Unchained - Which Types of Crypto Assets Make for Good Treasury Companies? - Ep. 885
Episode Date: August 12, 2025Subscribe to the new Bits + Bips channels! 📺 YouTube 🎧 Podcast → Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Fountain🐦 X / Twitter In this episode of Unchained, Guy Young, founder of Ethe...na Labs, and Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, unpack the emerging wave of Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) and why altcoins may be the next to follow Bitcoin and Ethereum onto public markets. They explain why StablecoinX, a new infrastructure company within the Ethena ecosystem, is merging with a SPAC to go public on Nasdaq under the ticker “USDE,” anchoring its treasury with Ethena’s ENA token. With $360 million in backing from investors like Dragonfly, Ribbit, Galaxy, and Polychain, the deal is testing whether public equity markets are ready for altcoin-native treasuries. Guy and Rob also discuss why some crypto wrapper stocks are trading at massive premiums, how capital gets misallocated in crypto, and whether ETH staking rewards represent real yield or just inflation. They debate whether this trend is creating lasting infrastructure or just new packaging for old narratives. Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Mantle Re Guests: Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🧠 3:29 Why Ethena worked with a team launching an ENA corporate treasury company 💰 10:38 Ways to structure public crypto treasury vehicles 🕵️♂️ 16:53 Whether treasury vehicles are just a flashy wrapper for vaporware 📉 22:28 Why Guy says there’s way more VC capital than good ideas in crypto right now 📈 31:20 How some DATs are trading at eye-popping premiums 🤔 37:15 Why Dragonfly backed TLGY but skipped other Bitcoin, ETH, or SOL plays 🏗️ 40:24 How the structure of these public vehicles shapes their value 🔄 47:39 What makes convertible debt different from SPACs or PIPEs 🧾 49:20 How investors should think about these new crypto treasury companies 📊 55:43 How Wall Street is being pitched on Ethena and USDE 💥 59:16 Whether this trend is legit or just another bubble waiting to pop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Putting vaporware in an equity wrapper doesn't disguise the fact that it's still vaporware that sitting underneath there.
And like an equity wrapper doesn't change the fact that it's a bad business model or doesn't generate revenue or any of these different pieces.
And I think what this is going to be the catalyst for is actually identifying what is that Mag 7 within crypto where these are the real businesses that are generating real revenues and continues to sort of compounders going forward.
In crypto, what has happened is you've had a lot of traders masquerading as VCs.
We're not playing the premium to Nav game.
That is not what I think is the long-term sustainability of this type of vehicle.
But this type of vehicle exists for is an access vehicle, and it's a distribution vehicle.
And so that's what we were really excited about.
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and wherever you get your podcasts. Today's topic is corporate treasury companies,
Who should do it, when and why.
Here to discuss are Guy Young,
founder of Athena Labs, and Rob Haddock,
general partner at Dragonfly.
Welcome, Guy and Rob.
Thanks, for you.
So, this show was inspired by a tweet thread
that Guy wrote about why Athena
decided to do a corporate treasury vehicle.
So just some background,
Athena is doing a SPAC merger
with TLGY Acquis Acquis Acquisition Corp,
and they will be creating the entity's
stable coin X assets,
which is going to be a validator
and infrastructure business
supporting the Athena ecosystem.
It's raised $360 million in what's known as pipe financing, which stands for private investment
in public equity.
And Dragonfly is one of many investors.
The others include Ribbitt Capital, Blockchain.com, Pantera Capital, Parify Capital,
Haute, Hot Ventures, Polychain, Galaxy, Wintermute, and others.
So, you know, let's start off with how it is that you decided to, you know, bring this new
company into existence and why you thought it made sense.
and what problem you were trying to solve. Guy, do you want to start?
Yeah, for sure. And maybe before we jump into that, I think, obviously, the comments that I'm making today are like my own views, and I'm not actually running the vehicle that's been set up. So there's a separate management team that's sort of running it, making the day-to-day decisions. But I'm obviously supportive of it and advisor to the vehicle itself.
Yeah, so I think the context here was we were approached at the beginning of this year. Actually, I think before we'd seen as much frost within the segment of the market,
terms of new vehicles coming to market. And the broader thesis was basically, Tadfai has a lot of
interest in digital dollars, the growth of stable coins and that thematic. And that was actually
before Circle had actually come out with their IPO. We'd been in discussions with the team
since then. And I think after we saw Circle come out, I think it became very evident to us that
there's just a very clear mismatch between the demand for these thematics. And then I think
the supply of ideas that you could actually express that view. And so I think one circle had
come out. We start to engage a bit more seriously around this idea. And the basic thesis that we have
and it's something that I sort of outlined in the tweet that you mentioned is that we have like
almost zero interest in terms of some of the dynamics that you're seeing in the market right now where
these vehicles are just trading on a premium to nav and, you know, people are paying a dollar
50 for a dollar of underlying assets. I think that that is something that any sensible person can look at
and sort of argue that it shouldn't persist through time. I think the view that we have there is that
from a macro perspective, I've had some concerns around the flows within cryptos and, you know,
specifically within else for a while now where there's very, you know, very clearly an excess amount
of supply coming to the market from all coins and just not that much demand to sort of meet it on
the other side. And one of the data points that I referenced in that tweet is that the old coin
notional market cap sort of peaked at the exact same level in 2021 and 2024, which is roughly
$1.2 trillion. And I think the view that we have,
is that all coins or businesses that are sort of originating from crypto at some point have to mature
and grow up where they're actually investable from people that are sitting within TradFi
and equity markets. And if you're going to take that step from an industry or subsegment
of the industry that's worth roughly a trillion dollars. And if that's going to grow at three or five
or ten trillion dollars over the next few years, you need to start, you know, establishing the
connective tissue between these assets and then the investors that are sitting within Tradfi.
So for us, it was really just a thesis around trying to deliver, you know, a theme and a narrative and a business to people who are clearly in demand and want to sort of express that view.
And then I think just broadening the capital base of investors who can actually access our products and Athena itself.
So, yeah, that's a super high level view.
And Rob, for you as an investor, what was your perception about why this was a good idea and why you wanted to invest?
Yeah.
So I think Guy's point, and specifically as it relates to, you know, ENA,
And, you know, his business makes a ton of sense.
You know, maybe to back up a little bit from a Dragonfly perspective, we've primarily set out these vehicles.
So we haven't invested in any of the Bitcoin vehicles.
We haven't invested in any of the Ethereum vehicles, none of the Salonah vehicles.
You know, our perception has been that there's actually good access points for, you know, institutional investors,
and especially for us as crypto investors to get exposure to those assets.
But there are, I think, certain types of protocols where, you know, this makes sense.
And those are the ones where we've maybe spent a little bit of more time.
And today, the only one that we've actually invested in in the pipe has been,
TLGY as you mentioned.
But, you know, I really bucket into a few things.
One is call it, you know, the large caps, the bitcoins, the Ethes, the Solanas.
You know, Bitcoin and Eth, obviously already have ETSs out there.
You know, they are things that we see, you know, institutional investors have interested in already.
They already have ability to get access to.
But, you know, maybe what they don't have is they don't have access to.
you know, different types of financing rate. So, you know, obviously a micro strategy,
strategy has an ability to go and raise, you know, more equity capital. But then as I've gotten
scale, they've also been able to raise debt capital as well. And, you know, as I think, you know,
anybody who's taking finance before understands that debt is cheaper than equity. And so that's a way
for them to essentially increase that Bitcoin per share. That we, we have not felt that's right
for a call it a venture capital investor, but there's obviously like hedge funds and traditional investors
where they do want that type of exposure. On the east side, you know, someone,
similar, except it's a little bit of a different story. The story there is, of course, like on the
ETFs, you can't get yield, right? You can't stay. You can't do any sort of defy activity. You can't
make that Ethereum productive. If you look at all of the Ethereum that is sitting in, or at least
the story around a lot of these new vehicles, it's around making Ethereum productive. And we see the
same thing with the Solana vehicles as well. And so it's taking full advantage of what being
on-chain means while also giving exposure to those traditional.
investors. And so, you know, that I think has actually been somewhat interesting for those people.
And then there's these protocols like, you know, TLGOI and Athena that the, there's a lot of
excitement about, you know, what is happening on chain and what the protocol can do.
Athena is one of the fastest businesses ever to, you know, $100 million of revenue.
Like, people want access to growth. You see it in the public markets right now. People want
access to what they believe will be the next paradigm of finance. And giving them that access to
Athena, we thought was important. And we've long been backers of Athena since the earliest of Browns.
And we're excited to, you know, kind of support them as they, you know, continue to grow the business and
provide access to, you know, that type of growth and stable coin, you know, thesis, you know,
directly to those investors who otherwise have a really hard time accessing through, you know,
other types of points of entry, crypto and, you know, call it those types of assets. So that's why we were
really excited to back it. And I think to guys' point, you know, we're not playing the premium
to Nav game. Like, that is not what I think is the long-term sustainability of this type of vehicle.
What this type of vehicle exists for is it's an access vehicle and it's a distribution vehicle.
And so that's what we were really excited about. Yeah, I think something that's becoming clear here,
kind of in this stage of crypto's adoption, is just that, you know, so much of crypto's history
was built on retail and, you know, just this kind of organic grassroots phenomenon.
And now I think both the cryptic community and just like the wider world are becoming aware
that there's just so many different pulls of capital.
And actually, there are other pulls of capital that are interested in this asset class,
but they don't have good, you know, and easy ways to get exposure.
And so that's why we're seeing not even just, you know, like these basic buckets that we're talking
about, but even just when you look at all the different variations that micro strategy has been doing
with each of the ways that it's structuring, you know, like STRK or STRF or STRC, like all these new
things are coming up with, you know, even like when you get into the details like that, like there's
just so many different ways that you can package this up. So I did want to ask, you know, like
maybe can you, can you walk us through what all those are? Because I do think, you know, like,
like even for somebody like me, because, you know, before covering crypto, I didn't cover
like traditional financial markets. So for me to even understand like, oh, okay, the people that are
or the investors and ETFs are different from the investors in like a strategy or whatever,
even in the different versions of that. Can you just kind of talk about why these even exist
and sort of what the spectrum of them are? So for strategy, if you actually look at the shareholder
base, it's pretty institutional, right? It's not a retail shareholder.
And there are obviously, if you go on Twitter, you see a lot of retail investors tweeting about it.
But that's not actually, you know, when you go look at the register, what you see.
And in fact, you know, one irony of what has happened here is that Vanguard, which is, you know,
one of the big traditional asset managers who has long been very bearish Bitcoin.
And they actually refuse to offer Bitcoin ETFs to their customer base is now actually, I believe,
the single largest holder of MSTR.
Right. And the single-watch order MSDR because that's what their customers are up, right?
And so what you're seeing is you're seeing this divergence of people who are, you know, excited about the Bitcoin story, but maybe are also excited about, call it, like, getting a little bit of leverage on the Bitcoin story and want to be able to also put their weight behind, you know, an evangelist like Michael Saylor, who they believe can, you know, increase that Bitcoin per share.
On the ETF side, what we've seen is more call it like endowments and sovereign wealth funds.
People who want direct exposure to Bitcoin are excited about Bitcoin, but have concerns about custody
or they have concerns about potentially some of the counterpart is involved.
Like they don't, you know, Coinbase big public company.
But if you go talk to the biggest pensions in the world, all of them still don't want to actually
custody with a Coinbase.
They're much more comfortable with a state street or somebody that they've known for a long
period of time. And so they'd rather have, you know, an operation that they understand, which is,
you know, call it a share register versus, you know, underlying Bitcoin. And they'd rather have
that at, you know, State Street, right? And so we see, you know, a lot of that playing out.
What we also see in micro strategy is because they have, call it, these different investments or
do these different, you know, products across the capital structure, you see a lot of, you know,
convert investors who are specifically hedge funds who play, call it volatility.
who potentially want to invest in this different part of the capital structure
that allows them to get different types of exposure
in the way that they call it hedge their books
or the way that they play this convertor that exists.
And so it's actually a much more sophisticated,
call it hedge fund investor who gets into that part of the capital structure primarily.
And then on the debt side, what you've seen is a lot of credit funds
actually want a little bit of exposure to, you know, Bitcoin
or they want a little bit of exposure to,
this type of growth, but it's not in their LPA. It's not in their mandate that their investors
have given them. And so micro strategy debt allows them potentially to put a little piece of
their book into this volatility, into this potential upside that is rounds out a very thoughtful
kind of cost of or kind of a return target that they have. And so we've seen a lot of different
types of institutional and sophisticated investors wanting to invest in different parts of the capital
structure depending on how, you know, exactly what their mandate is and how they want to structure
their their type of investing. And so it's actually not as much of a, call it a retail play
for those Bitcoin vehicles. I think for, as we get to the longer tail assets, that's going to
change a little bit. Now, you still see the same investors in the convertibles because
frankly, a lot of the convert investors do not care about the underlying asset. What they care about
is the structure of the convert itself.
But when you think about the long-term holders,
there is a lot of excitement in retail,
specifically for stable coin exposure.
There's also a lot of excitement for,
and call it the more fundamental, you know,
buy-in-hold type of asset managers
who want long-term exposure to, you know, stable coins as well
as, and you see that in the circle shareholder base.
And so the shareholder base is a little bit different
when we talk about the capital structure of micro-strategy
versus the capital structure of something like a TLGY.
Yeah, and I think it's an important point that Rob is touching on there with micro strategy.
And I think when we talk about the sustainability of these premiums going forward,
I think what we will see is like a divergence or dispersion of strategy versus everything else that's in the market.
I think one thing that people don't appreciate is that Michael Saylor's ability to raise leverage
or construct the capital structure that he has is not accessible to everyone.
So individuals do not have access to non-callable, non-liquidatable leverage on BTC,
which is an incredible piece to add to Bitcoin on top.
And you'd actually want to pay more than one times Bitcoin
to actually get exposure to the capital structure that he's put in place.
I think one thing that's going to look quite different here
is that your ability to put in place the capital structure
that he has on assets that aren't Bitcoin and maybe ETH,
I think is going to be a bit more challenging.
And so a lot of these old coin treasuries,
including what we're sort of trying to do with Stablecoin X,
I think we'll have a very different look and feel there
where the reliance on debt to create value per,
per share is going to be much reduced here.
And I think it's just more around the broadening of exposure and distribution, as Rob said.
And I also want to just like also make something very clear,
at least from my perspective and I could disagree with this, is that I don't think it's
actually appropriate to put a lot of leverage on these longer tail assets because they are more
volatile.
And you will see, you know, potentially this thing's trade under NAV or, and actually,
I think it's a inevitability at a lot of these trade under NAV for some period of time
depending on what you kind of part of the cycle we're in for the crypto cycle.
And so I think that is fine because this is a distribution story.
It is not a financial alchemy story in the same way, you know,
micro strategy is more of a financial alchemy story.
And so it's just a different product for different people.
That's so interesting.
Yeah.
And I definitely want to talk a little bit more about micro strategy in a little bit,
as well as what you were saying about how some of these may trade below nev.
But before we do that, I wanted to kind of look more at the token side before we kind of get into the details on all these different structures.
And this is more of like the skeptics view.
And I'm just curious for your response to the skeptics view.
You know, there would be people who would say, like for instance, in guys tweet that that sparked this, you know, whole podcast.
He said something like, oh, you know, retail isn't buying in what is 99% vaporware anyway or retail isn't buying more of it.
you know, other than the $1.2 trillion or whatever it was that he said it was capped at.
Or anyway, point is, I was just wondering, like, you know, do you, like, so a skeptic would say
that it's that crypto hasn't offered, you know, kind of real substantial improvements to these,
you know, to these retail investors.
And they now understand that the paper where they don't want to be fooled again.
And so it's almost like now, now the crypto community is just trying to do,
to this other crowd that is like, you know, not, not hasn't wised up.
So I was just curious, like, do you know, do you have a response to people like that?
Or what would you say to people who think things like that?
Yeah, I actually agree with that point of view.
So the final tweet that I sort of put out was saying that, um, putting vaporware in an equity
wrapper doesn't disguise the fact that it's still vaporware that's sitting underneath there.
And like an equity wrapper doesn't change the fact that it's a bad business model or
doesn't generate revenue or any of these different pieces.
I think the point that I was making actually was that.
And I think it's something that you've seen the cycle versus 2021, which was an increased amount of dispersion between assets within crypto where you've really seen different types of assets completely disconnect themselves from the rest of the market.
Where in 2021 it was basically just like everything goes up together and everything comes down together in the same way.
I think one example here, and I won't talk about Athena, but I think Hyper Liquid here is a very good example where the amount of cash flow that's generating just as an incredible business means that it's completely disconnected from everything that's happening within the space where if it continues to print cash flow, there will always be a buyer there, whether it's themselves or someone else to sort of step in there and actually just own that as a good business. And I think the point that you're making is actually, I think the outcome of what we're describing here is actually we're in agreement, which is a few select coins which can have like real
revenues can have real business models and have real users on the other side, I think we begin
to see that those assets dispersed from everything else because I think that those are actually
assets that traffic and underwrite and they will have a different kind of bid than assets
that aren't in the same sort of format.
And maybe to put a really fine point on that, that's a good thing, right?
And I think a lot of the investors you scroll through Twitter, they're upset about the fact
that if you look at on-chain volumes and, you know, April and May and, and, and
March, the on-chain volumes were awful. We were talking about less volumes than we've had since,
call it, you know, the depths of the bear because people were in, you know, essentially they were
the trade non-centralized exchanges, but it wasn't even there really either. They were trading
equities, right? What actually happened is all of the volatility that has previously existed on-chain
had kind of moved into equities in a lot of these equity vehicles. And we also saw it in Robin Hood,
we saw it in Coinbase. And it's because people were trying to find ways to under
right most of what was happening in crypto, and it was hard. And frankly, it's impossible, I think,
in many ways. And so what we've seen is we've seen a sophistication of our market. And that
sophistication has also meant that there is going to be winners and losers. There is going to be
more dispersion. There is going to be a more traditional, you know, fundamental style underwriting.
And so things like Athena and Hyper Liquid and some other core DFI protocols, they have done well.
They've done well because they have cash flows. They have users. And they offer a product to people that
they cannot get elsewhere.
Most of what exists in crypto, and we see this all the time, I was chatting with somebody
earlier this week who was saying the list for new token launches through the end of the
year is incredibly long because everybody is trying to get out to market.
And it's all of these project founders who are just worried about the market and not worried
about product market fit.
And that has been the problem with crypto is that people think they can get to market or
get public quote unquote with these tokens earlier than they can prove that they have a
protocol that people want to use. And those things, that's misaligned incentive. And that's been a
big part of the problem. And so what I always tell the founders is build something people want to use,
then worry about launching a token. And that hasn't been the ethos of crypto because, you know,
things have just done well based on the fact that there's a lot of hopes and dreams and wishes. And
we also believe that, you know, blockchains and crypto are changing the core of financial market
infrastructure, but build that product, get people to use it and then get worried about, you
what your public coin prices. And that just hasn't been what's been happening in the past few years.
I was just going to say to echo what Rob was saying there, I think it's actually an extremely
healthy development in the market. And if you actually look at what's happening in equity markets,
it kind of mirrors what you see now, which is it's called Mag 7 for a reason. All of the
all of the sort of returns that come out of equity markets are just seven companies driving
the entire thing. And winners just continue to compound on themselves in a very aggressive way.
And I think what this is going to be the catalyst for is actually identifying what is that
MAG7 within crypto where these are the real businesses that are generating real revenues
and continues to sort of compound as winners going forward. And I think it's no different
to what you've seen within equity market so far. Okay. So again, before, because I really do want to
dive it much more deeply into this, you know, treasury company trend. But I did just want to ask
one more question about kind of like problems that existed in crypto that maybe led to this
moment, which, you know, Guy, in your tweet thread, you mentioned what you call the significant
challenges that Athena faced with VC unlocks, you said, quote, I personally made countless
mistakes with fundraising and think about these mistakes daily. Crypto has a severe capital
misallocation problem with private VC capital far outweighing liquid capital to sustain
token valuations post-TGE. And we're not here to criticize Rumber or his place in the ecosystem.
But I just would love to hear you talk a little bit more about what that problem has meant for
tokens generally and why you feel like, you know, the corporate treasury company is potentially.
at least one solution to that.
Yeah, so I think it's not actually just my comment that wasn't like an issue with VCs.
I think they still play an incredibly important part of like the lifecycle of creating new products.
It takes money to build these things.
And it wasn't criticism, I think, to VC in general.
I just think there's a very obvious oversupply of VC capital in the market now relative to good ideas.
And especially in oversupply relative to the amount of capital that's sitting on liquid markets to actually carry a project from T.
through its life cycle afterwards.
I think the other piece that I'd also just point out is that it's not actually the capital
allocator's fault.
I'd also say it's that it's the builder's fault as well, which is if we built enough good
products and enough good businesses that could justify their valuations, then more money
would find its way into the space to bid those things.
And so I think we see a lot of people complaining about, oh, there's no liquid funds in the
market.
No one's sort of bidding these tokens on the open market.
Well, if you create things that are actually valuable enough, you know, there's a lot
the money in the world that's sort of chasing down these opportunities to buy things that are
actually growing fast and producing revenue. And so I think it's actually a two-sided problem.
It's not just there's too much VC capital in the space and not enough liquid. It's actually,
there's also too few good ideas that are actually out in the market and good businesses for
people to allocate towards. But I do think it's something that's naturally going to sort of
play out over the next few years in terms of right-sizing the VC capital that sits within the space.
I think there's just too many large funds who struggled to sort of allocate into ideas that
sort of make sense.
Obviously not aimed towards Dragonify, who as far as I understand have done pretty well the cycle.
But I think it's, yeah, the longer tail of funds who have probably run out of good ideas to fund the cycle,
which I think will naturally sort of downsize as the return sort of show through the cycle.
It's great to hear that Guy is not criticizing V.C. as his largest VC backer.
on this podcast.
But listen, we're a huge fans of Guy.
I think a lot of what he said, I would actually echo,
which is that there just has been too much VC capital
for a space that is not that big, right?
It's an industry that I think, you know,
we want to be bigger than it is.
We're so excited about the future of capital markets
that will exist on chain.
And so a lot of, you know, capital flew into that space and that idea.
And it funded a lot of things and a lot of founders
that frankly, haven't been able to build.
And I think that in many cases haven't even wanted to build sustainable long-term projects.
And I do think there's this misalignment in the market structure where, and I talked about it a little bit on the last question about how these projects get, you know, quote-unquote liquid or public really quickly, right?
If I think about how venture capital works and traditional markets, you know, I go do a seed round.
The likelihood that that company finds a real product market fit within the first,
you know, call it next year or two, is relatively small.
The likelihood they raise a series A is relatively small.
The likelihood that they end up getting big enough that they can sell at, you know,
premium or go public is relatively small.
And those things take, you know, 10, 15 years.
You look at some of the best investments of all time in the venture capital world.
There are, you know, investments into companies that people have held for 15 plus years, right?
In crypto, what has happened is you've had a lot of traders masquerading as VCs who have said,
hey, listen, I've got some capital and I'm going to be a long-term investor,
all investing this founder who's going to go build this protocol.
But it's open source software.
And in many cases on the app side, it's not that hard to build that piece of open-source software,
and you can do it with a relatively small amount of capital.
And then you can launch your project in, call it a year or two.
And then people are launching tokens right out.
after that. And so you get this like wealth effect that is this is a release of wealth
effect on paper. And it's unclear if you can can sell it really, really quickly. And so the VCs,
the founders, the teams, the LPs of the VCs, all are looking at these, you know, quote unquote
marks or their wealth and saying, how do I get this liquidity really quickly? And that is
misaligned from an incentive structure perspective from building a long-term sustainable
business. Right. And so there's, it's very rare that you get founders like guys.
who have said, hey, like, we've done this great job.
We have this token that's worth a lot.
And now we're years into this project.
And we still, the job's not done.
We still want to go and build this, like, great business over time.
And because there is so much money that's kind of sloshing around.
But it's also rare from the VC side that people aren't looking at that and saying,
oh, I want my liquidity right away.
I got to get my returns.
You know, I've got to return capital to LPs.
And so what we try to do is we try to model ourselves after other types of,
you know, traditional VCs who have long-term alignment.
with our founders and we want to support them over time. And we also try to make sure that we can back
founders like Guy who, you know, they're not here for that quick buck. They're here to actually
build something that is going to change, you know, the future of financial markets. And so that
market structure has been a big part of the problem. And because of that market structure at the
earliest of stages, the liquid funds just haven't been able to make money in the same way. And so if they
can't make money, then they're not going to be here because like at the end of the day,
that's what we're all trying to do. Yeah. So in a moment, we'll talk.
talk more about how to value these crypto treasury companies, but first a quick word from the
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Back to my conversation with Guy and Rob.
So, Guy, in your tweet read, you said the premium to nav arbitrage is clearly ephemeral and won't sustain indefinitely.
And then you mentioned Michael Siler would be the one exception.
You know, can you talk about, like, how you're, you know, looking at the actual prices that these companies are treating in and how you think, like, what the, you know, value should be?
Yeah, just curious for how you would kind of analyze one of these.
I honestly can't rationalize what I'm saying on, like, Bitcoin and Heath, if I'm being honest, I think outside of Sailor.
I can't give you a logical explanation as to why billions of gaps are buying these vehicles, like, above 1x.
I thought that it would disappear a bit quicker than it did.
So it might be a slightly unsatisfactory answer,
but I think the fair valuation is 1x or slightly lower
if you can't get your hands on the assets that sit behind the vehicles.
So I can't give you a logical explanation as to why,
when someone has access to a BTC or ETH, ETF,
buying one of these vehicles,
which isn't micro strategy with a superior capital structure,
you could justify something that's like 50 to 100% premium on top.
Well, actually, I want to run by.
I heard Tom Leon Bankless talk about how, you know, so BitMine stock BMNR, how that's trading.
The way he argued this was he was saying there's a premium for the E-field, a premium for liquidity,
and he had a bunch of comparisons to the other ETH Treasury vehicles and, you know, how much liquidity BNR had versus all of them.
He also said that he considered a premium for, that there should be a premium for the Vols.
velocity, which he defined as like the rate of accumulation of ETH per share or in the case of
like a strategy, you know, Bitcoin per share. And the way that he was defining this, he said that
actually currently BNR is accumulating more ETH per share or the rate of accumulation is
faster than strategy is accumulating Bitcoin per day. I wonder what you thought about, you know,
those factors that he was using to cite the, you know, what the trading price should be.
Yeah, maybe my response is less around like his vehicles specifically, but maybe like the points of argument that he's making.
I think personally, I don't think the yield argument is one that sort of stands up.
I think the ETH ETFs in the near future are going to see staking sort of introduced in like the economics of their offerings as well.
And I think relative to the volatility of the underlying, I think the yield that you produce on ETH isn't actually that interesting.
So producing, you know, 2.5 to 3%, paid in the token itself, isn't actually like a real yield.
I think we've sort of slightly lost side of this with ETH through the years where the vast majority of the component of where that return is coming from is just ETH inflating on itself rather than ETH producing like a 3% real cash dividend yield from activity that sits on the chain.
And so any, you know, chain, brief mistake chain can produce a nominal yield printing its own token and then sort of being able to give that back into a vehicle.
So I don't really see that as like outright value creation.
And then I think if you compare an annual 3% inflation of just printing more of your own.
own token, when you compare that to the daily
volatility, so ETH right now is up
4% on the day. It's just completely
inconsequential to the returns that you're
going to be making over the lifetime.
And maybe if you think that's worth something,
it might justify a 0.03
premium to NAV rather than like 50%
to 100%. So I'm not sure that those,
I agree with the arguments that he's making that.
Yeah, I'm going to disagree with Guy a little bit
here. I do think,
listen, the premium to NAVs, if you actually
look at them, they've gotten crushed or lost like two weeks.
And so I think like if you take all of the sole vehicles together, the premium to nav now is something like point, it's like 15% or something.
I think if you take all of the eth vehicles, it's actually less than 50% at this point.
So it's like 1.5, 1.4.
And so these premiums are coming down.
That's to be expected, right?
And I think I put that into his tweet thread.
And I believe that that will continue to happen.
That said, you know, I guess I did say this, which is that if you have 3% yield and the ETF has none,
Like, it should trade at least 1.03, right?
Like, that's just the math.
Right?
And yeah, maybe it's inconsequential of what that means for, you know,
call it relative to the volatility.
But the volatility actually is actually worth something to the investors who are trading
these things.
And so the people are trading around it are actually trade, are a lot of vol traders.
And the people are trading, you know, the converts are actually vol traders.
And so vol is actually worth something that probably demand some sort of premium
in access to that.
in a way that like doesn't really exist in equity markets otherwise, except for like, you know, microcap tokens or sorry, microcap equities is worth something. And so I don't know about the velocity argument for the Tom Lee made. You know, he's obviously, you know, making that for bit minor specifically. Not clear to me that, you know, that is actually, there's some sort of like mathematical way to try to quantitate what that should should be. But I will say like if you look at micro strategy and again, this is, my own base.
So I don't want to continue to extrapolate.
But if you look at a micro strategy, you know, you've increased your Bitcoin per share this year by 30%.
That's on top of what the, you know, call it the Bitcoin price appreciation has been this year.
So, you know, if you do have the ability to do that, well, then theoretically your, you know, premium should be another 0.3, right?
Because like you can have the ability to, or if they can do it, I think it was 75% last year.
So 0.75.
And so there are ways to be quantitative around this.
A lot of people are speculating that these other vehicles can recreate something like what Michael Saylor has done.
And that's part of a big reason for the premium.
I would guess that that's almost impossible for the vast majority of these vehicles and the vast majority of the tokens that are launching these vehicles.
So when you're just thinking kind of like generally, like when, so I, you know, you said earlier, you have not invested in pretty much any of these except for TLGY.
Are you, like, what are the factors that you're looking at for determining whether or not one of these crypto treasury companies would make a good investment?
So it really depends on the pool of capital.
So we're a long-term investor like we talked about before.
We're a venture capital firm.
You know, for us, we're not, you know, it doesn't matter how good the vehicle is.
We're not going to invest in a Bitcoin digital asset treasury company.
We're not going to invest in an Ethereum one.
We're not going to invest in a Salada one because that's not what my LPs are paying me to do.
So where we are focused is we're focused on places where we already are very constructive
and have investments in our LPs are paying us for exposure to assets and protocols
that we think can get a venture return anyways, right?
And so, you know, Bitcoin is obviously the best performing asset of basically all time for
the last 10 years.
And, you know, everyone's your old Bitcoin.
I completely agree with that.
But it's not what, you know, my fund is giving people access to.
But my fund is giving people access to is things like like Athena, which are reinventing future financial market infrastructure.
And so that's what we look at.
That said, I think, you know, I've obviously seen the, you know, dozens and dozens of these vehicles getting launched and they've crossed our desk and we've looked at a few of them.
And I will tell you, being very thoughtful around things like, okay, you know, who is the management team?
are they somebody who can be a good evangelist?
Are they somebody who can go and raise capital from sophisticated investors?
That's probably, I would say, the number one most important thing.
And do you believe there's someone who can actually run a good capital markets playbook?
I think on top of that, a lot of these vehicles I think are really exploitive in terms of like the amount of fees that these sponsors are taking out.
the amount of fees that maybe even like call it the management companies or the asset management
agreements are taking out.
I mean, we're seeing some of these things launched with, you know, call it an extra 20, 25% dilution
of just new capital that is going or for fees that are going to the people that are working
on these things, the bankers, the lawyers, the sponsors, the asset managers.
And in many of those cases, frankly, these are just people trying to make money very quickly.
And so what I would tell people is the number one thing you should be looking at is, is this a long-term aligned vehicle that is not trying to make a bunch of money just on the fact that they can launch this thing and take 25% of the shares.
But are they trying to do something where they're creating long-term shareholder value?
And they're aligning their incentives with long-term shareholder value as well and not with how much money can I make on the long-term of this thing.
And so that's actually been for me one of the biggest and most important points.
And I think one of the reasons we've seen a lot of exhaustion on the most recent wave of these digitalized of treasury companies.
Yeah.
So this is a perfect segue for us to talk about some of the different structures that are being used or different ways to set up these companies.
So, you know, TLGY is doing a SPAC.
There's also a pipe aspect that, you know, private investment and public equity that I talked about.
We actually read an article here at Unchained about the pipe aspect.
And Rob, you probably are aware because I know you're seeing all these come across your desk.
Some of these companies that are doing these pipes, the dilution is really high.
I actually don't know what it is for TLGY, so hopefully we'll find that in this episode.
But actually there were three like pretty egregious ones.
Really? No, actually there's, well, it depends on how you wanted to find that, but more like six, I guess.
But Sharplink, when they did their pipe, that inflated the supply by 8,800%, which that's pretty
incredible.
OPEXE inflated it's by 2,700 percent, strive 2,200 percent, Nakamoto, 1900 percent,
1,900 percent, bit mine, 1,300 percent, and SRM, which is the TRX vehicle, by almost 1,200
percent. So there were some others, you know, that that still had dilutions, but, but, you know,
these were all the really big ones. And as far as I understand, what happens in that situation is if the
kind of like liquid amount, you know, is, you know, just, or I shouldn't call it the liquid amount,
but whatever was originally trading that is owned by retail is whatever. Now, it's after the pipe,
now it's a small fraction. And then the rest is just all these whales.
It's sort of like what in crypto, you know, we would think of as like a ripple situation where
ripple is this massive entity, they own a huge amount of supply.
So we have actually seen that when they become, I forget what it is that happens, I think
it's like there's some registration that allows these investors to finally sell.
And they may not all sell at that time, but just like knowledge that it's possible has caused
a lot of these stocks to drop in price.
So I was wondering, you know, when you are.
you know, when you were thinking about how you were going to create this TLGY structure,
like were you thinking about that?
And, you know, how did you think about the potential for how this structure would impact
the price?
Yes, I think the key piece to focus on from our side at least was the point that Rob was
touching on, which is like the sponsor economics that you're baking into the deal,
not being egregious from the outset.
So I think we've seen a pretty negative reaction on some of the vehicles that just had, you know,
20, 30 percent dilation that Rob was talking about baked in from the deal.
the beginning and I think the dilution point that you were making there it really
depends on like the capital base of the company on a pre and then post money
basis for like the cash and in-kind tokens that are coming through so I think it's
quite hard to make apples to apples comparison there across these vehicles when
like the key number for me is really like how much is being taken off the table
from like a sponsor perspective on day one on the dilution so I think from
that perspective it was in market or slightly below in terms of what we're
sitting there for the management team that was running it and I think the
point that you're making around, you know, large, large holders and then when they, you know,
eventually come to unlock, I think it's actually not too dissimilar, funny enough, from what we see
with like low flow, high FDV tokens where you sort of have this period where the team and the
investors aren't locked. People are trading around it like crazy. It'll go up to crazy valuations
during that period of time because people are aware that there's no supply hitting the market.
And then I think it's just kind of gravity kicking in at some point, which is when you're
coming towards those unlocks. Some of these investors were just up such crazy multiples and
some of the vehicles that you were mentioning, that obviously there's going to be some profit
taking coming into it.
So I think it might have just been a function of the market being relatively nascent, some of the
retail investors mispricing these assets to like truly crazy premiums to nav before these
investors were becoming unlocked.
And then, you know, gravity just sort of doing its thing when those unlocks came through.
So I don't think it's too dissimilar from what you see on like the low float high FTV
token complaints that we've seen over the last few years.
Yeah, Laura, maybe just a.
I want to make a fine point there.
The dilution that you were talking about was these pipes into operating companies.
That's to be expected because what is happening is you have a public company that has a $10 million market cap for equity value essentially, right?
And people are putting, call it, I think in Espects case was $300 million.
I might have that number wrong, but hundreds of millions of dollars of cash into these vehicles,
which will then eventually be turned into the token.
Well, if you have a $10 million market cap company and you put $300 million into it, you know, it's worth significantly more now.
But the $300 million, whoever owns that obviously should get the vast majority of those shares, right?
And that's to be expected.
And that is theoretically creating, you know, there's no shareholder value that's necessarily created if that's at NAV because, you know, now you own a smaller percentage of a much bigger, you know, pool of capital.
But, you know, then if there's a premium, et cetera, like you're actually better off even though you got diluted there.
if you're that original shareholder.
What we're talking about in terms of the unlocks,
that's actually a very important point
because it really depends on how you define
or how you put together your shareholder base.
And so in a lot of these cases,
the pipe investors are hedge funds
who are playing like a short-term game.
And so they're investing,
and then they're going to be unlocked in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.
And the shorter the unlock, frankly,
the more kind of what I would call
hedge funds who don't have a long-term view are in these pipes.
And one of the things that actually Tom Lee did really well and it was very interesting
is he announced a share buyback the day that the unlocks were happening for the pipe investors,
but the idea that he was essentially trying to absorb that cell pressure.
And so there are a lot of these, like, call it, you know, capital market games that are happening in the equity markets,
which actually look very, very similar to the stuff we see in crypto.
And so they're not actually that different.
And so I think the point you made earlier, okay, well, these are different types of vehicles.
The SPAC vehicle is a different animal.
It is the SPACs mostly aren't trading at a premium to NAV pre, call it, you know, getting their full SEC registration.
And they're usually much cleaner.
They don't have this other operating company.
They don't have contingent liabilities.
They, you know, bringing them new management team is very long-term aligned.
And so I think what we've seen on the SPAC side is people who are a little bit more focused on long-term alignment.
and we've seen the pipes into the optos,
people are a little bit more focused on short-term,
capital, structure, financial alchemy type games.
Okay.
Yeah, but I guess TLGY is a mixture of both,
so it kind of has like both elements.
Yeah, but the time to market for TLGY is quite a bit more extended
than what you're seeing with some of these vehicles.
So the expectation is once it's gone through its process,
it's probably still three months out from being fully finalized.
So I think it's much more in the bucket that Rob,
was describing of the former, which is a long-term vehicle rather than short-term,
trying to get 30 days to liquidity type of set up. Yeah. Oh, I see. Okay. So now let's talk
about some of the other ways companies are funding corporate treasuries. So there's convertible debt.
Can you like explain how that works and, you know, what you think of that in comparison to,
you know, what we just discussed, specs or pipes? The convertible debt piece is,
these are, we're not seeing the convertible debts happen like at time of formation,
right? And so what we're seeing at time of formation is like straight equity. So whether it's a
pipe or whether it's, you know, call it a private investment into a private company that will
eventually be taken public by a SPAC. It's usually typically straight common equity. Maybe there's
some warrants coverage in there. But it's not a, it's not the convertible debt piece. It's not
typically, it's typically not preferred, you know, something else that's,
kind of higher up on the capital structure.
A convertible debt or the preferred were typically seen, call it, as these vehicles get a little bit
more mature, as they get a little bit bigger, because it's much easier to raise that type of
capital if you have a bigger, if you have a bigger capital base, essentially, right?
And so, like, on the debt side, what we're mostly seeing, nobody has a lot of debt on their
treasury company today, other than micro strategy.
That's the only one that has a real amount of debt.
The others aren't quite there yet.
They don't have the operating history.
They don't have the comfort from an investor pool or investor base who actually cares a lot more about their downside than they necessarily do about the upside.
And so the investors are different in that slog than the common equity.
Common equity guys are all, you know, just playing the upside that the convertible debt guys, they're much more worried about what the bounds of their outcomes are.
Okay. And are there any other structures that you feel like investors should kind of be aware of and know how to analyze in terms?
terms of, you know, when they think about what the value of any of these companies should be.
Yeah. So there's, I think there's two things where we're maybe kind of conflating a little bit in
this conversation. One is the type of structure that happens at the launch, right? And so at
launch, we have these, you know, call it pipes into already operating public companies. So like
in Sharp Links perspective, it's like a gaming casino business that, you know, was a microcap. And they
put, you know, a bunch of cash into that. They put some Ethereum into that. They went and took
that cash and they bought Ethereum. And that has, I call it a fully different public company and
operating business that is different from what they're doing on the East side. They raised,
you know, essentially common equity into that. And then they've, you know, trying to figure out
how to raise additional types of capital. Then there's call it the reverse merger or reverse takeover
that we're seeing where you take, you know, call it a private company and you bring it public
by reverse merging it into a public company. Frankly, I think that's the worst of the three things
that I'm about to say because your time to market isn't really that much quicker than a SPAC.
And you also are still taking the risk of call it the contingent liability is in the operating
company of the pipe side. And then the third is the SPAC. So, you know, a SPAC is essentially a public
a company that has raised a pot of cash that is going to despec or merge with a typically a private
company. In that case, usually the private company is either something that has a long
operating history or what's happening in Stablecoin or what we're saying in some of these
others is that it's a new, brand new, clean company that is doing something like validating
potentially and is getting audited, but doesn't have a long history of, you know,
potentially outstanding dilutive instruments or contingent liabilities or other types of concerns
that could make that adverse to shareholders. And so those are the three ways of which these,
things are going public or the DATs are being put together. Almost all of those are whether it's
a pipe or whether it's, you know, call it cash and trust at a SPAC plus some sort of investment
there. They're raising common equity upfront, but maybe some sort of call it warrant coverage
in the SPAC case. And then there's, okay, well, what are the ways these things raise capital?
after they're already trading.
And that's what we're talking, you were mentioned here a little bit.
Okay, well, there's convertible debt.
There's convertible preferreds.
There's common equity.
Then people are hitting these at the market offerings, which is what Tom Lee did in Bitliner.
Those are frankly, they're really sophisticated and kind of confusing capital structures for, you know, retail investors to understand.
So one of the things that I'll say, and this is actually not a, this is not a company.
that's raised, you know, call it a bunch of different types of financing.
But if you looked at the Sonnet Therapeutics vehicle, which was the height vehicle that was put together by,
I think you were invested in by Paradigm and Galaxy and a couple of others.
There was a significant amount of warrants at a bunch of different very low strike prices
that people didn't really understand.
And so what you saw in that vehicle was that on day one, it traded up to $18 a share.
I think it is sub $3 a share today.
I haven't looked or said $4 a share.
And part of what happened is you had all of these retail,
this retail excitement of people go invest into that vehicle on the day
I started publicly trading without understanding that there was going to be
significant dilution at a $1.25 per share, which is where the warrant strike was.
And so I say that to mean that these are actually very complicated financial capital
structures that are hard to understand and that people need to do deep diligence on
before they invest in these things early on,
and why you see actually a lot of the interest in micro strategy and others
coming from actually sophisticated institutional investors
and not necessarily retail holders.
Yeah, you're right.
Now it's below $3.
Okay.
So I do want to ask a bit more about TLGY, but right before we do.
I just want to ask, you guys keep talking about how MSTR is kind of in its only,
they do have a plan to retire their debt.
And I wondered, like, how easy you thought it would be for them to do that or, yeah, just what you thought about that plan.
I'm not sure I've seen the exact same headline.
Is it them rolling over the debt or retiring it entirely?
Because I think the latter would be quite surprising.
Oh, okay.
So maybe I have my facts wrong there.
I think they're probably, and I'm not deep on this either, but I think they're probably refinancing and rolling over.
I do think what has been become somewhat obvious in the micro strategy,
the recent call it in a week or two,
is that they are having to figure out different ways to construct products
to go and raise more capital.
There's not endless demand for micro strategy across the capital structure.
And so one of the things we saw that they announced a sort of an interesting new type of
product where you're getting basically call it like Bitcoin yield. It's a it's like a yielding
preferred instrument. They're trying to be creative and figuring out new ways to get people excited
about potential returns here. But there's not endless demand there. And so they will, I think,
continue to figure out ways to get, you'll call it more leverage within reason. And they do
have these maturations on their debt that are coming up over the next few years.
And so that is a bit of an overhang because they have to go raise,
if they have to go raise equity capital to then pay off the debt, right?
Like, that's actually quite costly for them.
And so what they're going to have to try to do is some other type of less costly instrument
to, you know, roll that over to continue to increase the Bitcoin per share.
And so there's not endless demand here.
And I think that is the one thing that people are missing even when it comes to micro strategy.
All right.
So now let's talk about TLGY, Guy, I'd be so interested to hear.
And I know you're not the one doing this, but I'm sure you've at least heard what the team is planning to pitch to Wall Street.
But I'd be so curious to hear like what the pitches or what the narrative is and even just like how they understand kind of like the synthetic dollar versus a stable coin.
You know, I'm just, yeah, I'm just curious to hear like what that world thinks of Athena.
Yes, I think there's obviously a recognition that the product obviously looks different.
to what Circle's doing, but I think the business model and the way that you sort of generate
revenue and how that flows through a P&L doesn't look too dissimilar from what you see to
circle. So I think the very simple picture, as you've seen, Circle trade up to, you know, around
$60 billion in market cap generating around $150 million of income. That's not too far off where Athena
is. And I think the growth of Athena in the last month has actually been some of the strongest
that we've ever seen since we've launched.
So month on month, this applies up around 70%
from like 5.5 bill to just under 10 billion right now.
And so you don't actually often see things growing quite as quickly as Athena is right now
at the scale that it is, at multi-billions,
you know, in an area that there's clearly a lot of excitement
in terms of the forward looking growth profiles.
So I think the macro view that I think people have around Circle,
and there's a piece that I actually learned a little bit about
because if you remember when Circle's IPOing,
I think there's a lot of negativity internally within crypto around the business, the go-forward profile.
And then everyone was wrong, basically, in terms of that.
Some of that may have been said on my show by one of your investors named Arthur Hayes.
And actually, also, someone from Jagged and Fly, I forgot, Omar.
Yeah, Omar did it as well.
Yeah.
And I'll admit myself, I sort of shared some of the sentiment.
But I think the piece that I got wrong is that the way that these investors are looking about things is step-weck
points represent 1% of money supply in the world right now. And if you look at payments companies
and the aggregate equity value that sits within those, it's well north of like a trillion
between one and one and a half trillion dollars. Those are like very big markets and big
terms to sort of go after. And I think that those very big growth stories that people can get
excited about where these businesses over the next 10, 20 years can actually go into, you know,
trillion dollar businesses and trillion dollar outcomes. I think that that's a different sort of lens
that these investors have come into it that looks slightly different to crypto investors.
I think are just looking at things in the, you know, here and now.
So I think the very simple picture is like, you know, Athena is the third largest asset
within that category right now is growing faster than anyone else within the same space.
And there's a pretty large, you know, valuation discrepancy between where Athena sits,
sits out right now and some of those comparisons that we discuss.
So I think it's a relatively clean story from that perspective.
Yeah.
The markets are starved for growth.
Like, you see this across all markets right now.
This is not a crypto-specific point.
The markets are starred for growth.
We have stagnating growth across most of our industries across much of the world right now.
And there are a few things that are doing really well.
You see it in all of the new IPOs.
If there is a belief that there will be, you know, call it outsized growth, there is an investor out there.
And there are billions and billions of dollars of demands from investors out there to invest in it.
And stable coins are one of those things where I think there's a,
a strong belief among many, many people that it is going to be one of the fastest growing themes
and verticals within payments and not just crypto itself.
All right.
So last question, you guys, there's been so much commentary on Twitter about how people, you know,
feel like this is a bubble in the making and things are not going to end well.
And so I just love to hear, you know, when you look at what's going on, what do you think,
well, stop the music and who will be left standing?
Yeah, I think from my perspective, it's just going to be.
oversupply where we sort of see the same thing play out through time, which is like when you can
create a uniswop fork of an AMM, everyone goes and creates 50 of them and then they start to,
they stop being valuable when everyone can create them with close to zero cost.
And so I think we consistently see this theme.
It was, you know, uniswop in 2020 being forked and then L2s.
And now I think it's just going to be an oversupply of these ideas coming to market.
That's sort of how it ends, which is just too much supply of the same idea coming to the market.
and we sort of run out of capital that's interested to bid them.
I do think some of the comparisons to some of the disasters that we saw last cycle,
you know, like a grayscale and that kind of stuff with GBTC isn't really the same
sort of comparison here.
There isn't a ton of leverage that's sitting in them, as Rob said, outside of Sailor,
and it's not hidden leverage, which is a very important piece,
because a lot of what blew up last cycle was sort of opaque leverage that was sitting
on balance sheets that no one could see.
I think here it's pretty much in the open.
If people are buying a pool of assets for above one times nav and it trades below, it's just
kind of like that's part of what you're signing up to in the trade.
It's normally the same sort of risk that I think developed a lot cycle with sort of shadow
leverage throughout the whole system.
Yeah, I would agree with all that.
I think anyone calling for a blow-up here, I think is misusing the term blow-up, right?
I think there could be a deflation and there would probably be a deflation.
And it's probably more akin to what we saw in SPACs in 2021 than it is akin to.
into what we saw and call it like Luna or FTX or something,
which is that eventually it just demand dries up, right?
Some of these things trade below premium, below NAV,
there's no new net new investors,
people stop being able to launch these things.
People who are late to the game lose some money,
but that's fine, right?
Like, that's investing.
The point around debt or around leverage
really only being in Sailor's vehicle,
that's an important one.
And as long as Sailor doesn't,
and blow up, I think, where there's, it's hard to see there being any sort of call it, you know,
large systemic risk that's involved with any of these vehicles. Instead, they just, you know,
they'll exist. They'll be, they'll sit out there, you know, maybe they won't trade a lot. Maybe
they won't trade particularly well. And maybe someday some activist will come in and, you know,
either Sailor will buy them and sell the underlying tokens to buy more Bitcoin or some activists will
come in and try to do something similar if it trades below, below nav. And because of low volume on that
token for whatever vehicle that is. That'll have a really big negative impact on the price of that
token. But that's invested, right? That's not, you know, I think what people refer to or what they
typically mean when they say a blow-up. Okay. Yeah, I guess the only thing that I could think of would be
more like if these become tokenized and use collateral and defy and then something, you know,
just drops in price and at least a cascates. There could be liquidations. But you're right. Like,
I don't think it's going to be exactly like it was in 2022.
Yeah, and hopefully the risk managers are able to handle that.
It is a little bit odd.
I think Sharp length just announces, but you know, you took a Ethereum,
you put it into the public market,
and then you took the equity of that public market,
and then you went and tokenized it and put it on chain.
And so it's a token of a token of a token, which I don't quite understand.
And so, you know, certainly maybe risk there I haven't thought of yet,
but hopefully somebody's smarter than me is.
Rob, don't you know, it's called Muddy Legos?
and it's the future.
Anyway, you guys, this has been super fun.
Yeah, it's just been great chatting with you both.
Thank you so much for coming on Unchained.
Appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about these crypto treasury companies
and Guy and Young and TLGY.
Check out the show notes for this episode.
Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin,
with help from Matt Pilcher, Twyarnarman Ranovich,
Pam McImbar and Margo Korea.
Thanks for listening.
