WEBVTT - Crypto Coverage Explained 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.239 Hello, and welcome to What Goes Up a weekly markets podcast. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.840 My name is Mike Reagan. I'm a senior editor at 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.000 Bloomberg and I'm Aldana Higher Across Acid reporter at Bloomberg. 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.160 And this week on the show, well, we didn't see 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.200 this coming, but turned out to be the year when 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.400 the crazy things we normally talked about at the end 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:33.800 of the podcast turned into the things we talked about 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.680 during the serious part of the show too, with crypto 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.040 executives being called before Congress, tokens that started out as 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.479 jokes skyrocketing to tens of billions of dollars in value, 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:46.600 n f t s of board apes selling for millions 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:50.199 of dollars, coin based, going public, you name it. It 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.080 was hard to avoid the crypto headlines this year and 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.120 wonder what it all means going forward. We're gonna talk 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.440 to the woman leading Bloomberg's coverage of it all about 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:00.960 what a wild year was and what's a lookout for 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.000 in two And speaking of crazy and wild things, are 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.080 operators are standing by to take your crazy things. So 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.399 if anybody saw something that they wanted to flag or 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.200 wanted to let us know about, you can call us 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.360 on the crazy things hotline. That's six four six three 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:20.399 two four three four zero. Leave us a voicemail. Maybe 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:22.480 we'll play it on the show. And as always, you 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.480 can always tweet at us as well. But first I 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.680 want to bring in Stacy Marie Ishmael. She's the managing 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.160 editor for Crypto at Bloomberg. Welcome to the show. Hi, 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:35.440 thanks so much for having me. Stacy also my neighbor 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.000 in the office. Although I'm getting kicked out of that 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:42.640 row about kicked out. They're moving me closer to the 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:44.720 men's room, which for a guy my agees is a 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:48.280 good it's an upgrade, So I'll take let's Stacy, I 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.400 just want you to tell the listeners a little bit 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.600 about yourself. I mean, how does such a nice, smart, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.280 level headed woman, what career path takes her into this 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.720 crazy world of crypto that you found yourself in. Give 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.240 us sort of your your your resume in a nutshell here. Sure. So, 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.480 I'm a person who has bounced between technology and media 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.560 for a long long time, and my very first job 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.680 in journalism as a kind of a baby reporter, was 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:17.359 covering structured finance credit to false swaps and derivatives from 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.799 two thousands sticks to two thousand nine, which you know, 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.960 it was an interesting time for a baby reporter. While yeah, 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:26.920 it was, you know, it's what you do. Um you 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:28.960 sort of get you get thrown into the deep end. 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:32.400 You start writing these stories about market in disease of 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.560 credit to false swaps that seven people read, and then 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.280 for lots of different subprime and housing related reasons six 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:41.480 months later that everybody in the whole country in the 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.960 world are reading. So, you know, I come at finance 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.320 from this perspective of what goes up must go down, 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.600 But sometimes it goes sideways, and you don't always understand 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:57.280 what the structural transmission mechanisms might be. Something that looks 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.400 totally un correlated actually turns out to be a hundred 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.639 percent correlated with something else. And that's a perspective that 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:07.080 I found really helpful in in crypto, where you have 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:11.200 to both take it I suppose seriously but not literally 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:14.560 when when you're thinking about these things. And I also 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.200 have you know, a technology background of workers technology companies. 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.200 I have more kind of technical skills. I know, I 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.920 know enough programming and codes be dangerous, which has also 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.720 come in really handy from the perspective of evaluating on 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.160 understanding some of the white papers in crypto about like 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:33.880 why you should trust this OME token, or just on 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.440 understanding how disruptive some of the conversations that we're having 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:41.720 about the underpinnings of blockchain can be for the rest 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.040 of the sector. So just to start out really broadly speaking, 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.400 I know you wrote an article for Bloomberg recently. It's 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.800 titled Wall Street Finally Learned it Can't ignore Crypto and 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:54.240 n f T S. So I was hoping we could 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.640 start out with you just sort of talking about the 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.640 year in crypto. It seems like the big theme was 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.480 street acceptance. We heard that over and udging or otherwise, 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.200 right exactly, So maybe can you later lay that out 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.160 for us and what some of those factors were and 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:15.840 why that is important for the crypto community. Three three 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:19.040 good questions at once. Okay, So I'll start with what 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.000 what happened? Right, which is if you think back to 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.440 you know, millions of years ago in January one, when 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.680 so much of the conversation about crypto was tied up 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.280 in scams, fraud and ransomware, right, if you were if 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.120 you were talking about bitcoin, you were talking about how 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:41.360 somebody lost all of this and you know, I think 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:43.839 that that really had set been the tone and set 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.080 the tone for all but the truest of believers for 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.240 quite a long time. I think there are a lot 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.200 of media companies, Bloomberg included, that had much more sophisticated 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:54.960 coverage of crypto than just it's all scams all the time. 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:56.640 But you know, if you were to ask a person 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:59.080 on the street, odds are that if they had heard 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.719 about it, they either thought it was totally sketchy or 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.320 they also were like Team by Gold, you know, high, 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:08.040 high guns and in basement kind of kind of stereotype. 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.480 And then a few things happened all at once, right, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.839 which is that you had the beginnings of fairly significant 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.239 price appreciation because coin base went public and coin based 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:26.880 being this major major exchange and hopefully helped well, I 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:28.640 think the people who were backing it, who helped hope 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.000 that it would help institutionalize the idea of this is 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.080 something that you can take seriously. Look it's it's serious 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.719 enough for this to be part of the public markets. 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.960 And that was in kind of March April, those conversations 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:42.839 were happening, and you you started to see that first 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.800 run up in prices. I would also say that right 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:52.720 around that time, when some of the buzz around meme 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:55.360 stocks was kind of hitting its peak, there was a 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.000 lot of overlap between people who were spending a lot 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.200 of time on Reddit forums talking about its etcetera. With 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:03.240 people who are spending a lot of time in Discord 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.719 talking about different crypto tokens. And I have what I 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.919 sometimes call my unified unified theory of crypto, which is 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:15.320 that it's roughly the same groups of folks who are 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:22.520 interested in sports, betting, poker, video games, n f t S, 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:28.480 Wall Street Bets, Discord, Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube. And not 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.160 everybody is part of every single one of those communities, 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:33.080 but chances are that if you belong to any one 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:36.800 of them, you are adjacent to people who belong to 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:38.800 the others. And I think there was a lot of 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.840 interesting overlap and conversation between some of the folks who 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.839 were like die hard on meme stocks and you know, 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.080 trading those in robin hood with people who were like, hey, 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.080 have you heard about the theory um maybe you should, 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.560 maybe you should add that to your portfolio. And this 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:55.279 is kind of what I mean about when you you 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:57.599 have to say crypto seriously but not always literally, which 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.400 is like you you wouldn't look back and say, Okay, 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.680 Wall Street now has to take crypto seriously because of 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.680 Wall Street bets. But you could also say one of 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:07.960 the reasons that Wall Street is taking crypto seriously is 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:12.760 because another thing that was driving material performance and markets 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:18.400 from the equities perspective, there were similar trends driving material 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:22.680 performance in crypto, you know, a totally different asset class. 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.040 And then, of course, I think one of the biggest 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.480 things that happened, and they happened within not too far 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.880 apart from each other, is al Salvador was like we're 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.760 all in on bitcoin, and China was like bitcoing completely legal, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:39.120 and you had these totally different approaches to the asset 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.000 class that had you know, some interesting ripple effects, right, 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:44.640 which is one folks were like, well, if this is 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.640 serious enough for an entire country to ban it, and 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:49.960 it's also seriously enough for an entire country to go 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.520 all in on on bitcoin, perhaps we should pay more attention. Right. So, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.880 whether you were pro or con the fact that this 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.600 asset class had is into sovereign attention as it were, 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.880 was I think another marker for folks that Okay, they 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:07.440 can't just be like la la la, I don't know 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:09.840 what's going on here. They really need to engage with 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.360 it in a serious way. So if your portfolio included 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:17.840 emerging market exposure of any kind, or your portfolio included TESLA, 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.400 or it included micro strategy, you know you were suddenly 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.000 having to be way more up to speed on Bitcoin 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.560 than you were maybe comfortable with or even aware of. Right, 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:31.560 so all of all of this is happening in a 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:33.720 very short amount of time. You know, we we kind 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:35.280 of go from like, ah, this is all bad and 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.480 ran somewhere to like WHOA, I need to I need 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.280 to understand this better. And then you have this incredible 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.040 run up in prices. Well, you know, at the time 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:46.480 of recording, like crypto is obviously nowhere near the old 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.160 time highs that we hit in November. You know, we're 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.480 about thirties down from the peak depending on the day, 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.760 but we are still so far above you know, the 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:59.640 when you could buy a bitcoin for like eight hundred 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:04.840 dollars that it's almost a different universe. And I think 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.800 that when you when you consider as Mike question in 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.600 the intro, you have n f T selling for millions 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:17.200 of dollars, you have single tokens experiencing three thousand percent 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:21.640 appreciation in a given window. You have bitcoin trading above 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:26.800 sixty dollars. If you are a serious person in financial markets, 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.240 there is too much money on the table, whatever your 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:34.840 personal opinion of the asset class might be, to ignore that. Yeah, absolutely, 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.680 I love your unifying theory there, you know, I pictured 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.280 is like a big ven diagram with all these little bubbles, 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.680 but all of them sort of dip into the crypto space. Uh, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.079 to some I know personally, I know a lot of 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.520 I have some friends who were online poker players who 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.200 you know, when there was a crackdown on that all 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:53.680 of a sudden, the only way you could really bet 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:57.200 on online poker was was with crypto, you know. So 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:01.199 it's it's interesting the different sort of you avenues that 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.920 you can get sucked into it. Um. But Stacy, I 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.960 wanted to talk sort of from the journalistic perspective because 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.960 along with the growth of crypto, there's been this whole 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:16.640 new growth of media companies covering crypto, and you know, 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.400 whatever that happens there, You know, these publications have some 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.320 sort of vested interest in the space, and to me, 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:25.880 there's a risk of sort of coverage that that borders 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:27.920 on cheerleading, you know, and I don't want to use 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.520 cheerleading in a derogatory term, Bildona. I'm the father of 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:34.000 two cheerleaders. I actually I could be pressed into service. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.400 Is like a backspot in a stunt group if needed. 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.280 So I I all all the respect it is for 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:41.880 if we if you ever want to do a stunt 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:43.720 at work, let you know, you know all the respect 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:45.839 in the world for cheerleading. Um. But you know from 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.200 that notion of and I think I know the answer. 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.320 I think Plato knows the answer. But to listeners out 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:52.920 there who are used to reading a different type of 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:58.400 coverage of crypto, how how do you approach Bloomberg's coverage? 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.679 And how how my it be different than say and 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:03.480 I'm la going to name any names, but a website 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.040 that obviously has has direct skin in the game of 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.040 the crypto world more so than we would. Yeah, I 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.719 mean this is this is the perpetual question of trade magazines, 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:16.320 right in the sense of and you know, for a 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:22.280 place where if you're direct owner is incentivized because they 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.440 participate in the crypto ecosystem to have all prices go 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:31.760 up that can present interesting editorial challenges and compromises. But 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:33.680 it's I think, as a as a universe of media, 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.120 it's not something we're totally unfamiliar with. What I would 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.240 say that I'm trying to bring to Bloomberg is, in 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.480 terms of crypto coverage, is a phrase that I use 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:46.240 a lot, which is rigorous skepticism, And that is to say, 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:50.880 I'm not actually interested in being cynical or nihilistic about 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.440 the asset class. I'm not interested in starting from a 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.599 place of well, all of this is, you know, potentially fraudulent, 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.160 Like I don't think that's journalistically useful, and I also 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.280 think it's untrue, right, Like is there an above average 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:07.880 number of sketchiness happening at all times? Yeah? Sure, but 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.000 it's it's not that's not the entirety of the universe. Similarly, 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:16.679 I'm not like a starry eyed believer, who will, you know, 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:22.120 take for granted any claim that a aggressively well funded 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:28.920 crypto ceo makes about this is the pathway to wealth redistribution. Like, sure, how, 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:32.920 give me, give me evidence, give me examples, you know, like, 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:37.040 show me materially what this means in practice. Um, And 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:38.960 I think that's that's where I would like all of 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:43.479 our coverage to live right that we are appropriately curious 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:48.240 and we're appropriately questioning, but we are sufficiently open minded 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:57.800 that we don't miss interesting stories. So, speaking of some 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:01.080 of the conversations we've been having internally, know we're we've 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.120 been working on a lot of stories that are you know, 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:06.520 looking at the year and review for crypto and for 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:10.680 bitcoin and for all these other offshoots, and so I'm wondering, 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:12.800 you know, I've been asking a lot of people like 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:16.520 what will it take to continue to see the market mature? 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.240 And I'm wondering how you're thinking about that. I think 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.840 any markets in which you have individual tokens or groups 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:26.760 of tokens that can go up or down by two 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:32.600 percent in one day is not mature yet. And I 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.880 think that when you're in a situation in which individual 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:42.880 CEOs tweeting about their puppies can cause entirely new classes 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:46.480 of things to spring into existence, I would also say 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.520 it's not you know, fully baked from from that kind 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:52.199 of perspective, and so I look at a couple of 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:54.800 different things. If you think about, you know, some traditional markers, 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:57.840 like what's the depth of the liquidity, right, what's the 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:04.199 what's the sort of proportion of pure momentum driven speculation 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:09.080 to fundamental analysis and investment. Like how many people are huddling, 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.440 as it were, not merely because they think that if 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.120 they outlast everybody else there will be gains for them, 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.800 but because they're making a more fundamental bet on something else. 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:26.000 I look at the frankly, the quality of the executive 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.600 bench of a lot of these crypto companies, Like, you know, 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:31.960 what is what is the experience of the folks involved, 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.240 What are their backgrounds? How do they spend a lot 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.000 of time on Twitter raging against the machine or are 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.280 they doing work? You know, it's it's things that you 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.840 tend to from a more traditional perspective. You see a 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.360 lot of activity happening in crypto that makes you think 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:53.640 that there is a degree of un seriousness which can 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.000 be funny but is also troubling. Um I'll give an example. 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:01.400 You know, just this year, we have seen a tremendous 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.880 number of outages and downtime across you know, even some 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:07.800 of the biggest players in the space. And it'll be 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:09.960 while you can't log in for x amount of time, 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.960 or you can't withdraw or you can't liquidate this particular position, 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.120 or you've been locked out of your accounts for X 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:19.360 number of days. And if you are a person who's 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:21.880 used to sort of technology, and perhaps some of our 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.200 listeners might remember when if you use Twitter, you would 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:26.080 see the fail whale, like every five minutes, it's like, 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:28.920 oh Twitter is down again, and it's like that that 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:30.920 can be funny for a while, but then you start 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:32.520 to have people who are like, hang on a minute, 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.720 this is my primary bank account, or I have positions 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.120 that at risk of being liquidated here because the market 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:41.080 is moving against me and I can't log into my 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.200 account to adjust an adapt accordingly, you start to move 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:50.240 into one actually needing customer service, like actually needing to 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:52.920 be able to service and meet the needs of your 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:55.800 customers who might be facing some kind of difficulty and 0:15:55.880 --> 0:16:00.680 to way better reliability and uptime. Right, It's like you 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.440 get past the point of trillions of dollars where joking 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.560 around on your social platforms while people are locked out 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:09.920 of their accounts goes from like funny, ha ha, we're 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:14.200 all in this together to just unprofessional and inappropriate. You know, Stacey, 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:16.280 I want to sort of unpack something you said earlier 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.680 on there in that answer, and um, it really it's 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.440 to an interesting quote I saw recently, and I wish 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:23.880 I had written down who who tweeted it or said it, 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.800 but it was it was basically the notion that defied 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.760 the centralized finance is a solution in search of a problem. 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:34.160 And you know, people kind of been saying that about 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:36.360 crypto all all along. But I do think you know, 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:41.080 it's it's ah, you know something that is a criticism 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.920 of DeFi. That's that's worth talking about, you know, you know, 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.560 the real believers and DeFi will tell you, well, it's 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.880 you know, it's opens the doors to the unbanked and 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.880 to the populations that have been sort of neglected by 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.680 traditional financial services. Is there validity to that? I mean, 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:59.200 is that sort of just the nice bow you put 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:01.440 on top of a real gambler's market to make it 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:03.680 look like, you know, it's a virtue signal? It a 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.399 little bit, But how do you think of that, you know, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.639 the whole world of the centralized finance and you know 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.600 the ability to to solve real world problems that people 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.959 might be having with the traditional financial system. Sure, if 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.439 I put my curious and also skeptical hat on for 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:21.399 a second. I think back to a couple of things. 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.320 I think back to when people were like why do 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:28.280 we need email? Fox machines are great and then or 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.480 or like this internet thing will never take off, or 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:36.640 video chatting never gonna need that we were in person constantly, right, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.800 Like there's always a moment when you are standing at 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.880 a technological fork in the road where whatever you are 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:51.080 doing right now seems still fine, adequate, appropriate, well suited 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.280 to whatever. The problem is that anything that isn't that 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:57.360 seems ridiculous, right, And I think there are certain there 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.119 is a risk in in some of the discussion of 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:04.280 Defy that is that idea of what we have now 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.000 is fine, Like what you're talking about is overly complicated 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.760 and doesn't make any sense and it's never gonna work, right, 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:14.120 And now we say this while recording on zoom in 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.159 in in full video for something organized by email that 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.200 we will publish through the Internet. So I think there's 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:22.840 some of that, But I also think that there are 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:28.760 insufficiently compelling arguments for some of the valuations and some 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:34.480 of the claims that we see in Defy right, Because 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:39.119 I think it's like you could argue that the the 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.960 mare fact of being able to offer twelve a p 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:48.400 y in a lowish interest rates environment is like useful 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.560 for people who are looking for yield. Right, That's that's 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.520 certainly a problem that's being solved through some applications of Defy. 0:18:56.680 --> 0:19:00.200 You could argue that the idea of smart contract is 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.120 kind of genius actually, that you know, you have this 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.919 notion of within an agreed set of parameters and variables, 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.800 you can automate things right now that are otherwise very manual. 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:16.520 Any lawyers listening to this like hatesmart contracts because it's 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.119 so potentially ultimating them out of jobs. But you know, 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.359 there's like lots of interesting stuff out there, But there isn't, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:25.800 you know, to use a phrase from our colleague Olga Crief, 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:29.359 there isn't a killer app for defy yet other than like, 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.840 here's like yield farming with super attractive interest rates, or 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.680 here's a handful of particularly technical or you know, niche 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.080 uses that some people find really helpful, but for the 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.240 vast majority, their eyes glaze over when you try to 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:46.120 explain to them how it works. I'm glad you brought 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:49.920 up the fax machine. I'm so old all Donna. When 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.400 I was a baby reporter, the newspaper had a fax machine, 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.399 but like the police department didn't, and the funeral homes didn't, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.919 So you know, I'd have to to the police station 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.840 take notes on all the police reports. You know, the 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.280 funeral home would call and and read me in about 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:08.480 thirty seconds, the super long o bit that that I'd 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.080 have to take down, and you know, so uh to me, 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:13.720 the facts machine was revolutionary when when those places starting 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.200 to get I can see where Paul Krugman was coming 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:18.119 from when he said, you know, the internet is is 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:20.280 just going to be as influential as the facts machine. 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:25.080 I've got it to be pretty influential. I'm imagining baby 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.680 Mike Reagan reporter. I'll bring by the fax machine here, 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.240 browner hair, you know, otherwise not the same Stacy. I 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.320 also wanted to ask you, speaking of all things defy, 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:42.160 there's also this trend of regular, you know, old school 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.439 traditional financial products, things like e t f s maybe 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.600 also moving into the DeFi space, or some version of 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.040 it moving into the DeFi space. I'm wondering if you're 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:57.159 surprised by sort of that whole world recreating itself in 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:00.000 the crypto world not at all. Um, you know, sort 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:01.800 me say this because as we said, we're basically deskmates 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:05.000 where I'm like everything old is new and crypto, which 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:09.400 is you know, the idea that in whatever you have 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:14.320 a starry eyed industry that's like, we're going to change 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:16.479 the world, but first we're going to rebuild everything we've 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.159 left behind. We're gonna make them better, but we're going 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:23.159 to start from recreating this infrastructure. It happens all the 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.320 time because inventing things that are genuinely new and have 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.080 never existed before is you know, super hard actually, um, 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.080 And what I what I also think is that there 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:37.440 are parts of crypto, there are parts of defy that 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:43.080 let you do certain things more efficiently potentially or you know, 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:48.840 with less friction, even if the underlyings are very similar. Right. 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:51.200 So you know, we've we've kind of looked at different 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:56.120 things around what would it mean if remittances didn't take 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.840 days on average but instead took hours and you could 0:21:59.880 --> 0:22:02.800 initiate them from WhatsApp Right, You're still doing the same thing. 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:06.000 You're moving money across borders, but the cost of moving 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.240 that money and the convenience of moving that money is 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:13.560 like transformational in in its distinctiveness. And so I don't 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:17.560 think that the that recreating old things in a in 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.080 a with a new code of paint is necessarily a 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:24.640 bad thing. And it's often helpful to help skeptics migrate 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.320 along with you because somebody's like, oh, I understand E 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:32.440 T S, or I understand tokenization, or understand fractional shares, 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:37.000 and so I have now a useful mental model to 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:39.800 approach something that I couldn't make head or tail of before. 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:42.760 As they said, I wanted to get into the n 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.760 f T market a little bit. You know, it's fascinating 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.479 me because NFC has really started out as sort of this, 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:51.440 you know, it seemed to come from the artistic community 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.920 more than anything else, and kind of the the outsider community. 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:58.160