Twitter's Edit Button and Google's Student Data Use

Published Sep 1, 2022, 10:51 PM

Bloomberg's Emily Chang finds out why the news of Twitter's edit button for paying users fell flat on Wall Street. Plus, a look at Google's use of data from free education tools. 

From the heart of where innovation, money and power collive in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily jay I rememberly Jack in San Francisco, and this is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up in the next hour. Twitter is finally about to launch that edit button. To edit or not to edit has been one of the longest running debates in Twitter's history. Will discuss how the timing could effect it's tussle with Elon musk plaus that millions of students across the country are using free at tech tools, but all that data is at risk. As part of our ongoing series, we will chat with the Attorney General of New Mexico who's taken on Google over student privacy and should you book crypto when you're retired Mint account. We'll talk to the head of the Federal Retirement Board that oversees eight hundred billion dollars in assets. Twitter launching that at a button for the first time after years and years and years of debate. Here to tell us more bloom works Kurt Wagner. So, Kurt, this is only a test right now for paying user subscribers to Twitter Blue. How will it work? Yeah, so you get a thirty minute timer, right, so once you post your tweet, you'll have thirty minutes to go in make edits to it, uh and change before it gets kind of locked more permanently. Now, other users will be able to see a label that shows that that tweet has been edited, that we be able to click that to see kind of prior versions, right, so there's a bit of a track record of where that tweet has been. And to your point, Emily, it's only going to be available on Twitter Blue, so you will have to currently be a subscriber to Twitter in order to get access to this when they roll it out at the beginning. That could change in the future, of course, but they want to start it with the small group of people, and it kind of makes sense to start with the people who are the most die hard Twitter users, right, and those are the people willing to pay The big question is is this going to change the nature of Twitter, the dynamic of Twitter? What do you think? Well, I'm waiting for when it first rolls out to have that moment that first week right where it's like people are going to be playing jokes and and someone's inevitably gonna, you know, send one version of a tweet and change it twenty nine minutes later to something offensive, right, and everyone's gonna look silly. I do wonder though, in the long term if that's gonna die down, right, Maybe we'll have that for a week or two, But eventually, you know, that thirty minute timer really isn't that long, right, It is long enough to fix the type of It is long enough to change a link. Um in a case of very very breaking news, it could be a big deal, but I think for most stuff on Twitter, you know, it's probably not going to have a dramatic effect. Now that being said, we are heading right into an election, right, and this is a really weird time to want to try edited tweets because is all we're doing is asking for someone to come forward say something about election results or voting or whatever, and that goes viral and suddenly we're all going, why did we do this? Why do we have edited tweets? Well, exactly does this make it harder to moderate misinformation disinformation? And what is Twitter's plan, especially heading into the mid terms, to be on top of all of this. Well, we don't know about their plan for edited tweets again, just announced today it's rolling out soon, so we don't really have a good plan for how or if they're going to fact check that stuff. But Twitter across the board has always been a little bit more hands off on fact checking than than Facebook, for example, which has tons of outside fact checking partners. Twitter has more focused on specific topics that they fact check, you know, like election results, and only from accounts that are very high profile. That's why President Donald Trump's account was constantly flagged, because they kind of had that in their crosshairs there, right, And so I don't know what this is going to do, but I do think it poses an opportunity for people who might want to stir up controversy or to cause trouble. Let to pay attention to that. But again, you know, because it's it's just being tested with this small group of people for now, maybe we can avoid sort of a big issue ahead of the election. Maybe the roll out to more people will happen after that. Well, Elon must definitely starred the pot when he did that poll at the beginning of this whole Sauda asking users if they wanted it at it button or not. What do you make of the timing of this doesn't impact. What's the ongoing feud between Twitter and Elon Musk While Twitter has bent over backwards to try and make sure that we all know this was in the works before Ellen showed up on the scene. Right, So Twitter actually tweeted We're launching an edupon on April one, on April Fool's Day. Everyone ignored it because we just thought this was like a joke from the company. It turns out that was the beginning of what they had planned for this long running kind of thing. They were going to tweet it out on April one. They were gonna unveil it later. Ellen showed up and kind of messed that whole thing up. But they want everyone to know they started work this before the year before, so late last year. And that's important, right, because they do not want to create a perception where Elon is directing the product strategy at this company. Not only did they want to avoid that back when they thought he was going to be the owner, but now they really want to avoid that when the two sides are fighting, uh it is legal battle, so you know, the timing is interesting. I have to imagine that Elon maybe push the timeline quicker for Twitter, but I don't think that he's the reason that they ultimately decided to build this thing, all right, Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, thank you for that update. Very anxious to see how the said button rolls out. Despite VCS rad raising record amounts of capital, start up fundraising is slowing down as fears of recession loom. Let's bring an Index Venture's partner Mike Fulby for his read on what's happening in the private markets. Might good to have you here in the studio, and obviously you've seen a lot of psych is in a lot of ups and downs. Where are we in this one? Emily, great to be back. Yeah. I think we're probably somewhere midstream between the downturn and somewhat of a correction and valuations, and hopefully sometime next year things will come back, but we're right in the middle of it. I would say, what does a hawk is fed mean for VC? It's tricky, right. Most of the companies that we fund lose money for a long period of time and then make money somewhere towards the end of the life. And when you have money making or positive earnings at the end of the life and Hi Hi interest rates, You discount that back to today and the value drops a lot, and that's really what's causing the downturn in all of the larger tech companies and even the private ones. So I think a hawk is fed means that we're going to be sitting in this stuff for a little while until they get inflation under control. We've had guests on the show who say they're gonna be millions of layoffs, millions of layoffs in tech, that this downturn is going to last two to three years, that this isn't going to be just a blip. How does that square with what you're projecting. I'm not convinced by that. I think when you actually look at the US economy in general, it's in a pretty healthy state. I think there are something like two job openings for every unemployed person in the US. What we look at B two B businesses in our portfolio. I wouldn't say that they're they're destroying their goals or records, but they're doing reasonably well. So overall, the economy is not in that bad as shape. Banks are in a good condition, good balance sheets and so forth. So we definitely got a little out of whack in terms of valuations and where their market was, and the consumer is definitely being a little careful with their wallet. But overall, I think that we're in a in a decent spot and I think the recovery is around the corner somewhere now. Going into this VCS raised a record amount of money. There's a lot of money in those war chests. Is it is? It hasn't been hard to find places to put the dry powder. I'd say is a very slow summer. I got a lot of text messages from my VC friends while vacationing in Italy, but but but not calling anyone out specifically, but okay, um, it's been a slow summer. I would say that we're seeing some green shoots. Uh, you know. One of the things that happened over the last couple of years. There's a lot of companies that have been seated, and those companies are coming up for Series A investments. We're seeing some growth companies get term sheets. Maybe they're not straight equity and they have some preferred structure or some general structure on these term sheets, but we're seeing it come out. And I think generally speaking, you're right venture capitalists that have capital to deploy aren't going to twiddle their sums for for the next two years, So I think you're going to see some movement. Does that mean that you know what happens for vcs? Then as the cycle progresses, will vcs not raise as much money over the next couple of years as they have over the last couple of years. I think that's the case. I think that the LPs that have invested in our funds have been drained pretty hard over the last couple of years because the I P O market is closed and there hasn't been a lot of M and A. They're not getting money back, and so they're gonna be reticent to give us more funds. And I think we're going to generally slow the pace down until we start to see the exit market open up again be able to pump some money back to the LP so they can come back our way. Now, it's interesting, we actually talked to the CEO of Pilot, which is a company that Index has invested in. They provide CFO services to startups, and they've done some surveys of their companies and found it doesn't necessarily look as dire as it sounds. Take a listen to what he had to say, two things are happening. The first is that there's definitely paying from the downturn, but I think it's more specifically and more pronacatlee felt by companies that really have nice to have offerings as opposed to really need to have offerings. And the second is, I think the dynamics and kind of the late stage in public markets are very different than what you see in the earlier kind of mid stage ecosystem for startups. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate. Um. You know, early stage, late stage startups over the last couple of years have raised a lot of money, and most of the particularly good companies have quite a strong balance sheet, so they don't need the capital. They're gonna wait for the markets to come back, They're going to paste themselves and so forth. I think the earlier stage companies, look, they just don't have as much money in their war chest. They're gonna have to come back to market. So I think we're going to see opportunities in the earlier stages. And overall, I think that there have been certain sectors in our industry where there's been heavy hype, which a ton of capital has gone into and a ton of capital will run away from those, whereas more kind of the steady, well known sectors I think will continue to perform as expected. What do you make of andres in horrow? It's writing its biggest check ever to Adam Newman. Look, you know Mark and Ben have been contrarian many times in the past. Uh, they're contrarian this time. I'd say, you know, the average polling in the industry would indicate that this wasn't the best idea ever. But you know, we'll wait and see the guy as a special guy in every sense of the word, and you know it's something that they wanted to do. We'll see. So you have and Mark Andreason doing that. On one ham, you've got Benchmark staying strong. On the other, where is index? What is your strategy in a downturn? Yeah, look, I think it's interesting. What I find interesting about this industry is that if you went back and listen to what people saying six nine months ago, you know, there was a sense of like all the industry is completely changing. You're going to go to these hedge funds that deploy capital at high velocity. They're gonna use the tech market like some kind of um you know, index market and no pun intended, and that all these smaller, more niche firms will go away, and it's turned out to not be the case. I think that the founders and entrepreneurs that take our capital are very diverse. They look for different things from their investors. Some look for folks like Benchmark, some looks for folks like and reason. Our view, we kind of think of it as curated growth. So index. The last fund we raised in totality was a little over three billion dollars in today's market, that's reasonably large, but definitely not the largest. I think that that gives us enough dry powder, enough capabilities as a firm to offer the services that our founders want. But we're not so small that we have to be nichee. So somewhere in the middle of the road is our view. If there is a bubble in the market private markets, where is that bubble? Is it crypto? Is it quote unquote web three. I don't know that there's necessarily a bubble right now. Honestly, Emily, I think that things have generally well corrected. There was a bubble in crypto, for sure. I think it's long gone yesterday, I think it was reported that n f T s on open open sea. We're down and in three or four months, so clearly the heir has come out of that one, and I think companies are trading at somewhere near realistic values right now in the public markets. You know, a lot of what I would say is a lot of the growth companies um that our growth stage right now are still holding on to the valuations that they got from the tail end of and those are probably still inflated, but they're not going to raise their next round until they can catch back up to those numbers. So you know, we're not going to see that the air come out of that balloon frou. And what's your advice on those companies that were planning to go public this year? Yeah, so there's you have two varieties, right You have the ones that don't need capital, in which case you just say, hunker down, grow your business and wait for the market to come back at some point it will. And you have the ones that need capital and if they if they need capital, they're going to go have to raise it. And you know, right now what the market is coming back with is debt. It's a structured equity, it's convertible notes and so forth. It's hard to come by a term sheet that is clean equity. You've got to figure out what the best option is, select that one and go for it. But if you need the capital, you've got to raise it, and it's out there. It's not that it's impossible to raise money right now. All right, Mike, Fully, Index Venture is good to have you back, Thank you for stopping by in person. In the world of cybersecurity, CrowdStrike reporting quarterly results that beat expectations. This week, shares fell though after an outlook scene conservative by some investors. Let's talk about all that and more with Crowdstrikes CEO George Kurtz. So, George, and light of the numbers, what do you make of the reaction with the shares here? Well, I think you have to look at the macro environment and just what's happening with interest rates and a lot of the uncertainties. So um, those are factors that are out of our control. And as I've said many times on your program over the years, you know, we can only focus on what we can control, and we posted stellar numbers. We've noted that we were the second fastest company ever to reach two billion dollars of air are and if you look at the growth rates, even you know our rule of fort it's just astounding at the scale that we're operating at. Is cybersecurity recession proof or could it be on to a threat? If companies, you know, they're deciding where to pull back and cyber is one of them, I think it's going to be difficult for companies to really pull back on cyber. They might delay some purchases, there might be more scrutiny, which is one of the things that we talked about. But at the end of the day, there's just too many drivers at the board level all the way down. Cyber is the number one risk that most boards are talking about. And then when you combine that with some of the regulatory pressures, like the SEC is coming out with some guidance around disclosing breaches, disclosing if you had to pay ransom payments. So at the end of the day, it's something that it's going to be very difficult to make it a nice to have and it really is a must have for most companies, and I think that's what we've seen so um, you know, we'll see how it plays out over time. That's our thesis, and I think we're in a great spot to consolidate a lot of spend in our in our sector. Let's talk about your assessment of the threat landscape right now. How concerned are you about China specifically upping you know, the groundwork for launching more cyber attacks against the West, given rising tensions with Taiwan. You always have to be concerned about China and other nations states. But China certainly is prolific in its attacks. It has great capabilities and it continues to be active in many, many different areas. So as as we've seen before, as the geo political environment changes, uh, the attacks change. They may focus on different groups and gathering information. Uh, they may target uh you know, chip manufacturers, etcetera. I mean these are these are all areas that are of concern to many, uh, you know, executives in the marketplace right now, and when the geopolitical winds change, you have to be prepared to make sure that your systems are protected. Chris Crabs, the former director of SISA, suggested these attacks would come on the supply chain. I mean you mentioned chip pack trees. Um you know how vulnerable do you think the supply chain is well. Supply chain attacks are a grave concern for many companies, and getting back to the board of directors, it's it is a huge risk. We've seen some of the large attacks over the past couple of years, and whether that's in the software supply chain or even uh you know, there's software that goes into the code of these chips. Obviously that can be problematic, so UM it's one of those areas. It's very very difficult to identify these. They do have a long tail and it's something that companies and governments need to be really vigilant about. We're preparing for a suite of new regulations coming from CSA, the f TC, the f d A, the Department of Energy and Transportation. What are you specifically preparing for it when it comes to regulation, well, I think you have to look at the regulation itself, and there's a lot of regulation that's that has the best of intentions, but then you have to look at how these are implemented and what's important. UM and we do a lot of breach responses. We're you know, one of the top two breach response firms in the world. UM and in the middle of a breach. It's it's very difficult to be talking about all the disclosures. So I think it's really important to understand the time frame and not to be able to compromise an investigation. And then what are the parameters around that, What is material, what are what should be disclosed, and how do you disclose it. I think there's a lot of complexity around that. We're at the table trying to work through that with many organizations. But what's important is that people have visibility because you can't just say you didn't know about it, right. You have to take measures to be able to instrument your systems like what CrowdStrike does, to be able to identify and prevent against these potential breaches. All right, George Kurt's CEO of crowd Strike. Always good to have George, Thank you for stopping by. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily changing San Francisco, continuing our coverage of education technology this week. New Mexico has been at the forefront of child privacy. The state sued Google just before the pandemic over the collection of personal information about children without proper parental consent. New Mexico school districts, especially those with fewer resources, use Google's free education tools, but the state says the company improperly used student data. Joining us now one of the most proactive prosecutors in the country when it comes to kids, tech and privacy. Hector Balderis, Attorney General of New Mexico. Attorney General Balderis, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be with you. So this suit back in of Google, which was before the pandemic even hit. At that time, you you said your investigation revealed that Google tracks children across the Internet, across devices in their homes, and well outside the educational sphere, all without obtaining verifile parental consent. What concerns you so much about what you saw that you believed Google was doing with student data. Well, there are three areas of risk that was very concerned with. And the reason I did bring the investigation in the lawsuit first is that our nation, our congress, members of law enforcement have been primarily primarily asleep at the wheel when it comes to data privacy. In other words, banks are not protected, our personal information as adults is not very well protected. And so I already knew the environment was very difficult Number two, Uh, these are children and miners, and so when we already have an inadequate environment that exploits consumerism and privacy, I was very concerned that from a safety perspective, these technology companies were tracking, marketing and really monetizing on the backs of children. And then finally, number three, it's a violation of federal law. There was already a prohibition built into the law that says that technology companies cannot market and profitier and gather data of miners without the consent of parents. And so it was really three tiers of risk. And ultimately I thought it was very important to to try to change uh this course because these miners are so innocent, small, and really unaware that this practice is being imposed on them because they just want to play video games or go to school and use this technology in a positive way. You settled with Google back in December. The company agreed to set up a privacy and online safety initiative for kids in New Mexico. Some folks looked at this as a victory for Google. Would you have wanted more, you know, absolutely, But I was strategic. I'm one of the few ages in the country that understands that this is a risk. Most members in Congress are barely struggling to use their iPhones as we speak today, and so our nation is very very behind, decades and generations behind and really holding tech technology companies accountable. So I was more focused, not necessarily the monetary victory. I was trying to change the way Google does business and Google does business and schools, and we were successful in that. But the ultimate mission of this lawsuit is also to be a learning tool for other attorneys general, other consumer advocates to make sure that we keep an eye on our schools and make sure that we safeguard technology and how we use those uh those services in our school districts. Well, now, because of the pandemic, you've got more tech, more computers, more software, more apps in the classroom and being used outside the classroom. What are your biggest concerns now two years later, Well, I think there has to be a shift at some point both in our school districts. There has to be a greater emphasis on privacy and security. We're starting to now see hacking and basically these type of scams that are really bringing pain and hardship to our school districts. Even schools are having trouble safeguarding their own data. So I'm hopefully going to see the conversation shift to more safety based. And then secondly, we have to have a moral debate in the halls of Congress and in our legislative bodies, not just about protecting data and protecting school children, but really who should own this data. I don't think it's fair that we are allowed to track adults and children utilizing these products, and then technology companies are the ones that profit here and monetize this behavior. I think there's gonna be a longer conversation about really imposing more safeguards. But is it fair shouldn't I make a dollar off of the data that I generate using these technology services. I think that's a debate that has to go on both in our school districts but also in the halls of Congress. How much of a problem do you think it is that a lot of this stuff is free, free for these schools, kids, parents to use. And when it's free, um, you've got more under resourced districts utilizing it. Well. I'm a big proponent in technology. I think technology is a great equalizer in terms of education outcomes, But we are not regulating these companies, and we are not regulating safety and these safeguards within these technology products. And so I think that when they say these things are free, we really need a question. Why is it that that is the nature of the deal. Nothing is free. Um, what we're signing up as parents and as educator and as lawmakers is his technology primarily benefits students. But what the Google is not telling our teachers and our administrators is that they're tracking valuable day behavioral data of these students and then where they're using it to sell this valuable data to other companies. And I think I think that's the immoral question that needs to happen. You know, when I'm an old man, so when I used to play Atari and I used to play video games, my expectation was not that they were tracking me and then going to go sell my data to other companies. That's a question that I think lawmakers have failed to grapple. So, you know, easy to say there needs to be regulation, but the bigger question is how I'm curious what you think of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which is waiting for a vote in the Senate. You mentioned earlier that a lot of lawmakers are just having trouble trying to figure out how to use their iPhones. Do you agree with how lawmakers are looking at regulating big tech right now? Is there agreement between Congress and prosecutors across the country? You know there is not. Um there's consequential debates always going on between prosecutors and members of Congress who should own the data, who regulates, and who really should profit? I ultimately think that this all these complex questions need to be shifted over to a much simpler question. We are a nation where we all own property. I own my automobile, I own my home, I pay my taxes. The real question technology companies and member of Congress and prosecutors need to to really come to the table with is should I um make a profit or be monetizing my own data? Why is it that I'm using these technology services but I don't benefit in any way financially? We are a great capitalist system. I think a lot will be worked out once we figure out who really should own the data. Right now, we don't own any of the data that these companies are securing, and I think ultimately that capitalist model will be one that really is what it's going to set the own for regulation and policy in the future. So back to education, post pandemic, big concern about learning laws and the learning gap over the last couple of years. A new report shows that there was the largest ever drop in reading score since the first ever drop in math. New Mexico, in particular, according to US News and World Report, is in last place for education quality. Why do you think that is, what can be done about it? And how do you think tech can hopefully help? You know, traditionally there's been a disconnect with educators have not been really at this innovation conversation with technology. We've been consumers of it, we've been fans, and we utilize these products, but we really need to redesign education where technology is a tool, but ultimately it's used as a great equalizer. And I have hope that technology can improve reading, math, science scores. But there's been a disconnect. UM. Technology companies are driven by profits and innovation. They've really not been at the forefront in terms of the design of educational services and curriculum and so UM I think, you know, bringing all of these parties together, I think we can make a more efficient, streamline and affordable education system. But quite frankly, we've been operating all in silos. All right, Attorney General Hector Paul Daris of New Mexico, thank you for joining us and sharing your perspective as a prosecutor to you, I appreciate it. We may be just two years away from the next big explosion in bitcoin prices. The bitcoin supply model is nothing if not ingenious. If Satosha no Kamoto, the mysterious creator of the original cryptocurrency, got anything right, it's his model of ultimately fixed supply delivered at a slowing tapering rate. Let me explain. One thing that makes Bitcoin different from the average Ponsi scheme is that supply is fixed. At the outset. There will only ever be twenty one million bitcoin. That much is specified in the original white paper and coded in the algorithm, and without broad community consent, something that game theory suggests would be hard to win. It can't be changed. But not only that, the rate at which bitcoin approaches this cap is slashed in half every four years or more accurately, the reward paid to miners fermenting new bitcoin is cut in its infancy. The reward for recording a unit of information on the blockchain was fifty bitcoin, by that number had fallen to six point two five, and Ino will be down to three point one to five. And given that the rate at which blocks on Mind is specified in advance at a rate of about one every ten minutes, it's clear to see that freshly mind bitcoin into circulation at a diminishing rate. What's more, every supply Harvey cycle has been met with parabolic rallies that started around the same time. In the twelve months after the last event, prices rallied as much as we're now about midway through the cycle, and that's typically been a period when prices go soft, and historically speaking, that's been a great time to buy. I'm Middie vander Walt. This is the crypto. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have been pitched as an inevitable part of our future. But are these highly volatile tokens a safe bet for your retirement account. Let's ask one of the most respected people in retirement investing, tech and policy, that is Stacy Olivar. She's a member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, a senator proof position for a fund that handled some eight hundred billion dollars in assets on behalf of six and a half million people, and our crypto contributortional I Bossi as well. So Stacy, should we be putting bitcoin in our four oh one case? I think we should be thinking about watching very seriously. And I think of blockchain as an infrastructure technology, almost like our freeway system, and cryptocurrency as the individual cars. As our population grows and our data needs become more complex, we are going to need a more robust infrastructure, and that's where blockchain comes in. So investing in the underlying technology can be very compelling. Now they're about ten thousand different cryptocurencies, so I don't want to lump them altogether. But at this time, when life expectancy is increasing and we're seeing high inflation and really poor returns in the market, we do need to look for alpha in other places. I'm not saying this is ideal for a pension, because overall there's a lot of volatility in the cryptocurrency space, but I do think we need to look very seriously a blockchain. I do want to talk more about the tokens themselves, because you look at bitcoin, you look at ethereum, and as long as I've been on this beat. There's been a lot of asset managers courting pension funds to really get them into the space, but we have not seen that movement yet. So what would it take to make pensions retirement systems comfortable with adding bitcoin or etherorum if you just even narrow down to the two largest. There would need to be clarity with accounting regulations. Right now, it's unclear how to account for cryptocurrency and that creates a lot of complication. They would also need to be transparency in terms of they're reporting out to holders, out to investors. That would need to be robust security. So bitcoin has proven quite secure to date, other cryptocurrencies not as much. We would also need clarity from the federal government on how it's going to be regulated. Right now, there's a build um in California's Assembly. I think it just passed and it's on the governor's desk for signature. You know, it's interesting because you do see more people in Congress warming up to the idea of crypto. You see a lot of money floating into Congress for the idea of getting members of Congress comfortable with cryptocurrency. Do you think that this is going to move the needle more. Do you think the next election cycles when we're going to see more movement in terms of that comfort that people would really need to get more comfortable with all the things. You're saying that longer term savings type money into crypto, I don't know about that. I think that crypto so right now has been uncorrelated from the election cycles, although it is more correlated with overall capital markets. Now, crypto tends to follow geopolitical events so much more global nature rather than domestic US or local to for example, to a state. So we've seen spikes in crypto as it relates to what happened in Ukraine and money being transferred UH to Ukrainians for aid when there have been other issues geopolitically, for example, say there happens to be some type of disaster, we'll see crypto being used there, so we know about its use there. We know that many people are adopting crypto all of the world and is becoming a standard. It is not that yet the standard, and I don't know that our election cycles are going to affect that. How is the crypto crash impacted pension funds more broadly, not as much as one would think. So pension funds are subject to ARISKA, so they are regulated on how they invest, and part of that tenant of ARISSA is the prudent person rule. So the fiduciaries of pension funds and of defined contribution funds have to invest like a prudent person, which means they have to consider the permanence of the fund, the amounts paid to beneficiaries, and the duration of those payments, as well as risk mitigation. There needs to be an optimization of return at a time when the markets aren't performing. So there have been some pensions who have invested in crypto, but they've invested a very small percentage. In fact, I haven't seen a pension that's invested in excess of one percent. And typically when they invest it's in publicly traded companies that mind crypto or hold crypto, so there's an additional layer of reporting that they can review. It's interesting because you mentioned that blockchain technologies where a lot of the investment needs to happen. But I'm really curious about what you mean by that, because on one hand, it's not like a pension can sit there unload up on a lot of venture capital wagers. But on the other hand, you do see a lot of big companies taking blockchain and really looking at ways to significantly change the existing markets as we know it. The bond markets, the stock markets, mortgage markets, all places that pensions invest very heavily in. So which side of that equation do you think the most movement is really going to be So, I think it will be on their systems. Insurance companies going back to started to invest in blockchain technology. I remember some insurers doing paper and pencil claims processing, very expensive, very error prone. There are private, permissioned block chains and several insurers started to adopt those so that way they could see the entire claims process on the chain, make sure it was immutable, and get the payment processed more quickly with few, if no errors. So there's that type of infrastructure available. When it comes to pensions again, they might have millions of members, many different changes to address to payments, and if there was a robust blockchain technology underlying that process, I think it would be more efficient and less costly. Alright, fascinating stuff. Uh. Stacy LaVar's Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board member, along with our own Chili BOSSI Thank you both. Apple set to announce the iPhone fourteen and new Apple Watches at its far Out event, all sharing in major upgrades to its smartphone and smart watch lines ahead of a very important holiday shopping season. The iPhone fourteen will continue to come in four models, too regular and two pro. Both versions will come in six point one in six point seven inch sizes and differentiate in terms of performance, screen technology, materials, and cameras. All the new phones will look similar to the iPhone thirteen, including aluminum sides on the entry models in stainless steel on the more premium versions. The only real design changes will come to the pro models. Those phones will see the notch replaced with smaller cutouts or face I D and the front facing camera system. The pro phones will also gain a new fort at megapixel wide angle camera on the back, in addition to a faster A sixteen processor. In contrast, their regular phones won't see as significant camera changes and will continue to use the A fifteen chip from last year's iPhone thirteen. The iPhone fourteen Pro line will also get a new always on display for lock screen widgets, gaining a standard feature found on many Android devices for the Apple Watch, Apple's planning a new Apple Watch sc with a faster processor, and Apple Watch Series eight that looks mostly like the Series seven that will add a new body temperature sensor, as well as the company's first Apple Watch Pro, the new high End Wall, which we'll ad a bigger display, better battery life in a new design complete with a rugged aluminum case. I'm Mark Erman. This is power On and you can subscribe to Mark's weekly power On newsletter at Bloomberg dot com. We will be live from Apple Park next Wednesday four that iPhone launch and bring you all the news you need to know throughout the day. And that does it for the sedition of Bloomberg Technology

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