Crypto Through a Global Macro Lens - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

afternoon everyone my name is James Newman and I run Global business development at webbing group The Alan Howard backed incubator for web3 and fintech Innovation um today's panel was crypto through a macro lens and I can't think of a more timely topic to end this conference on um over a very short period of time uh we've seen Global central banks raise rates to significant levels we've seen growth waning inflation remaining relatively stubborn whilst uh Regional bifurcation and of course an election next year is creating a backdrop of rather a large amount of uncertainty clearly the timing around any Central Bank Tilton particularly the FED is captivating markets both on the traditional and the digital side and the East Bitcoin rally throughout the year has seen levels drop back to more subdued levels this backdrop creates a number of risks but also opportunities out there and I think one of the most interesting things for me is the decoration between digital assets and the traditional counterparts on the flip side we've seen institutions entering the space a number of asset managers looking to create digital asset products in the name of Bitcoin and ETFs and this has further blurred the lines between digital and traditional assets um there's clearly a number of different places in which we could kick this off and I'm fortunate to be joined by a very special group of people here um I'm expecting this to get quite Lively so before we kick things off I will kick this off with a round of instructions starting with Alex uh on correlations basically the way I think about it is Bitcoin basically used to trade uh absolutely uncorrelated from equities and risk assets for basically a decade and that changed in Mars 2020 with the arrival of basically Port Paul to the Jones and a big slew of macro investors and if you basically look at the charts and look at correlations BTC Equity U.S Equity correlations pumped up to basically from zero percent to 30 to 0.3 to 0.5 and uh that broke down in uh basically April of this year so that's that's one of the issues we have this problem which is basically that correlation broke down that happened mainly because U.S market makers and then other market makers start stepping out of the market uh therefore turning their uh their correlation algosov basically market makers um one of the ways they uh their pricing models uh work one of the main inputs is correlational so when they turn those off Bitcoin started doing what we've seen which is basically nothing right so there's very little spot flows and uh with equities ramping up very little spot flows poor sentiment and market makers taking a step aside we got into where we are right now which is basically praying for an ETF taking a step back to kind of thinking a little bit more broadly about the kind of macro crypto picture and how that's evolving um Darris would you get to share some thoughts on the themes that you feel are most important and the ones that you're paying attention to when you're investing yeah um just to quickly introduce myself my name is Darius I'm the founder of qcp capital uh we're a global trading Global crypto trading firm uh one of the first in Singapore to start trading digital assets um we provide our clients with institutional trading strategies and and trading Solutions as well and we are one of the largest market makers for crypto options and derivatives around um yeah to answer your question I think you know I Echo a lot of what Alex said you know the the generally is a positive correlation between uh crypto assets and Equity so it created as a risk asset but March actually I March April this year was actually very interesting I think there was a one time when the correlation broke properly uh where you saw crypto rallying about risk asset sold off and I think you know for me I think anecdotally you know we uh when the traffic Community I think they started to take this seriously as a emerging asset class where you know it's a possibly non-aligned um where it's a corporate style value and it's not seeing it as part of the whole uh Global macro story so I think you know we we saw that but you know right now Vols all of a kind of subdue and a high interest rate environment like James mentioned so I think uh you know we'll be bouncing around a little bit here uh remains to be seen how how this develops the biggest issue with uh crypto right now as an asset class I think is the fact that the credit markets in crypto will be broken we have a situation where the risk-free rate is five plus percent and the crypto rates are somewhere below that um I think you know we need we need this uh we need to crypto my you know previously used to be the other way around in a big way so I think we need the crypto credit markets to come back you know bring some leverage into the space uh have proper risk premiums and um you know to see activity again with that said um the options and uh derivatives Market in crypto has been growing in spite of spot volumes being low so you know we see uh traditional players guys like Brevin coming in a big way into this derivatives market and I see that as a segment that will continue to grow as well thank you and then you touched on uh credit markets and obviously risk-free rates so I think that's an interesting segue into uh well your thoughts on fed Central Bank policy more globally rates and how that impacts the way that you look at investing the cost of capital and and those such things sure yeah I I think a lot of this comes down to the market participants and Darius talked about this some as well it's you know in a traditional framework right like if if yields are high investing in non-yielding assets is an opportunity cost and so you see liquidity move away from the likes of gold or other you know low yielding stocks and you can say Bitcoin as well right because it doesn't have a natural yield and so I I think despite the fact that personally I don't my view on crypto long term you know or even medium term is not impacted At All by the level of rates like you have to respect the fact that you know liquidity gets shifts how it's allocated you know in a higher rate environment and some of the correlation relationships that that Alex was talking about you know it's based on a narrative and something that's self-fulfilling right so if a lot of capital moves away from the asset class um whether it's market makers or allocators who you know think again it's an opportunity cost to be here when rates are higher then you have to respect that you know flow of liquidity even if it doesn't have a fundamental impact on you know where the Technology's going where the adoption is going you know Etc so long way of saying like you absolutely have to pay attention and respect you know fed policy especially for trading in shorter Horizons does that fundamentally you know change the the trajectory of you know Bitcoin or ethereum things being built on top of it like I don't think so at all but it certainly matters an impacts price over you know meeting the long-term Horizon and liquidity without a without a doubt has a huge impact on on asset price and right now we're in a a very low liquidity environment especially for the spot market and as a result it's you know short-term narratives and a lot of things that move price and seemingly kind of random or very gappy ways um and this is the reality I agree I agree with a lot of that and then Richard in terms of fed policy specifically do you have any view on an underlying Tilton or fizzy liquidity and uh digital asset markets is relatively low or feels quite low on the spot side what about dollar liquidity and how that's impacting crypto assets yeah I think um yeah I mean the reality is the Fed policy has been super aggressive in a super short space of time and I think anyone with uh uh you know within any economics background would admit there's always a lag between interest rate policy and economic outcomes it would seem appropriate time from my perspective although I'm obviously always slanted bullish being the uh the long investor up here that you know the FED needs to take a pause at some point and kind of take the temperature on the amount of impact that it's had I mean it's raised rates you know from Connor zero to five-ish percent in a period where you would usually most economic textbooks would say would have very limited effect over this period and you're really talking about an 18-month lag which we haven't seen play out yet so it would feel like the right sort of time to sort of pause upon that I think from a liquidity perspective you kind of got two factors when it comes to crypto you've got the macro liquidity the impact which you know which the guys have spoken about at a macro level and you've got the crypto specific factors around a number of market makers pulling out of the market number of Market participants pulling back so you've kind of got that double impact across the market and you know I would say you know our seven years in the market from a relative perspective this has probably been one of the lowest liquidity type markets that we've actually seen order books are extremely thin on exchanges particularly for people looking to actually acquire volumes in either direction it's extremely thin markets at this point so which is kind of an interesting time so from our perspective always slanting bullish these are generally the times when value emerges these are the sorts of times where you know to Will's point when you can look through the sort of longer term cycles and you can look through sort of longer term trajectories you know these sorts of sort of shorter term impacts of the sort of sort of periods that allow you to sort of find those to find those sort of real differentiators in your portfolio yeah and and Darius um in terms of this low liquidity how is that affecting Market structure and and what are the role markets actually saying to you in terms of price action in the majors Bitcoin ethereum I think Market structure is uh evolving and developing in spite of liquidity um I mean you know liquidity is fragmented in the crypto space partly due to regulations and partly due to the fact that there is uh you know there are many segments to it C5 defy you know different and and you know private exchanges and whatnot but uh I think you know Market structure is developing in spite of the poor liquidity um we have players who are developing infrastructure Solutions trading settlement clearing um I think people working on the rates Market trying to find a way to get a rates curve um and I think that you know one one thing that interests me and I think I'm quite uh uh you know optimistic about is there are segments within crypto that are native and unique to crypto uh staking staking derivatives that you know you don't have in in trap5 so I think you know we are developing new methods of looking at interest rates as well uh remains we've seen how that plays out um you know clearing through clearing through cd5 hybrids that's quite interesting as well um but yeah Market structures are definitely maturing uh you know in spite of the credit bomb you know that we saw last year right uh derivatives markets options markets were robust throughout so I think that was one positive thing that came out last year and you know we see you know this is going strong on the option side specifically you know you have more and more and more exchanges binance by bit bit.

com okx all starting to develop the options as well um starting to see Regulators pay attention to it several banks have started to trade options uh crypto options specifically and I think you know very soon we'll be seeing some of these guys distribute as well so I think the pieces are falling in place I think you know it's a bit of a journey we still need the Regulators to put the pieces together uh and on the native side we don't need to be open to working with institutional guys with banks uh you know we can't avoid them it is a capital market after all so I think you know things are falling in place with new unique features as well that are native to crypto and with them institutions and Banks entering into The Fray offering certain um digital asset products obviously the benefits of um uh call it portfolio diversification come into Fray um Richard from your perspective on uh both the kind of VC and liquid side how do you think about that when you're thinking about deploying capital yeah I think the the market Moves In from our perspective different Cycles right and if I look through the Journey we look at the the correlation between assets and and the segmentation of the market I think for the sort of first five years or so had Bitcoin trade somewhat uncorrelated to the rest of the market at points in time with the rest of the market was weaker and if you look back four years 2019 was a good example of that Bitcoins up about 100 percent and I think the entire aggregate of every other coin was literally zero when you add them all up um when we look at the market today four years on we've actually probably seen a pretty similar Market in 2023 I guess the key difference we'd see is that you know ethereum seems to have matured and kind of joined the big kids table and it's it's trading like Bitcoin did in 2019 in terms of you know extra much stronger than smaller cap or the outside of those two Mega cap coins I guess it's traded the rest of the Market's relatively weak and I think that's reflective of the flows right so when if you think about it from a macro perspective hedge fund allocations to crypto they make the decision to allocate Capital to crypto and then they buy Bitcoin and it appears they buy Bitcoin and now they buy eighth they don't really think much further about it because for them the key decision is the allocation to crypto not you know spending time and resources going further down the stack that's that's the decision they make as we move into our I guess a market more driven by growth there's crypto starts to sort of you know Drive the user adoption and the sort of Revenue growth that we'd like to see over the next few years you start to attract I guess a more fundamental driven investor that's not just allocating you know a small portion of the portfolio to crypto they're looking to actually add Alpha within that allocation as well and they've got the resources and the time to actually go further down the stack and in our experience that's when you start to see I guess the altcoin market for one of a better word start to provide differentiation you start to see some real sort of alpha generated as people start to sort of find the specific assets that are driving sort of real real adoption and real growth yeah Will Alex have you got any thoughts on what Richard said to be honest the Acoustics are really bad so unfortunately I missed I miss that big chunk in terms of um to Carry On from what Richard was talking about and if we think about the changing macro environment and also the changing interest rate perspective in an asset portfolio uh point of view how do you think investing has changed for those looking to run a diversified portfolio looking to include traditional assets and digital assets and how has that changed from a low interest rate environment to a high one perfect on one hand Anisha that we have with basically dropping correlation of Bitcoin is that it's by having an unstable correlation it makes it very hard for institutional allocators that they're basically in their portfolio construction they're targeting certain ball volatility levels so if you don't really know what the correlation is because it's massively variable it's pretty hard to determine what level BTC exposure you want to have in in your book in your portfolio that one had on the raids side I'd say that what the the theme which is uh I I would presume that all here agree that it's going to be the case is basically rates interest rates higher for longer what that may mainly generates it doesn't mean that that the economy has to crash or risk assets are going to be basically the doldrums forever what it actually means is it produces a large set of winners and losers so the phrase I'd use is dispersion is the name of the game um and and when it comes to basically so thinking about that on on the on the equity side you have to think that basically commercial real estate Banks and profitable Tech going to suffer while everything else I'd say or or most other sectors continue going up and particularly very uh I mean not at these levels very bullish but I'm bullish on on both uh growth and I'm bullish on risk assets as a whole and and finally when it comes to crypto having basically interest rates is high what it means is that it pushes projects to try to generate revenue and focus on Revenue because if you're not making Revenue in this in this market you have a problem we don't like you pretty much and I would just piggyback on some of what Alex said I think dispersion like this is like one of the healthiest things that we can have as an asset class like it must it feels like a terrible year in some respects in terms of you know aggregate performance and you have very few names that are doing well across the board at the same time if you look at the you know fundamentals or the you know potential for a lot of projects within crypto there should be a lot of dispersion there should be a massive Delta between the winners and the losers and when you're in a low rate environment in the bull market environment and everything's getting funded you don't really see that it's just all kind of one trade and so I again I think it's a very healthy thing to see that dispersion and frankly if there's institutional investors that want to take the asset class seriously it's also helpful to have that level of dispersion so you can see what are the things that are again being adopted have you know characteristics that you want to invest in so while it's it's painful from some perspectives and you know all my bags aren't doing great as a result again I think it's one of the better you know developments for crypto through this cycle and then actually to darius's point you know the market structures evolved a lot but the nice thing is within you know D5 broadly right there's a lot more options now to express views in terms of you know Longs and shorts perps Etc that are not um Tethered to having uh you know assets on an exchange again that that also helps reinforce this expressed views have more dispersion in the market so I think it's it's a very positive development in a otherwise uh kind of brutal Market at times and I think Alex touched on it um higher interest rate environments affect the type of or seem to affect the type of projects that are being built and will what's your thoughts on kind of cbdc's stable coins and the drive for profitability of new projects coming out in the argument crypto bear market and also for those existing projects how does Capital coming into that space view those uh one thing I like to talk about is is it's I'm not addressing answer your question directly but uh stable coins I um stable coins are one of if not the killer uh crypto killer utility it's it's uh extremely useful and it's transformed how people move money around the world and how countries some countries actually trade among themselves and uh I often talk about this because I I come from traditional finance and and still most of my circles are not in crypto and I face repeatedly nowadays conversations that I had multiple times through the years in the past which is basically what has crypto to prove after 15 years there's nothing going on well we have stable coins and they worked work extremely well that being said uh is very interesting there's a lot of people right now a lot of projects coming up with stable coins both in Asia in and in Europe and in Latin America actually I know projects in Brazil um well actually almost everywhere one thing that is very interesting on the stable coin side I think that is very important to issuers Who start passing on interest to Holders that's that's a problem we have mainly uh uscc has a big problem which basically it doesn't make much sense for you to be holding uscc for longer that you really have to for practical reasons because you you're basically losing four and a half percent spread and uh and it's not and with this kind of it's not that difficult to actually Implement that all all Circle has to do is basically take their their interest and use that to Mint new coins and basically rebate Supply and give those extra coins to holders and Ebola you have basically uscc holders receiving interest why is it not happening I don't know so you touched on something interesting which is obviously um everyone's well aware that the macro picture can affect crypto asset prices but vice versa do you think crypto on where do you think crypto has its most impact are going to be on the macro the geopolitical uh on on the stable coin side on the most impact on what sorry impact on geopolitical the macro side of things I think we're a little bit too far away from that point for for BTC to be uh Reserve currency uh I I believe it's going to happen at some point I think is a highlight gift let's say in 15 years major countries have BTC as a reserve currency 15 10 I don't know but it's I think it's going to happen it's a matter of of uh when not if but we're too far away so at this point from a geopolitical perspective I don't think there is as much substance actually if that's it you know when when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier the year um if you look at all the D5 stats you saw a big search in in Russian and Ukrainian uh IP addresses coming on the D5 so you're right I don't think it's any material impact per se but there is this narrative that uh Bitcoin is a crypto in general uh is forming a non-aligned or non-sovereign asset class um you know uh and I think that that comes into play as we go along as well uh you know whenever there's your political prices it could become a safe haven kind of asset so it could be a two-way sort of correlation here sort of fungible Global asset class before um traditional Finance apart from the absolute Mega fund perspective is very much Geographic driven you know most people put their science retirement savings into their own domestic markets for example right which in a digital world with digital information starting to feel odd or an odd or as we go past you know go through each year we're now moving into a you know an asset class where you know you can buy a Bitcoin in Argentina sell it in Australia and get a market made by Darius in Singapore on the same asset and the same you know 30-minute cycle right and the world's never had that before um and so I think you know that's just a a natural evolution of what digitization of the world does it makes sense that we have digital assets to go with the digital digital Revolution we've all been living through for the last 30 years we'll probably live through for the next 50 years so if I was to look at a you know at a macro level what's the most impact it's had it's really that sort of that sort of wake-up call that we're in a digital world now that should be borderless in terms of where assets trade and how they're how they're traded and how they're owned and crypto is really the only example of that today I think one more very important thing is if a simple simple case of let's say you compare margin levels on CME versus margin levels and they're a bit imagine you know the leverage on CME is three times therapy is probably five six times in general so you are talking about a use case of crypto here right crypto being uh constantly settled and constantly cleared asset class uh versus CME being an end of day over the weekend and then you know and then that that time and and the delay in settlement is being expressed in the cost of margin um and the fact that crypto exists and real-time settlement is forcing people to think about change this this change and I mean you start to see when the two markets have to overlap uh it's gonna cause a it's going to reduce margin costs for sure so I think this is a small but it could be very impactful actually I I just wanted to add exactly the same that's the the second killer app of crypto 24 7 liquidity it's it's amazing and I wanted to talk about the the geopolitical consequences and I think you know we're all aware of you know the narrative around Bitcoin is relates to having this independent currency and like the freedom that provides I would argue right now actually the stable coins have much larger geopolitical consequences than Bitcoin does you know like I'm actually on a a panel slash working group next week which is modern crypto Warfare dollars versus bullets that's the name of the the working group right but it it clearly is alluding to the the fact that you know it's no mystery that the US uses you know monetary policy and in dollars and sanctions right as a way of fighting Wars and having influence and so you know dollar-based stable coins or a potentially a big part of that um and so again I think in the near term well it's still a very much you know dollar being the reserved currency of the world I would I would argue that stable coins are much more relevant as it relates to geopolitical uh you know discussions and narrative than Bitcoin although I I'm also fully on board with you know the longer term trajectory of Bitcoin and the role it plays there while it's not specifically on on topic of macro I think it's probably worth giving you you mentioned the US dollar and regulation um just touching on this briefly um well what do you think of the main areas that one should be watching around regulation going forward and how the macro backdrop fit in here I'll be could the macro backdrop affect policy um in the US but a bit more globally yeah I guess I'll just make a few points that are related to that I think one I think there's this um impression that there's a cohesive view on the place of crypto within the US and amongst regulators and I think in fact there's no cohesive view I think even even within Congress there's different views the FED wants you know control over uh stable coins right because they even Michael Barr mentioned this a couple days ago like he's concerned about sable coins broadly in terms of it's for planting that all are you know the SEC of course has its own agenda which I think has been you know weakened uh recently so I think in general there's no like there's no strict you know one view one policy within the us as early as to to crypto and regulation um I think also again which is not talked about much but like this this panel I mentioned for next week I mean there's a lot of people that are attending that are part of like the National Security apparatus of the U.S like it doesn't go unnoticed you know the relevance again of of stable coins and how we could potentially use this so I don't think I answered either your questions directly but I you know it's it's it's it's it's very much a focus of of regulators each of them kind of trying to Vive for power over the little like fiefdoms uh which as a result you know there's not really one consensus view hopefully that works out for the best for all of us because there's you know uh ginzo doesn't get his way and there's thoughtful people that are thinking about this regulation on the U.S front but do you have a review on when U.S currency policy may get a little bit more accommodating policy might be a bit more accommodative um I'm well I'll say this it seems most recently when you look at like the case with with ripple or with grayscale one of the common threads there is that they're saying existing legislation is not sufficient and it's not the sec's purview to create legislation to do this and thus it's the like Congress needs to step in and create legislation so whether or not that regulation that they come up with is accommodative or not I'm not quite sure I am I'm hopeful though that you know it is and we've had enough time now and we understand the relevance of it whether for National Security or for other reasons or just wanting you know American dionism and being a leader in technology globally hopefully all those factors you know play a role again in in some respects maybe we'll have benefited from it taking so long so much regulatory ambiguity for so long that the space is matured enough that people appreciate the value and such that we have a more you know thoughtful uh regulation but I think what you're going to see now is over the next year this get pushed towards Congress we've got a number of bills in play already that are being you know reviewed talked about except or nothing that's imminent but I'm I'm hopeful on that trajectory but I don't have a strong view on when it's going to be more accommodative you know per se I think it's not a new thing for disruptive technology to be a struggle for Regulators to keep up with right like if you look at even the launch of the fax machine in the 70s there was a legal which is mind-boggling I think even until the early 80s it was actually technically illegal to send a fax direct to an end receiver you were supposed to send it through a U.S post Office so you're supposed to send the fax to the U.

S post Office it was then supposed to deliver it to the recipient now of course no one did it because mine was a ridiculous legislation but it that gives you an example of like how slow regulation could be to keep up with technology PayPal Uber crypto is just another evolution of disruptive technology that is moving way faster than Regulators can so I think you know from our perspective we think regulation continues to evolve but when regulation catches up to where we are today crypto's not going to be in the same spot so you're always going to have a lag until crypto gets to a more mature lower growth type environment which I don't think we're going to be in for some time and I think um with institutions clearly entering the space I think that discussion is going to speed up arguably the two big use cases there are ETFs which uh in this conference there's been a number of others applications announced and the second one is reward asset tokenization those are the two major things that a lot of major institutions seem to be focusing on how do you think that the macro perspective or the macro picture feeds in there will policy drive this from the crypto side and do you have any views um Richard on an ETF approval yeah I think I think answering the the first piece around real world assets I think you know one of the things rights has created is actually an environment where the I guess the settlement liar and the Spade the crypto provides can actually start to be a super competitive driver of growth and we're seeing that you know through maker Dao as one example right where you know the cost of effectively warehousing dead on maker Dow now is you know incrementally cheaper than doing it in the real world and that's the first time that we've sort of seen that environment and we're starting to see and that creates an impetus for people to take that step to embrace a new technology push it through the compliance Department have the risk discussions it's not just because they want to try a new tech there's actually margin in it for them right and so you start to see those interest rates one of the positive aspects it starts to make crypto much more competitive at that sort of at that sort of level when it comes back to the ETFs and those sorts of things I think atfs because there's ETFs already in a lot of markets right and I think the reality is if ETFs from our perspective if ETFs have got approved in 2017 they would have been a massive step change for the industry but clearly you know a bunch of exchange is a bunch of distribution platforms have made it easier and easier to buy crypto every year so the incremental benefit of an ETF in our view has probably decreased now having said that that's clearly a big part of I guess conservative money that wants to buy assets using the same platform that it does with its equities and its bonds and and ETF is super helpful for those people and they've got a bunch of money so that is you know pretty good inflows to the space and I think it does give a sign of Where The Regulators are once you've got an ETF it's effectively a sign off you know it's somewhat of a validation of the asset so we would say where we are now from our perspective the approval of an ATF is actually of more of a regulatory positive than a flows perspective although it is positive from flows as well given there seems to be a fair amount of call it positive news to come arguably if you assume that an ETF approval or spot is going to going to happen whether it's this year or next year what do you think are the major kind of systemic downside risks out there that you're worried about from an investment perspective um Darius if you'd like to give first well the uh near-term downside risks are still quite regulatory in nature you have you know doj going after binance or geology SEC cftc going after binance being hostile um FTX liquidating assets the mound dogs liquidation that seems to be forever being delayed so everyone's sort of you know waiting for that to clear up um but structurally I would say that you know we are quite bullish as well I think once we get over these supplies in the market um you know I think we there are positive narratives having been one uh the sport ETF uh I agree with Richard uh that you know materially effectively product wise it's not anything that new but you know if if U.S banks has started to be allowed to trade Sport and you know it just creates a whole more positive regulatory framework like you said um you know I think the guy is like all the hft guys are waiting for it to come up as well and then they jump in so increase participation increase you know activity in the space I think they can only be good so I think you know just some of these supply issues get over uh and I think we're quite systematically bullish as well okay and will anything you're worried about yeah I was going back to your question on on The View on how regulation we've become more accommodative I actually think you know the the entrance of BlackRock and these institutional players in in their application for an ETF is probably one reason to be optimistic about the regulatory path you know you could be pessimistic and say that some of the pushback from Regulators has been in in part to give time for traditional players and incumbents to catch up and now you know you could say that this officially caught up they're making these applications if nasdaq's going to offer a custody solution so I think from that perspective you can think it you know it's more likely to not to be more accommodative you know here on out now that everyone's got time to get their ducks and uh in a row um I do think just even looking at the testimony or this hearing with with ginsler earlier this week he's getting slammed pretty hard from every angle so I think the the probability on an ETF sooner than later is probably there and yeah while it's not that novel for people who are in crypto it's unquestionably like the convenience factor for someone who knows nothing about crypto available by something in their retirement account like it's hard to to ignore you know the relevance of that from just you know flows you know coming in and on the more positive side outside of the kind of known unknowns I.E potential ETF approval Bitcoin halving are there any themes out there that you think uh give you that kind of retail convexity that aren't necessarily being appreciated by the market that aren't priced in into current asset prices Alex well actually it's it's very obvious as the ETF somehow we're trading at the exact same level as when the news came came he hit us in uh this was uh mid-june it's it's absolute insanity but here we are so it's incredible it's such an obvious trade and is not priced in odds in my humble opinion are about 70 percent that that happens in January not before nothing it's before January all the delays and everything is are irrelevant and then January it's we get it or we don't get it and something that I think the the market is not talking about uh on the ETF side and something else on the ETF side is the uh back to what I was saying at the beginning that Bitcoin cease to be a macro asset once we get an ETF Bitcoin will be a map I'm across it once again so it's going to change everything that on one hand on on the downside something that worries me is is not binance itself I I think the settlement of binance would likely be something akin to what happened with bitmax in 19 what worries me is Define that CZ may get and if it's a multi-billion dollar fine and uh he's forced to sell in the short term we have no idea we're just guessing here say he has to sell dump billions of BTC and BNB okay that is not in the price so yeah yeah I would say um the uh Bitcoin ETF and halving are being priced into the options Market uh so the option Bitcoin option curve is steep it's about 15 in the front and back end very Steep and Bitcoin options are you know seven volts higher than either options as well so maybe absolute price wise not not that much priced in but you know the option Market is sort of reflecting some of this this volatility but yeah your point is easy I hope you can afford it so yeah customer earlier I guess that was when we all do four at the same time on the crowd as well so one last question to everyone and um answer how you feel comfortable and but looking to the end of the year and also 2024. what is your view on asset prices in crypto and if you're comfortable any levels that you're looking at in ethereum and Bitcoin um started with the Alex PDC end of year 28 and a half and uh next year 37 42 and if we get lucky more one thing about a as a directional Trader picking the exact level is is usually detrimental for returns it's different if you're an options Guy where basically you're going to be structuring structures around levels and volatility so if you're a directional guy it doesn't matter as much so I I don't really care if it's going to be 42 or 47 or 180 I mean you know yeah my base case is a slow grind higher in the last quarter it tends to there's some seasonality for positivity in the last quarter but if we have uh I think on the ETF uh positive ETF announcement probably jump we probably have a nice knee jump to 35 just based on where the gamma levels are I think uh putting I guess specific price levels to one side I think what we're excited about is and Alex made this point earlier that the interest rate environment the capital Rising environment is driving a lot of projects to really focus on speed to revenue and speed to kind of self-sustainability and we're seeing a lot of that at the moment and that's probably one of the key things that we see particularly through the second half of this year into next year some real differentiators of that sort of the smaller cap mid cap level of projects that are really starting to make tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per year right and and we think that can kind of drive I guess a new mindset around crypto and attract a whole new set of investors not just so much momentum driven um it's it's crypto dragging investors because it's fundamentally cheap based on the amount of you know revenues and users that's generating so that's where we uh where we see the most positive outcome over the next sort of you know 18 to 12 months well yeah I don't know if I have a sophisticated way to answer this question I I do think you know if there's a negative out come with binance in terms of negative impact on liquidity I think that will have a pretty big impact of course on price but also sentiment for some period not any different than what we saw last year with with FTX and so I think in that scenario you know we're probably flat to down from here I'm more optimistic than that um in probably say 28 to 30 but that's not you know take it for the grain of salt cool well uh thank you everyone for taking part and thank you everyone for attending so one question you uh I think towards the end of the year slightly lower but throughout 2024 similar levels to you guys cool thank you everyone thank you