Pivot - The Future of Crypto, SPACs, and Trump's Legal Troubles

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

The Biden administration makes a full-court press at crypto. Could a digital dollar be next? Also, the FTC wants the dirt on the Amazon/Roomba deal. Trump says he can use the power of thought to declassify documents, but there's one thing he didn't think of: a new lawsuit from NY's Attorney General. Kara and Scott take a listener question about prioritizing your career and your clients. Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Hello. I said do little. Oh, good God. Come over here, Kara, and unwind that bow and let me get to know you. That's Scotland, my friend. Yeah, that's my bad friend, Connery. Tell me, how is life in, I guess, Victorian England? How is life there?

What's going on? Well, I'm really settling into the UK lifestyle. Yesterday, I went to Starbucks, then to Zuma, American take on sushi, and then watched Netflix last night. So yeah, it's great to be in jolly old England. Yeah. No, but really, what are the differences? I feel as if London is New York and someone just, a giant stepped on New York and spread it out over 80 miles instead of eight. I feel it's just, I think it's the geography that makes things different here. There's more green. Right.

When it's sunny, you feel the sun more. I feel as if it's a little bit more cosmopolitan. You get people from a lot of different regions. And the thing I like about Europe, I've noticed when you meet people, they ask you where you're from. In America, they ask you what you do. Right. It feels like just a little bit more, I don't know what the word is, civil, so to speak. How are they taking to Scott Galloway? Oh, it was so nice. My wife hates it here.

We rolled into a party last night and someone came up to me and was like, oh, my God, are you Scott Galloway? And my wife just literally turned around and walked out. She's like, that's it. We're moving to Bucharest. She can't handle it. A lot of fans there. A lot of people recognize me. We have a lot of fans in Bucharest, in case you're interested. No, that's it. We're moving to Bucharest. She can't handle it. A lot of people recognize me. We have a lot of fans of Bucharest in case you're interested. No, she gets angry. She'll like, just before I even say, yes, I am, she'll be like, he's not that interesting.

But yeah, it's, look, it's lovely here. A little glimpse into the Galloway marriage, but go ahead. Keep going. There we go. There we go. It's taken me some time to adapt to driving on the other side of the road i was in the back seat of an uber with my son and i like to spit out the window and accidentally spit on him i just can't figure this shit out you know i drove all through england on the wrong side of the road with a manual this summer as i noted to you i did rather well manual anyone oh my god. They use manuals there. That's the most masculine thing I've heard anyone say in a while. That's definitely a flex.

I drove in London on a manual. I learned on a manual. My mom taught me how to drive on a manual. Yeah. I love London. I'm so excited to come and stay with you for an extended period of time with the entire Swisher clan. I think we'll bring them all. I think we'll bring them all the whole game.

You'll like it. You'll like it. Yeah. I'm in San Francisco, just so you know. Yeah, I've been here a day. I have no idea what's going on. I just know I'm jet lagged in a bad mood

and everyone's angry at me because I'm being such an asshole. Oh, well, try to be liven up a little bit. Liven up. Yeah. If you're in jolly old London, Do you know me?

Have you met me? It's jolly. It's a jolly place. It's jolly. Go see the crown jewels. That's what you need to do. Go take It's jolly. Go see the crown jewels. That's what you need to do. Go take yourself down to the castle and see the crown jewels. You'll feel good instantly.

I don't know what else you're doing. I can't imagine anything that would make me even angrier than having to go see the crown jewels. All right, all right. The London Eye? That's not going to... No, I went to one of these Tony members clubs last night. Oh, I thought you said Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. That's always fun. No, I'm doing one of these Tony members clubs last night, Ms. Honestelle. Oh, there's a Madame Tussauds wax museum.

That's always fun. No, I'm doing that with my kids this weekend because I owe, I have a lot of catching up to do on the whole dad thing. You do, indeed. Yeah, you do. It appears that they seem to be like tracking that, how much time I actually spend with them. So, they were going to Madame. I made the mistake of we can do anything this time, we can do anything this weekend. And they said Madame Tussauds and I wanted to stick a gun, which does not exist here, in my mouth. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, well, don't do that. You know, one person just noted to me about London and England is there's no, James Bond is no longer on Her Majesty's Secret Service. So, just a point. Oh, he is on His Majesty's Secret Service. He's dead. He died in the last movie, but okay.

Oops, did I plot twist? Plot spoiler. It was well known. I died in the last movie, but okay. Oops, did I plot twist? Oh. Plot spoiler. It was well-known. I am in San Francisco, which is lovely. I went to Dreamforce. What are you doing in San Francisco? Are you out there for Dreamforce? I went to Dreamforce.

They're one of our sponsors. They liked me to visit their Dreamforce. Actually, it's cool. I hung out with Stuart Butterfield, who started Slack. I hung out with my bro, my mom. We all went to dinner. D-Swish? Yeah, J Jay Swish.

And we had a great time. Jay Swish is in Pennsylvania and never leaves there. Anyway, so yeah, I love San Francisco. I'm going to Austin tomorrow to interview Hillary Clinton. Give me a question for her. Gosh, Hillary, I'm just curious how she, how does she continue to have an impact? Like what is she, What are her plans?

She's not a young woman, but she's still pretty robust. What's her plan to continue to serve, or does she want to continue to serve? That's a good question. I've interviewed her many times. It's for the Texas Tribune Festival. We're going to use some of it in my new podcast coming out on Monday, too. We're not going to put it out on Monday, but we have someone else that's really good to interview, I can't say.

How's inflation over there? The Fed raised interest rates by 0.75% for the third time this year. That's the fifth raise. I'm just curious what they're talking about there, what's going on now that we have an international flair to our show. Jerome Powell seems to be willing to risk a near-term recession if it stops long-term inflation. Many people don't agree with him. What thinks you of the situation? Well, an observation I made, I went to this party for some film festival thing last night, and I met several Americans who had, I thought we were being so original. Word is out.

And I met a lot of Americans who moved here. And this guy I met who works at J.P. Morgan said, well, if you want to experience something international or you have the opportunity to experience something international, you want a great city and you want English speaking and you want good schools. It's like you kind of have Singapore, Hong Kong, and London. And Hong Kong's off the table now. Singapore is too far. In addition, if you want to talk about inflation, and this is related, the pound, when I got a mortgage, pre-approved for a mortgage to buy a home here, I think seven months, it was $1.38. When I actually got the mortgage and converted, it was $1.26. And I thought I was getting the deal of the century.

I think it's today, it's $1.14. So you're going to see, just as you've seen a lot of wealthy people migrate to Florida from New York, you're going to see a lot of very wealthy people migrate from New York to London. Because everything here is 20% less expensive than it was 12 months ago. Oh, except energy prices are about to go through the roof, from what I understand. Yeah, but if you're wealthy, I mean, energy prices really hit the lower and middle income classes. Yes, I was going to go with just your novel.

But quite frankly, if you're a banker at Goldman or you're an entrepreneur and you're making millions of dollars, your energy, even if energy price is triple or quintuple, it's still a small part of your total income. Right, so it's good to go if you're rich to London, in other words. The bottom line is, and I don't think this is gonna be a secret to anyone,

New York and London are the greatest cities in the world as long as you can lubricate them with millions of dollars, full stop. You either need to be very young and be able to dance in between the raindrops and get a lot of psychic income from the incredible things the city offers, and it's worth living in a 300 square foot apartment in Gowanus and commuting in. Or, I mean, the ultimate luxury

item is to have three kids in London or New York, because you have to be making a million dollars a year. Yeah, it is expensive. But relatively speaking, five years ago, London was more expensive than New York. Three years ago, it was the same. Now, it is distinctly less expensive. So, it ties into the inflation discussion with the dollar surge, with Jerome Powell raising interest rates, with the US's relative strength geopolitically, food independent, energy independent, you're going to see every item in the store that's important, 48% of the global GDP is international trade, you're about to see, and I'm skipping to my prediction, but I have a bunch of them,

so I'll say it right now because it's related. You're about to see inflation come down as fast as it went up. I mean, the dollar surge is, we are an import economy. The Chinese, get this, have actually lowered interest rates. So we're raising interest rates, they're lowering them, which makes dollars massively attractive, which means in order to buy those dollars, the dollar is going to be able to command even more strength, which means every item or 88% of the toys under the Christmas tree, which all happen to come from China, are about to be 20% less expensive. And then, just to roll in some geopolitical nuance or wrinkle here, I believe that the Ukrainian people and their military just

striking courage, success, getting off their heels, onto their toes. They're now on offense right now. I think the global markets are going to correctly or incorrectly perceive a possible end to the conflict. Energy prices are going to plummet. The dollar strength, it's the perfect storm to see inflation start to abate. Oh, Scott is in a positive mood. It's London. It's the gin speaking. I had a gin drink last night. It's funny. I thought you did. Of course you did. Anyway, today we'll talk about the Biden administration's full court press on crypto. Also, the FTC wants dirt on Amazon's Roomba deal lost 700 employees as of this month. Workers have left sites stressed from the Musk deal and the loss of respect for leadership. So they're not thrilled with their CEO either. That's been well known. According to documents, Twitter has adjusted the way it categorizes attrition to track Twitter employees, quote, leaving due to acquisition by Elon Musk. Huh, that's easy to blame him. I think they've got other issues there for many years. I gotta say, I find this unfair. So, it'll be interesting if they discuss it in the court case.

Obviously, we have a lot of big coverage coming up for that. It's going to be like our Super Bowl, I think, in many ways. Any thoughts on this? We had talked about people leaving because of this. Yeah, he leaves. Twitter comes out of this deeply damaged. And the person who's managed to escape scrutiny, who in my view is arguably the second worst taxi of the last decade, everyone talks about Musk and Parag's been talking to it. The person who bears a lot of blame here is Jack Dorsey. He was basically an absentee CEO. All this reporting's coming out that in meetings and on calls, he wouldn't say a word. He was totally disengaged. And you have a company that didn't innovate, said it made itself really ripe for this kind of BS volatility, brought in a CEO, and then said that he thought that – has made these crazy statements that he thought that Elon was the singular best solution and then went quiet on it. Didn't defend his employees. I know that was irritating to many people when he didn't defend the chief legal officer, the woman of color, who was getting attacked. I mean, the reality is when you decide that, when you have this unbelievable, you know, king-size, big gulp serving of arrogance that you can run this

company, this important company, whether it's a big company or not, it's an important company, while running another one where 93% of your wealth is and that's skyrocketing in value. And what do you know? This company has gone absolutely sideways during his tenure and has opened itself up to this type of volatile, exogenous bullshit, which is not in short supply with Mr. Musk. And the chancery court, there's no way, this is the chancellor, if you will, the head judge, if you will, who's presiding over this case. There's no way she's going to be able to ignore the fact that in addition to him signing a hermetically sealed agreement to buy these shares for $54.20 a share, that

he's also damaged this thing, that this process that he initiated has brought tremendous economic harm to the company and these employees. I'm going to push back. I think this company has not been run well is something that Elon's correct about, right? And I think a lot of people feel that. I don't think this is a new, fresh idea. I think that people using it as an excuse for a long-time pain of being there and why even bother, because they can see what's coming, you know, that it's not going to be sold. If it is sold, that's problematic. If it's not sold, it's problematic.

And they're sort of facing nothing. And they, even though we're sort of staring at, you know, layoffs and things like that, most of these people can get better jobs somewhere else and more stable jobs without the headache of this. I think it just calls into question what they're doing. And after a while, you're like, that's enough. The kombucha is not that good kind of thing. But just one more wrinkle here is I think a lot of them look at the company, look at the current environment, look at the fact that the stock's at 44 bucks, and it's probably worth less than 20. And there's a lot of moving parts here, and this deal may or may not go through. I think a lot of them have exercised their options and said, I'm out.

Peace out. I'm not going to do any better. Meanwhile, speaking of woes, Trump's legal woes are piling up, as I noticed. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against the former president, as well as the Trump Organization, and three of his children. Let's not call them children. Let's call them adult children for fraud and false financial statements. But the children, James said Trump had, quote, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars. The AG seeks damages of $250 million. She really came to play. And a range of restraints that would bar Trump and the Trump

Organization requiring real estate or applying for loans in New York for five years. An appeals court ruled that Mar-a-Lago investigation could continue. That was in another ruling. This appeals court had two Trump people of the three without waiting for a special master. The special master, meanwhile, is smacking around Trump lawyers and the lawyer and the judge who had allowed the special master to be existing. He spoke about the investigation nonetheless with Sean Hannity this week. Here's what he said. Is there a process? What was your process to declassify?

There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there's different, people say different things. But as I understand, there doesn't have to be. If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. By thinking about it. He's the Yoda of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. By thinking about it. He's the Yoda of declassification. He's just literally just, I was worried during this interview, and of course, Sean Hannity, as usual, was the major suck up of all time.

Just literally, even informational stuff he couldn't get right, like could also get information out of him, but he didn't even do that. Molly Jungfast wrote in The Atlantic this week, Trump is never, ever playing three-dimensional chess. He's always just sticking pieces up his nose to see how they'll taste. I just, I don't even know what to say here. This day, legal day, was astonishing. It was, you know, he sucked up oxygen from the Republicans who were trying to win an election, a bunch of elections. He got himself into deep legal trouble. And these people are just, you know, and everyone's like, nothing's going to happen. I'm like, oh, besides going crazy, I'm not sure. I don't know. What do you think? Well, what everyone's missing is for the

first time in 25 years, it's awesome to be Tiffany Trump. It's awesome to be Tiffany Trump. I just imagine her getting together for family dinner last night. And on the other side, the four favorite siblings be like, how do you like me now, bitches? How do you like me now? Yeah. Yeah. It's good to be Tiffany Trump. This is our conclusion for this.

I really do want to talk to her now. But go ahead. Just to stir up our Twitter feed, there's something about this AG Letitia James suit I don't like and I'm uncomfortable with. Okay. I think that it feels very political to me. And that is wealthy people exaggerating the value of their assets to try and secure loans. If she's going to go after Trump, there's probably 100 other billionaires in New York she needs to go after. All right.

Let me address that. Most people do it 15%, 20%. This was 500%. This was a very different, over, this is exactly the kind of case these prosecutors do. It's an egregious abuse of this. And she actually addressed that very clearly. But go ahead. I also worry that it distracts from, I believe, the mishandling of classified documents that may unmask agents of our security apparatus overseas, information on nuclear codes. I think that stuff is essentially, is so reckless that it falls under the notion of espionage. Or I don't know if there's like

second degree espionage. I don't know how the law works. And also inciting violence at the Capitol. I worry this case is going to give the other side ammunition to say these cases are politically motivated. I don't know. I don't know. I think, you know, I'm using my mother as a barometer, but she said, what a crook. Like, she got this right away. Right away. This one. Yeah. What a crook. And they're going after his kids. Oh, his kids. Stop it. They're adult children who are officers of a company. I'm sorry. That's just crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

And speaking of people getting some criticism, Chamath Palihapitiya, he's the king of SPAC, the SPAC king. He started the SPAC craze. Announced on Tuesday that his firm, Social Capital, will wind down two of the SPACs it's created. It's created a lot of them, returned money to investors. Even as conservative social site Rumble is still in the game, the company has gone public and began trading after a SPAC deal. Nothing's going well for the Trump-backed True Social, another area of weakness for Donald Trump of so many across his weak loser landscape. Digital world acquisition, the SPAC company the company made a deal with, has seen its stock drop as much as 30% over the last six days as true social threatens to sue the SEC for political bias after delaying a planned merger. I mean, it's what he does, of course.

But in the broad scheme, the SPAC thing is completely over, correct or not? Well, the SPACs have been around for a while, and my guess is at some point, investors have a short memory. I mean, this kind of reflects a few things. The first is the market has an unbelievable ability to produce products just on the spot when people have money. And when the investment committees and the operating committees and investment banks would say, this company is so far from profitability, the financials here are so scary, we're not comfortable taking it public and trying to look at institutions that we work with. I mean, think about it. We work through their filters, but these companies wouldn't, these SPACs. And so, this vehicle-

Or they're not ready. They're not all problematic. They're just not ready. But go ahead. I think that's the same thing. Yeah. ready for example but go ahead i think that's the same thing yeah um so anyways you take a company that has you know it's pre-revenue is churning cash but it's cool and it's different and and kind of flies into the or has the wind in its sails of a lot of retail investors think i want to participate in the new economy and these big these big updrafts that's the first thing that's the cloud covers the demand of retail investors who want to participate in this new information economy, and investment banks aren't comfortable taking these companies public. So enter the SPAC. And then you layer on top of that really charismatic, thoughtful people who have an open invitation to CNBC. astronaut's uniform and you put Chamath on CNBC every 48 hours, and it felt like he was on every 48 hours. He's very articulate. He's very compelling. And you have the perfect storm

of a vehicle that is essentially at the end of the day, Cara, been a vehicle for the transfer of wealth from retail investors to the promoters, specifically Chamath and Richard Branson. And if you look at Chamath SPACs, Clover, Opendoor, Virgin Galactic, and SoFi, they're down between 45 and 80%. I mean, across the board. So, this isn't an individual company thing. This is a structure. This is an asset class. Too early. Baking too early. Baking too early, really, essentially. Or, quite frankly, taking retail money without a lack of disclosure in companies that are just shitty companies. Do you remember six months ago, you pressed me for a company that would be a victim of the SPAC thing? It was six, seven months ago. And you remember

what the company I cited was? I don't remember. You don't remember? I just said it. Virgin Galactic. Well, yeah. I think Virgin Galactic is going to zero. I have never seen a business more demand constrained or supply constrained. Yep, agreed with you. This is, space is incredibly, this stuff is so hard and so expensive. In addition, the market for people who want to spend $400,000 to go twice as high as they were in a 777 just two weeks ago on their way to London is pretty limited. And so this is a shit, this is the worst business in the world. Yeah, that is. Although I would push back, I would say Opendoor and SoFi are very interesting companies,

may not be worth being public yet, but certainly Acquisition Targets, both of those. So some of them, you know what I mean? It's just where they are. I mean, Virgin Galactic is one that's so obvious. It's a stunt company in a lot of ways. But it's definitely changed. Let's talk about Open. I mean, Open, I think, I'm looking it up right now, it's now at, I'm sorry, it's 52 week highs, 25. It's trading right now at $3.19. And it's great in an up market, but if they have inventory,

they will use an algorithm. It's a really great idea. They use an algorithm that looks at all sorts of comparables and then says, all right, we think your house is worth X. We'll pay 0.9 or 0.92X and you'll get a check in seven days. And a lot of people say, oh my gosh,

for that efficiency, I'll take a small discount. And what we have seen over and over again is that real estate is a local business and requires certain nuance from a buyer and a seller. And when real estate prices were skyrocketing and wallpapered over, in my opinion, the inefficiency of an algorithm to assess price, when inventory builds at this company and you have prices decline, I think this thing is going to be- And the mortgage issues. The mortgage issues right now. Could be wildly underwater. So, the market perceives the same thing. The stock's off

90%. And again, if you heard the promoters on CNBC, what this brings up, I think, is an interesting issue. And that is if you have over, call it $10 million or over a certain amount of stock, and you're on CNBC pumping it, should you be able to get off, like wipe off your makeup and call your broker and say, sell? I just did a really good job pumping this thing. And now I'm going to sell. Because what it ends, if you look at the sales of Virgin Galactic, you know, is it cool that the guy who's on CNBC talking about the brave new world of space tourism has basically sold his entire stake? Yeah. Yes. That all is, you know, this is a get the money and run kind of thing. With some interesting ideas. You're right. It's taking advantage of lots of money around, why don't I invest in this? Treasuries aren't giving me what I want.

And why don't I? It's gambling. It was always gambling in a lot of ways for most of these companies. Very innovative financial instrument in order to deal with unusual companies. But everyone, I remember I was talking to someone, I can't remember what it was. Remember when Paul Ryan piled in? That was a while back. I was like, oh, like when's the, when's all of them? Were you in a SPAC or not in a SPAC? No. So, I partnered with two friends who were the founders of hedge funds, and we decided we were going to do a SPAC, and I put together an operating committee of very credible operators. Goldman and Jeffries were going to take us out. And then we did one quick meeting, the three principles before we pressed go. And it was going to cost us a couple million bucks for underwriter fees and legal fees. And one of my colleagues said, how many calls have

you guys received from SPACs? Because we're all on boards and private companies. I had received seven calls in the last month. Each of them had received between 12 and 15. And I'm like, do we really want to be on the other side of this? Right now, Kara, there are 700 SPACs that have a D-SPAC that are looking for a target. So, what happens is they overpay. Most shareholders in the SPAC are saying, there's no way I'm going along for this ride. I've been watching what's happening. Right, getting the pipes et cetera, the extra money, which is called a pipe. And I just want to go back because pump and dump is a serious accusation. If you promote a stock, which CEOs do and investors do, whether long, and then you sell it at a high, you're entitled to do that.

But when every company you've taken through a structure called a SPAC is off 40% to 80%. And you are out there, I mean, really pumping these things hard. At some point, should you be subject to the same type of lockup that a board of director is? In other words, if you're on CNBC and you own more than 10% of this thing, if you're really out there trying to tell retail investors, this is a good company and you should buy stock, should you maybe be limited to not be able to sell yours for 90 or 180 days? Yeah, you have to own your book. No, it's true. So, we'll see what happens here. I think there's going to be a lot of pain with a lot of these companies for lots of reasons. Many of them are

experimental companies in a weird way. But we're going to be watching especially the true social one, which looks like it's headed for disaster unless some rich person just decides to bail them out to get in Trump's good graces. But I'm not sure that's worth as much. Speaking of things that aren't worth as much anymore. Let's get to our first big story. It's been a fateful few weeks in the world of crypto and other areas, Scott, that we've talked about a lot about. First, the Ethereum network completed its long awaitedaited system upgrade to proof-of-stake model. That should have had fans cheering, but instead the price of Ether fell by about 15%. The move could have regulatory implications. SEC Chair Gary Gensler hinted that proof-of-stake

cryptocurrencies could be considered securities and not commodities. There's a push-pull over how they should be considered. Also, the Biden administration put out a framework for regulating crypto. Besides clamping down on fraud, the framework also encouraged the creation of a digital dollar backed by the Fed. Not going anywhere, just ideas kind of thing. They put out a lot of papers that are not very full of real information. But obviously, a well-regulated crypto space is valuable, but it's a whole lot less exciting. What do you think about what's happening now? The numbers are pretty problematic. There's a lot of failures, like Meta's Libre or Diem. Reddit's NFT project isn't booming. It refuses to call them NFTs. Apple and Google payment apps are focused on credit card

steal, not crypto. What has happened in this? Because people declare the end of crypto and it never seems to come. It's an interesting technology. Obviously, blockchain is incredibly promising. But how do you look right now where it is in its young adulthood? Walking through the fire. Well, people who are long crypto will say this is 2000, where there's a shakeout that was overdue and some giants will emerge. The Amazons and Yahoo's or whoever will emerge from the fire. And it looks as if Bitcoin has hit sort of a floor. I don't know if it's $19,000 or $20,000. It bothers me that Bitcoin consumes the energy of Argentina and it's an artificially made construct. It's genius to try and limit the supply to create sort of scarcity credibility.

But at the end of the day, it's like we've decided to have marginal, in my opinion, unneeded energy consumption of a small country. We just don't need that right now. That's why they changed it. One of the reasons they changed it. And it's a better system for it. And I wouldn't be surprised if it flips in terms of valuation that Ether becomes more valuable than Bitcoin because the utility there around NFTs, the majority of them are minted on Ether. But it looks as if there's Bitcoin and Ether and almost everything else is going away. And also, I come back to the same, my same boomer question. How has the blockchain changed your life other than a vehicle for speculation? That you know about, yes. Yeah. Well, even in 98 and 99, we were getting stock

quotes on Yahoo. We were getting email and hotmail. We were buying CDs on Amazon. I mean, it was touching our lives. Well, if you want to make that comparison, the internet is blockchain and all the applications and uses on top of it are these crypto currencies, right? And so the way the blockchain is being used could be very, you know, there's all kinds of things that could happen. But I think the fact that it stayed so speculative for so long and not useful is a problem. Or you have utility in some fashion, except for speculation for rich people or young people who just are gambling again.

Yeah, it's, by the way, I just looked up Clover Health, one of Chamath's specs, it's, in 12 months, it's off 74%. Yeah, look, the bloom is off the rose on crypto. I'm willing to acknowledge, and there's so many smart people, there's so much human and financial capital that have gone into the space, it would be impossible for there not to be enduring innovation. But outside of the two major assets in the asset class, Bitcoin and ETH, you're just, I mean, it really is pure, at this point, pure speculation. And I keep waiting for some sort of consumer service on the blockchain. What about the digital dollar? What about the official digital dollar? We spoke with Circles Jeremy Allaire at USD Coin last February.

He talked about interoperability and open standards versus the walled gardens of PayPal or Venmo. I mean, who are the winners and losers if there's a digital dollar? Obviously, credit card companies or who? It's a really interesting point. So, for example, when I bought a house here, I had to transfer dollars into pounds. And it's very inefficient. In a wire, I always thought you press a button and it happens that moment. No, it's like a day, two days. There's all sorts of

review and administrative complexity. So, just in terms of remittance or transferring assets cross-border or getting the middlemen out of the way, whether it's, I don't know Venmo or PayPal, they might actually benefit from a digital dollar. But I think it makes all sorts of sense. The dollar has been such an extraordinary weapon and force for the United States. I think it's still two-thirds of reserve currencies or USD, despite that we're only, what, a third of the economy. So the USD over-indexes from a power standpoint. And whenever we decide to have sanctions, they have more teeth. Whenever we decide we're in trouble and we need to print more money, we can. There's always people who want our dollars. So the USD has been the most powerful

aircraft squadron or carrier force in history that's invisible. It's like kind of this invisible army. So, to signal innovation and say, we're going to make it digital and you'll have more efficiency, you'll be able to send it overseas to your friends, whatever, and also create a mechanism such that American regulatory and enforcement apparatus still have insight into flows, it's a great idea. think it's super and i think more more regulation is needed obviously and deciding what it is whether it's securities i i suspect they're going to be made the bitcoins and ethereum will be considered securities and not commodities i mean there's a push pull in the government about this um and that they deserve a whole bunch of

all the all the more less sketchy people in the industry want this and talked about it. And it's not in the, oh, please regulate me. This is going to get out of hand until you actually put some rules in the road because it creates so much uncertainty. And with money, there has to be regulation and very quickly. So, it'll be interesting. And obviously, cracking down on fraud, that's another big thing. If it feels like it's the Wild West, nobody's going to move there. You know, people who are thrill seekers do. But it's certainly a problem. I still haven't found my Bitcoin now that it's down again.

It's here somewhere here in San Francisco. I love that. I love that you're a billionaire. Someday I'll find it. It'll be $50 again. It'll be literally $50 when I find it again. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the FTC wants Amazon to come clean about its Roomba deal.

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This week, the regulator requested more information for both Amazon and Roomba's parent company, iRobot, about their proposed $1.7 billion acquisition. Several advocacy groups have written to the FCC opposing the deal. They're worried that if Amazon hoovers up iRobot, it could sell Roombas at a loss and hurt the vacuum industry. The vacuum people are upset. The FTC also wants more information about Amazon's deal with One Medical. Just to review, Amazon is not backing down. Many of the other tech companies are not buying big companies like this. But Amazon has bought MGM, Art19, Podcasting, Wicker, Messaging, Stryo AI,o AI, autonomous farming, and One Medical and iRobot.

They've been rumored in electronic arts. They're being very aggressive. And I think Andy Jassy in our recent interview with him didn't back off of that. The FTC has not done anything in this area. One Medical obviously has some HIPAA baggage, but it didn't seem like Jassy was going to back off that at all in terms of that deal. He seemed very happy with that deal. So, what do you think? Well, in a lot of the spaces, and you've said this, a Roomba, I don't even know what that space is. Is it home appliances? What is it? It's a fair- Well, it's vacuuming. It vacuums. But that's a fairly competitive space. So, generally speaking, antitrust is supposed

to ensure that people don't merge and create a lack of competition. Right. And not everybody wants a Roomba, by the way. I don't want it. I'd rather have a regular vacuum cleaner, but go ahead. But you want to avoid, at the end of the day, what they're trying to do is protect consumers from market power that results in unearned margin. And it's hard. I'm not sure that the home appliance market, my sense is it's fairly fragmented and fairly competitive. So I don't know. Now, could Amazon, does Amazon show a pattern of coming in and using predatory pricing to clean up the market? But I don't know if you can speculate on that. I think that most of these will go through. And also, I just think the FTC is outgunned. The problem is, I was thinking about our conversation

from Friday about Adobe's acquisition of Figma. I spoke to someone, including my partner at Property Media, who's a professor of the arts in the Tisch School of the Creative Arts at NYU. And she said that Figma is just incredibly powerful. You know, Figma is what kind of new up-and-coming designers are using. It's more user-friendly. You're just sort of up and running right away.

And that if Adobe acquires it, kind of it's not game over, but Adobe really controls the creative space. And the hard part is it's hard to go after Adobe when the big guys are doing all this stuff and getting away with it. That's the problem with antitrust when you don't go after the biggest, most powerful players. I think it's kind of hard to be heavy-handed with the medium. It's like, how do you go after— That said, it's a legal case.

All of these are losers. MGM, Hollywood is very competitive. Podcasting, very competitive. Messaging, very competitive. Autonomous farming, very small. One medical, very competitive. Messaging, very competitive. Autonomous farming, very small. One medical, very competitive. Vacuums, lots of vacuum companies. I mean, and not everybody wants what iRobot is selling, by the way. So, I think that's the problem. And also, Amazon is just being aggressive with the FTC. Top Amazon execs, including Jeff Bezos

and Andy Jassy, were subpoenaed earlier this year as part of an investigation into allegedly deceptive practices around prime membership. Now, that's a fertile area to look at, obviously, and also the marketplace. Amazon appealed the subpoena, calling it, quote, needlessly burdensome. And the FTC rejected that appeal and said instead, let's set a date, bring your lawyer. They just, they're being very aggressive in picking areas that are quite competitive. They're being very aggressive in picking areas that are quite competitive. Well, I think if there was going to be a case, they would say that you've used AWS to subsidize unrelated industries. And as a result, they've created predatory pricing across your e-commerce platform, which has made it very difficult for anyone else in e-commerce to compete. And when you don't have growth in e-commerce,

you get hammered in the market, which creates an inability to compete in terms of capital and all. That would be where I would focus. But buying a robotic vacuum cleaner, I don't know. I'm not sure that's what they're doing. God, Amazon is so canny here.

Speaking of Lena Kahn and her DOJ counterpart, Jonathan Cantor, testified before Congress this week, pretty rough going. Kahn in particular was grilled by Senate Republicans who asked about partisanship and the low morale at the FTC. Kahn pushed back, requested more resources from Congress. She's absolutely right about this. Kahn was, they didn't get it in one of the bills that didn't pass. I can't remember which one. Kahn was also asked about the Amazon One medical deal by Senator Josh Hawley. Let's listen to that exchange. Let me just ask you, still on this topic, what concerns we should be looking at involving

data privacy that might come about from either this acquisition or more broadly about mass consolidation, particularly when you have technology companies that are purchasing healthcare companies? I think especially when you have firms that are integrated across multiple lines of business, there are a whole set of conflicts of interest that can emerge. Oftentimes, there aren't any limitations on how data being collected on one line of business is being used in other lines of business. And so we've heard concerns both from consumers, but also from market participants about just the deep conflicts and asymmetries that that can create. Well, they're kind of, because Kali is so smart.

He's zeroed in on exactly the problem. I mean, privacy. If he stops yelling about censorship, he's correct here. You know, it's a very tough time for Lena Kahn. She was supposed to come in on a big grand horse and slay the dragons, and she's not doing so. Well, you can list her accomplishments on zero hands right now. She's got to really move forward and do something more aggressive. The Republicans were very aggressive on the Musk thing last week. They want the FTC to preserve any records related

to the Musk Twitter bid, and Khan said she was disturbed by Mudge's claims that Twitter misled the FTC. But how does she get out of this? She's got to have a win, some win somewhere, anywhere. Same thing with Cantor. She's either got to break something up or block something. She has such an incredible, beautiful mind around this stuff. She's able to articulate the problems. Her and Tim Wu, in my opinion, are the two clearest blue flame thinkers around competitiveness and predatory pricing. And they've been given the job. It's like, well, okay, now what?

And so far, it's been a big thud. Everything continues to go through. You could argue there's been a chill and probably Google and Meta are not being as aggressive. But Amazon appears to be like, well, no. They're kind of poking the bear. They're like, no, we're not worried about FTC or DOJ review. So she's... Well, you're not seeing a Pinterest buy.

What would really be poking too hard? I'm trying to think. What could they buy? FedEx? I've always said Apple or Amazon is going to make a bid for HBO. Yeah. FedEx. FedEx might be a problem. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of stuff. I mean, Google acquiring Pinterest would absolutely get a review and be challenged, I'm pretty sure. But although, do you remember when I asked Sundar about that? He was-

Very quiet. He didn't say a word. It's obviously in their area. Twitter, he was like, no, thank you very much. But Pinterest certainly is in everybody's radar in that regard, because it's so inexpensive. Speaking of... I mean, the only thing, so far, the only thing that's come out of Lena's administration of the FTC, and I'm a fan of hers, is that the morale is low. Me too. So, I mean, Tim and Lena are these incredible thought leaders. And the question is, all right, is that all? Do something.

Are they just thought leaders? Or are they actual administrators and leaders that can rally an organization and navigate what I'm sure is a massively complex political environment to get things done? You've got to make a big move and make a point. And I think it may be too late. It should have been made a year ago. You know, just waiting and waiting and figuring is not really the thing to do here. And I agree, you shouldn't just litigate unnecessarily.

But there's plenty of fodder for her in discovery and getting the case going and showing who's boss. I think she's really blown an opportunity here. We'll see how it goes. Again, Holly very much articulated the problem right there in health care, information, how much information these companies will have in way if they get into healthcare in a big way. Watch out, I think. Anyway, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got you've got I can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman. You've got mail. This question came in via email. I'll read it. Hi, Karen, Scott. I'm a 52 year old founder and CEO of the company here in London. Oh, you can have a friend, a new friend. My company hasn't done well as I would have liked.

We're facing some unfun months ahead, and I'm considering a change. However, many of my clients are friends of mine, and they wouldn't be able to find another firm to provide the services we offer. Hmm, I wonder who provides. My question for both of you as serial entrepreneurs is how do you handle this situation? I don't want to alienate my friends, but I'm concerned that my career is stagnating and there are more lucrative opportunities out there. Thanks in advance. And I hope to run into Scott in London. I will send you his address, sir. The listener asked us to withhold their name. Scott Galloway, London, England, near Buckingham Palace. I don't know where you live, actually. So what do you think about this? I say get out. I always get out. I always leave. I don't know. I just feel like if I'm not happy, I'm not doing unfun,

if something's unfun, I undo it and I go. You can't be working because clients are friends of yours and they depend on you. They can always find someone else. By the way, one thing, get out when it's unfun, too. You're not, as my grandmother used to say, the graveyards are full of indispensable people. So you're not indispensable. So what do you think? You're exactly right. They say there's a reason why pilots tell you if there's a loss of oxygen or pressurization to affix your own oxygen mask first. You have to take care of yourself and your family.

And you're not going to be able to take care of your clients if you're unhappy. This is an easy one. You figure out a transition strategy. You say to your clients who are your friends, and you can be honest with your friends, I'm not happy. I don't like this. It's not going as well as I'd hoped. This is how I'm going to transition my services to another firm. You might be able to sell that client base. And you your eyes. It's like leaving a company. When you leave a company, you make sure that you exit gracefully. You don't give them two weeks notice and bail and leave them hanging. You transition your clients, you transition your responsibilities, you upskill people, you identify people who could potentially take over your role and you leave the place and your role, hopefully as good as it was when you

were there. He can absolutely do the same thing here, but his obligation is to the wellbeing, his own mental health, and the economic security of his family. And his friends will understand. Yeah. We tap out a lot, don't we? I mean, over our careers, we've changed for various reasons,

but I think we do it because we don't like what we're doing and see other opportunities most of the time. Yeah, I've done it because I've been beamed in the fucking face and I have to find something else to do. Yours has been a function of opportunity. Mine's been a function of the world literally smacking me and saying, no, you should try something else. Who's living in London?

Not Kara Swisher. No, not Kara Swisher. I'm just saying. I took Leia and Gangster to Regents Day. It's so amazing. It's off-leash here. It's off-leash. They terrorize everybody.

It's hilarious. Oh, great. Fantastic. That sounds wonderful. It's off-leash. everybody it's hilarious fantastic that sounds wonderful watch for the old ladies wandering around with that giant dog of yours oh my god your dog off leash that sounds very terrifying just let me know when that's happening no they're actually pretty nice people they are i know i know um so anyway a listener who does who's withholding their name but is the uh lives in london uh we say go don't worry about it don't worry so much

people are so... You know, I have to say, let me just add one more thing here. Young people say this to me all the time. Like, I can't do it because my career, because of this. Get off the hamster wheel if you don't like what you're doing. I say this to everybody. Get off the hamster wheel. Absolutely. No question. Yeah. With young people, it's different. I don't know. The first thing is- Stay in your lane? You're telling them, but go ahead. Well, no, no, no.

Stay in your lane is totally different. Stay in your lane is not don't do things or don't talk about stuff you shouldn't. I was miserable at Morgan Stanley, like within three weeks. But someone said to me, it's an amazing platform. You're young. You have no credibility. Stay the full two years. Oh, okay.

With young people, it's different. You're looking to build credibility. And also young people think, oh, wait, this isn't as fun as college football. And my fraternity, I must not love it. No, it's called work. It takes some time. And also, there's a certain amount of shitty work just involved in getting started. And so my advice to a lot of people, I just want to make sure a bunch of young people don't run out of their jobs. You do not want to have a resume that looks like a tapestry coming out of your 20s until you have the credibility of a Kara Swisher who can leave and has five other entities that want you to work for them. No, I used to leave when I was young. I'm going to push.

But go ahead. You keep going. Keep going. Well, I'm going to disagree and compliment you. I think you're more talented than most people, Kara. Well, I'm going to disagree and compliment you. I think you're more talented than most people, Kara. And I think Scott Galloway at Morgan Stanley at 23 that has no experience, not a hell of a lot of talent and has an opportunity to stick somewhere two years. So I'm more attractive to business schools or that next thing. Unless you're like, unless you have another job,

you want to be really thoughtful before you leave at a minimum. You want to talk to some lame boomers such as myself and just get the benefit of their advice. Because you do not, most people have a more difficult time getting a job when people show up and they've had three jobs in five years. I don't hire people who've had three jobs in five years. I go, what happened? What went wrong? And so, as a young person, you want to find a place where you're learning, hopefully a good brand, a good platform that builds credibility and currency. Because very few people, other than Kara Swisher, know what they want to do in their early 20s. I thought I wanted to be an investment banker. That was ridiculous.

I was terrible at it, and I hated it. And the majority of people don't know. That is a fair point about not knowing what you want. I, though, think that I'm a life is too short person. And when I was very young, I left things constantly. I wasn't incredibly care of Swiss shirt. I kind of was. I mean, I left that John McLaughlin thing when he was such a harassing. I love how you caught yourself. I wasn't incredible. Actually, I kind of was. I kind of was.

I kind of was. As I reflect on it, I kind of was incredible. I really was. It was almost a moment of of humility and you checked yourself. I couldn't do it. Humility almost creeped in. I say go and you say stay for young people. I say get your... No, no, no. You need credibility.

It's called work for a reason. Don't... Call daddy first before you make any big moves and leave a good firm, especially if it's a good platform. I say this to my kids. I'm like, quit school? Right. Good decision. I'm always thinking that. A friend, a kid who used to work for me and broke my heart and left, went to Google. It's like, I hate it here.

I'm just managing keywords for Chili's. And I'm like, you're at Google. Stay there. Just stay there. Stay there until you're there at least two years. Don't listen to Scott. Go to London and stay at his house. This is a good question, London man.

That might have been Prince Charles writing this. What do you think? That's right. Hello. Probably was Prince Charles. this. What do you think? That's right. Hello! Probably was Prince Charles. I bet it was. He has, you know, unfun months. He's considering a change. He can't,

he has many clients. Anyway, stick with the king thing. In that regard, you're the king. Stay with the king. All right. All right. Do you want my prediction? I don't like it. They don't like it. Now, in a minute, if you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break, and then you can make your prediction.

Okay, Scott, let's hear your predictions, although I'm going to go first because one prediction I got right. Florida's Attorney General has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the Florida and Texas laws governing free speech on social media. Here's what I said earlier this week. Problem is this has gone down a free speech path when it has nothing to do with free speech. And I agree that these companies have free speech too, and we'll see how it plays out, but it's got to move to the Supreme Court. I don't see how any other way this is not going to be. The Supreme Court hasn't agreed to take up the case, but we'll see. So I think we were correct, both of us, because I'm being generous here. Go ahead. What is your prediction? I've come to the snap judgment that people underestimate just how incredibly powerful and important the queen was to the monarchy. And if you look at the pattern of all monarchies

pretty much over the last century, they've primarily just petered out. And the whole construct kind of doesn't make sense. And I don't think, I think the same is true here, but it'll be incremental. And I think that incremental effect of the monarchy starting to lose its power here, I think Northern Ireland is going to potentially talk about reunifying with Ireland. And I think Scotland, who's always justifiably been a little resentful of being ruled by the United Kingdom or by England. Yeah, they're going to William Wallace it, right? But it'll be nuanced. I think my, this is my prediction.

I think Scotland is going to engage in a bid or an effort to try and rejoin the EU. I think that's their excuse. It'll be a twofer. They'll get to say, we're not stupid. I mean, if you look at the leave, the leave thing was basically pushed over the edge by kind of rural Englanders.

Basically, London wanted to stay. People in the suburbs and the rural parts wanted to leave. And I think that the twofer for Scotland will be they want to be part of the EU and they want to be away from England. And if you look at the Commonwealth, it's everyone from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, but it's also the Virgin Islands, Antigua, Jamaica. All of these places have the queen on their coins and their currency. I don't think they're going to want trials. I think they'll use this as an excuse and they'll be polite about it. They'll say, we still are big fans of the queen, but we're going to use this as kind of the final step in our independence.

But I think you're going to see the Commonwealth, if you will, or the monarchy lose substantial territories. And the most interesting one, in my view, will be Scotland will engage in an effort to rejoin the EEO. But Scotland would be a big problem. Scotland's big because they're pretty economically tied to each other. Northern Ireland isn't that big. That would be very symbolic. Reunification there, that would probably, I don't know, maybe that'd be good for Ireland. But I think the biggest one would be, the biggest one would definitely be Scotland. They share, obviously they share a land

border. What about Australia? What about Australia? New Zealand? Yeah, but that's, I don't think they're nearly as integrated. It's not, I think that's mostly symbolic at this point. Belize? Grenada? Yeah, I don't know. I think Scotland's the big one. I don't know. I think the other ones are mostly like, we like her. We put her on our currency. I don't think it's much more than that.

Like Canada. But I think Scotland is much more economically integrated. I mean, Canada, basically, my understanding is, well, the Scots have, I need to learn more about this, Scots have representation in Parliament at the end of the day. The parliamentary government here gets to decide, gets to make big decisions that affect Scottish citizens every day. That's not true of Canadian citizens. I think they saw that the connective tissue across the Marneke in the Commonwealth would start to fray after her loss. So, what did they do? I don't think it's any accident that she died in Mern, Scotland. I think they strategically said, okay, she's not well, this might be it. We want to show our affinity and affection.

I read that. She did love that place, though. And it's a beautiful place. But if you look at her travel, she always said the queen needs to be, I think something along the lines of that the queen needs to be seen. It can't be a figment of people's imagination. And she used to go to all these places, and she created tremendous goodwill. She did. They do all those tours. You know, it's interesting.

At the top of this website, royal.uk, some information on this website may be out of date following the recent announcement of the death of the queen. You'd think they could change their website real quick. They have stuff. They have a thing about the king and queen consort, but they're keeping her up there. They're keeping her brand up there over King Charles. But it's a moment, I think of as consumer, whenever prices are raised, it's an opportunity for people to rethink, or COVID was the mother of all rethink. People thought, okay, do I need to be buying this? Do I need to be approaching my life this way?

I think her death will give a lot of these nations that were affiliated with the monarchy a chance to rethink their relationship. And I think a lot of them are going to decide just politely to say, we're done. Yeah. Anyway, it really is an interesting time. I think that's a good one.

Do you have any others? No, I said that I thought inflation was going to fall as dramatically. I'm going to England versus Germany at Wembley Stadium, which I'm excited about. I'm going to see Arsenal play Liverpool. Wow. When are you going to Italy? Go visit their new problematic prime minister. We're going to soak up all the great Premier League football first before we head to... Going up to your old homeland in Scotland. I love Scotland. I had such a good time.

I am going to Scotland. Yeah, I'm going to Scotland to see the Rangers play in a couple of weeks. Wow. So it's all around sports. Well, good for you. You know what? It's all around, Cara. I have no interest in sports. My 12 and my 15-year-olds are football crazy, and my advice to any father is give up all

notion that your kids are going to be engaged in the shit you're interested in. That's about you. Yes. Being a good dad is about leaning into what they're interested in. I know. I just went to a basketball tournament, hoop tournament whatever i went to it all day sunday one day the other day not all day a big chunk of it um i am very happy you're home i'm very happy you're home you were wandering around a little bit but now i'm glad you're there with

your family i got all pissed off some fancy friends of ours invited us to this black tie thing tonight and and they said oh it's to benefit amazon benefit Amazon. I'm like, I am not moving to London to go to a fucking fundraiser for Amazon. I hate Amazon. They're like, no, no, no, the Amazon, Scott, the Amazon. And I'm like, oh, sorry, never mind. I'm in. I'm in. I'm like, I'm not going to a benefit for Amazon. I hate that river for being named after the company I hate. I got so angry. I'm so stupid in some of my own world. I thought there was a benefit for the e-commerce company in Seattle. I'm like, no,

we're trying to save the Amazon, Scott. Go get a gin. Start in on the gin. I'm wearing a kilt. Daddy's wearing a kilt tonight. All right, Bridget. Oh, God.

Oh, Bridget Jones. I'm so happy that you're happy. I'm going to call you Bridget Jones. Go ahead and read us out, Bridget Jones. Okay, today's show

was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Severio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot

from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. A wonderful quote from Norman Cousins I stumbled on today. Life is an adventure in forgiveness. We're so in our own heads. When anyone's not nice to you or there's a perceived slight,

imagine the struggles you're dealing with. They're dealing with those too. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.