00:00What specifically are you seeing from the institutional side on your trading desks that might signal where we are in
00:06this crypto downturn?
00:07Yeah, I mean, I'll start with giving you context in terms of how we're thinking about the strategy for the
00:11next couple of years.
00:12Crypto is definitely being extremely range bound for the last eight months.
00:15There's no question about it.
00:17But what's happening on the RWA or the real world asset side, which is like, you know, your fixed income
00:21equities, commodities, trading on chain and centralized crypto exchanges is just unprecedented.
00:27In the last eight months, the volumes grew six times.
00:30In the last 12 months, the volume grew 100 times.
00:33Our customers are coming and telling us that's the future that they want to be.
00:37Right. Trading everything 24 seven, settling and clearing instantaneously.
00:41So if you look at the context of our decisions, also, it's in the light of exactly that.
00:45We are massively investing in the RWA side of things, whether it's like, you know, reprioritizing the product focus or
00:51investing heavily through a company.
00:53We made an acquisition called BloxRoute.
00:55They're the leaders in facilitating trade execution.
00:58Yeah, actually, if I can, just, you know, layoffs on one side and the other side last 12 months following
01:05the market.
01:05And you guys are in major acquisitions in that space.
01:08The fourth large acquisition last 15 months, 21 shares closed, BloxRoute, a couple of others.
01:14Tell us what's, you know, put your layoffs in context of what's happening in the business for Falcon X itself.
01:19Yeah, what's what's the real positive momentum?
01:21Well, absolutely. As a founder, this is the time for me to be very decisive in terms of what I
01:26do in the market.
01:27I can't do all things for all people.
01:29I am super excited and stoked about the phenomena of what's happening on the real world asset side.
01:34So our story over the last two years have been diversification and scale.
01:37So two years back, trading was 90 percent of our revenue.
01:41But fast forward today, trading is less than 50 percent.
01:45U.S. used to be 80 to 90 percent of our revenue.
01:48Now, because of the inorganic and organic growth, it's less than about 50 percent of our revenues.
01:53But more broadly, I see two phenomenas on the crypto side, with the clarity that strategy provided,
02:00like in terms of their reserve management and also asset liquidation,
02:04that's actually breeding some more positivity into Bitcoin specifically.
02:07So you're seeing some of that in the recent run.
02:10That's on the Bitcoin and the crypto side.
02:12On the RWA side, credit is becoming the bottleneck.
02:16There's so much more demand than what players like us are able to fulfill or facilitate.
02:20So with that, we are focusing heavily on raising credit.
02:23So we just secured a billion dollar line, one of the largest of its kind from Athena,
02:28that truly unblocks real world asset tokenization and trading for institutions.
02:33So clearly, you see a lot of reason to be optimistic over the long term,
02:37especially when you look at flows, the trading volume.
02:40At what point does that start to affect the price action of the major tokens like Bitcoin?
02:44I mean, you should see some follow through, no?
02:46I absolutely think so, because all these assets, when they're trading on chain,
02:51they have a direct bearing on the underlying blockchain.
02:53But it hasn't happened yet.
02:55It hasn't happened yet, because the volumes are big,
02:57but not in the context of like, you know, huge and traditional markets.
03:01They're very early.
03:02For example, last month, it is $150 billion of traded perps.
03:06That's large because it moved from $1 billion a year back,
03:10but it's not a trillion dollars just yet.
03:12I don't think we are very far off from a trillion dollar day for real world assets.
03:16Fascinating.
03:17Fascinating.
03:17Rogo, I have to ask you about, you guys filed confidentially for an IPO back in May.
03:22We've seen what's happened to other companies like Securitize that have gone public.
03:26Stocks are down.
03:27You know, Bitco, I mean, Galaxy, Bullish, they're all 40%, 50% down.
03:32Give us a sense of what are you thinking about from your IPO plans?
03:35What are the key decision points?
03:38At what point do you decide whether, you know, what's the time frame?
03:40Like, give us the broader framework through which you're thinking about, you know, your IPO.
03:44Absolutely.
03:45A quick clarification first.
03:46We haven't confidentially filed S1 just yet.
03:50Great.
03:50The market got excited because we are having some very good, interesting conversations with SEC
03:55on some of the innovation efforts.
03:57So the market jumped ahead.
03:58So maybe, you know, we got carried away a little bit with that.
04:01But broadly zooming out, we are shooting to be IPO ready in 2027.
04:06For me, the three important characteristics that I want to give to public markets, number
04:10one, continue to do extremely well on the institutional side of crypto.
04:14Number two, cap the downside of crypto through much more sustainable product lines like credit.
04:18And number three, this beyond crypto story in the form of RWAs is absolutely important for
04:23us to get it right.
04:24We're seeing a lot of momentum on that.
04:26Terrific.
04:27I want to ask about your acquisitions.
04:28You've talked about some of them.
04:29You've made four acquisitions in 18 months, cutting 10% of staff as well.
04:33What is the integration cost of that pace?
04:36And do you worry that it leads to acquisition fatigue within the company?
04:40That's an excellent point.
04:42As a founder, that's something that keeps me up at night because every subsequent acquisition,
04:46I need to be that much more careful.
04:48Because acquisition is one thing, integrating is in a whole other aspect.
04:51So far, all the four acquisitions are going tremendously well all towards the RWA side.
04:56But the barrier for us to acquire yet another company is definitely much higher than what
05:00it was one year back.
05:01So we're being extremely cautious in terms of what we're looking at.
05:06One last question from my side as somebody who's watched the company for a while.
05:10A couple of years ago, when I think about Falcon X, I think about that as a next generation
05:14crypto broker, prime broker.
05:15And now with the acquisitions you've made, you've sort of forward integrated.
05:19So give us a picture of how should investors be thinking about, how should the market be
05:23thinking about Falcon X going forward?
05:24Yeah.
05:25Is it still a prime broker or is it a much larger story?
05:28So the way I think about this is it's a tech-enabled prime broker.
05:32But the radical market that we'll see in the next two years is it's not just for humans
05:36and institutions anymore.
05:37It's for AI agents as well.
05:38So we're rebuilding that stack for what it means for an AI agent to be trading, borrowing
05:44and settling.
05:45Because these agents are not going to wait for your bank to open up tomorrow morning at
05:489.30 and initiate a transaction.
05:50So that's been one of the core focuses in terms of evolution.
05:53We also think agents look for one-stop shop.
05:56So that's why we integrated with asset management on one side and also on the credit on the other
06:01side of the equation.
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