against james alex fields to first-degree murder. driving man accused of into a crowd of counterprotesters in charlottesville, virginia, during that white nationalists rally. global news 24 hours a day. you are watching bloomberg. ♪ emily: i emily chang and this is "bloomberg technology." federal investigators confirm at least one criminal probe into uber. will talk about what it means for the world's most valuable startup. plus, the world's most -- the world's largest futures exchange will begin allowing bets on the world's biggest cryptocurrency. plus, another first for spacex. elon musk's other company since a recycled mock -- rocket and recycled payload blasting into space. why going green could be the future of space travel. but first to our lead. uber is under at least one criminal investigation. we are waiting for a letter alleging they attempt to acquire trade secrets and spy to unveil from attorneys representing a former security analyst detailing some business operations. this may be a key piece of evidence. the letter was supposed to be unsealed at noon local time. it has not happened yet but could happen at any moment. our guest host for the hour -- bloomberg contributor david kirkpatrick. thank you for joining us. what do we believe is in this letter and why is it important? in court,testified and a lot of the letter was read into courtroom testimony. we know that it alleges that -- it makes a wide array of allegations, some of which were walked back, so we should be careful with that. we know at the very least -- it alleges surveillance on other riders,n for example, and we know they engaged in some web scraping on competitors, peeling information about foreign competitors off the web. he has walked back very significantly the trades tickets claims. he alleges there was a group within uber designed and built to steal trade secrets. lawsuit infrom the which they were alleged to have stolen trade secrets. pressed in court, jacobs walked that back and said he did not really know for sure on first-hand knowledge that trade secrets were stolen by this group. it is kind of ironic because that may prove actually useless, this letter, but it exposes all these kinds of problems, some of which are true. emily: how does this play into the criminal investigation? there are a lot of investigations. >> i think bloomberg has reported as many as five. this comes from a criminal investigation. one of the criminal investigations we know of is of possible trade secrets, but we do not know that this letter is actually related to that particular investigation. we do not know that. >> another important point to consider is there are about 1000 people working security at uber, so the idea that one person would have access to all these different projects and would know about them with firsthand knowledge is also coming into , the idea that jacobs would know about market analytics but also surveillance efforts based on government is , so there's a lot of back-and-forth on how much he knew, how much he would have had first-hand knowledge of as opposed to just overhearing things in the office and maybe taking them out of context. new uber has.0 -- said over and over they have new leadership in a changing the way they do things and will be more transparent, but how much do these old skeletons in the today? urt the uber of >> clearly, the waymo lawsuit continues to hurt the uber of today, but if there's multiple lawsuits, probably more than we even know about. there's a macro question, which is how much the old culture, even if it is now dispensed with , will hurt the future uber, and my guess is it will hurt the future uber considerably, despite the fact that current leadership seems to be far more responsible in the way they run the company. emily: how much will this letter ? rt uber versus help waymo >> i think it hurts uber a lot more than it helps waymo for the reason david was talking about. you can see we're trying to clean house and clean up these lawsuits and the litigation, but it's like every time this another skeleton in the closet that reveals on the problems. it is important to point out that the competitors that the letter alleges surveillance of our foreign competitors. we're not talking about lyft. we will see how much turns out to be true, but we are talking about trying to get into foreign markets. their problems in london, for example. just as they are trying to make inroads and are desperate to do that, those countries are now learning about these practices of their companies based in those countries. integrity again coming in the question. i know you have been on the phone all day long. how do people feel about this within the company? how disruptive has this been? feelople close to uber devastated by this because they feel their job was to protect employees, to do everything they could to protect uber from other companies they say were spying on them and that that was their intention and that this is being taken out of context, but violating a law is violating a law, if you didn't for benevolent reasons or to protect your own employees, so i think they will have to do with a lot of questions -- if you did it for benevolent reasons. of questionslot about what they have been doing behind the curtain in secrecy that may or may not have been legal or ethical. emily: you have covered silicon valley technology for many years. fits intos how uber the pantheon of silicon valley shakespearean dramas. every day there seems to be a new chapter that makes the whole tale more dramatic. does it cap them all? >> sadly, i would have to say appears to be just about the most unethical large-company we have seen in silicon valley in its former incarnation. it is clearly reforming, and i admire that, but the uber that existed under travis kalanick was apparently a lawbreaking organization or certainly an unethical organization that took the risk of breaking the law very readily and did not abide by normal standards that we would consider what any company ought to abide by. i think because of that there are a lot of skeletons, as i said before, likely to continue coming out of this closet, which is tragic because it's a great company in terms of the service it provides. emily: right. well, i know you all will keep us posted. joel, you will be watching for that letter coming out any it. thank you so much. david kirkpatrick, my guest host for the hour, you are sticking with us. tencent has agreed to buy a 5% stake in china plus superstore costing about 3900 -- $39 million following alibaba's $2.5 in aon purchase of a stake chinese grocery retailer. it's chinese fourth i just hypermarket operator and already has a tech industry investor. coming up, bitcoin closes at a new record right before futures start trading. we will talk about the continued crypto craze next. livebloomberg tech" is streaming on twitter. check us out at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. san francisco on weekdays. this is bloomberg. ♪ bitcoin continues to be in the spotlight, closing out up, and the world's largest futures exchange is launching its own competing bitcoin product on sunday. what should we expect? developer of business at coin base joins us now. how do you see the week that was? .> it has been an exciting week our headquarters is in san francisco. we have had teams working 20 47. we think this is a really momentous kind of weak indication for this space and we are focused on keeping our exchange of and stable. emily: what are you expecting with the cme? >> what is exciting watching the maturation of the space is it's really driving in a whole new level of customers for us. we are moving beyond retail traders, the smaller crypto hedge funds and we are seeing mainstream wall street firms entering the space and entering very quickly. has the institutional interest, the institutional action on bitcoin over the last couple of weeks increase your belief in the legitimacy of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general and the future of it? >> i would say certainly it makes me more confident there is some kind of future. i never questioned the legitimacy of any of it, but why this particular asset should have this particular value strikes me as hard to answer. i would actually love to ask adam if i could, given that it seems to be sort of perceived -- -- as a storeis of value and speculative investment and a new kind of commodity, is it in your opinion likely that could remain the case even as bitcoin still has relatively little utility outside of the tradable asset world? >> i think it's a great question. i would push back and say i think we are seeing everyday greater and greater utility in this asset class. bitcoin is one of the dozens if not hundreds of assets out there. right now, most people are using it as a store of value, in this a lot of speculative value based inside of that as people look at it as a way to send value to anyone anywhere in the world just like sending a female. that, to me, is incredible and powerful, but you are right -- we are in the early days. we are seeing a lot of developer interest. we are seeing more and more use cases. we are not quite there yet, but we are the right direction. emily: at one point, you guys with the biggest cryptocurrency exchange out there. how does this hurt you versus help? >> i think we have a long-term macro view on the space. market share numbers are going to change. what is important to us is we are offering a safe and trusted platform to really attract the best trader. we were the largest exchange in and we did over $400 million in one span, which is a huge compliment. we want to be trading in the tens of billions before we can start to say we made it. emily: give us nubbers on the growth you are seeing on your platform. >> we talked about trading volume and seen that grow by orders of magnitude. we have also seen our user count increase by tens of thousands of customers, but we are also watching the activity, right? the bitcoin network itself, which is not a part of coin base, but the larger ecosystem, continues to see more daily throughput, more transactions, so not only is our company growing with the industry, but so is the technology itself. the head of facebook messenger, formerly head of paypal, has joined your board. what does he bring? >> he brings a lot of expertise and strategic vision. just coming out of a meeting today of which he was part, he's a fantastic resource for us to call on. he has been through hyper growth and scaling. what do you make of the ? rket position it cap into acceptance by facebook? >> absolutely yes would be my answer to the latter question. digitalplicitly a transactions and digital currency kind of expert and his original startup that took him into paypal was a mobile money platform, a mobile payments platform. running paypal gives him a lot of relevant background. the board of coin base is super impressive with the addition of marcus to fred wilson and chris dickson, i have to say, and others. that is a great, great board. can i just ask -- who are buying bitcoin? i still don't get it. i'm sorry. i do want to let you go without knowing who are these people that are paying these prices? are they just hoping it will go up, or are they really rational, thinking, knowledgeable investors echo >> i really think they are the letter. we see growth from both sides of the table. we see institutions beginning to look at this as an asset class. the example of crypto derivatives, the legitimacy that brings in the need to trade on the stock market is driving a lot of this growth, but we are seeing the average retail individual say this looks like an incredible new technology. what is the easiest way to get started, by buying or selling maybe just $50 of digital currency? they are coming to us in doing that and we are tying to make it easy and they for them to do so. thanks so much for stopping by. it's a long couple of blocks it takes you to get here. i really appreciate it. david kirkpatrick, you're sticking with us. coming up, blasting off into outer space thanks to jeff bezos and elon musk. we look at with the great investors are sending into the great beyond. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: a lightsaber wielding jedi is not the only skywalker making headlines this week. companyos' exploration into space named mannequin skywalker. it will be reused for a future flight. not to be outdone, elon musk's 17th spacex rocket launch had its own milestone. spacex sent a previously used rocket and recycled cargo capsule on a mission into the great beyond for the first time. the mission took place at cape canaveral air force station in florida. research supplies and hardware for the crew at the international space station. max from "bloomberg businessweek " joins us now. why was this launch in particular so significant? max: for spacex, and he wants the goes well is significant -- that goes well is significant, but this one in particular because it proves the idea that elon musk has been working on for the last decade and a half, which is that rockets and spacecraft can be reused successfully. not only were they able to land this thing, but this was a used rocket and a used spaceship, which is now making its way into the international space station. it is the first time for that. that suggests that not only can they land these things, but they can use them again and again, so it is a big milestone in terms of trying to get the cost of launch down, which is a big part of spacex's business, a key part of their profitability or hopeful profitability -- we do not have much information about their finances, and as far as elon musk is concerned, proof we can get to mars or have manned space travel in the future. exactly, that's my question. this is a very ambitious plan here in this is just one step. what is the next ring that spacex needs to prove? show they can to do this over and over again. that is a big part of arrow space in general. the next big launch is this new rocket, the falcon heavy, which is a rocket big enough to theoretically take people to the moon, and we also have additional tests of the current rocket we saw with people in them. -- that is a big part of aerospace in general. report earlier this year that they were going to try to have a couple of space tour s go into the end of next year. again, with rockets and stuff, deadlines are a little bit fungible because it is somewhat dependent on conditions and stuff like that and also, elon to sets a tendency ambitious timelines. we will see when those things actually happen, but that is what is coming down the pike. emily: i know you're very impressed by these launches and this one in particular. why you go why?rst of -- wife? -- rocketonly was it used and use capsule, but it then landed back on earth successfully so it could be used again. clearly, this is going to ofically reduce the price spaceflight which enables things we previously were unable to do because it just was not affordable. to me, this is another feather in the many-feted cap of elon cap -- the many-feathered of elon musk. to change the metaphor, the halo around the sky continues to grow, and i continue to be amazed. -- the halo around this guy. emily: we do not know much about spacex's financials. the name was floated as an upcoming ipo candidate, when we would learn more if such a thing happened. what is the likelihood of that? max: there were rumors earlier in the year that spacex quickly beat back. i have said is nothing in the cards immediately, but that said, the general consensus is the economics from this company are pretty good. when you look at the market share of the launch businesses from the kind of launches they are doing, it's pretty good. unlike tesla, which is really just getting its economic engine into production now, spacex has had a pretty good this in his, and every time they have one of that work, it is further evidence that they are making progress. i think really the one barrier to them going public is probably elon musk not wanting to run a public company -- wanting to put that off as long as possible. reason.or good thank you, as always, for stopping by. david kirkpatrick, our contributing editor, you are sticking with me. we are going to talk about the in 2018 coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪ the house and human services policy would allow businesses to opt out of unconditional talks with north korea. meantime, at the un security guterres gaveo this assessment on north korea. >> the situation on the korean peninsula is the most dense and dangerous piece of security issue in the world today. i am deeply concerned why the confrontation including as a result of any escalation of miscalculation. >> french authorities have raised the death toll to five children from thursday's horrific accident. a train slammed into a school bus. 18 other children and the bus driver were injured. merkelchancellor angela and micron held a joint conference. they warned against selective solitary. we are not quite in agreement on inner solidarity. here, we must continue our work because it cannot be that we had solidarity in europe on certain matters and not on others. >> turkey's president says muslim nations will ask for an annulment of president trump's decision to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital. the initiative would start at the security council. police --really israeli police questioned netanyahu. he is suggested to be involved fraud.ery, broad -- global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti, this is bloomberg. we will have more of bloomberg technology with emily chang straight ahead. keep it here. ♪ emily: as the year winds down, analysts are making predictions. they are warning that the large which lifted the markets in 2017 will go flat in 2018. for more reaction we are joined by our editor at large. corey, i will start with you. which is it? to say used to get paid that. i think there are some interesting drivers that may govern what happens to the companies. i can't predict that a company that blows free cash flow like a tire fire like tesla is going to have a great reaction in the stock market. an interesting development could come of the coming year. one of them we will hear about from congress is all the discussion right now. that is the tax bill. i think the lowering of corporate tax rate will certainly in the buybacks take care of the shareholders and executives take of themselves. what company spend on themselves --r&d they will do in soft where. companies like vmware and companies like oracle to get a great benefit from all sorts of companies looking to spend money on i.t.. so, david, facebook, amazon, google lists the rally this year. which one of those companies will have the most interesting story? david: i think facebook will have the most interesting story, but is an extraordinarily complex one. on them to own up to their social impact will get greater and greater. i expect the ads will continue pouring in and money and revenue will continue to do fine. probably the stock as well. there is a little question whether or not the push back could have a financial impact in impact on wall street so far, we haven't seen it but it is inevitable. it is an matter of when. i will add salesforce and microsoft as companies that will be beneficiaries. -- the tax bill will give companies more money to spend. that should benefit investors in industry after industry even after the ones we have mentioned. cory: if you bought stocks in this various times, on the nasdaq index this time in 2008 when the world was coming apart at the seams, the depths of the financial crisis, this brand-new obama administration with a aokie president -- we had 337% return in nasdaq in tech heavy -- cliche alert. the notion that you could have more than tripled your money on that date in the short. of time is doubly amazing. emily: i do want to talk about net neutrality. we have been hitting this hard all week. net neutrality repealed yesterday, david there was a strongly visceral reaction to this. yet, you don't think it is as big a deal necessarily as some people do. why not? david: first of all, i think it was the wrong decision and i think the rules should have been kept. they were opposed to imposing the rules in the first place, now he is imposed -- now he is opposed to removing them. his point was there has never been serious and fractions by the isps prior to 2015 when the rules were imposed. having the title to telecommunications route -- regulations was a good thing. but once you put it in, even though you didn't need it, you couldn't -- it wouldn't be smart to remove it because that sends abuse mightl that be more readily accepted. i do think we do not have the risks that a lot of the alarmists are talking about. it is really like the end of the world rhetoric that you have been hearing, which i find significantly overinflated. emily: all right. david compactor -- david kirkpatrick. david you are sticking with me. corey, thank you. emily: a story we continue to watch. nextng debuting its iphone. -- it's next to smart phone. 9.e galaxy s they will be similar to currently galaxy models. the debut will be samsung's first major phone introduction since the note eight was released in september. coming up, what happens next after disney's massive deal to buy 21st century fox's assets. we will hear from a maidservant investor in -- from a major investor in fox. we will bring you all of our best interviews from the week. discussing the cryptocurrency as their net worth source. thanks to the dramatic rise in bitcoin. tune in saturday for the best of bloomberg tech. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: the gop tax bill could be about to clear its final hurdle. the revised version was revealed today. andkey holdouts, bob corker rubio have-- marco said they will vote yes. anna, what are the highlights? anna: there are a few things we were looking at. things thatfew mostly with the direction of the senate bill including the individual brackets for income tax. we have seven rockets instead of fourth that were in the house bill. expireate cuts will before the 10 year budget window. cut will be rate 21% instead of the 20% in the house and senate bill. also, this child tax credit. wanted a more generous tax credit. ultimately, it looks like a bill that will be able to make it over the final hurdles in the house and senate. emily: so tell us what is next. all the support they need in the senate after bob corker and marco rubio decided to get on board. in the house, they are in pretty good shape as well. the only thing we are looking for now is the test to pass the senate budget rules. so, under those rules there are certain restrictions on what the bill can look like. there will be one more scrub of this bill. see thehen will we actual effects of this legislation assuming it's past? anna: that is one of the big hurries that republicans had to get through this process. they wanted to make sure this bill would be signed by president trump year and would be enacted on january 1 18. to make sure the effects of the tax cut, any economic growth that would come from this would already be in place before the midterms in 2018. emily: so, talk to me than about the significance of this being potentially a major policy victory for president trump. downplay really cannot how important this is for republicans and the president. their failure to repeal am replace obamacare was a huge, humiliating moment. regardless of whether or not you think this is good economic policy, it is a great political win for them. it will give a lot of energy to their other legislative priorities such as speaker ryan's entitlement programs. the social safety net so that more people are in the workforce and less people are relying on government handouts. emily: how does this position the embattled administration going into next year and what do you think will be the big policy things on the agenda in 2018. windsit puts much needed in the sale of the republican party. you see that in the house of representatives. they were a disparate group of different factions, different caucuses. the freedom caucus, the tuesday group, and more moderate members. they were able to hold out for their legislative priorities. with the tax bill they have all been able to get on board. they have found out that it feels good to work together. they are going to try to pass more republican only legislation if they can. they are looking at their spending bill that they need to pass before december 22. they will try to do that in the house with republican only boats. thank you soght, much, anna. startupp, and 18 person >> we will introduce you to the company and ceo next. this is bloomberg. ♪ facebook's value and impact on society has been hotly debated. to date the company wrote a blog post. is spending time on social media bad for us? this comes on the heels of comments criticizing the social network. friday he took to facebook to clarify his remarks. so what does david kirkpatrick think? director and scientists talking about the psychologist they have on staff here it. countering it with some of the old that it can be good for us. before we start, i want to read a quote from this where they say we were going to make facebook more about social interaction and less about spending time. this is the first time they're saying we to our thinking about this. >> you can read the post and think facebook is caring about its users. you can also read the post and think facebook is coming to a self serving conclusion. if we are organizing events it can be good for us. that is what facebook once out of its products. the more data they get out of you, the more engaged you are, the more the app is integrated into your daily life. props atave seen the the top of your newsfeed. i got one the other day telling haveat me and selina wang 10 likes between us. it was a celebration between us. they want us to celebrate our friendships. maybe it's an academic look, but maybe it is something facebook wants to convince us is good for us. emily: interestingly, there were some controversy all remarks made a few weeks ago. he feels tremendous guilt about some of the things he created. theyook wrote back that were tearing down his remarks. he has written another post, meant to start another conversation. i think we should discuss how we use the tools and what we should expect of them. them.sibly using david, what is your response? david: it is about time that social media -- that facebook has responded to this. healthy step very in the right direction. they need to take many more steps to engage with an awful lot of concerns that have emerged in society particularly in the last year about the degree to which they control the social dialogue. degree that many are addicted to these types of services. i agree. facebook has problems and challenges and also creates many society.benefits for it makes it a hard thing to rationalize and figure out what to do next. emily: sarah, do these celebrations of friendship that you are seeing on facebook -- does it make you concerned about how engagement on the platform is actually faring? sarah: the company is always concerned about their growth. they have more than half of the internet population using facebook right now. they need to keep increasing those engagement numbers. 1.i will make about this overall discussion is we are seeing that companies in silicon valley do not know how to talk about their power. facebook today with their blog post is trying to present themselves as responsible, caring about users. they still do not understand it's a conversation about its power in society. emily: incredible power. thank you so much. david kirkpatrick who wrote the book on facebook. david, thank you so much for joining us. finally, a los angeles startup wants to be tesla to market with electronic semi trucks. they are meant for short calls. bloomberg ashlee vance up with the ceo. >> thor is one of a handful of companies trying to bring electric drivetrains to really big vehicles. solve the issue that fleets are having right now. a lot of it surrounds compliance, cost of fuel, cost of energy. we are trying to solve a lot of those problems. >> in november, elon musk unveiled this. the semi rig will cost $180,000. it will go 500 miles in a single charge. minutes.echarge in 30 it will arrive at the end of 2019. i came to visit thor to see what a semi can do today. it got started in a warehouse when dakota brought a diesel truck and hired a team to convert it. they replaced the engine with an electric motor and built some battery packs. they slapped a giant screen in the cap. >> tell me about the logo. it looks like tesla meets transformers. >> part of what we are trying to do is exude the power. when you're talking about commercial vehicles, people think they are weak. >> it is tough it is a brand that people come to be known as the tough ev pavan. >> tom agreed to take me out for a spin. >> when i first looked at the i don't quitet, know that that's going to work. >> electric trucks are going to cost more than diesel rigs, have shorter driver ranges, and require a charging infrastructure to be built. tom thinks they have a chance. >> the way the sink is really unbelievable. >> so you were surprised? >> oh yeah. i was shocked. >> there is nothing else, the truck is good at getting attention. ruck.is is a thor t it is electric. >> thor expects this truck to have 300 miles of range when it 2019.n sale in they run clean and have amazing pickup. >> the power in this thing is unbelievable the way it takes off and handles. it speaks for itself. >> thor has 18 employees with deepa handful electric vehicle expertise. they bill themselves as an electric vehicle lab. including delivery and garbage trucks. they will have a hell of a time going up against tesla and chrysler since they have actual factories and experience. but l.a. has long been home to custom auto projects. tesla's early operations did not look much different than these. emily: bloomberg's ashlee vance there. that does it for friday's version of bloomberg technology. for now.ll have a wonderful weekend everybody. we will see you on monday. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ david: what propelled you to want to join this company? brian: i always wanted to work for my dad. david: did he say you could start at the bottom and work your way up, or did he say you could start at number two? brian: that is what i wanted to happen. david: did anybody say is he ready to be president? brian: everybody, including myself. david: have you ever had problems with your cable? brian: sure. david: is it intimidating for the cable repairman to come to your house? >> would you fix your tie, please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. just leave it this way. alright. ♪ david: i don't consider myself a journalist. and nobody else would consider se