On The Brink with Castle Island - Travis Schwab (Eventus) on trade surveillance, Bitcoin ETFs and 2021 predictions (EP.165)

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Travis Schwab, the founder and CEO of Eventus Systems, a company specializing in trade surveillance, joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Travis' entrepreneurial journey and path to starting Eventus Systems How he came to see cryptoassets as a market opportunity Thoughts on current market structure, the role of exchanges, and the institutional readiness of this market How trade surveillance directly impacts the prospects of a Bitcoin ETF 2021 predictions To learn more about Eventus visit their website. Sponsor notes: Withum is a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory and accounting firm committed to helping our clients be more profitable, efficient and productive in today's complex business environment. Our Digital Currency group is proud to partner with members of the cryptocurrency community. Get to know us at withum.com/crypto.

This episode is brought to you by Witham. Witham is a nationally ranked public accounting firm providing advisory tax and audit services to businesses on a local and global scale. More on Witham and their fast-growing crypto asset practice later in the episode. Today on the podcast, I sat down with Travis Schwab, the founder and CEO of Eventis Systems. Eventis Systems is a company that facilitates trade surveillance for trading venues. In recent years, they've started to service more and more cryptocurrency exchanges, which is a really good thing if you're someone in the audience that ever wants

to see a Bitcoin ETF approved. Those of you who have been following the SEC's stance on that issue know that trade surveillance is a critical tool to allow exchanges to detect market manipulation and wash trading, which has historically been a concern of the SEC. This was a fun conversation. We touched on a broader array of topics, talked about market structure, also talked about some 2021 predictions. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Travis Schwab.

Brought down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees will be liquid. 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 to Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative 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. So Travis, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. Great to be here. Matt, really nice to join you guys. We're joking before we started recording trade surveillance and financial market plumbing. This is the riveting podcast stuff that people like you hear about. Just sit down, strap in because it's going to be a raucous affair.

Yeah, exactly. Market structure. If you're a wonk, it's great. If not, well, probably not your bag. Well, it's very critical to the industry. So I'm excited to get into it with you. Maybe as a way to set this up, could you just give us your background and what led you to start the company? Like many people in the crypto space, digital asset space, I come from the traditional

capital market space, been in capital markets for 25 years. And really, I've been fortunate enough to always be in kind of that stage of transformation. Capital markets have gone through a ton of transformation just with the application of technology to make those markets more efficient, better. And that continues, unabated. And so you could argue that all the things happening within the crypto space are just that kind of distillation or manifestation of all these trends. that have been happening for a long time. So my career has kind of just mirrored that for the past 25 years. So it's been a combination of exchanges and brokers and vendors and traders within that space. And so that's how I got started and how kind of where we're at today, Event of Systems has been

around for six years, almost six years, I guess. Kind of the founding story of that was I was at a proprietary trading firm here in Austin, Texas, RGM advisors. I ran the broker dealer. our gym was going through a bit of a transition at the time and I saw an opportunity to spin a company out really at the time. And so ended up grabbing about a dozen software engineers and myself. And we sat in a white room kind of an office and tried to figure out what we were going to do. We didn't know when we were actually founding the company. But you think about this was 2014. You still had a lot of things happening or a lot of results. It's happening from the financial crisis and all the things happening with Dodd-Frank. And so especially within the proprietary trading space, there was a real laser focus going on. You had various books coming out, people talking about the markets being rigged. And so there was a real regulatory focus on firms like RGM that I was at. And so we had gone out, I'd gone out into the marketplace multiple times, trying to find ways to audit what we are doing internally.

Are we doing the right things from a risk management standpoint? Are we doing things operationally correct? And there weren't really good solutions out there. And the regulators don't tell you what you're doing well. They tell you what you're doing wrong. That's really the only feedback that you're getting. So I saw a gap in the marketplace. I knew that there was a better way to kind of look at trading and how you're managing your risk.

And so I sat in front of the dozen folks that came along. I said, I think I can sell this. I kind of drew some stuff on a board. think I can sell this. And everyone's like, okay, let's do that. So we started designing it and then we had kind of a product 2015 and ended up having three paying customers by the end of 2016. And now we're 60 clients globally and trying to grow the business. That's amazing. At what point in your journey did crypto become something that you got interested in? And what was that origin story? We started within asset classes. So we cover lots of asset classes today. But you think about what

we started and we purposely started within the U.S. equity asset class because that is the most prescriptive on the planet. So my thesis was, okay, let's start with the hardest and then we can just kind of take away things to be able to handle other asset classes. And so we had gone into U.S. equities and then we were starting to move into global futures and we had started to see more exchanges kind of pop up within the crypto space. And so we started trying to sell to them. Basically is what it came down to is we've always thought we could be a great fit for an exchange. And we had had actually a couple of exchange or ATSs or matching clients already. So we knew this space was growing.

That was about three years ago. And our first client, again, through kind of a mutual connection, came to us and said, we don't like any of the solutions that are out there. We like what you guys have done in the other asset classes. You're willing to work with us. And it was like the best scenario. And thankfully, it was like an absolute well-known, big exchange that we're still not saying publicly. but a household name that has worked with us and has been a client and now was a public investor of ours.

We got lucky in a way that about three years ago, stars aligned and we were able to work with someone that was very patient. And the rest is kind of history to where we now have about 10 crypto exchange clients around the globe, really a strong market share of where the industry is going. And as an entrepreneur, what was it that signaled to you that this was an asset class that was going to be for real. I mean, when you were starting the company, this was a really nascent industry. How did you know that it was even worth the capital investment to build this out for crypto? That's a great question. For me, it was a reflection on the size of fines you're starting to see, really coming out of, you think of the size of the fines coming out of the financial crisis. Hundreds of billions of

dollars were being paid because of various malfeasance happened within the marketplace. And that really was a sea change compared to what had happened before. You'd had kind of these episodes of strife, but this was hundreds of billions of dollars have been paid in fines. And there was a personal liability aspect that was not there. People would get slapped on the wrist with a fine. You build that into your cost of doing business and that's fine, but that doesn't exist anymore. As a CEO of a broker dealer, you have to sign online and you are personally responsible for how your compliance program is being operated. People are going to do. People are going to do it. jail. So everything had ratcheted up from a kind of fine personal liability standpoint. So I knew that

that market was people would need better tools because their risk was that much greater. And so the addressable market for surveillance, if you think about surveillance within the trading space is about a billion and a half. And that's kind of grass voice communications and trade. And that's just continue to grow. When we first got into the business, it's probably about half a billion. Now it's more than doubled in size in that time. Markets never become less regulated. If you look in the history of the world, the history of financial markets,

there is never a case, I don't think, that I've ever found. I've looked that markets become less regulated because regulation gives safety. Safety promotes more investors in the pie to get bigger, which promotes better price discovery. It feeds itself. And so when you have these kind of natural evolutions of these markets, it's going to become more transparent, more compliance, more regulated. And so I knew that the market opportunity was going to grow across asset classes, but

specifically within the digital asset space. That makes a lot of sense. So maybe for the listeners who have heard the word trade surveillance and it's kind of a buzzy word in the crypto space, there's a lot of reasons why we should have it for sure. But can you maybe just talk about exactly what it is? What is trade surveillance? What is the product that you're offering to your customers? So you think about any type of surveillance. And you think about communication surveillance. A lot of times that this line is being recorded. Why are they recording the line? Because they

want to know what you said. So just like if you're calling a call center and the call center guarantees that they'll be on time, that's probably going to get red flag. And you think about trading, there are behaviors in trading that are illegal. You can't manipulate the markets, for instance. And so firms that have regulatory responsibilities have to surveil their trading activity to make sure that they themselves or their clients are not engaging in these illicit activities. And so it's pretty straightforward in the fact that, all right, so I'm a broker, I'm an exchange, I'm a regulator, I'm any one of these constituent types of firms. I have certain responsibilities based off my status or my regulatory status that I have to take,

and trade surveillance is part of that. So I'm taking my trading activity, my client's trading activity. I'm marrying that activity with market data, the buys and sells, price, Bitcoin, $23,000, whatever and change, whatever it is today. And then we're monitoring that activity and looking for certain behaviors or we're looking for just general regulated activities that you have to do within the equity markets, when I put an order in, I have to mark that order. Is it by? Is it long or is it short? I have to do that as part of every order. And so if, for instance, the technology didn't put the right mark on there, we'll flag it. By the way, you have a problem with one of your systems. And so the types of surveillance that firms have to engage in is really wide. And so you think we have

hundreds of procedures across all of our asset classes. So equities, futures, equity options, FX, fixed income you think about in digital assets, they each have kind of their collection of responsibilities that people need to do. Some are shared, obviously, every market that I just talked about frowns upon market manipulation. So there is certain requirements, whether they are explicit from regulators or from your investors or any other constituents in the markets that people are using to monitor this behavior. And so within the crypto industry, what are the types, you mentioned exchanges, but is this a legal requirement that they have trade surveillance? And I guess if not, why would they do it? And what are some of the motivations around just who the

market participants are? Yeah, there's, depending on where they are, depending on the jurisdictions that they are in countrywise, depending on if there are responsibilities for them to register in those jurisdictions are all going to dictate whether or not they need a trade surveillance program. And so you think about one of your portfolio companies, AirSX, their clients of ours, they've taken the steps of registering with the CFTC. They've taken the steps of working through the regulatory process with certain regulators. As part of that process, we had to go in and help, not help them, but basically present with them what their trade surveillance infrastructure was going to look like. And so we talked about, okay, this is our platform.

It's called validists. These are the types of alerts. This is how they monitor those alerts. This is their workflow associated with those types of alerts. And really, that's what we do. So we sit down with those exchange clients who are taking those steps. So they have to take those steps to get certification. So you ask, do crypto exchanges have to register?

It's entirely dependent on where they're at, what the local countries, responsibilities for and what asset classes they're trading. If they're trading futures, and there's been some news about an exchange supports futures, and if they're not registered, there are certain regulatory bodies. The CFTC is going to be bothered by that, for instance. And so you're going to see more and more of that. So the way we've, at least as far as I know, the number is 750 crypto exchanges throughout the world. In general, there's a pretty small portion of that that are doing fulsome trade surveillance programs. And the way I think about it is those firms, those exchanges, those marketplaces that want to attract a wider group of investors, institutions,

and the like are going to have to adopt these types of technologies for those firms to join them. There's no other way for it to happen. The ones that don't, they just want to have retail clients. They're going to be in jurisdictions that don't require it, and they're going to have a smaller client base. And so as someone who's come up in a world of a traditional financial market structure, when you look at the structure of the crypto asset market right now, what are your impressions? I mean, you made reference to some of these offshore exchanges that will likely have trouble with the CFTC. But just structure in general, where are we? I was talking to another firm in this space yesterday on the blockchain 50. Congratulations, by the way. Oh, thank you. So they said we're in the first inning. basically they said we're in any one of a normal nine-ending game. And I think that's probably accurate.

I think it's been 11 years. There's been a ton of investment. The infrastructure is being built as we're watching. Again, we joked about market structure and policy and everything else. But it's really amazing. It hasn't happened in my lifetime to watch a market actually grow and build its infrastructure in real time as you're watching. And so that's where we're at. And so whether it's any one or running too, it's still really early. A lot of the core infrastructure that is required for people to feel safe, there's good transparency, all of the kind of core tenets of modern markets are not there yet. And so that's why we're really bullish on this space. There's a real big, addressable market still out there that continues to grow and we're expecting to be a big part of it.

This market has central limit order book models. It also has a pretty vibrant bilateral market. Do you guys get involved in both sides of that market? I'm curious if you have a view on just how this will evolve between those two categories. Yeah, I think right now up to this point, definitely within the exchange, the club central limit order we've had by far our most activity and continue to do so. We do have some of the intermediaries within the bilateral space coming to us and just kind of talking through it. I don't feel like they at least up to this point have thought that it's a real specific requirement of. of theirs, since a lot of times they're also going to the exchanges themselves to build positions offload positions. And so I think at least short term, the majority of our activity will be in the exchange space, the central limit order books. Who knows how defy kind of what the requirements are

and how that kind of unfolds before us. It's hard for me to imagine that we are a part of that space. But I think it's all growing at different speeds. And again, if I put my traditional hat on, the asset classes that adopt the safest infrastructure are the biggest and most vibrant. I mean, you just look at the U.S. equity market. By far, there's no close analog to it on the planet. Why is that? Because it's the safest, most transparent. You know when you engage in that marketplace, you know what the result's going to be. The transaction costs are super low. There's never an issue. You're not worried that I'm going to get my shares of IBM. You're not worried about any of that. You're trading for free. And that is absolute a direct correlation to the size of that market. And so I think if you think about that analogy, then the more of that infrastructure that you adopt, you should then start moving to growing that market accordingly.

That makes a lot of sense. One of the things I'm curious to get your perspective on is just the Bitcoin ETF. You hear that a lot. And you hear a lot of talk about trade surveillance and surveillance sharing agreements between. exchanges. And so what are people talking about there? What is the SEC talking about? What is lacking? And what exactly needs to happen in order for some of these concerns to be addressed, do you think? Yeah. I think Clayton, every time they say no, says trade surveillance, watch trades, market manipulation is an issue. There needs to be more adoption by these exchanges for surveillance technology, whether it's ours or whether it's someone else. They need to show that they are taking active steps in that space. Now, that being said, if you look at the two-thirds of the exchanges on the blockchain 50 are clients of ours. And so you do have a real adoption happening

across the industry where the exchanges that are interested in pushing the envelope on trying to get the Bitcoin ETF approved are taking those steps. And we actually are kicking off because we've kind of reached that point where we have a critical mass of players, we're going to do some kind of public policy work ourselves with those government entities. And so we think we have a unique position to be able to say, listen, we'll show you exactly how our technology works. We'll show you what these venues are doing not specifically, but in general, that they are taking these steps and are rooting out. A lot of it is around wash trading. That's a commonly referred issue. So I think you ask, what's it going to take? Well, I think we're rapidly approaching that

point where the exchanges that are taking institutional level controls, and so whether that's getting regulatory status at the various bodies and incorporating really fulsome surveillance programs, those points are happening. We sign up new exchanges like one a month or a couple a month to where we can go to the regulators and say, okay, it's time. And depending on, I know we're going to talk about this little future, but depending on who moves into the SEC and things like that, I think there's a good opportunity for more action to happen there than has happened in the past. Well, that would certainly be a good step forward. One thing that I'm curious to get your perspective on is just how this works at a tactical level. So surveillance sharing agreements,

the exchange is sharing it with you? Are they sharing it anonymized between themselves? What is happening and what ideally should be happening? So we don't facilitate. that exchange sharing through our platform. We could. One of the challenges that we've looked at, you think not just within crypto space, within these spaces, there are bank secrecy, BSA issues,

SARS, you think about there are SAR regulations, suspicious activity reporting regulations, that FUC elicit activity, you're not necessarily allowed to talk to other venues. Now that's within other asset classes. And so I think the crypto exchanges are trying to navigate that space. They're not doing it through us. Now, we've thought about promoting that in a way that makes sense.

And so you could almost do it on a also a no name spaces, just like you could say, okay, we have an alert. We could send an alert across our ecosystem that says we have an alert in Bitcoin at this price, at this level. Do you see that activity? Do you want to talk to the counterparty type activity? And so we've thought about that infrastructure. It's something that we can do ourselves.

And so what should happen, whether there should be a true consensus across these or a clearinghouse, if you will, of this data. It probably makes sense. It's a little harder to traverse. And I think people worry about stepping on regulations. And so I think we might be able to come up with an industry solution that makes more sense as compared to requiring it by some other means. If you're a regular listener of this show, you know that we take accounting and auditing pretty seriously. And that might seem a little bit strange in an industry that prides itself on the removal of intermediaries. But we think when it comes to digital assets, trust relationships

with counterparties like custodians and brokerages is critically important. With them is a top 25 ranked accounting tax and advisory firm. They have a digital currency and blockchain group that's working with some of the highest profile companies in the industry on things like tax advisory, financial statements, token sales, stable coin audits, and much, much more. To contact their team, go over to witham.com slash crypto. That's WITHUM dot com slash crypto and get in touch with someone on their team. And I know that there are various proposals over the years for SROs or trade groups. Is that the type of thing that one of those organizations should be behind?

Yes, I think they should. And we did a podcast with Adam last week. They have a code of conduct. and there's lots of organizations. The VCA is doing some interesting things, and they publicly said that they're interested in doing an SRO. There's lots of great efforts in this space. I think whomever creates that SRO, VCA or any other organizations,

I think that will provide some good comfort. If there's really good transparency, I think there's a new way to inform being an SRO. One of the frustrations I had, again, I talked about it earlier today is that information flow is very asynchronous. You did something bad. Fix it. Well, you could have a regulator in SRO that actually helps you be in compliance.

And I've thought about let's change the model a little bit to where, okay, so we'll give you the technology. We'll do it in real time. We're not going to come to you and ask what happened a year ago. We're going to be in compliance effectively in real time and give you ways to stay in compliance as trying to catch you out of compliance. And so I think I would love to see a new model happen within the SRO space, whether we get there or not, we'll see. But I think that will add some real credibility to this process. And again, the more pieces of this puzzle that you can kind of put together, the more comfort, I think that will provide the industry,

which will then theoretically allow it to grow that much faster than it already is. It's an interesting point that you bring up around the regulator being more involved because it's a unique asset class in that perspective. If you could bring in the market side of this and the trading and the market data, the regulator theoretically should have extreme visibility into the network data side of this in terms of seeing balances, proof of reserve, that type of thing. Perfect visibility with the analytics companies, with the trading side of things, you really could have real time and with the travel rule. You think about the ultimate, again, we can argue philosophically, then it's. starts to get into there's no anonymity and everything else. But if you want to grow the asset class, you want the institutions to come in who have pensioners as clients who are investors, they need to feel comfort. And in order to provide that you have to put in some of these

core pieces of infrastructure. And so you can argue that it defeats the whole point of decentralized cryptocurrency and everything else. But I would argue that fine, you can take that and it's going to remain fairly small in niche, or you take a different tech and maybe a more nuanced approach and adopt the best of these tools, the best of this infrastructure, and then your asset class is going to grow accordingly. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you're talking about public protocols that people are free to use how they want to use them. And if you want to hold these assets within the context of brokerage firms and exchanges and custodians, then you're going to have to fall under these regulatory requirements. That's right. And, you're,

You can go down any type of philosophical rabbit hole at that point. But you're right is if you're using this asset class as a store value or a medium of exchange and you're not doing anything illicit, then you should welcome the transparency. You welcome the light because it's going to, again, allow more and more tools for you to be able to engage in this asset class. And so I think there's always an argument to keep this in its way. and you don't want to put rules on top of it and get restricted. What my hope is you don't restrict it, but you, just like our system, you monitor it, you analyze it and you make it better. We talk about casting a wide net.

That safety net is important. It's there for a reason. And the smaller those holes are in the safety net, the more investors will come. And I think it's much like the internet. I mean, self-custody in a lot of ways is like the public open web. And there's options to do both sides. And I think that's a beautiful thing about the system is that you can have these peer to peer transactions on a self-custody wallet. But if you want to hold your assets at a fidelity, then you're going to do something different from a trades freelance perspective. That's right. And your level of engagement is going to be different. You might have to expose a few more personal details, but that gives everyone involved in that process more comfort. And so I think that's exactly right. And you can choose that. That's what's exactly to your point. You can choose how far you want to go with that or not. And that's, I think, one of the beautiful things about that. this asset class. So I want to get your take. You mentioned earlier the SEC, and I don't think I've ever seen a time in this market where it's just so abundantly clear that there is just a huge demand for a Bitcoin

ETF. I mean, you're seeing things like this Bitwise index product traded a huge premium. The GBT premium is persistent. You're seeing things like the micro strategy, convertible node, go off and really drive a tremendous amount of interest in that stock. So the public is telling us that they want access here. Where do we stand? I mean, what's it going to take? care. Part of it is you have a incoming new administration that's probably a bit of a throwback. I think if we're going to read the tea leaves a little bit, is we should have folks that are comfortable in the regulatory space that we kind of know of. So at least Gensler is a name that's being tossed around for various roles within the, whether it's SEC or Treasury or

whatever else. He's very comfortable in the crypto space. I think he's very much publicly said, we don't want to artificially restrain what's happening in this space. He's a former Goldman guy, understands all the pieces of the infrastructure, was hugely responsible for Dodd-Frank in orchestrating that. You can say there's pluses and minuses of Dodd-Frank to go too far. You could argue one way or the other. But regardless, my early read of the people coming into potentially the financial infrastructure and the various regulatory bodies should be positive overall.

the digital asset space. That being said, we are totally in the middle of this space, so we think it's massive. It's not even half the value of Apple's market cap. I think there's a reason why Clayton probably didn't spend much time on this is there's still problems happening in much, much bigger asset classes. There's still manipulation happening. In equity markets are still theft happening. There's still Ponzi. Whatever, there's still problems in every other asset class that are dramatically larger than digital assets. And so I think I will give him a little bit of the past saying, okay, he's probably allocating time to the biggest issues at the time.

That being said, I think with the adoption of these surveillance procedures, that these exchanges can, I know they're actively engaging with their regulators, which I think is great, they can show what their programs do, and they can show the actions that they're taking. And they're taking people out that are breaking the rules, just like every exchange needs to do, and it's reducing that overall opportunity for manipulation. And so I think as you have more of those venues doing this, that urgency will start to really present itself to the regulators, to where they'll say, okay, well, let's see if we can make this

happen and give it a go. Regulators are never incentivized to be on the bleeding hedge by its very nature. And so they're going to be reluctant to do things. You see the FCA. The FCA has outlawed crypto trading for the retail market. There's just, they're never incentivized to be out there, but with education, with understanding, and the, whether it's Adam or VCA or Digital Chamber of Commerce or all of these groups that are really actively educating the various regulators and constituencies, I think there's just, there's a tipping point that should happen here pretty soon. I think it's great that the SEC has actually spent a lot of time on that educational journey. and maybe it was the ICOs that put them on it originally, where they had to hire people and had to cultivate this knowledge of what's going on.

But there are clearly people at the SEC who are very pro-crypto innovation, which is great. There are. And I think the ICO rage hurt the opportunity for Bitcoin ETF. There were a lot of really poor ideas and really people trying to just jump on the bandwagon. And that didn't help. Just like anything else, there's these fits and starts across all these asset classes. I don't think Bitcoin is blazing any new paths here. There's fits and starts and adoption cycles that we have to just work through. And the fact that we've come all the way to this point over 11 years is just unbelievable, actually. Oh, it's crazy. And it goes way beyond the Bitcoin ETF.

If you think about some of the regulatory clarity that could actually come to the industry. I mean, think about how many broker dealers in the country actually hold. whole Bitcoin or any type of digital asset. It is vanishingly small. And that is because they don't think that they have clarity under the custody rule and possession and control. So we get some clarity on that. Maybe that's even bigger than the ETF. And that's exactly right. And so you just keep having these little, and they're not little, but these little steps, kind of two steps forward, maybe a half step backwards when someone's wallet gets stolen for $100 million or you get these bad stories, but I think the good stories are now dramatically outweighing and that Bitcoin price

keeps going the way it's going that just drives interest. And so all of those macro pieces of data, I think, are pushing the general direction in a positive way. It's hard for me to think otherwise, just because of the unbelievably bright people in this space that are really trying to do really positive things. And then in addition, you have this. intense price ascendancy happening as well. Those are all things that are going to, I think, help in the long run. So if we think about the things that could happen here that would be really good for the industry, also probably really good for your business. We're talking about regulatory movements. We're talking about the industry getting together around common standards. If you could wave a wand and just

change one thing or promote one thing to change over the next year, what would it be? Don't fight the man is the way I like to think about. To fight regulation, to fight the the rules is worthless. Instead, if I was to wave a wand, I'd talk not just the exchanges, but all the players in the space, first thing you should be doing is talking to whether it's, again, all those industry groups participate there and then make sure they're being heard in D.C. or Brussels or Singapore or Hong Kong or anywhere else or London is the more you can sit down and educate those regulators, get them involved, get them understanding the vision. And whether they say no the first time, that's okay. Because you just, the market

finds a way. And so the more you embrace that side of the coin, I think, pun intended, the better the outcome gets. And because a lot of times you have this very antagonistic relationship between regulation and development or innovation. It doesn't have to be. And I think really over the last couple years, regulators, whether they've started sandboxes, fintech sandboxes, or various ways to try to promote innovation in a safe way, that's a piece of that. But the more you can sit down with them and educate them on what you're trying to do, I think, the better. That makes a lot of sense. So it's that time of year, any 2020 predictions from you in terms of what we'll see? I say Bitcoin ETF 2021. Absolutely. That might be the only prediction I'm willing to make at this point.

I love, well, I just saw it today. Coinbase is going public, so I'll make that prediction on the West's a good prediction. Yeah. Yeah, how about that? So that's super easy to do that. For me, I think that's the first. There's a lot of really interesting companies doing innovative things there. So within the digital asset space, I think that could be kind of a bellwether for things to come.

So ETF, companies going public and probably I'll go higher than 23,000. It will close December 30. 31st, 2021 higher than 23,000. How about that? All right. I like that. Those are all really good ones. We sprinkle on a little custody rule clarity. We could be in for a banner a year. Exactly. Dare to dream. Dare to dream, Matt. Well, where can we send people, Travis, to learn more about the company? Yeah. Our website is eventosystems.com. EVEenTUS systems.com. Travis at eventosystems.com. You can email me or info, whatever info ad you can do as well. So happy to talk.

to any folks about trade surveillance or market risk. We're here in open. Well, I appreciate you coming on. We do have a lot of market structure junkies in the podcast audience, so I'm sure they'll enjoy this. So I appreciate it. No, really nice to talk to you. Happy holidays. Thanks for listening to another episode of On the Brink with Castle Island. To find out more about Castle Island, visit castle island.vc. To listen to all of our podcast episodes, please go to On the Brink dashpodcast.com or just click on the tab in our website. Thanks for listening.