Megan murphy. The lead in the finance section is on bitcoin. We have been talking about the so much in the last week. Politics, i than think we have talked most about the coin. Over the past year, let alone several years, we have seen volatile moves and price. One of the things we want to show this is a staggering statistic. Less than 1000 people hold 40 of the worlds bitcoin. With the markets being as volatile as it is with the price , going up so much, some of the people we know, when one of these big owners, when they sell, it can cause an extreme drop in the price quickly because of the concentration of ownership in the hands of relatively few. What we are looking at with cryptocurrency, forget the broader debate about bitcoin. This is a real problem for the market transparency. This is a situation where people dont know who the owners of the who the owners of bitcoin are. It is exasperating that that authority there. Julia we are going to see exchanges like the cme introducing futures on bitcoin. Is that going to change gas will this increase transparency, liquidity and perhaps reduce the impact . Thats the hope, that it becomes a more normalized market. When you go out and talk to people, one of the things about bitcoin and cryptocurrency is watching, the amount of mines moving into it. The issue i think, they are going to try to work out this market and move it from something that people think it is a scam. Nevermind that jpmorgan is also getting into it. There is that. I think what is so interesting is will they ever fully get out of this feeling of it is just a scam . That is the oldest form of the market and be able to normalize the market. This concentrated ownership issue, the week of us twins on twins, winklevoss on paper, are billionaires. Thats made famous by the investment in facebook and their dispute over that. It has seen an extraordinary change in fortunes of early investors. Carol i love the statistic that it has gained millions of percent in trading. That is hard to get your head around. When you think about when one big investor starts selling, what happens . Megan and when he has a lack of transparency we have currently. You cannot attribute it. We do big share selloffs when people would get liquidity or an m a deal. When Warren Buffett sells off on imb ibm. We dont know what the underlying motivation is, profit taking, concern, they know something we dont. That is the issue. Julia lets move to the cover story in particular. What happens in a country when 97 of the population who use the internet are on facebook . Megan this is a fascinating tale. We spent a lot of time talking about fake news. This is really ground zero. It is in the philippines. The story traces the rise of a controversial leader of the country and how he mobilized social media during his rise. The other side is this journalists, who founded a new site called grappler which was launched on facebook. Rappler newss how facebook is the only internet some people know in part of this country. 98 penetrations country. She charted his rise and was part of assisting this rise. He had incredible domination of facebook and social media channels. Once he got into power and some controversial elements of his regime came in clamping down on , drugs, we all know the murderous told that has taken. Murderous told that has taken. Other fake news, things in the administration to distract attention. And personal, extreme attacks on her as a journalist. Julia social media as a tool. And then as a weapon. Megan that is exactly what we saw in the story. Maria is a journalist from the philippines and has been there for more than two decades as an investigative reporter. About six years ago, started a company. An online news site. It does all kinds of different stories, they do investigative stories, lifestyle stories, and they do a lot of political news as well. Julia she really rose to prominence, if we look at january of last year, she combined with facebook to host a president ial campaign debate, and strangely enough, only one candidate turned up, and we know him very well. She invited all five candidates and some of them accepted. As the event neared, several of them canceled on the night before the final one canceled and leaving only roderigo dutere as a single candidate to show up to marias event. This event there were a cross 40 College Campuses across the philippines, the event was live streamed on facebook. The question for the candidate, they were crowd sourced on facebook. There was a dynamic relationship between social media and the fight for this event. It really did give duterte a mainstream avenue to broadcast his views on lots of controversial topics. Julia we know he is controversial, the policy he has enacted as residents. As the president. When did maria start to that something was being used as a weapon rather than a tool and get concerned about news appearing that was not actually real . Early in the campaign, there was a lot of aggressive use of social media. People who work for him online people who are produtere online, going after critics and opponents and targeting them in a personal manner and in a violent, aggressive manner. There was a trolling aspect to the Campaign Early on, and then there was also the fake news elements. Stories started circulating online and in social media that were not true. Julia what happened to maria when she started to try to tackle domestically what she saw as a kind of propaganda war from the government . It goes to the heart of media ownership in the philippines. Is her company at risk for trying to question the government, their motives and policies . Yes. Marias story is fascinating in part because it has been an evolution. She started reporting about what she felt was a Propaganda Machine being used by the government in order to go after critics. When she started writing about it, the Propaganda Machine essentially when after maria. Went after maria. They started sending her messages online and on facebook saying really vile things. Facebook did not do much to stop that at the time. The attacks escalated, as she started becoming more critical of the dutere government, dutere singled out her company and in a state of the Union Address and started saying the company was not following all of the rules and laws of the country. And escalated from there. Carol coming up, Warren Buffetts succession plan. Julia and Robert Mueller might be prepared to play defense. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Tool welcome back Bloomberg Businessweek. Julia you can find us online at businessweek. Com. Carol and on our mobile app. Opening the magazine this week, what are Warren Buffetts plans at Berkshire Hathaway . Julia we spoke to inhouse buffett watch her, noah. He talked to investors or people who follow berkshire closely, a lot of people have been looking at greg abel, who runs the energy operation, they own a bunch of utilities throughout the u. S. And u. K. We have these names because they were highlighted by the vicechairman. Everyone is trying to read the tea leaves. They have not come out and said. We should take a step back. We all have a lot of fun. We respect Warren Buffett, it is hard to follow in his footsteps, but it is like, who is going to for Berkshire Hathaway, everyone follow and take over for Berkshire Hathaway, everyone has been wondering. There has been a tremendous amount of speculation. Buffett is 87. Monger is a couple years older than that. This is a conversation that has been going on decades. Frankly, the name on the envelope has changed over time. We are certainly not the first people to write an article speculating about who the person is. There is a journalistic tradition of this. What we do know is that as time goes on, some of the names that have been thrown out there in the past, for many of those executives, they are no longer at berkshire or they are looking less probable because of age or some other reasons. Julia break it down for us. What the differences are, because there are fundamental differences, whether they have grown up in the business, energy versus insurance, their respective age. Which we know is a critical thing to Warren Buffett, too. He was a young guy to come in there. There are critical differences. Age is one of them. Abel grew up in the energy business. He has been running a business that has been highly acquisitive. Berkshire hathaway energy, his business has gone out and bought more utilities, they have bought pipelines, invested a lot in renewable energy. It is a place where part of buffetts empire, he can count on his managers to do something with this cash is producing. Which is solely not unique to him. He has a track record of doing that over and over again. Julia 20,000 employees, and thats just part of the business. Exactly. Something interesting about able and how he runs the business, the head office has only two dozen employees. Thats the model buffett uses for the whole conglomerate. Buffett likes to play this up, he talks about how he has about 24, 25 people in omaha who oversee the whole conglomerate, which has more than 350,000 employees. There is a nice parallel between how abel operates and buffett has been running the conglomerate. Julia in the politics section this week, a special focus on special counselor special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into potential kremlin ties to President Trump. Carol mueller may have a plan if trump tries to shut him down. Julia here is editor matthew philip. In the days after the Michael Flynn plea deal, trumps lawyers started to change how they would talk about the affection of justice charge being leveled at the president. From not thinking about much of it, too starting to argue that a sitting president cannot be charged with of structured charged with obstruction of justice there is no statute that , suggest it is a crime. It marked an interesting tidbit pivot in the way the Trump Defense team was going about this. This was john dowd, in the aftermath of the scrum around this tweet trump had sent out over the weekend in which out said, i wrote this, it wasnt the president. The tweet said i fired flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the fbi, the fbi thing was the big news, a lot of commentators said he proved obstruction, given what we know about his reasons for getting rid of fbi director jim comey. It has been interesting week in the mueller probe. We have some big names after the manafort and gates indictment last month. We now have the nsa director Michael Flynn playing to a pretty small count of lying to federal agents, given the potential crimes we know he could of been charged with, including being on the payroll of a Turkish Company while he was a top official in the white house. Julia we already have President Trump lawyers pushing back on the idea of obstruction of justice for a sitting president. The perception is also that Robert Mueller, in getting Michael Flynn to cut a plea deal, it is a huge step forward in the investigation. But you say it is more than that. More important, because it ensures it continues, the investigation continues. Explain that idea. Matthew thats right. Last spring when Robert Mueller accepted this job as special counsel it was always going to , be kind of a defensive job in its very nature because he was investigating a man who had the power ultimately to fire him, or kind of fire people, or direct people to fire him. There has always been this kind of threat over this counsels office and his team about whether the white house can do anything to shut down the case. What we have got with the flynn thing is a couple of things, it gave us the first person inside the administration, even though he was only there for less than a month, i believe, he was inside the trump administration, not just a campaign of figure. A campaign figure. It also raises the political temperature. If in fact, trump were to try to shut down the mueller investigation, the political implications of this would be unprecedented. Not that we have seen that since the watergate investigation. It raises this idea of the saturday night massacre, in which president nixon fired then special counselor archibald cox. He has given himself insurance. He has also laid some breadcrumbs on the ground for other prosecutors, state and local ones to pick up and continue his investigation is if he ends up not leading it, ultimately. Julia up next, how a famous lawyer became infatuated with hollywood and found himself working for Harvey Weinstein. Carol and a crowdfunding site that runs on hate. Julia this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Julia welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Im julia charlie. Carol and im carol massar. You can listen to us in new york, 1061 in boston. In the bay area. Julia and in london and asia on the Bloomberg Radio plus app. In the featured section, a profile of litigated david boyer hollywood and vision. Carol and what let him into the orbit of Harvey Weinstein. Here is felix gillette. People know this sort of famous courtroom litigator and champion of democratic ideals. He represented al gore during the 2000 president ial florida recount. He also famously represented the government antitrust case against microsoft. He has had all of these huge big highprofile cases, which has made him arguably the most famous lawyer of his generation. Because of his work fighting on behalf of gay marriage, with ted olson, george bushs lawyer, they teamed up on behalf of marriage equality. He has become more than just a lawyer, someone who has been revered, particularly among liberals. Julia you said he ran circles around bill gates. Yes. Julia i cant imagine a man capable of doing that. This brilliant courtroom tactician. He has been played in an hbo movie. There has been books about him, countless magazine profiles, all glowing, until suddenly this fall, when his role representing Harvey Weinstein came into the news and all these people were suddenly outraged by his association. Carol may be surprise that Harvey Weinstein, had someone circle. In his legal talk to us about that relationship and how it turned into a bit of trouble for david boys. We look back, how to the relationship start, but what was david working on. It turns out they met each other not long after the florida recount. They had lunch, and Harvey Weinstein had a Book Publishing imprint and boies agreed to write a memoir about his legal career. Thats how it started. As he was working on his memoir, he started representing harvey and his brother bob and their company miramax in various things. Disneyrvey and bob left he represented them. , he represented them in various things over the years and the relationship grew closer. Then in 2012, it becomes more interesting, because david decides to start a film company of his own. In part, this was because one of his daughters had graduated from college and was interested in getting into the film industry. One of his partners close partners and close friends, his son was also working in the industry, they thought it would be fun, lets do some movies. What is interesting is, they did some projects together, but in the end, its sort of complicated the relationship with Harvey Weinstein, because he was not just a client, there was also a Side Relationship in terms of doing business in the movie industry together. Carol in the Technology Section crowdfunding and payment firms , prevent racists from using their sites and services. Internetgave one entrepreneur and idea. His website aims to arm White Supremacists with donation. Donations. Facebook and twitter have taken a hard line on banning White Supremacists from the platform. Sites like kickstarter and patriotic, places where people can raise money for projects have been much quicker to put people off platforms for espousing hateful ideas or inciting violence. Carol but you dont get booted from hatreon, which is a site to raise money for hate groups. Yes. They are collecting about 25,000 per month from a few thousand donors, mostly about White Supremacists. Julia talk to us about cody wilson, the guy behind it. What do we know about him. Him . We should recognize the name. He is 29, as our reporter right, he is the rare troll who senses market opportunities. He came to prominence first in 2012 with a Company Called defense distributed, a small enterprise, but it did not have to be that big because it is mostly producing designs for open source, untraceable guns. In 2013, they published plans for a 3d plastic gun at you can make yourself, and therefore a it cant be traced by the government. Since then, the company has also begun selling machines that allow you to make untraceable metal handguns and assault rifles. Julia we get a sense of his political lean. Now he seems to be arming White Supremacists with funding, with cash. Explain how that is working . As the Southern Poverty Law Center intelligence project has told us, that the blog hate watch has already become an important tool for White Supremacists to keep themselves fed in lean times. The founder of the ultraconservative website daily s