It's been seven months since Travis Kalanick gave up the helm of Uber, but what did those last days or weeks look like for the disgraced CEO? Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Technology at Bloomberg News and Author of "The Upstarts" joins The Hive to discuss the strange world of Travis Kalanick.
Stone describes an insider's account of when Kalanick was shown the video of himself yelling at an Uber driver. The source said Kalanick rolled around on the floor muttering "This is bad." Stone also explores what took the board so long to realize that Kalanick was the company's main problem.
So is Kalanick fiercely loyal or unbelievably stubborn? Why did it take so long for him to relinquish control? Stone says what he was most surprised about was Kalanick's decision-making towards the end of his time at Uber. The first few years were filled with good decisions that forced the company to expand. However, at the end, Kalanick's decision-making took a turn and was ultimetly his demise.
While slumps within the crypto market have typically correlated with major developments, such as China's crypto crackdown or Tesla reversing course on accepting bitcoin, the current slide is coming at a time when the stock market is at or near record levels. Reporter Alex Vuocolo talks about the role of the crypto derivatives market in bitcoin's latest price drop, as well as the future of sustainability in the space.
According to a recent report from T-Mobile, spam call traffic doubled in 2021. The company says so far they have been able to block just 21 billion spam calls for their customers this year. Despite telecom giants blocking these calls, a number of customers continue to receive these spam calls, especially during the holiday season. Founder and President of Vertical Consultants Hugh Odom, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Venture capitalists and CEOs are clashing over the future of the internet. Web3 is the tech world's name for a decentralized, blockchain-based internet that runs on cryptocurrency. It was recently the topic of a tweet from Block CEO and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who wrote that Web3 will not actually be owned by users, and instead be controlled by rich venture capitalists. Dorsey later shared that he was blocked on Twitter by Marc Andreesen, co-founder of VC firm Andreesen Horowitz, which has invested billions of dollars into Web3 and crypto projects. Correspondent for DealBook from the New York Times, Ephrat Livni, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss what this could mean for the future of Web3.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
