The Wolf Of All Streets - Wall Street Adopts Ondo Finance | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Bitcoin surged past $113K before quickly retracing, setting the tone for today’s Crypto Town Hall. With markets focused on weak job numbers and rising unemployment, traders are asking if the Fed is behind the curve and whether September will finally bring a long-anticipated rate cut. We break down the labor data, Polymarket’s odds on cuts, and how ETF flows are shaping Bitcoin price action.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Cryptotown Hall every single day here on Exitin 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And by every single day, I mean, not Saturday and Sunday. Every single weekday here on Twitter at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. A lot to talk about today. Bitcoin, Euphoria, until about 10 minutes ago. We're trading over $113,000. We were so back, baby. And we currently have an hourly candle, 20 minutes. in that traded from 113, right back down to about 111, good times being had by all. And of course, all of this likely having something to do with the title today of not Tripto Town Hall. We are now macro economics town hall employment week is the printer reeling coming. Dave, you threw this one out there. What do we got here on job numbers today? What's the impact?

And why do we care? Well, the impact is nothing if the Fed doesn't do stuff. People are obsessed about it. And so there you go. I mean, as our friend Larry Lepard would say, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when they have to start firing up the money printers. But these numbers were weak and people kind of, you know, bad news is good news when you're looking at the Fed.

I don't know. I mean, it's all a bunch of bullshit. I mean, there's still not a whole lot of. that real asset allocation going on. This was classic knee-jerk, and when the knee-jerk happens, the best thing to do is to fade it. It doesn't necessarily mean it won't be right in the end, but, you know, it's as simple as that.

I mean, I wish I could say it was more, but, you know, it is. That is what happens. Do you have the job numbers in front of you, my chance? I don't. I had them this morning. I'm just logging back into my computer. I'm about it in, too. I mean, the most important part that I saw was the average hour

earnings being down a tick, which I think that actually matters to them. I mean, look, as far as the weaker creation of jobs, I mean, it's still, it seems significant because 75 to 25 is a big percentage difference, but 50,000 jobs here or there when their average yearly revision has been a million is rounding error. So it shouldn't matter. But there are things in here that definitely are there's signs of weakness here we've seen in terms of consumer stuff it doesn't really matter the real question is our rates at the right level is the Fed behind the curve or ahead of the curve and I think most people would say they're behind the curve and that's really the issue so but you know the people will debate this left whatever as a markets show

oh we care about it's what they will do and the tea leaves are you know what's polymarket saying I haven't checked in the last five minutes. I haven't checked it today. It was 89% yesterday for a 25-bit rate cuts in September. Let's look because it's easier. And while you're looking for that, I'm going to go ahead. Employers added only 22,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.3%. Revised data also showed that employment fell by 13,000 jobs in June.

I know that's going to shock you guys, but we had a downward revision for a previous month. Like, that's never happened before. and that was the first net loss since December 2020. That said, July was revised up upwards. I think it was by like 12 jobs, but still, you know. Yeah, I'm looking at Polly Market, and it's right now, it's 88% 25 basis point cut, 11% 50 basis point cut. That's up 5%. So it's somewhat material.

So basically no chance of no cut. That's down to essentially zero, yeah. And, you know, look, this stuff is. all, you know, people are betting, and who knows that the public knows a damn thing about any of this stuff, right? But the truth is that, you know, markets do react to people betting because it's just another way of people to bet. Yeah, I think it's notable, though. If you look back to November, December, I'm looking at the chart for monthly change in jobs. I mean, you were in the mid, you know, 250,000-ish jobs in November, December. December was over 300,000 jobs. The last four

months, all under 100,000, and some of them literally barely above zero and June negative. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, clear trends now. Right. The other point that I would make always on these numbers is, you know, Bitcoin is unbeably, you know, the ETF flows have been the major thing people are waiting for.

So if you buy it right before the open and there isn't a follow-through. of buying, you're going to get very disappointed, and that's going to happen. It's going to flush out. But understand something, retail doesn't react to numbers. Generally, first thing in the morning, the retail reaction is generally in the afternoon. Because there's two waves of retail. There's the wave before the open, which is generally decided the night before, and there's the wave that happens from 3 o'clock to 4 o'clock. And, you know, speaking of someone who used to run a business, taking the other side of retail, what we used to call the volume smile, because if you graph it out and it looks like a smile, is pretty pronounced. So one would expect that if retail

investors and or small RIAs are, you know, look at this news as a reason to buy Bitcoin that you would see it show up in the afternoon not now. That's what you would expect. Isn't it, isn't it curious that as soon as the market opened today, like we had a run up in the price of Bitcoin higher than obviously was expected last night when markets were closing and people were issuing trading instructions or computers were setting the rules. And then as soon as the market opens, you get a regression to like, oh, 111, which is $1,000 more than what the market closed at and had been steady at the night before, completely ignoring the 113 that the market had built up to. So it, you know, there's two, there's two markets of Bitcoin. There's a

tale of two markets, right? One that trades 24-7 and one that only trades during bank hours and maybe isn't up to the second in terms of its decision-making. And Tomer, too, like, that's exacerbated by obviously what Dave just said, because not only do you have the two bifurcated markets, but you also have yesterdays or last nights, he was talking about after a weekend, but kind of like last nights or this early morning pre-trading's demand on ETFs that reflects immediately at the open when those orders have to be filled in either direction. Yeah, and it's just, it's hard for people because the average person who is putting money into the ETFs or RIAs, they work 9 to 5, right?

And so retail, who aren't trading professionally, they get their orders in before they go to their job, and then, you know, maybe they, at lunch, they read some stuff and they put some orders in at the end of the day. the people who are trading the RAs, they've been taught, you know, it's sort of a gospel, you know, to avoid the open and not get cut up in the hype cycle. So they kind of wait to see, you know, what goes on. And when you see this stuff, it makes them volatility, makes people gun-shy. So it's really not that surprising on the microcosm when volumes are really low.

And a lot of people are still out on vacation. And next week is when you expect things to get started again. But, you know, who the hell knows? You know, it's just, it is, it's something that that has always been the case that, you know, when you see a knee jerk reaction, you fade it. But the weird part about the knee jerk reaction here is, I mean, Bitcoin moved well before, its move was, was well before, you know, it moved, you know, it moved to the announcement, it came back down, it moved back up, it stayed around there. And then the U.S. opens and it goes, bloop, and then right back down. And so it's a bit different, but, you know, you could look at other markets, right? you know, like what, you know, to look at what, what's happening.

You know, I'm not sure that I have to refresh this page. Let's just see if I got it right. I don't want to give bad data. Dave, let me ask if I can jump in here really quick. We're looking at four straight months of below expectation job gains, and I think that confirms that the labor market is actually losing steam and not just normalizing. And we're looking at, we're seeing unemployment, like Scott said,

at the top of the show here, since the highest is 2021, trending upwards, not sideways, And doesn't that seem that we're seeing, I think, softness? We lost a lot of federal jobs, manufacturing. And so maybe the public and industrial demand says that things are weakening. I don't know. What do you think? Well, yes.

Remember, my working thesis, Matt, has been that forget the arm waving and the job boning and all the stuff that people say. Yeah. This government cares about having a job picture that is looking more rosy and on the uptrend. A year from, you know, maybe May or June. and being, you know, in order for the midterms. You know, I know that's very cynical, but a very cynical human being, but that's what they care about. And so, yeah, they know.

Now, of course, they're screaming at the Fed. They're screaming at the Fed because they'd like to get momentum building sooner rather than later. But, yeah, I mean, what you're saying is true, and it makes sense. I mean, you know, we haven't had, you know, north of two years of above, of real interest rates. you know, interest rates well above the rate of inflation. We've only had five years in the last 25, and three of them were the year before the Internet bubble popped and the two years before the global financial crisis. And the other two are the last two. And if you think that they're not worried about it creating another financial crisis or a market crash at these levels, you're not paying attention.

So, yeah, they're trying to get in front of it. That's the real issue. My last comment here, I just think that the fact that Scott even brought up that these June numbers were revised, I think, that's a red flag that, to me, data quality and momentum, I think, are decaying. Yeah, I think that's clear. You know, it's super cypherpunk and libertarian and hardcore bitcoiner. You know, like what really makes Bitcoin special is for us to worry about Fed cuts and job numbers. It's so lame. It's so lame that this is like the conversations that we have to have.

have on a Bitcoin and crypto base show at this point. Just wanted to throw that in there. Go ahead, Dave. Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, look, trying to figure out with these, we all start, I shouldn't say all. I start with the premise that we shouldn't have us effect, that the notion today with modern technology being what it is, that we need a cabal of secret and unaccountable officials controlling the supply of money, the most important price in the economy. I think, you know, is just the wrong assumption okay and the cypherpunks will all agree with that i mean i would at least i assume so but we are in a situation where we do have a cabal of unaccountable secretive very well-paid people controlling the most important bison of money and so we're faced to deal with and trade

that reality and so that's why it matters yeah it does better i i tweeted something to the effect i don't have it the other day that said i don't care if that you know like I don't care if the Fed cuts rates and then don't care if they raise rates because I don't think the Fed should exist to your same exact point. I have a question. CJ, I'm going to go to you, but Maricio, are you on stage because I see you bouncing around and I saw your hand go up, but you show as a listener to me. Hey, Scott.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Yeah, I'm here. I put my hand down, but my quick question was just to really touch on something that's more industry-specific versus, say, the Fed is, and I wasn't here yesterday. you discussed this yesterday, but I was pretty interested in the NASDAQ guidance for the Treasury company acquisitions. I don't know if we discussed that already, but I think that until we or the market gets

a better grasp on what is the true implications of that, because that was a lot of the big driving, one of the big tailwinds that we had. Yeah, it's very vague. I dug into it a bit with NLW this morning. For those who missed it, there was kind of a report that the NASDAQ is putting Treasury companies that are listed on the NASDAQ under more scrutiny, asking potentially for more disclosures and information and even potentially delisting some that exist. We already saw one delisted, and we sort of have had these passive vague reports over the past few months, and a lot of

the companies that did the reverse mergers have been unable to actually get SEC clearance to change the business from whatever existed as to a treasury company, therefore have not actually been able to purchase Bitcoin and are sort of sitting in limbo. So, Maricio, there may be someone with more perspective here, but it sounds like things just aren't moving very fast and they're kind of halting the brakes and going to be a bit more careful on how they allow these to go forward. So I think it's a TBD to your point. Yeah, thanks for that, Scott.

And again, I would love for anyone that has a little more insights or perhaps more details to chime in that I agree with you, it was rather vague. And that's actually what I think, that's what I don't love about it. It's how vague it was because it would be super interesting to try to put some numbers around the implications, but that seems challenging with the information that's been shared. Yeah, and there's also, I happen to be speaking with a few potentially launching treasury companies, and I have seen a meaningful shift to trying to merge with New York Stock Exchange listed companies rather than NASDAQ now.

So I don't know if that gives us a hint that there was. some who were ahead of this. There were some deals, apparently, they were pretty bad and the one that was delisted. So I guess we'll see. Does anybody else on stage have more insight into this? I don't expect that you would. I'm just curious because all I've been able to see is that, as I said, they're just kind of being vague and saying we're going to put these under more scrutiny. That is a huge story, Maricio, because if all of a sudden these can't exist, that's a problem. Well, you need to understand the backdrop here. So let's give some background.

First of all, NASDAQ doesn't have that kind of power. There are multiple listing entities in the United States. They are what's called a self-regulatory organization. It's a private company but imbued with regulatory power. There are many people, including several at the SEC in high positions, who have wondered aloud and thought aloud many times, that we shouldn't be giving private companies with a profit motive, the ability to have regulatory power that can influence or that that can protect their their

bottom line this won't if it became that it so there's two pieces here one we can end up in the courts two companies can list on smaller venues the new york stock exchange is likely to agree with NASDAQ for the for what it's worth so those are listing networks but they they haven't said it yet uh who knows what they'll do i mean they may they may see it as a PR disaster as that NASDAQ is doing it. And also, maybe NASDAQ will walk this back and say people need to disclose it, not that they can't do it, right? Well, that's the point, right? We have a headline, but we don't have any facts. So I think if NASDA is saying, hey, we're recognizing a trend and we're going to watch it more closely. Okay, that's not barely worth reporting.

So I have friends at the other, the smaller listing venues that are being built, the long-term stock exchange, the green exchange, the new Texas exchange, et cetera. The likelihood that crypto companies or treasure companies won't switch their listings rather than stop what they're doing is, of course, ridiculous. Of course, they will do that. And understand the primary listing exchange, it matters a lot because you get to ring a bell. If you're on the New York Stock Exchange, you get to ring a different kind of bell, a buzzer, really, if you're at NASDAQ and Times Square, and you don't have the others. And your closing auctions may or may not have less liquidity. but it doesn't stop you from trading the national market system if there's consumer demand.

So it's not nearly as big of a deal as people are making it. It could very well end up in the courts if it's overbroad. Most likely what they'll do is say, listen, you shouldn't be able to say one thing and do another. And they want to codify rules about that so that it makes it easier for the tort bar to go after people, which is one of the problems in the United States that we can, you know, there are lawyers on stage who can understand it. But it's, I haven't a chance to dig into it. I know a lot of people at NASDAQ to understand. And I know that quite a few of them are very forward thinking.

My suspicion is they're reacting to public complaints and they're trying to do it. And so somebody got a headline out in front of something and it isn't, we haven't seen the end of this story. But I really, really think going down the rabbit hole that says you can't have a treasury company anymore listed in the United States is absolutely. That's not going to happen. Yeah, we're not saying. I don't think anyone's expecting that. I think there's just going to be a little more stricter listing standards and that some of the early ones who did it wrong may end up getting delisted,

but we know that there's going to be a culling of these down the road at some point anyways. And what was the stat? Tomer, you may be the one who shared it yesterday, but 26, 27 percent are trading at a discount already. Oh, it certainly wasn't me. I wasn't here yesterday. Yeah, I'd just like to credit you with smart things. So you're welcome. Thank you.

Yeah, of course it was me. I spent hours doing the research, and what was it that I said again? I think it was that like 25 to 30 percent. It was some number in that ballpark of existing treasury companies are already trading at a discount to NAF, which obviously a month ago, consensus, not here. It seemed to be that if you own Bitcoin, you can never trade in a discount to NAF, which we laughed at. Right.

Very good. Yeah. So I missed it. I mean, since I've never given my take on it, I think in the long term, all of these companies are probably trending to one-ish or even slightly less for overheads and lack of choice, lack of freedom that you have with actual on-chain Bitcoin. But like strategy has justifiably, because they're able to generate real Bitcoin per share yield for the time being, they have, they justifiably have a bit of a premium. These fly-by-night's little guys who

don't have the capacity to raise, to raise money that's accretive to the share. shareholders. I just don't see the value proposition there. So they should sell their Bitcoin and give up the ghost at some point. And CJ, I know you had your hand up and this kind of leads into, I happen to know, you know, where the puck is moving for you guys. There's a very clear way for companies to do this. And it's not to try to be micro strategy and take on leverage and debt to add Bitcoin to a balance sheet with no operating business. In my humble opinion, there's Bitcoin balance sheets, as we know, where you take a actual company and you take the cash flow and you would rather hold Bitcoin than cash, that makes a hell of a lot of sense to any Bitcoin

or any rational person. If it's not cash you need and you're willing to ride through the volatility and think that's a very rational approach. But then I think a more exciting approach is a company that actually earns Bitcoin and can add Bitcoin to the balance sheet through free cash flow. And CJ, I know that that's sort of the wheelhouse you're in. There are others that are there as well. But I think the micro strategy copycat model is going to go really badly for most. Yeah. I mean, it's really hard to replicate and copy it be micro strategy because you're starting from square zero. And a lot of these companies, as you guys stated, they can't even get off the ground. And they're having a hard time getting actually getting Bitcoin

on their balance sheet. So the ones that do have it on their balance sheet, like micro strategy, far in the lead. And they're able to create financially engineered products like the preferred offerings that basically create, you know, like a stable coin with an adjustable interest rate. And, you know, this goes back to me referring, you know, micro strategy, metaplanet. These are going to be the central banks of the future based on their products and how they balance their products and how they measure the yield against their preferred offerings, which are backed by the Bitcoin on their balance sheet. So a lot of these startup Bitcoin treasury companies

are just looking to get the Bitcoin on their balance sheet so they can try to compete when these other ones are already out here doing it at a level that they can't. And honestly, micro strategy is the only one who's really been able to pull off the preferreds because of the amount of Bitcoin they have. And yeah, we are actually at People's Reserve. We're in the middle of this process right now

with a NASDAQ listed company who, you know, I'm under strict NDA, so I can't share too much information. But our thesis is this. It's not just about Bitcoin accumulation. It's also about Bitcoin powered finance. And most of these Bitcoin treasury companies have come out and have created an accumulation engine or have theorized how their accumulation engine is going to work, rather than building a Bitcoin business. So what we are doing is we're bringing two companies together, one that already has strong positive cash flows and outlook, and then the new People's Reserve ecosystem, which will facilitate a marketplace for Bitcoin powered finance. And what we can do is we can pay our debts and we can pay the preferred yields through

cash flow, through profit from our operations, not only in the merger company that's already listed, but also in the Bitcoin powered finance ecosystem. So we are actually able to pay our debts without having to dilute, without having to issue extra debt. And I think that's really the next step, the next step in this whole process, what I call version two of a Bitcoin treasury company is, and you've heard the bigger ones talk about it. They just, they haven't taken that action yet, mainly because they don't need to. Their current strategy is working and they continue to stack Bitcoin at a quick rate. But eventually they will move into Bitcoin-powered finance, which is products and services built around Bitcoin as the most pristine form of collateral in the world. And then the revenues that you can generate from those products and services take away the largest concern that is in the marketplace right now, which is, how do you make money?

Where is your cash flow coming from? Your software business is dying. You have no business whatsoever. You're just an accumulation engine. How do you service your debts without issuing new debts? And the Trafai guys, they don't like that. And I don't think they should like it. It makes much more sense, like you say, Scott, where you have a balance sheet company.

You have an operating company that is profitable and is generating revenues. And you know what? Instead of doing a buyback, buy Bitcoin. Instead of doing a dividend, buy Bitcoin and learn how to take your company and turn your profitable company into a Bitcoin accumulation engine. And that is what we are doing with. our merger partner, and then on top of that, we're integrating our Bitcoin power finance ecosystem so that we can increase those revenues, increase profitability by offering those products and services to the marketplace, some of which are innovative and revolutionary

products, the marketplace has never seen before, and then use those cash flows to service the debts to make the flywheel happen even faster. It would be good, CJ. It would be great if your merger partner was Apple or Coca-Cola. Yeah, then we'd have lifetime Coca-Cola in the office. You'd have some very significant retained earnings to retain in Bitcoin. You'd also have to retain a lot of – These are big cash flow companies. Yeah, you'd also have to retain a lot of dentists and doctors for your health because of all the Coke in your office.

But I guess that's a different conversation. But CJ, did – maybe you can't disclose this. But this report about NASDAQ, has that had any impact on your conversations or your plans? like is that is that actively on the radar of people who are still in the process of doing this i i think it is yeah but in our specific situation of the the existing controller has 51% of preferred chair of voting so in this case if the vote had to take place uh i think the board would be aligned and we'd be able to execute the strategy but i could definitely see that if this became a requirement a lot of the boards they they're not

structured in that way and taking a vote every time you have to take action and then filing forms with the SEC for that vote, letting certain cool down periods go, that could create a lot of big issues for companies who don't have a setup where there is 51% of the vote controlled so that vote can be guaranteed and that decision can be executed. But yeah, it's definitely something that's come up. I mean, look, the devil's in the details, right? If the answer is the companies to have a clear policy of when it has discretion. So if the policy is and it's public and everybody knows that the company has filed that it can sell 20% of its stock whenever the fuck it feels like it as part of its ATM program

to accumulate whatever the Treasury company is, it's accumulating, then I think that I can't imagine that if that's the policy and it's public and everyone knows, that they're going to legally be able to stop that company from doing that. The notion that a listing venue is going to require a board level vote for everything and not give the ability to do shelf registrations or other things like that seems impossible to me. But the fact is that, you know, there's a lot of consternation about the transparency around this. You know, we've seen it, right? You know, you've seen it with micro strategy and all the stuff yelling back and forth. I'm pretty confident that Micro Strategies lawyers are pretty damn good and they didn't do anything that was illegal,

but they made statements that people arguably interpreted one way. And I think what they're trying to do is say, listen, it needs to be clear. And if that's what they're doing, then it's not a big deal. If they're doing more than that, then you're right. Then it would be a disaster. And frankly, they'll probably lose all that business. It'll get listed elsewhere. Yeah. And it's a strategic disadvantage as well when you have to kind of, you're forcing a business to declass You know, that information was shared by micro strategy so that the marketplace had some kind of guidance because they have been tapping the ATM very hard and the investors, you know, are are feeling the pain and feeling the burn. Bitcoin's at at new all-time highs or double or triple what it was and micro strategy has new all-time highs of Bitcoin on their balance sheet, yet their stock is underperforming. But it's the Bitcoin per share is going up.

So when Bitcoin makes its move, it'll push that nav into the equity. And I think people are just impatient, right? It comes back to like the marketplace just being speculative rather than long-term based. So yeah, I agree, Dave. I don't think it just doesn't make sense that you can tell a company how to operate. You can't put these types of guidelines and then enforce those guidelines when you don't have the authority to do that. And ultimately, it comes down to the, to the. And I, and this is what I.

personally believe this is what i think this is going to shake out only the bitcoin treasury companies that have a bitcoin oriented leader are actually going to succeed when you look right now at all the companies that are falling under uh one at one on their multiple they don't even really have a real spokesperson they don't have anybody in the bitcoin community that can actually represent them and and speak to what their theory and strategy is moving forward and all the companies that do the the ones that have the sailors and the Dill-McClare's, and just they have a Bitcoin professional on the team who can relay that information to the marketplace,

that is like one of the most core critical components of a Bitcoin Treasury strategy because you have to interact with your community. So it's weird that it's come to that, but ultimately there is going to need to be a Bitcoin representative on the board that the community trusts in order so that the flip-flopping back and forth that you can't stop,

actually comes down to, again, a trust-based system. Yeah, I violently disagree with a lot of that. But Tomer had his hand-up, so why don't you go first, Tomer? Yeah, well, for one, most of these companies have hired some or several Bitcoin influencers, big, big podcasters or people with big Twitter followings or very, very well-spoken people. I think their challenge is now executing, because it's not the Bitcoin community that has enough capital. It's not us plebs who are going to sell a lot of our Bitcoin in order to

buy shares in a Bitcoin treasury company. The capital has to come from previously restricted sources of capital or previously unconvinced sources of capital. So talking nicely to the Bitcoin community who believes in self-custody, cold storage, you know, keep funds away, beware of paper Bitcoin, aren't going to be persuaded into paper Bitcoin by other influences. it's actually viewed in the community as potentially a bit of a betrayal or a bit of a selling out for Bitcoin influencers to try to convince Bitcoiners to invest in Bitcoin Treasury companies in general. So I think, you know, the interesting story with strategy was, oh, you know, they're unlocking pension funds, they're unlocking insurance dollars, they're unlocking conservative

dollars or unlocking fund dollars that were forbidden from buying Bitcoin directly or even the ETF directly, but can buy strategy shares. So there's been a bunch of narratives that Sailor has actually executed on, although I think he's squeezed them as some of the earlier ones as dry as he possibly could. And that's been the thing.

So I'll pause there, because I know Dave might want to add something. You stole what I was going to say. I think that's a large part of it. I mean, frankly, someone who's come from the traditional financial to the crypto world eight years ago, I think that

vast majority of large Twitter following crypto people are full of shit and think their shit doesn't stink and got lucky and as opposed to being smart. I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous, but we're talking about all the people who pump the ICO markets, who basically pumped every market that you could possibly say. And some of them, look, I'm friends with some. And I told them to their face, you know, listen, you're not as smart as you act. And it's just that simple. You know, putting them in as a CEO, I mean, Saylor had conviction.

in an asset early, and that conviction he still has. But now what's needed to be done, and he's done it, is hire a team of people a strategy to monetize volatility and implement a strategy. And he's doing that, and that's fine. Now, so what really matters isn't the spokesperson, because, yeah, okay, if it's a brilliant spokesperson, someone who actually knows how to do it, I want someone as a spokesperson who can build products, who can build services around it, who can leverage what's going on, right?

You know, otherwise they just all the one of these Bitcoin, you know, treasury companies would all be lining up to hire, well, I don't, I don't want to make fun of anybody. But, you know, I just don't think that that's the right way of doing it. I think it's really, is there value in the company that goes beyond just buying Bitcoin because you can buy Bitcoin yourself. I mean, if there's no value beyond it, then what the hell's the point? Anyway, Gary. Yeah. And I want to, I want to just clarify. I didn't mean it in a way that these people need to hire influencers to talk to the Bitcoin community.

What I mean is you need Bitcoin representatives who can explain the thesis to the community, but also who can bridge the gap between what Bitcoin is to the investment bankers. And that is really what's missing. And the financial engineering that strategy has been able to do is what's really put them in the lead. And you haven't seen it from any other other companies. So I think that just want to make it clear that. I didn't mean that they don't need influencers, like the pumpers of the ICOs. They need people who understand Bitcoin and who understand finance and who understand that these two worlds are coming together and that the future of finance is going to be built with Bitcoin integration and that the investment bankers need someone who can connect those dots.

And then who also can dumb it down for the wider community to understand what's going on, why it's why. And look at STRC, stretch, it's a stable coin. Nobody really understands what that is on either side of the coin. very few people. Gary. Gary, you're up if you can get your mic lifted. Gary might be living in the glitch. Sorry, guys.

I had too many things opened up. Hey, on Tomer's comment, I see this slightly different, actually, maybe massively different. I think the whales are fueling these strategic reserves. I see one, it's very tax efficient for a guy that's got 50,000, 10,000 Bitcoin and move it into a strategic reserve. He doesn't have a tax event.

I don't know where this is, I mean, you clearly have whales selling. They're either selling for cash or they're selling into the strategic reserve. So I was a little surprised that, uh, i mean this bitcoin is serving these strategic reserves aren't just coming out of nowhere right so someone is using bitcoin to promote other activities uh and i don't think they're having to be like massively convinced to do this i mean am i wrong there or do you guys think the strategic reserves are all being like supported by new no i think you're i think you're absolutely right the who have seen the early ones, yes.

Because it makes so much sense. You're right. But they're not buying new Bitcoin, right? Like when Tether moves 100,000 Bitcoin into a company like 21, no new demand has been created for Bitcoin. No new capital has flown into Bitcoin. There was literally an on-chain transaction to move Bitcoin from one address to another. So they're not really accumulating Bitcoin.

They're not doing using, so far. besides strategy, I don't think we've seen any company generate huge consistent volumes of inbound demand for Bitcoin. And we've also seen recently the ones who had moved earlier that were generating something like Metaplanet. We've seen that MNAV multiple come way down. So I'm not saying that you're wrong, Gary. It's absolutely right that if you've got a bunch of Bitcoin, you want to put into an efficient and liquid structure that gives you all the benefits of things you could do with a Wall Street asset, you can do that. But the distinction between having an operating business that's generating cash flow and buying Bitcoin and a Bitcoin

treasury company that's doing financial engineering to generate capital to buy Bitcoin is really the distinction here. Like Tether's got a great business and they're using a lot of their profits to buy Bitcoin. Whether they put that into a Bitcoin treasury company or not after the fact is like a secondary point. But the Bitcoin Treasury companies in general are, with the exception of strategy, seem to be struggling to find continuing reliable sources of cash flow to invest in Bitcoin. I think it's also sort of a nuanced dancer because I think the early ones were being seated by Wales and eventually that dries up and the new ones have to actually find

different ways to buy Bitcoin and not just have it transferred in. And at some point, Bitcoin Treasury companies will just be Treasury companies, right? You know, so a company that has a nice cash flow business, think of it this way. Imagine you have a company that has a nice cash flow business that's getting a multiple of like three or four compared to a multiple of like 15 or 20 to a company. Well, what could you do? Well, you could say, listen, what we're going to do is we're going to take our cash and we're just going to use it to buy Bitcoin. We're going to operate a, we're an operating business. We're not speculating.

I'm not doing anything else, but understand that instead of paying out dividends, instead of doing this, we're going to use our cash to go into Bitcoins. Now, what's going to happen in the multiple of that company? It's going to trade well below its NAV because, I mean, or it's going to trade irrespective of its NAV because it's going to be putting its cash in there. And very few companies have cash reserves equal to their price, right? But that you're going to see. That's the trend that matters. That's the one that's going to push the price because company saying, rather than buying back my own stock, rather than paying out dividends, I'm going to do something to distinguish myself and get a better

multiple. And that's the one that hasn't happened yet, but that's going to be the next trend. And that has very little risk to it, right? That's not, we wouldn't be having these conversations about that. We would just say, oh, okay, that makes sense. Right now what you have are companies who are saying, listen, we're a company and we concede becoming a Bitcoin Treasury company, but effectively what we're going to do is we're going to put this into the world. And I think that that trend is played out. You know, once you have three or four gargantuan firms, what's the point of the next one? So you really still have to have a business at some point.

I mean, that's my point. That's my, my thought. So just to give you guys a heads up, we got a couple more minutes. But then I invited Ian and others from Ando because they had huge news this week. And I just, we used to do this thing on this show where we actually invited the people who had huge news themselves to talk about it. We're trying to recontinue that. So I just want to wrap this current conversation up in the next minute or two.

But, Marisa, go ahead. Thanks, Scott. No, I guess the point I was going to make is I think the unique, I think for me, at least, what I see these treasury companies as being, and there's what they are, and then what they are not. What they are is micro-strategy had found an initial way of raising very efficient capital to buy Bitcoin in a way that an ETF couldn't, right, by issuing those convertible bonds, monetizing their volatility without paying a coupon.

And that was very interesting because you're arbitraging an artificially cheap cost of capital because of market dynamics of giant pools of capital trapped in money market funds, making negative real rates if you compare them to the true basement of the dollar. But that's really what these treasury companies are. So long as they can continue to get financing at better terms than a person can, there will be a premium, and that's what's exciting about them. But if you look at micro strategies most recent STRC, the cost of capital on that is a 10% coupon.

And if you add the sort of issuance costs and all these other things, you're probably closer to 11%. And retail lenders of Bitcoin back loans are very close to that in the sort of and borrowing. So that efficiency from which that delta between the efficient capital versus the true market you can get outside has switched. And to the point, Dave and others, made. I think every company that is just smart with their cash should buy Bitcoin, therefore

becoming quasi or quote-unquote a Bitcoin treasury company in the future. So I just, I think you have to understand for me at least what these things are and what they're not. And what I think if you, you know, if you believe on one vision of that, then the things that will make them successful change. Exactly. I think that's a great way to wrap that part of the conversation. As I said, we've got Ian here. And we used to do this a lot more often when we had breaking news or a huge news story because obviously we're close to the teams from these projects and companies that are doing it, bring them up so they can actually talk about it. And luckily, Ian and we've got the Ando on stage as well, we're willing to do that. You guys, we talked about it actually

on this show briefly as one of the main topics that Ondo Global Markets was launched. I believe this was Wednesday was the press release, 100 plus tokenized stocks and ETFs on Ethereum. Absolutely a huge announcement and would rather unpack that with all of you with you guys than just getting our opinion. So, Ian, maybe you can break that down for us briefly and welcome. Yeah, no, 100% and thanks for having me. So yeah, you're right. On Wednesday, we launched a platform called on the global markets. It's a platform that essentially tokenized over 100 U.S. stocks and ETS and makes them available to a global audience. So now anyone on Mainet, Heath, and pretty soon a couple more chains, can buy any one of those stocks or ETS as they like, and the price they will pay for those assets

is the same as they would in a brokerage account. The liquidity of these assets is the same as in a normal brokerage account. So it's truly the first time where a platform launch that enables global access to these U.S. stocks and ETS, just as if you would have a brokerage account. But this time you can buy the stocks and ETFs with simple stable coins 24-5. So you announced it Wednesday, but it hasn't launched yet, right? Oh, it has, it has. So it's live. Okay, see.

It is live. Yeah. So you can fully do this. Are there rules as to who can gain access to it? Who cannot? How does that work? Yeah. So if anyone wants to directly, you know, come to our platform and buy directly from us,

we would require them to KYC, just like you would have. a normal brokerage account. I will say, though, that these assets, the way that they are structured are stable coin like. So, meaning that, you know, in the primary market, you have to onboard with us. In the secondary market, these assets do flow freely. So they're kind of like comparable to USC in a sense. If you want to mint and burn directly with us, you need a mint account. After that, these assets go wherever they like. Okay, so obviously there's a differentiation between what you've built and some of the other, I guess we'll call them walled gardens of tokenized securities and stocks.

So you're 24-7 and permission list, correct? So this is not the set, yeah. Okay, can you explain the difference there, how that works? Yeah, of course. So when you think about tokenized stocks and how they're different between the various platforms, because at this point, most people have seen some Robin Hood announcement, There's been the X-stocks crack in announcements, a couple more. So people are starting to wonder like, okay, how are all these things different, right?

And I think the two dimensions that people would want to look at are, are these assets truly permissionless, yes or no, or are they a Walde Garden? And second is, what is the liquidity and price that I can get on these assets to trade in and out? And on both of those dimensions, beyond the global market platform is kind of the first of its kind in the sense that our assets truly are permissionless. That is not the case on, for example, the Robin Hood tokenized stocks. If you want to buy the Robin Hood tokenized stocks, you have to onboard with Robin Hood,

you can buy them. You cannot move them out of Robin Hood, right? With our platform, you can buy these things. You can move them around 24-7 freely between your various different wallets, sent them to a crypto exchange, no problem. These are truly stable coin-like and that you can do whatever you want with them. On the second point of the price and liquidity, too, there we've seen other platforms. like MX stocks really rely on on-chain liquidity and dex pools to trade in and out of.

What that means is if the liquidity in the dex pools dries up, which is what we've seen, you're going to get massive slippage on any of these stocks that you're holding, or these assets essentially just depeg, just like when a stable coin can depeg to a dollar in 10 cents instead of a dollar, you'll see Tesla stock depeg from its price by like 10%. No one likes to own a stock if they think, it can be pegged 10%. So in our model, we always just put the asset on chain instantly whenever a user wants to buy it. We always source it from the various stratify networks and clearing broker networks at the price that the asset is trading so that anyone who buys any of our stocks

for ATFs on chain can always rest assured that the price you get is the same as in a normal brokerage account like Robin Hood. Really, really interesting. So obviously in the press release, there were some partnerships and integrations that were somewhat discussed. So which wallets, exchanges, protocols are involved with this launch? Yeah, great question. So we really tried to go as big as we could on the partnership. So we've got Big Git wallet, Big Git Exchange, the trust wallet, the Oakex wallet, a wide variety of other wallets. Essentially, most we have three wallets right now.

You can just go ahead and go into the swamper and find these assets. We also have partnerships with cowswap, 1-inch, that have integrated into our system so everyone essentially can just go wherever they would like and try to acquire these assets. So I'm assuming that massively increases the accessibility of these and trading and access and obviously the experience for people, right? Because you don't have to go to one specific place to figure this out. Oh, 100%. And, you know, we've already seen some update, too, from the Chrome crypto exchanges like

Gait, Mxie, and the like. I think people underestimate just how many people globally do not have access to a standard brokerage account, but do have a Web3 wallet or a crypto exchange account. I think the latest numbers I saw are somewhere around 400 to 500 million people who've got one of these essential crypto, you know, investment accounts. But a lot of them around the world don't have a normal brokerage account. Do not have. have access to U.S. stocks and ETFs, even though the U.S. stock market has been the global driver of wealth creation for the past decades, right? And so by simply putting these stocks and ETFs on chain, by making them tokens that can integrate into crypto exchanges, into

crypto wallets in a stable coin-like format, meaning that you can freely transfer them, is, in our opinion, pretty much a game changer in terms of what it does for enabling access to a global audience. Yeah, and it was very specific that this was launched on Ethereum in the press release as well. So how does Ethereum, I guess, power this and power pricing and compliance, all those things handled? And you also alluded earlier to coming to other chains near you.

So what does that look like? Yeah, it's a great question because there's a lot of narrative around, you know, Ethereum is for RWA and some of the other chains are trying to capture that narrative too. I think the reason we chose for Ethereum for starters is because it actually has a pretty well-established intent network. What that means is that you can essentially just submit an intent on the Ethereum blockchain that says, hey, I'd like to buy this stock. It doesn't mean that there needs to be already inventory or dex pools on the chain itself. We can essentially pick up on that intent and mint an asset just in time.

It's kind of a very novel architecture that we built and Ethereum was the right place to start for it so that we can essentially take Tradfi liquidity where all the liquidity of these stocks and ETF sits and put them on chain, build essentially a bridge between the two and the intense platforms like the Kauswofs and the one inches and et cetera really enable that architecture in a pretty unique way. So as a result, we can put all these stocks and ETFs on. chain with the same price and liquidity as it's available in Tradfi. And Ethereum does uniquely enable that in its current state. So I think for me, the biggest question and probably for most people, because I maybe don't understand the mechanics, is how do we ensure one-to-one asset backing

and how can people maybe who aren't Defi native trust Defi? I mean, you talked about this before slippage and all these things, but this is still a pretty foreign concept to most people. trust that it's backed. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's going to require a lot of user education. Trust is gained over, you know, weeks, months, years. So this will take time for people to fully understand and trust. The good thing is that we're very transparent in our backing and the like. So we would argue there's other models out there. You know, some companies have tokenized their stocks and ETFs without this one for one backing. We think the only way to credibly tokenize stocks and ETS is to have one-for-one backing, and on top of that have a very large collateral

buffer. We have agreements with, we call them, collateral agents. They have access to our brokerage accounts so they can see all of this backing, and they will post daily attestations of that online. So anyone can go and see, is all of this backed one-for-one, and what is the collateral buffer? So imagine as if a stablecoin company would post a daily attestation of what exactly is backing their stable coin for everyone to see that's the level of transparency that we're aiming for with our platform that's the level of transparency that we have sustained on our tokenized treasury products that we launched more than two years ago so people can go and check how the backing of those tokenized treasury products have been you know day by day

over the past you two years give or take and that same level of transparency we're bringing the tokenized stocks in etifs it almost feels like you're doing for stocks what circle's doing for dollars oh 100 percent yeah i mean we look at stable coins as the true first product market fit of you know tokenized cash really means a tokenized dollar and i think a lot of people figured out that a stable coin is just a better way to get access to the u.s dollar and once defy took off stable coin first and foremost was just a better form of the dollar you can do more with it. And those same people now look at access to the U.S. dollar via stable coins and say, why can I get access to U.S. capital markets via tokenized stocks and ETFs? I think more broadly,

too, people's expectations and user behavior ultimately is going to change. Like right now, brokerage is completely siloed. I can't move my stocks anywhere. I'm kind of locked into the platform on the margin rate that I get some brokerage platforms offered 24-5 trading most don't like all of these things when you think about it are kind of ridiculous you should just have a tokenized stock that can freely move 24-7 that you can trade in and out of 24-7 and move around in various defy platforms to get the margin rate that you like and that you deserve it's once people have used a stable coin they look at their bank account and say wow that's a little limited I think the same thing is going to happen to tokenized stocks in ETS, and people are going

to start looking at their brokerage account and say, whoa, that's a little limiting. I see CJ and Matt have their hands up. I have a couple more questions, and then actually, even though we usually end at 1115, I'll open it back up, like, kind of to wrap the conversation. But I want to know, like, maybe a way to go in that direction is how do you see the advantages of this over traditional stocks and traditional brokers in the first place? Yeah, no. I mean, I get this question from the Trad-Fi brokerages quite a bit.

They're like, why are you tokenizing stocks and ETFs in the first place? Isn't your brokerage account great? I'm like, well, I have two brokerage accounts that can compare and contrast. Some offer me 24-5 trading, but then the margin that I can get on the platform. I can't take off platform. I can only use it for more trading. The other brokerage account I have as great margin, I can take it off platform, but it's literally nine-to-five trading.

And on neither of these platforms, I've got all of my crypto assets, so I'm stuck with now like four different investment platforms, a crypto exchange, a web three wallet, and two brokerage accounts. Like that level of fragmentation of my assets is not great. I would love to just have one single wallet where I can have all of my stocks, my ETFs, my crypto combined into one where I can start cross-collateralizing any margin that I want and take it off platform and do that 24-7. And in order to get there, crypto rails, blockchain rails are a much better infrastructure, like Trafai rails and they're going to get there. So, or at least not in the foreseeable future. So we fundamentally think that the best way to do it is tokenize your stocks in ETS, bring them on crypto rails so that all of a sudden you can hold everything in your Web3 wallet, and then you can go on defy over time and take any margin you want with any asset that you like,

24-7. Now, this is going to take some time. But the key thing that needed to be in in order to get to something like that is to have these tokenized stocks and ETFs available on crypto rails in a permissionless format at the right price of the brokerage account with the same depth of liquidity and that's for the first time what on the global markets enables before I jump to the other the other guy so what's the roadmap beyond here obviously you kind of announced a hundred plus but there's a whole world of assets right so I guess we What's the future plans for onto global markets?

And how do you think that this will sort of drive the tokenized real world asset sector? Yeah, we'll start expanding to hundreds of stocks and ETFs by year end. So there's definitely more assets to put on chain. I think we'll probably start with all the assets in the SMP 500, more popular ETFs. We'll start the conversation about crypto Dats before this was fascinating. We'll start putting all of these. crypto treasury companies on chain because that's what people want and then over time we're going to move for the on the global market's platform not to just be an access play where people can buy these

stocks but really also build out the the margin and cross collateral capabilities of the platforms so that over time whatever people are used to in their brokerage account like buy anything you want by any option you want, get any margin you want, that that is fundamentally enabled on crypto rails, but 24-7 and in a better way. Amazing. So I encourage everybody, obviously, to go check this out and use it and figure it out yourself. Ian, thank you so much for taking the time. Welcome to stay.

I am going to go to Matt and CJ. They've got their hands up, and we can continue this at least briefly before I have to run. But go ahead, Matt. I don't know if you had a question or comment. Yeah, just a really quick question, Ian. Thanks for coming through and sharing the info. So it sounds like you're reading Larry Fink's playbook from BlackRocker. He's reading yours.

The tokenization of assets is something that we've been a long advocate for. I think, you know, since 2017. My question, though, really is with what you're doing there at Ando, are you able to now then put those QSIP codes into the stocks, the bonds, everything that you're tokenizing? Because I think that's kind of a big thing. I know it's a little geeky in the weeds on it, but I'm just curious about it. Yeah, no, it's a great question. The way we tokenize is we essentially issue these as a reg-reggis offering. in a wrapper format.

So these are not natively issued securities with the new QSIP. We actually believe that that is the way to scale this, because if you want to, in your model where you need a new QSIP, where it's essentially native tokenization, every single public company would essentially have to go through that by themselves.

So it's just a very hard model to scale. In our model, we can put hundreds of these stocks in ATFs on chain instantly. It is in the wrappers. There's no new QSIP, it's issued to non-U.S. investors in the primary market. But it does allow scale for the, you know, number of stocks in ETS. And as long as you tokenize them in a, in the right way where you have the right investor protections and you have the right disclosures on the backing of those

wrappers, we believe that that is the way to go. And when you look at stable coins, they start, they're all wrappers too, right? So we think that the people have gotten comfortable with the wrapper format so that is the format that we start will continue to go down a path of trying to figure out native tokenization as well but this is the the wrapper model is just the way to get started in the scalable fashion okay yeah i think what you guys are building is is really cool and i i what's interesting to me is just like stable coins have created an exposure opportunity for people all around the world, I wonder what the wider effects are going to be on this type of inclusion, because U.S. capital markets are the best markets in the world with the most opportunity

and definitely with the most government support. So I'm just, what are your thoughts on how analysts should start to think about tokenization of equities and global access to those equities? I love that question a lot. There's a big narrative now on you know, stable coins essentially cementing the dominance of the dollar in the on-chain economy and creating more demand for U.S. treasuries, I think over time the exact same thing is going to be said about tokenized stocks and ETFs, where essentially it cements the dominance of U.S. capital markets globally and in the on-chain economy is going to give people globally finally the level of access they want, need, and deserve into what essentially has been a creation of global wealth for anyone who

had access to it, right? And so that whole narrative of stablecoin cementing the narrative, is cementing the position of the U.S. dollar, we believe tokenized U.S. stocks and ETS will cement the position of U.S. capital markets and really, over time, enhance access, but also demand for these securities. like the scale you're talking about people like four to 500 million crypto investment accounts right if all of them start enabling tokenized stocks i think globally the number of brokerage accounts is about four to 500 million now these are clearly into developed markets so it's not necessarily all of a sudden going to be a doubling of your demand but the number of accounts at least and the number of people that finally have access, that can expand very, very quickly now. This is very exciting stuff. Keep up the great work. I look forward to checking up the platform.

Awesome. Thanks so much. Awesome, guys. It's been a great conversation. I would like to keep going on for hours, but I have to run for another recording. So thank you, everybody, for joining, especially Ian. I appreciate you showing up and taking the time to specifically talk about this news that you guys have this week. I really appreciate it. and And Ando on stage, you guys should give both of them a follow. You should give everybody on our stage a follow because they're here for a reason. Otherwise, we'll be back on Monday for the next Crypto Town Hall.

Thank you, everyone. We will see you next week. Have a great weekend. Bye. Thank you.