رونوشت 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.090 --> 00:00:03.149
Shifting the company from focusing on private blockchains, focusing on
2
00:00:03.189 --> 00:00:05.710
things like central bank digital currency to where we are today,
3
00:00:05.769 --> 00:00:08.449
which is all in on tokenizing the next trillion dollars
4
00:00:08.490 --> 00:00:12.230
of assets on open public blockchain rails. That was probably
5
00:00:12.359 --> 00:00:14.880
both the biggest challenge and also the thing I'm most
6
00:00:14.919 --> 00:00:15.210
proud of.
7
00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:23.059
This episode is brought to you by iTrust Capital.
8
00:00:23.379 --> 00:00:26.320
iTrust Capital allows you to invest in crypto as well
9
00:00:26.359 --> 00:00:29.359
as precious metals like gold and silver via an IRA.
10
00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:32.130
And this gives you huge tax advantages.
11
00:00:32.350 --> 00:00:38.130
So you can invest in over 90 crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana,
12
00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:40.950
and many more. You also get access to stable coins
13
00:00:40.990 --> 00:00:45.280
such as Circles USDC and Ripples RLUSD. And as it
14
00:00:45.340 --> 00:00:48.280
relates to precious metals, you can invest in gold and silver.
15
00:00:48.820 --> 00:00:51.700
And these are the physical assets. So you're not investing
16
00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:54.420
in paper gold and silver. So on this platform, you
17
00:00:54.460 --> 00:00:57.530
can redeem the gold and silver if you choose to,
18
00:00:57.689 --> 00:01:01.090
and not many platforms offer that. Now, the big advantage
19
00:01:01.170 --> 00:01:05.750
to investing via iTrust Capital's IRA is the huge tax advantages.
20
00:01:06.069 --> 00:01:08.969
Many of you know you incur capital gains taxes when
21
00:01:09.049 --> 00:01:11.829
you sell at a gain. Well, you can minimize the
22
00:01:11.870 --> 00:01:14.810
effect of some of that by doing it via an IRA,
23
00:01:15.109 --> 00:01:17.750
especially if you have a long-term view on crypto as
24
00:01:17.790 --> 00:01:20.250
well as precious metals. And you can buy and sell
25
00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:23.549
crypto and precious metals 24-7. It's low cost and no
26
00:01:23.590 --> 00:01:26.090
monthly fee. So this is a great option to get
27
00:01:26.129 --> 00:01:29.489
exposure to these two great asset classes. And in addition,
28
00:01:29.670 --> 00:01:33.469
they have a great custody solution. It's called Premium Custody Account.
29
00:01:33.709 --> 00:01:38.129
So it uses institutional-grade crypto custody, such as Coinbase Prime,
30
00:01:38.209 --> 00:01:42.030
which BlackRock leverages. iTrust also uses Fidelity Digital Assets as
31
00:01:42.090 --> 00:01:44.849
well as Fireblocks. And it's a closed-loop system. So if
32
00:01:44.890 --> 00:01:48.170
someone hacks into your account, They can't withdraw funds. I
33
00:01:48.209 --> 00:01:50.450
believe this is the second safest way to custody your
34
00:01:50.549 --> 00:01:54.209
assets right behind self-custody where you control the private keys.
35
00:01:54.489 --> 00:01:57.239
And within the custody account, you could buy and sell 24-7.
36
00:01:57.269 --> 00:01:57.950
It's low fees.
37
00:01:58.310 --> 00:02:01.349
So this is a great option for custody of your assets.
38
00:02:01.409 --> 00:02:03.590
And you can sleep at night knowing that you're getting
39
00:02:03.659 --> 00:02:08.460
the institutional grade custodial services. So once again, two great
40
00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:11.560
products here from iTrust Capital, the IRA, where you can
41
00:02:11.620 --> 00:02:15.419
roll over your existing 401k or IRA to iTrust Capital's version.
42
00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:19.759
getting the huge tax advantages and the institutional custody. And folks,
43
00:02:19.819 --> 00:02:23.240
if you sign up with my link at itrustcapital.com slash
44
00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:26.879
go slash thinkingcrypto, you could get a $ 100 funding bonus.
45
00:02:27.319 --> 00:02:29.680
I have an account with itrustcapital. So I encourage you
46
00:02:29.699 --> 00:02:32.639
to go check out itrustcapital, learn about their services and
47
00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:33.639
see if it's right for you.
48
00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:35.800
Again, you can get a $ 100 funding.
49
00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:39.169
Bonus by signing up via my link, which is itrustcapital.com
50
00:02:39.189 --> 00:02:41.110
slash go slash thinkingcrypto.
51
00:02:41.449 --> 00:02:42.750
Link will be in the description.
52
00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:46.629
Hey folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host,
53
00:02:46.669 --> 00:02:49.289
Tony AdWord, and we are recording at Station 3 in
54
00:02:49.310 --> 00:02:52.870
New York's Financial District. And joining me is Todd McDonald,
55
00:02:52.949 --> 00:02:56.629
who's the co-founder of R3, which is a leading provider
56
00:02:56.879 --> 00:03:01.419
of RWAs and digital assets on Solana. Todd, great to
57
00:03:01.439 --> 00:03:01.699
have you.
58
00:03:01.719 --> 00:03:02.560
It's great to be here.
59
00:03:03.219 --> 00:03:07.460
Todd. I'm excited for this conversation because I've covered R3' s
60
00:03:07.419 --> 00:03:10.879
updates over the years on the podcast. And you guys
61
00:03:10.919 --> 00:03:14.530
have been at the forefront in building with blockchain tech.
62
00:03:14.550 --> 00:03:15.370
You were so early.
63
00:03:15.389 --> 00:03:16.169
It's been a journey.
64
00:03:16.389 --> 00:03:19.270
So I'm so excited to dive into the history and
65
00:03:19.349 --> 00:03:21.490
what you're doing now and more. But let's kick it
66
00:03:21.509 --> 00:03:23.879
off with your background. Where are you from? How'd you
67
00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:26.479
make your way into TradFi and then crypto? Yeah.
68
00:03:26.659 --> 00:03:29.919
So grew up in Connecticut. So about halfway between Boston
69
00:03:29.960 --> 00:03:32.469
and New York. Made my way to New York City.
70
00:03:33.210 --> 00:03:36.620
I sort of accidentally got a job in finance. The
71
Load full transcript
00:03:36.680 --> 00:03:40.159
short version of the story is my sister threw her
72
00:03:40.259 --> 00:03:44.180
fiance out of their apartment over an argument, and my
73
00:03:44.219 --> 00:03:48.039
father suggested I should ask his father for a job
74
00:03:48.490 --> 00:03:50.729
because he wanted to get back at his son. And
75
00:03:50.750 --> 00:03:53.050
it turns out they offered me a job. I was
76
00:03:53.110 --> 00:03:55.150
on a trading floor when I was 21, thanks to
77
00:03:55.650 --> 00:03:58.469
this guy Oliver being a jerk to my sister. So
78
00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:03.379
I have a lot of debt to him. And that
79
00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:08.439
was 1996, 97, back in the wild west of trading,
80
00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:11.259
which was quite fun. A lot of responsibility for a
81
00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:14.439
young kid. I was running P & L and trading
82
00:04:14.469 --> 00:04:19.290
books back then. And yeah, spent about 15 years and
83
00:04:19.329 --> 00:04:21.170
spent a lot of time in emerging markets. So that was,
84
00:04:21.410 --> 00:04:23.050
I worked at Standard Chartered Bank. So it was very
85
00:04:23.089 --> 00:04:27.300
much in the emerging market world. So high volatility, On
86
00:04:27.329 --> 00:04:30.279
the FX side, things moved around every day. It wasn't
87
00:04:30.939 --> 00:04:34.199
exactly 24-7 markets. It was basically you would open Sunday
88
00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:37.259
afternoon and trade until 5 p.m. on Friday. So as
89
00:04:37.310 --> 00:04:42.689
you can imagine, once I stumbled upon Bitcoin around 2013
90
00:04:42.689 --> 00:04:47.899
or so, it was like the FX markets on steroids.
91
00:04:48.279 --> 00:04:50.079
And it was love at first sight, I guess, after that.
92
00:04:50.930 --> 00:04:53.149
What's it like seeing the firms you worked at, State
93
00:04:53.189 --> 00:04:58.430
Street and Standard Chartered, now embracing blockchain, tokenizing, launching crypto services?
94
00:04:59.209 --> 00:05:04.040
It's pretty wild. So, you know, as you know, at R3,
95
00:05:04.129 --> 00:05:06.730
I've been working with banks since the beginning. I came
96
00:05:06.750 --> 00:05:10.089
from a bank. I built after, you know, as part
97
00:05:10.110 --> 00:05:13.089
of my trading role, I ended up building products at
98
00:05:13.129 --> 00:05:16.250
the bank. I built trading systems and tried to work
99
00:05:16.269 --> 00:05:18.399
with developers and launch things inside the bank. So I
100
00:05:18.439 --> 00:05:22.829
know how hard It is to actually do new things
101
00:05:22.870 --> 00:05:26.550
within a bank, which is understandable. They manage risk, and
102
00:05:26.709 --> 00:05:31.829
it's a totally different business. So to see, especially Standard Chartered,
103
00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:39.060
embrace this world so wholeheartedly, it is, quite frankly, it's shocking.
104
00:05:39.199 --> 00:05:43.779
But it's great to see. And I think it's because,
105
00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:46.540
at the end of the day, and this is part
106
00:05:46.579 --> 00:05:49.740
of the journey with R3 as well, you know, these
107
00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:54.939
banks are starting to realize that there's revenue over the horizon, right?
108
00:05:54.980 --> 00:05:57.709
There's new products, there's new markets, there's new ways to distribute,
109
00:05:57.730 --> 00:06:00.689
there's new ways to manage risk. So it's not so
110
00:06:00.709 --> 00:06:04.629
much getting them excited about, hey, we can rip back
111
00:06:04.670 --> 00:06:08.170
off a system or we can optimize something. It's about
112
00:06:09.230 --> 00:06:12.959
making net new revenue. So that's what gets most companies,
113
00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.980
especially banks, excited. So it's not that surprising that they're
114
00:06:16.019 --> 00:06:19.370
jumping in. But if you had asked me in 2013, 2014,
115
00:06:19.370 --> 00:06:21.860
I definitely would not have guessed it.
116
00:06:22.629 --> 00:06:25.709
It's incredible how things have grown and matured. And it
117
00:06:25.750 --> 00:06:28.589
seems you've crossed the chasm of, is this a fad
118
00:06:28.649 --> 00:06:31.149
or a scam? Now we need to have a digital
119
00:06:31.209 --> 00:06:31.970
asset strategy.
120
00:06:32.189 --> 00:06:37.740
Yeah. So when we first started just having conversations with banks,
121
00:06:37.819 --> 00:06:42.319
I still remember sending an email to a handful of
122
00:06:42.339 --> 00:06:44.980
banks to set up a meeting. And we got a
123
00:06:44.980 --> 00:06:46.949
phone call. right after we sent the email. This is
124
00:06:46.970 --> 00:06:49.610
like 2014. And the guy came back, he goes, what
125
00:06:49.649 --> 00:06:51.689
are you doing? I said, what do you mean? He's like, well,
126
00:06:51.709 --> 00:06:53.040
you sent me an email and you had the word
127
00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:55.980
Bitcoin in it. And now I have to talk to
128
00:06:56.019 --> 00:06:58.420
someone I've never ever, the phone rang from a number
129
00:06:58.459 --> 00:07:02.060
that I've never seen before from my compliance department. So
130
00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:05.370
that was what it was like back then. It was basically,
131
00:07:06.569 --> 00:07:09.389
didn't understand it, didn't want to understand it. All it
132
00:07:09.689 --> 00:07:10.649
was was risk and threat.
133
00:07:11.829 --> 00:07:14.029
And I remember- That's very much in line with what
134
00:07:14.129 --> 00:07:17.000
Jamie Dimon, I remember in 2017, vividly saying, I will
135
00:07:17.139 --> 00:07:19.860
fire anybody who touches this. Don't talk to me about Bitcoin.
136
00:07:19.879 --> 00:07:21.879
You'll lose all your money and all these things.
137
00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:22.740
JP's come a long way.
138
00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:26.959
Yes. Yes, absolutely. So Todd, take us back to the
139
00:07:27.019 --> 00:07:30.060
genesis of R3. How did the idea come about? What
140
00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:32.120
made you guys want to step out and say, we're
141
00:07:32.139 --> 00:07:33.470
going to use blockchain tech.
142
00:07:33.319 --> 00:07:37.379
And build So as I mentioned, I stumbled upon Bitcoin.
143
00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:40.519
I wanted to buy it. I wanted to trade it. Honestly,
144
00:07:40.540 --> 00:07:42.730
it was the greatest chart I've ever seen. I still remember.
145
00:07:43.269 --> 00:07:46.810
I think Bitcoin was around $ 150 at the time, something
146
00:07:46.829 --> 00:07:50.110
like that. It was trending between $ 110 and $ 180. And
147
00:07:50.189 --> 00:07:52.269
I couldn't because I was a New York State resident.
148
00:07:53.129 --> 00:07:55.129
The only thing I could do was go to localbitcoin.com
149
00:07:55.170 --> 00:07:58.779
and meet someone on the street corner. But with that,
150
00:07:58.839 --> 00:08:01.920
I got very curious, started reading basically the internet about
151
00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:05.839
what Bitcoin was, what blockchain was. I started bugging my
152
00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:07.699
business partner. We were working on a project at the
153
00:08:07.720 --> 00:08:10.259
State Street at the time, as you mentioned, David Rutter.
154
00:08:10.680 --> 00:08:15.139
And at first he was, I would say, skeptical of
155
00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:18.250
the topic. But I remember he went to some industry event.
156
00:08:18.290 --> 00:08:21.370
I think it was the FIA event in Boca. And
157
00:08:21.389 --> 00:08:23.370
he called me up and he said, I don't know
158
00:08:23.389 --> 00:08:25.370
what it is, but when I try to talk to
159
00:08:25.410 --> 00:08:27.610
people about market structure, corporate bonds, this and that, all
160
00:08:27.629 --> 00:08:29.449
they want to talk about is Bitcoin. They keep asking me.
161
00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.939
They're like, hey, Rutter, I think you guys know something
162
00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:33.840
about this blockchain thing. Can you explain it to me?
163
00:08:34.500 --> 00:08:36.500
And that's when we knew there was something there. So
164
00:08:36.519 --> 00:08:41.500
we just started having conversations. We had a meeting with Goldman, Citi,
165
00:08:42.399 --> 00:08:46.000
with Deutsche. This was back in the summer of 2014.
166
00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.279
They all said the same thing. We know that we
167
00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:50.960
want to learn more about this and we don't really
168
00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:53.840
understand it. And in particular, they all wanted to know
169
00:08:53.879 --> 00:08:55.950
what their peers were thinking about what they were doing.
170
00:08:56.750 --> 00:08:59.490
So our angle back then, and it's still the same now,
171
00:08:59.549 --> 00:09:03.929
is that this is a network technology. So it's not
172
00:09:03.970 --> 00:09:08.110
about a bank or a corporation doing a thing on
173
00:09:08.190 --> 00:09:10.789
their own blockchain, right? That kind of defeats the purpose.
174
00:09:11.529 --> 00:09:15.309
It's about a market coming together and trying to do something.
175
00:09:15.929 --> 00:09:19.940
So that was the impetus behind R3. We weren't really
176
00:09:20.779 --> 00:09:22.720
pretending we had the answers because we thought it was
177
00:09:22.759 --> 00:09:24.740
early and we were right, it wasn't early. But we
178
00:09:24.779 --> 00:09:27.320
knew that this would impact the way that banks do business.
179
00:09:28.279 --> 00:09:31.620
And I think luckily we had enough credibility from our
180
00:09:31.639 --> 00:09:34.809
backgrounds and for how we were approaching the problem that
181
00:09:35.029 --> 00:09:37.129
we were able to get, which was a bit of
182
00:09:37.149 --> 00:09:39.669
a surprise to us at the time. I think initially
183
00:09:39.750 --> 00:09:43.240
it was 42 banks around the table back in 2015.
184
00:09:43.240 --> 00:09:45.080
And from that, we were able to create the company
185
00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:47.779
and fund the company back in 2017.
186
00:09:47.779 --> 00:09:50.919
Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
187
00:09:50.940 --> 00:09:53.350
the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
188
00:09:53.370 --> 00:09:56.090
you can please support the podcast by hitting the like button,
189
00:09:56.409 --> 00:09:58.470
subscribing if you haven't as yet. You can leave a
190
00:09:58.509 --> 00:10:00.639
comment below as well. And if you're listening on a
191
00:10:00.669 --> 00:10:03.759
podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get
192
00:10:03.799 --> 00:10:06.740
your podcasts, please be sure to follow and hit the
193
00:10:06.779 --> 00:10:09.320
five-star rating. I'll let you get back to the content.
194
00:10:09.539 --> 00:10:12.960
Thank you so much. That's incredible. And you've gone through
195
00:10:13.019 --> 00:10:16.299
so many market cycles, ups and downs. I mean, the
196
00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:19.039
Genster days at the SEC, the FTX collapses, where it
197
00:10:19.080 --> 00:10:24.059
seemed like This industry may not survive. Were there any high,
198
00:10:24.500 --> 00:10:27.159
you know, low points, I should say, where you're like,
199
00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:28.440
are we doing the right thing?
200
00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:32.759
So it's funny because it's a little bit different now,
201
00:10:32.840 --> 00:10:36.480
but we were always aligned or maybe adjacent to the
202
00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:40.159
crypto market, but never fully in it. Not nearly to
203
00:10:40.179 --> 00:10:43.259
the point that we are today. So we were impacted
204
00:10:43.279 --> 00:10:46.690
by market cycles, but in a very strange way. I
205
00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:49.549
do recall, I actually recall a few different cycles. I
206
00:10:49.809 --> 00:10:53.450
don't think people remember, I think it was 2015 when
207
00:10:53.649 --> 00:10:57.389
Bitcoin was dead. Just nothing was happening. And I think
208
00:10:57.429 --> 00:11:00.610
that was probably the bleakest I'd ever seen it. Really
209
00:11:00.629 --> 00:11:03.110
smart people trying to do
interesting things that was just
210
00:11:03.169 --> 00:11:07.120
not going, just didn't survive. Every other cycle has been
211
00:11:07.139 --> 00:11:10.539
a death and a rebirth. And we've had something come
212
00:11:10.580 --> 00:11:12.080
out of it. You know, the ICO boom and bust
213
00:11:12.659 --> 00:11:17.070
was the first, I think, experiment around, oh, actually, capital
214
00:11:17.090 --> 00:11:21.750
formation can happen, you know, good and bad on blockchains.
215
00:11:22.649 --> 00:11:25.590
And then, you know, the next boom, the DeFi summer
216
00:11:25.690 --> 00:11:27.610
was really the durable thing that came out of that.
217
00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:32.460
So every time we went through some of these cycles,
218
00:11:32.919 --> 00:11:37.269
it was an interesting thing where we clearly would ride
219
00:11:37.309 --> 00:11:40.070
the wave of the euphoria or how things were, you know,
220
00:11:40.210 --> 00:11:42.870
people were getting excited. So there would be, budgets would
221
00:11:42.909 --> 00:11:45.850
be a little bit easier to come by and meetings
222
00:11:45.870 --> 00:11:49.149
would be easier to book. When the cycle turned, you know,
223
00:11:49.629 --> 00:11:54.500
it just, everyone just got sort of very, very attentive
224
00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:58.860
to risk and things got pretty slow. I'd say probably
225
00:11:58.879 --> 00:12:02.460
the hardest thing for us was entering into and trying
226
00:12:02.500 --> 00:12:06.000
to survive through COVID really was the, the biggest change
227
00:12:06.200 --> 00:12:10.039
for us as, as a company. Because, you know, from
228
00:12:10.059 --> 00:12:12.759
day one, we were a global company. You know, we
229
00:12:12.799 --> 00:12:15.470
mentioned we, we got started, it was 42 banks. There
230
00:12:15.509 --> 00:12:18.970
were Japanese banks. We had four Australian banks. We, we
231
00:12:19.009 --> 00:12:24.470
were a 24 seven global company from, from literally day zero.
232
00:12:24.909 --> 00:12:27.769
So it was quite, it's quite difficult to, to manage
233
00:12:28.029 --> 00:12:32.820
that through global pandemic. But we were able to, to
234
00:12:32.860 --> 00:12:35.720
really adjust pretty quickly from that. So that was really exciting.
235
00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:41.659
I think that the biggest challenge we probably faced was
236
00:12:41.710 --> 00:12:47.009
the one previous to our current partnership with the Solana
237
00:12:47.029 --> 00:12:49.570
Foundation and the work we're doing on Solana. And I
238
00:12:49.610 --> 00:12:53.690
think a big part of that was we had recognized
239
00:12:53.730 --> 00:12:58.879
that the world had changed. And quite frankly, what we
240
00:12:58.919 --> 00:13:00.879
had been spending a lot of time on and we're
241
00:13:00.899 --> 00:13:03.710
still very proud of what we've done by building and
242
00:13:03.750 --> 00:13:07.929
supporting these private blockchain networks, that wasn't where the future was.
243
00:13:09.350 --> 00:13:14.460
Public and open networks had, one, they had survived through
244
00:13:14.620 --> 00:13:23.600
these many different crucibles. And that was really what we
245
00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.700
feel today is the way forward. And so shifting the
246
00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:29.620
company from focusing on private blockchains, focusing on things like
247
00:13:29.659 --> 00:13:32.000
central bank digital currency to where we are today, which
248
00:13:32.100 --> 00:13:34.629
is all in on tokenizing the next trillion dollars of
249
00:13:34.690 --> 00:13:38.649
assets on open public blockchain rails. I think that was
250
00:13:38.690 --> 00:13:40.909
probably both the biggest challenge and also the thing I'm
251
00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:41.929
the most proud of.
252
00:13:42.879 --> 00:13:46.559
Yeah, to your point, there was the hyperledgers and all
253
00:13:46.600 --> 00:13:49.600
these private chains that were being pushed, but it seems
254
00:13:49.659 --> 00:13:52.200
now they can still exist, but they have to bridge
255
00:13:52.259 --> 00:13:55.080
to the public chains for settlement, liquidity, and all these things.
256
00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:57.279
So do you see it being a hybrid world where
257
00:13:57.320 --> 00:14:00.669
the public chains have the lion's share of the market,
258
00:14:01.070 --> 00:14:04.190
but individual banks may partner together, have their own private chain,
259
00:14:04.210 --> 00:14:05.710
but they have to bridge to the public chain.
260
00:14:06.070 --> 00:14:08.409
Yeah, I think it'll be a hybrid. I think that
261
00:14:09.009 --> 00:14:12.990
all projects will have a potentially high failure rate. I
262
00:14:13.029 --> 00:14:16.409
would say that, you know, because when we started R3,
263
00:14:16.509 --> 00:14:18.909
it was really as a way for these banks and
264
00:14:18.980 --> 00:14:22.700
other financial institutions to come together initially to experiment and
265
00:14:22.740 --> 00:14:26.340
to run these projects that had multiple participants in them.
266
00:14:26.379 --> 00:14:27.899
So we kind of understood there would be a high
267
00:14:27.940 --> 00:14:30.860
failure rate. We probably ended up doing about 100 or
268
00:14:32.070 --> 00:14:35.330
plus projects, a handful of them turn into companies, their
269
00:14:35.370 --> 00:14:39.250
own consortium. Some of them exist today, some of them don't,
270
00:14:39.350 --> 00:14:42.990
the majority don't. And that was broadly what our expectation was.
271
00:14:44.389 --> 00:14:47.519
So I think that good ideas and good execution will
272
00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:52.419
survive and thrive. So it may be a bit of
273
00:14:52.460 --> 00:14:59.159
a hybrid world. I would say that the degree of
274
00:14:59.210 --> 00:15:05.100
difficulty is obvious. much higher if you're trying to organize
275
00:15:05.299 --> 00:15:09.259
in a private blockchain network with not just really your peers,
276
00:15:09.299 --> 00:15:11.590
but your
competitors. I think that that's a very, very
277
00:15:11.659 --> 00:15:15.289
difficult coordination problem to solve. And it can be solved,
278
00:15:15.850 --> 00:15:19.629
but it's usually solved in a markets context when they're
279
00:15:19.649 --> 00:15:25.070
working through, say, an intermediary or a utility. So you
280
00:15:25.090 --> 00:15:28.309
think of some of our customers like Euroclear and Six Exchange,
281
00:15:28.730 --> 00:15:33.789
amazing examples of, market utilities and intermediaries that are providing
282
00:15:33.830 --> 00:15:38.710
a great service to multiple competitors. Sort of an organic
283
00:15:39.110 --> 00:15:42.850
private blockchain network where a bunch of competitors will play
284
00:15:42.909 --> 00:15:46.830
nice enough for that network to be successful, that's a
285
00:15:46.929 --> 00:15:54.029
harder prospect. So I think it's, generally speaking, it's probably
286
00:15:54.070 --> 00:15:57.279
a better path for banks, financial institutions, and others to
287
00:15:57.320 --> 00:15:59.350
focus on what's a net new product or a net
288
00:15:59.379 --> 00:16:01.850
new customer base I can reach through an open public
289
00:16:01.889 --> 00:16:07.029
network than to try in the private networks. But there
290
00:16:07.070 --> 00:16:08.889
is still a lot to be done and a lot of,
291
00:16:10.289 --> 00:16:14.519
I'd say, services and connectivity to bring not just assets
292
00:16:14.539 --> 00:16:17.139
that are on private blockchains, but all assets into these
293
00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:21.620
open rails. And that's gonna be done through a mix
294
00:16:21.639 --> 00:16:26.200
of things, through tech, through relationships, through legal agreements. So
295
00:16:26.379 --> 00:16:27.620
that's really the focus of our work now.
296
00:16:29.200 --> 00:16:32.860
So for the audience who have not heard about R3,
297
00:16:33.799 --> 00:16:37.990
so you are essentially like a conductor bringing these different folks,
298
00:16:38.029 --> 00:16:42.929
institutions and platforms together and helping them to get on chain,
299
00:16:42.970 --> 00:16:45.750
so to speak, right? In different ways, tokenizations and things
300
00:16:45.789 --> 00:16:49.850
like that. Using Corda, but also along with Solana, is
301
00:16:49.870 --> 00:16:51.080
that right? Yeah.
302
00:16:51.820 --> 00:16:55.500
So back in, I'd say, 2016, we were looking at
303
00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.409
what was out there. And this is pre-mainnet of Ethereum.
304
00:17:00.549 --> 00:17:03.250
And looking at what options are out there. And we
305
00:17:04.349 --> 00:17:07.970
ended up convening a bunch of our customers, which were
306
00:17:08.009 --> 00:17:13.259
the banks, and with their help, designed a private blockchain
307
00:17:13.279 --> 00:17:18.019
protocol called Corda and open sourced it and and then, uh,
308
00:17:18.220 --> 00:17:20.740
supported a software. So there were, as I mentioned before,
309
00:17:20.759 --> 00:17:23.339
there are hundreds of projects that were, uh, tried on
310
00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:25.440
Corda and there's, there are some great ones that are
311
00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:29.539
running today. Uh, about a year and a half ago,
312
00:17:29.880 --> 00:17:33.069
we established a partnership with Solana and we've been building
313
00:17:33.349 --> 00:17:37.509
a Solana protocol, uh, also called Corda, uh, that we
314
00:17:37.529 --> 00:17:41.529
will be, uh, imminently, uh, going live with. And the
315
00:17:41.549 --> 00:17:45.400
focus of that is, is very simple. R3, uh, On
316
00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:49.369
the R3 side, we want to be the on-ramp for
317
00:17:49.380 --> 00:17:52.130
the next trillion dollars of assets. So this is fixed
318
00:17:52.150 --> 00:17:57.849
income alternatives. There's an enormous universe of assets, especially yield,
319
00:17:58.369 --> 00:18:02.230
to bring on-chain to existing on-chain customers. And with the
320
00:18:02.289 --> 00:18:07.299
Corda Protocol on Solana, which is stewarded by the Corda Foundation,
321
00:18:07.339 --> 00:18:09.599
which actually I'll be moving over to the Corda Foundation
322
00:18:09.660 --> 00:18:12.900
in a handful of weeks to help to lead that effort.
323
00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:16.900
the focus there is once you bring these assets on chain,
324
00:18:16.920 --> 00:18:21.250
when you get this yield into, uh, these open networks,
325
00:18:21.549 --> 00:18:24.450
how do you make it productive and useful? How do you,
326
00:18:24.990 --> 00:18:27.009
how do you allow for it to be used as collateral?
327
00:18:27.109 --> 00:18:29.970
How can you provide better liquidity for what, you know,
328
00:18:29.990 --> 00:18:31.690
quote unquote tokenize RWAs?
329
00:18:31.710 --> 00:18:32.779
Sure.
330
00:18:32.819 --> 00:18:34.920
Um, so that's the main focus now.
331
00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:39.019
So why Solana? Why not Ethereum, Avalanche or other blockchains
332
00:18:39.059 --> 00:18:40.099
out there? Yeah.
333
00:18:40.119 --> 00:18:43.769
So we've, uh, We have a lot of experience with
334
00:18:43.809 --> 00:18:47.450
a lot of different technology. So in building our own blockchain,
335
00:18:48.349 --> 00:18:51.690
helping to build applications for customers, spent a lot of
336
00:18:51.730 --> 00:18:55.849
time actually evaluating blockchain platforms a few years back when
337
00:18:55.869 --> 00:18:59.079
we were thinking about shifting the focus of the company.
338
00:19:01.500 --> 00:19:05.539
Solana was a very, very easy choice for us. I'd
339
00:19:05.579 --> 00:19:09.359
say roughly around three big reasons. One, if you think
340
00:19:09.400 --> 00:19:13.599
about just the technology, a very big supporter of a
341
00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:17.160
single main net that you can scale through. So there
342
00:19:17.180 --> 00:19:19.720
are definitely other approaches. You know, you have Ethereum with
343
00:19:19.779 --> 00:19:23.730
layer two approach and some subnets and those
approaches that
344
00:19:23.750 --> 00:19:26.890
I think they can work. I think having both the
345
00:19:26.970 --> 00:19:31.089
technical and that sort of logical architectural approach of saying
346
00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:34.430
we want to concentrate as much activity and liquidity onto
347
00:19:34.630 --> 00:19:38.170
one single main net is very, very attractive. And also
348
00:19:38.190 --> 00:19:41.700
it's a very, very straightforward and simple concept for say
349
00:19:42.299 --> 00:19:46.799
executives at banks to understand and as a former reformed
350
00:19:46.859 --> 00:19:51.000
markets guy, concentrating liquidity was always a very, very big
351
00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:55.960
focus of mine. So that's definitely one. I'd say two
352
00:19:56.079 --> 00:20:03.690
is Solana, Solana Foundation is incredibly focused on how they
353
00:20:03.750 --> 00:20:07.970
can help institutions be successful. So So not only was
354
00:20:08.009 --> 00:20:10.710
it a technical fit, it was very much a cultural
355
00:20:10.750 --> 00:20:13.730
and a strategic fit. So I think if you think
356
00:20:13.750 --> 00:20:18.470
about how everything is hard, working in institutions potentially is
357
00:20:18.509 --> 00:20:25.069
even harder. You need to have that consistent and persistent
358
00:20:25.210 --> 00:20:28.069
focus and have it really be part of the long-term strategy.
359
00:20:28.559 --> 00:20:31.410
So that's something that was very evident to us in
360
00:20:31.710 --> 00:20:39.119
working with the Salana Foundation. So that's been amazing. And, um,
361
00:20:39.589 --> 00:20:41.609
I think, you know, three, it's very interesting. If you
362
00:20:41.630 --> 00:20:45.529
think about, uh, blockchain networks, Solana is very much here
363
00:20:45.549 --> 00:20:48.809
to stay. So they have been through their own near
364
00:20:48.829 --> 00:20:49.750
death experience moment.
365
00:20:49.849 --> 00:20:50.269
Yes. Right.
366
00:20:51.289 --> 00:20:53.869
And I think they are much better for it. And it's,
367
00:20:54.369 --> 00:20:57.150
if you think across not just capital formation, but, but
368
00:20:57.170 --> 00:21:02.710
just Solana and the network as, as, uh, as a capital, as,
369
00:21:02.890 --> 00:21:07.140
as an asset. It's being accepted by institutions. It really
370
00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:11.769
is becoming an approved network for banks and others to
371
00:21:11.809 --> 00:21:15.730
do things on, which is a huge hurdle. And they've
372
00:21:15.750 --> 00:21:18.470
been churning through that over the last handful of years.
373
00:21:18.490 --> 00:21:21.569
And so it really gives them a really big, I think,
374
00:21:21.769 --> 00:21:22.190
head start.
375
00:21:23.089 --> 00:21:28.940
You mentioned Corda will be on Solana. Noob question, rookie question.
376
00:21:29.099 --> 00:21:30.960
Is it like a layer two, so to speak?
377
00:21:31.599 --> 00:21:34.079
So, yeah, it's a great question. Well, one of the
378
00:21:34.119 -->
00:21:37.859
things that drew us to Solana was the focus on
379
00:21:37.920 --> 00:21:42.019
bringing things on-chain, not as an abstraction, as a layer two.
380
00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:45.720
So we have, as I mentioned before, we have customers
381
00:21:45.740 --> 00:21:49.240
that are running, effectively running Corda as a private network.
382
00:21:50.220 --> 00:21:54.349
So those are their own sovereign networks. Through Corda Protocol
383
00:21:54.529 --> 00:21:58.509
on Solana, it really has two jobs. One is as
384
00:21:58.890 --> 00:22:02.460
effectively as... RWA yield vaults to be able to package
385
00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:05.440
yield that we're helping to originate and bring on chain.
386
00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:09.460
That's one. Two, it's a way for these existing quarter
387
00:22:09.500 --> 00:22:13.660
private networks to bring their assets to Solana. But it's
388
00:22:13.779 --> 00:22:19.069
very much not about separating out these transactions. You're going
389
00:22:19.089 --> 00:22:22.710
back to like, you know, why Solana? They've been very,
390
00:22:22.730 --> 00:22:27.190
very thoughtful around trying to keep permissions and permissioning at
391
00:22:27.230 --> 00:22:32.700
the right level. So having a single blockchain which you
392
00:22:32.759 --> 00:22:37.559
can rely on as opposed to having the bifurcated liquidity
393
00:22:37.579 --> 00:22:40.279
in Layer 2 is not something that we're really that
394
00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:44.180
interested in. So that was a very, very conscious choice.
395
00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:46.039
And when we were thinking about it, how we're going
396
00:22:46.099 --> 00:22:49.119
to implement this, how we want to execute was to
397
00:22:49.180 --> 00:22:54.359
avoid this Layer 2 model and instead bring assets on-chain
398
00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:56.119
to these open networks.
399
00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:59.740
Mm-hmm. Now, the institutions, the banks and so forth that
400
00:22:59.779 --> 00:23:02.740
are working with you, what's their highest priority right now?
401
00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:06.329
Is it tokenization of assets? Is it payments? Is it
402
00:23:06.369 --> 00:23:08.950
putting data on chain or all of the above?
403
00:23:09.549 --> 00:23:16.869
So I'd say right now, every bank has a stablecoin
404
00:23:16.890 --> 00:23:21.930
slash tokenized deposit strategy. Almost every bank and financial institution
405
00:23:21.950 --> 00:23:26.890
has a tokenized RWA or tokenization strategy. Above and beyond that,
406
00:23:27.019 --> 00:23:30.380
I think it's, if you think about data, that's probably
407
00:23:30.420 --> 00:23:32.599
a little bit down the road, a little bit less so.
408
00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:37.339
But as we were looking at where the opportunities are,
409
00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:40.539
you look at stablecoins specifically, it really was the very
410
00:23:40.619 --> 00:23:45.920
first successful token as RWA. And I think banks are
411
00:23:45.940 --> 00:23:50.900
still trying to come to grips with how they either
412
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:55.480
take advantage or compete with stablecoins, still to be determined.
413
00:23:56.690 --> 00:24:01.849
As you've seen, there's still, I guess, industry consortium that
414
00:24:01.930 --> 00:24:04.549
are trying to be stood up, whether it's around tokenized
415
00:24:04.569 --> 00:24:08.069
deposits or things that are close to central bank digital
416
00:24:08.109 --> 00:24:12.009
currency or even bank stablecoins. And I think that'll continue.
417
00:24:14.569 --> 00:24:17.869
I think that it's probably a better path to be
418
00:24:17.910 --> 00:24:22.910
looking at existing open stablecoins and trying to understand how
419
00:24:22.930 --> 00:24:25.089
they can interact with them as opposed to trying to
420
00:24:25.569 --> 00:24:28.109
control that, but to be determined. I think on the
421
00:24:28.170 --> 00:24:32.700
tokenized RWA side, it's a lot, it's a lot of a,
422
00:24:32.690 --> 00:24:34.079
I don't know if it's a cleaner, but it's just a,
423
00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:37.359
it fits together a lot better than, it's not as adversarial,
424
00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:39.720
in my view, as say where stable coins could be,
425
00:24:39.779 --> 00:24:43.720
because obviously with stable coins, you're thinking about, as we've seen,
426
00:24:43.980 --> 00:24:45.599
we saw with the fight with Genius and some of
427
00:24:45.619 --> 00:24:48.880
these other things, that's getting into really the core of
428
00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:50.960
a bank, around the interest margin, et cetera, et cetera,
429
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:51.559
all that stuff.
430
00:24:51.579 --> 00:24:53.039
Right.
431
00:24:53.079 --> 00:24:59.539
On, tokenized RWA, banks are generally an originate-to-distribute machine. So
432
00:25:00.039 --> 00:25:05.039
having a tool and potentially even a net new pool
433
00:25:05.079 --> 00:25:08.539
of capital to distribute to, so the tool being tokenization
434
00:25:08.599 --> 00:25:14.210
and these pools of capital being crypto wealth, increasingly stablecoin reserves,
435
00:25:14.730 --> 00:25:21.259
it's an amazing opportunity. It's something that in our conversations
436
00:25:21.299 --> 00:25:23.039
with them, they see as something that adds to their
437
00:25:23.059 --> 00:25:26.640
current business, adds to their current revenue, and isn't really
438
00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:27.140
a threat.
439
00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:31.220
That makes sense. And I know you said some of
440
00:25:31.259 --> 00:25:34.569
it is TBD because there's still some battles happening and
441
00:25:35.029 --> 00:25:36.049
things to be sorted out.
442
00:25:36.069 --> 00:25:37.710
Well, isn't life always TBD?
443
00:25:37.990 --> 00:25:42.569
Yeah. Really quick, going back to the Solana item, with
444
00:25:42.589 --> 00:25:45.650
bridging between a private chain and a public chain, how
445
00:25:45.710 --> 00:25:49.880
are you maintaining privacy and security in that
process?
446
00:25:50.309 --> 00:25:54.410
So there's a few different ways you can try to
447
00:25:54.430 --> 00:25:59.000
bridge assets and move assets. The model that we've supported
448
00:25:59.019 --> 00:26:01.039
for a while, and we've done open source work in this,
449
00:26:01.099 --> 00:26:03.960
and this is how we've implemented it with the quarter protocol,
450
00:26:04.019 --> 00:26:08.720
is you can have effectively an escrow and mint pattern.
451
00:26:08.759 --> 00:26:13.960
So you're effectively escrowing an off-chain asset somewhere if it's, say,
452
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:16.220
on a private blockchain network, and you're then minting it
453
00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:19.329
onto the destination network. In this case, it would be
454
00:26:19.849 --> 00:26:25.170
Solana our view on, or you can have a pattern
455
00:26:25.190 --> 00:26:29.950
where you keep your asset completely off Solana, for example,
456
00:26:30.099 --> 00:26:33.180
and use Solana as the settlement network. So you can
457
00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:36.299
have delivery versus payment, a DVP, where the delivery happens
458
00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:38.160
on the private network and the payment happens on the
459
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:42.920
public network. And you can effectively have all the data
460
00:26:42.980 --> 00:26:47.690
of the transaction on the private side. That's one approach.
461
00:26:48.210 --> 00:26:51.519
I'd say overall, if you think about one of the
462
00:26:51.539 --> 00:26:54.660
ways that Solana has evolved is that they're trying to
463
00:26:55.839 --> 00:26:58.589
put privacy controls at the right level of the stack.
464
00:26:59.809 --> 00:27:02.289
It's somewhat of a brute force thing to, to create
465
00:27:02.309 --> 00:27:04.809
a layer two to, to high transactions effective from the
466
00:27:04.849 --> 00:27:09.289
layer one. Um, the Solana approach is really, it's, you
467
00:27:09.329 --> 00:27:13.319
can have some level of obfuscation or, uh, or privacy
468
00:27:13.410 --> 00:27:14.460
at that transaction level.
469
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:14.880
Sure.
470
00:27:14.980 --> 00:27:19.079
While the confirmation of the transaction within the Solana network is,
471
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:19.619
is open.
472
00:27:20.359 --> 00:27:24.279
Hmm. Because I know for institutions, especially banks, privacy is
473
00:27:24.319 --> 00:27:26.480
so important. So it sounds like you guys have gotten
474
00:27:26.519 --> 00:27:29.779
that figured out and it's up and running and working well. Yeah.
475
00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:32.599
I mean, it's been a big driver from day one
476
00:27:32.859 --> 00:27:33.180
at R3.
477
00:27:33.559 --> 00:27:38.650
Right. Right. Absolutely. So Todd, with these institutions looking to
478
00:27:39.009 --> 00:27:41.329
put a lot of assets on chain and which will
479
00:27:41.509 --> 00:27:45.150
create 24-7, 365 markets, make them more global. You mentioned
480
00:27:45.190 --> 00:27:46.430
earlier distribution, right?
481
00:27:46.509 --> 00:27:47.269
Yeah.
482
00:27:47.450 --> 00:27:50.819
What does that look like by 2030? Are we seeing... 10%, 15%,
483
00:27:50.819 --> 00:27:52.960
20% of assets on chain?
484
00:27:53.940 --> 00:27:59.180
So from your lips to God's ears, I hope so.
485
00:27:59.259 --> 00:28:02.809
I think it's going to be certain segments of the
486
00:28:02.829 --> 00:28:08.509
market may have higher adoption and others are lower. I
487
00:28:08.829 --> 00:28:12.210
definitely do see that as the direction of travel. And
488
00:28:12.250 --> 00:28:15.400
it's not surprising how it started to evolve where it's
489
00:28:16.259 --> 00:28:18.630
potentially kind of the bottom up from like the most
490
00:28:18.730 --> 00:28:23.069
fungible assets. So dollars initially, and now say money market funds,
491
00:28:23.269 --> 00:28:27.490
you know, very fungible types of, uh, of assets. Um,
492
00:28:28.109 --> 00:28:29.430
but I think you're going to start to see this
493
00:28:30.109 --> 00:28:32.759
moving up in complexity after the money markets. Now we've
494
00:28:32.779 --> 00:28:36.079
had tokenized equities still, I mean, not necessarily simple, but
495
00:28:36.220 --> 00:28:39.619
somewhat straightforward. Uh, but over time, I think you're going
496
00:28:39.640 --> 00:28:42.880
to see more and more complex, uh, assets in particular,
497
00:28:43.990 --> 00:28:46.779
those yielding assets that I think that are potentially lacking
498
00:28:46.930 --> 00:28:49.880
on-chain today will be the next area. And that's the
499
00:28:49.900 --> 00:28:54.500
main area that we're focused on. I'd say, you know,
500
00:28:54.539 --> 00:28:57.059
within the next four or five years, you're going to
501
00:28:57.119 --> 00:29:01.809
start to see some of these financial institutions, not just banks,
502
00:29:01.829 --> 00:29:04.430
but asset managers and others move very aggressively into the space.
503
00:29:05.910 --> 00:29:09.099
The SEC just last week provided an exemption for tokenized
504
00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:13.069
securities stocks and things like that. the AMC CEO came
505
00:29:13.119 --> 00:29:15.549
out against Robinhood. So it seems there's still a lot
506
00:29:15.589 --> 00:29:18.670
to be ironed out and figured out here. Do you
507
00:29:18.730 --> 00:29:21.630
see any risks? Are the banks presenting any risks to you? Like, hey,
508
00:29:21.750 --> 00:29:22.450
what about this?
509
00:29:23.589 --> 00:29:29.029
Yeah, there's risk. But I mean, the AMC Robinhood fight
510
00:29:29.089 --> 00:29:30.809
was like, it's probably the best thing that happened to
511
00:29:30.849 --> 00:29:37.549
tokenize equities all year. It was amazing. So I think
512
00:29:37.569 --> 00:29:39.210
there's clearly going to be.
513
00:29:41.400 --> 00:29:45.579
Some risk on the regulatory side, although I think it
514
00:29:46.299 --> 00:29:50.279
was actually probably the best case scenario of what actually
515
00:29:50.299 --> 00:29:55.200
ended up occurring. It was probably a little too optimistic
516
00:29:55.259 --> 00:29:57.829
and too difficult to get everything sort of wrapped up into, say,
517
00:29:57.960 --> 00:30:02.400
one bill with clarity and So having the agencies instead
518
00:30:02.640 --> 00:30:05.440
getting involved and trying to provide guidance is probably even
519
00:30:05.480 --> 00:30:10.740
better for the industry. Since the beginning of R3, we've
520
00:30:10.809 --> 00:30:16.230
always had regulatory clarity as an excuse to not do things.
521
00:30:17.470 --> 00:30:20.410
If you were a bank executive or someone that's just
522
00:30:20.430 --> 00:30:22.509
trying to survive to the next bonus cycle kind of thing.
523
00:30:24.579 --> 00:30:28.700
I haven't really seen that be a real excuse, and
524
00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:31.609
I don't really see it. being a blocker over the
525
00:30:31.670 --> 00:30:37.150
next handful of years. I think if, as in when,
526
00:30:38.109 --> 00:30:42.569
institutions and, I would say, service providers and protocols, and
527
00:30:42.589 --> 00:30:45.690
this is very much what we're doing, adhere to existing
528
00:30:45.970 --> 00:30:49.910
securities laws while they're still trying to reach new customers
529
00:30:50.009 --> 00:30:56.009
and create novel products that give customers more choices for yield,
530
00:30:56.470 --> 00:30:59.130
as long as that happens, I think everything will be a-okay.
531
00:30:59.609 --> 00:31:05.490
The challenges will come if certain projects pretend these securities
532
00:31:05.529 --> 00:31:06.190
laws don't exist.
533
00:31:07.539 --> 00:31:09.759
Yeah, that makes sense.
534
00:31:10.140 --> 00:31:14.539
Which surprisingly is something that we have heard from some
535
00:31:14.579 --> 00:31:17.940
of our partners and customers where some of the projects
536
00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:20.619
do come and pitch some of these financial institutions with
537
00:31:20.660 --> 00:31:21.500
some magical thinking.
538
00:31:22.059 --> 00:31:26.049
So Todd, what's interesting, the SEC provided right crypto. It's
539
00:31:26.069 --> 00:31:28.250
still in the comment period. But could that be a
540
00:31:28.269 --> 00:31:32.400
game changer? Because You mentioned ICOs back in 2017 earlier.
541
00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:36.299
That makes ICOs regulated. Are there certain guardrails?
542
00:31:36.599 --> 00:31:37.740
Certain guardrails, yes.
543
00:31:38.359 --> 00:31:40.740
And could that open up institutions and say, hey, the
544
00:31:40.759 --> 00:31:43.220
token we wanted to launch to do X or Y,
545
00:31:43.720 --> 00:31:45.259
we can do it now as long as we stay
546
00:31:45.299 --> 00:31:48.140
within those guidelines?
547
00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:55.019
I think the reg crypto rules will... lead to some
548
00:31:55.170 --> 00:31:57.579
interesting experiments. I think the hard part is always if
549
00:31:57.599 --> 00:32:00.200
you look at the fine print, the size is fairly
550
00:32:00.240 -->
00:32:04.500
small of what you can do. But anything that effectively
551
00:32:04.559 --> 00:32:06.680
runs back the ICO but does it in a way
552
00:32:06.720 --> 00:32:08.859
that's more credible, I think would be very, very helpful
553
00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:16.700
because I'm a huge believer in on-chain capital formation. There's
554
00:32:16.720 --> 00:32:20.309
going to be twists and turns and some projects maybe
555
00:32:20.349 --> 00:32:21.730
get it slightly wrong, but I think it's a really,
556
00:32:21.750 --> 00:32:24.359
really important thing to start to keep experimenting with. I'm
557
00:32:24.380 --> 00:32:28.059
a huge believer in not just tokenizing RWA, but how
558
00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:33.460
actual project tokens and utility tokens can help with some
559
00:32:33.500 --> 00:32:37.339
of these ecosystems. So the more experiments, I think, the better.
560
00:32:38.299 --> 00:32:42.900
And the more examples that we start to see where
561
00:32:43.089 --> 00:32:45.730
these innovative projects can be doing things that maybe look
562
00:32:45.750 --> 00:32:48.970
a little bit strange and weird, but are compliance and
563
00:32:49.690 --> 00:32:51.700
don't rug people, the better off we'll all be.
564
00:32:51.730 --> 00:32:54.940
Yes. Yeah, for sure. And I can't wait to get
565
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:58.180
to that position or a place where rug pulls are
566
00:32:58.240 --> 00:33:00.099
a thing of the past. Yes.
567
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:02.539
One of our goals is hopefully everything we do will
568
00:33:02.579 --> 00:33:04.430
be as unruggable as possible.
569
00:33:04.769 --> 00:33:07.529
Yeah. And obviously institutions are not looking to do that.
570
00:33:07.650 --> 00:33:12.789
I think that's more so in the meme coin crowd, right? Yeah. Look,
571
00:33:12.809 --> 00:33:15.970
there's always bad actors, right? You never know. Barney Madoff
572
00:33:16.009 --> 00:33:18.380
was a bad actor in a regulated market. I agree.
573
00:33:20.009 --> 00:33:21.630
I worked with a lot of characters back in, uh,
574
00:33:22.210 --> 00:33:24.650
in the old FX days. Let's just say that, um,
575
00:33:25.019 --> 00:33:27.799
you know, brown paper bags filled with money were, uh,
576
00:33:27.960 --> 00:33:29.400
did happen from time to time. Wow.
577
00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:30.700
Under the table, huh?
578
00:33:31.220 --> 00:33:33.180
Statue of limitations was run off. I was not involved.
579
00:33:33.220 --> 00:33:35.140
This was stories I heard third hand.
580
00:33:36.740 --> 00:33:39.500
Yeah. We've seen it in the movies, right? Wolf of
581
00:33:39.539 --> 00:33:41.279
Wall Street, Boiler Room. Yeah.
582
00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:42.539
They were part documentary.
583
00:33:42.799 --> 00:33:48.809
Yeah. So with the institutions that you're working with, um,
584
00:33:49.450 --> 00:33:51.640
What are they looking at down the line as far
585
00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:54.119
as other assets they want to tokenize? Is it real estate?
586
00:33:54.539 --> 00:33:57.140
Is it precious metals? Anything along those lines?
587
00:33:57.660 --> 00:34:03.390
So what we're seeing currently is really across sort of
588
00:34:03.680 --> 00:34:05.490
fixed income and alternatives. That's where a lot of the
589
00:34:05.529 --> 00:34:08.570
focus is. We actually spent a fair bit of time
590
00:34:08.690 --> 00:34:11.329
on private credit. I still think it's going to be
591
00:34:11.530 --> 00:34:17.489
an interesting area. But I'd say there's still some challenges
592
00:34:17.510 --> 00:34:20.500
to be worked out. where there's a fit between what, say,
593
00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:25.219
an asset manager that's running, say, a private credit strategy
594
00:34:26.340 --> 00:34:30.500
and what a DeFi investor is looking for, which is
595
00:34:30.760 --> 00:34:35.289
one wants, obviously, AUM. They want money in, and they
596
00:34:35.309 --> 00:34:37.789
would like to keep it for 7 to 10 years.
597
00:34:38.869 --> 00:34:41.610
And a DeFi investor wants to own a yielding asset
598
00:34:41.630 --> 00:34:45.110
that can be used as collateral on-chain and have the
599
00:34:45.190 --> 00:34:51.179
option to exit Immediately. So bridging that duration gap is
600
00:34:51.320 --> 00:34:55.429
going to be pretty challenging. So we've spent a little
601
00:34:55.449 --> 00:34:58.889
bit less time on private credit than, than, uh, recently
602
00:34:59.469 --> 00:35:04.929
and looking at things along structured products. Uh, the, I
603
00:35:04.969 --> 00:35:09.110
think the longer tail of, of still bankable assets, but
604
00:35:09.130 --> 00:35:13.070
then maybe are a little bit less, um, uh, prevalent
605
00:35:13.309 --> 00:35:15.869
in today's financial world that can still have an attractive
606
00:35:15.889 --> 00:35:19.380
yield profile to existing on-chain investors. So that's where our
607
00:35:19.460 --> 00:35:25.380
area focuses. And importantly, it's around products that have liquidity
608
00:35:25.420 --> 00:35:29.360
that is not maybe all the way approaching to instance
609
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:31.179
without a little bit of elbow grease and a little
610
00:35:31.199 --> 00:35:33.730
bit of product design, but that out of the box
611
00:35:33.750 --> 00:35:37.449
are daily liquidity products. I think that's quite important. Because
612
00:35:38.610 --> 00:35:47.690
it's not so much that on-chain investors need bottomless liquidity.
613
00:35:48.579 --> 00:35:51.159
sell these assets. They need to know it's there. And
614
00:35:51.199 --> 00:35:56.000
also those that accept these tokenized things as collateral need
615
00:35:56.039 --> 00:35:58.280
to know that they can exit as well. So if
616
00:35:58.300 --> 00:36:03.750
you don't have that, it's really, honestly, it's not that exciting.
617
00:36:03.949 --> 00:36:05.730
And I don't think the RWA market on-chain is going
618
00:36:05.750 --> 00:36:06.050
to grow.
619
00:36:07.489 --> 00:36:09.809
That makes sense. And I know as we
get into
620
00:36:10.050 --> 00:36:13.579
other types of assets and commodities, there's going to have
621
00:36:13.599 --> 00:36:16.329
to be the market makers that come to provide the
622
00:36:16.369 --> 00:36:18.820
liquidity and get it all up and running because it's
623
00:36:18.860 --> 00:36:22.159
not there on-chain right now. And that could be institutions
624
00:36:22.199 --> 00:36:24.619
or it could be smaller crypto companies.
625
00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:28.500
I'd say, so you mentioned like 2030. I do think
626
00:36:28.519 --> 00:36:30.440
that over the next three, four years, you're going to
627
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:33.579
start to see off-chain and on-chain balance sheets sort of
628
00:36:34.260 --> 00:36:36.980
meld together. So right now there's a bit of a,
629
00:36:37.690 --> 00:36:39.570
there's more than a bit of a disconnect between these
630
00:36:39.610 --> 00:36:43.730
two worlds. And if you think about market making on-chain,
631
00:36:44.550 --> 00:36:47.090
It's a great business, right? It's fairly capital intensive and
632
00:36:47.110 --> 00:36:49.349
the bar, the cost capital is quite high for market makers.
633
00:36:50.070 --> 00:36:54.909
Then you introduce, say, a tokenized real world asset that
634
00:36:54.969 --> 00:37:01.099
has some conditions around maybe KYC or geofencing or some
635
00:37:01.139 --> 00:37:03.019
conditions on if I hold it, how can I sell it?
636
00:37:04.780 --> 00:37:08.019
It's not the most fun thing for a crypto market
637
00:37:08.039 --> 00:37:11.510
maker to get involved with. And they're still looking for
638
00:37:11.550 --> 00:37:14.449
this effective rate of return to overcome their cost of capital.
639
00:37:15.369 --> 00:37:19.519
Whereas there is off-chain capital that if it were presented
640
00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:21.559
with the rates that you can get for potentially, say,
641
00:37:21.599 --> 00:37:24.340
making markets or providing liquidity to on-chain RWA, it'd be
642
00:37:24.380 --> 00:37:26.539
quite happy. So how do you bring these two together?
643
00:37:26.559 --> 00:37:30.940
And if you kind of think about what R3 has been,
644
00:37:30.980 --> 00:37:34.780
that's been the role we've played is linking these two
645
00:37:34.860 --> 00:37:38.510
disparate worlds together. So it's something that we're quite focused
646
00:37:38.570 --> 00:37:41.349
on is how can we How can we bring not
647
00:37:41.389 --> 00:37:45.570
only net new products and yield to on-chain investors through tokenization,
648
00:37:46.030 --> 00:37:48.289
but then how do we introduce some of the opportunities
649
00:37:49.269 --> 00:37:51.610
on-chain to off-chain capital?
650
00:37:54.389 --> 00:37:58.880
Now, with the tokenization that's happening that you're helping to facilitate,
651
00:37:59.639 --> 00:38:04.840
are the institutions primarily targeting high net worth individuals, accredited investors,
652
00:38:05.159 --> 00:38:07.900
or are they planning to open a segment of those
653
00:38:08.059 --> 00:38:10.329
tokenized assets to the average Joe and Jane?
654
00:38:10.789 --> 00:38:13.449
So a lot of this depends on the product. Uh,
655
00:38:13.570 --> 00:38:17.570
so first and foremost, what we're focused on right now is,
656
00:38:18.230 --> 00:38:22.559
is we feel that there is a, uh, segment of,
657
00:38:22.780 --> 00:38:26.820
of effective on-chain wealth and investors that are looking for
658
00:38:26.860 --> 00:38:28.880
net new products. So there's customers on chain today. We
659
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:32.639
don't have to go off chain to find those customers, right? The, uh,
660
00:38:34.300 --> 00:38:36.920
some products, you think of some structured products and others
661
00:38:37.639 --> 00:38:42.800
need to have, uh, very careful consideration on distribution around
662
00:38:42.940 --> 00:38:46.579
credit and investor status and which jurisdictions you are distributing
663
00:38:46.619 --> 00:38:51.840
these products. But I still think that there is a very,
664
00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:57.969
very big demand for effectively, say, non-US on-chain investors, as
665
00:38:57.989 --> 00:39:01.389
you've seen with tokenized equities and other products. Within the
666
00:39:01.429 --> 00:39:02.989
yield space, I think that there's a lot to be
667
00:39:03.030 --> 00:39:08.570
done there. What is, I'd say, exciting is we.
668
00:39:10.139 --> 00:39:12.679
We're focused on bringing on products that are for accredited
669
00:39:12.699 --> 00:39:18.869
investors and products that are for certain market segments. The
670
00:39:19.090 --> 00:39:22.769
benefit of having an on-chain protocol of Corda and the
671
00:39:23.130 --> 00:39:26.789
packaging and the work that we're doing and our understanding
672
00:39:26.829 --> 00:39:31.030
of how these assets work, and how to work with
673
00:39:31.070 --> 00:39:36.449
different origination partners, there's definitely, I think, a great opportunity
674
00:39:37.159 --> 00:39:41.840
to bring yield on-chain that's very compliant, adhering to the
675
00:39:41.880 --> 00:39:45.710
securities law, and making sure we get the user experience
676
00:39:45.730 --> 00:39:49.510
of the UX right, that it is offered to more
677
00:39:49.550 --> 00:39:53.739
and more on-chain customers. So lowering that bar, so minimums
678
00:39:53.969 --> 00:39:59.179
come down, potentially accredited investor limits can come down or
679
00:39:59.219 --> 00:40:01.179
maybe be eliminated depending on how you package it and
680
00:40:01.199 --> 00:40:06.179
how you originate these products. I think what we want
681
00:40:06.219 --> 00:40:09.150
to get to, and you see some examples of this today,
682
00:40:09.230 --> 00:40:13.679
is you want effectively like a stablecoin like UX where
683
00:40:13.880 --> 00:40:19.219
you're still getting exposure to yields that is trustworthy, unruggable,
684
00:40:19.559 --> 00:40:21.440
something you can touch and feel, something that is backed
685
00:40:21.480 -->
00:40:26.000
by a real-world asset. I think that's the dream, and
686
00:40:26.019 --> 00:40:27.699
that's what we're focused on long-term.
687
00:40:28.360 --> 00:40:31.809
I'm sure many institutions, they want as much distribution as possible.
688
00:40:32.050 --> 00:40:33.510
Yes. The fees, right?
689
00:40:33.530 --> 00:40:36.369
Because someone in South America or a country in Africa
690
00:40:37.090 --> 00:40:40.369
has a smartphone, and they can get a tokenized version
691
00:40:40.409 --> 00:40:43.409
of Tesla or Apple, which they couldn't access before. And
692
00:40:43.429 --> 00:40:46.510
even if it's a fraction of it, still, right, it's
693
00:40:46.530 --> 00:40:49.550
just distribution. It's getting it to the hands of millions,
694
00:40:49.590 --> 00:40:50.730
billions of people around the world.
695
00:40:50.750 --> 00:40:55.780
Yeah, so I've spent time with very longstanding, very conservative
696
00:40:55.860 --> 00:41:00.239
asset managers. And it's amazing to hear what they believe.
697
00:41:01.079 --> 00:41:03.840
They believe, and it's not a belief, they can see
698
00:41:03.860 --> 00:41:07.179
the data. There's an intergenerational wealth transfer. That's number one.
699
00:41:07.820 --> 00:41:12.269
Number two is as that wealth is transferred, how this
700
00:41:12.329 --> 00:41:15.630
generation is interacting with their wealth and managing it. It's
701
00:41:15.739 --> 00:41:20.400
not going into a mahogany boardroom and trying to understand
702
00:41:20.420 --> 00:41:22.519
what they're going to do for the next year or two.
703
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:27.340
It's through their wallet on their phone. So these asset
704
00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:30.300
managers know they have to not only be there for
705
00:41:30.340 --> 00:41:34.159
these new customers, they have to actually be right there
706
00:41:34.360 --> 00:41:37.360
on chain. And one thing I wouldn't be surprised to
707
00:41:37.400 --> 00:41:42.000
see in the next couple of years, very conservative yet
708
00:41:42.199 --> 00:41:48.000
very successful asset manager types moving to become true on-chain curators,
709
00:41:48.280 --> 00:41:48.800
as an example.
710
00:41:49.590 --> 00:41:53.110
I feel like BlackRock, they definitely want that. If they
711
00:41:53.150 --> 00:41:55.489
can get their ETFs out there to everybody, they would
712
00:41:55.550 --> 00:41:55.969
love that.
713
00:41:56.070 --> 00:41:57.530
Yes, an ETF in every pot, yes.
714
00:41:57.590 --> 00:41:57.949
Yeah.
715
00:41:58.309 --> 00:42:00.369
Yes.
716
00:42:01.429 --> 00:42:03.289
I'm not sure if this is too early to talk
717
00:42:03.329 --> 00:42:06.320
about this, but are the institutions looking at AI agents
718
00:42:06.360 --> 00:42:09.829
and AI in helping to manage those assets in any
719
00:42:09.869 --> 00:42:11.710
way or incorporating it in any way?
720
00:42:11.849 --> 00:42:17.409
Yeah. So if you play forward vaults, for example, right, there's,
721
00:42:17.590 --> 00:42:22.440
and this is also a conversation I've had where the
722
00:42:22.519 --> 00:42:25.079
vaults can be this new product packaging. So instead of
723
00:42:25.139 --> 00:42:29.880
going from effectively like a product led investment where it say, Hey,
724
00:42:29.960 --> 00:42:32.920
I'm an, I'm an investment manager and I want to
725
00:42:32.960 --> 00:42:38.030
have three flavors, you know, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, ice cream, whatever.
726
00:42:38.050 --> 00:42:40.829
It's three flavors of investment because it's really, that's all
727
00:42:40.869 --> 00:42:44.309
I can create with the complexity. So I think you're
728
00:42:44.329 --> 00:42:46.909
a conservative investor, you're an aggressive investor, you're a mix.
729
00:42:46.929 --> 00:42:49.710
So these are my three products. Can that be flipped
730
00:42:49.750 --> 00:42:54.559
around to be very customer-centric? So potentially, today you're a
731
00:42:54.579 --> 00:42:57.719
conservative investor, but your needs and your approach changes over time.
732
00:42:58.619 --> 00:43:02.760
And so my one-size-fits-all product doesn't really fit what you
733
00:43:02.800 --> 00:43:07.199
need six months from now, can it be hyper-personalized and
734
00:43:07.239 --> 00:43:10.320
much more dynamic and allowed to evolve over time within
735
00:43:10.420 --> 00:43:16.199
certain guardrails? And that's, I think, something that's incredibly exciting
736
00:43:16.940 --> 00:43:20.679
for asset managers. The problem that they have today is
737
00:43:20.739 --> 00:43:26.469
the cost of that is astronomically high through how they
738
00:43:26.639 --> 00:43:31.630
build products today. The more and more of the underlying, effectively,
739
00:43:31.670 --> 00:43:36.929
investment in raw materials that are tokenized on-chain, the marginal
740
00:43:36.949 --> 00:43:40.210
cost of doing this approach is zero. So if we
741
00:43:40.230 --> 00:43:44.389
tokenize more of these baseline assets, allow for more options
742
00:43:44.429 --> 00:43:48.079
for these on-chain asset managers to assemble a target portfolio,
743
00:43:48.139 --> 00:43:50.940
you can start to see this coming true. And I
744
00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:56.079
think in particular, having an AI agent or agents helping
745
00:43:56.239 --> 00:44:01.010
to manage that over time that you're in control of
746
00:44:01.809 --> 00:44:04.809
and your asset manager is helping you to manage and
747
00:44:04.869 --> 00:44:09.199
curate is definitely something that folks are thinking about.
748
00:44:09.679 --> 00:44:11.800
So it's kind of like you have an RIA, a
749
00:44:11.820 --> 00:44:15.260
wealth manager in your pocket. And look, we know about
750
00:44:15.300 --> 00:44:18.659
rotation liquidity from different asset classes. If one asset is
751
00:44:18.699 --> 00:44:22.460
topped out, sell, rotate to the other asset. And it's
752
00:44:22.500 --> 00:44:26.420
doing that real time and giving you a summary every hour,
753
00:44:26.519 --> 00:44:29.380
if you want, or every five minutes, right? Yeah, it's exactly.
754
00:44:29.400 --> 00:44:32.260
And so this is where I think that the benefit
755
00:44:32.300 --> 00:44:35.449
of the last 10 or so years of of DeFi
756
00:44:35.489 --> 00:44:38.590
and crypto experimentation, you know, atomic swaps and all these
757
00:44:38.630 --> 00:44:42.909
things that were either toys or speculation or just these
758
00:44:43.010 --> 00:44:48.130
weird esoteric things that people in the trenches were doing.
759
00:44:48.710 --> 00:44:51.829
You can start to use them for traditional asset management.
760
00:44:52.090 --> 00:44:54.369
So Todd, what's on the roadmap that you can share?
761
00:44:54.389 --> 00:44:56.869
What can we expect in the next six months from R3?
762
00:44:57.570 --> 00:45:00.809
So as I mentioned before, I'll be joining the Corda Foundation. Very,
763
00:45:00.849 --> 00:45:05.550
very excited about that. we'll be launching our first Yule Vault.
764
00:45:06.610 --> 00:45:10.409
We have a couple of Yule Vaults closely following behind that.
765
00:45:11.889 --> 00:45:16.690
We are very focused on this not just being an
766
00:45:16.730 --> 00:45:21.510
issuance and forget it type thing. So this is on-chain
767
00:45:22.070 --> 00:45:26.159
RWA-backed Yule Vaults that are integrated into the Solana DeFi ecosystem,
768
00:45:28.099 --> 00:45:32.260
integrated in a way where investors can expect to be
769
00:45:32.280 --> 00:45:36.300
able to loop these positions from day one, post them
770
00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:41.530
as collateral on the different exchanges, and over time to
771
00:45:41.570 --> 00:45:44.349
be able to discover them where they are through fintechs
772
00:45:44.369 --> 00:45:49.849
and neobanks and exchanges and other earned platforms. Because we
773
00:45:49.889 --> 00:45:54.610
think that if we're just allowing institutions to do a
774
00:45:54.639 --> 00:45:57.760
POC to say that they've tokenized something, and we did
775
00:45:57.800 --> 00:46:01.079
that 10 years ago, that's not that exciting. The exciting
776
00:46:01.099 --> 00:46:06.039
part is working with financial institution partners to help design
777
00:46:06.059 --> 00:46:08.139
these products, which we have a couple of really cool
778
00:46:08.199 --> 00:46:14.230
ones that we've co-created effectively with these institutions that have
779
00:46:14.250 --> 00:46:17.429
a profile that's fit for the on-chain investor today. So
780
00:46:18.110 --> 00:46:23.530
attractive yield, attractive liquidity, and something that is as freely
781
00:46:23.570 --> 00:46:29.900
transferable on-chain as possible, integrated to borrow-lend capabilities, having Borland
782
00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:32.019
liquidity from day one. That's what we're focused on.
783
00:46:32.599 --> 00:46:35.460
That's exciting. Well, I will definitely have to have you
784
00:46:35.480 --> 00:46:37.880
back on, and especially that you're in New York, you're
785
00:46:37.900 --> 00:46:40.860
close to the studio, in a sense, to talk about
786
00:46:40.889 --> 00:46:44.010
these developments as they progress. Real quick, before we hit
787
00:46:44.130 --> 00:46:47.369
wrap-up questions, you're an OG. You've been in this space
788
00:46:47.389 --> 00:46:51.449
for a long time. Are you more optimistic, bullish on
789
00:46:51.590 --> 00:46:53.929
where things are going than you were in the past?
790
00:46:54.860 --> 00:46:59.619
Yes, definitely. I think... Uh, so obviously things, things are,
791
00:46:59.880 --> 00:47:03.519
we're happy now over the last three, four weeks, but
792
00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:06.840
I'd say it's the leaders in this rally that have
793
00:47:06.920 --> 00:47:10.090
gotten me excited. So, you know, leave Bitcoin to the side,
794
00:47:10.110 --> 00:47:12.989
but projects that get people excited are the ones that
795
00:47:13.030 --> 00:47:17.909
have customers and revenue. So I think that's fantastic. Uh, yeah,
796
00:47:18.090 --> 00:47:21.170
I'm very, very positive on where the market is right now.
797
00:47:21.630 --> 00:47:23.750
And in particular, I think that this, like all rallies,
798
00:47:23.829 --> 00:47:27.469
this rally happened in the biggest wall of worry possible
799
00:47:27.489 --> 00:47:28.030
for crypto.
800
00:47:28.570 --> 00:47:31.449
Yeah, as the saying goes, climbing the wall of worry.
801
00:47:31.469 --> 00:47:32.289
Yeah, big time.
802
00:47:32.329 --> 00:47:35.289
Yeah, no clarity act, and then the Fed raised rates,
803
00:47:35.329 --> 00:47:38.030
and the market held up really good. That's a really
804
00:47:38.050 --> 00:47:40.449
good sign. All right, got some wrap-up questions here for you.
805
00:47:40.849 --> 00:47:42.230
Are you an early bird or night owl?
806
00:47:43.469 --> 00:47:46.650
Oh, I'm more of an early bird. Back in my
807
00:47:46.690 --> 00:47:48.030
trading days, I used to have to be on the
808
00:47:48.070 --> 00:47:51.619
desk at like 6 a.m., so not that I've... I've
809
00:47:51.639 --> 00:47:53.980
fallen out of that habit, but definitely more of an
810
00:47:54.199 --> 00:47:55.400
early bird, I'd say.
811
00:47:55.659 --> 00:47:57.059
Do you prefer a window seat or aisle?
812
00:47:57.300 --> 00:47:59.880
I mean, it's got to be window seat. How can
813
00:47:59.900 --> 00:48:02.679
you sleep if you're in the aisle? It's crazy. It's crazy.
814
00:48:02.699 --> 00:48:06.079
People are waking up. Text, email, or call?
815
00:48:06.820 --> 00:48:09.210
If you need me, text. If you want me to remember,
816
00:48:09.269 --> 00:48:10.190
send me an email.
817
00:48:10.829 --> 00:48:13.690
Nice. What's one company outside of crypto you admire?
818
00:48:17.289 --> 00:48:21.030
Oh, Interactive Brokers. Have you ever read the story about them?
819
00:48:21.309 --> 00:48:21.650
Yeah.
820
00:48:22.150 --> 00:48:27.349
So this dude, Thomas Pederphy, he is, I love, I
821
00:48:27.869 --> 00:48:29.469
love traders that build companies.
822
00:48:30.230 --> 00:48:30.429
Yeah.
823
00:48:30.449 --> 00:48:32.530
So he, he was the first one to bring, like,
824
00:48:32.789 --> 00:48:36.010
he had handheld computers on the floor of the, of
825
00:48:36.030 --> 00:48:38.829
the options outcry markets. And then he was the first
826
00:48:39.489 --> 00:48:42.110
guy to figure out how to do automated orders in NASDAQ.
827
00:48:42.130 --> 00:48:44.070
And they got mad at him. They said, you have
828
00:48:44.090 --> 00:48:48.030
to use a keyboard. And so he created a mechanical
829
00:48:48.469 --> 00:48:52.110
finger to enter in orders. to get around the rules,
830
00:48:52.389 --> 00:48:54.110
and he was still cleaning up. And then he turned
831
00:48:54.130 --> 00:48:56.050
that into a platform, an interactive brokerage.
832
00:48:56.070 --> 00:48:56.389
It's great.
833
00:48:56.679 --> 00:48:59.559
It's amazing. I think the dude's like 120 years old,
834
00:48:59.619 --> 00:49:00.579
and he's still running the company.
835
00:49:00.760 --> 00:49:03.699
That's incredible. Definitely a forward thinker and a disruptor. Yes.
836
00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:07.519
If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead,
837
00:49:07.579 --> 00:49:08.079
who would it be?
838
00:49:09.559 --> 00:49:11.789
Oh, I'm going to leave family out of it because
839
00:49:11.809 --> 00:49:15.369
they'll start crying. I'd say that. Probably be someone... Oh,
840
00:49:16.690 --> 00:49:19.630
I just read this book on Shackleton. You know, the
841
00:49:19.650 --> 00:49:22.190
guy that... tried to traverse the Antarctica.
842
00:49:23.030 --> 00:49:25.050
Oh, the name sounds familiar, but I don't know.
843
00:49:25.070 --> 00:49:28.800
It's called Endurance. It's crazy. You can sort of speed
844
00:49:28.840 --> 00:49:30.820
read the middle because it's a lot about like eating
845
00:49:30.980 --> 00:49:34.900
seal blubber and kind of stuff. But I would love
846
00:49:34.940 --> 00:49:37.539
to have dinner with him. Someone like, someone that has
847
00:49:37.599 --> 00:49:40.929
seen a lot, but also someone that would be fun
848
00:49:41.610 --> 00:49:43.289
you know i don't need to have a dinner and
849
00:49:43.409 --> 00:49:45.489
like ask people about their business strategies more someone that
850
00:49:45.510 --> 00:49:46.889
has some good stories oh.
851
00:49:46.820 --> 00:49:49.280
Yeah for sure i helped to check out that yeah
852
00:49:49.340 --> 00:49:52.239
it's really cool story yeah uh best advice you've ever gotten.
853
00:49:55.059 --> 00:50:00.380
Uh well so my daughter just graduated college so i've
854
00:50:00.400 --> 00:50:02.000
been giving her this advice that i got when i
855
00:50:02.019 --> 00:50:04.400
was her age and i didn't listen to it which
856
00:50:04.539 --> 00:50:06.619
is i ran into some guy somewhere and he goes
857
00:50:07.010 --> 00:50:09.699
take every business card Or ask for a business card.
858
00:50:09.719 --> 00:50:11.260
This was back in the day when people had business cards.
859
00:50:11.719 --> 00:50:14.590
So relationships drive the world. That was the biggest thing.
860
00:50:15.010 --> 00:50:18.690
I think the only other advice is from a fictional character.
861
00:50:18.730 --> 00:50:23.190
I say this a lot. Breaking Bad. Mike Ehrmantraut, not
862
00:50:23.250 --> 00:50:27.880
Walter White. His mantra is no half measures. So if
863
00:50:27.900 --> 00:50:30.099
you're doing something, you got to go all in.
864
00:50:30.880 --> 00:50:33.559
I love Breaking Bad. I think it's the best show ever.
865
00:50:35.039 --> 00:50:36.739
Honestly, I watch that scene every once in a while
866
00:50:36.760 --> 00:50:40.619
just reminding myself. It's a little bit dark, but it's
867
00:50:40.780 --> 00:50:41.239
still useful.
868
00:50:41.500 --> 00:50:44.199
Yeah, Mike is one of my favorite characters. Yeah, it's crazy.
869
00:50:44.219 --> 00:50:46.579
It's crazy. And then, you know, I love what you
870
00:50:46.619 --> 00:50:50.019
said about take every business card. I've personally learned that.
871
00:50:50.639 --> 00:50:53.659
It wasn't so much how much I knew, but also
872
00:50:54.110 --> 00:50:55.849
who I knew was so important.
873
00:50:56.210 --> 00:50:59.130
Yes, and I think, you know, if you think about
874
00:50:59.469 --> 00:51:05.349
the crypto market, everything's still relationship-driven. Everything's, you know, it's still...
875
00:51:05.730 --> 00:51:07.650
who you're connected with on Telegram, who you can trust
876
00:51:07.690 --> 00:51:09.670
in a time of need, who you can call, what
877
00:51:09.710 --> 00:51:10.349
rooms are you in.
878
00:51:10.889 --> 00:51:11.110
Yes.
879
00:51:11.650 --> 00:51:14.909
So it's very, very important. So if you do see
880
00:51:14.969 --> 00:51:17.980
my daughter, tell her that too. Awesome.
881
00:51:18.159 --> 00:51:20.760
Todd, absolute pleasure. And I look forward to having you
882
00:51:20.800 --> 00:51:23.340
back in this room. Yeah, I'd look forward to it.
883
00:51:23.340 --> 00:51:25.639
And supporting R3 where I can. But thank you so much.
884
00:51:25.659 --> 00:51:27.090
Yeah, thanks for the support. Thanks for the chat.
885
00:51:42.090 --> 00:51:44.599
Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the
886
00:51:44.639 --> 00:51:47.099
like button. Subscribe if you haven't as yet. If you're
887
00:51:47.119 --> 00:51:50.119
listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple,
888
00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:53.460
please follow and leave a five-star rating. Thank you so much.