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A
That didn't work.
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We're seeing stark warnings that bitcoin is.
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A
Potentially set to dump on December 19. Many people wondering why that would be the case. It's because of the meeting of the bank of Japan, alongside the fact that the United States is likely to go to war with Venezuela. There's so many things to discuss today. So hard to unpack how they could potentially affect bitcoin and crypto markets. We're going to discuss all of it today with my good friend Bill Barheit, CEO of Abra. Let's go, let's do.
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B
Let's go.
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A
Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. To those who celebrate Wednesdays, I hope you're all having a good one. We have a lot of news and stories to discuss. Luckily, I have Bill here to do it with me. Good morning, how are you?
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C
Good morning, my friend. Good to see you.
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A
You've had a big week across the world and back. Announcement after announcement after announcement.
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C
It's been a fun ride. A little tired, but it's all good.
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A
Yeah, a little tired is, I think, how everybody feels about the crypto market right now.
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C
Yes.
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A
Feels like we're in one of those definitively time based capitulation phases where we get news and nothing happens. Good news down, bad news down, other news sideways. I mean, maybe we should start there. I mean, what do you make of the current price action? You know, we've got bitcoin sitting here, let's see, 87, I was going to guess, but 87,006. 35. Pretty uninspired down on the year.
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C
I think that's where we were 30 days ago. Right. So, okay, so I think, I think two things are happening, right? The first is, you know, people, you know, we had the bump which was the legal de risking post election. Right. And, and so that gave us a November 24th boost which got us up, I don't know, what, 50, 60, whatever it was. And, and you know, that was the, the, that was not a liquidity boost. That was the legal de risking. Bitcoin's not going to die. Trump's here to save the day. We rode that.
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A
So basically a repricing. It was just that this entire market is worth X more based on.
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C
Right. And we're, we're now, we have now reclaimed that, that level. And I, and I think that what's happening is, is that the markets assumed that there would be significant liquidity injections into the global economy. However you want to measure global M2, USM2, the Chinese version, whatever. And, and you know, people mispriced that I think tariffs plus, you know, delays on, on interest rate lowering, which I think many people, including myself expected more cuts this year. You know, bank of Japan starting to, to raise rates, which I'm sure we'll get into the upcoming meeting. I think that's been largely priced in. But, but, but by and large the liquidity hasn't come that we expected. Some people think it's delayed and it is coming. I don't have a crystal ball that feels right, but I feel like it's been kind of sideways in a log scale, which is the right way to look at crypto. It's been sideways since that election de risking and waiting for that liquidity. And I think the march to 125 was an assumption of that combined with whole bunch of institutional news, ETFs, multiple DATs and things like that. But that's played itself out and the liquidity didn't show up. And so now the question is, is it going to show up? I'm betting that it will. Institutional money is betting that it will. Retail is betting that it won't. Now it looks like we have this kind of widening rift between retail gloom and doom and institutional. Yeah. Look like it's game on in 26. Right. So it's a tough one. It's a tough one.
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A
It's a tough one. And it seems that we now have consensus that Bitcoin trades as a macro asset largely based on liquidity. And there's very few people who think that it has much to do with Bitcoin anymore or certainly much to do with what's happening in the crypto market. And you can see evidence for that everywhere. Right. Because all of this good news, all of this adoption, the genius act, all of these things, none of those have largely affected price, maybe in a vacuum for a brief period of time for a 10% move or something. But now we all have to be macro economists to understand what's going to happen.
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C
Right? Yeah, we've always had these fun micro shocks post ftx and other things that give us a boost up or a boost down or boost up, whatever the right word is. Yeah, it's fun, but. Right. That's within this kind of broader universe of clearly Bitcoin is a macro asset and crypto is a levered kind of bet on that, but overlaid with what's the usage look like, what are the trends? And so again, my personal feeling is the liquidity is coming in 26. The debt refinancing didn't happen the way everybody Expected it to happen in Q3, going into Q4 this year. I think they're pushing their luck to say, okay, we've got to get these rates down. That was My thesis in Q1 was that they would do anything that they could to get rates down to refinance the debt. And it didn't happen.
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A
Right.
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C
And so the question is, what are they going to do to get those rates down this year? Well, it appears that they're going to start buying bonds, which is the buyer of last resort, which is ourselves. Right. And you know, we're the only country in the world that can really get away with this at this scale and not have, you know, interest rates in, in the 20, 20% range, which, you know, could be where we're headed, I don't know. But it was clearly where we were headed in the 70s. Right. So. So we'll see. But they are going to, they're going to accelerate the bond buying with the understanding that if bank of Japan raises rates and that trade is broken, our other buyers of last resort are gone.
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A
Right, right.
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C
China's done well, I mean, okay, fine. There's only so many Nigerians that want to hold $100 in tether. So. So, you know, China's done. It's all converting to gold. Japan is the net seller, Germany's a net seller. And like, to your point, tether's a net buyer. Thank you. But. But you know, there's only so much tether can do.
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A
Yeah, yeah. It's just such an interesting place to be in. Because your premise that the Fed would have to lower rates to avoid a refinancing of the debt at a higher rate made a lot of sense given it's not the Fed mandate. But we know they care.
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C
Right.
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A
And then instead what we got is run it hot and the debt doesn't matter. They really went. So basically your premise and that of many and I shared that view for a long time, was that they would at least have a monica of responsibility like they would that 1% of the government would say, maybe this debt's a problem. They went, yeah, 100. You know, the. You never go full that movie. Our word. You're not allowed to say it. They went full.
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C
My premise was, was a little different. Right. So, yes, I believe the Fed would lower rates sooner. I didn't necessarily believe that would lower the cost of borrowing for treasury because as we saw the last two times, the Fed lowered rates before this time, you know, treasuries dumped because. And rates spiked because they believed either you know inflation was coming back or new debt sales were going to be very difficult or some combination of the two. I think it was actually more, more the latter. And so, so you still have to sell the debt on the open market. And, and the open market is, is a supply and demand phenomenon. It's not a manipulated market like interbank lending is, which is what Fed rates are. Right. So, so you still have to be able to sell your debt and if nobody wants it anymore, they, and you're the buyer of last resort. Right. That will eventually get rates down, but you have to actually execute on those buys. And we didn't, now we are. Right. So starting I think today or in the next couple of days or it's already started, but right, basically now we are going to start buying our debt again. Call it quantitative easing, yield curve control, whatever you like. With the stated goal of pumping money into the system, getting rates down, which creates a circular effect of jobs and hiring, which is, you know, their, their the most important mandate right now. Since they've clearly given up on inflation, I think I actually that's a big, a little facetious. If stated inflation was at 4% they wouldn't be doing this. They would let employment go a little bit higher. But since it, since it's manageable, they are going to pump money into the system.
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A
There's only one way and it's to pump money in the system. It's just going to be a matter of where it comes from. But I do want to jump into. We have this title Bitcoin set to dump on December 19th. Maybe. But December 19th, the date everyone is ignoring, that could crash all caps your crypto portfolio. Yeah, I think it's right to have our eyes on what the bank of Japan is likely to do. First of all, I don't think we have confirmation that they're going to continue to tighten. But I think that that's the assumption that that's likely to happen. Now you can go back to a bit of evidence here. March 24th, they hiked rates. Remember Japan did nothing like this for decades. Right, right. So March 24, rate hike, Bitcoin dropped 23%. July 24, rate hike, Bitcoin dropped 26%. January 25, rate hike, Bitcoin dropped 31%. There is some logic here. The Japan yen carry trade obviously unwinding for years people basically borrowed yen for free and used that money to buy things that had a higher yield risk assets crypto I guess certainly stocks and other things. And that's unwound or is Unwinding to me, like when I think about this and I read about it, it seems like, A, everybody knows this is coming. B, the Japan yen carry trade has, should have unwound. Like who is still in that trade, I guess, is the question that gives us fear about this and is this just so telegraphed that it shouldn't be an issue anymore?
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C
Yeah, I think on institutional side, you're right. I think the fear is on the retail side and it feels priced in. Meaning if, like I said, bitcoin has been sideways since the dump from the last 60 days, meaning it's at the same price today as I believe it was on November 18th or so. The question is, is there another leg down coming? I mean, the short term, if you're a pure TA guy, I'm not, I use it as a tool. But, but if you're a pure TA guy, the short term charts are clearly bearish. I mean, there's just, you know, there's. It's not even a debate. Right. So, so the question is, is what, what matters right now TA expectations, actual liquidity? Or is it some combination of the three? Or is it geopolitical shocks like, you know, Venezuela? I think liquidity wins in this race and I think that US bond buying, Trump's hawkishness from Japan in the next 90 days now does that.
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A
Liquidity is drying up, but. So basically they're doing the reverse of what we're talking about. But they're a drop in the bucket if we go the way that we're predicting.
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C
Right, so, so that means we could have, we could see a, you know, capitulation move to 70. I mean, okay, fine, it could have a wick, you know, I mean, a wick to 70 is, is not like, like a disaster, but it could happen and then a rapid spike up from there. I don't think that's going to happen, but it could. That's fine. As a major lender in the crypto space, we look at the LTVs of the loans and what's going to happen. And most of our loans are priced in a range where nobody's going to get liquidated until they're. And when I say liquidated, I don't mean all their bitcoin gets sold, I mean, a little bit to put them back in compliance. Yeah, most of them are going to basically see partial liquidations in the 50s and 60s. So I think from that perspective, that's.
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A
If they don't add more.
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C
That's if they don't have more.
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B
Right.
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A
Just rationally, if you're the kind of person who's taking a loan on this and you see a liquidation of 50 and 60 and you're someone who's taking a loan because you love bitcoin so much and don't want to sell it. You're buying the shit out of this at 60.
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C
Right, right. And I'm only bringing it up, it's information. And so that information tells me like we're in a, in a reasonably stable space. I think the, the, the churn of, of whales who were selling, I think that's played itself out. Like I said, we've been sideways. I think I saw a post yesterday which was really good. It basically referred to sharks, which is the people just below whales in terms of holding, which is, which is the largest, you know, important group of crypto holders in my opinion. They're accumulating right now significantly. Okay. In, in, in the November to basically in the last 35 days. They're accumulating very significantly. That's the group that's been absorbing the churn, as far as I can tell. That's extremely compelling to me because I don't see that group as kind of being active day traders. I see them basically as mid to longer term hodlers who holders. You know, we don't have a last resort in, in crypto. Even sailor can't absorb that much. But, but, but I think that there's like to your point earlier, as a macro asset, there's rapidly growing consensus that you want to own some. And it's funny, I announced last week that we're likely or strongly considering go public, which I'm sure you're going to ask me about anyway, but we can see. But the reason I'm mentioning it now is I talk to a lot of investors and none of them are afraid of this. What they're saying is, oh man, I wish you were public now buying this. Oh yeah. And, and so period, I think where.
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A
Nobody was going public like we had the first rush, but everybody's waiting for the second one. You guys cracked in.
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C
Yeah, so, so, so smart institutional money is looking at this going, man, I wish I had a truck to back into this right now. And I've had this conversation many times, but I've had the opposite conversation with people who are shorter term and many people who I go to for advice on how they're seeing the market very short term, people that you and I know, I'm not great at the 30 day prediction. I have some friends who are like amazing at the 10 to 45 day period. I just don't think that way. I'm not wired that way. I'm wired to look at a log chart, understand the trend and then go about my day. And so I'm interested in news, I'm interested in politics, I go to dinners here in Silicon Valley all the time as a libertarian and I have debates every time and it's fun but it doesn't change anything. It's just, it's not my, it's not, it's not changing my bets, it's not changing my investments. It's, it's, you know, whereas I have friends who look at that stuff and interpret it and say, okay, for the next two weeks I'm doing this, I'm doing covered calls over here, I'm putting puts over here and I'm just might, you know, and yeah, that's a job. It's a job, right? Well I mean for some of them it's fun and it's 15% of their whatever, but for some, yeah, it's a full time job and I don't want that job. And we're not in the business of enabling that job. Right. So we're long term wealth managers and I think you want a CEO who looks at trends and thinks that way himself or herself as opposed to saying, okay guys, let's get on a call and say we're going to reallocate today, we're going to come back in next week and I'm going to call you on Sunday and I have no more clients. And so I feel like the only.
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A
Move right now if you are fortunate enough to have dry powder, because I'm cognizant of the fact that most people just don't have money right now, is to just be slowly buying all of this. Even if we went into a three year bear trend which in no part of my brain thinks is possible even for the four year cycle. Truthers, right? I just don't, I don't see it personally. Just keep some money on the side and just keep buying. Because I don't believe 126 was the forever top in bitcoin. Yeah, everything to me feels cheap.
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C
I'll say it for the umpteenth time for you know, the 1% of your listeners that haven't seen me on here before, which is, you know, Bitcoin is my personal beta. Certain L1s are my venture capital style bets. Those are five to seven year bets for me. If, if I make 10x next year, I'm definitely moving a lot of profits into bitcoin. But again I, I see those as super high risk, could go to zero venture bets, but I don't think they are, which is why I made them. I have no interest in throwing my money away. But, but you know, bitcoin remains my personal beta. It's a combination of midterm liquidity play plus long term adoption. I think the narrative of, of integration with AI. Right. For the Solana Sui. I just, you know, came back from Breakpoint which was super interesting. Besides our own announcements there was, it was really amazing. It's more like a festival than a conference. But, but you know, all of them, aptos, swe, Solana, they're all kind of got a cadre of people adopting the, the crypto AI integration narrative, which is early but hasn't gotten any steam yet, but I think is going to go ballistic in the next six months to five years. I don't know when. And I, I care because I'm older but, but, but I don't care in the sense of, in the macro perspective. Am I wrong? I, I could always be wrong. But, but you know, that ship has sailed for me personally. I've made my bets so, so I could rotate, but I couldn't even imagine what I would rotate into at this point.
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A
That's the problem is like what are you selling your bitcoin to buy? But that, that's but eight apparently.
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C
But by the way, I mean Hut eight has been all over my feed the last, you know, since before I went to bed a few hours ago with Google.
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A
Today I don't even have it pulled up because those, it's like every day we get a big tech company doing a deal with a, a mining company that's pivoting to AI. So yeah, but that, that does seem to be the, the narrative today. But maybe just for today. Right. As you said, like that's a great short term thing if you timed it or we're ahead of that announcement but who knows where that'll be in a week. Right? Yeah. So listen, I want to talk more generally about the idea of you going public, which you have not announced but softly teased in your speech. And I was going to ask you about it because I heard the speech and I think that's really exciting. But in the context of what we kind of just discussed with altcoins or the market in general. So I had a thesis kind of earlier in the year that I think has been proven pretty accurate. That alt season basically happened in crypto adjacent equities. All the money that maybe we would have seen in Altcoins trickled down into Bullish and Etoro and all the big circle and all the big ICOs we saw there was huge hype there and then into the mining space. And because it's institutional money, it's not really finding its way into tokens as much because you can't go from a Bitcoin ETF obviously down to coin 74. That was just kind of a premise for why maybe we haven't seen as much liquidity in altcoins that continues in another cycle of public offerings which you will be a part of.
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C
You have a different thesis which is it's a season, but it's a different season. And so I think if you look at AI stocks, okay, so what has driven because we don't have enough data points yet but for the couple of the four year cycles which we obviously aren't going to have this time, that drove Ethereum and certain alt prices and you know, maybe even meme coins this cycle, but less so let's focus on the last couple of Ethereum cycles. NFTs. It's always the increase in prices of the major crypto assets whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum that spills over. It's like one big glass spilling over into other little glasses.
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A
We really didn't have that Bitcoin though. That was my point.
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C
A lot of that was in public market held securities.
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A
That's right, right, right, exactly.
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C
But my, so, so I, I think the spillover was, was not, I don't think there was a lot of selling of Bitcoin ETFs into those other crypto adjacent stocks. I think it was general QQQ oriented, NASDAQ 100 money, massive amounts of profits because of the, the AI trade that was being, being partially allocated into higher risk alpha and, and you know that has nothing to do with a, with a replacement for all season. As I see it. I think the alt season didn't happen. Keep in mind, I think, I think we're at 25, maybe 20% of, of Bitcoin that we consider not lost is in securities. Right. So the vast majority of Bitcoin is not held in publicly traded securities. Okay. So that is not in a position to keep alt season from happening. It's if, if 80%. So it's, it's that lack of massive liquidity pump which was driven in the last three four year cycles by qe. And so this is the first time post halving that we didn't have QE and We talked about this as we said, we said what's going to happen? We don't have, we don't know. Right. And, and we thought it was coming faster as I said earlier, but it, but it didn't. Whatever reason. Tariffs obviously, you know, have been an interesting phenomenon, but I do think it's coming. So I think you had to, to your astute point about the other, you know, crypto adjacent securities, Etoro being a great example, which is a great company, a spillover, the larger cup being, you know, the, the NASDAQ 100 stocks and then spilling over into adjacent stocks, especially data center oriented stuff slash miners and you know, early phase, some of the dads. But that played itself out quickly. Some of the shells that were holding them. But, but you know, like cut 8 up 20 plus percent before we went on this morning. So, so I, I think that's a parallel universe to what I expect to have happen in, in, you know, in, in the L1s in the next year. My guess is, is that we're going to see a massive run as QE and QC yield, YCC take hold. You know, we'll see. But that's my, that's my feeling, you know.
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A
Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. It wasn't necessarily that the money. Yeah, I shouldn't have really said that the money would have ended up in all coins. I just think the money that is moving around in crypto is in a different and much larger pool now. Right.
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C
Yeah, that's 100 true. I mean, that's good. That's good. I mean, look, I don't care about the securitization of Bitcoin as a, as an exciting investment opportunity. I think. Yeah, buy Bitcoin. Right. But there's a lot of people that they're just not going to do that if they have the option of buying it in a securities wrapper. And I think that's fine. Right. So that's interesting from that perspective. Just like if I want to buy oil, I certainly don't want barrels of oil in my backyard. Yeah. Right. So I don't want to buy oil, but if I did, I'm certainly going to buy an ETF tracking stock as opposed to barrels of oil.
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A
Right.
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C
I don't think bitcoin is the same, but the analogy still holds.
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A
Okay, so there's so many other things I still want to talk about. I hope you have some time. Let's do.
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C
I'm good.
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A
Okay, good. Because we have this right. FDIC just in FDIC to unveil plan on how banks may apply to issue stablecoins. So we're getting some clarity from bank regulators on not only how banks can interact with stablecoins but obviously we know they're going to launch them. Right. So you've got. I've kind of seen it as two camps. There's the ones who either just partner with an existing stablecoin or some crypto native platform that understands this plugs into an API or something and you know, gets their crypto services or they're going to build it themselves. I think this is more about what you can do to build them yourself. We have along these lines because I view stablecoins and the genius act as sort of the first iteration of a bigger narrative around tokenization. DPCC which was crazy last week basically saying we're going to tokenize everything. We're moving to this. They don't want to go full like Kodak Blockbuster and they're going to adopt this technology choosing Canton Network which is so out of left field. The ETH people are absolutely losing their minds. They can't believe it.
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C
That's a hoodie no play.
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A
Yeah. But here we go because this is important, this is where it matters because you're deep in this. Right. We're excited to announce aberfied world token platform for offering synthetic versions of real world assets. Our first product is usdaf, a yield bearing dollar base on the Solana Network. Big USD stablecoin but backed by Solana and Solana Defi Primitive. So you obviously are putting your money where your mouth is on this trend that we're very much hearing about on a daily basis.
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C
Yeah. So I believe that there is clearly an RWA play which we're in the first inning of. I think. I am not bullish on the current first generation of tokenization of existing securities in the sense of okay, is it exciting? Would I want to build a business on that? Personally? No. I think it's great that there are other companies that want to do that. I think the depository trust company has no choice but to do what they're doing because look, I think they're going to die anyway.
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A
Right.
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C
I think in, in 15 years, the SEC as we know it, the CFTC as we know it, most international securities regulators as we know it, most clearinghouses we know it are going to be gone.
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A
They're doing this next year. So they really, they realize or they say that it'll be by the end of 26.
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C
Yes. But within five years they add no. That entire cadre of Organizations adds no more value. None. So, so what we need in the next generation is securities that trade the same way meme coins trade. Now I made this point to several. I was at a dinner with a very well known congressman. I won't pick on him. I really like the guy. We're just on opposite, not opposite sides because I'm a libertarian. But I explained to him like he was complaining about the meme coin thing with Trump and Melania. And I said look, I don't think they should have done it. But now every announcement at Solana right now feels like it has something to do with scalable transactions whether it's real world assets or Visa like stablecoin settlements. And the best proof we've ever had that that's going to work was the Trump coin by far, right. It was the most scalable test in crypto history. Right. It did Visa like numbers for many days. Okay. So, so the point is you can now do native equity issuance on a Solana or one of their competitors and scale to Visa like numbers, which is, which means everyone by the way in just simple human terms. And we can do that now. Right. And so that's interesting to me what I want to facilitate. Right. And we actually don't own aberfi. We partner and advise. We actually are giving it away to the public. I'll explain the details in a sense. Second. But, but what I want to do is I want to basically level the playing field the way Binance and okx and the non US Exchanges have leveled the playing field for crypto investing. You know, maybe through regulatory arbitrage in some ways. But, but regardless of how they've done it, they have done it. Meaning 24,7 instant settlement. 24,7 access to withdraw your assets. You know, you can, you don't retain title in, in their instantiations because you're on their balance sheet. But, but basically you've, you've created an always on system for trading and, and, and manipulating value.
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A
Right.
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C
We need that insecurities if you're going to level that playing field. And I think that's what's coming next. What we're seeing now with tokenization in the first step, not what we're doing, but what you know, what you're seeing from others is in a way station where you're taking existing securities and you're tokenizing existing securities that has some value. But most of those announcements keep you in a walled garden. What is the value of tokenization if you're still closed as a market more than you're open if you can't borrow in open marketplaces against Those assets using DeFi, if you can't move to another exchange that is always open. And so I think we're going to leapfrog that to services that actually create instant on securities from the ground up that are native crypto assets, native digital assets, whatever the right word is. I prefer crypto, but whatever native crypto for these securities that you can trade on a binance, trade on an okx, trade on a coinbase. In the short term there are going to be legal issues with that. Meaning are you acting as a broker, dealer, are you acting as an exchange? In 10 years it's not going to matter. It's going to be a level global playing field. People will go to Dubai to issue their securities, they'll go to our Abu Dhabi or Singapore. And what you need is courts and police with guns because in the physical world you need to enforce the contracts. Everything else you can encapsulate all of the equivalents of an S4 and S1 and S8, right. In the smart contract. Now we're not doing that today, right? Because the laws make it too complicated for most people to do that. So what? People like Mike Cagney, who I respect a lot. Right. So we compete a little bit, you know, they're, they're basically doing the interim approach. He's a master of understanding the nuances of what it means to Basically take an S1 wrapper and tokenize it or take an S1 and tokenize it in a wrapper. Right. And, and I think that's, that's very astute for him to do. And there's, there's money to be made there. In the short term, I think it all goes away in, in five to five to seven years. I could be aggressive on the timing, but it doesn't really matter. So, so it has to go away because those markets are still going to trade, you know, less hours than they're, they're not going to trade. Right.
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A
So anyway, now we have NASDAQ going 24, 7 or 23. Yeah, 7 or something. So I mean it's just a perfect example of what you're saying.
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C
Right.
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A
Everything is going the way of the crypto example. We showed the world what can happen. Whether we'll be able to capture that value, I have no idea. Right. But everybody's going to be forced to be 24, 7, 365 and entirely global and to offer something better than we are or comparable or you just can't. So you have a, I mean we'll call it a, it's a yield bearing. I don't. Do you call it a stable coin?
- [31:34]
C
Yeah. So the legal, in legal death parlance it's not. But from a retail perspective I'll use the same terminology like an Athena would use or others that are doing similar stuff. It's a stable coin in the sense of that it's basically pegged using large L1 assets like Athena is pegged using Ethereum. Our USDAF token is pegged using Solana. And then you use a bunch of defi primitives to maintain the peg and generate yield, whether it's basis trades or liquidity pools or defi parameters.
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A
Meaning staking inside triple.
- [32:10]
C
Exactly. And we, you know, the, the everfi group already tweeted about some of the things they're doing. There's going to be. I, I've seen it. It's really good. There's a white paper, you go to aberfi.org they've already published a bunch of information about how all this works. So USDAF is going to be a Solana based stable coin that maintains its, its peg using Solana. Okay. Highly scalable. They want to integrate into every wallet, D5 platform, Neo bank in the marketplace. Okay. S U S D A F will be the staked version which will generate, you know, based on the results I've seen in, in the, in the test lab so far, anywhere from 8 to 15%. Now we, Abra Inc. My company is very good at generating yield. We've been doing it for years using DeFi. So we advise Abrafi on how to do this. And, and you know, we, we also are going to be using USDAF within our separately managed accounts in, in Abra. So our clients who deposit dollars are automatically going to have access to the yield and staked version of usdaf. Now we can do that as a US Company because we're an SEC registered Investment advisor. Most US companies can't do that because they consider these coins securities. Right. And I'm not giving you the legal definition, I'm just giving in very simple terms. And so most of the effort for Abrify, pretty much all of their effort will be outside the US we're in a unique position as an SEC registered Investment advisor that we can do the risk disclosures and you can go to the SEC website and see our Form 80B that as an RIA we can offer that product.
- [33:55]
A
Right.
- [33:55]
C
Which is super cool. And so that's the first product that Aberfi is launching. I've seen the discussions on what's coming next. It's super cool. I think they have dibs on everything from how to basically create individual tokens instead of full on prediction markets to native securities which we talked about a few minutes ago, as opposed to just tokenized securities and looking at different Oracle services to aggregate real world data into bets. I think these prediction markets are extremely interesting both as an Internet user and as a crypto guy. But what I want to see is I want to see individual tokens that any exchange can listen to, list. Excuse me, that give me access to those bets.
- [34:46]
A
Right.
- [34:47]
C
And I think the Aberfi team is in a very unique position to enable that. So doing the stablecoin first was important because it's like an away station for all the other tokens that they want to enable over time. And it basically gives us access to this yield which I think in the Solana ecosystem just didn't have anything native like that. And so when I, when I spoke to the Solana team they were like, yeah, we've scratched our heads as to why no one did this. And we were really happy that the EverFi team did this, which is why I agreed to spend 40 hours on a plane to present this. So it was really well received. Really well received.
- [35:26]
A
So that aligns with the idea that I think people kind of viewed stablecoins in a vacuum at the beginning and now are starting to understand that it's actually just the first, best, potentially example of everything that's coming. Yeah, tokenization of everything. I mean it's really crazy when you hear Paul Atkins saying within two years like the United States financial system will be on blockchain rails. And then once again, not to beat this dead horse, but the dgc, which famous for greatest hits like T plus two and T plus one Settlement, talking about instant settlement of everything by the end of 2026.
- [36:01]
C
Yeah, I left the CIA to work at Goldman as a kid and we were talking about straight through processing 30 years ago and we still don't have it and we're not going to have it based on the existing technology. I mean I was tibco's first customer. Vivek wrote a book on our deal called the Power of Power of Now. Tibco was the company that created all the real time information that flows around when you see your bid ask prices flashing on a screen that's a company like tibco pushing that information to your screen. And that was always supposed to enable this straight through processing. And it never happened and partially never happened. Because you know, the powers that be are highly incentivized. Who. And to that end there was one of the big tradfi companies wrote a scathing rebuke of tokenization and all this because why? Right. Because our business is highly likely to die when, when this happens. We talked about DTC and I think other businesses are going to die when, when this happens as well. And it's a good thing. It's just, you know, you have to either evolve or, or you're going to die.
- [37:03]
A
Yeah. So, so quickly. But before I let you go, the last thing I feel like you have to talk about now because we're all political homers. President Trump orders a complete blockade of all sanctioned oil takers going into and out of Venezuela. This is another one of those wildly unfactual, batshit crazy truth social posts from him which I find just incredibly entertaining. Saying that somehow Venezuela stole our oil. I don't know. But either way, I think we also apparently have done 19 trillion in tariff revenue or something. I think was the number that he threw out. But either way we have him making a big announcement at 9pm today.
- [37:43]
B
This seems to be angling towards a.
- [37:46]
A
Potential quote unquote war, I don't know for the Venezuela like looks like we're just gonna take what we want for Venezuela. But like is this on your radar at all for markets or is it just.
- [37:57]
C
It has to be. But, but you know, he has been convinced by someone, right? I, I don't think it's something he would have himself just said I need to focus on Venezuela. But he has been convinced by someone that regime change is in Venezuela is desperately needed and it will basically help stabilize and help us basically reform. You know, all of the kind of drug and I'm using. I think trying to put it from their perspective, not what I believe but you know, reform all of these drug infested countries that are basically pushing their wares on the United States now I don't think that's true, but I think that's what they believe. I don't think that Venezuela is ground zero for any of this. I think it's a basically a deteriorating society because of poor social and economic policy. Used to be the wealthiest country in the region became one of the poorest. It's not Haiti poor, but it's moving in that direction quickly. And given the amount of oil they have, it doesn't make any sense until you look at their economic policies. So it doesn't really matter in terms of is it going to affect the rest of Latin America? I don't think so, but most of my Latin American friends that I talk to, Mexicans and others, want regime change in Venezuela. They do. They just don't want Trump to do what he's doing. And so is it going to move the markets in the short term? Maybe it'll affect oil prices, which will have a trickle down effect, but they're not, they don't move the market in terms of oil, is my understanding. I'm not an expert in oil, but that's my understanding.
- [39:28]
A
I'm more concerned about geopolitical events over the past few years that have not really affected markets. So that's where I'm a little.
- [39:35]
C
Yeah, I'm more concerned about his postings in general the last couple of weeks than I am about, I hate to say it because people are going to die if we do this, but I am about specifically Venezuela. I mean, you know, I'm a libertarian, but I love Rob Reiter. I mean, that post was just batshit crazy. And, and, and so that was very disappointing to me.
- [39:57]
A
He's on a heater.
- [39:59]
C
Yeah, I don't agree, I never agree with Rob Ryan's politics. Who gives it crap? He's one of the best movie makers in history. And, you know, it was just bizarre to make it about you as a president when his, you know, mentally ill son is probably the reason that he died. It's bizarre and, but, but it's a trend is my point. And I don't like the trend. I, I like a lot of the policy wins of this past year. Not even just crypto. Get back to that and cut off the nonsense.
- [40:28]
A
Somewhere at the beginning of the post, I criticized the monetary policy you and I were talking about how they kind of just joked and a couple people in the comments were saying, is this a Democrat channel? And I kind of laughed. But if you say anything critical now, we're going to be pegged as a left wing, loony liberal channel for our takes. But I feel like people in crypto, we just call balls and strikes. That's the beauty. The beauty of being a bitcoiner was that you were supposed to be opting out of all of this. And I can even say for me, when I found bitcoin, it's actually what opened my eyes to all of the problems with money, which sent me down the rabbit hole of how insane government policy is when I was just sort of blindly following for most of my life. So I feel you're a true bitcoiner. Being critical of the government in general. Regardless of who is leading, it is pretty much the default.
- [41:16]
C
Yeah, not only I would, I would go so far after what I've personally gone through, which I don't talk about much the last three years, the attacks, the regulator attacks, you know, everything we had to deal with just to be alive and even have the discussion that we're going to go public, which is insane. There's zero chance. I'm not going to speak my mind now. I realize I'm one person and nobody cares. I care. And, and, and so if somebody asks me my opinion now, it is what it is. I'm going to give you my, my opinion. I don't think I would have reacted that way to a lot of these things, you know, six or seven years ago. And I think that we as people who see the future of the kind of post four turning economy in crypto AI maybe a little bit even more utopian terms, I think it's incumbent upon us to speak our mind and to call bullshit and call something batshit crazy if we think it's batshit crazy. I think this administration has done some really smart things. I think the libtard crowd does not give them enough credit and I'm talking about the ultra, ultra, ultra left wing. I have a lot of middle of road friends who probably are left leaning who gave the administration a lot of credit for closing the border, certain economic decisions. But then they see this nonsense with Venezuela with Rob Reiner and these crazy posts and they say, oh boy, here we go again. And nobody wants it definitely.
- [42:39]
A
Nobody really wanted the meme coins, but here we go.
- [42:42]
C
We knew that in January before any of the policy decisions.
- [42:45]
A
I am concerned though, I am concerned that we could see a major pendulum swing in the midterms or after and that that will be used once. Like I felt a year ago, I should say that the anti crypto army was dead, never to be resurrected. No, hope is not dead. And I feel like we're giving them a whole lot of fuel if they even get a tiny sliver of power again.
- [43:09]
C
There's a. You ever see the movie Other People's money with Danny DeVito when he gives his famous speech when he's talking to the lawyers about why they should kill all the lawyers and the commies are hiding, you know, in the bushes, waiting, waiting to come out like that's Elizabeth Warren right now. She's like, fuck, I don't have to do anything. Just like Trump. Keep talking, right? Stop saying stupid shit. Let your policy stuff work. Get back to work. You got a very Healthy majority in both popular and electoral college take advantage of that. But. But he just is not capable. He just has a mental block for people that have wronged him. And, and it's. As somebody who's gone through hell as well, I kind of get it. But you know, I mean, it's not helping. At some point Vance, who wants the job, has to sit him down and say, look, dude, knock it off.
- [43:57]
A
Oh yeah, good luck with that.
- [43:58]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:59]
A
But I'm just saying that went pretty good for Pence.
- [44:03]
B
Okay, well, before we slide further down.
- [44:05]
A
Into a political show somehow like blocked by the algorithm further or anything, I'm going to let you go. But Bill, so keep us updated obviously on the go public plans that are not public as of yet and obviously on the evolution here of everything with Aberfi because I think that now we're in a massive arms race of us.
- [44:25]
B
Versus the institutions and the banks.
- [44:27]
A
Right. It's great that they're adopting our technology and they're going to be using it, but we still need them not to co opt it and make sure that we don't have access and that it's not a profitable investable asset class for us anymore because we're using DTCC COIN instead of crypto native stablecoin. Right, Right.
- [44:44]
C
Yeah. There you go. Well, thanks for having me on. Everybody should please, you know, consider abra.com if you need a place to manage crypto, take a loan, earn some yield.
- [44:54]
A
And I'm not only a customer, I'm not only the CEO, I'm a customer.
- [44:57]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:59]
A
But I, yes, I've utilized Abra. It's incredible. So.
- [45:02]
C
That's right. Thank you. We love it. And yeah, happy holidays. Good to see you and hopefully we'll come back on in January with some great news.
- [45:10]
A
Yeah, let's catch up next month when Bitcoin's at $135,000. You heard it here first, people. No crash on December 19th. What if we just go up, be amazing? All right, everybody will be back tomorrow, obviously at 9:00am Eastern Standard Time. Thank you. Give Bill a follow and check out everything Abra has to offer. We'll see you soon. Bye.
- [45:28]
B
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A
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B
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- [46:49]
A
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