Pensions & Crypto

the future. So we're gonna talk about what that means for the asset class with the head of asset management at one of the biggest firms in the crypto investing world. But fill down. I think this is the portion of a podcast where traditionally the hosts engage in some witty banner back and forth. You know, it's almost never witty, almost never. You don't almost them. I want to better about while you never read the scripted intros I write

for you because I don't like to. I'm supposed to say I'm Mike Reagan and you go and I'm Dana Banana. Oh those are really really good. You've you've been writing me really really good introductions. I've just been totally ignoring them. I think last week it was I'm Madonna, right, and then this week it was banana fan of a fan, Total opportunities. Yeah, you had something else to banner about.

I think what was it? I did because we got this really witty tweet you and I did from Tweegy Sunday, one of our our fans on Twitter, and uh he or or she? I suppose because the profile pictures is a doggie. Um, it says craziest thing I saw in supermarkets this week and it's the cover of People magazine and it's Paul Rodd sexiest man Alive. You know, I don't know how I feel about opening the craziest things

in markets up to supermarkets that supermarket. No, I love it, since it's Twiggy Sunday, as you said, a listener from day one will allow it. But I don't know. I don't know if we want to go down in that rabbit hole. I love it. I I I'm all for it, and I want to open it up to others who have seen something crazy in any market, including the supermarket. So um. You know, we close out the show typically

with the craziest thing we saw in markets. If you guys saw anything, give us a call at our hotline. It's six four six three two four three four nine zero. Leave us a voicemail and maybe we'll play it on the show and then you can also hit me and my careaging up on Twitter as well. Although needs to tweet at us about what's so crazy about all Ruddby in the sexiest man in the world. I don't know, is it's not true? Right? Sorry Paul rod fans. Anyway,

enough crazy things. We have a lot to talk about with our With our guest this week, it's Steve Kurtz. He's the global head of asset management at Galaxy Digital. Steve, welcome to the show and thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you both, And my life mission is now to help work some crypto Twitter banter into your show going forward.

That would be that would be really really great. But maybe just to to start us out, Galaxy is a really big name in the crypto world, as Mike said in your introduction, So maybe you can just set up for our listeners what Galaxy is and what your job is at the company. Yeah. Sure, Well, it's been four

years since we started Galaxy and it was. It was eight people, uh with with Mike Novigrats leading the charge in and we had this uh, this idea, um that what had been a retail phenomenon, right, crypto started as a retail um uh phenomenon, like I said, And we thought for this really to grow into what it was able to grow into, we would have to have um

all kinds of developments on the institutional side. And that was a little antithetical to the crypto community and in a way the crypto ethos, but it was really important to us, having worked on the traditional side of finance, to help the space sort of grow up and really to be the translation mechanism between crypto and the institutional world.

And so we thought we had a unique ability to build a company that looks a little bit like Goldman Sachs, although uh, you know that that's a that's a mental model that again is not so crypto cool, I would say. And so we built out you know, trading as a as a as a client business. We built out investment banking, principal mining business, a principal investments business. And the business that I've been leading for the last four years is

the asset management business. And so the consistent thread across all that is a real need for education and working with the regulators and you know, doing things the right way as good sort of corporate citizens. Uh, and in so doing move the crypto phenomenon into the mainstream. Steve, let's get unpack a little bit about the asset management business. Uh latest number I saw three point two billion. Wow, it's uh nice little chunk of change you got you

got under management there. UM, we're working on it and uh, you know obviously uh, you know, maybe you can unpack it for as a little bit. A big chunk of that I think is in the index type of funds and you know, full disclosure, Bloomberg does partner with Galaxy on creating the index is uh, And I want to get back to the indexes, but I'm kind of fascinated with, um the other portion of it, which is the fund of funds um where you guys sort of identify, you know,

more active management type of funds UM. Talking to us a little bit about that portion. UM. It was an acquisition right, uh, that you guys made in the active fund business. Talk us a little bit about that sort of what how the fund of fund business works? UM, do you look for in other funds to invest in and that sort of thing. Yeah. Sure, so we we acquired UM Galaxies asset management business acquired Vision Hill in May of this year. And and Vision Hill is run

by two wonderful, brilliant guys, Danzela and Scott Army. And for the last three years before that they had been building a database and real connectivity to the crypto funds all around the world, passive funds, hedge funds, venture funds, and UM. You know, when you think about the need for a fund of funds, what does the fund of funds do? It wraps a number of different fund investments

under one vehicle. UM. In the traditional world, Uh, maybe Blackstone would argue with me, but you you would look at that and say, well, why do you need that model when people can go find their own managers themselves. Um, that's true. Twenty years later, I would analogize the crypto funds space too, very similar to the hedge funds space. In the early two thousands, there are eight and fifty funds. It's a shocking statistic that people don't understand the breadth

and scope of that. And they're divided out in many different ways and when you go to a pension, or you go to an endowment, or you go to a sovereign wealth fund, and they say, great, we believe in the crypto future. We believe in with web three. What do we do now? Uh, okay, you can buy bitcoin, you can buy ethereum, maybe you can buy a venture fund, but what else is there? And and intuitively they really go to hedge funds because it's kind of an alternative asset.

And then they say, well, wait, who are the big hedge fund players? And the answer is there really aren't big hedge fund players. There are a handful that have reached some escape velocity, a couple hundred million here or there, but how can someone put two million dollars into that? They can't do that. So it was a real pain point for large institutions to access this more active body

of the asset class um. And we we just felt that it was really part of our mission, which is both education and access, to give that tool in the toolkit. And a big part of that is not just the access vehicles, it's really defining who those funds are. What do we look for? Um, Well, no one's really done great operational due diligence in the space until until we've

come to the market with these vehicles. So we look for great entrepreneurs, talented entrepreneurs who have built good fund management businesses, and then on the back end, UM we look for really robust, thoughtful approaches that can scale, that our regulatory compliant and that meet a set of standards that were in the process of helping sort of define

for the asset class. So the same way that we do indexing with Bloomberg on the passive side, this hedge fund of funds model, both through indices and through great data and setting of standards UM is really important to more money coming into the space, more talented traders and financial services professionals coming to the space, and ultimately much bigger a u M s for all of those underlying fund managers. We think. And then just to break down a little bit more of what you guys do, I

think Galaxy also has a mining business. Correct me if I'm wrong, But maybe you can just break down a little bit like what those internally conversations are like for

you guys. Considering how much in the news, like the environmental aspect of all of this has been recently, it's a great question, and we we do have We have a mining business that's run by a fidelity alumna Amanda Fabriano, one of the one of the most brilliant bitcoin mining minds out there, and that's part of our principal investing business.

We've got a large balance sheet that does a number of investments and so UM, you know, we're very as you say, involved in this UM, this question of E. S G and Bitcoin, And I don't think at all as a starting point that having passion for UH the

environment is inconsistent with bitcoin. UM. What happened in May really of this year was that bitcoin started to grow up as a macro asset, right it hit a trillion in UH in overall market cap, and then the kitchen sink of macro problems were thrown at bitcoin China band UH. You know E s G regulatory and for bitcoin to become a five trillion dollar asset, it needs to not only meet those questions, but have good answers to those questions. And so E s G was a big part of that.

UM when when you look under the hood, UH, a lot of those initial arguments were somewhat flimsy, and I think you have to start with. Before you say how much energy can something, uh should something utilize, you have to agree that it's worth something. So the first question is why is bitcoin valuable to the world. And once we agree on that, then you can talk about the energy aspect. You know, we've been really active. We've got an E S G working group across the firm, uh

that's continuing to evolve. We were an active founding part of the Bitcoin Mining Council, and our mission is actually to make bitcoin green much faster than all of these goals. Uh. You know that we're hearing broadly. Um, we think that, for instance, the ability for bitcoin to utilize renewables is a huge and accelerating piece of the pie. Um. We think that, um, you know, oftentimes bitcoin is using energy that's actually already being wasted by the grid. So yes,

it's you energy, but that's not net new energy. And so but we put out a piece from this research group that um that sort of estimates I think it was around bitcoin is already uh mind using green sources,

and that number is going to accelerate very quickly. So I think when you look back on this in five years, given how much brain power is being focused on that exact issue, You're actually gonna look to bitcoin and say, wow, that was a great case study for other industries to accelerate the adoption of green technologies and becoming fully green. You know, Steve, I wanna get back to the the

passive index funds a little bit too. Um. You know, obviously, you know, one of the appeals of UH indexing is you get diversity. You know, Uh, it's kind of tricky, uh in the crypto world, considering that Ether and Bitcoin are just so huge compared to everyone else. And I was looking at the the the one index fund and it's you know, you cap the holdings at or the weights at of each you know, so it's Bitcoin ethereum and then and then the other ones make up the balance.

And in the defy index you're you know about of the unit swap token. So I just I'm curious where you see that going forward. I mean, will the do you think the other coins will catch up to the point where you know it will naturally bring down those waitings um or you know, is there a case to be made for sort of an equal weighted crypto fund. Do you think it's a great question? And look at

for for us UM. We were privileged to start working with Bloomberg and when I think, um, you know, crypto was in a very different place and that was a really important part of the puzzle. In our opinion, indusicries are important for a million different reasons, but with a new asset class, it's as much about the taxonomy and defining that taxonomy as it is anything else. UM. The one thing that is uh, you know, very consistent and

different than other indicries is that cap. UM. You know, We've got members of the team that have spent their careers in the et F space, and what we really wanted to focus on over time was the growth of the asset class. And our view was, if you want Bitcoin exposure, or if you want a Theorum exposure or any single asset exposure, you can go to other places,

including our single asset vehicles. You don't need to go to an index to do that for you for that exposure, and we felt that UM, the way to facilitate the growth of the space was really to set that cap and then really start to educate around forget the waitings

for now really educate the verticals. And so Bitcoin is digital goal thetheroreum is web three right defy as an entire construct n f T s UH and so um I expect to answer your question that you will have a number of very large assets in crypto in our large cap index. It is difficult at the moment to see how something could compete with a five billion dollar market cap and ethereum or a trillion plus in bitcoin. But look at how quickly we've seen aspects of the

space grow. We've got over a hundred billion total lock value and defy in less than a year. So we just don't know. And anyone who says they know, I think is is uh either confused or or or telling a story. Uh. You know, you look at something like Salana and you could see an ETH competitor come into that index at one point and be a really sizeable

chunk of the index as well. And so our expectation not in a month or in a year, but over a cycle five ten years, which is an eternity in crypto, is that like an accordy and you're gonna have uh fewer and then more constituents of the index, and then over time you're gonna have different competitive dynamics within the index within different verticals of the index, and what will be really cool is when we can start to subdivide and have a different sub indicries, kind of like the

Defy index that we launched with Bloomberg in August. So you just mentioned having a lot of e t F player is working with you, And obviously the big news recently has been the launch of the Bitcoin Futures ETFs. I was looking at some of the notes that, uh, some of the research that you had done recently, and you said in order for digital assets to continue to flourish, they must be accessible to all investors, but that the launch of the futures ETFs concerns you and I want

to I wanted to ask you why why that is? Yeah, Look, it's it's a nuanced um. It's a nuanced discussion, and I think on some levels as a crypto company, Galaxy looks at something like this from the SEC uh favorably, Right. It's it's important that there's an engagement and that there is for the first time, you know, this regulated public fund construct that's available in the United States. So as at a broad level, we think that's progress and we

applaud the regulators for that. And we think it's another in many recent developments around not the cool stuff that's on crypto Twitter, but the guts of the market and the actual infrastructure that's being built around the markets that's really foundational. So so that's great. Um, when you when you look under the hood as a fiduciary business, so now not with the galaxy crypto had on, but with the galaxy asset management had on, and you think about um,

something like USO. Uh you know, and I think you might have talked about this on a recent podcast. You know, the role dynamic is a real issue. And when you when you bring new participants to a new market in a volatile asset that's already enough you don't need to have structural uh questions on top of that, like leverage, which is obviously a feature of of the products that are that are approved and out there. And it reminds

me a little bit of the trust structure. Uh. You know, we chose not to do a trust structure for bitcoin access, just like we're choosing at the moment not to engage with the futures product. You know, the tracking relative to bitcoin hasn't been great. That doesn't mean that a company like gray scale isn't very important for the space. When when when the market really needed something like that, just like the market needs the futures et F right now. But I would call that more of a trading vehicle

as opposed to an investor retail vehicle. And so we're focusing on the spottyt F and putting all our energy into that project in partnership with Investco. All Right, Steve, I got a multi part question for you, and Vilton is gonna give me a hard time about that, probably as she always does this. This is trademark. Well, if I thought I was listening you ever heard of the smart List podcast with Jason Bateman and um uh Will Arnett. Uh He Jason Bateman asks like three minute questions. So

I think I think I'm onto something here. I think this is the way it's done. To me, Steve, it's been fascinating watching over recent years sort of the evolution of traditional finance. Uh. And that's sort of the big bold face names of the banking world. In the way they talk about crypto. You know, it sort of went from all they roll the rise at it. You know that this is digital toolips five years ago too. Well, we're kind of warming up to it now. So okay,

we're diving in know with two feet now. Um. So so part of of the question is, know, what are your conversations like with the institutions, Um, you know, what kind of allocations are are sort of typical for say, I don't know a pension or we're an endowment. What kind of allocations are they looking at? And the one person who keeps whose evolution of thought on this topic to me that's really fascinating is Ken Griffin of Citadel. You know he uh, he's he's warming up. You can

tell he's warming up to it. Um, he's still a little uneasy about it. And one of his some of his recent comments were like, I just don't know how to value this, you know, other than um, it's worth whatever the next person is willing to pay for. We're so hopefully that's not too much for you there. But if you can answer my questions and and Ken Griffin's questions, you know, uh, what's the sort of climate among the institutional investors, what kind of allocations are they thinking about?

And how do you what would you say to Ken Griffin if you if you got him in the elevator and he said, how how do I value this stuff? Uh? Great, I'll try not to answer the last question first because then I'll go down the rabbit hole. The rabbit hole, but uh, why don't I start with it? So, first of all, when you mentioned the banks, I I worked at a bank. It was called Lehman Brothers. Uh it didn't. So yeah, well we'll spare my leaving story for now.

But uh, I empathize a bit. It's there. There's there's what there's what you can do. There's what you want to do. There's what your your clients are asking you to do. There's committees. It's just it's a complicated process that necessarily is going to take time. But I think that they're getting there when you look at the institutional

allocators first of all, hunter trillion dollar plus market globally. Uh, you know a number of of necessary structural impediments to doing anything different in place, whether it's the investment committees or the consultants or the O D D work. Uh. And so really, uh, you can't fake it with this crowd, nor should you try. And so for the last four years,

why do we focus on indexing first? And then we literally treated service providers like Deloyd, like clients, we had forty meetings with them before we would have them as they would have us as as their auditor for our fund for our for our crypto funds, And you needed all those pieces in line before you could even have a credible conversation. So a lot of that between the period of time when crypto was down where we are today was happening behind the scenes. The conversations, the product

structure is being developed. Uh, even sort of the valuation frameworks we're being tooled around with a little bit so that when you came out of this and the world exploded and had a catalyst for crypto to really matter, which we can talk about and which is covid um, you're not starting from zero. In every single institution that you can think of, in every vertical, they have people

who have done work on this. It's been socialized with their committees, and they're much further along than than you would expect. Um. As an example, there's a there's an endowment that we spoke with recently and I'll not say their name obviously, uh that actually has now six percent crypto exposure because the bet has done so well over the last few years. And so that's a whole different

risk management challenge. Um for those who haven't participated yet, there's a lot of reasons why they haven't, but there's a real pull for them to now make that step. And the reason is that cryptos now a three trillion dollar asset class. If wealth broadly is fo fifty trillion, the index for crypto is now sixty or seventy basis points. So if you're at zero, you're actually short the crypto participation in the global economy, and that no choice is

a choice. One of the hardest things for these institutions is that crypto goes up and then you feel like you're buying at the highs and it's gonna mean revert and you're an idiot if if that to your to your committee. If crypto goes down where you thought you'd buy the dip, actually you feel like it's going away forever, so you don't have the conviction to buy it, and you end up getting stuck in the middle. And that has been the problem over the last two years for

some of these pensions. I was in a spirited debate two nights ago at dinner where a couple of very large pensions were saying, if only we had a bucket, right, we don't have a bucket for crypto. How do we do this, Where do we put it, how do we think about it? We want to do it? And so they're almost begging for someone to step in and say, you know what, this is the index. This is the benchmark.

Bitcoin goes in a hard asset bucket. Ethereum and the future of the Internet probably go in a venture bucket. Defined maybe goes in an equity bucket because it's it's competing with traditional finance in a way. And so you really have to take these mental models, uh and and and try to make it sound like something that already exists, because that's the only way that you're gonna get to the bucket. You don't get new buckets by going and pitching the committee and saying, I think we should have

a crypto bucket. You have to get off of zero, you have to have trusted partners to do that. You have to have use cases that make sense, and then you grow into the asset class. And when that happens, you're gonna see the really big dollars start to come in. I think is gonna be a seismic gear for those dollars coming in. I didn't hit the Ken Griffin. I don't know if there's anything in that aspect that you want to elaborate on, but I'm happy to go into

the cana as well. Some of these institutional players have been making the argument that bitcoin is a hedge against inflation, and this is a topic that actually has just come back quite a bit more recently, just because we are seeing a lot of these hotter than expected inflationary prints.

So I'm wondering what you make of that theory, because you know, I spoke with Cam Harvey at Duke and and he has been doing this long term research on gold and bitcoin, and he's sort of his argument is, well, the history is just not long enough to to to say definitively that bitcoin is an inflation hedge. So I'm

wondering what you make of that. Well, that's true, um, you know the history from but but time is not necessarily the right metric in an exponential age, right, These are these are networks and there's a generational turnover that that's happening, and bitcoin's the top five holding for millennials. So I respect the track record of gold. I don't

have anything negative to say about gold. I do think that it's interesting that UM gold is down two percent year to date and bitcoins up, and I don't think that's an accident. I think that UM, as Paul Tutor Jones said in May ofwy in his piece, bitcoin is the fastest force in this inflation race. Inflation is obviously a problem, and it's particularly a problem if you're uh, in the unfortunate situation where you're poor, or if you're young. And so I think cryptos are response to that. That's

that's systemically different. UM Bitcoin has all the characteristics of a hard asset and of digital gold. Obviously, it has a provably, verifiably scarce number of bitcoin. No one can ever change that. Only twenty one million will ever be mind,

even gold has a supply response. If gold goes to you know, five thousand or ten thousand dollars an ounce, Uh, maybe we won't be mining asteroids for gold the way Elon said, but will certainly be going into the cbed or at other places where we know there's gold at higher prices. There's no mechanism, there's no supply mechanism for bitcoin by which you could do that. So I think it has all the properties of of of a macro hedge, of an inflation hedge, and I think the market is

speaking very loudly on this. What's interesting is that it's not just a macro hedge, it's also a growth asset because of the adoption curve. So what I think that does for a portfolio is you also can play offense. If gold is a defensive hedge against inflation, Bitcoin is that hedge in addition to being like a tech growth stock, because we're so early in the adoption cycle. So it's very rare that you get both of those in one asset um at a time where the market is valuing

both of those themes separately. And I think that's why you've seen that explosion of bitcoin. Steve, let me get one more and then I think, then when I think we got to go to the crazy things uh as

his ar actrition. You know, when you think about you know, Galaxy's role as sort of one of the one of the leaders and indexing in crypto, you know, I'm thinking back to how long it took Tesla to get into the SMP five, and you know how they're there's certain criteria that it it didn't meet until it's market cap had just become enormous UM, so it really came into the index with with full force, you know, with a

with a big thud. And I'm wondering what, you know, how would you view something um, say like a doge coin or a sheba you know, you know that that you know, just from pure momentum, suddenly is one of the biggest cryptos. I mean, is there a role for you guys to sort of, you know, be a gatekeeper? And I hate to pick on those two, you know, I I honestly I already have the the Sheba, you know, tweet storm. People are already after me about something else, so I don't I don't want to pick on them.

But but just that notion of you know, you know, how how do you do do you know, how do you sort of protect the integrity of the index or is it is that not your role as a as an index provider? No, it's our role. It is our

It is our role. And I think you know, the rules fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and it's you know, it's it's regulated exchanges and and there's you know, there's there's a there's a consistency in terms of how long something has to be at a certain size, and volumes and and all kinds of things that I think sort of naturally sort out what you described as as much as I also uh laugh at at some of those coins you mentioned. What I think is really important

and it's separate from the Ken Griffin question. Right. If I'm answering Ken Griffin, I would say, uh, digital gold is going to catch a physical goal because of the generational turnover, and that's a five potentially in dollar market potential. And then I would say, you know, Ken, what's Web three worth? Because that's what's being built right now, and Web three is really important and really necessary. There's this

other bucket that you're talking about, and it's it's dog coin. Uh. It's also game Stop, it's identity investing, it's it's this patch that we wear, uh, and and it's Army that we we are a part of. And you know, yes it's momentum driven, and yes it's easy to laugh at um, but it's it's it's real. Right. Game Stop has been trying to be shortened for a year and here we are, and I think where where this is actually going to happen the right way, because I don't think those are

the right long term answers. Having you know, been around markets for a while, I think the n f T space is actually gonna get that identity investing right. It's gonna flip the fundamentals of that. If you're part of a network and that's your identity, and you're early to that network like board a yacht club, uh, you're you're you're an owner, you wear that badge and you own a piece of that network as it grows. But there's also real world crossover uh into some of the second

order applications of that. That's where it gets really interesting. So it's it's hard to say an institutional indexing. Yes, those things do get filtered out. But I think that we have to imagine a world where identity investing has value.

And it's possible all that like Facebook, where we didn't know what the economic model of the valuation was going to be until well after the network had grown, It's possible that we're just in the early stages of some of this, and I think it would be um silly to dismiss the value of some of that, or the potential future value of some of that stand clearer of the craziest things we saw in markets this week, I think we gotta go crazy things now. I'm looking forward

to Steve's crazy things build. As you know, crypto is, there's always something crazy talked about. But let's go with you with old Donna first, what's yours? Yeah, So I saw a lot of crazy crypto things this week, and I wrote up some of them, but I'm not going to go with them because I'm hoping that maybe Steve touches on some of them. I'm going with this story that I saw in the Wall Street Journal, and the headline is is Santa Claus coming to town? Maybe not

blame the labor shortage. So if anybody as little kids, maybe you want to shield their ears from this. But the tight labor market means that there's a really small supply of Santa claus Is making their rounds. So it's really really difficult to book a Santa Claus for a party or an event or a mall or whatever. And that even back in July for Christmas. In July, all of these places were basically overbooked with you know, people asking for for Santa Claus. So I don't want to start.

It's not even Thanksgiving. I don't want to start having to worry about this. I don't want to start a controversy. But it's not like they were promote top of the labor force food chain to begin with. You know, so I'm not weighing in on this. That's all you. That's all you. Yeah, I would have the shiba you know people after all? Right, my crazy things related actually one of them, I've got a triple crazy thing. But Steve,

let's hear what you got for crazy things this week? Well, I I know it's supposed to be one, but there's there's two, and they're both Twitter Twitter related. I can't I can't avoid the maybe it's Elon's biggest Jedi mind trick of all time in having and having Twitter decide whether he's gonna be able to monetize twenty six billion dollars of Tesla stalk. I thought that was weird, fascinating,

a sign of the times. Uh, that sure was? Yeah, yeah, considering he put the program into place in September, you know, a lot a lot of questions. I got a lot of questions, but maybe maybe maybe not, maybe not for today and the more crypto native one is you know, I alluded at the beginning of the podcast, there's a there's a whole vernacular on crypto Twitter, and one of them is is is GM. It means good morning, and

you can say good morning to each other. But it's more of a as Twitter would say, a crypto Twitter would say, it's a vibe check. Uh, And so you could say GM if you're feeling fresh in the afternoon or in the evening. And um, there was a a venture adventure capitalist named Sam Lesson who criticized that language, and Uh, the co founder of Salona, threatened him jokingly in in reply, and was subsequently banned from Twitter for

doing so. Um. This happened three hours before he went on stage in Lisbon and announced the launch of a Web three competing social media platform in partnership with Reddit. So to recap, you had Uh, one of the founders of the biggest Web three tokens banned from a Web two protocol hours before launching a direct competitor. So I found that to be again fascinating, weird and a sign of the times. It's it's pretty good. Yeah, it's funny.

You know how important the conversation You know, you think of Twitter is just this poof off time point it really can be important, uh, parts of the conversation. And as to your point elon muskin and stuff like this, it's uh, never tweet Bila. I think you never tweeked, do you? No? I I don't like tweeting you rarely. Our colleague Katie Garfield is so good at it. I just can't keep up. So I just don't even try. Just retweet stuff. I'll give you my my crazy things, Steve.

I know people consider crypto an alternative as a class. It's not quite alternative enough for me. I like to go even deeper into the alternative world. So all right, so I got three things I and this is you know I love the art and collectibles and memorabilia markets. Uh, so I've got three. I couldn't boil it down to one.

So I've got three for you. But we can still play prices, right, because I want each to you to tell me which one you think is the highest price that that went at auction, and and give me the price you think it went at as a tiebreaker. Okay, so first you'll answer highest, and then we'll circle back and you'll give me the highest price Okay, first one and this is current courtesy of the Independent newspaper. Back

to the mall, Santa Claus is. Uh. Will Ferrell in Elf, great movie from my think, what about almost twenty years ago? His costume. His Elf costume recently went up for sale at auction in London ball places. So that's one item that went up for auction. Uh. The other one courtesy the BBC the volleyball used in the Tom Hanks movie Castaway Wilson. The volleyball that went up for auction. Yes. And thirdly, uh, courtesy I've both the l A times in BBC. I saw this an Apple one computer, the

original Apple. Uh. Wadsniak and Steve Jobs built them. I think literally in the garage. They only brought a couple of hundred of this first batch in the seventies. Um. One of these just sold for auction. I will tell you it's made of wood. It still works. I don't think you can hook it up to the web talk about no Web point three. That was web web point zero, but you know you could. I guess you could do some word processing on it or something. But it still works.

It's made of CoA. Hawaiian CoA would is the casing of it. So well down you go. First, You've got Will for old self costume the original Apple one computer or Tom Hanks's volleyball Wilson from Castaway. Sounds like you're you're setting us up for failure by making it sound like it's the computer. So I'm gonna go with the volleyball. Volleyball, all right? Yes, Steve, what's your call? And that Will As much as I love Elf, that that's got to

be out because those I mean Wilson's Wilson. Um. I I as someone told me what the Apple ones were worth, but I can't remember. I'm gonna go with Wilson and go head to head on the on the price with uh, you know, to see who, to see who wins with Labana. All right, Bildona, what's your bid for the for Wilson and volleyball? Oh my gosh, I don't even know. I mean, I can't Steve remember. Maybe maybe I'm way off. I actually I thought I thought we were like at five

thousand for Wilson. Oh, I'm sure we are. No, I'm sure we are. I'm really bad at this game. Remind you prices right, rules are in effect. So that's true that you know. Okay, but that's easy. Let's let's let's go closest, closest, closest to the pin. All right. The volleyball went for three d eight thousand, Uh, Steve, but was it? But the Apple one computer went for five hundred thousand? Is the most valuable question? ALF costume went for three hundred thousand. So the volleyball beat ALF by

about eight thousands. So this is Yeah, I thought Apple one was. I was thinking in my head that would be three hundred thousand, and then I thought Wilson's got to be more than three d thousand. Hey, look, these are these are hard assets to value. Uh, good luck to Ken Griffin trying to value these things. I'll have to get him on the show one time. You shouldn't

You should ask him about it. To take a look at open see open see just hit ten billion dollars of volume, and uh, you can see they're worth at the moment. And I'm sure he'll have something to say about some of them. Now, now is that f T s up to you? Guys will start dabbling in or are you already? Oh yeah, we Galaxy bought a punk

last week. We're in the we we are out owners of a crypto punk and we have uh yeah, in our asset management business, we have six fifty million dollars of venture capital money that's really focused on this entire space, the creator economy and n f T s and gaming and esports and it's fascinating stuff. How much did you buy it for? No comment? It's it's it's it's it's on the blockchain. Now we're I have to be careful about that one, but it's I'm sure it's it will

be public at one point. I'm thinking it's more than the Apple one computer. From from what I've read about the punks, that would have been the right the right metric. Great stuff. Steve, really appreciate your time. I think that's all the time we have, uh but fascinating conversation. We'll have to get you back sometime if you're available. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate what goes up.

We'll be back next week. Until then, you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal website and app, or wherever you get your podcast. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, so more listeners can find us, and you can find us on Twitter. Follow me at Reaganonymous. Bildonna Hirich is at Bildonna Hirich. You can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at

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