Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: And now we are joined by Galaxy Digital founder and
Speaker 2: CEO Mike Novogratz, and let's just start with the simple things.
Speaker 2: Let's start with bitcoin in the crypto world, because we're
Speaker 2: flirting with that seventy thousand dollars level and you sit here,
Speaker 2: we have been around this space for a while. Now,
Speaker 2: is there more upside risk or downside risk as you
Speaker 2: see it now in the crypto world?
Speaker 3: Listen, I think we're getting skewed to the upside. I
Speaker 3: mean just the fact that we're here at a crypto
Speaker 3: show and Bloomberg shows how long we've come since twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: But we kind of got to the finish line.
Speaker 3: And when I say that DC has finally agreed in
Speaker 3: principle that crypto legislation has to happen, that it should
Speaker 3: be bipartisan, we still have a couple holdouts, but it's
Speaker 3: the last few weeks have been unbelievably positive in pushing
Speaker 3: the Democrats forward. Seeing this, they don't want it to
Speaker 3: be a political issue, and so that which was a
Speaker 3: headwind is becoming a tailwind. It's not a full tail
Speaker 3: win yet, we have governments that can't stop spending money,
Speaker 3: and so that just is so powerful for the bitcoin narrative.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, you hear, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: the state of was constant's pension.
Speaker 1: Fun about one hundred and forty million dollars a bitcoin.
Speaker 3: And so as we get more pension funds in more institutions,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's not a lot of sellers.
Speaker 2: So the question we know you hate, then where do
Speaker 2: we end the year.
Speaker 3: Listen, if we take out the seventy three thousand in
Speaker 3: the next week or so, we're going to end the
Speaker 3: year on one hundred thousand somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: We're even hire.
Speaker 3: Markets work, they create ranges, and when the ranges, the
Speaker 3: top of the range breaks, you know you have a
Speaker 3: nice extension. And so you know at the bottom of
Speaker 3: that range was started around forty, so forty to seventy.
Speaker 3: This seventy goes to one hundred, and so that's a
Speaker 3: good enough target.
Speaker 4: Okay, we saw a spot bitcoin etf sorry to get
Speaker 4: approved this year, and we've seen a lot.
Speaker 1: Of inflows there.
Speaker 4: So it makes me wonder what the next catalyst is
Speaker 4: for bitcoin to actually break seventy three and get to
Speaker 4: hear your in target of one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I had had the same question, asked me, I
Speaker 3: don't know five weeks ago, and I said, I don't
Speaker 3: think it will unless we get one of two things happen.
Speaker 3: More regulatory clarity, which I thought was a low probability
Speaker 3: at that point, and or the FED starting to move.
Speaker 3: We're getting the regulatory clarity, and even though it's not perfect,
Speaker 3: we got enough.
Speaker 1: That people now realize this is coming. And why is
Speaker 1: that important? What does it mean?
Speaker 3: So if SABE one, this arcade accounting bill and in
Speaker 3: time gets overturned, it allows Bank of New York and
Speaker 3: State Street and.
Speaker 1: Others to get into custody.
Speaker 3: If the infrastructure build, If the FIT twenty one bill
Speaker 3: gets approved, it allows Goldman Sachs and City Bank and
Speaker 3: all these other people to start doing sales and trading.
Speaker 3: And so as you bring those institutions in, huge money follows.
Speaker 4: The Biden White House said it would veto that overturning.
Speaker 3: The Biden White House vetoed the ZAB twenty one, and
Speaker 3: then they said they they wouldn't veto, and so they
Speaker 3: were talking. This is really sad what happened. Because Donald
Speaker 3: Trump stole the show. He basically came out and said,
Speaker 3: I'm your crypto president. The same day Biden had said
Speaker 3: he was going to veto this thing. Why would a
Speaker 3: president sitting president talk about vetoing a arcane accounting rule?
Speaker 3: And so that turned the whole crypto community into Trump's
Speaker 3: corner and almost was like a purity test. People said,
Speaker 3: if you don't vote for Trump, you're not a crypto person.
Speaker 3: And finally the Democrats heard and so real quickly, nine
Speaker 3: Democratic senators voted not to support that accounting rule, against
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Warren's wishes, against the SEC's.
Speaker 2: I'm going to steal Tim's question here, he asked all
Speaker 2: our guests, is I'm going to ask you at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, who would be better for bitcoin?
Speaker 2: Who would be better for crypto? Trump or Biden.
Speaker 3: What is so clear to me is it's the wrong question.
Speaker 3: What is good for our industry is a bipartisan support
Speaker 3: of bills. Otherwise you're going to be student Buney left,
Speaker 3: student Boddy right. Listen, these elections are going to swing
Speaker 3: back and forth for a while, and so crypto shouldn't
Speaker 3: be partisan.
Speaker 1: The short answer is, right now, Trump.
Speaker 3: Would because he says I'm crypto president, I'm going to
Speaker 3: do all this stuff. But really that's a short it's
Speaker 3: a short term way of looking at things. What we've
Speaker 3: done a really great job of and shout out to
Speaker 3: Brian Armstrong and lots of people in.
Speaker 1: The industry of our own time. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: our own.
Speaker 3: Lobbyist in DC is educating people on both sides. And
Speaker 3: there are tons of Democrats that are for good crypto legislation.
Speaker 2: Now, so many people who are pouring money into elections
Speaker 2: right now and into lobbying from the crypto community.
Speaker 1: What's this scale? How much influence do they really have?
Speaker 2: As someone frankly Mike was a traditional way donor as
Speaker 2: well as a crypto donor, the.
Speaker 3: Scale has gotten big. That's why the Democrats woke up.
Speaker 3: There's been about one hundred and fifty million on it's
Speaker 3: way to two hundred and fifty million dollars in these
Speaker 3: crypto superpacks.
Speaker 1: That's not all crypto money.
Speaker 3: What happened was when the Democrats kept saying we don't
Speaker 3: like crypto, and again it was a very small group.
Speaker 3: It was Elizabeth Ward who said, I want to have
Speaker 3: an anti crypto army. The way politics work in DC
Speaker 3: is every Senator doesn't know every issue, they look to
Speaker 3: the leader of that committee. So Elizabeth really was running
Speaker 3: crypto for the Democrats, and she hates crypto. So all
Speaker 3: that money started to look like Republican money, even though
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be bipartisan and focused on really
Speaker 3: key races.
Speaker 1: Shared Brown's race, John Tester's race.
Speaker 4: What would you say to someone watching right now who
Speaker 4: might say, you know what, the SEC and lawmakers it's
Speaker 4: their job to protect people from getting involved in things
Speaker 4: that could hurt them. And there are some people out
Speaker 4: there who say, well, there are a lot of people
Speaker 4: out there who say, I don't want touch crypto because
Speaker 4: I've seen how of all little it can be, and
Speaker 4: I don't think it's something that, you know, mom and
Speaker 4: pop folks should have in their portfolios.
Speaker 1: I see you laughing, Mike.
Speaker 3: Well, because Kai, frankly, anyone who bought big with the
Speaker 3: exception of one or two people that bought it over
Speaker 3: seventy thousand has made money. You know, Like, if you
Speaker 3: bought that codin held it like most bigcoiners do, you're
Speaker 3: in the money. So they're protecting them against making money.
Speaker 3: That makes no sense. Listen, there have been frauds. There
Speaker 3: have been lots of you know, shenanigans in this crypto space,
Speaker 3: and those need to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: And they were.
Speaker 3: They were prosecuted, they were pushed out of the system.
Speaker 3: Sam Bankman's freeze in jail. Other people will go to jail.
Speaker 3: And so I'm not saying this was a lilly white
Speaker 3: industry any in any space, but this idea that we've
Speaker 3: got to protect somebody from this new technology that cuts
Speaker 3: out the middleman, that allows people to transact directly instead
Speaker 3: of paying a fee, is just wrong thought of Okay, we.
Speaker 4: Don't have a ton of time, but I do want
Speaker 4: to get to one question on ethereum before we take
Speaker 4: a little break. If we do see ETF for theoreum
Speaker 4: approved in the coming months, which many people think we
Speaker 4: will see, what will what are your thoughts on sort
Speaker 4: of excitement and terms of inflows given that you can
Speaker 4: already get exposure to crypto through ETFs and spot bitcoin ETFs,
Speaker 4: Well we see the same type of enthusiasm.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, we're going to see enthusiasm. What was so
Speaker 3: unique about the Bitcoin ETF. It was the first time,
Speaker 3: in lots of ways that the US federal government said
Speaker 3: crypto's okay, you're okay to do crypto. Even though Gary
Speaker 3: Gamzer didn't want to say it, he said it, and
Speaker 3: the government said it.
Speaker 1: Larry Fink said it.
Speaker 3: Larry Think is the largest asset manager and the runs
Speaker 3: the largest ass management company in the world. And so
Speaker 3: the credentialization of bitcoining crypto that was kind of limit up.
Speaker 3: This is a second step towards that. So it's great
Speaker 3: for the ethereum community. It won't have the exact same impact,
Speaker 3: but it'll have a big impact.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: All of these ecosystems are about bringing new people into
Speaker 3: the ecosystem, into the circus tent, right, and so this
Speaker 3: is a new and easier way for lots of people
Speaker 3: to participate in the ethereum community.
Speaker 1: And so it's nothing but a that positive