Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Let's talk right now with Galaxy Digital. It's trading on the NASDAC after a nearly after a long drawn out process with the SEC that reportedly costs over twenty five million dollars. Joining us to discuss as Mike Novogratz, the founder and CEO. Mike, great to have you on the program. Really excited to talk about a lot of other happy things with you, But I want to start with this listing. Why was it so long drawn out, problematic, infuriating? What word would you use?
Listen the I would use the word Unamerican.
The SEC under the Biden administration really just wasn't fair. And it's been a breath of fresh air with the new administration that their process says they're looking at your business, they're doing what the SEC is supposed to do. And so we waited thirteen hundred and seven to go public. It kept us out of the deepest capital markets in the world. It put all the companies, not just ours, at a big disadvantage.
But we're looking forward. We listed on Friday.
It was a glorious day for you know, our Galaxy family. The NASDAQ does an amazing job of making you feel special and we couldn't be happier to have finally cleared that hurdle.
Okay, so you cleared that hurdle, but as you said, it took a long time. So I'm curious as to how you feel the company, Your company has evolved since you first filed to Listen in the US.
Well, we're a very different company, Listen.
I mean, sometimes scarcity makes you tough, and you you know, most of our growth was funded by trading profits and investing profits, and so it kept us, it kept us very focused on not being wrong. What's changed. We're now really a holding company with two different divisions.
Right. We have a very large AI data center company.
We've got a project in Helios called Helios down in West Texas that in the Panhandle that we think will be the largest data center in America by twenty thirty.
We already have eight hundred megawatts of power and we're in the queue for more. We've had a great partnership with core Weave.
I watched core Weave stock seems to go up every single day, and so we share for them because there are tenant you know, we have contracts signed with them on the first six hundred megawats of our power to deliver a little bit less than that to them.
And so that's a big business.
And so we have that business, and then we have our traditional crypto business. And the crypto business really was built to be a bridge between institutions and the crypto community. And to be fair, I was really early right. This idea that the herd was coming was my tag phrase. They just didn't come. But they're here now with this new administration, the regulatory clarity that we're starting to get from sec, CFDC, FDIC, you know, getting the right people
in those seats who are pro crypto. We just got stable coined legislation on Monday, and so there's only one more piece of one more hurdle for Congress, which is going to be called a market structure bill. But after that it's up to the crypto industry to build something that America wants.
I do want to point out Core Weave is up another ten percent today and the stock is more than doubled tripled basically since the IPO. So yes, very successful. Tenant a great one to sign up for that data center. In terms of Galaxy, you did have a decline in revenue in the first quarter, and a lot of people will find that puzzling since the price of bitcoin was up so much, right it rallied up over through through
and over one hundred thousand dollars. Are you going to see a bounce back in revenue now that this legislation has passed well?
And so if you look at big Coin from start to finish in the first quarter, it was actually down a little bit in the Ethereum and the other coins were down a lot. Right, Ethereum was down over forty percent, And so we still have a big balance sheet. Right we have roughly a billion dollars of crypto assets at another four hundred million of ventury private equity crypto assets, and so we have a lot of beta to the overall market. And so traditionally our earnings have been very
correlated with price. We are changing that quickly as our businesses become more stable. Right when we started, we made most of our money by being long at the right time and short at the right time. Now we've got a staking business, a lot of recurring revenue businesses that
we're building as well as this data center. The data center won't really be a cash flow positive for another year and then it becomes literally a cash machine, and so we hope the volatility of our earnings goes down when these other businesses come online.
So, Mike, the crypto industry is definitely having a moment right now. There's a listing of your company, Galaxy Digital Coinbase, joining the S and P five hundred. You also have the debut of etro, and of course a price of bitcoin itself on an upswing today hitting a record a one hundred and eight thousand dollars. Do you think the news around the crypto ecosystem is helping to drive the price of bitcoin? Is? What's what's a what's whigging the dog here?
I think?
Listen, it started with Larry Fink when he got orange pilled, and the largest ask managers of the world said, this is a real asset in at least bitcoin that everyone should be part of, and and lots of other companies Investo with us followed suit, right, and so that was kind of round one of institutions coming in. But really it was the change of the shift of approach from the Gary Ganzler sec. To this Trump administration which has just embraced our industry, and that freed up the animal
spirits both here and abroad. I've had conversations with heads of large sovereign wealth funds that said, if America's buying bitcoind, we're buying bitcoin. And so you're seeing like the snowball is rolling downhill. The one thing that could have held it back some at least the bitcoin price would have been if you know, Scott Besson and his and his team and Congress could have really not that deficit from seven percent of GDP down towards three, which was his plan.
Right now it looks like it's going from seven to eight. And you know, I like Scott Bess and a lot. I think he's as competent and capable as anybody. We're in a really hard position as a country, and when you have this kind of debt and you're seeing it.
With long ends of interest yield.
Curves are selling off everywhere, the dollars under pressure, and that all is very good for bitcoin and crypto assets as well.
Yeah, it was pretty shocking to look at weakness in the dollar and other haven assets, and for a long time Bitcoin was kind of bucking the trend and going the other way, almost as if it was taking on a reserve currency status. I know that would be a fantasy for a lot of bitcoiners, for sure. I want to ask you about tokenization though, Mike, you at Galaxy
have tokenized a number of really cool things. I think I read you tokenized as stratavarious violin and you mentioned the new SEC you want to tokenize your shares or you're in talks with them to do that. How are those talks progressing and when do you think that's going to be possible.
Listen, the SEC is really open minded to people coming down with ideas, and so.
I think you're going to see tokenized equities at least experiments with them in the next you know, one to one to two months. I'm just throwing at it, throwing out a range. I don't know for certain, but it's going to happen. And tokenization itself, I keep saying, this is going to got to go real slow and then all of a sudden, real fast, and I think, quite frankly, might end up driving a lot of crypto adoption. You know, people will be more comfortable owning Apple stock in a
token ized form maybe than owning your crypto. But once you start learning to go from an account to a wallet. The big migration in the next five years are going to be from accounts to wallets. Right this stable coin bill is going to allow lots of new issues of stable coins, and all of a sudden, people are gonna in this in this device here, going to have their money market fund and maybe some of their stock and maybe some of their bitcoin in a custody self custodied wallet as.
Opposed to having to call their bank or their brokerage.
But you know what, Mike, you know, I've spent some time on our ETF program last year Scarlett now co anchors that she kicked me off the set, and for a long time we talked about the ETF of crypto assets. Will crypto now replace? Will token tokenization replace et I F ETFs? I mean is is Eric Balchuna is going to cover tokens instead of ETFs.
You will have a token I show in a few years. I don't think you'll replace. Listen, the US capital markets are gigantic.
But crypto is going to take a piece of it, and it's going to and tokenization is going to grow much faster than people think.
You know it.
One of the advantages of having a token is stock is much broader distribution. You know, I can envision a day where the young kid in Tanzania who's got a you know, two dollars and thirty seven cent savings has put it into a tiny piece of applestock, right like the the the democratization of being able to participate in markets is going to go limit up, Yeah, because almost everyone on the planet has one of these, and it's going to be very easy to get, you know, digital digital wallets, got.
It, got it, Mike, Really appreciate your joining us. A pleasure speaking with you, Mike Novograts of Galaxy Digital, and who knows, maybe we'll launch a tokenization IQ or token IQ show sometimes soon.
We'll come back for that, all right, there you go,