Macro Trends in Digital Assets and Crypto | European Blockchain Convention

[Music] hello everyone thank you for being with us here today uh my name is Daddy Christenson and I'm from Iceland uh I want to I'm honored to be joined by some of the brightest Minds in the industry and we're going to discuss macro Trends in digital assets here today so let let's start with Martha if you want to introduce youu yourself and then we go back to the macro discussions good afternoon everyone thank you for being here uh and thank you for the invitation as uh I was we I was already introduced Martha Reay is from Fidelity digital assets I'm on the research team uh we're a team of 10 people now three years ago we were only three so we continue to expand um I'm a former Emerging Markets uh fund manager specializing in equities and I'm delighted to be here hi everybody thank you for uh inviting me and it's a pleasure to be here my name is Paul broadsky I'm a partner at panta Capital uh we have uh about five billion under management uh through four or five strategies uh I previously uh ran a macro fund so I'm delighted to be here and excited to talk about macro hello everybody it's good to be back uh my name is Maurice Muro I'm the CEO of the hotle group which is a digital asset fund manager in Europe uh we have a few strategies directional VC and uh delta neutral Market neutral and um yeah great to talk about the macro Trends in digital assets hi everyone I'm Dena um I'm at agnostic fund I'm a partner there focus on portfolio management so we're a Thailand based liquid token fund uh started my crypto career when I was at Bridgewater and so looking forward to having this conversation about macro hello everybody uh Michael Ashby CEO of alwand we're a uh quantitative investment firm that allocates to external managers as well as internal we're also in the process of developing a fixed income market for digital assets which we're excited about and I have a background and working in um large additional hedge funds macro and credit I'm excited for the conversation uh yeah so I I run a crypto hge fund out of Iceland as a liquid long bias fund so uh we are very macro oriented and that's why we're here uh the macro economic environment today is very exciting uh we've seen interest rates coming down this year and finally the fat cut rates by 50 basis points last week uh the Dot Plot shows that we could see 50 more basis points coming and uh very interesting stuff Market markets have been uh taking it well uh and what I would like to hear from from the panelists are like what are your current macro Outlook and how do you see that affect the digital asset Market uh until year end Michael let's start with you sure it's um a very interesting time globally um I sort of see three main thematics there's um a change of the Guard politically potentially in in the US which we're all um focused on the next month or so we have Global uh tensions between a couple of different spots currently and then finally to your point we have um some monetary changes happening and so I think the question is is this a a minic cycle change uh or a longer term cycle change and what becomes a new normal and what does that mean for digital assets so um I have absolutely no idea but I'm interested to hear what this group has to say Dina you're next uh yeah so we've had the most bullish version of the r cut that we could have really anticipated so 50 basis points there was a lot of uncertainty before going into it possibly around recessionary risks what the implications of a 50 BBS cut could look like but the way it's come out has been very positive and so the overall Outlook remains that the econom is strong and so that obviously uh puts at ease the recessionary risks we've seen over the past few years and so that's finally behind us that's been a major bottleneck and blocker for allocators that have potentially been interested in going into the space so we we think through to the next few months and early into next year it lays the foundation from a a uh for the broader Global macro environment in a pretty positive way so the other obvious thing that's still holding people back is the uncertainty around the elections and um that is obviously going to be more optimistic if Trump wins possibly less optimistic if Camala wins but I think regardless just the certainty of what that outcome looks like will be pretty beneficial for allocators across the board so once they have a decision around which way it's going to go they can make their portfolio management decisions and allocate into the asset class um for crypto I think that certainty will definitely lay the foundation for finally going into the asset class more heavily so whether it's Kamala it's probably not as bad as everyone fears if it's Trump it's probably not going to go as quickly or as optimistically as everyone hopes and so at the end of the day the probable trajectory for crypto the pace might change as a result of who wins the election but regardless we think that the certainty and conclusion to these big pivotal questions that have been on our minds for a couple of years now are finally going to get resolved this quarter and so overall that implications are over uh pretty positive outlook for the next quarter and likely early into next year Maurice yes um I think that the last few months it's all been is going to be a soft Landing or a hard Landing uh the economy globally um is is going a bit slower and I think we're quite happy at H that the the Fed decided to lower 50 basis points instead of 25 um they're always accused of being a bit slow um reacting to the to what's happening and I think they really stepped up this time uh and they know when they started it it's it's going to be the first of of a few more so already we have the discussion is it going to be one or two more quarters this year um but I think it's a good sign that that we can actually be able to follow the FED into the the the soft Landing scenario that they obviously prefer and if I look at the economic numbers it still looks strong in the US it looks a bit less in uh in Europe and I can also see some uh some troubling in China but um yeah hopefully the monetary policy makers will do the thing and this could be actually quite good for the digital asset space if we manag to yeah keep the economy running by lowering interest rates for quite a quite a while so uh we're pretty confident for next year and um yeah let's hope that we uh we'll make it happen Paul uh do you agree with Maurice or or do you have some recession fears for next year I do agree with Maurice I think it's a great time to uh very constructive on risk assets um I think the Fed was bound to drop rates at some point having less to do with domestic economy the domestic economy in the US and more to do with Finance with funding debt we're at 35 trillion going way out in uh us uh uh public debt um the housing sector uh has been weak in spots and so I think the Fed was bound to begin dropping rates and I think uh they'll continue to do it um until uh we see GDP stabilized which it's very at risk of now so I I think there's going to be I guess a soft Landing I don't think it have been in those terms but uh it's a good time to have risk assets I'd go a step further and say we've seen anticipation of this in high growth Equity um but not really in crypto in liquid crypto a lot of algorithmic Traders and I know we have one on the on the panel um have included Bitcoin in in their risk appetite uh leveraging up 12 to 20 times uh and as long as Bitcoin can be traded algorithmically on the same manner as uh as Nvidia uh it's going to move up and down and be correlated uh but over time you know it's doubled every two years for the last 10 um and when rates are coming down I think it's a pretty good time to allocate Martha how are your views on the macro situation and and maybe do you feel inflation risk is possibly On The Rise um gosh it seems like this is a consensus trade because I'm going to have to agree that I I feel like I sound like a broken record I've been uh we've been saying a soft Landing since beginning of the year really and we continue to see that over the next few months uh we're at the start of an easing cycle which is positive a positive backdrop and uh we've got earnings expansion as well uh the S&P 500 you know the the average stock is trading at 18 time P which is not egregious by any means so what we've been seeing is a rotation in a broadening out of of performance away from the mag 7 into the broader stock market and the Russell 2000 as well at the beginning of that rotation it was a bit violent and we did see some volatility in the market but that seems to have come down that's Pro probably one concern we do have with regard to the market is how that rotation will occur and also another thing that we think is more to do with 20125 and not now too early to answer is how far will that easing cycle go at the moment the Market's already pricing in a Fed fund rate below 3% at 2.9 which to us feels a bit Rich it's more on the competive side uh we think maybe the place to be should be more neutral but it's still a bit early to say it depends on the labor cycle uh and how far we swing in the pendulum the other way right um so that is just all positive but I think it's important to keep in mind like what are the drivers for Bitcoin in particular which is the largest cap digital assets and we see the strongest correlation with M2 so that's with liquidity liquidity is ticking back up whether you know it's China although the Chinese uh measures are somewhat Li Limited at this moment but whether it's Central Bank easing uh around the world and financial conditions are are positive and that that is a driver in the longer term in the short term uh digital assets have other drivers if you're looking at 12-month periods or six-month periods uh whether it's elections regulation over Supply you know manx there's all sorts of reasons but we do think that Bitcoin is an ideal monetary good it's a hard it has a hard Supply cap and it should be functioned as a store of value uh for people around the world in other words Bitcoin is now a a micro asset uh and the institutions are starting to see it so uh on that note it would be interesting to hear uh again from you Martha have you seen some in the past uh like a new asset class coming up uh and and can you describe how how that how the ad institutional adoption happens in a new asset class uh certainly yeah I mean I think it's helpful to go back and look at other asset classes and how they've emerged their journey to become mainstream of course you can draw the analogy too far because every asset class is unique it has different they have their own unique characteristics uh in the case of commodity for example having been an Emerging Markets investor for many years kind of went back and looked at how that evolved over time one big difference is that Commodities were already recognized you know people have been trading commodities for for Millennia uh basically so uh that part of it is different but we would say that uh there was a lot of kind of at the beginning it was a niche asset class and it wasn't really until the 50s that we had diversification introduced as a concept for portfolio allocators that people began to think along those lines but it took decades it wasn't until the 70s that diversification became more widely accepted and the case of Commodities it was really difficult to access Commodities unless you were like a niche uh player uh specializing in Commodities and you were looking to hedge your exposure and then you have things like the Goldman Sachs commodity index in the 90s which allowed people to gain exposure to to that space uh through the a future uh the Futures market and then later on we had the launch of the Commodities etps as well which kind of opened the flood gates and there was a seminal piece in 2004 by a us IV league university that kind of that um pointed out that the actually Commodities had a negative correlation to other asset classes that really allowed uh asset allocators to start allocating to that space and also right on the bandwagon that was the Chinese economy at that point in time very interesting Paul you've been in finance for a long time do you have any stories to tell on some similarities when you're looking into the in institutional adoption of things how dare you um so uh I was around when securitization started to get hot and uh it changed the framework of investing for uh for institutional investors with permanent Capital that had liabilities to match and uh so you know it it went from almost zero uh allocations to securitized products to Something in you know orders of magnitude greater in the trillions um this reminds me of that specifically tokenization it seems to be a better form of securitization far far better distributed better faster quicker uh fairer better governance the whole show um but my sense is that uh you know this this uh this thing of ours this crypto Market this blockchain space is going to start catching on to permanent Capital um once uh matters in you know regulatory uh framework become more clear um we think that's 12 18 months away in the US uh um the US has in the past been uh influential in global uh regulatory matters um the election we're actually thinking it will um not promote but uh be benign which in the US has uh uh is really all we needed in the securitization business uh to go to go crazy um and uh you know I think this SEC you know this analogy from securitization to tokenization and and uh investing in crypto making it okay I think we're going to begin to see uh permanent capital and uh fiduciaries begin to allocate uh you know on on the on the lines of 50 basis points in 12 to 24 months very interesting so what do we need to do to accelerate this process like how can we uh show the institutions that Bitcoin is truly uh a great diversifier Maurice yeah that's a good question um I think uh we we have to take one step back and look at the asset class itself it's actually a a um an entire new technological based asset class with no borders that actually uh reshapes the whole finan financial system as we know it because we we're talking about uh uh decentralized Finance on one side and traditional Finance on the other side so we just kind of compare ourselves to to what happens in the past but we're also integrating it into the traditional Finance um and um yeah to get to the question how did we get the institutions in yeah there's a few things that needs to be kind of cleared it needs to grow more because now all the digital assets together combined are probably half the market uh capital of Apple so it's still very tiny and if you have large Pension funds for example and you want them to have um um an exposure to an es class that's relatively small um it will take take a bit of time but on the other hand um uh with the uh ETFs for example beginning of this year yeah you can see the institutionalization of the S Class already started and um I think um uh with the tokenization coming I think all assets in the world globally will be tokenized at some point um uh because it's obvious that if you can trade one asset 24/7 seven days a week why shouldn't you be able to trade them all so I think it's it's small steps uh we're obviously going to touch regulation later which is also important uh for institutions um but um yeah it will take a bit of time but I think we we can definitely see the first steps in the right direction uh with all the things that happen this year Michael you have something to add yeah so so we see the world in two different shapes so on the one hand there's the deregulated part which is the Innovation I think it's really important that we have a a sand pit for people to create new products and then we see a regulated side so at alant we've partnered with a firm called aceta which is based on Austria and they have regulated licenses to provide a regulated market for tokenization and so in order to get permanent capital and to bring the large European institutions into this Marketplace we need to drisk it and you do drisk it by creating a regulated market and so I think you're going to have the R&D World which is the mcoins and all these Innovative products and all all the super intelligent people working on this and then it will slowly migrate into what I call boring crypto and that will sort of be the regulated mindset it'll be slow but we're starting to accelerate that makes sense uh I feel we have a great story to tell it's just a matter of uh getting the institutions to listen so if I if I take the uh the example from where I'm from I'm from Iceland and we have uh we have some investors within our font and most of them are high net with individuals and family offices those are the most open to new ideas it seems uh but we're gradually working on getting the institutions on board and finally we with the entrance of the ETFs with uh the fidelities and the black rocks of the world being very open about this asset class it it changes everything so all of a sudden uh these institutions are more willing to listen and then it's our job to to meet them and educate them because as as I said we have a great story to tell Bitcoin has proven itself to be a great diversifier in portfolios and obviously other crypto assets will do that as well so this is kind of the The Way Forward uh we just need to keep at it and uh yeah that's kind of how I view it do you have something to add yeah I was just going to add the more practical thing is putting crypto in your portfolio for institutional allocators is still considered career risk so as we see first movers you know the first couple endowments or pensions starting to make the move the others are going to have to follow but those leaders are making a significant career Risk by adding crypto in their portfolio and so while we still have some uncertainty around regulation uh the elections Etc people are kind of sitting on their hands but as you see a couple of the bigger players move forward and start deploying into the asset class it's going to become a career risk not to hold crypto so when that flood gate really starts opening it's going to open really fast and everyone's going to want to invest in the asset class and the asset class will boom as a result and whether it's you know holding big Bitcoin directly whether it's through to the ETF and whether it's investments into the liquid products that's really going to accelerate once you start seeing the first couple big players make those moves more significantly so I think it's really just getting a couple of those big players more involved more interested in getting them to pull the trigger and we think the possibility of of those players entering in the next six months one of the big players kind of taking the lead over the next six months is quite probable Martha yeah i' just like to add on the um point of you know when when are we going to see more institutional adoption uh well for us it's a process of Education in addition to having standardized Pro product sees of access and regulation um so we we do a lot of Education to traditional investors and we publish a survey every year and we've been doing it the last several years so we can see the trend and the trend is really encouraging so like the number of people who or institutional investors who think that digital assets are here to stay has doubled over the last 3 years or so and people or investors who have some exposure as well is steadily growing and keep in mind that the the last survey that we did was in 2023 so that's a point where this Market was still a bit muted we were still had the overhang from the from the 2022 correction and even then we saw like this progression and it's also there's a regional breakdown so Asian investors are much more um exposed to digital Assets in other regions and there's a generational divide which I find fascinating so it's just it's kind of slow work in progress in this survey keep in mind that we we we survey thousands of institutional investors from you know smaller hedge funds to family offices to endowment funds to large Pension funds Sovereign wealth funds so it's pretty wide ranging very interesting uh Paul you you uh at panta you started the one of the first Bitcoin funds in the world if I'm if not if I'm not mistaken in 2013 how was how was how did you tell the story at that point in time thankfully I wasn't with Dan in 2013 but he he tells a story that he was chasing every friend and family member he he knew down the street and telling him to to uh invest in Bitcoin Bitcoin was $65 us when we opened the panta Bitcoin fund it's been a decent return since then um I know we we got close at at the recent highs to like a 100,000% I don't know if I'm missing the zero or something like that but um clearly it's a ridiculous return um but I did join Dan in 2017 after selling my macro fund and he convinced me it would just be a lot more fun and uh I was a sucker for it because I was kind of a gold bug before that and I uh did a deep dive in monetary policies and saw the uh uh the issues there and uh so I looked at Bitcoin and then I I reached out most of our business is actually in Venture and uh both in two forms Venture Equity early stage Venture equity and uh private tokens uh comprise our two largest uh strategies um we also do liquid uh trading uh active management but um it's really evolved uh uh and the and the client base is evolved from high net worth individuals uh to more family offices uh endowments came in uh you know in 2018 actually uh and that was really uh and and the underlying common uh thread that links all these types of investors as I mentioned before is they all have permanent Capital so either an individual or an investment board that's contr controlled uh or influenced by members that are uh okay with taking a a stab at Innovation um you know uh took that stab we're still not seeing fiduciaries that have to match liabilities uh those like insurance companies and Pension funds uh join and I don't think they will until it becomes very clear uh from a regulatory standpoint but it's really changed a lot just since 2017 yeah so you you mentioned you were a gold bug uh now we have uh interest rates coming down and we have obviously gold has a lot of history and usually when interest rates come down gold performs very well uh and we have seen that in the past few days and we obviously seen that all this year even though interest rate have been relatively High uh Bitcoin is often called the digital gold but in reality we seem to be kind of between being gold and being uh some kind of risky asset so in your view here dear panelist like where is Bitcoin and and how do do we want to be the risky asset or do we want to be the the gold like how do we get there Martha yeah um so one of the the main obstacle that we we get u in our surveys for institutional investors not to invest in in uh digital assets is volatility so regulation security uh concerns but the top by far is volatility so yes uh Bitcoin specifically is a volatile asset it's more volatile than any other asset class so it's educating clients around of that and and the volatility is skewed to the upside and that a long-term Horizon is needed uh to be able to kind of hang in there and and and not not give up in in times when when Bitcoin is selling off over 50% so that's that's part of it having said that the volatility has been trending down over time um so as it becomes more mainstream there's less volatility it's a multi-year process uh because of course with less volatility you could say maybe less upside right so you can't make outsize returns without volatility right so yes so so you're not going to get the best of both worlds when the market does sell off as we've seen in in you know in the recent as um investors do tend to sell what sort of more has been more profitable for them they they kind of tend to reduce risk and all correlations go to one but then after that uh Bitcoin has shown that it bounces back relatively quickly Dina you you run a long biased fund so you Embrace volatility right we sure do and volatility is really a gift I think investors take that for granted hedge funds spend a lot of money on Leverage in order to up the volatility of things like equities and bonds and in Bitcoin you get it for free if you go further at the risk curve you can get even more volatility so I think really just changing the mindset of thinking of the asset class in Risk terms and just size down your exposure to a volatility you're comfortable with will go a long way and so I think it part of it is educating them on the beauty of the volatility that lets you put on the same bet in much smaller capacity but still allows you to capture significant upside so my perspective is the volatility is really uh an amazing opportunity for allocators and they should take it as a gift not not be fearful of it but Maurice how how do you see this yeah I I totally agree with Dina because what you see is um if there's a low volatility they up the leverage and um what happened in in Japan uh beginning of uh August you could see the what leverage leads to and what is are they actually selling it's the one product that isn't leveraged but tradeable 24/7 so um I think um it's actually a good thing that we have CU we we can definitely profit from it but also because yeah well you can sit the right out if you like I mean if if it comes against you as we seen in 2022 if if you just hold or hold as we say it then um then you're you're still fine so I don't think um it it's actually too bad but but I agree with Mar it needs time to grow and as the asset class will grow further the volatility will become less Michael you are qu focused in your work so how do you view those things look it's um it's a very nent Market still so there I guess most of my uh B panelists are looking longer term we look you know Inay Arbitrage opportunities so the ability to be able to find um you know a market neutral pair trade where you're you long one asset short the other you want something called Delta neutal um gives us the ability to capture that volatility in very small bite-sized pieces and cumulatively over I know the span of the year you're able to build a very interesting return profile so so we're not hunting for you know a unicorn we're looking pick to pick up pennies and not get run over basically um but if you look at traditional assets all of these Arbitrage opportunities have been um you know they they're they're not there anymore there's so much money there's so much different funds involved whereas IND digital assets there's less competition there's more regulatory Arbitrage and so we're really excited about the next three to 5 years and um how we can uh build out more capacity so uh I view Bitcoin as a safe haven asset that might sound silly and I think a lot of people that haven't like uh haven't really researched it doesn't agree especially people from traditional Finance but I view Bitcoin as a safe haven asset it it's volatile in the short term but it's uh has out has outperformed basically everything else in the long term uh we we saw last year in March when Banks were failing and Bitcoin was Rising that was one of the pivotal moments in my view for when Bitcoin can see show the world what it can do uh it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this like how how to where is the path towards uh Bitcoin proven itself as a safe haven asset Paul so if we start with Bitcoin as digital gold um and we think about that and the amount of above ground gold mined for all time at current prices is worth about 17 trillion or something like that half of which is in the form of jewelry and in places like India that is a store of wealth in their view um but most Li liquid markets you know that it's not treated that way um a quarter of it is in the form of uh or being held in on central bank balance sheets uh and which leaves about a quarter of the 17 trillion as uh a store of value specifically an actively uh managed store of value in investor portfolios or more more to the point Savers portfolios um so Bitcoin trading at a trillion dollar whatever it may be today trillion trillion 3 uh market cap as just a store of value does it have a lot of upside has definite upside I think the greater potential within Bitcoin per se is in the stack if it can turn into a payment uh uh mechanism a payment blockchain um and that's the exciting part about Bitcoin obviously that would compete with a lot of other platforms and stacks that that were seeing that we're uh we see a lot of opportunity um more so now in Layer Two scaling Solutions and uh web 3 build outs and and and Tool kits and various other things um but we think the next to use an an analog the next Amazon buying Amazon early or something like that is really away from Bitcoin um it's uh an opportunity in our view to speculate um divers good Diversified research speculations in what we build out and what will truly be different about um not and not from a store of value perspective but payments um we see uh many uh probably in the future certainly younger Generations are going to feel much warmer towards tokens than they will uh shares of equity better governance cleaner more efficient uh so we see it as a a capitalization tool and and businesses in the future will use tokens uh for that and uh Founders are incentivized to do that because it they don't have to manage anything they can just get fabulously Wealthy by creating the platform and then stepping aside and letting the market take over and uh Distributing capital in a much more uh you know Merit based way Dina yeah so I would add um Bitcoin is the only currency that's always or sorry not Bitcoin gold is the only currency that's been up only over you know hundreds and hundreds of years and Bitcoin also has a fixed Supply and so in the same way that when the gold became an ETF and kind of became a financial instruments that people could use to bet against inflation Bitcoin proposes a similar structured bet and so as you know institutions look to add Bitcoin into their Diversified portfolios you get you know a registered investment advisers add adding Bitcoin into the model portfolio that just creates the same kind of opportunity on the upside so I think it's more of an option on the storeold of wealth um and the pathway kind of from here to the Future creates a lot of upside for Bitcoin so it's much more of an anti-inflation asset that still is really really under allocated um and so I think of it more more in that way it's not really storing value as it is something that has a very fixed Supply and the demand is still very very early yeah and you can it's it makes sense that investors can be confused uh and maybe not perceive Bitcoin as a safe haven asset when it keeps getting sold off during the week weekends when you know there's a military strike in in Israel or or whatever but the thing is that's the only Market that is open so you can't really sell anything else so that maybe that kind of confuses things yeah I think hedge funds um traditional hedge funds have started using Bitcoin to hedge their risk exposures over the weekend for this reason and so you're seeing them using using it as a risk transfer tool through um One Market hours are closed and that's a pretty interesting Dynamic and I think the the problem there is that you know traditional markets are closed on the weekends and for Bitcoin and crypto and traditional markets to really converge you have a lot of tech debt that you still need to reconcile with in traditional institutions like is Goldman really going to go and enable weekend trading on their you know across their whole stack and rip apart all their infrastructure probably not anytime soon yeah I saw this interesting stat that uh the crypto Market has been open uh obviously since 2009 and that it equates to the stock markting being open since 1970 one as we are always open and we are open you know five times more hours each year than the regular Market because we have the weekends we have the nights and we have everything so this is a starking stark difference yeah maybe I can just add to support that so previously joining Al Quant I ran en crypto one of the largest hedge funs in the world and our issue there I'll just pick one of the Thousand if you look at the blockchain I'm trading Bitcoin the number of digits that you have to be able to put into the the system is 3x what you do in traditional Finance so having to go into a system and create it so that you could actually have 18 you know decimal places versus eight or six takes a year and you've got a thousand of these little problems for the institutional players to actually get involved and so what's happening now is that we have a a moat and a Time where the crypto native players can actually flourish as the traditional Finance firms start to retrofit their systems and get involved and that's the beauty of the ETF right that puts crypto into the traditional Finance framework and not the other way around and so allows investors to take advantage of the opportunity so that's I guess that one of the big inflow of capital that we might see exactly Martha you packaged up uh Bitcoin into a nice ETF in in Fidelity you guys over there so that made a a lot of difference for adoption it seems how do you see this uh going forward do we see other crypto assets than Bitcoin and ethereum on in ETFs anytime soon well that's going to be up to The Regulators really so uh but yes we were actually uh um just uh note noting that that ETP product is uh Fidelity asset management and I'm part of the digital asset side we do custody and trading nevertheless we're were C custody uh the Bitcoin for those etps we have our own custody stack and uh we were actually pleasantly surprised by the the speed of the the the inflows we really were positive we knew there was there was demand but it was just the the extent of it was really and and to quote someone else um this is this is not my statistic but the QQQ took like over 600 days to get to the AUM that uh the ctps have gotten so far in a very short period of time so that's uh really uh Blown Away uh all our expectations however we do think that a lot of it is uh has been retail money and the cash and carry trade certainly uh the stickier money the more institutional money that takes time and that's been very well discussed but we certainly wouldn't be investing in the space if we didn't think that was the case I mean speaking to my colleagues who joined uh our our department uh three years ago there were 150 people on the team now were almost 800 so that that already is signaling to you the potential that we're seeing in the market that's a very good sign uh Maurice yeah already uh Black Rock This Week launched the options on the ETFs so that makes it also possible for the institutions to hatch their positions more easily so I think that that also uh bring something to the table but um I just want to uh get back to one thing Paul said if we would add another $ 1.3 trillion to bitcoin at this moment that that will do a little bit more than double the price so I think you you will see 10x then at least so because there's not a lot of free flow um out there and um I think with the institutions coming this this is going to emerge a lot uh faster and quicker and larger than we think I agree with you on that one and the implications for ether even greater because eth is obviously a lot less liquid than Bitcoin and so even if a small share goes to eth that's you know know many many multiples above so I think we have a really good setup here and a good foundation I just want to say one other thing around the adoption one thing that could accelerate adoption is um any sort of instability in the markets and we we do see it as a hedge in that sense uh although we are uh positive on the macro Outlook over the next few months uh the structural deficits in in especially developed countries around the world is really a concern to us over the longer term and to us Bitcoin is is a hedge against that possibility uh it's you talk about structural deficits I think I think that applies to the us as well so if we look into the now the elections are coming up and uh uh us has been you know I think they're running 7 to 8% deficit right now uh the depb burden is over 35 trillion up from 10 trillion in 2008 uh very unsustainable uh it doesn't seem to matter if it's Republicans Or democrats RS the trajectory has been all the same and as as ly alen the famous economist says Nothing Stops this train uh does it matter for you know the fiscal situation if it's Trump or if it's Kamala that wins uh I think we both I think we most all agree that Trump is a more Pro crypto but uh do you have some color on that maybe Paul um I think the Harris Administration very recently um under is beginning to understand that another train is left the station and that's you can't kill Bitcoin you can't kill crypto it's a global market and the US is losing innovators um 3 years ago 65% of our Founders uh that we we sponsored uh lived within 3 miles of our San Francisco office not because everyone in San Francisco is brilliant but because it was a community where that attracted uh wonderful developers it's reversed since Gary Gensler has uh been at the SEC uh it's been hostile I think uh the Harris Administration now gets that that's not what they want they want the us to try to lead uh and it's it goes beyond just thoughts of scammers and Bitcoin and and and people doing like that it's it's bigger than that and they're start they're beginning to see I almost trust if that Administration begins to be supportive of cryptocurrencies it might be less uh fluid for us in this community than if a uh Trump Administration uh comes in um Pro he's promised to have Bitcoin reserves that would be great and we'd love it Bitcoin would would soar uh in the near term but what we really want is credibility what we really want uh I think as a community is um good logical uh approaches to the space Michael yeah I guess I lived in New York I left in April M to Dubai I was in Singapore for token last week I'm here and we're investing in Europe so it's a a wait and see in the US this is a global you know initiative and um I think it's really like an exciting time for Europe and the rest of the world to actually you know surge into this um the the US has given the rest of the world opportunity to really go for it and so it's um you know that's why I'm excited to be here and talking to you folks cuz it's uh it's exciting time to whether it be Lisbon you know uh Frankfurt switzland Iceland it's a fun fun time to be for sure anyone with some color on on the elections in the US bis yeah I think it doesn't really matter um um who wins the election it's just a matter matter of time maybe with trumpet it goes a bit quicker but on the other hand uh he he's probably going to lower the interest rates more more faster if it's up to him uh he thinks he he's in charge uh but it also will be trade Wars and uh tariffs Etc which for the general economy isn't good so um it depends a bit of boat but in the end I think digital assets will surface anyway uh no matter who wins the election as Paul said uh you cannot stop the the trend uh it's just a a matter of how quick it will will happen I agree with you on that one we're we're almost out of time I'm going to put you on the spot and we did not discuss this beforehand so I want you to uh let tell me what you think about interest rates how much they will go down in the US until year end and where where is Bitcoin trading in at year end I'll start to make it easier for you so I say 75 basis points lower than we are today and Bitcoin will be at 95,000 Michael I was going to say 50 and 100 but um somewhere in the middle of you uh 50 and 8 85 uh 50 and 995 someone much smarter than me said if you're going to make a prediction don't put a time frame on it and uh so by the end of the year I have absolutely no idea but I think in this cycle if you'll allow me um we uh Bitcoin probably goes up significantly higher than 130 and uh and then settles comes back down to 130 and that's I get that just by extrapolating past uh past Trends past cycles and uh no idea what the fed's going to do except drop rates over over the next two years Martha do you have a prediction I I wouldn't like to speculate uh however however we have done some work around modeling you know Network effects and adoption uh curves and and extrapolating from the adoption of the internet and and a mobile technology um over you know a very long period of time you know over 10 years 10 15 years and you do get a very wide range depending on the rate of adoption uh so you know I don't want to give a specific numbers but the multiple times where we where we are today over the very long term and in terms of interest rates uh I would say I would just go with what the uh forward curve is is forecasting because a lot of people who who are much smarter than myself are already uh kind of doing the work around that thank you uh well this is the end of the panel I want to thank you all for a great discussion and I want to thank the audience for for staying with us the whole time uh it's time for lunch thank you so much Michael Dina Maurice Paul Martha and our wonderful moderator daddy joining us all the way from Iceland it is indeed lunch so we say Bon profit buen V