It's an interesting one because I think it also shines a light on somewhat of
the immaturity in the space. So this particular vulnerability was found in a fork
of Bitcoin, which is why you know it was like two hundred and semha
change that were particularly affected. And the particular vulnerabilities, as I remember because
it was a couple of months ago, was the ability effectively to execute arbitrary
code and effectively bring nodes offline, which could effectively lower the amount of operating
notes that we can potentially launch a fifty one percent attack or just cause a
disruption in the network to lower the value of the particular asset. This content
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in a description. Welcome to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency
news and interviews. With me today is David Schwed, who's the chief operating
officer at Halbert Albern is, a blockchain security firm with full stacked security solutions.
David, great to have you back on. Thanks for having me David.
You have a plethor of experience in the crypto industry. You spend time
at BNY, Melon, the Galaxy Digital, and obviously doing some great things
here at al Halbern. But let's start with your background. Where you from
and what's your professional background? Sure you know my my twenty thousand foot overview,
my elevator pitch, if you will. Three arcs of my career.
Started working in traditional finance and various infrastructure type roles, information security, risk
management, audit. In two thousand and eight, I co founded a telecommunications
company which I ran for about ten years before were required, And in twenty
eighteen is when I got professionally into crypto. On a personal level, I've
been involved since around twenty twelve, but after I edited my telecommunications company,
that's when I hit the role over at Galaxy Digital as their chief security officer.
And I've been in crypto professionally since twenty eighteen. And what was your
first encounter with bitcoin and what was your AHA moment? So for me,
it wasn't this, you know, I didn't look at it from an asset
perspective, you know, well, you know, in twenty twelve, obviously
I knew a bitcoin, or actually even prior to twenty twelve, and then
two well, I kind of took the leap more from a technological perspective,
this concept of decentralized ledger from a resilient like I'm looking at it pure purely
from a technological risk management perspective, and just this concept of this decentralized ledger
and immutability of transactions, that's really what kind of struck a chord with me.
It wasn't so much the store of value, you know, for me,
Bitcoin at the time was just a use case of digital ledger technology.
I wasn't looking at it as this is going to you know, become a
seventy thousand dollars you know again as of today, you know asset. So
for me again, it was more that the technology that that kind of struck
a chord. And you spent time at B and Y Mellon as the global
head of digital asset technology, tell us about that, and were you around
when they launched the crypto custody service. Now, so I had left a
couple of months prior to that, but my organization was responsible for effectively building
what was eventually launched, you know, it was it was definitely an interesting
time to be at the you know of the world's largest or if not the
largest, you know custodian and for them to kind of take the leap into
digital az set custody was really really exciting for me because at this point I've
been working professionally in crypto for a while and having that background in you know,
trad by, I understand how things are built at banks and they're really
built to a completely different level than you know, a lot of other organizations.
So it was really really excited, you know, to be part of
you know, the oldest bank and you know, at least in the United
States and the largest custodial bank in the world and building you know, digital
asset custody platform. So it was it was definitely a very exciting time for
Sure. So tell us about Halburn, give us a history the mission in
the services Sure. So you know, Halborne is is a cybersecurity company.
We're focusing on that convergence of Web two and Web three, you know,
for any cybersecurity company to effectively protect, if you will, and that's what
we are. We're protectors of people with assets and people's you know, money,
right like we're you know, providing a value in sense that we're you
know, protecting people's you know, financial viability and stability and projects also.
But if you look at what an organization needs to do to protect a Web
three either project or organization, it's looking not just on the Web three threats
as far as the smart contract code, but it's also all of the other
things that make up that particular project. So whether it's the web front end,
whether it's the individual process of the developers and how the code makes it
from the developers you know, device and into production. So we look holistically
at all of the threats end to end. Now, tell us about clients,
the type of clients you work with, whether they're blockchain projects or custodians
or wallet services and so forth. Sure, you know, like I say,
you know, we can be anywhere from a DJN and a friend to
you know, talking about digital assets with some of the world's largest banks.
You know, we work with Web three native organizations. We also work with
layer ones directly, and then we'll also work with large enterprises that will have
a Web three initiative. So whether it's a large gaming company, retail company,
or you know globally systemic important bank who's building custody solutions or thinking about
tokenization, or you know, figuring out payment rails, or even organizations that
are using digital ledger technology that maybe you know, it's not an asset or
a token that's listed and you can't trade it on the main net, but
they're figuring out how to use digital ledger technology as like the rails if you
will, or you know, how to create operational efficiencies on a traditional financial
product. So we'll work with you know, across the gamut from from one
end of the spectrum to the other. So maybe you could take us behind
a curtain a bit as much as you can. What would the process be.
So let's say I have a layer one blockchain, I come to Halburn
and I said, you know, I want to look for vulnerabilities and any
type of security risk. What would be the next steps for the folks at
Helburn. Yeah, you know, that's a great question. You know,
I think it really depends on you know, if they're looking at us from
any consultancy perspective, there's a lot that we can do. A lot of
times firms will come to us and say we need you to do this one
piece and understandably so you know, our focus will be myopically focused on that
particular engagement. But our ideal working relationship with a partner, you know,
I like to call our clients partners, is you know, helping them understand
the threats to their organization. And it might be a code review like I
said, or it might be understanding their DevOps process. At the end of
the day, if we look at this from a risk management perspective or through
the lens of risk management, we're trying to understand what are the different threats
to that particular project or organization, what are the controls that they have in
place, and can we ensure that those controls are perfectively mitigated. So we'd
like to take more of an advisory roll upfront to help them understand what those
two particular threats are and then make certain recommendations of here, we want to
double click into this and do a pen test, and we want to double
click here and do a review of the particular source code, or we want
to really understand your DevOps process. So you're c c D, so that's
you know, ideally what it is, but if you want to talk about
process, you know, individually, it's first getting a real or understanding of
the code, the code based and the dependencies, then developing a test plan
in collaboration with that client to say, you know, these are the things
that we are particularly concerned with based on what the code is supposed to do.
We'll identify what those you know, test cases are, work with the
client, do that review of the code, you know, test against those
test cases, and then you know, internally obviously having a very well established
QA process, and then work with the client to identify any particular findings,
work with them to suggest some remediations, and then we'll also confirm after the
remediations have been in place, that these identified vulnerabilities have been effectively addressed.
Now, there was recent reports from Halburn that the you guys have discovered vulnerabilities
in dogecoin, light coin, and z cash. What can you tell us
there, Yeah, so that one that's interesting one because I think it also
shines a light on somewhat of the immaturity in the space. So this particular
vulnerability was found, you know, in a fork of Bitcoin, which is
why you know, it was like two hundred and sea change that were particularly
affected. And the particular vulnerabilities I remember because it was a couple of months
ago, was the ability effectively to execute arbitrary code and effectively bring nodes offline,
which could effectively lower the amount of note operating notes that we can potentially
launch a fifty one percent attack or just cause a disruption in the network to
lower the value of the particular asset. And this particular vulnerability was found,
like I said, in a fork. So what we did was after that
identify vulnerability was identified, you know, we checked all of the forks and
we said, okay, here's two hundred and some on projects that are now
vulnerable and when I say the immaturity in the space is because a lot of
code is fork from other particular projects. Which is fine, and that's the
beauty of open source. We can take in the listing projects, fork it
and you know, make it our own. The problem comes to play when
you don't have experienced developers or a well established vulnerability management program, you know,
to go back and start, you know, looking at the main branches
that you've been forked from to see what kind of changes and seeing if there's
any vulnerabilities that are potentially been mitigated in the parent project. So you know,
two hundred and SUMA chains. You know, we're identified as you know,
having this particular vulnerability now as someone who's investing in the crypto market and
in different tokens, right, this is important information I would want to know
about because of course there's some sort of you know, a hack or whatever
it may be that's going to impact the price of the acid and I'm holding.
So do you guys put out any type of tracker or list for coins
and maybe a status safe not safe, possibly you know, anything along those
lines. Now we don't, you know, we do do some engagements for
you know, some venture cap little private equity firms or just investment management companies
you know that will engage us on a one off we're you know, thinking
about either investing in a particular project or investing in a particular token, and
they'll have us do due diligence. So we do work on a one off
basis, but there's nothing publicly that we publish on that. Now, you
did raise ninety million dollars in a series A funding. Tell us about that
and who participated? Yeah, sure, the lead investor was a Summit Partners.
There's a number of follow ons as well, and you know, I
think it just speaks to the understanding of where we're headed and that, you
know, the importance of Web three. You know, if you look at
that, you know, again it's not just the size of the round of
you know, what we raise, but just the level of commitment as far
as the ability to grow as an organization, you know, in order to
build projects. But it really just highlights the importance of Web three, digital
assets, crypto, whatever you want to call it, is the future of
our financial services. Now, David, tough question for you, because we've
seen DeFi exploits over the years, you know, different hacks and so on
and so forth. And I know every iter ration or web one point oh,
I should say one point oh version of any technology. There's going to
be bugs. There's gonna be problems, and you guys are obviously have a
critical service where you're going to help mitigate a lot of this. But I
would love to get your take on are we making progress because sometimes I feel
we don't. We're not, especially on defive. There's been so many exploits
and drains and much more. What is your perspective on that we are and
we aren't we are? I'll talk about the good first and then the bad.
The good is there's a lot of knowledge, there's a lot of tools,
there's a lot of people that are more knowledgeable in the space from a
security perspective. You know, a couple of years ago, there wasn't Web
three monitor you know, security services that were you know, you know you
were able to do an API call and check for anomalies, and you know
behavior and you know launching, you know, simulate of transactions you know before
they actually execute. So we have a lot more tools at our disposal than
we did years ago that a lot of organizations are using and we are definitely
mitigating risks. So I think we are making a tremendous progress and like I
said, knowledge and tools. I think the downside though, is there's still
a lot of projects that are launching with very minimal funding that are not paying
attention to security. And I think on the flip side, the ecosystem itself,
you know, a lot of this is still let me try to make
a quick buck and you know, meme coin, shit coin, ol coin,
whatever you want to call it, and or just you know, hey,
here's a project that launched and I don't really care about the project or
the security thereof, and I'm going to try to flip it, you know,
ifter it goes up a couple of cents, And some of these projects
without true security have you know tvls. You know, even if it's twenty
thirty forty fifty million dollars, that's a significant amount of money of people's assets.
And as a thread actor, you know, the thirty forty million dollars
yield is still a lot. So you're seeing some sophisticated thread actors going after
projects where it's like you know, the major league hackers are going after like
you know, little league, you know, when it comes to a sense
of you know, security folks. That's such an important note that you mentioned
there. You got these coins that pop up overnight, especially the meme coins
right, which have been going crazy lately. But folks think it's, oh,
I'll just put my money in, but that could usually be rugged or
have some sort of security issue and they don't think about it. And it's
so important for them to have that knowledge and education, you know, kind
of what you guys are doing. But it's I don't know, I guess
it is what it is in the market. I don't know how do you
stop it? But uh, people, maybe it's the awareness in the education
that needs to be Yeah, I mean it's definitely awareness. And it's also
you know, part of it, like I said, is the ecosystem's fault
in and of itself. Like we see this, you know, indefnant traditional
stock market. You know, I remember when you stick the train to the
city every day, you know, I would hear somebody, you know,
whisper that they got some information about a particular stock and you know, people
are just buying it just based on a rumor. It's the same thing onset.
Still, this pumped up in some respect, like, you know,
I'm you know that by the time the news makes it to me, you
know, I'm somebody's exit, you know in some respect, and it's really
just kind of taking that those same people and those same actors and just moving
into a new world. So I don't you know, I don't necessarily buy
into crypto is you know, creating these types of you know, environments.
I think we're just shifting from one environment to another environment, and these people
are always going to be grifters and find ways to you know, flice people
out of it. But I think, you know again, I think people
need to really understand what they're investing in. You know, if they're investing
in you know, I don't know whatever coin and there's really no utility behind
that particular coin, it's a gamble, you know. So yeah, absolutely,
well put so on that note, you know, we talked about looking
for you know, you highlight it like forks having some issues because there's not
you know, developers backing it and it's not updated, you know, quite
often. Watch out for these meme coins. What are some other things as
you guys are seeing in the industry that maybe the average Joe and Jane who
are looking to invest should be aware of. Yeah, I think you know,
I'm not just saying this because I come from a world of custody.
I think custody is still still somewhat of an issue. You know, at
the end of the day, custody is foundational to anything that you do in
crypto. And if you look at a project, you know, five people,
ten people, you have to really stop and think about. You know,
somebody's holding these keys to the treasury or where there's some policies someplace that's
you know, maybe that's protecting against an emergency withdrawal for a rug pull.
And I don't think custody really has been truly solved, Like there's definitely solutions
out there, but as far as the implementation of those solutions, you know,
where are those recovery packages if you're talking about you know, MPC.
I think there's still a lot of nuance that needs to be figured out when
it comes to custody and wallets. So I think that's an area that I
would be particularly interested if I'm talking to a particular project, you know,
who owns the keys to that project or the upgrade of proxy track, you
know, to understand that piece you know, and I think, you know,
not to shine a light on you know, the industry a little bit
more. But you know, LinkedIn is a great resource to understand just how
well versed a project is. You know, I go on LinkedIn, I
click on a project and I see how many people are working at that project.
I look at the backgrounds of the developers. I see if there's any
security folks that are on there. It's scary to me a lot of projects
that I click into and I see absolutely no security folks. It's just developers
and marketers and biz dev people. So again, developers are not security people.
Security people are not developers. I would not want to hire a security
person to be my developer because they don't have it. That same mindset,
same respect goes to developers, you know, being security folks. So you
know that's link use LinkedIn just look at the team and make an assessment of
whether or not this is something that I want to, you know, put
a particular material amount of assets into Yeah, great point, and I've often
told people to do that too, to have that, you know, is
there a digital trail, what was the background of these people? What's going
on? Right? Can you readily identify them and all these things. So
that LinkedIn is certainly a great resource. And you know, another hard question
for you, I don't know what iteration we're in right now for for wallets
and these things and custody. And we have the ETFs that have been launched
right and and there with the Wall Street firms that have established custody insurance,
a lot of security layers and so forth. Do you see maybe in five
years a lot of these vulnerabilities and issues will be put to bed and will
be maybe at a higher standard's that's a good question. I think the answer
comes down to, again what the industry is looking for. Like there's different
tiers. If you look at you know, let's just take the ets for
example. So if you look at you know, it's been basically Fidelity,
Gemini and coinbase, And if you look at those organizations, they are fintech
organizations that you know, offer custodial services. And if you look traditionally at
again, this is not a knock on any of the qualified custodians that are
out there that are in the space today, but there is a world of
a difference between bank level security and security from a fintech organization that that's you
know, just actively building in the space. Especially a lot of these organizations
are privately held, so you know, we don't really understand truly from a
financial viability perspective, like how safe is that particular organization. You know,
when you're talking about a bank, you know you have you know, you
know, federal examiners in there. If they're publicly traded, you have sec
you have socks four or four. There's a different level of oversight for a
publicly traded organization and a true bank versus a trust company. There is a
difference in a bank and a trust company. So I think, you know,
as we're starting to see the globally systemic important banks starting to offer custody,
I am you know, I think we're going to see a lot more
capital come into you know, the market. Like if we look at today,
you know, people like to look at the market cap of crypto is
what's the value of bitcoin, what's the value of eth, what's the value
of soul or whatever it is? You know, But I you know,
I challenge everybody to kind of look at it from a different perspective, look
at it from a tokenization perspective, and look at it from the debt market
and the equity market, and we have over two hundred trillion dollars of value
there. So when we start getting into tokenization of bonds and tokenization of equities,
we're going to start to see the requirement of truly custodying hundreds of trillions
of dollars. And I think we're going to need a different layer and a
different you know, just working environment to kind of secure those assets. So
I do think things are going to change for the better in the next couple
of years. You know. Again, this isn't a knock on any of
the existing players in the market, but I do think that there's going to
be an elevated sense of security for a lot of custodians for sure. Now
with the big cooin ETF launch and you have different custodians participating in a coinbase
is a big, big one custoding a lot of the ets. Have you
seen more demand for your services and are you working You probably can't name drop,
but are you working with any of the ETF shoers or custodians. Yeah,
you know, without getting into specifics, you know, we have done
some work in that area, you know, you know, I don't want
to specifically go into it, but we did, you know, you know,
assist in some respect and you know, figuring out what a what a
what a custodial solution or what the custody strategy should look like. As far
as demand of our services, we are seeing an uptick in the banking sector,
you know, looking for looking for our services. You know, interestingly,
a lot of it's on the advisory side, which I like because it's
like, start earlier engaging in security experts. You know, I like to
bucket our services into advisory. You know, how can we do blank and
a sharing services? Can you please please make sure we did blank correctly and
you're able to fix things quicker and you're able to build things better if we
start earlier. So a lot of the you know, major banks are engaged
with us earlier to help think through things. How can we build things properly?
How can we start thinking about integrating here and doing the things properly as
opposed to let me go build it and then ask you afterwards that I do
it correctly. So definitely an uptick, you know, i'd say, over
the past twelve to eighteen months in those types of services from some of the
you know, like I said, the larger you know, enterprise organizations,
Oh awesome, and what's on your twenty twenty four romp? But what do
you guys have in store? Yeah, you know, just you know,
more of the same, you know, helping protect the ecosystem. You know,
we we were launching some some internal tools for our clients, which we're
really excited about. You know, I would encourage anybody that's you know interested,
reach out or happy to give demos you know, security solution center for
for our clients, you know, And that's that's really it. It's really
just you know, protecting our clients and you know, just learning about you
know, figuring out what areas of crypto you know, particularly interest our engineers
that we think is going to be you know, the next big thing.
So that way we can kind of dive into it because there's a lot right
Like, we're not going to provide service is for everything that's you know Web
three. You know, we want to figure out what we're experts in and
what we think the market is going to you know, be looking for in
twenty twenty four. So that's what we've been focusing on for sure. Jumping
back to the big onin ETF. So I want to get your take on,
you know, as someone who's been here for a long time and worked
in many crypto firms throughout the history of the market, what are your thoughts
on the bigcoin ETF launch and the inflows and how things have been going.
Yeah, I've been you know, really happy. You know, I think
it legitimizes it in some respect for you know, a large segment of the
market, you know, for people that thinking that this is you know made
up you know, bottle caps or you know, the you know, beanie
babies of twenty twenties. You know that you know the fact that we have
some big names in the market offering you know, actual ETFs, and you
know, these create investment vehicles for people that don't want to get into the
messiness of holding crypto itself and how they can just buy an ETF and have
somebody else worry about the custody of the assets. So, you know,
definitely been very very happy in the launch, in the inflows of capital into
it, and just then the sheer number of you know ETF providers, and
then obviously you know, hopefully coming soon this year would be the ethtfs as
well. Yeah, and there's there's some issues with the eth ETF. I
know there's uh that has been confirmed by the SEC, but it seems they're
wanting to classify etherorem as a security, but the c FDC sees it as
a commodity, yet the SEC had given the green light for the futures.
It's just a mess. And maybe the next question I have for you is,
you know, what do you think about cryptoregulations. Could we see something
this year or next year to give clarity to the entire industry. I think
we're heading towards clarity, you know, whether it comes directly from the SEC,
whether it comes from litigation you know, Ripple SEC case, whether it
comes from Congress. I think we're going to get there because I think at
the end of the day, I think, you know, there's central banks
all over the world that are you know, looking at CBDCs and you know,
in many respects, you know, especially in Singapore, we're doing repail
agreements on MAInet. So I think the US is very cognizant they have to
do something. Now. The other side of it is, I think we
as a community have to stop shouting at the SEC. And stop shouting at
Congress and stop demanding things. You know, their role is to protect us
from a safety and soundness perspective. And you know, with all of these
rug pulls and with all of these projects they are getting launched without security,
there is a little bit of truth to them saying like little let's pump the
brakes and think things through a little bit more clearly and let's you know,
set up regulation. So I think, you know, us as an industry
have to be a little bit more understanding and stop demanding answers and stop demanding
things. But I do I am very hopeful from you know, conversations that
I've had you know, closed door, whether it's with certain regulators that you
know there there will be you know, they're they're asking the right questions.
They're they're not you know, pushing and away and saying, you know,
this isn't something that we're concerned with. A lot of the you know,
in my personal involvement has been you know, from an educational and teaching perspective.
So I am hopeful and I think we're going to get there. Yeah,
for sure. What are your thoughts on n f T s. Do
you see that market coming back. Certainly, I see value in the utility
of NFTs in real, real application right where to be, movies, tickets,
real estate, whatever it may be. But collectibles, I'm not so
much a big fan of collectible as I understand as a market for it.
But what are your thoughts on the evolution of NFTs to be more utility based.
Yeah, you know, listen, I think there is a world for
collectibles, you know, just like baseball cards or you know, any particular
piece of art. I think once people realize that that truly is what differentiates
it and makes the value, I think then you know, we'll kind of
go back to I guess just like baseball cards or you know, you know,
you know pieces of art, that there will be certain collectibles via n
f T that are have value to it. But I am really really excited
about the utility aspect of it, you know, just you know, thinking
through like on a personal level. Now airline tickets, you know, the
ability to create a secondary market where you know, I really want to go
to Florida this weekend and I'll pay a little bit more to buy somebody,
or I want a particular seat, and there's only middle it's left. But
I really need to take this flight, and I can buy a seat from
somebody and they can make an extra MinC. Like it's creating a new market
where people can benefit from this. The airlines can benefit from it. You
can create you know, some residuals that go back to the airline. So
I think it's it's really cool if you start thinking about the ability for you
know, people to sell their assets and you know, to be able to
have this programmable code behind it. So I am. I am excited at
NFTs. And again, it takes, it comes in waves. It takes
you know a lot of projects to start up and fail. Like I know
there's a lot of you know, negativity around you know the Starbucks, you
know closing you know their their NFT platform. But listen that it takes projects
to launch fail for us to understand why something failed for the next project to
launch. So I can't I don't think we should look negatively on projects that
fail. Look at that as a learning lesson as to why fail. That
might be too early, it might not have been the project itself. So
I'm definitely excited about it. Yeah, you know, a great point you
brought up. I personally think it's it was a combination. I think one
being too early is the main item. I know there were some regulatory thing
because the SEC is going after NFT issuers like Stoner Cats and so forth.
But I think to your point, too early to a consumer. Maybe not
too ready for that yet, but they will be eventually. Yeah. I
mean, just like on a personal level, you know. You know,
a Ticketmaster launched some NFTs and I went to a baseball game with my son
and he got all excited and showed them and I, God, hey,
you get an NFT after the game. I said, awesome, I'll send
it to your wallet. I go and Ticketmaster and there's can't send it.
So like, so then you know, at the end of the day,
I have a JPEG sitting in my Ticketmaster account. I can't send it anywhere.
I can't do anything with it. So what was the point of launching
that if you can't do anything with it. I couldn't send it to my
son after the game. He can't show his friends at school on his you
know, his wallet. So it was just like a publicity player pr to
say that they're doing something with NFTs. So, you know, I do
think in many respects there's a quick launch to market to grab that pr but
then when people look at what the project is, they kind of roll their
eyes on a little bit. So I think we're early in some respects.
To your point, Yeah, as you're saying that, I thought of AI,
and I remember it does an AI question. I want to ask you,
do you see any rising threats to blockchains and different crypto wallets and services
due to AI? Yes? But yes and no. You know, we
have to look at So there's a couple of different answers for that. So
I'll give you like not different answers, but like different framing of the answer.
So the first one is, I think one of the more unrecognized threats
of AI is the over reliance on AI to do certain things. So I
see a lot of projects today having junior level developers utilizing AI to code and
you know, understanding where AI and the lll ms are learning from, they're
learning from information it's being fed and there's a lot of vulnerable code that's out
there. So if you have a junior level developer that's, you know,
please program me a smart contract that does blank, they get the code and
they launch and it works, They're not going to understand that maybe there's you
know, the l ll M is using two year old code as part of
its l ll M that it just now is giving you code with certain vulnerabilities
in it, and also the ability to ask an l ll M to now
audit code. It's the same thing too, you know, it's we're at
the tip of the sphere, so the l ll M only knows what it's
been fed up to a certain date or what has been fed up to it
is not up to date as far as you know, the particular you know,
vulnerabilities that we're discovered as of the last few weeks or few months.
So I think over reliance and AI from security, over reliance over reliance on
AI. From a developer standpoint, it is definitely a concern. The other
aspect of it too is to understand from a thread actor perspective, it is
a tool that thread actors use as well, because you can automate, you
know, reviewing certain codes, certain vulnerabilities, looking for certain things, creating
some you know, spear phishing campaigns. So it is something that you know,
we are concerned with from the cyberside. Is a tool that the thread
actors are also using themselves. Yeah, we'll have to wait and see how
things progress, because AI is going to become more sophisticated, and I know
blockchains are being used in a way to combat like de fakes and fake media
and so forth. But you know, we'll see what the threats may be
as things progress. What's your outlook for the crypto market? As you know,
Bitcoin seventy back over seventy k this to today, it seems we're still
maybe midway into bull market. What's your outlook? You think it's the same
for your cycles. We maybe blow off top in twenty twenty five, I
think. So, you know, listen, at a certain point, it
has to has to stabilize, right, you know, this isn't you know,
We're not going to hold a sudden create a thirty trillion dollar market in
BTC. So I think, like, you know, investing in this from
a return perspective, yes, but you know, just like gold, gold
will increase over the years, but it's not you know, one hundred x
in over two years, So it will reach a point in which it does
definitely does stabilized. You know, I don't think we're there yet, So
I still think there's a lot of upside potential, and you know Bitcoin,
and then when you look at all of the others like Ethan Solana and you
know whoever else, you know, there's you know, there's a utility to
that asset, so you know, there's there's more of an argument that the
assets are worth something because it's you know, it's it's it's being used for
something. So I'm definitely still bullish on the overall market. So yeah,
all right, I got some wrap up questions there for you, Furse.
If you got your own metaverse, what would the theme be my own metaverse?
I'd probably I'm a big e d M club guy, so I'd probably
create, like, you know, some some of the old clubs I used
to go back to back in the day in New York City, so I'd
probably recreate those nice rapid fire questions. Favorite food. Favorite food would be
actually Keyline Pie. Favorite musician or band. I'm going to go back to
d M, so I'm gonna go with my two favorite DJs, Sasha and
Digree. Favorite movie, Uh, definitely would have to be American Psycho,
favorite book Erican Psycho. And when you're not working at Alburn, what are
you doing for fun? I'm hanging out with my kids, going comedy shows.
I'm going to baseball games, sports games. So I love hanging out
with my kids and my wife. To obviously awesome David, pleasure chatting with
you. Looking forward to the future updates around Halburn. Thank you for joining
me, so having me