The BTC and ETH ETFs Were Supposed to Bring Real Institutional Adoption - But Are They? | EBC10

[Music] hey everyone thank you for joining us this afternoon um I have the pleasure of monitoring a planel that uh I'm personally very fascinated about with lots of lingo and looking forward to getting into uh into it um we maybe we'll begin with going down the row here if you guys could introduce yourselves your companies and the kinds of assets around the different products that you guys are owning in the crypto space sure so my name is Matt Hogan it's good to see all yall uh I'm the CIO at bitwise Asset Management we are a crypto asset manager we manage about5 billion 4 billion in the US and 1 billion now here in Europe through our acquisition of Etc group we offer ETFs and private funds and a hedge fund covering a wide array of assets but are best known for our Bitcoin ETF bitb Adrian hello from my side my name is Adrian I'm the head of research 21 shares and we're also a crypto asset manager and an ETF and ETP provider um we're based in Switzerland um we have the world's largest range of crypto etps so we don't only offer Bitcoin and ethereum but also a lot of longtail assets uh from Unis swap to sui immutable X and so on and so forth uh at the moment we have around six six billion assets under management I would say half is in the European market and the other half is in the US market where we launched our Bitcoin and ethereum ETFs in January as well hi everyone I'm Elliot Johnson uh from evolved ETFs in Canada we have uh just over 7 billion in assets we are not purely a crypto asset manager we run the range from uh a whole variety of different asset classes across our platform but we did launch uh spot Bitcoin ETF and spot ether ETF back in early 2021 um we've been interested in uh crypto since we started our business seven years ago we actually filed in uh 2017 for a Bitcoin ETF and it took us four years to get The Regulators to the point where we could have um uh one in Canada so uh we've been in and around the space and uh very happy to be here at this conference uh with all of you good afternoon uh my name is Duncan I run the digital asset oh oh I you told me before sorry uh my name is Duncan I run the digital asset business at Aberdine we're a full service trfy asset manager with about $600 billion uh under management our digital asset business is has activities across strategic Investments tokenization use of blockchain in the business and we are focused on bringing crypto investment products atps Structured Products to our institutional client base thank you very much guys um before getting into the whole ETF conversation um it's something I had a question about and I think a lot of people in the audience would also benefit from I don't get what's the difference between a ETF a ETP a etn um who' like to take that I'm happy happy to give it a shot uh it's a question that we get quite often especially now since we have the ETFs uh in the US while in Europe they are called etps so what's the difference um an ETP is actually a collateralized debt vehicle um however they're 100% physically bagged why are they called etps in the in Europe or specifically in the EU it's because of usage regulation um however for the end investors it feels exactly the same uh in terms of uh investment no thank you and uh maybe also in it's very complicated in Switzerland it's an ETP in Germany they would call it more of an Etc while in the UK it's titled the exchange traded note thank you so much I'm not sure it's any clearer other than etps but I'll take etps and ETFs um spot BT uh BTC ETFs haven't really become a huge tool yet for sort of tradire and Boomer adoption uh black crck for example confirmed the other day that about 80% % of ibits inflows are from self-directed online accounts um and of course you know the great Oracle of inflows and outflows Twitter keeps showing us that you know more recently there's been very little sort of either way um I just want to start the with the panel just chat around you know why is this sort of slowdown or or unot expected boom in assets that we're seeing in the ETF space uh maybe start with you man yeah uh it's fake news it's not actually true so um blackw is right that 80% of the flows into US ETFs are retail but if you ignored that and you only looked at the 20% that was coming from institutional investors it would be the fastest growing ETF adoption rate in history over 5,500 ETFs have launched covering every asset class in the US none have grown faster with institutions than the Bitcoin ETFs so the real story is there is massive retail adoption of Bitcoin ETFs and there is very fast institutional adoption of Bitcoin ETFs 60% of the world's 25 largest hedge funds own Bitcoin ETFs bit wises Services over 10,000 financial advisers who are allocating into the crypto space the adoption is coming it's just the reality of crypto is it wants to work on a week by week basis the reality of ETFs is they work on a year-over-year basis I'll give one more example the gold ETFs are a great analogy they were the fastest growing ETFs of all time they pulled in $3 billion in their first year Bitcoin ETFs have already done 17 or 18 and the important thing about gold ETFs is the second year they did more than the first year and the third year they did more than the second year and they built flows for eight consecutive years so don't believe the truth the reality is these ETFs are being bought by retail and they're being bought by institutional investors and we see that a bit wi every day and you can actually just see it in the data I mean I couldn't agree more I think it's just in terms of expectations uh especially in crypto we don't have any patience so people are just I mean it's been eight months now obviously the institutional adoption is happening and it's coming we just need a little bit more patience I would also say because it's completely right what you say that is actually those 20% is still a lot I think it's just over shadowed over of the by the other 80% um and that's why people they think it's small but on an absolute basis it's still happening I I would just add that two things can be true at the same time on the one hand Bitcoin ETFs uh whether it's this year's launch in the US or three years ago in Canada broken every record that had ever previously been set and they are being adopted a lot by institutions as well as retail but at the same time most institutions aren't here yet and I think this is an amazing opportunity for those of us who are already crypto native to realize that we've come a long way we've had a great year we're going to have better years in the future like this just mathematically the case and there are still barriers to the largest participants coming into the market the big one is dollar liquidity if you want to do a $50 billion allocation because that's the smallest unit of allocation you have because you're that big of an institution if you're looking at Bitcoin you need the Bitcoin price to go a lot higher for the dollar liquidity to match the size that you're looking to do and so those folks are still waiting and then in the meantime don't underestimate the needs of Institutions to go through their processes which can take a while investment committees where do they put this within their overall strategy all of that stuff takes time so I think we need to be very happy about what's happened so far in the past year and very excited about what's coming cu the ETF has unlocked this door and uh you know let's not let's not open our Christmas presents before Christmas you know let's let's let's enjoy the process while it's unfolding yeah I mean I completely agree about that process Point like I've spent my career building Alternatives products and selling to large institutional investors and even within institutional investors it's quite a range right like you like when we would build new new product offerings that were brand new to the market we'd go to wealth managers first maybe some family offices before you get up to the Sovereign wealth funds the big Pension funds the insurers because their process takes much longer and if you think about if I was trying to sell a product into maybe the us or the UK public Pension Plan Market most most of the allocations they make are determined partly by the Strategic assets allocations that they have and they are advised on by consultants and then approved by investment committees and Boards those uh strategy level plan um strategic asset allocations change every few years so we actually have a lot of work to do Beyond bringing the product to Market we actually have to engage with consultants get educate them help them understand the benefit of this asset class in a portfolio yeah I just wanted to I I agree completely with that and it's a it's a multi-year process I would add one anecdote for the room every year I give a speech to The Baron's top 100 conference it's a US Conference of the largest wealth managers in the US so the equivalent of of ifas or or Brokers over here um and every year I asked the room how many people have allocations in their personal portfolios and two years ago the answer was about 1% of the room and a year ago the answer was 10% of the room and this year it was 70% of the room these are people managing you know 10 to 50 billion on behalf of wealthy individuals and we went from 10% to 70% owning it themselves they haven't allocated for their clients yet mostly because they can't they work at Morgan Stanley or UBS but allocating personally is the first step and I'm telling you it was a it was like night and day it's a complete difference from a year ago what about if you look at the the the um asset allocators at the lower level the I forget the term in the US but it's you know the financial advisers are they allowed to go out and and sell the ETP to dentists and doctors and accountants yeah so it's sort of a two-tiered system so they're raas which are the equivalent of ifas here and they are out there selling to clients um we we have a lot of those clients I'm sure 21 does as well the other half of the market are called Brokers they work for forms like UBS and Morgan Stanley and those brokerage houses need to approve the ETFs independently of the SEC before they can sell them to clients that hasn't happened yet Morgan Stanley opened the door a little bit the other major Brokers haven't even opened it so speaking to what we were talking about how we're just getting started 60% of the US wealth Market can't even buy these yet and yet we have $17 billion of inflows and that's going to change I would guess in the next 4 months and it's just going to continue to open more and more doors um no I would just want to say and that's why it's so important that we educate as well and push from our side uh so we get that approval through fund selection um we seen it in Europe it's been happening step by step and I think it's just a matter of time uh until it happens in the US as well and you want to say well I I can just comment on Canada um we now had Bitcoin and ether ETFs for 3 and a half years and the Canadian uh wealth management space is dominated by the big Banks overall our financial industry is dominated by six very large Banks the advisers who work at those banks are not yet allowed to use our ETFs on a discretionary basis for clients so if they're building a portfolio for clients they're making all the decisions they can't use them they they will be able to buy them if it's unsolicited if the client comes in says I need Bitcoin and ETF they can do it so that's three and A2 years since we put the products in the market we still don't have the majority of the advisor Community permitted and and then of those advisers who are at independent dealers who could use them they're not really using them yet and and I would just add that the even in Canada you can't underestimate the impact that the success of the US ETFs has had on the thinking among compliance departments and product approvers within the Canadian Market it's it's shifted things you know it's it's it's the SEC saying yes to those ETFs and you know managers like bitwise and obviously Black Rock being so large having products in the marketplace in the United States opens the door in countries like Canada for more adoption because this adoption is really a global thing and it's it's we've really gone from you know 2017 our first effort people said they can't talk about Bitcoin because there's too much career risk to 2021 the big institutions and The Gatekeepers were saying well I have to know about this there's too much career risk for me not to know about it and now they're starting incrementally to say I have to start thinking about how do I use this within my business but we're not there yet in size we're there incrementally and we're moving directionally forward but there's still a long long way to go I think um a question for you Duncan related to this as well I saw some other stats saying that the average sort of Entry price into ETFs was around 61k so a few percent onite finally um but the average ticket size was about 12K which compar compared to say the g the gold GL Decon ETFs of uh 60k and obviously spy are way way larger is that telling us anything about what to expect I mean is this something is that a reflection of the volatility of the asset or is it about the early adopters of ETFs why why is the the average size uh is around 12K no idea I don't know I mean the I mean these guys are going to be better placed to answer that than me but I mean those tickets are still small right they're not big institutional uh tickets um I would guess part of it is you've got to think of any of the any of the institutions who is the actual buyer they're like which which part of any investor is is making that allocation uh because ETFs are uh publicly listed you normally you would have your Public Market Market team is going to be making the allocation yet the Alternatives team is probably going to be doing the looking at it as an investable asset class they're going to be have bigger tickets maybe the actual structure isn't isn't right for them but I maybe I'll def defer to one of the guys at the end yeah I mean I have a view uh look there there's institutions are two groups like pensions and then wealth managers those get grouped into institutions the pensions aren't buying these yet by and large a few are but not many wealth managers are wealth managers manage money for rich people someone with a million dollars is still relatively Rich if they're making a 1% allocation to crypto guess what that's a $10,000 ticket so I think the reason we're seeing $112,000 tickets is it's mostly retail investors and wealth managers making 1 to 5% initial allocations into crypto it's honestly not that surprising to me like it it feels it feels right often people allocate 5% to gold many people start 1% or 2% Bitcoin and I think that's just reflected in that ticket size I suspect it'll go up over time but I don't find it all that surprising and and sorry just one and if I think about all the the tickets we had into our like hedge fund products our Structured Products that we that we launched pretty much every Institutional Investor put test trades in at the beginning they just wanted to see how it worked you know like if it was going to work whe whether everything was going to be smooth and then they ramped up Adrian just in you know ETP has been around a lot longer what have you seen in terms of the kind of Clips typical clip size I'm just trying to see if there's a precursor to this I don't have exact numbers I would need to check but I would also assume they they they definitely still small compared to I don't know something like a gold product uh and again it's also because in Europe in terms of adoption yes it's mostly family of offes independent asset managers uh High net worth individuals and if you break down the math it's exactly where you land at that 10 15K ticket size and and as as ETFs grow do do you guys have a view as to what that will do for kind of Bitcoin volatility um crypto volage anyway on its lows obviously obviously everyone and his work and his dog loves to sell the vix um what do you see the kind of correlation here between a in Ro I can take a run at that I I think all adoption leads to lower V in the long term um just because you've just got that many more decision makers behind the price movements and uh that many more participants meeting in the secondary market and and I would just just to add to that just something that um maybe isn't obvious about ETFs but needs to be appreciated is that ETFs by definition always add liquidity to any asset class that they hold because you have buyers and sellers on a stock exchange exchanging a fund and that it's only the net amount exchange that then either is creation of units new units of that fund or Redemption of units of that fund and then only when new units of the fund are created or redeemed do you then have the manager going out and buying or selling the underlying asset and so uh this is going to mean that you have a liquidity layer of participants meeting that is not directly interacting with the underlying which also is going to you know I think to your question have a um a dampening impact on volatility but an expanding impact on accessibility and it's why it's so important that we have these kinds of products in the marketplace you know I think there's um a mistake a lot of uh completely crypto people make that they can assume away the existing system and say we all go to digital everything and we're we're just we're we're only using digital wallets and we don't have bank accounts and so on and I think the future is that we're going to blend these two worlds together and for a lot of people ETFs is the on-ramp for them and the that liquidity in the secondary Market layer is critical and just looking at my funds for example we have probably something like 25 times more volume than flow on a long run basis which means there's a huge amount of secondary market trading happening that doesn't end up hitting the fund and and it's good for everybody um and and actually means that in a lot of cases you can buy and sell Bitcoin or ether through an ETF way more efficiently than buying the physical at um some of the larger exchanges that have wider spreads uh for you to actually buy the physical themselves so it's it's an efficiency that passed on to the customer ultimately that's a that's a massive misconception a lot of people don't understand the difference between primary market and secondary Market they see the uh the trade volume on screen and I think it gives an indication of liquidity but that's absolutely right and I think it's important to understand especially when you go direct investment versus via an ETF structure so yeah that kind of brings me on to an interesting point CME listed uh ETF options last week or the week before um is it too early because if you look at the sort of um the crypto markets opt or versus traditional markets forget the ETFs the the volume of options relative to the underlying Futures is is much lower in crypto than say fixed income or or equities right um do you think do you think the ETF options are are is is the timing is right here for institutional given the where ETFs are as a as a product I mean I I'm really excited to see them launch I I'll say that for for what it's worth they still need a secondary approval from our second regulator the cftc before they launch uh we have a very comp compx and confusing regulatory setup around options um but if you look at any Market not just crypto but any traditional Market the scale of the derivatives Market is many uh multiples of the spot Market I think it's it's like 90 to one in most Commodities um and so I think this will just abet the financialization of Bitcoin which will be good for the space um I think it should have happened earlier I think I think we'll see liquidity improve and spreads tighten there's may be some risk sort of uh uh squeezes if we get uh very aggressive markets um but that exists in the purpose Market anyway so I think it's broadly a net good I I I think it just speaks for the legitimacy of the of the asset class um and again options are wonderful because they're so they're such a paradox because on one hand uh you they're used for risk management but at the same time they provide leverage um so I think they will just enhance the finan iial utility uh for for Bitcoin and other assets um and therefore it will ultimately also Drive institutional adoption because obviously it provides them the tools to for instance take duration based allocation bets um and play more the the the the long-term Horizon yeah yeah we've had options on our funds since uh day one well I guess a few weeks after we launched our ETFs we don't have the same um hurdles to get approval for options in Canada now the Canadian options Market is extremely small so don't take this for more than it is but the options are there people trade options on crypto ETFs in Canada uh it has had no negative effect whatsoever on our products I think it's just a sign again it's a signal to the market that these are legitimate ETFs these are legitimate asset classes we're getting all of the uh infrastructure that you would expect around that and for a lot of people who want to implement an option strategy for whatever reason whether it's you know adding risk or removing risk uh why shouldn't those tools exist there's really no reason not to have them and and I'm excited to see uh their their adoption in the US for sure the I mean yeah I mean the thing is I guess I then the next thing is you know when do the Structured Products come out on this as well you know and and you know with Bitcoin lending and Bitcoin yield in particular you know there's some great yield some great carry that you can add optionality to so I I guess you know I'm kind of interested whether anyone's even started asking you guys around these kinds of things yeah I mean we we we've been looking at it for for a while I mean they they already exist like you know like principal protected solutions for example like you can do that in many forms you can do plain vanilla like well today quite attractive zeron Bond plus plus crypto asset or you can do having you know some sort of yield product in there like money markets plus plus options there's a few different ways I think it's a great way to bring some of the institutional investors into the market uh you know just where they're not willing to take the full exposure they want to dip their toes in I think it's a really good entry point for them yeah I I think everybody is is working on it aggressively the only thing I would add for for all the anyone out there who's enjoying the sort of fat carry trade on uh on bit coin I suspect that that will diminish and go away as more institutional Capital feels comfortable entering this market and executing purely on a regulated market with Bitcoin ETFs against Bitcoin options I think that's going to squeeze down substantially the yields that you've seen on the carry trade historically I mean other than that I think in general we see more exotic structures in the future um I mean Matt and bitwise they're entering the European market and we just spoke about it that we have way more more flexibility when it comes to yeah creating exciting products uh so obviously something like staking products um or we have one product for instance that combines gold and Bitcoin I know we always yeah kind of put them against each other Bitcoin versus gold we think actually Bitcoin and gold they together they uh yeah perform brilliantly and other than that yeah um we get this question a lot in terms of structure products it will come and U many other things as well have you guys seen a borrow Market develop here against the ETF Holdings sorry again have you seen a borrow Market at all a borrow lend Market borrowing lending yeah the no yeah it it depends on which which part you're talking about the Bitcoin ETFs in the US can't lend their own Bitcoin the Bitcoin ETF holders there there's there's a little bit but not that that's sort of what individuals are doing I don't have a good view on it I mean the lending and everything it it it kind of has a bad uh taste now nowadays especially what happened in the market uh a couple years ago so as of now I can speak for our products there's no lending whatsoever in walls in Canada you can use a Bitcoin ETF like any other security uh in a margin account get loan value against it so for retail it provides that utility um but if you try to build a product where you want at an Institutional scale to um get a loan against uh Bitcoin collateral that's that's still not really there yet at least from traditional um parties like Banks and so forth so I think there's still um room room to grow before people start to realize that um the value of Bitcoin is a collateral asset for doing other things but I I think we're moving in the right direction and and it it will be exciting to see some of that happen as as bigger par start to realize the value there cool um I wanted to check around and get a feel around what you guys are seeing between different geographies in the ETF so maybe Duncan with you I think you guys are very strong obviously in Europe and Asia are you seeing any differences from a client side perspective I mean definitely in terms of the requests that we get for to present to educate you know I would say Asia is definitely leading the way um I mean we we have institutional investors all over the place but the the Asian uh kind of large Sovereign wealth funds um central banks I would say they they've changed over the last few years it used to be uh you know come teachers about blockchain what is blockchain what is tokenization and now it's genuinely how do we invest in crypto so you know over over maybe two years they've the the attitude has has changed not quite seen that in the UK we've had a few um rfis from Consultants um but I I you know I expect it to come the spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US created massive buzz in in the UK like un even though you know etps have been in Europe for for years all of the execution only uh Brokers like the the BTC businesses were getting massive inbound requests from from clients wanting to get exposure to it now unfortunately they can't because in the UK retail can't buy can't buy the ETFs or the etps but it just but that's changed the way these these Brokers think they realize there's an opportunity um they'll probably all implement the inv you know professional investor optin uh option which they don't do today um and I think you know these are people who work partly at the institutional investors as well so the attitudes will just slowly slowly uh change yeah look I would like to have uh Swiss regulators and US market size and you know pick the best things from every region in the world that would be ideal uh obviously you know we all live with our own constraints and and think the grass is greener uh somewhere else I I would say that the the the thing that I'm taking away from this conference is just how truly Global uh this community really is and I think that's super important because the direction of travel seems to be consistent everywhere we're we're moving towards further adoption we're moving towards better education every single thing that any of us does on social media to help to spread the message is being consumed outside of their country across borders with other people and that's all helping and it's helping investors it's helping advisers it's helping Regulators all move forward and we obviously have uh made different Headway depending on the you know the the the products we can build or the crypto assets that we can put in them uh but uh I I do think we'll we'll see a future maybe it's five years out where um many more countries have kind of caught up and we're we're maybe more at a level stable playing field rather than the big in consistencies that have happened over the past few years in terms of what's possible in different places thanks Adrian I think um you're the only one here who has UAE exposure where M2 comes from um and what are you seeing there on the ETF front not much happening there's not much volume and we have a listing in in Dubai as well but in terms of volume uh it's it's it's it's not really big in in in Dubai I mean just looking in terms of uh where the flows are coming from in emia it's definitely I would say uh Germany uh and Switzerland and and Italy to a certain extent those are kind of like the key markets yeah cool um Matt question for you maybe you can kick this off I've been curious about the um um eth ETFs why at least in my sense it sounds very superficially very very mediocre uh why do you compared to the Bitcoin why do you think that was or is yeah I think they're uh one just to push back against it a little bit the challenge with EFS in the US is you had all these assets locked up in the grayscale product and they fled it as soon as it converted and that's overwhelmed what are otherwise very healthy flows we've had I think 300 million or something into our EF that would usually make it a massive smashing success and so I think they've been more successful than people give them credit for but the the big issue is they came to soon they would have raised five times more assets if we had waited another year it takes people a long time to digest Bitcoin and be ready for the next thing I would guess the majority of this room the first asset they bought was Bitcoin and then I would bet at some number of months later they bought another crypto asset that's not true for everyone but that's like the most normal pathway and I just think the market wasn't ready to digest ethereum it's a more complex message they were still getting their hands around Bitcoin but it'll be it it'll happen we will wake up a year from now and there'll be $20 billion in the etherum ETFs in the US and everyone will be like wow I thought they were a bust no they weren't a bust the these ETFs just take a while and I actually think they're doing all right I I I think it comes with education I mean we are talking to a lot of traditional investors and we still have to explain first of all what Bitcoin is and then the difference between Bitcoin and ethereum and why they are so different um and obviously the narrative for Bitcoin is pretty straightforward while with ethereum there's a lot to unpack there's a lot of different narratives which in my opinion is a curse and a blessing because you have a buffet of of optional on how you could pitch that product so I think it will just take a bit more education more time until also traditional institutional investors pick up on this uh investment opportunity however one thing that I would add I think pitching it also depends we get a lot of time the question on where should we put it in terms of portfolio allocation so you could argue that Bitcoin is more of a odity so it might be sitting between Alternatives next to gold while ethereum could be considered more of a a Tech play even if it's a decentralized Tech play but you could make the pitch that it should sit next to yeah Tech equities um just to be part of this web 3 Revolution yeah I I I agree with all that I forgot one more thing that I think's been hurting e ETFs has been a terrible period for ethereum I mean we shouldn't we shouldn't look past that right like it's not the rock that Bitcoin is and it's not the cool kid like salana near monad Etc it's like the middle child that everyone forgets about it's just been missing from the narrative and if you can't sell eth to crypto Deens you're going to have a hard time selling it to institutional investors it's the same sort of narrative Gap I think that will end by the way I think the market is coming back around uh to ethereum but I think that's HED as well I thought I thought of italic sang well in Japanese he sang well yeah yeah um so I know you guys said you can't lend your underlying uh Bitcoin out or maybe that's a geographical difference um can you stake your eat and pass that yield onto your uh ETF holders somehow uh we stake our eth in our European ETFs in the US you can't yes likewise again we we we have a lot of different products in in Europe where we provide staking yeld to the end investors yes but again as we mentioned uh it's really important that we manage liquidity to make sure we we give the best possible year to the end investors yeah staking is possible in Canada there is one uh fund doing it but um the liquidity management has kind of prevented a bunch of others from doing it and and just on that I mean one philosophy behind it I think that kind of comes back to the point of why are EFS not selling I I'm skeptical of um Bitcoin on eth as a as a yield opportunity first and foremost I think people are coming for uh the price return the technology and the you know the newness of the asset class and I think right now that's still the primary selling feature of uh of of eth even I mean if you're getting Stak uh yield that's great but I don't think you're going to get people buying it for the yield if they don't want it for the eth itself and so we still think there's room to go on on uh on all of this to get to the point where people then say okay I'm so comfortable with the asset now I want to get one that's got yield because I'm in this thing for the Long Haul and and and therefore I want the yield on it because I'm going to go a 10 year hold and I want to pick up some I I actually think they will become they will come because of the yield right because once once traditional investors understand there's a yield generating asset they get uh they get excited um of course Bitcoin has a different value proposition but it doesn't generate any yield and I think once they understand that with eth it will drive some adoption as well and and I think if you've bought into it as a technology player and you really understand what you're doing with the the contribution you're making in some way to the technology operating you'll be more inclined to to to want to do it right I mean with with e upgrades coming along the way I mean does that make it more confusing for the whole for the institutional ETF holder or does it is it more encouraging and I I I can't tell like you know you know ETP blah blah blah and then you have to like put a note Out start explaining this to people and yeah I I think anytime you need to um go into technical detail you lose a lot of people in the room and so this again comes back to why is Bitcoin you know so predominant because you can tell the Bitcoin story in under five minutes and then people are either yes digital gold I've got it I'm allocating or or they're not but um I think it's a challenge and I think actually the refining that narrative explaining that narrative making it very simple to understand is a is a challenge for eth it's a challenge for crypto generally Beyond eth as well um and something that we all need to be focused on and thinking about as we're try to get the audience to increase in size um we've got a I'm running give me 30 seconds um what my second most curious question outside of what are etps was around this story around coinbase and black rock and I was wondering whether you know the official line from from coinbase or Black Rock was around settlement times and fee and I was just wondering whether there's something more nefarious going on why something that could be settled on chain in publicly wasn't done so in real time always great to talk bad about Black Rock oh that never comes back to haunt you look black Rock's an exceptional I wish I wish I could say something they're an exceptional ETF manager they're buying and holding Bitcoin I don't think they buy it and uh secure it as efficiently as both 21 does and bitwise do we have have very similar approaches to trading and custody and it is more efficient and creates a good product but has Black Rock just been pocketing you know billions of dollars definitely not uh they're buying Bitcoin as well just just less efficiently and less expertly I I also think the rumors are not true of course there were the rumors around paper Bitcoin and so on but uh no it's not happening they they yeah they worried about gold too this is a classic worry it they definitely have the Bitcoin cool thank you very much for your time Jess this has been fun thank you thank you