all of that ahead on "bloomberg west." but to our lead, redditors are rebelling. more than 180,000 people have signed a petition calling for ceo ellen pao's resignation. according to change.org a vast majority of the reddit community believes that she has overstepped boundaries and will run reddit into the ground. the petition was posted four weeks ago the number of but the number of signatures skyrocketed over the weekend after pao fired talented director victoria taylor. moderators protested by shutting down hundreds of message boards. pao went to read it and said "we screwed up." pao has been trying to cut down on harassment on the site, but redditors complain they are curtailing their freedom of speech. we have bob book. he led business developing at reddit competitors. peter signed this petition. why did you sign it? why was victoria taylor so valuable to read it? still no explanation as to why she was fired. peter: as to why victoria taylor was so viable to read it, it was not what happened with reddit. she was a go between between volunteer moderators who are the lifeblood of the community, because it is a unity platform for content to ration. she was an in between between volunteer moderators and the administrators were employees of reddit. she was seen as a good line of communication in a company or community that had become somewhat this functional. the people who ran the company, ellen pao, did not communicate effectively with the users. they were the lifeblood of the platform. it was a question of governance and communication and with her removal there was a severance of the last possible link in the chain. i signed a petition -- i don't know if people actually pay attention to change.org petitions. i like to think so. for me it was the fact that so many moderators that dedicate their hard work were unhappy with the situation, with her leadership. it is unfortunate for someone like that to be the leader of an important corporation. emily: bob, you tried to make some of the same changes at digg. bob: it is déjà vu. it is history repeating itself. the thing we did at digg and they will have to learn at reddit is that the moderators, the power users of reddit, they have more control over the site than i do as facebook on as a user or twitter does as the user. emily: outside control. bob: there are lots of people who visit reddit and get their news and there are people who run the company. then there are these power users. they are a really important stakeholder. i think what reddit is apologizing for and what they are hopefully learning, they are such an important stakeholder, you have to treat them as though they are your board of directors. you have to listen to them and create features for them. you can't -- i think one of the things that happened at digg that was a big mistake was we occasionally slipped into the mindset of the prison warden versus the inmates. these power users, you get frustrated because they are controlling our site. we can't let them take over our site and give them control. there is a balancing act. but you've got to get out of that prison warden, they are the inmates and collaborate. emily: but people left digg and went to reddit. ellen made this big apology and you look at the comments and they are still not happy. sarah: she is in this defensive position where she said, i tried to apologize to you guys before, but you down voted my apologies. even the ceo of reddit is having trouble communicating on reddit because of this community of moderators. emily: the iron in here -- irony here is that ellen pao became famous to the world essentially, she sued her employer kleiner perkins for discrimination. the jury found kleiner perkins not guilty. in the court of public opinion it was a different situation. i spoke with john doerr, who elaborated on their position that she was not a good investor, but maybe she could be a good ceo. take a listen. john: it's important to look at the difference between being an operator and being an investor. i think that ellen could be a really great ceo. i hope that she is. to be a successful investing partner is a really different job. emily: is this ellen pao's fault? is she a good ceo? bob: alike and say about her -- alexis has had a hard time finding -- emily: the cofounder. bob: the cofounder of reddit. i met with him several years ago. i was interested maybe in doing it. thing is, it is so hard to find someone who can lead that community because you have to have the hands-on approach, but a hands-off approach at the same time where you're a steward and you can't come in and clean house and turn it into something sellable or we can sell advertisers on. we have to partnership with the users. that is where she initially failed and i do not know if she can ever climb back. emily: the headlines, reddit is burning reddit is at war with itself. is there a very real risk reddit could go away? peter: that would be really difficult. people develop habits for entertainment and they get locked in. i know that i am addicted to the website. even if i signed the petition as i said i did, i'm still clicking through it on my website. it's interesting people sharing interesting things. there are dark sides that i do not appreciate but that is the price we pay for free speech or open platforms. as far as ellen's role and whether she can drive it into the ground, i do not think so. she has an unenviable task. she has two stakeholders. she has users who curate and create content that people love and then she has shareholders and people she needs to return the investment. how do you make something profitable without discouraging user participation? how do you put ads up without infuriating users when they want to get to the content? emily: which leads me to the question, should read it be a business at all or is it just a community? venture capitalist floated the idea that reddit using lock technology, but the site could run itself and there would not need to be management. what do you think of this idea? sarah: it is kind of too late. they have raised money through venture capital. they have shareholders to return capital to. some of the decisions they have been making such as shutting down abusive parts of the site, at least while they were making money, have already selling the waters as to whether this is an open community, whether or not those hateful -- things you say you do not appreciate about reddit even though you appreciate the need for the free speech, it is not exactly free speech if you are -- bob: it absolutely can be a business. i think what fred wilson said was interesting. he is talking about another arch -- another entrepreneur who wants to compete with reddit. i created a platform called digg ad, and it was one of the first native ad formats to be out there. before facebook and twitter. the thing was it was one of the most widely positively received features we ever launched. the users understood. they thought it was a really creative way of doing that. i think reddit users can be opened to the fact that it needs to be a business. they just need to run it and include the users as a stakeholder and bring them into the conversation. emily: which is hard to do. peter, you are going to be sticking with us after the commercial break, but we have to leave it there. bob from socialwire, sarah thanks so much. coming up, more uber drivers coming under attack. today, the company hired private security guards in johannesburg to help prevent intimidation from metered taxi drivers. this is the latest in a string of attacks on uber. asked which, -- last week uber drivers were the target of violent protests in paris. it has also met with bans in germany, spain, italy. uber continues to forge into new territories, and announcing that it plans to invest $50 million over the next five years in india. up next, crisis in greece. good bitcoin keep -- help greeks keep their money safe? that is next. ♪ emily: we turn now to greece. last night the country overwhelmingly rejected austerity measures europe once in exchange for bailout money. now athens has hours to come up with a plan that will keep greece in the euro. capital controls that came into effect last week are extended until wednesday. that is when euro finance ministers will hold emergency talks. under those restrictions, greece cannot withdraw more than 60 euros at a time per day and cannot make any foreign transactions. that covers even payments like buying a song on itunes and banks are running dangerously low on funds. even though the european central bank is maintaining emergency cash support for them. one currency has been gaining steam. that is bitcoin. will it help greeks keep their money safe? how do you get a hold of it with capital controls in place? joining me now is sunny singh and peter venoco convert that peter van wilkinsburg is back with me. we have seen the price inch backup. it is what, $250 -- $270? how much does this rise have to do with greece? sunny: i think the price last month was between $220 and $250. now because of greece it has moved to two at $75 this morning. emily: who is to say that this is not just speculation? peter: i think it is speculation, quite honestly. speculation is a tricky thing. when you see something in the news like a sovereign debt crisis, you look at other assets to secure your money. if you're in greece, you do not that option because your bank account is locked and you have a $60 a day cap. i do not think we are seeing a lot of capital move into bitcoin from greece itself, but if you are from a neighboring state that has a debt problem, say portugal or ireland, you're thinking, hey, maybe i should diverse of five my investment, maybe i should stay away from treasuries and consider bitcoin. but that's a speculative move. that's a thought, this is an option outside my other investment vehicles. it's not an escape. emily: most of the bitcoin exchanges are not open in greece. how can greeks turn their cash into bitcoin? sunny: that is the problem. it's very hard. you have to get money out of your bank account. you can get to it online. the problem is, how you get money to pay for the bitcoin? peter is right, a lot of the money will be neighboring countries around the world saying wow, it's interesting what is happening in greece. i should have a couple of percentage points of my assets in bitcoin. emily: we are seeing the rest of the eu buy a lot of bitcoin right, peter? peter: yeah, and it is also an open question about whether those goods store values. if you say i do not want my local currency, i want bitcoin it is not the best store of , value. we were talking earlier about how fred wilson thinks that you can build reddit on a blockchain. the technology could have a massive upside, but it also could have a very large downside because it disappears. what is good for though is a rail. in can be a new payment rail for cross-border payments. you switch into bitcoin to get out of your local currency and use that as a way to access online markets in other countries where you would then trade bitcoin for, say, dollars if you wanted to hold dollars or something like that. emily: this is your business. there are talks that greece could adopt bitcoin. if it leaves the euro how far-fetched is that though, really? sunny: listen, i think greece should look at bitcoin. it is a way they can work together. i think greece adopting bitcoin as the single currency would be hard, especially with the time and things happening right now but i think a could definitely find a way to have it work together. emily: peter, far-fetched? peter: yeah, i think far-fetched. but that said, in argentina, we see people who do use bitcoin as a payment rail to avoid capital controls. i think you will see adoption potentially kick up. the question is usability. it has got to be accessible and accessible to the kind of people who are harmed by the kind of activities we are seeing in greece by pensioners, older folks. right now that is not the situation on the ground. we will have to see a big change in the applications to help people access it for it to catch on. as far as adopting the national currency, they have ious. i don't think they want to add crypto currency into the mix. emily: final thought. sonny: i agree. they still have to make more readily available to creditors and grace. if i was in europe, south america, i would have a certain amount of my asset classes in bitcoin to defend against my local currency going up and down so much. emily: we do have a team on the ground in greece. peter: especially if they build reddit on it. emily: [laughter] we do have a team on the ground in greece. stay tuned to bloomberg television for developments there. peter, thanks so much for joining us, as well as sunny singh bitpay's chief officer. now to breaking news. amd shares crashing. the chip maker struggling to compete with intel. stocks dropped after amd said quarterly earnings declined more than they initially anticipated. we will get more on these results on thursday. it is time for our hack of the day. sudan, russia, saudi arabia. these are a few of the countries may rely on global spy team, a hacking team. they are a secretive organization known for providing surveillance and intrusion software around the world. hacking team are reeling from a data breach that exposed to their client lists. documents exposed on twitter showed that the company and has sold technology to australia turkey, and at least seven other countries. one of the group's cofounders said that hackers are spreading lies about the company and that the information posted is not true. he later shut down his twitter account. up next is the demand for equity , in billion-dollar startups creating illegal marketplaces? we look at the sec's latest investigation. before we go to break, here's a peek into the future. japan holding the world's very first robot wedding. two humanoid robots. they were married by pepper, a motion-sensing android. the bride is named after a japanese popstar. the ceremony included a dance number performed by fellow robots. no word on where they are having the honeymoon. ♪ emily: it is time now for the daily byte, one number that tells a whole lot. today's number is 20. that's the number of futures trading dismantled in chicago. that is right. the famous roar of the commodity pits are going silent, closing for good as futures trading moves online. the closing pits deals with futures contracts to buy them out of at a future date at a set price -- but not all of them are closing. auctions will be traded in person and so will stock at other exchanges like the new york stock exchange. turning to the sec, the securities and exchange commission is investigating the illegal sale of tech firm pre-ipo shares. the company is looking at the sale of employee owned shares. companies like uber, pinterest and airbnb prohibit the sale of company-owned stock, yet somehow the shares are ending up on the secondary market. join me to discuss is phil siegal and bloomberg born measure -- bloomberg board member to the carlyle group -- arthur, i will start with you. the journal makes it sound like this investigation is quite broad. what could the consequences be? arthur: i don't know how serious it is, but obviously it is ongoing. i think they are looking at it to see to it that any derivatives transactions are done on an exchange, not over-the-counter, as before dodd-frank. if you are asking me for my opinion about this as an advisor to a number of private companies, i don't think it generally is a healthy thing to be showing unlisted securities privately in this fashion. i think in some cases it is important, but as a general notion i would rather see that money going to the company rather than receiving valuations that are imprecise at best for employees to sell that stock on a second market. emily: bill, this is your business. have you been contacted by the sec and how could this affect your business? bill: we have not been contacted by the sec and our business is predicated purely on working with the company, so we do not run or condone an over-the-counter market or broker transactions between individuals and employees. our business is working directly with the company to run structured, organize liquidity events so the company can determine who gets what and what price. emily: as i understand it, there was a big market for pre-ipo shares. after the facebook ipo, is sort of dried up. over the past couple of years the market has rebounded and exploded again. what companies are we talking about here? how easy is it to get shares in uber and pinterest despite the fact of the companies prohibit it? bill: back in when facebook was 2012 trading very actively on the private market, companies were watching that take place and did not want the same scenario in those companies. a lot of the companies we are talking about today worked with those early companies. when they set up and found it, a lot of the companies you are mentioning, they put in place restrictions on transferring. they expressly prohibit the transfer of ownership of the underlying equity, and that includes encumbering or placing a lien on that stock. no secondary activity can take lace outside of their control. emily: quickly, arthur, how do you see this playing out? what kind of penalties could we see and what sort of crackdowns could we see? arthur: i do not think the deal with penalty or a crackdown. it is more of a simple of an ash it is a symbol of an overheated market where people are anxious to buy the shares before they go public and get a premium. i do not think that is healthy for the industry. as a shareholder, i would not want that to happen. i want funds that come to the company to be used for the company. emily: arthur, we will have to leave it there. former sec chairman arthur levitt, bill, ceo of second market. thank you for watching. ♪ we live in a pick and choose world. choose choose choose. but at bedtime? 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