The Wolf Of All Streets - What’s Next For Crypto After The FTX Scam? Alex Tapscott (Ninepoint Partners), Dean Skurka (WonderFi), and Dan Roberts (Decrypt)

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Join my guest speaker for a Thursday live panel: Alex Tapscott (Ninepoint Partners), Dean Skurka (President and Interim CEO at WonderFi), and Dan Roberts (Editor-in-Chief of Decrypt).  Alex Tapscott: https://twitter.com/alextapscott Dean Skurka: https://twitter.com/bitbuy_dean Dan Roberts: https://twitter.com/readDanwrite  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen  GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND TRADE ALL SPOT PAIRS ON BITGET FOR ZERO FEES! ►► https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io  Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe  Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c  #Bitcoin #Crypto #FTX Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:30 The best time to start in crypto 2:40 Is the bottom in? 4:30 FTX is not all crypto 6:30 The rise of crypto media 10:00 How to push crypto forward 15:50 Regulation 18:20 The DeFi victory 20:40 Centralised exchanges are the first entry point for crypto 25:50 Entering crypto is still too difficult 29:30 Regulation is not bad for the industry 33:00 Due diligence  34:40 American exceptionalism 37:30 Twitter drama 44:00 FTT was a shitcoin 47:00 Crypto companies are too inter reliant  50:00 WonderFi 53:00 What’s next for crypto 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.

Well, at this point, I would rather be talking about literally almost anything else on the planet. We continue to dig into the SBF and FTX saga, the kid gloves that the mainstream media and the government seem to be using with him, why that might be the case, and try to predict what the likely outcomes are in the end for both FTX, SBF, of course, and the crypto industry. I have an amazing panel because it's Thursday and that's what we do. We do roundtables. I've got Alex Tapscott, Dan Roberts, and Dean Skirka today to talk this once again to death. You guys don't want to miss this. Let's go. and shame for the crypto industry and just accidentally bang it on the like button while hanging your head in shame. That's the way we need you today to like. Listen, not the best time for the perception of the crypto industry, but actually I was talking with some of the panelists right before we started. And one could argue that this is the best time if you are an investor or looking to start working in this industry, because it's the opportunity to effectively buy the generational bottom, both with your money and potentially with

your career. As we see people continue to capitulate, companies going under, people quitting and going back to whatever boring jobs they had before they got on this roller coaster, you could argue that just like retail investors who are selling the bottom with their money, whether that's to pay taxes, buy a house, or just to pay those bills that they probably can't afford at this point, well, that's the same thing if you're now looking to exit the industry in general. We've got a lot to talk about today. I'm going to go ahead and bring everyone on right now. I've got Dean Skirker from Wonderfi, Dan Roberts from Decrypt, and Alex Tapscott from literally everything. Alex, I never even know how to introduce you because you're a man of many talents.

And Alex has obviously been here before, but this is the first time we're welcoming Dean and Dan. So, guys, we're excited to have you. Alex, last time we spoke, which was in person in New York, I think in October at Mainnet, we were a little more optimistic, right? We were talking about how the bottom was likely in and the future of crypto and all the things that Web3 was going to eat. Has anything changed in your mind as a result of the news we've had over the past, I guess, two months since, and obviously the FTX and SBF debacle? Yeah, well, you know what they say, when you try to pick bottoms, you end up with stinky fingers. And often it's impossible to time exactly when this stuff happens. But a lot of the fundamentals that we discussed in September are more or less

the same as they are today. But it's undeniable that the collapse of FTX, you know, obviously represented a huge fall from grace from one of the most well-known figures and also a big credibility hit for the industry. And I think as an industry, there's a lot of cleaning up that needs to happen, both in terms of, you know, how we think about centralized exchanges, how we think about, you know, personalities and figures in this space. I think probably we've relied too much on, you know, some sort of like hero complex when it comes to some of these big founders to try and lead us through this industry. And I think we need to return to the principles of what makes the asset class and the technology, you know, so compelling and powerful, which is that it is, you don't need to rely on intermediaries

to hold assets, to move assets, to use your assets. This is something, a technology that is peer-to-peer, that's self-custodial, and we need to lean into those features in order to grow from here. And guys, just real quick on the reputational hit. It's been interesting to me because you could fault the industry for that hero worship, for making Sam Begman-Fried this kind of idol. But that's not the same as the leap that too many people, mainstream places are making, which is the collapse of another company and they point and say, ah, see, crypto was a scam.

It was a fraud. It's a house of cards. People are equating another bad actor, now granted a very big one, one that too many people and industry kind of leaders had elevated with the whole industry. And even though it's not really the job of those of us who report on crypto news to try and defend the industry's right to exist, it is remarkable to me. And I try and dispel that with people and explain that, look, a company that behind the scenes was not doing what it said it was doing, you know, lending out customer funds, not holding them one to one, using its own shit coin for loans and investments,

funneling funds to a separate, separate entity. All that reflects on that one company and that one founder and his people. It doesn't equate with the whole industry, but that's the problem. I mean, Alex is right. It gives people who already think that all of crypto is stupid and irresponsible and for criminals another victory lap. And that's what happens every time. It happened with Terra, even though those two things were very different. Yeah. Go ahead. I just want to say something really quick. I'm sorry. You work in crypto

native media, obviously. So you view this through a different lens probably than the mainstream. Just as you were saying that, obviously, I alluded to it in the intro. We have the kid gloves on from the mainstream media. You know, Sam Bateman Freed was ready to save the world, but unfortunately, fraud got in the way, right? I mean, the Boston Globe had this yesterday was a tweet. Carolyn Ellison, math whiz and Newton native was bound for success. Then she got into crypto. You can literally replace the word crypto with meth, crack, like anything, and it would sound the same. It's exactly what you're saying.

Or how about that? It's one thing to say this company is fraud. It's another thing to say, crypto did this wonderful child. And when you see something like, what was the EV company that Trevor Milton was behind, and they tried to do a SPAC, and it turned out they were saying all our cars are hydrogen powered, and it was all a lie. People don't look, Nicola, people don't look at that and say, ah, so the entire EV space is a fraud and a scam and everyone should stay away. It's just one player. But when this happens in crypto, even though, you know, Bitcoin's been

trading 13 years, it's been doing what it's supposed to do. But in the big scheme of things, that's still pretty new. And so whenever there's a crypto scandal like this, people say, ah, the whole industry is a total joke and it's dangerous and it's for fraudsters. Yeah. I just want to jump in quickly, which is to say, I think that one of the silver linings of this is that the crypto media has really stepped up in an impressive way. Dan, I think we've all been in this space long enough to remember a time when the crypto media was basically just this like mouthpiece that that over inflated any small bit of news to try and like pump bags um that was the case for many years and now it's the it's the uh voice of reason in the room it's the it's the institution that's breaking stories that's providing like sound

analysis that's trying to like actually help people understand these issues rather than trying to put like a spin on it which is what what Dan is saying. You know, it's been extremely critical of a lot of players in the industry and a lot of the and very clear, clear minded, clear eyed about a lot of the challenges. Right. I think that's a sign of maturity for the industry. So just a little thing for Dan there. Yeah, I think, too, like when excuse me, when you look at the year as a whole and you look at the broader market downturn, I don't think it's uncommon with prior bad business models being exposed in market downturns that might have worked when we're in up-only mode. I think the magnitude of the FTX story, there's certainly elements from a media perspective

that are more compelling than any of the other names I mentioned, which probably draws more attention. But I think you're right. The idea that this is reflective on crypto entirely is obviously not accurate in my opinion. And I think if you look at the industry holistically, it really is like sort of the flushing out of poor business models. And we've seen that in prior cycles. And I think that's probably more relevant than looking at relevant than, you know, looking at FTX or SBF and, you know, drawing any type of conclusions around, you know, the broader crypto industry. It's unfair to even go ahead, Dan. Sorry. Well, that list Dean rattled off is just

so long that it is sort of stunning, right? Like, whoo, tough, tough year. I mean, you know, Terra and Doquan, 3AC and Celsius, Voyager, now BlockFi, which was always inevitable. You're right. And yet, you know, I'm thinking about this happened in 2017. You flush out the bad players and the industry builds and continues to grow. You know, I've been writing about Bitcoin since 2011. We've seen these cycles come and go. So it's just funny to me. You know, Scott, you're totally right. The Globe headline is a great example, but it gets to people. I mean, you know, my dad is in his early 70s. He lives in Boston. For him, the Boston Globe is the paper of record. For him, the Globe is the New York Times. He saw that story and emailed me immediately and said, oh, Caroline Ellison was from Newton. And, you know, he walked away from it saying, oh, a nice girl who got into crypto. Yeah, I'm telling you, it's the same as meth. But it's very disingenuous, as you guys have like aptly pointed out, to label the crypto industry as unique in this situation. Right. As we were talking, I pulled up on Bloomberg, the tech company job slashing tracker, Amazon, Apple, Adobe, Chime, Cisco, Digital Currency Group. That's one of us. DoorDash, you know, Intel.

I mean, literally everyone everywhere is firing people. Right. So why is the narrative different here? I mean, it's everywhere. Twitter. Let me jump in. So I think everything that everyone's saying is correct. It's correct that FTX is a company.

It's not the industry. It's a company that builds services on top of the technology, right? So the technology is a credibly neutral thing and it's not in question here. Blockchains keep running. Validators keep operating. Blocks keep getting added. Transactions keep occurring. Everything is working in the underlying technology. And so that is an important distinction. And it's also another important distinction to be made that the mainstream media and the crypto media are treating this differently. But there is a distinction between companies firing people and a bunch of companies going under because of mismanagement, bad risk management or fraud, right? Those are definitely

distinct things. And I think that we can say the former, which is that let's separate the bad actors from the underlying technology. We can say that, but we can also say, but what are the prescriptive things that need to be done here in order to push this industry forward? My view basically is that all of these centralized exchanges or anybody that's a custodial entity that is holding assets on behalf of people or businesses needs to be subject to, you know, stronger regulations. But we need to segregate the companies that operate on top of the technology with the technology itself. A good sort of frame of reference for this would be the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which basically regulated, you know, entities that use the internet, but did not regulate the internet itself.

And in fact, made it so that internet service providers were not subject to copyright laws if someone was sending something that was a copyright infringement item over the internet. They're basically a dumb pipe. So we need to create rules to segregate these things. I think the second thing is that the need to, the next crop of entrepreneurs needs to not just build CeFi lending platforms that like use a bunch of leverage and like try and get offer people the moon. They need to build decentralized applications that add, that provide useful services to most people. I think the big exciting thing from the last cycle

to me was the DeFi explosion of innovation, but it was still fundamentally geared towards like what I would call capital markets activities, a lot of like trading and margin lending and, you know, like speculation using perpetual futures and so forth. And that's fine. That's okay. We proved all these things can work. We proved AMMs could work. We proved, you know, decentralized loan books could work and so forth. So now let's just apply that to some more mainstream kinds of financial services and see if we can like drive more incremental users. I talked about the hero worship. So, you know, I think we need to sort of like downgrade individuals and their relative importance to an industry, especially with a technology that isn't supposed to rely on any

single entity or person. And then I also think you need to basically acknowledge that as much as self-custody is one of the big superpowers of this technology, especially if you're living in a part of the world where you're worried about inflation or about corrupt governments or inadequate financial infrastructure, for a lot of people, holding your own assets is definitely like a barrier. So we need to come up with like creative, simple solutions to allow people to self-custody their assets without having to like read a manual, right? And it's only if we can do that, that we can create like conditions for, you know, hundreds of millions of people to use the assets in the way I think that they're intended, or at least some of them are intended, right? Which is, you know, as a

medium of exchange or as a useful asset in a Web, right? Which is, you know, as a medium of exchange or as a useful asset in a Web3 application or some other, you know, creative way, not simply as a way to like buy and sell tokens. And I think that, you know, we need to be, we can't just be like, ah, fuck it, you know, like the mainstream media is wrong. It's just SPF, he's a big fraud.

It's like, no, let's use this moment as an opportunity to like reset and think about like how we move forward to help put this industry back on the right foot. Yeah, I would say to Alex's point around decentralized platforms and protocols, I still think the fact of the matter is looking out three to five years, I think predominantly most of the activity that will happen at the retail level will still exist on centralized platforms. It's just like, yeah.

And so I look at parallels within Canada with what happened in 2019 when two of the predominant platforms at that time, Quadriga and Einstein Exchange, the market in the short term. But with respect to regulation, it really lit a fire under the Canadian regulators to really get this right, or at least start to get, you know, put something in place. And so on the back of that, a framework was established by the Canadian Securities Administrators on how to regulate spot trading crypto platforms. Now, that's not the entirety of this ecosystem and certainly with you know D5 becoming as popular as it has or nfts or you know other use cases um it's not everything and it's not perfect but it's a starting point companies like ours being bit by and coinberry went through that registration process in 2021 and now you have a framework in Canada where at the very least spa trading of crypto assets is regulated by securities regulators in Canada. And so, you know, if I can sort of think about any positives on the

back of this, this might encourage regulators in the US and abroad to really take this seriously and understand the risk that their constituents are, you know, on placed under when they actually are participating in these platforms without that framework in place. So, you know, are are you know on placed under when they actually are participating in these platforms without that framework in place so you know my hope is that this will sort of be a catalyst in some ways for u.s regulation which i think will be naturally a huge boost to this industry going forward and then hopefully in other larger markets as well yeah i agree with dean sorry as a as a fellow can like person who's in the Canadian market, what you really want to do is try and bring as much of this activity

within centralized exchanges onshore so that the local regulators and also so that, and I mean through centralized custodial entities, right, so that the regulators can keep an eye on it. And that's also so those businesses can be subject to the law of the land in places like Canada and the United States. I do wonder, though, that there's so many things that like FTX International offered that FTX US was unable to offer, you know, beyond spot trading, the futures side of it, the synthetics and everything else, that there's always going to be something that the regulator in a place like Canada or the US is not comfortable with, that users want to access. They're always going to want to go to where that action is. So I think that, like Dean, my first point when I was sort of laying it out was, I think regulations like to bring more assets and more users on shore and bring these companies under the purview of regulators is obviously a very positive thing. But I think there's still always

going to be a limit to what that is able to achieve ultimately. Yeah, of course. And it's just, I think it speaks to the like the fast paced nature of this industry and how new products are always being developed and new use cases are always coming into market. And so, you know, you look at a world, you know, in 2021, where Canadian regulators have, you know, regulation in place around spot markets, you know, platforms like ours still see clients withdrawing, you know, crypto to decentralized protocols or to other platforms to take advantage of, you know, offerings that are not available in Canada. And so, you know, I think what we have in Canada is a good start, but I think you're absolutely right. Like, you know, as best as we can,

we need to encompass all of this activity, you know, within regulated platforms. And so, you know, Bitbuy just recently launched its regulated staking platform. And, you know, that's an example of regulators understanding the fast paced nature of this industry, understanding the risk that Canadians are placed under when they buy on a regulated platform and then withdraw it offshore to stake. And so I think you just need to see more of that evolution as the industry evolves. But I think starting with spot markets, which is predominantly where a lot of this activity starts to a certain degree, is probably the right first step. And Scott, if we just zoom in on the DeFi part of this,

it's been interesting to me. We talked about the victory lap for so-called no-coiners. It's also been a victory lap for DeFi advocates who say, well, this is why we always say, don't put your money on a centralized exchange. The problem with that is you're not going to see centralized exchanges just go away. I mean, you know, a company like Coinbase is able to say, well, you know, we don't do that with customer funds. We don't even have an exchange token. We always hold your funds one to one. We're publicly traded in the U.S. We have a bit more oversight.

Like the kind of new folks who came into crypto during the pandemic, Wall Street, mainstream investor types, they're not going to go on to Aave and Compound. I mean, they're just not. The friction there in the UX is still way too thorny and opaque for them. They can trust a centralized exchange. People say, oh, cold storage, use a hardware wallet. Most regular folks, if they're ready to even dip a toe into crypto, they're just not going to do that. So the people who are saying, well, this is why centralized exchanges don't work. Not quite. This is why centralized exchanges that behind the scenes were fraudulent don't work and were mismanaged.

So it's going to continue to exist, you know, both camps. And that's always fascinated me, that tension between the centralization of crypto, which is like the dirty secret of the industry, and then the OG idealists who say, decentralize all the things. It's going to take a long time. And there's always a sliding scale there anyways, because if you continue down the decentralization scale, you generally end up at like an Amazon web server, right? And so there's always a point where you have to understand, I think, that it's on a spectrum and it's not just black or white between the two. A couple other points there. As amazing as it sounds to live in a world of purely DeFi, last time I checked, I still need to pay my taxes, bills, kids, private school, mortgage in dollars. So there has to be an on and off ramp at the very least. And as idealist as it is to believe that DeFi is the future, which I do to a very large degree,

you also have to be realistic about the exploits and hacks that are happening there. So yes, DeFi hummed along beautifully as far as the loans being collateralized, being liquidated in an orderly manner. DeFi works, but that doesn't mean that everyone could just put all their money i i completely agree with that yeah like you think about the burden of you know a first-time participant in this market

setting up a self-hosted wallet and you know going through the motions of doing you know everything to self-custody and de-risk themselves entirely. My view would be a lot less people would be in the industry today. And so I look at, you know, on-ramps or centralized exchanges really as that entry point to make it super easy and, you know, for people to, you know, access these markets. And that's usually what I see is like the first point. What happens thereafter? You know, you buy a bit of crypto, you finally have a bit more interest, you start learning more, you know, you learn more about Ethereum or other assets, you start learning about how to custody your own assets and what that means from a technology perspective. You know,

so I look at it as like an education tool to get people into the market and then start learning about the benefits and how they can, you know, self-custody if they so choose. Yeah, but that was the downfall of Carolyn Ellison. You just described the gateway drug that led her right to that crack that ruined her whole life. Sorry, Alex. Yeah, just to build off of what everybody's saying. Yeah, I think of Web3, I think in order for Web3 to scale to, say, a billion people, you need to think of it more as like a Web3 tool set than a Web3, like full Web3. And so what's a Web3 tool set? Well, there are certain things that, you know, might be you could think about, right?

So like digital goods in general, I think, is like a Web3 tool, like an NFT or crypto asset or stable coin. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you, you know, keep it on a ledger and that you you know maintain a seed phrase all the time it could mean that you know instances you're trading on a semi-centralized platform like say an open seat right or you're um using a centralized exchange as an off-ramp to pay your taxes or it could mean um that you know if you're an enter and it's not just people if you're an enterprise that you know maybe you're you're fooling around with uh stable coins as a payment tool or NFTs as a marketing, you know, initiative, but you're not like reinventing, you know, turning yourself into a DAO or something. So I think that the way to, you know, it's not that we're trying to like red pill people with gateway drugs, though it is a little bit of that. It's more just, you know, practically speaking, there's a lot of things that are useful about Web3 tools that don't require you to do everything.

I think in Dean's case, like he mentioned the idea of an on-ramp. I think it's also, it's just, you have to think intuitively. Like most, I think most people or a big chunk of the population will never want to have a USB key with all their money on it. I just don't see that being the case. And so I just see that there will always be some role for partners in, in this industry. Now, I think that it, I don't, you can't predict human behavior. You might've said, you know, people wouldn't drive cars or they, you know, like the, the inventor, the Mr. Mercedes said that there will never be more than a hundred thousand vehicles because you can't train more than a hundred thousand chauffeurs.

Right. So like, he didn't think that people could drive cars of on their own so like you have to not assume people will only act a certain way forever but in general at least for the next decade or so you know i see that there's some role for counterparties and partners in the space now maybe it's something like multi-sig or multi-party computation or something where you hold a little thing and your partner holds one and maybe your bank and maybe the government or something. And there's some sort of way to make it simple for people to understand with an easy recovery process in case they do something stupid, which is like you're trying to make everything idiot proof, right? Secure and idiot proof at the same time is extremely difficult. So I don't know how that evolves. But like, in my opinion, you know, like some sort of

centralized parties are going to be important. The thing is, you don't, they're supposed to be, you know, they were they were intended always to be like an on ramp to the asset class, the industry. And what you want to do is basically like downgrade them from the industry to sort of a supporting role. And yeah, we need Chinese walls. I mean, we need them not to be custodians and not to be your bank. They should just be your exchange. Well, yeah, or some, well, there's that. There's the, I'm saying like, let's put them into one of many in the industry, but also,

yeah, we can disaggregate their services in the way that DeFi does, right? You segregate just exchange and custody and lending and all these different things into different kinds of buckets. Right. So that's another idea, too. But I just think that, you know, we need to be able to thread the needle here while saying, yeah, we should probably make sure that like Binance isn't 70% of all crypto asset volumes, which it is, because that seems like a choke point and a too big to fail issue, while also saying, well, but there's always going to be some need for, you know, parties like this to help to, you know, grease the wheels and move this industry forward. Alex, I know you need to go, right? It's 10 o'clock. So guys, everybody

check out Alex after this conversation. Check him out, guys. Yeah. Go find him on the Twitter, on the Twitter machine. Much improved, Elon Musk. Thanks for having me. Take care, everyone. Thank you. The social media boneyard. Yes. That's right. So, I mean, what do you guys think about that? Go ahead, Dan. Sorry. Well, I was just going to add, you know, the idea that we do still need centralized parties, it's so true, but it's something people in crypto don't like to talk about and like to acknowledge. I always use as an example, and I'm someone who believes that there will be really

cool use cases for NFTs. I mean, they're just tokens. I think we'll stop using that jargon because the very acronym NFT has become kind of poisonous and toxic. And yes, there is a speculative bubble where people were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a cartoon monkey. But I've seen at events like NFT NYC, like token gated parties. That's very cool. There's going to be use cases. The problem is I've had regular folks, friends who are only barely interested in the industry say to me, okay, I'm ready to buy an NFT. I'd like to buy an NFT. So what do I do? And even in describing it, I start to feel ludicrous. It's like, I say, well, you got to go to an exchange and you got to buy a little ETH and then make sure you have

a MetaMask wallet. You send the ETH to your MetaMask wallet. Then you go to the NFT site. You're probably going to have to convert your ETH into wrapped ETH, you know, wet. And then you can, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, even someone who's not a tech idiot, that's just too many steps. And so there are going to be services and and there already are, that help create bridges for people. And the true DeFi degens can poo-poo that, but that has to be the segue, as Dean phrased it, the on-ramp to getting to the true state of things that crypto people want. Because for now, Alex talked about how big DeFi got. Well, I mean, it's big in terms of the amount of money in DeFi liquidity pools.

But as I understand it, the actual number of different human beings who've invested in DeFi, it's like fewer than 3 million. I mean, this is still very small. I think way lower than 3 million. I was talking with Josh Frank from the Thai recently, and we had him on here, and he wouldn't give the numbers. We were kind of privately talking at Web3 in Vegas. And he was like, we were digging in pretty deep to some of these protocols and there was a day where it was like 70 people used uniswap yeah yeah this is niche 70 you know and yeah go ahead i think dan's point on um you know trying to explain to somebody how to buy an nfd for the first time is a great example and you know for someone like myself uh in many ways using my metamask wallet to buy an NFT for the first time is a great example. And, you know, for someone like myself, in many ways, using my MetaMask wallet to buy something is easier than, you know,

pulling out my wallet and punching in my credit card details. But certainly that's not for everybody. So I think, you know, I still think centralized platforms will play a very critical role in the next, you know, five to 10 years onboarding the next generation of crypto users. And I think, you know, to Dan's point, like the UX around some of these decentralized protocols is probably like the biggest prohibitor for growth right now. And so when, if and when these platforms are as simple as it is for non-crypto people to buy something on Amazon, as an example, I think you start to see, you know, a lot more utility and a

lot more people like coming around to it. I think right now the concept is, you know, completely foreign. And I've had the same conversation around, you know, how do I buy an NFT? Well, you know, sign up for Bitbuy, open, you know, buy Ethereum, open a Metamask wallet. What is that? How does that work? Store your keys, like, you know, your seed phrase, don't lose it. Like, I just think the burden is too high right now for mass adoption. And so I still think, you know, ultimately, on that basis, centralized platforms will play a meaningful role in the growth of this industry. And so if you have that view, you know, what is the best way to protect people and avoid instances like FTX or BlockFi or Celsius. It's really, you know, regulation that, you know, in some respect may not be perfect or complete, but is a starting point

that ultimately serves to protect the participants in this industry, which will, in my view, open up the doors for more participants to, you know, enter the space. And people in crypto, they sort of, regulation has become such a boogeyman term that they make the mistake of thinking that regulation means shutting down. And that's not the case. I mean, when Biden put out that executive order, which amounted to basically nothing, but it said, hey, let's get all the agencies on the same page about regulating the industry. He didn't say, let's make sure we shut this stuff down. It's evil and bad. He just said, let's create safeguards and rules of the road. They don't want regular people to lose their shirts. But I think the mistake people in crypto make is they

think regulation means they're going to kill and ruin all of these great companies. Well, we lost our shirts without it. And you could actually argue that the lack of regulation, and I don't really have a passionate position on it because regulation could go either way in the United States, frankly. So it doesn't necessarily excite me. But the lack of regulation and lack of clarity is what sent people offshore to places that they could lose their assets. So in the end, it was the lack of regulation that caused people to lose their shirts and all their money. And now, you know, I keep talking about this, but with FTX, Voyager and Celsius were horrible, right? BlockFi, it's horrible. But FTX is the crypto natives who are passionate about this industry and were actively trading and actively moving their coins around and actually using these things.

Now those people are broke. Well, and Scott, that's a really important point. I had a friend who, four weeks ago, when this all started in FTX Files for Anger, he said, well, shit, I had money in FTX. How am I going to get the money out? And I said to him, why did you have money in FTX? Because what people forget is the entire point of FTX, the value prop was, it's a bit more of an advanced, sophisticated platform. It's for serious traders who are trading on leverage and they're doing options trading. If you're just a regular person who's decided, I've seen enough headlines about crypto that I think I'd like to buy a little Bitcoin and ETH, you wouldn't go to FTX or shouldn't have. And so

it is interesting, you're right, that a platform that was more sophisticated, so to speak. And, you know, Sam was a hero until he wasn't. And people also forget before this latest collapse, he had already become a villain with True DeFi advocating overregulation. They were calling him a suit. And so, you know, maybe he was never the hero you wanted. But that is true, is that FTX was in some ways not akin to Coinbase. Although I think if you look at sort of their trajectory over the last, you know, year and a half with the Blockfolio acquisition, the big push to FTX US, they were clearly starting to open up and target retail more. Everyone wants to be everything. Arena, Tom Brady, right? I mean, listen, I mean, Dan, obviously, like you're the interim CEO of WonderFi.

You're pretty close to this, right? I mean, Kevin's been taking shots left and right. And Dan, obviously, like you're the interim CEO of WonderFi. You're pretty close to this, right? I mean, Kevin's been taking shots left and right. Kevin O'Leary, obviously, because of his involvement there. And, you know, I don't fault him for his involvement. Yeah, I mean, you look at, you know, the amount of people, the diverse group of people, investors that were associated with us. I mean, there were a lot of people with their reputation on the line. And when you look at a company that raises 32 billion from people like Sequoia Teachers Pension, Ontario Teachers Pension in Canada,

and some of the biggest investment groups in the world, I don't think you can fault any one individual or investment group for participating or being associated. Many ways I think they were duped by, you know, either fraudulent information or misleading information or by a character that was seemingly created in the last cycle with respect to SBF being this, you know, holier-than-thou, smarter-than-everyone figure.

And, you know, so I don't think it would be really fair to focus on any one individual for being associated with FTX. Not when it's everyone. Yeah, exactly. I mean, but that's a reason. I mean, that's the reason that like venture capital, when they raise the fund, they want a big name lead investor, right? Because there's this big name lead investor. So in that case, we could say it was Sequoia or BlackRock or whoever, right? Everyone was in FTX in some way. And then everyone goes, well, they obviously did their due diligence. Sequoia is not here without due diligence, so I don't need to do my due diligence. And it's just this endless

sort of tale from there. So you get the one big name or two or three, they're on an arena. Come on, of course, I'm going to give them money, right? And I think that... And I think if you look at the timing, too, you know, I think venture capital had largely been had not been actively participating in this industry. You know, they were the way they were last year. And with respect to, you know, investments like an FTX. And so, you know, could I envision a scenario in 2021 where FOMO creeps in and, you know, people feel like this is like the can't miss opportunity of a lifetime and, you know, making maybe overlooking certain red flags or just overlooking basic diligence. I mean, I could see a scenario where that could play out. And, you know, FOMO exists very much at the retail level. And, you know, would it be crazy to assume that it would exist at the institutional level, too, when there's like,, you know, strict competition for allocations and some of these, you know, these deals. Some of this was also like the, that kind of bullshitty American exceptionalism problem,

right? Because the mythos of Sam, like, you know, the Stanford professor parents and how many headlines have said math whiz about Caroline Ellison. And so, you know, I heard the argument. I was thinking about this the other day, maybe almost two years ago, back when Brian Brooks, the former regulator, was the CEO of Binance US. We were in an interview with him at one of our decrypt, you know, virtual events back before everyone was ready to do in-person again, you know, and all conferences went virtual. And he said that there was a little bit of this othering of CZ and of Binance.

And at the time, it just sounded like, well, someone who works for Binance, kind of, it's a little bit of a stretch trying to say, basically, if you paint Binance as shady, you're racist. But now you look and it's like, gosh, what a plot twist that the company and the founder who were always painted as dodging regulation. You know, how many times did CZ just outright refuse to say where Binance is located? He'd say, we don't have the headquarters. We're truly decentralized. And regulators were saying, well, you got to be based somewhere, buddy. And we need to know where to go after you. Where are you?

Drop a pin, buddy. And in contrast, like Sam was Mr. Washington and he was whining and dining congressional staffers. He was pals with Maxine Waters. And so there was sort of an automatic trust of him that in hindsight was totally ridiculous. And it was, you know, and the company wasn't even based in the U.S. It was based outside because the U.S. is so unfriendly regulation wise. So there's a lot of irony there. And I think there's a lot of soul searching that some of those VC firms do need to do. I don't give them I'm not sure I give them as much of a pass

as others are, even though I'm not trying to give a pass i'm just trying to explain how it happens and what you said actually reminds me very much and maybe it's just because i had paulo arduino on on friday from tether but how you just described the view of cz and binance largely reminds me how tether has consistently been attacked and viewed as the offshore shady one and just continues to keep on chugging and redemptions and like to dan's point you know even uh in some of the early uh you know articles on the back of this fallout you see you know blaming cz for you know taking out ftt or you know some type of like you know uh you know premeditated attack or plan to take out a competitor you know, some type of like, you know, premeditated attack or plan to take out a competitor, you know, when, you know, you kind of step back and say, okay, well, there's

$10 billion of client deposits missing. You know, I don't really think the story here is Binance going after a competitor. I think it's more so, you know, how was this platform operating, you know, basically from the beginning? And how could they misappropriate that amount of money? Like it's sort of like, again, and to the point about MathWiz or even like the drug use or whatever it might be, like it really is just sort of like missing the bigger story here, right? And both things can be true, right?

Like CZ saw a great opportunity to kneecap a competitor and he took it and jumped on it and he sparked the sell-off fine that doesn't change that you know there was fraud going on and so yes you can be you know he he exploited a a situation when he saw the alameda balance sheet you know gee i i wonder you know who leaked that balance sheet someone with with something to gain from FTX going under. But he also exposed that this was a bad actor and had fooled everyone. If one tweet can take you down, then you're Glass Joe, not Mike Tyson. You know what I mean?

You're the first competitor in the game. I mean, it's pretty insane. I think the Caroline tweet saying, well, buy all your FTT at $22 probably caused more damage than anything CZ said, truthfully. She literally could have tweeted, if this goes to $21.99, we're insolvent.

So guys, please. You know, the way that the crypto Twitter works, I mean, people see that and, you know, what else are they going to do, right? I mean, everyone's a contrarian and a conspiracy theorist. So that was an incredible trigger. Everyone sees that, they go, let's find out what happens at $21.99. Let's, yourarian and a conspiracy theorist. So that was an incredible trigger. Let's find out what happens at $21.99.

Which, like, quick, quick fun side note for all of us. Like, you know, happening in parallel. I mean, literally the same four-week period to the FTX story was the Twitter drama. And that is also a crypto story. You know, we've been covering that closely. And the people who are like, ooh, I'll go to Mastodon. It's like, no, you won't. I mean, this entire thing played out on Twitter. I mean, the entire industry, the biggest moves, the biggest moments, sell-offs, disgraces of DeFi founders who did XYZ. It all happens on Twitter. Twitter is not going anywhere. And so that's been a fascinating parallel. And even Musk you know, Musk and SBF had

talked about Twitter investment. It's all connected and it's all fascinating. I do even look at like, you know, Twitter accounts like this autism capital that people think is somehow associated to FTX. But I mean, they are, you know, probably covering this story better than most if not all of the mainstream media. Zach, Zach, XBT, all these blockchain sleuths. Yeah. But Dan, doesn't that, so you are, I mean, you're obviously crypto native media. Isn't there then, okay, we know that the mainstream media is, is totally punting and missing the ball on this, but isn't there then like a side where it's the native Twitter people who are also blowing it and it's too far in the conspiracy and there has to be a sort of a happy medium and way to thread the needle, which I would imagine where someone like Decrypt comes in. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the challenge that we go through. Like, look, I was at legacy media places before I went over to Decrypt.

I was at Fortune magazine for five and a half years and then Yahoo Finance five and a half years. And what I always was frustrated by, and I'm not like, you know, rah-rah, buy Bitcoin instead of the dollar. You know, I'm not out there giving investment advice. I obviously just think that crypto is fascinating and it's cool and it's here to stay, which I think is table stakes. You don't have to be like a crypto crazy to believe that. But what always frustrated me was the big places, CNBC, The Journal, The Times, Reuters, FT, they would only write when it was either

Bitcoin's tanking 8%, screaming headlines, screaming headlines or Bitcoin surging. Here's why. And so it was only sensationalistic as if nothing else interesting could be happening kind of below the surface. And I will say, even though so many places have covered the FTX thing with remarkable credulousness and sympathy, and I've been appalled by that, I do think that for the most part, big, big traditional financial sites have at least in the last year has discovered we need to care about this industry. We need to cover crypto. And that's new. And I'll give them some credit for that. But you're right, Scott. I mean, we try to be the adults in the room. What can be hard about reporting on crypto is when you have

like anons on Twitter who say something, but they say, well, but they're not, they would never call themselves journalists. So they're not held to the same standards. They don't care. And then we have to suss out, you know, how true is this? Very often in the last year, the things that start as rumors on crypto Twitter turned out to be a hundred percent correct, but not always. And, you know, lately there's, you know, the hot one right now, you alluded to conspiracy theories is people say, Sam was installed by politicians from the beginning. He was only supposed to fail spectacularly. And then they could use that as an example of why crypto is bad. Like, guys, come on. Come on, man, because I mean, it's not like the crypto industry is so powerful that they needed a conspiracy theory to take it down.

They could just aggressively regulate without having a fall guy to do it. So yeah, that doesn't make much sense. What is interesting though, we talked about sort of Dean, the self-inflicted wound by Caroline's tweet, right? That everybody sort of saw. Speaking of self-inflicted wounds, the new narrative right now,

and it seems to be that the Justice Department is even investigating it, you know, SPF for market manipulation, is that actually their Alameda or FTX aggressively shorting Luna and crashing that was an incredible, profitable trade for them at the time that ended up being the catalyst for their own demise, which would be a hell of a story of true self-pwn of all self-pwn. So do you think that that holds water? I mean, it certainly could.

And, you know, I mean, I've, you know, similar to Dan on crypto Twitter, you see all types of things. So I'm not sure where to decipher what's true or not. But, you know, I have read stuff to the effect of, you know, three arrows having this massive Luna position. And, you know, similarly to how, you know, the $22 tweet gets attacked by traders, you know, that position was attacked. And certainly, if you think about one large party having a massive long position on Terra Luna or UST, and another aggressively shorting it to get it towards liquidation and being on the other side of that, based on the fact that it went to zero pretty quickly, I imagine, you know, there was some profit made on the downside by some, you know,

firms, I can't speculate on who specifically, but, you know, I think it's just by the way, yeah, what you just described is beautiful. That's the free market, right? And that that's two counter traders. What's not beautiful is if it was happening on FTX and FTX knew the position as a result of that was able to target it directly because it was on their exchange. That's where it gets a little shady. Yeah, there was a Nansen report that we covered back on November 17. So this is not a completely new idea. And their conclusion was that the FTX collapse was triggered by the Terra collapse. Now, that wasn't making that connection that now we think was there. But I was always saying right after the bankruptcy that the irony of Terra in May and now FTX in November was that

even though they were very different entities, one was this algorithmic stablecoin, which is a concept that probably doesn't work, and the other was a centralized crypto exchange, there's something very similar at the heart of both. And that is you create a token and say, well, don't worry, because the value of X is tied up in Y, this other token. Well, what the hell happens when Y goes to zero? Right. I mean, basically you say they were lending out or doing agreements and commitments using FTT. Well, FTT was just a shit coin that they made up. Right. And so that's why I said earlier, you know, Coinbase gets tobase gets to say, having an exchange token isn't like evil per se. I mean, Binance has BNB, but it's about how you use it. And Coinbase gets to say, well, we don't even mess with that. We don't have an exchange token, which is also ironic because way back when Coinbase IPO'd, we interviewed a couple of different purists who said the crypto community is really disappointed in Coinbase. Because they don't have a token.

Why would they go to a direct listing on the stock exchange when they could just print their own money instead? Right. And now we can see how nonsensical that is. But to your point, inherently an exchange token, if it's used, if it has utility and has a very transparent and fixed supply, you know exactly where they're coming from. And it's actually, you know, reduces fees and stuff. As long as you're not collateralizing it for loans based on a theoretical value, it's really not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we still are here because we believe that some of this technology has utility, right? Well, that brutal CC tweet is still the best tweet I've seen from this entire past four or five weeks where he said like three lessons from this. And number one was don't use your own token as collateral. Yeah. And I think that's probably the bigger problem than having a token, truthfully. But, you know, I think it's like one of those things, you know, where I wouldn't be surprised if there was a link between what happened with Terra and what's ultimately happened here. You

know, when Terra blew up, three arrows took the, you know, the brunt of the, you know, public publicity of being wiped out as a result but you know the fact that they were the only uh you know fund or firm that was blown out by the terror collapse is you know just hard to believe right and so you you know you start to envision a world where a lot of these market participants and what you know it ultimately you know sort of uncovered through this is like the inter relation or connectivity between all of these firms, BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager, FTX, Riero. There is a very close connection here, maybe not related party, but certainly the way in which these platforms operated and borrowed and lent funds. And so were Riero the only ones that were

significantly impacted by Terra Luna? Probably not. And certainly, you know, those impacts may take time to resonate or get compounded by, you know, sending client money perhaps to cover some of those losses. Who knows something to that effect, but those issues can compound and get worse. And then when markets start to draw down again, you know, you can be exposed pretty quickly as we've seen. Dan, you, I mean, you, he just brought up BlockFi and you casually sort of said the, in passing the inevitable BlockFi collapse. I mean, they've been, they've literally for the last three years,

it's like Neo and the Matrix, like magically dodging bullets. It's unbelievable that they were after Voyager and Celsius when you look back. And no one needed me to point out, like this thing was always had a ton of red flags. But from the minute BlockFi, I mean, back, you know, even 2018 or 2019, when I was still Yahoo Finance, someone else, one of my colleagues who also hosted a live show would have on Flory, the founder,

often. And when they would say, you know, oh, yields of 16 percent or whatever it is on your deposits, I was like, you know, there's a reason you're not supposed to get that kind of yield. I mean, there's a reason that outside of crypto, you know, Marcus by Goldman Sachs and Ally and these other so-called high yield interest accounts, their example of a high interest rate was 2.5 percent. And so BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager, these lenders, I think it was very obvious from the beginning that there was something very dangerous about this model. And then if you remember what happened with BlockFi was multiple state attorneys general and other regulators were saying, we believe that your high yield crypto savings accounts are basically securities. And so they settled for $100 million, which is nothing.

And it's like, well, how does a $100 million fine to the SEC help anyone? And the only reason they survived a little longer, ironically, was FTX US bailed them out with a $400 million line of credit. You know, Celsius went under. Voyager should have gone under. Sam was Mr. Bailout, which is just insane. Looking back on it, maybe that was a distraction from looking at the underlying business. We had an interview with Sam where he said to my to my horror, not only was he, you know, happy with doing the bailouts, but he was

disappointed that other big crypto players weren't helping them do more bailouts. And that was just a stunning quote. I mean, even at the time and now even more so in hindsight. But, you know, BlockFi, I think, was always kind of hanging by a thread and was just teetering. I mean, they were always hanging by a thread. And then when you now dig into the bankruptcy, I mean, yes, they got this like, you know, credit line or, you know, facility from FTX US, but then they had a bigger loan than that credit facility out to Alameda. Right. And so it's like, did FTA, I mean, what kind of weird incestuous, like bring out the gimp kind of strange thing was happening here? Did Sam basically go like, yeah, I'll give you $400 million, but you got to give it back to Alameda to fill our hole.

None of it makes any sense. I mean, it's look at Gemini and Genesis, which I think was also an example. You know how we were all saying earlier, it's not fair that people equate this with the whole industry. That's still true. The retort to that that I think is also not untrue. It's like all these companies are two, as Dean was just mapping out, they're two sort of involved in reliance on each other. And that's how you get classic contagion. I mean, Genesis at first, when FTX went under, came out and said, don't worry, we're OK. And then, well, well, there is this one thing, which is we're going to have to pause redemptions and withdrawals on our on our lending arm because of FTX. And then Gemini comes out,

the Wink of Last Barriers Exchange, it says, well, and we will have to pause redemptions on our Gemini earned product, but only because our partner for that was Genesis. And it's like, you know, right. Maybe we should have known when Genesis basically had a default to two point one or two point three billion dollar loan to three AC that maybe we should have. It should have been more obvious to us that if Gemini was using Genesis for their earned product, that was problematic. Dean, you're obviously with WonderFi. I mean, you guys are still offering yield based products, right? How do you do that at this point in a safe and secure manner? I talked to Ben and Kevin in Vegas, and I asked basically that same question. And you know, Ben, who was the CEO at the time was basically like, listen, like every day I answer the phone and try to explain Celsius and Voyager's mistakes,

like the answer for them as if I did it, and so how do you like you know continue to offer a secure and safe yield product to retail when you're seeing all this that's happening i'm not saying you can't do it i'm saying like how do you continue to have customers and yeah so yeah so wonderfi's two uh main operating businesses are bitbuy and coinberry they are both regulated crypto trading platforms through can regulation. The way we offer yield today is through Bitbuy with a regulated staking product. So users can come in and stake their assets directly to the network. Today we offer Ethereum, Solana, Matic, hoping to roll out more coins in the near term as well. But everything we do from an operating perspective is

governed by securities you know securities laws in canada that have been established specifically for crypto trading platforms um so we feel pretty strong about our model uh you know uh we always uh felt more comfortable with staking as a yield uh offering uh compared to borrow lend because of the inherent counterparty risk that is associated with the borrow lend right um you know certainly i couldn't have predicted you know to the extent that the borrow land market encrypt that would blow up as dramatically as it has this year but i certainly you know think about you know from a regulated platform perspective how do we mitigate

those risks because anything we want to do, like staking, for example, we have to, you know, demonstrate to our regulators how we can offer this in a safe and compliant manner that protects users and, you know, who the counterparties are and why and how we are comfortable with using them. And so you look at a world where, you know, you're using stake, you know, you're staking and you're using someone who manages the validators, but it's all directly, you know, staked out of cold storage and into the validator itself and directly to the network and mitigates any sort of counterparty risk. So I think, you know, for us today, you know, we're fortunate that, you know, the yield on our platforms is generated through staking, which in my view, mitigates a ton of the counterparty risk or concerns. Completely different business model. Yeah. I mean, it's a great, it's a completely different business model. So both of you guys, so listen, all of this is fun to talk about in hindsight and we're really good at it, right? At figuring it out. I'm not asking for price

predictions or anything wild, but do we believe, do you believe that we're going to see more huge news or do you think it'll be sort of a slow drip of contagion? There's more contagion out there, right? I mean, there's no question about that in my mind. So what comes next, I really, is the question. Like, what's your prediction for how the crypto industry absorbs these problems or are the problems going to keep on coming? Dean? I'm happy to start. Look, I mean, yeah, obviously I can't predict what's going to happen. But, you know, like I said, I see a ton of parallels with what's happened in, you know, this year in crypto with what happened in Canada in 2019.

And so, you know, you have these, you know, very public blow ups, you know, certainly in the short term that create a lack of confidence in most likely crypto trading platforms, centralized platforms, but certainly the industry as a whole. You know, I believe on the back of what's happened this year, there will be significant pressure on regulators in the US and abroad to get this right, or at least start the process of having regulation in place. Ultimately, I think that's important for the industry to grow and certainly for the industry to regain the confidence of retail investors and future adopters of this technology. And so for me, I think, and just to add to that, you know, I think stable coin regulation will be a big, you know, area of focus next year as well. So, you know, I look ahead and, you know, albeit short term volatility, albeit the biggest markets for crypto in the world. You know, certainly I see that being a, you know, a positive, you know, advancement, you know, whether that takes place over six to 12 months, that's hard to tell.

But obviously, ultimately, I think that will go a long way towards regaining, you know, the trust of the public, the trust of stakeholders, the trust of potential investors or participants in the industry. Yeah, I like that take. I'd say the current kind of crypto madness was not just from FTX. Let's remember that for basically the entire past year, the crypto market was suddenly behaving in lockstep with tech stocks and was very correlated to the actions of the Fed and to inflation. And so that needs to change first for crypto to look up. I mean, I don't make price predictions, but I will say, I'll sort of cutely phrase it this way. If the past is any indication, crypto will not stay down

forever, right? I mean, these things come in waves and come in cycles we've already seen some green shoots in the last couple weeks and actually bitcoin has been pretty stable in sort of that high teens range for like a few weeks now or maybe a couple months um in terms of the industry like you know how do you regain trust by actually uh building products that work and you know all you can do is that all you can do is continue to execute. If you're Coinbase, like you can suffer the slings and arrows of your stock being a dog, you know, in the short term. And they did layoffs, everyone did layoffs, Dapper Labs did layoffs. And I noticed they all said, sorry, we overhired. Well, lessons learned. But a lot of these companies, even the good ones, they behaved as if it was always going to be up only everything was always

going to be good forever. They should have been kind of stockpiling their nuts for winter um and so i think not just from ftx but from the entire past 12 months there's a lot that the crypto players that are going to stick around have learned you hope and so the next year regardless what happens with price like there's going to be a lot of building it's going to look a lot like 2018 and i remember reporting on crypto in 2017 everyone Everyone wanted to do it. Bloomberg and others suddenly assigned a bunch of reporters to cover crypto. Then the price crashed in 2018. They went, oh, I guess crypto is done now. Everyone will put some of those crypto reporters on the real estate desk. And gee, it's like, narrator, it wasn't dead. So that's what I think

probably 2023 will be like. I wouldn't expect a mania like we saw in the start of the pandemic, but I think you'll see building and growth and some positives. And you'll probably see some more companies getting in if they really believe that all they need to do is just believe that this isn't going to disappear tomorrow, which we know it isn't, despite the collapse of one big company. This is the perfect time to build and head down and focus on product and build the product that people will want in the next cycle. That's become a cliche to say, but it's the truth. It is. Now they're going to put all those real estate reporters that they moved from crypto somewhere else when that market completely crashes and dies.

Right. And to your point, they all clearly believed the bull market was going to go on forever with their hiring. And that seems to be the case. But I do also think there were challenges where they literally just had to hire people to service the actual amount of customers flowing in. I mean, I remember when Doge hit, you know, and I was talking to Steve Ehrlich from Voyager. And he was like, we got a million people in like a month and customer service can't onboard a million people. So it was like these forced hirings to some degree to it. And when I had CZ last on, which was a while ago, he said, you know,

he was taking customer service calls and there weren't enough people like available to work in China that he could hire to, you know, get the job done. So I think that it's a disaster of its own making to some degree, but it is good to see that they're at least tightening their belts. I mean, we have someone here, architect Jeff is a great way to finish. He said, the takeaway from all this is stockpile your nuts. So I think that's a great way. Dean, Dan, Alex earlier, guys, thank you so much. That was really one of the most spirited and enlightening and fun conversations that i've had uh here in a long time guys everyone you can follow all of them i'm going to get there alex tapscott was at alex tapscott um bit by underscore dean and read dan

right which i love r-e-a-d dan w-r-i-t-e i will read you i've been reading you right for a long time so uh appreciate you guys. I will be back. Of course, tomorrow, everyone, 9 30 AM Eastern standard time on Fridays, we do a weekend review. And I know we've kept you guys for three minutes too long.

So we're going to get out of here. I'll see everyone tomorrow. Thanks again, guys. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Let's go.