Speaker 1: We originally talked about that vision with colored coins in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve of real world assets moving on chain really
Speaker 1: required that policy change, and now it's happening, and now
Speaker 1: is basically when things get rial right with real world
Speaker 1: assets on chain.
Speaker 2: Do you envision that we're going to need the support
Speaker 2: of AI agents when we're sleeping to manage our portfolio.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that retail investors can become significantly
Speaker 1: more successful investors using AI and using AI agents that
Speaker 1: operate easily over those APIs.
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Speaker 2: Hey folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your
Speaker 2: host Tony Edward and joining me today's Yoni Asia, who
Speaker 2: is the co founder and CEO of e Toro. Yoni,
Speaker 2: it is great to have you back on. Thank you
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 1: Yoni.
Speaker 2: Really excited to dive into the latest with e Toro.
Speaker 2: Just a few months back, e Toro went public listing
Speaker 2: on the Nasdaq, and you've made a lot of progress
Speaker 2: with developments in news services and solutions. Maybe we can
Speaker 2: kick it off with it Toro's IPO. What led up
Speaker 2: to that and what does it mean for the company.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we've been building e Toro since two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, always with a vision of opening the
Speaker 1: global markets capital markets for everyone to trade and invest
Speaker 1: in a simple and transparent way. I've always known that
Speaker 1: at some point Etro will become a part of public markets,
Speaker 1: will become a public company, and we definitely felt that
Speaker 1: after an amazing record year in twenty twenty four, this
Speaker 1: is the time for us to become public and to
Speaker 1: stage basically our plans for the next stage of growth
Speaker 1: for Etro as a public company. It's definitely been one
Speaker 1: of the most exciting journeys I've ever been to. I
Speaker 1: think last time we spoke, just after the Warren Buffet dinner,
Speaker 1: I told you about like the three bigg Aha moments
Speaker 1: I had in my life. One of them was, obviously
Speaker 1: the first time I saw the Internet, the second was
Speaker 1: the first time I traded stock, and the third was
Speaker 1: looking at crypto and bitcoins specifically understanding how blockchain technology
Speaker 1: eventually replaces everything in the financial services industry and everything
Speaker 1: becomes digital. And no doubt that being in this process
Speaker 1: of the IPO process and meeting investors who manage more
Speaker 1: than thirty trillion dollars, which is mind blowing, like the
Speaker 1: size and scale of US capital markets and how you
Speaker 1: meet investors from all around the world is definitely another
Speaker 1: one of those amazing moments where you come out a
Speaker 1: bit of a different person understanding how the markets work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and congrats on all the success and the growth.
Speaker 2: It's just exciting. And Yoni, you know, you and I
Speaker 2: have spoken over the years, and over the past four years,
Speaker 2: I couldn't even imagine crypto companies doing IPOs, you know,
Speaker 2: because there was so much aggression against the industry. What
Speaker 2: are your thoughts on how the environment has changed, and
Speaker 2: obviously that has benefited you going public and much more so.
Speaker 1: It's definitely been an amazing, you know process to see
Speaker 1: how much the US administration and SEC administration really shifted
Speaker 1: from negative sentiment in crypto markets to an extremely positive sentiment.
Speaker 1: I've never would imagined five years ago to see your
Speaker 1: US President talking about crypto NonStop and administration where the
Speaker 1: cryptos are in it. SEC chairman Paul Atkins revealing crypto projects,
Speaker 1: saying America is going to be the front and center
Speaker 1: of crypto market. So I think it's definitely amazing to
Speaker 1: see how US and US public policy have really adopted
Speaker 1: the crypto mindset, the fact that capital markets are being digitizer,
Speaker 1: being tokenized, and have brought that into the front and
Speaker 1: center of policy. And that's definitely a very big difference
Speaker 1: from where it was and by the way we were
Speaker 1: regulated at ICTURO. Today still our biggest market is Europe,
Speaker 1: which has now NIKA, which is a Pan European a
Speaker 1: digital asset regulation. We have the UK, which has been
Speaker 1: relatively early into crypto, the FC the regulator there with licenses,
Speaker 1: also in Australia, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and of course the US.
Speaker 1: So it's really amazing to see how their shift globally
Speaker 1: moved from where it was, you know, five and ten
Speaker 1: years ago very anti crypto. Banks are very anti crypto
Speaker 1: ten years ago, five years ago, gradually adopting talking about
Speaker 1: it to where we are today. Every single financial institution
Speaker 1: in the world, every single bank, central bank has their
Speaker 1: blockchain strategy, their digital asset strategy. The largest financial services
Speaker 1: or asset managers in the world, including partners of ours
Speaker 1: and smart portfolios like Franklin Templeton, like Blackrock, like Fidelity,
Speaker 1: are launching their own tokenized assets. So it's quite amazing
Speaker 1: to see that vision where we originally talked about that
Speaker 1: vision with colored coins in twenty twelve, of real world
Speaker 1: assets moving on chain really required that policy change, and
Speaker 1: now it's happening, and now is basically when things get
Speaker 1: real right with real world assets on chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, what an amazing change, and it seems
Speaker 2: everyone is recognizing the benefits and potential of this technology.
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned tokenization of markets and much more. E
Speaker 2: Toro has been leading the charge doing a lot there.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your plans for tokenizing assets such as stocks.
Speaker 1: So generally we were very early into the concept of
Speaker 1: how do you tokenize real world assets? Were the colored
Speaker 1: coins protocol actually with vitallic put are in The founder
Speaker 1: of ethere in two twelve and ever since have been
Speaker 1: very involved in this space. It's amazing to see, I say,
Speaker 1: obviously the most famous large tokenized assets being stable coins
Speaker 1: or the USDC and USDT stable coins, which have emerged.
Speaker 1: We started tokenizing assets in twenty nineteen and then continuously
Speaker 1: now started expending it. The biggest challenge has always been
Speaker 1: one regulation and the other part is liquidity. So if
Speaker 1: you think of the sort of aha moment when starting
Speaker 1: to use bitcoin, it's really about the fact that this
Speaker 1: asset is potentially self custodied, whether it self is an
Speaker 1: individual or firm, right, so you can own the actual
Speaker 1: asset yourself, and it's twenty four seven transferable, which also
Speaker 1: means it's tradable twenty four to seven, and I think
Speaker 1: that coming to financial markets, meaning of ventually all markets
Speaker 1: become twenty four to seven. And we are already seeing
Speaker 1: that shift in stocks, with many stocks moving from just
Speaker 1: nine hours a day to suddenly twenty four hour a
Speaker 1: day trading. That shift has come also in futures, which
Speaker 1: we recently launched, which are twenty three hours a day,
Speaker 1: five days a week. I think that transition where assets
Speaker 1: become digital, movable on chain without a dependency necessarily on
Speaker 1: a centralized entity being open at that time is the
Speaker 1: future of all assets, from bonds to real estate. And
Speaker 1: I think now we're starting to see just again very
Speaker 1: early days of tokenizing real world assets and enabling global
Speaker 1: access into the global markets in the form of digital assets.
Speaker 1: And again super interesting to see how front and center
Speaker 1: that is for now US policy talking about taking capital
Speaker 1: market it's on chain, and I do believe and we
Speaker 1: are already seeing many other market participants that are very
Speaker 1: keen to see how this creates more liquidity, more opportunity,
Speaker 1: more capital for formation opportunities across different industries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well said, And you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things I've been thinking about is the tokenization of these
Speaker 2: assets gives a lot of people around the world who
Speaker 2: didn't have access to financial services and being able to
Speaker 2: invest and make their lives better. Right, even if they're
Speaker 2: just buying a handful of token ied stocks. They don't
Speaker 2: have to be millionaires. But maybe you're in some country
Speaker 2: in Africa or Latin America, any want to buy some
Speaker 2: Tesla stock, maybe to buy two tokenized versions of it.
Speaker 2: That is the access they never had before, and they
Speaker 2: can benefit from the appreciation of those stocks.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent of Again, our view has always been
Speaker 1: to help people get educated about the markets. I think
Speaker 1: you know, everything around the crypto is also connected to inflation,
Speaker 1: to people talking about inflation and money printing. Understanding the
Speaker 1: value again of bitcoin specifically as a hedge against inflation,
Speaker 1: relates also directly to owning stocks and capital markets. And
Speaker 1: I think the four hundred million research people using digital
Speaker 1: assets or crypto assets will now shift into those individuals
Speaker 1: will relearn how to invest in trading crypto assets into
Speaker 1: also capital markets.
Speaker 2: And then do you envision that there's also the DeFi
Speaker 2: component that if I can own these tokenized versions of
Speaker 2: these stocks, I can probably put into some lending program
Speaker 2: earned yield if that's available along with stable coins and
Speaker 2: other crypto acids a hundred percent.
Speaker 1: So the big advantage of i'd say the last five
Speaker 1: years is if you look at sort of the crypto
Speaker 1: asset technology DeFi technology, I've always said it's like an
Speaker 1: island filled with engineers that are constantly like building technology solutions,
Speaker 1: but can connect to like the real world, where the
Speaker 1: vast majority of assets physical assets, real assets are. The
Speaker 1: beautiful thing is if you look at a lot of
Speaker 1: the DeFi projects, everything around lending, collateral, everything around things
Speaker 1: like flash loans, which are you know, mind blowing, don't
Speaker 1: exist in the wural world of multi party smart contracts,
Speaker 1: which again are extremely hard to do between financial institutions.
Speaker 1: When all of that get unlocked in financial services, in
Speaker 1: connecting financial services entities and companies and people around the world,
Speaker 1: I believe that unlocks a lot of innovation that for
Speaker 1: some extent it's hard for us to imagine. But if
Speaker 1: you just think of the simple, like big benefit of
Speaker 1: smart contracts. Within a smart contract, you define the contract
Speaker 1: as code, then you have multi you know a lot
Speaker 1: of different individuals, whether it's user or companies, and then
Speaker 1: access to that con If you compare that to how
Speaker 1: traditional financial services work, it's like us as a company
Speaker 1: Toro with Goldman Zacs or black Rock or another participant.
Speaker 1: Each of us need to have a contract between ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to create innovation that basically pens around
Speaker 1: multiple participants, and I think again we're very early stages
Speaker 1: of that. We've seen a lot of that technology evolve
Speaker 1: in the crypto space. The benefits of those technologies coming
Speaker 1: into basically mass retail usage are again very exciting.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned Goldman Sachs and some of these
Speaker 2: traditional institutions. You know, with the emergence of the Internet
Speaker 2: around the globe, people having smartphones being able to trade
Speaker 2: on e Toro or other apps. Right, do you see
Speaker 2: in the future we're less dependent on investment banks like
Speaker 2: a Goldman Sachs because we have to token ize version
Speaker 2: of these assets. The markets are opened up and I
Speaker 2: could just do it from my phone. I have more
Speaker 2: education because I'm learning from brands and companies like e Toro,
Speaker 2: but also the wealth of information on the Internet that
Speaker 2: trad file is kind of losing some of their market
Speaker 2: share or power, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So obviously I believe in what ITRO does, which is
Speaker 1: direct to consumer. And there's no doubt that you know,
Speaker 1: direct to consumer technologies if you just think about the
Speaker 1: Internet and companies like Google and Apple have grown significantly
Speaker 1: bigger than just sort of B to B companies or
Speaker 1: a lot where you have a lot of intermediaries. I
Speaker 1: have no doubt that our generation and again this is
Speaker 1: generational shift. And if you look at this generational shift,
Speaker 1: you can sort of split into two front in the
Speaker 1: mechan On the front end, you have what will become
Speaker 1: in the next twenty five years the wealthiest cohort of
Speaker 1: individuals on the planet. Younger generations gen Y is going
Speaker 1: to roughly have eighty more trillion dollars in the US alone,
Speaker 1: sixty trillion additional dollars in US and Europe, so that's
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty trillion dollars moving from older generations
Speaker 1: to younger generations. Where our generations gen Y really expects
Speaker 1: to access technology through their mobile phone. It's it's going
Speaker 1: to be your AI glasses, but it's technology first, product
Speaker 1: first approach where people expect to basically interact with whoever
Speaker 1: provides them financial services across different verticals, whether it's money transfers,
Speaker 1: whether it's trading and investing, with constant focus on how
Speaker 1: can I use the latest technology, any tous case to
Speaker 1: help make me a better, more successful investor. So on
Speaker 1: the front end, we're moving to where my father used
Speaker 1: to tell me that, you know, a financial product is
Speaker 1: a hedge fund or an ETF, basically a list tread
Speaker 1: fi product, usually denominated in a local currency, the local
Speaker 1: exchange to asking jen y what's the financial products and
Speaker 1: they would say any Toro app or basically nick app
Speaker 1: on their phone. That's happening on the front end. Then
Speaker 1: on the back end, that's where blockchain technology transforms from
Speaker 1: being dependent on basically local financial institutions. So if you
Speaker 1: think you know the world, it's still extremely fragmented. Every
Speaker 1: country has their own financial institutions. We operate in seventy
Speaker 1: five countries and it's quite amazing you go into almost
Speaker 1: each of those countries. Because I've been doing this for
Speaker 1: eighteen years, I can name you where the brokers, banks
Speaker 1: and insurance companies in France and Metally and Spain in
Speaker 1: the UK and Australia and Singapore in the US very
Speaker 1: different companies. Because again financial services has grown from being
Speaker 1: basically a local industry on the B to B side
Speaker 1: a global industry, but still all of the consumer company
Speaker 1: are very much still hyper local. When you think of
Speaker 1: blockchain unlock basically access to all of those markets twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven, so a lot of new technologies on
Speaker 1: the beck and transforming the entire financial services paradigm. That's another. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's by the way, the same one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty trillion dollars who are going in my view to
Speaker 1: move on chain, right, So you have one is those
Speaker 1: assets are going to move from older generations to younger
Speaker 1: generations which have a very different user experience expectations from
Speaker 1: the firms constantly providing them with the most advanced technology.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, you have those assets that
Speaker 1: are moving from our cake by the way, in some
Speaker 1: cases cobol systems and banks that were written in the
Speaker 1: eighties of the nineties moving to twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: blockchain based technologies, and those basically two very very big
Speaker 1: paradigm shifts are going to transform everything around finance in
Speaker 1: my view, to the better.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and with the move to twenty four to seven
Speaker 2: markets and access to all these new assets because they're
Speaker 2: being tokenized. Do you envision that we're going to need
Speaker 2: the support of AI AI agents when we're sleeping to
Speaker 2: manage our portfolio? So a two part question, will the
Speaker 2: envision AI being part of it? And is Etra looking
Speaker 2: to leverage that technology as well?
Speaker 1: So one, we're already leveraging that technology. So we recently
Speaker 1: announced a two very big AI projects that in my view,
Speaker 1: are going to be extremely significant for Etro's growth and
Speaker 1: also what becomes the user experience in an AI world.
Speaker 1: So I do think these are definitely the two biggest
Speaker 1: technologies happening right now. AI and smart contracts, and the
Speaker 1: relationship between the fact that AI agents can actually interact
Speaker 1: both viapis as well as via a ricly smart contracts,
Speaker 1: and we launched is one an AI analyst story enables
Speaker 1: all of our customers to actually interact through chat to
Speaker 1: basically look and understand what other people are doing on
Speaker 1: the platform. To immediately after earnings, ask the analysts to
Speaker 1: compare what's happened right now in earnings, how does that
Speaker 1: impact my personal portfolio, what's happening in the markets, how
Speaker 1: does that impact my portfolio? Or to other people like
Speaker 1: me are doing? Me can do all that through chat
Speaker 1: and on the back end, we're opening APIs for all
Speaker 1: of our pro investors to actually build apps with vibe coding.
Speaker 1: So think about the difference of I've been passionate about
Speaker 1: building algorithmic systems since I was about I think thirteen
Speaker 1: I started to trade. Sixteen I already wrote my first
Speaker 1: program trying to basically build algorithmic trading for me, which
Speaker 1: was a very very big project. And over time what
Speaker 1: you see is the ability and how fast you can
Speaker 1: actually launch a quantitative strategy, an agent that looks at
Speaker 1: your portfolio, that looks at what's happening in the world
Speaker 1: in real time, that's able to adjust to what's happening
Speaker 1: in the world twenty four to seven. Maybe another agent
Speaker 1: which is your chief risk officer who's managing the risk
Speaker 1: parameters of your portfolio. I have no doubt that retail
Speaker 1: investors can become significantly more successful investors using AI and
Speaker 1: using AI agents that operate easily over those APIs. We're
Speaker 1: opening that world now on top of obviously real world
Speaker 1: assets stocks on etoral from twenty two different capital markets,
Speaker 1: and obviously that connects directly to our Toro Proper Investor program.
Speaker 1: So when our most sophisticated investors are starting to use
Speaker 1: those APIs and tools, the rest of our customers can
Speaker 1: actually copy them on our platform very easily, basically gaining
Speaker 1: that alpha themselves as well.
Speaker 2: That's great. I love that. And you know, the AI
Speaker 2: agents can really help people who are new to this
Speaker 2: stuff to hold their hands right and educate them. And
Speaker 2: I love that you can also, you know, mimic the
Speaker 2: top traders and investors. I really love that. That's a
Speaker 2: great concept. One of the things I read recently is
Speaker 2: that you're expanding your crypto assets that you offer to
Speaker 2: users in the US. Talk to us a bit about that.
Speaker 2: I believe it's going from three to over one hundred.
Speaker 1: So we always support more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: crypto assets worldwide, constantly adding more and more crypto assets
Speaker 1: to global offering, and with a shift of policy in
Speaker 1: the US and more clarity in the US about the
Speaker 1: ability to trade crypto under obviously the right rigid environment
Speaker 1: and the right listing requirements as well as taking we
Speaker 1: do see now better clarity and more positive clarity and
Speaker 1: the ability to launch more crypto assets. And as they said,
Speaker 1: we already support one hundred crypto assets, and we do
Speaker 1: plend to continuously now expand basically more and more assets
Speaker 1: on nitauros only Toro. We're constantly looking not only at
Speaker 1: let's say, more crypto assets, but we add futures trading,
Speaker 1: twenty four or five trading, starting to look at tokenized
Speaker 1: stocks trading, as well as options trading. So continuously expanding
Speaker 1: the universe to find opportunities eventually for people to trade
Speaker 1: and invest in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. I love there is more options. And
Speaker 2: obviously to your point, the US being more friendlier to
Speaker 2: crypto definitely helps.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things on the note of being friendlier,
Speaker 2: the Clarity Act, the Market Structure bill is set to
Speaker 2: potentially pass this fall, the Senate pushing it through and
Speaker 2: it goes to President Trump for signatures. What impact do
Speaker 2: you think that bill will have because it you know,
Speaker 2: has the meat and potatoes tokenization, DeFi all the different things.
Speaker 2: What's the security, what's not? What impact would that have
Speaker 2: on you business? And you know, your your growth here
Speaker 2: in the United States.
Speaker 1: So I think the biggest again in Europe. Europe. Actually,
Speaker 1: if there's one thing, Europe is very good at this
Speaker 1: regulation and what it has been able to do is
Speaker 1: create a very significant build of MICA, which basically covers
Speaker 1: stable coins to organization trading in crypto assets. So we've
Speaker 1: been actually very much involved in that. We've go to
Speaker 1: licenses this year across crypto assets after a lot of
Speaker 1: work with regulators across the globe to really understand the
Speaker 1: risks and benefits of crypto assets and digital assets. And
Speaker 1: I do believe US being by far the largest capital
Speaker 1: markets in the world now adopting better regulations and have
Speaker 1: more clarity will bring in just more liquidity into the markets.
Speaker 1: And more liquidity into the markets means more assets in
Speaker 1: the market that are more liquid potentially and eventually twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. So I think this is definitely the
Speaker 1: steps in the right direction to again foster innovation and
Speaker 1: enable companies to succeed in a more clear way both
Speaker 1: in the US and outside the US.
Speaker 2: And on the other side of the token, you have
Speaker 2: the Genius Act that was passing to law. That's a
Speaker 2: stable cooin bill. Of course, do you expect a stable
Speaker 2: coin innovation explosion, is etal looking at launching its own
Speaker 2: stable coin or will you be using stable coins already
Speaker 2: in the market.
Speaker 1: So we are using stable coins. As we are expending
Speaker 1: more the ability of our users to actually convert crypto
Speaker 1: that they bring in from other exchanges into etro, so
Speaker 1: it is something we're opening more and more the total
Speaker 1: platform to be able to actually not only trade crypto
Speaker 1: and trade stocks, but actually bring in your crypto and
Speaker 1: trade stocks from your crypto directly. It's definitely a place
Speaker 1: where I do believe the fact that there's better clarity
Speaker 1: on regulation helps more people actually expand from crypto or
Speaker 1: diversify it from crypto into the stock markets. We haven't
Speaker 1: thought on us basically launching our own stable coin. I'd
Speaker 1: say never say never, but again definitely that unification. I
Speaker 1: think what's happening really is unifying the world eventually. People
Speaker 1: right now when they look at it Toro and they
Speaker 1: look at our customers three and a half million customers,
Speaker 1: who then of Q two add seventeen and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollars of assets, you actually see almost every quarter
Speaker 1: our customers have the same amount of stocks and crypto
Speaker 1: in their accounts, which is very unique because if you
Speaker 1: look at traditional brokers, even if they have added crypto,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a very small part of their
Speaker 1: assets and e towards roughly fifty to fifty between crypto
Speaker 1: and crypto assets and the stock markets for the past
Speaker 1: four or five years. And I think what's gradually happening
Speaker 1: again is that concept of digital assets, which is the
Speaker 1: unification between capital markets and existing real world assets in
Speaker 1: crypto assets, which is the technology of blockchain right now
Speaker 1: powering mostly crypto assets, and that unification in the middle
Speaker 1: eventually will be in my view, bigger than the two
Speaker 1: parts separated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, put in I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 2: this lately. With the convergence right, like you mentioned traditional
Speaker 2: markets and the crypto markets and everything going on blockchain rails.
Speaker 2: You have stable coins which will power your payments, smart
Speaker 2: contracts which can power our contracts or agreements and insurance
Speaker 2: policies whatever it may be. And then the tokenization of
Speaker 2: assets real estate stocks. It's amazing the world powered on
Speaker 2: blocked or running on blockchain rails.
Speaker 1: It's again the opportunities or mind blowing every innovation that
Speaker 1: has been sort of coming into effect on traditional tread
Speaker 1: fireworld becomes sort of more interesting when you think of
Speaker 1: blockchain assets, whether it's tachonization and fractionalization of assets. So
Speaker 1: we've been I think one of the first brokers worldwide
Speaker 1: actually offering people to buy fractional shares across now more
Speaker 1: than twenty different capital markets. Think about fractional ownership of
Speaker 1: real estate, think about democratizing quantitative trading, which is something
Speaker 1: we're doing now in ne Toro, to quantitative more bond trading,
Speaker 1: or access to private markets. So again, when you think
Speaker 1: of those technologies of fractional global twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: transferable assets, I think those opportunities will create a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities of capital formation as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things we've been seeing recently,
Speaker 2: excuse me, is the trend of digital asset treasury companies.
Speaker 2: A lot of companies buying crypto assets, putting it on
Speaker 2: their balance sheet, and there's that, you know, the nav
Speaker 2: aspect of you know, increasing their stock value and much more.
Speaker 2: And this seems to be a global movement recently, Ethereum specifically,
Speaker 2: it has been getting a lot of adoption. What are
Speaker 2: your thoughts on what's happening there in this new avenue
Speaker 2: so to speak of people buying assets crypto acids.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think it makes sense for
Speaker 1: companies to buy crypto. You to the treasury or obviously
Speaker 1: from the Toro's point of view, part of our business
Speaker 1: trading in crypto. We were actually probably one of the
Speaker 1: first companies to have a significant crypto treasury. We used
Speaker 1: to have in two thousand and I think twelve thirteen
Speaker 1: we bought about three thousand bitcoins. We had treasury for
Speaker 1: a while, but eventually sort of that became working capital
Speaker 1: in ititro to actually fuel the growth of our crypto
Speaker 1: business that significantly scale in two thousand and seventeen and
Speaker 1: then later on in the bull run of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. So I think, you know, owning or
Speaker 1: diversifying your treasury or diversifying your balance sheet always makes
Speaker 1: sense to against significantly large public companies. Regarding sort of
Speaker 1: the specific companies that are only treasury companies, I think
Speaker 1: again you can't really argue necessarily with what I would
Speaker 1: say is significant success of micro Strategy building I think
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred billion dollar market cap of that specific treasury.
Speaker 1: I do believe in bitcoin as an asset class as
Speaker 1: a hedge against inflation, and what micro Strategy or today's
Speaker 1: strategy did is that they made access to those markets
Speaker 1: in a simpler way to different type of investors, whether
Speaker 1: it's investors who are looking to invest in it, or
Speaker 1: convertible debt or just equity markets. That was prior to
Speaker 1: the ETFs. Right now we also have the entire ETF
Speaker 1: industry and crypto, which is quite significant. I would say
Speaker 1: that there are risks or even more significant systematic risks
Speaker 1: when you think of usage of leverage in some of
Speaker 1: those entities. Though I would definitely say that there's sense
Speaker 1: in leveraging crypto, there's also a lot of risk in
Speaker 1: leveraging crypto when too many people jump on basically leveraged
Speaker 1: crypto ships. My concern is that in a de leveraging scenario,
Speaker 1: and usually what happens is when markets contract and markets correct.
Speaker 1: And I've been in capital markets now for thirty years,
Speaker 1: so every time you see capital markets contract and correct,
Speaker 1: a lot of times leverage comes out very fast. When
Speaker 1: we think of the entire sort of a digital treasury
Speaker 1: public companies space, you need to understand the leverage of
Speaker 1: those companies. You need to really understand what happens in
Speaker 1: a significant market correction. And remember that you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: markets as much as they go up, when they correct,
Speaker 1: it's usually a faster correction. We've seen this a couple
Speaker 1: of times with crypto, whether it's eighteen nineteen correction or
Speaker 1: relatively recently twenty twenty two correction, and just people need
Speaker 1: to remember lit it goes both sides. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people still remember the Gray Scale Fund,
Speaker 1: which was actually at a significant discount to its now
Speaker 1: for a while. So again, premium and discounts announce is
Speaker 1: something that is seen in the markets, and now that
Speaker 1: there are more and more companies, I think those companies
Speaker 1: need to make sure people understand the risks of basically
Speaker 1: leveraging crypto and maybe a bit more conservative I like
Speaker 1: owning my own vehicle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in total agreement with you. One indred percent,
Speaker 2: I believe. I tell people like, look, I don't hold
Speaker 2: any micro Strategy stock or any others. I just hold
Speaker 2: the acid bigcoin in the theorem. And in addition, you know,
Speaker 2: to your point of leverage. You know, I often told
Speaker 2: talk to people about it. If you take some of
Speaker 2: the cash on your balance sheet and you buy some
Speaker 2: baitcoorinn or eat, I don't think there's a big deal
Speaker 2: with that. Maybe take twenty five percent of your cash.
Speaker 2: But then if you go raise billions of dollars to
Speaker 2: go buy an acid and put yourself in debt, and
Speaker 2: that's that's the risk has increased one hundredfold.
Speaker 1: I think there's definitely you know, as this expends more
Speaker 1: and more, there's systematic risk here. But also they're very
Speaker 1: smart players in the ecosystem. They just make sure they
Speaker 1: manage that risk. And customers need to be aware of
Speaker 1: the risks of you know, high volatility and leverage. That's
Speaker 1: always true, whether it's traditional capital markets or crypto markets.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, you know, YOI I don't want to put
Speaker 2: this on the air, but I have a my gut
Speaker 2: is telling me there's like a dot com bubble two
Speaker 2: point zero forming here. Not that the underlying technology anything
Speaker 2: wrong with it. It's gonna it's here to stay. But
Speaker 2: humans are speculative beings and we can't help ourselves, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna run the leverage up, and then there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a flush out like you were saying, and then
Speaker 2: a reset. Of course, I feel like that's what's coming.
Speaker 1: So I think again, I've sort of I always say, like,
Speaker 1: my my story of falling in love in capital markets
Speaker 1: is the dot com bubble, and my biggest learnings of
Speaker 1: capital markets is the good dot com bubble burst. So
Speaker 1: that's the nature of the markets. The markets go from
Speaker 1: being sort of irrational exuberant to irrational bearish. When it's
Speaker 1: irrational bearish, there's a lot of value opportunities. We definitely
Speaker 1: saw the saprils just not long ago where the markets
Speaker 1: reacted in my view but irrationally to tariffs. Everything fell
Speaker 1: sort of you know, twenty thirty forty percent. You can
Speaker 1: actually look at my public portfolio. I just bought that week.
Speaker 1: I think Google and Nvidia and Tesla after they felt
Speaker 1: like thirty fifty percent from all times high. So the
Speaker 1: I think a part of the markets is cycles. I
Speaker 1: think in public markets we've seen not long ago in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So following twenty twenty one, we've seen
Speaker 1: one of the most bearish years. We used to call
Speaker 1: this inn ey Toro the year of Education, where everybody
Speaker 1: sort of were educated about the fact that we went
Speaker 1: up ten times can actually go down ninety five percent
Speaker 1: at the same reason, sometimes faster, And we saw that
Speaker 1: sort of bear sentiment. A lot of retail investors, by
Speaker 1: the way, with the Toro actually stayed and huddled both
Speaker 1: their crypto assets and their stocks. So I think retail
Speaker 1: investors Act of twenty twenty five have already learned sort
Speaker 1: of the worst time or bad times of the markets
Speaker 1: during twenty twenty two, both in crypto markets and capital markets,
Speaker 1: and the best way to avoid a significant sort of
Speaker 1: drop in your portfolio diversify your portfolio. We believe that
Speaker 1: customers should diversify both between stocks, different industries, value investing,
Speaker 1: growth investing, tech investing, crypto investing, understand the different risks
Speaker 1: and understand the correlation between the different assets in your portfolio.
Speaker 1: I think I probably have as an investor one of
Speaker 1: the most diversified portfolios as a person. I'm copying about
Speaker 1: forty different smart portfolios in ETRO which are managed by
Speaker 1: our chief investment office. I'm investing and copying about ninety
Speaker 1: different strategies of different proper investors on e Toro, and
Speaker 1: I think I own about another like eighty different stocks
Speaker 1: and to access in my portfolios an extremely diversified portfolio.
Speaker 1: And again that's my view, diversification eventually enables you to
Speaker 1: weather sort of bad times in the markets, is specifically
Speaker 1: in sort of specific parts of the markets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, I'm in agreement. I've been preaching about
Speaker 2: diversification for years, like diverse file your crypto assets, but
Speaker 2: also the equities market. You know, you got to have exposures.
Speaker 2: So it's funny. My wife, she's more she hasn't been
Speaker 2: a big believer in crypto because she thought it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: what is this. I don't know what this is. But
Speaker 2: she believes in like the equities market because that's what
Speaker 2: she knows, right, that's the institutional knowledge of invest in stocks,
Speaker 2: invest in ets. So she kind of runs that side
Speaker 2: of our portfolio. I run the crypto. I'm the risk taker,
Speaker 2: but my portfolio is outperforming hers for sure.
Speaker 1: Actually, stock markets, if you're investing in tech, did quite
Speaker 1: well as well in the last two years. Here. My wife,
Speaker 1: by the way, he runs a VC fund, so she's
Speaker 1: investing in private markets and I'm in the world of
Speaker 1: public markets, and then crypto is somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, very cool, Joni. It's exciting times, man, and
Speaker 2: I look forward to having you back on. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for your insights. Excited for the future updates
Speaker 2: around e Toro. Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 1: Me, Thank you very much. Super exciting times.