← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Trump in Talks to Buy Binance US Stake? CZ Says No. | Crypto Town Hall
00:53:45
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- [00:00]
Scott
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every day on x at 10:15am ish, I guess we'll call it 10:19am by the time we actually start talking 5 days a week, Monday through Friday, where we unpack all of the biggest stories in the crypto industry and market with a panel of incredible, incredible guests who give us their expert insight on everything that is happening. Should say it's honestly, you know, we, I do this basically for fun. It's a just an incredible show and keeps me accountable for keeping up with the industry. Obviously to write a newsletter in the morning and do YouTube and then show up for Crypto Town hall and try to keep up with these amazing guests and to glean as much knowledge from them as humanly possible. And it's an honor to be able to do that every single day. We have so much news on a daily basis in this industry that it's almost impossible to keep up, almost impossible from hour to hour to decide what the topic of the show will be, which is why it's always so sort of winding and, and we go from topic to topic to topic and story, often even getting breaking news while we're doing the show. I think the biggest breaking news story right now is the one that we have in the title right now. Trump's family in talks to buy Binance US stake. There was a Wall Street Journal article today that says a representative of President Trump's family have held talks to take a financial stake in the US arm of crypto exchange Binance. CZ has been pushing for the Trump administration to grant him a pardon. This is pretty, pretty wild coming on the heels of the announcement yesterday that now I'm going to butcher it. It's MG something. Anybody here? The company owned by the Abu Dhabi Sovereign wealth fund invested to MGX. Sorry, thank you. That invested $2 billion, it was announced I think yesterday into Binance. Absolutely huge investment, largest in the history of the crypto space and paid in stablecoins. So NGX investing $2 billion yesterday are being announced they're owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, leading many to wonder why Binance would take. This has to be strategic, obviously, since we know that Binance is flush with cash. And now this story, although I don't think that this is breaking as of anything that happened yesterday, but that the Trump family interested in potentially a stake in Binance, specifically us. Interestingly also on Tuesday, Dave, who's up here, hosted the show for me and the reason I missed the show was because I was interviewing Richard Tang, the CEO of Binance, for, for my podcast, which will come out, I think a week from Sunday. And I asked him, you know, about the idea of them either going public or taking investment and kind of shrugged it off because the news hadn't come out. And I asked him about plans in the US and he sort of shrugged it off and said we're not really, we don't have a firm plan right now. We're just seeing how the wind sort of blow. So wondering if this is kind of old news or new, but I guess we should start with first, what would it mean if Trump and his family, via either personal investment or World Liberty Financial, were to make an investment in Binance on the heels of CZ obviously coming out of jail and finance, you know, being charged and paying a over $4 billion fine? Dave, what are your thoughts?
- [03:31]
Dave
I hope it doesn't happen is all I can say. Not because it's necessarily objectively bad, but because anytime the word Trump gets mixed up with anything these days, it creates hysteria in half the population. And you know, honestly, I think that let crypto build, right? You know, let, let, let the stablecoin bill get done without the meddling of the banking industry, which is the other story you could have talked about today, by the way, because that's going on right now. And let market structure bill happen where cooler heads can prevail as opposed to making it hyper partisan because Trump is, it owns a stake in one of the players.
- [04:10]
Scott
And the Chinese player at that, although I think technically they're from Malta now. Right. But I think, you know, stake in the largest exchange out of China would obviously, I think, cause a stir to a great degree. I mean, we kind of talked about it yesterday. But what do you make of the MGX investment of $2 billion into Binance in general? To me, that has to be strategic, as I said. Right. That's not about Binance needing $2 billion. So clearly, I mean, potentially a listing on a public listing in the United Arab Emirates. I mean, what else do you think could be the angle there?
- [04:48]
Simon
Adx.
- [04:49]
Scott
What? Mdx?
- [04:50]
Simon
Yeah, adx. AD adx, Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange or the local nasdaq.
- [04:55]
Scott
Oh, no, I'm saying that the company that, that made the investment is mgx. But yes, ADX would be where it would be listed. But do you think that that's the angle that they're going for here? Do you think that that's why they're taking a two billion dollar investment?
- [05:08]
Simon
My purpose, in fact. Sorry, I'm not sure if I Was, yeah, go on, Dave. Okay, yeah, I mean that's in, that's a 10 year or a decade long ambition of UAE in general. And Abu Dhabi is trying to win the finance game above the, above all the Emirates through, through ADX and Phoenix, the, the multi billion miner, if you remember, got a lot of strategic partnership with the government. They got a two billion dollar investment in a nuclear power plant dedicated to just mining operations. And then another billion dollars in hardware was already checked to Antminer Bitmain. So I mean just to give you a reference on how eager and how strongly Abu Dhabi in particular and UAE is heading towards crypto public listings. And eventually what happened with all these investments and strategic partnership was that Phoenix went live on ADX as the world's, I Mean Not World's, UAE's first company that, that went public, I think raised about a billion dirhams or something like that and then went to I think a peak of 4 billion. My numbers are not that good on this, but I'm just giving you references here. Now imagine if UAE would have to play a mega, a mega game of bringing the world capital to adx. What would you do when the world is chasing crypto and the future of economy and everything through crypto? If you could get Binance, the leading exchange with all those whatever, hundreds of millions of users to be listed in ADX before it gets to NASDAQ or before it gets anywhere. I mean you win the game, you bring all the liquidity of the world to adx. And I know that sounds pretty dramatic, especially coming from me, but I don't see a smaller play than that. And Binance already has by the way, for those who come to Satoshi Roundtable, they might have met the investors and partners of local partners of Binance. They're already like pretty royal, let's put it that way.
- [07:21]
Scott
Yeah. In my interview with Richard Tang, I was shocked. I guess I never looked into it that Binance has 260 million registered users. It's just a astoundingly huge number.
- [07:34]
Dave
Yeah.
- [07:34]
Simon
On the website.
- [07:35]
Scott
Yeah.
- [07:35]
Simon
Yep.
- [07:36]
Scott
Yeah, I mean I, you know, I just never thought about the numbers of registered users, but just astounding. So obviously as you said, that would be key for them to be listed there in the stock exchange. But I guess the question isn't as to why Abu Dhabi would want Binance. I guess what I'm asking is why would Binance take the money if they don't need it? And is it strategic for them to list in Abu Dhabi rather than any other jurisdiction in the world.
- [08:06]
Simon
Yeah. Because for the Last I think 30 years, UAE has been snatching or trying to snatch the world capital model, right? The world capital centers like Singapore, like Mauritius, the Asian centers, and then of course aiming and ambitiously aiming to also snatch more volume and capital from European centers. But what you see today is that some of the largest funds and also a ton of others in numbers have their feeders in uae, which means if Binance goes public, there will be a ton of institutional capital that would want to buy that share or that stock because that would be their best exposure into crypto. The most profitable, the most institutional, the most. I mean, the biggest company in crypto, like what's your best shot by the biggest company in crypto over a stock exchange? So no crypto exposure, no nothing. You dabble into crypto, but you don't and you still get the most stable and biggest company. So I think that would be a strategic angle to target global capital.
- [09:17]
Dave
Scott, I think it's bigger than that and I know that that's kind of a strange thing to say. But if you believe Larry Fink is right, and since I said it five years before, Larry, obviously I do, that every asset is going to be tokenized. And if you understand that the majority, that most of the volume of trading volume in the world is derivatives and Binance has arguably the largest derivative platform in the world, or damn close to it in terms of volume, the fact that it's crypto is immaterial. You understand that there is the possibility of a strategic tie up, that this is a toe in the water towards where Binance is the derivative platform and Abu Dhabi is listing the, you know, is listing the stocks and all stocks are multi jurisdictional listed if they're, if they're serious multinational companies. But understand that the potential here, if you're Binance, you need to get into the traditional financial markets if you want to be able to expand into the future. And they know this. And I haven't seen your interview with Richard, but my guess is that might have come out or probably should have, but I think that that's kind of important. And the same things are going to be happening. You're going to see every exchange group. If you think Nasdaq going 24 hours is only about US equities, then you're not paying attention. Now, I haven't talked to Tal. I know him and I know how smart he is. Tal Cohen, who's the one who made the announcement. But there's a lot going on here and ultimately this is the sorts of moves that you're going to see more and more of and they'll start increasing over the next few years.
- [10:52]
Bruce
I'll take it, Scott, a little bit even more personal. You know, if I'm sitting in the room there and, you know, you're kind of wondering, it's the same reason why, you know, BlackRock has a 5% stake in strategy. Right. Like there, Binance could be holding the most bitcoin like in the, in the world. You know, we, we don't actually all know it also could be one of the most profitable and largest companies in the world. Right. We don't exactly all know.
- [11:17]
Scott
Right.
- [11:18]
Bruce
It's a lot of private money that's kind of float around.
- [11:20]
Matteo
So it could be one of the.
- [11:20]
Bruce
Largest companies in the world. And then if I'm sitting in the room there, I'm, you know, the conversation was probably like, hey, you know, you've been able to operate over here and you know, CZ's kind of lived over there and, you know, they don't need the money. But I'm sure it was like, hey, you're taking this money, you know, we're still going to give it to you, but we want a piece of this thing that you've been building over here with kind of like the blanket of safety, regulatory safety that we've given you. Right. I would guess that that would also be a big piece of it, which is totally fine. And I think, you know, they're probably coming and saying, hey, we want our piece of this before, you know, now that the, the rails are off and the regulation is more friendly in the US and things are really going to go at some point if finance did, did disclose their, their true valuation and go public, you know, this investment, even though probably could be, you know, probably small, I'm guessing less than a 5% stake or somewhere in that range.
- [12:12]
Scott
Yeah, that's what I want to know. Right.
- [12:14]
Bruce
We don't know, but I'm guessing somewhere there this could, you know that 2 billion instantly turns into like 20.
- [12:21]
Scott
Right.
- [12:21]
Bruce
And so I think there's probably something there. And then to, you know, I think it's the same thing with Binance Us. Right. Like, I don't know if you get like, I don't know where Binance Us is actually like based, but there was the, you know, if you've been paying attention in the industry for a while, you know, that there was just kind of these wonky setups, capital structures for, you know, Binance Us to Binance or okx to.
- [12:43]
Scott
Okay, they're different companies.
- [12:44]
Bruce
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:45]
Scott
Presumably FTX obviously wasn't.
- [12:48]
I
Right.
- [12:48]
Bruce
Yeah, they're just like whatever, move fast and break everything. But I think it's a similar thing there. Now do I wish that the Trump family, like they've said, was the one that was going after that? Yeah, probably. I'm in the same camp as him. Like, you know, maybe take a step back or at least do it under a different name.
- [13:05]
Scott
Right.
- [13:06]
Bruce
Like just figure something out. So it's just not as volatile. It's like nice to see the volatility coming out of the market a little bit today and yesterday. So you know, I, I don't think that's a great strategic thing but you know, what, what are we going to do? You know, you can't have everyone in that person's family not try to go after what they're going after. And I think it's actually a great strategic buy. Right. And then there's, you know, there's the reciprocity from the larger corporation that they could have and who knows how much bitcoin they have. Right. So I think there's, it's the same type of thing.
- [13:36]
Scott
That makes a lot of sense, Simon.
- [13:39]
I
Yeah, this is actually, I believe, an incredible move for kind of what was trying to be built all along, which was the whole concept of that security token. But now you have most, you know, the largest interests in the world competing to try and be the future issuer of the dollar through stablecoins. And at the same time when you have acquisitions like this, the 260 million users, if we remember back to the DOJ, hostile takeover, I call it, the condition of the settlement was pay $4.7 billion or something along those lines, cz, you'll only get four months in prison but you have to install the U.S. compliance department. And then Binance started being used as I think, a tool and weapon where accounts were being closed down based upon government goals. And at that point it was a, it was a play for the 260 million users. So now come, you know, Abu Dhabi. This is a leap frog moment for a, a new capital market that has been building in the uae. A crypto friendly stroke tax neutral environment whereby you can, you can have all the foundation of a very large crypto native database that also has a peer to peer fiat currency system whereby you can clear direct from one bank to the other with significant traction. And if you try to turn that into a tokenized exchange with real world assets and traditional securities as well as a stable structure in the US for Stablecoins, then I think you have the making of a leapfrog capital market that I think would be a very large battle for who can dominate that industry between Abu Dhabi and America. And eventually it will probably be the stable coins that will build all those rails to connect it. But this whole vision of global markets where you can send, rather than just listing on NASDAQ or the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the ability for securities to go from exchange to exchange, I think this is a big vision and a big leapfrog towards moving in that type of environment. And then Binance is the perfect acquisition or investment or strategic investment for any jurisdiction that wants to pull forward that vision.
- [16:31]
Scott
Bruce, I remember a time when you were here every day, man. Where you been? See, I gave a great introduction there for Bruce Fett and he didn't even answer. Super awkward. I love it. That's what makes this show so good, is that I can like totally hype, man, and just get left hanging. Totally.
- [16:51]
I
Yeah. Bruce is the perfect one to talk to this.
- [16:53]
Scott
I know. Bruce, can you hear us? Ah, for some reason I don't hear Bruce, do you guys? Because it says he's got.
- [17:00]
Bruce
It's not even showing him as a speaker for me.
- [17:02]
Scott
Okay, Bruce, I'm going to drop you down and send you an invite or just close out and request. Okay, if you can hear us, I'll try. Yeah, Bruce is the perfect person for this, so would love to have that conversation with. Oh, you know what? I think I literally just booted him from the space. I'm the worst. I don't know what's happening, but if anybody on the team is listening, get Bruce up here. All right, anyone else thoughts on what Simon had to say there?
- [17:26]
Bruce
Just real quick, We've been talking about this for a long time in the space where. And I know Coinbase is like, oh, we'll never have a coin, we'll never have a token. But now there's a world where, hey, maybe we tokenize the stock and we have it on our exchange.
- [17:40]
Scott
Right.
- [17:41]
Bruce
Like we talked about this early on where, hey, is there an up and coming tech company that traditionally would have went public on the NASDAQ or potentially the New York Stock Exchange that says, you know what? Hey, we're just going to tokenize and we're going to go public on Coinbase.
- [17:55]
Scott
Right.
- [17:56]
Bruce
And what would the liquidity look like there versus other places? And what would be the advantage there versus other places? And I think right now it's scary. And previously it'd be more Scary to say, hey, we're going to go public, you know, as a token for regulatory reasons, obviously. And then B, is there enough liquidity there? Right? Then there's like, hey, you can halt a stock on the New York Stock Exchange, right? You can't hold something out of Dax. Right? So I think that's always been a scary thing for people, you know, after what happened with ftx and you know it's market making that took down Terra Luna, right? It wasn't just like bad technology, it was market making. And so I think that's always been a scare. But if you have like finance liquidity, Coinbase liquidity, Kraken liquidity, all working together, I think now it opens the door for companies to say, hey, we're just going to go tokenize and we're going to get access to, you know, the entire world as our tam, you know, versus just this one exchange. And I think that that is something that will be appetizing for companies, hopefully this, this year if people can pull it off.
- [18:56]
Scott
Bruce, can you hear us?
- [18:58]
H
Yeah, can you hear me?
- [18:59]
Scott
Oh, it's a miracle. I gave you a great, like really flattering introduction. I said we missed you. That used to be here at the beginning and then it was just crickets.
- [19:08]
H
Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, you know, it's weird. Maybe you're being suppressed. I couldn't find the channel after I got, I dropped out.
- [19:16]
Scott
Oh no. I accidentally tried to take you down and I think I removed you from the space and had to literally call the team to like unban you. So that was my fault.
- [19:24]
H
Oh, I got banned.
- [19:24]
Scott
Godspeed, my friend. I don't know, it said remove from spaces. I thought that meant to just drop you off. Apparently I'm a boomer, but we were in the glitch there. But. So your thoughts, Bruce?
- [19:36]
H
Well, you know, I want to be careful what I say because I'm friends with a lot of the folks involved and you know, confidentiality wise and everything. But you know, I'll say that, you know, to echo some of the things Simon said, you know, I think that, you know, I think Binance is a great, great brand. You know, I love what Abu Dhabi is doing and in the uae, you know, I was one of the first to. I was the first really. I was the first person ever to talk to the government in uae. Any government official talk to the official know government advisors way back. And I also was the first person to ever host a crypto event. It was the Dubai bitcoin conference in 2013 in UAE. So all these crazy conferences. Maybe I take some tiny bit of blame for that because now it's a zoo. As you know. I know you've, you've been there, I've been there. When you're there. The, the, the conference scene in uae, especially Dubai is pretty.
- [20:30]
Scott
I literally think I saw you on three yachts in less than six hours. 2049, Dubai last year. If people want to know how crazy it is.
- [20:38]
H
It is a funny thing, you know, the whole, I was thinking about that when I was on one of the yachts like a few weeks ago when I was out there and I'm like, this used to just dazzle me, you know, because it's not a normal thing for people to go on big nice yachts. Like, but like, you know, where I am at the bay in New Hampshire, there is no yacht. The biggest yacht we have is like the size of a tender of the, of the yachts that are in, you know, Dubai harbor and Abu Dhabi. So it's kind of overwhelming. I mean it's a little, little bit of, you know, especially Dubai. It's a little bit of like, you know, noise to signal ratio. You know, there's just a lot going on, a lot of people at these events. It can get kind of exhausting and funny, you know, I mean, talk about a first world problem. Like you get tired of going on the yachts. But there is, there is some truth and especially like the fatigue, you know, the size of the conferences and everything. But the point is it's a good market. I mean it's attracted, you know, tens of thousands of really good people. The Satoshi Roundtable had like ridiculous stats. We've had something like 250 people from the roundtable get a golden visa, which, you know, you know, we only have hundreds of attendees. You know, it's, it's not, I mean it's, it's like a huge percentage of people. And our first event that we did in Dubai was three years ago and there was 70 people who had never ever been to Dubai who ended up getting a golden visa. So it's literally 70 people. And these are all like pretty much OGs, a lot of CEOs, founders, ultra high net worth people, people who've been in the space a long time. 70 of them never even set foot in country before. They liked it so much that they decided to move there and get a visa there. So it, it really has done a good job at attracting people. I think that it's, it's a good market. You know, I think the things that have succeeded most in UAE are free market solutions. I think they've made some mistakes with some of the regulatory, you know, trying to be too much like the U.S. you know, there is some, some bureaucrats just like there is in every other country. But overall I think it's been a, you know, a bullish thing. So I'm, you know, I'm bullish on UAE and any country that tries to welcome people. And it's particularly interesting where, you know, Binance being the biggest player in the space, they felt welcome there, you know, and CZ felt welcome there because it's a very pro business, pro innovation kind of culture.
- [22:48]
Scott
But Bruce, do you agree that the angle, I mean, Binance obviously doesn't need money. I think we've established that. Right. So they took $2 billion in stablecoins from MGX, which is owned obviously by the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. I mean, do you think that that's eventually means, as we were talking about that they're getting listed there? I mean, what's the strategy there? What's in that? I guess for Binance, I think we obviously understand what's in that for the UAE or for Abu Dhabi?
- [23:12]
H
Yeah, I'd rather not speculate too much. You know, just like I say, I'm real close with a lot of the, you know, I'm friends with.
- [23:23]
I
It's not a little. Yeah, it's not a listing on the legacy exchange. It's a design of a future exchange.
- [23:31]
J
Yeah, yeah. Bruce, I can take you even further than that. I think your first interaction with the representative of financial markets here in Dubai was in 2008 in a hedge fund conference in Montreal where they had the DIFC representative there. And I happened to be part of that conversation. I was a student back then, so I was pretty impressed about the exchange. So that's why I remember it. And since that time in 2008, 2007, where DIFC was going around, in pitching all around the world the vision of what they're trying to do and seeing it today really actually happen on rails of decentralization, on rails that I participated in personally, et cetera. It's really amazing. And I think the little from a strategic orientation, I think that, or I assume that what, what the UAE in general is trying to do is really as like Simon said, leapfrog into global financial markets. And what will accelerate that is the ability to issue emerging market stablecoins, because that's what's going to make this place truly global is the fact that you can transact in Any currency that denominate stablecoin issued in any currency because that will give the world access to financial markets via a marketplace which is the uae where I think the conversation in the US is very much focused on obviously the US dollars and the US assets, et cetera, because it's the player in global financial markets. But I think the uae, and this is something that the UAE really understands is that the people, the world comes here and comes here with its diversity, with its needs, etc. And tries to create markets that they were unable to create back home, which gives this place this accelerated type of pace. So this is, I think, very exciting. Is exactly like you said, Simon. I think it's going to be. It's a really leapfrog moment that will. Because. Because the UAE has had a little bit of a hard time kind of competing with traditional, already established financial markets with London, with New York, et cetera. But, but given these new Rails and the capabilities that stablecoins, especially emerging market kind of denominated, you know, NARA and, and other, you know, emerging market stable coins, being able to do things with that here in the UAE is going to be fantastic and it's going to really create a truly.
- [26:12]
H
Yeah, I agree. I remember that in 2008. I remember when they were pushing the DIFC. I first went to the DIFC when it was first built in like 2004. There's a really cool video on YouTube if you Google like Bruce Fenton DIFC. I have a video from like almost 20 years ago and it was just the DIFC building and I love showing the video because I like do a panorama. I like move my camera360 and showing some of the cranes and stuff and there's like nothing there. It's just the building, they, they were smart. They. It's like you build it, if you build it, they will come. So they built the building and there was nothing. I mean there was nothing. The car, the floors were cardboard, you know, so they just built this thing and they're like, oh, hey, this is a new financial center. And it really wasn't. But it's sort of almost fake it till you make it. They got Goldman Sachs as a tenant, which was a big deal. They started doing, you know, different licensing and getting inviting people in. They used, you know, its own special law system and everything. And then it grew and they were, you know, they were pushing that all through, you know, 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9. And then they, you know, started building it and more and more things came in. There's a Whole bunch of books about this and everything. But they've, you know, they were really friendly and they, they were innovative and they were, they were really early on, on interest in bitcoin. You know, Sheikh Mohammed's office talked to us about Bitcoin in 2012, 13, maybe even 2012. Definitely 13, which is pretty early, especially for a government. You know, most governments didn't even look at it until later. And I remember my first meeting in there. I said, hey, there's this new thing called bitcoin and it's like money that you can move and you know, the old day kind of classic pitch where you, you do a demo, hey, pull out your phone, I'll send you some money right now. And, and, and the first thing the regulators said, they said, oh, this is really cool. How can we help you? And I'm like, are you serious? Like that's what you're, you know, U.S. regulators are like, oh, why is this illegal? And how can we screw you? You know, so they had a very positive pro innovation and I always urge them to, to keep that. The other thing they're doing that billionaire said is, is like they're, they're alluded to is that they're flexing their money when it's, you know, I used to be in raising private equity from the big funds and I would always urge them from a, from a, you know, sort of Middle east standpoint, I'm like, you ought to use some of that flex to force companies to invest more direct investment. You know, if you're giving them billions and billions, you should make them have a headquarters and make them bring some of their tech. And they, they've done that successfully for the last several years. So they've really transformed the economy that way as well.
- [28:45]
Simon
Yeah, and that, yeah, that's exactly what I started with.
- [28:48]
J
And just a quick one, in this, whatever this move that the UAE is, is doing right now is going to open the floodgate from a Saudi competition. So you will see Saudi making a move on another player, probably the number two. Okay, but, but you will see something happening from a Saudi perspective very, very, very soon, which is good.
- [29:12]
Simon
But number one is of course, number one. And Bruce to, yeah, Bruce, to just add to your point, that's exactly what I was saying that you know, it took about 20 years of deliberations for ADGM to get the kind of bilaterals, like the structured bilaterals that even some of the top nations don't work so hard to get. Right. So the tax structures are super sorted for institutions within adgm and difc, of course, it's a, it's a space by itself, like you said. So with all of that, if you, if you list the number one crypto company with the number one asset book as well as the one holding, and let's not even talk about the power it holds in the space, then you definitely get everyone and anyone who's interested into crypto buy that asset.
- [30:04]
Scott
Right.
- [30:04]
Simon
It's like owning the future NASDAQ or something. I mean maybe cme.
- [30:11]
H
Yeah, exactly.
- [30:13]
Scott
Quickly. I just want to. I just shared the tweet above. CZ's basically debunks the entire idea that the Trump family was in talks to buy Biden's U.S. stake, saying that the Wall Street Journal got all the facts wrong. This is the Wall Street Journal, hence why we made it the title. But you can read it above. But he said that they asked hundreds of people to have 20 people reach out to him. In essence, they tried hard to make a story to report. In all bold he said fact. I have had no discussions of a Binance USD deal with. Well, anyone. So perhaps my conversation with Richard Tang on Tuesday was quite accurate.
- [30:54]
Simon
Yeah, and you can't complain because there was no pump and there was no dump.
- [30:58]
I
But this really is best done in a, in a tax neutral environment to be like the central clearinghouse of tokenized securities and assets and onboarding and off boarding into peer to peer fiat currency rails and all that stuff. It's. If they pull off this vision, I cannot tell you how much of a radical shift in capital markets this could actually have. And I too actually Bruce. My first job interview in capital markets was at difc and I remember going there, if you ever worn a suit in Dubai, it's not fun. And it was an empty building with absolutely no infrastructure but this amazing, this amazing looking building and I, I took a job at London Stock Exchange instead. Maybe I should have stayed.
- [31:51]
Scott
Aren't they building a crypto building now? A crypto specific building in dubai.
- [31:55]
J
Yeah, that's CZ's project.
- [31:57]
I
But that's having, having been.
- [31:59]
Simon
No, no, no, that's a private building. No, CZ has nothing to do with that crypto.
- [32:03]
I
No, but having.
- [32:05]
J
Where are they building it?
- [32:05]
Simon
No, where are they building it? It's in dmcc. It's a DMCC L L Corder. It's another guy, it's a media guy stepping into it. Stepped into Web3, but that's a pretty, pretty solid building.
- [32:18]
J
But it's bad location.
- [32:19]
I
If any jurisdictions are listening into this, this is A massive, massive lesson in lost opportunity. So I was at the conference when CZ in the Chondu conference when he launched the BNB token and he just left OKX and he got hell from you know the, the Chinese government, it started there and then he had to flee to Japan and then he got hell from the Japanese government and got chased out there and then we know exactly what happened in the us. So under the Biden administration, you know they completely tried to, to wipe the thing out. But just due to jurisdictions short vision of him trying to create this global market, it couldn't work in China, it couldn't work in Japan, it couldn't work in America. But now Abu Dhabi is just the perfect place for something to work in the center of the world. I do genuinely believe that if this goes the way we think it's going to go, this would be a massive shift in global capital markets and it's a really big bet and actually a no brainer, asymmetric bet for them to make with their sovereign wealth from the vast resources that they, that they have. It's actually a really strategic, this is the definition of a sovereign wealth and strategic investments.
- [33:49]
Scott
BC.
- [33:53]
I
Yeah, I mean I think Simon, he framed it really, really well there. I just think that it's this kind of a really, really, really upfront move kind of aligned beautifully with the economic headwinds that are facing down the West. I think one of the things, kind of to go back to the point earlier, I was really surprised to see this kind of news article come up because I think it was last year, right that there was negotiations about the idea involved with CZ when it was offered to the Trump family then apparently it seemed like a little bit of a regurgitation of that. But I think it's when you look at it from the point of view of what is done, I think it's just showcasing Binance are just that biggest brand. You've got the brand, you've got the user base, you've got the UAE that have just kind of completely open, armed, welcoming this while you've got kind of policy issues, everything from Mica across Europe, everything that you look into the policy changes that are now happening in the us. I think this is just like a brilliant flex ride to have that kind of investment to open those doors, to kind of embrace cryptocurrency properly, you know, because I think also the timing of this, if we look at it, you know, the, the idea of Trump being the US's first pro crypto president coming in, bringing all this prosperity to the U.S. i think what the UAE are kind of saying, you know, is, is we, we, we're actually, we already have this environment, right? You can come and you know you're welcome here with open arms. You know, you can do everything here. You're not facing necessarily the same regulatory battle. But I also think that it kind of puts this really big open road call to everybody else now that says these guys are investing. And one of the other speakers said this brilliantly earlier, I think maybe Dave, but you're opening this up now. What are Saudi thinking about jumping on this bandwagon and how appealing is everything looking UAE wise versus the very sticky financial environment that we're finding ourselves here? Like for me for example in Europe, but also as well with the US.
- [36:04]
Scott
Matteo?
- [36:07]
J
Yeah, when I look at this, I see the NGX investment as kind of a reflexive response to the end of Operation Chokepoint and the policy change in the US where there's now actually a threat that all of these companies that onshored into this regulatory liquidity friendly environment could start to see an advantage and a gain in coming back to the US because there's now much more of like a clear landing pad for this. And just to kind of go back to CZ's tweet, I think what he's really saying there is that he had no involvement. I don't think it necessarily dictates that there has been no involvement. I agree with Dave that it would almost be extremely on brand for Trump or some affiliate of his companies to make this decision. But I don't think it's ideal for the industry or for cz. But I think what we are experiencing here is there probably is Binance plans to expand its capital market strategy. It's looking and shopping around what are the best solutions for that. Obviously the idea probably here is that Binance itself as a global company can receive this investment from uae, be able to manage the capital market strategy, upgrade the financial system there, build the liquidity rails, as Simon said. But then we have Binance us, which has been kind of the redheaded stepchild of Binance that's looking to maybe do something similar or expand its efforts and is needing a place to do so. I, I, you know, my conspiratorial take is what's, what is the opportunity here to have CZ installed again in Binance since he's, you know, legally one step removed from it. I just don't know. And it's not like a knock on CZ or on Binance. I Think that's good for everybody if that's able to be the case because I don't think they treated him fairly and I think the debt has been repaid. So it's very confusing to know whether there's truth to this or not. But it's an interesting take take.
- [38:14]
Simon
I want to go back to Bruce and Simon and in fact Dave, everybody covered how, how UAE places itself, but I want to give people an idea of how aggressively they do it.
- [38:27]
Dave
Right.
- [38:28]
Simon
For the last four years I have a whole bunch of my friends from the US, from around the world used to call me randomly like I'm in Dubai or I'm in Abu Dhabi, let's catch up. And in those coffee conversations I've always heard this. These guys are some of the largest holders of SpaceX and Tesla and these rare and blue chip stocks. Some of them are not public, others are. And they were directly sitting with these sovereign wealth funds, they were directly sitting with the management at avgn, they were directly sitting with similar houses. And the aggression can be observed in a simple fact that they are trying to get those stocks to be traded or to be, to be future traded at least in adx. Now how many times in your lifetime have you ever heard that level of aggression, like direct involvement of trying to get the best stocks, stocks not just as a stock, but a pile of that stock to get into local markets to be traded so they truly understand the capital markets from the core of it, from the execution point of it, from the retail activity side of it. So I wouldn't deny a penny or a percent of what Dave and Simon have projected. And in fact Bruce has given a good idea on how things have always rolled. So what you're looking at is crypto was a currency initially. So, well, good currency. We did good with currency. Then we became crypto assets and digital assets. Now we are real world assets. We are basically heading in a direction where crypto will encompass everything in finance and real world everything will be tokenized. And if the largest, largest, largest user base, the largest infrastructure, the most influential person, I mean, go on and on like the way you've seen in Dubai, they like making everything world's biggest tower, world's biggest lake, world's biggest this, that and those world's largest fart whatever, like why wouldn't they get the world's biggest.
- [40:32]
I
Exchange, the world's biggest fault coin if.
- [40:34]
Scott
They get, I was going to say the exact same thing.
- [40:41]
Simon
So yeah, why would they ever miss out on the world's biggest finance play? I mean at least I can say that. I mean, I can say that everywhere. But I'm saying in this conversation with the people here, we all know where crypto is heading and what crypto is capable of. Why are we in this? So if we know that that's going to be the future and everything will be tokenized, then there is no bigger player than Binance. And if, if I didn't have that perspective, and thank you Simon for bringing it that. But, but being the world's largest clearinghouse that has worked on building those rails, getting themselves out of the fat of gray list last year, which was, you know, insanely celebrated, they're in the best position to get the world capital for neat and clean stock trading. And this time the stock will be shipped from here to the US and not the other way around or it'll.
- [41:32]
Scott
Be a tokenized version of everything traded everywhere else.
- [41:35]
I
Well, that's the irony, which I think if you think about Binance US to Binance, if you look at the doj, this is why I believe there was a massive grand conspiracy from the fed to the SEC based upon the banks and operation choke 2.0. It is crystal clear that there was a grand conspiracy. But the, you know, what was it that Binance got done for? Well, obviously there was the money laundering KYC side, not, not being registered within the US and taking on US users. That was the, the foundation of the case. But what was the, the real big problem that didn't get looked in too much? It was the Rails because they got their stable coins shut down as they were getting real traction with the stablecoin and that was the rails between Binance and Binance. US was very murky because it didn't feel like the dollars were or the Treasuries were segregated in the right place and one exchange was borrowing from the other in an environment of trying to bootstrap that network and get the segregation right. But all of that is just a world of jurisdiction to jurisdiction that is being just broken down one piece at a time as we enter into this borderless capital markets on blockchain rails that just, especially with AI that just can't translate jurisdiction because it just doesn't make sense anymore. And so it's ironic that that's the Rails. And if anybody thinks that a key energy player, key energy player in jurisdiction would sit back and watch America say that it's going to have a bitcoin strategic reserve and not sit in the middle between China and America and not think that they should be investing heavily in asics and mining Bitcoin and building their own Bitcoin strategic reserve quietly on the side while everyone else is talking about the American Bitcoin strategic reserve, then you must think that these governments and some of the controllers of wealth are some of the dumbest people out there. The price is down for a reason because nation states want it to be down.
- [43:55]
Scott
Yeah, Zillion. And Dave.
- [43:58]
J
Yeah, Very quickly I just think that the US still has a massive advantage under the legislation of stablecoins, especially when it comes to people. Because in order for the UAE to kind of have like this global financial, I think that necessary condition would be to have the ability to trade digital dirham digital, Moroccan dirham digital, Nira digital or whatever. Okay. And, and in order to issue those type of currencies, you have to have to issue it under a very solid jurisdiction. And I think from, from, from a legislation standpoint, you're still going to have, I think that most of these emerging market issuances of stablecoins are going to happen in the U.S. under the U.S. stablecoin act or whatever that legislation is, simply because that provides a safe heaven for these issuers because a lot of these countries will see the issuance of a stablecoin denominated in their national currency as a sovereignty issue issue and they could be very aggressive in terms of stopping that, etc. So I think that the, the, the entrepreneurs that are going to kind of front run this opportunity and do this because there will be use case for it in the UAE definitely. They would still have a very, very good interest into going into the US simply because once you do it under regulation there, you're kind of safe. No one is going to come and, and fight and you know, US regulated company. That's all I had to say.
- [45:36]
Scott
Yeah, Dave.
- [45:38]
Simon
Yeah.
- [45:39]
Matteo
I mean there's a lot of unpacking here. I mean generally I, on these subjects I think Bruce and Simon are right. I mean all you have to do is go to Dubai and.
- [45:50]
I
If you.
- [45:50]
Matteo
Talk to emiratis for even 30 seconds, you get the message. They work, want to leapfrog, they want to be in the future. They understand that. That being said, if you listen to Trump for any even 30 seconds, he wants the US to be the epicenter of whatever he thinks is strategically important. So there's going to be a lot of machinations here. And I agree with Simon about that. There is a lot of positioning, there's a lot of game theory. But the one thing that is clear is our regulators understand they do because I actually, I talked to Someone there two days ago. They understand that the future of capital markets is going to be global. So they're going to care about a couple of things. Specifically, they want the issuers to be here in the United States of the actual capital stock, and they know trading is going to be global of that capital stock, and they're more or less okay with that. They just want to try to figure out the right way around it. That's why I made the point earlier about derivatives, because Binance has a huge lead in derivatives, and they're obviously very large in spot markets as well. But that user base is extremely important. And if you think that U.S. entrepreneurs and U.S. issuers don't want to be able to access that liquidity, you're nuts. Obviously, US Companies want that and they want the regulated environment. They want to have it be in a sense where I know Bruce thinks there's no use for regulation, but there's still, there's still a sense among issuers that it's worth having, you know, accounting rules that are standardized and that people understand that if they're lied to by the issuer of the asset, that issuer could potentially go to jail or at the very least, stick the tort bar on them. And all of this matters. So, you know, there's a lot to play here. But the strategy is not just sound.
- [47:47]
Dave
It's. It makes it.
- [47:48]
Matteo
I mean, it's, it's, it's flipping obvious, right? You know, if you think about it, London has kind of spit the bit when it comes to being the secondary or the globe, the leading international financial center, Europe can't get out of their own way. So, you know, the Emirates, actually, Simon's right. It's the center of the world, is where everything's being built. I mean, hell, you know, our CEO, you know, my son Ian has a golden visa in Dubai and lives there, you know, for exactly the reasons that Bruce mentioned because it makes enormous amounts of sense.
- [48:18]
Scott
Gross.
- [48:21]
Simon
So I'm going to borrow your seat as a host.
- [48:24]
Scott
Scott Mario just appeared so disappeared. So enjoy.
- [48:29]
Simon
Yeah, yeah, I just saw that. I was actually about to quote him, so he. He thrashed my joke as always, but okay, you know, we have discussed this for 40 good minutes. We've all given our thoughts, and there are no raised hands. So I'm expecting nobody has no more thoughts on this. Guys, can we, can we take a step back and maybe rethink about it? Okay? Listing capital markets. Done. What do you think? What else do you think? Could be, could be the reason of this investment what else do you think Binance could need? Or maybe the government could need? Or maybe just a fund could need. And last, but not. Oh, he's interested. See, he's back.
- [49:08]
Scott
He won't talk. It's his ghost. It's an AI.
- [49:14]
Simon
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Know who he is. And what about a simple, I mean, conspiracy theory on the other side? Maybe Binance needs that capital.
- [49:29]
Scott
Who has a chance?
- [49:30]
Simon
I mean, v. Sick Venice.
- [49:32]
I
Have you seen the liquidity on Binance? That stuff, the liquidity did not stop. That is the most liquid exchange in the world. If you want to get trades done, you need to be on Binance, Simon.
- [49:45]
Simon
Believe me, yes, from day one. But I'm trying to make this exciting. Right, We've discussed.
- [49:54]
I
Do you think there still might be a hole?
- [49:57]
Simon
I'm just saying maybe.
- [50:00]
I
Look at, look at the amount of trading fees that they're making. If Binance couldn't meet client assets at this stage, like I think they could. If they had any type of liquidity issue, they could have solved it within one year of the volume that they're doing.
- [50:18]
Scott
The United States government.
- [50:20]
Simon
Simon, the 4 billion, I'm not questioning the. Yeah, yeah, they paid it immediately. And There was a $4 billion BNB sale at the same 24 hours, by the way. So anyway, so that is also one.
- [50:33]
I
We can go down that route. They're trying to get a few billion.
- [50:35]
Simon
Out of them while I'm. I mean, please don't thrash me, guys. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate to make this exciting. Right? So, simple thing. I'm not talking about their liquidity, but I'm just saying maybe they can use an extra 2 billion somewhere. Who knows? Let's think about that. That's one. Maybe there are other utilities, not just liquidity. Maybe there's some other strategic reason. Let's explore that. Like we have pretty. Like there are some pretty intelligent people.
- [51:02]
I
I think it's more likely they would print 2 billion with a stable coin and do what Tether is doing and a bunch of yield from the US government and invest it in Bitcoin.
- [51:11]
Scott
If, But Simon, if MGX is listening, I could use $2 billion in liquidity. If we're just handing it out to people who, you know.
- [51:21]
I
Yeah, they need. They need the media. You are the media, Scott.
- [51:24]
Scott
I mean, I feel like, you know, doing this show for free every day should probably earn me $2 billion by now, but hey, whatever. I don't think we have any, Any evidence. There's a whole.
- [51:38]
Simon
It's a flop. You know, was it's a flop.
- [51:40]
Scott
Didn't finance help BYBIT fill their hole or the bridge loan Loan.
- [51:46]
Simon
Yeah, bridge loan, exactly.
- [51:48]
Scott
Yeah.
- [51:49]
Simon
I think that was claimed.
- [51:50]
Scott
Yeah.
- [51:50]
Simon
Number. The number wasn't given.
- [51:53]
Scott
Yeah. I can't remember how much they did, but it was, that was, I thought very unique to 2025 that when one exchange had a major incident this time everybody rushed to their aid instead of cannibalizing and watching them die. Right. You think back to the days of CV versus sbf. That wouldn't have happened. Right.
- [52:12]
Simon
It's.
- [52:13]
Scott
It's.
- [52:13]
Simon
I think at the end of the day your human qualities matter. I think that was one of the biggest, best and best managed hack ever in the history. And while we are just waking up from the largest Indian exchange which was supposed to be Binance owned was the hacked and how it was such a stupid banishment altogether. And of course the founders are busy building other companies and that's why. So I think it's a human part, it's the entrepreneurial part of the founder and the team on how transparently and aggressively and wholeheartedly they banished it. Again, that's my independent analysis. Being a vc, I'm always a big fan of good entrepreneurs. If someone else has another angle, maybe they can present it.
- [52:57]
Bruce
I would love.
- [52:58]
Scott
But I got a wrap because I have another conversation that I need to do in a few minutes. But it is worth noting and we'll probably continue this conversation as we get more information as to all of this, as to why this deal happened and certainly how much truth there is to the CZ Trump finance us rumors that seem to have flip flopped entirely while we're having this conversation. Guys, give everybody on stage a follow please. They're all amazing. Great conversation today. It's fun because at this point, 50% of the people on stage at any given time are people I count as actual friends in real life. So it makes for a really good time for me to do this show every single day. And thank you all everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. 10:15am Eastern Standard Time for another crypto town hall later.