00:00We've been in this for 13 years. Obviously it's a volatile industry. There's a lot of things going on in the market. I don't look any I don't look at read anything into that short term price. We're in this for the long term. And we think really if you believe not me Larry Fink you know CEO of BlackRock. He says everything every asset every bond every everything can be tokenized. So we're more in that direction. And we think this is a growth company for the long term.
00:28Now Bicco was a initially a crypto wallet company in 2013 but now you do so much more than that including banking services through your OCC license. From where you sit what peer group should investors use to determine Bicco's valuation.
00:44It's a great question. Look I actually think we're a little bit independent. So we call ourselves an infrastructure company. Remember digital assets are different fundamentally how you deal with them at the lowest level whether you're talking about securing them whether you're talking about how do you integrate on different types of chains.
00:58This is areas that Bicco has built expertise over more than a decade. And so we bring a lot to the table. What's happening right now institutions all over the planet in particular here in the US they don't have that expertise today.
01:10But they want to rely on parties that they can integrate with. And what they need to see is they need to see the utmost in security, utmost in technology, utmost in regulatory capability.
01:19Our OCC federal charter bank I mean that's the top level that you can have here in the United States. Of course that's augmented by the fact that we also have regulated entities across the planet.
01:28Whether you're talking about Boffin regulated in Germany whether you're talking about what we do in the Middle East and Dubai or whether you're talking about Singapore we build them all.
01:34So we think as an infrastructure company and anytime you have a big innovation wave somebody emerges as like the infrastructure from that innovation sector.
01:45We think that we have the opportunity to be that. So among your many lines of businesses you also have a Bitcoin treasury strategy.
01:51And I want to ask about that here. You owned about $270 million of Bitcoin at the end of September. Why is it necessary for a Bitcoin to own Bitcoin.
02:02Well look to some degree that's a choice. So we do believe very much. We put our money where our mouth is in terms of what we're doing.
02:08I would not call ourselves a treasury company. We have had assets Bitcoin assets on the on the books since 2014 I think is when we first got into that.
02:17And we're just we believe it's a better way to save for the future. And we are able to utilize that money by the way. Remember we keep capital reserves.
02:25Some of our regulators allow us to use some of that Bitcoin for those reserves. Those reserves go up and down in price along with the assets that we're securing in storage and regulated products.
02:35So this actually helps buffer those things. So it's good for our business. It's actually good for the long term.
02:40If you believe that digital assets are here in part because they provide a level of features around scarcity that other traditional products don't, then, of course, it's a good investment for us and our investors.
02:53Do you expect to buy a lot of Bitcoin at current price levels that are, you know, clearly have come off their highs from last October?
02:59I want to be clear. We're not a treasury company. So, no, it's not like we have some ambition to take the money that we've raised in the IPO process and just turn it into Bitcoin.
03:06Bitcoin, sorry.
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