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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to another edition of the Galaxy Brains Miami Tapes interviews that we recorded on site at Miami Beach Convention center during consensus 2026 in May. We have another great interview for you. Blu Machalari, the head of crypto at T Rowe Price, is our guest. T. Rowe Price, one of the biggest asset managers in the world. Blue has been running an actively managed crypto fund at T Rowe Price and I think they're launching, they've just announced the first actively managed spot crypto etf. We'll talk with Blue about institutional adoption and what it means to be a large asset manager actively trading spot crypto for their holders. Let's hop right into the interview with Blue. Blue Machalari, head of digital assets at T. Rowe Price. Thank you, Blue for coming on Galaxy Brands.
- [00:45]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [00:46]
A
I'm very excited to talk to you. We've, we've known each other for a little while now, but have never had you on the show. And a lot is happening both in crypto but also at T row in crypto. And gosh, you guys were kind of pioneers. Now everyone's following what you guys have been doing right now. Now everyone's getting into crypto.
- [01:02]
B
It's a cool thing. All the kids like it.
- [01:04]
A
Yeah.
- [01:05]
B
So, yeah, no, we have been. I mean, I joined Tiro, so I've been in crypto for 10 years now and I joined Tiro almost four years ago to, to build out sort of everything from the investment side, tokenization, the operational setup. It was a super easy lift. And I was like, bam. No, it was, you know, coming, you know, have your experience of Fidelity, but it's, it's a lot of work to bring a large organization along with you. And when you have sort of a totally new operational model combined with a totally new asset class and you got to just bring like a lot of different stakeholders along.
- [01:49]
A
So, I mean, you're one of the few people building a genuine crypto business inside a top tier institutional, traditional capital markets business. I mean, you're right. We tried to do this at Fidelity. Fidelity was very early, but it was even there where there was lots of buy in. It was not easy. Right.
- [02:06]
B
Yeah. I mean, obviously there's been a, you know, there was a significant regulatory overhang that sort of shaped the path that all large regulated institutions had to take.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But you know, and I joined, I joined like seven weeks before ftx.
- [02:24]
A
Great.
- [02:24]
B
So, yeah, so that, that was my first trip to the, you know, Monday morning meeting was like, no, this is not the end of crypto. Like no, it's, but you know, building a bear market and that's like to our credit as an organization, that's what we did. And we built sort of end to end operating system. And by built I mean we went with all best in class crypto native providers. We did not retrofit a single thing. At T row I always like to say the only T Row system we use in digital assets is Microsoft Outlook and everything else is separate. And we've been sort of, we run an internal research fund for the past three years. Um, we go pretty far down the liquidity scale.
- [03:10]
A
Yeah, you guys are playing around.
- [03:13]
B
Yeah, I've, there are like, I've been, there are times that I've like sat in leadership meetings and been like, so this is what a dog themed meme coin is. Um, but, but it's been as an organization they're incredibly, we're incredibly open minded and research driven and so when you can take them on the path, when you can sort of explain the pieces like this is why this makes sense, this is why it is going to transform our industry, then people are open to hearing it and they're willing to sort of support you.
- [03:42]
A
Yep, I think that makes a lot of sense and I have been very encouraged by T. Rowe's progressiveness on this. Really it again, you guys really were quite early. Do you feel like now T. Rowe has a, like a leg up on the, I don't know, the rest of SIFMA's membership that is finally here to work on crypto?
- [04:01]
B
I think so. Just because it takes a lot of time to, especially your operations, your tech group takes a lot of time to wrap your head around this stuff. So even if you can get there from an investment perspective or a strategic perspective, those sort of middle and back office and support functions, compliance, financial crimes, it's a lot of work, it's a significant undertaking and so it feels good to have done that groundwork.
- [04:28]
A
How important has the regulatory shift? You talked about the overhang having colored how T. Rowe and others had to build a couple years ago. How much of an unlock do you feel the last 18 months has been with the market regulators and bills in Congress and stuff.
- [04:42]
B
So our PR liaison in investments is always like, whatever you do, don't go on the show and say it's a sea change. It's like a sea change. Right? It's changed everything to have, you know, our primary regulators be willing to engage constructively, to answer questions, to explore ideas for the answer to be like, well, how can we talk about this? Or what does that look like? To be asked how they can support you is mind blowing. And I think for all the large asset managers, what we really needed was we needed enough certainty to be able to build. It takes a lot to turn that T row ship around and go in a direction. We can't just do that and then be like, well, we think maybe six months later you're like, oh surprise, you can't, you got a letter from someone. And so that visibility, that certainty and that willingness to engage has changed everyone's ability to build in this space.
- [05:44]
A
Yeah. You didn't realize, I certainly didn't realize that regulators could actually like the businesses that they regulate. They don't have to be exclusively hostile.
- [05:54]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [05:56]
A
I think it was such a strange thing too because the prior sec, it didn't just say come in and register and then make it impossible to register, which it did do. It also just didn't. There was a whole bunch of work they should have been doing on broker dealer rules, on like, you know, the custody rule. All this like groundwork. Even if they later were going to be highly restrictive, like they simply didn't do the work like so like the FCA in the UK did a lot of work to think about how do we put these things into our existing rule book or what rules need to be changed. That work even now still has to be done and we just like lost four years where the commission just refused to even do that work. I don't know why, I still don't quite know why. It's strange, you know, it is strange.
- [06:36]
B
But one of the things that's really interesting, we're a global organization and so I'm based in the US but when I know I'm asked to give a global perspective internally and I would talk to like our London based group or emir or Asia. One of the things I would say is, well, here's the, here's the slide on, you know, global regulatory landscape and FTX happened and almost every major regulator across the globe took that as an opportunity to say, okay, some things need to change. We need to make some structure, make some rules. Like let's bring this into the tent and figure out how to work with it so that people don't get hurt. And the US said we're going to close our eyes and hope it goes away.
- [07:18]
A
Right. Which is right. I agree. Right. You got good things out of Singapore and Hong Kong and the uk. You got MICA in Europe, probably many other jurisdictions I'm not even aware of. You're right. They all did new registration and licensure and compliance, but we just didn't do anything. Anyway, those days are behind us, thank God. I'm a big fan of what both of the market regulators, the CFTC and SEC are both working on. Hopefully we get Clarity act through Congress. How important is that specifically? Do we need it? Or can we just sort of live with this positive regulator stuff or.
- [07:53]
B
So I. So from our conversations, I know that you are like a armchair policy maven, so I'm going to put the question back to you because I feel like you're going to have a better answer than me, but I. I feel like I am compared to the average person. I think clarity is much more important than. I'm sort of anxiously awaiting compared. Like, if you put me on the crypto spectrum, I think I'm much more sanguine about how we'll be okay even if we don't get it. I think the industry as a whole has progressed so much. I think that there are elected officials heard the message in recent years and take the industry seriously. So I think that's a really sort of big milestone. And I think that what we've seen from the CFTC and from the SEC is from the occ, from everybody, is a willingness to make rules and sort of put in some guidelines and give us direction and a framework to the best of their ability in the current circumstances, even in the absence of congressional action on this front.
- [09:05]
A
I agree with that. I think that the way I like to say it is that I think for at least the next two and a half years, we're going to be pretty fine under this administration's regulators. But something like Clarity could be something that gets us fine for two and a half decades. Right. It's sort of like, I almost think of genius and clarity, like the 33 and 34 act, frankly, like. And actually it's very rare. It's like the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act, like the 33 and 34 act, the Clean Water and the Clean Air Act. They often come. Big things come in twos, but not that frequently. So it would be a big deal. But I do think some of the industry, like the way they've talked about Clarity, have overhyped its importance. It is very important. But I think we're fine without it. I don't think if we don't get it, it's gotta be like some disaster anyway. That's sort of my view of it.
- [09:54]
B
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. And I think. But if you also look in the grand scheme of things, it's really rare for Congress to pass legislation for a specific financial services industry. Right.
- [10:08]
A
I mean, we don't, it's complicated legislation too, and it's been quite bipartisan. I mean, this is a, Honestly, it's probably the most bipartisan issue in Congress today.
- [10:17]
B
And then I think obviously it didn't help that we got tangled up in the whole stablecoin yield.
- [10:24]
A
The, the yield debate. Yes, the kerfuffle. I have to say, shout out to Thom Tillis and Angela, also Brooks, who I think some in crypto were quite upset with Tillis for negotiating with the banks. But in the end it looks like they came out with a very good compromise and the banks are still being intransigent. And so it's like maybe they never want. Actually, I think the banks are the ones now who look like, unreasonable, frankly, because like they just worked for four months with like a bipartisan Senate negotiating panel and they still are mad about it. And it's kind of like guys, like, now you're the ones dragging your feet. Well, it kind of looks like they don't want a deal and maybe never did actually, is what it's starting to look like to me.
- [11:05]
B
So, and this is like a genuine question for me, which, if that feels really self defeating to me because aren't they then like, if, if it isn't covered in past and clarity and addressed, aren't they stuck with genius, which is what upset them in the first place?
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A
I agree with that. I feel like the status quo is not their friend. They, they're the ones that want the change in law.
- [11:26]
B
Exactly.
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A
So they should want something.
- [11:27]
B
Yeah.
- [11:28]
A
But I don't know, maybe they think they can just drag their feet. Part of me also thinks because they are all building too. So it's kind of like, yeah, I was arguing that they're, it's like the innovator's dilemma. They, they, they, they want to incorporate crypto into their stuff stuff, but they need more time. So they'd rather delay and slow us
- [11:43]
B
all down so that they can like catch up. That makes sense.
- [11:46]
A
I mean, maybe might make sense. You once said that if you don't start out as a crypto skeptic, there's something wrong with you. Which, like, but you love crypto. Are you still skeptic or how is it important to still be skeptical while you're building in crypto?
- [12:00]
B
I think it has to be a journey. Like when I meet people and they're like, I, you know, I went on, I went on crypto exchange, blah, blah, blah, for the first time. And I bought something and it went super up. And I'm like, yay, crypto. And this is like, I've gone down the rabbit hole. And they never stop to think critically, to be thoughtful about it. That always makes me nervous. I think in general, I'm like this, like, I want to interact and engage with people who have, like, kicked the tires and ask the tough questions. It. When I first started interacting on chain and when I first walked away from private equity to go launch a crypto fund, everybody, I resigned. And they all just looked at me and they were like, what? Why? Huh? Is this a comp issue? And I was like, no, that's fine. Just like, no, there will be no salary at the new place. We're just going to run our PAs. I think in order to be willing to understand something this complex, to be willing to commit to it the way that people in this industry commit to it, because equities, people don't feel like this about what they do. They don't. They're not wearing their equities T shirts everywhere and dressing their kids up like different equities for Halloween.
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A
Oh, right, right. Like, wow.
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B
So, like, to get to that place, it's a pretty rigorous intellectual process, and I think it should be.
- [13:23]
A
I love that point. I think there's clearly something different happening in crypto than there is in. In other asset classes.
- [13:30]
B
We do it because we love it.
- [13:31]
A
The passion is immense. I want to ask about tokenization. Obviously, this is. I've lived through so many eras in crypto. Now it's back. It's been back for a couple of years now, at least since the new administration came out, because this SEC is supportive of the idea of tokenizing equities. And I remember back when I did VC in this space in 2018 or so, there was like 30, 30 tokenization platforms. And we used to joke that there were more platforms than issuances, and that was true then. One of the problems I've noticed over the years is like, remember, people wanted to tokenize real estate. And turns out like, one of the problems with that is that connecting the physical to the digital ledger is a problem. I remember IBM was running ads saying they were tracking tomatoes on the blockchain. And we're like, how? How do you put a tomato on a blockchain? But equities are intangible as well, so they're really good. Target and NYSE and NASDAQ have announced stuff. Obviously, DTC is doing stuff. We've tokenized our. Or allowed our own stock to be tokenized. How important is this? You said the next level unlock would be when both the wrapper and the underlying are tokenized. We're getting close.
- [14:45]
B
We are, we're getting really close. And we're getting closer faster than I thought we were, which, I mean, which is great, but it's moved faster than I expected. And so what I mean by, like, that's where the next level unlock happens. So we are, we're a $1.8 trillion asset manager. We are one of the largest. I should know this. We're one of the largest managers of active equity funds anywhere in the world. So when you're an asset manager, there are two ways you interact with tokenization. You can tokenize your funds and you had a lot of autonomy on what that looks like, how you know what you want to tokenize. You can put it on one chain, you can put it on eight chains. You can, you know how you design that. There's a huge amount of flexibility there. Sort of white space. And the other place that we interact with tokenization or will interact with tokenization is the trading floor. And there we're really takers of business industry standards as they develop when you're an active manager. What I don't want is for us to have tokenized an actively managed equity fund, have that moving at the speed of blockchain, then have all the underlying not moving at that speed, settling T plus 1. And it's not an S and P 500 fund. So there is. Right. So this, and this can be different if you, you know, you can be running a perpetually compounding intertemporal asset liability mismatch. And the other thing is, is what, like, what we all learned in the like 2019-2018-2020-2021 sort of period was how absolutely critical, like seamless interoperability was.
- [16:28]
A
Right?
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B
So if I get to a place where I've like tokenized a bunch of funds and then six months, two years later, the whole trading floor gets tokenized.
- [16:36]
A
And it's like a different tech and different.
- [16:39]
B
And I'm like having it like, I'm like, you know, on one inch, two o' clock in the morning, trying to bridge us now. I'm joking, right, but like you're trying to bridge and it's, you don't have fully, then what you've done is you've built two super efficient systems that cannot communicate with each other.
- [16:53]
A
I think there's a lot of rebuilding and speed running the history of financial Markets happening in crypto, that's one of them. And like that, you know, you've got blockchain A is really good with this and it's pretty much done this way. But then blockchain B, it's oh, we're a little better or a little different but it's also done differently or like do I have to use all of these? And obviously we know the cyber risks in bridging as well.
- [17:17]
B
Exactly.
- [17:19]
A
You guys. Speaking of tokenized funds though, T row has filed for, I think what would be the first ever actively managed spot crypto etf. So spot cryptos in an ETF but actively managed by a portfolio manager. I don't know the status. There she is right there. The portfolio manager blue. I don't know the status of the filing. My understanding hasn't launched yet. But what can you tell us about this far? Hasn't gone effective yet, but what can you tell us?
- [17:44]
B
So we have an active pendant, like we have a pending filing with the SEC for the actively T row priced active crypto etf. We originally filed in October and there was a third update I think two weeks ago with the ticker tokens. And it's, it's interesting because it is the, it is the first one that is actively managed. It was a really challenging process to solve a lot of the questions that come up in the mechanics of an act actively managed. When you have a asset class that trades 168 hours a week and you have like what is the equity markets are like 30, 35, 35, maybe napping the rest of the time. There are, it's a whole other set of mechanics that have to be worked out and redesigned and there was no template for that. And so that's been a really, really interesting process. And we're an active management shop. This is like what we do. We're research led. This is our bread and butter. And so now we're just turning that lens to the new asset class.
- [19:04]
A
And do you think if we get like tokenized securities or something that does that make asset management generally easier? I know this is about spot cryptos, you're that fun. But how are this, how would tokenize if every stock is a token, how does that change the asset management business in your mind?
- [19:20]
B
So one of the things, so I think that one of the questions I'm always curious about is like where people came from before they went like came into crypto. So like what did you trade? Did you trade fixed income? Did you trade FX like equities?
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A
Right.
- [19:33]
B
If you Sit down with your equities desk and are like, so when we tokenize all the stocks you can quote, I don't know, you'll be able to quote Amazon and Nvidia. Like you'll have crosses like in fx. There's no, you don't. It will be much more efficient for a long time to go through the dollar lag as it still is in many places. But when you sort of tokenize all the things, it opens up an incredible range of what is possible in terms of efficiency for trading. And I think when you think about, and I don't know if this is like 5 years, 10 years, make up your number. What we like, we can achieve like fully customized, like mass customization for clients. So instead of having like a quasi sma, like a robo advisor type sma, like you can have a fully customized portfolio and it becomes affordable to manage that. And I really believe that in, I believe that asset managers ignore tokenization or sort of, you know, dismiss it at their apparel. I think in five years, the equity analysts that cover us are going to kind of like look up and be like, well, let's divide the world between the people who did it and the people who went on chain and the people who didn't. Right.
- [20:56]
A
Let's talk a little bit about AI. Your colleague Matt Howell talked recently about AI and said that it's moving from theory to practice on the trading desk. How either, you know, I don't want to stretch too hard to, you know, combine crypto and AI in this conversation, but just AI generally as an asset manager, you know, Kraken CEO said he would trust 100% of his crypto with an AI portfolio manager within a year. I interviewed Anthony Pompliano. He's launching an all AI stock research business that's just all AI. How are you guys at T row thinking about it? And how is Blue as head of digital assets thinking about, thinking about the importance or overlap with AI?
- [21:34]
B
So we're making, we have, we've actually been really fortunate. And they rolled out AI and they rolled out multiple tools. Like we've had it for a couple of years. And so then people have graduated towards like their favorite models and their different flavors and stuff. And now apparently we're having lots of discussions around how to ration tokens.
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A
I think a lot of people are,
- [21:56]
B
yeah, so, but I think, I think it does have the potential to dramatically change asset management and trading. We're within the digital asset group because we're a really lean group and we're super Consumers of AI, we use a lot. And I'm really fortunate because my co portfolio manager, David Kroger also has a degree in AI, which for a middle aged mom like me is like, I'm like, hey David, why isn't it doing what I thought I was going to do?
- [22:30]
A
Pretty good to have access to that.
- [22:31]
B
No doubt rewrite the prompt for me, David. But it is, I think that something where I see a really interesting intersection from like a tradfi perspective is not only in crypto but it's sort of being forced by the tokenization discussion. There's a lot of discussion around like, let's all get to 24 7, 365 equity markets. I was like, guys, I've been in a market that trades 168 hours a week for like 10 years.
- [22:59]
A
You don't want it.
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B
Like, you might want to slow down on that a little bit. It's, you know, you don't want like the phone makes a horrible noise in the middle of the night and you're
- [23:05]
A
like, I think we should honestly go the other direction. We should all take like turn crypto off on the weekends.
- [23:10]
B
All right. Like let's have like some like off hours.
- [23:12]
A
No joke. It's actually incredibly civilized of us not to trade 247 in equities. Like and actually with the overabundance of AI, like you could see, you could, you know, people are prioritizing in real life experiences over virtual. You might actually like, honestly the culture might be the opposite that we go 24 7, we all decide we hate it and it's actually cultured not to burn the tokens, you know.
- [23:35]
B
Yes. But I also think like this is
- [23:38]
A
like, but we are racing towards it.
- [23:39]
B
But we're all racing towards it. And I, I don't think people have thought, I think people have thought about how efficient it is and I don't think people have thought about how painful it is for the human beings involved. And I think that if you're going to ask people, if you're going to ask a bunch of traders on the trading floor to manage that, kind of like you are going to have to integrate and rely on AI to be able to handle that kind of.
- [24:04]
A
I agree, I agree. Yeah, I think it's. Well, we're all building some fun stuff with the AIs though.
- [24:10]
B
Oh my God, I love it. Yeah, yeah. No, we use it a ton. I also, I have been. My kids use it all the time.
- [24:18]
A
Mine are still a little too young, thank God. I don't know how I'm going to. Let's not go there because I'm sure there's a lot to learn. We'll do a raising your kids as a crypto person in the age of AI episode another time. That's a good episode, though. How important is AI to the economy? Very important. It appears incredibly important in the markets. Right. I mean, every day I get a new number. I saw some number. Anthropic intends to spend $200 billion at Microsoft, I think, over the next 10 years. I mean, these numbers are just, like, astronomical. Is this what we need to make stocks keep going up? Is that basically what's happening here?
- [24:53]
B
Yeah, I think it's. And it's also wild to see, like. So we see. Just keep seeing this, like, highly concentrated, right? Very concentrated. We were worried. The market was concentrated like a year ago. Like now it's like, you know, and it's just explosive growth and, like, on such a fast trajectory that it's like, no, last week's summer is this. Now we're adding a zero. It's like.
- [25:14]
A
Right.
- [25:15]
B
It's like the Turkish lira in reverse. Right. And so I think it's incredibly important. I think a question I have is, like, for every sort of big sort of positive trajectory that we have in terms of where it drives markets, are we periodically going to have those, like, panic attacks where everybody's like, oh, no, what does it do to the rest of the market? Like, and then everyone's like, no, we're back. We're just focusing on the AI part. How many of those are we gonna get over the next few years?
- [25:42]
A
A lot.
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B
A lot.
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A
It feels like a lot.
- [25:44]
B
So where is all the energy gonna come from?
- [25:48]
A
Energy is luckily very abundant in the universe. I'm sure we'll find somewhere. We use the Tesla coils, we'll suck it right out of the air, you know. Didn't he do that?
- [25:56]
B
He does a lot of things.
- [25:57]
A
Well, also, we might have zero point energy. Have you heard of this?
- [26:02]
B
No. What's this?
- [26:03]
A
Well, it's sort of all categorized in, like, the UAP disclosure genre. But like that. There is apparently, if you believe all the UAP citing, you know, documentation and stuff, there is some form of propulsion we're clearly unaware of. And people call this. It could be zero point energy, some way of moving, I mean, you know, anti gravity or something. I think there's still discoveries to be made on energy is, I guess, my point.
- [26:30]
B
I believe that.
- [26:30]
A
Yeah. Do you think we're going to have AI data centers in space?
- [26:35]
B
There's so many other places. I feel like people would want to build them that are a little more just. Yeah. A little more logistically, can we get
- [26:42]
A
them in caves first before we put them up in the space or like,
- [26:44]
B
I feel like there are. People aren't building massive ones in Brazil, for example. And I feel like. And I get that it's super hot in the cooling and the whole. I mean, the same reason it's like prohibitively expensive to mine bitcoin in Brazil.
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A
Right.
- [26:57]
B
But yeah, like, like an incredibly. Like it's fully.
- [27:01]
A
Elon said he wants to build AI in space now. I just. Well, you know, that's something Elon said, although I wouldn't put it past him. I mean with what they've done with SpaceX at this point, it's quite impressive.
- [27:10]
B
But yeah, I think that that's, it's like hard. It's like, hey, we're going to take you and your whole family and we're going to relocate you to space. Yeah, exactly what the package looks like.
- [27:20]
A
Hey, babe, I just got a new job. It's. I'm gonna have to travel a lot for work. Where to spare? Yeah, no one wants that. I agree. Before we wrap, a couple quicker questions. One, what is the thing that the institutional crypto narrative gets consistently wrong in the, in the common view? What people are when they talk about institutional adoption? What are people wrong about from your seat? What. What's a core truth that, that you know from, from doing it that maybe observers don't know?
- [27:47]
B
I think that people still do very much like to separate the buckets and say crypto tokenization or Boo crypto. Yay tokenization. Yay blockchain. And they are intertwined. It's an operational technology. We both use the technology and we invest in the technology. If you don't know how to use it, how on earth are you qualified to invest in it? Right? And, and so I think that they are totally intertwined and it is going to be the evolution across blockchain. Like not just in tokenization, but you know, blockchain based businesses, apps, whatever it is that in many ways drives crypto markets. Right. And, but they're not. You can't sever them and make them two different things. But people still really, really want to do that.
- [28:44]
A
I like that point a lot. This is the blockchain, not bitcoin era from 2016. Kind of hear about it now again with some of the more permission blockchains.
- [28:53]
B
Yeah. How are we back there again? Like, I feel like we had that conversation then. We were all like, yep, we got it like all on the same page. And now it's back.
- [29:00]
A
I don't know. I don't know.
- [29:01]
B
And like, who brought that to the party?
- [29:02]
A
I still think it's dumb. I like the open architecture of public blockchains and because you can build permission stuff on those.
- [29:09]
B
Yes. Like, they have so much, like, they have so much functionality, so much composability.
- [29:13]
A
Yeah. I think of it kind of like the Internet versus the intranet. And it's like no one's going around in 2026 saying, you know, it'd be great on intranet. No, dude. Yeah. Connect to the open web.
- [29:23]
B
And. And I think you. I think that it's like very intuitive from, especially from a TRADFI perspective to think that global decentralization where you like have these validators everywhere, like, you know, Bob and Omaha and you know, Jose and Mexico. This sounds crazy. Why are. I'd much rather go with blah, blah, blah, whom. I know that decentralization is such a critical component on so many levels.
- [29:53]
A
I agree.
- [29:53]
B
And I think that it takes a while for people to recognize that. And I think that's like, apparently we have to make that educational push again. But what you don't want is something that moves at the speed of blockchain and is controlled by a single person who can rewrite the numbers and run on blockchain. Would have been.
- [30:10]
A
We have a couple of those out here now. It's kind of crazy though. Like, I agree. I think decentralization is actually the innovation. So centralizing it is kind of like undo. Why not just use like a postgres database?
- [30:21]
B
I am someone. Someone else in at an asset different asset manager was saying that they sat in on a meeting and somebody was trying to pitch them on a two node blockchain.
- [30:30]
A
A two node.
- [30:32]
B
A two node blockchain. Like a permission two node blockchain. And they were like, I'm pretty sure that's like an email or a database.
- [30:38]
A
Yeah, exactly. I love that. What's a risk to institutional adoption that nobody knows or that people aren't thinking about, like, what's something that could cause this whole momentum to unwind or stop?
- [30:55]
B
So I see this as a crypto person with lots of love for my community. We have historically sort of been our own worst enemy and we've been known to completely set ourselves on fire from time to time and then make sure everyone sees it on Twitter. So there's that. So that can always be a surprise. I think this is a really unpopular opinion. But I came from credit. I worked at Lehman when we went bankrupt. I'm not convinced that looping is the best idea ever. I think that there's a lot of risk in looping. Money and credit have existed for thousands of years, and it has never been possible to infinitely scale leverage. And I don't think we, as a group figured it out last year all of a sudden and cracked the secret code. So I think there are some risks.
- [31:47]
A
Yep. And last question. What's one thing in the last year that you've changed your mind on?
- [31:56]
B
Wow. I had originally been. It originally been, like, right after genius passed, and you just saw, like, announcement after announcement, like, stablecoin, someone issuing new stablecoin here, new stable, like, stablecoins for everyone. And I get it. What a great business. I would launch a stablecoin if I could. You give me your dollar, and I'm going to hold your dollar and clip all your coupons and then give you back your dollar when you need it. Um, I thought we were gonna. I was like, I'm a little worried it's gonna be like when we went from cable to streaming, and now we're all like, now I have like a thousand.
- [32:33]
A
Can we go back?
- [32:34]
B
Yeah. And I'm sort of like kind of Ms. Cable, where you saw it, like, yeah. That it was gonna. Stable coins were just gonna become so, so, so highly fragmented, and you were gonna have to, you know, have 10 different stablecoins in your wallet to make sure that one of them was, you know, accepted somewhere. I feel more optimistic on that now. I feel like, especially with the pace of rulemaking and there's been sort of time to adjust, and we're getting like, there's more stability. It's like, okay, it's reasonable for these stable coins to exist. There should be diversification and there should be competition in the market, and we don't want super concentrated risk. But I don't think it's like, there's no longer. It's not like a Starbucks where there's like, one on every corner. So I feel like. I feel more optimistic about stablecoins from here.
- [33:23]
A
I like that. Yeah. You're talking about the bundling and unbundling of streaming services. I totally agree with this. People. Like, I've literally had people say, gosh, wouldn't it be great if you just pay one streaming service and get access to all. I'm like, that's cable.
- [33:35]
B
A long time ago, when I was.
- [33:36]
A
Put a box in your house, by the way.
- [33:38]
B
Right. And you could go to one place and find out where all the things are and when and record them and see them.
- [33:44]
A
I think this has been really fun and I guess. Okay, one final question. One final question. You don't have to put a number on it, but what are you most excited about for the rest of this year in the market, or. I'm going to come straight out and say it. Pick a bitcoin price December 31st. You got anything up your sleeve on bitcoin?
- [34:04]
B
I'm not going to pick a price target for bitcoin before the end of the year, but I. What am I really excited about you guys?
- [34:17]
A
Are you. Hopefully that fund will launch. That'll be exciting, right?
- [34:20]
B
I am very obviously super excited about that. But I'm also, I'm really excited about. I'm sorry. Well, it's not a number. I'm having trouble answering this one number. I'm excited about. I'm excited. I'm excited about the Russell 1000.
- [34:42]
A
Oh, wow.
- [34:43]
B
Which I will shortly look up all the things in the Russell 1000. But like, we've seen the announcements, like coming in July, we're going to start to see the components of the Russell 1000 tokenized by GTCC and that's going to be super cool.
- [34:58]
A
We'll see what that does.
- [34:59]
B
That's the number. I'm excited.
- [35:01]
A
I love it. Blue Melari, head of digital assets at T Row. Thank you so much, Blue.
- [35:05]
B
Thank you for having me. This is great.
- [35:07]
A
Thank you for listening to Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research. I'm Alex Thorne, head of Firm Wide Research at Galaxy. Follow me on X N tangiblecoins, Follow Galaxy Research on X, L, X Y Research. Read our written reports@galaxy.com research and don't forget, if you like Galaxy Brains to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more. We'll see you next time.