Transcription
It's time to start paying attention once again, as the crypto regulatory and legislative environment starts to heat up. Are we actually going to see the Clarity Act? And today, we have the House Financial Services Committee meeting on tokenization of assets. I think it's fair to say that the technology is being adopted, but you have to wonder if it's also being co-opted. I'm going to talk about that today with one of my favorite guests, Mark Yusco. Let's go.
>> Let's go. Let's go.
>> What is up, everybody? Good morning and welcome to the mountain region of Afghanistan, uh, where we're doing our show live today. I, I didn't know I'd have mountains behind me until it happened. They sometimes like to surprise me, but it's great. Feels, feels cozy. Mark, how are you? Are you in the mountains?
>> Uh, you know, I, I am not in the mountains. Although I, I was supposed to be heading to the mountains on Saturday, but uh,
>> CSA
>> worst snow pack in America ever. So, it's all gone. And uh, so we had to cancel. So, we're just heading to San Francisco to hang out with my son and daughter-in-law, which will be fun. But no m to go skiing.
>> Yeah, I've heard that. I mean, we, yeah, winter skiing was, I mean, uh, Christmas skiing was ruined. It didn't happen. Spring break skiing was awful everywhere. It didn't happen.
>> I, I, I think I played Trump.
>> But I love, I love the background. I love, I love the uh, the new setup. It's amazing.
>> So, really quickly, before we get into the news, I have some news and I'm feeling pretty good about this new setup now because uh, I'm launching a new show with Yahoo Finance. I don't know if you saw this.
>> Ah, what?
>> Bravo. Every day at noon, we're gonna start in two or three weeks, hopefully. Every day at noon, The Daily Wolf. It's going to be a solo show. So, like my Fridays where I just rant and rave about the top three stories of the day, totally off the cuff. Uh, Yahoo making a big push into crypto. They're launching a Yahoo hub and this is going to be the flagship show of that new push. So, really excited. People keep asking, it has nothing to do with my current channels. It's additive, not subtractive. So, are doing everything you're doing,
>> you know,
>> the only, the only person who loses in that trade and not that she loses, but is your better 90%, right? Because that's less time for her, but no, I'm just kidding.
>> It is. But it's noon. That's the thing is we're just going to plow through it, you know, do the whole morning and then uh, by 1 p.m. we're in the mountains.
>> There you go.
>> But yeah, so listen, I want to talk about all things kind of tokenization, Clarity Act right now. So this, you know, we have today the House Financial Services Committee uh will host a hearing on tokenization in the future of capital markets. Yay. Right. I, I think uh, and we, we have a lot of news that there's been a settlement on stable coin yield in the Clarity Act. Uh, a settlement means banks win, we get nothing. And I, it's like the, it's as big of gaslighting to me that this is a crypto bill as the Inflation Reduction Act was gaslighting ABOUT INFLATION.
>> WELL, BUT THAT'S THAT'S THE THING, SCOTT. Whatever the bill is called,
>> it's the exact opposite.
>> Yeah.
>> Whether it was the Genius Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Patriot Act,
>> it's the exact opposite. And this has nothing to do with clarity. This has everything to do with regulatory capture, opaqueness about my, I mean, and look, I, I shouldn't, I shouldn't like out her, so to speak, but you know, Senator Lummis, I thought was on our team and and she actually acted like she was on our team for a very long time and now suddenly she's this great supporter of this horrible bill, which means somebody got to her. Somebody, I mean,
>> she tweeted a yield sign yesterday and people took it as, or like two days ago, and it was like, yay yield, and then you see the news and it's like, no yield. No, it's look, it's it's so crazy, but it's not unusual and it's it's the way it always has been is incumbents use regulation that they pay for. I love the fact that, you know, in, in, you know, your mountainous background, they call bribes what they are, bribery, right? Corruption. In America, we call it lobbying and we celebrate lobbyists and we, we think it's great. No, it's it's bribery and corruption and and it's no different than, you know, you've heard me tell the story, the the red flag law. Everybody's like, "What are you talking about?" Well, you've all heard red flag, right? Red flags every, you know. Yeah.
>> Well, it got passed when the automobile came to New York City and the horse and buggy folks said, "Well, that's bad for us, so let's lobby. Let's pay the local administrators to pass a rule that would say if you had an automobile, you had to hire a human with a red flag to walk in front of you." Now, have you ever seen that? Like, no, I, I haven't. And so, it eventually goes away. And the, the, then they fight you phase. We're still in it. We're probably going to be in it for at least a couple more years. And my last thing on this, the aphorism is, be careful what you ask for, you might get it. We all say we want regulatory clarity. Okay. No, we don't want regulatory clarity. What we want is actual regulations that help technology adoption, not, okay, regulatory capture.
>> Yeah, it's, it blows my mind. And now I see the coping takes where they say, "We just need to get this done now and then we can change the bill later in our favor," as if they can't change the bill to make it worse.
>> And Scott, how many times
>> we win in the future after it's passed and it looks bad, that we're going to get some sort of favorable change. By the way, the government's about to probably become a bit more blue. That is not the direction that the crypto industry needs if they want more favorable legislation and regul. It's And it's so interesting because I, I think there are a lot of smart people in our industry. I, I really do. I, I just don't understand why in things like this we, we just collectively get dumb. I mean, it's it's just dumb to think that either party is on our side. They're, they're not, right? They just want our votes. And all the things that were promised to us have not come to pass. And you have any idea how much Bitcoin the United States government holds? I, I remember that.
>> Yeah. Oh, yeah.
>> An audit that was coming in a month. We're going to figure it out.
>> Oh, look. Well, the, the, the craziest one on that to piss off the, the, the army is is the XRP nonsense, right? Where XRP went big blue and their candidate didn't get elected and they're like, "Oh, okay." Okay. So, he shows up at Mar-a-Lago begging for some attention and Trump's like, "Yeah, you're dead to me. You gave money to her." And he's like, "Well, I'll give more money to you." And he's like, "Oh, my friend."
>> And now everywhere you look like XRP, well, you know, we're going to include that in the strategic stockpile. Um, no. That just means whatever you seize, you're not going to sell, which is like 11 XRP. So I, I just, I, I struggle with why we think that we could achieve anything that we want when people like, you know, our buddy John Deaton gets obliterated by a woman who is the antithesis of all the people she supposedly represents. It's just, it's just, it's a corrupt system and and you know, we have to do, we got to opt out, is is way you got to do it.
>> Yeah. Listen, I'm of two minds of it because you can't get anything done unless you play the game,
>> right?
>> So I certainly understand why crypto companies have come together, created a lobby. There was a time in the last administration when it felt like the industry might get crushed. So they were basically forced into that position. Crypto industry didn't have a huge lobby and was not particularly political until they were kind of backed into a corner. Um, and I actually even understand why they sort of backed both sides to some degree because you wanted to make sure that you had skin in the game with the winner.
>> Yep.
>> Uh, and I guess you can totally expect that they knew that whoever won, they could just push harder to that side and do particularly well. But like, we don't even know how much XRP, Cardano, Ethereum, Solana, or Bitcoin the United States government even holds. We don't even know what that strategic stockpile is because we can't even get an audit on it.
>> No. Hey, we've been trying to audit Fort Knox since 1940 something. So, why should this be any different?
>> Yeah. The, the Clarity Act, man, you know, I, I was gaslit into slight excitement there for a long time. I thought that it would pass. I don't know if you probably didn't, but I had a conversation with Chris Giancarlo recently, and he basically just poo-pooed all over the Genius Act.
>> He was the head of the CFTC. Yeah, like we just basically gave a CBDC to private companies, uh, and to the government. All of our fears about the CBDC, we doubled by not only giving the government full transparency into your transactions, but also private companies. And I'm not naming those companies. I'm just saying that, you know,
>> Scott, and only two private companies, both of which have to agree, do literally make a deal with the devil to only back their stable coins with US Treasuries. And oh, by the way, one of them happens to be partially owned by the Secretary of Commerce, which also happens to have ties with very, how should we say this? I just say shady banking institutions down in the Bahamas, which is where FTX was. And so it all goes and and the, the worst part is again, blue and red. There's no, there is no blue and red. There's, there's only purple or colorless or whatever. It's just in and out. You're in power or you're out of power. And when you're out, you want to be in. When you're in, you want to stay in. And so they all do the same things and they've all been doing the shady stuff in the Bahamas with Deltech for decades, probably centuries. And and it's just, it's just wrong and it's bad and and now we have this technology and people are say, "But, but Yusko, this this technology was created by those bad people. It was created by, you know, government agencies." That's certainly possible, you know, but the technology, like, like the internet, the internet was created by the intelligence agencies. Yes, it was Department of Defense. Sure. But the internet today, yes, it's it's utilized as a surveillance tool and a monitoring tool, but there are good parts of the internet that they lost control of because of the way it works. And the same thing with with Bitcoin. And anyway, I, I digress.
>> Well, speaking of those two stable coin issuers, we have some news on them. And this one, man, the Tether truthers are in shambles. Uh, Tether's big four firm to complete first full audit. I don't know where the uh, Tether isn't backed by anything people are right now, but I would imagine cowering in a corner wondering where their next engagement.
>> Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, they are, they are, they are a little nervous, but remember how the big, it's big four now because it used to be big eight and then turns out a bunch of them were were corrupt. Um, remember how it works, right? You can pay extra to have the numbers work your way, right? You can be Enron and you can have a big, you know, at the time big six auditor and you just pay three or four times more and you get the number. It's like the old joke about, you know, you're interviewing the accountant. The first guy comes in, "What's 2 plus 2?" "Four." "All right, never mind." The second guy comes in, "What's 2 plus 2?" "Four." "Okay, you're out." Third guy comes in, "What's 2 plus 2?" "What number do you want it to be?" "You are hired." And that's kind of what this is is. Yeah. Yeah, just because it's a big four firm doesn't mean they can't be bought and paid for. And you people, Mark, that's slam. Oh, I wonder, yeah, I wonder if this is like a historical audit or a current audit because I don't think anybody has, and I love Tether, but I don't think anybody has any doubt that Tether is currently fully backed.
>> Right. Uh, I think, but, you know, 10 years ago, what were they backed by? Fully backed? Maybe, you know, so.
>> Look, Tether is an instrument of the government plan to maintain the petrodollar standard, right? I mean, we were on our way out. The dollar was sinking. And look, the Chinese, I think, are still going to win, right? The Chinese have now stated they want the renminbi not to be a world reserve currency, but to be the world reserve currency. Now, they say, "Oh, but you can't do that because it's not convertible. It's going to be converted." They bought all the gold. Now, Tether bought a bunch of gold, too, which is logical because if you want to have, you know, a real currency, you have to back it by something and not have an empty Fort Knox. So, I get why we went down and and Giancarlo's thing about about the Genius Act. It's all going toward a CBDC that ultimately, like I say, a private company would control so that you can still sanction. Like, what did Tether do the other day? Not the other day, the other, the other week when there were some Iranian, Iranian, before the conflict even started, there were some Iranian funds and they just walked in and seized them.
>> That's the antithesis of everything we are fighting to build. And it makes me sad that that's again, be careful what you ask for, you might get it. That's that's what we got.
>> Yeah. I, I guess in, in my view, if we want a silver lining, this thing, if the Clarity Act is such a train wreck and the Genius Act potentially also was a train wreck, you have to imagine that DeFi adoption is going to skyrocket when people realize it because the yields still are out there in crypto. That's not going to happen on the centralized platform.
>> It will skyrocket. The problem is still the on-ramp, off-ramp, uh, you know, challenges and the, you know, like you could say, "I don't want to live under authoritarian rule. I don't want to be taxed, you know, unfairly." So I'm going to relocate. Okay. But then what happens? They still come after you unless you go to the certain jurisdiction where they have a treaty, you know, and there's some loophole. But everywhere you look, there's this issue of, "Hey, if I, if I put all my money in DeFi, but I go to pay for something like a piece of property or, you know, a large purchase or, or even a small purchase, I got to somehow get back to fiat."
>> And that, and that, and and whether it's dollar, the yen, the euro, but still got to come back to fiat. And and yes, I do believe in the future, we will have a fiatless world, like the, the, the, the biology kind of nation-stateless world. I, I believe in it, but it's not tomorrow.
>> That's from dead hands, right? That's not, uh, it's not like any of these entities as we can see for that's even a whole other step. But nobody's giving up easily. We, we're seeing even what it just takes to banks to get on board with uh, legislation. By the way, I'm old enough to remember when senators uh debated legislation and not industries.
>> It's incredible to me right now that we headlines, they're like, "Baking industry does not agree with legislation." I'm like, "Crypto industry," or that Brian Armstrong, that big, bald, beautiful badass, can like literally block a bill. Like, since when does Coinbase vote?
>> I, I'm, I'm with you, baby. And and since when, and since when when you threaten to vote, even though you can't vote, when you threaten, you get labeled by mainstream media, Wall Street Journal, as, you know, public enemy number one. I'm like, "Really?"
>> I mean, come on. I mean, yeah, he's he's a badass, but there's some bigger public enemies out there.
>> Oh, yeah. I'm just saying it's like that we somehow he, like, you know, sends one tweet and all of a sudden apparently he stopped an entire legislation. I just don't know how an industry stops legislation that it's like, we're saying all the quiet parts out loud about where the influence is coming from that it's not supposed to be. And this is what happened to Circle stock yesterday, by the way, on this news that likely stable coins would not be getting yield over a 20% down day. I mean, I don't think that that has anything to do with people actually adopting Circle or using stable coins.
>> I, I, I, I think if you looked at the actual data and I don't know if it was yesterday or the day before or you even, even the day before that, but we set a new record for USDC transactions. I mean,
>> USDT, I think. Yeah.
>> I mean, it was it was an unbelievable number. And and look, once you use a stable coin, I would say, you know, once you use it on a Sunday morning in your pajamas, you're like, "Oh my god, this is so much better than cash." I mean, I'm, I'm trying to send a wire again, old school, old a wire to a, a Cayman-based fund, right? Hedge funds have have Cayman funds. And first of all, they said, "Well, I need the SWIFT code."
>> Yeah.
>> I'm like, "Oh my god." Like, like literally, you need, you need the, the, the, the fax machine code. Uh, okay, I'll, I'll go ask where they, where they wrote down on a piece of paper the, the SWIFT code. Okay, fine. Okay, how long is it going to take? Oh, two days. I'm like, "Two days?" Like, are you going to walk it to the Caymans? Like, take a boat? I mean, two days. It's it's insane. And then of course, they charge me a gazillion dollars on a, on a percentage basis. You know, it's not a lot of money in, in the bit. But, but, but, but it's just all so wrong. And, okay, I, I made, I don't know if I told you the story on the, but I'll tell you a funny story about SWIFT, how bad it is and how antiquated it is. So, we had an experience with one of our investors. They got hacked and the, the hacker literally, this is an amazing program, was somehow in their email and every time they got an email that said, "Hey, we're making a distribution of one of your investments," it would send new wire instructions to a bank, actually, believe it or not, in Kazakhstan. And um, so, you know, we get this email from the sender's email. We're like, "Okay, fine. So it routes through their bank in Australia." And so we, we called the bank in Australia when we figured out that that the hack and or he figured out it was a hack because he didn't get the money. And uh, called the bank in Australia and said, "Well, could you help us track, you know, where it went? You know, what, what bank in Kazakhstan?" "We lost the SWIFT message." "Like, what? What do you mean?" "Said, well, we printed out the fax and we put it on this desk and the cleaning people threw it away." "I'm like, you're lying. I mean, that's like, there's no backup of that fax code. There's no."
>> I mean, to be fair, Mark, SWIFT, uh, transactions apparently have to go through the Straits of Hormuz.
>> So, it's just closed.
>> Yeah, it's just closed. It's just closed. And and you know, I know that's inconvenient for you. But and then the worst part of it is because I'm sending money to the Caymans, I got to pay a tax to the European banker's family that I shall not name because then I get struck down. But, I got to pay tax because the Bank for International Settlements set up a deal 400 years ago that says they have to get paid when money crosses borders. Which again, if I send my money using USDC, I don't, I don't pay that tax.
>> It's fair and it's cheap and it's fast and it's settled.
>> And it's settled and it's permanent and it's truth. And this is the part and this, this is why I'm here, right? I mean, I'm, I'm old. I'm, I'm not a techie. I'm, I'm the, I don't wear black t-shirts. I'm, I'm not the guy who's supposed to be here. But the whole idea of getting away from trust where I have to trust the accountants and the auditors and the actual bank that they actually not only have my money, which I know they don't because I know how fractional banking works, but but that they actually have the accurate record of my money, and that an auditor isn't in cahoots with them to change it so that I don't have that money, which is no longer my money, it's their money, and that it can go on this permanent immutable ledger and I own it. Like I have digital property rights to that asset. That is a mind-blowing phenomenon. And once, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. You cannot stop fighting for it, which is what, you know, collectively we're all doing. It, it is a beautiful thing. And it's an example, you know, like fire, like electricity, like, like basic innovations that change humanity. And Mark, that's that's, you know, you're prone to hyperbole. I know, but come on. That's hyper, that's hyperbolic.
>> No, it's not. It, it, this is a humanity-changing technology that is going to be at the base layer of everything, but it doesn't mean the incumbents aren't going to fight it. And that's, yeah, I mean, I love this headline right here. Like I look at it and I'm like, bullish, you know? BNY Mellon CEO Robin Vince says, "Large banks will lead crypto's next growth phase by linking digital assets to traditional finance." And I'm thinking, you know, this is what we were cheering for. This is great. But then the, the other side of me says, bad.
>> That, no, that, that sounds great and it was well-scripted by, you know, the writer. But no, that, that is that is Evil Corp, right? And, you know, you and I talked about Mr. Robot, the series, and and Evil Corp, you know, is JP Morgan. It could easily be Bank of New York Mellon, but it is, it is JP Morgan and and Evil Coin is JP Morgan Coin. And and pushing crypto into the banking system and and just making banking rails work on crypto technology is not what we signed up for because those are not permissionless networks. Those are permissioned networks. That is basically a better, faster SWIFT, which I'm not really in favor of. And again, I'm not a person that wants to blow up fractional reserve banking. I know there are some that do, but I, I don't. I actually think there's benefit to lending money and, you know, that kind of stuff. But, but I, I think the, the idea that that the banks that have been taxing us, I won't say stealing from us because we do get something for it, but they've been taxing us, you know, $7 trillion a year for a very long time. I think I think it's time to to move on to a, a better, faster, cheaper system.
>> I mean, even, even Brian's here saying, you know, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says, "Major banks are integrating stable coins for faster payments, tokenizing assets, and offering crypto trading to clients." I think that's all true. I guess this all comes back to a, there was no way that Bitcoin becomes a global reserve asset or that crypto reaches true mainstream adoption without going through Wall Street and government. I understand that part. Uh, it's just a very dangerous passing to get through there without it being entirely co-opted. I'm not talking about.
>> It is no, as you said, it's afraid of our muse. It's narrow.
>> And we can't buy, like, how do I invest in BNY Mellon? Mellon being the like, next uh, great adoption wave. How do I invest in that? I buy Circle stock, maybe. I, I don't know. It's not any token.
>> Yes, you would buy Circle stock, except Circle stock can be manipulated by headlines that.
>> And also, I mean, stable coins, I, you have to worry about into the future, especially publicly traded. And this is, I, you know, maybe we'll see others, but like, yields are going to come down. Like, if, isn't, isn't buying a stock in a stable coin effectively just buying a bond? It's like interest rate exposure. I mean, it's like, you know, because most of their income obviously comes from.
>> Scott, yeah,
>> there is a growth component because you can grow your transaction volume, right? That's that's different than just having a base layer of transaction volume and a yield. You, you can, you can turn it into a growth company, but, but there is a, there is a, you know, parabolic kind of slowing of growth of of anything. Um, and once you get to the ultimate end, the fees are going to continue to shrink and shrink and shrink and they, and they spread. It's kind of like lending, right? The first person who wants to lend says, "I need to be paid 15%." And then the next person says, "Well, I'll do it for 14." And the next person says, "I'll do it for 13." And finally, you get down to like the lowest cost of capital, which is usually a German pension fund. They're like, "Well, I'll do it for two." Like, "Well, two doesn't compensate you for the risk." "Well, it doesn't matter. I, I just need two to beat my actuary assumed rate." So, so great. And so spreads compress and that's normal. So then what do people do? Well, then they lever those spreads to get back to the, the spread that people need to to move off the couch. And then we get, you know, subprime blow up or now, you know, private credit blow up. And private credit's not as leveraged as subprime, but, but we'll see. Um, there's actually the real problem is those banks still have massive losses from all those bonds that they were stuffed during ZIRP at zero that now are worth much less at 5% and yields rising every day. So I don't know. I, I usually think and I always think markets do a better job setting rates than politicians.
>> Crazy.
>> Crazy thought. I know.
>> Crazy. Do you have to go now, by the way?
>> No, I can hang out with you.
>> All right, cool. I, you know, I never know if people got to run at 9:30 because I don't do my diligence before the show and actually ask.
>> Um,
>> look, I, I, I'm, I'm super easy. I, um, you know, one of the nice things about, you know, being a venture capitalist is it's, it isn't like being an investment banker or a trader where, you know, market opens and hours, you got to go.
>> And I guess investment banking is not the same either, but, you know, it's not like trading or asset management, you know, and part of it too is most of the people I talk to, they're still sleeping because it's in California. Um, some of them are getting up early because they're, they're doing the 5 a.m. thing. Um, which I just don't.
>> They're just getting up early to get in line at TSA PreCheck for their 3 p.m. flight.
>> Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.
>> I was in Houston on Sunday, uh, passing through, and we got super lucky. We got on the little train and the guy told us they had sent us, we, we landed in E. We had to, you know, clear customs. Then the line in E when we check, rechecked our bags was 5,000 people. I have no idea. And they were like, "But do you have PreCheck?" And we said, "Yes." They said, "Go to C. We have PreCheck at C." So they sent us to C. We got in a little train. Luckily, a guy was there. He's like, "I just came from C. There's a four-hour line, but they're sending me to A and there's a five-minute line for PreCheck." So we went to A and we actually got through Clear and PreCheck in five minutes and then had to go back to D for our next flight. So.
>> But we made it. And then apparently they completely hours later closed all PreChecks.
>> Really?
>> Yeah. It's that bad. So we got super lucky. Flights were on time and we made it. But yeah, it's really, really ugly out there. So don't go fly anywhere, I guess. Maybe.
>> Well, I'm, yeah, so I'm, I'm flying on Saturday, but thankfully it is Raleigh, which is, you know, not, not super, but, but it will be bad. Um, you know, Raleigh's normally, I say, the worst airport in America because we have this weird woman who was like with TSA in DC, and she just has these weird rules where there has to be certain distance between people. I mean, it's it's bad. So, we're very slow, but uh, All right. Thank you. I'll go earlier. My wife will be happy.
>> Maybe I'll be fine by uh, Saturday. Maybe they'll reopen that part of the government or something.
>> Oh yeah, that's gonna happen.
>> Let me ask you this, like, uh, since we have a couple minutes, as a VC, obviously, who's focused in this space, what's actually interesting to you right now? I mean, certainly tokenization, you know, we, um, we were early investors in Figure and and I love Mike Cagney and and everything he's doing and and seems like every day he's making an announcement with some new way to to create tokenized assets, to trade tokenized assets, to list tokenized assets, to use them as collateral. Now, it's, it's a long adoption cycle, but, but I, I think, you know, and and there are people on both sides of securitization. I guess there's, I don't know, I don't know the whole story, but there are definitely some lovers and some less uh enthusiastic people, but, but, you know, securitization seems to be making headlines every week as well. So I think, I think look, having an asset like a digital property right is just better on-chain than online or or old-school paper. Like DTCC should not exist. Right? There should not be physical pieces of paper sitting in file drawers in Dallas, Texas. That needs to go away. So that is a, that is a big deal. Um, stable, stable coins and and stable coin payment rails. So we've been doing a lot actually in Latin America in in payment rails and payment systems and that has been really, and the amount of of money that moves cross-border because of like silly rules like, you know, if you make the things in China, send it to Mexico, assemble it there, and then truck it across, it's not made in China, okay, fine, whatever. But that creates a, a whole bunch of businesses right on the border that need to send money across the border. And turns out stable coins are just a lot easier. And that is a massive business. Or, you know, the, the, the remittances for, you know, contract workers on cruise lines, right? That all go back to the Philippines, right? I, you know, learned this a couple years ago that the vast majority of that industry is like Brazilian and and Philippine, Filipino, you know, um, so there, there are big businesses being built on that.
Um, you know, I, I'm still actually quite bullish on on Coinbase. Um, you know, we are early, early investors and and we have sold most of of what we we own at this point. But I, I'm becoming increasingly bullish again on on what's what's going on there and how I think, you know, when I think about my original vision was someone was going to build the big four of the digital age, right? JP Morgan, City, uh, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, you throw Wells Fargo in there. So the big five, someone was going to build it.
>> Robinhood, right, too.
>> Yeah. And so, you know, I, I think there are the beginnings and and I really thought it was going to be the lenders, the digital lenders, but then they got shut down by the incumbents through, you know, many, many things that that happened and and maybe you could say there was a conspiracy with FTX to sync them all. Maybe you could say that, but I didn't say it. Well, I've said it, but um, but now I think it's maybe Coinbase. I, I thought Kraken maybe, but there's something weird with this delay with their IPO, so maybe it's not Kraken. I don't know, but they, they have been building. Um, I, I like, I like Yoni Assia at eToro. Um, but I just don't know that that it's an amaz that and Robinhood are are interesting in that they've, they've kind of created virtual Las Vegases and and and eToro is a little different. Like, like the gamification of of Robinhood to me is bad. Like one button, 100 times leverage and options. That, that's, that's gambling. What Yoni's done with the copy trading is actually quite extraordinary because there's talent in the world of trading. I'm not that I'm a horrible trader, but he's got some very talented people on the platform and with one button I can copy them. That's very interesting from from a lot of perspectives. So, so I like that. But I'll tell you who I think, back to Mike Cagney, you know, he founded SoFi. And SoFi, I think could be one of these in the sense that I think they're the closest to building the American Express of this generation. And the American Express, I mean, if you look at the stock, it's been amazing. But it was the thing for a very long time. I mean, Visa, Mastercard, great businesses, fine. But American Express was different. It was a club. It was a segment of population. If you had it, you were in, right? It's like being an early Facebook invitee. Um, soFi's kind of done that. And that network effect, that community value is real. Like Chime, probably similar tech, but they don't have the same.
>> I've never even heard of Chime if that shows you, uh, what.
>> Chime is, Chime's a great business, $10 billion company, or at least it was $10 billion. It's probably not $10, $10 billion anymore, but, but it, I, I'm, check it out, but it was, and I mean, it's, it's an amazing business for, um, anyway, I'll figure it out, but, Um, but I think SoFi is there. So that's, that's a long rambling answer to, I do think financial services is going to exist. It has existed, right, since the Knights Templar. And I'm not making, and like, like, "Oh, there goes Yusko down the Illuminati thing." No, no, no. It was literally the Knights Templar with the red crosses, the Portuguese monks. They invented this in the 1100s. I mean, they figured out things like fractional reserve banking and using gold as your base for monetary transactions. And they did some other stuff, too, that wasn't as nice, but, but that set the course for financial services. And the Medici in the 1200s created modern banking as we know it. And I said that's at a good 849, whatever year run. That's over, I think. And the new era of banking, I think, revolves around DeFi and CeFi, because I, I still think you need CeFi first, centralized forms of eventually what will be DeFi, because TradFi,
>> they're just not ready for DeFi.
>> Yeah,
>> they, there are people that need someone to trust or someone to yell at, which that is, I, I do, one negative, I here, I have one negative, and everyone has the same thing about Coinbase, right? So again, investor, I have an account for family harmony reasons and I have this account and for some reason, not for some reason, because I didn't push the right button, I didn't set up autodraft of my invoices for my custody account, my cold storage account.
>> You and me both, buddy. And you can't find out how to pay these damn things no matter how hard you try, and you can't go buy and sell anything. And then all of a sudden, you have to do customer service. Like, "You haven't paid your invoice." I'm like, "How do you pay your invoice?" Yeah.
>> Show me. And and then you, but there's no customer service.
>> Yeah. There's no human that I can get to. And this is almost as bad. So in lockdown, my son and I started playing Pokémon Go and I became, let's say, addicted to Pokémon Go. And my Pokémon Go account got frozen and literally got, it wouldn't work. So I started another one. So my original one was Got Bitcoin. And so I started Got Bitcoin 2. So now my better account is Got Bitcoin 2. And um, long story short, I was so pissed off about it, I said, "I'm gonna Twitter shame the CEO." And I Twitter shamed the CEO. And I said, "Look, for 17 months, I haven't been able to play this account. What is going on? I need to talk to a human because there's no humans that you can get to at Niantic." And she actually came back to me. So, I give her credit. She actually came back to me and said, "All right, call this number. You will get a human." I got a human. They fixed it like that because it was just a glitch in in the.
>> Yeah. It's literally like one person had to push a button, but it took you a year and a half. I mean, call my customer.
>> Yeah, that was crazy. Anyway,
>> yeah, I, I mean, yeah, to, to, I, I had the same experience. I don't know if it's because you forgot to push a button or whether you did or did not, but, uh, yeah, it's really hard to, uh, pay your mother.
>> No, it's it's crazy. And and I want to pay them, right? And.
>> Okay, one other little glitch. I don't know if you had this experience. So, I'm like, well, okay, I should be able to pay them with USDC, right? So, I wanted to transfer USDC from my regular Coinbase account to my Prime account. I copy the address from their, from their link from, you know, inside, and I paste it in and I, and I double-check it and I read all the numbers and and I go, he says, "We've detected a potential scam." I'm like, "That's your address. I mean, I'm sending it from you to you. I'm not sending it outside. I'm not sending. How could that be a scam?" And they wouldn't process. I'm like, "Okay, so."
>> I had a thing with like USDC or USD payment and was trying to switch from one to the other and it was a whole process.
>> Yeah, it's not easy.
>> And look, and I, and I know these are problems that will get solved, but I'm like, "Come on, guys. If, if I'm your client and you've already done all the stuff, right? You've already taken my photograph." That's the other thing. How many times do I have to hold up my damn face with my face?
>> Proof of life.
>> Yeah. Proof of life. Like I'm the same. Anyway, so it's, and the fact that I'm have, because as I'm doing this, my wife's yelling at me going,
>> "If you can't figure this out,
>> guy,
>> how the fuck?" And she doesn't mean that I'm so smart. She's like, "Look, you actually spent time in this. If you can't do it, there's no way my mom's going to do it. My brother's no way."
>> We're getting closer, but, uh, we're not, we're not ready for prime time yet. It's clear that's non-specific to any, uh, one company.
>> And that, that's not a session about Coinbase. I love Coinbase. I'm bullish Coinbase. I just, come on, guys. Give me, give me some humans that I can talk to. Not a, not agents, and don't hide the buttons. Like, let me, let me just push the button to transfer you the money and then you'll get paid.
>> Yeah. I mean, I, I just want to pay you.
>> Actually, Scott, I even tried this. I even tried sending an email. Of course, it wouldn't accept the email because it was to the automated whatever.
>> Don't reply. Don't reply to it.
>> Don't reply. I'm like, "Just take the money. I give you permission to just take the money." Like, cuz I mean, I don't know. I, I don't know how to. And it's not even a lot of money. I mean, it's a few hundred. Yeah. Well, yeah. Interesting that you had the same, same experience. It's a bit frustrating, but otherwise, incredible product. Well, now I'm going to let you go. It's 9:45 and you have a flight Saturday, so you got to go get in line.
>> Yeah, I got to go get in line. All right. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks. Thanks for everything you do. Thanks for being the leader out there and, uh, thanks for being the, uh, the wolf that we all howl with. So.
>> Thank you, sir. I deeply appreciate it. And I'll have you back very, very soon. Thank you, everybody. I will see you tomorrow.
>> All right. Be good.
>> That's dope. That's dope.