The Wolf Of All Streets - Coinbase's Top Researcher On When To Expect Institutional Investors To Adopt Crypto | David Duong

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

When will Institutional Investors adopt crypto? David Duong, Head of Institutional Research at Coinbase talks about the future of institutions in crypto - what they need to know, where crypto fits in their asset allocation strategy, and what the future of regulation looks like. David also talks about what trends and developments in the space have him excited, like Layer 2 technologies and Ethereum’s upcoming Merge, and the promise of crypto to the billions of unbanked people around the world. JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen Episode Links: David Duong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-duong-cfa/ Institutional Research at Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/institutional Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/ FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c SHOW NOTES 00:15 Institutional Adoption of Crypto 02:17 Crypto is not dead 03:38 Obstacles to Institutional Adoption 05:22 All CEOs must understand Crypto 06:37 Valuable Crypto research 07:59 Coinbase’s listing strategy 08:59 How to classify and regulate Crypto projects 10:40 Institutional asset allocation 13:00 Crypto volatility vs other assets 16:10 Coinbase Direct Listing Pros and Cons 17:22 The future of Crypto regulation 20:16 Crypto for the unbanked 23:47 Ethereum Merge and Level 2s 26:00 Can crypto scale? 29:08 Thanks for listening

One of the prevailing narratives in crypto is that institutionalization is happening and that institutions are rushing into the space. But we don't really necessarily have the facts to support that until I talk to David Young, who's the head of institutional research at Coinbase. Now, Coinbase seems to be the preferred platform for institutions in the United States to gain exposure to the digital asset class, so nobody has better insight

as to what's happening with institutions in crypto. So I think that one of the main narratives, certainly in crypto over the past few years and now has been institutional adoption of the asset class. You're the head of research for institutions at Coinbase, so you probably have your finger on the pulse of that more than anyone else. Are there any narratives that you're seeing that are outright false about what's actually happening in that side of the space? Or do you really think that we're having this big push of institutional adoption?

Yeah, I actually have seen that volumes have actually antennaxed over the course of 2021, for example. So at the end of 2020, we were getting institutional volumes around $120 billion on our platform. That increased to $1.14 trillion by the end of 2021. So we are seeing that institutionals actually are stepping in here. I think 2021 was a very big onboarding year for them.

And certainly not all of them were prepared for what it took to actually be there because you need the back-end systems, risk systems, research, like a lot of things that I think they didn't necessarily have in place. They thought it was going to be two, three months that they were just able to kind of step in. And it turned out that there was a lot that actually was a little bit different. Like the technology is really innovative, but these systems aren't necessarily that progressive. So that backend had to be built out. Now, of course, we're kind of going through

a bit of a lull in the crypto period. But I think for a lot of institutionals, if they were interested in this six months ago or a year ago, they're even more interested in it now because the valuations are a lot better for them. And we probably will start seeing that cash come in in the second half of the year. That's interesting because probably like the mainstream media narrative

or what you would hear on the street is, price is down, it's dead. But we are saying that sophisticated investors understand that, well, I missed it at 30 last time. It went to 69. Here we are again. Maybe this is an opportunity. No, exactly. I think market institutional investors in particular are savvy. They actually know that there's volatility in the market. The volatility is kind of what lubricates their ability to take advantage of cycles. And what we're seeing right now is a cyclical downturn. It is not something structural.

I think the fundamental narrative surrounding cryptocurrencies is still that the secular curve for adoption is still very steep. And I think as long as that trend is going to be there, you want to capture that. So I don't think anyone's under the impression that things are only going to go linearly up forever because there's no asset that does that. And certainly cryptocurrencies don't fall into that bucket. I think that we are talking about long duration, speculative assets that, yeah,

sometimes are influenced by hype cycles. And we got a lot of that in the second half of last year, for example. But there is still a lot of that in the second half of last year, for example. But there is still a lot of opportunity to be had here. And we are just in the early stages for a lot of these developments. I don't know if you interface directly sort of with the institutional clients or providing research, but are there hard questions that they're still asking? Are there major concerns that they have?

Is it surrounding custody, insurance, security? What questions are they still asking? What's preventing them maybe from pulling the trigger? So there's a really wide range of clients and education levels when it comes to crypto. And some are very much at that level of, okay, we're trying to figure out custody solutions. We're trying to figure out, like, you know, should we be having a cold wallet or a hot wallet? Are we able to trade on your balance sheet in order to use that? Because we have long, short strategies we want to go.

And there are some who are literally asking, we understand what a blockchain is, but can you tell us about, like, what investments are there available beyond, like, Bitcoin and Ethereum? Because we really don't have a grasp on that, you know? And so there are some that are really far up that curve, and they completely know what they need in this space. And they are looking for, probably to kind of your question, when are we going to get the regulatory clarity on this?

Like, you know, just even, like, yesterday they'll be asking me, like, what do you think about, you know, Cynthia Lo about Cynthia Loomis', Kirsten Gillibrand's bill? Do you think it's going to be progressive, positive for the space? Where are we going to see that? They're trying to figure out, what about co-mingling of assets with the custody account? So there is that. But I think there's just as many people who are just trying to figure out the beginnings of their crypto journey and trying to understand where they fall in that respect. Sounds like an accurate reflection of retail, right? We have people from every level of sophistication, but it does seem like now

even your average people and certainly average institutions are asking the question. And I think that that's probably the biggest change in my mind, right? All these people who probably either had a negative opinion or no opinion at all, I think have to have one because their customers are going to ask or, I mean, do you find that every institution now, the CFO sort of has to have some crypto knowledge? That's absolutely right.

You know, like when we're talking about levels of sophistication as well, you have to look at the segments within certain fund managers or companies because there is oftentimes a, I'm going to say, skews younger kind of group within that who is very knowledgeable about the space. Even within pension funds or endowments or other places, people seem to think of these as conservative institutions, but they know what they're talking about. They understand cryptocurrencies. They understand the technology. I was at a conference a couple weeks ago where it was mainly macro-focused, and at least 30% of it was dedicated to the idea of cryptocurrencies. So where three years ago, I would say you go to a fund manager and you say,

like, hey, what's your view on cryptocurrencies? They'd probably be like, why do I need to know that? Now if you go to one and they don't have a view on cryptocurrencies, you'd be like, well, you're not going to be taken seriously. And I think that's very much where we are at this point. So there's still some education to kind of get further up like the food chain for some of these companies. But for the most part, they're all looking at it.

And I think crypto literacy is actually picking up very fast. Specifically in your job, what kind of research are you providing? What do they see as the most valuable? You know, is it really top to bottom? Is it more macro context, everything? Yeah, I would like to say everything. So that's our mandate, just everything. No, but our idea, you know,

we come from the mindset of trying to provide actionable market intelligence. So I think there's a lot of good research out there, but it's not necessarily skewed towards how do I utilize this in my investment framework. And that's really what we're trying to do. So we're more of kind of a niche kind of focus, but we are looking at market views, thematic

reports on, hey, what's going on with the merge at the moment? Are we going to actually achieve it by end of Q3, for example? We will also be looking at tokenomics of specific coins and trading insights. So we want to understand what the slippage versus market order size looks like, because that's really important to a lot of institutional clients. Sounds like you must have a big team. I wish I could say that. We are building out. There's so much intelligence at the company i

work for at coinbase that i'm able to kind of pull people in and they're all excited so they all want to contribute something and i think that's kind of the great place so i've cobbled together a super team out of out of uh out of a very big group right i mean coinbase is outwardly said we basically want to list everything that can viably be listed, right? I mean, it's sort of the ethos of the company, which I, by the way, totally agree with, right? People should be able to trade what people want to trade. But does that mean that you're going to somehow have to have research one day for 19,000 tokens and provide that to your clients? I do not know.

I'll be honest. Like, that prospect has crossed my mind. You know, like, you think about active tokens versus the 19,000 tokens. Of course. Yeah. You could probably just cut it by half just by that alone. But even the prospect of 10,000 tokens, that's significant. I think we do need a taxonomy in this space.

I think that we are probably getting there. People have been already proposing them. So we're really trying to figure out on a sector-by-sector basis what are the projects that we need to really think about? And so we're probably going to get there more than anything else, trying to like tackle sectors of the crypto universe rather than try and tackle individual tokens. I really think that's probably going to be the better way to go with research. I think that taxonomy would be essential for regulators as well. And I would love to have that in existence and agreed upon before they come down heavy handed and just throw everything into one boat.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, even just you look at, I hate talking about Luna, but in general, like the even the mis sort of characterization of an algorithmic stable coin as a stable coin, if that even wasn't called a stable coin, we would be in a better place. I think that I've seen some taxonomies that include DAI in the same bucket as UST, and even that, I'm just like, you have an over-collateralized stable coin versus an algorithmic stable coin. And I completely agree with you.

I think that it is difficult as a prospect, but I think from the regulatory standpoint, you need to recognize that this is not a monolith, that you have governance tokens. A lot of these tokens actually act as both productive capital and functional capital. How do you regulate for that is unlike any of the assets we have seen come before it. So I think slowly we're getting there, and we're recognizing that these things are unique and that it takes a unique hand to actually have guidance on it. What an incredible challenge though

because by the time you've done the taxonomy there's 20,000 more coins. That's right. Actually that's one of the good things about having things kind of slow down a little bit like in the way we're kind of experiencing right now because a lot of these projects coming on board now actually are very thoughtful because it's not just for lack of a better term a cash grab right you know like they are actually like i can believe in these projects the developers working on this space are believers in the project i think things like that are going to actually reinforce this space more than anything else what approach do you think i i know you can't make a sweeping generalization at all because we've already talked about the fact that they're all over the educational curve.

But your average institution that wants some sort of exposure to this asset class, I can't imagine we have people saying, hey, I need to get 50% of my balance sheet into Bitcoin. What are we seeing as far as the sort of, I guess, baby steps of exposure that they're looking for? How are they starting to really get into the space? Yeah, you know, a lot of traditional concepts apply. You know, they are thinking about, what is their risk tolerance level? How much liquidity do they need on hand? And certainly, they are looking at a holistic picture of their portfolio to try to say, okay, you know what, this percentage of our allocation to cryptocurrencies actually works quite well relative to the risk we're taking in equities, in bonds, or even like our fixed income sleeve of

this. But I think it's very interesting to see that some of these pension funds, and this is public information, like Fairfax County, like the retirement fund, they have a DeFi sleeve now. That's something that I wouldn't have expected. Unbelievable. You know, it's incredible. Like Houston Firefighters Retirement Fund as well, you know, they're actually invested in these assets. So it's incredible to kind of see like the mindset

that people are actually willing to take the risk here. And they actually, some of it is still viewed as part of their tech sleeve or part of their tech stack. But I think a lot, too, is kind of understanding that blockchain technology is its own thing. It's separate and it's innovative and it's going to be part of, like, perhaps a different allocation in their portfolio. Frankly, I would have to imagine at this point some of the narratives that have existed to keep people out of the space, volatility and et cetera, as horrible as it is to see what happens in the stock market, when you see the Facebooks and the Netflix and the Snapchats of the world drop 30% after hours in five minutes, it sort of diminishes the negative cases against Bitcoin.

Everybody's exposed to meta stock in some way, shape, or form, whether they know it or not, right? So they have had exposure to assets that are behaving in the same manner. Well, this is what I don't like about the way some of the reporting has been done on cryptocurrencies. Because if you look at the information, and this is the part where I'm going to get a little bit nerdy, so just bear with me.

But for example, like if you compare it to other currencies, like G10 currencies, like the euro, the sterling, the yen, for example, like up until early May, crypto was outperforming. And what do I mean by that? It wasn't that if you look on an absolute basis on the absolute return that like it was actually doing better. I'm talking about on a standard deviation basis. Like we were looking at three, four standard deviation moves, sigma moves on these currencies. So they were weaker by like these levels compared to a one sigma move on Bitcoin and Ethereum. It was actually doing way better. And I don't think anyone recognized that because they're saying, oh, well, it's a X percent move compared to this X percent move. That's not the

way to look at it because we're talking about a 60-ball asset. Right. Or the media just says down 60%. Exactly. Because they only look at apparently the all-time high as the benchmark for current price, which is absurd. And it's easier and that's why they do it. But you need to do the work when you want to look at this space. And when you actually look at a fair comparison, I would say that you're still actually looking at a very strong asset in this class. I mean, I often make the point that everything obviously correlates

when you're in a risk-off environment to some degree. But you only have to go back to March of 2020 to see that Bitcoin was under $4,000, albeit briefly, and went to $69,000. And even if it's down half of that, we're still up seven, eight, nine times while the stock market doubled and everybody cheered those gains. It's almost like they forget the upside when things do decorrelate again and only focus on the downside.

And that's like to Jamie Dimon's comment about comparing the economy to a hurricane or going through a hurricane. And if that analogy is apt, well, when my house has the windows broken and my car is damaged because there's a hurricane, I don't say, gee, I wonder what the correlation is between that damaged car and that broken house. I just say, there's a hurricane.

That's what's happening right now. And so I think that very much with cryptocurrencies, it gets misconstrued because in context, everything is suffering. We're all converging to a beta of one. So, you know, it's not as if it's not going to retain some of its fundamental secular properties going forward. It's just that we are going through a cyclical downturn. Yeah, I completely agree. I obviously believe that it offers some

idiosyncratic risk long term, but maybe not for three months. Right, exactly. And it's disingenuous to pretend that correlations can really be measured based on what happens in that extremely short period of time, in my opinion. And even now, you start seeing that the correlations peaked somewhere around 80% between S&P and Bitcoin, for example, but already starting to trend lower again. Now, I'm not saying that it's still not high, but these things are not constants. I don't know if we're going to get back to the 20% to 40% correlations that we had prior to this sell-off and all risk assets. But I do think that we're going to be at least much lower than where we are today. Coinbase has obviously been the biggest, most notable,

first to do a direct listing, to be trading. Does it feel ever like you guys put yourself in the line of fire as a result of that? I think that being innovators in this space is definitely like kind of... In general being, yeah. Yeah, you know, and certainly there are advantages to being a first mover, but there are also disadvantages as well because that means you put your neck out on the line.

And I think, unfortunately, that's kind of... It kind of makes you a target at times. And so I think we've seen that over the course of the history of Coinbase, I should say. There are some serious head scratchers, though. Obviously, when you did the listing and people didn't understand the difference between an IPO and a direct listing and then said that the insiders were dumping when they didn't realize that you literally have to list your shares for there to be shares to sell. It feels like sometimes it's just completely misinformed. I think that it's a learning experience for a lot of people.

And the upside on this is that once it happens, fortunately, I think people get more sophisticated and then understand the situation. But at the moment, yes, I completely hear what you're saying. Do you think, obviously, that the regulatory environment right now is more or less complex than it was before? I mean, another head scratcher for me was when the SEC, you know, Gary Gensler says, hey, come on in, talk to us. And then you guys try to approach them with a very reasonable 4% yield product and get threatened with litigation. That doesn't seem like a very welcoming environment. Do you think that that's changing? I mean, we have a bill now that's actually pushing towards the CFTC rather than the SEC. That could be favorable. Or do you guys still think it's you

have to be pretty careful with how you approach regulators? I really want to see what comes at the end of all these things, because it's there's such a jurisdictional approach in the U.S., at least in terms of how regulation is happening and Congress is doing this. I think the bill is very innovative and kind of what it's trying to push. The one proposed by Loomis and Gillibrand. But also I would love to see what kind of comes out from the executive order we had in March with the Treasury Department. That's going to be reported sometime in the end of September, October. You know, I think unfortunately there's been a bit of a land grab when it comes to regulation so far in this space. And even though

these agencies have a memorandum of understanding, which means that they should be working together, and maybe some ways they are, some ways they aren't, I would like to see a more cohesive approach to kind of this, because we want the regulatory clarity. We want the oversight in the space. We just don't want regulation by enforcement. I think that is like the principle that we're kind of guided by. Other than that, I think that we're very welcoming to, oh, you want to put some framework around stable coins?

That's great. You know, they should be. Yeah, we should have a framework for that. It's better than a fractional reserve bank. Right. And I think that's the thing. You know, there is this setup though between like TradFi and DeFi, this idea that like, oh, like the fractional reserve banking system

hasn't had an innovation in X number of years and like this is DeFi and crypto that's coming in with like new ideas and trying to really kind of broaden that out. And we're like, part of that's true because the infrastructure needed to maintain those things are just so huge. Commercial banks, correspondent banks, compliance departments and all these things. But like that wasn't necessarily the origins of DeFi, right?

The origins of DeFi were like, I believe in these things. There's 300 million wallets out in the world and we like need liquidity because we're sitting on a bunch of digital assets that we really like, but I also need to buy things. So it was, well, a bank's not going to lend me on these digital assets that I have. Well, I'm going to create like lending and borrowing systems so I can borrow it to do it ourselves.

It came from a place of need. And that's the innovation in crypto. It wasn't like, hey, I'm here to like eat finance as lunch. It was we need to do this because otherwise, like we won't have liquidity. That's such an important point. Everyone feels like we're going to replace this global system. You don't need to replace it. You just need to actually offer something to all the people who don't have any access to it in the first place, which is most people on the planet. Exactly. It feels like we just sort of have lost that ethos along the way, or at least the narrative has, because now we're talking about institutionalization and nation states adopting

crypto and all those things. But still about your random person who literally can't get a bank account or doesn't have internet access and now has a bank on their phone. Absolutely. I think that we cannot forget that that's the origins of why this stuff exists. You know, like the permissionless, decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in general. Like it is there because, you know, in the U.S. we sit in a very privileged position, but I used to cover emerging markets. Like I did that for 70 plus years. Not in America, right? Right. And there, like there are countries but I used to cover emerging markets. Like I did that for 70 plus years. Not in America, right? Right.

And there are countries that are cut off from capital markets. There are countries that have capital controls on them. Like they need digital assets. It comes from a place of need, not in the place that other countries that are more fortunate to have the global reserve currency of the world. Like I don't have to worry about the things they do. I don't have to worry about hyperinflation in the same way, because even though we have 8.6% inflation here, it's not 50%. It's not 70% inflation. That's right.

And we have the dollar access to it, as you said. You just made so many points that I've made when I'm the guest on other things. People say it's not an inflation hedge. Tell that to someone in Venezuela. Right. It may not be our inflation hedge, but that doesn't say it's not an inflation hedge. Tell that to someone in Venezuela. Right. It may not be our inflation hedge, but that doesn't mean it's not an inflation hedge. Exactly.

I often ask that same question. When you say inflation, whose inflation are you talking about? That's right. But that really is the difference. And the funny thing is, obviously, in the El Salvador's and Venezuela's of the world, El Salvador obviously doesn't have hyperinflation. But Bitcoin is amazing, but also stable coins. They just want to be able to get dollars and they can't.

Absolutely. Right? I mean, so people are looking for access to dollars and crypto solves that, right? And that's not anything that people were talking about at the beginning. Absolutely. And, you know, I think that's why we have like, you know, maybe we are dealing with the nuances in our space of like, hey, what's a fiat-backed stablecoin look like relative to an algorithmic stablecoin? But we want these things to scale, you know.

Maybe that might be one of the next challenges, I think, for fiat-backed stablecoins. Because if we do add that framework in it and we say like, oh, these need to be short-term instruments or cash. Well, how much availability of these short-term instruments and cash do you actually have? How do you get $500 billion on the books or a trillion dollars at scale to actually service those redemptions? Exactly. And I think maybe that's what algorithmic stablecoins were trying to solve for because they could scale, but they didn't have the monetary policy. And with fiat-backed stablecoins, you are borrowing the monetary policy from a centralized authority, but you have one. And I think that's its real value.

We just need to kind of figure out how do we scale that. It would be nice if our experiments didn't break on such a grand scale and such a fireworks show. Yeah, well, this was the thing. It was a market that was testing liquidity and solvency trades everywhere. And this is the one that didn't pass. So, I mean, outside of obviously your role at Coinbase specifically, you're obviously so deep in the weeds

on all of this because of your role. Is there anything that truly excites you that maybe everyone's not looking at that's coming soon in this space? We definitely talked about regulatory. I think that's important. I think it's going to be a big theme in the second half this year. Everyone's looking at that's coming soon in this space? We definitely talked about regulatory. I think that's important. I think it's going to be a big theme in the second half this year. Everyone's looking at the merge, so I shouldn't just say that,

but I am excited about it. You know, like I'm looking at it. I am the guy who's kind of like, oh, the Robson test net actually passed through the merge. This is great. Yeah. You know, like tracking it like five hours later to check that nothing's gone wrong. Right, exactly. And be like, OK, like, we got Gorley in a couple of weeks now.

What's going to happen? And so I'm super excited about that. And I think people misinterpret the significance of this event because this is really the first time we've seen anyone change the consensus mechanism of a blockchain. This is fantastic. If it can be done, this is going to be amazing. But people are like, oh, is it going no is it is it gonna make it faster?

Maybe 9% faster, which is not nothing, but it's it's now You know we go from like maybe 14 13 seconds to like 12 seconds. It's still important, but like it's it's the efficiency It's the mechanism itself like think of all the developers are building on it, so I'm very excited about that And I am looking to l2 technology as well you know not just like kind of the distribution of the tokens but like i really want to see the zk roll ups kind of build it i want to see the eip like 4044 after it that's going to roll up more data onto the uh the consensus layer and the execution layers in order to kind of get that done, I think that's going to be really exciting to me. So the possibility that we'll see on-ramps onto these L2s, I think that's something that we cannot discount at this moment.

I think the theme there, as I listen, is that you're really excited to see if we can scale. Yes. You know, and it's a question. Are we going to be able to fill that block space? I think we are. I think that there is going to be demand there, but it's a question, like, are we going to be able to fill that block space? I do. I think we are. You know, I think that there is going to be demand there. But, like, it's kind of if you build it, they will come kind of situation.

And maybe I'm being too optimistic. But, you know, I'm a believer in the technology. I don't think it's too optimistic. I think historically, if you look at the development of any technology, it's zero to one. We all know that's really hard. And we've clearly done zero to one. So now it's just things are going to break. We're proving that more often than not at this moment, unfortunately, but there's no question that it eventually gets there. But it is an important question to say, okay, cool, we're this niche little industry, but what

happens when 2 billion people are trying to use this? Right. But, you know, we've seen this happen time and again. And this is kind of the nature of technology. You know, it may not look the same in a couple years' time, but, like, we need to test it. We need to test, like, these things right now because we are trying to build it for the future. And, you know, I used to be a computer science major. I was a programmer for a short period of time.

And, like, this is par for the period of time. And like, this is par for the course. You know, like, this is kind of what happens. Before I got into finance, like, this is the stuff that I was kind of, that I was invested in and I was mired in. And I think that we're just kind of seeing the next iteration of that. I could tell you have like a real passion for this. And I could see why you probably enjoy doing your job every single day. It's hard to be deep in this on a regular basis with all of the sort of swirling fun and antagonism. And it's great to see that we have people that are really, really passionate about it. No, thank you. And talking to you, Scott, I feel the same. You're so knowledgeable about this. I love it. Well,

so we have to, I think at the end of the day, and strictly what you're doing, it's all about education. Yes. You know, it's a lot about that. Educating myself. Of course. No, of course. But there has to be a base level of knowledge that still doesn't exist, I think, in the mainstream. I think we're getting there. But you're right. You know, I think that it's still going to take time and people are still kind of wrapping their heads around. I think once you start getting it, it just starts coming. I've never seen anyone who kind of gets on this curve because the typical education curve is like... Goes back.

Yeah, like, you know, oh, this is interesting, but I'm still pretty skeptical of it. Oh, I like blockchain technology. And then it quickly migrates to, oh, I kind of get it. And blockchain technology needs to be kind of embedded in tokens. And then it goes to, well, what else can I do with this?

And what, you know, and like that curve, then it's just so steep. And it's a one way street. You never, even like the billionaires, institutions, whatever, you never see any of them climb back out of the rabbit hole.

No. It really is. You go, once you're down it and once people get it, you never see them reverse course. I get that question all the time too, of the rabbit hole. No, it really is you go once you're down it and once people get it You never see them reverse course. I get that question all the time to of like Oh like where do I start and and and how do I kind of learn about the space and like how do I? To you know to your question earlier. How am I gonna just learn like 19,000 tokens? I'm like you just don't you don't like just start and then I will talk to them about month later

And they're like they're already like three levels like where they were previously because they're just like, they can't stop themselves. Yeah, I think that that's hopefully the trajectory that everyone will take. And what I get from this conversation is it's going to be a very exciting year. I think so.

And I hope exciting good, but yeah. On all fronts, I think it always only moves in one direction. It's a positive one. Even with a few, obviously, peaks and valleys. Yes, yes. good but at all fronts i think it always only moves in one direction it's a positive one even with a few uh obviously uh peaks and valleys yes yes thank you so much for taking the time i really appreciate it thank you so much scott wayne bay should put you out in front of the press more often you're great at this oh i i don't know if i can tell them you're gonna be their new pr guy oh good all right i'll tell them not to take your call okay maybe we'll stay in your role

thank you no thank you thank you so much for listening to this episode if you haven't already left a rating or a review on apple podcasts or spotify please do that now spotify just added rating so please go ahead and click that five star i'll see you guys next time.