SPACs Work, 'Supercharge' A Company: Andrejka Bernatova

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Transcript

00:00Tell us a little bit about your experience with SPACs and why you chose to go that route.

00:05Yeah, so we've been running our SPAC platform now for about four or five years. And

00:10the Ether Machine deal that we announced in July of earlier this year is our second deal. We also

00:17have a third SPAC that we just took public recently at the end of last month. You know,

00:22we are actually, when you look us up on ChatGPT or Google, you know, what we think about SPACs is

00:28we do think SPACs work. However, they have to be used for the right kind of a company. So if you

00:34use a SPAC for a company that should be public in the first place, the product works. It's sort of

00:41similar to leverage. If you think about it, if you put leverage on the wrong business, it's not going

00:45to do too well for the business. And if you put it on the right business, it's actually going to

00:51supercharge the company. We feel the same way about SPACs. And I know that Tim mentioned just

00:56recently, you know, all the de-SPACs that have happened that actually brought very high quality

01:00companies to the public market. And we feel the same way about the Ether Machine.

01:04So why is the Ether Machine the right type of company?

01:08So number one, Tim, you know, it is one of the largest places in the space. We are now one of the

01:14top two or three in the Ethereum space, number one. Number two, obviously huge believers in the

01:20Ethereum space and the versatile use of the currency. And number three, you have Andrew Keyes,

01:28who is the chairman and one of the founders of the Ether Machine, actually contributing a very

01:33significant stake, 150,000 Ether into the business, which is, you know, significant backing. And what

01:41really assures is for public investors, you know, having a founder and chairman of the company being on

01:47the same side as public investor, I think it's an enormous vote of confidence.

01:52Ether down about 40% since a high back in August, Andraka. And I'm wondering how that makes the sale

01:59to the public markets of a crypto treasury firm specializing in the cryptocurrency more challenging.

02:06You know, Tim, we come into the space from the energy space. So we are well versed in

02:13volatility of underlying commodities. Taking a step back, you really have to think about the long run

02:20for Ethereum. Number one, you're obviously, from a regulatory perspective, we have a lot of positive

02:27momentum coming out of the summer. Number two, you are seeing from, you know, highly regarded and

02:34extremely large institutions coming into the space, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, you know, recently,

02:39obviously, JP Morgan with Jamie Dimon, you know, institutions like Harvard, for example,

02:44really embracing the space. And so you have to take a step back and think about the long run for

02:51crypto and Ethereum specifically.

02:54Yes, certainly the institutional investor interest is something that we've been tracking carefully as

02:59well. You talk a lot, too, about how Ethereum fits into a broader narrative about energy,

03:04providing energy. Can you just walk us through that quickly?

03:07You know, when we think about the AI growth, we think about two pillars essentially of AI growth.

03:14One is energy, obviously providing the machine behind the growth of AI. And the second pillar is

03:21trust level, which is where really Ethereum and crypto fall in. If you have one of those pillars that

03:27don't work or don't grow as rapidly, AI is going to be precluded from the rapid growth that we are

03:33anticipating over the next, you know, five years.