The Ethics Of Fintech — With Dan Dolev

Dan Dolev is managing director and senior analyst at Mizuho, where he covers fintech companies Robinhood, SoFi, Affirm, Block, and others. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss fintech's ethics and opportunity, explaining who the industry serves, whether it's actually better than the current banking system, and how big it can get. Stay tuned for the second half where we dig into Coinbase's business and its recent turbulence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, if the market has a cold, then fintech or financial technology has the flu. Every company from SoFi to PayPal, Square, you name it. Robinhood, which has been in the headlines this week, seems like it's been a disaster for all of them. I think that we've been long overdue on the show to have a deep discussion of what's going on in the financial technology world, and especially now, now that these companies that have enabled what was supposed to be a democratic revolution in the finance world. Many of those dreams haven't come to fruition, at least yet. It's time for us to dig in and figure out what's going on.

• 2:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  We couldn't have a better guest to do it with us today than Dan Dolev, who is the Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Mizuho. He is a great analyst. He's on CNBC all the time, covers companies like, Dan, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Robinhood, Affirm, SoFi, Coinbase, you name it. We're about to get into that and more. Dan, welcome to the show.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Hey, Alex, a pleasure to be here. I'm glad we solved all the tech issues and it's a big honor to be on your podcast.

• 2:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's great to have you here. And yes, tech issues, we get those every week. So the true hero behind the scenes is Nate Guattini, who manages to turn these around quickly. So we usually thank Nate at the end, but the man is a saint.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I can tell you, your technology is better than the Square Analyst Day. Their technology was awful. You've already won on that.

• 2:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Low bar to clear. So we're going to talk about financial technology. I think, you know, sometimes with these discussions, it's always a given. Okay, of course, there is an area called fintech. There's an area called biotech. Financial technology is interesting because we have like a pretty well-established banking system with, you know, certain safeguards for people. And most people don't, well, maybe I'm being, getting ahead of myself. Most people don't seem to have problems with their banks. Generally, the bigger system, they do. But the banks, I don't hear too many complaints about them. You can help me shoot down those, you know, that assertion if you'd like. So I just want to start with this very basic fundamental question, which is,

• 3:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  financial technology, why, why does it exist? What is it trying to do? Is it trying to replace banks, disrupt certain things within banks? Why do we have a fintech industry? And what's the opportunity?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Look, this is like the, an excellent question and I would say there's um different answers to that question, right? You know, thinking through what you're saying, I think, you know, the, the gospel here, you know, if you're really into this is basically, there's a big group of people out there that are not well-served by the banks, right? Like, we are all like, sort of, you know, we have great lives and, you know, um, you know, very cushy jobs and, and we're all doing really well, but there's a lot of people, you know, in America, but also globally, like, that are underbanked or unbanked. I think in America, there's like forty, fifty, sixty million people who are either underbanked or unbanked, i.e. they're not, either they have a bank account, but that bank doesn't

• 4:41Speaker 02

  give them anything, it doesn't give them credit, it doesn't give them uh any services that, you know, like, that they need. And the, the fintech industry sort of emerged out of the need of those people, this is kind of the grassroots movement, it emerged out of the need of those people to actually have more access to, to, to the financial ecosystem. So initially, it was these, you know, the Western Unions of the world, et cetera, and the cash check, and that morphed into sort of more, with technology, it morphed into more complicated and complex um apps, like the Cash App on the one hand, the Buy Now, Pay Later, Firm on the other hand, uh, and sort of all that, this neo-bank era of like the Chimes, et cetera, of the world.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  So I think that's the, that's kind of what, that was the need that created the fintech industry, um, and, and I really think that, that that's kind of probably the biggest sort of driver, the biggest moat to the industry is like servicing the unbanked and underbanked. To your point.

• 5:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Banks are doing fine, most people don't need fintech.

• 5:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm, and so how does that, well, first of all, I would say that um Anything is an improvement over Western Union. If you've ever tried to send money through Western Union, it is a disaster and anything is improvement over there. That's why when I was in El Salvador, and I know I like to talk about this a lot on the show, and I saw people adopting Bitcoin. It's now legal tender there. I thought not, hey, this government should invest in Bitcoin through the Treasury, but this actually might help above all remittances. So when you talk about the promise of fintech, that definitely makes a lot of sense and it resonates that there's folks that are underserved by the banking system. I recant my opening statement.

• 6:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  That being said, what is the opportunity then? Because if it's mostly going to the unbanked folks, we're just coming through a moment of sky-high valuations for these fintech companies. Now they're on the other side of that. So how do you think about the opportunity in fintech? If basically, a lot of tech is, let's disrupt what's in, what's the current leader. But from my understanding, listening to you, it's not let's disrupt the JP Morgan. It's let's fill in the gaps that they're missing. And if that's the case, what's the opportunity? Because you look at some of the valuations of some of these companies, and they're way higher than you would imagine

• 7:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  if the opportunity is simply just to fill in the gaps of the mainstream banking system.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Right, and I would say that what we're seeing right now, the dislocation in the market that we're seeing right now is a function of, I would say, at least two forces that are working together. One, as we all know, COVID is a round trip. Everything that went up, went down. And fintech, particularly payments and fintech, is a leading indicator. So you're seeing basically payments and fintech peaking. I call this FIFO, first in, first out. Payment has peaked fastest before COVID. So i.e. in the second quarter of 2020, basically everyone was piling into payments. It's had an amazing 12-month run.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  And then it was the first one to start, kind of like the broken story started with multiples for the payments ecosystem, and now it's down. I think the bigger picture is it's almost like, why is payments so bad?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Right now, and the reason, the answer is just it's too good and everyone wants a piece of it. And I think that's what's happening. So if you think about like, if you kind of parse out the, um, so like, if you think about, say, let's think about PayPal, let me give you some specific examples, right?

• 8:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  So before we go in, I mean, I just want to, again, like, let's, let's zoom out before we go into like, why the stock has fallen and, and, and, you know, risen. Like, if you think about a JP Morgan, their market cap is 340 billion. You know, when we look at like, some of these other companies, I had a bunch of them open earlier. But, you know, they, they were like, basically, some of them were like, half of that. You know, we had a firm, for instance. I know if they were that high. But, you know, you look at it like, I don't know, a couple of years ago.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Forty, fifty billion.

• 9:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Forty, fifty. So we're talking about, this isn't exactly, you know, supplementing the banking industry. It's, it's replacing in some ways. So, do you think, A, you know, evaluations really never reflected what the opportunity was? B, maybe the opportunity is bigger than you let on originally, or something in between?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I think the opportunity for certain names in certain areas is, is probably bigger than we think. Like, I honestly think, like, you mentioned a firm. I think a firm could be the Visa and Mastercard of buy, not pay later.

• 9:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And shout out what a firm does and explain why that's the case.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  That's, that's actually interesting. So a firm is like, the market leader in the US in buy, not pay later, right? So everybody knows buy, not pay later. Like, think of it as instead of pay as you go, uh, owe as you go.

• 9:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  You know, kind of like, credit as you go.

• 9:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and Apple's getting into that area now, also. So.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Okay. So if you think, let's go back to this. If you think about a firm, right? Instead of, um, instead of like, kind of like, buy, not pay later, think of it as like, uh, credit as you go. So the traditional credit card system is basically, you get a FICO score, you get a credit card, or you get several credit cards, and then you have like, a huge APR, you owe a lot of interest, a lot of people are like, kind of in debt. And what buy, not pay later offers, and a firm is like, the front runner in the US, is basically like, the ability to get credit on a product by product basis. And why is that so powerful? Again, there is a certain group, there's a certain demographic, a certain socioeconomic group that.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Is is, you know, in, you know, doesn't wanna have credit cards. They don't trust credit cards, right? Especially younger people. And they prefer to buy things and finance them. It's basically a cash flow management tool. Finance them on a, you know, step by step basis. And, you know, a firm has built a brand that basically um is a big lure to a lot of people. So when they wanna buy sneakers, when they wanna buy something on Amazon, they check out using a firm and they finance, say, and pay for it, etc. So that's essentially what they do. It's really not that complicated of a business, but it's become a big, they're answering a big demand trend and they're there to to service it.

• 11:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  So we're gonna get into every company um a- as we go along on this show. But I just wanna ask you another broad question. You know, I like tackling these broad ones in the beginning. You have, okay, so first of all, a firm buy now, pay later. Um, I don't know, does that, does that, um, well, let me ask this quick one, and then we get to the bigger one. How does that impact people's credit credit scores? So when I, you know, opened a bank account and went in to deposit a check when I was like eighteen, the banker, you know, pulled me aside, and it's like, you should open a credit card because you wanna build credit. Can you build credit in the same way through a company like a firm and never having a credit card open?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  And so you actually, that's the, that's the interesting point. You don't actually build credit. You basically build credit on a firm.

• 12:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. But isn't, isn't, oh, but, but like your credit score, it's not gonna help you build your credit score.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  It's not gonna help you, but it's not gonna hurt you if you default. And that's the big, so again, remember, there's a lot of people, I think what we're dealing with here is like a new generation, like Gen Z, that prefers, it's like they prefer to share a car than to own a car. They prefer to, it's, it's basically taking credit and turning it into as borrow as you go.

• 12:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  But eventually, they're gonna wanna buy a house, and having a high credit score is important for that. So doesn't this hurt them in the long run?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  It, it, if they, if, if they don't do anything else that helps them get a high FICO score, it's going to be a problem in the long run. I agree with you. So there, it has to be, I, I, I, I, I think. You know, the question that you're asking basically is this completely substituting credit? Or is this complementary to credit? I think right now they can like live side by side. So you're not doing everything on buy now, pay later. You're doing some things on buy now, pay later and some things on credit. But you know, I think what eventually you'll see Alex is that you'll see regulators come in. And there's already like voices in DC, remember like Elizabeth Warren's of the world.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Actually Elizabeth Warren, they, they sent a letter to, um, you know, to, to, to try to the CFPB to, to regulate buy now, pay later. So I think eventually, which is a good thing, you will get more regulation around buy now, pay later in a firm. And which also means that you will get a FICO score.

• 13:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Yeah, that is a good thing. And this is kind of the worry that I have when I hear about like the way that all these fintech companies are operating. And, and I just want to state for the record, I believe in free choice. People should have, you know, if people make choices, you know, they, they, you know, they should have those options. And I really don't like the whole idea of like gatekeepers saying like, these options shouldn't be available because, you know, they could hurt people. Like let people make decisions on their own versus like have like, you know, um, you know, obviously like, I think the government should help protect people with some regulations. But like, you know, taking options away to me is, you know, is ridiculous. However, I, I think about the way that these companies work and the incentives they, they bring to, bring to bear.

• 14:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I wonder if, if the fintech industry is going to go after the folks that are, that don't have bank accounts or are underserved by the current banking system. How do we make sure? And this is like kind of different from, from, you know, the typical conversation, I think, but like about valuations and all that. But how do we make sure that they don't end up getting, you know, attracting customers, you know, from folks that are underserved? From the banking system and exploiting them. For instance, you know, you, we look about, look at Robinhood's.

• 15:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  The way that they do business in this this payment for order flow, which is says, okay, you know, the trades are free, but meanwhile, like you have the middlemen that are making making a lot of money off it. You have, you know, a firm which says by now pay later, you know, meanwhile, folks aren't building credit score. You have Coinbase that says, you know, go ahead and buy all these, you know, shitcoins, you know, even with with, uh, you know, and a manual to say this is how you buy a, I think, a coin or an index called bullshit, which, by the way, happens to be down ninety nine percent, um, or something like that over the past little while.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  It's gonna go down to zero.

• 15:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it will go down to zero. But that's that's amazing. Yeah. And so I guess the broader question is how how, you know, should we be celebrating fintech or should we be skeptical of fintech? I'm sure there must be some good in there, but I'm kind of curious. You you look at these companies all the time. So are they are they, um, helping people who are underserved or are they exploiting them?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  They help them by exploiting them.

• 16:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's interesting. Can you say more about that?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Let me give you an example. Like, I, you know, I love examples because that's just being concrete. Let's think about the Cash App.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Best example of serving the underserved, right?

• 16:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why is that?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Sort of, well, because the demographic of the Cash App. So in in America, there's like two different P two P solutions, right? There's Venmo, which is mostly like, you know, pampered millennials, East Coast and West Coast. And there's like Cash App, which is a lot Southeast, you know, lower income demographics,

• 16:37Speaker 02

  you know, kind of like minorities, like it's it's sort of become a thing, right? It's it's in it's in rap songs, right? It's become a thing. So, uh, again, I'm I'm not saying they're not exploiting that, but, you know, you know, why why are they doing it? Because they can. So so how do they make money? Let's go back and think of how they make money, right? Because that's at the end of the day. So, um, about forty five percent of the Cash App revenue, which is gross profit and revenue is kind of what, you know, synonymous for them, um, is from instant deposit. What is instant deposit? A lot of people don't know that. They charge you one hundred and seventy five basis points, which is one point seven five percent to transfer money instantly to your bank account.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Or you could do it for free if you wait two to three days. Now, who has the need to transfer money instantly to their bank account? You know, I'm not being kind of cocky or anything, but I don't. I can wait two, three days, but there are some people out there, especially the people that use the cash app, who cannot wait two, three days. They gotta pay rent. They gotta pay, you know, someone, they gotta send money home. They are the ninety-nine percent.

• 17:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  And they're taking, well, I was gonna say taking one percent from the ninety-nine percent. But they're taking close to two percent from the ninety-eight percent. Yeah, that pun is over because they raised prices. So it's not exploiting, but they're, they're, they're doing it because they can, because they're, the, the end market, those users really need that service. So what they would argue, and I think there's a lot of like, um, to, to be on their defense right now. What they would argue is we're providing a service to a certain demographic.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  That in the old days, you mentioned like the Western unions, et cetera. I don't know Western Union very well, but in, you know, you, we're providing a service that, that the cost of this money in the cash checked kind of like environment and like the old way, like the ten years ago, was much more expensive. So the opportunity cost is higher. The APR that you pay for money is higher. And they say like, look, we're providing a service, we're democratizing this. I mean, to me, there's a finite kind of time horizon on this instant depositing. But that's just one example of how you can, let's not, not exploit, that's a bad word, but take advantage of a need of a certain demographic.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  For, for money because they don't have other options. And that's just one example of maybe helping.

• 19:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  And hurting at the same time.

• 19:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, you know, that's interesting. So, so basically, in other words, it sounds like what's happening is the old system was so bad that you could still come in and take some margin.

• 19:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you're still gonna be less exploitative than the old system because the old system was that bad.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. You're better. You're better than the than the way it used to be done. You're more efficient.

• 19:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  But you're still probably overcharging for something that should be free.

• 19:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  So tech tech does what tech does, which makes tech so interesting is it applies. It applies values at scale. It allows actions to be taken at scale.

• 20:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, this is kind of old old hat at this point, but something like a Robin Hood or Coinbase. I'm actually kind of curious. Now we have a little bit of vision in retrospect. Back in the meme stock days and the game stock and the game stop is what we talked a lot about on this podcast. There was an idea that, well,

• 20:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  people on, you know, retail traders are turning the tables on the old institutions by using new tools. And, you know, there was worry like, okay, maybe we did need some of those speed bumps. But now they they've gone in and they, you know, many people invested a lot in individual stocks and meme stocks. They individually, they invested a lot, not just in Bitcoin, but in various cryptocurrencies that have since, you know, taken a hit. And we're now in a moment where a lot of these stocks are way down. And a lot of these these cryptocurrencies are way down. So, you know, let's, let's take a look, you know, over the past year where there was initially this like, oh, these are empowering tools. But now a lot of people are paying for the party, right?

• 21:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  So ultimately, do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing that that these tools had democratized so much access to investing?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  I would bifurcate, I think, between those two names that you mentioned. I think Robin Hood is a good thing and Coinbase is a bad thing.

• 21:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, why is that?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Well, let's talk about the the good thing first. Like, why, why do I think Robin Hood is is created value? Because they basically came to.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  A new demographic, a new age group, right? Teenagers, younger people. And, and basically said, hey, we're going to create. Investing is really complicated. Investing is really, you know, kind of opac and, and sort of old school. Let's come in with innovation, with an amazing interface and, you know, give you free trading, right? And, and basically become your, um, you know, a funnel to be, to, to have you as the, uh, sort of as a you buy, you know, the customer acquisition is, you know, the, the, the value proposition is come in when you're very young and then just basically grow with you. What did they do? That's really good. They lowered

• 22:21Speaker 02

  trading fees to zero across the entire industry, single-handedly. Schwab, TD, they all had to follow suit and basically cut fees because of Robinhood. So what did they do? They helped democratize. I, I kind of, I, I sort of hate that term because it's, you know, everyone's trying to democratize something, you know what I mean?

• 22:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yes, I do.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. So, so it's sort of like, it's almost like a cliche. But think about Robinhood did. The effect of Robinhood was to lower, or bring trading fees literally to zero. Uh, there's a debate on PFOF, etc. We can talk about that too. But like they, they single-handedly, you know, disrupted the industry. So I think they did more good than bad.

• 23:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Coinbase, the, on the other hand, basically.

• 23:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Robinhood, before we go to Coinbase, Robinhood also sort of gamified this, you, this, uh, the, the day trading thing. You even mentioned recently, I think this was probably you, that, um, it's the most engaged audience, six to seven transactions per week. We know that's like 90% of day traders lose. So I get bringing down the fee, but like, I don't want to say the speed bump was good because let people make their own decisions. But when you build this addictive product that, you know, people want to trade like crazy and we, you know, it's all good when everything goes up, but now everything has come down. Um, is it, is it just, uh, you know, an easy vehicle for people to learn hard lessons? Or where do you sort of stand on, on that front?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Hmm. I'd rather they learn the hard lesson with small amounts.

• 24:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Then make even more irrational decisions down the road. Like if anyone is sort of, you know, put their life savings into AMC. Sorry. Lost it all, you know, or, or, or one of these meme stocks. I think that um it's, it's, the question is like, how many of them have basically? Well, I think, look, there's a moral, deeper moral decision to everything. And especially when it comes to money and investing. And then the, the balance is, to your point, have they done more good or bad? Mm hmm. To humanity or to the economy? I think I, if I had to do a verdict, I think they would, they've done more good. But yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  It's an open debate. I agree. Like the meme stock era is, is a. We can finally look back at it. Yeah, it's a mutation, right? It's a mutation of, so you could say they gamified it. But really what gamified it was the people that were using it, right? It's kind of, it's almost like the. Oh, that's, well, it's designed that way, though. It's, it's designed, yeah, there's a casino kind of element. Right. To this, but you know, it's, it, you, you, you know, like, you know, you, it's, it's not just them. That's what I'm saying. Like, it's, it's everyone. They probably took it to the umpteenth degree.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  But they've also captured the hearts and minds of a lot of people and, and made and brought them to be engaged. I think there has been certain mutations and the Reddit era and all that stuff. Again, COVID, I don't want to blame COVID, it's kind of old. But, you know, COVID put all these trends on steroids. But as you know, COVID is around, always think about perspective, perspective, perspective. Like, we are at the sunset of COVID. We could be sitting here in a year, doing the same podcast and we wouldn't, and, and it would be like nineteen ninety nine. We wouldn't be talking about. Like it just a it's a one time in history bump.

• 26:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  That just got on steroids. I wouldn't extrapolate that to be.

• 26:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Long term.

• 26:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  The world and.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  So that's.

• 26:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  By the way, I I wish I had Robin Hood when I was younger because I would have learned those hard lessons and then realized how futile day trading is for most people who don't do it professionally and even then. And probably just said, okay, I'm go go S and P five hundred and invest a lot and see that return flourish. But instead, I had no no on ramp. And and it was confusing and I started investing too late.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and I agree and look at like.

• 26:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Every in every cycle. Um, I remember. You know, I'm I'm old enough to remember in like two thousand one, like I remember like a. A cab driver in New York City who was trading stock on he's stock on he's like um.

• 26:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Blackberry. Palm Pilot. Oh, wow.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  They did. It wasn't invented yet on the pine palm pilot.

• 27:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  And he was like, I'm making so much money. I'm making so much money. And then you know, that's the end.

• 27:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  So it's sort of like, you know, when when and and maybe there is a sense of it on the meme stock era so that you know that there's no, you know, when when investments become irrational. And I think there's an element of of it on the Robin Hood users and and that's, you know, I'm not a big fan of it, but it's maybe. The necessary evil that comes with the. You know, opening up investments and educating it to your point to a younger generation like.

• 27:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 27:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can we? Oh, sorry. Um, why don't you finish that thought and then I want to kick to.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  No, I'm done with that thought. This wasn't like, yeah, let's take a break.

• 27:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, great. So let's kick to a break now and then we'll be back here with Dan Dolev right after this to get to why he thinks Coinbase is bad. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AVPoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

• 28:27Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 29:11Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 29:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Dan Dolev, the Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Mizuho. You can watch a lot of his stuff on CNBC. Just go to YouTube now. Type in Dan Dolev. You'll see some interesting clips through the years. And Dan has really had a front row seat to this wild swing that fintech stocks have taken. So we'll get to that as soon as we go through the Coinbase stuff. But let's get to Coinbase. You have some reservations about Coinbase. It's a fascinating company for many reasons. A, it's the leader in basically crypto. It's the leading crypto trading app and holding app in the world.

• 30:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's also very public in terms of its political point of views. No politics in the office, which it made a big thing. I think their CEO, Brian Armstrong, is quite an interesting character. Doesn't care for journalists very much. They're very much in telling their own story, just like kind of a fascinating. They're an interesting product and also interesting political vehicle. But anyway, let's talk about the company itself, what it does and why you're kind of skeptical about it.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very bearish on Coinbase and things. I don't know if having a front row seat in fintech was that much fun over the last year.

• 31:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  You're right about the.

• 31:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  It makes for a fun podcast episode, that's for sure.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  It definitely is. If it gets, if it gets, you know, people to enjoy our podcast, I'm all about it.

• 31:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  So thanks.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I just don't want to have that roller coaster again.

• 31:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I believe it.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Gets a little quieter. But look, I mean, what is the, what are we, like, what is the, what is the, the whole promise of crypto? If you're bullish on crypto, right? The promise of crypto or what crypto should generate or what should help is lower the cost of transactions between people between. So it's basically the promise is kind of like, if I want to send you money in El Salvador, why do I need to go through like a Remitly or one of these guys? If you're like, you know, a foreign worker, you know, working out of the Philippines and sending money back to your family.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  One of the use cases of crypto is the ability to basically transact fiat to crypto, crypto to fiat.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Lowering the cost of acceptance, right? So if you think about the cost of acceptance, when I, when you go to a merchant, it's like three percent, four percent, five percent sometimes, we find out later. So if you can lower the cost of acceptance and do it on a cross-border basis, then you've really created value with greater, you've really democratized. What is Coinbase doing? What Coinbase is doing is it's basically like a, it's like a centralized exchange for a decentralized, you know, I would say asset class, if you want to call that.

• 32:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Asset class, I don't really think you should call it asset class. But it's, so there's a juxtaposition even in the term of what they do, right? That crypto, if you believe in crypto, you should believe in decentralized crypto and in this. So what, what they're doing is basically they created a, I mean casino is a hard word, is, is a tough word, but they basically created like a, you know, it's kind of like a, it's a gambling, like is, is this coin going to be better than that? And then the whole thing is, is they're not productive assets. So, you know, those alternative coins, and I would even say Bitcoin and Ethereum, they're just more of the same. So they're, but, but basically Coinbase does is they, they are bound to have diminishing, I mean, as a stock, I don't like it, right? They're bound, they've done very well for themselves, but they're, the, the, these,

• 33:39Speaker 02

  the trading fees are, on, on these things are going to close to zero. And there's no use case to all these alternative coins. So basically they're encouraging people to make, you know, um, you know, to make bets on, on these coins. And I think eventually that's going to end in tears. It already is ending in tears.

• 34:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, people are, people are definitely crying stage.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I think from a moral perspective and also from a stock picking perspective, it's bad news.

• 34:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Yeah, they are an interesting company. We will have some more Coinbase questions to come. So there's Coinbase and there's also FTX. There's this very colorful character, Sam Bankman-Fried. What's the difference between Coinbase and FTX and why does FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried mean there? He is like considering an acquisition of Robinhood, although he said he's not.

• 34:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's trying to work on some other stuff. Why is he and his exchange, you know, held in much higher regard at this point?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know FTX per se that well. It's a very good question. I don't know. They're bigger in Europe than in the US. I think that.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Talking about the acquisition, actually, it's like, you know, there has been news yesterday on Robinhood. I actually think that if they did it, it would be like peanut butter and jelly. Because what does FTX have? They have, you know, your, you know, non-US presence and they have a better balance sheet than than most other guys. And what does Robinhood have?

• 35:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they have much less people than Coinbase. Coinbase has like 1100 and which just announced an 18% 18% layoff. FTX has, I don't know, in the 300s from my understanding.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Correct. So they don't deploy as many people. They run it in a much smarter way.

• 35:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  And I think they run it in a, you know, I don't think that, again, I don't know them very well. They're private, but I know, I mean, from what I understand is it's, at least they don't tell a story. A false story about this crypto economy. They call it like it is. But if you think about the Robinhood, just a word on the Robinhood FTX thing, I think it's really interesting, kind of as a side note, because that peanut butter and jelly, right? FTX has the, you know, the technology and the non-US users and Robinhood has this amazing brand and can expand beyond. And even they understand that they need to expand beyond crypto. That's why they're going to Robinhood. But that's a different thing. So Coinbase is so controversial because you really think that.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  No one really thinks that takeaways are going to stay at one and change. They're going down.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  But again, I don't know why FTX is held in a higher regard. It's a very good question. It's a mystery to me, too. I don't know the answer and I don't know it very well because it's private.

• 36:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, we're gonna get to Coinbase's business in a second, but since we've been doing all the societal fun issues, in the beginning of this month, there was a petition where Coinbase, I think Coinbase employees wanted to remove their executives. Apparently, they had taken, you know, money, basically taken money off the table earlier. And there was this whole, I mean, it's very strange. We also saw SpaceX employees write to Elon Musk to tell him to stop tweeting. He fired them right away. And now we have this, you know, Coinbase rebellion, not a political one, but actually just saying that, here it is from the Wall Street Journal, it was a petition to remove several top executives, including Chief Operating Officer Emil Choi,

• 37:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Chief Product Officer Saroj Chahaji, and Chief People Officer LJ Brock. And it appeared on Mirror, and it complained that the company's recent, about the company's recent performance, and demanded that the executives be removed. I think Brian Armstrong said that this is really dumb on many levels. If you wanna, this is so interesting. If you wanna do a vote of no confidence, you should do it on me and not blame the execs. There is probably lots we can be doing better, but if you're at a place where you want to leak stuff externally, then it's time for you to go. You're hurting yourself and those around you. I mean, holy crap. For a company that outlaws, you know, discussion of political, they sure have, of

• 37:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  political issues, they sure have a lot of drama. What do you, yeah, I guess if this is new to you, I'm just kinda curious, what's going on with the leadership there? I mean, and what causes employee base to revolt in this way?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  I think that they, you know, they did it, if you go back to their IPO process, right? It was a direct listing. So usually when companies go public, they go public to raise money. They didn't go public because they were at the height of the COVID, you know, crypto mania, in June of last year, exactly a year ago. They went public to...

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And liquidity, it was a liquidity event to enrich themselves. They sold shares and it's been very publicly out, you know, the mentions that have been bought, et cetera. Right. So I, I feel like when, you know, when, when it potentially on the one hand, management is telling a certain story. But then on the other hand, they're, you know, selling shares and it's, it's, so it feels like they're, I mean, again, I'm trying to think about what would cause that internally. And it's, it, you know, it, it definitely sounds like there is, um, there's a dissonance between, you know, that what, you know, what they're saying and then some of the behavior. And then the second thing is it maybe they realize that, hey,

• 39:34Speaker 02

  our eighty five, ninety percent of our revenues are at risk of going to zero. If take rates go down to a few basis points and all the other projects that we've done aren't ticking off. Like NFT is not going anywhere. All these other staking and stuff revenues are kind of correlated with crypto.

• 39:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  It doesn't look good.

• 39:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And they only make money when people trade from what I understand.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  And people.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  They make money on volatility.

• 40:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And people have stopped trading. I mean, they've been selling, but.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Oh, this is actually a really interesting point. Can I mention something?

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, of course.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  A survey, Alex, we've done a survey recently that shows you, this is again, evidence based work that we do. Um, the average cost basis for the average crypto or Bitcoin holder on Coinbase is twenty one thousand dollars, which means that the average Bitcoin investor on Coinbase, on the Coinbase platform is now underwater.

• 40:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  What is, wait, what does the cost basis mean? And what does it mean?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  It means that the average person, so we did a survey, again, it's not.

• 40:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, the average, oh, the average cost at which they bought their Bitcoin is twenty one thousand dollars. Is that right? And so now Bitcoin is much, is lower than that.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Something. Yeah. So they're.

• 40:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Twenty thousand. So the average Coinbase user is down. What are the implications of that? That's fascinating.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  That's exactly the point. That's exactly.

• 40:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  So now we're dealing with a new era. And this is interesting. This is the. I almost wanted to hire a casino psychologist to analyze it. That would be a great, because now we're dealing with the realm of psychiatry and psychology. Right. Right. So now, basically, this is the first time in history, really, that the average investor in crypto, called Bitcoin as sort of the beacon of crypto, has lost money.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Now they have to make a decision, fight or flight.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Buy more. So we asked people, and this is really interesting, again, take that with a grain of salt. But we've asked those same people, at what point, at what level are you going to sell your, or give up? It turns out that 50% of the people said, this was actually, like, I wonder what it would say today, but this was about a month and a half ago, when Bitcoin was still at 30,000. 50% of the people, they said, I'm never selling.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Again, at 30,000, life was good. They were up 50% on their Bitcoin. At 20,000, life is bad. They're down. They're not losing a lot of money. They're better than two weeks ago when it was at 17, but they're down. And the other 50%, it sounds like the tipping point, we call that research, the tipping point, the Bitcoin tipping, is about 9,000 or 10,000. So at that point, people would just run for the exit. Because that means it goes to zero. It means there's a run on the X. That means that basically you've given up. But again, this is all like, again, it's not a, what about all the asterixes in the X, you know, this is a non-scientific survey, but we did survey like 200 to 300 people-ish.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good survey. And by the way, we did that same, same survey twice with a span of, with a span of like six to eight months. And that $21,000 kind of yardstick keeps showing up as sort of that, you know, consistently. So there is something about that $21,000 that's, there's a reason why Bitcoin's like hovering up and down that $21,000. It's a, it's a really, not just because it's a blackjack, but there's, you know, it's so, I think there's something very interesting going on right now. There's a real debate in people's heads. Like, am I fighting it or am I flighting? It's a fight or flight at this point, and I don't know. And I'm not in.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  I'm not a casino analyst, so I don't know. I just know one thing.

• 43:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Most casinos, you know, because the house always wins in casinos and people still come back, so.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  The house is Coinbase right now. But exactly, but, but exactly, the house is Coinbase, right? They. Um, but the casino makes less money when ten casinos open up on the same strip. And I think that's what's happening with Coinbase. Back in the day, they were the only one.

• 43:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  And now Binance is lowering fees, you know, FTX is getting more aggressive. So, you know, Robin Hood is already offering it for free. So e- even if this category remains, it's going to come at a much lower take. You're going to see the exact same mechanism that you saw with with equities.

• 44:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Whereas trading fees goes to zero. I would argue that because this is, these are non-productive assets, ninety-nine percent of them are going to go to zero, if not. So I mean, I think that the outlook for, I, I make a big distinction between blockchain.

• 44:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  And crypto.

• 44:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Different thing. They mix together, but I just, I make a distinction between. I don't own any crypto. I have no intention of owning. Actually, I'm lying. I own ten dollars of Bitcoin. I, now it's five, because I was checking pricing on the, on the, on the, on the Cash App to see. When we were initiating, I was like, how much does it cost me to buy five dollars, ten dollars? And then

• 44:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, interesting.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Twenty, I stopped.

• 44:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that makes sense. And this is from that Journal story that was actually in, uh, in June about the employees writing to Coinbase.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Interesting, yeah.

• 45:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and so.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  I saw something where the CEO said, actually, when if you don't like it, you should quit.

• 45:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and that's.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  There was something else.

• 45:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  He said that multiple times, but let's just read the numbers. So, uh, this is, this was in June. Coinbase shares are down seventy-seven percent so far this year and about eighty-three percent off their November record high of three fifty-seven. On Friday, shares fell seven point nine percent to fifty-eight point seven one. And since then, uh, shares have fallen even further because Coinbase is now fifty-one.

• 45:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is, I mean, look, we know the NASDAQ and the S and P five hundred are down. But fintech overall is just getting slaughtered. Why is the market taking, uh, you know, taking all this out on fintech? What's going on? I mean, you watch these stocks all, all the time.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  It again, I think part of it, it, it, when you think about fintech, it's separate. You know, software is software.

• 46:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  It's, if there's a SaaS and, you know, it's sort of like, it's, it's much more, I'd say unanimous. When, when you think about fintech, it's different verticals, like, you know, the, the verdict for buy now pay later should not be the same verdict as crypto trading.

• 46:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but people tend to group them.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  They group them together. So now we're in this market dislocation. I think that's going to, that's going to settle itself out. Like you're going to see that, you're going to see PayPal kind of going, you know, PayPal has nothing to do with crypto. I mean, they'd like to tell people, or at least last year they were talking about it, but they really don't have anything to do with crypto.

• 46:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how difficult does that make your job? Because you're like trying to put price targets on these, on these companies. So, I mean, like, here's one, you had Robin Hood at a $68 price target last year and it went up to 70. And now, now it's at nine. So.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know. It's called a bad call.

• 46:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Do you, do you search your name on Twitter ever? Cause it's, it is a lot of people who are like, um, Dan's got to answer for these calls. So like, how did, yeah, tell me a little bit about.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Oh, really? No, man. Thank God I'm not on Twitter.

• 47:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Don't do it. Don't do it. No, no, don't look, don't look.

• 47:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, but, but I'm curious, like what you, what you think about it.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  But send me the link. I'd like to see.

• 47:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  I, I don't know. Yeah. Send me the link. I, I mean.

• 47:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would lose, I'll, I'll be honest. If I was in my shoes trying to, you know, this market has just, you know, obviously shot up, you know, and then plunged down. And I would lose my mind trying to like, you know, obviously as someone like you reads the earnings reports, thinks about the market, you know, thinks about the company and the market conditions. And then says, bam, like this should be 68. But like, again, I lose my mind trying to, trying to figure out what's going on in this market. When, um, we're seeing such volatility.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if you think about sort of the way it should be done, and I'm not saying that is the way people do this. But if you really kind of sit down, like, let's, let's call it the Warren Buffett way.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Not sort of, not, maybe that's too, too much, right? It's, uh, the way it should be done, when looking at these fintechs, like the first thing you need to figure out is the sustainability of the revenue stream. So we have to like, figure out the debate on

• 48:23Speaker 02

  is this revenue stream protectable, right? Like, we talked about Cash App and instant deposits. I mean, I would wanna think that it's sustainable, but I, I, I, I can, I have concerns, right? Cause there's, you know, this seems to be too good to be true, maybe, right? So how sustainable? And then, and then you have to think about what is the terminal margin of these businesses? And, and, and, and then, once you do that, like, that's how hard our job is. Once you figure out this one and then that one, then you have to figure out what multiple you put on that.

• 48:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  And the multiple is the hardest thing to figure out. And I always liken it to measuring the distance in space. You're like, oh, well, the sun is X, Y, Z miles from the moon, but uh, it's closer than the distance to Mars. And like, so it's completely, you live in a world that has like, it's like basically like floating around in space. Like the people at the, at the International Play Station, you know, the International Space Station, right? They're just like floating around and they're like, you know, the water comes from above and it comes from below. There is no, there is sometimes there, you know, nothing justifies what happened last year. And that's when we put these price targets, because the multiples were very high.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  And the correction is too deep. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

• 49:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Like, it, last year, it's like, you know, real estate in Midtown Manhattan. There's some years where the market's hot and everyone pays up for that. And there's some years where the market's not hot and people don't pay as much for it. So our multiples.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Vary with marking to market because there's no other way we could do it.

• 50:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're Right.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't control the market. The market is what it is, but I can control the sustainability of the revenue stream, which I still think is very strong for, say, Robinhood and the term of margins, which I think is very strong. So it's really honestly like our numbers have come down. Uh, because they've guided down. But what's come down more than the numbers is the multiple, if you know what I mean.

• 50:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And it is interesting, like when you adjust your price target, the market really listens to you, Dan. I mean, you see, you see these stocks move. It's pretty wild.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I did not know it, but I was, I had no idea. I mean, look, I, I think it was a bad call on Robinhood and I still think wholeheartedly, honestly.

• 50:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  It's the most innovative name in payments alongside Square. And honestly, they have, you know, two feet on the ground, so to say, more than Square. I feel like Square, Square lives in like a Bitcoin bubble right now. And I think Vlad and Bijou, whatever, can't pronounce. Uh, but the, the co-founders, they really know what they're doing. I really think that they are, you know, very, very focused and it just sort of happened to be in a, I mean, when you go public at the height of an all time cycle,

• 51:34Speaker 02

  like it's 1999, everything looks like a tough call.

• 51:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  It's hard. That's what I'm saying. Perspective.

• 51:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah. Do you see any calm waters on the horizon or are we going to be in the choppy stuff for a while?

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Once you get clarity, I do see calm waters and not because I'm staring at the back bay here in Boston, at the airport.

• 51:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Um, and it's very calm outside.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  The, here, let me show you.

• 52:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Looks nice.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  So it's beautiful.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  I do, once we get clarity.

• 52:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  On

• 52:16Speaker 02

  the depth of the recession and the duration of the recession.

• 52:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you're already calling it a recession?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm not a macroeconomist, but I think that's what the Fed is trying to throw us into.

• 52:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  To lower, I mean, because with the Fed has a very tough job right now. They were late to raise interest rates. And now they're basically fighting the inflation by raising it.

• 52:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. Go ahead.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, but I'm, I'm saying like, I'm not a macro, but it, I would say, yes, I think a recession is coming. If I had to kind of think about like.

• 52:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  You know, I, I think it's prob, it's probably, I think that's what the Fed is like getting us into, right? And I agree that that's what they need to do to stop inflation. There's nothing worse than inflation. Inflation is destructive. You know, go back to like Germany in the 1920s or US in the 1970s. It's a disaster. You don't want that. So, once we get that clarity,

• 53:13Speaker 02

  everything will come down and then you'll, people will start basically saying, okay.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  You know, it might not be the mania that we've seen in 2021, but again, it'll be somewhere in the middle. I actually think the second half at some point will have a nice rebound and the volatility should abate as we get further out of COVID. Because remember, there was so much dislocation and everything we just talked about in the podcast.

• 53:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  It needs to be put behind us. It was a singularity in history that we won't see for another hundred years.

• 53:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I'll just leave with this thought. I have a source in shipping who told me back in the day, the, the containers were 2,000. They had gone to bring a container in from China. It used to be 2,000, they had gone up to 15,000 or 20,000. And he told me, Alex, inflation is coming and inflation came. And now those 20,000 containers are now 8,000. So they're on the way down. So we could see supply chain easing and we could see the Fed. Sorry. I'll let you have the last word.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  Can I give you my, can I give you my insight?

• 54:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, please.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  One of my, I, one of my kid's friends dad, he's a genius. He imports canned food from China. A year and a half ago. He told me, not a year and a half, a year ago, he was like, Dan, inflation is coming. Same thing, because he's more persistent. I saw him at like the baseball game. He's just like, his name is Dave. He's like, really, you know, really smart. I saw him and he goes like, Dan, for the first time, I'm getting deals.

• 54:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  There we are.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  So this is the beginning.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  He called inflation and now he's calling, why do you need Gary Gensler and Jay Powell? Get Dave on CNBC.

• 55:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Just got to speak to your shipping bros. I mean, really, it's sort of been, been the core of this whole thing is the supply chain.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  And I think that's why you're going to see the market. So you're already seeing like expectations for interest rates coming down in 2020, late 2023, 2024, and then you will see some calm waters coming. And then you'll see kind of quality rising, right? So there'll be a, I, I still believe Robin Hood is an amazing asset and I think Coinbase is, is, is, is not good.

• 55:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Dan Dolev, thank you so much for joining. What a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for coming on.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Anytime. My pleasure.

• 55:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast. You can check out, basically go to tune in on CNBC, any, any given day where there's fintech news and you'll see Dan there. So encourage you to do that. That's where we're going to wrap at this point. So appreciate Dan coming on, appreciate you listening. Gave Nate a shout out at the beginning. Nate, you're a hero. Thank you, Nate Quatney, for editing the show, mastering the audio. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. What a blast it's been. And thanks to all of you, the listeners, for coming here, week in, week out. We will be back next Wednesday with another episode with a tech insider and outside agitator, of course. Please go to my LinkedIn page. We'll talk about it. We have a newsletter that's dedicated to the podcast there. So I'd like to see you there. And, and that'll do it for us here. So we will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 56:32Speaker 03

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• 57:15Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 57:22Alex Kantrowitz?

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