Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, Radio News Now to our exclusive coverage from the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium. Joining us now is Crack and CEO Argren sat Cracking Insault, hosting the symposium this week. Argune, good to chat with you again. I know you weren't at the event last year, but I imagine the vibes even this year quite a bit different, given the regulatory outlook, given the excitement, and of course given the price increase that we've seen in so many
of these digital assets. What are the vibes like?
Look, I think you just have a large amount of tailwinds from what you saw last year, obviously with members of Senate, members of House, etc. And so you have a lot of excitement between folks that are here in the United States and outside the United States thinking about what's going to be the next evolution of building on blockchain, building on crypto, building with global liquidity in mind. So
the vibe here is great. Like we're in Jackson HALLWAYOM right before the meeting with the rest of the FED, and you just got a lot of excitement in the room.
What do you think is the next evolution of this technology? The next evolution of the blockchain. What's your view?
So, I mean, we're really early. We just had at the symposium, we kicked it off and we started talking about global finance and what's going to happen in the ecosystem. We had a very us look at it, and then we had a very zero sum look at it, which is, you know, the value of bitcoin is going to be
more sons with gold and on. Our take has been more that bitcoin is a protocol, it's a network, and you have another set of protocols like etch et cetera, and that the way in which we think about it today is very linear and it's hard to think about
what is exponential and super linear. And so the way I think about it is that we're just in the really really early innings of what's going to be trillions of trillions of dollars coming into the ecosystem, building against it, and then the value continuing to grow.
Can you explain more your thesis behind bigco being a protocol or being something that you build on, because I don't necessarily hear that from people who buy bitcoin or necessarily see that, because right now it just looks like people are using this as a way to build wealth they're buying and they're holding because they think the price will continue.
To go up. Look, whenever in history you've had anything starting to grow at a certain velocity, people will have different interpretations of what it means. And so the first version of what you've seen in crypto Bitcoin, which has been the default it's an on ramp and off ramp into crypto, has been that like, this will be the store of value and this is where I think I can make money. So you have volatility across the way,
and you've also seen the asset continue to grow. I think there's a certain amount of people that want to perpetuate that. Then there's just what is the technology of what you're allowed to be able to do with bitcoin and how that's going to continue to be perpetuated and preserved. And so remember look at the original thesis of the Bitcoin white paper. It was to be a hedge, but at the same time was sending and receiving payments. So you've got a lot of folks coming at it from
different angles. When you have a lot of folks coming at it from a different angle, and it's a protocol and it's a network and it's a store value, there's just so many different applications that are going to be built around it and within it. Then there's a next set of folks that are thinking about how to build around it, which is what we've seen with Eth then Solana. The list kind of goes on. They're all you know,
combined together. And I think what people miss is that we're just in the early innings of what the market cap is, you know, in the trillions today, what happens in five years, what happens in twenty years.
I want to home in on that point that you made about this being something that is used to exchange for goods or services, As you said, it was in the white paper more than a dozen years ago. At this point, are we seeing that play out at all right now when it comes to bigcoin specifically, or are people just buying and holding it. I'm not seeing prices denoted in bitcoin by any means.
That's right. Well, there's some folks that are trying to take you know, payments in bitcoin, but I think the overall you know arching thesis today and the usage is you know, buy and hold and then watch the value a crew. But you are starting to see people try to bridge against it and build against it, and so
it's really early. Most of this innovation you see is happening outside of the United States, but a lot of what we're trying to figure out is like how do we bring it into the United States, keep it here, control it here, and perpetuate it here so that innovation continues to grow in the United States.
One more on the market and then I want to get to crack in specifically and the roadmap and sort of theory and strategy there. Where do you think we are in the cycle? Given there's been so much pull forward since the November election and on optimism over the regulatory environment you mentioned just you know at the beginning of our interview, the optimism around that. Where do you think we are in the cryptocycle? Are we at the top or is there more room to run higher?
Look, I wear another hat chairman at Tribe Capital, and one of the first things I tell any entrepreneur that I work with is the word hubris is really important as you grow. And so as you grow at a high velocity, a lot of people will think about your company as you know, as a prime candidate. And so what happens is you think about the supply and demand of any type of valuation. When there's more eyes looking at something, the value of that asset tends to accrup
and sometimes that's not healthy. So where we are in the market, when I think about where we are in the market with crypto, we're really really early in the slope. But it doesn't mean that you won't have any ups and downs and volatility along the way. And I would say that if I was to just look at it from a pure numbers perspective, I think we're in the middle of the road. And the more we get market structure, the more we get market stability, the more inflow of
capital that comes in. I mean, take a look at like the DATS. You can make an argument that it's good for the ecosystem. We can also make an argument that there's a lot of folks that are sort of thinking about crypto fast and loose. And it reminds me and it's reminiscent of what you saw on twenty twenty one, where the discipline approach around building a business starts to
go away and it trickles away. And so I think, you know, the way in which we carry ourselves is more about what's the disciplined approach to making sure that we're catering towards our customers what do they need rather than speculation. So I think we're in the middle of the road, but it doesn't mean that we can't have hubris in this category over the next year or two.
Hey, before we go, I want to try to get some updates on how you're thinking about the road to a publicly traded company at CRACK and can you give us an update on your IPO when it will take place, any banker's size, anything color around that.
Sure. Look, I think people use the word public markets as if it's like a race to an exit, and like we're private. We've stayed private. We've raised less than twenty five million in capital since twenty eleven, and we've been able to stay disciplined. The way we think about our journey along the way private or public is that isn't in the best service to our clients and our customers. If the answer is no, we won't go public. And
so there's no real update there. It's just that you know we're profitable, We give our quarterly updates, and we want to make sure from a counterparty risk perspective, trust is the currency that we.
Care about what are your takeaways from recent IPOs of firms in the space circle. For example, we saw Bullish last week. The investor appetite was certainly there for that one. What are your thoughts.
If I use the framework of intrinsic value versus options value. My personal belief is that a lot of these companies in the crypto ecosystems are option valued, So they're overvalued in my perspective. And in some cases that is a good thing and and a bad thing, which is you're getting more attention and so you know more about what's happening in the industry. But I think it's really important to just take a look at, you know, how are
these companies growing efficiently? Where do they make their money, where do they not and where do the losses recruit? And so again, taking a step back, how do these companies actually grow the industry, How do they grow themselves? And are they actually fighting intrinsic value to themselves and their shareholders is what matters most.
So which companies do you look at and say those are overvalued?
Well, I mean, you know, I think any company that gets into a category of a meme tend to get overvalued. I don't think that's necessarily good or bad. You just take a look at the numbers and say, like, does it actually make sense for where they're going to be in two years, five years, and ten years. So I don't have any specific perspective on which one is overvalued. I just think the world of crypto has become a more overvalue with the dats and the companies that have been going public.
Yeah, it's been pretty wild to follow this just over the last few months, and what a difference we've seen in a little, you know, over a year at this point. Hey, one more for you on the public markets and what's
happening there. Are you concerned at all about all the companies that are going public sort of taking away interest from a potential IPO for you, or sort of taking the air out of the room when it comes to investors who want to invest in a company that is in the crypto space, By the time you get there, maybe the interest won't be there because there are so many others.
Well, I've been around around a lot long time in Silicon Valley, and I think what you've seen is that there's a race. You know, it's kind of let me put my idea on a napkin and raise, you know, tens of millions, one hundred millions of dollars. Put a dot com at the end of my company and take it public. I think good companies get valued because they're good and because they're able to continue to execute.
Argent Safety Kraken's CEO. Always good to see you, Argent, thanks so much for joining us on Bloomberg Crypto