The Breakdown - Bitcoin Back and Better Than Ever, with Kraken CEO Dave Ripley

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

NLW is joined by Kraken CEO Dave Ripley to discuss the new cycle, Bitcoin in a post-ETF world, memecoins, and more. Find Dave online: https://twitter.com/DavidLRipley Today's Show Brought To You By Kraken - Go to https://kraken.com/thebreakdown and see what crypto can be Ledger - 5% to Bitcoin Developers When You Buy https://shop.ledger.com/pages/bitcoin-hardware-wallet Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nathanielwhittemorecrypto Subscribe to the newsletter: https://breakdown.beehiiv.com/ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? Today on The Breakdown, we are talking to Cracken CEO Dave Ripley. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. What's going on, guys, really excited for this conversation today. Dave Ripley is the CEO of Cracken, which is one of at this point the longest standing highest credibility, most deeply connected

to the crypto industry exchanges that exists. Cracken has been an innovator from back when they first formed more than a decade ago, all the way up to getting the first bank type license for a crypto exchange. And in this conversation, we talk a lot about how the company thinks about the changing nature of the exchange business and what they were hoping for and building towards coming off of the last cycle. great conversation. So without further ado, all right, Dave, welcome to the breakdown. How are you doing, sir? Doing well. How about yourself? It's great. We're recording on a Friday, some of my favorite times to do these

types of conversations. And I'm really looking forward to it. You know, I was just mentioning this, but I love these sort of times in the cycle where we've clearly been through a big change. We're clearly at the beginning of something new, not the end of something old, but it's still really up for grabs, right? Like what the shape and texture of this cycle is going to be going to be really interesting. And so where I wanted to start is, you know, I guess like, where do you see us in this cycle? Is it still early? Is retail here? If not, when do you think they'll show up? You know, when you guys kind of sit and try to assess where we are, you know, what do you think about? Yeah. Well, it is nice to, it is nice to see the market's moving. Obviously,

the price moving, a lot of positivity as well that we see. I mean, clearly there's the ETF event that happened. You know, it's really great to see versus the negative, you know, negative news cycle that we had early part of 23 and obviously late 22 and all, you know, that time period. I mean, look, as far as I am, this will be, well, you know, I started in crypto in 2013. And, you know, that was a, that was a, that was a, a bull year, if you will. And so I kind of, I started and it, you know, jumped into a,

you know, we jumped into a bull market, you know, soon thereafter. You know, and so I, I do spend time looking at the four year cycle, the four year crypto cycle. We do, you know, at Cracken as well. There's, of course, been this pattern that, you know, is roughly aligned with the halving schedule. And it's been, you know, you kind of see that, that peak, that new all time high, 18 months on from from the halving roughly. But if you really look closely at the various different cycles, they're not identical with regard to timeline. And, you know, the previous cycle kind of started earlier than the one before it. And, you know, hey, if we're starting a new kind of, you know, bowl run here, this would mean we're starting earlier than even the previous one, right?

And so we're, you know, we're already kind of revisiting all-time highs now before having. Whereas if you look back in 2020, the last time we had a halving, we didn't revisit all-time highs until December. I think it was. So we are starting a bit earlier. This also could mean that, hey, we finish earlier as well. I mean, it's not surprising if we really do have this four-year cycle pattern, it's not surprising that people are going to try and jump in front of it as well. Particularly given we have this kind of positive event with the Bitcoin ETF. and so forth. So I think, you know, to the extent we're, you know, hitting off the cycle,

yes, it's earlier than than we've seen in the past, you know, basically kind of like getting to these levels before the having. So we'll have to see how it plays out. I do think it, you know, it could mean that, you know, we, given we're starting earlier, it might still be a, you know, 12, 18 months time period that we kind of go through a real positive, you know, market environment. And therefore, you know, hey, it may, you know, may not take all the way until the end of 25 to, you know, to kind of get to that, that new peak. Yeah, it's super interesting. One of the points that that you just made that is not something I've heard a lot of folks talk about, but I think it's really interesting is the idea that at some point, if humans expect a pattern,

they'll try to get out ahead of the pattern, right? That there may be sort of like that type of thing happening, you know, where people are just naturally sort of front running what they expect to happen. And I certainly think that, you know, that natural tendency plus, you know, that, that natural tendency plus the catalyst of the ETF could go a long way to explaining why things have moved so quickly this time around. Yeah. I mean, we could certainly go down the rabbit hole of what is technical analysis and trading. And I would be ahead of my skis if we were to do that. But I mean, to the extent that there is a pattern out there with regard to how a market behaves, it becomes identified by various different individuals. And that basically almost removes the pattern. It removes

that existing pattern and potentially creates a new one that individuals. And so there, there you get into like a lot of complexity of the, you know, technical analysis and, you know, trading in markets and how they behave and so forth. But yeah, to the extent that, you know, there, there is some repeatable pattern out there. You're going to expect that it can't really last that long because if it, if that is the case, people are going to jump in front of it. Today's episode is brought to you by Cracken. far too long, the whole financial system has been standing still, too slow, only on for certain hours, overly designed for some types of people, but not for others. Crypto, at its best, represents progress.

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Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payward Ventures Inc. PVI, DBA, CRAKIN. Hello, Breakers. Today's episode is sponsored by Ledger. As another cycle ramps up, it's another chance to think about your Bitcoin custody best practices, and of course, to help all the new folks do the same. Ledger is the global platform for securing Bitcoin and other crypto.

Ledger combines both hardware wallets and the Ledger Live app to offer the best way to buy, sell, swap, and stake without sacrificing on security or self-custody. Ledger features cutting-edge technology in the form of a certified secure chip and a proprietary operating system, but also brings ease of use. This makes Ledger a safe and secure way to manage your digital assets without all the stress. Check out the link to the Bitcoin Ledger Nano in the show notes. 5% of all sales of the Bitcoin Ledger Nano go to support Bitcoin development. Thanks once again to Ledger for supporting the breakdown. Let's talk a little bit about the sort of tradfai interest. Obviously, this is sort of one of the biggest differences that's become really real this cycle.

I feel like every cycle starts with at least the narrative of, you know, Tradfai coming, coming to crypto markets. You know, in 2020, we had a very lightweight version of it with sort of, you know, some of the more Maverick hedge fund guys starting to talk. And we had the, you know, the narrative of treasury assets, which never really came too, too much to bear beyond micro strategy and temporarily Elon. Obviously, this time, there is something different happening with the ETF. How do you guys think about how much it changes things to have?

this totally different set of buyers involved? Or do you think it really is a totally different set of buyers? I think one of the big questions that people are trying to figure out right now is among these sort of, you know, the billions that have flooded into these ETFs, what is it actually represent? Is it, you know, the same folks just sort of, you know, using this new instrument? Is it sort of the DGEN set of TradFi? You know, I'm sure this is something that you guys have thought a lot about. So I'm interested in your take on, you know, what these ETFs represent right now and what they may represent sort of more in the future. Yeah. You know, I think you got an interesting point about the institution sometimes sitting at the front end of some of these different cycles. I mean,

that was certainly the story at the end of 2020. There was a number of these different hedge fund managers, you know, came out making comments, you know, about, you know, crypto and the positive dynamics of it and so forth. And Paul Tudor Jones. just a number of them, right? And that was kind of like fairly early, you know, call it in, you know, late 2020 before we got into the 2021 cycle. My most dislike time, but you're right again, I mean, I don't know if you remember like in the 2015 range, there was the whole, it's blockchain, not Bitcoin, kind of like institution financial services, you know, they were out promoting that, you know, the permission chains and so forth,

the very like institutional thing. That of course, rightfully died. in due time. And, you know, of course came back to, came back to Bitcoin. But as far as this cycle, yeah, I mean, I do think we are kind of like seeing that a little bit now. I mean, the reality is the ETF is is more than, I mean, it's both. I mean, it's really just both. I mean, I think for individuals, consumer, retail, whatever, I mean, the ETF is just more accessible. It's there. It's in their existing brokerage account. Obviously, it's a really basic simplistic experience. You can't withdraw the Bitcoin, of course. But yeah, I mean, I think, there is that that use case and benefit for individuals.

And then for institutions, it's not so much necessarily about that like ease of use because, you know, at least a decent size institution, they can, you know, they can go to, you know,

companies like Cracken and Anchorage and so forth and kind of get there. But there is some, some aspect of like, hey, this is, you know, an asset that's traded on the traditional markets when they do their, their risk assessments,

you know, of, you know, what this is and what they're getting into, you know, some of the more conservative firms are able to just kind of like cruise through those risk assessments more easily. And then also, I mean, it's just a, you know, for some of the, some of the institutions as well that were maybe on the fence and they're like, hmm, how is this viewed by, you know, regulators? Is this really something we should be paying attention to?

And then you have, you know, the existence of the EETF. You have individuals like, you know, Larry Fink, a black rock out there, you know, talking about the positive aspects of Bitcoin. It just is like for them a proof point that, hey, we're at a time where this is, you know, something that should be looked at, you know, is being accepted, is being accepted by, by others. You know, at the end of the day, many of them are, you know, what is it? It's, you know, lemmings, you know, that are kind of following the leader as well. And so, you know, so I think there's, there's an aspect of that that is, you know, brought, brought more institutional buying into, to crypto via the ETF as well. So it's really both.

It makes sense. So it's sort of a related question, although a little bit different. But, you know, so there's this interesting in-between period that we had where, you know, coming off of all of the disasters of 2022, you know, no one who's been in crypto for a long time. You know, you were mentioning you've been here since 2013. I think had any questions that it would come back, right? We understand that, you know, even when things go bad, it comes back. How did you guys sort of as crack in as an exchange? think about, you know, how you wanted to position and build for whenever the sort of the next kind of time came. You know, there's sort of this interesting thing about those bear markets where they're more quiet and they're kind of chance for reflection. You know, what were you hoping to do? What are you hoping to do, you know, as this sort of new cycle comes into view? Yeah, this is a great one. I mean, we kind of bring you into the fold of what the, you know, crack and plan is, the annual plan for, you know, this previous year and so forth. I mean, we have look, we organize our plan.

We use the, you know, OKR structure, structure objectives and key results. We have, you know, five big ones at the top level for the company. In this previous year, one of them was prepare for the bowl, right? Maybe not surprising, but I don't know that that would be the case for a lot, you know, for all companies out there, you know, having seen what they saw in 2022 and into the early part of 23. But look, Cracken's been around for, you know, over a decade. and we absolutely are certain that Bitcoin crypto are going to be incredibly successful. Adoption is going to grow.

It's going to go up into the right, even though it's not going to be a straight line. And five years from now, a decade on from now and more, we're only going to see that many more, hundreds of millions and then soon billions of people that have adopted crypto. And so for us, it's absolutely the long game. And so, you know, look in a period that is, you know, a challenging year with negative new cycle. And yeah, adoption, you know, down. And, you know, for us, volumes down, obviously that impacts financials. We still have this objective of like, hey, prepare for the bull. What does that mean? It means a number of different things. It means continue and invest in

like scalability of our systems so that when, you know, volume does come back, we don't go down and are unable to service our clients. I mean, that's clearly problematic for those that have, you know, real assets and money in this space to be able to access that money, be able to trade when they want to if markets are moving in a different way. Of course, operationally, that's probably even more challenging than the scalability of the systems in some ways because it's fairly difficult to scale up an operational process with, for example, our client engagement agents, we have several hundred of them, all of a sudden, our volume of support requests goes 5X. We don't necessarily turn around and have 5X the people on the team the next days.

But how do we think about that? How quickly can we get to a place where we have 5X the capacity on the team to be able to handle that many more requests? And so those are a lot of things we're new. And that's, of course, a combination of a number of different things, inclusive of automation, inclusive of like how we, how we're able to like add to that team over. a short period of time and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's like, it's frankly, very purposeful. And, you know, even during a, you know, a very, you know, a year that had a number

of different challenges, we were, you know, certainly investing for, you know, investing for, you know, meaningful growth. So it sounds like a lot of this is not just about sort of, you know, sitting, sitting around making decisions about sort of, you know, positioning and sort of what you want to emphasize. It's literally just taking a breath to get infrastructure and systems up and prepared for, you know, what is always sort of a bigger flow the next time than it was the last time. That's certainly an aspect of it. I mean, in some ways, those periods are nice to be able to catch your breath, right? Because when the market's moving so fast, you know, we just have an influx of a huge number of new clients. Yeah, I mean, it's all hands on deck being able, you know,

doing what we need to be able to, you know, serve those clients, add new clients to the platform, all those types of things. And so in some ways, it does provide an opportunity, you know, for us to catch our breath, focus on some of these things to, you know, really prepare the business, prepare our, you know, our platform, operations, all these various different pieces for for that next go. So one of the reasons that I think that that preparation can be so important is that there's always unexpected things that come up with new cycles. You know, I think, broadly speaking, especially over the last year after BlackRock proposed, ETFs were sort of a when, not an if. But, you know, some other things are maybe, you know,

a little less predictable. One of the things that has sort of, you know, emerged as a big driver, at least early in this cycle, is this meme coin explosion. I guess, you know, simple question, what do you make of it, you know, either as, either there's crack it or just as a person observing it, you know, like, is it just crypto DGens playing a new game or is there something more, significant and sociological going on underneath here? It's a good question and I don't really have the answer to this one. I don't know. I mean, I don't have anything in mind, frankly, that this is like, you know, where we have

or I have a vision of like, hey, here's where, you know, here's where mean coins go and it's really, you know, society changing or significant or meaningful and so forth. I mean, much the same as, you know, call it PFP's for NFTs. I mean, I think that was a, you know, like many things. things, you know, given that there's value attached, you know, during these cycles, they, you know, can get ahead of themselves. But like, that's going to be a use case. You know, PFPs are going to be a use case via, you know, NFTs always, I think. I mean, just the same as there have been collectibles historically, you know, whether it's trading cards and, you know, Beanie Babies or you name it,

there's been collectibles throughout history. And I think, you know, digital versions make sense. But it doesn't mean it's going to be an enormous, you know, an enormous part of our economy, if you will. And, you know, it might be that meme coins are, you know, similar in that regard, where, hey, there are, there are reasons why people, you know, are attracted to these things, you know, like you said, possibly it's a social dynamic of, you know, the various different people that own them or what have you. but I don't know that, you know, there's necessarily a vision outlaw that we are aware of. So part of the reason that I think it makes sense to have some of those conversations to figure out what the next cycle is going to be like and how you prepare for it is that new cycles always throw new things at us, things that we didn't expect. And right now, I think one of those things sort of is this rise of meme coins. And I'm wondering what your take on this is, you know,

just as an observer, you know, even not just as crack. And, you know, is this sort of just crypto DGens finding the latest thing to degen around? Is it financial nihilism in action? What's your take on on whatever Joe Boyden coin or whatever it is? Yeah. That's interesting. I don't think we have like a, you know, a strong thesis where, you know, mean coins, you know, become a huge part of cratomy. You know, we don't. They have been around for a while. I mean, I think they're interesting. They're fun. They play a role. You know, I think they'll continue to be around. Whether, whether they're like, you know, a big use case of this cycle. I don't know.

I mean, it almost might be a little bit surprising if that's the case, unless something more gets added to them. Because again, they've been around, you know, for some time. I don't know.

When was Doche Point launched? It was, you know, it was probably in 13 or 12 or something like that. So it's been around for a while. So yeah, I don't, we don't really have a,

you know, perspective that these, you know, hey, this is like, this is the use case of this cycle and it's really going to explode. Of course, you know,

interesting things in crypto happens. and anything's possible. But that really is in our perspective. It's like, hey, they've been around for a while. They're going to continue to, you know, be something that kind of like is fun and interesting and drives, you know, some attention for some people out there. Again, maybe, you know, short of some like new interesting innovation that, you know, kind of happens with mean points that makes them, you know, that much more interesting to a greater number of people. It's interesting. One of the things that I think, you know, we always have this sort of discord. where it's tempting to treat things that are just interesting to the crypto community as somehow

sort of not relevant or not sort of, you know, a big deal relative to the sort of the rest of the world that might come in. But what's fascinating is that the longer that we exist, the bigger that community is and the more that it can sustain these like weird pockets of behavior that are completely outside of the norms of anything outside of crypto, but like make perfect weird sense inside crypto and they're, they're sort of like are big enough markets now to just be their own thing without them needing to jump, you know? Like, there's enough of these D-Gens now to play these games without ever having to sort of, you know, pull in the black rockers, I guess. Yeah, I think, I mean, that is what we're talking about. The whole, I mean, frankly, that's,

you know, that is the, in a lot of ways, the mission of, of cracking. I mean, I think there's just a number of things that you hit on there that are really meaningful, actually. So one is, hey, because we believe in these, you know, incredible, incredible benefits for, for really everyone's society around financial freedom, all of these various different pieces. But one of the things that, you know, happens with adoption is the more people that are already in crypto have adopted crypto, the more it makes sense to build new innovations on top of these networks, right? Because you have that many more users that are already in the space that are right there and able to, you know, be part of your new use case, whatever that is. And so like that are in,

the more, more it makes sense for innovators to build on on these. And then it so turns out that, you know, the use cases themselves can bring new people into into crypto. You know, not everyone starts with, you know, Bitcoin store of value as, you know, their first use case. I mean, there are some people, for example, this last cycle that, hey, they got into crypto first because of this one interesting NFT or they got attracted to PFP collections, board apes, or you name it. And some people started in crypto that way or, you know, someone who's a basketball fan with an NBA Top Shot's car, you know, interested in that NFT. And then, you know, then they kind of grow in their adoption across crypto over time. And so I think it's, I mean, this is the, this is the flywheel.

This is what we see happening and has been happening. the reason will be successful and will be something that basically everyone in the world touches many years from now, you know, five, ten plus years from now. I think it's a really salient point that there are so many doors that people walk through to get into the crypto space. They're very rarely the rooms that people stay in to sort of belabor the analogy, right? I think even hardcore Bitcoin or sometimes forget that a lot of them, you know, started paying attention because of some crazy 50% price move over a couple days, you know, and they might have decided to stick around because of, you know,

properties that they found that were totally unique to that asset and, you know, more learning they did once they got there. But, you know, all of these doors in are sort of equally legitimate in some ways. And, you know, it's just kind of, you know, what people do when they get in them. And to some extent, it almost becomes the job of the people who are already in the crypto space to make sure that there are good resources for people to move between these different areas, you know, as they start learning or they want to learn. Oh, you, you nailed it, man. That is exactly my perspective on this. And like, for me, it's like, cool that there's these different use cases and different doors in and, you know, that in different ways that people are

able to experience crypto, get into and so forth. But like, what's really awesome and powerful are the reins, you know, you had a number of these different use cases coming online. Like, e-commerce, email, you know, online media. And they were all stronger because the other use case email was there. And you could communicate with, you know, customer support easily. And then online media and view images online and you could, you know, see what product you were buying. And so they all kind of like reinforced each other from that standpoint.

And so we're going to see the same thing and starting to see the same thing in crypto. Let's take like two of the big. And, you know, NFTs, which is really a family of use case, is pig digital. So these two use cases are actually better, given both of them exists. So let's take that example again. And it's, you know, digit as collateral in a defy contract. Yeah, absolutely. And actually gain some type of like, you know, liquidity.

Yeah. No, it's, you see this already happening now, too. I mean, one of the things that's, that's fascinating is, you know, so we're recording this the week that BlackRock just announced their like tokenization fund. And it really looks like a crypto style product. even though it's, you know, for this totally different audience. And, you know, it's just going to start to get weird as, you know, listen, like, in some ways you can see these two very different ends of the poll. ETF maybe represents, you know, the sort of crypto world or the Bitcoin world adapting

to Tradfai structures. But this new product also looks a lot more like Tradfai trying to imitate what's happening for crypto. And, you know, all these assets start to look different in those context. To your point, like, things that were toys become collateral. And it's just, it's just a very sort of weird melange that we could be for. Yeah. You know, this is one of the things that I, you know, potentially, you know, have evolved my perspective on over time. You know, when I first got into crypto, Bitcoin, well, Bitcoin, we call it Bitcoin at the time, really, was, you know, it was like decentralization at, you know, above all else, which is still technically, I do believe is the case today, but like it was just like an absolute maximist on like decentralization,

censorship resistance, all these various different pieces. And I, you know, again, still true today, but like what I didn't really have, you know, I guess, you know, understand the same way I do now is that there is a spectrum here and that that spectrum actually does have some benefits. And so what do we mean by that? Well, you can go up and do something on an L2. with a little bit less security, a little bit less decentralization, but you can do other things within. So you effectively have more hybrids. I mean, take a stable coin, I mean, particularly the centralized backed stable coins. Like that is, you know, not as censorship resistant, of course, is Bitcoin itself. I mean, no way, right? I mean, you have the centralized entity that holds all the

assets. They can, you know, they could freeze in individuals, you know, particular, you know, stable coin. I mean, this is true of most all of them out there. But they're actually still a meaningful use case and there's actually benefits out there. And so kind of like the ability to use, you know, crypto networks for their benefits and some of the more, you know, kind of like traditional structures and having this like hybrid spectrum, I think actually does make sense. And I mean, ideally everyone understands the tradeoffs of, you know, actually holding a stable coin versus Bitcoin because there are like very meaningful. tradeoffs between those two. But that doesn't mean they can't, you know, both actually provide

a reasonable use case for individuals. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think is a journey that a lot of us have experience and that Bitcoin and crypto really pull out of you is the, you know, for people who will find themselves call it decentralization and censorship resistant maximalists, right? People who are really attracted to those properties in Bitcoin, but who are also free market maximalists, even though they don't like a lot of the other crypto stuff. These things kind of have to war sometimes, you know, as you watch these things.

You know, and ultimately, I think a lot of people land similar to where you are where they can understand, even if it's not what they're there for. They can understand why all these various sort of things that are, you know, kind of perhaps even uncomfortably in the same industry as their thing is in, all have a place in a role, even if it's different than the one that they're most excited about. I love it. I mean, that is actually an important dynamic of crypto. It's like, yes, like decentralization, censorship, I mean, these are absolutely incredibly

valuable things. But the fact that it's also a free market and it's open innovation and these are networks where anyone can go and innovate on top of them is actually important as well. So like, look, if someone wants to go build a stable coin on top of Bitcoin, that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean Bitcoin loses its properties for what it is and how awesome it is at. censorship resistance and so forth. I mean, it's open. I mean, that's one of the meaningful things about, you know, being, you know, freedom and having a free market is that, you know, in these networks that anyone can build on. And so I think that's important, even if what's being built

isn't as censorship resistant as that base layer, Bitcoin or whatever it is. And that's, you know, that's how it should be. I mean, much the same as the ecosystem is open to launch a new network. And that almost is kind of like in a way, the check and balance on a particular network. it becomes too centralized or whatever, hey, then that becomes another, an opportunity for some other network to launch. And so I think, again, just like that openness, permissionless innovation is fundamental to, you know, a fundamental aspect of crypto. One of the, I will say, I don't want to put these words in your mouth, but one of the, let's call them antagonists to the open innovationness of crypto has historically, or at least

for the last couple years been the SEC. And obviously, I assume you can't kind of speak directly about anything that's going on with you guys in the SEC. But I do think that over the last couple weeks, there seemed to have been a shift in the way that a lot of the world is witnessing them. You know, the sort of the insurance sanctions around debt box that came in an 80-page decision from a judge

and a couple of other things. You know, how are you guys feeling that sort of shifting tone around the SEC and sort of their relationship with the industry as well? Absolutely. I mean, they, I mean, it has become almost almost comical where, you know, the SEC sits within the, within the industry. They, you know, fortunately are on a losing streak. They continue to lose now. And, you know, the overreach and stretch here is just, is just quite extreme and mind-boggling. And, you know, it's not just people in crypto that are aware of this and know this. There are people across. all parts of various different industries that are now becoming aware of this.

There are not just here where there are a number of people in the U.S. government that Congress and so forth, I was over in Europe not too long ago and speak with a number of folks in government regulators, lawmakers, members of parliament and so forth. And their perspective is honestly not terribly different than someone in the crypto industry anywhere in that, you know, the SEC. seems to be, you know, just taking a really suboptimal approach that, you know, raises eyebrows, you know, gets the eye roll, again, from people in government, you know, in all, all various

different countries across the world. So I think this is, you know, becoming fairly widespread. The, you know, just the, yeah, the negative perception that is, that is, you know, that they've brought on themselves. It'd be interesting to see how sort of the rest of this year plays out on that front. I'm not particularly optimistic, but I am optimistic about the sort of the hand being revealed, let's say. Awesome conversation. By way of wrapping up, I'd love to kind of, you know, just ask, as you sort of zoom out across the rest of this cycle, or maybe even just, you know, what's coming up over the course of the rest of 2024, there are any big things if you could snap your fingers

and, you know, have it be the case? Any things that you really hope for, you know, in terms of, you know, how the crypto industry behaves or, you know, any of. anything like that, I'd love to hear, you know, just hopes and dreams for this new cycle. Yeah, it's a good question. You know, obviously we just got done talking about the regulatory dynamic. That's a little bit more applicable to companies like Cracken, but that's certainly one of the things that we hope, you know, moves in the right direction, you know, from where we sit today. Again, that's somewhat of a Cracken lens.

You know, I think there's, you know, a broader piece for like crypto generally is, you know, it would really be nice if like all of our learnings from previous cycles were, you know, perfectly understood and applied in this cycle. So when we talk about things like, you know, leverage who and what individuals are going to trust with their assets and all these various different types of things and the importance of that and importance of security and all these various different pieces, it would be nice if we were able to, you know, as an industry, as a group, somehow ensure that all of these learnings from past cycles, we brought forward. I mean, the build up of leverage. Obviously, that's maybe already happening to some extent. Of course, that's not a

crypto thing. That happens in Tradfai all over the place, or not crypto unique at least. But yeah, I mean, I think that would be a great thing if we were able to kind of continue to see, you know, great adoption, but then, you know, remember these challenges that, you know, have come about previously and we learned from them. Yeah, I can co-sign that, that hope very mightily. Dave, awesome to have you on the show. Really appreciate your perspective on all this stuff and very excited to see what you guys build and come out with this cycle.

Sounds great. Great being here. Thanks so much.