Speaker 1: One of the key fundamental innovations of the crypto space,
Speaker 1: Quarde frankly, is to launch a token that can have
Speaker 1: network effects in where you can have value accrule of
Speaker 1: the network that in and of itself, I don't think
Speaker 1: should be forgotten. The very novel way to do capital formation,
Speaker 1: which we as you know, being active in traditional capital
Speaker 1: markets and putting traditional financial assets on chain. It's a
Speaker 1: very interesting concept for usto to look at.
Speaker 2: Do you think by twenty thirty we're going to have
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Speaker 1: Day markets probably?
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Speaker 2: a description. Check it out. Hey, folks, welcome into the
Speaker 2: Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward, and my
Speaker 2: guest today is Ian Debode, who is the chief strategy
Speaker 2: officer at Ondo Finance. Ian, great to have you.
Speaker 1: On, Great to be here. Thanks for having me Tony. Ian.
Speaker 2: As we were talking about before the recording, I'm a
Speaker 2: fan of Hodo. I'm an Ondo token holder. I love
Speaker 2: what you guys are doing, so I'm excited to dive
Speaker 2: into the details about all the great work and initiatives
Speaker 2: that you and the folks there are working on. Let's
Speaker 2: kick it off with your background. Tell us a bit
Speaker 2: about yourself, where you're from and your professional background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and per say so. I'm originally from Belgium, born
Speaker 1: and raised. Came to us in twenty thirteen for business school,
Speaker 1: decided to stick around by trading. I'm actually an engineer.
Speaker 1: I used to be. I used to work at a
Speaker 1: semiconductor company as an R and D engineer or product manager,
Speaker 1: but that feels like forever ago. Those business school actually
Speaker 1: worked for almost a decade at McKinsey and Company as
Speaker 1: the consultancy shop. I ended up managing all their working
Speaker 1: digital assets, so working primarily with all of the trad
Speaker 1: fis on what are digital assets, where do they not?
Speaker 1: What can you do with them? And about a year
Speaker 1: and a half ago I joined Onto as the Chief
Speaker 1: strategy Officer, really to focus on obviously the strategy, corporate development,
Speaker 1: go to market, all sorts of fun things that you
Speaker 1: get to do at a ultimately small startup.
Speaker 2: Absolutely So was your first encounter with blockchain and digital
Speaker 2: assets and crypto at McKenzie or did you hear about
Speaker 2: it before? Some people have heard about bitcoin and they
Speaker 2: were like, man, I wish i'd paid attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's funny. I'd heard about bitcoin, but it
Speaker 1: never really did it for me. Although as I'm longer
Speaker 1: in the space, the more I appreciate the OG. But
Speaker 1: the moment I read about Ethereum, that's when it flicked
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. I mean, at the time, even
Speaker 1: at McKinsey, I was doing some work in financial services
Speaker 1: with some of the TRACIFI giants and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of shocked at how inefficient the system was, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: and then when I read about Ethereum and the whole
Speaker 1: concept of smart contract tech stack that could operate twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. I mean, mind you, this was pre
Speaker 1: DeFi though, you know, I hadn't really seen it, but conceptually,
Speaker 1: the whole concept of having a smart contract that could
Speaker 1: execute code twenty four to seven, that could do basic
Speaker 1: functionality that finance did that really spoke to me from
Speaker 1: a very early on. So I ended up then trying
Speaker 1: to do as much blockchain work within McKinsey as I could.
Speaker 1: I couldn't really need mckenzi, primarily in the visa reasons,
Speaker 1: so even if I wanted to stay in the US,
Speaker 1: I couldn't really leave Kinsey. So that caused me to
Speaker 1: add a very early onset in my McKinsey career try
Speaker 1: to do as much blockchain work or crypto work as
Speaker 1: I possibly could. Back then, there wasn't a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first project I did was on tokenization actually in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen for some French banks. Wow, And back then
Speaker 1: it was all, you know, blockchain, not crypto. I mean
Speaker 1: there's still some of that, but increasingly less so. But
Speaker 1: that was the first time that I did anything professionally
Speaker 1: with blockchain. Back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's fascinating because that's so early twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 2: don't think I got into the market then. I didn't
Speaker 2: hear about the word tokenization till years later. And then
Speaker 2: you mentioned, you know, the dynamic between blockchain and crypto,
Speaker 2: because there's always been kind of the narrative battle taking place.
Speaker 2: But you need both. I mean, you can't have a
Speaker 2: public blockchain with a public with some sort of currency
Speaker 2: greasing the network. And I think people don't really recognize that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know one hundred percent. I encountered that so
Speaker 1: many times with a lot of these traps. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: but I like blotching and I don't like crypto, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you can't really have one versus the other,
Speaker 1: because otherwise, how are you going to essentially pay your
Speaker 1: validator network to make sure that it gets included. And
Speaker 1: then they're like, well, why don't you just use cast
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you can, but that's not necessarily decentralized system.
Speaker 1: So you have to like walk them through the concept
Speaker 1: of why does a native asset to a chain make
Speaker 1: sense in the first place. Needless to say, a lot
Speaker 1: of the trad files just don't get it because for
Speaker 1: a trad FI they have to meet certain compliance requirements anyway,
Speaker 1: So the whole concept of a decentralized system is very
Speaker 1: foreign to them because all the time that would then
Speaker 1: ask the question, but like what's the throat to choke,
Speaker 1: like where is a regulator going to go? You're like, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of not how this system is ultimately designed
Speaker 1: per se, and you have to get into the nuance.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of education to do, which
Speaker 1: I think in part is why this whole concept of
Speaker 1: tokenization of traditional financial assets and adoption by the draft
Speaker 1: flights truly has taken quite frankly over a decade.
Speaker 2: Sure, and then it's also maybe a very foreign concept
Speaker 2: where you have the convergence of a network with a
Speaker 2: currency or something that holds value, because before it was
Speaker 2: just here's the protocol, there's a company behind it, maybe
Speaker 2: you get shares, private equity, IPO, YadA, YadA. But for
Speaker 2: the first time you have this conversion. So I think
Speaker 2: for a lot of people, even retail outside institution, they're like, so,
Speaker 2: why do you need the token or why do you
Speaker 2: what's blockchain and what's crypto? It's like hard for them
Speaker 2: to understand its paradigm shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, one hundred percent, and I mean quite frank
Speaker 1: I mean that's why it's a journey. I feel like
Speaker 1: everyone who gets into crypto has a million questions and
Speaker 1: it just takes some time for you to ultimately work
Speaker 1: through all of them and to really get what this
Speaker 1: stuff is about. And then you know, you ultimately also
Speaker 1: start to appreciate and realize that it's kind of all
Speaker 1: of a spectrum. Like the centralization is a spectrum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the trust assumptions in asset, that's his spectrum. So it's
Speaker 1: a very nuanced and complex space that just requires some
Speaker 1: time to work through. And quite frankly, you even see
Speaker 1: it now on crypto Twitter. In the crypto space these days,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of these RWA issuers and providers that
Speaker 1: are starting to build these purpose build chains right like
Speaker 1: Temple and Arc and you get a lot of debate
Speaker 1: around wait is that really a blockchain? So yeah, those
Speaker 1: debates have been around for ten years and I don't
Speaker 1: see them stopping quite frankly, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, time will tell the winners and
Speaker 2: what the market wants, and you know, what gets real
Speaker 2: world adoption. I think there's a lot of players right now,
Speaker 2: which is this is a normal process. It's healthy as well,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out maybe there are some solutions that
Speaker 2: exist that don't have a problem, but there are certainly
Speaker 2: folks like I believe, like you guys on it. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that because you're on the podcast, but I
Speaker 2: believe what you're you folks are doing. You know, we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about onto global markets and so forth,
Speaker 2: but you're really building a key infrastructure item for the
Speaker 2: adoption of you know, the technology and tokenization and much more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. With a lot of crypto. I mean,
Speaker 1: crypto sometimes gets a bad reputation because a lot of
Speaker 1: people in crypto think, you know, build it and they
Speaker 1: will come, and that does not necessarily how things play out.
Speaker 1: Yet at the same time, I think you can credibly
Speaker 1: say that a lot of infrastructure that has been built
Speaker 1: in crypto initially was build it and they will come.
Speaker 1: And turns out a lot of these crypto engineers and
Speaker 1: developers were ahead of their time and build something that
Speaker 1: maybe at the time wasn't necessarily needed. But you know,
Speaker 1: three four years down the line, people look at that
Speaker 1: and say, oh wow, that's actually pretty innovative. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, time will tell to your point on how
Speaker 1: this space plays out. It's kind of a cliche, but
Speaker 1: I do think ultimately we are still pretty early. But
Speaker 1: sometimes when you look at some of these crypto prices,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so fascinating the two ends of the spectrum
Speaker 2: here with the building but also the speculative aspect of
Speaker 2: the coins, which it is what it is. Human beings
Speaker 2: are speculative. Markets are speculative, and it happened in the
Speaker 2: dot com boom and the real estate boom and all
Speaker 2: these things. So can't escape it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can't escape it. Tohoman nature, I believe. But the
Speaker 1: fund like one of the key fundamental innovations of the
Speaker 1: crypto space, quite frankly, is to launch a token that
Speaker 1: can have network effects and where you can have value
Speaker 1: accrule of the network. That in and of itself I
Speaker 1: don't think should be forgotten. It's a very novel way
Speaker 1: to do capital formation, which we as you know, being
Speaker 1: active in traditional capital markets and putting traditional financial assets
Speaker 1: on chain. It's a very interesting concept for us also
Speaker 1: look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk a bit about that because it's still
Speaker 2: something I'm noodling on and it's so fascinating, and I
Speaker 2: try to explain it to people because they ask, you know,
Speaker 2: why is this mean coin worth money? And I try
Speaker 2: to explain network effects, metcaps law and reads law that
Speaker 2: take the real world, or I should say not the
Speaker 2: real world, but the non digital world. Politics, religion, people
Speaker 2: who crowd around a movement. That's a network being built there,
Speaker 2: but it's now it's in a digital form and there
Speaker 2: is a financial component to it. So that's all it is.
Speaker 2: It's people coming together agreeing this has value. We believe
Speaker 2: in this, even if it's a silly meme.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean there's two there's two schools of
Speaker 1: thoughts in terms of what I mean. There's price in
Speaker 1: there's value, right, and people conflate the two often. I
Speaker 1: think that the dominant school of thought is that the
Speaker 1: way to value any type of business is to look
Speaker 1: at the underlying cash flow that it generates. How much
Speaker 1: of the cash flow does that when I hold a
Speaker 1: particular instrument, does that give me claim to and as
Speaker 1: a result, how much is that ultimately worth? You know
Speaker 1: that that clearly it has some merit to it if
Speaker 1: you look at how a lot of companies are valued
Speaker 1: and dividend payouts and the like. But I think the
Speaker 1: reality is that oftentimes whatever you end up paying for
Speaker 1: something in the price of the acid, and the price
Speaker 1: of the acid is dependent on how many people that
Speaker 1: want to buy a particular thing, right, and so there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that people are willing to
Speaker 1: pay money for, But when you look at the underlying
Speaker 1: value from a cash flow perspective, it's not really there.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that the price that people pay is
Speaker 1: unreasonable or not right, well, you know, to be debated,
Speaker 1: because people clearly pay the money for it and are
Speaker 1: willing to pay for it. So I think it's just
Speaker 1: different schools of thought whether you look at price or value,
Speaker 1: and it's a very complicated discussion to have.
Speaker 2: Frankly, absolutely, I feel there's going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of studies about these things, but huge generation like why
Speaker 2: is those coin on ariz.
Speaker 1: For Oh boy, that means yes, quite, It's so funny.
Speaker 2: It's like human behavior on the blockchain. It's so fascinating.
Speaker 2: I'm curious. You know, what your perspective is of your
Speaker 2: time at Mackenzie and you know, even going back to
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen and now where things are at, I mean, Ian,
Speaker 2: it's an amazing growth and surge of adoption by trad fight.
Speaker 2: Are you blown away by the amount of adoption we're.
Speaker 1: Seeing, Oh for sure, and I mean relative to twenty sixteen, yes,
Speaker 1: but even relative it is quite frankly at twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: it's just night and day, right, I think the space
Speaker 1: has come a very very long way. The infrastructure has
Speaker 1: been developed a lot more than back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: The liquidity that's available also grew quite a bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: this really is the innovation of the stable coin that
Speaker 1: really was a key unlock for this entire space to
Speaker 1: really mature and unlock, because you could have crypto that was,
Speaker 1: you know, around in the ecosystem, and you could even
Speaker 1: put traditional financial assets on a blockchain, but all the
Speaker 1: way back to twenty sixteen, but what were you going
Speaker 1: to do with the actual settlement of these instruments. You
Speaker 1: needed a cash leg, which ended up being a stable
Speaker 1: coin leg. So stable coins truly were the first zero
Speaker 1: to one innovation I think in how to make all
Speaker 1: of this work, which back in twenty twenty sixteen, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean stable coins existed, but they were so small
Speaker 1: it didn't really matter. I think, DeFi was the other
Speaker 1: massive zero to one innovation where all of a sudden
Speaker 1: people could actually see how this could work in the
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven autonomous fashion, And there was a
Speaker 1: ton of innovation happening back in twenty twenty twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one in the space. And then the last thing that
Speaker 1: really unlocked post twenty twenty three really is the regulatory
Speaker 1: clarity and the attitude of the regulators. I think that
Speaker 1: was the final key unlocked that really needed to happen,
Speaker 1: where the ETFs played a very interesting role. Ultimately, that
Speaker 1: was the first introduction of crypto into the mainstream where
Speaker 1: it was very very clear that there was a ton
Speaker 1: of untapped demand and crypto ownership and appetite was a
Speaker 1: lot broader than I think what the other administrations had expected,
Speaker 1: and I think that created a lot of visibility for
Speaker 1: the space. Obviously, the Trumpet administration right now is very
Speaker 1: crypto friendly and wants to make America the home of crypto.
Speaker 1: But all of those things combined over the past ten years,
Speaker 1: I think have finally led us to this moment and
Speaker 1: the amount of trad fi interest in almost fomo quite
Speaker 1: frankly that I see in the space is really incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the names that are involved, and we're
Speaker 2: going to talk a bit about some of them that
Speaker 2: are using Onto and partnering with you. But before we
Speaker 2: get ahead of ourselves here, give a quick overview of
Speaker 2: ONDO for those who may not know what is Ondo
Speaker 2: and how's it work and things like that.
Speaker 1: For sure, So think of ONO as a company. We
Speaker 1: put traditional financial assets on block shainrails and make them
Speaker 1: available to a global audience. This is really what a
Speaker 1: stable coin piloted with cash we do for treasury stocks
Speaker 1: and etf We also develop the services and infrastructure to
Speaker 1: make that issuance and distribution process more seamless and to
Speaker 1: give real utility to these assets. We did that back
Speaker 1: in the day when we developed the flux Finance protocol,
Speaker 1: which was the first example of how a rebuild market
Speaker 1: could work with tokenized treasuries as collateral. So we started
Speaker 1: our entire journey, really, i'd say, back in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two twenty twenty three, by tokenizing treasuries in the first instance.
Speaker 1: We looked at stable coins as having product market fit.
Speaker 1: Stable coins are beautiful products, but they're not perfect they
Speaker 1: actually don't give you very good investor protections and they
Speaker 1: don't pay out yield to it's euroup to their holders,
Speaker 1: and so to solve both of those issues, we believed
Speaker 1: at a token its treasury fund with a lot out
Speaker 1: of investor protections was actually the way to go. We
Speaker 1: started doing that with a product called OUSG. It's a
Speaker 1: permissioned tokenized treasury fund. At the time, it was pretty
Speaker 1: innovative because it was the first time that a tokenice
Speaker 1: treasury fund, which is essentially security, could be transferred peer
Speaker 1: to peer on chain as long as you were onboarded
Speaker 1: with us. That also meant that you could allow list
Speaker 1: whitelist a smart contract to then use this asset as
Speaker 1: collateral in that ended up being flux Finance. So we
Speaker 1: started really with the first peer to peer transferable tokenize
Speaker 1: treasury fund. We have since expanded that mission to tokenize
Speaker 1: other tokenized treasury funds that are permission lofts in the
Speaker 1: secondary market, very much like a stable coin, but it
Speaker 1: still pays out yield on a daily basis. And most
Speaker 1: recently we also launched onto Global Markets, which is a
Speaker 1: platform to tokenize any stock and etf that you want.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a bit about onto global markets. So
Speaker 2: essentially any institution can come plug in, launch their token
Speaker 2: ied asset and push it out to the market.
Speaker 1: We can actually do that with no permission even needed.
Speaker 1: So any stock or ETF that is traded on your
Speaker 1: traditional financial exchanges and is available in a normal brokerage account,
Speaker 1: we can put that on chain now and make that
Speaker 1: available to non UFS investors in the primary market, so
Speaker 1: think of a global audience. These assets are in a
Speaker 1: stable coin like format, so there are permissionless in the
Speaker 1: secondary market, meaning that you can use them in D
Speaker 1: five however you want twenty four to seven. They are
Speaker 1: all fully backed one for one. So for every token
Speaker 1: that we issue, there is a let's say it's a
Speaker 1: token iced Tesla token, right, there will be Tesla stock
Speaker 1: sitting in a brokerage account that is itmovable, plus a
Speaker 1: large collateral buffer on top so that people can rest
Speaker 1: assured that there's always enough collateral backing the tokens out there.
Speaker 1: And ultimately the benefit of the platform that we've developed
Speaker 1: is that we can put in stock and ETF on chain,
Speaker 1: which is very helpful for a lot of the crypto exchanges.
Speaker 1: In the crypto wallets that really want to offer their
Speaker 1: users access to these stocks and ETFs, but for them
Speaker 1: to work with the traditional financial system is a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated than if they can just use tokenie stocks
Speaker 1: and ETFs, where the settlement can happen in stable coins.
Speaker 1: These things can trade twenty four to seven, all sorts
Speaker 1: of benefits relative to the traditional system.
Speaker 2: You a question I have, and it's not just specific
Speaker 2: to Ondo, but just in general, when the tokenization of
Speaker 2: an asset takes place, and I think you touched a
Speaker 2: bit on this that you know the asset sits in
Speaker 2: the brokerage, but how do we verify that? How do
Speaker 2: we see the bridge that connects the tokenized asset on
Speaker 2: the blockchain to the physical asset, whether it be gold
Speaker 2: or if you're tokenized real estate or if it's stock.
Speaker 2: Where can one say I need to see that bridge
Speaker 2: where all this is connected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, because ultimately, when you tokenize something,
Speaker 1: trust and transparency is incredibly You can put a stock
Speaker 1: on chain and it's a synthetic asset and you can
Speaker 1: claim that it's a token I stop, but if there's
Speaker 1: nothing backing it, I would not recommend that anyone buy it.
Speaker 1: So we take a lot of pride in the fact
Speaker 1: that all of our assets are fully backed. We actually
Speaker 1: the tokens that you hold on chain, they're tokenized notes.
Speaker 1: It's a debt instrument relative to the issuer of the tokens.
Speaker 1: That issuer can issue these tokens that is really debt,
Speaker 1: and they then hold the assets underlying or backing that
Speaker 1: token in a clearing broker account plus a collateral buffer
Speaker 1: on top. We have done this the similar structure that
Speaker 1: we did for USDY, that is that permissionless tokenized treasury product.
Speaker 1: We've had it for about two years you've take out
Speaker 1: in the market. We have an agreement with a third
Speaker 1: party agents called the collateral Agent. They have access to
Speaker 1: our brokerage accounts, so they can literally just see the
Speaker 1: value in the account on a daily basis, make sure
Speaker 1: that whatever we are holding that we say we hold,
Speaker 1: we actually hold, and that we have everything fully collateralized,
Speaker 1: plus the collateral buffer on top. They post daily attestations
Speaker 1: for everyone to see, so that anyone can go to
Speaker 1: our website and take a look and say, hey, it's
Speaker 1: really fully backed. They also have a legal obligation that
Speaker 1: when we as the issuer, failed to meet a redemption
Speaker 1: in a timely matter, or if they look at the
Speaker 1: account and say, oh, a drop below a certain level,
Speaker 1: they are legally obligated to seize all of the assets,
Speaker 1: sell it for cash, and repay the debt holders of
Speaker 1: the issuer, which is really the token holders in the
Speaker 1: first place. So these things are structured in a fully
Speaker 1: bankruptcy remote way. When you hold a token, you actually
Speaker 1: have a security interest in the collateral that is perfected
Speaker 1: by a third party, and that third party also posts
Speaker 1: daily attestations that anyone can take a look at.
Speaker 2: That's great, great to hear. And then is there ever
Speaker 2: a situation where the tokenized assets need to be in
Speaker 2: a custodian or is it just all in smart contracts?
Speaker 1: Well, so the underlying sits in a custodian right, so
Speaker 1: the actual tizla shares of the actualist and P five
Speaker 1: hundred ETF that all sits at the actual custodian custodian
Speaker 1: we issue the tokens against that. These assets are mobilized
Speaker 1: so they can't move. But these tokens then obviously can
Speaker 1: freely float wherever. You can use those tokens out of
Speaker 1: custodian too. If you want, you know, if you're holding
Speaker 1: them and you don't plan to move them anytime soon.
Speaker 1: We do have support from some of the major custodians
Speaker 1: in the space, so that also an institution can feel
Speaker 1: comfortable custodying these assets in the way that they want.
Speaker 2: Got it, guy, Thank you for that insight, because that
Speaker 2: is a question I've had once again just in general.
Speaker 2: So great to get that insight. You know, you mentioned
Speaker 2: the tokenization of stocks and the ability for people around
Speaker 2: the globe to access certain markets and assets they have
Speaker 2: never been able to. And I'm not sure how many
Speaker 2: people know about this, but if you're in some country
Speaker 2: in Africa, you can access the New York Stock Exchange
Speaker 2: or free platin America right, but now you can and
Speaker 2: that could change your life, opening up investment opportunities, wealth opportunities,
Speaker 2: and obviously some banking opportunities with stable coins and so forth.
Speaker 2: So tell us about your plan to expand to other
Speaker 2: markets and are there regulatory hurdles or not necessarily yet?
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, great question. So I fully agree with your
Speaker 1: point in that this is really initially a global access play.
Speaker 1: The number of people out there globally who clearly want
Speaker 1: to have access to US capital markets and invest in
Speaker 1: it is pretty substantial, right We as Americans, we don't
Speaker 1: really appreciate how difficult it is in many jurisdictions to
Speaker 1: get a brokerage account. And even when you can, the
Speaker 1: fees to buy any of these products, both FX fees
Speaker 1: and then just normal you know, buy and selfie are
Speaker 1: quite frankly absurd, right, So we are very excited to
Speaker 1: have a platform that we can put all of these
Speaker 1: US capital market assets on crypto chain and make them
Speaker 1: available to that global audience, so that anyone that has
Speaker 1: a stable coin can ultimately acquire any of these assets
Speaker 1: in the secondary market. So that is a pretty meaningful
Speaker 1: innovation in and of itself. These things are permissionless bear asset, right,
Speaker 1: so in the secondary market they can flow wherever. It's
Speaker 1: very similar to a stable coin tablecoin. You can send
Speaker 1: wherever you want to. If you engage in a peer
Speaker 1: to peer transaction with a stable coin or if you
Speaker 1: use it in DeFi, there's no there's no regulators are
Speaker 1: going to tell you, hey, you can't do that, right,
Speaker 1: But if there is a called it essentialized platform that
Speaker 1: decides to market these assets in a specific jurisdiction, and
Speaker 1: you know, has billboards in a country that says by
Speaker 1: token is stocks. Now that probably means a license. So
Speaker 1: it kind of all depends on how it's implemented. But fundamentally,
Speaker 1: our platform is set up in such a way that
Speaker 1: these assets are are available to a global audience. Anyone
Speaker 1: with a stable coin can find their way.
Speaker 2: Going back to what we were talking about earlier with
Speaker 2: network effects, is this going to change markets forever? And
Speaker 2: even private equity markets? You know, let's say the SEC
Speaker 2: opens up accreditation and private companies can you know, get
Speaker 2: their equity out there in a tokenized format. Plus you
Speaker 2: have the token ied equities and stocks and so forth
Speaker 2: that now you have liquidity coming in from around the globe,
Speaker 2: which once again we've never.
Speaker 1: Had that before. Yeah, I never had it before. It's
Speaker 1: a great question. I'm not sure how exactly it's all
Speaker 1: going to play out. If I'm being honest, it'll probably
Speaker 1: take some time. But if we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about you know, education and it just takes time for
Speaker 1: people to appreciate what this stuff is, I think the
Speaker 1: same thing is going to play out with token is
Speaker 1: stocks because the number one question we still get is
Speaker 1: why are you tokenizing stocks? Right, Like, why why not
Speaker 1: like real estate Because most people when they think of tokenization,
Speaker 1: they think of real estate and other types of asset classes.
Speaker 1: We've always believed that makes most sense to tokenite those
Speaker 1: assets that people globally already want and that you can
Speaker 1: use as collateral on chain, because that's ultimately you know,
Speaker 1: the two benefits of tokenizing an acid is you can
Speaker 1: open it up to anyone globally because now it lives
Speaker 1: on blockchain reels and it can move twenty four seven.
Speaker 1: And number two is you can use it in smart contracts.
Speaker 1: Most of the smart contracts on chain leverage some acid
Speaker 1: in some form of collateral, whether that's for staking, for
Speaker 1: margin purposes and the like. So for both of those reasons,
Speaker 1: you typically need an asset that has very good pricing transparency, right,
Speaker 1: Like what is an asset worth? People want to be
Speaker 1: want to know that whatever it is they're buying is
Speaker 1: they're buying and at the right price. And that's really
Speaker 1: hard to do with assets like real estate like pe,
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of information asymmetry. But when you
Speaker 1: do that for dox ETF treasury acids, there are incredibly
Speaker 1: liquid markets out there in trap FI already where pricing
Speaker 1: discovery occurs. So once you put these things on chain,
Speaker 1: actually pretty straightforward to figure out what these things should
Speaker 1: be worth. So that's kind of why we put stocks
Speaker 1: and ETFs on chain in the first place, because people
Speaker 1: feel very comfortable buying them. So if you get all
Speaker 1: of a sudden an avenue and a technology that hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of people are now going to be able
Speaker 1: to buy these things almost frictionless, I think there's real
Speaker 1: potential for that to change market structure down the line.
Speaker 1: It's kind of very similar to how even the US
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Treasury now it's saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: stable coins, we expected to create meaningful demand for US
Speaker 1: treasuries globally over the next five to ten years. I
Speaker 1: think at some point people will say the same thing,
Speaker 1: but you know about increasing demand for US capital markets globally.
Speaker 1: But how long is that process going to take? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it could be very meaningful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And then you know you mentioned the DeFi components,
Speaker 2: so I can not just hold the asset, but I
Speaker 2: can put it to work to help me earn additional
Speaker 2: income and yield and so forth.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent, And this is where trat FI gets
Speaker 1: very excited about tokenization because once it lives on crypto rails,
Speaker 1: you can tap into new sources of yield that historically
Speaker 1: we're not really available, essentially because you disintermediate a lot
Speaker 1: of people from the process that you would normally do,
Speaker 1: get them take a margin loan, right, and as a result,
Speaker 1: ultimately these processes become more efficient. So there's a higher
Speaker 1: yield to be earned, and there's new sources of yield
Speaker 1: that you could tap into, particularly if you enable it
Speaker 1: for these crypton native primitives like staking. So that's where
Speaker 1: the trap files really get very excited about how all
Speaker 1: of this could evolve. I think again, it's going to
Speaker 1: take a little bit of time for all of that
Speaker 1: to play out because right now, I mean, we're very
Speaker 1: excited to put these stocks and ETFs on chang, But
Speaker 1: I think the reality is that DeFi isn't really built
Speaker 1: with stocks and ETFs in mind. Like this simple scale
Speaker 1: that these things operate at. I don't think DeFi was
Speaker 1: particularly well designed for. So take your brokerage account, right,
Speaker 1: I have a brokerage account. I've got two actually, and
Speaker 1: I can buy let's say one thousand or so assets,
Speaker 1: maybe even more in them and then I just hit
Speaker 1: a button if I ever want to get a margin loan,
Speaker 1: and it just happens automatically, no gas fees paid, Like
Speaker 1: there's no problem. They can look at the thousand assets
Speaker 1: that I hold and I can get margin on all
Speaker 1: of them. So to speak. That's not really how defis built, right.
Speaker 1: If I have a thousand different stocks in ETFs and
Speaker 1: I want to get margin on it, I can't just
Speaker 1: hit a button with no gas fees and then get
Speaker 1: a margin loan twenty four to seven on my holdings.
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be some changes that are
Speaker 1: required in the DeFi ecosystem to really work with the
Speaker 1: scale of stocks and ETFs, But I have no doubt
Speaker 1: that a very eager developer ecosystem is going to adapt
Speaker 1: to that pretty quickly. Now that these things are actually
Speaker 1: on chain at the right price, with deep liquidity, with
Speaker 1: the right structure, I think it is actually going to
Speaker 1: be very exciting to see how the DeFi ecosystem evolved. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you know, as you're saying that that it
Speaker 2: will take time. I'm envisioning twenty years from now potentially,
Speaker 2: you know, after institutions have set up the infrastructure you know,
Speaker 2: folks like yourself and onto have set up the infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It's very easy.
Speaker 2: I could take a rare baseball card, a Mickey Mantle
Speaker 2: rookie card, or a rare comic book or an old
Speaker 2: Ferrari that's worth a lot of money, take it to
Speaker 2: a proper institution like ontore, whatever it may be. You
Speaker 2: go through the whole process. You're holding the asset, it's
Speaker 2: verified on the blockchain, and I can put that asset.
Speaker 1: To work ultimately down the line, if you really go
Speaker 1: twenty years down the line. Sure, I think all of
Speaker 1: that is going to be possible for some of the
Speaker 1: assets that you highlighted. I think is really going to
Speaker 1: be how much is that thing worth? And pricing it
Speaker 1: right in a way that even a DeFi protocol or
Speaker 1: an oracle could get comfortable with. But there's nothing like
Speaker 1: the process of tokenization in and of itself even today
Speaker 1: is actually pretty straightforward, right. All you got to do
Speaker 1: is take a traditional asset, put it in a custody account,
Speaker 1: whether that's a bank account or a clearing broker account
Speaker 1: or whatever the appropriate custody account is, make sure that
Speaker 1: you immobilize it, you issue a token against it, and tada, right,
Speaker 1: you've tokenized the asset. That's actually pretty straightforward. The hard part,
Speaker 1: oftentimes is doing the pricing of that asset on a
Speaker 1: real time basis and doing the subscription and redemption between
Speaker 1: the traditional world in the unchained world, in the twenty
Speaker 1: four seven manner, because a lot of these trap fi
Speaker 1: systems that you need to tap into to acquire an
Speaker 1: asset or sell an asset, they don't work twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven, whereas the crypto ecosystem does. So that liquidity mismatch.
Speaker 1: How you bridge that? That's the really hard part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And setting up, yeah, setting up the market for it
Speaker 2: and so forth, and there has to be demand for
Speaker 2: the asset, of course. You know you mentioned twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven markets. Clearly that's the direction the puck is
Speaker 2: heading in. I see these stock exchanges, you know, exploring
Speaker 2: ways to open longer, and it's so fascinating to see
Speaker 2: them get you know, getting disrupted in a way and
Speaker 2: they're trying to catch up and so forth. Do you
Speaker 2: think by twenty thirty we're going to have full twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven three hundred and sixty five day markets?
Speaker 1: Probably? To be honest, I think, you know, Nastak already announced.
Speaker 1: I think they're going to go for six days a
Speaker 1: week starting next year. And I think it's just really
Speaker 1: clear that there is ultimately retail appetite to trade twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. And right now you're you're in a
Speaker 1: situation where crypto markets are operating twenty four seven, people
Speaker 1: wipe to trade the you know mean coins over the weekend,
Speaker 1: bit point of the weekend, whatever it is they want
Speaker 1: to do over the weekend. And then you look at
Speaker 1: the traditional financial markets, which are far larger in size
Speaker 1: still but they don't. It's a very weird, weird dichotomy.
Speaker 1: So I think you'll see that the traditional exchanges see
Speaker 1: some pressure to move towards twenty four seven, increasingly, particularly
Speaker 1: once the stocks and ETFs are now moving on these
Speaker 1: blockchain rails that can move twenty four to seven. I
Speaker 1: think there's a real chance that the crypto ecosystem moves
Speaker 1: towards twenty four seven trading of these assets already even
Speaker 1: before the traditional brokerage accounts to And then over the
Speaker 1: next five years you start seeing those traditional financial systems
Speaker 1: actually catch up and upgrade so that they can support
Speaker 1: twenty first seven as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great point, because many of the crypto exchanges out
Speaker 2: there are launching token is stocks and it will trade
Speaker 2: just like crypto assets twenty four to seven, that's right.
Speaker 2: And then obviously with a twenty four to seven market,
Speaker 2: no nights in we and all these things and opening
Speaker 2: a closing bell, are we going to drive ourselves ourselves?
Speaker 2: I'm going to be up three am a bank of
Speaker 2: those or we have AI agents doing mm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. I'm very curious to see
Speaker 1: how all of that is going to evolve. I mean
Speaker 1: that a proponent would just say we're giving investors more
Speaker 1: choice on when to trade, right. But yeah, it's funny
Speaker 1: whenever I talk to someone in TRADFI or even in fintech,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the number one questions that typically
Speaker 1: get is like, but it's twenty four to seven? How
Speaker 1: do you even deal with that? Right? How do you
Speaker 1: ever relax? And I mean it takes a little bit
Speaker 1: of getting used to, but over time, it is what
Speaker 1: it is. And I think with traditional financial markets it's
Speaker 1: kind of going to be the same thing, but it
Speaker 1: does require very big changes in how a lot of
Speaker 1: these traditional financial firms operate that are not to be underestimated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think humans we find our way. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we get sucked into a trend or technology. It disrupts
Speaker 2: our lives and then people start saying complaining, Oh, this
Speaker 2: is so bad, but then we figure it out and
Speaker 2: our collective knowledge improves. I think we're going through that
Speaker 2: with social media, right, and the collective knowledge would be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you got to get balance back in our lives with
Speaker 2: our devices and so forth, so we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: Hund of present and you've seen that in like I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's lots of books about that too, right,
Speaker 1: Like when the printing press occurred was invented, there was
Speaker 1: a mass revolution almost in the access to information, which
Speaker 1: ultimately unfortunately led to the religious wars. But it's a
Speaker 1: good example of like how you had a shot to
Speaker 1: the system, It took some time to recalibrate, and ultimately people,
Speaker 1: you know, the system finds balance again. I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of that, but at a very accelerated
Speaker 1: pace with the Internet, social media and now twenty four
Speaker 1: seven networks and pretty soon Aya. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a bit about some of the
Speaker 2: adoption news that I read for ONDO, like connects us
Speaker 2: by JP Morgan using the Onto blockchain. Tell us a
Speaker 2: bit about that and maybe some other example of institutions
Speaker 2: using Onto.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this one kind of fits into the whole.
Speaker 1: How do I connect the on chain environment which happens
Speaker 1: twenty four seven to a tradi fy environment that normally
Speaker 1: does not operate twenty four seven. Now, luckily, JP Morgan
Speaker 1: has been ahead of the curve and realized a long
Speaker 1: time ago that they need to have a system that
Speaker 1: can operate twenty four seven, that is interoperable with public blockchains,
Speaker 1: so that you know, if someone wants to move their
Speaker 1: cash sitting in a JP Morgan account around, they can
Speaker 1: do that twenty four to seven. And that's essentially what
Speaker 1: the Connectionus platform is. It's a private ethereum blockchain that
Speaker 1: they've implemented years and years ago that can operate twenty
Speaker 1: four seven and where JP Morgan deposits can move around
Speaker 1: between their clients. We then had a collaboration with JP
Speaker 1: Morgan and chain Link as well, where Channeling provided the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to connect the Connectsus platform twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: JP Morgan platform through the Onto chain, where a lot
Speaker 1: of the real world assets live and where you can
Speaker 1: have an ecosystem of trading that can happen twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven, but like that connection between the two is
Speaker 1: what really needed to get built. So we partnered up
Speaker 1: with JP Morgan and Chaining to make that happen so
Speaker 1: that a transaction could occur where two investors that had
Speaker 1: an account at ONTO and had an account at JPM
Speaker 1: Morgan could transfer between themselves a tokenized treasury fund on
Speaker 1: the atochain, yet settle that transaction on the JP Morgan
Speaker 1: network with cash. So that was the pilot that we did,
Speaker 1: and the first time truly that you would have a
Speaker 1: public blockchain designed for RWAs really engage with the traditional
Speaker 1: banking environment that could operate twenty four to seven. And
Speaker 1: it's all about that connectivity between the on chain environment
Speaker 1: and the trad fi environment because as mentioned previously, tokenizing
Speaker 1: something's pretty easy. Got to learn how to deal with
Speaker 1: the liquidity mismatch, and these types of pilots really help
Speaker 1: tackle that liquidity mismatch that normally exists between trat fi
Speaker 1: and the blockchain world.
Speaker 2: That's pretty profound because it seems like the direction we're
Speaker 2: heading in is that to your point, building those bridges
Speaker 2: because some of these institutions like banks, they need their
Speaker 2: private blockchain networks internally to do to their things, which
Speaker 2: is fine, but they need to bridge their real world,
Speaker 2: and you're helping.
Speaker 1: To do that one hundred percent. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate typically and a lot of skepticisms towards private blockchains,
Speaker 1: which are very healthy. But I think it's because a
Speaker 1: lot of people look at a private blockchain say, well,
Speaker 1: you can't ever have DeFi on it, It's never really
Speaker 1: going to be a real blockchain, And that's true, but
Speaker 1: a private blockchain historically has been very helpful for a
Speaker 1: trat file to just upgrade their internal system so that
Speaker 1: they can work twenty four seven right. For that purpose,
Speaker 1: a private blockchain, it's great. Like we as an asset
Speaker 1: is sure. As a tokenization company, I love it when
Speaker 1: a trast fly has a private blockchain network because then
Speaker 1: I know their systems, or at least some of their
Speaker 1: systems can operate twenty four to seven, and that makes
Speaker 1: our lives significantly easier to tokenize an asset on a
Speaker 1: real public blockchain, which can then be integrated into DeFi tell.
Speaker 2: Us a bit about the bridge and the settlement and
Speaker 2: the communication. Is it like atomic settlement, Like how fast
Speaker 2: is that happening?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so not all block these chains aren't necessarily fully synchronized, right,
Speaker 1: So I think in the case of the JP Morgan pilot,
Speaker 1: all of this happened I believe, in thirty seconds, So
Speaker 1: it's not exactly atomic, but it's pretty close. And like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. For a crypto person, they're like, wow, you
Speaker 1: know on in one second, but for a trap fi
Speaker 1: that is like unbelievably. They're used to tepless one of
Speaker 1: two settlements. So JP Morgan was very very happy with
Speaker 1: that result.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely to your point, we as cryptoph I said,
Speaker 2: you get it right away. But that absolutely makes sense
Speaker 2: that these trat FI institutions, that's night and day for them.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure as with further iteration and fight tuning,
Speaker 2: it's going to get down to five seconds, two seconds
Speaker 2: for sure. That's amazing, really great stuff. There was also
Speaker 2: the Onto Finance MasterCard partnership recently or tell us a
Speaker 2: bit about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very similar actually in its intent. So we
Speaker 1: partner it up with with MasterCard to be integrated into
Speaker 1: the MasterCard Multi Tooken network. That one is essentially a
Speaker 1: network that can where banks can plug into and connect
Speaker 1: it into their own internal systems so that they can
Speaker 1: move deposits twenty four to seven. So again very similar
Speaker 1: to the Connections platform, but this one it's across various banks. Again,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of these pilots and agreements and partnerships
Speaker 1: is that we can connect into track fire rails that
Speaker 1: can operate twenty four to seven, so that when the
Speaker 1: trad Fi client wants to subscribe to our tokenized treasury
Speaker 1: assets that live on public blockchains, they can actually do
Speaker 1: so with cash in their bank account instead of a
Speaker 1: stable coin on chain and really pay us twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven subscribe to our products twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: with the trad five rails like that is a pretty
Speaker 1: meaningful innovation because there's a lot of institutions out there that,
Speaker 1: you know, if possible, they'd like to keep at least
Speaker 1: some cash where they've kept it for years and years
Speaker 1: and years, yet they still want to subscribe, you know,
Speaker 1: to our assets and mint them on public blockchains to
Speaker 1: do a wide variety of things with them. But the
Speaker 1: master Card Multi Tooken network kind of enables these particular
Speaker 1: institutional clients to stay on their trad Fi rails. It
Speaker 1: still have them operate twenty four seven.
Speaker 2: Amazing. It's a brave new world.
Speaker 1: Man. It is so fast. It's still happening quite fast.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I mean a lot of crypto people
Speaker 1: I think are impatient, rightfully so, because the pace of
Speaker 1: innovation in crypto is incredibly fast and furious. But at
Speaker 1: least the trad five standards, all this stuff is happening
Speaker 1: way faster than these guys are used to. And now
Speaker 1: with the tokenization of stock and ETFs and making that
Speaker 1: available to a global audience, like all of the building
Speaker 1: blocks right now are there were really meaningful innovation and
Speaker 1: how capital markets operate and how payments operates, obviously with
Speaker 1: stable coin, right so, it's going to be very very
Speaker 1: interesting to see how the next five years.
Speaker 2: We're speaking of the next five years and stable coins.
Speaker 2: The Genius Act pass huge for the industry, Clarity Act
Speaker 2: coming up this fall. Do you anticipate we're going to
Speaker 2: see this massive innovation boom because the market has clarity.
Speaker 2: No one has to look over their shoulder anymore.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. It's night and day for an institution
Speaker 1: right now. Because with a Genius Bill passing, everyone kind
Speaker 1: of looks at that and says, wait a minute, this
Speaker 1: Congress can actually get stuff passed, and digital ASTs is
Speaker 1: important enough to do it. I do think that the
Speaker 1: Clarity Act may be more impactful than the Genius Act
Speaker 1: quite frankly from a market structure perspective and what draft
Speaker 1: files are going to be able to do. But it's
Speaker 1: clear that this Congress can actually pass bills, and it's
Speaker 1: clear that digital assets is the priority for the ADMIN.
Speaker 1: And so with all of that in mind, all of
Speaker 1: these strat files truly are racing towards having a digital
Speaker 1: asset strategy and starting to implement it. Because crypto is
Speaker 1: also starting to be at a scale where it's very
Speaker 1: very hard to ignore. Right you're confronted with this ecosystem
Speaker 1: that keeps growing. Ta will coin TVL is now close
Speaker 1: to what three hundred billion token I Treasury is starting
Speaker 1: to accelerate almost at ten billion. There's now stocks and
Speaker 1: ETFs coming on chain. So a lot of these strat
Speaker 1: fis look at that and say, hmm, interesting, I guess
Speaker 1: I can't ignore it. Historically they had the excuse, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no clarity, regulatory compliance and the like, but that's
Speaker 1: pretty soon going to drop so there's real, real appetite
Speaker 1: and interest to move on chain. So that's why you know,
Speaker 1: companies like Onto are very excited in helping these strat
Speaker 1: fives move on chain because they often do need partners
Speaker 1: to do that. These strati files don't have the capabilities
Speaker 1: and skill set to do everything by themselves.
Speaker 2: I am so curious to see what innovations and things
Speaker 2: are built over the next five years. I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people are looking when number go up, right,
Speaker 2: but we try to get people like the number go
Speaker 2: up will follow the infrastruction, the building, and the adoption
Speaker 2: and building bringing billions of people on chain.
Speaker 1: For sure. I was I was talking recently with Joseph Shalom.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's gonna mind me saying this because
Speaker 1: he said it on a Twitter spaces it was public already,
Speaker 1: but he made the point. So Joseph would used to
Speaker 1: be the head of digital Assets at Blackrock. He's now
Speaker 1: the CEO of as BED, and he make the point about,
Speaker 1: as you know, putting his former Black Blackrock pat on
Speaker 1: as an asset manager. All of a sudden, you have
Speaker 1: assets now, stocks and the like that live on public
Speaker 1: blockchain rails where permissionless innovation is possible that has never
Speaker 1: ever happened before. Right as an asset manager, before you
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to design and structure products
Speaker 1: with these very old and clunky TRADFI rails. But now
Speaker 1: you've got all sorts of tick stacks that can operate
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven with a defied developer ecosystem of
Speaker 1: thousands that look at this stuff and say, hmm, what
Speaker 1: can I build? That's never happened before in the history
Speaker 1: of mankind. And so the level of innovation that you're
Speaker 1: going to see what people are going to be able
Speaker 1: to do for what passive investing looks like if you
Speaker 1: then throw in AI as well, I think truly what
Speaker 1: investing is and what you can do is going to
Speaker 1: change pretty dramatically over the next five years. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that mainstream adoption is going to arrive in the
Speaker 1: next five years, but a lot of interesting things will
Speaker 1: start to happen. And I think it's too meaningfully disrupt
Speaker 1: asset management, wealth management, brokerage, robo advisory, and just broader
Speaker 1: investing at a global scale in a way that has
Speaker 1: never happened before.
Speaker 2: It's exciting times, and we're gonna have to do our
Speaker 2: next interview in person. Man it joined the conversation a lot.
Speaker 2: I do have some wrap up questions here for you. First,
Speaker 2: if you could create your own metaverse, what would theme be?
Speaker 1: Oh? Boy, I used to be a very big gamer,
Speaker 1: so I'd have to go with one of the like
Speaker 1: original Command and Conquer games or something go old school
Speaker 1: that would be. That would be fun.
Speaker 2: Rapid fire questions.
Speaker 1: Favorite food. I'm Belgian, so I'd have to go with
Speaker 1: like most feats, favorite musician or band the Prodigy, favorite
Speaker 1: movie The Matrix, favorite book Atlas Shrugged. And when you're
Speaker 1: not working at ando, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: Oh I've got a family, two young kids, so they
Speaker 1: take a bullet all the time. I know how that is.
Speaker 2: I was a seven year old, so my our love,
Speaker 2: my wife and our allies would revolve around her.
Speaker 1: So there you go. I love it, Ian great stuff.
Speaker 2: Like I said, We've got to do the next one
Speaker 2: in person. But I really appreciate your thoughts and uh
Speaker 2: how this is a funny conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, love it. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me ton been a pleasure.