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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisntal and I'm Tracy halliway so Tracy that

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Speaker 1: that whole game something was pretty crazy. Huh. I noticed

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Speaker 1: you are putting that in the past tense. So you

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Speaker 1: think it's over already. We're still in the midst of

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Speaker 1: our Odd Lots game Stop series, So please don't say

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Speaker 1: it's over. It's not over. I mean, I do think

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Speaker 1: the squeeze and just like this incredible like moment where

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Speaker 1: the squeeze got so intense that it was causing various

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Speaker 1: hedge funds to not only uh put up massive losses

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Speaker 1: of their short positions, but also have to liquidate some

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Speaker 1: of their long positions to produce de gross overall. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it feels like we're sort of in you know, we

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Speaker 1: sort of faded a little bit, but obviously the sort

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Speaker 1: of impact of this moment not in a way anytime soon, right,

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Speaker 1: So I agree that the technicals for game stop look

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Speaker 1: to be um diminishing at this point. You've got the

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Speaker 1: short positions have mostly all been closed. The gamma squeeze

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Speaker 1: probably isn't going to be as easy to achieve now

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Speaker 1: because calls are going to be a lot more expensive,

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Speaker 1: and of course most of all street bets is currently

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Speaker 1: arguing with each other about what to buy next. But

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Speaker 1: I guess that kind of brings us to the topic

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Speaker 1: for this particular episode, right, And I mean, I think

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Speaker 1: there's like a few things so obviously lots of concerns

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Speaker 1: raised about market structure, how markets work, how markets settle,

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Speaker 1: the whole big guy, little guy thing. Is the car

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Speaker 1: is the deck, you know, stacked against the individual trader.

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Speaker 1: I'm not really convinced it is, but so many questions.

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Speaker 1: I think sort of like it was not a good

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Speaker 1: moment for trust. I would say for traditional market it was.

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Speaker 1: I don't think like by and large, even if the

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Speaker 1: system did kind of war and some of these curves

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Speaker 1: were put in place before it got completely out of hand. Like,

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Speaker 1: I don't think traditional markets market structure that I don't

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Speaker 1: think too many people came out like looking particularly good

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Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, I mean, I feel like market

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Speaker 1: structure is always going to be a hard sell to

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Speaker 1: the majority of people. And you know, I say that

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Speaker 1: as someone who used to write market structure stories and

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Speaker 1: had to pitch them to editors whose eyes would occasionally

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Speaker 1: gloss over um, but the industry definitely did not cover

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Speaker 1: itself in glory over the past week or so. And

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Speaker 1: you can see a lot of the outrage online to

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Speaker 1: talk about robin hood basically protecting hedge funds by shutting

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Speaker 1: down or limiting trading of a bunch of different stocks

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Speaker 1: and some other types of assets. The distrust is there

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Speaker 1: for sure, right so coming into this of course obviously one,

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Speaker 1: but also the second half of has been a huge

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Speaker 1: sort of boom for crypto bitcoin surgery to new highs

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Speaker 1: they shouldn't note or recording this February three, I think

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Speaker 1: bitcoin is around thirty six thousand it had pre It's

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Speaker 1: old high was around twenty thousand back And so we

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Speaker 1: have this industry that's really regathered a lot of momentum.

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Speaker 1: And there are many participants in the industry that say, look,

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Speaker 1: you know this, uh, traditional finance stocks UM all kinds

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Speaker 1: of issues with it, maybe some reasons not to trust it,

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Speaker 1: you don't know the rules. How about crypto um, this

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Speaker 1: is our moment something more transparent, something where the rules

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Speaker 1: are much harder to change on the fly. And so

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Speaker 1: I think there's you know, you already had this momentum

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Speaker 1: for the industry coming into this moment, and I think

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Speaker 1: probably a major attempt to seize on it by some

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Speaker 1: of the big players. Yeah, I feel like there are

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Speaker 1: probably two overlaps with the game stock situation here. One is,

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Speaker 1: is bitcoin and asset that's going to get a lot

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Speaker 1: of retail attention or as we see a bunch of

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Speaker 1: meme stocks get more popular, is that maybe going to

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Speaker 1: take away attention from something like crypto? And then secondly,

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Speaker 1: this idea of decentralized finance, whether or not something like

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Speaker 1: bitcoin could be an alternative to the existing financial system

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't really believe in. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: exactly right. So our guest today, I think is probably

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Speaker 1: one of the best people to discuss all this because

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Speaker 1: he really has seen both both sides of this divide,

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Speaker 1: all the different worlds from multiple perspective, crypto, traditional finance,

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Speaker 1: traditional big banks, hedge funds. We're gonna be speaking with

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Speaker 1: Mike Novigrads. He is the CEO of Galaxy Digital, which

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Speaker 1: will get a full description of but it's sort of

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Speaker 1: this crypto investment bank with lots of different aspects in

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Speaker 1: the crypto world. But prior to that, for several years,

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Speaker 1: he was a global macro manager at Fortress, and prior

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Speaker 1: to that he was um he did twelve years of

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Speaker 1: Goldman Sex. So he really knows the financial world inside

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Speaker 1: it outs in the traditional space, knows crypto extremely well.

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Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of like u X finance names

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Speaker 1: have gotten into crypto, but uh, Mike actually beat them

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Speaker 1: all to it and was there when everyone was mocking it,

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Speaker 1: and so he actually has a claim in a way

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Speaker 1: that many don't. So we're gonna talk about all these issues.

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Speaker 1: So Mike no reigrats, thank you so much for coming

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Speaker 1: on an od lot. Thank you guys. How are the

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Speaker 1: phones ringing off your hook? Specifically as a result of

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Speaker 1: what we've seen with game Stop and the way that

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Speaker 1: this sort of game stop story has become in part

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Speaker 1: of crypto story. Yeah, listen, you know it's interesting. The

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Speaker 1: last three months of crypto have been insane. We're hiring people,

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Speaker 1: you know, one a day, trying to build a company

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Speaker 1: up to kind of deal with the opportunity set. Some

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Speaker 1: of our business has made more money in January than

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Speaker 1: they did in the last two years combined, and just

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Speaker 1: the activity level was up, and so I think that's

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Speaker 1: great for the system. Right, there was a thesis that

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Speaker 1: was put out there a while ago. Uh, and it's

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Speaker 1: being validated as institutions and retail moved into mostly bitcoin.

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Speaker 1: But now the entirety centralized space. I mean, I think

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Speaker 1: it was in Games Stop. Was interesting because the start

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Speaker 1: off as some really smart young kids figuring out, you know,

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Speaker 1: a chink in the the armor of a bunch of

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Speaker 1: the big hedge funds that they had sued the way

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Speaker 1: too much of the stock that wouldn't be easy to squeeze.

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Speaker 1: Now it was three hedge funds, that would have been

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Speaker 1: illegal behavior, right if me and I called Paul Jones

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Speaker 1: and the most patients said dude, let's squeeze this. Right,

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Speaker 1: we had to go to jail. But what it's online

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Speaker 1: and you know anonymous, you know, that wasn't illegal. And

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Speaker 1: about one of those participants had enough individual weight to

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Speaker 1: to move the stock. But collectively, the swarm of killer

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Speaker 1: bees pushed the thing up. What was interesting was after

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Speaker 1: the squeeze on day two three, you know, Game Stop

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Speaker 1: goes from one, eight, three, three, fifty all the way

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Speaker 1: to five. The energy that God created was the energy

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Speaker 1: of a revolution. It was nihilistic, it was angry. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it was let's tear down the system. Uh, it was

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Speaker 1: David rus Goliath. It was endemic to what we're seeing

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Speaker 1: in the country and in the world. Right, we've had

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Speaker 1: this inequality gap that is so wide that we had

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Speaker 1: it was very similar people tearing down the capitol. Let's

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Speaker 1: burn burn it down. We don't believe you. And so

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Speaker 1: when Robin Hood got overwhelmed with new orders, right, their

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Speaker 1: business is booming, they didn't have enough regulatory capital, and they,

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Speaker 1: in one of the worst corporate communications jobs I've ever seen,

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Speaker 1: said Okay, we're gonna stop you from buying more game stock.

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Speaker 1: All of a sudden, it became the conspiracy theories. It

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Speaker 1: was like Trump getting the election stolen, right, Stevie Cone

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Speaker 1: called and stopped. All these guys are inspiring against the

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Speaker 1: little guy. The reality was this was legislation from God

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Speaker 1: Frank from the progressive side of you know, of the House,

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Speaker 1: that came back to say, hey, if you're gonna participate,

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Speaker 1: you need regulatory capital. Listen, the game stop squeezes over

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Speaker 1: you asked that question and earlier names squeezes can't can't

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Speaker 1: sustain themselves for two really simple reasons. I call it

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Speaker 1: greeting gravity. Right, if you bought it at forty twenty

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Speaker 1: or forty or fifty at four hundred, made a fortune. Right,

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Speaker 1: there was a crypto thing called Doge that got squeezed.

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Speaker 1: My daughter's boyfriend he participated. He sold his Doge and

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Speaker 1: brought his first part right. At one point, the the

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Speaker 1: impetus to take some of that money that feels like

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Speaker 1: it's free, that you just like it showed up in

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Speaker 1: your wallet happens. New people come in and they start buying.

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Speaker 1: There were twenty three billion dollars of volume that traded

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Speaker 1: in game stock on like the third day of the squeeze.

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Speaker 1: That means billion dollars of people selling with new people buying.

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Speaker 1: When the when that gravity starts hampening and it starts

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Speaker 1: going down, if you bought it at four hundred, it

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Speaker 1: feels pretty shifty at three hundred, and so then you

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Speaker 1: get to collapse, at which we see game stock will

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Speaker 1: go back to its old fundamental value, which is probably

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Speaker 1: what really pissed the office that a lot of you know,

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Speaker 1: senior people in finance, Cameron Winklevoss and them off, and

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Speaker 1: even Elon Musk at one poin kind of encouraging the

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Speaker 1: masses what they were encouraging was unsuspecting new investors. Not

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Speaker 1: the smart guys that bought it at you know, before

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Speaker 1: it was squeezed, but new guys that got caught up

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Speaker 1: in the frenzy, spending their hard earned dollars and to

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Speaker 1: buy the thing at four with nothing almost knowledge, like

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Speaker 1: it was almost a certainty they'd lose all their money

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Speaker 1: at that point, and so I think that was just

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Speaker 1: it was frustrating to watch. Yeah, that was around the

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Speaker 1: like four mark. Um. I have more game stop questions,

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Speaker 1: but before we sort of dive into a lot of this,

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Speaker 1: I have a very simple thing to ask you, which

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Speaker 1: is what does Galaxy actually do? Because every time I

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Speaker 1: see it described, it's usually in a really vague term

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Speaker 1: like Galaxy is an investment firm in crypto, or Galaxy

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Speaker 1: works in the crypto industry. I never see a really

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Speaker 1: specific description of it. We're gonna try to be much

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Speaker 1: more crystal clear. So we have you know, four or

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Speaker 1: five businesses if any where to break it out. We

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Speaker 1: have one business, which is where you know, we're a

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Speaker 1: venture shop, direct investing, and so we've invested in eighty

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Speaker 1: companies that are building out the crypto ecosystem from new

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Speaker 1: protocols like one inch or Luna token, two exchanges to

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Speaker 1: custody services. So anything that has touched the crypto ecosystem

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Speaker 1: or quite frankly, the virtual world ecosystem, we're investing in.

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Speaker 1: And so we have a giant portfolio of investments. We

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Speaker 1: have a inventory of both Bitcoin of theory and other

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Speaker 1: coins that I personally trade, uh and so buy it

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Speaker 1: when it's going down and sell what's going up. And

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Speaker 1: so that's our principal activities. Then we have what you

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Speaker 1: would call a traditional sales let sales, training, credit business.

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Speaker 1: We lend money to people that are participating in the space.

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Speaker 1: That's miners, that's that are just normal customers lending on margin.

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Speaker 1: We have a derivative business right where the second or

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Speaker 1: third biggest market maker and options and so if you

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Speaker 1: want to do a structured product or sell calls against

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Speaker 1: your position or by puts, we're there. For institutions, we

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Speaker 1: have an asset management business where we take other people's

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Speaker 1: money and raise it. We have a bitcoin fund. We

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Speaker 1: have the Bloomberg Bitcoin Crypto Index. We have a venture

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Speaker 1: fund that focuses on the virtual world stuff. And we

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Speaker 1: have an investment bank, a group of people that have

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Speaker 1: great domain expertise in the space, and we'll give advice

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Speaker 1: on mergers, on acquisitions, on on capital raising and so.

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Speaker 1: And then we have a mining division. Right, we are

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Speaker 1: mining our own crypto, and that's mining finance, it's mining derivatives,

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Speaker 1: and it's us mining ourselves and so pretty broad and diversified.

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Speaker 1: It's been focused on institutions, not retail, and so that

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Speaker 1: was a painful position to be in until about April

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Speaker 1: of last year when COVID happened. Right, I had said, oh,

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Speaker 1: the institutions are coming, and then they were slow, and

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Speaker 1: then COVID happened, and they went from walking at one

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Speaker 1: mile an hour to trotting to sprinting, and now it's

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Speaker 1: like a mile prower, you know, just mad dash. And

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Speaker 1: so you've seen hedge funds, insurance companies, asset managers all

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Speaker 1: entering the space since April, and that's why when we

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Speaker 1: went through twenty we went right to forty in bitcoin.

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Speaker 1: Those institutions are mostly buying bitcoin. But the moment you

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Speaker 1: make a little money in bitcoin, you're like, hey, what

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Speaker 1: else is in this space? And you look into the

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Speaker 1: ethereum ecosystem and you're like, wow, that's pretty cool. Too,

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Speaker 1: and so then they're putting some money in ethereum. And

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Speaker 1: then the final spaces, well, where the real disruption is

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Speaker 1: gonna happen is in defy. Defy really simply put as

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Speaker 1: taking a blockchain and bring it to the financial system. Right,

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Speaker 1: it is creating driverless banks, or driverless insurance companies or

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Speaker 1: dry list derivative markets. And that while it's still I

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Speaker 1: think in the sandbox, right, it's still working out the

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Speaker 1: kinks and being exploit it's growing so fast that you

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Speaker 1: could see the little guppies jump out of the sandbox

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Speaker 1: and become frogs really fast. Uh. And so it's a

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Speaker 1: really exciting time to be in the space. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's tons of human capital pouring in, there's tons of

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Speaker 1: interest um and it does you know, I got into

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Speaker 1: the space I already had made a whole lot of

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Speaker 1: money in my life. So if I was going to

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Speaker 1: go back to work and work seventy hours a week,

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Speaker 1: I had three things I cared about. One, am I

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Speaker 1: gonna work with young people? Because I think if you

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Speaker 1: work with young people, you stay young. Two is it

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Speaker 1: a big learning curve? Right? You want to learn new stuff?

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Speaker 1: And this is a fantastically cool learning curve? And three

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Speaker 1: did I have something to add? And I thought, partly

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Speaker 1: because I got in early and I have Wall Street experience,

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Speaker 1: that I'm older than most people, that there was something

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Speaker 1: I could add to the community, if not just being

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Speaker 1: the spokesperson or the unofficial spokesperson, but mostly it was

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Speaker 1: purposed of it. Right. Crypto at its core is not

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Speaker 1: about making money. It's about systems change. It's people started

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Speaker 1: Bitcoin and the theory because they said, Hey, the world

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Speaker 1: is screwed up. It is stacked to the to the

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Speaker 1: to the big guy. Can we make it more transparent? Right?

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Speaker 1: Sunlight brings disinfectant. Can we bring it more transparent? Can

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Speaker 1: we make it more egalitarian? And that intuition you saw

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Speaker 1: last week or the week before, write what it felt

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Speaker 1: like We're just getting screwed again, even though it wasn't

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Speaker 1: the truth. When Robin had shut down, the little guy

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Speaker 1: felt like he was just getting screwed again. And when

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Speaker 1: you think about you know, I p O allocations all

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Speaker 1: go to the rich guys, right, the invest in the

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Speaker 1: coolest project early. You've got to be rich to be

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Speaker 1: led to be an adventure fund or private equity fund.

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Speaker 1: And so we have this set of rules that we're

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Speaker 1: supposed to be set up to protect a little guy,

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Speaker 1: but feel a lot like rules that are boxing the

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Speaker 1: little guy out from the best investments, leaving them the problems,

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Speaker 1: and the little guy got angry. And so I think

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons crypto residents is that it's core

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Speaker 1: the people are trying to rebuild the financial market infrastructure

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Speaker 1: and the consumer infrastructure on a more fair platform. And

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Speaker 1: again it doesn't always feel that way, right, crypto insiders

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Speaker 1: still get a better deal than crypto retail. But the

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Speaker 1: DNA of the space is really kind of a progressive

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Speaker 1: social dna UM. Now it has a big libertarian feel

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Speaker 1: to it, right, Uh, keep the government out. I want

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Speaker 1: to be peer to peer right, peer to peer transactionally,

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Speaker 1: I don't need the government. But you're not just keeping

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Speaker 1: the government out. I don't think we're gonna get We're

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Speaker 1: gonna in the long run have a system that there's

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Speaker 1: no government regulation in UM. You're cutting out the rent taker,

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Speaker 1: and that's really where it becomes progressive. You know, I

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Speaker 1: mentioned it in the beginning, and you could be quick,

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Speaker 1: but it's pretty cliche by this point to hear It's like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: this banker, so and so jumps over to some crypto thing.

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Speaker 1: Can you usually hear about it at market tops? It

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Speaker 1: was very big in seventeen is very a lot more

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Speaker 1: of these days. You actually were not one of those people.

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Speaker 1: You were interested in it when it was not cool,

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Speaker 1: when I don't know ethereum was a few pennies or something.

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Speaker 1: I think it was a Bloomberg article that first sort

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Speaker 1: of report on it, but sort of what is the

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Speaker 1: quick version of when you got interested and why? You know,

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Speaker 1: you always get a little lucky in life to be

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Speaker 1: that early. Uh. A friend called me up and said,

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Speaker 1: have you heard about bitcoin? And I hadn't, and I

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Speaker 1: googled it and it was trading about ninety dollars and

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Speaker 1: I was like, wow, has all the markings of something

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Speaker 1: that could be a good speculative bubble. And so I

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Speaker 1: originally bought it, thinking i've something cheap, you sell it

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Speaker 1: when he gets rich, right when it goes up, and

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Speaker 1: it was. It was good technology. It was at the

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Speaker 1: time of the financial crisis number two, right, the European

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Speaker 1: financial crisis. So we'd already had the financial crisis. Now

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Speaker 1: we're at the European financial crisis. We're in que two.

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Speaker 1: Their printing money, and so there was a group of

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Speaker 1: people that thought, oh, we're going to debase the currency.

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Speaker 1: There was gonna be hyperinflation. They were wrong, but I

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Speaker 1: thought that, and there were libertarians that cared about it.

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Speaker 1: There were cipher punks, and the Chinese were buying. So

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Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, this is going up. So I bought

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Speaker 1: it as a speculative hack. And because I talked about

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Speaker 1: it publicly without knowing I was in the public, I

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Speaker 1: started getting asked to, you know, give speeches and whatnot

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Speaker 1: on it, and that forced me to dig in and

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Speaker 1: really try to understand it. And the more I dug in,

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Speaker 1: the more I was like, Wow, this is kind of

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Speaker 1: a cool, coolly designed thing. But it's when I started

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Speaker 1: touching with the community. It really accelerated when my old

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Speaker 1: college roommate Joe Lubin, who was the founder of Consensus,

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Speaker 1: I went over to see him and his is it

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Speaker 1: seems like three months old, and I felt that spirit

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Speaker 1: of all the people in his office that they were like,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna disrupt the music industry. We're gonna disrupt the

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Speaker 1: finance industry. And I was like, well, the music industry,

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Speaker 1: and they were like yeah, we're gonna hook royalties right

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Speaker 1: into the song, and so you you you're the creator,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna get something whatever that song is played, and

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Speaker 1: it's actually automatic. It's not some promise from a shady

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Speaker 1: music producer. I was literally looking at this and I

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Speaker 1: was like, dude, these guys are going to rebuild the world.

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Speaker 1: And that's when I got really involved. That's what the

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Speaker 1: theory was ninety six cents, and so I bought a

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Speaker 1: ton of a theoryum and really started understanding the space war. Listen,

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Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen was a bubble. So everyone thought, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is just two loops, and they were wrong. It

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Speaker 1: was a bubble for lots of reasons. It was such

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Speaker 1: a powerful idea. Bubbles always happened around ideas that changed

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Speaker 1: the world, like the Internet bubble of ninety nine. It

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Speaker 1: was a bubble. It wasn't like the Internet didn't change

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Speaker 1: the world. The Internet changed everything about the world. It's

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Speaker 1: just those ideas get so powerful and they spread so quickly.

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Speaker 1: You know, you get a rational exuberance, and that's what

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Speaker 1: happened instead and team the market had less knowledge. But

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Speaker 1: what was cool about it, and it is important to

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Speaker 1: talk about, is that It was the first bubble that

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Speaker 1: started from the little guy. Right, This was a retail

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Speaker 1: lead global speculative mania. We never had one before, right

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Speaker 1: where Mr and Mrs you know what, the Nabby in

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Speaker 1: Japan and Mr and Mrs Kim and Korea and guys

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Speaker 1: in India people will call him the Sings. So I

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Speaker 1: could really get myself in political trouble, you know, when

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Speaker 1: we had people from all over the world participating, uh

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Speaker 1: in this story. Right when people buy apple stock, it's

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Speaker 1: not the thing everyone talks about in in India, right

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Speaker 1: A local markets usually traded local things, and now all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden everyone was talking about this thing called crypto.

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Speaker 1: And so I think we're in this transition, going from

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Speaker 1: a retail driven market to a you know market where

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Speaker 1: institutions are moving in fast. That will create less volatility

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Speaker 1: in the long run. Right, institutions have deeper pockets. They're

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Speaker 1: not buying it leveraged retail, especially in age, you love

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Speaker 1: to play it leveraged. But that idea that this was

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Speaker 1: the people's revolution, right, that this was our thing was

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Speaker 1: both generational, right, millennial and gen z realizing that the

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Speaker 1: baby boomers that screwed the world up right, they've leveraged

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Speaker 1: the future, right, we have these giant deficits that probably

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Speaker 1: can never get paid back, and so intuitively they know

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Speaker 1: they need some of their own store value. And that's

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Speaker 1: where bitcoin really works. It's a social money, right, It's

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Speaker 1: kind of the Internet, the money of the Internet in

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Speaker 1: some ways for young people. And so you have this rich,

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Speaker 1: poor revolution and generational revolution happening at the same time.

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Speaker 1: And I think that's a powerful force. So I don't

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Speaker 1: think that's going away. I noticed when you describe bitcoin

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Speaker 1: initially you talked about being a store of value, and

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Speaker 1: I'm curious, like what happened to the payments thesis around bitcoin,

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Speaker 1: because that seems to have fallen by the wayside a

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Speaker 1: little bit. And it's kind of interesting how the narratives

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Speaker 1: on bitcoin change. But um, I'm curious how you sort

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Speaker 1: of see the use case now and how that differs

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Speaker 1: to when you first got into the space, so a

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Speaker 1: bit quite Originally people thought it would be money, and

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Speaker 1: that's why they called it a cryptocurrency, and for a

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Speaker 1: bunch of different reasons. It morph part of the bitcoin

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Speaker 1: technology is really cool, but it's not what gives it

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Speaker 1: its value, right, what gives it its value is a

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Speaker 1: social construct. I believe it's valuable, and you believe it's valuable.

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Speaker 1: Therefore it has value because we could take the same

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Speaker 1: code and call it bitcoin cash or call it novo coin, right,

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Speaker 1: and it would be worth nearly as much. And so

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Speaker 1: there was a debate about what it should be. There

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Speaker 1: were storytellers, me being one of hundreds that said no, no no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: this is digital gold and the story of digital gold one.

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Speaker 1: And it's important in a lot of ways because gold

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Speaker 1: doesn't get central banks and regulators nervous. Right, there's centrally

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Speaker 1: lotters with the goal. No one's freaking out that it's

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Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna ruin our ability to tax and it

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Speaker 1: a citizens and whatnot. Normal cryptot get them nervous. But

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Speaker 1: payments does, right, money does, And so you're gonna see

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Speaker 1: a whole huge war in payments. Uh, fidelities getting into

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Speaker 1: it with stable coins. But I think you're gonna see

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Speaker 1: payments done on blockchain. But it's going to be done.

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Speaker 1: And things that look far more like stable coins are

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Speaker 1: traditional currencies wrapped in a token. Now they might not

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Speaker 1: all be government issued stable coins. They might be algorithmic

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Speaker 1: like in Korea, there's a thing called the Shy payment system,

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Speaker 1: which is built on the Terra blockchain, which acreates value

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Speaker 1: to the lunar token complicated systems. I'm along a lot

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Speaker 1: of lunar tokens. I love it. It's one of the

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Speaker 1: first applications where a fintech crypto experience has jumped out

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Speaker 1: of the sandbox that is being used in real life.

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Speaker 1: It is gaining traction, right, So it's really cool to

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Speaker 1: watch because if you're a user, you don't care it's

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Speaker 1: if it's built on a blockchain. You care about the

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Speaker 1: user experience. That it's cheaper and it's faster, it's more efficient, right,

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Speaker 1: And so keep your I on that that project as

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Speaker 1: how this whole system could develop. But yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: think bitcoin will fight with being a with being a money.

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Speaker 1: I think it'll be an asset. We should call them

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Speaker 1: crypto assets in a lot of ways. And in that

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Speaker 1: middle bucket, there's gonna be a monster battle, right. Facebook's

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Speaker 1: coming out with the d M coin. You have USDC,

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Speaker 1: you have tether, you have algorithmic stable coins like die.

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Speaker 1: That space on how we move money, because reality, the

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Speaker 1: real estate that everyone cares about, is gonna be your wallet,

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Speaker 1: like what's in your crypto wallet? Bank accounts at Bank

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Speaker 1: of America and JP Morgan are gonna be replaced with wallets.

428
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:41,640
Speaker 1: The banks will be dinosaurs if they don't quickly flip over.

429
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 1: That's why the PayPal news was maybe the most important

430
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 1: news of the year. PayPal has three thirty million customers

431
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:51,479
Speaker 1: that now have crypto wallets, right or that will have

432
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: crypto wallets. That's a big deal. So if you're a

433
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:55,920
Speaker 1: Bank of America, they're like, okay, they have more customers

434
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 1: than us. And you know, I think young kids are

435
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: gonna want to go to the bank, tell or even

436
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:02,760
Speaker 1: deal with their bank. It's gonna be all on your phone.

437
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: And so the real real estate that Facebook is gonna

438
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:07,439
Speaker 1: fight for it, I think everyone's gonna fight for is

439
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: can you control? And you see that in China with

440
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: you know Allie, you know Allie pay and and we

441
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 1: chat and you know, and financial the innovation is literally

442
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 1: having on people's telephones. No one of the like compared

443
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: contrast the crypto ecosystem with say what we've seen in

444
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: traditional markets lately, because people looked at what happened with

445
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: robin Hood and even though there was no conspiracy Uh,

446
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: you know, it's not great that people were in the

447
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 1: middle of a trade and suddenly they weren't able to

448
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 1: buy game stop shares, although ultimately they probably saved them

449
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: a lot of money. But anyway, you know, that was

450
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 1: it was a rare instance in which the rules sort

451
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: of we're not ideal for a lot of people. It

452
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:53,680
Speaker 1: seems to me that with crypto you might avoid rule

453
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 1: changes and the system might be transparent, but the day

454
00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: to day experience is not nearly is smooth. I mean,

455
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: bitcoin transactions are slower. Maybe I assume with like stable

456
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: coins itself, some of that can be fixed. If you

457
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: have your crypto wallet hack, you could lose all of

458
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:14,199
Speaker 1: your coins if even if you know, if you have

459
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,400
Speaker 1: it on a private wallet, you can lose the key,

460
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: the password. If you have your money and say coin

461
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: base and someone logs in, those transactions are irreversible. So

462
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: it seems to me, like, you know, there's a trade

463
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: off where it's like, okay, you don't have these educations

464
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,440
Speaker 1: where suddenly the rules change per se, but the day

465
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: to day experience seems inherently clunkier and riskier for many things.

466
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: So listen, when I was your age and it was

467
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: probably two thousand and one, and I'm logging onto the

468
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: internet to try to listen to a song I get,

469
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, bus pretty Go, that was

470
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,960
Speaker 1: pretty good. You know. Years later, I'm downloading any song

471
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:00,040
Speaker 1: in the world instantly, or I'm getting full movies and

472
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,399
Speaker 1: on galing three D movies, and so it takes time

473
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: for systems to be built to perfection, right, like the

474
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: U Actually I is a huge deal in crypto, but

475
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 1: it's accelerating out of an amazing pace, and so the

476
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 1: user experience is getting better by the day. But remember

477
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: we say it's a twelve year old industry, it's really

478
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: not right. Bitcoin started twelve years ago, but it was

479
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: a it was a little backyard experiment. A Theorium started

480
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,920
Speaker 1: in two thousand four teen, So that's seven six and

481
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: a half years ago. Like we're really call it four

482
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: years of having tons of developers for you and working

483
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: on this stuff. And so but if I could just

484
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:42,919
Speaker 1: put push back a little bit, and to me, it

485
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 1: seems like there's more than just a UI or u

486
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: X question because the block you know, like one of

487
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: the selling points of blockchains, of the bitcoin blockchain, the

488
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: Ethereum blockchain is it's irreversibility and what that It seems

489
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:02,479
Speaker 1: to me that that means you're sacrificing sort of like

490
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: legal protections for the software, and so ultimately like that

491
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: transaction can't no matter how good the UI gets on

492
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: coin based or how good the UI gets on a

493
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: you know, a USB wallet, you can't reverse it. There's

494
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 1: no law that could ever reverse Whereas I have so

495
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: many protections in my bank account, fraud protections. If someone

496
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: steals my credit card, I call up the bank, and

497
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: most of the time that can get reversed. Like it

498
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: feels like for many day to day things, we're giving

499
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: up a lot in terms of sort of legal protections

500
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:42,679
Speaker 1: and guarantees and comforts that not can't necessarily be fixed

501
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 1: just with better U. I well, I think part of

502
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: it is in the app start idiot proofing. Are you

503
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:51,399
Speaker 1: sure this is how much you want to send? You know,

504
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 1: double check you know? So yeah, if I think I'm

505
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,560
Speaker 1: gonna send you because you're my buddy, you know, ten

506
00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: dollars worth of bitcoin, and instead I sent ted big

507
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:04,200
Speaker 1: coin like Jesus, I just send the country with thousand

508
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:08,959
Speaker 1: dollars right like, And so I do think part of

509
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: that is building in a an idiot proof system to

510
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: consumer crypto apps. The other stuff is interesting, right, We're

511
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 1: gonna see regulatory frameworks built into the financial system. So like,

512
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: why is government regulators worried about DEFY. It's because of

513
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: k y C A m L. If I want to

514
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: trade with you, I don't make sure you're not a

515
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: drug dealer or a North Korean agent. Um there will

516
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: be at a project built on the blockchain where the

517
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 1: transaction goes to it. First, it just validates that you're

518
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: you're a blue check, we know who you are, You're

519
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: a decent character. And then it disappears. And so I

520
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: think DEFY will run through another protocol that really becomes

521
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:56,720
Speaker 1: the compliance protocol. And so again this whole stuff is

522
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: being dreamed up and built on the run. And so

523
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: I can't participate as a US citizen in a lot

524
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:08,160
Speaker 1: of staking and DEFY on shore because of KYC concerns.

525
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: And so I've got a vested interests given I want

526
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 1: this system to flourish, to invest in projects. They're going

527
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: to solve those k We see concerns, and I'm telling

528
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: you they're out there already, they're being built. And so

529
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: the system is evolving really quickly. It's not ready for like,

530
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: we couldn't shut off traditional finance and ever move anything

531
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: to crypto today, right Like this is a this is

532
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: a ten year journey of eating away and eating away.

533
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: But the reason it's so important, and you felt it

534
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: with game Stop, is that we need to do something

535
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 1: to change the system because the system isn't working so well,

536
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: certainly for the little guy. And that's that's felt emotionally,

537
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: it's it just resonates. And so crypto is trying to

538
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: build a system that's more efficient, more transparent, more egalitarian,

539
00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna happen overnight. So I have a

540
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: related but different question, which is it. It feels to

541
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: me like the user experience is improving primarily as more

542
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: traditional financial institutions get into the space. So I mean

543
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: you mentioned PayPal. The PayPal wallet is incredibly easy to

544
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: use and you can just log in and start buying

545
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: bitcoin right away. But I wonder if does increased participation

546
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 1: from traditional finance the increased interest is that at odds

547
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: with the spirit of defied, do you give something up

548
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 1: in exchange for having traditional financial players involved in the space.

549
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: And sorry, one more thing that makes me. Think about

550
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: that is, you know, last week during the GameStop phenomenon,

551
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: robin Hood curb trading in some meme stocks, but also

552
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: curb trading in cryptocurrencies. So it felt like on that day,

553
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:56,239
Speaker 1: maybe you know, bitcoin wasn't so defy if you were

554
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: trading it on a robin Hood app. Yeah, listen, robin

555
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: Hood curb trading and all the things that people were

556
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: piling into because of the regulatory capital so it's like, Okay,

557
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: where's all this new money coming from. We need to

558
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: slow it down. And so they were entering, they were

559
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: opening up new accounts to trade crypto as fast as

560
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: they were to trade games. Now, and you're right there,

561
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: I think, listen, I'm sure they'll get their regulatory capital

562
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: issues solved pretty quickly. We we call ourselves a bridge

563
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: between the traditional financial world in the crypto world, and

564
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: that's a hard road to walk. On the one hand,

565
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: on pitching business at a big bank like Morgan Stay

566
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: Only or JP Morgan. On the other hand, I'm saying, hey,

567
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 1: this stuff is gonna put these guys out of business,

568
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 1: and they're like, why are you talking about us? People

569
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 1: put out of a a business? Right? Um? I say, I

570
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: were a hoodie one day in a suit and next

571
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: The spirit of crypto is to change the rules and

572
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: spatch the rules down, and so lots of the rebel

573
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:55,040
Speaker 1: companies operate outside of the regulatory framework their life and

574
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: the way regulation works. Gary Gensler, who's the new head

575
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: of the SEC, gave a great lecture on this. He said,

576
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: if you're a smaller company, you're allowed to break the

577
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: rules a little bit. You're not gonna get that much struggle.

578
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 1: If we didn't exactly say that, that's what he said.

579
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: But if you're a big company, you gotta play by

580
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: the rules. And so it kind of gives these new

581
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 1: companies a leg up on getting set and that you're

582
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: you're seeing that happen. You saw that with Uber, right,

583
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: Travis broke every rule known to get Uber set up.

584
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden people have done in

585
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: trouble and he said, I don't care, and all of

586
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,239
Speaker 1: a sudden and the the laws changed to allow Ruber. And

587
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: so sometimes change happens, you know, not by people playing

588
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 1: by the exact rule set, but big institutions happened. I

589
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: think tech is going to be a bigger threat to

590
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: crypto companies, you know, being the dominant players than finance

591
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: because the tech world is more used to you know,

592
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: chewing off their arm to grow a new arm, uh,

593
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: where finance wants to protect what they have. And so

594
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: I think you're seeing companies like Visa and PayPal and

595
00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: you know, Facebook getting into this space. And when they

596
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: get into the space, they get it with a tremendous

597
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 1: amount of resource. Right, So you've got crypto companies that

598
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: are raising capital and new ways, and you know that

599
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 1: are small, and all of a sudden, you have you know,

600
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: Facebook say okay, here's our eleven people or whatever they

601
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: have working on a people and so, yes, they're gonna

602
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: be threats that will help it accelerated. And I do

603
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: think there's a middle stage in the evolution, right We're

604
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: not going to scrap with figgers and have a whole

605
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: diffinancial architecture and ecosystem, and so I think it's just

606
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: a part of the process. The theory was not fast

607
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 1: enough for the world to build on. Right When you

608
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 1: talk to the guys that Tara why they did their

609
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: own blockchain, they were like, well, the theory was too

610
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: expensive and too slow for us. Since we looked at others,

611
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: we decided to build our own. You'll see over time

612
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 1: with to the etherory of blockchain grow and grow and

613
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: get faster and faster than alonger. It will be a

614
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: public utility. You know that it's worth a whole lot.

615
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: We will be talking about blockchain or defy when we

616
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: talk about fintech, and then it will be just a

617
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: user experience. Like I always think of it as like

618
00:33:57,520 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: the back of the TV. I don't know how the

619
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: kind of TV works. We just turned on and we

620
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: watched TV and it's pretty cool. Like most people will

621
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: care less that it was built on a block chain

622
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: or that it's don't care that it's cheaper, more transparent

623
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: and easy to use. I think we're just early in

624
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 1: that innovation cycle. It's clear we're moving that way. It's

625
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: not going to be linear. It's not gonna be straight line.

626
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:20,200
Speaker 1: People with vested interests are going to fight like crazy

627
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 1: to stop it. Right. You see all these people saying, oh,

628
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: we gotta be careful that bitcoins used for illicit purposes.

629
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: Bitcoins used for like many illicit purposes, right tiny you know,

630
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 1: Chain Analysis just in a report on it, though you'll

631
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 1: see some other reports coming out a little bit of

632
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: a sphere of change from older people. Uh and and

633
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: it's it's what they call fun, you know, like bad,

634
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: bad info for people who are trying to protect their

635
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: vested interests. I want to push on this a little

636
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: bit more, the question that Treacy asked about the hoodies

637
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: versus the suits the cipher punks first, the bankers. I

638
00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: understand why the traditional finance industry does seem to be

639
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: embracing Bitcoin and perhaps other cryptocurrencies. But bitcoin, for sure

640
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: as an asset, as you described it, as a store

641
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: of value, something for people to invest in. But what

642
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: happens if that if the sort of like censorship resistant

643
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,720
Speaker 1: payments that I can make a payment to you person

644
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: aid a person be without any person CEE saying no,

645
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: you can't do that. You know this person is bad,

646
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 1: This person is on some list, this person is on

647
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: an industry that we don't like, so you're not allowed

648
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: to make this payment? What it like, what happens if

649
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: that goes away? Like, is there a risk that the

650
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,320
Speaker 1: sort of like cipher punk spirit of it all gets

651
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: completely snuffed out as institutions take it on as an

652
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 1: investment and institutions regulated institutions that probably have zero interest

653
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: in that in that hoodie element. Yeah, listen, So let's

654
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: let's start with, like what problem are we so worried about.

655
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 1: Like if you ask the average American how many of

656
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 1: their transactions there they really don't want anyone to see.

657
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: It's probably only the cheating husband sending his girlfriend flowers

658
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: and he doesn't want his wife to see. Like like

659
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: most people aren't selling drugs or or uh, you know,

660
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: shipping arms to North Korea funding terrorists, right, And I

661
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 1: think there will always be pockets where the cipher punks

662
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: live off off the space, but the bulk of the system,

663
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: bulk of people that play in the system are pretty

664
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 1: rule abiding peprit right. They buy groceries, they buy tennis shoes,

665
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: They want to save money. Bitcoin right now is a

666
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: great place to put a store of value against the

667
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: basement of currency. And so there's nothing nefarious about almost

668
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 1: what all the money we spend. We love to let

669
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: our mind go to the fact that, oh, I'm gonna

670
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: go with the back alley and buy some weed. Uh,

671
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,359
Speaker 1: but now weeds legal, you can buy weed, you know,

672
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: like it pretty soon, well have to criminalize most drugs.

673
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: At least I think we should decriminalize drugs. I think

674
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: we will, And so we're really talking about a tiny

675
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: little percentage of need in most Western countries now in

676
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: places with authoritarian regimes a different answer to that. And

677
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: so I think there's this balance between politics and the

678
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: need for ultimate privacy. And I always think there will

679
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: be systems the tech guys, you know, the guys on

680
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,880
Speaker 1: the on the tech front here are too good for

681
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: the regulators to get. There'll always be systems that if

682
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: you really want to, you know, send your listen. Just

683
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,839
Speaker 1: like there is I mean, horrifically for for kittie porn, right,

684
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: people operate in this dark web, and there's all these

685
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 1: horrific images of like no one wants that. I don't

686
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,879
Speaker 1: want that peer to peer. I don't want that to exist, right,

687
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: That's a crime against humanity in lots of ways. And

688
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: that's where like my philosophy or ethos differs from the

689
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: pure libertarians. Not a libertarian. I have some libertarian you know,

690
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 1: sympathy at time, but but you know, like ask yourself,

691
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: do you think we should ban kittie porn? Now, again,

692
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,959
Speaker 1: if it's a huge issue, it's a big issue. Most

693
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: of the issues we're talking about, our tiny, tiny issues. Um,

694
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to your mention of Gary Gensler.

695
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 1: So we have this new administration in place, and I

696
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 1: think most people would probably agree that regulators have had

697
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: a hard time keeping up with bitcoin. Now you sort

698
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:33,239
Speaker 1: of have this opportunity potentially to reset. You have Gensler, who,

699
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, has given lectures, has done quite a

700
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 1: lot of workers or at least intellectual study on the

701
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 1: crypto space. Do you think he's going to move the

702
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: needle on some of the rules and regulations that have

703
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: been held up. I think he will be a great

704
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 1: SEC commissioner. He is I worked to be fair full disclosure.

705
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:53,800
Speaker 1: I worked with him in Hong Kong, had Goldman Sachs.

706
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:56,719
Speaker 1: I've stayed in touch with him. We are both political progressives.

707
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: Let's he's progressive, So if you're progressive, you're looking at

708
00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: the rent takers in the banks. I think he's I'd

709
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 1: be more nervous if I was a bank than if

710
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 1: I was a crypto company. I think he's intellectually really honest,

711
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: and so where crypto might be nervous is you know,

712
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 1: if you look at the ripple x RP, was it

713
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: a security issuance or not? You know Gary ol saying

714
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: they failed the duck test. That looks looks like a duck,

715
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: quacks like a duck, smells like a duck. It's probably

716
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: a duck. He's gonna he's gonna my most likely think

717
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: this was a security offering. And there's some other cryptos

718
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: that were launched that way, and so it's not like

719
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: crypto will have a free pass from Gary. But he

720
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 1: understands it, right. He taught a class on crypto and

721
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: m I T and the blockchain and m I T,

722
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: and so I think that's a big deal because well,

723
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: our experience has been there are plenty of people on

724
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:48,560
Speaker 1: the staffs of the SEC and the CFDC, of of O,

725
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 1: c C of fitter that that get it. All. The

726
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: young people get it, they trade it, they understand it.

727
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: It's been the top which is a little more calcified

728
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:58,399
Speaker 1: in their views, and so to get people that really

729
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: understand it, I think he'll be a huge us up

730
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: to the space. So you mentioned, and I've observed this

731
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: to this phenomenon of one of the rare sort of

732
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: financial assets I guess bubbles at times that really started

733
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:28,760
Speaker 1: with the little guy and then has grown and gotten

734
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:31,720
Speaker 1: more and more respectable. And now we have the richest

735
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: person in the world, Elon Musk, and his Twitter handle

736
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 1: is just hashtag bitcoin. So in this new world that

737
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 1: everything goes in reverse, isn't he the new shoeshine boy

738
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 1: that like now by the time even he is rapping

739
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: his identity in bitcoin? Is it? Who? What's left now? Like?

740
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 1: Where else is there to go? I'll tell you a

741
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: year listen, I would tell you the big, big group

742
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:04,399
Speaker 1: that hasn't participated is the baby boomer wealth channel in America. Right,

743
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: you can't go to Morgan Stanley, JP, Morgan Goldman, Sachs,

744
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: Charles Schwab, ubs can call your broker and sad I

745
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,919
Speaker 1: want to buy bitcoin, you still can't. That's all gonna

746
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: change in the next two years. I can guarantee it's

747
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: gonna change because I'm seeing it. We're working with companies.

748
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: It's gonna change. There's gonna be offerings first out of

749
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 1: their wealth management division and then out of there you know,

750
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:31,720
Speaker 1: trading business. And so that's that's Those are the elephants

751
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: that haven't moved in and that's where all the money is, right,

752
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 1: news flash, all the money's old by the old people.

753
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: Year olds own all the money. You know, we keep

754
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: talking about this giant generational wealth transfer that will happen

755
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: when they die off. Right, the average baby boomer is

756
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's stage. So it's Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George Bush.

757
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,719
Speaker 1: They were all born the same year. It's crazy stat right,

758
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 1: we had twenty years of presidency, twenty years of representation

759
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: from guys born in the same year. I didn't realize that, Right,

760
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 1: that's because we had this, babe, they had this population advantage, right,

761
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: and so listen, I think it's been the shittiest generation.

762
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:10,760
Speaker 1: I think they have polluted our country and our world.

763
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,320
Speaker 1: They have not been great stewards of the of the country.

764
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: They have if you look at the amount of debt

765
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:18,880
Speaker 1: we started with them what we have now, Like, you know,

766
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 1: you have the greatest generation and fought World War Two.

767
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: This was like the reverse Boomerang, what we should call him,

768
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: the worst generation. Unfortunately, I'm a baby boomer by six

769
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: days or thirty one days. I was born November four.

770
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: If it was just Ji, I would not be a

771
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 1: baby boomer. And I kind of hate it because I

772
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: literally look at just the like there's this generational theft

773
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: that has gone on, Right with all the debt, the

774
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: guys in charge, and you can't say they haven't been

775
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,279
Speaker 1: in charge same birth year. And now Biden is four

776
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: years older. He's he's a little bit what they called

777
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: the Silent generation right after after World War Two, the

778
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 1: Greatest Generation. He's a tweener. But really it was that

779
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: to have about four or five more boomer presidents and

780
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: then and then and then another generation will get a Jenny.

781
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: I think the next president will jump down in age. Literally,

782
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: I think, you know, my generation will get skipped. You're

783
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,879
Speaker 1: probably right. I guess we had Obama. Obama's a baby

784
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:19,240
Speaker 1: boomer officially, but he really wasn't either in spirit. Yeah,

785
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,879
Speaker 1: the people listening to this canseie. But we're watching Mike

786
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: and he has a hoodie with a dragon on it

787
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:27,439
Speaker 1: and a bunch of really cool pop art behind him.

788
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 1: So he's definitely he's definitely gen Z. Tracy Warring, Yeah,

789
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 1: that's fair enough. I was gonna say, to Joe's point, though,

790
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: is there a particular milestone that if you saw, you

791
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,959
Speaker 1: would think, oh, bitcoins finally made it? Like, is there

792
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: one thing in particular that you're watching and you can't

793
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: say it's for the baby boomers to tie I think

794
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: we've crossed that, right. So one of the most important

795
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: things that happened this year was mass generally a mass

796
00:43:57,120 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: life one of the big insurance companies coming out in

797
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: saying we bought bitcoin for our general account. So the

798
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: general account of insurance company is like sacred money. Right,

799
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: it's went back up. All the people that are insuring,

800
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 1: they need insurance regulator approval, they need feed approval to

801
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: do that. And I would tell you it's not just

802
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: one insurance company. Now there are three insurance companies that

803
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: are participating that I know of, maybe more. That's a

804
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: big deal because that says the most conservative asset managers

805
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: have now decided bitcoins the store value. It's a it's

806
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:28,680
Speaker 1: a macro asset, and so I think we've checked the box.

807
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is around us. Stay it's a macro asset. It

808
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 1: doesn't always go up in price. It'll go up, it'll

809
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:36,239
Speaker 1: go down. But this idea, oh I could go back

810
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 1: to zero. You should only invest what you're willing to lose,

811
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,240
Speaker 1: I will you know is wrong because now a matro asset,

812
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: you should look. It's high volatility, it can trade. You know,

813
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 1: it was just twenty thousands eight weeks ago. And and

814
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:52,240
Speaker 1: so could it trade backed out of twenty four thousand,

815
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 1: of course it could um, but it's not going away.

816
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:57,759
Speaker 1: It's part of our architecture now. And so I think

817
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: it's a big, big deal. Portfolio managers is are going

818
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: to feel like it's irresponsible not to have some allocation,

819
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: not that oh my god, I could get fired for

820
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: having an allocation. And so we're in that shift, and

821
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 1: so I kind of think I don't want to, you know,

822
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,360
Speaker 1: George bush It on that plane and say declare victory.

823
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:18,719
Speaker 1: But I think it's a really big deal that we're

824
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 1: no longer I'm no longer going in and explaining, you know,

825
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 1: how Satoshi came up with the White paper and the

826
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: Byzantine General's problem, and you know that that that's that's

827
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:32,439
Speaker 1: where my conversations were seven years ago. And so I think,

828
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've crossed that crossed that bridge. This

829
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: week is actually a big one for crypto because we're

830
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 1: going to see the launch of CME futures for ethere Um,

831
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:45,759
Speaker 1: and I know that's one of the cryptocurrencies that you're

832
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: very big on. What do you think how is that

833
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 1: going to change the space? Because I remember, you know,

834
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 1: back in December two thousand seventeen, when we saw bitcoin

835
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: futures launch, some people were saying that that was one

836
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: of the reasons is why the bitcoin price collapse. So

837
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,360
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you see this one playing out, um, Listen.

838
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:10,280
Speaker 1: I think any architecture that we build around these systems

839
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: to bring in new players is good for the ecosystem.

840
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:18,280
Speaker 1: Like in seventeen, it was unbelievably timed in this zeneth

841
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:23,240
Speaker 1: of the market. And while it fields were all excited

842
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 1: right here and we're hyped, I really feel it's different

843
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:28,439
Speaker 1: than seventeen, and so I think this is a good thing,

844
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: not not the mark of the top. These futures always

845
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: take some time to to get up and running. But

846
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: what's interesting is I'm talking at Goldman Sachs, who only

847
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: participates to futures right, and they went from like two

848
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,719
Speaker 1: hedge fund clients to fifty in bitcoin futures. So if

849
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: you're already trading bitcoin futures, it's pretty easy to trade

850
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: each futures. So I think the futures contract will grow

851
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: far faster than the bitcoin futures contract in and it's

852
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:54,280
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna help eat price. I'm very bullish

853
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: East right now. I think you look at the chart,

854
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 1: it went through fourteen. It took out the old highs

855
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: last night, after like four attempts. You know that to

856
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: me measures all the way to I don't love to

857
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: give prediction because people always say you said, doesn't it

858
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:10,800
Speaker 1: didn't happen, But I give a lot of producer Loggy,

859
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:14,759
Speaker 1: we would never do that to you, Loggy. Um. One

860
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 1: more very quick question. Obviously we've been talking a lot

861
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:22,719
Speaker 1: in this discussion about the idea of retail pushing up

862
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 1: against the big boys of the traditional financial system. Would

863
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 1: Galaxy ever launch a retail fund or a fund aimed

864
00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: at retail investors? You know, we have looked at that

865
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: a lot. I would never have ruled it out. You know,

866
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:40,520
Speaker 1: the how do you get into the business to buy it?

867
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 1: You know, exchanges really aren't exchanges their brokerages, right, So

868
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: like quain Basis is amazing roverage firm. I look back

869
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:48,280
Speaker 1: on it and was like, you know what a knuckle

870
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:50,879
Speaker 1: had I spent all this time building a brand, personal brand,

871
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 1: firm brand, and I didn't have a retail outlet. And

872
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: so it's certainly I think about a lot right now.

873
00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: It's quite expensive to acquire these retail outlets, and so

874
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 1: we'll we'll think of either builder by at one point.

875
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: But I think to be part of crypto in the

876
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,400
Speaker 1: long run. Right, it's peer to peer and it's touching

877
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:12,479
Speaker 1: as many people as you can. And so you found

878
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,239
Speaker 1: a kink in my arm, chink in my armor. I'm

879
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: not really having that that accessibility. I also, though, believe

880
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: you know, do what you're good at first, and we

881
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: understand institutions. We understand how they think. I was joking

882
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 1: about half past suit and half a hoodie. It's not

883
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: a joke, right. You literally need to walk institutions in

884
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: a very calm way so they understand it and they

885
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: feel they feel comfortable with it, very different than the

886
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,480
Speaker 1: seventeen year olds or the nineteen year olds. And so

887
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 1: we're balancing that all right, Mike now regrets. Thank you,

888
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. That was a great conversation. I

889
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: think the timing was perfect. And uh, looking forward to

890
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,879
Speaker 1: seeing where where you going there? What your next thing, guys,

891
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: Thanks to take care of Mike. Thanks Mike, I really

892
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I really enjoyed talking to Mike. I really

893
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 1: do think his sort of having been in both worlds

894
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:27,399
Speaker 1: made that a fresh conversation. You know, I'm gonna say

895
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: something a little rude, and this is not about any

896
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 1: of our guests that we've ever had before, but I

897
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:35,759
Speaker 1: talking to some crypto people can get a little bit repetitive,

898
00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: like the same thing now, yeah, I know, the same

899
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:44,880
Speaker 1: lines about money printing and blah blah blah. And I

900
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:47,479
Speaker 1: thought that was super fresh. Do you remember when people

901
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: used to say, it's not about bitcoin, it's about blockchain.

902
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: No one says that anymore, no, I know, So that's

903
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: that's progress. But people used to repeat that all the time.

904
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 1: So I totally agree. No regrets is um or Mike's

905
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:07,239
Speaker 1: position sort of straddling crypto and traditional finance in the

906
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: form of you know, Goldman and Fortress. That's definitely an

907
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:13,920
Speaker 1: interesting position to be in, and I don't envy him

908
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 1: in some respects having to pitch to bulge back bracket

909
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: banks about a potential competitor. I will say one thing

910
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:24,840
Speaker 1: that I was thinking about. This is the second time

911
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 1: this week in our game Stop series where we've heard

912
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: people talk about this transition from a baby boomer led

913
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 1: economy into something new, and the idea that we're in

914
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 1: this transition period and it's throwing up all sorts of

915
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:44,879
Speaker 1: new opportunities. And I think Mike's analogy of the two

916
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: thousands tech bubble was a right one was the right

917
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: one because people went crazy for the story of the Internet.

918
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: They bought a bunch of Internet stocks, and of course

919
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: a bunch of them lost value, but some of them didn't.

920
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:58,399
Speaker 1: So if you can recognize the turning point, and if

921
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:01,840
Speaker 1: you can recognize the box or the companies or in

922
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:04,240
Speaker 1: this case, the cryptocurrencies that are going to be winners

923
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 1: from the transition, you do have this opportunity to make

924
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: a lot of money, sort of like once in a

925
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:13,840
Speaker 1: lifetime type money, you know what I feel like. Also,

926
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 1: it didn't really get that into it, but there are

927
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:18,359
Speaker 1: a couple of things he said that I thought, we're

928
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 1: sort of these like hints into what makes a good

929
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: trader or someone who is like a good trader's intuition,

930
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: Like I liked his whole thing with a game stop

931
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: about the idea of like eventually gravity takes over. You know,

932
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: you might talk it might be fun to ride the meme,

933
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: but if you like suddenly made enough to buy a

934
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: car overnight, a lot of people are just gonna want

935
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 1: it to even it's fun as the meme is to trade.

936
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: It's gonna want to um by the car. But then

937
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:47,520
Speaker 1: the other thing he said to I love that point

938
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,439
Speaker 1: about like buying bitcoin at ninety and it's like, oh,

939
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: all these people don't QUI two hyper inflation was gonna happen,

940
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:59,000
Speaker 1: And you sort of got the sentence like he understood.

941
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:01,160
Speaker 1: It's like, you don't actually have to believe that hyper

942
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,760
Speaker 1: inflation is going to happen. You just have to believe

943
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:06,240
Speaker 1: that other people are going to believe that hyper inflation

944
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 1: is going to happen. And I feel like a lot

945
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 1: of people ever think these things, like, well, that doesn't

946
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:12,720
Speaker 1: make any sense to buy this on hyper inflation fears

947
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,320
Speaker 1: because QUI two is just an asset swab of elong

948
00:52:16,400 --> 00:52:19,359
Speaker 1: dated treasuries for short dated treasuries and blah blah blah.

949
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 1: But it's like, if you have like a sort of

950
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: like good intuition about markets and stuff, it's like, yeah,

951
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of people are going to believe that I'm

952
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: just gonna buy bitcoin at ninety. Obviously it's paid off

953
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,360
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Yeah, this is my bolish on bitcoin thesis,

954
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: which is that you know, I used to think that

955
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: all these weird and different narratives around bitcoin were a

956
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:42,239
Speaker 1: weakness in the buy case because people were pitching it

957
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,320
Speaker 1: is all different types of things, you know, like a

958
00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: hedge against inflation, but also a way to do transactions UM,

959
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,560
Speaker 1: which seems at odds with the store value thing. But

960
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: the more I think about it, it's actually like the

961
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,440
Speaker 1: more stories you have, the more appealing it is to

962
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: a wide variety of people. So all those different narratives

963
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 1: sort of appealing to um different types of people. Ultimately,

964
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: I think, increase the network um and get more adoption.

965
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:14,040
Speaker 1: So you know, some people are going to see bitcoin

966
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: as a way to undermine traditional financial architecture and they're

967
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:19,279
Speaker 1: going to buy it because of that, to take a

968
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:21,759
Speaker 1: sort of moral stance. Some people are going to see

969
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: it as a way to get rich and they'll buy it.

970
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:25,879
Speaker 1: Some people see it as a store value against hyper

971
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: inflation or whatever, and so on and so on. But

972
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,520
Speaker 1: the network gets bigger. Yeah, that's really well put, And

973
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:37,279
Speaker 1: that is why Mike is a massively successful career as

974
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: a traitor because he sort of has that intuition. And

975
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: we don't, okay, and we're podcasting, shall we leave it there? There?

976
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: All right. This has been another episode of the All

977
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,360
Speaker 1: Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on

978
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wisn't thought you

979
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:56,799
Speaker 1: could follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our

980
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: guest Mike Novigrads. He's the CEO of Galaxy Did It All.

981
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 1: His handle is at No Regret. Follow our producer Laura Carlson.

982
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: She's at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg had a

983
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:12,239
Speaker 1: podcast Francesca Levi at Francesco Today, and check out all

984
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 1: of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts.

985
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.