#659 Investing $750 Million in Crypto with Dan Tapiero

Dan Tapiero is the Managing Partner and CEO of 10T Holdings. He has more than 25 years of experience investing across asset classes on Wall Street and is one of the most well-known macro investors in the world. Dan previously spent time working with Julian Robertson, Stanley Druckenmiller, Steve Cohen, and many other luminaries. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, ethereum, venture capital, digital asset ecosystem, raising $750 million, institutional investor interest, and billionaire Wall Street investor questions. ======================= MiamiCoin, the first CityCoin, is now live! This is a community-launched program built on Bitcoin, and it’s far more than a currency: MiamiCoin is a protocol, and a platform for innovation. So, the CityCoins team is announcing something pretty cool: MiamiCoin Makers Month is a bringing together hackers, designers, and creators who are passionate about creating apps to benefit the City of Miami. $25k in total prizes will be awarded to developers who build the winning apps. And, the winners will be announced by Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, and Bored Elon Musk, everybody’s favorite pseudonymous Twitter inventor and blockchain enthusiast. Visit MiamiMakers.co to learn more and sign up to take part. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: http://www.crypto.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dan Tapiero is the Managing Partner and CEO of 10T Holdings. He has more than 25 years of experience investing across asset classes on Wall Street and is one of the most well-known macro investors in the world. Dan previously spent time working with Julian Robertson, Stanley Druckenmiller, Steve Cohen, and many other luminaries. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, venture capital, the digital asset ecosystem, raising $750 million, the institutional investor interest, and billionaire Wall Street investor questions. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dan, as always, and I hope

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Miami Makers Month. That's right, it's a virtual hackathon for hackers, designers, and creators who are passionate about creating apps to benefit the city of Miami. They're giving out $25,000 in total prizes, which will be awarded to developers who build the winning apps on top of Miami Coin. What is Miami Coin? Far more than a currency. Miami Coin is a community-launched platform for innovation built on top of Bitcoin and Stacks, the network that enables apps to smart contracts for Bitcoin. Miami Coin is generating real-world value. The protocol has already generated over $3 million in contributions reserved for the city, and the project is just getting started.

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Go visit miamimakers.co to learn more and get involved. Again, Miami Makers Month, a virtual hackathon for hackers, designers, and creators who are passionate about creating apps. Go to miamimakers.co to learn more and to get involved. Next up is Crypto.com. They're helping to mainstream the crypto industry, signing major global partnerships with multiple sports, including Serie A, the Italian Football League, the UFC, and my personal favorite, Formula One. That's right, they got the Formula One sponsorship. With over 10 million users around the world, Crypto.com offers an easy way to buy and sell more than 100 cryptocurrencies. You can even buy Bitcoin with as little as $1. New users enjoy 0% credit and debit card fees in their first 30 days. Crypto.com also pays some of the

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Most competitive interest rates in the industry. You can find out more by going to crypto.com. Crypto.com is also Visa's biggest crypto card partner. My listeners across North America, Europe, and most of APAC can apply for the slick metal card, offering up to 8% back on most purchases. And it comes with amazing perks like 100% rebate for your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Get $25 as well when you download the crypto.com app today using the code POMP. Again, you get $25 when you download the crypto.com app today using the code POMP. Crypto.com, not only do they have a great name, but they are helping to usher this entire industry into mainstream adoption with those partnerships like Serie A, the Italian Football League, the UFC, and Formula One.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty cool. Go to crypto.com today and use code POMP to get started. All right, let's get into this episode with Dan. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs POMP Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of POMP Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by POMP or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Dan, what's up, man?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  How you been?

• 3:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm great. Tapiero, is that how I say it?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  That's how you say it. You said it correctly many times before, so I don't know what got into you.

• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I said his name wrong one time, and as soon as I get on Zoom, he starts roasting me for saying it wrong.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Well, I know you have problems with names ending in O, but this is an easy one.

• 3:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I hear you. I hear you. How are you?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Good, good. I mean, I've been busy as can be. You know, we've sort of had even limited interactions. It's just been a whirlwind the last four or five months. And I've been off Twitter. I mean, on, but not as much as before. And, you know, not as, you know, deeply ingrained in sort of the markets, you know, as we built up the holdings of 10T.

• 4:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to us about 10T and what the kind of original idea was and then walk us through this $750 million fundraise across the various vehicles.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, the idea originally was to build a broad sort of macro sector exposure to the growth in the digital asset ecosystem. So, you know, as you know, I'm a pretty hardcore Bitcoiner, but I also think there is a world where there are lots of things growing up in the overall ecosystem, lots of great businesses that have grown up and, you know, I'm not, my background is not as a venture capitalist, so I don't have a specialty in, you know, trying to figure out, you know, which code is better and, you know, which chain is going to work for whatever it is. And so I said to myself, look, I, there's a, there's a

• 5:09Speaker 02

  lot going on in this, in the private equity world in the digital asset ecosystem. There are a lot of companies that are a lot larger than people understand and, you know, I'd like to get that kind of exposure for my own personal portfolio and DTAP Capital. And so went about the idea of constructing this portfolio of 10 to 15 businesses operating in the space, again, not involved with the cryptocurrencies or, you know, the protocols or tokens or anything else except for the equity in these businesses. And I did that

• 5:47Speaker 02

  largely because I wanted, I wanted to build something that was very easy for outsiders to understand for, you know, as we say, people in the legacy world or the boomer crowd or just people over 50 who have a really hard time understanding what's going on here and are not comfortable with direct exposure in the underlying cryptocurrencies, especially, you know, I think the volatility is a problem and also, you know, what are the exact fundamentals that are driving these things. It's just, it's just a lot to comprehend. You know, if you've had success and you've been in the traditional investment world for 30 years.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  It's just not that easy to make a transition. And so I, I said, listen, I'm building this portfolio for myself. And this is how I would like it to look. And we just went out, built a team, went out and spoke to people in my network and friends of mine and people from my background. And said, look, this is, this is what the portfolio broadly is going to look like. And what we did is we broke it down into three buckets. There's digital asset ecosystem, gateways, next gen financial services businesses and blockchain infrastructure companies. And basically, we have three to four companies in each bucket. And the idea really is to hold them for five, six, seven years.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And I think we're going to get multiples appreciation. You saw in the press release, some of the businesses that we've, that we already own. And I, I know you're familiar with all of them and you're, you're an investor yourself and actually a few of them.

• 7:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about when you went out to raise the money. So you, you've got a very unique position in that for 25 years, you've invested across markets, you've started previous businesses before in, in different sectors. You've worked with or for some of the best global macro investors in the world. And so you've got kind of a very unique network and the trust of a lot of people. And you've done great work with, with a bunch of people that are well respected in traditional finance. When you went out to have those conversations, what was the reaction from, whether it was, you know, the billionaire friends or from these like institutional allocators?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny. It, it, I always say this, it sort of broke down like almost, you know, according to age. You know, if I met somebody who was an investor, let's say in their 30s, they were super interested, but you know, usually writing smaller checks. And, you know, meeting guys sort of in their 60s or later, very tough sell. But of course, you know, they're, you know, they're managing most of the money. So it's sort of, we have a nice cross section. Yes, a lot of guys from my background, all the LPs more or less are, are friends or people from my network, as you said.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  I think people, I, I think people who were interested in the space, but just didn't have exposure and were looking for ways to get exposure.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Those are the people who really were excited by the idea because, look, the investment team and I, we write these 50-page investment memos that take weeks, if not months sometimes, behind each of the investments. And so I can say, listen, the fund is putting in, and this is how we really got to the 750, you know, I would say, the fund itself, which is around 390 million, you know, the fund is investing, let's say, $40 million into this business. And then I would say, you know, here's our research, this is why, and you know, there's co-invest if you're interested. And so what's happened is, is because quite a few of the LPs are from the money management business, they're

• 9:39Speaker 02

  either retired or still in the game, they read the 50-page investment memo, and then they, you know, they make a decision for themselves. And so, you know, in some cases, you have guys who, you know, put, let's say, a million dollars into the fund, but then all of a sudden are asking for 5 million of co-invest, or 10 million. It's because they, they have quite a lot of firepower. And, you know, I think they're happy to have the general exposure in the fund, but they're also experienced enough to want to really leverage up when they see the opportunity. And, you know, I would say the skill we have really isn't explaining something very clearly. And, you know, that's

• 10:21Speaker 02

  sort of the one skill that I developed over 25 years, not only, you know, managing my own portfolio and portfolios, you know, at the funds where I worked at, but, you know, always sort of being very, working very closely with the head of those funds, and being able to explain yourself clearly, simply, you know, and to be able to explain a subject that is foreign, you know, and to put it in terms that people will understand, I think has been the reason why we've grown so quickly. And it's sort of way beyond my expectations, because the co-invest vehicles all add up.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Up to about another, you know, call it 300 million or so. So, uh, actually, I think it's, it's actually more. It's, I think it's closer to 350, uh, in, in co-invest vehicles. And I don't think we, you know, we've allocated about remarkably 80% of the fund money. And again, we really just launched at the end of January. So, I mean, it's been, as I said, drinking from a fire hose.

• 11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the, um, I'll, I'll just call them kind of billionaire Wall Street asset management crowd, uh, and the institutional investor crowd, I think that you guys had a, a public pension also participate that was publicly named. Talk to me about the difference in conversations between the individuals that, yes, they are very wealthy. Yes, they operate in some form or fashion like an institution to some degree. But the institutions that you actually have participating, what was the difference in conversation there?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's sort of interesting. Um, yeah, I, I think it was, it was released in the Bloomberg article. It is state of Michigan, their pension fund, uh, MERS. They, uh, they invested a considerable amount and I think they were looking for a way to get exposure. Um, you know, I don't think they own a Bitcoin or can and, but you know, they're smart people. They wanted to get exposure to the sector broadly, but weren't really interested in taking on the risk of early stage investments. And, you know, the minimum size and, uh, market value of companies we look at is 500.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  But of the 11 businesses we, we own, um, you know, only two, uh, nine of them are over a billion dollars in market valuation. Only two are sort of between 500 and a billion. And so, you know, they didn't, you know, there, those types of businesses are also de-risked. Um, they don't have the same type of business risk. Look, they're not going to go up 100X like Solana or her, you know, some of these other things that have moved 100, 200X or whatever it is. You know, we, we think some of the businesses can go up five to 10 times in the next. Five, six, seven, eight years.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And for a big fund like that, um, you know, they can put a lot of money to work in bigger names. Um, but it also helped that a very close friend of mine, um, had, um, taken an investment from them, friend of mine about 15 years, um, you know, knew them very, very well. And he, of course, spoke on our behalf, um, to them. I did not reach out to them. I didn't know them beforehand. Um, but honestly, I was told that, um, you know, they turned around within a few weeks to make the investment. Uh, I was told that like never before has a pension fund turned around that quickly.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  I, I don't, I'm not, you know, I, I've never really raised a lot of money. Um, I'd always worked for funds that had more capital than they knew what to do with. So I was never on any sort of fundraising circuit, uh, you know, where I met pension funds or whatever it was. So it was really, again, as I described before, there are institutional players out there from the legacy world. They just don't know how to access it and play it in a way that they're comfortable with. And so the fund is somewhat structured, you know, based on my own personal parameters, what I wanted for my own, um, portfolio, but also, you know, with, you know, keeping

• 14:42Speaker 02

  in mind, of course, what other institutional type, you know, um, and, you know, uh, more institutional type investors, uh, want and are comfortable with. We also have a, a foundation, uh, an LA based foundation, but, you know, they're, you know, multiple billion dollar of foundation, but they're very, uh, savvy. They, you know, they've been long, actually Bitcoin, I think, and Ethereum for quite a while. And they have a few venture investments, but just not. It's just, there's too much risk there. They don't, you know, they don't want a black or red option. And I think that, that would just means that, you know, the typical VC, I guess, you know, makes 10 investments and nine go to zero and, and, and one ends

• 15:27Speaker 02

  up being Google and the fund returns, you know, a zillion percent. It's sort of, I don't know, I'm sort of uncomfortable with that strategy, even though it's worked brilliantly and in this space, the VCs have had huge returns. But there's only so much an investor can have, even if he likes that strategy, in a VC bucket. And so, you know, 10T, which only invests in the mid to late-stage companies in the space, is sort of a, as I call it, more of a broad-sector bet. You could call it, like, in a sense, you could think of us as building an index of the future. I mean, I think, if you look at the companies

• 16:08Speaker 02

  we've bought, I think, look, within five years, most of them will probably be public. You know, some of them could be in the S and P 500. You know, if they weren't in crypto, you know, some of them are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, they'd already be public and in the S and P. So, but I think that's a little bit of an advantage for us, that the growth equity guys who would normally play in this space, you know, except for, you know, the Tigers and Co2s, and they'll come in and write one-off checks and, you know, they can do whatever they like. But most of the growth equity space, they're not that comfortable with currency or with macro. And this really is a macro

• 16:53Speaker 02

  bet, and we're using the private equity structure to take a long-term view, because I think the one thing that kills you in this space is, you know, the short-term view. I think no one knows what's going to happen on a three-month or five-month view, or even necessarily on a one-year view. But on a five-year view, three to five-year view, I have a very high degree of conviction. And as you know, I mean, since we started talking almost two years ago. You know, in the middle of nineteen, I've had a very strong view about how this world was developing and where Bitcoin prices were headed. You know, and I remember that that that interview we did about gold and Bitcoin.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You know, I think, you know, I still am a believer in physical gold and that's a conversation for another day. I've got lots of exposures in my portfolio. I know, Pomp, I know you're a hundred percent long Bitcoin in your portfolio. But for us, you know, guys a little bit older, we're not quite a hundred percent. You know, and and try to have a few different types of exposures. But, you know, I think that this is a differentiated enough expression of an investment, a view that it is attractive, you know, for that institutional. But but who's interested, right?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  The guys who say to me, there were many guys who just said, it's Ponzi, we don't believe in this. No, thank you. And I was like, OK, it was very easy conversations because we were rejected right away. Or they had been thinking about it, right? And so those people, we try to help and we try to educate and we give them things to read. We send them some of your podcasts, Believe It or Not. You know, so, you know, as you know, there's a lot of educating to do in this space.

• 18:52Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about Bitcoin, let's start there. Where do you think Bitcoin goes from a price standpoint this year? Are you a believer in this like super cycle theory? Are you more a believer that, you know, we kind of just go sideways? How do you think about Bitcoin through the end of the year?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I just said it's almost pointless to have a three to four month view. But I know that's what, you know, sort of people look at it. Look, I was in the hedge fund business and I had marks every day and every week and liquidity every month. I mean, I lived that for, you know, twenty five years, you said. I just think that, you know, this is an asset that's returned two hundred and fifty percent annualized over the last eleven years. It's the greatest return of any asset in the history of the world. I mean, probably going back to caveman times. So I don't think, I mean, I really am a hodler. I don't think you mess around with that. I always thought, and I've said probably even a year ago, I think that we we're going to get to around a trillion dollar market valuation

• 19:50Speaker 02

  and then we would consolidate. And that's sort of what we've done. I mean, in my worldview, 40,000 Bitcoin, 50,000, 60,000, it's all basically around the same price. I think we could still get to 100 by the end of the year. I, you know, we might need some macro things to happen. I think that's more likely sort of within six to 12 months. But, you know, and I think I've said this on our last interview and even two years ago, that 3, 4, 500,000, which would put the market value at, call it, you know, five, six trillion dollars, that was the first stop for me. You know, and I just simply, you

• 20:32Speaker 02

  know, I've talked about this a lot, but it just, in my mind, I think, okay, Bitcoin, you know, the most decentralized, most secure network in the history of the world, the potential sort of value protocol for the entire internet, okay? And it's worth a trillion dollars, which is roughly half of Amazon, which is just one company. So to me, I look and I think, you know, how much would it cost even a company to try to build the Bitcoin network from scratch? I mean, it's trillions and trillions of dollars. So, you know, $5 trillion market value is a, is a comfortable estimate that I am very comfortable with. In fact, I called

• 21:15Speaker 02

  the fund, we called the fund 10T. Now, 10T stands for 10 trillion. And what is that? Well, the market value, okay, when we started thinking about this idea in 19 and 20, I said, the value of Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the cryptocurrency and all the equity in the space, okay, was around 300 billion. And I said, well, I think we can go from 300 billion to 10 trillion in 10 years. And so that's sort of our mantra, 10T in 10 years. But the problem is, we're at 3 trillion now. So, like, we're a chip shot away from 10 trillion

• 21:54Speaker 02

  in 10 years. I mean, we, we just launched really in, in January, and we're already at 3T. So, you know, the biggest mistake I've made with all of this, Mike, was I've underestimated the exponentiality of the growth in the space. It just, it's, it's sort of not anything that the mind can comprehend. And last thing I'd say on this, though, is that what I was just looking at the teaser for the fund that we wrote a year ago, there were 20 businesses that we identified with over a billion-dollar market valuation. Today, there are 70. Just think about that. 70 businesses.

• 22:40Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy to see.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  There's a lot to do in this space, and I presume I'll have, you know, there'll be other people getting involved. I mean, soon.

• 22:50Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the businesses, is it fair to say that your investment strategy is essentially to invest in the infrastructure, and then you're benefiting from like the overall industry growth and the kind of that index approach is you're basically betting, hey, the industry is going to be, you know, much larger, hundreds of percent larger in the future, and you want to bet on businesses that are going to win as long as the industry grows? Is that kind of a fair characterization?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. You know, that's exactly right. I think, you know, we want to pay a reasonable multiple of revenue and earnings as well. I mean, I don't think there's a company that we paid more than 10 times revenue for. You know, we're, there are so many opportunities out there. We're very active in the secondary market as well. We speak to companies directly. You know, I'm not really willing to pay 25 or 30 times revenue. And there are great companies that we've just passed on that will grow a lot

• 23:57Speaker 02

  just because, you know, we don't have to buy everything. There are lots of great companies. But yeah, I would say these are companies that we think are core to the ecosystem. And, you know, the approach really was, it's a $300 billion in, you know, late 1920, $300 billion world, and we think it's going to 10 trillion. And so that's 30x. And if it goes 30x, if we have a basket portfolio diversified nicely of, you know, sort of broadly what you're calling picks and shovels, businesses that are constructing, you know, the rails of this new digital asset ecosystem.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  You know, the odds are the portfolio is going to go up and I, we don't need a 30x to be happy. But we actually put that 10T, obviously, you know, we're, we're putting our, our, you know, we're eating our own cooking on this one. I mean, I put it in the title of the fund. So, um, you know, a portfolio, I think broadly is going to have such wind at its back that it, it should do well. And again, you can see from the names that we purchased,

• 25:14Speaker 02

  that, you know, it is, it is diversified into those buckets and then these businesses broadly do different types of things. So.

• 25:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about the biggest surprise. As you've been deploying the capital, I know you've deployed a very large portion of the $750 million already. What's been the biggest surprise to you, whether it's, you know, as you've dug deeper into the companies, talking to entrepreneurs, talking to investors, what's surprised you?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I would say that, you know, one of the hesitations that many people we spoke with initially had was, they said, well, Dan, that's great. Your team is great. You know, everyone has connections and a network in the space, but how are you going to procure these blocks of stock? You know, um, you know, I had the portfolio more or less broadly outlined before we launched. I said to investors, you know, this is what I'm interested in. You know, we had five leaders and five backups. And I said broadly within these, you know, for the three buckets within these 30 companies, you know, we're, we're going to have a portfolio and, you know, hopefully we'll get, you know, some of our leaders.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  We won't have to go to our backups, but this is what it's going to look like. And almost every person said, well, how are you going to do that? How you, maybe the stock's not available, et cetera, et cetera. Biggest surprise is that it's been very easy to source the, the equity in the businesses that we wanted. Very easy versus expectations. And, um, you know, and I think that's why the LPs also keep asking for, you know, when is the next fund? We allocated very quickly, much more quickly than we thought. But again, at reasonable valuations. We weren't reaching for the moon or anything. We just, we said, you know, these are the types of businesses we're interested in. You know, we approached a lot of the companies directly.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  We have, you know, have built good relationships. You know, I think we're still the only fund, I think, out there that is focused exclusively and only on mid to late-stage companies in the digital asset ecosystem. So, you know, and I think people in the space know that. And so it's not, you know, as you know, it's a very flat space. You can reach out to someone on Twitter. It's not, it's not that, that hard. And if people feel that, you know, you are bringing new capital to the space, and I think we are. I think we're bringing, you know, people joke with me that, oh, Dan, you know, you're doing, you're doing crypto for boomers. I mean, it's sort of true.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  You know, we're bringing like completely new capital to the space and we're allocating it, I think, to some of the smartest guys. And I'm saying to myself, these guys, they know what to do with it. They're much smarter than I am in certainly on the weeds, you know, getting deep into the weeds. And they're going to be able to pivot to where the action is, to where the business is, to the places that really need capital. So I'm in a sense, really, you know, I think some of these businesses already are budding conglomerates. And also in a way like VC funds as well. Because, you know, some of the businesses, they're snapping up these smaller companies

• 28:35Speaker 02

  and they're incorporating them into their operating businesses. So, you know, in a way, they know what smaller companies are going to be successful, almost better than the VCs, because they're incorporating them into their bigger businesses. So I would say the biggest surprise was that we haven't had difficulty. And also in the future, I mean, there are a lot of companies out there. I mean, there's quite a long pipeline of companies that have approached us or that we've marked, you know, that are, that we think are interesting and worth investing in.

• 29:12Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the industry at large, one of the things that comes up a lot is regulation. Obviously, we're seeing it in all different forms and fashion. Some of it seems to be a tailwind, some of it seems to be a headwind. How do you talk to legacy kind of market investors, people who think about regulation a lot, want to understand that there's certainty from a regulation standpoint? What are those conversations about?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  The one thing that I try to, you know, make very clear to the LPs is that crypto is a, you know, is a global business. Bitcoin, Ethereum, it's global. All the things popping up in the ecosystem, it's global. And if you look at total world volume, spot and futures, I think the US is 10% of world volume. So I keep telling people, listen, stop telling me about the SEC and the Treasury and all this stuff. I get it. Yeah, the US is going slow. They're putting speed bumps out there. I personally am not so sure they, they know

• 30:15Speaker 02

  what they're doing. They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. But for the investments that we're making, they're all global businesses. And some of them are US, but we have some, you know, we have a non-regulated business in there. But he's buttoned up, he's smart, he's not doing any, he's doing his KYC. We're not, you know, concerned about like any issues. It's just that he doesn't operate in the United States. And that's fine. Again, people in the US think everything is always just about the US. And in the last 30, 40 years and before, really since the war, I guess that's been true. But, you know, this may

• 31:00Speaker 02

  be the first time that from a technology innovation and financial innovation perspective, the US is definitely not in the lead. And it could be, you know, I think that this is an opportunity, I've been saying this for two years, for the legislators here, for people in government, dig deep, understand what's going on here.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  My goodness, I mean incentivize innovation. Forget about like over regulating it and being difficult and clamping down and all of this stuff. Um, this is the future and we don't want to be left behind. And you know, I tell my LPs, these are, these companies, they're diversified globally. Um, you know, even the US ones. So I just, you know, I, I think it, it takes a little bit of time for people to understand that. Um, I mean, just think about how many, you know, there are probably node operators in every country that exists in the world, right?

• 31:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  You can't say that about other assets.

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. I've got my brother John here. He's got a couple of questions for you.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Hey Dan, thank you for doing this. It's really nice to meet you. Um, 10T is an awesome name, by the way. 10T Holdings. I love that.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's only awesome if we're right.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  That is true. That is true. Um, so I'm curious about, you were talking about investing in the infrastructure of kind of the digital asset economy. What excites you the most about that? So I've seen that you guys have done investments into Kraken, Ledger SAS. Um, like what is exciting to you about that? Is it the Lightning Network? Is it the hardware? Is it kind of the, um, the exchanges? Like what, what are you excited about moving forward?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you know, I take a little bit of a pedestrian, uh, approach to it in the sense that, you know, what excites me about the businesses we're buying is the fact that they're making a lot of money. Right? I'm an investor. Okay. And the guys who are winning and know how to win and know how to build businesses. Um, those are the guys I want to invest in. That's different from, you know, projects that I think are cool, that I think could work. Again, I'm not a venture capitalist. I, I, I don't have the ability to make skilled judgments about, you know, these budding enterprises. Um, you know, in a sense, you know, I'm letting,

• 33:21Speaker 02

  in a way, I'm not letting, but I'm, I'm not making these investments at seed or in the A rounds. Uh, or really even B. I mean, we're usually focused on B plus and C and D. Uh, I don't mind paying a higher valuation, um, you know, a higher market valuation. If the company has established itself already, you know, because the space is growing so quickly. I just, as I said, I'm just trying to build a broad diversified bet for, you know, for the traditional investor. And I'll tell you, you look at the list of companies for RLP base, I mean, most of them have never heard of these businesses before.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  So just think about that, never. And so that's why I say, I think we've tapped into a whole new type of investor base. The criteria really is this threshold, you know, do they have a, you know, are they, it's not a business looking for a business, right? It's a business that's already established itself and is dominant in its space.

• 34:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Dan, when you think about moving forward, are you going to just continue to allocate capital to the space? Do you think it's something where once you get the money invested, then you'll kind of sit and harvest it? How do you think about kind of future plans?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, look, if there are opportunities out there, reasonable valuations, I think we'll keep going in some form or another. I mean, you know, if I look out and there aren't opportunities or everything is trading at 30, 40 times revenue, then I think that would, you know, we take, we take a rest. But as I said, I mean, just think about it. One year ago, 20 businesses worth over a billion dollars. Today, there are 70. And that's not, that's not just multiple expansion. And in some cases, you know, that's massive revenue expansion. And so, you know, just in very like simple terms, I mean, we all know the volume, just the volume at the exchanges

• 35:34Speaker 02

  is up 5X from last year. I mean, that's 500%. And so there are huge knock on effects as the number of wallets increase, as adoption increases. It's really, it's exponential. And so as long as there are opportunities out there, I think we'll continue to allocate capital.

• 35:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that that makes sense. Where can we send people to find you on Twitter or find more information about what you're doing?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Well, I'm DTAPCAP on Twitter. But you know, we have a website, 10tfund. You know, if you just punch it into Google, as I, you know, you'll you get to our website and, you know, we have all sorts of information there. I think we may even have our, the interview that you and I did last on there, under the educational section. But, you know, that's a good place. That's a good place to go, the website.

• 36:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it. Listen, you, you've been ahead of the curve. You continue to, to surprise to the upside, just like Bitcoin and everything else. So keep it up. I think this is awesome. And then obviously, the portfolio that you guys have built is a list of very impressive names. So I think that any founder who has the opportunity to partner with you guys is pretty intelligent if they go ahead and they pursue that.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Well, thanks, Pom. And I hope that some of your early-stage investments grow into, you know, 10T investments. So I'm looking forward to us doing some business as well, maybe down the line.

• 37:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna send them all to you, like, listen, Dan's the smartest guy that I know. Go ahead and take all of his money.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  All right, Pom. Anyway, thank you very much for having me. Really enjoyed this.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Thanks so much for doing it. Everyone, make sure that you go check out 10tfund.com, or you can go follow Dan on Twitter at DTAPCAP, all capitalized, by the way, which is my favorite thing about your Twitter. All right, sir. Thank you so much.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 37:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, bye.