00:00Before, Dan, you were a whale in the Bitcoin community. You were also you still also are a tiger cub. And so when you look at the market right now, how would you be trading it across assets? Yeah, I would say I think equities are rich relative to to bond yields. And I think the bond market really has no way out. There's high inflation. The deficit is as large as it's ever been. And everything's as good as it's ever been.
00:28So if something bad happens, the deficit goes even higher. So I think it is tricky to be in the traditional markets. And that's why I do favor being in hard assets like crypto currencies. So just to clarify for my mom, right, a tiger cub means that you traded global macro for Julian Robertson and then on your own. So basically one of the most important global macro traders of the world for a quarter of a century. How does this rank in your experience in terms of geopolitical events?
00:57It does seem like it's probably contained as the previous guest said that, you know, there's really not much that Iran probably can do. So I think it will be relatively contained.
01:09I realize by asking you this, you said cryptocurrency is a hard asset. A lot of people would debate that because they are now trading gold these days. Right. So when you think about the safe havens that are out there, how do you think about Bitcoin relative to gold relative to the bond market?
01:25I think it's a great question. I think all these geopolitical issues highlight a theme we've been talking about for a decade, the separation of money and state. Back in the day, money was separate from the state.
01:35It was hard assets like gold. We've had this era where governments print money. They're printing a lot of it now.
01:41And I think we are going back to people trying to store their wealth in hard assets. Gold's great. Gold's doing very well. But digital gold, Bitcoin, is also relevant for people's portfolios.
01:51And it can't be undermined by policies, tariffs, wars. It's you can't print more of it. It has all those attributes that gold has.
02:00We always talk about the dollar as a world reserve currency, and obviously it is still the number one choice there.
02:06But I guess my thinking is you have a percentage weight to the dollar and some to gold and the euro and the yen and the Swiss and Bitcoin now.
02:15That weight has obviously grown from zero to wherever it is now for Bitcoin. Is it taking from the dollar?
02:22Oh, I think it is. And remember, the reserve currency has changed a lot of times over the years.
02:26It used to be the Portuguese escudo and the British pound. It's the dollar right now.
02:30It could easily be cryptocurrency in the future. And you're seeing governments now.
02:34But it's not binary, is my point. This is what Shinali and I talk about every morning.
02:37So it's, you know, it's not like it either is or isn't. It's just a bigger part or a smaller part of your portfolio, right?
02:45A great way to put it, you know, the U.S. stores 11 million workers' years' wages in gold.
02:51I don't see any reason why they couldn't store the same amount of Bitcoin in 10 years.
02:54And so I think states, U.S. government, foreign governments are all going to have more than just one reserve currency, the U.S. dollar plus Bitcoin.
03:02What do you think the value of stablecoin is in this environment?
03:07We saw, of course, a recent listing. Matt was always saying if he was the investment banker for it, he said he would wait for longer until you got that higher price.
03:16But there's some debate around that.
03:17Circle sold shares at $31 and it's trading right now at well over here, $276.
03:21I feel like they left a lot of money on the table. Other people tell me it was a very small float and difficult to short.
03:26Is it safer than Bitcoin right now to be more involved in the stablecoin world if you're a large investor?
03:33It's a different use case. We've been investors in Circle for 12 years.
03:36I'm so happy for Jeremy Allaire and the team. But you think about it.
03:40We like investing in Bitcoin because we think it will appreciate.
03:42It's on average doubled each year for 12 years that we've been invested in it.
03:47But stablecoins are better for cross-border payments, storing your wealth if you don't want that at risk.
03:53So they both have really important use cases.
03:55You're raising a billion dollars right now.
03:58So how is the fundraising environment and when do you expect to close that?
04:03Yeah, so fundraising is much better now.
04:06I think the change in the administration has really kind of taken away some of the kind of uncertainty about regulatory issues.
04:12And so big institutions are more likely to want to invest now.
04:16We're also investing in these digital asset treasury companies.
04:18We led the first DFDV and Cantor Equity Partners.
04:24We're raising a fund to invest in more of those because there's a huge amount of appetite in the public markets to get invested.
04:29And so far, there's still only a few publicly listed companies like Circle Coinbase.
04:34But the fundraising, are you almost there?
04:36Oh, I think it'll probably be over the next year.
04:38It takes a while.
04:39Interesting. Well, we'll keep an eye on that with you.
04:41But, you know, I also want to point out that not everything has been rosy at all times with new listings in the space.
04:46Sharplink in particular was a sharp decline after you saw that initial registration.
04:53Do you think that you're going to see more of that for treasury companies where you see maybe a pop and then a cool down after you see perhaps dilution that investors are expecting with some of these companies?
05:03Well, you see with MicroStrategy's 100 billion market cap, there's such an intense demand to invest in crypto via the public markets.
05:12And in 10 years, there's going to be hundreds of public companies in the crypto space.
05:15Right now, there's only a few.
05:15So I think you will see potentially excessive speculation where things go up a bit, but they're all still trading way above their net asset value or their holding.
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