¶ Intro
Big believer in crypto and in the technology and the potential of this technology to do all the things I'm talking about twenty four to seven market is access, democratization, etc. One thing that keeps me awake at night around this technology is security. How often have we seen a startup be hacked by a state sponsored actor? And when a state sponsored actor goes after a startup and tries to hack them, guess what the startup's going to lose.
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into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm Tony Edward and I'm Amanda Wickcroft and joining us today is Chris Perkins, who is the CEO of two fifty Digital Asset Management, which is a spinout of coin Fun Liquid Strategies. Chris, great to have you back.
On Tony and Amanda, So good to see you guys. How's it going? Very good? Happy Friday.
We're recording us on Friday, May eighth, and excited to dive into the big news around Franklin, crypto and much more.
Yeah, me too. Happy Friday to you.
So Chris, why don't we start with two fifty Digital
¶ Franklin Templeton 250 digital acquisition
tell us about how this acquisition came about and what's the mission here?
Right?
So I'll start by saying we are absolutely up to our eyeballs in this thing I like to call the institutional era of crypto. If you've noticed, crypto to date has really been largely a retail phenomena, and the institutions have kind of come, they've kind of gone. They're trying to figure it out. Maybe a couple of them dip their toe in the pool in twenty one, some of them got burned. But I think it's fair to say that the institutional era of crypto is upon us in a major, major way.
And why is that.
It's because now you have a favorable regulatory climate. And again, most institutions they're more than comfortable using technology, they're more than comfortable investing in assets, but they don't like taking reputational risk. And I think a lot of that has come off the table now with what we're seeing the progress around Clarity Act and regulations and everything else. And so with that Clarity no pun intended, they're comfortable in entering the space in a major, major way.
And so as.
Retail's kind of like come and gone, and now i'd say they're they're kind of out of the picture right now, but they're thinking about coming back in because like the conditions that are hard to argue, it's pretty favorable set up.
The institutions have continued to march forward.
And so with that in mind, Franklin Templeton announced in April first that they were acquiring two fifty Digital, which is a spin off of my last company on our liquid strategies, and they've also announced that once that deal closes, I will be the new head of Franklin Crypto along with my partner Sethkins and then Tony piccor And our job now is to really you know, I talked about the institutional error and how it's so important. These are businesses of scale, and the fact of the matter is
is that I don't care who you are. Right now around the world, there's probably more risk in not having a crypto strategy than in the past. You had all this risk for being in this space, like we all lived it, right, we would get slammed and attacked, But now you actually have risk for not having a crypto strategy.
And so wouldn't it be great if institutions around the world, as they're thinking about strategies and ways to gain exposure to our asset class, to partner with people that have been around and very native for a long time, but also now reinforced with the most robust set of institutional support groups, whether I'm talking about compliance, operations, regulatory policy folks, right, that is the reinforce, Like we can bring all the
nativity in the world. But you bring that together with like enterprise, robustness and controls and like it's it's a very very powerful combination. So our goal is to be that trusted agent. Our goal is to say, guys, we have You know, the Franklin Templeton brand is without question, one of the best in the space. They've been into space since twenty eighteen. They have the vision. I spent a lot of time with with some time with Jenny
Johnson last week at the Milkan conference. Daniel Gaba that the president of Franklin Templeton, and he was up there on his panel talking about the power of tokenization. So here's an institution that's all in. They've put all their chips on the table. They've asked us to come and be part of that incredible growth that we all expect. And I'm telling you, I couldn't be more excited.
Your new role as CEO, Chris, are you So, does that mean you're still connected to coin fund? Explain to us how that works with this acquisition.
Yeah, so exactly upon once once the deal has closed, and that should be imminently, then I'll move from from my previous shop into Franklin Templeton as a full time.
What's the mission of two fifty Digital Investments Strategy.
Yeah, So as we transition into Franklin Crypto, our mission is to be exactly what I'm what I talked about. So we want to be we want to help our clients around the world solve for their entrance into this space we call crypto.
Now.
It's it's really interesting because the line between native crypto craziness and traditional finance is blurring. And so whether it comes down to you know, tokenization or that access to products that they're that they're looking for exposure to. We want to be that trusted agent. We want to solve for their investment needs in this space and and and be that you know, trusted agent as they navigate into
this this new world, this really exciting new world. Right, We're about to tokenize one hundred and twenty seven trillion dollar equity market cap. You know, the world is going in that direction. How's that going to work? How are you going to pay for that stuff? What are the rails that are going to live on? What are the new opportunities that you're going to see? And so, you know,
we've been in this space for a long time. We've been immersed in this encrypto to our eyeballs for for years and years and years, and so hopefully we can lend our expertise, you know, not only our expertise in crypto, but our expertise in traditional market's. Pretty much everyone on the team has some kind of background in traditional markets as well, and so I think the goal is to kind of be that Rosetta stone, be able to translate and be able to explain and make it easy for
our clients. 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 so, Chris.
¶ Getting into Crypto with Sandy Kaul
I'm assuming you're gonna be working closely with Roger Basin and Sandy Call, both of who great people, very smart, and they are adding your brilliant mind to the team as well.
I don't know about my brilliant mind, but some of the minds that you spoke about are certainly brilliant. And yeah, we've known Roger Sandy for a.
Really long time.
What people don't know is that Sandy and I got into crypto together when we sat next to each other for about ten years city group and we're like, what is this thing called bitcoin? That's kind of interesting. Ely, there's a blockchain. Like, wow, we had blockchains that would really make my life so much better because I'm scared the death of the settlement risk I'm taking in this current business. Oh gosh, that would be cool. So we
got into it years and years ago together. She's a dear friend, and gosh, she's an incredible thought leader, right, she was talking about stuff, you know. She she's the type of person who talks about things years before they happen. And if you listen to her carefully, you know, for many years she was a CEO whisperer. She would go around to CEOs tell them about the future, and a lot of that future's actually arrived.
So I'll tell you another funny story.
I started business back years ago and I sat down with her and she helped me really think through the business model. I don't remember the exact number, but she's like, you know what, if we do everything right, it'll be year three, It'll be seventy three million dollars or whatever the number was.
And I remember that I.
Was closing my books here end and it was like seventy three million dollars and I'm like, oh my god.
I called her.
I'm like, Sadi, one of the best minds in the business. Can't wait too, you know, to be working side by side with her again.
Absolutely, So.
¶ 250 Digital overview
Franklin's been doing a lot, you know, with tokenization, et apps and much more. I've had conversations with Sandy and Roger as well. Two fifty Digital tell us about the specific services that you're going to be enabling in addition
to what they're already doing. Right, So, we're going to be here to very simply provide scalable asset management solutions for institutional clients, ones that meet their the highest of their standards, and that that you know, you can think about numerous strategies that you're going to hear us announce, can't announce it just yet, but from the liquid side on through where you'll hear a diverse array of scalable, institutionable strategies.
That's our focus.
I'm part of the acquisition. I read on the coin
¶ Benji Tokens
desk article was using Benji tokens that are tied to Templeton's on chain money fund. Can you just talk a little bit about that.
That's pretty cool, right, so let's think about it. I mean, this is like a much much bigger story. But if I'm going to receive value for something, would I rather receive it in a yielding asset or a non yielding asset? H And, like, I think this is worth a much much bigger conversation. But what's the difference between a money market at tragy back money market fund and a stable coin?
What do you guys think?
They're really at the wrapper and there's.
Really like the from a risk perspective, one pays interest, one doesn't.
Which one's more risky? Do you think seems pretty similar to me? Right?
So would you rather have one that pays you interest or one that doesn't definitely pays interest?
Yeah?
So anyway, it's kind of it's kind of look when you step back for a second and you look at what's happening here. It's this company that's trailblazing again, right, they've been. They were like the first real is tuitional manager, you know, I think Fidelity was there. Black Rock came along maybe around this, maybe a little later or whatever, but one of the very very first investment galible investment managers to really trailblaze in this space. And this is
just another example of that trailblazing. But I like to step back and say, like, wait a second, let's really think about what's going on here. Maybe this is part of something even bigger, and that's the kind of stuff that I'm excited to explore. Chrisy, it's really fascinating to look at these players such as Franklin, black Rock, Fidelity and others in this race. And you alluded to it
¶ Institutional crypto race
earlier where you mentioned it was kind of taboo, you know, not to talk about crypto back in the day.
But now if you don't have a strategy, it's almost foolish, right, you need to risk. Yeah, So are we at that, you know moment where we cross the chasm now trad fives in this race. The innovation is kicking off and we're going to see some incredible new products, financial products, and much more developed in the coming years.
I mean, you're going to see an I think, stepping back, it's an most incredible era of innovation we could ever imagine. We have two and a half like civilization changing technologies right now. I'm pretty soon it's going to be three. So you've got AI, which is AI is such an accelerator. It accelerates so much. It accelerates development, it accelerates thinking. And the better it gets, the more of that acceleration you'll see. You've got crypto. You can't look at AI
and crypto separately. They accelerate each other. Crypto forms the rails through for agenttic commerce, and the development and the innovation across the crypto landscape will also be accelerated by AI. And then you have this other technology that's coming on pretty fast. It's also being accelerated by AI and will have I think probably a pretty strong impact on crypto.
And that's quantum.
Right, these are three civilization changing and they're all kind of related, whether it's quantum for compute, AI needs compute, you know crypto are those payment rails. They all kind of go together. And then you know, what are what are some of the new commodities that we need to focus on well, compute is one of them, energy is another one. These are going to be invaluable commodities. Gosh, we can probably tokenize them. Gosh, there's that that's going to be perhaps a better store.
Of value than gold.
It could be compute, right, and wow, like bitcoin is correlated too because it needs energy. So these things kind of all work together, kind of on this interesting continuum of compute, energy and these defining technology. So it's such an interesting, interesting time applied to asset management.
What are you going to see?
You're going to see a lot more timely and and hyper bespoke solutions to an individualized solutions, you know, via things such as of faults, leveraging AI immediately deploying smart contracts to drive the hyper customized.
Solutions for the client. You know.
And I think that I'm not saying that people aren't going to be interested in some of those bigger, you know, strategies that everybody likes, but now give the ability to create hyper precise strategies and cash flows for individuals and institutions as they see thing.
You know, there's a lot of talk as we're seeing
¶ Crypto learning from TradFi
this institutional convergence. There's always the talk of trad fi learning from the crypto natives. You know, are you finding us as you are becoming, you know, incorporated by Franklin Templeton, that there's also the reverse happening of your crypto natives having to very quickly, you know, become a sponge to the trap FI world and the terminology and the compliance and regulation.
Roles violent agreement, Amanda, like, it's such an important thing to highlight. A lot of crypto people think that, you know, the trai FI people need to learn from us, and you know what, they're right. I don't often hear as much as hey, we have to learn from the Chad five people. But if they don't think that they're wrong. You learn so much from traditional finance right, enterprise scale real tps right. And you know, the needs of institutions are much different than the needs of retail.
And I'll give you an example.
A lot of crypto people say don't need intermediaries, like get rid of all the intermediaries, forget it, like, we don't need them anymore, and they're kind of right and and you and that's one of the beautiful things about decentralization is that anyone can access DeFi via their own Internet connection and they should absolutely have that right. But that doesn't mean intermediaries are going away because a lot of
institutions like the value added service, right. They like the insulation that they get, you know, from maybe some of the downstream enterprise risks. They like that, like white touch, that like white glove service.
Right.
So it's not a matter of either or it's yes both. And that's what we're seeing is this collide. So I'll tell you what TRADIFI needs to learn, which they're learning very quick and they're very scared right now. They have to figure it out. Twenty four to seven markets, that's what the natives bring, that's what their infrastructure brings, and that's what their culture brings. That is really really hard
for traditional markets. And if you think about it and you step back for a second, markets are naturally twenty four to seven. That's how they exist in nature. Our technology has always prevented us from keeping up with natural markets. Natives now sorted that and we are in the market twenty four to seven. And so that takes a complete rewiring of culture, rewiring of systems, are rewiring of risk apparatus.
That is the world that has always been the world that we've lived in, but we haven't been able to keep up with it. That's probably the biggest unlock that crypto people bring to trad fy twenty four to seven markets. So, Chris,
¶ TradFi vs Crypto native firms
on that note, with tradfi moving twenty four to seven to match the crypto market and what exchanges have been doing for a while, trad FI institutions are launching crypto investment products. This week, Morgan Stanley launched crypto trading via e trade with very low fees.
So, Chris, what does this mean for the native crypto exchanges and platforms. Are some of them potentially going to lose market share or they're going to be consolidated in the mix, you know, tradfy and the native firms coming combining. Maybe, yeah, Tony, it's a really great point.
So crypto and tradifi like, they don't change the rules of markets, and the rules of markets are very very clear if you observe them. Spot trading is one of the hardest businesses in the world. It's kind of an awful business. The margin is incredibly low. I mean, look at equities, right, you know, you know used to pay these huge commissions the intermediaries. Now you know, most doc trating is free because they because PI FI.
There are the other ways people get paid.
But my point is this, for spot markets, typically fees go to zero and that's one of the laws of markets, and that's what we've seen over and over again. And so if you are a major crypto exchange, this is not a surprise to them. Like I remember, they've been working on this for years and many of them have they've gotten into custody, they've gotten into financing or prime finance, they've looked at derivatives, always go back to markets and observe.
So there's a reason why ICE bought NISI. And I'm not talking about homeland security guys. I'm talking about the Intercontinental Exchange. There's a reason why ICE bought NISY and nysy in by Ice. Right, what does this mean? What businesses are going to be important data businesses, Like what's the data that you accumulate? There's going to be an incredible focus on derivatives. Derivatives is the arms CME's in ninety billion dollar market cap company. Ice is a ninety
billion dollars market company. That's where you make your revenue. And then of course all those other add on services custody, financing, et cetera. So yeah, I think Spot's going to get more and more competitive as we go on. The folks who win will diversify. The other thing you'll notice is that the one thing if you observe markets, regulation kills competition. And what you'll see over and over again is as regulation and legislation is introduced, it's really regulation. It really
forces consolidation. And here's why. Regulation results in a very significant fixed cost. And if you want to get into that business, it's the same for everyone. If you're like a monster bank, GCIB whatever, you pay the same amount for that minimum compliance layer as the startup. But if you're if you have scale, you can drive your revenue or your your fees pretty low because you have to eat that that that fixed cost for your for your regulatory compliance. And so what happens is the folks who
can scale will win. The folks who can't scale will die because they'll be priced out of the market and they have the same costs. So stand by for a lot of consolidation. And then on top of that, you know, we talked about how Crypto's trying to get into trad FI. Trad fis trying to get into crypto. You're going to see incremental consolidation due to M and A because it's really hard to build these things organically and hire the teams and figure it out. And so you're because you're
in an arms race. Watch the M and A space, it's going to move very fast.
Do you have a right in regard to innovation and consolidation? You know, you have so much competition because of that, But there's almost this competition that is building to be acquired. And I always worry about that because it's you know, where's the sustainable entrepreneurs that actually want to build something. That's why I actually love the CEO of zero Hash, who was offered, you know, to be bought out by MasterCard, and he turned it down because he wants to be
one of the real players. And I think he's actually also backed by Templeton. You know, what do you have to say for people who are building to be acquired because of this climate?
I mean, look, when when you're in the venture space, one of the questions that a lot of venture capitalists will ask is say, hey, you know, if somebody gave you a check for one hundred million dollars, you can take it, you know, And and that's part of a lot of due diligence that that venture capitalists will undertake.
And so look, I can't speak for every single founder, but the best founders, you know, as you're looking at them through that lens for the adventure capital lens, are the ones who are mission driven and who want to win and and you know, don't want to turn over the keys when it's too early. And so I think you're pointing out something is like, if you're building to be acquired, then maybe that's not the best. You know,
you're not building the best foundations. That's not to say that if if a founder decides to be acquired for the right price and the right vision like that, that's fine.
You're seeing a lot of that.
But you know, the other thing is that we're seeing it very difficult, you know, and I know Chairman Atkins is trying to fix this, but I think eighty one percent of companies in the United States with over one hundred million dollars in revenue, they're private. It's not easy to go public, and many people don't want to go public, and so what kind of exit is available if you can't go public? Well, M and A is typically the
route it would be. It wouldn't be fair for me to say, you know that that's not an obvious exit for many folks, But yeah, you want mission driven founders when you're looking through a venture capital lens.
Chris you mentioned in private equity. Do you think tokenization
¶ Private Equity tokenization
is going to change that market where I don't necessarily have to go public, but I can do some sort of token issuings. I hope it does in a way.
I really hate the fact that, like I just gave you guys that quote, around eighty one percent of companies that remain private.
That's not good.
We have a huge issue with income inequality in this country, and if we're saying, hey, sorry, you're too poor, you can't invest in the best companies.
Sorry, you're just too poor to do it, that's like not cool.
And so I really commend some of the efforts that are being undertaken, and I'm not sure they were executed perfectly just yet. But how do we give retail access to the best companies, the most innovative companies that continue to be private. Now, maybe there's a way where we get them public earlier by alleviating some of the overhead and the stresses that they currently under that they face, you know, and sec SI. Maybe we don't need to report four times a year, maybe we do it twice whatever.
But there's always this give and take between consumer protection, et cetera. I don't like the idea of saying, sorry, Amanda, we're protecting you. You can't invest in a you can't use your hard earned money to invest in a company that you want because I'm going to protect you. Like you're like, no, dude, that's not how it is. And I hope we get past that as a country. That said, it's important to give people open disclosures to understand what
they're investing in. And the one trend that I'm seeing that's really moving fast and I hope it continues because oftentimes it starts and it stops. That's democratization. So crypto, to your point, gives people access to tokens as long as they've got access to the Internet, and that's pretty democratic. Now pretty much everyone in the world, even developing country, they have mobile phones.
Right, that's great.
AI is democratizing access to information as well, and so gosh, I'm in a much better position now, even if I'm not trained in anything to say, hey, I go into my deep research and I'm like, hey, look at the financials, what does this tell me? And you can really start teaching yourself and so hopefully together this allows for regular folks to invest in the best companies in the world.
That's where you want to get and you want to make sure they do so in a way that they know what they're getting into.
I know on Twitter you've been making a lot of
¶ Privateers Bitcoin Reserve
analogies with the Revolutionary War in comparison to the bitcoin reserve. You know, your privateers and how this would work with a bitcoin reserve at no cost to the tax payer. Can you explain how that exactly would work?
Yeah, thank you for bringing it up.
It's something I'm pretty passionate about, and yeah, I do spend a little bit of time on social media talking about it. I'm a big believer in crypto and in the technology and the potential of this technology to do all the things I'm talking about twenty four to seven market is access, democratization, et cetera. And if I were to say, the one thing that keeps me awake at night around this technology accomplishing its full potential is security.
And I've been living this for years.
How often have we seen a startup by a state sponsored actor? And when a state sponsored actor goes after a startup and tries to hack them, guess what the startup's going to lose. And yes, I've been criticized and people have said, well, this is a very you know, confrontational environment, and people need to be robust, and it's shame on the victim. But like I don't know in any place that I've ever been, when you start shaming victims,
probably not the right way to direct your angst. And so why don't we start pivoting on policies that will actually protect our founders attract entrepreneurs on shore. And did a little bit of research and it brought me to the US Constitution, which I used to be in the military and I used to defend and I'm like, wow, and the little history and here's how it goes. In the Revolutionary War, we didn't we couldn't afford a navy, We didn't have the surface area to really fight the British,
who is the greatest naval power in the world. And so we went through this thing called we issued letters of mark, which were started in the Middle Age where you commission private citizens and ship captains to go on the attack against str enemy. And if you don't know the history of the Revolutionary War, the Revolutionary War large and a large part came to an end because we ravaged the British economy. If you look at the newspapers at the time in London, they were upset because their
shipping was destroyed. Our privateers would raid it, take you know, take take their goods and really hurt their economy.
And they had enough. So that helped us.
When the Revolutionary War War eighteen twelve came around, James Madison issued five hundred letters of mark and again that helped with the stalemate there. And again this is as American as apple pie. To an Article one, section eight of the Constitution. Now why does this apply to crypto today? We have decent capabilities within our government, but it's really hard to attract and retain talent, and our surface our
defense service areas tiny. And so the thinking is is like, gosh, what if we could look back at our history and come up with a fully regulated opportunity to let private companies go out and help help us recover those stolen assets. The numbers are big I think we had twenty nine hacks. Like recently, last month alone we had six hundred millions stolen from hacks, whether it's the KELP, Dow Layer zero thing, drift and so what are we doing about it? It
keeps happening. And to me, there's only one policy solution I can think of, and it's not to blame the victim. It's to go after the bad guys. And the bad guys keep doing it. So how do we create policies that protect our founders? And to me, it's around issuing these these regulated letters of mark where they can go and recover assets. When they're successful, they will receive some of you know, using a pirate term, some of that booty and some will go to the house and then
of course some will go to the victim. And like back in the day, they would actually have prize courts that adjudicated this. And a great thing about crypto is it's all chain. You could track who ones what right. So look, I'm all about solutions and that's the only I can think of, But we have to get much better from a security per The second thing on security is that people are freaking out about like AI, like oh a I is going to destroy our security situation,
and they're right. It brings a lot of new risks, like deep fake technology is very scary. But the point is that AI is also going to be great from a defense perspective because it's not going to be game over like the bad guys win because they have AI. I know we're going to be able to strengthen a lot of our protocols as well. At the same time, So to me, security remains really important and has to
be saw one way or the other. But thank you for asking me, Amanda, I think I'm crazy on that one, Like what do you think?
Well, I think it's interesting, I do I did I hear how it works with no cost to the taxpayer? Did you answer that? And did I missed that?
Yeah?
So if you were to recover those assets, and always traditionally we get a cut, right they give you the letter, they're like, Amanda, you know you can go out and hack the bad guys, and you're like, okay, I I reclaimed I recovered one hundred million dollars and maybe I had to violate OPHAC to do it because I have the special license. But then you got to pay your taxes to the man, and so that would that could potentially go into the bitcoin reserve no cost to the tax payer.
Everyone's happy.
Thank I'm all for that.
Yeah, I like the idea, and Christy, you and I have talked about it in the past. But yeah, by the way, how do you get this to Congress? To Antony, I'm trying, man, I'm trying call your congressman. I've spoken to numerous congress people on it.
They like it.
My Christian Carlo and I former chair of the CFTC, we published a couple of papers on it. No one's really told me that they think it's awful. There's some people that have concerns about people going rogue whatever, but like that can be solved. But uh, I think we need to do something. I can't think of anything else. And I've had good support from Democrats as well. It's not just a Republican thing, and I'm not not partisan, but I think in fact, I heard the Secretary best
likes it. Christian Carlo spoke to him. So a lot of people like it. We just got to do it. And as you guys know, as we're heading to the end of the Clarity Act, here getting when they say it takes an Act of Congress. It takes Anact of Congress at it easy, So you know, we'll see what happens. But fingers crossed and call your congressman.
Speaking of clarity, you've expressed a lot of concern about
¶ Clarity Act
section five oh five. Well, first of all, do you think this bill will pass? It seems you know, early next week, end of next week. What are you? What are your thoughts?
You know it's a coin flip, no matter what anyone tells you, it's a coin flip. I remain bullish that it gets passed. I think prediction markus went pretty high recently, but you know, I'm probably in the sixty percent range right now. Because things get weird at the end. And if you looked at the Genius Act, who got really weird at the end. People want to extract, they have their little agendas whatever. You never know, and it's a hard bill and a lot of people don't like it,
and so there are some political challenges. The good news is that there are no more technical issues. The bill is the bill. Now you're getting into the political issues. Those political issues, there's some stuff around. People want commissioners to be appointed to balance things out. Fine, but the big issues ethics. And it's unfortunate that this has to be the issue because this is not an ethics bill. We really need an ethics bill, and we should have a big ethics bill, and I would love it, and
I think it would be great for our country. But why are you tying that to crypto? And the reason is is that in some people's minds, Donald Trump and crypto are a thing. What I tell them then is like, let's really like get rid of real estate too, Like, let's go after real estate ethics because like he likes real estate too, Like, come on, guys, it should be an entire like a focus on ethics should be across
all asset classes. In the State of the Union address, Trump said twice he talked about to Stop and Saider Trading Act twice. I would like I would I'd be a fool to come up here and say, oh, no, we don't need ethics, Because we do need ethics. The question is is does it need to be in this bill or should it be done you know, more broadly. I would vote for more broadly, but politics or politics
are tough. The thing that makes me bullish on this getting done, though, is that when Operation Epic Fury started and the bullet started flying, Trump literally said I want clarity done. And so he's got a lot of chips. I think he's putting them on the table and I hope he gets it done.
Chris, we've seen the market recently rally bit quite over
¶ Crypto market outlook
eighty thousand for a bit. You know, what are your thoughts on where we're at in this cycle and could the institutional crypto institutional error break some of the four year cycle patterns we've seen over the years and make things less wild for your cycle is a thing. You can't ignore it.
You can't just say it's not important, because it continues to show that it's one of the inputs. However, it's starting to be offset by others, and I think the institutional bid especially will help that. So I don't think it's fair to say, oh, it's dead, forget it, ignore it. It's just one input into many other inputs, and I think it's waiting will decrease over time.
I think the market setup is very, very constructive. A few reasons.
Number one, retail burned in ten ten. This is a retail market. They kind of pulled back. They're not so sure and those are the dgens, the people with the early adopters. Right typically, when price action picks up, they'll come pouring back. They needed to go after gold for a while. Blah blah blah blah blah. Look at the
bitcoin gold graph. It's really actually quite beautiful right now. Ever, since epic Fury began, people are like, I think there was a little bit of concern amongst retail saying, well, wait a second, why did everyone buy gold and not bitcoin?
Oh my gosh, Like my narrative is broken. I'm so sad.
But the truth of the matter is is that once epic fury started, people like, wait, this gold stuff, it's hard to transport. We really don't know how much there is if I used derivats. On top of that, I'm backing US financial system. Maybe there's a better asset that's more transparent, that I can move around easier. That's that's just a better store of value. And I think that realization is coming back. So I think the narrative, first for a hot minute, broke down in some people's minds.
But when you step back, the narratives are very much intact. Bitcoin's a wonderful store of gold. Wonderful like digital gold store value. But you know, right now Macro has been you know, keeping its foot on the neck of crypto a little bit, but it's been very resilient. Right we just hit ady. It feels very constructive, and then you have those institutions continuing to march forward. So sentiment is bad, fundamentals are improving. Typically results in a really constructive market setup.
¶ Inflation & Market data accuracy
And see its fundamentals. You know, data is clearly one of those the biggest things with prediction markets and other derivatives. And as you I think I saw you Reshare this morning again on social media. But this this company True True Inflation. I believe it's the name of it. And you know this is this is showing better data, timely data, transparent data. It's giving you instant access to actionable inflation print.
Can you just tell us a bit about about this company and why you're championing it.
Yeah, So not investment advice or anything else. Stefan's a friend a step and rust I just did a podcast with him. But he if you look at the way financial data was released by the government in the past, Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's latent. The methodology is pretty old. They survey a bunch of households, they.
Move it around a little bit.
And so this entrepreneur identified a way to improve the calculation to go from something that's super lagging to something that's near real time. And one of the most exciting things that are that's coming out of crypto is the transparency and the discovery of new data points like predicated in prediction markets. So like, let's let's look unpack that for a second.
I don't know.
About you, but I would argue that the world is becoming more trustless and more permissionless as we go on. We're in a world of real politic. People are acting in their interests. It's really hard to trust, you know, polls, it's hard to trust news, and like it's hard to trust social media. And frankly, the best way to truth from my perspective is via markets. Markets tell the truth. I had a good friend, He's like, you want to know the truth, watch financial news. That's the closest you're
going to get, and markets tell the truth. Now, what we have now is we have these things called prediction markets that are telling the truth in real time. Put your money where your mouth is, and they're not perfect. They can be manipulated and we're seeing issues around that already. And the great news about market manipulation in this space is that it's illegal. It's always been illegal. We don't need new laws because of a new technology.
You can't do it.
And I think people are going to start realizing that you don't get a free pass because it's a new market. No, it's a fully regulated market market. You can't manipulate it. So what you can start doing now, and I think we're just at the beginning of this phenomena. You can start ripping apart different parts of a company's balance sheet and have prediction markets to see how they're doing in
a region. And and like the opportunities or inflation, you know, why should I wait for like a monthly report or you know, any other government data like a weekly report or whatever. When I can have the market tell me the more accurate number in real time. That makes markets more efficient, that gives people a better opportunity. And that's just one example of many. So yeah, Stefan's good friend. It's been interesting to watch as policymakers start looking at
his metrics as well against the BLS. But it's great to see private sector enhancing and disrupting to get more accurate data.
That's exactly what you want to see.
And Chris, with blockchain tech, you know, being used as the rails for many of these different data sources and so forth, you see that it will get more efficient, better quality data with blockchain tech in the mix one hundred percent.
You're seeing companies around the world. There are a couple of different streams. So one stream is that people are looking into to invest in cryptonative assets. But another humongous stream during this institutional era is that they're integrating blockchain technology for the value that it brings, which effectively is real time settlement in many cases, and it eliminates risks
and eliminates settlements risk. In tradify, we call it herstat risk, which was named after a bank that defaulted in nineteen seventy four because it couldn't settle things on time and it had this huge issue with settlement latency. So yeah, you're seeing that across the board, and I know guys who are building entire pe funds around that concept.
So yeah, it's interesting.
Well, Christopher, this has been super informative. You're one of the few guys that doesn't get overly technical when you respond. It's very understandable and I really appreciate you joining us this morning.
I really appreciate your time. Keep doing all the good work that you guys do. Big fan, and thank you Tony and Amanda. I really appreciate you coming on.
Thank you Chris, 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 podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple, please follow and leave a five star rating.
Thank you so much,