¶ Intro
Have you seen sentiment this bad or was it worse in FTX.
The sentiments it's not someone said it's bad, it's a bit whiny. It might just be the case that the days of one hundred x gains in crypto or over the returns are not as asymmetric as they used to and the new opportunity for those types of returns or in prediction markets. Maybe it doesn't mean that this isn't something that is going to continue to accelerate from a growth perspective, but the easy money might have been made.
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about v chain, go to vchain dot org. Link will be in the description. Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and we're recording at Station three in New York's Financial District. And joining me today is Frank Jhaparo, who's the head of Content and Special Projects at GSR. Frank also has an extensive experience in the crypto market, covering the industry as a reporter at the Block. Frank, great to have you.
Great to be here, so nice to get to try out the new mic system. I'm loving this area. This is super good. I didn't know this existed. I know the whole fruits exist, I didn't know this little space existed and it's all crypto.
I guess yeah. Majority crypto web three companies, a lot of startups and folks building in the industry, by the way, just so folks know, you and I first met and shout out to Anthony Pompleano at Anthony Pompleana's Christmas crypto party in twenty nineteen. I remember mark Uska was there and that's where we first met.
It feels like a different time, doesn't everybody was younger. I guess that might be.
I don't think both of us had to as many grays, right, definitely not. And it's like that meme the Interstellar.
It was at that big club, right, what was the jay Z Club or something that's right.
I can't remember the name, but I know what you're talking about. The name escapes me. It was a pretty pretty nice place. Yeah, those were wild times though, because bigcoin was tumbling down to three, but it was more fun.
¶ Crypto market conditions
It felt like, isn't it crazy how at ninety thousand, you know, people are losing their losing their mind over over you know, the sentiment's not as good, Yeah as when it was maybe at nine or ten.
It was rough.
It's rough leverage, that's what leverage will do to people.
Well, the biggest leverage wipeout on October tenth, right, and it seems like that cut the legs out from the market, you know, for the time being, at.
Least, it feels like I was just I was visiting my grandparents on October tenth. I was down there and I was just like so funny. I was like, cryptos, it's really exploding, and my Grandma's like, that's great. No, it was like exploding in the bad way, and she's like, oh, that's too bad. But yeah, this market, like we were talking about before we turn the mics, has been really
unique in a number of ways. Obviously, the price is you know, I never would have thought we'd be at ninety k when we were at nine care when I started covering this asset a reporter when it was at nine hundred dollars or a thousand sure or whatever it was. But the one thing that is interesting is that it is nothing, really is. It's not getting a bit on anything. And it seems like bad news is really bad and good news is bad or ma when it comes to bitcoin and crypto right now?
Do you feel there's some manipulation happening? Look, this market is not fully regulated. It's the first truly global market that trades twenty four to seven. And we see the New York Socock Exchange and other folks are trying to follow that. But maybe it's a manipulation, right, and they could be the market makers could be waiting to I don't know, wait for the crypto market structural legislation or things to get into better position politically, I don't know.
I think that it's probably just a market structure issue, like the market has grown to trillion's and but if you look at like the patchwork of market infrastructure providers and trading firms and liquidity providers, it's probably the same amount of players as there were five years ago when the market was just approaching a trillion, right, And you have to think after FTX, there's still a massive liquidity gap, or at least a big liquidity gap in terms of
two of our largest liquidity players excuse me, liquidity providers are out of the market FTX or their sister company ALMDA gone and Genesis right, which was at the center of our market. Credit. Our credit infrastructure is still looking at its wounds, or at least it's still pills in comparison to the size that it was in twenty twenty one, which again was really a credit crisis, and that was twenty billion dollar book that Genesis managed, which is now gone.
So when you have you have effectively a very you know, we took we took a few steps back after that, and so we still have a relatively nascent or at least sophomoric market structure, Waltz being three times as big, and so that makes sort of that makes for you know, the liquidity issues that we see on a day like ten ten, and then after something like that, it does stand to reason. I think we get a little anxious, and we get a little ahead of ourselves in crypto.
But after an event like that, you could see why the market might be cautious and why most rallies are quickly sold off, and we haven't. You know, it keeps bringing us back to that, to that floor. We you know, I was hoping that one forty would create a new baseline for Salon. About here we are one twenty seven, and I think it's going to take you know, it's going to take a bit of you know, we were saying before we turn the mics, it's it's not like it.
It doesn't like anything bad. So like you know, the Trump knew anything around tariffs that spooked the market, anything around macro or the fed that spooks the market. Crypto just can't take it. It can't take it. So you know what it really needs is some stability, right, but that's not something that can be promised.
And do you see that maybe the likes of or maybe it could be frustrating.
It's frustrating because you know, think about it, a few years ago, in twenty twenty one, we were told that this was you know, this is this is almost existential without being dramatic. Right, this was supposed to be the fastest horse in the inflation race, yes, as per pul tutor Jones, And this is what a lot of folks
within crypto expounded. And that's not the case. Right. Gold is experiencing this this breakneck rally, while spitcoin is like, you know, withering in the duldrums, and that's really bad. And the longer that that happens, the worst it is. So it's definitely a wake up call and you can you can imagine that the sentiment it's such as you know, people have cognitive dissidence and just can't wrap their head
around it. And that's coupled with the fact that you know, we're at a point right now where nothing really could from a from an adoption perspective, obviously you could have more app usage and there could be more traction there. But from an adoption perspective from Wall Street, everything that
we thought could happen is happening. And stable coins are real and Teather is a multi billion dollar company tens of billions of dollars in valuation and hundreds of billions of dollars or what does it maybe sub two hundred billion and assets multiple billion dollar publicly created companies. Yeah, and stable coins have been accepted as something that's important across Wall Street. And that's it. And then so it's like, why, what's what's missing? And that's a that's a tough place.
¶ Value of Crypto assets
It's a tough place of being. Yeah, I think everybody is kind of scratching their heads as to what's going on because you have the four year cycle believers and then the self fulfilling prophecy. Oh no, it crashed on ten ten. That must be the top of the market, even though that felt very manipulated. I don't know if that's the right word. But at the same time, like you're saying, adoption is on an amazing level. We've never seen anything like this, we're at the cusp of getting
crypto legislation. You have ETF inflows. I mean, you look at the black rock et fastest growing each have ever, So what is happening? You know, is this indeed the top of them or has the market top or just like a mid cycle pullback.
You know what it is? It might be just it might just be that. I think there's another question, at least in the conversation that I have, that puts into question the value of tokens or where value ac cruise? Right, And it's very clear that stable coins work and blockchain works, and that's why you have interactive brogers working on settlement with USCC, and why you have the New York Stock Exchange saying that they're going to move to twenty four
to seven tokenization, tokenized trading excuse me. And it's why you know all these things are happening is because it works better. But where does the value of that efficiency accrue? Does it a crue to Solana and ethereum, or does it crew to equities? Does it accrue to the companies that are facilitating that transformation they're building on top of those projects. And so what we've seen in the past quarter is the value a crew to equities in the
form of well a crew. And we've seen it a crew, and we've seen it, you know, abandon the market as quickly as as it got there with the DAT fallout. But we saw it a crew to equity businesses. And that's that was the main story of Q four And so now we're in a part of the story where it's like it's not when to you know, it used to be when token. Now it's why token, so to speak, and we're trying to figure out where that value a crew, right, Yeah.
But do you think it's also just the natural sicklecality of the market. And if you go back to the Trump presidency and him getting voted in, you had incredible euphoria. A lot of old coins did move and Bitcoin clearly move right breaking one hundred k. But were we so euphoric and this sentiment is so much agreed that we're still feeling the Affri effect?
You know, it wasn't that like well in terms of price, right, like Ethereum only returned to its previous all term high, Salona only went to like three hundred. Maybe that was like I think it's previous all the time I was like two something or other And there's dilution obviously.
But what about the mean coins ripping?
Yeah, Trump deaf coin I and you definitely had like a lot of people got burnt on that. But you know what's crazy is that's a lot of down fifty percent since Trump got elected. Yeah, Trump is down ninety percent, bitcoins down something like I don't know, thirty percent or something.
Man, It's it's pretty crazy. So I'm curious.
I fand to cover though it's fun to watch.
Watch, right, Yeah, how does it from like GSR handle those market volataty items? As a market maker, you know, is it just business as usual or is crypto like its own beast where you guys have to pivot and make sure you cover all your bases and things like that.
That's a good question. I mean, like, we run a very uh diverse business, right, So there's obviously liquidity that's important. There's market making, there's OTC, systematic OTC, there's venture and so when there's events like ten ten, obviously on the market making side of the house, that's where we're most active. But the demand ebbs and flows with with where the market is and you know we ran we operate asset
managements during the dat dat camera explosion. We were very active as a partner there, as an asset management partner and as an investor. So it just depends. I mean, there's always something to do. We think about effectively acting like similar to Goldman sacks as as almost like a merchant or investment bank. Right. When you think about Goldman, which is not too far from we're recording, actually you
know you have them investing in the founder. Uh. Then effectively, maybe that founder goes on to go public, they underwrite that IPO, and then maybe that company, after their IPO goes on to acquire companies that compete with it for inorganic growth. Sure, and Goldman facilitates that via M and A. And then of course the stock of that company that trade. Goldman might serve as the designated market maker for that
company's stock. And then for that founder that I mentioned at the beginning, he might have amassed a lot of money, and Goldman, through its wealth management business, will then manage that I forget what the kids call it, gs G SAM right anyway, so we are doing that but for crypto, right, and crypto is not that different that's a lot. That's
something that people don't really understand it. It has a similar market structure, but just different words, right, instead of and so we have a token market making business, which is best thought of is like facilitating that process that
I just described with the Goldman entrepreneur. Let's call that guy Mark Zuckerberg in that company Facebook, right, You know, we may invest in the start, we may invest in the token project, and then we see it through that life cycle of help it go to market, find a footing in the public markets, help its token trade and mitigate volatility by providing ample amounts of liquidity and then potentially providing services that help manage the treasury of that
of that project, and then potentially even maybe one day I don't think we really do much of this now, providing some sort of and concierge wealth management to these you know, to the cryptos ultra rich and helping them something that actually we were just starting to see this build that happened before the fall out of FTX, and it's happening again, but it's more slow, slow, more slowly.
A lot of people don't remember this, but at the time Barry Silbert's DCG was working on expanding a company called h Q. It was kind of under the reps for a long time. Yeah, A lot of people don't know about this. That sounds very Trump of the Trump
A lot of people don't know. I knew, and that was going to be like a ultra high network concierge situation where the crypto ultra wealthy would get support on a wide range of things from you know, chartering a private jet to a state planning and wealth management services. And you know, it's it's a need in the market doesn't really exist. But anyway, that's I think you asked me how we uh, how the process of market making works or when things get busy. Obviously we've got to
be twenty four to seven. We've got people staffed at the desk at all times, and it's really just I mean, it's a it's a computers game, right, It's making sure that our risk systems and our algorithms are firing on all cylinders and in having the balance sheet to sort of go out to market and be reliant and able to counterparty. Yeah, but it's so much more. I mean, like I think, not just for us, but for the market overall. Like people don't understand or have visibility. Rather,
I shouldn't say they don't understand. That's pejorative. They don't see the full scope of I didn't see it right either, of how much sort of work goes into making our markets function and there's a lot still missing, right.
Like, yeah, the infrastructure is still being built. Still need crypto market structure legation to maybe get some of those things in place. Yeah, definitely, pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if you can please support the podcast by hitting the like button subscribing. If you haven't as yet,
you can leave a comment below as well. And if you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, please be sure to follow and hit the five star rating. I'll let you get back to the content. Thank you so much, Frank.
¶ Crypto market sentiment
I am really curious about your time of the block and first question would be have you seen sentiment this bad or was it worse than FTX.
The sentiments It's not someone said it's bad. It's just like it's just a little it's.
It's a bit.
Whiny, okay now, and it's like, come on, like you're fine, Like it might just be the case of the days of one hundred x gains in crypto or over the returns are not as asymmetric as they used to and the new opportunity for those types of returns or in prediction markets maybe and that's just that could be the reality. Sure, it doesn't mean that this isn't something that is going to continue to accelerate from a growth perspective, but the
easy money might have been made anyway. So people are really upset about that, naturally, because people will want easy money. I mean, who doesn't. After FTX, I think it was really a bit more existential is now right where?
Or fear and like, oh my god, is this the ear?
And and you know, people really got out, especially the you know, all these venture funds that were these generalist funds that had you know, put money into what what effectively was the issue was you had a number of centralized financial services companies basically FinTechs with with crypto offerings X blow up incredibly so and people outside of crypto couldn't really tell the difference between that and crypto itself.
And so you had this exodus and that was a huge blow and that resulted in like pretty bad sentiment for you know, a few quarters and then we kind of rebounded.
What was that the craziest story you covered or were there are other things that happened maybe on the regular side, regulator side, like Genser or anything else, or was that that was the big pinnacle moment of disaster in the industry?
You know for the Block it was. It was really insane because we were entangled in the entire thing and you know, we we had a CEO who had borrowed millions of dollars from Sambankuin freed Wow, and we those loans were never disclosed until there was this blow up and you know, he stepped down and there was this major transition and it was pretty intense, right yeah, I mean he brought there was a it was a massive
there was a massive domino effect across the market. I sometimes think about how insane it is that the Block survived that that those those times, because after that there was a trust gap that needed to be filled, and you know, sponsors weren't as keen to work with us after that because they maybe not less maybe not just because they didn't trust us, but because they didn't know where the market was going, and so you want to be conservative with your spend, right, But it was very
intense times and personally as well too, right, because you don't know if the place that you know you've been working at for a number of years will we'll go under and and you know there's a sunk costs in that where you know, you think, I dedicated so much time to this that you know you want to stick around, And so I did, despite tons of people told me
to leave. And you know, they weathered the storm and we got through it, and now the company is in a very like stable place and is under new ownership. But I mean there was a time where like I think, all right, is this the day that we uh finally die?
Right? No, I had those thoughts too, And you know, I was then working at a crypto exchange. I think it was okay Coin, which is backed by Okay okay X, and I'm like, oh my god, that I'd make a big mistake here because it looked like the entire industry was going to collapse, And of course you think about your livelihood and career. It's like, man, this really sucks. But you know, I was also doing a podcast on the side, and I stuck it through, and you know, we got better days after.
That, got a better on yourself.
Yeah, but uh boy, that was a rough time.
And I was I mean, but but during the whole FTX saga, it was just endless, endless work, sure, endless chasing, because you know, part of it was like I need to understand this for myself, right, it became a bit of an obsession. I mean I remember, like in those first few weeks, constantly on the phone, I probably talked to everybody you can imagine, just what do you think, what do you know? Who do you what were the signs? You know. Sure, it was really intense, but it was
also a lot of fun. I mean yeah, because it's like it's like it's like my own like I'm in my own like mini series.
Yeah, you know, yeah, that's a crazy time. And I you know, one of the things that I like to remind people of, and it's not the boats, but just you know, there's a saying I think Warren Buffett said, by the when people are greedy, be fearful. When people are fearful, it'll be greedy. I remember in November decembery. I started buying bitcoin when it was crashing on like
fifteen sixteen K and that worked out. I was a good bet and and that's so I'm also trying to remind myself of that now, like right now everybody, there's some people who are fearful. Some people that's it, it's done, it's boring. Crypto is dead, even though we have incredible adoption, but the sentiment and the price action seems to be dead. But it'll return. I think. I think it's there's gonna be rotational liquidity from precious metals. They're going to top out at some point.
And you believe in the catchup trade.
I do it to a bit because if you again, if you're looking at it from like two to three months, four months, yeah, but if you're looking from a yearly standpoint, you put the gold chart with bitcoin. You see when gold is cooling down, bitcoin runs. That's it a lot, right, Yeah, So I'm hoping. I mean, well, how do you feel
¶ Bear market confirmed
do you feel that this is.
A market year? Oh? Well, yeah, I mean look at it. I mean we're i mean October, you know, it's it was a little bit before October. That's just when it really like really shit the bed. But I mean we're getting to a year, we're down off the highs, like you know, some coins eighty seventy percent, so like this is but bitcoin is a little bit of a different story.
Yeah, it feels like bitcoin had a decent bull market, but all coins did not. Yeah right, bigcoin kind of did it very short lived.
Yeah, oh thanks to Malania.
Coins.
I did make some money on that beach, not a lot. I made enough. I went to costco and I got a new TV from trump coined.
So I have to ask, Frank, you live in New York,
¶ NYC Coin and Memecoins
tell me you own some NYC tokens issued by Eric Adams recently.
No, I don't. I don't. I uh, I can't believe that Eric Adams is funny though. You know I interviewed him ten years ago. Really yeah, when he was Brooklyn Borough president. I forget about what though. You know he was really bigger that back then. You know he got They told me he was going to get diabetes, and he went totally keto and he reversed his diabetes. Wow. A lot of people don't know that.
Maybe he should have put the you know, he's funny though. The mission behind his token is make New York is healthy again versus No.
He's a funny guy but obviously very But who isn't controversial these days? You know, everybody's controversial. Oh my god, my thumb's controversial.
But I guess if the president can do it, Milania can do it, Barron can, Eric Adams can do it.
Eric Adams can do it.
What do you? What are your thoughts about meme coins? Look, I know it's like human nature online and on chain, and you can't stop some of these trends. Right, you have the virality, but now people can speculate on it. Do you think this is something that continues moving forward?
I don't know. I get into these arguments with my girlfriend. They're not really arguments with these discussions rather sure where she wants me to change my She suggests that I change my headshot for some things, from my pudgy penguin to my actual headshot. She comes from traditional finance, traifying. She thinks that, like, you know, people might want to
meet me at this conference. I want to take me seriously, and I think that it's funny and that you know, I see her side right, like you know, makes you people aren't gonna know that's you if it's a pudgy penguin. But anyway, this is all to say that I've always been a firm believer in the power of mimetics and culture, and I think it's important. And I think the sort of financialization of humor, which is something that we all share and as one of the greatest gifts we can
give someone else is the gift of laughter. I think financializing that's really powerful and interesting, but it can also be really dangerous, as we've seen, yes, and so I think that, like, I don't have a great answer for it in terms of like how do we capture sort of the There's been so many memes and history from like you know, the cats on the Internet to whatever it might be. And I think like folks are part
of that and contribute to that. To see some financial gain from that is cool and it's an interesting new form of capital formation, right, you know, and and people can participate on it. But that's one side of the sword. And so I think, just like anything else, there should be some uh guardrails, some some guardrails or something, But I don't think they're inherently bad like some of right people.
Yeah, No, I'm gonnagree with you. I'm a I believe in the free market. If you want to go to casino and throw it all on Runner black, yeah yeah. And or you want to buy part coin, just not a risk. You know, to be smart, be do your research and just know you're gambling to a certain degree there, and then you know to your point of this is
a new model for capital formation. So I'm more interested in how this is used by enterprises like Amazon or even entrepreneurs who are looking to raise capital to build their business, and how they can use this technology to do things.
You just you just do what Eric Adams, Trump and Lania were able to do. That's like insane, Like that's insane capital formation. Sometimes it takes to raise that much money like a team of bankers and a tank and it's like I just came up with an idea and a ticker and I put out an address and I've raised tens of millions of dollars. Like that's like, you know, that can bootstrap a lot of different things, right, you know,
So that's what's the speed is what's interesting. But then you can just see there's also the flip side of that is that you know, the rug poles are oft an omnipresent, right, But ultimately I think it the burning of people that that like resulted, that resulted in a lot of people being weary of crypto, and now they have all these different options, right, Like crypto when you got into the market, that was the casino and perps were the casino product, and offshore exchanges were actually the
physical casinos. Now there are at folks fingertips a myriad of options to participate in the casino, from prediction markets to obviously they had access to options, but you know, the growth of robinhood and the accessibility of financial products via Robinhood, and then just the change in the market to be more casino ficcated has given a new playing field outside of crypto, and in some ways it's becoming more crypto than crypto is and that sucks a bit
of the oxygen out of the room. I mean, who would have thought, like, you know, typically it's it's like, you know, drop the ticker of the coin and it was all these weird dats. So crypto doesn't get to be the only only weird, volatile gambling toy in the markets anymore.
That's true. It is probably one of the catalysts as to why less action or liquidity and crypto for alts and things like that. You know, you mentioned dats. What do you think about the future of thats there is.
¶ Digital Asset Treasuries
It seems to be a lot of risk because they're raising debt and you're adding, you know, a volatile asset to your balance sheet, and some of these businesses don't actually have a business model is just simply buy the asset and do the arbitrage with the stock price. You know, I'm concerned for like micro Strategy. I'm not concerned about Tesla taking some of their cash and by bitcoin. I think that's fine, But the amount of debt and leverage
that's been used. Do you think we see a big collapse at of some of these companies.
Yeah, definitely. I think you're gonna see a massive wave of consolidation. I mean the str I mean I'd always thought that it didn't make a lot of sense, but if you look at micro Strategy right, like, it's one of the most successful stocks and over the last five years relative to many of the big tech companies. So
the strategy no put intent worked. But yeah, like you can't have there's a cap like this is relatively speaking of a zero's own game, Like you can't have thirty Salana deaths, like you probably literally can have one, you can have a few Bitcoin deaths. And so there's gonna be a there's gonna be a massive shakeout of these things, and then the bankers are gonna make a ton of money because they made fees on the raising of these things millions of dollars. No one's really talked about how
much money. These guys have made a lot of money, and they're gonna make money on the cleanup, on the consolidation, and on whatever craziness happens as these things kind of unferral.
Speaking of banks, big drama last week, banks are trying
¶ Banks Stablecoin yield
to find fight stable corn yield and rewards on exchanges. Yeah, they don't want to obviously lose the big bonuses and the amount of the interest they keep and just give you zero point zero one percent. What are your thoughts in that situation and the bacle is happening in DC.
I think that even if you know, it'd be nice to get that headline of this being kind of sorted, but I don't think it's going to be the panacea that that that's gonna kind of that's not why we're in the market position that we're and that's retail fatigue. Sure, that's the hangover from the data era. It'd be nice if we get some clarity no pun intended around in the next few weeks. But there's still going to be open questions. There's still going to be open questions for
policymakers and for legislatures, legislators. The banks obviously had a lot of their dirty work done for them by previous administration under chair Genzler, so they could sort of rest on their laurels and sit on their hands knowing that they were going to take care of these things for them and not allow crypto to grow any bigger or to offer customers interesting product. The bottom line is stable coins is a better alternative to the existing financial infrastructure.
It's seamless, it's it's easy to use, it's simple to you to send money and then to earn rewards. And so that terrifies them because since at least the financial crisis, there's been very little that banks have had to do or had to give customers on deposits, and you know, that's that's a huge, huge threat, and especially because they can't just roll this stuff out overnight. They can't just get into stable coins in a few years, let alone
a few I mean, let alone a few months. This is something that would take that they weren't able to do in a few years. So they're scared. They're scared, but I don't think they'll I think that they I think they're kind of screwed, to be honest, Like it's it's just gonna happen regardless, you know.
Well to your point, I mean, look, they could bump up the interests for consumers to compete that way, but we know that they probably won't. But with their stable coins, like you said that maybe years away, maybe would they with the Clarity Act pass and I saw I think it was David Sachs said this morning, you know, we could see a lot of mergers and acquisitions and and things like that. Maybe the banks go buy some of these stable coin companies and that could fast track them.
Yeah, they could, but I think that you know a lot of these companies are getting quite sizable. Sure it'd be cool to see, Yeah, maybe Coinbase by patchwork of like regional banks and just yeah offer services through them.
Well, they're already working with like P and C, City JP Morgan. So they've they've really got their position really well, and they can white label some of their services. So yeah, it would makes sense for them to purchase somebody's banks. You know, do you are you anticipating or we see a lot of IPOs this year, you know, depending on the market condition.
We're seeing on tomorrow, who's going to public? But oh there's yet another one.
Oh boy, I didn't even realize you were going tomorrow.
Yeah, New York Soccer Exchange. Oh no way, yeah, wow.
I some reason I thought that was in February. I don't know why.
Oh February's right around the corner.
Yeah, okay, wow, Yeah, I'm hoping, you know, with someone them looking to go public that I know rallies the market up a little bit, and anythink I think that.
I think we'll see more. I think more we're going to hit the market. I mean, you've got securitize this back. There's you know who else is looking cracking. I think was looking Ripple was looking too.
There's talks about it, but they keep saying they're not.
They're like, we don't want to do it now. But I think there's a huge there's probably at least ten more that in the short to medium term will tap public markets, right, and that's just further further meshing of the of the two.
It'll be interesting to say, yeah, what are your thoughts on a tokenization market. There's a big race there, all these stratify institutions looking to get equities or whatever it is on chain.
A lot of people don't understand that. You have to think that it's really the asset, right, Like, tokenization doesn't make an asset better, you know. And so what we've seen with a lot of these plays is for funds that these financial institutions are having a hard time selling, they'll typically partner with a crypto firm to tokenize it for the marketing and brand exposure of the underpinning blockchain so that they can then push it. Now it's kind of lipstick on a pig type deal.
For now, for now, okay, for now.
And that's at least my opinion. I'm not sure there are people who would disagree with me that work at a lot of these companies, but that's the impression that I have. And you know, it's not going to really stick until everything's end to end, because right now it's sort of just you know, it's it's siloed, right, like
you know, you think of something like biddle. It's like, really just this one product that's engaging with like one type of one type of client, which is really a crypto client that wants to be able to seamlessly engage between crypto and treasuries. But it's not like you can operate throughout the you can't. You can't operate end to end throughout black rock on chain, right, And until that happens, things are kind of just slightly insignificant. Pointing is something more significant.
M I appreciate that perspective because we only get one view of it where it's like, oh my gosh, you know this is all going. But it's good to have a balance view. And to your point, as you said that, I was thinking, yeah, I can see how some of these things are like marketing and just hey, our chain is being used by this institution to tokenize X. But okay, what's happening after We don't usually hear the results or you know, the performance metrics. We just hear it got
built on whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly interesting. So Frank, what's on your roadmap for this year man GSR and well, yeah, I.
¶ GSR Roadmap
Mean it's been well, there's a lot of work to do, work to be done, you know, there's a lot we can do to further support the client and the portfolio. I think providing them with a platform through the podcast is one vehicle because there is a lot of noise.
I think this is the biggest challenge that founders in this space space is the fact that you're competing for airtime with malania Coin and driump coin, and so you know, when I think about what we can do in twenty twenty six is to help the client kind of peak out through the noise, and so we'll continue to grow that, We'll continue to grow the platform and a lot of travel this year for me, which yeah, I try to take a break in twenty twenty five, but twenty twenty six shaping up to be busy.
Well, hopefully the more cold dude, Well, you want to get out of New York, go go sound you gotta get to the Caymans.
It's freezing out.
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Plus snow. More snow. Well, I'm in a bit in Jersey, so I get more snow. It's lots more shoveling I feel like I've been shoveling every day.
Make sure to leave your heat out, dude, my heat bell for my house. My gas bill. I guess don't put this in the show, but it was five hundred dollars. Is that normal? My house is drafted? I guess I was asking.
I was like, well, it depends on the size of your house.
It's huge. No, I'm just it's reasonable. It's reasonably size.
All right, Frank, I got some wrap up questions here.
¶ Wrap up questions
For first, if you could create your own metaverse, what would the theme be?
The theme would be very low gas bills.
No one knows Star Wars no.
Oh, if I had a oh, probably Sopranos themes I've been I'm just restarted. Oh wow, yeah, I'm on episode four of season season one. Maybe I.
Have to rewatch that myself. Rapid fire questions. Favorite food.
It's a good question. I mean, you know what I've been into, like the past six months, just like my default.
Yeah, I'm gonna tell you.
Tacos. I've been obsessed with tacos. Uh Santos in the in the city. Uh do loves tacos? All right, what's that one that's like everywhere there's one down here and find I loves Tacos Tacoma or Tacoby's, Okay. I used to go there a lot back in the day for the burritos. And then I was in Mexico over the holidays. I was too really were Oh I was in Tuloom It's so funny.
Yeah for New Years other it was there for Christmas.
Yeah, or you just there for Christmas.
Yeah. We we went from the twentieth through to twenty sixth at SLS player and then we went to like Islam Muies took the ferry over drove.
Did you do you know about this train that they have, the Maya Trained Maya.
I think my wife had mentioned it to me.
It's sick. It's really clean and fast.
I checked that out.
Yeah, that's cool man Tacos. Yeah, yeah, just cause recently too. It was never a.
Big doco guy meant the favorite musician or band.
Oh, that's a good question. I mean I feel like being from New Jersey, like Bruce Springsteon hard not hard not to pick him.
Sure, Oh, favorite book?
You know, I like this probably isn't my favorite book, but I mostly read like biographies. Nonfiction is my preference. But probably the book I read quickest would have been The Bad Blood Bad right about there there in Us. Oh yeah, yeah right, it's bad Blood the Elizabeth Holmes.
Yeah yeah, but when you said bad Blood, I thought of Taylor Chef.
Yeah, because I don't think it's actually bad blood. It's something else, but that that one.
And when you're not working, Frank, what are you doing for fun?
I work out a lot, you know, like most days, that's fun.
I love to cook.
I don't make tacos though, that's like an exclusively for that going out endeavor for me. I've made tacos once. I I went to Costco and I got probably ten pounds of pork shoulder and I cooked that let's marinade two three days or something, and I made like sixty seventy tacos over the holidays.
Wow.
But yeah, I like to cook. I like to work out.
Tweet Yeah, fintech Frank, Yeah, follow follow Frank, Frank pleasure. Thanks glad we finally got around to do it.
Yeah, we'll see again soon. Yeah.
Yeah, Well we'll bump each other at a conference or something, because I hope so this year we see a rally, Frank, we get some life back in this market. Yeah, Hi, thank you man, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the like button subscribe if you haven't as yet. If you're listening on a pod cast platform such as Spotify or Apple, please follow and leave a five star rating. Thank you so much,