The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Will More Than 30x | Dan Tapiero, 10T Holdings

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Dan Tapiero is a renowned macro investor and asset allocator. A few years ago, he took the orange pill and went all-in on crypto, creating a fund that he believed would capture 30x growth in 10 years. 10T was born, based on the idea that crypto would hit a 10 trillion dollar market cap. Dan now believes that his original prediction was too low. In this episode, Dan thoroughly explains his investment philosophy and how he approaches the crypto space. Dan Tapiero: https://twitter.com/DTAPCAP -- Sorare: Where fantasy meets reality. Collect, trade and earn weekly prizes on https://thewolfofallstreets.link/sorare. #OwnYourGame - If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

This episode is brought to you by SoRare. Stay tuned for more information on them later in the episode. What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where two times a week I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, arts, sports, politics, basically anyone with a good story to tell. Now, if there's one thing we love on the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, it's a guest with a bullish prediction for Bitcoin. And Dan has recently said that Bitcoin is likely headed to 500K. Dan Tapieri was the CEO and founder of Tenti

Holdings, a private equity fund that focuses on investing in the digital asset ecosystem. Dan was early in his bullish macro thesis on crypto, led him to be an early stage investor in many of the companies we all use today, like Kraken, Ledger, eToro, and many more. Having Dan on, I hope to dive into his thoughts on the future of crypto innovation and the stories that are driving the markets today. Dan, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, Scott. Great to be here. Great to be here. So listen, I recently had Mark Yusko on the show, and he made an amazing point, said that he was always investing on the side of the criminals by being early. He gave the example of the internet originally being, quote unquote, for porn, that he was always investing on the side of the criminals by being early. He gave the example

of the internet originally being quote unquote for porn, that crypto was originally for drug dealers and criminals. Do you share sort of a same feeling and investment thesis being early? Well, not really, in a sense. I love Mark. I've known Mark, you know, at least 15 years. You know, he worked very closely with Julian Robertson for a while when he was at the UNC endowment. And again, my, you know, first real job when I was young was at Tiger working for Julian in the global macro group. And, you know, I come from a little bit of a different background. I mean, Mark, of course, you know, managing that kind of endowment, very institutional, very focused on asset allocation.

And I was in the hedge fund, macro hedge fund business for, you know, about 20 years. And so, you know, running a portfolio, acting as an analyst. And again, I, a little on my background, I mean, I was at Tiger, and then I worked for Michael Steinhardt and then eventually Steve Cohen and Stan Druckenmiller. And, you know, that was 20, 25 years there deep in the trenches, you know, running a portfolio sort of 24 or five currencies, bonds, emerging markets, anything commodities where there was a sort of an opportunity. But it was really, you know, more from this macro analytical framework. And so I, unlike Mark, Mark focuses, you know, as you said, on being super early. I leave the super early for Mark and Andreessen and all those other truly genius guys, I'm looking more to make a bet on the growth in an overall sector. And so for me, launching 10T was about building a

portfolio of mid to late stage companies that, you know, names that I thought were de-risked, that I thought were not going away because when you invest early stage, you know, you have zeros in your portfolio, not something I was very comfortable with. And as you mentioned, and this has been out there publicly, the 10T portfolio is we have Kraken and eToro, but also, you know, Bitfury and Huobi, Ledger, Figure, Deribit, Helium, Figment, and Amoca. I mean, these are, we think, we have three buckets that we invest in, digital asset ecosystem gateways, next generation financial services, and blockchain infrastructure businesses. And the first two funds that we launched, we've got two or three businesses in each sector. And so these are already companies, my minimum

threshold for investment is about $500 million in market value. But of those companies I mentioned, eight of them have values over a billion. And so these are companies that have already figured out how to win. They already have established like moats around them, making in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. I don't think I'm investing next to any gangsters or, you know, nefarious actors. These are all real businesses, hundreds of employees. And basically, I, you know, I have this view and I know Mark has the same view that at some point in the next five to 10 years, all things of value will sit somewhere on some blockchain in the digital asset ecosystem. And it's just a wholesale transformation, not just of, you know, store of value. And I think we're starting to see, you know, a huge increase in the number of use cases, as they call them in the space. And the digital

asset ecosystem has been expanding, deepening, broadening, like nothing I've ever seen. There's nothing I've ever seen grow at the growth rate that we've seen in the past sort of six to 18 months. Most people enter this space as skeptics, though, early, right? So what was it that finally convinced you that everything of value, every value transfer could happen on a blockchain? Because that's a pretty big jump from, you know, from something nascent and early that is almost non-existent in the first days. Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.

And I think that there is this massive hurdle for people to get into this space. I'm not sure why it's so massive, but it is. I mean, I think it's generally difficult to understand, you know, but for me, look, my light bulb moment really came, you know, I fell down the rabbit hole in early sort of in late 18, early 19. I'd been aware of the space of gold company that I started in 08, 09 called GBI Gold Bullion International in 2014, integrated with a firm called Bit Reserve, which today is the uphold wallet. That firm, we were the first to a place where you could buy and sell physical gold to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ripple. And so that was my introduction back in 14. And I was, you know, I was a macro guy. So it just seemed

like small. It was interesting. I didn't really understand it. I thought it was more sort of like what I call like a play thing for technologists. And I just, it wasn't something I really, you know, you see the word algorithm and all of a sudden, like I jumped back from it. Like I figured I wouldn't be able to understand in a deep ways, but then in a deep way, but by 18, 19, it was already a little more established. And as you know, it had that big move into 17 and then it dropped 80, 90%. And just as a macro guy, I'd seen that happen in other markets. And that really is the time that it either goes bankrupt, zero, or it's a buying opportunity. And so I fell down the rabbit hole in that moment and did the deep dive. And what I realized was, and I hadn't before, was that the Satoshi white paper, those eight pages, was really a solving of a math problem that had been

solved for literally hundreds of years, this Byzantine generals problem. And I'd never heard of it. I didn't know anything about the history of cryptography. And again, it's the problem of distributed trust where two counterparties can trust each other without an intermediary. And again, I'd never thought in those terms. It never occurred to me. And so then I realized, I thought, my goodness, this is like an invention akin to the invention of the combustion engine or a discovery like the discovery of electricity. There's 30 years of real academic work behind this. And, you know, this is transformative. And so that realization combined with a bunch of other things, but that one put to rest in my mind that, oh, this is a Ponzi scheme. Oh, this is for nefarious actors. Oh, this isn't real. And I said to myself,

wow, this is really real. And why was I such an idiot back in 2013, 14, not to really go whole hog into it, but, you know, it is what it is. I didn't, but, you know, I think the other thing that prevents people from believing in this, as you say, in my mind is that, you know, it's very age dependent. I think it's very hard for someone over 50 or 60 to even think about money, digital money, right? And I think people under 30 and certainly now 20 years old, they have no problem thinking about, you know, value represented digitally in a video game. You know, they've been playing, you know, video games forever. Millennials spend, I think I read somewhere, eight hours, the Gen Z, eight hours a day online. They live online, their lives are online. So why wouldn't they have their money

online too? It just makes so much sense versus a six-year-old guy who still is like, you know, not even that comfortable on the internet, right? So I think it's, there's a huge divide. I'm sure you see that all the time, right? Absolutely. And I sit right in the middle, right? I'm 44 years old. So I think I'm right on the cusp of both of those worlds. And I think what you just described, as you aptly put with a six-year-old might also not quite understand the internet. I think that that age divide is not specific

to money being digital. It's just specific to technology, right? Every older generation struggles with the technology of the younger generation. The same with my parents and the music I listened to and how we did it, right? Right. Every older generation struggles with the technology of the younger generation. The same with my parents and the music I listen to and how we did it. Right. Right. Yeah. So no surprises there. But for you, you know, a lot of people coming from global macro never have that light bulb moment. And so I'm curious when you talk to your contemporaries, how do you define the asset class? Is it another commodity? Is it a digital gold? Is it peer to peer cash? When they ask you questions, how do you define the asset class? Is it another commodity? Is it a digital gold?

Is it peer-to-peer cash? When they ask you questions, how do you describe that? Yeah, there are actually now some macro guys who have come in, not the older ones so much. You saw last year, Paul Tudor Jones wrote that fantastic eight-page paper about Bitcoin is the fastest horse. So you see my background here, this painting, the fastest horse.

Again, it's one of my favorite paintings as well, the Stubbs painting. But anyway, the point is, there are people. I mean, Stan Druckenmiller came out and said he owned Bitcoin. He owned Bitcoin, though, because he saw that people in Silicon Valley and the tech people were making a lot. And he said, you know, they think it's a store of value. So I think it's going to go up because they're making a lot of money. And so I think there are people who are coming to it. But it's just it's very difficult for them to get over that hurdle. And if they do, they understand maybe that Bitcoin is digital gold,

maybe because there's a finite amount and the expansion of the central bank balance sheets means that fiat currency is expanding almost infinitely. So they understand supply is increasing a lot on the one hand in fiat and it's not in bitcoin okay but that isn't necessarily giving them comfort to make to take a big allocation and so even the guys who kind of get that you know they're at five or ten percent they're not like the 23 year old who's 90 you know who's 110 percent long and not just but, you know, Ethereum and Solana and who knows what else, right? So I think that what this really is, is a new asset class.

And I think the way that you can think about it is if you think about something like the mortgage-backed market in 1980 or 82, you know, a nascent market, very early stage. I think it's still early. When I founded this fund, the digital asset ecosystem had a $300 billion value, and that is Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the crypto and all the equity value in the space was about 300. And I said to myself, I think we can do 30x in 10 years. So that's why I called the fund 10T. 10T is 10 trillion in 10 years. And what's happened is that I've been wrong. I'm going to be wrong because we're at 3T today. And that's just two years ago. So we're probably going to do a lot more than a 3X,

7T more in the next eight years. And so if you think about any early stage market, US Treasury bond options in 1979, right? That's how traditional people should be thinking about this. And we do a great, we have a great chart in our presentation that's about the ABS markets and the astronomical rates of growth, let's say in the 80s and 90s in those markets. And you're looking at like 60% CAGR, you know, for years, right? As it grows. And this has been even greater. Bitcoin has gone up 250% annualized for 11 years. It's the greatest return of any asset in the world. It's like people who are doubters, I get the first five or six years, but it's already proven itself. I think that's one of our advantages being sort of like you, I'm a little bit in the middle of the two generations.

You know, I think this is already established, right? Like if I had a 10 year track record of 250% annualized, I don't know. That's pretty good. Like, what are you doubting? It can't be zero anymore. To me, there's zero chance that this is zero. And anytime someone says, well, it might go to zero, no. It's lazy. It's lazy. Yeah. I mean, Lindy effect, Metcalfe's law, network effects, however you want to define it. Bitcoin clearly isn't going anywhere. And if it was, like you touched on earlier, if it was going to zero, 2018 was the chance, right? I mean, we would have probably seen it then. Absolutely. And it wasn't even close. I mean, it wasn't. Not even close. Yeah, not even close because still, like you said, the annualized returns, all that price action happened so quickly that even the floor was higher than it had been a year or two before. So it was not really as significant as people look at it when you kind of view the roller coaster. You could have approached this market

from a number of different ways with your background, obviously. It seems that you took the picks and shovels approach. Why is it that you decided to focus on investing in these companies rather than aggressively trading the assets? Or maybe you're doing both, but why was that your approach? Yeah, no, I'm not. I think this is the one asset, unless you're 24-7, 365, you do not trade this asset. I do not trade it. I allocated what I wanted to allocate initially in Bitcoin and a little in Ethereum. And this is not something that you survive. And I had a lot of experience trading. And this is by far would be the hardest asset to trade to figure out the squiggles.

This is a buy and hold. You buy it. You hold it for five to 10 years. And so, you know, what I thought myself was, well, starting a fund that owns Bitcoin and just says, that's not very interesting. I have that in my own entity. What I saw, though, was tremendous intellectual activity in the space. The smartest sort of and most entrepreneurial people between the age of 20 and 35 are in this space. They're not going to Wall Street. They're not going to legal firms. They're not doing it. They're in this space. And I thought, OK, well, let's investigate this.

Wow, there's a very vibrant ecosystem of companies and a lot of interesting projects, et cetera. But I'm not a technologist. I'm not a venture capitalist. I don't like the risk of a VC portfolio. Not to say that those things don't work. It goes up hundreds. VC performance in the space has been astronomical, up hundreds and thousands of percent. Solana was at $2 in January. It's now $150. That's wonderful. I'm thrilled for everyone who's been involved there. But it's just not the kind of thing that I do. And to speak to, you know, the investors in 10T are all basically my friends and people from my network of, you know, all those years in the investment world. And I wanted something really simple to explain.

And I said, listen, we're only going to you understand private equity. You all have some private equity in your portfolio. We're going to own private equity in mid to late stage companies that are already established, have already figured out how to win, really straightforward. And if I had started to introduce, yeah, it would have been nice to own a few of these early stage projects and get involved in some of the more nitty gritty. But I just think that it would be difficult to explain. I've got a great team. We've got five analysts, people who have been in the ecosystem deep in the weeds.

You know, we can do that analysis, but too hard to explain. And also, I feel like we're a gateway for the legacy people. It's easy for them. I read you the portfolio. Easy for them to say, hey, I know some of those companies. Those guys, they're making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. I look at that portfolio and I say, on a five to 10 year basis, could that go up five to 10 times? Sure. Okay. I don't make a thousand X like some of the other guys. I'm not focused on these early stage things. That's fine. Right? Also, some of my investors actually are not allowed to own cryptocurrency. So they've been looking for a way to get exposure to the sector and just haven't found it. The last thing I'd say is this portfolio of companies will have a dramatically less volatile exposure than just directly in Bitcoin or Ethereum, which I think

are safe. I think everyone should own them. There's no question in my mind about them. The other ones are more venture-y projects. You just don't know yet. And I don't want to make that judgment. I want to own a company like Kraken, for instance, that's leveraged to all of the value of those cryptocurrencies, or a company like Ledger that has exposure to all the value in the digital asset ecosystem, because as things become valuable, you need to take them off the platform and have them in cold storage. Your NFT that was worth 50 bucks a year ago, it's now worth 2 million. You're not walking around with that on your phone if you're smart, right? You have it on your ledger. What's that?

Some people might be, unfortunately. I know, but when something gets growth in the value, dollar value, or Bitcoin value of the ecosystem. And so it's just a lot easier for me to explain to people from the legacy world. And those are our investors. And I feel like I'm also bringing in a whole new group of people that would not just entertain it and hopefully increasing network effect and just getting adoption to much greater levels. Because I really think that once adoption, you know, gets past a certain level, as you know, only 2% of the world today have crypto wallets. I think then, you know, only 2% of the world today have crypto wallets. I think then, you know, it becomes more established. And then also, and this is more specifically speaking about the United States, then the regulators and the legislators, their constituency will be Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto owners, and then we'll start to get some real proper, you know, regulatory oversight or whatever

you call it. I mean, I, this sort of is a segue into the next, my next thought, which is that, I mean, I really think the, the, what's gone on in the U.S. in the last few weeks has been, I don't want, you know, it's just been terrible in my mind. I think the U.S. is potentially in a position to really lose, you know, a step in financial and technological innovation. Other countries in the world are moving ahead and very quickly. China is not. They have their own problems. But look, the U.S. doesn't understand 90% of total volume is outside of the U.S. The U.S. can go to zero in volume terms, and it's not going to matter for this ecosystem. This is the most decentralized, I call it the first true global macro investment network, most decentralized network, certainly network of value in the history of the world. And we are going to, you know, clamp down and, you know, not, I think, not do the work.

I think the people here have not done the work. And it's embarrassing, frankly. Don't you agree? I'm not the only one who feels this way. Do you love sports collectibles or fantasy sports as much as I do? SoRare is blending this together to create an entirely new gaming experience powered by its community. SoRare cards are officially licensed NFTs for over 160 clubs, including Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, and Liverpool, and all built on Ethereum.

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and we're understaffed, but they're probably all securities. Talk about admitting that you're not willing to do the work. They're just going to put a blanket regulation on all of it because they're not willing to look deeply. I agree with you. And it sounds like even what you're saying, we have a bit of a chicken and an egg problem because once we have adoption, they'll be forced to deal with it. But we're now in a position where they're going to regulate it far before we have adoption. And maybe we get the heavy handed regulation in advance of that opportunity. Well, maybe. I mean, I hope not. You know, I think there's also an opportunity here for some of the leaders in the sector.

You know, you saw what happened with Coinbase. And I think Armstrong is trying to, you know, reach out to people down there. I think, you know, the established guys in the crypto space, very eager to work and help explain and teach more so than in any other industry. I mean, this is, it's ridiculous. You know, this is a very, this space embraces outsiders. It's not, it's not difficult to penetrate. You know, you try to learn something from the guys in the banking system or legal system or accounting system. I mean, it's impossible. People here will reach out. And I am

sure that if D.C. reached out to some of these, the leaders, you know, you've got Novo Galaxy, you've got some of the, you know, they would have no problem building a group of intelligent people to help the legislators get to where they need to, to understand that this is really one of the most groundbreaking inventions, certainly in the financial world and in the history of money, right? And that the United States, which has been the leader in this area, is going to put these blanket generalizations and rules without having done the work is it is embarrassment. We have the smartest, best people in the entire world in this country, most innovative. You know, I say this is like the mortgage backed industry in 1980. We invented that the securities market there, you know, and this is the first time that we're not at the lead, right? 90% of it is outside the US, and we're going to potentially set ourselves back here. So I just hope, you know, look,

being in the, coming from the traditional world, you know, even the Federal Reserve has a shadow private market committee. I mean, there's a shadow Federal Reserve Committee that meets that that's composed of, you know, well known portfolio managers and investment bankers and they get together and they talk about monetary policy, as they see it in, you know, as practitioners. our practitioners, none of them are on MetaMask. None of them are moving around their coin staking or not staking or trading or being involved in any of these things. And so because of that, they don't see the innovation in the space. And maybe they're protecting the existing constituencies. But I'll tell you this, look, the United States should have nothing to fear. This is a truly free market. Capital is moving to the digital asset ecosystem because money wants to be free. And right now in the legacy world, it's not free. It's overregulated. The US, I think, overregulated everything after 08 because there were a few actors who got out over their skis.

And I just it's it's a shame because we really are. We really do have the ability to lead here. Right. But they should be reaching out to people who really know who have the knowledge listen you know to some of these guys i mean listen how many antinopolis's podcast did you listen to when you were falling down the the rabbit hole what 10 20 20 yeah yeah i mean read the books read safa d and amos's book read jan pritzker's book invent Inventing Bitcoin. Read these great, you know, these great pieces that have been put out there, right? But Gensler taught this. I mean, you're absolutely right.

But if you're talking, I guarantee that Gensler's read the Bitcoin standard, at least, I would imagine. But he clearly doesn't get it. But maybe he didn't. Okay. And even if he did, he's now a politician. And it's not clear who he did. Maybe even if he did, he's now a politician and it's not clear who he represents. In my mind, I don't know that he he he you know, I don't know who or what he represents. I don't know who or what he is. I just know that some people in that group, that organization, wherever, whatever, just sounds to me.

OK, like they haven't done the work. You said it yourself, right? They just don't look like they've done the work. So, you know, do the work. Or that they intend to. Or that they intend to. Right. Yeah, I would hope that they intend to. But you know what? This is the most complex world that I've ever investigated. It's the most complex investment. The space is deepening and broadening. It's fully global. I mean, look, there are more nodes in Germany than there are in the United States. Right. Think about that. And there are three times the number of people here. So the Americans need

to get through their head. This is not an American. This is a global development. And if we want to cut ourselves off from it, the rest of the world is just going to go charging ahead. And so as the premier country in the world on all sorts of metrics, we need to at least do the work. And if after doing all the work, they still think that they don't want it and that they don't you know whatever that's something else but you know engage with the people here who are deep in the weeds who can explain and again I'm sorry if I've gone off on this tangent. I really feel like we're potentially at a place where we could do ourselves damage.

And again, as you said, it's a chicken and egg. If Metcalfe's law can kick in fast enough and you start to have every congressperson have a constituency that owns Bitcoin or crypto, then we have a game changer. Because then what happens is the people actually get a say. And this is not going to be from the top, from a few guys who are academics or whatever it is, who are saying this thing or that thing. It'll be the people, the groundswell, Metcalfe's network effect kicking in people saying this is what we see as the future. Let's figure out how to incorporate it. Right. Yeah. But that's such an unfortunate indictment of how our system operates, isn't it?

The fact that it has to be a political threat. Right. The politicians have to fear losing their job to care enough. That's really, I mean, and that's really, and I'm not saying that's what you said. That's really how it is. Yeah. Democracy is what it is. And, you know, it's that famous Churchill comment. It's the least bad of all political systems. And, you know, I think it, you know, it is what it is. And, and I, I, it may be unfortunate. But look, look how much wealth has been created in this country. The standard of living has increased dramatically from 30, 40 years ago.

I know everyone complains about everything. That's the thing. When you have free speech, everyone wants to complain about everything. It's just human nature. But, you know, when you step back and look what's been built here and how people lived 40, 50 years ago, how they live today. I mean, it's just been tremendous. And, you know, I think any time that we thwart the capitalist process, any time that we stop free markets from working, from letting, you know, freedom really kick in and let it work its magic, we get set back, right? I mean, we remember as kids fighting against that communist and socialist threat. I grew up with all of that. And the fact that, you know, we have guys who are thwarting this process, let, look, America has worked. Let the magic work, right?

Again, this is a tangent, my own political. It's not even political. I just want crypto, right? No, I don't think it's political. It's just rational. And the fact, I always make the argument when I go on other people's podcasts that Bitcoin is the last free market,

that crypto is the last free market because we're so far beyond, obviously, stocks being a free market. The crypto is the last free market because we're so far beyond, obviously, stocks being a free market. I mean, everything, people love to make the indictment of Bitcoin that it's manipulated because whales can move price, which, by the way, is the definition of a free market in my mind. But manipulation is money printing and Fed policy and buying stocks and providing a floor for bonds when otherwise there wouldn't be one. So as much as it's a dream, we lost the free market in the United States a long time ago. I think we did, unfortunately. But I would, yeah. And I do agree with you about Bitcoin

being the only free market out there. This market, okay, and I said this in March of 20 as well, but this market has had seven corrections of what, 70% or more since inception, and it survived, and people have killed it off, and it's not going anywhere. It is a store of value. It is extremely valuable. What is the valuation today? It's a trillion dollar valuation. To me, that is way too cheap. This gets to the headline. Of course, I said Bitcoin could be worth $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. I said that two years ago. I said it at the bottom in March of 2020 when it sold off dramatically, like 30%, 40% in two days. So this is the only true free market. It will survive. It is strong. And I think now it's proven beyond any reasonable doubt, okay?

There's no banning it. There's no getting rid of it. There's no government that is going to ban it. China completely shut down mining this year to zero, as we know. And it hasn't had any material effect that I could see. We should be encouraging these businesses here in the United States. We should be incentivizing them. The miners now, as we know, a lot of them have moved to Texas. A lot of rational actors there in Texas. I hope that we could become, you know,

the mining powerhouse. Like, I mean, and we're going to do it with renewables. Everyone is still, you know, it's the same old FUD that they throw out at everything, you know, oh, it's going to use more energy than this, or, oh, a government is going to ban it. Anytime someone asks me that, those questions, the first thing that I say to myself is they haven't done any work because we know in the space there are probably 10 to 20, 50, at least great pieces of research that have been written debunking those arguments. Right. I mean, but they're great headlines and they're great headlines. And it feels like our politicians and the regulators at this point are much like you're like crazy uncle on Facebook who reads a headline and just extrapolates all of his knowledge about a certain topic from one headline. I mean, like and I'm not I honestly I'm not a very political person, but you get like Elizabeth Warrenren who's literally just like vomiting headlines right more the ones you said more more power than the country of pakistan or argentina and only used for criminals and it's the same recycled thing and it takes five minutes to understand and do the work like you said yeah clearly the theme of this podcast is do the work well you know what i

but you know scott what i would say though a, a little bit is I sound like I'm blaming them or whatever it is. But you know what? I do have some sympathy because they're they're older people. Yeah, they don't. And they're not they're not Internet native or crypto native. And it's hard. OK, it's hard for a 60 year old person. I don't I don't care how smart or successful they are. It's hard to really understand what's going on here. It really is. It's such a it's a you know, the the number of disciplines that come together here. This is not just finance or economics, you know, sociology, psychology. It's just, it's so many different things, cryptography, science, math, computer programming. I mean, most of these people, there was no computer when they were growing up. It's really tough. And so like, I know us in the space, we're like disappointed

at them, but they really need our help. You know, they really, you know, and I, and again, I've never seen such a welcoming space. You can't tell me that if, you know, some of these people reached out to people in the space that they would be turned back, they would not be turned back. And I mean, it's just incredible. I feel like it's almost an evolution in the way humans will interact with each other. I mean, there's so much going on here. Look, I think Gen Z, I read recently,

spends eight hours a day online. Now, the people who run this country need to understand that. They're living online, right? All things. They do social things. They buy and sell things. You know, digital value is as normal a concept to them, you know, as a breathing air, right? So we have tremendous real structural change in our society and culture, and we can't let,

well, you know, we can't let. I just hope that the people who are at the helm in D.C. spend the time, reach out, talk to people and really understand this thing so that the U.S. isn't. Right. Well, I mean, if they don't get it now, I'm sorry if I've gone off. No, I love it. And if they don't understand it now, wait till they get a load of the metaverse in five or six years. Forget about five or six years. It's there now. And, you know, the growth and the value of NFTs is up 100 times from summer of last year. Think about that. 100 times. Like this exponential rate of growth in the space is what we all, I think, are having a little difficulty dealing with and comprehending. So I know I've been harsh on the regulators and on the, you know, the leadership, the politicians, but it's honestly, it's not really their fault. You know, even people in the space are having a hard time keeping up with the innovation.

Oh, myself included. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's really been. Yeah, it's been difficult. So I may not have sounded like the most welcoming guy, but I honestly. Well, I think it's the opposite. And our portfolio and the investments that we'll be making in the future is leveraged to that innovation and growth globally. And we want to own businesses that are global, right? Because this is a new phenomenon. Sure. In no way do I think it actually sounds unwelcoming.

I would say it's quite the opposite. I think that our industry and your tone and mine is just come talk to us. Right. I mean, it's literally the opposite. Coinbase, you have Gary Gensler on one hand saying, hey, guys, come into the office, talk to us. We want to discuss this. And then when you have a company like Coinbase that walks into their office, presents something in advance, discusses it, the lend product, and is threatened immediately with litigation when they're trying to offer a product that's only 4% interest when 10% is the industry standard. So that double standard makes it impossible for a company, I would imagine, to want to run over to Gensler's office hours, as he likes to call them, to discuss this.

Right. And what happens is companies say, you know what, 90% of the businesses outside of the U.S., hey, you know what, we're not going to do business in the U.S. That's right. That would be a catastrophe if the leading businesses in this space decide that 90% of the businesses outside of the U.S., we're just not going to have a presence there. Long term, that would be very, that would be very, you know, that would be very discouraging. And I hope that, you know, that won't be the case. So you talked about the fact, obviously, you had a gold fund previously, you come from global macro. No, actually, it's not a gold fund. It's a physical gold business, we sell and store physical gold, the vaults are outside of the banking system. It's a physical gold business. We sell and store physical gold. The vaults are outside of the banking system. It's it's said, yeah, yeah. Do you think that do you think that not to put no pun intended, but the gold is losing its luster?

Obviously, we're seeing in this environment since really March 2020, we've seen obviously Bitcoin bottomed, but pulled a 17x from there, right from under 4000 to 65,000. Gold's been a little bit less exciting. People don't really talk about it as much. Do you think that people are truly viewing Bitcoin as digital gold? And that's where that money is going? Or do you think that this is just part of the gold cycle and eventually it has its moment? Look, maybe some money went to Bitcoin, sure. But I think it is part of the cycle. I think gold is really the only true hedge left within the legacy system. And so, you know, I think institutions actually will start coming to gold. I know I've said this for the last 18 months and I think it's true to some degree, because the bonds are negative

real yielding and yield such a small amount, they don't really act as a hedge to the asset side of your portfolio. So traditional portfolios, which have been 70-30 or 60-40, that's equity bonds since 1981. That's been a great exposure. Every time you've had a wobble, I've said this many times, in the equity market or a wobble in the economy, your bonds, the appreciation on your bond portfolio helped offset that. Those bonds are not going to appreciate anymore.

They are not going to help you if things slow down. The equity market decides to go sideways or lower for a few years. I don't see that, but if it happens, you don't really for a few years. I don't see that. But if it happens, you don't really have a hedge. And I think gold is that hedge. And so I think if you're within the legacy system, you don't believe in the digital asset ecosystem, you're long a lot of equity. That's your only exposure. So I don't see gold going away. It's been around for 5,000 years. It a record year last year and a record six months. So I think the debasement going on in global fiat that we see through the massive expansion

of global central bank balance sheets, I think the supply of gold is increasing at an infinitesimal amount every year. It's a very simple argument to make. Gold is not increasing in supply. Fiat is increasing massively. You know, owning gold is going to do well in your overall portfolio. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So before we get done, there's just one more thing I wanted to ask you about, which is what are you personally, I mean, you've obviously invested in all these companies. I'm curious, not specifically companies, but what are you looking at and what are you personally, I mean, you've obviously invested in all these companies. I'm curious, not specifically companies, but what are you looking at and what are you most excited? What do you see coming over the next couple of years that you think you'll be putting money into?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I sort of follow Stan's old dictum, Stan Druckenmiller, who I worked for, who used to say, I like to put all my eggs in one basket, and then I watch that basket very carefully. Now, I mean, that I'm not saying I'm doing that. But this is my full focus 100%. You know, we're going to be building another portfolio in this space that is going to be all new businesses, different businesses that I think represent what I call sort of the deepening and broadening of this digital

asset ecosystem. So, you know, we're moving beyond now Bitcoin more than just Bitcoin as a store of value or Ethereum, you know, as world computer, which was talked about in 15, 16, 17. And right now, the number of use cases in the space from, you know, stable coins to, you know, and, you know, dollar value locked in DeFi to NF volume, the borrowing and lending. Remember, this is all global. It's 24-7, 365. It's in every country around the world. And the pace and acceleration is just like nothing we've ever seen before. And so just I'll give you one example, I'll leave you with this. In our space in one year ago, exactly September of 2020, there were 14 businesses that had a valuation of over $1 billion. Okay. Today, they're about 70. Okay. So our, you know, ecosystem of businesses, our, you know, world that we invest

in has completely exploded much more than I would have ever thought. And there's a very diverse, very exciting, flourishing ecosystem that is growing, again, at this exponential pace. And the portfolio that we're going to construct, you know, that we are constructing and will in the future, will be leveraged to that growth. Because as an investor, I feel like, you know, this is really the only place of sort of true alpha for a macro investor, but there's so much going on, Scott. I feel like I don't really have time to do anything else. I mean, I feel like we're just sucking from a fire hose. We're way behind. You know, we probably have a pipeline.

There's a bigger pipeline than we have money in. We've put $700 million to work in the last five months in this space. $700 million. And I feel like our pipeline is much bigger than we have capital. So it just, there's nothing really else to do in my mind. It's just, you know, you can diversify in the space. You know, you can have your traditional exposure to equity if you feel like. But I think every investor needs to put in the time, focus here, start with buying Bitcoin, learn Bitcoin, understand it. Everything in this world is, of course, as we know, a derivative of Bitcoin. You know, it's code that's been, you know, hived off. Then try, make a go at Ethereum, right?

That's the best advice. And then start looking at all the activity, right? It's- Same approach that I, exact approach that I tell people just right buy some bitcoin man just buy it transfer it just try you don't have to buy a lot buy one dollar a hundred bucks man like you're just right hundred bucks like you know no one's forcing on you okay it's got the best track record of any ass in the history of the world you you know, don't worry, you know, don't worry about that. Don't let that excite you. Right. Just, just try it. See what it's like, learn, read, dip your toe

in, and it's going to change your life. Right. I mean, it just changes your life. No matter, no matter who you are, no matter how rich you are or not, there's no wealth gap here. In my mind, you either own Bitcoin or you don't. And it doesn't matter whether you own a dollar or $100 million. Right. I absolutely agree. I think that's a great way to conclude. Where can everybody keep up with you after this? Where can they follow you and potentially get in touch with you about the fund, the next fund. Well, you know, there's, I'm on Twitter, DTAPCap. And then, you know, I'm on LinkedIn as well. And my website is 10tfund.com. Pretty straightforward. And we're just going to continue and stay focused and,

and try to like, make sure that drinking from the fire hose doesn't drown us. Well, it's hard not to be bullish when you hear about all the money that's flowing into the space and where it's flowing in from, regardless of what the price is at any given moment. So I appreciate you sharing that perspective and obviously giving us a bit more perspective

on what's actually happening on the regulatory side and making it clear that all of us need to ourselves do the work to convince our politicians and get out there and make sure that we see some sensible regulation. So thank you very much. My pleasure. This was a lot of fun.

Thanks, Scott.