May 29, 2025 • 31 mins
Small businesses struck back this week–A handful of companies plus a dozen states sued to block the Trump administration’s Liberation Day tariffs. The Court of International Trade ruled that the tariffs marked a presidential overreach. The Trump administration swiftly appealed the decision and the appeals court allowed the tariffs to stay. For now.
In the third episode of Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin dive into the impact tariffs are having on small businesses, Trump’s crypto strategy, and Tinder’s new plan to arrange double dates.
The initial court ruling on tariffs this week marks a notable pushback from states and small businesses, which have been hammered by Trump’s litany of tariffs, and typically have far less flexibility than large corporations, which can stockpile supplies, shift costs, and, in some cases,fly to Mar-a-Lago to negotiate deals in person.
Also, this week a big Bitcoin conference is going on in Las Vegas. Vice President JD Vance gave a speech to the cheering crowd, assuring them that they had a friend in the White House. Bloomberg’s stacy-marie ishmael joins the show to talk about President Trump’s crypto strategy as well as what the President’s enthusiasm and support could mean for the industry.
Then, Max and Stacey bid farewell to the penny. The Treasury announced it will stop minting pennies–helping save the government millions. But the penny’s departure could cause prices to rise, as businesses begin rounding up to the nearest nickel.
Finally, the underrated story of the week is Tinder’s new CEO, whose plan to save the struggling online dating company involves an increase in the use of AI and introducing a “double-date” feature, where four people all chat to arrange a date. Personally, I would swipe left on that idea.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm ex Chapkin and I'm Stacey Vannocksmith.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey, Stacy, Summer's here.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I guess yes it is.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's not, though, but Memorial Day happened and I went camping,
and it feels like we're entering a new phase.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yes, it has been warming up a little bit in
New York, which has been very welcome. And typically the
summer is when the news slows down a little bit.
Not now, at least not so far. This week, the
business news has been really big, everything from Tinder to tariffs.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There was a huge court ruling essentially blocking most of
Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, saying he was essentially not following
the law that allowed him to make those tariffs, that
this was an issue of presidential overreach.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah. In fact, the lawsuit was brought in in part
by a group of all businesses, which is really interesting
to me, you know, like small businesses strike back. The
Trump administration appealed the decision and appeals courts looking into it.
Last we heard the tariffs will be going ahead for now.
It's all tied up in courts. But Max, the little
(01:16):
guys they're putting up a fight.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
They're gonna lose. Stacy, We're also gonna tell me about
money and the Trump administration and the way that Donald
Trump has used crypto both to create a really big
sort of political piggybank as well as a potential personal
piggy bank.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, we've got Stacy Marie Ishmael coming in to talk crypto.
And while very strange coins seem to be getting issued
by the day, actual coins, Max, actual coins are going away.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And our underrated story of the week is going to
be about the big way that Tinder is going to
turn things around, get those youngs to start swiping.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So Max, the big economic story of the year so
far has definitely been tariffs. It's been just a central
pillar of the Trump administration's economic plan, and he's put
them in place on just a massive global scale, and
also then kind of unput them in place.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah. I mean, at the beginning of this week, everyone
was talking about all the ways in which Trump was
kind of whimping out on tariffs, and then the International
Court of Trade, which was a court I had never
heard of, essentially said to all those people, hold my
beer and blocked the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, a dozen states came together and a handful of
small businesses they brought this suit. There was like a
wine shop and a fish wholesaler and a bicycle shop,
and they said the Trump administration did not have the authority,
that it was a presidential overreach to levy these tariffs.
Trump has been using this Act for nineteen seventy seven,
which says a president can put tariffs in place if
there's an emergency. Otherwise it has to be Congress that
(02:52):
puts tariffs in place.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
This had always felt like a little bit of the stretch.
If I understand the Trump Administration's logic, there are sort
of two emergencies going on. One is the fentanyl crisis,
the idea that China is sending the United States fentanyls
sometimes via other countries. And then the other is just
in Canada. Yeah yeah. And then the other is just
the trade deficit. It's like, hey, we got an emergency
(03:16):
because the trade deficit is so bad. Court essentially questioning
that logic.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The Trump administration appealed the decision. Now in appeals court
is looking into the case, and last we heard as
of Thursday evening, the tariffs can go ahead. So it's
like a pause to the pause to the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
There's been a lot of those lately, I know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
But but what I did find fascinating about this was
that it wasn't the big companies doing this, like the
big companies with lots of money and armies of lawyers.
It was the little companies that kind of got together
and had the guts to take on Trump and the
Trump administration, Like, why don't you think big companies went
this route?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So I think there are two things going on. I mean,
one is that the big companies of made this calculation.
I mentioned the idea that Trump is going to kind
of wimp out or whatever. That's the calculation that the
big companies have been making all along that they will
be able to kind of influence him. You know that
they want their tax cuts, they want other policies that
they think Trump is going to give them, and their
plan is to kind of negotiate this. And maybe the
(04:18):
more important thing is this hurts small businesses like way
more than it hurts big businesses. Ye, big companies, they
have tons of capital. They can fly in you know,
several months worth of inventory while they send their lobbyists
to Washington to try to negotiate an exemption. They have
other supply lines. Apple operates factories in India. Right, they
(04:39):
can shift production to countries with other tariffs. Right. Trump
obviously has been trying to thwart that.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
And they can eat some of the costs for a
while if they need to just tekeep customers coming. They've
they've got some flexibility.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And like small businesses are not able to play that
political game, they are not able to play that inventory game.
They're just getting like blown by these wins, probably harder,
I think than anybody else. A lot of people talk
about this as an attack on consumers, which of course
it is ultimately, but I really think it's these small companies.
You think about, like a kind of typical shark tank business. Somebody, Yeah,
(05:13):
we had some idea and like contracts with a supplier
overseas and brings it here and like that business is
in crisis right now.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, And small businesses they employ like forty percent of
the people in the US. I mean, this is a
huge part of our economy, and almost all of them
get some kind of goods or service from overseas, and
like you say, they don't have the financial cushion, the options,
the political capital to go to mar A Lago and
have dinner with the president that big companies do. They
(05:41):
just have fewer avenues to push back against this. I
have been talking to small business owners for the last
couple of months about tariffs and the different impacts that
it's having on their businesses. I spoke with one man,
this guy, John Pascal. He owns a flower shop in
la and he was saying that all of his different
flowers have different tariffs on them. Now he gets roses
(06:02):
from Columbia and orchids from Thailand, so every single flower
he has to calculate a different tariff on and packaging
is almost entirely from China. He's getting cell of fame
to wrap around the flowers and boxes from China. And
he said he looked into making those things in the US,
or to getting US made products to try to get
around the tariffs, but it was so much more expensive
(06:24):
to do that that he came up with this interesting solution.
Here's what he told me.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So now I have to send it to my father
in Canada, and then I ship it again from Canada
to here, so twice the shipman plus a small tariff
from Canada, plus the tariff from China to Canada is
less than shipping it straight from China. So now we
(06:52):
have to just jump hoops to get things cheese.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
That's just the cell of Fame and the boxes. He
said he spends like fifteen thousand dollars a year on
those things. It's like little things you don't even think
about that small businesses are dealing with, and that are
making a huge difference to their profit margins and bottom lines.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
The thing is too remember a few weeks ago when
Amazon seemed to sort of briefly consider taking the what
would have been kind of a fairly modest step of
telling customers about this, and then they now, we bet
or not, you know, wouldn't want to rattle the cage
too much.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And meanwhile, I mean, actually that's interesting because John Pascal
decided he wasn't sure what kind of upcharge to put
on his flowers, and so he decided he was just
going to put a ten dollars tear a fee on
all of his bouquets. And he said, he's not really
sure how customers are going to receive it, but he said,
things are just changing so much, and so fast that he's,
(07:46):
you know, can't deal with all the uncertainty and kind
of had to cushion by adding ten dollars on which
of course pushes up prices for customers too. This is how,
you know, tariffs kind of trickle down to all of us,
and it's like every business. As I talked to this woman,
Aaron McKenna, she owns bakeries in Florida, in California. She
imports a lot of her ingredients from Europe, obviously chocolate
(08:06):
and stuff like that, but also the Philippines in India.
And I asked her to like go through some of
her ingredients that she was importing, and here's what she said.
So let's look.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
At coconut milk. Seventy eight dollars that's per case. It
was sixty four eighty.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Five a few months ago. Yes, so that's a lot.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Of course, there's cinnamon. I actually haven't even looked at
the price of cinnamon. I can't look.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It's gone up a lot because she gets her cinnamon
from India. And she said she just doesn't actually feel
at this point like she can pass the cost along
because she feels like prices have gone up almost by
a third since the beginning of the pandemic. And she says,
at this point, people are upset, like customers are angry.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So what's she doing? What is the recourse here?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
She was thinking about maybe experimenting with new recipes or
making smaller versions of all of her deserves, which of
course r inflation. Yes, I mean, this, of course is
what we see as customers. But she said, you know,
she just didn't feel like whatever happened, she could raise
her prices.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
We actually have a chalkboard in the back. We put
a little ding by it. Anytime somebody's like how much wow,
and the wows really psychologically get to you.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It doesn't sound like you feel like you can just
easily pass cost rise and costs along to customers.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
No, I don't think so. People take it really personal
and we're just trying to stay in business.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I think one thing where Trump has been very successful
is kind of like picking on kind of unpopular targets,
whether it's Harvard or big law firms, yeah, or even
like big companies. It's like hard to cry tears for
Harvard University or like one of these big corporate law firms,
or even like Walmart. When Trump says, oh, Walmart's got
to eat the tariffs. But you're telling this florists to
(09:53):
eat the tariffs. You're telling some like Cookie Baker, I
know they can't eat the tariffs. They're just going to
eat less.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, and we are going to eat less because yes,
so Max. The tariffs were of course huge economic news,
but we did also get some smaller economic news, which
is also important. The penny is going away, oh, Stacy, or.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We're still talking about the penny?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Penny? No? No, I feel like this is actually like
a really sad day. It's the oldest coin that we
have in the US. It's almost as old as the
country itself. It's part of our history.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, but it's only worth a penny and it costs
I think four cents to make. Nobody cares about pennies anymore.
And if they stop minting them, they're gonna save like
fifty five million bucks, which is not that much money,
I guess in the scheme of a country grounding Err yeah,
with a with trillions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But a penny saved is a penny earned.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And that is what we will lose, Stacy if this
happens is happening, I know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I know but also there's like an inflationary risk if
you take the penny away, because it probably means that
prices are just going to get rounded up to the
nearest nickel, and now everybody's going to be coming for
the nickel because it costs like fourteen cents to make
a nickel.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I mean, we should just get rid of all coins, right,
just Max?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Do you That would have a huge inflationary impact.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
You want to get this economic.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Policy economic issues aside. I feel like there's like a
cultural heritage thing at stake here. It connects us to
our past, the founding of the country, plus all the
lore around the penny. If you find one, it's good luck.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, you throw them in the fountain and wish for something.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, Max, because
I went to a fountain to talk to the people
of New York about their feelings about the end of
the penny. Bethesda Fountain. It's in Central Park. It's very famous. Anyway,
I decided to ask people how they felt about the
penny going away? What brought you to the fountain today?
These are our grandsons, and figured we'd let them make
(12:04):
some wishes. Oh did they wish with pennies. They wished
with pennies. What did you wish for?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
I can't say you nice?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, okay, that's good wish policy. What do you think
about the penny going away?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
There's always been pennies. It will be kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
We save pennies, Yeah, you save them for fountains and
the boys. Does it make you said the pennies going away? No,
it doesn't make me feel much of it is at
the end of an era for sure, just like kids
won't know what a penny is.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's crazy. Penny for your thoughts. Pennies from heaven. Pennies
are relevant. Do you guys want a penny you can
wish with?
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Let's wish to get too great?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Let me go, what do you guys wish for?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That my boys can continue to do things like this
and maybe have pennies for their kids to wish with.
You know, you can still throw pennies, maybe all the
more so once they get rid of them. They're just
there's gonna be sitting around for exclusively.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
For there are still like billions of them in circulation,
and you can still spend your pennies. It's just they're
not going to be making any new ones.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Don't you know?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Each cloud contain.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Pennies from heaven.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So from a coin that's going away, to the new coins,
to the future of every day, talking of course about cryptocurrency.
Jd Vance, Vice President, was in Las Vegas on Wednesday
speaking at the Bitcoin Conference. This is the same event
that Donald Trump spoke at last year during the political campaign,
(13:47):
and this time it was something of a victory lab
for the Trump administration, essentially claiming credit for all this
support of the crypto industry and asking for more support
in the future.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I'm here today to say loud and clear with President Trump,
crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the
White House.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
That sounds like a big crowd, It's like a big convergence.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
There are a lot of people who love crypto. As
our guest stadium, Stacey Marie Ishmael Bloomberg's executive editor overseeing
crypto and fintech, can attest. Hey, Stacey Marie. Hello, So
there was a lot in this speech from the Vice President,
but it's really just kind of the latest in a
series of love letters that the Trump administration has written
(14:32):
to the crypto industry. Let me just quickly run through
a few. You had the Trump and Millenia coins, the
dinner about those coins, trumps stable Coin, the Crypto Reserve
Executive Order, the pardoning of Ross Olbrick, defanging the SEC
It goes on and on and on. Stacy Marie, how
would you characterize the White House's approach to crypto sort
(14:57):
of overall of all those things, like what has been
most important or most interesting?
Speaker 5 (15:02):
I would say, from an efficacy perspective, if I think
about this as like what's been material to the fortunes
of crypto people as opposed to what are they happiest about? Certainly,
the difference in the regulatory approach under the Trump White
House versus the Biden administration is pronounced. You mentioned the
moves by the US and Securities Exchange Commission to largely,
(15:26):
I would say, drop or pause a majority of the
more significant crypto cases that they had been prosecuting. But
we're seeing, you know, enthusiastic rhetoric, shall we say, from
the regulators about crypto, which is very different from the
Gensler era of I think you're all criminals who don't
like following rules. Right now, we're hearing whether it's the
(15:48):
SEC or the CFTC, or the IRS or anybody else,
essentially encouraging the industry to go out, be innovative, try things,
and you know, from a regulatory perspective, our approach is
going to be We're not going to get in your
way unless something egregious or obviously fraudulent is happening. So,
if you are a crypto insider, you currently feel like
you know your money was well spent on all of
(16:09):
the lobbying efforts and the political donations of the past
couple of years.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Just to say that perspective of Gary Gensler is saying
it's all illegal, like that is the crypto industry's perspective.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Hundred percent of crypto industry.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Not necessarily what you'd hear if you talk to Gary Gensler.
I think what he would say is, hey, we just
want them to follow the same rules that other finance
companies follow. There was a moment where I saw people
in the crypto world sort of getting mad at Trump,
sort of saying like he is making us look bad,
like he's launching coins.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
When he launched the trump coin in Milania coin. They
were mad at him exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
They were saying, like, we're beyond this. We are we
are building a new finance industry. This is like changing
global finance whatever kind of high minded slash crazy futuristic
ideological thing.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
He also created the Strategic Crypto Reserve, which seems quite legitimizing.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
So I think what you're describing one. There's a timeline thing,
which is President Trump launched the Presidential meme coin, I
suppose right before he was inaugurated, right, so it was
like a couple of days before January twentieth, and then
the First Lady launched thrown separately through a different entity.
And there was criticism then of the fact that this
looked like the kind of thing that people criticized the
(17:19):
industry for, But the same people who were criticizing it
were very careful not to criticize the president directly. The
rhetoric was like, he must be getting bad advice, right,
because the industry is in this very interesting place of
trying to keep the White House and the President on
side while also worrying about whether this is going to
(17:42):
affect them negatively or there might be too much competition
from the same investor base.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
But trump coin has not done that well, right, how
are these strategies working.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
One of the first things you learn in crypto that
attempting to apply traditional market value analysis to the assets
is like the path to pay. So, you know, one
way to think about the trump coin is as a
political instrument, a way of declaring kind of allegiance to
a president, an ideology, a way of seeing the world.
(18:16):
It's very similar to you know, the folks would buy
the Trump collectibles, like which featured art of him as
super mad or an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Or or an actual coin or there was an actual Yeah, there's.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
But there's also the bibles, there's the sneakers, Right, So
a lot of the ways that people are approaching trump
coin is this is a way for me to signal
fidelity to a particular worldview, as opposed to this is
going to be the thing that.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Gets me rich.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
There are absolutely people who made out like bandits in
trading trump coin and other meme coins, because there's a
lot of room for that sort of speculative arbitrage and crypto.
But in so much of the conversations that we're having
with people, they're like, this is how they signal that
they are aligned with the presidential cause.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
There was all this conversation before the Trump presidency about
the dangers of crypto, right, Gary Gensler to some extent
driving that conversation. You also have seen like investors really
get screwed by buying into you know, rug Polish like
schemes or in putting their money in crypto companies that
(19:20):
just haven't been good stewards of that money. You have
Trump essentially throwing the gates open, changing the regulator environment,
and telling people essentially including Trump and the vice president
and Trump's kids, basically bitcoins going to the moon, Like
how much risk is there? I mean risk to this
kind of class of investor and maybe even broader like
(19:44):
economic risk.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
I think that that philosophy that you're describing is not
confined only to crypto.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
We're seeing the rule back of regulations in other parts
of the financial markets. Things that affect you know, FinTechs,
things that affect payment companies, things that affect whether like
Apple and Google are considered to providing financial services. So
to me, the fact that this thing is happening in
crypto isn't because crypto is like uniquely special in terms
of its regulatory love being success is that the White
(20:11):
House policy on a lot of these things is you know,
a very like individualistic do your own research platitude.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I mean to me, like the stable coin thing is
almost scarier than the Trump and Malaney coin. Like I
feel like we have a framework for understanding that. It's
like the sneakers or whatever Trump is on TV with
a commemorative plate being like, Hey, this thing might not
go up in value, but you sure you're sure want
to get Like, I don't know that there are that
many people buying Trump coin who really see it as
(20:38):
like a good investment. Stablecoin has stable in the name.
It's also basically like an unregulated bank. It just seems
like that is where you could imagine real economic risk.
It kind of fits the framework that you're laying out
in other parts of the financial system.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Can you also just describe, like what is happening with
stable cooin in a foundational way?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Sure? So, stable coins are the things that international financial regulators,
especially people who care about stability, worry about the most
when it comes to the incursion of crypto and traditional finance.
And it's for two reasons. One, as you say the
name gives people the impression that like, this is a
totally chill thing, like it's it's tagged to a different asset.
(21:22):
It's fine, And for certain categories of stable coins, that's
largely true.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
It's designed to maintain a steady value with something like
the dollar or the euro or the yen. And the
way that it achieves that for a majority of these
kinds of stable coins is the people who issue it
hold a bunch of assets that are very liquid, and
so if you need to redeem the dollar value of
that thing, somebody will go off to their vaults, their gold.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
There's not going to be a run on the bank.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
So it's not going to be a run in the bank.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That's the theory.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
The practice is not all stable coins have been created equal,
and even the ones that are able to demonstrate that
they have the reserves backing them, et cetera, have been
prone to volatility in ways that have stressed people out.
So one of the things that's happening in the US
is the US Congress is hotly debating some stable coin
legislation that will actually provide more of a framework that
(22:10):
would include things like investor protections. Who do you call
if your stable coin dollar is no longer actually worth
a dollar. Hasn't been passed yet.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Has been the Genius Act. This is the Genius which
is like a callback to the stable Genius things.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I guess yeah, because there's also a Stable Act. There's
the Genius Act the Stable Act. They have very slightly
different provisions. It's very stable genius haha. But this I
think is a good example of where there is bark
partisans consensus that this particular element of blockchain doesn't look
like it's going away, and it seems better to have
legislation around it rather than not. Now you've mentioned the
(22:43):
Trump stable coin. That stable coin is issued by World
Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family crypto project is
largely run by the Suns. It's promoted by the President
on various social platforms, and it's very very new. It's
in fact not officially launched to the public, but it
has had some extremely high profile deals, including the issuance
(23:05):
of this stable coin.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
At the moment, is it pegged to the dollar or
what is it?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
They describe it as a US dollar pegged stable coin,
so in theory it should maintain a one to one
relationship with the US dollar what we don't yet have
a lot of visibility into is what their reserves look like.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
So the other big stable coin issue is tether circle
provide varying degrees of attestations and financial statements that say, hey,
we've got you know, x billion dollars worth of treasuries
being held by Cancer or Black Rock or whoever. We
haven't seen that yet for World Liberty State an you.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Just hope it's not held like exclusively in Trump wine
or Trump sneakers or some other asset. Last thing, jd Vance.
This was in some ways a victory lap. I think
he's like saying thank you to the industry for supporting him.
But he made a pitch at the end of this
talk essentially for more engagement, essentially saying to these guys
(24:01):
and gals at the crypto industry conference, like, Hey, you
need to like stay engaged, you need to support us
this political alliance between Trump and crypto, Like how big
do you think it is? There was an interview in
New York Magazine where Mark Cuban and he actually said
the same thing to me a couple weeks ago, but
(24:22):
unfortunately in New York Magazine got it out before me. But
in any case, he said, like crypto costs Democrats the presidency,
and I think there are real questions about like how
seriously we should take this. Obviously that's a claim that
the industry really likes. But how valuable is this cohort
politically to Donald Trump?
Speaker 5 (24:39):
I would say financially, it's very valuable. Right, So, the
crypto industry, starting with Sam Bankminfried in a different time,
really changed the perception of how much money they would
give to political candidate. It's like, you know, the sbf
ftx Ero was very much we're going to donate aggressively
to Democrat un Democrat alliance causes. Under Trump, the industry
(24:59):
stepped ou substantially, both before the election and then continuing
into donations to the inaugural parties and all that. Like
we're talking multiple millions of dollars of gifts just from crypto,
like up there with pharma and tech and you know,
Brian Armstrong who's the chief executive officer at Coinbase and
has done a lot of work with the fair Shake Pack,
(25:19):
has made it clear that the midterms, the big crypto pack, right,
the midterms continue to be like a priority area for
donations for campaign support and so jade Vance is rightly
recognizing that the industry has said, we will keep showing
up for you, and so you know they want to
be explicit about thank you for doing so, here's what
(25:40):
else we have on the pipeline.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, they really have like an existential stake in this,
right crypto. I mean, as far as being able to
have access to different markets and regulations. It seems like
this is a good investment for them.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I think if we go back to the kind of
the Mark Cuban argument, and I'm not going to get
into sophisticated political analysis, but essentially that comes from a
place of what crypto allows people to do is like
self actualize financially in a way that's not intermediated by
gatekeepers and having to have a broker or be rich
enough to be a qualified investor. You can kind of
(26:14):
go out there, do your own thing and see the
numbers go up. And that is a very powerful argument
that has been used a lot by the crypto industry
for many, many years. We are not the banks, we
are not the government. We're in it for you, and
you can also be in it for you. It's a
very individualistic appeal.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, it's a powerful appeal. All right, Stacy Marie, thank
you for being here. We'll have to have you back
on soon next time something crazy happens.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Sure is you Stacy Coin, No, Stacy.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
As you know and as our listeners know, every week
we pick an underrated story, a story that you or
I feel like is not getting enough attention, And this
week I've got one for you. Okay, okay. So it's
about the apps. It's about Tinder. I guess Tinder is
run into some troubles lately. Used to just gone down.
(27:08):
The kids don't like swiping as much as as us old.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yes, I think I have heard that younger users do
not like dating apps because also apparently they don't like dating.
So that's what I've read.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I'm not in that cohort, but but yeah, I know
that the apps have been having a terror part.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, Tinder is in the midst of a turnaround. And
to spearhead this, this bold pivot to the future, this
attempt to win over the youngs, they hired the forty
nine year old former CEO of Zillo.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
The rest seems like a great move.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It seems like great if you're trying to win over
millennials or exers, or the kind of people who look
at real estate. I don't know that this is necessarily
what I would have done if I were in charge
of Tinder. On the other hand, Spencer Raskoff, the new CEO,
he laid out the plan and I'm gonna I'm gonna
run through the few things. So his basic idea is
(28:04):
that Tinder is like a bar. Now, bars go through phases.
They start out cool, then they become uncool. Then the
bar owner has to come in and renovate. This is
the metaphor he used an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Now,
the renovation involves speeding up product changes, quote leverage artificial intelligence.
I don't know what that means, but I'm sure Tinder does,
(28:27):
and boost user safety. They also have a new product
feature in mind.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Okay, this I want to hear about. What is their
new product feature?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Double dates?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Oh God, that's the idea. Double dates.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, so I've been trying to puzzle through.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You have to go out with three people you don't
want to talk to.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I think you would pair up with a friend and
then you would match with two strangers. But this seems
like it's just it's like two times worse than a
normal date because you have these other players in it.
And I also don't know, like, is this that's the
thing that zoomers do. Do zoomers go on double dates?
That sounds like very retro.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I mean, it just seems to combine two of our
culture's most terrible things, one trying to coordinate schedules with
multiple people and two blind dates. Like it's like two
wrongs make a right.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
My assumption here is that what's going on, like you
kind of hinted at it, there's sort of a bit
of a backlash towards like social media, and Tinder is
a social media thing. I'm trying to think back to
when Tinder got really hot, and I think part of
what made it cool I've been married for a long
time and not on the apps, so I'm sort of
speaking from secondhand experience here, but it seemed like it's
(29:41):
integration with Facebook was kind of what powered it in
the first place. And it's kind of like what it
made it exciting is you could see, like which of
your social connections you might have a match with. And
I think that as that has become less important and
as people have become creeped out by that and maybe
creeped out of you know, apps in general. It's just like,
you know, they just want to like get out in
(30:03):
the world, go to run club or something. That was
what the journal suggested as the alternative.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I have used the apps in my sordid past, and
what I will say is that it is like a
uniquely awkward experience because the thing is, there's all this choice, right,
like hundreds and hundreds of people, and you're swiping this
way and you're swiping that way while you're watching TV,
which is literally what everyone's just sitting. You're swiping, swiping,
(30:28):
and then you have to go out and meet this person.
It's just the strangest sensation because you have no context
and all of a sudden, you're like on a date.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Don't you want AI involved in that?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
That is the other problem, right, It's like three things
that make everything terrible. Coordating schedules with groups, blind dates.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
And AI listeners. Let us know if you have thoughts
on this, either yeah, the dating app business or dating
in general, send us an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer. Amy Keen is our editor and Brendan
Francis Neonham is our executive producer. Dave Pricelf fact check
the show any special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Sagebauman, head
Bloomberg Podcast. If you have a minute, please rate and
review the show. It would mean a lot to us.
Thank you for listening, and see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm ex Chapkin and I'm Stacey Vannocksmith.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey, Stacy, Summer's here.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I guess yes it is.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's not, though, but Memorial Day happened and I went camping,
and it feels like we're entering a new phase.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yes, it has been warming up a little bit in
New York, which has been very welcome. And typically the
summer is when the news slows down a little bit.
Not now, at least not so far. This week, the
business news has been really big, everything from Tinder to tariffs.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There was a huge court ruling essentially blocking most of
Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, saying he was essentially not following
the law that allowed him to make those tariffs, that
this was an issue of presidential overreach.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah. In fact, the lawsuit was brought in in part
by a group of all businesses, which is really interesting
to me, you know, like small businesses strike back. The
Trump administration appealed the decision and appeals courts looking into it.
Last we heard the tariffs will be going ahead for now.
It's all tied up in courts. But Max, the little
(01:16):
guys they're putting up a fight.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
They're gonna lose. Stacy, We're also gonna tell me about
money and the Trump administration and the way that Donald
Trump has used crypto both to create a really big
sort of political piggybank as well as a potential personal
piggy bank.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, we've got Stacy Marie Ishmael coming in to talk crypto.
And while very strange coins seem to be getting issued
by the day, actual coins, Max, actual coins are going away.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And our underrated story of the week is going to
be about the big way that Tinder is going to
turn things around, get those youngs to start swiping.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So Max, the big economic story of the year so
far has definitely been tariffs. It's been just a central
pillar of the Trump administration's economic plan, and he's put
them in place on just a massive global scale, and
also then kind of unput them in place.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah. I mean, at the beginning of this week, everyone
was talking about all the ways in which Trump was
kind of whimping out on tariffs, and then the International
Court of Trade, which was a court I had never
heard of, essentially said to all those people, hold my
beer and blocked the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, a dozen states came together and a handful of
small businesses they brought this suit. There was like a
wine shop and a fish wholesaler and a bicycle shop,
and they said the Trump administration did not have the authority,
that it was a presidential overreach to levy these tariffs.
Trump has been using this Act for nineteen seventy seven,
which says a president can put tariffs in place if
there's an emergency. Otherwise it has to be Congress that
(02:52):
puts tariffs in place.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
This had always felt like a little bit of the stretch.
If I understand the Trump Administration's logic, there are sort
of two emergencies going on. One is the fentanyl crisis,
the idea that China is sending the United States fentanyls
sometimes via other countries. And then the other is just
in Canada. Yeah yeah. And then the other is just
the trade deficit. It's like, hey, we got an emergency
(03:16):
because the trade deficit is so bad. Court essentially questioning
that logic.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The Trump administration appealed the decision. Now in appeals court
is looking into the case, and last we heard as
of Thursday evening, the tariffs can go ahead. So it's
like a pause to the pause to the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
There's been a lot of those lately, I know.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
But but what I did find fascinating about this was
that it wasn't the big companies doing this, like the
big companies with lots of money and armies of lawyers.
It was the little companies that kind of got together
and had the guts to take on Trump and the
Trump administration, Like, why don't you think big companies went
this route?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So I think there are two things going on. I mean,
one is that the big companies of made this calculation.
I mentioned the idea that Trump is going to kind
of wimp out or whatever. That's the calculation that the
big companies have been making all along that they will
be able to kind of influence him. You know that
they want their tax cuts, they want other policies that
they think Trump is going to give them, and their
plan is to kind of negotiate this. And maybe the
(04:18):
more important thing is this hurts small businesses like way
more than it hurts big businesses. Ye, big companies, they
have tons of capital. They can fly in you know,
several months worth of inventory while they send their lobbyists
to Washington to try to negotiate an exemption. They have
other supply lines. Apple operates factories in India. Right, they
(04:39):
can shift production to countries with other tariffs. Right. Trump
obviously has been trying to thwart that.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
And they can eat some of the costs for a
while if they need to just tekeep customers coming. They've
they've got some flexibility.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And like small businesses are not able to play that
political game, they are not able to play that inventory game.
They're just getting like blown by these wins, probably harder,
I think than anybody else. A lot of people talk
about this as an attack on consumers, which of course
it is ultimately, but I really think it's these small companies.
You think about, like a kind of typical shark tank business. Somebody, Yeah,
(05:13):
we had some idea and like contracts with a supplier
overseas and brings it here and like that business is
in crisis right now.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, And small businesses they employ like forty percent of
the people in the US. I mean, this is a
huge part of our economy, and almost all of them
get some kind of goods or service from overseas, and
like you say, they don't have the financial cushion, the options,
the political capital to go to mar A Lago and
have dinner with the president that big companies do. They
(05:41):
just have fewer avenues to push back against this. I
have been talking to small business owners for the last
couple of months about tariffs and the different impacts that
it's having on their businesses. I spoke with one man,
this guy, John Pascal. He owns a flower shop in
la and he was saying that all of his different
flowers have different tariffs on them. Now he gets roses
(06:02):
from Columbia and orchids from Thailand, so every single flower
he has to calculate a different tariff on and packaging
is almost entirely from China. He's getting cell of fame
to wrap around the flowers and boxes from China. And
he said he looked into making those things in the US,
or to getting US made products to try to get
around the tariffs, but it was so much more expensive
(06:24):
to do that that he came up with this interesting solution.
Here's what he told me.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So now I have to send it to my father
in Canada, and then I ship it again from Canada
to here, so twice the shipman plus a small tariff
from Canada, plus the tariff from China to Canada is
less than shipping it straight from China. So now we
(06:52):
have to just jump hoops to get things cheese.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
That's just the cell of Fame and the boxes. He
said he spends like fifteen thousand dollars a year on
those things. It's like little things you don't even think
about that small businesses are dealing with, and that are
making a huge difference to their profit margins and bottom lines.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
The thing is too remember a few weeks ago when
Amazon seemed to sort of briefly consider taking the what
would have been kind of a fairly modest step of
telling customers about this, and then they now, we bet
or not, you know, wouldn't want to rattle the cage
too much.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And meanwhile, I mean, actually that's interesting because John Pascal
decided he wasn't sure what kind of upcharge to put
on his flowers, and so he decided he was just
going to put a ten dollars tear a fee on
all of his bouquets. And he said, he's not really
sure how customers are going to receive it, but he said,
things are just changing so much, and so fast that he's,
(07:46):
you know, can't deal with all the uncertainty and kind
of had to cushion by adding ten dollars on which
of course pushes up prices for customers too. This is how,
you know, tariffs kind of trickle down to all of us,
and it's like every business. As I talked to this woman,
Aaron McKenna, she owns bakeries in Florida, in California. She
imports a lot of her ingredients from Europe, obviously chocolate
(08:06):
and stuff like that, but also the Philippines in India.
And I asked her to like go through some of
her ingredients that she was importing, and here's what she said.
So let's look.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
At coconut milk. Seventy eight dollars that's per case. It
was sixty four eighty.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Five a few months ago. Yes, so that's a lot.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Of course, there's cinnamon. I actually haven't even looked at
the price of cinnamon. I can't look.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It's gone up a lot because she gets her cinnamon
from India. And she said she just doesn't actually feel
at this point like she can pass the cost along
because she feels like prices have gone up almost by
a third since the beginning of the pandemic. And she says,
at this point, people are upset, like customers are angry.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So what's she doing? What is the recourse here?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
She was thinking about maybe experimenting with new recipes or
making smaller versions of all of her deserves, which of
course r inflation. Yes, I mean, this, of course is
what we see as customers. But she said, you know,
she just didn't feel like whatever happened, she could raise
her prices.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
We actually have a chalkboard in the back. We put
a little ding by it. Anytime somebody's like how much wow,
and the wows really psychologically get to you.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It doesn't sound like you feel like you can just
easily pass cost rise and costs along to customers.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
No, I don't think so. People take it really personal
and we're just trying to stay in business.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I think one thing where Trump has been very successful
is kind of like picking on kind of unpopular targets,
whether it's Harvard or big law firms, yeah, or even
like big companies. It's like hard to cry tears for
Harvard University or like one of these big corporate law firms,
or even like Walmart. When Trump says, oh, Walmart's got
to eat the tariffs. But you're telling this florists to
(09:53):
eat the tariffs. You're telling some like Cookie Baker, I
know they can't eat the tariffs. They're just going to
eat less.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, and we are going to eat less because yes,
so Max. The tariffs were of course huge economic news,
but we did also get some smaller economic news, which
is also important. The penny is going away, oh, Stacy, or.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We're still talking about the penny?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Penny? No? No, I feel like this is actually like
a really sad day. It's the oldest coin that we
have in the US. It's almost as old as the
country itself. It's part of our history.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, but it's only worth a penny and it costs
I think four cents to make. Nobody cares about pennies anymore.
And if they stop minting them, they're gonna save like
fifty five million bucks, which is not that much money,
I guess in the scheme of a country grounding Err yeah,
with a with trillions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But a penny saved is a penny earned.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And that is what we will lose, Stacy if this
happens is happening, I know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I know but also there's like an inflationary risk if
you take the penny away, because it probably means that
prices are just going to get rounded up to the
nearest nickel, and now everybody's going to be coming for
the nickel because it costs like fourteen cents to make
a nickel.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I mean, we should just get rid of all coins, right,
just Max?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Do you That would have a huge inflationary impact.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
You want to get this economic.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Policy economic issues aside. I feel like there's like a
cultural heritage thing at stake here. It connects us to
our past, the founding of the country, plus all the
lore around the penny. If you find one, it's good luck.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, you throw them in the fountain and wish for something.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, Max, because
I went to a fountain to talk to the people
of New York about their feelings about the end of
the penny. Bethesda Fountain. It's in Central Park. It's very famous. Anyway,
I decided to ask people how they felt about the
penny going away? What brought you to the fountain today?
These are our grandsons, and figured we'd let them make
(12:04):
some wishes. Oh did they wish with pennies. They wished
with pennies. What did you wish for?
Speaker 4 (12:09):
I can't say you nice?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, okay, that's good wish policy. What do you think
about the penny going away?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
There's always been pennies. It will be kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
We save pennies, Yeah, you save them for fountains and
the boys. Does it make you said the pennies going away? No,
it doesn't make me feel much of it is at
the end of an era for sure, just like kids
won't know what a penny is.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's crazy. Penny for your thoughts. Pennies from heaven. Pennies
are relevant. Do you guys want a penny you can
wish with?
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Let's wish to get too great?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Let me go, what do you guys wish for?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That my boys can continue to do things like this
and maybe have pennies for their kids to wish with.
You know, you can still throw pennies, maybe all the
more so once they get rid of them. They're just
there's gonna be sitting around for exclusively.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
For there are still like billions of them in circulation,
and you can still spend your pennies. It's just they're
not going to be making any new ones.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Don't you know?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Each cloud contain.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Pennies from heaven.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So from a coin that's going away, to the new coins,
to the future of every day, talking of course about cryptocurrency.
Jd Vance, Vice President, was in Las Vegas on Wednesday
speaking at the Bitcoin Conference. This is the same event
that Donald Trump spoke at last year during the political campaign,
(13:47):
and this time it was something of a victory lab
for the Trump administration, essentially claiming credit for all this
support of the crypto industry and asking for more support
in the future.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I'm here today to say loud and clear with President Trump,
crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the
White House.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
That sounds like a big crowd, It's like a big convergence.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
There are a lot of people who love crypto. As
our guest stadium, Stacey Marie Ishmael Bloomberg's executive editor overseeing
crypto and fintech, can attest. Hey, Stacey Marie. Hello, So
there was a lot in this speech from the Vice President,
but it's really just kind of the latest in a
series of love letters that the Trump administration has written
(14:32):
to the crypto industry. Let me just quickly run through
a few. You had the Trump and Millenia coins, the
dinner about those coins, trumps stable Coin, the Crypto Reserve
Executive Order, the pardoning of Ross Olbrick, defanging the SEC
It goes on and on and on. Stacy Marie, how
would you characterize the White House's approach to crypto sort
(14:57):
of overall of all those things, like what has been
most important or most interesting?
Speaker 5 (15:02):
I would say, from an efficacy perspective, if I think
about this as like what's been material to the fortunes
of crypto people as opposed to what are they happiest about? Certainly,
the difference in the regulatory approach under the Trump White
House versus the Biden administration is pronounced. You mentioned the
moves by the US and Securities Exchange Commission to largely,
(15:26):
I would say, drop or pause a majority of the
more significant crypto cases that they had been prosecuting. But
we're seeing, you know, enthusiastic rhetoric, shall we say, from
the regulators about crypto, which is very different from the
Gensler era of I think you're all criminals who don't
like following rules. Right now, we're hearing whether it's the
(15:48):
SEC or the CFTC, or the IRS or anybody else,
essentially encouraging the industry to go out, be innovative, try things,
and you know, from a regulatory perspective, our approach is
going to be We're not going to get in your
way unless something egregious or obviously fraudulent is happening. So,
if you are a crypto insider, you currently feel like
you know your money was well spent on all of
(16:09):
the lobbying efforts and the political donations of the past
couple of years.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Just to say that perspective of Gary Gensler is saying
it's all illegal, like that is the crypto industry's perspective.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Hundred percent of crypto industry.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Not necessarily what you'd hear if you talk to Gary Gensler.
I think what he would say is, hey, we just
want them to follow the same rules that other finance
companies follow. There was a moment where I saw people
in the crypto world sort of getting mad at Trump,
sort of saying like he is making us look bad,
like he's launching coins.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
When he launched the trump coin in Milania coin. They
were mad at him exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
They were saying, like, we're beyond this. We are we
are building a new finance industry. This is like changing
global finance whatever kind of high minded slash crazy futuristic
ideological thing.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
He also created the Strategic Crypto Reserve, which seems quite legitimizing.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
So I think what you're describing one. There's a timeline thing,
which is President Trump launched the Presidential meme coin, I
suppose right before he was inaugurated, right, so it was
like a couple of days before January twentieth, and then
the First Lady launched thrown separately through a different entity.
And there was criticism then of the fact that this
looked like the kind of thing that people criticized the
(17:19):
industry for, But the same people who were criticizing it
were very careful not to criticize the president directly. The
rhetoric was like, he must be getting bad advice, right,
because the industry is in this very interesting place of
trying to keep the White House and the President on
side while also worrying about whether this is going to
(17:42):
affect them negatively or there might be too much competition
from the same investor base.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
But trump coin has not done that well, right, how
are these strategies working.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
One of the first things you learn in crypto that
attempting to apply traditional market value analysis to the assets
is like the path to pay. So, you know, one
way to think about the trump coin is as a
political instrument, a way of declaring kind of allegiance to
a president, an ideology, a way of seeing the world.
(18:16):
It's very similar to you know, the folks would buy
the Trump collectibles, like which featured art of him as
super mad or an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Or or an actual coin or there was an actual Yeah, there's.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
But there's also the bibles, there's the sneakers, Right, So
a lot of the ways that people are approaching trump
coin is this is a way for me to signal
fidelity to a particular worldview, as opposed to this is
going to be the thing that.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Gets me rich.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
There are absolutely people who made out like bandits in
trading trump coin and other meme coins, because there's a
lot of room for that sort of speculative arbitrage and crypto.
But in so much of the conversations that we're having
with people, they're like, this is how they signal that
they are aligned with the presidential cause.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
There was all this conversation before the Trump presidency about
the dangers of crypto, right, Gary Gensler to some extent
driving that conversation. You also have seen like investors really
get screwed by buying into you know, rug Polish like
schemes or in putting their money in crypto companies that
(19:20):
just haven't been good stewards of that money. You have
Trump essentially throwing the gates open, changing the regulator environment,
and telling people essentially including Trump and the vice president
and Trump's kids, basically bitcoins going to the moon, Like
how much risk is there? I mean risk to this
kind of class of investor and maybe even broader like
(19:44):
economic risk.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
I think that that philosophy that you're describing is not
confined only to crypto.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
We're seeing the rule back of regulations in other parts
of the financial markets. Things that affect you know, FinTechs,
things that affect payment companies, things that affect whether like
Apple and Google are considered to providing financial services. So
to me, the fact that this thing is happening in
crypto isn't because crypto is like uniquely special in terms
of its regulatory love being success is that the White
(20:11):
House policy on a lot of these things is you know,
a very like individualistic do your own research platitude.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I mean to me, like the stable coin thing is
almost scarier than the Trump and Malaney coin. Like I
feel like we have a framework for understanding that. It's
like the sneakers or whatever Trump is on TV with
a commemorative plate being like, Hey, this thing might not
go up in value, but you sure you're sure want
to get Like, I don't know that there are that
many people buying Trump coin who really see it as
(20:38):
like a good investment. Stablecoin has stable in the name.
It's also basically like an unregulated bank. It just seems
like that is where you could imagine real economic risk.
It kind of fits the framework that you're laying out
in other parts of the financial system.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Can you also just describe, like what is happening with
stable cooin in a foundational way?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Sure? So, stable coins are the things that international financial regulators,
especially people who care about stability, worry about the most
when it comes to the incursion of crypto and traditional finance.
And it's for two reasons. One, as you say the
name gives people the impression that like, this is a
totally chill thing, like it's it's tagged to a different asset.
(21:22):
It's fine, And for certain categories of stable coins, that's
largely true.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
It's designed to maintain a steady value with something like
the dollar or the euro or the yen. And the
way that it achieves that for a majority of these
kinds of stable coins is the people who issue it
hold a bunch of assets that are very liquid, and
so if you need to redeem the dollar value of
that thing, somebody will go off to their vaults, their gold.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
There's not going to be a run on the bank.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
So it's not going to be a run in the bank.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That's the theory.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
The practice is not all stable coins have been created equal,
and even the ones that are able to demonstrate that
they have the reserves backing them, et cetera, have been
prone to volatility in ways that have stressed people out.
So one of the things that's happening in the US
is the US Congress is hotly debating some stable coin
legislation that will actually provide more of a framework that
(22:10):
would include things like investor protections. Who do you call
if your stable coin dollar is no longer actually worth
a dollar. Hasn't been passed yet.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Has been the Genius Act. This is the Genius which
is like a callback to the stable Genius things.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I guess yeah, because there's also a Stable Act. There's
the Genius Act the Stable Act. They have very slightly
different provisions. It's very stable genius haha. But this I
think is a good example of where there is bark
partisans consensus that this particular element of blockchain doesn't look
like it's going away, and it seems better to have
legislation around it rather than not. Now you've mentioned the
(22:43):
Trump stable coin. That stable coin is issued by World
Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family crypto project is
largely run by the Suns. It's promoted by the President
on various social platforms, and it's very very new. It's
in fact not officially launched to the public, but it
has had some extremely high profile deals, including the issuance
(23:05):
of this stable coin.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
At the moment, is it pegged to the dollar or
what is it?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
They describe it as a US dollar pegged stable coin,
so in theory it should maintain a one to one
relationship with the US dollar what we don't yet have
a lot of visibility into is what their reserves look like.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
So the other big stable coin issue is tether circle
provide varying degrees of attestations and financial statements that say, hey,
we've got you know, x billion dollars worth of treasuries
being held by Cancer or Black Rock or whoever. We
haven't seen that yet for World Liberty State an you.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Just hope it's not held like exclusively in Trump wine
or Trump sneakers or some other asset. Last thing, jd Vance.
This was in some ways a victory lap. I think
he's like saying thank you to the industry for supporting him.
But he made a pitch at the end of this
talk essentially for more engagement, essentially saying to these guys
(24:01):
and gals at the crypto industry conference, like, Hey, you
need to like stay engaged, you need to support us
this political alliance between Trump and crypto, Like how big
do you think it is? There was an interview in
New York Magazine where Mark Cuban and he actually said
the same thing to me a couple weeks ago, but
(24:22):
unfortunately in New York Magazine got it out before me. But
in any case, he said, like crypto costs Democrats the presidency,
and I think there are real questions about like how
seriously we should take this. Obviously that's a claim that
the industry really likes. But how valuable is this cohort
politically to Donald Trump?
Speaker 5 (24:39):
I would say financially, it's very valuable. Right, So, the
crypto industry, starting with Sam Bankminfried in a different time,
really changed the perception of how much money they would
give to political candidate. It's like, you know, the sbf
ftx Ero was very much we're going to donate aggressively
to Democrat un Democrat alliance causes. Under Trump, the industry
(24:59):
stepped ou substantially, both before the election and then continuing
into donations to the inaugural parties and all that. Like
we're talking multiple millions of dollars of gifts just from crypto,
like up there with pharma and tech and you know,
Brian Armstrong who's the chief executive officer at Coinbase and
has done a lot of work with the fair Shake Pack,
(25:19):
has made it clear that the midterms, the big crypto pack, right,
the midterms continue to be like a priority area for
donations for campaign support and so jade Vance is rightly
recognizing that the industry has said, we will keep showing
up for you, and so you know they want to
be explicit about thank you for doing so, here's what
(25:40):
else we have on the pipeline.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, they really have like an existential stake in this,
right crypto. I mean, as far as being able to
have access to different markets and regulations. It seems like
this is a good investment for them.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I think if we go back to the kind of
the Mark Cuban argument, and I'm not going to get
into sophisticated political analysis, but essentially that comes from a
place of what crypto allows people to do is like
self actualize financially in a way that's not intermediated by
gatekeepers and having to have a broker or be rich
enough to be a qualified investor. You can kind of
(26:14):
go out there, do your own thing and see the
numbers go up. And that is a very powerful argument
that has been used a lot by the crypto industry
for many, many years. We are not the banks, we
are not the government. We're in it for you, and
you can also be in it for you. It's a
very individualistic appeal.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, it's a powerful appeal. All right, Stacy Marie, thank
you for being here. We'll have to have you back
on soon next time something crazy happens.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Sure is you Stacy Coin, No, Stacy.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
As you know and as our listeners know, every week
we pick an underrated story, a story that you or
I feel like is not getting enough attention, And this
week I've got one for you. Okay, okay. So it's
about the apps. It's about Tinder. I guess Tinder is
run into some troubles lately. Used to just gone down.
(27:08):
The kids don't like swiping as much as as us old.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yes, I think I have heard that younger users do
not like dating apps because also apparently they don't like dating.
So that's what I've read.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I'm not in that cohort, but but yeah, I know
that the apps have been having a terror part.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, Tinder is in the midst of a turnaround. And
to spearhead this, this bold pivot to the future, this
attempt to win over the youngs, they hired the forty
nine year old former CEO of Zillo.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
The rest seems like a great move.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It seems like great if you're trying to win over
millennials or exers, or the kind of people who look
at real estate. I don't know that this is necessarily
what I would have done if I were in charge
of Tinder. On the other hand, Spencer Raskoff, the new CEO,
he laid out the plan and I'm gonna I'm gonna
run through the few things. So his basic idea is
(28:04):
that Tinder is like a bar. Now, bars go through phases.
They start out cool, then they become uncool. Then the
bar owner has to come in and renovate. This is
the metaphor he used an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Now,
the renovation involves speeding up product changes, quote leverage artificial intelligence.
I don't know what that means, but I'm sure Tinder does,
(28:27):
and boost user safety. They also have a new product
feature in mind.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Okay, this I want to hear about. What is their
new product feature?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Double dates?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Oh God, that's the idea. Double dates.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, so I've been trying to puzzle through.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You have to go out with three people you don't
want to talk to.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I think you would pair up with a friend and
then you would match with two strangers. But this seems
like it's just it's like two times worse than a
normal date because you have these other players in it.
And I also don't know, like, is this that's the
thing that zoomers do. Do zoomers go on double dates?
That sounds like very retro.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I mean, it just seems to combine two of our
culture's most terrible things, one trying to coordinate schedules with
multiple people and two blind dates. Like it's like two
wrongs make a right.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
My assumption here is that what's going on, like you
kind of hinted at it, there's sort of a bit
of a backlash towards like social media, and Tinder is
a social media thing. I'm trying to think back to
when Tinder got really hot, and I think part of
what made it cool I've been married for a long
time and not on the apps, so I'm sort of
speaking from secondhand experience here, but it seemed like it's
(29:41):
integration with Facebook was kind of what powered it in
the first place. And it's kind of like what it
made it exciting is you could see, like which of
your social connections you might have a match with. And
I think that as that has become less important and
as people have become creeped out by that and maybe
creeped out of you know, apps in general. It's just like,
you know, they just want to like get out in
(30:03):
the world, go to run club or something. That was
what the journal suggested as the alternative.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I have used the apps in my sordid past, and
what I will say is that it is like a
uniquely awkward experience because the thing is, there's all this choice, right,
like hundreds and hundreds of people, and you're swiping this
way and you're swiping that way while you're watching TV,
which is literally what everyone's just sitting. You're swiping, swiping,
(30:28):
and then you have to go out and meet this person.
It's just the strangest sensation because you have no context
and all of a sudden, you're like on a date.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Don't you want AI involved in that?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
That is the other problem, right, It's like three things
that make everything terrible. Coordating schedules with groups, blind dates.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
And AI listeners. Let us know if you have thoughts
on this, either yeah, the dating app business or dating
in general, send us an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer. Amy Keen is our editor and Brendan
Francis Neonham is our executive producer. Dave Pricelf fact check
the show any special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Sagebauman, head
Bloomberg Podcast. If you have a minute, please rate and
review the show. It would mean a lot to us.
Thank you for listening, and see you next week.
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