Speaker 1: Contrigurable privacy is definitely the cornerstone aspect of why Canton
has kind of attracted these institutional kind of parts Ethereum
and Salana. I don't think anything bad about their blockchains.
I don't think we will get to a world where
one blockchain is the only blockchain. There are different blockchains
for different use cases.
Speaker 2: The SEC and the CFTC have been doing a lot
of guidance in rulemaking. Your thoughts on that, what impact
that's having on the institutions, Is that giving them kind
of a semi green light to continue building and innovative.
Speaker 1: Short answer is yes, there's a tremendous amount of tailwinds
behind this.
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go slash Thinking Crypto. Link will be in the description. Hey, folks,
welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony
Edward and joining me today is Mark Wenlan, who is
the chairman and chief executive officer of Canton Strategic Holdings,
which is the first publicly traded company to leverage Canton
coin and support the Canton network to advance institutional blockchain
adoption and the digitization of financial markets. Mark great to
have you.
Speaker 1: Thanks Stony, and it's a pleasure to be here. I
look forward to digging into Canton.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm very familiar with the Canton network, so I'm
excited to dive into what you and the folks are
doing with Canton Strategic Holdings and talk about, you know,
the broader market with institutional adoption and much more. But
you know, I would love to start with your background.
Tell us about where you're from and you're professional back.
Speaker 1: So I'm from Wisconsin, Midwest accent, maybe a little twang
to my voice there, but I'm from Wisconsin. I'm the
youngest of seven siblings. Avid sports fan, a Green Bay
Packers fan of course, if you can't be from Wisconsin
without being a cheese head. And so I grew up
in the Midwest and went to Citadel pretty much straight
after school. Worked at Citadel for sixteen years doing a
variety of different functions and leading different teams, but all
within the Treasury and operations function. So it was always
about how to use technology and leverage technology to build
scalable systems, scalable process Obviously leverage was a key component
for a firm like Citadel, and was there for sixteen
years and then until twenty nineteen left to go to DRW,
another trading shop trades pretty much every asset class under
the sun, but leverages technology as well. So I was
COO and a partner there for six years until coming
to Canton Strategic.
Speaker 2: So you have a plethor experience in the trad fi
world and seeing a lot of changes into financial markets,
a lot of technology. But now we have blockchain coming
along Mark, how do you see this technology changing the markets?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean I think it's just another example
of how technology can impact workflows. I think that is
the area where Canton's focused specifically on. It's not always
the most sexiest aspect of it, but it is the
underpinnings of how settlement flows, how collateral news that can
unlock real economic utility. I think, you know, crypto and
technology has talked about doing a lot of different things,
but delivering that utility is the key differentiating factor of
what determines success in some of these things, and what
I mean by success is not a moment in time,
but something that sustained for a long period of time,
not just necessarily a momentum play. And this is a journey,
This is a marathon. This isn't you know, a short
sprint to the finish line and then it's over. It's
really about leveraging the technology to rewire financial markets that
you know, everyone kind of enjoys. The US markets are
the largest, most liquid financial markets in the world, and
it's still based off of technology that is from a
different era. And so CANTON is focused on trying to
use that technology and rewire our financial markets, not necessarily
replace our financial markets. There will be an enhancement and
things that will evolve with any technology, but it starts
first with rewiring the systems into you know, the power
of blockchain and the internet. Frankly, so Key.
Speaker 2: Where you mentioned there that I thought of enhancement because
to your point, we're not replacing these markets, but we're
making them twenty four to seven, we're making assets that
we're sitting idle in the corner, so to speak, liquid
and opening up more opportunities with fractionalization and the ability
for these assets to be distributed globally. It's pretty incredible
when you think about it. And to your point, it's
a marathon, not a sprint. So it's going to take
some time to build this out right, It's going to
take time. But I will caution this isn't a five
to ten year cycle. We have tremendous kind of tailwinds
at this adoption right now, and I think the next
call it six to eighteen months are you're going to
see a lot of progress towards evolving these things. That
doesn't mean that all the trillions of collateral that are
not on blockchain will suddenly move to tokenized form. But
when you think about high quality assets, and there's over
two hundred and forty trillion of kind of that asset
class high quality that could be eligible collateral that's just
kind of locked in kind of a settlement cycle that's
either a T plus onet plus two cycle, and now
it can move instantaneously and the amount of friction in
the system that is slowed down by that. So instead
of funding an obligation a day in advance, now you're
able to fund it ten minutes in advance. That is
a large amount of financing cost and overhead that the
entire system is kind of dealing with right now based
on the legacy architecture around those system. So I do
think you're going to see significant traction in the next
six to eighteen months. I don't think it's a five
to ten year vision. And the other aspect that I
would say is the train has left the station. It's
the genies out of the bottle. This is the way
of the future.
Speaker 1: Exactly what that means and how the market structure is
going to evolve. I think we'll wait for some more
development from Washington and some of the regular editory at Landscape,
but I don't see this as something that's going to
be revised or repealed back. I think you're going to
continue to see more, you know, the vision and details
around that form, but I don't think it's it's inevitable
at this point. Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm
the host of the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to
ask you if you can please support the podcast by
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follow and hit the five star rating. I'll let you
get back to the content. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. Mark, where along the timeline, whether you
were at Citadel or DRW, that you discovered blockchain tech
or crypto, and what was your aha moment and and
what made you want to come work in the industry.
Speaker 1: Sure, so, first exposure was when I was at Cidadel.
It was actually not through work, It was through a
personal friend that was intrigued. I was trying to convince
me to get involved and invest in different things. Unfortunately
for me, I did not follow his path and did
not get involved financially at that point in time. But
it did kind of introduce some curiosity and explore more
about what the technology was all about. Introduced me to
some of the white papers. But my first kind of
aha moment, which is kind of a funny story, but
this is, you know, crypto, this is what everyone else
who's been in the industry for a number of years.
But when I joined DRW in summer of twenty nineteen,
I am and I've never shared this story publicly yet,
so this is somewhat of a humorous one, but it's
typical in the crypto space. My first day, I'm going
through orientation. I arrived thirty minutes before. I'm sitting in
the conference room ready for my HR training to explain
where the bathroom is, all the benefits, etc. And I
get a call on my cell phone from one of
the people that was going to work on my team
at DW explaining there was an exchange, a Japanese exchange hack.
There's a shortage of around fifty million dollars. We're being approached.
Do we want to provide liquidity, do we want to
backstop it? Do we want to invest in it? And
you know what should we do. I'm just taking it
all in understanding that I'm just in orientation at this
point in trying to make a decision and think about
how to dissect that. And so that was like my
AHA moment that this is one real These are real
dollars that are being placed in at stake here and
you need to how you answer that question potentially before
watching would be a different case now and so you
need to attack the problem slightly different. And so that
was my kind of AHA moment right in the fire,
make a decision what do you want to do we
have to make a decision that day, still trying to
understand exactly what yourw is all about and so forth.
But that was just an element of you know, where
the state of the world is at that time, it's
real time, it's you have to make risk adjust the
decisions at those points.
Speaker 2: And what drew you to Canton strategic holdings to go,
you know, be the CEO there.
Speaker 1: So Canton again what it's focused on is rewiring that settlements,
those those operational flows. My background has always been about
leveraging technology to solve for those types of problems. And
I also have a passion and driven for market structure
change and things that evolve. So I always like to
solve complex problems, try to figure out what's a better
way to go about something, whether it be from an
operational process or a financial equation or managing scarce resources.
Is how do you solve for this problem to get
the optimal result? And Canton is the underlying technology that
I think is supposed to do that. So for me,
it was a very exciting opportunity to help re shape
how our operations flow, how the financing flows through our ecosystem,
and there's no better seat than right in that thick
of it. So that's why Canton Strategic was very exciting
to me, and it's something that I've been working on
my entire You.
Speaker 2: Know, Canton is getting a lot of attention, a lot
of adoption, and there was a big investment recently in
Digital Acid, the developer of the Canton network. They raise
about three hundred and fifty five million dollars. So it
seems a lot of institutions are betting on Canton again,
building and investing in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, even hats off the Digital asset in
their rays. And I think again there's a who's who,
a list of those investors that were in that round.
There was another raised they did, I think it was
in December. There was another raise in June of last
year as well. You take the accumulation of all those raises,
you take Canton Strategics five hundred and forty five pipe
and then an RDO in January that's six hundred million.
You know, well over a billion dollars has been raised
across those two different firms in about investing in the
Canton ecosystem. So there definitely is you know, a credibility
standpoint by all those institutions looking at Canton and saying
I want to get involved, I want to help preciate this,
you know, financial plumbing, and that's definitely a strength of
both Digital Asset and Canton Strategic. But you look at
any of those lists of who's involved in them, they're
they're pretty much your largest institutions that are involved in
our financial markets today globally.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the most recent, if I'm not mistaken,
is the DTCC announcing that they're going to be building
on Canton network, which is pretty incredible. I mean they're massive, Yeah,
DTC the largest CSD.
Speaker 1: In the world. I mean, they have one hundred trillion
of assets under their systems. And you know, I think
the pilot that you're referencing that was announced in December
of twenty twenty five was that Canton was going to
be where they were going to pilot transactions. It's not
an exclusive deal, but it's where they're starting with of
meeting their requirements, and it starts with tokenizing the treasury,
which is the number one kind of use of non
cash collateral. And the reason for non cash collateral is
you're able to take a risk free assid or as
closer risk preacies, you're going to get a z US
Treasury and still earn an interest rate associate with that.
If you use cash fiat for collateral, you're not guaranteed
to earn an interest rate assoction with that. Now, if
you're big enough, if you're large enough, you can negotiate
that through your commercial relationships, but it's not a foregone conclusion.
If you take a Treasury and pledge that as collateral
to back your margin or your obligations that you're required
to do for your portfolio, you can earn that coupon
rate on the Treasury bill or the two year note
of the US Treasury having it. So that's why it's
the most common used collateral, non cash colteral that's used
in our financial markets. And DTC gives it that stamp
of credibility associate with it because they are the custodian
for those Treasury assets. And it's as close as you
can get to natively issuing on blockchain the US Treasury
by doing it at DTCC. Then the only out there.
Next step up, I would say is if the US
Treasury issued directly on blockchain, which may happen at some point,
but it's not happening today. And so that's why I
view DTC is a key component to allowing this and
what better play to kind of allowing this flipping back
and forth between tokenized form versus fed wire which is
the traditional way that treasurers are settled today. As they
can provide that service so you're not bifurcating liquidity between
the tokenized form and the old fedwire form. DTC can
do that service and make it seamless to the end user,
to the investor that's doing it. You want it in
tokenized form, you can get that and they will flip
it back and forth between the two. I think that's
another key component that they're able to offer that service
given where they sit in the stack. They are the
largest CSD in the world. The US treasurers sit on
their books and records, and they make can make it seamless,
you're not bifurcating liquidity.
Speaker 2: Common question many of the viewers and listeners may have is, well,
you know what about etherorem solon, why would institutions pick
Canton network. I kind of know the answer today. I'm
assuming it's you know, institutionally built, institutionally trusted as far
as the participants supporting the chain, but also it has
native privacy built in.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That is correct? I would say slightly
different in the fact that configurable privacy is definitely the
cornerstone aspect of why canton has kind of attracted these
institutional kind of parts that we've talked about Ethereum and Solana.
I don't think anything bad about their their blockchains. I
think they were just made different choices in what they
were going after at that point in time. I don't
think one blockchain is I don't think we will get
to a world where one blockchain is the only blockchain.
I think there are different blockchains for different use cases,
and Ethereum Salana made choices. Maybe they're faster, maybe they're cheaper,
or associated with that, whereas Cantonon focused on the configurable
privacy as the cornerstone moment, and you know, I think
there were be others that will eventually evolve and introduce
privacy similar to that over the course of time, and
that's a good healthy market infrastructure. I think too much
reliance on one blockchain is also a bad market structure,
So you need to think about it in what the
right structure is for a sizable market that we're talking
about here, which again crypto is is not insignificant from
a size, but the rest of the treasure market equity
markets just is so massive compared to what we're talking
about today.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I always remind people it's going to be a
multi chain world with interoperability, and some of these assets
will live on multiple chains, right, we're seeing it with
stable coins.
Speaker 1: That is correct. Yeah, I'm one hundred percent there has
to be able to do that, and again, those are
some of the choices where we need to still work
on some of the bridges and the interoperability across that.
That also can be seen as a vulnerability and it
weighs to you know, bad actors and so forth to
infiltrate and cause issues there, which again I'm sure we'll
use technology to help solve for those problems as well.
But that's that's some of the risks of ego across them.
And again, the benefit of how I describe Canton specifically
and why you see all these partnerships is once you're
in the blockchain and you're in the ecosystem, then you're
able to cross over and interoperate on the same type
of code without exposing you know, those bridges to then
be able to connect from JP Morgan's staple coin deposits
to HSBC staple coin deposits. It's it's one and the same.
It doesn't introduce bridges across those, which is again oftentime
seen as the vulnerability to the network.
Speaker 2: Let's double click a big into Canton Strategic Holdings. Tell
us about the company, the mission, amount of Canton tokens,
your holding, ticker symbol all that jazz sure, So.
Speaker 1: Canton Strategy Strategic Holdings CNTN is the ticker. We rebranded,
I think it was in February from the legacy name
and ticker. And we are focused on investing in the
Canton ecosystem, so we use and a access to capital
markets and ability to sell stock and buy coin. So
coin accumulation is a component of it, but it's not
the only aspect of how we view in supporting the ecosystem.
We run businesses about participating in Canton markets, so an
options market, a lending market, all of these things that
are developing. As the ecosystem is very young, so to speak,
it's only been around for a couple of years, and
so as that market develops, we will be participating in
those markets and investing in applications that build on top
of that network. So there's an element of we can
invest in firms and applications that are building on the
top of the network. We're also participating in the network
by being a super validator, We're participating in the governance structure,
by being a member of the foundation. I'm on the
board of the foundation. And so it's again early days
around this ecosystem. It's only two years it's been a
public blockchain, and it's about how can we help grow
the ecosystem and do it the right way and sent
as participating in the governance, participating in structure around that,
and helping the markets develop. But also from an investment standpoint,
sometimes there needs to be you know, capital deployed to
invest in those those applications, and we have access to
capital markets to be able to then help do that.
So you know, it's just another way to invest in
the ecosystem. You can buy the coin, you can buy
our stock, and you obviously could buy Digital Asset, but
that's a private company today, so that's not necessarily the easiest.
There's also ETFs out there as well. Each one has
their own flavor of differential and invest and it ultimately
comes down to an investor of what the goals are
and what they're looking to achieve.
Speaker 2: Right now, the crypto market, many are saying, isn't a
bear market. You know, we're down from the all time
highs that were hit possibly in twenty twenty five, So
I'm curious, you know, what's your strategy and getting through
the bear market. Obviously markets are cyclical, but how are
you guys planning to navigate the waters here?
Speaker 1: So again, there's an element of crypto here because we
do have a token, but I view this as a
technology plan versus more of a crypto element. So you know,
this may be two extreme realistatement. The crypto can do
what it wants to do, it can be a bear
marketing not and we just need to focus on delivering
the goals of our business and what we've set out.
That's what we can control. You can't worry about what
external factors happen now. Obviously, a macro environment, even you know,
just as a whole, whether there's a war or anything
like that, inflation, s fight or anything like that can
impact risk assets or things around that like a company stock,
But you have to focus on what you can control.
You can't control those market events of what they happen externally.
You just need to focus on executing the vision that
you will laid out and the rest will take care
of itself. So I feel very confident about the ecosystem
that we built, the partnerships that we've included, and again
for our business specifically at Canton Strategic, the additional yield
generation that we can return to shareholders by exposure to
the Canton ecosystem and all the different applications that are
going to rewire financial markets that we know today.
Speaker 2: On that note, what's on your roadmap that you can
share and notice? Probably things under wraps, but what can
you share as far as next six months or so?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think again, since we're a public company,
we have quarterly filings that we have to do and
we've disclosed that. I think one of your questions before
was how many cantson coin we hold until fourth and
I would just re or back to our public filings
that would disclose that we have not published anything more
recent of the dashboard or something like that that some
of the other data have done and that's more a
function of we don't view ourselves just as a digitalizet
surgery company. We're about exposure to the CANTON network as
a whole. Again, there's different ways you can do that.
Obviously we're biased and we think our company is the
best way to invest in that. Because it is a
publicly traded stock, you can hold it in any type
of broker account. You could obviously do the same with
an ETF, but it just that offers a differentiated return
without a management fee, and it's reflective of the whole
ecosystem versus just tracking to the coin and the coin. Again,
you can invest if you want to hold a wallet.
Not everyone wants to do that, but that's another way
to get access to the investment of the coin and
the directional correlation around that. But really excited about the
opportunities that we have ahead of us. Again because it
is early days the next six months, obviously DTC is
a key component and laying out that vision about how
to make collateral more mobile and working with CCPs and
traditional finance to be able to accept tokenized treasuries after
they're tokenized by DTC. You need to get the rule
books and changes with the CCPs to be able to
use that collateral and to allow that kind of real
time flow of funds to go through. And so we're
going to be continuing working with uh, you know, the
partnership and the network to build that and then drive
demand from you know, retail institutional demand of where they
want access to those tokenized assets, and you know the
lending market, options market, UH kind of some of those
derivative markets that will develop as a result of a
healthy and you know, robust ecosystem. We will be participating
in those and again allows us to generate additional revenue
for shareholders.
Speaker 2: I did want to get your take on, you know,
broader markets with everything that's happening in DC. Obviously, we're
waiting on the Clarityact to pass. It's currently in the Senate.
Supposedly there's going to be some meetings this week and
we'll see how things go. But the agencies, the SEC
and the CFTC have been doing a lot of guidance
in rulemaking. I'll love to get your thoughts on that
and what impact that's having on the institutions. You know,
is that giving them kind of a semi green light
to continue building and innovative.
Speaker 1: Short answer is yes, there's a tremendous amount of tailwinds
behind this. I think the Clarity Act specifically getting done,
we have a very short window I think of whether
that gets done or not before midterms. It's not that
it will never happen, but I think then if it
doesn't get done in the next six weeks, then you're
talking about, depending on the outcome of the midterms and
how our political landscape looks in the US of whether
that's a twenty twenty seven event or not at that time.
But still very positive posturing from the regulatory agencies. I
think it's not just about some of the rulemaking that's
coming out of it, but it's just the willingness to
embrace and hear versus. The mindset before was if you
ask any questions, you're almost simultaneously going to get hit
with some sort of action against you. It was almost
that you were penalized if you were asking questions about
different things. So the mindset around that is definitely embracing it.
The details around what that looks like I think is
still TBD, but I'm very optimistic that with the leadership
of the two most relevant which is the SEC and
TFTC that they will continue to work together with themselves
and also with market participants to develop rules that work
and allow for more things to continue to develop on shore,
whereas probously previously it was it was pushed offshore. So
I do think that we'll continue to be a headwind,
I'm sorry, a tailwind, not a headwind. And you'll you'll
see things come out. Last week the SEC, or was
it two weeks ago? The SEC made some market structure
changes for equity markets with REGA n MSS. Again, I
view those things are probably long overdue, and you see
from the current administration and these agencies that they're willing
to tackle these problems but also work with market participants,
whether they're task force or working groups or not. They're
reaching across to market participant to hear from them and
then take that back and then produce rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a complete one eighty from how things were
years ago. It was so crazy and I wondered if
this industry was going to last with the you know
the aggressiveness of that respective administration. But you know, we
and it's a brand new day and things are in
a better place. And you know, you said it earlier
train has leftistation, Genie's out. The bottle of technology here
to stay and see we're seeing a lot of institutions
building with it, so it's pretty exciting. I did want
to ask you about not so much predictions, but rather
you know, where do you see the markets in let's
say ten years, so it's twenty thirty six, and a
lot of the institutions are tokenizing assets. Maybe all assets
are on chain, or the majority are real estate, precious metals, stocks, equities,
YadA YadA. Is it all one market? Is AI training
on behalf of these institutions and individuals? But what does
it look like?
Speaker 1: I think the short answer is you have a mix.
I think that you're not going to see one hundred percent,
like just even take tokenized treasuries. I don't think ten
years from now you're going to see one hundred percent. Well,
you see an overwhelming majority move on, see it's tokenized
one probably. I think that that's a reasonable outcome over
a ten year time horizon. And I think there are
are those that can benefit from some of the financing
drag associate with it. You can also have operational efficiencies
that isn't always talked about either but bank loans, which
is a credit instrument associated where it's mostly institutional players
that are in that today. But that's also because a
function of how liquidity is in that and how operationally
burdensome is to do that so well. Equity is settle
on a T plus two but basis. Bank loans settle
on a T plus sixty basis because that's how long
it takes to do those you know, settlement workflows associated
with it. You can move those types of flows on
top of a smart contract that allows then potentially for
it to be traded in a much more liquid way,
which could also open up potentially more for individuals or
retails to participated in some of these markets, similar to
discussions that have been had on private editor or things
like that. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to
be right for everyone, or that necessarily all assets will
move on chain, but by putting some of those workflows
and assets on top of a smart contract, it allows
for that discussion to even have take place. And so
I think ten years from now you will see obviously
the majority of the liquid assets if you will move
on chain. I do think that you will see harmonization
around that where you don't have bifurcated markets, which I
think would be a bad outcome. If you wanted to
buy a stock and you want to buy it through
the normal rails versus tokenized form, you get different prices
associated with that that I think would be a bad market.
And I think it's our job to figure out how
to make that seamlesst to ultimately investors that want to
do invest in equities or whatever for us we're talking about,
and so that you know, flip flopping between the two
is handled behind the scenes and it's just one instrument
one security, as the SEC and some of the banking
regulators have said for capital rules, is also a continued
statement that I think should be our thesis or a
mission of what we're trying to build towards, because that's
a market that is stronger, it's more liquid, and ultimately
is better execution for all parties, both institutional and retail.
Speaker 2: You know, you brought up an interesting problem I never
really thought about, you know, with the different prices of
a token is stock versus a normal stock in a
regular environment, and that seems that's going to be a
big issue we have to solve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely and this is one that again,
I think there are different models if you take tokenized
equities that are being discussed and developed. It's still yet
to be determined exactly who's the winner, which model is
going to be the most prevalent, but you have those
that are, if you will SPB type structures. I think
you've even seen some headlines with the SpaceX IPO that
there was potentially some lawsuits about that they thought they
own something that they don't. That those are some of
the risk By having not a natively issued asset on chain,
you get some of the characteristics, but it introduces new
risk that you otherwise wouldn't have. So I don't think
that that's a scalable model. That's what you're seeing developed
on some of the offshore. Does that mean that that
model will completely go away? No. I think that maybe
right for certain things, but not when you're talking about
US equities. I think there's better models that can be developed.
I know DPC started with treasuries. I assume they have
ambitions to look at equities in the future. NOISE and
NASDAC have both discussed some details about how they plan
to look at tokenized equities for investors on their platform.
So I do think that those will all evolve, but
it's important that however they're evolved in which blockchain they're on,
it's not bifurcated liquidity. That is the worse outcome that
actually can make the You're giving up a lot of
the benefits that the underlying technology promises to save on.
So I think that's one thing that we need to
always keep in mind as we use innovative technology, how
is that going to end in the best way possible
That you're not sacrificing some of that by maybe getting
a faster shortcut to get to market, but you're always
doing it in the best mindset of structure which would
enhance the most liquidity, which ultimately will be the best
execution for investors.
Speaker 2: And do you feel though over time, and this may
be a far way off, but when companies go public,
they're not doing the traditional way, They're going on chain
and that might help solve.
Speaker 1: Some of them. Yeah. I mean again, you can think
about whether it's using a transfer agent, which is done
today and they're the ones who are doing that conversion
or D to C as the intermediaries flipping the settlement
layer between the two. Again, there are different ways to
tackle the problem, but the point is that both of
those need to be fungible at the end state that
it's just you if it drop down. If I want
to do a trade or a fixed message that I'm
sending to my broker, if I'm doing algorithmic trading, I
just want to own it in tokenized form, or I
want to own it in that but it's the same price.
It's still one hundred dollars on the exchange or the
venue that it's trading at. I'm not paying a premium
one way or the other. It's just this is a
settlement means of how I want to hold that asset.
And again I think it's important that we give investors'
choice whether they want to convert to tokenized form or
whether they don't, but it's one and the same to them.
That's the goal is I think to come up with
the structure where that's seamless. And then on the other
side of token and I think you mentioned it earlier,
not everything needs to be tokenized, and I think of
okay for putting real estate on chain. Not every real
estate market is appealing, and it may not be a
market for it, right, and even on the stock market,
not every company is appealing. There's some zombie companies out
there and things like that. So to your point, doesn't yes,
a lot of assets will be token ased, doesn't mean
everything has to correct. I definitely think that's the case,
and you have to be able to support both of
those paradigms as they develop. And I think you have
to take a look at what's the value add by
tokenizing this, by converting it into a potentially twenty four
to seven I think not all markets, frankly will be
twenty four to seven either, and so I think that's
another thing that will develop across like which markets, is
there significant demand to be able to do that? What
are the risks of doing that in the twenty four
seven type of environment? And those choices will be you know,
the market will you know star oninism I view, the
market will evolve and demand for those types of things.
But the other thing I'll say about twenty four to
seven is obviously a buzzworth that's thrown around a lot.
But the biggest value add, you know, the power of
blockchain technology is not necessarily about those two am trades
that I want to do from Chicago or New York.
It's more about what does it do during the throughput
of the trading day when the majority of the liquity.
I don't think that will change. I don't think suddenly,
you know, the most liquid point of the training day
is going to be at two am New York time
when you were talking about US equity markets.
Speaker 2: But the ability to.
Speaker 1: Trade that is worth something, and there's obviously for large
markets like that, there is a huge benefit from being
able to do that, or to be able to trade
on the weekend and things like that. But the biggest
actual value add and economic utility to the market as
all is actually done through that normal trading day, that
nine to five type trading day, that's the unlocked and
that can obviously be overlooked because that's you know, enhanced
economic utility you get today, whereas the others are allowing
you to do something that you couldn't do. So there's
two folds to the technology value add. There's one that
allows you new things that you otherwise wouldn't be able
to do, and then the other one is just doing
more efficiency around it through the trading deck.
Speaker 2: What do you think about in the ability to put
these assets on chain, you could push them into markets
where people don't have access to these assets. So for example,
in certain parts of the world, people can't access the SpaceX
or a Tesla stock, right, but if you're tokenizing and
able to fractionalize it, and it could be some countries
in Africa, some places in India, whatever it may be,
that is also part of it, the expansion of the
reach of the asset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's also some of the problem so
of you know, blockchain and bitcoin in general is about
how to use that as an access point to all
these different markets as well. I think for some of
these it's just making sure that it's done in a
regulatory compliant way, depending on how that is. And I
think that's historically why some of the things always moved offshores,
because there wasn't an embracing of allowing that to happen
in the prior regime. And I think now it's like, yes,
we're on board with that, We're just need to define
what those rules of the road are for that to happen.
And again, I think the current regime is very committed
to deliver on that. It's going to take a little
bit of time to be able to formulate exactly what
that looks like. But I think that is definitely part
of the promise of the technology is you get that
access to different partticle of the otherwise pin which means
more demand associated with it as well. So very excited
about what that looks like in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just think as you're saying that, like
stable coins where the proof of concept so to speak, right,
which we know it works, and there are people in
different countries and I've seen examples in South America, you know,
people they want the US dollars stable coins and the
benefits that come with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again stable coins are just a form of
payment associated with a tokenized way. So like if we
think about tokenized equities, they can have a form of payment.
It could be a stable coin, it could be a
tokenized deposit, it can be you know, the you know,
blockchain equivalent. If you will form a payment attached to
that tokenized equity that you're then able to move as
a delivery versus payment, all one kind of transaction, the
atomic selement across MM.
Speaker 2: Mark great stuff. I got some wrap up questions here
for you. Let's do it First, are you an early
bird or night out?
Speaker 1: Short answer is both, and I'm talking to you. I
guess a Crypto audience which just doesn't sleep too much
either because they've been operating at twenty four. But if
I have to pick one, I'm definitely a morning versus afternoon.
But I'm I don't sleep.
Speaker 2: Well windows theater aisle.
Speaker 1: Definitely an ale. I'm the tall individual. I need to
stretch out the legs, text, email or call, So I'm
definitely an email because I like organization. An email just
been around for a long period of time, so able
to organize my inbox very very meticulously.
Speaker 2: I'm same way. What's one company outside of Crypto you admire?
Speaker 1: There's a few of them. I think Amazon always comes
to mind. You know, read several books on kind of
how their evolution, about how they developed and broke the
supply chain and innovated from you know, it started as
a as an online bookstore and where it's come today
and how it's evolved. So I think they're a fascinating
one that I always kind of look at how they developed.
Speaker 2: I love that image. I'm sure you've seen it, the
photograph of Jeff Bezos in that room with just you know,
really bad computer deats and a banner where it looks
like a spray printed Amazon.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is very good, incredible where.
Speaker 2: He came from. If you could have dinner with any
person living or dead, who would it be.
Speaker 1: So I started with them from Wisconsin, and I'm a
Packers fan, so I'm gonna press it with that. But
I admire Reggie White. So he obviously was not around
for a long period of time. I think he passed
away when he was forty something early forties after retiring,
but obviously one of the most dominant in his position.
But the way that he carried himself, I think was
what really stood out to me. He's obviously was a
physical human being, but it wasn't about demoralizing the opponent
or anything like that. He played by rules and you know,
had a certain character to him. So Reggie White, best
advice you've ever gotten. So one of the most impactful
for my career was a coach that I had in
my career, and it really taught me about preparation and organization.
So going into.
Speaker 3: Your your day, whether that's a week in advance, or
the night before or even the morning of, you have
a series of different meetings or participants that you're you're
engaging with and going through a series of questions, what's
my role, what's my outcome?
Speaker 1: How am I contributing to it? And ultimately, uh, you know,
what's the goal the meeting and how do I influence
that decision or whatever the outcome of that is. And
then upliging your objectives and what your role is and
that to align to obviously achieve the goal. And that
really that mindset really allowed me to uh, you know,
optimize my day and kind of my operational workflow around
things by being organized but being thoughtful about you know,
extracting those outcomes.
Speaker 2: Love it mark, absolute pleasure, and I'm looking forward to
the future updates around Canton Strategic Holdings. I'm sure we're
going to do a round two at some point as
things progress. But thank you so much for joining me,
thanks for having me, Thank you so much for tuning in.
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