Speaker 1: Bokn or chillions.
Speaker 2: I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Belchunas.
Speaker 1: Eric, we got a vip here today, we do.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 1: Who is it?
Speaker 2: We got Blackrocks head of Digital Assets, Robbie Mitchnick, and
Speaker 2: I have been told and we've seen him as like
Speaker 2: the guy internally who has really turned Blackrock into this
Speaker 2: sort of bitcoin force. And not only has he done that,
Speaker 2: but since the bitcoin ETFs have launched, especially ibit, I bit,
Speaker 2: Blackrocks offering, Yeah, that's their bitcoin ETF. And as an analyst,
Speaker 2: I've never seen anything like this. This has to be
Speaker 2: like a golf analyst tracking Tiger Woods in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: What is this?
Speaker 2: What is going on here? Let me give you some
Speaker 2: number stroll. So before I Bit, the fastest ETF to
Speaker 2: get to ten billion dollars in assets was jp e Q,
Speaker 2: which did it in six hundred and forty seven days. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's like three years. I Bit did it in forty
Speaker 2: nine days, and Fidelity no slouch, did it in seventy seven.
Speaker 2: So think about that. Just let that absorb. That is insane, right.
Speaker 2: Another one, if you look at Blackrocks ETFs globally they
Speaker 2: have over one thousand, like one thousand and forty four
Speaker 2: something like that. IBID is taken in more money than
Speaker 2: any of them. IBID is taken in eighteen percent of
Speaker 2: all of black Rocks global flows this year, unreal for
Speaker 2: a new launch or unreal for any ETF. Even IVV
Speaker 2: doesn't pull off those numbers. And then when we look
Speaker 2: at the ETFs in the US, you're to date flows,
Speaker 2: IBID is number two overall. Only VU, the stud of
Speaker 2: all studs, VU is above IBIT this year, so it's
Speaker 2: top one percent in volume. Again, this is after four
Speaker 2: months on the market, and we see thirteen f's come in,
Speaker 2: which is reported holders. There's already two hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: reported holders of this. Normally a new ETF and their
Speaker 2: first thirteen F season will see anywhere from zero till
Speaker 2: five if they're lucky. So again, this is like breaking
Speaker 2: records by quantum leap style.
Speaker 1: And here we are with the guy who came to
Speaker 1: Blackrock and said, let's do something a little different. Okay,
Speaker 1: So joining us on this episode of Trillions Robbie Mitchnick,
Speaker 1: head of Digital Assets at Blackrock, and also James Safert,
Speaker 1: an ETF analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, this time on Trillions.
Speaker 1: Blackrocks Bitcoin believer Robbie James, Welcome to Trillions.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for having me on,
Speaker 3: and I appreciate the intro. I actually feel like I'm
Speaker 3: the one with celebrities here because we've all been watching
Speaker 3: Eric and James.
Speaker 4: Your guys, their head don't do it.
Speaker 1: So James is a somewhat of a regular on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Robbie obviously so thrilled to have you here. Have you
Speaker 1: asked Larry Fink for a raise yet? No? No, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so maybe it's like in the course somebody
Speaker 1: just gave Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the way, I saw Larry Fink on Fox Business.
Speaker 2: I never see him mention tickers. I mean, because he's
Speaker 2: got a thousand of them, but it's like having a
Speaker 2: thousand kids you don't really bring up. He talks Macro
Speaker 2: a lot, but he was beaming. He's the biggest launch
Speaker 2: ever I been. But it's rare again seeing him talk
Speaker 2: about the ticker. I'm like, that must be a big
Speaker 2: deal internally if the big man's talking about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think he's brought a lot of insight and thought
Speaker 3: leadership to this right, you think about we talk at
Speaker 3: Blackrock a lot about being a student of the markets,
Speaker 3: being a student of technology, and Larry's kind of the
Speaker 3: ultimate embodiment of that. So you see that in his
Speaker 3: journey on this, and obviously he brings a ton of
Speaker 3: geopolitical and historical context to it.
Speaker 1: So Eric ran through some stats about the launch in
Speaker 1: the intro there. But let's rewind the clock a little bit.
Speaker 1: When did you first spot the opportunity and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got bitcoin and we got Blackrock. How do I
Speaker 1: bring those two things together?
Speaker 3: Well, I joined actually in the summer of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: so coming up on six years now, and I had
Speaker 3: been at business. I totally fluked into this internship at
Speaker 3: a company I hadn't heard of and nobody had heard
Speaker 3: of at the time called Ripple, And that was twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and I interviewed for that internship in April of seventeen.
Speaker 5: XRP was a two cents.
Speaker 3: Their crypto tooken when I started eight weeks later in June,
Speaker 3: it was a twenty eight cents, and three months after
Speaker 3: I left in January to go back to finish my MBA,
Speaker 3: it was at three dollars, and so that explosive journey
Speaker 3: obviously incredible fortuitous fun timing, and I knew at that
Speaker 3: point I had to do something in this space. The
Speaker 3: opportunity was just too great and too exciting, and it
Speaker 3: was apparent to me that Blackrock had a lot of
Speaker 3: potential to be a transformative force in the space. And
Speaker 3: so August twenty eighteen, I started as full time employee
Speaker 3: number one in the digital assets realm.
Speaker 5: And it's been a fun couple of years.
Speaker 1: Who hired you?
Speaker 3: It was really Rob Goldstein in effect, that's who I
Speaker 3: first met with it at Blackrock, and we had a
Speaker 3: good conversation. I think some of my ideas were probably
Speaker 3: a little premature, let's say, at that time.
Speaker 4: But what were they Well, you know, you might guess,
Speaker 4: but you know, if you think about twenty eighteen, or
Speaker 4: at that time was twenty seventeen, the idea that we
Speaker 4: would do a bitcoin ETF would have been totally premature, right,
Speaker 4: You did not have the institutional infrastructure, you did not
Speaker 4: have the regulatory clarity, You frankly didn't.
Speaker 3: Have a lot of interest from our clients in this
Speaker 3: at that time. So as you track through time our
Speaker 3: journey there was a confluence of factors over the years
Speaker 3: that evolved to get us to where we are today.
Speaker 1: You were pitching an ETF, a bitcoin ETF even before
Speaker 1: you were hired.
Speaker 3: I don't think I was as reckless as outright pitching it,
Speaker 3: because I know how that probably would have gone at
Speaker 3: that time. It really wasn't the time, right, But I
Speaker 3: would be lying if I didn't think that at some
Speaker 3: point this was the thing that could happen at What
Speaker 3: better place for her to do that than black Rock?
Speaker 1: If you could have taken the internal temperature with one
Speaker 1: of those internal thermometers at Blackrock for what the temperature
Speaker 1: for crypto or digital assets in general was at that
Speaker 1: time you were starting, what do you think it was?
Speaker 3: What was the I think it was pretty similar to
Speaker 3: just about every large traditional financial institution at that time, right,
Speaker 3: We had so predating me. The firm had begun exploring
Speaker 3: blockchain in twenty sixteen, and I think correctly at the
Speaker 3: time came to the view that this technology and certainly
Speaker 3: the asset class was nowhere near ready for prime time
Speaker 3: and for our clients. And that was accurate, right, And
Speaker 3: there's been a bunch externally.
Speaker 5: Very importantly that's.
Speaker 3: Evolved over the years that brought that temperature up to
Speaker 3: obviously a much warmer level.
Speaker 1: So it was not ice cold, because it was just
Speaker 1: warm enough that they could hire you. So like cold.
Speaker 5: Certainly not ice cold.
Speaker 3: There was a recognition that this could be a thing, right,
Speaker 3: that it's time hadn't come.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting to me is Larry Fink is a
Speaker 2: major name, just like Jamie Diamond, and a lot of
Speaker 2: his peers generally were not into bitcoin. And there is
Speaker 2: an interview with Anthony Scaramucci on I Think It Was
Speaker 2: The Wolf of All Streets podcast and he says that
Speaker 2: he had a private meeting with Larry in late twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one where Larry says bitcoin sucks and Scamochie says,
Speaker 2: I think you're wrong. You should do some research, and
Speaker 2: then Scamucci says it was a young kid named Robbie
Speaker 2: who came into Blackrock with the idea of creating a
Speaker 2: bitcoin et have he orange pill Larry, And I'm going
Speaker 2: to give Larry a lot of credit because he actually
Speaker 2: did the homework. It takes a smart leader to pridefully
Speaker 2: say bitcoin sucks and then twenty four months later say
Speaker 2: you know what, I've got this wrong. Blackrock needs to
Speaker 2: be part of this? Is that mostly true?
Speaker 1: Was the pill actually orange or was it a different code?
Speaker 3: I think there's probably a little bit of hyperbole in that,
Speaker 3: But like I said, we talk all the time about
Speaker 3: being students of them mark markets and students of technology,
Speaker 3: and Larry's the ultimate embodiment of that and his journey
Speaker 3: in this space and the work he did in the
Speaker 3: study through various sources. It shows up in how insightful
Speaker 3: he is now when he speaks on the topic.
Speaker 6: When you're talking about joining and you're interviewing, they're looking
Speaker 6: up blockchain. That's around the time that Larry Fink's famous
Speaker 6: quote about an index of money laundering came out. Could
Speaker 6: you just walk us through before we move on to
Speaker 6: talk about the actual ETF What was the actual process
Speaker 6: of going from that view in twenty eighteen to twenty
Speaker 6: twenty one, still saying it sucks to like all right,
Speaker 6: actually I'm changing my mind, Like what were the milestones
Speaker 6: along the way? What did you see internally or even
Speaker 6: with Larry specifically that led us to getting Blackrock filing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then also.
Speaker 2: FTX was part of this. I had to think that
Speaker 2: almost would take you down a few pegs or set
Speaker 2: you back.
Speaker 3: So first, I think the approach here has always been
Speaker 3: very client focused and very long term right. So, certainly
Speaker 3: FtF was a bad event for the industry, but our
Speaker 3: focus was much longer term in nature than anyone company
Speaker 3: or market cycle. Where it started in twenty eighteen after
Speaker 3: I mentioned that initial work that happened in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: So twenty eighteen where we really spent our time and
Speaker 3: energy was applications of blockchain technology, and that was consistent
Speaker 3: with most of the banks and another large traditional finance firms.
Speaker 3: So exploring a dozen or fifteen different use cases of
Speaker 3: how you can use blockchain and the data synchronicity benefits
Speaker 3: across our business and for our clients, and by and large,
Speaker 3: most of those use cases across the industry did not work.
Speaker 3: We actually hit on a couple that were pretty interesting
Speaker 3: and delivered some value, but you didn't see the sort
Speaker 3: of broad based adoption of blockchain of everything right that
Speaker 3: some people thought would happen. That was an important period though,
Speaker 3: for learning, for building comfort, for understanding the technology, and
Speaker 3: as factors of evolved. Starting with I would say twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: you really started to see an uptick in client interest,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of in the post COVID aftermath, and
Speaker 3: there's widespread money printing. Obviously bitcoin went up thirteen x.
Speaker 3: You also had a huge amount of venture capital coming
Speaker 3: too the space, right if at almost one hundred billion
Speaker 3: dollars in venture financing the last four years. And that's
Speaker 3: also brought with it a lot of credible human capital
Speaker 3: too from big tech, from financial services backgrounds. And so
Speaker 3: you saw this institutionalization of the infrastructure of the degree
Speaker 3: that would enable us to potentially build solutions for clients
Speaker 3: that we could be confident in and have conviction that
Speaker 3: we could build to a black Rock and I Shares
Speaker 3: quality standard. And the last piece is the regulatory environment
Speaker 3: slowly but surely did moderate over time, right. And so
Speaker 3: when you put those together and then lay that against
Speaker 3: what we were doing at the time, first in crypto,
Speaker 3: so we think about this space across three buckets in
Speaker 3: digital assets, three pillars crypto.
Speaker 5: Stable coins, and tokenization.
Speaker 3: So in crypto foundationally, we built a partnership with coinbas
Speaker 3: Prime starting in twenty twenty one. That was a technology
Speaker 3: focused partnership building their trading and custody capabilities and workflows
Speaker 3: into our Aladdin Investment system, so that Black Croc or
Speaker 3: any of Aladdin's other clients who wanted to get exposure
Speaker 3: to crypto as part of the whole portfolio could do that.
Speaker 3: We also concurrently developed this private Bitcoin trust, which was
Speaker 3: really a starting point for us being an asset manager
Speaker 3: in the space, and that was focused on large US
Speaker 3: institutional clients, but it was a key solution that we
Speaker 3: felt was solving part of the problem that our clients
Speaker 3: were experiencing.
Speaker 5: Think about stable coins.
Speaker 3: We started managing the USDC Reserve or a part of
Speaker 3: it in twenty twenty one. That relationship grew significantly in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two where we became the primary non bank
Speaker 3: manager of that three billion ish reserve today and invested
Speaker 3: in Circle and started to become a technology collaborator with
Speaker 3: them as well because of the potential we see for
Speaker 3: stable coins.
Speaker 5: And then finally tokenization.
Speaker 3: We did some private tokenization work with JP Morgan on
Speaker 3: their Onyx platform in twenty twenty one that laid the
Speaker 3: foundation for us to ultimately do our first public blockchain
Speaker 3: tokenization earlier this year. So those are all the key
Speaker 3: pieces that ultimately paved the way.
Speaker 2: For Understood But and this reminds you of what's going
Speaker 2: on in JP Morgan, but again, all that's happening. While
Speaker 2: the CEO does say some things that seem to be contradictory,
Speaker 2: but clearly he's also has to service clients, and he's well,
Speaker 2: this is fine, we're serving clients. But personally I don't
Speaker 2: get it because we do see JP Morgan. Jamie Diamond
Speaker 2: is basically slams it like every other week, and yet
Speaker 2: JP Morgan is one of the big aps for ibit
Speaker 2: and some people are like that hypocritical, but yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty much par for the course for a lot of
Speaker 2: firm this is the whatever business they're in, Like, they
Speaker 2: can't ignore clients, right, So you could actually be in
Speaker 2: the business without your CEO being all in.
Speaker 3: Yes, although thankfully Larry's been super supportive of this, right.
Speaker 3: I think he recognizes the level of interest from clients,
Speaker 3: and I think importantly the level of frustration that we
Speaker 3: felt from a lot of our clients, which was if
Speaker 3: you want to access crypto or bitcoin directly, that's been
Speaker 3: very hard for most of our clients. With the institutional
Speaker 3: or wealth advisory, right, it's different for retail. Retail has
Speaker 3: their own challenges too, but for financial advisors and for institutions,
Speaker 3: almost impossible practically to hold bitcoin directly. So what they
Speaker 3: do They went to alternative exposure vehicles, and a lot
Speaker 3: of those didn't go well right. They were often high fee,
Speaker 3: high risk, underperform the price of bitcoin in some cases
Speaker 3: all three right, and so there was this frustration. There
Speaker 3: are other clients who missed the opportunity entirely. Bitcoin turned
Speaker 3: out to be the best performing asset in the world
Speaker 3: the last ten years, so that was also a bad outcome.
Speaker 3: So I think that recognition that we were in a
Speaker 3: position to solve a real frustration for our clients definitely
Speaker 3: motivated the firm.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to twenty twenty three now is
Speaker 2: that okay, Okay, I'm on vacation in Kpe. May I'm
Speaker 2: doing my thing. I try to stay off the internet,
Speaker 2: and I try to stay off work email, and I
Speaker 2: see my Twitter's blowing up because coin Desk puts out
Speaker 2: a story saying black Rock's about to follow for a
Speaker 2: bitcoin etf. I remember quot shooting. I said, this can't
Speaker 2: be real, ken it. I didn't want to totally shut
Speaker 2: it down because coin desk is pretty good. They've had
Speaker 2: some scoops about four hours later at four in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: Bang there it is. So my vacation, thank you, was
Speaker 2: messed up for the next couple of days. But it
Speaker 2: was exciting. I was like, what why would they file?
Speaker 2: Like I always thought Blackrock would come out after there's
Speaker 2: a couple filings and they get launched, and you come
Speaker 2: out a year later because you don't need to be
Speaker 2: early you're Blackrock. But you were like leading the way
Speaker 2: and there was no real I mean, as far as
Speaker 2: I was concerned, our odds were one percent that SEC
Speaker 2: would approve one and that day, on that day, on
Speaker 2: that day, and they immediately went to fifty because blackrocks Blackrock.
Speaker 2: And so the whole thing was what does Blackrock know?
Speaker 2: And then there was these conspiracy theories that like Larry
Speaker 2: was talking to like Gary and the head of the SEC.
Speaker 1: Or a lot of conspiracy things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a lot. It was like, well, remember,
Speaker 2: Blackrock is a big time company. You helped bail out
Speaker 2: the whole economy basically with buying bonds with the FED
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. So Blackrock is like just a monster company,
Speaker 2: different than any other company. In my opinion, this wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been as big as Fidelity or even Vanguard filed it.
Speaker 2: So anyway, everybody went crazy. The internet blew up. I mean,
Speaker 2: you broke the internet that day. I wasn't sure. I
Speaker 2: didn't know. I was like, maybe they saw Greyscale lawsuit
Speaker 2: and you saw that, Hey, maybe the SEC's going to lose.
Speaker 2: We should file now. So my question to you is
Speaker 2: what drove the filing that day at that time versus say,
Speaker 2: just waiting a while until the SEC comes around and
Speaker 2: then you can come in a little later and do
Speaker 2: your thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that we were ready and our clients
Speaker 3: were ready, right, that was the big thing. We had
Speaker 3: laid out all those foundational pieces from the technology side
Speaker 3: with Coinbase in Aladdin, from the Bitcoin private trust side,
Speaker 3: and had conviction that we could deliver an ey shares
Speaker 3: quality product in this space, and it was increasingly clear
Speaker 3: that our clients hungered for that. Right that, at the
Speaker 3: end of the day is what it was.
Speaker 2: You knew that you could decrease friction and cost, which
Speaker 2: is sort of what Larry did say on Fox Business
Speaker 2: when he went on and I agree, I mean, ETFs
Speaker 2: are so good at that. I get it again. It
Speaker 2: was just a little bit of a shock. We figured
Speaker 2: usually the first one to throw in their hat is
Speaker 2: like a van Eck or a grayscale. It was like
Speaker 2: Blackrock playoffs.
Speaker 3: So I will say, you know, I maybe downplayed what
Speaker 3: Scaramouchi said your question earlier, but to his credit he
Speaker 3: did in the summer of twenty two when we launched
Speaker 3: the private Bitcoin Trust, he connected the dots and said,
Speaker 3: I think this is a precursor to them doing an ETF,
Speaker 3: which was a pretty good call.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, like you said, our expectation was like people
Speaker 6: like Vanguard and Blackrock are nextually, Like Vanguard's never going
Speaker 6: to happen, but Blackrock we think that will probably happen.
Speaker 6: But we didn't think he'd be first or in with
Speaker 6: the first guys. So you talk about clients wanting this,
Speaker 6: I guess what are the client questions you're fielding or
Speaker 6: what were the questions like six months ago versus what
Speaker 6: are the questions now? What type of conversations are you
Speaker 6: happening with those clients that wanted you to do this?
Speaker 3: A lot pretty steadily through you know, we're four months
Speaker 3: in now, We've had hundreds of conversations across our client base, right,
Speaker 3: You could think of kind of our main distribution channels
Speaker 3: and investor direct which right out of the gate they
Speaker 3: were buying. There no hurdles to them getting access. That's
Speaker 3: been I think the largest source of flows for sure,
Speaker 3: second being wealth advisory channel and third being institutional, and
Speaker 3: those latter two really operate on a longer timescale. Right,
Speaker 3: There's a much longer, as you guys know, education, research,
Speaker 3: diligence journey that underpins their process. So it's a lot
Speaker 3: of conversations with our wealth advisory partners with home offices
Speaker 3: who are considering the approval process for this because many
Speaker 3: of those platforms it's available unsolicited today. Right, you guys
Speaker 3: have covered this in the past, but not on a
Speaker 3: solicited basis. So that's the process that they're going through.
Speaker 3: And then institutional, when this happened, it restarted in many
Speaker 3: cases those conversations of crypto or bitcoin, should we be
Speaker 3: invested in this?
Speaker 5: Right that in some cases.
Speaker 3: That firm has been having those conversations in twenty one
Speaker 3: and twenty say, for some of they hadn't had it yet,
Speaker 3: but this was a moment where they said, okay, we
Speaker 3: better figure out what this thing is and how it
Speaker 3: fits the portfolio. And that's kind of the education that
Speaker 3: we've been doing.
Speaker 2: Let's go to advisors for a second. When we saw
Speaker 2: the first inflows and the trade sizes for IBIT, it
Speaker 2: looks small. It looked like a bunch of minos biting
Speaker 2: right occasionally a big bite, right, big trade. The thirteen
Speaker 2: f's showing that there are advisors buying a couple hedge funds.
Speaker 2: No major institutions yet. But when you look at all ETFs,
Speaker 2: I think advisors are like seventy percent of the assets.
Speaker 2: Like they're the biggest users of ETFs generally. And there's
Speaker 2: been this sort of debate on Twitter lately about whether
Speaker 2: the boomer advisors are really coming. And let's bring up
Speaker 2: this part about solicited versus unsoliciteds So what you're saying
Speaker 2: now is that only if a client goes to the
Speaker 2: advisor says I need this, can they buy it. But
Speaker 2: over time the advisor will be able to solicit it
Speaker 2: to their clients. And where are we what inning are
Speaker 2: we on the solicit sure?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 3: So the standard process for new ETFs right is typically
Speaker 3: a multi year journey from launch to actually being approved
Speaker 3: for solicitation, right, And so I think what's happened here.
Speaker 3: Given some of the historic demand that we've seen around
Speaker 3: this that you talked about, Eric, there's been an acceleration
Speaker 3: of that process for a lot of these home office
Speaker 3: platforms at the Wealth Advisor. So that's a long journey.
Speaker 3: There's a very intensive diligence process that goes into that.
Speaker 3: There's also an education process, and so we're going through
Speaker 3: that with them. Some will be faster than others, that's
Speaker 3: just the nature of it, but certainly over the coming
Speaker 3: months we would expect to see some of those approvals
Speaker 3: come online. The institutional piece is interesting. You mentioned that,
Speaker 3: remember on the thirteen apps that says of March thirty first,
Speaker 3: So over the last couple of weeks you've started to
Speaker 3: see some of those institutional conversations come to fruition. And
Speaker 3: I think people forget with an investor direct. People say, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: that's like small dollar retail. Not necessarily we have within
Speaker 3: that bucket a number of very large positions, right, So
Speaker 3: we're talking about many of our holders are in the
Speaker 3: ultra high net worth category holding in some cases nine
Speaker 3: figure positions, right. And what we've found, we've been surprised
Speaker 3: by some of the ways that this that ibit has
Speaker 3: resonated with investors, even large existing bitcoin holders. One of
Speaker 3: them that we found is very large holders like the
Speaker 3: fact that one it's extremely liquid, right, ibit trades ibit
Speaker 3: USD larger than many of the crypto exchanges in the
Speaker 3: world that's been around for a long time, and you
Speaker 3: don't have to show your hand in moving bitcoin to
Speaker 3: an exchange, right. So Wales hate the fact that people
Speaker 3: monitor the blockchain for when bitcoin is being moved from
Speaker 3: large wallets to exchanges. They don't have to tip, and
Speaker 3: so we've seen actually a lot of very large bitcoin
Speaker 3: holders coming to the product for that reason.
Speaker 2: It is really interesting. In my first book, which I'll
Speaker 2: Plug your Institutional ETF Toolbox, which Joel's read eighteen times,
Speaker 2: I remember institutions love the anonymity. They love that. They
Speaker 2: also love liquidity, anonymity and freedom, and it sounds like
Speaker 2: that's what you're talking about. The liquidity had to come
Speaker 2: and you're trading a billion a day, which is that
Speaker 2: that's what they need. So that's interesting that I do
Speaker 2: agree institutions will bite probably more on on that. That's
Speaker 2: why I think you're like the GLD, there can only
Speaker 2: be one super mega liquid one, it looks like you're
Speaker 2: going to be a Fidelities is pretty liquid, and the
Speaker 2: others are pretty liquid, but none are in like the
Speaker 2: top twenty most traded every day consistently like ibit, So
Speaker 2: you get liquidity, jol. That's when that's like the best
Speaker 2: big fish. Yeah, it's like chumming the water.
Speaker 6: So you talked about these whales and people buying ibit,
Speaker 6: I mean, what percentage allocations of a portfolio you're seeing?
Speaker 6: Are you seeing people like you you always hear everyone
Speaker 6: saying one to five percent or something? Are you seeing
Speaker 6: people doing way more than that is? Are you actually
Speaker 6: seeing the one to three percent when you're talking to
Speaker 6: these clients, Like, how are clients looking at ibit and
Speaker 6: just bitcoin in general?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's probably the most intensive part of
Speaker 3: our conversations and the education journey right now, frankly. And
Speaker 3: it varies by investor type and risk references, et cetera.
Speaker 5: Right, So there's no.
Speaker 3: Kind of one size fits all, but we're doing a
Speaker 3: lot of education with our clients around that, and I
Speaker 3: would say one to three percent is probably the most
Speaker 3: typical range for those who who are allocating.
Speaker 2: And we talk about allocations, how is it being positioned,
Speaker 2: because I see people who will there's all a big spectrum.
Speaker 2: There's the hardcore people who are all in this is
Speaker 2: like their religion. They think sixty forty is a scam.
Speaker 2: Will move them aside for a second they're a special
Speaker 2: Then they're sort of the more normal sixty forty ors
Speaker 2: who are like, yeah, I don't want to kick myself
Speaker 2: if this goes to a million, so they buy one
Speaker 2: two percent. I would consider that hot sauce. Now, some
Speaker 2: of the bitcoin issuers will try to sell this as
Speaker 2: something that lowers your overall portfolio volatility. It's like digital gold.
Speaker 2: But if you compare bitcoin to gold, bitcoin makes gold
Speaker 2: look like a money market fund. To me, bitcoin would
Speaker 2: be like double black diamond ski slope, whereas gold is
Speaker 2: like the bunny slope in terms of volatility. Have you
Speaker 2: are people understanding that it's hot sauce. The one thing
Speaker 2: I fear is that they look at it as gold,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to move like gold, and that
Speaker 2: they need to make sure that they are ready for
Speaker 2: this roller coaster ride. Is that how do you brace
Speaker 2: them for this?
Speaker 3: Certainly that's part of the education journey. But I think Eric,
Speaker 3: you've hit on what is probably the most important debate
Speaker 3: in the space right now when we think about investment
Speaker 3: thesis risk portfolio construction. Is the nature of bitcoin's risk
Speaker 3: and the reason I think it has so many people
Speaker 3: confused is bitcoin has this duality to it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: On the one hand, it's a novel technology disruption, right.
Speaker 3: It is potentially a global payment instrument, right, It's very
Speaker 3: early in that journey. It is something that on that
Speaker 3: basis as a sort of technology play and a beta
Speaker 3: of some sorts to blockchain adoption, you would expect it
Speaker 3: to be highly volatile, correlated and would look more like
Speaker 3: tech or VC in a portfolio.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: And on the other hand, it is a global, non sovereign,
Speaker 3: scarce decentralized, global monetary alternative of sorts, right. And so
Speaker 3: that's where the digital goal thesis comes from. And there
Speaker 3: you would also expect it to be volatile because it's
Speaker 3: early and it's adoption on that journey, But you expect
Speaker 3: it to be uncorrelated and a potential hedge to some
Speaker 3: of these rich factors inflation, monetary debasement, geopolitical et cetera. Right,
Speaker 3: And that's where the tension comes in because how you
Speaker 3: think about it in a portfolio depends very much on
Speaker 3: which of those narratives prevails. I think the direction of
Speaker 3: travel is increasingly towards the latter, because fundamentally, over a
Speaker 3: longer term, I think that's the bigger component of what
Speaker 3: drives bitcoin. But it's gonna have short term episodes where
Speaker 3: there's a lot of noise around that, so people certainly
Speaker 3: have to be ready for that ride.
Speaker 2: I thought of the best catchphrase for it. It's like gold,
Speaker 2: but as a teenager, you know it's out the party,
Speaker 2: bring all the rules, expect your car to get stolen
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night, like all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. It's not going to be dull, right, Gold
Speaker 2: is eight thousand years old. This is like gold is
Speaker 2: like a seventeen year.
Speaker 6: Old role to be fair, the common phrase that people
Speaker 6: meant and including me, for many years, have been using
Speaker 6: is a call option of store value asset, which is
Speaker 6: like a monocle Pooh or super smart one, but like
Speaker 6: a call option in store of value asset is what
Speaker 6: a lot of people have been referring to it.
Speaker 2: As the other description I heard that I thought resonated
Speaker 2: was some guy, this retail person on Twitter, just the
Speaker 2: regular guys like, it's like the Second Amendment for money,
Speaker 2: which I thought about it. I thought about it. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I get that it's like protect from your own government
Speaker 2: from devaluing the currency, which honestly sends wealth right up
Speaker 2: to the top. And so this idea of like devaluation
Speaker 2: and you have something to protect yourself from it. How
Speaker 2: much does that resonate with advisors versus just simple Hey man,
Speaker 2: this thing is cool. I don't want to miss out if.
Speaker 5: It goes to a million. It's some of each.
Speaker 3: But I think that in the US and Europe in particular,
Speaker 3: that first piece is a little bit harder to grasp.
Speaker 5: Right. The US has enjoyed this.
Speaker 3: Incredible run of the post World War two era, basically
Speaker 3: eight decades of pretty remarkable stability and prosperity, right, And
Speaker 3: that is an outlier in human history, in financial history,
Speaker 3: and so it's harder to grasp why you would have
Speaker 3: to worry about the debasement of money or political dysfunction, destabilization,
Speaker 3: et cetera for an American, specifically those of an older generation.
Speaker 3: The reality is around the world, there's about four billion
Speaker 3: people who live in some sort of non democratic regime, right,
Speaker 3: You've got about two billion people who live in hyperinflationary
Speaker 3: or severe inflationary monetary regime. So for those people, this
Speaker 3: is very real and they've lived it. For Americans, it
Speaker 3: can be a little bit more amorphous that this concept.
Speaker 6: When you guys are talking about this, what do you
Speaker 6: view the what do you think it's correlated to or
Speaker 6: inversely correlated to? Are you looking at the dollar real rates?
Speaker 6: Like what inflation? How do you guys talk about this
Speaker 6: with clients? From a correlation's point of view, you've danced
Speaker 6: around with a lot of this talk.
Speaker 1: Let's dive right.
Speaker 3: The correlation is super super important, right, because volatility is volatility, right,
Speaker 3: And because it's so volatile, we're not recommend it in
Speaker 3: large concentrations in a portfolio because then the volatility really
Speaker 3: starts to add to risk. But at smaller concentrations, the
Speaker 3: correlation becomes the key factor. And fundamentally, from a macro perspective,
Speaker 3: you can sum up most of Bitcoin's correlation where it
Speaker 3: exists to so called risk assets.
Speaker 5: Based on real interest rates.
Speaker 3: Right, Bitcoin is massively short real interest rates, it is
Speaker 3: short nominal rates, and it is long inflation expectations. You
Speaker 3: look at the charting of this, it's quite striking, and
Speaker 3: of course the alternative way of thinking about it is
Speaker 3: versus the dollar, and bitcoin is also very inversely exposed
Speaker 3: to the dollar, and of course the dollar and real
Speaker 3: interest rates have their own pretty tight correlation. So that
Speaker 3: explains most of the correlation that exists, because fundamentally, on
Speaker 3: other metrics, you'd expect that correlation to be low or
Speaker 3: even in some ways the negative.
Speaker 6: So the pitch should be basically inversely correlated to real
Speaker 6: rates expectations that but.
Speaker 2: Also the volatility.
Speaker 6: You talk about volatility as a bug, but I almost
Speaker 6: I think of it more as a feature. If you
Speaker 6: look at any of this research, if you do any
Speaker 6: sort of semblance of regular rebalancing, whether it's quarterly, semi annually,
Speaker 6: or annually, if you can manage to sell when it's
Speaker 6: a little bit, when it's going way high through the
Speaker 6: roof and these massive bull markets, and buy after it's
Speaker 6: collapsed eighty percent, which happens pretty much every single cycle,
Speaker 6: that's where a lot of this sharp ratio seems to
Speaker 6: come from any back test analysis that I've done, so
Speaker 6: is that the pitch you're giving to these advisors do
Speaker 6: this put in an allocation and just rebalance it and
Speaker 6: make sure you do it properly.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that market timing is easier said than
Speaker 3: done right because sometimes it may look like the top
Speaker 3: and it's not yet, and sometimes it may look like
Speaker 3: the bottom and there's a.
Speaker 5: Ways to go yet.
Speaker 3: So historically, for bitcoin, the best way to trade it
Speaker 3: was to buy and hold it for a long period.
Speaker 3: The people who had the discipline to do that over
Speaker 3: the last ten years fifteen years did extraordinarily well. So
Speaker 3: we're certainly not trying to advocate market timing.
Speaker 6: For Sorry, I just meant regular rebalancing, which I know
Speaker 6: like bitcoin believers here out there listening to that, and
Speaker 6: that's like blasphemous.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about behavior, because I frequently debate this.
Speaker 2: When the bitcoin ets were taking your money, all of
Speaker 2: the degens were thrilled. They're basically celebrating, and then they
Speaker 2: top off a little. There's other sellers. The ETF flows
Speaker 2: seem to be somewhat driving the price, but there's definitely
Speaker 2: the ETF flows have the price going up, and then
Speaker 2: you can tell there's actually like whales selling or somebody else,
Speaker 2: like clearly it's not the ETFs. Then the price kind
Speaker 2: of flat lines and the ETF flows follow, which is normal,
Speaker 2: but in the past sell off there's been like a
Speaker 2: month of like shaky flows. I think it's added up
Speaker 2: to about three percent of total assets, so not a lot,
Speaker 2: but everybody's all, look, the boomers have lettuce hands. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, first of all, it's three percent of
Speaker 2: the assets. Second of all, ETFs or hotels, people come
Speaker 2: in and out. It's the way it is. And then
Speaker 2: I do think that ETF investors are usually heads up.
Speaker 2: If you're smart enough to know what an ETF is
Speaker 2: and use it, you've probably used one before, and you
Speaker 2: probably have this as a small occasi. This isn't like
Speaker 2: the whole enchilada, so you can stomach more volatility. So
Speaker 2: my view is there will be some outflows, but over
Speaker 2: time I think these are more diamond hand investors than
Speaker 2: some think. Is that true?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly our client base I think is taking more
Speaker 3: of a long term buy and hold view than a
Speaker 3: lot of the sometimes frivolous trading activity that happens more
Speaker 3: broadly in crypto markets. Ultimately, the ETFs are an access vehicle, right,
Speaker 3: They're an efficient, comedian access vehicle that has taken away
Speaker 3: frictions from some portions of the market that historically may
Speaker 3: have liked or wanted to participate in bitcoin who couldn't,
Speaker 3: and now they are and I think ultimately that's making
Speaker 3: the market more efficient and more liquid.
Speaker 6: So talking about an access vehicle. We've talked about institutions
Speaker 6: a lot, but like thirteen fs, we'veeen granted, there's still
Speaker 6: some time left before they all file, but like, when
Speaker 6: are the institutions coming? I mean, forever you've been hearing
Speaker 6: people on crypto Twitter and elsewhere saying the institutions are coming.
Speaker 6: I heard is coming, But when are the institutions coming?
Speaker 2: I think crypto twitter also thinks advisors or institutions. Crypto
Speaker 2: Twitter thinks anybody without like a coinbase account is like
Speaker 2: an institution.
Speaker 5: Right, I think some parts of crypto Twitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just think someone wearing like pleated khaki pants
Speaker 2: to golfs that's like the institution for them. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about pensions. Someone said someone said bitcoin ETFs are
Speaker 2: for your parents. That was like, I forget what article did,
Speaker 2: but that I thought that was a pretty accurate. This
Speaker 2: is the boomer The boomers are coming.
Speaker 3: We talked about those three buckets, right, and investor, direct,
Speaker 3: advisory and institutional It's just just the longest timescale for sure.
Speaker 3: There's a very significant research, education, diligence process that is
Speaker 3: going into it, and I think that we're still very
Speaker 3: early on that journey. Obviously, there are a handful of
Speaker 3: institutions who over the years, very small number who allocated
Speaker 3: to bitcoin directly, who overcame the pretty significant frictions to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 5: A little bit larger number.
Speaker 3: Who allocated to the sector, to the technology or asset
Speaker 3: class more broadly, typically through funds. Venture funds were a
Speaker 3: popular way to do it, But it's still early. What
Speaker 3: I can say is there's plenty who are on that
Speaker 3: research journey, and that's part of the education that we're
Speaker 3: doing every day.
Speaker 1: What do you think is next for the crypto industry
Speaker 1: as a whole? I mean, not that we have ETFs trading,
Speaker 1: what does it mean for the rest of the industry.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously there's a much longer tail of crypto
Speaker 3: assets than bitcoin or bitcoin and ether. For us, for
Speaker 3: our clients, their interest overwhelmingly has been in bitcoin, a
Speaker 3: little bit in ethereum, and not a whole lot in
Speaker 3: that longer tail of ten thousand plus assets, So I
Speaker 3: think it's important to make that distinction between the two.
Speaker 3: Certainly there's some great projects out there in that larger
Speaker 3: group of assets, but there's also been a lot of
Speaker 3: pretty frivolous projects, right, A lot of tokens that have
Speaker 3: been flashing the pan and they've come and gone, and
Speaker 3: there's been you know, hype associated with them that hasn't
Speaker 3: been backed up by real economic substance. So it's going
Speaker 3: to be a long journey for some of the rest
Speaker 3: of crypto to really start establishing product market fit and
Speaker 3: economic use cases before they start to cross that chasm
Speaker 3: into what we've seen obviously Bitcoin become.
Speaker 1: So bitcoin maximalists.
Speaker 3: Bull maximus would be a little stronger, but certainly it's
Speaker 3: unique and it's where it is today.
Speaker 2: We've seen when they launched bitcoin and ether together, whether
Speaker 2: it's futures or like in Hong Kong, they launched both
Speaker 2: at the same time. I think e've got fifteen percent
Speaker 2: of the assets twenty over twenty twenty. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it was a little less. He's more bullish than I
Speaker 2: it was. I tot you funny is to me, Bitcoin
Speaker 2: is the headliner and eth coming out next if it
Speaker 2: ever gets approved would be like the opening Act coming
Speaker 2: out after So I just mostly focused mentally on the
Speaker 2: bitcoin ETFs. I think eth also speaks to what I
Speaker 2: was going to ask you next, which is tokenization, And
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about that because when Larry's
Speaker 2: on Fox, he does talk about the bitcoin ETF, then
Speaker 2: he pivots to tokenization. Now, are you talking about tokenizing
Speaker 2: everything so that Microsoft shares and even your own ETFs
Speaker 2: are tokenized? Or we just talking about tokenizing things that
Speaker 2: are hard to get like artwork or farmland in Iowa
Speaker 2: where you can just now places ETFs can't go. What
Speaker 2: are we looking at in ten years?
Speaker 3: So I think if we go back to that three
Speaker 3: pillar frame where crypto stable coins, tokenization is by far
Speaker 3: the least developed of those three right now from an
Speaker 3: industry perspective. Right that said, there's a lot of excitement
Speaker 3: around it because the potential future state and I don't.
Speaker 5: Know whether this will be realized.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone really knows, but certainly possible of
Speaker 3: a world where a blockchain digital asset token becomes the
Speaker 3: primary format for the majority of investment assets and securities.
Speaker 3: Right that's a possibility, and that is a really interesting
Speaker 3: world in a lot of ways, or something that becomes global, universal,
Speaker 3: digitally native, transparent, instantaneously transferable, programmable, all these attributes of
Speaker 3: tokenization that are behind why there's so much optimism for
Speaker 3: it and for us, it's a story of how does
Speaker 3: this increase access and lower costs for our investors. The
Speaker 3: substance today, though, is that tokenization has not yet taken
Speaker 3: off at scale in any meaningful way, right, and so
Speaker 3: there's a lot of work happening. I think what you
Speaker 3: need to see is a coalescence around what are the
Speaker 3: right asset classes to start with? Forget about where we're
Speaker 3: going to finish and what's going to be included in that.
Speaker 3: Where do we start so that we can say there's
Speaker 3: a geography, there's an asset class that we used to
Speaker 3: trade and an issue this way, and now we primarily
Speaker 3: do it using a digital asset token and then having
Speaker 3: the custody and the trading and the regulatory support infrastructure
Speaker 3: to actually make that happen.
Speaker 5: We're just early in that journey.
Speaker 1: Let me ask similar question in a different way, which
Speaker 1: is there anything that the ETF can't do?
Speaker 3: ETS is a pretty good wrapper. It's popular for a reason.
Speaker 3: I haven't thought about that question though.
Speaker 2: I think some of the crypto crowd underrates the disruptive
Speaker 2: ability of the ETFs. I think they think crypto is
Speaker 2: the big disruptor of everything. But ETFs, I think are
Speaker 2: gonna push down costs from the exchanges. If you're doing
Speaker 2: direct indexing for advisors, you're probably charging one percent. You're
Speaker 2: going to get pushed down. There's nothing like a highly liquid,
Speaker 2: cheap ETF, and the US is full of them, and
Speaker 2: these are already at twenty to thirty basis points with
Speaker 2: a billion dollars in liquidity. I can't overstate how powerfully
Speaker 2: attract act of that is to every investor. We're probably
Speaker 2: going to see people come over from other countries who
Speaker 2: are big investors just to get that. It's just hard
Speaker 2: to compete with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what's interesting, you know, comparing the ETF and
Speaker 3: a digital asset token as a rapper. If you look
Speaker 3: at the two things. Two major announcements we had this
Speaker 3: year obviously i BIT in digital asset space and our
Speaker 3: tokenized yield fund on a public blockchain, and they do the.
Speaker 5: Opposite of each other. Yeah, which is i BIT takes
Speaker 5: a crypto.
Speaker 3: Asset underlying investment and puts it in a trad FI
Speaker 3: rapper an ETF wrapper, right, And a tokenized fund takes
Speaker 3: a trad FI underlying investment and puts it in a
Speaker 3: crypto wrapper. And you might say, well, that's contradictory, but
Speaker 3: it's really not, because what it's a reflection of is
Speaker 3: across our client base there are various stages of their
Speaker 3: evolution and have very different preferences around infrastructure and access method,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so for a lot of our clients,
Speaker 3: certainly the majority of our client the ETF is a
Speaker 3: much more efficient convenient way to access something like bitcoin.
Speaker 5: And for some of our clients who are now.
Speaker 3: Crypto fluent or they're active in digital asset world and
Speaker 3: they're used to blockchain wallets and settling on chain, they
Speaker 3: love the idea of having a black rock fund that
Speaker 3: is digitally native, instantly transferable, et cetera. So both are
Speaker 3: happening in parallel, and perhaps one day we see a
Speaker 3: convergence that's the best of both, but I think that's
Speaker 3: a long way off.
Speaker 6: We're coming up on a deadline for some spot theorerem ETFs.
Speaker 6: You guys have an active filing, but what are the
Speaker 6: prospects internally. Do you think we're going to get an
Speaker 6: ethereum spot ETF.
Speaker 5: Given it's an active perspectus, I can't comment.
Speaker 2: If they don't get approved, there'll be five hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy five and two approvals. That's it, look it, hey, man, here's.
Speaker 5: Sure it's never come up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: People were like, BlackRock's not going to file if they
Speaker 6: think they could get denied. In my mind, I was like,
Speaker 6: Blackrock doesn't care well if they get denied in their
Speaker 6: record is they're trying to get it approved. Do you
Speaker 6: guys talk about the idea like, we can't tarnish our record.
Speaker 5: We're a lot more focused on the client out.
Speaker 2: The number out there, which Fox never gave me credit.
Speaker 2: But that's okay. Yeah, But it wasn't to say they're
Speaker 2: focused on it was just to say this is how
Speaker 2: powerful and not messing around this company is, right. That
Speaker 2: is some record right speaking of that, like the in
Speaker 2: kind versus cash creations, just to get wonky in kind
Speaker 2: would be ideal for the industry, but SEC would only
Speaker 2: allow cash creations for these spot ETFs. Looks like they're
Speaker 2: doing fine. It wasn't a big deal, but I know
Speaker 2: in kind is what you wanted and others you didn't
Speaker 2: get it, which proves that Blackrock isn't dictating things. Do
Speaker 2: we think do you think we'll get in kind in
Speaker 2: the next year or two?
Speaker 3: I hope at some point our views on it were
Speaker 3: all public in the SEC discussions that we had with
Speaker 3: them on it. And ultimately what we're focused on is
Speaker 3: it's even more from a market structure perspective, better for
Speaker 3: investors that way. And there are a lot of clients,
Speaker 3: frankly who have large Bitcoin positions and they would like
Speaker 3: to hold some or all of that in an ETF,
Speaker 3: but without in kind, they would have to incur a
Speaker 3: tax realization, and so there's some eagerness from those folks
Speaker 3: to have that.
Speaker 6: Crenshaw, who's one of the commissioners, was the I've heard
Speaker 6: is the driving force behind us having castreats and not
Speaker 6: having in kind.
Speaker 1: Who's a Democratic commissioner.
Speaker 6: So depending on what happens in November with the election,
Speaker 6: like all these questions could be completely different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could be moot because I think.
Speaker 6: A Republican administration will be much more amenable to in
Speaker 6: kind transactions.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about yourself through this?
Speaker 3: I was expecting that one. Now, I think that so
Speaker 3: patience was not something that I would say I necessarily
Speaker 3: have a lot of, but I have maybe a little
Speaker 3: bit more than I thought I didn't. I think that
Speaker 3: for big things to happen in an industry, you have
Speaker 3: to be very patient.
Speaker 5: Right, These things take time.
Speaker 3: Obviously, you know, the digital asset space has had a
Speaker 3: pretty seismic shift over the last decade. But in any
Speaker 3: given year, people might have said, oh, this is all
Speaker 3: not happening fast enough. And if we look back on
Speaker 3: where we've come as an industry and as a firm.
Speaker 5: You know what we've been able to do. I think
Speaker 5: it's actually pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Capital one question, what's in your crypto wallet?
Speaker 5: Oh? Boy, there's obviously some bitcoin there.
Speaker 1: Is it? Or bitcoin?
Speaker 5: It's both?
Speaker 1: Okay, it's both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some eat there. And what's in beyond that?
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say, probably for the best not
Speaker 3: to answer.
Speaker 2: The rest of any XRP people are the craziest.
Speaker 1: Can we agree on that?
Speaker 5: Yes, no comment.
Speaker 2: When they put that foge XRP thing out and I said,
Speaker 2: I called you guys, and they said this is not true.
Speaker 2: I said, it's not true. The price went down to
Speaker 2: normal again, and for a week they just dragged me.
Speaker 2: They were like this suiting. It was longer than a yeah,
Speaker 2: they refused to.
Speaker 3: I mean that there are some pretty intense elements to
Speaker 3: a lot of these token fan bases.
Speaker 5: That's not just XRP.
Speaker 1: All right, And then we got to talk about the
Speaker 1: ticker for a second. We always asked at the end
Speaker 1: of the show, is what's your favorite ETF ticker other
Speaker 1: than your own? I bet also pretty good. I want
Speaker 1: to ask if there was any other tickers that were
Speaker 1: in consideration that Black Rock.
Speaker 5: Well, you hated the ticker, Eric, the first you dragged us.
Speaker 2: I bit was fine. The first one was not going
Speaker 2: to save as a BONDIETF in Europe. It was like IBTC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's too many consonants.
Speaker 2: You gotta have a vowel in there, man, it's like
Speaker 2: a fortune. Give me a vowel and you can make
Speaker 2: it a verb and it's even better.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I would say, I don't know. I so
Speaker 3: I grew up in Toronto and I gotta go with
Speaker 3: cow and MoU. Yeah, it just good ones cows one
Speaker 3: of ours. Moo is a van Eklin. But you know,
Speaker 3: my cousin's growing up north of the city. They had
Speaker 3: had this great farm and they raised cows. You know,
Speaker 3: had fun hanging out up there and have a lot
Speaker 3: of fun memories, all right.
Speaker 1: Robbie Minchick of Blackrock, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you, this is fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can
Speaker 1: find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We're on Twitter. I'm at Joel Webber Show.
Speaker 1: He's at Eric Altuna's. This episode of Trillions was produced
Speaker 1: by Magnus Hendrickson. Bye