Why this Avalanche AVAX Digital Asset Treasury Company is a Game Changer! with Bart Smith

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includes Ripples, r L USD. You can earn up the five percent on that stable coin and five point two five percent on USBC. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold and all the great services they offer, visit the link in the description. Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and joining me today is Bart Smith, who is the CEO and chairman of the Avalanche Treasury Co.

from and your professional background.

I ran the ETF group. I was also responsible at times for so in some international sales and trading stuff. I ran our credit trading business. And then since twenty fourteen, I was responsible for anything that was digital asset related. And then kind of in twenty twenty two, kind of giving the regulatory environment, we made the decision to create Susquehanna Crypto, which was not part of the Susquehanna group of companies. It was a separate entity outside of the

Susquhenda group. It was based in Bahamas and with offices in London Hong Kong, which you know, we were a derivative trading shop, proprietary shop, market maker, and we did a fair amount of investing into the ecosystem and a lot of DeFi so a pretty well rounded business there. And then departed in it's late August after thirteen great years there to lead this new digitalised treasury. That's incredible.

them as securities, and so we kind of limit our approach mostly to those names like cooin, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, and theorem classic, stuff like that. And then kind of as there was that ICO correction in twenty eighteen, you know, we went to try to kind of expand and kind of set up like a proper OTC desk, and you know, we just really couldn't get terribly comfortable with kind of the legal and regulatory advice that we were getting and others were getting, and so, you know, we kind of

were very interested in the space. We made a lot of direct investments over that time, but kind of there was a period there for a while where we weren't as active as maybe some of the other kind of bigger US market making firms, and then kind of near the twenty twenty one kind of run up, and that's when we kind of made the decision that if if we want to do this, and Susquehanna and my person all kind of view of the world is taking a

very conservative approach towards legal and reguatory compliance, and that just meant, you know, doing it offshore. And we knew that people were doing it in the US and they were using VPNs and you know they which really just means they're they're you know, they are you know, they're

they're not abiding by they're terms of service. But it's you know, just in a broader sense, if we were going to do this, we wanted to do it in the most compliant and effective manner, which meant, unfortunately, in that timeframe, you know, going offshore, and that's what we did. You know, we set up a global business that was in three time zones but just not you know, in the US.

We went from being taboo and the stigma of this being used by criminals to this full blown asset class that now Wall Street firms are jumping all in. They're going neck deep adopting, launching, crypto trading, custody, tokenizing stable coins, and much more. Plus we have some legislation like the Genius Act. What is it like looking back and seeing the.

through the woods on that. I not to take a somewhat more parish view than many people, but like, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done, and we need to codify clarity, right because you know, if you don't create laws that you know that and rules to follow that are very clear, well then you're just subject to the same kind of you know, regulatory arbitrage that has existed historically. So that's something that you know, in twenty twenty five, we need to kind of close out.

It's kind of difficult right now with the government being shut down. So those are things that i'm i'm i'm looking at. And then what you're going to need to have some sort of harmonization of regulatory rule making around the globe, right, and you've seen a little bit of like kind of things to be excited about. The US is working with the FC in London, which has always been like a fairly difficult and slow moving regulator, to maybe harmonize some of their rulemaking. But then you have

all these other money centers you're going to have. You know, you have mic ou to for for broad EU, you have you know, a lot of people going to UAE, and then you have all the money centers you know in in in the far East, right, so you have

like Singapore, Hong Kong, Soul, Tokyo. So there's a lot of things for global firms, particularly global banks, to make sure that they, you know, that they are harmonizing the rules so that they can run businesses globally and they don't have to have a different set of rules and a different set of groups and and and groups that can't really function, you know, globally, because there's different rules and reanks in each locale. So I think we've made

a lot of progress. I think institutions are very interested. What we haven't solved for is kind of this, you know, banks being able to be kind of prime brokers for are for liquidity providers and market makers in the space. I think, you know, the events from a couple of

weeks ago, that was the function of that. Like there's just there isn't enough capital that's fungible and and where you can arbitraze price differences and different platforms and in different in different areas, so that stuff it still needs to happen. But like from where we were twelve months ago, yeah, it's you know, we're white years, so that that part's good, but we still have a lot of work to do.

the full rundown, the history, the mission, and much more so.

like a hemp manufacturer. There's like, you know, there there are you know, the different like medical failed companies, and so in my opinion, those are more problematic, right, they have they have historical problems you have to address. They're operating companies, they're registered, they're regulated, so you have to kind of continue to run these often failed businesses while the primary business is completely unrelated. And like to me, that was always kind of difficult. And so when the

concept of an Avalanche digitized of treasury came along. You know, people reach out to us because in the last round of Avalanche raised money, we were one of the largest participants in that race. So there, you know, people knew that that we were constructive on Avalanche, and I was personally constructive. And then as you know, it was kind of in the early stage of thinking about what that

might look like. You know, I had some very strong opinions about you know, what would lead to success and what you know, the next generation of these debts are going to look like. And the more that I was thinking about it, the more I thought, you know, this might be a unique opportunity to do something different. And you know, there's going to be a lot of these digitalass of treasuries, and I think, just like in every other part of the capital markets, you're going to have

winners and losers. And you know, if you built one that was you know, purpose built to do uh to provide you know, exposure to the avalanche ecosystem, but you could go beyond, you know, what you might be able to get by just owning the underlying spot commodity or an ETF. Like I think there's a unique opportunities that this type of structure provides. And so the more you know, I thought about it, the more excited I got, and you know, ultimately I ended up here.

why not Bitcoin, why not eat? Why not Salona? Why avax or Avalanche?

to implement blockchain technology? I do feel like Avalanche has a very strategic advantage in like a kind of government and business vertical that it's you know, it's not the mag one, right, the mag seven. So like throughout the last couple of decades, there have been many winners in technology put through software. They had different approaches and so you know, you had you know, telecom, you have Internet, you have SaaS, you had all these different areas. You

could have a winner or multiple winners. I think as people look to implement blockchain technology into businesses, one of the difficulties they have is that businesses don't want to take their private information, all the customers private information, and put it in a public blockchain. It's just like it's not it's not it's not starter, right, So you know what a lot of people have done is is maybe looked at like ethereum and building you know, kind of

an L two. Like the unique structure of the Avalanche chain is if they have this kind of three chain approach and and one of them, the C chain, allows people to build their own l ones kind of out of the box in a way that's supported by this broader network. And you know, you don't need to have

like an army of software developers to develop that. So you see in companies like Robinhood or uh you know that, you know Google, they're gonna build their own They're gonna build their own change, which makes total sense because they want to implement k y C and a m L. They don't want to put their their customers you know,

private information on public lock chain. But most importantly, like they want to own the entire financial stack, right like they want to be able to customize it and so but then at the end they want this kind of base layer, you know security, and that's where you've seen Ethereum have success. Right There's all these L two's that are building on top of the Ethereum and they're basically

just paying for THEEUM level one, you know security. And so for me just looking at all of the companies that have already been building on Avalanche because they have the capacity to customize an L one, but then you know, into a the security of the Avalanche, which is also EVM capatible, so you can you can connect out for the rest of the world like KKR, Polo, Toyota, FIFA, like big brand names are utilizing Avalanche today to build

for a myriad of reasons. Avalanche team has really built in Japan and in Korea and other parts, Like they're kind of market leaders in a lot of these spaces, and you know, I just don't think people really understand how differentiated AVAX and Avalanche is. So like when I'm looking at kind of an opportunity, you know, it's it's you have all of this stuff here and really you just need to be able to package it and market it.

In a way that people can understand the opportunity, and like, what a better way to do that than to create a regulated public company that's audited that you can go out and basically reboot, you know, the marketing, you know, in in partnership with all of people from the ecosystem to kind of make people aware of like what's going on in Avalanche and why they might want to own a little bit of exposure to the ecosystem in their investment portfolio.

but also participating in the ecosystem. Let's double click a bit into that, like, how what are some of the initiatives you'll be doing as far as supporting the ecosystem?

Acquisition Corp. Will be a listed company. We are going to There's a lot of things that we can do and that I believe we're going to be able to do, but we have to also just kind of go through this process and make sure that that everything that we're doing is aligned with the you know, the SEC and other regulators. So I think that's an important point that you know that we are going to continually evaluate that.

So let's putting that aside. There's a lot of things that happen in an ecosystem that have value that doesn't fully or a majority kind of a crewe down to the token. So like so if you think about Ethereum, right, which is you know, the largest non bitcoin blockchain, and I always have kind of thought, like, you know, bitcoin is digital gold, right, it's over here, and there's a world where people might build applications on bitcoin but it

feels like pretty far away from that. So excluding that in Ethereum you've had, you know, it's the largest blockchain, it's the oldest, and there are a lot of applications that have built on top of Avalanche right Ave Right, it's worth four billion dollars, it's seen one of the largest. It's not the largest lending protocol you have like Uni swap right, which is a trading platform decks that it's on top of the built primarily on top of Ethereum.

That's worth a four million dollars. You know. A lot of the value of those companies doesn't go down to the Ethereum network. Some does, but like it wasn't as if if you owned you know, Uni swap, or if you owned ave, you know, you've got a different kind of return than would trickle down to Ethereum. You know, the the value of you know, fully diluted value of Ethereum, you know, give or take, you know, rounding broadly, it

is probably like five hundred billion dollars. Right. A lot of the excitement around Ethereum is stable coin usage, right,

and Tether's the bigges stable coin in the world. Teather's worth five hundred billion dollars, right, So like teather being you know, and and some of that crews down to Tron because you know, there's a lot of tether on TRON, So like some value accrue down to ethereum from tether, but like how much you know, and like how much accrued from AVE and how much accrued from uh, you know, all of these other platforms out for the unisops of the world. So like there's definitely a network effect that

will happen that will creue more value. So if you're looking to get exposure to implementation and growth of the avalanche ecosystem, you can own AVAX and like that should work to some degree. But all of these l ones that are being built on top of avalanche, where you have these kind of private companies or governments or different you know, uh kind of news, like builders that are building applications on top of avalanche, some of that will

crew down because there will be a network effect. But if you could get a little piece or you could invest in, you know, some of those companies, that probably gives you a much better exposure to the growth of the ecosystem. So you know, we're going to own evacs, We're going to stake it. You know historically, you know, very conservatively, you know that's gotten you know, mid single digits to like high single digit kind of yield returns from from you know, taking the AVAX and using it

to secure the blockchain. So we can do that. There's other things that we would love to be able to do. Can we you know, buy a validator and run our own notes and you know, could we lend our avax to builders and applications and l ones that are building on avalanche right, and can we work with them to help them kind of with their staking, you know, with their their the avax they need. Can we work with them to make their businesses better? Can we do you know,

DeFi activities in the space. Can we there are derivatives obviously, you know, coming from Susquehanna, like, there's a lot of driven activity that you do with options and future strategies that can generate diversified and maybe in some cases higher levels of income. So what you end up getting is, you know, this this diversified pool of of exposures that

should do better. If the ecosystem does really well, then if you just owned the token seuth so like you know that that that is the thesis that we're going after, sure, is that we can provide a much better kind of holistic exposure for value accrual for uh for individuals in a way that is the access they want, right Like many you know, many high net worth individuals and institutions like they just they're either can't or do not want

to buy you know, spot commodities, digitaliztic commodities on unregulated exchanges. That's it's not how they want to interact. So if I can create you know, a public company where people can invest through convertible bonds or through preferreds or through straight equity, and they can hold it in the brokerage account and they can they can invest in it just

like they invest in everything else. And then you have this exposure where we can take you know, that capital and then we can put that into the enterprise that is avalanche and you know, you would imagine that that that capital coming in should provide you know more you know, uh, you know, gas for the fire, so to speak. Right, You're gonna you're gonna help to like to to implement more capital into the ecosystem, which should you know, you

would hope help the ecosystem grow. So that's kind of like the dual nature, right, So like you you allow regulated exposure for people in the way that they want to invest, and then you take that capital and you invest it into the ecosystem, which you would hope benefits the growth and is mutually beneficial for for for the whole, you know, for both parties. So that that's the concept as I think about it.

and so forth, will that be potentially paid out in dividends or reinvested.

So I would my guess is that the best use of you know, whatever capital we have would be to continue to try to find the best returns. But like, sure, if it you know, if there are certain situations where you know, it would make sense to pay a dividend

or a special dividend. But yeah, I think you know, right now, we're, like I said before, we're going to kind of take the cues from the SEC and make sure that we you know, we're disclosing risks and we're and we're setting this up in a way that is compliant. And then yeah, well as a lot of just Trypto in general is like not being overly prescriptive and and

just kind of taking what the market gives you. And so you know, we're gonna we're you know, Lane Littman is my CEO, who he was the president Hidden Road and and spent many years you know, working at ad Vertue and and and you know Coleman and but banks, like we've seen a lot of iterations of this, and so you know what we're gonna do is we have a strategy. We're going to communicate, you know, owning and staking Avax is going to be a very large portion

of it. And then to the extent that we can have other additive sleeves of our strategy that are smaller, but we we believe would offer a diversified, better exposure and you know, hopefully provide kind of risk adjusted you know, good rates of returns for investors. Like that's that's the plan, oh for sure.

capital into the space. The thing that's interesting to me is that and you know if over time, you know, sometimes you'll hear me save this over and over like every other industry was allowed to grow this way, you know, software SaaS, you know, telecom, the Internet, and that you created a public company and you wrote you raised money through debt or through converts or through equity, and you

took that money and invest in the enterprise. The enterprise did well, bondholders and equi holders did well, and this industry was specifically not allowed to do that. And so

this digitalized a treasury structure allows for that to happen. Right, you can go, you have a public company and you can raise money in you know, in the public markets in a variety of ways, and that could be issuing equities, but that you know, there's other things that you can do that might be attractive to both a different type of investor and we might be more attractive in trying to generate more AVAX per share for our shareholders. And so that to me is what I find most exciting

about this structure. And then obviously because you know it's not a mutual fund or an ETF, like, you don't have to prepare yourself for the possibility of deploying money on any given day that you weren't prepared for or

having to redeem money. Right, so if you if you're open to a mutual fund redemption or an ETF redemption and having get any given day, that's very limiting in what you can do to provide exposure to you know, your yes, because in theory, you know you hope this doesn't happen, but on some given day, everybody could come and rush to want a redeem and so you need to be able to meet those redemptions. And that is very limiting in what you can do to try to

maximize a longer term strategy. So yeah, I think I think that's the I think that in the evolution of kind of these digitous of treasuries, I think that's the most compelling argument that people will come to realize with like, this is just a better structure to invest in an early what is still, in my opinion, a very early emerging technology.

market downturn rolls around. How are you preparing for that? And do you see other dats failing you know, maybe some consolidation and things like that.

Fridays ago. Was how surprised that people were right? Like, it's like these asset classes are very volatile because their early stage, all good new ideas are volatile, right, and so you know, you have to have the expectation that that you know, when volatility or when you know, a sell off happens, like you need to be prepared that that could be, you know, a pretty meaningful sell off and it could last for a long time. My first job out of college, I worked at Payne Weberg, which

was later acquired by UBS. And you know, the market was at the very end of the like the internet dot com bubble, and so for the first like four or five six months i work there, the market just went up, right, and then it went down for three years, so you know, two thousand and two thousand and one, two thousand and two, all negative years de s and P. Five hundred. So that was like a very formulative experience

for me. So like you have to you know, we're thinking about these this vehicle as a long term vehicle, but like it's the idea here is not to try to take incremental risk that is unwarranted. The idea is to take a long term approach that is prudent, that provides kind of the best exposure you can for your shareholders.

And so as we're thinking about in this, you know, this strategy going forward, you always in the back of your mind have to keep thinking like, well, you know, like if you have this massive people are coming into the space because they think they have a one, two, three, five X. You know, I don't have any forecasts of of you know, where the market capitalization is going to go. But it's like it's you know, if you're buying this is because you think that there's an opportunity for to

go meaningfully higher like that. There's no free lunch, right like that that's going to come with periods of doubt and periods of fear, and that's when you're gonna have you know, market selloffs and the and the best thing that you can do is to position yourself to benefit from those moments and not to be the person who's being harmed by those moments. So, you know, I think that that will be a key component of of how

we think about it. And then yeah, you have like you said, there's there's all of these digitals of treasuries out there. They're gonna have to distinguish themselves, right, They're gonna have to. They're gonna have to you know, they're gonna have to capture mind share from people, and they're gonna have to be able to communicate like an effective

strategy and and then deliver on that. So like the capital markets, if nothing, are very efficient and so over time, I think you will see kind of winners and losers that that that kind of show up, you know, over time. And you know, I think that that we're excited about our ability to to to navigate that.

And uh, you know, the tips are going to fall with a fall in the volatility hits or at the bear market, so we'll have to wait and see.

of what we're doing. Our sole focus is going to be on delivering kind of value to customers and in shareholders in a in a in a way that that you know, we feel like can better represent the growth of the ecosystem. And and yeah, and I think that you know, we we like there's gonna It's not like I'm not worried about well, you know, an alternative investment per se. It's just like there's a whole world of investments. Like they don't need to own crypto at all, right,

they don't need to own blockchain technology. So can we effectively communicate a value proposition of owning you know, this asset versus any other asset? And now, and I think if you're listed, you know, on a public stock exchange in the US, you are now competing against basically every asset in the world. And so I think that that's what we're focused on, is providing you know, a structure and a company and an exposure that people are interested in,

and then being able to communicate that effectively. Yeah.

to be a vx boty tfs and so forth. So I'm curious, you know, how would you'll be what would be your elevator pitch to say, hey, this data is better than just buying an ETF.

ton of criticism about ETFs. The ETFs provided like a systematic risk and that the creation redemption, uh, you know, mechanism was going to fail under a massive amount of like market drests, and that you know that that ETFs were creating it impossible for small and mid capitalization companies to seek capital that can differentiate because people were just

buying the index. And there's just like there was a lot of fun around ETFs and how was it was a you know, this like this really risky, dangerous, unproven structure and then here we are, you know, fast forward to twenty twenty five and people are saying, oh, these digitalts of treasuries, you know, have all of these shortcomings. You should have been putting it into a ETF, right, And so it's just funny how like things evolve over time as people become familiar with structures. And ETF is

not good or bad. It is just a rapper, right, It just it's a function of what you put in it, and the same way a dies US treasury is not good or bad. It's just a function of like what is in it and what do you do with that capital. ETFs are like one of the most democratizing you know

structures that have in financial services has ever created. Right, It Like it allowed people to get exposure to gold and to a whole host of things that in average small you know, institution or high not worth investor didn't have access to and so if people want to use ETF to get exposure to avax or any other crypto like, that is net positive and I'm very supportive of that.

I would argue to the points I made earlier that just owning the avax token itself and then staking that for whatever amount that they're going to be able to stake, given the fact that they're going to have to respond to to you know, daily creation redemn requests, and then the ability to trade that asset and keep that in line you every day in the marketplace, like it could be an expensive proposition. I think by and large, market

makers in the competitive marketplace will figure it out. But it's not totally clear to me how efficient a vehicle you're going to have for uh, you know, avax or some of the other tokens that aren't Bitcoin and aren't ethereum right, And so to me, I think that there's you know, we've seen these digitalish treasury structures over you know, the last couple of years, and so there's like I think in my mind, there's probably more certainty in my in my from my position of of what, you know,

what that looks like day to day, and less so in all of these new ETFs that are coming out, like managing that asset day to day and having market makers keep that price in line with Spot like could be problematic. And and then again you're just kind of because you have to have daily redemption and creation requests, like, you're just going to be very limited as owning the

spot market. And so our hope is that for people who would like to get you know, a differ, a different exposure and maybe something that I would think would be hopefully more of a true exposure of the growth of the ecosystem. I think you put those two things side by side, and I feel very good about the value proposition that that we put forth. And and for a lot of people that might just seem too complicated and that can buy the ETF and that's fine, right,

you know. I I don't know over time if that will get them what they're looking for, but I certainly understand why people would want to own it, and people in general buying a BAX is good for the ecosystem, and you know, we're obviously very supportive of it. So you know, like I'm you know, I spend a lot of time in that industry, you know, and I like you know, a lot of my friends are still working

at you know, all of these firms. Bit Wise are three guys that I've known for you know, over a decade, if not longer, And so they're gonna bit Wise is going to launch an avax ETF And if you want to buy an a bax ETF, you should the bit wise etah for any of these other companies that are

listing them. So yeah, I think I think we're We're focused, like I said, on putting our strategy together and putting forth the best strategy we can and then making sure we're doing it in a prudent way gives people the best exposure. And you know, there's gonna be a lot of other investment opportunities beyond crypto that we're also competing

for mind share. And so I'm in reality, I'm probably more thoughtful about how do we distinguish the opportunity versus like the field versus you know, a comparable passive exposure or you know, owning spot on you know, coinbase or robin Hood or something like that.

The the the wonderful thing about the SEC and EDGAR is all these filings are public, so you know, we also get the benefit of people who started before us, and so you know, every time you know there's another filing, you know, an updated regulatory uh kind of response to another one of the digitalist of treasuries, it's just an opportunity for us to kind of clean you know, what is you know, what is in the gray area and what is not and then you know, like I said,

like we're going to take a very conservative approach towards regulatory and legal compliance and we're not gonna go anywhere near gray areas. I feel pretty confident that the the from from what I'm seeing in the market to date, like the these structures will be won't be very limited.

You know that they that that you know, as long as you're disclosing and you are doing all the things that you're supposed to be doing, you know, from from that perspective that you should have a you know, the ability to do whatevery other corporate treasury in America has been able to do. And I think sometimes people act like these are new vehicles, right Like Berkshire Hathaway and Apple and Microsoft are like the largest corporate treasuries in

the world. They just have this massive operating business alongside of it. But Berkshire Hathway doesn't. Berksure Hathaway just buys companies and they invest in other companies and then they

have this huge pile of cast they use. So like the concept of a corporate treasury and corporate treasury management is not new, It's just it was taken and kind of implemented by Michael Sailor and micro strategies, and the benefits from being able to use that capital structure to invest with a whole slew of people who today have not been able to access you know, this asset class

the way that they wanted to. And I think everyone said, wow, that's that's actually that's a great evolution of something that already existed. I would like to apply that to this ecosystem and see if I can provide, you know, a better you know return or a better exposure for investors, and so that's that's kind of how you know, we ended up here today.

at the end of this year excuse me, and going into twenty twenty six.

things that are out of our control. And so once that that, you know, once that business combination, uh, you know, hopefully gets approved and closes, and then you know, then it's it's you know, the strategy will go from there.

And at that point we had, like I said, this permanent capital vehicle where you know, our investment timeframe is just way longer, right, and so you know we're looking at you know, the opportunities that are in there that could supplement just owning AVAX and staking it, which again is going to be you know, a large portion of what we're doing. I just want to you know, I don't want to think that this is going to be

like you know, a venture funt right. You know that this the idea is to have that at its core, you know, is trying to return more avacx per share for you know, our shareholders. And then if we could have sleeves that are diversifying or a creative or provide different exposures, you know that I think that is going

to be the differentiator. So you know, I would I look at it kind of in a two step process, like we need to meet the obligations of of our regulator and and and hopefully have this close you know, that requires the government to reopen and then and then beyond that, I think then you know, then we're taking this kind of longer view, Okay, Okay, how do we how do we represent the opportunity set? Uh, you know that that this ecosystem provives, you know, in this vehicle.

is not a security? And so if you do it on an L two is it is it actually security because it's not really decentralized Versus if you do it, you know, in a broader ecosystem, you can you can demonstrate sufficient you know, decentralization and that would meet different rules for the SEC Like I think, I think tokenization is inevitable and so you know, having worked in traditional finance for all you know the bulk of my career, Like even today it is it is insane to me

how manual stock trading is right. And so, you know, I think that there are certain parts about you know, blockchain, moving things on blockchains that requires like a very specific set of skills and make sure like you're very you're being very diligent at how you how you manage things on chain, you know, because in in in you know, the trictional finance world, if you send Google to the wrong you know, broker dealer, like you're getting that, you're

that back, right, you know, like they will they will reverse that back. And so the thing to me that is shocking is that how dated the infrastructure is in in traditional equities, you know, globally, and like just how much inefficiency there is there. And so I think just from like a basic like just modernization of the underlying structure and plumbing of of traditional finance like bond trading and equities, it's like it's really just like this cobble

together kind of plumbing. That's that it's existed for over one hundred years. And like you have this opportunity to like start clean and like start you know, if you're going to build the best way for people to exchange value, you know, over a blockchain, Like, I think that is a tremendous opportunity and an avalanche. The community has been focused on toganization, you know, you know from from the outset, that was kind of the the like the core motivation

of launching of this chain. So yeah, I think I think that kind of antiquated plumbing mixed with like people want twenty four to seven everything, and so you know, in many cases we are limited to the trading hours that we have in all of these different old money centers because of this plumbing, right, and so you know, the as people are going to demand a higher layer level of access and liquidity, it just seems inevitable that it goes to tokenization.

qualified custodians. And I would imagine over time, you know, if we were to deviate from that, it would come after you know, a pretty exhaustive, uh set of conversations with you know, our regulators.

questions here for you. First, if you get great Drown metaverse, would the theme.

of Avalanche right now. So that so that you have this situation where you know, you go to sell a ticket and some bot buys it up and it's a broker, and they post out two hundred and three hundred percent you know, above the price they paid with consumers paying this excess price right And so you know, blockchain technology where you can obscure private, you know, customer information, but you can still verify that person is like a verified

purchaser and user of the ticket. That that's one technology you know that that Avalanches is implementing with with with FIFA. And then fan engagement tokenizing you know, your rewards or you know right now they have a there's a partnership they have with the LSU football team, and so if you go and you're using your card and you can like get you know points that a crew for like a Tiger token, they call it a go token. You know, you can spend that on you know, memorabilia or like

you know, a team T shirt or something like that. So, like if you could go into a metaverse where you combine the ability to purchase ticketing right in a safe place where you know you're buying you know, the actual ticket from someone that's verified, and then you're also you know, crewing all of these other tokens that you can use kind of in a metaverse to to purchase memorabilia or other kind of you know, fan things, and you have this like world where I could go from like one

team to another in a different sport, in a different league. That to me would be like a pretty cool start. So there's probably people out there who could come up with something a little bit more imaginative than that, but just being able to kind of go into one kind of metaverse where I'm surrounded by, you know, all the sports teams and I can engage in them in a in a different way. I can purchase tickets, I can purchase memorabilia in a safe way. That to me would be would be pretty cool.

interpersonal kind of relationships. And so it's it's it's taught me like a lesson over time to like the interactions you get from just having sitting down and having a meal with someone just kind of provides like a you know a wealth of different benefits. And so that was a book that I learned on, you know that that I learned from very early on in my career.

of stream place. So a lot of times that's kind of on the boat.