Paradigm Shifts: Navigating Crypto Capital Market Cycles - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2024

all right must say I'm quite impressed all four of us made it to the panel today this morning considering three out of four of us last night has um had a bit of a bender yeah what time did you get home Butch did you guys have a good time I was I was I don't remember yeah Arthur's Party um yeah my name is Sylvia Tara I am the head of Partnerships and research at bullish exchange joining me today we have Mike Bella from neoc classic Capital we've got Matt seagull from Van e as well as Ben Roth from oros so without further Ado I'll let the panelists do a brief introduction of themselves stand with Mike yep so Mike Bella managing partner of neoclassic capital a one week old to the public investment firm I started another firm with my partners previously called block tower Capital uh so I've been in the crypto investment space for 7 years professionally uh spent 10 years at Goldman prior to that and I'm on the board of a power company um that does hydro and nuclear Bitcoin mining uh and now some HPC given the AI Revolution uh hi everyone great to great to be here in Dubai um I run the digital assets research at vanac vanak is a 100 billion doll asset manager we have about1 A5 billion dollars in crypto assets across ETFs and actively managed liquid token funds I started my career as a journalist uh understood the phenomenon of fake news pretty early uh moved to the buy side uh managed an equity portfolio with Kathy Wood uh at Alliance Bernstein got a lot of conviction in how to uh identify disruptive technology but also learned a few things I didn't want to do like overtrade a portfolio so I'm at vanac running a low turnover buy stake risk manage collection of digital assets uh We've also got a stablecoin project that Yan sun is running and an nft platform uh run out of Germany uh benroth uh co-founder and uh C at oros where a electronic trading and Market making firm focused entirely on on crypto assets uh founded the firm in 2019 prior to that I spent my career as a equity derivatives Trader and macro portfolio manager at a number of prop firms in throughout the world really predominantly Asia and the United States um we have 85 people at oros of which I think um 70 of us are in in the country um well 70 tried to get in the country I think there's a few still trying to get in after some Transportation issues this week uh company has five major business lines we've got our um electronic trading business which is uh high frequency and medium frequency trading uh we've got a defi desk and options desk uh we do strategic Market making on behalf of token projects and exchanges and also oros Ventures which is a relatively new um new project that we've uh that we've started started deploying um to strategic um Enterprises and and projects and we're looking to expand that throughout this year and and going forward thank you thanks for that okay so let's start the panel off with first question about business Cycles so if you look at a graph of what a business cycle look like it's the trough and then there's an expansionary period you reach the peak and then a recessionary or contractionary period and you're back at the trough so which part of the market cycle do you feel that we're in today maybe we'll start with Mike uh sure so I I mean I think we're clearly in an expansionary phase it's um I guess it's been affected by two major things which has been interest rates shifting higher um counterbalance with the ETFs is a bug on my face thank you at Vanek and the other providers of ETFs so I think that's kind of impacted the typical fouryear cycle in crypto post 2020 it was all about liquidity and uh I got a fly getting in my face here um and uh and I think that Unleashed yeah it Unleashed um a lot of liquidity into the market a lot of that flowed into longtail risk assets including crypto um we're at I mean we're we're Trading North of 60,000 I know near term that feels like a hit to the market depending on your time frame uh I had the gift and the curse of running both a hedge fund and a venture Fund in crypto and so I look at things in multiple time frames um I always judge these conversations by what I would tell my mother which is you know accumulate at this point um don't go crazy I feel like we don't know what's there's obvious geopol political events that are happening at this current moment that could impact risk markets and right now the only thing working is gold oil and uh and rates so um we're in expansionary phase I think technologically we're in a very interesting time um and that's kind of what we're focused on at at at the moment at neoclassic which is identifying Founders that are building infrastructure and applications uh that people will use use uh which I think over the year we've always speculated on for a long time um but usability of product is getting a lot better uh and then identifying the regions in the world where those users are which the US is not that helpful with at the moment so um I'll pause there I'll move over to you yeah so I mean I think we there's you can think about Cycles in the shortterm business cycle but then there's also longer Cycles to think about um and so our call is that we had a 40e cycle of great moderation of falling interest rates globalization and lower resource prices and you know Satoshi kind of I think anticipated uh the turn in that cycle and now we're in a period of fiscal dominance it's a long-term cycle When government monetary policy is just less effective because of the high levels of of debt and the the three factors that underpin the great moderation have all reversed so now we've got de globalization and Rising rates and Rising resource prices and that means that a lot of correlations that used to hold uh may be decoupling uh and we think that Bitcoin and and digital assets are well set up for that period of fiscal dominance right on the shortterm cycle pmis spent 2023 all in contractionary period you know under 50 on global PMI and now in March 2024 it's above 50 uh China manufacturing is accelerating um but we still have this uh fiscal Reckoning that has to be dealt with uh and I think that's going to be the challenge uh for investors over the next year okay and Ben you got guys are better macro guys than I am I would say um I I repeat what they say fairly uncontroversial um consensus view uh it's going to become a fiscal fiscally dominated space um Global macro you've had this kind of I would add demographics as well to to um what Matt said um you've got you got weakening demographics or at least weakened demographics in a number of number Nations so I think going forward on on the larger cycle definitely become more fiscal um dominant um it feels like it feels like we're probably at the top of the short-term cycle of rates globally although inflation still still hasn't weakened so that that that story is still not yet to be told I think in terms of crypto uh penetration of Technology globally so we talk about like mobile phone penetration but I just penetration of kind of information globally has has increased significantly in the past decade I think that's a it's a very strong Tailwind for for crypto as well as uh geographical uh geopolitic sorry geopolitical um kind of instability across Nations drives at least a demand for for some sort of stable Global Currency of which bitcoin's probably a probably a major beneficiary okay so say expansionary long-term expansionary and then on the upward Trend with momentum there so um I Heard a talk um from Kathy Wood two weeks ago back in Hong Kong so she dialed in to the conference there and uh there was this concept that Bitcoin was both a risk on and riskof asset so what she meant by risk on was you know it's highly correlated to us Equity markets we know we've seen like over 0.8 since uh the outbreak of covid and then risk off in the sense that when you look at developing nations with hyperinflation there is a flight to Safe Haven assets like Bitcoin and for things like Financial meltdowns like what we saw in svb um back in March 202 uh one that sent bitcoin's price action up by 40% so you know there's that argument of risk on and risk off can an asset class be that versatile uh what what do you guys think maybe we'll start with Matt uh well as usual I disagree with Kathy which is why don't uh work with her anymore um you know the long-term correlation of Bitcoin is essentially zero uh with risk assets but uh bitcoin's still a teenager so its correlations uh change over time driven by liquidity though right in the that short term sure but I I just think of it as a way to get exposure to emerging markets and Frontier markets and US institutional investors you know used to buy emerging market stocks there were that index is 40% Chinese we've seen how China uh uh has changed dramatically in the last 10 years and it's essentially become uninvestable for lots of us institutional investors and so they can and will look to bitcoin and digital assets as a way to get exposure to these Frontier markets and we have some long-term conviction in that because you can look at surveys of citizens by country whether they're optimistic or pessimistic on bitcoin and the the the countries that are most optimistic are you know Nigeria the Philippines um uh country young countries essentially and the countries that are most pessimistic on bitcoin are Japan France Germany the old countries uh so we just look at the demographic writing on the wall uh and don't see it as either risk on or riskof okay and Ben yeah I agree long-term low correlation shortterm highly correlated but most assets are fairly highly correlated in the shortterm you know liquidity flows um particularly interest rates um commentary maccro commentary by fed and Regulatory Agencies tends to drive all assets in the short term but in the long term yeah I would agree it's it's highly uncorrelated to to other asset classes and that's kind of what we've seen um from from the data okay I mean it kind of all depends on what your denomination is like Bitcoin trading at alltime High in a number of of of particularly Emerging Market currencies and you know so I don't know I view everything in life as a pair trade right we're sitting up here instead of standing somewhere else right that's a pair trade we're long this stage versus short another stage right and so when you're long Bitcoin you're short something you're selling something to buy Bitcoin and typically when you're in a region where there's I don't know poorly run uh monetary policy you want to be out of that denomination you want to be in something like Bitcoin or you want to be in the US dollar uh or you want to be in Miami real estate right that's uh a lot of Latin American I live in Miami now so I'm using this reference but a lot of Latin American Wealth has flowed into US denominated US dollar denominated Miami real estate I mean it's it's all about how can I get myself into a more stable environment Bitcoin is it's been touted as the hardest of hard assets I I I I think I generally agree with that like there's definitely fault in that um slightly but it's better than most things uh is it better than the US dollar in time probably at the moment no because it's not as functional um so I guess it all depends on it's I wouldn't necessarily call it riskof because it certainly hasn't acted riskof but it is a drisking agent if you live in a region with very poor monetary policy and the worst part is those governments tend to try and control the monetary Supply in such a forceful way way that they make it the most so Nigerian I don't know if it's the citizens that are most positive on it but the government clearly is trying to do everything they can to preserve their Nigerian naira right I believe it is so they're pushing cbdcs over there and yeah so I mean everything comes down to preservation of purchasing power preservation of power which is through your currency typically and that's what the US has always done throughout its history and I feel like that's what most countries do but citizens are the ones that kind of are going to be the the driving change agent in some of those regions and and in the US and like one correlation which has been quite pronounced and sticky is bitcoin's negative correlation to the US dollar which is kind of intuitive Bitcoin is Kryptonite to the dollar um and emerging market equities also used to act best when the dollar was weak right so I think that that further supports our thesis that it's an increasingly Emerging Market Frontier Market proxy and if you look at the performance of Emerging Market debt even local denominated em debt has outperformed us investment grade over the last two years which is a big change and we think speaks to the better uh more responsible monetary and fiscal policy that's being run in Emerging Markets versus many developed markets right now okay fair play um let's move on to market makers so I know there's probably a few projects sitting in the audience today and Ben coming from a market making firm the industry is quite saturated right there's so many market makers out there and you know as a a token project you don't know which one to go through and what what are the key characteristics that you would say token project should look out for when they're looking for a market maker and also like what differs you guys from other market makers what's your real note out there yeah there there is a lot of uh misinformation out there um kind of the the I see a few market makers in the room see one in the front row here um and he would probably agree with me a lot of misinformation the term Market making quote unquote is kind of bandied around by probably hundreds of firms in the space and there's there's probably only a fraction of those that that really understand what what liquidity provision actually is um you you spoke about you know what what your projects look for I think I think the most important thing when you are when you're selecting a market maker or or you thinking about a liquidity um strategy as a firm or as a project don't get caught up with kind of some of the little shiny balls and fluffy toys attached to the liquidity provision um the most important thing a market Mak can provide is consistent ongoing guaranteed liquidity on Exchange be it you know centralized exchange or decentralized exchange during during all Market periods all Market Cycles so it's very easy it's very easy to kind of provide two two-way liquidity when volatility is low and liquidity is deep it's it's easy to add your liquidity onto it and say hey wait quote unquote Market making what is difficult is when there is no natural liquidity when the market is volatile and that is often the case on new launches particularly on launch day and and in the say few days or weeks post launch and and it's in those conditions that you really find out you know who who's a quality Market maker and who isn't and I think um in terms of in terms of launchers in terms of what what project should look for on launch day or or or soon after launch day I think it takes we like to say it takes at least a month but sometimes you know 2 3 months to plan for a launch a lot of projects think we're going to do all our marketing we're going to get our K's on we're going to we're going to start and then two weeks before their launch day they say okay we let's let's hire some market makers and get some exchangers on board if you want a successful launch you got to you got to plan this out a little bit more um spend some time you know thinking about what service providers you want what exchanges are the most appropriate for your user base including how much you want to pay these exchanges because because they they're in a they're a business too they need to make money and some of them are going to be more appropriate than others um think about you know what type of liquidity um you want on that first day and in that first week what are your users going to demand do you need liquidity on decentralized venues or do you want to concentrate it on you know centralized venues make sure that all of the exchanges you get listed at they all they're all prepared so that their pipes are running well withdrawals and and deposits are friction L what you don't want is fractured liquidity fragmented market prices trading all over the place across different venues that's a very very bad user experience and that's going to result in in Lost users um and lost potential users as well so planning out a liquidity program long in advance I'd say months in advance and treating it as a very very important part of your of your platform of your project which differs I suppose from from inequities where to some extent it doesn't really matter where a stock trades on the market right it's largely separate from the company itself not always I mean if if there's you know a capital Cliff or or there's debt funding required but for the most part fundamentals are are different to to technicals in crypto it is one and the same the value of your project and the kind of future momentum of your project is highly highly correlated to the health of your token so so coming up with a valuable and and ongoing liquidity um strategy ahead of time pays pays dividends along the way and I think you guys have probably experienced some horror stories along the way one of I mean one of the most important decisions a project can make is who they work with on the market making side and as an investor it's one of the most important decisions they can make and you help them through that process but a fumbled you know launch on a token I mean that that could cause ruin for it can cause an enormous amount of growth in a successful token launch and it can cause a substantial amount of of pain and a long duration of that pain trying to get yourself back on your feet as a project if your token launch doesn't go successfully so it's it's an opportunity it's a real Catalyst for growth it's a token launch but you only get one yeah so if if you fumble it you you've missed a big opportunity so liquidity plan ahead and just make sure find the right service providers plan an actual strategy it's not just let's get listed on this exchange so we can have a live token it's a an IDE strategy liquidity yeah plan plan out your listings plan out your service providers plan out your your overall liquidity strategy with market makers is um you know really really valuable decision for most projects very bullish on that um and okay so I was at eth Denver last month and there's just so many projects going on right now um there's lots of hype around Bitcoin l2s so like B built on bitcoin there's like Babylon and then when you look over to abss this whole reaking narrative is huge so as a VC especially an early stage VC what kind of characteristics or or points are you looking out for when you're looking at investing in these token projects and what themes are you actually seeing right now so I mean from when we started in I started in 2017 it's always been identifying a theme early and being a bit contrarian so like right now I mean if you had a liquid reaking protocol or if you have a you know a Bitcoin L2 and there's no shortage of capital looking to fund you um it's getting to a saturation point where you need to start really showing differentiation um like for example anything in the Bitcoin world my my first question is who is your strategic partner because if you don't have a substantial source of Bitcoin value to allocate you don't really have anything you have a product that's going to float into a market where it's primarily commoditized and it's going to be hard for you to really get any type of usage or value out of that so I think the side of things particularly in the early stage Venture space because you're trying to identify projects early at reasonable valuations that you think will you know accelerate pretty dramatically over time you have to go to under capitalized regions under capitalized sectors um and so my my partner neoc classic Steve Lee has been in you know Asia for the last seven weeks be for another two and you know he's he's a he's a local he's a local in Tokyo and and and soou he speaks fluent Korean Japanese he's worked across those regions Singapore he's someone who can act very locally which is important in those areas particularly cuz I mean the largest denominated you know currency uh trading pair is the Korean W right now and the large largest user base for a lot of these projects is in Korea Japan southeast Asia you need to be able to like operate very locally speak with them in a particular format and particularly in Japan operate in a certain business sense to be able to build a relationship that over the the next 6 months you're their partner for when they decide to go out in scale and you're doing that at early stage Venture valuations the other thing I mean eth you know what happened in E Denver I'm not going to say this is probably going to be a good trade but it's not an investment I would make as an early stage manager but you look at the valuation of a particular infrastructure project went from a billion dollars at the start of e Denver to three and a half billion at the end of it and it was financed by the end at $3.5 billion doar and it's because there's a lot of money I'm that project by the way yeah so I think it's I think the project will work it's just not an early stage Venture investment and you know again it's just there's no shortage of us focused infrastructure focused dollars to flow into those types of things and that's great and if I was running a liquid fund I would probably side pocket that investment because I think it will work well uh but early stage Venture you have to look at things that are much earlier take much l you know have much higher conviction yeah um and be contrarian because everything else that's non-content you're basically it's relative value you're looking at a comp group of all tell ones or liquid restake protocols and you're saying okay good team the right people around it this is tra this is coming at me at three and a half billion if it sort of fills closes the Gap to the next player of the public markets it's a 2X 3x and you could trade that but that's not early stage investing okay so be contrarian so don't buy an index go to under capital sectors and regions and that's where you're going to find Value okay and um for this one's for Matt so Bitcoin ETFs they've seen unprecedented inflows so 60 billion last time I checked in AUM and uh Huddle's also been approved as one of those um there's a lot of chatter around ethereum spot Bitcoin ETF approvals Etc and all that but outside that this the world of ETFs is so much larger I mean like all of us come back from trfi background so we know you know things like the Matic atfs are a thing too like what other kind of projects or Innovations are vanck looking at at the moment so we have filed for a spot ethereum ETF in the US and we are first in line to likely be rejected on May 23rd uh and the reason why we think will be rejected is because we haven't had the usual uh interactions with the SEC that preed an approval uh so I'm I'm very happy to see the price of gold rallying because you know about a third of our assets are in Gold so the higher gold goes the greater the chance that Yan Vanek will sue the SEC after we get rejected because he'll be flush and feeling confident so please keep uh buying gold uh and I did a Fireside with with Brian Brooks last month and he said if the ethereum ETF is approved before the election I will eat your hat uh so we you know it's hard to feel optimistic about that um in Europe however you know we have a spot ethereum etn about 100 million in assets vth is the ticker and we just added staking to that product so ETP buyers in Europe will get some income from uh our ethereum staking efforts um I've noticed our competitors in the US added ethereum staking to their ETF filings in the US I think that's trolling us uh because we don't see the regulations as allowing for staking in Europe there's more leeway given to the PM to uh manage the liquidity that etps are supposed to provide but in the US it's stricter you really have to provide continuous liquidity and it's we don't think staking will pass so uh unlikely to be other uh ETF products in the US there needs to be Futures markets on these I had dinner with a guy at the CME in charge of that he's like I'm not doing anything until the election or after so little chance that there'll be salana Futures as an example that could give us a Solana ETF uh so we're not really about new products we're about executing on our existing products we have two uh private funds hedge funds essentially most folks don't even know because they're not available to retail investors uh because of SEC regulations but both of those uh liquid token funds beat Bitcoin after fees last year so we think we have the right mix of um you know a thesis driven approach risk management and you know 365 247 trading to take advantage of U Alpha opportunities that we think some VCS might miss frankly because they've rightly got their eye on the IL liquid and earlier stage opportunities are I act funds yeah so secondary you see more opportunity around like secondary Market kind of tokens uh see more opportunity around I I feel like the early allocators into crypto in the US the institutions they got their exposure through Venture that's where it fit in the allocation Matrix and those funds have have grown up but they haven't returned DPI they're not returning Capital uh I saw an incredible chart the ratio of DPI to assets raised for us VCS it's at an all-time low uh so we're trying to offer a different experience quarterly liquidity take your money out when you want to uh and my fund the staking alone is covering the expense ratio um and that's just through like discipline staking unstaking a lot of clicking uh but that experience of quarterly liquidity versus the VC model oh let me take your money for 5 years lock it up make a bunch of small bets Maybe double down on the winners uh yeah we think there's a better opportunity uh in the liquid markets valuations are more attractive liquidity is more attractive uh and the risk management and concentrated approach uh can provide attractive returns okay all right and going back to Market Cycles so we've all been through Peaks and troughs and expansionary recessionary kind of periods um wrote my paper economic paper back in 2009 during the GFC Etc so being such seasoned not that it's showing an age or anything yes it is um what kind of lessons have you guys learned from seeing different Market cycles and what would you have done differently if you know you could turn back to time I don't know when I I started at Goldman two weeks before Leman collapsed and OCC my the CH the thing I would have changed is when I saw the Occupy Wall Street folks outside our office I probably should have bought Bitcoin the second I heard about it um I didn't recognize I was more angry that I was working you know 18 hour days and people were outside midday just yelling at us and throwing stuff at the windows and but that was a movement right it was a movement against the financial system and I I think was maybe too young to understand at that point in time what it actually meant um the other thing is just just follow liquidity I mean when we were in a Zer you know zero interest rate environment for as long as we were were just own assets I mean it's it's it actually you said lower turnover it actually takes a lot of discipline and work to not trade out of positions like it is it is incredibly uh difficult to do um and so anyone you know the world of crypto fund managers it's rare that you have someone with lower turnover because you get these substantial returns and in your head you say okay this has to mean revert but there's a much larger structural play at work that I think I recognized obviously which is the reason I left Goldin in 2017 but I would say looking back in time I've kind of used as my overarching thesis of of of all Market Cycles which is liquidity dictates everything and effectively rates dictate everything and then within that you can make your allocations and so you know the the the the world of crypto make made a lot more sense for me later on in my career um once I understood the asset itself and then I always say I mean even from my perspective I came into the market because I thought it was a very tradable Market I thought there was Alpha to be had and when we launched the hedge fund that made sense to me and then once I was in there I'm you know over the years I'm like we we have these great conviction bets and yet we keep trading out of them constantly and that's why when we launched you know neo classic I said Steve and I said we need to focus on early stage high conviction bets and that might actually be public assets we would structure you know a public deal but I think you're doing it right I think this concentrated longer term orientation with lower turn over is one of the hardest things to do if you're but if you're able to do it it works out well yeah there's this saying uh don't just do something sit there uh so that I think that's if if you miss the best 15 days of the year in crypto you're negative every single year so like why put yourself through that right and and the total return from from staking eth uh since the merge if you've outperformed by like 15500 basis points holding eth right so lower turnover High conviction uh that's the model that that we're less tax Lots huh less tax Lots yeah well in Dubai it doesn't matter but in the states it certainly does don't try and trade the market basically huddle huddle exactly Ben what about you yeah where moing fun so we don't we don't really take take directional views we leave that to the professionals over here uh I can speak from from personally I got I think I got a few years on you guys so I was um seven years into my career when um when you were starting Mike and um we had we The Firm that I was at it was a market neutral firm but we did have a few a few kind of we were a vol trading firm so we had a few Vol positions um and we over traded it for sure like sometimes you've got the right right position you just got to sit there man you just got to you just got to recognize I'm in the right position here I'm either adding to my position or I'm going to sit there and the when the liquidity is going one way it it it's a it's like a it's like a freight train don't just don't get in the way of it either either hack out of a losing position or or sit on on a winning position I'd say I probably personally did a poor job when um yeah from what 2012 was it 2012 through till 2020 it was just liquidity liquidity and then you had the little brief hiccup around around Co and then even more liquidity thereafter over traded um it always feels good right it always feels good to like be in a good trade to make some money and say okay that that's that's enough I've hit my target but you need to set yourself moving targets you need to recognize you know the Tailwind is is going to be a lot stronger than your ability to pick short-term highs and lows uh as a market neutral fund we market neutal trading firm we don't we don't tend to to try to do that but we do make some small little decision making you know along the way and um certainly I'm I'm trying to trying to trade less cuz I think it's I think we all overtrade um and and the alpha like I said the alpha you're going to get from picking short-term highs is short-term highs and lows probably going to be lower than just recognizing when you're in the right position and and sticking to it yeah definitely and um in terms of the next 6 to 12 months there's quite a few macro factors coming up there's like us elections there's potential rate cuts um on the cards what what do you guys think about these factors like what do you think is actually going to drive this crypto cycle uh in the this next 6 to 12 month period maybe Mike I don't know I I mean it's like you know all economists are right 50% of the time right that's the the oldo I I mean it again I said it previously I think liquidity and ultimately rage drives all things so so I think if there's a vacuum of capital out of the system it's going to come out of every orifice of capital markets and our markets are deep but they're not that deep and so you know there's Gap risk in basically every asset outside of Bitcoin and maybe eth so that can also Gap higher right so we can if if all of a sudden you know INF inflation prints much lower um and we have a you know a chance at having a few Cuts again this year which is the opposite of the view that was or that's currently happening do you think that's likely like a uh no I think we let I think we unleashed a force a wave of capital that's going to be very difficult to pull back in and I think that's going to continue to be seen through inflation I don't know how long it takes for markets to self-correct in that time I think crypto can work because we're at this point in a you know if you if you dumb it down we're in this four-year cycle and this is that cycle for us and so I think in an in an unknown environment if we're not in full-on riskof you know rates higher we're probably going to Trend higher in crypto there's probably going to be some interesting opportunities the the other side of it is Will Market liquidity come back in the market I think that's important even on the Venture side because ultimately what you said about DPI the reason crypto Venture makes so much sense is because of the velocity of token liquidity and so if you have the ability to take you know if if if a successful trade successful investment works out you put a million bucks into a deal it trades at 50x and you get 20% liquidity on that asset over you know that token generation or over some time frame you need Market liquidity to trade out of that thank you market makers um and if that if the market doesn't allow for that level of liquidity it doesn't allow for the velocity of capital and the expansion of the industry so yeah um I guess all that to say I don't know what happens with the you know on the macro side of things I don't think anyone actually knows um but if we sort of stay in this phase of I'm glad we corrected from saying four cuts to saying maybe one because I think that was overdone um and the market needed to come back uh but if we're in this chop in the macro world I think crypto works well we're just I mean it's it's the right part of the cycle for us and I think this unknown leads people to a barbell approach generally so you have I mean even my own portfolio I have a a good chunk in you know what I consider to be very safe assets and obviously a good junk in crypto and that is a nice you know yeah we came into the year saying no Cuts wage inflation is still 4 and a half% in the US so it's uh it's very hard to cut and that was not our thesis for this year our thesis is the election cycle record percentage of Global Citizens voting in elections this year so far they've all gone to the pro crypto candidate uh and then November is just going to be an enormous event and I think Bitcoin is going to Rally either way because of the certainty that the two nominees are the most fiscally profligate uh presidents in US history in in peace time right so we're going to look back on this period of 7% deficits during an economic boom the same way we look back at 1% interest rates during covid as completely maniacal and unsustainable and the election will catalyze some type of Reckoning we usually only deal with big issues in the US in the year after a presidential election 2025 uh Social Security is going to go bust in 2023 so if we don't do it in 2025 2029 is too late and that's why politics are such a big deal and my personal view State nation state adoption of Bitcoin is what will drive this cycle right so there's five countries mining Bitcoin for their own account that will grow and the election will either way will catalyze the rest of the world to deal with it because we're not elections okay and Ben I think I mean we're running out out a time I'd probably Echo what what you guys have said and add that retail is not really participating yet like it just feels there's there's still no retail participation we're at alltime highs and it hasn't even started the the fly in the ointment is wage inflation um I would say a lot stronger and seemingly a lot more persistent probably in a happy spot where they where the FED doesn't have to raise they'll it'll it be a high bar for them to go to go and raise I've seen some kind of non ensus views this past week that actually the next move is going to be up not down um I don't I don't necessarily buy into that view I think but I think we might be waiting longer for for the shift down but it it may not matter me we saw us equities aside from the last week us equities are up 25% since October and the 10 years gone up since since then so no one cares about valuations anymore yeah like it's it's all about liquidity and and evid and flows and evidently there's there's you know stronger flows and stronger flows than what we priced in and I I think aside from a real rate surprise on the upside it just the trend does seem to to appear that it's going to go high so the fed and elections look out for those macro factors thank you ladies and gentlemen that's the end of the session