On The Brink with Castle Island - Joel Revill (Two Ocean Trust) on building a Qualified Custodian in Wyoming (EP.141)

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Joel Revill is the cofounder and CEO of Two Ocean Trust, a Wyoming Chartered Trust Company offering wealth management services to high-net-worth individuals and family offices. Two Ocean Trust has recently received a no-action letter from the Wyoming Division of Banking stating the division's determination that Two Ocean is a "qualified custodian" under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the SEC Custody Rule. This letter states the division's determination that Two Ocean may provide custodial services for digital assets under Wyoming law, including virtual currency and digital tokenized securities. In this episode: Joel's background and the genesis of Two Ocean Trust Current gaps in the market as far as digital asset custody is concerned The significance of Two Ocean's No-Action letter from the State of Wyoming What Qualified Custody actually means, and why it matters Why Wyoming is a great place to start a business pertaining to digital assets The history of the SPDI Charter – and why Two Ocean did not opt for the SPDI Why high net worth individuals are buying Bitcoin today Joel's current monetary outlook – and why Bitcoin is more than just a hedge

Welcome back to another episode of On the Brink with Castle Island. Today on the podcast, we're breaking some news. We have an episode with Joel Revel, who is the co-founder and CEO of Two Ocean Trust. Two Ocean Trust is a Wyoming chartered company that provides wealth management services to high net worth individuals, family officers, and advisors. The big news of the day is that Two Ocean has received a no action letter from the Wyoming division of banking. The letter permits Two Ocean Trust to custody digital assets in Wyoming, and it also

also expresses the opinion that Two Ocean Trust may act as a qualified custodian under the 40 Act. So we see this as a big landmark response, and it's really the first of its kind in the United States. It definitely reinforces our view that Wyoming is the most crypto-friendly jurisdiction in the entire United States. Joel and his team have had rich and illustrious careers in the financial services world. Joel was previously a portfolio manager at Citadel prior to co-founding Two Ocean Trust. In this episode, we discussed a range of topics, including the state of crypto assets in Wyoming. We talked about the investment case for Bitcoin, and I thought Joel had a really unique perspective on some of the conversations that are

happening with some of the family offices and high net worth individuals in his orbit. We also talked about the market infrastructure that was actually required to support some of this effort. So Joel and his partner, Dustin, and the rest of their team spent an awful lot of time surveying the landscape, looking at the various custodial offerings, looking at the various trade execution offerings, and trying to piece together the best options to bring this product to market. And they announced in the press release today that they've partnered with Anchorage and Talos trading to actually launch this first part of the product line. We also talked about the types of services that Two Ocean Trust offers to their high net worth clients. So I had a lot of

fun with this episode. I thought Joel was very thoughtful and really articulated a very bullish case for the industry. I'm excited about this announcement. And so without further ado, here's our conversation with Joel Revel. Brought down by Bad Mortgage Investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees will be liquidated. The federal government loans American International Group, AIG, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping it to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis.

The Bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of constituted easing. You print a couple trillion dollars, and all of a sudden, people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called the Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Joel, well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. We have another Wyoming-focused podcast, which is becoming pretty common for us these days. Yeah, well, thanks.

Thanks, Matt. And I guess this is the first time that we've had kind of a newsbreaking podcast in the sense of we're talking about a no action letter from a bank regulator. So there's a lot to get into today. But maybe before we hop into it, could you give the listeners your background and maybe talk a little bit about your professional history and what led you to start Two Oceans Trust? Sure. I'm the CEO of Two Ocean Trust. It's a Wyoming Chartered Trust company. I'm a Wyoming native.

Originally, I grew up here, but was out of the state for the last 25 years. My work experience started as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the 90s. And then I transitioned in 2004 to the investment management industry where I was an analyst and then eventually a portfolio manager, most recently a portfolio manager with Citadel. And in 2017, returned back to my home state of Wyoming and began work on this idea for Two Ocean Trust. I'm also very proud of the fact that I sit on the Wyoming Select Committee for Block. blockchain and digital innovation, fintech and digital innovation, and a liaison appointed by the governor of Wyoming. The firm, To Ocean Trust, it's, as I mentioned, a Wyoming Charter Trust

company, was founded really on a handful of compelling business opportunities that we saw. There were three kind of significant tailwinds happening in the wealth management industry and specifically in Wyoming. The first is that, and probably what your listeners are going to care most about is the work that the Wyoming Blockchain Task Force has done here in the state to now pass 20 laws, clarifying digital assets. and creating a landscape within which we think it's the best situs to both custody and managed digital assets. There are two other tailwinds that are related from a sort of wealth management perspective. One is a movement of wealth from high tax states to low tax states here domestically. And then as well, movement of offshore trust and trust-related assets to the U.S.

as over the past decade or so, the U.S. and other national taxing authorities have essentially shut down offshore tax havens. So we've set up a firm that is kind of positioning itself in front of these headwinds. and got our charter last year from the Wyoming Division of Banking and launched with traditional assets, both on the trust and investment side. And then with today's announcement, are very excited to be adding digital assets. That's fascinating. So it's, you know, it's always interesting to me if you think about the blockchain industry writ large. This sort of started with platforms that catered towards really sophisticated retail users. And I guess there wasn't a lot of wealth to begin.

with in the Bitcoin space back in 2012 or 13. It was minuscule. And it still pretty much is minuscule, I guess, when you look at it in the context of other asset classes. But that's certainly grown over time. And there's this interesting dynamic where you have a lot of firms that have been catering towards those retail users, but maybe there's a lack of focus on some of the high net worth and individuals who are looking to put big dollars to work. Curious if you agree with that. and then, you know, kind of how you see that changing over time. Obviously, you guys have taken a bet here that there's a market there. And I think you're right.

Absolutely. Yeah, Matt. You know, I think there are many great firms out there today that are addressing digital assets in various niches and great technology. In fact, we've partnered with some of them. But there are limited options in terms of kind of a full comprehensive. set of wealth management services for high net worth holders of digital assets of cryptocurrency. And so a big question here is if you become incapacitated or die, do you have a reliable mechanism to make sure that your private keys are passed on to somebody else that you trust

and that that value won't be lost. And there's a whole host of complicated legal and tax issues that need to be addressed. And that's made even further complex by the unique nature of digital assets. And so when you were looking at this, when you were looking to start to Ocean Trust, was it the type of thing where you knew that crypto assets was going to be a big piece of it? In what lens did you start to get excited about Bitcoin and other crypto assets as part of the business. Yeah, I think I think the idea from the beginning was that this was a long-term opportunity to add digital assets. But what we built is a firm that provides wealth management

services for high net worth individuals and family offices for traditional assets. And it's really just an expansion to be able to offer those same services with the same. regulatory compliance, safety and certainty for digital assets. So it's bringing a traditional wealth management firm and what those high net worth and family office investors expect with traditional assets to digital assets. And so when you're having these conversations about Bitcoin and other types of crypto assets with these families and with these clients, What's that conversation like at this point? Is it still largely education or are they coming to you and saying, look, I've made up my mind on Bitcoin. I want X amount, figure out how to do it. What's the nature of those conversations? Yeah, it's really a bifurcated client base. There are some clients who, I guess you might describe them as crypto native, who have created their wealth through crypto assets, are very well aware. of the unique nature of digital assets, but have not thought much about estate management,

trusts, tax planning, how their wealth is being passed from generation to generation safely and securely. On the other hand, you have high net worth individuals or family offices that are now looking at the digital asset space as an opportunity for investment for the first time. But they come with the expectations that this asset class will be like traditional digital assets in terms of the legal protections, the regulatory oversight, the transparency of trade execution, the balance sheets, the insurance policies, the Those are the things that they care about. And they're just starting to dip their toe into this asset class.

It's a fascinating industry, obviously, for a lot of reasons. But one is that the general thesis around why these assets are interesting is becoming a lot more pronounced in the past, probably even just a couple months when you see the amount of money printing that we're doing. And then at the same time that the thesis is really developing, all the infrastructure just needs to be built at this point. I mean, we're dealing with an industry that really started with just retail facing exchanges, if you even want to call them that, that were domiciled outside the United States. And all of that plumbing to support a real asset class is kind of racing to keep up with the thesis at that point. I'm not sure if you'd agree with that. Absolutely agree.

And I think we're lucky to be positioned where we are in Wyoming, which has been sort of out at the forefront, at least from a legislative and a regulatory perspective, in bringing digital. assets to the more kind of mainstream way of thinking about investing. And that's a great kind of transition into Wyoming. And so why don't we actually just start with what are you announcing today? So you have this no action letter. Tell us a little bit about what is covered in that no action letter and what is hitting the news this morning. Yeah, there's really kind of two announcements here. The first is the launch of our digital asset wealth management platform and then sort of concurrent with that is the release of the no action

letter from the state of Wyoming Division of Banking. I'll start with the latter. The letter clarifies for the first time, or at least clarifies from a U.S. bank regulator for the first time that we're able to provide qualified custody for digital assets. And so speak a little bit about what that actually means to folks who are not. I think that's a term that's actually been thrown around a lot in the industry. And probably, to be honest, we'd be thrown around by some folks that probably are not

qualified custodian. So what exactly does qualified custody mean? And why should people care about that? Well, it's a standard that everyone should care about, whether your retail investor, a high net worth investor or an institutional investor. And it's a standard that has been defined by the SEC. But I think it's particularly pertinent to the institutional investors because investment advisors under securities law are required to hold in custody client assets with a third party qualified custodian. And the SEC is defined what a qualified custodian. And the SEC is defined what a qualified

custodian is. It is the federal bank regulator, the OCC, or the state bank regulators in the case of state charter banks or trust companies who then opine on whether an institution is a qualified custodian. And that's what the division of bankings, no action letter that was released today is doing. It's clarifying. a qualified custodian and that Two Ocean Trust is, in their opinion, can be, we can hold ourselves out to the public as a qualified custodian, which again is required for investment advisors to use and is a standard by which all investors ought to be thinking about their assets. That's certainly the way it works in traditional digital assets and it's the way that, or pardon me, traditional assets and is the way that digital assets are certainly heading. And it's certainly the first time a state banking regulator has come out and done something like this.

Wyoming has really been at the forefront. I mean, as I said at the outset, we've been doing a lot of episodes about Wyoming lately. So what is it that's unique about Wyoming and what made it an attractive place for you to start this business? Well, I'll start with the digital asset legislation. So the state of Wyoming has now passed 20 laws in total that, specifically address digital assets. Probably the most important thing that those laws has done is to wire digital assets back into Wyoming's property laws

and commercial laws. So the Uniform Commercial Code in Wyoming has been appended to include digital assets, specifically three different categories, digital currencies, digital securities, digital securities, and consumer tokens. Because of this, there are clear legal protections for investors in Wyoming or investors who hold their digital assets in custody in Wyoming. No other state has done this. It hasn't been

down at the federal level yet either. So that's kind of first and foremost. In addition, what was attractive for us is Wyoming has the overall lowest tax burden among all 50 states. There is no state income tax, capital gains tax, gift or estate tax in Wyoming. That benefits residents, but it also for our clients who were able to help structure non-grant or trust can benefit their crypto assets as well or their non-crypto assets. Wyoming also, in addition to the low, taxes is known for having favorable trust laws. And that allows flexibility in terms of structuring trusts and the state planning. Things like asset protection trusts, I mentioned the non-grantor

trust, directed trust, silent trust. So there are a number of trust features that are available in Wyoming and again, it's considered one of the most attractive states with the most updated laws. Third is the privacy and creditor protection laws in Wyoming are among the best in the U.S. The LLC laws in Wyoming are among the best. And so we sort of sit at the intersection of all these different benefits. And that's sort of what our platform is. designed to deliver to our clients. With respect to the uniform commercial code, do you think that this is something,

is this a table stakes type of legislation that you think will have to happen in other states? We're going to start to see more of that, do you think? Yeah. You know, I'm not a legal expert, Matt, but I do expect that this will happen over time. The UCC, you know, there is a commission that, addresses this at a at a federal level. My understanding is that this is something that will will likely be addressed within two to three years time. How other states move in the interim, it's hard to say. Folks are beginning to copy Wyoming laws in bits and pieces. We haven't seen anything as

comprehensive as what exists in Wyoming yet, but I do expect it's coming. It seems like it's, you know, a lot of the news has been around the SPDI, the speedy charter. Maybe talk a little bit about that and the history of that development. And was that an option that you looked at? We certainly did. And it's, you know, we took a different path versus the Speedy Charter. The Speedy Charter, though, is a really fascinating part of the Wyoming law that was created. and as I'm sure your listeners know,

Cracken was the first Speedy Charter that was granted a few weeks ago. And Wednesday actually will be the bank board hearing for the approval of Avanti's Speedy Charter. So if that goes as hoped, we'll have two Speedy Charters now in Wyoming, and there's a queue of folks behind them coming. So what's interesting about the Speedy Charter and differs from what we do is we're regulated by the Wyoming Division of Bank, but we're a non-depository bank. A Speedy Charter is a bank in the truest sense and access to the Fed window and into that payment system. So what I think is unique about the Speedy,

bank is it's not that they're going to be offering CDs and and issuing loans for cars and homes. It's that they're going to be entering the global payment system as a bank. And that's where I think the really interesting stuff that Avanti in particular, I know is going to be addressing as the sort of global payment and settlement system. On the other hand, we are more of, I think of this as more of a private bank with a comprehensive wealth management platform. And, you know, so we're kind of going at two different approaches, both obviously focused around blockchain and, and digital assets. But what's the same between us and the speedy banks is that customers want a clear legal,

regulatory framework. And whether that's a speedy or a Wyoming trust bank like us, we're all kind of here in Wyoming working on this together and delivering that. I think it's really interesting just from the perspective of making Wyoming a really interesting place to start a crypto business, but also a really interesting place to have your wealth managed and potentially even live. I wonder if we're going to start to see more startups actually move into Wyoming as a result of this, almost in a way that some of the, you know, the credit cards, I guess, weren't startups, but South Dakota, I think, made a big move with credit cards at one point. It just sort of reminds me of that. Yeah, this could be Wyoming's

moment equivalent to what to what South Dakota experienced with, with the credit cards. clearly the state has a lot of natural benefits with the low taxes with the with the trust in LLC and privacy laws and now with the with the digital asset legal framework in place we we heard at our last select committee meeting from the the state of Wyoming secretary of state that the filings for for LLCs and corporations in Wyoming was up significantly year over year, year to date. So we are seeing business formation, capital inflow in a fairly significant way here in Wyoming, and I suspect that that's going to continue. Yeah. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about how you built this business,

specifically the digital assets piece of it. So you guys were really thoughtful in terms of surveying the landscape and figuring out which businesses were the most professional and which ones you want to do business with. And I think in doing so, you probably formed a really unique opinion on just the categories of market infrastructure that are built out and the ones that need to get built out. And obviously, given you and Dustin's backgrounds, you have a really good view on other types of asset classes and how those have been built out over the years. So, you know, I'm curious just what your general take is on the state of infrastructure

for our industry and where you see it going. That's a great question. Yeah. So, you know, we, myself and my partners in building this business out, we really come from a traditional financial services background. I have 28 years in, financial services and primarily around capital markets. And my co-founders, Dustin and Cassie, have similar backgrounds in wealth management and trust and so on. So when we came at this opportunity,

it was through this lens of more traditional financial services. And what is interesting to me is that while it was daunting as we were first starting to peel back the layers of the onion because of all of the technology and and you know trying to understand how the blockchain works and how digital assets work and but really there's an incredible amount of innovation that's happening in this industry a significant amount of capital that is that are backing these companies and while it is it is not as developed clearly as traditional asset classes, we found a number of great partners with really impressive technology and innovation happening every day.

So I've been incredibly impressed with the infrastructure that's in place. It's really interesting because the infrastructure has been built largely by startups. Now, granted, there are companies like Fidelity that have made big moves and invested heavily in the space, but a lot of this is being built by startups and you don't have banks and broker dealers and even wealth management firms that have actively built out that infrastructure yet. So do you see that, I guess, merging at some point where these startups start to get acquired by some of these bigger firms, will these firms start to build it on their own? How do you see this playing out?

Yeah, that's another great question. I think that there is, if you kind of look at it carefully, I think both sides are merging together. I think that the startups are bringing to the marketplace some really great new ideas and innovation and this sort of crypto-native philosophy that is kind of breaking some barriers that that had existed previously. And then kind of coming from the other direction, the more traditional financial services firms, their knowledge of how you operate through cycles, safety and soundness,

the importance of working with your regulators, of clarity around laws, balance sheets, insurance policies, you know, these are all very important things that are necessary for this asset class to continue to evolve and become more mainstream and accepted by the high net worth individuals, by the family offices, and ultimately by the institutional investors. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, one of the things that I'm always curious about is just how high net worth individuals are engaging with platforms like yours. And particularly, I'm interested

to see how people think about just inheritance planning and how to pass these type of assets along. I mean, there've been some really horror stories, some really sad stories about people that have passed away and their next of kin have not had the ability to recover their Bitcoin and things like that. So how are people thinking about this on your platform? Yeah, well, you hit on a good point, right? I mean, self-sovereignty is great. and and sort of being your own bank is a great idea. But the challenge is if you lose your keys, right? And if, as I said at the beginning,

or if you become incapacitated or or die, if there's not something set up a reliable mechanism to make sure that those private keys are passed on as you want them to be passed on, it's gone. So one issue here is creating succession and how you structure that from a kind of classic estate planning perspective. And then the other is,

is the fiduciary capable? Do they have the technology and the knowledge to marshal those assets from one generation to the next, you know, or from spouse to spouse, whatever the estate plans call for. And then there's kind of this whole additional layer of optimizing flexibility around your estate and your trusts, and then, of course, the tax optimization as well. Yeah, that makes sense. So when you, two things that would be curious to get your take on. One is just general a thesis question. Two is an implementation question. So maybe to start on the thesis, I'd be curious what the overarching most popular thesis on the

space is with your high net worth clients. Is it digital gold? Is it just a hedge against chaos? Is it something around smart contract platforms? And then maybe to build on that, how do you recommend that people start to get into these positions typically? Is it a one shot, just put some money in there or is it building overtime. Right. Right. Yeah. So I think there's, I mentioned earlier, Matt, there were these sort of two, this kind of bifurcated client class. So I'm going to, I think your question is is more directed at the, at the sort of high net worth individuals who may be looking at this asset class for the first time. So in that sense, yes, there's this, there's this sort of store of value investment thesis that that you're well aware of.

And I think that increasingly sophisticated investors are looking at what's happening to our economy and how our central banks are responding to that. I mean, elected officials are incentivized to spend more and tax less. And so deficits, to me, just look increasingly likely with the unfortunate situation we've got now with COVID and the lockdowns. This is leading to an even sharper rise in government borrowing and soaring deficits. And the Fed is responding as they probably should by expanding by expanding its balance sheet. And that's going to continue to put downward pressure on the dollar. And so folks are getting increasingly nervous about the dollar or fiat currency.

in general, this isn't limited to the U.S., fiat currency in general, not being a good store of value. And so then you look at gold or other precious metals, and then there's the sort of lack of portability there. And I think that now we're seeing BTC as sort of, it looks to be kind of clearly the reserve of cryptocurrency now. And so these folks that haven't had exposure previously are thinking, you know, I need better store of value. BTC has characteristics that are superior to precious metals. And then there's this whole sort of technology behind it. It's almost like you've got a gold or a store of value investment that has this second leg to the thesis, which is the demand for this is limited only by the creativity of developers.

And we know, so going back to my history as a portfolio manager, and sometimes it's sort of hard when you first look at this asset class, because you can't really build a model like we're used to building. And intrinsic value is sort of hard to get your head around. with this asset class. So it just becomes a very simple analysis of supply versus demand. It's and what's what gets, I think what really, you know, for these more traditional high net worth investors, when that's their aha moment is when they recognize that the demand is, is limitless. It's limited only by the imagination of the developers. And the ability for the regulators to kind of open the doors for these currencies to be accepted into global payment

systems. And then on the supply side, it's already decelerating, right? So your second derivative has already rolled over. You're decelerating now. And eventually, it's going to fixed, right? 21 million. It's, that's it. Yeah. So I think when you get, when you just sort of get past all of the, I explain it to me again what blockchain is and, you know, what about all the hacks and and the nefarious uses of Bitcoin. Once you get past that and get into a discussion of a simple supply versus demand, these folks are, they're sophisticated investors and they're looking for other asset classes. This is a very compelling argument. This is a very ace. This is a very asymmetric setup.

It's totally right. I mean, if you look at it, I thought that Paul Tudor Jones this week on CNBC was really eloquent with the way that he described it. He talked about the competition for a store of value asset and some of the global macro things. And then he captured a lot of what you're talking about too around this. It's almost like an early stage venture bet at the protocol layer around everything that is going to be built on top of these open networks and really just the talent that is,

in this system. And so, you know, 20, 30 years from now, it seems very likely to me that the Bitcoin blockchain will be used as a time stamping mechanism across any number of industries to anchor records and it will be a global settlement system. And who knows what else. I mean, there's really, we're at the, really the infancy of this technology. So it's, it's a pretty unique asset when you combine the store of value characteristics with almost the Series A option value of a fast growing tech firm. Yes. Now on the implementation detail just around how to get into these positions, I mean, is there an answer to that question around how people think about this? Is it just put X percent in on day one and don't worry about it or people dollar cost averaging?

How do your clients think about this? Yeah. So we have, you know, prior to our announcement this morning, we have been running in our platform. in sort of a stealth mode. And so, you know, our clients, by and large, treat this the same way they do buying equity or our other traditional asset classes. We've got limit orders from clients who are price sensitive. We have, you know, I think very thoughtful discussions with folks about the amount of allocation and the time frame over which they're building that allocation.

I just, you don't see a lot of difference in the way they think about cryptocurrency versus how they've thought about legging into a stock in the past. Well, I guess that's good. I guess that that means it's less of a gamble and more of a part of a comprehensive professional approach to building a portfolio. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of conversation around volatility, obviously. of this of this asset class and so you know the way the way i think about that is it was one you know

volatility is is one metric and the more important metric around volatility is is sharp ratio which you know which is a a measure that we've used for years on traditional investments, which is the rate of return that you're expecting versus the unit of volatility that you're going to take on. And if I look at this asset class over time on a sharp ratio basis, it's fantastic. So yes, you're absorbing a lot of volatility, but your returns are more than compensating for that relative to other asset classes. So allocate your net worth, accordingly to make sure that that volatility is not going to put you in a bad position. But from a sharp ratio perspective, it's great. The second part of this notion around volatility is that

you, as an investor, if you have the right prerequisites in place, you want volatility. And so the way I think about it is I have a long-term horizon on this. I don't. I don't I don't have sort of liquidity needs near term. I have an upward bias to the asset class, the demand exceeding supply. And I have uncorrelated returns to the other asset classes that are in my portfolio. And with those prerequisites in place, I want volatility. I want that asset class to be volatile. So again, I said this earlier.

this is one of the most asymmetric setups that I've seen in my career as an investor. Yeah, you know, we hear that a lot. And I mentioned the Paul Tudor Jones and Raul Paul actually had a great video out this week, talking about that asymmetry as well. I guess some of this comes down to your view on what's going to happen just to the dollar overall. And are we going to have this kind of consistent, demonitization event, whatever you want to call it, or do you think we'll have this point in time, Bretton Woods, Plaza, Accord type of just abrupt demonetization? Do you have a view on that?

I, you know, I do have a view on it, Matt, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I just don't have any confidence in our elected officials' ability to spend within their means. And I think that central banks, therefore, have no option, but to continue to expand their balance sheets and deflate their currencies. And so I think that the kind of central bank model that we've been operating under since the 70s is very much at risk. I don't like to think about this as a hedge. That's not the way that I've historically thought about investing. I like to think about it as an asset class that I want to own

and that fits in my portfolio because I like the return dynamics and I like the lack of correlation to other asset classes that are in my portfolio. So I just on a standalone basis, I think this is an asset class that I want to own for reasons, including the sort of debasing of the dollar. Yeah. Well, it's a great time to be doing what you're doing, and particularly with the type of customers that you're engaging with, to be able to add this product line around digital assets is I can't think of a more timely opportunity. you know, we haven't really talked about it, but what are the other product lines and suites of services that you're focusing on apart from digital assets? Well, it's, as I mentioned before, it's, uh, trust in, in a state, uh, as well as, um, investment services. So we provide, uh, wealth management services to, to high net worth folks, to,

to family offices, multifamily offices and, and to advisors that, uh, that, uh, that, would like to bring these same services to their clients. Specifically, as it relates to digital assets, thanks to the well-structured regulatory framework that we have in Wyoming, we're able to bring this comprehensive and frictionless wealth management platform to digital assets. and because we're in Wyoming, this unique position affords our clients the legal protections and regulatory oversight that right now is only available to investors in Wyoming.

Then we can bring this additional trust in estate management benefit of tax planning, where if you employ some sophisticated planning and a non-grant or trust, there's some great state tax benefits. And especially with appreciated cryptocurrency, the capital gains, state capital gains tax, that can be very meaningful savings. So, and I think one other important thing that we haven't hit on yet, you know, we've talked about sort of trust in estate management. We've talked about custody and trade execution. But reporting is something that I think is going to become increasingly relevant.

I don't know if you've seen this year's Form 1040. Put that checkbox. Yes. I think it goes name, address, social security number, and do you own cryptocurrency? Exactly. Yes. They're monitoring. Yes. So if you own cryptocurrency and you select no, it's a felony. If you do own cryptocurrency, or if you own cryptocurrency and you check yes, accountants and CPAs right now are being guided to if you don't provide basis and proof of basis,

it's treated as though your basis is zero. That's painful. Yeah, it's like losing your toll ticket on the New Jersey Turnpike. You're paying full load no matter where you bought it if you can't prove your basis. So I think that's another important evolution in services and something that we're providing, which are statements, proof of basis, and tax statements. We're providing our clients with 1099s each year. So I think it's kind of what's exciting is that I think the only way that digital assets are going to become a truly viable asset class is when we,

we as an industry are able to apply the same discipline and rigor and safeguards that investors have and expect with their traditional asset classes today. And to sort of sum up what we offer, that's essentially it. We are offering a fully regulated, comprehensive wealth management platform for this exciting new asset class. Well, it's really excited to see folks like you and the team you've built entering the space to begin with and then to be able to get something like this no action letter done. That's no small feat. So congratulations to you and the state of Wyoming and all the regulators there too. I mean, those are some unsung heroes that have really pushed this forward. So I think you're doing a great service for the industry. Where can we direct folks that want to learn more about the product offering and more about Two Ocean Trust? Yeah, thank you. Our website. that would be a great place to start www.2ocean.com. Great. Well, thanks so much, Joel.

Excited to see the news. You know, this is, it will be really exciting to see how this is picked up on. So thanks again for coming on the podcast. Yeah, thanks, Matt. Great chatting with you.