The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Just Cleared Its BIGGEST Hurdle - Rally NOT DONE?
Episode Date: July 22, 2026Bitcoin is holding near $66,000 as investors brace for one of the biggest weeks of Big Tech earnings this year, with Alphabet, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon all set to report. We also cover the l...argest Bitcoin outflow from Binance in five months, Brian Armstrong's warning that Coinbase may continue expanding overseas if the CLARITY Act fails, growing concerns over AI-powered crypto security after OpenAI's latest model leak, Jack Mallers stepping down as CEO of Twenty One Capital, and why one of the UK's largest Bitcoin treasury companies has voted to liquidate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Bitcoin just quietly cleared one of its biggest hurdles, leading many to believe that a rally may be coming.
We'll unpack that and all of the news here live from the Out East Summit presented by the Tie.
And of course, I have the founder of the tie with me today, Josh Frank.
Let's go.
Good morning, everybody.
And welcome to the scenic north fork in Long Island.
Today we are not having Gail Force wins like we did yesterday.
We have the sun actually out yesterday.
Everyone's hair was blowing around.
This is what happens and I'm not invited on day one.
I just, I stand the wins.
You brought to.
As a Jew, people think that I can control the weather.
So, you know, I, I've heard that rumor too, but obviously not the case.
So listen, first of all, it's been an absolutely incredible conference.
It's beautiful out here.
We have bottomless cups of coffee.
Bottomless.
Bottomless cups of coffee.
Mine's empty.
That was kind of the joke.
Okay, so let's start from the beginning and then we'll dig into kind of what's happening with the conference.
A few pieces of news that hit today, which sort of led into that title.
So Jack Mahler stepped down at, not surprisingly, as the CEO of 21 and it blew up entirely, I guess,
the merger between Electron 21 and Tether.
And I mean, you know, and we have another story that's at Summa, which is a UK-based treasury company,
completely unwinding, 90% vote on shareholders to sell off their treasury,
there's only 600 and something Bitcoin, which is actually a lot of money.
But after raising 180 million to do it, I think it's worth about 40,
and they're going to delist entirely.
So, you know, I think a slightly different environment here with the digital asset treasury companies
that maybe last year at the same.
Yeah, I mean, last year, 12 months ago, we were out here.
And as I mentioned you earlier in passing, I mean,
there was like a billion dollars plus worth of dat deals that happened at the event last year.
I mean, people running around foundations launching dats.
I mean, it was crazy. Multiple funds announced dat funds. One fund in particular raised $100 million
to invest in Dats, and I have to imagine not doing particularly well. And definitely no conversations
about DATs these days. I think DATs is obviously an interesting phenomenon. I mean, they're all
trying to figure out what do we do. I mean, it's worse than holding the underlying token because
when you hold the underlying token, you own the token when you hold the DAT. Yes, there are tokens in the
but also in addition to executive compensation and fees and legal fees and everything else,
one thing that's not really talked about publicly, and I speak to a lot of the founders of
DATs is these insane asinine asset management agreements that they signed.
So some of the DATs signed, you know, with different asset managers that they pay 2% a year
for 20 years in asset management fees with like a 90% buyout.
So effectively, you got 100 Bitcoin, 40 something of it is going to the asset manager
over the course of the 20 years.
So some of these debts are not even salvageable because you can't buy them because they have
these agreements.
And these agreements require that the debts pay out to these asset managers.
So the big winner here is all of the law firms that set up these entities, all the asset
managers that are managing the assets of these entities, as well as the bankers that set
up a tremendous number of these entities.
I was entirely unaware of that.
So even if they're trading at a discount, if they have a commitment to the asset manager
that amounts to 30, 40% of their assets.
I mean, over the course of a very,
yeah, of 20, but still, like if you said,
we're going to sell our 100 Bitcoin,
they literally can't, or there would have to be some.
It's not all of them.
Right.
It's some of them that rushed to raise capital that basically thought of it is,
I'm just going to print $20 million for myself really easily.
Everything's going to go up, it doesn't matter.
And so there are some of these.
So I talked to some of the larger debts.
There are a few big EF dats and big Bitcoin debts.
And the founders, and I've asked them like,
okay, well, you guys are trading at, you know,
90% of MNAV.
Everyone else is trading a 30%
why not buy them and roll them up?
And the reality is they can't
because of these horrendous agreements
that have incredible alcohol.
Yeah, I was wondering why we haven't seen
like a dad of that.
Someone just raise a bunch of money,
consolidate them or buy the Bitcoin and, you know,
that answers the reason.
Buy it.
Activists invest and get them to return
the underlying assets.
For some, it's doable.
It's not all of them.
It's definitely not all of them,
but the ones that really rush to structure
and get things
out and basically we're just tasting an easy dollar, which is the case in crypto a lot of the time,
as we know, there.
Yeah, I mean, I take the silver lining approach, which is why the title says Bitcoin clears biggest
hurdle, right? To me, the biggest hurdle was getting sailor out of the conversation as the main
character, which I think has happened. But now actually seeing these unwind and it not really
affect Bitcoin, like there's a time when the kind of news that we have seen yesterday and today
maybe would have been devastating for price. But if treasury companies, even if they're unwinding,
are kind of priced out as a non-issue, I think that's really actually a quietly bullish narrative.
Yeah, I mean, I think this has been the problem for Bitcoin for the last really six months,
but maybe more, is basically this, you know, obviously the Michael Saler Overhang.
And what does this mean?
And I think it also has pulled away from what is the bulk case for Bitcoin, what's the narrative?
Why should you hold Bitcoin as well as some of these other underlying, you know, digital assets?
So I think this definitely changes that.
And I think we can go back to the conversation of why Bitcoin and, you know, as a store of value and a hedge and, and, you know, as we see more and more froth in traditional equity markets, maybe that narrative becomes more interesting.
Yeah, I mean, it's still trading it at a book today, 65, 66, I would imagine.
Somewhere in the not bottom 60s and mid-60s, very exciting.
Not even high 50s.
Right.
But there's been the ETF implows again.
Like one of the stories, big stories today was that 9,000 Bitcoin had left finance for like the large.
in many, many months yesterday.
Yeah.
Right.
So you get these kind of like low end signals that maybe sentiment or the market is
kind of turning or that, you know, smart money is doing something different.
Yeah, no, 100%.
And I mean, and you've seen it here.
I mean, you've had guests here.
You have all the large traditional asset managers that are here at Audi is.
Crazy.
And they're all buying Bitcoin.
They're, I mean, they're buying Bitcoin.
They're making Bitcoin accessible to their, I mean, they're not, sometimes they're
buying Bitcoin with their own capital, but they're focused on increasing accessibility
of Bitcoin.
in a big conversation that I had with one of the top three largest asset managers in the world yesterday
was they're really thinking about how do we build a portfolio that we allow our clients to get,
which has the S&P, which has bonds, which has Bitcoin's already in it.
Like how do we build these structured products that are more than just Bitcoin?
And that's ultimately what's going to push this narrative forward is,
is making Bitcoin part of the portfolio that you build as an investor and that you have exposure.
I wish I had the story in front of me.
But yesterday there was a story that S&P released its first crypto index fund.
Did you see this?
And Bitcoin wasn't in it.
Because I think they were like, because it doesn't have a, you know, a yield or no earnings or platform fees and stuff, which is fine.
But I mean, we're clearly moving into a world where like there's diversified products and a lot of assets for these things.
And like to your point, like I can't diversified products.
Exactly.
I can't believe who you have here.
Like yesterday I had conversations with Morgan Stanley.
Franklin Temple.
It's like every single institution on the planet is here.
And they're and they're significantly more bullish.
any of the crypto fund managers that are here.
Yes.
You talk to any crypto fund manager here.
The world is ending.
The sky is falling.
You know, kind of yesterday was the sky was literally falling.
The sky was literally falling.
And today, you know, it's more the, you know, you talk to these large guys, you know,
talk to another asset manager that's raising, kind of raise billions of dollars to buy liquid
tokens.
I mean, we were talking about this.
Crazy.
Okay.
So let's let's talk about that, not specifically about raising billions of dollars to
to buy liquid tokens.
But I think one conversation that you and I have.
had last time you were on was the re-raging debate about tokens versus equity. I think it was actually
because of the Venice story, right? Venice raised a bunch. They did inequity, not tokens. It left
people wondering, why do I own this token? It was defended by Eric Voorhees. You've been doing,
I know a lot of thinking about this, but maybe there's a more interesting conversation is if you're one
of those, how can you convert the tokens into equity or should you? Yeah, I mean, I think the question is
why should you convert token to equity? And I think it's not.
not every project. There are reasons to have tokens. And I think a lot of the amazing things
about crypto is, you know, there's obviously been an insane amount of vaporware, which we love to
chat about and nonsense and garbage. An insane amount is the understatement of the century.
I mean, the industry is mostly vapor. But there are some projects that have real revenue,
but that are just trading at ridiculously low multiples. And so to kind of give, you know,
kind of a little bit more context, right, when you're a founder of an equity business, right,
You know, if you launch a new podcast, you launch a new company, whatever, you might own 30%, 20%, 15% of the company.
When you launch token, oftentimes you get 2% of the token, 3% of the token.
And when your token is trading at 5 billion market cap, you're the happiest person ever.
When that token is down to 20 million market cap, you're looking at yourself, you're like,
I got $100,000 worth of this token.
Like, what's my incentive to continue to build this out?
I can go get a signing bonus during an AI company, and it's more than the 100%.
$100,000 that I have in token, right? That's the first problem. Second problem is you as that
founder can't really give yourself or your employees more tokens because you've basically out of the pie.
You know, everyone's seen the token supply schedules out of the pie. The team gets 20% of the token.
And so in a traditional, you know, equity business, you'd issue what's called an ESOP, which is an
employee stock option pool. And so you'd dilute all the shareholders equally. In crypto, if you wanted to do
that, you'd have to pass a governance vote saying, hey, we're going to mint a bunch more tokens.
We're going to admit more tokens, and that's going to go off over horribly, right?
But like, you know, the incentive structure is on place.
That's the first thing.
Second thing is, if they want to raise more capital, they can't do it because it's the same
problem, right?
If you have an equity business, right?
If we wanted to raise more capital, we're not concerned about how many shares we have
in our treasury.
We issue more shares, right?
And you dilute everyone equally.
You know, in crypto, people raise one round of capital.
They raise, you know, sometimes two rounds of capital.
Then the token goes live.
And it's like, okay, you had runway, but now your token is not worth anything.
so you can't liquidate the token to extend that runway.
And so how do you raise more capital?
You can't issue more shares.
So if you want to raise $10 million and you only have $5 million in the treasury,
what do you do?
And then you're out of tokens.
You have nothing left and you're putting cell pressure on the token in order to,
you know, in order to raise capital.
That's the second kind of problem.
The third problem is buybacks.
Buybacks are a massive problem because paper liquid should buy back.
They're generating a tremendous amount of revenue and a tremendous amount of EBITA.
And they're, you know, at this point, even though it's so fast,
their very late stage company, you know, early stage businesses should not be buying back.
No seed stage equity business, series A stage equity business buys back shareholders.
It doesn't make sense.
And so, you know, you're a token.
Let's say you have $5 million in revenue and $1 million in profit on that revenue.
You wouldn't go and spend a million in profit or $2 million in profit to buy back tokens,
which isn't even working.
It's not even pushing price up.
And then you're actually losing money.
And so you're run right, your run, one runway is shortening.
You can't raise more capital.
So structurally, it's a huge problem.
And there are a lot of projects out there, I think, specifically in the DFI space,
and in the RWA space, that, you know, that, like, actually have revenue,
but the token just doesn't reflect that, right?
Like, we've seen projects that have $5 million in revenue,
but the token sits at $15 million market cap, but the token also doesn't give you anything.
You have no investor protections.
You don't have any rights to anything, right?
Like, as a token holder, you're also kind of screwed.
So, you know, I think there's going to be a huge movement towards converting,
not for L1s and L2s, I don't think it makes sense structurally,
but I think for a lot of DFI projects or revenue-generating projects,
to basically effectively end the token and convert to equity.
The way I think that it practically happens is you take over anyone above a certain amount of tokens,
and you put them directly on the cap table of a new company.
You basically say, okay, send these tokens to a burn address,
and then basically they get burnt and you get issued common stock in a Delaware C-Corp.
I think for a token holder 5 to 25, maybe there's a way to enter an SPC.
and move over.
And then from everybody else,
basically the larger investors
that are coming over onto the cap table
basically have an offer to buy back
everyone else's token at a slight premium to spot.
So even the token holders are getting a little bit more out of it.
And I think that's the way, like,
could these tokens do it and just kill the token
and build a C-Corp and make money
and not care about token holders for sure?
I don't think it's the right thing to do.
I think the right thing to do is you effectively
get the token holders out at a little bit of a premiums.
They make money.
the option. You're not confiscating.
Who's less money. But yes, make money. Make money versus current price. Right. And then so basically
you convert everyone over as common stock. You can then issue a new employee stock option
pull on top of that. So all the employees can get more shares, especially if the founders
got 1% or 2% of the tokens. It doesn't make sense. The incentives are in the line. You give them
a little bit more, but also you create more shares for future employees, be able to come in
and then you raise new capital on top of that. I think where this ultimately becomes really
interesting is if you can take the SPV and tokenize it and then allow people that were previously
token holders to participate in the tokenized equity. I think that's ultimately where I want the
market to go, which is investors should have the ability to invest in whatever they want, whether
or not they're accredited. And I think, you know, obviously U.S. accredited investor laws
prohibit that. But I would like it to be the case that investors can participate in anything.
I mean, there's been a lot of, you know, free IPO stock trading, you know, SpaceX and others before
they've gotten live. But I think crypto has done amazing things as it relates to bringing in
investors in order to access early stage opportunities. And people have made a shit ton of money on the
retail side. People that got into hyperliquid early, salana early, there have been, you know,
avalanche near a lot of these projects very early were extraordinarily successful. And, you know,
there's no reason that they shouldn't have access to the same opportunity. So I think,
I think where the market is going in the short term is token to equity and where I hope the market is
going to go in the longer term. And I think, you know, obviously we need to see regulation pass to
enable this or there's novel ways to think about this.
is token to equity to tokenize equity and allow those that were token holders to become
tokenized equity holders because ultimately I just think equity is a better vehicle than a token is
for lots of business. But certain projects still would need tokens, right? So I mean, I guess
if it's gas fee, if there's some specific utility to it, you're layer one basically, then maybe
you still need one, but this basically what you've described is for like 99% of the existence.
I don't know if it's not because not, there's not that quality.
Because there's no point.
I think it's really relevant for, there's probably a universe of a couple hundred tokens
that have a decent amount of revenue.
By the way, they might not raise money at a hundred dollar valuation.
It might be at a $15 million valuation, but ultimately it creates the right incentives.
It allows you to continue to grow.
It allows you to continue to invest in the business.
And it creates investor protections and investor rights.
And it lets you think a lot more long term.
I mean, the problem with being a token and having token holders is,
is that you're constantly, and this is the problem with being a public company broadly,
you're constantly trying to appease your shareholders or your token holders.
And when you're a later stage business, that's fine, when you're an early stage business
and you just need to invest in growth and you can keep funneling money in and, you know,
differentiate and try things and fail, you know, as opposed to just playing for the,
I mean, as you know, I mean, the crypto game used to be, let me just announce a partnership.
Like, we're using AWS.
We partnered with Amazon.
And then token price goes up like, you know, 400%.
The Google partnership.
partnerships. I mean, I remember the chain link one, which, you know, from, uh, at this one,
probably 2018, 2019, chain link just ripped on this, right? And there's a ton of these things,
right? That game doesn't work anymore. Um, and so I, I think, you know, it's time for people
to start to really rethink and we're happy to have these conversations with folks. How do you
actually structure this? How do you do this? I have the best example of that that I always kind of point
back to is that polymarket is literally called polymarket polygoth. Yeah. I haven't seen much
movement there.
They were the kings of the announcements.
Like Instagram, Facebook.
Starbucks.
And I think some of those were actually legitimate, but if a token can't move on names like
that at this point, and what are we doing here?
I guess that begs the next question is if you're a founder and you have an idea,
do you even launch a token at this point?
Or do you just, I mean, I think there are, as to your point, gas fees and other things,
there are reasons to have tokens.
I mean, hyperliquid is a token.
and it's very successful.
And I think it's arguably potentially more successful as a token than it would be as equity,
allowing retail to participate and it's grown so much.
And it's trading at a huge multiple of its revenue.
So I think it's a serious conversation to be had.
But a year or two ago, you talked to crypto venture funds and every single venture fund
would only invest in things that touch tokens.
When we were raising, we've raised one round before.
We had a couple of term sheets from investors where they put a token warrant in the term
sheet.
I'm like, guys, we're never launching a token.
Like, what do you?
like, why is there a token warrant in this term sheet?
But it was just that they just wanted to cover their ass
because everyone was launching a token.
They wanted to make sure they had the right to participate in the upside of the token.
Now you go around, you talk to VC funds, and it's kind of flipped.
I think everyone is willing to do tokens now and to do equity,
but I think, you know, whereas before it was 90% tokens, 10% or 80-20,
I would say it's now even more than 50-50.
It's probably leaning more towards a dependency on equity.
Or there are a lot of, you know, project token warrants that are just never,
going to launch it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that makes sense.
I think that's a healthier market.
Yeah.
We just don't need another million tokens.
But now you can see why people launch meme coins.
You're saying the founders only get 1.2% or 2% of the tokens when they try to actually do something
real.
Memecoin, you just keep 80%, 90%.
Yeah.
Talk to Donald about that.
Do you think those are coming back?
I mean, it seems like we've seen a little meme coin renaissance.
I mean, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a fan of meme coins only in the
meme coins only in that it pulls liquidity from the rest of the industry.
Yeah.
I have no idealistic view against meme coins whatsoever.
But people love gambling and meme coins are way to gamble.
It's like a scratch off ticket.
Yeah, I agree.
So let's talk more broadly about what you're hearing here at the conference.
I mean, it seems like there's every panel I listen to every conversation I have.
There's a few like buckets, I guess, of themes a clarity act, which I guess we can talk about.
Like, everybody's talking about that because it's a thing right now.
update that I saw today, but it's just kind of loosely reported. Obviously, the White House had
some language around ethics. Democrats are saying they want the state attorneys to prosecute it.
Trump said he wants the DOJ, which is his own personal lawyers, obviously, to prosecute it.
That's one topic. RWA and tokenization, I would say, is the other biggest one. And AI and
agentic trading. Maybe I mean, those are kind of the biggest buckets. There's quite a few others.
But every single conversation ends up touching all of those.
I think that's right.
I think it's a lot of, you know, who wins.
I think a lot of crypto, you know, I talked to a lot of crypto VC funds as well.
And this is, you know, another conversation point is they're no longer just crypto vCs.
They're now investing outside of crypto.
And I think.
Yeah, wasn't it Pantera that announced the robotics and AI.
Was it pantera?
Well, I mean, there's everyone, everyone is.
I don't know if Pantera specifically, but, um, uh, paradigm is probably
referring to, but lots of others.
I mean, there are definitely still funds that have a lot of conviction to the space.
I think the most intelligent, which is,
to go about this, from my opinion, and I'm not a VC, I'm not an expert, but, you know, I like the,
we invest in fintech that touches crypto. Like every neobank is going to have some crypto,
rail. If you're, if you're, you know, a payments platform, you're going to use stable coins
in some way. So that to me makes sense. You know, to me, when you go from crypto to a totally
different segment, I understand it's another emerging technology. I'm not sure what your edge is, but a lot of
these firms that we've talked to are hiring people that are experts at that, and they're just
expanding the firm and expanding their footprint,
and they're ultimately going to become generalist funds.
So I think that's the other theme that we're trying to see.
But it's not everyone.
There are definitely a lot of others that still do have conviction in the space,
continue to invest the space.
I think the question is another theme is also who's going to win?
Is it tradfire or as a crypto?
I think you would have asked this question three or four years ago.
I think people would have said, I mean, you know, peak FTX and FTAG getting into equities
and I mean, FTCS owning Robin Hood and all sorts of things.
I remember I said he was going to buy Goldman Sachs?
That's not a bit of a top signal.
Yeah, maybe.
You know, we've missed all the top signals between us, too.
The, so, you know, I think, you know, the conversation a few years ago was crypto will eat equity markets.
And I think now it's equity markets or traditional players are going to use crypto rels and crypto infrastructure.
Is the value going to accrue to those that invest in crypto rails?
Well, I think that's, I think it's a difficult question.
I think it depends.
I think certain segments like stable coin rail, stable coin infrastructure.
I mean, you've seen stripes, you know, acquisition, mass acquisition of bridge last year.
So there are areas and there are areas.
And I think there's also a huge convergence in multiples that crypto businesses are trading at.
But I think a lot of guys that are more Rails and infra that can be used by traditional institutions are trading at material.
Instead of trading at four times revenue like other businesses, they might be trading at 20 or 30 times revenue.
And so you're seeing this massive convergence in crypto valuations, whereas everything was trading at high multiples.
I think now people are having a much more sober take on, you know, basically, you know, everyone
was fishing in a pond, right? And now, you know, there are more fishing rods in the pond is smaller
and everyone thought the pond was going to grow. And so the question is really, you know,
how do you, you know, cash your real both in the crypto pond and the tradfifai pond. The
tradfif pond is a lot bigger. And so you're within the crypto-native space, you're kind of playing
to a smaller market. And I think that's really, you know, I think businesses that are thinking just about
crypto natives are in a tougher spot. But I also, you know, we've, I mean, we've gone out.
We've made three acquisitions in the crypto space. And you know, some that have been very native.
And my view is when everyone is scared is when you should be.
What are the acquisitions? Yeah. Yeah. So we acquired a business at the end of last year called
Staken, which is a couple billion asset under delegation staking provider. Basically, the thesis
there was that staking is broadly undifferentiated. Every staking provider has got the same fees,
the same infrastructure, the same cost. You know, the same.
of time. It's all the same. It doesn't matter who you stake with. It's all the same. I mean,
there are some that are bad, but anyone who's good is all the same. And so basically, you know,
we view it as a mechanism for accessing our services. So if you're an institution and you want
access to the terminal, like our platform, you know, a lot of crypto funds. So in traditional
capital markets and equity fund, you know, wouldn't launch with less than $200 million, right?
Because it costs money to launch a fund. You need to pay analysts. You need to pay lawyers. You
need to pay back office. You need to pay fund admins, custodians. And crypto people launch
funds with very small amounts of money. That's like $20 million. And
on 220 model, 2% management, 20% performance fee, they have $400,000 a year in management fees.
They can afford to go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on software, which, by the way,
a lot of these crypto companies that are trying to sell software to funds are realizing,
but they do have 20 million in tokens, and they can delegate those tokens.
And so we allow our clients, instead of paying us cash to delegate their tokens to us in order
to access or services.
We also do a tremendous amount of kind of go-to-market work with protocols.
You know, we do it at our events.
We have them come and speak and take meetings and institutions.
And so on the back of that, we acquired a couple of other businesses.
We acquired a business called Liquidity Land, which is a platform that helps tokens raise TVL.
And they've helped tokens historically raise about $100 million in TVL.
The idea being is, to our point earlier on announcements, announcements no longer are everything.
They no longer move the needle, right?
Protocols need to grow.
They need to approve revenue.
They need to gain traction.
And so being able to enable the growth of the protocols by bringing them things that are
tangible like TVL is very helpful.
And for our institutional clients, it's going to enable.
able us to give them higher yields by going and working with these protocols to basically
structure deals for institutions, as well as for the broader market. Everyone can access a lot of
these opportunities, be able to earn higher yields. They would earn otherwise on the large lending
markets and crypto and other platforms, as well as we acquired a business called stakingrewards.com,
which is the most trusted and most visited platform for staking data. One, it expands the data
offerings that we have with the TIE Terminal and other things, but it's also an amazing
distribution channel because it's got a million visitors annually that care about yields.
So we'll be able to bring a lot of the liquidity and land opportunities onto the platform.
And we'll also be able to work with protocols and help them gain more exposure to a much broader audience.
So they all kind of fit in along these themes of helping institutions get exposure to digital assets and meet digital assets,
as well as helping digital assets grow and gain exposure to the institutional audience that we've built in that you see here.
Do you have specific thoughts on odds of the Clarity Act passing or Genius Act finally actually getting implemented since they may.
made it past the year. It's hard for me to give any better thought than any of your other guests,
because some of your other guests I talked to said I called the White House yesterday.
Like, I feel like that guest is going to have a much better opinion than me.
So I talked to multiple people that called the White House yesterday, and they have different opinion.
Right.
So it seems like it's a mixed bag.
People seem to be more positive than I was expecting from what I've heard,
including those that are close to the White House and that are close to Trump and his team.
And so I don't know.
I mean, it's, it's, I don't have an informed opinion other than I've heard both sides of the story from people that claim that close to the administration.
That's what I was hoping you would maybe be, be leaning in one day.
You know, Trump, Trump didn't answer my phone call.
More of me either.
More importantly, what do you think it means if it does or doesn't pass?
Like, do you think that that will have a meaningful impact on the market?
I think it, I think it does have a meaningful impact on the market in terms of, you know, folks' ability to participate, companies, you know, willingness, especially on the traditional institutional side, to really,
go all in on the space, continue to invest in the space, build out the space. And also,
I think it's also, crypto is desperately in need of something. It's desperately in need of a
narrative. And I think this is the narrative that people have latched onto. And the market has
not priced in a win at this point. And so I think a win, we need a catalyst. I think a win would
be a massive catalyst for the market brought. I mean, for you at the tie, you just talked about
three acquisitions that you made that seem like they would at least be touched by Clarity Act passing.
so it actually matters to you.
Well, look, we are all in.
It was funny.
I had a VC come up to me.
And he's like, you know, you guys are so active.
You're buying all these things.
Why don't you buy things that are tangential to crypto?
I'm like, if the ship goes down, I'm going to be the fucking captain of it.
Like, we're all in.
We're betting on crypto.
You know, we think that there's a future to this industry.
Whether or not the future is all tokens or tokens and equities, it doesn't matter.
We think there's a future to decentralized finance.
And, you know, we see massive traditional kind of institutional adoption of it.
And so for us, you know, we have a massive exposure to tokens.
You know, we have just as much token exposure as a lot of your listeners do, if not more, probably.
And so we, you know, we believe in the industry.
And personally.
And personally.
You know, realizing that diversifying is a good thing.
But we have personal exposure as well.
But we're still excited.
I mean, and you can see it here.
You can see those that are building are excited and continue to be excited.
And, I mean, you know, there's there are firms here on the traditional asset management side.
they have a thousand full-time employees in crypto.
And so, you know, while, you know, your random altcoin number 700 on coin market cap might not be going up,
there's certainly a lot being built.
And it's not only tokenization.
A lot of it relates to Bitcoin, Eith, Falana, you know, and Canton and all the different, you know, projects.
I mean, how did you get all these people into what?
I would say one room, but I'll say one winery.
Because, like, it's at everybody's represented here.
Everybody.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, we've built a very long, I mean, I've been doing this for nine years.
So it's taken a long time to build a massive network.
But I think it's also, you know, with a lot of conferences, so, you know, out east is a conference we're hosting now.
And we have 300 attendees that are spread across this giant 200-acre vineyard.
And the reality is when you go to a conference, you know, less so now.
But, you know, you probably were at consensus in 2017, 18, and there's Lambos parked outside.
And there's a million, you know, random people there.
And there's, you know, 400 sales people from a custodian.
you can't get business done.
No one wants to be there.
And then you go to these major conferences, you know, that are, you know, token 2049 is an
amazing event, but no one's at token 249.
Everyone is all over Singapore.
People are at this side event and that side event and that side event.
And so everyone you want to meet is there.
You just can't sit down with them.
And the whole idea here was we want to give people a space to actually do business, right?
So we want to, you know, we want to allow people to sit down and spend 15 minutes together,
I mean, even us, like before this, we're able to sit down and chat.
And so it's just about creating an intimate space for deals and business and opportunities to actually get done.
And it's amazing to see all the tokenization partnerships that are coming out of this, all the capital raising that's coming out of this.
The LP is committing to GP's funds, you know, raising, raising capital.
And so we actually just announced this morning we're doing another event like this.
We rented a five-star hotel in the Dominican Republic to an event called the Enclave.
It's very similar, even smaller event.
It's 250 people.
But the idea is create very intimate opportunities for leaders in the space to connect.
I think people appreciate it.
Yeah, and to put the right connectors into the people who actually need to connect,
not just kind of a random assemblage.
Yeah, and look, could we make this a 3,000 versus an event and make more money?
We could, but no one would come year to.
And we're trying to build something long-term and sustainable.
And also, you know, bring the right people into the room and honestly help push the industry forward.
Like I think this does a lot to bring legitimacy and professionalism to the space,
which I think is sorely needed.
I mean, we have no meme coin projects here or any of that.
It's really institutional, but it's not just, we are not, there's a lot of RWA events.
There's a lot of tokenization events.
It's not about, yes, there's tokenization, but this is about crypto broadly.
It's about tokens.
We have a lot of the projects here.
We have a lot of the founders.
We have the founders of Avalanche and Monad and a lot of these big projects that are here in the room
having these conversations.
And I think it's, you know, pushing the industry forward.
It's also giving a lot of these trad-5 players the opportunity to meet these different protocols,
connect with them.
And ultimately, you know, in some cases, potentially lost TTFs, ETPs, including,
their token or multi-acety-tfs or tokenized on their network or, you know, have some sort of
partnership with them, you know, launch a tokenized money market fund on their chain. So I think
it's, you know, just about having the right people in the room and also making sure there's not
500 people trying to sell you things at all point. I was trying to sell my Melania bag out on the street,
but yeah, no buyers. Yeah, maybe one of your listeners, though. Maybe. Maybe anybody wants a
Malani? I don't have any money tokens. I was highly clear. Oh, man, I think we covered it. Is there
anything else that we didn't cover? No, I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate.
And you're having me out here.
Yeah, this is amazing.
It's awesome to have you here.
And it's beautiful backdrop.
Nice sunny day.
And thanks everyone for listening.
Yeah, man.
Thank you guys.
And we'll obviously be back again tomorrow.
See you then.
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