June 19, 2021 • 36 mins
This week, Gary Vaynerchuk, who is a board member of the sports memorabilia company Candy, CEO of VaynerMedia, and has a new NFT project called VeeFriends, joined to talk about the resurgence in trading cards, how investing has become a pop culture phenomenon and why alternative investments hold more social currency than stocks. Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox and senior advisor at Teneo, came on to talk about her new memoir "Where You Are Is Not Who You Are" and whether policymakers are taking economic inequality more seriously than during past expansions. Mike Pyle, the chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, explained why the White House is encouraged by trend lines in the U.S. jobs recovery despite the past two jobs reports coming in below estimates. Then Brooklyn Nets star point guard Spencer Dinwiddie, who is also the founder and CEO of Calaxy, a blockchain-based social media app that lets fans buy tokens associated with their favorite stars, joined to talk about creator tokens.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to What You Missed This Week? I'm Joe Wisenthal.
This podcast has some of our favorite interviews from the
Daily Market Clothes show that I co anchor along with
Romaine Bostick and Caroline Hyde. What Do You miss It's
the perfect way to kick off your weekend. This week,
we took a look at a very alternative asset trading cards.
It was a huge trend back in the nineties, but
it faded out over time as the markets got oversaturated.
(00:31):
Now there is a renewed interest in sports trading cards.
Prices are soaring and we've seen some major sales. Kobe
Bryant Rookie card just sold recently for one point seven
five million dollars. So we spoke about it with Gary Vaynerchunk.
I associated Gary with all kinds of things collectibles, and
he totally called this away. He's a board member of
the sports memorabilia company Candy, the CEO of Vyner Media,
(00:52):
and he has a new end of t project called
v Friends. And I started by asking Gary what it
is about this moment that people want tangible, physical things
they can hold, you know, It's it's very interesting. The
sports card thing was actually happening pre covid, pre kind
of the reddit, you know Wall Street thing. Though, you know,
we were talking about this three and a half years ago.
(01:14):
That was just happening because I think the sneaker flipping
game was changing. Were a lot of entrepreneurs, and I
think a lot of you know, eight six ninety one
was the big, big, big era of sports cards in
American history, and a lot of those fifteen sixteen year
olds started having seven, eight, nine year old So you
had a kind of like that classic turn that you
see in the toy industry. You know, in general, the
(01:36):
more broader question you're asking, I think, and you've covered
this a lot on this great program, investing has become
a cultural pop culture phenomenon. If you go to TikTok
right now and look at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds,
they think of themselves as investors. And whether that's the
Robin Hood mentality, whether that's sports cards, whether that's n
(01:57):
f T S, whether that's cryptocurrency, or whether it's just
public stocks. You have an entire generation of fifteen to
twenty five year olds that think of themselves as entrepreneurs
and investors or influencers who are going to make money
doing marketing. That's a very different breath than what you
and I grew up with. And it's been allowed because well,
(02:18):
the cost of getting into the market has been lowered
through innovation, like the likes of Robin Hood or whether
we can get into crypto without having to be someone
who earns a certain amount of money or to have
a million to your name. But I'm interested, Gary, like,
how much do the community you speak to, this TikTok
community in particular, get frustrated by the patronization coming from
all of the people that basically we talked to here
(02:39):
onbout TV. There's an awful lot of older style investors
who are like, oh, cryptocurrencies, are they mad? You know,
I think you've asked the exact right question. We all
know this. This is how society works. It used to
be with like dans and clubs and restaurants and dress culture.
There has never been a time that fifteen to twenty
five year olds are interest sit in supporting what their
(03:01):
parents are. And to your point, you know, when when
individuals come on this show and talk down and dismiss
something that is an incredible reality to many of those people,
it only fuels the fire. And the reality is, and
we've seen this with some of the you know, stock
prices of things that as you know, everybody said months
(03:24):
ago would be a one week to day, four day phenomenon.
The reality is is that a lot you know, and
I do a lot of my forty fifties sixty seventy
year old business friends, which I have a ton of,
probably more than my fifty five year old friends, and
I remind them the market is, the market is the market,
and the markets evolving. Things are changing, and you know,
(03:45):
fundamental still matter. There's plenty things that matter. But what
I will definitely say is alternative investing. It is more
interesting for a lot of people to hold a Michael
Jordan's rookie card as an investment then let's say twelve
thousand shares of Resolid company culturally visually in the way
that people storytell on social media. There you get double value.
(04:08):
You not only get the intrinsic value and be able
to trade it, but you get the social currency that
comes along with, like owning a role X or Mercedes,
which in my opinion actually speaks to incredibly bullish opportunities
for the right n f T projects long term. You know,
you mentioned something about sneakers, which I think is interesting.
You know, people have been into sneakers obviously for a while,
(04:30):
but now we have like these sneaker marketplaces where one
contract the price of us given Jordan's as if you're
tracking a stock and you can go to stock X
and look at it go up and down. How much
does that make collecting things more fun? The idea that
not just do you have a thing, but like it's
fun to watch the line go up or down, and
it's fun to see if you have one of the
(04:50):
ones that's going up in price. And how much does
that sort of change the collecting game To be able
to see these live markets in action, well changed everything
that seems to be stuff is you know that would
be in malls, convention centers. You know, a sneaker or
a sports card or a comic book show would be
in a firehouse in a suburb. Now it's at scale,
(05:11):
it's everywhere. It's legitimized. To your point, stock X looks
like I'm looking at Bloomberg and and again I'm trying
to remind people holding real estate for a passive income,
holding a stock, those are great business decisions. Those are
our grandparents and even our contemporaries business decisions for alternatively
sitting on cash. The fact that you now can do
(05:34):
that with sneakers, sports cards, and f t s and
many other things, and you get the cultural value of
being able to flex that on your social media. I
think humans. I think the industry of finance, the Wall
Street crowd, the Madison Avenue crowd, is underestimating the thirst
that humans have always had for for communicating through what
(05:56):
they hold. When you buy a brand new Mercedes that
the appreciates and value as soon as it leaves the lot,
but you bought it many times for social signaling. The
fact that we can now invest in these assets and
make money but also social signal while we hold them
up in our public crypto wallets or in our Instagram
(06:17):
photos is a human psychology that is grossly being misunderstood
by the black and white decision makers that watch the show. Gary.
I'm interested in though that quite often in the past
we've we've held up like my generation like or just
about call myself millennial, the gen z. Oh, they'll never
buy houses, they don't want to own things they're not
(06:37):
into like actually purchasing stuff, they're gonna rent it all.
And then, funny enough, you hit in a certain age,
you have a pro procreate, you have a kid, and
suddenly you do want to buy a house, or you
at least want to try. You do want to go
on holidays in the way that you always used to.
You don't want to just rent things. Is there an
element that this will be a fat and we'll find
all these the TikTok generation buying ets in the future,
(07:00):
or is it that this will really change the way
in which investment high I think your storytelling up from
is exactly right. I think that happens all the time. However,
I want to remind both of you and everybody watching
that there's always been an alternative class. It's called art,
It's called antiques. If you go look back at the data,
(07:20):
the amount of money spent on these things are quite
real and meaningful. The difference is there's no twenty six
year old on Earth that wants to go to a
Southobes auction house and buy a piece of China from
Europe in the eighteen hundreds. They want to buy Bill
russell Rookie card. They want to buy a Pikachu, they
(07:41):
want to buy a rare pair of Jordan's. This is
just the contemporization of human behavior, that's all. Now, this
week we had what some FED watchers were calling the
most important FOMS team meeting of German Paul's career. The
Central Bank may have held rate to zero, but they're
even looking for more change within non white communities, but
sure Pole admitting that the playing field may not be
(08:02):
even so. We got some reaction from Ursula Burns, the
former CEO of Xerox and senior advisor to to NEO
and the author of a new memoir called Where You
Are Is Not Who You Are, and we started by
asking how much cheap things policymakers are taking the goal
of narrowing the racial employment and wealth gaps seriously, and
how they can do better than policymakers during past expansions.
(08:25):
I think that we are at a point in in
America's progress and the world's progress where this is front
and center for political leaders. I'm not sure how effective
um all of the attempts and policies will be, but
I do know I do feel that there is there
(08:45):
is clarity about the fact that without some real attempts
to to actually close this gap, this diversity uh, this
diversity of earnings right, and unfortunately we have two camps,
a lot and very little, and we have a lot
of people who are in very little and a whole
very small number of people who are in a lot
(09:07):
that is not sustainable. The good news is to the
government in this country, and that I believe the governments
around the world, in in the highly affected countries also
are believing that. So I'm hoping, like heck knocking on wood,
that not only do they see it, but they also
have some policies in place that will help to close
the gap. As you know, what's so amazing about your experiences.
You've earned a lot, and you've also known what life
(09:28):
is like to earn very little. Through your memoir, where
you are is not who you are. The writing in
it is so it stirs so many emotions. You talk
about a tenement apartment that you grew up in New York,
what poverty looks like, what it smells like, what it
feels like. We talk about your mother really making you
study hard, getting getting don't cut up and caught up
in your neighborhood. You right move on in life to
(09:48):
a better place. You said she was fierce about it,
but also you saw certain impediments when you want to
go to university, for example, and the fact that I
mean this is so amazing to me, and it's because
I'm fortunate, but the fact they made one of the
universites you wanted to go to wanted you to swim
a lap, and how much that discourages in the city. Kids,
are what's the impediments you seeing now as you now
(10:09):
have the luxury of having earned a lot, and seeing
how people like you now can get out of that part.
You know, the example of swimming a lap is sounds ridiculous, right,
It's like, of course you can swim a lap. Just
learn to swim a lap. You know, why would that
be an impediment? Isn't it better for your health? Isn't
it safety? Isn't safer? The fact that the matter is,
we have no place to learn how to swim lap,
(10:29):
goddamn it. So we can't just learn to swim lap.
It shouldn't even be in the criteria, and it's not.
I don't know if it's purposeful. I say in the
book that I think it's purposeful. I think it's either
purposeful or you know, worse, they have no clue where
we are, what we live like, what we where we live,
what opportunities we have. And it's just it's not just me,
(10:51):
the small number, you know, like five of us. The
vast majority of the United States of America has a
struggling which some significant gap in the basic need. So
I think that what happens now is that we literally
have to back up a little bit. The people in power,
like me, like you guys, people who are part of
the at least ten percent, have to actually get closer
(11:14):
to the people who are the other nine percent understand
how they live. This is not a desire to do poorly.
This is not laziness tonight with that, with soverign lee,
it's none of that stuff. We literally a lot of
us were just struck stuck. We had no money, we
had nobody paying attention to us. We're trying as hick
as hard as possible. My mother was maniacal. She was
(11:36):
My mother was literally a maniac on this thing. Any
energy she had, any energy she had, was put to
these three kids. And I know that people can say, well,
if my mom did, everybody's mom should be able to
do it. I actually think it's too much to ask.
She died at forty nine years old, not because she
ate that she were, not because she took drugs. You
(11:58):
didn't drink. She died was being tired and poorly cared for.
I know I'm getting I get emotional when I talk
about this. It's we deserve better. Humans deserve better, particularly
from the the wealthiest, most privileged, most resourced nation in
the world. We just need a better start. People need
(12:21):
a better start in life. Your book, who do you
see as the ideal reader, Who did you write it for,
Who do you envision reading it, and who could benefit,
in your view the most from reading about your story.
I wanted it to go to two younger people more
than anyone UM and it didn't matter what race or
gender they were. I wanted people to understand that. I
(12:42):
wanted them to get in their minds that if you
have a lot, a little help to someone else can
make a huge different difference, and if you don't have
a lot, a little help from someone else can make
a huge difference. We should be able to actually work
better together as individuals, as humans to actually make sure
(13:04):
that we don't have what I call zip zip cold,
zip code laden um poverty, and zip code laid in
the wealth that we should actually kind of build bridges
between rich and poor, between black and white. I mean,
it's it's the same old story. Please, young people understand
that this is your world, this is you. I mean,
we're gonna leave it to you. I'm not on the
(13:25):
other side of fifty. Well on the other side of fifty,
and they have the ability to look at what we
have created for them, keep the things that are really
good and literally just throw away the rest of the
craft and build new new vehicles to actually have a
better society as we go forward. We have one of
the best in the world. But we are we we
(13:46):
know we're struggling, right, We're struggling because we don't understand
each other. In some cases, we just don't like each other.
Many cases, we have no care for each other. That's
not sustainable, by the way. I'm fine, right, We're all.
I'm fine. I live in a nice apartment, I have
another place in it. I'm fine. But I know that
I can't live in the world happily if everybody around
(14:07):
me is living in a disaster a situation and I'm
walking here with mink codes on. So we have to
figure out a way to make it such that we
can lift everybody's boat a little bit and that into
socialism and want hard work. I do want a true meritocracy,
but I don't want the inability to start. Let's talk
about meritocracy. Let's talk a bit about affirmative action for
a moment, because it was really interesting a couple of
(14:28):
weeks ago, and it was Joe pointed out earlier on
our editorial call. There was a CEO, Frank Sluteman over
at Snowflake Tech Company World you know well, came on
Bloomberg and sort of laid bare his thoughts. He said,
we're actually highly sympathetic to diversity. Well, we just don't
want it to override merit because they start doing that,
(14:51):
I start compromising the company's mission literally dot dot dot.
He then says. He goes on to say that many CEOs,
all the names that you know privately, they are there.
We're all in the same mind. It's just publicly it's
difficult to be that way. Now, Ursula, before we rant
on him too much, Frank Slutman did go on to apologize.
He walked back those remarks and he said, look, I
do not believe that diversity and merit are in any
(15:13):
way mutually exclusive. But you are a woman who's working
hard to make boards executive committees more diverse. How hard
is it to keep on talking about meritocracy when behind
the scenes people are apparently thinking like this. I don't
know the CEO of Snowflake. Based on this short um
(15:35):
interaction that I've had over the last couple of weeks
with some of his thoughts, I think it's probably a
good idea that I don't know him. He's wrong, he's wrong,
and you know the problem is this is pre apology.
The problem is that he probably is right that there
are a lot of people who actually believe what he said.
His apology. The comments before his apology is what he feels,
(16:00):
what he thinks, and I think it's how he governs
and interacts with quote unquote that other group of people,
those women, those black people who depend on affirmative I
I am saddened by the comments, but I tell you what,
one of the ways that we have this comment come true,
(16:21):
one of the ways that quote unquote they win is
if we shut up and stop pushing, If we allow
we me people who look like me, people who look
like you, who believe like me that everyone deserves a chance,
and we have a system and a structure that does
not allow or afford everybody that chance. We don't. The
(16:42):
reason why a meritocracy society is so difficult to actually
get into reality is because we start so unequally. We
are judged so unfairly. And I don't mean we me
we groups of people. Bias, um, structural racism, structural inequality
(17:04):
is there if the c this CEO doesn't see it.
By the way, God bless him. I'm happy he's lived
a life where he's never run into a literally someone
who thinks about who you are and judges who you
are without knowing who you are. I'm happy that he's
never run into it. Trust me, Mr CEO of Snaith Snowflake.
That's not the way it is in life. Women are
(17:24):
still expected. We see this in COVID more than expected.
They are left with the burden of taking care of
the full burden of trying to get to make a
living in this very tough economy and taking care of
the children who are now stuck at home. That burden
didn't fall evenly to men and women. Guess who got it, women, etcetera. Etcetera, etcetera.
(17:47):
So that's affirmative action is not there because we just
like people. Affirmative action is there because we have uneven
distribution of opportunity, structurally uneven, we have uneven distribution of wealth.
It's there to try to balance the scales, not to
you know, jump in front of anyone. We just want
(18:09):
to get in the same line as people. And I
think it's really narrow to believe that that we're past,
that we're past, that it's all done. You know, we're
we're okay. I think that, you know, it's unfortunate. So
as you mentioned, um, you know, it's certainly plausible that
there are other CEOs who think like him, and or
his original comments reflected that are there. Um, how do
(18:32):
you tell the difference? I mean, because it's as he
was saying, Oh, we say this in public and then
in private we feel it differently. How do you tell
the difference between someone who's talking about these issues in
good faith? And is it just a matter of looking
at hard numbers? Is it just a matter of like,
you know, it's great, rhetoric is fine, but in the end,
look at it's about measuring the data. Yeah, this is
how I think about it. Somebody else said this, some
(18:54):
great fight business leader, a government leader said trust but verify.
I the way that you get by the way I
want to hear the rhetoric change. It has to is
discouraging if you are a young female employee to hear
the comments that some believe actually really do believe in business.
(19:16):
So the rhetoric has to change. But I think that
the rhetoric changing is step number half. It's not even
step one, step number half. The rest of the steps
are set goals step number and that step that that
that gets me to step to set the goals. Track progress,
(19:37):
adjust your approach, check the numbers. A judge your approach,
check the numbers. It is going to take a while
to get here. This isn't We didn't get here overnight,
and so I know it's going to take a while
to fix. And if we see progress, that's good products.
You will see patients and I don't mean patients sitting back.
(20:00):
I mean patients that are helping to engage to move
it along. We know that there are things that we
have to do if we're women, are people of color,
or Latin X or whatever it is, to actually maybe
adjust some of our approaches and our thinking. But we
want to see on the other side some belief and
the idea that there's all these CEOs out think, these
white CEOs out there that basically are being dishonest. I
(20:22):
I refuse to believe that that's the outcome. And by
the way, you should get some of those white CEOs
on this program, and they should be pushing on this guy,
because basically what has happened is he's basically brought them
all to the same place that he was, which I
have to say is close to the gutter. I don't
think that's the way it is. I I hope it's
not the way it is now. Sure. Paul struck an
(20:46):
optimistic tone about the labor market recovery during his news conference,
despite the ongoing narrative about friction from within the labor force.
The high frequency data hasn't been all good. US jobless
claims ticking up for the first time since April, and
while the level is still much lower than it was
several months ago, it's still not the direction that you
want to day to be trending, especially after two non
farm perils reports. It came in below estimates, so we
(21:09):
got some reaction from the Biden administration with Mike Pyle,
chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. He's also
the former chief investment officer at black Rock, And we
started by asking Mike if there's any concern at the
White House the pace of economic job creation is not
what was expected. We think it's important to pay attention
to the trend lines, not any one number given. As
(21:32):
you said, how noisy the data can be, especially on claims,
and when you look at the trend lines, I think
we're very encouraged. So you know, the four week moving
average UH dipped below four hundred thousand jobless games claims
for the first time today. You know, that's down over
half from the more than eight hundred thousand claims we
were seeing when the President and Vice president took office.
(21:54):
You know, similarly, on the monthly job sprints, you know,
the economy has created over two million jobs since the
president vice president took office and average of around five
thousand jobs a month. You know, if you look at
the three months before they took office, was creating away
sixty jobs a month. So again, taking a step back
looking at those trend lines, were encouraged by the improvement
(22:15):
we're seeing in the labor market, and uh and expect
that to continue. Are you encouraged by the amount of
inclusivity in the market or not, because of course that's
the FEDS kind of goal lifting all boats and showing
that people have been left behind previously, people of color,
women are attracted back into the labor force. Are you
seeing that at a white house level? Is enough being done? So?
(22:38):
I think one of the things that we are encouraged by,
again kind of recognizing that the data is noisy, you know.
I think we're encouraged by some of the wage data
that we're seeing, especially wages at the lower end of
the income scale. That is indicative to us that the
President and Vice president's economic strategy is working. That we're
(23:00):
seeing wage gains for those across the economy part but
particularly those at the lower end who all too often
than left behind. So again, I think to your point,
were encouraged by the directions we're seeing in inclusivity, but
obviously have further to go, and that I think is
reflected in the President's proposals around the Job's Plan and
the Family's Plan that's designed exactly to make the economy
(23:21):
more inclusive. Over inclusive over time. Like, let's talk about
inflation for a second. Yesterday cheer Powell basically expressing the
view that's on a lot of economists that even with
the upward pressure we're saying lately, it's likely transitory can
be attributed to reopening aspects supply shocks that are not
necessarily going to be repeated. That being said, when the
(23:42):
White House has say, designing infrastructure packages, does expanding the
supply side of the economy such that we can grow
faster without running into supply shocks um factor into how
you're thinking about infrastructure design. So I'd say two things
they're uh. You know, first, you know, when we think
(24:03):
about the inflation tjectory over the near term, and we've
talked for some time about these shorter term supply demand mismatches,
and in particular some of the bottlenecks that we've seen emerged.
I mean we all know that, uh, in particular the
past couple of prints, the challenges in the semiconductor space
space we've seen bubble over into our autos. UH. And
(24:24):
so what I think we heard from the administration last
week was a commitment, through the creation of a new
task force to turn over every stone that we can
around some of these short term supply chain disruptions, particularly
in spaces like semiconductors, spaces like transportation, logistics, home building
and construction. You know, we think a big part of
what we can do over the short term to relieve
(24:46):
the supply demand mismatches is to exactly focus on the
places where we see bottlenecks, convened stakeholders, identify policy solutions,
and do what we can to ease this this transition.
But yeah, then I think you're exactly right that part
of what is motivating the job's plan and the family's
plan is to make investments in our infrastructure, in our competitiveness,
(25:07):
in our families. That's ultimately through both enhanced productivity as
well as through increasing the size and the skill of
labor force to allow this economy to grow faster over
time and put that potential to harder work. Investments that
you're currently making. Of course, that have many of our
guests will come on, say, added to inflationary pressures that
(25:29):
we've been seeing transitory there they may be we're starting
to see the FED want to take on inflation or
indeed the act as if they will do be a
credible threat to it. How do you think about paying
for of course, the significant investment that you're making from
an infrastructure perspective, if we are likely to see well
yields push that much high, perhaps rate heights come in.
(25:49):
So I'd say a couple of things, you know, First,
I categorize the Job's Plan and Families Plan investments differently
than sure term stimulus. These are designed to the conversation
with Joe just now around really increasing the competitiveness, the inclusivity,
the growth potential of the economy over the long term.
(26:11):
These are long term investments in the economy and our
infrastructure and our families, you know. And secondly, the presidents
and vice president put forward a plan to pay for
these investments, you know, text changes on the corporate side
among the wealthiest individuals to pay for these plans over
fifteen years. And that's reflective of the fact that you know,
not unlike any capital investment, you want to get that
(26:32):
to work as soon as possible, but they need want
to pay for it, uh slowly over time. And that's
what this plan does. Gets those dollars, get those investments
working over the next five, six, seven, eight years, and
then pays for them more slowly in full over that
fifteen year horizon. Let's talk. Let's go back to the
pace of labor market recovery, because that still is an issue.
The fact of the matter is the last two months,
(26:54):
and again, you know, it's higher than it was previously,
but still both times substantially short of say, where economists
thought it would be when they were making their forecasts
in March. What do you attribute that too? Primarily so
again I would say we're encouraged by the trend lines
that we're seeing. You know, this is an economy that
generated over five thousand jobs a month for the last
(27:17):
four months. It's putting us on the right type of trajectory.
But again, to turn to the news of yesterday, I
think you know, when we heard Chair Powell UH speak
during the press conference, you know, he talked about about
the ongoing overhang from the coronavirus crisis. He talked about
the ongoing overhang from schools only getting reopened, from childcare issues. Uh.
(27:44):
Those are the types of things that that we see
and we hear when we are kind of thinking about
the pace at which the economy is reopening, and we
think those are going to continue improving over time because
of the President's economic strategy around shots and arms, around
relief in pockets, and so we're encouraged as we look
ahead the trend lines are only going to improve from here,
precisely because some of those overhangs that the Chair and
(28:07):
that we've been paying attention to should continue dissipating over time.
It's been an incredibly busy week for the White House
on a geopolitical perspective as well, Mike, and I'm interested
in how you feel the pushback in particular versus China.
Are you looking at businesses doing business in China as
as a concern you just trying to build up the
(28:28):
supply chain domestically here in the United States? What are
the economic ramifications of some of the moves being made
currently From a geopolitical perspective, So, I think that everyone
around here thinks that this was a successful visit by
the President overseas. The goal of this visit to the
G seven to Europe was to highlight that the United States,
(28:52):
acting in concert with our democratic allies, can achieve tangible
results for both our citizens as well as the world
as a whole. And I think that's what you saw.
You saw the announcements around a global vaccination, efforts to
end the pandemic globally. You saw efforts on the economic
policy side where I spend most of my time to
(29:13):
end the race to the bottom around global corporate taxes.
You know this to us as a as A as
a real moment to demonstrate what the United States, leading
alongside its democratic allies, can achieve. And we think that
the record that was generated over the last week is
a is an important first step and that important initiative.
(29:34):
And on what you miss, we like to thank cryptos
for everyone. It doesn't always have to be about redefining
money or disrupting central banks. So he spoke with someone
trying to bring the old world of sports and pop
culture into the crypto space. Spencer Dinwittie is an NBA
player and start point guard for the Brooklyn Nets. Was
also the founder and CEO of Galaxy, which is a
blockchain based social media app that allows fans to buy
(29:56):
tokens associated with their favorite stars and use them to
interact with their favorite celebrities and athletes. So we started
by asking Spencer to explain this different use case for crypto. Um.
I mean, when you look at anything with value, right,
And in this situation in the entertainment industry, it's usually people, right.
Fans want to get as close to that value they
(30:17):
possibly can. So you know, in a in a distant future,
you're probably gonna have situations where you can buy stock
in in people, um, but right now you don't have that,
and the security law is kind of create friction for that.
So we kind of have this this half step, and
we want to create an appendent ecosystem built on the
next generation technology that could watch step by step into
(30:39):
that future. That future of course that you started because
it was a few years ago that you first have
a well petition the NBA put it to the NBA
that you wanted to convert your own contract into a
digital currency of form. You wanted to bring perhaps your
earnings forward. You want to be able to set it
into other people's hands. How did that learning experience go
for you? How did it really change the moon music
(31:01):
not only around you, but around like your entire industry
of the NBA pay is also getting it on the
app um. I mean honestly, being a pioneer net in
that sense came with a lot of arrows in the
back of those speak, um, it was tough, but I
think with the recent bull run of the cryptocurrency ecosystem
and has experienced, there's been a lot of eyes open
(31:23):
to it. And you know, I think what was once
written off it is a simple cash advance, is now
seeing something much bigger. The democratizing and decentralization of something
that it looked with like a sports contract and allowing
access to fans and you know, having meet and greed
experiences in different premiums that you know aren't always associated
or tied into a traditional sports contract offers both benefits
(31:45):
to the fans um and the players, and at the
end of the day um and both fans and player
are happy than the NBA or the you know, central
body also a successful as well. So your your company,
Glaxy is built upon a blockchain or a blockchain like
to knowlogy called hash graph. It's kind of a competitor
in some respects to Ethereum. Perhaps a lot of people
(32:05):
look at all these different coins, they don't know how
to evaluate them. They don't even have the be the
slightest idea you had to actually evaluate a platform to
figure out what we're going to launch on. How should
people go about thinking of the sort of you know,
not from a price perspective per se, but thinking about
the pluses and minuses of all these different coins that
they're like really just trying to wrap their head around. Yeah,
(32:27):
so I mean you've got to kind of separate them
first into ones that are trying to be currencies or
stores of value and others that are trying to be uh,
you know, smart contract platforms or layer ones. Is as
a lot of a lot of people call it a
big cooin obviously is the gold standard um digital goal
with a lot of people call it in terms of
a currency. But to your point, Ethereum is the most
(32:47):
prevalent smart contract platform and a lot of essentialized finance
applications were being built on that. Uh. You know, the
reason I chose hash graph is because it's next generation
that should be alleged technology. So it's not technically blockchain,
but it is distribute alleged technology. US consensus algorithm is
actually called hash graft Um is patented, and you know,
when you look at building enterprise grade applications, you want
(33:09):
that security. You want to the network won't be forked UM.
And you know, for me, I wanted to align myself
with fortunate five companies and have some of that reputation
risk management and just in mind myself with those type
of caliber companies that calxiates to be reputation risk management.
The fact that you're worrying about, you know, the the
(33:31):
your future proofing, whatever you want to be working on
when it comes to the decentralized nature of what you're building,
but also your own reputation. How much you know, given
you just said, actually it helped when you're a pioneer.
It helped them to have this rallying crypto to bring
people's attention to it. When you then see the sell
off that you do, how much do you have to
worry about how crypto has seen Do you feel like
(33:52):
people are getting up to speed with the fact that
perhaps is not just purely used for ill gotten gains
and the like? Yeah, I mean, I think reputation risk
management comes in two forms. We're talking about Calaxy. Uh,
you know, I'm twenty eight and I played the NBA
and my co founder is twenty six and is awarded
business school grad were both ethnic young men, and so
(34:13):
to align ourselves with you know, LG, Deutsche Telecom, Google,
et cetera, helps kind of uh ring validity to what
we're trying to accomplish, and hashgraft helped provide that. In
terms of the actual overall crypto ecosystem. Um, you know,
people are starting to realize that it's an actual market
and markets have eplows, and you know, I believe that
(34:33):
what we're experiencing right now is a simple correction. If
you look at where bitcoin was only a year ago,
there's you know, the stock market, bonds, you know, uh
commodities or you know, uh, precious medals. None of them
have returned like this. And unfortunately, you know, some people
only want to experience the good, but you can't have
good without bad. So you know, we're experienced correction right now.
(34:53):
I fully believe that we're still within the midst of
a boat run, and we're gonna see enough take going
to the end of the year quickly. You know. There
there's the fan player relationship is changing in all kinds
of ways, obviously, social media, etcetera. One other thing that's
becoming much more accepted recently is the rise of sports gambling,
and I'm curious, like how this all fits into it.
(35:14):
People want to buy a token on a celebrity or
player that they like, they maybe want to bet on
the team. How much is that all part of the
same desire to like sort of just like feel more
of a steak in outcomes. Yeah, I mean, I think
the ethos and the emotion that you're talking about UM
is directly tied to what Taxi does. Now, we're not
a gambling platform. I stretch UM and don't aim to be.
(35:36):
But when you start talking about these experiences that you
can buy in and having a dynamic pricing models within
you know, specific athletes or entertainers or really anybody you know,
a Spencer token might be a different price than a
than a Joe token. And then when you start having
secondaries markets that you know enables trading and you know,
long short all types of different avenues that will you know,
(35:58):
be insting to see it and follow. I wonder if
you'll do worth more than Joe token or the Spencer
token if it's I'm gonna flip in you if if
the Spencer one is worth more? And that's it for
what you missed this week. If you like the show
and make sure to subscribe and rate us an Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to podcast. You can catch
(36:20):
our show every weekday from three thirty to five pm
on Bloomberg TV and from four to five pm on Twitter.
Thanks for listening and have a great week.
Welcome to What You Missed This Week? I'm Joe Wisenthal.
This podcast has some of our favorite interviews from the
Daily Market Clothes show that I co anchor along with
Romaine Bostick and Caroline Hyde. What Do You miss It's
the perfect way to kick off your weekend. This week,
we took a look at a very alternative asset trading cards.
It was a huge trend back in the nineties, but
it faded out over time as the markets got oversaturated.
(00:31):
Now there is a renewed interest in sports trading cards.
Prices are soaring and we've seen some major sales. Kobe
Bryant Rookie card just sold recently for one point seven
five million dollars. So we spoke about it with Gary Vaynerchunk.
I associated Gary with all kinds of things collectibles, and
he totally called this away. He's a board member of
the sports memorabilia company Candy, the CEO of Vyner Media,
(00:52):
and he has a new end of t project called
v Friends. And I started by asking Gary what it
is about this moment that people want tangible, physical things
they can hold, you know, It's it's very interesting. The
sports card thing was actually happening pre covid, pre kind
of the reddit, you know Wall Street thing. Though, you know,
we were talking about this three and a half years ago.
(01:14):
That was just happening because I think the sneaker flipping
game was changing. Were a lot of entrepreneurs, and I
think a lot of you know, eight six ninety one
was the big, big, big era of sports cards in
American history, and a lot of those fifteen sixteen year
olds started having seven, eight, nine year old So you
had a kind of like that classic turn that you
see in the toy industry. You know, in general, the
(01:36):
more broader question you're asking, I think, and you've covered
this a lot on this great program, investing has become
a cultural pop culture phenomenon. If you go to TikTok
right now and look at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds,
they think of themselves as investors. And whether that's the
Robin Hood mentality, whether that's sports cards, whether that's n
(01:57):
f T S, whether that's cryptocurrency, or whether it's just
public stocks. You have an entire generation of fifteen to
twenty five year olds that think of themselves as entrepreneurs
and investors or influencers who are going to make money
doing marketing. That's a very different breath than what you
and I grew up with. And it's been allowed because well,
(02:18):
the cost of getting into the market has been lowered
through innovation, like the likes of Robin Hood or whether
we can get into crypto without having to be someone
who earns a certain amount of money or to have
a million to your name. But I'm interested, Gary, like,
how much do the community you speak to, this TikTok
community in particular, get frustrated by the patronization coming from
all of the people that basically we talked to here
(02:39):
onbout TV. There's an awful lot of older style investors
who are like, oh, cryptocurrencies, are they mad? You know,
I think you've asked the exact right question. We all
know this. This is how society works. It used to
be with like dans and clubs and restaurants and dress culture.
There has never been a time that fifteen to twenty
five year olds are interest sit in supporting what their
(03:01):
parents are. And to your point, you know, when when
individuals come on this show and talk down and dismiss
something that is an incredible reality to many of those people,
it only fuels the fire. And the reality is, and
we've seen this with some of the you know, stock
prices of things that as you know, everybody said months
(03:24):
ago would be a one week to day, four day phenomenon.
The reality is is that a lot you know, and
I do a lot of my forty fifties sixty seventy
year old business friends, which I have a ton of,
probably more than my fifty five year old friends, and
I remind them the market is, the market is the market,
and the markets evolving. Things are changing, and you know,
(03:45):
fundamental still matter. There's plenty things that matter. But what
I will definitely say is alternative investing. It is more
interesting for a lot of people to hold a Michael
Jordan's rookie card as an investment then let's say twelve
thousand shares of Resolid company culturally visually in the way
that people storytell on social media. There you get double value.
(04:08):
You not only get the intrinsic value and be able
to trade it, but you get the social currency that
comes along with, like owning a role X or Mercedes,
which in my opinion actually speaks to incredibly bullish opportunities
for the right n f T projects long term. You know,
you mentioned something about sneakers, which I think is interesting.
You know, people have been into sneakers obviously for a while,
(04:30):
but now we have like these sneaker marketplaces where one
contract the price of us given Jordan's as if you're
tracking a stock and you can go to stock X
and look at it go up and down. How much
does that make collecting things more fun? The idea that
not just do you have a thing, but like it's
fun to watch the line go up or down, and
it's fun to see if you have one of the
(04:50):
ones that's going up in price. And how much does
that sort of change the collecting game To be able
to see these live markets in action, well changed everything
that seems to be stuff is you know that would
be in malls, convention centers. You know, a sneaker or
a sports card or a comic book show would be
in a firehouse in a suburb. Now it's at scale,
(05:11):
it's everywhere. It's legitimized. To your point, stock X looks
like I'm looking at Bloomberg and and again I'm trying
to remind people holding real estate for a passive income,
holding a stock, those are great business decisions. Those are
our grandparents and even our contemporaries business decisions for alternatively
sitting on cash. The fact that you now can do
(05:34):
that with sneakers, sports cards, and f t s and
many other things, and you get the cultural value of
being able to flex that on your social media. I
think humans. I think the industry of finance, the Wall
Street crowd, the Madison Avenue crowd, is underestimating the thirst
that humans have always had for for communicating through what
(05:56):
they hold. When you buy a brand new Mercedes that
the appreciates and value as soon as it leaves the lot,
but you bought it many times for social signaling. The
fact that we can now invest in these assets and
make money but also social signal while we hold them
up in our public crypto wallets or in our Instagram
(06:17):
photos is a human psychology that is grossly being misunderstood
by the black and white decision makers that watch the show. Gary.
I'm interested in though that quite often in the past
we've we've held up like my generation like or just
about call myself millennial, the gen z. Oh, they'll never
buy houses, they don't want to own things they're not
(06:37):
into like actually purchasing stuff, they're gonna rent it all.
And then, funny enough, you hit in a certain age,
you have a pro procreate, you have a kid, and
suddenly you do want to buy a house, or you
at least want to try. You do want to go
on holidays in the way that you always used to.
You don't want to just rent things. Is there an
element that this will be a fat and we'll find
all these the TikTok generation buying ets in the future,
(07:00):
or is it that this will really change the way
in which investment high I think your storytelling up from
is exactly right. I think that happens all the time. However,
I want to remind both of you and everybody watching
that there's always been an alternative class. It's called art,
It's called antiques. If you go look back at the data,
(07:20):
the amount of money spent on these things are quite
real and meaningful. The difference is there's no twenty six
year old on Earth that wants to go to a
Southobes auction house and buy a piece of China from
Europe in the eighteen hundreds. They want to buy Bill
russell Rookie card. They want to buy a Pikachu, they
(07:41):
want to buy a rare pair of Jordan's. This is
just the contemporization of human behavior, that's all. Now, this
week we had what some FED watchers were calling the
most important FOMS team meeting of German Paul's career. The
Central Bank may have held rate to zero, but they're
even looking for more change within non white communities, but
sure Pole admitting that the playing field may not be
(08:02):
even so. We got some reaction from Ursula Burns, the
former CEO of Xerox and senior advisor to to NEO
and the author of a new memoir called Where You
Are Is Not Who You Are, and we started by
asking how much cheap things policymakers are taking the goal
of narrowing the racial employment and wealth gaps seriously, and
how they can do better than policymakers during past expansions.
(08:25):
I think that we are at a point in in
America's progress and the world's progress where this is front
and center for political leaders. I'm not sure how effective
um all of the attempts and policies will be, but
I do know I do feel that there is there
(08:45):
is clarity about the fact that without some real attempts
to to actually close this gap, this diversity uh, this
diversity of earnings right, and unfortunately we have two camps,
a lot and very little, and we have a lot
of people who are in very little and a whole
very small number of people who are in a lot
(09:07):
that is not sustainable. The good news is to the
government in this country, and that I believe the governments
around the world, in in the highly affected countries also
are believing that. So I'm hoping, like heck knocking on wood,
that not only do they see it, but they also
have some policies in place that will help to close
the gap. As you know, what's so amazing about your experiences.
You've earned a lot, and you've also known what life
(09:28):
is like to earn very little. Through your memoir, where
you are is not who you are. The writing in
it is so it stirs so many emotions. You talk
about a tenement apartment that you grew up in New York,
what poverty looks like, what it smells like, what it
feels like. We talk about your mother really making you
study hard, getting getting don't cut up and caught up
in your neighborhood. You right move on in life to
(09:48):
a better place. You said she was fierce about it,
but also you saw certain impediments when you want to
go to university, for example, and the fact that I
mean this is so amazing to me, and it's because
I'm fortunate, but the fact they made one of the
universites you wanted to go to wanted you to swim
a lap, and how much that discourages in the city. Kids,
are what's the impediments you seeing now as you now
(10:09):
have the luxury of having earned a lot, and seeing
how people like you now can get out of that part.
You know, the example of swimming a lap is sounds ridiculous, right,
It's like, of course you can swim a lap. Just
learn to swim a lap. You know, why would that
be an impediment? Isn't it better for your health? Isn't
it safety? Isn't safer? The fact that the matter is,
we have no place to learn how to swim lap,
(10:29):
goddamn it. So we can't just learn to swim lap.
It shouldn't even be in the criteria, and it's not.
I don't know if it's purposeful. I say in the
book that I think it's purposeful. I think it's either
purposeful or you know, worse, they have no clue where
we are, what we live like, what we where we live,
what opportunities we have. And it's just it's not just me,
(10:51):
the small number, you know, like five of us. The
vast majority of the United States of America has a
struggling which some significant gap in the basic need. So
I think that what happens now is that we literally
have to back up a little bit. The people in power,
like me, like you guys, people who are part of
the at least ten percent, have to actually get closer
(11:14):
to the people who are the other nine percent understand
how they live. This is not a desire to do poorly.
This is not laziness tonight with that, with soverign lee,
it's none of that stuff. We literally a lot of
us were just struck stuck. We had no money, we
had nobody paying attention to us. We're trying as hick
as hard as possible. My mother was maniacal. She was
(11:36):
My mother was literally a maniac on this thing. Any
energy she had, any energy she had, was put to
these three kids. And I know that people can say, well,
if my mom did, everybody's mom should be able to
do it. I actually think it's too much to ask.
She died at forty nine years old, not because she
ate that she were, not because she took drugs. You
(11:58):
didn't drink. She died was being tired and poorly cared for.
I know I'm getting I get emotional when I talk
about this. It's we deserve better. Humans deserve better, particularly
from the the wealthiest, most privileged, most resourced nation in
the world. We just need a better start. People need
(12:21):
a better start in life. Your book, who do you
see as the ideal reader, Who did you write it for,
Who do you envision reading it, and who could benefit,
in your view the most from reading about your story.
I wanted it to go to two younger people more
than anyone UM and it didn't matter what race or
gender they were. I wanted people to understand that. I
(12:42):
wanted them to get in their minds that if you
have a lot, a little help to someone else can
make a huge different difference, and if you don't have
a lot, a little help from someone else can make
a huge difference. We should be able to actually work
better together as individuals, as humans to actually make sure
(13:04):
that we don't have what I call zip zip cold,
zip code laden um poverty, and zip code laid in
the wealth that we should actually kind of build bridges
between rich and poor, between black and white. I mean,
it's it's the same old story. Please, young people understand
that this is your world, this is you. I mean,
we're gonna leave it to you. I'm not on the
(13:25):
other side of fifty. Well on the other side of fifty,
and they have the ability to look at what we
have created for them, keep the things that are really
good and literally just throw away the rest of the
craft and build new new vehicles to actually have a
better society as we go forward. We have one of
the best in the world. But we are we we
(13:46):
know we're struggling, right, We're struggling because we don't understand
each other. In some cases, we just don't like each other.
Many cases, we have no care for each other. That's
not sustainable, by the way. I'm fine, right, We're all.
I'm fine. I live in a nice apartment, I have
another place in it. I'm fine. But I know that
I can't live in the world happily if everybody around
(14:07):
me is living in a disaster a situation and I'm
walking here with mink codes on. So we have to
figure out a way to make it such that we
can lift everybody's boat a little bit and that into
socialism and want hard work. I do want a true meritocracy,
but I don't want the inability to start. Let's talk
about meritocracy. Let's talk a bit about affirmative action for
a moment, because it was really interesting a couple of
(14:28):
weeks ago, and it was Joe pointed out earlier on
our editorial call. There was a CEO, Frank Sluteman over
at Snowflake Tech Company World you know well, came on
Bloomberg and sort of laid bare his thoughts. He said,
we're actually highly sympathetic to diversity. Well, we just don't
want it to override merit because they start doing that,
(14:51):
I start compromising the company's mission literally dot dot dot.
He then says. He goes on to say that many CEOs,
all the names that you know privately, they are there.
We're all in the same mind. It's just publicly it's
difficult to be that way. Now, Ursula, before we rant
on him too much, Frank Slutman did go on to apologize.
He walked back those remarks and he said, look, I
do not believe that diversity and merit are in any
(15:13):
way mutually exclusive. But you are a woman who's working
hard to make boards executive committees more diverse. How hard
is it to keep on talking about meritocracy when behind
the scenes people are apparently thinking like this. I don't
know the CEO of Snowflake. Based on this short um
(15:35):
interaction that I've had over the last couple of weeks
with some of his thoughts, I think it's probably a
good idea that I don't know him. He's wrong, he's wrong,
and you know the problem is this is pre apology.
The problem is that he probably is right that there
are a lot of people who actually believe what he said.
His apology. The comments before his apology is what he feels,
(16:00):
what he thinks, and I think it's how he governs
and interacts with quote unquote that other group of people,
those women, those black people who depend on affirmative I
I am saddened by the comments, but I tell you what,
one of the ways that we have this comment come true,
(16:21):
one of the ways that quote unquote they win is
if we shut up and stop pushing, If we allow
we me people who look like me, people who look
like you, who believe like me that everyone deserves a chance,
and we have a system and a structure that does
not allow or afford everybody that chance. We don't. The
(16:42):
reason why a meritocracy society is so difficult to actually
get into reality is because we start so unequally. We
are judged so unfairly. And I don't mean we me
we groups of people. Bias, um, structural racism, structural inequality
(17:04):
is there if the c this CEO doesn't see it.
By the way, God bless him. I'm happy he's lived
a life where he's never run into a literally someone
who thinks about who you are and judges who you
are without knowing who you are. I'm happy that he's
never run into it. Trust me, Mr CEO of Snaith Snowflake.
That's not the way it is in life. Women are
(17:24):
still expected. We see this in COVID more than expected.
They are left with the burden of taking care of
the full burden of trying to get to make a
living in this very tough economy and taking care of
the children who are now stuck at home. That burden
didn't fall evenly to men and women. Guess who got it, women, etcetera. Etcetera, etcetera.
(17:47):
So that's affirmative action is not there because we just
like people. Affirmative action is there because we have uneven
distribution of opportunity, structurally uneven, we have uneven distribution of wealth.
It's there to try to balance the scales, not to
you know, jump in front of anyone. We just want
(18:09):
to get in the same line as people. And I
think it's really narrow to believe that that we're past,
that we're past, that it's all done. You know, we're
we're okay. I think that, you know, it's unfortunate. So
as you mentioned, um, you know, it's certainly plausible that
there are other CEOs who think like him, and or
his original comments reflected that are there. Um, how do
(18:32):
you tell the difference? I mean, because it's as he
was saying, Oh, we say this in public and then
in private we feel it differently. How do you tell
the difference between someone who's talking about these issues in
good faith? And is it just a matter of looking
at hard numbers? Is it just a matter of like,
you know, it's great, rhetoric is fine, but in the end,
look at it's about measuring the data. Yeah, this is
how I think about it. Somebody else said this, some
(18:54):
great fight business leader, a government leader said trust but verify.
I the way that you get by the way I
want to hear the rhetoric change. It has to is
discouraging if you are a young female employee to hear
the comments that some believe actually really do believe in business.
(19:16):
So the rhetoric has to change. But I think that
the rhetoric changing is step number half. It's not even
step one, step number half. The rest of the steps
are set goals step number and that step that that
that gets me to step to set the goals. Track progress,
(19:37):
adjust your approach, check the numbers. A judge your approach,
check the numbers. It is going to take a while
to get here. This isn't We didn't get here overnight,
and so I know it's going to take a while
to fix. And if we see progress, that's good products.
You will see patients and I don't mean patients sitting back.
(20:00):
I mean patients that are helping to engage to move
it along. We know that there are things that we
have to do if we're women, are people of color,
or Latin X or whatever it is, to actually maybe
adjust some of our approaches and our thinking. But we
want to see on the other side some belief and
the idea that there's all these CEOs out think, these
white CEOs out there that basically are being dishonest. I
(20:22):
I refuse to believe that that's the outcome. And by
the way, you should get some of those white CEOs
on this program, and they should be pushing on this guy,
because basically what has happened is he's basically brought them
all to the same place that he was, which I
have to say is close to the gutter. I don't
think that's the way it is. I I hope it's
not the way it is now. Sure. Paul struck an
(20:46):
optimistic tone about the labor market recovery during his news conference,
despite the ongoing narrative about friction from within the labor force.
The high frequency data hasn't been all good. US jobless
claims ticking up for the first time since April, and
while the level is still much lower than it was
several months ago, it's still not the direction that you
want to day to be trending, especially after two non
farm perils reports. It came in below estimates, so we
(21:09):
got some reaction from the Biden administration with Mike Pyle,
chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. He's also
the former chief investment officer at black Rock, And we
started by asking Mike if there's any concern at the
White House the pace of economic job creation is not
what was expected. We think it's important to pay attention
to the trend lines, not any one number given. As
(21:32):
you said, how noisy the data can be, especially on claims,
and when you look at the trend lines, I think
we're very encouraged. So you know, the four week moving
average UH dipped below four hundred thousand jobless games claims
for the first time today. You know, that's down over
half from the more than eight hundred thousand claims we
were seeing when the President and Vice president took office.
(21:54):
You know, similarly, on the monthly job sprints, you know,
the economy has created over two million jobs since the
president vice president took office and average of around five
thousand jobs a month. You know, if you look at
the three months before they took office, was creating away
sixty jobs a month. So again, taking a step back
looking at those trend lines, were encouraged by the improvement
(22:15):
we're seeing in the labor market, and uh and expect
that to continue. Are you encouraged by the amount of
inclusivity in the market or not, because of course that's
the FEDS kind of goal lifting all boats and showing
that people have been left behind previously, people of color,
women are attracted back into the labor force. Are you
seeing that at a white house level? Is enough being done? So?
(22:38):
I think one of the things that we are encouraged by,
again kind of recognizing that the data is noisy, you know.
I think we're encouraged by some of the wage data
that we're seeing, especially wages at the lower end of
the income scale. That is indicative to us that the
President and Vice president's economic strategy is working. That we're
(23:00):
seeing wage gains for those across the economy part but
particularly those at the lower end who all too often
than left behind. So again, I think to your point,
were encouraged by the directions we're seeing in inclusivity, but
obviously have further to go, and that I think is
reflected in the President's proposals around the Job's Plan and
the Family's Plan that's designed exactly to make the economy
(23:21):
more inclusive. Over inclusive over time. Like, let's talk about
inflation for a second. Yesterday cheer Powell basically expressing the
view that's on a lot of economists that even with
the upward pressure we're saying lately, it's likely transitory can
be attributed to reopening aspects supply shocks that are not
necessarily going to be repeated. That being said, when the
(23:42):
White House has say, designing infrastructure packages, does expanding the
supply side of the economy such that we can grow
faster without running into supply shocks um factor into how
you're thinking about infrastructure design. So I'd say two things
they're uh. You know, first, you know, when we think
(24:03):
about the inflation tjectory over the near term, and we've
talked for some time about these shorter term supply demand mismatches,
and in particular some of the bottlenecks that we've seen emerged.
I mean we all know that, uh, in particular the
past couple of prints, the challenges in the semiconductor space
space we've seen bubble over into our autos. UH. And
(24:24):
so what I think we heard from the administration last
week was a commitment, through the creation of a new
task force to turn over every stone that we can
around some of these short term supply chain disruptions, particularly
in spaces like semiconductors, spaces like transportation, logistics, home building
and construction. You know, we think a big part of
what we can do over the short term to relieve
(24:46):
the supply demand mismatches is to exactly focus on the
places where we see bottlenecks, convened stakeholders, identify policy solutions,
and do what we can to ease this this transition.
But yeah, then I think you're exactly right that part
of what is motivating the job's plan and the family's
plan is to make investments in our infrastructure, in our competitiveness,
(25:07):
in our families. That's ultimately through both enhanced productivity as
well as through increasing the size and the skill of
labor force to allow this economy to grow faster over
time and put that potential to harder work. Investments that
you're currently making. Of course, that have many of our
guests will come on, say, added to inflationary pressures that
(25:29):
we've been seeing transitory there they may be we're starting
to see the FED want to take on inflation or
indeed the act as if they will do be a
credible threat to it. How do you think about paying
for of course, the significant investment that you're making from
an infrastructure perspective, if we are likely to see well
yields push that much high, perhaps rate heights come in.
(25:49):
So I'd say a couple of things, you know, First,
I categorize the Job's Plan and Families Plan investments differently
than sure term stimulus. These are designed to the conversation
with Joe just now around really increasing the competitiveness, the inclusivity,
the growth potential of the economy over the long term.
(26:11):
These are long term investments in the economy and our
infrastructure and our families, you know. And secondly, the presidents
and vice president put forward a plan to pay for
these investments, you know, text changes on the corporate side
among the wealthiest individuals to pay for these plans over
fifteen years. And that's reflective of the fact that you know,
not unlike any capital investment, you want to get that
(26:32):
to work as soon as possible, but they need want
to pay for it, uh slowly over time. And that's
what this plan does. Gets those dollars, get those investments
working over the next five, six, seven, eight years, and
then pays for them more slowly in full over that
fifteen year horizon. Let's talk. Let's go back to the
pace of labor market recovery, because that still is an issue.
The fact of the matter is the last two months,
(26:54):
and again, you know, it's higher than it was previously,
but still both times substantially short of say, where economists
thought it would be when they were making their forecasts
in March. What do you attribute that too? Primarily so
again I would say we're encouraged by the trend lines
that we're seeing. You know, this is an economy that
generated over five thousand jobs a month for the last
(27:17):
four months. It's putting us on the right type of trajectory.
But again, to turn to the news of yesterday, I
think you know, when we heard Chair Powell UH speak
during the press conference, you know, he talked about about
the ongoing overhang from the coronavirus crisis. He talked about
the ongoing overhang from schools only getting reopened, from childcare issues. Uh.
(27:44):
Those are the types of things that that we see
and we hear when we are kind of thinking about
the pace at which the economy is reopening, and we
think those are going to continue improving over time because
of the President's economic strategy around shots and arms, around
relief in pockets, and so we're encouraged as we look
ahead the trend lines are only going to improve from here,
precisely because some of those overhangs that the Chair and
(28:07):
that we've been paying attention to should continue dissipating over time.
It's been an incredibly busy week for the White House
on a geopolitical perspective as well, Mike, and I'm interested
in how you feel the pushback in particular versus China.
Are you looking at businesses doing business in China as
as a concern you just trying to build up the
(28:28):
supply chain domestically here in the United States? What are
the economic ramifications of some of the moves being made
currently From a geopolitical perspective, So, I think that everyone
around here thinks that this was a successful visit by
the President overseas. The goal of this visit to the
G seven to Europe was to highlight that the United States,
(28:52):
acting in concert with our democratic allies, can achieve tangible
results for both our citizens as well as the world
as a whole. And I think that's what you saw.
You saw the announcements around a global vaccination, efforts to
end the pandemic globally. You saw efforts on the economic
policy side where I spend most of my time to
(29:13):
end the race to the bottom around global corporate taxes.
You know this to us as a as A as
a real moment to demonstrate what the United States, leading
alongside its democratic allies, can achieve. And we think that
the record that was generated over the last week is
a is an important first step and that important initiative.
(29:34):
And on what you miss, we like to thank cryptos
for everyone. It doesn't always have to be about redefining
money or disrupting central banks. So he spoke with someone
trying to bring the old world of sports and pop
culture into the crypto space. Spencer Dinwittie is an NBA
player and start point guard for the Brooklyn Nets. Was
also the founder and CEO of Galaxy, which is a
blockchain based social media app that allows fans to buy
(29:56):
tokens associated with their favorite stars and use them to
interact with their favorite celebrities and athletes. So we started
by asking Spencer to explain this different use case for crypto. Um.
I mean, when you look at anything with value, right,
And in this situation in the entertainment industry, it's usually people, right.
Fans want to get as close to that value they
(30:17):
possibly can. So you know, in a in a distant future,
you're probably gonna have situations where you can buy stock
in in people, um, but right now you don't have that,
and the security law is kind of create friction for that.
So we kind of have this this half step, and
we want to create an appendent ecosystem built on the
next generation technology that could watch step by step into
(30:39):
that future. That future of course that you started because
it was a few years ago that you first have
a well petition the NBA put it to the NBA
that you wanted to convert your own contract into a
digital currency of form. You wanted to bring perhaps your
earnings forward. You want to be able to set it
into other people's hands. How did that learning experience go
for you? How did it really change the moon music
(31:01):
not only around you, but around like your entire industry
of the NBA pay is also getting it on the
app um. I mean honestly, being a pioneer net in
that sense came with a lot of arrows in the
back of those speak, um, it was tough, but I
think with the recent bull run of the cryptocurrency ecosystem
and has experienced, there's been a lot of eyes open
(31:23):
to it. And you know, I think what was once
written off it is a simple cash advance, is now
seeing something much bigger. The democratizing and decentralization of something
that it looked with like a sports contract and allowing
access to fans and you know, having meet and greed
experiences in different premiums that you know aren't always associated
or tied into a traditional sports contract offers both benefits
(31:45):
to the fans um and the players, and at the
end of the day um and both fans and player
are happy than the NBA or the you know, central
body also a successful as well. So your your company,
Glaxy is built upon a blockchain or a blockchain like
to knowlogy called hash graph. It's kind of a competitor
in some respects to Ethereum. Perhaps a lot of people
(32:05):
look at all these different coins, they don't know how
to evaluate them. They don't even have the be the
slightest idea you had to actually evaluate a platform to
figure out what we're going to launch on. How should
people go about thinking of the sort of you know,
not from a price perspective per se, but thinking about
the pluses and minuses of all these different coins that
they're like really just trying to wrap their head around. Yeah,
(32:27):
so I mean you've got to kind of separate them
first into ones that are trying to be currencies or
stores of value and others that are trying to be uh,
you know, smart contract platforms or layer ones. Is as
a lot of a lot of people call it a
big cooin obviously is the gold standard um digital goal
with a lot of people call it in terms of
a currency. But to your point, Ethereum is the most
(32:47):
prevalent smart contract platform and a lot of essentialized finance
applications were being built on that. Uh. You know, the
reason I chose hash graph is because it's next generation
that should be alleged technology. So it's not technically blockchain,
but it is distribute alleged technology. US consensus algorithm is
actually called hash graft Um is patented, and you know,
when you look at building enterprise grade applications, you want
(33:09):
that security. You want to the network won't be forked UM.
And you know, for me, I wanted to align myself
with fortunate five companies and have some of that reputation
risk management and just in mind myself with those type
of caliber companies that calxiates to be reputation risk management.
The fact that you're worrying about, you know, the the
(33:31):
your future proofing, whatever you want to be working on
when it comes to the decentralized nature of what you're building,
but also your own reputation. How much you know, given
you just said, actually it helped when you're a pioneer.
It helped them to have this rallying crypto to bring
people's attention to it. When you then see the sell
off that you do, how much do you have to
worry about how crypto has seen Do you feel like
(33:52):
people are getting up to speed with the fact that
perhaps is not just purely used for ill gotten gains
and the like? Yeah, I mean, I think reputation risk
management comes in two forms. We're talking about Calaxy. Uh,
you know, I'm twenty eight and I played the NBA
and my co founder is twenty six and is awarded
business school grad were both ethnic young men, and so
(34:13):
to align ourselves with you know, LG, Deutsche Telecom, Google,
et cetera, helps kind of uh ring validity to what
we're trying to accomplish, and hashgraft helped provide that. In
terms of the actual overall crypto ecosystem. Um, you know,
people are starting to realize that it's an actual market
and markets have eplows, and you know, I believe that
(34:33):
what we're experiencing right now is a simple correction. If
you look at where bitcoin was only a year ago,
there's you know, the stock market, bonds, you know, uh
commodities or you know, uh, precious medals. None of them
have returned like this. And unfortunately, you know, some people
only want to experience the good, but you can't have
good without bad. So you know, we're experienced correction right now.
(34:53):
I fully believe that we're still within the midst of
a boat run, and we're gonna see enough take going
to the end of the year quickly. You know. There
there's the fan player relationship is changing in all kinds
of ways, obviously, social media, etcetera. One other thing that's
becoming much more accepted recently is the rise of sports gambling,
and I'm curious, like how this all fits into it.
(35:14):
People want to buy a token on a celebrity or
player that they like, they maybe want to bet on
the team. How much is that all part of the
same desire to like sort of just like feel more
of a steak in outcomes. Yeah, I mean, I think
the ethos and the emotion that you're talking about UM
is directly tied to what Taxi does. Now, we're not
a gambling platform. I stretch UM and don't aim to be.
(35:36):
But when you start talking about these experiences that you
can buy in and having a dynamic pricing models within
you know, specific athletes or entertainers or really anybody you know,
a Spencer token might be a different price than a
than a Joe token. And then when you start having
secondaries markets that you know enables trading and you know,
long short all types of different avenues that will you know,
(35:58):
be insting to see it and follow. I wonder if
you'll do worth more than Joe token or the Spencer
token if it's I'm gonna flip in you if if
the Spencer one is worth more? And that's it for
what you missed this week. If you like the show
and make sure to subscribe and rate us an Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to podcast. You can catch
(36:20):
our show every weekday from three thirty to five pm
on Bloomberg TV and from four to five pm on Twitter.
Thanks for listening and have a great week.
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