Dmitry Tokarev, CEO of Copper: The True Drivers of Crypto’s Buy-Side Infrastructure

Dmitry Tokarev is the CEO of Copper. In this conversation, Dmitry and Anthony Pompliano discuss the buy-side problems with legacy markets, what financial infrastructure actually entails, how custody and prime brokerage in crypto is evolving, and why LPs drive decision making in investing. -----Curious about Cryptocurrency but don’t know where to begin? Storm Play is a free and fun way to start earning in exchange for you time. Simply download, register and discover microtasks that meet your interests and be rewarded with Storm Bolts. These Bolts can then be converted and withdrawn into your favorite cryptocurrency, including Storm Token, Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC.). Earn cryptocurrency rewards by playing new games and trying out cool products! Download the app to start earning crypto here! https://bit.ly/30pSxh9 (Available for iOS and Android). ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

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

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Dmitry Tokarev is the CEO at Copper. In this conversation, we discuss the buy-side problems with legacy markets, what financial infrastructure actually entails, how custody and prime brokerage in crypto is evolving, and why LPs drive decision-making in investing. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well.

• 0:36Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Alright guys, bang, bang. I am here with Dmitry, coming to us live from New York City. Not actually live, but it sounds cool to say that, so I'm gonna keep using that. Thank you so much for coming and doing this.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.

• 1:59Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So let's start with your background. You're not American, and you've got a very unique perspective on financial infrastructure, but give us kind of the overview of how do you end up in the seat today?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, I grew up in Siberia and as everyone in Siberia, you study either computer science or math, so.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Where, where is Siberia for the uh, for, for the geography buffs out there?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  It's a city called Krasnyar. It's like five hour flight from Moscow. It's actually closer to Beijing. It's like three hour flight to Beijing.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  But it's in Russia, right?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct, yeah.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Okay, got it. It's cold there?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Very, yeah, minus forty Celsius.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Minus forty Celsius?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Negative Fahrenheit.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Negative Fahrenheit all year round?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, it's like eight, eight months, uh, but like it, it ranges.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  How, how hot does it get?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  I guess it's, it's similar to climate, uh, climates to Canada, actually. So it's sharp continental climate.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Got it. So like in the summertime, we're talking?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Plus thirty degrees. So, you know, that's like, you know, eighty, ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. You guys are real volatile there. Okay.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  So it's a high volatility.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  All right. Maybe I'll come in the summer. I've always wanted to come in the summer when everyone wears the white jackets. They blend in with the twelve feet of snow. Perfect. All right. So you grew up in Siberia?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  So I grew up in Siberia, kind of.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  And everyone does math.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Halfway through high school, some people thought I'm smart to, to go to university. So I left school a little bit earlier and started studying computer science. And as one of my projects, I actually built a trading game, uh, which was kind of like a CineSoid where you press basically up and down buttons. And that way you basically, uh, make a profit. It's like lasts for one minute, uh, but, um, you know, you get the result in the end. And actually that's how I got interested in, in trading. So I left uni there to go to the UK and study there, like study finance and to basically get educated in trading and, uh, to become a quant. And, uh, fast forward, you know, six years, I was a, as a quant in a hedge fund, uh, basically long, short natural resources, building all the different strategies for traditional markets.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Um, with the guys from Ex Goldman team who taught me basically everything, uh, I like the fundamental knowledge that I have today, uh, I got from them, which I'm very grateful for. And, um, then I decided to move and a decision was made to move into financial technologies and I partnered up with, uh, two guys who were, uh, studying asset management company to build, uh, an asset manager in the UK with, um. Technology angle. So we grew that to over a hundred people, over a couple of billion assets under management. And I think they've added another billion since I left. Hope those events are not correlated. But the, at the same time, we had quite large client base from Asia who got very interested in 2017 in crypto space.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  And we started building a product for them, which eventually we didn't launch for the lack of institutional infrastructure. And that's how we switched into crypto.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  All right. So hold on, you just covered a lot there. Trading natural, natural resources. What do you mean by that?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  It's basically coin strategies. So mean reverting strategy, momentum strategy, statistical arbitrage. There are a few funds actually currently, maybe like a couple of proper ones, doing statistical arbitrage in crypto space. So basically you milk statistical inefficiencies in the market. So you have, well, for example, a very standard one is GLD GDX, you know, it's like a gold ETF versus a gold ETF. You know, so they have to kind of like go in the same direction together. And when there was a discrepancy in, in, in returns, like, you know, that's what you basically go along one short the other or vice versa. Examples like this, or one of the popular algorithms that I really liked, I mean, currently it's probably would have been called AI. But back then it was just called Kalman filter is something, whereas, you know, used in automobiles industry for self-driving cars a lot.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  And it's basically, you know, your wheels have velocity and it moves somewhere and then you have a GPS signal. As a matter of fact, like those two signals are incorrect. So you have something called Kalman gain that basically coefficient that always educates itself with historical data. And then puts the correct coordinates for your car. So that could be applied.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Because the GPS is inaccurate and then the

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Speed of the wheel and the direction of the wheel is inaccurate. But if you put those two together along with additional software, then you can get a much

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  More accurate pinpointed position.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that could be applied to stocks. That could be applied, for example, to Bitcoin prices. That could be applied to, you know, all sorts of things. So it's, it's basically like, you know, statistical arbitrage. So.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Smart people stuff.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  I mean, some would say, I mean, it's actually not the

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Dumb people would call it smart people stuff.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I would I would I would agree. I think everyone's gonna have their own kind of like angles and understanding different parts, right?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Got it. Okay. And so let's talk a little bit. You mentioned AI as like today would be called AI. Back then it wouldn't be. It feels like that term has just become like a cover all, right? In terms of, oh, it's like some software that does something that isn't one plus one equals two. Like AI, it's artificial intelligence, right? Like, how far do you think we actually are with true AI? Like, it doesn't feel like we're really that far in progress compared to how popular the terminology is.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. From that standpoint, obviously, we're not we're not in AI business. So for me, it will be hard to to sort of say how far we are.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Well, around trading, like around trading specifically.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  But for example, why why it is like that? I mean, if you look in the last, for example, four years.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And this is actually fundamental problem which links to why it's very hard to build something in the large financial organization. Because every time something new comes out, you sprinkle that on top of your next software project and you call it, you know, in 2015, it was big data. And, you know, then it was the RAR, then it was blockchain. This year it's AI. Next year it'll be something else. But the residual effect of that technology, we're also yet to see. So the traditional kind of cycle of technology to market, I would say, maybe about four years. So we're just seeing like big data products being pushed to the market and and people actually buying those, utilizing those to to to basically generate revenues. So create like operational, improve operational efficiencies in their businesses, et cetera.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  So I think, you know, extrapolating that, I would say, yeah, so if AI is a thing of 2018, we're probably about three years away from seeing something actually having reasonable impact on how the markets become more efficient or creating value to to the customers.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Got it. So before we dig into the bulk of what I want to talk about, I want to start with financial infrastructure. Right? Because we're gonna talk a lot about what the problems are, what the potential solutions are, what you guys are doing, et cetera.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  What do you mean when you use the terminology financial infrastructure? Like at a high level, what does that entail?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, to understand financial infrastructure, it's also important to understand the institutional kind of landscape because people talk about institutions, institutions. It's actually not like, you know, one particular profile that we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, insurance funds, insurance funds. We're talking about pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, UCIT funds, all sorts of other asset managers and all high net, ultra high net, family offices, you know. So all of them have different problems and different kind of requirements for the infrastructure in order for them to conduct business activities.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  When it comes particularly to hedge funds, it's very, there is nothing new that's happening today in hedge fund sector which we haven't seen. It's the same movie that we saw 20, 30 years ago where, you know, smart guys from Ivy League schools would come out and start managing family money, for example. And then institutional guy would come in and say, look, I'm going to give you like 10 million ticket or 20 million ticket, but you have to basically no self custody, no self administration. You got to use a prime broker and all these different requirements. And this is exactly what's happening, basically.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And that is those requirements were part of risk management?

• 10:01Speaker 02

  It's from, from this, I mean, self administration went kind of like out of the window since Madoff. Like no one, no one just takes it.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Let's go through each one of this because I think, again, many of the people listening sort of understand the finance world, really excited about the crypto world. When you say self administration, what is that?

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Self administration is basically you verify your own net asset value, right? So you say like, like I gave you $10 million to manage and you say like, this month I have 10 and a half million, Dimitri, and I trust you, basically. And you can, for example, if you invest in ICO on pre-sale, how would you value that ICO? At the pre-sale price, was the reasonable market price for that to be valued? So you have players such as administrators that would basically come with the correct valuation and then they would report NAV to, to, to, to the investors, to the LPs, limited partners. Basically, the playbook of a hedge fund is You need to have prospectus, which basically outlines what kind of activities can you conduct, what can you invest in, what you can't invest in, what are the terms, what are, you know,

• 11:05Speaker 02

  things like in watermark, gates, all of that, basically. Then you would need to have administrator, which we covered. You need to have a custody and/or a prime broker. Basically, sometimes, mainly like, you know, in the hedge fund space, you know, a prime broker would act as custodian for your assets as well. So then from the software side of things, you need to have a PMS, which is a portfolio management system, which does the position aggregation for you and calculates like different returns for a couple of positions. You need to have OMS system, which is an order execution management system, which then is responsible for executing this, your trades in different venues. And then depending upon your strategy, you would probably have data provider, which is in traditional space, is Bloomberg, for example, in crypto space, different. And then probably a research. So there you have it. So this is basically how you build a hedge fund.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Without one, like, without the first, let's say, four, it's very, very hard to come to your LPs and say, you have to invest in this. Or it's very hard to get anywhere with a ticket above a million. You know, because they will be asking exactly the same questions they're asking you today in a traditional space. And in traditional space, it's very easy because you say like, look, I don't control the funds, administrator controls the funds. Then my prime broker executes on these venues and I generate you alpha. Alpha is the return above the market. So, and they're happy with that. In crypto space, for example, let's go, for example, with custody. Custody in crypto space has been traditionally associated with purely security. But on top of the security, there is also a business application of a custodian that needs to be there.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  And that's, that business application is to make sure that the funds cannot be misappropriated by the fund manager. Now.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Meaning something like, hey, you have a fund, 70% is supposed to be deployed in X strategy, 30% is supposed to be deployed in Y strategy. If I as the fund manager can just do whatever I want, you as the LP have no confidence or confirmation that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one thing administrator would look after that. But the the the the other thing is also if you basically deploy from from a custody to, for example, an exchange in crypto, you can just take the funds from there to your personal wallet. Nothing stops you from doing that. So that renders custodian obsolete in the equation. Because why would you need a custodian if you can just, you know, basically you're in self custody mode, a step away. So that's the problem that LPs, you know, they're aware of that. And there's a lot on based on trust, you know. So this is the problem that we've been solving with a client of ours who brought this problem to us. And it's the company called Nickel Asset Management. They've got twenty five years of experience in investments, right?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  So they've seen all sorts of market cycles, types of LPs and everything.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  They've seen good people, bad people and everything in between.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. And say like, look, if this is not there, we're just not going to launch it. And, you know, we build it and it turns out that, you know, this is something which is quintessential in this space, especially for two other types of players, market makers and funds of funds. Because as a fund of funds, you deploy capital to several funds. It only takes one fund to take your crypto. So for example, you see a very kind of interesting asset manager generating like, you know, six hundred percent return a month and you're like, wow, I'm going to give him fifty grand, for example. Imagine if he takes it from, you know, Bitrex or whatever, any other exchange, for example, and disappears, your entire operation is basically non-existent anymore because you just violated your prospectuses, you know, conditions that you would have put in there that, you know, this is not going to happen.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  So and for market makers, it's very, very important thing. And as this industry grows larger and larger, when you have assets deployed across twenty five different exchanges and you have a problem such as generally you have market makers that have done automatically, right? So you you fill the order book with limit orders, spread it across different exchanges and. When the liquidity dries up in one place and aggregates in another place, you have to do the reallocation. The way it happens in ninety percent of places today is there is a senior executive who pick up the phone, call and say, could you move the funds? Now, that senior executive, if in theory, has access to like fifty to hundred million of borderline untraceable asset.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  And, you know, if somebody approaches him and asks politely to transfer it elsewhere, you know, that that is a risk, physical threat. So that that that as this industry grows larger in size, that needs to be eliminated. Withdrawal processes would have to be covered within like the same kind of predefined ecosystem where it can move and nowhere else. So this is the important part.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Because what you're basically talking about is not just rogue actors, but you're talking about people who are malicious. You are talking about people who are threatened. You are talking about people who could actually just make mistakes. They might even be trying to do something incorrectly. They're typing the wrong wallet address.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  It it's not just the the bad actors. It is also, you know, other issues that can come up. And so by having what I would consider a more mature, kind of professional financial infrastructure, it solves a lot of these problems.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. And it's it's also like, when when coming back like generally to the question, like, what would LPs be comfortable with? Right? Like, for example, you know, we know the manager and they're good guys and everything. And we'd be happy to give them one million allocation. But before we're going to see like, you know, serious tickets coming into this, the argument like, you know, they're good guys. It's only goes like as far as certain ticket size. Then you just need to have a robust framework, which you know for a fact, nothing goes anywhere. And you just like leave the manager to generate your returns.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And from what I've seen, it sounds like you as well, many LPs, when they approach these crypto asset managers. They just have an expectation of things like there's no self custody, right? And there's no self administration, etc. And that is being solved and addressed in the traditional world. So there's an expectation of if you're an asset manager, you follow certain criteria and have certain structures.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  When you look on the crypto side, all of that's gone out the window historically. And so when you see it all go out the window, what ends up happening is the LPs are faced with the decision. Either they're good guys, I trust them type situation, right? So like, hey, I like this team. I think that they can do a good job. I'm willing to take the risk and I'm just gonna give them the money and I don't care.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Or what I think we're seeing now, and I think this is where you guys are coming into play, is you're getting professional LPs who say, I want exposure to the asset class. I don't care if you're a good person or not. I can't just blindly trust you.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  And so I am going to pull you as an asset manager into having professional, mature financial infrastructure. Right? So like, I'm basically gonna dangle money out there as a carrot to get you to become, infrastructure wise, what I need you to become, so then I can give you the money.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  And keep in mind, there's also like, some of them have minimum ticket sizes. So some of them are not gonna give you a million. I mean, say like, okay, I can give you a million, but like, we have a minimum ticket size is 10 million, for example. And with 10 million, like, this is, those are the conditions that you need to go through. So, so some of them-

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Due diligence process.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, they, they, they can't be bothered with investing, like, if we're talking about like, large tickets, like, 10 million is like, you know, like, we're seeing quite a lot, like, you know, we can only commit with 10 million plus, because otherwise it's not worth our attention. So, um, yeah, and I think fund of funds as they're entering into the sector, and there are a few very, very, like, smart players that are just, you know, launching, I think it will be quite, quite big, because fund of funds attract larger ticket sizes. They do have, they basically take care of the entire due diligence process that we, we discussed. They go through, like, everything to make sure that everything is robust as possible. That's why they're charging fees on top as well. So, the, the, the, those type of players will be very, very impactful.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Got it. So, describe to us, um, kind of two more pieces of the problems with the financial infrastructure, and we'll get into what you're building. Uh, the first is the traditional banking system. Horrendous.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is very, I mean, like, kind of-

• 19:11Speaker 02

  In mathematical expectation, this is the fundamental reason why we're in this business. Because it's something which people don't see and people should know. And let me describe you the following scenario. So you would have an asset manager and then another asset manager and they've conducted a trade. Say they bought Apple shares, I mean that settles T plus three. So then the mechanics of that, what actually happened in the background, like these guys have database, these guys have database. Both of them will have sub custodians, right? They would have like Bank A as custodian for that asset manager and then Bank B as a custodian for that asset manager. So then actually trade needs to, the shares need to go basically from that custodian to that custodian. So the way it normally happens, it happens through SWIFT, everyone uses SWIFT.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  So, so keep in mind four databases already in this equation. So all of these databases have, you know, software integrators and people who maintain it and all kinds of like soft that needs to work together. And majority of those parts of the infrastructure has been built in seventies, eighties, nineties, you know, so it's very, very old. So trade happens and God forbid somebody misses a comma in empty five hundred message on the SWIFT. There you have it, a trade stuck in limbo, not settled. Now, why is this important? Because a person at this asset manager, this asset manager, at this bank and at this bank spend half of the week figuring out how to sell the trade.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Now, on extrapolating into the entire sector, we're talking about ninety percent of costs of any financial institution is, well, salaries, right? Like our salaries and like, you know, all the expenses associated with human resources. So out of that, probably the most efficient places would have forty percent doing that, basically. So those are the most efficient places. Now, traditionally, I always give an example of first Swiss, small Swiss bank, a billion, for example, assets under management slash custody. They would have twenty five people, guess how many people would be doing this ops?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Out of twenty five people, fifteen.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Eighteen.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Eighteen.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Like roughly eighteen people would do operations and then you have like two kind of like mid level and then you have the rest of sales. Basically, so Swiss salaries are not cheap. And why is this important is that like it's not the banks that are gonna save money. It's like it's it's pushed to consumers, right? Like it's pushed to us. Like we pay for that. We pay uh all of this infrastructure costs. So we're talking about like slashing everything in half, basically by implementing something like this correctly. Yeah. So and the database maintenance and and infrastructure maintenance, we're talking about, for example, uh tier two, tier three banks budget for IT infrastructure. Is roughly around three billion a year.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  So imagine what kind of like IT infrastructure budgets like big players are having, like this is not the big player. This is like tier two, tier three bank, right? Like, we're talking about like billions, billions and billions and billions and billions, right? So uh and and all of that can basically go away if you have a single source of golden source of truth. And that's why blockchain is important for financial infrastructure, like that there you have a situation, whereas you no longer need to sync up databases amongst each other. You sync it up with the golden source. So um that reduces costs dramatically. It allows you to be more competitive. And more importantly, it allows new players to enter into the field because, for example, my uh when I started my career to launch a hedge fund.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  It would cost um basically in the math would work out in such a manner that you need to have hundred million dollars assets uh basically under management. In order to basically pay for, you know, like lights and salaries and things like that. So in September last year, when we announced our products, uh we were at uh HFM CEO Summit. The number that people discussed was three hundred and eighty five million. Now, how many? Fund managers, you know, that can just leave Blackrock Blackstone instead of fund with half a billion dollars.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Not very many.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  It's very difficult. It's very, very difficult launching a fund. So we're talking about if those infrastructure costs are being reduced, then uh then we have a much like fairer environment for start a competitive environment as well. Um regulations have to do a lot with that as well because a new introduction of regulations like uh been affecting those quite significantly. For example, in Europe, um who had MiFID II basically, which basically followed on last year. Um MiFID II, for example, requires you to submit um eighty plus fields after each trade to the regulator.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so all of this.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  What the heck is in all that information?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, you know, who you like before it was four, before MiFID II, MiFID I basically.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  What the four is what? Who you traded with?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of like basic information, what assets, et cetera, et cetera. Now it's like everything, absolutely everything.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  How many breaths did you take? What was your heartbeat? Where were you sitting? Right? Did you go to the bathroom beforehand or not?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. The thing is like you end up paying more software integrators that would basically implement that for you and and make sure that it all communicates.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It just increases costs and increases friction.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. And from the regulator's standpoint, it's blockchain, it's blessing in disguise. Um it's something which can solve so many problems, but it's one of the situation where I don't think that they will just come out and say, guys, hey, we've built this, you know, and this is how you use it. This is the GitHub, like, you know, let's go bug bounty, like all of this, like this is not how it's gonna happen. You need to show them how this could be used. You need to build the tools and and show them, look, guys. Actually, for the first time in history, you could be at the forefront of, you know, preventing money laundering, terrorist financing and things like that because blockchain is actually not a very, very good, uh you know, uh system to to be, you know, money laundering.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Like it's it can be traced all the way back and if you and and and in traditional space, you know, once you have it in a bank from cash to, that's it. Like you only know like the last point of entry. So for regulators, I think, I and I hope uh it's not gonna be a quick process. We're talking about like years, uh maybe like five, uh hopefully no longer than that, but potentially it could be e- even ten, where regulators were able to extrapolate like information that's happening and even be like, you know, preventing and seeing uh those trades happen in real life, flagging those uh and and and which will remove the costs from from from from the players and and, you know, create less uh. Frictionless and more competitive environment which benefits everyone or all market participants.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  I love it. And then there's this bridge between the engineers and financial firms and the finance people.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  They usually have very different backgrounds. They have very different perspectives. They spend their time doing different things. They almost speak different languages, right? I always joke and say one speaks the language of like GitHub and the other speaks the language of Excel.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  And so they're just, they're working on, in the same company, they're working on the same problem, just very different ways. How big of a problem is that and how big of a gap is there between those two groups?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Huge, huge. To give it to quantifiable numbers, like in 2015, everyone got excited about fintech, remember? Like big data fintech, fintech is gonna change the world and everything. And then a bunch of banks and large institutions started like projects, like pilot projects or some of like not pilot, like full scope projects. And ninety percent of those projects failed. They failed because of that reason, because of lack of understanding between those two tribes. And we're talking about like top ten, top five largest banks in the UK. They had a project that they spent half a billion dollars on, so five hundred million. And they didn't launch it because they couldn't migrate the database.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. So database migration basically is a significant portion of failed launches. Because the project is built, but then it comes to migrating and the migration takes such a long time that the project kind of like dies halfway through. And we're talking about like in banks and large institutions, they'll realize that problem. Like for example, one of the top ten largest banks in the world, for example, today uses a syntax called COBOL.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  In their core banking system. So they lost documentation to what the core banking engine does. Uh roughly in like early two thousands or like late mid mid two thousands. And had to write a PHP wrapper around to understand what the core banking basic system does. And COBOL uh been used widely in financial services and this is syntax developed developed by American military in the seventies. And people who know COBOL are either retired or dead. Uh and uh lots of guys basically coming out of retirement because the the money that people pay to patch now those systems are ridiculous. And we're actually seeing a few engineers that start to learn COBOL because you know, we're talking about like Java. Uh consultant with getting paid like the rate of about eight hundred pounds, uh thousand bucks a day.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Uh and COBOL is two and a half, three thousand bucks a day. So you can get paid three thousand bucks a day to patch the system written in COBOL. So we're going to find like the reason why it still exists is because there there is there is uh. It's it's such a massive machine that needs to migrate from one to another and then engineers can build it. The migration needs to be performed kind of like with joint efforts and it always have because. It's not uncommon to have a two, three, four, five years integration cycles of the software in large institutions. Doing completes from the from the ground up like rejigling of the entire systems is borderline impossible. And that's why also from from where are we going with with with the whole financial infrastructure based on blockchain.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  I believe that we're not going to see large institution coming in and saying like, look, we build everything. Thanks very much. Uh it's either going to be through acquisition or it's going to be completely new from scratch. And keep in mind the budgets of the entity infrastructure. These guys can afford to basically drop a billion on a company that builds something.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no problem.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Like this. I mean, if we're talking about like traditional space, for example, from the investing standpoint, you have like. VCs that need to sell to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, et cetera, et cetera. How many financial institutions can buy a startup in in this sector? Like huge number and they're all.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Almost all of them.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  All of them, exactly. So uh it's going to be pretty exciting to see how this will unwrap and how this is going to be integrated. But the the future of financial services is most certainly uh will be based on blockchain.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  What are you guys doing?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  When it comes to infrastructure.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  So custody, as a first point, basically, we revealed.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Name the company, who you started it with, and then what you guys are doing.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  All right, so we're called Copper. So we started the company because we couldn't find suitable institutional infrastructure service providers in crypto space. When we structured the fund, and we did structure a fund, basically, we went prospectors, administrator, you know, everything's done. Started to look out for custodians, found wallets, who then didn't realize they're custodians. And this was, then they basically changed their brand to custodians. But then I was trying to explain to the guys, like, look, I can't pay you withdrawal fees. I'm charging a three thirty, like, management performance fee, which is already like, you know, should be illegal. Because, but the clients are happy to pay for it because the asset's going like, you know, a hundred percent every, every two months or so. So, but I can't pay you withdrawal fees, that's insane. So, anyway, long story short, we didn't launch the fund, we shut it down.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Because we couldn't find, infrastructure decision was made that it's an opportunity, right? So inefficiency equals opportunity. So we, we started building custody for buy-side players like we, like, spent our careers being. So we built custody product, we built it a little bit different. We didn't build it in such a manner as like, you know, this is crypto, this, where it's stored.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Crypto on our custody platform is stored, is stored, basically, because it's, it's not like a gold bar, you don't need a mountain to store it. Like, it's stored in cryptography, so in mathematical expectation. So you don't have to have somewhere stored at all points in time, because it creates unnecessary vulnerability. And then we threw it off, basically, completely offline, no connection with the online layer, and just sits there. When you need to sign a transaction, we use, basically, optical error gapping. So it generated QR codes to pass the information between devices. So then we started developing this, and we built a framework called Wallgarden, which solves that problem of having predefined ecosystem of execution venues where a manager can transfer the crypto and nowhere else. And which gives a massive comfort to LPs.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Basically, say, we don't have access to anything, you know, Copper's handling, Copper doesn't have access to anything, no one has access to anything, but it works.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  And the Wallgarden framework, basically, went live earlier this year, like, in January. And then we also looked into OTC market, and we. I've started looking at everything is kind of like settled bilaterally. And, you know, whereas it's all exciting to have like smart contracts settling a trade and everything doesn't exist yet. And today, it's not uncommon to see a trade being settled in two weeks. So, I mean, this is crazy. I mean, we're talking about T plus three, T plus two inefficiencies. And we're talking about like, you know, within the crypto community, people discussing like how to scale the, you know, to process, you know, the blocks instead of like, you know, twenty minutes into seconds. But trades are settled back in two weeks. So that's, that's crazy.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  So build a settlement framework and clearing framework for institutional players so they can settle basically through us. And the development of all of that is basically is exactly what people are used to in traditional space. For example, prime broker, uh, and the prime broker service is going to be super important in the space because people can utilize the tool provided by prime brokers to use their capital that's been given to them by LPs more efficiently. I generate more return, i.e. more money coming into the space. So it's, it, it, it all kind of makes sense. And we're talking about margin funding, lending borrowing, repos, reverse repos, collateral rehypothecation. So all of these terms, I mean, I know that they might be confusing for, for, for some of the audience,

• 33:17Speaker 02

  but those are basically the tools where, you know, for example, you can borrow with a promise to buy it back at a certain price later, at a certain date. It, it, it allows us to create different strategies, different hedging strategies where, you know, if you're winning on one leg and you're not going to lose on another leg, and, you know, things like collateral rehypothecation is, for example, whereas, you know, you store your funds with the prime broker and then those funds have been lent to someone else, you're getting a cut off those fees that they charge basically a borrower on the other side. So all of these parts of infrastructure are super important and. It's still early days. I mean, it's institutional space is ridiculously small.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  That's we have a lot of interests, kind of like, you know, and obviously you guys on your side speak with big institutions, but you know how careful they are, how like, you know, it takes six to 12 months to get somewhere. And the first kind of group of people that went out is like the crypto funds. And there are probably 20, 30 like crypto funds out there in the world with proper strategy, institutional background, understanding how to conduct investment activity. And these guys were going to dictate basically how this sector is going to grow because they are the contact for their LPs. And LPs have all the money which they basically take from Goldman and put into them, you know, that's.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  That's the game.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely. What, um, talk a little bit more about how the LPs drive decision making.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, so we covered that a little bit in terms of, you know, who are current LPs and what kind of tickets they're writing, but as part of the due diligence for some of our clients, as most of our clients, they basically ask who is your custodian, what is the world garden framework, how it works. So we end up talking to them and we end up talking with.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  As the custody provider.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  As a custody provider, yeah. It's a new space. They want to make sure that how this works and.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Make sure you're real.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  You're doing it right away.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And these are very, very sophisticated guys. And it's not a matter of like, you know, whether they want to invest, it's how much they want to invest. Because it's a risk return to them. So they weigh the risks by conducting the full due diligence of the cycle, et cetera. And keep in mind like execution venues today are places like, you know, BitMEX, et cetera, et cetera. So they're also.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Not exactly the most institutional friendly places.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Exactly, but it's through a reflection of the crypto space today. So at least, you know, we have kind of that, that's, uh, it's basically super efficient, you know, in terms of like where we are, what we're doing, et cetera. So, you know, going forward, it's either these guys will adjust and make sure that they take all the boxes for institutional guys to have the floor. From them or someone else will do it, you know, someone else will like in a here UK, whatever, wherever like, you know, we'll sit down, build the roads exchange, properly regulate it and then, uh, you know, get the flow. So, uh, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's good to see like many, many companies like coming into the space and providing all of this different service like driving, if you see them forward. So it's, um, I think it's a good thing.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Where, where do you think, um, we still have to improve, right? Like, like what are the next kind of steps? And then, uh, what, what's the future of kind of custody, prime brokerage and other uh, financial infrastructure for the custody, uh, for the crypto industry?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  I think it's always like, you know, I'm, I've got, I've got a technology finance background and I think where the most stumbling blocks always are, it's when you try to build something straight away for twenty thirty five. And like, it's like, you know, you build a, a, a, a, a wheel, like Lamborghini wheel and like bring it and there's like a cart outside, you know? So it's like, I think those components should kind of like be stacked with each other in such a manner that we have MVP and we move to MVP two point zero, et cetera, et cetera. And then we have alpha, beta and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we basically go with what works today, what solves the problems today, uh, rather than solving, uh, hypothetical problems, uh, and somewhere, somewhere down the line in the future.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  So then, I mean, that's what we're doing. That's what, what, what's some of the other players are doing in the space. So I think it's, it's, so, so when, you know, everyone got excited about like institutions coming next year, like we were that institution. We're like, this is not happening. Like we, we can't like.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  They want, their desire was there, but the infrastructure wasn't.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So we're now seeing first proper institution launches like from Q one this year. Like that's the, um, bigger ones pulled the plug, uh, when, when, but also by the way, what was blessing in disguise is when Bitcoin went from six thousand to four thousand. We saw basically, so our conversations like fifty, fifty, fifty chance basically that you're gonna sit down and have a proper conversation with potential clients. Uh, or, or you, you would have a conversation of like somebody who's managing like, you know, twenty thousand dollars and like the guy bought Bitcoins like in two thousand and ten and now he's a fund manager. Uh, so, and for us, like it eliminated all of them basically.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  So the guys who stayed there, who stayed in the sector, they know exactly what they invest in, they know exactly how they invest in, they know exactly how to communicate the investment strategy.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  The tourists went away.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sorry?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  The tourists went away.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, tourists, yeah, correct. Yeah, absolutely. And that was absolutely great. Like, so everyone kind of like who who went through this. And by the way, no one was kind of like second guessing it. Like, everyone just like kept doing what they're doing. And they're like, okay, we're like on target to launch that. And then, you know, all the variables aligned, all, all, all, all of the, uh, you know, money are lined up, let's do it. And then people did. So it it's great to see the first kind of like conduction happening.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  For sure. What, um, before I finish up, uh, I always do rapid fire, uh, questions. What do you think is the most important company in crypto?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's not, uh, one company. I think it's a consortium and, um, and I think it's, uh, when it comes to spreading the word and the media, I think media in, in, in.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. You think the media is the most important?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Because without the media, we wouldn't see the responses from like regulators wouldn't care, like some other players wouldn't care, like some people wouldn't be thinking they're missing the boat. Some people wouldn't spend the time. So, um, it's, it's kind of like content and it's like, you know, you you create liquidity. Like you're a market maker and then there is like on the other side, there is a taker and then, then, then, um, you know, people have to react to it.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  And it's like the media is basically a liquidity provider of information.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  It's a really interesting way of looking at it.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And liquidity is basically is the key. Liquidity is your oxygen. So and then the space, for example, we we probably would, people would just dismiss it and say, okay, well, no one cares about it. But when, you know, you have like, you know, CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, uh, Bloomberg, uh, you know, FT, um, you know, everyone's basically writing about it. You kind of understand, okay, well, it's time to look into it.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good answer. Um, what about regulation? What, uh, one regulation would you change or improve if you could?

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Um, it depends, um, uh, which, which kind of like place we're talking about. So everyone's got like all sorts of things. Um, so for example, in, in this country, uh, we'd say Howie definitely.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Okay, US Howie test.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just generally, you know, judging things by the way they were done. Because it's it's it's this market been in existence like the longest, right? So so but judging like the same way as we would be judging like activities like, you know, fifty years ago shouldn't be shouldn't be the case. Uh in the UK and Europe, I would say RDR. So RDR is basically the what you can sell to retail clients.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Because retail end up uh uh with a subpar product. Um and which have been basically they basically invest in the market with like effective five percent fees.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  And uh they don't invest in like complete rubbish, uh which is good, which is what regulator tried to achieve, but they also can't invest or they can't sell them the product which could be interesting and not rubbish. So that's I say with specifically with security tokens and and and and and different parts of the infrastructure coming to to them that needs to be adjusted. And Asia, man, I mean, it's Asia. Principal agent trading, never heard of it. It's like, you know, people taking retail clients for a ride like everywhere, you know. So principal trading is like, you know, marketing and agent trading is basically. Uh so in in in in in Europe, it's illegal, you know. In Asia, everything's possible.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I would say a little bit more maturity in terms of the regulations would be nice there.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Um what's your most controversial thought?

• 41:43Speaker 02

  On?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  What what do you believe that a few people in the crypto community also believe?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Um, yes, this is something which is from the crypto community. I think it's that the drive of institutional adoption is gonna come from finance and not from engineering.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  The, so you're saying that the institutional adoption is gonna come because we become smarter and more mature on the finance side, not the engineering?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Correct. I think engineering is there. Like, we have so much already out there that like we could ever wish for, like, and and for finance, it's just a matter of at least adopting parts of that currently. And obviously, in crypto community, it's predominantly engineers' community.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  And uh and engineering community, it's common belief that, you know, like, screw finance. And, you know, like, you go to different conferences and it's guys are discussing, how do we do this? How do we do that? And the majority of the like eighty percent of questions are already answered by the regulator. Like, they have a playbook for that.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  So, uh, yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Got it. Makes so that makes sense. What's the most important book you've ever read?

• 42:52Speaker 02

  I would say extreme ownership.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Ah, Jaco Willink.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a big fan, read both books. Uh, I'm a big kind of fan or have lots of interest in companies' cultures and how to build companies' culture and human psychology. And I believe with that approach, that's like a life hack for building efficient teams that get results. And I think since the guys were um in the military, the cost of a mistake was not like a delayed launch in six months. The cost of mistake was a human life. So how.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Changed the game.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Exactly, completely different. So we read it, uh, like the whole team read it, we read both books and it helps, it helps Victor.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's a uh very unique perspective on the world of just, hey, you're responsible for what happens.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Right?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  From there. Uh, aliens, believer, non-believer, think they're real?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  I think in infinite amount of universes, everything's possible, right?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  So. Everything or anything?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Both, right? Uh, you think we'll uh discover alien life before you and I die?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Um, that has also impacted how how much we're gonna live, right? Like by how how how long, how long we're gonna live.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Good answer.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  So I think it's kind of like, you know, it comes from both sides, hard to estimate.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Let's let's say that we've got a average life seventy five years.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Um.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  So what what?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Probably, probably.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Thirty, your thirties?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So call it another thirty five, forty years.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Um, I think we'll discover some sort of some form of life, bacteria isn't, you know, or that would be already, uh, that that is the thing, it was something. But again, you know, this is like me speculating, had zero knowledge about it. So my opinion on this, you know, I wouldn't value.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Spoken like a true risk management.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Uh, what one question do you have for me to finish up?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Um.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  I think, I think it would be interesting to, to ask you is, is when do you think the next financial crisis is gonna be and since last created Bitcoin, what do you think is gonna come out of the next one?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Man, everyone is asking me something related to this lately. So next financial crisis, I'll say, I'm gonna give a really safe answer of next five years. Right, one's gonna happen, it's just doesn't go up right to the right forever. I don't think it's, you know, another 10 years of this type of market, but I also don't think it's like tomorrow, right? So like, is it a year, three years? I have no clue. I tend to just say that like, I want to be, I want to hope for the best but be prepared for the worst type attitude. So that's on the timing. And then how Bitcoin will, will.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  What will come out of the next one? So Bitcoin was created during the financial crisis, last financial crisis, what would come out of the next?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Automation.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Automation.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think a lot of these financial crisis and just issues in general in the financial system can be solved with software and automation. And if you look at Bitcoin, Bitcoin is like the automation of money, right? Or the kind of software-backed of money. And I think that we'll just see it not just be money this time, I think coming out of the next one, it'll be a much more automated system. And ultimately, it's because when you have automation and more kind of software-based systems, you can just prevent a lot of bad shit from happening, right?

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  And so.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  No human error.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, depending on just like what the cause of it is, and it's always, you know, hindsight's 2020. But I do think for Bitcoin specifically, I keep talking about this perfect storm, right? Kind of, you know, late second, late first half next year, you're gonna probably get some interest rate cuts, you're gonna get some QE, you're gonna get the Bitcoin halving, and you know.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  If you're paying attention to US politics, we got a, you know, a president who's conducting trade wars on Twitter, so you kind of have all these things coming together, that'll be interesting to see how they all interact. And I tend to think they're bullish for Bitcoin. But again, we've never seen Bitcoin perform in a down market, or you know, all the kind of traditional stuff, so that's one piece. The second thing is, um, I just see us starting to get serious about automation and software uh in finance when there's another like kind of sober moment, right? And so it kind of takes you to get hit by a hit in the head with a two by four.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  To like pay attention.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Um, and I think some sort of recession or, you know, financial crisis would, uh, would do that to us. Uh, and then once that happens, um, I think people will start paying attention and kind of get their act together.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Right. Interesting.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  By the way, I could be completely wrong.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  It makes sense. It makes sense.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  It was just, you know, an idea.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have next year, next year is going to be definitely, and it's very well described.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  If we get interest rate cuts, QE, a move towards modern monetary theory and the Bitcoin having all at the same time, I, I'll see you later, man.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  There is one more event.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  It's like rocket fuel.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  This, this year, um, China has three celebrations and they can't afford the financial crisis this year, but next year it's going to be over. So the, the, the market there, I think is also like will do, yeah, I mean.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  It's all gonna, it's all coming together.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  It's all coming together, yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  And, and look, and I'm always, whenever I talk about this stuff, I'm always very careful to say like, I do not want a financial crisis to hit. Uh, they're incredibly painful, incredibly bad for people. Uh, a lot of people get hurt, right? Um, and so we should do everything we possibly can to avoid this stuff. Uh, I just unfortunately think that there's people asleep at the wheel.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Right? And, and no matter how much you are, anybody else yells and screams about this stuff, uh, it's coming down the pipe.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Right? And, and so as investors, the, uh, the, the job we have, you know, that we're tasked with is to be prepared for this stuff and find ways to make money, um, regardless if the market's going up or down.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Um, and so all we can just kind of call out what we see.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  So, listen, man, I appreciate you doing this. Uh, I'm glad that, uh, you guys are building, um, kind of professional infrastructure for the space. It is much needed. Um, obviously institutions cannot come in and then refuse to come in until the stuff's in place. Um, so the work you're doing is incredibly important and, uh, I'll do this again in the future so that, uh, we can get an update on how things are going.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me again.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 49:16Anthony Pompliano?

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• 50:00Anthony Pompliano?

  If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.