day overall. Remember we had a big, big rally yesterday after Pal suggested that maybe the FED might start dialing back the pace of rate hikes. Then you look today ahead, the big payrolls print tomorrow. Not too much movement in the SMP five hundred. The NASA one squeaked out a little bit of a game. You did see a big drop in the socks, but again at the big benchmark level, not too much movement, even though we're looking at a pretty big rally in the bond market, those tenure treasure yields dropping by about ten basis points or so. But this muted volatility that we've been seeing in the markets, it's definitely a theme. Let's take a look at the volatility index, the VIX, if you will. It dropped below twenty. It's has a nineteen handle, and as you can see, it's just been grinding tighter and tighter in this very narrow range. So, even though I don't know, it's felt like a pretty volatile year, not too much action at the our market level. But I'm dying to talk about crypto. Let's do that right now and look at bitcoin, because Bitcoin, even amid all of this chaos that we're seeing at the company level in the wake of what we saw with f t X, bitcoin is actually having a pretty good run. It's up about two and a half percent or so over the past five days, and I'm going to say it's a macro asset. It's doing fine, all right, Let's stick with this broader theme, Katie, stay with us. We look at the biggest story in crypto right now, the ongoing story f t X is collapse and Sam Bank and and Freed, who was at one point worth twenty six billion dollars he now claims quote that's worth close to nothing. Those were his words at the New York Times deal Books summit yesterday, and luckily for us, Bloomberg's Annie Massa was in the room and joins us now for more. Did we solve the mystery, Annie, of the missing billions and where they are? I think that would be a little bit too easy. We're far from fully having solved the mystery. Um, So yes your day. SPF did speak at the deal book conference here in New York, and I would say he answered a lot of questions, but we didn't get a lot of answers. He's kind of on an apology tour now, giving his side of the story and saying that he's sorry that he screwed up um and overextended basically, but he he as far as actually offering any explanation of what went wrong. Uh, he hasn't given us much and there was some surprise that he actually turned up, albeit virtually, you know, he joined from the Bahamas. But you were there, there was some protests on site against him appearing at the conference, weren't there, absolutely So, even to get into the venue, which was in Columbus Circle in Manhattan, there were protesters outside, kind of these dueling camps of protesters who were protesting not just SPF and had pamphlets saying that this guy is an embezzler, but they were also protesting others on the on the program as well, which was a little bit of a surprise to see all their name alongside uh Sam Bankman, Freed's, but he was one of the people making an appearance there that they were absolutely protesting. It was a little bit controversial that he appeared at all. He was on this program to appear at the conference long before f t x S blow up, and so some people were surprised that he got the platform to speak. But to their credit, there were some really tough questions and SPF tried to wriggle free but didn't really pull that off. Well, Anny, to your point, it's just amazing that this man keeps talking, and I want to talk about where we could see him speak next, because the Senate did here held hearing today on the f t X collapse. Can we expect to see SPF actually on the floor of Congress at any point? I mean, it's definitely possible. One thing that came up at the conference was, uh, SPF was asked, what do your lawyers make of the fact that you're appearing here today virtually? And he kind of grumb that they didn't really they weren't too happy about it. So he's going about rogue. It would appear, Katie, we were glued to our computer screens, as we always are. SPF not the only speaker, not at least on this topic. Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, what she's been talking about. You know, I'm sorry, I mean, I'll let me take this. I want to talk about Janet Yellen because it's interesting trying to map the contagion. Obviously, when we talk about contagion, there's been a lot of worries about spill over into the broader financial system. But Jannet Yell and she did say yesterday that if you look for the silver linings, basically the good part of this explosion that it hasn't really spilled over into the traditional banking sector, and that point was actually echoed by Michael bar today, of course, the FED Vice Chair for Supervision. He said that the crypto risks to the core financial system, they've been muted so far, So if you're looking for systemic sort of fears here, they really haven't appeared yet. A lot of folks have been going in. Annie. We just heard about the kind of yelling perspective. Larry Fink, for example, what are these voices saying about the f t X situation. Yeah, Larry thinks an interesting one. He was also on the program at the deal but conference yesterday and he mentioned this is known, but black Rock had some exposure to f t X. It had made a twenty four million dollar investment through a fund of funds. So Fink was saying that he thinks that there's definitely a reckoning to come and black Rock is not immune from that, nor are any number of vcs that invested in f t X. Okay Bloombergs, Katie Growfeld and Annie Massa unraveling the unravellable thank you. Meanwhile, Apple is ramping up work on its long awaited mixed reality headset. The company changed the name of the operating system to x r O S. According to sources, that's a nod to extended reality, which encompasses both augmented and virtual reality. The headset would be its first major new product category since the Apple Watch in twenty fifteen. Who had the scoop, of course, bloombergs Mark German, who joins US now from Los Angeles, mark, x R O S. What's the thinking behind it? Yeah, Ed, thank you so much for having me so. Originally, when they've been working on this mixed reality operating system, which, like you said, blend's a R and v R, they were calling it reality O S and r OS, but they've shifted now to a term called x R O S. It's a bit shorter and it's more translatable across many geographies. Right, reality is not a word like iPad or iPhone or watch or TV that's very universal. Reality is not a universal word, so they needed more of a universal term. That's why they're leaning towards x R OS. They've also trademarked x R O S in several countries internationally, and they're fighting for the trademark in the U S as well with an unrelated Chinese company who actually coincidentally filed for the x r O S name back in March. In real terms, this is a market that Meta dominates right to the A A VA headset. What's the timeline for Apple to bring this product to market. It's still a pretty small market, but technically yes, Meta is the dominant player there with their Quest headsets, Sony with their PSVR, their PlayStation VR. There's a new one coming U soon as well. They're a big player there. HTC Lenovo. Samsung has played in a little bit with partnerships with back in the day what was called Facebook. In terms of Apple, is the year of the Apple headset. It's going to be called probably the Reality one or the Reality Pro headset run x r os. It's going to have mixed reality versions of messages, of maps, of FaceTime, games, video watching, TV, plus you name it, live sports streaming in virtual reality in a three D like environment. This is going to be the hot product of This is really gonna be Apple's next big thing. It'll be introduced sometime around the middle of the year. Most likely. It's going to be quite a friendsive. Apple has been looking at price points between two and three thousand dollars, certainly going to be the most advanced mixed reality headset on the market today really going you know, full throttle on both of those technologies. It will have the best cameras on the market for a R, but it will also have the best displays on the market for VR in The real magic of this headset is how Apple is going to be able to blend the two in a way that you haven't seen Meta or others do so far. Alright, three year if the Apple Virtual Reality headset. You heard it here first bloom bogs Mark, German, thank you. Black Friday has been boom time for by Now Pay Later products. It's a financial product that lets you pay in installments, and its use has skyrocketed during the holiday shopping extravaganza. Adobe says that it's use climbed compared to pre a day, and one provider after Pay said it's use actually rose compared to the pre holiday season. But does this all mean we're actually setting ourselves up for a debt headache in the future. They do promise interest free payments only free if you follow the rules, so check the small print, because if when you're a longer term monthly by Now Pay Later plan, you could be up to thirty in terms of interest costs. Maybe if you do a late fee or have to reschedule a payment, that could cost you from one to ten dollars. Ago, roughly eleven of all borrowers using by Now pay Later fell behind schedule in their payments, and if you're years old, that lumber grows to almost h That was, of course, Bloomberg's Caroline hide there on by Now Pay Later trends in the holiday shopping season. We also took to Twitter to ask our audience about this, and while b MPL is gaining ground, it does seem, based on our phole, that the credit card is still king when it comes to the preferred means of spending. I want to bring in Claner CEO Sebastian Shimmy Atkovski for more on this. We're going to talk about your earnings. But first by Now pay Later. I bet you've got a pretty interesting take on the clan of you for buy now pay Later. Well sure, I mean, first of all, we actually think of ourselves as a payment network, a third party payment network, you know, VI sell master Card kind of thing, and so of our volumes debitum. We're obviously associated with credit, but just worth highlighting that fact. With that set, I do think by an alpulator is a better formulated credit product than a credit card, right, So it doesn't push you into revolving, it doesn't. It's not borrowing against all of your spending. It's only for single transactions, and it has a fixed installment period and it's no interest. Right. So we think genuinely speaking, if more consumers ten years from now have debit cards in use by alpulated for occasional purchases versus everyone having credit cards, we are going to see that's a better world. And losses on our portfolios are about below crey card industry standards, so I think that's also kind of some indications of this being in healthier form of credit, but it is still credit, right, let's just be here about her. So, Bacily, you just posted earnings third quarter earnings two one million dollar operating loss and improvement quarter on quarter but year on year, slightly worrying, and yet you still have this goal to push to profitability. How do you re ensure your reassure your investors that you are on that path to profitability? Well, actually, because exactly of that, right, So when um, you know last year Obviously, investor sentiment looked very differently than it does this year, and so everyone was asking us to lean entirely into the future and was rewarding us right and as much as looking back now, you know, if you think about at that point of time the investment trade, you grab it was consuming about two and dilution on an annual basis, so it wasn't crazy from that perspective. But obviously invest sentimis has change. People want you to focus on proftability and we have the benefit here Clona. We were profitable up until eight nineteen when we started investing heavily into the US market, so we know how to make money. Our European business makes about a billion dollars in gross profit annually UM. So we decided, you know, we had to take the top decisions. We actually started being a little bit more conservative on our underwriting already in January, and then increased that conservatism in May in combination with you know, reducing our investment into the long term future. And they presented a plan. So obviously a year year comparison right now isn't really relevant because the plan came into effect in May June, and so far already this quarter versus previous quarter. We reduced our are you know, quary lost by fort so you know our invest is looking at that feel confident, like, Okay. The ambition that we set out when we raised money in May June to reach profitability again somewhere a month by month basis after summer next year is entirely achievable and we're on target to to to be back at that. The US is an interesting one, isn't it. I think you hit thirty one million customers in the US in the third quarter, just gone, what did you learn about this market? And then what does the expansion look like going forward for you? Super super excited by the US. I mean in despite the fact that we've been a little bit you know, we've tied up credit underwriting due to the macro environment. We're also obviously in generally commerced right now, everyone is not really comparing apples and apples is all apple and bananas because you know, a year ago I was in San Francisco and there was nobody in the streets. You know, there was impossible to get a meeting because there was COVID restrictions all over the place. Right, So the comparisons are still not entirely there for you, commus, but we're seeing n growth you know, ye versus last year and seeing tremendous I mean, I just think more and more consumers in the US are dead tired of credit cards of you know, just go to Netflix and watch cred Card Explains, and you see all the dirty tactics that the industry has applied against the best interests of its customers. This is a healthy model. You're seeing that shift, right, and your seven eight percent in your Twitter poll is indicating that. But at the beginning, it's still the beginning. You gotta remember in the Nordics, where were active plan up processes more than half of all e commerce payments, right, So it tells you something on how effective and successful this mall can be once it's what It takes a little bit time to get there, sebasting very quickly. I know you stayed late for us out there in Sweden. Layoffs in this industry, layoffs for you, well, we we obviously unfortunately have to take that tough decision. We did it back in May. It was a little bit earlier than a lot of other companies. And and but because you know, I have the benefit of the noon. This for seventeen years. So I was part of Plana back in the financial press of seven and eight and and we at least try to. Our ambition was to take the tough decision that we unfortunately have to do, to the shift investor sentiment and make those changes. So we we hope that we've done what we what we need to done, and consider if the market Maclaconna environment stats the same, we think that we've done what we need to do. Okay, klan A CEO, Sebasti and Schimyatkovski, thank you. Now. Chip maker TSMC will now offer advanced four nanome to chips when it's new twelve billion dollar plant in Arizona opens in this after US customers like Apple pushed the company to do so. According to sources, Bloomberg's Debbie We reported that Bloomberg scoop Debbie, what will they be doing them when they open this plant? So, like you said, add the t SMC will well announced next Tuesday that they will start making an advanced for nelometer chips in Arizon now when the plan comes in light in two and this is an upgrade from their original plan. After our customers, including an Apple, uh A and d and and media urged them to make more advanced chips in America. So, uh this comes at the time that trade tensions and also a supply chain disruptions over the past care years have sort of pushed the balmuzation to help bring more chip manufacturing back to America and to make sure that the more advanced chips are made on US oil tabby. My understanding is t SMC are gonna be holding a pretty big party when they unveil this plan, and that the President will be going. What are the details? Yes, So President Biden and Secretary of Commerce Jena Ramondo will be attending the so called toy in ceremony next two day in Arizona. And this ceremony is to celebrate a key construction milestone or for t smc s first advanced plant in the US, and in attendance will also be uh ND CEO or Lisa su and and media chief Jensen Huang and Apple's chief executive Tim Cook. Uh is also a schedule to attend the event next Tuesday. For nanometer technology, let's dig into the technology. Why do we care if it's five nanometer or four nanime? So why is that important for t SMCS customers. Actually, it is also whatha important for the administration because with the fifty Building and Chips Act, the administration is hoping that the latest, the most cutting edge chips will be made in the US eventually. So right now the US is sort of like falling behind Asia one generational, two generations at least when it comes to a chip manifacting technologies. But the Bandministration in the hope to uh prevent future disruptions and to make sure that the America will stay ahead in this competition with China and the technology FUNCD So eventually, I mean, what kind of technology is that the chip makers will be able to offer us? Soil is so from uh most importance for the government, not and not just for American companies. This whole story is about expanding manufacturing capacity in the United States right on shoring. Who are some of the biggest names in the world of semiconductors that rely on t SMC. So companies that rely on t SMC in the US include the Apple and d N Media and also a Qualcom and Alison Timer Intel Whila it makes its own chips. Also, what relies on our t SMC on some of its production, so t s m C actually will also announced next Tuesday that it is committed to build a second plant in Arizona to make even more advanced three nelometer chips to help American companies. Okay, Bloomberg's deady, we're great reporting, Thank you very much. Time now for talking tech layoffs in the tech industry still in the headline. Serious XM is the latest to announce job cuts in response to faltering revenue growth. Sales at Serious grew three point seven in the third quarter, but analysts now forecast more modest growth, just one percent in the current period. All this comes as consultancy firm Challenger Gray and Christmas says. While job cuts are announced across the US, the tech sector was hit particularly hard. Of the nearly seventy seven thousand jobs that announced to be cut in November, around fifty three thousand came from tech no surprise therefore, the West Coast was hit especially hard. But that's not just in the US. This is a global story. Over in Ireland, for instance, tech companies ranging from Twitter, Intel, Stripe or Meta have all been acting jobs. Such layoffs, of course, have raised concerns with the European Commission about tech companies and what they plan to do next, particularly those that are caught up in the narrative around privacy rule. Definitely one to watch. Go forward now stick with us. Coming up on the show, we're going to speak to the CFO of Visa. Important spending, spending, spending, credit cards. This is not one that you're going to want to miss. Why holiday season and we want to lend into what's going on that's fast and probably the Visa CFO. Coming up next, this is Bloomberg Welcome back to Bloomberg Chnology. I'm at loveloaw in San Francisco. Now. Online spending is up nine percent this year compared to one and Cyber Monday's record eleven point three billion dollars in sales per Adobe show signs the consumer remains resilient in an economic downturn. I've got just the guests for this. Let's discussed with Visa's chief financial officer of Vascent, probably Vass and thank you for coming on the program. It's good to see you. Your assessment. Where do things stand? You know we're entering kind of the backstages of this holiday shopping period. What signs of visa seeing about consumer activity. Thanks. Yeah, Yes, you use the word resilient, and I'd say that's the that's probably the best adjective to use to describe the state of the U. S consumer. You know, you've seen consumer spending state remarkably stable all year. You know, we like to compare things to pandemic to get a clean look, and it's amazing how stable spending. Husband, we're about forty five forty ahead almost on a day by day, week by week basis, And in fact, we just released numbers through the twenty one November, and in the first three weeks in November, just leading into the holiday period, we were up roughly that from up about nine over last year, and then holiday week twenty one to seven was roughly in line on a ear over year basis, also high single digits. We can't yet compared to because Thanksgiving was later in so remarkable stability, remarkable resilience. I think that's the best way to describe the US consumer right now. We were a bit concerned with credit. We're talking out of course, about the the impact of higher rates on the consumer, and we're also talking a lot about buy now, pay later. Do you have any sense of the split on consumer spend between debit credit. What risks are the consumer taking right now? Well, you know, it's been roughly the same most of the year. Debt has been very strong relative to even in November, devitt was up almost fifty over which is well about the pre COVID trend line. So debt has been very resilient and credit has come back in a very nice way. Credit was up thirty percent or thirty eight percent over twenty nineteen. Both were up high single digits over last year. So essentially, you know, there's no sense of any consumer stress on the credit side. Um debt has real stayed resilient, even has credit has come back. All in all, you know, consumer spending has stayed generally the same. It's changed a lot below the surface. People are buying different things. People have adjusted to inflation and so on. People are buying more services than goods, more experiences, you know, than products, and there have been some changes in what people buy as a result of inflation. But the aggregate level of spending, whether it's debit or credit, remains very healthy. We maybe don't think of Visa as a technology company, but if you think about it, visas very much a technology company. My understanding is you have a new boss, how is that going? What is what is the three version of VISA look like? Well, hopefully more of the same. We've had a good run, um. You know, we we had a good year in fiscal year twenty two. Our revenues were up well over twenty our profits are up well over You know, Ryan McNerney, our new CEO, has been here a decade. He and I I've worked together for a very long time. We're all very sad to see our level was beloved within the company. UM, but this was all very planned and expected. UM, and our strategy remains the same. We have great momentum on multiple fronts. We have tremendous growth in our core consumer payments business. We have some significant opportunities in two new vectors of growth, what we call new flows that gets us into new use cases, UM, you know, like person to person peter p like cross border remittances, like businesses paying consumers, as well as in value added services. So I think you should expect to see more to the same, and we feel very good about you know what's ahead of us and your new boss. Um, you should have a mom one of these days and and and see for yourself. Ryan is uh, you know, a great guy. He is a you know, smart strategic He's deeply knowledgeable about the business. He's very well known to our clients around the world. Um, I think you know we won't miss a beat, and of course Ryan will set a new agenda for the future. I've got to ask you about f t X and the historic relate and ship between Visa and f t X. You had a debit card partnership. My understanding is you've severed all ties with f t X in any affiliation with sanbanger Free and f t X. But could you explain to us where that stands to clarify, But also how did f t X get to that stage of relationship with you given what we know now? Well, you know, we we do business with a lot of partners. We do the best we can to make sure we understand, you know, how they're doing business. Like a lot of other people looking at ft X from the outside, we certainly didn't have the knowledge we now have about what was going on. You know, our viewers, we don't have a position on cryptocurrencies per se, whether they're a good thing or a bad thing or how much bitcoin should be worth or not. Our job is to facilitate what people want to buy, as long as it's legal and as long as it's in compliance with the regulation, and all indications were that fd X was in compliance and all regulations. Buying bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is legal. We will enable people to do things that are both legal and in compliance and regulations. Clearly, we are as surprised as everybody else has been about what was really going on in ft X. We no longer have a relationship with them. We really had no financial exposure to them. We were primarily enabling people to buy and sell uh, you know, cryptocurrencies if they wanted to, you know, buy things on ft X, much alike we would do with any other exchange. UM. In any case, you know, clearly this has been an eye opener for everybody. We will all step up our diligence uh and and hopefully there will be further regular tary actions that make this all safer for all involved. Quickly, bass and broadly, how has the crypto contagion or what we've seen in the markets impacted visa well, our exposure to cryptos rather limited. Um, you know, we have more sleep facilitators for people wanting to buy cryptocurrencies, and that's a small part of our business. Uh. You know, we have you know, some amount of card issuance by crypto partners, some of whom may not survive, some of whom may may slow down some of their activities. So it might slow things down in general. But all in all, our exposure directly to the whole crypto I guess economy is fairly limited. Now. We are long term, you know, remain of the view that blockchain is a significant technology. There will be things happening. We will remain engaged with blockchains, with stable coins like us DC and others. Or we will obviously monitor the situation very closely, but you know, I wouldn't say it has much impact on us UM at this point in time. Visus CFO best and probably thank you very much. Thank you. Meanwhile, shares of Salesforce down Thursday after the company gave and now look, the analyst says, reflects a weak economic environment. It also announced the exit of co CEO Brett Taylor next month, leaving Mark Benioff at the helm. Blame Bug's Brady Force covers sales Force. Brody A pretty simple question to start. This is the second time a co CEO has left Sales Force in recent history. Why that's the million dollar question right now? Right, I mean, Mirke Berniop has been in control of this company for a very long time. There have been multiple moments where it appears that he had found his successor. He has had multiple mentees that were very public, very personal, um, and they have gone. I mean, it's difficult to run a company, it's difficult to find a successor, but specifically here it's been an issue, right, I mean, this is the second co CEO to depart in about three years. UM. So right now there are a lot of questions about what this means for you know, a company that looking for a successor eventually, not this second but in the in the future. What's interesting, I guess is now the forward looking question what does this mean for Salesforce and what does it mean for Benniff. Does Mark Benioff become soul CEO again? For example? Currently, Yeah, the planet is that it becomes Soul CEO. A lot of folks have asked him, so do you now look for another successor? He didn't quite answer that question directly, But what we do know this comes at a difficult time for Salesforce. I mean, their growth is at the slowest it's been since I p o UM. They're under pressure from activist investors to improve profitability, and they're experiencing the same difficult market everybody in the industry is. And I mean Bratt was seen as a very even hand, someone that kind of helped the company be more efficient, kind of operate in a good way, and so losing him it's it's a bad time. Most people would say, all right, blame bugs, Brady Forward, thank you. This is a setback for crypto. But there's an inevitability that digital assets are gonna be part of our future, and we're going to make that better. We are going to lean into the opportunity set that we see. There are a lot of cheap assets right now, there'll be a lot of distressed assets. We're going to build for where they think we think the puck will be in two years. That was Galaxy Digital's Mike Novegrats earlier on bloom Doug TV as Sam Bank and Freed's work to create trust in the crypto ecosystem has been hurt for f t X, but also for his rivals let's bring in d Y d X founder and CEO Antonio Giuliano, your derivatives exchange, so its activity triple in the wake of the f t X implosion, right, I guess the question to start with is this people shorting crypto? What is the behavior there? So I think the biggest thing is somewhat of a migration from centralized exchanges like an apt x to decentralized exchanges like d I d X, unit slap and others. At d I d X, we're proud to be one of the leading decentralized exchanges. Decentralized exchanges have become a pretty significant part of the ecosystem over the past few years. Currently over a billion dollars a day is traded on d I d X. That's still a relatively small piece of the pie in terms of the crypto markets overall. But d I d X and other decentralized exchanges there's something that's really new and I think have been growing a lot in the past couple of years, and I think what's recently happened with f t X just underscores the need for what we're building. I think volumes have been growing immensely in your space, right, but it's still a frank a fraction of what's being put through centralized platforms. When does that equation change, I think it's going to take a long time. UM. Right now, decentralized exchanges like d I, d X, unit, SLAP and others are roughly five percent of the fire market when it comes to overall crypto trading volume. And I think the thing we have to remember about decentralized exchanges is they're very new. They were just invented about five years ago or so, and only in the past two years or so have they become a significant portion of the crypto volume at all. I think if you're asking the question, when do you decentralized exchanges become bigger in terms of trading volume than centralized exchanges on crypto, I think it's certainly a longer term play. I like to tell my team UM and everyone else, I think it will be about five to ten years from now, UM, But it's certainly something that we're building towards, and I think it's certainly in the cars for the future. We started this segment talking about Sam Bankman Freed and how he's been speaking publicly. You know, he was trying to build trust in f t X, that trust is damaged. I guess my question is you're seeing more business, right, but why should anyone trust you any more than trusting Sam Bankman Freed. I think the beauty of it is you don't have to trust me um, you can just trust the code. Really, how d Y d X and other decentralized exchanges work is they're based on code, not humans or intermediaries, and that's kind of the magic of what we're building. You can look at our open source smart contracts on ether scan, you can read our audit reports, and you only have to trust those. You don't have to trust me um. I don't even have access to any of the funds, So something like what happened on ft X is literally impossible to happen on the well functioning decentralized exchange like d I d X. One of the reasons that defile more specifically decentralized exchanges a kind of not more mainstream for bigger players is because of the compliance risks. Right, there's always a risk of potential money laundering. How do you circumvent that issue? So we run automated compliance checks on the protocol using a lot of data that exists on the blockchain, and we do this in partnership with third party vendor UM. And I think the thing that's interesting about cryptocurrencies is they're both in some ways more private and in some ways more public than traditional finance. One of the beauties of d I d X and a d centralized exchanges is that everything that's going on is transparent, so you can see the history of funds that every address has used UM, and that's all data that can go into creating a robust compliance solution, and that's one of the things we're also pushing forwards. All right, d Y d X founder and CEO Antonio Giuliano, thank you. Now coming up, Elon Musk's lofty promises with human implant technology goes viral. This is Bloomberg now going viral today. A big promise as well hopes from Elon Musk, set out at Wednesday's newer Link event. Musk says neural Links ready to start putting its brain implant into human patients within six months. The brain computer interface aims are allowing a person with a debilitating condition to communicate via their thoughts. Musque said that Neuralink is also developing implants that can go into the spinal cord to possibly restore movement from paralysis. Bloomberg Sarah McBride covered the event for US. The event exciting a classic Elon Musk on stage affair. That's a good one. What were the big takeaways? Well, for me, I thought it was very interesting that while the rest of us are still trying to just wrap our minds around implants in the brain, he's already thinking about upgrades. He spent a lot of time talking about how you wouldn't want just an iPhone one if you could have the latest version, and they're already thinking about if the first one doesn't work as well, get another one, get a third, get a fourth. I thought that was pretty We should point out I guess that Elon Musk has a track record of stating timelines and goals and predicted dates that he doesn't meet. And actually, in the case of NEURALNK, that's already true. Yes, it is. In fact, when he first started talking about NEURALNK, he thought it would be in humans by now. He gave an interview in two thousand seventeen and said that by one would be in patients. You know, wide adoption, and so that deadline has obviously slept, and each year almost he gives another deadline that slept, which is probably motivating to his staff. There was a demonstration of a monkey essentially that was the recipient of a neuralink implant, and they sort of demonstrated the use of thoughts to translate that thought into a digital signal, and Uh, it's astounding what they can do. The technology seems to be there. The biggest block to it being real appears to be the FDA. Let's say that's fair because other similar less advanced implants have gone into people in the past to treat things like epilepsy and Parkinson's. The FDA obviously really wants to make sure that these are safe, that they won't degrade over time in the brains. So they have a lot of questions and he seemed realistic about that. He did say the FDA had asked some tough questions and that talks were progressing well. Yes, is neural link on its own in this field? I mean other people trying to do something similar right. Actually, there are a lot of companies that are working on different variations of this technology, including many founders from Neuralink who have gone on to start I think they've left the company, and exactly there was a big founding team. Since the company several years old, many of those people have moved on. They've started different companies. One founder, Max hodak as this company Science that relies on the optical nerve for implants. There's another one, Precision Neuroscience in New York. And then there are some that don't have ties to neural links, such as synchrome, which uses your blood vessels together. And am I right in thinking very quickly? Elon Musk said that he would get an implant himself. He said that he also said he would be happy to put one in one of his children. Okay, interesting, Well, this is also the man that said he wouldn't get on a SpaceX rocket until he was sure that he wouldn't die on impact on his way to Mars. Bloomberg Sarah McBride, thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Don't forget to check out our podcasts. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify and also on my Heart. It has been a crazy week so far in the markets. In crypto for Apple, for Elon Musk and his many, many companies. Going into the end of the week, we're expecting some pretty big news out of Twitter on progress with verification. Is Twitter Blue coming? We're not quite sure, but tune in either way. There's where you can find the podcast, and of course you can find us on all of our fantastic social media platforms, from here in San Francisco to New York to around the world. This is Bloomberg Technology. This is Bloomberg

I met Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology, Sam bankman Fried speaks, but questions remain. We discussed the mystery that still surrounds the missing billions at spfs, bankrupt crypto exchange f t X. Then we're turning into a buy now, pay later economy, especially this holiday season as shoppers try to stretch their dollar. Klaners CEO on its fight to reach profitability and how regulation could impact the buy now, pay later industry. And Musk takes a break from Twitter to talk well brain surgery. The world's richest person says Neuralink could start human implants within six months and makes big promises for the tech, including cures for paralysis and blindness. Welcome, fus, let's gonna check on those markets here. It's been Katie Rfield high. Katie High ed Well, it was a pretty muted day overall. Remember we had a big, big rally yesterday after Pal suggested that maybe the FED might start dialing back the pace of rate hikes. Then you look today ahead, the big payrolls print tomorrow. Not too much movement in the SMP five hundred. The NASA one squeaked out a little bit of a game. You did see a big drop in the socks, but again at the big benchmark level, not too much movement, even though we're looking at a pretty big rally in the bond market, those tenure treasure yields dropping by about ten basis points or so. But this muted volatility that we've been seeing in the markets, it's definitely a theme. Let's take a look at the volatility index, the VIX, if you will. It dropped below twenty. It's has a nineteen handle, and as you can see, it's just been grinding tighter and tighter in this very narrow range. So, even though I don't know, it's felt like a pretty volatile year, not too much action at the our market level. But I'm dying to talk about crypto. Let's do that right now and look at bitcoin, because Bitcoin, even amid all of this chaos that we're seeing at the company level in the wake of what we saw with f t X, bitcoin is actually having a pretty good run. It's up about two and a half percent or so over the past five days, and I'm going to say it's a macro asset. It's doing fine, all right, Let's stick with this broader theme, Katie, stay with us. We look at the biggest story in crypto right now, the ongoing story f t X is collapse and Sam Bank and and Freed, who was at one point worth twenty six billion dollars he now claims quote that's worth close to nothing. Those were his words at the New York Times deal Books summit yesterday, and luckily for us, Bloomberg's Annie Massa was in the room and joins us now for more. Did we solve the mystery, Annie, of the missing billions and where they are? I think that would be a little bit too easy. We're far from fully having solved the mystery. Um, So yes your day. SPF did speak at the deal book conference here in New York, and I would say he answered a lot of questions, but we didn't get a lot of answers. He's kind of on an apology tour now, giving his side of the story and saying that he's sorry that he screwed up um and overextended basically, but he he as far as actually offering any explanation of what went wrong. Uh, he hasn't given us much and there was some surprise that he actually turned up, albeit virtually, you know, he joined from the Bahamas. But you were there, there was some protests on site against him appearing at the conference, weren't there, absolutely So, even to get into the venue, which was in Columbus Circle in Manhattan, there were protesters outside, kind of these dueling camps of protesters who were protesting not just SPF and had pamphlets saying that this guy is an embezzler, but they were also protesting others on the on the program as well, which was a little bit of a surprise to see all their name alongside uh Sam Bankman, Freed's, but he was one of the people making an appearance there that they were absolutely protesting. It was a little bit controversial that he appeared at all. He was on this program to appear at the conference long before f t x S blow up, and so some people were surprised that he got the platform to speak. But to their credit, there were some really tough questions and SPF tried to wriggle free but didn't really pull that off. Well, Anny, to your point, it's just amazing that this man keeps talking, and I want to talk about where we could see him speak next, because the Senate did here held hearing today on the f t X collapse. Can we expect to see SPF actually on the floor of Congress at any point? I mean, it's definitely possible. One thing that came up at the conference was, uh, SPF was asked, what do your lawyers make of the fact that you're appearing here today virtually? And he kind of grumb that they didn't really they weren't too happy about it. So he's going about rogue. It would appear, Katie, we were glued to our computer screens, as we always are. SPF not the only speaker, not at least on this topic. Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, what she's been talking about. You know, I'm sorry, I mean, I'll let me take this. I want to talk about Janet Yellen because it's interesting trying to map the contagion. Obviously, when we talk about contagion, there's been a lot of worries about spill over into the broader financial system. But Jannet Yell and she did say yesterday that if you look for the silver linings, basically the good part of this explosion that it hasn't really spilled over into the traditional banking sector, and that point was actually echoed by Michael bar today, of course, the FED Vice Chair for Supervision. He said that the crypto risks to the core financial system, they've been muted so far, So if you're looking for systemic sort of fears here, they really haven't appeared yet. A lot of folks have been going in. Annie. We just heard about the kind of yelling perspective. Larry Fink, for example, what are these voices saying about the f t X situation. Yeah, Larry thinks an interesting one. He was also on the program at the deal but conference yesterday and he mentioned this is known, but black Rock had some exposure to f t X. It had made a twenty four million dollar investment through a fund of funds. So Fink was saying that he thinks that there's definitely a reckoning to come and black Rock is not immune from that, nor are any number of vcs that invested in f t X. Okay Bloombergs, Katie Growfeld and Annie Massa unraveling the unravellable thank you. Meanwhile, Apple is ramping up work on its long awaited mixed reality headset. The company changed the name of the operating system to x r O S. According to sources, that's a nod to extended reality, which encompasses both augmented and virtual reality. The headset would be its first major new product category since the Apple Watch in twenty fifteen. Who had the scoop, of course, bloombergs Mark German, who joins US now from Los Angeles, mark, x R O S. What's the thinking behind it? Yeah, Ed, thank you so much for having me so. Originally, when they've been working on this mixed reality operating system, which, like you said, blend's a R and v R, they were calling it reality O S and r OS, but they've shifted now to a term called x R O S. It's a bit shorter and it's more translatable across many geographies. Right, reality is not a word like iPad or iPhone or watch or TV that's very universal. Reality is not a universal word, so they needed more of a universal term. That's why they're leaning towards x R OS. They've also trademarked x R O S in several countries internationally, and they're fighting for the trademark in the U S as well with an unrelated Chinese company who actually coincidentally filed for the x r O S name back in March. In real terms, this is a market that Meta dominates right to the A A VA headset. What's the timeline for Apple to bring this product to market. It's still a pretty small market, but technically yes, Meta is the dominant player there with their Quest headsets, Sony with their PSVR, their PlayStation VR. There's a new one coming U soon as well. They're a big player there. HTC Lenovo. Samsung has played in a little bit with partnerships with back in the day what was called Facebook. In terms of Apple, is the year of the Apple headset. It's going to be called probably the Reality one or the Reality Pro headset run x r os. It's going to have mixed reality versions of messages, of maps, of FaceTime, games, video watching, TV, plus you name it, live sports streaming in virtual reality in a three D like environment. This is going to be the hot product of This is really gonna be Apple's next big thing. It'll be introduced sometime around the middle of the year. Most likely. It's going to be quite a friendsive. Apple has been looking at price points between two and three thousand dollars, certainly going to be the most advanced mixed reality headset on the market today really going you know, full throttle on both of those technologies. It will have the best cameras on the market for a R, but it will also have the best displays on the market for VR in The real magic of this headset is how Apple is going to be able to blend the two in a way that you haven't seen Meta or others do so far. Alright, three year if the Apple Virtual Reality headset. You heard it here first bloom bogs Mark, German, thank you. Black Friday has been boom time for by Now Pay Later products. It's a financial product that lets you pay in installments, and its use has skyrocketed during the holiday shopping extravaganza. Adobe says that it's use climbed compared to pre a day, and one provider after Pay said it's use actually rose compared to the pre holiday season. But does this all mean we're actually setting ourselves up for a debt headache in the future. They do promise interest free payments only free if you follow the rules, so check the small print, because if when you're a longer term monthly by Now Pay Later plan, you could be up to thirty in terms of interest costs. Maybe if you do a late fee or have to reschedule a payment, that could cost you from one to ten dollars. Ago, roughly eleven of all borrowers using by Now pay Later fell behind schedule in their payments, and if you're years old, that lumber grows to almost h That was, of course, Bloomberg's Caroline hide there on by Now Pay Later trends in the holiday shopping season. We also took to Twitter to ask our audience about this, and while b MPL is gaining ground, it does seem, based on our phole, that the credit card is still king when it comes to the preferred means of spending. I want to bring in Claner CEO Sebastian Shimmy Atkovski for more on this. We're going to talk about your earnings. But first by Now pay Later. I bet you've got a pretty interesting take on the clan of you for buy now pay Later. Well sure, I mean, first of all, we actually think of ourselves as a payment network, a third party payment network, you know, VI sell master Card kind of thing, and so of our volumes debitum. We're obviously associated with credit, but just worth highlighting that fact. With that set, I do think by an alpulator is a better formulated credit product than a credit card, right, So it doesn't push you into revolving, it doesn't. It's not borrowing against all of your spending. It's only for single transactions, and it has a fixed installment period and it's no interest. Right. So we think genuinely speaking, if more consumers ten years from now have debit cards in use by alpulated for occasional purchases versus everyone having credit cards, we are going to see that's a better world. And losses on our portfolios are about below crey card industry standards, so I think that's also kind of some indications of this being in healthier form of credit, but it is still credit, right, let's just be here about her. So, Bacily, you just posted earnings third quarter earnings two one million dollar operating loss and improvement quarter on quarter but year on year, slightly worrying, and yet you still have this goal to push to profitability. How do you re ensure your reassure your investors that you are on that path to profitability? Well, actually, because exactly of that, right, So when um, you know last year Obviously, investor sentiment looked very differently than it does this year, and so everyone was asking us to lean entirely into the future and was rewarding us right and as much as looking back now, you know, if you think about at that point of time the investment trade, you grab it was consuming about two and dilution on an annual basis, so it wasn't crazy from that perspective. But obviously invest sentimis has change. People want you to focus on proftability and we have the benefit here Clona. We were profitable up until eight nineteen when we started investing heavily into the US market, so we know how to make money. Our European business makes about a billion dollars in gross profit annually UM. So we decided, you know, we had to take the top decisions. We actually started being a little bit more conservative on our underwriting already in January, and then increased that conservatism in May in combination with you know, reducing our investment into the long term future. And they presented a plan. So obviously a year year comparison right now isn't really relevant because the plan came into effect in May June, and so far already this quarter versus previous quarter. We reduced our are you know, quary lost by fort so you know our invest is looking at that feel confident, like, Okay. The ambition that we set out when we raised money in May June to reach profitability again somewhere a month by month basis after summer next year is entirely achievable and we're on target to to to be back at that. The US is an interesting one, isn't it. I think you hit thirty one million customers in the US in the third quarter, just gone, what did you learn about this market? And then what does the expansion look like going forward for you? Super super excited by the US. I mean in despite the fact that we've been a little bit you know, we've tied up credit underwriting due to the macro environment. We're also obviously in generally commerced right now, everyone is not really comparing apples and apples is all apple and bananas because you know, a year ago I was in San Francisco and there was nobody in the streets. You know, there was impossible to get a meeting because there was COVID restrictions all over the place. Right, So the comparisons are still not entirely there for you, commus, but we're seeing n growth you know, ye versus last year and seeing tremendous I mean, I just think more and more consumers in the US are dead tired of credit cards of you know, just go to Netflix and watch cred Card Explains, and you see all the dirty tactics that the industry has applied against the best interests of its customers. This is a healthy model. You're seeing that shift, right, and your seven eight percent in your Twitter poll is indicating that. But at the beginning, it's still the beginning. You gotta remember in the Nordics, where were active plan up processes more than half of all e commerce payments, right, So it tells you something on how effective and successful this mall can be once it's what It takes a little bit time to get there, sebasting very quickly. I know you stayed late for us out there in Sweden. Layoffs in this industry, layoffs for you, well, we we obviously unfortunately have to take that tough decision. We did it back in May. It was a little bit earlier than a lot of other companies. And and but because you know, I have the benefit of the noon. This for seventeen years. So I was part of Plana back in the financial press of seven and eight and and we at least try to. Our ambition was to take the tough decision that we unfortunately have to do, to the shift investor sentiment and make those changes. So we we hope that we've done what we what we need to done, and consider if the market Maclaconna environment stats the same, we think that we've done what we need to do. Okay, klan A CEO, Sebasti and Schimyatkovski, thank you. Now. Chip maker TSMC will now offer advanced four nanome to chips when it's new twelve billion dollar plant in Arizona opens in this after US customers like Apple pushed the company to do so. According to sources, Bloomberg's Debbie We reported that Bloomberg scoop Debbie, what will they be doing them when they open this plant? So, like you said, add the t SMC will well announced next Tuesday that they will start making an advanced for nelometer chips in Arizon now when the plan comes in light in two and this is an upgrade from their original plan. After our customers, including an Apple, uh A and d and and media urged them to make more advanced chips in America. So, uh this comes at the time that trade tensions and also a supply chain disruptions over the past care years have sort of pushed the balmuzation to help bring more chip manufacturing back to America and to make sure that the more advanced chips are made on US oil tabby. My understanding is t SMC are gonna be holding a pretty big party when they unveil this plan, and that the President will be going. What are the details? Yes, So President Biden and Secretary of Commerce Jena Ramondo will be attending the so called toy in ceremony next two day in Arizona. And this ceremony is to celebrate a key construction milestone or for t smc s first advanced plant in the US, and in attendance will also be uh ND CEO or Lisa su and and media chief Jensen Huang and Apple's chief executive Tim Cook. Uh is also a schedule to attend the event next Tuesday. For nanometer technology, let's dig into the technology. Why do we care if it's five nanometer or four nanime? So why is that important for t SMCS customers. Actually, it is also whatha important for the administration because with the fifty Building and Chips Act, the administration is hoping that the latest, the most cutting edge chips will be made in the US eventually. So right now the US is sort of like falling behind Asia one generational, two generations at least when it comes to a chip manifacting technologies. But the Bandministration in the hope to uh prevent future disruptions and to make sure that the America will stay ahead in this competition with China and the technology FUNCD So eventually, I mean, what kind of technology is that the chip makers will be able to offer us? Soil is so from uh most importance for the government, not and not just for American companies. This whole story is about expanding manufacturing capacity in the United States right on shoring. Who are some of the biggest names in the world of semiconductors that rely on t SMC. So companies that rely on t SMC in the US include the Apple and d N Media and also a Qualcom and Alison Timer Intel Whila it makes its own chips. Also, what relies on our t SMC on some of its production, so t s m C actually will also announced next Tuesday that it is committed to build a second plant in Arizona to make even more advanced three nelometer chips to help American companies. Okay, Bloomberg's deady, we're great reporting, Thank you very much. Time now for talking tech layoffs in the tech industry still in the headline. Serious XM is the latest to announce job cuts in response to faltering revenue growth. Sales at Serious grew three point seven in the third quarter, but analysts now forecast more modest growth, just one percent in the current period. All this comes as consultancy firm Challenger Gray and Christmas says. While job cuts are announced across the US, the tech sector was hit particularly hard. Of the nearly seventy seven thousand jobs that announced to be cut in November, around fifty three thousand came from tech no surprise therefore, the West Coast was hit especially hard. But that's not just in the US. This is a global story. Over in Ireland, for instance, tech companies ranging from Twitter, Intel, Stripe or Meta have all been acting jobs. Such layoffs, of course, have raised concerns with the European Commission about tech companies and what they plan to do next, particularly those that are caught up in the narrative around privacy rule. Definitely one to watch. Go forward now stick with us. Coming up on the show, we're going to speak to the CFO of Visa. Important spending, spending, spending, credit cards. This is not one that you're going to want to miss. Why holiday season and we want to lend into what's going on that's fast and probably the Visa CFO. Coming up next, this is Bloomberg Welcome back to Bloomberg Chnology. I'm at loveloaw in San Francisco. Now. Online spending is up nine percent this year compared to one and Cyber Monday's record eleven point three billion dollars in sales per Adobe show signs the consumer remains resilient in an economic downturn. I've got just the guests for this. Let's discussed with Visa's chief financial officer of Vascent, probably Vass and thank you for coming on the program. It's good to see you. Your assessment. Where do things stand? You know we're entering kind of the backstages of this holiday shopping period. What signs of visa seeing about consumer activity. Thanks. Yeah, Yes, you use the word resilient, and I'd say that's the that's probably the best adjective to use to describe the state of the U. S consumer. You know, you've seen consumer spending state remarkably stable all year. You know, we like to compare things to pandemic to get a clean look, and it's amazing how stable spending. Husband, we're about forty five forty ahead almost on a day by day, week by week basis, And in fact, we just released numbers through the twenty one November, and in the first three weeks in November, just leading into the holiday period, we were up roughly that from up about nine over last year, and then holiday week twenty one to seven was roughly in line on a ear over year basis, also high single digits. We can't yet compared to because Thanksgiving was later in so remarkable stability, remarkable resilience. I think that's the best way to describe the US consumer right now. We were a bit concerned with credit. We're talking out of course, about the the impact of higher rates on the consumer, and we're also talking a lot about buy now, pay later. Do you have any sense of the split on consumer spend between debit credit. What risks are the consumer taking right now? Well, you know, it's been roughly the same most of the year. Debt has been very strong relative to even in November, devitt was up almost fifty over which is well about the pre COVID trend line. So debt has been very resilient and credit has come back in a very nice way. Credit was up thirty percent or thirty eight percent over twenty nineteen. Both were up high single digits over last year. So essentially, you know, there's no sense of any consumer stress on the credit side. Um debt has real stayed resilient, even has credit has come back. All in all, you know, consumer spending has stayed generally the same. It's changed a lot below the surface. People are buying different things. People have adjusted to inflation and so on. People are buying more services than goods, more experiences, you know, than products, and there have been some changes in what people buy as a result of inflation. But the aggregate level of spending, whether it's debit or credit, remains very healthy. We maybe don't think of Visa as a technology company, but if you think about it, visas very much a technology company. My understanding is you have a new boss, how is that going? What is what is the three version of VISA look like? Well, hopefully more of the same. We've had a good run, um. You know, we we had a good year in fiscal year twenty two. Our revenues were up well over twenty our profits are up well over You know, Ryan McNerney, our new CEO, has been here a decade. He and I I've worked together for a very long time. We're all very sad to see our level was beloved within the company. UM, but this was all very planned and expected. UM, and our strategy remains the same. We have great momentum on multiple fronts. We have tremendous growth in our core consumer payments business. We have some significant opportunities in two new vectors of growth, what we call new flows that gets us into new use cases, UM, you know, like person to person peter p like cross border remittances, like businesses paying consumers, as well as in value added services. So I think you should expect to see more to the same, and we feel very good about you know what's ahead of us and your new boss. Um, you should have a mom one of these days and and and see for yourself. Ryan is uh, you know, a great guy. He is a you know, smart strategic He's deeply knowledgeable about the business. He's very well known to our clients around the world. Um, I think you know we won't miss a beat, and of course Ryan will set a new agenda for the future. I've got to ask you about f t X and the historic relate and ship between Visa and f t X. You had a debit card partnership. My understanding is you've severed all ties with f t X in any affiliation with sanbanger Free and f t X. But could you explain to us where that stands to clarify, But also how did f t X get to that stage of relationship with you given what we know now? Well, you know, we we do business with a lot of partners. We do the best we can to make sure we understand, you know, how they're doing business. Like a lot of other people looking at ft X from the outside, we certainly didn't have the knowledge we now have about what was going on. You know, our viewers, we don't have a position on cryptocurrencies per se, whether they're a good thing or a bad thing or how much bitcoin should be worth or not. Our job is to facilitate what people want to buy, as long as it's legal and as long as it's in compliance with the regulation, and all indications were that fd X was in compliance and all regulations. Buying bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is legal. We will enable people to do things that are both legal and in compliance and regulations. Clearly, we are as surprised as everybody else has been about what was really going on in ft X. We no longer have a relationship with them. We really had no financial exposure to them. We were primarily enabling people to buy and sell uh, you know, cryptocurrencies if they wanted to, you know, buy things on ft X, much alike we would do with any other exchange. UM. In any case, you know, clearly this has been an eye opener for everybody. We will all step up our diligence uh and and hopefully there will be further regular tary actions that make this all safer for all involved. Quickly, bass and broadly, how has the crypto contagion or what we've seen in the markets impacted visa well, our exposure to cryptos rather limited. Um, you know, we have more sleep facilitators for people wanting to buy cryptocurrencies, and that's a small part of our business. Uh. You know, we have you know, some amount of card issuance by crypto partners, some of whom may not survive, some of whom may may slow down some of their activities. So it might slow things down in general. But all in all, our exposure directly to the whole crypto I guess economy is fairly limited. Now. We are long term, you know, remain of the view that blockchain is a significant technology. There will be things happening. We will remain engaged with blockchains, with stable coins like us DC and others. Or we will obviously monitor the situation very closely, but you know, I wouldn't say it has much impact on us UM at this point in time. Visus CFO best and probably thank you very much. Thank you. Meanwhile, shares of Salesforce down Thursday after the company gave and now look, the analyst says, reflects a weak economic environment. It also announced the exit of co CEO Brett Taylor next month, leaving Mark Benioff at the helm. Blame Bug's Brady Force covers sales Force. Brody A pretty simple question to start. This is the second time a co CEO has left Sales Force in recent history. Why that's the million dollar question right now? Right, I mean, Mirke Berniop has been in control of this company for a very long time. There have been multiple moments where it appears that he had found his successor. He has had multiple mentees that were very public, very personal, um, and they have gone. I mean, it's difficult to run a company, it's difficult to find a successor, but specifically here it's been an issue, right, I mean, this is the second co CEO to depart in about three years. UM. So right now there are a lot of questions about what this means for you know, a company that looking for a successor eventually, not this second but in the in the future. What's interesting, I guess is now the forward looking question what does this mean for Salesforce and what does it mean for Benniff. Does Mark Benioff become soul CEO again? For example? Currently, Yeah, the planet is that it becomes Soul CEO. A lot of folks have asked him, so do you now look for another successor? He didn't quite answer that question directly, But what we do know this comes at a difficult time for Salesforce. I mean, their growth is at the slowest it's been since I p o UM. They're under pressure from activist investors to improve profitability, and they're experiencing the same difficult market everybody in the industry is. And I mean Bratt was seen as a very even hand, someone that kind of helped the company be more efficient, kind of operate in a good way, and so losing him it's it's a bad time. Most people would say, all right, blame bugs, Brady Forward, thank you. This is a setback for crypto. But there's an inevitability that digital assets are gonna be part of our future, and we're going to make that better. We are going to lean into the opportunity set that we see. There are a lot of cheap assets right now, there'll be a lot of distressed assets. We're going to build for where they think we think the puck will be in two years. That was Galaxy Digital's Mike Novegrats earlier on bloom Doug TV as Sam Bank and Freed's work to create trust in the crypto ecosystem has been hurt for f t X, but also for his rivals let's bring in d Y d X founder and CEO Antonio Giuliano, your derivatives exchange, so its activity triple in the wake of the f t X implosion, right, I guess the question to start with is this people shorting crypto? What is the behavior there? So I think the biggest thing is somewhat of a migration from centralized exchanges like an apt x to decentralized exchanges like d I d X, unit slap and others. At d I d X, we're proud to be one of the leading decentralized exchanges. Decentralized exchanges have become a pretty significant part of the ecosystem over the past few years. Currently over a billion dollars a day is traded on d I d X. That's still a relatively small piece of the pie in terms of the crypto markets overall. But d I d X and other decentralized exchanges there's something that's really new and I think have been growing a lot in the past couple of years, and I think what's recently happened with f t X just underscores the need for what we're building. I think volumes have been growing immensely in your space, right, but it's still a frank a fraction of what's being put through centralized platforms. When does that equation change, I think it's going to take a long time. UM. Right now, decentralized exchanges like d I, d X, unit, SLAP and others are roughly five percent of the fire market when it comes to overall crypto trading volume. And I think the thing we have to remember about decentralized exchanges is they're very new. They were just invented about five years ago or so, and only in the past two years or so have they become a significant portion of the crypto volume at all. I think if you're asking the question, when do you decentralized exchanges become bigger in terms of trading volume than centralized exchanges on crypto, I think it's certainly a longer term play. I like to tell my team UM and everyone else, I think it will be about five to ten years from now, UM, But it's certainly something that we're building towards, and I think it's certainly in the cars for the future. We started this segment talking about Sam Bankman Freed and how he's been speaking publicly. You know, he was trying to build trust in f t X, that trust is damaged. I guess my question is you're seeing more business, right, but why should anyone trust you any more than trusting Sam Bankman Freed. I think the beauty of it is you don't have to trust me um, you can just trust the code. Really, how d Y d X and other decentralized exchanges work is they're based on code, not humans or intermediaries, and that's kind of the magic of what we're building. You can look at our open source smart contracts on ether scan, you can read our audit reports, and you only have to trust those. You don't have to trust me um. I don't even have access to any of the funds, So something like what happened on ft X is literally impossible to happen on the well functioning decentralized exchange like d I d X. One of the reasons that defile more specifically decentralized exchanges a kind of not more mainstream for bigger players is because of the compliance risks. Right, there's always a risk of potential money laundering. How do you circumvent that issue? So we run automated compliance checks on the protocol using a lot of data that exists on the blockchain, and we do this in partnership with third party vendor UM. And I think the thing that's interesting about cryptocurrencies is they're both in some ways more private and in some ways more public than traditional finance. One of the beauties of d I d X and a d centralized exchanges is that everything that's going on is transparent, so you can see the history of funds that every address has used UM, and that's all data that can go into creating a robust compliance solution, and that's one of the things we're also pushing forwards. All right, d Y d X founder and CEO Antonio Giuliano, thank you. Now coming up, Elon Musk's lofty promises with human implant technology goes viral. This is Bloomberg now going viral today. A big promise as well hopes from Elon Musk, set out at Wednesday's newer Link event. Musk says neural Links ready to start putting its brain implant into human patients within six months. The brain computer interface aims are allowing a person with a debilitating condition to communicate via their thoughts. Musque said that Neuralink is also developing implants that can go into the spinal cord to possibly restore movement from paralysis. Bloomberg Sarah McBride covered the event for US. The event exciting a classic Elon Musk on stage affair. That's a good one. What were the big takeaways? Well, for me, I thought it was very interesting that while the rest of us are still trying to just wrap our minds around implants in the brain, he's already thinking about upgrades. He spent a lot of time talking about how you wouldn't want just an iPhone one if you could have the latest version, and they're already thinking about if the first one doesn't work as well, get another one, get a third, get a fourth. I thought that was pretty We should point out I guess that Elon Musk has a track record of stating timelines and goals and predicted dates that he doesn't meet. And actually, in the case of NEURALNK, that's already true. Yes, it is. In fact, when he first started talking about NEURALNK, he thought it would be in humans by now. He gave an interview in two thousand seventeen and said that by one would be in patients. You know, wide adoption, and so that deadline has obviously slept, and each year almost he gives another deadline that slept, which is probably motivating to his staff. There was a demonstration of a monkey essentially that was the recipient of a neuralink implant, and they sort of demonstrated the use of thoughts to translate that thought into a digital signal, and Uh, it's astounding what they can do. The technology seems to be there. The biggest block to it being real appears to be the FDA. Let's say that's fair because other similar less advanced implants have gone into people in the past to treat things like epilepsy and Parkinson's. The FDA obviously really wants to make sure that these are safe, that they won't degrade over time in the brains. So they have a lot of questions and he seemed realistic about that. He did say the FDA had asked some tough questions and that talks were progressing well. Yes, is neural link on its own in this field? I mean other people trying to do something similar right. Actually, there are a lot of companies that are working on different variations of this technology, including many founders from Neuralink who have gone on to start I think they've left the company, and exactly there was a big founding team. Since the company several years old, many of those people have moved on. They've started different companies. One founder, Max hodak as this company Science that relies on the optical nerve for implants. There's another one, Precision Neuroscience in New York. And then there are some that don't have ties to neural links, such as synchrome, which uses your blood vessels together. And am I right in thinking very quickly? Elon Musk said that he would get an implant himself. He said that he also said he would be happy to put one in one of his children. Okay, interesting, Well, this is also the man that said he wouldn't get on a SpaceX rocket until he was sure that he wouldn't die on impact on his way to Mars. Bloomberg Sarah McBride, thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Don't forget to check out our podcasts. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify and also on my Heart. It has been a crazy week so far in the markets. In crypto for Apple, for Elon Musk and his many, many companies. Going into the end of the week, we're expecting some pretty big news out of Twitter on progress with verification. Is Twitter Blue coming? We're not quite sure, but tune in either way. There's where you can find the podcast, and of course you can find us on all of our fantastic social media platforms, from here in San Francisco to New York to around the world. This is Bloomberg Technology. This is Bloomberg