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Speaker 1: Hey, folks, we are recording at the Injective Policy Summit

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in DC and joining me is Joseph Shalom, who is

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the CEO of Sharplink. Joseph, good to see you.

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Speaker 2: Great to be with you again.

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Speaker 1: We've done in person interview in the past and there's

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lots happening around Sharplink, So excited to chat with you.

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Tell us about the latest with sharpling. What's new.

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Speaker 2: So for your viewers again, we're a digital asset treasury company.

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We raised several billion dollars to buy Ether and we

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make it really really productive. I think the two most

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interesting things over the past month is we were able

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to go back to the public markets and raise equity

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and actually go back to buying eth actually at a

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very good price, buying back some stock. And the second

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thing that is quite interesting is we've been along with

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Joe Lubin from Consensus and Tom Lee from bitmin, we've

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started supporting and investing into spinoffs in the theory of

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ecosystem and it's going to be really really positive for

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the new narrative and the new era of ethereum.

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Speaker 1: Joseph, there's been a lot of negativity around some things

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around the foundation, but overall, the ecosystem around etherorem continues

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to grow. There's more institutional adoption and much more. Do

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you think it's just symptoms of the bear market that

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you have that sentiment.

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Speaker 2: I actually think for the last year and a half

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or so, there's been a divergence from reality and sentiment.

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And the reality is, let's start with a really positive

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The reality is the Theeum ecosystem has over fifty percent

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of all stable coin volume, nearly sixty percent of tokenized

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real world assets, the vast majority of DeFi was built

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on Ethereum, and so if you look at the scoreboard,

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they're winning. The sentiment has been pretty negative, largely because

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of some i would say malaise in the industry, and

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the Theoreum Foundation, which has done an amazing job over

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the past decade or so, has taken the decision to subtract,

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to be smaller and to allow more ecosystem participants to

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support the roadmap, and that communication led to a lot

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of i would say, a lack of clarity and confidence

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in the ecosystem even when it was winning. So a

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number of us stood up as ecosystem stewards and large

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owners of eth and we're putting our money where our

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mouth is, and I'd love to share some of the

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things we've been doing as a collective industry.

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Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, So let's talk a bit about that. Let's

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double click into that. What are some many initiatives.

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Speaker 2: So let's start with a positive. Ethereum has the longest

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track record of any blockchain other than Bitcoin, never gone down,

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the most secure, the most trusted, with the most liquidity.

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It also has a multi year, very very aggressive roadmap

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to continue to scale. That said, their mantra and their

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approach is to go back to the basics. The Theoeum

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Foundation is going to focus on privacy, and they're going

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to focus on censorship, resistance and some of the core

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principles to make sure that Ethereum is credibly neutral for

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decades to come. But what that meant is some of

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the most critical talent and functions within the Theorem Foundation

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were spun out, and over the last three weeks or so,

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there have been three groups who've spun out of the

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Theorem Foundation who've gotten the support from Joe Lubin, myself,

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and Tom Lee from bitmin and they're actually really consequential

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for institutional adoption. And I'll tell you who they are.

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The first was eth Labs, you know, some of the

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strongest developers in the theorem ecosystem, building the scale that

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institutions require. The second was Ethereum Institutional. This is the

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front door, the go to market, the BD activity for Ethereum,

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spinning out of the foundation with our support, and just

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earlier this week, the three of US funded eth Labs,

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which is building the next generation of privacy and compliance

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on Ethereum, which is an absolute requirement for the largest

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institutions to transact but ensure their data is kept private.

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And while these sound like three distinct nodes in the ecosystem,

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these are the three most important things that are going

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to drive institutional adoption over the next year and years

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to come.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Joseph, it's fascinating because I see a lot of

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institutions they start with etherorem when they're ready to tokenize

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and delve into DeFi and much more, and then they

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eventually branch out to other chains, but it always starts

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with Ethereum. It's amazing.

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Speaker 2: It's because, as I said earlier, Etheroreum has the characteristics

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that institutions need. I don't know a lot for certain

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in life, But I spent twenty years at Blackrock, and

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I know for sure, before you move financial rails that

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are forty to fifty sixty years old, you want it

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to move to something that's trusted, always on, secure, with

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the most liquidity. And most importantly, people don't talk enough

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about decentralization. Blockchains that are truly decentralized means the rules

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cannot be changed once you make that decision. So the

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idea of having a fully distributed chain where no one

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person or no one treasury controls it is really important

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for institutionals when they're making a once in a generation

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shift in infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, Now, during the bear market, how has sharplink

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been able to add value to shareholders? Is staking defive

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protocols to generate that passive income so to speak?

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Speaker 2: Sure, just for the benefit of your viewers. Last summer,

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there were about six or seven Ethereum digital asset treasuries,

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probably five Solana treasuries that launched during the summer of

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digital asset treasuries last year, only a couple of us

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were able to raise billions of dollars and get exit velocity.

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Really to get scale, and you need scale in this

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industry when you're competing, and what we've been able to

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do is, first of all, use all that money to

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buy ether, and then from day one make it productive.

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Because ETH is a productive asset, you could stake it.

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You can get two and a half to three percent yield.

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We've been doing that and we've been making it even

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more productive than that benchmark. We've been participating in DeFi.

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We've announced a partnership and a fund with Galaxy, another

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public company, one hundred and twenty five million dollar fund

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to take our ETH and deploy it into new protocols

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to help them start and get what's called TVL or

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initial capital into their protocols. So we're making our ETH

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more productive than native staking. And then the final thing

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I'll say is when you start a business and three

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months in there is a consolidation period, a winter, a cycle,

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you really find out who is running their public company

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institutionally in those who are not. And we have not

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taken on debt, we've not issued preferred stock, we've not

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borrowed against our ETH. We decided during a winter is

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when you get a little bit conservative. And there's a

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couple all of us who've survived, who owns who owned

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billions of dollars of ETH, and that is how we've

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been protecting our investors. And I'll be honest with you,

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going through a winter has not been fun, but treating

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your investors with respect has actually been what's motivated us.

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And you know, after a winter comes a spring in

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a summer, and we're really well situated for when the

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market recovers, and we're starting to see recovery in ETH.

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Just since these recent announcements, eth has run up about

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twenty percent from it's low. So the short term picture

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has been challenged, the long, long term adoption story has

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never been more bullish.

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Speaker 1: That's really great to hear. And I love the fact

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that you guys are not raising debt because I believe

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that's a risk and it's kind of the emphasis of crypto.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I tip my hat to Michael's sailor

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for really inventing a new exposure vehicle for assets. You know,

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you can own a public company and you can get

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access to bitcoin. The challenge in the bitcoin space is

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that it's not natively productive, and the only way you

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can actually continue to accumulate and make your bitcoin productive

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is financializing your stock taking out convertible debt issuing prefs,

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and then you can get in a pickle where eventually

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you have to end up selling your reserve asset. And

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it's been challenging for the bitcoin community because, you know,

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the digital asset treasuries, including Michael Saylor, went from massive

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net buyers of bitcoin to now they're selling, and that's

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very difficult for short term price movement.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, Joseph, with your background at black Rock and tratfy,

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and you have a plethora of experience, what is your

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outlook on institutional adoption of this technology. It seems all

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these folks on Wall Street are looking to tokenize get

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involved with stable coins. DeFi do you see that trend

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continuing and jumping in all the way?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know. The tokenization space, whether you're

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talking about tokenizing dollars as a stable coin, tokenizing treasuries,

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or real world assets, it has been a phenomenon that's

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been around for almost eight to nine years, and so

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it's actually been going remarkably slowly to date because of

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a lack of regulatory clarity. I'd like to describe to

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your viewers in very simple terms, how these things work

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together and how together they compound on one another. You

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can think of stable coins as just being the dollar

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or value layer of the future of finance. You can

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think of tokenized assets being the asset exposure layer. DeFi

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is the execution layer. So if you have the money layer,

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the exposure layer, and the execution layer, you're off to

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the races and you're starting to see tokenization not just

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of new funds, you're seeing tokenization of existing multi billion

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dollar funds. You're seeing tokenization of stocks. And then one

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more layer, just to complicate it, is again you have

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the cash, the asset, the execution layer. AGENTIC will be

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the automation layer. And I think we're at the bottom

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of the first inning. We're looking for a little bit

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more regulatory clarity. But the institutions went from learning to

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experimenting to now going into production and now it's a

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race to not be left behind.

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Speaker 1: Do you feel that once the Clarity Act is passed,

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it'll give them the catalyst or the confidence excuse me

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to go more and innovate more and invest more.

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Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I think the Clarity Act is really

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important for two things. One is to make it clear

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that if you're a DeFi developer, you're a software provider,

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you're not responsible for the things being done on your software,

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But if you're holding the client's assets as a DeFi protocol,

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you're regulated and you're responsible for what happened. So like

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the future of DeFi will be brighter with the Clarity Act.

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I think the second thing is just sentimental momentum. Crypto

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is a very momentum driven and very narrative driven industry.

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It is if you get a little bit of tailwind,

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it goes a long way in crypto. And the third

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thing is if you're in a large institution and your

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leadership is interested in digital assets, having a stamp of

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good house keeping, seal of approval from the government gives

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you a lot more leeway to do things that you

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would have done slowly in a much quicker way. And

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I think, again, we're going to see a lot of

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momentum this summer, and I think we're going to get

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to a point where tokenization is going to become the

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norm rather than exception to the rule.

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Speaker 1: Not to get too much into weeds, because I know

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we don't have much time, but do you see there

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being any major challenges when you have some companies tokenizing

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but you still have the traditional markets in place. So,

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for example, you can have a tokenized version of a

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Tesla stock, but the traditional stock in the equity markets.

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Do you see any disparity there and problems that might

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arise there.

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Speaker 2: I think the biggest challenge is having different pools of liquidity,

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and for tokenization to be successful, we need to make

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sure that the digital version of a stock or a

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fund has as much trading depth AS's liquidity as the

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true additional analog version. So that to me is the

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biggest impediment. But anytime you have technology progress, you have

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analog and digital. You had slow speed trains and high

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speed trains existing on parallel rails. Eventually they become high speed.

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But I think the more important inflection point is going

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to be as follows. Imagine a world where your government

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declares a war in the Middle East on a Friday night.

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Speaker 1: It just happens, yes.

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Speaker 2: And you own an analog version of a stock in

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your portfolio, and you want to sell it. If you

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own the digital version, you can trade it twenty four

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by seven and express your view. You want to go

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long oil companies, great, You want to sell out consumer

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cyclicals great. At a certain point, fiduciaries who are making

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the decision to buy the analog version or the digital

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on chain version are almost going to have to buy

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and own the on chain version because it's tradable twenty

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four to seven, it's programmable, and it's in ste and

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least settleable. So you'll have to get to the point

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where a fiduciary says to themselves, I can't own the

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slow analog version because over the weekend, I can't express

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my view. So it's going to be a tipping point

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at some point, and I think that's a couple of

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years away.

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Speaker 1: That's such a great point because also holidays, right, and

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with the markets heading towards twenty four to seven, you're

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almost you're at a disadvantage if you're in the analog version.

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You've got to get to this tokenized digital version.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but you need liquidity to tip back in the

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favor of the liquid version, because that's important too.

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Speaker 1: Well. I guess that's why it makes sense that the

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stock exchanges, the major institutions, the banks, they're all headed

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in the same direction to twenty four seven markets.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, NASDAK New York Stock Exchange are going either twenty

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three hours a day, seven days a week or twenty

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four hours, and you would have seen just this week,

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just yesterday, the DTCC, which processes and clears and settles

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I think four quadrillion transactions a year US launched an

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ability to tokenize collateral on chain. So I think it's

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very exciting. You're seeing announcements every day that are becoming

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so routine. They would have moved the markets three or

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four years ago.

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Speaker 1: And this is when you know you have momentum, absolutely,

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and it feels the acid classes maturing. We're entering a

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new level of adoption. It's pretty incredible. Final items, what's

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on your role map that you can share?

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Speaker 2: Sure, I think the most important thing right now for

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what Sharplink is doing, beyond accumulating ETH and making it

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productive and we've been the most productive DAT with our ETH,

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is stepping up to do something that we never anticipated

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we need to do, which is to become ecosystem stewards

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and not just mouthpieces, but put your money into new capabilities,

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spinouts from the Ethereum Foundation and basically help the go

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to market for Ethereum. And it's very interesting. I get

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the question of you know, whose interest is this in well,

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it's in the interest of my shareholders. It's fully aligned.

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So the idea that we're going to help Ethereum win,

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whether it's the Layer one or the Layer two's and

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tell the story about why ether the token is going

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to become the in demand settlement and trust commodity, is

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actually in the interest of my investors. So we're going

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to lean into this along with our ecosystem partners and

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try to be very good stewards. What we're not going

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to do is get involved in the core protocol that's

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fully decentralized. We're not going to get involved in the

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management of Ethereum, but we are going to get involved

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in funding the talent and funding the go to market capabilities,

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and that's in our investors' long term interest.

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Speaker 1: Love it, great stuff, Joseph. Always a pleasure, and I

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look forward to our next interview and the future updates

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around Sharplink.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Tony. We've been in two cities.

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I look forward next time to be in another city.

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Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Fortis X. Guys,

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Let's be honest, the crypto market has been moving sideways

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for a while now. A lot of people are just

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sitting on their coins waiting for the next big move.

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But while you're waiting, your crypto is just sitting in

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your wallet doing absolutely nothing. That's why I want to

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mention one of my longtime partners, Fortax. Instead of just

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letting your assets sit idle, you can put supported cryptocurrencies

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into fortestx liquidity pools and earn daily rewards while still

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keeping the flexibility to withdraw whenever you want. One of

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the reasons I've continued working with them is because they

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keep delivering. The team is public, they've successfully completed Cyberscope,

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has been building consistently for years. They focused on long

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term growth, transparency, and security rather than hype. In a

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market like this, it makes far more sense to have

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your crypto working for you instead of letting it sit

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idle in your wallet. I've worked with fortest x for

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a long time, and if you're planning to hold your

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crypt anyway, I genuinely think it's one of the smartest

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ways to put those assets to work. And folks, I

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know security is very important to all of us as

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we hold our crypto assets, and they are fully audited

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by certik and they are SEC registered and much more so.

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You got to check out for X go to fortx

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dot fi slash x slash thinking crypto link will be

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in the description. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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Please hit the like button subscribe if you haven't as yet.

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Thank you so much