Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Allowait. Tracy, did you
Speaker 1: like it the other day when you tweeted something and
Speaker 1: then I just stole your idea and wrote about it
Speaker 1: in a newsletter. I wasn't actually trying to insinuate that, Joe.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was funny. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a mind meld from like three thousand miles away. I'm
Speaker 1: not that arrogant that I would have assumed that you
Speaker 1: had actually read my tweet, given that I think I
Speaker 1: tweeted it at like midnight your time in New York.
Speaker 1: I do miss a lot of your tweets because we're
Speaker 1: on such a different time zones. But for those who
Speaker 1: are listening and don't know the context behind it, it
Speaker 1: was a very interesting story in the crypto world this
Speaker 1: week where a major exchange, major crypto exchange called ben Aunts,
Speaker 1: they delisted a coin, causing the price of that coin
Speaker 1: to fall, and it raises all kinds of questions about
Speaker 1: who really holds power in the crypto world and questions
Speaker 1: about decentralization and centralized because how decentralized can any anything be?
Speaker 1: If one exchange can come along and say no, we're
Speaker 1: not trading you anymore, and then the price plummets. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Tracy tweeted about this conundrum. I had written about it
Speaker 1: in a newsletter, and I swear I didn't. I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen Tracy's tweet, but she called me out for stealing
Speaker 1: her ideas. No, I didn't call you out. I complimented
Speaker 1: you on having the exact same idea as me. No. Look,
Speaker 1: I think the reason why I was actually thinking about
Speaker 1: it was because it reminded me of an old Odd
Speaker 1: Thoughts episode, And I think it was actually the episode
Speaker 1: where you were talking about your experience inventing a cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: and what you learned from that whole uh saga, I guess.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you pointed out then
Speaker 1: was you thought one of the reasons that the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: didn't actually take off was because it didn't get picked
Speaker 1: up by any major exchanges, and without exchange participation, you
Speaker 1: couldn't have pricing transparency and no one could really get
Speaker 1: on board with it. So over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: I think we've really seen the importance of exchanges when
Speaker 1: it comes to crypto. For what is worth. My cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: that I started with a friend several years ago failed
Speaker 1: for many more reasons. Uh that just that many more,
Speaker 1: including the fact that we never really took the project
Speaker 1: that seriously to begin with, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: a joke. Nonetheless, that was one of numerous issues that
Speaker 1: we faced anyway, the power of exchanges. It just one
Speaker 1: of obviously many interesting questions that arise in market structure,
Speaker 1: and we've been talking a lot about market structure on
Speaker 1: the show recently. We recently did one about bond market structure. Obviously,
Speaker 1: crypto market structure just like crypto itself in its very
Speaker 1: early days. Nonetheless, people are trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: it's going to look like. So I think this should
Speaker 1: be an interesting conversation today because we are going to
Speaker 1: be talking to someone in that field who's trying to
Speaker 1: figure out and maybe we'll learn something about where the structure,
Speaker 1: how market structure works today and then ultimately where it's
Speaker 1: going in this space. All Right, I'm intrigued. Who do
Speaker 1: we have today? We're going to be talking to Alex
Speaker 1: Gordon Brander. He's the founder of Omega one. He's formerly
Speaker 1: of Bridgewater. He's building a dark pool for crypto. So, Alex,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us, Good morning, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me here today. What is Omega one and
Speaker 1: how did you decide to launch it or what did
Speaker 1: you see as the opportunity So Omega one, our first
Speaker 1: offering is Omega Dock, which is a regulated institutional dock
Speaker 1: pool for digital as steps. So let me just break
Speaker 1: that down digital ass sets, meaning initially crypto and bitcoin,
Speaker 1: but we also have our eye on the future where
Speaker 1: we see stock spawns, real estate and currencies all moving
Speaker 1: over into this digital environment. Dark pool we can talk
Speaker 1: a bit more about for your listeners that don't know,
Speaker 1: but as a particular kind of market microstructure or trading
Speaker 1: venue that allows large orders to be placed in volatile
Speaker 1: markets without moving the markets and brings stability to market
Speaker 1: places and then regulated obviously we'll talk about what that means.
Speaker 1: So how did I come about doing this? So when
Speaker 1: I was at Bridgewater, I had the job of figuring
Speaker 1: out how to build a next generation trading platform that
Speaker 1: allowed very very large volumes of f X to get
Speaker 1: traded in a way they didn't push the market around.
Speaker 1: When I started first really getting deep into crypto in
Speaker 1: and made small, little trades of a few thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on exchanges. I was shocked to see the same kind
Speaker 1: of behavior that I was seeing when we were moving
Speaker 1: around billions of dollars in FX and allies that the
Speaker 1: market microstructures in crypto needed a lot of help to
Speaker 1: be able to build the kind of liquidity that was
Speaker 1: required to then have this sort of flow of money
Speaker 1: from the old world into the new. So that that's
Speaker 1: what got me going. So, Alex, can you talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about why the crypto market
Speaker 1: in its current existence or its current form is actually
Speaker 1: a liquid because we hear all these stories about, you know,
Speaker 1: even small trades having an outsized impact on the market,
Speaker 1: But we also hear a lot about bitcoin whales, people
Speaker 1: with big positions or who make big trades who are
Speaker 1: able to really really move the market. Why is does
Speaker 1: this seem to be such a problem in crypto? So
Speaker 1: I think there's probably three different causes root causes behind that.
Speaker 1: One is simply immaturity that you know, markets are ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and if you leave the ecosystem for a while, different
Speaker 1: kinds of sort of herbivores and carnivores and different kinds
Speaker 1: of beasts enter the ecosystem and end up creating this
Speaker 1: sort of efficient landscape of trading, and in crypto, they
Speaker 1: just hasn't been that long for you know, the agency
Speaker 1: brokers and market makers and OTC desk and all these
Speaker 1: to really develop the tight web of inter relationships that
Speaker 1: they have in other markets. So there's a there's an
Speaker 1: immaturity piece. There's also, i think a more interesting thing,
Speaker 1: which is crypto as a market that started off in
Speaker 1: the retail world, and most of all the other asset
Speaker 1: classes that we know started institutional and moved retail, and
Speaker 1: this thing started retail and at a time when there's
Speaker 1: a really low barrier to entry for creating exchanges and
Speaker 1: platforms that also never existed in previous asset classes. And
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people who made a bunch
Speaker 1: of money from being early adopters who then had, you know,
Speaker 1: the confidence to start up venues. So you have a
Speaker 1: very road set of people coming from very different places
Speaker 1: entering in and becoming players in this market. Again, so
Speaker 1: that's just a different kind of starting point than in
Speaker 1: than in traditional assets. And the third main thing is
Speaker 1: regulation and compliance, which is what causes a lot of
Speaker 1: harmonization in the other markets. So here's what my initial thought.
Speaker 1: And obviously we can't talk about Omega one and specifically
Speaker 1: how you're trying to solve this problem. But when I
Speaker 1: hear like about, okay, there's going to be a dark
Speaker 1: pool for crypto, my first thought is, isn't this kind
Speaker 1: of premature because have we still even gotten to the
Speaker 1: stage where we know institutions actually have any interest in
Speaker 1: this at all, let alone some sort of like sophisticated
Speaker 1: modern trading environment that we think is applicable to much
Speaker 1: bigger markets. I would turn that around and say that
Speaker 1: a lot of the larger institutions that we talked to
Speaker 1: have a great deal of interest and entering the markets,
Speaker 1: and then are held back by the lack of regulatory, compliant,
Speaker 1: secure and liquid solutions to trade on. So it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a chicken egg problem here. It's also
Speaker 1: the case that although everyone says price action doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: pushing into the marketplace who at least probably held back
Speaker 1: on pushing their bosses and compliance departments for approval while
Speaker 1: the while the price was falling like a knife last year.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we've hit the floor, and we're
Speaker 1: turning on that front, and that is going to make
Speaker 1: a difference to institutional interest because you know, the institutions
Speaker 1: are primarily driven by the family offices and you know
Speaker 1: an asset owners who are seeing the price rises and
Speaker 1: now again wanting to get back into the asset class.
Speaker 1: So when I hear dark pool for crypto, I have
Speaker 1: a slightly different initial reaction, which is if you think
Speaker 1: that one of the issues are one of the major
Speaker 1: criticisms of the crypto market as it exists right now
Speaker 1: is a lack of transparency. You know, people talk about
Speaker 1: the sort of murky world of crypto trading and various
Speaker 1: exchanges um that possibly engage in uh sort of sketchy practices,
Speaker 1: maybe order inflation, that sort of thing. And then you
Speaker 1: think about dark pools, which you know it's died down
Speaker 1: a little bit, but at one point a few years ago,
Speaker 1: dark pools had a terrible reputation and we're sort of
Speaker 1: viewed again as these murky private exchanges where no one
Speaker 1: knew what was going on and there was all this
Speaker 1: predatory pricing. Michael Lewis basically wrote an entire book about this.
Speaker 1: How are dark pools going to benefit the crypto market,
Speaker 1: given that one of the major criticisms has actually been
Speaker 1: a lack of transparency. That's a great question, and I
Speaker 1: think what we need to do to answer that is
Speaker 1: look at what he is dark and what isn't. So
Speaker 1: there's you know, it's it's a little bit cheesy, but
Speaker 1: we use the phrase we're bringing dark pools into the
Speaker 1: light because what we're actually doing is, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: we're bringing dark pools into the crypto asset class. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, we're bringing some technologies from crypto and
Speaker 1: blockchain into dark pools that actually increase the transparency. So
Speaker 1: what we see in you know, the actual blockchain transactions
Speaker 1: and more transparent than anything else. We can all see
Speaker 1: what all of the bitcoin transactions are. It's what's going
Speaker 1: on off chain in the sort of the murky world
Speaker 1: of the exchanges and bots, which agree is, you know,
Speaker 1: there are some real issues there. So we have one
Speaker 1: major innovation that we have that no dark pool inequities has,
Speaker 1: which is that the pricing of access to liquidity on
Speaker 1: the dark pool is going to be mediated by a
Speaker 1: token that is public, clear and transparent. So Bart Chiltern,
Speaker 1: who's one of our Advisors has been one of the
Speaker 1: guys who's railed against the sort of h f T
Speaker 1: dark pool alliances where you know, there's these under the
Speaker 1: table contracts where high frequency trading firms get their own
Speaker 1: order types and essentially get to predate on other clients
Speaker 1: the dark pools in a non transparent way. All of
Speaker 1: our market microstructure is public, transparent, is going to be audited.
Speaker 1: We're working on a big four audit contracts, so actually
Speaker 1: the pricing, the mechanics, and then even the trades afterwards
Speaker 1: are going to be printed onto a blockchain. So we're
Speaker 1: bringing a lot of transparency. So what is the ent
Speaker 1: what's the dark part? So the dark part is if
Speaker 1: you right now want to buy ten million dollars a
Speaker 1: bitcoin and you announce that intention to the marketplace, you're
Speaker 1: going to have your face ripped off because you go
Speaker 1: and you put that on an order and put that
Speaker 1: order on exchange and just rest everyone's going to see
Speaker 1: that order and the price is going to move away
Speaker 1: from you. God help you actually try to buy that
Speaker 1: ten million dollars a bitcoin on the marketplace, you're going
Speaker 1: to eat up liquidity that's going to move the market.
Speaker 1: Then all the bots are going to get freaked out,
Speaker 1: and by the time you bought your ten million dollars,
Speaker 1: the prices move like five seven percent. You've paid basically
Speaker 1: three or four percent in slippage costs, and the fact
Speaker 1: that you paid ten basis points or twenty basis points
Speaker 1: and fees on the exchange, you're paying eighty times that
Speaker 1: much in terms of how much you're moving the market.
Speaker 1: So that's the key thing. But a dark pool changes
Speaker 1: is it allows you to put that ten million dollar
Speaker 1: ordering in a discrete way and it gets done at
Speaker 1: the market mid price, and every trade gets done at
Speaker 1: the mid rather than moving out. No I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're plausing because people at home can't see it.
Speaker 1: But I'm making a weird of making like a skeptical phase.
Speaker 1: I'm just still trying to figure out how fundamentally the
Speaker 1: ten million dollar purchase of let's say it's a bitcoin,
Speaker 1: even if done on a dark pool or in a
Speaker 1: dark pool, doesn't have the same issue run into the
Speaker 1: same issue of eating up the existing liquidity because in
Speaker 1: the end, you know, there's only so much people at
Speaker 1: any given moment are selling it x Right, maybe this
Speaker 1: is a dumb guy I'm just like, if everyone is
Speaker 1: buying and nobody is selling, a dark pool isn't going
Speaker 1: to magically create sellers. But if there are people who
Speaker 1: have buying intentions that they don't want to reveal because
Speaker 1: they're afraid they'll move the market away from them, and
Speaker 1: people have selling intentions they don't want to reveal, and
Speaker 1: they're both nibbling around the edges, and we give an
Speaker 1: opportunity for them to meet because they know they're going
Speaker 1: to meet at the fair market mid price, that enables
Speaker 1: both of them to come out. Now, if twice as
Speaker 1: many people are buying as are selling, the price is
Speaker 1: still going to be moving up in the marketplace, and
Speaker 1: you know, the sellers are all going to get fed
Speaker 1: on on our side, and the buyers are still gonna
Speaker 1: be waiting for more sellers. But it's a it still
Speaker 1: has a stabilizing action on the market compared to just
Speaker 1: putting that order on analytics change. There's a key concept here,
Speaker 1: which is when I say the mid price, what do
Speaker 1: we mean by that? Who's mid price? So any dark
Speaker 1: pool needs to have an external price reference set because
Speaker 1: it's not doing the price discovery with the lit orders,
Speaker 1: So you know where do we get that external price from?
Speaker 1: And that's a that's a really interesting question to dig into.
Speaker 1: Now we've looked at what the top fifty exchanges. We
Speaker 1: looked at that bit wise report about how much of
Speaker 1: the exchange volume was faked, and that was roughly in
Speaker 1: line with our own analysis on this. So when you
Speaker 1: look at the vast wealth of lit exchanges, you say,
Speaker 1: where can we actually get a trustable price from. There's
Speaker 1: actually only a few of those LIT exchanges that you know,
Speaker 1: we feel are trustable for providing a mid price. So
Speaker 1: what we're doing is actually UM working with a partner
Speaker 1: to get pricing from all of the OTC in the
Speaker 1: market maker desks, so we have a true price that
Speaker 1: represents the broad set of liquidity in the whole bitcoin market.
Speaker 1: And once that price is clear and being sort of
Speaker 1: communicated out on the exchange and just inviting people to
Speaker 1: meet at that midpoint, that will have an anchoring, stabilizing
Speaker 1: effect on the overall marketplace. That's really interesting out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: how different is that sort of true mid price to
Speaker 1: some of the prices being reported on the exchanges, Like
Speaker 1: how much of a gap is there between the two
Speaker 1: that you've seen so far. Yeah, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: great question. If you look at the equity dark pools,
Speaker 1: it's really simple. There's a national best bid, there's a
Speaker 1: national best offer, and the dark pool goes and mids
Speaker 1: between the two of those, and there's you know, fiber
Speaker 1: optic pipes and microwaves wiring everything together and it's all
Speaker 1: clean and in crypto. You can see fifty dollar differences
Speaker 1: between the mid of the order books on some of
Speaker 1: these exchanges, and so you occasionally have definitely edged discrepancies
Speaker 1: with wanted to exchanges that can be as much as
Speaker 1: fifty or hundred bucks from what is sort of the
Speaker 1: true weighted mid price. Those often don't tend to be
Speaker 1: really there if you try to trade those orders, or
Speaker 1: there's just kind of a few dollars there and everything fades.
Speaker 1: But the data field, the market data field, is much
Speaker 1: fuzzier and crypto than it is in FX or equities. So,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned um and really with all kinds of networks,
Speaker 1: but there's a chicken and egg problem with all this stuff.
Speaker 1: How do you you know, ultimately you can have great technology,
Speaker 1: but if nobody shows up to your exchange, then there
Speaker 1: isn't going to be a whole lot of liquidity, even
Speaker 1: in the best scenarios. So how do you plan to
Speaker 1: solve that? Because there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: trying to work on the institutional aspect of crypto in
Speaker 1: one way or another, whether it's on custodio solutions or exchanges,
Speaker 1: and you have the legacy it's funny to call them legacy,
Speaker 1: but you know the the legacy players like coin base,
Speaker 1: so they're trying to make a big push into institutional trading.
Speaker 1: How do you plan it can only it can only
Speaker 1: be so fragmented before there's no liquidity anywhere, Someone or
Speaker 1: a few players have to really dominate. So how do
Speaker 1: you convince different entities of which there still aren't very many,
Speaker 1: to coalesce around your platform. Number One, there's a minimum
Speaker 1: ba of the regulatory and security and all of those
Speaker 1: things the one needs to have to be entering into
Speaker 1: that conversation. And once you actually really look away that
Speaker 1: minimum barries, you've cut yourself down to a handful of players,
Speaker 1: most of you don't even have product out that can
Speaker 1: operate at that level. And then from that point onwards,
Speaker 1: there's two things, at least from how we look at it.
Speaker 1: One is we have a unique offering that is not
Speaker 1: actually competitive to the likes of a coin base or
Speaker 1: a backed or an aeros x or an el max.
Speaker 1: We're actually talking to those parties because each of them
Speaker 1: will have excess beard or awful liquidity, and they may
Speaker 1: have market making operations or OTC desks that will want
Speaker 1: to have the opportunity to access mid price liquidity through
Speaker 1: through our platform. So one having a different offering that
Speaker 1: actually offers something to all of those players as well
Speaker 1: as to the end institutions. Two by kind of being
Speaker 1: adults and professionals, and that filters things down some I
Speaker 1: hate to say, although not as much as it used to.
Speaker 1: And then thirdly, and this is where it's a it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more creative. We are. We have a
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency token ourselves, and that token is something that we've
Speaker 1: designed to um build the network effects on the platform,
Speaker 1: to reward people for early participation, and to kind of
Speaker 1: price the access to liquidity on the platform. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that the business isn't sort of built
Speaker 1: around it. A lot of crypto tokens rely on the
Speaker 1: token itself to create the network effects, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of an accelerant for those network effects. So, Alex, I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you make decisions about which cryptocurrencies or assets
Speaker 1: to actually provide trading for on your platform. And this
Speaker 1: sort of touches a little bit on Joe's totally original
Speaker 1: observation about Bitcoin SV, this sort of offshoot of bitcoin
Speaker 1: cash um that Finance decided to delist recently. You know,
Speaker 1: they said they weren't comfortable with the cryptocurrency for various reasons.
Speaker 1: And again, I wonder like what sort of factor as
Speaker 1: would go into your decision making process about which crypto
Speaker 1: or what type of crypto trading to provide. So the
Speaker 1: first thing is, we're only going to be offering where
Speaker 1: there's already sufficient liquidity in the marketplace for our offering
Speaker 1: to make sense. So you know, we're starting off with
Speaker 1: bitcoin only when we launch, and we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing probably not more than the top ten cryptos for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. You know, we're not the folks who
Speaker 1: list two hundred and fifty four hundred different coins. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the Bermuda Monetary Authority, it is probably a good moment
Speaker 1: to just talk about Bermuda here. So the Bermuda Montory
Speaker 1: Authority is and our view the leading jurisdiction for regulating
Speaker 1: digital assets, and they have a pretty clear framework for
Speaker 1: looking at what coins can be listed on a registered exchange.
Speaker 1: For instance, we're steering clear privacy coins because that makes
Speaker 1: it very hard for us to do the A M
Speaker 1: L K ye see that we need to do. You know,
Speaker 1: there are there are coins which have reputational issues that
Speaker 1: we talked to the to the b m A about.
Speaker 1: Uh so where do you see this all going? And
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the beginning that you're gonna start with
Speaker 1: sort of what we know is cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and so on,
Speaker 1: but then you also mentioned like other types of assets
Speaker 1: that will be like traded as digital currencies. And I
Speaker 1: hear people talk about this stuff and the idea of
Speaker 1: like token izing equity or token izing bons or real
Speaker 1: estate and being some sort of crypto token, and I
Speaker 1: still don't understand why that is an improvement or why
Speaker 1: that is a why that would represent an innovation. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious in your view, like what the roadmap for
Speaker 1: all this in terms of what actually is going to
Speaker 1: be traded in this way. So yes, I do think
Speaker 1: that all asset classes are going to be traded on
Speaker 1: a blockchain, as digital assets, and that the efficiency gains
Speaker 1: of near immediate settlement and all of the interoperability of
Speaker 1: blockchains will make a difference. They're not making enough of
Speaker 1: the difference today to overwhelm the liquidity barriers and other issues.
Speaker 1: But where is it gonna go? Like, I just want
Speaker 1: to push it back or my my when you say
Speaker 1: that these efficiency gains, because we've had several discussions with people,
Speaker 1: and one of the consistent themes when we talk about
Speaker 1: crypto currencies or blockchain whatever is that it's not efficient,
Speaker 1: that's actually highly inefficient, and that traditional databases are far faster,
Speaker 1: are far less computationally intensive, are far less energy intensive,
Speaker 1: and that blockchains are basically these very clugi costly systems
Speaker 1: that are good for a narrow purpose. So you when
Speaker 1: you talk about efficiency gains and those efficiency gains driving
Speaker 1: more assets to be traded in this manner, that's like
Speaker 1: the part I'm struggling to understand. So the efficiency is
Speaker 1: absolutely not but it's more computationally efficient than doing things
Speaker 1: in a centralized way. The efficiency comes from the one
Speaker 1: thing that blockchains are good at, which is giving everybody
Speaker 1: around the world or everybody in the network the same
Speaker 1: picture of what's going on consistently and coherently across the
Speaker 1: whole network. So when you look at equity trading, for instance,
Speaker 1: that the nanosecond level trading of equities is highly efficient.
Speaker 1: You're not going to replace that by making it be
Speaker 1: traded on a blockchain. But the back end of that
Speaker 1: equity trading there's still you know, stock certificates in dtc C.
Speaker 1: There are cases you see where companies have a hundred
Speaker 1: and five percent proxies because nobody is adding up the
Speaker 1: shareholding of the companies. There's a huge amount of inefficiency
Speaker 1: in the layers underneath trading, which is why it still
Speaker 1: takes two or three days to even settle transactions, even
Speaker 1: though the trades are taking place in nanoseconds. So it's
Speaker 1: more in having a coherent global ledger of who owns
Speaker 1: what that everyone can trust, which, especially in emerging markets
Speaker 1: where there isn't even good title to land and things,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of the world's population
Speaker 1: who don't even have identity in the traditional way, you
Speaker 1: can make massive differences on that level. And then in
Speaker 1: the more sort of industrialized capital markets, it's about having
Speaker 1: a clear common settlement layer and then building a new
Speaker 1: trade layer on top of that. Well, Alex Gilordan Brander
Speaker 1: really appreciate you coming on. Fascinating and I'm really looking
Speaker 1: forward to watching where Omega one goes and just the
Speaker 1: general landscape because obviously, like since the end of ten
Speaker 1: when the bubble peak, there was like so much hype
Speaker 1: and enthusiasm about the institutional money coming in and then
Speaker 1: the market flopped, and I'm still like sort of curious
Speaker 1: where it's all happening. So we'll see if it eventually arrives. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean it's um, it's definitely different being a crypt
Speaker 1: a company in winter and it was in summer. I
Speaker 1: think shoots of spring are coming through right now, and
Speaker 1: the good news is it's cleared a lot of the
Speaker 1: noise and scanners and hucksters out of the space and
Speaker 1: you know, a strong survive. All right, Well, we'll have
Speaker 1: you back in a couple of years and we'll see
Speaker 1: how it all I've developed. Thank you very much, Thank you, Tracy.
Speaker 1: I'm really enjoying all of the market structure talk that
Speaker 1: we've been doing on I'm serious, No, I am too,
Speaker 1: uh corporate bomb, market structure and now a crypto structure.
Speaker 1: It's great. I did think. I mean, it's slightly ironic
Speaker 1: Alex's last point about green shoots coming through now. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that seems to have
Speaker 1: the crypto community feeling a bit better lately is the
Speaker 1: fact that bitcoin has popped for five thousand dollars per
Speaker 1: coin once again. But the irony comes through that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are saying that that pop was actually
Speaker 1: because of one trade that probably moved the entire market.
Speaker 1: So the illiquidity in this one instance seems to actually
Speaker 1: have benefited the crypto market. And I keep thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: going back to my initial question to Alex, because still,
Speaker 1: like when I hear like dark pools for crypto, like
Speaker 1: this is such a new space, Like isn't there still
Speaker 1: just an issue of anyone even like caring about this
Speaker 1: or being sure that this will be around. But I guess,
Speaker 1: like ultimately it is a chicken egg thing, and you
Speaker 1: know you can't have uh, you know, institutions aren't going
Speaker 1: to be interested in entering the space unless they're good tools.
Speaker 1: And the good tools won't be used unless there's actual
Speaker 1: institutional interest. So someone's got to build this stuff. If
Speaker 1: you build it, they might come. I guess we only
Speaker 1: have to wait. Uh, they might a couple of years
Speaker 1: to find out. This has been another episode of the
Speaker 1: Odd Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe wisn'hal. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart and follow
Speaker 1: Alex on Twitter at Alex Omega One Project. And you
Speaker 1: should follow our producer on Twitter. He's toe for four heads.
Speaker 1: He's at four heads t uh. And I want to
Speaker 1: thank our new producer who will be taking over the reins,
Speaker 1: Laura Carlson. She's on Twitter at Laura M. Carlson. And
Speaker 1: don't forget to follow Bloomberg's head of podcast, Francesca Levie
Speaker 1: at Francesca Today. Thanks for listening.